The Towers of Babylon

by Michelle Kaeser

  Yannick looks out over the crowd: Lou is easy to spot, a passing glance is enough to pick her out, alone and in a weird blue dress with a single puffy sleeve—like a costume from the ’80s. But she looks amazing, always. She stands out brighter than everyone else, crisper. And she’s the only one not watching the featured action on stage. Her gaze is skewed upward, at an image of Jesus in stained glass, which she’s studying with a confused and beautiful frown. He knows not to stare. But he can’t help himself from lingering on her for a moment, wondering what the fuck is up with her. He called her twice yesterday, looking for details on this maybe-split: nothing.

  He forces his eyes to move on, taking in this collection of people—docile and mindless and lined up in the pews. Even the Bourques, both of them, have been on their knees in full prayer throughout the church service. Now again, as the priest offers prayers to the kid, Yannick watches Baby Bourque close his eyes and clasp his hands, devout and compliant, as though the guy hadn’t spent the other night defending the plunder of society as perfectly normal, even moral, while trying to bed a waitress.

  Yannick isn’t the only one who hates being up here. Yvie’s twitching discomfort is transforming into full-blown alarm. “Daddy,” she whispers. She looks up at him, with desperate eyes, expecting him to save her from the sacrament. And he wants to, every instinct firing off inside him tells him to grab the kid and bolt. But he stands aside and lets Karen, in her billowing orange dress, pick Yvie up and hand her over to Joe, who holds her above the trough, in sacrifice to the priest.

  The kid’s panic localizes around Father Thomas. The nearer this priest gets, the more her face fills out with terror, like she might let rip a piercing howl. But she holds it in, doing as she’s been told—that’s her nature. The restraint, however, is costing her something. This is one of those childhood moments that will leave an early scar.

  Yannick sympathizes with the kid’s reflexive dislike for Father Thomas. He’s old, a creaky kind of old, with puddles of saliva at the corners of his mouth. His hands are claws. His movements slow and vaguely creepy. His sermon was an absolute slog. Say what you want about Babylon Ben’s unhinged preaching, at least there was some showmanship there. Despite the breakup, the prophet himself has joined them all today, the big hulk of him conspicuous in a middle pew. Highly concerning—Yannick thought they’d finally shaken him loose.

  The priest, in his slow drag, continues to do his thing—more prayers, more words, something with oil—and then finally the aquatics. With his first round of dribbled holy water—“I baptize you in the name of the Father”—the water trickles around Yvie’s big white bandage. Deflected! Look at that! The kid’s worked out a way to repel the baptism, the ceremony, maybe the whole religion.

  But on the priest’s second go he sloshes water over her head, soaking the bandage through. Karen winces and blows gently on Yvie’s forehead, as though her breath has the power to rapidly evaporate water. On the third and final baptismal splash, droplets land in Yvie’s mouth. She sputters and spurts and flinches; her little shoulders pull up to her ears, and she shakes the water off her face and hair, like a wet dog.

  “Amen,” says the priest.

  “Amen,” comes the echo.

  All round them, from every possible side and angle, Elliott keeps popping up to snap photographs of the occasion. Yannick has developed a healthy blind spot around Elliott, but now that the guy might be on his way out, he doesn’t mind indulging in a closer look. Although Elliott has a couple of years on Yannick, it doesn’t show. Elliott’s still fresh-faced. Too fresh. He’s a boy. No wonder he couldn’t hold onto Lou. He never stood a shot.

  But Yannick does hope he caught the kid’s sputtering rejection of the faith—he’d like that image framed. Unlikely, though. Karen will have any pictures of a frowning Yvie omitted from their package. And if there’s a dearth of happy shots—Yvie hasn’t smiled in an hour—she’ll just order Elliott to airbrush the kid’s frown from displeasure to reverence.

  When the service ends, the photo-op continues. How else will they fill another set of slideshows and albums Yannick will never look at? “Outside!” cries Adele, taking command of the operation. “We need pictures outside, Karen. The day is perfect. It’s fate.”

