The Monkeyface Chronicles (32 page)

Adeline licks her lips as she pulls away the cool white sheet that
covers me. Her hair is longer than it's ever been. She sweeps it
back to reveal her naked body. “Hello, Gumby!” she says seductively
to my rising erection.“In Heaven yet?”

The sheets are gathered up around my chest, and a burly man in blue medical scrubs, with a military-style brush-cut and a thick salt-and-pepper moustache, is washing my private parts with a soapy sponge. “Good morning, Sport,” he says jovially.

I feel my erection deflate, flopping over to one side. My body's hot and prickly all over. All I can do is close my eyes.

“Oh, don't be embarrassed,” he says, “it happens all the time. It's a good sign, actually — means your circulatory system is still working okay.”

It's Bob, the PCA, which stands for Personal Care Assistant. They used to call them Male Nurses. Bob confided to me yesterday (or I think it was yesterday — my perception of time is still rather unreliable) that he likes the term
PCA
better than
Nurse
because it's more gender-neutral, if not more “outright masculine.”

Bob shows up every day to wash me, and change the bags that collect the waste from my body. That he does these things so cheerfully is both puzzling and inspiring.

“Just let me finish up your bath,” he says, “and then Amiya is going to come in to begin your Physio.”

As he pats me dry, I feel tingling sensations in my legs, a slight chill on the skin.

Have they removed the casts from my legs? When did that
happen?

As Bob pulls the sheets up over me again, I feel the material slip over my arms, and I realize that my arms are free as well. I don't think I can move them, though.

Am I paralyzed? Am I going to be like this for the rest of my
life?

“All done, Sport,” says Bob, “And just in time, too. Here's Amiya. See ya later, then. When she's finished with you, I'll be back to turn you onto your side, so you don't start developing bed sores.”

Panic.

When Amiya's finished with me? What is Amiya going to do
to me? And what in God's Name are bed sores?

My heart throbs in my chest. I can't protect myself. Anyone could do anything to me. It feels like the bed is trembling. I wish I could get up. God, I wish I could move.

Like the answer to a prayer, a gentle voice whispers in my ear, a voice that sounds like it's about to break into song. My heartbeat decelerates.

“Hello, handsome. I'm Amiya, your Physiotherapist. I'm going to help you get moving again. Can you lift your right arm for me?”

I try, but my arm doesn't budge.

“Let me help,” she says in that singsong voice.

I vaguely feel her warm fingers under the tender, tingling flesh of my right arm. The muscles I'd built with weight lifting and hockey training are all gone now, and all that's left is a limp, pale-blue twig.

“Now you help me,” she says.

I strain as she lifts my arm upward again.

“Good!” she says. “Very good! You must have been in pretty good shape before your accident. Your muscles are not completely atrophied. Your progress will be faster than most.”

Amiya lifts my arm again ten more times, coaxing me to help as much as I can. I will do anything this woman asks. She moves to the opposite side of the bed, runs through the same procedure with my left arm. Then with each of my legs.

I'm exhausted. My eyes twinkle with tiny stars.

“We made good progress today, Mr. Philip. Very good progress. You rest now. I'll be back again tomorrow, and every day after that. Will you do something for me when you wake up?”

Of course I will. I will do anything for you, Amiya.

“Whenever you think about it, I want you to curl your toes, and to close and open your fingers as many times as you can. This will help your muscles and your circulation. We need to get your hands strong enough to hold a pencil, so you will have a way to communicate with us.”

My body sizzles with pain, but it's not the same pain as being wounded, broken, shattered. It isn't that helpless kind of pain. It's that burning feeling I got in my legs after skating a long, hard shift and scoring at the end. It's the little razorblade stings in my lungs after I ran all the way from Plympwright High to Faireville. It's the acid that boiled in my stomach when the time came to fight.

My eyelids drop, and I can't stop myself from sinking back into the tingling pool of darkness, but when I emerge, I'll be ready to fight again.

