Floating Like the Dead

by Yasuko Thanh

  “Are we there yet?” Raymond asks.

  “Getting close,” answers Nestor.

  Vince looks from one side of the field to the other bordered by old-growth firs, his gaze sweeping over the rolling, manicured lawn. “You worked here?”

  “It wasn’t a bad place,” Nestor says, “all the time.”

  “I remember watching it close on the news – what was that, three or four years ago now?”

  “It’s pretty here,” Raymond says, looking around. A pool, filled by a stream flowing downward from a hill is flanked by a grove of trees.

  Vince tries to shake off the goose bumps on his arms. There’s something tactile about the stillness that hovers eerily over the grassy expanse.

  Nestor, too, is looking around. His head pivots left and right while creases grow on his brow.

  “I don’t understand,” Nestor says. “I – this is where the cemetery should be.”

  “So where is it?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s not here.”

  The tires of Raymond’s wheelchair sink into the soft lawn as they push forward under the sun, looking for a grave marker, a map mounted on an information board, a sign. A hundred yards away, a woman in exercise pants picks up her poodle’s feces with a plastic bag. Vince leaves Raymond and Nestor resting under a tree so he can make better time searching on his own. “You’re probably just disoriented. It’s been a long time,” he says to Nestor. “I’ll be right back. Stay here with Raymond.”

  Vince has only been walking for a few minutes when he comes to a grove of willow trees and stubs his toe. The pain crackles up his foot and, kneeling to rub his toe, he looks down. Next to his foot lies a headstone covered in brush. Confused, he moves to the next tree, a weeping elm, under which more headstones lay in grim disorder, nearly invisible beneath its draped branches.

  After he leads Nestor and Raymond back to his grim discovery, he lifts a corner of the stone, holds it up for them to see.

  Nestor is silent. Pushing Raymond’s wheelchair closer he mouths the words, “Oh, no.”

  Some gravestones have been stacked and stored one on top of the other. No human attempt has been made to hide them, only nature has rendered them partially hidden beneath fallen leaves, long grass. Vince finds others piled in a nearby garden shed.

  “I want to go in with you,” Raymond says.

  “The wheelchair, it won’t fit through the door,” Nestor says.

  “I want to.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Nestor says. Still, he lets Raymond get out of his wheelchair slowly and walks closely behind him, watchful, ready to catch him if he falls, as he shuffles toward the shed, thin in his leather jacket. Once Raymond is stationed inside the shed with Vince, Vince helps Raymond get as comfortable as he can, seated atop a blanket, resting with his back against the wall. The air is damp and smells of earthworms, moss, and wood. Vince hopes the air is not too cold for Raymond.

  Through the open doorway, Vince can see Nestor outside, shuffling through the back pack, getting out drinking boxes and sandwiches for their lunch. Vince kneels and puts his hand on the flat surface of a gravestone, the first of many, piled up like cord wood. He brushes off the dead leaves to read: Lewis? – something. The caked dust crumbles off the cast concrete as he caresses the grooves.

  He lifts the stone. It’s heavier than he expected and his back twinges as he turns to set it apart from the pile. The stones smell of urine: local dogs must have roamed these grounds freely for years. He brushes off dried worms. Then he does the same for the next one. Each stone once memorialised a face, a name, a story.

  The stones clack as Vince builds a new stack. They are sometimes difficult to balance on top of each other as some of the stones have been split in two with one half lost, while others have been battered by the years and neglect to mere shards that fall to the ground. The concrete feels moist and leaves a chalky residue on his hands, stealing the warmth from his palms.

  Vince drifts between tears and anger. They spend most of the afternoon in that garden shed, looking through the tombstones, more than three hundred of them. Nestor comes in and out asking if they want more sandwiches or apples or granola bars.

  “I’m going to leave this for Charlie,” Raymond says, opening his hand, a carved wooden turtle in his palm. “Nestor got it for me in Chinatown. Do you like it?”

  Vince holds his head aloof, fights to stop himself from looking down his nose at it.

