by Joan Thomas
All afternoon Rupert sits in his recliner watching game shows. Once in a while Aiden throws a jocular comment in his direction, but he never gets anything back. It’s characterized by aphasia, Rupert’s dementia, but it’s of a piece with how he’s always been. He’s shrinking, he’s stooped, his stomach is rising towards his armpits, forcing all his fundamental qualities to the surface: his disgust for everything outside his narrow ken, his contempt for words. “Feet” is the one cogent thing he’s said to Aiden all day, as in Wipe them. (“Aw, suck it up,” Aiden said under his breath.)
He tramps down to the basement and then he’s pulled back to a savage fight he had there with Ken, in which he resorted to scoring Ken’s ribs with a pick comb. A girl’s defence – no wonder they despised him. A lifetime ago, but it still hangs in the air in this house, the ugly fear that wracked him for years: that, unlike his brothers, he would fail at being a thug. “Where are ya now, ya losers?” Aiden calls, flicking on the basement light.
Three cheap vacuum cleaners are snarled under the basement stairs. None of them work. Aiden messes with them for a while and then he gives up, goes back upstairs to the kitchen and runs a rag mop over the linoleum floor. He picks up two bread crusts and a Bran Buds box from under the table. He shoves a footbath up onto the hat shelf in the closet to get it out of the way.
“Couldn’t walk out of Canadian Tire empty-handed, could you, Dad,” he says. In fact, that’s the entire reason Rupert owned wilderness property – it was an excuse to buy stuff. To talk about stuff with other men, to source it cheap, to transport it and install it and tinker with it. Diesel engines and generators, fish locators, buoys. Log splitters, chainsaws, power winches, gas tanks. After Aiden took possession of the cottage, he had the guy from the marina bring over the construction barge and they loaded it up with all that dreck, as well as an old TV and rabbit ears (which had never remotely worked), two lawn mowers, two large animal traps, a hooded hairdryer, plastic fish, a plastic lettuce spinner, and a fucking plastic swimming pool. Aiden paid a fortune to have it all hauled away and dumped on some other patch of the Canadian Shield.
He sticks the mop back into the crack beside the fridge and glances over to the chair, where Rupert is asleep now, his chin on his chest. “And it’ll be me who shovels this shithole into landfill,” Aiden says. He raises his voice. “As if I don’t have enough of my own crap.” Rupert doesn’t stir.
Midafternoon, he closes the door and steps outside. The frosted branches and telephone wires are still extravagantly beautiful against a blue sky, but they’re starting to drop white petals in the sun. He stands on the back step for a minute, breathing out his rancour into the humid air, before he sets out for home.
Evenings, he and Liz drink mulled wine and sometimes Scotch. They watch pirated movies (nothing noteworthy) and they eat a heap of the mashed olive appetizer Liz likes so much, shovelling it onto crackers, sometimes with soft cheese. She’s in a better mood because she got a refund from Vacances françaises. It took fifteen minutes of charming persistence in her dreadful French, but she hung in. They can’t do much to plan for the baby until some decisions are made. But they can talk; they can surf the same conversation over and over, sometimes taking a short ride on an exhilarating wave when they think about what it would mean to have an infant in the house again. Details from the past come to him – baby Sylvie’s callus-free little heels, and the way she would nuzzle blindly for the nipple.
Then Noah’s back in town. He comes to collect Sylvie for New Year’s Eve. He stands in the hall in a parka while Sylvie rummages for her boots.
“You two will have so much to talk about,” Liz says hintingly, though it looks to Aiden as if Noah is already three sheets to the wind. There’s a Ford minivan full of kids at the curb, driven by a forty-year-old designated driver wearing a plaid cap with ear flaps. A hockey stick pokes out of a window like a periscope.
“Not a drop, eh, Sylvie,” Aiden says as she goes out the door. She rotates a shoulder in his direction, irritated.
When they’re gone, Aiden puts on Lyle Lovett and opens a bottle of Bergerac Rouge (to say, France is not going anywhere). He gets his little film canister out of the freezer and rolls a couple of joints. Thirty-five-millimetre film canisters are getting harder to find than the weed.
