by WD Clarke
—Is he, said Dan, slightly curious.
—Yup, well, that is, I don’t really know, but he did say last week, when I said something particularly nasty about the Catholic Church, and he said that Jesus Christ would’ve been a socialist, and a socialist’s the same as a communist, right?
—Well, said Dan, and he thought: boy, is he ever flying.
—You think he was?
—Uh, said Dan, turning from Johnson onto Montreal and crossing Princess and Queen in rapid succession. I … couldn’t say, I’m not … religious.
—I hear you, said Ed. So this Gramshee, what’s she have to say, then?
—He. Well, it’s a bit involved, and we’re almost at Raglan, but, have you ever heard of the word ‘hegemony’?
This was, he was ashamed to admit, a new one for Ed. He was not a political man, and had always assumed, like the American curmudgeon H.L. Mencken, that those who owned the country ought to, well, run it as they saw fit. Otherwise, he had no real time for politics or politicians of any stripe.
—No, he said truthfully. I haven’t.
—Well, said Dan, it’s right on Raglan?
—I don’t know, said Ed.
—You said it was your….
—It’s, it’s the first time I’ve, said Ed.
Dan took a right turn anyway, and seconds later applied the brakes. —Well, we’re here, he said. To their left stood a small, aluminum-clad cubic bungalow, of the type constructed for the veterans of World War II. Dr. Ed groaned, then shimmied himself out.
—I guess this is where we part, he said through Dan’s window. He held another pair of folded 20s between his fingertips, which he motioned towards his driver.
Dan waved them off. —No, really, he said. You’ve given me plenty already. Ed nodded, dropped the 20s through the open window anyway, and then made to leave.
—Oh, sir? said Dan.
Ed turned back towards him.
—Hegemony, in case you’re interested, is, according to Gramsci, how the ruling class maintains power in a democratic state, without the use of force.
—You mean brainwashing? said Ed.
—No, not brainwashing. More of an unconsciously agreed-to limitation of what can be discussed; what questions are worth answering, or even asking, and which ‘truths’ are considered … axiomatic.
—Oh?
—It’s, said Dan, it’s well maybe it’s a bit like how your patients ‘naturally’ avoid questioning certain things about themselves, because it’s precisely by not questioning that they maintain the fiction that their lives are in their control, or at least make sense.
—I’m not, said Ed, a psychologist.
—I thought you said, said Dan.
—Psychiatrist. Different set of axioms. Axia?
—Of course, said Dan.
—More drugs, less talk is our motto, said Ed half-jokingly, patting the roof of the Chev. Thanks for all your help tonight. And for the vocab, of course.
—You have a key?
—No, but I’ll be fine, said Ed, and he held his palm up in the air as the cab drove down the street. He watched it turn right, back towards the downtown core, then he turned and faced his son’s house.
This was the 2nd time he had stood in front of it, but he had never been inside. 3 months ago, he had sat across the road in his car for a few moments, as part of a little covert investigation; it was a week or so after Ted had first made contact. He was broke, he’d said, and had just moved here from out west, Vancouver Island way, and needed to come up with a security deposit on a small house he was trying to rent. He didn’t expect a handout, but were there any vacancies at the hospital, or anything Dr. Blanchette needed doing (unlike Ed, Ted was good with his hands) around the house?
There was only the computer. The CPU fan had just given up the ghost after a month or so of moaning & groaning, and had been down for 10 days. Ed hadn’t had the time to deal with it himself, and ‘feeling’ a bit of pity for the kid, had let him go at it, pulled a string or 2 with the folks at the temp agency, and had advanced him 2 weeks’ salary, but on the condition that Ted never, ever call him or make contact by any other means.
And now here he was, standing outside his son’s house, wondering what to do next. Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t ‘thought’ any of this through, so he just stood there and stared for some time. The ruined little box of a house had a ruined little white picket fence out front; he’d noticed that before, but what he hadn’t noticed before was a little varnished, wood-burned sign just to the left of the front door, which hailed visitors and passers-by with ‘The Gosse’s’ [sic]. Ed ‘felt’ a strange little tug of some kind inside of him.
