Bio Trauma Clean up reads the first entry. “We service all of central and southern Alberta, crime and death scene cleaning and remediation, sewage clean up, large scale animal biohazard our specialty.” Their office is in Edmonton. It’s just one nasty carpet, thinks Bernie, maybe I don’t need such a big company. She tries the second listing. “A.D.D.”, she reads, “After Death Detail, professional, experienced and discreet. Our family-based business has been serving Calgary since 1982. Let our caring professionals ease your mind during this traumatic time. Estate clean up and disposal also available.” That’s perfect thinks Bernie, she grabs a pen and the only piece of paper beside the bed, a word search that Mo had been working on, flips it over and writes down the phone number. She closes her laptop, switches off the light and almost immediately falls asleep.
“Okay, I think we’ve covered enough for one day, don’t you?”
“Has it been a day?” asks Fabian. The Membrane doesn’t falter in its opalescing, the grey space behind them continues to recede into black.
“I bet you’ll like this. From now on I’ll put up sunrise and sunset indicators. We’ve covered the orientation phase, so a sense of passing time will be helpful, but we’ve missed sunset. Earth time is about 9:30. You should lie down now on the turf. Breathe in the ether. What does it offer tonight?”
Fabian lies down sullen but dutiful, settles himself into the turf, which softens like a mattress and forms under his hip and shoulder. He breathes quietly for awhile. Roast chicken this time, with crackly salty skin, a symphony of root vegetables. Apricots in kirsch.
“Not bad!” says Fabian looking up at the angel.
“All right now, watch. I’ll do a fast-forward until we catch up.”
Fabian gazes at the Membrane as it moves rapidly through a stereotypical sunset progression; golden light fades to green, fades to teal, fades to a plushy navy blue. Finally, black and twinkling stars. How annoying, the twinkles are arranged in a grid pattern.
“Couldn’t the stars be more . . . ?”
“Ah yes, Northern hemisphere, I forgot.” The stars rearrange themselves. Fabian can make out the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. He feels very sleepy.
“Good night then.”
“Night,” murmurs Fabian.
Fabian wakes with a jerk and a shot of adrenaline, like he used to after coming down from a high, like a child on the first morning of camp. He remembers where he is, his eyes fly open and he looks around. His heart and stomach grip. Bune is nowhere to be seen. He has left Fabian alone with only this sleeping wolf lying two metres away, nose tucked under tail. Fabian should be sweating. He needs to do something, to eject or leak, but he certainly doesn’t want to shout. “I’ll just get the fuck out of here,” he thinks, and starts crawling backwards. After a reasonable distance he gets to his feet and runs, but in the first strides into the dark he wakes up another degree and feels foolish. Be sensible. It’s only Bune. It’s only your demon/angel. Fabian snorts aloud and the noise wakes the sleeping wolf.
“Hey!” The wolf sits up and scratches behind his ear, looking around blearily. “Now where has the little tadpole got too?” He peers into the dark and finds the brighter patch; the first golden light of the sunrise indicator, which bounces rosily off Fabian’s body. Bune licks his front forepaw, and then gets an excruciating itch between two toes. He goes at it vigorously, his lips pulled back and his teeth scissor as precisely as possible. He finds the flea and feels it pop between his incisors. Angel fleas. He gives himself a shake.
“Little Tadpole,” he calls into the gloom, “come back. You know it’s only me. Today you need to get over it and give me a pat. Then I’ll change back if you want.” Fabian stands motionless.
“When you were a boy you had a dog. What was his name? Ah yes, Brownie.” Fabian breathes in and starts walking back dragging his feet. He wishes he had pockets to jam his hands into. He stops before the wolf.
“Could you not do that?” he grumbles. “Switch like that without warning. First thing in the morning too.”
“I’m sorry, I enjoy the variety. Full angel format gets cramping on Corridor Nine. But just come pat me and then you should have breakfast.”
Fabian stretches his arm out, holds the back of his hand under the wolf’s nose. Bune sniffs and woofs a laugh.
“You still smell like coffee but not so desperate. Now scratch me behind the ears.” The fur of the ruff springs under Fabian’s fingers, each hair an infinitesimal jet of energy. He digs his fingers deeper, finding the cool resilience of the skin, scratches under the ear, down below the chin. Bune leans into him, half closes an eye, and grunts appreciation.
