The Sky Is Falling (29 page)

She beckoned me over, took my reluctant hand, and guided it toward Pascal's naked shin. When I glanced at him, I saw embarrassment radiating off him.

“Do you feel it?” Sonia asked.

The leg was hot and covered with wiry hairs. She made me stroke it. I drew back. “What
is
that?”

“Cancer,” she said.

He tucked the leg under himself and turned away. I thought he might be crying too, but when I asked him if it hurt he looked at me with pure exasperation. “No! I wouldn't even have noticed except I was putting on my shin pads. For soccer. Man, I shouldn't have even mentioned it! If I'd kept my mouth shut, none of this would have happened!”

“Have you been to a doctor?”

“That's what I'm talking about.”

“Jane,” said Sonia. “Tell him to go home. He has to go home.”

Pascal: “I'll just take off again. They can't make me. They think they can, but they can't.”

“Make you what?” I asked.

He threw up his hands. “They want to cut it off.”

“But you'll die,” Sonia cried.

“Everybody dies. I'm not going around like a gimp the rest of my life.”

“You won't. You'll get a proth—”

“Oh sure. A peg leg. I can hear it now. ‘Here, Peggy. Here, Peggy.'”

“You could be like Terry Fox,” she told him. “You could be an example.”

He shook his head. “Have you ever seen those movies of him? I'd feel like a tool hopping around like that.”

“Jane,” Sonia implored, as though he actually cared what I thought. “He doesn't know what he's saying. He's too young. Tell him.”

It was too horrible. I couldn't think of anything to say except what my mother always said when there was any sort of crisis. “I think we should all go to bed.”

“Good idea,” said Sonia feverishly. “We'll have a good night's sleep and in the morning we'll make a plan.” Without a word, Pascal stalked out, back to his makeshift room, his hiding place. “Pascal!” Sonia called after him. “You're not going to run away from us, are you?”

2004

Joe Jr. brought Simon home that afternoon. My office is at the front of the house, facing the street, so I had advance notice of their coming. (Here's something else to worry about: do they talk this loudly because they're plugged in, or is this premature hearing loss?) I got up from the computer—page
22
!—and watched them from the window, the Labrador of the guitar case and the mastiff of the cello set down beside them on the sidewalk. At first they seemed to be arguing, then I recognized the outraged tones of agreement, Simon striking out at the air while Joe Jr. shook his tufts in sympathetic disgust. Someone coming along on the same side of the street caught sight of them and hurried across. Who in the world, I wondered, would be afraid of a teenager with a
cello
?

Then boots on the wooden porch. There might have been horses at the door. They burst in, instrument cases colliding, one of them letting loose a stream of really shocking invective. “I'm not fucking even going to call her,” Simon said, and I guessed the whole story, that all this emoting had to do with a girl. Joe Jr. shushed him, “She's always home,” which could have been a reference to me or the love interest. During the valiant struggle to get their boots off, they didn't speak at all.

It embarrasses Joe Jr. when I'm eager in front of his friends so I waited a few minutes before going out, six minutes by the clock on my computer screen, time enough for them to half-empty the fridge. Every container was out, all the lids confused, the diminishing smorg spread out between them as they sub-vocalized between mouthfuls. “Hello,” I said and they sprang back like startled carnivores off their quarry.

Joe Jr.: “Thanks for the heart attack.”

Simon was back to not seeing me, though I saw him because his acne glowed. Supposedly they have miracle cures now—gone the hell of tetracycline, the shame of the Ten-O-Six pad. But poor Simon is incurable. ( Joe Jr., luckily, hasn't had to suffer the way his father did.) “How was school?” I asked.

Joe Jr. fed himself a chipful of salsa in lieu of a reply.

“Not too boring?” I asked.

“Mom.” He glanced at Simon, who had his neon chin tucked into his shoulder to avoid me.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

Vsyo normalno?

“Yes!” he snapped.

So much for the new mother-son communication. I'd promised to tell him the rest of my story but, apparently, he didn't want to hear it any more. Slinking off, smarting despite how I had been dreading confessing to him, I left them to make chewing sounds at each other.

Earlier in the day, transcribing Chekhov's letter, I read this one too:
Nobody wants to understand me. Everybody is stupid and
unjust. I'm in a bad temper and speak nonsense. My family breathes
easier when I go out.
Evidently it's viral. Now they've got it too. It must be the wonderful weather, the scented air, the flouncy trees—enough to put anyone in a foul mood. Plus, I was getting no work done, which is fine when you have no work, but when you actually do, it's frustrating.

I stumped back to the computer and just sat there.

Joe got home from the hospital a few hours later, just as my bad mood was peaking. He washed his hands in the kitchen, sliced the bread on the cutting board. Over at the stove, I manned the ladle. “Not so much,” I told him. “It's just us.”

“Where's Joey?”

“He went out somewhere with Simon.”

“Did he skip today?”

“How would I know?”

I set a bowl of soup in front of him. Before picking up his spoon, he paused to scratch all over his head with both hands, hair standing at attention, imagined flakes swirling and descending over his bowl. “Mmm,” he said, tucking in. “Good.”

After a few spoonfuls, he noticed my disgust. “What?” he asked.

“You just seasoned your soup with dandruff!”

His shoulders sagged, but he carried on—buttering his bread, dipping it in his bowl. Finally, he mustered his courage. “What's wrong, Jane?”

“Nothing.”

“You're presenting differently.” Then he looked around the room. If I hadn't spent an hour concocting soup (after tracking down the blade of the food processor that Maria had secreted away), if I hadn't undone Maria, he would have noticed right away. She leaves this vinegary miasma behind. I thought of her departure that afternoon, trudging out to the guzzler with her belongings in a half-dozen plastic bags—change of clothes, plastic shoes and wallet, even her own rags—while her pimp idled out front, ruining the climate.

