by John O'Neill
24
FAMILY
A car approached. Leonard opened his eyes. He kept his head below the window, heard voices, a car door slam. Peeked out the rear window, saw a taxi disappear. Saw Alison moving down the walkway toward her house, arm in arm with toga boy. Behind them, her arms extended as if walking a tightrope or imitating an airplane, was Beverly. Her hair was mad, dishevelled and she held the Queen of Hearts crown in one of her hands. Shit, Leonard said. He’d hopelessly hoped that Alison might appear alone, that her rendezvous with the toga boy had been an impulsive act in the charged atmosphere of the dance. He’d also hoped that Beverly would have gone elsewhere. He was dismayed, too, by the attitude of the three. They moved in a drunken, jovial way. They were not discussing the incident at the dance. No sign that the confrontation had made any impression on them. It was just an unpleasant, insignificant moment, like the sea captain throwing up. In fact, as Leonard watched the three float up the steps and into the house, he could hear singing. Alison and the toga boy harmonized some tune Leonard didn’t know. Leonard concentrated on the pain in his arm.
His only hope was that Beverly would go to bed and that the toga boy had only been invited for a nightcap. Did people still go for nightcaps? It was a silly, antiquated notion. He’d wait, throw a stone against Alison’s window. In the meantime, he’d leave the car, make his way behind the house, down the alley, to see if either the kitchen light was on, or the light in Alison’s bedroom. He’d make do with secondary contact.
He walked to the end of Alison’s street, turned the corner. Slowed a bit when he saw some movement amidst the row of parked cars. A man was putting something in one of the trunks. He was dressed as The Phantom of the Opera, had on the standard half-mask and cape. In one movement, he pulled the cape over his head, swept off the mask and threw them both into the trunk. Stepped out of his dress pants, stood there in stringy underwear before pulling on some jeans. Leonard had moved behind a tree, waited until he heard the car trunk close. When he stepped out again, the man was gone.
Leonard saw, then, that the car was familiar. Alison’s father’s car. Leonard had been watching Frank Corvu. Perhaps he’d been at the dance. Perhaps he’d witnessed Leonard’s humiliation. But why had he arrived here, alone? Perhaps Alison hadn’t been aware of his presence. Perhaps there’d been two phantoms at the dance.
Leonard entered the alley behind the row of houses. Nearing Alison’s place, he heard the sound of creaking wood. Of scraping. He walked, slightly hunched, close to the fence, stepping around garbage cans, detergent bottles, an old laundry basket. He pulled his turtleneck up over his mouth and nose. In the thin divide between her neighbour’s house and Alison’s, Leonard saw Frank Corvu moving away from him, a ladder propped above his head. He vanished into the dark where the buildings came together and the streetlights couldn’t penetrate.
There was a shared sense, now, of conspiracy. Leonard told himself he was just protecting Alison, had happened upon some random suspicious behaviour. After a few moments of silence during which Frank Corvu did not re-emerge, Leonard followed, sideways. He kept his back to the wall of her house, his palms paddling along the brick.
He stopped a few feet from the bottom of the ladder, which Alison’s father had placed under his daughter’s window before climbing up. Alison’s bedroom light was on. Her father’s face, above, was illuminated by it. He was leaning slightly backward, his arms taut, body rigid, like a swimmer about to make a high dive. He was there so long, unmoving, his face expressionless but stained with patches of red, that Leonard was reminded of some exotic sea creature, whose survival depends on stillness.
Leonard also stood still. He imagined that Frank Corvu was looking through the same tear in the flag that he had, but couldn’t understand why. Paralyzed, dumb, he couldn’t concentrate on a course of action, had no idea what the correct response was. How would Alison react if he told her what her father was doing? How would she respond to him, having witnessed this, after having followed her home? Should he confront Corvu, call him down? Should he phone the police, anonymously report a Peeping Tom? But that would answer, explain nothing. His mind skipped from Alison’s father, up on the ladder, to a picture of what he might be seeing. He considered anger, of directing rage against Frank Corvu, but could work up no hostility. And he found he couldn’t concentrate on the fantasy image. He let a new one push into his brain: Alison by the hospital bed, her thin arm on the white sheet, intravenous tube that had been disconnected.
