The Journey Prize Stories 21

by Various

  “I’ve lost one eye. I’m half-blind in the other. I’m just trying to live, Dad.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My fingers ran down the pad of buttons on the phone, touching but not pushing. “I’ve been working since I saw those paintings of yours. They’ve travelled with me. They live in my mind. Best things you’ve ever done.”

  “I know. Even when I was working on them I knew. It was like I’d channelled something, brush guided by a force beyond me, as though the paintings weren’t even mine.”

  “You said you’d written to your mother. Who else did you write to?”

  “My mother? Dad, I didn’t –”

  “Never mind. Forget it. I’ll see you when you’re back. You hang in there, okay?”

  It took me an hour to walk the path back to my cabin. I had to rest at every chance. It took two days before I could pick up my brushes. Even then, all I could do was stand and stare. All my life I’ve thought I had something to say. Pile all my paintings end to end and they couldn’t whisper a word of comfort now. I set down the brushes, looked out the windows – out over the ocean, across the great expanse of grey that meets the sky in a fine, thin line. I can stare out there for hours, watching the weather change, watching distant boats, mind racing out over the Pacific, out toward Japan and China.

  That weekend I bought a roll of quarters. At the library, I wrote down every number for a Sylvette or Lysanne Turcotte in Montreal. I called them all from the pay phone outside the Co-op with no luck. When I was done, I called Alvin’s neighbour for an update.

  “What am I supposed to know?” Sue said. “What am I supposed to tell you? They just left.”

  Back in my cabin, I set those abstracts in storage slots and worked in the garden. I harvested my marijuana crop, carried it into town. I called Sue again. She said they were giving him some tests. That was all. No other news. I spent the rest of the week putting frames together. I gessoed them, then drove back to Victoria.

  I used the key they kept under a flower pot. Up in Alvin’s studio, I lay the paintings out, drank from them again, then gathered together the half-dozen smallest canvases, the portraits I believed were of Sylvette – her face melting away into abstract forms. These I took with me.

  In my studio the next morning, with those portraits of Sylvette arranged behind me, I raised my brush and stared again at a blank canvas, bent close until I could make out its dimpled skin, could smell the dried gesso. At the bench, where all the colours of God’s prism are squeezed in drips and drabs, I touched my brush to the azure blue of a summer sky. Standing at the easel, I turned slowly and faced Alvin’s paintings. I crouched by the first – a rich vision of a face turned raw and bloody across the top of the painting. It was as though the skull had been sliced open and the top lifted off. The face itself was green, grey, and blue, and I brought my brush so close to the dark shadow of the nose that it might have touched. I backed away, dropped the brush, and for a moment paced the room. I walked end to end, looked out at the ocean, but not even that could hold me. At last, I returned to the painting. I raised my brush and this time it did touch.

  In the early 1900s, Chaim Soutine used to send an assistant to buy paintings from hawkers on the banks of the Seine. He’d use these as a base. He’d begin from them. I’d done similar things throughout my career, although never with a painting of my son’s. In one way or another every artist works from the paintings of others. We all stand on each other’s shoulders, we all take and we all give. It’s the cycle of art.

  Next morning I returned to town and called Sue. “They’re coming home,” she said. “But it’s not good news. They’re going from the airport straight to the hospice.”

  My body went slack. I leaned against the phone booth to stay upright. My mind had formed a scale from worst news to best and this was as close to the worst as I’d allowed myself to consider. I managed a few words of thanks into the receiver, backed out of the booth and walked away.

  The Sooke Hospice is a quiet retreat in the hills – a peaceful place where people go to die. I arrived in the evening after a rain. The earthy smell of a warm, damp garden was rich in the air. A woman in a black leather coat stood smoking under the awning. I walked past her and through to reception where a nurse led me down a short hallway. Alvin was propped up in bed, ashen and gaunt – the withered branch of an ancient tree. Sandy was curled in the chair beside him, and my entry woke her. She rubbed her eyes, and Alvin turned my way. He seemed to smile as he raised a hand. He said something, but it was just a croak.

