Hopeful Monsters Page 8

  “Isn’t that just like a man!” Janine had thrown her exaggerated hands into the air and stomped to the basement. Left Jun in the cradle of Karl’s lap.

  No, Jun sat now, neatly on the beige Sears sofa, feet placed on the shag carpet.

  Gloria and Karl didn’t have satellite and sitcoms held no humour for Jun. He’d heard that that was the last test of whether or not you’ve mastered another language. If you could understand humour. Jun blinked and blinked. He stared at the television, the roars of recorded laughter, until Gloria’s ridiculous cuckoo clock ground out a sound. 10:30. Gloria and Karl. Shit. Jun’s lips curled toward his right cheekbone, a Janine-imitation he had picked up. He hoped that any deep emotional ties Gloria and Karl may have had with the dead goldfish were well frozen. How bonded could a person get to fish anyway? He knew some people in Japan sat in their koi ponds and fed the glorious creatures from their hands. Koi, he could understand, but really, who in their right mind would have feelings for these mutated excuses of pets?

  Chopsticks would be just the thing to get them out of the toilet with ease, but Karl “would starve to death if they ever had to eat with sticks,” so Gloria had none in the house. Jun would have to ladle the carcasses out.

  He found a slotted spoon in the third drawer beside the stove, a Ziploc bag in the pantry. He would put those disgusting creatures back in the freezer and next time someone went looking for single portions of ground beef, they’d damn well see what it wasn’t before they’d unwrapped it.

  Jun nudged the washroom door with his foot. Flicked the light switch on with his elbow. Swallowed. Blinked.

  The deformed fish.

  Those coffins of ice. Melted.

  And alive.

  The tattered fish, the undead fish, swam in sluggish circles in the iron-stained stink of the toilet bowl. Gills gaping, broken fins ragged with remnants of disease. Their popped-o mouths, open, shutting, thawing from an icy sleep into an awakening hunger. The tiny hairs on Jun’s arms, nape, the curve of his graceful back, rose and tingled cold crazy. Shuddered almost into wet.

  My god. My god. A miracle. A sick sick miracle. A portent. A fucking sign. He made a small noise. Ladle clattering to the floor.

  “What – Jun? Are you okay?” Gloria knocked at the partially open bathroom door. She was pushed in by Karl, crowding, concerned. Together, they peered at Jun, caught movement in the toilet bowl, pressed forward to stare into the toilet. Gloria and Karl, their eyes popped, bulged in disbelief, mouths O in wonder and Jun guffawed, couldn’t hold it back, gasped hysterical from the pit of his belly. He bellowed, one hand holding his gut and the other pointing to the miracle of the fishes, pointing back to Gloria and Karl. He convulsed with laughter, unable to stop, barely able to stand.

  Gloria pinched her lips inside her mouth.

  Karl flushed the toilet.

  Jun’s body contorted, gasping, tears streaming down his face, choking laughter like vomit. It’s not funny! he thought. There’s nothing funny, only to be torn apart with an explosive guffaw. Gloria lowered the lid of the bowl and determinedly sat Jun down. He gulped air, erupting with convulsive gasps, swallowing it into his slender body. Trembling with the effort. Gloria reached out both arms and pulled Jun’s face into her soft bosom.

  She smelled like baby powder.

  Jun blinked. Blinked.

  Jun wondered if he ought to move his head side to side between the cushy orbs of Gloria’s breast.

  Jun wondered if this was a motherly gesture on Gloria’s part or if he was supposed to get physically excited. Perhaps both at the same time, in that Occidental way?

  Jun wondered what good ol’ Karl was thinking.

  He pulled his head slightly back and tipped his eyes upwards. Karl loomed over Gloria’s shoulder. A grin on his bearish face, he gave Jun a thumbs-up sign. Jun shook his head slightly.

  “There, there,” Gloria murmured, stroking Jun’s glossy hair with one hand, keeping his head in her bosom with the other. “There, there.”

  What should he do? Jun wondered. What did they mean? Something felt terribly off, but he couldn’t put words to it, it only yawned before him in growing darkness and he scrambled away from the crumbling edge. The goldfish, Jun thought, just think about the goldfish.

  “Goldfish,” he muttered.