‘Gosse’s’. It wasn’t the misuse of the apostrophe, or the unfamiliarity of Ted’s last name that disconcerted him, however—for Ted had, quite against Ed’s will, informed his birth father of the particulars of the situation of his adoptive family (impecunious yet hard working; neurotically G-d-fearing and Philistine; incredibly close-knit until the passing of the not-yet-40, much beloved father from cancer-of-the-everything; the downward slide into alcohol on the part of the mother, subsequent to the preceding as well as to an unelaborated-upon accident at her place of work; finally, the consequent scattering to the 4 winds of the children, of whom Ted was the youngest).
No, it wasn’t that. It was the ‘s’ at the end of that name on the sign: Ted had never told him that … that he was married!
Married? He was only what—26? 27, tops? Did he have children, too? No, he was too immature for … but then again … he wished, he wished he’d known that, if he had known he would have … would have what?
He knew, to be truthful, that he would not have acted, in all probability, any differently than he had done. Well, there was still time to make that, and so much more, up to him. To them, that is, yes, to them both. He felt like Scrooge on the morning after the visit of the 3 Spirits of Xmas. He felt like climbing into a Frank Capra film, like writing a happy ending to a clichéd Canadian novel about broken families and prairies full of wheat….
He moved forward, onto the ruined little front step, looking in vain for a doorbell or knocker. He’d have to rap his knuckles on the—no, wait a minute, it wasn’t even 05:00, he couldn’t, it wouldn’t be right to, not at this time of. He was dressed warmly; he’d wait on the porch for the, what, only 1 or 2 hours or so until the Gosse’s, until his son Ted and his beautiful (he supposed) young wife awoke. No pressing need to disturb them now, he’d be fine: it had become overcast since he had gained entry to the after-hours club, and the air had warmed up considerably. His greatcoat was plenty warm (his drink-and-drug-addled brain spuriously reasoned), and there was a plastic bagful of papers put out for recycling in a blue box on the curbside, which he could retrieve and upon which he could rest his behind. No problemo, as the young Doug there would, he speculated, be wont to say. He settled in for the medium haul, his back resting against the black, solid wood front door, and his head on the beveled surface of a bit of door-frame. And (thanks to that potent mixture of alcohol and codeine) as he drifted off into what he imagined would be a blissful, dream-free sleep, Edward Blanchette felt absolutely no pain.
25
Fucked in the Head
By G-D, said Ed, lying on his back, staring at the inside of his eyelids. The partially aspirated phrase was a reference to something one of the generic engineers at the neighbouring table had said at the club: after having obviously eavesdropped on the entirety of Dr. Ed’s recounting of the dream that had been shaking him on a nightly basis, the empathetic oaf had nodded sagely to his tablemates and had pronounced, to a radial arc of 5 or 6 tables or so:
—Dreams, you know, shit, they’re, like, like getting fucked in the head by G-d.
—G-d sucks, said another engineer.
—G-d rules, church sucks, said a third.
—Church? said the first. Church? Church sucks cock!
Ed had not demurred. But that was hours ago now, and—how was i
t?—oh yeah, and ‘a world away’. It was now late Friday morning, and while some celestial cannon had just blasted him, circus performer style, into consciousness, he was not at all aware of his new surroundings. A nearby, involuntary, feminine gasp, however, followed by the slamming of a door after he uttered the above epithet, granted him the unimpeachable awareness of several things: that he was lying in a strange bedroom; that the room had also been occupied by a strange but definitely female presence; that, moreover, said female had no doubt been shocked and appalled by that which he had just, not entirely voluntarily, said— that which, only 72 hours ago quite frankly, would have shocked and appalled him as well.
But this was not 72 hours ago, neither Tuesday morning, nor Wednesday, nor Thursday morning either. This was Friday, and he was lying in someone else’s bedroom, and through the interference pattern set up by an incipient hangover of erupting, red molten lava and black ash, his ears could still discern with some clarity that there was someone to whom he should immediately apologize. Yet that very someone had, in storming immediately out of the room, made such amends (for the time being at least) impossible to make.
