by Pasha Malla
Rachel and I went to an art exhibit once on one of our trips into the city. There was this room that you went into, and it was dark, totally black. When you entered, a single lightbulb turned on and lit up the room. And in this light you saw, written on one of the walls, text about guillotined criminals who were found to be able to communicate after their heads had been chopped off. Then, right as you read the last word, the lightbulb turned off, leaving you in darkness.
As we were coming out of the room, Rachel took my hand and whispered, "Man, that was spooky."
"Yeah," I said, but later I realized she was only talking about being left in the dark.
Out of the woods, one of the dogs comes trotting up to me and nuzzles its nose into my hand, then starts lapping at the creek. I smack its muscled haunches and the tail starts pumping. Judy and Pico are close, moving through the trees, their voices muffled. Then Pico starts calling, "Leth-eee! Leth- eee!" and Judy gets into it too, their voices ringing out in chorus. Judy turns on her flashlight - it swings through the darkness, sweeping the forest in a fat, white band. I hunker down, my arm around the dog, and wait for them to find me.
AUTUMN HAS FULLY arrived, the smoky, dusty smell of it thick in the air. The leaves are starting to fall, and in the mornings my breath appears in clouds as I putter around the backyard. I figure I'll get a space heater for the cabin once it gets really cold, but the big problem is that I don't know how much longer I'll be able to work outside. I had an indoor workshop at the old house, back when carpentry was only a hobby. It was odd moving, clearing out that room - with all my tools missing it became just an empty space in the basement, smelling vaguely of sawdust and leather. I'm sure Rachel's since turned it into the darkroom she used to talk about.
I don't see Pico for more than a week. Then one afternoon I'm out in the front yard doing the first rake of the season, and he wheels up on a bicycle.
"Les!" he yells. "Look at the bike my nana bought me."
He does a wobbly circle on the street. The bike is a throwback to a time well before Pico's birth - tassels dangle from the handlebars, and the seat curves up into a towering steel backrest. I give Pico the thumbs-up.
With some minor difficulties Pico dismounts, lowering the bike gingerly onto Judy's lawn. Today he is wearing a pink K-Way jacket about two sizes too big for him, blue sweatpants, and a pair of rubber boots. He runs up to me, and we both stand there for a minute, silent, breathing in the crisp autumn air.
"I'm not scared of squirrels any more," he says.
"Yeah?"
"I'm doing my science project on them. They bury their nuts in the fall, and then they find them later because they rub their feet on them and make them smell."
"Is that how it works?"
"Yep. People think they remember where they put them, but they don't. It's just the smell of their stinky feet." Pico starts giggling.
"Isn't that something else."
"You never showed me that card trick again."
"Help me bag these leaves, then we'll go in and I'll do it. But this is the last time."
In a drawer in the kitchen I find a pack of cards, and I deal them out on the table. Pico, eyes narrowed to slits, scrupulously watches my hands. Then I do my big theatrical bit at the end where the cards get tossed all over the room. I walk around for a few seconds in feigned indecision before snatching Pico's queen of spades off the floor.
"I saw you counting."
"No, way! This is a magic trick, it's all -"
"You counted the cards, Les, and mine was number eleven."
Pico gets down off his chair and silently collects all the cards scattered around the kitchen. I follow his lead and start to clear the table. "Well, now you know the trick at least."
Pico picks up the last card and hands me the deck, his face solemn. "Thanks, Les," he says. "I have to go home now."
And that's it. Pico abandons me in the kitchen. The front door wheezes open and a cool breeze floods into the kitchen, briefly, before the door slams closed. The house is silent. I look out through the kitchen window at the dining table sitting half refinished in the backyard.
I head back there intending to do some work, but I can't figure out where to start. After hovering around the table for a while, I rearrange my tools, then head inside my cabin, and, leaving the light off, lie down on the bed. I look over at the fish, their aquarium glowing blue in the darkened room. Five seconds of memory. A lifetime composed of these five-second instalments, just flashes of existence, only to have them vanish, recede mercifully from you like an accident you'd drive by at night on a highway.