“With Brownie, I used to go like this.” Fabian, reaches way over, scratches the lower back just in front of the tail. Bune can’t help himself and genuflects, Fabian laughs, “and then I’d do his sides like this”, his fingers wriggle assiduously up the rib cage. He gives one final scratch around the neck and pats him on the top of the head. Bune lollops a lick on his cheek and Fabian smiles foolishly, realizes his hands feel just washed, not the usual oily grit after patting a dog.
“Go lie down and eat now.”
“Lie down and eat. This is so weird.” Fabian steps away and lies down on the grass, curls on his side. He breathes. Oatmeal. He hates oatmeal, but this is only the wholesome kernel, not the viscous slimy part, sun butter melting into caramelizing sugar, glacial milk infused with the generosity of grass. He sits now and looks at Bune, his face quite open.
“Ready?” The wolf starts to vibrate and meld, fur waving and weaving upwards, he lengthens. Fabian squints into the quagmire of movement, tries to focus his eyes, and watches the rushing, upward sprouting. He blinks and there stands Bune replete with wings, rubbing his eyes with his fists and running his leathery hands back through his hair.
“Okay, we should get to work.” Behind him on the Membrane sunlight-tinged puffs of cloud drift across a morning sky. “First of all, I need you to tell me the highlights of what you learned in your last assignment, what you see as your real accomplishments, and I will list them on the Membrane so we can talk about them.”
“What I learned on summer vacation?”
“Essentially.”
Fabian starts to pace, his hands clasped behind his back, head down.
“The first thing you realize, in a, in a life, is that shit happens to you and you feel terrible. It’s tyranny, shit happens to you right from the beginning, when you are a naked, helpless baby, and the feelings are the worst of it. “But,” and here he raises both a finger and his eyebrows, “But, I believe I came up with a really brilliant solution. I wrote about it in some of my books, and when they are discovered, I think I will be granted all the esteem that I am due. I wouldn’t be surprised in fact, if I go down as one of the great minds of the twentieth century.”
“Really? Could you elaborate? What do you mean by ‘shit,’ and the concurrent feelings, please?”
“Well, you know, pain, simple physical pain for one thing, gas, colic, various infections and inflammation. Then, depending on the reliability of your parents, who knows what you’ll get: physical punishment, spanking, pinching, shaking — who can say what level of emotional abandonment they will inflict on you. If you cry out in loneliness and terror, will they come? Hard to say. And through the rest of your life it continues. Shit happens, and you feel pain, loneliness, sexual frustration, humiliation, abrasion, a stab in the back, a kick to the balls,” Fabian demonstrates with gusto, “a punch in the gut. And never, or rarely, the gentle caress, the soothing balm of love.”
“Yes,” says Bune.
“But I discovered, or rather gathered from the research of others, various plants that produce certain substances. Now these substances, if ingested, create concrete emotions and sensations of their own, and there are a lot of them, a whole menu to choose from. The wise man therefore, although still under the tyranny of fate, can at least decide how he wants to feel at any given moment. In that way he can be free, in
that way he can at least have some say.”
“Hmmm, let me try to summarize that . . . ” Bune turns toward the Membrane. “Number 1: Avoidance of feeling through botanical interventions.” Fabian watches, delighted, as the words project in glowing font on the cloud-filled screen saver.
“Yes, that’s it, except don’t say ‘avoidance of’, say, ‘liberation from’. And if I can continue along that vein . . . ”
“I’m sorry, an interruption.” Bune turns his head to the side as if listening to something behind him and to the left. “Ahh . . . ” he smiles apologetically. “So sorry.” He lifts his right arm into the air and with a pop something materializes in his hand.
“This just in,” says Bune, and Fabian stares at a cobalt blue key that winks and twinkles between the angel’s thumb and forefinger.
“My guys can be there any time today. What would work for you?” asks the woman at the other end of the line.
“Really?” Bernie sits parked in front of the school after drop off. “Could they come this morning?”
