Bullet Train
Harold
when Harold was a boy, he drowned his sorrow by flying kites. In the mornings, he pedaled his bike out along the residential streets where the winter drizzle made the asphalt shine. He biked under the streetlamps, through the rain puddles, all the way to the lake. On the grass, he slid off and left the bike lying on its side, the front wheel still spinning.
Harold unraveled the line. He ran and looked backwards. He was good at keeping it up, good at angling it over the lake. The kite shouldered left then straightened out. Harold put some slack on the line, then pulled it taut. And all the time he thought about the rain, or when the lake would freeze over, or how his mother kept spare change in a red metal box. He wondered how far down in the ocean he’d have to swim to see phosphorescence with his own two eyes. He could swim forever, he thought. From this side of Trout Lake to the other, and back again. His dad was a fine swimmer too; he always mentioned how he used to swim competitively, back in his university days. But that was long ago, too long to count. Donkeys years, his dad would say.
After half an hour, he let the kite down, watched it fall in slow motion to the lake. Then he reeled it in fast, just like fishing. Watched it tear across the surface of the water. Right until it bumped against Harold’s shoes. He gathered it up and held it in his arms, the bright yellow fabric still damp.
On the way home, he dodged between cars, pedaling so fast little droplets of water shot off the handlebars and off the wet tires. Right up the alley to the front door, where he dropped his bike in the grass and pounded up the steps, the kite in his hands, right into the coffee-smelling kitchen and his dad’s Famous Breakfast. Famous, his dad said, because it was as dull as dull could be. Two pieces of toast each, and a bowl of lumpy oatmeal.
His dad leaned down to pat his head and then they sat across the table from each other, gulping breakfast down before his dad hurried out the door and off to work.
Harold was nine years old and he felt he was living life on his tiptoes. One morning, he crept downstairs to put the coffee on. He tried to move as softly as he could past his mother’s bedroom. The door was slightly ajar and he could see the narrow outline of her body beneath the blankets. In the kitchen, he stepped over his dad, who was lying on his back, head and torso under the sink, taking the pipes apart. Harold made coffee and his dad yelled out, “Don’t make it so damn weak this time!”
And Harold thought of his grandmother, her soft, wrinkled arms and watery eyes. He thought of snow falling on Trout Lake, how it melted on the surface of the water. He thought of elephants in the National Geographic, their sad, baggy eyes.
“Get me a glass of water, will you?” His dad’s voice echoed from underneath the sink.
Harold walked to the bathroom and turned on the tap. He thought of dream-catchers, the netting and the beads woven together, holding his most secret wishes.
Sooner or later on the weekends, his father would make him climb the ladder onto the roof. It was a kind of punishment. If Harold forgot to put away the dishes in the dish rack, or if he fell asleep on the couch, as he often did in the afternoons, his dad would lose his temper. He would point his hand towards the roof. “Go think about things. Go sit where I can’t see you.”
This morning, a Saturday, Harold had forgotten to buy milk for the coffee. When his father asked for the money back, Harold couldn’t find it. His father pulled him by the arm onto the back lawn and shoved him up the wooden ladder onto the rooftop. Harold was afraid of heights. He was too terrified to stand so he crouched on all fours. Down below, he could see the neighborhood boys flocking to the back alley, circling the house on their bikes. They turned wheelies in the soft gravel road. “Hey, Harold! You stuck up on the roof again? Can’t get down, can you?” They laughed, tilting their bikes up, hopping them gracefully on the back tires. “Hey, when can I go up on the roof? Is it my turn yet?”
Harold’s father, weeding the garden, laughed out loud. “Only Harold,” he told them, crouched down, his hands full of soil. “Harold’s the one who doesn’t want to be there.”
