For Terry
… the days were very long
while the years were very short.
—Louise Glück
Contents
1
Four-Day Forecast for Wendy
This Year
Backup Chorus
The Cinderella Problem
The Chicken Remedy
National Craft Day
Hands on the Wheel
Dream Come True
Summing Up
Vibe
The Hearse Driver Speaks
Vibe
Keep Calm
Couch Lock
Old Days
Calendar
Doris Grant Day
Secretary Day
Gordon Lightfoot Day
It’s Supposed to Be a Fun Deal
Vibe
Ritardando
Annual Day
How We Live
Today’s Letter
Mother’s Advice
Father’s Advice
The Sailor’s Advice
Grandma’s Prophesy
Advice Ancient and Modern
Vibe
2
How Nice Was My Reply?*
Deep End
Frog Chorus
Not Every Day Will Be the Best Day of Your Life
It’s Like There’s a Wormhole in the Universe
Deaf Day
History of the Kitchen Sink
Story
Punk Kitchen
Day with Clouds
Day When Thoughts Became Audible
Vibe
The Chorus at 3:00 A.M.
Vibe
Today’s Mystery
The Marilyn Statue
The Finish Line
The Space Station Astronaut Speaks
We’ve Been in This Position for Decades
Vibe
Today’s Letter
There Are Times When You Are Forced to Respond to Things
Little Person
The Uncomfortable Zone
Adrift
Green Water
Day Off
The Complicated Solo
Vibe
French Connection
Dylan Thomas Day
3
Dream Lover
Festival in the Kitchen
Old Wives’ Day
Dorothy Parker Day
Roddy Doyle Day
Guys in the Chorus
The Cashier Speaks
Vibe
Seeing His Ex at the Wedding
Some Days You Just Can’t Talk …
Dog Days
The Importance of Discovery
Vibe
Six-Day Forecast for Andrew
Things She Wouldn’t Want
Usually There Are a Lot of Goodies throughout the Day
Organized Chaos
Vibe
Salon Day
The Day Comes Round with Unfailing Regularity
On a Busy Corner of Reality
The Cricket Problem
Father’s Advice
Mother’s Advice
Parting Advice
Chorus of Aging Rockers
Vibe
New Year’s Day
Chorus of Swans
Eternity Delayed
The Chorus Discussing God
Notes
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
1
Four-Day Forecast for Wendy
1
You have a keenness to never let your running mind rest. A keenness to be emotionally important.
You love dancing while wearing a bowtie and are not allergic to glee.
But you will never applaud a legend in the unmaking. Your dad, the retired banker, for one. His aging narrative has grown side effects.
Yesterday he was spotted exposing himself at a busy intersection while wearing see-through pantyhose beneath your mother’s curry-coloured coat. This caused mild excitement among passing motorists. The police were called. A witness described your dad as “not having much to show for himself.” He was quietly delivered home.
In light of all this, your becoming an astrophysicist doesn’t seem like such a big deal today.
2
Today you are in the Original Mystery business, a former bride hoping to penetrate the story, deliver the goods. Elements of a leaping terrier appear, and devoted goats, elephants, as well as flat, floating fish. A festival of washing dishes, cooking, hauling garbage, weeping, and laughing appear.
Mostly you are rushing from one beginning to another declaring, “Doesn’t the world look stunning? It almost feels natural!”
It’s hard to describe the look in your shiny chocolate eyes.
3
On this day you will mention to Gary, your husband of twenty-nine years, that you wouldn’t mind being your family’s head of state. You come from a long line of matriarchs, you’ll explain, and so your request is not an unreasonable one. Furthermore, you will say, “The men in your family do not become heads of state, ever. They tend to drop back to their own devices and drink Scotch in the corner of the living room with the cat on their lap.”
It will be late afternoon when you broach the subject with Gary. He will receive this as Good News! He’ll be in the garden shed smoking his daily joint. He’ll be sitting on the old white leather chair he dragged out there and he’ll be looking at you pleasantly. You, on the other hand, will be breathless. Nevertheless, you will tell him what’s on your mind.
Gary will be quiet for a long while after you speak. He’ll be staring at the dust on the shovel. Finally, he will say, “If that’s what you want, Wendy …” And grin.
4
Today your dog, which is wearing a red vinyl jacket and is tied to the boulevard tree outside the thrift store, will decide to end things. His name is Rusty, and suddenly, he feels like he’s dragging a rusty anchor.
This is because he now understands the truth of his situation: you don’t really love him. It’s what he’s suspected for some time – that, for you, being with him is like being in a prison. Because he, Rusty, is never going to grow up and go to school and get a job and support you later. That very quickly he’s going to become an old dog and possibly an expensive and cranky one.
