Fatal Light Awareness

by John O'Neill

  Leonard didn’t say this. He hung up without leaving a message. Immediately phoned again; said this:

  “Mr. Corvu, this is Leonard Edison. You came by my school today. I’m not sure why you did this, but it’s a bad idea. Alison is a grown woman and can make her own decisions. You don’t know anything about me or my situation. I’m sorry if you don’t understand. But it’s none of your business. Please don’t call me, or come to my workplace. I’d appreciate it if you gave me the benefit of the doubt, gave me some credit. I do care about Alison. Please leave it at that. Give me some credit, things will sort out. If you really absolutely need to talk, call me at this number. I think it’d be better if you didn’t get involved. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I hope you’re well.”

  He hung up, cursing himself for his softness. Wished he could retrieve the message. Alison’s father would smell blood, would, instead of being pacified, increase his insistence that Alison and he not see one another. Leonard’s head throbbed. He took three Tylenol and went to bed. Slept with his eyes half open, frozen, as if the tires from Alison’s bicycle, still captive in his room, were pressed against them. He was burdened by the bicycle and imagined that Alison’s father had already bought her a new one, a gesture that would open a happy new chapter in their relationship, Leonard excluded and denied.

  3

  FAT MAN

  Leonard waited for Cynthia to speak again. For Alison. He waited for Frank Corvu to arrive at his school, challenge him to a fight. To come at him, not like a Ninja, hovering above the ground like a character from The Matrix, CGI effect, imagery from a new generation, they were both too old for that, but like a boxer in scratchy, halting black-and-white. Leonard had a vision of them, two grown, stupid men, slowly and deliberately pounding each other in the school parking lot, the proverbial three o’clock fight, while his students gathered and formed a hard circle to cheer Leonard on. Alison’s father never came, never phoned. Leonard wished that he would turn up, that he’d make some gesture that implied Alison still cared. If Frank Corvu had lost interest, it was further evidence that Leonard was no longer a factor in his daughter’s life. But Leonard steeled himself with a new resolution, decided that he’d inhabit a new stoicism, that he wouldn’t phone Alison again, remembering a phrase he’d read in a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: that, in matters of the heart, one advances by retreating. And he knew that his best role-model for retreat, his best ally for shrinking from life, was the person now closest at hand, his brother of circumstance: his nephew Ellis.

  He advanced by retreating; and he stole another bicycle.

  One afternoon after work he stopped at a Victoria Park grocery store for supplies. As he was leaving, a young woman glided up on her red racer, dismounted, leaned it against the wall by the store’s entrance. She fastened a bullish lock through its rear wheel and bars without attaching it to anything (he could tell by her agitation she was reluctant to leave it this way) and, her sleek helmet in hand, and shaking out an ample shag of curly brown hair, hurried her sporty-purple-stretch-Gortex-self through the automatic doors. Leonard waited, watched her through the glass as she cast one glance back, then disappeared. Brazenly, nonchalantly, and despite the fact that two elderly women were walking by steering a baby carriage, he lifted her bicycle against his shoulder and marched toward his car.

  Then he was cruising down Victoria Park Avenue and picturing the young woman’s panic over her stolen bike, berating herself for her stupid faith. He imagined her curly tresses framing the shoulders of an ample body and her writhing over him, saying something about how her bicycle’s disappearance was the most invasive, humiliating thing she’d ever experienced, the words moaned just as she surrendered to orgasm. He saw unwashed, unshaven men ogling her on the bus she was now forced to take. She’d no longer find quick passage through the world. In a moment Leonard had deprived and thus mastered her.

  When he got home, he was still flushed with strange pleasure. He took the bike to the empty room beside his, propped it on its handlebars and seat not far from the window. He went downstairs, found his nephew propped among cushions on the couch, watching TV with the sound turned off.

  Ellis said: “Sometimes it’s funnier to watch like this.”

  Leonard turned to see two transvestites tearing at each other. Jerry Springer.

  Suddenly peckish and with a mind to bonding with his nephew, Leonard asked him if he wanted to go out, grab a bite.

  “No thanks,” Ellis said, eyes still on the television.

  “Why not?” Leonard asked. “Have you eaten? Come on, you could use the sunlight. We’ll just go to Harvey’s. I don’t feel like eating alone.”

  “Don’t really want to go out.” Then he said: “Why don’t we go to the Town Centre Mall?”

  Leonard stared at him. “I want to eat, not shop.”

  “The food court has variety.”

  “All right,” Leonard said.

  Ellis clicked off the TV and said: “I have to take a shower.”

  He walked past Leonard, his red pyjama pants flying low. Leonard gave him a minute before following him up the stairs, reluctant to come too close to the pale strip of flesh between Ellis’ pyjama bottoms and top.

