The Book of Stanley

by Todd Babiak

“No.”

  Dr. Lam smiled artificially and looked down. He took a pen out of his coat pocket. “All right. What I’d like to do with you now is talk about what we call a death plan. I know it might sound a bit macabre, and some of my colleagues have developed gentler phrases to describe it, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t be honest about what’s happening to you. What will happen to me, to all of us. You see?”

  “I see.”

  “Now. You have children?”

  “Dr. Lam, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than make a death plan, but something odd happened to me this morning and I’d like to bounce it off you.”

  “Certainly.” Dr. Lam lowered his pen. “Certainly.”

  “There was a flash, a voice. A rumble.” Stanley swallowed and smiled. “Now I seem to have special strength and, every now and then, the ability to read, well, minds.”

  Dr. Lam squinted. It was a long and ponderous squint, accompanied by a silence that unnerved Stanley.

  “Is it common,” Stanley said, “this delusion?”

  With a gentle clearing of his throat, the doctor picked up the phone and informed his secretary that the Moss session would run late.

  FIVE

  Stanley lay awake that night with his eyes closed until Frieda fell asleep. Then he waited another half-hour, for her Somnol pill to take effect.

  It was wearisome to stare at the ceiling, so Stanley turned to Frieda and willed her to be happy. She continued to frown, faintly, in her sleep. Next to the bed was a framed photograph of adolescent Charles and their black Labrador retriever, Dennis, on the beach at Skeleton Lake. He tried to move the photograph with his mind; he tried to make chunks of white paint fall from the stippled ceiling into his hand. But it seemed his powers of persuasion did not extend to inanimate objects–yet.

  When Frieda’s breathing patterns shifted, Stanley sneaked out of bed and found his swimming trunks. He put on his grey suit and hat, and slipped the trunks and a towel into a white plastic Planet Organic bag. Thieves and marauders never seemed to visit their neighbourhood, so Stanley did not lock the door as he left. It was a Friday evening, not yet eleven. He stood in the cool air for some time before sprinting north through his neighbourhood of identical and nearly identical bungalows and semi-bungalows, across Whyte Avenue, and past a few grimy pubs and retirement complexes. It took him no more than a couple of minutes to run several blocks, and he was feeling so untroubled he did not care who saw him.

  Dr. Lam, as it turned out, was a curious gentleman. He had asked Stanley to tell his story, very slowly, into a tape recorder. Stanley skipped over certain matters, like soiling himself.

  “The voice you heard. Was it in English?” the doctor asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Expand on that.”

  “On what?”

  “On not thinking so.”

  “Well…”

  “You heard the voice but you didn’t hear the voice. Is that what you mean?”

  “There was so much pressure in my head I couldn’t really hear it. Even though I was hearing it. Whatever the voice said, it was slow. Maybe it was a female voice. Like three or four high notes on the biggest organ in the world. But it wasn’t an organ, either.”

  “Can you reproduce the sound for me?”

  “No.”

  “Can you try?”

  Stanley cleared his throat, attempted to find the voice. Once, when Charles was doing his master’s degree in Palo Alto, they’d gone to a karaoke bar. Charles had convinced Stanley, after several drinks, to sing “I Only Have Eyes For You.” But once he was in front of the people and the music started up, the “I am an old fool” element overpowered him and he couldn’t sing. The crowd booed him. This was how he felt now, as though Dr. Lam, despite his curiosity, would boo him.

  “No. It’s a thing that shouldn’t be attempted.”

  Dr. Lam lowered the recorder. While staring intently at Stanley, he picked up his pen and twirled it on the back of his thumb.

  “Have you seen anything like this before, in a dying patient?”

  “No. No I haven’t, Mr. Moss.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I believe you feel something has happened to you, and to the extent that it is a positive change it can only be–”

  “I can show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  Stanley remained seated for a minute. He knew he could do the handstand pushups, but this called for something new. A scene from Singin’ in the Rain popped to mind. He stood up and prepared to explain himself to Dr. Lam, but decided it would be best un-introduced. Then he sprinted to the nearest wall, ran a couple of steps up it, and executed a back-flip. He landed hard, with his legs straight, took a couple of bracing steps forward, and turned to face Dr. Lam.

