The Sky Is Falling Page 9

  “That’s funny,” I said, though really, why would he be curious about his mother? Except that Simon seemed to be. “So where is the article now?” I asked.

  “He’s got it, I guess. You want me to get it?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said and, satisfied he was just trying to help, I kissed the good, long-suffering doctor, heroic lancer of haemorrhoids, and let him get some sleep.

  Chekhov was a doctor. His stories are full of medical men and women, the occasional scoundrel, but most of them sympathetic and hardworking. Dr. Samoylenko with his kebabs and mullet soup. Dr. Ragin in “Ward Number Six,” who ends up committed to the same asylum as the patients he neglects. The frustrated, overworked Dr. Ovchinnikov in “An Unpleasant Business.” Joe is, I think, most like Dr. Osip Stepanych Dymov from “The Grasshopper,” in the background making everything run, taking no credit. No one remembered Dymov until exactly half past eleven every night when he threw open the dining room doors and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, supper is served.” Throughout dinner his wife would call him her darling maître d’hôtel and extol his charms to her arty guests. “Gentlemen, look at his forehead! Dymov, turn your profile to us. Gentlemen, look! The face of a Bengal tiger, but an expression as kind and charming as a deer’s. Oh, you sweet darling!” Yet she started an affair with her painting teacher, and when the doctor found out, he began inviting a friend to dine with them so Olga would not have to lie. And after dinner, when his friend played the piano, Dymov would say, “Why, hang it all, my dear fellow, let’s have something really sad!”

  Joe has a raptor’s face, but a deer’s expression too. He would, of course, ask for something really angry.

  When Joe Jr. was younger I was fearless. Nightly I would brave the obstacle course of Transformers, the carpet land-mined with Lego, slippery with hockey cards. Willingly I risked these childish hazards because I needed to be sure he was actually still there in his captain’s bed, tucked in and breathing and safe. Safe from the harm I’d imagined throughout the day. But as he got older and slept less soundly, he’d sense my intrusion and wake. I had to stop checking on him despite my urge to protect him, which persists even now that he’s a foot taller than I am and perfectly capable of looking after himself. It should be easier, but it’s not. It’s worse than ever. The older he gets, the more imperilled, or so I feel anyway. Because of Pascal. Because, what if the same thing happened to Joe Jr.?

  I tossed and turned. I curled my toes up tightly, then relaxed them, did the same with my feet, then my calves, and so on, like you’re supposed to, but gave up. Gave up and gave in to the compulsion and went to Joe Jr.’s room to make sure he was okay. Standing in his bedroom doorway, I faced different hazards now. His scorn, for one. I couldn’t even see him, but I heard him. He breathes like his dad. All that was visible were the fluorescent constellations stuck to the ceiling, still glowing after all these years like the heavenly bodies they represent. When I noticed them, I was amazed, just as I am nightly amazed by the reappearance of the stars and how they prove that, against all odds, the world has endured another twenty-four hours. They gave me courage and so I shuffled in, feeling my way with my feet until my shins collided with the bed. I froze while Joe Jr. slept on, oblivious to my bumbling—until I sat down.

  “Ow!”

  I sprang up. “Oh, God. I’m sorry. I woke you.”

  Groggy. “Mom? You sat on my leg.”

  “Sorry!”

  “What time is it?”

  “Shh. Go back to sleep. I’m leaving,” I said.

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  “Nothing. I’m leaving.”

  I turned and walked straight into the edge of the door. It felt like a punch. More stars, brighter now, and a waterfall in my eyes. My nose sang with pain and when I cupped it, I felt something warm running out. Joe Jr. switched on the lamp.

  “Are you okay?”

  As soon as I could see, as soon as I ascertained that blood had not been shed, I turned to Joe Jr. sitting up in the bed. These days I rarely see him undefended by attitude like this and, in that moment, he looked exactly like his baby self. The clock on the bedside table, its face round and reproving, jabbed its hands past two-thirty.

  “You want the article, I guess,” he said.

  What I actually wanted was that he would always and forever be safe.

