If Clara

by Martha Baillie

  Violet Moore Higgins has permitted herself three colours (black, white, red), and her drawings are distributed with economy. A quotation from the text accompanies each picture. One by one, that first day, I removed and examined each book:

  Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.

  Oxford University Press. 1978. (first edition 1879–1882)

  I allowed it to fall open of its own accord. ‘Apple: the fruit of the apple-tree. The apple of the eye is properly the pupil; but was sometimes used of the eye-ball, from its round shape.’ Page 27.

  A pleasing pink paperback, titled The World within the Word: Essays by William H. Gass. Published in 1976 by Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group.

  I turned to the opening essay, ‘The Doomed and Their Sinking.’ It offered the following statement, which struck me as true and therefore delighted me: ‘the crazy can garrote themselves with a length of breath, their thoughts are open razors, their eyes go off like guns.’ Page 4.

  At the very bottom of the box lay a book boasting 147 colour plates. Theodore Bauer: Works on Paper. Prestel Verlag. München. 1979.

  On the front, a brusque watercolour of a tulip; petals like fence pickets, seven in number and slender.

  I flipped it open. Plate 3. In black pen, in Clara’s distinct, surprisingly round and open handwriting: Girl who claims to be a paper boat.

  Plate 4. Rapid strokes of Bauer’s brush suggest wildflowers ruffled by wind, and more wind moving through grass. Clara’s added, I am trying unsuccessfully to become a field of flowers.

  Plate 7. Collaged strips of paper, two indistinct grey shapes side by side. Clara has renamed them: Girl whose face is torn. My features have been reduced to two hazy birds, pecking.

  Plate 8. The same tulips as on the front cover. Beneath the erect petals, Clara’s declared: My hand reaches up for help.

  Plate 17. What appears to have been a painting of two tin cans, balanced, one on top of the other. Clara has outlined three pale patches, turning these into eyes and a mouth: Little Girl.

  Plate 18. An area of red paint resembles an open mouth in profile. Teeth have been added and the words Little Girl Screaming.

  The first time I opened Clara’s copy of Theodore Bauer: Works on Paper, I revisited each plate more than once, counting petals, counting birds, the nightmare interior of Clara’s mind pressing close. I looked for patterns. Doing so calmed me. This seeking of patterns, doubtless, is what she does continuously, to survive.

  Maurice

  We laugh. He trips again. He flings himself with abandon. His performed awkwardness frees me. The burden of opinion, a weight I’ve carried all my life, is lifted as I watch his legs and arms fly through the air, uncensored. As far back as I can remember, my own gaze has crushed me. The gorgeous Bruce Mammadov tosses his arm, his leg, into space, trusting. Not trusting that he won’t fall but that he will fall. He’ll laugh, and again let go. He’ll throw himself into the centre of the room, or down the street, or into the river, or through the nettles, or along the rocky path, or into the fountain, or into someone’s arms. Sounds rush out of him, the world pours in. I gaze. From the weight of judgment he removes all weight. As if uncorking champagne, he presses his delightful thumbs into the evil neck of hierarchy and sends all unkind assessments flying across the room. All my life I have feared the eyes of others fixed upon me, and equally feared that without their gaze I would cease to exist. The best way to explain is to tell you the story of the dog and his bowl.

  Simon the basset hound belonged to a friend. I offered to take care of him for thirty days, while his owner went wandering about Brazil. For thirty days I accepted full responsibility for Simon’s four stubby legs, his flapping ears and dangling tongue, his inquisitive nose and apologetic tail. I became answerable for the well-being of the smooth-haired brown-and-white length of him. I filled his bowl with food and placed it on the floor. I’d been instructed to watch him eat. ‘If you don’t, he’ll starve,’ my friend had warned me. While Simon slurped and chewed, I sat on a kitchen stool and bore witness. But curiosity got the better of me. What would happen if I walked away? I did so and the hum of the refrigerator replaced the crunch and suction of food being consumed by a drooling mouth. Simon had turned his back on his bowl. He refused to eat. As soon as I resumed my perch and stared in his direction, he once more attended to the task of feeding himself, and did so with audible passion. A wave of nausea rose in me. I realized what Simon and I had in common: a desperate desire for permission. That I craved solitude suggested an independence I did not possess. I isolated myself so as not to feel the intensity of my need for approval. To breathe, to eat, to think my own thoughts – I was a grown man who sought permission to perform these fundamental acts. To so desire permission and approval, to see my desperate needs mirrored in the behaviour of a neurotic dog, inspired horror in me. At the end of thirty days, I returned Simon to his owner with immense relief.

