“This is Clara. Now don’t give me that, Manfred. Annelie sent you an announcement.”
“It’s yours?”
Michel nodded. Father and daughter were equally hairless with identical close-set blue eyes. They might have been conjoined twins, attached at the heart, back to front, one of them hideously stunted.
Manfred pushed his tray aside. “Is Annelie coming?”
“She’s getting the lowdown from the nurses. How are you feeling?”
Wounded, he wanted to say, but to Annelie. “Check this out.” Manfred showed him how the morphine was self-dispensed. “Push here. Go ahead.”
Michel pushed, his eye on the light above Manfred’s bed.
“Ah!” Manfred sighed.
The baby grabbed the device and stuffed it in her mouth. When Michel pried it away and gave it back to Manfred, she began to cry. Pockets were searched, a pacifier inserted. The baby spat it out on the bed. Michel tried a rhythmic bending at the knees. The baby flailed her limbs like she was doing jumping jacks.
What’s a baby for? Manfred asked himself.
Then his muse arrived, his apple-cheeked child bride, and Manfred felt the knife again, this time in his heart. Gone were the tangled teenage tresses his fingers used to catch in. With short hair Annelie looked even more like Lee Miller. Lee Miller’s head superimposed on the much plumper body of Kiki of Montparnasse. She’d put on weight. “Fat and happy” came to mind. When she’d been married to Manfred, he’d made her so miserable he could lift her with one hand. Yet she brightened when she saw him and opened her arms. He wasn’t mistaken. She crossed the room, her face aglow with love.
Michel released the fussing baby from the harness and passed the hot potato on. Annelie started nuzzling, practically licking the baby.
Quick! Another hit! Manfred scrabbled for the cord. Michel’s baby was Annelie’s too? How had he missed that?
“Well, Manfred,” she said. “You’re human after all.”
On the ward everyone was making resolutions. His roommate Mel vowed to eat more roughage over the next thousand years. “Go on, Manfred. There must be something about you that needs improving.”
Manfred told him, “I accept myself exactly as I am.”
Later that afternoon they kicked Manfred out. “I’m not weaned yet,” he protested as they drew the IV from his hand. “Would you tear a three-day-old baby from the breast?”
“Dr. Ito will set you up with a nice big bottle of Tylenol 3,” said his favourite nurse, Diane, originally from Fort McMurray, youngest of three daughters, age twenty-four, size eight dress and shoe. Her resolution for the coming millennium: to leave those split ends alone!
“There’s no one to look after me. What if I relapse?”
“What about that woman who was here?”
“She’s in Mexico.”
A male nurse with a tattoo took out the catheter. A cab was called.
All day Manfred lay in the bed of his own unmaking, as he liked to refer to it. Getting up hurt, but eventually he had to do it. In the bathroom he peeled back the dressing then nearly swooned at the sight of the incision in the mirror, a crimson path through the dark forest of his belly hair. From solar plexus to navel he was tacked together by black thread. Why so big a cut? He shuffled to the kitchen and made himself some tomato soup, then, still on red, ate the rest of his mother’s bird’s nest cookies shipped from Mississauga, licking the raspberry jam out of her thumbprint. He badly wanted to phone his mother and tell her what had happened, but she would insist on flying out and nursing him back to health and after three days of her he’d start bringing up the usual scarring childhood incidents just to make her cry.
He went out onto the balcony and looked down on Yaletown. His neighbours had stripped their Christmas trees and were may poling the light posts with tinsel. Vancouver City Council, for once showing moral initiative, had declined to put on a party of any kind and now these deluded citizens were taking the festivities into their own hands. At the Starbucks on the corner, groups of laughing patrons gesticulated through the steam of eggnog lattes. A man on the corner, “homeless” according to his sign though nevertheless in possession of a dog and a guitar, busked “Auld Lang Syne.” Fools! Manfred wanted to shout down.
Back inside, he steeled himself and lay down on the couch. What had they taken out? Absurdly, what came to mind was Man Ray’s first Dadaist work, Le Cadeau, a flatiron with fourteen tacks glued to its underside. Then everything he had ever misplaced: keys, unprocessed rolls of film, scraps of paper scrawled with urgent messages, the very core that made him Manfred—a purple-faced, stump-limbed manikin, his darker self. Here he lay, a husk of the man he had been, the bran of him, needy and sentimental. Next he would be taking pictures of sunsets and kittens.
