With a soft clever click, it opened. Violet hadn't touched anything. Magic? Inside was brightness, forcing me to squint. Emeralds shone, gold magnified whatever dim light the bulb above us produced. The shape came to me slowly as my eyes adjusted...it was a dragonfly set in dark satin. Four wings of thin gold, emeralds for eyes, a multicolored body.
I reached to touch it, but paused, letting my hand hover in the air. It looked like something only angels could hold. "This is what your father gave you."
"Yes. I always carry it with me."
"It must be worth...well thousands of dollars."
Violet shrugged. "It's very old. It's been in our family for over 400 years."
"It's perfect," I whispered.
Violet closed the lid, carefully placed the box in her backpack. What other mysteries lurked inside?
"I've never shown it to anyone before."
Did this mean she trusted me? I felt the urge to take her hand, but held back. Silly, we had made love last night and yet I didn't feel comfortable reaching out to her. I would let her make the rules to our relationship.
And yet, why not seal this moment with a touch?
Violet stood up. "Let's eat and get on our way."
After I put on a pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt, we drifted over to the restaurant. It was still crowded, perhaps no one had moved. The smell of bacon frying made me salivate.
We sat in the same place. Deja Vu shadowed my every movement and thought like a ghost image on a t.v. If only I could adjust the channel.
"Morning!" Our waitress glided up to the table, beaming, her happiness a wave that washed over us. She was in her twenties, had a slightly pudgy face and an honest smile. Susie Sunshine! That's what my friends call me.
We ordered and I stared out the window, watching cars head by to unknown destinations, tapping my feet.
Further away, I needed to get further away.
"Casey..." Violet paused until she had my full attention. "Have you ever fucked anyone?"
The word fucked echoed in the restaurant. People turned to stare.
"What?"
"Are you ever an animal? Have you ever despised the woman you're screwing?"
"What?" My vocabulary had shrunk to one word.
The waitress arrived with our meals, setting a speed cooking record. Violet kept talking: "Last night was great, but I just wondered whether you've had sex for the sake of sex. Have you?" The waitress departed, grinning.
"Have you?" Violet repeated.
"Well...yeah, I'm sure I must have. One time or another. Fuc—screwed someone, I mean."
Laughter from the kitchen. Word traveled fast here.
Violet rolled her eyes. "You're so innocent, Casey. It's both endearing and annoying."
Dumbfounded, I looked down. My eggs and my thoughts were congealing. I fumbled for my fork, momentarily forgetting how to use it; then ate silently, fearing any conversation would get her going again.
Her question about my mating habits did remind me of something else. "Are you, uh, uh..." I coughed. "...all right, medically?"
Violet glanced up, frowning. Maybe for once I had surprised her. "What do you mean?"
"Well you know we had...you know what we did, last night, and I forgot to ask you about that...that..." Coxswain, fire up the neurons...his brain has come to a complete halt! "...stuff."
"What stuff?"
"You know. Whether or not...well...you have any...disease." An ugly word, it crawled out of my mouth like a cockroach.
Violet laughed. "Casey, king of worrywarts. I have a doctor. I'm safe to be with...on that account anyway."
Praise heaven. "Are you on the pill?"
"No."
My heart stopped. "No?"
"I don't have my period unless I want to."
Hello? What was she talking about? "You don't menstruate?" Another word that felt awkward in my mouth. Maybe men were genetically incapable of pronouncing it correctly. Or without feeling some primal fear.
"I meditate every day. It's a trick my mother taught me. Lots of meditation, no menstruation."
"Neat trick."
I tried to think of more questions to ask, none came. Frustrating.
A few minutes later we were on the road, the sun bright and warm in the sky behind us.
Fourteen
Hey there, Mr. Death: What You Got in your Tickle Trunk Today?
We joined a caravan of vehicles on the road. Maybe there were hundreds of our brothers and sisters, who were weary of their jobs with the big corporations, and were now seeking escape on the highway. A diaspora of free thinkers to meet where? Someplace in the future, a green valley on an island under a mountain. A gathering.
