by Gemma Files
“You don’t have to log off!”
“Yeah, you kinda do, actually.”
“Don’t do!”
“Do do, and now.”
“Aaaaaagh!” he’ll shriek then tell himself, mimicking me, even to the tone: “Don’t scream, there’s no reason to scream.” And he’ll run away to the bathroom, or his room, slamming the door either way. Cue the sound of either frenzied peeing or frenzied dancing, and we’re off to the races.
That’s a good day, by the way. Typical. The kind of day when, if he notices how much he’s driving me nuts, he’ll sometimes suddenly appear by my side and kiss me—knock his mouth against my elbow or my stomach, face-first, like a pecking bird. Then grin and sing out some nonsense phrase (“I didn’t mean to burp!” “Koo-do!” “BAD ROBOT!”) before scurrying away again, like he’s the Road Runner and I’m the Coyote.
Taking him to Mom’s breaks that up, though, leaving him off-balance. It’s not that he doesn’t like it there once he’s there, or that he doesn’t like her; he loves her, unreservedly. But there can be weeks on end during which he refuses to express that in ways she’s willing to accept, and that’s when things tend to get testy. “He doesn’t want his old Nay-Nay anymore, I guess,” she’ll remark to me, and I’ll feel the urge rise in me to snap: Yeah, that’s right—I’ll just work on training him to say the right things when you press his buttons, shall I, like a parrot? Because that’s the most important thing, not teaching him to self-regulate, or making him use his words; we need to get across to a kid whose entire vocabulary is made up of Disney dialogue how essential it is that he not only feel grateful, but also act grateful. To at least get him to say “I love you, Nay-Nay,” even if we can’t make him act like he means it. . . .
Oh, and I know how I sound when I blurt these things out, I absolutely do—which is why I struggle not to. Especially when the very next thing that always occurs to me is: But why should you get what I don’t even get, most days? What makes you so special? You’re my mother, not his.
Yeah, that’s never a conversation much worth having.
Spinning and spinning, trudging and trudging. I took his hand, trying to urge him along, and he fought me; I held on like grim death, not quite dragging him. By the time we reached Mom’s building, my shoulder was in an uproar. She let us in, he rushing past her with barely a glance to try and monopolize her computer, only kissing and hugging her when she extorted it out of him; I lowered myself onto her couch with a grunt, rolling my neck, unable to bite back further noises as things cracked and strained. “You look like you’re in pretty bad straits,” Mom said, to which I just half-nodded, unable to shrug. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“Much as I ever am, sure.”
“Well, that’s a pity.”
“Probably, yeah.”
“I just mean that it seems like you should be getting better, doesn’t it, considering how long it’s been going on? All . . . this.”
“Mmm, uh huh. And yet.”
(Thinking: Sorry if it offends you how I’m always in pain, Mom; life’s like that, at least for me. Can’t do much about it except what I’m already doing, in between all the other shit on my plate, but from now on I’ll do my level best to try and make it a bit less obvious.)
“You’re in a bad mood, too. How’d that last thing you were doing go?”
“It went.”
She gave me a shrewd look, but didn’t press, for which I was grateful. “I just wish you were getting paid for all your hard work, Lois,” she said, eventually. “That’s all. Given the effort you put in . . . and what it seems to take out of you.”
“Well, me too, Mom, but it’s an investment. Like when I started out—remember that? You prove yourself, do something for nothing, then trade up. . . .”
“That was a long time ago.”
I sighed. “What goes around comes back around. Blame the economy.”
“Interesting times, in other words.”
“Exactly.”
A few minutes later, she offered to take Clark overnight, thus freeing Simon and I up to go out on one of our increasingly infrequent “dates.” I accepted, then texted Simon, telling him to meet me at her place after work. We spent some time after that trying to explain what was going to happen to Clark, which was an exercise in frustration, as ever—he refused to even acknowledge it right up until the moment Simon appeared, at which point he suddenly announced: “Daddy, Mommy, Clark—we’re a happy family! And now it’s time to go home.”
