Your Place In The World

It’s the morning of your birthday, the first birthday you’ve ever spent without your mother—not because she’s dead, she’s too proud for that—but because the week of your birthday happened to be the only week your partner’s family, dispersed now across Canada, could meet up at the family home on Vancouver Island. You have made it down the wide, creaking staircase without waking any child, you have crossed the hallway, littered with shoes and sleeping dogs, without stumbling or stepping on anything that barks, you have entered the kitchen and closed the door and are walking towards the kettle and the French press when a pain in your foot collapses your leg and you curse, which wakes Brandy, your brother-in-law David’s deeply compassionate golden retriever-German shepherd mix, who scrambles up, her nails scraping the hallway floor, which wakes Harold, your sister-in-law Stephanie’s boneheaded boxer who barks and whips his head around desperately to try and figure out why, why, why he is barking. “Oh, shut up,” you say, your voice an eerie emulation of your father, though you make this observation so quickly that it slips through the net of your memory of the event and swims back into the sea of your subconscious.

A toy unicorn. Someone’s fucking toy unicorn.

And now someone is crying. Harold has stopped barking but he and Brandy seem desperate to go upstairs to help.

In the moment it takes you to figure out if it is your youngest daughter or your youngest niece crying, you toss the unicorn towards the living room then see your brother-in-law Stan asleep under a nylon sleeping bag and glistening with sweat. The unicorn hits him near his feet. It slips sibilantly off the sleeping bag, bounces from the couch and thumps against the floor. Stan rolls over mumbling something about stupid dogs and covers his head with a throw pillow that you can’t tell for sure in the dark but you think may have a Popsicle stick stuck to its coarse fabric.

It is your daughter. The crying is your daughter.

So you tell the dogs to “stay” and charge upstairs as fast as your tiptoes can carry you up the creaking stairs. When you see your youngest daughter, Erica, standing against the netting of the Pack ’n Play, you know that all hope of a quiet, private morning has vanished. Still, you are whispering that you are there, that it is okay, that she should, shhh, just go back to sleep. Erica is quiet when your partner comes in bleary eyed and sees you standing there. “Oh, okay,” your partner says and Erica gets excited and reaches for her mother. “Hi,” your partner says.

Your oldest daughter whimpers then and you wave your partner away in a way that you know she finds rude.

She scowls.

You pick Erica up and shake your head at a pace that says, I can’t fucking believe it, it’s five-thirty and I got up to avoid all this shit.

Your partner says, “I can get up,” and you flick your head quickly, No. “Why don’t you go back to bed?” she suggests.

You press your finger to your lip, telling her to shhh.

“Stop it,” she says, like you’re one of the dogs.

You hold your hand out, palm down, your way of silently saying, Relax.

You are driving your partner crazy. “Okay, I got it. You don’t want to be here.”

Good morning.

“Happy birthday,” she says as she turns and heads back to bed.

You manage to get out of the bedroom and down the stairs again. Erica says, “Dogs,” as you cross through the hall. Brandy raises her head. “Don’t even think about it,” you say and feel badly.

You start the kettle and hand Erica a piece of banana which she seems more interested in mashing against things or seeing how much dirt she can cause to adhere to than eating. Then, as you are measuring out the coffee, she throws the banana and starts shouting for yogurt.

Stan over on the couch mutters something. Erica gets scared and she starts crying. You take her out onto the porch, and the sound of that, probably specifically the sound of the suction on the outer door, the sticky snapping open and the woosh of air that makes any closed door rattle against its latch—or maybe whatever enticing smells flood the house—gets the dogs shuffling around, agitated, and vocalizing. You can’t be bothered.

It is cool outside and your hands go immediately cold. Your ears, too. Erica isn’t satisfied playing with the Rubbermaid bin of toys on the porch and wants to walk on the lawn with its human-scale dog feces, which is so much harder to see in the dim early morning light. You do that for a few minutes, startling the sleepy, slow flies from their shit-beds, or their shit-meals or whatever shit thing they are doing and sending them buzzing lazily in the air before you spot your stroller hanging from a large coat hook on the outside of the house where you hung it so whichever of the neighbourhood cats wouldn’t piss on it again. You grab Erica from under her arms and she laughs like she thinks you are playing. “Let’s go for a walk,” you say.

You go inside to grab a sweater for you and a sweater for her and you pause by the kitchen counter to consider making that coffee, but as soon as you do, Erica starts to strain towards the door, her arm reaching and saying, “Walk, want walk.”

You go into the room you and your partner are staying in and set Erica down in the nook created by your partner’s fetal positioning. Your partner say, “Hunh?” and you whisper, “Watch her for a sec., I’m just gonna grab us sweaters.” Your partner says, “Sweaters?” like you are crazy, possibly dangerously, and you say, “Yes. Sweaters.” She asks you what your problem is. You don’t answer.

You are ninja-quiet going into the room where Erica’s older sister, Virginia, is mercifully, probably delicately, still asleep. Out the open window a motorcycle screams by—it sounds like it's racing along the sill—but Virginia doesn’t even sigh. Then, suddenly, you are worried that she’s dead and you watch her chest for a minute to make sure that it is still rising and falling rhythmically. It is. You leave.

You walk into town. Erica is singing. The birds, too. The coffee shop that you love, a bastion of familiar coffee options and near-familiar feeling, is closed at this hour, which shouldn’t surprise you, you know. Shouldn’t upset you. Tim Hortons is open and you go there and order the dark roast coffee you scoffed at the ads for. You buy Erica a donut. The feeling in Tim’s is familiar too, from your youth, and if the tables and colour schemes have changed in the last thirty-years they have been changed with a delicacy and care that intends to escape your notice.

