“I lost my long-term memory. Ha!” Johnny flutters his hands at his sides like a little bird. “Hey, you’ve been at the centre.”
“A bit.”
“Good, keep coming, we need you there.”
Johnny figures maybe he should have been a teacher. He feels good driving away from school. He lights a cigarette and immediately stubs it out. Ms. Holt had a second part to that saying. It went something like,
No event occurs twice, precisely because it has occurred once already.
“Yes, that’s right,” Johnny thinks. He says this out loud to himself. It still doesn’t make much sense but that doesn’t matter, he feels intelligent saying it.
He drives past his sister Carol’s house and, on a whim, pulls into the driveway. He lets himself in and finds Carol breast-feeding her new baby in the living room. The TV’s on and Erica is flipping channels. Johnny sits and watches the baby’s head beat a slow rhythm against Carol’s skin. He is amazed by the colour of his sister’s breast. So white. Perhaps it is the contrast, the round black head against her flesh.
“How’s Roy?” he asks.
“Fine. He’s got a road trip next week. Out to Calgary.” She pulls the baby away. It comes up sloppy and wet.
“Here, let me burp him.” Johnny stands and takes the boy. He smells the baby’s neck and ears. The baby burps, its head wobbles. Johnny thinks about the little pea tucked inside Loraine’s body. He misses Loraine, wants to lift her sweater and poke at her stomach. Maybe she’ll show up at his baptism; he doubts it.
While Carol mixes tuna salad, Johnny rocks the baby and flips through a mail-order catalogue for women. There are bras and panties, stockings and skirts. The models are young. Johnny doesn’t really notice the clothes. He can’t think of any women who look like this; certainly not Loraine, Charlene, or his sister Carol. And that’s fine. He prefers women who are flawed in some way, women who need someone like Johnny to dig for their centre and rescue them. Carol comes into the room licking mayonnaise from a spoon. She pauses, looks at her brother, and shakes her head.
“What?” Johnny says.
“Charlene called last night. She wanted me to come over. I couldn’t. Roy was out till late. She sounded drunk, said you were gone.”
Johnny nods. “I saw her this morning. She’s okay.”
“She’s going to lose her job,” Carol says. “She doesn’t need that.”
“She’s got my money.”
Carol ignores her brother. “She always knew you were seeing Loraine.”
Johnny swallows. This is not what he expected.
Carol continues, “She could live with it, but now with the baby, that’s killing her.”
His sister’s shirt has a wet spot on one side. Her full breast is leaking. The baby bangs his head against Johnny’s chest, gums a fist. “Is he hungry?” Johnny asks.
“I just fed him,” Carol says. Her own mouth is like Johnny’s, he can see that; coy, greedy. Johnny’s been watching his own body lately, observing its quirks, its descent, and he’s been imagining his own baby not as a baby at all, but grown up like him, and he’s wondering, Will it be happy when it’s thirty-six? That’s what he wants for the child, happiness. It’ll be a girl, he’s almost sure about it. He wants a girl.
He says to his sister, “Is Roy needy? Does he pull at you? Block you in?”
Carol shrugs. “Sure,” she says, “but he’s a man.”
“Charlene and me, we don’t have sex any more,” Johnny says. He lifts a hand, touches the baby’s neck.
“That surprises you?” Carol asks.
“How ’bout you and Roy?”
“We’re all right,” Carol says. She gathers up the baby, who’s fussing, and holds him like a football. She sways in the centre of the room. “Roy’s not like you though.”
Johnny watches his sister lull her child to sleep. What she has become, this mother, amazes him. He’s proud of her. He says, “And, who am I?”
“Roy doesn’t always think about sex. He can take it or leave it. That’s how it is. So, we live like that. Besides, children drain you. I’m beaten up by bedtime.”
Johnny nods his head. “I’m going to be baptized,” he says. “In three days.”
“Well,” Carol says. “Again?”
“Yeah. On the advice of Phil Barkman. He compared the earlier one to an infant baptism; though I was sixteen I probably wasn’t terribly conscious. Conscious. That’s what he said.”
“I guess Phil Barkman knows then,” Carol says.
“I guess. It’s this Sunday evening. At the MB Church. You’re welcome to come.”
“I was at your first one.”
“You were baptized once,” Johnny says. “Weren’t you?”
“Of course, everyone was,” Carol says. “I was twelve.”
“Huh. Anyways.”
“You should see Charlene,” Carol says. “She’s gonna kill herself out there alone. Walk outside drunk. Fall over and freeze or something.”
“I will,” Johnny says. “Right after supper.”