“No, bunny. You’re staying at Nay-Nay’s, remember?”
“Don’t remember!”
“Yeah, we already talked about this. You have to stay.”
“You don’t have to stay! You have to go!”
“Nope.”
“Don’t, don’t, it’s heinous! CEE ESS EYYYYE!”
“Look, man, it’s gonna happen no matter what you say, so just roll with it, okay? Have a good time with Nay-Nay and we’ll see you tomorrow, do you understand? Do you? Clark! Look here, here. Do you understand me?”
Simon took him aside, murmuring, as I struggled back into my coat, trying not to wince. “He really seems to be annoying you, these days,” Mom observed, to which I could only reply: “Okay.”
“Please don’t do that, Lois. I’m just saying you need to be careful what you say around him, how you say it. Children pick things up.”
“Yeah, they do—and you know what? I actually want him to pick up how there’s more people in the world than just him, and sometimes things don’t go the way you want them to, ’cause that’s just life. Besides, you know how he is—all ‘no Nay-Nay, no Nay-Nay!’ until we leave, and then suddenly you’re the best thing ever. It’ll be the same tonight.”
“That doesn’t excuse your behaviour, Lois. You’re his mother.”
“Uh huh, and nothing excuses me, like nothing excuses him, either. Must be genetics.”
I regretted saying it the instant it was out of my mouth, not least because of the glance my mom shot me then, so much more hurt than angry—but right that very moment Simon reappeared, timing suspiciously on point, sporting that too-cheerful smile he puts on whenever he’s trying to defuse tension (a lot like Clark’s fake “Disney smile,” come to think). “I’ve set him up with Make Mine Music on your DVD player, Lee, and he’s got bacon,” he said. “We should probably go, right?”
She nodded, eyes still on mine; I wanted to look away, but didn’t. “Tell him goodbye, though, before you do. Don’t just disappear.”
“Of course.”
(Of course.)
“That didn’t sound good,” Simon observed, carefully, on our way down in the elevator. “Talk? Or just forget about it?”
“Forget,” I replied, still staring resolutely forwards, studying the dull, scratched inside of the elevator doors like I thought if I only did that long enough, a reflection would appear: not mine, perhaps, but somebody worth looking at. Already knowing, however, that I probably wouldn’t be able to.
Do you ever wonder when you started to hate yourself? I felt like asking Simon as we sat there in our favourite sushi restaurant, waiting to order. Except for the fact he’d most probably answer: No, but I do sometimes wonder when you started to hate yourself, let alone why—a question I knew damn well I’d never be able to answer, at least not in any way he’d find enlightening.
I was thirty-six when I fell pregnant with Clark, old enough that the gynaecologist judged my womb “geriatric,” and on the night I went into labour he was already two weeks overdue, so they’d been talking about inducing me the next day anyhow. I weighed more than two hundred pounds at that point, a lot of it fluid, and my hands were covered in pruritic urticarial papules and plaques, a rash often found in first-time mothers—benign but incredibly uncomfortable, like tiny, crunchy, air-filled subcutaneous blisters that hurt anytime I moved a finger. There’d been
a series of scares in that last month, everything from a sugar test hinting at prenatal diabetes to a false water breaking, but now we were finally at the precipice. Things were going—well, granted, I had nothing to compare it with, but it seemed all right, probably because I’d taken the epidural the minute they offered it to me.
On one of my second or third pushes, stuff gushed out of me in a flood without any hint of warning, like I’d pissed myself, so suddenly I didn’t even feel embarrassed; Simon held my hand as I bore down then stopped to recoup, whoop-gasping, before bearing down once again. And that’s how it went from then on: repeat, repeat, repeat.
