Milosz

by Cordelia Strube

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So you still can’t get out of bed?’

  ‘I ran a couple of Ks this morning.’

  ‘Have they given you a prognosis?’

  ‘Minimum of eight weeks before I can bear weight.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘He doesn’t care.’

  ‘I brought some frozen yogourt. I’m afraid it’s melting.’ He removes the lid and hands the carton and a plastic spoon to Christopher. To his surprise, Christopher begins to eat the yogourt, slowly, delicately, like Robertson.

  ‘How’s my family?’ he asks.

  Milo intended to confess his crime and despicable lack of remorse, and inform Christopher of Tanis’s bizarre behaviour and imprisonment of Robert­son. But seeing Christopher, increasingly frail, has stalled him.

  ‘That’s what gets me through,’ Christopher says, ‘knowing they’re going about their days, ignorant of this hell. I see them eating dinner, playing cards. She always lets him win, he’s a lousy loser.’

  ‘How long since you’ve talked to her?’

  ‘Since I left. Ten fun-filled days. She doesn’t return my calls.’

  ‘If you call from here, she won’t know who it is.’

  Christopher puts the frozen yogourt back on the table.

  ‘They miss you,’ Milo says, ‘and you miss them.’

  ‘She doesn’t miss me.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘Did she say that?’ For the first time he stares directly at Milo, his blue eyes looking surreal against his bruised skin. ‘Look, Milo, I know you mean well, even though you want to fuck my wife. But I’m so tired. Indescribably tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m only keeping it up so my employer’s insurer deposits disability cheques into the bank account that supports my family. Otherwise, this learning-to-walk again business, who needs it? What happened to your hair?’

  ‘I got a part in a Nazi concentration-camp flick.’

  ‘How thrilling.’

  ‘Robertson needs you.’

  ‘I hit him, and I’ll hit him again. He doesn’t need that.’ Christopher covers his face with his hands the way Tanis does.

  ‘My father used to hit me. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘I survived.’

  ‘I don’t know who I am around him anymore. I can’t trust myself. Or him.’

  ‘He’s only eleven.’

  ‘Then he’s twelve, thirteen, eighteen. It doesn’t get easier. Most parents end up doing more not less. The kids have no friends, don’t go to college.’

  ‘I don’t have friends,’ Milo offers. ‘And I barely made it through college.’

  ‘Don’t expect him to be something he’s not. Try imagining being overwhelmed by sensory data, unable to prioritize or edit sounds, textures, visual details.’

  ‘But Robertson’s calm a lot of the time.’

  ‘When he’s able to create a local coherence. That’s what his patterned behaviours are all about.’

  ‘Well, whatever he’s doing works for him, doesn’t it? Most of the time he’s fine.’

  Christopher drops his head back on the pillow and stares at the ceiling while Milo sits in squirmy silence wanting to plead Robertson’s case but not knowing how.

  ‘All he can manage,’ Christopher says, as though by rote, ‘are simple and immediate tasks. He needs sameness and predictability. We can’t offer that his whole life. I can’t.’

  ‘So you’d put him in an institution?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You just said you can’t look after him his whole life.’

  ‘His life may be short. It happens.’

  Is that why he left, because he was afraid he might put a pillow over the child’s face? Is this what he means when he says he doesn’t know himself around Robertson, can’t trust himself?

  Christopher closes his eyes again. ‘I don’t know who he is anymore. He scares me. When he loses it, I can barely restrain him. And the social workers are useless. Did you ever meet the last one?’

  ‘With the dead flowers in her VW bug?’

  Christopher nods. ‘She used jargon like “benefit finding” and “meaning-based coping processes” and told us to seek “positive-toned emotions” so we could “positively evaluate” our circumstances, “thus minimizing or miti­gating the negative implications.” Tanis beat herself up trying to make sense of this psycho-babble. I wanted the woman out of the house. We always had to leave her alone with Robertson and he’d be wrecked after the therapy or whatever it was.’

  ‘Was she the one who was supposed to help you discover hope?’

