Corridor Nine

by Sophie Stocking

  “I am Bernadette Macomber.”

  “Can I come in, Ma’am? Is there someplace we can sit down?” The kids, Bernie thinks. No the school would have called first. A car accident? But Peter had phoned her when he got to work. “Yes, come into the living room,” she says.

  He sits down on the couch and Bernie perches opposite him on the ottoman.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I’m sorry to inform you, I have some rather difficult news.” Bernie watches his scrubbed face. He is maybe twenty-two, his neck bulging over the top of his too tight collar. A film of sweat shines on his clean-shaven chin and she wishes she could reduce his distress.

  “Do you know a Fabian Macomber?” Oh, thinks Bernadette, so this is it. Finally it’s come.

  “Yes”, says Bernie. “Fabian Macomber is my father.”

  “I am sorry to have to tell you this, but Fabian Macomber passed away sometime last night or early this morning. The cause of death appears to be suicide. He left this note for you.” The policeman holds out a legal sized white envelope. Sprawled across it in black Sharpie in her father’s messy capitals is her name, and above that are written the words “Please deliver to.”

  Bernie takes it and pulls out the folded eight by twelve-inch piece of white bond. The same big writing that she has seen so many times. It reads: “Don’t feel guilty. I am fatally sick and wouldn’t have lasted long anyhow. If there is any money, give it to your kids for college.” He hadn’t signed it.

  Bernie feels electricity buzzing through her body. Cold sweat covers her and only one thought comes to mind; after all these years of hiding from him she must go to him, she must go find her father.

  “Where is he?” she says, and then “I have to phone my husband.” She walks to the kitchen and picks up the phone, her hand shaking so hard that it is difficult to hit a button and she is grateful that Peter’s office number is on speed dial. He answers.

  “It’s me. There is a policeman here. He came to tell me.’’ She takes a deep breath so she can say the words, “He came to tell me my dad killed himself. I have to go find him now.”

  “What?” says Peter. “Slow down. A policeman, your dad? Oh my God. Where is he? Where are you going? Find out, and I will meet you there.” Bernie turns to the policeman.

  “Where is my father?” she says.

  “At the Medical Examiner’s Office. I’m very sorry but you’ll need to come with me for purposes of identification.”

  “Yes. I’ll go.” And then to Peter, “the medical examiner’s office” and she puts down the phone without disconnecting and tries to think what to do next.

  “Just bring your purse Ma’am” says the young man and leads her out of the kitchen.

  If this is all there is, thinks Fabian. Would that be all right? He rolls onto his side, propping his big head up on his preschool hand and stares at the light wall. Who would have thought, the place reminds him of a movie theatre with a much nicer carpet. He had been hoping, of course, for billowing meadows and psychedelic sparkling streams, Islam’s paradise with its virgin companions, or perhaps Odin’s Valhalla. In Valhalla he could have played a great warrior, battling and dismembering all day and then putting the pieces back together and shaking hands with his brothers in arms. In the evening there would be feasting and frolicking with the Valkyries, those Nordic nymphets.

  What, after all, had caused his suffering? People! His mother first and foremost, the frustration of beautiful women, and his wife’s insistence on children when he so desperately needed all the nurturing for himself. Tall men of course had been a hindrance, they always got the women; black tall men got the women and scored the baskets. But who could blame them given the opportunity; he would have done the same, so that really brought it back to women. Women and mothers were the problem. They had what he needed, but unfortunately his need could never be satisfied, because they were so stingy and withholding.

  So here the major frustration of his life was spared him, and he didn’t even have to eat. He wasn’t cold. Fabian wondered if his “equipment” would functional in this funny place. If so, he could spend his time in self-flagellation alternating with bouts of healthy and acrobatic exercise. He assumed he could still sleep. Look on the bright side, he told himself, all of the crap you got to leave behind: bureaucratic gridlock in every human institution, urban sprawl, environmental devastation in all directions, “superbugs” breeding and cross pollinating in airplanes and hospitals, famines, genocides. Committees, and vegetarianism, and women CEO’s click-clacking down the hallways of power in their high-heeled shoes. And ugliness, how it had pained and offended him, beautiful young women covered in tattoos with grommets in their ears. Here there was nothing that was ugly.

