Coq, page 19
I remove a tiny thorn from my fingertip. The boy slaps his hot dog fingers over his eyes and starts counting, loudly. “One, two, three . . .” Kid doesn’t even know how to play.
I whisper, “You already found me.”
“Six, seven, eight . . .”
I half-stand and bolt, breaking to the right. I find refuge behind an old tree further from the wall than the rubbish bin, but still too close to Felix, to Glen. My phone rings. Something from inside the crepe is smeared on my purse and gets on my arm. Jam? Sadness? I wipe it on my pants.
“Hello?”
Wes. “Why are you whispering?”
“I’m on the subway.”
“Can we order a pizza?”
“Yes, gotta go.” End call.
“Ready or not, here I come.”
Fuck off.
Across from me, at the edge of the park, a man is pissing on a flower bed and a young couple is strolling toward me as if they’ve just come from a church picnic, gay and innocent. I pretend I’m out of shape and am using the tree to catch my breath, which is senseless, given that the wall doesn’t require any physical exertion.
I steal a cautious glance behind me and there’s Felix, hands cupped around his mouth, his back to the blue tiles, head tilted to the sky, a herald trumpeter. “Claudia,” he hollers. Fanfare for a Runaway Date. And then it happens. Glen maneuvers himself through the crowd, dodging selfies and strollers, the boy in the windbreaker. He taps Felix on the shoulder.
A text chimes from my phone, which I’m clutching like it’s a detonator.
Dan: are you almost back?
Ignore.
Have an upset stomach. Diarrhea. Want to go to bed. I reply, That sucks.
Glen and Felix are talking. Do they recognize each other? It appears they do.
“Found you!”
I jump.
“See?” The kid says to a couple, presumably his parents, as he points. “Hide-and-go-seek.”
They frown, take the child by the arm. The mother tightens her grip on the boy’s sibling, who’s strapped to her chest as if the Tree Pervert might come for her baby, too. I try to explain. “We were just playing.”
The couple scowls, turns, hurries down the cobbles. A red balloon, tied to the father’s wrist, bobs and jerks. The boy looks back, waving. I watch the balloon drag across the night sky until it pops.
Felix and Glen have agreed to split up. I contemplate climbing the tree, but it has the girth of a linebacker and barnacle bark. Get me out of this stupid park. A man, dressed as a train conductor, with a nose resembling a child’s fist, pads by in prison boots. “The park ees closing een ten meenutes,” he says.
I race to the far side of the yard, to what I guess is an exit. It’s a locked gate. Propriété Privée.
A text from my father: Dan has diarrhea.
What does he expect me to do? Uber back to the hotel so I can wipe my brother’s bum? Fuck.
I type: thoughts and prayers.
Claudia, Dad replies, he needs Ginger-Ale!!!
Then go down to the bar and get him some!!!
“Claudia!” My name, being sung by no less than three men: Glen, Felix and the park patroller.
Glen: we know you’re here.
We.
Dad FaceTimes. I reluctantly answer. He’s holding the screen so close to his face all I see is his great spotted forehead, and the tips of his brows, coarse and white as a wool sweater.
“Where are you?”
“I’m hiding.”
“From whom?”
Mona’s face appears in the screen. She’s taken off her makeup and looks a bit like the garden crepe, enjoyed and discarded. “Glen,” I whisper.
“Why are you hiding from Glen? I thought you had a work meeting.”
“I was on a date.”
“Oohhh!” Mona squeals, clapping her meaty hands.
“You’re dating a man from work?”
“No.”
“Maybe Glen can get the ginger ale?”
I hang up, and slide my phone back in my purse. If I follow the park perimeter, I should find an alternate exit to the front gates, where Felix and Glen are now headed. What am I doing? Going on dates with sick men, abandoning my kids at hotels, having anything to do with Glen. My mother is gone and this is how I honour her. With a midlife crisis, subtitled in French. At my feet, a swatch of the red balloon. I pick it up. I’m nearly clear of the park when I sense a bold feminine presence: Mom. She does not guide me out, she hauls me back, toward the wall. I hear her voice, clear as a flight announcement: This is why you came here.
