by Heather Burt
“I think I’ll take a shower too,” the woman said, and Rudy nodded.
She left the bathroom door half open as she showered, but he waited for her to come out. She didn’t bother with a towel. Her wet hair hung almost to her waist and her skin and eyelashes glistened with drops of water. Her legs were covered in white-blond fuzz; her pubic hair was surprisingly dark. The woman took a swig of his Fanta then rested the bottle on the small wooden night table, the only other furniture in the room. He stood up, letting his towel drop to the floor, and cupped her breasts in his hands. They were large and soft, a long-lost pleasure that now excited him intensely. He wanted to be inside her right away, but he held back. He would come too soon, and then neither of them would get what they wanted. Gently he pulled her down onto the bed. She guided his fingers where she wanted, as if, sensing an inadequacy on his part, she was willing to compensate. In return, he was entirely accommodating when she commented on the darkness of his penis against her pale inner thigh and when she compared their lovemaking to a scene in one of Michael Ondaatje’s poems. When at last he entered her, he even quoted a line from The Cinnamon Peeler—required reading for the A-level Literature exam.
But he didn’t come. They tried a few different positions, but when the whole thing became a mechanical chore, they gave up. The woman assured him there was no need to feel embarrassed. An unnecessary remark, for as he lay on his back, staring at the white ceiling, he felt only an oppressive heaviness at the centre of his chest.
The woman sat up and began combing her fingers through her hair.
“Would you like to climb Adam’s Peak with me tomorrow?” she said, as if there were no reason in the world that he shouldn’t want to join her.
Rudy hesitated, wondering how to refuse. “I can’t,” he finally said. He suspected the woman would have accepted any reason, or even no reason at all, but he went on. “I’m waiting to do the climb with my brother. His name’s Adam—after the peak, sort of. Neither of us has ever climbed it before, and we agreed to do it together.” He paused. “Actually, I just suggested it recently, but I’m pretty sure he’ll go along with it.”
“Where is your brother now?” the woman said.
For the first time since his father’s phone call, Rudy’s eyes threatened to well up. He reached for his clothes, piled on the floor. “He’s back in Montreal.”
“He’ll be coming here?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.” His voice was strained, robotic. “He was in a motorcycle accident on Friday. He’s in the hospital.”
He glanced at the woman in time to see her wince.
“My God, you must be so worried!” She hugged her knees to her chest and fixed her eyes on Rudy as he dressed. “Will you go back to see him?”
The question took him by surprise. The possibility of returning to Montreal hadn’t occurred to him, but he knew, even as he pretended to grapple with the idea, that he wouldn’t go.
“I don’t think so,” he eventually said. “Not at this point.”
“But why not? Doesn’t your family need you?”
The question was presumptuous, Rudy thought. At the same time, it begged an answer. Did his family need him? Would it make any difference at all if he were there? If Aunty Mary were to go back—and he suspected she would—Dad and Susie would be happier. Aunty would cook for them, and clean the house, and through these familiar domestic miracles, she’d impose a certain order on the chaos that had no doubt invaded their lives. But if he, Rudy, were to go back? What could he do that his aunt, or even some neighbour, wouldn’t already have under control? There’d be an intangible benefit to his presence, he supposed, to having the whole family together. But it was a togetherness that would quickly become crowded. His father’s epic brooding, Susie’s anxiety, Aunty’s stubborn faith—each would take up an inordinate amount of space, and Rudy, the impotent observer, would be squashed into further uselessness.
Slowly he did up his pants. The woman on the bed was still staring at him, expecting an answer.
“I don’t think I could get leave from work,” he said. “Unless things got worse.”
The woman shook her head. “That’s inhuman. What’s more important, English class or your brother? Couldn’t they find someone else to do your job?”
Rudy shrugged. If he were to be completely honest, his companion would no doubt think him inhuman. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t go with you tomorrow. I’m probably a cad for being here with you now. I should have told you right off what was going on.”
