When the old man’s face is staring right at you, square, his ears bracket an expression that is completely earnest. There are small plugs of black and/or grey growing from his ears. His uncontrolled eyebrows seem dry and foreign compared to his open, dark eyes. Wet eyes, that offer, that are eager, and —
Because they are new to you, you assume they are sad, because that is how sad sad would be, if you want to know the truth. But he licks his dry lips and smiles. Hello, he says, with a rich voice that cannot lie.
So, he’s not here for sadness, but you are available to it. Maybe he’s only open to hope because he’s a believer, a man of faith, without putting too fine a point on it.
Okay, suppose that were true. This man died in a cold winter while shovelling snow. It was in the Christmas season and his heart, Doug supposes, was swollen, content.
He didn’t smoke. He spoke to his grandson before going out into the cold. The grandson had a new job and for the first time in his life got paid for the time he took off at Christmas. The job was nothing special. Not a never-ending stint at a research hospital, not a first-line winger on a good NHL team, not even a union job with the RM. But it was a good job and the grandson had called from the top floor suite he rented with his fiancé. Her family was all fine. They’d had turkey that day. The father-in-law snored on the couch.
Was the dead man’s piety a response to sorrow on earth? Did he believe in heaven because of his miserable lot in life? No. No.
He took pleasure in a job well done. His peers may sometimes have ridiculed him but the cold concrete exposed as he shovelled gave him as much pleasure as the souls he’d saved for his God, or for the sake of the souls themselves, however you’d like to look at it.
So you’ve got to look somewhere else in this man’s life. That’s how you’ve come to the idea of him staring out the window of an airport building to a field of planes moving unnaturally on their tiny wheels.
He thought of the thin ankles crossed below her green skirt. He imagined the time before his marriage when he’d lusted after his wife. Sure, he’d felt the same once they were married, but it wasn’t the same. It had taken him forty-three years to allow himself to enjoy this feeling.
It’s okay; she’s your wife.
But she hadn’t been.
Now that he allowed himself this pleasure, almost anything could remind him of the sight of those ankles crossed like the brown wet legs of a colt struggling to stand. How had they gotten so tanned? What did she do in the wild grass of the yard or the poplar forest beyond?
The thin metal legs descending from the bottom skin of the plane to hold its hard wheels, for instance, might make him remember. His own wrists one day as it rained, when his gloves were so wet he’d removed them before reaching for the hand of a long-forgotten friend met suddenly and by surprise. The pale brown trunk of a tree in a pot beside the hospital’s elevator.
Well, that one, at least, makes sense; the leaves of this artificial plant were the same edible green as his wife’s skirt on that troubling occasion those long days ago.
But what of those who cannot marry? He knows he’s lucky. He knows he’s next.
So what is he doing with no luggage and no plane ticket?
I’ll leave that to you.
What were you doing on that day, when nothing had to be said, when you finally allowed yourself to see the world, to see the connections from each human standing upright on the same concrete floor out into the world, where we are each too small, then back in? When one of these flesh nodes caught your eye because his face was blank and so was the wall he stared through?
He’d like one day, without close relatives and friends in the room, to be as open as this man was, staring into the mirrored darkness as if his own loving people were there with him, even though he knew he was alone. But as Doug’s red-eyed mother walks out to the car on his arm and he tries to hold his breath through the thick clouds of exhaust, he forgets his father, who he hasn’t heard say a word all night.
“Go help your dad,” his mother says, just before he shuts her door. So he walks back in and finds his father’s coat, finds his father, too. When they get to the car his father stands staring at the world around him, and tail lights and reverse lights are all lit up around him as he stands in the fog of exhaust. Doug swings his gaze around, looking for whatever has caught his father’s attention. Then he looks back and sees the door open, his father bending to smile at his mother.
“Yes,” his father says, though Doug doesn’t know what he answers to.
But it doesn’t matter anyway. What kind of great act is so small it deserves only a slice of pie on a weekday afternoon?
We All Considered This
HE WAS JUST LIKE ANY OTHER guy walking around with his age spots. He fished weeds from the dirt in front of his bay window, or he planted them, depending on your perspective. He knelt with a canvas seed bag that seemed always full. The sun was up when he was out there and his deliberate movements seemed neither to start nor end. The bag would have weeds in it, and so would the dirt; his hand would be in the dirt, his hand would be in the bag.
In the evenings he’d sit cleaned up and smiling in the shade at the front of his empty garage. He didn’t drive anymore, and he had no car. He would sit in front of the open door of his garage, with his tools and rakes and supplies on tables and shelves behind him. He’d drink beer from a glass and wipe his forehead sometimes with an old white hankie.
We saw him all the time. Then one day he wasn’t there. That’s typical of this world. That’s how it goes. Turns out he had been charged with collusion. They picked him up. He was gone for weeks, but I assumed it was natural. I would go and peek in the front window of the house — you know, in case it came on the market soon. My daughter needed a house. This one was pretty close to mine, so I’d like that.