Startled by a rattling noise, Leonard pushed tighter against the wall. Alison’s father stayed frozen in place. Leonard had a memory of his mother in the nursing home, her dead face on the pillow, and how he’d wanted to laugh. Something needed to break. Perhaps he’d laugh out loud; perhaps he’d speak Frank Corvu’s name. Instead, Leonard backed up along the wall away from the ladder, found and deliberately throttled the lid of a metal garbage can that was nearby and coughed loudly at the same time. Alison’s father climbed down, came out to investigate.
As he approached, Leonard stepped out of the shadows. Never before had he seen the colour in someone’s face change so rapidly, from ruddy to dead white. Leonard noticed he himself had made fists and was standing in a defensive posture, one leg planted firmly behind him. They both were breathing rapidly, in unison. There was comfort in this. His breathing slowed. Leonard broke from his defensive posture. The blood returned to Alison’s father’s face. They both dropped their shoulders.
Finally, Frank Corvu turned away from Leonard, smiled and shook his head. He gestured at the darkness and the ladder, jabbed his thumb toward his daughter’s window. He said, quietly, without any hint of emotion: “You want to take a look?”
A moment passed. Leonard decided he had no choice. Kept eye contact with Frank. Sidled past him. Walked to the bottom of the ladder. Gripped it with both hands. Climbed without hesitation, unconcerned with the metallic creaking sound. But ducked down quickly upon discovering that Alison’s room was exposed, the British flag curtain pulled almost right back. Let his face creep up over the window ledge, though he was sure that whoever was inside would see him. Would have seen Alison’s father, too. Emboldened by this, Leonard moved higher, allowed his torso to rest against the ledge.
Alison was inside. She was on her bed, on top of the toga boy. They were moving in slow rhythm, as they had at the dance. Now, though, the toga boy was naked, while Alison still wore her cat costume. And the toga boy was not some anonymous stranger, some loser she’d picked up. When he turned his face toward the window, Leonard recognized him – it was Stiv-or-Steve. Leonard still didn’t know the name of the man who was fucking Alison. Was being fucked. Then Alison turned toward the window. Leonard didn’t flinch. Instead, he looked from face to face, waiting for one of them to break, to scream and shout and pull the flag across, or to throw open the window and spit profanities, to jump up then thunder down the stairs in order to apprehend the pervert before he disappeared. To call 911. Yet they continued, their eyes on him but with no change in their expressions, and no apparent pleasure in their occupation, as if their act was for his benefit, utilitarian. A kind of humdrum performance. Or, as if Leonard wasn’t there at all, and both of them had grown tired of their embrace, were engaged in something that was merely the obligatory conclusion to their night.
Leonard stopped looking at them, let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. Saw the same candle dripping down the side of the dresser, the casket incense holder, the small green sculpted bear. The CD stand, the old film reel, the cracked hardwood floors. He could smell the room, Alison’s musky scent, the incense she burned. He saw her bathrobe on the back of the door, wished that she might put it on for him one last time, in her distracted, unselfconscious way. He climbed down.
Frank Corvu had moved closer, nearer to the ladder. Leonard paused by him, and they stood for a moment side by side, the way strangers stand together in the street as they float in the aftermath of some unexpected event, like a fire in the
ir building, or a blackout. But they didn’t share their thoughts.
Alison’s father moved past Leonard, climbed up the ladder again. Leonard walked away, defeated by the circumstances. It was as if by including him in this ceremony, by allowing him in on an apparently equal footing with her father, Alison had made a continuing relationship with him impossible. His new sanctioned role as voyeur was a sad concession, an acknowledgement of his inadequacy. He was the same as her father but he wasn’t her father. This was her final no, more definitive than what had happened at the church. But, perhaps worse than this, there was banality in the exchange.
