Vital Signs (16 page)

“She didn’t say much, just that it’s what can happen in relationships and that you and she were just ordinary people who sometimes found it hard to be together, like everyone else.”

“Of course.”

No, it’s not relief I feel. What’s raging in my ribs is more complicated than that, and it includes an untender lust, an arousing image of my wife straddling a faceless man. I rub my palms hard against my brow. Sasha touches my arm.

“Dad, I’m sorry, you didn’t need me to bring that up. I’m sorry.”

And when I look up I can see the weight of stuff on her face that I couldn’t see before. The slight downturn of her mouth and the trembling lip that resembles mine after all.

“Not a problem,” I say, drawing her nearer to me. “We’re past that. Now, I wonder if it isn’t time to go in and see her.”

“She’s probably still sleeping,” she says.

“You go check, let me know.”

She doesn’t budge.

“Please, darling.”

Sasha stands and hesitates, but I will her with all my might to leave. She eventually walks off. I have no feeling in my feet, but there’s a tingling at the end of my earlobes. And Anna is still unconscious.

I despise her.

I slouch back on the couch. It hurts. I stand up. This is worse. I sit back down, but on the floor this time, with my back pressed up against the couch.
Way after it happened
. I stand up again and begin pacing. The water cooler gurgles. I raise my foot, whack it with my heel and walk out of the room.

When you fucked him … you opened your legs and guided him into you and you fucked him. Or was it your ass you raised, pumping it, pink and spanked … you fucking fucked him …

There are so many people in the ward—the two women visiting their epileptic friend; the Chinese family is back and waiting for news on their son; the nurse with the beard and tattoos; the fee-fi-fo-fum throng of illness. I walk towards her room at the far end of the hallway. I picture myself ripping the tubes from her arms, delicately lifting her head, but then letting it fall back—hard—against the stiff hospital pillow.

In the corridor there is a door marked Janitor. I try the handle, surprised when it turns. I don’t even check around me to see if anyone is watching. I enter the walk-in
cupboard packed full of cleaning solutions, bleaches, liquids in large plastic bottles marked with skull and cross-bones. My legs buckle and I slouch down against some giant rolls of paper towel, accidentally knocking over a spray bottle of tile cleaner in the process.

There’s an elaborate floor polisher in front of me, and my shoe rubs against the felt of its polishing disc. I try to focus on the construction of this disc, the mechanics of the machine—imagining intricate pulleys and levers, where the engine clicks in, and how it propels the pad over the floor. I realize I know nothing about how things like this are built; not even the mop, there—the long strands of cotton strings that slop up the puke, shit, and blood of this ward and then get squeezed into the trough that rings out the water. I don’t understand the simplest of mechanisms.

Who had been Anna’s lover? Another teacher? A man whose words flowed to please her, tease her, whispering as he entered her? I picture them and my stomach churns. Why did she stop seeing him?

My head slumps forward. I am embarrassed by the janitor’s uniform, which hangs on the door to my right, as though it is observing me at my most ridiculous. Which version of our past has Charlotte been privy to, after all? Anna felt no need to confess; she wasn’t concerned about leaving me with false memories of my wife.

Eventually I focus on the crisp cobalt blue coveralls hanging on the hook. They look as though they would fit me and I consider putting them on.

And then I am back in Bali, on that terraced hillside with Anna, her back to me, her arm outstretched as she points towards something down in the the terraced, jade valley. I think it’s our home, the place where we will grow old together.

“We’re ordinary people,” she says, as she turns and looks at me. I see that her face is as beautiful as ever, her language unflawed, no sign of any damage from the operation. Her head is perfectly shaped. Strands of her hair are rising and falling in the breeze like the shoots of new rice that make the hill an undulating green ribbon that we’re carefully balancing on.

If they’ve changed the bed then someone will have left the drawing for her on the side table, or it’s been bundled up in the soiled sheets and will be laundered with them, its ink bleeding into the cheap cotton.

When I arrive at the door to the room she is surrounded. Rosie is arranging something near the bed; the children are gathered in a semi-circle. I catch sight of my wife’s face framed by the white gauze turban and almost do not recognize her. My eyes flicker to the ventilator, the IV, the tubes in her arm. When I look back up at her face I see that her eyes are sunken, with dark circles underneath, as though she’s been beaten.

She sees me. The children notice the shift in her gaze, and turn around, their tear-stained faces puffy like wet cardboard. I force myself closer, then almost skip towards them in a jolt of confusion. Anna looks at me with what could be concern, but I smile.

“Sweetheart,” I say, and sweep my fingers under the pillow near her head, feeling for the paper, before bending my face to hers, resting it against her cheek without pressure. The gauze around her head is slightly moist, and I smell something like mould masked by disinfectant and a lemony balm. I stay longer than feels appropriate and do another sweep with my fingers.

