by Suzette Mayr
— You will go to family counselling! says Dave, his voice low, almost as though he’s singing. Shinny thumps her tail under the dining room table. The finches rustle and cheep into the silence.
George M. smacks his lips over his mashed potatoes.
— Why the eff not? says Dave. — How will it hurt you?
— Because you need the therapy. There’s nothing wrong with me. Plus you can’t afford it, remember? Faraday’s already 140 bucks an hour you and Mother have to pay, and now you want to pay again? Some more?
Faraday wonders what Patrick’s family argued about at the dinner table when he was alive. Maybe their arguments made him kill himself.
Shirley shovels forkful after forkful of wrinkly peas into her mouth, drinks from her brimming glass of Coke. George M. tings his glass.
— Enough with the tinging, says Dave.
He pats Shinny’s head, her chin propped next to his plate.
Ting, sings George M.’s glass. Ting!
Shinny barks.
— Look, son, says their father. — I’m just trying my best here. Because I love you, Georgie.
— Dad, don’t, says George M.
— Give me a hug, son. Their father pushes himself back from the table, about to stand up.
— Dad! Dave! Stop! shouts George M. — I’ll go to the family counsellor.
— Okay, their father says, returning to sitting. — We don’t need to hug. I just love you so much. I love all of you kids and your mother so so much and it would kill me if anything happened to this family.
He wipes his watery eyes. Sighs. Glances at their mother.
Their mother glumly sips from her glass of Coke; her fourth glass, Faraday counts. Her mother’s silence in all this reminds her uncomfortably of the same great silence almost a year and a half ago that followed when her mother loudly clicked closed her makeup case and said she was leaving. In response, their father sat in the basement in front of his tiny TV, replaying his NHL Great Moments DVD, stroking Shinny’s head, big and heavy as a pot roast, in their father’s lap. The dog sprawled across the entire chesterfield, their father squinched into the corner.
— Leave me alone, he said when Faraday or her brothers creaked the top stair, the hockey announcer’s tinny bellowing, the organ honking, the crowd shrieking. Then after they backed away he slapshot himself up the stairs and asked them why he was alone in the basement all by himself, were his children all bloody robots? He boiled himself a hot water bottle, talking about how adult men have feelings too, men crying shouldn’t be frightening, then clumped back down into the basement, the water bottle cradled in his arms, NHL Great Moments cranked up. That first time when Dave and Shirley’s marriage spiralled the whole family into a galaxy-sized blackhole.
How their father’s grief simmered into an inflammation, and the bad blood infected the whole family, all of them not making eye contact, saying Leave me alone.
The air in the house was dirty all the time, too many flies buzzing and squirming. One day, Faraday’s father threw a plastic bottle of mayonnaise and splattered the kitchen wall. Their mother retaliated while he was at work by throwing his favourite coffee mug against the living room wall. Two days of gelatinous mayonnaise splatter until Jonas scraped it off the wall and the floor tiles with the sharp, plastic edges of his brand-new university student ID card. Carefully picking up the mug pieces and stowing them in an empty milk carton by the garbage can.
How their mother stood by the shoe rack next to the front door to speak to their father, — Dave, I’m taking the kids with me.
Faraday, George M. and Jonas all kept watching their own computer and television screens.
Their father shambled downstairs to his tiny television, and then suddenly he was wheezing, his eyes wide when he suddenly snow-angeled to the floor. Their mother stayed overnight with him in the hospital, her very own Gordie Howe hat trick: taking the kids, leaving the kids, remarrying the husband, all in one night.
That day— thirteen months, four days and six hours ago— Faraday’s nose started to bleed. She needed to get away, needed to neutralize the toxins, unearth an antidote to her family’s venom, so she borrowed a credit card to buy a blessing of live unicorns on the internet. She knew she could end up in the clink as she pulled open the snap of her mother’s wallet, chose arbitrarily from the fan of plastic credit cards, but she did it so she wouldn’t nosebleed to death, she did it for her father gasping his asthma attack in the hospital, her mother cooing her love for their father but regret for her youth, Jonas brandishing a spatula as he fried up bacon and egg sandwiches in the kitchen, George M. complaining only once when Jonas insisted they all eat at the table together, or together in front of the big TV at least.
