All Saints (14 page)

That night in bed he imagined her pulling on her nightdress, folding back her bedclothes, and felt a stirring he hadn't felt in years.
It's all right
, he told himself afterwards, wiping his hand on a Kleenex.
Perfectly natural. Normal. And these young single women. These days. She wouldn't be still—No. Surely not.

He himself was not completely inexperienced, after all. There had been Fran, years ago. Decades ago. He didn't like to think about Fran. Her bullying, teasing manner that he had always had to be a good sport about. Long after it had stopped being a tease. (“
Jesus, Owen, you are such a stick!”
) He had no idea where Fran was now, or even if she was still alive. And why should he care? She couldn't hold a candle to Cathy.

You have strong features
, he assured his mirrored reflection the next morning while arranging his hair over his scalp.
And wasn't Larkin a rather—well, a man one wouldn't necessarily notice? With an ordinary job? And yet he had a lady friend. A relationship.

Was it really so impossible? He guessed Cathy to be forty at the most. That hardly made him old enough to be her father. Well, it did actually, but what of that? What did chronological age matter? He sensed something old-fashioned in her. Something that might appreciate a man who still believed in courtesy and ritual and reserve. A courtly man. A gentleman.

Cathy, would you like to come for tea?

He would put out his mother's bone china cups and cake platter. Except perhaps he shouldn't ask her to his apartment. Not the first time.

Cathy, do you think we could go to lunch some time? My treat.

A nice local restaurant. Nothing too fancy. Except perhaps he shouldn't offer to treat. These younger women can take offense at such things. Though he doubts Cathy would. But still.

Then Cathy herself, in all innocence, took the proverbial bull by the horns. In the laundry room, of all places.

There was a bulletin board on the wall where people posted ads for furniture and appliances they were hoping to sell. This particular day, he found Cathy looking at a flyer for some kind of creative writing workshop someone named Emily would be teaching in the basement of All Saints, just down the street. By then he was feeling nervous and excited around her, so he started in rather pompously about how writing surely couldn't be taught, that you either had it or you didn't, or at least that had been his experience, furthermore—

“Do you write too, Owen? You do? You're kidding! Oh, this is so amazing.”

So of course she wanted to know all about it, and queried and coaxed until, blushing, he actually recited one of his shorter poems, the one about the scent wafting out of the cedar chest his mother had brought with her when they came over from England, and which he still had in his bedroom. His blush grew fiery when he said
bedroom
, but she didn't seem to notice. At least, he hoped she hadn't.

Then she told him about a short story she kept trying to write about her grandparents, and how they met during the war. “My group thinks it's kind of boring,” she said wistfully.

“What group?”

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep—

Part of him can still do that, can come up with things like that, can think and remember and observe and make note of irony. The other part thrashes and pants in the dark, stumbling over deadfall and bumping face-first into tree trunks. His nose is bleeding. He can taste the blood on his upper lip. He knows it isn't snot. Not any more. He stopped crying when he started to move.

He could not stay by his tree any more, bawling for help into the growing darkness, pleading, smelling his own shit. When the dark finally fell, as swiftly and silently as a curtain of black silk, he heard a voice.
You are going to die,
it said. A calm, matter-of-fact voice inside his head.
No one is going to find you. Soon you will be dead of exposure. Insects will crawl into your nostrils and into your anus and lay their eggs. Small animals will sink their fangs into your face and peel it from the bone.

But then, from out his bone, from out his flesh, a different voice howled
No! No! Nonononononono!
And he set out into the dark, his hands outstretched like a blind man's.

 

He was such a bloody fool. Mooning over a young woman. Thinking he could ingratiate himself with her by befriending her friends.

“They're nice, aren't they, Owen?” she said in the car after the first meeting he attended with her. “We met in one of those All Saints writing courses, and we clicked, so we decided to keep getting together once the course was over.”

