Monoceros

by Suzette Mayr

  Friday

  Walter and Max

  Walter, the dead boy’s guidance counsellor, so hungover he can see into the centre of the earth, isn’t at work this morning. He phones in sick, his glutinous voice scratches on the phone to Joy.

  — Your flu wouldn’t be of the twenty-six-ounce variety, would it? she asks. — Ha ha! Just kidding! That’s good. You need to relax. Been a tough week.

  Walter’s not sure if he likes Joy very much. Or maybe now he likes her a lot.

  Max, the dead boy’s principal, the dead boy’s guidance counsellor’s secret husband, has not the foggiest clue where the guidance counsellor is. He taps a cigarette out from his new pack and smokes under the porch light at 5:30 a.m. Last night when he finally started getting ready for bed, selecting his ‘I Heart Colonel Shakira’ T-shirt to sleep in from the dresser drawer, Walter wasn’t ensconced in his Buddha-like way in front of the TV, watching the eleven o’clock news, drinking his regular post-badminton Diet Coke with ice. Then the cat yodelled for her midnight snack; Max scrabbled fruitlessly among and through the cupboards hunting for the stash of cat food tins so he dumped out a can of sardines into the cat’s food bowl instead. By 1:03 a.m., Walter still hadn’t deigned to call and Max fumed as he tossed around in the blankets that there was no need for this kind of rudeness, how difficult was it to take fifteen seconds and dial in a phone call, and suddenly Max was waking up to a shrieking alarm clock in an empty bed. It’s morning, Walter’s still MIA, Max’s mouth and lungs cry out for a second cigarette, and the cat hisses and angrily switches her fluffy white tail every time Max ventures near her, even after he locates her cans of cat food under the sink and cranks one, two, three, open for her that she slurps up and then promptly vomits on the bathroom floor right next to Max’s heel while Max is in mid-shave. Max cannot bear being interrupted mid-shave. He steps and slides sideways into the pile of vomit anyway. And Walter, that reprobate, still isn’t home, he’s started tramping around, the principal just knows it, Jesus H. Christ. That reprobate. That tramp. Once a tramp always a tramp, and a long time ago the principal loved how his husband used to be a tramp and a kleptomaniac and a reprobate who stole bedsheets from Superstore along with Eggos and parsley just because he could, a quasi-criminal with shark eyes who reformed out of love for the principal, a tamed lion padding quietly around the house, my goodness how the principal loves that. That reprobate probably in someone else’s bed right now. The principal glances at his watch, maybe he can sneak in another smoke. Yanks his tie around his throat. Twists out another morning cigarette from the package. Coughs a foggy puff into the cold morning air. Shameful. All of it shameless.

  When he gets in to work, hangs his coat from its hook, Max phones Walter’s office and the phone burps the canned voice mail, — I’m away from my desk but will return your call as soon as I am able. If this is an emergency please dial the following number—

  Skipping work!

  Thursday night, Walter actually wins a badminton game— the birdie dead on the floor on the other side of the net. Not through deliberate strategy, but brilliant, awesome fucking accident, racquet at the level of his knees when he wants it up in the air, Walter heaving for breath, Ethiopian food lurching up from his stomach into his windpipe, his racquet wilting at just the right time in the path of the zinging birdie. He huffs and puffs, his esophagus burning, he’s drowning in sweat, goddammit, somewhere along the way he transformed from a muscular stud muffin into fucking Fat Albert, but his heart pounds like a twenty-year-old man’s— then he decides to go to the pub afterwards with the badminton guys and the two badminton gals, Brecken and Louise, and he worries that the cat hasn’t gotten her midnight snack, but why is it always his responsibility to feed their cat, he smiles a little bit when he thinks about how Lieutenant Fong will yodel at Max and he won’t know where Walter’s stacked the canned cat food. Then he worries for Lieutenant Fong.

  He sucks hard at the creamy head on his beer, trying to ignore his leaping irritation at two of the other guys putting their arms around each other and calling each other babe and honey in this too public place (why would they do that, there are ways around that), one of them calling everyone bitch, including Walter even though Walter’s done nothing except drink his beer, — You enjoying that beer, bitch? ’Sabout time you came out for a beer, bitch.

