The Shadow of Dread
Preparations for a flight
[In the publications section today, there is a link to a short essay of mine that was recently published by the CBC. While the timing is coincidental, the theme of the essay somewhat mirrors the theme of today’s post.]
Sometimes, sighing deeply, he would say to no one: I cannot keep living like this.
Now that he had moved back in, he had to look at the same water-stained ceiling in the living room, the same old-fashioned grandfather clock in the hallway, the same disorder of books piled up dangerously on dozens of weak IKEA shelves, the same cupboards full of cups discoloured from decades of black tea, and all these sights from his past filled him with an almost debilitating sadness.
If he looked hard enough, he could uncover a second layer of historical memories that dated back to his mother's all-too-brief residence in that house. Her wedding dress was still in the closet of the spare bedroom. Her jewelry was still in an ivory box in the top drawer of his father's dresser. In the unfinished basement was a box of old photos and letters dating back to the 1970s, when she and his father were still living in England. One night, he poured himself a pint of wine and looked through every single artifact in that box. He became so engrossed that when the furnace creaked, a prelude to its full-blown roar, his heart slammed against his chest. For a few seconds, he was convinced he was having a heart attack.
When he stared long enough at his parents in their twenties, cavorting about a sun-speckled garden in England—his father doing a headstand while his mother clapped and laughed, and in the next photo his mother acting as if she were swooning upon being presented with a rose—he became almost convinced that the past was not truly over, that it would never be over. It was simply a failing of his own that he was incapable of entering that summertime English garden and making the scene just as real as it had been all those decades ago.
He, too, had been in love—but not quite like that. The affair had been complicated and compromised from the very beginning. She was constantly springing surprises on him. At month six of their relationship, she said she wanted to marry him and have children.
He explained to her that, as he approached thirty, he had not achieved any of his major aspirations. Like his father, he had an artistic streak. He wanted to publish a book. He wasn’t going to have sufficient time to put in the requisite effort if, in addition to his full-time job, he had a wife and children.
Let me get some serious work done and then we'll talk, he said. (He was confident, still believing in his own potential.)
After you've written your great book, then will you marry me and give me children? she asked.
I think I most probably will, he replied.
OK then, hurry up!
He failed to keep his end of the bargain, annoyed that he was expected to rush through a novel for the sake of marriage and children. One night, after hours of arguing about it, he became exasperated and said, it is never happening.
She immediately called a cab to take her home. She didn’t answer his phone calls for a week. When eventually she did answer, she told him he was selfish and self-indulgent and immature. The next time he called, she said she had found someone. Her new lover was an accomplished chef who had apprenticed in France and had come back home to open a restaurant. But it didn’t take more than six months for her to find out that her second lover had the same qualms as the first one. The chef wasn’t ready to get married and have children.
So she turned back to her first lover.
He welcomed her to his apartment gladly, relishing her physical proximity, especially the fragrance she imprinted on the bed sheets. The part-time relationship went on until she became pregnant. He was shocked by this discovery and for several days was tied up in awkward and embarrassing conversations, the conclusion of which was that the baby had to be the chef’s. He had always been careful—almost formal—in their intimacy.
For over two years, he didn't see her at all. She gave birth to a baby girl and was utterly preoccupied with her new life. Then the chef resumed old habits. The restaurant consumed almost all his waking hours, and the stress of it could only be fended off with heavy drinking. The chef was not a reliable father. One night, the chef swore at the woman, who now wore the new names, wife and mother. The chef claimed that her preoccupations were utterly tedious. All you talk about is poop and breastmilk, said the chef.
And so the woman came back to him, the first lover.
Eventually he turned forty. He was a less zealous admirer of his lover’s body. His occasional frostiness made her self-conscious. After a night of lying together like two dry sticks, she told him he was no longer any good for her. At least my chef will sometimes change diapers and get up in the night and give the baby a bottle. You give me nothing but a headache, she said.
For a long time he experimented with turning the failure of this relationship into a book. This proved to be yet another failure. The book became as off-putting to him as the smell of unwashed trousers. When he knew the manuscript was no better than a corpse, he decided he would leave his hometown forever and fly to Paris and try out a new life.
The day after he had decided this, his father called and said, A bit of bad news, I'm afraid. I have Parkinson's.
Because he had been a rather distant son, despite having lived in the same town as his father all this time, he decided to delay his flight to Paris and move back home instead. He vowed to stay right to the end of his father's life, no matter how long that might take. He considered it to be the only truly virtuous and unselfish deed of his otherwise pointless, wasted life.
He took his father to the mountains one last time. They had tea overlooking Lake Louise. On the way home they took a final detour through the Badlands. The intensity of the sun, the clarity of the sky, and the hardness of the baking, undulating land made him think of the desert, and he was almost overwhelmed by a religious feeling. The feeling burst when he saw his father sleeping in the passenger seat. It took a firm shake to wake him up for a picture at the hoodoos. After staging the picture, straining their smile muscles, the pair got back into the car. His father seemed to shrink in the passenger seat, his head repeatedly bobbed forward onto his chest and jerked upwards again before decisively resting against the window.
