There were two large sinks in the far right corner of the room. There were cots on wheels pushed into the far left corner and these cots were covered with sheets and straps and pans of instruments. Perhaps my knife had been lost among the piles of cloth and metal pans.
Somebody was breathing in amongst the pile. It was a raspy sound like wind through fabric, but it was a breath, I was sure. I thought it might be the fat clerk, hiding for a nap. This is what I was thinking. This is what stress can do to you.
I yanked the top sheet and heard a small yelp. Soon I had the young man uncovered. He was naked and holding a knife. It was my knife and this was the boy, looking at me, unsurprised, just taking it all in. Nothing could shock him. It was all he could do to manage his physical pain and nothing else would move him. He was watching his own final moments and did not care. It isn’t did not care, he probably welcomed the end, that’s what pain will do to you.
My own father had a lucid moment toward the end of his life. It was only a week or so before he died. He could barely move but I read to him and sometimes he would smile. One night I had my ear down to his mouth to hear what he had to say, if anything, and he strung together many words in a row. It was a big moment, talking to my dad for the first time in many days. He told me this was no way to live, no sense to it, he was too drugged, he could not enjoy it, it was not living, and so on. I told him I knew what he meant but how could I? The pain would be too much.
I can handle the pain, he said. This is too much, this fog, there is one thing left for me to do and I won’t even know when I do it. He looked at me and I have to believe he was unable to say what he wanted. I have to believe it was physical, or brought on by the drugs — what happened.
He told me, “You are not the son I imagined,” and then went on muttering. I didn’t understand his mutterings. And this little conversation was the cause of one of my greatest regrets. Because of it, I lessened the dose of his medication. He wanted off altogether but I just lessened it.
I woke in the night to check on him and he was not screaming or thrashing about but, on closer inspection, was gritting his teeth and sweating and holding on so hard to the rails of the bed I thought they might snap off.
I made some minor conversation with him then, as I washed his forehead and neck with a cool wet cloth, and he tried his best to smile. How far can we take this? I asked him. How long can you do this?
“Just watch me. Pierre Trudeau,” he said, and laughed, or tried to, but it turned into a yelp that startled us both. He closed his eyes. He trembled. And wept.
“They’ve forgotten you,” I told the boy. “That’s all right, they’ve forgotten you.” But I knew they did not forget people. Not these people. They had an exact plan in mind. Never mind the freeloaders, they were old and there was still the argument publicly that they had earned some kind of respite, some kind of consideration, but these kids — there was no way. In that little room there was one window, but it was covered. I couldn’t reach it to let in some light. Probably there was no light to let in. Probably it opened into another room, or a blank wall somewhere, the wall white brick, painted yearly, or some kind of metal, sandblasted once a year. There are certain standards for buildings. Where they came from you never know. You depend on the window being there. You can’t depend on it being useful.
The boy held the handle of my knife, absent-mindedly, and his wound held the blade, as if it were all natural. Do these hospital characters think they are above the law? There must be one rule that founds our belief.
“I will keep the knife in. They will be here soon.”
“No. Take it out.”
“I am the one stabbed. I am not the one stabbing. They’ll be here soon.”
“What is your name?” I asked him, leaning down to his ear, whispering. We were in a hospital. We had all the gear and the body is simple.
He asked me which one, he said he had many names and when he was a child . . . I removed his hand from the knife. I wheeled the boy and my knife out of the room. Everything in the hospital was at my disposal. There were empty beds and empty rooms and empty hallways and the wheels and my footsteps had authority there in the silence. Questions were not asked.
I’m not made of money, so I can’t explain this taking cabs everywhere. Why not take the subway? Why not take a bus? I could even walk, as I had until this morning, until stabbing the boy.
I planned on walking, but found myself in a taxi. Shut up, I told the driver. I’m sorry. I am private.
The birds that strut around don’t know the world has changed. Their poor, ridiculous brains miss the essentials. Every time the cab stopped, a bird was there pecking at nothing, or walking in jerky movements like an unbalanced toy. Sometimes in the morning you see them cooing, burying their hard beaks briefly in each other’s feathers.
Every block I told myself it’s time to get out and walk, but stayed in the taxi, looking through its glass. People bumped into one another on the street as we stopped, again and again, at lights. Bareheaded women tried to look straight ahead. Children yelped and laughed on their way home. And everywhere, people exchanging objects, trying to be civil.
It Cools Down
THE MAN WAVED TO HIS TWIN boys as they drove away with their mother in that polite old station wagon. I could only see the sweaty, rumpled back of him, with the hair on his neck damp and dark. But I said to myself, Jesus, this one’s going to go on about everything.
He shook his coat out and folded it again over his left arm, then turned to walk toward the school as the sun hung low in the sky. He was startled to see me there behind him, and briefly on his lined face was the ghost of a frown, then a sudden smile.
“Hey,” he said through his white teeth. “Is this where the meeting is?”
“Sure,” I said. “We just got all the chairs arranged. Just stepped out for a smoke.”
I knew he thought it was a filthy habit. Everybody did. So did I. But he just stretched his hand out and told me his name, Bob Rush. I told him mine: Larry.
