by Stephen Law
Holding the phone to her head, she collapsed onto the couch.
“I know it’s been a while. I wanted to, you know. You know, I wanted to …”
Shaz wondered if he was drunk. He kept talking despite the fact that she still hadn’t said a word, as oblivious to her now as he’d been all her life. While he took his time getting to the point, she counted the tiles on the ceiling.
“I’m sick, baby. Not well. It’s my kidneys.”
Thirty-six. The ones in the bathroom and in the closets might add another ten or fifteen, but she couldn’t see those to count them.
“I thought you should know, in case … you know. In case there’s something to do. To make it better. You know, I didn’t want you to worry about your old man …”
Shaz almost laughed. The days of worrying about her dad had long passed. She had visions of her father lying on a gurney, cut from sternum to pelvis, relieved of his organs while she tattooed a tattered crown onto the centre of his chest.
She tried to think if she’d seen any omens today — a crow on a lamppost or circling overhead. Had she missed the portents giving her fair warning he was going to call? She sat up and looked out the window, just in case.
He kept talking, but she’d had enough. “Thanks for letting me know, Donald. Goodbye.”
She lay down and stared back up at the tiles. They’d need replacing soon: there were water stains on some. Probably not enough exhaust to the outside. She wasn’t sure when she would be able to get to them. It would require closing for a weekend. Maybe she could convince Aleysha and Frank to give her a hand.
***
“KIDNEY OR LIVER DISEASE or something. One or the other.” Shaz stared at the menu.
“Not something I’d want on my plate.” They were at Gus’ Pub and Aleysha was nursing her beer. Shaz was on her second pint with no thoughts of slowing down. First the break-in, then her father. She wanted bitter on her tongue.
“Does he want yours?”
“My what?” Hamburgers, fish, salad. Shaz shifted her focus from the jumble of options in front of her.
“Your kidney, your liver, or whatever. Sounds like he wants to see if you’ll be a match, like a donor.”
The menu slipped from Shaz’s hands. That’s why he called. She assumed it was part of his twelve-step program, something he was forced to do if he was riding to the last stop on the mortality train. But, Aleysha was right. The bastard hadn’t called her to tell her he was about to die. He called because he needed something from her: he needed Shaz to keep him alive.
She called over to Petra. “I need Scotch. Like a half dozen or so.”
A little watermark had pooled around her beer on the table. Shaz circled the dew with her glass, bending it out of shape.
She was in the nook at her nana’s house. It was where she waited for him as a kid. “There’s my girl,” he’d say when he found her there, out of the way. He’d toss her up in his arms.
“Whatcha bring me, whatcha bring me?” She’d peek around his back and pat his shirt.
He’d smile and his eyes would dart around and she’d finger his cigarettes. “No, no, those aren’t for you, honey.” He fumbled in his pockets till he found a half-full packet of Juicy Fruit. “Some gum!”
She put a slice in her mouth and stashed the other three in her pocket, for later.
Daddy’s girl. When he returned to shore for leave and paid family visits, she felt like a princess. But he always went away again too soon.
Shaz downed the beer and chased rather than sipped the first shot of whiskey.
“Can you hear me?”
“Daddy, where are you?” Her mom hushed her, admonished her for shouting into the receiver, but he was so far away.
The phone crackled and echoed. “At sea, baby. I’m at sea.”
She wouldn’t see him for months at a time. She knew because she’d mark it on her bedroom wall. Lying there, after he’d left, she’d pushed a pin through the drywall, wishing it was her fist, but not wanting the trouble. After school the next day, she saw it on the wall, and added another. Then she just kept doing it, every day he was gone. From the headboard, to the foot of the bed, rows of pinpricks on the wall, just enough so she’d know, but not draw anyone’s attention. When there were too many, when she had to stretch to start a new row, she stopped.
Shaz put the empty shot glass down and eyed the others.