  “The turtle. He holds the world on his back.”

  Vince doesn’t acknowledge the remark. It’s enough that he has to accept Raymond’s high estimation of Nestor. He brushes the dirt off another of the gravestones, moving his hand softly over the letters, touching them as gently as a lover. A shudder passes through him, a sudden strange presentiment of loss, a nostalgia for the present. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  Raymond laughs. “Look at me. I’m being visited by dead people.”

  They leave the garden shed, Raymond with his turtle and pencil drawing clutched in his hand, Vince steadying him with an arm at his elbow, and they walk out onto the grass.

  “If you are going a long way, go slowly,” Nestor says.

  With Raymond leaning heavily on his arm, they walk for a time, the sun shifting behind clouds, the air growing still. They walk on the grass where the gravestones have been pulled like teeth from the rolling hills. There is nothing to acknowledge that more than three thousand bodies, according to Nestor, still lay underfoot. Vince blinks hard, looking over the grassy expanse, imagining what lies beneath.

  When they approach the ridgeline of trees on the hill, they stop. Raymond crouches down and, next to the turtle, arranges the carnations, as well the picture he has drawn, over top of one of the many unmarked graves, laying them all on the grass. Then he folds at the waist, collapsing toward the ground, his cheek against the earth. Alarmed, Vince reaches out for him. “Honey?” He shakes his shoulder. He worries Raymond has passed out. But Raymond, his cheek still pressed firmly on the ground, opens one eye and peers up at Vince with a look of annoyance. “What?” he says.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Shhh. I’m listening.” He closes his eyes again, presses his forehead to the ground.

  Vince leaves him there and waits. He paces back and forth, biting at his fingernails, peeling the cuticles back with his teeth until they are raw. He wonders what Raymond hears, and what he himself might hear if he could only bring himself to lie down next to Raymond, press his own cheek into the solid earth, and listen.

  By the time they get to Jericho Park later that afternoon it is raining. The grey sky hangs over the evergreens. Damp sea air invades Vince’s flimsy windbreaker, a blue relic from the eighties which he refuses to get rid of, and seeps through the leather of his loafers, soaking his toes. He would rather be at home with a cup of Earl Grey on his lap, but it was his idea to stop in and visit Lucille, part of his ongoing peace mission, the all-or-nothing salvage operation into which he’ll gladly sink his own heart.

  “Not stay long, okay?” Nestor says, for which Vince is grateful.

  Raymond’s mother sits on a chair behind a table of bocce merchandise: clothing, ball rentals, and a metal box for the tournament entry fee. Vince pushes Raymond’s wheelchair around the table, ducking under team lists that are hung with clothespins from the streamer above her, while Nestor walks at Raymond’s side, holding the umbrella over him. Only when Raymond is in front of her does she get up from her chair and hug him.

  “Hey, Mom,” Raymond says, his eyes glassy from the morphine drip and fatigue.

  Vince nods toward Nestor. “Lucille, this is Nestor. Nestor, Lucille.”

  “You want a T-shirt?” she asks Nestor. “Good cause. Charity for kids.”

  “We’re not staying long,” Vince says.

  “I’m here until four. It’s good to leave the house, you know? I like to help out.”

  “Helping out is good,” Vince says. Doe
s she hear the edge in his voice? Vince jams his fists into the kangaroo pouch of his windbreaker and feels some balled up Kleenex. His exhaustion from the early morning and his lack of sleep feels like a tight band around his head.

  Nestor tucks and re-tucks the blanket around Raymond’s knees.

  “Nestor,” Raymond says, “stop fussing.”

  “Check it out,” Vince says, touching Raymond’s elbow.

  A man in a shirt that says “FBI, Full-Blooded Italian” steps up to the pitch, the weight of the shiny grapefruit-sized metal ball resting solidly in one palm. The mood is intense as the audience waits for the man to hit the other ball on the terrain with a resounding puh-tank.

  “So. What is it today, Lucille? Who’s the money for?” Vince asks.

