When he was young, Jerry’d thought his dad had lived in the middle of a jungle, in a tree house, or something. Had thought his dad had spent his days feeding orangutans, the gentle old men of the forest, and wrestling massive boa constrictors that could consume an entire child; swallow a whole person until all you could see of them was a series of lumps in the constrictor’s middle. Dad was forever on about centipedes the size of snakes and eels that could electrocute you with a touch. But . . . “No,” Jerry’s mother had said, “orangutans are from Borneo, whatever they call it now. That’s Asia. Your dad’s from South America.” But Jerry still hadn’t really understood. From his northern city home, where the biggest trees were the low, cultivated rowan trees that shed their orange berries in the fall, Borneo might as well be Guatemala. It wasn’t until Mum had shown him pictures of Dad’s family’s house in Guatemala City, where she and Dad had gone on their honeymoon, that Jerry had realised that his dad was a city boy, too. Probably the only electric eel Dad had ever seen was the one right here in the Toronto zoo.
The excavator was quiescent now, crouched beside the condo sales hut. The snow was heavier, but melting as it fell. Beads of freezing water hung off the thistle leaves. If he looked carefully at the water droplets, he could see car brake lights reflecting red in them. Spring was pouncing in like a lion, all right.
No use putting it off any longer. Jerry turned north towards his dad’s condo. The snow was turning into biting hail.
“How’s your mum?” Jerry’s dad took Jerry’s coat, hung it in the hall closet. Jerry followed him into the living room.
“She’s fine. Says she’s got a new plant cutting for you, and you should go by and get it. Dunno where you’ll put it, though.” A ficus rioted in one corner of the living room, nearly touching the ceiling. The spider plant hanging from a nook was a veritable cathedral of foliage. Trifoliate, an ornamental shamrock blushed hugely purple. Dad grinned.
Sudharshan rose from the couch, came and gave Jerry an awkward hug. “Good to see you,” he murmured. Jerry gave a kind of grunt back.
“And how’s Sandor?” Dad asked.
Jerry sat on the arm of the plush burgundy couch. Sudharshan frowned.
“He’s great. Settling into his new apartment.”
A trilling noise came from over by the dining table. Jerry turned to see what it was. He was up and standing beside the cage before he knew it. He reached to touch the wire bars. “Yikes. Dad, what the hell is that thing?”
The bird—Jerry figured that’s what it was—tilted its head at the sound of his voice. It sidled on its perch, closer to Jerry, one eye beady on him. Jerry pulled his hand back from the cage. The thing was tiny, bald and fucking hideous. No feathers on its head, none on its wings. Looked like something out of the grocery’s freezer. Probably no feathers on its body, either. Hard to tell, in the weird little suit it had on it. “And what’s that it’s wearing?”
Sudharshan laughed. He came over and stroked one of the cage’s wires with a beautifully manicured hand. “You like his jumpsuit?” he asked Jerry. Sudharshan’s face always made Jerry think of chocolate brownies, dark and sweet. “I crochet them for him. He’d freeze to death otherwise, wouldn’t you, my numbikins?” Sudharshan cooed at the disgusting little thing. It screeched back at him, tossing and tossing its beak up into the air.
“Why doesn’t it have any feathers?”
“Birdie alopecia,” his dad said, coming up behind Sudharshan and putting his arms around Sudharshan. Sudharshan put his hands on top of Dad’s, smiled. He leaned back into Dad’s embrace. Jerry looked away.
“It’s a rare condition my birdie has,” Sudharshan told him. “He’d have died in the wild.”
Jerry snuck a look back at his dad and Sudharshan. They were still cuddling. He sighed and deliberately kept his eyes on them, trying to look cool. His gaze slid back to the creepy bald bird in its bright green wool jumper. “How does it, you know?”
“Hole in the base of the suit,” Sudharshan told him. “Want some chai?”
“Uh, yeah.” Something to do.
“I’ll get it.” His dad headed for the kitchen.
“Not too much cardamom, okay, sweetie?” Sudharshan called after him. Jerry could feel his face heating up.
Sudharshan pulled chairs out for himself and Jerry. They sat. Then he leaned over the cage, made more smacking noises at the bird. His long nose with the dip in it echoed the bird’s hooked beak. He opened the cage door, reached a hand in. “Come, darling, come. Say hello to Uncle Jerry.”