He came ashore after her brother arrived. He drifted around, bobbing in and out of sight. The calls, when they came, were clear. They didn’t cut out mid-sentence, but by then there was nothing left to say. She was fourteen. She stopped using pins, and started using needles. At fourteen, she began to tattoo.
Aleysha held her nose and gulped the shot in front of her. She grimaced and shook as it went down. “Guess the car’s here for the night.”
Shaz flipped the shot glass over, took a breath, then grabbed the next one in line.
As an adult, seeing her father was like spotting an apparition. He was there, something she caught out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked he’d be gone. It had probably been three years since Shaz last had a sighting.
“Since it’s gotten all nasty, I’m gonna have me some fries and gravy with that.” Aleysha squeezed her eyes shut with each gulp of Scotch.
He needed her, of course that’s why he called. Not to tell her he was dying, but because he wanted another piece of her. Wanted to replace the parts of him that were damaged with the parts of her that weren’t, just because they shared DNA.
Shaz held up the glass, to catch the final few drops, letting them drip onto her tongue.
What would Desmond say? Her mom had been home from the hospital with her brother for only five days before her dad split again. That was the last time he’d lived with them.
Shaz picked up the last shot and looked over at Aleysha, who squinted at her, sighed, then picked up hers as well.
“To family.” The Scotch burned.
Fries, gravy, and a boat of mussels sopped up a small portion of the alcohol. By the time they got back to the studio, the ceiling was in full spin. They lay on the couch, their heads pressed together.
“What are you going to do?” Aleysha was slurring.
Tests, procedures, organs, donations. Words jumbled around inside her. She felt sick, but wasn’t sure throwing up was going to help.
“Fuck Donald.”
“Let’s drink to that.” Aleysha giggled and lifted an imaginary glass.
Shaz fell asleep dreaming of rats. Her strategy was to befriend them. What else could she do? The landlord denied there was a problem and told her to set traps. They had been leaving telltale signs around the studio. Mice she could handle, small little scurriers nibbling cutely on chunks of cheese. But rats. Rats lived in sewers and conspired in covens.
She set tantalizing bits of food on her desk and the rats grew bolder. She hoped they’d gathered for some kind of rat reunion. The bagel scraps were laced with poison and she geared up to inflict them with a spray. She dreamt of nuking them with pesticides, screaming out, “Die rat, die!”
Shaz bolted up from the couch. She’d been dreaming the rats had invaded her house, that they were the ones who had broken in to exact their revenge.
She shook her head and looked to the crow series she had on her wall. It was macabre to some, an omen for others. A symbol of transformation or wise council.
She tattooed them on feet with roses, on backs with faeries, and on biceps with firearms. She wanted to add crows to every tattoo, have them walking through the city streets on their people, the scavengers. Emblems for others to recognize as a warning. Or simply to be admired. But the rats? What was she going to do about the rats?
2
LEFT CALF
heart-shaped worry box
SHAZ WAS FIXING AN angel tattoo on a woman’s ar
m when her cellphone rang.
At first it sounded like Frank’s familiar drawl so it took her a moment to register it was his father, Norman. And another second to catch what he said. “Frank’s in the hospital.”
Shaz froze, the gun shaking in her hand.
“He’ll probably be fine.” Norman’s voice caught as he spoke, so Shaz couldn’t be sure.
Angel was going to have to remain wingless for now.
Shaz ran onto the street. She couldn’t get a cab to stop and she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting for one. Wiping away tears, she sprinted through lights and dodged strolling pedestrians.
Breathless, she burst into Frank’s hospital room. A patchwork of bandages covered his body. Hand in cast, face distorted, IV in his arm. She couldn’t see the cracked ribs his dad had mentioned, but his left knee bulged up under the sheet like he was hiding a rugby ball.
She went to his side, but kept herself from touching him. “I’m here.”
Frank turned away when she spoke, staring out the window from the hospital bed, lost in the distance.
