Dropped Threads 2 (26 page)

The Boy
                    Can’t Sleep

Ann Dowsett Johnston

The boy can’t sleep. He can’t sleep because he didn’t get the girl. Or rather, he got the girl, but he lost her. And now he can’t sleep. Nor can you because he wants to talk.

You try to take it seriously. You try to remember what this felt like. You know you went through this very same thing, at the very same age. But that was so long ago. The summer of 1969, to be exact. The same summer that man first walked on the moon—an event you barely noticed, an event eclipsed by a boy with blond hair and an acoustic guitar and your first trip to Paris.

You try not to say what you’re thinking, which is, Thank goodness. You’re too young to find “the right girl.” You’ll find someone better. Smarter. Less selfish. More nuanced. Take your time. This you want to say, but you can’t.

So instead you make popcorn. Standing by the stove together in the middle of the night, his tall frame looming close beside yours. Waiting for the first kernel to hiss and sizzle and pop. And as the two of you stand, waiting for the action to start, he bumps into you—a seemingly nonchalant little hip check.

Which is a good sign. This, you’ve come to understand, is what boys do after they stop hugging and kissing their mothers. A hip check, a knock on the shoulder, a little flick on the wrist. You’ve learned to decipher these casual little moves, along with the adolescent grunts—the code of a breezy male teenager.

And this you’ve also learned: the last thing a breezy male teenager wants is to be grilled by his mother. Yes, you would love to know the details of the evening, how it all unfolded, how it led to this middle-of-the-night session in the kitchen. But you resist. You zip your lip and wait for him to talk. Because, as we all know, mothers of sixteen-year-old boys know nothing. Especially about dating. Unless they’re asked.

Which isn’t to say that the boy has lost faith in you. On the contrary. That’s why the two of you are up in the middle of the night making popcorn. He has faith that you will listen. But it’s a dance, and this time he’s leading.

For years, you led and he followed. As far as he was concerned, adults could fix anything. For starters, they had the power to negotiate with the Easter bunny, a creature he believed had no business being in his bedroom. He trusted you to arrange a front-door drop-off for chocolate. And when, as a toddler, he watched Joe Theismann’s leg snap like a matchstick on the football field, he sat in front of the TV, unfazed in his fuzzy yellow sleepers. “Don’t worry,” he said, as the doctor raced to Theismann’s side. “That man will kiss him better.”

But over time, his faith in adult magic began to wane. Once, on a vacation by the sea, you stayed up into the night spray-painting seashells with gold paint. You soaked paper in tea and burned the corners with matches, making secret treasure maps that would lead to the loot that you had buried on the beach before breakfast. For years, that “pirate’s gold” from Prince Edward Island was lugged to school for show and tell. Years later, when he discovered the true story, he was embarrassed. Unwittingly, you had made him look like a fool.

So tonight, as you stand over the ever-expanding pot of popcorn, you listen as he begins to tell the story of the girl and what happened. You listen carefully, your antennae keen for details. Most of all, you listen for evidence that she might have played him for the fool.

And all the while, you keep your eyes trained on the pot in front of you. If you look him in the eyes, you know the story will stop. Teenage boys retreat easily: you can’t approach them head-on.

Of course, this is the same boy who once had a habit of dancing you around the kitchen as you cooked dinner—a boisterous little tango that left you flushed and laughing. This is the same boy who used to stall his bedtime with a series of questions, questions designed to lasso you and keep you close. Do monkeys get periods? What would hurt more: having a baby or porcupine quills up the nose?

But that was before. Now, most nights, the bedroom door is closed, and you are beginning to wonder what it will feel like when he moves away, when he marries. For the past several months, you’ve carried a poem in your pocket, a dog-eared clipping of “Mother of the Groom” by Seamus Heaney. Which, of course, is silly because he doesn’t even have a driver’s licence. But when it comes to this boy, you don’t like surprises.

Once, you thought that this boy was an egg on a spoon, an egg you could not afford to drop. But now it’s clear that he’s no egg at all. In fact, he’s more than half hatched, and you’re no longer holding the spoon. Perhaps you never were.

Still, tonight, as he stands lean and fresh-faced beside you, you’d like to know that his world will unfold as it should. You’re tempted to give fate a helping hand, to make sure that no woman ever knocks him sideways—as if you could stop it. Standing in your nightgown, you’re tempted to tell him the whole truth about the mating dance of men and women, to spill the beans about all you’ve learned since that summer in Paris.

But where would you begin? Certainly not by warning him against marrying young. This you’ve already done, over and over. And besides, it made not one whit of difference when you were told the same thing, when you married his father.

No, you’d start by letting him in on a few secrets. Perhaps you’d begin with the ones women share over long lunches, or late at night, long distance, when others have gone to bed: that the men they love best are not the tallest or the richest or the most suave. The men they love are the ones who make them laugh. The ones who dance them around the kitchen and kiss them on the back of the neck. Most of all, the men they love are the ones who ask questions and then listen to the answers. All this, you’re certain, he’ll be good at.

