by Méira Cook
Mostly, though, the last days of his life have been erased. He is a book with its final chapter torn out, a calendar missing a month, an autobiography whose writer has forgotten the end of the story. He presses his hand against his chest, as hard as he can, hoping to feel the iambic rhythm of his heart. But he feels nothing — no tremor, no beat, no flutter, no thump — until, all at once, his cheeks are wet. Max is weeping. He’s mourning the death of Max Binder. Did you happen to know him? A hopeful fellow, a fool.
As far as Max can tell, no one gives a damn about his untimely passing. Day after day, Maggie shines in her inscrutable anger, a matchstick, a flint striking sparks. That iridescent blue halo around her head. And his sons remain as inexplicable as ever. Lazar: toppling over, scrambling up, fighting and falling. A nervy kid in both senses of the word. And Sams? The wrong kind of nervy, the wrong kind of everything.
Max longs to stand and brush the snow from his trousers, walk up the path to the front door. This was once his house, these were the porch steps he pounded up and down, shovelled in winter, swept in fall, hosed down in spring, and on summer evenings lingered on with a Scotch in one hand and a can of Off in the other. Knowing when to sip and when to spray was his greatest challenge in those days, but one he accomplished with flair. Now he can’t even walk up the stairs, can’t yank at the screen door, can’t fit Lazar’s latchkey into the lock.
He hunches on the sidewalk with his big head in his big hands. Why does a ghost need a key? The ghosts in the books he’s read walk through walls, materialize as the spirit moves them and the occasion demands — Marley and Banquo and Beloved. That old tell-tale heart. Have all the books been lying? But it’s a theoretical question since Max Binder, late householder and current apparition, can neither dissolve into ether, nor glide through walls, nor magically open the front door of the house on Magnolia Street. It’s just one of the many things about being dead that remains a mystery, although a more grievous one than amnesia or hunger or his flamboyant problem with dogs.
Mourning his life, mourning his death. Max hunches on the sidewalk, aching. Maggie walks past, no longer in flames. She’s grown softer lately; a haze has settled over her. Sometimes she even sings to herself. Out of tune and out of time, but it’s a happy sound. Max catches a word or two before she fades out of earshot. Something something stars, something something eyes. Later Lazar comes flying out of the front door, hits the ground, scrambles up, his backpack yawning open, its burden of paper and wadded sums spilling like a careless and unimportant blizzard. Much later, Sams. Not walking on cracks Sams. Not lifting his head Sams. Not crossing the road until he’s counted three white cars Sams. (Max counts with him.)
In between are walkers who slouch or amble or stride past and occasionally through him, and dogs who snuffle at his fragrant ripeness, and Hariharan the mail carrier, chatting with Imee on the doorstep. One day his mother visits. She looks old and sad as she climbs out of her car, almost too weary to put one foot in front of the other. Max’s heart breaks. Oh, what has he done to his mother! He tries to put his arm around her and hug her close. When she ignores him he feels like a child again, abandoned. But a moment later, his mother yawns and Max yawns in response, a secret pact. Is it his imagination or does Minnie Binder straighten up as she walks down the front path? All around them, schoolchildren josh one another on the sidewalk, pushing and cavorting and butting horns in the rising sap of an unexpected thaw. Minnie Binder begins to hum.
Max sits and days pass. Ice floes melt, species become extinct, rainforests die, weather changes. Then it’s the afternoon. He sits through it all, hopelessly, because he’d like nothing better than to step over the threshold and into his house. Sigh gratefully and toe off his wet shoes. Undo his belt and release himself into the burly luxury of his recliner. Watch a little football, hockey. Whatever’s on. He was fussy once. Flicked through college basketball games and hooted at the curling championships. If only he could have it all again. Once more with feeling.
Early one evening Max is sitting on the sidewalk outside his old house, hawking up phlegm on account of having caught a chest cold. The unfairness of his predicament assails him. It’s bad enough to wake up every day, homeless and queasy with nerves, to find himself bereft of wife and sons, to be condemned to limp the slippery streets and thawing boulevards of a once-familiar city, to provide succor to every passing mongrel — but why all this and a fever too? Might as well be dead and buried, he thinks, sneezing convulsively.
