Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good

by John Gould

  “Yes, wife,” says Kate. “Hi, Paul.”

  “Hey,” says Paul, looking her dead in the eye the way kids do these days. He sports a decent array of hardware, the umgirl’d be impressed. A couple of earrings, a single rivet through his left eyebrow, and a tiny ball—it might be a bead of drool—in the middle of his lower lip.

  “Great to meet you, Paul,” says Matt, offering the lad his hand. And what if he were a McKay? In one of Kate’s parallel universes, what if this kid were to call Matt Dad? He’d be even taller, for one thing, and stringier. Stranger too, fraught or fucked up in some barely detectable way. Yeah, so maybe it’s just as well. Maybe Matt just needs a better rationale, a better explanation for why he’s ended up forsaking fatherhood. Maybe he just needs something a little more impressive to have forsaken it for.

  “No, no kids yet,” Kate’s saying—Charlotte must have come right out and asked. “But that may change any day now, eh, honey?”

  Matt has a go at the jovial-hubby thing. He leers, aims a slap at her rump. “You betcha, babe.”

  And look—Charlotte, still the sweetheart, believes.

  MONDAY

  Dear Zane,

  REASON NOT TO BE GOOD #4

  Virtue is a tool of social and political domination, the means by which the powerful teach the weak to love their weakness. Virtue is collaboration with the oppressors, and collaboration with the oppressors is a vice. Virtue is vice.

  So grow up.

  Matt

  “Afternoon, sir.”

  “Afternoon, um, Albert. Really, it’s afternoon already?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Oh dear. The Danforth please.”

  It’s gotta be safe by now. Matt’s got a new symptom today—a dull pain in the centre of his chest—but that’ll just be tension. Or maybe it’s his heart, but who cares? He’ll die (two hours he’s been famous and it’s about to finish him off!), but he won’t kill anybody.

  No, it’d take a greater hypochondriac than Matt, it’d take a truly world-class hypochondriac to convince himself he’s infectious today. What was that old joke of Zane’s? This month’s meeting of Procrastinators Anonymous has been postponed indefinitely, hardy har. Zane, who couldn’t procrastinate to save his life.

  The plan is to drop in and stun the guy, then retreat to the hotel for one last night with Kate.

  Matt executes a few kapalbhatis, a few Cleansing Breaths. He’s never done one before—he never got this fancy during his enlightenment phase back in high school—but what the heck. He’s watched Anirvachaniya often enough, how hard can it be? Deep inhalation, hold it in for a jiff and then, lips pursed, blow it out in a series of sudden blasts. It feels good, eases the ache in his chest and gives him a bit of a head rush. Then, “Hey, Toronto’s an Indian word, isn’t it, Albert?”

  “Could be, sir.”

  “Not Indian Indian, but you know. The folks who were here first.”

  “Could be.”

  “Mohawk, I think. I can’t remember what it means. Place of No-Breath. But yeah, there was probably air back then.”

  Albert nods as though in appreciation of some grave profundity. He can’t nod far, though, before his chins start to pile up on the rugged plateau of his chest. Albert is big. Albert is enormous. Fat Albert, how many times must he have heard that when he was a kid, the Bill Cosby routine?

  “Three twenty,” says Albert.

  “Beg pardon?”

  “That’s what I weigh, three twenty. You were wondering.”

  “I … No, I really wasn’t. Albert.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He meets Matt’s eye in the rearview. “When a guy gawks at me I just figure.” He’s gunning it now, getting up to speed to join the lunacy of the 401, which is weirdly freewheeling at the moment. “Unless maybe you fancy me, is that it?” Something English about the accent, or anyway about the usage, fancy for desire. Friday there was Jatinder, then yesterday Eddy from Jamaica, Shan from Sri Lanka. Only newcomers know their way around, is that it?

  The city. Here it comes again. From where he sits Matt can see only Albert, but he knows they’re out there, the other five million souls, cocooned in their cars, cordwooded behind concrete and reflective glass. Matt’s of the view that human beings are hard-wired for tribal life—a few dozen cousins all speaking the same tongue, thinking the same animistic thoughts. Which explains the panic attack, the prolonged collective freak-out that is city life. We just aren’t meant for this. But then shouldn’t Matt crave the very life he’s resisting, communal, close to the land? Shouldn’t he cling to the life he’s losing?

