The Book of Stanley

by Todd Babiak

  “Is there anything, in particular, you wanted me to do?”

  She smiled up at the snow.

  “I have a plan.” Stanley sat next to Darlene on the flat rock, exhausted. “This isn’t news to you, but I’m the wrong person for the job. I can’t remember my wife’s face. I miss my life. I’m pleased that you gave me this opportunity but I–”

  “Of course.”

  A long silence passed between them. Darlene sat up on the rock and waved her hand. In an instant, the snow stopped falling. The stars appeared in the sky and the glow of Banff reflected off the snowy boughs of the cemetery. Stanley wished he could have pleased Darlene. But if she couldn’t prevent the land from dying, in all her thousands of years, surely Darlene could not have expected much from him–an old man, an agnostic florist, dying of lung cancer.

  “I did and didn’t.” Darlene stood up off the rock, removed her scarf, and retied it. “I’m going to Israel.”

  Darlene did not offer encouragement. Stanley watched her walk to the gate of the cemetery, reinforced to keep the bears out, and then he followed her. He knew he would not see her again, that this was his last chance to seek wisdom. He wanted to know if he had permission to choose his successor. He wanted to know what would happen to him, and his wife, if he gave this up. Where would he end up?

  A layer of snow covered the blackened husk of a house across the street. Darlene kicked some of it away, revealing ashes and shards. “You build it and you burn it down,” she said.

  Stanley decided not to seek wisdom. Instead, he apologized.

  EIGHTY

  Charles Allen Moss sat at the small table in the motel suite, drinking a glass of tap water. At first he seemed not to recognize his father. He looked up at Stanley with a mixture of confusion and resentment, and crossed his arms.

  “What am I to do, bow or salute?”

  It was inconceivable that Charles would fly across the continent, rent a car, and hunt his father down. But here he was, in charcoal suit pants and a white shirt. The tie, blue and yellow, was knotted yet loose. It hung below his unfastened top button. Stanley smiled. “My boy.”

  “At least he recognizes me.”

  “Get up.”

  Charles did as he was told, and Stanley hurried over to his son and hugged him. Mid-hug, he slapped Charles on the back of his head. To his own astonishment, Stanley began to cry.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch when you were sick. I was called away to a meeting in Washington and–”

  “Shush. I’m just so glad you’re here. Have you seen your mother? How is she?”

  “Mortified.” Charles wiggled out of the hug and unconsciously wiped the non existent creases out of his shirt.

  “Did you bring a picture?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of your mom.”

  Charles touched his nose. “What the hell is going on here, Dad, really?”

  His son looked old in this light, greyer and thinner on top. The skin around his neck had gone loose. Stanley was surprised that Charles hadn’t sought treatments, for the hair and wrinkles. It wasn’t pleasant to grow old in New York City in the twenty-first century.

  Since Stanley could not answer his son’s question, he didn’t try. He went to the window and looked down at the massive crowd that had gathered in the snowy parking lot. A few people had spotted him on his way through town, and a few people had become a thousand.

  “Mom wants to come live with me.”

  “I heard. Won’t she cramp your style?”

  Charles joined Stanley at the window and fumbled with the knot of his tie. “You know me, I barely have a style. This is my style. And besides, she wants to get her own place. What I don’t want is you two separated unnecessarily, even if you are currently the most famous man in America.” Charles finished his glass of water and winced. “God, what are you people putting in the pipes these days?”

  “I’m almost finished.”

  “Finished what, Dad?”

  “One of my colleagues and a former doctor have offered to buy my rights today.”

  “Rights to…”

  “To me. My words, actions, name, likeness, story. They want to transform everything I did into myths and metaphors for better living. Halt the spiritual collapse of western culture.”

  “How much are they offering you?”

  “Half a million dollars and a condominium in Puerto Vallarta.”

  Charles laughed. “You could get a hundred times that.”

  “I don’t need the money. You don’t need the money. I was going to give it to Maha and Kal. You’ve met them?”