Some time later, a silver Accord pulls up to the curb and idles, as if trying to make up its mind to stop or go, stay or flee. From where he slumps, Max can reach out a hand and stroke the old girl and then — why not? — does. He’s begun to notice that as the warm-blooded mammalian world recedes from him objects advance, shine their eerie inner lights, beckon him on. Automobiles and streetlights and parking meters flicker as he limps by, power lines and outdoor ice rinks throw off a chemical radiance. He waits at crosswalks while traffic lights cycle rapidly through their intervals. At the end of the street, in the neighbour’s front yard, a snowman glows weirdly as if it’s swallowed an incandescent bulb.
He touches the rumbling silver Accord. The car feels warm; there’s a spring and give beneath his palm, almost as he imagines a horse might feel, although God knows he’s never been anywhere near a horse. While he’s petting the flanks of the huffing automobile, a man emerges from the car. Ho, and not just any man either! It’s Shapiro, Maggie’s boss, that patriarchal son-of-a-bitch pissant.
Grinning from ear to ear, Max lumbers to his feet, his arms outstretched. He wants to grab Shapiro and hug him and shake him. He wants to tussle with him, and thank him for stopping by, and apologize for being such a stranger. He wants to fall upon his neck and weep, and he wants to wrestle him to the ground. He wants to kiss him on both cheeks, enfold him in a bear hug, feel the old so-and-so squirm in embarrassment. He wants to challenge him to an autographic piss-up in the snow, and he wants to pull the lazy bastard down on the sidewalk beside him, confide all his troubles then punch him on the shoulder. So okay, that’s life eh, what you gonna do?
Because death’s like that, he’s found. A seesaw with a fat man who keeps changing sides. An up-and-down proposition, a bit of a ragged ride.
Shapiro is looking sharp. An astrakhan coat, no less, and freshly shaven. A muffler, by God. He ambles around the side of his car, slouching as is his way, hands deep in his pockets. Without cutting Max a glance he walks right through him. An ill wind gusts up. The sort that blows nobody any good.
Hello, hello — somewhere behind Max a door slams shut and Maggie, in ankle boots and suede jacket, appears. Max, who has scrambled to his feet, blanches, ghost-like, at her transformed beauty. She’s cut her hair short and it sticks up around her head in beguiling, childish tufts. No more tumbling locks, no more quick-wristed yanks to skewer her hair in place. She looks shorn now, shriven. But the change in her is more than a haircut, although he’s hard pressed to say what it is. It’s not the toffee-coloured suede or the ankle boots. It’s not even the general air of cinch and strut, of denim stretched across well-rounded hips. Something has given way in her, some taut sinew of principled outrage. Her edges are hazy again, and she seems to be singing to herself, tuneless as ever.
“Well, if it isn’t Maggie the Cat!” Shapiro steps forward to open the passenger door, gallantly offering his arm to assist her over any icy puddles and roaring gutters and dead husbands that might waylay her progress. Maggie smiles as she walks down the path, singing. Max opens his arms and closes his eyes. When he opens them again she’s still smiling as she saunters toward her patriarchal son-of-a-bitch pissant boss. Max suddenly remembers what a pain in the ass he is.
But Maggie is nobody’s cat and merely steps straight through Max, her erstwhile husband. She strides across the sidewalk, over the roaring gutter, and into Shapiro’s arms, allowing him to bury his nose briefly in her hair before shaking him off and climbing into the c
ar. Shapiro has a goofy look on his face, a helpless grin. Uh-oh. Max recognizes the look of a man whose fondness has snuck up on him. Good luck to you, pal, he thinks, but he is pierced with helpless rage.
Shapiro waits for Max’s widow to arrange herself in the passenger seat before easing her door shut, striding around to the driver’s side, and gunning the engine.
“Wait!” yells Max, stepping forward, shoving one inadequately shod foot into the gutter. But he is too late. The patriarchal son-of-a-bitch pissant lays rubber to road and the silver Accord peels from the curb. Max feels the shock of the icy water travel all the way up his leg to lodge painfully in his knee.
