Viaticum

by Natelle Fitzgerald

  “Want to try?” his old Dad asked eagerly.

  “Try what?”

  “Let’s go on the roller coaster. What do you say?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh come on. It will be fun. You used to love roller coasters.”

  “Jesus, Dad.”

  But they went. They stood in line and his father struck up a conversation with a couple of ageing RVers who were staying out of town. “I’m here with my son,” he told them. “Father and son day on the town.”

  When they got to the ticket window, his father put the money down and said, “Two adults. Me and my son here.”

  They were herded through the turnstiles and into a loading bay where they waited on a platform next to the track. The train pulled in and the bars released and people climbed out on the other side, then an attendant opened the gate and let them on. Matt and his father were in a car near the front.

  The tiny seats were hard and rickety and when the bar came down Matt felt like he couldn’t breathe. The discomfort seemed to cut into his drunken haze and he had a moment of clear and painful sobriety: what the fuck am I doing here? he thought. I have my own family. I have my own problems to attend to and here I am on a fucking roller coaster that I don’t want to be on.

  His father elbowed him and grinned. “Here we go,” he said.

  The little train began to tick slowly upwards towards some critical point that would give it enough momentum to get it through the loops. This is ridiculous, Matt thought as the train clicked inexorably upwards to where the narrow rails crested and the fake Manhattan skyline ended in the impossible brightness of the day beyond it; yet still the tension in him rose as the fake train approached the fake crest. His heart thudded in anticipation even as he reminded himself how ridiculous, how totally and utterly ridiculous it all was.

  Then they were up and over and the G-forces pushed him back and he was screaming, he was screaming and up and down and whipping around, streaks of red and green and glass and the streaking red rails ahead.

  When they got off the old man elbowed him again. “Hey, hey. Fun, no?” Then he toddled off to buy the photo. There was a camera that took your photo at the exact moment you were upside down and you could purchase it for an exorbitant sum of money. Matt wondered briefly how his father could afford to live like this, then it occurred to him that he probably couldn’t.

  Matt sat at a table and ordered another drink and one for his father and soon the old man came back and slapped the photo on the table. He was red-faced from laughing and he slapped Matt on the back. “Look at you!” he wheezed. “You look like you’re about to shit your pants. Bahahahahaha!”

  Matt slid the photo closer so he could get a better look. He shook his head. His father could be so . . . so ridiculous sometimes and yet a smile played at his mouth. The old drunk. Carrying on like that.

  His smile froze when he saw the photo. It was not his own face which was the typical wide-eyed, open mouthed grimace you’d expect, but his father’s that made him catch his breath. His father didn’t have his hands up and he wasn’t screaming like the rest of the people. In that moment, with the world upside down, his father was perfectly composed, upright, erect, beaming with pride.

  The old man was coughing now, wheezing and laughing and ridiculous. Matt put his hand on his father’s shoulder. He said, “You keep that Dad. I’ll be right back.” Then he went to the washroom and locked himself in a stall. He took out the little T-shirts and held them next to his face and began to cry. It was over, he realized. He was through.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There were no lights on at Matt Campbell’s house, no cars in the driveway. Annika didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. She sat in her darkened car staring out at his darkened house, wondering what to do. Most of the houses around the cul-de-sac had their lights on and she caught glimpses of people inside: people laughing, talking, sitting down to dinner. Seeing them made her feel lonely. It made her hate Matt Campbell even more.

  She was parked in the driveway of the foreclosed house, the same spot where she’d parked before. She’d turned the headlights off almost immediately when she pulled in and was pretty sure no one had seen her. She waited for a while, then, taking a deep breath, she picked up the gun from where it sat on the passenger seat and tucked it into her coat. Quietly now, she climbed out of the car, then gently pressed the door shut behind her. The night air was cold and still. Somewhere far-off, she could hear the roar of the highway.

