Robert Duperre - The Gate 2 - 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

Laura sees Don’s face flush. “Yeah, well, I’d better go.” Don stands, panting, awkward. He covers his groin with his left hand. “Maureen expects us at the zoo, and you know what she’s like when she expects something. I’ll see you later.”

Laura wants to cry out to him: “Don’t leave.”

In her mind she reaches out. But what good are arms that don’t rise, hands that won’t grasp, lips that can’t kiss?

Laura wants to weep.

It’s a small zoo. Its paths are hilly and broken, and Don pants as he shoves Laura’s wheelchair around the potholes. Laura feels his breath, rhythmically warm and cold against the nape of her neck. Even as the neuron storm of the night before fades, Laura remembers she’s felt his breath on her neck like that before.

“It’s bloody worse than I remember,” says Maureen. “It’s all weeds and a few motley wildebeest. Those tortoises haven’t moved since the last time I was here.”

Pete grips Maureen playfully by the earlobe. She yells and falls into him, and the two fumble against each other. Even Laura notices their embrace lasts longer than it need do. Behind her, she feels Don look away.

“Stop moaning,” says Pete. “We’re doing the zoo even if I have to lead you around it by the ear.”

“It won’t take long,” says Maureen. “Most of the animals have gone anyway.”

“Still, it’s fresh air for Laura,” says Don. “It’ll do her good. The trip’s for Laura’s benefit don’t forget.”

They walk under a rusted monorail overtaken by weeds, a relic from a time when the zoo held grander thoughts. Beyond that the trees grow unchecked, arching into each other across the path. Through this darkened, tangled canopy the branches hang down like the snapped synapses in Laura’s brain. Laura stiffens; she’s suddenly unsure whether she’s inside or outside her head. It panics her. It’s like the incident all over again. She’s not sure she can live through another incident .

“Follow the signs,” says Pete. “Elephants, this way.”

“Elephant,” says Maureen. “Just the one. I read in this morning’s paper Whipsnade’s reject went tusks-up last Thursday.”

“Poor bugger,” says Don.

“Ah, here we are; Elephant House and Coffee Shop,” says Pete. “Who’s for cappuccinos?”

“And a cake for me,” says Maureen.

Don nods. “Pick a table near the fence, and I’ll nip in for the coffees.”

Laura hears in colors. She feels in sounds. Since the incident , it’s a forced synaesthesia that most people would fear. But when the neuron storms fade Laura will grasp at any sense that comes her way however jumbled.

She feels the lumbering thud of the one good elephant beyond the electrified fence, hears the drying mud clinging to its skin. She smells its bulk, and tastes the cleaving of the air by its trunk.

Ah, yes, elephant , she thinks, I remember elephants. But do I like them?

“When are you going to tell Don?” says Pete.

Maureen shifts uneasily in her seat. “We’ve been through this. I’m not moving in with you while she’s there. It’ll be too weird.”

Across time and space, the elephant sings to Laura. Its song is flat and endless like the Savannah. Where it lilts, it does so sifting over memories of the herd, filled with dirge and eulogy to bleached white bones abandoned in the scrub. Laura drinks its soul and shudders at the bitter taste.

“Well, there might be some news on that,” says Pete.

“Oh?”

“I got a letter from Social Services. They tell me there’ll be a place soon for Laura at the Twilight Years Care Home, seeing as she’s worsening.”

Maureen laughs. “It’s not really called that, is it?”

“Something like it.”

“And is she worsening?”

“Nah, but I thought it couldn’t harm to say so.”

Laura soars with the elephant’s soul above the African plains. Wind and sand sting her cheek. Over leaping gazelles and lumbering buffalo they fly. And the land is forever and the warmth never ending. They see elephants in the distance, dark shapes plodding-slow, as only elephants can be.

These are your kin? thinks Laura. She knows the answer; she tastes it in the elephant’s thudding heart. Then this is where you should be, not trapped here alone in such dreadful captivity.

“Tell Don, and then come over tonight,” says Pete. “We can put Laura downstairs out of the way until whoever it is pegs it at Twilight Years. Come over; I’m tired of shagging Laura. It’s like poking a bean bag.”

Maureen frowns. “ I’m tired of fucking a cabbage is not the basis for ours to be a good relationship.”

“You know what I mean.” Pete takes her hand. “It’s you I want.”

“Look, Don’s on his way back,” says Maureen. “I’ll slip out tonight and we’ll talk about it, right?”

Alone in such dreadful captivity , Laura repeats. Just like me.

There’s a storm Saturday night. Laura is locked in the conservatory. The air is stuffy and warm, and sickly with the aroma of scented candles seeping in through the ill-fitting French doors. There was a time, Laura thinks, back when she knew about lemurs and elephants, when Pete would put scented candles out for her. Now he lolls about drinking beer and farting as if she’s not there.

Lightning flashes beyond the glass windows. It burns an image onto Laura’s eyelids—the tangle of trees in the woods beyond the garden fence. She holds it there, tracing the detail of each branch, each twig delicately connected to its neighbor, held frozen in an instant of time. In her mind, Laura fingers the tree bark down to the wet earth below; loses herself in the nooks and ridges of the wood; invades these miniature worlds of grubs and insects and life and death.

Laura pauses, suddenly afraid. It’s in contemplating such intricacies of the world that brought on the incident . It was then that the universe rushed into her head. Human brains weren’t made to understand entire universes. It was little wonder veins popped.

Laura reins her thoughts, pushing them back outward into the meaningless macro world of Pete and Maureen and candles, and of Don sitting at home blissfully unaware of all of them. Rain bangs down upon the conservatory roof. It’s insistent, like Pete’s grunts and Maureen’s groans from the living room floor. She sees the rise and fall of Pete’s buttocks reflected in the conservatory window; up and down like two pale, nervous ghosts.

Laura sighs.

Life moves on.

Laura wonders whether it’s time she did so too.

The pub does a fine Sunday Lunch. Sunday lunch and darts at the pub was always something of a ritual back before the incident . Laura’s in her chair, tucked in the corner under the rubber plant. Her head is forward, her chin resting on her chest like she’s nodded off asleep. She sees Pete’s fingers trace circles on Maureen’s thigh beneath the table. Occasionally Maureen reaches down and grips his hard-on just to keep him going.

“Did you see Jonathon Ross last night?” says Don.

“Nah,” says Pete, “I had other things to do.” He winces as Maureen glares at him and grips him harder below.

“He had that bloke who does the stunts as a guest. You know, the hangs-upside-down-and-doesn’t-eat-and-drink-for-a-month bloke. It’s bloody marvellous how he went for a month without sustenance.”

“That’s all trickery,” says Pete. “I bet he took water through a straw in his arse or something.”

Maureen spills her beer. “That would be a good trick in itself.”