Janice, I noticed, had now changed into her visor and she and Daddy were facing each other sitting cross-legged on the cage floor in preparation for a game of cards. Janice was dealing.
“Daddy,” I whispered through the bars, “you’re going to have to come up with something new. I need a new line, something unexpected. A brand new angle. I’m running out of raw material.”
Daddy put down his cards and, sighing, pushed at the stacks of post-modern fiction that littered the cage. I was beginning to wonder if he ever read the stuff.
“Is there anything left over from your days at the steel mill that I haven’t used?” I prompted. “Some funny little thing you used to do? Some quirky little thought you used to have?”
He shook his head morosely, picked up a copy of the New York Times Review of Books and softly tore at its pages. I could see that he was feeling his failure.
I motioned for Janice to absent herself from the cage. Nine-year-olds do not understand nuance: you have to spell out everything for them.
“Did you look at that piece on popular culture?” I asked. “Or that new theory of Disengagement that was highlighted in Scientific American?
Daddy grunted.
“Nothing?”
Daddy grunted again.
“What about vanishing grizzly bears? The nuclear threat?” I cried, exasperation setting in. “Have you not had any dreams? Is there nothing left for me to use?”
What if my inspiration is drying up, I thought with alarm. What if Daddy never yields another gem and our family business has to shut down? No more making of important fiction? Bankrupt Art? What if I have to change careers in mid-story?
Janice, meanwhile, had climbed out the study window.
Let her go, I thought. As a parent you should never take out your personal frustrations on your child; who knows what abnormal psychology they might indulge in, later on, if you do.
I had, of course, seen it coming. Daddy’s off-the-wall comments, his bizarre antics (all those videos!) had become less and less frequent this past while. I had produced three volumes of short fiction based upon the inspiration I received from Daddy, but perhaps now he had nothing new to give me.
Janice climbed back in the window, pulling the garden hose behind her.
“What on earth?” I started to say just as she activated the nozzle.
A terrific gush, a quelling protester sort of gush, sprayed Daddy, the cage, the books, papers, myself.
Janice of the crazed eye manoeuvred behind the hose, all teeth and elbows, laughing maniacally.
“God is deader than thou!” she screamed.
Daddy and I, amidst the hosing, exchanged glances. “God is deader than thou!” Say it again, Janice. “God is deader than thou!”
An interesting indictment. Existential possibilities. (Juices flowing.) Children’s literature? An epic poem?
But that’s the joy of child rearing, I reflected, as Daddy and I wrestled the hose from Janice and locked her in the cage: you never know what they will come up with next. Fresh ideas! New angles! So important not to stifle their creative urges, to keep their little minds ticking over with wonder, excitement, awe. (Is there something to be done with elephants?)
Children have a crucial role to play in the service of Art. I’ve often said it’s the handling that counts, it all comes down to providing them with a proper home environment: nourishing food, clear guidelines and a healthy respect for their place in the untoward scheme of things.
THE BRIGHT GYMNASIUM OF FUN
How many laughers make up a laugh track? How are laugh tracks engineered?
Is there a laugh track company? With its own building/parking lot/cafeteria? Does the laugh track company have its own stable of laughers and highly trained technicians? Are laugh track companies union shops? With shop stewards and an annual general meeting? With negotiated contracts covering such items as sick leave for laryngitis and with the right to strike for better working conditions?
Do laughers laugh at anything? At nothing? Is the mark of a good laugher one who can laugh for no reason at all, as if a switch were turned on?
Do laughers practice laughing? Sitting or standing in their living rooms/kitchens/bedrooms or on public transportation systems, do they suddenly ring out with laughter, practising the same laugh over and over until they get it right? Do professional laughers, therefore, have to carry identification on their persons at all times which will reassure startled or frightened passersby that they are indeed just practising their trade and not, in fact, mad or deranged or both?