In portrait photography, everything depends on the sitter’s expression. He could not erase from his mind the picture of Annelie at the hospital, the look of love he’d coveted, then, over the subsequent days, appropriated. Her cooing surely included him.
By eleven the revelry in the street below, though an hour short of climax, threatened to bust his seam. Manfred dressed and called a cab.
Blocks before they reached the Burrard Street Bridge, he saw the giant illuminated 2000 held aloft by a construction crane. “It’s not really the millennium,” he told the turbaned cabbie. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So—1991, ’92, ’93, ’94, ’95, ’96, ’97, ’98, ’99, 2000. Get it?”
They passed Kits Beach where a party was going on. He heard music, the salvo of firecrackers. “Another thing. How long are we going to have to say Year 2000? We didn’t say Year 1999. I’ve never claimed to be born in Year 1952. It’s madness. Are we going to be expected to say Year 2001 too?”
Annelie’s house in Point Grey stood in darkness. The entire street seemed to be asleep, the house-poor and the double-mortgaged peaceful in dreams of debtlessness. With no response to his first tentative knock, he tried again, louder. Then the porch light came on and in his blindness he waved away the cab.
Annelie opened the door and blinked over the chain. He remembered writing dirty limericks all over her naked body. There was a young woman from Punt . . . What happened to the negatives?
“Manfred!” She popped out the clear horseshoe of her mouth-guard and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “Thank God. Do you have an emergency kit in your car?”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t get any candles. I went over to London Drugs around five but they were sold out.”
“What do you need candles for?”
“When the electricity goes out.”
“Anneliebchen,” he said. “Midnight has come and gone in St. John’s. In Winnipeg. In Cranbrook.”
She hovered there, not quite believing him. “My computer’s going to be all right then?” She unchained the door and in tartan pyjamas, squinty and uncombed, stepped aside to let him in. “What are you doing here, Manfred?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Now? If you only knew how long it’s been since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.”
Left standing on the mat holding his gift, he watched her climb the stairs. Manfred faced facts: the back view of her was hardly the pride of Scotland.
“Michel,” he heard her say. “Wake up. Manfred’s here.”
Collusive whispers.
“I don’t know,” said Annelie. Then, “That won’t work. He always does exactly the opposite of what you ask him.”
Michel slept in the nude, Manfred observed as his rival descended the stairs cinching the belt of his robe. From this vantage, Manfred could see up the robe almost to where the real competition dangled. When Michel reached the bottom of the stairs, the two men stood nose to collarbone. Unlike Manfred and Annelie, Annelie and Michel were not a physical match but victims of a comical disparity in height. They were a lot closer in age, however, and Manfred suddenly felt like a mean old uncle dragging the children out of bed.
Michel checked to see if his stubble was in place, then pumped Manfred’s hand. “Happy New Year, Manfred.”
Manfred gave the gift to Annelie along with his coat.
“Michel, Manfred says my computer’s going to be all right.”
Michel had gone ahead to the living room to turn on a light. “I told you that.”
They followed. A complex stereo system filled most of the shelves. Lit with so many coloured lights, it reminded Manfred of the Doomsday machine. Michel dragged a plastic flying-saucer-like baby seat closer to the armchair and put his bare feet up on it, crossing one long white leg over the other and flipping the robe to cover his naked thigh. Manfred sat beside Annelie on the couch. He breathed in sharply and extracted a plastic pretzel from underneath him. “That’s a hell of a subwoofer you’ve got there,” he told Michel.
“So, Manfred. What’s this you’ve brought us?” Annelie tested the weight of the gift with both hands.
“It’s a present for the baby.”
She tore away the newsprint Manfred had wrapped the book in. “Ah, Man Ray. Look, Michel, it’s a book of Man Ray’s photographs.”
“Let me see,” said Michel.
“Man Ray is Manfred’s idol.”
“I wanted to be Man Ray,” said Manfred.