Because of Felix? I wonder. He’s technically why I’m here. He set this up. Set me up. And yet in a moment of shattering loneliness, I asked Glen also to bring me to the Wall of I Love Yous, and he obliged. He’s here too. We’re all here.
The wall is navy blue, the colour of veins and transatlantic crossings. Of moons and herons. Flames and forget-me-nots. The I-Love-Yous are white. I scan the blocks for a familiar language, but fail to recognize anything in the dim light, my eyes drawn to the seemingly random red shapes scattered across the enamel.
Above the wall is an unbecoming painting of a woman in a blue dress. A Hollywood dame, vampy and bitter. Beside her, an etching of another woman: faceless, vaguely shaped. A ghost.
Mom.
I touch the etching, the blackened lines and the words painted beneath it:
aimer c’est du désordre . . . alors aimons! Love is disorder . . . and so we love.
A commotion outside the park gate. I see the outlines of Felix and Glen, the peak of the park patroller’s hat, tourists moving away in droves, back to their Airbnbs, villas and hotels. A tiny swirl of wind startles me and yet I still feel my mother’s warmth in the worn cobbles, the curbs, the drowsy flowers and the night birds. In the disorder.
thirty-six
I reach the exit with a ready-or-not-here-I-come gait just as Felix collapses. He hits the sidewalk half-pinning Glen who seems to have broken his fall, preventing Felix from smashing his head off the concrete or the shoes of passing pedestrians. The park patroller squats beside them, an old-school radio in his hand, jacket flapping in the breeze. A small crowd has gathered. A woman smoking a Marlboro offers Felix a bottle of water. He accepts, and Glen helps Felix take a few sips before he moves him into a recovery position.
Paramedics arrive and treat Felix on the sidewalk. They take his vitals, give him oxygen, juice. They move him to a bench. Within minutes, he is lively and talkative, dismissive of the attention. He waves people away. All part of my condition, he seems to say with the casualness of a man whose knee’s just given out, and not of a man who’s lost consciousness on a Paris boulevard.
I watch, frozen, from a bus stop fifteen feet away.
“Well, go to him,” Glen says, lightly shoving me from behind. I didn’t even see him coming. He was just there, mauling Felix, conversing with the EMTs or whatever you call them in France, and now he’s here and I can smell them both, mostly Glen, but a touch of Felix, a cocktail of gym bag and shower sex.
“He’s not mine,” I protest, as if Felix is an item that’s fallen out of a shopping bag looking to be reunited with its owner. Something embarrassing. Something unclaimable.
“You’re the closest one here to a next of kin,” Glen says, wearily brushing sidewalk debris from his sleeves. “Go see if he’s alright.”
“I barely know him. We just had din —”
“I could smell you on his neck, Claud. When I caught him.” He spits, paces. “How could you have brought him here, to the goddamn wall, the wall, when you knew I was going to be here? Do you think this is all some sort of joke? That I came all this way to show you I can’t live without you, and I’d all but given up until you texted.” He angrily grabs his phone from his pocket, scrolls it like a madman. “Here. It says I’d like you to take me to the wall.” He shoves his phone in my face, hand trembling. “I was supposed to fly home today, but I stayed. I stayed because of this text, because you said you wanted me to take you here. Me,” he shouts. “Not him.”
A single text. The difference between hope and despair. Like a tiny piece of gold, a tooth, to the Lagina Brothers, to every Oak Island treasure hunter. A reason to keep digging, keep drilling. Order the caissons! Blow up the swamp! Money the money pit! Stay in Paris.
“But you can live without me,” I calmly reply. “You can and you have. For ten years. And you even had the nerve to make it look easy, with your clean condo, and nice clothes, and your goddamn Jules Verne road trip. Do you have any idea what it’s like trying to bring a man home when there’s my father in the kitchen, salsa on the carpet, Sharpie on the coffee table and two a.m. nightmares?” I clear my throat, lower my voice. “And would this be different, Glen, if Kara could’ve had kids? With you? If you had been able to successfully build a second family, would you be here right now, trying to reclaim your first? You know what happens to those people who drop some used trinket off at Value Village and only realize later that it was valuable? They never get it back.”