  The era of the neurotic dog is the era in which we live. Dogs riding in strollers, a dog seated on a folding chair placed in the shade of a tree. As for me, I’ve made my body a place of discipline. Two hours minimum at the gym three times a week. Julia mocks me. I’ve not seen Julia in weeks. Julia, who has known me for decades. I roll over in bed and gaze at Bruce, at his closed eyes, the delicate lids of skin concealing the damp surface of those shifting orbs. Dreams are tightening and loosening his breath. I watch it escape from between his lips.

  ‘Bruce?’

  ‘I was dreaming. Can you scratch, just down there, yes, yes, no, yes, an inch lower, aaah, yes, aah, good, good, very good.’ ‘Will you come flying in the ultralight, if there’s no wind, later today?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘I don’t want to fall out of the sky.’

  ‘Is it my flying you don’t trust, or my building skills? I check every nut, screw, wire, and rod, every connection, before taking off, always, every time.’

  To silence me he positioned his mouth so that it covered mine, and his tongue searched for home.

  Daisy

  Now that it plays a constructive part, now that it has become a contributing member, bearing a portion of my weight, with gratitude I accept it as mine from here on in. True, I have cause for pointless resentment. My leg has stolen possibilities from me, and that’s not all: it has altered my character. Pleasure, however, it gives – the dense, hard, satisfaction of the arduous, of the deliberate and well-performed. When my left foot, in its black sock, slides down the wall in tiny jerks, I watch with the avid eye of a card shark to see if I’m winning. If my toe descends below the white dot of exposed plaster, where the red paint has been chipped from the wall, then I win; if not, the white dot of plaster wins. I force my left ankle and foot downward, until the muscles of my thigh scream that they can stretch no further, and the knee joint squeals, and the leg will not bend further. No matter, further, further, breathing hard and slow. Ahhh, but what’s this? My foot is gaining territory, inch by inch, parting the red sea (a terrible colour to have painted a dining room – what was I thinking all those years ago?). Every inch gained is the result of pressure applied from above, applied by the heel of my good foot upon the ankle of my unwilling-to-bend leg. Through the wall I hear my neighbours laughing. Over and under each other, their amusement flows. A stream of delight sparkles on the far side of the brick wall that separates my rooms from theirs. They are in love. Bruce and Maurice. The sound of their orgasms moves from the front room to the back room to the front room. They argue about one subject only: surveillance cameras. Bruce sells them. Maurice disapproves. Once more they’re going at it, amicable, sly, persistent.

  ‘Tiny, perfect ones for home use? What am I doing here? You’re not oblivious, just immoral. Distrust. It spreads, you know. Social gangrene, intimate amputations, that’s what parents surveying their kids leads to, and lovers filming lovers, everyone spying on each other.’

  ‘Maurice, Maurice. I’m going to install a camera in the livin
g room. I’ll lie on the sofa repeating your name, while the camera records my devotion. We’ve all been performing forever. A camera records. Tell them you’re installing it and where, that’s my advice to clients. Use it to create fellow feeling, clown about. A camera can be put to any number of uses.’

  ‘Sure, document little Johnny kicking his sister, catch Nancy spilling her milk and the nanny yelling. That’ll make for an easier day in court.’

  ‘Some love the attention, others don’t.’

  ‘Proof over privacy.’

  ‘Did I show you the footage, from yesterday, of you in the shower?’

  ‘Bruce.’

  ‘Yes, Maurice?’

  ‘Not funny.’

  ‘I’ll never forget the day we met. You knocked on my door. I opened it. You confessed that you’d been spying on me for weeks, that I’d become part of an exhibit in an art gallery across the street. You and who knows how many others had been watching me through binoculars.’

  ‘Not the same. Nothing was recorded.’