  “Lysanne,” Sandy said. “She arrived last night.” And then the woman in the leather coat was at the doorway. Her stringy black hair fell over her face, but even through that veil she looked like her mother – the strong jaw and muscular face, shoulders set at attention. This could have been Sylvette walking into our lives twenty-some years ago.

  Sandy stood. “Lysanne, Skylar.”

  Lysanne stepped forward. “How do you do?” She rose to her toes and kissed my cheek. “I do not speak English well.” She flashed a wide, embarrassed grin, almost giggled.

  “Welcome,” I said. “It’s so good. I mean.” I turned to Sandy unsure of what Lysanne could understand. “You should have said. You should have told me.”

  Alvin raised his hand for Lysanne. He spoke little above a whisper, and she leaned close to listen. She nodded as though she understood, although the language barrier must have prevented him from getting words across. When she backed away, Alvin managed to sit up, and with our help, he stood. He posed for a photograph with me and Lysanne. We rang for the nurse. She took another, which included Sandy, then one of just Alvin and Lysanne, one of him with Sandy, and finally one with me – the two of us trying to smile, my arm around his bony shoulder.

  Alvin slept and Lysanne went out to smoke again. Sandy joined her. I watched Alvin, his rib cage barely registering each shallow breath – every one a labour to produce. His face, once round and full, had been chiselled away. It was now just bone and skin.

  Sandy returned and I listened as she made herself comfortable. “So?” I said after a while.

  “So,” she said.

  “Lysanne.”

  Sandy nodded, gestured outside. “She’s talking to someone on the phone.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant –”

  “I know what you meant.”

  I stretched out my legs.

  “He’s happy,” Sandy said. “It’s made him happy.” She leaned her head back and for a moment I thought she was going to sleep. “Months ago, when we first talked about going to Tijuana, it seemed so expensive. In the end, the money was nothing. It was the cost in time. It really just exhausted him. He could have spent a few more days with Lysanne. A few more days at home.”

  “I know.”

  “It feels like it’s been so long, but really it’s only been three months. Hardly a beat of time.” She raised her head, opened her eyes, and looked at me. “Sometimes I wonder if all this effort to prolong life was more for me than him.”

  “Have you talked to him about this?”

  “In a way.”

  “Now’s the time. I mean, if it’s important, don’t let him go without talking this through.”

  She snorted. “That’s rich, you telling me I need to communicate. The things the two of you need to talk through could fill a book.”

  I did my best to smile, but I knew it wasn’t coming through. I turned back to Alvin, still and peaceful-looking. “Maybe that’s it. There’s so much there’s effectively nothing.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “We connect through our work.”

  “That’s a bullshit answer.”

  “What do you want from me, Sandy?”

  “I don’t want anything from you. Maybe Alvin does though. Maybe you do, but can’t see it.”

  “I believe it’s possible to connect through the paintings, that our shared endeavour
brings us together on a different level. I know you’ll never understand, but it’s true.”

  We sat with him through the night, the three of us, his witnesses, alternately holding his hand, brushing the sweat from his forehead, and rubbing his bony feet. In the morning, he asked for more morphine. Sandy climbed into bed with him, curled against him while the nurse increased the dose in his iv. That evening he died – a last quiet breath and then nothing. Stillness. Peace.

  “Will you leave me with him?” Sandy said. “For a while.”

  I led Lysanne into the damp night, into the rich, earthy smell of summer. The moon was full, leaden in the sky, hanging there heavy and white, ready to fall earthwards. We got into my truck and I drove us into town.

  I switched on all the lights in the loft and took Lysanne to the sofa where Alvin had spent so many of his last days. The canvas that hung above it was the only painting of Sylvette left in the house as far as I knew. Lysanne gazed at it and nodded. “Sylvette,” I said. “Alvin. He was little more than a child. So was your mother.”

  I went to prepare the bed for her and when I returned, she was sitting on the sofa, arms folded, alone in her thoughts. I sat and took her hand, squeezed it, this soft, still hand of the only child of my only child.