Glen rubs his face. “Did you fuck him?”
“Are you serious? That’s what you want to know right now? A, that’s messed up and B, that’s none of your business.” I peer at the bench where Felix is listening, recovering, hunched over a bottle of water, his camel-hair coat rumpled beside him. He pushes a lock of hair from his face.
“I would have liked her to,” Felix says, shrugging.
We stare at him. Felix stands, pauses as if to check that his legs are still attached, and then swipes his coat up from the bench. A family with identical-looking boys of varying heights, swoops in and takes his place. The father distributes forks. In succession, the sons open takeout containers and begin to feast.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Felix says, placing one hand on each of mine and Glen’s shoulders. “I should get back to my hotel.” He reaches for Glen’s hand. “Thanks for catching me, back there,” he says, gesturing behind him. “I have a big day tomorrow. Couldn’t do it if I was concussed. Appreciate it.”
Then Felix turns to me. “Thank you,” he says. “Hadn’t been on a date in years and as weird as this is right now, it was all worth it. You’re worth it.”
My phone rings. I let it go to voicemail. It rings again. “Would you excuse me for one minute?”
Dad shouts into the phone. “You brother’s diarrhea’s real bad. Did you find that ginger ale? We tried Sprite but it wasn’t helping. It’s the ginger that does the trick.”
Click.
I mumble “sorry” and then Felix leans in, right in front of Glen, and kisses me ravenously on the mouth.
Glen watches.
“Sorry,” Felix says, backing away. “I don’t have ten years. Goodnight.” And then he’s gone. A few measured steps, a hand in the air, a black cab, taillights in September. All that’s left is the disorder. A broken umbrella in a garbage can, a blue medical glove at the edge of a storm drain, faded constellations. Me and Glen.
The drugstore carries three brands of ginger ale. I buy them all, overpriced Imodium and an emergency travel pack of adult diapers. Glen calls an Uber. We cram in to the back of a Prius and ride to my hotel in silence, the bag of Depends quelling any possibility of romance or reconciliation. Of anything at all.
When the Uber pulls up to the hotel, I’m quick to exit. I can’t handle any more phone calls or texts about diarrhea. Glen stays in the Prius and a jolt of disappointment roughs up my chest. I’m halfway through the lobby when I hear him: “Wait!”
I turn, keeping the pharmacy bag behind my back.
“Did you actually see the wall?” Glen asks.
“I saw it,” I reply. “I mean for . . . a minute, I didn’t study it or anything,”
“But you saw the red splashes on the tiles?”
I did, and they made no sense. I think of the shred of red balloon in my pocket.
“The splashes represent fragments of a broken heart,” Glen says. “Gathered together, they form a full heart. That’s why I wanted to take you to the wall.”
I nod, step into the open elevator, press the floor number. The doors quake shut and I see my reflection in the brass. A lovely sentiment, I think, the red splashes. But it only works — you can only put something back together — if you have all the pieces.
thirty-seven
When i enter my hotel room, all the kids are inside.
“What are you guys doing here?” I set down my pharmacy bag and fix my gaze on Emma, who’s doing a handstand against the headboard of my bed, her feet inches away from a framed photograph of Mont-Saint-Michel.
“My dad destroyed our room,” Liam says without looking up from his phone. I can see his screen in the mirror. He’s trading again. Kid never stops. He’s either going to be rich or Dan’ll wake up one day to find his accounts drained and his house repossessed.
“My dad shit his pants,” Emma says.
Bits of Disney clutter the room. Mouse ears, ticket stubs, glossy shopping bags, foil balloons.
“Emma, honey. You should not be using that type of language. You’re ten. You’re too young to swear. What happened to the little girl who was the first to volunteer to say grace at Thanksgiving? The girl who started a veterans’ food drive last Christmas? You used to make cards for the garbage men and the crossing guards. Where’s that nice little girl?”
Joan, gripping a thick black marker that she’s somehow acquired, along with what appears to be several sheets of bulletin board, stops colouring. “Haven’t you heard the expression well-behaved women seldom make history?”
