Craig Davidson - Sarah Court

“You were told not to take it at all. My employer has a strong code of ethics.”

He accepts this without rancour.

“I don’t even have the cash to offer you double whatever you’re being paid. You know, like in the movies.”

He laughs. But his lips hardly move. He roots his pockets for a slip of paper. Name, phone number.

“Call her. She’ll take my dog. Tell her she has to feed Matilda Iam’s Scientific Diet, okay? None of that Purina bullshit. Liver pills everyday. Liver ailments are common with the breed. Mix baby food into her kibble for the complex proteins. Silly, I know.”

“Silly.”

“I was trying to raise worms.” He nods to the Mister Turtle pool. “Garden centres, bait shops. Like drugs: there’s gradients. You must establish a rep as a premium worm producer. Well, I guess they’ll die.”

“They will die.”

I raise the gun. James Paris’s forehead butts the bottle’s plastic nubbins. He rocks forward on his toes. The weight of him on my shoulder. His heels do not touch the floor.

When a bullet enters a human body a number of things happen simultaneously. For small calibre arms such as mine, the unjacketed round — free of casing, propellants dispersed — weighs 110 grams; 132-grains ballistic calibration. Entering James Paris’s forehead it will cause two types of damage: permanent cavity damage where the projectile tears directly into flesh; radial displacement of neighbouring tissue stretched in the projectile’s wake. The pop bottle is a single-use silencer. All his neighbours will hear is a momentary high-pitched tssst! like steam blowing the lid off a saucepan.

I pull the trigger.

Compressed gasses expand the bottle. Its base explodes into James Paris’s face. Suddenly, his face resembles a red starfish.

… this could have happened — if not for the kiddie pool. You see, you bury bodies in dirt outside . Here dirt was inside . You must never bury a body inside. Unsanitary.

I lower the gun. A little moan comes from somewhere. I open the closet. Matilda sits on her haunches. A doggy cough: houch-houch! I am aware that James Paris should be dead. I am aware that he is not dead. But I think he is. I have had a brainfart. This is a very lucky thing, I think, for James Paris.

I drive to the Niagara Falls aquarium. Under the security halogens I break the gun down. I heave the parts into the basin. The border guards give me no hassle over the canis domesticus .

Mama’s hysterectomy became a public showcase. Her uterus was riddled with pre-cancerous fibroids. Adenomyosis: uterine lining thickening into the organ walls. Mama instructed her doctor to “rip out the plumbing.”

Following the laparotomy Mama became obsessed with her pulse. Resting, active rates. She instructed us to check ours hourly. Log it in a notebook. It made Cappy Lonnigan CRAZY.

“Who gives a good goddamn about your pulse . It’s beating. You’re alive.”

Mama’s phantom hot flashes were unbearable. She wanted to “take in the days.” Teddy, myself would push Mama around Sarah Court in a wheelchair. Mama had a bowl of M&Ms on her lap “for wellwishers.” Neighbours made enquiries with eyes in the sky.

“Missus Russell,” said Philip Nanavatti. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing but a little hysterectomy, dear.” Mama took this opportunity to approach Frank Saberhagen. The surgeon was drinking with Fletcher Burger. Pitting their children in some sort of contest in his garage.

“Your kid stole my Caddy what, six months ago? Thanks for pencilling me in.”

“Mister Saberhagen—”

“ Doctor .”

“… I’ve undergone a hysterectomy.”

Frank Saberhagen examined the sole of his deck shoe.

“Yeah? Those can be a bitch.”

“I wished to discuss, civilly, Jeffrey’s actions and my dog’s treatment of yours some time ago. You can’t blame Excelsior. Your corgi was eating squirrel babies.”

Frank Saberhagen turned to me. “Jeffrey, right?”

I looked at Mama. She nodded so I nodded.

“Do certain colours scare you, Jeff?”

I peered at my shoes. The yellow band running over the toes I had coloured over with black marker. I was not SCARED of yellow. It did make me feel as I did riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the Lion’s Club carnival.

“Are there specific words you prefer not to say? Do you know about autism, Jeffrey, or Asperger’s syndrome? Has your ward of the state told you about those?”

“Nonsense,” Mama said through tight-gritted teeth. “Darlings, wheel me home this instant.”

At home Mama smashed dishes. RAGING against the “rat-shit jack-bastard.” The “hateful brute and lush.” Were Cappy present he would have exclaimed: “She’s on the warpath!”

“A rotten trickster,” Mama told me. “As doctors are. Warp your body, warp your mind. You have a black spot on your brain because your amoral mother smoked drugs. That’s why… that’s why… everything! ”

In the kitchen that night Mama crushed shards of bone china with a rolling pin.

“Pull that ground chuck out of the icebox, Jeffrey. Sloppy joes another night.”

Mama crunched the china to sparkling powder. Knuckled sweaty hair out of her eyes. She rolled the raw chuck through glass.

“All I ever want is to help. But people so seldom take the cure.” Pinpricks of blood on her hands. “They spit the bit. You believe me, darling, don’t you?”

I cannot tell what other choice I ever had. Under a gibbous moon I threw the raw meatball into Doctor Saberhagen’s backyard.

Before dying, Gadzooks! chewed through my telephone cord. I have to go to Mama’s house to call. “Is this Patience?”

“… it is.”

“I call on behalf of James Paris. Who is dead.”

“James Paris?… oh! Dead. Christ. How?”

“Police are stumped. His pitbull, Matilda, is with me. Old Family Red Nose. White coat. Brindle pattern over left eye. High stiffles. Clipped ears. A proud bitch.”

“I knew him only one night. We met at the Legion in Fenlon Falls.”

“Otherwise she must go to the Humane Society. For gassing.”

“Gassing?”

“He wanted you to have the dog. Otherwise—”

“Gassing, gassing. My life may not tolerate a dog.”

But she agrees to meet. I hang up. Mama is off at the Lucky Bingo. My elbow brushes the computer mouse. The monitor brightens.

A MySpace page. A girl in pigtails.

We meet at Montebello Park. Patience is Patience Nanavatti. She is wearing a floppy sunhat. Big sunglasses accord her face the aspect of a dragonfly. She is also pushing a pram.

“Jeffrey?” Chin tucked to her neck. SUSPICION. “From Sarah Court?”

I mimic her chin-tuck. “Patience Nanavatti?”

Matilda licks the baby’s foot. The baby’s name: Celeste. She grabs the air in front of her face. Patience Nanavatti takes Celeste’s hand. She pins it gently to her belly.

“She is very scrawny,” I say. “Have you seen a pediatrician?”

“She… no, she eats. Why won’t you take Matilda?”

“This dog was not offered to me.”

“She’s yours.”

Celeste emits hitching, painful sobs. Her eyes swivel so far back in their sockets it is as though she wishes to examine the inside of her own skull.

“Celeste is the toilet baby. I read of you both in the newspaper.”

“Please.” Is she soliciting help or begging me not to tell? “Jeffrey, please.”

Patience Nanavatti tells me how she stole her. Then she fled up north but, finding nothing at all, she returned to the city. The police may be monitoring her home. I ask how long Celeste was in the toilet.

“Four minutes, maybe?”