Shelby

by McCormack, Pete;

“Does that make me family?”

  “Only if you stay,” I said.

  “I can’t, Shel.”

  “I want you to know you’ve really gone and blown all my plans.”

  “What plans?”

  “I’m not sure, but I know you were in them.”

  Lucy closed her eyes, touching her fingers to my cheek.

  “Lucy … I have to tell you something. You have to stay.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I … I have cancer.”

  “What?”

  “That’s a lie … but please stay …”

  Lucy laughed.

  “See? That’s the kind of fun we could have if you stayed.”

  “Fun?” she said grinning. “I need turmoil.”

  “Why do you have to go away?”

  Lying on her side, she shrugged her shoulders. “I just know I have to.”

  “But … isn’t it … I think it’s good here, you know?”

  “It’s not that, Shel,” she said. “It’s just that … I’ve never actually been anywhere where it felt like it was where it should be. I’ve always felt like either I’m in the wrong place or the place is in the wrong place.”

  “And Nazi Germany is the answer?”

  “I’m going everywhere.”

  “I don’t think going away is the answer. You can’t just walk into the Amazon River and say, ‘Hi, I’m here, I’m your new Goddess.’”

  “I can’t?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well … because … well …”

  We both laughed.

  “I’ll be hittin’ the Rhine first, anyway,” she said, “then maybe the Nile. Rumour has it the Amazon’s crazy with wannabe Goddesses this time of year.”

  “Hey? Why don’t I come with you? I have no immediate plans. I could probably hear my calling in India just as well as Vancouver—maybe better.”

  Lucy closed her eyes and touched two fingers from her right hand to my lips. Her eyes opened. “I’m going on my own,” she said.

  “Lucy, if you can’t find yourself here, I don’t think you’re going to be able to do it anywhere else.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Wait,” I said, “you can’t go. I still owe you a thousand dollars!”

  “A gift.”

  “What?”

  “It’s yours.”

  “I can’t take it.”

  “Too late.”

  “What are you going to live on?”

  “I’ve been stripping for eight years, Shel,” she said. “I’ve saved a bushel of money—stashes of it everywhere.” She grinned. “Accounts all over the world. Even with Frankie-boy I saved a fair chunk of dough.”

  “Lucy, I have to pay you back.”

  “Look, keep me in my old age.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I would,” I said.

  “Thanks, Shel.”

  “In fact it was one of my plans.”

  Just before leaving for the airport, Lucy bestowed on me a cardboard box full of things she wanted me to have, books—The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Myths to Live By, Original Blessing, The Family, Tao Te Ching, The Book, The Transmission of Doubt, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware, candles—purple, blue, red, some half melted, some new, the poem she had hung and framed inside the door: The valley spirit never dies; It is the woman, primal mother …, a small stack of photographs, a pipe, a record—The Best of Dave Brubeck, two bracelets and a worn out Raggedy-Ann type doll with a few strands of orange hair, a loose leg and one of her teeth blacked out with blue ink.

  Stepping outside, the street—our street—was amazingly quiet; it was chilly, an overcast sky hanging with the threat of rain. I put the cardboard box, the quilt and Lucy’s suitcase in the back seat of the car. Lucy put her other bag on her lap. And so I drove, due south, overwhelmed; two days earlier I had been seeking ways to bridge the gap between us, confident, yearnful, unknowing that a finger snap into the future I’d be driving her to the airport so she could venture off on a spiritual safari to someplace called Bingen.

  Boom and we were standing at the departure gate watching faceless passengers walk through the metal detector, all of them oblivious to the significance of our situation. Nonetheless, there we were, the gestation period of our relationship about to come to term, only to have us separated at birth. The last call for boarding had come and gone.

  “This is it,” she said. I glanced at Lucy. She appeared anxious.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  She turned and looked at me as though about to burst. “I think so,” she said, half smiling. I was overtaken by a wave of sadness, without warning, rising like a storm front. I turned away and looked out towards the landed planes. A few snow-flakes fell. Lucy took my hand and squeezed it softly. My eyes trickled with moistness. I swallowed and took a deep breath. Several more people went through the detector. Lucy squeezed my hand a second time.

