Critical Injuries (33 page)

Yes. Well. In that, they would not be alone.

Is it significant that Isla's children have not, either of them, directed themselves towards the problems of the crippled, the paralyzed, those on the receiving ends of addicted or dream-deprived bullets?

It's alarming, even unnerving, how radically and swiftly Alix can shift her attentions. She didn't even return to the Serenity Corps farm to pack up the rest of her things, just because, she said, “there's nothing there that's important now.”

“Is your Master Ambrose angry?” Isla asked. She rather hoped that he was. But Alix seemed puzzled.

“He doesn't get angry.” Oh, really. “He'll know I've found my serenity my own way. And I know I wouldn't have been able to do it without him. He understands working through to the end of attachment.”

Isla doubted it. She doubted abandonment was what Master Ambrose had in mind. “Good for you,” she said drily. “Good for him.” Alix, poor dumb bunny, looked pleased.

But she's not a poor dumb bunny at all, she's just stuck with a large, still-flailing heart. Isla worries about both Alix and Jamie, out there with dangerous, desperate people. They may not know quite how dangerous it is, neither of them having had a moment like Isla's in Goldie's; that delicate pas de deux of violence she danced with Roddy, Alix's young friend, her project, her cause.

Today's gathering was Jamie and Alix's idea: a celebration of their mother's various triumphs. Isla remembers a time when it was possible for celebrations to be unambiguous, but she has been so much the centre of attention the past year, unhappy attention, that its charms are now slight. The gesture itself, though, this business of a number of people making plans and arrangements so that they can be together in the same place at the same time on her behalf — that's really quite touching. Even Martin, who did go travelling after they sold the agency, and only got back from India a couple of days ago, will be here. Everyone will have stories to tell, it won't be a gathering dedicated entirely to congratulating and cosseting Isla.

She has another picture in mind. Many hours from now, she expects to look around the table, when everybody's leaning back in their chairs and there's a clutter of dirty dishes and spills, and dusk has descended and all the faces are shaded and shadowed, replete and relaxed, and be happy for this event. That it contains most of what's counted so far in her life.

Except for James, of course, and she can certainly live with his absence.

Otherwise, everyone who counts will be here. It'll be another memory-keeper sort of picture; like the one she had of sitting on this porch in the heat and light of the day, also come true.

How remarkable it is, looking forward to certain moments, anticipating with some hope certain events. She smiles at Lyle. “You're right, it's time. I'll just roll in and start getting ready. Mother should be here soon.”

She can wheel right into the shower in the new downstairs bathroom, lift herself onto the shower seat, push the chair out although careful to keep it in reach, work the taps, shampoo her own hair; and she can do all this in private, with only the power of her own arms, a luxury she wouldn't even have noticed a year ago.

This is the sort of thing she needs to hold sharp in her mind. Not gratitude; but a respectful nod to partial blessings.

She hears the phone ring while she's in the shower. It remains odd to feel hot water pouring over half of her body, but only see it pouring over the rest. As if the rest of her belongs to somebody else.

Lyle comes to the door when she turns off the shower. “That was Alix. She'd like you to call her.” His face is grim and displeased.

“Isn't she coming?” Instantly Isla sees a hole in the dinner-table picture she's made. Things falling apart.

“No, I expect she'll be here. But she does need to talk to you. And I'll just say right now, I'm not happy about it, but it's up to you.” Whatever it is. When Lyle doesn't pass on messages, it generally means he doesn't want to be in the middle of something. He punches out Alix's number and hands the phone over.

“Mum,” Alix says, and it turns out she also has a picture in mind, but one that's radically different from Isla's.

Only Alix would dream up such a breathtaking notion. Literally, for a moment or two, Isla can't breathe. “I know it'd be hard, Mum, but you're good at doing hard things. And I think you're good at doing good things, too.” As transparent as her Serenity dresses — how foolhardy Alix is, what strange expectations she has, what hopelessly unrealistic demands. A couple of Christians strolling stupidly, ignorantly, into a coliseum of lions.

Which has its appeals.

She takes the deepest breath she can manage, given that her chest still rattles ominously and is not what it once was. “I think, actually, that saying it'd be
hard
doesn't quite capture it. And I think you vastly overrate my
goodness
.” Perhaps Alix is still, optimistic child, in search of the ideal, perfect mother. Which she is obviously not going to get; and which anyway she's too old for. “You do seem,” Isla says slowly, “to be expecting a great deal from me.”