  Joe and I have tried to raise Joe Jr. in such a way that lying would be unnecessary. It seemed we were successful, for his confession spilled right out. “Dad asked me to take it. That was why I came home early. And because I was bored.” But the next thing he said just floored me.

  “Were you a terrorist, Mom?”

  1984

  A grey quilt thrown across December. I glanced up and, remembering the missiles, quickly hoisted my umbrella. As though a bit of nylon stretched over some flimsy metal ribs could save me! Then the Reliant, so motley, so cheerful, pulled into the bus stop and honked. Dieter unrolled the passenger window so Pete could call out from the driver’s side. “Get in, Zed!” To Dieter, Pete said, “Let Zed sit in front.”

  Dieter: “What?”

  “You heard me. Don’t be such a creature. Mix it up.”

  Dieter, lips rosebudded, got out of the car and slammed the door before getting in the back. “Oh, thanks,” I said.

  “I’m not going to hold it open for you, Jane. That’s sexist.”

  I got in. The sticker on the glove compartment read Military Intelligence is an Oxymoron. Dangling from the rear-view mirror, a plastic Virgin Mary with a man’s bearded face cut from a book and pasted over hers. Pete saw me staring at it. “That’s Kropotkin.” A jab started the figure pirouetting on its string.

  “She doesn’t know who Kropotkin is,” Dieter said from the back.

  “Did you before I told you?”

  I felt for the seat belt but the buckle had been cut off. Only one windshield wiper worked, luckily the one on Pete’s side. It was raining seriously now and my side was all smears. He turned in the direction of Fourth Avenue, then immediately into the alley. “Where are you going?” Dieter said. “I have an exam.”

  Pete: “I forgot something.”

  We drove down our own alley, past the pristine back yards, then the moss farm that was ours, around the corner and onto our street, circuit complete when Pete pulled into his original parking spot. “Unroll your window, Zed.” I did and he looked out at the house next door where the drapes were fully open now. The neighbour, usually in melancholy vigil in the morning, was gone. Pete stepped out of the car into the rain and, keys jangling, went around to unlock the trunk.

  “What’s he doing?” Dieter asked me.

  Strolling toward the house. Then he veered off the path and cut through our long grass, which lay down for him. When he reached the neighbour’s emerald turf, he suddenly bolted for the garden statue, the black man in livery, twin to the one on our living room hearth. “Fuck,” Dieter said, which summed up what I felt, though in different words. After a brief struggle, Pete wrested the statue free. It had been wired to something; I saw metal feelers protruding from the base as he ran with it CFL-style back to the car. A thud, then the trunk slammed and Pete slid into the driver’s seat with a single bead of rain hanging off his nose, just above the smile. I shrank down in the seat.

  “Great,” Dieter said. “I’m officially late.”

  Pete turned to me and placed a hand carefully on my forehead. I pulled away from his touch. “Stick out your tongue,” he said.

  “Are you nuts?”

  He caught my wrist in a tight clasp and took my pulse. “Still depressed” was his diagnosis when he finally let me go. “I’ll check on you later, Zed.”

  My parents wrote me every week I was away at university. To save postage, my father always included his letter with my mother’s, versions of My dear Jane, I am glad to hear your studies are going so well. He would cut off the unused portion of the page for his next letter until all that was left was a strip like you’d pluck out of a h
at for charades.

  That Christmas they waited for me to come home before putting up the tree. My father did the man’s work, bringing the box up from the basement, grappling with the assembly, swearing, while my mother and I unpacked the ornaments. Last year I’d been so happy to come home to the only people in the world I could be myself with, but this year I was different, wiser I thought, older than my years.

  “How did exams go?”

  “All right, I guess.” In my hand was the innocent toilet paper angel I had made a thousand years ago, before I knew I’d be dead at nineteen.

  My father paused in his cursing to say, “All A’s, I bet.”

  “Not necessarily. I won’t find out for sure until I get back. I’m going back earlier than I said.” They both looked at me. “I’ve got things to do,” I told them.

  “What things?” my father asked.

  “I have to buy a desk.”

