Mad Hope (20 page)

I have been known to drool on and over my children – when they were infants bundled snugly in my arms, attached to my nipple like barnacles. You're tired, Bruce would say, if he witnessed it, and, yes, the fatigue in those first weeks robs a woman of her sense and dignity, makes vanity a frill in itself. It is the kind of exhaustion that crosses over into a deep, sensual sorrow, everything leaky and askew. When I breastfed, I felt the world's sadness in my throat. I wanted to spit it out and instead I had to swallow it. Still, I can tell you, it was not fatigue or sadness that made me drool over my kids but a slack-jawed adoration, an awe larger and more compelling than love.

My husband is a good man. Still, sometimes in the middle of the night when one of the children has woken us with an earache or outrageous request, he will stare at me, sleep-sodden and merciless, as if I am a stranger who has stolen everything from him. And it is possible I have.
Gentle
is our word, our mantra and slogan and motto. It is our family philosophy and religion. But the way we have sex is the opposite: brusque, silent, its gestures brutal and sharp. Afterwards we laugh and do not speak. And then there is laundry and eavestroughs and crocodile tears and a dishwasher to unload. When we first met, and the moment arrived for me to tell this story, the story of my mother, he listened quietly, then said, Let's not talk about this anymore. You are here. Your mother is not. And he was right; he loves me.

I know I am fortunate. I have taken my place in the world with relative ease. My children are fed, clothed, educated. We hug them all the time. This is not the case for everyone. The school counsellor tells me things about the youth I bake with; I listen and shake my head. They have drawn short straws, it's true. Easy, easy, easy, they say (although everything in their lives is not), high-fiving each other with great tenderness as they come through the door. I love to listen to them; the camaraderie in their shared aggression.
You don't know shit, yo, why not go somewhere like Canada's Wonderland instead of sitting around in that shitty old shed? Oh yeah, why you got a duffel bag and not a knapsack? Low-budget, man, low-budget.
They steal my phone all the time, play games and coax strange images and sounds from it.
Look, turn it sideways, you gots a sexy chick. Whoa, who did that? I did it because I'm king, dog.
Then, when they notice me watching, they berate me in a way that makes me feel like maybe they like me a little.
Miss, why you always gotta be so in-on? Non? No! In-on! In-on! Like in on every little thing we doin'.
And I think, I am
so
not. In-on. Anything, really. And: What would it feel like to be truly in-on. The 'hood. The world. Your head might just explode. They are the type of kids who are frightening to some people. But for a long time they did not scare me. Then one day I answered a call whose number came up BLOCKED. And someone said
Hello
, conversationally, kindly, even. Then,
I'm gonna kill your fucking babies, bitch
. And it undid me. The next session we baked a large round sourdough loaf. I brought butter and blackberry jam and we slathered it on and ate together like family. But I was watching them in a way that friends should never watch each other. My
children
, I thought. You little shits, you threatened
my children
. Still, the bread smelled really fucking good, and the way those ratty teenagers ate – their eyes surprised and glad – made me forget for a moment, it really did.

Outside the window, I can see the highway, cars crawling along the edge of the lake. It was a room like this where I had my babies, all three of them entering the world as a line of cars streamed past below. The children anchor me, I suppose. Sarah was a Caesarean – they scooped her out of me whole, but the other two were natural, or as natural as these things get. With James I can remember a feeling of impending collapse – I was in the middle of pushing him out when I informed my midwife that I had to sleep. You're having a baby, she said. It was a soft command and a statement of fact. She was telling me to live. Bruce was fetching a cloth for my forehead, and when he walked towards me, cloth outstretched, all concern, I did not, could not recognize him. Why have they let that strange man into my room? I thought. This is what these moments do – they unhinge us from the known, from the familiar, the family. They give us a freedom to let go, to fall asleep, to let it all fall away.

James has regained some of his colour; his forehead is warm, so smooth, when I bring my lips down to kiss him. Soon they will be arriving – the rest of the tribe – and we will strap ourselves into our little metal box and ease onto the highway with the rest of them.

