Читать книгу Something Remains - Hassan Ghedi Santur - Страница 12
ОглавлениеAndrew’s heart sinks as he listens to the man on the other side of the telephone saying, “This is Constable Abraham of 51 Division. May I speak with Andrew Christiansen, please?”
He can’t imagine losing two parents in one day but knows it is possible. It is not statistically impossible, nor is he so special as to be karmically immune to great misfortunes. Andrew also knows that given the bereaved state his father was in, he could have easily run the Volvo into a light pole or driven off a bridge. Such horrifying scenarios are within the realm of possibility. Therefore, when Constable Abraham asks him to come to the police station to post bail for his father who is sitting in a cell charged with assault, it is the last thing he expects.
A little later, as Andrew parallel-parks outside the police station, he is overwhelmed by a deluge of emotions. His heart breaks for his father who will have to learn how to live without a wife and constant companion. Andrew also feels the numbing shock of his mother’s death, not to mention the fatigue of being on his feet since the morning. Underneath all that is the guilt of forgetting to call his wife to tell her about his mother’s passing. However, his most immediate reaction as he opens the heavy glass door of the police station is sheer gratitude that his father is safe, held in a cell where the man can’t be a danger to himself or anyone else.
After posting the $3,000 bail, Andrew waits in the reception area. “Huh?” was all he could say when the policeman told him about the bowling alley brawl. But his surprise that his father was in a bowling alley of all places took a back seat to the charge of assault. His father, the pacifist, the believer in non-violent solutions to world problems, the man who drove all the way to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate against the Vietnam War, who voted for any politician advocating the banning of guns, now sits in jail for smashing another person’s face. Unbelievable! Andrew thinks as he waits for his father to emerge. And the more he ponders the situation, the less he feels he knows his father.
When the glass door finally slides open and Andrew’s father steps out, he seems too frail to have beaten anyone. Andrew smiles, trying his best not to appear disapproving. However, Gregory’s dirt-covered khakis, the torn pocket of his blue shirt, and the cut over his left eyebrow make it impossible not to judge. They stare at each other for a moment, then without a word walk side by side out of the building.
As Andrew drives north on Parliament Street toward his father’s house near Bathurst Street and Eglinton Avenue, he wants to ask Gregory what possessed him to attack another man in a bowling alley. But he doesn’t. Andrew can see that whatever the cause, just or unjust, his father seems sorry about the outcome. Besides, they have more pressing matters to worry about. They have a funeral to plan, relatives to notify, an obituary to write, not to mention getting a good lawyer to sort out the bowling alley mess.
“Natalie has called Aunt Doris, who said she’d call everyone else, and Uncle Dave is flying in tomorrow,” Andrew says without taking his eyes off the road. “I’m going to take care of the funeral home and the obituary, and Natalie will handle the rest.”
“What about me?” Gregory asks.
“You’re in no condition.”
“Bullshit.”
“Dad, you need to rest.”
“Don’t treat me like an invalid.”
“I’m not. I’m just worried about —”
“I’ll find the funeral home. You’ll take care of the rest, and that’s final.”
Andrew knows better than to argue with his father, a man whose stubbornness has always been formidable under the best of circumstances. He pulls the cab into his father’s driveway and turns off the engine. Reaching for the door lock to get out, he notices that his father isn’t moving, so he remains seated, gazing at the red garage door in front of them. They sit in this fashion for quite a while. It feels so long that Andrew begins to worry. He wouldn’t put it past his father to stay in the car all night, so he makes the first move. Touching Gregory’s wrist to be certain his father is still awake, he suggests, “Dad, why don’t you go in? You must be starving.”
“I should paint that door,” Gregory says.
“What?”
“The garage door.” He moves his chin up a little to point to the door in question.“Your mother nagged me to repaint it for months.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll paint it.”
“Before the funeral. We have to do it before the funeral. She would hate people visiting us with a door like that.”
Andrew tries to hide a surge of impatience. “I’ll paint the door, Dad.”
They stare at the garage door as if waiting for it to tell them what to do next.
“We really should go in,” Andrew says at last, putting authority in his tone. “Natalie’s worried to death in there.”
Gregory finally gets out of the car. Andrew follows him, registering a tinge of pride for his display of strength against his father’s childish obstinacy.
When they stroll in the front door, they are confronted by a dishevelled Natalie. Her hair is mussed and her blouse is covered with large red stains. She hugs her father with relief.
