Читать книгу The Jade Butterfly - Jeffrey Round - Страница 6

Toronto 2009:

The Complexity of Desire

Dan raised his head from the pillow. He’d been dreaming of crowds, angry and surging around him in a panic. The darkness receded. A vein pulsed behind his eye. He sat up and pushed the curtains aside, letting daylight stream over him. The dreams were getting worse, not better. It was to the point where he feared going to bed.

After a night like this, he woke feeling drained rather than refreshed. Sleep meant struggle and torment, not rest and a simple respite from the day. For most people, daytime was what they wanted to escape. Night was where they sought relief from their unfulfilled lives: bitter spouses, ungrateful children, and endless hours spent at meaningless jobs. It was the night Dan feared.

This was nothing so mundane as a wet dream coming to unsettle the prudish mind. These were dreamscapes filled with anxiety and dread. Sometimes they were of crowds, pulsing and restive. At other times they held a terror of the simplest things, fears that lay buried in his subconscious, overwhelming him as he lay in bed and burned, night after night, unable to wake.

Perhaps it came from too many years spent tracking people who vanished, often inexplicably and without a trace. People who left behind family, friends, and colleagues to wonder what had gone wrong in a country as advanced and enlightened as Canada, where such things were not supposed to happen. Lately, the dreams had taken on an even more personal tone, leaving Dan feeling vulnerable and exposed.

The worst was the dream of the empty bucket. It was hard to believe he was paralyzed by the sight of a child’s pail sitting empty by the edge of the sea. Usually it was a variation on one he’d owned when he was four: galvanized steel, purple, with a plastic handle and a string of white seashells ringing the edges in soft undulations.

In his dream, the sun danced brightly on the water and the sand felt warm beneath his feet. But always, as he approached the bucket, a surge of despair overtook him like an unseen tide. He was consumed by an urge to grip the handle and lift it clear of the waves lapping at its sides. Then, to his horror, he watched as the water poured through the rusted-out bottom. Dan felt this presaged something dire about his life, as though it too could never contain anything for long. Somewhere in the distance, his mother was calling.

He turned instinctively from her voice, not wanting to see the breasts dangling beneath the open blouse. Not wanting to see her nakedness. If it was one of her bad days, she would be sloppy, her hair uncombed. Her breath would smell. On bad days, Dan was afraid of seeing her. He would try to hide from her in his dreams.

On nights like these he woke to sweat-soaked sheets, trying to clear his head and fight off a sense of numbing loss. Amazing how the images can resonate in your mind for years, he thought. He still remembered that trip to the beach, the wearing away of a hazy afternoon as his mother and a man who might have been his father got drunk. Then, later, stumbling on the pair in the bushes as she straddled the man lying prone beneath her. Dan recalled his fascination with her exposed breasts and something standing erect between the man’s legs.

When they left the beach that day, he forgot to collect his pail. They were halfway home when he remembered. But the man would not go back for it, despite Dan’s wailing. To quiet him, they stopped at the Dairy Queen and bought him a banana split. Dan still had a photograph of this outing, or one just like it, where he sat at the shore filling his pail with sand. It was the last summer of his mother’s life. She would die at Christmas, locked out in the snow all night after a drunken argument with his father before succumbing to pneumonia soon after. It was one of a handful of memories he retained of her. By the time he was grown, she’d been reduced to an outline. Except lately, when she returned to haunt his dreams.

Mornings were never easy.

Dan lay in bed, hoping this false start wouldn’t colour the whole day. The sooner he got up and tackled his duties, the sooner he’d feel normal. Whatever normal was.

He stumbled to the shower, first hot then mind-numbingly cold, till he felt revived. Next, he dried himself off and slung the towel over the shower rod. The glycerine-tinged eyes of some off-hours werewolf stared back from the mirror. A thin red line edged down the side of his face like a contour on an elevation map, the reminder of a doorframe he’d encountered when he was ten. Stubble had sprouted overnight, marking his face like a stain that could not be wiped away. His chest needed a clipping too, he noted, but that would wait for another day. He ran his fingers through his hair once, twice, then shook and pressed it into place. Wash and wear was good.

As he shaved, he listened for sounds of life from downstairs. None. His son had likely already gone to class. Lately he thought Ked had been avoiding him, getting up early and heading out before they could talk.

