Craig Davidson - Sarah Court

Tiny openings appear in the nasal shelf above its top lip. The ball in the wheelchair is now utterly featureless. It bulges convulsively. Then it stops quivering. The thing points to the still ball.

“I promise you I am no better or worse than he was. It’s a one-to-one exchange.” The gesture it makes invites my acceptance. “If that is a fact, then tell me: how can your world be any worse with me in it?”

I wipe my nose. Then I ask:

“How would I do it?”

“Just say the words. Hey!”

“There’s something under the kitchen sink.”

“Oh, you can leave that to me.” The thing performs a jack-legged dance round its box. “Hey! Hey!”

I back out of the chamber. Blood is squeezing out of my pores. I close the front door. Almost . I press my mouth to that slit of darkness and whisper:

“I set you free.”

One yearTeddy and I missed Halloween. Chickenpox. Mama made us costumes. Teddy, a teddy bear. “My cuddly Teddsy-weddsy,” said Mama, nuzzling him. I went as “Boxcar Jeffy,” a hobo. Mama painted my beard with an eyeliner pencil. My bindle was filled with tube socks. By the time we got over the contagion it was November 2 nd. Mama dressed us up to take us out anyway.

“Why should it matter?” she told Cappy. “Surely our neighbours have leftover candy.”

On a cold night we went trick-or-treating. No jack-o-lanterns, except those that had been smashed by vandals or were decaying in trash cans. Mama knocked on doors around Sarah Court. Philip Nanavatti wasn’t confident he had any candy. The holiday having passed, you see. Mama had not ordered the Nanavatti’s squirrel shot yet.

“Come now, Phil,” said Mama. “Surely your daughter could part with a few candy bars from her stash. For my boys’ sake.”

Philip dutifully rummaged up a few granola bars. Not all neighbours were so obliging.

“Tell the belligerent bitch to take a hike,” came Frank Saberhagen’s voice from the family room when his wife answered Mama’s knock.

But Mama was persistent; we returned home with our plastic pumpkins full. I felt something indefinable for Mama. For what she had done. Was it LOVE? I could not say.

Cappy, speaking of Mama: “Like the moon, she’s got her phases. When she’s waxing, her LOVE’s the purest, truest thing. But when she’s on the wane…”

Squirrels gave every child on our block parasitic seatworms. Mama had “a bird” watching Teddy or me claw at our anuses. She ordered: “Don’t flush!”, then checked our leavings. At Shoppers Drugmart Mama bought a kit: Colonix Cleanse. Insisted upon administering it herself. Teddy, myself: naked on plastic sheets in the bathroom. Clutching our privates. We pried our buttocks open. Mama lubricated the plastic wand with flaxseed oil.

“Hold it, darlings. Hold it up there.”

Cappy quarrelled with her over this.

“You force them to hold two pictures of you in their heads. One’s this woman who feeds and houses them. The other’s an ass-invading bitch-wolf.”

“They can’t give themselves bloody enemas, William.”

“You’re half devil, Clara. I swear. Three quarters, some days.”

She envisioned a world where she was everyone’s Mama. She sought to hurt her darlings as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

Frommy employer’s I drive to hers.

Mama is in bed. Her sleep apnea machine hums. Mama removes the mask. Gulping inhales. Her eyes too round. Words mushed up. She cannot see the latex gloves on my hands.

She tells me a police officer named Mulligan barged in today.

“Investigating computer malfeasance. A ring of kids teased some poor youngster into a suicide attempt.” Suside ta-tempt . “But I don’t know my ass from my elbow with computers — do I, darling?” She nibbled her bottom lip. “He took your lovely gift away. As evidence. As if I’d even hurt a fly. He said my parole officer hasn’t even been born yet. That’s how long I’d be in jail.”

Every act of kindness I ever experienced came at her hands. She never hurt me because she never found a soft spot. But she took me in. I called her mother.

I pull the pillow from beneath her head. I settle it over her face. Apply pressure. Her startled slurs are muffled by the stuffing. Her hand rises, trembling, to touch my elbow. Then it is all thrashing. Grunting. Growling. One dead leg slips off the mattress. I slide myself on top to straddle her. Her big breasts bunch under my groin. Her nails tear grooves in my forearms. Her chest deflates between my thighs. I withdraw the pillow. The muscles of her face have come unglued. I see the silver fillings in her molars. She has wet herself. That almond-y smell. Thin rasps exit her throat. I snap the oxygen mask back over her face.

I find some Q-Tips in a bathroom drawer. Sit back with Mama. I take each finger very gently. I remove my skin cells where they have collected under each fingernail bed.

Patience Nanavattihas been sleeping at my apartment. She is packed when I arrive. Grocery bags filled with Sally Anne clothing. Enough, she believes, to make a clean start.

“You’re sweating,” she says. “There’s blood on you.”

A blistering ache sets up in my arms, my shoulders. Lactic acid burn. Chloride torching the muscle fibres. Matilda noses between my legs.

“Lie down, Jeff.”

“I am alright.”

“Lie down .”

“I will.”

I lie on the bed she has occupied previous nights. I have slept on the couch. The scent of her is in the sheets. It is not a bad smell at all. Patience Nanavatti pulls off her sweater. Blue static sparks pop along her torso.

I do it out of LOVE . Mama used to say this. “If I am brusque or insensitive it is because we are familiar and I LOVE you.” How much behaviour can you hide under the cover of LOVE? Allowances made to trample others because — because what? Because LOVE? Because you LOVE someone?

Patience Nanavatti lies beside me. We do not touch.

“I could take the dog,” she says. “You, too.”

To leave this town permanently — I do not know it is FEAR I feel, simply because I do not know the colour that emotion bleeds. There is a brittle cracking sensation, localized to my chest, through which burst wires that wriggle as earthworms do. To vacate these streets, these sights of long acquaintance…

As Cappy Lonnigan says: Yesterday’s history, tomorrow’s the mystery .

“You must understand, Patience Nanavatti. I do not need you.”

“That’s fine, Jeff. I don’t need you, either.”

Summertimeand squirrels abound on Sarah Court. The descendants of Alvin and Gadzooks! nest in trees whose outlines stand in calligraphic relief against the sky.

Nicholas Saberhagen’s car rounds the bend where Clara Russell’s house still stands. He pulls up in front of Fletcher Burger’s house. Burger himself is long gone— disseminated is more apt — but the house is currently occupied by his ex-wife and daughter.

Nicholas’s knock is answered by Abigail. Who is lovely in a violet sun dress. The scar on her throat is white, while the rest is tanned. She extends her hand to Nick, who receives it in a brotherly manner. They do not speak. Abby seldom does anymore.

They cross to the house where Nick grew up. His mother lives there now that her ex-husband is gone. Released on bail after his malpractice hearing, Frank Saberhagen booked clandestine passage to Brazil on a ship borne down the Saint Lawrence seaway. He was bitten by a stowaway spider. Its neurotoxin induced seizures and severe priapism. Frank Saberhagen thrashed to death in an airless metal cabin on a banana freighter in the dead calm of the Atlantic ocean. His limbs flexed hard as bowstrings. Teeth clenched so tight his molars impacted. He also happened to perish sporting a trouser-ripping erection.