No. They were not nice. But he couldn't tell her that. The group reminded him of the people he worked with. There was a sharpness to them, and a shallowness that made him want to run back out the door. Cathy either didn't see it or didn't mind it. He suspected the former. It was that innocence of hers again. It kept her from knowing how casually cruel most people were. Kept her from seeing the flash of incredulity in her friends' eyes when she introduced him. The looks they exchanged whenever he ventured a comment on something one of them had written:
If I may, I would like to suggest …

For her sake, he agreed to go to a second meeting. This time, though he polished his wing tips and selected a good white shirt, he left his tie off. And he tried for that jocular, avuncular tone he suspected was the key, the thing that would get him in.

“Greg!” Pumping the startled young man's hand. “Got your hair cut! Good man! How are you?”

“Fine. Um—I'm Brad.”

“Of course you are! I knew that! I was testing you!”

And into the silence, Cathy's small, helpful laugh.

Cathy. It was for her sake alone that he agreed to spend a weekend with these people he did not like and who did not like him. In a cottage. In the woods.

 

He trips. Falls. His hands skid in the dirt. Dirt. Not pine needles. He raises his head. Squints around. Is the darkness somehow less dense? He pushes himself up onto his knees and reaches out, waving his arms like feelers.

Bite! Something bites his hand. Won't let go. He pulls back and the piercing turns to flame. He reaches with the other hand. Tries to feel, to know what's—

Wire. Wire leading to the pinioned hand. A barb. Yes. A horrid little knot of sharpened ends. Barbed wire. He has found a barbed wire fence. He pulls himself up carefully, climbing the sagging wires. His uninjured hand comes down on another barb and he jerks it away, then flails frantically in the dark to find the fence again. He must not lose his fence.

Once on his feet, he works his way along, using the top wire as a guide, trying to avoid the barbs but getting stuck more often than not. Soon his shit-smeared hands are slimed with blood. He'll have to get a tetanus shot. The thought of it makes him laugh and cry—a strange
Hoo hoo hoo
sound. A tetanus shot!

The barbed wire ends in a wooden post. And then there is an opening. Onto a road. He can just make out the edges of the road. He can feel its gravel surface through his shoes. He begins to walk. With every step, he stands straighter. Wipes blood and snot from under his nose. Breathes hard, smelling his smell. His shit. His blood. He steps hard, tramping the road, almost marching. Into the light. For there is more light. With every step he takes.

A clearing. The clearing around the cottage. He has found his way back. The light is coming from inside, through the floor-to-ceiling window of the front room where the big dining table is. He stops and stands at the bottom of the porch steps, just outside the lit circle, where he can see in without being seen.

They're all there. Sitting around the table. Eating their dinner. Laughing. Talking. Passing bowls of food. Topping up each others' wine. Without his glasses, their faces look even more alike than ever. He squints, trying to see. Is there a space left for him? An empty chair? An extra place set at table?

Just then one of them says something and the rest burst out laughing. The laughter comes to him muted through the glass of the tall window, as if through water.

He hears that voice again. Calm, matter-of-fact.
Here is what you are going to do, Owen
, it says
. You are going to open the door and go inside. You are going to smile sheepishly and keep your distance, because you know how you smell. You are going to pretend not to notice their guilty, startled looks when they see you. Pretend to believe their lies about thinking you were in your room the whole time. Taking a nap. The way you said you might. You are going to chuckle, ‘No, no, all my fault. Got into a spot of bother out there. Bit of silliness, really. Should have known better.' Then you are going to creep up the stairs to your room and pull off your shitty pants and wrap yourself in a sheet and sneak to the bathroom and soak your clothes in the tub and wash yourself all over and wonder all the time what you're going to wear while your clothes dry and—

Another burst of laughter from behind the bright glass.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

He puts his hands over his face. Breathes in.
Out of sight
. Smells shit.
Out of mind
. Blood. Breathes out in a low growl. Starts to sway rhythmically back and forth. Growling.

Out of sight

Shit and blood

Out of mind

More laughter. Owen stamps his feet.
Out of sight!
Claps his hands.
Out of mind!
Stamps his feet.

Shit and blood!

Out of sight, out of mind

Shit and blood! The Shitblood Man!