What is different is the clientele here on the Island, in Duncan, at six on a Saturday morning. The erasure and assimilation project so central to Canadian colonialism isn’t as far along here, will hopefully never get so far here as it has in the Greater Toronto Area. There are, you take pains to acknowledge, a woman your age with a stethoscope around her neck, its black rubber wrapped in beautiful, colourful beadwork and an older Native couple at a table by the front window having a quiet breakfast and conversation, the man’s hair carefully combed—slicked—and the woman smiling warmly at Erica when they spot each other. But there is also a woman who seems to be at the tail end of a substance-hammered night clutching at her extra-large coffee like it’s the only buoyant thing in her sea of suffering. There is a man with large, vicious looking scabs coming out of the bathroom who makes eye contact with you and offers a grin with gaps, maybe fresh. You nod, possibly imperceptibly, and say, “Hi,” with too little breath.

A maybe twelve-year old boy with black hair and a No Fear shirt opens the door to enter, spots you trying to leave and tells his siblings to, “Wait, guys,” and you thank him as you navigate Erica’s stroller out the door trying desperately not to spill your coffee. For whatever reasons, you apologize to the people you presume are the boy’s parents as you scuttle past them on the sidewalk.

 You cross the highway and walk towards the river. Any time you slow down or start pushing the stroller with one hand and it arcs as a result, Erica says, “Go, go, go,” and jerks her body forward and back, her head slamming the back rest. This means that you drink much less of your coffee than you would like.

Before the bridge, you push the stroller off the sidewalk and down a path of flattened grass that allows you to avoid the stairs leading to the gravel walkway running parallel to the Cowichan River. The gravel is much harder on the stroller’s wheels and you are actually stopped a few times before you curse and give up.

Erica is saying, “Out, out, out,” and you are telling her to just hold on. It is hard to find a spot on the ground where you feel confident that you can set your coffee down and it won’t tip over. You decide to put it on the edge of the path a few feet away. Erica is rocking forward and back again as you approach to unbuckle her. As soon as you set her feet on the ground, she races down the slight incline to the tall plants that create a barrier between the path and the river. You tell her to hold on as you grab your coffee and with one hand swing the stroller onto the grass. You have to tell yourself to relax, and you do tell yourself. The river’s long monologue is audible in between the sound of trucks passing over the bridge on the highway. Erica is happily running with her hand out, sweeping the long grasses. The coffee is starting to work. The wind is playing ventriloquist with the leaves on the trees and the sun is drawing elongated images of houses and trees east of the path. You can feel the day cooling off your heart.

But Erica has disappeared.

You look back along the path towards the highway. You squint. You call, “Erica?”

She squeals from somewhere beyond the wall of plants.

Your coffee rocking and splashing out from the hole you tore in the lid and landing burning on your hand, barely registers against the hot humming panic animating your body, yet some corner of your mind manages to tell your left hand to grab the cup so your right hand can grasp it from the top, your fingers free of the splashing, burning beverage.

“Erica?” you call again.

She laughs again and bursts out of the grasses running on stiff legs and waving a pair of jean shorts in the air. You laugh relief, then surprise because where’d she get a pair of jean shorts. Now the pain of the coffee on your hand forces a, “Fuck!” and you again grab the cup with your left hand, this time more consciously, and flick your right hand as if that’s a way to get rid of the pain. Erica drops the jean shorts and runs back towards what you see is a concave dirt rut cut by use through the tall plants. “Where are you going?” you say and her hands and eyebrows leap up and she screams like you are playing a game with her now. “Erica!” you shout. She shudders with surprise, falls onto her diaper-padded bum and begins to cry. Certain now that she won’t go any where, you walk over to inspect the jean shorts.

They are cut to the edge of the back pocket, short enough that the thin, light blue front pockets would hang below their frayed hem. Through one leg hole you can see a pink, frilly fringe and a pattern of tiny black and yellow bees.

You put your burnt, throbbing right hand into your pocket, pull out your phone and take a picture.

Squatting, you pick Erica up with one arm and she rests her snotty, tear-streaked face against your shoulder. You walk her down the path. A few steps towards the Cowichan and the riverside plants already reach past your head. You see a depression that looks like a deer bed. “Is this where you found those shorts,” you ask Erica. She lifts her head and looks, but says nothing. “Is this where you grabbed those jeans?”

“Jeans,” Erica says. She buries her wet, warm face in your neck and laughs.

Curiosity walks you to the riverbank, raised and clear here. There is a path down to a rocky, shallow pool. Though called a river, the Cowichan is closer in size to the creeks you know from southern Ontario and there is something about it that makes you feel like you are home, reminds you of bike rides with your mother, Sunday drives with your grandparents, exploring with your father.

Near the water’s edge you notice a twelve pack of Labatt Ice—the box anyway—a clutter of brown empties visible through the torn top. Beside the box is a bottle on its side half in the water, rocking slightly.

As you walk back to the stroller sipping coffee, your brain writes stories. It is the need to account for the women’s underwear still in the jean shorts that seems to push each ending to an unhappy place—drunk, bottomless swim leads to drowning; sex in the grass followed with a hasty bottomless departure. You buckle Erica in and wonder if you missed a body bobbing around some bend in the river, or a used condom hanging off some tall riverside plant like the limp pupa of a monstrous butterfly.

The sound of a car door slamming means nothing to you until you see a beautiful girl, obviously tired, obviously upset, walk to the edge of the wall of plants then along it, head turned towards the hidden, monologuing Cowichan. She is wearing a long, white shirt with some sparkling design. She stops and takes a few steps down a path like the one you so recently emerged from, but before she disappears you notice that the back of her shirt has some sort of plant matter clinging to it. When she returns from down the path, you notice her breasts rocking rhythmlessly as she trots along the edge of the plant wall. You turn your head forward, conscious of staring, and you see an older woman—possibly her mother—watching the girl. There is a cluster of keys and tchotchke key chains bouncing from the middle finger of the older woman’s impatient left hand. “Found them,” you hear the girl shout, her voice tired, but relieved.

