Burridge Unbound (6 page)

I step back out into the hall, the phrases labouring in my cobwebbed brain as if I were an adolescent trying to ask for a date.
You look well. He’s beautiful, Maryse. You’re doing a good job
.

Maryse and Joanne stop talking when I approach. Maybe it’s the dull light, but Maryse’s skin still looks like that of a twenty-year-old. Her eyes are as dark as ever, but harder somehow, on the edge of attack. The kind phrases fall out of my head. I need knives. It’s a matter of self-preservation.

“I bet he wasn’t even wearing a helmet,” I say bitterly.

“Oh, Bill–”

“Aren’t there parks for skateboarding? You probably should just make a rule with him–”

The dark eyes look down at her lace-up boots. At any moment the points might come right up into my groin.

“Did this driver give a statement? Are we suing? You probably didn’t even get the licence number.”

“You just fuck yourself,”
she hisses, then her boots click-click down the hall.

“That was accomplished,” Joanne says, and I nearly light into her as well. But something holds me back – some small thread of sanity remaining in my ugly mind.

“What kind of parent–?”
I start, but she touches my shoulder and the thought evaporates.

“Save it,”
she says. “Is Patrick awake?”

She goes in to see him and I stand in the hall, feeling like a tree somehow engulfed by miles of ocean. What did I do? It’s not my fault. It’s not my fucking fault. Any father called to the hospital in the middle of the night to see his son …

“He’s a treasure,” she says, tiptoeing out. “He looks like an angel.”

Outside, waiting for the taxi, I say, “Maybe you could write her a note.” She laughs, not a happy sound, but sudden and harsh, like cars colliding.

“All right,” I say. “I’ll write her a note. You just tell me what to say to make everything better. Some little graceful card. So she’ll read it and know I was fucking tortured within an inch of my life and that inch is all I’ve got left and it’s not much to work with. I’ve done a bloody good job.”

“That would make a
handsome
card,” she says.

“Yes,” I say.
“Handsome
. It would fix everything, wouldn’t it?”

“She’d come running back to you. Romantics the world over would flock to you for advice.”

Breathe and breathe and breathe. How much longer do I want to put up with this? I have work to do. I can’t let myself get sidetracked by these petty, insignificant … these
distractions
. They’re fine for everybody else who has more than one inch of life left to work with. But not for me. I have to look out for me.

No one else will.

In the taxi. I watch the passing streetlights, headlights, donut-shop fluorescence all poking impotently into the black of this night. The driver is from Lebanon. His smudged photo
ID
makes him look like a drug smuggler. Husayn Awada. Before long Joanne has got him to tell us his life story. He came to Canada in 1982 in the wake of the Israeli invasion. He was an engineer in Beirut; in Canada he’s been a baker, waiter, pizza deliveryman, school janitor, Christmas-tree salesman, and, mostly, a taxi driver. He has three grown sons, all engineers, and one daughter, now married with twins. His wife
runs a restaurant. Neither of them has taken a vacation in sixteen years.

“The winter was the worst thing about Canada. When we arrived it was about this time of the year, not too bad, we said we’d be all right. Then it got cooler and we said it wasn’t so bad as we’d heard. Then the snow came and the ice and it never stopped. It just kept building up. My wife would look out the window and say, ‘I won’t go out today. It’ll get better tomorrow.’ Then tomorrow it would be worse and we’d say, ‘How does anybody
live
here?’ We still say that. This winter, I swear, if I can make some money, we’re going to Florida. That’s it!”

If I can make some money
. It’s a nice line and Joanne tips him almost as much as the cost of the ride.

“Thank you,” I say to her at the door of my building.

“Not at all,” she says, waving goodbye to Husayn.

“No, I mean it. I’d be lost without you. I’m sure you know it. I’d be in my grave.”

“Maybe not.”

“No. Maybe I’d be an unmarked body without a grave. Put to death by my relatives. A mercy killing.”

“I won’t be here forever,” she says carefully, and just like that the night turns cold, I can feel winter slipping under our guard.

“Are you telling me something, Joanne?”

“I’m not the kind of nurse who waits around on cancer wards while people wilt and die,” she says. “I’ll treat people at their worst, fix ’em up, then ship ’em out. You know? Vaccinate the kids. Give them a week of steady food, water to wash with, a roof over their heads. It’s amazing to see them bloom. That’s what I live for. The big hit. Some die, it’s inevitable, but if there’s no hope then I don’t want any part of it.”

“So I’m hopeless, is that it? You want out?”

“Some things are beyond my control,” she says. “I don’t want you thinking that I’m going to dedicate the rest of my life to–”

“What things? What’s beyond your control?”

“I have a life, Bill. I have a family, I have elderly parents, my mother is ill. She has throat cancer. Right now I’m doing the very best I can for you. I just hope I’m not working so hard you figure you don’t have to do anything.”

Ah. The point is made. This is a buck-up speech. I’d best buck up. Ultimately it’s up to me. No one else can do it. I have to decide I
want
to get better. Moreover, I should be further along. It’s been two years. Lots of water under the bridge. Bad things happen, but people get on with their lives. Think of the Canadian POWs starved by the Japanese in World War Two. Some of them came back. They lived their lives. There are rapes, beatings, attacks, mutilations happening every moment of every day. I was lucky, I escaped. No limbs lost. Faculties intact. It could’ve been worse. I have medical treatment. My condition is manageable. People look up to me.