  Fabian watches the shifting opalescence of the wall. So beautiful, and the sounds the wall made were almost responsive to him, almost conversational. Perhaps he could have a relationship with the wall? Perhaps there was some way to fuck it? Fabian stares at the wall, and it gives off a long come-hither hum. He gets to his feet and walks forward.

  “Hello wall,” he says and then reaches out his hand to touch it. Was it solid or vapor or maybe just electricity? He reaches forward and expects to feel the smooth flexible inside of an abalone shell, he hopes it will be warm, but his hand goes right through up to his armpit and he feels nothing. Fabian pulls his arm back in alarm, remembering the Black on the other side. The wall makes a series of annoying lip-smacking noises. He wants to kick it.

  “That’s all?” he shouts at the wall. He goes back to his hyperbolic bouncing, and then he sits down, not even breathless. Never getting tired begins to frustrate him. He pats the turf and thinks maybe he could have a relationship with it. He could dig a hole in the fragrant velvety softness and . . . He begins to scrabble at it with his fingernails, is there earth underneath, then jumps back with a yelp. A shard of blue light zigzags out and bites his hand with a fierce electric nip.

  If this is all there is, he thinks, if this is all there is . . . People had always made him so miserable, how unfair that he could not have left loneliness behind too. He hangs his head between his knees and cries. There are no salty tears though; crying without tears feels as unsatisfying as an interrupted yawn. Fabian yowls and screams and swears for awhile in his impotent little boy voice, then in a pause between expletives he hears a noise. He freezes. Did he imagine that? No, he hears it again clear and sweet, Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, and then, Chick-a-dee-dee-dee, how poignant that sound. Hiking with Margaret and Bernadette and David. The scent of fir trees floods his memory.

  The call is coming from behind; he swivels around and stands up. The light wall stretches away receding to its vanishing point like a perspective exercise he remembers from high school art class. The grey nothingness comes up to meet it and try as he might there is nothing to see, certainly no chickadee flirting and swooping through the grey space. Then he hears a different call. A nagging nasal and insistent wock, wock, wock a wock, pjur, weer weer, the sound familiar to him, wock, wock, wock a wock, pjur, weer weer, black-and-white magpies fighting over a bone in the snow, suddenly a honking cacophony of Canada geese flying low. Then silence, still he sees nothing. Chickdee-dee-dee, again that sweet trill, and far off in the grey there is movement. He strains his eyes and watches a tiny rain cloud that seems to form and float just above the horizon, and then begins to grow, advancing towards him he realizes at a rapid rate. Again, the wild spring honking of low-flying geese but much louder now, Fabian covers his head and cowers, but quickly uncovers his face to watch the cloud. Perhaps it is a tornado of birds?

  The cloud grows and grows, he stares mesmerized, too relieved at the sensory stimulation for fear, but as the bird noises get louder in a bizarre tangle the cloud also grows and takes on detail. He hears the roar of a mighty wind. Torn fragments spin away from the centre of the cloud, scraps of drapery; at the top something protrudes and at the bottom he sees a smaller whirlwind of motion.

  “Oh no” says Fabian. “O
h no!” Wock, wock, wock-a-wock, pjur, weer,weer. The bump at the top is a head, a terrible head, he remembers now in a visceral way. Running is futile. He curls up in a ball and a cold wind hits him, Chick a dee dee dee, chick a dee dee dee. Fabian huddles and shakes. He hunkers before those great feet, his jailor, how could he have forgotten? Then intense annoyance at the trickery overwhelms him.

  “Turn off the goddamned bird soundtrack!” snaps Fabian.

  “Birds of the Rocky Mountain Foothills” says a voice as rooted as a mountain of limestone, yet liquid and surging, a tidal current, the Gulf Stream.

  Peter stands behind her in the waiting room and puts his warm hand on her shoulder. The only warmth in the room, but she can’t stand the sensation. She shrugs away from him. She is as cold inside as this institutional linoleum, as the fluorescent lights. Staying refrigerated seems the safest way.