  ‘She didn’t call it hope. It was “a cognitive set based on a reciprocally derived sense of successful agency.” I wrote it all down, showed it to Tanis, told her we were wasting our money. You know what Tanis said? “It’s essential to set goals and work towards achieving them.” It was like she’d been body-snatched. I put up with it until Robertson came out crying because he didn’t know what was going to happen to him after we die. “What happens to me when you die?” he kept asking. Apparently pointing out that he would be left all alone in the world was part of his therapy. I told the stupid bitch to get out. Tanis was furious with me. She can’t see what’s happening to him. She’s too close.’ He stares at the contraptions on his legs. ‘When she was pregnant she made all kinds of plans. I felt lucky to have married someone so together. After Robertson was diagnosed, she kept making plans. When the plans failed she’d make more plans. I don’t fit into her plans anymore. Can’t.’

  ‘A Buddhist harmonica player once told me,’ Milo says, acting badly because he doesn’t know how to act, ‘to cease hoping. He said ceasing to hope frees you to live in the moment.’

  ‘Is this the same guy who told you life’s challenges are lessons?’

  ‘Different guy.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Christopher squeezes his eyes shut, forcing tears to snake down his cheeks. ‘I’d like you to go now, Milo. Thanks for the yogourt, but you better take it or it’ll melt.’

  He bangs for several minutes on the door of Geon Van Der Wyst’s headquarters. Hunter eventually opens it while talking on her cell. She holds up a finger to suggest that she won’t be long. But Milo is forced to wait twenty minutes, surrounded by posters of Geon Van Der Wyst’s shows without scripts going in different directions. When she takes yet another call on her desk phone he shouts, ‘Where’s my watch, bitch?’ He has never called a woman a bitch to her face before and consequently feels himself vibrating.

  Apparently unperturbed, still on both phones, she pulls open a drawer and tosses the watch at him. Not quick enough to catch it, Milo watches it crash to the floor. ‘You stupid cunt,’ he says, astonished at how good it feels to fling abuse, even though Hunter seems oblivious and keeps talking on her phones. He picks up the watch and sees that the crystal isn’t cracked and the second hand continues to tick. Gus told him it would last a lifetime. ‘Forget that Jap trash,’ Gus said, ‘you want Swiss.’

  Still on the phone, Hunter nudges him out of the office. ‘Fuck off, bitch,’ he says but already she has the door bolted behind him. He hurls Chris­topher’s carton of yogourt at it. Back on the street, he glances at a newspaper box. A front-page shot of the orca halts him. Sea World has announced that it has no intention of putting the violent whale down because he is a popular attraction, good for business, particularly now that he has killed three humans.

  How apt.

  hen he was small Milo found solace in his collections of marbles, matchbooks, condiment packets, stir sticks, plastic cutlery, mini soaps and shampoos. All went into shoeboxes under his bed that Mrs. Cauldershot had to remove when vacuuming. ‘What in God’s name have you got in those boxes?’

  ‘Treasure,’ he replied. The boxes were carefully bound with elastic bands. He knew Mrs. C. didn’t have the patience to open them. When he was supposed to be sleeping he’d take out his flashlight and examine his
acquisitions, wishing he could share them with the baby he imagined would have grown into an adoring little brother. His mother assured Milo that he didn’t kill the baby, that it was already dead when he flushed and that she left it in the toilet because she wanted the doctor to see it. Milo hadn’t looked in the bowl, only noticed the curled-up, watery and bloody fetus swirling around after he’d pressed the lever and his mother shrieked, ‘Don’t flush!’

  From then on, when he heard his mother making terrible sounds in the bathroom, he held his teddy bears against his ears. Once he peed himself rather than look in the toilet. He only went into the bathroom in the morning, after his father had shaved.

  Pushing open the door to Gus’s house, he longs for shoeboxes full of treasure.

  ‘You better watch out,’ Pablo warns. ‘Vera threw a spoon at Wally.’

  ‘What tosh,’ Vera scolds from the kitchen. ‘All your namby-pamby ways, I should have known.’

  ‘I’m no fairy.’

  ‘I don’t care what you are, but don’t lie about it. That’s just like your father. I heard nothing but lies from that witless dingbat.’

  ‘Maybe he was scared to tell you the truth.’