Thirteen hours later, Clark had crowned but little else and the doctor could feel his neck starting to twist, as if he couldn’t decide which way to face while exiting. She recommended a caesarean, which I’d wanted to avoid, and eventually I signed off on it. I remember being wheeled into the operating theatre, sobbing like a drunken maniac and apologizing to everybody I saw. I remember the frame around my hips, a sheet placed so I wouldn’t be able to watch them cut me open, them lifting Clark free and putting him in my arms. He was covered in my blood, slightly yellow and swollen, eyes bulging like a bemused frog’s; his full head of black hair was plastered down, and he held his hands up to the light, fingers spreading delicately, whimpering. Nine pounds eleven ounces: “the little stud,” they called him. A friend had knitted him a cap with a skull and crossbones on it, which he wore for all his first photos. He couldn’t latch on, probably because my breasts were so massive and deformed—five years later I’d have to have a breast reduction, because they never quite deflated—which meant the nurse literally had to hold his head in place while I nursed him for the first time, half-asleep. The hangover lasted for days.
It was traumatic, for both of us—but then again, birth always is. In another era, neither of us might have survived. What I’m trying to say, though, is that I never resented him for any of it, never suffered from post-partum depression the way some of my friends did, never blamed him for the pain or the irreparable damage to my body, the staple-studded scar that ran twice as long as normal under a stomach pendulous enough it was impossible to clean without help, so it became infected almost immediately.
He was my child, a part of me, and I recognized that immediately; we lay in bed together for what seemed like months after, rarely separated by more than a few feet. He smiled early, laughed early, crawled early. When I wanted him to sleep, I’d put something I’d worn into his bassinet, knowing the smell would comfort him; when he heard my voice, his eyes lit up. I never doubted that he loved me, or that I loved him.
In my darkest moments, though, I have to wonder: how much of our affection, as parents, is for the child we think we’re going to have, the child we think we’re entitled to, instead of the one we actually end up getting? I mean, I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad didn’t see me coming, either: the kid with the black moods, the kid whose mind was always elsewhere, flinching from real life as from a bruise. Who wanted to lay a fiction-filter on top of everything and pretend it was something else just to keep the sheer disappointment of it all bearable: this limited, empirical experience of ours, trapped inside a decaying shell of meat, mainly able to perceive that nothing lasts, even in our most pleasurable moments.
That future I saw for Clark, though, when he was a baby . . . that was gone. It wasn’t coming back. That left only the present, which felt unbearable on occasion, though it wasn’t, because nothing was. Sad but true.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Simon offered, and I shook my head. “Wouldn’t want to waste your money,” I replied.
“Hey, it’s mine to waste.”
“Oh well, okay. No wonder we don’t do our own taxes.”
We’d already established there wasn’t anything showing in Toronto worth enduring two hours in a movie theatre seat, so edamame and assorted sushi rolls plus a bit of mild flirtation, followed by whatever we’d PVR’d earlier in the week, seemed like the next best thing—good for an hour or so, anyhow. Still, as we walked home, I found my mind sliding back to Mom: the impossibility of a last word, ever, when both of us were just so certain we knew better—about Clark, about life. About each other.
“I just wish she’d admit I might occasionally know what I’m talking about, that’s all,” I told Simon, closing our condo door behind us. To which he basically shrugged, moving to flick the kettle on, and pointed out, in return: “But she wants what’s best for Clark, right? And it’s not her fault she doesn’t know what that is, any more than either of us do—it’s uncharted territory, here. We’re all feeling our way, Clark very much included.”
“. . . Yes.”
“So.” A beat, then, while the steam gradually mounted. “If what you resent is her wishing you wouldn’t push him quite so hard, I have to be honest and say on that particular issue, I kind of agree: he’s a kid, first and foremost. Self-control’s always gonna be an issue.”
“Most kids grow out of it, though. He . . . might not.”
“He will. Slower than some other kids do, probably.”
“‘Probably?’”
“We don’t know! Anything, really. People make leaps; he’s autistic, not stupid. What I do know is that no matter how long it seems to take, one day, he’s gonna be an adult—which means he’ll end up living in the real world soon enough no matter what we do, or don’t do.”
