Sarah Court (27 page)

There are rows of cheap units off 44
^th
street. My
employer’s Cadillac is curbed with two flattened
tires. In the apartment hallway I remove my shoes.
Bread bags go over my feet, taped to my ankles. Skin
lotion on exposed skin. Shower cap. Surgical gloves.

13A is unlocked. Tiny B&W TV. Mr. Turtle pool
full of soil. Books:
Raising Earthworms for Profit
.
Harnessing the Mighty Nightcrawler
. An old video
game unit. I play
Stuntman
with the volume off until
James Paris arrives. His pitbull wears a plastic headcone. Catgut racing its flank. He sees my gun pointed
at his chest.

“Place the dog in the closet.”

“Easy,” he says. “What’s with the bread bags? . . .
my wallet on the boat, right? You can take the car
back.”

“You were told not to take it at all. My employer
has a strong code of ethics.”

He accepts this without rancour.

“I don’t even have the cash to offer you double
whatever you’re being paid. You know, like in the
movies.”

He laughs. But his lips hardly move. He roots his
pockets for a slip of paper. Name, phone number.

“Call her. She’ll take my dog. Tell her she has to
feed Matilda Iam’s Scientific Diet, okay? None of that
Purina bullshit. Liver pills everyday. Liver ailments
are common with the breed. Mix baby food into her
kibble for the complex proteins. Silly, I know.”

“Silly.”

“I was trying to raise worms.” He nods to the
Mister Turtle pool. “Garden centres, bait shops. Like
drugs: there’s gradients. You must establish a rep as
a premium worm producer. Well, I guess they’ll die.”

“They will die.”

I raise the gun. James Paris’s forehead butts the
bottle’s plastic nubbins. He rocks forward on his
toes. The weight of him on my shoulder. His heels do
not touch the floor.

When a bullet enters a human body a number
of things happen simultaneously. For small calibre
arms such as mine, the unjacketed round—free of
casing, propellants dispersed—weighs 110 grams;
132-grains ballistic calibration. Entering James
Paris’s forehead it will cause two types of damage:
permanent cavity damage where the projectile
tears directly into flesh; radial displacement of
neighbouring tissue stretched in the projectile’s
wake. The pop bottle is a single-use silencer. All his
neighbours will hear is a momentary high-pitched
tssst!,
like steam blowing the lid off a saucepan.

I pull the trigger.

Compressed gasses expand the bottle. Its base
explodes into James Paris’s face. Suddenly, his face
resembles a red starfish.

. . . this could have happened—if not for the
kiddie pool. You see, you bury bodies in dirt
outside
.
Here dirt was
inside
. You must never bury a body
inside. Unsanitary.

I lower the gun. A little moan comes from
somewhere. I open the closet. Matilda sits on her
haunches. A doggy cough:
houch-houch!
I am aware
that James Paris should be dead. I am aware that he
is not dead. But I
think
he is. I have had a brainfart.
This is a very lucky thing, I think, for James Paris.

I drive to the Niagara Falls aquarium. Under the
security halogens I break the gun down. I heave the
parts into the basin. The border guards give me no
hassle over the
canis domesticus
.

Mama
’s hysterectomy became a public showcase.
Her uterus was riddled with pre-cancerous
fibroids. Adenomyosis: uterine lining thickening
into the organ walls. Mama instructed her doctor to
“rip out the plumbing.”

Following the laparotomy Mama became obsessed
with her pulse. Resting, active rates. She instructed
us to check ours hourly. Log it in a notebook. It made
Cappy Lonnigan CRAZY.

“Who gives a good goddamn about your
pulse
. It’s
beating. You’re alive.”

Mama’s phantom hot flashes were unbearable.
She wanted to “take in the days.” Teddy, myself would
push Mama around Sarah Court in a wheelchair.
Mama had a bowl of M&Ms on her lap “for wellwishers.” Neighbours made enquiries with eyes in
the sky.

“Missus Russell,” said Philip Nanavatti. “What’s
the matter?”

“Nothing but a little hysterectomy, dear.”
Mama took this opportunity to approach Frank
Saberhagen. The surgeon was drinking with Fletcher
Burger. Pitting their children in some sort of contest
in his garage.

“Your kid stole my Caddy what, six months ago?
Thanks for pencilling me in.”

