Algoma (27 page)

“Yes, yes, he’s with the holy son now.”

Son. Algoma looked at her remaining son with confusion. Was he smiling? He sat there, legs splayed open, feet dangling, shirt partially unbuttoned, staring blankly at the front of the church.

“You’re in shock,” she whispered, but his eyes did not meet hers. He was somewhere else entirely.

______________

1:48 p.m. 25°C. No wind.
Attempt to cook an egg on a parked car: failure.

“Leo!”

A lanky redhead stood in the middle of the street, her dirty hands cupped around her mouth. She yelled again: “I’m only going to give you one more chance, Leo. It’s your turn.”

The hairs on the back of Ferd’s neck stood up. Though he’d told the girl his name was Leo, he kept forgetting to respond when she spoke to him. He didn’t know why he had given her his brother’s name, but he liked the way it sounded when she said it. As if Leo would turn the corner and show up at any second.

“Just give me a minute, will you?” Ferd finished writing a note to his brother, which he slipped down the sewer before running over to the girl.

“What were you doing over there?” Beth asked.

“Nothing,” Ferd said.

Beth’s mouth twitched with suspicion, but she didn’t pursue further questioning. “Whatever.”

Even though Beth and Ferd were the same age, Beth was taller, which gave her ultimate authority. She was balancing on a tar-filled crack in the road, her sun-burnt toes dug deep into the black bubble gum.

“It’s your turn,” she repeated, exasperated. “Here.” Her face was tight and serious. She stepped off the crack slowly and carefully, as if removing herself from a landmine. A light breeze ruffled her long curly hair, which was threaded with bits of twigs and leaves. An afternoon of roughhousing with the boys.

The crack in the street reached from one side to the other. Ferd took off his running shoes and socks and took Beth’s place in the tar. The warm tar felt oddly familiar—like flesh—as it closed around his toes. The mid-afternoon sun bore down on his head. He thought he could smell burnt hair.

The crack was central to the game the kids had been playing all afternoon. At all times, someone had to have their toes pushed into the tar to keep the street together. If the crack was abandoned, the street would split apart and suck in everything around it. The fate of the world rested on the shoulders of six kids from Le Pin. The tar lodged under their toenails would be there for days.

“Don’t move, Leo,” Beth commanded breathlessly as she hopped by on one foot. “We’re counting on you.” She thumped her chest with a fist to emphasize her point.

Ferd wondered how long he would have to stand there; that particular rule of the game had not been established. He had already been standing in the tar twice as long as Beth had. None of the other kids strayed close enough for him to ask. They flew about like sparrows, flitting and chirping rules they made up as they went along.

“You can’t touch his arm with your hands, only your feet.”

“No shadows!”

“Three handfuls of grass for one stone.”

“You have to roll over first.”

“Rip the leaf in four.”

“Jump ten times, shadow-stepper!”

That morning, Ferd had biked to the south side of town where the kids went to a different school. A parallel universe of latchkeys and Popsicles. He had trolled the tree-lined streets for unfamiliar faces. On a slow roll, he had passed mailboxes with last names he didn’t recognize; a shirtless man polishing his car, the driver’s door left open, stereo blaring AC/DC; a lawnmower abandoned on a half-cut lawn, the orange extension cord snaking into the open garage; an elderly woman in thick black support hose sweeping her already clean sidewalk. Most of the front lawns were empty. Bursts of laughter and shrieks tinkled from backyards. Ferd could smell the barbecued meat and he could almost taste the tall glasses of lemonade he imagined accompanied it.

After a stop at a corner convenience store, he had encountered a pack of kids on 12th Avenue. They had just been released from microwaved pizza lunches on Corel plates and juice boxes sucked dry into hourglass shapes. They had sprinted full tilt from their homes, inmates released from life sentences. Wild-eyed, they had come to halt around his bike. He was immediately, wordlessly, absorbed into their afternoon.

The last summer that Leo had been alive, he and Ferd had gone into the woods every day and never encountered another kid, let alone a pack. Every night, they prepared backpacks full of everything they thought they could possibly need: granola bars, matches, comic books, snare wire. With their mother’s approval, they left the house in the morning and didn’t return until the street lights flickered on, their bags emptied and filled again with forest fare.