“What the hell happened to you?” Gregory demands.
“I was cooking. I wanted to have something ready to eat when you came home. We’ll have to order pizza, though.”
“I’m not hungry,” Gregory mutters as he climbs the stairs, leaving his children in the mustard-yellow foyer.
They watch him trudge up. Once alone, Andrew turns to Natalie and chuckles. “You tried to cook?”
“Oh, shut up!” Natalie snaps as they head toward the kitchen to inspect the damage.
Andrew feels a jolt of happiness that he can still get satisfaction from teasing his sister even on a day such as this one.
Standing in a corner of the elevator, Andrew stares at the changing red digital numbers above the door. It occurs to him that he hasn’t shed a single tear yet for his mother, who he imagines lying in the hospital morgue, body growing colder with each passing minute. He is dismayed by his lack of emotion. It is as if his heart hasn’t caught up with the dizzying speed with which the events of the day have occurred. And the day still isn’t over. Turning the key in the door to his apartment, he tries to construct the words to tell his wife that his mother is dead. His mother liked Rosemary — a lot. She told him so when he informed her that Rosemary was two months’ pregnant with his child.
“Marry her, you fool,” his mother said to him as she struggled to sit up in bed, exhausted from another chemotherapy dose earlier that morning. “She’s a sad girl, no surprise considering her parents, but she’s kind and hard-working. If that doesn’t make a good wife, then I give up.”
Rosemary once lived two houses down from the Christiansen family, with a bipolar mother who spent most days watching Portuguese soap operas while knitting miles and miles of colourful bedspreads no one ever bought. Her father used his job driving a Greyhound bus as an excuse to be away from home most of the year. So it was natural for Andrew’s mother to develop a soft spot for the shy, scrawny girl whose flat chest made her unpopular with boys at school, and more dismayingly, with girls, as well. Because Andrew was the only guy among his peers who was nice to her, and because they were neighbours, Rosemary found a second home with the Christiansens where after school she would watch Wheel of Fortune — a game she beat everyone at — or help Ella prepare supper.
Given all that, Andrew wasn’t surprised to hear his mother say, “Marry her, you fool” — especially since Rosemary was carrying his child, the result of many evenings driving her home when she visited his mother at the hospital. It had started with one awkward kiss on Rosemary’s porch and had progressed to what could only be described as several months of comfort sex, the type two sad, lonely people share as a temporary refuge.
As Andrew now enters his apartment and quietly closes the door, he knows he will probably find his wife in one of the two bedrooms of their tiny apartment at the corner of Finch Avenue and Yonge Street where they are a visible minority among the upwardly mobile yuppies occupying much of the building. Just as he suspected, Rosemary is on their queen-size bed. They wanted a king, but the room that pretends to be the master suite doesn’t accommodate anything larger than a queen. His wife is propped against the bed’s headboard, her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose as she reads another romance novel.
Andrew once made the mistake of suggesting that since Rosemary spent so much time reading, why not make the effort worthwhile by reading something good. She didn’t speak to him for three days. Instead of perceiving his suggestion as innocent, albeit pompous, Rosemary interpreted it as a comment not so much on her intelligence, for she was confident in her intellect, but a cowardly reminder that she lacked the kind of sophistication her husband found sexy in a woman. Andrew has come to realize that his wife’s homeliness is a particular sore point with her. Also problematic are his world travels as a photojournalist and all the adventures and exotic love affairs such a career rightly or wrongly implies. A background like that makes the differences between them all the more striking.
After his comment about his wife’s choice of reading material, Andrew learned to keep his mouth shut. He truly believes that one of the reasons his wife is so unhappy, and as a result angry, is that she reads romance novels in which all the men are wealthy and dashing and all the women are long-legged and gorgeous. If she stopped reading those novels, Andrew feels, she would be content with the mediocrity of her life. Or, failing that, she would learn to value its many quiet virtues.
Andrew knows Rosemary wasn’t reading before he arrived. More likely she was pacing the kitchen floor, anxiously awaiting his return. However, his wife would rather eat a rotting octopus than let on she was fretting. But despite her attempt to seem nonchalant, he always finds her waiting to tell him how horrible he is for not doing the hundred and one things she asks him to do on any given day.
