Reproduction

by Ian Williams

  But when Felicia came home, no one was there. She was almost never home alone, certainly not since Edgar’s arrival. Oliver, for his part, hadn’t worked in over twenty years. Evening came. Vater kept an old car in a storage garage for over fifteen years She ate and watched CNN. never fixed it Then night. we had one too where I come from She read some Fifty Shades of Grey in her bedroom. no wheels on the thing Then deep night. She placed her one phone call to Army.

  Yeah, we’re on our way, he said.

  It’s getting late. I hope you put a proper coat on him.

  We’ll be there by morning. We’re taking turns.

  There was a rush of sound and another voice in the background.

  Morning? Where you going?

  New York.

  With who?

  Oliver.

  When did you decide this?

  It’s Felicia, Army said.

  Don’t call me Felicia. Who you calling Felicia?

  There was a crumpling sound as Army passed the headphone and mic to Oliver.

  Oliver: I spoke with Riot and he knows that he’s at the end of—

  You kick out Edgar before you leave? Felicia asked.

  Edgar’s gone, Oliver said to Army.

  Army in the background: Yeah, well.

  Riot’s not answering his phone because he knows I’m about to bring down the rain.

  Army laughed in the background. Tell ’em, Stone Cold!

  It’s time some order was restored in my house. Children hopping the border, old men showing up, thinking they can just live off me, smoke in my carpet, and I have to bend over and take it. Uh-uh-uh.

  You go, girl! Army said.

  They sounded drunk to Felicia. And—hard to verify—they sounded like they were speeding.

  Toll’s coming up, Army said in the background.

  They negotiated the amount of change needed while Felicia tried to clarify exactly what had happened to Edgar. From the decisiveness in Oliver’s mouth, she deduced that Oliver threw out Eeeer after breakfast, locked the door on him while he was out smoking, and Edgar walked to the mall without a coat, got a cab we did play in it from outside the Asian supermarket, and went home. but in the evenings Then feeling his new power, Oliver terrorized well Riot all you could see was the car rocking hither and yon on the phone until the boy wouldn’t answer, and threw some dollars and promises at Army so he would accompany him to New York.

  You happy with yourself, Oliver? Felicia asked.

  You told me to do it.

  Then they fought and when they were done fighting, rocking she was dressed.

  * * *

  +

  Edgar’s eyes were red not from sorrow or sleeplessness—from smoke and possibly whiskey—but when Felicia met him at his door, he was neither smoking nor drinking. His hands were empty. How long his arms were. The length of a life.

  Felicia said, Your phone just ringing out and I wanted to make sure—

  Telemarketers. There was a silence as I was saying the length of an arm when I was in uni before Edgar said, there was a girl on the floor one of your brunch girls no she was on the floor below mine I didn’t tell you? I went to Turks and Caicos.

  When would you have told me that? Felicia had only been standing there for seconds and she used to sing very loud or decades. it took me weeks to go down there and talk to Sophie

  White beaches. This was years ago. Landing in Providenciales, for a minute you think the plane’s going to crash into the ocean. I thought of you.

  I’m not from there, Edgar.

  Anyway, as I was saying, because her singing wasn’t unpleasant that’s the place to die. just loud If dying is something you want to do.

  Look, Felicia said, Oliver can be very forceful when he ready.

  There were no lights on right and it wasn’t a song so much as it was three notes in the house. When the motion sensor failed the same three notes to detect any motion, do you know a song that goes ooh-ooh-ooh the porch light went off with a soft snap.

  Eeeee gripped his forearms across his stomach. If youooh-ooh ooh want to die happy.

  Happily.

  You’re correcting me no now?

  Truooh-ooh-oohe. Her whole life he had never corrected her grammar, even during the time when her first Canadian teacher screwed up her face and pretended not to understand I Love YouJust the Way You Are the dialect of her small unrecognized island.

