Mad Hope (14 page)

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man's hat.

If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do.

If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God … bless … you!

My mother, who was the crux and star of the story, never spoke or sang during the telling, although her smile throughout had something of the smug about it. And sometimes, towards the end, she would let out a brief, girlish laugh. Because she knew, as we all did, that it was not like her to be the showman, to solo so brazenly, even if it was under cover of the night.

On Thursday afternoons, Jeremy's friend Richie's mum came to visit. Mum made tea and served chocolate digestives. Mrs. Henley was sad and capable. She always did our dishes and insisted on running the vacuum across the rug in the front hall. ‘It's the least ... ' she would say. ‘He was such a good man,' she told my mother. Then one day we forgot she was coming; we took the dog out to the country for a run and sniff. When we came home there was a note scotch-taped to the front door. Mum read it quickly, folded it, then put it in her pocket. ‘That woman is depressing,' she said. ‘Kind, but depressing.'

One morning in September, I came downstairs to find Mum sitting in the corner of the couch in her housecoat, the dog draped across her lap like a discarded stole, her face wet with tears.

‘Your father came to the door,' she said absently when she noticed me. ‘The knocking woke me up. He forgot his keys. He was laughing and carrying on on the porch, slapping his forehead like one of the Three Stooges.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Did you let him in?'

‘Of course not. I couldn't.'

‘Oh,' I said. ‘Should I feed the dog?'

Every Hallowe'en for as long as I could remember, Dad had dressed up as a warlock named Newman the Nefarious. His costume varied from year to year. Sometimes it consisted of stripey black lines he had smeared across his face using Mum's eyeliner, and an old stained blanket he draped across his hips and shoulders toga-like. Other times it involved head gear: a baseball cap with a rubber spider sewn on the front, a straw sun hat with bits of blackened newspaper and other trash affixed to its brim. They were not brilliant costumes, but as Newman he infused them with a blundering menace that thrilled the children who turned up at the door. Their parents were often not so pleased, probably because Newman's breath smelled strongly of Glenfiddich and cinnamon gum, but most of them returned at least twice, tethered to their offspring, who loved him. With Jeremy and me he was equally alluring and threatening. ‘You are not my family,' he'd say with a guttural growl when we approached him. ‘I am Newman the Nefarious. I have no family. I have only my pots and my potions, my mice and mittens. Do not mess with Newman the Nefarious.' And he would hunch over himself and mutter darkly before waving us away.

The Hallowe'en after Dad died, Mum and I gamely decorated the porch in orange and black streamers and stretched bits of cotton across the railings for cobwebs. But we had to close the door after three visits. Who can endure a child's questions when it comes to loss?
Where's Newman?
the superheroes, princesses, werewolves and gypsies asked, then rattled their plastic bags hopefully.
Where's Newman?

After we had turned out the porch light, we sat across from each other at the kitchen table eating dainty chocolate bars from the good salad bowl. Mum smoothed out the creases with her thumbnail, so that the wrappers appeared to have been sucked dry and starched. Once a wrapper slipped from her grip and fell to the ground. I intercepted it quickly and handed it back to her. ‘Chocolate is death to dogs,' I whispered. We stacked the empties in the middle of the table. When the pile was too high to balance, Mum turned to me.

‘Do you feel sick yet?'

‘No.'

‘Me neither.' She passed me another mini Mars bar.

Emptiness is making us invincible, I thought, but had the good sense not to say it out loud.

Before the camping trip, Ben and I had spent a lot of time in his truck in parking lots or cul-de-sacs, making out and talking in a light, jokey way.

‘Did I ever tell you about when half my face was frozen?' I loved to compare war stories from childhood with friends; we would often boast of strange injuries or illnesses we had overcome. My best story involved Bell's palsy; how, at the age of four, my face had tricked everyone, including myself, into believing it was infirm and elderly. And half-paralyzed! This was the hook that always got them. And Ben was no exception.

‘No way.'

‘Swear to God, Ben.'

‘Show me.'

‘What?'

‘Show me how you looked.'

‘I can't.'

‘Don't be a wuss.'

‘Like this.' I pulled one side of my face down with my open hand and smiled. But it wasn't the same, and I knew it. The whole of my face was smiling, despite the pressure of my hand, despite whatever lopsidedness was going on inside me. But I can still remember, with a sharp-edged clarity, the night my face froze. Dad had told a knock-knock joke, and I was hiccup-laughing. My corn was piled to one side on my plate, and my plastic tumbler was full to the brim with apple juice. I was reaching for it when my father's broad pink face changed. ‘Stop making those funny faces,' he said, and grabbed my arm roughly. But I would not, could not, stop making the funny faces. Not then, and not for six weeks afterwards.