“Okay,” the older woman shouts, too loud for how close you and Erica are. She smiles nearly apologetically.

You nod.

“Let’s go,” the older woman shouts.

The girl shouts back, “I’m coming.”

A hundred meters down the street, they speed past you in an old Ford Focus.

Back at your in-laws’ place, your partner and Virginia are up and they both wish you a happy birthday. David is sitting in a low lawn-chair, Brandy lying at his feet. David wishes you a happy birthday, too, then sips his coffee.

Your partner asks how you are.

You smile too wide and hold up your right hand, your thumb and index finger forming a circle. “Perfect,” you say.

Your partner suggests that maybe you go off on your own today, like go for a walk or go sit in a coffee shop and read or something. You want to tell her about the girl and the beer and the jean shorts and the underwear, but don’t know what you would say.

Virginia runs up to you and smash-hugs your thighs. “Daddy?”

“Yes.”

She holds up the unicorn that you stepped on and tossed accidentally at her Uncle Stan. “It moved,” she says. “It’s magic.”

That makes you laugh.

“What?” she asks.

Your partner explains that Virginia remembers leaving it “set up” in the kitchen and that when they woke, it was on the coffee table by where Uncle Stan was sleeping.

Uncle Stan comes outside, trailing two of David’s kids. Virginia gets quickly distracted. Stan wishes you a happy birthday, then sits down and starts telling David about a dirt bike engine he’s trying to re-build.

Erica is chasing some cousins around and squealing.

You ask your partner if she’s good, if you can go have a shower. She says yes.

You say good morning to your mother-in-law who’s making another French press of coffee in the kitchen. She asks you if you want a cup. You tell her yes, when you are out of the shower you would love a cup. She makes a face before saying, “I’ll just make a fresh batch then,” because both of you know that there will be no coffee left five minutes from now.

It takes David’s wife, Lisa, wishing you a happy birthday to remind your mother-in-law of the day’s significance. She apologizes, wishes you a happy birthday then apologizes again.

In the shower, you think about the girl and now that you know she is safe you feel permission to make the story positive. Sexy. You can imagine the riverside plants all around you, under your bare knees. The sound of the water going down the drain is the murmur of the Cowichan, the warm water the warmth of another body pressed willingly, thrillingly against your own.

It is only after the shower, hearing your daughters’ voices through the open window that you imagine yourself the jean short girl’s mother. Despite the guilt that the thought brings, you still resolve that tonight you will suggest to your partner a walk down by the river.

As you are getting dressed, your partner and children come upstairs to the room you are staying in. Virginia and your partner give you cards. Your partner hands Erica a package and the girl nearly gets it to you before she drops it on the ground and starts tearing at the tissue paper. Your partner tries to stop her, but you say it is okay and you get down on the floor and unwrap the gift with Erica’s help. It is a short-sleeved chambray shirt. You put it on. You thank your partner and she hugs you and kisses you.

All morning, your partner’s family compliments you on your new shirt.

After lunch, you call your mother. She wishes you a happy birthday and tells you that since she woke up this morning she has wanted to call you, but she wasn’t sure when she should call because of the time difference and because she knows it can be busy at your in-laws’ place. She asks you how you are doing and you tell her about waking up to be alone and about the dogs and Erica and the unicorn toy that you threw and that now Virginia thinks is actually magic. Your mother tells you she misses you, but that she understands. She tells you how proud she is of you. She tells you how important you are to her and how when you were born she finally understood her place in the world. You know what she means. You have heard it before. You tell her thank you, because you appreciate it. You tell her about Erica disappearing in the grass by the river and the horrible flood of fear. Your mother tells you that once she lost sight of you at the CNE and that it was only a few seconds before she found you and picked you up so quickly and with such loving force that you cried, but for those few seconds she felt— She can’t find a word. You picture the midway at the Ex: all the metal amusements, all their moving parts, all the people. “I can’t imagine,” you say, which is obviously not true, but you don’t bother to correct yourself.

You spend the afternoon with your partner’s family at a provincial park along the river. People are going down some small rapids on one of two yellow, inflatable mattresses. Virginia and you go too and the first time Virginia screams and cries, but when you reach the end of your run she says she wants to go again, so you do, many times. You collect stones at a gentle bend fifty meters up river. Erica naps under a small nylon structure that David and Lisa brought, then, when she wakes up she sits in a shallow pool with her grandmother and your partner. Your partner looks good in her bathing suit and you notice, but you have to think about other things. Three times you get up to go pee in the woods, each time walking further down a small path and scanning the bushes for deer beds and discarded clothes. As you are leaving the park, Virginia has a tantrum about a hardboiled egg that she has thrown in the sand and still wants to eat. There are no more hardboiled eggs. She says she hates you and you hug her and she tells you to let her go, that you are hurting her. In the car on the way back to your in-laws’ house, your partner tells Virginia that when she shouts like that you and your partner worry that the Child Services or Children’s Aid will come and take her away. You watch the sunlight flickering between the cedar trees.

After your girls have gone to bed, after dinner, your partner’s family surprises you with a cake. You thank them. Some people give you cards, the card from your mother- and father-in-law has a cheque for one hundred dollars. You thank them. Your father-in-law makes coffee and offers a cup to anyone who is interested. You consider it, briefly. Everyone eats their cake and you eat your cake, but you are waiting for an opportunity to ask your partner to go on a walk with you, but your partner, who misses her family for the eleven and a half months that you spend halfway across this massive country from them, is engaged in a conversation with her sister and you just don’t have the patience to wait. You stand up and announce that you are going for a walk.

