Sweeter Life (57 page)

“You baking me a cake?”

“A pizza. I’m actually getting pretty good at this.”

As she watched him knead the dough, she thought about the power of continuity. His actual movements were unexceptional. He was making pizza dough. Somewhere down this very block, and on thousands of other blocks around the world, you would find other men and women engaged in the same activity. But this was Cyrus. These were the same hands that had peeled potatoes in her mother’s kitchen. These hands had played music of passion, cupped her breasts and combed her hair and wiped sleep from her eyes. She had watched him pick apples with those hands. She had watched him do his homework, holding his pen between his thumb and forefinger, like a child
who was learning to write. Asleep, he would curl his hand into a fist and cover his mouth. In conversation, especially when he got excited, he would pound his knees like a drum. And whenever he was concentrating, he would flick his thumbnail between his two front teeth,
click-click, click-click, click-click
. It was magic, this continuity, this nearly endless series of hands, all of them Cy’s, all of them different but complementary. More than that, it was art. This was how she worked, extending a line so that it might link the most unlikely moments and textures and images in the most necessary ways.

While the dough was rising, Cyrus prepared the toppings: a thin wash of tomato sauce, three mushrooms chopped finely, a palmful of diced green pepper, grated mozzarella and a few slices of prosciutto. After the pizza was in the oven, he lifted his glass, touched it to hers and said, “How’d it go today, dear?”

Her hand lingered on the nape of her neck where a knot of pain had been building most of the day. “It’s funny,” she said. “You spend so much time getting your career to the point where people will talk to you about your work. And when it happens, it’s so dreary that you only want to be left alone. But you must know all about that.”

“Not really. I was still working on the first part.”

She studied his face a moment. “How are you doing, anyway?”

He wiggled his fingers, as if to test their flexibility. “I sold most of my gear. What company is going to release a record from a guitarist who can’t play? Looks like my temporary factory job is a career now.”

She remembered a time in her life when her whole world came unravelled. Ruby had thought a little religion might do wonders. Instead Janice had found something of her own to believe in. She sipped her wine and said, “Maybe it’s time to look at other options.”

“Really? What options? You think stacking shelves might be better?” He turned away then, disgusted with himself. He had vowed he wouldn’t be pitiful. With a forced laugh, he said, “I’m reading again. Maybe someday I’ll go back to school.”

She smiled but not happily. He could tell the damage had been done. Her sunny features had darkened. She was disappointed or saddened or worried—it scarcely mattered what. He’d just ruined their first real chance to talk.

After they finished the pizza, she begged to hear a bit of his album and,
good friend that she was, made a convincing show of enthusiasm. But his mood was such that compliments hurt as much as criticism. As he had on the previous night, he made her a bed on the sofa and left her in peace.

Half an hour later she crept into his room and sat on top of him. “You are such a moron,” she said. Then she kissed him with so much force that she pressed his head deep into the pillow, as though she were trying to squeeze all the stupidity out of his system. Little chance of that, though. He’d always been stupid. Aside from music, he knew little at all. But he knew this: he loved the feel of her in his arms; her presence there beside him was the expression of something grand. He lay awake all night listening to her breathe. Next morning after breakfast, when she drove back to Wilbury, she took all the brightness with her. When he looked closer at the space she’d left behind, it seemed to glisten.

EVA WAS TINA’S BEST FRIEND AT WORK
, and it was from Eva that Cyrus got the scoop: the father of Tina’s child was in trouble with Immigration. One day it looked like he would be granted status as a landed immigrant; the next, deported. Dean Lawrence was involved. He’d spoken to his member of Parliament. If anyone could fix it, she said, Dean could.

Cyrus couldn’t begin to imagine the uncertainties of immigrant life, always fearful you might displease the authorities and lose your cherished foothold in the land of peace and prosperity. Though on some level the loss of his parents had left Cyrus emotionally homeless, he had never felt that way. With Clarence and Ruby, with Isabel, he had always known he was safe and secure and, most of all, loved.

He told Tina’s story to Chu and asked if he had ever experienced that kind of pain. Chu cleared his throat, an impressive array of rumblings and scrapings, and said, “Canada is the best country.”

Cyrus then asked Chu where in China he’d come from.

