Shelby (20 page)

“In fact,” I said, continuing on, “as late as the Thurass—” A hand on my shoulder spun me round, and Dad, grabbing me by my collar, bulldozed me sprawling into the wall. Wrenches and other tools rattled around my head, paint cans fell to the floor.

“Dad … what—”

“Stand up,” he growled.

“I'm standing.”

“Shut up. Why'd you back out?”

“I just—”

“I asked you why you were backing out.”

“I—”

“Put these on.” Dad took a shiny pair of red leather boxing mitts off his workbench and tossed them at me.

“Boxing mitts?”

“Gloves, city boy.”

“What for?”

“Put 'em on.”

“Fisticuffs?”

“Put the gloves on before I knock you right in the nose.”

“This is a setup, isn't it?”

“
Put them on
!” he screamed. Terrified, I complied. “Never made you work, never put you in sports, never made you be a man!”

“I've been set up.”

“Never taught you courage or committment.” Dad started putting on his pair.

I glanced at the gloves on my hands and backed up. “Dad … remember when you told me about Orion's belt?”

“Just put on the gloves,” he said.

“Dad … I … I don't even know how to tie these things up.”

His hands and head dropped in dismay. The door swung open and there in the dim light stood a toothless Gran and Mom, both in nightclothes, both in gumboots, both staring, void of expression.

“Shelby?” Mom said, looking at me in the boxing gloves.

“There's no beer in here,” I said.

“What's going on?”

“Mom, there's no fridge,” I mumbled, near tears.

She glanced at Dad.
“Ed?”

He didn't respond, gloves clutched loosely in his hands, head bowed.

“I was set up,” I whined.

“I'm utterly distraught,” I said sometime later, my head laid out on Gran's kitchen table as she plugged in the kettle. “My own father may have pummeled me to death in a back shed.”

Gran whistled.

“Where would he have buried me?”

“Good question. The ground's pretty frozen.”

“Are all the prophecies coming true? Is the gyre widening; famine, disease, broken men—alas, where even the best lack all sensibilities?”

“Huh?”

“Must I be what others think I should be?”

“I don't know.”

“I now truly believe our own lives are mere microcosms of the world at large.”

“Come on.”

“I feel like an egg!” I cried, thumping the table.

“Scrambled?”

“Is it only through
these
eyes that insanity reigns?”

“Is it … Let me tell you something, mister. At forty-two I knew at best I had maybe three childbearing years left. Thing was I'd never met a man worth his salt.
Problem
was, time was running out. So I offered to chaperone a soiree for some of the young soldiers who were leaving for France. This is just before the Dieppe slaughter; the boys were wide-eyed and pimply faced—no fear, boy, they didn't know. No one knew. Right away I spot an attractive redhead. Introduced himself as Pegland Cecil ‘Shocky' Dansworth, Private. ‘How old are you, Shocky?' ‘Eighteen, Ma'am …' ‘Ay, you're a handsome lad.' Did he blush! So anyway, before the night ends I offer Shocky a lift home. From there I give him the fling of his life, eggs Benedict for breakfast, and the best war story a kid could want. A month later word came back he was dead. Same day I found out I was carrying.”

“Mom?”

“And I raised her, loved her, gave everything a single mom could in the 40s. Told her to be proud, to not worry about what the other children said. She grew up beautiful, strong—smart, too. But she still married Ed. You see, Doll, life has always had, between the sheets, between the clouds, between it all, an underlying spirit of insanity.”

“My God,” I said, “if it wasn't for one virile redheaded young private, I wouldn't be here today.”

“And that's another thing, too. Good times, bad times. You gotta give thanks—even for experiences you don't understand.”

“That whole story reeks of destiny. I mean what are the chances of ever actually existing? Three or four hundred million sperm per ejaculate. One egg. Miscarriages. Abortions. Out-of-cycle unions.”

“Shel, I'm gonna tell you something. Never told anyone else. When I was sixteen I had an abortion.”

“What?”

