by Darren Greer
The first sign something was amiss in the town at large came the day my uncle returned from the hospital. That Friday afternoon, my grandmother’s bridge tournament was cancelled. One after another her bridge partners called and begged off with some ill-prepared excuse. By the time Hazel — who lived down the street and was one of her closest friends — called, my grandmother was resigned.
“Perhaps you could find a fourth from your list, Millicent?” Hazel suggested.
“I think,” said my grandmother dryly, “the list wouldn’t do me much good today, Hazel.”
▪ ▪ ▪
my grandmother made certain to be out of the house when my uncle arrived. She still held the faint hope he would get an apartment in town, and kept calling around for places to let on his behalf. She was always told nothing was available. The man who had offered my uncle the apartment on the Protestant side rescinded shortly after David went into the hospital. No one questioned why.
The bout with meningitis, and whatever else my uncle had, took a lot out of him. When he returned from the hospital, he was not able to walk on his own. Jeanette had borrowed a wheelchair from the hospital to bring him from the car up the walk, but he insisted on standing up and making his way up the front stairs and through the door. I stood in the front hall and watched, fascinated. He was hardly the same man. He was pale, gaunt, and exhausted, weaker and thinner than before he had gone. He held on to the doorjamb to ease himself in to the house, then rested for a while in a kitchen chair.
When he said he would make his own way up the stairs to his room, I was surprised that neither my aunt nor my mother offered to help. As much as they loved him, they were refusing to touch him. After he was up, and his door was closed, they sat over coffee at the kitchen table. They said nothing, and occasionally looked at each other in some wordless communication designed, I was sure, to exclude me. I was baffled. My uncle was home. They should have been happy.
Dr. Fred came by later that afternoon to see how my uncle was doing. He was remarkably free from the hysteria of the nurses and support staff at the hospital. After a little research, he was confident the disease my uncle had, the underlying illness, was sexually transmitted.
My grandmother refused to believe it. She still wanted David away where it was safe; she warned me to stay away from him and not to go into his room. My mother didn’t challenge my grandmother’s proclamation. Though she claimed to believe what Fred said, she must have had some lingering doubt.
While he was in hospital, my uncle had developed two purple spots, one on his cheek and one on his neck, each about the size of a dime. My mother and Jeanette asked Dr. Fred what they were. He said they were a rare form of cancer called Kaposi sarcoma, not uncommon in patients with aids. There were no treatments. Uncle David also had a bacteria in his cerebrospinal fluid normally found only in the feces of birds.
Dr. Fred showed himself to be a consummate physician. By his own admission, he knew little about aids. There was precious little written about it. There was no one local he could consult, and there were no reported cases in Nova Scotia besides my uncle. He contacted my uncle’s physician in Toronto to ask him about it, but the man knew little more than Dr. Fred, and as of yet there were no treatments. So Dr. Fred treated each opportunistic infection separately, with antibiotics and antivirals.
“I don’t understand how he could be so sick,” my mother said in the living room, while I eavesdropped from the stair. “In June he was just fine. A little thin, maybe, but …”
“He wasn’t fine,” Dr. Fred said. “David has been symptomatic for over a year. The weight loss is simply part of it. All the other illnesses I have mentioned to you, with the exception of the meningitis, were diagnosed before he came home.”
“And so you’re telling us …”
“Yes. I’m telling you.”
“Hold on,” my mother said. Before she said more, she got up and looked into the hall, where she found me sitting there. “Jacob,” she said. “Would you excuse us a minute? Go up to your room while Dr. Willis and I talk.”
I did so, resentful that I was being excluded. I passed the closed door to my uncle’s bedroom. Over the next few months, I would get very used to that closed door, and tiptoeing past it so as not to disturb him.
▪ ▪ ▪
if deanny mcleod ever understood exactly what my uncle had, or if her parents had heard the rumours now virulently sweeping the town, she never mentioned it.
