by Ian Williams
Oliver
If Heather had the baby in Brampton she’d become a proverb to all the kids on the street, causing Oliver’s stock to descend into white trash, and Oliver didn’t want that.
If she had the baby in Leominster, her whole school, all the neighbours, her mother’s conservative friends, would know, and the ex-wife didn’t want that.
It’s about time people knew the kind of father you are, the ex-wife said.
Don’t start on me. The high-pitched whine of Oliver’s tinnitus broke into his consciousness. This is not something you want to start.
Time people knew the level of utter ineptitude I was putting up with. I sent Heather to you for one summer and you send her back knocked up like a Jersey cow.
She was pregnant when she got here.
It never ceases to amaze me how unfit you are for fatherhood, she said.
This happened on your watch, not mine.
For fatherhood, yes, and also for marriage and manhood generally.
26. ADOPTION OPTION
Oliver
Oliver and the (not his but the, because she was nothing to him) ex-wife were undecided about whether Heather should give up the baby for adoption.
You don’t throw your children away, the ex-wife said, intending, no doubt, to land an uppercut.
I didn’t throw my children away, he said.
No one said you did, the ex-wife said. You’re always so defensive.
You took them from me, Oliver said.
Let’s not get off topic, she said. But Oliver could hear in her voice that she was satisfied.
27. DISCLOSURE
Oliver
The ex-wife said she was not going to tell the father (as Heather identified him) about the baby.
Oliver said some of what he was thinking: Because you don’t want to be the one to ring their doorbell and sit on their couch and look them in their married faces and tell them that their son knocked up your daughter like some black street thug.
I never called him a thug, she said.
I never said you did.
That’s your language.
Oliver recalled her habit of clearing herself of blame. In the fifteen years they were married, she had never been wrong once.
It’s unnecessary to blab any of this to anyone, the ex said, until Heather knows what she’s going to do.
It’s not Heather’s decision.
I mean, as parents—you’re still a parent, aren’t you?—we have to decide.
And you don’t think the boy has some say? You might be comfortable with deception but I certainly am not. Jab. How are you going to keep a man’s child from him? Jab. Jab.
We’re talking about a boy, not a man. Some men, though, never—
We are talking about doing the right thing, Oliver said. Believe it or not, some of us have principles.
28. UNTIL HEATHER KNOWS WHAT SHE’S GOING TO DO
Oliver
They decided that Heather would return to Canada, where it was free to have the baby, after Christmas.
Why after Christmas? Oliver asked.
The divorce agreement clearly states—
I know what the divorce agreement clearly states. I just don’t see why the two of them can’t come for the holidays if she has to come anyway.
No one said anything about Hendrix.
Oh, come on!
The divorce agreement clearly states that both children will spend Christmas—But we’re talking about exceptional circumstances.
What happened to Heather does not change my right to spend Christmas with my children, so Heather will not be travelling until Sunday, January 8, and Hendrix will be back in school on the ninth. End of story.
You don’t decide end of story.
The courts decided.
Through similarly arduous point-by-point fighting, they decided that Oliver would home-school Heather for the winter semester, aka the final trimester, that she would be kept indoors when she started showing, that she would return to Leominster in the fall to finish her last year of high school, and that she would apply to a state college for Nursing.
29. WHAT ABOUT HENDRIX?
Ex
Oliver tried again. Then you have to send Hendrix for March Break.
Says who?
You can’t separate them for so long, Oliver said. A boy needs his father.
End of story, the ex-wife said. You’re not taking Hendrix to your strip clubs.
I never. How did that—
And you will never.
30. OPTIONS
Hendrix
While his mother and father were debating whether Heather should keep the baby or not, Hendrix, who was on the not side, suggested feeding the baby to ants. The ants could eat the baby and leave no trace at all, but he’d need African army ants for that.
31. PROVERBS 6:6–8
Hendrix
Let us read responsively.
6 Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise:
7 Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler,
8 Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
It said right there, right?
32. DOUBLE DRAGON
Hendrix
Hendrix was not allowed to play his handheld video game for two days because of his modest proposal. He was on the brink of beating Level 6 when his privileges were taken away.
That’s no way to talk about your sister, his mother said.
You called her a Jersey cow and no one took away your—he scanned her—your fingernails.
Three days, the ex-wife said. You want to keep going?
But I didn’t call her anything. And here Hendrix began crying. I was talking about the baby.
33. FALL
Edgar
Edgar spent his fall in a boardroom facing male lawyers, public relations consultants and boardmembers, then in Berlin facing his brother, who was putatively male, and now on a train facing an unbelievably blond teenager.
I sometimes look at kids on the street and think they might be you.
They might be.
So blond that it took Edgar a morning of furtive inspections to figure out the gender. Right now, he was going with male.
34. HIS/HER
Edgar
No, female.
In the aftermath of the harassment allegations, but before the enforced leave of absence, the board mandated that Edgar complete a course in sexual sensitivity (their words), a course that Edgar blamed for messing up his most basic perceptive and intuitive skills.
