Year of Lesser (16 page)

What are you for?
Johnny wants to say, but he doesn’t. He’s watching Avi’s tongue appear and then disappear as she savours her wine. Her mouth is close to Michael’s ear, she’s leaning into him and Johnny understands at that moment that these two are lovers—not that he doubted it before. But now it’s so obvious, the quickness of breath, even the scent of them together. Johnny wonders if Avi likes to lie naked on one of those hoary bears, if she cradles that fanged mouth as Michael climbs her.

His thoughts, both perverse and creative, are interrupted by the appearance of Loraine. She’s removed her apron and she’s pushing back her hair. Her arms are bare, the undersides white. She is exhausted and content. Johnny rises and offers her his hand and then the chair, but she refuses both.

“We’re ready,” she says, and bends slightly towards Michael and Avi, the strange guests Johnny finds he does not like, one for her impertinence, the other for his love of dead animals, something Johnny, the country boy, is expected to share. But he doesn’t. The thump of a big bird hitting the ground has always managed to sicken him.

Melody, picking up a slice of white meat, wants to know what a physicist does. The word, hissing through her braces, makes the occupation sound tired and deflated. However, Michael seems not to notice her difficulty and, armed with an answer, wants to illuminate the group. His fork points at the ceiling, his eyes lift in thought. Johnny wonders what Avi sees in a man like this, though he does consider that they deserve each other.

“We look for ways to explain the world,” Michael says.

Johnny looks over at Loraine but she is intent on watching Michael whose whole physical self has changed. The snarly aggressive hunter is replaced by a glowing fanatic. His head is lit up in a way that suggests photons travelling at the speed of light, his eyes are bright with weightlessness, as if drifting through space.

“Illumination,” he says. “Everyone lives for that moment, for those three minutes or three days, where we break through the mundane and experience bliss.”

Loraine says, “Sounds religious,” and she looks at Johnny, who, with that last statement, is scratching his head. This does sound like a spiritual event, something that Johnny can understand.

Michael confirms this. He says, “It is religious in a way. Rather like Paul on the road to Damascus being blinded by a light. A form of salvation.”

Melody interrupts. This confuses her. “But,” she says, “you don’t believe in God, do you?”

Michael laughs. Avi is quiet. She doesn’t like Michael controlling the conversation. “It may seem odd,” Michael continues, “for a scientist to believe in God. Some physicists do. There is a particle physicist, John Polkinghorne, who took up the priesthood.”

Johnny is impatient. He wants to make jokes, to laugh at this man who is tarnishing Johnny’s domain. He is making light of religion, of faith. The man is all brain, a sort of walking grey matter, who obviously has no sense of pleasure other than killing animals. Johnny holds up his hand as if in school and says, “So, when you look for this God of yours, you and your colleagues, you ignore happiness and fear, joy and pain. Your God is a mathematician and that’s that?”

Michael doesn’t get to answer. Avi shakes her head and says, “This isn’t fair to Loraine. She’s worked hard at the meal and surely doesn’t want to suffer through descriptions of muons and superstrings.” She pronounces these words carefully, with familiar distaste.

“But it’s fine,” Loraine says. “Really.” And then she pours Michael more water and says that if she weren’t raising chickens she would study math because playing with numbers has always struck her as a way into another life. “All those theories,” she says, and rubs her hands together. Johnny is amused by her girlish excitement. She appears quite taken with this professor. She tucks her fists under her chin, rests her elbows on the table, and says, “Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Theories.”

“Sure,” Michael says. “But theories give us our truth, as close as we can come to it anyway.”

“You have something you follow then?” Loraine says.

“Theory of Everything,” Avi breaks in.

Michael looks at her, clears his throat, and says, “Yes, but I can’t adhere to it completely.”

Johnny wants to laugh. Melody, bored now, whispers something to Chris and they disappear.

“Oh,” Loraine says, and before she can continue, Michael says, “If we believe the cosmos is rational then we should be able to assign a graspable logic to our world, that is, we should be capable of taking the forces and particles of physics, as well as the structure of time and space, and blend them into a single mathematical plan.”

