Cricket in a Fist (15 page)

Picture a woman in her mid-thirties. Fifteen pounds overweight, dressed in jeans and an oversized sweater. The ever-present wool socks. She opens a bedroom door. She has a headache and her daughters are making a racket — she sees her teenaged daughter tickling the younger one on the bed. They are both shrieking with laughter. The sound makes the mother want to tape the children's mouths closed, sedate them. Anything, as her own mother used to say, for some peace and quiet. She can't believe the children are hers, doesn't know how she came to be in this house, standing in this doorway, feeling this impotent fury. There must have been some kind of mistake. The girls' laughter excludes her and pains her and goes through her head like a knife.

But during my transformation, I laughed all the time. The doctors said my laughter was pathological. They claimed it was only my brain injury, the misfiring and realigning of neurons, that made everything funny. They told me I was defective because I could see absurdity, delicious absurdity, everywhere I looked — in the seriousness, the heaviness of other people. The way they looked at me, pitying, thinking I was someone who had suffered. My husband held my hand and told me earnestly that he was trying to understand what I was going through, that it was hard for everyone — oh, it was enough to make my stomach cramp, the way I laughed. With every convulsion I felt closer to the truth. It was like walking out of quicksand — all I had to do was move my own legs and I could walk out. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche tells us, “One does not kill by anger but by laughter.” You don't have to sleep until your body rebels and forces you to wake up. Believe me. Laugh. Even if it feels fake at
first, even if you don't find anything funny and don't know why you're doing it. Laughing is like praying: you don't have to believe it at first, but if you keep doing it, it will open your eyes and become real. There's plenty of time for peace and quiet after you're dead and buried. I never have headaches anymore. I always know where I am and that I came to be there of my own will.

Nietzsche writes, “I have learned to walk: since then I have learned to run. I have learned to fly: since then I do not have to be pushed to move.”

J. Virginia Morgan

The Maternal Return: An Anti-Memoir

The first Halloween after Mama's accident, Dad cut two eye-holes in the middle of an old sheet, secured it over Minnie's head, and told her she was a ghost. He led her through the apartment building, floor by floor, trick-or-treating without going outside. We'd lived on Cooper Street since the beginning of the summer before grade ten, when the rented eleventh-floor apartment was supposed to be temporary, just until Dad and Mama found a house.

I was in the bathroom putting on makeup and washing it off again when my mother emerged from the former guest room, now her bedroom; in the mirror, I watched her walk away down the hall without turning to give me a glance. She was wearing her huge stained track suit and had a full pack on her back, a grocery bag in each hand. Her hair, fluffy from a recent washing, was shapeless, almost shoulder length, and needed a cut badly. I didn't try to get her attention; I'd become almost accustomed to her indifference, her habit of showering twice a day and her steady, alarming weight loss. She hadn't seemed to eat anything at all for the previous two months. All she did was exercise, read and shuffle through boxes in her room with the door closed.

When Dad and Minnie came back with a pillowcase full of candy, I was waiting in the living room, wearing an old slip over a pair of jeans and holding an unlit cigar in my hand. Minnie set to work sorting her loot into categories, and I put on my jacket, telling Dad as I left, “She went somewhere.”

I was out until two in the morning. I took off my shoes and jacket as quietly as I could and stepped softly through the living room, only to find Dad standing in the dark hallway. He had the stoic, pale look that comes when anger and shock have exhausted themselves, leaving a calm despair in their wake. “I just went to the diner after the dance,” I told him quickly, “with Reiko.”

“Agatha,” he said. “Can you come with me, please?”

My mother had left her bedroom door wide open. The boxes from her closet, which had contained all her mementos, journals and old clothes, were in the middle of the floor, empty. She hadn't bothered taking my things or Minnie's — a box with all our baby clothes and childhood drawings was undisturbed.

“Look at this,” said Dad. All our family photo albums were piled in the corner. He opened the top one. The once-full pages were patchy; it took me only a minute to see that my mother had removed every photograph of herself, leaving me as a baby on Oma Esther's lap; me at three, at the wedding, leaning against Oma Esther's arm; Tam-Tam and Dad; Minnie as a baby. Everything was there, our whole lives, only Mama was completely missing. Dad and I sat on the floor in silence, flipping through the albums, hoping she'd missed something. “She didn't have to do this,” Dad said, head in his hands. Then we packed up everything that was left and put the boxes back in the closet. We were both in our own rooms when I heard my mother come back in the early morning, stepping lightly, her bags empty.

