The Lava in My Bones (36 page)

“He's Sam, my brother. Please, tell him he has to cover his face!”

I was going to start crying. I would go into hysterics. My body automatically stood up. “I have to”—down, voice, down!—“go to the washroom.” With a will of its own, my body hurled itself across the carpet whose fronds now seemed to be a thousand ululating tongues. I told myself to walk with long strides and stiff legs, but my torso twisted, writhed, and tossed above buckling legs. I was so upset I almost went into the women's washroom, but swerved and charged straight through the door sporting a Gumby stick-figure. Three men adjusted their ties before the mirror. I bent over the sink, splashed water on my face, retreated to a cubicle, and shut and locked the door. I pulled my pants to my ankles so no one would get suspicious and hid my crotch behind one hand.

So my beloved son had become a monster. My brilliant son with his astounding intelligence, who'd partially redeemed our
family. What had they done to Sam at that hospital? What did he do to himself? I imagined every possible scenario: they grafted ape genes into his skin; he acquired an infectious disease, one of the African ones, and became possessed; or, while fleeing through the forest, he'd met a clan of sasquatch, foolishly slept in their beds, ate their food, and shared their toothbrushes. Whatever had happened, Satan had embraced him. He was farther from me than I had imagined. Maybe I had already lost him for good.

I closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and the Holy Spirit descended and entered me. The imprisoned words burst forth from my windpipe and filled the air. My voice rose and I revelled in the sound—I didn't care who heard me; luckily the toilet kept running and Muzak played loudly.

When finished, I wiped tears from my cheeks and thanked God for bringing me peace. The solution to the problem was simple. In soldier's guise, I'd find out all the information required and then invite Sam and Sue to my room where I'd baptize them with Mary's urine. Before leaving the men's, I stuffed a wad of toilet paper into the crotch of my panties; it bulged impressively. I pushed open the door and stood before the rows of chattering men in dark suits. With deliberate indiscretion I reached into my pants and moved the Kleenex from my right side to my left, removed my hand, and gave my hips an abrupt little shake. I straightened my hat and strutted into the room, completely secure in the world of men.

The waiter walked away from our table just before I arrived. Sam had put the sheet back over his face.

“We ordered you the English breakfast,” Sue said.

“Very good. I love that. You've got me down pat.”

Sam was scraping the paint off a teacup with a talon. I couldn't bear to look at him.

From the loudspeakers came a
rappa-rappa-rappa.
A fresh-faced man stepped up to a microphone. “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.” Diners applauded. “Organizing this conference was a challenge, and we hope you enjoy it. A conference at sea is an incredibly original idea! We needed a full week of discussion before meeting our conglomerate counterparts in London, so we decided to do it en route! Now we've officially started our North Atlantic tour!” People cheered. “Such innovative thinking is at the root of the success of Remston Batteries. Just last week, CEO Benson said to me, ‘Youngster, when I was your age, the world was an oyster. I can't eat oysters now because the juice stains my dentures, but I hope that when you're my age, you'll eat oysters all day, even if your teeth turn green permanently because'”—the man's voice wavered; he was becoming emotional—“‘you deserve them.'” He was going to start crying.

A woman shouted, “You're a real trooper, Hank.”

Reviving, Hank yelled back, “Yes I
am
a trooper, and when we arrive in Bristol, those Brits are gonna love our fine products!”

The crowd hurrahed and clattered their cutlery.

Our food arrived. Taking a utensil in each hand, I asked Sue, “So, why are you here?”

She looked at me warily. “Because I want to be here.”

“Want to be here? What do you mean by that?” I put a salty piece of bacon in my mouth and munched loudly.

Sue lifted a piece of toast, held it level before her face as if balancing a marble on top. “I had to leave where I was. That's all.”

“Where are you going?” I countered cheerfully. I sliced my ham-circle in half.

Sam burst out, “Switzerland.” He clutched a greasy sausage in each trembling hand; froth splattered from his mouth onto the tablecloth as he spoke. “When I left Zurich, I thought I had been forced to leave, but it turns out I left of my own corrupted volition.”

