Martin Sloane

by Michael Redhill

  That night, one of the doctors from the hospital came. It had been arranged earlier. Colin Sloane sat with his back as straight as a rod and their mother kept one hand on his leg. The doctor took the chair across from them, his gloves folded in his lap. Martin was better, but he would not stay better in Dublin, he told them. The air was too polluted and Martin would need cleaner air if his lungs were going to heal permanently. They would have to leave Dublin and live somewhere else. It was put simply so none of them could misunderstand what he was saying.

  Martin swivelled his head to take in the room. His parents were looking at the doctor. His sister’s eyes were as black as coal.

  Galway was one hundred and twenty miles away. How were they ever going to get their things from Dublin to Galway?

  Martin picked the string off the page and laid it down carefully again, making it hug the little blue road on the map book. Now it was one hundred and twenty-five miles away. Getting farther away with every passing minute. He was sitting on the front stoop, peevishly refusing to box even his own things, his adventure stories, his tin soldiers, his cigar box. His mother called from inside:

  Martin Samuel Joseph Sloane!

  And he twisted his body away from the door. She came to the window.

  Are you deaf?

  I’m not.

  Then get inside and do what I asked you to!

  She slammed the window down, and he felt part of the front stoop quiver as she walked past inside and went up the stairs.

  They were moving to Galway, and it was all his fault. It was the fault of the Dublin air, but it was also his fault for the way he breathed it, or perhaps for the way it breathed him (for he remembered the way the dead girl had told him all things were within other things, even the air). He kept replaying the awful events in his mind, trying to isolate the one thing that, if he’d done it differently, he wouldn’t have gotten ill, he wouldn’t have gone to the hospital, and the tall doctor with the soft black gloves wouldn’t have come to the house.

  He’ll be prey to all manner of respiratory predations, I’m afraid, the doctor had said.

  The next day, Theresa had broken the silence over their porridge.

  But we live here, not anywhere else.

  It’s not where we live, their father said. It’s that we’re together and we’re healthy.

  But you make hats in Dublin!

  They have heads in Galway.

  After that, Theresa had taken to slamming doors. He would walk to the bathroom in the morning and hear Theresa jump out of bed, run to her door, and open it in time to slam it as he went past. Sometimes he’d be in his own bedroom, and the door would suddenly open and then slam shut.

  Risa!

  He bothers me!

  For Christ’s sake! (And then their father’s voice: Adele, I’ve told you about that! ) And Martin shouting back:

  I’m not doing anything, though! He opened the door to his bedroom.

  You! she hissed. You are going to wreck my whole life! She was red-faced in her thin nightie, and he could see the knuckles on her toes whiten as she clasped the top stair. Why didn’t you die like the others, and let us get on with things?

  He knew she didn’t mean it, but it stung him just the same. They were moving to Galway, and it was his fault. His father had told him that people desperately needed hats in Galway, and it was a good opportunity for them, not bad luck. Martin tried to picture what Galway would look like, and hoped that when their car turned off the road and came into the city, that they would see a bare-headed populace, and he would begin to feel better about himself.

  His mother put on a record, and the voices of two women floated out of the window and into the street —

  sous le dôme épais,

  sous le blanc jasmine,

  ah! descendons ensemble!

  Sometimes his mother’s voice would join theirs, breaking in to the parts she knew by heart. It was a sound of home, and it made him sad. He bounced a ball on the bottom step and watched it rise again and again into his hand. He waved at a man who rode past on a red bike.

  His father came home with his brown satchel, and put his hand on Martin’s head, then leaned down to his ear and whispered, It’s just a patch of bad luck. It hurt Colin Sloane to see his son sitting outside the house. He went inside and the front stoop quivered a little. His father hung his coat in the closet, then walked over to the banister and hung his hat, as he always did, on the newel post. As if to say to anyone who visited here that this was the domain of a man who made hats. Martin always thought it funny that when he would walk home with him from the shop on Grafton Street, his father would tip his hat to people in such an exaggerated way that the label would show. Always be ready to sell; everyone is a potential customer, he’d say.

  Martin heard his parents talking. His father was telling his mother that he’d found someone who would make them a new table for the new house. They would leave this one behind. That gave Martin a pang of grief, since it was the table he had eaten at for his entire life. He did the math quickly in his head. Since he had been able to hold a fork, he had eaten at that table over six thousand times. It was simply wrong to say they would leave it behind!

  He leaned in toward the slightly open door. It’s in the basket, his mother said. He saw his father shaking his head unhappily. She put her hand on his. Now stop saying that, she said. Give me a pencil, she said.

  Then it was quiet, and Martin knew they were discussing the future. They were to leave in three more days, and it was all because of him. He could hardly believe that in three days, this part of his life would be over, and all because he was cursed with a bad chest! He was overcome with the urge to beat his own ribcage with his fists, shatter his ribs and tear out his lungs. He realized he pictured them as lungs, not the fuzzy blurred sacs he’d seen in the bottled baby but as purply-blue shimmering lungs. Pictured them inside his body, hanging in his ribcage like a cluster of berries. The tightness in his chest and the liquid he would cough up seemed to come from the same place. He believed in the body now, but the belief gave him no solace.