  “I so wish you didn’t have to do this,” says Peter.

  The door with the wired glass window opens and a man in blue scrubs comes through.

  “Are you the family of Fabian Macomber?”

  “Yes,” says Peter, and they follow him down a hallway through chemically sterile air.

  They enter a small room with a metal rolling table in the centre. A huddled shape lies under a white sheet with a steel retractable light hovering above. The man folds back the sheet. Peter starts to put his hand on her shoulder again.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snaps and steps forward. She barely recognizes him as the same man, but then she hasn’t seen him for seven years. Her father lies curled, his knees folded up and his hands clasped under his chin like a baby in utero. His face peaceful as sleep. Stubble covers the yellowish skin of his receding chin, even more receding now in his old age. He reminds her of some ancient turtle. No longer is his head shaved in sympathy with the Neo Nazi skinheads’ fashion he had adopted when she last saw him but has grown out silky and white around his bald crown. How skinny he looks. A diarrheal stench surrounds him, and yes, even now he smells of coffee.

  “Sorry about the smell. It’s a normal reflex at death. All the sphincters give way. The funeral home will clean him up and lay him out properly once the rigour mortis relaxes. Says the man in blue scrubs. “Is this your father Fabian Macomber?”

  “Yes”

  A red abraded two-inch strip of skin shows around his neck.

  “Why is his neck like that?” asks Bernie.

  “We had to remove a plastic bag from his head. He sealed it around his neck with duct tape.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “He used helium gas I think they said, with a hose from the canister into the bag.”

  “Oh,” says Bernie. How like her dad. He had always loved tape and adhesives. She remembers the few times he packed her lunch for school. How her sandwich had been entombed in tin foil and bound this way and that with masking tape.

  “Daddy?” she says into his quiet face, but she does not want to touch him. Turning away she stumbles into Peter and he wraps her in his arms.

  “Let’s go now,” says Peter and they go out the door and down the hall. Bernie can’t feel her feet. Sitting in the car she watches herself as she jerks out violent sobs. When she finishes she wipes her eyes on her sleeve and, looking at Peter, thinks how old he’s suddenly grown.

  “What do I do now?” asks Bernie.

  “I guess we get him cremated. Take care of any belongings. I suppose he left a will.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” says Bernie. “I don’t know what to do! How do I live with this?”

  “With what?”

  “I hurt him, probably a lot.”

  Peter starts the car. “Don’t go there, Bern. You did what you had to do to stay sane under the circumstances. Don’t torture yourself,” and Bernie repeats the words all the way home in her head; what you had to do, what you had to do to stay sane.

  They roll into the driveway. The modernist flat-roofed house that Peter designed for them suddenly looks hollow. Bernie follows Peter up the kitchen steps. He unlocks the door and they both jump a bit when they see Eben standing lanky and awkward at the island. He keeps pushing his overgrown auburn bangs out of his eyes with the back of his wrist as he applies peanut butter to a bagel. Without quite looking up he grunts an incoherent greeting.

  “Why are you home so early, Ebe?” asks Peter.

  “Early dismiss . . . ” mumbles Eben in the cavernous new voice spliced into what used to be their son.

  “What?” says Peter, “God how I miss you actually talking to us. Enunciate. I can’t understand you.”

  He looks up at his father and mother, ready to roll his eyes, and says distinctly and patiently, “On Fridays we have early dismissal.” From under his bangs he assesses the faces of his parents.

  “What’s happened?” Eben asks. “Something’s happened.”

  Strangely, life continues, even after your father gasses himself with a tank of helium rented from Toys “R” Us. Bernadette carries on doing the things she has always done, but while the rest of the world continues to live in the golden sunlight of early fall, she descends into a grey and steely universe. She must walk through this harsh gravity alone. She doesn’t know why she feels so much grief. In the end she decides that their separation in life had been illusory, that the pain she feels resulted from the severing of some invisible cable of kinship.