  From the moment I’d stepped into the loft, I could feel my son’s paintings. They called to me, the last great works of Alvin Cale. Although I sat with my granddaughter, my mind was already heading upstairs, and although I told myself I wouldn’t take them, I knew it was a lie. I knew that before the next day passed all those canvases would be in my truck. This knowledge, wrapped tight in shame, ate away at me while my granddaughter wept.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Jesus Hardwell’s short fiction has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Windsor Review, Front & Centre, and Exile. Hardwell recently completed a volume of stories entitled Bloodgroove and is currently at work on a number of plays as well as a vocal chamber drama, The Star-Knot Variations. He lives in Guelph, Ontario.

  Daniel Griffin’s previous appearance in The Journey Prize Stories was in 2004. “The Last Great Works of Alvin Cale” was one of five stories he published in 2008. His work was also highlighted in Coming Attractions 2008. Griffin lives with his wife and three daughters in Victoria, B.C., where he is completing a collection of stories about fathers, brothers, and twenty-first-century family life. You can read more of his work at www.danielgriffin.ca.

  Paul Headrick’s first novel, That Tune Clutches My Heart, was published by Gaspereau Press. “Highlife,” which appeared in Event, is part of The Doctrine of Affections, a collection of stories on musical themes forthcoming from Freehand Books. Headrick teaches English and Creative Writing at Langara College and lives in Vancouver with his partner, novelist Heather Burt.

  Sarah Keevil has published short fiction and poetry in CV2, Descant, filling Station, Kiss Machine, and Room. She has degrees in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University and was the winner of the 2004 Irving Layton Award for Fiction. “Pyro,” which first appeared in Event, was also nominated for a National Magazine Award. She currently lives in Toronto, where she is at work on her first novel.

  Adrian Michael Kelly is the author of a novel, Down Sterling Road. His short stories and essays have appeared in Queen’s Quarterly, Best Canadian Stories, Canadian Notes and Queries, The New Quarterly, and Prairie Fire. He currently lives in Calgary, where he is completing a collection of short stories to be published by Biblioasis.

  Fran Kimmel is an Alberta lifer who recently moved from Calgary to the rural community of Lacombe. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, and filling Station, and she has won both CBC Anthology and Write for Radio awards. She writes extensively for the corporate sector and is working on a collection of interlocking stories.

  Lynne Kutsukake’s short fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine, The Windsor Review, Ten Stories High Short Story Anthology, and Ricepaper. Another story is forthcoming in Prairie Fire. She has studied in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and attended the Writing with Style Spring 2008 Program at the Banff Centre. As well as writing fiction, she has translated modern Japanese literature. Kutsukake lives in Toronto and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

  Alexander MacLeod lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and teaches at Saint Mary’s University. His short stories have appeared in many Canadian and American journals, and his first collection will be published by Biblioasis Press.

  Dave Margoshes is a Regina writer whose stories and poems have appeared widely in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, including the Best Canadian Stories volumes. He’s published three novels and five collections of stories; the most recent, Bix’s Trumpet and Other Stories, won two prizes at the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including Book of the Year. “The Wisdom of Solomon” is the latest in a series of stories based on the life of his father.

  Shawn Syms’s fiction, poetry, essays, and journalism have appeared in the Globe and Mail, PRISM international, The Danforth Review, Quill & Quire, and twenty or so other publications. He’s in the final stages of writing Human Forces, a short fiction collection.

  Sarah L. Taggart’s story “Deaf” won The Malahat Review’s Jack Hodgins Founders Award. Taggart was born in Calgary and is hopefully almost done her Master’s in Publishing from Simon Fraser University. She might live in Montreal.

  Yasuko Thanh has lived in Germany, Mexico, and Central America, and currently resides in Victoria. Her stories have been published in Prairie Fire, Descant, Fireweed, The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, and Vancouver Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in publications as diverse as the Vancouver Sun, Island Parent Magazine, Speak, and subTerrain. She was a finalist for the Hudson Prize, the Millennium Prize, and the David Adams Richards Award. She is at work on a novel and a short story collection called When You Get Where You’re Going.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTING JOURNALS

  For more information about all the journals that submitted stories to this year’s anthology, please consult The Journey Prize Stories website: www.mcclelland.com/jps.