“Absolutely. The city quiets down in the fall. Around Stampede it gets . . . But just give me the address and leave the rest to us. I’ll have a dumpster sent over right away. Your father, you said? I can’t imagine. My sympathies.”
“Yes. Thank you. The house is in Cochrane actually, will that be a problem?”
From the school she drives to a liquor store that piles its cartons on the sidewalk for people to take away. David said he didn’t want anything from the house, but Bernie doesn’t know what she will find. She wants his books, especially the last one he wrote. She needs to search his study, but even conceptual movement towards that room, and her skin, her insides, pull in the opposite direction. She thinks about drinking something stiff. A shot of medicinal mind-numbing whiskey would come in handy. Little bottles of Jack Daniels in her purse don’t seem an option however. Opening the back hatch of the van, she unties Angus from the tether that keeps him in the back. He leaps over the bench seats and settles himself as co-pilot. Bernie loads in the boxes.
As she drives, fog percolates up from the sodden ground to meet the low ceiling of cloud. Rain fell all night and the clouds seem in no hurry to leave. Cars flare up at her on the highway then vanish into the mist as soon as they pass. Bernie pulls into a drive-through coffee place on the edge of town.
“Medium latte please,” she says to the dreadlocked boy huddled in his coat behind the take-out window. She drops toonies into his cold fingers and pulls away, the coffee scalding just behind the insulation of the plastic coating. She tries the radio, but nothing seems appropriate, CBC plays a Bartok concerto, cheerful reggae on CKUA, she hits the button that Eben has set to a station and guttural alternative screaming mixes with the smell of coffee and soggy cardboard and, strangely enough, it seems about right. Pulling into her parents’ old driveway, she sees the hulking dumpster already planted on the lawn.
Bernie turns the engine off. Scratching Angus behind his ear, she sips the coffee. The A.D.D. lady, Jeanie, had said they’d be here by ten-thirty. She waits for the biohazard remediation team to show up. Ten forty-five, finally eleven, and a faded maroon Mercury Topaz, rust gnawing the side panels, noses into the driveway and stops. The car sinks into its wheels with a sigh. Two young and very thin men peer out at her from under hoods. She watches as they light cigarettes, take a few drags and then get out. Bernie lowers her window four inches and Angus growls.
“Hello?” The man with the quilted black and red jacket over his tattered hoody approaches her window. He cracks a greying pointy-toothed smile, and rocks from foot to foot, rubbing his hands against his thighs.
“Jeez, it’s cold eh? Jeannie said you wanted us to clean out your house? We’re from A.D.D . . . ” His eyebrows are dark and bushy and, if he should live to be an old man, they could become veritable moustaches.
“You’re the ‘bioremediation team’?”
“The wha?”
“The, oh never mind. Shouldn’t you have protective clothing? I mean, you’ll be dealing with bodily fluids!”
“Oh yeah, Jeannie gives us the stuff,” and he pulls a pair of yellow kitchen gloves from one pocket, a dust mask on an elastic string from another.
“Shouldn’t you have a full protective suit . . . ?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, I just take a shower when I get home. This here’s Derek,” gesturing to his partner, “and I’m Troy. Uh, we’re uh, sorry for your loss Ma’am.”
Bernie wraps Angus’s leash twice around her hand and gets out of the car.
“I’m Bernie and this is Angus.”
“I love dogs, I’ve got a pit-bull cross at home, she’s a real sweetie, I named her Crystal,” says Troy. He lets Angus sniff his hand and then scratches him behind his ear. Angus actually wags.
“Okay,” says Bernie. “Come on, I’ll let you in.”
Derek walks behind them carrying a ghetto blaster. Bernie finds the plastic rock beside the stairs and tips the key into her hand. She unlocks the door and steps aside so they can go in ahead of her, and the odd mixture of cat box and incense hits her again.
“Wow, what a mess. I mean, we’ve seen worse though. Where do you want us to start. Where was the body by the way, just so we know?” Bernie starts flicking on lights and trying not to look.
“Anything you want us to save, Ma’am, any keepsakes? Look at that Christmas tree, fuck I don’t think he ever took it down . . . ”
“The only room I care about is the study. That’s where he died, the carpet is the problem, you’ll have to rip it out. But I need you to bring everything out from the study and leave it on the porch, so I can go through it before you throw it away. The other rooms, I don’t care. I don’t want anything.” Bernie unclips Angus from his leash and lets him wander the house.