  Dr. Lam had stopped twirling his pen. “Can you…”

  “Do that again?”

  “Yes.”

  Stanley did it again, and this time he landed it solidly.

  “Cirque du Soleil!” said Dr. Lam, applauding. “Bravo. Now, what am I thinking?”

  Stanley listened. Dr. Lam was definitely thinking of fly-fishing, in the mountains. “Fly-fishing.”

  “Bravo!” Dr. Lam stood up and clapped some more. He smiled and said, into his tape recorder, “Patient just read my mind. Just read my…effing mind.”

  “So?”

  “So,” said Dr. Lam, as he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

  “So what do I do? What does this mean?”

  “I am going to study you, how about that? And I am going to write a paper about this, and we are going to be famous. More than famous, Mr. Moss. I don’t think there is any sort of model for what we’re dealing with here, not with peer review, anyway. Can I call you Stanley? Stan, even? Cognac?”

  Earlier that day, before he heard the voice in the backyard, Stanley had read in the newspaper that city pools were open until midnight as part of an initiative to combat childhood obesity and youth crime. The change room bustled with youngsters, their slick torsos and metallic voices, pushing each other and cackling about girls. They were boys, not men, the chubby boys of the new millennium, video-game champions, all of them too young to enjoy the nightclubs of Old Strathcona on a Friday night. Some took their post-swim showers, carefree with expletives, while Stanley took his pre-swim shower. They bumped him and did not apologize.

  Stanley walked into the echoing hall of water and found the two lanes designated for laps. The giant clock hung directly across from him, its red second hand moving through another minute, and another. When the second hand reached twelve, he dove.

  Despite his awkwardness on ice skates and in football cleats, Stanley had a sort of grace underwater. Though he had not been in a pool since the 1970s, he remained an elegant swimmer. Now, Stanley was also a powerful one. At the end of one hundred metres he stopped and turned to the clock. Forty-three seconds had passed.

  “What the ass?” A young man in a red shirt, the lifeguard, stood over Stanley. He had crumpled a white hat in his hand. “What the sweet mother ass was that, man?”

  Stanley sniffed, pretended to be out of breath. “Water’s fast tonight.”

  “The world record for one hundred metres is just under forty-eight seconds. Some Nordic guy. You just slayed that.” The lifeguard glanced at the giant clock, accusingly. “Dude, you were under forty.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “You so were. I watched the whole thing.” The young man lowered himself to the slick deck as though he had become faint, and put his head in his hands. His hat fell into the water. “This is so messed up.”

  “It must have been a minute.”

  “Shut up. Let me process this. I feel sick sorta. How old are you? I mean, who are you?”

  Stanley understood, as the young man rocked back and forth like a madrasa student, that it would be prudent to be more careful in the future. Several thoughts came to him. He might continue lying to the you
ng man. He could pretend to be a great swimmer, visiting from California. Or he could kill the lifeguard, destroy the living memory. “I’m nobody.”

  “Dude, you are not nobody. I train sixteen hours a week and I can’t even approach that pace. And you’re like, fifty. I don’t understand.”

  “Actually, I’m sixty-two.”

  “Can you do it again? I want to grab some other guys. No one’ll believe me.”

  “I’m pooped.”

  “You aren’t pooped. Don’t pretend to be pooped!”

  Stanley lifted himself out of the water and helped the lifeguard, a tall and fit young man of seventeen or eighteen, to his feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who are you?”

  On his way back to the change room, Stanley realized that others in the pool were watching. The splashes and screams and echoes of screams had quieted, due to the lifeguard’s loud incredulity and, perhaps, other more peculiar reasons. As Stanley took his shower, the lifeguard stood next to him.

  “Who are you?” the lifeguard said again. Tears had formed in his eyes. “Please.”