“He wanted to be Man Fred. Remember how Manfred wore a shoelace instead of a tie to our wedding? That was because Man Ray always did.”
“Well, after about 1941,” Manfred corrected.
Michel sat back down with the book. “Schöenberg had a little affectation I’ve always wanted to take up.” He turned a few pages. “Manfred! We’re putting this away until she’s eighteen.”
Outside: cheering, kazooing, the clash of pot lids. Michel leapt to his feet and disappeared down the hall. “Oh, God,” Annelie groaned. “Is it midnight already?” She rose with a yawn and headed to the front door where she slipped on a pair of oversized shoes. Manfred followed, struggling off the couch then stepping sock-footed into the chill night nailed down with stars. The street light on the corner wore a halo. Alone. The moment to speak was now.
“Anneliebchen.”
Clang clang clang! Clang clang clang!
“I hope this won’t wake up Clara.” She pressed her lips to Manfred’s cheek, the cold tip of her nose qualifying their warmth. “Happy New Year, Manfred.”
“You’ve kept my name all this time, Annelie. Why?”
She stifled another yawn. “It would have been confusing at work if I changed back. No one would know who my memos were from.”
“I’ve been thinking.”
Her eyes widened. “Don’t do that!”
“I remember once, you got out of bed in the middle of the night—”
“Manfred? No. We are not going to have this talk. We’ve been on friendly terms all these years.”
“I moved over to your side and pressed my face to the pillow. It was wet with tears.”
“I drool, Manfred. Because of the mouthguard. You’ve had a scare. You’ve felt your own mortality. That’s what this is about.”
“I’m sorry for how I treated you.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear you say that. Better late than never. But what about that poor woman who phoned me at four o’clock in the morning? How are you treating her?”
Michel stepped out onto the porch wearing headphones. A tape recorder that could easily have fit into Manfred’s abdominal cavity hung by a strap over his shoulder as he threatened the sky with a huge, phallic microphone. Manfred drew Annelie to the far corner of the porch, almost tripping over the stroller. He plainted her name.
“Shhh.” She pointed to Michel and, finger to her lips, clomped back inside.
Manfred obeyed, keeping quiet until the last nasal blats of distant noisemakers died away. Michel kept on listening, but to what? The ambient sound of the universe, the low hum of electrical infrastructure, the ceaseless grating of tectonic plates? At last pushing the headphones over the back of his head so they ringed his stalky neck like a horseshoe, he gave the nod.
Back in the living room, Manfred eased himself down on the couch while Michel rewound the tape. He pressed Play. Hearing the feeble cheers again, Manfred said, “Y2K. What a farce.”
His own voice on the tape, tremulous with love: Annelie.
“Midnight snack?” Michel asked. He took his gear with him.
He was a sound composer, Manfred remembered, then couldn’t help but hear what came from the kitchen a minute later as a prosaic symphony: cupboards opening, cans meeting the counter, Cellophane crackling, something like cereal pouring out, fridge seal breaking, drawers tried. The electric can opener revved a crescendo and out of nowhere a grey cat appeared and shot a startled green look at the supine Manfred. Meowing, the oven door yawning and slamming, water running. The microwave’s SOS, bottle caps pried off.
“Ta da!” Michel carried in a platter and, with a foot, manoeuvred the flying saucer seat over to the couch to set it on. Tortilla chips fused with hot cheese, piled with refried beans, black olives, avocado, salsa, sour cream—an abortion of colour.
Manfred forced himself to sit up. “Ow, ow, ow.”
Michel returned a second time with his equipment and two bottles of beer. He joined Manfred on the couch where they listened to midnight for the third time.
Annelie. The hollow tattoo of Michel’s clown shoes taking her away.
“Where’s Annelie?” Manfred asked.
“She probably went back to bed. Clara’s teething. She’s up a lot in the night.”
Manfred heard the cupboard doors opening again, the cans connecting to the counter, the fiery crackle he knew now was a bag of tortilla chips.
Michel said, “We’re listening to me making nachos while we’re eating the nachos. Do you get it?”
Manfred stared at him. He had nothing against the boy really. His eyes were too close together, but other than that he actually had no feelings for him either way.
