The Withdrawal Method (24 page)

The fish are good to watch. There are three of them, all the same species, although what that would be, I have no idea. But there's something soothing about them, these shimmering, fluttering things, all silver glitter in the light of the tank.

We always talked about getting a cat, Rachel and me. But we figured we'd try fish first, and if they didn't die right away we'd chance it with a cat. But less than two months after we moved in together, before we'd even had a chance to go fish shopping, Rachel got pregnant.

At first having a baby seemed too big, too adult, too far removed from the safe little niche we'd carved for ourselves. But once we got talking to Judy, started considering her as our midwife, things began to take shape and make sense. At night, in bed together, Rachel and I would lie with our hands on her belly, talking about the future, how one day we'd look back on our apprehension and laugh. But I guess everyone constructs, at some point, these perfect versions of how things are going to be.

A WEEK OR so later I'm in the backyard, down on my knees sanding the table legs, and Pico appears at the gate.

"Hola, Pico," I holler. "Come on in."

Pico reaches over the fence, flips the latch, and moves across the yard toward me, plucking an old seed dandelion from the grass on his way. Today is chillier; he's in a mauve turtleneck and a pair of pleated jeans. Pico leans up against the table, twirling the dandelion in his fingers. He lifts it to his mouth, sucks in a great mouthful of breath, and blows. The grey fluff catches a breeze and lifts scattering into the sky.

"Nice one," I say.

"How come dandelions aren't flowers?" Pico twirls the decapitated plant between his thumb and forefinger, then flicks it at the ground.

"Because they're weeds, Pico."

"But they look like flowers. When they're yellow."

"Well, that's their trick."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. They pretend to be flowers so you keep them around. But they're weeds."

"They look like flowers to me," says Pico, as if this settles it.

He starts walking around the table, running his fingers along the wood. Before I can warn him about splinters, he yelps and springs back like something's bitten him, his hand to his lips. Right away, I'm up, beside him. "You've got to watch that, Pico."

"Ouch," he says, wincing.

I guide him into the shed, where he sits down on the bed. I find some tweezers, and Pico puts his hand out, palm up, quivering.

I smile, the tweezers poised. "Trust me?"

Pico nods. I raise his hand up to the light, and there it is - a black grain of wood lodged into the skin. I slide the tweezers up to it, clamp down, and pull the splinter free. Pico bucks and yanks his hand away. But after a moment, he examines his finger and looks up at me in awe.

"Nothing to it," I tell him. But Pico has already turned his attention to my fish, the splinter apparently forgotten. He sits on my bed, regarding them with vague interest.

"Cool, huh?"

"Great," says Pico.

I struggle to think of some interesting fish fact, something remarkable and fascinating.

Pico beats me to it: "Did you know fish only have memories for five seconds?"

"Huh. I had no idea."

"They forget their whole lives every five seconds - then it's like they're new fish again."

"Or they think they are."

Pico gives me a funny look. "How come you're the only Block Parent on this street?"

"I'm not - really?"

"Yep. I went around looking for signs, and you're the only one."

"It's because we're the nicest."

"Can I feed your fish?" Pico asks, standing up.

"Sure." We trade places, and I settle into the groove he's left in my bedcovers. "The food's just there. But don't give them too much -"

Pico glances at me over his shoulder, already sprinkling the coloured flakes into the aquarium. "I know what I'm doing, Les."

On my bedside table is a deck of playing cards. I pick them up and try making a house, but the cards keep slipping off one another. Pico comes over, shaking his head.

"You've got to make triangles." He sits down beside me, takes two cards, and leans them against one another. He succeeds in building a few levels before the whole thing collapses.

"Hey, want to see a trick?" I ask.

"A card trick?"

"Sure. Just pick a card and tell me what pile it's in."

This is the only card trick I know, and it's a simple one: after three times through the same routine, the person's card is always the eleventh out of the pile. But I choose it with a flourish, throwing the cards around the room, and then walking around as if confused before pulling the right one up off the floor.

Pico claps. "Again," he commands. "Again!"

"Nope. Magicians never do the same trick twice in a row."

"Oh, come on."

"Sorry. Maybe some other time, Pico."

