by Suzette Mayr
Spring is overrated, but a winter that never ends, like this one, feels like it’s pushing him closer to lunacy. If he could, he would fall to his hands and knees and drag the green from the ground, yank out blooms from frozen tulip bulbs; the time for spring is now. Now.
Petra
In Tamsin’s bedroom, musical notes unfurling, uncurling, ungirling. Tamsin has poured Petra a Diet Coke with secret rum in it, the husky sweetness and fizz rolling across Petra’s tongue. Tamsin practises her viola, the sweep and scrape of the bow across the strings, and she frowns as she plays the same bar over and over again, a broken horsehair streaming from her bow. Petra sips her drink, poking at an ice cube with her finger. Tamsin’s bow sawing across her viola, Petra’s heart cracking at the high notes.
— I’m gonna do it, says Petra, plunking her drink down on the table.
Tamsin’s playing abruptly stops.
— No, breathes Tamsin. — You wouldn’t.
— I would, says Petra. — I will.
— You still haven’t heard from Ginger? Are you sure?
— That’s why I have to do it, says Petra.
She pulls on her coat, picks up her bag. Shakes her hair down over her face.
The delight on Patrick Furey’s father’s face, how he intermittently pats Petra on the shoulder, the smile wrinkles around his mouth deepening.
— You were his friend, you say, the father says. — What a nice surprise, how nice, Patrick’s friend.
Petra stammers when she asks for the sweater back, a blue one. — With d-d-diamonds on the f-f-front? she says. She sketches the diamonds on her own chest with her index fingers, brushing her nipples. — I gave it to him as an early Valentine’s present, a memento of our new love.
The father smiles so wide he seems like he could break into a pale laugh.
Petra hears a door click open, then closed, and a woman, the mother, comes out. Side by side, Patrick Furey’s parents look surprisingly normal. Ordinary. Boring even. Like the kind of boring old people her parents would play bridge with. Like regular parents, but she’s not sure anymore, it’s been a while since she’s had to stare at old people. The mother’s smile thin and too long across her face, her lips naked.
— You knew him when? asks the mother. — You were exchanging presents for Valentine’s Day?
— Yes! answers the father for Petra. — A brand-new girlfriend. That’s why we didn’t know about you.
The mother frowns a little, brushes her yellow bangs back with her hand so bits of bang ruffle straight up into the air before settling back down. The house busting and bursting with white and yellow roses and carnations, lilies, feathery flowers Petra doesn’t know the name of. She balls the sweater between her hands as though it’s a ball of dung she’s gathered for her nest— the bright smell of so many petals.
The warmth of the tears surprises her, the sudden flood of mucus at the back of her throat, the tears running from her nose. She cries so hard and for what? The wails erupting from deep within her gut, she rocks and the father pats her on the shoulder and the mother offers her a hank of Kleenex. The sweater seized in her lap as she leans forward, she’s sure she can feel the wool ball beating like a heart. Or the blood in her head from the crying— why is she crying, moaning? They coo around her— a cup of tea steams on the glass table by her knees. The mother pries the ball from Petra’s hands and shakes out the diamonds, folds them smooth and lays the sweater next to Petra’s cup. Petra drinks the hot tea, the bitter, minty edges.
The father asks her, — Do you want your locket back too?
— What locket?
The bulbous, heart-shaped locket beating in the centre of the mother’s palm.
Petra says, — That’s not mine.
Walter
Max is at home, 6:30 p.m., eating microwaved, canned tomato sauce slopped on spaghetti. Walter’s breath puffing in the cold as he tromps through patches of unshovelled sidewalk snow for a proper meal he’s too tired to cook. The giant digital clock in front of the Ethiopian restaurant reads 17:83, incorrect as always.
Walter orders two platters’ worth of food, plus an extra order of injera.
— Actually, no, make that two, he says to the woman at the till, and holds up two fingers in a peace sign. — Awesome, he says, then pulls out his wallet from his coat pocket. He’ll bolt down the food then boot it to badminton. He needs the exercise if he wants to reach a thirty-two waist again this lifetime. He would even be happy with a forty.
The waitress types in the numbers in the cash register, and Walter inhales the roasting food and coffee smells, smells of his ancient home maybe, the waitress’s silvering hair pulled back from her face and tucked up into a white scarf, large gold hoops swinging from her stretching earlobes. Once he brought Ethiopian takeout for his father, and the old man smacked his lips, saying, — Tastes just like what your grammy used to make. Then his father belched, — Buraaaaaaap!
— Really? We originally came from Ethiopia? You have proof ? asked Walter eagerly.
— Wally, said his father, Sal, — it’s not as if your great-great-granny ’n -grampy remembered to pack their travel itineraries and passports when they were kidnapped into the slave ships. What kind of question is that, did the slaves in our family come from Ethiopia and can I prove it. Like I have a magic wand in my pocket. Next time think before you speak, Wally.
Walter’s father laying out domino tiles beside his dinner plate. — Think, Sal said as he clacked down a tile, — before (clack) you speak (clack clack).