  SIX

  Dear Allah–

  In my dreams you are white. How can that be? You look like that man in Pretty Woman, only older. This is not what I have learned. You know what I have learned and IF IT IS WRONG AND YOU KNOW IT, and if you are real, and if you know All Things, why have you deceived us for so long? Why have you chosen me to be doubtful? Why now? You know what we believe. If we are wrong and you know we are wrong, and surely someone is wrong (I believe the Christians are wrong), why do you not stop us and correct us in a civilized manner? We would only be angry and ashamed for a short time and then I am certain we would be pleased.

  Thank you sincerely. Allahu Akbar.

  Maha Rasad

  Montreal, Quebec

  Ms. Charlebois was so pregnant she could not reach down for a piece of chalk that had fallen to the floor. Yet there she was, in front of Maha Rasad and the rest of her class, discussing Kirchhoff’s Second Law. It seemed to Maha that Ms. Charlebois should be at home, doing whatever it is women do right before they give birth. Sterilize bottles? Sweep the stairs?

  Tomorrow, Maha would begin writing her final series of high school examinations. But she could not concentrate on physical laws of electricity. Maha checked over her fifteenth letter to God, for spelling errors and grammatical peculiarities. Very quietly, she read it aloud to herself. This was what she had learned in both English and French composition tutorials: we do not discover our mistakes until we hear them.

  Just as she was about to slip her fifteenth letter to God into a pocket at the back of her physics binder, Ms. Charlebois appeared before her. “Maha.”

  “Yes?” She covered the letter with her elbows.

  “May I see that?”

  “No.”

  “You weren’t paying attention.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  Ms. Charlebois sighed and leaned back, crossed her arms over the giant belly. “Tell me what I was saying.”

  “You were discussing Kirchhoff’s Laws, which concern energy. The conservation of energy and the conservation of charge. There are two laws.”

  The teacher sniffed, clearly disappointed. “Why are you writing letters in my class?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Charlebois.”

  Maha knew the material and knew she would get between 90 and 100 percent on her exams, but she also knew Ms. Charlebois would demand the letter. This was not because of any rule or regulation. No, Ms. Charlebois was curious. And Maha was a special case, a student with a history. At Wagar High School, the jewel of Côte St.-Luc, a suburban city in the western quadrant of the island of Montreal, a teacher was entitled to see private letters composed by Maha Rasad.

  “Hand it over.”

  After a short pause, the extent of Maha’s rebellion, she took her elbows off the letter and gave it to Ms. Charlebois, lifting it so the woman would not have to bend over. Silence filled the class as Ms. Charlebois read the letter. When she was finished, she looked down at Maha.

  “What’s it say?” Jonathan Talbot, whose voice was like a knife on sheet metal, wore a T-shirt that advertised for a motorcycle company. Ms. Charlebois ignored him.

  “We’ll deal with this later?”

  Maha nodded.

  Now her classmates stared and talked among themselves. In the five or seven seconds it took for Ms. Charlebois to resume her position at the front of the class, Maha heard several theories. Most of them, of course, concerned sex.

  Maha imagined the particular act that had rendered Ms. Charlebois pregnant. Unlike many other teachers at Wagar, she was a beautiful woman. Thin, clear-skinned, with a deft hand in eye makeup and excellent taste in scarves. Yet it was difficult to picture Ms. Charlebois without clothes, without the giant belly, writhing and calling out as they do in the movies. Repeating “yes” or “oui,” addressing God, tearing into or slapping the man’s flesh. Was it in the dark, the instant of Ms. Charlebois’s impregnation, or on some bright Saturday morning in a township farmer’s field?

  Electricity. The conservation of electricity. Jonathan Talbot was staring across the aisle at Maha’s breasts, her hair. She imagined his sour breath, streaked with hot dogs and Coca-Cola. His erection.

  He leaned toward her and whispered, “What’d it say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Was it a make me real letter?”

  Maha did not answer, or turn to him. She stared straight ahead.