“Yeah, I know. I know that. But . . .” I paused. “We’re not gonna be around forever. One day, we’ll be gone—her too, sooner that that. And he’ll be alone.”
“What’re you afraid of, Lois? That no one’s going to love him but us? Look at him, man: he’s lovable. Very much so.”
“He’s innocent.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“’Cause it can be.” He blew out a breath, annoyed. “Tell me I’m wrong, Simon.”
“I can’t, obviously—but you’re not right, either. Not totally.”
We stared at each other for a long minute then, neither willing to give an inch on the subject, till the kettle’s spout finally began to sing. Till I sighed, letting my eyes drop, and thinking, as I did:
We’ll see.
So we had tea, mainly in silence, and then we picked up a bit—shuffled all those various bits and pieces Clark tended to leave behind everywhere back to where they were supposed to go, the DVD cases and the random toys, the plastic cups that’d once held water and the coverless Tupperware containers containing nothing but cereal crumbs or pretzel salt. Eventually, as I loaded the dishwasher, I felt Simon draw near, clearing his throat; I looked up to see him hiding something behind his back, and smiled in spite of myself. He smiled back.
“Well,” he began, “I was going to give this to you at the end of the evening, but since I think you could use the pick-me-up now. . . .”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling absurdly touched, and a little surprised—Simon rarely gave me gifts out of the blue, mostly because by the time I’d talked enough about something I wanted for him to clue in about it, it usually turned out I’d bought it myself already. I recognized the Amazon packaging right away as he handed it over. “No guessing,” he said.
“Aw.”
“Seriously. I think you’ll find it’s worth the wait.”
I shook my head, smiled, and obliged, popping open the cardboard flap at the end and sliding out a flat, bubble-wrapped package; tore open the bubble-wrap, slipping it off to reveal a startlingly old-looking hardback volume no more than six inches high, bound in dark green fabric, spine worn and pages yellowing, like something from the older and dustier shelves of a university library. No title on the cover. Genuinely puzzled now, I opened it and found the title page.
In the centre, drawn in black ink, a massive snake curled about a little girl in a frilly Victorian-style pinafore; both the snake and the girl wore crowns, and behind them, a dark forest rose on either side. A
bove this picture were the words The Snake-Queen’s Daughter; below, Wendish Folkore & Legends; and below that, in smaller letters, Translated and Compiled by Mrs. A. M. Whitcomb, and smaller yet below that, Edited by Charles Pelletier, M.A., O.B.E. And opposite, on the printer’s page, my eyes drawn magnet-sharp to it even though I knew exactly what I was going to see: © 1925, printed in Toronto, Faber & Faber.
“I’m sorry about the condition,” said Simon. “I had to buy it used because the seller only ships to Canada by priority mail, but I figured, well, like you said—it’s an investment, right? In a project that could really be something important . . .” He trailed off, maybe noticing at last that I wasn’t squeeing with delight as he’d obviously expected. “Hon? Is—this not it?”
“No—no, this is definitely the one, and that’s great; I’d have gotten around to it, I guess, but the fact you already did . . . that’s amazing, thank you so much. That’s excellent.”
“Um, all right.”
“No, it’s just . . .” With a sigh, I flipped the cover open again. “When I was talking to Jan Mattheuis, I showed him my book, the one I found the original Lady Midday story in—and he pointed this out.” I tapped the copyright notice on the printer’s page.
“The date?” I nodded; he rubbed his face, clearly thinking hard. “Look, this doesn’t disprove anything. It’s still perfectly plausible she could have made the films, then wrote her source material down—I mean, she wasn’t involved with this book either way, right? She was already gone. This is this other guy’s baby, this Pelletier. . . .”
“Maybe, sure, but it doesn’t matter.” I leaned against the counter, hard, welcoming the distracting pain as its granite edge creased my skin. “What I want out of the NFA is a contract, money for research up front rather than afterwards, and Mattheuis isn’t gonna shell out that kind of dough for ‘plausible.’ Which means I have to find another way to make the connection, if such a thing exists.”