It’s in this frame of mind that he shuffles out to the arrivals hall, so it surprises him to feel — as he sees his daughter with her husband, a thin man with warm eyes, who holds their son, bright with young life and a full head of curly blond hair — a quickening of his blood he might almost mistake for joy. Hi Dad, says his daughter. And she wraps her arms around him. Her husband introduces himself, introduces his grandson. Flesh of his flesh. His grandson. Glad to meet you, he says, his voice and body unsteady. I’m Jake. Jake or Jacob, take your pick.
They drive into the city. He sits enveloped by his daughter’s family, observes them in wonder, oscillates between excruciating grief and excruciating joy, terror the base note. He feels like a child: helpless, aimless. I haven’t been to Toronto in almost twenty years, he tells his grandson, whose eyes go wide. I have lots of wonderful memories of this city. Many of them involve your mother when she was a young girl. His daughter’s expression is both compassionate and wary. He understands. I won’t stay long, he says, asking permission to embrace the joy he feels by swearing his readiness to relinquish it. Stay as long as you like, says his daughter. David needs all the Bubbies and Zaidies he can get, says her husband from the driver’s seat. That way he grows up knowing who he is. He looks at his grandson, who’s preoccupied with his own thumbs. I’m not sure I can tell him who he is. Who are you, he asks the thumb-beguiled boy. David, says David.
It’s nearly midnight by the time they arrive at his daughter and her husband’s apartment, a two-bedroom walk-up above a furniture store. He has no appetite, but he accepts his daughter’s offer of bagels and tea, afraid that she might otherwise leave him on his own. He sits with her in the kitchen as her husband puts their son to bed. Unsure what to say; frightened that a too clear expression of the tenderness he feels, overtaking him tidally as his pain did, might alarm these young strangers who are his closest living relations; alarmed himself at his rending passions, his weakness, his inability to know what he needs and what he lives for. Tell me if you don’t want me in your life, he says to his daughter as they wait for the kettle to boil. Just tell me and I’ll go, I don’t mind. She doesn’t respond. The kettle boiled, she pours tea, brings over the bagel she’s toasted and buttered for him, the cucumber she’s sliced, and sits at his side. What’s left for me to do, he asks. I’ve lived a full life. Maybe it’s time to call it a day. We’re always in need of babysitting help, she says. You think you’re allowed to quit this life while Aaron and I can’t afford to hire a nanny? Soon her husband joins them, and they talk long into the night. Mostly he listens. Picking his way forward along the edge of a chasm, refusing to look down. Looking instead at the faces in front of him.
He sleeps on their couch for now, a makeshift solution until they can figure something else out. He tends to his grandson every weekday while the parents are at work. The boy fascinates him, gives him great pleasure to observe. They watch cartoons together. The boy dashes around the apartment, tyrannizes the furniture. There are moments that evoke memories of his son’s childhood, and the pain is intense. But it passes. The boy doesn’t let him grieve for long, is too demanding, unforgiving of selfabsorption. He knows his babysitting regimen won’t satisfy him forever, his intellect will need more to keep it occupied. But for now it’s a respite. It occupies his time, holds the emptiness at bay.
He considers calling his ex-wife but doesn’t know what he’d say. He could apologize, though the thought of such a belated apology, its outrageous inadequacy, makes him nauseous. He calls anyway. A man answers. He hangs up at once. Later he calls again and gets her machine, where he leaves a brief message. I’m in Toronto, he says. I’m sorry to intrude. Just wanted to let you know I’m here. Hannah tells me you’ve been well. I’m glad. I’m glad, he repeats, ancient history shuddering through him. Please don’t call me back if it’ll create difficulties for you. He hangs up, rushes outside, walks for hours. She never calls back.
One evening, he slips out of the apartment to buy basic art supplies. He brings them to the breakfast table the next day. What’s this, his daughter asks. I have arcane wisdom to impart to your son, he says. When the parents have left, he sets up his easel in the centre of the living room, opens the blinds to let the grey day in. The boy observes him with uncharacteristic diffidence. Just a moment, he says. I’ll show you. Everything set up, he leads the boy to the easel and stands him on a chair. Show me the world, he says. The boy looks at him, unsure what he’s supposed to do. He guides the boy’s brush to the paint, to the blank surface. Go on, he says.