“We should fire her,” Joe said.

“Finally,” I said. “Thanks for offering.”

He's so kind, so sweet, so cowardly. He looked horrified. “How about we move to another city?” he said.

I sighed because here's my problem with Maria, why, even though she only comes every second Tuesday, she exercises such power over me. She reminds me of my aunt Eva, who died twelve years ago. I was eighteen when I lived with my aunt, old enough to recognize what that basement repository of flattened cans stood for. The smelly balls of wool. The way she cooked for ten then froze the eight remaining portions, just in case. In case of what? I thought I was so smart. I thought I—
I!
—could prevent a war, but it never occurred to me that my aunt and father were so odd because they'd lived through one. I dipped my spoon in my bowl of guilt, lifted a bearable dose to my lips, sipped. Across from me, Joe ate heartily because he is a man with a clear conscience. The doctor's conscience is a big glass room, shiny and full of light. I watched him bend over his bowl, dousing his bread, slurping like a Russian peasant, and it made me feel vengeful.

“So,” I said. “Last night Joe Jr. told me you go behind my back all the time.”

He tried avoidance. “Are we still on the newspaper? I left it out for you.”

I said, “That's what he told me last night.”

“Last night when?”

“When I sat on him.”

“You sat on him?”

“By accident.”

Now, resignation. It doesn't take much to bring on that state in Joe. I presume he's very much in charge at work, but here he's mostly resigned. He blinked wistfully at his bowl because sometimes he doesn't have time for lunch. Why was I punishing him? “Eat,” I said, disgusted with myself now, and he did, with renewed diligence.

He served himself seconds, then asked if the manuscript had come.

“Yes.”

“Good. You'll have something to do.” He hesitated. “Is it a good book?”

“I don't know. Searching for errors spoils the effect.”

“Are there a lot?”

“No.” I explained how fewer errors actually made the work less enjoyable; you start nitpicking to justify your fee. He shook his head in genuine amazement and immediately, I felt lousier. How could he be impressed with that after how he'd spent his working day? Someone might have died, or been saved, yet he acts as though what he does is no more difficult than correcting
lie
and
lay
. Sometimes he'll freeze in the middle of something and call out, “Jane! Help! Am I lying this down or am I laying it?”

“I'm so critical,” I moaned.

“It's your job.”

“I'm so grumpy!”

“That's part of your mystique!”

“Oh, you sweet darling,” I said, turning away and hating myself like in the old days.

Joe went down to The Lair after dinner. He keeps the volume low but I could hear the disquieting, irregular clank of the weights striking the concrete floor. Joe Jr. was still out with Simon and hadn't called to say where he was. Maybe they'd gone over to the girl's house, or arranged to meet her somewhere. Not, I prayed, on the infamous Granville Mall where hordes of teenagers hope to evade the ID checks in the clubs, where they loiter when they've been carded, vulnerable to pushers, to pimps, to peer pressure, to being in the wrong place at the wrong time, to et cetera, et cetera. I was too restless to work or read so I went out for a walk.

In Vancouver the streets are mainly laid out in a grid. The numbered avenues run east to west, the streets north to south from Burrard Inlet to the Fraser River, so although our neighbourhood is much farther south than Kitsilano, the street names are the same. I headed west and the first street I reached was Gandhi, a.k.a. Blenheim. Along it and on the avenue ahead, the trees were all in bloom. There were two different types, a stately white on Gandhi and a pale, confetti pink on
38
th. I'd always thought they were cherries, but yesterday Rachel had said some were plums. Now it struck me that I'd lived for twenty-one years in this city famous for its parks, for its trees, for wearing green the whole year long and all these pastel shades in the spring, yet there was barely a tree I could name. I was trying not to worry needlessly about my son because, after all, it was only just after eight o'clock. I tried to enjoy the beauty of the plums (or cherries) instead, but the beauty of the plums (or cherries) reminded me again of that spring when I loved Sonia so much that I suffered physical pain, a dull throbbing in my chest that never let up. Occasionally stories appear in the paper about lovers separated, usually by war, who somehow reconnect decades later and fall in love again. I always wonder how they distinguish passion from angina. Was that what Joe Jr. and Simon were going through, that exquisite agony? I hoped they didn't love the same girl. Me, Dieter, and Pascal—we were all in love with Sonia.

I got as far as Chomsky Street, then turned back in case Joe Jr. called.

Joe was in the shower. I checked for messages, but there were none so I put on my nightgown and got into bed where I lay willing the phone to ring. A few minutes later Joe came in.

“Did Joe Jr. phone while I was out?”

“Were you out?”

“I went for a walk.”

“That's nice,” and he sat down on the bed and leaned over me with his wet hair dripping on my face. “Was it raining?” he asked.

“It just started.”

We kissed for a minute, though I wasn't really concentrating. I can do it with my eyes closed, so to speak. He broke off to say, “So the kid's out? That's convenient.”

“Where do you think he is?”

“I have better things to think about.”

He was just trying to seize an opportunity. Tomorrow he was on call. He didn't have to get up so early. Also, it's very difficult to have uninhibited sex with an adolescent in the house. But I needed reassurance before I could get into the mood. “He has his cell. He'd call if there was trouble. Wouldn't he?”

Joe: “He'd better not. We're not answering.”

He kissed me again, forcing me to run through my list in mid-act. It's different now from when he was in kindergarten; pedophile abduction, for example, has been updated to teenage prostitution. I'd never heard of crystal meth until last year. Some things never change: car accidents, random acts of violence, earthquakes, nuclear war. A cell going bad. That cell doubling, then trebling. Joe had no idea what was running through my mind during his caresses. Or maybe he did.