But Ed did not have the strength to move an eyelid, let alone recruit the ‘mind’-bogglingly complex chain of requisite motor neurons to bring something approaching recognizable human speech patterns within the realm of current possibility. Instead, he lay on his back, groaning the inward, solipsistic groan of the truly hungover. He had not, as the engineers would have said, worshipped at the porcelain altar; nor had he talked on the big white telephone, or conduit la grande autobus blanche. And that was a bit of a pity indeed, for things might have turned out better for him if he had had. How much better? Well, if you asked an engineer, he’d say, most likely, something like this:
—No shit Sherlock, 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd times better if only ya’d done what ya’, coulda shoulda woulda.
So, whatever gasping feminine presence the room had contained, it contained it no more. The sound of what could only have been the offended footsteps of one encumbered with the highest of heels could forthwith be traced tap-tapping their way down a short hallway to a most impatiently bruited front door. Henceforth there commenced the firing of an automotive engine, but one so anaemic and unrefined that it could only have belonged to a domestic 4-cylinder with a plentitude of logged miles in her. The engine idled for some minutes, giving Ed more than enough time to discern at least a ring-job if not a full re-bore (or perhaps a loss-limiting disposal) in its future. Then the engine whined off into the distance, and Ed was left momentarily alone with his hangover. Christ, what remained of his ‘mind’ needed more sleep, required a few hours’ escape from the catabolytes of last night’s indulgence, from the aldehydes and glucuronides which mercilessly coursed through his veins. His ‘mind’ had no wish to abrogate the sternly articulated edict that had been issued, by fiat, by his body. The ‘mind’ would obey, settle in, wherever and whomsoever it was, and hunker down for….
—Ok pal, let’s go, coffee’s on! A voice echoed from somewhere outside the room where he lay.
Huh?
—Da-aaaaad! It was a young man’s voice: playful, lilting, ironic, arch even. It was—oh, sweet Jesus, so that was where he was.
—Dr. Blanchette! Calling Dr. Blanchette! Not here yet for his breakfast ban-quette!
His (he quickly recanted, assiduously and guiltily reproaching himself for the almost-reflexive attributions of ‘good-for-nothing’ and ‘alleged’). Son. Came. Up. The. Hall. Singing.
And banging on a metal pot:
It’s true that all them men were through
with puking up a past they left you to,
while dreaming it was love, or warmth, or shelter…
—C’mon, Dr. Ed, said Ted, tugging at his bedding. Up’n’at’m. Yuvv’ got a big day ahead of yas. He then pulled Ed’s comforter off with the aplomb of a magician spiriting a tablecloth from beneath a set of fine china.
—How did I get here? asked Ed.
—Well, sir, you were fast asleep against my front door when I got up this morning. When I opened it to go get the paper, you crashed backwards without waking up, and….
You can call me dad, Ted, or Ed, Ed groaned, remembering his drunken ‘vow’ to himself from the dark hours of the morning.
—No can do compadre, said Ted.
Ed shuddered, and then succeeded in unfixing one of his stuck cantilever brakepad eyelids. He conducted, more out of embarrassment than necessity, a rigorous, if extemporaneous, assessment of his current situation, with a 270° cyclopean scan of the bedroom.
—Sorry? he said belatedly.
—My father’s dead & buried, Sir. Metastasized cancer of the larynx, Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, 1984.
Ed sat up straight, his other, tardy eye snapping open now without difficulty.
—You never, I didn’t, I’m, I’m very sorry, Ted, he said.
—S’alright. There’s lots of things I haven’t told you. All of which can wait, cos we gotta get you to work, Dr. Bloody Nose.
—Pretty bad, huh?
—Could be worse, Doc, said Ted. There’s fresh gauze and tape in the bathroom; I’ll get it out, and you go get the rest of you cleaned up.
—Call me Ed, at least.
—Hunky Dory, Ed, he said, picking up a rolled towel of the dresser and lobbing it towards him. Shower up quick, like, and I’ll put your brekky in a bag and call you a cab. You’re late again.
