by John O'Neill
Like most of the new houses, Ellis’ backed onto the rear of a strip mall, which in turn faced another strip mall across Kingston; between them, they housed four fast food restaurants representing at least three nationalities, a hairstylist, a dollar store, a convenience store, a drug store, a Goodwill and a framing shop that, in the spirit of the new development, displayed in its window an elaborately framed portrait of Paris Hilton.
Leonard’s room looked out through sliding glass doors onto the large, unkempt backyard, where weeds had begun to claim the modest deck and, beyond that, to an alleyway lined with service doors for the strip-mall businesses. Bowing to pressure from neighbours, his nephew groomed the front yard but let the backyard go. Ellis’ bedroom was one of two next to Leonard’s and was carpeted, like the rest of the house, with a shag rug the colour of vomit. At the front was a huge square space split into foyer, living room, dining room and kitchen.
Ellis had brought everything from his old basement apartment, but his sparse furnishings were dwarfed by the expanse of the living area. An ugly two-seater couch sat before a small glass end table that had been pressed into service as a coffee table. A round pine table with two plastic chairs barely filled a quarter of the dining room, and the kitchen looked like a hallway with cupboards atop a long marble countertop, fridge and stove, and marble island running half the room’s length. The walls throughout the house were bare, except for the area over the gas fireplace. There, a poster hung from a wrinkled strip of duct tape.
It was a large, air-brushed picture of an Amazonian type woman. She wore brown leather buckskin and a sort of antlered crown, and was riding between jagged plates on the back of a stegosaurus. In her blood-nailed hand, she gripped a leash that was attached to four snarling white tigers. It was a Frank Frazetta-style painting, though less accomplished, but completely commanded the attention, due to the blandness of the rest of the room. The large front windows lacked curtains, so that a passerby might glance in and be startled by the prospect of being torn apart by tigers, or, if spared that fate, clubbed to death by a pair of massive cartoon breasts.
After he’d hung up some of his shirts and wrestled a small desk from the trunk of his car, Leonard was hungry. He asked Ellis, who sat in the dining room studying the comic section of the Toronto Star, if he wanted to get something to eat. Leonard joked he was anxious to sample from the culinary smorgasbord just one street away. Ellis said he was about to make dinner, asked Leonard to join him. Anxious to be sociable with his new landlord, Leonard agreed. When he offered to help with the preparation, Ellis waved him away.
Leonard sat at the dining room table, stretched his legs, folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He imagined that the sounds from the kitchen, the sliding of drawers, opening and closing of cupboards, buzz from the fridge, represented the gathering of precision cooking tools and exotic spices and marinated meats in the preliminary stages of an elaborate preparation, of a great welcome-to-the-household feast. Instead, he watched as Ellis placed two large mixing bowls and spoons on the table, then an enormous, industrial strength box of Alpha-Bits and a two-litre carton of milk. Ellis sat down, filled his own bowl to the brim with the cereal, then drained the milk carton until, after what seemed like 30 seconds, the letters began to stir.
“Go ahead, dig in,” he said.
Leonard shook a small portion into his bowl, splashed on the remaining milk. The clicking of their spoons against the bowls, the combined sounds of their chewing, as well as how they mirrored one another in the mechanics of cereal consumption, made Leonard feel as if he was eight years old again. He read the cereal box, disappointed that no toy was promised. Pacified himself by forming the word blowjob out of his cereal bits. He wondered vaguely if there might be a market for adult cereal, that every box could contain little marshmallow penises and breasts, as well as a sex toy prize.
After they’d finished, Ellis retired to the basement, Leonard to his room. He sat on the plaid pullout couch (a gift from Ruth to her son, so that she’d have a place to sleep if she stayed over). Leonard was happy to close his eyes for a few minutes, conserving his energy for the phone call he needed to make. He had to talk to Alison. She had to speak to her father. Or he would.