Confessional

I
am dreaming of a tall man made of shadows. He stands beside my hospital bed, with his narrow-brimmed hat clasped in his hands like he's standing before a casket. His long grey overcoat is speckled with melting snowflakes.

Has so much time passed? Is it winter already?

I'm pretty sure I am hallucinating. Maybe there are no snowflakes at all, maybe it's just the morphine. What I thought were snowflakes now just seem to be just flecks in the fabric of the old coat.

There is a shadowy aura around his body, the opposite of a glow.

“Hello, Philip.” His rumbling voice resonates against the walls.

I'm not hallucinating. He is here. It is my grandfather. Or, the man I
thought
was my grandfather.

“May I sit down?” he asks, in a diplomatic way.

It's not as if I can answer him. Despite what some of his political opponents may have believed, he does not have the ability to read minds; if he did, he would hear mine screaming
No! No! You may NOT sit down! Go away! No!

He settles into the plastic chair beside the bed, and places his hat atop the blue-green hospital blanket that is draped over my legs. He leans forward so I can see his face. He's wearing a pair of new glasses, with slender gold rims and conservative oval lenses; the eyewear of an elder statesman. I notice he also has four round, dark purple bruises in a horizontal line across one cheek.

“What do you think of my new spectacles, Philip?” he asks, knowing that I cannot answer. “They're a compromise, of course. You remember the day they took my licence away. Well, I needed the glasses to get my licence back.”

Why didn't you just take the train?

“It's not that I particularly need to be able to drive again,” he says. “There are other ways to get around.”

Maybe he
can
read minds.

“I have a plan, Philip,” he says, as quietly as is possible with his thunderous voice. “A plan that will require the use of my car. A plan to make everything right again.”

Since I can't move my head or neck, I can only see his face. His fingers are locked together, his chin resting on his thumbs.

“Philip,” he says, “I imagine that you've had a lot of time to think about things.”

Actually, I've spent most of my time unconscious, or watching the walls change colour, or having strangely disturbing dreams about a big, aggressive red ball chasing a frightened little yellow ball to the
Peter Gunn
theme.

“I imagine that you've been able to put together everything that was said and done before your accident. It
was
an accident, wasn't it, Philip?”

Of course it was an accident. I got on the motorcycle to escape
you
, not to escape
life
! If I was the give-up-and-end-it-all type,
do you think I would have waited this long?

“Regardless, I'm glad you survived. It's a miracle, really, one for which I am very grateful. And I want to prove it.”

He clears his throat.

“The English clergyman Roland Allen once said, ‘
redemption
is inconceivable without truth.
' Well, Philip, before I do what I must do to redeem myself for the mistakes I've made, I want to tell you the truth. About everything.”

If this were a confessional booth, the priest would say something neutral like, “Go on, my child.” I suppose a psychoanalyst would do the same thing. But I cannot. Not only am I unable to speak, but my bloodstream is so saturated with painkillers and sedatives, I can hardly blink or move my eyes.

“What was said on the night of your accident,” he says, coughing, “is the truth. Your father is not your father. He is your brother. Well, half-brother, technically. And while we're on the topic, Dennis is, in fact, your full brother, not a half-brother as we had you believe.” He points to the purple-brown knuckle-marks under his left eye. “He did not take it so well when I told him.”

I suppose if this were a political debate, this line would be a tension-breaker, meant to get a laugh. But I can't laugh. I can't respond in any way. All I can do is listen, and all he can do is talk. So, he talks.

“My first wife was a lovely woman, Philip. Esther was ten years younger than me, and as beautiful as . . . well, I've never been much for poetry. She was the most beautiful woman I ever knew, until I met June, your mother.”

He pauses.

“Esther died giving birth to your father . . . your brother, I mean. Your half-brother. To my first son, Landon.”

He's grown so accustomed to the lie that he's confusing himself.

