Shelby

by McCormack, Pete;

  “I didn’t shake my head.”

  “Yes, you did. I said, quote, I’m reading Winnie-the-Pooh, unquote, and your head went back and forth two or three times.”

  “You want to know why I shook my head?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  He leaned forward. “Because I cannot believe my twenty-one year old dropout son is sitting on a couch in Revelstoke reading Winnie-the-god-damn-Pooh!”

  We stared. “Okay.”

  His face curled up as though his brain had been sucked out from behind. “That’s all you got to say for yourself?”

  “What would you like me to say?”

  “What do you want to say!”

  “I … I want you to know that my leaving university was no fly-by-night decision. I didn’t mean to let anybody down. And yes I’m frightened about what lies ahead. Yes I am aware that I have forsaken the comfortable path. But a man who hears a call and ignores it is, in my books, no man at all.”

  “And what call have you heard there, sonny boy? Call o’ the wild?”

  “I’m fed up with these attacks! One’s calling does not come in the form of a loud scream. It doesn’t say, ‘Here I am.’ It doesn’t come with a set of instructions. Nay, it comes like drops of pebbles into water. Yes, and all the seeker can hope for is to somehow make contact with the tip of that ripple and from there follow it to its source.”

  “You don’t have a damn clue what you’re doing, do you?”

  My ears tingled, my teeth clenched to stop a surge of tears. “Maybe not … but I damn well know what I’m not doing—no, wait. I know what I’m doing. I am trying to … embrace my … you’re not helping much.”

  “You want help. Here’s help. I ought to smack you right in the chops!”

  “Offer denied.”

  “Don’t get smart.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You think you know it all but you don’t really know.”

  “What don’t I know?”

  “You don’t know shit.”

  “I know this much,” I said, scanning to the bottom of the page. “Piglet asks Pooh …” I glanced up and our eyes shook like copulating dragonflies. “Oh … to heck with it.” I slammed down the book.

  “I paid for that table.”

  “I know. You paid for everything.”

  “That’s right, I did.”

  “Well … I won’t be bought.”

  “No one would buy you!”

  “I’m not for sale.”

  “You’re already sold!”

  “How could I be if no one will buy me?”

  The veins in Dad’s head began to ripple, rising like swollen rivers, popping on his temples and forehead as he glared at me. “Talk all you want, your damn philosophy will never pay the rent!”

  “By the way, I’m not twenty-one, I’m twenty.”

  And on we went Until all family members had been raised from slumber and Winnie-the-Pooh was set alight page by page and left for cinder in the family hearth. Gran, for some reason, found the situation hysterical.

  I did not sleep that night. How could I? Twenty years old and I was sent to my room. I tried concentrating on my breathing. It didn’t help. I read The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro—a writer Mom loves but who I find tedious. Still slumber was allusive. Despite my best intentions, the one sure-fire soother called from below. So detached I was from my nature, I wound up in heated conversation. “Come on,” he said, “it’ll take you two minutes and you’ll be asleep in five.” My hands clenched. “I don’t need you.” “Maybe not … but you waaant me.” “No!” I leapt from the bed and penned an extravagant letter to Lucy espousing the beauty of our friendship and how I cherished all she’d taught me about the bigger picture. I threw it out and collapsed on the bed, barely able to breathe for the painful urges in my groin. Ellie McMartin, my laboratory partner in Advanced Chemistry 11 and the first woman for whom I ever ached, slammed into my forehead. It was just before the Christmas holidays, 1988, and I had left beneath her Bunsen burner a note with a passage from a love poem by John Donne: If ever any beauty I did see, ’twas but a dream of thee. I signed my name and spent the weekend in bed, staring at my three-winged airplane wallpaper, unable to move, filled with terror.

  The following Monday between classes, amidst the crowd, I sipped from the water fountain near Ellie’s locker and overheard Shirley Derosa (one of Ellie’s horrible friends) offering her opinion of me and my gesture.

  Shirley: “A love note?” she asked in her Valley girl way.

  Ellie: “A poem.”

