I was glued to Cheryl. My arms actually made suction noises when I moved them. I was covered in her blood. All of her friends had gone. Freaks. When the ma.s.s exodus began from the caf, the authorities swooped in, in every conceivable form - police snipers, guys in balaclavas, firemen, ambulance workers - all too late. They were taking photos, putting up colored tape, and everyone was screaming to turn off the alarms and the sprinklers, as they were not merely annoying, but were contaminating the crime scene. For all I know, those sirens and sprinklers may still be on, as I"ve not returned to the building since that day.
"Son, stand up." It was an RCMP guy with the big RCMP moustache they"re all issued once they earn their badge. Another cop looked at me and said, "That"s the guy."
So apparently I had now become "the guy."
I should describe at this point what it"s like to hold a dying person in your arms. The first thing is how quickly they cool off, like dinner on a plate. Second, you keep waiting for their face to come back to life, their eyes to open. Even with Cheryl cooling in my arms, I didn"t really believe she was dead. So when an authority figure of proven uselessness told me to let go of the body of my wife, whose face I knew would reanimate momentarily, my reaction was to stick with my wife.
"Go to h.e.l.l."
"No, really, son, stand up."
"You heard me."
The other cop asked, "Is he giving you trouble, John?"
"Lay off, Pete. Can"t you see he"s . . . ?"
"What I can see is that he"s tampering with a crime scene. You - get up. Now."
Pete wasn"t worth responding to. I held Cheryl close. The world is an ugly ugly ugly place.
"Son, come on."
"Sir, I said no."
"Pete, I don"t know what to do. She"s dead. Let him hold her."
"No. And if he keeps it up, you know what to do."
"Actually, I don"t."
I tuned them out. From my vantage point, soggy reddened lunch bags and backpacks lay everywhere; the wounded were being removed with the same speed and efficiency that coliseum staff remove chairs after a concert.
Underneath Cheryl I saw her notebook, festooned with its ballpoint scribbles: G.o.d IS NOWHERE/G.o.d IS NOW HERE; G.o.d IS NOWHERE/G.o.d IS NOW HERE. I didn"t give it any thought past that. A man"s arm reached down and tried to tug my arms away from her, but I flinched and held on. Then a dozen arms reached in. Pow, I became a one-man supernova, firing my legs in all directions, refusing to let go of Cheryl, but they managed to pull us apart, and that was the last time I touched her. Within forty-eight hours she was embalmed, and for reasons that will follow, I wasn"t permitted to attend her funeral.
Once they"d pulled me away from Cheryl, they shoved me into the foyer and then promptly forgot me. And so I walked through the same shot-out empty window frame as before and onto the front plaza, where it was sunny and bright. I remembered this thing Cheryl once said, how G.o.d sees no difference between night and day, how G.o.d only sees the sun at the center and the greater plan, and that night and day were merely human distinctions. I figured I now understood her point, except that for me, I didn"t see any greater plan.
I won my apartment in a poker game, from Dennis, a concrete pourer who"ll spend the rest of his life losing his apartments in poker games. He"s that kind of guy. The place is nicer than something I would have found on my own; I even have a balcony the size of a card table, which I"ve managed to ruin with failed houseplants and empty bottles that will someday enter the downstairs recycling bins. It looks out on the rear of small shops on Marine Drive, and beyond that to English Bay - the Pacific - and the rest of the city across the bay.
I checked my messages. The first was from Les, reminding me to bring the nail gun for tomorrow"s job, which is framing in a towel cabinet for a real estate tyc.o.o.n"s fantasy bathroom.
The second message was from Chris, Cheryl"s brother, saying that he can"t risk leaving the U.S.
for tonight"s memorial because if they catch him either coming or going across the border, that"s the end of his visa, which he needs to design spreadsheets, whatever they are, down in Redwood City, wherever that is. The third was from my mother, saying she didn"t think she could handle the memorial. The fourth was her again, saying that she thought she could. The fifth call was a hang-up with five seconds of bar noise. The sixth was Nigel, a contractor buddy from a recent project who doesn"t yet know I"m a living monkey"s paw, asking me if I want to shoot some pool tonight. Soon enough Nigel will learn about my "story," and then he"ll go buy a cheapo ma.s.sacre exploitation paperback in some secondhand bookstore. His behavior around me will change: he"ll walk on eggsh.e.l.ls, and then he"ll want to discuss life after death, crop circles, gun laws, Nostradamus or stuff along those lines, and then I"ll have to drop him as a friend because he"ll know way more about me than anyone ought to know, and the imbalance is, as I age, more of a pain than anything else. I don"t want or need it.