Is there a pay scale for laughers? Are guffawers, hooters, roarers and howlers paid more for their work than are gigglers, twitters, cacklers and snigglers? Do belly laughers and shriekers command the highest fees, enough to make a decent wage? Enough to claim, in real life, the equivalent of the humorous, middle-class counterpart presented in many of the TV sitcoms they perform for?
What is real life? Is it that state of being which exists other than what is presented on television and in movies and videos? Something other than performance and posture?
Are there child laughers in special demand for childhood laugh track events such as cartoons/birthdays/tooth extractions? And what of amateur laughers? Are there how-to-laugh books developed especially for them which can be purchased at airport magazine shops/drugstores which encourage them to embrace laughing as a hobby? Are there night school courses that amateur laughers can attend in January/February/March? Tricks of the trade they can learn from practitioners who are slightly more skilled at laughing than they are? Techniques such as breath control/crescendo/decrescendo as in the training of singers and musicians? Are there laughing forms to master?
And what of those sad/abnormal souls who stubbornly refuse all merriment, all lampshade and lewd joke activity? What of them? Should there not be places/institutions/homes where they can receive treatment for their affliction? From which they can emerge, restored to rapture, and armed with tanks of nitrous oxide to declare that it is not better to sorrow than to laugh, it is not better to die than be born?
Is it true that the aging process kills off dopamine cells in the brain, that as we get older euphoria declines, and our capacity to have fun diminishes? Why there is no fool like an old fool, young fools being a dime a dozen?
Is there a market, therefore, for personal, portable laugh tracks? Small, special recording devices that we can all carry around? Attach to our persons? To enable us to laugh at our families/governments/worlds? Would illness/despair/hopelessness/anguish finally vanish as some people have suggested? Would we then all be prodded into states of chronically good moods, becoming perpetually pleased, and not tormented to death as we are now with the what-fors and whys of an absurd existence?
Would the boundaries, then, melt away between what is laughable and what is not? With everyone wearing their portable laugh tracks and laughing at everything/nothing, even in their dreams, even in love, would not the world as we know it become like one enormous California, as smooth and mild as a grapefruit? A heaven on earth? A bright gymnasium of fun?
On the other hand, in a world of stunned, uniform laughers, would there not emerge a deviant subclass, a deliberately unfunny, underground movement of anti-laughers declaring their right to misery/ bleakness/doom? Intent on the destruction of stand-up comics and gameshow hosts? Would not the cry of dadaist ecstasy be heard again, this time as “Assasinate the Laughers!” in an updated attempt to startle/ shock the smiling millions who, poised before their television screens, are laughing on cue as if possessed by some grand/homeric/universal tic?
Should not television laugh tracks be scrutinized? Do they not control the quality/frequency/duration of our laughter? Do they not disallow transcendence by rendering all experience cute? Do they not tranquilize us by rendering our laughter thin and meaningless until death do us part?
What if all the laugh track laughers went on strike? How would any of us know what is funny?
FISH
FO
R VICKY HUSBAND
By day, carrying on with my fish body assembly work. By night, waking to find strangers in my bed. Last night, Mrs. Hanson and her three kids. A trial of a person.
Rip doesn’t seem to mind the strangers. He just rolls over, grumbles about needing more covers, leaving me to contend.
By day, all is well. The important fish body assembly work continuing. But three nights ago, an elderly couple vacationing from Alberta. He bald and snoring, she in hairnet pondering. Maps and guidebooks spread out all over the quilt.
It’s the nighttime crowds I can’t stand. Whole families arguing. Some under the covers with Rip and I, others sitting on the bedside nattering.
It gets worse when I sweat because of too many people. Then I have to throw off the covers and every one starts in on me then, complaining. Many of the strangers don’t like our bedroom, for instance: no proper dresser, a doorless closet, the bed merely a double. I wish I wouldn’t apologize so much. Feel so responsible.
“Perhaps if I cleaned up the room you’d feel better,” I say. “Perhaps if I slept on the floor next to the dog.”
More room for Mrs. Hanson and the three kids. Mrs. Hanson slithering naked next to Rip. Mrs. Hanson breathing lullabies into Rip’s dozing face.