  “Shhhh, shhhhhhh,” Gloria murmured. “They’re gone now, don’t worry your head about it.” She gestured her chin toward Jun and Karl knelt down in front of him. Karl slipped one arm under the back of Jun’s knees and behind his back with the other. Karl lifted Jun up like he were an injured animal, a well-loved pet, and Jun’s eyes gasped open.

  A grown man! Carried like this! Jun could feel the verge, the tip of the chasm and he shuddered, shuddered at the incredible depths, the vertigo plunge and – and –

  “He must be freezing!” Karl exclaimed.

  “It’s the shock,” Gloria said decisively. “Let’s put him in our room. We can turn up the heat on the waterbed.”

  Gloria pulled back the satiny covers and Karl deposited Jun on the unstable surface. It sloshed beneath him like nausea. The sheets smelled of Gloria’s baby powder, Karl’s hand cream, and Jun’s teeth chattered though he hadn’t thought he was cold. Karl leaned over him to unbutton his shirt, Gloria tugging the socks off his feet.

  Someone started tugging on the fly of his jeans.

  “Yamete,” Jun whispered, clutching at his pants.

  “Leave him be,” he heard Gloria advise, her voice low. “He can sleep with his jeans on for one night, at least. Poor pet. He can sleep between us and we’ll keep him warm.”

  “He’s shivering away!” Karl exclaimed. “You’ve got to fatten him up some, Glory, he’s all skin and bones. He’s lighter than you are!”

  “Oh, you stop!” Gloria giggled. Tucking the satiny comforter firmly around Jun’s slender neck.

  “Do you think, ah,” Karl coughed, “the child’s been a bit touched?”

  “Oh, honey, I just don’t know.” Gloria smoothed the hair from Jun’s brow and he stared upward. Not blinking. “We can’t really know what he’s thinking, can we?”

  “He’s like a son to me, a real son,” Karl stated.

  “He’s as pretty as a cat,” Gloria murmured. She changed into her flannel nightdress and sloshed into bed. Sat up, absentmindedly stroking Jun’s glossy hair, watched Karl put on his pyjamas.

  “Leave the hall light on. In case he gets worse during the night,” Gloria called out. So Karl just switched off the bedroom light, the weight of the door slowly swinging itself shut. And as Karl sloshed into the bed on the other side of Jun, their middle-aged backs fencing him in between them, the door slowly closed, and the wedge of light slivered into darkness.

  From Across a River

  She is three. Breathless. Fever presses her forehead like a hot and heavy hand. Her father sits on the edge of her bed, a silver razor blade pinched between his thumb and forefinger.

  “The blood is sick,” he explains gently as he clasps her wrist in a soft but firm grip. He slices the tender flesh, a parting of meat and sinew, white, red, and gleaming.

  Emiko just watches, her lips slightly dry. There is no pain. Only wonder that her father is capable of doing this.

  “We have to let the bad blood out.”

  She wants to ask why, but words don’t leave her lips. The gap between thought and action is so wide a decade will pass before he ever hears her. But her father shakes his head. Frowns. He murmurs something with excruciating slowness, the sound ballooning round and full. It will surely pop.

  Kelsey, who was sleeping beside her, jerked erect. “Don’t I have school this morning?” her childish voice shattering the ether of sleep.

  Emiko started, heart thudding and swollen. Mouth gasping for air. She jerked upright and slapped for the alarm clock. A halfhearted ting. She stared at the hands in the winter darkness: 7:25.

  “Oh!” Emiko flapped bedding off her sock-covered feet and pulled on the sweatsuit she’d left
on the floor. She ran for her daughter’s clothing in the bathroom, then rushed back. The child had burrowed deep beneath the blankets. Emiko flipped on the lights. “Four and a half more minutes until the bus,” she sang.

  “I’m cold,” Kelsey whined, her voice muffled beneath three layers. “It’s still dark outside.”

  Emiko pulled the covers off.

  “You’re mean! The lights! Turn off the lights!”

  “You’re going to miss the bus!” Emiko grinned through her teeth. She started to stuff a sock on her daughter’s foot, forcing the bunched-up wool over resisting toes.

  Kelsey screamed. The child’s maw unhinged a wail that filled the small bedroom, spilling into the hallway, and Emiko, heart stopping, dropped the girl’s small ankle. Her fingers crept to cover her horrified lips.

  No. She hadn’t hurt the child.

  Scrabbling, Emiko clutched her daughter’s limb, poring over the long fine bones, so unlike her own. Was that a bruise? No. Only a vein close to the smooth surface: blue and filled with life.

