by Julie Paul
Extra gravity didn’t impact me, either. What was wrong with me?
Warren phoned again. “Now will you come home, baby? I just heard that there’s a place near Hudson Bay where gravity isn’t as strong. We could go there. Try again.”
Just a few hours’ flight away, I had a man who wanted me, enlightened or not. I was alone in a foreign land and no closer to seeing angels or aliens. But then I received an email: a Groupon for an acre of moon surface. For $19.99 I could buy an official, notarized deed from the Lunar Embassy Corporation. A man named Dennis Hope owned the moon, after all, and he wasn’t an alien, either, just a businessman from Nevada out to colonize a bit more of the solar system.
I was so lucky I’d acted as quickly as I did. He sold off all the acreage on the moon in a matter of days.
A few days later, my body began to feel lighter. Gravity’s effects were lessening. I didn’t need Hudson Bay. And I wasn’t alone.
Many of those who were beginning to float knew that the only sensible thing was to take a lunar vacation, and we made our way to the launching site of the Lunar Pilgrim, at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, in hopes that it would take us all away.
In a hotel room in Dallas, I had to tie my legs and one wrist to the bed to get any sleep. While many people in the country were unable to get out of bed—as if the globe’s core was pulling on every cell they had to keep them on Earth, as if Earth itself was worried that people would leave it behind—I was being freed. It was letting me go. No wonder I’d always felt out of place.
I had a shuttle to catch.
When I had everything set up in Florida, I called Warren to say goodbye. “I’ve got incredible news!”
“You’re coming back?”
“Not exactly. But I’ve been chosen! I’m going to the moon.”
He laughed. “Girl, are you finally trying peyote?”
“It’s real, Warren. This is it. I’ve found my place in the universe.”
“Lacy,” he said, “I’m coming down to get you.”
“I’m not in Sedona,” I told him. “I’m already gone.”
As we glided away from the beautiful, magnetic, uninhabitable Earth, I looked back at the planet. What swirled above the blue marble, above the glassy green, were clouds of angels. Clouds of angels, in gowns of white, singing me home.
Adios
We used to exchange zucchinis for tomatoes, Fred Poole and I. At the house across the street from ours he used to garden early in the spring, before most people had finished their winter pruning. He liked to say hello in foreign languages as we walked past, when Simon was still a toddler enthralled by his own shadow. No matter the weather, Mr. Poole was out there, pruning or planting or propping something up.
Now Mrs. Poole is at the door. Her face is puffy, blotchy; she’s been crying. Simon is suddenly beside me, asking if he can watch TV.
“Fred’s gone,” she says. “He’s been taken by the Lord.”
Taken? Oh, that taken. Oh, God. “Oh, Mrs. Poole,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“Over by the school,” she says. “He got hit.”
“Yes,” I say to Simon, distracted. “Go ahead.”
I’m sweating, shaking. I feel like throwing up. When I hear the TV come on, the music of a nature show that Simon loves, I stupidly ask Mrs. Poole, “By a car?” I imagine myself in her shoes, my husband, just like a young Mr. Poole, filled with beams of love for me, and then gone. My husband doesn’t exist, and never did. But that fact doesn’t matter: my brain conjures him up often enough that if I close my eyes, a whole scene—a whole life—unfolds.
“He never leaves the yard.” Mrs. Poole’s voice is quavering. “You ever seen him wandering around?”
“Um, once or twice.” My words come out tiny and tight. “Out for a little walk.”
Her eyes are welling up. “I was just getting the vegetables ready for dinner, and when I came out, he was gone. The policeman said it happens all the time, the wandering off, but Fred never did that kind of thing.” She’s still wearing her apron, embroidered with chickens.
Again, I stammer, “I’m so sorry.”
Then, as if something has pushed her from behind, Mrs. Poole stands up taller. “Well,” she says, wiping at her eyes with the cuff of her cardigan. “We shouldn’t feel sorry, should we? God’s got him. He’s in the Lord’s care now.”
Simon is calling me to come and watch something.