The woman got up from the bed and approached him. Her hair was half dry and smelled lemony; her brown nipples had softened and enlarged. She took both his hands in hers. “It’s okay,” she said. “Nobody should be alone at a time like this.” She kissed his cheek, squeezed his hands, then crossed the room to her backpack and began rummaging for clothes. Buttoning his shirt, Rudy wondered if her next outfit would have as many pockets as the last. He’d been mistaken, perhaps, in imagining she was self-contained.
He left the guest house alone and wandered back in the direction of the train station, weaving through vendors’ displays of pirated music and brand name rip-offs. On the traffic island at the junction of Chatham Street and Janadhipathi Mawatha—President Street—he paused to mop his face. The island was occupied by a clock tower, a squat, off-white structure with the queer distinction of being, according to Aunty Mary, a year older than Big Ben. Leaning against it, Rudy recalled the visit he and his aunt had made to the city shortly after his arrival. Aunty had been the acknowledged expert that day, navigating the maze of streets, pointing out landmarks, telling stories of Van Twests who’d come to Colombo on merchant ships at the start of the last century. But all Rudy had retained was the location of his bus stop and a useless fact about a clock tower on a traffic island. His brother would have paid more attention.
Squinting up at the clock face, which read ten past eleven, he remembered Easter lunch. Aunty would be completing her preparations, expecting him to show up. He glanced around for a public phone, but though he spotted one, he didn’t bother calling. He was getting hungry, and more for that reason than any other he decided to go home.
On the train back to Wattala he tried to sleep again but couldn’t. The scene of Adam’s accident had finally worked its way into his consciousness. He saw the Boulevard, slushy and grey, under a low, grey sky ... the ugly strip malls and regimented parking lots ... the streams of indifferent traffic. He put himself on the motorcycle, behind his brother, his hands around Adam’s waist. He imagined the engine’s thrust, the outrageous speed, the knifelike air, and he wondered that he’d never taken such a ride before. Adam had asked him once. The motorcycle was brand new, and he was enthralled with it. “Just a short ride, Rudy,” he’d said, pleading almost. “Come on, it’s a blast!” But Rudy had refused. Not because he was afraid. As he recalled it now, he just hadn’t felt like being with Adam, allowing himself to be governed by Adam’s whims and desires. He tried to remember what he’d done that evening instead. Read the newspaper? Stared out the window? He had no idea. Of course, if he’d gone on the motorcycle, it would have been a big deal. The event might even, he thought now, have changed the course of things to come. But this was a pointless consideration.
Putting himself next in the driver’s seat, Rudy played the collision in his mind, over and over, trying to get it right. He fine-tuned the sprays of grimy slush, the flashes of chrome, the violent clenching of the van’s brakes. A minivan? A moving van? He didn’t know. He considered all possible points of contact and the shocks that each would send through his body. When the muscles of his legs and trunk had begun to throb for real, he threw himself from the motorcycle. But at this point, his imagination failed him. It got him into the air but couldn’t land him, couldn’t conceive of the terrible impact that would decide everything. It seemed impossible to him then that his brother would survive. God or no, he was being punished.
As the train rumbled into his
station, Rudy became nervous—butterflies in the stomach and a bursting bladder. He crossed the platform to the public toilet and held his breath as he urinated into a concrete trough, covered, like the walls of the stinking enclosure, with graffiti. Most of the messages were in Tamil or Sinhala, though someone had scribbled “Give peace a chance” in English. Back outside, he left the shade of the platform and walked in the direction of Vaththe Mawatha. Then he stopped. In his nervousness he was no longer hungry, and he wasn’t ready to go home. Behind him, people were filing out of Aunty’s church, and it was there that he headed, eyes fixed on the statue of Saint Anne gazing down from an alcove high on the church’s façade.