“Not expecting. I wish you could bring yourself to do it, but it's completely up to you, I understand that, and sure, you can totally disagree. You're the one who knows how you feel, all I have are impressions and an idea or two. I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it was important. For everybody, I mean, not just you.”

Lyle has gone quietly away. Isla can hear him in the kitchen, taking plates from the cupboards. She can help set the table, if he will just put plates and cutlery, a few at a time, into her lap. She can wheel around and around the dining room table, setting out knives, forks, spoons, wine glasses, napkins.

Sandra, he said long ago, died with as much grace as she could manage. Isla remembers that; and she remembers believing that would be beyond her. That she would struggle, and cause damage. That if dying with grace meant being reconciled, she would fall sadly short.

Has Lyle found it hard to live with a woman who doesn't manage her own heart in ungrudging ways? He's held Isla while she wept, and he has wept as well; he has listened gravely to her rage and has joined her in it. He has been remarkably restrained about how devastatingly his own hopes, plans, and pictures have been ruined. This is not at all the life he had in mind, a clumsy ramp cluttering his porch, a wife who can no more be his partner than she could be Martin's. Except Martin could fly away.

So could Lyle. He hasn't, but he could.

Oh. She hadn't quite realized the extent of her doubt.

“But surely,” she says to Alix, “he's already said no?”

“Leave that to me. It's you I'm interested in. I mean, wanting the best for you.”

Isla sighs. This will not be the day she expected. The picture she had in mind is going to turn out differently than the one she was longing for. On the other hand, she does realize that of all people, she should not be surprised by this.

Her at the Wheel

Roddy is fussing with his tie, which he can't seem to get knotted right. His fingers have gone kind of spastic, and since he's never had much to do with ties anyway, he keeps screwing up, undoing it, starting all over.

Before he began messing with it, it was a very nice dark blue silky-but-not-silk tie with tiny white flying things, like seagulls. Alix got it for him because she says he'll feel better if he looks right. “I know it sounds stupid, but clothes really can make a person feel stronger inside,” which is one of the things she says she learned from the dresses she and the other girl members of the Serenity Corps used to wear. “I could look around and see I belonged, wherever we were, out on the streets or at the farm. Like, I wasn't alone. We were all in it together.”

Different, then, from a jail uniform. Everybody dressing the same there didn't mean everybody belonged, or felt together with each other. “But,” Alix says, “it's about whether it's your choice or not. For me it was.” Whatever. The Serenity Corps sounds weird to him, but he supposes she's right, it must have been her own choice. And it must have had something to do with making her into who she is: strong, clear, generous and, well,
sweet
is the word he thinks of, but not in some phony, sickening way. Sweet like honestly good.

He owes Alix. He owes Alix everything. There she was, every other Sunday, waiting in the visitors' room with her wide-open expression, her eyes willing to absorb anything that came her way. She saved him. Not because she said anything in particular that made some big difference, but that she kept turning up, looking willing to hear whatever he had to say. Who could deny somebody like that? Somebody who so obviously could be hurt, being open-eyed and willing, but who didn't expect to be hurt, but who would not be especially surprised to be hurt.

For the first while, he didn't know how to talk, what he should say, what she wanted to hear. So she talked, instead. She told him true stories. She told him about her father, which was the worst one. Well, the worst except for her mother, but she didn't need to tell him that one. She told him also about her brother, who had trouble with drugs for a while. “He was in jail, too,” she said. “But I wasn't allowed to visit him. I was too young.”

The strange and also best thing was that she didn't really say how any of this made her feel, she just recounted events. Even forgiveness didn't come into it. That was another part of her sitting across from him: that forgiveness didn't come into it.

In counselling and the group therapy sessions, everybody was supposed to go on about how stuff made them feel, and as things went along, also whether they were sorry. The stories some guys had! The kind of things somebody like him never ran into, like fathers who beat them, not like his dad just moving silently through the house; like mothers who locked them out of their apartments while they had sex with strange men for money, and who didn't, like his, just throw themselves in the dead of night off a high bridge.

He stayed quiet as much as he could during those sessions not, as he'd supposed, out of an ambition to keep himself to himself and therefore safe. More from embarrassment at the paltriness of his story, shame at his crime's small foolish motives.

