Five Legs

by Graeme Gibson

  Get a handkerchief or something. Or anything. To forestall this empty talk and to ease me from this room before I. Pointless to argue with or anger her in her sullen. And besides, with my head and this nervous stomach, I simply don’t feel well enough. He rummages in the upper drawer. Not even a decent shirt dear heaven. But at least I have a good one for my pocket and an old one for the nose. Slip it into the old pocket and never confuse the two. Order, that’s the thing. And as she talks and talks away I can turn my mind to other things; and it won’t simply be an escape either. Because. After all. This dismal chore was designated in an attempt to. I mean there can be no other explanation can there? Because I am to be department head he’s sending me down officially. He closes the bureau drawer and turns again to Rose. The next few weeks will see it all settled, for whoever it is needs time to plan. All the planning for a new life. Yes sir. He pats his pocket handkerchief into place and straightens his tie. Still, another pill or so wouldn’t be out of order. To calm the unofficial man. Hum. Within her perfumed body grows my seed. Dear Heaven I hope it’s true! Our lives conjoined and growing into one. Our lives . . . “Should be on my way Rose. Can’t tell how long it will take on a day like this.”

  “Be sure to tell Susan how upset I am. Because I can’t get down I mean. She’ll understand you know, that someone has to do this show.” There is no distance in that weather outside: its shape is encompassed by the swirling snow. The park’s black trees are indistinct, frozen in uncertain light. “I’ll get a note off to her this weekend. Poor girl. It’s a terrible day for it.” The room’s warmth has gone and I’m alone on that vacant road beneath the tree-torn sky: one of the wretched figures who will walk and wait for the earth’s slow stain. “Lucan, for goodness’ sake, you’re not going down with your fly undone? Hee hee.”

  “What? Oh.” Good Lord. In the bathroom, after. Couldn’t have. Good Lord. He casually closes the zipper. “Thank you Rose. Wouldn’t do to.” Jesus no! Crackell’s back you know whisper-whisper behind pink hands, and how he has the nerve in a second-rate shirt with his fly undone I really don’t know. Oh boy, that’s all I need!

  “Be just like you Lucan, it would be just like you.” All sad-faced in your english suit and your fly undone as you mourn. Dear Rose your taunts and your lightly mocking voice are grossly out of order. Should be my help-meet, should. And what are you, eh? And Lucan stands uncertain in his wife’s eyes. “When the bird did its business on you just before we were married and nobody noticed until Harry . . . Oh Lucan you’re always . . .” Ho-ho for chrissakes! You weren’t laughing then as I recall. “Came in with the big wet patch on your coat and I thought I’d die, I honestly thought I’d die with you standing there looking injured and surly. Ha!” The bed she laughing lies enthroned upon is burnished by the cotton-candy light and windows rattle in the empty wind. Is it because I went too far or do I expect too much? Oh God, I can’t wander in myself today! Lucan asserts himself; he straightens his shoulders and stiffens his back. Self-control in. I always say. On her white and slightly oily brow, a kiss. A final kiss. And then I’ll leave. For time runs on. Once again he leans and. Kisses. “Now be sure to tell poor Susan how distressed I am that I’m all tied up.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “And that I’ll be writing her a note for sure.” All levity gone, her voice is thin and earnest now as she screws the blanket in her hand. “Tell her that I’m thinking of her on this day and, and I have been ever since, well ever since her terrible. Loss.”

  “Sure Rose. I’ll do that. You can count on me. Well, I’m off now.” And he starts from the room. “Bye.”

  “And Lucan . . . pick me up a couple of copies of the Stratford paper will you. This morning’s.” Oh by God you, you. “I want to see what Mustard has to say about the production.” Unfeeling bloody bitch! He turns incredulous towards his unsuspecting wife. With her brittle bloody co-ed’s face. By God indeed! And you almost had me fooled with your. Frigging smarmy talk.