  “Fancy?” says Matt. “Fancy, no. No, I was just thinking.”

  “Thinking, oh,” says Albert. “That’s different, innit.”

  This concludes their confab. Matt sits silently, managing his gaze and endeavouring not to think anymore. If only he had his cello with him on this trip, that’d settle him down. He adores the feel of it between his thighs—sexual if you’re a woman, surely, and if you’re not a woman what? It’s Erin’s cello, Matt’s main memento, sprung from the shrine her bedroom became after her death. Erin, too, was talentless at the cello, never got much beyond “Hot Cross Buns,” “Twinkle Twinkle.” This is crucial to Matt, to celebrate what was mediocre about his startling sister, what was run-of-the-mill.

  Matt’s own forte is the Bach Suites for Solo Cello. Okay, the first suite of the Bach Suites for Solo Cello. Okay, the prelude of the first suite of the Bach Suites for Solo Cello. Okay, the opening few bars of the prelude of the first suite of the Bach Suites for Solo Cello … It’s a series of chords fanned out into their separate notes—you get this rocking-horse thing going, simultaneous motion and stillness. Time moves and stands still at the same time. Matt grinds it out over and over again pretty much daily. He swoons, he sways, he grimaces with emotive agony—if he had any gift at all he’d be a genius, right up there with the Yo-Yos of this world. Plus the Sibelius, the cello part of his Fourth Symphony, that long swelling solo passage at the start. Sibelius, so say the liner notes, had already suffered a bout of throat cancer when he composed the thing. The cancer was gone, but was it gone for keeps?

  Matt scowls. He’s watched one person decide to die, is he game for another? Erin died of a disease, sure, but only in the sense that a free choice can be a symptom. It still had a new-word smell to it back then: anorexia. You whispered it, you wondered what it meant. What it meant was nothing. This is what his sister died of: she died of nothing. “I ate earlier. My stomach’s upset, some kind of flu I think.” Once she started saying no she never stopped. Starvation became beautiful to her, beautiful in the way a bottle is to a dipso, a price-tagged trinket is to a klepto. Beautiful in the way food is to a guy like Fat Albert. Sustenance was there for Erin, delicacies delivered to her like oblations, in the end, like gifts to the gods. Maybe if there hadn’t been so much of everything she’d have wanted more.

  Matt could scream. What if he just screamed?

  Cheese slices. “Cheese” slices, orange slabs of something synthetic individually wrapped in plastic—these had always been Erin’s favourite, so Matt brought a packet with him whenever he visited her in her rented digs downtown. Plus eggs and bananas and broccoli, because he’d heard they were perfect foods. Plus pizza, because you could put everything on it and make it a perfect food. Erin would arrange these offerings on a platter and poke at them for a while, Matt pretending not to notice or care. The only thing more painful than watching her not eat was watching the pantomime she put on for his benefit. Eventually he’d break down and eat the gifts himself. Erin would sit on the floor and play with Bell, the stray cat she’d taken in and named after Marilyn Bell, a schoolgirl who’d made history by swimming the frigid expanse of Lake Ontario. The perfect idol for Erin, a kid who’d gone ahead and done what was perfectly impossible.

  Until the end, until Erin’s system actually collapsed and her heart quit pumping blood, none of them—not even Erin, Matt suspects—believed it was death she was choosing.
She was choosing power. She was choosing perfection. She was choosing to inflict pain on herself so’s not to be, any longer, its passive recipient. Or whatever. Oblivion is only a turn-on as long as it’s beyond you—such is Matt’s conviction. He too craved it for a little while there, until it occurred to him that he could have it. You couldn’t keep wanting it after that, could you? The desire for death must always be a mistake, surely, a misunderstanding.

  When Zane goes it’ll be because he, too, has refused to ingest something that could save him. Refused it because it’s there …

  Matt screams. Matt stops himself from screaming. He does both at once—the result is a strangled groan, the kind of complaint a client of Mercedes might register without slipping his gag.

  “Sir?” says Albert.

  “Yeah, sorry. Change of plan.” Chest pain, who knows what that might be? Pneumonia? TB?