“Do you want me to come with you?” your partner asks.

“It’s up to you,” you say.

“Maybe you’d like some time to yourself,” she says.

“Sure,” you say.

“I’ll come,” she says. The kitchen is quiet and her whole family is listening, because they can’t help it.

“No,” you say. “It’s okay.”

You stand for a second at the curb out front of your in-laws’ house. You are lonely and angry. Plus, your mind is constructing violent, fearful, racist narratives now. Some tricked out Honda Civic with a muffler modification rips past and your exhausted body shudders.

You go back up the walk to the house, stop at the threshold and, looking down at your shoes like you need to look down at them as you take them off, you say, “You know what? Fuck the walk. I’m beat.”

“You’re going to bed?” your partner asks.

“Yeah,” you say.

Everyone wishes you a good night, then Lisa remembers to wish you a final happy birthday and everyone follows suit.

“See you in the morning,” you say.

You ascend the creaking stairs and prepare yourself to sleep. 

Toronto, June 2016

Emoji sequence: Kat Armstrong

Story: Lee Sheppard

Beside Us

Mom died in February because of pneumonia or old age or boredom, maybe. She left Dad with no one but the hamster to look after.

I visited him on a warm, early-Spring Sunday in April. We sat outside to watch some of Mom’s flowers come back to life. On Monday morning he called me and said, “Beryl, I just called an ambulance to take me to the hospital. I’ll let you know what happens when I get there.”

I was on the 80 Bus speeding and swaying up Parkside. “What’s going on?”

There was a pause before Dad said, “I can’t get out of bed.”

“I’ll come out.”

He took a breath, bracing himself. “No need to make a fuss.”

I was too worried to wait for the next bus south, so I walked back down Parkside. I did the first few blocks in my high-heels, but was losing my balance and my patience, so I went the rest of the way in my stocking feet. My manager was irritated when I called to say I wasn’t coming in. I drove out to Mom and Dad’s, but when I got there, Dad had already been taken away.

The house felt warm and smelled lived in, smelled and felt like it was itself a living organism.

I called Dad. He was in the ambulance. “I think we’re going to Credit Valley. Hold on.” He put the phone against his chest and I could hear his heart beating and the rumble of his voice. “Credit Valley,” he said. “Have you called your siblings?”

“I’ll do that.”

The hamster wheel squeaked. I glanced in his cage and he was sitting in the metal contraption and staring off somewhere, motionless despite rocking back and forth slightly. I put some food in his bowl and changed his water while I worked up the nerve to call my brothers and sister.

Martin didn’t pick up.

Laura said, “Shit,” asked which highway exit to take to get to the hospital then said she’d be right there.

Darby was on a run, so he was already out of breath. I told him to find a seat. “Oh no,” he said. Once he was sitting I explained where Dad was and he cried. It started with an ugly, pained whimper squeezing through some place deep inside him. I told Darby that Dad had asked if I would call everybody, Laura and Martin too. “No, no,” Darby said again.

“Look, I really should get going.” He didn’t respond, so I just told him that he should come out as soon as he could.

I tried Martin again, then I texted him, “Dad’s in the hospital.”

I was in the car when Martin texted back, “K.”

At the stoplight at Burnhamthorpe and Erin Mills I wrote Martin. “He asked if I’d contacted everybody.”

I was by Dad’s side when Martin texted back, “He alright?”

Dad was holding my hand then and in the eighteen hours since I’d seen him he had changed. Sunken is the word that comes to mind. That’s the cliché, isn’t it? It was like all the soft bits of him were getting out of the way, starting the process of abandoning his skeleton. “Sorry Dad,” I said. “Give me a sec.” To Martin, I typed, “I don’t think so.” Dad had his eyes closed and was smiling. I deleted my message. “I think you should come to the hospital.” I added “Credit Valley,” when I realized that Martin might not know which hospital.

Laura arrived as they were moving us to Palliative. Darby arrived as Laura and I were waiting outside while the doctor examined Dad so Darby was there when the doctor, an angelically kind woman, explained to us that she didn’t know how long Dad had, but that it wasn’t long. Laura asked what “wasn’t long” meant. “No way to know. Could be today, could be a week from now.” I called Martin while Laura and the palliative care doctor each held one of Darby’s hands and the doctor encouraged Darby to breathe.

When Martin arrived, sometime around two-thirty or three in the afternoon, Dad greeted him the same way he’d greeted all of us, with a whispered, “Hi,” and a smile, his eyes fighting to stay open long enough to find our eyes. Then he added, “All my kids in one room.” In my lifetime, Dad had always asked us not to buy birthday gifts. “I just want my family to be together, that’s gift enough.” His birthday party was the one time every year when we were all in the same place.

At around four-thirty, Martin’s partner, Jack, arrived with their children Barnett and Stuart, to say good-bye to Grampa. Darby, Laura and I waited in a room at the end of the hall. Darby’s daughter, Lisa, was too young, Darby thought, to see her grandfather “like this,” he said. By then, Dad’s body seemed even more changed, like he was a figure you might meet in a dream who you would know was him, but who wasn’t him really. Martin left with Jack, Barnett and Stuart. He said he’d try to be back in the morning.

Laura’s kids, Eric and Astrid, arrived with her partner, Susan, after dinnertime. Darby phoned his wife, Julie, and talked about maybe bringing their daughter Lisa out, but Lisa had already gone to bed. “Tomorrow, then,” Darby said. After Susan, Eric and Astrid left, Darby looked at us and said, “I think I’ve got to go.” Laura asked if Darby was okay to drive and offered to give him a lift to the train station.