  So Yannick is guided out of the church, steered first onto the church steps, then toward a tree, then against a brick wall, following directions as they come, with mindless obedience, in the dull hope that this might expedite the process.

  “This way, Yannick.”

  “Look over here, Yannick.”

  “Smile, Yannick. No, smile! SMILE!”

  14

  THERE’S A PARKING lot down by the lake that Yannick always uses. It’s a few blocks from the CN Tower, further than some of the alternatives, but the owner of this chain of lots, an investor of his, gave him a VIP (free) pass to the entire chain, dozens of locations across the city. So after he drops off Karen, the kid, and the in-laws at the tower, he comes down here to park. Nobody else ever wants anything to do with parking.

  As he turns into the lot, he spots Joly and Lou, smoking a joint on the hood of Lou’s shitbox, and he pulls into the empty spot beside them. But they’re not alone. Emerging from behind a bush, adjusting the top of his pants, like he just took a piss back there, is none other than fucking Babylon Ben.

  “—you like this number?” Lou is saying when Yannick joins them. She’s half-laughing as she looks down at her one-armed dress, its single sleeve ballooning over her left shoulder. “It’s Mai’s. I found a chest full of her old clothes in the basement—”

  “You already cleaning the place out?” asks Yannick, stepping up close beside her. “I hear you sold it.”

  Lou flicks her eyes toward him and away again. “The cleanout is gonna be a nightmare.”

  “Where are you gonna live?” Now’s not the time for a conversation about the state of her marriage, but he can’t help himself from seeking a hint of clarity.

  But she’s ignoring him for some reason—because of Joly? Ben? She adjusts the right side of her dress, where it’s digging into her breast. “Mai’s stuff is all a little tight. Turns out she was a lot smaller, slimmer than I am. But some of it fits okay.”

  “I guess it saves you from buying any more clothes for a while,” says Joly, coughing through her light pull from the joint, which she hands off to Lou.

  “Quite right,” says Ben, wearing what must be his Sunday finest: an undersized and faded black button-down shirt, missing at least two buttons. But it’s the first time Yannick has seen him in a shirt with a collar. “Spectacular waste of resources—buying new things.”

  “You know, Lou,” says Joly, shaking her head with enormous exaggeration, like she’s just heard the damndest thing. Such a lightweight, his sister—a puff or two, a drink or two, and she’s done. Hard to believe they share a gene pool. “It’s nuts that you sold that house. I thought you’d be there forever.”

  “Yeah well, the neighbourhood’s gone to shit anyway. There’s a plastic surgery clinic at the mall now, d’you know that? Across from the two spas. And the new tattoo parlour. And the Anthropologie. Behind the Town Square.” She lies back on the hood, closing her eyes to the sun. “Remember how the old mall used to have just a paint shop, a doughnut shop, that German delicatessen—and an Eaton’s for everything else?”

  The wildfire smoke has worsened. The midday sun is an alien orange ball behind the cover of grey. It’s busy on the water today, boats everywhere. Yannick will prefer Lake Huron when he finally gets there. He’ll walk the shores of his Bayfield property and instead of hearing the engine of an entire city behind him, its grunt and grind, he’ll hear only the quiet woods.

  “This lake looks … dirtier than I remember,” says Joly.

  Yannick looks at her, sitting with her legs pulled into her chest, like a bird on a roost. “You used to think this was the ocean.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah you, dummy. When we were kids. Because you couldn’t see whe
re it ended. You don’t remember that?”

  Their mother used to take them down to the lake sometimes. They both liked coming, but now, as Yannick stares at the dull blue, he can’t remember why. He can’t even recall the feeling of liking it. Of liking anything.

  Buzz buzz. He pulls out his phone. Karen.

  “Hey,” says Lou, stretched out on her back, looking at him properly for the first time. “Nice baptism.”

  “I can’t believe we did this to the kid.” Yannick shoves the phone back into his pocket and intercepts the joint on its way from Ben to Lou.

  “Come on,” says Joly. “It wasn’t so bad.”

  “I enjoyed it,” says Lou.

