Westlake Soul (16 page)

I didn’t see him bruise Yvette’s arm. Didn’t see her ease the swelling on her shoulder with a packet of frozen peas wrapped in a hand towel. I was there, though, when he called her a dumb French whore and made her cry. I was there when he slapped her ass—playful, perhaps, but hard.
Way
too hard. He grinned and flowed through me, and I collected the bricks of his anger, stacked them inside.

She can go from happy to heartbroken in next to no time.

This is Wayne’s superpower.

Like me, you’re probably asking how Yvette could ever have been attracted to someone like Wayne. Everybody makes mistakes, I guess, and she met him when she was vulnerable, and alone, having recently moved away from her family. She recognized early on that Wayne was damaged, and dangerous, but ever the caregiver, she thought she could fix him. And there were moments, particularly at the beginning, when he shone in her eyes. When he showered, shaved, and dressed in his cool threads, he was handsome enough to have stepped from an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. He’d walk into a bar holding her hand, and she felt protected, and he was so strong that he could scoop her into one arm, and all the vulnerability of being away from her family was swept away. Even when things weren’t good, which was often the case, she saw hope in Wayne. She felt she could connect with him in a way that nobody had before—that she could pluck the diamond from the rough, and they would both shine.

She couldn’t reach him, though. That’s what it came down to. Couldn’t
help
him. Sometimes people think they have a bond—something special and enduring—when all they have is a trail of broken pieces.

Like I said . . . everybody makes mistakes.

I reached Yvette, however. I
know
I did, despite the cool efficiency with which she removed my feeding tube. I
inspired
her. Quite an achievement from the midst of my vegetative state. (Imagine what I could do with the full use of my body.) She had admired my Wall of Achievement—recognized that pride is not a sin, after all—and had made her own. She took the two framed diplomas from the back of her closet and hung them in pride of place. Then she put up shelves and lined them with the gymnastics trophies she pulled from a box that had been hidden in the same place. They glimmered in the soft light of her living room. Figurines in postures that depict the grace with which they were won. It was a splendid display, and Yvette would often look at it, always smiling, recalling, perhaps, the occasions she had been awarded those accolades. You can imagine how this made me feel, and at a time of such helplessness. I would look at her wall with pride for us both. Achievements should never be lauded, but always noted. Take it from me, you never know when the ability to achieve—even something so small—will be stripped away.

Wayne didn’t see it this way.

“The fuck is this?”

“Some trophies I won. That’s my college diploma. That’s—”

“Dancing?”

“Gymnastics.”

He sneered, tested the shelves for sturdiness, gave his head a little shake. I could sense his meanness boiling just beneath the surface, ready to spill over. Yvette’s Wall was a challenge to his alpha role—something he
didn’t
have, and which (in his own small mind) demeaned him. Guys like Wayne don’t appreciated being demeaned.

“The shelves aren’t level.”

“I did the best I could.”

“Did you at least screw into the studs?”

“Of course.”

“You surprise me.”

She smiled, as if he were making a joke and not being mean. He sneered again to assure her he was. Hoping to diffuse the sudden spike in tension, Yvette stroked his arm, sat on the sofa, and patted the seat next to her.

“Sit with me, baby,” she said. “We’ll watch a movie.”

But Wayne wasn’t interested in watching a movie; he wanted to reestablish his alpha role. I could see what he was going to do and tried to stop him. I threw my useless ghost in the way but his arm passed right through. He grabbed one of the trophies and, with no effort at all, snapped the little figure from the top.

“Plastic,” he said. “I thought it was real gold.”

The argument that followed was brief but ugly, culminating in Wayne breaking three more trophies and thumping Yvette’s college diploma with the side of his fist, hard enough for the glass to shatter in its frame. She cried and dropped to the floor, hands covering her head. Wayne stood over her. One hundred percent alpha. Showing his teeth. His fist bled.

Yvette’s Wall of Achievement was in pieces behind him.

