A Matter of Life and Death or Something

by Ben Stephenson

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Simon frowned at me.

  “But you love pancakes.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  I examined the pancakes. They were possibly the nicest pancakes I had ever seen, really, and I know what makes a good pancake good. These ones were perfectly yellow with hints of golden brown painted on top. They were big, almost perfect circles, and when you poked them they felt like a delicious pillow, not like a rubbery tire. Simon had his hands folded and his eyes closed, because he was saying a little prayer before eating. I usually did that too, not because I wanted to be like Simon or anything, but because I thought it was good to say thank you for getting to eat. But this time I had to say a prayer about not eating.

  “Hello God,” I said in my brain, “thanks for the pancakes. If you care about the syrup and the trees and everything, please tell me somehow and I won’t eat it. Okay goodbye.”

  I opened my eyes and looked around at all the people, stuffing the food into their mouths. I cut off a piece of my pancake and chewed on it. It was only about 60% good-tasting. I know what makes a good pancake good, and pancakes without syrup are pretty terrible.

  “Mmm,” Uncle Max mumbled with his mouth full. Aunt Maxine smiled.

  I reached for the syrup and somehow—I have no idea how, because I am not a clumsy person—I knocked over the little jug and syrup spilled out all over the table. That was kind of a disaster, because the tablecloth was bright white and very clean.

  “Uh oh,” Simon said, and he turned the jug back over. There was a gigantic puddle of brown on the tablecloth and it was soaking in. At least it was syrup, so it didn’t shoot everywhere and get people wet, but it was just sitting there soaking in and laughing at me for being so clumsy.

  Simon and Maxine were dabbing the table with napkins to clean up the huge sticky mess I made, and then I felt something on my shoulder. I turned my head around and it was the man-in-charge. He said “Is everything alright?” and Simon said “We had a bit of a spill but it’s fine,” and the man-in-charge still had his big hairy hand on my shoulder, like grown-ups always do—they think they can just put their stupid hands on your shoulders, and mess your hair up and touch you on the cheek—and the man-in-charge asked me if I was enjoying my pancakes and I said “Don’t touch me.” And he lifted his hand away and held it floating in the air like I was a hot burner on a stove, and he said “Easy, little guy” and he gave me a look like I was doing something wrong. He said “What’s the matter?” and I thought about the trees losing all their sap and turning into transparent nothing and him not even caring, and I thought about ripping all the taps out and I said “I’m going to punch you,” and I transformed my hand into a fist and turned my teeth into shark teeth. The man-in-charge shook his head and looked angry but I was the one who was angry, and I didn’t punch him but finally he walked away and Simon was staring at me like I was something gross he’d never seen before. And I didn’t feel happy like you’re supposed to feel when you win against someone in a fight; I didn’t feel happy at all and I was even less happy because I realized I’d made my fist wrong, and not the way Max showed me one time, because I tucked my thumb inside my fingers so even if I was an expert puncher and punched the man-in-charge as hard as I ever could, I still wouldn’t have actually won because I would have broken my own stupid thumb in half.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and I left Simon and everyone else and the sticky mess and went outside. I ran over to the other house and went in and that weird girl was at the desk again. She was everywhere at the same time; she was an octuplet or something. I asked about the bathroom and she said it was down the hall, so I ran down the hall and into this tiny white bathroom with red towels and my breaths were really fast. I didn’t have to pee, I just needed to go away and to run somewhere. And I needed to have a sit-down. So I sat on the edge of the bathtub for about as long as it takes to pretend you’re going pee. Then I stood back up and flushed the toilet and washed my hands, but I was still scared to leave the bathroom and I was still breathing excruciatingly fast so I sat back down for a couple more ice ages and thought about my deep breaths and thought about how punching doesn’t make anything easier.

  When I finally came out, the girl at the desk smiled at me and said, “How old are you?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering.” Her bubble gum exploded again.

  “I’m ten,” I said. “How old are you?”

  “I’m fifteen. My birthday was three days ago.”

  “Happy birthday,” I said. “My birthday is December 5th.”

  “You’re pretty cute for ten,” she said.

  “No I’m not,” I lied, and I walked out the door.

  I carefully looked through the door of the dining room building but I didn’t see the man-in-charge anywhere so I walked towards the table. Maxine was still eating, and Max and Simon seemed like they had been having a long important conversation and it was just about to end. I knew that because Simon was doing this thing he does where he leans back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head sort of like he’s sunbathing, and he was shaking his head like “No,” staring straight ahead, and smiling really big. If he was doing all that, it usually meant that he had made up his mind on something, and if the next thing he did was take his glasses off his face and hold them out and stare through them like field glasses, that meant that no matter what, he would never change his mind.

  “No, it would be fine,” I heard Max say as I was getting close to them. “It wouldn’t be a big deal, and she—well, it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

  “I don’t know,” Simon said in his tanning position. “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see” with Simon usually meant “No way,” but he didn’t do the glasses-binoculars thing, so it was a little curious. I had no idea what they were talking about. Grown-up stuff probably. Banks and retiring and buying cars. Maybe we were finally getting a new car.