What I remember most about my father during my spell with paralysis was the way I would catch him looking at me sometimes, as if I had been stung by a dangerous insect whose name everyone had forgotten, and he was trying desperately to pin down its particulars, to recall the antidote. He would hug me at odd times, then turn away. My mother, if she was at all puzzled by my predicament, never let on. She busied herself sewing me a pirate patch for my lazy eye, and, when she was finished, snapped the elastic resolutely around my head. ‘There you go, dingbat,' she said. ‘Now go outside.'

For Christmas, we bought the dog soft elfin boots to protect him from the salt on the streets. But he refused to wear them, tearing them from his paws with his new pointy teeth.

The night before I left for university, I dreamt Jeremy and I were at the Ex on Labour Day. Jeremy's friend Richie had invited himself along at the last minute. We watched the parade from behind the Princes' Gates, sitting on electric-purple folding chairs, fanning ourselves with glossy leaflets. Solemn and tattered, the line of workers filed through the gates of the Exhibition. Richie cheered madly when the Miss Toronto float chugged by, then he sat back down, exhausted. My father was there, less ghost than sprite. He weaved his way in and out of the marchers, his hands in the air, waving. Pied piper to the union folk. As a grand finale, my brother and I were required to fly a stunt plane in the air show. There are rules, even in dreams.

Jeremy was explaining to me the best way to keep your sunglasses from falling off your face while the plane is performing a 360, when my mother appeared, casually, on the sidelines. She was not a ghost or a sprite, but she was everywhere. She pointed a finger towards the midway, where a vendor was selling breaded pork on a stick and a carny was peddling three chances to win a stuffed pink poodle. Everywhere, slick skinny men in snug jeans and leather headbands hawked bright, perfect, useless things. Mum had a megaphone in one hand, and two spirals of fluorescent cotton candy in the other. She brought the megaphone up to her lips.

‘All I can say.' She paused, as if that were indeed all that she could say. Jeremy and I were standing now, listening. Mum coughed and gestured towards one of the kiosks, then spoke again. ‘Is if you two die in that plane, you'll be working at one of those places for the rest of your lives.'

When I hugged Mum at the airport, she whispered something in my ear, and, for years, I have whispered it to myself when I find myself in a tight spot, or in no spot at all.

Then she began to wave, and called to me as if from a great distance, although I was still standing right there beside her. ‘Goodbye, dingbat!'

When I didn't move, she pursed her mouth into a tiny, pink O, tight like a dog's bum.

‘Bye.' I picked up my bag, began making my way over to the sliding glass doors, then turned to look back at her.

A ha'penny will do.

The doors slid open. I looked back at her again. I wanted desperately for her to forbid me to go.

But she didn't. She just stood there beside the idling station wagon in her red and beige paisley blouse that did not quite match her burgundy pants, and I noticed her shoulders for the first time. How small they were, how suddenly stooped and how completely, shockingly, her own.

Frogs

NAADIYA ABBOUD WAS A
dark brown girl, a Somali Muslim, slight of build, with a smattering of tiny pink blemishes across her chin, wide brown eyes, heavily lashed. She wore the same rose-coloured hijab most days, and green high-top Converse tucked under her dark denim jeans. As a student, she was vivacious and bright, although completely unreliable. It seemed to Vasile Dinescu that her lack of assiduousness when it came to her studies was of little concern to her, which is why it surprised him when she came to him at the end of class to ask for extra help.

‘Sir,' she said, leaning over the slab of the lab bench, ‘do you think I can talk to you after school today?'

He looked up from the attendance sheets he was updating and nodded. She had barely passed the first test of the year – nothing more than a lack of sustained attention to the diagrams and definitions in the text. But tears were welling tragically in her eyes, and the skin on her face had gone blotchy where the fabric of her hijab met her forehead. There were pressures at home, Vasile surmised. He would try to help her. He would make no overt promises but would also make it known he had no intention of contacting her parents, of, in teenage parlance, snitching.

‘I'll be in the science office.'

She nodded, stepped away, then back again, touching the ­barrette that held her hijab in place with one careful hand and reaching into her pocket for her cellphone with the other. ‘Where's that?' she said, preparing to make a call.

‘Room 206, next to the stairwell.' Ah, no, she was entering the information into her device, making it a date. ‘Do you need some extra help?'

She nodded again, then turned away – more resolutely this time – calling to one of her friends in the hallway. Then she was gone, padding softly in her sneakers.