He helped set up a bedroom on the main floor of the house so his father wouldn’t have to contend with the stairs. He completed the paperwork for a homecare attendant to visit every day, to help get his father up, to do the laundry, lay out the pills on the table in the order in which they had to be taken, and so on. Then the time came for him to find a senior’s residence. Once a week he ate lunch with his father in the residence’s sunny atrium. When food fell from his father’s hands and onto the tray, he picked it up and handed it back to him. Then the day came when his father refused food. The nurse at the senior’s home took him aside and quietly explained that this was a decisive turn. No one held on much longer after this point.
His duty to his father was now over. The body was cremated. The estate was settled. The house was sold. The realtor would be coming for the keys on Monday. He would spend his last two nights in town at a hotel adjacent to the airport. The planes would lumber through the winter night, groaning into the small hours of the morning, and then the racket would start up again at dawn. He would occupy a room by himself, leaving it only so the cleaners could do their work. He would wander around the airport, eat an overpriced lunch, and come back to his room for the night.
Sometimes it seemed to him that the entirety of his forty-five years had been merely a dress rehearsal for this final act. But at other times, the future was not quite such an exciting prospect. He still had doubts. It wasn’t just that he doubted his ability to establish himself on another continent. He was starting to doubt whether his ongoing existence was even possible, in this city or any other.
My life has been a very long process of subtraction, he continued thinking, muttering aloud in the empty house to prove the fact of his physical existence. There is almost nothing left of me. Just my body and my suitcase. Once I move into the airport hotel, I will matter even less than I do now. I will have a passport, some clothes, a couple of books, a laptop, and a keycard for my room. Everything else has been sold, donated or destroyed.
He entered the basement. He looked into the corner where he had once pored over those old photos and letters. The ancient artifacts had long ago been buried in the recycling, ensuring there was nothing to return to.
If he called out, hello there, his voice echoed against the concrete walls. He wished again that he could enter the scene of that sun-speckled English garden and witness his parents’ love, a love so much more powerful than any he had ever felt—the love that had made his life possible. This basement seemed to deny the very possibility of such love. He saw a spider scuttling away from his left foot. The shadow of dread fell across his heart. When he forced himself to imagine what might be possible at the end of his flight, he imagined love like it had been in that English summer garden.
After a deep, almost mournful sigh, he took out his phone and dialed the number for the cab. There would be no further delays. Once he arrived at the airport, there would be no turning back. When you realize your life has been spent preparing for a flight, you have to go.
PUBLICATIONS
The CBC has published my essay about moving back to Edmonton while my father was battling Parkinson’s in France. “The water started leaking into our house that year. First it was only when the ice thawed, and then it was also during the summer rains. I called the builder who called a roofer, and then a more experienced roofer, and eventually an engineer. The experts didn't know what to do. Nor did I. There wasn't room in my mind or heart for the roof. My father was dying.” Read the rest at the CBC.
NOTES
If you happen to live in Edmonton or are curious about Edmonton, it might of interest to look at Taproot, a local online publishing venture that is going from strength to strength. Taproot just launched a series into the housing crisis. It’s some of the best journalism you’ll see anywhere—it explores housing at a systems level and from a deeply personal angle, as in this interview.
“The first farm was out by Rolly View. My dad, he loved cattle, and we had milk cows. Us kids, after school was out, we all went out and we all helped. Seven of us, and we all worked hard, and it didn’t matter, even in the wintertime you went out, you did the chores. I just loved being out there, and the freedom. Running around chasing the calves, or picking rocks, it was hard work, but it was still fun. When you were threshing, Mom would bring the meal out to the field and we’d sit and have a break, and everybody ate together.”
Time passes. The Taproot journalists have captured part of a whole life here:
“I was at my son’s wedding in St. Paul. I had hired somebody to work for me and she stole money from the bank, but because I had the contract, I’m the one that’s responsible. And so, I lost the job, I lost the home, I lost my whole life. (The ATB manager) and the other fellow that came down, they said, ‘Bernice, we know this isn’t you. We know you didn’t do this. We can tell by the work, the way the work was done, that it wasn’t yours.’ But I said I can’t replace that money. The only thing I could do was declare bankruptcy. I felt like I was dishonest because this money is gone, and I can’t replace it.”
Check out Taproot’s series The Housing Complex.
The Substack Octopus will be resting up during the month of December. My apologies to end the year off on a sombre note. I didn’t have anything cheerier in the works. The festive season will bring back the colourful lights. Happy holidays, all!
PHOTO
Top photo is from a webpage called “The Jet Age: 1959 - 1969,” from Air France