Call seven is my mother again, asking me to phone her. I do.
"Mom."
"Jason."
"You feeling weird about tonight?"
"Someone has to take care of the twins. I thought maybe I could take the twins off Barb"s hands for the evening."
"Kent"s friends have probably sorted that out weeks ago. You know what they"re like." "I guess so."
"How about I drive you." "Could you?" "Sure."Okay.
After leaving the cafeteria, I walked out onto the sunlit concrete plaza, where I turned around and saw myself reflected in the one remaining unshot window, and I was all one color, purple.
Gurneys with their oxygen masks and plasma trees covered the front plaza like blankets on a beach. I saw bandages being applied so quickly they had bits of autumn leaves trapped inside the weave. I remember a sheet being pulled over the face of this girl, Kelly, who was my French cla.s.s vocabulary partner. She didn"t look shot at all, but she was dead.
There were seagulls flying above - rare for that alt.i.tude, and -Well, I"ve seen all the photos a million times like everyone else, but they just don"t capture the way it felt to be there -the sunlight and the redness of the blood: that"s always cropped out of magazines, and this bugs me because when you crop the photo, you tell a lie.
I was thinking, Okay. I guess I should just go home and wash up and get on with things. Up the hill, hundreds of students were being held back by police barricades. When I looked to my left, a medic plunged a syringe like a railway spike into the chest of a friend of mine, Demi Harshawe.
A few steps away, an attendant running with a plasma tree tripped over a varsity coat soaked in coagulating blood.
In my pocket I felt my car keys, and I thought, If I can just find my car, I"ll be able to leave here, and everything will be just fine. When I walked down to the auxilary lot where I"d parked that day, n.o.body stopped me. I"d later learn that I"d accidentally fallen through every crack in the security system, which was for a time interpreted as having sneaked through every crack in the system. Regardless, n.o.body called my name, and, by the way, those grief counselors they always talk about on TV? Oh, come on.
I was headed for my car, but then I saw Cheryl"s white Chevette - it looked so warm in the sunlight, and I just wanted to be near it and feel warmth from it, so I went and lay down on the hood. The sun was indeed warm, in that feeble October way, and I curled up on the car"s hood, leaving red rusty finger-painting swishes, then fell into whatever it is that isn"t sleep but isn"t wakefulness, either.
A hand shook me, and when I opened my eyes, the sun was a bit further to the west. It was two RCMP officers, one with a German shepherd, and the other with a rifle speaking into a headset: "He"s alive. Not injured, we don"t think. Yeah, we"ll hold him."
I blinked and looked at the men. I was no longer "the guy"; I was now merely "him." I tried lifting my right arm, but the blood had bonded it to the hood. It made a ripping-tape sound as I pulled it away. My clothes felt made of plasticine. I asked, "What time is it?"
The officers stared at me as if their dog had just spoken to them. "Just after two o"clock," one of them said.
I didn"t know what to say or ask. What was the grand total? I blanked, and two very nice-seeming women ran down to the lot toward us carrying large red plastic medical boxes.
"Are you shot?"
"No."
"Cut?"
"No."
"Have you been drinking alcohol or using drugs?"
"No."
"Are you on any medications?"
"No." "Allergies?"
"Novocaine."
"Is the blood on your body from a single source?"
"Uh - yes."
"Do you know the name of the person?"
"Cheryl Anway."
"Did you know Cheryl Anway?"
"Uh - yes. Of course I did. Why do you need to know that?"
"If we know the relationship then we can more precisely evaluate you for stress or shock."
"That makes sense." I felt more logical than I had any right to be.
"Then did you know Cheryl Anway?"
"She"s my . . . girlfriend."
My use of the present tense flipped a switch. The women looked at the RCMP officers, who said, "He was sleeping on the hood."
"I wasn"t asleep."
They looked at me.
"I don"t know what I was doing, but it wasn"t sleep."
One of the women asked, "Is this Cheryl"s car?"
"Yeah." I stood up. The fire alarms were still clanging, and the concertlike sensation of thousands of people nearby was distinct.
The other female medic said, "We can give you something to calm you down."
"Yes. Please."
Alcohol chilled a patch of skin on my left shoulder and I felt the needle go in.
Like anyone, I"ve seen those movies about army barracks life where evil drill sergeants, with cobra venom for spinal fluid, sentence privates to six years of latrine duty for an improperly folded bedsheet corner. But unlike most people, I have to leave the theater or switch the channel because it reminds me of my life as a child.