“Now you have to sing the birthday song backwards,” yelled Tracey, the smallest girl of the group. Her nose was flat and round like a crushed blueberry and she was missing both of her front teeth.

Toe-deep in tar, Ferd began to feel dizzy from the heat, but he didn’t dare move. Beth’s eyes were always on him, and he could tell that she was someone who wouldn’t take mutiny with grace. He licked his parched lips, squared his shoulders, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He could do it. He dug his toes in deeper. They were depending on Leo.

The game had changed. Ferd watched from the street, his T-shirt slick with sweat, the back of his neck hot to touch.

“You’re the bear and you’re the boy,” instructed Beth.

Ben and Michel walked to the nearest lawn and lay down on the freshly mowed grass. Michel made breaststroke motions while Ben dog paddled in place behind him. Even from the street, Ferd could hear Michel’s heavy breaths, Ben’s grunts and growls.

“Swim faster,” Beth yelled. “He’s going to get you! He’s going to tear you apart with his teeth.” Michel screamed when Ben grabbed onto his ankle and dragged him closer.

It hit Ferd. They were reenacting what they had heard about Leo. He stepped off the crack. The world fell apart, everything sucked into his anger. “You’re wrong,” he hissed. “It’s all wrong.”

Ben stopped air swimming. He was sweating. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s all wrong.” Ferd’s ears and neck were bright red, but he couldn’t find the right words.

“You’re ruining everything,” Beth shrieked, her previous calm shattered.

“Leo was chasing the bear,” Ferd said. “The bear wasn’t chasing him.”

The kids looked at Ferd like he was a ghost. The two boys stood up. For the first time that day, Beth’s voice sounded unsure: “What did you say?”

Ferd pumped his legs as fast as he could, blasting past stop signs, weaving in between cars, coming close to hitting people crossing the street. He stopped for nothing. With each block he peddled through, he shed a small piece of Leo. By the time he arrived home he was entirely himself—Ferdinand. He threw down his bike at the end of the driveway and stood there. His mother was standing in the living room talking on the phone. She didn’t see him. He could see the half-moon silhouette of her pregnant belly and it soothed him. His breathing slowed. Soon, he could stop living for two.

______________

10:21 a.m. 33°C. No wind.
Large purple bruise spreading around the IV needle.

“Name.”

“Gaetan.”

“Last Name.”

“Beaudoin.”

“Date of birth.”

“What happened?”

“Primary physician?”

“Where am I?”

“Emergency contact?”

“Who?”

“Emergency contact?” the nurse repeated.

Gaetan’s mind drew a blank. There was no one he could call. And even if he did, he didn’t know what he would tell them. He looked at the nurse who sat patiently beside him as she waited for him to figure out his situation. Who was important. She tapped her clean white runner against his bed like a metronome.

“You were beaten,” she offered. “You’re lucky to be alive.” Her hair was the same colour as Algoma’s.

“So—” Gaetan started.

“So, we fixed you,” the nurse said. “The police still want to talk to you. I’ll call them and let them know you’re conscious now.”

Gaetan reached up and felt a turban of gauze wrapped around his head.

“Quite a gash,” the nurse said. “You’ll feel that one for a couple of weeks.”

Gaetan looked down at the rest of his body, noting every bruise and bandage and the cast on his left arm. He lifted up his right hand and looked at the IV line. “What happened?” he asked.

The nurse put down her clipboard. “You were robbed and beaten, hon. Simple as that.”

When Gaetan tried to remove the IV line from his hand, the nurse slapped his leg. “No,” she barked. She picked up her clipboard and wrote something down. “You’ll need to stay for another day or so. Do you have someone to watch you when you go home? Someone to help you out?”

Gaetan thought about his apartment. He hadn’t vacuumed since he’d moved in. Had he picked up the mail yesterday? There were dirty dishes piled in the sink and he was out of toilet paper. “Yes,” he said.

The nurse nodded. “Do you want me to call them for you? What’s the number?”

“No. I’ll use the phone here,” Gaetan lied. “I’d just like some privacy. Is that alright?”

The nurse nodded and looked at her watch. “I’ll be back later so we can fill this out, okay?”

“Sure,” he said. As soon as she left, he shut his eyes. His last memory was of eating in a restaurant in Chinatown, how the bell rang every time someone went in or out.