  They were hurt. I shouldn’t have mentioned leaving so soon, but it was all I wanted to do. During the bus trip home I’d been amazed at how quickly we entered winter. Just past Hope, the season had been lying in wait. It made Vancouver seem all the more vulnerable, ever draped in the fragility of spring, never donning winter’s frozen armour. I felt an urgency to get back and somehow guard it.

  A few days before, Sonia had invited me to go downtown. I’d finished my exams and felt like being with other people before the world came to an end. I felt like being with Sonia. At the bus stop, we met up with Belinda and Carla from the “Women Only” house, Carla who seemed colourless next to Belinda in her padded Mao jacket and bright pink harem pants. Sonia hugged Carla and Carla hugged Sonia and, to my dismay, Carla, whom I didn’t even know and had only seen once, the night they found out I was studying Russian, hugged me too. Belinda was swinging on the pole; we had to stand back to avoid the red lash of her hair. She twirled over to Sonia and hugged her. Then she saw me and cried, “Ho ho, Jane! Congratulations! Sonia finally got you!”

  I turned to Sonia, who was beaming. “It’s how we’ll save the world, Jane. One person at a time.”

  Then Belinda, of course, hugged me, breathing in my ear, “I hear Sonia gets little Russian notes in her shoes.” She pulled back and looked at me. “I want a note.”

  Carla husked, “Me too.”

  We were going to The Bay to put stickers on war toys. They’d already been to Eaton’s and Woodward’s, Sonia told me on the bus, smiling and leaning over the seat ahead of where I sat with Carla. “We got kicked out of Woodward’s,” Carla boasted. My shock must have shown because she hastened to add, “Don’t worry. They can’t arrest us.”

  Never in my life had I intentionally done wrong. I hadn’t even handed in an assignment late. I had, of course, given my parents the usual teenage grief, but I didn’t count that. “I don’t want to get in trouble,” I said.

  Belinda and Carla exchanged glances. Carla said, “You can be support. Are you okay with that?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’ll be the lookout and if anything happens to us—”

  “Nothing will happen,” Sonia assured me.

  “You let the others know.”

  “Who?”

  Belinda: “Call Pete.”

  “All right,” I said.

  The plan when we got off the bus was to fan out and enter separately, then meet up again in the third-floor bathroom. “The handicapped stall,” Carla said.

  “What if someone has to use it?” I asked and Belinda spread her arms and pulled me to her again. She smelled of patchouli and B.O. “Jane,” she cooed. “Everything will be fine.”

  “It’s her first time,” said Sonia. “It’s normal to be nervous.”

  I felt her little hand pet me.

  Inside, the store was shiny with Christmas, tinkly with piped-in carols. A harried clerk looked up from her register as I passed. There would be security guards, too, posing as Christmas shoppers on the watch for shoplifters. I insinuated myself into the crowd on the escalator and was the first to reach the bathroom. Please Do Not Throw Sanitary Products in the Toilet read a notice on the back of the stall door. A tap. I unlocked the door for Carla, who immediately crouched to unzip her backpack and hand me a sheet of stickers.

  Warning: This is a war toy.

  Studies show violent games

  make violent children.

  This Christmas, think peace.

  She took a black marker from her backpack and wrote under the sanitary products notice: Ronald Reagan is a criminal! Throw HIM in the toilet! Then the door handle rattled and Belinda bellowed on the other side, “Hey! What’s going on in there?”

  “Are you okay, Jane?” Sonia asked when we were all crowded in the stall together. “You can bail if you want.”

  I shook my head.

  Carla distributed the sheets of stickers to the others. “Toys are at the top. Pretend you’re shopping. If a clerk gets suspicious, employ distraction. We’ll meet up afterward.”

  “Where?”

  “The cafeteria.”

  “No. It’s on the same floor.”

  Belinda suggested Santa’s Workshop. Then she dropped her harem pants and peed in front of us. After they left, I stayed behind for a minute dashing cold water on my face and wiping it with paper towels.

