The Madrigal

by Dian Day

  At any rate, it seems to be an honourable occupation these days, and much sought-after, even though a lot of what we get to deliver are bills, solicitations for money, packages ordered on eBay, and ad mail—our “bread and butter.” Nowadays, would-be posties can pay their dues on casual rosters for years, waiting for an open route, kind of like teachers who substitute, hoping to get their own classroom one day. Strangely, once they arrive at this destination, most of my colleagues are single-minded in their attempts to get through the thing as fast as possible. It is not time, but speed itself that is of the essence. Those starting out first pare quarter hours, then, as their experience grows, whittle minutes and seconds off their clocked time, sometimes going to what seem to be bizarre extremes for the sake of thirty seconds. Giselle arrives at the sorting station an hour early every morning and has left again by eight o’clock, while the rest of us are still sorting and waiting the required time for the arrival of our nine o’clock packages—she sneaks back for hers at the end of her run, and delivers them from her own car on her way home. Dave has perfected the “moving drop,” which involves unlocking his relay box, putting what he finds there into his own letter bag, and re-locking the box, with both his feet still moving along the pavement. Although our contract requires us to take a certain number of breaks, and we’re given plenty of time to remove the shoulder bags, eat lunch sitting down somewhere, and find a washroom, I don’t think I know anybody who doesn’t have their tuna sandwich tucked inside their overcoat, to emerge briefly between numbers 37, 39, 41, 43, and 45. In residential areas, cutting across lawns is standard, and holding over a piece of mail going to the end of your route for one more day, when there’s nothing to deliver to the middle, is not unheard of. It’s like they’re playing a music piece with a constantly accelerating tempo, because once they’ve finished their route for the day, they get to go home and have their real lives begin.

  This whole real life thing might be the difference between me and them. I am not sure if that is because I alone consider my mail route a legitimate part of my real life, or whether there is simply nothing in my fake life that feels any more real than this. Whatever the reason, I prefer the mail route metronome to be set Allegro non troppo, so I have enough time to notice things. I see things that most other people miss. This morning, for instance, there was an open telephone book—the Yellow Pages—in a tree in front of the Crawfords’ house; someone had been looking up “Golf Courses – Public” in the middle of the Raglan Road. Yesterday there was a red wallet containing five hundred and twenty dollars in well-worn twenties—somebody’s drug money, no doubt—in the wet gutter in front of the rooming house on Montreal Street. That necessitated a stop at Constable Miller’s police station—though he’s long since retired—after work.

  I know the last names of pretty much everyone who owns a house or runs a business on the streets I deliver to. I can often guess someone’s age and sex and birthday and religion and approximate household income without meeting them, just by seeing what kind of mail they get. Bills from National Geographic, vegetable seeds from William Dam, notices from collection agencies, promotions from Pennington’s, the Child Tax Credit, Easter cards. It’s mostly only old people who are still sending handwritten cards and letters.

  You get to learn a lot more about people, too, just by watching the changes that occur on their doorsteps, or inside their shops. I see when people put up Christmas lights, and when—or if—they take them down. I see when someone’s got a lover sleeping over, or when they’ve bought a new car. I see who plants crocus bulbs in the fall, and who cuts down perfectly good maple trees in the summer to give their yards more light. I see who replaces double-hung windows and storms with low-e, argon-filled glass, and whose plastic down-spout breaks off and is never replaced. In the shops, I see when all the sales start and end, and how many t-shirts, tambourines, and swivel chairs are purchased in between. I see who sits in the booths during their coffee breaks, in the darkest corners of the restaurants, waiting with their hands around a cracked mug for an erstwhile lover to appear.

  THE NEXT TIME I SPENT OVER AN HOUR in the library before I could get my nerve up. I examined the hold shelves and tried to predict other people’s personalities based on their requests, which was a waste, since the whole time I was there no one came in to collect their books. I stood at a computer terminal for half an hour and played solitaire, a game I hate. I gathered one forgotten mechanical pencil and two gel pens to give to Luke on my way out. I read the front page headlines from the Whig Standard and the Globe and Mail, but I would not have been able to repeat even one of them five minutes after hanging the newspapers back on the racks. I played mind games with myself with my watch, saying that I would do it when the second hand reached the twelve, again and again, like a kid who shouts “one, two, three—go!” to himself countless times before jumping from the high diving board.

  Finally, the minute hand got too close to the hour when I was supposed to teach a lesson at the shop, and I had to either jump or come back some other day and go through the whole blistering procedure again. I started towards the circulation desk, and then I was somehow heading back the other way, back into the safety of the book forest. I swear it was completely involuntary. I leaned against a metal bookcase, and a shoulder-width of large print books slid to the back of the shelf. I just needed to get myself past the point of no return—the place on the floor when she would notice me walking towards her, with a look on my face showing my intention to speak. The point where turning around would be more humiliating than continuing on.

  When I was about six feet away she looked up and smiled. Even then I wondered if it was a patron-greeting smile, or something warmer. I still have no premonition for true disaster, looking for it, as I do, all the time—and so am mostly wrong.