The room convulsed. Something hummed and rattled; whistled, cranked. Leonard realized that Ellis had initiated the launch sequence on the entertainment system in the basement. The explosive sounds were the Sensurround soundtrack of some movie he’d slid into the DVD player. It sounded as though the four pedestal speakers were fastened to the ceiling, the woofers and tweeters pressed against the floor of his room. Vibrations entered the soles of his feet, throbbed into his legs and torso and head. He let himself slouch deeper, pretending he was the happy recipient of an audio full-body massage.
Leonard let one particularly powerful surge push him up from the couch and he went down to the kitchen to phone Alison. No answer – only the sound of Beverly’s recorded voice, an efficient, flat We’re not home; you know what to do.
Half the night, Ellis watched (foghorn, zombie-grunt, drive-by) movies in the basement, seemingly oblivious to Leonard’s presence. But Leonard felt he’d have to be more fully integrated into this new situation before he could complain.
The next day, Leonard phoned Alison again. Again, Beverly’s recorded voice. He left no message. The following day was the beginning of fall semester, so he had to spend the latter half of Sunday arranging lesson plans, deciding on changes in the course outlines. He realized that he’d have to make these changes on the school computers, since the only one he could access was in his former home, an iMac he shared with Cynthia. The anticipation of such practical frustrations made, in a kind of protest, his penis stir. How could he arrange his masturbations here? How could he relieve himself without worrying that Ellis was hovering near? He’d have to arrange his sessions around his nephew’s schedule. But as far as he knew, Ellis had no schedule; his nephew was still out of work and, according to his mother, had lost all interest in finding a job, since he’d been rewarded by providence for his lack of ambition. According to Ruth, her son, after the purchase of the house, and the treat of a spanking new top-of-the-line entertainment system, still had a hundred grand to keep him, for the time being, gainfully unemployed.
23
LIFE IS SHORT, ART IS LONG
Mavis Grace was in fine form on the first school day – more severe than usual, establishing the right tone with her classes, roving up and down the aisles as she spoke, moving in close to the students, standing back, modulating her voice, roaring, dropping it to a whisper when she talked about what she expected of them. And with her strong, straight nose, her black eyes, her pale skin, her long neck that was emphasized by the abundant and curly black hair that fell along its sides and around her shoulders, she looked pre-Raphaelite, though unlike a Holman Hunt or Rossetti painting, there was something approaching gall in her face as if she, in this first 70 minutes, had to atone for all the injustices done to artists over the years. She would go from this dark passion into a kind of ecstasy, breaking from near diatribe into a euphoric smile when she introduced the notion that art was the best of humanity and so was timeless. At least Leonard was disarmed. Watching her, he forgot about Alison.
He stood outside her classroom door, on his spare period, time that would have been better spent in further preparation for his own classes. But the sight of Mavis, her thin figure in a summery but dark-flowered dress, stopped him, and everything. When class was over, the students didn’t stream out, but wobbled, one by one, as if exiting from a bus crash, dazed, bloodied, unsure what had happened. What should they do with the information? How should they process their teacher’s passion? Should they chalk it up to insanity, or former drug use, or admit that she was just plain interesting and acknowledge they were in for a semester-long challenge they hadn’t anticipated when they’d rolled out of bed that morning, motivated only by the prospect of seeing their peers after the summer.
Mavis saw
Leonard waiting by the door and came right out and hugged him, unembarrassed by the proximity of the students who’d flooded the hall. Her strong embrace made him want to surrender, to fall right into her as if into some larger element, wisp of breeze sliding into a storm.
“Leonard, God bless you. How are you? How was your summer?”
“Fine. Good. Yours?”
“Come in, I’m on prep. I think I scared my class.”
“No, you were great.”
