Fall (26 page)

It was my lot to buy a gift for Carlos. We weren’t expected to spend much. The party was meant to be a warm celebration of our odd little community, the usual Christmas pretense that through the exchange of gewgaws we could claim to care for others. I tried to think of something for Carlos that would adequately reflect the silent oppugnance I felt for all he represented and I settled on a fish.

Ant came up to me after he drew from the toque and showed me Fall’s name typed on his little slip of paper. “Looks like I don’t have to buy a present,” he said.

I asked Julius if he would like to go shopping with me. We hadn’t been off school grounds together for many weeks. “No,” he said.

There is a type of “no” that carries with it a heroic and unshakable self-knowledge, an implication that to be considerate of others is somehow to be craven and dishonest.

I took a bus downtown and went to the fish market. I felt a mischievous glee at the prospect of Carlos unwrapping his present in front of everyone and discovering not something benign or merely gestural, but something wet and offensive. I sought out the largest, cheapest fish available, wrapped in wax and newspaper, I bought red paper and a pretty bow and I wandered through town, delaying my return to school, my mind feeling relieved by the subsidence of study and the reminder that the world was larger than St. Ebury. A warm day in December when the clouds were bloated with snow.

I was eating as much as I could, despite being nervous most of the time. I wanted to stay strong. I remember treating myself to a hot chocolate after I bought the fish.

I was wearing a pair of Julius’s trousers—simple grey flannels— and a pair of his shoes as well. The shoes never felt like my own because of the imprint of his toes, but I always felt like his trousers could be his and mine together. I continue to believe that there can be an intimacy between two people that is simpler and subtler than the social mind or words like “love” or “friendship” can ever adequately encompass. It is there in the feeling of flannel on thigh, and even to describe it as intimacy is to summon it from the dictionary, where all good feelings have died.

When my drink was ready, the girl behind the counter shouted, “Hot chocolate for Julius!” and I smiled and took my cup.

“The cops wanted to know what happened to your face,” Julius said. “They saw your bandages.”

The lights were out.

“What did you tell them?”

“I said you were playing basketball.”

It was a loyal thing to say.

“They’re asking about everybody,” he said. “I’m supposed to answer about everybody.”

“What are they asking about me?”

“It’s an investigation,” he said, as though he couldn’t believe it.

I was still in my energized state and was worried about what I would say to Julius, whether I would say something offensive or not appropriately comforting.

“They found hair,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” I said.

“In her room. Right? I thought, Yeah, you found hair in her room. There’s hair in my room. My bald uncle has hair in his room. Right? It doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“No one’s talking about dead, Julius.”

“No,” he said.

“No.”

“Everyone’s thinking it,” he said. “It’s hair with roots. A clump of Fall’s hair with roots.”

We lay quiet for a long time. He wasn’t crying.

I discovered later that they asked Sarah whether she could offer any explanation for Fall’s hair in the room. Sarah had turned to pulling her own hair out. Anxiety drove her to maim herself in various ways over the coming months, and I wonder now about the memories inside her, the half-dead woman in the convenience store. All the lively limber bodies in the world, bending and smiling at experience. All the swollen barrels of grief and guilt standing upright in our middle age.

I think it was the intrusion of an outside reality that made everyone nervous. Julius was not directly declared a suspect for legal reasons, primarily because of diplomatic immunity. Here was a grand legal concept appearing in our little world. As the son of a U.S. diplomat he could not be charged with any crime in Canada. Of course, this was not just a concept: the close relations between the two countries, the fact that his father was not just an ordinary diplomat but the ambassador—the more compelling reality, no doubt, was simple fear of controversy. Julius’s father and the embassy had lawyers watching everything closely from the beginning.

And, of course, there was nothing yet linking Julius with Fall’s disappearance.

“I saw her that morning and that was it. Her mom saw her after I did.”

“I could tell them,” I said. “When will they ask me what happened?”

“Who knows.”

I didn’t want to talk, but I said, “I can tell them everything.” Never again was I willing to tell them, to help you. I still wanted to be your friend so badly. I can see us, like I never could, our stature, our hairless vulnerability. I can see us today like we were and we weren’t.

“I don’t know where I am.”

“Don’t worry.”

“I can’t catch up.”

“Don’t worry. There’s a simple explanation.”

You stood in your boxers and only one sock and I genuinely felt sorry.

How can one capture the romantic vicissitudes and mysterious infuriations that occur between two people? Day after day. There is never a moment when two bodies are even. I know that couples sometimes hope for stasis in the wave tank that contains them, but something outside always shifts the container. I wasn’t mature enough to recognize what was in action that year, how one moment Julius seemed like he dominated the room, and the next he was quiet and feckless. How, in the subsequent truncated and ugly term I felt completely impotent, the tank always tipping against me.

We all gathered in the common room downstairs. It was a space that students filed through daily, a combination of classroom, lounge, hall, and cafeteria. All the boarders sat on the floor and gave the space a gaudy dimension. MERRY CHRISTMAS in banners around the walls.

Julius had left before the party, head down in the room with his duffel bag on his shoulders. His sadness is clearer to me now.

I sat with Ant and Chuck and watched students of every age unwrap presents in front of each other. The House Master presided as Santa Claus.

“It has been a difficult term,” he said. “A difficult thing has happened at a difficult time and we have all been affected in different ways. But the staff and I have every confidence that there will be a happy resolution and we will finish the school year, indeed start the new year, with our number as it was before. For now, I want to congratulate you,” and so on. He intoned an ecumenical prayer.

Somebody bought me a key ring.

