Summed up an entire marriage.
Twenty-six years. Would have been longer but he died.
After that there was the story of the singing kettle. I drank a lot of tea and there was always a kettle on the stove ready to boil. When it went off it made me laugh. Made me think of a man at the peak of sex.
By then I’d decided all men were alike—a penis and a list of demands.
The time we buried Daddy is another story. The grave was too shallow and then it rained. The coffin had to wait overnight for next day’s ceremony to cover it with dirt. It floated to the top, bobbing like a boat.
Everyone laughed. The old bugger wasn’t making it easy as usual. We had a good party on that.
This new story concerns a summer afternoon. My bed is beside the open window. A breeze is blowing the lace curtains. Outside everything is white, even the flowers—clematis, alyssum, the late roses. Even the sky is bleached. The important part is the horse. This is a serious story. There’s a white horse with a black star on its forehead and it’s waiting for me outside the window—frisky, full of life.
When I was a kid I loved riding horses. I have never forgotten that power between my legs.
I would like to gallop away from this world on a horse. Is this too much to ask, considering?
What Mattered
A beaver returned to the polluted Detroit River and caused the people of Detroit to rejoice. It was one hundred years since a beaver had been seen in the area. Everyone said the environment was returning to normal.
We got behind that.
We watched the video a few million times. It was claimed that workers at the power plant across the river had used a motion-sensitive camera. We stared at the mound of sticks, then saw a humped shadow moving about. That’s the beaver, we said.
For a while it was the beaver that mattered. Even though we knew it was probably some stuffed thing put there by two guys with a camera. And some string.
Along the Way
I got a job working in a burial park. In administration, doing payroll, ordering coffins, urns. On the day I was hired the owner gave me a tour. The grounds were exactly like a park: rolling hills, a meadow, oak trees, benches for sitting; the buildings were low and painted green.
The one where the embalming took place had finished corpses sitting in rocking chairs along one wall; others were laid out on tables and being worked on by three old men. The men wore grey smocks and didn’t look up. The floor was sawdust, the windows open. It was a warm fall day.
The owner lay on a divan and asked me if I could tell the difference between her and the cadavers. I couldn’t. The embalmers were that good.
At lunch we ate in another building—roast pork, cherry pie. Besides the embalmers, equipment operators, salesmen, and groundskeepers were there. Everyone was jolly. I was to start the next day.
I could bring my dog. It was full-time work. I thought: I’ll do this over the winter; there’ll be stories; I can write them up in the spring.
On my way out, I met the caretaker who lived in a cottage on the grounds. There was something odd about her—what we used to call “slow witted.” I thought this because she moved and spoke so slowly. She showed me her garden. In spite of or because of her slowness, she’d made a beautiful display. Every flower was either blue or white, the grass in front bright green. She had a slow-witted dog as well—slow witted or old.
I began appreciating everything.
Overhead there was sky and light and clouds sliding by. There were squirrels, falling leaves, the dead in their final rocking chairs.
I thought: Maybe it’s time to slow down.
Finally
I was making burritos when the stranger in the black suit appeared. He hooked his foot on the ledge beneath the counter and asked if he could stay for dinner. I worried there wouldn’t be enough food. There were uninvited people in the house—teenagers on phones, old men and women in the living room singing sweetly about Jesus.
But I said yes to the stranger because this was the first time I had seen him up close. He was tall, gaunt, with black hair, a lock falling over one eye. He looked exhausted. He rubbed against my shoulder like a cat. Now that I think of it, his voice lay flat in his chest like a waiting lion. For once, though, he wasn’t chasing me terrified through a forest. He’d been chasing me on and off all these years with one thing in mind—my annihilation. Now all he wanted was a burrito.
There Must Be a Reason
The spies were hired straight out of university and some of them were stationed that summer in our backyard. At night I’d open the bedroom window hoping to hear their conversation. As usual I was trying to understand the inexplicable in our lives. I was sure there must be a reason.
The young men in their new suits—there were four of them—settled in deck chairs. From the second storey I could see the tops of their pale heads in the moonlight, their long legs stretching out.
Supposedly we were the enemy camp and they were keeping watch on our secrets.
Listening at the window I learned that this was their first assignment, which meant it would be an easy one because our secrets, like most people’s, are the ordinary kind: worries about money and love; fears about final things.
My pleasure in the spies’ presence, though—that they’d even be interested in us, that we were worthy of scrutiny—was short-lived. They soon grow bored.
We had no guns. No plans to bomb the power station.
The Unaccountable
They bring the philosophy student to our door by mistake. A fainting young man supported on either side by two old women. Then the undertaker arrives and carts the women away, leaving the young man behind. This sort of thing is always happening. Crossed wires about home deliveries. Confusion about who is or isn’t dead.
I complain to my husband. Why us? Do we have a sign outside that says we’re in the market for the unaccountable?
