Where we live, p.10
Where We Live, page 10
It’s only a short time now.
And then with her youngest child out on his own, she’ll be free.
Only a short time.
12
Mandalay says: I thought your dad was picking you up for your driving test.
No, Owen says. Max is. But we’re going to swing by Dad’s and pick up his vehicle, as it’s the one we practiced in.
Well, that’s nice of Max, Mandalay says.
It’s useful that the boys organize their own lives, more or less, these days. The years of complicated arrangements via telephone calls, of the careful creation of a network of drivers and at-home parents and favours and obligations, which had been necessary to manage the boys’ lives and which had fallen to her to manage, have suddenly (it feels like) evaporated. Now, if she’s lucky, she is informed whether or not either of the boys will be home for dinner.
Not like Duane to miss out on this kind of milestone, though. What’s up with your dad today? she asks. It’s not her habit to ask about Duane, and she sees Aidan, hovering over the toaster, glance at her quickly, as if startled.
Or as if wary, maybe. She and Aidan, so closely connected, intuitively: it’s like there’s still an umbilical cord between them. A ghost umbilical cord.
Owen, energetically spreading peanut butter on a stack of toast already on his plate;— he’s eating it faster than Aidan can produce it;— says, cheerfully: Dad was going to take us, of course. But his surgery got scheduled for today.
Oh, his surgery, Mandalay murmurs. (Has she heard about this? Is she supposed to know? Sometimes, lately, she tunes out things the twins tell her. Just sometimes. But they don’t tell her everything.)
Yeah, surgery, Aidan says. He looks unhappy, his lips pressed together, his eyes round behind the round lenses of his glasses. He won’t say anything more, Mandalay can tell, but she thinks also that she reads embarrassment, rather than dread, in his expression. So maybe not serious surgery, but something personal? Colonoscopy? But Duane would have rescheduled. Something to do with the prostate? She had recently heard one of her students refer to someone having “ass cancer.” Much better to have some delicacy, though she doesn’t want Aidan to feel that any part of the body is shameful to discuss.
Yeah, Owen says, talking with a mouthful of toast and peanut butter. Dad’s got ear cancer.
Ear cancer? Is there even such a thing?
Moron, Aidan says. It’s skin cancer on his ear. The top of his ear.
Well, that’s not surprising. Duane has been bald for decades, and he’s always out in the sun, sailing, kayaking, windsurfing, whatever.
It’s funnier to say ear cancer, Owen says.
It’s not funny, Aidan says. You can die from skin cancer. Melanoma.
So Aidan is upset, not embarrassed? Had she read him incorrectly?
Yea, Owen says. But he’s just going to get a piece of his ear cut off. He laughs.
That’s kind of lacking in empathy, Owen, Mandalay says. To find it funny.
Owen shrugs. That’s how it struck me.
She dislikes her son, at this moment. And yet, of the two, he is the closest to his father, and more vulnerable to any kind of bad news. She has tried to discourage it, in her sons, this jokey, callous response to emotional events. It’s a form of toxic masculinity, to minimize the feelings, to distract oneself with jokes, to pretend insensitivity. She has tried to show them a better way, but it’s all around them. She can’t control everything they come into contact with. She has tried, but she can’t control every influence.
That’s scary, Owen, she says. Do you know if he will be in the hospital long? Will he want visitors?
Mom. It’s okay, Aidan says. Just lean out a bit, okay, Mom?
It’s none of her business, but she needs to know, somehow. She’ll call Taylor Gibbons, maybe. The other twins’ mother. It would be Taylor who has arranged for Max Gibbons to take the four of them;— her sons and the Gibbons pair;— for their driver’s tests, as a group, when Duane couldn’t do it. Taylor who arranged the tests all together in the first place. Max is a businessman who could talk any deal into being, but it is Taylor who manages the household, in that traditional arrangement, and the family money, in a not-so-traditional arrangement. Taylor had dusted off her CPA licence, back in the crash of 2008, when Max had gone bankrupt, and supported them all for a couple of years, until Max was back in action. Now his bankruptcy looked more like a small blip in his rising fortune, but back then it had been pretty devastating.