  Daily, their arguments and tender reconciliations drift through the wall as my left foot, in its black sock, inches downward, past the chip in the paint, approaches the pencil line, then stops and will go no further. The knee joint locks in anguish, the quadricep remains too tight, the foot in its black sock descends no further.

  Clara

  Kamar is gone. I’ve given her away. For once, Bridgette is smiling. Her competitor is gone. ‘Smiling like an idiot doesn’t stop your nose running,’ says Kevin under his breath. He’s watching me closely. ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ he hisses in my ear. ‘You’ll find out what they do with your Kamar. Use her to wipe the coffee stain off their desk.’ I must keep walking. There’s the white elephant. The yard is small. The elephant leaves room for nothing else. What is the elephant made of? I’ve never dared reach out and touch it. I could. I could run my fingers along its trunk or down its immense flank, but someone would be watching from the window. Metal fencing keeps the elephant in. The pachyderm is packed into the yard. They must slip the lawn mower beneath it. They’ve mowed, so somehow got under the belly of the beast. Neither snow nor ice has reduced the animal. From one winter to the next it survives. It stands in its yard. The owners of the house cannot bring themselves to part with their artwork. Perhaps they love it. Perhaps they argue with each other regarding the future of the elephant that is consuming such a large portion of their property. It towers next to me as I walk by. At Christie Street I stick out my arm. With my other hand I press the button commanding the yellow sign to illuminate itself. Suspended midway across the street, the flashing sign announces my presence, and that I intend to make an attempt to reach the other side. I look both ways and wait for the cars to stop. Arm extended, I step forward. I like to make them stop. Last week Kevin whispered, ‘Do it again,’ so I turned the moment I reached the other side and crossed back to where I’d come from. ‘Again,’ he giggled. Kevin doesn’t often giggle. As I embarked on my third crossing, a driver honked, another yelled through their window: ‘What’s wrong with you? Make up your fucking mind!’ At the sound of yelling, Bridgette burst into tears. Kevin started glee-snorting, choking on his own delight, scraping wax from his ear and sucking the wax from the tip of his finger. When he gets excited he indulges in his worst habits. I was running now, and raced the length of a block. I wouldn’t have slowed down, but the cramp in my side got worse. I came to the elementary school where the children are kept out at lunchtime, but also kept in, the yard fenced. The children move about in clusters, smaller formations breaking off, forming new chemical compounds. A few lone atoms were drifting, over there, under the solitary tree. Beside the fence, two were digging a hole. They were planning their escape. Kamar escaped from several camps. I went online and stared at pictures of those places. It was one of Kamar’s former homes and consisted of row upon row of canvas tents. First the sun beat down, then the sky split open and water pummelled the tents and the dirt road and the dirt between the tents. An outhouse existed, somewhere, likely overflowing with urine and feces. One bucket per how many? It wasn’t the camp that scared me but the internoose, pretending to open while tightening around everything. On the internoose I listened to the camp’s cacophony of grief and hunger, its dust and shit scuffle, a curse concert of decomposing lives. Before handing Kamar over to Daisy Harding, first I freed her from a Turkish refugee camp, jerked her across borders, murdered the man who’d raped her (I couldn’t resist), tossed her into a truck, flew her across an ocean, and deposited her in a carpeted bedroom with a view of a garden. I think that’s what I did with her. I meant to. ‘Can’t even remember where you put her?’ sniggers Kevin. ‘And you call yourself an author.’ I plugged my ears and hummed as I walked. I did know, I did. I was the author and I decided. She lived for several months in the home of a well-meaning professor. Dr. Lydia Benjamin, geophysicist. I gave her to Lydia and her dentist husband, Max Howl. A quiet Toronto neighbourhood, that’s where I made Kamar’s mind come apart. It starts catching on things, small things. Her reasoning unravels. She creates a new reasoning. Her sense of proportion vanishes. Amplification chases her down the street. She perches on the tongue of a hospital, and the hospital gulps her down. In the belly of the hospital she meets a young woman her own age, Babuk Sassani, born in Canada to Iranian parents. Babuk has chosen suicide to escape her family, whose collective attention centres on her brother. They choose not to see what sort of attention her brother focuses on her. I didn’t give a name to Babuk’s cherished brother as he was beneath naming. ‘’Cause you’re scared of him,’ snorts Kevin. ‘She’s not not not,’ stammers Bridgette, chewing on the tips of her braids. ‘Clara’s not, not, not afraid, nobody’s afraid of you, Kevin bumbum.’ ‘Be quiet, all of you,’ I yell through my fingers, my hands covering my face. ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll take away your names! I’ll do to you what Julia, my devil sister, does to me. All my life I’ve been mistaken for Julia. Only as Julia can I talk with other people. When I’m Julia, the rest of you scuttle away in fear. I will become Julia, Queen of Volubility, Her Histrionic Self. You’d better behave or Julia will evict you. She’ll tell the landlord all about you, then out we’ll all go. Bump, bump, bump down the stairs.’ I allow gestures of friendship between Kamar and Babuk, moments of trust. Then comes the End. I’m allowed to end it. They want me to. They want an ending, since a book needs to finish. I’m not Kamar, but we are close in our mutual inability to be close. Kevin, Bridgette, and the others are colonizers. I never invited them in. Before I sold Kamar to Oliver Bodinar, no, NO. Precision must prevail: I gave her to Daisy, SHE sold Kamar because I told her to (just as my mother sold me). There, in any case. Kevin snuck along the corridor and spat through the keyhole. I plugged it with Kleenex. Plug the hole. All holes must be plugged immediately. That made Bridgette wail and kick. I put in my earbuds and let the Grateful Dead erect their raucous wall. I’ve sold Kamar, and all I have left is language and the urge to tweezer it apart, as if it were a clock.

