There was a little Japanese place across the street.
They sat together at the counter and watched the chef mould the sushi rice in his hand; watched as he sliced a block of red tuna with his sharp blade. Sam was fascinated when the chef took a bamboo mat and sheet of seaweed and rolled the seaweed around a cylinder of rice and cucumber strips.
When their food was ready, Sam stared at the small green plate in front of him.
He picked up a piece of the salmon.
“My first sushi,” he said, beaming.
He took a tentative bite and then turned to his mother.
“I don’t think it’s cooked enough for me.”
Morley showed him how to pour soy sauce into his little side dish and stir a bit of the green wasabi paste into the soy.
“Try dipping it first,” she said.
“Okay,” said Sam.
He tried everything but the eel. And the octopus.
“What do you think?” said Morley.
“I liked the avocado fish the best,” said Sam.
They were walking down the street, the spring sun warming their faces.
They were heading for Harmon’s.
“Hello, Sam,” said Mr. Harmon.
“Hello, Mr. Harmon,” said Sam. “This is my mother. I want to show her the pasta.”
Morley remembered the last time she was in Harmon’s. It was a couple of years ago. She needed olive oil, and she thought maybe she would get a nice one. There was way too much choice. And she was overcome by Mr. Harmon. All his questions. Did she like grassy flavours? What about the bouquet? She had left empty-handed.
Sam said, “Come on.”
She followed him past the bins of perfectly arranged vegetables, down a narrow aisle of cans, and then to the back. To a cooler filled with little packages of exotic pasta. Squid ink pasta with Gruyère. Acorn squash with garlic and chicken.
She didn’t notice Mr. Harmon standing behind them.
Mr. Harmon didn’t for a moment think there was anything unusual about a young boy browsing in a gourmet food store. In fact, Sam reminded Mr. Harmon of himself as a child.
“We have a pasta class on Saturday afternoons next month,” said Mr. Harmon. “I’ve been telling him he should come.”
They were back on the street. Back in the sun.
Morley said, “Do you want to take the class?”
“I couldn’t,” said Sam. “It’s all adults.”
“I could come with you,” said Morley.
Sam looked at her. “Would you tell people that you made me go?”
“I could do that,” said Morley.
Morley noticed they were holding hands. She hadn’t noticed when they’d started. She did notice, however, when they began swinging their arms back and forth, the way they used to when Sam was younger.
Morley smiled softly. It was true: the race was almost over. Apparently, though, she still had a while left to run.
RIDING THE LIGHTNING
Summer came and summer went, sashaying through town like a girl in a cotton dress—languid, long of leg, and saucy enough to turn heads. Slow enough too that everyone who turned caught at least one last glimpse before she disappeared.
It was the summer that Kenny Wong’s restaurant, Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies, had a bad turn. Oh, the regulars still came, but the new burrito place down the street and the vegan café around the block were siphoning off some of the lunch traffic. Kenny had to lay off a chef and return to the kitchen himself for the first time in years.
It was the summer that Dave’s neighbourhood nemesis, Mary Turlington, had her infamous meltdown at the Bistro Ouimet.
It’s not clear what transpired in the little café. Mary was, safe to assume, wound up as tight as a seven-day clock. The incident happened, after all, during the hot spell at the end of July, and you surely remember how fragile everyone was that week. The conflagration, that’s what the paper called it, had something to do with the please wait to be seated sign, and the fact that a lot of waiting, but not a lot of seating, was going on. What exactly happened no one knows for sure. There was a dust-up. That much is certain. Though I don’t want to leave the impression that it got physical. As far as I understand, it didn’t get physical. Though someone said that the owner was called at home—and the police. Or some sort of security.
And the restaurant hostess did go on sick leave. And Mary did end up at the family doctor. It was the doctor who delivered the ultimatum. Either psychotherapy or meditation. Choose one.
“You have to chill out” were his exact words.
“You have to be kidding,” said Mary. “Surely there’s a chemical option. If this was Hollywood there would be a chemical option.”
The doctor didn’t bat an eye.
“I will not chant,” said Mary. “Or go to an ass-ram.”
“Ash,” said the doctor. “Ashram.”
He gave her the name of a private meditation instructor. She had her first class Labour Day weekend. She had to sit for half an hour a day, doing nothing. She found it intolerable. But she persevered.
Finally, and surely most unsettlingly, it was the summer that Jim Scoffield had his heart attack.
“Episode,” Jim said. “It was an episode.”
Except it was more than an episode. Jim went to the emergency room at three in the morning with all the classic symptoms: indigestion, pain that started in his chest and radiated down his arm, and a general sense of doom.
“But I always have a general sense of doom,” Jim protested.
It wasn’t a serious attack.
“I didn’t lose any heart function,” said Jim.
But it was serious enough.
“It was a warning shot,” said Dave.
“I guess,” said Jim.
Jim is fine. He had a bypass. And he went through rehab, stopped smoking, and started exercising. A walking program.
“Whatever works,” said Dave.
It’s not clear who thought of the defibrillator.
“You’re joking,” said Jim.