  She cut swiftly across the lawn of the foreclosed house to avoid the glare from the streetlamps, then skirted along the edge of an empty lot adjacent to the Campbell residence. Here, the ground was rough and stony. It was so dark she could barely see and she had to step carefully, feeling for the ground with her feet.

  Suddenly, she stopped. She had a sense of an empty space in front of her. There was a slight change in temperature, in the quality of the darkness. She peered ahead, squinting. When her eyes finally adjusted, she realized that she was standing at the edge of some kind of pit, a foundation most likely, eight feet down, a little deeper than a grave. She shivered. One more step and it might have been over; one more step and he might have found her there, broken, covered in mud . . .

  She shook herself free of the bad thoughts—she was always shaking free of the bad thoughts these days—then continued to the back of the Campbell house. Here, light from across the narrow alleyway illuminated a small, fenced backyard. She stopped and listened. She could hear music, voices. She looked around. There. She could see several people laughing and drinking wine through a patio door in one of the houses across the alley. For a moment she was afraid; they seemed so close, so near that surely they’d see her, then she remembered: she was the one in darkness; they were still in light. If they were to look outside their warm, well-lit circle, they wouldn’t be able to see her at all; they would see only the reflections of themselves.

  Reaching over the Campbell’s fence, she found the latch and let herself into the yard. Compared to the stately front of the house, the backyard was small and shabby. The paint on the fence was flaking; the cedar shrubs along the fence line half-dead. A child’s Hot Wheels lay overturned in the middle of the yard and there were boxes of empties stacked under the porch.

  She climbed the steps up to the patio, then peered between cupped hands through the sliding glass door. She could see into the kitchen, the microwave clock casting an eerie glow over the room. She tried to open the door but it was locked.

  She walked back down the porch steps, pausing as loud laughter erupted from the house next door. She wasn’t sure what to do next and thought, maybe, she should abandon this craziness and just go home. She wasn’t entirely sure why she’d come in the first place, just that she needed some resolution before the end and the end was close now. She could feel it in her body, in her mind.

  She was about to turn and go back to the car when she noticed a window low down, almost at ground level, half-hidden by the dying shrubs. She knelt, tried to open it and was ­surprised to find that the glass slid easily to the side. She looked over her shoulder. Her heart was pounding wildly. She’d never done anything like this before, never even imagined that she would. She pushed the screen aside, then slipped through the window after it.

  She had to jump down and landed heavy. It took her a moment to catch her breath. She was in the basement of the Campbell house. It was dark and smelled like paint. From the little light available, she sensed that it was bare, unfinished, as if they were in the middle of a renovation. Not daring to turn on any lights, she ran her hand along the walls, searching until she found the stairs leading up.

  On the main floor, more light was filtering through the open concept living room from the streetlamps in front of the house. She wandered around. The house was relatively new and had all the modern comforts: leather couches, dark minimalist furniture, a big a
rea rug with a geometric pattern on the floor; yet something about it felt strangely empty, strangely bland, more like a way station than a home, like people pretending at marriage, pretending at family . . . She frowned. She thought about Michael, how strung out he’d seemed to her at first and her anger towards him softened a bit. Being in his house made her sad.

  She wandered into the kitchen then stopped short. There was a gaping hole in the wall and a mess of something—wood or boards or fibers—all over the floor. On the counter was an open bottle of vodka, half-empty. What had happened here? She’d been so angry, so upset after their phone conversation, she’d thought only of how horrible he was, but now, remembering, she thought that he’d sounded truly crazy, unhinged, like there was something seriously wrong with him. She frowned again. She didn’t know how to feel.