  A full hour passed before Ellis emerged from the bathroom. Twice during this interval, Leonard went up the hall and listened at the door, puzzled by the absence of sound: no running water, no flushing, no inhalations or exhalations of breath, no slide of clothing or rustle or rub of towel. Ellis was, even in audio terms, a creature of extremes, a man who lived with a soundtrack of either explosions or pantomime silence, who would clatter and smack things while in the kitchen, but who glided like a ghost through other domestic occupations. When he finally emerged, after having indulged perhaps in some kind of silent dry Buddhist sponge-bath, his longish hair was slicked down 1950s style, and he was wearing bell-bottomed jeans and a flowery short-sleeved Bermuda shirt, top buttons undone. He looked retro yet festive, a 1970s Scarborough boy ready for his vacation in Jamaica, but with his head stuck in an earlier decade.

  “We’re just going to the mall,” Leonard said, unsure what environment or occasion might complement his nephew’s style.

  Ellis’ presence would help time pass. Leonard needed distractions to help him to get through his new attitude of detachment. It would take a while before real detachment kicked in. And the mall certainly provided superficial distraction. It occurred to Leonard that walking through a mall, weaving among the shoppers and strollers and packs of loitering teenagers, ducking in and out of stores, was the physical equivalent of surfing the Net, or of flipping through stations on the television, or of working through five-thousand songs on an iPod – the series of thin bright stores could be quickly experienced, then replaced. And, in the food court, one could place oneself on an island in the middle of a river of changing fashion and flesh. He asked Ellis to go and buy their dinner, but his nephew refused, shrinking in his seat. Leonard went off and joined one of the long fast-food lines.

  The whole area was roofed by a Plexiglas dome, circa 1970, through which the dull light of the late September day filtered. There were teenage boys seated in menacing groups, all in standard hip-hop wear: long, oversized coats, baggy rumpled pants flying low so their underwear was visible. Some middle-aged women clutching plastic shopping bags. A professional couple in business attire, taking small bites but going through their salads with determination. The only commonality was the lack of joy. All were huddled over their plastic tables as if guarding treasures, unhappy, serious, mistrustful. Leonard was reminded of a trip he and Cynthia had once made to Las Vegas, where in the huge, maze-like casinos, he’d had the same impression – human faces whose emotions ranged only from indifference to apprehension. Occupation defined by need.

  Leonard returned to the plastic table. Two silver-wrapped burgers, two boxes of fries, two towers of Coke. They ate in silence. Stabbed their faces with fries. The sugar rush from the drink made Leonard talkative.

  “Got a
ny plans tonight?” he asked Ellis, already knowing the answer.

  Ellis chewed briefly, considering. “No.”

  “Don’t you even go out on weekends, on a Saturday night?”

  Ellis continued chewing. A vague look of puzzlement came over his face. “No,” he said again. Then: “Why?”

  Leonard wasn’t sure if Ellis was asking why he was asking, or asking him why he should want to go out. Leonard assumed the former.

  “Just wondering.”

  The ripple in his nephew’s brow disappeared. Leonard persisted.

  “I mean, don’t you like to go out to a club occasionally, to meet people? How can you stay cooped up in that house?”

  “Why?” Ellis said again.

  “You mean, why am I asking?”

  “No. Why would I go out?”

  “Curiosity. Boredom. To meet someone. Don’t you get lonely? Don’t you want to get out, do things?”

  Ellis stopped chewing, regurgitated an undercooked fry, placed it in the silver wrapping on the table.

  “Why would I do that?” he asked. “To what end?”

  Leonard ate again, not sure what to say. He’d never heard his nephew use a phrase like to what end. Finished his burger, went to get another. Decided, on the way, he didn’t really have a response to Ellis’ question; or, at least, the responses that sprang to mind were clichés. When he returned to the table, he asked Ellis when he’d last been on a date, or in any kind of male/female relationship.

  “Last year, I tried that Lavalife thing. Met a woman for coffee. I thought we had a good conversation, but she didn’t return my calls. I didn’t really care.”

  Leonard searched Ellis’ face for signs of regret or anguish, but found none. He searched, too, for resolution, for resignation, for an acceptance bred of hopelessness, but didn’t find this, either. He saw only a sort of stillness, an absence of both history and expectation. Had the sense he was looking into the face of a very young child, a kind of unconscious peace in his nephew’s expression, almost as if his personality was unformed. It was unnerving. There were no angels or devils in his eyes.

  Ellis said, very softly: “Things are what they are.”

  Leonard thought, okay, he’s pushing his dormant lifestyle into the arena of philosophy, but then his nephew nodded, winked. Leonard turned to see an uncommonly large man approaching: his stubby arms poked out in front of him as though he lacked elbows, his huge mushroom hands wrapped round the tray he carried, the heels of his feet were outside of and crushing his running-shoes, and his white t-shirt rode the bottom curve of his belly, an overhang of flesh that bristled with black hairs. His t-shirt, failing in its bid to contain him, carried in black letters the phrase things are what they are. The words were in lower case, unlike the man’s eyes, that, searching for an empty table, looked desperate, tragic. The message on his shirt was apparently his mild rebuttal to those whose eyes would fall upon him in judgement. Leonard felt as though he loved the man, wanted to stroke his mushroom fingers. He thought of the woman whose bicycle he’d liberated that day. This fat man was the kind of specimen she’d never consider dating. Leonard felt pleasure in knowing that he’d exacted revenge.

  He decided to simplify his questions, in deference to the fact that things are what they are.

  “Are you happy?” he asked.