Normally, Andrew takes exception to her complaints about his shortcomings, but tonight he, too, would concur with her. This morning when his father called and told him to rush to the hospital, Andrew turned off his cellphone and hasn’t checked the countless messages his wife has likely left by now. To make matters worse, he was so overwhelmed by the events of the day that he forgot to let Rosemary know that Ella, the woman who had been more of a mother to her than a mother-in-law, was dead.
Andrew sits on the edge of the bed gingerly looking at his wife, doing his best to seem guilty. He takes his shirt off as Rosemary carefully puts the novel on the night table and folds her arms. Andrew can sense the coming recriminations.
“Before you say anything, I just want to ask you a simple question,” Rosemary says slowly as if talking to one of her more difficult fourth-grade students. “Do I or do I not have the right to be angry? You’re always accusing me of being angry, that I make too much out of —”
“Honey, I’m really sorry. I have —”
“Andrew, no! First, I want you to acknowledge the validity of my feelings and make a genuine effort to understand why I feel the way I do before you try to pacify me.”
He hates the inane therapy jargon she uses on her emotionally troubled students, but this isn’t the time to bring that up. Instead he plays it safe. “Sweetie, I do understand how you feel —”
“Fuck you, Andrew. You have no fucking idea how I feel.”
He is always shocked when his wife swears, even though he has spent more than a year listening to her curse as if she were auditioning for a Quentin Tarantino flick.
“I left you seven goddamn messages and not once did you bother to call me. Didn’t it occur to you there might be a legitimate reason for my calls? I could’ve been raped, for fuck’s sake. I could’ve been strangled and left to die, for all you knew.
Hanna could’ve fallen out of her crib and —”
Andrew’s heart leaps with fear. “Is Hanna all right?”
“No, your daughter’s fine,” Rosemary says quickly as though realizing that bringing Hanna into the fight is a low blow. “But that’s not the point, Andrew.”
“Then what the fuck is the point?” He recently noticed that he only swears when fighting with his wife — her casual use of expletives gives him the permission to do likewise.
“The fucking point is you wouldn’t know if she wasn’t okay. I could’ve been scraping her brains off the goddamn floor and you wouldn’t know because you didn’t bother to pick up the phone.
That’s the fucking point.”
Andrew, who has now taken his pants off, leaving on his blue boxers, gets off the bed and goes over to the closet where he throws in his jeans and sweater and takes out a wrinkled grey T-shirt. He sniffs it to check if it is clean. It could use a spin in the washing machine, but he is too tired to be picky tonight, so he puts it on. Then he returns to the exact position on the bed where he was sitting.
“Well?” Rosemary says.
“Well what?”
“An explanation would be nice.”
“I turned my cellphone off. Is that enough explanation?”
“What’s the point of paying for the thing if you’re just going to shut it off?”
Andrew doesn’t respond. He is too exhausted for tit-for-tat tonight. The death of a loved one has a way of making winning an argument inconsequential. On the edge of the bed he bows his head, lets his shoulders slump, and dangles his arms as if they were deflated balloons. “My mother’s dead,” he whispers, finally giving into the fatigue of this wretched day.
Rosemary doesn’t reply. Either shock or just plain not having a clever comeback has rendered his otherwise cantankerous wife speechless. After a moment, Andrew glances up to see if she heard what he said. Her slap-on-the-face expression indicates she did.
“What the fuck, Andrew!” she screams. “When were you going to tell me? I mean, you could’ve told me the minute you came through the door.”
“You didn’t give me a chance. Besides, you could’ve asked me.”
“What should I have said exactly — hi, hon, is your mother dead yet?”
Andrew glares at her menacingly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That was horrible. All I’m saying is that you could’ve told me rather than let me bitch about the stupid messages. Do you really think I’m so heartless that it wouldn’t have made a difference to me?”
“No, I don’t think that. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing.” Actually, Andrew isn’t really sure if that is true or not.
“Of course, you don’t. How can you?” Rosemary crawls on the bed over to Andrew. She wraps her arms around him from behind, encircling her bony, pasty legs around his waist as she kisses him on the back of the neck and whispers how sorry she is. Andrew turns his head, his face meeting hers. They kiss. It is a sweet, consoling, sexless kiss, the kind he has longed for all day. Rosemary starts to cry.
Andrew wipes her tears with the open palm of his hand. “Don’t cry,” he whispers. “Don’t cry.”