  She climbed the stairs into a hallway and entered the first door she came to. It was the little boy’s room. Here, a plug-in night light shaped like a boat lent the room a soft glow. She touched the stuffed animals on the shelves and ran her hands over the space-ship blankets on the bed. She opened the dresser. Inside, the clothes were neatly folded. They smelled clean, like lemon scented detergent. Is this what her life would have been like, she wondered, if the treatments had worked for her and Hamish? A clean, neat world with pyjamas and tiny socks and stuffed animals? Would she have been happy in it? She didn’t know. There were times when she envied other women who were swept up in the busyness of children and the tasks of caring; she envied the way time seemed to carry them; and yet she liked her solitude; she liked the quiet. Who could say how it might have been, who she might have become had the treatments worked? It was too late now to ever know. This didn’t make her particularly sad; it just was. It had become a fact, time moving on, the pain and drama had bled out of it.

  Next, she went into the master bedroom. This was the first room in the house that seemed truly occupied. The bed was unmade and there were clothes scattered over the floor as if someone had left in a rush. She sat down on the bed. Wasn’t it strange, she thought, how all couple’s rooms looked the same? Here were his things. Here were her things. The digital clock. The marital bed. It reminded her of the space she’d once shared with Hamish. She smiled sadly in the dark. This is what Hamish had wanted. Exactly this. Maybe he would even get it one day with his new partner. The house, the car, the kids. Would it make him happy? She thought of the half-empty bottle downstairs. The hole in the wall. Was anyone really happy?

  She sat there thinking about people and their lives and their paths and their choices, her mind wandering, wandering until a light swept suddenly across the room. She froze. There was the sound of a car in the driveway. Now it turned off. A door slammed, then another. She heard a key in the lock. He was home! She looked around wildly for a hiding place.

  Downstairs, the front door opened and light from the foyer spilled into the open bedroom door. Annika darted into the bathroom and climbed into the shower. She drew the curtain closed.

  “I’m just going to take our clothes and some of Jakey’s toys,” said a female voice. “We’ll get the rest of the stuff later, when we come back with the truck.”

  Then a male voice, one Annika didn’t recognize, said, “When is he coming home?”

  “Who knows? He went to visit his Mommy in Arizona. I don’t really care if he ever comes back, to be honest,” the female voice answered. She sounded young, flippant and terribly, terribly angry.

  Annika’s heart was thundering in her chest. She could barely breathe. The shower was a stupid hiding place, she realized. The curtain was flimsy and half transparent and if anyone came in to use the washroom, they would see her. She climbed out of the tub and went back into the bedroom. She stood at the door. She could hear them walking around downstairs. If I’m quick, I might slip past them and out the front, she thought. She held the gun tight to her chest, getting ready to bolt.

  “Nice,” came the woman’s sarcastic voice from the kitchen. Annika heard the clink of a bottle on the counter. “What did I tell you?”

  “I never thought I’d feel sorry for the guy, but don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh?” said the male voice. There was a bored, nasal quality to it that made everything sound ironic.

  “Jesus, Jeremy. I told you what he did didn’t I? His idea of an investment? And look at this shit!”

  “I know, but it seems like he’s really upset. If he has a legitimate drinking problem, then maybe . . .”

  “Oh, he definitely has a problem. He’s a total fucking drunk.”

  Michael, a drunk? He hadn’t seemed like that to her. He hadn’t seemed like that at all. Annika caught her breath. They were starting up the stairs! She had to do something fast, but where? What? The closet? The woman was coming up here to pack clothes! The boys room? No, they’d go in there, too. She peered out into the hall. There was another door at the end, passed the boy’s room. It was open. She had to be quick. Just as their heads crested the top of the stair, she dashed out of the bedroom and slipped into the open door. She held her breath.

  “Take everything from Jacob’s closet and dresser. Don’t forget his shoes,” the woman said. Annika let her breath out. They hadn’t seen her.

  Annika was in a room with a computer and little else. There were some boxes against the wall. The walls were bare. She stood very still. Once both of them were busy packing, she reasoned, she would sneak past them and down the stairs. If they saw her she would run; she would wave the gun around and act like a crazy person.

  She heard the woman say: “Look at this mess! What a pig.”