The bird mumbled its beak against Sudharshan’s brown hand. Jerry held his breath, afraid that it would peck. The bird climbed onto Sudharshan’s hand, windmilling its wings for balance. “Where’d you get it?” Jerry asked. In the kitchen, the kettle began whistling off key.
“They’ve been in my family for years,” Sudharshan said. “His grandparents’ parents belonged to my grandparents. Each new generation of children looks after the new generation of birds. It’s kind of our duty. How’s work?” He carefully brought the bird out of its cage. It screeched loudly. Jerry put his hands over his ears.
“Work’s going okay,” he said. “Sold a big mansion up in Aurora. Rich couple, one kid. Six bedrooms, that house has.”
Jerry went silent. Sudharshan said nothing. The bird crab-walked up Sudharshan’s arm, perched on his shoulder and nibbled at his ear. Sudharshan giggled and chucked it under its chin. It still looked to Jerry like plucked freezer chicken, walking. He swallowed and looked around the room. One whole wall of the apartment was painted with images of suns. They flared and wheeled through space. Each one was different. They seemed hand-done. “Your art work?” he asked Sudharshan.
“We did it together,” Jerry’s dad said, coming out of the kitchen. He was balancing a tray, a white lace doily on it under a teapot, three mugs and a saucer. The mugs were a fat, sunny yellow. He put the tray down on the table. Jerry recognized the doily. It was part of a set that his mum used to save for when they had company. “Three sugars, right, Jerry?”
“I don’t take sugar, Dad.”
“You like sugar.”
“I never liked sugar. You always gave me too much, and I never liked it.”
Sudharshan busied himself with his ugly pet. Jerry watched the way that his long black hair caught the light, gleaming. Looked at Sudharshan’s handsome face, sucking in light and reflecting gorgeousness, and hated him.
With a squawk, the bird threw itself off Sudharshan’s shoulder and onto the table. It started stalking Jerry, its tiny body strutting. It stared him down. Sudharshan laughed. “Rudy, stop it.” The bird ignored him. It was almost to the edge of the table where Jerry’s hand was. It was bigger than he’d thought. Jerry pulled his hands away, into his lap. Sudharshan scooped the bird up and cupped his other palm protectively around it. “Stop it, I said.” He beamed at Jerry. “That’s his snake-eating glare.” He tucked the bird back into its cage and locked the door.
“A parrot that eats snakes?”
Jerry’s dad began pouring chai. “It’s not a parrot, son. We never said that it was.”
Jerry took the yellow cup that his dad held out. He sipped the chai. It was too sweet. “What the fuck is it, then?”
“Jerry. Language.”
“I don’t know the word for it in English,” Sudharshan told him. “I just call him Rudy. He knows his name. They all do.”
Dad poured chai for himself and Sudharshan. As he lifted the teapot, his biceps swelled against the rolled-up sleeve of the tight white t-shirt he was wearing. He looked better nowadays, Jerry had to admit. He hadn’t heard his dad complain once about his bunions. Blunt-toed army boots had replaced the pointy Italian leather shoes. Well-worn jeans sat better on his hips than the polyester dress pants that used to be his uniform. His gut had shrunk. It was now just this cute little suggestion of paunch, yet another manly bulge beneath his form-fitting t-shirts. A chain of fat silver beads encircled his neck. They shone against the warm yellow-br
own of his skin. Jerry wondered where the tiny gold cross on its sallow gold chain had gone. The stiff brush cut in which Dad now wore his black hair suited his solid, square face. The lines in the corners of his eyes were the friendly signs of someone who smiled a lot, not the creases with which Jerry’d become familiar as a child; the disappointment and anger that had once been incised there. Now Dad’s brown eyes were happy. Who was this man?
Dad offered Sudharshan the cup of chai along with a tender gaze. Jerry felt a lump forming in his solar plexus. The mug disappeared behind Sudharshan’s long, wide hands. There was just a little bit of yellow china gleaming out from between his fingers. He sipped from his cupped hand. The colour of the mug made his chin glow. Jerry thought of butter, of chocolate brownies, warm and sweet in the mouth. He pushed the thought away. Sandor thought it was all very cute. Your dad’s one of the boys now, he’d said. Hey—maybe the two of them can come to the Box with us some day. Jerry’d told him to shut the fuck up.
