by Ian Williams
She was thinking that matrix of thought when suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She was aggrieved, she thought, with Edgar’s inability to trust her, his withholding of information as a kind of power over her, she would not sort through his dusty china at her age, no more cleaning up after people.
The tinted-window SUV was still in front of her. She was getting hot, although the high was only going to be four degrees, well below the fall seasonal average.
She lowered I noticed something a long time ago the window what and lowered the world has enough the volume what of the news radio. She tried to pull the car into the right lane but no one was letting her in. Reports just in of a woman being. suffering She reached for her handbag, no for her phone, not suffering and was going to call Army or Oliver, Oliver or Army, children let me in, who would be better, when the whole world got slapped away and she called out, Jesus.
* * *
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Both of their mothers were dying in the hospital.
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Army was listed first in the emergency contact information inside Felicia’s purse but Oliver arrived at the hospital first. The doctor told Oliver that it was spontaneous, Felicia’s heart attack. Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection. SCAD.
But Oliver knew it was not spontaneous. It was Riot’s desertion. that’s not funny It was the last week of Edgar’s groaning I’m not trying to be funny from downstairs, sending Felicia through the house sleepless and into work in the morning like a ghost. In the morning her face looked full of coffee, inflamed. She came home as soon as she could and tried to feed Edgar soup for an hour. It was pathetic, how she let a man wreck her life to his dying day.
If it wasn’t for Oliver and the roof he provided for her, what would she have? surely you don’t mean it A thirty-six-year-old deadweight of a son.
When Army arrived, holding his elbows, Oliver’s explanation of SCAD was: Her heart exploded on the highway.
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you’re confusing me with someone else who with the Father Abraham sort of man you ever spend Christmas alone me you never you look like a man who does spend Christmas alone
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Riot woke at noon and noticed the voicemail and text alert icons but did not open them. Instead, he went downstairs to check on the video or on Edgar. Same thing in his mind. At first he thought Eegrr was snoring on the exhalation portion of his breath but when he actually looked at Ergrr, not via the screen, he realized that the sound was of whimpering, a vestige of groaning, of agony that had exhausted its expression.
Riot wasn’t sure that Egrrr could swallow the old morphine or fentanyl pills. He retrieved the secret—secret only to Felicia—stash of Bacardi from the divorce rubble in the garage, poured some into the cap and held it to Errgr’s mouth. The whimpering softened. you will regret it Repeat. when you dying alone Repeat. you will regret it He lit a cigarette and put it to the man’s mouth as he has seen Army do. Since coming back from New York, Army had started smoking for Errrr. It was mostly second-hand service, as he called it, but he would occasionally hold the cigarette to Error’s lips, careful not to let the ash fall on his face.
Only then, sitting on Hendrix’s former twin bed and holding a cigarette to Error’s mouth, did Riot feel his own body—a wetness through his socks. Someone had knocked over the strawberry meal replacement drink. He would have to check the video.
* * *
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Home texted hospital: SCAD?!
Hospital texted home: Sudden corinary [sic] accident disease.
Home texted hospital: I know what it means. And? Doctor says?
Hospital texted home: Stable.
Home texted hospital: Meaning?
Hospital texted home: Nothing.
Home texted hospital: Can you come get me?
Hospital texted home: Don’t leave Boss who says I will alone. I say
At this point, Chariot Soares placed a phone call to Armistice Gross.
They swapped positions, Army and Riot. Riot took Army’s car to the hospital and Army sat on the floor next to Rrrrr’s bed, as he had for nights, until I mean what is death but mandatory sterilization it so much more than that same with menopause is okay if you frighten for your mother I’m not you don’t have to rationalize I’m just saying what exactly are you saying I’m saying I’m waiting that I hope you have yourself until two girls and a boy Edgar finally quit smoking.
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But Edgar would die twice more after that. Three days later for Army and Riot at the foot of Felicia’s bed. And once again for Army who watched the last ninety minutes next to Felicia’s head, the section where men removed the body and Army stuffed the sheets into a garbage bag and approached the camera, his crotch growing larger and larger as he did, to turn it off.
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Riot and Army began watching the video together from two chairs in Felicia’s hospital room. They began so that the time in the video corresponded exactly to the time in real life. Riot said it was to aid the illusion that they were living two days at once, that they were in a divine state of past, present, and virtual all at once, to which Army rolled his eyes and removed his gum.
Army couldn’t watch all the footage in one stretch, for boredom, not sensitivity, so he sometimes went for what he called spins around the hospital or neighbourhood or internet.
I’m not pausing it, Riot said.
No, you go ahead.
You’re leaving at your own risk.
Little man, it’s not childbirth in the Dark Ages, Army said. Text me when something—it was obvious he wanted to say something good—happens.
