Interference Read online

  “Freak.” Shouted.

  When he turns the kids scatter. He has that, at least. Ralph is big. Kids are afraid. Even if he’s an aging man, lost, shuffling in slippers through the snow.

  He continues on. What else can he do?

  Nothing is wrong. Nothing. He’s just absent-minded, distracted, worried about Claire’s cancer. That’s all it is. Anyone else would be like this. But now he has to somehow get back into his house without his kids or Claire noticing his footwear. And without his keys. This could be difficult.

  At the next corner Ralph doesn’t know where to go. Right or left. He is up by the elementary school and he can’t, for the life of him, remember how to get home. Or to town. Where he needs bananas and milk. That’s it. Bananas and milk. Ralph turns left. His hands in his pockets are cold. Why didn’t he think to wear gloves?

  This has been happening for months. This forgetfulness. A little wire in his brain, maybe, snapped. Maybe it snapped when the doctor told them Claire had breast cancer. Maybe it fizzed quickly, went taut and then snapped. Maybe that’s a stroke?

  Ralph is sitting on the climbing structure at the school, watching the snow blow across the field. The wind has picked up. His feet are cold and caked with snow and ice. He taps them carefully, hoping he doesn’t get frostbite.

  The funny thing is that he’s having no difficulties at work. You’d think he would. Remembering numbers and codes, dealing with clients and proposals, the small complicated things he does every day as an engineer. He has never once set off the door alarm at the firm, for example, something almost everyone does at least once in a while. No one has said anything to him about his work habits, nothing seems to have changed, and Ralph feels in control there. But at home it sometimes takes all Ralph’s energy to remember his kids’ names. Jude snapping his fingers in front of Ralph’s face, saying, “Dad? Dad? Are you in there?” Caroline rushing out to her friends, shouting, “I told you yesterday. I’m going to the movies.” And the other night when Claire came to bed and Ralph rolled over to touch her and felt that empty, vacant place on her chest, that raised scar, he jerked violently away because he had forgotten — he had forgotten! — she was missing a breast.

  There is a kid there, beside him. Sitting right beside Ralph on the climbing structure. His leg is actually touching Ralph’s leg. Ralph looks at him. The kid looks back. Where did he come from?

  “Hi,” Ralph says and moves away slightly.

  The kid nods. A strange, gangly looking kid, probably Jude’s age, his hands stuffed into his winter jacket, his toque on low over his eyebrows, his nose running in the cold. Why is he sitting so close?

  Ralph gets up to leave and then sits down again because he has no destination, no forward movement. Sometimes, Ralph thinks, it’s as if there is lead in his legs, his arms. Sometimes he will become so incredibly tired. He will sit still until the feeling passes. Maybe he should get his blood sugar tested. Maybe that’s what this is all about. But the thought of going to a doctor just about knocks him off the climbing structure. Ralph is tired of doctors. He wants nothing to do with them anymore. He understands now why you hear about doctors and nurses getting ill with diseases that could have been caught. Never getting their heart checked and then dying of a heart attack, for example. When you’re around sickness all day, all month, all year, you do all you can to avoid acknowledging your own.

  The kid beside him reaches out his hand and squeezes Ralph’s knee. Ralph jumps.

  “Hey,” Ralph says. “Hey, don’t do that.” He stands again and backs away from the kid.

  The kid jumps up beside Ralph. He opens his mouth into a scream and points at Ralph and starts shouting. “Help,” the kid shouts. “Help!”

  There he is in his red velvet slippers, far from his house, lost. His wife is sick and dying. His kids are growing up and leaving him. He has no keys, no gloves. He can’t remember what he left the house to do. He probably doesn’t even have his wallet. The kid screams louder.

  “Quiet,” shouts Ralph. “Shush.” He wants to put his hand over the kid’s mouth — the scream is piercing and hurts Ralph’s ears. He wants to hold the kid down in the snow, pound on him, make him shut up. “Quiet.”

  “Help. Help.”

  “Terry.” A woman comes around the corner of the school. She pauses to step on her tossed cigarette as she walks towards Ralph and the kid. “Terry, leave the poor man alone.”

  Ralph clutches at his heart. He holds onto it. He feels it beating hard under his jacket.

  “Help,” Terry shouts. “Help, help, help.”

  The woman makes her way towards them. “Sorry about that,” she shouts over Terry’s screams. “He’s, well, he’s just different.”

  “Different?” Ralph thinks, Different? Is that what they call it now?

  When the woman reaches them she takes her hands out of her coat pockets and she cups Terry’s ears and stands close to him, pulling his face towards hers. He is still shouting and Ralph has no idea how she can get that close and not go deaf. The woman touches her forehead to Terry’s forehead and immediately he stops screaming. The silence is pure. Ralph hears a buzzing in his head, in that vacant place where the scream once was, but nothing else.

  “Phew,” Ralph says.

  The woman takes her hands off Terry, pulls her forehead away and Terry begins to climb the structure. He is laughing now. As if nothing happened.

  “I’m really sorry about that,” the woman says. “I just went around the side of the school to light my smoke. The wind is harsh over here.” The woman shrugs.