Vasile shook his head to clear it. There was something about that girl. The way she had spoken, with an intensity and clarity of purpose. Was she flirting with him? He thought not; in any case, the prospect terrified him. He was not of the ilk that admired nubility beyond its representation of youth – of an era necessarily and thankfully no longer available to him. It was somewhat of a relief not to look for that, not to
want
that anymore. When he first arrived in Canada from Romania, he had, in order to refine his English, which was already passable, taken a class in poetry. The poem that had stayed with him like a pop song was by Theodore Roethke, ‘Elegy for Jane' (
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, /And she balanced in the delight of her thought …
). It was awkward and creepy to be a male teacher of young women, the poem suggested. (
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love: /I, with no rights in this matter, /Neither father nor lover
). It exiled you into a position of necessarily non-physical, non-overtly affectionate mentorship, but demanded of you an investment, an intimacy – okay, yes, a
concern
that in other quarters might go by the name of love. You could weep over your student's grave, but you'd better make damn sure no one saw you.

Besides, he loved his wife. A colleague had recently sent him a YouTube clip of a crude comedian who explained his interest in women vs. girls. Women, he had exhorted, were not women until they had squeezed a couple of children out of their vaginas and had these children trample on their dreams. As a former doctor in a pronatalist socialist republic, Vasile could appreciate the directness of this assertion. Ceauşescu had specialized in this dream trampling with his ban on abortion and designation of women who managed ten or more children (
ten!
) as Heroine Mothers. So this new humour was necessarily less scathing than the gallows humour that circulated in Romania at the time (
Beginning in the year 1967, rape will be considered productive labour and will not be punished.
), but no less accurate. He was mortal, and he liked to be reminded of it; the more we as a species untether ourselves from our limitations, the more difficult to ascertain the world becomes. Okay, he liked the way technology made his life easier, but also shied away from the moral quandaries it seemed to engender almost every minute of every day. But science and morality – they had always been strange bedfellows. Where was he going with this? Closer to the crux: why did Naadiya want to see him? He doubted she would even show up. A teenager's brain was not designed to keep scholarly commitments after dismissal. To swim against the flow of students yearning for freedom required a monumental effort – a rebellion against that strongest of forces, instinct.

The lunch bell rang.

‘I don't like to stand too close,' said the young teacher whose name Vasile had forgotten. She was tall, with a confident Roman nose that seemed to lead her person. Christine, he thought. What was the surname? Something vaguely and inoffensively European. French perhaps? Her posture was newly self-assured and somewhat forced – he could sense she had spent time coming to grips with her height. She wore a bright blue cardigan that tied like a fortune cookie at the waist, stylish wide-legged blue jeans and a coral-hued lipstick on her mouth. Vasile was certainly not, as his students might say, a fashionista, but he felt the ensemble suggested far too much colour contrast between the woman's lips and torso – there was something touristy and sunset-esque about it. What was it she taught – history or social science? He couldn't quite recall. For a moment, he wondered at what she had said.
Too close?
Was he offending her somehow – exuding a certain non-­collegial maleness?

‘They say the rays,' she continued, and pointed at the micro­wave, ‘
not
good for you! At least a metre away is what they say.'

Ah yes, Vasile nodded. ‘They' had made such proclamations before, and it was an attractive prospect, to be able to gauge and control your environment, seal yourself deliberately and definitively off from danger. He nodded again at her as the microwave beeped. She stepped forward to retrieve her meal. The fragrant steam wafted towards him. ‘Indian?' he said.

‘Yes,' she replied, nodding quickly. ‘I made it last night – spicy dahl. I find the spice gives me energy in the middle of the day.' She was in her mid-twenties, keen like a squirrel, a
veveriţă
, bristling with industry and vim. She had already presented two school-wide initiatives at staff meetings, and it was only the beginning of October.

‘How are your classes?' he asked, stepping forward to program the heating of his own meal.

‘Oh,' she spoke, and her eyes said,
So glad you asked
. ‘Some are more challenging than others.'
But I will not be beaten or dulled by the institution, by the constantly changing, consistently confounding curriculum, by bureaucracy, by seeping professional apathy. I'm here for the kids! For their minds and livelihoods, for their very futures, which I hold like delicate doodads in my terribly capable hands …

Vasile felt himself mildly accused. He smiled at her, the
veveriţă
with her twitching, anxious nose. ‘Can I give you some advice?'

‘Sure,' she said.
Of course, old man. I am young and kind, and I know it is politic and generous to engage your type.

‘There will be days ... ' Vasile paused. The spicy dahl steam rose between them. ‘There will be days when you are so bone-tired that you will look out at them sitting there, waiting for you to give them something, something true and shining that holds their attention or will prove useful at some later date. Or maybe they just want badly for you to tell them who they are – a chatterbox, a troublemaker, a genius – so that they may continue to live up to the role they feel has been foisted upon them. And you will reach far down inside yourself and find … nothing. There will be nothing left. On these days you must write two words on the blackboard.' He paused again. She leaned forward expectantly. ‘Work Period,' he said.