Pico looks at me carefully. "The kids at school call me PeePee-Co, sometimes."

"That doesn't even make sense," I say. Here I am, sitting with this boy on my bed, this odd little fellow with the face of a diabolical American president. "You want to stay for dinner?"

Pico considers, tilting his head toward some indefinite place on the ceiling. "I'll have to call my nana," he says, nodding. "But I think it might be a good idea."

JUDY COMES HOME to Pico sitting on the floor of the kitchen, talking to the dogs. I've got a veggie moussaka in the oven, tomato and tarragon soup simmering on the stove, and a spinach salad tossed and ready for dressing on the counter.

"More bird food?" says Judy. She stoops down to greet Pico and his canine companions. "You must be Pico."

Pico looks up and grins. "I'm staying for dinner."

"Oh, you are now." Judy turns to me. "Did you check with his mom?"

"His nana," I tell her. But then I realize I haven't. I had stayed in the kitchen while Pico made the call from Judy's bedroom. Pico and I exchange a quick look, and then I turn to Judy. "I'm sure it's fine."

"She knows you're Block Parents," says Pico.

Judy shrugs, steps over Pico, and opens the fridge. "Don't we have any beer?"

"Beer?" I squeeze a wedge of lemon into a glass jar, add some olive oil, salt, pepper.

She slams the fridge door shut and then leans up against it. "What a day. I spend half my week wrist-deep in vaginas - you'd think I've got the best job in the world."

I frown and nod my head in the direction of Pico, but he seems oblivious, totally absorbed with trying to get the already prostrate dogs to lie down.

"Oh, shoot," she says, snorting. "Would you believe I've got another couple who are burying their placenta? Although at least these two aren't eating it. Man, these people. You'd think they'd just be happy if their kid comes out all right, it's not - "

She catches herself.

"Oh, fuck. Les - I'm sorry."

The room has changed. Even Pico is quiet. I shake up the jar of oil and lemon juice. I shake it, I keep shaking it, I stare out the window and I shake the jar, and all I can hear is the wet sound of the dressing sloshing around.

Judy is beside me. She has her hand on my arm. I stop.

"It's okay," I tell her.

"It's okay," she tells me.

We finish dinner by seven o'clock, so Judy and I ask Pico if he wants to come along while we take the dogs out for their evening walk. Before we ate, Judy had decided Pico needed to know I had a lisp when I was a kid, and he kept my sister in hysterics, calling me "Leth" and "Lethy" for the better part of the meal.

Everyone helps clear the table, and then we collect the dogs and head down to the creek behind Judy's house. We call it the creek, but it's basically dried up, just a gentle dribble through the ravine. The dogs love it, though; we let them off their leads and they go bounding and snarling into the woods.

The sun is just setting as the three of us make our way down along the path into the ravine. Judy's brought a flashlight, but she keeps it in her coat. "It's for when they poop," she tells Pico, and shows him the fistful of plastic bags in her pocket. His eyes widen.

Under the canopy of trees overhead, the light down here is dim - almost as if the ravine is hours ahead of the sunset. We unleash the dogs, who bolt, disappearing into the gloom. Judy and Pico follow them, but I move the other way, climbing over a mound of roots and earth, arriving in the dried-up creekbed. I kneel down, put my hand out, and I'm startled to feel water, icy and streaming urgently over my fingertips. But then I realize I can hear it, I probably could have all along - the happy, burbling sound of it barely above a whisper. I close my eyes, listening, my hand dangling in the thread of river.

Rachel and I went to an art exhibit once on one of our trips into the city. There was this room that you went into, and it was dark, totally black. When you entered, a single lightbulb turned on and lit up the room. And in this light you saw, written on one of the walls, text about guillotined criminals who were found to be able to communicate after their heads had been chopped off. Then, right as you read the last word, the lightbulb turned off, leaving you in darkness.

As we were coming out of the room, Rachel took my hand and whispered, "Man, that was spooky."

"Yeah," I said, but later I realized she was only talking about being left in the dark.

