The Matter of Sylvie (19 page)

The woman dials another number on the phone, the ring echoes through the grand hall, bounces off the granite floor, the hollow high ceiling. She replaces the receiver, then flips through the Rolodex in front of her, tries again.

“North side, Dr. Maprin, please,” she says.

Corporal Lloyd lets his breath out in a gush, hadn't realized he was holding it. He looks at Jimmy. Jimmy has meticulously shredded the brochure into a thousand tiny pieces in a neat pile on the peas-and-carrots granite floor. Now he's trying to fit the pieces back together. Could take a lifetime, Lloyd thinks.

Then the woman's up, buzzing and fussing about in the filing cabinet behind her, papers and forms in hand. She can't promise anything, it's not like you can simply walk into Michener and have someone admitted, especially an adult. Michener has had emergency admissions in the past, but always children and rarely at that. There's a process involved, you understand? Social workers, psychiatric assessments to be done by not one but three qualified doctors, although Doctor Maprin's the only one on today and he's on the north side, will be here shortly. Judge Jonathan Wade is no slouch, a good man, a fair man, that she knows, and clearly she can see Jimmy Widman is in need of some help, though that doesn't hold any water, won't necessarily get him admitted, and he, Lloyd, looks like he could use some help too, or perhaps just a solid night's sleep.

“Is he psychotic?” the woman asks, glancing up from her questionnaire form over at Jimmy.

Lloyd shakes his head. The woman ticks No on the box beside.

“A danger to himself ?”

“He has his moments,” says Lloyd, feels his pulse deadening.

“Suicidal?” she asks.

“No more than the rest of us.”

“Yes or no?”

“Not in that sense.”

She bypasses the box, goes onto the next question.

The woman holds Lloyd's gaze carefully for this last qualifying question:

“A danger to the public?”

The image of Jimmy standing the middle of the Burger Baron, his powder blue ski pants around his ankles, crying mothers, frightened children, disgusted men.

“Yes, he's a danger to the public,” Lloyd says.

The woman nods, ticks off a corresponding series of squares on the form, raises her head.

“Enough?” Lloyd asks, can't even summon the strength to put it in a proper sentence—the weight of the day, his life in this simple question.

“Enough—for now,” the woman answers.

Lloyd's shoulders drop. He smiles gratefully, helplessly at her.

By the time she gets to her mother's car on the south side of Michener, the clock reads well past 2:00 PM. A three-hour lunch? She didn't notice the time go. Lesa's got to fly if she wants to make it back for dinner. She climbs in the Toyota, lights a much-needed John Player, flips the radio on, scrolls through the static until she finds a station. Country music—she leaves it on regardless. She pictures Sherry's arm swimming in rhythm to Dolly Parton as she drives down the hill, turns left onto Gaetz Avenue. The mid-afternoon traffic is light. She reaches Highway 2 in no time. Her mind on cruise control, she pushes the accelerator to the floor. Her mother's Toyota hesitates, the piston rods rattle in their cylinders at Lesa's sudden insistence but then settle into an even thrum in the fast lane.

No lingering thoughts of Sylvie. Sylvie is wholly unharmed, thriving even in her private child's life at Michener—Michener no longer the dire institution of Lesa's early memory. Lesa realizes only now, her parents' heart-rending decision to have Sylvie committed was not as black and white as she thought. Not simply a case of a difficult child, of a mother's Wednesday gone horribly awry. But full consideration given by her parents for all of them: Sylvie, Nate, Clare, Lesa too. The water already under their bridges, a possible lifetime of bridges in need of constant repair, the reason matters not, what matters is that Lesa gets home in time for the monument of her mother's memorial dinner before she inflicts further damage.

She drives in the fast lane, passing a line of army trucks. The khaki-clad drivers honk and wave as she blurs past them before they turn off at Penhold. Then car after car after pickup truck until soon she's solo on the highway for as far as she can see on the wide-open prairies. She keeps her eyes alert for wayward coyotes. Olds, Didsbury, Carstairs; approaching Crossfield she scans the side of the road for her Superwoman boots, doesn't see them, hopes the waitress rather than the wilful October wind got them. She relaxes into the rhythm of the tires on the smooth asphalt, rips freely along hampered by nothing more than her want/need to see her mother.

