by Ian Williams
She opened the curtain.
He was no longer smoking. He was sitting with his ankles crossed. Pants off. His dress shirt extended below his hips, covering his underwear. There were tiny, fair hairs on his legs that she wanted to blow off.
You ever been on an airplane? he asked.
How did he think she got to this country? By whale? Kinder to God’s creatures. Once, she said.
I never tire of the clouds. Tomorrow I’m off to Calgary. Might go skiing while I’m out there. You’ll have the room to yourself.
Thank you, Jesus. For the first time, she perceived an accent, bones in his consonants, girth in his vowels.
You ever see the Rockies?
Pictures, she said. Apparently she would have to alert him to the obvious. Your mutter’s coughing.
Mooter, he corrected her pronunciation.
Mutter. That’s what I said. All God’s creatures. Hold it together.
The Rocky Mountains. He panned his hand across space. Last time, no, two times ago, we had some meetings in Banff. No joke, on one side of the road, a bear, on the other an elk, and us in the middle. He shook his head.
Mutter coughed shrilly. He lit another cigarette.
Oh, no, no, no. Hell no. Felicia took hold of the dividing curtain again.
She put a thousand words into her good-night-so-sorry-your-mother’s-sick-help-her-with-some-water-yes-hold-the-cup-for-her-you-have-a-good-night-you-hear-such-a-shame-what-is-man-chaff-chaff-chaff-the-days-of-our-years-are-chaff-threescore-and-ten-but-don’t-give-up-hope-give-her-a-sweater-cover-up-her-chest-when-the-roll-is-called-up-yonder-a-little-water-now-tsk-tsk smile.
Edgar stood up and stood in the path of the curtain, adjusting his underwear under his shirt. Felicia came right close to him. You-and-your-mutter-have-a-good-night-you-hear, announced her shoulder to his sternum.
Mutter likes to see out the window, he said. His hair was parted and swept over in a tumble to the side in a sixties hairstyle, very out of style now. But what did she know of white men’s hairstyles? He looked like the father of Dick and Jane.
Felicia looked back and forth between the window and Edgar. Apart from one scraggly tree, which couldn’t be seen from Mutter’s angle, there wasn’t anything to see. Plus it was dark.
Mutter likes to see the sky.
Then you should have put her in the bed near the window.
His mother coughed chaff-chaff-chaff-chaff-chaff.
See, he said as if his mother were coughing confirmation. He stepped around Felicia and undid the little progress she had made with the curtain.
But she’s coughing, Felicia said.
I thought the cancer would take her out. But it looks like—
I can’t have her coughing on my mother, Felicia said.
She’s not coughing on your mother.
The last thing she need is to come down with pneumonia.
Edgar lined his forehead into a haiku:
You’ve got bigger things
to worry about, my dear,
than a little cough.
* * *
+
She endured that cigarette.
But the next time Edgar wanted to smoke, Felicia fixed him with a look, bad eye they called it on her island, which he pretended not to see, but he put the cigarette back into the pack, put his pants back on, and left. Felicia took the opportunity to find the nurse on duty. The hallways were dim. From one of the rooms, she heard the choked, desperate silence of a patient recovering his breath after vomiting. There was one nurse at the station.
I don’t understand why you put my mother in that room.
I did not admit your mother, the nurse said.
Can you tell me if she’s— Felicia didn’t know how to finish. Conscious? Better? Dreaming?
The nurse followed Felicia back to the room with a folder. She observed the monitor. She took the temperature. She looked at the colour under Felicia’s mother’s eyelids. But Felicia wasn’t sure the nurse was capturing essential information. She pointed out the dark fingernails. She lifted her coat from her mother’s feet for the nurse to touch.
She’s stable, the nurse said.
She stable? She not improving?
Stable doesn’t mean—
I know what stable means, Felicia snapped then instantly regretted it. She sanded her voice. I think you should send my mother to Emergency.
There’s no Emergency.
This is an emergency.
Emergency is flooded, the nurse said slowly. Intensive Care is flooded. There are no beds in Cardiac so, given the circumstances, Miss, she’s in the best place possible—above water.
You making a joke of my situation?
Would you like her floating in the ICU?
You in the wrong profession, Felicia said. I want to talk to a doctor. I here since three o’clock and no doctor come to find me yet. You tell me she in a coma when I come in here. Now you telling me she stable. You giving she oxygen. I don’t see nothing hook up to she heart. I not no doctor but something need to hook up to the woman heart.
The doctor will be here in the morning.
I don’t see how you could have my mother in here next to this lady who coughing coughing all the time. How you go put she next to somebody with highly contagious pneumonia?
The woman looked at the next bed. Where’s her mask?
She didn’t have on no mask from the time I get here.
She’s supposed to.
The nurse pulled a blue mask from a box on the wall and covered Mutter’s nose and mouth.
She has to keep it on, the nurse said.
The room already full of bacteria, Felicia said. I could pull this curtain?
Of course.