  Albert tilts his head in interrogation.

  “Yonge Street,” says Matt. “Around the cemetery, Mount Pleasant?”

  “You’re the boss.” Smartass.

  “Okay, so where is everything?”

  When Matt finally stirred this morning his message light was already blinking. Sardonically, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  “Less than one percent of the stuff in the universe is actually visible, so where’s everything else? Huh?” How can Kate possibly sound so chipper first thing? She kicked him off the elevator at his own floor latish last night, pleading an early morning—she had to get up and prep for her presentation, her big performance at the conference today. “What’s everything else? ‘Dark matter’ they call it, but I mean what’s that? It’s supposed to be mostly WIMPs—weakly interacting massive particles, you knew that, right?—but what’s it doing? What invisible ways is it bending us? I’ll be done five-ish, wish me luck.”

  It’s all so cutely metaphorical. Is that how the geniuses decide, how they settle on one theory over another? They just take the one that’s most conducive to lightweight psychologizing? All the stuff that’s dictating your true direction in life is hidden from you, deep, deep. Or maybe it’s God, maybe God himself rigged the universe this way so it’d feed folks a cute little image or aphorism now and then, a twinkly mnemonic.

  Wimp?

  “Okay, smarty-pants. You want deep? What were the names of the two countries in Duck Soup, Groucho’s and the other one?” And he clunked it down hard.

  “Rolex Cheap!!!” Then “Nigerian foreign minister needs your assistance,” that old chestnut. “Freaky Asian Sluts!!!” And finally Mariko. Matt lashed his robe more tightly about himself, treating himself to a gust of bleachy clean.

  i met the couple yesterday, they were still taking measurements when i got back. they seem nice. middle-aged or maybe it’s us that’s middle-aged and they’re old?

  oh and by the way, ashram? shanti m

  The bizarre thing is that selling the house was Matt’s idea. It wasn’t an idea he ever actually entertained—he spoke it impromptu that night because it’s what a person would say in such a situation, because the scene itself seemed to call for it. Mariko had just delivered her news. They were in the bedroom on their usual sides of the bed, both freshly pajama-ed and flipping down the duvet. Cary Grant and somebody, Irene Dunne? My Favorite Wife. Neither of them had said anything definitive yet. Was this a bump on the road they’d been travelling together or was it a fork, you go your way and I’ll go mine? Infidelity could be spun either way. Which way would they choose?

  This question hadn’t been asked let alone answered, yet Matt distinctly heard himself say, “So, we’ll sell the Lair.” The idea, presumably, was that Mariko would protest, plead for a little time to sort out her feelings, earn back his trust. Matt would grimly relent and they’d hit the sack for a session of restorative sex made extra rambunctious by Sophie’s phantom presence between them. But no. Mariko numbly nodded, said nothing. Maybe she felt she hadn’t the right? Matt gathered up his bedside movie magazine and his pillow (his pillow?) and made his way with as much aplomb as possible down the hall to his study, where he and Toto have been crashing ever since.

  Dear Mariko,

  Middle age (that’s me, but not you yet), sex and death mixed one to one. What happens in middle age is you realize things can all of a sudden be gone. There’s nothing that can’t be whisked away from you, your meaning, your mind, your favourite mug, so there’s no point getting all grabby. You think you’ve always known this and then one day you realize no, you’ve never known it, but you know it now and it’s too late ever to unknow it.

  Spooky, how a way with words can be dolled up to look like wisdom.

  Oh, and one other thing about middle age. As your parents die off it feels like you that’s done for. Jaak and Hoshi, hold them close.

  Matt signed off, clicked Send. He was just about ready to quit when another message from Mariko bleeped in.

  omg, you’re famous!!! the sun ran a piece about your craziness this morning and i’ve just had three calls from people to interview you. fame!!!!!!!! what do you want me to say? what will you say? you could probably parly? parley? parlay? god my spelling sucks this into something if you wanted to. time to make a movie?

  hey, are you at zane’s yet? have you seen him? i think you’re a great friend for going and trying to talk him out of this. here’s something to think about though, would you ever just give him your blessing? you love him for being the kind of man who’d do something like this, is it okay to ask him not to be that man?

  make that four calls!!!! shanti m

  Fame?

