The Gum Thief (30 page)

Uh-oh
...
yet another year in which I won't be able to venture outside.

On the counter were two Pyrex bowls in which her soon-to-be-born new children were rising, and they filled the space with a warm, nurturing, floury aroma. Karen Slice felt safe in the kitchen, a room that never made the newspapers, perhaps, but one in which some gentle and important thinking took place. Karen heard Melba's delicate baby snores down the hallway. Soon, Melba would be up and full of beans, as would little Crouton-a crusty devil if ever there was one, so much like his father.

Outside a crow cawed, and Karen shuddered.

Why does death always have to make its presence felt? Can't we take a holiday from death, if only for a day?

She looked at the rising dough-her babies to be-and was shot with a pang of almost Zen energy, an awareness that death and life were folded together in a complex origami of existence.
But what shape would the origami take? A tree, perhaps
...
or a goose!
Karen had seen documentaries on TV of geese in municipal lagoons greedily inhaling entire bread loaves in genocidal frenzies; swans were even worse. No, the complex origami of life would have
to
be shaped like ... an oven.
Without ovens there would be no life.
She went to the bowls to test her unborns for firmness. She felt like ... like ... like a wheel within a wheel within a wheel.

Karen realized she needed a buttering.
Getting old is so difficult. The staleness; the lost elasticity of youth. One blinks, and before one knows it, it's onions, sage, perhaps a bit of sausage and a turkey's greasy carcass.

She caught sight of herself in the microwave's black glass.
Karen Slice, there's still a bit of vim left in you. And don't forget you've got two children, a husband who cares for you and, shortly, some buns in the oven. Count your blessings.

She heard the crows cawing outside. They'd seen her through the window and were gathering in the trees and shrubs in an act of menace, but Karen had long ago learned to meet their taunts with indifference.

She was about to brew some tea when she heard a noise that made her crust freeze-the sound of baby Crouton scampering down the rear hallway, followed by the back screen door's gentle
thwacking
sound.

He'd gone outside.
Crouton!

She ran to the door to see Crouton in the backyard, the crows above in a frenzy, swarming in from the east.

"Crouton! Come in!"

"No!"

Karen ran into the yard, screaming, "Crouton, hurry, the crows will eat you! You must go back into the house!"

Crouton ran farther away, into the base of a forsythia shrub in full bloom, a place where the crows wouldn't go.

Karen followed him a moment later and they stood there together; catching their breath. "Crouton, what were you thinking? You can't stay out here in the yard." "But Mother I can't stay inside the house forever." "But you have to, Crouton, or else the crows will eat you. You'll die." "But Mother, staying inside the house forever that’s not really life, is it?" Karen had no choice but to say the following

words: "No. You're right-it isn't."

They both shivered.
It
was cold out.

"Come inside, Crouton. I'll butter you."

"Yes, Mother."

Roger

Bethany, Bethany, Bethany ...

You know what I was doing when I found out what you'd done to yourself? I was sitting in a chair in my place. Wayne was in the kitchen, and I was looking out the back window, at a patch of sky in between the front of my landlord's snowmobile and the remains of his above-ground swimming pool.
It
was almost dark out, but not quite we’re so close to the shortest day of the year-and I was watching that last little bit of blue turn colourless. And then I heard footsteps coming down the driveway towards my door. It was your mother-yes, your mother. Lately she's been bringing me food, and I've been her sounding board for her worries about, well,
you.
Until tonight I've been hiding from the door's knock and we've been swapping notes, but tonight something inside me changed, as if some frozen lake inside me had thawed-I felt
life
returning to me-and so instead of heading into my room to avoid the door, I went to answer it. Yes, it was indeed your mother and in her left hand she was holding a clear plastic produce bag containing a twelve-pack of Juicy Fruit gum and several airline-sized mini Scotch bottles. In her right hand she was holding a cellphone on which she'd just heard news from the hospital about
you.
I didn't know this. But there was your mother, and she was in shock and so worried she was making squeaking noises. Wayne, sensing something wrong, bolted towards us, with me trying to keep your mom steady, prying the gum and Scotch from her hands and bringing her into my apartment to calm her down and find out what the heck was going on.

Bethany, Bethany, Bethany. What were you
thinking!

Okay, Roger ...

. . . take a breath.

You're asleep. Your mother is back at your place, fetching some things and, I hope, trying to get some sleep herself, but I doubt she will. This hospital room smells like old magazines. I hate this place, and I hate it even more because there's all this depressing Christmas crap all over the place, and you'll love this: You know what I'm thinking about right now? I'm thinking about that joke you made last summer back at the store when we opened a carton and found a thousand Christmas-themed mouse pads-you asked how it was that everything the Italians do using their national red, green and white colours looks Italian, but when we non-Italians use them, all they ever look is Christmassy. A random memory from the Bethany File.