“I loved her. She wasn’t an in-law to me. She was a like a mother.” Her voice cracks.
Andrew knows Rosemary’s words are heartfelt, that her sentiments aren’t the hollow kind people are compelled to offer to the relatives of the dead no matter what their true feelings are. He has always despised false tributes — like the time he was watching the funeral of Richard Nixon in a hotel room in Kinshasa and he threw the can of yogurt he was eating at the television because he couldn’t stand the sight of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and so many other dignitaries pretending to be sad for the loss of one of the most loathsome presidents in American history. So when Rosemary says that his mother was like another mother to her, he knows she is sincere and is moved.
“When did it happen?” Rosemary asks after her tears subside.
“This morning Dad called me on my cell, just as I started working. I meant to call you, but I had to drive to my parents’ place to pick up Natalie, who flew in late last night. We rushed to the hospital, and by the time we got there, Mom was already in the ICU. We didn’t get to see her alive.” Andrew glances at his wife, who now seems sadder than he has ever seen her, even more than she was on their high school prom day when her date stood her up and his mother asked, actually demanded, that he take her instead. And he complied begrudgingly but was glad he did, not because it made him feel compassionate or heroic but because they ended up having such a nice time as friends without all the weird expectation of customary prom-night sex.
They sit silently for a minute, holding each other, then change positions. Now she sits at the foot of the bed, side by side, takes his head in her hands, and rests it on her lap.
Her cool cotton nightgown feels so good on the side of Andrew’s face. He looks up at her face. “After we found out that she passed away, we lost Dad.”
“Lost Dad?”
“He ran away, and we looked for him all over the hospital.”
“Did he go home?”
“That’s what we thought, so we went home, but he wasn’t there. Natalie wanted to call the police and report a missing person, but I told her to wait a little longer.”
“When did he come home?”
“He didn’t. I had to pick him up at the police station.”
“What? Why?”
“He beat up some guy in a bowling alley.”
“A bowling alley? What on earth was he doing there?”
“Bowling, I gather.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I, honey.”
“Wow!”
“I know.”
“Now do you see why I forgot to call you?”
“I do. I’m sorry. I did go nuts on you, didn’t I?”
Andrew nods.
She bends and kisses him on the lips.“What a day you’ve had.”
Andrew sighs. “I just want it to end. Make it go away.”
Rosemary pulls his head off her lap. “Lie down and get some sleep.”
“I can’t sleep. I have to write an obituary for the newspaper tomorrow.”
“Don’t they have people who do that?” she asks, clearly unfamiliar with the rituals of death.
“Dad wants it to be personal. He doesn’t want a complete stranger writing it.”
“That’s understandable. I wouldn’t like someone who’s never met me to write about me when I’m dead.”
“I don’t even know what to say. Where do I start?”
It is one-thirty in the morning. Andrew nurses a glass of whiskey he poured himself ten minutes ago with the hope of lubricating his mind so he can write his mother’s obituary. All he has done, though, is stand by his eighth-floor living-room window and stare down at Finch Avenue, giving him a perfect view of the long, narrow bus bay of the subway station.
Andrew watches several people waiting for a bus in the cold, wet September night. As he takes another slow sip of whiskey, he wonders who these people are and where they are going at this late hour. He often finds himself doing that — gazing at people in the midst of their lives. Whether from behind the lens of his camera or through the windshield of his cab, he is always captivated by the sight of other human beings rushing to work, walking their dogs, kissing in the a park under a tree, or lingering at a city intersection, pausing for a light to change.
Witnessing the private stories of others playing out in public isn’t just a hobby but a compulsion. Something about the simple act of observing others moves him. He is touched not so much by their activities, for they are almost always banal, but the very fact that they exist, that out there, at any given moment in Toronto, in any city in the world, are millions of private little narratives unfolding, some beginning, others ending, all adding up to an unfathomable master narrative whose ultimate conclusion is anybody’s guess.
One of the people waiting for a bus is a tall African man who could pass for the doppelganger of Andrew’s friend Zakhariye, which reminds him that he should tell Zakhariye about his mother. Watching people is what made Andrew a good photojournalist. He has never had what could be called a technique or artistic vision, but he does possess the gift of observation. As he takes another sip of his drink, Andrew thinks about the millions of stories that need to be written, painted, photographed, captured in some way for others to see and maybe find consolation in.
