Life on Mars

by Lori McNulty

  Sheryl gently kisses my knees, works her way up my hips, then along the length of my scar, a rubbery ten-inch exclamation point blemishing my breastbone. Her soft tongue tickles the scar’s raised edge, running all the way up my throat. Then her wet mouth circles the small round point at the top of my scar. And I close my eyes, remembering our first time, how her tongue tested the tip of my penis in her bedroom. That slow, delirious ache when her lips slipped over my hard bone, taking me in. How I moaned, as her mouth quivered above my chest.

  It’s the drugs, Sheryl says, when I go limp right away. You’re not in control of yourself right now. How can I tell her that I’m afraid the rush will leave me slumped like some dead seal. She looks me in the eyes. Gently, she presses her hands on either side of my rib cage, tries to hold the world together for me. She wants to close what’s been open too long. How can I tell her? That our heart isn’t two clenched fists, but a tunnel. There are no sealed chambers. Only exits.

  You’re a drowning man, I tell Aardvark when he shows up at my house with a six-pack and a wry smile. He says, Enough is enough, that Sheryl says I’m recovering very well. Well enough to hit the pubs with him while she is at her conference, and he throws his arm over my shoulder in the Benz. We pick a dark booth and watch Detroit choke on a three to one series lead. Aardvark orders a third round of his favourite single malt and it lands next to my fizzy drink. He grimaces then slides his tumbler across the table. Alcohol and recovery don’t mix, I say, pushing the glass back at him. Look, it’s been four months, he insists, you deserve to loosen up. Christ, I almost lost you. And this I don’t expect, DG. Because Aardvark looks away, doesn’t even pretend that he’s busted up over Detroit. He wipes his eyes with a napkin and covers it with a bad joke.

  But it’s not long before he’s glancing over my shoulder at two young women laughing in another booth. You take the brunette, he winks at me. Isn’t Sheryl at her conference for a few more days? Sheryl’s been through the worst with me, I tell him, frowning. Aardvark lifts his glass to the ladies, who glance over at him, a look of pity and boredom crossing their faces. Aardvark leans forward, whispers, Just tell them that you’ve got a new ticker, they’ll be fighting over who gets to bang you first. I watch him a long time while he glances up at the TV, thinking I can’t help you conquer Germany. She’s gone. We’re gone, Aardvark. Neither one of us is coming back. But his gaze is restless, his eye on the sure thing.

  When the waitress returns to ask us how we’re all doing, she doesn’t ask how you’re doing, DG, but I know.

  I know the girl who first took your breath away. Feel the flutter in my chest, that delicious twinge the moment you wrapped your arms around her. You thought she could save you. You felt her rapture in your dreams. And then the moment your life fell apart, sent you tumbling in the wrong direction, the young man’s free fall into the inscrutable darkness. No one ever told you that the end of the world comes many times in one life. And that knowing it doesn’t make things any easier. Your cry catches in my throat at night, keeps haunting my dreams. Teamed on this inexplicable ride, who would have guessed we were the perfect match?

  Two more flights of stairs without a weak-knee dive, and I’m ready to lay back and take it like a man. When Sheryl is on top and we are going at it — I mean in a sticky trance, hot and heavy — right in the middle of things, she rolls off and falls onto her side. Her worried eyes scan my chest. What if you’re not quite ready? she says, patting my breastbone. In my fantasy, I flip her over, show her what it’s like to cheat death from behind. In reality, her mouth moves, my cock aches, but I can’t feel a thing. Like there’s a numb barrier between us. How can I tell her what you’ve become? That there’s a space between her lust and mine. How could she possibly know? That she’s sharing her love with a wreck of a man who couldn’t see straight when his life hit a curve.

  Am I running out of time to ask? What comes after death? Resurrection? The old-fashioned Jesus walk? Don’t rise too high, you’ll fall too hard. Life is all tiptoe and timing. It’s like you’re the runner on first base, trying to get a jump on the pitch, DG. Poised for the windup on his mound, the pitcher glances over, keeps you in his sight. He stops, fakes a toss to first, driving you back to the bag. You shake your arms out, step off first again, do a little sideways dance on the balls of your feet. Cheat a bit when you see the pitcher’s foot slip from the rubber again, keen eye, delicate, delicate. Go — before the pitch even reaches home plate. The catcher throws off his mask, launches a laser to second. You do a bent-leg slide, try to clip the base with your heel, but the catcher’s tag is clean. You’re caught stealing.

  I should have known there would be trouble. Me wheezing my way through the past decade, knowing last call was going off in my ears. Then a long, floating slide in the ICU, before the brilliant resurrection. Now this constant frrrrip, frrrip, frrrriip in my ear. Your mitral valve when it closes at night. And all the closings and contractions and endings, DG. The surgeons think they fucking saved me. You’re the only one who knows we both made it out alive.

  No one asks anymore. But if they did I’d tell them. Imagine lying in a room so bright you have to shield your eyes as an orb grows broad against your chest. Feel a prick at your neck, the fluids floating through machines that bleep and whir, pump and click. As you lie there, spread open, a nurse asks you your name, while a masked man snuffs out light. They’re all preparing to stop your heart. So don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t sway left or right as the steel clamp splits you open, tearing your breastbone apart. The machines are vampires draining you of fluids, while your life hangs between scalpel, steel, and wire.

