If Clara

by Martha Baillie

  ‘She showed me a picture. Fiona Burns did. It looked just like me. It was of her father as a young man.’

  ‘Have you got it? Show it to me.’

  ‘She didn’t give me the picture. She put it back in her wallet. He died when she was four years old. He was a bush pilot. Crashed somewhere in northern Ontario.’

  Bruce removed his glasses, stared into space for a long moment, then put his glasses back on.

  ‘Its more than I can take in right now, Maurice, you not being you but a dead bush pilot. I have reading to do. I don’t plan to stop, not before lunch.’

  Julia

  ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It came to me from somewhere. I must have heard it when I was little, maybe in school?’

  Alice laughed, then sang again, the words from her childhood: ‘Stand up, stand up for Jesus.’

  I wheeled Alice through a set of doors and along the corridor leading to the exit.

  ‘If you get chilly or bored, tell me, and we’ll head back.’

  In the narrow park, pigeons were perched on a low branch. They observed us as we went back and forth along the paved path.

  ‘Pigeons on the grass, alas.’

  ‘Where’s that from?’

  ‘Gertrude Stein.’

  ‘Really? Any other poetry that you remember?’

  ‘I walked fourteen miles. That’s not poetry. But I did it. We were wearing saddle shoes and woollen skirts. I was with a friend. Who she was will come to me. The skirt rubbed and rubbed just below my knee, it made my leg sore and red, we walked for such a long time.’

  ‘Are you chilly?’

  ‘Yes, a bit.’

  ‘Shall we go back inside?’

  ‘I suppose the pigeons will be here next time. Or if they aren’t, it doesn’t matter. Yes, let’s go in where it’s warm. Pigeons in the park, alas, alas. I’d miss them if they weren’t here next time but could forgive them.’

  I wheeled Alice in and we waited for the elevator to arrive. Next to us a woman waited, hunched over her walker, her caregiver beside her. The hunched woman turned her head toward us, then explained her circumstances.

  ‘My life is gone and I don’t know what I’ve done with it. I’m quite well. I always am, that’s the thing with me, I’m well, but I don’t know where I am or what will happen next. I really have no idea. Whatever I did with my life, I hope I made good use of it. It’s gone now. I must have done something with it.’

  ‘Dora, you’re on your way to your room. You’ve had dinner and now it’s time to rest.’

  The elevator doors opened and we all stepped in.

  ‘Which floor?’ asked the caregiver.

  ‘Twelve, please,’ said Alice. ‘Pigeons on the grass alas. Pigeons on the grass alas. Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. If they were not pigeons what were they. If they were not pigeons on the grass alas what were they.’

  ‘You remember all that?’

  ‘Stein. Gertrude Stein wrote all those words.’

  ‘Do you like Stein?’

  ‘We never met. If you mean her writing, not particularly.’

  We arrived at the twelfth floor and I wheeled her along the corridor to her room.

  ‘I never know what will surface. That’s what keeps the days interesting, that and watching the people who come to look after me. I’d like someone to get me a map. Not you, Julia, you’re busy. But someone.’

  ‘How big a map would you like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Of the world?’

  ‘I’d like it to include the Philippines and Tibet.’

  ‘I’ll get you one.’

  ‘Will you? Thank you.’

  ‘A map is a good thing to have.’

  ‘And Clara? Any news?’

  ‘I spoke with her. She didn’t want to talk for long. Her psychiatrist is away.’

  ‘But you feel she’s safe?’

  ‘I do.’

  Daisy

  I was in my kitchen, concentrating on the elements of walking, when I heard my doorbell ring.

  To achieve an even gait, swing your leg freely without involving your hip, do not forget to bend your leg at the knee, shift to your other leg but not too soon. Hum a funeral dirge under your breath to establish a rhythm.

  I walked as evenly as I could across the kitchen, down the short hall, arrived at the door, and opened it. Clara Hodgkins stood on my porch, trembling.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I don’t feel safe. May I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  We stood in the hall. I offered her tea, and to take her coat, which hung black and full. It descended to her ankles, and her wide-brimmed hat was made from felt of the same colour. She made no move to leave the hallway.