“There’s some nice furniture here, that looks antique. You sure?” Troy stares at her great-grandmother’s mahogany Victorian settee, upholstered in moss velvet. She shakes her head. “Derek, phone Jeanie and tell her to send the big truck.”
“No, wait. The old stuff, the antiques, let’s leave in the house, but everything else can go. Let me just walk through and look, you could start with the carpets in the living room, what do you do with filthy fake Persian rugs?”
“Dumpster.”
Lying on the coffee table she sees various incense-burning vessels, one in particular, a lidded, pierced Aladdin’s lamp of brass that she used to play with as a child. Matches, ash, dirty dishes, and prescription bottles. A mouldy, half-eaten apple impaled with a burnt stick of incense. She picks up the dishes and takes them to the kitchen, balancing them on the piles already covering the counter. Bernie starts opening cupboards and at the very top she finds a few of her mother’s stoneware casseroles, some tarnished silver jugs. Maybe they should be put away for the kids, the old furniture too. Behind the table her painting hangs crookedly on the wall, a close-up of an organic tangle of plants in a garden. She’d won the grade eleven art award with that one, and she gave it to him for Christmas. “Oh, there’s all sorts of stuff in that picture,” Fabian says, “gnomes, little sprites; there’s more there than meets the eye.” Hmm, when you’re stoned out of your mind on LSD. She takes it off the wall gingerly, finds newspaper in the living room and wraps it in multiple layers, finds tape, no shortage of tape, and encases it safely like radioactive material. She can’t throw it out, perhaps she’ll put it in storage. Bernie brings in the boxes from the van, and then walks quickly through the rooms trying to see only obliquely, in case something not too steeped in her father, some remnant of her mother or grandma or David, should be saved for the children.
The guys have the radio playing and are laughing and talking to each other as they roll up and manoeuvre the carpets out the door. In the kitchen she should wash the dishes, and then everything can be donated. Dining room, keep her mother’s maple pedestal table and ladder-back chairs for the kids? The old hall chair with the seat that lifts up where she and David, in their ch
ildhood, had kept their drenched toques and mittens. The weight of it all. Maybe she’ll just sell the furniture. Shed all of this.
“Uh, what do you want to do with the Christmas decorations?” Troy’s head pokes around the door frame.
“Sally Ann? Do you guys donate, or will they just go to the dump?”
“I’ll put them in boxes if you want, we can take a load to the Women in Need, any furniture you don’t want to keep. He spent a shitload on ornaments, holy crap, wish I had . . . ”
“Take them for yourself if you want, anything actually, just let me have a look first. You could start on the bedroom and the bathroom, I don’t want anything in there just empty them, the clothes and mattress in the dumpster.” Bernie walks to the bedroom door and looks into the curtained room piled with dirty clothes to the level of the mattress. He hadn’t believed in laundry, only shopping at Costco. In the closet are close to sixty pairs of runners and black slip-on shoes.
“The shoes to the Sally Ann I guess, but I can’t go through the clothes.” Angus, after eating all the cat food off the floor, plants himself repeatedly in the path of traffic. Bernie takes him outside to the van. Shutting the hatch, she looks over at the pristine clapboard bungalow of Mrs. Gotslieg. The kitchen lights are on. She goes back into the house and starts on the piles of dishes, the cups spackled with dried Metamucil are the worst, she fills both sides of the sink and puts them all in to soak, fills the dishwasher with the first load and turns it on. He seemed only to have eaten three things, London Broils, pre-cooked stuffed mashed potatoes, and cereal. And coffee. In one cupboard she found six containers of Metamucil. The freezer compartment in the fridge barely shuts and a frozen potato falls like a brick on the top of her foot. She is hopping around swearing when Troy walks by with a heap of clothes in his arms. “Please,” she says, “at the end of the day take all this food home if you want it.” Derek follows behind him, his usually subaudible voice cracked and husky, “This shit man, I can’t believe the street value . . . ” Seeing Bernie, he recedes back into his hood as they go out the kitchen door.
Corridor Nine Page 6