The Sea-Wave (4 page)

M
y fat aunt Coral is a riot and a lousy person. She is just so pink and fat. She laughs too much, and wears too much enormous jewellery. She's like a pig on a pearl leash sniffing out gossip then trotting up to your table and vomiting. I like her gossip because it's malicious and it's nice to know who's dying. She is shallow and destructive.

My dad and Coral are siblings but don't talk much. When she comes over he likes to say hi then take a nap or run errands. Then Coral will put her feet up and talk to my mom for hours.

I typically avoid my family but with Aunt Coral I don't mind hanging around and listening. It's great listening to people gossip because it's the one time they mean what they're saying. It has to be a huge relief to people. Aunt Coral likes to kick off her tight shoes — it probably feels like that. She gets so comfortable, it's like she's lounging on her skeleton. And then she says the most shocking things about everyone I ever heard of, and never stops smiling.

I like Aunt Coral. She talks to me without changing her voice, like I'm an everyday person. She even talks to me when other people have left the room. That's a small thing, but it means a lot.

One time she told just me that her one daughter wasn't even her husband's daughter, but just from some fling with the butcher. I thought: Why are you telling me this? But I guess she needed to tell
someone
and figured I was a pretty safe bet for discretion.

The last time I saw Coral she was fifty pounds heavier than the time before. She wheezed just coming up the front steps, and right away sat down. She doesn't leave her house much now but sits in her armchair with the phone in her hand. “I tell people the truth,” she told my mom once, “but I tell my telephone
everything
.” All day she sits there soaking up gossip and getting fatter and fatter. She needs a cane now from the knee strain, and will probably be in a wheelchair one day. I'm kind of looking forward to it.

T
he day I fell down the stairs . . .

Mom asked me if I was okay staying home by myself for an hour or two while she went to the dentist, and I of course said yes. I was initially supposed to go along but she was running behind. She took me to the bathroom then took off.

I thought I'd watch a movie. So I wheeled towards the elevator, which is right at the top of the stairs. I pressed down hard on the forward button on the directional pad. Pressing harder doesn't make me go any faster, it's just impertinence. Once in a while, though, pressing too hard makes the button stick. Which is just what happened. Sometimes I can unstick the button, but there wasn't time, there's maybe two feet between the elevator and the staircase. I didn't have time to panic even, just to brace myself as that top step got closer and I shot over it.

I didn't instantly fly out of my chair or anything, I bumped violently but held on tight. For a while I thought I'd be okay, I'd just thump on down in my chair then cruise across the floor till I stopped. Another possibility: I might stop half-way down on the landing and have to wait there like it was an ice floe till someone rescued me.

Neither of those things happened. Just before I got to the landing, I flew out of my chair, I couldn't hold on. I did a hard somersault where my neck almost snapped before my body flew over top of it. Then I slid down on my back, hit my butt hard and became airborne. I landed with a loud click on my face on the hardwood floor. My glasses broke in half. Then my wheelchair landed on my back.

I lay there in a pile waiting for my mom to come home and put me together again. I could see the clock on the cable box. An hour passed. Two.
Three.
I held on as long as I could. Then I shit my pants.

It got dark. Still no Mom. At six, Dad came home from work. He put his coat on the coat rack, and flicked on the light. When he saw me lying there, he said: “Shit.”

He was right.

T
he old man has dandruff. When he wheels me over a rough patch, it snows. My glasses are blanketed with skin cells.

“To scratch an itch,” said the narrator of a nature documentary, “is one of nature's greatest pleasures.” Well, I might feel an itch, a wicked itch on my leg or something, my back, but there's nothing I can do. When you ignore an itch it only gets more powerful. Like North Korea. Or it floats all over me, this lilypad of itchiness, up and down my body and I scream internally. When it finally passes there's a kind of mild relief which is probably not even close to as good as you'd feel from scratching.

I don't have dandruff. It would be worth having dandruff, though, if I could only scratch it. I can touch my head, but . . .

Life is quite a bit worse than a nature documentary.

M
om has major depression. “I have major depression today,” she'll say, like it's a headache, and take Aspirin.

She goes to Dr. Blignaut twice a week but she goes to me two or three times a day to complain about her major depression. She has no energy, she says, it's a labour of Hercules to even make toast. “I wish I was dead,” she'll say, but I have difficulty believing this because if she was dead she'd have no one to complain to.

Dad works twelve hours a day and when he's not working he's running long errands. He could be having an affair. When he
is
home, he opens a newspaper and holds still for two or three hours. Mom looks for him but it's too late because his skin has changed to the colour of newsprint. So she hunts me down, instead.

It's depressing.

T
he only kid I ever identified with was Bacon Bones. His head was too big. He went from being a shy, big-headed kid to a total shithead. He got bullied so much about his big head that he hurt too much for just one kid and needed to hurt other kids. But he never hurt me. He even once defended me from people. I guess I was the one kid he identified with.

Too bad he's in prison.

I
t was not a dream.

The wave came
in
. I was sleeping. I leaped up. My
hands
. I felt the cold water, pouring.

I felt on the wall, for the hole. It was only very small. I thought to grab something . . . but there was nothing. So cold, the water, on my throat.

I folded my hands. I pressed them on the hole. But still, it poured water.
Stop
.
God
. My hands pressed together, as in prayer.

I could hold no more.

I cried out.

Someone opened the door.

I
miss the smell of people. The old man has a smell but it's just the one smell and not a good one. If you put maybe ten people together, there's just instantly this smell, sort of like how whatever's in garbage smells like garbage. I miss that people smell where there's sweat and perfume and whatever and it gets painted on your skin and taken with you like an odour coat. I tried smelling my sleeve to see if I still smelled like my house, like
people
, but I didn't. I smelled cold, and strange. Which is pretty much how I felt.