My poor son. I was going to start weeping. Luckily Sue distracted me. “My town in Labrador was awful. I hated everything there. The kids, the school, my mother.” Surely she didn't realize the weight of the word “hate.” She was speaking with adolescent bravado, but still I felt wounded. Her eyes reddened. She swallowed round a lump in her throat. She was not honest about me.

A man at the mic said, “How great to see so many company-men and women in one room.”

I continued, “This mother of yours,” was it my imagination or was the ship rocking? “she can't have been that bad.” I spoke each word as notes in a descending scale, “Because, she, gave, birth, to, you.”

“Gave birth?” Sue's eyebrows raised. “No. She's not my real mother at all.”

Restraint. I had to learn restraint, for at that moment I wanted to scream. I know her idiotic story about a honeycomb mother in the sky. I stared at my daughter's bulbous head. The stories she tells are clouds of mist, not rooted in flesh and blood. I'd heard Sue blubbering at her open window. “Come Mother, come!
I want to touch your drops of sweetness.” Hiding in our alder bushes, I flung a rock that bounced off the house. She gasped, shut the window, and turned off the light. That's her sky mother for you. Faced with the slightest opposition she disappears like a vanishing ring of smoke.

“So why is your brother going to Switzerland?” I asked.

Sam gnawed on the tip of his fork. When he removed it from his mouth, two prongs were missing.

“Who knows?” Sue said. “I thought he'd come along to help me, but he has other things on his mind.” She studied a patch of skin on her forearm now cleared of stingers.

“But why must he leave Canada?”

Sue's eyes narrowed.

I was asking too many questions. “I ask this question because,” I spoke in an off-hand, relaxed tone, “because I have fled many things myself. I fled the army and before that, I fled an office job. Before that, I fled my high school, grade school, I fled my kindergarten teacher, and I fled my nursery. I fled the hands of the doctor who pulled me out with forceps. The thing I regret most is fleeing my mother's womb. I should've stayed inside. The placenta walls fitted my body perfectly, her cervix was as comfy as an ottoman, and fallopian tubes hung like party streamers. I have fled many things in life but long to turn flight into its opposite, rest.”

Sam blurted, “The opposite of flight is chase.” He grabbed the salt shaker and began nibbling on it. Sue glared at him.

My children's disjointed lives lay in pieces before me and I could not find the thread to join them together. Lord, help
me unravel these mysteries and return my children unto me. I remembered Mary's gold liquid and the miracles it promised.

As we headed out, I glanced at people talking together at the tables. It occurred to me that I'd never really had friends of my own. Religion is supposed to expand your life, but without my God I'm nothing. In Cartwright I could have developed other parts of myself.

Returning to the lower corridor, I said, “It has been wonderful meeting you both. I'd like to invite you to my cabin for a—” A what? For once my imagination failed me. “To look out my porthole. I have a fantastic view.”

“We're very tired,” Sue answered carefully. “We didn't sleep much last night.”

“Let's meet later then. For a … martini. Before dinner. It's on me.”

Sue's forehead wrinkled. She needed me for my money and the appearance of normality I provided. She was terrified of arousing suspicion and probably feared that if she offended me, I'd report her. “All right. We'll meet. Later.” My children scurried down the hall and ducked into a curtained space beside the boiler room.

I entered my room, locked the door, took off my hat, and let my hair fall down my back. Here no one could see me except—through the porthole—flying seagulls and those horrible, leaping swordfish. I cradled Mary's vial in my hands as if shielding a flame from the wind. Praise God for His succour and may those with dirty minds not snigger at the word “succour”!

I could hear the boiler room door opening and closing. The elevator bell rang incessantly as workers transported things out
of storage rooms. From the dry cleaner's came a steady hum followed by a loud hiss. At noon a man began to shout and curse. He was the soldier who'd come to get the uniform I was wearing.