He throws up his hands. You figure it out. I have no new philosophies. I can only recycle, replay, rewind the old ones like everyone else.
Meanwhile the philosophy student lies on the couch with his hand to his head. He has a migraine and wants soup.
They Built a Wall
Eleven years into the marriage they built a wall down the middle of their bedroom. We lived across the street and saw it all. The new lumber, the mounds of sawdust beneath the portable table saw in the carport. The loud argument on the front lawn—you this, you that. Then a truck arrived delivering two new beds—one for either side of the wall. The kids, two boys, must have wondered.
At first we blamed her, called her the crazy one. We’d see her weeding the garden in a flesh-coloured bikini, fat all over the place.
Then we started calling him the blob because he was large and slug-like. You wondered how he fed himself, drove off each morning to the middle school where he taught shop.
When he moved out a couple of months later she got a dog and named it after him. That way, she said, the kids would remember their father. You’d hear them calling, “Wayne! Wayne!” when the dog ran off—always at sunset. This made us feel—something.
Then she took up the cello and formed a string quartet that practised in her living room. Then she made a public appeal for money to swim around Costa Rica in aid of dolphins, or perhaps it was whales.
The house burned down while she and the kids and the dog were vacationing in Peachland. They couldn’t prove it was the ex-husband. It’s a charred lot now. Crows perch on the fence, you’d think in polite amusement.
Rush Job
A woman rushes into her kitchen clutching a live chicken. Here it is! The breakthrough I’ve been seeking!
Her husband’s fiddling with his Erector Set at the kitchen table and doesn’t look up. Not now, he hisses, I’m working.
But I’ve pierced the membrane! The curtain’s been whipped from the world! I’ve seen the truth!
Not now, I said. I’m building a ladder to the moon.
But this here squawking chi
cken ...
Not now! It’s an escape job for a consortium. Something about a falling sky ...
The Play Was Going to Be Huge
I volunteered with a theatre company up north. They wanted me for the chorus but I was really a lost star looking for my place in the firmament. That’s what I’d been led to believe—that there was room up there for everyone.
The play was going to be huge. Elizabethan costumes, production numbers, millions in the cast. Thinking I was important, a cast member asked my name. Tell me one name at a time, he said, and I told him all ten thousand to keep the interest going. The telling lasted a hundred years, though during that time the committee in charge of the firmament hadn’t decided my fate.
I’m still wearing my brocade tutu and dimpled hat and waiting in the wings for direction. The play and the firmament are carrying on without me, though I remain as excited about my prospects as ever ...
The North Pole
We’re keeping Daddy company. He’s been under the quilt for two hundred and thirty-seven days.
On the living room couch. It’s some kind of record.
No, he’s not sick. Not in the usual way.
The remote’s in his right hand. You can’t see it. It’s under the quilt. His hand gets cold.
Quit it, Dustin. No one wants to see the remote.
That’s nearly eight months of non-stop TV.
Quit it, I said. Find something to do.
Seven. The kid’s seven. We had him late.
Daddy’s on the couch all the time. Except to use the bathroom. Eats and sleeps on the couch. The TV going night and day.
I watch from the recliner. Stig’s on the hard-backed chair. Stig’s our boarder. We watch it with him.
Pretty much all the time.
A trio travels to Transylvania to destroy a werewolf queen.
One of the late-night movies we’ve seen. Stig keeps track.
ETS. Daddy’s got ETS.
End Time Syndrome.
He turned forty-four last July.
Well, it starts out gradual. Sneaks up on you.
All the bad news. You get shell-shocked. Lose meaning. Feel helpless. There are so many things.
Whew.
Dying trees. Everyone getting cancer, especially little kids.
No, not you, Dustin.
Tornados. The planet heating up. Pandemics. A new one every year. Poisoned chocolates from China. Animals dying off. You name it.
People shut down. Become a former.
What they were before they got ETS.
Daddy? A baggage handler at the airport.
Hairy creatures from earth’s core latch on to human necks.
At least he’s not totally gone. Like some. At least he’s got his cause.
Saving the North Pole.
Leave Daddy’s quilt alone.
Kid never sits still. The meds don’t help.
That’s what I said. The North Pole. Melting ice.
Sorry, ice melt. Glacier melt.
He gets mad if I say it wrong.
Gets squirmy.
He’s staying on the couch until the ice stops melting.
That’s what he said eight months ago. Before he stopped talking.
He’s serious. Won’t have ice cubes in his pop. Nothing from the freezer. Nothing that melts.
Well, what can you do?
Just keep him comfortable, that’s all. And he’s got his sign. He likes his sign. It’s over there by the couch.
Hold up your sign. Hold up your sign.
Sometimes he’ll hold up his sign. His protest sign: Save The North Pole. Sometimes he’ll wave his sign at the TV.
Your guess is as good as mine. But we respect his reasons. Whenever he feels like waving it, I guess.