“I’ll be fine,” Darby assured us.

Dad died at eleven twenty-three p.m., Laura and I by his bedside.

It was after two a.m. when I drove to Mom and Dad’s place. The house felt cold. I walked around checking the windows and doors. When I was little, in April we’d open up the house whenever we had an opportunity. The fresh air felt so good after winter’s staleness. I figured Dad had done that, had started to open up the house, but every window and every door was shut. I was standing back by the front door and wondering why I’d come when I heard the hamster nosing around in his food bowl.

I went into the kitchen, picked up his cage with him in it and walked it to my car. I had to take second trip to grab his Tupperware container of food. It was nice to have his company on my drive home. I turned the stereo off so I could hear his little noises. He chirped like a bird with a cold.

I have only street parking and had to park a ways from my house. We were walking from the car and were maybe half a block away when a big breeze blew the hamster’s fur around his tiny body and he squeaked and ran around looking for something to hide behind. “It’s okay,” I told him. I picked up my pace.

We held a service for Dad.

Martin and Laura’s mother, Dad’s first wife Shelly, showed up and offered Darby and I her condolences. Every time I interact with her, I am surprised by her kindness. The only other times that had happened, though, was at Martin’s and Laura’s weddings and, you know, I could explain her kindness away because those were both happy occasions. But at the reception after Dad’s service she was generous and patient and, I don’t know, really in tune to me. Focused on me.

I think she rattled Darby a bit. Darby is still loyal to our family’s vision of her as— As what? Um. As unkind. As missing some essential thing. As someone who hurt Dad because of some unforgivable, unalterable flaw. As the root of the otherness that made Martin and Laura gay, maybe—yes, our family had that quiet homophobia, at least had had it. As being by definition responsible for the otherness that made them half-siblings who were only around occasionally and who were cold to Mom. Or skeptical about her. Or ungenerous towards her. Unforgiving, maybe, that for them, towards them, she was no mother. 

“Why’d she come?” Darby whispered across my shoulder, his hand gripping my wrist.

Shelly was hugging Martin, whose eyes, even distorted by tears his lower eyelids refused to let go of, were Dad’s eyes. “It’s okay, Darby,” I told him.

When he said, “It’s not okay,” I wished I’d said, Get over it, instead of something kind. “I mean, who invited her?”

“Obviously Martin or Laura.”

“Obviously.”

“They were married for, like, fifteen years,” I reasoned.

“Oh, stop being so nice.”

We met at the house on the Sunday a week after my last visit with Dad, my last visit unburdened by the knowledge of Dad’s immanent death.

My nieces and nephews were all coming, so I brought the hamster to honour his purpose. Mom and Dad got him so the grandkids would have something to entertain them. The hamster wasn’t looking good—his fur was matted and his eyes seemed, well, glazed. Glazed like a donut is glazed. Like with an inconsistently translucent white coating.

“What’s wrong with him?” Stuart asked.

Astrid said, “Is he going to die, too?”

“Well, duh,” Barnett said. “We all die.”

Eric started to cry.

“Be nice,” Martin said to his sons.

“Be nice,” Laura told her daughter. “It’s okay, Eric,” she told her son.

The kids just turned down the volume on their conversation. Jack walked over to where they were standing. After looking at Laura, Susan followed Jack.

Darby leaned against the piano holding onto Lisa and staring into some invisible distance. “I’ll take her,” Julie said to Darby. “Darby?”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll take her.”

Julie took Lisa to where the other kids were. Darby sat down beside me on the couch.

Martin said he’d get us all glasses of water. Did we want tea or coffee? He sounded just like Dad. He probably always had, but I’d never noticed. “Beryl, coffee with a half-teaspoon of sugar, right?”

“Only if you’re making some,” I said.

“I’m making some,” he said.

Through my teary eyes the room seemed flooded.

“I’d take tea,” Laura said.

“I know,” Martin said. “Darby, you like tea too, yeah?”

Darby nodded.

We were quiet for a while. Barnett and Stuart went into the backyard to play catch. Eric went out to watch them. Twice while we were sitting there, Stuart missed the ball and it streaked past the dining room window and banged into the wooden fence. Both times Eric eagerly raced after and retrieved the ball. Susan and Julie sat on a bench by the garden. Periodically Susan would encourage Astrid to go join her brother and her older cousins, but the girl preferred standing between her mother’s legs or climbing up on the bench and running her hands through Susan’s hair. Julie sat with Lisa on her lap. Lisa watched the ball flying back and forth like some cartoon tennis spectator. Jack walked around Mom’s garden surveying it, and squatting periodically to touch some leaf or petal.

Martin took steaming cups to the people outside before he came to the door with a tray with waters and coffees and teas for us. “Shall we?”

Laura stood up. Darby followed her then I followed him. We went downstairs like that, oldest to youngest.

Martin put the tray down on the coffee table. “Grab a seat,” he said.

“You have your key,” Laura asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ve got mine, too,” Laura said.

“Okay. Sure.”

Martin went to a closet under the stairs and returned with a black box. “This is heavier than I thought.”

“Isn’t it fireproof or something?” Laura asked.

“Can you help me put it down?”

Laura and I both stood, but Laura was closer.

Inside there were envelopes for each of us, Darby’s and my names written in Mom’s handwriting, Laura’s and Martin’s names printed by Dad. There were two letters inside each envelope, one from Mom and one from Dad. I knew they were written a long time ago because Mom started hers, “I wish I could be there with you.” As I alluded to earlier, near the end, her end, Mom had given the distinct impression that she had outlived her interest in life. I set both letters aside and read them later that night when I was alone. I looked through the will. There were no surprises. Martin was the executor. Everything was to be split. 17% each for Martin and Laura, 33% each for Darby and me. Dad had a mathematical notion of fairness. I understood, or figured, I guess, that the rationale was that Martin and Laura would also inherit from their mom.