  “A fuckin’ make me real letter?”

  Somehow, even though Jonathan Talbot had whispered, Ms. Charlebois heard him. The heightened senses of a pregnant woman. “Jon. Out!”

  “What?”

  “Out!”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Right. Out.”

  “This is prosecution.”

  “The word is persecution, Jon. Either way, get out. You’re done here.”

  Jonathan turned to Maha, opened his mouth, and moved his tongue around in a crude manner. “Fine.”

  He stood, and Ms. Charlebois paged the office to prepare the administrators for Jonathan Talbot’s arrival. Kirchhoff’s Laws were illuminated for another seven minutes until the buzzer sounded. Maha’s classmates filed out while she sat in the acid of her shame. Make me real. Ms. Charlebois eased into the ergonomically correct chair at her desk, exhaled mightily, and smiled.

  “Come closer, Maha.”

  She did, with her gaze fixed firmly on the blackboard behind the teacher.

  “How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  “Things are all right?” The teacher reached down and cradled her belly. “Really all right?”

  “If there’s something you want to say, just say it.”

  Ms. Charlebois frowned thoughtfully. “You’re writing letters to–how do you say it? Allah?–in physics class. Now, you aren’t like other students. I can’t warn you that you’re about to fail and ruin your prospects for university. You could ace the finals in your sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “But given what happened in January. Given your file. I just want to…make certain your health is sound. Are the other students still bugging you? Jonathan. Is he?”

  “He’s insignificant.”

  “Should I call your parents, I wonder?” The teacher lifted the letter to God and used it as a fan. “Should I be concerned about this? You’re not getting extreme, are you? Because we have strict guidelines around these things now, with the fire-bombings and shootings here in Montreal and all the strife in the Gaza Strip…”

  “I’m not an extremist.”

  “They taught us about warning signs at the convention.” Ms. Charlebois leaned forward on her desk. “You don’t hate Jews or anything, do you?”

  Maha Rasad swiped the letter from Ms. Charlebois, gathered the supplies from her desk, and marched out of the physics lab.

  “There’s a hotline!”

  In the hallway, Maha walked upright, proudly, just as her
mother had taught her, until she turned the corner. Then she backed into a set of lockers with a hollow clang and lowered herself slowly to the floor. French class was underway but she lacked the strength, energy, or resignation to go. There were two posters on the wall across from her, one with a photo of a black female sprinter grunting over the finish line and the other featuring a smiling male student in a wheelchair, surrounded by supportive peers. In large white letters the posters announced “DEDICATION” and “UNDERSTANDING,” respectively. Underneath, poems of the greeting-card variety.

  Just as she had done with the other fourteen letters to God, Maha ripped this letter into tiny pieces and began to swallow them, one by one.

  SEVEN

  Maha and her one true friend, Ardeen, sat on the upper floor of the Faubourg Sainte-Catherine, eating bagels and clementines as afternoon passed into evening. It was not a particularly warm day, but Ardeen wore a short black skirt. Every minute or so, she reached up to touch the new silver ring in her eyebrow. Under their table sat several bags from BCBG.

  “What do you mean you don’t like shopping any more?” Ardeen popped an orange wedge into her mouth.

  “It used to make me feel good. Now it doesn’t.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “I know.”

  Ardeen ran her tongue over her teeth. “It’s just a terrible phase. Don’t think about it too much.”

  “Ardeen, don’t be mad. But I think I’m leaving.”

  “Leaving what?”

  “Montreal.”

  “Why? When?”

  Maha shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometime after exams are finished.”

  “I thought we were going to Cegep together.” Ardeen kicked one of the bags under the table. “What the hell’s going on here? Did you apply to U of T without telling me?”

  “No.”

  “This is about what happened, isn’t it?”

  Maha took a small bite of bagel and shrugged her shoulders. The bagel was at least a day old, though the bag claimed it was made that morning.

  “It was so long ago.” Ardeen waved another piece of clementine in the air. “No one even remembers it any more.”