  “They were here when I arrived. I gave them two hundred dollars and sent them out to the French restaurant.”

  Stanley felt weak all of a sudden, and curiously enjoyed the sensation. The sight of his son. “I am so glad you came. Leaving work behind to see your dad.”

  Charles lifted a black item out of the front pocket of his slacks and displayed it. A personal communication device. “No one leaves work behind any more.” Charles looked down at his little computer. “It’s a phone, a web browser, an e-mail retriever. I can keep track of the markets. On particularly lonely nights, it sneaks into bed and fellates me.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “We are staying at the Fairmont. You can’t share a room with a couple of kids any more.”

  Stanley adored this sensation, of his son taking care of him. “What’s our room number?”

  Charles pulled two keycards out of his pocket and gave one to Stanley. They agreed to meet at the hotel in the morning and hugged again. Charles opened the door, and the noisy crowd, alternating between chaos and organized chants, like British soccer fans, went silent.

  “Who are you?” someone said.

  “Nobody,” said Charles.

  There was an ovation. Stanley worried for his son’s safety, so he sent him floating–screaming all the way–over the crowd. Watching through the window, Stanley dropped Charles on the bank of the river, not far from the bridge.

  Stanley exited the motel through the fire door in the back and made his way through the dark alleys west of Banff Avenue to a beige condominium complex. Swooping Eagle welcomed him effusively into the refuge provided by her insurance company and boiled a pot of yerba maté, “the ancient drink of peace, health, and friendship.” To Stanley, it tasted like hot water squeezed out of a whole wheat bun.

  Stanley phoned Le Beaujolais and left a message for Maha and Kal. They were to avoid the motel and meet at Swooping Eagle’s condominium.

  While they waited for their friends, Swooping Eagle outlined her mission. “I’ve decided, since the fire, to get out of the historical bed-and-breakfast racket and start something new. I think you’re here, we’re here, as a last chance for the species. If we continue on our present track, we’ll use up all our resources and poison the land and air completely. We’ll be extinct in a few generations, Stanley. That isn’t just intuition, either. It’s science. Given that, how can I run a bed-and-breakfast?” She sipped her yerba maté. “You like this?”

  “Not so much, Swooping Eagle. Sorry.”

  “Coffee? I have a bottle of Pineau des Charentes.”

  “I’m all right, really.”

  Swooping Eagle poured more tea into her cup. “We need to be transformed, not amused by historical anecdotes and the smell of lavender in our bleached pillows. I have a dream, an inspiration, to bring my philosophies to the people. To save them.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe we could partner up, you and me, really focus. Failing that, I could use abstract landscape painting and interpretive dance.”

  “I have a better idea.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Maha and Kal entered. Kal’s eyes looked even redder than before, and Stanley realized that Maha had said what she needed to say–that she did not love him.

  “We’ve been talking, Stanley, and as much as we appreciate the gesture, Kal and I aren’t interested in movi
ng to Puerto Vallarta together. We want to stay here and help you, be your disciples.”

  “As friends,” said Kal, “really terrific, awesome friends. Right, Maha?”

  Maha sighed. “Please don’t let Tanya and that doctor buy The Stan.”

  “Come with me.” Stanley had planned to take them along the river, near the bridge, but he worried someone would spot them. So instead, they walked a few blocks west, past a number of old houses, and then through the thick snow into the trees. Stanley found a bare spot protected by pine boughs, and when they were gathered, he smiled. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” said Kal.

  “For supporting me. For believing.”

  They could not read minds, but his friends seemed to understand. Maha placed her hands on his chest. “Don’t leave.”

  Stanley asked them to form a circle, as they had on the banks of Lake Minnewanka. He stood in the south, Swooping Eagle in the north.

  “No.” Maha wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her fleece jacket. “Don’t do this. You don’t have to.”

  Stanley smiled. “Please don’t worry. This is the way it must be. If you believe, Maha, you have to believe in it all.”