  “Well, I guess this is it,” she said. She threw her arms around me, stroking the back of my neck with her bandaged hand. I closed my eyes, trying to memorize the feeling. Lucy fell away, looking up at me. For the first time ever I saw tears in her eyes. She quickly rubbed them with the wrist of her bandaged hand. “Damn allergies,” she said.

  “Do me a favour,” I said, “learn whatever it is you have to learn and then get the hell back here.” Tears were starting to roll down my face.

  “Okay.” There were no more people going through. “I have to go,” she said. She hugged me again and turned away, putting her carry on bag on the conveyor belt.

  “Wait!” she yelled, snatching it back. The customs lady jumped away. Lucy crouched down, unzipped the bag and pulled out the framed photograph of the little girl I’d given her for Christmas. She ran back and handed it to me, her eyes alive with tears and sadness and hope. “It’s me,” she said.

  I looked at the photograph. “Really?”

  “Nineteen sixty-five,” she said. “Nothing but fear. Thanks for everything, Shel.” Tears everywhere, she smiled. I smiled back and looked down at the little girl with the bad haircut, eyes squinting into the sun.

  I looked up.

  The big girl was gone.

  XXIII

  O powerless is the brain to pierce this mighty mystery!

  —Walt Whitman

  I didn’t do the concert with Eric that night. I left the airport and drove to the banks of the Fraser River. Pulling Lucy’s quilt from the back seat, I draped it over myself and watched the water flow by; pregnant from all the rain, muddy and brown against the light fall of snow, clouds above her reminiscent of sleeping old dogs, factories and the squeals of rush hour traffic dancing around her like a huge golden frame from the Smithsonian Museum in Oxford or some other place I’d never been. Pollution on the shoreline told a tale of its own: a licence plate, two aluminum cans and a plastic bag. Gazing out to the other side and as far east and west as vision would allow, I could see no Goddess.

  I watched the river until long after the sun had disappeared, changes abounding, light to dark, altering noises, all of it dished up like soup, rolled out like carpet, unstoppable, source unclear, destination blurry. And then I drove across town, still draped in the quilt, and parked the car outside Lucy’s apartment. I knew I hadn’t yet grasped the reality of her leaving—whatever that was. I half expected to see her in the window, or dancing, or yelling, or smiling.

  In the lamplight I flicked through the books she had left me in her box. In one by some guy named Bubba Free John—poor kid—there was a bright red bookmark with a tassle. I opened to that page and read what had been highlighted in yellow felt pen, presumably by Lucy:

  Rather than settling down to an adolescent life of complaint, you should kick your ass out of the house and submit yourself to the bare facts of existence. Wander until you find it. This was an obvious course for me. There was no way I was just going to take a profession
or a job and settle down to a middle-class life. To do so was insane from my point of view. I did not see any Happy people. I only saw people burdened with their lifetime occupation, their dumb ideas about existence, and their endless neurotic fretting. What is the purpose of organizing that into a career? What is the purpose of devoting yourself to a life of preserving that?

  I couldn’t decide if the passage had been highlighted as a way for Lucy to explain to me her leaving, as a piece of prose that moved her, or as a note for me to reflect on. Either way, I read it several times. I cried, too. I stared at her window for hours; the darkness of glass, the emptiness of a memory of a calico cat. And sometime into the wee morning hours I unravelled myself from the quilt, wandered shivering down to the beach and peed into the ocean. At that moment it seemed, with a golden umbilical chord glistening between us, I and the sea were one; and as I breathed out visible breath I thought, where does this breath end? Where does the air I take in end?

  Dawn arrived in a downpour, a cacophony of natural applause, and to this curtain call I did a U-turn on Cornwall Street and parked in the beach parking lot perhaps 100 feet away. Traffic peaked to where its roar—beeps and squeals and all—was indecipherable from the crash of rain. Tilting my seat back, I was swaddled in the quilt, my thoughts as intermingled as Christmas decorations, lights included, after a year in storage.