Some people really do suffer. Now Alix, hauling him into both her life and her work, isn't going to let him forget.

When she visited, she talked about the Serenity Corps, and how she met Master Ambrose and a whole group of them downtown here one day, just a few blocks from where her place is now, as a matter of fact, and how their faces appeared to her, and the ways they moved. “They looked so peaceful and certain. As if they knew. Or as if they knew how to go about knowing. It was very powerful to see them together. And him in the centre. He looked wise, you know? Not loving, because that's not really part of serenity. More as if he understood the depths of contentment. Being in place. Well, it's hard to explain.”

Then she'd left them, the guy she called Master Ambrose, the whole thing. “You learn,” she said easily. “Then I thought maybe it was necessary to move on. Not just because of my mother, but because when something changes like that, other things do, too. I thought, the Serenity Corps teaches the ways of attachment and detachment, but maybe there was another circle to it: that I'd gotten too attached to it, so if I wanted ideal detachment, I'd have to leave.” That made sense, in a roundabout sort of way. Everything made sense while she was talking and Roddy was listening and watching her so attentively it felt like he hardly was breathing. “I figure Master Ambrose understands. Since he's the teacher.” Roddy wondered about that later, though: if her Master Ambrose really would understand.

“Do you like being called Starglow?” He was curious about that. He liked the way she called him Rod, but that was different, that was still his real name.

“Oh, yes, I'm keeping that. Because you know how stars are so far away, and there's so many of them, and on a clear night you can look up into the sky and feel so small that you think that truly, nothing much counts? Everything that happens is tiny, it's just a speck, less than a speck, in the universe, and either that makes you feel kind of bad because obviously you don't matter at all, or you're relieved because every speck counts but you're not the whole thing, you're not what everything spins around? Like that, anyway. I thought Starglow was so cool and far off, it had light, but distance, too. So yes, I like being Starglow. It reminds me. Makes me mindful.”

Mindful
is a word Alix likes.

You might think that feeling like a speck in the cosmos, even a good speck, would make someone watch things happen in a remote sort of way. He has learned this is not the case. Alix takes her speck very seriously. When she wants something, like today, it doesn't look like much is allowed to get in the way.

She's getting dressed right now, too. She'll be wearing a long, light cotton dress, not so different from the Serenity Corps dress he first saw her in, long ago on that amazing court day, except it's a pale blue with a pattern of tiny white flowers, sort of like the seagulls or whatever they are on his tie. She's got jeans now, and T-shirts, regular clothes, but for good, she still mostly wears drifty long dresses.

This day is already causing extra trouble. She was supposed to be getting a ride with her brother, but when he heard what she had in mind he said no way. Actually what he said, which Roddy could hear because he was yelling on the phone, was, “Jesus Christ, Alix, you can't do that, are you insane?”

It's a real small place, Alix's. You can hear practically everything from everywhere in it. Roddy heard her brother's phone slamming down. “Well, that's it,” she said brightly. “We'll have to rent a car, then.” She is so careful with the little bits of money she has. It's a sign of how important this is to her, that she's willing to spring for a rental car for a day.

Roddy said no, too. No way. But here he is, struggling with the tie Alix got him. He's also wearing beige cotton pants and a blue shirt. “Casual,” according to Alix, “but also respectful.” He's not sure what she means by
respectful
. That he cares enough to be clean and normal-looking, he guesses. It's strange to him that he does actually look normal. It's sure not how he feels. He wants so bad to run away; except then he couldn't come back. Not that Alix has said so. He just wouldn't be able to face her.

He doesn't have any idea how he's going to handle this, but he can't see any way out. He was kind of counting on Alix's mother to say it was impossible and out of the question. He wouldn't even have minded much if she'd said it was disloyal and disgusting. He isn't sure himself that it isn't disloyal and disgusting, but here it is, happening anyway. No wonder he's yanking the tie again, starting over. The possibilities for disaster are huge. He thinks about this sort of thing now, he takes possibilities for disaster into account. Today he has entire movies' worth of outcomes unfolding in his head; none of them good, none of them happy prospects.