Riot doffed an imaginary hat.
But before it happens, Army said.
Riot’s love for slow Norwegian TV had built up his endurance. In principle and practice, pausing long videos was disrespectful to the work. Indigenous people didn’t interrupt their elders. A viewer’s needs, which were more often than not conveniences, were secondary to the primacy of the work’s right to be. He wrote something like in his application essay to his first-choice film school. He might have written something like, primacy of the work’s unfolding Dasein. And they still didn’t take him.
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Mind the cord, Oliver said to the nurse.
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Faye said they needed to talk but Army knew no good ever came out of needing to talk.
Did you hear me?
You realize both my parents just died, like within days of each other? You do realize that, right?
When did your mom—
Like any minute now.
Long tender pause. So she’s not—
She’s not going to make it. He began rolling up his sleeves as if that were necessary to get into the meat of the phone call.
That’s not the same, Army. And I’m not saying we have to talk now.
Yeah, let’s wait for her to die first.
Goodness, Army, what do you want from me? All I said was—
I’m not stopping you. If you want to talk, come down here and talk. As my wife—
I’m not your wife.
Legally, as my wife, don’t you think you should maybe pretend to be supportive?
As part of my secret girlfriend duties.
Timing, Faye. Timing.
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It might appear that nothing was happening on screen. Rrror der Schmerz she used to say is lying on his back, clamped tight in a blanket by his arms. It would appear as nothing, das Leid until one found one’s breath der Kummer synching to his, his sleep tugging one underwater. Eventually the background die Qual softens. The pitch of the fridge, for instance, is much higher than Riot imagined. The cars and buses passing outside sound like waves. There is also a steady dog whistle in the house that nearly overwhelmed Riot’s attention. He spent a long time trying to identify the source of so starke Schmerzen the
sound until he realized that it did not originate in the video but in the hospital room. He looked up at Felicia—stable, stay stable—and quickly looked away.
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Faye’s on her way, Army announced to Riot when he returned from a spin.
Riot unplugged his laptop and gathered himself to leave.
Come on. Don’t do that, Army said.
Army was trying to be courteous, to give people foreknowledge, something Felicia had been trying to teach him for years, but what was the point? He had tried to explain to Riot, She came on to me, she came on to me, and Riot had said, Whatever, intending both I don’t believe you and I don’t care. Army was tired of Riot’s wounded feelings. What about his feelings? How had he failed at everything? Let’s work on one set of feelings at a time. Yours? No, yours.
Don’t walk away from me, Army said.
* * *
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Faye’s coat had fur around the collar that made her seem leonine.
How is she?
Look, Army said.
Faye sat beside him. She looked between Felicia and the side of Army’s face several times but said nothing. She had never known Army to be quiet.
When she finally thought to ask him how he was, he told her a story instead.
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The source of the dog whistle was not in the hospital room, as Riot previously thought, nor in the Tim Hortons where he removed himself to avoid Faye. It was coming from inside of him.
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Army told Faye that he had finally cornered a senior buyer at the Delish corporate office and set up a product demo for his French-fry line, a project that had been in the works for about a year. The buyer said he’d give Army and his partner ten minutes and would come to a decision right away. Just prepare the fries and let the product speak for itself. He practically put his arm around Army’s shoulder to warn him against entrepreneurs who thought they could sell him sugar in a cat-shaped pink box, exact words, taking Army into his confidence, saying, I know you’re not like them but really meaning, Don’t be like them. So Army and his partner went down to Delish headquarters with a few frozen packages of fries, thinking that in the twenty-five minutes it took to bake the fries, they’d have the chance to conventionally pitch the product. Army would do most of the talking and his partner would be the hype man, but the secretary directed them to the company break room, which was stocked to the heavens with every conceivable edible product, and told them that the buyer and team would need everything ready at 12:30 as if Army and his partner were caterers. They came in on time, the senior buyer, and some folks clutching coffee mugs but no work implements, folks who looked like they were recruited in the hallway and knew each other but didn’t really display the cohesion of people who worked together on a team. And as Army was reaching for the tray of fries with the oven mitt from Felicia’s kitchen, it occurred to him that the purpose of the product demo at 12:30 p.m. with this crew was to provide its members with lunch. That was all. Lunch and a free sample to take home and chuck on their granite countertops.
So if I was neglecting you, Army said and lowered his head. So if you felt for some reason I was neglecting you.
* * *
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Stable.
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The longest Riot had gone watching a screen with only the briefest of shuteyes was a video he found of a girllikehim’s (that was her YouTube moniker) trip from her house in Halifax to her hostel in Auckland, which included lengthy layovers in PHL, LAX, and SYD to a total of forty-two hours. He wrote the girllikehim afterward. And she responded. So he responded. She really was like him, only older. And she responded to that response. And so on until he learned that she had a boyfriend and suddenly it seemed pointless to continue.