  Now Ralph wants to hit her. He wants to smack her in her cute nose, her pretty little face. Smoking. Before, when he was allowed to take Claire to the hospital for her radiation treatments, if he passed patients or doctors smoking outside the building, Ralph would say something. He would turn on them. Two times the security guards asked him to control himself and then, finally, Claire asked him not to come with her anymore.

  “You make me nervous,” Claire had said. “I’m not sure what you are going to do.”

  Claire has never smoked. Not once. She has always been healthy. She exercises. She lives cleanly.

  The woman backs away from Ralph. He realizes his face is set in a scowl and his hands are in fists.

  “Whoa,” the woman says. She puts her hands up. “Hey, what did you do to make Terry scream?”

  Ralph relaxes his fists and sets his face in a partial smile so he looks more friendly. “Nothing,” he says. “I was just sitting here, minding my own business.”

  The woman turns from him and watches her kid on the climbing structure. Terry is moving along the top part of it as if he’s scaling the outside of an office tower. He’s only about four feet up, but he holds onto the sides and moves so carefully, a look of fear on his face.

  “Listen,” the woman says. She turns back to Ralph. She puts her hands on her hips and blows cold air out of her mouth in a puff. “Terry’s different, sure.”

  “I didn’t mean to —”

  “You’re wearing slippers,” she says. She points down at his feet. “In the snow.”

  Ralph shrugs. He blushes.

  “What I’m saying is . . . we’re all a little strange.”

  Ralph nods. This makes sense to him. In fact, it’s the only thing that has made sense to him in a while. Cutting off his wife’s breast, then shooting her full of chemicals that are so dangerous they should kill her and then burning her internally and externally with radiation. None of that has made any sense. But wearing slippers in the snow, screaming, “Help, help” for no reason — this, somehow, makes sense.

  On the way home Ralph sees Jude up ahead, walking purposefully. Ralph falls into step with his son. He’s grateful that Jude is who he is. He is lucky to have Jude.

  “What have you been up to?”

  Jude shrugs. “I went downtown. Just hanging o
ut.”

  “Going home?”

  Jude looks at his father and nods. Then he looks down the street at two girls sitting in the snow in their snowsuits in front of a house still decorated for Christmas. He puts his head down and looks at the sidewalk.

  “You’re wearing slippers, Dad,” Jude says. He stops and takes his father’s arm. “Dad?”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Ralph says. “I just forgot.”

  “How could you forget your boots?”

  Ralph wants to say, “We’re all a little strange, Jude. We’re all different.” He wants to echo the woman in the schoolyard, he wants to make his time with her mean something, but instead he says, “I’ve got a lot on my mind these days.” Maybe it’s true that Ralph just has too much to think about. Maybe Ralph’s brain is giving him a break, helping him, lessening the load. If he can forget some things then he’ll have room for more things. He’ll have room for life, death, memories, moments in time, images that come at him late at night when he lies in bed in the dark and listens to Claire’s shallow breathing. Ralph knows that everything he forgets now — his keys, his hat, his boots, which direction to go — will not matter. Ever. All that will matter is that he lived through this period in his life with his eyes wide open. His brain will do the rest. The important things will be there.

  “It’s like when you and Caroline were babies,” Ralph says quietly as the two of them walk down the street towards home. “Life was so complicated and fast and busy. Your mom and I sometimes forgot things. Once we even left you in your car seat inside the front hallway of the house. We shut the door, locked it, got in the car and drove around the block,” Ralph laughs, “before we remembered. There you were, sleeping in that car seat, peaceful as anything, when we got back. We scooped you up, Jude, and carried on.”

  Jude smiles at his father’s memory. “You’re just getting old, Dad,” he says, and nudges his father with his elbow. Jokingly. “Old man.”

  “Yeah,” Ralph says. “That too.”

  They round the corner and head towards their house. In the front window Claire stands with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Watching. She is lit up from the lights inside the house and she almost glows. She has taken off her silly pink hat and her fuzzy head shines. Ralph looks at her, watches her, takes her in. His heart aches, his chest splinters again and again. This, Ralph thinks, I won’t forget. He can feel his son beside him doing the same thing. Wondering, staring, filing, placing this image somewhere deep within him. Sometimes there isn’t enough room in your head for all the things in the world. Sometimes there is.

  Dear Parents and Guardians,

  Isn’t this weather ridiculous? First we have snow, then ice, then melting, then freezing, then snow again. The ground these days is an accident just waiting to happen. Literally! One step in the wrong direction and you’ll land on your tush. Or worse.

  I’m writing to warn parents of the hazards of our grounds, especially the south side parking lot. On Wednesday morning our lovely custodian, Mr. Berton, slipped getting out of his truck and went down with a bang. He’s in the hospital with a concussion right this minute. The doctors assure us he will be fine and he might even get to go home next week. The kids in Room 201 are making him a card if you’d like to stop by and sign it. But if you do, please be extra mindful of the parking lot!