A car passed me and I squinted at its occupants hoping to see a compatriot. Instead I saw a boy with his long hair tied in a ponytail, a spindly arm slung around his girlfriend. Fuzzy dice dangled from his mirror like square leg-less spiders. Were they a symbol of masculinity? Then what did they mean? That he had square balls? Besides, didn't fuzzy dice go out of fashion in the seventies? Somewhere in the last few years our world had started spinning backwards in time, giving rise to Olden Goldies radio stations, bellbottom pants, recycled hippie feelings.
It scared the hell out of me: if there's one thing in life more frightening than the future, it's the past. Because everyone seems to look at those years behind us with Norman Rockwell eyes: painting happy smiles on little kid's faces, placing bright red apples on the corners of desks, erasing the shadows.
It dawned on me that neither Violet nor I had spoken in five minutes. I'd been too busy daydreaming. I cleared my throat. "So what's the biggest mystery in your life?" I asked.
"Two things," Violet answered without hesitation, "the first is my memory...because I never seem to remember things exactly as they happen. It's always this confusing mess inside my head."
"My mind's like that all the time."
Violet laughed. "The second thing would be my personality—it's always changing, with my moods, my health, my age. I'm in chrysalis right now, evolving into someone else—a moth or a butterfly. If you had met me three or four months ago, you probably wouldn't recognize me as the same person." She turned, focusing her dark eyes on me. "What's the biggest mystery in your life?"
"A chest." There was something about Violet's presence that sounded in those deep, hollow caverns of my subconscious. Waking up the bats. "I mean, I guess, my father. Why he is the way he is."
"Why a chest?"
"Dad had a wooden chest in his room that was always locked. I used to imagine the spirit of my real father was imprisoned in there. The old 'I wish I had another Dad' fantasy."
"Did you ever find out what was inside?"
"No. Mother burned it."
"Why?"
I shrugged. "Revenge, I guess. It was the only time I ever saw Dad get angry at Mom. He screamed till his face was red. And Mom just ignored him."
"Did you ever get along with your Dad?"
"Not that I can remember."
"Will you ever talk to him about this?"
Something was starting to curdle in my stomach. "Someday...I guess."
Right after the NDP win a federal election.
We were quiet for a few moments and the feeling of angst passed. Maybe there were anti father-anxiety pills somewhere out there, wrapped up in candy. Gimme a caseload, Mac. And could you throw in a few of those Anti-Momma's guilt cough drops?
It occurred to me that we didn't have to carry on without a destination. "Would you mind staying at my brother's place?"
"Not at all. Where is it?"
"Just outside Calgary. On an acreage near Balzac."
"Sounds nice. What's he do?"
"He's an RCMP officer."
"You two must be quite different then."
What'd she mean by that? "We are. He used to be kind of an overbearing ass, but he's changed. About four years ago he got shot."
"Really?"
"Yes." Here was another story I'd re
peated endlessly. "He was called to a convenience store robbery—two stoned teenagers. One had a gun. He fired at the roof to scare Chris, but the bullet ricocheted down and drilled through the top of Christopher's skull. He didn't even notice. He went through a high speed chase and everything. Once they'd caught the two he realized he was bleeding and passed out. He spent three days in a coma."
"Was he all right?"
"More or less...he couldn't speak for a few days, guess the bullet was resting on top of his speech centre. It was too risky for the doctors to take it out, so it's still there. He recovered pretty well and the only thing he's left with is a partial facial paralysis. You'll notice when you meet him. It always seems as if he's frowning on the left side."
I paused. There was a side of me that loved talking about accidents, playing all the trauma for what it was worth.
And guess what else happened...my arm fell off...no I mean both arms. And my left testicle.
We started up a hill, a semi rushing down the other side, heading towards us.
"How many are there in your family?" Violet asked.
The semi whistled past.
"Six of us, no five, sorry...well six."