Okay, here's something else from the Bethany File, triggered by some kerfuffle I just heard out in the hallway: Wouldn't it be funny if someone had Tourette's syndrome, but it was a low-grade case? They'd walk around all day saying
Sugar! Sugar! Heck! Heck!
and bystanders wouldn't have a clue what was going on.

Ha ha.
That's not a funny joke, and chances are somebody on the planet has made it before. But I'm not in a funny mood!

How could I be? Bethany! What the hell! I asked your mom why, and she said she didn't know-the poor woman is terrified. And it's not like I know either-geez!
Puck!
All your mom said was that when the bus driver found you at the back of the bus you were barely coherent but that you said you were sick of being you-that you didn't like who you'd become.

Bethany,
nobody
knows who they are when they're young-nobody! You're not a full person yet! You're liquid! You're lava! You're a larva! You're molten plastic! And don't take that the wrong way. I mean, it's not like it gets much better as you get older, but when you get older and you will-you'll at least figure out who you are a
little
bit.
Not much, but some. And when it happens, you might not be too thrilled with who it is you are, but at least you'll know. But right now? At your age? Again, don't take any of this personally, but no!

Remember back when we started writing I talked about what I was like when I was younger-but then I stopped talking about it? That was because I realized there was no point to it. I did some stupid shit and some good deeds along the way, but it all cancelled itself out and morally I think I'm a pretty generic person, like everyone else. Your Joan of Arcs and Supermans don't come around too often. Mostly, the world is made up of people like me, plodding along.
It's
what people do-plod, plod, plod. While it kills me to come
to
grips with the fact that I'm like everyone else, that pain is outweighed by the comfort I get from being a member of the human race.

Let's say you're a judge, or maybe a scientist, and you have your first big case or make your first big discovery, and you become world-famous-you're a genius! But then you get older and stop discovering new things-you've hit your peak. And then you start seeing people enter your courtroom or laboratory or whatever, and they're all repeating the same mistakes as all the people who've ever come before them. And a chill passes through your body. You realize,
Oh, dear God-this is it. This is as good or as smart as we're ever going to get as a species. Our brains aren't going to get larger. Our accumulated pile of human knowledge can only be absorbed
so
much at a time. As a species, we've reached the upper limits of our intelligence .
..

. . . and then you plod along.

Here's an amusing anecdote from my youth. I used to like playing with green plastic soldiers, but my mom was anti-war (odd, considering what a battle-axe she was) and wouldn't buy me soldiers. I was too young for a paper route to make my own money, and our house was miles away from a store. My father brought me home a bag of soldiers one night, and I was out of my mind with happiness. I began to play with them, but then my mom came into the room, holding a phone with an extension cord, and she sat down and said, "Okay, you can play with your soldiers, fine. But I'm going to sit here, and every time one of them gets killed or injured, I'm going to telephone their mother. Ready? One, two three, play ..." Well, you can imagine how much fun
that
was.

The point here is that everyone's family is a disaster. Some are noisier disasters, and some are quietly toxic disasters, but we're all in the same boat. I don't know if I agree with you about your family's behaviour defining or limiting what you can and can't do in your life. I think we're born a certain way and our family can influence us only a tiny bit. So
what
if people in your family die? You'll die too! But in your eighties, in a good nursing home, surrounded by loving family members and staff who don't steal your brooches and dilute your morphine.

Who do I think I am to lay any of this on you? Frankly, the knowledge of who I am is all I have, in every sense of the word. It's the one thing I can speak of without fear. It's the one thing I can give someone else. I earned this knowledge, dammit! And I'm your friend. And your mother loves you too-nay,
adores
you-and she is a terrific woman, and I think she deserves to be allowed
to
care for you and care
about
you. All the tea in China couldn't make me go through my twenties again, but at the same time I'm jealous that you have such a broad swath of life ahead of you. Needless to say, you'll make many more mistakes along the way, and I fully expect many of them to be highly amusing. I urge you to keep me in your loop, if only
to
provide me with entertainment at someone else's expense.

Bethany, the world is a beautiful place. Life is short, and yet it's long. Being here is such a gift.

And there's always going to be someone knocking over the Sharpie pen cardboard display in Aisle 3-South. So go over there right now and clean it up!

Your friend, Roger

Dee Dee

Dear Roger, Now you're the one sleeping. Bethany is having a shower down the hall, and I'm sitting here on this amazingly uncomfortable chair, coping. I'm certainly better now than I was last night. Bethany's groggy and a bit sheepish. I'm not a hundred percent sure she wanted to succeed. She OD'd on a bus, and to me that sounds like she didn't fully mean to. Besides, I think she's so malnourished and overworked that one painkiller could have wiped her out. As a child, she'd eat the most amazing things (potting soil, daddy long legs, road salt) and always come out fine, so her constitution is rugged. She's got a stomach like a cement mixer.