There were eleven of us on the plane and I have always considered this a beautiful and accursed number – I was so obviously an add-on, an extra bead on the abacus. I watched her drown. I have tried to soften or mitigate this fact my whole life, but it remains: it is truth, perhaps the only solid fact I can pull from the whole story. Still, here is how I remember it: a bumpiness, as if the plane were a car going over train tracks – the three modes of transportation suddenly, weirdly, melded – then a sharp drop that made us suck in our breaths and clasp hands, then another, more dramatic drop, the wink, then a clap as terrifying as the fiercest thunder, and a blank. A shooting pain in my shoulder, the cold and the darkness liquid around me and a sick-making need to clamber my way up to surface, to her. And then, once I had seen the sky and breathed the air, a deep unease, a heaviness of limbs. The waves were large, and because of my fatigue I did not fight them, but let the swells carry me; it was if the water were inside me then, cold, so cold, forceful and roiling. I have had the same sensation only once since, standing far from the beach on the shores of Lake Erie, the undertow tugging at my shins, my family safe and sand-speckled on land. That day, I felt the sun on my shoulders and the water around me, inside me, all womb, all soft danger and unrelenting life. I felt my mother that day.

She bobbed up two waves over, her hair slicked neatly back from her face. Did I call out to her? I feel certain that I did, but I have read that within minutes severe cold clouds rational thought. In my memory she is beautiful and strange, comical even, her lips parted in an O of surprise, the face she made when she came upon me in the back of the closet, crouched silently behind the shoe rack, smiling at my cleverness.
Drowning people's mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water.
Of course she must have known I was there! I floated, my feet barely fluttering, my clothes ballooning up around me. Afterwards they told me that the air in the jacket and my lack of skill as a swimmer had perhaps saved me. The cold became relaxing to me, I didn't have the sense to panic. I saw another person, maybe two, in the periphery, and it seemed to me they were calling out, to each other and to me.
Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning to perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving towards a rescuer or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
I think they were counting, numbering off. Did they assign me a number? If so, I have since forgotten it.

According to legend, Lake Superior seldom gives up her dead. She gave me up because I was not quite dead. My heart had slowed. Children's hearts are more capable of this slowing, this playing dead. The colder the water, the better, the more effective the response. The blood concentrates its attention and its circulation on the important bits – brain, lungs, heart. The lake held tight to my mother – who would not? They never retrieved her body. Normally bodies puff up with the gas generated from decay. Then they rise like bath toys to the surface. And they are found. But, they tell me, the cold water didn't let bacteria grow in my mother. She was allowed to sink.

I am not brave enough to leave them. It is untrue that bravery and love go hand in hand. Love is its own form of cowardice. If I were brave I would rent a car and drive north to the shores of Superior. I would go in the summer, when the water temperatures are not immediately torturous. I am a strong swimmer now and I want time to feel the smooth cold on my skin. I would wade; I would float; I would use my arms and legs to pull me far away from safety. And once the grey waves surrounded me, I would look up into the sky, salute this worn-down world and submerge. I would join my mother.

James wakes up as if he has heard my thoughts; as if now that I have pulled him back, he must pull me back too. Hi, Mum, he says. He smiles. Is it possible for a seven-year-old to be sardonic? Hi James, I say. He looks around. Nice room. Only the best, I tell him, and squeeze his hand. But he means it; he likes this room. He knows it saved him. Still: Can we go home now? Yep, your dad and sisters are on their way. Excellent, he says. He inclines his head towards the
TV
. Can we watch some shows? I shake my head. I think we have to pay. But when I get up and try the button – the television mounted on its very own space arm – it works. A rerun of
Welcome Back, Kotter
. Is this the only channel we get? He makes a face that makes my heart twitch with irritation and gratitude. Beggars can't be choosers, I say. What does that mean? says James. It means, count yourself lucky. What does that mean? says James. It means, watch the show and I love you. I kiss him on the shoulder. Eww, he says. But he's still too weak to push me away. On the screen, John Travolta's jeans are too tight and everybody looks too old to be in high school, but James gets into it, and after a few minutes, so do I.