“Austria,” he said. “Before Canada I live six months with my brother. In Vienna.”

“But before that, in China, where did you live?”

“India. My parents move to India.” He then described how, in the middle of the revolution, his mother and father boarded a junk and made their way
to Calcutta, where they established a leather tanning business. When Cyrus asked for more details, a troubled look appeared on Chu’s face. “Next month I go back,” he said. “To Calcutta.”

“Are they sick?”

“Two years ago my mother die and now—” he twisted his mouth, searching for the right words “—we finish blessing.” He then described the ritual of prayers, how only the poor and desperate were buried too soon.

It was a struggle for Cyrus not to make a face. Those few days of Clarence’s funeral had nearly done him in. He couldn’t imagine two years of ritual. Little by little, the import of Chu’s words began to sink in. He was planning to use all of his vacation time. He had three children and a wife, who, like him, made minimum wage. Cyrus could well imagine how expensive it would be to fly to Calcutta.

That night back at his apartment, Cyrus’s feelings of disbelief turned to anger. Chu was wasting so much heroism and good fortune. His parents had set off from a troubled country and sought a new and better life. They worked hard and prospered, raised two sons who in turn sought a better life, first in Austria, then in Canada. It was the stuff of legends, of the building of empires and nations. But to what end? For Chu to land this dead-end job and devote his every waking moment to lotteries and the shallow seduction of game shows? Was that what the dreaming and effort had been for? And then to fritter away his hard-earned dollars on what, to Cyrus, amounted to little more than a primitive sacrifice. Why not throw himself into a volcano and be done with it?

Nothing in his own life had that kind of power over him; he was free of dreams and obligations. All he had was a vague longing, an empty space inside him that might take any shape, that might make any demands if he let it. At one time it had echoed with the music of his life, but now it was silent.

When he told Chu’s story to Janice, she was more sympathetic. “You shouldn’t be so quick to judge,” she said. “It sounds to me like your friend is the one who’s heroic. The grand gesture of his parents is obvious. But what Chu is doing is even harder in a way.”

“Watching TV and buying lottery tickets?”

“His children. He suffers this life so they can have a better one.” When
he didn’t respond, she said, “You’re one to talk. Not exactly setting the world on fire there, are you?”

He was so angered by that shot that he slammed the receiver down. But he called her back a few minutes later. “You’re not being fair.”

“Well, you’re not being kind.”

“Yeah, well, fuck you, too.”

IN THE FIRST FEW MONTHS
after Cyrus started working at Dominion Optical, the guys in Jangle would phone to see what was up and invite him out for a drink. But he never wanted to go anywhere or see anyone, so in time they began to call less and less and finally stopped altogether, which was what he had wanted in the first place. But when Chu went off to Calcutta, Cyrus realized that, as pathetic as it might be, sitting beside Chu eight hours a day, exchanging a few sentences of mindless chit-chat, comprised his entire social life. He had no friends, no hobbies, nothing aside from tipping back a few glasses of beer at Zeke’s. When Janice phoned to invite him to Orchard Knoll for the weekend, he jumped at the chance.

The Impala had been carted off for scrap, so Cyrus took the bus to Hounslow and was met at the station by Janice. As he tossed his suitcase into the back of the Volvo, she said, “You’ll be happy to know your room is just the way you left it.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed that they’d be sleeping separately. “I thought we might pick up where we left off in Toronto.”

“Well geez, Einstein, no kidding. I was making a joke. Ha ha. I packed all your junk into the basement the day I moved in. It gave me the creeps, that room.”

They drove out to Lake Isabel before heading to Orchard Knoll. His last time through, the old place had still been an industrial wasteland with oil wells and storage tanks and wire fences. Now he saw a vast stretch of mud and weed, with a murky-looking pond in the centre. Two trailers sat beside the pond, one twice the size of the other.

“Looks like Hank’s got some company around that mudhole.”

“Yes,” she said, “Po Mosely.” She uttered the words carefully, without inflection. There had already been enough talk around town about Po and
Hank. She didn’t want to colour Cy’s view of things. It was none of her business.

He turned to her and said, “I suppose you think this is funny.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“Yeah, I know you didn’t. I can hear you not saying a word. Your not saying a word is coming in loud and clear. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you’d get weird about it.”

