The Opening Sky (25 page)

A
party at 385 Augusta … how long has it been? For a few years they had a great thing going with Peter Kohut, a guy Aiden knew from high school. What a brilliant guitarist that guy turned out to be. He’d show up with some musician buddies and people would stream in from all over the neighbourhood, and they’d get a bounce going on the hardwood floor. One morning Liz and Aiden came downstairs and found three characters they’d never clapped eyes on before, sleeping in the living room. But then Wendy came to a party and started handing out singalong sheets for “Big Yellow Taxi,” and that was the day the music died.

Oh, well, Aiden’s got a pretty good ear for a playlist. David Lindley now, doing his California thing with reggae. Aiden’s squeezed into a corner of the living room, drinking Corona with Patti. Patti turns to him with liquid eyes and says, “He was the third one to go,” and next thing he knows she’s vanished and he’s been teleported into the hall, where he stands with a welcome-to-summer G and T in hand. The front door is propped open, watery light pours in, and Tracy Chapman is begging them for one more reason to stay. These lovely little folds in time – he only ever has them at parties.

He sips his G and T and watches Noah move along the veranda railing, passing around a box of Cubans in his courteous fashion. The other grandpa brought the cigars: George is all over the chance to show off his prowess with a smoke ring. Lucky Patti’s made it outside – there she stands in a clean and sparkling world – and Liz is up at the end, doing her sexy shtick with a cigar. “When Sylvie was born, I was in labour so long they had to shave me twice,” she deadpans in Patti’s direction. It’s an old line she stole from
Ab Fab
, but everybody falls against the rail laughing.

Whereas Aiden’s marooned in the entranceway with the brooding Slavic artist, who’s standing with his eyes on the Afghan prayer rug, sucking back a tumbler of Glendronach from what Aiden has always considered his secret stash.

“Machine guns,” Aiden says. “Helicopters.
AK-47S
.”

Krzysztof does the three-second pause that lets you know your place in the Doric temple of his thought. “Beg your pardon?”

“The designs in the prayer rug. It was apparently made while the Soviets were having a go at Afghanistan.”

“Hmm.” Krzysztof frowns, looks closer. “How’d you end up with it?”

“Bought it at an auction in the ballroom of the Marlborough
Hotel. I can’t say I’ve quite got my mind around it. You are standing on a symbol of my moral confusion.”

Krzysztof barks dryly.

“So, you working on something at the moment?” Aiden asks.

“Yes, of course.”

“What’s the premise of this one?”

“Um, it’s, uh, kind of a post-urban fantasy set in the bush. About a post-tech society.”

He’s got a slight accent and a modest, almost ingratiating way of speaking, but Aiden’s been around, he knows this tone as a further refinement of ego. “What happens?” he asks. Artists hate this question, in his experience.

“Uh, a father takes his kid on a hunting expedition, they’re desperate for food, and the kid becomes his prey.”

Aiden turns back to gaze out at the veranda, where water drips in a silver chain from the lowest point of the plugged and sagging eaves. “It’s a psychological thriller?”

“I’m not really into psychology.”

He hasn’t shown a flicker of interest in Aiden or what he does. “You think it’s plausible,” Aiden asks, “on the face of it, for a father to go after his kid with a rifle? However hungry?”

“I’m interested in the anarchy of the post-apocalyptic scene. The aesthetics of anarchy, I guess you could say.”

“
The Road: The Next Generation
?”

Krzysztof looks at him with open distaste. Aiden turns to peer towards the kitchen, thinking, Eat something. He can tell that Liz ransacked the place for snacks, though he hasn’t laid his hands on as much as a cracker. When she invited people, she said, “Stop by and take a peek,” specifying after dinner so they’d arrive fed. But then Maggie showed up with her crew about four-thirty (didn’t she purport to know the best hour in a baby’s biorhythms?) and they’re
all starving, and now it’s seven-thirty and the second wave has hit – happy partiers who ate at home and are settling in for the night.

Somebody’s turned the music right up. The baby’s crying. Aiden checks the living room. Still filled with yakking women, women from
SERC
bonding with women from the neighbourhood. The granny hasn’t moved from her chair. The last time he caught sight of Sylvie, she was enduring Wendy’s account of making the yarn octopus, and she was white as a ghost. But he can’t see her now. Maybe she’s changing the baby.

He turns back to Krzysztof. “So what caused the big collapse?”

“Collapse?”