  “Dear God Rose! Where do you think I’m going?” My voice is sliding embarrassingly up the scale to a squeal, can’t control it; can’t. “To a stinking, a stinking . . . picnic or something?” Keep it down for chrissakes, try to keep it down. And shaking his exasperated head. “I can’t just, well what do you want me to do for goodness’ sake, stop in the middle of the goddamn cortège?” There’s a bit more control and the sound of my voice is better for it. Now calmly, logically explain to her how absurd it is to ask. “The point is Rose, you want me to think of buying a newspaper, a stinking newspaper right in the middle of a most disturbing day; a day so full of, as you should know, so full of possible, possible aah, trauma, that I just don’t know, I just . . .” Christ. She doesn’t understand. I can tell by the face that there isn’t any use. Lucan begins to stalk the room with black dismay in the gut. And a roaring head. “I just don’t know how you can ask me, that’s all.”

  “Lucan I don’t understand you. I really don’t.”

  “That’s obvious enough.”

  “No I mean it. You always make everything so dramatic, you’re so unreasonable and everything. Just like your mother, your family’s all like that. If you’d just take yourselves less seriously, that’s all.”

  “Now look Rose, this is no time for a goddamn lecture, and I’m not going to . . .”

  “But it’s just a funeral Lucan and you act as if . . .”

  “It is not for chrissakes! Will you stop saying that! It is not just a funeral.” Lucan shouting now, waving his arms and desperate. “If it were do you think I’d, I’d. Oh boy! How you can lie there and, and.” Stalking and shaking the old head and I simply cannot find the words.

  “I know it’s unpleasant Lucan, but people go to funerals every day and you hardly knew the boy. It’s not as though . . .”

  “You don’t know what happened. I was drunk, drunk all the time after Vera left, and to top it off, well . . . well I was sick one night.” Her eyes you terrible bloody fool, her eyes uncertain watch you as it comes. “I barfed at the feet, the very goddamn feet of an old faggot of a social science teacher. For chrissakes.” God I must go to the john and relieve this tension in my bowels. “And they fired me.” A certain Miss Savage and they fired me. “You didn’t know that did you? You didn’t know that your husband drank and puked right under the eyes of that miserable frigging town! Eh? Hah!”

  “Don’t be silly Lucan. That was years ago. You were a boy and everything; they’re not going to remember . . . and anyway it’s different now isn’t it?” Lucan distraught with a third of his adult life in her hands. “God Lucan, you talk about actors’ egos! I’ve never known anyone who, who made such a fuss about their life.”

  “That’s it! That’s it!” Jumbled thoughts and why must I always squeak like this? “Attack my life, that’s the way! Feel free, go on. Boy! And you criticize my family when yours, good God when yours is a vicious outpost of . . .” Never a passionate longing, never: never the harsh wind of terror round the heart. Rushing gratuitously from deep inside, a dark and frantic freedom from them all. I’ll kick over the goddamn wastebasket! No. Smash! That’s the way and the twisted crap flies all over the floor. Bastards all!

  “Lucan! Stop it. What’s the matter with you?” Her small voice tearful from the petty life and it’s littered all over the place and I won’t pick it up either. With the mark of my foot upon it. “Are you crazy or something?” No, no, an absurdly tragic figure, that’s what I am, a pale and balding Hamlet from the comic stage. Tossed by the hopeless season’s icy hand. He strides from the room and her breaking tears, he strides into the hall and down the stairs. Two at a time. Thump thump. A strong and angry unrelenting sound. Two at a time. We’ll not be the same after this assault, not after your callous disregard for. His foot slips from the step. Good-bloody-grief but I’m. Hold on! Frantically he clutches at the bannisters; he cries a strangled cry, cracks his ribs on the newel-post and careens off headlong to the fl
oor.

  Lucan Crackell lies as he fell with a searching sob expectant in his chest. Too much, just too much. And the tears gather behind his eyes. “Lucan, Lucan, are you alright?” How can I be alright with this side of mine? Broken. All torn and wrenched. He lies unmoving and closes his eyes. Lucky, she’s lucky I wasn’t. Maimed. “Answer me Lucan!” I can’t. My poor bloody head. Oh! And the sob rolls about, seeking release. I can’t talk. He hears her bare feet hurrying to the top of the stair. Serves her right. He rises to his knees as she starts down. Arrgh. A frigging awful blow to my side and I feel so sick.

  “Alright, it’s alright.” He grunts and heaves himself to his feet. “Wheeowhw!” And clutching his right arm against his side he grimaces and shakes his head. He limps extravagantly with watery eyes and Rose stands uncertain on the landing. “Fell. My foot slipped and I fell. All the way down. Wow!” And he shakes his head again. Now. Maybe she’ll.