He waited until the last stragglers had left, then he slipped through a side door into the cool, cavernous sanctuary. He moved sideways to the middle of a pew and sat down, positioning himself under a ceiling fan. Gentle pulses of air dried his face. He stared ahead at the plaster Jesus hanging behind the altar. The figure’s contorted, pinkish form was stained with blobs of red at the usual places. A white plaster loincloth drooped precariously from the skeletal hips, but the eyes, taking no notice, were directed upward, to the building’s rafters and fans. The expression was one of weary exasperation, indifference to whatever might be happening in the church below. Rudy imagined the eleven o’clock Mass—a few hundred people pouring out their compassion and thanks to a guy whose image suggested he didn’t give a fuck—and wished, in spite of everything, that he’d been part of the ritual.
Across the sanctuary, next to the confessional booths, a door opened and a cleaning woman appeared. She walked silently, carrying a dustpan and a straw broom with a short stub of a handle. She was very thin, and her silvered hair was dressed in a long plait down her back. Working her way around the perimeter of the sanctuary, she bent over at regular intervals to sweep. Her equipment was hopelessly inadequate, but she moved quickly. When she reached the centre aisle she noticed Rudy and acknowledged him with a sideways tilt of her head and a fraction of a smile. Then she took the palloo of her faded turquoise sari and wiped her forehead.
Apart from its colour, the sari was nothing like his mother’s special one, and the cleaning woman herself bore no resemblance. Still, witnessing the simple gesture, Rudy saw her—Mum, enormously pregnant, pushing the vacuum cleaner around the living room, stopping to mop her face and catch her breath. His last goddamn image of her. He remembered nothing of the car ride to the Pereiras’ apartment. His mother must have kissed him goodbye and reminded him to be good, but he didn’t remember that either. And then there were the infinite moments he’d never remember because they’d been stolen from him. Cold cloths and calamine when the chicken pox finally caught up to him in grade four, sympathy when he failed to make the junior basketball team ... As he always did when he began to mourn her in this way, he imagined how things would really have been. He told himself his mother would have suffocated him with her doting, like Aunty. She would have bragged inappropriately about his run-of-the-mill accomplishments and pestered him increasingly for a daughter-in-law and grandchildren. As she aged, she would have complained of varicose veins and high blood pressure and developed a swelling nostalgia for the past in the cavities of her heart. He would have loved her, of course, but their relationship would not have been central to his life. This is what he told himself—but still, he couldn’t bear the sight of the cleaning woman in the turquoise sari.
He turned back to the plaster Jesus, muttered “Useless bastard,” then checked his watch and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. It was time to go home.
Outside, he noticed the Bajaj three-wheelers across the street and groaned. As he headed toward Vaththe Mawatha, the fat-bellied driver who’d accosted him the day he missed his bus stop again stepped forward.
“Sixty rupees only, sir.”
Rudy walked on a few paces then stopped. “Fine,” he answered, and the driver, showing no surprise, nodded, refastening his sarong. Rudy ducked into the back of the taxi while the driver installed himself in the front seat. After several vigorous revs of the engine, they rumbled off in the direction of Aunty Mary’s lane.
7
CLARE APPROACHES THE RECEPTION DESK with a strange confidence.
“I’m here to see Adam Vantwest. He was admitted on Friday.”
The receptionist types something quickly then squints at her computer screen. “Are you a family member?”
“No, I’m a neighbour. But I was with him right before the accident.”
“I’m afraid you have to be a family member.”
“But that makes no sense,” Clare says helplessly. Then she recognizes the woman. “Ma, it’s me. Can’t I see him?”
Her mother shakes her head. “No, pet. It’s too dangerous.”
“But why?”
“He might not be dressed. It’s too dangerous.”
Suddenly aware that her mother is barricaded inside her station, Clare marches off in the direction of Adam’s room. Isobel, still insistent, calls after her, but her voice becomes more and more faint.
The corridor is long and the fluorescent lights flicker and buzz. Clare passes darkened rooms and realizes she doesn’t know which is Adam’s. Desperate now to find him, she braces herself to return to the reception desk. Then she spots a large index card, taped to the wall next to a door. Sloppily printed in black felt pen is the name “VAN TWEST.” The door next to the card is slightly ajar. Clare pushes it open.
