Black Rabbit and Other Stories (21 page)

“I'm not happy, Coop.”

“What do you mean, you're not happy?”

“My wife left me last night.”

“That sucks.”

“It does. She left me for another man.”

“I'd smoke the motherfucker.”

“I know,” I said. I put away all the paperwork, shut the filing cabinet and escorted the youth to the foyer.

“This is where we part company, Coop.”

“It's been real.”

“When you go back in, get them to fix those fucking teeth of yours. I hear they've got a great dental plan in adult prison.”

“Yeah, right on. Maybe we can talk about it when
you
go in. I'll get them to give you the cell beside mine.”

“Very funny, Coop. Very funny.”

“Later, boss.” He stalked off through the doors and out into the harsh sunlight.

A clear sky promised less grey that day, reason to crack open a bottle of champagne perhaps, and somewhere in Niagara Falls this might have been going on. Niagara Falls was all about what bubbled and foamed. I felt somewhat tingly, my skull, my skin, my heart, but kept my ebullience in check. February had just begun. We weren't out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. A blizzard could strike at any moment and bury our optimism. Still, caught up in the dazzle, I found myself fighting back a smile. When was the last time the sun appeared? Maybe in November. I drank coffee by the living room window, watching people trundle back and forth across the frame, their faces all lit up. There were so many of them and yet I knew none of them. Maybe they were doing a loop, bit players recur in the movies. Watch the crowd scenes closely. Some change hats or coats. But here they never doubled their roles. In itself surprising. You'd grant at least one redirect to the source, to the home place, mission complete, reward or refreshment awaiting. But not insofar as I could see, though at times my eyes glazed over and the faces blurred together and I could not distinguish one from the other.

I heard a sound in the bedroom and wondered if the wife was waking up at last. The woman could sleep. I wished I could sleep like that, but I've never been good at it. Even as a child I had trouble sleeping, fearing the dark, fearing the strangeness of dreams.

I listened for another sound from the bedroom but only heard myself breathing.

The cream in my coffee congealed soon enough. The house was cold, but I wouldn't turn up the heat just yet. A big red sweater with a charcoal moosehead, black sweatpants, white tube socks: these kept me warm enough. The dog scratched at the side door. I let him in. He looked at me and yawned. I pulled his ear, he ducked his head, good boy. Stark contrast to yesterday's reaction, snapping at my hand. Lucky he misjudged. Had he bit, well. His was the good life. What did he want for? Not food or exercise, not toys or cuddles. The wife provided most of this. But I contributed to his life and his well-being in my way, walking him around the block, but not so often now. I hated walking now. At two hundred kilograms I was bursting at the seams and growing by the day. Bad food and my gluttony! More than anything I dreaded getting so big they'd have to bury me in a piano case. That would take the cake. Going out like that, mammoth, monstrous. Had I eaten more vegetables, more roughage, and so forth, things may have gone differently. But it was too late. I accepted that. I envied the dog in many ways.

Eventually the wife emerged from the bedroom in a loose red robe. She was shrinking.

“You're even smaller today,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she said.

“But it's something we should discuss,” I said, and I meant it.

She dismissed me with a wave of her small blue hand. What was I to do? The woman had an iron will and a quick temper. I knew better than to push her. I could see her tiny feet under the robe, thrashing like hairless, emaciated mice. The dog howled like a wolf and the wife responded in kind. They howled for several minutes. I never joined them when they did this. It was their thing.

“Pick your poison,” she said later, in the kitchen. Rashers of burnt bacon and sausages beside runny eggs. The dog simpered under the table, waiting for whatever fell his way. I chose sausages that squirted when I stabbed them with my fork. The wife crunched a bacon bit and mopped up slithery yellow yolk with a crumb of toast. The sausage
smelled too porky for my liking but I ate it anyway. The wife would have taken offense otherwise, turned beet red and opened up on me. She had a mouth when she lost her temper. I knew she didn't mean all those things she said, but they stuck in my skin.

“Is it good?” she asked.

“Delicious,” I said.

I excused myself and hustled to the bathroom. I tried to bring it up quietly but my system betrayed me with horrible gargling sounds and something akin to barking. My stomach squeezed and heaved. It all came up in the same order I'd swallowed it. I returned to the table ready to give it another go.