Out of the woods, one of the dogs comes trotting up to me and nuzzles its nose into my hand, then starts lapping at the creek. I smack its muscled haunches and the tail starts pumping. Judy and Pico are close, moving through the trees, their voices muffled. Then Pico starts calling, "Leth-eee! Leth- eee!" and Judy gets into it too, their voices ringing out in chorus. Judy turns on her flashlight - it swings through the darkness, sweeping the forest in a fat, white band. I hunker down, my arm around the dog, and wait for them to find me.

AUTUMN HAS FULLY arrived, the smoky, dusty smell of it thick in the air. The leaves are starting to fall, and in the mornings my breath appears in clouds as I putter around the backyard. I figure I'll get a space heater for the cabin once it gets really cold, but the big problem is that I don't know how much longer I'll be able to work outside. I had an indoor workshop at the old house, back when carpentry was only a hobby. It was odd moving, clearing out that room - with all my tools missing it became just an empty space in the basement, smelling vaguely of sawdust and leather. I'm sure Rachel's since turned it into the darkroom she used to talk about.

I don't see Pico for more than a week. Then one afternoon I'm out in the front yard doing the first rake of the season, and he wheels up on a bicycle.

"Les!" he yells. "Look at the bike my nana bought me."

He does a wobbly circle on the street. The bike is a throwback to a time well before Pico's birth - tassels dangle from the handlebars, and the seat curves up into a towering steel backrest. I give Pico the thumbs-up.

With some minor difficulties Pico dismounts, lowering the bike gingerly onto Judy's lawn. Today he is wearing a pink K-Way jacket about two sizes too big for him, blue sweatpants, and a pair of rubber boots. He runs up to me, and we both stand there for a minute, silent, breathing in the crisp autumn air.

"I'm not scared of squirrels any more," he says.

"Yeah?"

"I'm doing my science project on them. They bury their nuts in the fall, and then they find them later because they rub their feet on them and make them smell."

"Is that how it works?"

"Yep. People think they remember where they put them, but they don't. It's just the smell of their stinky feet." Pico starts giggling.

"Isn't that something else."

"You never showed me that card trick again."

"Help me bag these leaves, then we'll go in and I'll do it. But this is the last time."

In a drawer in the kitchen I find a pack of cards, and I deal them out on the table. Pico, eyes narrowed to slits, scrupulously watches my hands. Then I do my big theatrical bit at the end where the cards get tossed all over the room. I walk around for a few seconds in feigned indecision before snatching Pico's queen of spades off the floor.

"I saw you counting."

"No, way! This is a magic trick, it's all -"

"You counted the cards, Les, and mine was number eleven."

Pico gets down off his chair and silently collects all the cards scattered around the kitchen. I follow his lead and start to clear the table. "Well, now you know the trick at least."

Pico picks up the last card and hands me the deck, his face solemn. "Thanks, Les," he says. "I have to go home now."

And that's it. Pico abandons me in the kitchen. The front door wheezes open and a cool breeze floods into the kitchen, briefly, before the door slams closed. The house is silent. I look out through the kitchen window at the dining table sitting half refinished in the backyard.

I head back there intending to do some work, but I can't figure out where to start. After hovering around the table for a while, I rearrange my tools, then head inside my cabin, and, leaving the light off, lie down on the bed. I look over at the fish, their aquarium glowing blue in the darkened room. Five seconds of memory. A lifetime composed of these five-second instalments, just flashes of existence, only to have them vanish, recede mercifully from you like an accident you'd drive by at night on a highway.

TWO WEEKS LATER, autumn is in full swing. Every morning I wake up to a backyard buried in leaves, which I dutifully clear away before starting my day's work. By the end of the afternoon the grass is already disappearing again, the lawn just green scraps under a patchy brown cover. I've finished the dining table with one last coat of mahogany stain; I'm keeping it under a tarp out back until I find a buyer. It looks about a hundred years older than it actually is.

Judy has convinced me to go to this thing with her this afternoon - that weird hippie couple intent on burying their baby's placenta. Judy, the deliverer of the baby, is the honorary guest. Last weekend we were down at the creek with the dogs and she told me all about it.

"I'd really like you to be there," Judy said. She sat down on an old mossy log and looked up at me. Nearby, the dogs were chasing each other through the trees, the patter of paws on fallen leaves fading as they ran farther and farther away.