by Dian Day
“A new lawn mower?” he asked.
“I don’t need anything more than I already have,” I assured him. “In fact, I need a lot of things less.”
“A new toaster?”
“Not one penny, or I’ll kill you.”
“Ha,” said Ed. “But I’ll already be dead.”
“I’ll throw your urn in front of a bus,” I said.
ED’S ILLNESS. MY BROTHER’S WEDDING. Alex’s phone calls and then his letter. There was an element to all the things that were happening in my life that felt otherworldly. It was like a return to my childhood when, other than during my midnight singing, I never once felt my life was in my own hands. Even when things began to get better, I first felt it was because of my benefactors, and, after my conversion, that it was the will of God. After my mother’s stroke, when God left me as suddenly as He’d first appeared, I felt—and still feel—like a piece of driftwood in the cold waves of Lake Ontario. But drifting with the sun shining, and with land always in sight, so it really wasn’t as bad as it sounded. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining.
It used to be that when people turned away from God—or God abandoned them, whichever way it happens—they turned towards science. But who can credit science anymore? Physics these days is like science fiction. Parallel worlds, time travel through black holes, eleven dimensions, string theory. This last belongs to quantum physics, the physics of the very small, subatomic particles like quarks and a bunch of other things like neutrinos that nobody has ever heard of. It seems that all these subatomic particles are simply notes on a plucked string, and change as easily as a harpist plucking the string in a different place produces a different note. Physics is the harmony and chemistry is the melody and the universe is a symphony, and it’s all supposedly a neat package of cosmic music. But there are still questions about whether anyone is plucking the strings, writing the score, conducting the symphony. The hands of God still cannot be proven. Or worse, disproven.
The new kind of “fan mail” jangled my nerves, even while I was at work. I began to feel anxious while I was still in the sorting depot. I started to put any letters addressed to me in my jacket pocket instead of in the mailbag, defying years of well-entrenched habit, just in case Alex sent another one.
I read my letters in the washroom of the bookstore, but there were only notices of concerts or offerings of new music products. Sandra must have thought I had a digestive problem; locked in for five or ten minutes at a stretch, and red-faced and sweaty when I handed back the key. Once I tried throwing everything out unopened, but retraced my steps up the block and fished them out of the garbage can again, fouled by spilled Coke and a banana peel. Lots of days I added fifteen or twenty minutes to my route time; people who’d set their watches by me began to shake their heads and look at the time as I passed their elastic-bound bundles over their shop counters.
I’ve known all along that you don’t get away from the past that easily.
“I’LL SING YOU A SONG FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY,” Alex announced. “I don’t have any other present.”
He had come to join us in the cafeteria, pulling a chair from another table to a corner of ours. There were eight of us already there, and the table’s surface was spread with chip wrappers, the ragged crusts from salami sandwiches, chocolate milk cartons, and orange peels. Nobody had moved even an inch to make room for him, so he sat on the very edge of his seat and held his empty hands in his lap.
The birthday presents were for me, and I was overwhelmed by this novel manifestation of friendship: a Rubik’s Cube, a brick of chocolate, a trading card-sized hologram of a naked woman whose enormous breasts shook from side to side provocatively when the card was tilted back and forth. That—along with the monogrammed bottle opener I’d gotten from Kevin—was already in my pocket, both tucked away immediately after their unwrapping before the lunchroom monitors caught sight of them. I am not sure which of them would have embarrassed me more.
“Which song would you like?” asked Alex. “Not ‘Happy Birthday’—that’s too predictable. Name something you really like that you haven’t heard in a long time. Just say the title. I bet I’ll know it.”
There were a lot of eyes on me, waiting eagerly for my answer. I couldn’t think. There was a buzzing kind of noise in my ears, a tinnitus of indecision.
“I can’t think of one,” I finally said.
“What about ‘The Last Rose of Summer?’”
“Oh shut up, Lick Shoes,” said Kevin. “He said he can’t think of one.”
“‘The Water is Wide?’” he persisted. “‘The Fields of Athenry?’”
“Folk music is just plain lame-ass stupid,” declared Eric.
“I don’t think any music is stupid,” said Alex. He wasn’t defending himself, but an art form.
“Right then, how about singing ‘I am a Loser,’” suggested Reid.
And he started, of course, laughing at himself as he did so, making up the words as he went along:
I am such a loser all the time
I am just a stupid jerk
Oh a loser and a jerrr—rrrk
All the boys were laughing; we were all laughing. But even singing those terrible words his voice was beautiful.
On my way home from school that afternoon, I tucked the hologram into the crack between my subway seat and the wall of the train, leaving only a small corner exposed. I imagined someone finding it, maybe an old man, maybe the cleaners, maybe another boy my age who would be amazed at his good fortune. The bottle opener I was afraid to simply leave somewhere, having at that time a ridiculous sense of the likelihood of being tracked down in a city of several million merely by the initials FM. Instead, I got off and walked between Castle Frank and Broadview and threw it from the overpass into the Don River.
“ASHLEY, IS ANY SOUND COMING OUT of your mouth, or are you just moving your lips?”