  ‘What in God’s name is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’ve got fixed ideas about things. You get miffed when they don’t turn out the way you want.’

  ‘I get miffed when I get lied to. You can rub noses with boys if you like, but don’t skulk about while you’re doing it. Brace up. You’re thirty-six years old, Wally, it’s time to get on.’ She marches into the living room and sees Pablo and Milo. ‘What are you lot up to?’

  ‘We live here,’ Milo says.

  ‘Right.’ She sits rigidly on the couch but, after a moment, begins to sag. Pablo takes her hand.

  ‘It’s okay, Vera, we don’t think he’s a fag.’ He signals to Milo that he should second him on this, but now that he has been forced to ponder Wallace’s sexual orientation – the fact that he has never been seen with a girlfriend and only makes references to nights of debauchery – Milo feels uncomfortable attesting to his heterosexuality.

  ‘It’s not important anyway,’ he says. ‘He’s still Wallace, whatever his ­preference.’

  ‘All I ever wanted was a grandkiddy,’ Vera whimpers. ‘A bonny grandkiddy I could call my own. All my sisters have them, scores of them, dashing about.’

  Wallace cowers. ‘Ma, I just haven’t found the right girl yet.’

  ‘You don’t find them without looking.’

  ‘I haven’t found one either,’ Milo offers, ‘and I’m thirty-seven.’

  ‘And I only just found Fenny,’ Pablo says. ‘It’s hard to meet the right girl, Vera.’

  ‘It is,’ Wallace and Milo chime.

  ‘Milo found the right girl,’ Pablo says, ‘but then he lost her.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Zosia was the right girl, Milo.’

  ‘What do you know about it, you little spic?’

  ‘She was after his fucking passport, butthead.’

  ‘She loved you, Milo.’

  ‘Bullshit.’

  ‘You’re just too afraid to love anybody because of what your father did to your mother. You’re not your father, Milo.’

  ‘What is this? Did I ask for a fucking therapy session?’

  ‘Stop using that word,’ Vera shouts. She never shouts.

  ‘Sorry,’ Milo says.

  ‘I’m going to bed.’ She climbs the stairs slowly, like an old woman.

  Pablo kicks off his workboots and tosses his socks on the floor. ‘Every­body’s afraid of turning into their fathers, Milo. I see my father in my hands. Every day that hijo de puta is in my hands. You look like your dad.’

  ‘How would you know, dickbag?’ Wallace twists open a vodka cooler.

  ‘Same eyes, same chin. The nose must be your mom’s. I’ve got my mama’s lips.’ He purses his lips and makes kissing sounds. Wallace groans. Milo surfs. Pablo pushes the La-Z-Boy into reclining mode. ‘Do you guys ever think about who you were before you were born?’

  ‘A serial killer,’ Wallace says.

  ‘I think I was a girl in China,’ Pablo says. ‘With bound feet.’

  Milo turns up the volume on Canada’s Next Top Model. Pole-thin girls strut about in tiny dresses.

  ‘Sarah asked me, “What is your original face, Pablo?” And I couldn’t think of it, like, what my original face is – you know, you spend your whole life showing different faces to please different people, it’s hard to know what your original face is. What do you guys think your original faces look like? I think Milo’s is the face on that little boy in his dad’s wallet. He looks so scared, like he thinks he’s done something wrong but he doesn’t know what it is.’

  This is the story of Milo’s life, thinking he’s done something wrong but not knowing what it is. Everybody else seems to know: Tanis, Zosia, Gus, Mrs. Cauldershot.

  ‘Sarah says if you hold your hands lightly over your face and focus on breathing deeply, you will discover your original face.’

  ‘Would you shut the fuck up about that crazy bitch?’ Wallace says.

  ‘Sarah says it’s not who you are with other people that counts, it’s who you are when you’re alone. What goes through your mind in those moments of aloneness.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Milo says. ‘I’m never alone. I have squatters living in my house.’

  ‘I’m moving out soon, Milo. Me and Fenny are moving in together.’

  ‘No way,’ Wallace says.

  ‘Yes way. We just need to find a place.’

  ‘You fucking Mexican.’