The waitress presents him with the credit card slip. He breathes heavily as he contemplates how much tip he should leave. It occurs to him that she might be a distant cousin— a romantic, mostly implausible notion, but still he can’t be cheap with a woman who might be a relative. He calculates 17 percent, then signs with a flourish and a smile. She doesn’t smile back which, sadly enough now that he thinks about it, is why he and Max like this restaurant. No one who works here is that friendly, they don’t ask questions. This woman will never ask him if he’s married then say she has a single daughter or a younger sister he might like to meet and make him lie and ruin the restaurant for him. And if he told the truth, well, forget it, old people the most judgmental of all. He likes this restaurant because he likes the food, maybe his ancestors come from Ethiopia, and the people who work here couldn’t care less about Max and Walter huddled at their regular, isolated table, minding their own business, even though they’ve been regulars here for almost five years, since it first opened.
Walter hurries back to the house, skidding on patches of ice, hopping over icy puddles, the bag of food sliding and jostling in his arms. He sets down the bag, unlocks the door, the sound of the television, one of Max’s stupid DVD spaceship shows beeping and laser beaming in the front room.
— You know, says Walter suddenly from the doorway as he knocks snow from his boots, — why is it that on every single one of these shows there isn’t ever a female captain of a spaceship who’s a black woman? An Ethiopian woman, for example?
Max’s mouth sours. — I suppose Colonel Shakira doesn’t qualify?
— Oh, her, says Walter. — She’s just some kind of bimbo with a giant rack. She doesn’t count.
— How convenient, says Max, as he turns his head back to the television, his arms crossed, the chunky silver band of his watch glittering in the light from the television. He’s still wearing his work shirt and tie. Dress pants. His profile sharp and hard and outlandishly beautiful as always. His white hair swept forward onto his forehead, as though he were the model for an emperor profiled on an ancient Roman coin. Or a Masterpiece Theatre show about a Roman emperor. Max handsome in that classical, Caligula kind of way, in a way Walter can never tire of even when Max is being his most horrible.
Walter stuffs his toque and scarf in the closet, accidentally jostles a leftover Christmas tree ornament still hanging on the Norfolk pine by the door.
— And you know what? Next Christmas I would l
ike it if for once we could decorate the tree with normal glass balls instead of little spaceships. I would also like a real tree, and not a house plant we glam up once a year. Like normal people who live in the world instead of fourteen-year-old boys.
The tiny Romulan Bird of Prey spins, then spirals to a stop on its side, one of the warship’s nacelles hooked on a branch.
— Low blood sugar, Wally? snarls Max. Lieutenant Fong stands and stretches, her back arching up.
— What are you running away from, Max? What’s outer space giving you that you’re missing here on Earth?
Max points the remote control at the television set as though he wants to knight it, pauses his television show. Then he points the remote at Walter, takes in Walter from the top of his balding head to his bulging stomach to his damp, stockinged feet, points the remote at the rustling plastic bag of Ethiopian food swinging from Walter’s hand.
Walter pads to the kitchen, plops the bag on the counter, runs himself a glass of water from the sink. Lieutenant Fong curls herself around his ankles in a repeated figure eight. Max named the cat. Walter wanted a cat, so Max researched cats, selected the cat, bought the cat, named the cat. Lieutenant Fong. Max and his little television shows sometimes so gay.
— You’re going to be late for badminton practice with those people, calls Max. — You say you want to get down to a thirty-two but then you stock up on restaurant food and skip exercising. That makes a lot of sense.
— Whadda you care? shouts Walter. — You telling me I’m fat?
— No, calls Max. — Just more of you to love, my pet, just more of you to love!
Walter rushes upstairs to the bedroom, snarfing down a handful of injera and goat meat from one hand, hopping on one foot as he pulls on his sweatpants with the other.
— I’ll be home in an hour and a half, he says as he galumphs toward the door, racquet in his hand.
He sticks his face in Max’s face, directly in the way of the beeping television screen. Max cranes his neck to look around Walter.
— Where’s my goodbye kiss? asks Walter.
They peck. Max’s microwaved-tomato-sauce breath. Max’s frown.
— That’s right, says Walter.
The television beeps goodbye.
Gretta
As the dead boy’s mother, you wonder how you got here. You wish he would open his eyes, why won’t he. You wish you had stuffed every rope and everything shaped like a rope into the fireplace and burned them all yourself. You wish you wish this was just an elaborate game this expired star collapsing on itself. You wish you wish and you cannot believe your wish is being ignored. You would like to write a letter to the prime minister, the UN, God, light a candle, cast a spell, force breath back into that broken neck, watch the chest expand, hear your boy cough awake, watch him stuff fork after fork of macaroni and cheese and wiener slices into his mouth like he used to when he was twelve, all big ears and eyelashes and warm baby skin. You would drain your savings, sell the house and your grandmother’s jewellery, your great-grandparents’ heirloom china and silver, the hutch for the dining room you had to have, the cars, your ludicrously expensive cheap-looking clothes — those goddamn leather pants — the whole house, yourself in an alleyway to some stranger, you’d give your life to a murderer if you knew you could force a way to open your boy’s eyes. You wish you wish and the plates, the glasses, the bowls, the bag of macaroni, the brick of cheddar cheese you splatter against walls and floors make no difference at all.