  The Dalhousie Review has been in operation since 1921 and aspires to be a forum in which seriousness of purpose and playfulness of mind can coexist in meaningful dialogue. The journal publishes new fiction and poetry in every issue and welcomes submissions from authors around the world. Editor: Anthony Stewart. Submissions and correspondence: The Dalhousie Review, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2. Email: dalhousie.review@dal.ca Website: www.dalhousiereview.dal.ca

  Event is a celebrated literary journal in which readers encounter new and established talent – in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and critical reviews. The journal thrives on a balance of both traditional narrative and contemporary approaches to poetry and prose. Event is home to Canada’s longest-running annual non-fiction contest. It is our goal to support and encourage a thriving literary community in Canada, while maintaining our international reputation for excellence. Editor: Rick Maddocks. Managing Editor: Ian Cockfield. Fiction Editor: Christine Dewar. Poetry Editor: Elizabeth Bachinsky. Submissions and correspondence: Event, P.O. Box 2503, New Westminster, British Columbia, V3L 5B2. Email (queries only): event@douglas.bc.ca Website: www.event.douglas.bc.ca

  Exile: The Literary Quarterly is a distinctive journal that recently published its Anniversary Special 30 Volumes/120th Issue, featuring new work from, among others, those who appeared in the first issues (Margaret Atwood and Marie-Claire Blais), the middle issues (Austin Clarke and Susan Swan), and those who continue to carry on the tradition (Priscila Uppal, a finalist for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize, and Matt Shaw, winner of the 2006 Journey Prize). With over one thousand contributions since 1972, Exile has become a respected forum, always presenting an impressive selection of new and established authors and artists, drawing our material (literature, poetry, drama, work in translation, and the fine arts) from French and Engli
sh Canada, as well as from the United States, Britain, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia. Publisher: Michael Callaghan. Submissions and correspondence: Exile/Excelsior Publishing Inc., 134 Eastbourne Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M5P 2G6. Email (queries only): exq@exilequarterly.com Website: www.exilequarterly.com

  Grain Magazine, a literary quarterly, publishes engaging, surprising, eclectic, and challenging writing and art by Canadian and international writers and artists. Published by the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, Grain has earned national and international recognition for its distinctive content. Editor: Sylvia Legris. Fiction Editor: Terry Jordan. Poetry Editor: Mari-Lou Rowley. Submissions and correspondence: Grain Magazine, P.O. Box 67, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 3K1. Email: grainmag@sasktel.net Website: www.grainmagazine.ca

  The Malahat Review is a quarterly journal of contemporary poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction by both new and celebrated writers. Summer issues feature the winners of Malahat’s Novella and Long Poem prizes, held in alternate years; the fall issues feature the winners of the Far Horizons Award for emerging writers, alternating between poetry and fiction each year; the winter issues feature the winners of the Creative Non-Fiction Prize; and beginning in 2010, the spring issues will feature winners from the Open Season Awards in all three genres (poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction). All issues feature covers by noted Canadian visual artists and include reviews of Canadian books. Editor: John Barton. Assistant Editor: Rhonda Batchelor. Submissions and correspondence: The Malahat Review, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 1700, Station csc, Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 2Y2. Email: malahat@uvic.ca Website: www.malahatreview.ca

  The New Quarterly is an award-winning literary magazine publishing fiction, poetry, interviews, and essays on writing. Now in its twenty-eighth year, the magazine prides itself on its independent take on the Canadian literary scene. Recent issues include the Montreal Issue (in both English and French), our Salon des Refuses, and Last Poems (the end of poetry and the poetry of last things); upcoming is an issue on Lists as both a thematic and a formal element, and a series on the role of the critic. Editor: Kim Jernigan. Submissions and correspondence: The New Quarterly, c/o St. Jerome’s University, 290 Westmount Road North, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G3. Email: editor@tnq.ca, orders@tnq.ca Website: www.tnq.ca