The truth is her whole life was a shambles. Her brother had wrecked it. Her half-brother. I don’t know. I was not in on the truth in the old days. I was drunk and at war — or drunk, then at war, then drunk again. It seemed to me that my youth had been the best time of my life — successful, I mean. I’d learned how to drink and when I came back from the war I already had that talent. It was a gift after what happened over there.
I needed to get fucked up. I needed the inside to match the outside — okay, green seas, blue skies; mountains climbing up God’s cold skull, dreaming whatever rock dreams when fuckers like us climb all over it, trying to kill stuff we don’t even admit is alive.
The stupid part was I got her to move back to town right away. It was simple. It went like this (on the telephone):
— The house down the block’s up for sale.
— Is it nice?
— Great. Great price, too.
— I don’t know.
— I could help with the down payment, too.
— I don’t know. You need your money.
— I got lots. I got more than I need.
— How?
— I don’t know. At least I made good financial decisions when I was drunk.
— Don’t joke about that, Daddy.
— It’s one of my coping mechanisms, it’s fine, you know, I’m okay, I —
— What step is it?
— It’s complicated.
— What step is it, though?
— I don’t know.
— You’re not in a program?
— I don’t need a program. I’ve been sober two years, now, Jenny. It’s fine.
— Uh huh.
— I’m sober. You could move in with me first.
It wasn’t really simple. I forgot about that part. She really let me have it. She came home to get me into a program. I think she wanted the, I think she needed the — I mean she needs to help people. She practically destroyed her life helping her brother Troy. Troy, who I never wanted to meet. He is my ex-wife’s boy from a couple of years before we met. He’s a couple of years older than Jenny.
— Let’s go see him, she told me once
.
— Why?
— Don’t you want to see your son?
— He’s your mother’s son, but not mine.
— He’s my brother. I’m your daughter.
— Why would he want to see me? I asked her, and this I remember. I was having a glass of milk. It was winter. I don’t know what I was doing that day, but I needed milk for my stomach. We were at the kitchen table. Who knows what time of day it is in the winter? It can be dark almost anytime. It was dark then, but we were in the kitchen and Jenny wasn’t cold but she brought me an old green cardigan. It had been my father’s and she’d rescued it when she was a teenager. Now she was giving it back to me. I was shivering. I needed it.
— I think it would be good for him to meet you, she said.
— I don’t know, I told her. I am not sure you’re right about that. He’s got his own father.
— Maybe, she said. But I’d like you to come with me. It would be for me.
Of course it would be. I always missed things like this, but usually when they were told to me straight I got them. She brought me the sweater because I was cold. I should do things for her without being told.
— Oh, I said. Sure. I’d like to meet him.
— You and Mom are so over each other, she said. That won’t be weird.
— No, you’re right. It won’t be.
A lot of things seem simpler than they are. Jenny always found things simple. She always did the right thing. When she was younger she was a loner. She would stay in her room with her dolls. One Saturday I was just waking up, and I think her mother was out somewhere. I heard her talking in the living room. She was wearing her pale yellow dress with the straps like suspenders and a bright white shirt with short sleeves that puffed at the shoulders. Her pale red hair was in a neat ponytail and she stood with her hands clasped behind her back. Facing her, with their expressionless faces, sat Winnie the Pooh in a high chair, and a blank, dark-haired white doll on the coffee table.
— You both want the same thing, she told them. You both love each other, don’t you?
Pooh and the doll didn’t answer, but Jenny waited for them.
— Of course, she told them. Pooh, you look at it from Betty’s perspective. She wants the best for you. She wants you to be happy. And Betty, it’s hard for Pooh.
Everyone considered this last one in silence.
— You were never in the war, Betty.
I heard her voice continue as I walked quietly away. I didn’t want her to know I was watching. I had to get to the washroom. I had to get something for my stomach.
Two days after Jenny arrived, a pair of boxes arrived on the doorstep. They were Troy’s effects, or some of them. She wanted them put in the basement. She couldn’t deal with them right now.
I don’t know how sober people do it. She told me this while she was tying her shoes and then stretching. Her body was starting to bounce imperceptibly. She was getting ready for her run. If I had it to do over again, I thought, I wouldn’t change a thing. She’s turned out all right. She’s healthy and she’s caring — maybe every second generation ought to be sacrificed to some disease or corruption, just so the next one can learn by their example. I mean, it felt good to exercise. I lifted those boxes and took them to the basement. I put them in the corner where the old couch and recliner were.
Who’s allowed to look in these boxes? I asked her, but she was gone. She’d watched me set the second box down, then she was up the stairs and off for her run. I should start running, I thought. The blood felt good moving around like that. I sat in the recliner and wondered who could look in there, what harm could it do for me to see the final bunch of stuff Troy had. We had talked about me adopting him, long ago, but some neighbours had him and he seemed happy. We did it just like they were puppies or kittens back then. People just farmed out the children. It was all secret until the deathbed confessions. Nobody worried much about happiness. Drinking wasn’t always a bad thing. I mean, I never hit anyone, a child or my wife.