“Well, good to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too, Larry. Look, is this air-conditioned? Will it be cool in there?”
“It’s a pretty old school,” I said. He sounded like a salesman.
“Yeah. No luck huh, Larry? No air-conditioning?”
“No,” I said. I knew he must be a salesman, the way he kept saying my name.
“Look, I just moved here, Larry, just last month. Is this normal? I mean, Jesus, it cools down, doesn’t it?”
I knew it. Cripes. About the weather, no less.
“It cools down, Bob. It’s an odd year.”
“Yeah, it’s odd all over, I guess.”
I didn’t know what he meant, and so I asked him. Behind him, on the other side of the street, a kid stopped his bike to pick up something he’d seen in the grass. He held it up to his face. The poor kid had glasses an inch thick. He put whatever it was in his pocket and rode on as fast as he could.
“I mean the weather,” Bob said. “It’s hotter than hell here, then there’s all that flooding in the east.”
“I’m just worried about what’s coming when this is over,” I said, looking at the sky. I wanted to scare him. Maybe we get tornadoes here, that kind of thing. But he was calm and looked at me, just waiting for an explanation. I lit another cigarette.
His wife had just driven off. She was leaving — otherwise, why would he be at the meeting? — and here he was, chatting me up like a salesman.
What about the anger? What about walking two steps toward the dust that hung behind the gone car and shaking your fist? But then the kids. The kids were the point of it, after all. It had to be right for the boys.
If it were me?
There was nothing to do but your mind goes on. I could picture it all. The real story was in the car. A road trip gets things moving. Bob was stuck with us. His twin sons looking back at him through the bright air, with their young faces bumped up against the glass, would they be consoled during th
e trip ahead?
Would they even need consoling? And this wife, with her solid, straight course of action, with her defiant turn out of the parking lot and her every direction sustained by active physical pressure on the car, either fingers and hands turning the wheel or a foot holding steady on the pedal, would she set the twins down somewhere as it got dark? Would her two boys eat, confused but open to this new adventure? It wasn’t forever; nothing, so far, had been forever. Everything, so far, had ended up all right.
Meanwhile, Bob was stuck with us. It’s the right way to do things, these days. The women have their support groups, why not us, Bob? Why not us indeed, Larry? Your wife tells you to go and get your support — for you and the kids you all need to do things right — you the father, and she the mother.
But would the mother sit outside the tiny roadside restaurant and smoke a cigarette calling on as much as she could see in the night sky to justify whatever it was she thought she was doing?
So here was Bob, talking to me about the weather. The sun does all it can, Bob. The meeting is about to start, Bob. Welcome to our community, Bob. This is what happens here.
“Well,” he said. “Isn’t that something? Would you look at that?”
I followed the line of his sight. I looked over to where he was looking. It was a pretty big deal. His old station wagon sat in a little driveway four doors down from the schoolyard. The air seemed to hold the ghosts of the sounds of car doors closing. It was Penny’s place. She just moved there, but everybody knows Penny.
“Are you going to do anything?”
“What could I do, Larry?”
“Some people do things, Bob.”
“What kinds of things?”
I shrugged. Listen, Bob, I thought, I am the wrong guy to ask. I didn’t do anything. My wife left long ago and though I had one son, not two of the same, not twins, I did nothing. It’s a very small town and I should have known where she’d go. I knew where she’d gone. I’ve seen it many times. Penny’s. Penny is a big help. It’s a safe place.
He took the doorknob in his hand and turned. I usually struggle a bit with this door, but he opened it easy. I’m older than he is and also I have an undiagnosed disease I call arthritis. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn’t, but when I use that name people know what I mean.
The meeting was about to get underway. Gord and Jamie introduced themselves, as they usually did, then I introduced Bob and myself, though I needed no introduction. It was how things went in these meetings; we all introduced ourselves every time.
Gord was wearing a button-up shirt and his sleeves were not rolled up. Jamie had on an old T-shirt with dark stains of sweat all over it. The shirt said something about a 10 K Fun Run, but Jamie looked like he’d never run a day in his life. He was a solid shape with a huge hard belly, thick all over with his big arms and shoulders solid muscle. Hair jumped out from the neck hole of his shirt.
The interior darkness was a switch from the sun outside and the hardwood floor was a sickly colour. There were six empty chairs in the middle of the gym. I sat down but Bob walked back to the exit after putting his jacket on the chair beside me.
We all waited for him. This wasn’t usually done. The meeting had begun. So we watched him as he opened the fire exits, then came and sat back down. He looked at us all and smiled.
“Sorry,” he said. “But it’s so hot in here.”
Jamie nodded and so did Gord.
“It doesn’t help,” I said. “That’s the only thing.”
“Maybe a breeze will get through here.”
“There’s no wind,” I said.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Bob said. “Now how does this work?”
“He’s right, Larry, it doesn’t hurt. Sometimes there’s a breeze.” Gord shuffled some papers that he held on his lap. He squinted at me as he spoke. We heard a car drive slowly on gravel outside, the sound of a child’s surprised and happy scream followed by laughter. And somewhere, just at the range of my hearing, a lawnmower stopped and another expectant layer of silence was added.