“Eclipse soon,” Sudharshan said. “You going to watch it?”
“That’s why I came,” Jerry reminded him. “That’s why you invited me.” His dad only looked at Sudharshan, stricken.
“Where will you go?” Dad asked Sudharshan.
“I thought we’d go up onto the roof,” Sudharshan replied. “We can see the sky more clearly from there.”
His face remained open, friendly, but Jerry’d been looking at his dad, so he knew that Sudharshan hadn’t answered the question Dad had asked. Dad stared into his mug like someone had hidden the sun in there. He looked up at Jerry, baring a too-bright smile. “Hey, Jer; you seen my Monstera?”
“Say what?”
Dad pointed to a shady corner of the apartment. Sure enough, there was a Swiss cheese plant there, a static explosion of large, oval leaves riddled with holes. Jerry hadn’t really noticed it before, huddled in the dark like that. “Wouldn’t it be better in the sun, Dad, like the rest of the plants?”
Dad sucked back the rest of his chai, put the cup down. He had an angry look. He pointedly didn’t direct it to Sudharshan. “It prefers to have its roots in the shade. But it gets more than enough sun. Look at where it’s growing to.”
With his eyes, Jerry followed the trailing growth of the plant. It had made its way along the bottom of the wall to the big picture window, and sure enough, was climbing to the light, using a thick, succulent tree in a pot there as its ladder. The leaves of the Monstera were so mixed in with the leaves of the tree that Jerry couldn’t tell what the tree was.
“It’s a banana plant,” Sudharshan told him. The Monstera needs it, but it’s strangling it. I’ll have to have my cousin get me a new one.”
Dad reached for Sudharshan’s hand, but Sudharshan pulled away. “Delicious,” Sudharshan said. “The chai, I mean. It was perfect, lover.” He smiled at Dad, hesitated, took the outstretched hand, kissed it. The longing on Dad’s face! And now Jerry was afraid, like when he was a kid. Like when his parents would fight, and then try not to fight, try to make up, but one of them would be closed, arms folded, the light shut from their face, and the other would look with longing, would try to touch, would be rebuffed and then finally taken in again, reluctantly, and the child Jerry would feel relief, but with a hard little stone of fear left there, below his breastbone.
“Isn’t it about time for that eclipse?” he asked Dad and Sudharshan. In his cage, peeled Rudy screamed and flapped his raw limbs, swinging back and forth on his little trapeze.
Sudharshan checked his watch. “Yes, soon.” He went to a beautiful pale wooden cabinet, all carved—the doors looked like strips of bamboo—and got out three pairs of goggles. The eyepieces had a funny gold sheen to them. “Welders’ glasses,” he said. “Rated safe for looking at the sun.” He handed one to Jerry.
“I’m not coming,” Dad told them. He sat at the table, mug in his hands, staring at the window where the banana and the Monstera plants wrestled.
Sudharshan just stood there, looking at Dad. His face did something complicated, moved through shock and sadness to an unbending calm. “Carlos,” he said softly, “don’t you want to see what happens? I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
“Why?” Jerry asked. “Where’re you going?”
“He’s leaving me,” Dad told Jerry.
“I am not.” Sudharshan went to the front door, began pulling on his boots. “I’ll come back.”
“When?” Dad asked.
Sudharshan reached into the hallway closet, pulled out a long, black wool coat. He shrugged into it, stuck the two pairs of goggles into a pocket. “As soon as I can, lover.”
“Where are you going?” Jerry asked again. Rudy swung harder and harder on his trapeze, warbling a harsh and complicated song. Sudharshan reached into the closet, pulled out something round and shiny, about the size of a Frisbee.
“I’m travelling for work. I have to go.”
“You’re leaving me.”
“What’s that thing you’re holding?” Jerry asked. What in hell was going on?
“If you don’t come outside with me now, we won’t be able to say goodbye.”
“You’re leaving after the eclipse?” Jerry asked. Rudy hit an ear-piercing note. Dad’s eyes were wet with tears. Sudharshan walked over to him, touched his shoulder.
“Please, Carlos. It’s about to happen. Please come.”
