by Lynn Coady
“I’m here,” I say, “To see how you’re doing, Jim. I’m just here to say hello and get caught up.”
Jim looks up again—it’s an awful glance, like a kicked dog expecting more of the same. I can’t believe he’d look at me like that. He exhales a breath and sinks a little in his chair.
“Oh well, you know how it can be after the holidays around here. A bit—a bit deathly.”
“Stark,” I say. “I always find this time of year so stark.”
Jim runs his hands along the edge of his desk—away from each other, and then together again. It is a shy sort of gesture, which startles me.
“Stark,” he whispers to the desk. “Jesus, you got that right, kiddo.”
My next question is a gamble—but better to get it over with than let the topic fester in the air between us.
“How was your holiday, by the way, Jim?”
He’s in the middle of running his hands along the desk’s edge some more. Halfway through, when his hands are as far apart as they can get without falling off the ends, his eyes slide up to meet mine.
“Not bad, Larry. Thanks for asking. Not too-too bad.”
“Did you and Moira go anywhere, or—?”
“No, no,” says Jim. “Stayed put. Neither of us is all that close with our families. Moira’s youngest brother stopped in.” Jim shakes his head. “Drunk. Made a fool of himself as usual.”
Another quick glance from Jim. Did I say shy? Perhaps I meant sly. He smiles. I smile bigger.
“You know my cousin?” I say, seizing on the topic of family. “You know how I told you my cousin was pregnant and my family was freaking out?”
Jim frowns. “I believe you mentioned that, yes.”
I hesitate, remembering that when I mentioned this, it was of course the night of Dekker’s party, walking home from the bootleggers’. I remember I introduced the topic as a way of changing the subject—a last-ditch means of distracting Jim from all the betrayals, all the lies, all the rocks to be pushed up all the hills.
It’s possible, because of how drunk he was, that Jim has no memory of any of this and doesn’t know what I’m talking about—that he is pretending to. Either way, I launch into the story of Janet. I do my jowl-quivering impression of Grandma Lydia for him. I talk movingly of Uncle Stan shaking his head back and forth. Then Janet in Little Billy’s, confessing to me all her stunning lies, her Machiavellian manoeuvres. I wave my hands until Jim’s leaning forward, smiling. I don’t stop until the two of us are laughing, until Jim is shaking his own head in amazement and disbelief. Until I’m certain he has shaken off his mistrust and reserve. Until I find myself feeling tired, maybe even a little resentful of the effort, trying to remember what it is I did wrong, what exactly I’m trying to atone for.
Not five minutes after leaving Jim’s office, the magic sheen of my day is forcibly, physically explained to me by a wave of nausea that descends like a black bird. There’s a moment where I can almost see it approaching in the distance. The potato chips I grabbed for lunch rumble emptily in my gut. Acid gurgles up around them and saliva spurts beneath my tongue. I remember as a kid in springtime, walking down the path from Grandma Lydia’s to the beach, being cawed at by nesting crows. The whole way there, I’d be terrified as they swooped directly at my head, veering off only at the last possible minute. That’s what it’s like, this thing coming at me, this thing I know has no intention of veering off at the last minute. This thing is my hangover, delayed. I’ve been having such a good day because I’ve been residually drunk all morning.
I bolt into a washroom and retch nothing but bile and chips. A couple of guys at the urinals laugh and provide uninspired commentary—“Whoa! Rough night, buddy?”—until they get bored and maybe start to feel guilty.
I close my eyes and hold some tissue to my nose to act as a smell-filter. I try to think about this morning’s snowflakes, clean and white. I think of Dermot Schofield’s reedy poet’s voice, so comfortable and far away across the whirring wires.
But what I see is Jim’s face—transformed and animated thanks to me, all my painstaking effort. Him opening his blinds, stretching with sudden, startling vigour as the winter sun poured in. I thought he might perform a couple of jumping jacks for a minute there. Instead, he turned to me with a startled look.
By God, Larry, I don’t think we even had a chance to discuss your portfolio, now, have we?