  Raymond’s mother says nothing, simply points to multiple banners strung next to the team lists just to the right of his head. “Oh, geez,” he says, angry at her condescension, though he’s embarrassed he hadn’t noticed. It’s a symptom, he thinks, of how much he lives in his head these days. “Commercial Co-operative Centre. Kids Up Front Fundraiser. The Bocce Father Tournament.” The last banner features a silhouette of Marlon Brando puffing a cigar. “That’s just great,” Vince says.

  “Yah, I buy T-shirt,” Nestor says.

  “Black or white T-shirt?” she asks Nestor. “And this one with the Bocce Father, or just words?” She shuffles under the table. “I don’t think I have bags. I did have bags. What did I do with them?”

  Why won’t she look at Raymond? Why does his sickness make her so uncomfortable? Why isn’t Raymond upset that she is ignoring him? Instead, Raymond is tucking the shirt Nestor has bought him under his arm like a football, smiling his tired smile. Sometimes, he really does act like a man who believes he deserves his punishment.

  Vince takes an egg-sized piece of concrete from his pocket and offers it to Lucille.

  “What is it?” she says.

  “Something I thought you might be interested in.”

  He knows he’s goading her but he can’t help it.

  She takes it and before Vince can tell her it is a piece of a gravestone, the sun gleams through a break in the clouds and the park is illuminated, spotlighting the ancient beauty of the old-growth Douglas firs, their slick boughs, the game of bocce on the grass. A few people oooh, rub their arms, lift their faces to the light. For an instant the day is glorious.

  “Look,” Nestor says, pointing at the sun, “it’s a blessing in the sky.”

  With the chunk of concrete in her hand, Lucille looks like a woman on the verge of some kind of action. Vince wonders what she is waiting for.

  In that moment, with the sun glancing off Lucille’s face, Vince begins to understand there are truths one speaks and others one doesn’t. Maybe Lucille is waiting for a confession. Maybe she needs to hear her son say, “I’m sorry,” before she can move on, grant forgiveness, and be forgiven herself.

  Everyone has something to confess. Vince’s confession is the tragedy of his infinitely small mind. His inability to believe in anything beyond himself, beyond what his puny eyes can see. He could never have joined Raymond down on the grass, honouring the unmarked dead with his cheek pressed to the ground.

  And no matter how much love they share between them, Vince can’t even begin to imagine what the world looks like through Raymond’s eyes. To have faith. Vince has only his own pair of eyes through which to view everything for all eternity.

  Vince looks at Lucille – like him, all she has left is Raymond. He feels the loneliness engulf him. She is poised and ready, but still waiting. He tries to imagine what kind of a push she needs. What they both need to let go.

  “We went to Woodlands today,” he tries. He doesn’t know what to expect with this revelation.

  Lucille pauses. “And?”

  “Nothing much there,” Vince says. “Most of it’s been torn down.”

  She puts her hands on her lap. “I guess that’s a good thing. Who wants to be reminded of the bad that happened. Negative energy. That’s why I heard they’re getting rid of everything, clearing the whole site.” Then she forces a jovial tone. “You kids. Always up to something.”

  “We should go,” Vince says.

  “Already?” Raymond asks.

  “I love you, don’t complain.”

  “So soon?” Lucille says, flatly. It is a statement, not a request for them stay. Or does Vince detect a note of regret in her voice?

  “But the sun just came out,” Raymond says.

  “Long day, you,” Nestor agrees.

  “Sometimes the best time to leave a party is when it’s in full swing,” Vince says. “Before all the mess.”

  Lucille smiles. “Okay. Gotcha.” She makes a gun from her fingers and pretends to shoot them. “We see you soon, okay?”

  Vince says okay, even though he knows it won’t be soon or maybe ever again. For all he knows, this glimpse of Lucille, sitting at her table in a sunbeam, her hair like a blackberry, her face tilted upward, might be his last of her, and Raymond’s last, too.

  The wet grass, sparkling with raindrops, makes the wheelchair tires slip.