“Of course, they’re angels on the first day. Then the demons emerge. You know how it is. Leonard, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
Listening to her, Leonard’s eyes had welled up. Mavis closed and locked the classroom door, sat him down beside her desk on one of the blue plastic chairs. Her face was all concern. Leonard was also aware of the classroom walls: close behind Mavis was a series of prints, images of the Madonna, most of them in shades of yellow or gold. Mavis’ face seemed particularly pinched, amidst all of the passive, beatific ovals, the repeated circles of shoulders, faces, haloes, suns and stars. Mavis’ eyes were on Leonard’s, and she placed a hand on his. She pulled his hand toward her, stroked it, replaced it. Under her strict attention, Leonard didn’t want to speak, as if any actual information might cheapen their exchange, clutter it with details. He wanted to exist within the sense that he was the victim of some large wrenching catastrophe, and not of something small, self-inflicted. But he knew that, to Mavis, there were no small catastrophes. She was there, absolutely, for him.
“Cynthia and I separated,” Leonard said finally, after having luxuriated in Mavis’ anxious but general sympathy for as long as he could. “I moved out on the weekend. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Mavis lifted his hand again, drew him up and into another embrace. This one was specific, one of her hands pressed to the small of his back, the other between his shoulders.
She said, her mouth against his ear: “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible. Terrible. It must be so hard for you to be here. What can I do? Tell me what happened.”
Though he had experienced Mavis’ kindness many times before, Leonard was still a little startled by her reaction. In the past, he had shared some of his misgivings about his marriage; how he’d found himself attracted to other women, had even told her about the sexual drought between him and Cynthia, mostly in hope of seducing her. Mavis seemed to have forgotten all this, or forgiven it, and did not allow herself to let her sympathy be qualified by her knowledge of his past turmoil. Even when Leonard said: “You know that Cynthia and I have had trouble before,” Mavis just nodded, and again he had the sense that she believed any reference to the past should not mitigate the anguish of present circumstances. In Mavis’ eyes, any time a troubled student skipped a class or a stressed colleague burst into tears was cause for renewed grief. The passion that Mavis brought to her lessons, to her relationships with students, to her own family, was a feature of how, for her, every day was a gift. This being the case, every sorrow was unprecedented and required new strategies, new sympathy. New strength.
After Leonard had explained, somewhat incoherently, and with emphasis placed more on circumstance than choice, what had happened between him and Alison, and him and Cynthia, Mavis said again: “I’m sorry, you must be going through so much.”
Mostly, she just listened, then sat quietly next to him. But once their prep period ended and Leonard stood to let Mavis attend to the new class gathering outside her door, she said: “Leonard, you’re putting your love in too many places. Like you don’t believe in it.” She added: “For some reason, you’re still looking for a home.”
Leonard lingered in the hall. He wished he could follow the simple directive of a school bell, could fall in among the students, settle at the back of a class, invisibly. But invisibility was not an option; also, he was selective. Only in certain aspects of his life did he want to disappear. In others, he wanted to appear full, irresistible. Mavis made him feel whole, substantial. He wondered if she felt desire stir as he did, but dismissed the thought that his emotions, the tears that had surprised his eyes, had their source between his legs. His emotions had to have come from a different place. Had to.
24
DANDY
All week, Leonard was exhausted, partly the result of the change in routine from the free-fall of summer to the duties of teaching. Each night he came home, collapsed, slept sometimes until 10 p.m., spent the remaining hours staring hopelessly at a series of scribbled, coffee-stained, uninspired and woefully outdated lesson plans, wondering why he hadn’t spent at least a few days of his vacation updating them. His guilt from the mediocrity of his preparations was acute and he found himself startling awake in the middle of the night (when he wasn’t startling awake from television sounds), expecting to find some wool-suited, stiff-shirted, slick-haired, vehemently manicured, blood-eyed Dickensian officer from the Toronto District Catholic School Board standing at the foot of his bed, informing him in a stern teacherly voice that he need not rise for work that morning, that he had been, after years of clandestine observation, found out for the fraud that he was and that his students would be tactfully informed that poor Mr. Edison had resigned from his teaching post for health reasons. And when the morning alarm sounded (a simple wind-up alarm clock that Leonard found in a convenience store after searching fruitlessly through the rows of unforgivingly complex digital models at Future Shop), Leonard stared at the clock’s hands with contempt, as if they were his own, post-masturbation, and fantasized how he might fashion a life around sleeping, that the only thing worthy of true allegiance was that eternal raft: box-spring, mattress, sheets and pillow.
