Canis Major

by Jay Nichols

  * * *

  "Wake up, Rusty."

  The familiar nudge.

  "I said wake up!"

  Russell opened his eyes and saw his naked chest.

  Where’s my shirt? was his first thought. His next one was: Who’s talking?

  He had the answer to the second question first: his father was the one talking. He was also the one poking his chest with the cold, brass corner of his briefcase. Then, as the events leading up to his fainting spell on the porch came back to him in a rush of recollection, Russell had the answer to the first question.

  Today is a good day, he told himself, sitting up.

  "Do you mind telling me why there’s water all over the floor?" Darrel said, now from the kitchen.

  Russell squinted his eyes, even though the room was dim, and countered with a husky, "Why’s it so cold in here?"

  "Did you hear me? I asked you a question. Why’s the floor all wet?"

  Russell shivered and rubbed his goosepimply arms. "Oh, that? I was going to clean it up. I guess I forgot. Sorry."

  But Darrel barely heard him. He was in the hallway, turning the thermostat back up to eighty. Entering the living room via the piano room, he said, "You bet your ass you’re sorry. I nearly killed myself walking in here."

  "Fine," Russell said.

  "Get a mop if you have to. I don’t care. Just clean it up."

  "It’s only water," Russell said.

  "It’s only water," his father mocked.

  "Lola. L-O-L-A Lola. La la la la LOOOOLLAAAA!" Russell sang con brio.

  Darrel looked at the shirtless person resting his chin on the back of the sofa and swinging his arms like windshield wipers across the fabric, shook his head—partly out of frustration, but mostly out of confusion—then walked away. When the boy was acting like that, he liked to make a wish. He would wish for that to go away, and in its place a normal kid who did normal, everyday, American things: an athlete, a math whiz. Even a dunce would be okay—just as long as the kid he got was predictable.

  Climbing the stairs, making his silent wish, Darrel stopped at the landing and issued a final warning, "Clean it up before your mother gets home."

  As his father was storming off, Russell called out, "Wait!"

  "What?"

  "You forgot to ask me about my day?"

  "Rusty, I’m not kid—"

  "Just ask me."

  "Fine," Darrel relented, his shoulders slumping. He exhaled slowly, dispassionately, sarcastically, then asked, "How was your day today, son?"

  In reply, Russell shot his father two skyward-pointing thumbs along with a huge, game show host’s grin. "It was the best day of my life, Dad! Thanks for asking!"

  That’s when the doorbell rang, but instead of getting up and seeing who was there, Russell held the pose—hands out, thumbs up, humongous, saccharine grin planted across his affected face.

  "Well, are you going to get that?" Darrel asked, nodding his head in the direction of the door.

  "I might," Russell responded, still grinning, still posing.

  "Get it," Darrel said with enough finality to compel Russell to stand up and go answer the door.

  Along the way, Russell spotted his abandoned shirt on the foyer floor. He simultaneously pulled the garment over his head and opened the front door. With his head struggling to find the shirt’s neck hole, Russell peered through the tiny holes in the damp cotton weaving and attempted to make out the figure on the porch. It was impossible, though: the porch lights were off. All he saw was a black outline of a man with no arms.

  Finally, his crown found the hole and he pushed the rest of his head through. He flipped on the lights and standing before him, holding a stack of paperback books to his chest, was Joel Oscowitz.

  "Can I put these down?" Joel asked.

  After a minute of silence, Joel stooped over and placed the books on the tiles in front of Russell’s bare feet.

  Russell looked at Pete’s dad’s bald spot, and when he stood back up, Russell was forced to look at his smooth, Semitic face. What’s he doing? he asked himself, glancing briefly at the tower of books. And why isn’t he crying? Shouldn’t his eyes be red or something? Instead, Joel appeared serene, as if unburdening those books in the doorway was some sort of ritual—like the tearing of his shirt sleeve at the funeral—that he had to carry out before moving on to the next step of the grieving process.

  "Look, Joel—Mr. Oscowitz—I don’t want Pete’s books. I mean I…I can’t take them. Give them to charity or something."

  A ripple of pain contorted the man’s face. It was a quick shiver that was gone before Russell could form words of condolence in his head, let alone speak them.