  When they’re halfway to the car they hear Lucille call out, “The stone.” She’s holding up the piece of concrete. “What do I do with it?”

  Vince and Raymond share a look. Save the conversation for next time? Run back and tell her what it is? “Keep it,” Vince calls back.

  She’s still holding the concrete with a puzzled grin.

  “Should we go back and explain?” Raymond asks.

  “It’s nothing that can’t wait,” Vince says. “We’ll do it another time.”

  Vince has been considering taking a leave of absence so he can stay home with Raymond full-time, although Raymond insists that’s the last thing he wants. “Let’s keep everything as normal as possible, okay? For as long as we can.” So today Vince gives Raymond a shave in bed with the electric razor. His skin colour seems to change each week, from white to yellow to green. His lips are cracked and Vince has to shave around the eruptions. When he’s done, he retrieves Raymond’s makeup bag from the bathroom. But he forgets the comb. Then he forgets the hairspray.

  “Quit it,” Raymond says. “You’re pacing as bad as Charlie.” But there’s no disapproval, only tenderness, in his voice.

  Vince applies concealer around Raymond’s eyes and brushes mascara onto his thinning lashes.

  “How about some falsies – those ones made of feathers,” Raymond says.

  “I’m not sure about the chemical composition of the glue. Let’s check with Nestor first.”

  “Joking,” Raymond says, giving a weak chuckle.

  What do you say to someone who is dying? What words do you use and in what tense? Though they have never stopped planning for things and talking about the future, some days Vince feels like a liar.

  Yet last night Vince dreamed he was nursing Raymond, much like he is now. Then he looked at his hands, noticed them for the first time as they hovered above his lover’s face, mascara wand poised over his granite-coloured eyes. The hands were those of an old man, liver-spotted, wrinkled, arthritic. Good God, he’d wanted to cry. Look how old we’ve grown.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the following people:

  For reading early drafts of these and other stories, Audrey McClellan, Sarah Selecky, Jody Gardner, and Yvette Guigueno. For their support, Yvette Guigueno, as well as Terry Glavin, Jeremy and Sus Borsos, Amanda Jardine, Jessica Kluthe, Peter Boychuk, and Michael Nardone. Thank you also to David Thanh, Landon James, Dan Hogg, Valerie Tenning, and Cliff Haman (for always answering my questions). Tim Lilburn, for introducing me to the phrase “nostalgia for the present” and “presentiment of loss”; Ibet Falk, who shared her swimming lessons with me; and rockabilly legend Art Adams, for the story about his white shoes.

  For their inspiration, Earl Andersen, author of Hard Place to Do Time; Reverend Joseph B. Ingle, for Last Rights; Jack Hodgins, for A Passion for N
arrative; Harold Brodkey, for This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death; Sherwin B. Nuland, for How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter; and Jean MacNeil, for her story “Bethlehem.” Thank you to Vancouver historian Lani Russwurm, and a deep and sincere thank you to Chris Yorath for his excellent book, A Measure of Value, without which my story “Floating Like the Dead” wouldn’t exist.

  Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding while writing these stories.

  Thank you Jason Jobin, Helga Thorson, Lorna Jackson, John Gould, Bill Gaston, Gudrun Will, my Spanish expert Dan Russek, Florence Daurelle, and the members of my University of Victoria writing workshops. For their comments and suggestions, special thanks to Grant Buday, James Marshall, and Zsuzsi Gartner, as well as to Steven Price for the assignment he gave me that led to the Journey Prize.

  Without my tireless editor, Anita Chong, these stories would not be what they are, and I thank her for always demanding my best. Thank you to Denise Bukowski, keeper of the faith.

  My children, Jet and Maisie, for tolerating their “just-a-minute” Mommy. And no acknowledgement would be complete without my mentioning my husband, Hank, whose Indian head I stole; to whom I owe my sanity and my successes, however big or small; who loves me for better or for worse. Thank you, with all my heart, for making each day beautiful, possible, and worthwhile.