On the outskirts of Calgary, past the line of available gasoline stations around Airdrie, two suburbs out from her mother's neighbourhood, her mother's car shrugs and stutters, refuses to accelerate. Lesa comes to a rolling stop on the shoulder, scans the dashboard for the emergency lights, sees the fuel gauge on empty. She hadn't noticed.

She climbs out of the car, the wind gusting, swirling grey road dust, carrying precious topsoil across the barren prairie. She retrieves her purse, her silver cigarette case from the front seat, the half-smoked joint inside that she considers seriously before flicking it off into the ditch below. Locks the car door, then she slides down on the passenger side of the car, shelter from the unceasing wind, pulls blue-suit man's vomit bag out of her purse. Folding the bag into a neat origami Air Canada airplane, she raises her hand up, allows the pulling wind to take it. She watches the paper plane lift and swoon for a moment, riding the extraordinary invisible waves, the plane swelling high, higher on the October air. Then the plane loses momentum, comes crashing down onto the stubbed remnants of last year's wheat.

Protected against her mother's car, Lesa smokes a cigarette in the tempest wind, weighs her gasless options. She could flag someone down. She could find a pay phone. She could call her brother, Nate.

She won't do any of those things.

A cluster fuck of God-given karma—Lesa knows it.

No more, no less. Reparation.

She stands up, begins the long walk toward her mother's house.

Jacqueline wakes in the black of her own bed, can't immediately recall how she got there. But here she is in their marital bed, strangely fresh, alert at—she rolls over, squints at her Timex watch on the nightstand—3:35 AM. She reaches her arm instinctively across the double bed. No Lloyd. The house is deathly quiet; are her children sleeping?

Programmed, her body leads her down the dark hall first to Sylvie's room. She peers inside, sees Sylvie uncovered, coiled as she always sleeps at the foot of her single metal bed. Jacqueline tiptoes in, guides Sylvie gently up to the cool pillow, pulls a light sheet over her body curled like the fetus in Jacqueline's womb, like the circles Sylvie draws so flawlessly. She smoothes her hand over Sylvie's face, traces her finger lightly if only to soften, ease the jagged scar across Sylvie's pink lips. The nutty scent of peanut butter on Sylvie's skin. She checks Sylvie's arms and legs, mostly washed clean by the thunderstorm, although there are still clumps of peanut butter still in her black hair, the least of her concerns after this nightmare of a Wednesday.

She watches Sylvie's small chest breathe evenly, in and out, in and out, strong, smooth, involuntarily. There is a quiet strength in children that Jacqueline never noticed before, at least not consciously, not determined by straight or jagged, skewed or unskewed, but some
thing
intrinsic, innate, built-in. Beyond Sylvie, beyond Jacqueline even. Jacqueline can feel the metal burrs beneath her skin disband, disperse, released by the enormity of this simple understanding. So much so that she wants to roust Sylvie, pull her close, whisper in her faultless ear that she's lovely, she's wonderful, she's strong—a perfect girl in a defective world. Sylvie is everything she needs to be.

But Jacqueline doesn't want to wake Sylvie from the rare ease of her sleep. Instead she gets up, lingers another moment watching Sylvie from the doorway, then goes down the quiet hall.

In the other bedroom, Jacqueline finds Nate sprawled on his back, his toddler face flushed from the heat. Jacqueline slides the window open; the next day's air skims in cool, fresh, unsullied into her children's room. Lesa's asleep on the other bed, changed out of her wet skort and blouse into one of Jacqueline's T-shirts, far too large for Lesa's five-year-old body. Jacqueline leans close, pushes Lesa's strawberry hair off her freckled cheeks, tries to smooth out the perpetual rat's nest at the back of Lesa's head. She can't do it now, but come morning, Jacqueline knows that she owes, bare minimum, she owes Lesa a shampoo and a bubble bath. She keeps her hand on Lesa's sweltering back until she feels the heat release.

Then she gets up and wanders down to the living room. Startled to find Lloyd bowed and pressed against the hard curve of their red and black tartan chesterfield. She doesn't know when or how he got there without her hearing him. He's here, alive, still in uniform, flat asleep. She sits down beside him. His skin emits the stale scent of alcohol: warm, sweaty, musty. Does he smell of other women too? She's not sure, just knows in some warped way that she needs him. No, he's not what she bargained for, not nearly as perfect as Sylvie's circles, but as time will inform her, things seldom are.