“Mister Saberhagen—”

“
Doctor
.”

“. . . I’ve undergone a hysterectomy.”

Frank Saberhagen examined the sole of his deck
shoe.

“Yeah? Those can be a bitch.”

“I wished to discuss, civilly, Jeffrey’s actions and
my dog’s treatment of yours some time ago. You
can’t blame Excelsior. Your corgi was eating squirrel
babies.”

Frank Saberhagen turned to me. “Jeffrey, right?”

I looked at Mama. She nodded so I nodded.

“Do certain colours scare you, Jeff?”

I peered at my shoes. The yellow band running
over the toes I had coloured over with black marker.
I was not SCARED of yellow. It did make me feel as I
did riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Lion’s Club carnival.

“Are there specific words you prefer not to say?
Do you know about autism, Jeffrey, or Asperger’s
syndrome? Has your ward of the state told you about
those?”

“Nonsense,” Mama said through tight-gritted
teeth. “Darlings, wheel me home this instant.”

At home Mama smashed dishes. RAGING against
the “rat-shit jack-bastard.” The “hateful brute and
lush.” Were Cappy present he would have exclaimed:
“She’s on the warpath!”

“A rotten trickster,” Mama told me. “As doctors
are. Warp your body, warp your mind. You have
a black spot on your brain because your amoral
mother smoked drugs. That’s why . . . that’s why . . .
everything!
”

In the kitchen that night Mama crushed shards
of bone china with a rolling pin.

“Pull that ground chuck out of the icebox, Jeffrey.
Sloppy joes another night.”

Mama crunched the china to sparkling powder.
Knuckled sweaty hair out of her eyes. She rolled the
raw chuck through glass.

“All I ever want is to help. But people so seldom
take the cure.” Pinpricks of blood on her hands.
“They spit the bit. You believe me, darling, don’t
you?”

I cannot tell what other choice I ever had. Under
a gibbous moon I threw the raw meatball into Doctor
Saberhagen’s backyard.

Before dying
, Gadzooks! chewed through my
telephone cord. I have to go to Mama’s house to call.
“Is this Patience?”

“. . . it is.”

“I call on behalf of James Paris. Who is dead.”

“James Paris? . . . oh! Dead. Christ. How?”

“Police are stumped. His pitbull, Matilda, is
with me. Old Family Red Nose. White coat. Brindle
pattern over left eye. High stiffles. Clipped ears. A
proud bitch.”

“I knew him only one night. We met at the Legion
in Fenlon Falls.”

“Otherwise she must go to the Humane Society.
For gassing.”

“Gassing?”

“He wanted you to have the dog. Otherwise—”

“Gassing, gassing. My life may not tolerate a dog.”

But she agrees to meet. I hang up. Mama is off
at the Lucky Bingo. My elbow brushes the computer
mouse. The monitor brightens.

A MySpace page. A girl in pigtails.

We meet at Montebello Park. Patience is Patience
Nanavatti. She is wearing a floppy sunhat. Big
sunglasses accord her face the aspect of a dragonfly.
She is also pushing a pram.

“Jeffrey?” Chin tucked to her neck. SUSPICION.
“From Sarah Court?”

I mimic her chin-tuck. “Patience Nanavatti?”

Matilda licks the baby’s foot. The baby’s name:
Celeste. She grabs the air in front of her face. Patience
Nanavatti takes Celeste’s hand. She pins it gently to
her belly.

“She is very scrawny,” I say. “Have you seen a
pediatrician?”

“She . . . no, she eats. Why won’t you take
Matilda?”

“This dog was not offered to me.”

“She’s yours.”

Celeste emits hitching, painful sobs. Her eyes
swivel so far back in their sockets it is as though she
wishes to examine the inside of her own skull.

“Celeste is the toilet baby. I read of you both in
the newspaper.”

“Please.” Is she soliciting help or begging me not
to tell? “Jeffrey, please.”

Patience Nanavatti tells me how she stole her.
Then she fled up north but, finding nothing at all, she
returned to the city. The police may be monitoring
her home. I ask how long Celeste was in the toilet.

“Four minutes, maybe?”

Onset of advanced cellular decay: two minutes.

“Something is the matter with her brain.”

“You don’t know that.”