Harold looked out over the back lawn, at the solid figure of his father pulling up the ground. Nine years old, and all his life he’d been afraid of heights. What he wanted more than anything was to ride his bike up and down the alley, to stand side-by-side in the yard with his father, their four hands full of weeds. On his stomach, he straddled the roof, cheek pressed to the shingles, and thought about the bullet train in Japan, speeding across the country. Cherry blossoms bursting on the street out front. How people described hearts lodged in their throats and he knew that feeling. He missed his mother, missed her like crazy even though she was right there, inside the house. She had a thick braid that swung when she walked. Now, she barely came out of her bedroom at all.
Last week, he had wandered through the house, from room to room, with a pain in his chest. He had gone to his dresser and taken out his clothes, three pairs of pants, a stack of T-shirts, sweaters, socks, and underwear, and laid them in neat piles on the bed. One book, his well-worn encyclopedia. His father came to check on him, and when he saw the piles of clothing, he said, “What’s all this for?”
Harold said, “I’m running away.”
His father leaned against the door frame.
Harold sat beside his clothes. “These are for me to take. I’ll leave the rest in the dresser.”
“Will you be gone long?”
Harold nodded.
“I’ll tell you what,” his father said, clearing a space to sit. “Why don’t you give it a few days? See what happens. I think, maybe, things will get better.” Harold sat tight-lipped. His dad turned around to look at the items of clothing. “Why don’t you put these back in the drawers for now?” He looked at Harold, his expression pained.
Harold did as he was told. When all the lights went out he lay very still in bed, listening for change. Hoping that by morning, she’d be up and about again.
Now, sitting on the roof, watching the neighborhood boys, he stared down at his father leaning forward into the vegetables. Harold thought of all the chance moments, his mother’s car accident, the weakness in her chest, and how she had a cancer there. He always thought that if they let him go free, if he had all the time in the world, he would make himself into a great runner. The kind that ran long marathons, through New York or Chicago, who came to Heartbreak Hill and just kept going. All skin and bones, like his mother said. The kind of boy who, try as he might, could never eat enough to keep himself running.
When it started to rain, Harold’s dad climbed up on the ladder. He leaned forward on the rooftop, chin in his hands. “I know you hate it up here,” his dad said, “but it will make you stronger. No matter what happens to you from now on, you’ll always have this well of strength to draw on.”
Will I, Harold thought. He let his father help him down.
In silence, they made ham sandwiches for lunch. Then they carried them into the living room and ate, plates balanced on their knees. He saw the slope of his father’s shoulders and the stiffness in his knees, and Harold mirrored it back, curving his spine just so, holding his feet slightly apart. If his mother came down the stairs, she would see the two of them and it would make her laugh. Trying to hide it at first, then letting it burst out. “Look at the both of you,” she might say. How he missed her voice. When she walked with him at Trout Lake, when she said to him, “It’s the details, you see. Once you get the details right, it will fly all on its own.” She adjusted his wrist and looked up high, away to the kite he was pulling in. And she threw rocks in the water. And she said he was doing “fine, just fine.” When she died, he would take her red metal box, the one that held her spare change. It was filled to the top and he would always keep it that way, he would never remove a single penny.
When he was ten, Harold experienced what he would come to think of as the turning point of his life. There he was, face-down on the roof. It was months after his mother’s funeral. She had told him tha
t nothing would ever be the same again, saying this in a voice that was like her voice if it had been left outside in the cold all night. It wavered and it was exhausted, but she still smiled at him and told him he was going to be a fine man. Harold had nodded his head, afraid to look at hen He had closed his eyes and pictured his mother walking along beside him at Trout Lake, the two of them holding hands. He looked her straight in the face and said, “I will never forget you.”
Nothing was the same, except here he was again on the roof. It was summer and he could see the waves of heat. They blurred the ground. Down below, his dad sat on a lawn chair, sipping water from a plastic bottle. The shingles on the roof burned Harold’s arms and legs. He felt a wave of sickness passing through his body. He turned over, gingerly, so that he was spreadeagled and facing the sky. An airplane was lowering itself through the clouds. He thought it could see him. It could drop a line and he would catch it, like James Bond. Hold on and swing low across the city. He pictured a flower of skydivers billowing from the plane, the wind pressing their faces into stunned amazement.