  “Oh dear. I, I . . . you are alright?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sure. I’ll be alright.” Christ, it’s become. But I might have been . . . she’s lucky. This day is, this day is . . . Oh God this day!

  “Can I, can I do anything Lucan?”

  “No. No thanks.” He turns, holding his side and favouring his leg, to the kitchen door. “I’d better be going.” Let go, let go of your side you stinking bloody sham! “Goodbye Rose.” And he takes the sound of her voice through the kitchen and into the back stair’s colder air.

  LUCAN 2

  SIGHING HE RUBS his head, shifts. Sighing. He lights another cigarette and. His wife the queen; imperious in the basement, she oversees the ritual of masks. Bending she removes an eye-brow, peels black hair from a greying head, strips away the islander and finds the plump-faced boy in stocks and bonds; she moves in certainty while I wait, wandering as the evening begins. Reflected in the laugh, she’s moving among them with cold cream and Kleenex and I hate this world. The two young men who guard the door and watch themselves in each other’s eyes; leaning on the wall some talk of methods, one nods to her drink and her hair falls down, but she does not avert her eyes. The convoluted sound of memories, of ego’s plea and the laughter. Lucan longing for a drink from the bottle she poured, longing to rise from the room and walk in the gusting night. You who smile in this deadly room, you also have sweated in the green world’s sun and I went over and asked you, I said c’mon Rose, for chrissakes let’s go for a drink, let’s go upstairs, I’m dying of thirst. Let’s. I asked her but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Later, she said, later for.

  “. . . really a terrible thing. I still can’t believe it, can you? It’s so, so. Hard to believe.” With a hint of a whine she’s revealed by death, pinched almost, her face. She’s Ann. No Nancy, I’ve taught Ann Sears and she’s in the back seat. Nancy. Nancy, what? Lucan bemused by the mythical name of a girl, driving up Richmond past the Post Office, past the Cathedral, orange lit at night for drama, driving. Driving this drive in the sullen snow. Nancy. Thin-faced Nancy with glasses. Ugly Nancy. “Had his job for the fall and everything. A good school too.” Her pause and the wipers’ strain. Chunk. Chunk. Against the wet snow’s weight. “The best in Stratford, by far.”

  “So funny at O.C.E. He really hated it.” Beneath the uncertainty in her voice, there’s admiration. Baillie had the way with girls. Got to give him that alright. Lucan’s chilly fingers bumbling out a cigarette as Ann’s voice goes on and. “Remember once in practice teaching.” Reflex strangling of a little laugh and Lucan yearns for the summer sun, he longs for the certainty of grass. “He gave a model lesson, a really model lesson on death and rebirth. Or something funny. It was so good that the instructor analyzed it specially. You know? All about his question-and-answer technique, his use of the silly chalk board and everything. You know how they are. Very serious. Recognition of individual differences. Evidence of thorough planning.” Good Lord. She’s got the same, his mocking voice! “And the point was, he hadn’t prepared anything on it. And when the instructor had finished (this is what kills me), when the instructor had finished: Martin told him. You know that? Martin told him that he’d made the whole thing up. My God, you should have seen the poor guy’s face! He damn near flipped.” Her freer laughter and then this silence in my car. A pause. And then more softly. “He was always doing things like that.” Chunk chunk and the heavy flakes are swept away. “Poor guy.”

  “He would have been head of the department for sure. In just a couple of years. You really make a lot of money then, and he would have been. Everybody says so.” Careening from her mouth in whisper-plumes, her words fade in the warming air. “There’s such a turn-over of teachers in Stratford. Everyone wants to go to Toronto. They were very pleased to get someone like Martin, I can tell you. Miss Schwartz is really ready to be retired.” Department head in Stratford? — Hard to believe, Lucan, what you’ve done with Middlesborough in these two years. It’s hard to believe. Light shines on his vulnerable face, it toys with the lines of admiration. You’re really going great guns Lucan. Enrollment is staggering, already past capacity. We’re really packing them in, eh? Rubbing his hands and his face (can I say it?) is awed. I’d better watch out for my president’s job, eh? Ha.

  Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Scotty.

