The Journey Prize Stories 27 Read online

  I asked if it was bad. He shrugged. “It’s been bad since day one.”

  The hospital room smelled like vomit. On the other side of the curtains, a woman with a Yankees baseball cap stretched over her head waved at me. I waved back, feeling as though one of us was in a car going someplace, and the other was standing very inert, very still. “I think she tried to eat herself a couple hours ago,” he said. I looked at the woman again and saw the imprints of what could have been teeth on her hand.

  We sat in silence as the tubes put things into him and sucked things out. I let him fall asleep, but not before I made him promise not to die on me before I could take him out of this place. All I could think to do was walk around the hospital, looking for someone, anyone, who fulfilled my idea of what a gay person looked like. What did I plan to do when I found him, the perfect man for my husband? In times of crises, your nervous system dilates your pupils, raises your blood pressure, increases your heart rate, parts of your brain shut off, and you can only comprehend survival. It was a simple equation: if I could do this thing, find this man, I could negate so many other things. The word cancer didn’t even occur to me as I tried to find the perfect man for my husband.

  My husband wasn’t dead when I came back empty-handed, no potential candidate on my arm. The fact hit me, right then. He probably wouldn’t be getting out of the bed he was curled up in.

  “Doctors are like weathermen,” I whispered into the thinning hair of his crown. “They’re wrong about everything. They used to recommend spraying people with DDT.” He grunted a little bit, which made me think what I’d said had entered him through a sort of osmosis.

  Crawling into the bed with him, I transformed my body into something like a plaster mould. The space I would make between our bodies would be an imprint, the way you’d make a mask of someone’s face. I told myself if I didn’t move I could keep the shape of him forever, that when this version of him was gone, I could fill the shape up over and over, making a new him when the old one had to go and leave me. My eyes were closed when my husband put his mouth on my ear. Not just on it, around it, as if he were trying to swallow me starting at the place I could hear. After coughing a little, he pulled back a bit and touched my hair and whispered, “There are no monsters here.”

  SARAH MEEHAN SIRK

  MOONMAN

  When the sky turned black, I thought of my father.

  But that makes no difference to you now. “Where were you when it happened?” you ask, and I say I was at work, in my cubicle, in the centre of the city. Which is not untrue. Hunched over my keyboard, the computers blinked off with a defeated drone, the lights flickered out, and the silence of a city cut from its power rose up from the ground. A quiet more unnerving than darkness, just like Moonman had whispered.

  “How did you get out?” you ask, meaning methods, vehicles, escape routes. You want to hear about the path you assume I took west to the wide roads and stiff stalks of corn, whether I knew about the tunnels in advance, and so on, so you can amend your own plans of now-constant preparedness, mental networks fizzing as they rewire.

  I don’t tell you that when the black clouds thundered across the sky I didn’t go anywhere, and my first thought was of the man least capable of protecting me from the end of the world.

  —

  I saw him the way he was, with a mug of red wine and a pack of Player’s Light, on the other side of the screen door that led out to our small backyard. He could sit out there for hours on summer evenings, smoke lingering around his head in varying densities like a dirty halo. He sat and smoked, looking out, facing elsewhere, while Mom dried the plates and glasses with a blue dishtowel and went upstairs to put Alice to bed.

  I’d sometimes pretend he was out there on the step listening to a Jays game on the radio, unwinding after work like most dads did. I imagined that if I opened the squeaky screen door he’d shift over to make a spot for me and tell me that there were two out in the top of the fourth, with runners on first and third. We’d sit just listening for a while and, when the game began to drag, he’d talk about stats and trades and the players he watched when he was my age. Near the bottom of the seventh, when the score was 11–2, he’d tell me to grab our gloves from the garage so we could throw the ball around until it was time for bed.

  Instead though, like most nights after dinner, I was inside lying on the rug in front of the TV, and he was out there alone sitting quietly on the back step, wishing he were somewhere else.

  I was ten when he came home on a Saturday afternoon with a used guitar. He ruffled my hair as he walked across the front porch where I was colouring with Alice, and let the door bang shut behind him. His fingertips left trails on my scalp like swaths cut through a wheat field. I followed him inside and watched from the living room doorway as he leaned the banged-up guitar case against the couch. He grabbed a glass from the cabinet in the dining room and whistled on his way into the kitchen, where he rummaged through a high cupboard, clinking bottles together until he found the one he was looking for. I’d never heard him whistle. He returned, the glass half-filled with a nectar like dark honey, and stopped when he saw me, his lips still pursed in melody.

  “Hey, Simon,” he said. “Wanna hear something, little man?”

  I nodded and moved closer as he set his glass down on the coffee table with a clink. He pulled the case onto the couch, clacked open its locks, and lifted the lid to reveal a plush red interior cradling a scratched black guitar. He ran his fingers along its strings before pulling it out and nestling it into his torso. For a couple of minutes he tuned the instrument, his eyes closed, head cocked as though listening for some secret. And when he started to strum, a whole different man took the place of my father.

  Something dropped to the floor in the upstairs bathroom, and a second later my mother was there on the stairs, her hair pulled back with a kerchief, yellow latex gloves on her hands glistening with water.