“Not for you,” said Dave. “For everyone. For the neighbourhood. This is a high-risk neighbourhood.”
Lots of men, over fifty.
The idea was that they’d all chip in and then store it somewhere central. If they could get ten families to commit, it would cost less than $200 each.
“Listen,” said Dave. “You’re fine. It might be me who needs it.”
In the end there were twelve families who chipped in, so there was money left over. They organized a barbecue. And hired a trainer. They ate burgers and fries and learned CPR.
So August came and August went, and September too, and the pretty girl in the summer dress disappeared down the street and into the crowd. Jim was fine, and Kenny was back in the kitchen, and Mary, who did not enjoy the meditation business one bit, not one little bit, worked away at it nevertheless. She lay there on her bed half an hour a day, counting her breaths: in and then out, smiling at her breath as it came in, and smiling at it as it went out, trying to ignore all the thoughts that bounced into her mind and the infernal racket of the world around her—the dogs barking, the doors slamming, the car alarms.
The best place for the defibrillator, everyone agreed, turned out to be Dave and Morley’s garage, the most central and accessible place in the neighbourhood.
At the start everyone treated it with great earnestness. The trainer said they should practise, have drills. “You need to do it,” he said, “so you can do it without thinking, if you ever have to do it for real.”
And so they drew up a schedule, and they gathered in little groups, on Saturday afternoons, in Dave’s garage.
Dave, Carl Lowbeer, and Bert Turlington were there one Saturday, hanging around the way guys do, until one of them said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”
Dave said, “I’ll be victim.”
He clutched his chest dramatically, moaned, staggered around, and then laid himself gingerly down on the garage floor.
&n
bsp; Bert looked at Carl and said, “You go first. I’ll time you.”
Carl nodded. Bert pulled out his phone.
Now. For all intents and purposes, a defibrillator is foolproof. When you attach it to someone, the first thing it does is evaluate their heart rhythm. It has to recognize a life-threatening rhythm before it recommends administering a shock.
Once you turn it on, it gives you step-by-step voice instructions. “Remove the patient’s shirt. Pull the sticker off the first pad. Place the pad on the chest below the left arm.” All you do is follow the instructions.
So even if Carl had stuck the pads on Dave’s chest, it wouldn’t give him a shock if he was in a healthy rhythm.
And for times like this, when they were just practising, there was the safety mode.
“Go,” said Bert.
Carl ran across the garage and popped the little lunchbox-sized machine out of the bracket on the wall. Then he ran back and knelt beside Dave. He flipped the case open and pressed the On button.
“Initiating device,” said the machine soothingly. Then, “Remove the patient’s shirt.”
They all knew this was just a scenario. They all knew that the machine was in safety mode, and that Dave, lying there on the floor with his eyes closed, had not had a heart attack. But they also knew that Carl was kneeling beside a machine that was capable of delivering two hundred joules of electricity. So even though they began all casual and jocular, as the scenario progressed a certain seriousness settled on them.
Carl unbuttoned Dave’s shirt.
“Okay,” said Carl. “If this was real I would rip it open.”
The machine said, “Remove the sticker from the first pad.”
Carl said, “Okay. I am removing the sticker.”
He wasn’t really removing the sticker, he was just pretending. Those stickers are expensive.
The machine said, “Place the sticker on the patient’s chest below the left armpit.”
And so it went, for the first sticker, and the second sticker, and the testing of the heart rhythm—Carl’s face screwed up in concentration. Carl biting his tongue.
“One minute,” said Bert.
“One minute, thirty,” said Bert.
And then the machine said, “Prepare to shock the patient.”
Bert said, “Make sure that you’re not touching him anywhere.”
If you’re touching the patient, you are going to get shocked too.
Carl said, “Clear.”
The machine said, “Shock the patient.”
These things can start to feel real.
Carl held his breath.
Dave scrunched up his eyes.
Carl checked one more time to be sure that he wasn’t touching Dave anywhere.
“Here goes,” said Carl.
He pressed the red “shock” button.
And that’s when Bert, who was standing right behind Carl, leaned over so that the paper bag he’d blown up was no more than six inches from Carl’s ear. He swung his hands open and clapped them together.
There was a terrific explosion.
Carl levitated.
There is no other way to describe it.
Carl lifted right off the ground—which is not an easy thing to do when you’re kneeling. One moment Carl was on his knees beside Dave, his hand on the red button, the next he had lifted off. Howling.
It was as if Carl was the one who’d been shocked.
Dave and Bert whooped.
Dave and Bert staggered around the garage, hysterical, clutching onto the side of the car.
It took ten minutes for Carl to settle down.
Carl was still fluttery and crazy, standing up, sitting down, calling the two of them unspeakable things.
“I can’t believe you did that. I could have had a heart attack.”
“Well,” said Bert. “We’ve got the defibrillator for that.”
And that is when Ted Anderson arrived.
When he spotted Ted, Carl pulled himself together. He looked at Dave and Bert, and Bert nodded. Carl turned and smiled slyly at Ted. Then, all earnest and serious, Carl said, “Hey, Ted. I just finished. It’s your turn.”