His aura glimmered like the trophies he had just destroyed. Not gold, but miserable flashes of black and red. It emanated from inside him. Sick energy. I could hear his teeth grinding. The crazy drum of his heart. I moved in front of the door and waited. The TV chirped in the background, ludicrous commercials that couldn’t have been more out of place. Wayne made a sound like he was clearing his throat, told Yvette to go fuck herself, and then left. But he passed through me on his way to the door and I opened my arms wide. I took his anger. A hard and heavy haul. Not one brick but dozens. Enough to build a wall. I added them to the pile—now a towering, teetering stack—and went to Yvette. Ghost hands stroked her hair, her face. I flowed through her, gathering blocks of anguish.

I went home with all of this inside me. I listened to Niki sing, and her voice soothed me.
Healed
me, almost.

My left eye blinked in time with the melody.

Work. Deep in the motor cortex. Screaming into emptiness, losing track of time as my body deteriorates. But no, I haven’t forgotten about Wayne the Fucktard. He is one supervillain I
will
get the better of.

Soon . . . I’ll get to him soon.

And I think I know how.

Blood oozing from my anus. Not very superhero-like, huh? You never read
that
line in
The Amazing Spider-Man,
did you? My bedsheets had to be changed three times yesterday (I’m back in my diapers today). The tip of my penis is as dry as—and somewhat resembles—dead fruit. Hair falling out. Armpits clogged with flaky skin. Veins I didn’t even know I had showing in my face. Stomach a broad dip, like something that could catch water. Hip bones poking up. I breathe like a cat hissing.

Nine days without food.

Everything—
everything
—hurts.

Tomorrow is the first day of October. Always my favourite month, when the colours come to life and the night draws in close and cold. There’s a real feeling of change in the air, more so than any other time of the year. Spring in Ontario moves quickly. Nobody can quite believe the snow has stopped, and before we know it the sidewalks are baking and we’re drinking beer on the patio. Autumn is different. It’s patient; it fades in and out, a considerate season. The colours begin in September, but in October they burn and fall. Kind of like me, all engines blazing. Forgive my lapse into poetic metaphor, but to think of a leaf, once healthy, quickly withering and burning, falling to the ground . . . it’s appropriate that October should be the month of my death.

No change in the homestead, though. Apart from a few tender moments spent with me, Mom, Dad, and Niki shuffle around, pale-faced and brainless, like extras in a George Romero flick. The occasional smile or half-hearted attempt at conversation, but that’s it. Sometimes I think their life is as distant as mine. Hub hasn’t wagged his tail for over two weeks. He spends most of his time with Niki. She scratches his belly. His leg twitches and his tongue lolls, but the dude isn’t happy.

It’ll get easier, for everybody, once it’s over.

A matter of days now. That’s all I have. This narrative could—and probably will—simply end, without resolve. Which reflects life in general, I think. We rarely get the opportunity to tie up loose ends and finish neatly. We quite often end mid-sentence.

I woke from dreams like clenched fists to see Dr. Quietus floating above my bed. This was two nights ago. He snapped his teeth and swirled but didn’t touch me. I waited to be dragged into what would surely be our final battle—and one he would win—but it never happened. I inhaled his thick stink and shuddered, and he eventually faded, soaking into the dark air like a puddle into the ground.

He’s here with me now. He fades, but never leaves.

Any moment, baby.

I look like a scarecrow with all the straw blown from its shirt. I have sunken eyes and my teeth are too large in my face, projecting from gums you could strike matches off. There may as well be an hourglass poised above my head, the last grains of sand sifting through. Mom and Dad aren’t Catholic, or religious in any way, so there’ll be no Last Rites. Only their final goodbyes, which they have already made.

Darryl came to say goodbye, too. A brief visit, and hard for him. I wish I could have leapt out of bed and kicked his ass out the door. Not because I didn’t appreciate the visit, but to spare him the discomfort. He didn’t want to be anywhere near me. Dad called him, told him that I was fading fast and that he should come and say goodbye. Darryl made some bullshit excuse about having to go to Kitchener with his boss. “Forget that,” Dad said to him. “Get your ass here and say goodbye to your best friend.” And so he did, and he stayed as long as he could bear. Almost seven minutes. He stood by the door, biting his fingernails, glancing at me, then quickly away.

“Dude,” he said, over and over.

I jumped into his mind, converted the data. He was thinking about Michael Jackson in the “Thriller” video. The part where he’s a zombie, dancing in the street with a horde of equally nimble undead. Then he got to thinking about how he once dressed up as Michael Jackson for Halloween and moonwalked for treats.