  The escalator delivered me up in Furniture and Appliances. I had to stagger around looking for Toys. When I found it, Carla was working independently, Sonia and Belinda together. I passed behind them, nonchalantly I hoped, and heard Belinda ask in her stage voice, “God. What do you think? Will he like this?”

  “Nope,” said Sonia, slapping a sticker on the box.

  “This?”

  “Nope.” Slap.

  “This then?”

  “Nope.” Slap. Giggle.

  I looked around for a clerk but there wasn’t anyone except an elderly woman in a knitted beanie hobbling toward me. She seemed exhausted. “Where are the Cabbage Patch Kids?”

  “Sorry. I don’t work here.”

  “They have squashy faces.”

  “Are these them?” I asked, pointing to some nearby dolls.

  “That’s not squashy.”

  I suggested she talk to a clerk and, as she limped off, I hissed to the others to clear out. Belinda and Sonia separated at once, heading in different directions. I had to go over to Carla with a second warning before she took off. It would look suspicious if I left then too, so I picked up a box and pretended to be interested in model building. The picture on the lid showed a green army airplane raining down bombs.

  The old woman came back. “No luck,” she told me. “They’re sold out.” Then she thanked me for helping her.

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  As soon as I said it I knew I didn’t want those to be my last words.

  Living on the West Coast had softened me. I couldn’t tolerate the Prairie cold any more. When my mother insisted on taking me to the West Edmonton Mall for clothes I didn’t want, I dashed from car to store and, even in that short time, sprang a nosebleed. My mother yearned for me to feel pretty. She urged me to try on frilly tops and skirts, even though she didn’t dress that way herself. (She was the slacks and sweaters type.) When I was in high school she seemed to think that if I dressed differently my problems would be solved, I would make friends, when what I’d really needed was to be inconspicuous, not to make enemies. Anyway, all of that was in the past. It was trite. There were enough missiles pointed in my direction to kill me twenty times. It didn’t matter what I wore. Sonia didn’t care about clothes either.

  Faced with my mounting sullenness, my mother finally gave up and we ran the frigid gauntlet back to the car with a new pair of runners. I vowed not to step outside the house again for the rest of the visit.

  She turned on the heater and, while we waited for the engine to warm up, she studied me. “Don’t,” I said, bringing my mittens to my face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  �
�Did you have a fight with your aunt?”

  “No.”

  “Then why aren’t you going to see her any more?”

  “I was busy with exams,” I said.

  “She was kind to you last year,” my mother said. “I’ll just remind you of that.” Then, tentatively, she asked, “What about those girls you’re living with?”

  Worried, fretful little Sonia with her sudden bursts of joy. I had one too, at the thought of her. “Remember I wrote you about Sonia? We’ve started doing things together.”

  My mother pounced on this. “You’ve made a friend?”

  What a freak she’d given birth to! She never said that, of course, but I intuited it every time she tried to help me. The heater pumped out its chinook, but I answered coldly, “She’s really nice. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “So what’s wrong then, sweetheart? What’s bothering you?”

  I winced and drew a circle on the window.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Do you ever think about dying?”

  “Not if I can help it. What are you nursing morbid thoughts for? It’s Christmas.”

  A line to bisect the circle, then two drooping arms. Peace. “Mom? We’re on the very brink of a nuclear war.”

  I wasn’t expecting her to be relieved, especially not to laugh. “My goodness! Is that it?”

  “Yes!” I told her.

  “Why waste your time worrying about problems you can’t fix?”

  “Maybe we can fix it!”

  “Jane. That’s silly.” She put the car in reverse and began to inch out of the parking spot. “And don’t mention this to your father. You know how he feels about Communists.”

  “Not wanting the world to blow up has nothing to do with Communism! That’s just so ridiculous! The nuclear clock? It’s at three minutes to midnight. There’s a fifty-fifty chance of a nuclear war occurring by 1985. That’s not me talking. That’s the generals. The scientists. Nobel Prize winners.”

  We were halfway out of the parking stall. My mother had braked for my outburst and now she sighed. “They’re always talking about it on the news. But, please. We haven’t seen you in four months. It will ruin the holiday, Jane. Just ruin it.”