Falling (6 page)

She kept holding the tree, and the boy went away after a while.

Elvis gets upset, Roger was saying to Ingrid.

He’s just scared that everything will change, she said.

It’s going to have to change.

You could have someone come in, said Ingrid. You could have a girl come in.

No, said Roger, not a girl. Why not?

A few weeks ago he was on his way home from the workshop and he noticed a girl. He followed her home and stood across the street from her house for hours, until the girl’s mother called the cops. If I had a girl come in, it would just be trouble.

Well, someone older then.

Maybe.

You’ll be all right, Ingrid said. One way or another.

The blind leading the blind, said Roger.

They turned the corner from Morrison onto Ontario Street.

We used to go bicycling here, she said.

There weren’t as many cars then.

And we’d go past those two kids. Remember that? The Petroski kids.

They had that disease – progeria, I think it was.

They looked as though they were ninety years old, she said. Remember how their mother put blankets over them when they were sitting on the front porch? They had Hudson’s Bay blankets over them and a look in their eyes as if they were prisoners of war. We were probably about the same age, but they had that look in their eyes. I wonder what became of them.

She was silent for a moment. Well, I guess we know what became of them, don’t we?

Yes.

Tears came to her eyes when she thought of this. The Petroski kids had never been children. They’d never had bicycles. They’d never gripped a bicycle’s handlebars while going crazily around a corner, as she had, with the slender pink and blue plastic streamers whipping in the wind as she rode past the Petroski house, laughing, because Roger could ride his bicycle without hands and make faces at the same time.

No hands, she said. That’s how you rode.

That’s right. I did, didn’t I?

Here they were, thought Ingrid, making their slow passage, step by step. Nothing she could say was going to change the fact that he was blind and he had to take care of Elvis, and nothing he could say to her would change the fact that Lisa was dead. It was just how life went, and people got through it. But
how
? Ingrid wondered.
How
did they?

I thought I could do anything back then, he said.

It had been like the Valley of the Shadow, going past the Petroski house, she thought. When they’d turned the corner at the far side of the house, everything was different.

It was too hot to sleep that night. Elvis had gone out to the carriage house to sleep on the futon there, and Roger was on the couch in the living room. Damian was in the guest room, the one at the front of the house. Ingrid was in the bedroom she’d had as a child; she lay awake, hands folded over her chest, thinking she could hear Damian breathing as he slept down the hall. The books of her childhood were
on the shelves:
Katie and the Sad Noise, Paddle-to-the-Sea, Swallows and Amazons, Stig of the Dump, Anne of Green Gables
. In the shadows, she could still make out the dancer in the reproduction of a Degas painting. The dancer resembled a white bird.

It had been so sheltered, that world of childhood, where a dancer pirouetted inside a painting. There had never been any worry about money, and there never would be. The land their parents had sold off had been turned into blocks of condominiums near Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Greenborough Estates, for God’s sake, had made their parents wealthy. But money hadn’t saved her father from the slow deterioration of his eyesight and then, later, having a heart attack as he came inside after gardening. It hadn’t saved her mother from getting melanoma.

It didn’t save Ingrid from going into Emergency, leaving the bright afternoon and walking into the dimness of the hospital. It didn’t save her from seeing the look on Damian’s face, from holding him and trying to comfort him. It didn’t save her from being taken, along with Damian, down to the hospital morgue. They could have been in a bank, with someone leading them to the safety deposit boxes, except that the smell of formaldehyde was all around them. A long metal drawer was pulled out of the wall, and there was her daughter, in a white zippered bag. Like a garment bag. They unzipped her.

Lisa, whispered Ingrid. Her whole body was trembling.

It was Lisa and it was not Lisa. The features were all the same features, but the skin wasn’t right. It had been a matter of hours; that was all. Only a matter of hours. That very morning this daughter of hers had woken up alive and now she was dead.

Lisa’s hair was still damp, though it had been quite a while since they’d brought her in. Her hair had dried in ropes, the way wet hair dries when it isn’t combed. There was sand on her neck. Oh, there was sand on her neck. Why should it have been sand on her neck that brought tears coursing down Ingrid’s face? Just a delicate tracing of sand, that was all. This was her daughter. Her daughter was dead. Ingrid kept thinking this, but it didn’t make it real.