In a final indignity, while turning into the alley from the dark space between the houses, Leonard surprised a family of raccoons. The youngest were rummaging inside a garbage can, their mother perched on the fence above. Before Leonard could react, the mother flattened her ears, pulled her lips tight against her teeth and swiped him with her claws, leaving three fine gashes in his face. He stumbled backwards against the fence.
“Owww, Christ almighty, little fucker.”
The raccoons, their eyes flashing from beneath their masks, hissed and clawed and scrambled to the other side of the fence. Leonard looked around, determined to inflict injury, picked up a stray wine bottle. When he hoisted himself up on the fence with his strong arm, he could only manage to lob the bottle in the direction of the retreating animals. It fell harmlessly on a patch of grass.
Leonard stopped at an all-night drugstore on Eglinton, bought some peroxide, gauze bandages and scissors to attend to his injury. The store clerk, a balding, middle-aged woman with square glasses too small for her head, didn’t ask any questions, didn’t seem to notice the cheek gashes or his bloodied arm.
In his car, Leonard sat in the drugstore parking lot. Under the overhead light, he took time to unwind the gauze, to apply the peroxide generously, though painfully, to both his arm and face. He wound the bandages around his arm, feeling calmed. He used the small pair of scissors to fashion a circular patch for his wounded cheek, grinned at himself in the rear-view mirror at the job he’d done. He turned off the light, left the key in the ignition, put both hands on the steering wheel, 10 o’clock and 2. Began to sob. Cried without covering his face or bending his head. The sound was repetitive and dull, did not increase in intensity, each sob exactly like the one that preceded it. After a few minutes, he realized his cheeks were dry. His crying fit was like a sickness, the dry heaves, as if he had nothing inside that needed expelling. But he knew that his mother was dead, and that Alison was gone. Felt a terrific craving, planned on devouring a big bowl of Alpha-Bits when he got home. Hoped that Ellis would join him.
25
FALLEN, A FILM
In February, Leonard’s 41st birthday comes and goes without incident. The memory of Cynthia’s dream fades. The months pass, Leonard trying to re-define himself, trying to build a philosophy from his numbness. Two incidents interrupt Leonard’s stupor, prevent him from sliding completely into lethargy, into peace.
In early March, on a Friday evening when summer is in the air, Leonard is watching television with his nephew. Ellis has just removed another action movie from the DVD player and the regular TV station comes on. Leonard leans forward in his seat, trying to hide his agitation. Frank Corvu’s creased, sleepy face fills the television screen; he yawns and opens his eyes, smiling vaguely, while a scratchy female voice narrates: “Every day, Frank Wright wakes up at five a.m. He, like many people in the city, has a job to do.”
The camera pans backward from the tight face shot to reveal that he has been sleeping, not in a bed, but in a sleeping bag over a heating grate in a sidewalk.
“Every day he takes it upon himself to commune with creatures who, like himself, have been injured by the city. Though he has no place to call his own, Frank works to find a final home for hundreds, thousands of creatures, creatures who most of us barely notice as they go about their mysterious lives, until those lives are interrupted.”
The camera follows Frank Corvu, a.k.a. Wright, along a mostly deserted street that appears to be residential. The camera’s point-of-view keeps changing from medium shots to close-ups of the protagonist’s scuffed shoes moving along pavement, then stepping off curbs and across streetcar tracks, to shots of his hands, one of them folding a cardboard box under his arm, the other lightly brushing various surfaces like chain-link fences and brick walls, surfaces on the way to some destination, as yet unclear. The narration resumes.
“This is a mission, a purpose that has nothing to do with Frank’s situation. It comes from deep within, though some might wonder why a man, so concerned with the lives of others, does not take better care of himself, and chooses a life on the street.”
