Sarah Court (28 page)

“Gruh!” goes Abigail Burger. “Gruh!”

The most purely FRUSTRATED sound I have
ever heard. Her breath is as sweet as baby food. She
reaches for me. So strong. The nurse struggles to
keep her in check.

“No soda machine up here,” the nurse says. “You
want the caf.”

I double down the corridor into the neonatal
ward. I carefully set Celeste in a plastic tub. Pluck
stray peanuts off her blanket. To the tub I affix a
note:

FORGIVE ME.

I pull
into the horseshoe driveway of my employer’s
cottage. The moon stands upon its exact reflection
on the lake. Hours ago he called:

“Je . . . uuuuuurt suh–
suh
. . .”

Then the phone line went dead.

I open the cabin door. All is very quiet. Except a cupboard rattles under the kitchen sink. I open
it. The dreadlocked one, Parkhurst, has squirmed
underneath. His body is bent round the gooseneck
projection of plumbing pipe. His face appears ovencharred, but no: only blood dried to a glaze.

I shut the cupboard.

In the viewing chamber, the casement windows
open upon a starless sky. A squirming mass the
size of a medicine ball occupies my employers’
wheelchair. On the floor beside it are empty bandage
casings that still hold the strange shapes of whatever
they once encased.

Inside the box is something holding the exact
shape of my employer. Its skin is grey yet gleaming,
silvery, shifting in the insubstantial light the way
campfire embers will brighten in the wind. But as I
watch, its flesh is paling to match the colour of my
own. Its eyes are blobs of mercury in creased sockets.
With one fingertip the thing traces the box where
each pane meets.

“Whoever built this did a very adequate job.”

It opens its mouth against the glass. Puffs its
cheeks like a blowfish. Deep down in its craw, little
half-seen things are thrashing. It has no nostrils. But
the quivering ball in the wheelchair has two slit-like
dilations, side by each, fluttering in the manner of
fish gills. They are the only feature it has, anymore.

“Are you scared of me?” the thing in the box asks.

I say: “I do not know what I am.”

“If it makes you feel any better, neither do I.”

It yawns. Blood emits from my nose.

“Eat the hearts of the innocent,” it says. “Is that
what you think I’ll do?”

I say: “What will you do?”

“Go to Disneyland?”

“What are you?”

“Some call me demon, some say alien. Demon
as it fits a ready-made definition, I guess. Alien as I
don’t match any categorized flora or fauna on earth.
I wish I knew what I was. You are lucky to be part of
a species.”

It stretches, catlike. Snaps its jaws.

“Want to hear something funny? Although I don’t
know if it is. That whole concept is lost on me.”

“Me, too.”

“Your species finds it impossible to envision an
alien entity lacking the body structure, appendages
in some arrangement, of organisms found on your
planet. Your most common alien representation?
The “Grey Man.” Big globe-like eyes. Legs, arms,
fingers, toes. Or if not human-shaped, then spiderlegged. Or tentacle armed. Still legs, still arms. Or
exactly the same bodily specifics as you, except
furry. All with eyes and mouths: only more or fewer
than you, or smaller or larger. Your imaginations
can only conceive of organisms here, on this planet,
reconfigured. Do you understand the mammothness
of the universe? That there must be life hieing to
no forms found here on Earth? Creatures without
heads, or eyes, or organs. Only human beings
are self-absorbed enough to believe all life in the
universe must resemble them.”

Tiny openings appear in the nasal shelf above
its top lip. The ball in the wheelchair is now utterly
featureless. It bulges convulsively. Then it stops
quivering. The thing points to the still ball.

“I promise you I am no better or worse than
he was. It’s a one-to-one exchange.” The gesture it
makes invites my acceptance. “If that is a fact, then
tell me: how can your world be any worse with me
in it?”

I wipe my nose. Then I ask:

“How would I do it?”

“Just say the words. Hey!”

“There’s something under the kitchen sink.”

“Oh, you can leave that to me.” The thing performs
a jack-legged dance round its box. “Hey! Hey!”

I back out of the chamber. Blood is squeezing out
of my pores. I close the front door.
Almost
. I press my
mouth to that slit of darkness and whisper:

“I set you free.”