TWO WEEKS LATER, autumn is in full swing. Every morning I wake up to a backyard buried in leaves, which I dutifully clear away before starting my day's work. By the end of the afternoon the grass is already disappearing again, the lawn just green scraps under a patchy brown cover. I've finished the dining table with one last coat of mahogany stain; I'm keeping it under a tarp out back until I find a buyer. It looks about a hundred years older than it actually is.
Judy has convinced me to go to this thing with her this afternoon - that weird hippie couple intent on burying their baby's placenta. Judy, the deliverer of the baby, is the honorary guest. Last weekend we were down at the creek with the dogs and she told me all about it.
"I'd really like you to be there," Judy said. She sat down on an old mossy log and looked up at me. Nearby, the dogs were chasing each other through the trees, the patter of paws on fallen leaves fading as they ran farther and farther away.
"Who are these people?"
"Les, come on. You used to deal with parents like this all the time - you know, the kind that think they're bringing up their kids creatively but are just breeding weirdos? They're fun."
"Jude, I don't know."
"Think about it," she said.
When we got home I went right out into the backyard and sat down at the head of the dining table, the tarp ruffling in the wind. Judy stood at the kitchen window watching me. For a moment we locked eyes, and then she pulled away.
I'VE DECIDED TO wear a suit, a starchy navy thing I used to pull out for meetings or home visits back in my days of social work. In the cabin, I struggle to knot my tie, then head out to the front of the house to wait for my sister. A chill in the air hints at winter; the street is quiet, and still. The neighbours have their Halloween decorations up: front porches are framed with orange and black streamers, cardboard cutouts of witches and ghosts perch on lawns. Daylight is just starting to drain from the sky.
Some kid is weaving down the street on a bicycle, tracing these slow, arching parabolas from one curb to the other. The kid comes closer, closer - and then I recognize the bike, that retro frame, those tasselled handlebars, the banana seat. The pink jacket. And a gorilla mask.
"Hey!" I yell.
The kid slams on the brakes and looks over at me. The mask comes off, and underneath is the face of a girl. She's probably twelve, and Asian - maybe Vietnamese, maybe Cambodian.
"Hi," she says.
I walk over to her. My tie is choking me.
"Cool bike."
"It's from the centre," says the girl. "It's old. It's only a onespeed."
"The centre? You mean the Laughlin Centre?"
"It's the only bike they have."
"They got a bike."
"Yeah."
I point up to the sign in the window of Judy's house. "We're Block Parents, so if you ever get into any trouble..."
The girl is giving me a look that says, Can I go now?
I tell her to ride safe.
IN JUDY'S CAR we listen to one of her French-language tapes. She practises her verbs along with the voice on the tape while she drives.
"J'ai eu, to as eu, it a eu, elle a eu," says Judy, and so forth. I sit staring out the window, playing absently with the power lock. "Try it, Les," Judy encourages me.
"J'ai! Eu!"
Judy grins. "Bravo, monsieur."
The woman on the tape continues to chatter awa
y, but Judy seems to have lost interest. We pull up to a red light and sit idling while cars stream by in front of us. Out of nowhere, Judy does one of her snort-laughs. She covers her mouth with her hand, eyes twinkling.
"What's up?"
"I just remembered how when you were a kid, you used to tell Mom's friends that you could remember being born."
"What? Never."
"Yeah, always. You'd describe it to them and everything."
"Shut up." I'm laughing now too.
"Christ, Les. You were such an odd little guy."
We drive for a while in silence, then pull up in front of a grand old house, the front yard full of people. Judy cuts the engine and pats my knee. "Ready to bury some placenta?"
"Yep," I say, and we high-five.
Judy straightens her skirt. "Seriously, though - make me laugh and I'll kill you."
Not only am I the only guest wearing a suit, but there is a couple in matching muumuus and a woman with an owl perched on her shoulder. Music starts up, and everyone shuffles around until they've formed a delta with an open space in the middle. Judy and I retreat behind a tree. I look up through branches scrawling black and empty into the grey October sky.
The mother and father appear from somewhere, the mother carrying her newborn, the father toting a platter with what looks like a lump of meat heaped onto it. The placenta.