— You don’t have to eat anything, George M., said Jonas. — Have fun making your very own salad with the liquefying lettuce head in the fridge, gonad.
Yolk drooled down George M.’s chin as they sat in a half-circle in front of the blaring television, a Sector Six rerun, the theme song plinking, ‘No such thing as heroes, just a bunch of ones and zeroes,’ Colonel Shakira in her gold uniform aiming her weapon at a giant Reptiloid in gold shorts. The Reptiloid called her the equivalent of pig turd in its language, the Reptiloid lunged, Colonel Shakira shot her Rosette Nebular, — I am Colonel Shakira! she shouted.
— That would never happen in real life, muttered George M. — That Reptiloid skin would repel a flimsy laser like that.
Faraday’s raging tears were not so much from the hurricane of her parents, but from her mother shaking the credit card printout in her face after the credit card company had called her mother about suspicious activity on that credit card. Her mother trampled her with the news that the website was a hoax, that she hadn’t bought a blessing of unicorns, it didn’t matter if there was an official receipt, and a shipment of unicorns was not sailing the Atlantic Ocean on its way to her on a ship from the Black Forest in Germany.
Her mother wailed at Faraday’s credit card fraud and the money lost, and her father’s voice was breathy in the hospital as he tried to lasso enough air for his lungs. The credit card printout her execution summons on the kitchen table, braying, betraying her.
She decided not to tell her parents about how the company that supplies the unicorns, Einhörner GmbH, asked for a pair of her used panties along with her credit card number and home address. The panties so that the unicorns could know her virgin scent of course. She knew the panty part was maybe a little creepy, but she also knew they were a reputable company. All the customer reviews rated them five stars.
— Do you want to tell me what this is all about? wheezed her father.
Faraday’s tears dripped dropped splotched splat.
— The shipment was guaranteed or my money back! she said. — They can’t lie about that. They gave me a receipt.
— It doesn’t make a lot of sense, he said. — Does spending money on an imaginary— ?
— They’re in the Bible! she interrupted wildly, — Aristotle wrote about them, Marco Polo, Pliny the Elder, Genghis Khan, they all knew that unicorns exist, they saw them, Faraday tried hard not to shout. — Are you calling Pliny the Elder a liar?
— Does spending money, her father repeated, — on an imaginary animal really make that much sense to you? Plus, where were you going to put them? In the garage? Because there’s no way you could keep a bunch of horses in the house. I’m going to have to take away your computer privileges. For a month. His bony knees poked tents up under the sheets on the bed.
— The mother of Confucius! She wouldn’t lie! They’re not horses, she gritted her teeth.
— I don’t appreciate that tone, señorita.
— What tone?
— Privileges revoked. Computer. For two months.
— Well, my blessing’s on its way, Faraday said, whirling a circle of medical tape on her index finger, slipping her bum off the edge of the bed. — They’ll be here. The credit card went through. Money’s been spent.
&n
bsp; — Where are these unicorns? It’s been a month since you ordered them.
— They’ll be here. Ordering a shipment of unicorns in the mail isn’t like buying a set of washed-up, olden-times hockey DVDs!
— That’s it, said her father, swiping his hand through the air, the plastic tube of the IV violently looping, — Your hair straightener privileges are now officially revoked too.
— Please not the hair straightener, she said.
She raged to Uncle Suzie. He fed her nacho chips and Cheez Whiz, the occasional glass of Chambord. — Not too much, he said. — Or it stops being sexy and just becomes sloppy.
He said, — Maybe you should go see a shrink. I saw a shrink. Then I saw a shrink. A different shrink. You’d think a therapist would be the most well-adjusted person alive. Uncle Suzie shook the bag of chips and peered into it, hunting for crumbs. — Wrong. And neither were any of his shrink buddies. That’s right, they hang out in packs.
He took a sip of his drink, the ice tinkling.
— You don’t believe they exist either? she sobbed, a fresh burst of grief rippling through her.
— Oh, Faerie, he said, taking her hands in his, his hands warm and strong. — That’s not it at all. It’s just that, you know, things like unicorns, those important things, they’re not things you can buy. Like love. You can’t buy that. When you try, all you get is something ugly and misdirected that’s not really yours. Does that make sense? I know it sounds like a Harlequin romance.