And marrying? You’d like to tell him that the right person will
smell
right. His father smelled like April, when the pale green shoots of the trees reach upward, shimmering and electric. But no, that would throw him off. You’d keep it simple: never marry until you’re amazed at your own luck, you’d say, paraphrasing Iris Murdoch.

Oh, and that’s just the beginning. After the wedding, you must make your own luck. Learn to parse each other’s silences; understand the arc of an argument, that it will begin and it will end. Talk to each other in the middle of the night; canoe together. Don’t founder on the tiny pebbles of daily life, the ones that trip us all.

No, this you definitely can’t say. Not yet; perhaps never. This boy won’t know that you too have skinny-dipped under a harvest moon. That you too have tried to fall asleep listening to Neil Young, just as he has tonight. And yes, you too have been played for the fool. Certainly he’ll never know just why you learned the hard way how to parse men’s silences, to hear what they weren’t saying.

No. Instead, you pour the popcorn into the bowl, and he adds the butter—too much for your liking, but you say nothing because right at that moment he has begun to tell you that, actually, there is another girl. One he thinks he likes even better. And she likes him, too. And he wants to know, do you think he should ask her for coffee or a movie on the first date? For the first time, you allow yourself to look him in the eyes and smile.

Tomorrow, once again, you will be invisible: the mother standing at the door, telling him not to forget his sunscreen, to remember to call if he’s going to be late. And he will rush down the walk, nodding, not hearing a word you have said. But tonight, the two of you are standing in the kitchen, eating popcorn after midnight because he can’t sleep. And nor can you because, right now, he wants to talk.

Speaking
                    of Dying

Shelagh Rogers

Morning, October 18, 2001

I am in Cape Breton. The CBC Radio program I host,
This Morning
, is in Sydney for a broadcast from a church hall in the centre of the steelworkers’ neighbourhood, Whitney Pier. I’m not on the air today, and I’m using this reprieve to tour Whitney Pier and see for myself what the media has dubbed “the notorious toxic Sydney tar ponds” that flank the Pier. It’s just past ten-thirty. We’re getting into our rented car after a banal errand at the drugstore when I hear on CBC radio that “our friend Kate Carmichael died last night after a brave battle with leukemia. She was fifty-one.” The three producers I’m travelling with pat my hand or my shoulder and say they’re so sorry. And then unstoppable tears come with the searing realization that Kate has really done it this time. She has died. Just as she kept saying she would.

I first encountered Kate Carmichael on what you might call a blind date. She was in the Halifax studio. I was in Toronto. I could only imagine her through her voice, one with the same properties as champagne—golden, effervescent, lighter than air but powerful and absolutely intoxicating. And she used it to great effect. From our first words, I realized I was beginning a radio love affair. She was playful, opinionated, smart and funny. She said what she meant. No fake politeness. When I asked her in this first conversation, “What did you feel when you learned you only had three months to live?” she said, “I was really pissed off.” Knowing that I would get a truckload of mail from some of our more conservative listeners, I rushed in to staunch the flood. “Kate, you mean you were ticked off.” Kate said, “No I don’t. I was really pissed off. That’s the only way to describe it. Look, I knew what it was going to look like when I was going to have a baby, I knew what it was going to look like when I got married. I knew what it was going to look like when I graduated because we talk about those things. Do I know what it’s going to look like when I die? No! Why? Because we don’t talk about it. So I want to, as much as possible, make it more comfortable for people to talk about it so that people who come behind me can understand what it will look like, what it feels like, what’s going on in my head in these months when I think, Will it be tomorrow? Can I make an appointment for next week?”

At the time of our next conversation, about two weeks before Christmas, Kate was going through a bad spell. Her three-month “expiry date” had come and gone. She was hoping to make it through Christmas because, as an active and concerned citizen, she still had a lot of unfinished business in the downtown core. “Kate,” I asked, “how are you going to get it all done?” She said, “Well, I have this bit of ammunition. I can call councillors and say, ‘Time is kind of an issue for me now. How about we get together and bring this to a conclusion?’ And they say, ‘Okay, Kate, why don’t we get together next Friday?’ I say, ‘Next Friday? I’m not going to be around, maybe, next Friday. How about tomorrow?’ And it works.”

Meeting Kate in March 2001

On a whim, I’ve booked a flight to Halifax. I am going to spend twelve waking hours with Kate and then fly back to Toronto. I have an overwhelming desire to see her in person before it is too late. The night before I meet her, she speaks before Halifax City Council about her three main causes: getting rid of the Cogswell interchange (an ungainly piece of roadway in Halifax), creating a heritage streetscape for downtown and fixing up the infernal parking problem on Barrington Street. Kate Carmichael, against the odds, is very, very alive.

I don’t know what she’ll be like. Is all that bravado just something she drums up when we’re on the radio? Is she as attractive as she says she is? (I love the fact that she knows she’s beautiful.) I am nervous about meeting her, about not living up to her expectations. We’ve been exchanging e-mails that grow more personal with every message. We’ve written to each other about work and to what degree it defines us both; we’ve written about children (in her case), childlessness (in mine) and stepchildren (a blessing we both share). We’ve written and argued about our favourite authors, about our teenage years, about our mothers and fathers. We’ve also recognized that our friendship is developing at Polaroid speed and how great it would be to go to a Greek island and celebrate it. We have not acknowledged that our relationship will, inevitably, be short. We have an intimacy through our e-mails, but what happens when we leave the virtual world for the real one?