I do not know what else to say. I say this:

“I will take the dog.”

“Can’t stand to see her gassed?”

“I will take the dog.”

My employer
is entombed in a wheelchair. Bandages
clad his head, eyes, to the midpoint of his nose.
Hands encased in gauze. He appears to have shrunk
several sizes. His body is like an alpaca sweater
sent through the wash. There is a large depression
in the side of his head. A wet, red, glistening hole
like a medical photograph of someone’s wrecked
vocal cords. Tonight he will be visited by Nicholas
Saberhagen. My presence a precautionary measure.
The dreadlocked kid, Parkhurst, who my employer
says is a biographer of some sort, is curled up in a
corner. I saw this person, Parkhurst, not too long
ago. In the company of Colin and Wesley Hill.

When Nicholas Saberhagen arrives, I observe
unnoticed from the top of the stairs. Nicholas
asks permission to photograph the box. There is
some commotion in the viewing chamber. Nicholas
brought his son with him, you see. Somehow the
fat vampire boy got into the viewing area with the
box. Next Nicholas is bundling his son into the car. I
follow them in my minivan. They pull into the Motor
Motel. I park in a washout. The dark fluttering of
wings in the trees. Time goes by. Nicholas exits his
room in a towel. He retreats inside.

Next: bracing animalistic screams.

I get out of the car, walk across the road. The boy
is lying on the motel carpet. Rope burns ring his
neck. Nicholas Saberhagen pushes at his chest. He
spies me. As if to spy a demon. I kneel beside them.
There is a visible dent in the boy’s throat.

“Your boy’s trachea is crushed.”

In my pockets: a notebook, a pen, a penknife. I
chew off the pen’s cap. I pry out its ink wand.

“The fleshy tube running down the boy’s neck.
You must cut below the obstruction.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” says
Nicholas.

“The veins run here”—I trail a finger down the
boy’s neck—“and here. I know to avoid them. I know
the trachea’s consistency is that of a garden hose. I
know about how hard to push.”

I kneel patiently. The towel has fallen away from
Nicholas’s body. There is a dark stain on the tip of
his penis. The boy’s skin is presently the blue of a
picture-book sea.

“Okay, Jeffrey. Go. Go.”

I straddle the boy’s waist. Set the knifetip
horizontally across his windpipe below the Adam’s
apple. Drive the knifepoint in, then squeeze either
side of the wound. Still too small. Insert my pinkie
finger. The boy’s tendons constrict around my
fingertip. His slit trachea feels like a calamari ring.
I thread the pen barrel in. Nicholas wraps the towel
round his boy’s throat. I find the carotid snaking
past the boy’s collarbone. Pressure stems the blood
flow.

A man enters. He has the look of a SAD cowboy.
His consort: a half-naked woman with a harelip.

“We called the medics.”

A medical evacuation helicopter touches down
in the gravel lot. I stand in the rotor wash as it lifts
off. The helicopter ascends until it is nothing but a
blinking red dot.

I return to the motel room. The closet door
smashed. Contents of the boy’s knapsack spilled over
the carpet. Electronic equipment in Ziploc baggies.
On the cover of his math booklet is a girl’s name.
Encircled by a lopsided heart. I know that name.

General hospital.
Lea side of Valleyview Road past
the ambulance bays. Midnight. Patience Nanavatti
sits in the passenger seat of my Vend-O-Mat Dodge
Sprinter. On my lap is a box of cellulose packing
peanuts.

“It is sensible.”

“You keep saying that. How will she breathe?”

“I will punch holes in the boxtop.”

“She’s not a turtle.”

I stack cases of soda onto a dolly. Patience sets
Celeste gently into the bed of packing material. She
moans when I close the flaps.

“I’m a bad mother, I guess.”

“But she is not your child. She never was.”

I have made Patience Nanavatti SAD. I cannot
understand why she should react so. I merely
outlined the truth of the matter.

The elevator takes me to the fifth floor. As I
am pushing the dolly round a blind corner, I nearly
collide with a nurse. The nurse’s patient is Abigail
Burger.

Abigail is narcotically swollen inside a hospital
gown. Her feet are covered in thick strings of blue
veins, which I can see through her green paper shoes.
The flesh of her face hangs in bags, as if fishing
weights have been sewn under her skin.