Coq, page 21
“And now I don’t want to die.”
I touch his knee. A sparrow flutters in the foliage. “I’m going to the protest tonight.”
“A big one,” Felix replies. “We’ve been talking about it all week.”
“You’re going?”
“Of course.”
We sit in silence. I resist the temptation to fill the space with empty words. I listen instead to his breathing and study his chest, imagine his faulty heart, what it looks like. A gelatinous anemic jellyfish or an overripe avocado? Grenade? Or sand-castle? I imagine going down on him. I imagine shooting him up with morphine. I imagine marrying him. I imagine visiting his grave, leaving him a message anchored beneath a stone. Less than a year. Do I have room in my heart for more grief?
He rests his head on my shoulder like an old friend, and for a moment I believe this is how it’ll end, in nauseating melancholy, in nothing, but then he works his way from my shoulder up my neck, to my ear lobe. I feel the tip of his tongue, his hot breath, his mortality in my ear, his finitude on my cheek, and it’s so overwhelmingly desirable that I gasp.
He seizes the moment, jolting up from the bench, grabbing my hand. We race to the exit. We make out in the back seat of the taxi like teenagers, hands fumbling, bodies shivering. I apologize to the cab driver, a simple désolé. For my sexuality, my age, my humanity. We pull up to a hotel, grander than mine, not as grand as Glen’s.
Glen. Fuck.
We take the stairs, it’s only three flights. Is he struggling? Am I going to kill him? It takes several passes of his key-card to get inside his room. His tidy, small room, with polished shoes lining the wall, a desk covered in papers, and an oxygen tank. A pharmacy is on the bedside table. A tube sock, white and furled and feeble, sits idle on the red carpet and somehow it makes me want to cry. I will remember this sock forever.
He climbs onto the bed, pulls me on top of him. I can barely stand the intimacy, the spark, the want in his eyes, his grip on my hips, unyielding. I kiss him, memorize his tongue. He is all over me, pressing, cupping, mouthing. I reach into his pants and pull on him. He is hard and beautiful. I come just from holding him. So does he, recklessly, on my collarbone, my shirt cuff, my cheek. I can feel the tears well, a cocktail of shame and relief, hope and despair. I close my eyes, note the softness of his arm against mine, his end on my upper lip. After a few minutes, I sense him get up. He returns with a warm wash cloth and I wipe him away.
I fix my shirt, sit up, feel the hardness of the bed’s headboard against my confused spine. He puts on glasses I’ve never seen him wear and recites climate statistics like poetry. He will go to the protest with fellow oceanographers. He will clap and chant and cheer. I will look for him.
He goes to the mini fridge and prepares an ad hoc picnic. Pastries, pistachios, Jujubes, pastel M&MS. Sparkling water. I ask what he knows about Rotterdam. He asks what it’s like to be a mom, and it catches me off guard—this interest in the familial — and I tell him stories. About Wes and Célestine, how to get rid of head lice, the horror of loving and, at times, barely being able to stand my children. I explain indoor shoes, soccer evaluations, parent-teacher interviews, movie nights and loneliness.
“We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon,” I say, choosing a fat orange Jujube from a paper plate. “In fact, I should really go soon and pack. We’re doing one last family dinner before the protest. When are you flying home?”
“I’m not flying back to Nova Scotia,” he says. He reaches for one of the pill bottles on the bedside table, swallows two tablets and then reaches for another bottle.
“Where are you going?”
“Switzerland.”
“Switzerland,” I reply, trying with my tongue to pluck away the bits of Jujube cemented to my back molars. “Another conference? Vacation? Ski trip?”
He shakes his head, opens his mouth, and then closes it as he watches me figure it out. The answer sits in the scattered pill bottles and in his trembling hands. It’s still on my cheek and on my shirt and probably on the note he left on Jean Paul Sartre’s headstone. The end.
forty
Joan looks stunning. She wears the bougie store dress I got stuck in, lip gloss, mascara. She’s styled her hair in serious braids, the way she does for a playoff game or final exam. The bartender has reluctantly agreed to stash Joan’s protest signs behind the bar. He’s old and has frown lines deep as gutters, but seems taken by her enthusiasm.