He stayed that way, not speaking. Not to anyone.
The nurses had told her the only sound he made was a groan if they moved him and aggravated an injury. His mother paced the hall, hoping that seeing Aleysha or Shaz might push him to speak. Visits with psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and even the chaplain produced no change.
The police told them it was a swarming. Four or five of them surrounded Frank and beat on him. Some street kids walking by with their dog scared the group away, but by that time Frank was in a heap, the damage inflicted. They’d taken his cellphone and wallet and left him.
Shaz kept vigil at the hospital. With the lights in the corridor and nurses moving in and out of the room constantly, neither of them slept much. She would have loved to sit in the room with him or curl up beside him in bed and tell him everything was going to be okay, but she stayed in the hallway and waited.
It became a new routine, a new route: A quick run to the hospital before work and across lunch, and then settling in the waiting room for the evening. Still Frank gave no response.
His silence didn’t stop Shaz from trying to talk to him. “Come live at my place, just until you’re better. You’ll need someone to take care of you.”
Frank maintained his gaze at a distance.
“I’ll promise to tidy up, keep everything spotless.”
A nurse came in, examined his chart and checked the IV. “How you feeling, Frank?”
No words. His smile seemed forced.
The nurse checked his pulse and vitals. Shaz left her to her duties and retreated to the waiting room.
Scrolling, flipping, swiping. Everyone had their heads bent over their devices, except one old lady who looked at Shaz expectantly, like she was the only one in the universe who remembered that people used to talk in public. Shaz ignored her.
Aleysha was there, playing Threes on her iPhone. Shaz could see the nurse still in Frank’s room, adjusting and fixing, trying to make Frank more comfortable, trying to help him heal.
“Head to head, I’ll take you on.” Aleysha moved numbers around on a grid with her finger, trying to match them up, trying to get them to like each other.
Shaz jumped up and went to the window, to try and see what Frank saw. Buildings, cars, parking lot, sky. She felt itchy, like she could scratch off her skin. Why wouldn’t he talk to her? To anyone?
A swarm of bees and a plague of locusts were acts of God. A group of insects or animals moving in a concentrated frenzy. Human swarmings were something else and seemed to leave their own wake of destruction.
Holding herself back from ripping Aleysha’s cellphone from her hand, Shaz stood directly in front of her. “He should have known better than to be walking alone on the Commons.”
“Excuse me?” Aleysha’s finger was poised over the grid.
“I’m tired. I’m going to go.” Shaz grabbed her coat off the back of the chair.
“Sure. You look like you could use some sleep. Frank will be okay. I’ll stick around tonight for a while till he drifts off.”
Hunkered down in her coat, Shaz felt the numbers in Aleysha’s phone jump up and follow in a cloud above her head. She resisted the urge to swat at the air.
The studio was dark. Streetlights lit the walkway and light from the stores along Quinpool Road seeped into the front entrance, separating into strands that lost potency as they stretched into the room. Shaz dragged the old army-issue sleeping bag she had been using to the couch. Sitting beyond the edge of light, she scrutinized the couples and groups passing on the street. Pulling the bag closer to her chin, she implored the people who walked alone to walk quickly, not to stop, to run if they heard noises.
House broken into. Frank covered in welts and bandages, beaten and battered in places on and under the skin. Shaz kept her eyes alert and shivered in the sleeping bag.
***
IT WAS ODD TO see a nurse wearing a pillbox hat, dressed in white from shoes to shirt as though she were from back in the day. The other nurses wore pale blue, green, or pink scrubs. What was it about this one? Shaz wanted to ask Frank, to see what he thought, but he still wasn’t talking.
“I had this woman come in today and she wanted me to ink, ‘bastard child’ on her belly. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to herself or the baby.”
Silence.
It was taking everything she had not to shake him into a response.
“I was thinking of goddesses and African queens. They don’t get enough play. Maybe if I did a bunch of portraits and hung them up around the studio, it would arouse some curiosity, spark some interest.”