  Felicia heaved a Riot-sized sigh. that came out later Get your things together it could be any song and let’s go, she said. maybe it’s hers

  * * *

  +

  You look like a tramp.

  Pops, Riot said.

  Nice to see you too, Heather said.

  Oliver eyed her sleeve of tattoos. He was becoming more conservative I used to go out a lot as he aged. You go to the gym?

  Do you? Heather replied.

  Oliver clapped his hands sharply at Riot. Chop, chop.

  I toldjou. I’m not gowing anywhere! where

  Let him figure out out his life, Heather said.

  He can figure it out out in Brampton. Dump your stuff in a bag because we’re out outta out places here first thing in the morning.

  It’s already morning, Riot said.

  Put that smart ass to good use and get packing.

  You can’t make him go back to school, Dad. Heather tried to mediate the intervention.

  Oliver sized her up.

  That’s between him and Felicia, Oliver said. If it was up to me, Oliver turned back to Riot, you’d be full time at Shoppers Drug Mart and paying rent. Or Canadian Tire. Choose ye this day.

  Riot bowed his head and sat on Heather’s couch as Oliver outlined a life-plan for him then he reclined on the couch and closed his eyes. When he was little, Felicia read him Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. He believed he had arrived in the family magically.

  No, he could not explain to Pop-Pop the importance of making films I’ll take you to the movies that no one wanted to watch when terrorists were hurling trucks into crowds like missiles. He could not explain why why he could no longer live in a house where food was free and showers endless and how his parents were both good to him to get your mind off things and killing him. Clichéd but true. Except to say there was no I not allowed to date nutrition for his soul. He wasn’t talking about God. There was no one who would sit with him on a train through Norway, says who only in his company. Maybe she not dead when he was a child they would. They all used to place him in the sweet centre of their lives.

  Don’t mind me. Army wiped his hands on his thighs it won’t be a date and cut from the bathroom, through the window, anymore than this is a date to the fire escape.

  * * *

  +

  Two days, what do you want to see three days it doesn’t matter passed.

  Army was still where in New York I not from anywhere when it came time for Edgar’s next oncology appointment. no I mean where do you live Edgar walked with unusual Regent Park effort. where Felicia took the morning off. what’s Regent Park The public housing appointment was east of here tragicomic: grim news but with bouts of laughter between Edgar and the doctor. In the weeks he had been at the house, I not from there Edgar had never laughed, so the sound made Felicia feel both inadequate (why doesn’t he laugh at home) and intimate (you don’t know the real Eeeee). The doctor increased Edgar’s dosage of morphine pills Mutter always says low-rise apartments look like Auschwitz and asked him was she in Auschwitz whether he wanted to continue not Auschwitz no the other medication. but you know she’s Polish

  What’s the point? she only speaks German now Edgar said. even when Vater met her

  Your call, the doctor said.

  Felicia was going to report him she would try for malpractice. She wanted to ask him about pau d’arco, trumpet leaves, which she heard was good for cancer. But, Your call? What kind of quackery and pretend like she was was German that?

  The men stood up who wouldn’t and shook if is a matter of life and d
eath hands. Felicia studied the prescription if she knew I was telling you this so that she would not have to shake the doctor’s. she’d kill me

  * * *

  +

  They were like two opposing walls across a dirty alley.

  I’m not going anywhere, Riot said.

  We’re not leaving without you, Oliver said. We can tie you up so your father marry she and put you in the trunk or you can walk out of here on your own.

  I’m not leaving, Riot said. Stay on message. he married somebody Stay on message. she’s a total forgery Stay on message.

  Army, you hear that, Oliver said. News release. He said he’s not leaving.

  I’m not.

  We’ll see.

  * * *

  +

  When Felicia called in the evenings, she spent more time listening to Oliver and Riot in the background you shouldn’t talk like that about your mother than talking to either of them or to Heather or Army. The disputants held the phone to their ears but really they were performing to her, becoming more and more recalcitrant.