  I forgot to smile back, but I did open my mouth to speak as I crossed the last few feet towards her. I knew if she looked away, even for a moment, I would lose the string that was pulling me in and I’d veer off in another direction. She was wearing a white cardigan, buttoned to the top, with a kind of indoor scarf flowing in folds around her neck. Her sleeves were pushed halfway up her forearms, and, when I arrived at the desk, I could see that her skin was freckled and her arms wiry.

  So my mouth was open and she was looking at me expectantly. I put my fists on the counter, and leaned in.

  “I suppose you’re with someone?” I asked her, though that was not what I’d been planning to say at all. A library kind of silence followed. The echoes of distant footfalls died away, and I wished with all my heart I had not jumped. I leaned so hard on the counter that my knuckles hurt, and the pain held me together for the sixty seconds I had to wait for her response.

  “You’re asking me this because—?” Her voice was confused, but not wary, which for some reason I took as a good sign.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You were maybe thinking about asking me for a date?” She was really being very helpful.

  “Yes.”

  “Why are your eyes closed?” she asked then.

  I opened my eyes.

  “Really, you want to go on a date?” Now she looked doubtful. I was beginning to get a very bad feeling—an even worse feeling than I’d had at the edge of the diving board.

  It felt like there wasn’t any water in the pool.

  I nodded.

  And then, as is the way of these things, there was suddenly someone behind me, with a preposterous handlebar moustache and an armload of books to check out, waiting for us to finish.

  She rubbed her hands together thoughtfully behind the counter. She opened her mouth several times and closed it again. The man behind me cleared his throat, to make sure we knew he was there.

  “Well I’m honoured, Mr. Madrigal,” she said finally. “Thank you for asking me. I really am honoured. But I am married. I’ve been married for fifteen years.” I think my eyes were closed again.

/>   “Happily,” she added.

  I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t look up at her. I could see I had nothing in my hands but three well-used writing utensils.

  “SO YOU THINK YOU MIGHT BE GAY?” Maya asked.

  “Me? No. Not a chance.”

  “That’s been said before,” said Maya. She was leaning hard on the “privacy fence” between our properties. I wanted to tell her to lighten up; it looked like she was going to push the whole thing over. I couldn’t stand the thought of a shared back yard.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but in my case it’s true.” I didn’t tell her how many times I’d been asked that question in my life, mostly by women who were on their way out the door; they almost always asked it compassionately, as if they were doing me a favour. As if they were helping me get in touch with something deeply buried. I thought it was just easier for them to walk out the door if they thought they were helping to set me free. That’s not the thing that’s buried, I always wanted to say.

  “So why don’t you have a girlfriend or a wife or something?”

  “How come everything has to be so personal with you? Don’t you understand about boundaries, personal space, you know, good old-fashioned tact?”

  “No,” she said, and she looked up at me with a mild belligerence, still waiting for an answer, still leaning on the fence rail. I had come out to drag the sodden and overfull bags of leaves out to the curb for the last leaf collection of the year. I was easing the bags, one at a time, across the slippery grass, trying not to rip the paper—at least not while Maya was watching.

  “Or maybe,” she said, “you’re shy? Or just a little repressed?”

  “What about minding your own business?”

  “What’s that?” she said. “Citrus Plumbing?”

  It is a proven fact that when one has been asked two objectionable questions, the inclination to answer one of them, in order to avoid the other, is almost overpowering.

  “Maybe I suffered the tragic loss of my lovely young wife to invasive ovarian cancer, and I’ve never recovered,” I said, exasperated. The bags were heavy with wet leaves. I was trying not to grunt out loud.

  “So did that happen?” She raised her eyebrows, as if to suggest I could have made up a better story.

  “No,” I admitted. “But it might have. Then how would you feel, asking me personal questions like that?”

  “I would feel so honking good that you finally opened up to someone. I’d rejoice. I’d have a party,” she said. “I’d invite all your friends and family,” she added, as an afterthought.

  The damn bag I was moving caught on a maple tree root, and no matter which way I pulled, it wouldn’t budge.

  I didn’t have anything to answer to, but Maya kept looking at me as if I did.

  “You just go ahead and assume that would be a good thing,” I said, finally, “but can you quit leaning on the fence?”

  “Do you have any friends or family?” she asked. And then she jumped over the fence to help me with the bag.

  “WHERE’S ALL THE BARS, THEN?” wondered Brian. There was a small gang of us in the street, and the Milky Way was twinkling a trail of silver dust in the clear night.

  Nothing in Stratford seemed to be more than three stories high. Even to me, after more than two years in Toronto, it seemed quaint and rather boring. It was a handsome place, but a boy’s desert. All the shops were closed, and we wandered through the town feeling superior, and very sorry for the resident teenagers.

  “What the hell do people do here at night?” asked Kevin in disgust. His voice broke on the word “hell,” which ruined the effect, but nobody laughed—or at least, not so he would hear them. He was the first of us to enter that much-anticipated and fearful door to manhood; the previous week he had come to school with an admirable collection of razor nicks and told us all about shaving with his father’s Gillette Trac II.