“Dad rounded up for you guys, eh?” Darby said.

“Well, it’s correct,” Martin said. “I mean one sixth of one hundred is sixteen point six six repeater, which goes up.”

Darby shook his head and went back to reading the will.

Martin stared at him long enough to decide not to react.

After 20 minutes, Martin directed us to the other stuff in the box. “You guys know this is where the funeral information was?” he asked, holding up a folder of papers.

“I didn’t,” I said.

“I assumed you had been given it,” Darby said.

“It was here,” Martin said.

Darby glared at him like maybe he was worried Martin had, I don’t know, tampered with the contents of the box. I put my hand on Darby’s back to try and calm him down, but he shrugged my hand off.

“I figured you all had enough to think about,” Martin said.

“It would have been nice to know,” Darby said.

“Well, now you know.” Martin smiled.

There was the deed to the house. Laura reminded us that we should start clearing the place out. Sitting in the basement there, I could imagine the weight of all their stuff, all my old stuff, all Darby’s old stuff pinning me down to the couch, or at least barricading the basement door. Martin mentioned that in their letters, Mom and Dad had said there was no rush, since the house was paid off. I felt relieved.

There was banking information.

There was a list of jewellery that was valuable and jewellery that was sentimental. Mom had put names beside each item, though overwhelmingly she wanted the items to go to me.

Darby was looking up at the flat screen TV. “Anybody else want that?”

Laura and Martin each looked up from a different scrap of paperwork. Martin shook his head, No. Laura shrugged, frowned and shook her head too.

Darby looked at me. “It’s fine,” I said.

He stood up and touched the corners of the TV gently. He looked behind the unit, biting his tongue as his eyes searched for screw heads and wires and whatever else he might need to see. Martin said, “I’ve got a flashlight on my phone. If you need it.”

“Oh, thanks.”

Laura stood up. “I’ll get the toolbox.”

“Can we just leave it?” I startled myself with how loud I made my request. My siblings were startled, too. We were all quiet. They looked at me. They looked at each other. We heard my nieces and nephews and their parents come back in the house and spread out. Someone turned on the TV upstairs. “Let’s just leave things for now,” I said. “For today.”

“That’s fine with me,” Martin said.

“Absolutely,” Laura said.

“Whatever,” Darby said. “I don’t see the difference, but sure.”

“Will you guys give me a minute?” Martin asked. “I’ll be right back.” He took the stairs two at a time. Darby sat down beside me again, but made a point of not looking my way. I put all my paperwork down on the coffee table, upsetting a little cloud of dust. My coffee was surprisingly cold, cold like it had never been warm.

Darby went to the washroom.

Laura asked, “You okay, Beryl?”

I nodded.

“I mean you lived here more recently than anyone. Other than Dad and your mom, of course.”

I just kept nodding because there was something too touching about Laura thinking of that simple fact and what it meant.

“Was the basement even done when Darby lived here?”

I broke my nodding rhythm and flicked out a quick, No.

The toilet flushed and we heard Darby at the sink. Laura rubbed her eyes. Darby came back and sat down again.

Laura asked Darby questions about Lisa and it took him awhile to warm up to answering, but he was going on at great length about his and Julie’s impressions of Lisa’s daycare by the time Martin came down clutching a tiny, steaming ceramic jug by the neck and holding, leaning against his chest for balance, a stack of tiny cups like they serve tea in at Chinese restaurants. “Okay,” he said. He set the jug down, took a quick breath and waved his hand to cool it down.

“What’s that?” Darby asked. His tone was unwilling, closed.

“Saki,” Martin answered. He set the four cups out.

“Mmm,” Laura said.

“What’s saki?” Darby asked.

Martin explained that it’s rice wine, that you drink it warm. He poured some for each of us. Darby took his, sniffed it and put the cup to his lips. Martin opened his mouth like he was about to stop Darby from taking a sip, but he didn’t. Darby twisted his face up, way overselling his dislike of Martin’s saki.

“Okay,” Martin began. “I— Let’s drink to Dad.”

We all held our glasses up, but none of us spoke and none of us put any effort into touching anyone else’s glass.

“To Dad,” Martin said and took a sip. We all drank, even Darby. “So. Um.” As Martin thought about how to say what he wanted to say, he pulled his lips up and in. “We don’t see each other enough.” Martin looked at Laura and I knew they had spoken about whatever he was about to say. “Look. I’m, well, I’m not doing anything, I haven’t done anything to fix that. But I— What I want to say is I think— I think we should think about buying a cottage or something. Together. A vacation place that’s, like, got room for all of us.”

“What, like one of those mansion cottages?” Darby asked. “Like one that’s nicer than my house?”

“No,” Laura said. “Well, we can talk about it, but what Martin and I have been talking about is more like one of those old resorts, I think people called them. They’re often, say, a few acres near a river or on a lake—”

“And we could each have a cabin was what we’ve been thinking.”

“With this money?” Darby pointed to the basement floor. “The inheritance?”

Martin nodded. 

“I need this money,” Darby said. There was a fierceness in his voice that made you feel sorry for him. I knew he owed a lot of money on his house, that daycare costs were stressing him out, that he wasn’t sleeping.

“We don’t have to decide now,” Laura said.

“Just think about it,” Martin said.

“Can’t we do something normal, like invite each other over?” Darby was worked up.

“Sure,” Martin said in his quietest voice. “Sure.”

“Plus,” Darby said, “we’re going to see each other a lot dealing with— Clearing this place out, right?”

