The Death of Small Creatures (21 page)

I find Sebastian
in the quiet room with another in-patient, Dave, who speaks to trees, learns their names by using his third eye, and who believes in something called the Wonderlock, the day the world will end.

They are conversing openly. Seb speaks only to his brother and Dave. Dave plays guitar and Seb plays the piano. “When I play Bach I feel like a king,” Seb says.

The doctors, nurses and residents gather at the doorway and listen for a while, pause when the music ends, then everyone applauds.

I have been
returned my own clothing and sit on my cot, survey the back-ass of the hospital: two banks of windows directly across; on the other sides of those windows is the kitchen, pots and pans, giant cauldrons, other metallic items which I cannot make out from here; several loading bays with yellow lines to mark the way in and out as the linen and food supply vehicles come and go all day with their beeping and grinding; a large heavy-looking metal door above which is written the word
Powerhouse
, though I have not been able to determine why this particular door is instilled with such power.

Doctors come and go. I have noticed that some of the doctors are healthy doctors who ride into work in spandex and helmets that match their fancy bicycles. They haul their bikes up the loading-bay stairs and disappear, until they return at the end of their day, back in their cycling gear, hauling their bikes down the loading-bay steps again.

Then there are the unhealthy orderlies who slouch about the curb at the edge of the loading bays smoking cigarettes and dressed in blue scrubs.

I wave to the doctors and deliberately undress close to the window, but I don't think they can see me.

Beyond all this, beyond the roof and cylinder things and metal chimneys and banks of kitchen windows, is the ongoing construction. The work goes all day into sunset. The three cranes glint pink in the day's last light, and I have hope.

These are my three steely cranes. They belong to me.

These are my heavenward cranes upon which I focus when I press the tip of my secret paper clip down hard, wincing of pain but exalting in the relief that follows.

I cannot see the earth beneath my cranes.

I stare out the window. I welcome any construction worker with good strong arms and a heavy body to lie down upon me.

Because I need to be pressed upon.

Because I'm afraid to be in here.

Because I long to have a man's weight upon my body—a construction worker, my husband, my doctor—to crush me breathless.

Dr. P comes
and goes.

Every day I long for his arrival, have formed an unhealthy attachment to him. I want only to sit across from him, to be in his presence. Only in such close proximity to him do I feel safe, alive, whole.

Our meetings are too short and the intervals of time in between are agonizing.

He says, “Hello, you look well.”

I say, “Thanks, so do you.”

I want to tell him I'm feeling better, that I've come to an important realization, that loving yourself is rooted in a process of remembering who you are, not in a process of creating someone new.

But I say nothing. I just sit there glowing in my own sexuality, wanting him to touch me.

I sit at
a sunlit table in between the feeding hours, thinking about my rabbits. I think about the time I ate rabbit without knowing it, the injustice of that.

My friend's stepfather gave it to me when I was ten, watched with a gleam in his eye as I chewed and swallowed, then everyone laughed when I learned the truth.

Another time, I held a rabbit's foot in my hand. It was attached to a key chain. I held it gingerly on the playground. I was standing underneath the jungle gym. A faceless boy hung upside-down from one of the beams. He reached and tried to steal it.

“Rabbits' feet bring luck,” Nicole said.

Years passed.

Now I recall the foot's softness, the crinkle of bones under the softness.

A nurse comes, rests her hand on my shoulder, says, “Honey, are you okay?”

I weep, “I miss my rabbits,” then get up and walk away.

I miss my bunny room: my drug den, my haven, that toxic sanctuary.

I miss my rabbits terribly. Leigh is gone.

Soon, Caravaggio's upper front teeth will yellow and pierce the roof of his mouth. His jaw could separate.

I want him to be a perfect bunny rabbit, to have those perfect box-shaped teeth that a child draws onto a rabbit's face: one rectangle next to another rectangle, no space in between, or perhaps one big rectangle through which the astute child might draw a vertical line of division, thus creating two perfect upper rabbit teeth.

No pending disease.

As perfect a rabbit as a rabbit can be.

I want to
tell Dr. P that last night I had a dream about braiding Lisa's hair, that she kept falling asleep so I had to keep telling her to wake up, that it was oddly erotic, my hands moving through a woman's hair. But I say nothing, tally it up to another neurotic impulse. I can't help but wonder if the stigma of being in such a place fucks you up more than simply being fucked up.

Dr. P and his Wednesday afternoon group have welcomed me into their sanctum. I keep quiet and listen, feel I must earn my place and my right to speak, and so it is, until he calls upon me directly to compare my marital situation with that of a lovely woman who sits directly opposite me. She is slender and beautiful. My intuitive powers tell me she is stronger than she knows, which in turn leads me to consider that I am stronger than I know too, and perhaps this is Dr. P's angle.

“Yes, I totally relate to what you're going through,” she says.

I nod my head, hide my hands in my lap.

Dr. P nods his head, sits next to me in the circle. I can't help it, but I feel drawn to him, needy, wish he was physically touching some part of me—my hand, my elbow, my wrist.

I want every man I know to love me.

The slender lady says something else, but I look out the window to Mount Washington, its snow-covered peak. I can see the gleam of Cadboro Bay, just barely, a silver line at the base of the mountain and the plume of a white sail filled with a gust of wind, miniature, far away, dwarfed against the horizon.

The lady is telling the group about her marriage, her kids. I think about how Leigh and I eloped, just the two of us, got married in Cuba, and I realize it meant nothing to me, not the gown or flowers, or gazebo overlooking the Caribbean, not even the vows, how as Leigh was saying something important to me I was thinking of being twelve years old, standing on skis in the North Bowl of the Kimberley ski hill, specks of snow and ice flecking my face, foggy goggles, crystals forming in my long blonde hair.

“I love you,” he said. And maybe I did love him; I loved him and the small white flower pinned to his lapel.

The swish of my skis angling down the safe side of the mountain.

I was just a girl.

Dr. P is
talking to me in the quiet room. I am sensually aware of his proximity, but my thoughts are elsewhere.

“Are you feeling ready to go?” he says.

I say, “Well, maybe next week?”

He appears surprised.

I am thinking of junior high, Prince George, BC, Mr. DeWolf's environmental education class, learning to use a compass in the school field, then learning how to find True North in a forest outside of town by determining first the light side of bark, where the sunlight strikes it the longest throughout the day, thus indicating the rising of the sun in the east and its westerly trajectory above the shadows.

From this we establish our north, south, east and west, and find our way home again.

I am there in the forest, but I am also here. I am here and there, wanting Dr. P to wrap his arms around me.

“Well, okay,” he says. “How about we let you go next week after group therapy?”

I think of Mr. DeWolf teaching me how to pull the trigger on a twenty-two-gauge shotgun in environmental ed. when I was fifteen and really into Bon Jovi.

I feel the butt of the action against my shoulder that day in the woods at the target range, the crackle of shot in my heart and the bruise on my shoulder from the surprising kickback.

“Sure, next Wednesday is good,” I say.

I feel Mr. DeWolf close up against me, helping me with the weight of the thing, levelling it off my shoulder, guiding my vision through the scope, compelling my finger upon the trigger and urging me, “Whenever you're ready… now gently, squeeze.”