One year
Teddy and I missed Halloween. Chickenpox.
Mama made us costumes. Teddy, a teddy bear. “My
cuddly Teddsy-weddsy,” said Mama, nuzzling him.
I went as “Boxcar Jeffy,” a hobo. Mama painted
my beard with an eyeliner pencil. My bindle was
filled with tube socks. By the time we got over the
contagion it was November 2
^nd
. Mama dressed us up
to take us out anyway.

“Why should it matter?” she told Cappy. “Surely
our neighbours have leftover candy.”

On a cold night we went trick-or-treating. No
jack-o-lanterns, except those that had been smashed
by vandals or were decaying in trash cans. Mama
knocked on doors around Sarah Court. Philip
Nanavatti wasn’t confident he had any candy. The
holiday having passed, you see. Mama had not
ordered the Nanavatti’s squirrel shot yet.

“Come now, Phil,” said Mama. “Surely your
daughter could part with a few candy bars from her
stash. For my boys’ sake.”

Philip dutifully rummaged up a few granola bars.
Not all neighbours were so obliging.

“Tell the belligerent bitch to take a hike,” came
Frank Saberhagen’s voice from the family room
when his wife answered Mama’s knock.

But Mama was persistent; we returned home
with our plastic pumpkins full. I felt something
indefinable for Mama. For what she had done. Was
it LOVE? I could not say.

Cappy, speaking of Mama: “Like the moon, she’s
got her phases. When she’s waxing, her LOVE’s the
purest, truest thing. But when she’s on the wane . . .”

Squirrels gave every child on our block parasitic
seatworms. Mama had “a bird” watching Teddy or
me claw at our anuses. She ordered: “Don’t flush!”,
then checked our leavings. At Shoppers Drugmart
Mama bought a kit: Colonix Cleanse. Insisted upon
administering it herself. Teddy, myself: naked
on plastic sheets in the bathroom. Clutching our
privates.
We
pried
our
buttocks
open.
Mama
lubricated the plastic wand with flaxseed oil.

“Hold it, darlings. Hold it up there.”

Cappy quarrelled with her over this.

“You force them to hold two pictures of you in
their heads. One’s this woman who feeds and houses
them. The other’s an ass-invading bitch-wolf.”

“They can’t give themselves bloody enemas,
William.”

“You’re half devil, Clara. I swear. Three quarters,
some days.”

She envisioned a world where she was everyone’s
Mama. She sought to hurt her darlings as only a
child can be hurt by its mother.

From
my employer’s I drive to hers.

Mama is in bed. Her sleep apnea machine hums.
Mama removes the mask. Gulping inhales. Her eyes
too round. Words mushed up. She cannot see the
latex gloves on my hands.

She tells me a police officer named Mulligan
barged in today.

“Investigating computer malfeasance. A ring
of kids teased some poor youngster into a suicide
attempt.”
Suside ta-tempt
. “But I don’t know my ass
from my elbow with computers—do I, darling?” She
nibbled her bottom lip. “He took your lovely gift
away. As evidence. As if I’d even hurt a fly. He said
my parole officer hasn’t even been born yet. That’s
how long I’d be in jail.”

Every act of kindness I ever experienced came
at her hands. She never hurt me because she never
found a soft spot. But she took me in. I called her
mother.

I pull the pillow from beneath her head. I settle it
over her face. Apply pressure. Her startled slurs are
muffled by the stuffing. Her hand rises, trembling,
to touch my elbow. Then it is all thrashing. Grunting.
Growling. One dead leg slips off the mattress. I
slide myself on top to straddle her. Her big breasts
bunch under my groin. Her nails tear grooves in my
forearms. Her chest deflates between my thighs. I
withdraw the pillow. The muscles of her face have
come unglued. I see the silver fillings in her molars.
She has wet herself. That almond-y smell. Thin rasps
exit her throat. I snap the oxygen mask back over
her face.

I find some Q-Tips in a bathroom drawer. Sit back
with Mama. I take each finger very gently. I remove
my skin cells where they have collected under each
fingernail bed.

Patience Nanavatti
has been sleeping at my
apartment. She is packed when I arrive. Grocery bags
filled with Sally Anne clothing. Enough, she believes,
to make a clean start.