I sit between Glen and Dad. Dad is dressed in head-to-toe black, Glen, sharp and comfortable: old concert T-shirt, blazer, expensive jeans, Lacoste sneakers. He’s not here for the climate, or for Joan. He’s here for me, and I can’t look him in the eye because I’m still wearing the shirt from this morning with Felix on the cuff. I dried it with a hairdryer and covered it with a cardigan.
A thin-faced conquistador plunks crusty loaves of bread at either end of the table. Mona’s the first to break off a piece and slather it with butter and a sprinkling of sea salt. Emma complains that the bread is spicy, so Dan orders her a fancy mocktail chockful of cherries, orange wedges and umbrellas.
“How come you’re wearing a tux?” I ask, only now noticing my brother’s burgundy velvet jacket, crumpled shirt and his black bowtie, stiff as drywall.
“The boys took me shopping,” Dan says.
“Isn’t it great?” Liam slurps his beer. He’s also dressed up, a baby oligarch about to take on the Vegas strip. Wes too, dressed for prom. Célestine will be protesting with her family. Wes plans to join them. Only Mona has taken my advice to dress comfortably. She wears a black Costco leisure suit, flamingo earrings, Sketchers, and massive sunglasses. She’s ordered two bottles of wine for the table, a Chenin Blanc and a Côte Rôtie. I start with the red.
The appetizers arrive: canapés, escargots Bourguignonne, Bouchées à la Reine, blood sausage paired with apples, salade Lyonnaise, mussels. Dad clears his throat. He wraps his hand around the bowl of his wine glass, nearly dragging his elbow in pate, and lifts it from the table for a toast. I feel a trickle of guilt. I was supposed to do the final tribute. This trip was mostly my idea, derived from my own need to get some closure and simultaneously to honour Mom’s unrequited Paris dreams. But I’ve prepared nothing. No speech, no notes. I think only of myself and Felix’s death wish and Glen’s persistence and the mini love grenades that detonate every time a memory is triggered: rumpled sheets, confessions, a shared laugh, a bare flank. I twist her ring on my finger in frenetic apology.
Dad attempts to stand, but his legs catch under the table. The dining chairs are heavy and don’t slide in and out easily. As he falls back into his seat, a little crumple of wrapper tumbles from his pocket and lands on the floor. I pick it up.
“Why don’t you just say what you’re going to say from here,” I suggest, resting my hand on his back while trying not to be patronizing. “We can all hear you.” It’s true because we’ve been seated in a corner, almost a separate room. Either it’s Mona’s plastic earrings or the fact that Emma has brought a three-foot stuffie with her to dinner. Or maybe they know I have half a handcuff and Felix’s sock in my purse. I remind myself to deal with these items in the morning before we go through airport security.
“I’d like to propose a toast —” Dad interrupts himself to sip from his water glass. I play with the little ball of garbage on my lap, tugging at its edges, waiting for him to get on with it. It’s not often I get off on a salad, but the one in front me looks divine and I’m starving.
“To Mother Earth,” my father says, eyes misty.
Wait, what? I look at Dan. He shrugs, clinks his glass to Joan’s, and repeats the phrase. “To Mother Earth.” I clink glasses with the giant stuffie and throw back my entire glass of wine in one greedy gulp, a goddamned pelican. Does he mean Mother Earth as in the planet? Or is this a posthumous nickname he’s given Mom because she liked gardening?
Dad raises his drink, as if he might dump it over his head. I pour another glass of wine, to the rim, emptying the bottle. Glen watches my father with abject fascination the way one might revere a gorilla with a kazoo in its hands. “Oh, Mother Earth,” he says, more of a lament than a statement. “We’ve done horrible things to you.” Is he swaying? “We’ve hurt you, abused you, cut your forests, poisoned your rivers, raped you.”
“Assaulted you,” I interject, burying my face and gesturing toward Emma. But it doesn’t help because Dad’s eyes are still closed. “We get it,” I continue. “We’ve done terrible things to the earth, but let’s move on with it so we can make it to the next course and get to the protest.”