—What time is it?
—Just after 9.
—Christ. I have no.
Ted lent his birth father a black t-shirt, a white-on-black sweatshirt (the largest he had, which bore the slogan ‘Only Users Lose Drugs’) and a bomber-style jacket (Ed’s beloved greatcoat was missing, mysteriously, a sleeve) and whisked the still-wet-haired, unshaven travesty out the door, clutching a pom-pommed toque in one hand and his brown-bagged breakfast in the other. He waved a terse wave goodbye to Ed, handed the driver a tenner, and said, before he closed the passenger door behind him:
—How’s dinner, 6 o’clock tomorrow sound?
Ed nodded wordlessly. Ted closed the door and patted the trunk of the cab as it began to pull away. Just then, Ed felt compelled to do something quite out of character. He turned around and looked back—out the rear window of the cab. There stood Ted, staring back at him with palm raised chest-high in the air, motionless on the grey pavement, against the grey western horizon.
The Supplement of Copula
The shock waves passed through him while he was riding up (mercifully, alone) in the hospital’s front elevator, and he stumbled backwards against the rear wall of the lift just as it made an abrupt negative acceleration to let him off at his floor. Just like any patriotic footsoldier keen to witness Truth, Justice & The American Way in action at the Los Alamos testing grounds, he:
(i.) saw the flash,
(ii.) ducked & covered beneath the hurricane of shock and heat,
(iii.) heard a blast so terrifying that it relegated those masters of thunderclap and bolt lightning—Zeus, Thor, JHVH—into the books of fable and fairytale.
He knew, however, unlike his conscripted forefathers 50 years previously, that there was more: the deadly silence of the fallout. And he remembered, finally, what he’d so conveniently forgotten the previous evening. He remembered, putting aside the previous day’s casuistry, that there would be casualties.
His heart reached apogee somewhere near his Adam’s apple, just as his feet manoeuvred this perambulating automaton to the clinic’s main door. How could he have. Why didn’t he. Nurse Sloggett. Missy. His wife. It could be any of them. But which?
He stood stock-still outside the doors to his clinic, indicting himself. He was a stunned stockjobber, too busy with busy business to feel real guilt, too consumed with the fear of death to live up to life, too—
—Excuse me!
And a short but almost completely round female form, swathed in woolens (scarves & mittens, a poncho and a beret), rolled by him, pul
led the door open and went round the corner towards the reception area and nurse’s station. He followed her.
—Ec, Ex, Scuse, Me? Ma’am?
She did not turn around, but strode purposefully past the empty nurse’s station and towards the door of his office. Still, as if mesmerized, he followed. She knocked on his door, then brazenly turned the handle and let herself inside.
—How can I help you, ma’am? he said finally, after following her into his office. He stopped just past the doorframe, and self-consciously left the door open, for he was of course used to all manner of crazies pulling the whole gamut of crazy stunts on him: several of his more theatrically-inclined patients, for instance, had tried to end it all in his presence, armed with the usual devices (the razor or knife across the wrists, the flamboyant swallowing of a bottle of pills, the ingestion of the full range of household poisons), but never quite succeeding. He had never been taken hostage, but his couch and desk had: both had been defecated and urinated upon, twice each. The culprits, however, couldn’t have been more different. The first had been a young schizophrenic male, whose father was a risk management specialist in the Faculty of Commerce at the university. The young man had been doing quite well on his medication, and was (proleptically, as it turned out) preparing to get back to his studies and write the lsat when the incident occurred. He never saw the young man again, but he heard, by the by, that his parents had sent him to a private residential clinic near Santa Fe.
The second copremic event occurred not long after the first, but this time the poor unfortunate was an elderly woman named Violet Starkes, who had become quite nearly catatonic with grief after having been widowed. Her husband, still a dairy farmer at 80, had suddenly hung himself during the morning milking not long after their 60th wedding anniversary. He had left a note which stated, simply: ‘Forgive me, Violet, Rose.’ Rose, Violet’s sister, had died of coronary failure in her sleep several months previously.