“Yes, Joan, I’ve heard of that, but before you run off and put that on a T-shirt, you should know that quote has been taken out of context. What Laurel Thatcher was implying was that well-behaved women should be making history. Her intent was not to suggest that we all rebel and behave poorly to make it.”
“What’s this have to do with my dad shitting his pants?” Emma asks.
“Just stop swearing,” Liam replies, setting his phone on the bedside table. He glances at the pharmacy bag. “Did you buy . . . diapers? Does my dad need diapers?”
“No” I reassure him. “It was a bit of a joke, though maybe . . .” Maybe Dad could use them. Or Felix. Fuck. I hope whatever sick he is, he doesn’t need diapers. If I ever see him again. I want to see him again.
“That’s kind of mean,” Wes says. “The Depends.”
“Well, I guess I won’t be making history tonight.”
Joan smooths the bulletin board with her hand and then holds it up. In English: REBUILD THIS CATHEDRAL! She’s drawn the Earth and below it, a cartoon of Notre Dame. A fat red arrow points to the Earth. No doubt she copied it from something she’s seen online, but still, it’s clever.
“I will tomorrow,” she says. “Make history.” There’s a flicker of darkness in her eyes, an unsettling confidence that both terrifies me and makes me proud.
“Just remember the proper context of that quote.” I gather the bag. “It’s a good protest sign,” I say to Joan. To Liam and Emma, “I’m taking this stuff to your dad.”
I’m halfway out the door when I think to grab my laptop.
“Take this,” Liam says, tossing me a shirt.
“What for?”
“To wrap around your face.”
I take the shirt to the bathroom. It smells like sweat and Doritos. Who gets traveller’s diarrhea in France? What next, cholera? I secure the tee over my mouth and nose, a coroner en route to an unreachable neighbourhood ten days after an earthquake. I slip out of the room and down the hall to Dan’s, knock twice. An indiscernible grunt in response.
“It’s me,” I shout.
A groan and then the shuffling of feet. The lock clicks open. The air is green.
“Why didn’t you put the fan on?”
“Broken,” he mumbles stumbling back to bed. He curls into himself, a cooked shrimp, tucking a bolster pillow between his knees.
I want to suggest he ditch the bolster. Georgia cleaned rooms at the Chateau Lake Louise for a summer between degrees. People do all kinds of things to bolster pillows. She referred to them as crime-scene pillows.
“Was it something you ate?” I ask.
“Billy Bob’s Country Western Saloon,” he slurs.
Did he eat Billy? I open the first bottle of ginger ale. “Sit up a bit.” He rolls onto his back and shimmies himself against the headboard. “Slow,” I caution as soon as he starts gulping. “Want an Imodium?”
He shakes his head. “Diarrhea is the body’s way of purging sickness.”
“Also, your children.” And any shred of dignity you still have after forty. “I’m not saying it’ll cure you, but it might offer you some relief.”
He relents, opens his palm. I pop two pills from the blister pack. He dry swallows, gags. I hand him another ginger ale and attempt to open the room’s only window. Sealed shut. I climb into bed beside him where I can plug in my laptop. We catch each other up on the day’s events and as I share the details of my meeting with Cornelle and my date with Felix, I realize I’ve put in a forty-eight-hour day.
“Harrison got his hair cut.” Dan haphazardly throws his arm toward the bedside table to grab his phone, nearly tipping the ginger ale. He opens his messages, scrolls, turns the screen toward me. Harrison’s cut a mullet. He looks a bit like Ricky from Trailer Park Boys. It definitely gives him a more masculine edge, and compliments his neck tattoo, but I still see Hannah in his cheeks, which are pink and round as candy apples, as Allison-Jean’s.
“Mom’s former lover was a lawyer. I went to his office.”
Dan sits up taller. “You met him?”
“No. He’s retired. I just wanted to see if anyone knew him.”
“How’d you find him?”
“It was an accident, really. Or fate, if you want. Dad told me his last name and I looked him up. His office was across from the hotel where I was meeting Cornelle. Wanna see him?”
My brother crosses his arms over his chest. I field-kick the bolster pillow from the bed. It hits the window. I flip open my laptop and bring up Chalamet Avocats.