When Carlos unwrapped his fish there was a brief silence. Ant’s laughter prompted everyone to laugh, including Carlos himself— who looked at me quizzically toward the end of his always sneering smile. I hoped that my face would make him uneasy.

I flew to Sydney the next day with a cold feeling in my stomach. A cab to the airport in the dark early morning.

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror on the plane, feeling contemplative in the way that solitary travel encourages. My black eyes were gone, my bad eye settled into its regular deformity.

Chuck and I had both been waiting for cabs outside the front of the school to take us to different flights. I had said good morning to him and he had said nothing. It was customary for people to shake hands before Christmas. He gripped mine very hard when his cab came. “I hope you liked the key ring,” he said. “I didn’t know what to buy a guy like you.”

I sat on the plane, Sydney ahead, being rushed to the brutal sun. I learned early in life that contemplation on an airplane is doomed to be flawed. The mind may be full, but it is only bewildered at watching the body being thrown so far ahead of it. The true coldness of my departure would land in my body weeks later.

My mother would meet me. She would hug me and say “Welcome home.”

I
T’S A FEAST
!

It’s a hot dog.

It’s a feast!

There’s mustard on your chin she says.

You sure you don’t want a bite.

Positive.

Myum myam myum I say.

There’s mustard on your chin she says.

I’m wiping it.

Hey, Julius. There’s mustard on the back of your hand she says.

I wanna go to Italy she says. Florence.

Ok.

Look at paintings.

Ok.

I have favourites.

What.

Paintings.

Ok.

I wanna see them. In person she says. It’s so different. I saw the Mona Lisa when I was fourteen and it was so different. You have to think about it.

I’m thinking about it.

I don’t know what she means.

You’re staring at it with all these other people, so you have to wonder why you’re staring at it.

Right.

And it’s, you know. It’s emotional. Emotionally moving she says and she’s biting my hand.

Hungry I say.

And Rome she says.

She’s excited.

I think I don’t like Italians I’m saying.

Why.

I don’t know.

Why she says.

They’ll pinch your ass and whistle and they never pass the ball.

I won’t be playing soccer with them.

Don’t.

I won’t. Your great-great-grandfather was Italian she says. And your name’s Julius.

It’s true I say.

And you’ll be with me to fight them when they whistle me. Pinch.

I don’t want to fight I say.

Let’s look at paintings in Florence she says.

Ok.

I’m thinking I don’t know what to think about paintings.

No, there’s nothing.

Let’s do things, Julius, she says.

Fuck I remember sitting in the park by the parkway with Chuckie just like this I say.

Like this she says.

No not like this I guess, but I remember. Sitting there with a little bottle of vodka and dreaming.

Mmm she says.

Every year you feel so different I’m saying.

Yeah.

Don’t you.

Yeah. If you’re thinking about next year she says. Don’t.

I’m not. I’m thinking about vodka.

Ok.

And Chuckie.

I love Chuck she says. I could tickle his belly.

Her fingers.

He’s all fat and funny.

He’s not fat.

So we’re sitting in a park when we’re seventeen and now Chuck’s got hair on his belly and I’m here with you.

Yeah. I never knew about this park she says.

She’s rubbing her legs through her coat.

My ass is cold I say.

It’s quiet.

Are we both thinking about my ass.

What’s in the head I say.

Nothing.

It’s funny right. Me and Chuck and the vodka. Even drinking. I’m not liking the drinking so much anymore. Shitfaced with the boys. I like drinking and talking. You know.

Mmm she says.

Joint.

Sure she says.

I light it.

Sweet burn noseflesh.

Eat my nose.

Hoo! I shout.

Hoo! Shouts the Fall.

Hyoo! Shouts J.

Fraa says the girl.

Fraa I’m thinking. It’s fuckin hilarious.

       H                    H

H

                                                           H

H

H!

Christ I can’t stop

                         H!

                                                           H

H

I’m drooling.

That’s the funniest fuckin

Hoo.

That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.

What is she says.

H

                           H

H

H.

Fraa I say.

Hih.

That’s Fall.

That’s my girlfriend.

That’s my Fall in her little red coat blowing trumpet on the roadcone.

The grass is dark.

That’s my funny Fall.

Joooolius she says.

Fall.

Hphweem she says. I’m an elephant.

I don’t wanna go home she says.

William’s I say.

I know she says. Let’s not go yet.

Fuckin A. Let’s stay out.

We can sleep in she says.

All day.

That’s so nice. That’s so nice she says.

It’s opening.

The lights and the dark.

Driving into the opening.

Where in Hull says the back of his head.

Chez Henri I say.

I’m looking at her.

Smells like a cab in here I say.

It looks like one she says.

My hand’s between her legs.

I can put my hand between her legs I’m thinking. I’m allowed.

I’ll pay you if you dance with me I say.

I’ll pay you not to dance she says.

Nice I say.

I’ll film you one day. Show you what you look like she says.

I thought you liked my dancing.

I love your dancing, my J. I’m kidding.

Squeeze.

I’ll pay you if you dance with me I say. Again.

I’ll pay you she says.

It’s opening.

I’m pretty fuckin high.

I should have worn black she says.

We’re crossing the bridge.

It’s pretty she says. The lights.

On the water I say.

So pretty.

Halfway over the bridge and there’s steel and light and I don’t want to barf tonight.

So pretty she says.

Breathe in through the nose. Sit up straight. I’m a man. I will make a serious comment.

I guess there’s a border somewhere on this bridge I say.

She laughs.

I laugh.

What are you laughing at I say.

I don’t know she says.

You’re laughing at me ’cause I said whatever I said. What did I say. There’s a border.

Pfff she says.

What.