Anomia, p.21
Anomia, page 21
Chanson De Geste
“What kind of flower do you think it is?” Fain asks Slip and Fir, as the three of them regard the memorial rock Limn painted which sits, wordless, at the foot of a tree on the periphery of the Unwood, a short way off from where the bones repose. “A white daffodil maybe?”
“Hard to tell.” Slip squints. “It could be a jonquil. Or a moonflower.”
“An almond blossom,” Fir suggests.
The three of them stand, facing the stone, childish and sincere in their clumsy approximation of funerary rites.
“Should we have added text to the stone?” Fain worries.
“Like what?” Fir asks.
“A word. Any word.” Fain kneels, touches two fingers to the top of the stone.
“Anonymous?” Fir improvises. “Anomaly? Anomie?”
“Don’t fuss.” Slip says. “Kisses are a better fate than wisdom, and a flower is a better fate than some generic RIP.”
“Should we at least offer a few words,” Fain persists, “while we’re all standing here?” Fain turns, expectant, toward Fir, who shrugs helplessly and turns toward Slip with pleading eyes.
“Well…” Having spoken so many times to the bones, Slip does not believe that anything more needs to be articulated. Hello, goodbye, these are phrases that Slip expects to repeat countless times to the bones when visiting them in the Unwood, and whatever peace or lack they have will be a condition of which Slip is also a part, so there is little need to wish for it.
A single, melancholy howl emerges from the woods. Other voices join, resounding high and several, surrounding the three people who stand astounded, casting glances all around them, in the clearing.
“Hello, song dogs,” Slip says, as if a few humans had just arrived.
“Are those wolves?” Fir whispers.
“Coyotes,” Slip answers, at regular volume.
“A whole pack of them?” Fir continues in a hushed tone. “Are we safe?”
“Could be two, could be ten. Not surprising this time of year. It’s when all the young start to go off on their own, find new groups.”
“Why is it so hard to say how many there are?”
“Any given coyote makes so many different and complicated sounds, it’s hard for strangers like us to tell their voices apart. I think it’s supposed to help them scare off predators and rivals, that kind of thing. Or maybe it’s just a joke they like to play on unsuspecting visitors.”
“I’m fine with leaving if they want us to leave.”
“They’ll let us alone if we don’t approach them. They might not even be talking to us.”
“You didn’t spend much time outdoors as a child, did you?” Fain, who has been standing by silently, asks Fir.
“Not as an adult, either,” Fir admits.
“I think it’s sort of sweet,” Fain says. “The coyotes are carrying the dirge.”
“Just as well,” Slip adds. “You wouldn’t want to hear my warble.”
“You could still add your melody to the chorus,” Fain prompts.
“What would you have sung, Slip, if you had to?” Fir asks.
Slip sighs and then, hushed, so hushed it hardly sounds like words, but more like a susurrus of wind through brush, begins to hum, and then to sing.
Under the earth,
‘neath grass and leaf
into the dark do our dead go.
But they return,
watered by grief,
in the faces of blooms that grow.
Slip coughs self-consciously. “I haven’t thought of that tune for years. We sang it at the funeral of a family friend who died quite young. Drank too much. Liver gave out. I think they chose that song because it made the death seem like less of a hopeless waste.”
Mourning Portraits
“I dunno, sounds kind of ghastly to me,” Mal tells Limn. “I mean, obviously I support you and I’ll help you with it, but that’s just my honest opinion.”
“Okay, it’s ghastly,” Limn admits. “So what?”
“People don’t even want to look at real dead people.”
“Yes, they do.”
“Right, but they’re not supposed to want to.”
“Don’t be so modern. Did you know that back when daguerreotypes became popular, they were still really expensive, so sometimes the only photographs people would have taken of them were after their deaths? Families took advantage of that last chance to have a likeness of their loved ones.”
“You’re on another research bender, I see.”
The kids enter the trailer park and pass the management office, the landmark that, once attained, gives Limn the settled feeling of having arrived home.
“Anyways,” Limn continues, “with what I’m doing, no one will even be looking at dead people. Really, they’ll be looking at living people posed and painted to appear as if they were dead.”
“Because that’s so much better.”
“It is. Death becomes familiar. Integrated into life. Then death will be less overwhelming when it actually arrives.”
“I don’t think my parents would agree.”
“Well, I won’t show them the painting of you then.”
“Okay, whatever. If you want me to model so you can paint me up to look dead, I’ll do it. But I still think it’s abnormal.”
“Yeah, probably. On the bright side, you don’t have to strike a demanding pose or anything. You can basically just take a nap while I work.”
“Sounds easy enough, I guess. Is this what you were thinking about while you were being a wallflower all night at the party?”
“I got the idea from someone I saw passed out on the couch.”
“At least you actually came to a gathering of your peers for once.”