  Emiko sat down. Shoulders sagging her back into its familiar curl. 7:28. Was it possible?

  No.

  Something shuffling at the doorway.

  “Daddy!” Kelsey held up thin arms. Gordon bent down to sweep her into his strong hold. Curly hairs glinted auburn. Kelsey latched on to his waist with her legs and clasped her childish arms around his neck. She turned to glare down at her mother. No longer bawling, but a few fat tears still clung to the corners of the child’s lashes.

  “Mommy’s mean! She hurt my toe!”

  Emiko slowly raised her head. She could see up Gordon’s nose and a clot of hanakuso stuck to several nostril hairs. It fluttered with his breathing.

  “Why don’t I get you ready for school, pumpkin? Then we can drive there together, just you and me!”

  “I love you, Daddy!”

  Gordon turned, carrying his daughter to her own room. The child rested her chin on her father’s shoulder and smiled at her mother. Emiko watched her daughter’s face with a measure of distaste. Kelsey smiled even broader, her canines too pointed to be cute, her dark eyes gleaming brightly, like a fox. Emiko started, blinked, but the child closed her eyes. Emiko shook her head. Kelsey’s clothing on the bed. No point in dressing her in a whole new set when these were still perfectly fine.

  “Ta –” Emiko choked, gulped at the stale morning air. The word a spasm in her mouth, she swallowed hard. Blood in her ears drumming loud. Fast. Her armpits pressed moistly against her sides and a fine coating of sweat chilled her entire back. Shivering, Emiko crawled back into her blankets. The light was still on, but she could pull the pillow over her head. Emiko could barely hear Kelsey’s excited chatter about getting pancakes instead of cold cereal.

  When she woke up, there was a sourness in her mouth. Emiko swallowed. She felt slightly sweaty, surprised that she had actually fallen asleep. She hadn’t slept properly for over a month, and the days and nights waxed and waned with a fevered conflation of forgetfulness and hyper-reality.

  Emiko hated the wooden chair at her desk. She tried to keep clothing draped over the back, but the sweater she had left the night before had fallen to the floor. Emiko flicked her eyes away from the mesmerizing grain of wood. Faux patterns, she told herself. Not even real wood. Her eyes, unwittingly, slid back. The markings swirled clockwise, counter-clockwise, a twisting twining of cells and time. And as she gazed, the wood undulated, liquid lines morphing into shape, eyes, mouths. Howling. Wailing oni writhed from the swirl of wood, spiral demonic horns twirling upward, malformed cats crawling out of the grain.

  She started. A sound almost breaching her lips.

  The chair was just a chair.

  Emiko blinked rapidly, dragging the back of her hand over her closed eyes. The overloud ticking of the clock. She glanced up. 10:37.

  She didn’t want to pick up the child at the bus stop.

  Emiko creaked down the long hallway into the kitchen, the refrigerator clunking into operation, whining on the borderline between sound and words.

  The clutter of breakfast dishes was left unwashed on the kitchen table and counters. Drying eggshells, syrup spilled, and an almost-full two-litre carton of milk turning thick and sour. A platter of cold pancakes. No one ever ate cold pancakes. Emiko sighed. Her stomach gurgled. She pinched a piece from the stack, brought the morsel to her lips. The slightly greasy smell wafted into her nose. Her mouth pooled with a salty liquid. Emiko dropped the piece back on the plate, brushing her hands against sweatpants. Little lumps along her thigh; she glanced down. A row of transparent dried grains of rice stuck to the cloth and she absentmindedly picked them off with her fingernail. Dropped them on the floor.

  Seven wasted pancakes! Who did he think would eat them all? Emiko sliced the stack of soggy circles into bits with sticky cutlery, crumbs spilling from the edge of the platter. There was a small blur of movement. A thudding of motion or sound. Something thrown at her head. Emiko ducked, arms encircling her skull, her heart pounding. Then she looked up.

  No. Just a glimpse of someone’s back passing through the frame of her kitchen window, walking past her house in the back alley. Emiko shook her head. Dragged both palms over her face and pressed down on her closed eyelids with her fingertips. The pressure left an afterimage of green lights. She wished that the slats on the back fence weren’t so widely spaced. They didn’t live in a bad neigh-bourhood, but who knew what could happen in a back alley? There was no security.