“I hab a coud, sir.”
“If you have a cold,” I told them all for the hundredth time, “you need to stay home until you are better. Next week everyone will have a cold,” I said to Ashley.
“I dibn’t want to biss anything,” she said. “I lub choir too much to stay homb.”
It’s hard to give them heck when they say things like that.
“Come on down and sit in the pews, at least. You won’t miss anything, and we’ll all miss getting your germs.”
A conductor channels electricity, heat, light, or sound. All of these things are produced by a good choir, though sometimes miracles are a required ingredient in the recipe. I was tired and in need of a miracle. A good number of them had taken turns having colds and flu and broken legs and mysterious rashes. They’d had aunts visiting from China and had gotten new puppies and had been given way too much homework by unsympathetic teachers. Some of that homework, doubtless, had been peed on by the puppies. The excuses had been legion. All this to say that rehearsals had been missed. And Ashley knew exactly how to mollify me.
I took them through “Danny Boy” one more time.
“Okay, okay,” I said, when they’d barely gotten through the last line. “Let’s take a break.”
Jiro put his foot on the soft pedal and looked over at me. “I’ll go down with them,” he offered. What he meant was, “You stay here,” since we both always go. It takes two of us to monitor both the water fountain and the washrooms. He turned off the piano lamp, swept his child up onto his shoulders, and motioned for Ashley to join them.
“Wash your hands before you touch anything,” I told her as she went by, but I knew it was wasted breath.
I sat in the pews on the opposite side to where the germs had been sitting. I could hear the kids’ feet going down the wooden stairs, in a curious multiplication of sound that made me suspect I was conducting an army choir, and they were all wearing their combat boots in church. After a minute or two they’d gotten to the bottom and
gone along the hallway, and I could hear only the faintest of noises: soprano calls and distant laughter. I looked at my watch and closed my eyes. I had ten minutes.
“Are you all right?” said a voice.
I opened my eyes and saw Alex standing in the centre aisle, his fine hand resting on the end of the pew. As I looked at him, he tossed his blond hair back with a shake of his head, and I saw with relief that it was Blake, not Alex.
Alex is not twelve. Alex hasn’t been twelve for twenty-five years.
“Sir?” Blake said. He tilted his head to one side, and did the hair thing again. It was uncanny. But he looked genuinely concerned.
“Thanks, Blake. I’m just tired.”
“You’re never tired,” he asserted.
“Well, I am today,” I told him. “But I’m okay. Don’t you want a drink?”
“No. The water down there tastes like chemicals.”
“There’s ginger ale,” I suggested.
“I don’t like ginger ale,” he said, and then he hesitated. “Actually, I’m not allowed ginger ale.”
“Ah,” I said. “Yes. We should get juice, I suppose. For choir nights.”
“You won’t tell anybody I said that, will you, Sir?” he was suddenly anxious.
“No, I won’t say anything,” I reassured him. “I’m good at secrets.” He was relieved, and changed the subject.
“Do you like directing our choir?”
“Yes, I do, very much,” I said. “Do you like singing in it?” I slid over so he could sit down. It seemed I wasn’t going to get rid of him.
“Yes,” he said, sitting. He pulled a hymnal out of the slot in front of him and flipped the pages absent-mindedly. “I’m good at it, aren’t I? Is that being conceited?”
I laughed.
“No, that’s not being conceited, and you are good at it. You’re very good at it. We’ll see what happens after your voice changes, but you could probably have a career in music if you wanted to.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m only twelve.”
“Right,” I said. “No rush. Just keep singing.” There was a bit of a lull then, as the book fell open and he ran his finger down the lines of a hymn. His lips were moving slightly; he was singing the music to himself. Then he flicked his hair back and lost his place.
“You remind me of a boy I went to school with,” I told him then. “He was very good at music too.”
“Did he make a career out of it?”
I didn’t answer right away. I saw an eighteen-year-old Alex “Lick Shoes” Hughes pulling on his coat in the cloakroom and running out into the snow, crying. His gloves fell out of his pocket as he went, but he didn’t stop to pick them up.
I could hear the first pair of army boots coming up the stairs.
“No,” I said, finally. “He didn’t.”
“LET’S GO BACK,” SAID ALEX. “I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m not tired,” I told him, but I was dead on my feet.
We’d been taken to see The Pirates of Penzance and were going the next day to a matinee of Twelfth Night before boarding the chartered bus for home. We’d gone back to the motel with our chaperones after the performance, changed out of our school clothes into our “civvies,” waited patiently for them to be convinced by our deep breathing, and then had risen from our beds fully dressed and exited by the back door.
It was all Eric’s idea. He had produced a flask of rum stolen from his mother’s liquor cabinet, and some of the boys were drunk. They were singing loudly.
Oh is there not one maiden breast
Dah dah dah dah dah dah-dah dah-dah.
“Frederick? Where’s Frederick?” called James. “He should be singing this!” Much had been made out of the fact that the play’s protagonist and I shared the same name. And that we had been taken to a play where someone sang about women’s breasts.