  Only Ben abstains from the chorus of dutiful praise. “Hmm, hmm,” the big fucker is saying, nodding pensively with his wide head.

  “You have an opinion there, Ben?”

  “Well …” Ben lets his voice rattle around its bass register, “the Church of Rome …”

  “What about it?”

  “… it’s a corrupt and evil institution, obviously. Mistaken in its understanding of Faith. It’s lost all legitimacy with God.” He puts his boot up on the bumper; Lou’s shitbox tips slightly. “Also, I don’t recognize the authority of the Pope.”

  “Neither do I.” Yannick takes a last turn with the joint before returning it to Lou. “Look at that, we agree on something. This baptism is bullshit.”

  “Okay!” Joly pops off the hood. “I’m gonna head up. I promised Yvie I’d stand on the glass floor with her. She’s scared to look down by herself.”

  “The kid is scared of everything,” mutters Yannick.

  “I’ll wait another few minutes,” says Lou, fanning her arms out over the hood. “It’s just … a lot of people.”

  Buzz buzz. Karen again.

  “You coming, Yannick?” Joly asks, already on the move, Ben right on her heels.

  He waves the buzzing phone at them. “In a minute. I gotta take this call.”

  Joly pauses, her eyes darting between him and Lou, then she half-nods and carries on.

  “SHE’S ALMOST HAPPY today,” says Lou when his sister and the communist are out of earshot. “D’you notice that? First time in a while.”

  “I noticed,” he says, tucking his phone away, unanswered.

  “It’s Ben.”

  “Could be the weed.”

  “It’s good he came.”

  Yannick watches them ambling up the sidewalk, not quite hand-in-hand, but close; he hears the shrill burst of one of Joly’s cackles. “It’s a disaster.” He can already see how this will go: she and Ben will reconcile, and Yannick will have to flip the bill for both of them. Just like he throws in money for Adele and Joe, or for whatever deadbeat friends come asking for it. But the primary funnel is Karen, through whom tens of thousands of dollars can pass without him understanding why. How much did they shell out for today’s reception? For whatever food she ordered? For the flowers? The dresses?

  And what happens if Karen does get pregnant? A whole new world of costs. But it’s almost worse if she doesn’t, because they’re not far out from an IVF conversation now, he can feel it coming. It’s off message Catholic-wise, but she’ll explain to him, even after this baptism fiasco, that she’s not that Catholic.

  Money keeps evaporating. Their expenses catch up with whatever his salary becomes. It’s a magic trick. Karen’s right, five million won’t be enough. He’ll have to keep going. Because everyone around him seems to need more and more money, and none of them know how to make it. What’s he looking at? Realistically? Another five years? Freedom Forty-Five is still a win, right?

  SPREAD OUT ON the car hood, Lou turns her head his way and half-smiles, with just the right corner of her mouth. He’s on her like a magnet. Grabbing her by the wrist, then swinging open the back door of his Lexus, climbing in next to Yvie’s car seat and pulling Lou in after him. Bad form to fuck your mistress in the family car, but still he’s feeling for the zipper at the back of her perfect blue dress. He wants to touch her, sink into her, and after he’s done, he wants to lay his head on her bare chest and feel her fingertips weaving through his hair. With his mouth somewhere along her throat and his hands on her ribcage, she says, “Hey, stop.”

  He pretends he can’t hear her, pretends she’s reciprocating. His hands ride up the sides of her breasts, around the overflow of flesh falling out of the too-small dress.

  “Yannick.” She picks his hands up off her body and shoves him against Yvie’s car seat. “Stop.”

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “I told you I wanted to stop this. I said that last time.”

  “Yeah, but …” Yannick’s stomach buckles. Something’s wrong. “You always say that.”

  “Now I mean it.”

  “I thought … you and Elliott were splitting up?”

  “We are.”

  “So … what’s the problem?”

  “This can’t be the only way I ever feel good, Yannick. This mindless sex.”

  “Why not?” He puts a hand on her rumpled dress, but she bats him away. He might puke. He hasn’t puked in years. She swings her legs out of the car; a pulse of hysteria rips through him. “Wait,” he chokes out.