When you come out of the thrift store he can read the truth in your eyes. Even though you say, “Thank you so much for waiting for me,” he knows it’s a lie. Your mind is elsewhere. You’d sooner walk by him and visit the cat in the pet shop down the street.
Every dog should have a boy instead of a fifty-six-year-old woman, he thinks.
This Year
–the dog will have six hundred friends
–almost everyone will lead a charmed life and spend it singing
–no one you love will get hurt, though some of us worn-old will disagree with this
–many will wear so much gold for good luck that no one will offer them guidance
–hair will be mostly styled for its hypnotic value
–everyone will follow forecasts, warnings, advice
–everyone will be part of the chorus, the ubiquitous hum
–everyone will plan to enjoy the next twenty-seven years
–everyone will get their picture taken with the President
Backup Chorus
–We are three nameless women harmonizing behind the male lead.
–Three TV goofs walking into walls with ladders.
–A quartet of optometrists singing “Wait till the Sun Shines, Nellie” on board the doomed flight in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
–A string trio covering Green Day over there by the subway exit.
–Five old women knitting together in a storefront to attract business.
–We are Janet saying to Elaine, “I was beautiful once and everybody loved me.”
The Cinderella Problem
You have a fondness for sweeping floors and raking leaves. You are happiest alone or when getting your hands dirty. You’ve often thought you’d make a good Cinderella. You like shoes and would consider a prince with a foot fetish as not a bad catch. You like a fancy-dress ball as well as the next person.
Many of these attributes have been put forward over the years but you have never been chosen. It’s beginning to look like you will never star in a fairy tale.
Your ugly stepsisters were actually good looking.
Your stepmother did the best she could.
The Chicken Remedy
If you need to peck ceaselessly at worrisome things, and it’s becoming a problem because you are pecking so much that it’s causing turmoil in the lives of others, wear red contact lenses.
This remedy has been inspired by chicken farmers. Red lights in the henhouse will decrease a chicken’s high, the one they get from pecking each other to death. Red contacts will do same for you.
I am a chicken that knows this.
National Craft Day
I’ve sculpted this clay figure. It’s tiny, four inches high, but only has three legs because I ran out of clay. It can’t stand on its own. It could be mistaken for a frog because I painted it green. But I like it. And I want other people to like it too.
How many people do I want to like my sculpture? How many people do I want liking it before I am satisfied that it is really liked? Can I put a number on that? I wouldn’t say no to a thousand people. A thousand people liking my sculpture would be pretty good, though more would be better. And Facebook “likes” don’t count because I want my sculpture to be liked for longer than a few seconds.
Another thing – do I have to be alive while people are liking my sculpture? I ask this because “decades” are no longer an option for me. Do I want people liking my sculpture, then, when I am just-about dead? After I am dead? When I am long-dead?
Oh my God! How dead is long-dead these days?
Hands on the Wheel
There is no law forbidding your dad from taking his electric train set with him when he’s buried. Many people have taken things with them after they die, the idea being that they’ve still got their hands on the wheel, so to speak.
Bob Marley took a Les Paul guitar and some weed.
Miles Davis took his trumpet.
Tiny Tim took his ukulele and some red tulips.
Harry Houdini took a packet of letters from his mother. (There was no escaping his mother.)
Roy Rogers took his cowboy hat, his dog’s ashes, and a pair of riding gloves.
Frank Sinatra took a bottle of bourbon and a pack of Camels.
My mother-in-law took her full-length mink coat. She wore it.
My grandmother took a deck of cards so she could continue playing solitaire.
My uncle took his dog Buddy, who’d died a week before. Buddy had to be dug up and reburied.
Then there was my father. He was a quiet man, but also a man of action. He wanted a roll of quarters with him in case he found a pay phone. To call home, he said.
Dream Come True
I remember my dad telling me about growing up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, when he was a kid, and how his grandpa retired off the farm and moved in with my dad’s family. And his grandpa lived out his days with them. That’s what happened to my dad’s parents and blah, blah, blah. That’s what you did back then, you looked after old people, blah, blah, blah.
My dad’s grandpa died on the couch, with two loaves of bread and some peanut butter on the coffee table and a bag of apples beside him. He had twenty-eight dollars in his pant’s pocket. The family had left him for a few days to go to a hockey tournament in Brandon.
Fortunately, things are different now. It’s become vogue to put your parents in a nursing home or whatever, or find them a place in a retirement community. Now you can get on sooner with your post-parent life.
Summing Up
I’m an optimist by nature so still have many friends. And I’ve stayed true to the end. I’ve been coming back like an affectionate robot for decades. I haven’t lost it yet – water-skied fully clothed or worn a clown costume to town on a Tuesday afternoon.
I’m a sweet guy.
