by Lynn Coady
It’s a perfect day for hating, the hangover shaping itself into a thundercloud behind my eyes, and I take my seat in the back rows, primed for hatred, ready to seethe and writhe. Seethe and writhe—this reminds me of how I used to mishear the national anthem when I was a kid. Only a geek who read dictionaries for fun would misinterpret such a simple construction as “we see thee rise” as “we seethe and writhe,” but the thee threw me off, and that’s what I thought it was for years. With glowing hearts, we seethe and writhe, our true north strong and free.
Creighton’s wearing his signature white shirt and a skinny Texas-oilman tie, but today, perhaps since he’s in his academic’s hat, we’re favoured with the requisite tweed sports jacket. Once the bifocals get positioned just above the pinkish bulb of his nose, the professorial picture is complete.
So where’s the hate? By all rights it should be rising like bile at this point, but I can’t seem to really get it going today. My mood is black, no question, but the rest of my being is otherwise exhausted from the surreal excesses of the night before. Maybe my raisin of hatred has been toppled for the time being. Maybe that’s how it works. Maybe different brands of booze knock out different cerebral raisins.
More likely is that I am finding Creighton less obnoxious out of his poet’s hat. He’s talking about Canada today, and how wonderful a place it is. It’s sort of soothing to listen to. Our nation glimmers, he tells us, with potential and cultural distinctiveness. By some, it has been called a “frontier”—and these people mean the word to have less than flattering connotations. But it is indeed a frontier, affirms Creighton. A new frontier, an intellectual frontier, still being shaped by the precious raw materials that we are fortunate enough to claim as our birthright.
Around me, on occasion, I hear sighs. Sighs of boredom, sighs of impatience—the standard thing at lectures. Still, some of the sighs sound more pertinent than others, more deliberate—closer to actual comments. At one point, as Creighton scoldingly asks the students present how many of us plan to do graduate work outside of the country, one sigh comes at me with particular vehemence, and because I feel goosed by the question, I turn around to glare.
White-blue eyes meet mine, smiling, inviting collusion. I glance into the brown ones beside them, and the smile they send me is one of apology. Sitting even farther back than I am. They must have come in late. But why in God’s name would he bring her to this?
Even more surprising, I note another latecomer, lingering in the back doorway, as extreme latecomers often do. Latecomers, but also people with a message to get across. A slouch to the shoulders, a loose, dismissive fold to the arms.
Before I can jerk my face forward again, he catches my eye. Another conspirator’s smile. Another invitation—one I can’t very well turn down.
The first thing I see, after emerging into the hallway after the lecture, is the mind-mussing triad of Jim, Creighton, and Robert A. Sparrow, department head. All of Jim’s poet friends are gigantic like himself. He and Creighton loom over the dainty Sparrow. As I gape, Jim makes introductions, gesturing from one to the other. Sparrow extends a delicate scholar’s hand to the crinkle-eyed Creighton.
The presence of Sparrow is the one force in the universe capable of prying Todd from the orbit of Jim and Creighton. He skulks a few feet away, pinning himself against a wall—seemingly trying to flatten and wriggle himself in behind a bulletin board.
I arrive at Todd before approaching the mirage farther down.
“They shook hands,” Todd whispers. “Just a second ago. Sparrow, like, hailed him. And walked over there. And they shook hands.”
“Well—that’s good,” I say.
Todd shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”
“They’re smiling,” I observe. But are they? Their mouths are smiling—corners turned up. Although Creighton has one of those odd, droll smiles where the corners turn down. But his is not either of the smiles Todd and I are interested in.
“They look like they’re smiling,” I amend.
“They’re putting it on for each other.” Todd sounds like he’s begging. “You can tell they can’t stand each other.”
At the same moment as I take a step forward, Sparrow makes gestures of self-extraction from the triad. He bows toward Creighton, shakes his hand a second time. A quick farewell remark to Jim, who nods—smiling? Smirking? Either way, Sparrow is now fully extracted and hoofing his small-boned way toward Todd and me. Todd pulls his head in like a turtle, turns, and faces the bulletin board. He mutters to himself as if reading, as if it were possible to read documents when they’re shoved practically up your nose.
