‘Same old, same old. Fear of responsibility, being tied down, although in my case, and I think Wallace’s, it’s got more to do with this no longer being a world of opportunity. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer trashing the planet.’
‘What nonsense. You remind me of those bellyachers after the war. Nothing for it but to get on, Milo.’ She hands him the bandage. ‘We’re all watching telly, would you care to join us?’
‘Now? It’s three in the morning or something.’
‘It’s that picture about Mr. Mandela and the rugby player. Quite inspiring really. Mr. Mandela was very keen to forgive the white people who locked him up for thirty years. Imagine that. He thought hatred was a frightful waste of time.’
Milo has seen this movie. Morgan Freeman says, ‘One team, one Africa,’ and everybody, black and white, stands up and cheers as Matt Damon kicks the ball around. No doubt Pablo will cry at the end of this movie, never mind that black and white are back to hating each other in that sports-loving nation, while the poor get poorer and the rich get richer trashing the diamond continent.
‘Why don’t you have a kip here then?’ Vera says. ‘I can sleep on the couch.’ And she’s off to join the deniers. Milo pitches the bandage in the wastebasket and lies back, gingerly touching his rib. All life forms are connected. Who said that, the Buddhist harmonica player? We’re all just an arrangement of atoms. Atoms that will cease to exist. No pearly gates then. Just The End. So why bellyache and suffer guilt? Surrender to the marshmallow bed, savour your freefall into the void, feel the interconnectedness of all living forms, the circularity of it.
‘I fucked your wife.’
‘I figured.’
The intercom announces a code red in the Cardinal wing, fourth floor.
‘It won’t happen again,’ Milo says. ‘She says I don’t belong there.’
‘Who does? Just the dog.’
‘I hope she’s feeding the hamster. I forgot to remind her.’
‘It’s hard to remember things like hamsters when you’re fucking.’
Sybil, in chartreuse today, pushes her face around the curtain. ‘Would you mind not talking smut?’
‘Is fornicating a better word?’ Christopher asks. ‘It’s hard to remember things like small rodents when you’re fornicating.’
Milo resumes his station in the chair, facing the window. ‘So do you hate me now?’
‘Not right this second. It might take a few minutes to sink in.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t say sorry. It is such an utterly useless word. Be glad you got it out of your system. It is out of your system, isn’t it?’
‘I was a lousy lay.’
‘Yes, well, we’ve all been there.’
‘I don’t understand why she hates me.’
‘That makes two of us.’
The intercom repeats that there is a code red in the Cardinal wing, fourth floor.
‘I remember years ago watching her from a distance,’ Christopher says. ‘We were supposed to meet at the St. Lawrence Market. I arrived early and spied on her as she fondled fruits and vegetables and negotiated with vendors. She was in command of her world. The world was her oyster, Milo. It bent to her will. Then she had Robertson and even though she never said it, I suspect she believes that I am the cause of his problem, that had she fornicated with someone of brawnier stock, she would have had a normal, bouncing boy. She had a tubal ligation, by the way, so don’t worry that you might have impregnated her.’
Sybil pushes her face around the curtain again. ‘You are disgusting. No wonder she ditched you and that freaky boy of yours.’
‘Why,’ Christopher asks, ‘is my friend Travis not joining in this discussion?’
‘He’s wearing headphones, you jerk.’
‘So why are you here, Syb? Can’t hubby watch sports solo?’
Sybil sighs heavily and drops the curtain again.
‘Hospitalization,’ Christopher says, ‘forces one to share the most intimate details with complete strangers. I know when Trav pukes, craps, pisses, farts. We’ve formed an inescapable bond.’
‘Likewise, jerk-off,’ Sybil says.
‘It’s all good,’ Christopher says.
‘When you can get in the wheelchair,’ Milo says, ‘I’ll take you out.’
‘Oh, to the Tim Hortons. How dreamy. No, Milo, you are under no obligation to look after the cripple.’
He still doesn’t know if Christopher remembers that he called his name, causing him to turn away from the cab. ‘You’re my only friend.’ How lame this sounds but utterly true.
‘I guess that’s why you fucked my wife.’
Sybil jerks the curtain. ‘Enough already. There is a lady present, if you please.’