“Dad,” Charlotte says, sounding irritated. I push myself up on my hands and glare at her, then look back at Anna, whose eyes search mine. I don’t know how to look at her. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but doesn’t.

“Has she said anything?” I ask Fred as I stand up straight.

“Her throat is sore as hell, I bet, from the breathing tube,” he says, “so I doubt she’ll want to for a while, but they did neurological tests in the ICU, and they’ve found no evidence of damage. If she’s here, it means she’s answered their questions, like ‘what is your name’ and ‘what day is it?’ over and over. So, she can speak to us, she just hasn’t felt up to it yet.”

I’m amazed by the depth of my relief.

Anna stares blankly, and I wonder if Fred is right. Does she understand us? I want them to leave us alone now. Please go, I repeat, over and over in my head, as Charlotte
strokes her mother’s hand. The knuckles of my daughter’s fingers flow smoothly, up and down. Each articulation of the bones is purposeful, almost dangerous. I remember all the times I told Charlotte how crucial it was to be self-sufficient, no matter what she chose to do and how she had to work hard and not be dependent. But that was not real life I was talking about. I keep my eyes on her knuckles.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I say. They glower at me. “And then I’d like to be alone with her. Is that okay?” I notice that Rosie has disappeared from the room. Sasha nods at me first, then Charlotte and Fred nod in unison. I kiss Anna on the cheek and pick up my briefcase from the floor.

I walk briskly out of the ward, down the elevator, through the crowded lobby and onto the street.

I find a patch of grass near the corner of Queen and Church streets, in front of the hostel for men in a wing of the Metropolitan United Church. I open my briefcase, take out paper and a new Staedtler, and I begin.

After a few strokes, I falter. I look around me. There is a group of young men gathered on the corner, all of them with their belts so loose their pants sit midway down their asses. A woman pushing a shopping cart loaded with her valuables passes me and glares, paranoid no doubt that I am sketching her. I’m sorry, I think to myself. I’m sorry.

A young man goes by—he’s attractive, in jeans and a white T-shirt: a simple, well-honed look. He is the shape I still like to imagine myself to be, even after so many years. He is the body double for my stale ambitions.

More people pass me. I try to determine what makes one different from the other. It isn’t their sex: many of them, male and female, are dressed the same. It isn’t their race: there are black, white, brown and pink faces, all with the same unhappy glare. Is it their minds? No, not that either.

I begin again.

In the figure that takes shape, I begin to understand how my own mark has been dull and feeble for so long.

I sketch and shadow.

When I’m finished, I look up at the clock in the church tower. I’ve been gone for over an hour. I fold up the drawing and tuck it into my pocket. My legs feel limber as I stand and hurry across the grass.

Once back in the neurological ward I realize I’ve left my briefcase on the grass, but never mind. I see the children down the hall, talking to Rosie, taking in her instructions like good kindergarten pupils. I duck into the room unnoticed.

Anna’s eyes are closed. I think about the bone flap that lies sterilized in the surgeon’s jar, and the gaping hole that exposes what it is that keeps my wife alive.

My imagination has been poor. I touch the paper in my pocket. I take it out and delicately unfold it.

She opens her eyes. “How are you feeling?” I ask. I’m fully aware it’s a stupid question, but I mean it. I want to know. I want to hear her voice.

“Mmm,” she murmurs. There’s a voice there, and I hope there will be clarity and precision to the words that
come. She touches her neck and tries to smile, but I see that she’s in pain.

“Anna,” I say quietly, as I lay out the sheet of paper and look again at what I have done.

It is a different kind of shape—a shape without bulk. One that I hope holds truth in its throat, like the bone of song or the cartilage of a scream.

“For you,” I say, as I hold up the paper, smoothing out its creases, careful with its edges.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I see.”

Some of the medical information and inspiration for this book came from Paul Broks’ beautiful and disturbing
Into the Silent Land
. Further technical details on confabulation were drawn from William Hirstein’s
Brain Fiction
, among other books.

Thanks to the Canada Council for financial support during the writing of this novel and to the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of East London for research funding.

It was a privilege to work with Aleksandar Macašev, who patiently listened to me during innumerable Skype calls and shaped my wild abstractions into Mike’s beautiful illustrations. Thanks to Stephanie Young for reading and believing in it from the start; to Jackie Kaiser for the title; and to Attila Berki for copyediting. Thanks to Anne Collins at Random House Canada for her spirit, support and commitment.

This book has two godfathers: John Berger, who sometimes ends our phone conversations with, “Now I put my hand on your shoulder and turn you back to your work”; and the wonderful Andrew Kidd, to whom I am deeply grateful for his sensitive attention, every step along the way.