Johnny isn’t really listening. Everything is nonsense, gobbledegook, even this “Theory of Everything.” It strikes him as contrived and desperate, as if Michael the physicist were an elevated form of Johnny Fehr the feed salesman, both of them striving for illumination—one through molecules and mind, the other by praying and running his nose along the base of a woman’s spine—yet, for all their trying, they are both worming around in a primal soup, somehow failing, eyes staring up into a blackness that is like pitch. Johnny wants to tell Michael Barry one thing he has learned: look for everything and you’ll end up with nothing.

After dinner Loraine apologizes and says she has to gather eggs. Johnny wants to help her but Avi jumps in and says the men can do dishes while the women work in the barn; she seems excited by the prospect, so Johnny lets her go. He is standing at the sink, hands deep in water, as Loraine and Avi walk out across the yard. Avi is wearing a green parka that is too short in the sleeves, and big white boots. Johnny watches her throw her wide forehead up at the sky and shout something. Loraine turns and smiles and Johnny thinks how it is impossible to really know
someone, even if you live with that person, sleep beside her, and enter her body now and then.

It’s his fault that Charlene died. He lacked the imagination to find the other Charlenes hidden somewhere beneath her dull skin. He has sinned. He admires these young people from other countries who are thrown into arranged marriages and learn to love their partners. He thinks that that is wonderful and he hates the craving in his own life, in the lives of the people he sees around him.

He turns to Michael now and asks, “You and Avi. You live in the same house?”

Michael looks surprised, but not unwilling to answer. “Yes,” he says, “we do.”

Johnny says, “I like living with a woman. Though I’m not terribly good at it.” He laughs and then stops, because he’s close to crying. “Living by myself now, most of the time at the centre, I’m lonely and I start thinking that I’m full of boring chaos, like a dripping tap.” Johnny doesn’t know why he’s telling Michael this. He doesn’t really like the man, though at this moment Michael seems gracious and willing to listen.

Michael has nothing to say so Johnny keeps going. “What I find amazing,” he says, “and you understand that I’m not laughing, is how people like you spend your lives looking for order, even arranging it, but you wouldn’t have shit to say to someone who’s grieving. I’m a Christian, you see, born again many times, and
I’m
at a loss. Sometimes I think God has really screwed up. Not that that stops me from believing. No point in that. I like the feeling. Do you believe?”

Michael has a way of pointing at the air as he speaks. It makes him look silly, as if he were stabbing at dust motes or invisible rings. He says, “You’re right. I have nothing to say to you. About Charlene. A priest would do better.”

“I’m not Catholic,” Johnny says.

Michael is thinking. “Maybe those who accept mysticism to ex plain the unexplainable are deluding themselves. And maybe the more comprehensible we make the world the more pointless it all becomes. Maybe.”

Johnny thinks the man is full of crap. Still he likes him a little bit now. He’s not jumping all over everybody; perhaps because Avi’s not around.

Later, when Avi is back in the kitchen, talking and laughing about all the eggs she broke, Johnny passes by her and a shiver skips across his back. She’s a mixture of cold air, ammonia, perfume, and the tiniest trace of sexual heat, as if she were hungry for Michael, or someone else. She crosses her legs and says, “It’s odd, to be stealing eggs. I feel so guilty.”

Loraine looks at Johnny and closes her eyes. She is tired; Avi has worn her out. Michael senses this too and suggests they go. Loraine doesn’t argue. She asks if they could drop off Melody at home. “Chris needs a ride too,” she says. “He’s sleeping at a friend’s in town.”

When everyone has parted and the house is quiet, Loraine stands in the middle of the living room and tells Johnny he can stay the night if he likes. He’ll have to sleep on the couch though. The blankets are in the hall closet.

“I’m tired,” Loraine says. “I’m gonna shower, scrub off the turkey, and then go to bed.” She walks over to Johnny, leans down to him, and kisses the top of his head. “Thanks,” she says and strokes his face.

He keeps his hands at his sides. Her knee touches his, one of her hands rests on his head.

“You okay?” she asks.

He nods.

“Good night, then.”

He lies on the couch and listens to her bathe and then the house is silent, and Johnny is by himself, thinking about Loraine, who will still be damp and fresh smelling, her bum warm from the bath, a red line marking her skin where the hot water lay against her body.

In the morning, before the winter light creeps in through the windows, Loraine wakes him as she climbs under his covers. She wraps her legs
around his hips. Her body is fierce but her voice is tender as she says, “Love me, Johnny.”