She watches the sharp line of his face, the same rise and fall of his chest, as Sylvie's, as her own. She lies down in the small, yielding space of him, slides back into the skin of herself too, also, for better or worse. She's in it for the long haul, she always has been.

Relieved of the weight of Jimmy Widman, Corporal Lloyd walks out into the cold air. He looks across the sprawling grounds of Michener, can see a teeter totter submerged in the snow. A metal slide coated in hoarfrost, the steep crystalline length of it, the white jagged edges. An empty swing set motionless in the dwindling light. He rolls his head side to side. He's tired, so goddamn weary-dreary, he'd like to curl up in a snowdrift and give into his fatigue. Relieved but not released. Not enough yet, but soon, sooner than he thinks.

If he could see through the jumbled scatter of poplar trees
in between, past the naked winter forest in front of him, he'd be able to see the north side where Sylvie resides. The low, flat-topped brick buildings in strict rows, as if to bring order to the chaos within. The barred windows that make his chest seize, his throat knot. The live wire beneath his skin more alive then ever. He breathes consciously in and out, his breath tangible in the air. He can see it as clear as Wednesday. He zips up his RCMP parka, strides across the lot to the orange Camaro, gazes once more through the trees. He'll walk instead; the cutting air feels good on his face. In fact, he requires it.

The straight road that connects Michener south to Michener north has yet to be plowed. Lloyd follows the road, wades through the deep snow, glad for his knee-high Strathconas. His one gloved hand warm, the other he stuffs into his pocket, the car keys metal-cold to his touch. Beyond the forest, the frozen grounds stretch well off into the distance, farther than he can see. Territory he's not familiar with, some unknown ground he's not stood on. The muted light is growing grey over the horizon, darkening not only for dusk, but something else too? Snow perhaps, thinks Lloyd, pulls his parka closer around his body, the temperature dropping with the light. The weight of his leather boots, the heavy snow reaching his knees at points, the pending snow in the western sky.

His overwhelming fatigue as he traverses the wide-open space to the brick buildings, the precision of their rows reminding him of the row housing he and Jacqueline initially lived in. The row of houses adjoined, identical on the outside, though none housed anything inside like theirs: his uncontrollable, often inconsolable Sylvie, his island-stranded wife, who needed him then, not necessarily now, his children he missed, still misses.

He feels his body growing weak, though he's reached the broad sidewalks on the north side, which are shovelled clear, but still his body weak. He notices his ragged breath, edged like the hoarfrost on the metal slide. He spots a bench outside the first building, not Sylvie's, he knows. Her building is farther along, somewhere in the middle, not sure of the number, he knows it's across from a small canteen.

He sits down on the bench; the cold sneaks up beneath his pressed shirt, beneath his undershirt, under his skin, finds his core. His arms, legs feel useless, exhaustion hitting him like a two-by-four, a brick wall he's run up against. He doesn't know if he can even stand at this moment, let alone stride through the maze of brick buildings in his stiff boots, find his Sylvie, look into her skewed face. He takes a shallow breath in the bitter air. Could it be the result of a long, difficult Wednesday? Why he's so tired, so weak? He doesn't know. Though he suspects it goes further, like the grounds he can't see past. Like his life past, his future, the road that lies ahead.

When enough is enough?

He tries to breathe more fully, revive his failing body, his struggling mind, but the cold air is useless to him. Lloyd looks up at the sky, the light almost gone now. The black seeping over, the few streetlamps along the sidewalk have blinkered on, throw a muted yellow on the frozen ground. Large white snowflakes are floating down from the dark sky. A group of caregivers in the distance, their voices growing louder as they approach, nine or eleven of them, Lloyd guesses. As they draw closer, he sees not all of them are caregivers, some are the clients they care for. He can tell by the peculiar gaits, the odd hunch of shoulders, the ill-fitting clothing, the herky-jerky motions of hands and bodies forever busy with their surroundings, their inner worlds, not aware of what's around them. He watches the group make their way to the building next door, the outside light of their two-storey brick home burning brighter than any streetlamp could.