Christine stepped away from him, disappointed. Vasile could tell she thought he was not being exactly ‘appropriate' as per the staff handbook. She wanted to get to that dahl, but he had not yet finished. He stepped closer to the door, so that she would be forced to excuse herself in order to push past his bulk and into the staff room. ‘Then,' he said, ‘at the end of the class, after you have dismissed the students, I would recommend the following: run your palms along the blackboard, erase the words with your palms, then pat them, like so.' He patted his belly and his thighs. ‘Directly on your person. That way, when you bump into the principal in the hallway, she will see the extent of your dedication marked on your good clothes and you will feel yourself excused – or at least unworthy of comment.'

Christine looked at him, into his eyes. She was unsure of whether to laugh. He lifted a corner of his mouth, giving ­permission. Her laugh was dry and short. Vasile's meal beeped. ‘Lunchtime,' he said.

‘Yes,' Christine replied. ‘Have a good one.'

Vasile's first class after lunch was another Grade 10 science. A small class, but boisterous, they tumbled into the classroom, cursing and laughing, took their places at the lab benches, but did not stop talking, even after he had cleared his throat twice, loudly. It was his least favourite part of the job, having to quiet them, to focus their attention on his person. He had been in the employ of the Toronto District School Board for eighteen years now, and still, the corralling of these young people felt strange and affected.

‘Class, your attention up here at the front, please. Quiet, please.'

The nattering and jostling subsided. They were not unruly, really, just young, coursing with hormones and full of french fries from the cafeteria. And once he began to speak, they listened, or at least appeared to, their faces tipped up towards the blackboard, then back down to their notebooks, as they scrawled down the lesson.

He suspected it was his ghost of an accent that kept them rapt. It was reassuring, the not-quite-rightness of his English; they were not native either, or at least their families were not. What they were was Diverse. Which, as one might imagine, could mean many things. Mostly, people used it to mean Black, although sometimes it also meant Poor, or Neglected, or 100% Likely to Do or Deal Drugs in the Next Five Years. It was language used to cloak and gentle the truth. Never mind. He understood the power of naming, the great mess of meaning that trailed after a word like cans clanking along behind the bride and groom's car. And, it was true, there was a kindness in this gentling that at times it found its proper mark.

But in his classroom, Diverse meant Vietnamese, Jamaican, Guyanese, Somali, Albanian, Portuguese, Iranian, Indian, Afghani. It meant Christian, Muslim, Hindu, varying levels of devotion. It meant On Welfare and Working Hard and Striving for the Comfortable Middle Ground. And it meant Canadian. Which was another word with its own cans clanking. And trumping all this Diversity was Youth – its arrogance, energy and lovely obliviousness. He witnessed it all the time, eavesdropping, observing:

‘Ugh, I never want to turn twenty.'

‘Why not?'

‘That's when you have to start watching the news.'

And:

‘Man, that girl is so haunted.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I, like, totally booked her talking to Bryan, standing totally close and all up in his face, while Sha-shauna was, like, right behind her. Afterwards Sha-shauna was looking for her and she just dipped.'

Their dramas were all-consuming and extreme; they were ridiculous and charming and seemed to find their roots in daytime talk shows. He could understand why they did not want him to interrupt. But interrupt he did.

‘Please be prepared for the frog dissection next class. You will need to make sure you have reviewed the chapter in your textbook regarding amphibian physiology – chapter 12. You must also go over the handout regarding proper procedure for dissection. Remember also that you will be evaluated on the precision of your technique.' He paused to allow some chatter to subside. ‘It is no small thing to use another living creature in this way. You should arrive with an attitude of reverence, of respect.'

The students gazed at him, saucer-eyed. He had deviated from the script, had dared to speak not as a teacher but as a spirit guide of sorts. It entranced them for a moment.

Vasile was alone in the science office when Naadiya knocked. The two colleagues with whom he shared the space had sprinted out the door seconds after the bell rang. He understood it, the pressing desire to put distance between the overwhelming stimuli of the school and the shaky sanctity of the self. But minutes after dismissal, there was a new quiet in the school – a deflated sense of contentedness, as if the building had digested something, then belched up its essence. It was not like this of course on the main floor, near the drama and music wing, or in the basement gym, where rehearsals and practices went on, causing a ruckus with bleating trumpets and bouncing balls and proclamations of love and victory. Here on the second floor was a different story. A calmer, emptier story.

Naadiya knocked again. When Vasile opened the door, she was searching for something in her backpack, one hand submerged in the large main pocket.

‘Hi, sir,' she said.

‘Hello,' he replied.

She uncapped a chapstick – the backpack loot! – and ran the tip along her mouth several times. Then she threw the chapstick back in the bag, zipped up the pocket and slung the bag over one shoulder.