Night in the World, page 1
NIGHTIN THEWORLD
Night
in the
World
a novel
SHARON ENGLISH
© SHARON ENGLISH 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical — including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems — without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.
Freehand Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
The author acknowledges the financial support for this work provided by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
Freehand Books
515 – 815 1st Street SW Calgary, Alberta T2P 1N3
www.freehand-books.com
Book orders: UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario M3H 5T8
Telephone: 1-800-565-9523 Fax: 1-800-221-9985
utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca utpdistribution.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Night in the world / Sharon English.
Names: English, Sharon, 1965– author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210368276 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210368284 |ISBN 9781990601026 (softcover) | ISBN 9781990601033 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781990601040 (PDF)
Classification: LCC PS8559. N5254 N54 2022 | DDC C813/.6—DC23
Edited by Deborah Willis
Book design by Natalie Olsen
Cover image © buddhawut/Shutterstock.com
Moth image on page 1: Daphnis nerii ©Didier Descouens
Author photo by Kevin Connelly
Maps by Sharon English
Printed on FSC ® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Gauvin
PERMISSIONS
I Am Dust
Words and Music by Gary Numan
Copyright © 2013 Numan Music USA LLC
All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC
Check My Brain
Words and Music by Jerry Cantrell
Copyright © 2009 Roosters Son Publishing
All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC
“Rain Dogs” (Waits, Thomas Alan)
Copyright © 1985 Jalma Music c/o Southern Music Pub. Co. Canada Ltd.
Copyright © Renewed. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved
The sun, the darkness, the winds, are all listening to
what we have to say.
GERONIMO
* * *
Song
There are those who are trying to set fire to the world,
We are in danger.
There is time only to work slowly,
There is no time not to love.
DEENA METZGER
Looking for the Faces of God
CENTRAL TORONTO
TORONTO ISLANDS
Part I
Ripe for Dreaming
• THE RIVER •
1
THE NIGHT BECKONS when he stirs from sleep, troubled by worries about Leverage and Naomi. The uneasy day ahead. As his eyes open the dog is already approaching, nails clicking against the floor, to meet the warm hand extended. A few strokes of the soft face. Another moment accepting he’s wide awake. Then he rises.
They head downstairs, the usual routine, he doesn’t need or want to turn on lights. A pearly illumination from the street shows him the way to the back door, his boots and coat. Turn the bolt, twist the knob, pull. Cold wafts in and Reg darts out.
He stands calf-deep in snow while the dog relieves himself. Wind swells the trees along the yard’s edge into creaking. In the west, toward the river, a bank of cloud almost white in the city lights, though it’s hours before sunrise. The worries continue to flit through his mind, like brambles tugging wherever he goes, and he shrugs the trench coat tighter again. And something else now, something new. Not a problem or difficulty, like the others. Not even tangible.
This new thing is like an absence that crouches or a hole filled with darker darkness, waiting for him to step inside. It’s come with his mother’s death but isn’t Death, not exactly. Even while he stands here in the calm of a January night, with Reg sniffing nearby, Justin can feel it, close as a shadow. It’s something other, a force that knocks things loose.
* * *
ADDRESSING THE ASSEMBLY at his mother’s funeral that afternoon, Justin Leveridge doesn’t break down. He’s running on a few hours’ sleep, an extra Xanax and lots of coffee, and has the sensation of a hot towel wrapped tightly around his neck — the beginning of illness, or erratic nerves. Yet his mind, like a helpful assistant, passes him the words he needs. He says the right things. Kind things. He talks about his mother’s intelligence in raising him and Oliver alone after their father died. How she learned to invest and make more from little, and her love of late-night online poker, which she played for money and was usually ahead. He makes people smile.
And gradually he becomes aware that the eulogy he’s giving, while factually true, is a pale distortion, like so much else these days. Nice, expected, and even sincere, but so wretchedly scripted and contained that it’s barely alive, like a storm caught and corked in a bottle.
He looks out at the audience. Naomi’s staring down at her hands. Oliver’s expression is solemn. The concerto that tinkled guests to their seats has begun to replay. Only Gwynn, his girl, gazes back with love. His breath catches and he tries to wind up.
“Mom. What can I say? She drove me nuts sometimes — I’m sure some of you can relate?” A hand through his hair. “She had her opinions, and she was usually right about them. She pushed me early on, believed in me, and I wouldn’t be the person I was today without her.” Something building inside; not building, burning. His mother popped. And he can’t say anything with feeling. Like how he could never quite tell if she loved him or just admired how he’d succeeded, a sound return on time spent. Always that cool distance with her even when she was close and happy. Does it matter? He swallows, looks to Gwynn again. “We’ll miss her always, won’t we, dear? We loved Grandma. We loved you, Mom.”
Stop there. Live with that.