By day I’m a person of importance. Thank heavens. With my fish body assembly work. Nearly fifty thousand so far and the numbers keep climbing. The parts from Hong Kong, duty free. That was my doing. I found the rule about location making it is permissible for a manufacturer to assemble a product on home turf thus avoiding import tax. The rule book was old but not forgotten. I take pride in that. Ferreter of antique rules.
The woman at Customs agreed, but not whole-heartedly.
“Right here on page fifteen of ENTRY REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTS FROM FOREIGN PARTS,” I showed her.
She wasn’t happy. They don’t like to give anything away. They come to believe it’s their rule you’re tampering with.
“It’s a nice rule,” I told her, “one you should be proud of.”
But she took it personally. That the government would be missing out on its due tax. That’s dedication for you.
We all get on. Somehow. Me, I’m doing my part for the environment. Tax free. And I won’t have to charge sales tax on the assembled fish bodies either because I won’t be selling them. Because, in a sense, I’ll be giving them away.
Rip was disappointed I didn’t use my inheritance money for something more worthwhile. That’s his opinion. A jazz trio, for example. I know he’s always wanted one of those. Piano, bass, drums. Playing Bill Evans on demand. Actually he’d like to have Bill Evans as well. I’ve often hoped he’d visit us in bed but the dead can be very stubborn. So far, no show.
A Bill Evans CD wouldn’t do. I suggested it.
“Too small,” Rip said.
He wants to be wrapped in the live thing, ear to the electric bass speaker or sit beside the piano player and stroke his fingers while he’s playing. Or crouch beneath the piano player’s legs and work the peddle. Involvement. That’s what Rip wants.
But I only had enough inheritance money for one of us to be involved. And after all, it’s important to me that I calm things down. Quit my job at the gas station just so I could take the time.
The fish bodies are all the same size. Ten inches. Just under the legal size limit. Plastic. Overall grey in colour, made up of three sections: head, shaft, tail. Flecks of pink and blue in the plastic. Could be mistaken for a trout, a cod, or a young salmon. That’s not the important part, the type. It’s just so that they can be seen to be there.
I’ve always wanted to raise spirits.
Getting tired, though, with all these strangers turning up in our bed. I tell Rip about it but he just gets annoyed.
“Don’t be so rigid,” he says, “have a little flexibility. After all, they’re not bothering you, are they? Not in any significant way? Beating you about the head or sitting on your back? Complaints about the bedroom furniture don’t count. They’re not actually hurting you, are they?”
Apart from Mrs. Hanson’s gymnastics over Rip’s body last night, I’d have to say, no, they’re not.
“Well then,” he says, “be like a rock in a stream, a tree in a storm. Let your turmoil flow around and away from you.”
That’s my Rip. He’d be a Zen Buddhist if he had the time. As it is, he’s run off his feet. No wonder he sleeps through the nighttime visitors. By day, he’s selling Bic pens, Eddy matches. He’s got the whole territory from here to Burgoyne Bay and having the whole of anything is exhausting. So there’s always someone in his bed. In a manner of speaking.
He’s right, though. I make too big a deal about everything. Always have. Still.
Seven members of the Golden Eagles Day Camp the night before last. Out on an adventure sleepover with their counsellor.
Children are far too active, especially in sleep. Why I’ve never gone in for them. One of the campers tried to cuddle next to me, one even tried to climb into my arms. Rip just shoved them aside as if they were sleeping cats, heavy lumps. But me, I can’t. I’ve always got to be taking charge. Half the night gone running back and forth to the fridge—juice for the campers. And then the nineteen-year-old counsellor having trouble with her boyfriend and wanting to talk. By morning I was a wreck from trying to keep everyone happy.
I can’t leave well enough alone. Or in this case, bad enough alone. Doing my bit for the environmental movement. I can’t stand it when people get upset. The depleting fish stocks. All the hue and cry.