Faraday hiccupping, her face wet, she was dying from the grief, the betrayal.
— What’s a Harlequin romance? she asked.
— Everything’s going to be all right, he said, patting her hand. — Your unicorns, your parents. One day you’ll graduate and flip the big fat bird to high school forever.
— They issued a receipt, she said, slapping one hand into the other for emphasis.
— You stole a credit card, he said, slapping one hand into the other for emphasis
He lent her his hair straightener.
She loves Uncle Suzie, but she knew he was wrong. The unicorns are on their way. In the live cargo area of a ship currently crossing the Atlantic Ocean, courtesy of Einhörner GmbH, a reputed dealer. She isn’t stupid. She did her research.
Her father told her to go talk to Father Tim at their church. She tried to look excited when Father Tim exclaimed about her enlightened decision to remain a virgin, and did she know that unicorns were closely associated with the Passion of the Christ?
— Think about it, said Father Tim and his shiny round cheeks and Santa Claus beard. — The maiden is the Virgin Mary, the unicorn Jesus Christ. You have joined a spiritually wealthy, esteemed tradition, Faraday.
Faraday doubtful of Father Tim’s enthusiasm as she picked the polish off her fingernails.
It was the first time Faraday ever heard fucking and priests in the same sentence. From Uncle Suzie’s mouth roaring in her father’s face. Then Uncle Suzie coaxed her father to watch a live hockey game upstairs instead of that old, canned Wayne Gretzky. Each of them angled into the opposite arms of the couch, Shinny splayed between them.
Father Tim twinkling and nodding hard at her the next time she went with her parents to church. Father Tim on the way out as her therapist but not her priest. Her first appointment with Dr. Linus Libby only three days later.
— Why a unicorn? asked Dr. Linus Libby. — Why not a regular horse? Why not run away in a car or a bus or a train? Why not a magic carpet?
— It just makes sense, Faraday said. — Cars, buses and trains break down. And magic carpets don’t exist. Unicorns are genetically programmed to gore and eradicate the impure. They cure us.
After her father came back from the hospital, her mother clicked her makeup case back open. So Dave moved back upstairs, and now he watches hockey games in colour again. Her parents visit a marriage counsellor once a week. Dave sometimes tries to hug Faraday and George M. in public for no reason, and she just wants to die.
She has a spare Friday afternoons after 2:30, so she gets half an hour at home, then half an hour for the drive to the shrink, one hour with the shrink, and the rest of the evening she works at Tim Hortons because she has to pay her parents back, and besides, they’re at home having sex.
— You know, said Dr. Linus Libby one Friday afternoon, you know it’s natural to have anxieties — worries — about sex and sexuality. Especially around your age.
— I know what anxiety means.
— It’s just that … it’s just that … there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of unicorns.
— Of course, she lies.
— You believed they were real.
— I was just kidding. I’m not stupid.
— I’m not calling you stupid. I have a very strong reaction to the idea that you would think that. You’re very smart. In the top percentile for your age group.
— But not for your age group?
— It’s just that— perhaps other students are sexually active around you—
— Of course! It’s high school!
— And perhaps you’re not as interested and that’s okay.
— I’m waiting for the right person. I’m not a virgin freak or anything. I know what sex is. I know what fellatio is. I know that sometimes girls at school charge money for it.
— I’m not suggesting you’re a freak, Faraday. How do those words virgin freak make you feel when you hear yourself say them?
— Nothing.
— Hmm?
— Nothing. Maybe the right person has a horn growing out of their head, she says. — It’s not a big deal. That’s all. I’m not prepared to settle for a mediocre product.
— Hmm, says Linus the shrink.
He pulls at his blonde thinning hair, scratches at his skin to match. He has the smell of that sweet pink liquid soap in public washroom dispensers.
— I know you’ve been facing challenges at home. With your parents working on their marriage.
— Yes, Linus, Faraday says. The liquid soap in public washrooms is pearly in the light, and it always leaves behind a messy tendril on the edge of the sink. Maybe she can talk about that with Linus next time instead of about her parents. She is tired of her parents, their neediness and narcissism, their frantic fornicating, always hogging the microphone.