A week and a half afterwards, I was late for school, missing math, allegedly because Dad wanted company while his car was cleaned. Long, rubbery strips smacked the soaked windows and smeared the glass with soapy trails while Dad sipped his coffee and I blew steam across the surface of my cup. The carwash was a perfect place for Dad to talk to me; it would be dangerous to open the door. Mama used to do the same thing, save the worst for when we were in transit
and I couldn't escape. She'd described sexual intercourse on the way to ballet class when I was eight.

“Don't tell Minnie we came here without her,” said Dad. He'd already dropped off my sister at first grade. The carwash always had a uniquely sedative effect on my sister, and Dad used to take her there often, not because the car was dirty, but because she was unmanageably hyper and it was the only way to calm her down. Minnie had changed; her frenetic energy had given way to a pensive shyness, but she still loved the carwash.

The car inched forward. “Your sister still gets so upset when I drop her off in the mornings,” Dad said.

“She'll be okay,” I told him. “Don't worry, Daddy Longlegs.” Dad's limbs looked cramped in any car, even with the seat pushed back, and that's what called up my childhood nickname for him. He smiled and relaxed slightly, grateful for this show of affection. “Nice hair,” I said. His usually scruffy hair and beard had been trimmed, so every hair on his head was exactly the same length.

“Well,” he said, “you inspired me. I really like it.” He pushed my bangs out of my eyes. “I like your hair down.” Dad had been surprised when he saw me the night before. He didn't know I visited Tam-Tam at work once a week, usually just for half an hour after school. She was always obsessed with my hair and had finally dragged me upstairs to have it cut.

A set of small pipes blasted the car's windows with hot water, pushing soap-froth to the edges and away.
Kshhhhhh
, Minnie would have said. “Well, Agatha,” Dad said. “You know I've been talking about adopting you. The papers are ready to go. I'm pretty pleased about that.” My glasses were steaming up, but I left them on. “It's quite important that I'm recognized, legally, as your father, because things could get confusing.” He had one hand on the steering wheel and was looking straight ahead although the engine wasn't on. “Your mother's never going to be like she was. As Dr. Manning says, we all have to accept that.”

Soap and water blasted the windows, brushes closing us in, while Dad talked, backtracked and tried to explain, tapping his hand on
the steering wheel, moving things around on the dashboard, and I thought of my mother. I didn't know where she was — working out at whatever gym she frequented or shopping for clothes at newly discovered stores. I knew she'd started swimming; a chlorine-smelling black bathing suit had started appearing in the laundry. When I got home after school, she'd probably be back in her bedroom with the door closed, looking for more possessions to sell, throw in the canal, bury — or whatever she'd done with them.

The car was already spotless, and Dad had to speak up over the hot-air dryers by the time he managed to say, “Her name is Lara.” Then we were outside in the sun and I knew. Dad was in love with someone else. That's what he said: “We've fallen in love.” We both slumped in our seats until someone banged on the window, startling us, and Dad fumbled in his wallet.

“Here.” I pulled a ten from the pocket of my jeans. “The absentminded professor thing gets a little tired sometimes.” Dad ignored me, took a twenty out of his jacket pocket and handed it to the attendant.

I concentrated on cleaning my glasses while Dad drove. When I looked at him with my bare eyes, his face was a blur of beard, eyes, skin. If there were tears in his eyes, I couldn't see them. If his jaw was relaxed in self-assured indifference, I didn't have to know about it.

“Will this . . . woman adopt me, too?” I asked. I thought I'd be the first person in the world to be adopted at the age of sixteen, related by blood to neither of my guardians, my real mother set loose, adrift.

“No,” said Dad, “of course not. Your mother will still be your mother. And I've always been your father. The adoption is just a legality.” I could tell he'd been waiting a long time to tell me all this, dreading it. “I love you and Minnie very much,” he added. “I know this is hard. Especially for you.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

Before he stopped in front of my school, Dad said, “I understand you're angry right now. We'll talk later when you've had time to
think. Lara's an easy person to like. Minnie gets along with her wonderfully.”