But, he doesn’t. Instead, he goes back to the centre. Allison is there, sweeping the floor. She has her own key and often lets herself in. She’s playing music. It’s too loud.
“Turn it down,” Johnny shouts.
Allison doesn’t hear him. She’s holding the broom, her back to him, and her head’s bowed and moving slowly. Johnny tramps over to the stereo and turns down the volume. Allison swivels and smiles. “Thought I’d clean up a bit,” she says, pushing a hand out at the room.
Johnny lifts an eye. “Nothing better to do?”
“Not really.”
Johnny goes to his back room and phones his house. Charlene surprises him and answers.
“I’m just wondering,” Johnny says, “if you want me at home there? You decide, okay? I’ll do what you want.”
Charlene’s voice is calm. “I’m strong enough,” she says.
“You wouldn’t do anything stupid?” Johnny asks. Charlene laughs and then stops. Johnny listens to her quick light breaths and then says, “You’ll call me, if you need anything?”
“Sure.”
After he hangs up he sits for a long time, his eyes closed, and listens
to Allison’s music. She shouldn’t be here, he thinks. It doesn’t look right. Not these days. He puts on his coat, tells Allison he’s going out, and drives down to the river and over the bridge to Glenlea. He could stop by St. Adolphe for a drink but he doesn’t want to, not really. He turns up the 75 and drives towards Morris. The inside of a car at night is a wonderful thing. There is a glow, a low hum; it’s his own egg. Johnny goes fast. His car is big and new and creaks faintly on the small bumps. Later Johnny pulls over and watches the traffic pass by. He talks to himself. “I am not a good man,” he says.
When he gets back to the centre, Allison has left. Johnny brushes his teeth and climbs into bed. He stares up at the ceiling and thinks how believing in God makes him feel special. It gives him another side. He is not just one more philandering unbeliever, a descendant of an ape who, after spilling out his lonely life, returns to dust. In the darkness Johnny presses his fingers to his forehead, squeezes his eyes shut, cries a little, and whispers a need for forgiveness.
On Sunday, before the baptism, Johnny calls up Phil Barkman and says, “I don’t think this is right. My life is not exactly on solid ground these days. Charlene and I are not doing well. Loraine Wallace is going to have my baby. I drive down the highway and big trucks bear down on me and I think I’m not ready to die, to be baptized. You see?”
Phil doesn’t seem shocked or upset by Johnny’s revelations. Johnny can hear kids playing in the background. Phil says, “You think there’ll be a better time? I mean, you have to be sure. I can’t decide for you. This one’s all yours; not your wife’s, not Loraine’s, nor should it have much to do with this sense of imminent death you seem to have. Of course you want to be sure things are right with everyone in your life. Have you made your peace? But most of all you want to listen to the Holy Spirit. What does the Spirit want you to do?”
Johnny hangs up, still confused. He tries to read the Bible but nods off.
He sleeps too long and wakes with a feeling of both panic and anticipation. There are three cars in the church parking lot when he arrives. Inside he finds Melissa Emery, Phil, and one other man whom Phil introduces as his brother-in-law, Brian.
“Are you ready?” Phil asks.
“Sure.”
“Turnout’s low tonight,” Phil says. He shakes his head.
“No problem,” Johnny says. He finds himself amused.
The main auditorium is vast and bright. Johnny changes downstairs; he wears underwear, purple briefs, beneath a white gown. He keeps on his socks. His hands shake; he is cold. Phil is already standing in the water when Johnny walks up to the edge of the baptistry tank. He steps down into the water, grateful for its warmth. Through the short panel of glass, against which the water laps, he can see Melissa’s red lips and Brian’s bald head. Then, Phil has him by the shoulders, clasps his hands, and speaks into Johnny’s ear. Asks him all those things that are necessary, things about Jesus and sins and the Holy Spirit, and Johnny says yes to all of them. Finally, he’s submerged and then he rises again, water dripping off his ears. Later, he and Phil change into dry clothes in a Sunday school room in the basement. They rub towels against goose-pimply skin. Their shared nakedness keeps them silent and thoughtful. Johnny turns his body slightly so Phil can’t see his privates; though he does manage to sneak a look at Phil’s and what he sees is nothing to brag about. Johnny slips his bare feet into brown shoes. His hair is tousled, his back still wet. Phil, dressed now, asks if he feels okay.