“So, you met your dealer?” Liz says.
“Looks that way.”
They lie feet to feet on the couch, a fine fire crackling. Within three minutes Liz is back to the Grandparents’ Summit, rooting around for little pockets of scorn she hasn’t unpacked yet. “You know what really got to me?” she says, louder than necessary. “In her mind, in Mary Magdalene’s mind, the main meaning of this pregnancy is its impact on her brilliant son and his fabulous career. Isn’t that the impression you got? As though the three of us got together and planned this and failed to consult. Like, once I gave her the phrase ‘planned parenthood’ she couldn’t get it out of her mind.”
“No,” Aiden says. “I didn’t pick that up at all. I thought she was great. You notice she didn’t question paternity, even though Noah’s been away most of the fall? And she was the one who said, ‘If they decide to keep the baby, we’ll have to get together to talk about maintenance.’ That was decent, especially since she is so set on adoption.”
Liz shrugs.
“And I think Noah’s okay. I’m assuming George was a really shitty dad, but Noah doesn’t seem to have lacked for parenting. Well, I guess he’s had that other guy, that Nowak character, as his stepdad for quite a while.”
Liz stretches out her hand for the joint. “What’s Stonechild doing now? I didn’t hear that part.”
“He makes those long-necked birds out of stones and iron that people stick in their gardens.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. He makes a living selling high-end pink flamingos at craft shows.”
“You know, he looks exactly like he did fifteen years ago.”
“You knew him?”
“He was the good Samaritan who drove me home from the Folk Festival that time. Remember? When I lost the car in the parking lot and I was wandering around at midnight carrying our big lug of a daughter, being bitten to death by mosquitoes?”
He remembers. He remembers driving her out the next day, to the sight of their Datsun sitting alone in the middle of a huge, empty field. “Did he hit on you?” he asks.
“Of course.” She looks directly, brownly at him. Her eyes are not that melting tropical brown. They’re Celtic eyes, with a lot of amber in them.
“You never told me.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe if Aiden went places with his wife she’d be protected from schmucks like George Stonechild.” She’s holding the smoke, talking out of the corner of her mouth. He loves it; it’s worth the effort it takes to get her to this state.
“I’d never met him before,” he says, “but I’ve seen him around town. Didn’t he used to hang around the Bella Vista? Wearing a cape – remember that guy we called Zorro? Anyway, you’re right, he hasn’t changed. Maybe the music keeps him young. Music is his bag.”
“He said that?”
“Yup. ‘I’m a stone-and-iron artisan, but music is my bag.’ ” They gaze at each other in wonder. “Is he good-looking?” Aiden asks.
“Of course. He looks like Jesus. It’s the most annoying thing about him, the way he’s always sticking his face at you, pleading, Admire me.”
“Noah’s not like that.”
“Full of himself? No, he doesn’t seem to be.”
“Although he’s … hot?”
“Hot? Hot-ish. Sylvie must think so. He could use a proper haircut.” Fireworks start banging in the distance like popcorn in a tin pan. “What’s your impression?” she asks suddenly. “Is he a nice guy or just well-trained? Like, super-polite.”
“I think he’s a nice guy.”
“Smart, or just a nerd?”
“Probably both.”
She’s pensive again. “You know,” she sa
ys, “Noah would have been just one of the stories of Sylvie’s life, a fun summer she’d think about from time to time when she was stuck in a rut. But now he will be the story, at least for a long time.” She leans forward to toss the roach into the fire. “And now, as we speak, our genes are all duking it out in the cells of that poor little fetus. Yours and mine and Mary Magdalene’s and George Stonechild’s. Oh my god!”
