Chicken

by Lynn Crosbie

  And when we fucked, I flashed back to the devil he played and, in many ways, was.

  Parnell let me master that creature, and win, in turn, an informal award for the most UTIs at the women’s clinic that year.

  Now, on the rare time my husband touches me, he bores into me when I am dry and rigid, wondering, “You’re so tight, your baby-slit is so tight.”

  This kind of talk excites him to orgasm, and leads me, every time, to despair in the mud room off the kitchen of the enormity of my loss.

  I flash on Parnell, big and wet beneath me, jerk my hand out of my pussy, and drive: I am still opening and closing, jammed in the lonely perfume of my sugar, he called it my sugar, without his briny salt.

  * * *

  It is getting dark when I get to the hill leading to a strip of beach, the sea.

  Very quickly I did let myself go, giving away my entire wardrobe, dressing in old Gap painter’s pants and Parnell’s oversized sweaters, minimal makeup, the army boots he couldn’t stand.

  But underneath, hidden, I am waxed pinewood, nails buffed; my hair still a waist-length champagne breaker, tucked into the knit watch cap I once stripped off for him.

  I have on a Strumpet & Pink black quilted bra with white ribbons attached to each square, skimpy white underwear, cut high, beribboned and reverse-quilted also, a red bunny tail on a black square on the rear.

  And I have made up my face to perfection, pulled on the one outfit I put aside.

  I am in a clinging scarlet silk slip dress, sea-blue silk heels, the rope of pearls, diamond earrings, and a tiara he messengered to me in New York, light up your candles for me.

  Crossing the street clutching a pink chiffon wrap, I had forgotten what it was like: car jams, barbarous howls, all that shouting: “Mami, ven aquí!”

  Fall has returned: I am twenty-three.

  My baby has been dead for almost seven months. He lived five days before an embolism burst in his brain, devouring my darling boy’s entire life in seconds.

  Parnell’s funeral was standing-room-only, but you have never seen a smaller ceremony than our child’s.

  Just me and the — as it turns out — cruel man I married, holding hands as a minister recited: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

  I carry his ashes with me at all times.

  “Buzz, look at the pretty waves,” I say, kicking off my shoes. “And see — ”

  * * *

  I skipped the funeral and spent the whole day locked in the bathroom, dry-eyed and vomiting.

  Why didn’t I forgive him?

  I killed him.

  Later that night, Christine comes to see me. My husband is working, the house is still.

  She is carrying her baby in a sling against her chest, a plump pink creature with dozy eyes.

  “This is Patrice,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Me too,” she says. “He’s missing everything.”

  “The animals,” I say, and she tells me that she and Rabi have divided them.

  “Did he leave you a note?” I ask.

  “He did,” she says, and smiles, her eyes clouded and kind. “Here,” she says, and hands me an envelope addressed to Duchess Wrath. She apologizes: it is sprayed with blood. “Thank you for making my father a better man,” she says, hugs me, and leaves.

  Trembling, I open the letter.

  Annabel,

  I see you, desperately hiding your beauty from the sun dogs flanking your face. How parhelion-blind you made us all, my belleza sagrada.

  Please show yourself.

  And stop saying that you killed me. I killed myself.

  And others.

  I am attaching Vindicta with reservations. Read the details, or don’t, but know that you have been avenged.

  I delighted in all of it.

  You never let me apologize, and I understand. The things I said and did are unforgivable.

  Rape, for me, acted as an unstoppable force meeting my immovable soul.

  I never loved anyone before you.

  You saw the little bit of good in me that Kray could not spoil, and you saved me.

  Because of this, it is your name that will have fallen from my mouth as I lay dying.

  You were right to leave me: I might have hurt the child.

  Even if I have changed, as others tell me, I can no longer carry the repulsive weight of what I have done.

  Or live without you.

  Thank you for loving and caring for me.

  Because of you, I will be remembered for the best work of my life; because of you, this work murders the horrible Sid and his ultimately hateful ultraviolence.