  ‘He’s Cuban,’ Milo says.

  En route to brushing his teeth, he hears Robertson shouting on the other side of the wall. ‘I’ll eat you for fucking breakfast!’ It sounds as though he’s throwing things. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

  Vera stops on her return trip from the toilet. ‘He needs a good hiding, that one.’

  ‘Will you be able to get to sleep?’ Milo asks.

  ‘Don’t worry about me. You look knackered though. How ’bout a nice rum toddy?’

  ‘No thank you.’ He fetches a pillow and lies on the floor beside the wall. He can hear Robertson pacing and knows he will do this for hours in his big slippers. Milo puts his hands lightly over his face and focuses on breathing deeply.

  Wallace’s snores wake him. He presses his ear against the wall. Robertson is still pacing, although with less energy. Milo gently knocks on the wall, waiting a few minutes before knocking again, a little harder. The pacing stops. Milo knocks again, three times. After several seconds, he hears Robertson knocking back three times. Milo tries knocking four times. Robertson knocks back four times. Rejuvenated by this breakthrough in communication, possibly wearing his original face, Milo knocks back and forth with his comrade in unknown needs.

  Guard Number Eight does not make a pass at Milo but joins him again for lunch. Yesterday he spoke heatedly about Holocaust deniers and worldwide growing anti-Semitism, but today he seems intent on recruiting Milo as an ally in what he refers to as a testosterone minefield. ‘They’re all homophobic,’ he says.

  ‘Not the director and the producers.’

  ‘No, which is why they’ve hired beefcakes. I only got the job because of Inga. It’s so predictable that they would hire homophobes.’

  ‘I think the Nazis were homophobes.’

  ‘Only on the surface.’ Number Eight pulls apart a chicken wing. ‘Half of them were flaming queers – all that showering with Hitler youth. They had to kill their empathetic, female sides to survive.’

  ‘I’m trying to figure out if a friend of mine is gay.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His mother’s very upset and I’d like to assure her that he isn’t gay, if he isn’t gay.’

  ‘If she’s very upset, he’s probably gay.’

  ‘But he’s always talking about wanting a girlfriend, and reading the personals.’


  ‘Does he ever answer them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then he’s definitely gay.’

  Guard Number One and Prisoner Number Ten sit at the next table gripping chocolate brownies. ‘The fact of the matter is,’ Number One says, ‘I’m old enough to be her father.’

  ‘Whose father?’ Number Eight inquires.

  The Prisoner licks icing off his fingers. ‘His father is marrying a girl who could be his daughter.’

  ‘Whose daughter?’

  ‘Mine,’ Number One says.

  ‘So what’s the prob?’ Number Eight asks. ‘Are you jealous?’

  ‘Were we talking to you? I don’t believe we were including you in this conversation.’ He turns his back on Number Eight. ‘The fact of the matter is, he didn’t give me any warning, just showed me the ring and announced he was marrying the gold digger.’

  ‘It’s his life,’ Number Eight says, which is what everybody says, as though a life can exist free of the constraints imposed by other lives. As though we’re all planets in our own orbits, revolving around one another without ever intersecting. As though Christopher can walk away from his lost son, or Milo can walk away from his lost father.

  His cigarette acting attracts the director’s attention. Milo hasn’t smoked for years and feels his lungs convulsing.

  ‘Oh, I adore the ciggy butt,’ the director says while stroking one of the dogs. ‘He should put it out on a prisoner. Can we do that?’ He looks at the fight coordinator who looks at the special effects director. Neither of them appears enthusiastic. Milo inhales deeply and blows smoke rings in Prisoner Number Four’s face. The prisoner starts to cough. ‘Oh, I love that,’ the director says. ‘Is he the only smoking guard?’

  ‘As far as I know, sir.’

  ‘We definitely need more smoking guards. I completely forgot about cigarettes. I mean, nobody smokes anymore, you just never think of it. Back then girls were exchanging fucks for ciggies. What’s your name?’

  ‘Milo Krupi.’

  ‘Inspired work, Mr. Crappy.’

  ‘I was wondering if I might whistle.’

  ‘Whistle?’

  The fight coordinator groans.