The phlegm had gone completely from his voice.
Well—I realized what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to wave my hand, act unconcerned, and so I did.
No, no, no, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about some of the pieces. Great work, kid. Really.
And going over to one of his shelves, and rifling through his stack of copies.
When we were both in Toronto, said Schofield, we spent a lot of time together. I can’t tell you how much I admired him. The confidence he had even then, in his talent. It was inspiring to me.
And throwing himself back into his chair, tossing his long legs up onto the desk, sending the balls of Kleenex flying on the updraft.
The sequence, he said, flipping pages. The short poems with the similar titles. Some really smart stuff here. “Showdogs”—that was a great one, Larry.
I mentioned “The Ass of the Head.” I said I understood why he hadn’t cared for that one as much.
No, no, it wasn’t that, Larry, I just didn’t feel it had the precision and coherence of the others. It kind of stuck out. Plus, to be honest, it was the more suitable piece for discussing in class. More meat on it. But I liked it, I really did. He raised his head, cocked it at me. I knew that cock. I knew that look. Throw the ball, it said. I’m waiting.
Why would you think I didn’t like it, Larry?
We’d go out, said Schofield, and he could be so crazy. He could—it never occurred to him he should have to hold himself back, and at first that was wonderful, in a way. Exhilarating to behold when you’re a young man. It’s precisely the way you think a genius should be.
Well, I said, and I knew what I was supposed to say. My grade.
Blank look. But you got an A.
Then I was supposed to act a little shy and shamefaced. I was supposed to shrug apologetically. I was supposed to explain to Jim I hadn’t, in fact, gotten an A.
At that point, Jim was supposed to look appalled, yank open a drawer, and withdraw the folder he kept his marks in. Flip it open. Run his finger down the page. And finally smile with relief—shooting me a mock-scolding look: Naughty-naughty. Playing games are we?
It’s an A, Larry. Broad grin. Right here in black and white, kid.
I ad libbed at this point. I argued a bit with Jim. I insisted my mark had been a B—it was written on my portfolio.
It was? Were there any other comments?
No, there hadn’t been any other comments.
It was a mistake, kiddo. I mistook your portfolio for someone else’s. Sorry about that—it’s a crazy time of year with all the marking. Must have given you a scare, though!
Yes, it had given me a scare.
It’s a good thing you came in. I bet some poor kid thinks he got your A. I should double-check with everyone. I watched Jim scribble himself a note and stick it in the folder before shoving the whole thing back into his top drawer.
What I wasn’t supposed to do was jump to my feet and yell, What the hell is going on? I wasn’t supposed to kick the toilet-chair over to one side, or reach over and topple Jim’s haystack of papers. I wasn’t supposed to grab him by the shirt, or shout in his face, or yank the top drawer from his desk to see my original grade for myself. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to do any of those things. And of course, I didn’t.
I was feeling a little queasy at that point anyway; there was a heaviness settling itself inside my head. All the toppled raisins were ballooning to full strength at once.
After a while, said Dermot Schofield. After a while, though—I don’t know. I was tired. Just take care of yourself, Larry, okay? It�
��s as important as anything else.
I stood and smiled, went to shake Jim’s hand, but got pulled into his musty chest for a moment instead. He bashed a hand between my shoulder blades a few times then set me loose with a light, companionable shove toward the door. The raisins swelled and strained—a million frog’s eggs popping open deep in the marsh’s awakening depths. In the distance, a black-winged shadow getting ready to dive.
4
we seethe and writhe
28.
JIM SHOWS UP in class every week, comb ruts dug across his scalp. He introduces us to a new form called the ghazal, which is basically a series of unrhyming couplets, and shows us some very old Persian translations as well as a couple of modern examples by a poet named Jim Harrison, who is wonderful. I try to keep from getting too excited. It’s one of the loveliest forms I’ve seen. It’s muscular and vague all at once—Potent yet airy, says Jim. I like it so much I want it to be just mine. I don’t ever want to write anything else. I have this childish urge to stand up in the middle of the class and insist that no one else be allowed to experiment with this form. Where does it come from, I wonder, that mean human desire to keep all the most beautiful things to yourself?