Alix isn't innocent, whatever she looks like. She said, “I'm not raising it with them till the last minute. Then whatever they decide, nobody can change their minds.” She raised it with him days and days ago. She has different methods for different people; which means she figures and calculates. She maybe understood that if she'd sprung it on him, he most likely would've bolted without thinking what that would mean. Instead she has coaxed and discussed and sort of wheedled and finally challenged him: “You have to know what it's all about. Otherwise it'll keep haunting you, and you'll never be able to rise above it. You'd always know you weren't big enough to do what needs to be done. That's an awful thing to live with, I imagine.” Oh, his angel can be harsh.

But serene in her certainty. Nothing harsh in her tone. Not like a counsellor, suddenly snapping, or appearing to snap, yelling at some poor sullen goof, “Think, think, think! Is this what you want your life to be like? Can't you get it through your head that if you do this, that happens? Do you intend to be a fuck-up forever?” They were always switching gears, the counsellors: sometimes quiet and understanding, sometimes tough and even cruel. Not cruel like some of the guards, but in their own ways.

Alix makes many things possible. Or, like today, unavoidable. Jesus, it was easier to face down guys inside, less frightening to get beat up, as he was twice for no special reason except being in the wrong place when somebody got in a bad frame of mind. One night, one crazy guy set a mattress on fire. Who knew where he got matches, but smoke filled the corridors, guards were running around yelling, alarms were going off, all sorts of shit happening. Not even that was this scary.

Alix, the vision of Alix, carried him through every day of those months. Not the counsellors, or the classes, or the work, or any of the guys, not even Dare, but knowing Alix would be coming. That she was willing to make that journey again and again, and looked every time as involved and intent and as pleased and interested to see him as she was the very first time.

He owes her everything.

Because she told him her own stories on visiting days in that nearly flat way that left out all the feelings, she finally made it possible for him, too, just to recount events. He entered this process cautiously, though, talking about his grandmother, his father, and moving from city to town. “Why was that?” she asked.

He told her about his mother: so much gaiety he remembered, and the sadness. The first vanishing, and the last one. Alix's big eyes blinked, but she only nodded and said, “I see” as if she actually did see. Maybe even saw his mother climbing the bridge, perching on its edge, toppling over, down and down onto the unforgiving expressway; the infinite whir of tires on concrete, the eternal glitter of headlights.

He told her about Mike, too; although not everything. He talked about Mike and his mother coming to Roddy's grandmother's door, the ways their friendship began and then flourished. Their explorings, their adventures, even the shoplifting, and the beer and the dope, he told her about; but he stopped well short of their big plans, and their dreams. Dangerous territory, for Alix as well as for him.

When he was coming to the end of his sentence, Mrs. Shaw, the head counsellor, had him into her office and said, “You've done quite well, I see, in your courses. We thought you would, and I'm glad you've achieved something while you've been with us.”
With us
, like they'd invited him and he'd accepted. “I could wish you'd been more forthcoming in group, but sometimes people gain more than they're aware of from those sessions. You may find that, as well. Now, what are your plans for when you leave? Do you have something firm in mind? Because that's very important for getting off on the right foot, and if you don't, we can try to help get you set up and settled.”

But he wasn't like some of the others. He did have a home to go to. His dad and his grandmother were picking him up. He didn't know how being with them would be any more, after all this. “It's okay,” he told Mrs. Shaw. “It's taken care of.”

He was more grown and changed than they knew. Not hard, exactly, but grown. His dad, looking much older, said, “Hey son. Good you're coming back.” That was it. He didn't mention any father-son trips in their future. At home Roddy's grandmother kept touching him, his arms, his shoulders, his back, his hands, and peering at him. Like she had questions she was scared to ask.

When she called upstairs, “Dinner's ready, Roddy,” he told her at the table that his name was now Rod.

Although it wasn't, really. Much closer, but it still didn't quite fit.

He couldn't sleep for the silence at first. Also, he was strangely lonesome. He missed Dare, in a way. His room was a kid's room, with its kid quilt on the bed and those insect photographs all over the walls. What a geek he must have been, he thought; but then felt disloyal. He felt kind of protective towards the previous Roddy: somebody headed for trouble, who didn't know anything.

For the first few days, he pretty much stayed in the house. If he went out, people would stare and he would know they'd be thinking ugly things about him. And what if he ran into the woman? Alix's mother? And there were places he couldn't go now, like Goldie's. Like a lot of places.