Impossible to Die in Your Dreams

Eliza: Soup out of Stones

When my granddaughter Annie was ten, she started talking like a wrestler from a fable. ‘I regard you as a nail in the eye and a thorn in my muscle,' she'd say. ‘I will trounce you,' she'd shout, with her arms raised, fists clenched. That was after the three-month period when she insisted on watching
As the World Turns
standing on her head with the backs of her knees propped against the recliner. She said it made more sense that way. There's no contesting the wisdom of children. Now, there she is, all dolled up to the nines and tens, ready to wed. And in such a place! I'm not one for religion, but still, a brewery tugs at the old constraints of credulity. And her sister Samantha, always the ornery one, scowling in the corner. Went and got herself a P-H-D and traipsed around the world. Places herself above weddings and other normal human interactions. Thinks tripping through a rice paddy in Vietnam lends her some smarts inaccessible to the likes of me and Bea.

‘Why the beanie?' says my friend Bea, nudging.

‘Not a beanie, Bea,
yar-mah-kah
. He's Jewish. But not strict or anything. Eats whatever's placed in front of him.'

‘Shh,' says Samantha, who has now seated herself behind us. She refused to be a part of the ceremony – said it was antiquated and patriarchal. But now she sits shushing, blinking back tears and choking on love. Guess they never put the term
hypocrisy
on the syllabus at her fancy schools.

Annie's a beautiful girl, wilful and often ill-mannered, but a survivor. It's odd seeing her in white, in a gown, looking like a Cinderella doll with shiny cheeks and teeth. I had them like that – bones and teeth that thrived and gritted and bolstered. Not anymore. But I still got a couple of gnashers, rising proud like tombstones from the gum. I once heard a sprinter on the
TV
talk about hitting his stride.
I had my legs under me
, he said. I'm the same, legs still under me. And I know some things.

Ah, here they are now, pronouncing the same old promises we go on promising: to be true, to take care, to grow old together.

And the kiss – under the silk huppah, the clean, striving buildings and the blue, blue sky. Perfect. And impossible to fulfill, though we sweat and ache and die trying.

‘Jewish, eh?' says Bea as the bride and groom stride past, well-fed youth with years ahead. ‘Will she have to wear that scarf?'

Bea's sparky and tough, but crosses wires.

‘That's Muslims, Bea,' says Samantha, sighing. ‘There are some of those here too. Plus some Gentiles turned Jews, a couple of Catholics with questions, some lapsed Buddhists, or Buddhists ascending.' Samantha scans, then sighs again. ‘Some who just do a lot of yoga.'

‘Any lesbians?' says Bea.

‘That's not a religion.' Samantha gets up to congratulate and circulate.

‘Coulda fooled me,' says Bea. ‘What with the protests and parades.'

After the snap-snapping of photos, the well-wishers are herded by Samantha through the shipping doors – passageways from a far-off, enchanted land, too tall for mortals – and into the dining hall, with its soaring ceilings and portentous, yeasty smells. Long medieval tables dressed in white have been set up along the walls. But outside there is the
CN
Tower, that spire of silver and concrete, people being sucked up through its centre as if caught in God's gigantic straw. Bea and I sit out on the patio, watching it all. The rabbi who married the couple – a humanistic feministic Jew with a batik scarf draped around her large bosoms – is mingling with the crowd. I can tell that Bea approves of the woman by the way she followed the ceremony, mouthing along as if at a rock concert.

‘Do you remember your own wedding, Eliza?' she asks me, then pauses to reflect and point towards the hustle and bustle of celebration. ‘Do you remember this?'

‘Yes,' I say. ‘Yes, I do.'

And she nods the slow, sad nod of the never married.

A blue jay wings its way across the sky, alights on a scraggly shrub.

‘Did I ever tell you about my neighbour's canaries?' Bea is alert again, ready.

Once, twice, thrice
, goes the refrain in my brain, but I shake my head no.