  “What are you guys talking about?” I asked Simon as I sat down again.

  “Adult stuff,” Uncle Max said. “Boring.”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. I didn’t really care what they were talking about. Simon said “Arthur,” ’cause I said “hell,” so I said “Sorry” and we got my pancakes boxed up for later and we left.

  IN THE CAR on the drive home Max and me played the scribble game in my sketchbook again, but soon it got boring and I couldn’t stop thinking about the most important and serious thing I had to do in my life at that moment, which was obviously to figure out where the Phil notebook came from, and what I was supposed to do with it, and if anyone could help me out. I was almost thinking maybe I should just phone 9-1-1, and also in the two days since my interview with Mrs. Beckham I must have almost-searched the internet for him a hundred times. But every time I was about to click the button I got the biggest throat lump. And once I clicked it and then closed the window right away ’cause Simon came into the kitchen, so I didn’t see anything and I was glad. Both searching him and calling the police scared the heck out of me, and also for some reason it felt like I wouldn’t find the right clues that way.

  So when we drove past the orange fossil rock again, which was on my side this time, Max passed me a scribble and I looked at it for a bit, acting like I was scheming about what to draw, but I really wasn’t. Max had his head against the window, checking out the scenery and the sun that was falling down in the sky but wasn’t quite setting yet. I flipped the page and wrote him a little note instead of a drawing.

  UNCLE MAX I HAVE A TOP SECRET THING TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT OK?

  I handed the paper over to him and he glanced back at me, confused his eyebrows, then read it, and wrote back. He handed the sketchbook back over.

  sure thing guy.

  I FOUND SOMEONE’S JOURNAL IN THE WOODS. IT’S A SERIOUS JOURNAL. I HAVE STAR
TED TO GO AROUND INTERVIEWING THE GROANUPS ON MY STREET. I NEED SOME HELP.

  (Now when I look at the pages in my sketchbook where we passed our notes, I can’t believe I ever thought Max would be the best person to ask for help, but like I said, I was in way over my brain.) Uncle Max wrote:

  sounds like an adventure. where do I sign up?

  NOWHERE. I JUST NEED YOU TO LISTEN TO THE TAPES I WILL RECORD. THEY WILL BE SENT TO YOU IN THE MAIL. THEY WILL NOT BE THE SELF-DESTRUCTING KIND. YOU CAN LISTEN TO THEM AND SEND ME BACK A REPORT LIKE IF YOU THINK THE PEOPLE ARE LYING OR JUST STUPID OR IF YOU THINK THERE WAS A CLUE THAT I MISSED OR IF YOU THINK I MIGHT BE ASKING DUMB QUESTIONS. OK?

  roger that. rendez-vous at the checkpoint in 0400 hours.

  WHAT THE HECK?

  I mean I would love to help.

  SHADOW

  I spend more time looking in mirrors than I should, watching “ME” ME ME ME ME, but I’m not convinced I’m related to my reflection. I’m not sure whether it looks like me or not, but it’s not the image that throws me off, it’s the way it behaves. When I move my hand, so does my reflection. Always. I’ve always thought I had much more in common with my shadow.

  I’d much rather watch my shadow move, as it walks home through the snowy park in the night. I like how—no, I guess I really respect how when my legs cross over each other back and forth, they don’t do the same in the shadow’s reality. The thin black rectangles bulge up to accommodate a passing bump, or spill downwards off the edge of the path, then they leap back up onto the snowbank. When I approach the next lamp post and the icy ground glistens pale yellow, my shadow quickly reels itself in and cringes beneath me, buried under my feet, then starts to grow back, stretching way out in front of me. I can try to describe its motion all I want, but the truth is I never know exactly where I’ll find my shadow, and often it’s off somewhere I couldn’t have predicted—wildly projected up onto a wall I’ve never noticed, or cloaking some window I myself will never get to look through—and I just like that.

  WAITING

  This sure is one big clean room. A couple of makeshift hallways shaped by padded burlap-chic barrier things, comfortable carpet chairs with wooden arms and cushy seats, also burlap-chic. The tile floor pretends to be cleaner than it really is. The walls and wall things are covered in sun-washed posters from long lost eras of poster design, shouting the truth about chlamydia, smoking and depression in hyper-neon Technicolor. A wheelchair.

  Everything seems wrapped in plastic, even though only half of it actually is. A suggestions box, a Tupperware crate of stuffed animals under a low table. The radio is playing the piece of music entitled “Eye of the Tiger.” One of the wall’s posters hangs from its feet, the top pieces of tape having finally given up, admirable, they’ve been holding fast since ’83. Only the poster’s pale back is showing. Everyone here looks annoyed and then bored and then annoyed at being bored. Does the flaccid poster secretly hold some key to it all? Why am I too well-behaved to go flip it and check? What could it possibly say? “LIFE IS JUST A BIG THING MADE OF SMALL THINGS”—“THE ONLY WRONG IS THE WORD ‘WRONG’”—“THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT IT, THE WAY OUT OF THE

  “HELPFUL”

  CABINETIVE THERAPY

  He didn’t go in. They called his name and he said he had to go to the washroom sorry and he headed into the hallway, he was practically running to the elevator. Hours later now here he is having the worst coffee of his life. This is the only place that’s open this late. This thing he is drinking has like two more names than he does.

