Mad Hope (5 page)

‘For the man who has absolutely nothing,' he said.

Anton managed a few weak goodbyes from his stairway perch, but rallied when he saw Martine buckling her brown Mary Janes. ‘Thank you for your generosity,' he said, and I adored him for stumbling upon Irony at such a young, smooth-skinned age. Martine turned for a moment to flick a strand of hair from her eye. Then she waved at Anton, her lips curving into a small, orderly smile on her pretty, atrocious face.

Taisie shifts around so her legs are draped across my lap. ‘Feet,' she says. Then, ‘What else is on?'

‘Oooh,' I say, flipping through channels with one hand and massaging her instep with another, ‘
Vain or Insane?
'

‘Yes,' she says. ‘Yes, yes.'

I've done it, I crow to my Self. I've made her feel better. But my Self just smirks like a mother until I swat him away. On the screen a woman forced to live without mirrors for the two weeks it took to cinch and overhaul her body is about to experience The Reveal. She is wearing a black velvet kerchief around her eyes, a red satin evening gown and very shiny shoes, precarious shoes. Behind her a team of stylists has assembled the way magpies gather, proprietorially, around something discarded and gleaming. The woman waits in front of the mirror, which is shrouded in black satin. One of the stylists breaks from the flock to lead a small girl in party clothes and a man with frizzy hair and a forlorn gait into the room. The man is a forklift operator in a small town in the southern U.S. He loved her fine the way she was.

‘So,' says Taisie. ‘What about Joe?'

‘He would have been interested in this,' I say.

‘In what?' she says.

She's teasing me. She knows he never watched
TV
. But for some reason I can't bring myself to say the word
pregnancy
; it feels almost obscene in its adult ramifications. When I was a child there was always a sort of shimmery scrim between myself and adulthood, until one day –
shazam!
– I found myself tiptoeing like an alien amongst the enemy, wondering when they would see past the permanent, shoddy disguise.

‘No,' I say, pointing to her belly, ‘that. And also,' I add, looking down into my lap, ‘I keep remembering things I forgot.'

‘Like?' she says.

‘Well. Like this one time we're hiking in the woods on Bowen Island and we don't see a soul, not even a deer, until we get to the salmon run and this incredible family appears from across the bridge. It was a mother and three daughters – the blondest, tiniest things I'd ever seen, so they made delicate little Joe look like this hairy gorilla Amazon, and I looked like I'd just rolled out of some tree trunk where I'd been surviving on roots and berries. That's how luminous they were, and how spare, as if everything about them was there for a specific, superior reason.'

‘I know people like that,' says Taisie grimly.

‘“Hello,'' said the woman, only she said it with no tentativeness whatsoever, like she was making an important list, and
Hello
was the last thing on it. Her girls stood next to her, a row of pretty chickadees, each a head shorter than the last, and also said
Hello
. They had rich, clipped accents, and when Joe asked, they said they were from South Africa, and the woman leaned back slightly, placing her hand like a cup under her belly. Which is when I noticed she was pregnant.'

‘
Pregnant
, eh?' says Taisie, and pokes me.

‘“Congratulations,” I said. “When are you due?” And immediately I regretted it, since something inside me was certain that
due
could not be the right word. “Three months,” I could hear her saying through the bustle of my thoughts. “I'm quite small, but I have small babies, easy births.” And I was still thinking
due
was for library books and hydro bills, and wishing I could get these things to stop trotting across my mind. But then it occurred to me that South Africa was where all those penguins washed up, so I crouched down low to look into the face of one of the chickadees and asked her if she knew of any tarred, tuxedoed waddlers washing up on her shores. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Mother and I took care of one. It was quite arduous washing all that oil from its feathers, quite a number of them died.” “Yes, a shame,” said the mother. “That was right after our neighbour was shot.”'

‘Jesus,' says Taisie.

‘I know,' I say.

On the
TV
, the assistants have wheeled out the contestant's ninety-two-year-old grandmother. They introduce her and the audience erupts into raucous applause. A couple of people even hoot.

‘You know,' says Taisie, ‘I never used to get it, the applause for old people. I thought: So what? They're old! It's not really a talent or a special accomplishment, not
really
. And, I mean, it's a bit condescending too – isn't it? – clapping for the wrinklies?'

I nod and wait.

‘But last year I went to see this bluegrass singer, and she said she was the youngest of fourteen children, and then she dedicated a song to her momma. She said, “This one goes out to my momma, who is ninety-one years old.” And I thought: Fuck me, ninety-one years old, fourteen children, what the woman has
seen
, right? And I got it, I really got it, and I clapped extra hard, so my palms bounced right off each other ... '

I give her knee a little squeeze.

‘Just living,' she begins, then continues quietly, ‘it can be an accomplishment, can't it?'

I toast her with an imaginary champagne flute.

The woman of the hour is about to see her new Self for the first time. The room is hushed as the black satin is whisked away from the mirror. The camera pans over the crowd and settles on the reflected image. For a moment the woman stands perfectly still. Then she doubles over as if someone has punched her in the stomach. Which, in a way, somebody has. I read an article about this writer in her seventies who said that in her head she was stuck at age thirty-eight, no matter what tale the mirror told.
Well, Self,
I say,
I'm not sure we're there yet, at our sticking point.
But it's possible it's close. It's possible it's very, very close.

‘Tell me again why we like this show,' I say to Taisie. But Taisie is in Snoozeville, her eyelids almost completely lowered on the world, her chin bobbing against her chest as she inhales and exhales for two.