He told you the hutch was made from an endangered species of tree, and you told him to stop with the crap. Was crap the last word you said to him? You couldn’t wait, you cut him down yourself with a kitchen knife, that knife so dull, his body so dead you wouldn’t believe it, your husband pumping his chest then poking buttons on the telephone, you pushing air into his dead lips, when all you wanted was to inhale and inhale him back inside your body, wrap him in your skin, start all over again, from the beginning, and not be stuck here in this perpetual ending.
Where he goes from here. Interred and quiet in that sloping parkland, a solitary biker, two mothers jogging behind high-tech baby carriages with bicycle wheels, they have babies inside them — where is your baby? — the mothers’ legs thin and fleeced. A desperate couple of hormone bags fucking high up among the older graves, you wish you wish you could fuck the whole goddamn ugly world.
His strange blue face, so swollen, his body a bizarre chandelier. You asked the medical examiner, the funeral director, what would happen next. You close your eyes tight but you can’t get his round blue face, his hardened body, out of your sight. You open your eyes wide and wish his body back into your sight. You wish you wish. The black dog on the other side of the fence hunches into the shape of a shrimp, squeezes out a thin long shit. Pants black-dog breath.
Open your eyes.
The winter mosquitoes won’t leave you alone. Suck all your blood in tiny increments.
You live a righteous life. You make art that sells in reputable galleries — your work has been featured more than once in national newspapers. You attend Mass on the important holidays, you give up chocolate for Lent and never cheat. Give to Feed the Hungry at Christmas. You and your husband pay the maximum on the RRSPs every year. You chat with the neighbours— even the strange couple who made a jagged rock garden out of giant pieces of slate on their front lawn— and you vote most of the time. You sweat on the weight machines and treadmill at the gym and make sure your husband and son eat their vegetables and you usually shop organic. You cream your skin at night, get your hair trimmed once every six weeks and dress well in public (high heels and a smart dress) even for grocery shopping, because why look like the slob you’re not? You knew he didn’t like school, but you thought, Soon he’ll graduate. You knew he was smarter than the report cards said, you knew, but why didn’t you ask why he was skipping so much school. You forgot to ask why he spent all his time in his room, who was texting him all the time, his phone chiming like raindrops, why one day he was wearing a locket in the shape of a heart and a blue sweater you didn’t remember buying that that strange girl came looking for. That girl no girl your son would ever know, you just know this because he told you in no uncertain terms. You remember wishing he was seven again, all skinny arms and legs wrapping themselves around you like a monkey’s, bony like a kitten’s, back when you could read his actions like they were your own. You remember deciding to ask about that locket, that piece of girl’s jewellery around your boy’s neck when he’d yelled at you that there would never be a girl, but you knew enough to know you didn’t really want to know. You saw the chain wrapped around and around his throat, the heart cold against his skin, cutting off his circulation, you ripped it off, the chain dissolving in your hands. If you’d known, you would have done something because you always assumed he would be a banker, not a faggot.
You think about killing yourself too. How that would end the grief, just go ahead and jump, toes pointed artfully, into that giant lake of fire. Dump rocks in your pockets, your purse, two of those sturdy shopping bags from your favourite clothing store Tristan and Isolde, and jump into a swimming pool. Inhale water like air, cough yourself into a flood. Why couldn’t he just have had a problem with a girl? Why couldn’t he just bum around Europe and smoke too much pot, experiment a little with cocaine, like his father did?
Because you are evil, you continue to live. Because funny that evil is a noun spelled forward and a verb spelled backwards. Because what you did to your son was the word evil as a verb, a verb that means to ignore someone to death, that locket winding around your boy’s neck, lurid neon signs, a verb that means to stand by, place your hands over your eyes while someone dies in front of you. The verb of not putting out your hand to save. That verb. That human-chandelier verb. That verb-an-unnatural-colour-of-blue verb. That gold, heart-shaped-letter-he-wrote-to-you-and-only-you verb. You evilled. Your chest heaves, scratching in and out your breath.
Furey, Patrick — Patrick Furey, kno
wn to his mother as Peanut or Fishy until he told you to fucking stop it, his name is Patrick, stop treating him like a kid, door slam the exclamation mark at the end of both your shouted sentences. Took his life February 17 in the morning while you were pushing a shopping cart through an aisle at Planet Organic Market and trying to decide if you should change canned tuna brands, your son gasping the last of his life while you stood on another floor of the house stacking the cans of tuna in the cupboard, arranging green and Spartan apples you just bought in a bowl in a way that caught the light instead of fucking running up those fucking steps, leaping up those stairs and stopping him, the glossy green skins against the red, bright apples, a snowy day, snowy apples, glistening tuna, gasping. Your Peanut, your Fishy, Mister Fishy a cluster of cells in your womb, bubbling into bright bones hands pushing out of the skin you can still feel his heel, his skull pushing through your skin, your giant belly, your heavy tender breasts, your fishy. You his mother. His empty body.