“Are you in a funk?” the wife asked me, dwarfed by her high-back chair, her voice a trill. When I failed to reply she leaned forward and said, “Tell me what's the matter.”

But what was I to say? Your shrinkage horrifies me? But when did it begin? I found it hard to recollect. Things sneak up on you. Day by day you notice nothing changing—but, in increments large and small, everything changes. I thought about the weight I had put on and how suddenly, one day, it occurred to me that I was
obese
. Not just plump or fat, but morbidly obese. The dog emerged, baring his teeth, one blackened by a cavity, a visit to the dentist imminent if the dog lived. I would do that for him, if he lived. He studied my wife. Unsure of his intentions, I banged the table with my fist. He glared at me.

“Bad dog!” I shouted.

“He doesn't know any better.”

“On the contrary,” I said. “On the contrary.” I tossed him a sausage and he snatched it out of the air like an acrobat; he could do that for food but not for sticks or frisbees. His will matched that of the wife. He would not cur to me, not this dog, and despite the rancour it sometimes stirred in me, I found that admirable. He gulped down the sausage without chewing and sat there licking his chops, waiting for more, then looking almost puzzled. He tried his puppy face. The puppy face worked for years to solicit whatever he wanted, but it had lost its efficacy. With no more sausage forthcoming he dropped the act. Moments later he scratched the door to get out.

“You know better than to feed him sausage,” the wife cried from the folds of her red robe. “It repeats on him.”

I had to be delicate with her, my pinkies extended. She looked as fragile as a china doll; the slightest force might fracture her. No, I kept silent while she chewed on a crumb of bread, chewed and chewed. My heart ached for her at that moment. We had been through so much together, so many ups and downs, so much joy and sorrow. Fill yourself up, I thought, do it, honey. Eat until you're bursting. And she gave it hell. But she was getting small, smaller, smaller, exponentially diminishing. Her tiny jaws worked. Her little peep eyes blinked and blinked. Her pinhole nostrils glistened. Such effort she put into it, a simple act like eating. She tried so hard. What a fighter, fierce in her way, but so delicate, such a flower. She tired, poor thing. She told me she needed a nap and excused herself, dragging the robe behind her like a parachute.

Sunlight poured like corn syrup through the east-facing window, and once again I found myself smiling and fighting off the smile. I had no reason to be smiling. But I truly felt that somehow things would sort themselves out, that the presence of the sun alone guaranteed a positive outcome, as it often does. Maybe all I had to do was go back to bed and fall asleep and when I awoke the queer dream that this was would be over, the wife would be normal again, and life would be better than ever. But as I said, I was never much of a sleeper. I rapped my knuckles on the tabletop. Then I bit the base of my thumb. I pinched the fat of my left upper arm. This was no dream. I returned to the food. My egg had congealed on the plate and I refused to touch the fleshy sausages, but I ate bread and drank more coffee and soon felt that I could get through the next few hours without fainting.

I went out with the dog. He sat on a pile of snow. Red tongue flopping, he fixed his gaze on something in the tree. “What are you looking at?” I asked him. Maybe a squirrel perched in the snow-covered branches mocked him, and he'd have none of that, not from a squirrel, but I saw nothing. The dog often reacted to things not there, or things invisible to me. “What's that, boy? What is it?” But he reveals
nothing. Not pleasant to imagine he could sense things I could not. Not pleasant to observe him staring at the tree in that fashion, trembling, no, not trembling, like I in my massive body trembled, studying something there that I was not privileged or sensitive enough to see. Maybe that was my problem, my inability to see things right before my eyes. They had to sock me in the nose for me to see them, to acknowledge they were there. This came as a grim self-revelation. This told me I was not just a gluttonous man, an oaf, a lout, a sloth, an unmotivated lay-about, but I was selfish as well, so self-absorbed I couldn't see the trees for the forest.