  Julia

  The moment she saw me she waved. There she was, coming down the street, carrying herself very straight as always. Rows of safety pins advanced in an elegant script across the shimmering cloth spread over her thigh. The pins descended the skirt that rippled around her ankles. This time she was not dressed in black (except for her sweater, which I hoped was warm enough) but in layers of blue and green, of net draped over silk. Her inimitable style, her striking disguise.

  ‘Hello.’

  Eyes and mouth smiling, face radiant, there she stood, in front of me, taking great gulps of air.

  ‘Hello,’ she repeated. ‘I have to catch my breath. How are you?’

  ‘Fine. I’m fine, I think.’

  ‘You’re not sure?’ she asked, holding herself even more alert, her expression now quizzical.

  ‘No, no. Fine. I’m sure, I’m fine.’

  ‘I’d like to go visit Alice.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘I can do it no
w, if you’ll go with me. I couldn’t before. But I’m feeling well at the moment. I still couldn’t go there on my own. But if you’d come?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know how busy you are.’

  ‘No, no. I mean, I am busy, yes, but yes, I’d like to go with you to see Alice. When shall we go?’

  ‘Tomorrow? Any time you like. But sooner would be better. I don’t know how long this will last, this feeling good and able.’

  ‘I can’t tomorrow, but I’ll come knock on your door, Friday at eleven-thirty?’

  ‘Yes. Good. Eleven-thirty will give me time to prepare. Good. See you in three days’ time, on Friday.’

  Daisy

  The large muscles have taken over. This was how she, the physiotherapist, explained it to me. I was lying on a mat on the floor, sliding my foot down the wall of the clinic, replicating what I do at home. ‘You are cheating,’ she told me. ‘Your hip is shifting to allow your foot to slide lower. Your hip is obstructing your progress. Relax your arms,’ she instructed. My arms relaxed. My hip had no interest in anyone’s authority but its own.

  She told me to kneel. Fear prevented me. She repeated her instructions and I attempted. Holding on to the bed, as she’d warned me to do, saved me from falling on my face. I pictured, in front of me, the entrance to a tent and imagined crawling inside, spreading out my sleeping bag, choosing how to position myself, the rock uneven beneath me. But crawling was impossible. I could not advance on my knees. An internal blister of self-pity burst. Sorrow trickled down my face. To hide my shame, I turned my face away from the physiotherapist. ‘You’re doing it,’ she told me, ‘you’re kneeling.’ I was not kneeling. Had I let go of the bed, the floor would have rushed up. ‘You can do it,’ she repeated. ‘Good. Now do it again. See?’ she asked. ‘See how well you got down onto the floor?’ All I could see was the entrance to a tent. All I could feel was my stiff leg pitching me forward as I clutched at the bed.