I rest my hands on her feet and finish the story. ‘Then,' I tell sleeping Taisie, ‘the woman turned back to Joe, and I realized they had been talking about the travails of childbirth, because the next thing she said was, “In Africa, the blacks in the fields will simply stop whatever they are doing and push out their babies then and there, in a squat, strap them to their backs and go on working. Just like that.” The woman placed her hand on the head of the oldest girl and sighed. “It's lovely here, but quiet, so polite,” she said. “Even the trees are polite.”'

I close my eyes. ‘Taisie,' I whisper. ‘I wanted to talk to Joe about the strange beauty of those children, the ruthlessness of the mother, the way in my head the correct words kept feeling so wrong, but on the way back home we got distracted by some teenagers in big pants making out up on the observation deck, and then the hump of a whale breaching in the distance. We started arguing about what we wanted for dinner.'

Once:
How can anybody be their own best friend?

The next day, Taisie goes into labour. The beginnings are much less dramatic than I anticipated. She glares and holds up an index finger prohibitively when I ask what I can do. There is nothing I can do. There are processes, once set in motion, that do not heed preset human choreography. I find this causes me some small relief. I phone Marco, who arrives in mere minutes, a vinyl overnight bag clutched in one hand.

‘How far apart?' he says, still breathing heavily from his journey.

‘Um,' I say, ‘enough time for her to wipe down the countertops and take out the garbage.'

‘Ten minutes,' Taisie says. ‘My housewifely skills have improved.'

Marco takes her in his arms. ‘Ready,' he says. ‘I'll call the ­midwife.'

She nods, although I know her well enough to see the skittering incredulity behind her eyes.

‘I'll take Anton for a walk,' I say. ‘Do you need anything?'

‘No,' says Marco, suddenly manly and in charge, ‘a walk is a good idea.'

I think I would like to trip him by mistake, can imagine the length of him sprawled over the kitchen tile.

‘The baby's on the way out, or in,' I tell Anton, momentarily ­confused.

‘Uh-huh,' he says. ‘Let's go to the zoo.'

He means the low-rent zoo in the park. Peacocks with their runway walks, thug-like buffaloes and – my favourites – mountain goats looking to head-butt each other when they're not looking to the horizon.

We tour the animals for half an hour, then stop to buy hot dogs from a friendly vendor. Anton confides that he would like to be a hot-dog seller when he grows up if the pilot thing doesn't work out.

‘Joe would have liked you,' I tell him.

‘Who's Joe?' he says.

‘Oh,' I say. ‘Nobody, really.'

He doesn't press for more. He has Nobodies in his life too.

When we get back to the house, the contractions are coming one on top of the other and the racket is of the nerve-jangling variety. Anton and I sit in the living room and play checkers, pretending not to notice the long, low moans, which are possibly the most purely animal noises we have heard all day.

The midwife, Lena, an expressionless Iranian with a light tread and an olive complexion, comes padding down the stairs and tells us not to worry, soon our friend will be able to push. But a few minutes later, a flashing, yelping ambulance is parked outside the house, Taisie is being helped down the stairs by a ghost-faced Marco and within seconds they are all out the door.

Anton watches them leave, then sweeps the checkers from the board with the back of his hand in a gesture that can only be learned. Next he upends the board and attempts the same with the table. He begins to scream, his fists so tightly clenched that when I pry them open there are bloody crescents where his fingernails have marked his palms. After about an hour, although he has not stopped screaming, his body loses sound. He topples slowly over onto the floor and lies there, his lips still stretched apart in anguish. I lie beside him until Marco calls from the hospital.

‘The baby is fine,' I tell Anton. ‘Taisie is fine. Please, let's go
to sleep.'

A few days later, Taisie comes home from the hospital with a bundle tied to her boob and asks me to stay awhile. She says, ‘As long as you like, but get a job to help with food and fun stuff for Anton.'

I tell her I need to think about it.

Lately, Anton has been asking me questions I can't find answers to. Two nights ago he pulled an old atlas down from the shelf and started pointing.

‘Where did you used to live?' he said.

‘British Columbia,' I said, ‘over here.' I turned to the correct page, North America spreading down across the crease of the book like a spill.

‘Were you dancing a lot there?' he asked, his finger circling the province rhythmically.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘My specialty is west-coast swing, from California. Down here,' I said.

‘Is that where they had the flood with all the black people?' he asked. ‘I liked how they got to float along on their houses.'

‘No,' I said, ‘that was in Louisiana.'

‘Right,' he said, ‘Hurricane Katie.'

‘Katrina,' I said, ‘they named her Katrina.'

‘Why?'

‘Because we name storms and babies according to their sex,' I lie. (This is preposterous, I know, but how to respond to such queries?)

‘How do we know their sex?' he said shyly, his volume downturning on the word
sex
.

‘We turn them upside down and examine them, or we use instruments to predict their nature,' I told him, acting professional.

‘When will Taisie name the baby?' he said.

‘I don't know, honey.'

‘I like the name Martin,' he said. ‘It's also a bird's name.'

One second I decide I must leave Taisie and Anton and the baby – which, at three weeks, remains nameless – and the next second I decide to stay with them forever. I do a lot of dishes and sometimes laundry, and I stare at the baby when Taisie cannot. This morning we lay him on a placemat on the kitchen table, then sit down as if to sup.

‘You know,' says Taisie, ‘that midwife was magic. She was like the best kind of boss, while Marco kept doing this useless whispering in my ear.' She touches the baby's nose, then lets him grab her hand.

‘Have you decided on a name yet?' I know better than to pressure her, so I speak lightly, as if discussing a possible change in the wallpaper. ‘Anton thinks Martin is a good name,' I say.