Not this morning, however. He came downstairs to find a handsome young man in pajamas sitting at the kitchen table, a ginger retriever near his feet. The dog looked up momentarily then turned away.

Dan glanced at the clock and frowned.

“Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?”

His son gave him a doleful look. “Earth to Dad — it’s Saturday.”

“Oh, right.” Dan winked. “Just checking to see if you knew. You’re lucky you have weekends, you know. I don’t have the luxury.”

Ked shrugged. “So take the day off. You’re your own boss.”

“Can’t — too much to do.”

Ralph grumped in the corner then turned on his side to catch the sun streaming through the French doors and across his tawny fur. Outside, the trees were filling in, buds popping into leaves, their branches growing heavy with green again.

“I can make pancakes,” Ked offered after a moment.

“Sounds good,” Dan said. “I’m hungry.”

“You look grumpy.”

“I’m not.” He smiled as if to prove it. Probably not convincingly, after the tortured sleep he’d had.

His son stood and went to the cupboards. He brought down a box of mix and reached for the measuring cup.

“Buttermilk okay?”

“Works for me.”

Dan watched as Ked prepared the batter. Darkness edged the boy’s cheeks and chin, making him look older than usual.

“Saving on razor blades these days?”

“Ha-ha.”

Ked glanced over, seriousness etched on his features. His mouth twitched. He seemed about to say something, but the words weren’t coming.

“What?” Dan said.

“Just — I don’t know. How do you know when you like someone?”

“Like?”

Ked shrugged, turned back to the bowl of batter.

“You know.”

Fifteen. It wasn’t the easiest age. Teenage trauma, the turmoil at finding life’s unanswered questions plotting your doom and staring you in the face each morning when you looked in the mirror or read it in the faces of others around you.

“Do you want the simple explanation or the complicated explanation?”

Ked shrugged again without looking over.

“Dunno.”

“Okay, then let’s start with simple. You go to school five days a week, more or less, and at some point you realize there’s a face you see every day that stands out from the others. You start looking forward to seeing that particular face. It resonates with you. You feel excited when you see her in the crowd.”

He watched his son. Ked focused on the bowl of mix, turned up the burner, dribbled oil in the pan.

“Good so far?”

“Yeah.”

“Sometimes you want to talk to her, just her alone.” Dan held up a finger. “But where you can talk to almost anyone else with no problem, this particular person seems like the hardest person in the world to get together with and just be yourself.”

Ked’s mouth grimaced.

“Sometimes you feel really stupid around her, no matter what you say.”

His son sighed. “Yeah, that’s for sure.”

Dan tried to hide a smile, but Ked was too focused on the frying pan to notice.

“Why?”

“Why?” Dan thought this over. “It’s hard to say. Nerves, hormones. It’s chemistry. But now we’re getting into the complicated answer. Let’s say you’re at a certain age where your body is starting to change and your personality is becoming more complex. You realize you want things you never wanted before. It’s like you’re going through training all over again. All the things that worked for you before are starting to have different results. You need to learn to drive all over again.”

“I don’t drive.”

“Well, that’s not the right metaphor for everybody. Let’s just say things are looking very different from what you’re used to. And because this person — this girl — is likely starting to notice you too, it matters more. Suddenly it’s a big deal. You want to look cool. You want to sound smart when you talk to her, but you think you look like a jerk.”

“Yeah — a real jerk.”

“It happens to everyone, Ked. You don’t need to feel bad about it.”

The oil was crackling. Ked scooped a ladleful of batter and let it fall onto the pan where it sizzled on contact. Dan went to the fridge and removed the tin of maple syrup, then grabbed a peach and sliced it into a bowl. Setting everything on the table, he noticed the envelope with the Purolator label: MR. DAN SHARP, SPECIAL PRIVATE INVESTIGATION SERVICES. It sounded awfully formal.

“When did this come?”

“Not sure,” Ked said with a shrug. “It was at the front door when I walked Ralph this morning.”

Dan turned it in his hands. He could just make out the scrawl, but didn’t recognize the sender’s address. He slit the package open and a smaller envelope slid out. No markings, nothing to indicate what it was or who had sent it.

“So how do you know when she likes you?” Ked asked.

Dan picked up the smaller envelope, weighing it in his hands, then set it aside. He turned to his son. “You might see it in her face. The way she looks at you when you pass each other in the hall. Eventually, you’ll know because it becomes the most natural thing in the world to spend time with her. Your heart stops racing and your tongue stops tripping over itself and you begin to like the way she looks at you when you look at her.”