  If Max were here he would have signalled to Walter Time to go home and ranted the whole way back to the house about these flamers and public displays of affection giving everyone a bad name, and how he and Walter keep it in the house and only in the house which is the only right way to do it and sexier too. Which Walter would normally agree with. Which is why Walter hardly ever drinks beer with the guys and the two badminton gals, Brecken and Louise, because they’re always so loud even when they aren’t talking. This beer undoing all the benefits of the badminton exercise.

  When he pulls himself up the steps from the pub, clutching the railing with each step, the cool air nuzzles his face, the beer still foaming in his head, and he watches winter-muddied cars squish by in the dark. He wants to go home, so he hails a cab to the bar called Home, and he orders another beer while he stands in line at the bar with the trannies and the dykes and the bears and the nellies and the circuit boys and the twinks and the leathermen and the drag kings and the drag queens and the drag hags and the fag hags, then he dances by himself in the steamy, dark dance club with a beer in his hand like he’s nineteen again, and if one of them’s a student or a colleague or a superintendent or a parent or a priest— if they see him, well, he will also see them, he isn’t the only one— and for the first time in a long time, he’s finally Home. He’s once again himself with his own people, he can’t remember why he doesn’t go Home more often, how zingy and awesome he feels drinking this many beers and dancing in the flashing lights with giant, awesome women and their tucked-away dicks like this giant Colonel Shakira here, how maybe keeping it at home and just between the two of them isn’t as sexy as it could be anymore.

  He is a middle-aged fat man with an unfashionable goatee, but an electric, noisy peacock tail unfurls around him, and he swirls among its feathers. He sweats under the folds of his sweater, his body gleaming.

  All these dancers, strangely flavoured, oddly shaped fruit hanging from branches of the family tree. Tucked behind leaves and flowers, behind wedding dresses, plus and equal signs, and vertical lines heading toward children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. The abrupt end to a branch. An anonymous, invisible life companion fallen to the ground. A whisper, but no ears to hear. No pens to record.

  Walter drapes his sweating body with shining peacock feathers, — Awesome! he shouts, curls his bottle of beer in his hand, next to his heart. Another beer and another beer, he never wants to grow up and leave Home.

  Look at that! His old boyfriend Normie Kwong roosted at the bar, just like in the old days. He wonders if Normie’s still freezing him out, like in the old days.

  Walter’s hands grip the cool rationality of the toilet bowl, the water fresh and cold next to his nose until his throat forces his mouth open and zings of beer and Ethiopia waterfall out. Normie— who is still freezing him out— and one of the glamazon drag queens drag him into a cab, her name is Suzette, — But, girl, that just doesn’t matter right now, we’ve just got to get you home, your husband’ll be worried sick—

  — How do you know I have a husband? Walter asks, then vomits in the gutter bubbling with decomposing winter leaves and garbage.

  — I told her, you moron, says Normie. — You left me for Max, remember?

  Walter rouses himself long enough to blurt his address, not that address, but the other address of the condo where he gets his school mail, and has a phone number under his own name, and utilities, and another mortgage, all under his name, because technically it is his home even though he hasn’t lived there for years, he only tells people at work he lives there, he only goes there when Max needs to host a school staff or administrator social event at their
house, Walter sleeping by himself on the little single bed, a picture of Max on the night table. Maybe he’ll give the address of the bar as his home address to the next person who asks. He giggles.

  He falls into his other-home toilet just in time to vomit his heart out, then rinses out his mouth— the taste so bitter, oh God he’s too fucking old for this— in the sink. He pulls back the sheet and blanket like the flap on the envelope of his tiny bed, the sheets cool and smooth, the way sheets can feel only when they’ve been waiting for months, for years, for a body to climb inside. He crawls back to the living room, grabs the wastebasket beside the desk, and sets it near the bed. A glass of water. He slurps a glass of water. Flops into the bed. He doesn’t know where he’s left his badminton racquet. Or what the score is.