I’ve loved the handsome heads and hefty vaginas of many. I’ve loved drinking Scotch against existence rushing by, and attending undertaker conventions because it wasn’t me yet.
But you don’t want people to know how long you’ve been around. If they do, they will think, “Well, that’s long enough. Pull the plug on him. He’s had his chance.”
I hope my end is sudden. I want people to say, “Who said he could leave the party?”
Vibe
Oh there you are, dear. I thought you were dead.
The Hearse Driver Speaks
Once a gentler, more respectful public was the norm. A funeral procession was escorted by police on motorcycles. People stopped and took off their hats, put their hands over their hearts. Cars pulled over. For a few moments onlookers paused in reflection. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting – among them a shopkeeper in a brown apron, an old woman in a blue coat, a freckle-faced boy with his mouth hanging open.
Not so today.
Today a funeral procession with a police escort will not be seen unless you are a hero or a major politician. Today the driver of a hearse manoeuvres in traffic like everyone else. We get no special treatment. In fact, it is not unusual to have someone in a car cut me off and then give me the finger as I watch them drive by. Several times I’ve driven a hearse that’s been pelted with pop cans. I’ve had people yelling obscenities at me, making rude gestures from the side of the road.
What do they think is going on? Do they think it’s a scene in a movie?
They need to understand that death is driving by. That when the inevitable happens to someone they love, it will bring with it a degree of sadness. They need to understand that, for example, of course they will miss Shannon, but that life’s a bitch, and then you move on. That Shannon is dead.
Vibe
Don’t be too moody in school these days or they’ll put you on pills.
Keep Calm
Even while the woman in your dream lingers in your bedroom doorway smoking a cigarette.
And the man holding a clipboard and who looks like William S. Burroughs announces that the reality genre is cooling.
And original poems, stories, phrases are written, read, and forgotten, meaning that your masterpiece has eluded your grasp again.
And the rumpled bed covers in the half-light look like a woman curled and weeping.
It isn’t you. It’s your imagination.
Couch Lock
Every time I see superweirdos on the bus I embrace them. This is because I’ve come to realize that, like me, superweirdos naturally want to overthink things and analyze, like, the meaning of life, and that the only way to do this is to disengage from those around them and let the messages come through. I figured this out one time I was high on the narcotic analgesic drugs I was taking for my broken foot.
So I started getting into this state of couch lock, which is doing absolutely nothing while sitting on the couch. Like, nothing, nothing, like, less than nothing. Doing nothing feels like riding a wave, and then you feel another wave coming, and you paddle hard and you hit it. You spend the day doing this, and the next day it’s the same.
Doing nothing, I’ve had moments when I am, like, Whoa! And moments when I’m a little dazed and can’t believe this is real life.
Yesterday the message was that I am getting better at singing. Today the message came in the form of a memory, the one where I got heckled at my own wedding reception. Ashleigh, my ex, was off dancing when a drunk jumped on the table and yelled, “You’re nothing but a joke, Brandon, a character in a Woody Allen movie!” I must have looked like such a loser.
Old Days
When I was seventeen I heard a noise coming from the backyard and went to investigate. That’s where I found Peter, the boyfriend of the woman who owned the house. He was lying in the driveway in his boxer shorts with a knife sticking out of his chest. It was that kind of a neighbourhood.
We lived in the basement suite. My dad was always yelling at us to close the door. “The door’s not an asshole. It doesn’t shut by itself!”
You want the obvious truth? Death was a bit overwhelming, and talk about decay made me sick. So I thought, well, everything. It was, like, maybe Peter died for love, maybe not. But hopefully his girlfriend would get a stack of money to help her with the change, going forward.
The yard next door was where I went on a daily basis. I was constantly there with Lisa. I’d sit on her back steps and sing “Sherry, Sherry baby.” She had a passion for vegetable soup, but I always knew eventually she’d come out.
Calendar
Now and then you will find yourself thinking of time as a calendar in a late-night, black-and-white movie you saw when you were ten years old. You and your father on the Colonial-style couch in the den.
Near the end of the movie the screen cleared and a calendar tacked to a wall appeared. Each page on the calendar contained a single number representing a single year. One by one the pages came loose and fluttered to the ground. A pair of birds flew in to take the pages away. Cartoon birds like in Disneyland.
You felt unease at the speed with which the years disappeared, and how easily. Your father must have sensed your mood because he said, “It’s showing the passage of time. Loretta Young was twenty when the movie started, and now she is fifty. You see that, don’t you?”
You take a deep breath of terror and say yes.
Doris Grant Day
Doris Grant was a home economist who invented a brown bread that didn’t need yeast or time to make it rise. As a result, the people of England didn’t go hungry during the Second World War. They could make the bread between air raids.
The Days Page 1