  ‘It’s just, my psychiatrist is away. Thanks for the offer of tea. I won’t have any, but thank you. My psychiatrist is taking a few weeks off to cope with a death in her family. Not seeing her has made me more anxious than usual. I realize, now that it is too late, how foolish it was of me to approach you with my novel.’

  ‘Foolish how? Are you sure you won’t sit down?’

  ‘I convinced myself that F. H. Homsi might allow me to participate. My psychiatrist, she’s always pushing me to socialize. I’ve told her that my writing is the only way, the only possible route. She urged me to stop my private poetry, my language experiments she doesn’t understand. I got tired of arguing with her. I’ve done my best to make myself comprehensible, and you have the results. I’m sorry. I don’t trust you. I said I did, and thought I could. But my psychiatrist is away, and the inside of my head is not a good place.’

  ‘When does your psychiatrist come back?’

  ‘At the end of the month.’

  ‘Would you consider waiting to make your final decision? You could decide after she gets back?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Are you sure you won’t take your coat off? Come sit on the sofa.’

  She perched on the edge, coat on.

  ‘I’ve been rereading sections of your manuscript. Last night, the tale about the crow, the girl, and the judge, it got me thinking about my own childhood. I grew up with crows.’

  ‘How so?’ Clara asked, cocking her head and scrutinizing me.

  ‘My father was a very shy man. The conversation of crows, their intelligence, fascinated him. He’d take me to the park, and the crows recognized him. He could imitate some of their calls and talked to them in a limited way.’

  Immediately, she got up from the sofa and walked to the middle of the room, where she stood, hands twisting the brim of her hat.

  ‘Crows,’ I continued, ‘they’ve often saved people’s lives. My father was on holiday in British Columbia, driving on a mountain road, when a crow flew at the windshield, not just once but several times. The crow gave my father no choice but to pull onto the narrow shoulder. Around the next bend was a rock slide. Without the crow’s warning, my father would have sailed around the sharp curve and crashed. Instead he got out of the car and investigated on foot while the crow flew above him, watching.’

  ‘I don’t want to be told anything more about crows.’

  ‘I won’t say any more.’

  ‘Are you and Oliver Bodinar going to remove the tale of the crow, the girl, and the judge?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I’m glad. I’ve got to go. I can let myself out. Don’t get up. Thanks.’

  ‘What shall I tell Oliver?’

  ‘That I am unwell.’

  ‘He knows. He wants to publish your manuscript, regardless.’

  ‘He has poor judgment.’

  ‘Once your psychiatrist is back, if you still want to withdraw your manuscript, please tell us as soon as possible. Does that sound fair, Clara?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it sounds fair.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help? Please come over if you’re feeling unsafe.’

  ‘Cr
ows are the only bird that can single you out, spot your face in a crowd, and tell their friends if you’re dangerous or not. Did you know that? They’re like primates wearing feathers, and I wish I could trust them, and talk to them the way your father does.’

  ‘Could you trust a crow better than a person?’

  ‘Possibly. I’d have to think about that. The U.S. Department of Defense is funding research on crows. They must be planning to use them in some horrible way. Crows are like us. They’re smart and self-serving. I’ll give you my answer about my manuscript as soon as I can. Thank you for your patience. Goodbye, Daisy.’

  Julia

  I banged on Clara’s door. I’d told her I wouldn’t, that I’d let her hide. But the more I thought about her psychiatrist being away, and Clara having done something she regretted doing, the more anxious I became. I waited. No answer. No curtain twitch. I gave up, went home.

  Maurice

  Fiona Burns has requested a second meeting with me. This alarming news arrived by email. I have consented.

  Dear Maurice,

  If you can spare the time, I’d like to speak with you again. Might you be available tomorrow at two in the afternoon? We could meet in the same café as last time? I apologize for the short notice and look forward to receiving your answer.