My immediate urge following Jim’s class is to run to Carl’s, order one of their bottomless pots of tea, and work on ghazals for the rest of the day—an urge I mercilessly squelch, forcing my feet in the direction of the library. It’s frustrating that Jim would hit me with this now, considering my new resolution to back off from poetry for the time being and turn my attention to something I’m actually good at: school. The new plan is to stay in on weekends in order to save money, study, and—only on weekends—work on my poems. Nothing but schoolwork during the week. But it’s as if Jim has intuited my new resolve and is trying to tempt me back into the fold, like someone waving a drink in front of a reformed alcoholic.
This has all come out of my most recent meeting with Sparrow, whom I went to see not long after my makeup session with Jim. I asked him to tell me more about what I would need to get into Oxford. Sparrow’s eyebrows had performed an exultant swoop or two before settling into a no-nonsense furrow.
“Of course, it’s no small matter, you understand, Lawrence. It has to be nothing but the canon from here on in, yes? Nothing but serious scholarship. If you want to apply somewhere like Oxford“—and only here did Sparrow allow his eyebrows another upward spurt, uttering the sacred name like any other man would utter titties—”your … other interests may have to take a back seat for a while.”
I nodded. Sparrow watched me nod, a clinical look to his eyes. It was as if he had injected me with something—some kind of drug, or poison—and was tracking its effects.
Everybody else is organizing everything—it feels almost as if they’ve intuited my new regime and have helpfully, wordlessly picked up the slack. Dekker has been helping Jim with our second poetry reading of the year, which has suddenly become a big deal because the guest poet, Abelard Creighton, has of late been awarded some sort of poetry prize by the city of Toronto. In class, Jim pointed out the irony of this—the fact that Creighton winning a Toronto award was national news but if someone from out here won a Charlottetown award or a Fredericton award it would be considered irrelevant to the country as a whole. Still, you could tell Jim was pleased. Dekker confided to me that Creighton was an old mentor of Jim’s. His award made Jim look good in the eyes of the department, because Jim had fought to get Creighton invited.
“He insisted,” Dekker recalled. “He told us when he was hired that there was a handful of writers in this country whose work was absolutely crucial, and he said in a few years they would be so prominent as to be beyond our reach. He said if the English Department genuinely cared about the literary innovations of today it would make a concerted effort to get people like Schofield and Creighton out here.”
Dekker told me this at the Stein, where the student poetry reading—organized entirely by Sherrie—was being held. He sat looking dreamy, telling me about the days after Jim had been hired, the promise perfuming the air. I was glad to hear him speaking of Jim with as much affection as ever. They had both forgotten Christmas—at least it looked as if they had. Just like it probably looked as if I had, too.
“I’m thinking this gets Jim back some of his credibility,” Dekker confided. “I hope it will have reminded the department why they hired him in the first place.”
“What’s Creighton like?”
“Older guy,” said Dekker, “A staunch nationalist from what I understand—he’s published essays dealing with culture and national identity.”
A sigh interrupted us. We looked over and were surprised by the person of Ruth. She’d been talking to Sherrie, but Sherrie must have gone off to get another drink, and so Ruth had sidled noiselessly across the bench to join us. She was on my side of the table, her ass only inches away from mine. I could scarcely believe I had been sitting that close to a warm, breathing presence and not realized it.
Ruth’s sigh was not like Moira’s. Moira sighed as punctuation to something she had already said. Ruth sighed in statements, declarations. She sighed to announce herself.
“Pardon, love?” said Dekker, inclining his bristly chin.
“Nationalism,” said Ruth. “The ultimate colonial giveaway.”
“Ah, Ruth,” said Dekker, actually turning his head 90 degrees away from her. And so Ruth looked my way.
“Should a country wish to announce itself as a backwater,” she said, gazing at me the way you might a blank wall, a void surface, “should a country wish to flaunt its insecurities—indulge in nationalism.”