The man, her son, say he mother does like to see—
It’s the middle of the night. Nothing to see, the nurse said and drew the curtain between the chairs, leaving Felicia on one side and herself on the other.
XY
3.
Outside, Edgar sat high on the back of a bench, feet on the seat, smoking tobacco though his mind felt weedy. His life had been a long straight line to this point that ended with the red tip of a cigarette.
If two people travelling in a straight line meet in a hospital room, is that a vertex or an intersection? Why can’t two lines be friends or form a shape of some sort? Good word, vertex. Vertex.
He noticed that his belt was unbuckled. It dangled between his legs like a—How long is a line? If line a is travelling on a plane to Calgary at 850 kilometres per hour while line b remains arrested next to a bed, how much longer will it take line a to recover from the death of its mother than line b?
He twirled the long end of his belt. He meditated long before flicking his cigarette away. Then he ducked beneath the unmanned tape of Emergency and walked through the ocean, back to the room where his mother lay dying.
* * *
+
Edgar immediately removed the mask from Mutter. She was in the middle of a rapid succession of coughs unh-unh-unh-unh-unh-unh-unh that ended with a long, high-pitched one, her windpipe trying to invert itself like a sock. She shouldn’t inhale the same germs she was expelling.
He opened the curtain.
Put the mask back on her, Felicia said.
Edgar went to his chair and tapped a folded newspaper against his knee, as if he hadn’t heard.
Felicia crossed the room and put the mask on his mother, his mutter. Edgar got up and removed it. Felicia replaced it. Mutter’s coughing intensified, a thick continuous assault that left her breathless. Her eyes watered. Her mouth was full of phlegm.
Don’t let her swallow it, Felicia said. This time, she was the one who lowered the mask.
Edgar took a Styrofoam cup from the side table and held it under Mutter’s mouth.
Mutter spat weakly. Trails continued down the side of her mouth. Felicia found a straw and gave the woman some water then she wiped her mouth with the paper towel on her chest.
She adjusted the
angle of the bed. Let that cold drain from her head, she told Edgar.
Edgar looked into the cup. The liquid was rusty. Streaks of red marbled the yellow. He tipped the cup to show Felicia, who then covered her mouth and hurried from the room. He glanced into the cup again. In English, he couldn’t determine whether it was disgust or shame or tears or a vision of an impending fact that propelled her? The German word for her departure would be Fernweh.
* * *
+
He had the room to himself long enough to construct another word problem. If one calculated the number of hours over a period of months or years that relationships take to develop and applied them into a single, compressed meeting of heightened time, and tested that relationship years later by a reliable metric, would that relationship be as sturdy as a relationship constructed over months or years?
Before he could bring to mind personal and celebrity examples for each case, he heard Felicia in the hallway, arguing with one of the nurses. He got up to investigate.
I don’t have no money for the pay phone, Felicia was saying.
I’m very sorry, the nurse said. I can’t help you.
You can help me. Felicia’s arms were expressive.
I really can’t.
Edgar approached them.
You go have to live with your conscience if something happen to my mother while you upholding a policy, Felicia said.
I’m very sorry. We don’t permit international calls.
Edgar jumped in. Why do you assume her call is international?
Is the sister you’re calling here? the nurse asked Felicia.
Felicia didn’t look at Edgar but he felt an energy pass between them like she had psychically tagged him into the fight. She nodded.
The nurse looked unconvinced.
She has people here, Edgar said.
The nurse held the receiver to Felicia while looking hard at Edgar. One call, she said. What’s the number?
Felicia rattled out a local number while the nurse dialled. The conversation was too polite to be with a sister. The nurse was placing a coloured form into patient folders. She seemed satisfied listening to Felicia’s acrobatics. Felicia couldn’t say, Call my sister, if she was in fact speaking to one of her sisters. She would not need to give one sister the number of another. Handcuffed.
You run a tight prison, Edgar said to the nurse. She should be ashamed of herself, harassing an eighteen, nineteen-year-old girl like Felicia.
One local call, the nurse said. It’s not a public phone.
* * *
+
When Felicia ended the call, Edgar nudged her lightly and she followed him down the hallway, around the corner, and down to the second floor. His pants were wet against his shins.
You might get lucky, he said.
They did. Immediately. They found an unattended nurse’s station. Edgar lifted the phone from the desk to the raised counter.
Don’t talk too loud, he said.
Edgar leaned on the counter and kept lookout while Felicia placed a call. As soon as her sister picked up, Felicia turned her back to him. Her body relaxed when she began speaking. She sounded like the younger sister. He recognized the tone—pleading, petulant, reluctantly deferential. Although his brother was only two years older, his decisions had determined the structure of Edgar’s life. He studied Economics so Edgar had to. What a mess that attempt was. He worked at the head office in Germany after Vater died so Edgar had to anchor himself in Canada with Mutter.
How long it go take you to get a visa? Felicia said into the phone. Well, tell—Interrupted. Tell— Again. I know she close but she illegal. She go say she can’t leave the States.