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. For … just a few minutes.”

  She hesitates—her legs come back inside, one stacked over the other, barring entry. Wait, wait, just wait. How’s he going to get through his weeks without the break, the reset, the few minutes of peace that she provides? There’s compression all around him; he’s dropping down a long and narrowing sinkhole. He needs room, to pace and swing his arms, to think, but he’s trapped in the middle of this back seat, sandwiched between Lou and Yvie’s car seat.

  Yannick drops off the bench seat, onto the floor of the car—next to the kid’s stuffed turtle and Adele’s knee brace. He sets his head on Lou’s lap. As if by reflex, her hands drift into his hair.

  Three minutes. Four. He lies crunched on the floor, but with her fingers on his head. He tries to breathe.

  This is what Bayfield could have been like. If they’d both made just a few different decisions—that’s all it would have taken. Lou could have opened her own batting cages in Bayfield (he’d have financed that), and on slow evenings, they might have both put up Back in 15 Minutes signs on their shop doors and made love in some back room. That could have been their life.

  Buzz buzz. Not Karen. Adam this time. On a Sunday. Which means there’s a problem. Another in the endless series of problems he has to fix. Yannick climbs back up onto the seat and holds the buzzing phone in his hands until it turns silent again.

  “You all right, Yannick?” Lou asks, watching him closely.

  “I’m so tired,” he says.

  “But you’ll bounce back.”

  He always has. Or he’s muscled his way back, at least, through the last fifteen years. Brutal, but he’s managed. “I don’t know, Lou. I’m just so fucking tired.”

  She turns to face him, brushing a thumb under his eyes. “Well maybe …”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe you’re depressed.”

  “I’m not depressed, Lou. That’s stupid.”

  “Is it?”

  “I have a job. And a kid. An array of dependants. I don’t get to be depressed.”

  Lou holds his hand, interlacing her fingers with his, and squeezes. His attention narrows on the sensation. His senses have fragmented. The pressure of her hand around his, the insistent buzzing of his phone, the sight of the great lake out in front of him: he can’t fit them all into a coherent reality.

  “That’s not something I get to be,” he says.

  Lou cups his cheeks in both her hands. He flinches free of her grasp, but she returns her hands to his face and sets her forehead against his. There’s a tremor in his throat and a sharp sting behind the eyes, and for the first time in years, he begins to cry.

  LOU PULLS a candy tin out of her purse, inside of which is another
slim joint. “One more for the road?”

  They smoke against the trunk of his Lexus this time, taking their time about it, like they used to do as teenagers. Yannick’s phone rings, several times in quick succession, but he ignores it, like he used to do with ringing phones when he was a teenager and that was still allowed.

  Enveloped in a quiet pot-haze, Yannick blinks at the sight of an apparition suddenly appearing in the parking lot, a spectre draped in billowing orange. He’s high all right, but not so high that he doesn’t recognize those $2000 billows.

  “Yannick!”

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he says.

  “What the fuck? D’you know what time it is?”

  “Yeah, I was just on my way up.”

  “What the hell have you been doing?”

  “Well, I was on a call for a bit … and, uh …” He loses the thread.

  “Hi Karen,” says Lou. “Good to see you. Very very good to see you. As always.”

  Karen stares at the two of them. “Oh my god, are you guys high?”

  “It was a tiny joint, Karen,” says Lou. “Super small.”

  “Super small,” echoes Yannick.

  “You’re kidding me, right, Yannick?”

  “I barely touched it. A tiny puff.”

  “At your daughter’s baptism.”

  “Hey, great dress, Karen,” says Lou, smothering a giggle. “Just perfect for your skin tone.”

  Karen can’t help glancing down at her orange gown, but then she whips her head back toward Yannick. He rubs the heels of his hands deep into his eyes, across his temples. “What are you doing down here anyway?” he asks.

  “I’ve been calling you for the last half hour. About Mom’s knee brace. She’s been complaining nonstop. I finally came down to get it myself.”