That’s right, Dustin, Santa Claus lives at the North Pole. And polar bears. And Fluffy Arctic Cotton Grass.
We’re home schooling him.
If all the ice melts we’ll drown. That’s a fact.
All of us, Dustin.
A while back I contacted the Guinness World Records.
They weren’t interested. They said lots of people watch TV forever. But how many do it for a cause?
Astrology influences the prowess of a third-rate boxer.
That was a good one.
A ravenous snake terrorizes hapless Koreans.
Also good.
A hologram sings for a struggling band.
Thank you, Stig.
Stig’s Mom’s got it. She’s in the psych ward. A former real estate agent. National sales leader for 2006.
Three spirits try to restore a woman’s faith in true love.
Stig again.
He was in my group. My ETS support group. Needed a place to live.
We get disability. Plus money for Stig. Foster care money.
I’ve stopped going.
To my group. What’s the use?
Stig? Seventeen. The black cape is recent. So is the white paint on his face and hands.
Rural Vermonters try to bury a corpse, more than once.
I hope Stig’s not getting it.
Pretty soon there’ll be more of them than us. Ha, ha. Who’s the zombie?
I know. It’s not funny. That’s another ETS symptom. Nothing’s funny.
News. Sitcoms. Cartoons. Talk shows. It’s all the same to him. He doesn’t care what he watches.
Neither do I for that matter.
Stig likes the late-night movies. That’s all he’ll talk about. Dustin, well—Dustin.
That’s what the social worker said. It’s all the candy he eats. Too much sugar.
What’s it to you?
We all eat candy.
A carpenter takes control of a Jewish woman’s button store.
An art thief steals an insurance investigator’s heart.
Napoleon Bonaparte concocts a plan to reclaim his throne.
Don’t get Stig going. That’s how it starts. One-track obsessions.
Mine’s pretending I’m on TV being interviewed about ice. Melting ice.
Sorry. Ice melt.
What?
A former exotic dancer.
I wasn’t so heavy then.
Hereditary Job
The head had a best-before date. I hadn’t known this when I bought it. It included a face and hair and brain. I would wear it now and then when I didn’t want to fix my own face and hair or think my own thoughts.
Before long the head’s built-in obsolescence began to show. The cheeks sagged; the area around the eyes pocked; the hair fell out. And the brain! It gave me the most trouble—memory gaps, repeated stories, absences of data, reasons.
So I took the head to the recycling depot where it was thrown in a bin with other used heads to be shipped to a town in northern Alberta. Once there, townsfolk would begin the slow work of extracting neurons and synapses, eyelashes, hair follicles, and upper lips.
It’s a hereditary job, passed from one generation to another. Fortunately, the rogue thoughts that escape while the heads are being dismantled have no effect on the workers. They’ve heard every rogue thought there ever was and have ceased to be impressed by them.
Thoughts such as, “I’m afraid!” “It means nothing!” “Shoot the bastard!” “We are doomed!”
Journey to the Unknown Regions of the Extreme Outside
— It was a harmless idea. We didn’t think it would be a problem.
— You and your companion decide to sneak into the extreme outside while the world’s top minds are discussing sunblock and you didn’t think that would be a problem?
— We wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before.
— Really? And what was that?
— We wanted to catalogue and measure the world that exists beyond known experience.
— What makes you think such a world exists?
— We’ve heard things.
— What? Voices in your heads?
— No. Stories and such.
— From whom?<
br />
— Nobody special. Crazy people. Blind seers.
— Blind seers? Come now.
— They all say the extreme outside doesn’t even contain a stuffed moose or a flock of birds singing do-wop to console us.
— So you decided ...
— We wanted to see for ourselves. We were hoping National Geographic Explorer would put us on the show. We wanted adventure, something more.
— Something more than your beautifully decorated world?
— Well, yes.
— So you opened the steel door. Contrary to all ...
— Yes.
— And you and your companion walked through it.
— Yes.
— You weren’t afraid?
— Only when the door slammed behind us. Our hearts were banging.
— And your paraphernalia?
— We took that with us.
— That must have cost ...
— We saved up.
— You saved up for ten mules, thirty pieces of luggage, a sextant, four telescopes, microphones, a transducer, nets, and specimen cases?
— Yes.
— Doing what?
— We worked four jobs. Delivering pizza. Delivering car parts. Driving old people to doctor’s appointments. Catering weddings. We saved our tips.
— And you believed this ... equipment ... made you explorers?
— Yes. That and our enthusiasm. We wanted to be like the pair who scaled Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador in 1802. They found domestic flies at 16,600 feet.
— That expedition took five years. You were planning to explore the extreme outside for five years?
— Not really. We thought it’d take a couple of hours, maybe the afternoon. We live in faster times.
— How old are you?
— Twenty-eight. My companion’s twenty-nine.
The Strange Truth About Us Page 7