  The pale light of the moon half lit their faces. There were crackles throughout the forest, as branches thawed. Without speaking, Stanley asked Swooping Eagle to concentrate. To distill her thoughts. Her vision. It took a long time, and from the corner of his eye Stanley could see Maha crying and Kal clutching his accordion nervously. He whispered, across the circle, to Maha. “What’s happening?”

  Several minutes later, with a scream, Swooping Eagle fell in the slush. She lay silent for some time, then sat up and wiped her nose, which had begun to bleed. “When I was a kid, at my uncle’s farm, sometimes I’d grab the electric fence. That was worse. Or, I guess, better.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I’m tingling. It’s like I just sobered up, all of a sudden.”

  “Were you drinking?” said Kal.

  “Not at all.”

  Swooping Eagle was sober and Stanley was tired. When he blinked, his eyes wanted to stay closed. “Try something.”

  “Like what?”

  Kal closed his accordion. “What’s going on here?”

  Swooping Eagle took a few steps back and stretched her arms out, as though she wanted to make sure she wouldn’t hit anyone. Slowly she began to shine, brighter and brighter, a Vitruvian Woman, until Kal and Maha covered their eyes. Stanley asked her to say something.

  “It’s The Muppet Show,” she said, in a voice that rumbled so deeply a couple of car alarms went off on nearby streets, “with our very special guest star, Carol Burnett.”

  Stanley applauded. “Very prophetic.”

  The light faded and, a minute later, went out like an extinguished candle. An afterglow remained around her. “I’ll have to think of some more profound things to say.”

  “There’s climate change,” said Maha.

  “Bad viruses,” said Kal. “It was on TV.”

  “You’ll know exactly what to say and do, when the time comes.” Stanley took her hand in both of his and tried with all his strength to accept his words as the truth. “God chose me so I could choose you.”

  They walked back to the condominium complex together and, while they did, Swooping Eagle and Maha and Kal organized a meeting for the following day. A luncheon in the condominium, tabouli salad and cucumber sandwiches. No one wanted to acknowledge the fact that Stanley was leaving. They stood in another circle, in front of Swooping Eagle’s building, looking down at the melting snow and up at the stars.

  “Sure turned into a nice night,” said Kal.

  Stanley couldn’t bear to talk about the weather so he hugged Swooping Eagle. “Don’t do anything until you’re ready. Make sure you know exactly what The Stan should be. Don’t make the mistakes I made.”

  Swooping Eagle kissed him on the cheek. “I appreciate your trust in me, and I will not squander it. I’ll bring it all together, Stanley, all the gods and communities. Your ideas about the earth and ecological mythology, moral action–”

  “Maybe keep your clothes on, though. I’m not sure the world is quite ready for that.”

  “Note taken.”

  Stanley, Maha, and Kal walked slowly through the dark alleys. It was suddenly too cold for Stanley, without a winter jacket. Frieda came to him like a gust of wind and he laughed, clapped his hands. How could he have forgotten? Undone by the nervous silence, Kal scouted ahead, to see if the crowds were still in front of the motel. While he did, Maha wiped the tears from her eyes and hugged Stanley. “I’m so angry with you, for doing that.”

  “You have to help.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Promise me.”

  Maha’s tears wet Stanley’s neck. She rolled a melting snowball around with the toe of her boot. “What happens to you now?”

  “I go home to Frieda.”

  Kal returned, sliding around as he ran. “There’s only a couple of them, sitting with some candles and singing songs. I’ll protect you, Maha.”

  Instead of hugging Stanley, Kal insisted on playing a goodbye song. It was an instrumental, blending classical, tango, and continental melancholy. He shook Stanley’s hand.

  For the first time in months, a firm handshake actually hurt. Stanley watched them round the corner. He waved, but they didn’t turn around.

  It remained a clear night, crisp and quiet. He walked across the bridge and down Spray Avenue, leading to the Banff Springs Hotel. A fog rose up off the flats near the river. As a child, on camping trips with Kitty and his parents, he had wanted so badly to stay in this stone castle. Entering the imposing lobby, with its high rock ceilings and opulent chandeliers, Stanley realized he had never actually been inside the hotel. The uniformed concierge bowed faintly. There was no awe in his eyes. He said hello, just hello. He desired nothing from Stanley as he directed him toward the elevators.