  They were both quiet for a while, then the woman called, “Bring his toys too. He misses his stuffies. And his books.”

  Then the male voice, closer now. They were both in the master bedroom. “Does he even know that you’re doing this?”

  “I don’t care what he knows.”

  “Maybe you should wait though. Maybe you should talk to him first.”

  “I told you, I’m done talking.”

  “I know, Jen, but he doesn’t know. He thinks this is just a marital squabble and that you’re coming back. He was practically begging Mom to talk to you on the phone last night. You could at least tell him you plan on filing before you clean the place out.”

  “Why do you keep defending him?”

  “I don’t know, I just feel bad doing this. I mean, I’ve known the guy for the last four years and he is still Jacob’s father. Maybe he’s a bit of a dolt, but he did marry you; he could have fucked off but he didn’t . . . And he loves Jacob, you have to give him that . . .”

  “You know what he is to me? He’s some guy I fucked because I was 19 and drunk. That’s all he is to me,” she said in a voice so filled with resentment that Annika felt a wave of sadness for Michael. The feeling was unexpected. Powerful. Forgive me, he’d whispered, stroking her hair. Forgive me forgive me forgive me. For a long time, she thought she must have dreamt it but now she wondered if it had been real. Poor Michael, she thought, he was almost as screwed up as she was.

  Suddenly, she felt impossibly tired. Tired and sad for herself and the world and all the people in it. Lately there were times when she felt her perspective pull back, become wider, as if she were already starting to see things from outside her body, from somewhere up above. It happened most often when she was tired, fatigued from her own thoughts. It happened now. What was she even doing here? she wondered. Was this really how she wanted her life to end? Creeping around with a loaded gun? Her own anger suddenly felt small, childish somehow. What did it matter what Matt Campbell had done? Now she remembered something that Sasha had told her, one of Sasha’s hippie insights about dying that she’d dismissed but which she was starting to understand. Death can be an opportunity, Sasha had said. An opportunity to show people who you really are in the face of adversity and suffering. Annika thought about this. She stood in the darkened room thinking about her
life, about the kind of person she wanted to be.

  Quietly, she slipped out into the hall, a figure so frail and silent, they may not have even noticed her had they looked. She stole out the front door, then ran back to her car. She drove though the darkness, unsure of the road ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Matt sat in the frosted room and waited. There were ­murmurings and shuffling all around him; he could see nervous feet tapping under the gap but he remained slouched in the chair, utterly motionless. He was finished. Done. Everything he’d tried to do in the past five years, all his plans and ideas to make life better had only ended up making it worse. The big house, the shot-gun wedding, his career change, the viatical settlement . . . none of it had made a lick of difference. Jen still hated him. Now Annika hated him. One day, his own son would probably hate him too. He waited for what came next.

  After a while, three bankers in crisp blacks and greys filed into the room, their faces set in a look of practiced serenity. Ron was there, his great towering frame between the two diminutive female bankers a reprise to his old role as bouncer, the bank’s version of a heavy lest one of the financially beholden grow unruly and try to take matters into their own hands. Matt supposed it happened. He could imagine it happening. A younger version of himself might have mustered his outrage at the whole humiliating process, the frosted rooms, the terrible solemnity; but as it was, he was beyond outrage. He simply wanted it to be over.

  “Mr. Campbell,” Ron said. “Thank-you for coming.”

  Matt nodded and waited for them to say what they had come here to say.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d anticipated. One of the female advisers took the lead and explained how it would work. Her language was cool and polished and skirted around the swampy pit, avoiding altogether the muck of wanting and fucking and lying that was at the core of it. Instead, she presented him with the facts of his life as coolly and as neatly as if she were handing him a set of polished stones. There was his current position. His assets. His investments. There were his options. His credit. His file. He sat and nodded, grateful for her calm, methodical delivery. She had a generic prettiness that required nothing of him.