Taylor had also kept up the friendship between her twins, Galton and Mahalia, and Mandalay’s sons, via much ferrying of the four of them in her car, signing them up for fencing and pottery and drama and sea kayaking classes. Duane paid, of course;— Mandalay had even paid, for a couple of things;— but it was Taylor who searched out the opportunities and booked them and got the kids there.
Mandalay does not like to admit what she owes Taylor. Of course Taylor is extremely wealthy;— domestic-staff-level of wealthy;— but Mandalay would not have done all of that arranging even if she hadn’t been in school or working, probably. Taylor runs rings around Mandalay, as Duane has pointed out.
Taylor will know what’s up with Duane. Mandalay will call her, when she finds a moment.
In fact, it’s Taylor who calls Mandalay. About Tuesday, she says. She’s always to the point. As Max is taking the kids to their test, could Mandalay pick Duane up from hospital? Taylor would herself, but she’s committed to a board meeting.
Of course she is. Taylor is on the boards of a number of charities. Doesn’t Duane have other friends? But Mandalay has to say she will, in the face of so much benevolence. I don’t drive, though, she says.
Yes, I know that, Taylor says. You’ll have to take a taxi. The hospital won’t release him unless there’s a responsible adult who can stay with him.
Mandalay isn’t teaching that day. She can hardly say no.
Of course, Duane won’t ask for help, Taylor says.
But doesn’t he have a girlfriend or something? Mandalay wonders, but doesn’t say.
You know how he is, Taylor says.
Yes, Mandalay knows how Duane is. He would lie down and bleed to death, probably, before he would ask for help. He can’t bear to be in anyone’s debt. He can’t bear to be vulnerable in any way. He would not want a girlfriend, if he has one, to see him in a hospital bed or unable to drive;— he wouldn’t accept that abnegation of power.
It’s really the last thing she wants to do;— take on the job of seeing a belligerent Duane home from day surgery at the hospital. But she really doesn’t see how she can refuse.
I’ll text you the details, Taylor says.
Mandalay would rather not take on a new intimate role with Duane. But she remembers always the two sets of twins growing up together. Taylor and Max Gibbons, Duane’s friends, embraced a sort of rich, privileged liberalism (she is momentarily ashamed of thinking so judgmentally, but that’s what it was) and eschewed, as Mandalay did, conventional gender roles and colours and toys for their twins. The four children had grown up all together, all encouraged to play with building toys and dolls, all sporting the same haircuts and jeans and T-shirts. They’d all bathed together until they were ten or so, and still have sleepovers. (She suspects that they also still skinny-dip together in the Gibbons’ pool, but can’t really ask, can she?)
Mahalia is definitely embracing a more feminine look, though, now. Are either of her sons attracted to her? Or would there be, given their history, a sort of kinship taboo?
(Back off, Mom, she hears her sons say. Lean out.)
What will become of them all, these seventeen-year-olds, born at the turn of the millennium? They are very polished and confident, Galton and Mahalia. They have a certain gloss about them, a perfection of dress and grooming and manners and speech. They have been able to hold their own even in a group of adults since they were pre-teens. It is not difficult to be ultra-confident, socially, Mandalay thinks, when the world seems to belong to you.
She wants, and doesn’t want that for her sons.
Mandalay doesn’t like hospitals. Possibly most people don’t like hospitals? But for her it’s something visceral;— her knees shake; she can’t breathe; her vision blurs.
The nurse at the station says: He’s a bit groggy, still. But you can see him.
A row of curtained cubicles, like change rooms in a department store. Some are open to the corridor, and in them she sees tubular steel beds on wheels, carts with apparatus, handles and spigots and signage on walls. The nurse twitches open a blue curtain hanging from an aluminum track. Duane? Are you decent?
In the bed, between the raised rails, an elderly man with one side of his head bandaged, asleep.