He returns his head to his hands, his elbows to his knees, hunches his shoulders about his ears. Gingerly, he takes a shallow breath but it still hurts too much and he decides not to take another. Maggie is leaving him, he realizes. First the flames died down; then she began to waver and break up. Lately he can barely make out her features although the soundtrack is still clear. The click of heels on sidewalk and a snatch of song in the distance. Something something stars, something something eyes. With a start, Max realizes that the pain in his heart is easing. He too is thawing out.
So deep in thought is he that he barely notices that someone has settled down beside him. Then someone taps on his forearm to get his attention and when that doesn’t work, sits drumming idly and irritatingly, until he glances up.
“Buy you a drink, Mr. Macks?” says Pat Ngunga, sliding a hand over her thick braid.
Pat’s hair has grown since he last saw her, and now it’s a knotted rope, the sort of rope a man might climb in his dreams, intricate and shiny. Max notices that his old friend is beginning to fade at the edges and glow in the middle. Her silver backing is coming loose and it shines through her pinholes (eyes, the holes in her earlobes, the pores of her skin).
Surprisingly, she is holding out a thermos flask.
“Well?” she asks again. “Do you have a hanker?”
He shakes his head. Right now he’d love a hot drink, but he hasn’t tasted one since he died. Death has rendered him invisible to vendors and baristas, incapable of making his wishes heard or his thirst convincing.
Apparently, Pat has no such problem. She extracts her flask and unscrews the top. Max smells the slightly burnt, bitter aroma of fresh coffee. He gazes at the steaming liquid with deep suspicion. Suddenly he remembers that Sams once offered him a cup of coffee. How long ago that was!
“Don’t be dubious,” Pat tells him. “Believe.”
Her words, shining and cursive, unfurl from her silver-backed mouth. Believe, believe, believe.
She puts the open thermos flask to her mouth and tilts. Mmm, she sighs, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and making a your turn face at Max. He takes a deep breath, tilts and sips, summons belief. Coffee dribbles from the thermos in a thin, miserly stream. But a start, by George! It’s the first drink he’s taken since dying, and hunger roots around in his belly. Well, well.
Immediately, the smell of rot that’s come and gone throughout the day, wafting dogs his way and chasing more fastidious creatures out of it, rises unmistakably. Is he at last resolving to a dew, running like overripe cheese, liquefying from the marrow in his bones to the gel in his eye sockets?
“It’s coming from your coat, Mr. Macks.” Pat points to his pocket.
He yanks off his coat and turns it upside down, shaking, shaking. Dust and more dust, lint, a handful of worn-down pencil stubs. A ketchup-stained handkerchief and a latchkey. But nothing to explain the stench. Oh God. He shoves his hand into his coat pocket, wriggling his fingers through the torn lining. His fingers sink to their joints into something so soft that it almost falls apart at his touch. It is — Max is certain of it — his rot. The ghastly liquid beginning of his descent into effluent and worm shit. But Pat is still waiting, tapping her fingers, so he yanks and pulls and scrabbles to divest himself of his rotten, runny core. Something — what? what? — finally detaches itself from his coat lining. A sort of oozing lump.
Beneath its furry spores and green mohair sweater, the lump turns out to be a fast food burger.
Distantly, Max remembers pocketing the burger at a long ago drive-thru window. The wrapper, which is still intact, is the only thing preventing it from dissolving into the mush of its constituent parts: bun mangy with mustard and ketchup, the guttery stink of decomposing meat. He gazes helplessly around him, trying to calculate how the reek of his ghostly burger has penetrated the mortal world. He remembers the rising odour of his days. How dogs snuffled at him, at first in joy and then, stiff legged and flailing, skittered sideways at his approach. Finally Pat, her patience fled, pulls him upright.
“Time to bury your dead, Mr. Macks,” she tells him. She’s been disappearing all the while they’ve been sitting on the sidewalk, flickering and dimming as if one of her wires has come loose. Now, when he turns to look at her he can only make out a concentrated glow like a light bulb before it burns out.
Max watches her burn, the smell of sulphur-tipped filament in the air.
“Come on, Mr. Macks,” says Pat. “I know a place.”