  Shirley: “I don’t want to put him down, right? But you’re my best friend, okay, and I think he’s kind of pukish.”

  Instinct one: Smash my skull into this ceramic fountain and leave myself for dead, unidentifiable even with dental records.

  Instinct two: Puncture Shirley Derosa with my compass several thousand times before mercifully bludgeoning her to death with the textbooks I was carrying.

  Instinct three: I am a loser. I need to be in bed, wallowing in self-pity and disgust at my own form.

  Instinct three prevailed, the first indications of what lay ahead in the not so distant future. But even worse was that without forewarning, Shirley and her loppy breasts and constricted jeans had mysteriously screeched from the hallway and parked themselves in my head like an inoperable cancer of the brain. Oh yes, I despised her for what she had done, and yet there she was, my first ever dominatrix fantasy, yelling: “It’s me you really love, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” And I’d be crying out in my head: “Yes! Yes! Yes!” in desperation until my piston-like hand had finally blasted all my pain drenched gooey stuff into a white rag pulled over my helmet like an Arabian’s head gear. Afterwards, I’d lie spread eagled and spent, the wet rag in my right hand, my body and brain draped in an itchy blanket of self-loathing. As late as the following day I would still be walking around hating my every fibre.

  Then I’d do it again.

  After a pleasing enough following day and a deliriously oily egg and cheese fry up dinner at Gran’s place, I returned home sometime after eleven to find Dad in the front room gazing into the television, hues of blue and purple dancing off his balding head.

  “Hello.”

  “Son—yeah … say, I’m sorry about the book.”

  I shrugged.

  “I shouldn’t have …” He shrugged, lost for words.

  “Burnt it,” I said.

  “Listen … you want to have a beer?”

  I was surprised by the offer. Never had we drunk together. “Beer?”

  “Sure. I got a case o’ Black Label in the fridge in the shed. You want to have one out there?”

  “The shed?”

  “I’ll show you the rad.”

  “The rad?”

  “Still leaking,” he said.

  “Leaking?”

  The walk towards the shed was made without jackets. The wind blew cold as though hearkening to the demands of the winter to come.

  “Frosty, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Ten years ago there was snow by Hallowe’en. Makes you wonder if there’s some truth to that greenhouse stuff.”

  “Did you know ten thousand years ago Vancouver was under thirty feet of ice.”

  “You’re kidding me?” he said, opening the creaky shed door. “It musta been hell on rush hour.” I stepped in. Dad pulled a switch and a low watt bulb offered a dull glow, as though courteous of the space it was sharing with the prevailing turpentine and gasoline odours that filled the room. The door closed.

  “In fact,” I said, continuing on, “as late as the Thurass—” A hand on my shoulder spun me round, and Dad, grabbing me by my collar, bulldozed me sprawling into the wall. Wrenches and other tools rattled around my head, paint cans fell to the floor.

  “Dad … what—”

  “Stand up,” he growled.

  “I’m standing.”

  “Shut up. Why’d you back out?”

  “I just—”

 
“I asked you why you were backing out.”

  “I—”

  “Put these on.” Dad took a shiny pair of red leather boxing mitts off his workbench and tossed them at me.

  “Boxing mitts?”

  “Gloves, city boy.”

  “What for?”

  “Put ’em on.”

  “Fisticuffs?”

  “Put the gloves on before I knock you right in the nose.”

  “This is a setup, isn’t it?”

  “Put them on!” he screamed. Terrified, I complied. “Never made you work, never put you in sports, never made you be a man!”

  “I’ve been set up.”

  “Never taught you courage or committment.” Dad started putting on his pair.

  I glanced at the gloves on my hands and backed up. “Dad … remember when you told me about Orion’s belt?”

  “Just put on the gloves,” he said.

  “Dad … I … I don’t even know how to tie these things up.”

  His hands and head dropped in dismay. The door swung open and there in the dim light stood a toothless Gran and Mom, both in nightclothes, both in gumboots, both staring, void of expression.

  “Shelby?” Mom said, looking at me in the boxing gloves.

  “There’s no beer in here,” I said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mom, there’s no fridge,” I mumbled, near tears.