  It was the latest I’d been out at night—without an adult—since my pre-adolescent busking in the streets. Three years is a long time in a boy’s life; having lost my familiarity with the dark, I was a little nervous about the deserted streets, the dark corners, the narrow alleys that ran between buildings, the dark water lurking in the river, and the dark face of the big sky.

  “This was your dumbass idea, Bricks,” James said to Eric. “So you better come up with something to do.”

  “Just waiting for you to ask!” declared Eric, and he took a flask out of his inside pocket with a flourish and showed it around like a magician holding a rabbit by the ears.

  “Whoa!”

  “Now you’re talking!”

  Immediately there was a huddle of boys around the Old Monk, and it was passed from hand to hand. James got it first, tipped his head back, and doused himself generously with rum.

  “Ohhhh shit!” he gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve.

  “Allll right!”

  “Yesssss!”

  “Here Frederick, over to you!”

  “Naw,” I said, nervously. I had stood a little outside the circle, hoping to escape notice. My hands were in my pockets, and I didn’t take them out to reach for the bottle. I held my breath and waited.

  “Lame,” declared Kevin.

  “Ah, leave him alone,” said Eric. “More for us!”

  After a while they began to sing, their voices rude and jarring, cutting into the quiet like an alarm clock that rings just after the insomniac has fallen asleep. They linked arms and stomped pirate-like down the middle of the pavement, those on the ends of the line kicking tires and slapping the hoods of parked cars for percussive effect.

  For I am a Pirate King!

  And it is, it is a glorious thing

  To be a Pirate King!

  I expected windows to fly open and sirens to wail. But the whole town was like a postcard, and it seemed it could not be made into something real, no matter how much we tried to disturb its surface sheen.

  For I am a Pirate King!

  And it is, it is a glorious thing

  To be a Pirate King!

  “Hoy! Frederick!” Kevin called back at me over his shoulder and held the flask up over his head in a second-chance invitation.

  I ran to catch up and burrowed into the middle of the line. We turned at the corner and made our way down toward the river, whose black surface seemed irresistible to over-tired and slightly drunk boys looking eagerly for mischief.

  “Give me that,” I told him. There was one swig left, and it was mine.

  For I am a Pirate King!

  And it is, it is a glorious thing

  To be a Pirate King!

  “JAMES! JAMES! YOU SPACE CADET! Take the other side!”

  “Here!”

  “Ouch! You fuck, that was my foot!”

  They were tackling a mail box. It was like a swarming; the box’s curved top was invisible in the dark crush of rum-infused boys. I half expected to see, at any moment, a triumphant boy hold up a pair of Nike sneakers.

  “Lie it down! Lie it down!”

  “It’s on my fucking foot, you asshole!”

  “Have you got it? Here! Like this!”

  It lay flat on the ground like a dead thing covered in dark blood. Like a swarming gone wrong. They stepped back for a moment to admire the sight, puffed themselves up, cuffed each other on the back and shoulders in congratulatory excitement.

  Eric took off his fall jacket, tossed it in the grass, and rolled up his sleeves like a fighter. The other boys took off their jackets, too, even though it was midnight-cold in October.

  “Pirates, ho!” he called, and once again moved in towards the body of the beast.

  We were on a strip of green beside the river. The five of them lifted the box, dropped one corner, stumbled forward a few steps, dropped another corner so one metal leg made a long rent in the grass.


  “Up here a bit, it’s deeper.”

  “No, no, no! Wait!”

  “It needs to be deeper, you dickweed. Not there!”

  “That is my fucking foot!” yelled James.

  “One, two…” said Eric’s voice.

  “THREE!” they all yelled together, and they pitched the box as far as they could—it travelled about two feet—into the Avon river. The letter flap clanked closed as it fell, in a kind of death screech, and the splash it made was enough to soak Kevin and Brian, who were nearest the water. They jumped backwards, laughing. The box sank quickly, releasing giant grunting bubbles to the water’s surface, which made them howl with laughter. The river was only deep enough in that spot to just cover the box, and it lay on the riverbed completely visible below the rippling surface.

  From the sidewalk, its hulking form was hidden by the inky silhouettes of my classmates. I thought of my mother sending me ratty five dollar bills in a mailbox like this.

  “Awesome!” said Eric, in satisfaction. My hand was on his bent back, as if I’d helped by extension.

  I looked anxiously up and down the deserted street.

  “Wicked!” agreed Kevin.

  THE STARS ARRANGED AND RE-ARRANGED themselves into new constellations on my bedroom ceiling. I was still alone, of course. The room was pitch-black like a night with no stars, moon, or planets, yet I could still see pinpricks of distant suns. I could feel the light years of emptiness between myself and others, the married librarian, my co-workers, my neighbours, all their cats and dogs and gerbils and occasional laying hens in clandestine backyard coops, the skunks under porches, the coyotes nipping at the heels of subdivisions, my whole city and all its streets that ran to other places—the entire unbearably crowded planet—and the unknown and distant planet where someone, something, a creature beyond my imagining, looked out into space and wondered what to make of existence.