Before people exit the room there’s the final farewell. In the open casket lies her body: powdered and rouged, hands crossed modestly over thighs. She’s wearing a dress he’s never seen and nylon stockings too. Justin stares at this schoolbook idea of dignity until he senses the shuffling of shoes next to him.
At the reception he has plenty to do even though Naomi and Aunt Fiona have seen to most of the arrangements. With his brother he stands receptively by the flowers and guest book, growing glassy-eyed from fatigue and all the hugs, handshakes and thank-yous. He speaks with people who knew his mother or aunt, some of his staff who made it, and he hopes he manages each conversation with grace. He’s assumed the robes of an ancient office today; he wants to stand tall and proud as her son.
He meets Oliver near the entrance, changing his shoes for boots. His brother glances up at him.
“Good speech,” he says.
“You too.”
Oliver had spoken of their mother’s strength. If she was so strong, why’d her heart give out?
“See you over there?” Oliver asks. A dinner Fiona’s hosting.
“Of course. And we should make a plan too, you and me.” Confusion on Oliver’s face. “Talk about the will, the house, all that?” Shit he almost adds, because that’s what it is: another mound of details and processes to tackle, mostly on his own.
“Right.”
With a nod and a tight-lipped smile, Oliver heads out the door as if the conversation is over. Justin watches his younger brother slip on the pavement, catch himself, vanish into the parking lot. Didn’t he come with someone? His ex showed up, though they didn’t sit together. Justin shakes his head.
It’s almost seven now, and the sky is the colour of wood smoke, that urban murk that passes for night. Snow still falling thickly. On the way here, traffic proceeded cautiously on roads edged by white embankments.
I’m thinking about weather, he realizes. Isn’t that amazing? Death yawns open, your last parent disappears, and you hold an emotionally mute service that feels somewhere between a holiday luncheon and a graduation ceremony — no wailing, no keening, no rending of cloth or prostrating before gods. Bundle up the family and drive off like it’s any other day, with your usual sack of concerns. Tomorrow, someone will call about the ashes.
EARLY MORNING. Pushing the recycling bin, Justin puffs up the driveway. He feels like an old bear prematurely woken. His belly aches and he’s been awake for hours. Planning. Strategizing. Making mental lists and notes. He can’t stop himself — there’s too much happening.
He wheels the bin into place and gives it a shove. Catches his breath. Bears are right to hibernate. He doesn’t want to go back inside. Because that means starting the whole thing over: another day.
He wants all the calls, and the questions, and the emails, and the expectations, to drift far far away. Let the wind disappear them into that grey horizon. He wants to lie close with Naomi, and Gwynn. To slip into living again.
He inserts the key, turns and pushes. Warm air on his face, winter behind him.
About his mother’s death he doesn’t really know what he feels. At the funeral as he spoke there was that nuclear surge within, but he dialed it down. The day felt too staged, Grieving Son a role. And since then, nothing. True, authentic, hot-in-his-veins feeling seems completely out of reach, a luxury experience.
Since when?
A good long while.
To avoid disturbing Naomi he goes down to his basement office and lies on the sofa under the duvet, his hands on his sore belly. Dozes until his watch alarm beeps.
When he re-emerges the sun’s in the kitchen and so is Gwynn, eating toast.
“Morning, Chickadee. Your mom up?” She nods, her head lightly bobbing. Justin kisses her then listens to confirm the whine of water. He takes down his favourite cast-iron pan from its hook. “Are you singing inside?”
Gwynn nods again.
“Cool. That’s what I like to hear.”
He adds minced onion to melted butter, not too much or neither of them will eat the omelet; then fresh tarragon, egg batter and shaved parmesan. When Naomi joins them, her wet hair pulled into a clip, he divides the meal onto three plates and sets them on the table while Naomi gets out vitamins, reviews the contents of the lunch box and adds a granola bar.
“Do you smell something off?” she asks.
“Just the onions.”
“No. Off.”
He shrugs.
As she eats, Justin relaxes. He asks Gwynn to sing the song she was making up and he and Naomi laugh. George Aborge, George Aborge, George Aborge got the lowww down! is the essence of it, name upon name. Gina Bellina, Gina Bellina, Gina Bellina got the lowww down!
Then breakfast’s done, there’s the dash for coats, boots and bags, and his girls are out the door.
She texts him twenty minutes later.
He keeps working.
When she returns from dropping off Gwynn at school, he’s making another piece of toast for his aching belly.
“Oh!” she says, that stiffly bright tone. “I thought you were busy.”
“I am,” he replies, calmly buttering. It would defy mathematics to count the number of times he’s told her how he loathes this passive-aggressive behaviour. Chick speak, he privately calls it. He loathes the tedious, vacuous, unnecessary texts too, this trickling demand for responsiveness to the most mundane and fleet-footed of thoughts and occurrences, expressed simply because Naomi’s bored or anxious or because she can.