“What grade was it you dropped biology?” He reaches for the ankle nestled against his ribs, squeezes it. How long they’ve been together! One night, just after they met, he happened to see her on the street, on Broadway, waiting for a bus. It was late, dark, and she was standing under a streetlight, holding a magazine up to her nose, reading. She wants everything and she wants it now. If he were a foreign correspondent needing a man on the ground, he’d hire her every time. His fixer – that’s what she is, the one who knows the right words for things, who slips dash to the authorities, who forces you to drink a foul-tasting tincture to kill the local amoebae. The one who hustles you out a back door into the alley when things get hot.
To Liz, he thinks, enjoying the high arch of her bare foot with the back of his fingers. She sits back and flashes him a rueful smile and slides her hand along his thigh. A new year. Begin as you mean to go on.
6
Transition Species
NOAH HAD TO GO BACK TO GUELPH BEFORE the ultrasound. Well, he could have stayed, but his mom had paid for his airline ticket and he didn’t yet have Sylvie’s insight into what a total waste of time the first week of semester is. So in the end it’s her parents who walk with her down the long hall of the hospital and sit with her for an hour while she pretends to be absorbed in a People magazine so they’ll leave her alone. And Noah misses it all, he misses a big lesson in the secret inside strangeness of things.
Afterwards Sylvie’s parents wait by Liz’s car in the parking lot while Sylvie stands in the litter of butts at the hospital entrance and calls him. He picks up on the second ring. “It’s a girl,” she says. Though really, this is the unnerving thing: it’s a baby. An actual baby, lying grey and remote and unconscious of being spied on.
“That’s great,” Noah says. His voice sounds weird and phony, and so does hers.
In the car, she sits in the back seat and watches the narrow houses of Maryland Street slide by. Her parents were quiet in the ultrasound room, but now they talk on and on about how amazing the picture quality was. When Liz was pregnant with her, they say, ultrasound technology was much cruder. Every once in a while you got a flash of a limb or an organ, but the image was so gibbled you started having nightmares that your baby was misshapen or maybe in pieces. Whereas this baby is evidently intact, as the technician confirmed by her bored manner.
She tapes the image over her bed at the dorm. It’s hard to put it up where everyone can see it, but she knows it’s part of getting used to the idea. It looks like a big-headed doll seen through windshield wipers on a dark night in a heavy rain.
Late in the afternoon, Sylvie’s friends from the Fringe troupe come to her room bearing various drinks based on soy milk, cow’s milk, yogurt, and ice cream.
“First pick for Sylvie,” Thea says.
“I’ll take the banana smoothie,” Sylvie says. “I’m starving.”
“One banana smoothie,” Thea says, handing it over, “for the miracle mama.” Somebody (maybe Sylvie herself) told them about the point three percent failure rate of the pill, and they are turning her pregnancy into some sort of victory of nature over pharmacology.
They spy the ultrasound picture. While they’re all still raving about it, Benedictor comes to the door to wish Sylvie a happy new year. He’s never been to her room before. “I wanted to see if you got your botany paper finished,” he says. He makes a sad face, as though the loss of her brilliant paper was his fault. Her friends draw him over to see the ultrasound.
“Meet the seven billionth human baby,” Thea announces.
“That’s over,” says Jenna. “Isn’t that over?”
Benedictor stares at the image and then looks at Sylvie in confusion and surprise. She has so enjoyed his fascination with her, she is so used to sipping it like a hummingbird and then darting away, that she feels embarrassed as she smiles to say, Yes, it’s true. He comes over and squeezes her hand and says courteously, “I congratulate you.”
Kajri passes around a Tupperware container of veggie samosas her auntie from Windsor Park just delivered. Once they’re all settled into eating, Sylvie grabs the moment of distraction from her ultrasound to ask, “Where are we at with the play? You guys met without me, didn’t you? Last week?”
“You knew we were meeting.”
“I know. I’m not mad, I’m just asking.”
Well, they did meet. They’ve dropped the Maldives. They spent the whole meeting talking about the news from the U.N. climate summit. Then they were so depressed they walked up the skating trail as far as the Norwood Bridge, where they found two old packing crates buried in the snow on the bank, dragged them out onto the ice, and built a symbolic fire to say goodbye to the human race.