  Save a late lunch across the street at Mama Gold’s, I remained in the car for the day, wrapped and warm in Lucy’s quilt, my sunroof mysteriously not leaking. I thought about the Neo-nazi groups that had spread across the Canadian horizon in the past year or so and the anti-rascist groups that had sprouted up in defence with large rallys and signs like KILL NAZIS. Naturally I took side with the latter group, but were either of them doing any good? The same went for the Pro-Life and Pro-Choice factions. The end result? Individual human ideologies and angers so ingrained that on a large scale differing opinions—indeed people—seem incapable of one thing: getting together and chatting it out—or just getting together! Are Pro-Choicers really murderers? Does the conscious aborting of a fetus hint towards a human species’ subconscious hatred for existence? Is it a feminist reaction to subjugation? As for Pro-lifers, the majority of them also believe that capital punishment is warranted and killing in war is justified. Therefore, I concluded, in the depths of what we call civilization, psychosis abounds. And religion? Jesus appeared to be onto something with his Do not judge concept, but look what happened. Moreover, now He has a group of fifty million ardent followers in North America who, I am sure, if it weren’t for the grace of the times would slaughter homosexuals and wipe out nonbelievers. In short, be it nations or lovers, eventually somebody always stops calling. Perhaps the answer for me was to take no sides and have no opinions. But then how could I still enjoy poetry? Or was the answer to not follow anybody, including myself? Dammit, who could I turn to? Lucy had the Goddess, but that for me was not a natural inclination. But what was? What had I accomplished in my twenty years? Nothing. Had I made a difference in anybody’s life, including my own? No.

  The sun had been set for about five hours by the time I backed out of the parking lot. The rain had stopped and the temperature had dropped to where bits of ice were forming on the windscreen. The Molson Brewery clock said: 11:38—HAPPY NEW YEAR! I was cold and I had to defecate. I drove across town, observing crowds celebrating in the streets and coming and going from different establishments, be they public or private.

  Parking outside Eric’s apartment, I heard the noise of the party before I left the car. I picked up my box of gifts from Lucy.

  Inside, the apartment was enveloped in a smoky blue screen of self-induced oblivion. I felt a twinge of pain in my lower back. Coughing, the pain leapt into my chest. Eric’s face popped through a maze of faces.

  “Shel!”

  “Hi.”

  “Where the hell have you been, man?”

  “Sorry about the concert last night.”

  “The … oh yeah, where the hell were you?”

  “How did it go?”

  “We kicked the shit out o’ that place, man—you look terrible.”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s in the box?”

  “Stuff.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “No, I’m okay, thank you.”

  “Y’sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’s Lucy?”

  “Seattle or Frankfurt.”

  “Okay, man …” Eric smiled and did a cheers gesture with his bottle before sinking back into the quicksand. I pushed my way into the front room, knelt down into something wet, picked up Lucy’s photograph from the top of the box and held it to my breast. A knee kicked me in ribs. I didn’t respond. I didn’t even care, instead getting on all fours and searching through the paraphenalia I kept beneath the couch. Tapped on the shoulder, I looked up to see Eric smiling at me with a beer in his hand and a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.

  “Hey, hombre,” he said, his words slightly slurred, “you sure you’re okay?”

  Pushing myself up, I embraced him with all the regard I had, kissing him on the cheek, shaking his hand. “Thank you for everything, Eric.”

  He seemed confused. About to put his beer to his lips, he stopped, offering it instead to me. I shook my head in the negative.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asked again.