No, it’s Duane. Oh, lord.
His skin, under the pitiless hospital fluorescents, is greyish, and sags with gravity toward the side closer to the bed, as if it’s slipping from his face. The stubble of his beard is white, and a few white hairs curl out of the neck of his hospital gown.
Oh lord.
She can hardly bear to look. Has to sit down. No seat, only a commode chair. Is she allowed to sit on the bed? The bandaging over his ear makes a large lump, as if there’s a protective cage inside it.
Pull yourself together, she thinks. She recognizes her own panic but can’t move away from it. Can’t get even the space of a breath between her and the shock or fear or whatever has leapt at her and is squeezing her chest.
The nurse is a calm man, well-groomed, alert-eyed. He could be one of Duane’s colleagues, if he were in a suit instead of scrubs. Time to wake up, Duane, he says.
No, not a lawyer. He has somehow scrubbed authority from his voice.
Duane’s eyes open, close, open again.
Hi, Mandalay says. Her voice is squeaky. She clears her throat, begins again. How are you doing?
Duane moves his head, focuses his eyes. And act of will, she can see. His lips part.
He can have some of that water, the nurse says. There, with the straw.
It feels an act of violence, of unspeakable boundary crossing, some-how, but Mandalay lifts the cup and brings the straw to Duane’s lips.
The nurse lifts a blood pressure machine from the wall and wraps the cuff around Duane’s arm. Mandalay can’t watch even this procedure. She feels light-headed. Sits on the bed.
It’s too warm. She’s sweating in her vegan-leather jacket. But Duane’s hand, when he reaches to take the cup from her, brushes hers, is cold.
You need to start waking him up, the nurse says. He has to be walking before he can go home.
He looks like he should be in a hospital bed for several more days, Mandalay says.
Oh, yeah, the nurse says. Patients always look like that. It’s surprising how quickly he’ll look better once he’s sitting up. Anyway, we need to move him out. Day surgery.
Factory, Duane whispers.
You got that right, the nurse says. Assembly line. But hey, you get to go home.
There are forms with starred sentences that Mandalay has to initial and sign. It’s really difficult to focus on words. She balances the clipboard on her lap and tries to make sense of what she’s reading.
Don’t sign anything, Duane rasps. She looks at him. Crooked smile. Okay, then. She sits, quietly, focussing on her breath. The panic begins to ebb.
Move your fanny, he says, presently. I want to sit up.
He’s wearing track pants and a T-shirt, under the gown. And socks. She passes him what must be the rest of his clothing, in a clear plastic bag on the end of the bed. He undoes the fasteners of the hospital gown, slips it off, pulls on a shirt. Sits a moment. She doesn’t offer to help him. She can see that he is exerting all of his will, his considerable will, to pull himself out of the thickness of what is left of the anesthesia.
He pulls on his leather loafers.
She hands him his watch and his phone and wallet and keys, which she has retrieved from the little locker in the cubicle. He says, I want to use the john.
To the left, she says. Around the corner.
He lurches a bit, grabs a rail. Mandalay hesitates, then follows him, waits outside the lavatory door. He looks more like himself already, standing up. He’s going to be alright. Well, she doesn’t know that. He’s going to be alright today. Now.
When he comes out of the washroom he says, I can call myself a taxi. We can drop you at your place, if you want.
Nice try, Duane, she says. I’m going home with you. You’re not supposed to be alone for twenty-four hours.
It’s not that she cares, but she has promised Taylor, whom she owes so much.
He shrugs, but doesn’t protest.
She doesn’t stay overnight, of course.
She rides with him in the taxi, and pays the driver with his credit card. At his condo, she helps Duane take off his shoes, because he’s not supposed to bend over. He asks her to put his shoes in the closet and she does. She puts the prescription painkillers and package of gauze on Duane’s granite counter. He says he wants to sleep; insists he’ll be fine. He’ll talk to her later. He clearly needs to sleep, and seems fine, and she says she’ll call in a couple of hours, and he’d better answer or she’ll send an ambulance, and he grins absently and tells her to go.