A bus finally arrives and parks next to the line of people. They board the vehicle, but it idles for a while. Suddenly, a heavy-set woman with a long blond mullet emerges from the station. She is holding two plastic bags in each hand and starts running. Andrew knows that catching the bus will make the difference between getting home to a warm bed or standing in the cold for thirty or forty minutes, maybe longer. The woman tries to move faster, but her weight holds her back. Andrew thinks about the blank page that still waits for him. He shakes his head.
He spent the past hour at the dinner table attempting to compose a short obituary to inform Torontonians about the life and death of a woman most of them never met and couldn’t care less about. Andrew doesn’t understand the point of the exercise. Its apparent futility makes him even sadder. But his father was adamant that it be done, that they inform whoever is out there about the special woman this town has lost.
Andrew wonders what his father thinks writing an obituary will accomplish. Does he imagine someone out there, perhaps an old friend she lost touch with or one of the young men she dated before she married him, will read the newspaper and discover his wife’s death, share his loss, and grieve with him from afar?
Already Andrew has tried three drafts and found the task of distilling his mother’s life into a few sentences next to impossible. How does one sum up a full, rich, well-lived life? Frustrated and feeling unequal to the task, Andrew now finds himself watching an obese woman frantically trying to catch a bus. He notices he has been holding his breath as he follows her progress. The bus has been idling for sometime now and could drive away at any minute. But she is so close. What a shame it will be, he thinks, what a shame if she doesn’t make it after such a valiant effort. Does God see our efforts?
Andrew isn’t even sure if he believes in God anymore. His former life as a photojournalist took him to the gaping mouths of dug-up mass graves in Bosnia and villages in Bangladesh drowned by nature’s indifference, making it difficult to accept a supreme, benevolent being watching over everyone.
Gazing out the window, he wants to believe there is a God who sees how hard people try — like the fat woman racing for the bus — how much everyone strives only to fall a little short. Tonight, though, one woman does succeed. She reaches the bus’s rear door and boards the vehicle. The bus comes to life and slowly turns westward on Finch. He tilts his neck as far as he can to track the bus until it disappears, then smiles.
Andrew is so happy for her. Whoever she is, wherever she is going, his heart is glad for her small triumph. He takes the last sip of whiskey, relishing its sweet aftertaste in the contours of his mouth. Then he returns to the blank page on the table, hopeful that he, too, will have his own small victory and find the right language to pay tribute to the life of Ella K. Christiansen.
As if by sheer inspiration, the words, good, solid, truthful ones about his mother, tumble onto the page. Andrew’s previous attempts produced what sounded to him like overly sentimental rubbish, and now here it is — a brief, honest, unembroidered account of his mother’s life. As he puts the finishing touches on the piece, the shrill, start-stop-start crying of his daughter drifts out of her room. Although he yearns to finish the obituary, he is happy for the urgent intrusion of the living upon the final affairs of the dead.
Andrew goes to his daughter’s room and opens the door. He stands over the dimly lit crib where Hanna, a chubby-faced, seven-month-old girl, sits cross-legged in the middle like a Buddhist monk. She has recently learned to sit on her own and takes every opportunity to use her newly discovered independence. As soon as she sees Andrew, she raises her arms, a gesture she performs with perfection. Hanna is supremely confident of the outcome of her action — that her father will pick her up. And she is right; it never fails. Andrew sweeps her up in one smooth motion and holds her warm, soft body close to him. He kisses her head, its soft curls pressing on his lips. The scent of baby oil hits him, making him dizzy with joy.
“She must be hungry,” Rosemary says.
He turns to find his wife standing behind him. “I’ve got her. Go back to sleep. I’ll warm up her bottle.”
Rosemary wobbles back to their bedroom as Andrew carries his daughter to the kitchen. Hanna’s bottle of formula milk has already been prepared for a late-night feeding like this. He puts the bottle in the sink, runs hot water over it for a minute, then tests the milk by pouring a little on his hand. Happy with its temperature, he takes a seat at the kitchen breakfast nook. Holding Hanna on his lap, he places the bottle in her waiting mouth. She wraps her tiny pink fingers on the bottle as if to say to her father: “I can hold it myself, thank you.”
As she sucks on the bottle, her brown eyes — the exact shade of her father’s — focus on him. Hanna tilts her head up slightly as if trying to remember who the man with the bottle is. Then her little red lips curl into a big grin in recognition.