“Ninteen-fifteen. Knocked up by the son of a prominent Toronto politician. Next thing I knew I was on a train into the city. Yonge Street. Old building of bricks. Broken windows. Terrifed, I was.”

“I'm stunned.”

“I was laying back on a table. Looked over to a wall, stained. Water. Christ on a cross. Not a word was spoken between me and the man. Light in my eyes so bright I couldn't even see the doctor—if he was a doctor. I was sick for three weeks afterwards.”

“I had no idea.”

“I saw you on the news that night and it brought it all back.”

“I wasn't taking a stand, Gran. I have no position on the issue.”

“I know, Doll. But let me tell you one thing, if people tell you it's black or white—they're full o' donkey doo. It's pain and fear and guilt and hope and sad and necessary and wrong and right.”

There was a pause. “What do you think of sex, Gran?”

“Overblown.”

“Do you believe in the
Christian
God?”

“Oh Heavens, the things we done in His name!” Gran shook her head and grinned sadly. “And now in the name of progress. We go to the moon cause we can't make it work down here. What good does it do us? We can't even feed our children. Pollutin' all the world with our big-time factories, keepin' people alive who have the right to be dead and free from all this medicine. See, nobody knows what they're doing, they just know they ain't happy. And it's not about having enough for everyone. Some ghetto kid, what's he want? He wants what those in the suburbs have. But what do they have? Two T.V.'s. A microwave. We gotta learn when enough's enough. Look at Ed tonight. He's got all the comforts. But he ain't got Ed. Never listened to Ed. And we try to blame someone else, or we try to tell everyone how it should be done. Where's it leave us, darlin? All I know is I hear a lot less birds singing songs when the sun comes up than I did thirty years ago—and it's not because of my hearing aid.” We both smiled. “It's not that there isn't enough out there,” she said. “There's not enough in here.” Gran pointed to her heart. “You want to live? Don't let anyone tell you what you should be doin'. You got a big heart. I've seen it a thousand times. And one day it's going to draw you a big map and you'll nod and go, ‘Oh, so that's what that old bag meant'.” Gran whooped.

“I love a woman back in the city, Gran.”

“I know you do.”

“She doesn't love me.”

“How could a woman not love you? Dammit, Shel, pour it out. Let her know. Take a chance. If it doesn't work, be proud of yourself.” Gran sat down and we gazed out the window and into blackness.

“Are you happy, Gran?”

“If I wasn't happy by now,” she said with a smile, “I wouldn't be here. At my age you can pretty much decide before bed if you want to cancel your wake up call.” We looked out the window some more. “Your old man loves you,” she said. I didn't respond. I knew it was true, but somehow it was more fullfilling to be in turmoil.

“Hey, Gran?”

“Yeah, doll?”

“Given everything, is it all worth it?”

There was no hesitation. “Oh God, yes,” she said.

I drove home without saying good-bye the following morning—except to Gran, of course. I snuck away before dawn. What else could I do? I left a note.

Dear Mom and Dad
,

It would appear at present we have nothing in common. But what is the journey of a man's life if it is not his own? I feel deep within that within five years we'll all be sitting around a big fire, petting dogs and what have you, laughing about the time Shelby Lewis dropped out of school. But, alas, for now it is all grief. Sorry about letting you down. Love and thanks to you both
.

Shelby

XIV

Son of man, You cannot say, or guess

for you know only A heap of broken images

—T. S. Eliot

The first week back from Revelstoke, I shuffled along without serious mental anguish or physical disfigurement. In one way, I felt more garbled than ever as to knowing the purpose of life—often picturing myself as a spawning salmon swimming back thousands of miles to the source, only to find the river dammed. In another way, I felt more brave than ever, prepared to express both my needs and my shortcomings.

As for Lucy and I, we spent considerable time together and got along wonderfully despite our disagreements on how to deal with Frank (they had a shouting match outside the Cobalt Hotel over past monies), the National Referendum, divinity, the relevance of her flailing psychic abilities, the function of marriage and, of course and most of all, sex. Never was it actually spoken of as a blatant question as to whether we should confer to copulate, but general conversation pointed to the unwavering chasm between our respective wants.