‘The sweetest songs they sang. So peaceful for such bright yellow things. And none of us knew the reason why. Helen would bring them out in their copper cage to the garden, and I'd listen to them while I weeded. Well, it wasn't until years later I learned the reason for their dreamy song. It was cannabis seeds she fed them! Carted the seeds from Greece every time she went back. No one ever blinked an eye or sniffed her out. Picked them from her brother's field. A whole crew of chirpy little drug addicts keeping me company as I plucked dandelions from the soil. Do you believe it? Would you ever have dreamed that one up?'

‘No,' I say. ‘No, I could not.'

We shift from side to side, heave ourselves up and begin the trek inside. There is a beat or two while we breathe and step. We have it down, our rhythm, our particular intermissions.

‘But that's not the whole story when it comes to canaries,' I say. There are times when it is important to come back at Bea with an interesting fact, a tidbit of information. ‘My grandfather kept his at the back of the garden – was determined to breed them with the pigeons. Figured if the damn flying rats were to be a nuisance, they could be nuisances with some talent.'

‘Yes,' says Bea. ‘Right you are.' We shuffle our way past a thin, glowering waiter placing cutlery and napkins just so, last night's libations weighing heavily on his brow. ‘Couldn't get them to do it though, could he?' Bea nudges me, something lascivious in her eyes.

‘No, he couldn't. They'd screw their own kind silly, but you couldn't get them to give the time of day to a stranger.'

‘Too true,' says Bea, sated. ‘Too true.'

It's like this with us. We know each other's stories like we know the shapes of our own noses.

Samantha comes over and settles us into the reception area, hands us tall glasses full of fizzy, pink drink.

‘Cheers.' She clomps off, too thick-waisted and heavy-footed for her delicate getup. She's an odd duck, that one. As pretty and petal-like as her sister when she wants to be, but het up with notions of a world out of her reach. Out of everybody's reach.

Last week, I had a dream where I flew. But it wasn't the flying you expect from a dream – the soaring freedom of being airborne, carefree. I could fly only a short distance off the ground, and for me, flying was like swimming. I breaststroked my way around town, just over the heads of my friends and family. Not hovering, but floating as if on water, supported and stymied by the thickness of the air. There was my daughter, teenaged and bold, holding a pantsuit aloft, wanting a button stitched, the hem fixed. And my husband, with a teacup outstretched, his Brylcreemed hair flopping sideways, a sly eyebrow in view. The town, which was my world, had gravel paths instead of roads, a pink stop sign at every corner. Bea was there, in an easy chair by the river. And that bastard Bobby, sitting on a bench by the newsstand. Annie was inside buying penny candy, her pigtails straggling free of their fasteners. I swam over to cuddle her, to hold her in my arms, carry her on my back, so we could swim away from Bobby and his groping fingers, his eyes that stroked and cajoled. But it was hard going. I could not reach her, my kick was weak and tadpole-like. She strode out of the store and he called her over – three times her age and one third of her intelligence!
Annie!
I shouted. And she turned to look up at me, her inept angel. But I could only ever say her name. Whatever warning was blossoming in me stuck like a lozenge in my throat. She smiled and waved. She sat next to Bobby and counted out her sweets with him, put them in three piles in his outstretched palms.
Annie
, I said. She smiled up at me again, her cheek bulging with the shape of a jujube. And then I woke up.

‘I don't think it's about death,' I say to Bea. Atonement, maybe. Not death.

‘No, no, not death,' says Bea. ‘Impossible to die in your dreams.'

But this is not what I mean. To die in a dream would be nothing. But to feel it coming down the pipe, to have to do battle with all your willed innocence and slick helplessness. And my daughter, with the same cheery sense of entitlement she wore as a child, a blamelessness she cannot really feel in her core – where is she today while her own daughter twirls and basks?