I do nothing to adjust my naked gape, however. So, unlike Todd, Sparrow takes me into account.
“Hello, Lawrence,” he nods, he slows, but slightly.
“Hi, Sir.”
“You haven’t been to see me of late.”
“No,” I say.
“Make an appointment with Marjorie,” he calls over his shoulder. “We must get caught up.”
Instead, I follow him down the hall. Todd is long gone in the opposite direction.
“Do you have a minute now, Sir?”
“I have a minute. I’m on my way to a meeting—you can walk with me, can you?”
“Sure,” I say. We walk. Down the stairwell—flinging loud, echoing footfalls into the air around us—and out the door. Into the quad, where the freakish warmth of an early thaw hits us.
“This is lovely,” says Sparrow, inhaling rot. “This warm spell we’re having.”
I look around at the bare trees, the yellow grass. “It’ll be depressing,” I remark, “when the cold hits again.”
“Never,” avows Sparrow. “I can’t believe that winter ever was.”
“One of the worst blizzards I ever saw,” I tell him, “was in late April, after everything had melted. Birds were back, crocuses were coming up. Knocked out the phones and electricity for weeks.”
Sparrow laughs at me. “Do stop, Lawrence,” he entreats. “You’ll have me heading straight for the English stairwell.”
That’s the Westcock euphemism for suicide.
I walk Sparrow across the quad to the Administration building without managing to make any further conversation.
“Well—here we are,” he prompts. He turns to me in front of the building’s Gothic double doors.
“How did you like the talk, Sir?” I ask, voice girlish with a strained attempt at casualness.
Sparrow’s eyes flutter behind his glasses. Often when we speak I’ve noticed I find myself wishing he’d take off his glasses. Sometimes I twitch to simply lean forward and bat them off his face.
“The talk?” repeats Sparrow.
“The lecture,” I say.
“Oh, just now, you mean! Well, I found it very interesting, Lawrence.”
Sparrow’s eyes are a dark, muddy blue, if that’s possible. Blue murk, like the marsh from a distance on the clearest of days. And he’s shorter than me, too. I’ve never noticed that before.
“Did you,” I say. “Do you think it’s accurate? What Creighton said?”
“Mister Creighton? Oh yes, I suppose he did make some good points.”
Sparrow glances at his right wrist, which is bare. He frowns slightly, then raises his left, which sports a watch. Sparrow beams down at it like you would a newborn babe.
“Ah, I’m late,” he coos. “I must be off, Lawrence.”
All of a sudden, I’m Slaughter. I’m my cousin Wayne. That is to say, a dumb bloodlust descends and I want nothing more than to grab that bird-boned wrist of his. Sparrow is a shrimp! I could take him. I could yank his wrist behind his back, and up, up, up, until he squealed. Then might be the time to inquire why he’s been waving his Oxford bullshit under my nose these past few months—simultaneously shooing me off poetry like a fly from a pie.
“But,” I say, wringing my hands to keep them from flying out at him. “I mean … do you think that’s something I should be thinking about? What Creighton s
aid, about not doing graduate work in Canada?”
Sparrow hauls on one of the double doors, grunting slightly with the effort. He looks like a child in a fairy tale—Jack sneaking into the giant’s castle.
“Indeed, indeed,” he tells me, nodding with vehemence. “He’s absolutely right. There’s no point doing graduate work in Canada. None at all, just as the man said. But do come see me before exams, Lawrence.”
His voice is echoing now, throughout the lobby of Administration. “We’ll talk about your course load for next year.”
The door heaves itself shut between us.
I don’t know what it is, but I go directly home after this conversation. I sit down at the typewriter without taking off my jacket or boots, type up a bunch of my new ghazals, and put them in an envelope addressed to Dermot Schofield at Ralston University. I walk to the post office and, on impulse, fork over some extra coin to send the letter express. Not just to expedite things, but because I know it will make the missive look like something official—something far too important to pass on to the lowly likes of Joanne or one of her fellow editorial barracudas.