Then this letter arrived, forwarded. It was from a woman. The letter said, Dear Troy, in the old fashioned way. It said Dear Troy and then it went on like this: Where are you? It’s been too long since we’ve talked and I’m clean now. I want to share my cleanness with you. Maybe you are clean too? The letter was three pages long, double-sided, and written in neat little lines. Tidy and clean, that’s right. Clean and tidy writing, with the word clean in almost every sentence. It made me afraid. I was sober. What does clean mean? And how does it work when the paper’s clean and you dirty it with your words that actually come from someone’s imagined living life to me when I don’t even know what the word means and who you are — how is that clean? The word meant cutting, the word meant clipped, it meant something had been excised, it meant an elision of some kind . . . does this mean I don’t believe? Does this mean I can’t ever . . . is sober actually better? At least it doesn’t mean I’m so new I’m born in midair, I’m living in a clinic, I’ve got this artificial sheen, something clicked and I’m mean, I mean cleaner than I’ve ever been, etc.
I tried to ignore the letter but I kept looking at it every morning, when the sun came up. I used it three days to get my mind rinsed out. It was an excellent tool, as my legs shook and I drank my coffee and tried not to smoke, because of the chain of events (coffee–cigarette, cigarette–beer, beer–rum, rum–this time I’m dead and just when my daughter’s back home). So I focused on the word and it didn’t bother me as much as it first had.
Then, on the third day, a postcard slid in with my stack of junk mail. It fell out from the middle as I put the stack of flyers on the table. It was from the same woman. This one said: I hope you got my letter. I am alone now. I’m happy alone. I hope you’re alone too. I think we can make it together, if we’re both good alone. I’m alone. It’s not lonely. And this one was signed love Alice, so she had a name. The clean letter had no name, the clean letter went on forever and Alice was so clean her name wasn’t there. Now she’s alone and happy, signing her name for him.
— Daddy, he says he’s not even selling his house.
— Who?
— Roy Mortenson?
— Roy?
— He says call him Morty.
— I call him Roy. Nicknames are for kids.
— Whatever you call him. He says he’s not even selling his house.
— You didn’t tell him I thought he was dead, did you?
— You thought he was dead?
That was one day soon after she moved here, somewhere between the letter and the postcard. The second time she spoke to him, she had him over. The skin around her eyes was translucent. She’d just come from a run and brought Roy in through the front door.
— Morty, Harold. Harold, Morty. She sat him at the kitchen table. I put the postcard under the newspaper. Jenny said I’ll be right back. She said it to me and to Roy.
We looked at each other across the table.
— Did Jenny tell you I thought you were dead?
— No.
— Good. I didn’t know you were alive, but that’s not the same thing.
— You’re just as old as me, he said.
— I don’t think so. I really don’t. You’re seventy?
— Almost. Sixty-eight.
— I’m fifty-seven.
He stared at me and thought about that. He was likely comparing us, and I was too. He had no hair left on the top and he kept the hair at the back and the sides cut real short, it was just white tiny bristles.
— Don’t you ever see me out there gardening and mowing my lawn?
— Yeah. And then you were gone. All of a sudden.
— I’m not talking about that. That’s unrelated. Did you see me out there moving around? Did I have any trouble?
— I guess not, I told him. You still look older than me. I have a guy who comes and mows. I don’t like flowers.
— So what? What makes you think I’m so old? I enjoy a couple of beer out in the shade at night. I
watch boxing.
He leaned over to me and ramped up the urgency a bit. He opened his eyes wide and pointed. Ramped up is current jargon. I keep up.
— I’ve got a heavy bag in my garage.
— What do you think I’ll say now? I asked him.
— I’m not old, is all. Why would you think I was dead?
— Never mind, Roy. I’m sorry. You’re not dead, okay?
— I know that. I know that.
He settled back into his chair and he was taking a small breather. He closed his eyes briefly. He put his hands in his lap. He interlocked his fingers, he held his hands and settled in. I heard Jenny stirring upstairs, getting ready to come down after her shower.
— Can I get you anything, Roy? I asked.
— Call me Morty, he said. Maybe a glass of water.
Roy seemed okay. Morty. He seemed okay, but I am not sure I am cut out for this helping stuff. I went to get him a glass of water. When I came back he was reading the postcard.
— That’s private, I said.
— Not really. The mailman can read it.
— You’re the mailman?
He just looked at me dumbly as I set the water in front of him and pulled the postcard out of his hand. I didn’t want anything to do with him, then. Troy was none of his business. Nothing was any of his business. Jenny came into the room and I left. It wasn’t out of character.
In the evening Jenny told me more about him, this old man across the street. There was an old law on the books. Roy and his wife had colluded to get out of their marriage. They had conspired to lie about certain difficulties when the truth is they loved each other and just wanted out. It wasn’t what they wanted anymore. I knew Roy basically from when I was sober. That’s two years. So I knew him as single and retired and poking around in his garden. Apparently there was more to it than that.
Now his ex-wife wanted back in the marriage and Roy didn’t know why. He didn’t want her back. So he and Jenny developed a scheme. The next night we went over to his garage where he sat sipping beer.
We Don't Listen to Them Page 11