by John Gould
“He’d just ordered paints. He’d sent a relatively upbeat letter to his brother. There was no suicide note.”
In our son’s case, too, there was no note. His girlfriend discovered him stretched out in their backyard where he’d apparently been gazing up at the stars, or at the clouds behind which there would have been stars. In the bathroom she found empty bottles of his painkillers and his antidepressants. Even assuming the bottles were full to begin with, it shouldn’t have been enough. Surely he would have known this.
My wife says, “I’m trying to paint him. From that photo, him coming through the door, sort of looking up and to his left? In his little blazer?”
“On 6th Avenue.”
“I think it was Frances Street.”
“Not 6th?”
“I don’t think so.”
I turn as though to look at her, the spot she occupies in the dark. “You have a smear of something on your forehead. Magenta, I think.”
“Yes. Well, violet.”
“What will it be?” Violet hair. Violet eyes. Violet.
“I don’t think I can do it,” she says.
I open my mouth. I make a sound. We both cry for a bit, and then we make love.
Once my wife is asleep I get up and creep downstairs. Out in the backyard it’s raining, and then it stops. That things can still be beautiful.
Machu Picchu
She’d never regret the things she did, only the things she didn’t do — of this she was assured many times, back when she was alive. The people who offered up this nugget of wisdom were generally selling her something, or pushing some other agenda of their own. They’d deliver it in the world-weary tone of those who bear the burden of being right, but they were wrong.
She regrets so many things she did. She regrets, for instance, the night she agreed to go out dancing with a former student to a place known for something called deep micro house music, a stripped-down, thumpy, pulsating sort of thing that made her intensely euphoric, so much so that she let the young man kiss and caress her on the dance floor despite the fact that he was far too young and not especially gifted. There was nothing terribly regrettable about this, and indeed the long walk afterwards, during which he spoke with fervour about matriarchy in the Neolithic age and other diverting subjects, was rather sweet. But when she got home in the wee hours she discovered her dog Arvo having some kind of fit on the kitchen floor, unable to rise yet going at a full gallop, driving his head again and again into the base of the stainless steel fridge. She pinned him down while he died, then began to bawl in a way that made her believe she’d never stop. She did stop, but this only intensified her pain.
And really, what an idiotic idea. How could you distinguish between things you did and things you didn’t do? How was doing something not also not doing something? If you went out dancing, you didn’t stay home with your dog. If you stayed home with your dog, you didn’t go out dancing. If you spent your first honeymoon (that whole first marriage was a poor idea) in Peru sampling piranha as served in various cities, in Lima and in Huaraz and in Trujillo, you didn’t spend it walking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. Saying yes was saying no, and vice versa. Yes and no were indistinguishable, because you were always saying both.
So there’s nothing to stop her regretting the things she did as well as the things she didn’t do. This is what she does. She regrets the bad things she did, and she regrets the good things she didn’t do. She regrets spending so much of her shortish life dividing things up into bad and good, and she regrets the fact that she still does this, here in this exhausting afterlife with its stringent, almost mean-spirited diet and its onerous exercise regimen. Is this program for everybody, or just for her? Is it meant to punish her for something she’s done, or to prepare her for something she has yet to do? How is it that she’s still so bewildered?
There’s no way to know if she’ll get another life — it seems a long shot, what with the state of planet earth when she quit it — but she’s making plans just in case. Next time she’ll do exactly the other thing. She’ll drop money into every upturned hat, what the hell. She’ll lavish such vigilant care on the creatures around her that they’ll glow with received reverence. She’ll make it to Machu Picchu and pray alone to nobody in the Temple of the Sun. She’ll do the things she didn’t do and undo the things she did, so that when she dies next time it will be for good.
Crepuscular
It was odd, Lucy leaving him the fish. They weren’t much more than acquaintances, he and Lucy. They’d both signed up for over-fifty ping pong at about the same time, almost a year ago now, and they were both beginners with no natural ability, so they did tend to get paired up. And Dennis did have more patience with her than some of the other players. Lucy was inclined to quote great thinkers, loudly and in ludicrous contexts. Flubbing a serve one time she hollered, “Well, you know Hegel, The mystery is is, the mystery is was.” Not much chance that this was actually Hegel, or anybody else for that matter, but so what? Dennis readied himself to jot the gem down on an invisible pad, and Lucy, laughing, repeated it almost verbatim.
It seemed slight grounds upon which to write a person into your will, though. Plus Dennis was older then Lucy, and in dodgier health. If anything, he should have been leaving stuff to her. Plus there were no fish.
Lucy’s nephew read the relevant bit of the will over the phone. “To Dennis at ping pong I leave my guppies, Joan and Miró, and all their issue.”
“I don’t understand,” said Dennis.
“But I’ve got the right Dennis? From ping pong?”
“Yes. But I’m not sure … why would she leave me her guppies?”
“She didn’t. I mean, she did, but she hasn’t got any guppies. Or any other fish, as far as I’ve been able to determine. Did the two of you … was there ever any talk of fish?”
“Not as I recall.”