She had stood beside her mother at her father’s wake. Roger on one side, Ingrid on the other. Her mother was like a bird, and it was only the two of them on either side that kept her from gliding away. It was like that with Lisa too. Her body was hard and closed, but Lisa herself was light and feathery. She would vanish, fly up out of that narrow, bright room, if only Ingrid would release her.

No, she couldn’t release her.

She closed her eyes. Strangely enough, in that moment, she thought of Roger, in the Bomb Barrel, going over Niagara Falls. She had the sensation of being at the brink and realizing there was nothing to hold her back. Terrifying. How had Roger gone over the Falls? Twice. Not counting that other time he’d tried, or the time he hung upside down at the brink of the Falls for a film. She didn’t know how he’d done it, hanging upside down like a fruit bat, with the water rushing away beneath him.

And here was Ingrid with the firm, waxed hospital floor beneath her, though everything had given way. Her life had given way.

WE’RE OKAY, THE TWO OF US
, Roger said. We get by.

We get by, echoed Elvis.

They were eating a late dinner of tortellini and salad on the porch because Ingrid and Roger had spent the day in Niagara-on-the-Lake, tootling around, as Roger put it. Ingrid and Damian had been in town a week, and she’d shown him the Flower Clock, the Spanish Aero Car, Fort George. They could have gone to Crystal Beach that day, where Damian could use the kayak, but he offered to cut the lawn for his uncle just to spend time by himself.

Sometimes Damian couldn’t be around his mother and uncle, listening to them talk about how Nancy Ann Jakubowski had lost her leg to diabetes and whether Jerry Sparks had ever come home from the Buddhist monastery on an island off eastern Thailand. When they realized how they’d been leaving Damian out of the conversation, they’d tried to draw him into it. But the people they were talking about had all been born at least thirty years before Damian, and he didn’t want to know what a knockout Nancy Ann had been before she gained weight.

It had been a relief when they left Damian alone. He’d cut the grass absently in the heat of the day, and when he was finished he’d flung himself down on the lawn with a glass of lemonade, filled with ice, and watched a line of ants crawl over his arm. Now dusk had fallen and it was cooler. No one wanted to turn on the porch light as they sat there, though they could hardly see the food on their plates. Elvis was already in his pyjamas. He was sitting quietly, picking up the tortellini one by one and squishing them between his fingers before he ate them.

There’ll come a time when I’m just no good for you, Elvis, said Roger. We’ll need to go to a nursing home. Well, I’ll have to go to a nursing home, at least, because I won’t be able to take care of anyone, much less myself. I’m an old wreck as it is.

You do pretty well, said Ingrid.

Oh, something happens at least once a day. Last week Elvis was late getting to the workshop because he lost his Thermos, and you got panicky, didn’t you, Elvis?

Elvis was peering at a pocket of tortellini between his thumb and forefinger.

He got a bit panicky, said Roger.

Elvis put down the piece of tortellini and got up. He went down the steps.

Elvis? said Ingrid.

Friday, November 22, 1963, 1:10 p.m.

JFK, murmured Roger.

Friday, November 22, 1963, Elvis repeated. The date of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Three months after the death of his son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who lived thirty-nine hours –

Elvis, said Roger.

Both John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln were shot in the head. They both had seven letters in their last names. Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre, and Kennedy was shot in a Lincoln limousine, made by the Ford company.

Ingrid went down the steps and put her hand on Elvis’s arm.

Both of them were shot in the head, he said loudly.

Elvis, there’s ice cream for dessert, said Ingrid. Chocolate swirl.

Shot in the head on a Friday.

Elvis turned on his heel and left them.

He’s gone to the carriage house, said Roger.

I’ll go, said Damian.

It was dark in the carriage house, and when Damian went inside he bumped into a cabinet, making something crash inside it.

Who’s that? cried Elvis. Who’s that?

It’s okay, said Damian. It’s just me.

I’ve got a big gun, said Elvis. There was a shuffling sound, a banging. I’ve got a Winchester 30.30 here.

Elvis, it’s Damian.

I’ve got a big gun.

No, listen – it’s me. It’s Damian Benjamin MacKenzie. May 31, 1987.