  Ha-ha. But seriously, I can tell you the Board is delighted Lucan, they’re really delighted. Shaking his head. How you got that land for the golf course, I’ll never know. And the library, for that matter. Shaking and shaking, rubbing his greying hair and I don’t want his job, not yet poor man, there’s too much to do. And I’m freer here. A university of class, yes indeed, with that golf course we’re attracting the better sort of student.

  I know, I know Scotty. Do you realize that not a singe student in Middlesborough was eligible for the student loan fund this year?

  No Lucan! Is that right? Not a single one? Boyoboyoboy, what a coup! Wait till I tell that to the Board. Lucan, Lucan, you’re a corker, a real corker. Laughing he takes me by the hand, laughing and clapping my shoulder as I rise. Ha-huh-huh-ha! The most beautiful campus in Canada, with the most beautiful people, eh Lucan? Right! It’s too bad we haven’t got the mountains like the University of British Columbia.

  I’ll see what I can do Scotty.

  Oh God Lucan! You’re a real corker, that’s all I can say. I’ll see what I can do! And shaking his head uncertainly he edges out my door. Could do it too. If only my. The ache behind his eyes, the pain of his battered ribs. Could have broken my neck, for chrissake, and died before her eyes, my strangle gurgling in her widowed ears. Shit! Staring at me wiping the spreading blood from my silent mouth. And somewhere the heavy thump of a futile fly, buzzing and thumping against the glass, buzzing as the cry grows in her throat, spreading its wings and growing and spreading until it bursts from between her teeth in a terrible flight of sound.

  Rising in naked trees on either side, Richmond Street blends with the falling snow. A bus breathes grey exhaust, disgorging clumsy-footed figures at the hospital door: disfigured by wind and clothes they lurch and totter uncertainly, while all about our ears the sky is shredded on the branches’ spines. Lucan trembling with, the echo of her cry. I don’t want to go back, I don’t want to go, I. Ahead, and beyond the city gates, it grows in substance on the hill. Must be the reason. Said so yourself. A good sign, almost certain. To get the Middlesborough. And she doesn’t understand. My own wife, my Rose. She doesn’t understand or know the. Swore I’d never go back, that I’d forget the whole, the fearful bloody mess that was my life. And since you didn’t understand, get out of my. The fallible wings aflutter in my chest, for I can’t be sure! My poor goddamn aching head, that’s part of me; and this raw stomach is me too. Consciously, forcefully, he relaxes his hands on the steering wheel. And she will never know. It is all so perfectly clear.

  “Poor Susan.” And Nancy’s voice is hiking still. “I don’t know what she’ll do, I really don’t. She’s never been interested in other boys, not f
or, for years anyway. He came home every weekend, at least almost every weekend; and when we were in high school, they went out all the time, as long as I can remember. Everybody knew they’d get married. We used to call them the Bobbsey twins. And now . . .”

  “That’s when he had the trouble with his skin, isn’t it?”

  “Oh yes. And it didn’t make any difference to Susan at all.” What’s this? Bad. I don’t have to listen, why in hell should I . . .

  “Bad skin?”

  “Yes Doctor Crackell, he had terrible skin. Terrible acne or something. You should of seen his face.” Ugly Nancy, you relish this role, you really shine: the chorus, the thin but eager chorus for another’s life. “And he was so shy, it was pitiful; so shy you hardly ever saw him after school!” Sorry he asked, and fascinated by the voice, Lucan glances politely, right into her, good Lord right into her sad sharp eyes! All I need, for chrissakes, picking at my sleeve, is an old man’s bony hand. “But Susan brought him out of it because she loved him. Real love can do that you know, and she loved him for what he was. She didn’t care a bit about the pimples and things, at least she didn’t let on . . . You know what I mean?”

  An uncertain “Hmmm” for I’m no longer sure.

  “And he started going to the school proms. Even to tea dances at the Pines. That’s the club, you know, the Pines.” She pauses and Lucan waits for the lights to change. “Of course, he really had to go to them.” Knowing that I should ask why, that I should turn again with badly concealed fascination, that I . . . But I won’t, goddamnit, I won’t! Not in my car, my own car, not today.

  “What do you mean?” Thank you Miss Sears.

  “Well Susan was president of the young people’s club two years in a row.”