We all nodded.

“What do you think, Beryl?” Laura asked. “About a place to go, to meet up?”

What I thought was how much Dad loved it when we all got together. What I thought was that if we had a place together, that it is where Dad’s spirit would be. What I thought was that I would like it, sure, especially if I ever decided to start a family of my own. What I thought was, “I like the idea.”

Darby looked at me like I was betraying him. Then his face softened a bit.

Someone upstairs screamed. Eric screamed.

By the time I arrived in the kitchen, my brothers and sister were joining their partners and children around both sides of the counter where the hamster’s cage was. On the far side of the counter were Barrett and Stuart, Jack framed between his son’s shoulders. Lisa was in Julie’s arms. Susan was leaning down in front of her son and Astrid, desperate to get a look at the little hamster carcass in her brother’s hands, was pressing against her mother’s shoulders and trying different angles to get a clear view. Poor Eric was holding the hamster on flat hands inches from his face and trying to blink his tears away. You could see that he felt an urge to look, to hold the little hamster close, but was also repelled, maybe even angry at the beast for dying. 

“What happened to him?” Darby asked.

“He was old,” I said.

“Was somebody playing with him?” Darby asked.

“No,” Julie told Darby.

“Why was the cage open?” Darby asked.

“He really wasn’t looking good this morning, Darby,” I said.

“Then why’d you bring him?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Why was the cage open!?” Darby was shouting again.

“Enough, Darby,” Martin said.

Lisa had started crying.

“Why was the cage open?” Darby asked.

“I thought maybe he was asleep,” Eric said.

“I know,” Susan said. “I know sweetheart.”

“Did you open the cage?” Darby asked Eric.

“Stop, Darby,” Julie told her husband.

Darby took a deep breath, glared at his wife then left the room.

I found him in his old bedroom. I sat down beside him on his bed. Just like Dad used to do, I sat down beside him and was quiet. Just like Dad used to do for me and for Darby and Laura and Martin too, I’m sure, I sat down beside Darby and just let him cry.

Toronto, March-April 2016

Emoji Sequence: Emma Sheppard, teacher and sister extraordinaire

Story: Lee Sheppard

Thomas Martin Love

When Thomas Martin Love was ten and three-quarters years old, his family moved to a place in the country. There was a big cornfield behind their house and because Thomas had seen Field of Dreams and he loved baseball he was hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone would make him a diamond. Thomas would sit on the stairs above the hallway desk where his father did bills or stand beside the doorway to the tiny back kitchen where his mother and Grannie prepared meals and whisper in his loudest whispering voice, “If you build it, he will come,” until one day Dad sat Thomas down on the couch in the front room, which was crowded with boxes of things from their old house and from Grannie and Papa’s place, and explained that, Yes, the field belonged to the Martin and Love families, but that the corn belonged to farmers that the previous owners had rented the field to and that they now rented the field to and that, besides, there were two whole acres for Dad and Thomas to play catch on anyway, more than enough space, right buddy?

Papa’s sport had been hockey. There was a school yearbook on the shelf just outside the door of the room where Papa’s special hospital-style bed was. Sometimes Thomas would take the yearbook into his room across the hall and sit on his bed flipping through, looking for pictures of Papa as a boy. The picture where Papa was smiling from the right side of the back row of “Award Winners!” was Thomas’s favourite. “Gordon Martin, Athlete of the Year: Hockey.” Thomas wished, though, that there was a picture of Papa playing.

Going to sleep, Thomas missed the noise of his old house where he’d slept above the kitchen and often drifted off listening to his parents cleaning up and talking to each other, their words muted and unrecognizable. Here, the machines in Papa’s room droned Thomas to sleep and hummed him awake in the morning.

One night, Papa woke shouting, “Free! Free! Let me free!”

The next afternoon, Thomas was sitting on the back porch when he heard Grannie and Mom talking about Papa. They couldn’t decide whether they were keeping him alive or keeping him comfortable. There was a noise like choking then a voice moaning. Thomas knew that it was Grannie. He heard a utensil drop. Shuffling. When Thomas looked through the window, Mom was hugging Grannie. Mom saw Thomas kneeling on the bench and looking in. She moved her lips like she was trying to smile, but the muscles at the corners of her mouth had other ideas. Then she winked and made a kissing mouth at Thomas before she turned and nuzzled Grannie’s neck.

Thomas slid off the bench and launched from the porch down onto the lawn. The grass was a bit longer than normal. Before leaving for work, Dad had promised Mom he’d cut it when he got home.

Thomas had been in the barn before. There was always dust dancing in the air as if to tease the old flat broom that leaned in one corner of the main floor. You had to watch where you stepped because some of the floorboards were split and opened onto the basement where the stalls were. There were no animals there now, just some old junk. Thomas remembered the big tube that looked like a jet’s fuselage, so he went down the wooden stairs, holding loosely to the thin, splintery banister. It was in the third stall he checked. He wanted to bring it up to the main floor of the barn, but it was made of thick cardboard and it was very heavy. After checking the floor for bugs and sharp things then sweeping it with his sneakers for insurance, Thomas got down on all fours. The tube had a thick tangle of spider webbing though the middle of it and its bottom was littered with empty potato bug exoskeletons. Besides, Thomas saw that it was only just wide enough for his shoulders. It wouldn’t make a very good rocket if he couldn’t move around inside it.

He climbed to the hayloft. It took a while to warm up to the game, but soon he was stomping around up there pretending it was the bridge of the Enterprise. He was shouting instructions to Spock and Sulu, Riker and Worf, Grannie and Papa and Mom and Dad and his friend Ingmar who lived down the street from his old house, when he heard the lawnmower start up. He went down the hayloft ladder thinking that it was Dad, but when he came out of the barn it was Mom there wearing Thomas’s Blue Jays hat and neon pink shorts. Grannie was sitting on the front porch and started waving at Thomas.