Elvis turned on the light. He stood like a large shambling bear, holding a gun. His hand was on the trigger and he was pointing the gun at Damian.

Elvis – don’t. Is there a safety on that thing?

But Elvis was looking down the barrel of the gun. What’s a safety? he asked.

Christ, don’t
do
that.

Why?

It could go off and you could lose your head. And if you point it at me, I could lose my head.

There aren’t bullets, said Elvis, still looking down the barrel. Roger told me that there weren’t any bullets in it. Did you know that a Winchester 30.30 shoots bullets at two thousand feet per second?

Why does that make me feel even more nervous?

Elvis turned the gun over and stroked the polished wood of the handle. Roger said that it’s a Trapper Carbine. He said that it’s a Trapper Carbine and that it’s an antique and what did my mother need with a gun anyway. That’s what he said.

I’d really appreciate it if you put that Winchester Trapper Carbine down.

Elvis dropped his arms down, but he still held the gun loosely.

Thank you, said Damian, bending and putting his hands on his thighs. His heart was doing acrobatics. Maybe you could put it away. In a locked gun rack or something.

I wasn’t going to shoot you.

Elvis’s sandy hair had been brushed up like a crest on top of his head, and he had the sleepy look of a small boy. He had large eyes, with eyelashes and eyebrows that were so pale they could hardly be seen. There were entire galaxies of freckles all over his body; his face and neck, especially, were covered with ginger-coloured speckles.

His blue pyjamas had small sheep and ducks printed on them. They were a little too small and he’d left the top unbuttoned. For some reason, Elvis’s chest surprised Damian, just as it had the first time he’d met him. His chest was as
pale and hairless as his face, except for a few sparse curls of sandy-coloured hair; nevertheless, it was a man’s chest.

I wasn’t going to shoot you, he said again.

Well, good, because it scared the bejesus out of me.

For the first time, Damian looked around. He’d never seen a place like this before, filled with things from top to bottom. The glassy yellow eyes of a snowy owl were fixed on him; the bird had been stuffed and put in a huge mahogany case, lined with black velvet, on top of a cabinet. There was a small brass plate in front:
Nyctea scandiaca
. The creature’s feet were downy with soft feathers, making it look as though it was wearing delicate boots, but its wings were outstretched in an ominous way. It wasn’t an owl – it was a dead thing – but Damian couldn’t help thinking it was real. Such yellow eyes.

Where did all of this come from? asked Damian.

It’s Roger’s stuff.

There was a three-legged table on top of a marble-topped sideboard, and on top of the spindly table was a birdcage, spray-painted with gold. Books were stacked in piles, with old, yellowed newspapers beneath them: there were Bibles and dictionaries, musty with age, and a full set of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
. A cabinet held treasures behind glass: a rock on which nested tiny ivory birds in ivory nests, and beside the birds, a miniature scene of Santa’s workshop made to look as though it was a cave of ice, where thimble-sized elves were busy swinging hammers and using saws, and a Santa Claus waved his arms as if he were conducting a symphony.
Santa’s Animated Workshop – $78.00
. Next to it was a pair of horns from a two-headed ram, according to the label, and a Ghanaian gold weight of a dancing woman. The gold weight held open the table of contents of
a book written by Siamese twins
(The Left Page Being the Work of Simon and the Right Page Being the Work of Albert, Dated This Year of Our Lord, 1789)
. Overlooking Simon and Albert was a pink music box, with the lid raised and a pink ballerina tilted precariously against a mirrored backing.

In an umbrella stand were five walking sticks, and Damian pulled one out, idly; it was an ebony and brass stick with a carved ivory handle that unscrewed and revealed a unicorn hidden inside. He put it back again, making a clatter. Lisa would have loved this place, he thought. She’d have felt at home.

An oil painting was half hidden behind a sewing machine, and though it was dusty, the colours glowed. Crimson bloomed out of darkness, soft and thick as algae on the surface of the canvas. Near the bottom of the painting was a soft, subtle strip of golden red that became, at the lower edge, the golden yellow of autumn trees. There were small black lines in the corner that resembled a signature. “Imgit,” it seemed to say. Damian bent down to look at the oil painting, pulling it out so he could see it.