“Hey,” Limn points in the direction of Slip’s trailer. “Look who’s back.”
They meander, magnetized but riverly, preferring not to seem too eager to reach their inevitable destination. As they approach, Limn is surprised to find two people playing backgammon on a folding table outside the trailer.
“Where’s the other one?” Mal calls out, prompting Slip to look up from the game.
“Gone,” Slip says.
“Taking some time away from Euphoria,” Fain clarifies, still staring at the board.
Recognizing the deliberate evasiveness of euphemism, Limn puts on a look of wide-eyed naivete. “Why? Where?”
“Hard to say,” Fain replies, disaffected.
“For how long?”
“Until the day Fir returns,” Slip says with tautological finality.
* * *
Limn turns, whispers into the shell of the Mal’s ear.
“Maybe I should ask them.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not? I think I’m owed a favour.”
Mal leans back, considers, leans in again.
“Actually, you’re right. These are probably two of the only people we know who might hear about your project and still be willing to talk to you afterwards.”
“Yes, exactly, thank you.”
“What are you two scheming about?” Slip asks.
Gingerly balancing dismissiveness and indulgence, Mal handles the question: “Someone,” here Mal points a thumb at Limn, “thinks it would be a fun casual project to paint living people as if they were dead and is looking for volunteer models.”
“Oh, I am so out,” Fain says immediately.
“Hmm.” Slip deliberates. “I will probably never get a chance to see myself when I’m dead. It could be interesting to see it now.”
“Really?” Limn asks.
“Sure,” Slip says. “But you have to really set a scene. Let me go out, roadside, wearing leather and aviators, clutching a pineapple.”
“Why a pineapple?”
Slip shrugs. “Why roadside? It adds narrative potential. Gives people something to think about.”
“I’m sure you two can negotiate something,” Mal says.
“Thanks,” Limn adds.
“But for now, we’ll leave you to your game.” Mal finishes and the kids step away. Limn offers a tentative wave, which Fain returns with equal hesitancy.
“Yes, and you two should try to go to bed before noon,” Slip says, with an inflection that might be mistaken for care.
Echium Vulgare
Weed to some, wildflower to others, the lush corolla of Echium Vulgare can transmute from dusky pink to afterglow blue on even the most impoverished land, like this glassy sand of a freshwater shoreline a few miles north of Lac Lemot. Possessed of nutlets formed like viperous heads, it has been said that Echium Vulgare, which also goes by the name Blueweed, can nullify the bite of a real reptilian snake, though whether that rumour is true no one can now recall. It scarcely matters here, for snakes have little interest in the beach of a cold lake. This Echium Vulgare rises precariously skyward, vulnerable to gravity and aggressive vines, though both of these it meets with a gritty if finite persistence, snarling its roots further and more securely into the earth, coiling through bloodied satin and black strands of human hair.
Fungiculture
A small crowd of students is assembled in the dim shed, their faces vegetal and faintly green in the viridian light radiating from a cluster of bitter oyster mushrooms.
“They are particularly bright right now,” the instructor explains, “because they are undergoing spore maturation. This species is significant not only as an example of bioluminscence, but also because of its potential applications in bioremediation. It has been shown to reduce the presence of toxic levels of polyphenols in wastewater. High concentrations of polyphenols result from various industrial processes such as fabric dyeing and olive debittering. This species may also help clean land contaminated by other kinds of organic pollutants. Research is ongoing in this area.” A switch is flicked and a faint bulb sputters to life overhead, making visible the panoply of mushroom species growing in the shed.
The jelly-soft wood ears, for instance, which emanate from the bark of the dead tree at the front of the class, make it appear as if the tree is listening to the group of visitors assembled before it. Though the wood ears are many, they actually constitute a single organism, held together by impossibly gauzy wisps of mycelium. The instructor is still speaking—rhapsodizing now about honey fungi that are thousands of years old, thousands of tonnes heavy, thousands of acres wide, too vast to measure except by the vaguest of estimates—but Fir, feet numb and legs restless with cold, soundlessly tiptoes out the door of the shed.
Outside, the sunlit October air is scarcely warmer, but it is far drier and brighter than the dim and dewy cloud in which the fungi grow. Every week, Fir leaves class early, but the next week still returns, bewitched by the mushrooms, those fleshy psychopomps who intercede between the living and the dead, turning one into the other and the other into the one.
The mushroom shed is a modest A-frame structure in the small but flourishing community garden that is mere blocks beyond downtown Valence. Today, as has become customary after class, Fir sets out on the 15-minute walk that leads to a barely-populated café off the main street, where Fir has made a ritual of proceeding alphabetically, visit by visit, through the long list of loose-leaf teas. Some familiar, like chamomile, others unexpected, like fennel, none of them as exhilarating as coffee, which is just as well, for often Fir finds that the central nervous system more than justifies its name, amply frenetic even when confronting ordinary life.