Harold turned over and pushed himself up on all fours. He crawled slowly down the slant of the roof. He could no longer see the ground so he kept his eyes on his hands. Nobody was watching him. He crawled backwards, each moment expecting the roof to end. When his body began to slide down, he wasn’t afraid. Even when his elbows bruised off the rain gutter and his arms darted away from his body as if he was coming apart, he wasn’t afraid. This was the end of it, he thought, all the weight of his body left on the roof and the lightest, strongest part of himself tumbling through the air.
Harold opened his eyes and saw the yard and the house. He heard footsteps in the grass. He sat up and saw people running towards him.
For most of his life, Harold will be shy with women. After he moves out of his father’s house, he will keep to himself, making a living by doing repair work and caretaker jobs. Every night for two decades Harold will do one of three things: read, watch television, or listen to the radio. He will take pleasure in the ritual of his day-to-day tasks. Then one day he’ll meet Thea and everything will change.
One day he’ll wake up beside her, in their apartment on the seventeenth floor. He’ll find his mouth open against her neck and he will remind himself of a small animal, dreaming, feeding. In the bedroom, Thea’s daughter Josephine will be listening to music and he’ll listen to her heavy steps back and forth to the kitchen. Harold will surprise even himself. He’ll think, I’ve woken up into a dream. I’ve dreamt up an entire family.
At first, when Thea and her daughter argue, as they often do, Harold will try to remain unobtrusive. He will pretend to read a book. One night, he will sneak a glance at them: Thea, tough as nails, Josephine, emotional and sarcastic. Both of them yelling to kingdom come. Slouched on the Chesterfield, he’ll feel a pang of regret that he hadn’t met Thea fifteen years earlier. Josephine will be the closest thing to his own child he will ever have.
This fight will be worse than the others. Josephine’s eyes will be red and swollen. “I hate it, I hate it here.”
“What has gotten into you? You hardly know this boy.”
“We want to move back east!”
“Over my dead body.”
“Let me go,” Josephine will say, cradling her body in her arms. “Harold, tell her. You understand. Tell her I want to move to Toronto.”
“No! Not with that boy. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. I was just as impulsive as you once.”
“We want to get married.”
“It’s ridiculous! The two of you are still children.”
“Harold!” Thea’s daughter will sink to the floor. “Talk to her. Make her see. He’s moving and I have to go with him. Or else I’ll die. I can’t stand it.”
Harold will stand up and walk towards them. He will remember a magician he saw once lying on a bed of nails, how the magician laughed the whole time. He never even shed a drop of blood. Harold will think that he could do that, if he put his mind to it. All the things that once seemed impossible. He will walk towards his wife and daughter and realize how far away he is from the boy who sat sorrowful on the roof. Hell feel a pain in his heart, reach up to touch it, and Thea will walk across the room to him. His body will be so light shell catch him in her arms. Hell see the look on her face, terrified. Terrified. But not Harold. He will be holding on to her with all his strength.
Thea
When Thea met Harold last year, she was a decade younger than he. Thea worked as an outreach nurse. She drove around in a government van handing out clean needles and condoms and jokingly called herself the Protection Lady. In the van were racks of brochures and pamphlets. She sometimes scribbled notes to Harold on these, grocery lists in the margins of Hep B info sheets.
Thea kept her hair loose, long enough to reach the small of her back. There were fine lines webbing out from the corners of her mouth, streaks of gray in her hair. They radiated from her forehead, single strands that Harold would seek out with his fingers.
“What did you go and do that for?” she asked when Harold plucked one with his thumb and forefinger.