  Regards, Fiona Burns.

  You’d hardly think I’d caused her mother’s death. Her tone both calms and unnerves me. Fiona Burns and I are to meet for lunch tomorrow. I will again sit and face the daughter of my victim.

  Daisy

  The leg’s progress felt uncertain. The leg’s progress looked uncertain. Today, the leg succumbed, and the foot slid further below the pencil mark than ever before.

  As I witnessed the foot repeating its new accomplishment, Bruce’s voice slipped, melodious, through the wall. He was reading aloud from a text by Simone Weil: ‘There is true desire when there is an effort of attention. It is truly light that is desired if all other motives are absent. Even if the efforts of attention remained apparently sterile for years, one day a light exactly proportional to these efforts shall inundate the soul.’

  Clara

  This morning, a computer became free and I claimed it, I plugged in my earbuds. The moment I did so, the librarian stood up behind her desk. She did not look directly at me, but this was perhaps a ploy. Her oddly flat face was beautiful. It was smooth and round, a soothing shape for a face, or for anything. I lowered my head as she approached the bank of public terminals. I’d used my own earbuds before and not been reprimanded for breaking any rule, but she was new or was new to me. I wanted to look up and gaze at her flat face, the round shape of it. Instead I stared at the floor. She was now separated from me by inches of air. Into the little box, placed between two of the terminals, she dropped a handful of short pencils. Then she walked away without commenting on my earbuds. She did not step away from me quickly. The oddity of my clothes, therefore, had not signalled danger, had not suggested infection, the spread of my invisible disease. I raised my head. She was seated once more behind the information desk, her head bowed. The internoose behaved as it always does, opening then tightening, pulling me into its maze. I stabbed at the too-many samples of crows cawing. I opened pages, slid them over each other, listened to layers of beating wings, of crows in woods, of cawing on city bridges, of crows in parking lots, and of crows in corn fields, until their cawing swallowed the library. The deeper I fell, the brighter their cries became. Then all of it ended. I opened my eyes. I clicked on new links: ‘Pre-feeding Caw,’ ‘Rattle or Comb Caw,’ ‘Alarm call.’ A careful classification of auditory specimens exists.

  Though no sample lasted more than a few seconds, each succeeded. Each removed me from the library. I was dropped inside a cry that pried open the sky. Another, with higher notes, operated with surgical precision. I did not feel attacked but addressed by an orator I longed to understand. By the time my hour was up, the crows had made bell sounds, drips, clicks, rattles. I didn’t know the names of the other sounds. My time was up. No more shining rawness. No more tumbling. I removed my earbuds and stood there, expelled from the world of crows. I stood there, telling myself: Next time, look at who’s talking to you. Beak and eye and claw attached to language. You should never have listened to Daisy. Beak and eye and claw. You’ve got to figure them out before they figure you out. If you knew what they were saying. My head was crowded with crow. I reserved another computer session, but it wouldn’t start for another half-hour. I went off into the stacks. ‘Don’t forget,’ Kamar whispered, ‘they’re thieves. Remember the molasses. Remember what they did to you.’ I found and opened Rutherford’s Guide to Birds of North America. A sleek head stared at me, its eye shiny and knowing. I kept the book open. I examined the alignment of the feathers, the polished beak, the tilt of its neck, and warned Kamar to keep her thoughts to herself, but she only whispered louder. I figured her out, I figured her in. I out-figured her. She was punishing me, because now I wasn’t going to give her to Daisy and Oliver, and she wanted to get away from me. I pulled out a pen. Shut the fuck up, I wrote in large letters across page 89 of Rutherford’s Guide to Birds of North America to prevent myself from shouting at Kamar, because shouting in the library is not a good thing, but she went right on moaning her blind pain, tightening her fear around my throat, so I dug the pen into the bird’s eye, and I closed the book and hurried down the stairs, and down the stairs, and past the long tables supporting the rows of computers where I’d booked my second hour and the crows were waiting for me, and out through the security gate, bag thrown open, nothing to hide, screaming at the guard but with my mouth clamped shut so he couldn’t hear and stop me from returning tomorrow. Out I burst onto the sidewalk, where I was free to hiss at the pavement: ‘I am not a fucking thief. Stop staring at me. She means the crows. Don’t look at me. You don’t know shit about me.’