  Theresa came up the walk dangling her schoolbooks. It was five o’clock, and the sun was beginning to go down behind the Church of St. Columba’s.

  Move, she said. I’m going into my house.

  Don’t slam the door.

  I think we should stay in Dublin and you should move to Galway and get bitten by a snake.

  St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes, he said.

  She leaned down to him; he could feel her breath on his ear. He put them in Galway, she said, and she went inside, slamming the door, stomp stomp stomp up the stairs and then she hurled her books at her bedroom wall. Martin felt all of it through the wooden door. It vibrated with every heavy footfall and his spine absorbed the movement and sent it up his neck and into his skull. He tried to block out the life of the house behind him, and he looked at the houses across the road. Over the roof of his best friend’s house, the rim of the sun was vanishing. He imagined that from William’s bedroom window, it would still be visible, hanging like a huge lamp over the city. Martin watched the last sliver of sun until he couldn’t see it any more. It turned his friend’s house into a dark blot.

  The door opened and his mother came out into the air.

  It’s getting cold out here, she said.

  I don’t mind.

  It’ll soon be dark, and then it’ll be even colder. He didn’t answer her, but he let her fold his fingers into her palm. Just the touch of her hand could induce him to cry, and he looked down at his feet. Even at the age of nine, he knew the warmth of her hand, the smooth, dry surface of her palm would be something he would long for when he got older.

  He turned to her, and she saw he was about to cry. She loved his face like this, and sometimes, seeing his emotion, she would want to break into a smile.

  Nobody asked me if I wanted to leave, but it’s still my fault.

  It’s no one’s fault, Martin. It’s this nasty great cloud of
air we have in Dublin. It’s Dublin’s fault. We’d have to leave here one day anyhow. It’s expensive to live in a big city.

  We’d stay longer if I were well.

  She brought him close to her, and she smelled of her good soap. He buried his face in her neck and let his tears come, but quietly, and she held him.

  Do you know that there is going to be a coronation the day before we leave? May twelfth and a new king, King George the Sixth. They’re going to broadcast the ceremony around the world, so Buby and Zaida Mosher can listen in Montreal. He’ll have the same name as the king on the horse in St. Stephen’s, did you know that?

  He sobbed quietly that he knew. The equestrian statue in the green was called George the Second. It was his favourite.

  They’re going to have a parade of white horses and there’ll be bishops and princes lining the streets outside the palace. Do you know that I stood in those very streets in 1910 when I was nine years old? And watched beside my brother King George the Fifth crowned? This king’s grandfather? That was a day in London! And my brother and I fought because my brother had a larger piece of salt-taffy. It made Buby Mosher very sad to see us fighting.

  Did you see the king?

  I did. He waved to me.

  Martin laughed and wiped his face on his mother’s chest. He liked that they were talking of England. It was a subject his mother couldn’t talk to just anyone about, even though it was her whole childhood and life up until she met their father. When she talked about the streets of London, or her family’s house in Holland Park, her voice became slow, as if the words and names were coming out of the past and gradually taking shape in front of her. She felt about those places in her life the way he felt about his own streets and rivers and greens. He wanted to be the only person she would tell these stories to.

  So, she said. Do you think we can keep the peace in Buckingham? We have one king, one queen, one prince, and one princess. Will we manage?

  He said a quiet yes, because it was true he wanted there to be peace. The yelling and fighting was wearing him out. He wished for things to be the same as they had been before, when he and Theresa would pitch quoits on the back lawn, and sometimes, when he was lonely in the night, he could knock on her door and she would move over so he could sleep in her bed, and she would be as kind to him as Nuala had been in the hospital. Recently, he had felt very lonely at night, when it was so dark outside his window, but he knew his sister would not give him any comfort, not now, when he was taking her home and her friends away.

  Is he sick again? called William’s mother, coming up her walk. She had shopping bags hanging from her arms up to her elbows.

  No, Phil. He’s just a little tired.

  I’ll bring over some of my soup in the morning. Does he want to visit with William after supper?

  We’ll see, said Martin’s mother.

  Mrs. Beaton went into her house and Martin took his tear-streaked face off his mother’s shirt. When I’m better, we’ll come back here, all right? he said. And everything will be the same.

  For now, you look around and keep everything in your head, so we can make sure things are the right way round when we do come back. Every tree, every lamp, and every window. You can keep it all in here, she said, touching his forehead. It’ll be safe here.

  When, she’d said. His heart had thrilled at the word.

  VII.

  LINWOOD FLATS. 15" X 17" X 3" BOX CONSTRUCTION. WOOD AND GLASS WITH FOUND OBJECTS, DOLL PARTS, FABRIC, PAINT. BELIEVED DESTROYED. THROUGH A WINDOW IN THE SIDE OF A HOUSE, A CHILD’S ROOM CAN BE SEEN. BEYOND THE DOORWAY TO THE ROOM, SOMEONE SITS AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS.