I still hadn’t told my mother about Deanny or where I was going. Not because she was from the wrong side of the tracks — I knew my mother and Aunt Jeanette would not care about that, though my grandmother would — but because everything was too weird at my house to invite friends over. So I kept her a secret.
We met at the mill when she could get away. We broke every window in every abandoned vehicle, investigated the old buildings and machinery so much they were stripped of their intrigue and mystery. Deanny got bored. We had done pretty much everything we could there, and looked for somewhere else to play.
She invited me to her house on Meadow Pond Lane.
I had been to Meadow Pond Lane on several occasions. When I collected bottles and cans for Christmas money, my aunt drove me to the depot to cash them in. But I had never walked through it. Poor neighbourhoods, like rich ones, seemed exclusive. Deanny’s house, with a weedy, scrofulous lawn, was small, pink, and unadorned, except for one plant dangling under an eve, undeniably dead, its brown stalks and leaves collapsed around the rim of its white plastic hanging pot, an exhausted spider. Everything about Deanny’s place was impoverished, even the two twisted spruce trees growing behind the outhouse.
The first time I was there, Deanny did not invite me in. She was as foul-mouthed as she’d been at the mill, and spoke in a loud voice. I kept waiting for someone to come out and see who I was, but no one did. I suspected either her parents weren’t home — belied by the presence of a rust-eaten blue Dodge Charger in the driveway — or they didn’t care. I assumed, correctly as it turned out, that she was an only child.
I liked Meadow Pond Lane.
I shouldn’t have. It was so disordered, so small, so derelict compared to what I knew. But that was the reason I liked it. I never had to worry about sitting on an antique chair or breaking a Depression glass punch bowl. On Tenerife Street I could get away with nothing, for if I did something untoward either my grandmother would see me or one of her friends would call her up and rat me out.
Deanny didn’t once ask to go to my house to play. She was content to stay at Meadow Pond, and to educate me in its ways. Freed from the suffocating rationalism of Cameron and math class, and the domestic rules of my grandmother, I went to town. We lit matches and set off caps and firecrackers. No one blinked an eye. We walked on the hoods of abandoned cars and tried to smash windshields with rocks and slashed up the vinyl on seats with jackknives. I was not a physical boy. This was the closest I’d ever come to delinquency and it was exhilarating. Deanny showed me the ropes. She told me what to do and how to do it. She took satisfaction in corrupting me.
From the time my uncle returned from the hospital, until my birthday, Deanny completely transformed my life. It’s no wonder I paid little attention to the dramas playing themselves out in my house. There would come a time when I could no longer ignore them. Until then I was content to play and unshackle myself from academic expectations and social pretensions. Deanny taught me how to be a child, at a time when I was being asked to grow up too quickly.
3
my mother was confused about why my uncle was not bouncing back from his illness. In her experience, people got sick and then they got better. David was thin and pale when he went into the hospital, it was true, but there was no reason, she felt, he shouldn’t get his strength back. He seemed to be feeling better, making his way around without assistance. But he was feeble. Dr. Fred explained that the meningitis had beaten down my uncle’s immune system, and the underlying condition would not let it bounce back. Ot
her illnesses, like the bird virus and the purple spots, had taken more serious hold, and, as usual with patients with aids, my uncle David seemed to get seriously ill seriously fast.
My mother and Aunt Jeanette suspected David stayed in his room to spare my grandmother. She claimed she couldn’t stand the thought, let alone the sight, of him. When they begged him to get out of his room, he would only say that he would rather stay in. He made no requests to go out. He’d made no requests for anything. So they spent time with Uncle David in his room, and continued to bring him meals on trays. My grandmother began to live on the phone in her room, talking to her old bridge partners even though they would no longer come to her house. I spent most of my time at Deanny’s.
This state of affairs continued until Dr. Fred told my mother that David had to get out more. “He’s rotting away up there,” he said. “This disease is as hard on the mind as it is the body. He needs some relief from it.”