Transparent as a fishbowl, the whole front of the café is windows, including the door, which today slips, suddenly slick, through Fir’s hand before it can even be opened. Reflected in the glass, Fir sees, across the street, a familiar figure walking. Fir turns around to get a direct look. Collar up, head down, but how could it be anyone else?
Fir is sure; Fir is not sure; Fir is sure enough.
Here, on the shore of the sidewalk, Fir stands fast. There, on the far shore, Blue walks away. And between them, a lake, throwing breathless fish at their feet.
Acknowledgements
I don’t know how I ever finished writing a novel, but I do know I was helped along the way.
To my thesis committee: Drs. Louis Cabri, Carol Margaret Davison, and the late great Catherine Hundleby (1966-2023). Thank you, Dr. Cabri, for your grounding calm and artistic curiosity during our weekly mid-pandemic telephone meetings. Dr. Davison, you were an inspiring and encouraging mentor when I was a student in your wonderful classes on Gothic literature. Thank you for prodding my novel along while you were writing your own. And thank you Dr. Hundleby. Wherever you are now, I’m sure you’re casting your astute philosophical eye upon your surroundings.
Thank you to the University of Windsor and the Ontario Graduate Scholarship program for giving me two years to work.
Thank you to other early readers of this project: long-time editor and annotator of my writing, Jeremy Colangelo, whose own novel I eagerly await; Hafizah Geter, who owed me nothing but generously gave me great advice anyway—if there’s powder in this novel it’s because of you; Caitlin Galway, who is a freelance editor I cannot recommend highly enough, and whose forthcoming short fiction collection I am so looking forward to reading.
Utmost thanks to Corinna Chong, Michael Melgaard, and Aaron Tucker for their deeply insightful words about Anomia, which describe the book better than I ever could.
Thank you to my fellow poet-at-heart Kamila Rina, an excellent friend with whom to walk this genderweird road.
Thank you Ari for all the days you spent sitting on my desk beside the hibiscuses while I wrote. I’ll miss you forever. Thank you Lulu for doing your best to take over Ari’s shift after he had to pack his metaphysical suitcase and go.
Thank you to the Palimpsest Press team for their crucial efforts to bring this odd little project into the world. Aimée Parent Dunn, I dearly appreciate you letting me be a tad precious about my first novel. Vanessa Shields, I’m grateful for your cheerful, enthusiastic championing of the press’ titles.
Thank you, as always, to my parents, Laurie and James Wallace, for filling our house with books and philosophical debate.
Extra thanks to my mother, for being the single absolutely loyal fan of my writing throughout the years.
Finally, thank you to Mark Laliberte, my eleventh hour editor, and my other half both on the page and in the home. As you already know, I’m grateful for your gorgeous design work on this book, and all of my books, and all of our books. I’m glad we’ve chosen to permanently combine our libraries.
First Edition.
June, 2024
Palimpsest Press
1171 Eastlawn Ave
Windsor, ON
N8S 3J1
info@palimpsestpress.ca
palimpsestpress.ca
photo credit: Mark Laliberte Jade Wallace (they/them) is a queer writer, editor, and critic, as well as co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE. Wallace is the author of two poetry collections, Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There (2023) and The Work Is Done When We Are Dead (2026), both with Guernica Editions. MA|DE’s debut poetry collection, ZZOO (2025), is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press.
jadewallace.ca
ma-de.ca
In Euphoria, a small, fictional town that feels displaced in time and space, an affluent but isolated couple have vanished from their suburban home. Their estranged friend, Fir, a local video store employee, is the only person who notices their disappearance. When the police refuse to help, Fir recruits Fain, who moonlights as a security guard, and they set off on a seemingly hopeless search for the lost lovers. Their chance at an answer, if they can ever find it, lies on the wooded edge of Euphoria, where Slip, an elderly trailer park resident, finds a scattering of bones that cannot be identified. Distrusting everyone, Slip undertakes a would-be solitary quest to discover the bones identity. Yet secretly, Limn and Mai, two bored, true crime-loving teenagers from the trailer park, are dogging Slip. Determined to bring justice to the dead, Limn and Mal will instead bring the lives of all seven characters into fraught and tangled confrontation.
Beneath the familiar surface of this missing-persons novel lies an unparalleled experiment: the creation of a folkloric alternate reality where sex and gender have been forgotten. Anomia is an atmospheric exploration of a possible world, and a possible language, existing without reference to sex or gender.
palimpsestpress.ca
“Wiih mycelial plotting propelled by Jade Wallace’s nuanccd and atmospheric pro; Anomia is an astonishing debut.”
– Michael Melgaard, Author of Pallbearing and Not that Kind of Place “Anemia resists definition, courageously dissolving the divides between genres, genders, and realities.”
– Corinna Chong, Author of Badland and the Whole Animal
Jade Wallace, Anomia