  It was just before Christmas when he left his job at his uncle’s car dealership. My mother wore a hood of silence as she peeled carrots and potatoes over the sink, her dark hair hanging forward like a curtain so none of us could see her face.

  “Maggie, you’re not even trying to understand,” my father said.

  He leaned beside her against the counter, with his arms crossed tight over his broad chest, shaking his head and staring down at the tile he kept poking with his big toe. Mom peeled harder and faster until the carrot in her hand looked more like a weapon than a vegetable.

  “Babe,” he said, “come on. You think it was easy for me to make this decision?”

  As though he wasn’t there at all, she chopped up the potatoes and carrots, dumped them in a pot of water, and set it on the stove. She grabbed plates and cutlery from the shelves and drawers, set the table for three, and opened the oven door to check on the meat.

  “It’s pork,” she said, slamming it shut. “Dinner will be ready in an hour.”

  She wiped her hands on a dishtowel, tossed it onto the counter, and didn’t say anything to Alice or me on her way through the living room and up the stairs.

  “I’m really getting tired of this martyr shit!” my dad yelled to the ceiling on his way out back, the screen door clapping hard against its frame.

  Alice and I sat like statues on the living room floor in front of Wheel of Fortune. I thought that if we didn’t move, if we didn’t say anything, we might blend into the carpeting. I was relieved when Dad came back in a few minutes later and went upstairs.

  “Big money! Big money!” Alice called out as she clapped her hands.

  I elbowed her in the ribs: “Shh!”

  The bedroom door opened and shut above us, and I heard the bass of their voices getting louder and louder until something slammed against the wall, rattling the trinkets in the china cabinet beside me.

  Footsteps in the hallway above. Fast but not running, my mother came down the stairs, my father close behind.

  “Maggie, wait,” he called to her. But she was al
ready out the front door. Because I didn’t hear the creak of the porch steps, I knew she hadn’t gone far and imagined her leaning over the railing, which, in a way, was just as bad.

  That spring I turned eleven and got a bike for my birthday. By then my father was writing music during the day and playing Bowie cover songs in bars a couple nights a week. My mother was working the overnight shift at the radio station, where she was a part-time producer. I’d heard her on the phone with someone not long before she started working nights, saying Alice and I wouldn’t even know she was gone, that she’d be around for bedtime and home in time to take us to school in the morning.

  “My aunt is going to stay over the nights that both Chris and I are working,” she said into the receiver. “I don’t know, Fran. It’s going to be tough for a while, but I think it’s only temporary. I mean, my hours and his … situation.”

  And then she laughed in that conspiratorial way mothers share while talking with one another about their husbands and children. A laugh, it seemed to me, that rarely involved joy.

  I couldn’t tell her that she’d been wrong. It didn’t matter that she was home when we went to bed and when we got up for school in the morning—her nighttime absence echoed through the halls. We always knew when she was gone. I lost the feeling that children are supposed to have when they drift off to sleep: that knowledge that their parents, their mother, is in the house somewhere, her protective warmth flowing from room to room in the dark. Without it, I lay awake for hours listening to every creak, every rustle, and every snore that rose up from Great Aunt Audrey, who slipped into an impenetrable slumber on a chair in front of the television minutes after the front door was pulled shut and the key turned in the lock.

  In search of a direct line to my mother, I brought the old brown clock radio up from the basement one night, plugged it in by my bed, and tuned it to her station. I knew I wouldn’t hear her voice, but it didn’t matter. I could see her in the windowless studio I’d visited on a PD day, sitting at the control board pressing buttons, adjusting volumes, directing the show in silence. The studio felt as serious as an operating room and everything in it seemed very important, including my mother, without whom I believed the whole thing would fall apart.

  I burrowed deep under the covers with the radio and slowly increased the volume.

  “They know more than they’ll ever let on, while they ply us with television and hamburgers and the Super Bowl, pounding our brains into a doughy pulp. You can’t hear them, but they’re laughing. Right now. Laughing at us.”

  The voice stopped. A man’s voice, almost whispering. I felt like I’d caught him in the middle of telling a secret. I waited a few seconds before reaching for the tuner, thinking maybe I had the wrong sta—

  “Laughing!” he boomed, the radio tumbling from my hands and clunking to the floor. Aunt Audrey’s snore broke into fits before returning to its sinusoidal cadence. I picked up the radio and settled back under the blanket.

  The voice was whispering again.

  “Laughing. At us. And you can bet your last ounce of gold that they’ll be laughing harder as they watch us try to peeeeeeel our flabby bodies off the couch when it comes time to fight back.”

  Pause.

  “To fight the new world order.”

  Pause.

  “If, that is, we ever open our eyes to what is happening. To what—really—is happening.”

  Longer pause.

  “I’m Moonman and this is The Age, on the Striker Radio Network.”

  I crawled deeper under the covers where it was hardest to breathe and decided that when Moonman came back from commercial I’d focus on the silence between his words. It wasn’t hard to do. And I could swear, if I listened hard enough, that I heard my mother in that silence, that I could hear her breathing. She was always there in the soundlessness. Quiet on the board signalling to Moonman to break, quiet in the kitchen packing our lunches for school, quiet with Alice asleep in her arms through the crack of the bedroom door.