This speech rattles fully formed in my mind. I’ve been over every part of it endlessly before. Joanne says one or two sentences and the self-flagellation begins. It’ll go on for days if I don’t stop it.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “I have to help myself.” And I do. I help myself up to my own apartment. I help my computer back onto the desk and then I help it off again to see whether it rolls any farther if I push it harder. It’s a scientific experiment. Gravity pulls on us all, but does it pull harder if we’re kicked or if we’re pushed? How hard does it pull if the desk itself is kicked or pushed? What does gravity do to other household items if they’re liberated from their positions of
rest? Which way do dishes bounce if flung against a wall? How much plaster is liberated if struck by the edge of a plate? The flat of a bowl? Why do glasses shatter most easily against hard surfaces as opposed to soft?

Here’s a helpful experiment. Fill your bathtub with household appliances and then turn on the water. Do microwave ovens float? How long will a toaster bob before settling on the bottom? What if the Yangtze River overflowed your bathroom right now? Where would the water go? Down the hallway? Into the bedroom? How wet will the carpet get before the water gets bored and must flow elsewhere? Down, down to the point of least resistance. Study the properties of water, how smooth, gentle, flexible it is. Abuse it all you want. Boil the hell out of it, it comes back in fine rain. Freeze it all to hell, it scars and cracks and breaks, then melts and flows again good as new. Beat it with your hands again and again. No harm; it becomes a game. Child’s play. Poison it and you’ll poison yourself the next time you drink, and then when you pass urine the water will be okay again, back to normal, right as rain.

First comes rain, then thunder. Regular as the pounding on a door. “It’s okay!” I call. They want to come in but I tell them it’s okay. I just had a little flood. I’ve turned the water off.

Okay
.

I say the word again and again. Through the door.
Okay. Okay
. No, you don’t have to come in. It’s all under control. It’s
okay
.

They say they’re going to call Joanne. Yes,
okay
. Joanne is
okay
. Everybody, we’re all
okay
.

I find a spot by the windows, near where the desk used to be. It’s not too wet. There’s just enough room to do some animals. A man has to be able to defend himself.
Dragon
. Lunge for the neck, pull on the arm, attack the neck again.
Both sides. You might get attacked on the other side. Back straight, bum and chin tucked in, rounded shoulders, elbows out. A cat stance. Why does the dragon use a cat stance? A question for Wu. Lunge and pull, lunge again. Now
lun
. Intercept the blow. Break the arm and pull down. Choke the neck as he falls towards you.

Pang, mandarin
, snake, and ape. All my animals. I do them again and again, my feet going squish-squish on the carpet. There’s going to be hell to pay.

Dragon,
lun, pang, mandarin
, snake, and ape. Both sides. Again and again and again. It beats thinking. It brings the night along. Slowly. Squish after squish. The time is liquid but it’s flowing. Slowly at first, then quicker, like sweat. Elbows out, turn the hips, don’t lean too much on the knee. Dragon,
lun, pang, mandarin
, snake, and ape. Intercept the punch and break the arm. Thrust and jerk. One side and another. Eyes on the horizon. See everything at once but not in detail. The devil’s in the details.

At four in the morning I drink long from the tap, gingerly step around the shards of kitchen casualties. Breathing and breathing. When you do the animals for a long time a warmth takes over your body. It’s almost as if Wu is standing next to me. This is the first time I’ve felt this on my own. I find my squishy spot again and fall into more practice. The less thinking I do the better off I seem to be. Dragon,
lun, pang, mandarin
, snake, and ape. Break the arm and strike the neck. Stay relaxed. If there is danger most of all. Your body can interpret the energy coming at you, will know in the moment exactly what to do. But only if you stay relaxed.

At five in the morning I start picking up pieces of glass. I unhook the trash bucket from inside the kitchen cupboard and traverse the apartment on my hands and knees. When the
bucket is full I find a box and when the box is full I use a double-strength brown paper bag. Then I drain the tub and mop the remaining water from the bathroom, leaving the appliances to drip dry. Joanne will be so happy to see what I’ve done. I’ve been making so much progress!

When she comes in I’ve nearly got everything back in order. There’s a terrible shortage of dishes, of course, and the baseboards betray a recent flood mark, and the place smells awful. And I haven’t righted the desk yet.

“What happened here?” she asks, quite restrained, I think, considering.

“I’m going to need a new computer,” I say. “This one just can’t fly.”

“You’re right there,” she says, surveying the trash bucket, box, and bag, the dripping appliances, the sorry computer. “I thought Hurricane Bonnie was heading for the Carolinas.”

I get to my feet. “Cato, attack!” I command.

“You must be joking.”

“No, I’m serious. I’ve been practising most of the night. Attack me. Anything you want to do.”

“I am not Cato. I’m your nurse!” She comes at me anyway, a big sick grin on her face. I take my cat stance. Relax, relax …

In an instant she whirls a wet cushion off the sofa and launches it at my head. I have no defence except to duck quickly, by which time she’s launched the second cushion straight into my midsection. I fall in a heap, coughing, sputtering.

“Oh, Jesus!” she says, kneeling beside me. “Are you all right?”

I cough some more, slowly get to my feet. “I haven’t learned the wet-cushion defence yet,” I say. “It must be one of the six missing animals.”

“Must be,” she says.

I go back to poking the computer. She looks through the kitchen for a while, then steps back out. “So, I take it breakfast will be out this morning?” she says.

“Just punch me slowly,” I say. “With your left hand.”

“My left hand?”

“Just do it.”

The fist comes at me slowly. I intercept, bend it against itself, clamp my fingers around her neck as she falls towards me.

“How’s this for better?” I ask. “I’m getting better, right?”

“Write to your wife,” she says when I’ve let her go.