‘I guess that’s why you fornicated with my wife. All best friends share spouses. Maybe you could find that nice Latvian girl and I could fornicate with her.’
‘You told me the field was open.’
‘Oh, come on, Milo, how often do people mean what they say? Anyway, it’s all so yesterday. The reality is when you’re strung up like I am, not sure if you will ever walk again – or live, for that matter – intently focused on things like sitting up and not spilling food on yourself, small matters like fornication don’t hold much sway. You know what Nietzsche said?’
‘Didn’t he say a lot of things?’
‘He said amor fati, which means love of fate. That was his philosophy: as torturous as his life was, he embraced it. He accepted life’s inevitable limitations, no matter what fate had in store for him. “Amor fati,” he said, “is not merely to endure necessity, still less to deny it … but to love it.” He called it his “formula for greatness in a human being.”’
‘What pretentious prattle,’ Sybil says.
‘Milo, I want you to bring Robertson back. I don’t care what she says. Do you understand me? Don’t come here again unless you bring him. This may require some aggression on your part. Can you do that, Milo?’
‘Of course,’ he says, although he can’t imagine it, charging in to the centre and removing the boy by force, fighting off the yoga-panted and Birkenstocked women.
‘I need you to do that.’ The plaintiveness in Christopher’s voice causes Milo to face him. So many tears pour from his eyes he makes Milo think of a candle dripping wax, dripping and dripping until nothing remains but a puddle.
‘I will do that,’ Milo says. Amor fati.
e finds Pablo and Gus in the Zellers restaurant eating pork schnitzel with fries and sauerkraut. ‘Can you believe it, Milo? Polski food at Zellers? It’s good, eh, Gussy?’
‘Goot,’ Gus says, daintily eating a fry. Gus never dines among the old and infirm at Zellers. Gus never dines out, prefers home-cooking because ‘you know what’s in it.’
‘They give you free refills,’ Pablo says. ‘Sit down, Milo. You want something? They got Montreal-style smoked meat on special with coleslaw and fries plus your choice of beverage.’
‘Aren’t you about to be arrested? Where’s the security guard?’
‘That’s why we got him to call you. We knew you’d fix it.’
‘What? What happened?’
‘Gussy shoplifted. Well, he didn’t mean to, he got spooked.’
‘What do you mean “spooked”?’
‘Didn’t the guard tell you nothing?’
‘He said there was “a situation.” He didn’t give details.’
‘He told us to wait here or he’d call the cops.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘For a smoke.’
‘Oh, for chrissake.’
‘Everybody’s allowed a smoke break, Milo.’
‘What did you steal?’ Milo demands of Gus who pays him no mind so intent is he on cutting his schnitzel.
‘He didn’t steal nothing. He got scared ’cause they put a siren on and this, like, flashing light they use when they’re doing a demo. It’s, like, this big flashing light, and a guy talks on a loudspeaker ab
out the promotion. And everybody starts running to the big flashing light because the guy says the first ten people win a free gift. So Gussy had just come out of the change room to show me his jeans. Stand up, Gussy, show him your jeans.’ Pablo nudges Gus who stands, still holding a fry. ‘Turn around.’ Pablo grabs the old man’s hips and turns him around. ‘Cool jeans, eh, Milo? Guess how much?’
Gus never wears jeans.
‘Guess how much?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘Eleven ninety-nine. And the cowboy shirt, guess how much?’ The shirt has snaps for buttons and horses’ heads and lassos embroidered on the collar and cuffs. ‘Nine ninety-nine. Can you believe that? You know how much this would cost in Cuba?’ Gus never wears cowboy shirts.
Milo sits because his legs feel unable to support him. ‘He’s wearing clothes you’ve stolen?’
‘Shit, no. I paid for them later, plus his underwear.’
‘Un-dehr-vehr,’ Gus clarifies, nodding.
‘So what’s the problem?’ Milo asks. ‘Why are you still here?’
‘Because I don’t got no driver’s licence or nothing, and neither does Gussy. The guard wants to make sure we’re no criminals. I said you’d tell him Gus is your dad.’
What if he doesn’t? What if the Polish farmer in the cowboy shirt is whisked away to prison to await bail that no one will post? I’ve never seen him before in my life.
Pablo pokes Milo. ‘Try the avalanche cake. It’s got chocolate all over.’