My mother didn’t say anything. In his room, David was barricaded from the prejudice of my grandmother. My mother also wanted to shield him from the ugly truths playing themselves out beyond his door.
Uncle David didn’t know, for example, that I had been asked to stay out of the town library. One afternoon, when I had walked in to get a book, Mrs. Frail told me I would have to stay away for a time, until this thing with my uncle straightened itself out. My mother was incensed. She called Mrs. Frail, who prevaricated. I was being prevented, she said, from entering the library due to a town ordinance.
“What ordinance?” asked my mother.
“I don’t remember. Perhaps you should contact the mayor.” Mrs. Frail would say no more.
At dinner my mother said if she wasn’t so angry she would be forced to laugh. “Don’t these people hear themselves? Don’t they know how ridiculous they sound?”
Jeanette nodded.
My grandmother stayed silent. She had overheard when Dr. Fred said David needed to get out more. After he left, she asked what the mechanics of such a venture might be. “Surely you know you can’t just waltz out the front door with him,” she said. “The neighbourhood would never allow it.”
“I’m tired of what the neighbourhood will and won’t allow,” said my mother. “I’m sick to death of having to dance around their ignorance.”
“Mark my words,” said my grandmother. “Trouble will come of it.”
“I don’t care,” my mother said. “If Dr. Fred says it will be good for him, then we’ll do it. Who would you rather keep happy? David? Or a bunch of gossipmongering cowards with not a drop of sense or understanding?”
These were unusually harsh and vicious words for my mother, who normally didn’t speak poorly of anyone. But she was angry, and I think Dr. Fred’s gentle remonstrance had made her feel slightly ashamed. She had allowed the reaction of the town to dictate her own behaviour, and denied my uncle some comfort and relief because of it.
▪ ▪ ▪
on the day of my twelfth birthday, I got up at eight and went downstairs, forgetting for the first half hour I was actually twelve. I only remembered when I glanced into the living room and saw the gifts wrapped in brightly coloured paper and stacked high on the living room sofa. I always got a lot of gifts on my birthday; in a way, it was better than Christmas, because there were no socks or pants or running shoes among the lot. They were always toys, and things I had specifically asked for. Even my grandmother usually went all out and bought me three or four things. This year I asked for a Commodore 64 to replace my old Vic-20, and was anxious as to whether or not I had received it. The Commodore was an expensive gift, and though usually there was no limit on what I could ask for, I was not sure the Commodore fit my grandmother’s dictum of “within reason.”
I was tempted to check the size and heft of the presents for the most likely candidate, when I heard scuffling of slippers in the kitchen behind me. I expected my mother, but when I stepped inside I saw it was my uncle standing in front of the fridge with the door open. He was looking for something. This was the first time since he had come home from the hospital I had seen him outside of his room, except to go to the bathroom.
As my uncle reached one bony hand into the fridge he became aware of me.
“Hello Jacob,” he said.
He looked worse than usual. I almost didn’t recognize him. But his voice sounded exactly the same. Calm and measured. It was strange hearing my uncle’s voice coming out of this very sick man.
“Hello, Uncle David.”
“Can you find the margarine for me? I can’t seem to locate it.”
Nobody else was around. My mother and Jeanette had taken my grandmother to town at exactly eight so she could beat the rush at the grocery store. He stole these few moments to emerge from his prison on the second floor and get some toast and tea. I’m certain, in retrospect, he hadn’t known I was there.
I found the margarine for him. He poured the tea. I poured cereal for myself.
My uncle asked me to sit with him. I was suddenly as fearful as the rest of the town of catching whatever it was my uncle had. This was only natural. I was only twelve, and for weeks I had been hearing concerns about his infectiousness, mostly in regards to me. I had not given it much thought before because I barely saw him. His disease remained mysterious and remote. Yet here he was this morning. I imagined those purple flowers blooming on my own face. My own hands so elongated and thin. My own eyes so sunken in their sockets. I shrank away from my uncle’s every movement, even when he reached forward to dip his knife in the margarine, which he did several times.