  Mrs. Mochinski

  Because that little fucker Jésus said to her face yesterday afternoon, right out of the blue, — Who the hell would want to be married to you? in that psychic way children sometimes have. Reading a teacher’s secrets like on a billboard.

  And she very calmly pointed to the door and ordered him to get into the hallway right now, wait for her at the third locker to the right of the door right there and nowhere else. She has had students throw pencils and crumpled paper balls in her face, tell her to fuck off, draw obscene pictures of her on her chalkboard, tell her she’s a lesbian, but nothing has prepared her for this.

  Jésus sticking his hand up in the middle of a discussion of Paris in Romeo and Juliet, and saying to Mrs. Mochinski, — Who the hell would want to be married to you? I feel sorry for your husband.

  The smirk on his face, the truth in him.

  Maureen, so hungover from last night because she let herself drink as much as she wanted, anything she wanted. She pulled on her sweatpants right after work, her fluffy pink sweater, and she downed two shots of Alexey’s $100 bottle of scotch and then poured the rest down the sink, a very sweet glug glug. She drank six glasses of Chianti, the brand that Tony Soprano drinks. She sipped homemade crabapple liqueur her neighbour gave her five years ago, a shot of tequila, she even tried some of the cooking sherry because she always wanted to but just never had. Then she lay down on her stomach on the floor, raised her ass to the sky in downward dog, and did a little drunken yoga because yoga is good for anger management, upward then downward dog, a little pigeon pose to open her hips, the pose that always makes her cry because she carries her tension in her hips, that shows her the centre of the universe, and then she collapsed into corpse pose by nine p.m. Really she needs to go to a yoga class. Trying to do it by herself always leads to drunkenness.

  She is not proud of herself this Friday morning. In fact, maybe she is still a little bit drunk as she tells the students they’re going to watch a movie today, and she listens to them cheer, Jésus at the back of the class cheering the loudest, of course— Listen, class, I’m just going to level with you, she says. — I’m hungover, my head is splitting, I don’t have a lesson. I do have a DVD we could pop in, and if you have homework you’re stressed about in another class you can work on that, but it can’t be mayhem in here, things are not going well for me, you can put on your iPods if you want or text your friends, my head’s splitting, okay? All right? How about Sector Six: The Movie? Happy Friday!

  Sector Six: The Movie’s a good one, that’s the emergency one she confiscated from a student once that she keeps in the bottom drawer of her desk. What difference does it make. In her drunkenness she found several truths. The truth that she is no longer Mrs. Mochinski, but just plain old Miss Maureen, even Jésus can tell. The truth that she didn’t help Patrick Furey one bit, not one. The truth that one of her ass cheeks is a little flatter, a whole centimetre saggier than the other cheek, and that she is still stuck in high school, she hasn’t written that novel she has promised herself she was going to write every summer for the past twenty years that would set her free from high school. Write a book. Make a million bucks. Live on a houseboat with her husband. Cross-stitch pictures of Boston terriers like her neighbour does and lie back enjoying the sunsets. She hasn’t even started the book, she has no idea what it should be about because she has done nothing but punch a clock and/or play devoted wife her entire adult life. Even though she had so much potential to be a writer, all her teachers said so back when she was in high school. Had the potential to be whatever she wanted to be.

  Walter

  Walter surfaces from his hangover. He noses through the earth in his headache pain, he opens his mouth wide, wraps his mouth around the clay and earth and swallows, moves the grit and sand and rocks and roots peristalsic through his vitals and intestines, shits out earth in dark clusters, pushes his way up and breaks the topsoil crust. Walter shaking dirt out of his hair and pulling himself up out of his hole with his arms and his kicking legs. Walter surfaces. His clothes filthy, grit and roots between his teeth. Pulls himself out of bed and showers in time to catch the noon bus so he can make it to work by one.

  After rummaging around in closets and drawers in the condo for a set of clothes, Walter steps into the crisp noon light. The wind this week drifted all the snow up onto the lawns— the sidewalks arctic clear. He rocks from heel to toe and back again as he waits for the bus, clouds of breath gusting from his mouth. He climbs up the grimy steps of the big red and white bus that will take him to the school. He clings to the grey rubber strap. The other bus riders hang from their straps, hang on the metal bus poles, and sit bunched in the blue plastic seats like cuts of meat arranged in a butcher’s freezer.

