Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

Summer meant Will was again a constant presence in the house, and so was Jonah. He was a quiet boy, and at first she’d worried he was somewhat morose, but now that he was opening up she could see something lustrous in him, a vein of brilliance that in some ways reminded her of Arthur. But Will was smitten and rarely ate when Jonah was over, the surest sign of adoration. Initially she was unable to watch their skateboarding — this machine without seat belts or protection of any kind, upon which her sweet, tender son, his legs like finely sanded sticks, hurtled through traffic and over concrete. But on her better days, she liked to watch them out front. Mostly it was to see that old determination on his face, the same zeroed-in look he’d get while painting — something he hadn’t done in months. Though she’d never tell them, she found skateboarding as beautiful as any dance, with its arcing turns and graceful little leaps. (She could only imagine what Arthur would say about how these disenfranchised boys were reclaiming their inhospitable urban environment in creative ways.) It transported her back to the hours she spent in the workhouse at Pool 6, watching in fascination the displays of balance and daring and one-upmanship: men swinging from safety lines, leaping from high perches, dancing through dangerous machinery. As long as Will stuck to their neighborhood as he’d promised, and he and Jonah didn’t start hurling themselves down staircases and sliding across banisters and curbs like the boys in the magazine pages that now wallpapered his room, she’d do her best to contain her fear. Hadn’t Charlie been equally reckless after the deaths of their parents? Fighting, scaling high trees, riding his bike like a demon, working like a man possessed — why must boys terrify the world to know it loves them?

But most heartening was to see Will and Jonah together. In the Thunder Bay of her youth, Native people still mostly kept to the reserves and to themselves. She suspected that was the real reason the other elevator workers had grumbled about what Charlie and Whalen were up to at night at Pool 6. When a rumor went around that they’d let the Native workers use the common mugs in the workhouse, the men smashed every last one, and the thought of this now left her ill. From the paper she knew more and more Natives were living in the city these days, mostly across the highway in County Park (a subdivision that hadn’t existed until after she’d left) and down by the harbor — a good thing, she supposed, as long as they weren’t forced from the reserves, as they’d been forced onto them. She recalled the silent scorn and derision heaped upon the Native students at her school, worse than she and Charlie ever got it. How they were never called upon by teachers in class. How at recess they were literally spit upon and ignored. How White children washed their hands if ever they happened to touch a Native student or pass one a handout. It was so easy to misplace details like these because they tasted so foul in the mouth, were so quietly vile. And it would be easier to say that Theodore was kind to Natives they’d pass on the street, which he was, but Diane also remembered her father expounding that old Thunder Bay adage that Natives were averse to work — to him life’s greatest virtue, making idleness life’s gravest crime. Diane could still see him flushing her and Charlie from the house, as though their idle presence on a weekend afternoon was unclean. “I don’t huff grain dust to finance a couple of homebodies,” he’d say. Any man spotted in taverns or sitting on his porch on a weekday was less than an insect to Theodore. But it was worse if they were Native. “I understand these people were given a raw deal,” he said once while driving in his squeaky pickup. “Who hasn’t. Look at us Cardiels. But they need to just forget the past and get to work.” She wondered now what he’d have said about the crew that his son had cheated out of their fair pay? Or of all the hours Will and Jonah spent together painting and skateboarding? And what would her father think of her now? The very definition of a homebody. Living off Arthur’s support checks and her meager royalties. Moping around the house. And what would he make of her films? Had it been work to create those? To Theodore work meant huffing grain dust or loading trains or framing a house. Work was defined by one thing: a punched clock. A payroll. Diane hadn’t worked in decades by his definition. But wasn’t everything that demanded care and effort — painting, growing up, skateboarding, reading, filmmaking, hiding — also equally important work? How much damage had this narrow idea done to people in Thunder Bay? And to Charlie, who would’ve given anything to set foot on a university campus or to make a film, as she had? How much more damage would this idea do?

It is hard work to be destroyed , she heard herself say out loud to the image of Theodore floating in the lights of her goggles as she pulled them from her face and removed her headphones, uncovering the soothing clatter of skateboards out front. No, that first glimmer of Charlie in her son that had so terrified her when Will first stepped outside wouldn’t land him where it had landed his uncle. These two boys tearing around together was proof enough that things didn’t only get worse in Thunder Bay. Maybe recklessness would be the very thing that would save them.

While Will was in Paris duct-taping the hole in his shoe that his futile ollie attempts had chewed away, the phone rang. “Angela’s back from Toronto,” Wendy said conspiratorially when he picked up. “She’s at Our Lady of Sorrows. She wanted you to know.”

To reach the hospital, the boys piloted their skateboards through tributaries of street and sidewalk out beyond the preposterously expansive golf course on the outer limits of Grandview Gardens, drawing Will farther from home than he’d ever been. From the peak of Hill Street, he was rewarded with a closer glimpse of the grain elevators, which were even more decrepitly majestic than ever. When they reached the hospital, the sign outside put Will in mind of his mother. “My Lady of Sorrows,” he said to himself.

Inside, the building was a spaceship, all gleaming metal and glass, with a clean smell with an undertow of decay, the way fresh white paint put over rusting iron eventually bubbles and bleeds orange. Will had never been to a hospital. He’d never been sick, either, if you didn’t count choking on the chicken finger and the expired yogurt. Was there a machine here that could fix his heart? Had his uncle Charlie been brought here when he was dying? Had one of these people failed him?

As they were looking around, a stethoscope-wearing man with a crisp collar blooming up through a buttery V-neck sweater bent down to examine Jonah’s swollen elbow. “That’s a nasty one, son,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, it sort of stays like that,” Jonah said, his eyes wide. “It’s just a moderate contusion. But it seems to be resolving fine.”

“You’re quite right,” the doctor said, letting go of his elbow, impressed. Then he leaned in close to Will. “Is your friend safe at home?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s really safe,” said Will. “He’s maybe the safest person I know.”

The doctor directed them to Angela’s floor on the children’s ward. That there could be enough children in medical peril to fill an entire wing nearly sent Will running back Inside. The boys heard a sound from down the hall like a seal’s bark, and they found Angela in her bed, her body braided with coughs, her face a swimmingpool hue. There was a thin white tube snaking into her nose, taped to her cheek. Will had the sudden fluttery urge to sneeze.

“Hold on!” she said when she spotted them, making a bowl with her lower lip, as she kicked off her blankets and rushed to the bathroom, dragging a rolling pole of swinging fluids behind her. They heard guttural sounds of expectoration while Will examined her room: a vase of chrysanthemums, a sparkly purse, a few teen magazines, and some pictures hung in frames on the wall. Will recognized one as the same grid he’d given her from Jonah’s desk.