Oh is there not one maiden breast—
“Maiden breast, fuck me!” said Brian.
“I’m going back,” said Alex. “They’re just being assholes.” We were slightly behind the row of boys strung across the road like lanterns in the wind. “They’re going to do something stupid.”
“They’re just having fun,” I said. I was trying to believe it.
“Hoy, Frederick!” Kevin was in the middle of the string of boys, and was looking for me over his shoulder. “Where are you?”
“I’m going,” hissed Alex.
“I’ve left some for you,” Kevin shouted back, and he held the flask of rum up over his head like a trophy.
I was in the centre of an expanding universe. The line of boys was moving forward and Alex was moving backward. Their bodies drifted in slow motion, like planets in orbit.
“Come on, Frederick, please,” pleaded Alex. “Let’s go.” His hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders hunched forward defensively. He looked like an old man nervous about falling.
“Hoy, Frederick!” shouted Kevin impatiently. There was no doubt in his voice that I was one of them.
Out of my orbit, I ran to join them, singing along.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing—
Eric broke off the singing and turned to watch Alex pass beneath a streetlight and run off alone into the dark.
“You better not narc us out, Lick Shoes!” he called after him. “If you do you’ll be shitting teeth for a week!” The whole line of boys laughed.
“What a loser,” someone said.
In front of us the Avon River slid darkly by. Stratford was as far as I’d ever been from home, but there was something about how I was feeling that made it seem that I was as close as I’d been to my Madrigal heritage in a long time.
LAKSHMI, GODDESS OF WEALTH AND PROSPERITY, was recently reincarnated in India, but instead of having only the four requisite arms, she also has four legs—an improved version. Or I should say had, because doctors cut off all the spare parts—four of her limbs, much to the distress of the local people who worshipped her.
I read the article over three or four times before I got out my scissors. I thought long and hard about those extra arms and legs. So much more substantial than fingers.
These days stories like this make pretty much every major newspaper around the globe. I wondered how it would be, as an adult, to read such reports about oneself. I imagined this newspaper cutting—with dozens of others, and photographs from every angle, and maybe even medical reports—being put carefully into a scrapbook on the other side of the world. How would it be to know that all the world had once seen you as something else, no matter how ordinary you now seemed. No matter how alone you appeared to be.
Lakshmi’s twin was referred to as a “parasite” by the surgeon who led the operation. The procedure to eliminate the evidence lasted twenty-seven hours and involved more than thirty doctors. Goddess or host, Lakshmi survived the operation.
I wondered what they did with the discarded arms and legs: perhaps buried or incinerated them or pickled them in formaldehyde for medical research. What do they do with body parts no longer wanted on the voyage? I looked at my hands; thought about my missing fingers. Thought about missing Filander. Thought about being alone.
Six flesh and blood brothers, and I want the one I haven’t got. I can’t even say Filander died, because he never even existed except in my endless longing. For me, there was not even the comfort of his loss.
When Lakshmi was grown, I wondered how she would feel about losing her divinity.
THERE ARE MORE LISPS AMONG THE YOUNG than you would think. The choir was singing She’s like the Swallow, and “swallow” was coming out more like “thwallow.” There’s nothing you can do about that but wait for them to grow out of it.
She slike the river that never runth dry
Likewise, you can only wa
it for them to grow into their bodies, for all the body parts to come into alignment—and you can only hope they don’t ever look closely enough in the mirror to notice how discordant they really are. There are small child heads on trunks that seem practically adult-sized, and large heads on tiny bodies, so thin and frail-looking that I wonder how they can carry their brains around without wobbling like bobbleheads. Some of them have arms so long that they can almost touch their knees without bending over; others have legs like stilts and walk as if they are always too far from the ground. They are like those paper people divided into three sections—heads, bodies, and legs—and somewhere in the universe a hand reaches down and flips the pages around so everything is mismatched, the head of one on the body of another. They are mythical creatures, children. Sometimes I feel as if I am conducting in a cartoon.
She slike the thunshine on the lee thore
We had the parents there. We had been rehearsing for weeks for the occasion, and I had nagged them to be on time, and tidy. And, since it was an official concert, the kids got pretty worked up about it, excited and nervous and more inclined to look as if they had been dragged there against their wills, and were going to throw up or faint while singing. Like dogs, children yawn when they are anxious. The result is that it is generally hard to tell that they are thoroughly enjoying themselves. I just have to trust that the parents know this as well as I do.
‘Tis out in the garden thith fair maid did go
There are exceptions. Those few who grin widely, even ludicrously, the entire time, in between the syllables of the words to the song, unable to contain their delight, and oblivious of the concept of performance anxiety: Ashley and Emily and Ryan. Or those whose faces, like miniature opera virtuosos, portray the emotional content of the song so well that even a deaf person would understand what they were singing about. They can make us believe that their teenaged hearts know exactly how it feels to be betrayed by a lover: Blake and Stephanie. These are the few who carry the choir through evenings in front of an audience, as if their beaming and expressive faces have the power to light even the most stage-struck of their peers.