In the late afternoon things quieted down. I tucked my hair under my hat and crept into the hall. I lingered by the wall near where my children were hiding. From behind the curtain I heard a scraping sound like a stick rubbed across a washboard—Sam snoring—punctuated by occasional sighs. Sue was awake.

Soon Sam woke and he and his sister started giggling together. Through a crack in the curtain I observed Sam lying with his head in Sue's lap. She stroked his hair. They were happy together! For an instant, I felt superfluous. Something was growing inside them that I wasn't privy to. A waiter carrying a box appeared in the hall. Afraid he'd speak to me, I darted into my room. An hour later I returned to the curtain. My children were arguing, which reassured me.

Sue said, “This isn't what I expected. Everything's so difficult—and dangerous. And what's with that creepy soldier who keeps asking questions?”

Sam began to wheeze, a mountain of phlegm in his throat. “We don't have one identity but several, Sue. We change from one personality to others every second of our lives. Only submitting to passion keeps us safe.”

My body curled like a comma over their hiding place, my ear as wide open as a trumpet-mouth.

“What do I have now?” continued Sue. “I no longer have Father and his dingy. And when we get where we're going, what'll I do there? Sam, quit picking your crotch, I'm talking to you! You're
no help at all. You've been creating all these problems, and
I'm
the one who has to look after
you.
I'm afraid of you, Sam. Surely if you shaved off all that hair, things would be fine. Oh, quit reading those stupid letters! Why won't you even tell me anything? Why are you going to Europe? I told you all about what happened to me. You have to learn to trust somebody, Sam.”

“Maybe you're right,” he said. “Maybe I'm not on track.”

A loud thump. She'd leapt to the floor. “I'm going to find out where the washroom is.”

I flew like an arrow to the end of the hall and ducked into a closet; its shadowy shelves were lined with plastic goats with silver eyes and spring-necked puppies whose heads nodded as the ship rocked. In the corner, a bunch of naked Barbies lay like a pile of flesh-coloured kindling. I heard Sue's feet
pick-pock
past the closet. She was wearing my shoes. Then—
bam-bam-bam—
Sam's heavy feet followed her. When I saw him in the doorway, I noticed his hands were empty. Where was his bag?

I counted to ten, raced out into the hall, arrived at their empty hiding-place, knelt, and drove my head through the curtain. Piles of rope, pails, steel poles and, in the corner, a small rock beside a shopping bag. I snatched the bag, stuffed it into my pants, marched purposely down the hall, entered my room, and slammed the door with such a loud bang that I imagined the ship swayed from side to side and waiters fell onto trays as plates and cutlery slid off tables. The ship's horn gave a disgruntled blast.

I plucked one piece of paper from the bag:
“Eins, zwei, drei, vier.
Kraut-talk. The manly language. You wanted it, Sam. You wanted my tongue …”

I read further and the words entered my eye sockets, seeped into my bloodstream, and flowed to my brain, my heart. Colour drained from my cheeks. My lips quivered. I briefly experienced life without faith.

Now I understood the reason for this trip. That this Franz Niederberger—a pervert, a debauchee, a degenerate spawn of Satan, a pantywaist homo-boy—had breathed his rank, polluted air into the nostrils of my boy, poured poison-peppered saliva onto his tongue and with a touch of one suave, manicured fingernail laid waste to Sam's entire body.

Listen, reader. My son was never a skirt-twirling ball-sniffer, a flitting, pulp-sucking guava-girl, a purse-flapping fruitfly, a pirouetting, zipper-kissing Pansy McBride until Franz hurled his body against him like a comet that collided with the Earth.

My fingers began to flail. The Monster in me was let loose. I could crush Franz's testes like grapes, tear out his penis by the roots, and chop up the rest of his body into bite-sized chunks, each no bigger than a Shreddie that I'd scatter over all the oceans of this world. A storm of weeping descended upon me and I tumbled to the floor. No wonder Sam's pores sprouted hairs that curled like tarantula legs.