The room is dim and orangey, and Adam’s sheet is a saffron brocade. The bed is unusually high. Standing at the foot of it, Clare cranes her neck to see Adam’s face, but Adam bends his legs, just enough to block her view. She stands on tiptoe, trying to peer over his knees, then backs out into the corridor, but Adam’s legs, draped in the saffron brocade, hide his face completely.
Across the hall is another room, a regular-looking hospital room, brightly lit, with its door open. Clare looks inside. In the one bed is her father, reading a book. He looks up and smiles.
“It’s my wee cub!”
She runs to his bedside. “I can’t believe it! Ma told me you had a heart attack.”
“Oh, aye. That’s what they call it to avoid confusion. But it was really a metamorphosis.” He puts the book down on the bed. “It’s not restricted to the heart, you see. It’s more pervasive.”
“Metamorphosis?”
“Aye. I’m lucky they caught it. It’s like a coma, you see.”
“So you’re going to be all right?”
“Oh, they’re not positive yet, but I’m down to just this one wee IV.”
He holds up his left wrist, from which a tiny rubber tube snakes to a hanging bowl of clear liquid.
Clare laughs. “That’s great! Does Ma know?”
“No, no. Not yet. That would have been too risky.”
He’s so easy to talk to. She wants to ask her father about his metamorphosis—it makes perfect sense, and she’s surprised that the possibility has never occurred to her—but the hospital has suddenly become noisy and chaotic. There are voices and footsteps out in the corridor, heavy things being dropped.
CLARE ROLLED ONTO HER BACK, woken by the carpet installers hauling in their equipment and getting on with the business of tearing up Alastair’s Wedgwood blue carpeting. She reached for the remote control on the bedside table, pointed it at the stereo, and shut them out.
She tried to remember her dream. The part with her father was hopelessly fuzzy, but the image of Adam’s room was clear. Not surprisingly. Several days had passed since the accident, and in that time she’d thought of little else. First there was the shocking matter of the thing having occurred on the very day she had been with Adam. The only time she’d ever been with him, in fact. Then there was the swarm of what-ifs buzzing about her head in an ever-multiplying cloud. The number of ridiculously simple ways she could have altered events was horrifying. And it wasn’t just the matter of having refused his offer to ride up Mount Royal. Everything she’d said to him, or not said—about hi
s family, about Vancouver, about Emma—seemed part of a necessary chain. Remove any one of those links, or add one, she thought, and the outcome would have been different. She’d convinced herself, more or less, that these what-ifs were irrelevant—Adam was still in a coma (though showing signs of improvement, according to Mrs. Skinner’s reports), and she, Clare, was in her bedroom, about to get ready for work. But while Friday’s events were now beyond her control, her power over things to come was dizzying. The future, previously distant and uncomplicated, something to be mulled over and planned at leisure, was now close—on the other side of the blind, behind the bedroom door—and its possibilities, its what-ifs, branched infinitely.
Most of them simply had to be ignored.
Clare stared at the blank ceiling a moment longer then got up. She went to the window and raised the blind. Mr. Vantwest’s car was in the driveway, but all the curtains in the house were drawn.
What if I were to go over there and knock on the door?
You should have done it already. Emma’s voice was terse and accusing. You were probably the last person to talk to him before his accident.
I don’t think his family knows that.
Doesn’t matter. You should still visit them.
There was no getting around this, it seemed. Isobel had taken a casserole across and left it outside the Vantwests’ front door with a card, which Clare had signed. Joanne Skinner had kept herself updated somehow. But Clare had yet to cross the street. Like a spy, she’d kept track of her neighbours’ movements from her bedroom window. She knew that Adam’s sister and her little girl had left, and she’d witnessed the return of the aunt—Mr. Vantwest hauling two bulging suitcases from the car to the house, the aunt trailing behind in a summer dress and a ski jacket, carrying what looked to be bags of groceries. She’d watched for Rudy Vantwest, but he hadn’t yet appeared.