Stamping and growling, he moves into the circle of light. They could see him. If they looked.
Out of sight!
He unzips his windbreaker and drops it on the ground.
Out of mind!
Pulls off his shirt. Shoes. Socks. Jeans.
Shit and blood!
Takes down his underpants. Dances out of them, hopping and yanking.
The Shitblood Man! The Shitblood Man!
Puts his underpants on his head. Pulls them down over his face like a mask. Hopping, growling.
Shit and blood! The Shitblood Man!
Picks up his shoes. Curls a fist inside each one.

The diners still don't see him. Their faces, serious for once, are turned toward the one sitting at the head of the table, who appears to be telling a story.

Outside, glaring through the leg-holes of his underpants, Owen knocks his shoe-clubbed hands together over his head, stamping in a circle, thrusting his belly, flapping his penis, chanting,
The Shitblood Man! The Shitblood Man!
Faster and faster. Starting to run. Finally rounding on the cottage.

Just then one of the women turns and looks out through the window. Is the first to see what none of them will ever stop seeing, as Owen James, head down and arms out, charges straight for the glass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Return

 

 

 

 

 

The horse is standing there
when she wakes up. The floor is cold under her back. She keeps looking up and around at walls. Pictures. Doorways. Where is she? She doesn't know this place.

The horse takes one step forward, lowers its head and nudges her slippered foot with its nose. She only has the one slipper on. The other is lying on the hardwood a few feet away from her bare foot. She keeps looking from the empty slipper to the horse.

She knows this horse. From somewhere. She is familiar with the way it dips its head and shakes its mane and blows through its lips. She recognizes every ripple in its white hide, every gradation of pale blue and yellow and grey where its muscles dip and swell.

You're here for me, aren't you?
As if in answer, the horse nudges her foot again.

Some of the horse's familiarity begins to seep into her surroundings. This is her apartment. She is on the floor in the hall. Between the bedroom and the bathroom. It is morning. She had just gotten up. Was just heading toward the kitchen to make the coffee. Now she's on the floor.

The horse. It's standing in a field. Shouldn't that be remarkable? That a field seems to have sprouted in her apartment? Not every part of it, just the part where the horse is. When she rolls her head to face the other way, she sees baseboard and area rug. But when she rolls her head back, there is grass and wildflowers.

And the horse. Watching her with eyes like globes of night.

 

“That's terrific, Emily! Keep going! Step! Step!” The horse keeps pace with her, its eyes white-rimmed, its nostrils flaring.

EMILY WALKED FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY! Whenever she sees that cheery note tacked to the bulletin board beside her hospital bed, she wants to cross out WALKED and write in LURCHED. How could anyone call what she did that day walking? Her left leg in a brace, a member of her rehab team supporting her under each arm, her right leg waving like a feeler, making tentative taps on the ground.“Good, Emily! Take your weight on your right. Now lean. Now use your back muscles to swing your left hip. Stabilize. And … step!”

The horse is calmer now, getting used to her daily walks, which are getting longer. It's been—what? Two months? There's a calendar on the bulletin board, courtesy of Della. Baby animals. Just the kind of thing Della would pick out. When Emily first came here, the baby of the month was a giraffe. Now it's tiger cubs. She's walking with a wheeled walker now, and only needs one member of the team helping—lurch-slide, lurch-slide. The horse steps along slowly beside her, up and down the halls.

 

You're here for me.

She decides it's like having a new lover. You wonder what they're doing there, what they want from you, how long they'll stay, what state you'd be in if they left. You tell yourself to live in the moment. You remind yourself that too much analysis could jinx things.

There is still that maddening familiarity. She can't ground the horse in any specific time or place, and senses that she shouldn't try. But she does try sometimes, in a forbidden corner of her mind. It's like overhearing your own name in a snatch of conversation. You know you shouldn't listen in, that whatever you hear might throw up a distorted, funhouse mirror version of yourself more true than any you have ever chosen to see.

Whenever she starts wondering where the horse came from or worrying that she might wake up in her hospital bed one morning and see nothing but hospital walls, she repeats
You're here for me
in her mind like a mantra. The horse always hears and responds, taking a step toward her, gazing at her with its large black eyes.

 

“Use your neck muscles to keep yourself stable, Emily.”

My neck muscles?