One evening Lucy and I drove to English Bay for a stroll around the sea wall. Upon parking and leaving the car, with the potential for rain obvious by gloomy gray clouds o'erhead, we zipped up our jackets and huddled in close. The sea air was strong, coating my tongue like a salt lick. The tide was in and the beach was as dark as chocolate milk, sprinkled with seaweed and barnacled logs and fishy smells. Just around the first bend, the rains began. By Second Beach, we were soaked. The night had arrived and the pathways were glistening in the lamplight. My pants chafed my tender legs as from deep within I throbbed, yearning to live out a verse or two of the
Song of Songs
.

I knew, however, it was essential that I also be respectful of Lucy's needs, for it takes two wanting souls and a little serendipity to truly share the milk and honey beneath one's tongue. So if Lucy desired celibacy, what right had I to get in the way? Our previous encounters had uncovered me to be spiritually brain-dead. How could I guarantee I'd changed? On the other hand, further sexual suppression could once again tumble me back into a bed of paranoia and questionable orientation. So no matter what, I was a man with a yin that needed to be yanged.

“Lucy?” I said as we walked onwards against the rain.

“Yeah?”

“If I may say, there have been moments, just before I'm taken by slumber, that you've appeared before me as half woman, half fawn or maybe moose, your hair dangling down across olive breasts, and you're bathing in some glacial oasis in the Rockies.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And then from the woods I charge like a galloping stud to mount you in a splashy, furious display of such natural anger that you become fully human. Psychically speaking, does such mythology mean anything to you?”

Lucy laughed and then stopped, looking at me perplexed. “I'm not sure,” she said. “You ever fucked a dog?”

“Of course not.”

“I don't know, Shel.”

“Well, answer me this then: Although your path is celibacy, do you still sometimes think about men?”

“Sure.”

“Me?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don't know. I …” I gazed into Lucy's wet and smiling eyes. Rain streamed down around us. Blood and hormones rushed north to my chest and head, south to my loins. “I was … would you explain to me about tantric sex again?”

Lucy stopped walking. “What do you want to know about it?”

“Just a few of the basic principles.”

“Well … the main thing is it's not about orgasm—at least not in the blow your wad sense. It's meditation and balance, transcending the physical.”

“So it doesn't involve ejaculation per se?”

“It's about a valley orgasm—and there
is
intercourse.”

“Oh.”

“It's a perpetual kind o' thing, Shel. No highs, no lows. Some call it a cosmic orgasm, too. Sex becomes a means of transcendence.”

“That's sort of paradoxical, isn't it?”

“What is?”

“Well … you're saying you want sex to help you transcend and yet you don't want to have sex.”

“I just … I ain't ready to screw on that level, yet. It's still a power game, you know?”

“So you're working towards being able to?”

“Sort of … I know I'm working towards something. What I'd really like is to get to a place where sex isn't even part o' the gig, eh?”

“Really?”

Lucy smiled, stroking her wet hair from her forehead. “Hey, it'd save a hell of a lot o' bull.”

“True,” I said. “And yet … with the state of this wacky world, to engage in such primitive ecstasy with the person you love surely remains wondrous in its own right.”

“On paper, sure. But with no Goddess? See, look at science. No spirituality. A tragedy. I mean forget emotions and passion or even committment for that matter. That's all bull. You gotta have the Godhead, Shel. You don't have that in your sex—shit, that should
be
your sex—you end up with what we have now …”

“Being …?”

“Being AIDS, rape, syphilis, unwanted pregnancy, venereal warts, unfulfilled expectations, herpetic sores, endless guilt and urges that are so out of control no amount of release can shut 'em down, pedophilia, harassment, power, power, power …”

There was a pause. “Yeah,
and
…”

We laughed, strolling the next few hundred yards without discussion. The rain let up.