  Daisy

  This table I now think of as ‘ours,’ the one nearest the window. Clafouti and Clara have become inseparable for me. Despite her anxiety, the real author of Don’t Get Me Wrong has decided to publish her manuscript, as planned. She is not waiting for her psychiatrist’s return. She wants to move forward, provided the subject of crows is disallowed from any future conversation. She and F. H. Homsi have agreed to a fixed pattern of encounters. The more regular and reliable an arrangement, the more reassuring, she’s explained. They will meet every second Tuesday here, at Clafouti. F. H. Homsi will report that the editing is progressing well, or not progressing, and offer whatever other news. Soon Oliver will show Homsi a few possible designs for the cover, which Homsi will describe to Clara.

  This afternoon, she brought me flowers – daisies. The barista offered to stand them in water. A lot, a little, not at all, a lot, a little. Yank off the oracular white petals. I did so often as a teenager. Back then I wanted a lot or not at all. A little struck me as pointless. The daisies, standing in a mason jar on our table, have such long stems and nodding heads.

  ‘You are important to me,’ announced Clara. She looked me in the eyes as she said this, then she threw her gaze away from me so as not to witness my reaction. I waited. Again her eyes confronted mine. ‘I never want to meet Oliver Bodinar. Homsi’s job is to keep him away from me, to keep everyone away from me.’

  ‘Understood. Homsi understands.’

  ‘Thank you. Please thank Homsi.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Have Homsi and Oliver begun editing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Homsi is happy?’

  ‘Homsi and Bodinar work well together. Homsi and Bodinar are exacting editors but respectful, and they find there’s little to change. They are enjoying the precision of your prose, also the loose moments when the words seem released from under great pressure and syntax explodes. Kamar’s thoughts land in patterns that make no immediate sense, but Homsi and Bodinar are succumbing to the book’s logic.’

  ‘Good. I am glad. I am glad for Kamar’s sake. But I need to stop talking about this
. Kamar is making me anxious. She turned on me a few days ago.’

  ‘Kamar? What did she do?’

  ‘Never mind. Forget it.’

  ‘Your psychiatrist. She’ll be back soon?’

  ‘Two weeks from now.’

  ‘Having her back will be reassuring?’

  ‘Yes. But we don’t always get along.’

  ‘Did you say there was a death in the family?’

  ‘Her mother.’

  ‘That will have been hard on her, I imagine.’

  ‘It will be confusing. She’s good. She’s as good a psychiatrist as I’ve ever found, but still I have to keep things clear. I don’t know how well she knows herself. I’ve been wondering how she’s experiencing her mother’s death. She may be seeing in her mother’s death a glimpse of her own mortality – that would make sense. She could also be floating, freed of decades of guilt, of inability to plug the hole in her mother. She’s never spoken to me about her mother. But there have been clues. The hole she refused to stop up with love. I don’t make the mistake of assuming I know her better than I do. She makes assumptions about me all the time. She crosses certain lines. She may get away with that sort of behaviour with other patients, but not with me. I catch her out. I’m not saying I’m any smarter. We’re pretty well-matched. She’s an agile ambusher. It's a complicated game, and we’re playing for keeps. Sometimes she enrages me to the point I figure I’ll never see her again. But I couldn’t survive without her. Or maybe she’s just learned to make me feel that way.’

  Clara glanced down at her wristwatch.

  ‘It’s later than I thought. I’ve got to go. My coffee’s paid for.’

  She buttoned her jacket, pushed back her chair, and left.

  An afterimage of her grey eyes filling with panic floated in the café. I manoeuvred my leg out from under the table and paid my bill. Carrying a bouquet of daisies, I walked slowly home.