The pan was smoking. Ked seemed lost in thought.

“You might want to turn that down a bit.”

“Oh, shit!”

Ked grabbed the spatula and turned the cakes, carefully, one after another. They were just right, Dan noted. Lacy edges crisping into brown, the centres lighter, off-yellow. A man and his son bonding over cooking. The twenty-first century was such a novelty.

“Why are some people confused about their sexuality?” Ked asked.

Dan flashed on the dream where he was equally revolted and fascinated by the sight of his mother’s nakedness.

“Good question. The verdict’s not entirely in on that one, but I think nature sets up a few taboos. You’ve heard of incest?”

“Of course.”

“Well, genetics will tell you it’s not a healthy thing, in the long run, if ever. So there’s that. It’s also partly because when it comes to sex most people are not properly educated. They’re often told to fear the very things they desire.”

“You’re talking about gay people.”

“I’m talking about sexual desire in general. If we’re repeatedly told that sex is bad and that pleasure is bad then we don’t get a chance to think things through for ourselves. That could be anybody, gay, straight, or other.”

Ked slid the pancakes onto a plate and poured more batter into the pan.

“So, like religion, then.”

“Religion, politics, morality. It doesn’t matter. It’s hard to decide what’s right for you when the facts are distorted by other people’s beliefs.”

“That’s messy. It can screw up your mind.”

“That’s for sure.”

Ked fidgeted in silence for a bit, watching the new batch sizzle.

“What about you and Mom?” he asked quietly.

“What about us?”

He turned to his father. “Did you want to be with her? You know, when …” He shrugged, embarrassed.

“When we conceived you?”

Ked looked down at the pan again. “Yeah.”

Dan considered how to position this one. “That was not entirely desire on my part, but peer pressure. I felt I had to be manly, and at that age I thought being manly meant wanting to have sex with women. Because that’s what I’d been taught to believe.”

Ked flipped the pancakes while he thought that one over.

“But did you want to?”

“Well, I did want to be with her, but not entirely for the usual reasons.”

Dan considered how far to take this conversation. He’d slept with Ked’s mother just once. Kendra had made the first move. Dan followed through because he felt pressured, but also because he was infatuated with her brother, Arman, a fellow student in residence at university. He was saved from having to answer by Kedrick’s further probing.

“What about now?”

“What do you mean?”

This conversation seemed unnecessarily abstruse, Dan thought. Ked was usually more straightforward. He watched as his son placed a stack of pancakes on the table and sat across from him.

“I mean, do you want to be alone? Why don’t you have anyone now? Don’t you have those feelings anymore?”

Dan felt pinned to the wall like a butterfly. “No, I don’t want to be alone. Some days it’s just easier that way.”

Ked stared at him. “But if you found the right person — the right guy — you would know?”

“I hope so.”

Ked speared three pancakes with his fork, hearkening back to the days when they would try to see how many stacked slices they could fit into their mouths at once. He looked up after a moment.

“Dad, what’s it like to be old?”

Dan smiled. “It’s like, one day you look in the mirror and see that you’ve turned into the person you vowed never to become back when you were young.”

He watched his son’s face for signs of amusement. Ked seemed oblivious to irony, particularly when he was in such a serious frame of mind.

“Is that what happened to you?”

“Some days I think so.”

Ked nodded. Silence invaded the kitchen. Ralph rolled over again.

Ked picked up the platter and offered it to his father. “Eat some more pancakes. It might make you feel better.”

“Yes, son.”

They finished breakfast in silence. Later, clearing the table, Dan saw he’d drizzled syrup over the envelope. He wiped his hands and opened it. It contained photocopies of newspaper clippings. Most of them were in Chinese, but one was in English. He didn’t need a translator to know they were about the Tiananmen protests of 1989. Each carried a variation of the same photograph: a long line of tanks being held up by a single individual holding a jacket and travel bag in either hand. Tank Man. That was the name he’d gone by, though his true identity had never been confirmed.

Dan counted: there were five articles in total. He shook the envelope, but nothing further fell out. He was mystified. There was no clue as to why he’d been sent the clippings or who had sent them.

He checked his watch: it was getting late. Stashing the envelope in his laptop case, he headed for the door.