"Holy shit," I whisper, nudging my sister. "That thing's enormous."
Judy, the corners of her mouth twitching, does her best to ignore me.
The parents move into the empty space in the middle of everyone, where a sort of grave has been dug in the garden. Dirt lies heaped up around the hole in brown piles.
The mother steps forward and begins talking. I don't hear what she says. I am thinking, suddenly, of Pico, and considering what the three of us - me, Judy, and Pico - would look like together in this context. Maybe people would mistake us for a family. Sure: a father and mother, friends of the happy couple, and little Pico, who we might have brought on the way to his soccer game. We'd drive him there in our minivan, go sit with the other happy, proud parents along the sideline. Afterwards everyone would go out for ice cream; plans would be made for sleepovers and birthday parties and summer camps.
I look over at my sister and her expression has changed. She seems focused, solemn. There is applause, and Judy steps forward. She waves, then reaches back and, grabbing my hand, drags me up with her. The parents take turns embracing us. When the mother wraps her free arm around me, the baby, resting its head on her shoulder, regards me across her back: it's like we're sharing a secret.
The father lowers the platter into the hollow and hands Judy a small shovel. She casts me a quick glance over her shoulder, then steps forward and stabs the blade into the earth with a crisp, dry sound. Everyone is silent. Judy lifts a shovelful of dirt and sprinkles it over the placenta, the pattering sound of it landing below like the footsteps of a hundred tiny feet.
WHEN THE CEREMONY is over, after the placenta is buried and the last spade of earth patted down, we are all invited inside for a reception. Judy seems to know everyone. She introduces me to countless midwives and clients and former teachers, all of them wanting to know what I do for a living. At one point, I corner my sister and tell her I've had enough.
"Christ, I can't leave now," she whispers. "Can you stick it out for another half-hour?"
"I'll walk - it's nice today."
She looks at me with this weird, sad smile. "Thanks for coming, Les."
"Sure."
With that I leave my sister, I leave the party, I leave them all behind and make my way outside. An earthy smell hangs in the air and, beyond it, something cold and sharp and distant. On the front steps of the house, I survey the empty front yard. A squirrel sits in the branches of one of the trees; just as I notice it, the animal springs to life. It scrabbles down the trunk, lunges, and lands silently on the grass. An acorn appears from its mouth. The tiny paws claw at the earth, then stuff the nut into the ground. The squirrel straightens up. It turns, staring in my direction from two black buttons in its face.
Something twitches inside me, and I have to grab the railing to steady myself. I inhale, closing my eyes, and count five seconds while my breath drains into the autumn dusk. When I open my eyes the squirrel has disappeared. The neighbourhood is silent, washed in dusty twilight. I let go of the railing and step down, one stair, then the next, and begin the walk home.
TIMBER ON THE WHEEL
OF EVERYONE
AFTER HE EMERGED from the coma, when Timber explained to Janet his revelation that he and Lance Armstrong were polar opposites on the spectrum of humanity, he would pinpoint its genesis in a single moment: the front wheel of his bicycle smacking into the driver-side door of the navy blue coupe.
This had happened at the bottom of what Timber's son Neil and Neil's big weird friend from England, Rick, called Frog Hill. (Rick with the chapped lips that spread in a red clown mouth of flaking skin onto his face and who carried a cellphone, always; Frog Hill because in those sunny summer days post-chemo and pre-magpies Neil and Rick had found a frog in the woods and Rick had bullied Neil into launching it into the path of an oncoming truck, which had flattened the frog into a creamy green paste. Neil had come home for dinner and it had been two bites of spaghetti, a pause, a wave of guilt, and then vomit, everywhere, spraying and splashing like a fire hydrant in a film about Harlem.)
It went like this: Timber had been coasting down Frog Hill, all easy speed and carefree, no brakes, thinking of the successes of Operation Stoplight, thinking of Janet, whom he had not yet met but was sure he loved, thinking of The Neil Kentridge X-Canada Tour for the Cure (the X denoting the word cross and nothing licentious) and thinking of these three very good things Timber spun his pedals backwards so something down there made that whizzing noise he enjoyed so much, and the pavement of Frog Hill zoomed by smooth and grey-black below, and gravity pulled him down, down, now at the bottom and the road starting to even out, flattening, and the sky above was a blue sheet slung arcing across the heavens - but then, wham! Here was a car door! With a crunch of metal the bike crumpled and so did he.