“You go, now,” Mrs. Poole says, opening her hands like she’s Jesus showing his wounded hands, then pushing the air toward Simon. “God bless.”
She makes her way slowly across the street, back to the empty house where now, with the Lord’s help, she only has herself to take care of.
Simon’s eating from a giant box of Ritz crackers while glued to the show. The sight of my son makes me weepy.
“Look at the size of that, Mommy!”
The animal on the screen looks like a giant hamster, and it’s rolling around in mud. I can’t remember the name of the animal, but I know that I know; I studied mammals at university, in the days before making a mammal of my own.
“Wow,” I say. “Pretty cool.” What’s its name? The name has something to do with Catholics down in South America—they were allowed to eat its meat during Lent because the animal used to be classified as a fish. Obviously it’s not the right time for animal name recall. But what do I know about timing? “What’s it called?”
“I dunno.” Simon shrugs. “Wanna watch with me?”
“Maybe in a little while.” That box of Ritz has me feeling guilty. I’ve got to cook up something decent for that boy. I need to make him eat better, foods that will feed his brain. They sent home a sheet from his school with those kinds of foods listed, but it’s long gone into the recycling bin. All I remember is omega something-something. I grab my phone and Google “brain foods”: the only ones on the list that he’ll eat are walnuts, eggs as long as they’re mixed into other ingredients, and blueberries. Guess it’s muffin time.
The cookbook is from Mrs. Poole’s church: all the ladies’ favourite recipes, bound with a black plastic spiral. At the sight of its pale blue cover, I start to cry.
I saw Mr. Poole today and I did nothing.
It’s all right, Jonathan, my made-up man, tells me, my head on his chest. Our son is safe. Like me, he gauges everything against Simon’s safety. Jonathan is the guy who starts the high-fives, the one with the open, hug-ready arms. He’s earned his wrinkles from sunshine, kindness, and wonder—the perpetual Boy Scout, collecting badges from a world he sees as harmonious and good. Simon has his love for the world, his grin.
I’ve helped kill a man. I’m looking right at him, my face broken and wet.
He stares back at me, then peeks through the archway to Simon, and I do the same. Simon’s still watching TV. Crumbs litter the couch.
You didn’t.
I might as well have done it myself. I let him get run over. I’m trembling.
You didn’t know. He could’ve been okay.
He’s dead. Fred Poole is dead.
Two years ago, Fred Poole got a gift from the Crown, the coronary vessels circling the heart like a tiara of thorns. A piece of the past had come back to haunt him, a package sent floating like the baby in the basket, Moses in the bulrushes, up to the Pharaoh’s sister, arteries connecting to the Lord of all, the Almighty brain. How many religious metaphors does it take to give the picture?
The Pooles don’t believe in medical intervention. Fred had a stroke. He didn’t go to the hospital.
Today, I saw him, out walking. It was a beautiful day, and I just kept going. It was a timing error—I didn’t have the time. He really did seem to be out for a walk, and only three blocks from his house, after all. I continued on to the schoolyard.
Another name for a stroke: cerebrovascular accident.
It wasn’t an accident, Mrs. Poole would say. Nothing is accidental. She believed in strange blessings, that it was her duty to God to care for her husban
d; the stroke was a message to have faith, an opportunity for members of the congregation to work together. They believed they could heal him with prayer.
Does she know that the word blessing comes from the old German word bletsian, meaning blood? A souvenir from times when they performed regular sacrifices to God?
Following the stroke, Mr. Poole could only say three words. For no, he said, Boy. For yes, he said, Boy oh boy. When he didn’t like something, he said, Balls! No one thinks to say that any more, but his wife still reddened, apologized, and mumbled into his ear, Now, Fred. She tried valiantly to make sure he liked everything, but she couldn’t keep track. His frozen face said nothing at all, yet he could shuffle-walk when he needed to. His body was doing better than his brain.