Bert was in the corner, inflating a new paper bag.
And so went the autumn, bags popping and leaves bursting into orange and red, and then came the smoky afternoons, as the reds faded to yellow, the yellows to brown, and then everything to grey. Pretty soon the defibrillator in Dave’s garage was just another summer memory. Not forgotten, but no longer the first thing anyone thought about on a Saturday morning. No longer a preoccupation.
Except for Dave, of course. After all, it was in his garage. He walked by it morning and night. Stare at something like that, day in and day out, and it’s only natural that you’re going to start obsessing about what it would be like to use it. In real life. It would be—Godlike. The power to give life.
In hospitals, the ER doctors call it riding the lightning.
“It has baby pads,” said Dave to his pal Kenny one day at lunch.
Dave was sitting at the back counter, staring at a steaming plate of Kenny’s pork dumplings.
“It still delivers a shock. But a kid-appropriate amount.”
Even the adult pads wouldn’t kill you. If you were shocked by accident, Dave explained, it would get your attention. It would knock you around. It would hurt like hell. But it wouldn’t kill you. It would stop your heart—and then? Your heart would start again.
But those were the adult pads. What harm could the infant pads do?
“No way,” said Kenny.
“Come on,” said Dave. “Take off your shirt. For science.”
He wanted to try them out so badly.
“How about your dog?” said Dave.
“There is just so much wrong with that,” said Kenny. “To begin with, you would have to shave my dog. You’re not shaving Szechuan.”
They settled on a twelve-pound roast. A rump roast. Kenny had one in his cooler.
They took it over to Dave’s, shut the garage door, and ducttaped the roast to the pads so that they wouldn’t have to hold on to it.
What happened was a lot of nothing.
“Sort of disappointing,” said Dave.
He’d been thinking of Carl. He’d been hoping it would bounce around or something.
Kenny called the next morning.
“Get over here,” he said.
Dave couldn’t get him to say any more.
“Just get over here.”
So he got dressed and headed over.
The breakfast rush was done and the restaurant was mostly empty by the time Dave arrived. There were two moms with strollers in a back booth and a couple of construction types near the door. Dave slipped behind the counter, poured himself a mug of coffee, and settled onto his regular stool. A minute later Kenny came out of the kitchen carrying a plate of something to the women at the back. Then he disappeared again without a word. He was gone about five minutes.
When he returned, he set a plate of steaming beef in front of Dave. He stood back and crossed his arms.
Dave looked at the plate and then at Kenny.
“Go on,” said Kenny.
It was quite possibly the tenderest beef Dave had ever tasted.
“It actually melts in your mouth,” said Dave.
“I know,” said Kenny.
“It isn’t …” said Dave.
“It is,” said Kenny.
“You didn’t …” said Dave.
“I did,” said Kenny.
Dave looked around and lowered his voice.
“Is that, like, to code?”
That afternoon they tried the adult pads on a different roast, but the adult pads seemed to toughen the meat. They tried other roasts on various settings. But it didn’t have the same effect.
They had stumbled on the sweet spot on the first try.
“Dumb luck,” said Kenny.
They spent hours in the garage perfecting the recipe.
“What
you doing out there?” said Morley.
“Nothing,” said Dave. “Nothing.”
It’s not that they were doing anything wrong. Dave had done the checklist. It wasn’t immoral. Or unethical. Or dangerous.
It just seemed—wrong.
They kept at it, but they didn’t tell anyone.
“Are you sure it’s to code?” said Dave.
“Code?” said Kenny. “I’m selling twice as much beef and broccoli as last month.”
And twice as much again the month after that.
Word was getting around. A columnist mentioned it in a review.
Business picked up. Kenny hired back his chef, though he continued to make all the beef dishes himself.
And then the bone-white moon of winter slipped into the sky, and the stars seemed to double and move farther away. The night deepened, and got longer and colder—until one morning, out of nowhere, someone said, “I woke early. For no reason.”
And someone else said, “Me too.”
The crows were back.
Pretty soon the robins were back, too.
That was April.
Then came May, May, the lusty month of May.
Kenny opened a backyard patio and stayed open for dinner for the first time ever. Jim, who’d been walking in malls since November, started outside again. And Mary Turlington moved her daily meditation from her bedroom to her back garden.
And the sorry problem with that is that when you’re standing on Dave’s back porch, on the stool in the far corner, hanging clothes on the clothesline or just, you know, hanging out, you can see clearly into the Turlingtons’ yard. And the problem with that is that if you’re there, on the stool, for whatever reason, and you see Mary splayed out on the ground, just lying there, not moving, not a muscle—well, you can understand that it might be easy to jump to the wrong conclusion.
Especially if there happens to be a defibrillator in your garage.
“Hello?” called Dave. Tentatively.
When disaster comes calling, no matter how prepared you might be, no matter how much you think you’re courting it, it is never a welcome thing.
“Hey,” called Dave again, climbing down off the stool, thinking, Mary was probably asleep.
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