A History of Forgetting (24 page)

Now, in the dark room, he asked, ‘So you forgive me?' His head ached and his tone was sarcastic. She got up with a lurch and backed to the end of the bed.

‘I don't know how you do it, darling. You are a superior being.'

Her little knees began to shake, if she had knees, that was.

‘Get down,' he commanded.

Suicide-like, she leapt off the bed.

 

 

 

6

 

The eye on the answering machine, red and domed, was
winking. Alison rewound the tape.

‘Ali, it's Mom. I'm just wondering how you're feeling.'

‘Bad,' Alison answered, before calling back.

‘How's Jeffy?' she asked when her mother answered.

‘He's in his room blowing people away on the computer. How are you?'

‘Okay.'

‘When's your day off this week?'

‘Thursday,' said Alison.

‘I was planning to go over to North Van and tidy things up. Do you want to keep me company?' She meant the cemetery where Alison's grandparents were buried. Alison, who didn't care what she did any more so long as she didn't have to pretend to enjoy it, said, ‘Sure. Okay.'

‘Really?' said her surprised mother. ‘Oh, thank you. No one else will go.'

 

On the other side of the Second Narrows Bridge the mountains stood shoulder-deep in cloud. Below, Indian Arm reached
crookedly up the inlet, the water, completely flat, the colour of aluminium. Again her mother asked how she was, and when Alison shrugged she simply nodded. What a relief
not to have to explain herself, Alison thought. She looked
fondly at her mother, saw her completely grey at the temples now, the skin around her eyes spoked with lines. Yet she wasn't even fifty. Anyone looking at Alison's mother would
see a woman whom age had not been as kind to, as she herself had been kind.

‘Billy's driving me crazy,' she admitted. ‘He wants to go to Mexico.'

‘Mexico? When?'

‘At the end of the month. What he really wants is for me to cheer up.'

Her mother said, ‘He wants you to be happy. Are you
going to go?'

‘I think I have to,' she said. ‘Every day he asks me if I got my passport pictures. If we've stocked up on Imodium.'

Her mother laughed.

‘He booked the tickets, but I don't feel like it, Ma. I just
don't.'

‘You're going to have to tell him.'

Alison sighed. ‘I hate fighting.'

They exited the highway and looped onto an ascending, tree-lined road. This part of the city was built in deference to the rainforest; in every yard, on every street, shaggy giants towered. When they turned onto the drive that led to the cemetery, it was as if they were driving into a forest clearing. Past the office and the chapel, they parked. Out of the trunk, Alison's mother took a tray of bedding plants.

Alison followed carrying the cardboard box with the trowel and watering can. As they made their way along the
path, her mother stopped now and then to point out a headstone. ‘Look. This old gal lived to be a hundred and three. But here. See? This one was a baby.'

Her grandparents' grave had a single headstone with both their names carved in it. It was a simple black granite rectangle surrounded by drooping blade-like leaves of something past flowering. ‘What do you want me to do?' Alison asked, putting down the box.

‘How about filling the watering can? There's a tap behind the office.'

She took the can and started back along the path. Paved and meticulously edged, it was the main street through this necro-suburb, this North Vancouver for the dead. None of the graves were old. They were the same modest granite markers as her grandparents had, upright or laid flat—the cemetery equivalent of ranchers and bungalows. Everywhere, the sweet smell of cedar and the calls of unseen birds. She was not afraid. There was nothing remotely frightening here. It struck her then that the usual experience of death was actually quite banal. Her grandfather had died before Alison could know him. She remembered her grandmother's dying as her father coming in her bedroom and saying he was going to get take-
out for her and Jeffy. Their mother would not be eating. A
very sad thing had happened. Ever after, if takeout was offered on a school night, Alison's first thought was that someone had died.

The path veered towards the A-framed chapel, a half-glass
structure with a single-storey wing for the offices. The tap was under a window. As she stood filling the can, she could
see inside to a small kitchen where a heavyset woman sat at a table reading
Maclean's
and drinking coffee. A man in a dark suit came in and said something to the woman to make her laugh. These were the jolly, guiltless people who ministered to the dead.

Her mother had cleared out the bed by the time Alison got back. Now a bright border of primulas replaced the lank overgrowth. From a bread bag, she was sifting dirt around the new plants.

‘What's that?' Alison asked.

‘Compost.' She pressed the soil down with her gloved
hand.

‘This grave looks the nicest,' Alison commented. Very few were decorated with flowers. A faded plastic bouquet stood stiffly in a granite vase not far away, but mostly there was just the green blanket of grass.

‘I like to come here and have a chat. The plants are my excuse.'

‘Oh,' said Alison. ‘Should I go away again?'

‘It's all right. I've said what I came to say already.'

‘Are you and dad going to be buried here?'

‘We're not going to be buried. We're going to be cremated and scattered.'

Alison, who had not previously given any thought to her parents' eventual dying, suddenly felt hurt. Seeing her expression, her mother said, ‘It's better for the environment, isn't it?' She straightened and took the watering can from Alison. ‘Just add me to the compost.'

‘What if I want to come and have a talk with you?'

‘It's silly, really,' said her mother.

‘I don't think so.'

‘I'll tell you what. When your father goes, you can have his La-Z-Boy. You can sit in it and commune with him.'

‘Ugh,' said Alison, turning away. ‘It takes up half the living room.'