He must have noticed this. After he had finished only one piece of toast he said he guessed he would take his tea and go back upstairs. He had difficulty carrying it. The hand with the cup shook. As he passed the doorjamb he held on to it for support. The cup was shaking so badly I thought it would spill.
I should have offered to help him. But I didn’t. God help me, I didn’t.
At that moment I was as guilty as everyone else in the town in thinking my uncle was a doomed pariah.
It was a terrible tone to set for my birthday.
▪ ▪ ▪
by ten o’clock, everyone had come back from the grocery store. I asked my mother if we could go pick up Deanny. I had only told her the night before that Deanny was coming, and my mother was delighted, though she was worried about Cameron not being present. Deanny was to be my only guest. My mother knew better than to invite anyone else. Besides the fact I didn’t have any friends from town, none of their parents would let them come.
My grandmother used this as another opportunity to state what an effect this whole affair was having on me. “The boy can’t celebrate properly,” she said. “I hope you realize what a toll this must be taking on him, Caroline.”
My mother had the decency not to answer.
She agreed readily it was time to pick up Deanny. By then I had spoken of her a few times, but not much. My mother knew she lived on Meadow Pond Lane. My grandmother did not. I was afraid to tell her about Deanny, in case she viewed the arrival with all the enthusiasm of having a leper, or another case like my uncle, over for the afternoon. I knew what she thought of Meadow Pond Lane and those who lived there.
I was a little worried, I admit, about Deanny spending any amount of time with my grandmother. She swore more than any kid I’d ever met. Since I hadn’t seen her in the presence of adults, I didn’t know if she toned it down for them. My grandmother did not like swearing. She did not allow it. She was currently not talking to Jeanette, who had called her a bitch the day before over an argument about my uncle. Bitch was barely in Deanny’s vocabulary as a mild curse word. She preferred cunt and fuck to practically any others. I couldn’t imagine what would happen to my grandmother if she heard those coming out of Deanny’s mouth. A heart attack, or an aneurism. She might banish her from the house never to return, and forbid me from ever stepping foot on Meadow Pond Lane again.
Because my mother didn’t drive, my Aunt Jeanette picked up De
anny. I went with her. My mother stayed home to ice my birth-day cake and get ready for the party. Although I didn’t realize it, both my aunt and my mother were prepared to love Deanny, if for nothing else than because she was allowed to come to our house when everyone else was being warned to stay away.
Even past the point where her parents must have known what was going on, Deanny was never asked to stay away from Tenerife Street. If she was, she never listened. Her parents were either completely indifferent, or more educated than the rest of the town. I tend to think the former. Deanny’s father was always drunk, and Deanny’s mother was so busy trying to hold the impoverished household together she didn’t have time to inquire after her.
Deanny herself was never afraid of my uncle’s “cooties.” She told me before the party she was kind of excited to see him. “Is he all gross?” she said. “Like sores and stuff?”
“Some sores,” I told her, thinking of the little purple spots. “And he’s kinda thin.” I told her about the bird infection in his brain.
“A bird brain,” Deanny said. “Cool.”
Deanny had made an attempt, I realized as soon as she came out of the house, to dress up. She didn’t have much fashion sense, nor money to adhere to one if she did. Most of her clothes were hand-me-downs or bought from Frenchies in town. She rarely wore jeans, mostly pull-on polyester slacks and largish tops that hung too far down. Today the slacks were canary yellow, the top lime green. The same old filthy sneakers. Her hair was still wet from her bath. She came to the car, not smiling, and climbed in the back seat.
I turned around and introduced her to my aunt. Then I held my breath. Anything at all could have come out of her mouth at this moment.
But all she said was “Hi.” She scowled and looked out the window.