Faraday wonders how much longer before the dysfunctional family venom completely formaldehydes her brain. How much longer she has to wait before her unicorns come to save them, why they couldn’t have come earlier and saved Patrick Furey too.
Walter
Walter the guidance counsellor matches the dead boy’s combination lock serial number to the number on his clipboard list, and pulls open the metal door with a clang. A battered runner bounces to the floor. He slots it back into the locker’s clutter, next to its mate, then he remembers and places the runners, side by side, into the empty binder box by his feet. Next, a wad of gym clothes. An unruly sheaf of papers puffed from water damage. A blunt pencil stub and half a pack of Skittles. A Japanese comic book and a copy of The Pride and the Joy. The book’s familiar weight and width in Walter’s hand, disturbing the soil he’d smoothed over it. He tries to pat the book back into the locker. He could never have discussed this book with this student. An inside-out blue sweater dangling from one of the hooks. He fumbles, and the package of Skittles gapes open, rainbow-coloured candies spinning, bouncing, tumbling, scattering staccato clicks on the floor, metal pings against the lockers.
A torn envelope and a blue argyle sweater. A dried glob of gum thumbed to the door. The boy’s fingerprints and spit. Walter pulls a greeting card with a picture of a bowl of fruit on the front out of the envelope and opens it. Tears squeeze out of his eyes— he swipes them away. The card he’ll burn. The copy of The Pride and the Joy he’ll burn too. He folds the sweater neatly into the box.
He fits the lid back onto the box. Kicks and drags the Skittles with the side of his foot into a dusty mound he scoops up with his hands
and tosses into a garbage can. Dusts his hands off on his pants. His ears buzz.
The card and the book in the bottom drawer of his work desk.
Walter sits in his car in front of Patrick Furey’s house. His family won’t think Walter’s a creep, they probably don’t look out the windows anymore. He doesn’t want to look out windows anymore either.
He shoves open the car door and steps onto the pebbly road. The sun a sinking, sloppy peach in the sky.
Patrick’s father blinks at Walter in the sunset, the air Kool Aid orange with the falling sun, the grass crisped and brown, and grey, dirty snow crusting lawns, edges of sidewalks, gutters globbed with dead grass and twigs, Barbie doll legs, dead birds and gravel. One of those afternoons when he can almost smell spring on the wind, but not quite. The father’s eyes sag as though he has been pulled from an oil slick. — Can I help you, he asks but not as a question. And Walter can only open and close his mouth, the cardboard box full of dead boy pushing into his belly.
— I am the head guidance counsellor from Patrick Furey’s school, he says. — My name is Walter Boyle. The words a wet mop dragging between them. — Are you his father? asks Walter. — I just wanted to give you my condolences and bring you the contents of his locker.
The purple bags under the father’s eyes pulling his face down past his jowls, so Walter holds out the box and the father takes it between his hands, like they are dance partners with the box a shield between them, — Thank you, the father says, his skin waxy and collapsing.
— I am so so sorry for your loss, says Walter.
— Yes, well, says the father. — As my dead son’s head guidance counsellor I guess you should be.
The father flickers in the orange, windy air.
Walter’s hands hook onto the steering wheel. He peers out the windshield, he can’t remember anymore how long he has framed his life like this, spattered windows and closed doors, close air, dead grass. Once upon a time, this was enough for him, this job. His work life with the students and their girl or homework or timetable problems one thing, his real life with Max another thing: a clear outside, a clear inside. The occasional leak of one world into the other, the occasional charge of seeing his boyfriend by chance in the hallway or at a meeting and Walter secretly gloating He’s mine, the brilliant reunion trysts at home some days when they could shiver in pretend-but-real fear over how they’d pulled it off another day. They’d have their cake and eat it too, Walter licking the cake icing off Max’s fingers. And how wonderful that Max made sure their work life and real life could stay separate, so vigilant: two peas in a pod they were as a couple. Max and Walter undercover. Their electrifying, delicious secret. Not hurting anyone inside their closed doors, Walter always thought, their windows with the blinds drawn, safe inside their secret shell.