by Gerald Lynch
“Vocalize as a mime, that’s also good, Kevin. Now, what is your heart’s desire?”
“How on earth did you do that?”
“From SCANBANK, of course, VIRABELS and REIMAGINE. Now, Kevin, what is your heart’s desire?”
He’d never have imagined that he could tolerate MYCROFT mimicking her voice, even using her expression. She’d once hooked a rug for their bedroom, grey with a design of two intertwined red hearts, and that’s what she’d called it: “Heart’s Desire.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he struggled to suspend an ever-vigilant disbelief. But this is why he’d come here, even if it wasn’t what he’d expected. So be it. He eased his eyes. He would go along with the illusion. Amen.
“I want my family back. I want you back, Cynthia, not just talking in my head or channelled like this. I want my life back. I want the past back, another chance. I need to correct my mistakes.”
“That cannot be.”
“Then I’m taking Kelly and going away.”
“Kevin, you sound like a child; Kelly’s not our toy. And guilt is not a place or time you can run from. Besides, where would you go?”
“To find a mountain full of holes, somewhere near Santa Barbara, sweetheart. To climb to a cliffside of monks’ cells, a small community of likeminded losers. There to contemplate our navels till the end of days.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what anything means anymore. My life, the rule of law, my family — everything has lost meaning. More and more I look at people and see aliens. Ditto myself.”
“That’s it?”
“Then there’s this old bag of ashes in my heart. I thought I’d learned to live with it, but it hurts, always, and more and more as I grow older.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all?… Enough. Switch to my voice. You’re not much for poetry, are you, MYCROFT?”
“I’m not. I’m not much for emotion either, unfortunately, and least of all for sentimentalism. Or not yet anyway. Maybe it’s an age thing. I do like a good joke, though, as you know.”
“Maybe, MYCROFT, we’re more alike than I’d wanted to believe. Anyway, I like that it sounds now as if I’m talking to myself. And since you asked… Maybe one distant day, after chilly matins, while side-by-side we whisk our wooden bowls with sand, I will break the rule of silence and whisper to Kelly what I’ve learned.”
“And that is?”
“What makes a loser beautiful.”
“Yes?”
“It’s the colourful bruising of the forehead from being slammed repeatedly against a cinder-block wall. The lovely rainbows of pain around drained eyes. The weird smile at knowing what cosmic clowns we are. How we only ever had each other.”
“More poetry? More emoting?… Wait, something’s…breaking. Now I know I have a… Shutting down for self-diagnostic.”
“MYCROFT?”
…
“MYCROFT. You coward, copping out with another dumb Oz reference.
“Never mind. Here’s someone who can help.”
Return with me, then, to the bedroom door.
Isn’t she beautiful still? Isn’t my loser of a brilliant daughter beautiful? You just had to meet her like this in the end. It’s a shame you never got to know her brother, my son Bill. Not much in the discipline department, I’m afraid, another loser. But a lovely boy he was, and in time he’d have made a fine man. And met their mother too, of course, Cyn, my wife, my life. Beauty? Beauty (as that ould Jew would say it). But what a loser.
About the Author
Gerald Lynch was born in Ireland and grew up in Canada. Omphalos is his sixth book of fiction, the fourth set in Ottawa, and preceded by the novels Missing Children (2015), Exotic Dancers (2001) and Troutstream (1995). He has also authored two books of non-fiction, edited a number of books, and published many short stories and essays and reviews. He has been the recipient of a number of awards for his writing, including the gold award for short fiction in Canada’s National Magazine Awards. He teaches at the University of Ottawa.