“I heard your ping but I figured if it was important you’d call me,” he says.
I heard your ping? God!
Naomi’s looking at him. “I’m worried there’s mold in here,” she says. “I’ve been smelling it for weeks. There’s all that condensation in the sunroom. It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole thing’s rotted.”
“Alright, let’s take a look.”
The sunroom, a spacious addition built some years before they purchased the house, used to be their favourite space to eat or curl up with books or laptops overlooking the backyard, under skylights that showed clouds and pattering rain. About a year ago these windows became permanently fogged, then began to drip. After a heavy summer storm, chunks of plaster fell to the floor and water stains appeared, first on the ceiling, then on the walls and under the windows. They decided to have the entire room rebuilt and hoped it could be done before winter set in, but the house has heritage designation, and the plans got tangled in the permit-approval process. For months now the skylights have been sheeted with plastic and the room cleared. Casey, Justin’s go-to carpenter, has moved on to another job.
Naomi points to a crack along a windowsill rough with dark matter — black mold, certainly. The sills are actually spongy to touch. With a kitchen knife Justin easily lifts away rotten wood, slides the knife down and brings it up covered in damp sooty stuff.
Naomi rears back, a hand to her throat. “My god, honey. There’s tons of it.”
He tries to reassure her that in the spring — only a few months away — the room will be dealt with. He’s been pressing the right people.
“So you say, but who knows what else could interfere?” Which is true enough. “I can feel it, Jay, deep in my lungs.” She starts to pace. “I wake up in the morning with this craggy ache in my chest and my head. It feels like something’s got inside me, literally. I can feel it there right now, like pollen, like I’ve got allergies, which I’ve never had in my life! And Gwynn feels it too. From what I’ve read, once this stuff gets into you it can take ages for your body to get rid of it.”
He kisses her cheek. “I don’t know what else we can do, my love. We can’t tear it down yet.” He strokes her shoulder. Another kiss. “I got to get moving. I’m meeting Stanko.”
But Naomi follows him to the upstairs bathroom, saying they must figure out something. He starts the shower and undresses, turning aside to remove his underwear. It’s been months since they were intimate, and like always when these troughs occur, he starts to feel a peculiar modesty around her, ashamed and protective of his hungry body.
“We could get it caulked, I suppose. I could ask Casey.” He aims the gotch at the hamper.
“Would that help?”
He says yes, he thinks so, and will make the call. Then he steps into the tub, wishing she’d follow him now. Shuts the glass door.
Steam. Water. A memory: Naomi’s long hair wonderfully slimy between his fingers as he worked in the conditioner — when? Some afternoon or late morning after lazing in bed, in a time of freedom he’d not recognized. Before everything got so relentlessly, inescapably wound up tight.
Driving to Ace, he considers black mold: yuppie asbestos.
Stanko’s late. Sitting in the booth nearest the kitchen, Justin checks his phone. Another text from Naomi: she’ll pick up Gwynn from school today. Dutifully he replies. Then taps out a message to Casey. Checks email again.
Never, never a moment anymore.
When his landlord arrives, Justin orders them cappuccino. Waiting for it fills the first minute of their meeting, while Stanko slips off his coat and checks his phone, neither of them willing to initiate the social niceties that would admit a weaker status. Justin drums his fingers and wonders if he should have taken another Xanax. Stanko appears to be reading a pleasant message.
“Did you hear from Alex?” Stanko finally asks, putting down his phone and looking up with a smile. Opening volley.
“Was I supposed to?”
“Yes. He’ll be calling you today, I expect. I took him through.”
“Though the kitchen?” Motherfucker. “When?”
“Sunday morning.”
Outmaneuvered again. Gone is the appealing prospect of showing Stanko the damage himself today, in the presence of the men who had to clean it up — who always have to clean it up, his crew. He’s been imagining the circle of men tightening, their gazes leveled . . . the glint of knives in their hands —
“You should have called me. I’d have come down. That plaster landed on my grill. That’s a seven-thousand-dollar piece of equipment, by the way.”
Stanko sugars his coffee and sets the wet spoon on the table. “You can talk to Alex yourself, no problem. That’s why I asked him to call.”
Justin stares at him in disbelief. Everything with this man is always no problem, of course, perfect.
Back when Ace first opened, Justin rented from Stanko’s father, a dour, war-damaged old man. Yet the elder Mr. Stanko dealt directly, and bore to certain principles. When you battled him you connected with something. Stanko Jr. is smoke. Stanko Jr. is cloud. He’s a man for these times.
“Alright,” Justin concedes, “but no more patches! That’s pointless.”
“Alex says he knows the source of the leak. He’ll fix it. He’s very good, I trust him. If he says patches, that’s fine with me.”