Edgar realized he was listening when Felicia glanced over her shoulder at him. He took a few steps down the hallway. Back to the first question: If two people travelling in a straight line meet in a hospital room, is that a vertex or an intersection? Solve.
Is only now I could use the phone! Felicia said. You could call the hospital or call the landlady and she go tell you what happening.
A vertex can become an intersection by extending the lines. But an intersection cannot become a vertex again.
Nobody say anything about an operation. Pause. They thinning she blood. Pause. Everything close down—Emergency, Intensive Care. She up in Palliative. Pause. I know she don’t belong there but that’s where they put she.
Felicia looked over her shoulder again and Edgar shot his gaze upward to study an exit sign.
I pressuring the nurses to do something but they standoffish. All I can do is wait, watch and pray. Pause. She not looking good but you remember Cling-Cling—right, clawing the casket from the inside. Pause. It don’t matter. Listen, whether she get better or she get worse you go want to be here. Pause. In the morning, call the hospital and ask then I go find a way to call you and we go compare what they saying.
Felicia turned around so the telephone cord was wrapped around her body. She covered the mouthpiece and mouthed to Edgar, Excuse me. He gave her a little salute.
I don’t know, I don’t know, she was saying to her sister as Edgar walked toward his cigarette spot in the parkette outside Emergency. He sat on the back of a bench, feet on the seat, and smoked through his thoughts.
* * *
+
When he returned to the room, the curtain was open and Mutter’s mask was off. Felicia was sitting on a chair between the two beds.
Edgar removed his wet pants and sat beside her. She took a deep breath. He gripped his wrists. They opened their mouths.
XX
4.
Their conversation that night was made decades later into a movie starring Ethan Hawke and a French actress.
* * *
+
Where I come from—
The islands, he clarified.
The islands, she confirmed. —everybody have they real name and the name that people does call them. Not the girls so much unless you fat or lightskin but definitely the boys.
They would call me, what, Whitey?
We already have a Whitey. Maybe Hitler.
Ignorant.
Who ignorant?
Not you. I don’t mean you.
Oho.
People. Edgar conducted his hand around. Like Hitler’s the only German.
You not supposed to like your name.
And even Hitler, whatever you think of him, Edgar persisted, but Felicia didn’t think anything of him, the same way she didn’t think anything of Genghis Khan. They were exam questions to her. Even Hitler, he got the idea for eugenics from the Americans because it was the Americans, not the Germans, who used to sterilize their people first. So people should get educated before they say Hitler this, Hitler that.
Okay, okay, she said. You can be Whitey.
* * *
+
Which Germany your mother from? East or West? Felicia asked then promptly missed Edgar’s answer because she was congratulating herself on her sophisticated geopolitical question. She was not part of the ignorant, uneducated masses, despite the rejection of her high school certificate from a small unrecognized island.
Even with that Nadia Comaneci winning everything, was the next thing she heard.
Remind me, she said, which side is the good side again?
* * *
+
Felicia told him that her mother was a domestic.
Edgar beamed. We used to have one, he said. Two. One from Trinidad and the other from—
Jamaica?
No, a small island somewhere. Edgar tried again.
I not from there, she said. She told him that her mother collapsed right in the white lady’s kitchen. The children called the ambulance.
How old are they?
Seven, eight. I want to know if this woman was such a concerned employer, a friend to my mother, why I didn’t meet she by the bedside when I come here. Why I didn’t meet anybody by the bedside?
Edgar opened his mouth.
I meet you, y
es, is true but you is a practical stranger.
Edgar opened his mouth again.
You is a goldfish or what? Felicia said. And notice once my mother drop down how this woman find sheself at home to watch she own children? And my sister—Felicia touched her toque—quick to blame me for letting my mother leave the house this morning and have other people calling ambulance for she. I glad those children see she fall down. Right on the kitchen tile.
Those are smart kids, Edgar said. He had plucked the white people from the story and let the others swirl down the drain.
* * *
+
I don’t mean to interrupt, Edgar said, but you really should remove your hat. He reached toward her head.
She flinched. You does just remove people clothing for them?
You’re in a building.
It’s not the same rule for men and women. Felicia scratched under her toque. She imagined that Edgar was overdressed as a child and forced to sit silently on a tufted settee among adults.
In this culture, Edgar began.
I could finish my story or you want to talk about a hat?
* * *
+
She told Edgar that she and her mother shared a bed in a room they rented from a Christian lady. As they were falling asleep one night, Felicia wanted to talk about what she would do if she won the Wintario, though she didn’t have a ticket, seeing as gambling was prohibited, perhaps in Leviticus.
What would you do? Edgar interrupted.
Buy a big house and get married.
You don’t need to win the lottery to get married.
You don’t expect me to live in a big house by myself.
However, her mother wanted to talk about her funeral, her death, how to style her hair, who not to invite. Her mother told her to wear the black dress with the lace décolletage and ruffles at the wrist. And a hat. The brim was to be as wide as her shoulders.