  THREE WEEKS AFTER I MET DANIEL, I WAS WALKING around the wood-floored living room of his one-bedroom flat and listening to the streetcar grind the tracks on Dundas below. It was the middle of the night and the lights of Chinatown flashed yellow and green against the back of the room, bands of greeny light warping along my stomach. Somehow night windows make you feel invisible to the outside world, although you know from looking out of those very same windows that you’re not. Still, your nakedness at two in the morning feels like a natural state, like men crying in the silence of darkened rooms. Animals we tend by day stalk and kill other animals in that kind of dark.

  I moved around his space, taking in the things he filled his life with, or that other people, trying to reflect him back at himself, had given him. A row of antique pearl buttons fixed to a card and framed. An ex-lover, I assumed, either complimenting him on something she liked or criticizing him after the fact. And the books, always tell-tale, and the coffee-table tomes by photographers, the good ones, and the painters too that one has to know, if not like.

  On a high shelf, there were the books assigned in my classes. I’d believed him when he told me but still, it was nice to be reassured, and I opened up the Collected Donne and read his marginalia. My scholarly tics were reflected there: Donne’s apparent rejection of the sensual scrawled beside the sermons; underlinings of my favourite words in “The Compass.” A few pages later, “diadem” defined in tight script, “royal headband” — had I explained why Donne used it? The wonder of feeling the poet’s blood and mind moving through those places …

  In the fridge, the bachelor’s comestibles. Carrots shrunk to yellow-stained old-man fingers. A six-count carton of eggs with two eggs in it, both stuck to the sides. Fresh milk, fresh butter. Nondescript styrofoam containers, one with rice in it, the other with vegetables and beef sticking up out of a congealed brown sauce like stumps in a dead pond. Little plastic ramekins filled with hot sauce teetering in the egg-cups in the door. It filled my heart with something like love for him, for the hopelessness you encounter in men who somehow go forth in the world. I took out the veggies and beef (a black-bean thing that smelled still edible) and stood full frontal in the window eating it, warming the cold broccoli and carrot disks in my mouth before chewing them. More knick-knacks and keepsakes on tabletops: a Betty Boop Pez dispenser (no one likes their women with jowls anymore), a raku bowl full of pennies, a picture frame with the factory photo still in it: a soft-focus shot of a blonde with a straw hat on. I took the back of the frame out and removed her, crumpled her up. Then set the frame standing empty, like an elevator waiting for a passenger. I chewed stringy beef. Below, another streetcar went past completely empty and the driver craned his neck to take me in. The lonely people in a city are all joined together at night.

  I rinsed my mouth out in the kitchen sink and then went and drew the blinds in the front room. I crept into his bedroom again and slid into the covers without drawing them back. It was the first time I had gotten back into bed with this man. His back was hot and he was breathing deep soughing exhalations, the sound of the body safe but unguarded, and I raised myself up and bent over him to look at his sleeping face. Eyes closed, lips parted, glistening. There resides the real and perfect beauty of human beings, I thought. That killers and babies alike look peaceful in their sleep, you know someone will love them no matter their sins. I kissed the mouth and lay back down beside him. He took a sharp breath in and turned on his back. His eyes were closed. “You okay?”

  “I didn’t mean to wake you,” I said.

  “I sleep light.”

  I waited for him to drift off again. But I saw his eyes had opened and he was looking at the ceiling. I turned and closed him in my hand. “You’re warm.” He looked at me and his eyes were dark, like the eyes of an animal encountered in a cave. An iron scent from the wine we’d had floated around him. “I should keep you in a little box under my bed.”

  He sighed deeply. “I was having a dream just now, where I was walking down the street with my childhood self.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s strange, isn’t it? To think by the time we get old, no one will know what were were like when we were little.”

  I quickly moved closer to him, and kissed his mouth. “Don’t talk about that right now.” I felt the pulse in my hand and he lay there and then after a mome
nt, he closed his eyes again. Another streetcar went by on the road below. I shifted a leg and pulled myself on top of him, flattening my body against his like a page closed beside another in a book. I drew my knees up beside his chest and lay my mouth down next to his ear. “Don’t say anything about that stuff,” I said, and I rose and fell on his body.

  I came back to the hotel around seven, having walked the angled streets through midtown in a daze. Molly had left a half-dozen messages for me, and there was one from Daniel too, whom she’d called in a panic at four o’clock, to report me missing. I phoned him from the hotel lobby and reassured him it was all a misunderstanding, that everything was okay, was being worked out. He sounded skeptical; he wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing, so I murmured some bright thing to get him off the phone. I couldn’t explain to him there and then exactly what was going on, nor show him how badly I wanted to talk to him. And I returned to my room understanding what Molly had meant by “work” the night before.

  I splashed some water on my face and sat on the bed, immobilized by my misgivings. Light from streetlamps spilled over the floor. There was nothing familiar to me here, no touchstone, nothing to guide me. The desire to quietly pack and take a taxi to the airport had a kind of intelligence to it — after all, discovering nothing more would leave me in much the same state I had been in before Molly’s call — but I also knew it was wrong. I broke the seal on the frigo-bar and poured a minibottle of Glenlivet into me and while it still burned, I took the stairs to Molly’s room.