My bit. Keeping the complainers happy. l have parts for one hundred and fifty thousand fish bodies. The boxes are stacked in the living room, hallway, kitchen, down the stairs to the basement. Thought of using Mini-Storage but the inheritance money is running low. If I were a midget, it would seem like a cardboard city inside our house. Towers of boxes, alleyways dark and spooky, no telling what goes on in there.
One of the campers got lost the other night on the way to the bathroom. Found her wandering terrified amongst the tail sections.
I’m especially happy about those tail sections. After all those faxes to Mr. Ni in Hong Kong.
“They’ve got to look like they’re swimming,” I faxed. “They’ve got to look like they’re moving in schools through the water.”
Mr. Ni is a marvel. Even without an engineer he managed to come up with a propeller thingy that’s connected to an elastic band. And he guarantees it. Either my assembled fish bodies self-propel or he’ll take them back. That’s business. So far, on my bathtub trials, success. Except for an occasional turn of swimming on their backs. You just pull this elastic band, the tails whirl and away they go.
I was trying to tell Mrs. Hanson about my plans last night in bed but she wasn’t interested. Just wanted me to give the baby his bottle so she could get on with Rip’s body rub.
The baby listened. “I will be delivering the first fifty thousand fish bodies by month’s end,” I told him. “I’m so excited. Rip has agreed to drive the hired truck. A dump truck. My plan is to back down the ramp at Anchor’s Aweigh Marina about three in the morning. Only problem is, first I have to activate the tail sections. Otherwise, plunk, to the bottom of the deep blue sea.”
Fifty thousand elastic bands snapping. I have to admit it’s daunting. I’d have a nightmare about it, no doubt, if my nights weren’t already so crowded. That’s something. Too bad the strangers are always gone in the morning. I’m at the point where I could do with some help.
Right now what I picture before me is a string of busy, solitary days activating fish bodies. Their writhing grey forms mounting the cardboard box towers, scraping against the ceiling. Jiggling jelly. Maggot movement.
What keeps me going is the thought. All those upset people calmed down. Perhaps even happy. Look there’s fish in the sea! Again. After all. In spite of.
STUDIES SHOW / EXPERTS SAY
“How much butylated hydroxyl toluene does it take to make one mutant cell?” This is the quest
ion I pose to Isobel over dinner. “One millilitre? A quarter of a teaspoon?”
“Why don’t you just shoot yourself and be done with it?” Isobel screams as she packs her bags. “I’m leaving you. Sicko. Pea brain. Bag of shit. You’ve got gas up the ass. And I’m taking the antibiotics with me.”
“You’ll be sorry,” I tell her. “Studies show that being cut off from friendships and family doubles a person’s chance of sickness and death. Not only that,” I call from my sick bed, “but experts say that it is not enough to marry someone because they make your heart pound, two people’s lifestyles must come together as well. What’s a nurse without a patient?”
The main thing that worries me about living alone is this: what if I should stop breathing in my sleep? Sleep Apnea. What if no one is there to roughly shake my shoulder, or if necessary, administer mouth to mouth resuscitation? What if I am found dead in my bed, a rotting cauliflower, one ghastly hand still clutching my Merck’s Manual of Diseases?
For this reason I call up Georgina, single mother of two, my client-girlfriend from the welfare office.
I say, “About forty percent of women who separated while still in their thirties will never re-marry. Now’s your chance.”
*
The chest pains start on the first Sunday after Georgina moves in. We send the kids to McDonald’s and spend the rest of the afternoon in Emergency. I tell them it is my fifteenth heart attack.
“Skinny guys don’t get heart attacks,” the intern says. “It’s probably just gas.”
Driving home I say to Georgina, “What does the medical profession know? They’ve yet to discover why I am dying.”
“Everyone dies,” says Georgina. “In fact the outer limit of the human lifespan remains at about one hundred and ten years and that figure hasn’t changed since the beginning of recorded history.”
“But you’re not supposed to die in the prime of your life,” I yell. “Not when you’re a forty-two-year-old, white-collar welfare worker, three-bedroom home-owner secure in the middle-income profile bracket.”
Down the Road to Eternity Page 5