His eyes got teary and he half turned to go back to the barn, but he felt like there was a tractor beam holding him in Grannie’s line of vision then pulling him across the lawn towards her.

He sat down on the bench without smiling. Grannie wrapped her arm around him and gave him a squeeze. He tilted his head away from her. “Grannie’s okay now, Thomas.”

Thomas grunted.

“Would you like to play catch?”

“Mum’s cutting the grass.”

“She’s finished by the house here.” Grannie stood up. “Where’s your glove?”

Thomas turned away from her.

“I think I know where it is,” Grannie said.

“It’s okay, I don’t want to play.”

“Is it still by the front door?”

Thomas nodded.

Mom waved as she drove by. The sound of the lawn mower made Thomas feel sleepy.

“You’ll have to go easy on me,” Grannie said when she came back with a worn Dodger’s cap and two gloves, Thomas’s and Dad’s. “I haven’t played catch in years.”

Grannie was patient when Thomas threw wild. And she was good. Her throws popped satisfyingly into Thomas’s glove and before long he was smiling.

When Mom finished up, Grannie said she was tired. Mom took over for her. Grannie disappeared into the house and came back in a minute with three glasses of pink lemonade. Mom convinced Thomas to join her and Grannie on the porch.

“Have I ever told you about my ring?” Grannie held her hand out and twisted her engagement ring around until it sat the way she liked it. “Your Papa’s sister was engaged to a man. A boy seems more accurate, from where I’m sitting now.”

“Aunt Marge?” Mom asked.

“That’s right.” To Thomas, Grannie said, “your Mom’s Aunt Margaret. The boy’s name was Matthew, I think. Or maybe Mark. Isn’t that a shame? I can picture him, but I can’t remember which evangelist he was named for, except that it wasn’t Luke or John. Well, Margaret and this Matthew or Mark, they were quite the couple. You’d see them around town holding hands, laughing. Always seeming like they had some sort of private joke going. Not in some sort of mischievous way, just like you wanted to know what was so funny. Well, this Matthew or Mark—I think it was Mark—when England joined the Second World War and Canada joined right along with them, he was one of the first to sign up. Before he left for training, he asked for Marge’s hand and she said yes, of course.

“Your grandfather and I were already an item. He probably could have afforded a ring, but the war made everyone different about money. Or maybe it was that things like marriage seemed frivolous. He might just not have thought of it, knowing your father,” Grannie said, turning to Mom. “Anyway, one day Mark’s parents, they come up the door to your Papa’s house and ask to see Marge. They tell her that Mark’s been killed.”

“How?” Thomas asked.

“In the war,” Grannie said.

“I think he means, ‘In what way,’” Mom said.

“I don’t know,” Grannie said. “Isn’t that a shame?”

“That’s okay, Grannie,” Thomas said.

“Thank you, Thomas. The thing is, Marge gave Papa her engagement ring. It was some agreement she and Mark had, that if anything happened to Mark she should give the ring to Papa.”

“Then you married him,” Thomas said.

“Well, then he asked. I had to think about it, first.”

“For how long?” Mom asked.

“Not long. A day, I think. We hadn’t talked about it at all, not at any point.”

“But you said, Yes,” Thomas said.

“Of course. Or there would be no you.” Grannie squeezed him again. “And I’m glad there’s a you.”

“You must wonder what your journey would be like if you hadn’t said yes,” Mom said.

“What my life would have been like? I suppose. Doesn’t everybody?”

Thomas was eleven and a third when Papa died. The person who dressed his corpse and did the makeup, they did their best to turn the body Papa had become into someone that, with the lid of the casket open, resembled the man Papa had been a year earlier, the man in the photos that Mom and Grannie had given them to work from. Thomas couldn’t remember ever crying so hard as when they lowered the closed coffin into the ground.

Dad had built a little ice rink on a more or less flat part of their yard. Thomas started spending all of the time that he wasn’t at school on the rink. At night, the light from the porch wasn’t really strong enough to light the ice and was at such an angle that even the puck cast a long shadow. Dad ran an extension cord and put up a utility light with a tripod stand. Sometimes Dad would skate with Thomas and after a few circuits around the rink’s perimeter the two would pass a puck back and forth. Mom and Grannie would come out too. They were both very good on skates and with the puck. They laughed as they played.

One evening at dinner, Mom asked if they should have signed Thomas up for hockey that winter. He shook his head, No. “’Cause when I asked, you said you didn’t want to play, right?’” Thomas nodded, Yes.

Have you seen Field of Dreams? Mom had seen the movie and Dad had even read the book, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella. In Field of Dreams, a man builds a ball diamond in the middle of a cornfield because a voice tells him, “If you build it,” meaning the baseball diamond, “he will come.” So, when Shoeless Joe Jackson arrives, you think that’s the “he” the voice is talking about, but it isn’t. The father of the man who builds the diamond played minor league baseball and it is the man’s father who eventually comes, the man’s dead father is the “he” the voice is talking about. 

Thomas knew that if he said something about Field of Dreams sitting there at the dinner table that he would start to cry. Then he started crying anyway and Mom got up and pulled her chair over next to him so she could put her arm around him and Dad and Grannie looked at him with sympathy and concern and love and Thomas felt like a little baby and wished he could disappear or could be beamed up to his room or back out on the ice rink where the tears would sting his freezing cheeks.

Toronto, December 2015

Emoji Sequence: Dave Buschemeyer of Formless Form and formerly of New Day Rising.

Story: Lee Sheppard