  We’ve salted. We’ve sanded. We’ve shovelled. But to no avail. The ground is a skating rink under our feet. Children slip their way into our school. We’ve cautioned them but there are still some children who are running and skipping and dancing into the school. Please tell your children to walk slowly and carefully. I like to tell them to act like old men and women, to bend slightly at the waist and slip slowly along as if they can’t lift their heavy, arthritic feet. The kids love to do this and they make quite a game of it.

  Winter is hazardous for all kinds of reasons besides the slippery ice. Believe me. Snow shovels are sharp, for example. So are snowballs packed with rocks. And then there are the colds, the flus, the frost bite. We need the parents of Oak Park Elementary School to be super-vigilant. Work with us, not against us! Tell your child to walk slowly and don’t send them to school if they are sick. Make sure they wear proper outdoor clothing: boots, gloves, hats. Remember: a lot of heat disappears out the top of your head!

  Don’t worry, though, spring is just around the corner!

  Marge Tanner

  Principal, Oak Park Elementary School

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Just wondering

  Hi Tom,

  Just wondering if you managed to get in touch with that man with the large scar going down his face who works at the car wash on Braid Street? I was in there again recently. My car gets really dirty carting around all the food for the shelter. Just the other day I found a tomato rolling around the back seat. It was frozen, if you’d believe! Anyway, I thought of you. He was there. Working hard. His name must be Michael. I could see his name tag. Were you able to pay him back for raking?

  I’m just curious. I always like to see a story to the end. Especially if the ending is happy. Hope to hear from you.

  Cheerio,

  Art Spack

  Abernackie Men’s Shelter

  Braithwaite Drive, Parkville

  spring

  * * *

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Kidnapping

  Dayton. There are things you know about me. I have little patience. I also never forgive. Or forget. Ever. You know this about me. I know you do. What were you thinking? Were you thinking at all? What you have done to me by stealing my child is unforgivable. It is reprehensible. I will not forget this. You took a baby from her father. This is called kidnapping and it is punishable by the law. I don’t know what the prisons are like up there in Canada, but they sure as fuck aren’t great in California. In fact, we have the death penalty here. That’s a fact.

  I have spoken to the Cress Company Finances lawyer and we are in total agreement that you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They have offered their services pro bono and I have retained them.

  Watch out, Dayton. I’m coming.

  John

  ...

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Kidnapping

  John,

  I know you got fired. I know you no longer work at Cress Company Finances. I know you were fired because you were using — and selling? — drugs. I also know they do not have a lawyer on staff. And, even if they did, they would not give you pro bono service. Especially after firing you. For drugs.

  I did not kidnap Carrie. I took her away from a dangerous situation. You are not stable. Get help. My lawyer will contact you shortly. Are you still at the same address?

  Again, I am keeping all your correspondence so you might as well stop threatening me.

  Dayton

  11

  Jude and Claire are watching Ellen. She should be getting dinner ready but sitting here, tight and close with her teenage son, watching feel-good comedy feels, well, good. Claire remembers when Ellen had her own sitcom; she remembers when Ellen came out publicly and the backlash. She likes Ellen because of her past, not because she’s become popular now. Jude probably watches just because his mother is watching. Although he seems to enjoy it.

  Every time Ellen says something people scream.

  “I don’t think I could be on that show,” Jude says. “I couldn’t scream like that.”

  Claire laughs and puts her hand on Jude’s leg. “Even if you won a car?” She’s been trying to touch him lately. More than usual. She wants to feel his warmth through her hands. She pats his head, even though she has to reach up high to do it, she touches his
back when he passes, she squeezes his shoulder when he’s sitting at the table. Claire can’t help herself. She does the same thing with Caroline, but Caroline always shrugs away as if her mother’s touch is too much. She brushes Claire off whereas Jude stays still as if trying not to scare her away.

  “I might say yay or shout a little, but that shrieking is scary. Those women holler like someone is cutting their arm off.”

  Claire smiles. She imagines Jude winning his own car. She imagines his shy smile, his hulking-growing-boy-shoulder-slumped look. Not too sure of his body yet, the power it will have. Then she imagines Ralph, her husband, and how he is stooping lately with middle age. How their son stands stooped from youth. Why is everyone stooped? Except Claire. She stands tall now. Facing her demons, her cancer, she has needed to stand straighter, be stronger. The more erect she is, the more body mass she seems to have. More of her to fight, she reasons.

  Ralph comes into the room. “Dinner?” he says. “I’m not rushing you, but what are we having?”

  Claire sighs. She gets up. Ralph sits down. For some reason he takes the remote control, as if he didn’t even notice they were watching anything, and turns to the news.

  “Ralph? Jeez.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He flips back to Ellen. Jude rolls his eyes towards his mother. Ralph walks around in his own little world these days. Claire and Jude can’t figure him out. It seems he isn’t listening, hearing, thinking, seeing. He’s just there. A shell of nothing. Where is he?

  The things that are left unsaid in the room hang there. Elephants. Lots of them. Claire knows everyone is watching her. She knows they are thinking, Cancer. They are thinking, Tiptoe, be careful. “What do you two want for dinner?”

  “Nachos,” Jude says. “With refried beans. Do we have avocado?”