  She glanced at Dad. “Ed?”

  He didn’t respond, gloves clutched loosely in his hands, head bowed.

  “I was set up,” I whined.

  “I’m utterly distraught,” I said sometime later, my head laid out on Gran’s kitchen table as she plugged in the kettle. “My own father may have pummeled me to death in a back shed.”

  Gran whistled.

  “Where would he have buried me?”

  “Good question. The ground’s pretty frozen.”

  “Are all the prophecies coming true? Is the gyre widening; famine, disease, broken men—alas, where even the best lack all sensibilities?”

  “Huh?”

  “Must I be what others think I should be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I now truly believe our own lives are mere microcosms of the world at large.”

  “Come on.”

  “I feel like an egg!” I cried, thumping the table.

  “Scrambled?”

  “Is it only through these eyes that insanity reigns?”

  “Is it … Let me tell you something, mister. At forty-two I knew at best I had maybe three childbearing years left. Thing was I’d never met a man worth his salt. Problem was, time was running out. So I offered to chaperone a soiree for some of the young soldiers who were leaving for France. This is just before the Dieppe slaughter; the boys were wide-eyed and pimply faced—no fear, boy, they didn’t know. No one knew. Right away I spot an attractive redhead. Introduced himself as Pegland Cecil ‘Shocky’ Dansworth, Private. ‘How old are you, Shocky?’ ‘Eighteen, Ma’am …’ ‘Ay, you’re a handsome lad.’ Did he blush! So anyway, before the night ends I offer Shocky a lift home. From there I give him the fling of his life, eggs Benedict for breakfast, and the best war story a kid could want. A month later word came back he was dead. Same day I found out I was carrying.”

  “Mom?”

  “And I raised her, loved her, gave everything a single mom could in the 40s. Told her to be proud, to not worry about what the other children said. She grew up beautiful, strong—smart, too. But she still married Ed. You see, Doll, life has always had, between the sheets, between the clouds, between it all, an underlying spirit of insanity.”

  “My God,” I said, “if it wasn’t for one virile redheaded young private, I wouldn’t be here today.”

  “And that’s another thing, too. Good times, bad times. You gotta give thanks—even for experiences you don’t understand.”

  “That whole story reeks of destiny. I mean what are the chances of ever actually existing? Three or four hundred million sperm per ejaculate. One egg. Miscarriages. Abortions. Out-of-cycle unions.”

  “Shel, I’m gonna tell you something. Never told anyone else. When I was sixteen I had an abortion.”

  “What?”

  “Ninteen-fifteen. Knocked up by the son of a prominent Toronto politician. Next thing I knew I was on a train into the city. Yonge Street. Old building of bricks. Broken windows. Terrifed, I was.”

  “I’m stunned.”

  “I was laying back on a table. Looked over to a wall, stained. Water. Christ on a cross. Not a word was spoken between me and the man. Light in my eyes so bright I couldn’t even see the doctor—if he was a doctor. I was sick for three weeks afterwards.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I saw you on the news that night and it brought it all back.”

  “I wasn’t taking a stand, Gran. I have no position on the issue.”

  “I know, Doll. But let me tell you one thing, if people tell you it’s black or white—they’re full o’ donkey doo. It’s pain and fear and guilt and hope and sad and necessary and wrong and right.”

  There was a pause. “What do you think of sex, Gran?”

  “Overblown.”

  “Do you believe in the Christian God?”

  “Oh Heavens, the things we done in His name!” Gran shook her head and grinned sadly. “And now in the name of progress. We go to the moon cause we can’t make it work down here. What good does it do us? We can’t even feed our children. Pollutin’ all the world with our big-time factories, keepin’ people alive who have the right to be dead and free from all this medicine. See, nobody knows what they’re doing, they just know they ain’t happy. And it’s not about having enough for everyone. Some ghetto kid, what’s he want? He wants what those in the suburbs have. But what do they have? Two T.V.’s. A microwave. We gotta learn when enough’s enough. Look at Ed tonight. He’s got all the comforts. But he ain’t got Ed. Never listened to Ed. And we try to blame someone else, or we try to tell everyone how it should be done. Where’s it leave us, darlin? All I know is I hear a lot less birds singing songs when the sun comes up than I did thirty years ago—and it’s not because of my hearing aid.” We both smiled. “It’s not that there isn’t enough out there,” she said. “There’s not enough in here.” Gran pointed to her heart. “You want to live? Don’t let anyone tell you what you should be doin’. You got a big heart. I’ve seen it a thousand times. And one day it’s going to draw you a big map and you’ll nod and go, ‘Oh, so that’s what that old bag meant’.” Gran whooped.