“It’s about Time. Hey! Better idea!” He wiped his hands on the front of his robe, slipped the headphones back on and fiddled with the buttons. The microphone reared between his thighs. “Now I’m recording us eating the nachos.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure.” He took off the headphones. “Of course we can. Shoot. How can I help, Manfred?”
“I mean do I have to be quiet?”
“No. I’ll just edit you out.”
Manfred, forced now to contribute his crunches to the service of Art, ate self-consciously. Salsa dribbled down the front of his shirt. He drank half the beer in one go.
“So how does it feel not to have a spleen?” Michel asked.
Manfred unbuttoned his shirt and peeled back the dressing.
Michel recoiled. “God! Should you be out of bed? Should you even be out of the hospital?” Down the hall something squawked. “There’s Clara. I’ll be right back.”
Here was Manfred’s opportunity to sneak upstairs, but his relationship to his pain had changed he realized then, the standard against which he’d first measured it, the actual rupturing, three days distant. He managed to get off the couch and as far as his coat hanging in the hall, and to feel through the pockets for the bottle. In flagrant disregard of the label, he shook three tablets into his palm. (Do they call it Tylenol 1? Do they call it Tylenol 2?)
Stairs? Out of the question.
He brought the Man Ray book over to the couch. When he saw the microphone balanced on the arm, the machine still running, he briefly slipped the headphones on. “Who a there, Princess,” Michel was saying over the baby’s crabbing, as clearly as if they were in the living room. “Let’s get you all changed up.”
Manfred opened the book.
“Here we are, nice and fresh,” Michel said, bringing in the lump. She gaped bluely at Manfred. “Another beer, Manfred?”
But when Michel returned from the kitchen, only the baby had a bottle. “Looks like we put away the last two. How do you take your Scotch?”
Warn
ing:May be habit forming. May cause drowsiness. Avoid alcoholic beverages.
“Neat,” said Manfred.
Michel poured the Scotch at the sideboard. Perched on his hip, the baby kept watch, taking the occasional pull on her bottle. Manfred could guess what she was thinking. He lifted the nude of Lee Miller to show her. She grimaced.
Michel handed Manfred his whiskey and returned to the armchair. They all drank, Clara on her father’s lap. She reached for Michel’s nose. “Beep,” he said and she dropped the bottle and leaned into him with an open mouth.
“Ow!” Michel cupped his nose. “Someone has teeth.” To Manfred: “It’s a different life once you have a baby.”
“Can I hold her?” Manfred asked.
Michel hesitated. “Just watch your scar there.”
He brought her over and set her in Manfred’s lap. Manfred was surprised by how warm she felt, how squirmy. “Aren’t you a little package of life?”
She looked up at her father. “That’s a good girl,” Michel said.
Manfred tried with Man Ray again. “See here, young lady. Does this or does this not look exactly like your mother?”
Clara pulled the book to her and gummed it.
“She’s hungry,” Manfred said.
Michel offered the plastic pretzel off the floor then leaned down for a closer look at the book. When Clara took the pretzel, he whisked the book away and scrutinized Lee Miller.
“Maybe the eyebrows.”
“The lips,” said Manfred. “They’ve been seen floating in the sky.”
Michel yawned. “Not lately.”
The baby blinked up at Manfred and pressed a tacky palm against his cheek. It stuck there. “Ba ba ba.” With Manfred’s retort, “Ba ba ba to you!” she smiled, revealing four tiny blue-white teeth. How long had it been since he’d gotten such an unequivocal reaction from a female? He placed a hand on her head, cantaloupesized, velvet-fuzzed. Her neck was cowled in fat, chin non-existent, glazed with drool. These features notwithstanding, she was a beautiful blue-eyed thing. He saw it now and understood that the baby, not Michel, was his rival. Michel was nothing. And now Manfred wanted the baby. He glanced up at Michel still turning the pages of the book. How to get him to leave the room long enough to tuck the baby under his arm and escape? He would flee the country and raise her as his own daughter in Liechtenstein or Borneo. Like her mother before her, she would be his muse. His Kiki. His Lee Miller. His Juliet.
Pleased to Meet You / The Sky is Falling Page 7