Читать книгу The Quarantine Review, Issue 4 - Группа авторов - Страница 7

FICTION

Based on a True Story

rob mclennan

It isn’t so much that geniuses make it look easy; it’s that they make it look fast.

—Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments

1.

A story could begin with an idea, or a phrase. Sometimes a character. And while characters might not require names, naming is often an anchor around which mine develop, progressing both story and action.

If I name him Sean, for example, or switch gender, what differences might emerge? All of my biases, conscious and unconscious, on full display. One hopes I might notice some blind spots, and correct, as appropriate. I suppose, in this, I attempt my limitations.

John, Siobhan, Gwendolyn, Christine. Stephen. Names of people I know. I find myself gravitate towards a list of unfamiliar names, around which characters are far easier to compose: Ethelme, Malcolm, Alberta. Thais.

Ethelme: a short, blonde crop of hair, and dark-rimmed glasses. The years she worked as a barista to fund her post-secondary studies. Her subsequent years in a variety of offices, assisting federal government employees file grievances—against co-workers, managers, higher-ups. Ten years on, most days she feels like a superhero: problem-solving, fighting the good fight. Occasionally she feels eroded, her energy depleted, an endless email sequence. Weeknights collapsed in a contented heap upon husband and children.

But who, you might ask, is she?

2.

Regina slides her left index finger alongside her temple and hairline, releasing a stray hair. Caught in the hinge of her glasses.

The snow descends. It has been for hours. Across the small table, Thais the shape of soft clay as she speaks. Thais forms words that solidify as they strike air, finding both mass and gravity, and clatter the silverware, chip at the plates and her wine glass.

Thais insists on mispronouncing Regina’s name. I am not the city, she wrote on her profile. Re-gee-na. She repeats, a fourth time. Thais pauses, with only the slightest flicker of comprehension.

As first dates go, Regina realizes, Thais is the dumbest person imaginable. However stunning she might be in that dress. Tattoo-sleeves the full length of each arm, slipping under white crinoline. How could someone with such a name be so god-damned clueless? Regina sips at her wine, resolute. There will be no second date. Although that doesn’t preclude something happening later tonight.

Two tables over and one across, Ethelme treats herself. While she enjoys the company of others, sometimes it is good to sit alone for a meal and gather thoughts, away from office, husband, children. A second glass of wine, and the new issue of Brick: A Literary Journal. A tablecloth free of marks or stains. A floor free of loose Lego bricks, stuffed animals, mismatched shoes. Endless Cheerios.

3.

Sean: a strawberry blonde, with soft curls that tease out his eyelashes. Eyes marble-blue. A white enough complexion that his mother would slather his pre-adolescent body with sunscreen before he was allowed to leave the house each morning. A concern he might burst into flame.

Now he walks the four blocks at the end of each school day to collect his three children, none of whom are wearing their sun hats. Pale enough, between himself and Ethelme, that they might just be transparent. Veins ripple blue. As Sean jokes: you can see their bones.

Each of their boys: skin slightly red, on their cheeks and their arms. Unfazed.

Children dash through the schoolyard in every direction, his boys abandon backpacks at Sean’s feet before returning to friends.

A bumper sticker in the school parking lot reads: Be brave enough to be kind.

4.

When she was sixteen years old, Regina’s mother informed her that she had originally been one of twins, her sister lost in utero. It came as a shock, realizing she was meant to be paired. As her mother explained, the baby had developed in such a way that she would have threatened them both.

Her mother had named the baby Theresa, after her own mother, who would soon die of breast cancer. A naming that had attempted to create a connection to that painful absence. Instead: one loss compounding another.

Prior to this, Regina had never been aware of any missing piece, but now it was all she could think of. She was profoundly aware.

She would rather not have known.

5.

Ethelme is caught on a detail, from an article on Christian miracles: set in the sweltering candle-fed heat of a deep chamber, the Blessed Virgin statue that begins to weep blood. A miracle. Let me feel your heat, believers. Instead, consider the possibility that small holes had been drilled into the corners of each eye, and that these holes are filled with red liquid, sealed in with wax. The heat of the cave melting wax, and the miracle of tears.

6.

After hearing the story of Regina’s lost twin, Doris responds that she’d rather know something bad than know nothing at all. Doris, herself, had only just discovered that she was the product of rape. She’d known her whole life that she’d been adopted, but had only recently managed contact with her birth mother, who had offered that particular fact in response.

She would rather have known, Doris repeats. The not knowing, to her, was far worse.

Regina doesn’t agree at all. She found this whole conversation disturbing. Even beyond the trauma her mother would have carried, how could Doris handle the fact that her birth father a rapist?

And would this carry over? What if Doris were to birth a boy? What might he become?

Good lord, no, Doris responds. There’s no way that would happen.

Regina shudders. Changes the subject.

7.

Thais: Greek, meaning “the beloved,” although alternate meanings include “bandage.” Named for the doctor that delivered her, in the unimaginatively-named Mississauga Hospital. While they themselves were not Greek, her maternal great-great-grandmother was born on the island of Mykonos. So that counts, her mother claimed.

She wakes, solo. Door unlocked. An uninspired note left on the kitchen counter.

8.

As the sun slowly sets, there is a flare in the air over the playground. It is blinding and radiant and completely silent. The light solidifies, roughly the size and tenor of a small car, but fills the entire imagination of those on the ground. It holds in the sky for a moment, blinks, and disappears.

Had it been blue, they might have blamed a transformer, bursting out through the clouds.

It is mentioned for months after, but in hushed tones, until it begins to normalize. It is simply a thing that happened, like a well-remembered television show, the death of a distant relative, or that time the train was delayed.

But ask yourself: what does any of this have to do with the story?