  And me. I’m no good and you know that too.

  But wasn’t I almost. In those perfect moments, suspended as Darkling, above us — intoxicating, dangerous, the field of you and me.

  Kiss my baby, kiss —

  Parnell

  * * *

  I cry, at last. Then I cannot stop.

  * * *

  Half of Parnell’s assets plus the back end of the film leave me extremely wealthy.

  The money, which my husband is unaware of, sits in the bank, multiplying.

  I make a will of my own, which decrees that this money will be divided among charities for victims of sexual assault, for battered women, for sick babies and tortured animals, and for a well-appointed home, called Pannabel’s, for former stars down on their luck.

  My filmmaking days are finished for good.

  Once, I had wanted to make an Ultraviolence sequel to vindicate myself as a survivor and as an artist.

  Incredibly, he and his stylish director avenged me on their own — with my own voice and images woven in, like the silken threads of Kamal Haasan’s Aalavandhan.

  I rarely filmed Buzz, preferring to savor our moments together unmitigated, but three days after he died, I posted a video of his ascension called Jealous God, which was coded to disappear within the hour.

  I found the antique ceramic doll at Little Paris on La Brea, a boy in a moth-eaten linen dress who looked like my baby.

  Stuffed him in a trunk until I had hired three frowning Chinese women and dressed them in flowing red gowns.

  “This color, it’s forbidden,” they said, explaining their funeral traditions.

  “The child will become a ghost,” another said, and laughed joylessly. “Well, that’s what our ancestors think.”

  “Good,” I said, and they rehearsed, then nailed the number.

  I could not stand to see another coffin: the women are filmed placing a pink cloth over his face (more frowns) and a light-blue cloth over his body.

  After burning real money in the flames of three white candles, Jia, Bo, and Ling wrap my baby in a tabloid cover with this blazon: “More Grief for Parnell Wilde’s Ex!”

  Then tear away their robes to reveal fitted gold lamé suits and sing, swaying, “You’re the Only One.”

  God enters the room in the form of a white swan and He takes my beautiful son for he is too good, because He envies him; the girls rend their garments and wail as I freeze, unable to stop shooting.

  “A jealous God,” says Ling — who is married to a scholar of the Torah, a hakham — her voice ringing with compassion. She turns off the camera and signals to the others, who hold me and we sway.

  Jealous God is viewed with admiration and disgust: I begin to read the comments, and stop.

  I am almost finished.

  * * *

  The last video, which appeared on YouTube, is an unnamed portrait of Parnell I filmed while he was sleeping in our bed, as the sun rose and our song played sweetly: “Everything Will Be Alright.”

  I sing as I post it and feel a
thrill — some of the old savage energy between us.

  This time, I pay attention to the rush of comments.

  The first says: “You killed him, bitch.”

  The last: “Want to make a million dollars at home? I did.”

  Somewhere in the middle: “I always wanted to feel what you did for each other. So much love. I’m sorry.”

  There is grace.

  I am lying safely in his broad arms with Tubby, and the night is just starting to shake down, a big blue-black blanket that shelters us, its moth holes letting in points of starlight.

  “I love you,” I say, and he doesn’t answer, just holds me.

  Dr. Jain once said, out of nowhere, “His silence is eloquent, isn’t it?”

  I shook my head. But yes, it was. He loved me, wordlessly —

  Adoration, bliss, concupiscence, dear, my dearest heart, everything everything.

  My old white man and me, a skinny black girl.

  Unlike my mom and dad, we fit, and when we didn’t, we banged the pieces together in a divine cheat.

  I destroyed the Vindicta file quickly, after anxiously noting the words “Two cops, one docent, a barfly, my own son, and — ”

  I couldn’t finish this but held it papoose-close, cursed and thanked him.

  I have read his letter so many times, it tears at the creases. It is stained with my crying: squid-sprays of mascara, saline bombs.