Now it’s Friday night and I still feel hungover from Wednesday. It’s the oddest hangover so far. I haven’t felt sick. What I feel is decelerated, like a movie in slo-mo. Minutes drag. Walking home from campus, I noticed how the wind seemed to crawl up my body like a big, sun-stupefied lizard. I forget about my kettle, it takes so long to boil. Big Blue refuses to steep.
In particular, my thought process. I dwell. I linger. I’m not able to yank my thoughts up and away from a particular notion in my usual yo-yo-like fashion. It’s a handy skill of self-preservation, the ability to bounce one’s thoughts away from unsavoury truths like a flea escaping a looming thumb. That’s what I’ve been doing a lot of lately. Not much dwelling. Very little lingering. And now that the hangover has forced the condition on me—made measured thought compulsory—I understand why.
Because there’s this bland checklist in my head. I always make checklists when I’m studying—it’s the final step of my overall regimen, which begins with the taking of detailed notes in class that I write out over and over again in my notebooks, gradually trimming the information of any superfluous detail, so that eventually all I have left on the page are a series of points. A list. Gleaming gems of information, polished into the perfection of a mere handful of words. Concepts, dense with meaning. Study-poems.
Because apparently my subconscious has been honing all the experiences of the past few months down into a similar kind of list, just waiting for the right moment to present it—neatly typed, in point form, unassailable—to my conscious mind.
Because it’s like this:
• The head of my department, upon whose good graces my potential academic career hangs, is either malicious or dense—one or the other.
• I had some sort of sexual congress with my first cousin on Wednesday night.
• This is something hillbillies do.
• I think the poetry of Abelard Creighton is a joke.
• Jim Arsenault doesn’t think the poetry of Abelard Creighton is a joke.
• I think Jim Arsenault is a genius.
• I want to be a good poet. I want to be a genius.
• I have no idea what good poetry is.
• I know what I like. This is the cry of the dilettante.
• Dilettante: n: A dabbler in the arts, or field of knowledge. See amateur.
Furthermore:
• If Jim Arsenault is a genius, then I need Jim Arsenault to take me seriously as a poet.
• I need Jim Arsenault to love me.
• Because that will mean I have worth. That will mean there is a point. That will mean I am not a PEI hillbilly going hyuck-hyuck, chawing on a sprig of hay (or in my case maybe a hunk of raw potato), and poking around with his first cousin.
• It will mean, instead, that I am a free spirit, an iconoclast, a brilliant, unfettered Dionysian soul from admittedly humble means—which makes my literary ascendancy all the more astonishing.
• The Real Thing.
• The truth I am not.
Finally:
• Jim Arsenault has been messing around with my grades. With my head. With my poetry.
• There is no possible universe wherein the above could be interpreted as gestures of esteem.
33.
AT CREIGHTON’S RECEPTION, Todd and I stand on either side of a table eating steadily from a plate heaped with cheese cubes, as though we are in competition. I use a toothpick to spear them one by one, but Todd just stands gobbling the cheese by the handful. If it were a competition, he’d be winning.
“Corpse of milk,” I say after a moment or two. Watching Todd has subdued my interest in the cheese somewhat.
“Whaf?” says Todd behind his hand.
“Cheese,” I say. “Joyce.”
Todd chews and swallows before replying. “Joyce,” he sneers.
“He’s an Irishman,” I say. “Catholic boy like yourself. Doesn’t he win any points there?”
“The Irish don’t even like him,” Todd says. “Most of them don’t even know who he is.”
His teeth are bright orange. I look away, around.
Creighton’s final reading was an embarrassment for all concerned, though no one has acknowledged it, and Jim and the visiting poet himself seem genuinely oblivious. Grayson Hall was cavernous in its extreme lack of audience. It’s been renovated to seat a hundred at least. There were about seventeen of us in attendance—the only locals being a smattering of granny types. Old ladies in their hats and gloves, desperate for diversion, something to nibble at their intelligences besides doilies and church. Mrs. Dacey not among them.