“Yes,” Johnny says, and Phil hugs him. While they are holding each other Johnny thinks about how Phil looks when he’s naked. He shakes his head and tries to recall Melissa Emery’s red mouth. He hopes she will still be up there in that large vestibule, waiting to shake hands and wish him well. Then he remembers the voice he heard just before he went under the water. It was a groan or a chant, and he still isn’t sure if it was Melissa Emery babbling with delight or his own voice crying out at the high varnished rafters of the empty building.
Loraine is losing her son. For some time now he’s been chafing. But as fall slides away and the world is at the edge of winter, Chris decides to take his hatred for this meagre life and throw it back at his mother. It’s like Loraine is standing at the edge of a river and Chris is walking out into the middle where the ice is thin and dangerous. She calls out to him but he ignores her. There’s nothing Loraine can do but watch. Some mornings, at breakfast, she watches him drop his chin near a bowl and spoon up cereal, and she thinks that all is okay, that Chris is still her little boy, that whatever ugliness she saw in him yesterday was exceptional and is dead today. But then he opens his mouth and Loraine must brave a barrage, a storm. He wallops away at his mother, at himself.
Like this morning, he is buttering his toast and Loraine is by the kitchen window watching for the school bus. She turns to ask him if he has his bag, his lunch.
“Why don’t you go puke,” he says.
Loraine’s hands grip the countertop, the small of her back presses its edge. There is a hardness in her throat. “I’m finished with morning sickness. The first three months are the worst.”
“Oh, the worst. Now we’re waiting for the best. I’m so excited.” He flaps his hands, mocking her.
“Your bus is here.” Loraine can see it standing at the edge of the drive way. It’s like a big bright yellow box on a black background. A painting. She calls out goodbye but Chris doesn’t respond. She watches him run, his laces loose, his jacket flapping. Then he’s swallowed by the doors; a mouth of a bird.
Loraine washes the dishes, then puts on a heavy coat—it was her husband’s—and goes out to the barn to gather eggs. She’s in the refrigerator room when the phone rings. She picks it up and talks but there’s no response. She says hello again and then there’s a quiet giggle and a voice breathy and loose that says, “Bitch,” and then a click. Loraine holds her breath. The baby’s fluttering and giving her goose bumps.
This baby. She wonders why she wanted it. She knows who phoned and she feels sorry for the woman. Johnny sometimes talks about Charlene, not in a bad way, just little details, like her habits, and bodily things. Loraine will ask, point-blank, about Charlene: how often does she shave, does Johnny like hairy armpits, does Charlene have nice breasts, whose are nicer, what about weight, is Charlene heavy, and does Johnny like lots to hang on to. Johnny doesn’t seem to mind answering these questions. Often they’re in bed talking like this and Johnny will touch Loraine all over. “I like
you
,” he’ll say.
But Johnny hasn’t been around lately. And Loraine thinks maybe he won’t be. When he gets into this baptism and Bible stuff he becomes more faithful and stays close to Charlene. That’s all right, good for Charlene but, still, Loraine misses Johnny. She tries to understand how Chris might perceive all this. That’s what frightens Loraine. Obviously, she’s in the wrong; she has stolen another woman’s husband and, according to Chris, the man wasn’t worth stealing. But, it’s more than that; Chris is just discovering his own sexuality and it must be troubling for him to know his mother sleeps with Johnny.
She talks to him one night. “You know, what Johnny and I are doing
isn’t wrong. It’s terrible that Charlene gets hurt but if I love Johnny and he loves me, it’s not wrong for us to be having sex.”
“Did I say it was?” Chris says. “I mean, just because you’re a slut doesn’t make it wrong. Right? Everybody says that, ‘Your mom’s a slut.’”
“They do not.”
“They think it.”
“No, Chris.
You
think it. Look at me. Am I a slut? A whore?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“No, not whatever. I was wrong, okay. I shouldn’t be pregnant. But I am. What do you want? An abortion?”
No answer. Glum face and angry ears.
“You have no idea,” Loraine says.
“You talk too much,” Chris throws back. They are in his bedroom, Chris lying in bed, Loraine on a stool beside him. Her neck is hot and red; she stops talking. She gets up and walks out on him, softly shutting the door, wanting to slam it. She creeps back in later when he is sleeping and stands looking at him. Lingers over him, bends to listen to him breathe. His bare legs are outside the blanket. They are getting hairy. She touches him lightly: hair, eyes, elbow, knee, mouth, hand, thumb, lips. She kisses him and smells his cheek, a mixture of Vaseline and soap. He has tiny scrapes on his arms as if someone has poked at him with a sharp object. His nails are bitten, his hair long, eyelashes thick. He mumbles and stirs. Loraine backs from the room.