  And as you rise, hover halfway between life and death, the blood pumping so fast to your cavern core, it’s a rush so sweet, so warm, at first you fail to notice the figure. His face floats before you. He’s the man who went away, who left without saying goodbye. He rises with me off the table, his sweat clings to my cheeks. No one else is coming, he says. Whatever happens now, it happens to us.

  The play-by-play commentary on my first night back in the arena might go something like this: sick man collapses forward in his hockey-arena seat, his lap stained with beer. The painted-face patrons drop their signs. A nearby security guard radios for help, thinking the fan may have scarfed back a few too many cold ones. The man collapses on his side, making a mad clutch for his chest. His eyes are dilated. Fans howl into their cellphones. Punch out 911. The security radio crackles. Row forty-two, seat five, section F. Yes, it’s an emergency, the hapless security guard screams into his walkie-talkie. Don’t move him, the voice crackles back. Better meet the ambulance at the gate.

  A woman, let’s call her Sheryl, stands over the prostrate man, screaming at the pressing crowds, Don’t touch him, give him room, he’s got a heart condition. Two more security guards try to settle startled fans back into their seats, but no one is moving. Help is on the way, one of them says to Sheryl, reassuringly. A few minutes later, in section F, the stands fall silent. Hands over mouths, no one following the score anymore. The paramedics arrive, say, Stand back, we’ll take it from here. The man’s vitals are checked. He is loaded onto a stretcher, carted away with haste.

  Outside, the paramedics do not hit the siren in the ambulance cab, do not flood the street with blue strobes, scattering traffic. Do not sprint through sliding doors, past the monitors, the crash carts, behind curtained rooms. Sheryl does not see my hand reaching out for hers, my fingers twitch for the last time under the stretcher sheets.

  Or maybe the incident is four years from today.

  DG, can you see all that’s crowding in my head? The fool who breaks down at parties. The prick sports writer so busy covering all the angles he doesn’t even understand his own story. Our lungs puff and screech, DG, still the heart calls all the shots. Fills with red courage, swells with false pride. Our vessels are open wide. Can’t keep this beat much longer.

  Your pain flutters in my breastbone tonight, a fast beat, then a murmur rises from the back of
my throat, the sound of a man slipping away.

  Please. Tell me.

  Did you feel your heart pound like a rocket ride on that sharp highway curve? Did you hear death knocking hard against your steel chamber, envision an end more divine than dawn? Did you hear a sound like a shot when the impact came? Did you crawl out from that crumpled cave, or sail through broken shards, your shattered face turning stone to blood?

  Where is our road show now?

  Let’s go back to the Pole People. To wander with them through the halls, in search of the last gasp of life we know, not to cry with the living. Maybe you and I, we can take it on the road. Map out some new destiny, piss our dreams to the wind. Like in those showdown at sundown road movies with hard shadows and dark, poetic twists. We’ll crank up the brooding mood music. Someone will quote Shakespeare or Kerouac or Mad Max. Something about love’s impediments, about blindness, about pain. We’ll travel all the way to the end of the earth on just one last breath.

  So, where do we go from here?

  Acknowledgements

  My enduring and heartfelt thanks to the following people:

  Zsuzsi Gartner’s remarkable devotion to these stories as an editor and early reader is a gift for which no words of gratitude here can equal. She is the greatest champion of storytelling and authors I know. Thank you, ZZ.

  My agent, Samantha Haywood, has been a fierce, funny, and indomitable literary champion throughout this process. I want to thank her, as well as the wonderful Stephanie Sinclair of Transatlantic Agency.

  Thank you to the superb team at Goose Lane Editions: Susanne Alexander, publisher; Julie Scriver, creative director; Martin Ainsley, production editor. Your commitment to this book, and to independent publishing, makes me proud to be part of the GLE family.

  Embarking on this adventure without the piercing intelligence and deliciously dark humour of my editor, Bethany Gibson, seems unimaginable. She helped me steer a ship with a crooked mast through a choppy sea and find its true course. B-Town, thank you.

  Paula Sarson brought to this collection an open heart and critical eye that enabled me to enter the work with fresh insight. Working with such a perceptive and precise copyeditor has been a pure delight.

  My friends and family have been kind and enthusiastic cheerleaders. For their support and strength over the years, many thanks to Lisa McNulty, Maureen, Kelsie, and Sam Phelan and to George, Pat, and Christina Larsen. The wisdom and experience of Rupi Sidhu also pervades these pages. Many of these stories were first published in Canadian literary magazines. “Monsoon Season” appeared in Descant; “WOOF” in the New Quarterly; “Fingernecklace” in PRISM; “Ticker” in the Fiddlehead; and “Battle of the Bow” in the Dalhousie Review.

  Thanks also to the judges of the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for including “Monsoon Season” and “Fingernecklace” in that esteemed anthology. “If on a Winter’s Night a Badger” pays homage to the inspired wit and boldness of Italo Calvino and to his great novel If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler.

  Finally, Kim Larsen was the first to read and edit these pages, often enduring the angst and uneven temperament of the author. Her brilliant ability to find the still and silent in life and language continues to astonish me. She lends grace to wisdom and is the reason I write.

  Lori McNulty was born in Ottawa, Ontario. Her work has appeared in the Fiddlehead, the New Quarterly, PRISM international, the Dalhousie Review, Descant, and the Globe and Mail, as well as a number of anthologies. She has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize, making the shortlist in 2014 for her story “Monsoon Season.” She has also been a finalist for the CBC Short Story Prize, the CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize, and the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. A global traveller and digital storyteller, she now resides in Vancouver.