The nurse was long gone. All too quickly, Shaz had depleted her topics of conversation.
“I’m just going to step out for a bit. I’ll be right back.” She left the room, only half waiting for a response.
Along the corridor, down the stairs, out of the hospital, and through the parking lot. She ran home. Paused. Took a breath. Then burst into her room. She hadn’t been sleeping here. Pushing through the mess, she collapsed onto her bed. A noise caused her to bolt upright. She scanned the room. There was nothing there. A mouse? Getting up, she threw open the closet and pushed the clothing aside.
Everything had been touched, soiled.
She threw herself back onto her bed and screamed into her pillow, pounding it into flour. Wrestling with her blankets, piling them into submission, getting tangled up in the process she knocked her pillow to the floor. Her hand batted the edge of the bedside table nearly toppling the reading lamp.
Prostrate on top of her duvet, head and arms hanging off the bed, she tried to catch her breath.
Her fingers brushed the worry box, knocked to the floor in her frenzy.
It had started out as a valentine project initiated by a teacher who wanted all the students to share in cupid’s bliss. They would decorate the box and give it to the valentine whose name they’d drawn. Shaz had glued a bunch of small, coloured beads onto the heart-shaped box. It was kitschy, the kind of craft parents would fawn over but end up pitching into a drawer.
Flipping onto her back, Shaz picked up the box and held it in her hand.
The oil from her skin brightened the dull colours as she rubbed the beads beneath her fingers. She ran her fingers over the bumps again and again, until it hurt, like she had as a girl, pretending the box was the lantern and she was summoning a genie to grant her a wish. On Valentine’s Day, she scratched some hearts out on paper and decorated it with apple-and-lemon-scented stickers and gave that to her secret valentine. The box, she kept.
Her dad didn’t come home, but she’d run her fingers over the ridges of the box when she was hopeful or worried. It didn’t change anything, but it made her feel better.
Shaz got up and made her way to the hospital. Slipping by the nigh
t nurses, she leaned into the room to make sure Frank and his roommate were asleep. Then she went to his bedside and looked down on him. The worst welts were beginning to mellow and some of the puffiness had gone down. The morphine dripped by his bedside and his face in sleep appeared contorted, misshapen, not the one she knew.
In happier times, Shaz would watch the twitches he would make as he slept, sometimes in the light of the moon from his bedroom window. Drawing her palm to his face, his breath warm on her skin, she’d draw lines from the blemishes and freckles on one side of his face to the other. Ursa Major, the Great Bear, Eridanus, the river and Cassiopeia. If she used his eyes, nose, and chin, she could create a picture of Lupus.
Looking at him now, asleep in the hospital bed, she ran her fingers, one after the other, along the familiar beads of her old valentine box before placing it on the windowsill, heart-tip down, cold against the glass, not sure if she was leaving it for him or for her.
3
HAND TO HEART
ink tracks
“IT’S SUPPOSED TO RAIN TOMORROW.”
Shaz was getting used to these one-sided conversations. She told him about her day: about her dad and the kidney; about the latest at the studio.
An orderly came in to take Frank’s roommate away for x-rays. The other side of the room stood empty, spotless, hospital clean, a whiff of bleach in the air.
“They say there’s a storm front coming in. It’ll feel like the edge of a hurricane.”
“He was there.”
Shaz bolted up. Finally.
Frank continued speaking, his voice raw from lack of use. “I saw him. He looked down on me.” Frank winced, from the pain or maybe from the memory. “Like he was making sure.” Frank turned his head away, and began talking to the wall.
She held her breath, not wanting to interrupt, scared he might shut down again.
“There was a group of them. It was dusk. I walk through there all the time.”
Shaz could see it. Frank walking alone in the park in the centre of the city. The street lights wouldn’t have come on yet — that moment between light and dark. People playing Ultimate in one of the fields.