“Oh, come on,” Sylvie says.
They drink their smoothies and munch on their samosas. She gets the impression no one wants to meet her eyes.
“We have no ideas,” Kajri says finally. “It’s too big. And too scary. No one wants to hear about it.”
“Well, let’s do something smaller then,” Sylvie says. “Like, who was that environmentalist who walked into the oil and gas auction in the States and bought up a whole bunch of wilderness leases and ended up in jail? Maybe we could tell his story.”
“Tim DeChristopher,” Nathan says. “He’s out now. He’s turned religious.”
“Or,” Sylvie says, “maybe there’s some sort of allegory we could do. Like, I don’t know, that play we read in grade ten, Arthur Miller and the Salem witches.”
“Or let’s do something futuristic,” says Thea. “When we really get into a global burn and can’t grow food anymore, and everyone is starving. Scare the shit out of people.”
Benedictor is leaning against the closet door. “Ask people in the Horn of Africa if that is the future,” he says.
They sit and stand in silence, well rebuked.
“Benedictor, you have to join us,” Sylvie says. “You totally have to!”
She’s leaning against her desk beside Nathan. His sleeve is rolled up; he’s got a fresh tattoo along the inside of his left forearm. She picks up his arm, feeling an upswell of tenderness. He’s one of her oldest friends. So full of need, so gentle and delicate, as though it’s hard for him to be exposed to the elements. He makes her think of a trembling whippet. She bends her head closer to the wound. The tattoo is text, a plain font, but it’s tiny and hard to make out because his skin is still swollen. Four words: NO WATER, NO MOON. What does it mean? she asks with her eyes, and she feels his gratefulness flicker up like a little flame. He takes back his arm and taps on his smartphone.
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
She passes back his phone and they look at each other in understanding.
Sylvie finishes her samosa and presses some crumbs off the desk with her fingertips. She turns back to her friends, looking from one anxious face to another. “You know what I think about?” she says finally. “The hot summer nights when this show will be running. It’ll be about thirty degrees out.”
“All the venues have AC now,” says Emily. When she’s nervous, she has a deeply annoying way of talking, with her eyelids flickering.
“That’s right, they do. And our audience lives out in Fort Richmond or Charleswood. And they’ll start their SUVS – which also have AC, of course – and drive across the city, and then they’ll walk into our cool, comfortable theatre. And we’ll hand them a progr
am printed on paper made from a clear-cut logging operation, which they’ll drop on the floor a minute later. It’ll be dark outside, but our stage will be blazing with light.”
Another long silence. Nobody looks at Sylvie. She picks up her smoothie from the desk and takes a last drink, sucking air with a rude slurp.
“Emily knows a guy who will rent us a sound system powered by a stationary bicycle,” Kajri says. “Don’t you, Emily.”
Emily herself doesn’t say anything. She turns a look that could kill on Sylvie. I am so, so, so, so done with this, thinks Sylvie.
“She needs to move home now,” Liz says when Aiden comes into the kitchen that night. Rolling chicken fillets in a Dijon paste and then in finely chopped pecans, Liz goes through the obvious advantages of this plan. Aiden is leaning against the counter watching her, doing the reverent-listening thing that most women would appreciate but Liz has come to resent, actually, because it’s all about holding his cards close to his chest.
“And you know,” Liz goes on, “if they are at all considering adoption, she needs to be exploring her options. These things aren’t arranged overnight.” She goes to the sink to rinse her sticky fingers. From the living room she hears the boom-boom-boom of the nightly news theme. “I wish you’d talk to her about it, Aiden. It doesn’t do any good for me to go after her.”
“Okay,” he says. “Will do.”
The oven pings that it’s up to temperature. “It’s that damn ultrasound,” she says. “They’re the kiss of death to adoption programs. Once a girl sees the baby’s face, she’s smitten. This is something we talk about all the time at work.” She reaches for a towel and dries her hands. “And if Sylvie thinks she’s going to keep the baby … Well, there are a thousand things we should be doing.”