I get off the plane with bed head. I don’t wear makeup as a rule but manage to drag some Revlon over my lips. I am wearing my uniform of black top, black pants, black shoes. Oh so Toronto.

My first vision of Kate is in the airport lounge. She is wearing a linen jacket in Popsicle pink with a paler pink shirt and big earrings. Her makeup, her hair and nails are perfect. She has big brown eyes and long legs. In our interviews, she has told me she has used those attributes to get her way. Her husband, Alan, drives us home. We plant ourselves in her sunny yellow den and do not draw breath for the next twelve hours.

Some of our conversation is recorded for broadcast on March 21, 2001
.

SR: I didn’t know what to expect. I had a picture of you and now that I meet you, you’re just right. You look great.

KC: This is a good time for me. In November Alan was planting some tulips and daffodils. I stood watching him from the dining room window and I thought, Those are bulbs I’ll never see in bloom. But you know, I am going to see them bloom and it’s interesting…. I am going to die soon, but all those negative thoughts I could have parked somewhere. I didn’t need to have them. And so I don’t have them any more. I have started to buy a few clothes for myself …

SR: So you weren’t buying clothes …

KC: No, I haven’t been doing anything that seems like a poor investment. It probably happens to everyone who is dying….

SR: What changed your thinking?

KC: If I can manage six months of this, why can’t I manage another six? If I had my choice, I would go from now to dead. I am eternally fearful of lingering and being a burden and sort of fading away. I really want to be this person who can walk down Barrington Street, as we did today. There’s a lot of bravado in that. I’ve lasted this long, so why the hell can’t I live another six months?

SR: Hasn’t that bravado been very good for you?

KC: Bravado is what has kept me going. There is no question. But on my side of the bravado, there was a sense that things were going to happen quickly and soon. I have a very sore mouth, but other than that there are no changes….

SR: What do you do when it hurts?

KC: Nothing. Just keep going…. Look, no need to do anything about it. Just keep on going. What I’d like to know is why is
my
dying interesting?

SR: I’d like to tell you. You’ve made me interested in dying and the kind of dying you are doing, I’ve been able to talk about death, which I couldn’t do before, and not just with you but also with other people. You’ve found the power in it.

KC: I still don’t get it. I don’t necessarily agree with you. Why isn’t anybody else talking about it?

SR: Why did you choose to do it?

KC: Well, it didn’t start out as talking about dying. I started out talking about blood collection because we need it, because I need it. I need blood. Dying scares me. It frightens me. And I’m not comfortable with anything frightening me. When things frighten me, I’m inclined to ask questions so that I can be more comfortable. But there was nowhere to go, nobody talking. People were uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say to me…. As frightened as I am about the act of dying, I wanted to get the best out of it, milk it for all it was worth. I have a feeling it can be a very powerful experience both for me, the dying person, and the people around me if I plan it properly rather than see it as something that needs to be put in the corner and not talked about.

The other part of it is that I want to make it as comfortable as possible for my children. It’s hard to sit down and have this kind of conversation with children. I thought if they could read about it or hear about it in the media, that would help them understand their mother. But I have to say I continued to be floored by the media interest.

SR: You are dying publicly?

KC: That’s right—I am sharing it. Yeah. Sometimes a difficult thing to do because there is no question that with each of these interviews a little bit of me goes with it because it’s such a personal thing. You’re opening up your skin to the world. For somebody like me who tries very hard to be a strong achiever, showing my frailties and my fears in public goes against everything in my personality. But the rewards are far greater than the risks.

SR: When you are alone and you’re not being strong for interviews or feature articles in magazines, what gives you comfort when you need it?

KC: This is really a hard thing to answer. There are times when it’s really hard to keep up the bravado, when things hurt. I try to calm myself down and think about the good things. Think about what’s left to do. Think about people who are in far worse places than I. It’s an immediate sort of kick in the ass. Smarten up, Kate. I cry once in a while when I’m by myself, for about thirty seconds or so, but I snap myself out of it. Feeling frail and feeling sorry for myself doesn’t do me any good, so I just smarten up. But there are times when I inject myself in the stomach and I eat these cocktails of pills and I think, I’m just tired of this. Which is stupid because that’s what’s keeping me alive. But I do think those things sometimes. And I think that’s what the end is about. The body just can’t do it any more…. There’ll come a time when a person just doesn’t have that oomph to stand up and get out there again. I think that’s what will happen to me. I think it’s mind over matter. There’s a part of me that is terrified when I sit down for those ten or fifteen minutes, when I need that comfort. I wonder if I am losing ground by giving in.

My last conversation on the air with Kate was September 4, 2001. Her voice was frail and dainty, almost like an old woman’s. She had good things to tell me—she was winning an award from the Metro Chamber of Commerce in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the downtown of Halifax
.