A mystical laugh. "Can't you count?"
"No, it's not that I can't...well...it's because my older sister died." God this was coming out poorly. "So I never know whether to count her."
"You should."
"I know, it's just that...well...people don't like to talk about death."
"I never understood why people make so much fuss about it. Death is more common than the cold. It's like ignoring the sun or the air...it just doesn't make sense." She paused. "Tell me about your sister, okay?"
I did. Reciting the story of Deidre's life like a mantra, trying to explain how she was one of those rare few who was born pure and happy, seeing so much potential in life. How she used to take me down to the creek and help me catch frogs, even though she was six years older and by the unwritten rules of childhood she could have ignored me, how she went to university and studied to be a veterinarian. And how in her second year of school an aneurysm swelled the blood vessels in her brain and took her away.
I was fourteen at the time, still in the grips of puberty, still believing in God.
"Your family hasn't been that lucky."
"Cursed is more like it. We measure time by all the bad things that have happened to us. 'Was that before you lost your finger, Casey? The year after Dee died we had a good winter. Chris, did you get that car after your accident?' It's become part of our language."
"Tiananmen is like that for my family. It divides each of our lives. Before Tiananmen and after. We lost a lot of friends then and..." She paused. "We have something in common, Casey. Because my older brother died at Tiananmen."
"Oh no." I set my hand on hers.
"You would have liked him, he was...he was like Deidre, I think. He had big ideas. He believed in so many things. But in China, thinking like that just brings you trouble. I talked to him when everyone started to gather at Tiananmen. He was so full of energy. 'It's like a rock n roll concert,' he told me, 'except everyone's focused on democracy.'" She wiped at her eyes. Tears? I didn't want to look. "You might have seen him. He was the one who stood up in front of the tanks and held them all back that one day. I was yelling at the t.v. 'get out of the way, get out of the way.' That was the last time I saw him. One of his friends faxed us just as everything fell apart to say he was dead, had been hit by a soldier's bullet."
"I'm sorry, Violet."
"He was ready to die. That's my only comfort. He knew his death might mean something good."
I found it hard, fed by CNN, to believe things that happened on t.v. were real. The Gulf War was a big long video game wasn't it? World War Two a black and white movie. Here was someone who had lived there, whose brother had participated in an uprising against a system.
Violet had withdrawn into herself, but our hands were still together.
A sign said: Calgary 100 Kilometers. An hour away. Which meant soon we'd be at my brother's tiny acreage.
Hello Christopher, bet ya weren't expecting us.
Fifteen
The Hug that Halted the World
Christopher and Joanna's house sat boldly on top of a hill. It was built to resemble a prairie log cabin, except somewhere along the way it had turned into a ski lodge. It lay on the borderline between the prairies and the mountains: look out one window you saw grass, the other, giant, ice-capped stones.
We pulled up the driveway and shuddered to a halt. Odin backfired hello and a second later three tiny faces peered around the side of the house, blonde hair ablaze in the sunlight. I opened the door and a trio of gremlins scampered towards me.
"Uncle Casey! Uncle Casey's here!" A battle cry. Then I was surrounded, pummeled and plundered by hugs and laughs; Lilliputians grabbing my legs, dancing around, all their emotion making me awkward and happy at once.
Violet, leaning on Odin, giggled.
The kids halted their assault, stared. "Who's that?" Myles asked.
"My friend, Violet."
They gaped at her as if Violet were some mythical creature. Then Mandy, twin sister to Myles, sprinted for the house, hollering, "Mom! Uncle Casey's here! With a Chinese girl!"
We followed our herald, Myles and Tara clinging to the belt loops in my jeans.
Joanna met us at the door, a pencil tucked behind her ear, her blond hair tied back. A few strands hung loose, falling over her fine-boned, Scandinavian face. She had probably been in her office, working at architectural designs on her computer. "Casey!" She gave me a strong hug that squeezed the air from my lungs. I breathed in her familiar lilac scent. She released me and I felt a little unsteady. "You should have phoned."