  Matt’s often fantasized about bringing out a collection of his kritikal pieces. The way the big shots do it, the New Yorker types, Kael, Rafferty, Lane. When it appears in Omega his stuff’s still mired in time. It’s occasional in the worst possible sense—people run an eye over it, then shred it for the hamster cage. In a book, though? He’d suddenly transcend the temporal realm, join the eternal hubbub of the greats.

  And maybe now’s the time. Maybe he really could parly parley parlay this into something. Maybe, with a little management from the wizardly Mariko, he could drum up enough notoriety to get such a thing read. People would finally get it, and the world would be redeemed.

  Dear Mariko,

  What I’m supposed to say is that I’ve been suffering personal problems, that I have personal issues, and that I’m in therapy. That’s what Jayson Blair said when he got caught by the NY Times plagiarizing and fabricating sources. That’s what Stephen Glass said when he got caught by the New Republic making tons of crazy shit up. Personal problems, that’s what drives us writers to do these things. Did you not know this? Self-hatred, unhappiness at home (nothing personal). Hey, Glass has a novel out, six figures apparently, and there’s a movie due out soon. If Harper-Collins calls, or Miramax, definitely take a message.

  I’ve seen Zane yeah, but only from a distance. I’m heading to his place now. Give Toto a scruffle and a tug on the tail for me, wouldja? M

  Then he hit the loo—making do with the gigantic shower and its myriad misting nozzles—and just generally girded himself for the coming encounter.

  Without Matt telling him to, Albert takes the route past the Dadinator’s place. Matt considers getting him to stop, but no. He’ll give the old guy one more day.

  How’s the job, son?

  Just got sacked, I’m the talk of the town.

  How’s the homestead?

  It’s on the auction block.

  How’s the little woman?

  She’s having girl-sex with some funky young barista.

  Any sign of my grandkids?

  Dream on.

  Matt hates breaking bad news. It’s generally a woman who’s had to break bad news to him. “You’re such a great guy, Matt. You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re kind. If you just … Well anyway, you’ll find somebody.” And that’s the way he likes it. He hates to think of Zane, all the news he’s had to break. Mum? Dad? I’m an artist. Mum? Dad? I’m gay. Mum? Dad? I’m gettin
g married—and she’s queer too. Mum? Dad? I’m positive. No, I mean I’m positive …

  Zane tries each revelation out on Matt first, kind of a dry run. There was the HIV thing, that day on Max Sweet’s grave. There was the marrying Mercedes thing, done over a swanky candlelit dinner, Zane’s treat. Matt felt as though he were being proposed to that night—he kept expecting some sombrero-ed guy with a guitar to pop out and serenade him, Zane down on one knee with a velvety ring-box, Make me the happiest man in the world. And way back when, the poofter thing. Zane sprang that one in Morocco, at the end of their Europe tour together. “What if one of us were gay?” And in no time he was gone, pressing on alone far deeper into Africa.

  Albert swings past Charlotte’s mum’s place (all quiet, no car in the drive) and drops Matt across from the old chez Levin, Zane’s old …

  Oops. It’s gone. Zane’s family’s place was a lean semidetached, not so different from his new one. The two halves of the semi have been replaced now by a single monstrosity, Greek in inspiration. Doric columns, the works. Hideous, hilarious.

  Matt’s house? He turns and sets out. It’s five minutes, south and through the park. En route he roots out his cellphone. Just as good as being there, it’s words that’ll change the man’s mind anyhow. Unless of course he needs roughing up, but that can wait.

  “Yyyello?”

  Thank Christ. “Is it just suicide?” says Matt. “I mean is it that simple, are you just killing yourself? Nothing to do with holiness or have-nots or any of that hooey?” He shuffles to a standstill mid-park, hard by the old swing set. These are the very swings to which he and Erin used to repair to agonize about their folks. About their dad mostly, his heavy love, what they might do to lighten that load for one another. They’d make themselves puke, or try to anyway, pump up heavenwards and hang their heads down behind. Erin kept her red hair bum-length in those days—before the swimming got serious, before she trimmed it butch—and it’d drag in the grey dirt of the divot under her swing. “Oh my gaaaaawd, I’m gonna speeewww …”