“The apocalypse. In your film.”

“Oh. Oh, I don’t go there.”

Aiden drains his drink, grabs the shard of lime with his teeth, bites into it for its food value. “With all due respect,” he says, “I don’t grasp a story about human behaviour that’s indifferent to the human mind and human feelings. I’m trying to remember a film of yours I saw at Cinematheque a long time ago. A bunch of kids out in the bush being killed off one by one. By animals?”

“No, they offed each other.”

Aiden hears the baby’s crying torque up. He and Krzysztof have drifted up the hall and he can’t see if Liz is still out on the veranda. “So again,” he says, “it could have been a psychological thriller.”

“Not really. If you recall, they were taken over by totems.”

“Some sort of malignant force of nature?”

“I don’t like to talk about my work in thematic terms. But yeah, I am interested in notions of wilderness.”

“The aesthetics of wilderness?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“You’re interested in the aesthetics of anarchy. So I presume you’re also into the aesthetics of wilderness.”

Krzysztof doesn’t deign to answer. He lifts his shoulders wordlessly to withdraw from the conversation. He’ll be used to being God in his own little world.

Aiden takes an involuntary step closer. “You know, fear is big. I get why you want to scare the shit out of people. But ever consider making a film about real stuff?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You have to ask me what real stuff is?”

“I’m asking you what you’re talking about.”

The women from the living room have drifted to the archway. They’re hearing a baby in distress; they look around anxiously. Their eyes snag on Krzysztof and Aiden.

“Okay,” Aiden says. “For example, what it’s going to mean when the arctic ice is gone and the poles start absorbing heat instead of deflecting it.”

“You want a film about ice,” Krzysztof says, “maybe you should make it yourself.”

“Hey, excuse me. I’m asking you a question about your work, seeing you dismissed mine out of hand.”

“I’m an artist. I’m not a scientist. I’m not an ideologue.” His boyhood in Sevastopol or wherever is seeping into his speech.

“An artist has a vision of the world.”

Krzysztof turns to face Aiden, as if he’s squaring off. “You want me to tell you what I see?”

“Sure, by all means.”

“I see a man who’s getting old, who sees his own death staring him in the face, and decides the planet is going down with him. You think the world’s coming to an end. Every generation thinks that – a certain type of mind in every generation. It’s just not my subject.”

“But it is your subject.”
Asshole
. “Your film’s about the end of the world.”

Then Maggie’s there and the baby’s on her shoulder, her whole tiny body clutched into a spasm of squalling. “This. Infant. Is. Starving. And she needs changing. I can’t find a diaper. Sylvie’s in the washroom in your kitchen. She’s extremely upset.”

He goes to the kitchen. Noah’s little sister is sitting on the floor outside the pantry, swinging the purple octopus like a pendulum between two of its braided tentacles. “Your baby’s crying and you’re crying,” she says sweetly into the confessional.

Aiden can see Sylvie’s bare feet under the half-doors. He waggles the doors: there’s a half-inch of play in the sliding bolt. “What’s up, sweetheart?”

Sylvie opens the door and falls against him, sobbing.

“Come on, let’s get you up to your room,” he says, putting an arm around her shoulder. They start up the stairs. Natalie follows, and Max, and Maggie with the screaming baby. Faces in the hall lift to watch their reproachful parade.

At the door of Sylvie’s room, Aiden tries to takes the baby from Maggie. “No, I’ll settle them,” she says. “Why don’t you get Sylvie something to eat.”

Liz is still out on the veranda. “Our daughter needs attention,” he says. She turns a startled face in his direction, follows him inside, and makes a move towards the stairs. “It’s okay, Maggie’s with her. But she needs to eat. What have we got?”

When he comes back upstairs with a plate from the microwave and a glass of milk, Sylvie is sitting in the rocking chair in her terry robe, nursing the baby. Her face is swollen but her sobs have stilled.

“Terrific,” Aiden says to Maggie. “Thank you.”

“Oh, no worries,” she says, getting up off the bed. “Like they say, it takes a village.” She leans over and gives Sylvie a hug. “This was way too much, wasn’t it. I know you need quiet. You’re going to need lots of time to heal. And lots of support.” She’s talking tenderly into
Sylvie’s face, nose to nose. “And we are here for you. You remember that, eh? We’re all just a phone call away.” At the door she stands for a minute, including Aiden in her reproving sympathy. “My numbers are there,” she says, nodding towards Sylvie’s desk. “Work, home, cell. Anytime, eh?” Then she’s gone.