"Oh, you know how paranoid I am of phones." I gestured. "This is my friend, Violet."
Joanna shook her hand. "Come in, I'll put some coffee on. You're going to stay awhile aren't you?"
"I was hoping we could spend the night."
"Of course. Why don't you get your stuff from the car? Have you had lunch?"
"Yes."
"Good, then I don't have to get anything out."
A moment later Violet and I were dropping our luggage in the guest room. The curtains were open and I got my first glimpse of the mountains, grey forms in the distance that looked like a breaker of clouds. Tomorrow we would be surrounded by them.
Violet joined me, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I like Joanna and the kids. They're so nice. I wish I could somehow shrink this whole place down and take it with me."
A giggle. Two of the faces on one side of the door, the third on the other.
"Tell us the Boom Boom story," Mandy asked.
I smiled, pleased. It had been six months since they'd seen me, but they still remembered. "I'll tell it to you, but later."
All three blinked at the same time. "Boom crash bang bing," Mandy sang.
"Oo oh ouch tinkle ring," Myles finished.
"Get out of here you brats!" I stomped my feet and they scattered into the living room, screaming.
I watched. There's something about happy children that gives me faith in the world. And yet I knew they wouldn't be on this world if Christopher hadn't been shot. Before that day he and Joanna were the perfect nineties couple, concerned with their careers and collecting investment bonds; creating offspring hadn't made its way onto any of their spreadsheets. Chris's accident was a turning point: face to face with death their reaction was to have children. Three in less than two years.
And I've never seen Christopher and Joanna so happy.
"What was all that Boom Boom stuff?" Violet asked.
"Just a story I told them once, about a dragon who learns how to drive a Volvo."
"I'd like to hear it."
"Someday," I promised. And again came that image of her with three children, standing beside Odin.
Tick tock goes my biological clock.
I shook my head. We followed the scent of coffee i
nto the kitchen, plunked ourselves down at a heavy oak table. A moment later Joanna set two steaming cups in front of us. I warmed my hands on mine.
"Chris should be back any second now," Joanna said, "he'll be so happy you're here."
As if on cue, the hum of a vehicle. A moment later the front door opened.
"Someone parked a garbage can in my driveway!" Christopher lurched into the room, his lopsided walk another reminder of his accident. He was bigger than me, his frame bulky but not fat. His hair was jet black like mother's, his lopsided smile a lazy S, friendly and leering at once. Sparkling blue eyes. Hams for hands.
Which soon yanked me out of the chair and pulled me into a bear hug, testing my rib cage. Me breathe? Heck no, only sissies need to breathe! The closeness knocked something loose in me that rattled downward. For a brief moment I felt safe, the security you can only find in the arms of a family member, then Chris relinquished his hold. "Casey, what are you doing here?"
I staggered back a step. "Holidays," I wheezed. God I was lying to them already. Quick, think up another lie! "Just dropped by to see you...it's been awhile."
Then I began to weep.
They stared at me open mouthed, but the person who was most surprised was myself.
"You hugged me too hard," I accused.
"Jesus, Casey." And Christopher was holding me again, softer this time, my face against his shoulder. I sobbed quietly, frightened because none of this was under my control—someone else was using my body to mourn.
What kind of man was I?
Joanna arrived with tissues and I pulled away, blowing my nose. "So how's the weather been?" my voice crackled.
"What's going on, Casey?"
"I don't know." I felt my way to a chair, using the table for support. I sat awkwardly.
"He's been under a lot of stress," Violet pronounced. "He's just working it off." She looked stern. For a moment I felt like a patient in a coma, who couldn't move, couldn't indicate that he was awake and alert, who wanted to join the swirl of life around him.
A sip of coffee made me feel better. Captain Caffeine, take the helm!
Thankfully Christopher asked Violet who she was and began a conversation that didn't involve me. I slumped in my seat, their words outside my world.
The Not So Simple Life (A Comedy) Page 5