Christian didn't have a grave. Alison thought of this as they were driving back over the bridge. At the memorial service, there wasn't even a casket. She wondered what had happened to his body. And what of all the others, the millions turned to ash in ovens or thrown into pits? Where to bring the gardens and gardens of their flowers?

They had reached the crest of the bridge. Alison, looking down on the inlet's opposite shore, saw along the metallic water the green spread of a park. Between it and the bridge was an enormous structure, like a prison or a factory, painted white. They were driving past it now, looking down on, but somehow not dwarfing it. ALBERTA WHEAT POOL, read the logo on the tower.

The exit ramp brought them down next to a junction of railway tracks, rows and rows of boxcars standing. A moment later they passed the park she had just seen from the bridge. Almost blurred, the sign, she couldn't really read it, but still it snagged her eye. New Brighton.

Quickly, she swung around, then stayed like that, frozen backward in the seat, the hair on her arms, on the back of her neck, rising up.

 

At first Billy didn't want to go with her. ‘Call one of your buddies from work.'

‘No one will want to go.'

‘Why do you want to?' he asked.

‘I want to see where he died.'

‘Right,' said Billy. ‘But why?'

She didn't want to say that it was because he had no grave. Billy would have some smart-alec reply. Turning, she walked out of the bedroom. She would find her way on the bus. To her surprise, Billy followed.

They drove in silence for nearly an hour, pulled into the parking lot, got out. A tunnel under the railway track led to the park, the walls layered with graffiti, both cryptic and sinister. In the bright arch at the other end a child in a pink peak-hooded jacket appeared. When someone called her back, she squealed, gleefully stamping rubber boots, turned and galloped off.

Allison and Billy emerged from the tunnel. More children were playing on a jungle gym with three young mothers watching from a nearby bench, drinking from takeout cups. Beyond stood the massive Alberta Wheat Pool building she had seen a few days ago. On the tennis courts a man was lobbing against the practice board a cheerfully percussing ball.

She started in the direction of the toilets, Billy in tow, and when they reached the building, she asked him to go in. Wordlessly, he complied, coming out a moment later.

‘What's it like?' she asked.

‘It's a can. It stinks.'

‘Is anybody in there?'

‘Just a couple of guys going at it. Ha ha.'

‘You keep watch,' Alison said, stepping inside herself.

Immediately, she began breathing through her mouth. It did stink—of new paint. Each of the shiny cubicle doors she pushed open. Nobody, nobody. The last, larger and wheelchair-accessible, she entered. This was where he had been waiting, here, she was sure. Behind these very metal partitions Christian had stood. For minutes, she concentrated, but in the end sensed no presence, felt nothing, no recoiling of her soul. Beneath her feet, the concrete trembled not at all.

‘Christian?' she whispered. ‘Christian?'

When she opened her eyes again, it was to a white toilet and chrome handrails.

Outside, Billy was waiting with hands in his pockets. In silence again they began walking back, Alison slowly, keeping her eyes to the ground, tracking. She was searching for
some mark, a sign of where the golf club had come down. But that was months ago. Weeks and weeks of rain had washed his blood into the grass. Past the jungle gym, where the children were tearing after one another, screeching. Alison stopped to watch the little girl in pink running for her life, then falling.

Back at the car, Billy unlocked her door. Curls edged his cap and poked through the arch above the sizing band.

‘You need a haircut,' she said.

They stopped for groceries and beer on the way back. Billy made himself a sandwich, and after he had eaten Alison went to fetch the comb and scissors.

‘So?' he said. ‘Did you see what you wanted?'

She shrugged. All she had seen of any significance was spray-painted in the tunnel, but swastikas she saw everywhere now—on stop signs and garage doors, carved into trees, on newspaper boxes, in the dirt on parked cars, on bus seats.

‘Could it happen again?' She asked him because, after all, Billy was the most intelligent person she knew.

‘Of course,' said Billy. ‘Gays get it all the time.'

That was not what she meant. Coldly, she said, ‘You say
that so matter-of-factly.'

‘It is a fact,' said Billy.

‘My friend died,' she reminded him.

‘I know.'

The towel in her hands, she stared at him.

‘You hardly knew the guy, Ali. Not really. I mean, you worked with him for four or five months. If he'd quit and moved away, you wouldn't still be thinking about him.'

‘He didn't move away,' said Alison. ‘He was killed.'

Billy sighed and looked up at an ancient curlicue of spaghetti stuck on the ceiling. ‘Are you going to cut my hair or not?'

She draped the towel around his shoulders, though she didn't feel like cutting his hair any more. She didn't feel like touching him, but his head was bowed, waiting, the furrow
between the tendons on his nape showing.

‘Remember Mrs.
Soloff?' she asked, raining mist all
around him with the spray bottle.

‘Who?'

‘At the salon. The old woman who was in Auschwitz.' On his head, she marked the sections with the comb, starting at his crown. ‘When I asked you if it could happen again, that's what I meant.'

‘Auschwitz?'

‘Yeah.'

‘No way.'

She marvelled at his confidence. ‘How do you know?'

‘I just don't think people would fall for that again.'

‘Those kids who killed Christian, they fell for it.'

He looked over his shoulder, frowning. ‘I thought you took that book back.'

She reddened. She didn't know what had happened to it. The day Thi threw it out of the door, Alison had snuck around after work to retrieve it. She'd even scaled the blue steel wall of the dumpster and peered under all the cars, but it was gone. Vanished.