“I just feel so responsible,” Dad continues.
Mona nods in agreement, smuggles a half-loaf of bread into her handbag.
“We’re all responsible,” Glen says, resting a hand on my thigh. “It will take hard work to fix.”
“I think that’s brave, Grandpa,” Joan says. “To admit your responsibility. After all, it is your generation’s fault.”
“Joan —”
“No,” Dad interrupts. “She’s right. We made most of the mess and even when we started to hear the warning signs, we ignored them.” A tear trickles down his face.
“Yeah,” Dan says, oblivious. “Didn’t your company dump a ton of toxic waste into a lake?”
“No.” Dad shakes his head.
Joan blows out a sigh of relief. I do the same.
“It was a river.”
For fuck’s sakes.
The waiter appears annoyed that he’s been stuck with our table, but perhaps also hopeful we’ll leave a fat Canadian tip. “How ees every-sing so far?”
I can’t answer. I haven’t touched my salad, and my father’s having a breakdown. Emma uses the stuffie as the table spokesperson. “Three out of five stars,” she replies. The server ignores her.
“Can I go meet Célestine now?” Wes asks.
“You haven’t eaten,” I reply.
“I had some bread.”
“You ordered a steak. Who’s going to eat that if you leave now? No. You can meet her afterwards, when one of us can get you there safe.”
Wes looks to Glen, Glen glances at me. “No,” he agrees. “After.”
Wes mumbles something about “not being a baby.”
I stab my lettuce. “This protest is a serious thing,” I say. “So let’s get out there and participate. Grandma never got to see the climate change movement. She wasn’t around to hear Greta Thunberg speak, or to see the first Tesla. She never even got to use a reusable shopping bag. I agree with Joan. Grandma cared about the environment. She never wasted food, we walked whenever we could, and she recycled everything from wrapping paper to yogurt containers, so let’s just enjoy our last night in Paris, as a family, go to the protest, and then get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.” I dab dressing from my chin, knocking the paper garbage ball from my lap with my napkin. I bend to retrieve it, placing my face dangerously close to Glen’s lap. I reset my napkin, unravel the wrapper. I smell the watermelon before I read the label. It’s a friggin’ cannabis gummy. Dad’s high. I look across at Mona, who is sawing through the crust of her French onion soup with a steak knife.
Glen leans into my ear. “As a family,” he whispers.
forty-one
We’ve missed the beginning of the climate march from Paris’s opera district and take the Metro straight to the end destination, la Place de la République. The subway car is crowded with protestors, weary Saturday shift workers, and tourists. One protestor is dressed as the Grim Reaper and Emma watches him closely as if unsure if she should flee for her life or ask to borrow his cardboard scythe. I imagine for a moment that he is real and here for Felix.
Dad naps on the train, head on his chest like a newborn and Mona fixes her hair beside him with a plastic pick. The rest of us test the group chat and hammer out the details of a family plan in the event we get separated. Glen is tasked with making sure Wes is safely delivered to Célestine and her family, where he’ll get an hour with them before he’s to return to us. Dan is assigned Emma, Dad and Mona. I get Joan and Liam, who’s become his cousin’s right-hand man in protest.
When we stumble up from the underground, a crowd is singing “La Marseillaise” in a cacophony of voices: gravelly men, maestros, boys, baritone ladies. The sun’s beginning to recede and hundreds cradle candles. The statue of Marianne, the “personification of Paris” at the centre of the square, is cast in hazy blue light. French flags compete with signs and banners varying in sophistication, from laser-printed placards to hand-painted bedsheets. A man in a New England Patriots jersey licks a soft-serve and observes with curiosity as if unsure what’s being protested. Glen and Wes negotiate their way through the masses toward the Célestine meeting point. I watch until they’re blurs.
In every direction, I search for Felix, but there have to be twenty thousand people here. The mood is somewhere between hope and despair. Some protestors weep and I can’t tell if their tears are real or performance. Others shout angrily at anyone who will listen. Parents hold signs that claim “ce n’est pas trop tard.” A lone vagrant bangs a hand drum and begs for money.