Timber lay panting, nuzzling the curb, no pain yet, vaguely aware that he was not dead. He could see the blurry shape of a head leaning gawking from the passenger-side window; equally blurry, the driver faltered half in and half out of her car. At that moment Timber's thoughts of Neil and Janet, of Operation Stoplight and X-Canada anything, and even his own life, still intact, were shattered by the image of Lance Armstrong, arms aloft as he crossed another finish line, champion, on the box of cereal that Neil enjoyed every morning.
When Timber thought of Lance Armstrong, Timber thought Hero. And when he considered himself, lying in the gutter, in relation to this Hero who had beaten cancer and won seven consecutive Tours de France, he thought Zero. He thought Fuck.
And then that final epiphany, materializing horrid and red like blood from a wound - like the blood that was now oozing through the torn knees of Timber's trousers, through the torn elbows of his shirt. All of humankind, Timber realized, existed on a spectrum, a wheel such as the one used to desig nate colours with opposites on either side: blue here and orange there, purple and yellow, red and green.
Here on the wheel was Mother Teresa, habit-clad and smiling and sickly thin and Good, and directly across from her sat a bristling, grumpy Hitler, Evil. And here was Evel Knievel and there was, what's his name, Super Dan? Mike? That guy, the one who always hurt himself: him. The Ex-Wife versus Janet. And on one side of the spectrum Timber saw Lance Armstrong, Hero, symbol of the triumph of the human spirit. And across from Lance Armstrong on this wheel, the Wheel of Everyone, Timber saw himself.
THAT MORNING, Timber had tried to ensure a normal routine. He and Neil sat at the kitchen table in Timber's rented duplex as they always did when Neil was in his father's custody. Timber slurped his chicory coffee substitute and grapefruit; Neil slurped his Tang and Lance Armstrong cereal drowned
in 2%. It was Speech Day, and through breakfast Timber prompted Neil on his speech, which ended with the line, And that's why Lance Armstrong is my hero.
After only four run-throughs, Neil had it down. Timber reached across the table to proudly tousle his son's hair. It had grown back different after the chemo, curly and dark and fun to tousle - although Neil ducked away from his father's hand and chided him, Da-ad. Then Timber helped Neil don his icecream tub helmet for the wait outside for the school bus. Since starting the fifth grade, Neil preferred to do this alone: fine. Timber wanted to believe in the old adage about letting the loved bird out of the cage, free, or whatever, however it went, and so instead of joining his son at the foot of the driveway, Timber watched from the den window.
In the trees the magpies were collecting, all glinting black eyes and fluttering wings. Neil stood below, oblivious - but safe in his ice-cream tub helmet, hopefully. The next day Neil had a track meet that Timber would miss, even though every weekend he had helped his son practise at the park: fetching and rolling back the softball, timing his laps around the soccer field, measuring his long jump in the sandbox, coaching and cheering him on through each event. But Timber recalled yelling, Batter up! when Neil had stepped to the start line for his 8o-metre dash, and then realizing, Aw crap, he didn't know from sports, who was he kidding? And the way Neil faltered there at the other end of the field, he was likely thinking the same thing.
Watching his son wait for the bus, Timber tried to focus on The Neil Kentridge X-Canada Tour for the Cure, proof he could just Do It as well as anyone. But then from nowhere, like a waft of sudden flatulence, the term custody agreement was upon him, and this conjured The Ex-Wife and The Ex-Wife's lawyer-slash-lover, Mr. Barry Parker, who together seemed negligent, did not appreciate the dangers facing young boys in town, especially young boys in remission - the magpies, for one, and also having reckless, cellphone-toting friends like British Rick. Who could a ten-year-old possibly need to call? But then the school bus arrived growling and took Neil away. It was time for Timber to head to work.