The parents arrive home from work to find an alien snow of paint-streaked papers scattered across the hardwood floor. We’ll clean it up, he calls from the bathroom, where he’s scrubbing the boy’s hands to try to dislodge the more stubborn patches of paint caked onto his nails. Over dinner he apprises the parents of the progress the boy has made, how their toddler has progressed from applying blobs of paint helter-skelter, with a primitive enthusiasm, to a subtler, more delicate approach whereby concentric circles are interpolated among the blobs. The parents, though sceptical, aren’t uninterested. He is a painter, after all, and it may be somehow beneficial for their son to be exposed to the fine arts at a young age.
The next day, and then every day that week, he paints with his grandson. He continues to guide the boy’s hand over the canvas, to suggest shapes he might make, patterns he might impose, intermittencies of colour that might produce a shiver of delight. Yet by the fifth day the boy clearly wishes to take charge. With a show of small-limbed resolve, the boy wrests possession of the paintbrush from his instructor. The hand that holds the brush moves with assurance. Slowly he becomes aware that his grandson is painting with reference to him. That at intervals the boy looks up to take him in. Comprehending, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he moves to the window in front of the easel and sits on the ledge, in line with the boy’s gaze. He observes his grandson, who still looks two-going-on-three, but two-going-on-three and focused. What does the little boy see when he scrutinizes the old man’s face?
The boy drops his brush at once when his mother arrives home. He runs to her, throws his arms around her legs. As his daughter kisses his grandson, Jacob hobbles over to the easel, where, without looking at it, without even a glance, he folds up the portrait his grandson has made of him, goes to the window, opens it a crack, checks to make sure nobody’s watching, and lets the paper fly out into the evening. The breeze takes it. Gone. He closes the window. How was your day together, his daughter asks, lifting his laughing grandson high in the air. Perfect, he says.
Acknowledgements
These stories were first drafted between 2005 and 2010.
Their early lives had the following highlights:
“Mine” won the CBC Short Story Prize
and appeared in Air Canada’s EnRoute Magazine.
“Witness” received the Jack Hodgins Founders’
Award for Fiction from The Malahat Review,
where it first appeared.
“All That Flies From You” appeared in
Per Contra magazine.
“Sister” was recognized by Glimmer Train’s
Family Matters short story contest.
“The Baker’s Apprentice” appeared in
The North American Review,
which nominated it for the Pushcart Prize.
“The Snake Crosses the Tracks at Midnight”
was published as an e-book by Found Press.
“Faithful” was recognized with the
Alta Lind Cook Prize and the
Norma Epstein National Literary Award.
Thanks to the editors and jurors.
Thanks also to Stephanie Sinclair, Samantha
Haywood, and the rest of the wonderful team
at Transatlantic Agency. And to Michael Mirolla
and Guernica Editions: class acts.
Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts
and the Ontario Arts Council
for supporting my work on this book.
Thanks to my friends and colleagues who read
and responded to earlier versions of these stories:
Brooke Banning, Sofiia Rappe, Kevin Shea,
Anthony Furey, Melanie Leishman, Sigalit Hoffman,
Naomi Skwarna, Robyn Sarah, Marc Côté,
Jason Rotstein, Hrant Alianak, Aaron Rotenberg,
Adam Weissman, Nicolas Billon, Kathy Friedman,
Michael Redhill, Barbara Gowdy, David Bezmozgis,
and Al Moritz and my classmates in his
University of Toronto creative writing class.
Thanks to my family and to Kirah. I love you.
About the Author
Daniel Karasik has been a winner of the CBC Short Story Prize, the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, and The Malahat Review’s Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction. His previous books include Hungry, a poetry collection (Cormorant Books), and three volumes of plays: Little Death (BookThug), The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee (Playwrights Canada Press), and The Crossing Guard and In Full Light (Playwrights Canada Press). His critical writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, National Post, and Partisan Magazine. He can most often be found in Toronto.
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