  “I love a woman back in the city, Gran.”

  “I know you do.”

  “She doesn’t love me.”

  “How could a woman not love you? Dammit, Shel, pour it out. Let her know. Take a chance. If it doesn’t work, be proud of yourself.” Gran sat down and we gazed out the window and into blackness.

  “Are you happy, Gran?”

  “If I wasn’t happy by now,” she said with a smile, “I wouldn’t be here. At my age you can pretty much decide before bed if you want to cancel your wake up call.” We looked out the window some more. “Your old man loves you,” she said. I didn’t respond. I knew it was true, but somehow it was more fullfilling to be in turmoil.

  “Hey, Gran?”

  “Yeah, doll?”

  “Given everything, is it all worth it?”

  There was no hesitation. “Oh God, yes,” she said.

  I drove home without saying good-bye the following morning—except to Gran, of course. I snuck away before dawn. What else could I do? I left a note.

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  It would appear at present we have nothing in common. But what is the journey of a man’s life if it is not his own? I feel deep within that within five years we’ll all be sitting around a big fire, petting dogs and what have you, laughing about the time Shelby Lewis dropped out of school. But, alas, for now it is all grief. Sorry about letting you down. Love and thanks to you both.

  Shelby

&nbs
p; XIV

  Son of man, You cannot say, or guess

  for you know only A heap of broken images

  —T. S. Eliot

  The first week back from Revelstoke, I shuffled along without serious mental anguish or physical disfigurement. In one way, I felt more garbled than ever as to knowing the purpose of life—often picturing myself as a spawning salmon swimming back thousands of miles to the source, only to find the river dammed. In another way, I felt more brave than ever, prepared to express both my needs and my shortcomings.

  As for Lucy and I, we spent considerable time together and got along wonderfully despite our disagreements on how to deal with Frank (they had a shouting match outside the Cobalt Hotel over past monies), the National Referendum, divinity, the relevance of her flailing psychic abilities, the function of marriage and, of course and most of all, sex. Never was it actually spoken of as a blatant question as to whether we should confer to copulate, but general conversation pointed to the unwavering chasm between our respective wants.

  One evening Lucy and I drove to English Bay for a stroll around the sea wall. Upon parking and leaving the car, with the potential for rain obvious by gloomy gray clouds o’erhead, we zipped up our jackets and huddled in close. The sea air was strong, coating my tongue like a salt lick. The tide was in and the beach was as dark as chocolate milk, sprinkled with seaweed and barnacled logs and fishy smells. Just around the first bend, the rains began. By Second Beach, we were soaked. The night had arrived and the pathways were glistening in the lamplight. My pants chafed my tender legs as from deep within I throbbed, yearning to live out a verse or two of the Song of Songs.

  I knew, however, it was essential that I also be respectful of Lucy’s needs, for it takes two wanting souls and a little serendipity to truly share the milk and honey beneath one’s tongue. So if Lucy desired celibacy, what right had I to get in the way? Our previous encounters had uncovered me to be spiritually brain-dead. How could I guarantee I’d changed? On the other hand, further sexual suppression could once again tumble me back into a bed of paranoia and questionable orientation. So no matter what, I was a man with a yin that needed to be yanged.

  “Lucy?” I said as we walked onwards against the rain.

  “Yeah?”

  “If I may say, there have been moments, just before I’m taken by slumber, that you’ve appeared before me as half woman, half fawn or maybe moose, your hair dangling down across olive breasts, and you’re bathing in some glacial oasis in the Rockies.”