by John O'Neill
The camera pulls back to introduce another figure, a woman filming the scene. It’s Alison holding a small video camera. Another voice, presumably the one behind the camera filming, asks her if they should shoot each burial, or resume once the whole ritual is complete.
Alison turns to her father, both of them on screen now. “I don’t know, but. Dad, what do you think, how long will it take?”
He leans back on his heels.
“Not long, you may as well film. Can’t you edit later, change things?”
“Right on,” Alison says.
The camera focuses on Frank’s hands, digging. Then the view cuts to him standing over the rows of popsicle-stick crosses, holding a black book. He recites something that Leonard doesn’t recognize:
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty –
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
– Until elevators drop us from our day ...
Alison re-enters the scene without her camera, puts an arm around her father’s waist, rests her head on his shoulder, while he continues to recite. The sound and image fade, until words appear on the blackness: FALLEN. A Film by Alison Corvu.
Leonard finds the break in the objectivity of the documentary irritating. Why does the filmmaker invade the frame to underline the actual process of filming? Why does she include a little editorial discussion? It pulls me, Leonard thinks, out of the narrative. And is the cloying nature of the subject’s mission, his precious love for nature, being satirized? And, if so, why the genuine moment of the filmmaker putting her arm around his waist? Is his reciting of the poem, its language so fey, affected, actually meant to move? And the film only skirts the issue of homelessness; insufficiently drawing either a parallel or contrast between the subject’s homelessness and the fate of the birds. Leonard is surprised that the tone of Alison’s film is so uncertain, inconsistent, though there are some good shots, some interesting, though unexplored, ideas. Leonard decides that, if he should see her again, he will give her film, despite its weaknesses, his stamp of approval.
Ellis, rising from the couch, says: “I’m going to bed. Stupid birds.”
The next day, Leonard is awakened by noises from the spare room, the bicycle room. He gets up in time to see his nephew carefully guiding one of the bicycles, Alison’s, out the front door of the house.
Ellis notices his uncle, stops, says: “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“But it was locked.”
“This one wasn’t. I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s been months.”
“I don’t mind. But where you going?”
“Don’t know. For a ride. Maybe the lake.”
Leonard, in his mauve pyjamas, follows his nephew into the driveway. Astonished, he lingers there. A dark premonition comes to him: that he’ll die before his next birthday, a bird colliding in the light of the years. Immobile, square as a house, he watches Ellis swing his leg across, settle onto the seat, realizing he’s a little too tall. Nevertheless, he grips the handles, pumps the pedals, recklessly sails onto the street, his hair lifting up, his body hunched over, almost flat. Disappears.
26
POSTSCRIPT: POWER CENTRE
March break. Leonard drives to Scarborough Power Centre, the new, sprawling expanse of big-box stores near Markham and the 401. He parks near the Gap, wanting to get a start on a summer wardrobe. Gangs of teenagers congregate in front, crowd the entrance, the girls laughing too readily, the boys glooming it up. He envies them the roles they fall into, their transparency, their aggressive innocence. He walks through, relieved that no student of his is among them; no one breaks rank and, making a show of familiarity, talks to him. He keeps his head lowered, moves in an uncharacteristic way, shortens his steps, thinks of the fat man he and Ellis saw at the mall a few months before.
Leonard lifts t-shirts from a table. Boxer shorts, on sale. Tries, unsuccessfully, to re-fold them. Feels the hair rise on the back of his neck. Looks up to see Cynthia at another table, holding Capri pants against her legs. A few feet away, her mother Candace watches, leans backward against a mirror, shakes her head in disapproval, says something. Both of them laugh. While Cynthia continues to laugh, her mother walks over, takes the pants from her hands, deftly folds them, puts them back. They begin to walk in his direction. He hides behind a wall of sweatshirts.
Candace is dressed very casually, in light blue slacks and a little cardigan, while Cynthia wears a smart tailored suit, dark green. Her hair is shorter, a burnished red. He thinks back to how, when they were together, he never noticed when she changed the style or colour of her hair, and how this never bothered her. He feels like, any second, a hand will creep up his back, fall upon his shoulder, catch him out, and its voice ask a question. “What are you doing here? Why are you watching?”
It occurs to him, fleetingly, the idea like the shadow of a bird, that Cynthia never dreamed a dream about his death. He moves out from behind the shelves to see if they’ve gone. They’re just leaving. But before the glass exit door, Cynthia turns around, plants herself. Her eyes sweep the store’s interior, stop on him, continue, stop on him again. Their eyes meet, former wife and husband. She shows no recognition. She turns, curves her arm inside her mother’s. They go. Leonard follows a bit, stops before the windows, watches them. Still arm in arm, leaning together, they walk along the rows of cars, across the expanse of sunlit pavement. Disappear.
27
ONCE IN A LIFETIME
Disappearing, I decide I need more sleep. I yawn and say good morning to our East Indian neighbour who is out watering his potted plants in a pair of zebra-striped pyjamas. When I go inside, the flashing red light of the answering machine alerts me that I’ve missed a call.