“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Jerry said. They didn’t even look at him. Dad stood, got his coat, a sexy biker jacket in heavy brown cowhide. Jerry hated it that his dad looked sexy.
“Let’s go,” Dad said. “Jerry, why’re you just standing there?”
Sudharshan did something to make the gold disc disappear into the inside pocket of his coat. It should have been too big to fit. Jerry slipped into his own coat, and when he turned back, Sudharshan had Rudy out of the cage again. He put the bird inside his coat and cinched the belt of the coat tight. Rudy shifted around inside, stuck his creepy little head out. “Ready?” Sudharshan asked.
“You’re taking Rudy to see the eclipse? Won’t it damage his eyes?”
“He’ll be okay,” Dad told him. “Come on.”
As Sudharshan unlocked the front door, Jerry’s eyes fell on the picture window. The Monstera was fruiting. The spike that it thrust up towards the light would plump. In a year, it would be a scaly fruit with pale yellow flesh. It would taste delicately sweet to some, like a mix of banana and pineapple. To others, it would irritate their throats and make them cough in vain efforts to dislodge the miniscule hairs with which the fruit was filled.
The three men and the bird went out into the hallway of the apartment building, heading for the elevator. Jerry remembered something. “Dad? I thought that Monstera never fruits if you grow it in a pot?”
Grumpily, Dad replied, “Strange things happen around Sudharshan.”
In the elevator, no one spoke. Rudy peered around him with interested, birdseed eyes. Jerry wondered what Sudharshan would do if his pet pooped in his coat.
They stepped out onto the roof. The cold, bluish light of late afternoon made Jerry squint. There was a fractious wind. It poked fingers down his collar, up his sleeves. “There’s the sun,” Sudharshan said, pointing.
“I know where the sun is,” Dad responded. But he didn’t look where his lover was pointing. Instead he went to the side and looked over. They were thirty-two floors up. There was a ledge, but it’d be easy to leap. Jerry moved towards his dad.
“Carlos, come over here and put your goggles on,” Sudharshan said. “You too, Jerry.”
Rudy punctuated the command with a high note. Both Jerry and his dad obeyed. The goggles made everything a calm, non-reflective yellow. The sun no longer bit at Jerry’s eyes. Dad looked bug-eyed, strange. Jerry went back to the ledge, looked over. He could see the construction site, the excavator, the gravid tree.
Dad said to Sudharshan, “Aren’t you going to put your glasses on, too?”
“I don’t need them.”
“And did you bring a pair for me?” said a voice from over by the door to the elevator. Jerry looked. It was the man from the street. He tossed the lick of green hair out of his eyes and hitched his way over to Sudharshan, scowling.
Sudharshan only nodded. “Good to see you, Gar. You’ll be fine, you know that.”
“You two know each other, then?” Jerry was way out of his depth. He only wished he knew whose waters he was floundering in.
Gar regarded him bitterly. “His family knows my family.”
“I’d take care of Gar, if he’d let me,” Sudharshan said.
“I just bet you would.” This from Jerry’s father. “It’s him you’re going away with, isn’t it? The rest was just some story.”
Sudharshan replied, “Carlos, it’s not what you think.” The sky began to darken.
“I don’t know what to believe any more, Vick.”
Vick? Victor? Wasn’t his name Sudharshan?
Dad let go of Sudharshan’s hand. Or Vick, or whoever he was. Dad adjusted his goggles more comfortably on his face. “Gar. That’s your name, right?” he snarled.
“Yeah.”
“Well, you should cover your eyes or something.”
“I’ll be okay,” the young man replied gently. He turned his angry face full on the darkening sun. Jerry was frightened. People went blind like that, staring at eclipses.
“Hey, Gar,” he whispered, but the young man ignored him.
A whistling sound came from the front of Sudharshan’s coat. Rudy worked his way right out into the open, and with a happy warble, jumped onto Gar’s shoulder. Gar looked to see what had landed on him, and his face softened. “Hi there, little brother,” he said to the bird. He reached an open palm to Rudy, who leapt into it, chirping. The bird nibbled lightly at one of Gar’s fingers, a gesture of avian affection. Gar grinned broadly down at Rudy, then up at Jerry. “He’s just a fucking little sport, isn’t he? He and I.”
Falling in Love With Hominids Page 17