* * *
It takes forever, but they get there: Max limping, Pat padding silently beside him. Together they follow their breath through the night. As they go Max sings to himself: Something something stars, something something eyes. Pat joins in on the chorus, her voice melodic and deep. Something something moon, something something heart. The singing seems to bring her back into focus, back into her jacket, her skin, her shivering girlhood. Max takes her cold hand.
They make their way through neighbourhoods and suburbs and new housing developments, beside schoolyards and hospitals and shopping centres, between office blocks and strip malls and tract housing, past warehouses and storage lockers and industrial sprawl, alongside trailer parks and rivers and railway tracks, over golf courses and bridges and exhibition grounds, across cemeteries and soccer fields and garbage dumps, until eventually they leave the city limits and hit the highway. It takes forever, but presumably forever is what they have.
Then they’re stumbling along on the edge of the highway. Stars, moon, eyes, heart. Pat and Max, Max and Pat, go their footsteps. Pat, Max, Max, Pat, pitter pat, pitter pat. The moon swings across the sky in a high arc and the Joliecoeur Motor Hotel rises up out of the darkness, its blue neon sign still flickering “Vacancy/No Vacancy.”
“Here?” asks Pat. Well, why not.
In the neon-buzzing darkness, in a ravine by the side of the road, in a shallow grave scooped out of the snow with a plastic set of cutlery from some motorist’s discarded takeout meal, Max buries his burger. Rest in peace. He stands, head bowed, blue light flashing across his face as he listens to the Doppler effect of automobiles and semi-trailers.
Why is it so easy for everything else to die? Max thinks of the burger disintegrating serenely in the sweet earth. Perhaps it’s a sign of how low he’s sunk that he doesn’t feel foolish standing and gawping up at the moon. Once he would’ve had to be good and drunk, past gregarious, overfond, lugubrious, melancholy, addled, and raving to linger there, his face turned like a satellite to the sky as if trying to pick up signals from a cold but necessary planet.
He is suddenly so lonely he could die. He draws Pat down to the shoulder of the highway.
“Won’t be long now,” she promises.
He sits with his elbows on his knees and his fists bolstering his chin. He’d like to know who’s in charge of this tedious second death of his. Is there someone he can speak to? Pat broods in silence beside him, drumming her fingers on the cold highway blacktop.
“Goodbye, Mr. Macks,” she says. “It’s time.”
After a moment, Max too dims then goes out. But the blue neon sign above him flickers on and on, caught forever between hospitality and the untenanted places of the soul.
Notes
On page 5
the poem quoted is Rilke’s “First Elegy” from Duino Elegies, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
The Russian phrases on pages 53 and 67 are from Dostoyevsky’s “White Nights” and Crime and Punishment respectively.
On page 178 Milt recites from Milton’s Samson Agonistes and on page 350 Maggie refers to Kafka’s famous readerly instruction from his letter to Oskar Pollak (November 8, 1903).
The installation of trees hung with dead rabbits that Sams glimpses during Nuit Blanche is a reference to Diana Thorneycroft’s 1999 art exhibition, Monstrance.
Although many movies flicker through this novel I’ve made particular allusion to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, directed by Jacques Demy and Big Night, directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci.
Binders Unbound: A Playlist
“Get in Line” by Ron Sexsmith
“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles
“The Ambient Air” by Louise Talma
“Heart and Soul” by Hoagy Carmichael
“Roll on Down the Highway” by Bachman Turner Overdrive
“Red River Jig” by Reg Bouvette
“Which Way Is Home” by Johnny Reid
“Fairytale” by Cowboy Junkies
“Harvest Moon” by Neil Young
“Louie Louie” by The Kingsmen
“January Girls” by Lord Kitchener
“Xmas in February” by Lou Reed
“April Love” by Pat Boone
“Maggie May” by Rod Stewart
“Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell
“Hey There” by Rosemary Clooney
“I Fought the Law” by The Clash
“Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana
“Zog Nit Keyn Mol (Partisan Song),” by Chava Alberstein
“Jerk” by Kim Stockwood
“Pavlov’s Dog XM” (in-store music for retail zoning)