  Emiko glared down the hallway to the closed door facing her. The floorboards weren’t flat and the doorways were slightly skewed. She thought she could hear soft breathing from Gordon’s room. He must be sleeping again. Or lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. There was a time when Emiko had loved the fact that her husband worked at home.

  Emiko snatched a piece of paper and scrawled, “You pick up Kelsey at the bus stop.” She crept down the long hall to crouch at her husband’s closed door. She slid the piece of paper across the floorboards.

  “What are you doing?” Gordon loomed.

  Emiko fell backward on to her plump behind.

  She pushed back her heavy bangs. Emiko stared up at her husband from the hardwood floor. He was so tall that his head looked like it was shrunken at the top of his skinny neck. The hanakuso still fluttered in his left nostril.

  “You have snot in your nose,” Emiko stated.

  A bright pink crept up Gordon’s pale neck and on to his un-shaven cheeks. He anxiously pinched both nostrils with thumb and forefinger, once, twice, as he inhaled, managing to plaster the clump along the inner lining. Emiko was relieved. As long as she didn’t have to watch it flap.

  “You’re not talking to me,” Gordon said, in his reasonable voice. “We need to talk.”

  Emiko stood and brushed off her bottom. She handed Gordon the note and went back into the kitchen.

  “Kelsey really needs you right now!” Gordon shook the message in the air. Emiko turned her back, the plate of pancakes heavy in her hands.

  “We need to be a family more than ever,” Gordon pleaded as his wife plodded three steps down to the second landing.

  “What kind of mother are you?” he muttered. His head sagging on his bony neck.

  Emiko stuffed her broad feet into Gordon’s winter boots. She had to turn her toes upward with each step to keep them on, but at least they were too big to bump up against her bunions.

  What kind of mother was she?

  She hadn’t bothered with a coat though hummocks of old snow still lay on the ground. The chinook-warm winds mimicked spring again. The scent of mud rose from the thawing lawn. Bile rose in Emiko’s throat. Choking, she swallowed the bitter acid back down. She clumped to the picnic table in their backyard.

  “Scrawwwk! Scrawwwwk!” she shrieked. Scattering handfuls of pancake.

  “You feeding those damn scavengers again?”

  Emiko twitched and turned around.

  “You keep your magpies away from my chickade
es!” Hal teased. Emiko’s neighbour rested his jowly chin on the adjoining fence. His plump hands gripped the wood and they looked like white mitts beside his face

  Emiko bent her lips upward.

  “You noticed the house three doors down was bought? Haven’t seen the new neighbours, though. You?”

  Emiko shook her head.

  Hal lowered his friendly voice. “You folks need to get out more. Alone time, just you and ol’ Gord. Me and the missus’ll be happy to watch Kelsey for you. She’s a little angel!”

  Emiko managed to control a shiver, her broken smile flattening into something else. She nodded and turned to flip the last of the pancake off the plate.

  “I’m serious about the offer,” Hal called to her back.

  Emiko clumped back into the house and slipped out of Gordon’s galoshes. She sat on the steps and squeezed her feet into her own leather boots. They pressed painfully against the triangles of bone jutting out from the joints beneath her big toes. Bunions ran in her family. She hoped Kelsey didn’t get them when she grew older. Pulled on her jacket and slipped outside.

  It was quite a jaunt to the supermarket, especially with her bunioned feet. But Emiko would never drive again. And the last thing she needed was to be stuck with Gordon in the confines of the car. His kind voice and sane patience were more than she could endure.

  They needed new milk. Some more fruit. Cold cuts.

  Warm wind is an unnatural thing in the middle of winter, Emiko thought. She still couldn’t get used to the erratic temperatures despite eight years of it. She minced down the brown slush of the back alley. The treads of her boots were more fashionable than practical and they shot out at any given moment. Her bunions ached. She watched her feet, toeing the patches that had more gravel. The telephone wires guided her periphery. The banks of snow along the sides of the alley were big enough to cover dead bodies, but she didn’t want to look in case they were. Magpies clamoured from someone’s yard and Emiko quickly glanced upward. Certainly they harboured her no ill will. In other countries, birds ate from the dead. But Emiko made sure the birds that visited her yard only partook of what the living had eaten. They were not harbingers of woe. And cats, unlucky or not, were scarce after the recent by-law. Emiko teetered on uneven gravel, the stickiness of mud.