It is nice to be surprised. To have it swoop down and claw at you. Johnny, holding Loraine, is surprised. He feels as if he has been offered an unexpected present, and gently, gently, he unwraps it. Loraine is urgent, but Johnny takes his time. He lays his head on her stomach. He bows down before her, kneels on the rug beside the couch, his legs bare and chilly outside the blanket, but he doesn’t notice. He talks and prays to this woman. “You are good,” he says. “Good.”

Loraine reaches down and pulls him up so they can share mouths, and eyes, and noses, and tongues, and Johnny would swallow Loraine whole if he could. There is nothing else he wants. He has everything.

BLISS

In early February Loraine phones Mrs. Krahn and asks about Melody. “Has she been any different lately?” she says.

“No, not really,” is the answer. “She knows we don’t approve of her crowd, but, well, we are limited, you see.”

“Yes, we all are,” Loraine says, and then adds that Melody and Chris are having sex.

It’s quiet for a long time and finally Mrs. Krahn says, “Oh. Oh, my. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Loraine says, “I’m sure.” She does not explain that she was shopping in Winnipeg on a Thursday afternoon and returned to find Chris and Melody in her son’s bed. They were both naked, on top of the covers. Loraine hadn’t known they were there when she opened the bedroom door and discovered the rounded whiteness of Melody’s bum and Chris’s foot, an innocent and vulnerable limb. Loraine slipped downstairs and made a big to-do about her next entry, banging the back door, shouting out Chris’s name.

Later, when her son appeared, Melody at his side, the two of them were pulled together, but seemed somehow puzzled, as if they were descending from a mountaintop and were sobered by the common sight
of Loraine unpacking groceries.

That night, Loraine asked Chris if he and Melody were having sex.

He looked up from his math homework, surprised. “What if we are?” he asked. “You gonna stop us?”

He was like a rat, Loraine thought. She disliked what she was doing. She poked at some plants, talked into the dirt. “It’s supposed to be fun,” she said. “I mean, if you are having sex, and I’m not saying you are, age has something to do with how comfortable you feel. Like, will she get pregnant?”

“We’re not stupid,” Chris said. “Not like you.”

Loraine expected this; she was quick with her response. “It’s never occurred to you that I wanted this baby, has it? I’m thirty-six. How old are you?”

Chris snarled and thumped upstairs. Loraine sat at the kitchen table, cleaned the dirt from her nails, and felt washed over by helplessness.

Funny thing, on the phone now, Mrs. Krahn wants to know Chris’s age too. “How old is he?” she asks.

“Fourteen,” Loraine says.

“Melody’s sixteen.”

Loraine waits, expecting some logic. Then Mrs. Krahn says, “She just got her driver’s, last week.”

“Yes, she told me.” It sounds, though Loraine can’t be sure, as if Mrs. Krahn is crying. There’s a whistle in her voice, a quick intake before she speaks, and then a shakiness.

“I said to Leonard, just last night, that Melody was scaring me. He agreed. So we’ve stopped her using the car. She just can’t have it. This made her angry of course. She hates us.”

This sounds like a pathetic confession, something Loraine might say. Mrs. Krahn is surprising Loraine. She anticipated anger and outrage, not sub -mission and helplessness. The kindness in her voice is perhaps the veneer of a pastor’s wife: the woman must take care, be generous and forgiving.

Loraine becomes careless. “I suppose you could blame Chris,” she says. “He’s a little out of control lately.”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Krahn says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

“Is she using any protection?” Loraine asks.

“Sorry?”

“I was thinking. We can’t forbid them to see each other, short of chaining them in their rooms, so I wonder if Melody’s on the pill or something. I know I’m gonna give Chris condoms. Even so, Melody’s the girl. She’s got to look out.”

“See,” Mrs. Krahn says, as if aiming a finger over the phone, “Leonard wouldn’t have it. You know. It’d be like condoning it.”

“How ’bout you?” Loraine asks. She’s getting a feel for this small woman. She’s only seen her once, in the aisles of the hardware store, and there she seemed cowed and timid, not at all the mother of colourful Melody.

“Of course,” she answers, but she stops, as if what she desires and needs is far from the core of her real existence and in the end, denied. She breathes quickly, a slight rattle in her throat. Loraine listens, thinks of dry seeds, and Mrs. Krahn says, “You’re expecting.”