Using the back of his chair for leverage, Milo manages to stand. ‘I’m going to find the security guard. Does he have a name?’
‘He’s got a uniform.’
Milo heads for the entrance to Zellers where, presumably, the smokers linger, but he stops in the toy section stacked with junk for future removal. The shelves stand so high Milo can hide among the Barbies. Ernie Batty, the boy in foster care, and Milo dismembered some Barbies that belonged to his foster mother’s spiteful daughter. They stacked a pile of Barbie limbs and tried to set them on fire but Gus caught them at it. Milo had never seen his father so red in the face – even his ears glowed. He grabbed Milo’s arm and yanked him into the house. ‘I’ve seen children burn,’ he said. ‘Never play with fire.’ Gus didn’t spank Milo but sat him in front of the macaroni casserole left behind by Mrs. Cauldershot.
‘What children?’ Milo asked.
‘What?’
‘What children did you see burn?’
‘Eat your dinner.’
Milo wanted to ask questions like Did they smell? How long did it take? Was there just a pile of ashes afterwards or were there still bones? But Gus descended to the basement to chisel stone.
Did the Zellers siren and flashing light evoke memories of burning children?
A hulking man with Daddy tattooed on his forearm talks on a cell while fondling the Barbies. ‘The great thing about heavy-duty garbage bags,’ he says, ‘is you can put stuff like screwdrivers in them.’
Beyond Daddy’s hulk, in the electronics department, a massive flat screen displays a freed Colombian hostage. Milo has already seen her on a morning show in which the big-haired hostess repeatedly leaned forward and said, ‘It must have been very painful for you.’ The hostage looks too normal to have lived for years in the jungle on gruel, tied to a tree by her neck. She kept track of the passing years by remembering her children’s birthdays.
‘They’ve got Kitty Care Vet Barbie,’ Daddy says. ‘Has she got that one?’
When Milo looked for Tanis and Robertson this morning, Gus was scraping the Muskoka chairs. How is it possible to forget a son but remember how to scrape a chair?
‘What about Ballerina Barbie?’ Daddy inquires. ‘Or I Really Swim in Water Barbie? I’m not shitting you. It says she really swims in water. They’ve also got Ballroom Dancer Barbie, has she got that one?’
Milo walks past the toys, through pet supplies, past housewares, until he sees the glass doors opening onto a Gus-free world. He walks swiftly past the sidewalk-sale tables and across the parking lot.
When the Colombian guerrilla who tied the hostage by her neck to a tree was executed, the hostage confessed that she was not sorry to hear about his death, but she did forgive him. Just like Mr. Mandela forgave the white-asses who locked him up for thirty years. All Gus did was hit Milo occasionally, and forget about him. What’s to forgive? The chin-up bar incident? Milo had desperately wanted one, imagining that daily chin-ups would transform his noodle arms into Stallone-like weapons. Gus said the bar would damage the door jamb. ‘You won’t use it anyway,’ he added. ‘Too much work.’ Milo saved his lawn-mower money until he had enough for a bar. He installed it in his bedroom doorway, regularly forgetting it was there and slamming his head into it. He tried to use it but hauling his body weight up to the bar was agony. His neck muscles burned from pulling when his arms and shoulders gave out. Usually father and son avoided crossing paths in the hall but one evening Gus appeared just as Milo was slamming his head into the bar for the fifth time that day. Gus grabbed Milo’s hair and repeatedly thumped his head into the bar. ‘How smart is that, Mr. Universe?’ he demanded. ‘Are the girls chasing you yet?’ With one swift movement Gus collapsed the bar and pointed to the indentations the rings left on the door jamb. ‘How can my son be such an idiot?’ he asked the walls. Bumps swelled on Milo’s head. He considered going to the police and having Gus charged, but then Milo would have to admit that he’d failed in the chin-up department and frequently slammed his head into the bar.
A small boy points at him. ‘Mummy, Mummy, look! It’s the Canadian Tire Man.’ The mother, weighted with bags and responsibility, tries to grab the boy’s hand, but he scoots towards Milo. ‘Can I have your autograph?’
‘Sure. Do you have a piece of paper?’
‘Mummy, do we have a piece of paper?’ He hops up and down while she sets her bags on the pavement and searches in her purse. One of the bags tips, revealing many packets of Kraft Dinner. Apparently embarrassed, she immediately starts to shove them back in.