Lucy’s nephew gave a rueful chuckle. He urged Dennis not to fret about the whole business. “This isn’t even the weirdest part,” he said. “Hey, by the way, before I let you go, Lucy never mentioned the … Cuchiyaku people of Ecuador, did she?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
Lucy’s nephew thanked him, apologized that the bequest had come to nothing, and hung up.
There was a Joan Miró painting called Singing Fish. Even on Dennis’s computer screen it was exquisite, a delicate shattering of shape and colour. At first you didn’t see the fish because it swam not horizontally but vertically, rising up out of some depth. Towards what? Was it a message, a metaphor?
Or maybe it was just that Lucy perceived Dennis as lonely. Retired, widowered, kids abroad and busy with their lives. Perhaps she imagined pets would perk him up.
The guppies at the store were fancier than the ones Dennis had pictured. They sported great vivid tails that rippled like medieval banners. As a boy, Dennis had inherited an aquarium and its fish from a friend who’d had to move away with his family. There were no guppies, only an angelfish that promptly died, and a pair of neon tetras, little zaps of red and blue light. Dennis had every intention of naming them, but failed to come up with names that weren’t depressingly obvious. Then one morning there were a bunch of tiny, transparent babies flitting about the aquarium. Dennis told everybody at school, and a few kids rode home with him at lunch to check them out. The babies were gone, eaten by their parents. The parents died too, soon enough. Dennis could no longer remember to feed them.
The pet store also carried rodents. A chubby, squirrel-sized creature caught Dennis’s eye, a sort of cross between a rabbit and a mouse. “Native to South America,” read a handwritten sign, “the Chinchilla is smart, clean, and incredibly soft. Crepuscular, meaning most active at dusk and dawn. A great jumper!”
“Sweet, eh?” A young woman looked up from a display of catnip toys she was arranging.
“Crepuscular,” said Dennis. “I didn’t know that word. I’m that too. Crepuscular.”
“Cool,” said the young woman. She wore a T
-shirt that read, “Stop eating meat and I’ll show you my breasts.”
“I’m not much of a jumper, though,” said Dennis.
The young woman smiled. “Me neither.” Judging by her athletic appearance, this was a fib.
“I’ll take her,” said Dennis.
“Cha-cha? That’s what we call her, but of course you can call her whatever you like.”
“Here we go again,” said Dennis.
“Pardon me?”
“Hegel. I’ll call her Hegel.” She’d die too, of course, but this was hardly her fault.
“Awesome,” said the young woman. She stood and started ticking items off on her fingers. “Cage. Water bottle. Dust for her to bathe in.”
“Dust?”
The young woman nodded. “You won’t believe how happy it’ll make her.”
Homeward bound, Hegel chattering from her cage on the passenger seat like a sat-on squeeze toy, Dennis thought to himself, Happy. He thought, Happy.
Welcome
By the time you read this I’ll still be alive. You’ll get home from your mum’s place, you’ll push through the door with your little red rolly overnight bag and call out, “Babe?” Silence. You’ll spot this note on the table and sit down to read it, I’m guessing, without even plucking off your wool hat with the dangly things, so silly it’s cool. And you’ll get mad at me again, but not as mad as you’d have been if I’d written the other note.
The other note would have been a playlist, mostly. Music for my funeral. The playlist would have been my will, too. The songs would have been my gifts, behests I think they’re called, since I don’t have anything else to leave behind. Except the speakers, which we bought together so of course they’d have been yours. Oh, and my bike. You’d probably have given it to Nick, since it’s too big for you, plus you don’t like orange. Why is that? I think I asked you once, but did you tell me? Don’t forget that orange is the colour of basketballs and Cheezies and flames, depending on what’s burning.
It was hard nailing down the list, but for some reason it’s got me feeling a little less like crap. Two full days I spent, almost half your cooling off time, assuming you actually do come home today. Fingers crossed. Should the songs relate to me, or to suicide, or to the people I was dedicating them to, or what? I started with Baby’s On Fire, which was for Nick but of course it’s me who’s obsessed with it. If I was going to choose a Brian Eno it should have been something soft and ambient, obviously, so people could be somber, but the Robert Fripp solo — well, you’ve caught me air guitaring to it a few times, so you know. For Mum I went Hallelujah, the k.d. lang one, not because I’m crazy about it (I’m actually kind of meh) but because Mum would be hurt if nobody cried (I choked up pretty good just thinking about her listening to it, to tell you the truth). For Dad I went Violent Femmes because that would mystify him, and for Maya I went Bach (Italian Concerto, Glenn Gould) because that would mystify her. For you I was thinking, maybe you’ll hate this, but I was thinking 4’33”, John Cage. My idea was that you’d perform it yourself, go up to the piano or probably organ (Dad would insist on the church) and just sit there for four and a half minutes letting everybody listen to themselves and the world. Because it’s all music, of course, which in a way is what I’ve realized while you’ve been gone.
The thing about killing yourself, other than it’s brutal for everybody else, is it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is being born, the opposite of which isn’t dying. When you die you’re still you, you’re just dead, right? What you have to become isn’t dead, but whatever the actual opposite of born is. Not so easy, but for sure you have to be alive to even try. You can’t stop having the stuff you got by being born, but maybe you can stop it being yours, give it back to nature by watching yourself, a naturalist. Which is what I’m doing right now, noticing this thought as it emerges from me like some sort of, I don’t know. Like blood from a cut. It is what it is, just like everything else.