  The room on the second floor was decorated with luxurious furniture. Charles, looking tired and dishevelled, was at his computer. He spoke into his small, black device. “I want us out of oil for the time being.”

  The greenhouse-style windows in the living room offered a view of the Bow Valley, faintly green in the moonlight. Stanley braced himself on the windows and looked out, noticing the sound and rhythm of his breaths, until Charles was off the phone.

  “Your grandfather, my dad, never could have imagined a hotel room like this.”

  Charles joined Stanley at the window. “Are you finished what you had to do here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How are you sleeping these days?”

  “Really well.”

  EIGHTY-ONE

  William and Rosa.

  Stanley recalled them during breakfast, as he dipped his final morsel of fried potato into salsa. He was on the verge of saying, aloud, that the Banff Springs Hotel was too sophisticated for mere ketchup, when they reinstated themselves. William grew up near Grande Prairie, the fourth son of a farmer, and Rosa was originally from Ottawa. A clerk’s daughter whose mother died of tuberculosis. William and Rosa met at a community picnic shortly after they finished school and entered into a long, cautious courtship. William became a carpenter and Rosa a French tutor for the rich children of Garneau.

  His sister, Kitty, whose hair was somewhere in-between blond and red. Pigtails. The three houses where they grew up, two on the north side of the river and one on the south. Skeleton Lake every weekend all summer, the gravel roads and bright-yellow canola fields and grasshoppers. The smell of the trees in the rain along the lake, walking with Kitty in their rubber boots and slickers. Birch woodsmoke rising out of the cabin. The funeral of his second sister at a funeral home in downtown Edmonton, next to the Masonic Hall. William and Rosa hiding their grief like an ugly secret.

  A server came around to pick up Stanley’s dirty plate. Charles had finished eating long ago. He stared at his father. On their way out of the hotel, they passed a
grand bouquet of flowers in the entrance hall. Stanley smelled them and, in a shock of delight that was almost painful, remembered each of their names. Stanley went through them, one by one, for Charles. Chinese aster, globe thistle, zinnia and gladiolus, scabious and hypericum, red hot poker, cockscomb, achillea, love-lies-bleeding.

  The rental car, a silver Mercedes sedan, was parked far from the hotel. It wasn’t a particularly long and difficult walk but Stanley’s lungs were aflame. He was dizzy. He leaned on the hood of a minivan and waited for his breath to come back.

  Charles was patient with him. “Should we stop at the hospital, on the way out?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Stanley sat back in the heated leather passenger seat. They crossed the bridge and he regarded the Chalet Du Bois longingly. He closed his eyes and treasured his regrets, as Charles took another phone call from New York.

  He remembered his affair with the customer, whose name was Heather. She was a divorced schoolteacher, ten years younger than him and of more generous proportions than Frieda. It went on for a long time, piteously long, and he endured a swampful of her tears and Frieda’s tears because he had been too cowardly to end it sooner.

  Once, when Charles was a baby, crying inconsolably of an afternoon, Stanley had screamed at him. Screamed at the baby, as loud as he could. “Leave us alone!”

  Not long before his father died, Stanley had wished his father would die.

  There was more.

  Charles, his mother’s son, chose the long mountain route of Highway 93 through Lake Louise and up the Icefields Parkway. “They say it’ll melt completely in my lifetime,” he said, as they passed the retreating glacier. “The rivers of the mid-continental plains will dry up. Alberta and Montana will be deserts. I’m investing accordingly.”

  “I’m so lucky I don’t have grandchildren.”

  “Ouch, Dad.”

  “It’s not too late.”

  “What will they drink, these grandchildren of yours, when the water is gone? What’ll they eat?”

  Stanley couldn’t tell if his son was being facetious. Ten years ago, the boy would have called this sort of talk left-wing nonsense. “Maybe the land won’t die. I’ve made certain arrangements.”