  I nodded, crouched back down and reached under the couch, scattering books until coming up with my red-bound, New International Version, slightly weathered Holy Bible. It fell open to where I kept the photograph of my family: Gran, Derek, Mom, Dad, me. I took the picture out and stuck it in the lower left corner of the framed picture of Lucy. I stood up with the photographs in hand and picked up Fish-tail Pie from the top of the television set. Then I put both into the box of treasures Lucy had given to me. Turning around, I borrowed a packet of matches from a man I didn’t recognise. I hoisted the box up, now of considerable weight, and pushed my way through the labyrinth of people and into the cloudy hallway. There was a winding line-up for the bathroom. I surveyed the situation and readied myself. The door opened, I barged in, slamming the door with my foot. I placed the box on the yellow bathmat and turned around to lock the door.

  “You asshole,” somebody bellowed from outside, “I got to take a shit!”

  I pulled down my corduroys and did just that. The music stopped and through the barrage of voices somebody yelled, “Countdown!” I smiled, pulled two candles from the box and lit them. Then I wiped, flushed, got up and placed the candles on the toilet seat. I turned out the light and ran the bath. Steam started to rise. I kicked off my shoes and undressed slowly, letting each article of clothing drop to the floor on its own accord—a strip-tease of sorts. Gently I caressed my goose bumped body, stopping for a slightly longer time on my nipples and the base of my testicles. There was a thumping on the door.

  “Hurry up for Christ’s sake!” Thump. Thump. “Fuckin’ hurry up!”

  I was pleasantly surprised at how much noise from the pandemonium the running water could block out. The flickering candlelight was brilliant across the bathroom walls. I picked up the picture of Lucy and my family and balanced it on top of the toilet against the wall. I looked at it. The warmth of the candle flame was soothing under my chin, the waxy aroma floating through my senses. There was more pounding on the door, barely audible, over the flow of water and music. I positioned Fish-tail Pie next to the candles. I stood up and stuck my toe into the water—the heat firing emergency synapses in my brain—and slowly ventured in.

  “What the hell are you doing in there?” mumbled through the flowing water. I didn’t answer. Thump. Thump. “What the …” I kept my eyes on the photographs, flickering in the light.

  “Open the damn door, asshole!” I closed my eyes and let out a deep breath. I slipped my shoulders under the water, opened my eyes and lay motionless. Beads of sweat started to form on my temples. I was amazed at how perfectly designed the bat
hroom was for setting up a shrine on the toilet. Flat out in the tub I could see everything—Gran, Lucy, Fish-tail Pie, the rising steam reminiscent of some ancient medicinal hot spring carved into a mountainside. I closed my eyes and went under. I pictured a river and then a calm little inlet where the rapids had ceased—rich greens and yellows brilliantly dancing off the rippled surface like some cosmic trampoline. I pushed my nose just above the surface of the water and took a deep breath. There was another thump. I smiled into the darkness.

  When I woke up the water was tepid, the party was still furiously loud and the music was back on. Climbing out of the bath, I dried off, giving my hair a particularly good swaddle, and put the photographs and Fish-tail Pie back in the box. I left the two candles on the toilet seat, still alight. Opening the medicine cabinet, I took out Eric’s razor and, testing its sharpness, nicked my thumb. Blood oozed freely out of such a fine and wet laceration. Wrapping the cut with toilet paper, I proceeded to shave without incident. I also flossed and brushed my teeth. Then I folded my clothes—jacket and shoes included—and put them on top of the box as a makeshift lid. I undid the bathroom door lock, picked up the box and stepped out.

  In the hazy, smoky light everybody stopped and stared as I strutted my clean body down the hallway, big box in hand. I asked a young woman putting on her coat if she’d open the door for me. She obliged. A burst of cold air chilled me. I walked down the steps into the night.

  “Shel?” a voice yelled from the doorway just as I opened my car door. I turned around to see Eric’s head among many. He was grinning widely. “What the hell are you doin’, man?”

  I shrugged.

  “It’s fuckin’ freezin’ out there.”

  “There’s a quilt in the car,” I said.

  “You’re butt-naked!”

  “I know.”

  “Where are you goin’, man?”

  I stopped, thinking. “I don’t know,” I said. “Does anyone want to come?” Nobody moved. I was glad. I stepped into the car, wrapped myself in the quilt and blew them all a kiss. Eric gave me a thumbs up. I drove away.

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