Yeah, I found your private stash (you really didn’t think I’d rummage through your tampons?), but that’s not what’s going on here. These aren’t the kind of insights that turn out to be idiocy when you come down the next day. It’s already the next day, so I’d know.
Why am I telling you all this? Because that’s what we’re doing from now on, we’re telling each other stuff. Sure, I might still be lying. I might not have thought about killing myself, or I might have thought about it and decided to go ahead. I might be dead right now, the right now of you reading this. Once a guy’s lied to you (it was three times with Mari, by the way, not two like I told you the other day, but one of us really did cry after each time, her twice and me once), why would you believe him when he says he’s stopped lying? Why wouldn’t that be a lie too?
Beats me. You know that thing where you say “this is a lie”? Which if it’s true it’s false and if it’s false it’s true? Maybe this is like that. Or okay, maybe not.
It’s about noon right now, the right now of me writing this. The right now of you reading this is probably late afternoon. I’m heading over to Nick’s to give you time. I’ve taken my toothbrush, and I’ll wait for you to call. I’ll wait as long as I have to. I’ll wait forever, though that’s obviously an exaggeration, which is a lie, so pretend I didn’t write it.
I know you’ve been worried about me, especially with my mother and everything, but to tell you the truth I’ve kind of been milking that. Having a mother who tried to kill herself isn’t at all the same as having one who did. And I’m sorry if this note spooked you again, but you can stop worrying. I don’t think I’d ever off myself even if there was a point, which there isn’t. Like I say, if I was dead I’d still just be me, whereas I’m already different. I wouldn’t write this note, would I?
Oh, and for Yash I was going to go John Coltrane, that song Welcome, the one that sounds like Happy Birthday. You pointed that out to me one time, right? We were on a train going someplace, sharing my headphones, one bud each. It’d be funny, or maybe the word is ironic, what with me lying there all dead. Plus of course it’s beautiful beyond belief, like you, like everything. Like you.
Welcome. Call me when you’re ready to, okay? There’s still half a joint in the tampon box. In the fridge there’s salad and quinoa and one of those samosas.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to express my gratitude to the fine people at Freehand Books for embracing this project: Kelsey Attard, Anna Boyar, the members of the editorial board, and especially Deborah Willis, my kind and clear-eyed editor. Also to Cap’n Bill Gaston, whose attentive readings have helped me navigate some tricky fictional waters, and to the other esteemed members of the GFC: Jay Connolly, Jay Ruzesky, Bill Stenson and Terence Young. Sara Cassidy and Julie Paul offered insight and encouragement; Celso Cambiazo and Pierre Mackenzie helped me with translations; Leslie McGarry provided valuable feedback. Learning of the theme of this book, people often directed promising leads my way — I’ll single out Sylvia Weinstock, and there have been many others.
My parents, who died while I was at work on these stories, are a constant, guiding presence for me. My kids — I include my own two, as well as my niece and her partner, my nephew, and my daughter-in-law, adding a shout-out to little Isadora — are always there to inspire me even when they don’t happen to be nearby. My brothers-in-law are my brothers (plus one!). My sister, Anne Louise Gould, and my wife, Sandy Mayzel, offered wise counsel regarding this work, and have supported me in this as in all my endeavours. These people are the greatest blessings of my very fortunate life.
I’m thankful for the many friends, colleagues and students who’ve helped animate and shape my relationship with thinking and writing over the years. And I’m thankful to have the opportunity to live and work in this magnificent place, at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen (Songhees and Esquimalt) people.
My thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for financial assistance during t
he writing of this book. Also to Douglas Glover and the editors of Numero Cinq, who previously published some of these pieces.
Thanks finally to Natalie Olsen of Kisscut Design, for the gorgeous cover and book design.
It isn’t possible to acknowledge all the other works that have informed this one, but I’ll mention (without, of course, holding responsible) a few. For “Via Negativa” I’m indebted to Dr. Emma Bryne, Swearing Is Good for You; for “Pulse” to Yoel Hoffmann, editor of Japanese Death Poems; for “The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying” to cleric Jeremy Taylor who authored the original work of that title; for “The Works” to “The Gospel of Thomas” in the Nag Hammadi Library; for “From the Journal of Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Mass.” to Dr. Duncan MacDougall and his “Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of the Existence of Such Substance”; for “Party Game” to mystic Douglas Harding, On Having No Head; for “About Me” to philosopher and poet Jan Zwicky, Plato as Artist; for “Shrub” to philosopher Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons; for “Stage” to Ruth Davis Konigsberg, The Truth About Grief.
John Gould is the author of two previous collections of very short stories – including Kilter, a finalist for the Giller Prize and a Globe and Mail Best Book – and the novel Seven Good Reasons Not to Be Good. His fiction has been published in periodicals across Canada and abroad, and adapted for film. A teacher, editor and arts administrator, he served on the editorial board of the Malahat Review and taught creative writing at the University of Victoria.