“Afterward, I sold our farm and moved Landon and I into town. I invested in a couple of old buildings on Main Street, a few vacant lots here and there, and, well, you know how that turned out.” A hint of pride pushes through his tone of confessional sincerity. “I got into local politics reluctantly at first. I started out as a School Board trustee only because Landon seemed to be learning nothing at school but how to glue macaroni to paper plates. But once I was into politics I loved it, and I was elected for several terms as a town councilor.”

He sighs, and drifts into himself for a moment.

“By the time I won my first term as mayor, Landon was almost twenty, and was excelling in the science program at university. It was at that time that your mother came to work as my personal secretary. It was the ‘seventies then, Philip. You weren't alive yet. You don't know what it was like. It felt
okay
for a fifty-five-year-old public official to have an affair with his twenty-year-old secretary. It felt okay for your father . . . your brother, I mean, to have a homosexual tryst with one of his lab partners, give up science and become an artist. The thing is, of course, that none of those things were
okay
in Faireville. Those things are still not okay in Faireville. People in Faireville hear ‘artist,' and they think ‘dirty pinko hippie.' They hear ‘Scientist,' and they think ‘respectable professional.' So I talked Landon into pursuing science instead of art. Perhaps I was thinking more of my own career than of my son's happiness. Perhaps it was selfish of me, and perhaps I should regret it deeply now. Yes. I regret it.”

He pauses, as if waiting for some sort of absolution, which of course I cannot give him.

“I was up for re-election, and rumours were starting to circulate around town about my relationship with June. Even though we were both single, well, with our age difference — can you imagine? Me with a son almost the same age as her? It would have been the scandal of the year. To make matters worse, your father and his, em,
friend
were caught smoking marijuana together under the exhaust fans in the graduate student laboratory, and both were kicked out of school. Of course, I couldn't let word get out that Landon had been involved with
drugs
— in Faireville, one might as well tell people he was involved with
Satan
. And if his
homosexuality
ever got out . . . ”

He stands up and disappears from my sight. From the sound of his footsteps I assume that he's walked over to the window.

“So, I made a deal with him. If he would pose as a freshly-minted scientist, and pretend to be June's new boyfriend, I would buy him the dilapidated old castle on the hill that he'd always admired, and he could get back into his painting, as long as he kept it a secret. It was the perfect solution. He got to do what he really wanted to do, with me paying all the bills, while I went on to win another election, and another three after that, my reputation unblemished. And June and I had an excuse to be seen together.”

I hear him pacing back and forth across the floor tiles now.

“June went along with it whole-heartedly at first, but when she got pregnant with Dennis, well . . . it seemed logical to me to have her pose as Landon's
wife
, and for us to continue our own relationship in private. Of course, by the time we staged the wedding, June was already showing, so we had to invent a story about a pre-marital tryst, so it wouldn't look as if Landon had fathered an illegitimate child.”

He sits back down on the plastic chair, and I can see his face again. He looks ancient, white, like plaster about to crumble.

“So, that's the truth,” he says. “Dennis is my son — although sometimes I wonder. He certainly didn't inherit his disagreeable personality from
me
. You, Philip, are most definitely my son. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.” He points to the little vertical scar in the middle of his upper lip. “I didn't get this from a hockey puck. I was born with the same defect as you, it just didn't manifest itself in such a severe way. They stitched it up when I was still a toddler, and I made up the hockey injury story for the kids at school.” His sobs rattle and echo through room like someone hitting a loose-skinned drum. “It's all my fault. I did it. I gave you that face. I'm so sorry, my boy, so sorry.”

I've never seen him cry. I've never heard of anyone seeing him cry. His contempt for crying is legendary.

“I did it. I did it to all of you.” He collapses against the bed, his head on my leg. I have no way of telling him how much it hurts. I squeeze the little rubber ball they've left in the infant-grip of my right hand, which switches on a light outside the room so they know I need help.