An organizer with a red megaphone shouts a proclamation, rousing the crowd. Her French is muffled and I don’t understand what she’s saying. People respond with applause. Dad and Mona have found a tree to lean on. Mona checks her safety-vest-orange lipstick in the tiny seashell-shaped compact and I’m struck again by Mona’s . . . Mona-ness. My father’s wife. I try to imagine Dad giving my mom an ultimatum. Where and how did he say it’s me or Émile? In “winning” did he not calculate that he was also losing? A marriage of conformity. I observe the couples around me. Couples that look alike. Couples that look like they had a fight last night and were up until two in the morning hating themselves and each other. Couples who look like they still make love on a sun-streaked bed in the middle of the afternoon.
All marriage involves loss.
“This is wild,” Dan says, careful not to lean too close to my ear so that Emma doesn’t tip from where she’s balancing on his shoulders. “I’ve never been to a protest before. Can you hold this?” He hands me Emma’s stuffie, which I reluctantly accept and pin under my armpit.
Of course Dan’s never been to a protest. He started attending the Pride parade when Hannah first came out as gay, and continued when he came out as trans, but those had been in celebration of and not in protest against. The crowd suddenly roars and Dan joins them, fist pumped and whistle sharp.
I temporarily lose Joan and Liam, igniting a spark of panic. How far could they have gone? On tiptoes, I search. They resurface above the crowd. I can’t tell what they’re standing on — a statue? A bench? — whatever it is must be stable because their upper bodies move with confidence and conviction. The youth are here in droves.
I join my dad by the tree. “Those gummies,” I shout over the noise. “You didn’t buy them here.”
“Smuggled them in,” he replies, a mischievous smile on his face. “With my diabetic candy.”
“You could’ve been arrested. They have tracking dogs.”
He shrugs and then whistles in response to some sort of climate prompt.
“Well, I hope you don’t have any left because you can’t take them back.”
“They help my knees.”
Glen texts: where are u?
I describe the tree, the stilt walker teetering beside it, the bald woman with the three German Shepherds on blue leashes. In a few minutes Glen’s by my side. He pulls a flask from inside his jacket, downs a hearty a swig and passes it to me.
“What is it?” I ask, sniffing the opening.
“French whiskey.”
I take a shot and hand it back. It burns and soothes. Like a marriage. A troupe plays homemade instruments. Back and forth with the flask until I feel warm, a tea light in my chest. I read the signs: sauvons la terre! La terre est en danger! Macabre artwork. There is no Planet B.
No plan B either. Glen was my plan. A man in a wheelchair is attempting to pass. I don’t see him right away, my vision skewed by a mock funeral procession also moving in this direction. Glen grabs my wrist and tugs me to the side. I appreciate his grip. I drop Emma’s stuffie and one of the pallbearers steps on it. Fuck. Now it has a footprint on its neck. I don’t even know what “it” is. Probably a video game character. I brush the dirt from its green fur. The wheelchair jitters by and Glen hands me the flask. I have no plans.
A news crew moves through the crowd. I try to hide the stuffie behind my back. The last thing I need is to make the front page of the French paper clutching a large plush creature of indiscernible breed.
“We should move closer to Joan,” I suggest.
Glen nods and we push our way forward. Protestors cling to lampposts. We pass an elderly couple in black tie, arms linked and chests proud, steps: synchronized. We get close enough to see that Joan and Liam are standing on a bench. A news crew films them. Joan doesn’t even seem aware. Her arms stretched overhead holding one of her signs, her mouth wide open, shouting, a right Joan of Arc. Liam, on the other hand, is filming himself being filmed. I can’t see Dan. I send a text to the group chat: everyone ok?
Mona sends a photo of Dad posing with a Grim Reaper, a different one from the train. This one is seven feet tall and masked, hopefully not here for Dad. The crowd surges as police in riot gear advances through. They move with authority, a precaution. A good thing.
I go to respond to the group text, but notice something odd in the background of Mona’s picture. Figures dressed in black, in fatigues. I want to show Glen, but as I’m motioning for him to look, a text arrives from Felix: I want to taste you. My face flares and I shove the phone in my back pocket.
“What?” Glen asks, expectantly.