Every other day she has to lie spread-eagled on a big drum. Two members of the team rock it—first gently, then almost violently. The first time, the horse flung its head up and nickered in alarm.

But it seems to be working. Not only does her neck somehow keep her from sliding off the drum, but it's getting stronger. Thicker. She can feel as much, with her right hand.

Her left arm, her afflicted arm as they call it, is kept strapped in a plastic brace.

Twice a day, they take the brace off and work the arm—pumping it, stretching it. “Do you feel any return, Emily? A tingling? An itch? Let us know the minute you feel the slightest bit of anything that might be return.”

Return,
she thinks
. As if my arm is going to come back from somewhere. Or maybe the spirit of my arm? Which is off wandering, having left its corporeal self behind?

They work her afflicted left leg, too. They raise it straight up, while she lies on her back, then jackknife it practically to her chest.

“Does that hurt? Good. That pain is a very good sign.”

For you, maybe.

The horse follows her on her rounds. She can hear it clip-clopping behind her wheelchair, over the squeak of the nurses' shoes. Wherever she ends up—hydrotherapy, OT, cafeteria—she will glance out of the corner of her eye, and there it will be. It brings its own dimension of space with it, like a bubble. When it grazes, Emily can see a circle of grass at its feet. Sometimes it turns and trots off toward a stream she can see in the distance, under a cloud-dotted sky.

What would it be like to have no awareness of the passage of time? No expectations to live up to? She only works at her therapy to please the team. They get so excited whenever she manages to do anything at all that it's sad. To her, the exercises feel like studying for an exam in some subject she did not elect.

“Are you looking for someone, Emily? Is there something we can get for you?”

She always shakes her head. But then when she's alone she glances again toward the horse.
Secret,
she says to it in her mind, and it dips its head.

 

Now the calendar shows a baby hippo. Emily tries not to think about how much it looks like Della. Della, she reminds herself sternly, is a godsend. She tries once to tell her so, pointing and concentrating as hard as she can to get the words
god
and
send
out of her mouth.

“Squeak bustle?” Della's small eyes get smaller.

Oh shit. Now she thinks I'm making fun of her.

“Did you say squeak bustle?”

“No.” Emily tries to sound soothing. Conciliatory. “No.”

She can say
yes, no
and
oh my.
Those are the only words that make it out of her mouth without being stopped as if by border guards, who confiscate them and substitute other words she had no intention of saying.

Yes.

No.

Oh my
.

She can't remember saying
oh my
before the stroke. She wasn't an
oh my
kind of person. But at least it has an emotional element. She's able to sound appreciative of yet another flowering plant—“Oh
my!”—
or box of cookies. She can sound sympathetic too—“
Oh
my!”—which is necessary with Della, who has to take three buses to come and see her.

Before she became her godsend, Della was one of Emily's perpetual beginners, or PBs. Emily has labels for certain types who sign up for her writing courses. Besides the PB, there is the HS, or hotshot, who has never actually written anything but is apparently possessed of brilliant ideas that will translate into bestsellers the instant Emily finds them an agent. Then there is the TT, or true talent, that she cultivates like a rare orchid—too little attention and it will wither, too much and it will drown. Finally, the perpetual beginner. No discernible ability, just alarmingly prolific and as impervious to criticism—everything from gentle hint to bald insult—as a turtle to rain.

At the start of every course, Emily resolves to sniff out the PB in the group, take them aside, give them back their money and send them away. But she never does. And so, as she did with all the other PBs, she became Della's protector. She scrounged for something positive to say about her memoir, which was being narrated in turn by all the cats she had ever owned, and looked daggers at anyone in the class who snorted into their hands.

No good deed goes unpunished,
she thinks now whenever Della comes through the door with her shopping bags and baby hippo smile. Still, who else would notice that she was running low on toothpaste or deodorant? Who else would badger the nurses into washing her hair more than once a week? She can't see Dave doing it. And it wouldn't be right to ask Simon, even if she could get the words out. Simon has enough problems as it is.

The horse just grazes with its rump to Della when she arrives, then trots off in the direction of the stream.

 

Now the calendar is turned to fox cubs. Four months.