“Who could it be this early?” I think, annoyed.
Perhaps it’s for Ellis. Lately, every message has been for him. It’s for me; it’s Cynthia.
“Leonard, my mother died today. She died suddenly, of heart failure. I know you cared for her. I know you’ve been through so much with your own mother. Come over. My family’s not going to be here. I want to ask you for a favour.”
Candace is gone. It’s so soon after my own mother’s death. Is this a premonition, a turn of the starwheel? Dream of death, like a bird in the house, and someone dies. But not the one you expect. I don’t return the call. Instead, I get dressed and drive back to the old house. The least I can do is to offer Cynthia my condolences. I find her standing in the darkened doorway – she is holding snipped white and purple lilacs she has just sheared from the bushes in the yard. She is dressed in subdued tones, mostly in values of white. A thin streak of white hair among the burnished red appears on the front and sweeps to the side. The house is in darkness, except for a few candles and the ordinary light leeching through the closed curtains. I notice a new picture on the dining room wall, a large painting of black flowers in a gilded frame. Cynthia puts down the lilacs and we embrace. Our lives have collided once again.
“I’m sorry.”
“You always cared for her.”
“Of course I did. She always helped us. She was a kind person. It’s terrible to lose a mother.”
“Do something for me?”
“What?”
“Will you speak at the funeral? Just a few words. You know you’re good at that.”
It may be too soon to speak about loss and the death of a loved one. But I find myself saying: “Yes.”
“Will you stay the night?” she asks. “Under the circumstances, just this once. You can sleep downstairs. The rest of the family will be here tomorrow. You can go before they arrive.”
She reaches over and touches my arm. We’re standing close together amid all the plant life and vegetation that she has br
ought in from outside. We’re aware of the grief that binds us together. We’re aware of the shyness and hurt that still separate us. Then I see, from the corner of my eye, an animal flash by in the hall, a blur of eyes and teeth and fur. I hear the scrabbling of claws on hardwood. I ask Cynthia: “Did you get a dog?”
She doesn’t acknowledge the question. She says: “Will you help me? Will you stay? Just for tonight?”
I want to offer her something: a breathless word, a soundless gesture. The way I peer into Cynthia’s eyes, she knows I will probably spend the night.
“Yes, if you want me to,” I say. “I’ll stay.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My grateful thanks to those generous individuals who gave me valuable feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript – Mark Cassidy, Ann Chaban, Lee Gowan, David Bryan, and especially Tony Labriola. I am indebted to Elana Wolff for her support and to Michael Mirolla for his patience and dedication to literature. Very special thanks to my editor Lindsay Brown for her sensitivity, her candour and her way with words. Thanks to Ann Chaban for being in my life.
There are a few references in the book that require, if not explanation, then some acknowledgement. Throughout the story, there are allusions to Nathanael West’s novel The Day of the Locust, particularly to the character of Homer Simpson – some lines of the description of Leonard crying are a paraphrase of the description of Homer sobbing in Chapter 24 of Locust. There are references, as well, to another West novel The Dream Life of Balso Snell, specifically in the ‘dream’ section of Chapter 23 in Part Two. Readers familiar with West’s work will recognize them. There are one or two references to the Talking Heads’ song Once in a Lifetime, from their seminal 1980 album Remain in Light. Leonard’s wife Cynthia, in her despair, utters some words that were originally spoken by the actress Beatrice Straight, playing William Holden’s wife in the 1976 film Network (for which she won an Academy Award), screenplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky. Fans of James Whales’ The Bride of Frankenstein will recognize a quote from that film. The stanzas quoted in Chapter 25, Part Two, are the opening of Hart Crane’s Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge, from his larger work The Bridge (The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958).
Thanks for the inspiration provided by all of the artists mentioned above.
And in loving memory of my brother Jimmy, who introduced us to irony, music and movies and gave us much more than he ever realized.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOHN O’NEILL is the author of four collections of poems: Animal Walk, Love in Alaska, The Photographer of Wolves, and Criminal Mountains. His work has appeared in such journals as Canadian Literature, The Malahat Review, Event, Prism, Grain, Prairie Fire, Descant, Queen’s Quarterly and The Antigonish Review. His poems have thrice been nominated for National Magazine Awards and he won second prize in the Prairie Fire Long Poem Competition. In 1998, he was awarded First Prize in the Scarborough Arts Council’s Poetry Contest, and his chapbook Reading Alice was a finalist in the League of Canadian Poets Chapbook Competition. In 2010, one of John’s poems was included in Implicate Me: Short Essays on Reading Contemporary Poems (Guernica Editions), edited by Elana Woolf. John lives in Toronto and teaches in Don Mills, Ontario. Fatal Light Awareness is his first novel.
Copyright © 2013 John O’Neill and Guernica Editions Inc.
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O’Neill, John, 1959-
Fatal light awareness [electronic resource] / John O’Neill.
(Essential prose series ; 99)
Issued also in print format.
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I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 99
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