Up until about then, I had been feeling well-disposed toward Ruth because Ruth was one of the only people present at our reading who wasn’t a student. Sparrow didn’t come, although I left a message with him through Marjorie—casually adding that Marjorie herself was more than welcome, should she be free. Of course I didn’t expect the blowsy Marjorie with her brood of children waiting at home to take me up on the invitation. But I had thought Sparrow might show. I’d thought Jim might, too. I had even, in all my deluded idiocy, imagined my reading might somehow bring the two together in their swelling pride and appreciation of a shared protégé. I would stand motionless, reciting under a spotlight, and they would stand rapt on opposite sides of the dead-silent room, lost in the power of my words. Through this transcendent experience, they would gradually come to realize how similar they both were, how much they had in common, how ultimately they both wanted the same thing—my success and well-being. I imagined one striding up to the other—probably Sparrow, the first move would be his—hand extended. Professor … Jim. You should be proud. And Jim grasps the smaller man’s hand with firm, resolute dignity. The pride is ours to share, Sir. Their eyes blaze into one another’s—dark into light. Afire with emotion, understanding, and mutual respect. Hostilities melt into nothing, swords are turned into ploughshares, and—it’s spring. A million flowers burst from the dead earth.
But neither of them came, and so I was left shouting about showdogs and pinpricks over a bunch of girls who I later found out had been sitting there drinking in celebration of someone’s birthday since four in the afternoon. I was the first to read, since we went in alphabetical order, and the microphone wasn’t working. I recited two poems through the indignity of ongoing girl-shrieks and giggles—one of them growing so bold as to yell, “Show us your thing!”—before sitting down in disgust.
Claude sauntered to the stage afterward, pausing to speak to the bartender, who made some vaguely technical motions with his hands. Claude fiddled with the mic, tapped it, blew, and finally wiggled the cord. The cord-wiggling was what did it, and unbelievably, all his fiddling around up there had managed to attract the interest of the whole room. By the time Claude was ready to read, everyone present was ready to listen. Even the sounds of the birthday girls had descended to intrigued murmurs.
“He’s got presence,” Ruth Dekker leaned over to say to Sherrie.
<
br /> “I think we should have gotten an MC,” I announced to no one. “We should get an MC next time, to introduce people.”
“I’m sorry, Lawrence,” whispered Sherrie, because apparently Claude’s presence and the power of his work demanded hush, working microphone or no. “Do you want to go up again?”
I glanced around to see if anyone was looking at me, if anyone was showing a particular lively interest in what my response would be. My gaze collided with the smiling eyes of Todd. I turned back to the stage and forced a yawn.
“I’m fine.”
“I don’t say this to be disparaging,” continued Ruth. “We are from a colony as well, after all.”
I glanced over at Dekker to gauge his willingness to re-enter the conversation. But Dekker’s neck was actually straining—I could see the tendons bulge beneath his stubble—so vigorously had he turned his face from Ruth.
“I don’t think we really see ourselves as colonists anymore,” I remarked. “I mean, my grandmother will talk about ‘the empire’ from time to time …”
“You can never underestimate the deep-seatedness of the colonial mindset,” Ruth interrupted.
I craned my own neck around the bar, perhaps not as casually as courtesy would dictate.
Blessedly, Ruth excused herself to lumber off toward the ladies’ room, man-hands swinging like dual pendulums. Heads turned to follow her height and shining blondeness—male and female heads alike. Ruth too had presence.
“Lawrence,” Dekker called, causing me to look up. I realized as I did that I had been sitting there feeling somewhat gut-punched.
“Ruth didn’t mean to be insulting. She’s homesick.”
I nodded again. Was I insulted? Todd would be insulted—he’d be apoplectic. Not so much at the suggestion that Canada is a backwater, but at the insinuation that there’s anything wrong with that. But I wasn’t Todd. Hadn’t I shaken off such provincialism, placed myself above it? Wasn’t I going to Oxford?