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Faye told Army that when she first moved to Canada she used to throw her noodles in the toilet at lunchtime although she wanted to eat them.
My father used to feed me worms, she said. I don’t remember much about him. My mother said it wasn’t worms.
What then?
She said it was a snake.
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In the video, Army says so starke Schmerzen to an unconscious Edgar, I went to the meeting with proof of product insurance, with sales numbers from a mom-and-pop grocery store. I had to render them as percentages because the manager doesn’t order tons and every time I go in there he has them stocked below eye-level. I’ll have to talk to him again. I had my laptop. I had a projector. I had the website updated with a couple of new testimonials. I had handouts about the company, growth the last thing my mother say to me in the morning forecasts, the marketing plan, printed up business cards.
Error breathes.
I’m rethinking your jingle idea, Boss. I thought it was whack. But I could lose all the kissing in the commercial and go old-school. Kid hears, Army sings now, Canafries, see the smile, kid walks into the kitchen, humming the jingle, mother picks up the jingle, mother remembers it before she gone and drop down on the white lady floor next time she’s in the grocery store. Conversion right there.
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For Riot, the slow entertainment movement gave him the same pleasure as those spot-the-difference drawings in the ethnic newspaper Felicia brought home from time to time. Only he wasn’t identifying differences between two static and, under casual inspection, identical drawings but differences between one moment of time and the next. In the video of Edgar, was try your best Riot spent minutes watching the minutes of the LED clock change at night until he finetuned his internal clock to predict exactly how long a minute lasted. He got to be so good at predicting the time that he’d say, Now, under his breath and the time would change within two seconds. Or he spent time watching a shadow form and lengthen. He heard footsteps upstairs. He heard Oliver shuffling in the garage. He heard soak the rice pot toilets flush, doors close elsewhere in the house, mysterious sounds with no source, just and try your best with it the house groaning. All of these were major points of deliberation. Why did Oliver keep letting the screen door bang upstairs?
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In the video, Felicia says, I should check on her Turn that thing off.
Still in the video, Riot says, It’s off.
Go and eat, she tells Riot in the video.
I’m good.
I’m not asking you, she says in the video.
Riot rises up his lanky frame from his director’s chair near the camera and leaves the room.
When he goes, Felicia looks at the camera long. There’s no red pinhead of light as she’d expect from cameras in her day. Then she turns back to Error. She inspects him, she’s stable checks to see if he’s dry, checks the adhesion of his fentanyl patch, sniffs his armpit while she’s there. Then she closes her eyes and soundlessly prays, only her lips move, while resting a hand on his forehead.
She leaves the room.
A few minutes later, she returns with a straw in a strawberry flavoured meal replacement drink. She rouses him and tries to get him to drink it. He groans. She insists he take one sip. She places the straw in his mouth you turn doctor and he frowns in what could be interpreted as don’t use that word on me displeasure. One sip, she says. His embouchure contracts. One more, she says. Contracts. She wipes his mouth with the hood from his sweatshirt, Army’s, Brownstone’s. She quickly screws on the cap of the bottle and places it on the side table with a straw.
She leaves the room.
Upstairs you can hear her getting ready. There is a conversation with Oliver where their voices are heard but not their words.
Half an hour later, she returns to Edgar in the basement, this time she’s dressed for work in the very clothes she was wearing when she arrived it’s the medical term at the hospital. With her hand on his skull and her thumb hanging into his face, she explains that she’s going to work and she’ll be back
early, that one of the children will give him a snack and then lunch and when she’s back she’ll make him some soup for dinner. Soup. Would he like that? He nods.
Then she, like, presses his forehead with her thumb I believe and exits into the garage for the last time, death is stable too possibly ever.
* * *
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Army told Faye that he saw Felicia one day when she couldn’t see him. She was crossing, waiting for the light. He was in the comfort of his car, behind dark windows. She hesitated until all the cars had stopped. He saw her. How much taller than her he was. How each part of her was a decision, to wait or to go, to trust the cars or her instinct, her coat, her shoes (she shopped a long time for those boots), her bag. And now she forgot about them. She was not his mother then but Felicia, thinking about whatever she did, the street, some administrative task certainly, some worry. It seemed to Army an especially adult thought, one he had never had before, one he was sure no one else had. No one else took note of her. She’d die and disappear. Never thought of by strangers. Like the vague deaths of an earthquake. His mother was one of ordinary billions. A depreciating asset. As she waited to cross at the other intersection and he drove away, she became fractionally smaller. One of six billion, then seven, then seven and a half.