‘I’ll do that,’ Milo says, righting the bag and collecting the packets.
‘Thanks. They’re on special, that’s why I got so many.’ She finds a pen and a scrap of paper and hands it to Milo. He squats so he is level with the boy. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Thomas. I saw a wolf earlier.’
‘Really?’
‘Or it might have been a fox.’
‘It was just a dog, Thomas,’ his mother says.
‘It might have been a wolf dog,’ Thomas suggests.
Milo writes: To Thomas, Watch out for wolf dogs, and don’t lie to your mother. With warmest regards, The Canadian Tire Man.
‘Your writing is messy,’ Thomas observes.
‘Thomas, what do you say?’ his mother prompts.
‘Thank you.’
Not wanting to reveal that the Canadian Tire Man is a mere mortal, Milo walks in the opposite direction from Thomas and his mother, back to Zellers. He asks the sickly clerk at the Customer Service desk to page the security guard.
‘You were amazing, Milo,’ Pablo says, leading the way to the produce section. ‘Totally Clint Eastwood.’
Gus sniffs mushrooms, grumbling as he examines then discards them.
‘He shouldn’t sniff the vegetables,’ Milo says.
‘It’s because he’s a farm boy,’ Pablo explains. ‘I don’t think he likes the mushrooms. Are the gzhibs no good, Gussy?’
Gus shakes his head and throws up his hands. ‘No goot. Prawdziwe grzyby rosną w lesie, na mchu i na słońcu, to rośnie w szopie na końskim gównie.’
‘That bad, eh?’ Pablo says, looking at the list Gus wrote in Polish in a childish hand completely unfamiliar to Milo. ‘Okay, Gussy, take it easy, we’ll go check out the meat counter and see if they’ve got cot-let s-habo-vyh pah-nyeh-roh-vah-nyh.’
‘What the fuck is that?’ Milo says.
‘Kotlet schabowy panierowany,’ Gus clarifies, nodding.
‘A
nd zhiem-nyah-kamee,’ Pablo adds.
‘Ziemnikami,’ Gus says, nodding.
Milo trails them as they search for pickled herring and sour cream, and deliberate over pork tenderloin and pickles. ‘Who’s supposed to pay for all this?’ he demands.
‘Sammy gave me cash. I like that guy. He’s a forward thinker. You should be nicer to him, Milo.’
He walks like Clint Eastwood into the Child and Parent Resource Centre but there are no yoga-panted women at reception. Should he wait for one to appear or should he stride to where the Curlys and Robertsons are secluded in quiet rooms? On the walls are photos of autistic children, some facing but not looking at the camera, others ignoring it entirely, and some looking normal, smiling mechanically, no doubt at the photographer’s urging. Say cheese. Milo spots a photo of Robertson solemnly building a tower with Lego. Milo pulls the shot off the wall and slips it in his pocket.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ the Birkenstocked woman says. ‘Robertson isn’t here.’
‘Where is he?’
‘When he isn’t here, we don’t know where he is.’
‘Did he run away?’
‘His mother took him. Please don’t cause another disturbance.’
‘She must have told you something.’
‘We don’t pry into our clients’ private lives. We are here to offer relief, not to pass judgment.’
She holds the door open for him, smiling judgmentally. Milo smiles back. ‘Cheese,’ he says.
Facing the window, he listens to air whistling through unconscious Christopher’s nose. Travis’s father, Earl, talks loudly about a bowling partner who is not playing like a gentleman. ‘I guess it’s to be expected of a guy like that,’ Earl admits. ‘He grew up on tough street, end of the block.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ Sybil, in apricot today, says.
‘Syb,’ Earl says, ‘sometimes you gotta cut folks a little slack.’
‘He told me I was the worst bowler in the league,’ Travis whines, ‘just because my average is a hundred.’
‘Milo?’ Christopher asks.
‘Here.’
‘Zowee, you really do have no life.’
‘I tried to bring Robertson. She’d already taken him. I’ve checked the house twice.’ Milo speaks too fast and too loud, like Robertson when he is trying to justify himself. ‘They’re not there, and she’s not picking up, even when I call from a pay phone.’
Milosz Page 27