“No, I guess it doesn’t,” I said.
Jamie rubbed his eyes and said, “It works like this.”
Bob watched Jamie, who took a while to speak anyway, but especially when someone was new. He wanted to remember exactly how it had been explained to him.
“We introduce ourselves?” Bob asked, turning in his chair from Jamie to me. His short neck was almost useless; he swivelled his whole upper body from his hips.
“Well, yes,” Jamie said, and Bob swivelled back to him.
“But we’ve already done that, Bob,” I said, just to see the poor man turn toward me again. But he stood up and pulled the chair back, away from the group, then sat down on it again where he could see us all just by turning his head a few degrees.
“He means formally,” Jamie said.
“Sure I do,” Bob said. “I mean formally, like in AA.”
“There is no formality here,” I said.
“Maybe Bob would like the formality,” Jamie said to me, and then to Gord: “We used to be more formal.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Things weren’t going the way I expected. We hadn’t had to go through these motions for quite some time. We just talk. We know who we are.
“Especially in a small town, I think, Larry,” Gord said. “The formality may help us seem a bit more like strangers or at least give us the impression that we have some kind of anonymity.”
Bob nodded.
“We don’t, of course,” Gord said, and rubbed the end of his nose with the back of one hand.
“I think it would help me,” Bob said finally.
“Then let’s go ahead, Bob,” I said. “Let’s start with you.”
Bob stood up and walked back and forth in a short line in front of us. He looked at the floor and paced, then he went to his chair, put his hands on its back, and looked at all three of us in turn.
“Somebody else had better go first,” he said. “This just happened to me. Everything’s just happened. I haven’t been to a meeting like this before. I was just dropped here and I met Larry outside while they drove off.”
Bob was sweating. He stopped talking and stared at me. Jamie and Gord were looking at me too. I knew this would happen. I knew it would and now they wanted me to clear things up, they wanted to hear what I knew. I nodded and tried to smile.
“I don’t need to introduce myself,” I said. “Why don’t you go first, Gord?”
Gord looked at the papers in his lap. He cleared his throat.
“Okay, my name is Gord,” he said, then cleared his throat again. “I used to be called Gordie.”
“Right,” I said. “Then you went to Gordon, which you liked. Now it’s just Gord, which you’re unsure about but it will have to do.”
“Jesus. Would you just let him speak?” Jamie said.
I didn’t say anything. I let him go on. Of course it’s the right thing to do but I’d heard it again and again, formally and informally. Now what?
I stood up and walked to the door. There were two of us standing now, Bob and me. Bob was holding the back of his chair, sometimes gesturing with his hands or standing straight as if stretching, but he never moved from behind his chair.
I stood over by the northeast door. It was just as hot in the shade of the interior as in the light let into the gym by the open door. But there was a breeze, just like they said. I couldn’t help it. I lit a cigarette. I need something to do with my hands. Nobody would say anything. It wasn’t that bad.
I heard the ice-cream boy riding his ice-cream cycle on the other end of town. I imagined screen doors on rusty hinges slamming, and children running with money in their hands. A Fudgecicle. Sitting on the step, with my arm tired from throwing the ball, my son beside me who could catch and throw all night.
I went back to Jamie and Gord and Bob, just about the time Gord finished his little introduction. Bob, in his loosened tie and shirt wet from sweat, walked the two steps over and pulled Gord fr
om his chair to give him a hug. Jamie looked a little uncomfortable. He stood and squeezed Gord’s arm.
Everybody sat down again, except for Bob and me.
“I don’t know if I completely understand,” Bob said. “I moved here two weeks ago with my family. My wife had twins. I mean she gave birth to them eight years ago. We have twins. Their names are Art and Zach. Those were not my choices but I like them. They’re not as plain as Bob. I always wanted for my kids names that were not as common as Bob. I couldn’t think of names on my own but Debbie did and I like them now. I wanted maybe Zeus or Thor, that kind of name. That kind of odd name.
“Two weeks ago we moved to this town. No offence, but I didn’t want to. I mean, it’s a good place to raise kids, and I was happy for them, and I’m glad they’re here.
“But it’s just so far outside my realm of experience, I didn’t know anything about it.”
Bob was telling a story. This was not an introduction. I was pacing up and down the floor.
“They’re not that far, Bob,” I finally said, interrupting him. Jamie looked at me and stood up. He was getting annoyed. Gord looked as if he pitied me, just like he always does. “I’m just saying,” I said. “They’re right down the street. They’re at Penny’s place, they’re just down the fucking street! They’re right there!”
Jamie stood like he always did; he seemed to get closer without ever moving. I calmed down. I walked to the door again. I lit a cigarette and listened to Bob’s voice.
Bob’s story went like this: He had two kids. Twins, as I said. They were boys and he loved them. He suspected from the beginning they weren’t his sons.
The usual reasons would have been mathematical, but Bob didn’t think of anything like that. He’d been on the road, sure, selling construction equipment. He’d been in different cities on some nights and he’d been out late all the time.
We Don't Listen to Them Page 6