“You've already introduced her to Minnie?”

“It's okay that you need to yell, I know this is hard to deal with. Yes, they met, but Minnie just thought Lara was a friend of mine. Probably thought she was one of my students.”

The effort to speak in a normal tone made my voice shake. “
Is
she one of your students?” Dad pulled up next to the curb, and there was no one outside the school except one grade ten girl with limp black hair and a lumberjack jacket standing near the curb in the smoker's corner. “No,” he said. “She's not my student. She's a lawyer, actually. Works in Gerry's office.” Gerry, Dad's cousin.

“Mama gets sick and you just find someone else?” I slammed the door and told him through the window, “Don't drive away, Steven, my foot's in front of your tire.”

“We'll talk about this later.” Now that Dad had unburdened himself, he was all confidence and composure.

“Does Mama even know?”

“Sweetheart,” said Dad, “we'll talk about this as soon as I get home this evening. You're a smart girl and I know you'll be okay. I'm counting on you.” He backed away from my foot, pulled past me and away, waving reassuringly. I was surprised to find myself surprised, baffled that I never saw this coming. I'd always thought Mama was the one who didn't love Steven enough. I had evidence. Hard, written evidence that Steven's love for my mother was unyielding and blind. I was standing in the turning circle outside the school, my family crumbling, what was left of its shape finally giving way. The girl in the smoker's corner ground her butt under the heel of one army boot. I knew who she was; she was famous for having fainted during a presentation, collapsing backwards, a half-smoked joint tumbling out of her pocket. She shrugged at me sympathetically.

*

I found everyone packed in the hallways. Every Remembrance Day, the whole school was organized grade by grade, class by class, two by two, and herded to the war memorial, a fifteen-minute walk away. Attendance was taken before and after, absence considered a crime against decency. I was looking for my homeroom half-heartedly when I spotted the back of Helena's head and turned quickly away. I hurried to the pay phone at the end of the hallway; Dad answered his cell phone after three rings.

“How long have you been seeing this person?” I said. I thought of all our therapy sessions with Dr. Manning — Tam-Tam, Dad and I trying to bring Mama back so we could be a family again. “Were you planning this the whole time? Why did you pretend you wanted things to go back to normal if you were just going to dump us anyway? Steven! Hello?”

“I'm not dumping you, Agatha. I'll be your father for the rest of your life. I want you to understand that.”

“How many other affairs have you had?” It occurred to me that Mama would no longer even care what he did. “You are the biggest hypocrite I've ever met.”

“All right. We'll talk about this later. As much as you need to.”

I struggled for words and tried to imagine what Mama, the old Mama, would have said about Dad's mistress. “Fuck you,” I said, on Mama's behalf. “Cocksucker.” The word sounded idiotic coming out of my mouth. I hung up.

I put another quarter in the phone and dialled the number scrawled on my bus pass. Sundar was there, and barely awake. “You want to skip out on Remembrance Day?” He sounded surprisingly disapproving of my plan.

“I've got to get out of here. Can you come and get me?”

He described his car and said, “Okay,
NAC
parking lot.”

“Ms. Winter,” said Mr. Meyers, my history teacher, hand on my shoulder as I hung up. “Get back in line. No, wait.” He stepped around in front of me and, in a peculiarly intimate gesture, held me by the front of my fraying brown army jacket to pin a felt poppy in
the general area of my heart. His round belly was an inch away from me, his collarbone level with my eyes. I'd been in his Canadian history class the year before and barely passed, though he gave me an A the year before that. I looked up at his face. “If you'd only focus,” he said, releasing me, clearly exasperated by the chaos of the day, “you'd be just fine.” Smiling noncommittally, I turned away with a strangely pleasurable thrill of paranoia. I'd suspected all year that the teachers discussed me in the staff room, mulling over my mother's bizarre and tragic accident, an injury better suited to a television character than a real person. “Find your homeroom and make sure you're marked present,” Mr. Meyers called after me. Instead, I walked to the far end of the hall and stood behind a particularly disorganized swarm of kids. The double-file lines were already dissolving into mayhem.