You"re nothing, you hear me? Nothing. You"re not even visible to G.o.d. You"re not even visible to the devil. You are zero.
Here"s another thought from the mind and mouth of Reg: You are a wretch. You are a monster and you are weak and you will be pa.s.sed over in the great accounting. As can be clearly seen, my father"s primary tactic was to nullify my existence. Maybe today"s banking adventure with zeroes stems from that.
Kent, however, was never nothing. At the very least, he was always expected to join my father"s insurance firm after college - which he did - get married to a suitable girl - which he did - and lead a proud and righteous life - which he did, until exactly one year ago, when a teenager in a Toyota Celica turned him into a human ca.s.serole up by the Exit 5 off-ramp near Caulfeild.
I miss Kent, but G.o.d, I wish he and I had been genuinely close as opposed to Don"t-they-look- nice-together-in-the-airbrushed-family-portrait close. He was always so b.l.o.o.d.y organized, and his efforts at all activities always made my own efforts pale. Kent was also righteous; he was sent home from school in sixth grade for speaking up against Easter egg hunts (pagan; trivializes G.o.d; symbols of fertility that secretly promote l.u.s.t). Granted, l.u.s.t is purely theoretical in grade six, but he knew how to spin things the Alive! way. He was a born politician.
Dad left scorch marks behind him as he jetted off to the school"s offices that pre-Easter afternoon, of course to take Kent"s side. Through bullying and threat of litigation (he was an imposing, hawklike man), he was able to get Easter egg making banned in Kent"s cla.s.sroom. The school caved simply because they wanted a demented nutcase out of their way. That night at dinner, there was extra praying, and Kent and Dad discussed Easter egg paganism in detail, way too far over my head. As for my mother, she might as well have been watching the blue-white snows of Channel 1.
Here"s another thought, this one about Reg: when I was maybe twelve, I got caught plundering the neighbors" raspberry patch. Talk about sin. For the weeks that followed, my father pointedly pretended I didn"t exist. He"d b.u.mp into me in the hallway and say nothing, as if I were a chair.
Kent the politician always stayed utterly neutral during this sort of conflict.
The bonus of being invisible was that if I didn"t exist, I also couldn"t be punished. This played itself out mostly at the dinner table. My mother (on her sixth gla.s.s of Riesling from the spigot of a two-liter plastic-lined cardboard box) would ask how my woodwork a.s.signment was going. I"d reply something like, "Reasonably well, but you know what?"
"What?"
"There"s this rumor going around the school right now."
"Really?"
"Yeah. Word has it that G.o.d smokes cigarettes."
"Jason, please don"t ..."
"Also, and this is so weird, G.o.d drinks and he uses drugs. I mean, he invented the things. But the funny thing is, he"s exactly the same drunk as sober."
Mom recognized the pattern. "Jason, let it rest." Kent sat there waiting for the crunch.
Taunting my father was possibly the one time where I became vocal. Here"s another example: "It turns out G.o.d hates every piece of music written after the year 1901." The thing that really got to Dad was when I dragged G.o.d into the modern world.
"I hear G.o.d approves of various brands of cola competing in the marketplace for sales dominance."
Silence.
"I hear that G.o.d has a really bad haircut."
Silence.
During flu season and the week of my annual flu shot: "I hear that G.o.d allows purposefully killed germs to circulate in his blood system to fend off living germs."
Silence.
"I hear that if G.o.d were to drive a car, he"d drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof . . . with leather upholstery and an opera window."
"Would the thief please pa.s.s the margarine?" I existed again.
It"s midnight and Kent"s memorial is over. Did I make it there? Yes. And I managed to pull my act together, and wore a halfway respectable suit, which I cologned into submission. But first I packed Joyce in the truck, and we drove to fetch Mom from her little condo at the foot of Lonsdale - a mock-Tudor s.p.a.ce module built a few years ago, equipped with a soaker tub, optical fiber connections to the outer world and a fake wishing well in the courtyard area. Everyone else in the complex has kids; once they learned that Mom is indifferent to kids and baby-sitting - and that maybe she drinks too much - they shunned her. When I got there she was watching Entertainment Tonight while a single-portion can of Campbell"s low-sodium soup caramelized on the left rear element. I sent it hissing into the sink.
"Hey, Mom." "Jason."
I sat down, while Mom gave Joyce a nice rub. She said, "I don"t think I can make it tonight, dear."
"That"s okay. I"ll let you know how it goes."
"It"s a beautiful evening. Warm."
"It is."