  Why didn’t he go to his appointment?

  It was like when he was sitting there he got thinking about it and couldn’t figure out why he’d ever started going, or how he’d lasted so long. It’s been like five months. E had suggested maybe he should think about it; he was already thinking about it. He needed something. He needed to take his mind off of her. No. He needed somewhere he could go and just talk about her for hours. Did it make him feel closer to her sometimes in some backwards way? Did it give him hope?

  Did he do it for her?

  No he wanted to go. And at first it was free through school. He had an initial half-hour consultation with one counsellor named Janet, in which he described the things that were going on in his head. He’d brought an epic web of a list that filled two whole pages of graph paper with black ink. He showed her the list, which contained every sorrow and habit and insurmountable obstacle—she glanced at it a moment and handed it back. How could she have overlooked it or consumed it so casually? It was the most enthralling list.

  Janet left the room for a minute and then returned with a thin stack of paper, fresh with the smell of photocopying: fire and asphalt. When she handed him the pages they were still warm in his hands. He always loved the feeling of holding warm paper—it was one thing that felt precisely like hope. The smallest things could be comforts. The white sheets had tiny font typed in columns and bulleted lists, sprinkled with little clip-art illustrations of men with frowns, question marks shooting out of their heads. They outlined some “unhelpful” styles of thinking, and basic coping strategies. As he squinted at the papers Janet said he would be set up with a regular counsellor on a weekly appointment basis, to begin cognitive therapy. Cognitive therapy, she said, was a drug-free treatment, with emphasis on the conscious changing of thinking patterns, in the hope that negative feelings would change as a result. It would be a start. If he turned out to need drugs they’d address that later. It sounded pretty good.

  Then the meetings were every Thursday with a psychologist named Ralph who had a short grey beard like a shag rug and a firm handshake. His office was a warehouse a few blocks off campus, fully stocked with table saws and belt sanders and nails and glue. The psychologist and the patient hung their jackets on pegs on the wall and washed their hands in the filthy square industrial sink and put on their safety goggles. Let’s get to it, Ralph said at the first appointment, and started cutting two-foot squares out of a large sheet of plywood.

  Together they began work on a complex filing cabinet system for the thoughts who came clawing their way into the patient’s mind. They got three or four boxes built in the first couple of hour-long sessions. The patient was a slow carpenter, but Ralph said they were making great progress. Quicker than most patients, he said. When the patient returned the next week, even more cabinets had appeared: fifteen, sixteen of them stacked and waiting to be filled.

  You worked on them without me? he asked.

  I got to thinking, and figured we’d need a few more.

  You didn’t have to do that.

  Sure I do. It’s my job.

  Soon the focus shifted and the patient did less of the building and began the filing. He sat in the orange upholstered chair in the centre of the huge floor and did his mindfulness exercise. He’d put the earmuffs on to save himself from the noise of Ralph’s cutting and hammering and ladder extending. He made an effort to sit up straight and focus on his breathing. (When he got in the chair, Ralph would take notice, and, trying not to be obvious about it, he would make quicker cuts, wouldn’t leave the saw running. He would hammer softer and walk on tiptoe. It broke parts of the patient’s heart and made him want to try harder. He knew he could fix it.)

  It always took a few false starts. His mind would be whirling, speeding in nine directions on nine layers at once. Something would surface—an image of E standing up from her bed naked in the morning with the new sun sparking a ring around her hair and showing off all her smoothest skin—then something long past—childhood, riding in the car through the poor part of town, June bugs on the porch floor in May and his bare foot crunching them into the rough wood—then an overbearing wonder about the future: what would he do when his lease was up, would he stay here again or finally scrap it all and be the vagabond he always pretended he might be, and then the giganticness of having done it all wrong, of continuing to do it wrong, o
f everything right being embarrassing, everything wrong being worse, of being in all the wrong places at all the wrong times, having all the wrong heroes and wanting everything for all the wrong

  Then he would catch himself, somehow, and be back again.

  Start over.

  Gather up the drawstrings from all corners of your mind and pull them a little tighter. Come back to your breathing, keep slowing it down. Close your eyes and let the thoughts come whipping by and try not to chase after them. Fold your hands together to stop them from grabbing. Instead of being the thoughts, just watch them run past.

  Eventually the patient would recognize a thought and write its name on a sheet of paper.

  It really did help you, you know. For a while. It did. It was embarrassing but not useless. You’re just so fucking stubborn. You could still go back. Go back next week. It’s collapsing, rebuild it. But why would you? You’re already giving up or telling yourself you are, you don’t know what you’re doing, you can’t keep going into something like that without being hopeful you are way past hopeful, you are desperate, hopeless. You have ALWAYS been desperate, you’re never NOT desperate