  I tuned in to Moonman under my blankets every night she was gone. I listened to him talk about the Illuminati, about life in other galaxies, about Area 51 and what really happened in Roswell, New Mexico. I learned about the symbols of the new world order, the secret histories of world leaders, and the imminent “end of the world as we know it.” Moonman knew more than anyone I’d ever met, and every night I felt like he was sharing secrets of the universe with me alone.

  If I wanted to, I could blame him for what happened. I could say he planted seeds of curiosity about the world at night, that he inspired me to explore the dark, that listening to him made me feel brave and independent and old enough to creep down the stairs past sleeping Aunt Audrey, into the garage and out onto the street with my bicycle.

  But, really, I think it was rage that sparked it. Rage or insomnia, or just the plain white terror of being left alone in the dark. Or some of all three.

  I rode off into the starless city night, pedalling hard and fast, weaving through neighbourhood streets, toward the main road. Darkness rustled the leaves high overhead and I was breathless with adrenaline and the metallic taste of the night air that in no way resembled that of the day. I knew where my dad was. He’d pointed it out to me one afternoon when he picked me up from school—the pub where he played his music.

  I had to blink against the bright street lights when I turned onto the main road, standing up as I pedalled along the wide sidewalk, zipping past people out for a nighttime stroll or huddled in dark doorways smoking cigarettes.

  “Hey—kid!” someone yelled. “Little late for a bike ride!”

  I slowed down and rode close to the storefronts as I approached the pub, slipping into the shadows of the awnings that lined the way. I heard music. A man’s voice singing something familiar. “CHRIS COATES, TONIGHT 9 P.M.,” written in pink chalk on a sandwich board outside. I hopped off my bike and leaned it against the window of the shop next door. When I was sure no one had seen me, I crouched down beside the planter box in front of the pub and slowly raised my head to peek into the window.

  He was right there, sitting on a stool with his back to the street. His feet were perched on the lowest rung, his heels bouncing up and down, keeping time. A column of sweat soaked through his shirt along his spine. On the small stage floor beside him was a bottle of red wine and a half-empty glass, and everything was hued pink and green by the lights cast from the ceiling above him. My father strummed his guitar while he sang hard and loud into the microphone. Even through the glass I could hear that his guitar sounded brighter and more desperate than it ever had in our living room.

  I looked past him into the pub where candles flickered like grimy stars on each table. A group of college kids was making its way to the pool table at the back, the girls stirring candy-coloured drinks with tiny straws. Two older men in plaid shirts drank beer and ate nuts at the bar while they watched hockey on televisions that were hung from the ceiling, and three young women sipped white wine and looked around the room instead of talking to each other. One couple sat facing my dad, a blond woman leaning back into the man she was with, a number of shot glasses and beer bottles scattered on the table beside them. The man seemed to be having a hard time keeping his head from bobbing around. The woman was staring at my father. When the man said something in her ear she swatted at his face with long fingers and didn’t take her eyes off the stage. I looked around for others listening the same way but, outside of a few people nodding their heads to the music now and then, no one else seemed to be paying much attention.

  When he stopped playing, the blond woman was the first to clap. She sat up straight and pressed her elbows against either side of her chest. A few others turned to applaud as well, but none as vigorously as she did. I heard my dad say something about taking a break and I dropped down again as he slid off his stool.

  I peeked one last time and saw him standing in front of the stage, pouring more wine into his glass. He was talking to the woman. She smiled with big
white teeth and tossed her blond hair over her shoulder when she laughed. The man she’d been sitting with had fallen asleep with his chin on his chest and was being nudged, hard, by a chubby waitress as she cleared the empty bottles left on their table into a black dish tub. Dad walked in the direction of the bar, the woman chatting close beside him. He smiled at her in a way that was moist and young, a smile that bared too many teeth and a hunger I couldn’t recognize.

  I rode home. Fast. The wind felt colder, like it was scratching my throat with long frigid fingernails. I was suddenly very tired and I wanted my bed. My radio. My blankets. My mother’s inaudible breaths in Moonman’s pauses. I stood on my pedals and pumped hard, turning from one street to the next in wide arcs. A block from my house, I took a corner too quickly.

  I remember headlights. And that is all.

  Nauseous in the aluminum lighting.

  Thick throbbing in my ears.

  Mom and Dad shadows cut out against a white ceiling.

  Alice’s singsong voice at the end of a long, warbling tunnel.

  Can’t talk. Can’t move.

  Nurses checking tubes and dials, stroking my forehead when they looked down from far up, into my eyes. In the light, a dull, faraway inescapable pain.

  Dad somewhere in the room with his guitar once. Or always.

  Mom hovering in the quiet spaces between.

  I left the hospital near the end of autumn. The surgeon came down to see me on my last day and ruffled my hair and told me to buy a lottery ticket on the way home. When my mother wheeled me through the front door, I knew right away the house was not the same—a new emptiness in the hallway, the coat rack gone, the spider plant no longer trickling its spindly leaves from a stand by the stairs.