Bea grunts softly over her supper, concentrating like an animal. My husband, Frank, would make these same noises, little sighs and half-words dedicated to himself as he ate. There were days I could've clocked him for it – a right hook to the jaw – or ended it swiftly, bringing the cast iron down cleanly on the top of his head. Other days, the tiny clicks and deep echoes of his very swallowing filled me with such brutal tenderness it took my breath away. Still, I never begrudge Bea her private sounds and satisfactions. It is one of the luxuries of the elderly – to skirt niceties in the name of infirmity. But now here they are, the couple of the hour, rising to thank us and praise each other.

‘Would you look at our Annie,' I say. Bea is licking her index finger to collect crumbs from the table. She looks. We both look.

Who is this young woman – mouth open in declamation, hand over her heart – if not a strange beacon to us all? There was a story – her favourite – I used to read to her when she was a child. In the story a village was starving, hoarding what they little had. And into this village came a hobo with less than nothing. But faith in life's little improvisations –
this
he had. He helped them make soup out of stones.

‘He's got a good shape, does he not?' asks Bea of Philip, the groom.

‘So he does,' I say. It's true. A birthmark like the boot of Italy down the side of his face, but a good shape, and even better sense.

A pretty girl with chunky arms clears our dishes, the wedding cake is wheeled onto the dance floor. Annie and Philip step forward, sink a knife into the creamy frosting.

Everything speeds up, tightens, then expands inside of me. I am at the park with Annie. Samantha has skulked off to the pool with one of her pals – covetous with her plans and preparations. Annie is wearing dungarees and a sleek hairstyle. She is eleven, with two new soft knobs for nipples. She runs from tree to tree, actually leaps to catch a white and blue butterfly and succeeds. She comes to me, her hands clasped around the creature. ‘Gran,' she says. She looks me in the eye. ‘Bobby calls me his butterfly.' She opens her hands, exposes her palms like a beggar. We watch it together, the darting, fluttering thing, as it spirals up into the sky like ash. Like confetti. Like the suddenly free, short-lived secret that it is.

Ah, but now she dances. And now she is in the air herself, on her throne, a queen hefted high by friendly drunks. Our Annie, clutching the sides of her chair, terrified, alone, triumphant.

‘Earth to Eliza,' says Bea. ‘Who's that Samantha's talking to?'

‘Couldn't say,' I reply. It is a man carrying himself well, older than Samantha, though not by much. He is taking her hand for the hora, leading her into the fray.

‘It's a good dance for the hebes,' says Bea, clapping along. ‘For everybody.'

‘Yes.' It is a good dance, bodies linked in circles, grapevining around the dance floor, shoulders shifting this way and that, the elation of arms raised.

‘
L'chaim
,' I practise softly.

Samantha: A Room of One's Own

‘You're not dancing?' He is tall, this man, his black hair expensively, if modestly, coiffed, and although he does not carry one, Samantha imagines he would suit a cane, a prop of some kind.

‘No. Just absorbing it all.'

‘From here?' he says. He takes Samantha by the hand and soon she is in it, being swept back and forth, Annie's mother-in-law winking at her from the left, her father waving from the sidelines, his look of perpetual surprise deepened by the sight of her, of her joy. Yes, this must be it. She's drunk and duped into sentiment, into belonging. And her father, so solemn in tone and matte in manner, seems to know something about her she never suspected. How
can
he, when his most fervent interest, for as long as she can remember, or at least since her mother left, has been the building of ships in bottles? She had always dismissed this hobby as an exercise in maddening patience, requiring only the miracle of single-mindedness, a steady hand and overly long pincers. She thought he had shut out the wider world for a fantasy encased in glass, but now here he is acting as though he knows her, as if he can see not into her brain, which is tangled like a briar patch, but into her future, the twisting tunnel that is her very life.

‘Your sister is beautiful,' says the man, stooping to her ear. ‘Philip told me as much.'

‘She is incredible,' says Samantha, watching Annie spinning in the middle of their circle, arms outstretched. When the sisters were twelve and eight, a vast treacherous galaxy stretched between them. Annie was determined to navigate it. Samantha and her friends believed in witchcraft, blue eyeliner and using tongues when you kiss. Annie was their doll and plaything, a floppy, earnest version of themselves. They used her to play séance, to call up the power they felt surging through their bodies like new sap.