The film cuts to an interior shot of Frank’s talking head. Leonard studies the background; he can see the edge of Alison’s flag curtain, recognizes the bed on which her father sits, leaning back on his arms and speaking directly to the camera. Once Frank begins the next speech, the screen blinks with quick still shots of various homeless men either sleeping or panhandling or chewing the stubs of cigarettes, a montage of despair.
“I don’t think about my life, much. How I got here’s irrelevant. How anybody gets here is irrelevant. A wife leaves, a job’s lost, accidents happen. Like you, anybody. You find yourself, you know, with a beautiful house, a beautiful wife, and say, How did I get here? It’s not different with me. But, the point is, I’m going out. I have a reason. It was early one morning, I was just walking around downtown and I began to see. If I wasn’t without a job, without a couch, a television, a dresser or mirror, if I wasn’t free, I wouldn’t have seen.”
The film cuts to an exterior shot, Frank Corvu standing at the top of concrete steps, in front of some first floor windows, the bottom of an office tower. Like a suffering Jesus, his hands are palms outward, his head thrown back. The camera moves from a distant shot of Frank in this pose, looking as if he’s about to ascend, to a tight shot of his dirty legs and feet, and finally along the space in front of the windows, where there are several dead birds, little lumps of feathers spaced evenly along the pavement. The camera stops on each one, nine in all. The last one, on which the camera lingers, has a pristine halo of blood around its head, its pale beak standing out against the redness.
Then, Frank’s talking head: “Every morning, this is the end, this is the carnage. Every night, dozens of birds collide with these skyscrapers. They’re the roadkill of the downtown core. They are the drowned in the ocean of artificial light. And no one mourns them, or reflects on their innocence. Well, almost no one.”
Leonard winces at the melodrama. Glances at Ellis, who is staring at the screen, seemingly involved. The trill of a cell phone. On screen, Frank Corvu pulls one from his pocket, speaks into it. His words are inaudible. The narration begins again, while the camera pans over a group of people wearing yellow gloves and knapsacks, and carrying either brown paper or plastic bags. One has a butterfly net.
“These are members of FLAP, or the Fatal Light Awareness Program. Every morning, they collect birds that have been killed or maimed flying into buildings. But this is only part of their job. FLAP mostly works to convince developers and architects to design more bird-friendly buildings, to use less reflective glass, so the birds have a chance. Every year, some 5,000 birds fly into office towers. Only a small percentage are still alive and can be rehabilitated.”
The camera follows Frank Corvu as he gathers up some of the birds. Cut to a new location, another office tower. Alison’s father continues to pick up birds, examining them in his yellow gloves, each time nodding his head, some kind of genuflection.
This is followed by a series of portraits of trees, with variations of sky behind them – dark, shadowy, bright or coloured pink and purple. Then, with various cloud formations, each birdlike, wild: altocumulus, cumulus congestus, cumulonimbus mamma. Clouds stacking up to heaven. The images are beautiful. Over these, Frank Corvu’s voice:
“And these buildings, th
is city, makes no distinction as to species. We’ve collected every type of dead bird: sparrow, warbler, junco, redstart, vireo, dove, hummingbird. Waxwing, robin, tanager (as he speaks, a detailed painting of each bird pops up in a corner of the screen). Jay, woodpecker, finch, bunting. Cardinal. Owl. Even, last year, a magnificent, but dead, peregrine falcon. The FLAP people collect most of the birds, but I take a few. What I do represents the dignity of them all.”
The last shot is of a tree overhanging a cliff. Neatly, it looks exactly like a bird in flight. The camera follows Frank Corvu again, again with close-ups of his shoes and of his hands carrying the box that contains the birds. The scene jump-cuts to him moving through a muddy area, between small trees, close by a river. The camera pans up to reveal the Bloor Viaduct, winged strip of concrete and metal, stretching over the Don Valley. Frank Corvu lowers the box to the ground, takes a small gardening shovel from his rear pocket and begins to dig holes. A wide-angle shot reveals an area strewn with little crosses, each made from popsicle sticks and lying flat on the ground.