For example, he caught himself saying to a friend, an escort friend whom he no longer slept with, not really, I like a beautiful woman, same as everybody else, but the important thing is that he or she gets me, you know.
There was a microexpression of concern across the friend’s face.
A woman, Edgar clarified. I’m not froufrou.
I understand, the woman said.
A female woman, he said to make sure.
I got it, Edgar.
But he wanted to be absolutely certain. Feminine.
35. ø Edgar
The blond teenager was already seated when Edgar boarded so there was no opportunity to evaluate his or her voice or movements for confirmation of his or her gender. S/he was reading a book where one of the letters on the cover had an o with a slash through it. So s/he was either a ghostbuster or Danish.
And therefore male or female.
Edgar felt he should err on the side of female.
36. ALTHOUGH ARMY WAS FORBIDDEN TO SPEAK TO HIM
Edgar
Edgar often heard Army’s voice in his head. How did you end up here?
Well, I’m nowhere yet. I’m in transit.
No, I mean, how did you end up being such a sorry wreck of a man?
Thank you, Army. Thank you very much.
Plain talk, bad manners.
But, yeah, I’ve never been up north. Change of scenery. Fresh air.
Don’t you smoke?
> Used to. I’ve quit. More or less. I’m considering it. The plain gendered teenager began eating from a plastic bag of granola. Maybe s/he was a horse. And to answer the real question, I’m here because I wanted to be alone for a while.
Don’t you live alone?
37. BETWEEN SOLITUDES
Edgar
I mean, you’re not a total train wreck, Boss.
I’m doing all right.
More like a car wreck.
It’s just a little rough patch.
Yeah? Things went downhill after you got the boot.
I’m on a leave of absence.
Getting away for a month in Berlin was supposed to be good for Edgar’s psychic realignment. Change of scenery. Fresh air. Five years ago, his brother had divorced his second wife and married a woman much like the first two, with a trickle of royalty in her veins. Good thing Edgar didn’t invest in getting to know the first couple of wives or the two children from the second marriage. When he arrived at his brother’s house, he offered his new nephews chocolate eggs he had bought at the airport.
Gender neutral, Edgar pointed out. Kinder Überraschung.
His new sister-in-law made the children thank him. Edgar told her it was sexist to have only male children. His brother told Edgar he smelled worse than a fruitcake. Edgar told him he was getting fatter than Vater. By evening, his nephews were sneaking up on him, tagging him, then running away, shrieking, Drunkle, Drunkle. (Edgar had had a sip or two on the flight.) And by night, Edgar was tired of the children.
Seems to be a pattern.
I’m not tired of you.
I’m waiting for it.
Yet.
There we go.
After a week of Drunkle-Drunkle! and Fatter-Vater! and the blunt life-planning of his brother, Edgar and his brother got into a nasty fight. It began unremarkably. At dinner, his brother criticized rosé as a Mischling drink. Pick one, red or white, he said, but don’t suck the teat of a halfbreed. Edgar bit down. The riff to the Final Countdown began. The brother told him he would create a position for him to manage a couple of regional airport stores in Eastern Europe now that the wall was down or, better, he could give him a portfolio of airports through Greece and Turkey, a portfolio that Edgar knew his brother planned to axe in a few years, so Edgar could run the division into the ground if he liked and retire at that point or go back to Canada once the Canadian branch had rehabilitated its image but Edgar declined both offers and his brother kept insisting until they were shouting at each other and Edgar was digging up all sorts of family bones and inventing Emersonian quotes under the auspices of translating them into German, and alas the next day Edgar packed his travelbag from the seventies to much headshaking from his brother and politeness from his sister-in-law who dressed the children and instructed them to bid Uncle farewell while she took photographs for the album. His brother dropped him off at Lehrter Station. Edgar called him a Bolshevik, which sounded to him like an appropriate insult to part with, and his brother called him a Gypsy, which Edgar didn’t mind.
Inside, Edgar promoted the ticket vendor to a travel agent. Throw something together for me.
Just anywhere?
Amsterdam maybe. He’d grow his hair out and wear a gold glam suit. Or no—north. He said, As far north of Germany as you can. Three weeks. A big circle that gets me back to Tegel. And he gave the agent the date of his return flight to Toronto.
So the travel agent booked him a ticket north to Hamburg then farther north through Denmark. From there, Edgar intended to take a boat across the North Sea, another train up to Oslo then east to Stockholm then south again to Copenhagen and back to Germany, drinking moderately all the way.
Well, that was better than what I was doing.
Which was?
Worrying.
Sweet, but—
Not about you, Boss.
38. NEVER AGAIN
Edgar
When the blond gathered up his or her grey belongings to leave, Edgar felt a gust of disappointment pass through his lungs. The train was nearly empty. The tone of the car converted itself from German to Danish and as he travelled through his itinerary he became, if it were possible, more silent.
The trains were better than the cities. He didn’t want to do anything touristy.