A phone rang. Startled, Gaetan bolted up in his bed, his heart pounding. His panic lessened when he realized the phone wasn’t for him. It was for one of the other patients in his room. His breathing slowed back to normal. While he dreaded the idea of his phone ringing, in a way, he desperately hoped it would.

A nurse walked into the room with a tray of food. Gaetan didn’t even wait for her to look his way: “Is the phone working? My phone, I mean.”

She put down the tray on the table beside him and removed the lid: poached white fish, lukewarm canned peas, overcooked instant rice, a covered bowl of cherry Jell-O, and a plastic mug of tea.

“Can you check for me?” he asked. “Please?”

The nurse picked up the receiver and tapped the receiver button repeatedly. “You’ve got dial tone. It’s good. You expecting someone?”

Gaetan said no, pushed his lunch tray as far away as he could, and turned toward the wall. Had no one intuited his injuries, or felt that something was wrong? Maybe his ties to his friends and family were thinner than he had already thought. Maybe they had already forgotten him and moved on. He ignored the fact that he had been the one who had left.

Gaetan tried to picture Algoma in bed with another man, strange hands on her naked breasts; someone else picking up his son from school. He half expected to see his wife and their two sons walk in at any moment. One son, he corrected himself. One son. He always pictured Algoma in the last thing he had seen her wearing: a pair of jeans, a floral dress layered over top, and a black headband she’d made out of the bottom of an old T-shirt.

“Wear your hair down more,” he had asked so many times. “It looks more feminine.” He realized now he wasn’t a good man, but it didn’t matter anymore.

He desperately wanted a drink, something strong, but there were only IV bags, it seemed, for miles and miles.

Later on in the afternoon, the nurse returned with a vase of tiger lilies. “I thought your corner of the world could use some colouring up,” she said.

For the first time since he’d been there, Gaetan noticed that the nurse had a thin scar on her upper lip that extended to her left nostril. He came close to asking her about it, but instead said: “I don’t need a dead man’s flowers.” The lilies were slightly wilted, the water dingy. He knew she’d taken them from another patient’s room, another patient who didn’t need them anymore.

“Fine,” she said. She picked up the vase again and turned on her rubber-soled shoe with a squeak and started for the exit. “Asshole,” she said just loud enough so he could hear it, which he did.

Gaetan turned back to his view: a thin belt of grey morning sky over top of the west wing of the hospital, hundreds of windows, endless rows of pigeons. He pressed his hand to his head. It still hurt to touch. He concentrated on his body, the other injuries, to see if he could feel each one, but the pain blurred, it was everywhere.

Two new patients had been wheeled into his room the previous day to replace the two who had left. The older one, a woman in her eighties, slept in the bed directly across from his. She was using her yellow housecoat as an improvised blanket to shield her frail body from the hospital’s fierce air conditioning. Her hospital-issued blanket was on the floor; she didn’t have the strength to retrieve it. Gaetan watched the thin wisps of her white hair dance every time someone walked in or out of the room, a soft coral.

The bed beside the old woman had been assigned to someone half her age who was sleeping on her back, blanket pulled up to her sharp chin. She was so still Gaetan wondered if she was dead. She hadn’t moved in hours. His hand hovered over the button he used to call the nurses’ station, but he pulled his hand back when he noticed her uneaten food. Yes, he thought, I would eat the cold dinner of a dead woman. Waste not, want not. The patient mumbled in her sleep and turned over on her side.

Gaetan sighed. He’d had enough. He wanted real food and to go back to his apartment. Once there was a lull in the hallway traffic, he quietly pulled the privacy curtain around his bed and put on the clothes he had arrived in. His jeans were cold and damp against his skin, his shirt wrinkled. He picked at an unidentifiable stain on his sleeve. Blood, he guessed. It would never come out. He reached into his pocket for his wallet and then recalled the nurse had said he’d been robbed. As he left the room, he scooped up the old woman’s blanket and draped it over her as he had once done for his sons.

The hallway was empty except for abandoned wheelchairs and overflowing laundry carts, but he could hear women talking at the nurses’ station. Laughter. He walked in the opposite direction toward the stairwell. Holding his broken arm still, it took him nearly half an hour to hobble down seven flights of stairs. By the time he reached the bottom, he was sure he’d ripped the stitches in his left leg. He kept checking his jeans for bloodstains. He’d have to remember to pick up detergent on the way home.