At the end of the week first thing in the morning, Leonard phoned Alison, hoping he might catch her then. It had occurred to him that Alison’s refusal to respond to his earlier messages might be evidence of a disastrous conversation with her father, and that she wanted, for a time, not to deal with either of them, the two ancient men in her life. This segued into the more disturbing thought that Alison’s dad was truly psychotic and had done grievous harm to her, perhaps disposing of roommate Beverly in the process. Perhaps he’d burned their Annex residence to the ground, had set up a shrine from their charred bones that only required Leonard’s skull for completion. But these notions were balanced with the fear that Alison was simply respecting her father’s wishes. Leonard resolved that if he didn’t hear from her that night or early Saturday morning, he’d drive downtown, seek her out. He was at the very least entitled, even Mavis agreed with him here, to understand the meaning of her silence.
Friday morning, no answer. Saturday, no answer. The ruined, ruining weekend. Leonard called Alison one last time, deciding he’d hang up before Beverly’s voice clicked in. Beverly’s real voice came on, and Leonard stammered with embarrassment, remembering all the messages he’d left. But her tone showed no strain, no irritation, no trace that she was annoyed.
“Sorry, Leonard, you just missed her.”
“Shit. Sorry. Shit. Do you know when she’ll be back. Or …” Leonard decided, inspired by Beverly’s ease, to push things a bit: “Do you know where she is today, where I might find her?”
“I think she’s working at Innis, tonight.” Then, backpedalling: “Maybe. Actually, I’m not sure.”
He thought of trying for a further confidence, of asking Beverly why Alison was not returning his calls, but instead opted for ingratiation, hoping she might volunteer the information.
“So how are you, Beverly?”
Silence.
“Dandy,” she said. “Just dandy.”
Another silence. Leonard filled it.
“Okey-dokey,” he said. “Thanks, and take care.”
He hung up, mortified at his lameness. He was sure that, whatever the situation, Beverly would certainly conclude that no woman with any self-respect could continue seeing a man who used the phrase “okey-dokey.” His faint hope that Beverly might advocate on his behalf was gone.
25
FOX
AND RABBIT
That night, the journey on the Don Valley Parkway was slow. Leonard saw, when he turned onto the on-ramp from Eglinton, the lines of red taillights. Traffic crawled, bumper to backseat. With the humidity and his anxiety, Leonard’s shirt was soon soaked through. The electronic sign above the highway assured him what he was experiencing was an illusion: TRAFFIC MOVING WELL, SOUTHBOUND FROM LAWRENCE. His eyes shrank to dots of red. Mirrored the taillights.
“For fuck’s sake,” he spit out each time he applied the brakes. Felt personal rancour for every other driver. Opened the window. The belching exhaust from a truck made him close it again.
“Fuckface, get your fuck truck fixed.” When he saw a large clutch of birthday balloons, red and yellow and green and blue, jostling from the passenger window of a child-packed, lime green SUV: “Where the fuck you going, spoiled little fucks?”
A yellow balloon escaped the rest, shuddered toward the oncoming lanes, shot up into the darkness. This made Leonard happy, briefly. He imagined the pinched face of the brat who’d lost it. He wished, though, he could follow the balloon, soar above the gridlock.
Eventually, his angry link in the chain of cars reached the valley portion of the drive. The highway followed the river, whose banks were bordered in green. Leonard opened all the windows, smelled the night’s perfume. Had the sensation, as the traffic broke and picked up speed, he was floating. The lights of the city core, closing in to his right, were a ship on a lake. He wished it would come to meet him, a jewel-encrusted boat, that all the space between his suburban home and Alison’s would go river-y and exotic. He fantasized fireflies, mystic birds, silhouettes of jungle trees. Crouching tigers.