  And I read it as I walk farther into the water.

  Let the water bear it away.

  “I miss you,” I say. “Everything bad and good; your hands, swollen with crime, as tender and sacred to me as gentle, furious Christ.”

  I have buried the Rimbaud book in the sand, and swallowed the pink sapphire and turquoise — our birthstones — he left in a, also buried, velvet pouch.

  The water is warm and soft: it does not resist me as I press forward.

  “I never loved anyone either,” I tell him, “except my mother.”

  “And you, desperately, and our son,” whose paper bag of ashes I am hanging on to.

  I managed to snatch some of Parnell’s as well, before they were interred, and I have smudged my sleepless eyes with them: sweet prince!

  I was chicken too, especially in the end — and so cruel!

  “I wanted to hurt you, like you hurt me,” I say. “Not lose you. I would have come back, how could you not have known that?”

  I know how, of course.

  But I want another chance.

  “Please forgive me?” I say, as an unusually large pekoe-colored wave rises and knocks me down, pulling my child from me, drawing him into the depths.

  “And love me always?” I ask feverishly.

  “As I am, larded all with sweet flowers,” I sing, like a mad girl.

  I stand, and another wave pulls me down until I am sinking, sleepily, my lungs filled with joy.

  Above, I hear flights of angels singing him — singing us — to our rest.

  It is him I hear most clearly, answering what I have asked and longed for, as my heart slowly stops.

  He says yes, he says yes!

  Acknowledgements

  My beloved dog, Francis, then dying, lay near me, patient as always, as I finished this book. In the course of rereading it, in his great absence, I see that the story’s love and pain are his and mine. I never could thank him enough for his constancy and goodness: for his noble heart.

  I thank my father, Douglas Crosbie, an early and strong advocate of the book’s title, who inspires me always, whose wit and counsel I miss every day of my life.

  My mother, Heather Crosbie, read an early draft with her usual intellectual and emotional skill. David McGimpsey read and remarked, very well, on a draft also: I thank them both for their insights, patience, and kindness.

  At House of Anansi I thank Sarah MacLachlan, truly and always, and my editor, Noah Richler, above all, for his instruction and edification: I am most grateful for his unwavering belief in Chicken. I thank Maria Golikova, managing editor, for her hard work and insight, and ace publicist Laura Meyer, who is an animal-lover, a dumpling connoisseur, and someone to aspire to in every way. Thanks, too, to Lorissa Sengara, a deadeye, and Stuart Ross, a great editor and friend. And last and in no way least, Alysia Shewchuk created a beautiful cover out of thin air. I am very grateful for her vision.

  Thanks to Helen Floros and the Ontario Arts Council for assistance tendered. To Lola Landekic for her powerful work. And to Carol Dalziel, best friend of my youth, who is the inspiration for my heroine, Annabel.

  I give thanks to my talented friends Chase Dylan, Sarah Faber, Jeff Kirby, Neil Schwartzman, and Jim Shedden, with particular gratitude to the very gifted Sara Peters and Billy and Margaux Williamson.

  My blue groom, Robert Siek: I love and thank you for your good heart and hot talent.

  Steph Cilia VanderMeulen, who lost her dog Lucy not long after Frank died. You have been my lifeline. Emma Richler also: you understand all too well.

  I met Malcolm McDowell at the appalling Fan Expo in Toronto (run by very nice people), and he was both horrid and charming. I thank him for embracing my hands and calling me “Darling.”

  Thanks finally to the Malcolm McDowell fangirls, my Insta friends (you are all gorgeous and crazy): Ariel, Emily, and Karin.

  If I have forgotten anyone, and one always does, I thank you anyway, with love.