  You’ve missed so much class, Army, Felicia said. You need to come back.

  I’m brokering a deal, why not he said. it’s true

  In the background: I don’t care. I’m not going back with you.

  Then it looks like we’re all moving to New York.

  Leave them to work it out, Felicia said. You need to be back here, Army.

  But he couldn’t hear what she was really saying.

  In the background, she heard Oliver’s smooth baritone begin, Start spreading the news.

  * * *

  +

  A total week forgery passed.

  Finally, Heather of a woman had had enough. Four people in her one-bedroom apartment. The pressure on the narrow drains of her toilet. Army’s chatter about Wall Street. Riot’s screencentrism. Oliver’s criticism.

  If she could locate her breaking point in one precise moment, it was when her father threw himself down on the couch beside her and ripped a fart and didn’t tint red whatsoever. It was like a threat uttered directly at her: I’m moving here forever.

  She spoke that’s no way to speak about the woman who birthed you privately to Riot, took him to breakfast at the coffeeshop he liked, treated him like an adult (that’s all he wanted anyway, not to be coerced like a calf through an electric gate).

  He sensed something was up, because he got to the point first.

  You want me out, he said.

  You know you’re welcome here any time. You are.

  Then what’s the problem?

  They are.

  So throw them out.

  They’re not leaving here without you.

  That’s not— That doesn’t have to be true. You can tell ’em that this is my home now.

  Is it?

  He reddened. For one more week then. Until I finish my film. I won’t be any trouble.

  She almost changed her mind. She wanted to say, You can stay forever. Only in therapy had she disclosed that she had had a child in high school who was being raised as her brother. The therapist said, That’s not as uncommon as you think. But that wasn’t the heart of Heather’s problem. The heart lay somewhere between how Felicia became Mutter and her father became Pop-Pop, and how Riot didn’t automatically know who she was when she first arrived for the summers, per the divorce agreement, and how he used to take Felicia’s hand or Army’s and was wary of her for days. She could barely touch him. She had problems with how they kept his hair. Felicia didn’t cut it for three years out of superstition then all the haircuts Army gave him made him look like a convict. At thirteen, he started growing frighteningly tall and his T-shirts got short and he started moving in the languid, apathetic, hands-in-pockets way that skinny male bodies move. By the time he got into his late teens, she couldn’t bear to visit that house. Fortunately, she only had two weeks of vacation.

  I can’t, Riot. Why don’t you go back, sort things out at home, then come visit next summer?

  I’ll be in summer school. They’ll make me.

  Riot twirled his cup. And suddenly they were in a McDonald’s from the nineties, eating Egg McMuffins.

  Listen, kiddo, she’s my mother she said. but she’s not herself I’m all for the Knausgårdian struggle of your film project. But you got to get these people out of my apartment before I shoot them in the face.

  Riot was silent.

  Heather waited. He lived as a slow motion replay of someone else’s life, didn’t he? She felt like she was always waiting for him to grow up and become himself, not Hendrix at seven or Army at fourteen, and hopefully not like Skinnyboy in his twenties or like her father after that. All the ages of men were occupied by her memory of men.

  Riot looked her in the eyes for a few seconds. Who’s my dad? he asked. Then his nerve failed and he looked down at the lid of his coffee cup.

  The precision of the question. There were certain subjects that could not be discussed with certain people in their family. One could not talk about Hendrix with her father (although he had been publicly discussed in the American newspapers). While not strictly off limits, she avoided asking Army about his debt. She no longer lent him money and Army no longer asked her. And crowning the list of subjects to avoid was the circumstances around Riot’s birth. The silence or fabrications were intended to protect him and to protect her. Heather could keep her life in front of her without the obstruction of (a child in) her past.

  You know we don’t have that information, Riot.

  You do.

  Heather shrugged one shoulder in a believe-what-you-want gesture. She drank some of her kale smoothie.