After I ignored Fred today, I heard sirens coming closer while I waited for Simon. I smiled blandly at the other parents. It’s nothing, I told myself. It isn’t anyone I know. I found a piece of gum in my pocket and chewed the daylights out of it while I waited, doing what I had to do: pick up my son and go home. I said to myself that I didn’t hear any screeching tires.
“Mom!” Simon called when he came running out of school. “Ambulance!”
He was fascinated by sirens, and before I was able to stop him, he was running down the sidewalk toward the blue car stopped in the middle of the street, the driver’s door flung open. Simon didn’t notice the man, half under the car, or recognize the plaid slipper by the curb. He was more interested in the flashing lights. My whole body weakened, lost feeling, until I realized what my son was about to see.
“Come on,” I said, yanking him by the arm before he could get a better look. “It’s just an ambulance. We’re going home.”
After the stroke it was months until I saw Mr. Poole outside. When Simon and I passed him, sitting in a reclining lawn chair, his garden overgrown and drab, I called out, “Buenos dias!” Fred looked confused and gripped the arm of the chair with his good hand. “Look!” Simon held up his toy for Fred to see. “I got a new yo-yo!” But Fred couldn’t respond. He closed his eyes. “Adios,” I said quietly and reached for Simon’s shoulder as we walked away.
I thought of Fred’s mind as a prison, trapping him with his three words. But some days, at home with the list of must-dos and Hot Wheels in every corner and work orders for more of my designer pillows piling up in my email inbox, no one coming home to help me clean it all up, Jonathan no support at all, I grew to envy him. Nothing to do but sit.
On other days, I felt angry with Fred, on his patch of grass, staring at anything that might come by. I might have hazarded the thought that he deserved it. Or else his wife did, all her bravado and clarity about the will of God. Medical treatment is a necessity, I wanted to yell, like getting enough protein, or sleep, whatever’s required. Of course prayer is helpful. But not as therapy. Not as a substitute for an intravenous drip.
I’m at the counter, measuring the dry ingredients, when ghost-man Jonathan comes up behind me and says something in my ear about helping me to forget this terrible day.
I’ve got to tell her, I say.
He shakes his head. It won’t bring him back.
But how can I face her every day?
You’ll think of something, he says. But first, come with me.
As I’m walking with him to the bedroom, feeling my way with my eyelids firmly shut, the telephone rings.
“Phone!” Simon yells.
It rings again.
“Phone!”
Eyes open. Bye-bye, Jonathan.
After I say hello twice, I hear a shaky voice on the other end. “It’s Annie Poole.”
“Hi, Mrs. Poole.” Is she telepathic? Listening in on my conversations?
“I’ve slipped,” she says. “I think my ankle might be broken.”
Maybe Mrs. Poole just wants me to show that I’m still a good person, that I can make choices that would make her God happy. Otherwise, why not call 9-1-1? Oh, right. No medical intervention. No X-ray, plaster cast, or padded crutch for her. She’s not trying to give me anything; I’m just handy.
Or maybe she knows I saw him today. She’s giving me a chance to make it up, or confess. She knows how much better it feels to offer up your mistakes to the Lord for pardon, and she wants me to feel this, too. She wants to give me this, forgiveness like birds flying out of my chest, a lightness I haven’t felt since my last confession at least ten years ago.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell her.
I look in on Simon. “Don’t move. I have to go across the street.” He’s zoned into the show; he doesn’t even know I’m talking.
Suddenly, I remember the name of the animal he’s watching. Capybara. It tastes like pork. Maybe Simon would eat something weird like this, the largest rodent-mammal in the world, instead of his beloved white flour and sugar.
My mind holds on to so many things it doesn’t need. No wonder my head feels as full as it does. The curse of my species, to have thoughts; the blessing, too.
Despite the circumstances, a rush of hope rises in me. “It’s a capybara,” I yell to Simon. “Capybara!”
“Okay,” he calls back. “Bye.”
Jonathan, I say, quietly. Please keep him safe. How’s he going to like sharing couch space with Mrs. Poole, once I get her over here? Will he say, Boy oh boy, or Boy? More likely, Balls.