  A number of movies, songs and books are alluded to, drawn from, or recast here:

  The chapter heads include fragments from “Everything Will Be Alright,” by the Killers. Although the song is only named here, it is meant to be Annabel and Parnell’s song and, as such, is critical to the book, and is much admired by me. The headings also include some Nadsat from the novel A Clockwork Orange. The War in Heaven is the title of an excellent book of short fiction by Kent Nussey, and it refers to the brawl detailed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is Rocky Balboa who says, quite rightly, that the world will beat you to your knees and keep you there (the actual speech is far longer and infinitely more complex.) It is Hamlet’s, and Annabel Wrath’s, broken hearts that are noble, and the epilogue is drawn from the play (Hamlet) as well.

  I was strongly influenced by the following as I conceived of the book: Marlon Brando’s memoir, Songs My Mother Taught Me, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, James Kirkwood’s P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (and the glorious Malcolm McDowell), Richard Price’s The Breaks, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (and all of the revenge tragedies cited herein), and Scott Walker’s song “Duchess.”

  Finally. I am indebted to The Velvet Underground (and their wine and roses), Joni Mitchell’s “Lady of the Canyon,” Ted Hughes’s notion of sitting “godless” before the telephone and “beautiful America.” Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies, the Comte de Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror, Julio Iglesias, and Warren Zevon and Loudon Wainwright III, for the heartbreakers “Keep Me in Your Heart” and “Daughter,” respectively.

  Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (Parnell’s memory is Hurston’s women’s memory, to a T).

  John Lydon, for his idea, explicated in his memoir (with the same title,) that anger is an energy. My dad read Richard Ellmann’s Oscar Wilde biography a long time ago, and the boys are behind me one hundred percent is one of his paraphrases from the same.

  Brian De Palma’s magnum opus Scarface appears, a snatch of Tony’s crass, astonishing dinner monologue regarding the cruelty of (male) ageing: “You’re fifty. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, you need a bra . . .”

  Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust offers the following verity: Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous; Hamlet is cited several times. See if you can find it, and let me know.

  Ben Jonson spea
ks of this, No clime breeds better matter for your whore, in The Alchemist.

  I make a reference to Jacques Brel’s “Ne me quitte pas,” to Hank Williams’ falling tears and “Lovesick Blues,” to R. Kelly’s “Your Body’s Callin,” to “How Great Thou Art,” performed by Elvis Presley.

  I recall Theodore Roethke’s sad geranium and pure despair; Rimbaud’s “Ophélie,” Isadora Duncan’s unreal last words ( Je vais à la gloire! ) and Lana Del Rey’s “Ultraviolence” (of course).

  One of Parnell’s suits is made by Hans Gruber’s (fictional) tailor in Die Hard, The Pearl Poet’s poem “Pearl” is cited/altered here, and Jean Genet and the Friendly Giant are lovingly noted/alluded to.

  Muse of Mad Eros Jack White’s “Love Is Blindness” appears, Disco Jesus (and the Doom Patrol) is the name of a great Toronto-based band, circa 1988, fronted by Joel Wasson; Joy Division creep in, frightened by the sun, as does a sliver of Erín Moure’s diction (I am thinking of her use of the nominative case in Furious).

  It is the great Lord Byron who awoke one morning and found (himself) famous after the publication of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” in 1812.

  Yves Montand, in Let’s Make Love (1960), snaps that L’incident est clos! The wonderful Beach Boys play at some point, and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss is evoked.

  John Berryman’s Dream Songs are invoked, meaning the author’s “axe” (likely Kafka’s, borrowed for sinister purposes).

  Author’s Note

  Chicken is a revenge tragedy, steeped in those very plays, and it is a comeback story.

  It is, additionally a roman à clef, based on both Alexander DeLarge (from A Clockwork Orange, the film) and Malcolm McDowell himself, who was, when I began the book, starring in horrid commercials and making the fan expo scene.

  It must be noted that unlike Parnell Wilde, McDowell has never hit the skids and is, by all accounts, a kind, clean, and sober family man; he is extremely wealthy and, I am happy to say, doing marvelously well with Mozart in the Jungle, a sort of artistic sequel to Clockwork.