The dog suddenly lost interest and led me to the snow pile near the shed where he had puked up the sausage. His eyes drooped on cue. Good dog, that's right. Bad sausage. So what are we gonna do about it, dog? Puke it up, move on. Everything should be that simple. Go through your progressions, make a throw. Don't hang in the pocket too long and take a sack. Chuck it away if nothing is there. You'll live to see the next play. I threw my hands in the air as if I had just scored a touchdown. Yes! I am the champion! I am the champion of the world! These gymnastics tired me. But what a fine day it was. To have all these thoughts. To be alive, thinking and witnessing the wide world around me. The dog snuffled the snow, rooting out a grey vole and then watching as it shot across the ice-crusted path and under the neighbour's privacy fence. The dog looked at me. And if he had shoulders, the dog would have shrugged and then gone on with his business. It was what it was. Still, I felt too tense to appreciate the pale blue sky and the light scudding clouds and the sparkle of icicles melting from the eaves of the bungalow. The cold air nipped my hands and ears, and loud and mournful barking from down the street made me go inside sooner than I wanted, and then I had no choice but to deal with the vanishing wife.

She lay on the pillow fast asleep, her tiny naked body covered only by a handkerchief. I gently touched her abdomen and she stirred. “How are you feeling?” I asked, for I could only imagine. Her eyes popped open and then her mouth issued a squeak. I couldn't help but chuckle at this sound, to which she took offense, shaking her little
fists at me and squeaking some more. Regaining my composure, I asked if I should call a doctor, but perhaps I should have suggested this long ago; that she hadn't mentioned a doctor herself eased my conscience, though I knew that some form of punishment awaited me nonetheless.

What can I say? She was strong-headed. Very much her own person. She never changed her last name when we wed. We kept separate bank accounts, held different religious beliefs, and—except for breakfast—ate vastly different things at different times of the day. That being said, even after seven years of marriage, we still managed to make love once or twice a month. Not bad when you think about it. Now lovemaking was out of the question.

“I would ask you,” I said, “how this transmogrification came to be, but frankly I'm afraid of what you'll say, so I won't.”

She squeaked.

“Honey,” I said, “keep calm, no need to get in a tizzy. I‘d take you to the hospital, but don't you think it's a bit late for that? Don't you think we should have moved on that earlier? I would have taken you myself, or at the very least called a cab. Now what? Eh?”

She squeaked.

I prayed for divine intervention. I shut my eyes and prayed. I waited several seconds, hoping that when I opened my eyes everything would be back to normal. Please God, I pleaded, please. Fix what is wrong here. Perform a miracle for us. I who never prayed for anything beg you to . . . I heard a squeak before I opened my eyes and my heart sank for I knew what that meant. God wasn't there for me. I prayed and He did nothing. Now I knew why I never prayed. But perhaps there was nothing metaphysical about the transformation. Stranger things have happened than people shrinking. A neighbour's cousin was a victim of spontaneous combustion. All they found of the poor bastard were his charred boots and an ankle bone. But thinking of these anomalies, these freakish occurrences, did not mollify my growing anguish.

How would I manage on my own? I mean, without my wife's help? For instance, I had trouble getting in and out of the tub, and
her assistance proved invaluable. She would push my buttocks over the lip of the tub and facilitate my entry. Then when I was done, I'd call her and she'd come and grab my arm and pull with all her might and somehow yank me out of the tub. And she gave me fabulous foot rubs, my God, she could turn me into jelly when she worked over my feet. My weight had doubled since we married, but she swore it made no difference. A fellow could get self-conscious, but other than calling me a lard-ass on occasion, something I deserved, she tried very hard not to offend me and not to make me feel terrible about being so fat.

The dog bayed and I raced out of the bedroom, stumbling in the hall, knocking down a portrait of my mother-in-law and a green vase on a table that shattered into a million pieces. Jesus Christ, I thought, everything is held together with spit. In the yard, the dog and a black squirrel squared off by the maple tree. The beady-eyed squirrel made a strange rattling sound. The stiff-legged dog snarled and humped his back. And as much as I wanted to see a good scrap, I feared for my dog's eyes. Squirrels must be ambushed to be vanquished without injury. They have a genius for gouging out the eyes, they go right for them. This one readied to spring, ogling the dog's corneas like they were candies. The dog stood no chance. I clapped my hands and whooped. The squirrel climbed the tree and then sat on a branch glaring at me. I picked up a stone and flung it but missed completely. I picked up a second stone and pulled back my arm but the dog jumped me before I could hurl it. “What's wrong with you!” I cried. He pointed his nose at a stone bigger than mine. I dropped it, picked up the bigger stone and once again pulled back my arm.