Jonathan doesn’t answer. He can’t hear me over the television.
Mrs. Poole is lying on her kitchen floor, a broken glass and a puddle of water beside her on the tiles. “You’re an answer to a prayer,” Mrs. Poole says. She’s pale and shaking, but she smiles weakly at me. “You’re a gift from God.”
Flip
Monday morning. Claudia can see puffiness beneath Rodger’s steel eyes, but his smile is big enough to show his upper gums and his good oral hygiene. His graphite hair is spiked up at intentional angles; when she uses a pencil today she will think of him. But when does she use a pencil? Her hands are curled into paws from keyboard use, her spine is a wilting stem. The library used to supply little pencils for the slips of paper to help people find their books, but they kept getting stolen. Now there are leashed pens, but rarely does she see anyone write anything down. Most store information in their phones, these people who have never looked in the drawer of a card catalogue, unless it’s to buy one at a retro/hipster/upcycling boutique downtown. Do they even know who Melvil Dewey was? Honestly, the books seem to be props half the time. Everyone Googles. Only the elderly and the die-hards who hate screen views come into the library for books. The homeless outnumber the studious, two to one on rainy days, the smell of paper and binding is becoming replaced by urine, sour socks, and liniment, and her poor books languish on the shelves, filed in perfect Dewey Decimal order.
“Claudia,” Rodger says in that singsong way, standing in front of Claudia’s station at the information desk. “How was your weekend?”
He should know. He was there, at least at the beginning of it. On Friday night in the bustling retirement haven of Oak Bay Village, deep within the gentle folds of the city of Victoria, Rodger had been walking down the avenue toward her when she’d bolted. The stores were already tinselled up like tarts for the Christmas season, but she’d just been innocently picking up a decent loaf of bread from the Italian bakery when she saw him coming. She looked around for the nearest escape route and had to choose between Serious Coffee and an art gallery, and because he was wearing a puffy coat and talking on a cellphone, she chose art.
Wrong choice. Rodger came in and found her at the back of the long room, where she was rummaging in her purse for a tissue.
“Hey, Claudia,” he said. “You like the show?”
She hadn’t looked at the art until he asked.
Everything was penises. The whole gallery was plugged with cocks, and most of them were up and ready, sculptures and paintings alike. One even had a handlebar moustache.
Her face bruised with blood, she nodded, then made a run for the door.
Now Claudia wants t
o give him more glamorous weekend details, but aside from working on her self-love according to the latest blog she’s following, which has instructed her to do what she would do if a mate were in her life—cook a whole chicken with herbs and spices! Wear matching bra and panties! Brush hair and teeth once more each day!—her list includes eating two family-sized bags of barbecue chips, watching three bad movies, petting Ruffles, her mangy cat, and watching, for hours, a brown wren playing with its reflection in the broken mirror stored on her balcony.
Weekend. Same old, same old, aside from Cockland. He doesn’t need to know.
“Pretty good,” she says to Rodger. “How about you?”
“Bit of this, bit of that,” he says, taking a bookmark out of the inviting display in front of her computer and turning it to face the right way. “Trying to decide on a vacay spot for January. You ever been to Aruba?”
“No.” Aruba. It sounds like an old car’s horn when she repeats it in her head.
“What about Cuba?”
“No.” She’s never been anywhere. Afraid of flying, along with a hundred other worries.
“Those are my top two picks,” he tells her.
“Tough choice,” she says. Why is he doing this? Can he not tell that she is the wrong person to ask about tropical vacations? She’s a gong show, the way she folds into herself like one of those plastic toys you push on the bottom to make move—only she’s not cute. She knows she needs help in coming out of herself, in making herself a part of the world, but she just can’t do it. What would any other girl do when faced with a gallery of penises and a male colleague who likes to look her straight in the eye? Stick around and pick favourites? Analyze the finer points of penile art, remark on how she preferred the stone renditions to the canvas? She can barely get undressed in front of her own mirror; she rushes away like that wren, only to return to the same old bird. Nothing else to do but run.