  I was thinking about Faye, Heather said. In the photo.

  She’s not my girlfriend.

  She’s Army’s.

  Do you think I’m ugly? Immediately, Riot appeared embarrassed at having asked the question. Objectively, he continued. Was I an ugly baby?

  I don’t know that there’s anything objective about beauty, Heather said.

  Thanks.

  Adorno might disagree. Or maybe not. I mean, you’re not a monster, Riot.

  Wow.

  You’re fine, Heather said. But we were talking about Faye. Have the two of you—

  I said she’s not my girlfriend. We’re not having crazy sex. Then he added with sententious weight, Or digital sex.

  Sex in itself is not a problem. Forbidding it is just another way of regulating the female body.

  I’m a dude.

  I know, I know that, Riot. What I’m trying to say is that you, is that one should respect a woman’s decision to be with whoever she wants, that you can’t make someone do what you want them to do. You’re probably feeling all sorts of things. Jealousy.

  I’m not jealous.

  Or anger.

  I’m not.

  You can’t just contradict everything I say. What are you feeling?

  Riot returned to the question. I want to know who’s my dad, Heather.

  He held her eyes until she looked away.

  Heather put on her client voice. I am feeling like you are trying to pin me against a wall and mug me.

  You sound like Mutter.

  Whenever he called Felicia Mutter, Heather sensed that an identity was taken from her that she could never reclaim. It must be how decolonized islanders felt once their colonizers left.

  I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Heather said, but there’s no talk-show reunificiation narrative in your future.

  I’m not asking for that. I just want to know who he was.

  I don’t know, Riot. I don’t know. Heather could not bring herself to say, Your father raped me when I was sixteen. How would that be a just and generous inheritance to leave Riot? If he didn’t know, there was a chance he wouldn’t grow into him.

  You must, Riot said.

  Again, I am feeling a violation of my—

  Come on, Heather.

  If you could leave your subject-position for a while, consider from the othe
r side what it means to give up your colonies even if they were never yours to begin with.

  She resisted the potentially destabilizing effect of truth on her relationship with Riot. She didn’t want to be his mother. A mother at some point, maybe. But not his, not now.

  For the last time, I don’t know, Heather said. She took a sip of her smoothie. But I imagine, he was nothing like you.

  She swallowed painfully.

  * * *

  +

  Their last night. it’s cold Heather, on the fire escape, smoking.

  Cold put this on out here, Army said.

  It’s my Gulag, Heather said.

  Army took a drag from her cigarette then you’ll be cold and gave it back to her.

  The stress, she said. I was fine it’s not cold until you guys showed up.

  He still thinks you’re going to run off with Kurt Cobain.

  Army’s phone vibrated. you’re not cold but it is cold He smiled, texted a blur, paused, texted some more.

  That your little Lolita? Heather asked. Army didn’t have a wrinkle on his face, sang froid not a liverspot on his hands. He looked like a taller version of fourteen. Despite her education anything under 20 is cold and some years of therapy, she could not suppress the comparison serious to her own softening body. No amount of green shakes or Fitbit data seemed to stay her destiny—that of a short, fat, divorced woman with a floral couch and professionally manicured nails. For now, she could pass as a petite, curvy, unmarried woman with a Craigslist couch and clean nails, but her mother was gaining on her.

  Army slid his slim phone into the slit of his pocket. My what now?

  Your underage sex princess, Heather said, barbing the sentence.

  She could see him struggling with whether to deny his girlfriend or boast.

  Wish I could find myself one of them old-money princesses, he said. Yeah, some young, fine, Brazilian, guitar-booty princess who be all like, Ohh, obrigado, senhor. You realize that your sexuality—

  My sexuality, yes. He Trumped his lower lip. where I come from you’d be burning up Tell me about my sexuality.

  Your sexuality was arrested in high school somewhere. That’s why you prey on girls half your age. are you from hell