  “People think,” Ellis began, “that happiness depends on what you want, what you need. I don’t. Or what you do. It doesn’t. Not really. It doesn’t matter what you want or have. When people are busy they think they’re happy. When they’re chasing dreams. Accomplishing things. But those things are selfish. They don’t mean anything to anyone else. They just make other people feel bad, really. I don’t bother anybody. I’m just as happy, if you want to call it that, when I’m doing nothing. When I’m sleeping. When I’m, I don’t know, making toast. When I look at something. My shoes beside the bed. I don’t live for it, though. It just comes, or doesn’t come, no matter what you do. Some people wouldn’t be happy doing what I do. I don’t know. I’ve found, though, it doesn’t matter what I do, how I arrange things. So I do what’s easy and happiness finds me. Most of the time, anyway.”

  “But you obviously. I mean it’s easy for you to say, you don’t work. But you bought that lottery ticket, you obviously were after something ...”

  “Not really. I just sort of bought it. First time I bought one. I never fantasized about winning. It wasn’t a big dream. Even when I was at Hallmark, it was okay. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t love it. I bought the house because I like watching TV. In the room I used to rent, the guy upstairs complained about the noise. Now I’ve got extra room so my mom can stay. You can stay.”

  “But,” Leonard said, “you want to see your mom, then, don’t you? Doesn’t that relationship mean something to you, make you happy?”

  “Sure. But I didn’t choose it. Whatever. I just know I’m happy as I can ever be.”

  “Sounds like you’re afraid. If you have no expectations, you won’t be disappointed.”

  “No. I’m not worried about disappointment. I don’t avoid expectations. I just don’t have any. I feel as content as I’ve ever felt. I can’t argue with it. I won’t seek people out. I won’t invent things to make myself feel important. I don’t pretend. I live small, which is how things are, anyway.”

  Leonard was uncomfortable, unhappy with the responses he’d forced out of Ellis. His nephew’s words sounded almost wise to him. In that instant, listening, staring at Ellis’ unwritten face, Leonard knew he should have stayed with Cynthia. At least, he might as well have stayed with her. But here he was at the mall, trying not to think of Alison. And succeeding; letting himself be drawn into Ellis’ world.

  A wave of bliss came over him. A sense of well-being as in stories he’d heard about people near death. He loved the plastic table, ran his hands over it. Wanted to buy another thin, silver-wrapped burger. To carry back, to balance in his hand, another box of fries. Everything was here. Ellis was here. He was all Leonard needed.

  4

  SPECIAL FEATURE

  They watched DVDs together. They rode the couch, side by side, in audio-visual hibernation, barely speaking. Once, Leonard made a comment to Ellis about what DVD they were going to watch next, then realized his nephew wasn’t in the room. As the days passed, Leonard began to find it easier to restrain himself from contacting Alison. He’d move through the school workday with studied indifference, drive home and retire to the basement where Ellis had already established himself. They’d sit quietly through even the most mediocre films, listen to the director’s commentaries (who always talked about their puerile comedies or soft dramas as if they’d made Citizen Kane), watch the trailers, the making-of featurettes, even the actor’s bios. Leonard wondered what a director’s commentary might be on his life, what might be said about the role he was playing, was surrendering to: Leonard’s character, you’ll notice, is in a state of transition, an important kind of purgatory, during which his priorities will shift – notice how even at his workplace he avoids interaction with others, is abrupt, and hardly speaks to his colleagues, even to his friend Mavis, who, symbolic of his better nature, is tolerant of his distance. We shot him using mostly interiors, from the dank hallways of the school to the dark basement of his nephew’s house. I’m trying to capture his mildewing soul, how, as his recline in the couch deepens, so does his indifference to the lives of others. Of course, this transitional phase, this removal from life, is only part of the story arc, an interlude before Leonard’s character will fall again, will commit himself to some desperate course of action, which will constitute the climax of the film. And Leonard is a very cooperative, malleable actor, who loved the script, and his malleability shows in his performance.

  Leonard realized he’d need to see Alison again, needed at the very least to be part of one final anguished parting. If he was to be rejected, rejected by the woman who was the knowing catalyst in the destruction of his marriage, it wouldn’t be through s
low fade. He needed a showdown. This is what occupied his mind as he watched various explosions in various locations shot from various angles and repeated in slow-motion, through the stories that were untainted by character development, by believable or subtle resolutions. Yet, he was increasingly lethargic. He spent more hours in front of the television than he did at work. The basement filled with the refuse of fast food establishments. Leonard frequently fell asleep there, in the paper nest, barely made it to work on time. He smelled like the inside of a McDonald’s bag. Alison’s bicycle, and the bicycle that Leonard had propped up in the spare room, resembled strange skeletons, the bones of creatures long since extinct.

  On a Saturday morning three weeks after he and Ellis had visited the mall and Leonard had decided to emulate his nephew in his disaffection, while he and Ellis were both digging into their bowls of Alpha-Bits, the phone rang. They didn’t answer. It ceased, then rang again. They didn’t answer. Part of the rhythm of things was that they never answered the phone directly, instead listening later, thus avoiding the necessity of spontaneous response.