By the entrance, Sherrie is quietly tearing a strip off Charles Slaughter, who stands with his arms folded, staring grimly ahead like one of the Queen’s guards at Buckingham Palace. The reading was a particular embarrassment to Sherrie, because Slaughter lumbered in about halfway through and started belching her name. Her other name.
“Mittens. Mitts! Mitts, Mitts! Mittens!” The belching tone, I could only assume, was Slaughter’s attempt at a whisper.
Creighton had stopped reading and given a baleful crinkle. A fart in church—that’s exactly what it was like. Well, that went over like a fart in church, my mother used to say in moments of social indecorum.
“It would seem someone’s mittens are lost,” the poet remarked. Tart, puckered lips. Another expression of my parents’ drifted to mind—my father this time: Mouth on him like a hen’s hole.
I hadn’t been expecting it, Dad’s voice, Dad’s words, so clear and wry—which made things worse for Sherrie when I burst out laughing. Her hands went red and she scrambled down the aisle, hunkering down, practically crawling on all fours.
Todd notices me watching the pair of them and turns to look for himself, grinning when he takes into account the pissed-off hunch to Sherrie’s shoulders. Whatever she’s been saying has finally penetrated Slaughter’s demeanour—he glares around the room like a bouncer seeking provocation. Waiting for someone to slip up, be bad.
Todd smirks around his cheese, blowing crumbs. “Never thought I’d see a guy that big so whipped.”
“Claude didn’t even bother to come,” I note after a while.
“Claude,” says Todd, the same way he said Joyce. Which makes me a little jealous of Claude.
Dink-dink-dink! A sound reaches us. Dink-dink-dink! Jim stands shoulder to shoulder with Creighton alongside the table where Creighton has been swapping books for cash. Every granny now has a signed copy tucked into her bag.
Dink-dink-dink! Jim is tapping on a wine glass with a knife, so hard it makes me cringe.
“Shh!” scolds a granny, and everyone does.
“Everybody!” says Jim. “Well, now. I just wanna thank you all for coming tonight to this very special event, and I’d like you to join me in thanking Abe Creighton for a wonderful week—for having enlightened and entertained us. This guy
, I think you’ll agree, this guy talks a lot about cultural resources. Well, he’s one of the richest founts we have.”
Everyone smiles and heh-hehs and then, at Jim’s instigation, we clap. It was a clumsy remark, delivered like a joke, cueing laughter as opposed to eliciting it. But Jim’s mood, Jim’s smile, is not to be denied. It’s grown a bit goofy in the last half hour or so. There is something in the air, tickling everyone’s expectations like a communal sneeze.
“Jim’s looped,” Todd mutters with approval.
“Thank you,” Creighton calls around to us, raising hands like the pope. He turns to Jim in the wake of applause and gives his shoulder a squeeze, speaking into his ear. Jim nods and signals for quiet.
“All right,” says Jim. “To hell with it. It’s a bit early to be making this announcement, but I look around and I see I’m among friends. Good friends—some of the best I’ve ever had. It’s been a rough few months for me, as most of you are aware. But even such trying times as these—you know—it makes you realize there’s a reason for everything. You learn, under this kind of pressure, and you learn fast. I learned who my friends were, and that’s been invaluable and heartening—very heartening I’d like to say. That’s what got me through this very difficult year: your friendship.”
The grannies, who have no idea what he’s talking about, are nonetheless transfixed. When we break into applause, it’s a granny who’s initiated it.
Smiles all around. Jim’s teeth, Creighton’s teeth (yellowed, like his hair), and, a few feet away, Dekker’s teeth. Dekker knows what’s coming, I can tell. There’s not a hint of expectancy on his face, which is more relaxed than I think I’ve ever seen it in Jim’s presence.
Ruth Dekker hasn’t bothered to put in an appearance either. Ruth and Claude. They’re the only two people who can make themselves more present in their absences.
“Listen, I’m lousy at giving speeches, so I’ll get to the meat of this thing,” Jim continues once the cheers have died. It’s fortunate the lobby of Grayson Hall is more cloistered that the auditorium—the cheers possess power, conviction. I don’t like to think how mewling they would have sounded within. Creighton’s applause had come across like splatters of paint hitting the ground.