  In his office, in the midst of smells of photocopier toner and paper, the noise of lockers slamming, students laughing, he unwraps the framed photograph from his condo of Max in his Tilley hat. From that day two springs ago when they crawled up Tunnel Mountain, and Max seized in a laughing fit he couldn’t stop. Walter can’t remember what Max was laughing at, but it was one of the few times Max didn’t frown or have a cigarette hanging out of his mouth or try to turn away when Walter took a picture of him. The sun shining silver through the pine trees.

  Walter shoves aside papers, pencil jars, staplers, empty and half-empty boxes of paperclips, then props the picture on the corner of his desk. The inside life now outside.

  It’s only half an hour before Joy flutters into his office.

  — So you made it to work! she says. — I thought I saw you skulking around, Boyle. That’s an interesting picture you have on your desk. Her cucumber perfume fills Walter’s office. The scent reminds him of car freshener. She’s flipped open a small photo album with a transparent plastic cover on the desk so Walter can dote over the pictures she has of Begonia, her new baby niece.

  — Yes, says Walter. He pokes an imaginary speck of dust away from the picture frame with his index finger. He flips through the pages, oohing and ahhhing at the pictures of a baby indistinguishable from a newborn kangaroo.

  — Did Max give you that picture?

  — I took it two springs ago.

  — Nice, says Joy.

  Then she blathers about how warm it was this morning, how she thought she saw a bud on her honeysuckle bush, while Walter pretends to look at the pictures, wonders what she really thinks of the photo on his desk, his shocking act. Breathless as he waits for the roof to collapse, the guillotine blade to fall. But she hasn’t even glanced at it since her first look, instead she talks about how she was tempted to wear her spring trench coat this morning, but now of course the sky looks like snow, and didn’t that wind at lunchtime just slice out your bones? The wind ran through her coat like a bunch of needles, right to her skin. And she decided on her tired winter coat, what would’ve happened if she’d gone with her trench coat! She’d be a Popsicle dropped in a snowbank.

  Her hips push against Walter’s desk, her arms crossed, her nails short but evenly filed straight across. Suddenly she leans down, runs her finger around the frame on the photo of Max. Taps Max right on the mouth.

  — Do you have any pictures of your family? she asks.

  — Just this o
ne, says Walter, pointing a pencil at the picture of Max, his heart about to pop from his chest and run away. Max is my family, he thinks. He flips more plastic pages in the baby Begonia album.

  — It’s good to enjoy the company of people you work with, she says. — I can give you a picture of me to put on your desk too. We should do a group photo with all the staff ! She throws her head back and laughs boisterously, her chest bouncing up and down.

  Walter closes the photo album of Begonia the blob. Snowflakes have begun to drop outside the window.

  — It’s been a helluva week, huh? Joy says, turning to the window, the white winter sky bleaching out her dress like she’s an overexposed photograph. — Poor Patrick. Poor thing.

  — He’s in a better place, blurts Walter so quickly, so automatically, he flinches. — No, he recants. From now on he’s going to tell the truth when he’s asked, no matter how bumpy, no matter how job-threatening. — What I meant to say is, yes, a horrendous tragedy.

  — We should really do something. A minute of silence or something. The school.

  — Can’t, says Walter. — Copycat syndrome.

  — It’s not fair.

  Walter rotates the pencil slowly in his fingers. — No, he says.

  — Well, the staff should be allowed to do something. I’ve sent the family flowers and a card on behalf of the school. Maybe all the staff and the teachers, we could have our own private wake. Go to a pub the old Irish Catholic way.

  — You— you knew him that well? asks Walter.

  — Talked to him once or twice when he had to sign the book for being late. It doesn’t matter. He’s one of the tribe, right? she says, her voice beginning to shake, her eyes puddling. — The St. Aloysius Senior High School tribe. I’m going to send out a note to the staff. Have our own wake. Toast his life. Will you come?