The desk is cluttered with baby things, gifts. Aiden shoves them over and perches on it. He picks up a stuffed pig and turns it in his hands, keeping his eyes cast tactfully down, although Sylvie has a shawl draped over her shoulder. Below them, the music turns off. Liz said she would send everyone on their way. The silence is impressive. Maggie is right – it was too much. It’s as if Liz was desperately signalling to their friends, We are not at all ambivalent about this baby. And he’s ashamed of that pissing match in the hall. He waits for Sylvie to lift her head and meet his eyes, but she won’t.

“Did something happen, honey? Was it Noah?”

She shakes her head. “I’m just tired,” she says after a minute, in a little voice.

“Why didn’t you slip out? You could have come up here with the baby.”

“You guys were standing at the stairs.”

This is what he and Liz used to call ego disintegration time – they read it in a book. “It’s pretty overwhelming, I know,” he says. “But look at that baby. She’s fine now. It’s wonderful, the way you can meet her needs. And she meets yours too. You sit holding her like that and she warms your heart. Literally.”

“I wish I could lie in bed and feed her.”

“She’s a little young for that. And so are you. I know the way you sleep.”

“Dad, do you think she can see yet?”

“Sylvie. Honey. Of course she can see. Maybe you’re thinking of kittens.”

He watches her, shaken. She seems to be coping most of the time, and until now she’s been in reasonable spirits. But there have been troubling lapses. The name thing, for one. The whole week at the hospital, Sylvie refused to discuss the name, or she joked about it. Evo-Devo was a big contender. As luck would have it, he was alone with her the night a nurse brought the birth registration forms to the room. Sylvie scrawled something on the form and went back to eating her Jell-O. He picked it up and read it out.

“Whatever,” she said. “It’s rude, sticking a name on another human being. Especially when you don’t know what sort of person she’s going to be. When she’s old enough, she can name herself. There’s a culture that does that. I wish I could remember which one.”

“What does Noah think?”

“He doesn’t care.”

Liz hit the roof when he told her. Well, first she heard it as
Fawn
. “Fawn Phimister?” she said in disbelief.

“Yup.”

“You have got to be kidding. That’s the worst name I have ever heard, bar none.”

“Well, it’s a different generation,” Aiden said gamely. “I guess it sounds good to her.”

Liz had just come in from her meeting and was standing with her coat on. He beckoned for her to come and sit on the arm of his chair, but she stayed on her feet in the archway.

“Is it some sentimental reference to Bambi?”

“I doubt it. Bambi was before
our
time. Anyway, it’s not the baby deer. It’s F-A-U-N.”

“Faun Phimister.”

“Yup.”

“What’s the middle name?”

“No middle name. I’m not sure she took it seriously. She was kind of in a mood.”

“Oh, for god’s sake.” Liz leaned into the frame of the pocket doors and closed her eyes.

In fact they never use the name. They say Pumpkin, or Angel, or they just say “the baby.” Sylvie herself does not use it. “I am watching this girl like a hawk for postpartum depression,” Liz says to Aiden every day. Well, so is he.

The feeding is almost finished. It looks to Aiden as though the baby is drifting off. Sylvie lifts a finger and gently touches her cheek. That’s a good sign.

“Let me take her,” he says. “You need to eat your supper.”

“I have to burp her.”

“I can do that.”

He lays the warm little bundle on a towel over his shoulder and pats her back until she pukes up a teaspoon of hot milk. Then he changes her again, and Sylvie eats her warmed-up lasagna and drinks her milk and crawls into bed. It’s a piece of cake changing this baby, what with the Velcro tabs. She kicks her white legs vigorously at him. We’re fine, he tells himself. We’re all fine. The elms have died and the valleys in B.C. have all turned brown, but nature can still do perfection. He picks her up gently and walks her around the room, and she’s asleep by the time he lays her in the crib.

“Are you going to be all right, honey?” he asks, his hand on the light switch.

“Oh, who knows?” Sylvie says, but she manages a little smile.

T
hree o’clock. Sylvie sits up in bed and turns on the lamp and looks at the squalling baby in the bassinette. Her incision hurts like crazy and she feels hollowed out from all her crying. It’s cold
in her room, so she pulls on her robe and sticks her feet in her slippers. She picks up the baby the way they taught her, as though her head is in danger of falling off, and moves carefully over to the rocking chair.