“Dude,” he said.

So I looked like a zombie to him, one that might—at any time—begin body popping. I groaned and he backed against the wall, perhaps fearing I would spring out of bed and bite his arm. It was all too much for him. He pulled a grim face and looked down at his crisp white socks.

“You’re a good guy, Wes,” he said. “When I remember you . . . I’ll remember the old
you. The
real
you. We kicked ass, huh?”

I tried to nod. To wink. Foul breath creaked from my open mouth.

“Here, you can have this,” he said, reaching into his jeans pocket and pulling out something I’d coveted for nearly three years: Angus Young’s guitar pick—flicked into the crowd at our first AC/DC concert. Darryl had snatched it from the air, quick and accurate, like a frog catching a fly. “I figure it’d be pretty sick to be, you know, buried with it.”

Cremated
, I said.
But yeah . . . pretty sick.

He stepped forward, but then stopped and looked at his socks again. A deep breath. Another glance at me.

It’s all good, Darryl
, I said.
I know I’m hungry, but I promise not to eat your brain.

“Okay,” he said, as if he’d heard me. Three hesitant steps (you’d think a gigantic scorpion’s stinger extended from the collar of my pyjamas, hooked to strike), then at full stretch he placed the pick on my nightstand. I wanted to, and
tried
to, reach out and clasp his arm—what a hoot!—but couldn’t, of course. He scampered back to the door and puffed out his cheeks like he’d just successfully navigated a minefield.

“Dude,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

Then he was gone. I heard his synergy green Camaro roar into the distance. He’d left rubber on our driveway.

No other visitors. They may come in the next few days, but I doubt it. Aunt Janey lives in Poughkeepsie, NY, and I haven’t seen her since I was eleven years old. She and Mom don’t see eye to eye. Grandma Soul—my one living grandparent—has been detached from reality for a long time. She’s not senile, she’s just . . . well,
out there
. She lives on an intentional community (read: hippie commune) in Florida, and has made a small fortune selling bottles of ocean air labelled as Good Vibrations (ingredients: peace and love). Dad e-mailed to tell her that I’m not long for this world. Grandma Soul replied with a link to an Ojibwa prayer on YouTube, and an assurance that a motherly hand was poised to carry my spirit to the earth’s energy stream. She added that she wouldn’t be making the long trip north to say goodbye in person, but would send a rainbow in her stead. And wouldn’t you know it, that rainbow appeared. Dad wheeled me onto the rear deck and we watched it fade from the sky together.

“That’s a gift from Grandma Soul,” Dad assured me.

Just a coincidence, but it was sweet that he believed it.

Goodbye. Such a simple word, and so often delivered without feeling. Almost without thought. An automatic response, like an ATM flashing,
THANK YOU HAVE A NICE DAY!
It’s because, when saying goodbye, we invariably assume that we will see that person again. Some time. Some place. But the word has different power when we know that it truly
is
goodbye—when that person is leaving our life forever. A final goodbye is a weight that drags and pulls.

It’s not easy. Mom, Dad, and Niki have voiced it in different ways. Knowing that I can go at any time, they have each ventured into the groovy room for some final Wes-time—to say
adios
should they not get another chance.

“I think I want to be a singer,” Niki said. “Fuck getting a regular job. That’s
so
not for me. And I don’t want kids because they just get hurt—at some point they
all
get hurt—and I can’t handle that. So I’m totally going to learn the guitar, and I’m going to be a singer. A
real
singer. Like that woman Dad likes. Joni someone.”

Mitchell
, I said.

“You know . . . sings that song about the parking lot.”

Big Yellow Taxi
, I said.

She sat in the Mork chair, swinging her legs, twisting her hair. She’s seventeen but every time I look at her—I swear to God—she’s still a little girl. My kid sister. Breaks my heart, because I want to be her big brother again. Wrap my arms around her. I want to be cool in her eyes, and protect her from the world.

“I don’t care about being famous,” she continued. “That’s not what it’s about. I’ll write songs with pretty melodies and communicate what I’m feeling inside. All the hurt. The disappointment. I’ll play bars and clubs, maybe a few folk festivals. Record an album that doesn’t sell. Then I’ll totally develop a drinking problem, go to rehab, and probably convert to Buddhism.”