And she does. She’s glad to go. She is suffering severe generalized anxiety. She can still hardly breathe or think.
She takes a cab home from Duane’s, lets herself into her quiet house. It’s only late afternoon, but she wants a drink, to take a pill and be unconscious. She can’t settle to anything, so has trouble distracting herself. Settles on the yoga mat, and finds some relief, moving through positions, focussing on her breathing, her alignment, her body sense.
Had she left, really, because she felt something of their old attraction surface, between herself and Duane? She doesn’t want to encourage that. It is just attraction, a random kind of chemistry. She doesn’t want to get close to Duane again.
Some quiet, before the twins return from their driving tests, triumphant.
13
During the long slow day, in the spare bedroom that he uses, or used to use for an office, Cliff sits and clicks through links on his laptop, moving from one article to another. He has bookmarked many of these sites already: he’s finding that as he clicks on links that take him to different sites, he ends up, more and more, where he began. Is this a good or a bad thing? On the one hand, it’s reassuring to find the familiar. He thinks: Yes, I know this. He’s familiar with some voices, some terminology. On the other hand, he’s starting to get this nagging feeling that the whole thing is just one big circle or cycle. That the same few people are just referring to each other for evidence or authority, cycling him around the web.
It’s a little bit similar to the process of trying to get to talk to a live person at a government service: the endless menus on the phone or website, the clicking through choices only to cycle back to the original menu. Please enter your PIN now. If you are calling regarding a PIN, please press 5 now. To receive a PIN, please enter your temporary authorization code. To receive. . . He has spent many hours, over the past few years, trying to talk to government services. Workman’s Comp, which changed its name to Worksafe. Ha. Disability services. Medical services. The tax people. So many people, so many forms and documents and numbers. A cycle that exists just to keep itself going.
Or it’s like the life cycle of this African parasite he watched a documentary about. Snails, waterfowl, humans. Snails, waterfowl, humans. What’s the point? It exists only to make new parasites, in complicated ways.
The websites and the items on them proliferate, but he is learning the paths, now. He follows them. It gives him something to do.
Well, it’s more than that. He’s learning something. He was never one for politics. He had his job; he liked his nature shows. But now he’s learning things. He always felt a bit stupid when people talked about politics. He found it very confusing. It was mostly over his head. But now he’s beginning to get it. He can understand it; he can understand what’s going on. He’d rather not know, in some ways. But it’s clear, and it’s something you can’t not see, once someone points it out to you.
Some of the types who post online go a little too far. He’ll admit that. But in general, he thinks that what he’s reading makes sense. It’s not what you’ll see in the mainstream papers, of course. But they’re all controlled. On the internet, people can talk about what’s really going on. People can say what they want. Most of what they want to say is that other people are controlling what you can say, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? Too much bureaucracy. The government is trying to stop you from making or keeping your money. But some postings say that handouts are bad, are making the country weak. He doesn’t know if that’s true, being one of the people on disability. Likely, though, lots of others are collecting money fraudulently? Welfare mothers sitting on their asses, one of the postings he’s read says. He doesn’t agree with that opinion. Of course, many of the people who post things are in the United States, and he understands things are different there.
It’s clear that someone is controlling things, anyway, and that people like himself have no say anymore.
On regular days he doesn’t have as much time on the computer, but he has time on his hands, now. He’s going to have another back surgery, and in the meantime he’s already off work, already trying to fill in the minutes and hours. He’s had three back surgeries, already, not counting the first one that he guesses saved his life, and also involved some surgery on his pelvis and shoulder. It’s like they can’t get it right. They go in, they chop away at his bones, they fuse this and stabilize that. And he feels better for a while, but it doesn’t last. Or, usually, he doesn’t feel better. He feels better, but only until the physio and the painkillers wear off. Then he feels worse. But he goes back to work anyway, and keeps at it until he can’t anymore.