He had a boyish smile. She strung her arms around his waist and they sat on the couch together watching television. They watched The Price Is Right, Thea biting her lip nervously while a middle-aged man swung the big wheel. “Go Big Money,” Thea said, squeezing Harold’s hand. Parked in front of the television, she thought of all her days spent lying on the brown carpet in her parents’ basement, watching Divorce Court and Donahue. When she was sixteen, she used to lie there and plan out the details of her life, what kind of marriage, what kind of children, what kind of person.
Driving with her partner Betty in the outreach van, she kept her eyes on the drug addicts and young girls. The girls seemed to turn old right in front of her. Their skin just dried right out, their hair turned limp. If she were the Pied Piper, she would lead them away from the city, over the Cascade Mountains, down into the idyllic valley. If she hadn’t drowned herself in Donahue episodes when she was a teenager, would she be here now, working these streets? The very idea made Thea laugh. To think that talk shows had shaped her life. It was so ludicrous yet true.
Early in her relationship with Harold, they had driven down to the docks to watch the longshoremen, the Lego blocks of cargo being loaded deep into the freighters. It was a bright afternoon, Thea told him, “I have an excellent memory. It goes with my line of work, I guess. I remember everything someone tells me. I just pack it down. I’ve always been good with secrets.”
“I don’t have any secrets to give you,” Harold said.
She nodded her head. After a moment, she asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” he said. His face was tired and he had grown too skinny for his clothes. They hung in creased folds along his sides.
“Good,” Thea said, grasping his hand. “Because I’ll never, ever forget anything you tell me. I’ll always remember. I’ll always remember everything you tell me.”
Thea came from a good family. Her dad was a lawyer who had a tendency to yell in conversation, “HOW WAS SCHOOL?” he would shout, “DID YOU LEARN ANYTHING AT ALL TODAY?” Her mom, a nurse, curled her body forward as if fearing attack. She whispered to Thea, “Is that lipstick you’re wearing? Who gave you lipstick?” Thea yelled at her dad and whispered at her mom. At sixteen, she diagnosed herself as schizophrenic.
“I’m hearing voices,” she told her father.
“WHAT?”
“I’m hearing voices.” She danced around like a witch. “Boo! Boo! You know, voices.”
“RIDICULOUS!”
Her mom puttered around the kitchen, lips puckered in a constant “Shhh.”
Thea developed a booming voice. She had to just to make herself heard. Dinner conversation was warfare.
“You wouldn’t believe how much I paid for this asparagus —”
“PASS IT OVER!”
“—per pound. Isn’t the world crazy?”
> “Here, Dad. Have them all”
“You won’t believe what the supermarket girl said to me —”
“IS THAT THE CHECK-OUT GIRL WITH THE LAZY EYE?”
“She said I should just climb down off my wallet and get in line behind everybody else. Can you believe it?”
“IT JUST ROLLS OUT THE SIDE OF HER HEAD, LIKE SHE’SCRAZY.”
“Really. Why, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.”
“CAN’TTHEY OPERATE ON SOMETHING LIKE THAT NOWADAYS?”
When she was twelve, Thea asked her mother if she loved Thea’s father absolutely. Her mom frowned. “That’s a difficult question. Do you want me to answer honestly?”
Thea nodded, bracing herself.
“Feelings come and go,” her mom said softly. “Some days I love him more than others. Some days I don’t love him at all.”
At sixteen, Thea fell in love. It was the first time and she was carried away by it. The man was thirty-one years old. He was a helicopter pilot. All year round he worked for Search and Rescue on Mount Seymour, scanning the ground for missing people. At night, she would sit with him, parked in deserted schoolyards, falling in love in the front seat of his truck, the steering wheel marking patterns on their pale winter skin. After months of this, Thea decided to bring him home. She snuck him through her window and into her bed. She pressed her index finger to his lips, daring him to have sex with her on her adolescent bed. He couldn’t resist. Thea didn’t know she could be this way, her face shocking into misery and happiness, her hand coming down hard on his bare back, believing that some unknown part of her was breaking off and deserting her. She glimpsed its shadow, its out-of-breath escape, and knew she’d never bring it back again.
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