She pulled into Orchard Knoll and parked beside the garage. As they stepped out of the car, he said, “You think I’m being weird about it?”

“You’re acting like Izzy, which is weird enough for me.”

He held his hands out, as though he were balancing two pies. “What did I say?”

“You didn’t have to say anything. I could see it in your face.”

“What, that I’m surprised?”

“That.”

“And maybe a little pissed off that no one told me?”

“That, too. You’re also afraid that Hank’s going to screw up again.”

“And you think that’s weird?”

She raised her eyebrows playfully. “You and Izzy. I’m beginning to think Hank’s the only sane one in the bunch.”

IF ANYTHING MADE HIM FEEL WEIRD
it was his aunt and uncle’s house, especially with all the changes Janice had made—bold colours, stylish furniture. And making love in Ruby and Clarence’s old room was weirdest of all. It was almost too much for him. Had it not been for Janice’s customary ardour, he would have lost his concentration.

Next morning he got up at sunrise and wandered through the orchard. There’d been no spring pruning, no thinning, no spraying, no effort to keep the grass and weeds down. Frank was too old to take on that much, and his boys had found work in an auto plant. Who else was there? You couldn’t have just anyone mucking around out there. They could do more damage than good. He picked a Winesap and inspected it. The whole crop, both early and late varieties, was a write-off. What hadn’t been spoiled by pests and rot would be too small to sell. Worse, the load on some of the trees was so great they might split. A couple more years of this and there’d be nothing much to salvage.

When he got back to the house, Janice was still in bed. He crawled in beside her warmth and kissed her neck. “I think you should stop fooling around with this artsy-fartsy crap of yours and take care of those trees out there. It’s breaking my heart to see how wild it’s become.”

“You own them. Why don’t
you
do something about it?”

“It’s Izzy who should have taken care of it,” he complained. “Hire someone or sharecrop it or something. This is just wrong.”

His mood improved over breakfast, partly because of the funny stories Janice told about Wilbury and partly because of the way she moved about the kitchen. She looked beautiful to him, like something green and full of life, a field of corn, perhaps, and he was a summer breeze.

After he helped her clean up the kitchen, they returned to the bedroom and made love again. Unlike the previous night or their last evening in Toronto when they had been frantic and greedy, there was something methodical in Cyrus’s approach that morning, as if by clearly labelling and cataloguing her discrete elements—the mole beneath her chin, the arch of foot, the dimpled knee, the swell of buttocks, the deep ridge of her spine, the physical poetry of her shoulder blades—he might later, in the loneliness that was sure to greet him down the line, remember and possibly even relive the splendour of this time together. If he could hold himself outside the beckoning chaos, he might make better sense of what was happening between them, maybe unlock the secrets of this naked duet. But foot and knee, breast and lips, flesh and sweat and breath had their own sort of cadence and value, a physical melody with dynamics that ranged from the susurrus of whispered kisses to the loopiest of crescendos, up and down, round and round, themes repeated, restated, inverted and harmonized until he lost all sense of time and register and meaning and was drawn down inside this thing they were creating, this energy, this wave, this flow.

HANK TOOK A MOMENT EVERY DAY
to marvel at his project. It wasn’t a dream come true, not even close, but it was something. As laughable as it might be (and he knew some people were laughing), he still felt lucky.

The hardest part of the whole scheme had been talking Izzy into it. Once he’d done that, it was easy to convince her they needed a well and a big
holding tank for waste. With money from Ruby he bought a trailer, then a banged-up golf cart from Ross Pettigrew.

The riskiest part of the venture was Po, who’d been turfed out of his spot at the home. There’d been cutbacks to social services, and the authorities figured he could fend for himself as long as he came in regularly for his medication. He was certainly no harm to anyone. He deserved his freedom was the thinking; he needed his self-respect. But freedom brings certain risks, the prime one being the freedom to mess up, and that was something Po frequently managed to do. Invariably, a day or two after he cashed his welfare cheque, some young thug managed to take the money from him. And more often than not, he was so involved in keeping the sidewalks free of paper that he neglected to get his medication. Increasingly he was spending nights at the shelter in the church basement. Ruby’s complaints about the matter, how Po was disrupting various social functions, gave Hank his idea.