The highlight of his misadventures through Scandinavia occurred in Stockholm. He was rummaging through a display bin outside of a gift shop in Gamla Stan, the old town, when he saw two black men, first their heads over the incline then their bodies approached, then their shadows. They were very conspicuous. Together they appeared formidable, walking toward the sun. Taller than Edgar. Thin too. He’d describe them as giraffey but the sexual-sensitivity-trained Edgar would not. Edgar poked around the bin until the men came close. He was sure that they’d recognize him, not with the electricity that he beheld between black strangers but as a fellow foreigner, perhaps with a nod. He scattered his mind for a pretext to stop them. The time. Directions. He could trip them. Nothing seemed appropriate. So they passed him. He trailed them for a while and still could not find a reason to stand between the pair. Were they brothers? How did they end up here? Did they speak English? They seemed more African than American. Could he say that? He didn’t know what was reasonable anymore. The sexual-sensitivity course said he should ask a woman if she wanted to be addressed as Miss, Mrs. or Ms. Then they entered a dollhouse, the Negroid men of African ancestry, and Edgar continued through his itinerary without seeing another primarily Congoid person of colourful, African, or mixed ancestry until he reached the airport in Toronto.
39. HO HO HO
Edgar
He spent Christmas in a hotel room on Lake Louise.
His brother’s wife had encouraged him to return to Germany for Christmas but Edgar found himself saying into the phone that he already had plans to spend the holiday skiing in Banff with a woman. The lie got more and more elaborate to the point where he bought new Völkl skis and flew to Alberta.
He went skiing one day. That was enough. On Christmas Day itself, he slipped out of the hotel around noon as if he were heading to visit family for dinner then he hiked one of the closed trails, smoking and calculating how high up he was from the lake. When he got to the top, he cleared a log of snow, sat, smoked a cigar and ate the pack of M&Ms he had brought for lunch. The rest of Christmas, he watched TV on low volume in his room, mixed experimental ratios of red and white wine, and ate from among the assorted snacks he had prepared, for he didn’t want room service or the hotel staff to think he was spending Christmas alone in a hotel room.
40. ARE YOU THE LEAF, THE BLOSSOM OR THE BOLE?
Edgar
What are you getting me?
What I wanted to get you didn’t quite work out.
Nothing seems to work out for you.
You are a life-vest to a drowning man, Armistice.
And why should he get Army anything for Christmas after the way Felicia had forced the boy to deracinate their blossoming chestnut tree?
They made their choice. During the summer, Edgar had acquired a list of traditional anniversary gifts, and painstakingly selected gifts for Army because he assumed that Felicia was grooming the boy into a chippy British butler. Year 1 was paper, year 2: cotton, 3: leather, 4: fruit, 5: wood (he considered a Frost poem for this one), 6: candy, 7: wool, 8: bronze, 9: willow (a hassle), 10: tin (at a loss), 11: steel, 12: silk (maybe for a little Liberace), 13: lace, 14: animals (he came within seconds of buying a dog), 15: crystal. Plus the mixtape.
For Christmas, if everything had gone according to plan, Edgar intended to give Army the ultimate gift. He would present himself. Make a present of himself. Be present. But their relationship was prematurely razed and sold to a developer. Yet if the thought counted, on Christmas he and Army hiked up a snowy mountain trail side by side.
41. MIXTAPE
Army
Army planned (and would forget) to bring his Walkman to the hospital so Heather could listen to the Quiet Storm while hav
ing the baby. You give me, you’re giving me the sweetest taboo. Or he could grab the mixtape from the car. He had made her a mixtape of his father’s mixtape by dubbing Edgar’s 60-minute mix on a 90-minute cassette and adding some songs of his own. Crystal Waters, Gypsy Woman, la da di, la di da. Deee-lite, Groove Is in the Heart. Nirvana, The Man Who Sold the World.
Later, in a letter to him, Heather wrote that it was hard to know where his father’s songs ended and his began. Edgar had attempted to put some nineties music on there, at the end of side B. It was the most meaningful thing Heather had said to him to that point; it was exactly what Army wanted to achieve with his curatorial efforts.
It was hard to know where his father ended and he began.
42. CHRISTMAS 1978
Edgar
For better or for worse for Edgar every Christmas echoed Christmas 1978 for Edgar for better or for worse.
He remembered seven things about that Christmas.
He had willed himself to tell Felicia by December 31 that he was married so that they could go forward into the new year with their mouths open to snow.
He hadn’t celebrated Christmas in years but Felicia discovered an artificial tree in the basement and pulled her what-kind-of-man-(in-this-case)-doesn’t-celebrate-Christmas-especially-when-every-year-could-be-his-mother’s-last trip. Together, they connected the three sections of the tree, fluffed the limbs to hide the space where the tree was joined, strung the lights and the fat, blue tinsel boas, hung candy canes and angels, threw out the broken balls, sprinkled tinsel into a gaudy mess, and crowned the tree with a gold star.
She placed two gifts below the tree. But then she removed the gift that was for him.
He bought her several gifts over a period of days. The first one, she wouldn’t open. He opened it for her. The Jackson 5 Christmas Album. He shook it in front of her face. Nothing. He put it on the record player and within a minutes she was humming ruh-puh-pom-pom, ruh-puh-pom-pom, ruh-puh-pom-pom. A victory. Within a matter of days she should have been back to herself.