  Mr. Oscowitz managed a slim smile, then reached out and lowered a comforting hand onto Russell’s shoulder.

  Why is he doing this to me? I should be doing that to him.

  Russell looked at the hand on his shoulder, then at the man’s face.

  Leaning in, Mr. Oscowitz said, "They’re not my books to give away. They’re yours."

  Backing away, Russell craned his neck and read the titles on the spines. Some he didn’t know were his, but others—Nine Stories, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, The Day of the Locust, and Catch-22—he recognized at once. Not only did he clearly remember purchasing those particular books, but he also remembered writing his name on the inside covers, for reasons God only knew, and lending them to Pete with the added commentary of each one being the best book he had ever read.

  But Pete had never returned them, and Russell had forgotten he had loaned them out. There had always been that next book to read or fresh musical composition to attend to. All his life, he had allowed selfish distractions to draw his attention away from the menial tasks that should have meant more to him, tasks like asking for his stupid books back when his friend was through reading them. After all, they were his books. He had written his name in each one.

  And now that he was getting them back, he found that he didn’t want them. Somehow they had ceased being his. They were Pete’s books now. That was how he thought of them. They had sat on Pete’s shelves longer than they had sat on his.

  Out of nowhere, the urge arose within him to kick the stack over and slam the door in Mr. Oscowitz’s plain, blank face. How dare he claim they were his books. And how dare he come over here and try to ruin his day.

  Those stupid books. What else will they find in Pete’s room that is also mine, Russell wondered. He found his mind conjuring up images of Sarah and Joel rummaging through Pete’s stuff: his insect collections, and his other books—the science ones—and the drawers in his desk, getting down on their hands and knees and reaching under his bed, and getting dust bunnies all over their shirts, and trying not to cry when they came out with only a single chess board and clinking purple sack because their son never stored anything under his bed like a normal kid, never crammed a whole bunch of shit under there, the way they avoided eye contact as they silently stripped the room, stacking glass shelves full of dead beetles into cardboard boxes and taping them shut with smelly brown tape, labeling them PETE’S BUGS, taking down Pete’s posters and rolling them into tubes and securing them with rubber bands, removing his clothes from their hangers and folding them neatly so they’ll fit in the DONATE TO CHARITY box designated for Pete’s apparel, dismantling the telescope and placing it into another box that will ultimately wind up in some unused room in the house so they won’t have to see it but will still know that it’s there—that some part of Pete will never leave them. Maybe they cry a bit, too, when they see certain things—his handwriting on a scrap piece of paper, perhaps, or a calendar—and then they embrace, and Joel tries to console Sarah, who is now crying past the point of consolation and could probably use a Valium, which Joel is unable to provide her. Then, as they unlock from their embrace, they return to their task, because no one else can do it for them and they’re the ones who are supposed to be doing it anyway. One of them, Joel perhaps, grabs a row of
paperback novels from the lowest bookshelf above the desk and tries to carry it to a box on the other side of the room. He trips, or one of the books in the middle slips out, and the whole shebang goes crashing to the hardwood floor in a paper avalanche. One book lands on another in such a way so that its cover is bent back, and Joel reads Russell’s name scrawled in a hybrid of print and cursive on the inside cover. He doesn’t think much of it, but he checks all the other books out of curiosity and finds that they all bear Russell’s name.

  And now that man stands before Russell, wordlessly grieving over a son he always secretly wished could have been more flexible and creative, more like the boy standing before him.

  And Russell continues to stare at the books, ignoring the man on the porch. As he reads the titles along the spines, his lips move but they issue no sound.

  When he looks back up at the visitor who has delivered the bomb, he mutters something and begins to cry. Knocking the tower over, the man steps inside and hugs the boy the same way he hugged his wife when she broke down not thirty minutes earlier. The boy wails into the man’s shirt sleeve then mutters the same words again.

  This time the man thinks he knows what the boy is saying.

  But he doesn’t know why he is saying it.

  How can this be the best day ever? he wonders as he strokes the kid’s long, copper-colored hair. How can this possibly be the best day ever when those days are long gone.