Sometimes, as if exploring a sore tooth with her tongue, ready to stop at the slightest twinge, Emily thinks about home. The small things of home. That strip of counter space in the kitchen that is just wide enough for her coffee maker and just close enough to the stove outlet. The blue mug on the shelf in the linen closet, full of loonies and quarters for the laundry. The rocking chair in the bedroom, so handy to pile the pillows and quilt on when she changes the sheets.

Home.
She can see and hear the word in her mind. Feel it behind her closed lips. What would come out if she tried to say it? And why doesn't she long to get back there? Resume her old life? Shouldn't she be hurting? She's not. Remembering things the way they were before the stroke is like remembering a vacation—some pleasant but slightly improbable place she might or might not see again. Either way, it doesn't really matter.

Either way. Might or might not. I live in the subjunctive. Ambiguity is my element, and negative my capability.

She remembers another calendar—one with no baby animals. It hangs above her desk at home and is busy with her own jottings. The deadline for her next book. Dates for the next course she is contracted to teach. Readings she agreed to do. Obligations. Commitments. Responsibilities. They are still there. But they have become as remote and insubstantial as the clouds in the sky behind the horse.

 

Cards keep arriving, and flowers. The flowers come directly to the hospital, but most of the cards are handed to her by Della, who picks up her mail at the apartment. “Do you want me to open these?” Della asks gravely over each and every bundle. Emily makes herself nod, just as gravely. “I would never go ahead without your say-so,” Della has assured her more than once, while Emily tries not to imagine her steaming open the envelopes, reading the contents, then gluing the flaps back down.

Not that the cards ever contain anything personal or disturbing. No one dares to write a plain letter—black ink on white paper—containing, God forbid, words like
afraid
or
angry
or
sad.
The cards fall into one of three categories—pretty, perky and funny. The senders invariably compliment her, cheer her on, assure her they have every possible faith in her.
Might as well be an Olympic athlete,
she thinks after reading the latest batch and watching Della shuffle them into place with all the others on the windowsill.

Besides cards and flowers, she receives visitors. Neighbours, students, colleagues. They come in groups, and stand bunched together as if for protection in the doorway of her room until she beckons to them to enter. Once in, they chatter and laugh non-stop, exclaiming over her cards, her flowers, the size of her room, the view out her window, the lovely grounds of the hospital, and above all herself—
You look fabulous, Emily!
They stay for exactly two hours, assuring her they won't tire her out, then leave with promises to come again soon.

Emily knows that it's all going to stop. One day she will wake to a silence, and emptiness. And when that happens, so will something else. Kind of like a bubble popping. She will fall, very suddenly, onto something very hard. And she may or may not be able to get back up.

You're here for me, aren't you?
No matter how far away it has retreated, the horse raises its head to let her know that it has heard.

 

Dave comes on his own. The first time, he arrives laden with chocolates and brown-eyed susans, starts in gamely, “Hey there, old girl,” then bursts into tears. “Aw fuck, Em,” he manages to say at length. He keeps saying it—“Aw fuck, Em.” It's all he can say. She can't even remind him that her name is Emily, and that she hates being called Em. No point, anyway. He could never remember when they were married, so how can she expect him to now?

My ex-husband is my best friend.
Since the stroke, she's been saying that to herself. It's been true for years—just not something she could ever admit. After the divorce, she kept herself cold and hard, not returning Dave's calls on her birthday, walking briskly away if they encountered each other on the street. Then about ten years ago he came to one of her launches and stood in line to get her autograph. She watched herself take the book he had bought out of his hands, turn to the title page and write,
I'm still in the same place.

They started seeing each other now and then for dinner. He helped her move into her present apartment. She listened to him talk himself out of his second marriage and into his third. There remains a tenderness at the centre of their relationship, a touch-me-not that is strangely sexual. Emily has sometimes wondered if going to bed together, just once for old time's sake, might absolve them. Technically, Dave is the guilty party, since he left her. But she needs a ritual too—some way to demonstrate her forgiveness. If that's what it is. It has gotten all mixed up in her mind, and seems silly to try to pinpoint who did what to whom all those years ago.