  Daytime means moving resolutely forward through the gritty thickness of time, but at night guilt ambushes her without pity while she lies defenseless in her sleep. Bernie dreams of her father glowering at her from behind tree trunks in a park, a rotund and bearded faun, darting from tree to tree as she tries to feed her children a picnic of plastic food. One night he stands in an upstairs window of her house while she looks up at him from the lawn. He scowls at her, shakes his finger and lectures through the glass as he moves to each of the second story windows, always finding her below with his irate eyes. From this one she wakes up with a shriek, clutching and scrabbling at Peter. But the really dangerous dreams are the ones where he is kind.

  Bernie makes sandwiches at seven in the morning but has been awake since three. She needs to buy more mayonnaise and she uses a spatula to scrape out the bottom of the jar, spreads it on eight pieces of bread, and then layers on mustard and ham and spinach. This level of sleep deprivation would normally render her incoherent, but the dreams fire her with anxiety and adrenaline. If only he had never done anything decent, if the craziness had been constant her entire life, but there was an earlier father who built a toy oven from a wooden cupboard with burners lit by red light bulbs, who munificently and extravagantly tossed art supplies on her work table. Perhaps she will never sleep again. She cuts oranges into boats and fits them into the kid’s lunch kits. There is no baking, and after digging through the back of the cupboard she finds a fossilized roll of chocolate digestive biscuits. They are running out of groceries. She needs to start functioning again. The kids have been watching hours of movies while she sits on her bed and stares into space or takes long drives in her car listening to Chris Smither cds.

  Peter stumbles into the kitchen in his pajamas. He kisses her in passing on his way to the sink to fill up the coffee maker.

  “How did you sleep?” he asks.

  “Fine for awhile, but I had another dream.”

  “Why don’t you go to the doctor and get some sleeping pills. This is crazy, did you take the Gravol last night?”

  “I took it, and it knocked me out but then I woke up. I can’t take another one at three in the morning if I’m driving the kids to school.”

  “You’re too tired. It’s not safe to be driving at all.”

  “I know.” She changes the subject. “What do I do next, I wonder?”

  “I guess you have to figure out what to do with his house.”

  “I have to go in there and sort it out.”

  Peter gets a box of cereal out of the cupboard and shakes some into a bowl.

  “Why do you always h
ave to do the hard thing, Bernie, and always on your own? Let people help you. Hire someone to clean it out. I don’t want you retraumatizing yourself. Just get an estate company to go in and sell anything of value, and then we’ll list it with a realtor.”

  Bernie is silent as she fills juice containers. Finally, she says,

  “If I go back in there, I can get the evidence I need to stop feeling guilty and finally sleep.”

  “Evidence you need?”

  “Proof of the insanity, of how I had no choice. I need to find the books he wrote at the end.”

  “That’s twisted,” says Peter, leaning against the counter, cereal spoon in hand.

  “I know, but it’s the only way I can get free of this. She closes the insulated lunch bags. “This is sad, but if I can hate him, I’ll be safe.”

  “Alternately, you could just go for counselling. Let’s talk with David, he could recommend someone.”

  “No,” says Bernie shaking her head. A powerful sense of direction fills her for the first time since Fabian died. “I think that’s the way out, I think that’s what I have to do.”

  “Well, I’ll come with you after work.”

  “You know, I’m just going to go. I’ll do it when the kids are at school, there are piano lessons and Lola needs help on her science project tonight. I’ve got to start being present again, the evenings are for the kids.”

  “We could get my mother to come on Saturday and watch them. At least take a friend with you, someone.” Peter gets the milk from the fridge.

  “No. I’m sorry, I need privacy to do this. I don’t want to be worried about someone else’s reaction to what I’m going through.” The dog comes in to say good morning and Bernie leans over and scratches Angus above his tail. “I’ll just take Angus. Then I’ll be okay.”

  From upstairs they hear the drumming of Eben’s shower. Bernie checks her watch, seven-thirty.

  “God I’m late. Could you wake up the twins before you go?” Bernie asks. “I’ll get Lola going.”

  “Now stop turtling,” says the voice, rich in timbre, booming yet quiet. “Sit up, let’s have a look at you. See how you’ve grown.”