“You’re sweating,” she says. “There’s blood on
you.”

A blistering ache sets up in my arms, my
shoulders. Lactic acid burn. Chloride torching the
muscle fibres. Matilda noses between my legs.

“Lie down, Jeff.”

“I am alright.”

“Lie
down
.”

“I will.”

I lie on the bed she has occupied previous nights.
I have slept on the couch. The scent of her is in the
sheets. It is not a bad smell at all. Patience Nanavatti
pulls off her sweater. Blue static sparks pop along
her torso.

I do it out of LOVE
. Mama used to say this. “If I am
brusque or insensitive it is because we are familiar
and I LOVE you.” How much behaviour can you
hide under the cover of LOVE? Allowances made
to trample others because—because what? Because
LOVE? Because you LOVE someone?

Patience Nanavatti lies beside me. We do not
touch.

“I could take the dog,” she says. “You, too.”

To leave this town permanently—I do not know
it is FEAR I feel, simply because I do not know the
colour that emotion bleeds. There is a brittle cracking
sensation, localized to my chest, through which
burst wires that wriggle as earthworms do. To vacate
these streets, these sights of long acquaintance . . .

As Cappy Lonnigan says:
Yesterday’s history,
tomorrow’s the mystery
.

“You must understand, Patience Nanavatti. I do
not need you.”

“That’s fine, Jeff. I don’t need you, either.”

Summertime
and squirrels abound on Sarah Court.
The descendants of Alvin and Gadzooks! nest in
trees whose outlines stand in calligraphic relief
against the sky.

Nicholas Saberhagen’s car rounds the bend where
Clara Russell’s house still stands. He pulls up in
front of Fletcher Burger’s house. Burger himself is
long gone—
disseminated
is more apt—but the house
is currently occupied by his ex-wife and daughter.

Nicholas’s knock is answered by Abigail. Who is
lovely in a violet sun dress. The scar on her throat is
white, while the rest is tanned. She extends her hand
to Nick, who receives it in a brotherly manner. They
do not speak. Abby seldom does anymore.

They cross to the house where Nick grew up. His
mother lives there now that her ex-husband is gone.
Released on bail after his malpractice hearing, Frank
Saberhagen booked clandestine passage to Brazil
on a ship borne down the Saint Lawrence seaway.
He was bitten by a stowaway spider. Its neurotoxin
induced seizures and severe priapism. Frank
Saberhagen thrashed to death in an airless metal
cabin on a banana freighter in the dead calm of the
Atlantic ocean. His limbs flexed hard as bowstrings.
Teeth clenched so tight his molars impacted. He
also happened to perish sporting a trouser-ripping
erection.

Though I give the impression of omniscience, it is
not so. Whether Frank is dead or alive in fortuitous
or inhospitable circumstances is really up to you.
Stiff as a rod in a Brazilian banana boat? Fine.
Should you wish to picture him in more charitable
circumstances, well, everything is within the realm
of speculation.

Dylan Saberhagen runs out to greet his father
and Abby. Had it been me guiding this narrative, I
suppose I would have let him die at the Motor Motel.
Please try not to hold this inclination towards the
most horrid variable against me. How svelte the boy
is! Brain damage altered the appetite suppression
centre in Dylan’s brain. As has been said: the brain is
a funny organ and it breaks in funny ways.

Nick’s car wends up Martindale past the pond
where Dylan caught poison ivy years ago. Nick
unrolls his window to let air flow through his spread
fingers. Wind skates up Abigail’s legs to stir the hem
of her dress. Nick’s gaze momentarily wanders to
that bare strip of thigh—a sight that once would
have locked a thrilling tension across his chest—but
now he only lays a hand on the armrest as the fabric
touches his fingertips to resettle.

The Lion’s Club carnival is on in Port Dalhousie.
The heavenly smell of fried dough, or at least I’ve
heard it described as such. The beach is studded with
Tilt-A-Whirl, Zipper, bumper cars. All manned by
a leathery roustabout. A pavilion christened “Our
Poisoned Seas” is erected beside the marina. An oilcoated shark floats in a glass box of formaldehyde.
Its black eyes stare over Lake Ontario.