Graeme Gibson - Communion

In order to see into the bathroom he has to edge back, about six feet, to the corner and then to the mirror, he makes no noise. She’s brushing her hair. He sees black stubble in her armpit, he watches her tricep flexing beneath painfully white skin; she tilts her head, the hair falls free of her shoulder, her dark mouth is parted, he stares into her empty eyes. She leans her head to the left, she reaches to brush the other side, her breasts shift heavily, they’re marbled with miniature blue veins, she’s holding her lower lip between her teeth and now her eyes are closed. Abruptly she throws her trunk forward, her tumbling hair, a curtain between him and her body, she brushes and brushes. He hears the brush in her hair; he’s close enough to see, just before she straightens, the white scalp at her crown. There’s a tap on the door. Turning she shakes her hair into place, she unlocks the door and takes the drink. The man is just visible beyond her, he seems to be pressing against the door, his face is very close to hers: his mouth opens and closes as he speaks, her body prevents him from entering and still he’s talking while she resists, she manages to close the door, she latches it, her voice is very calm: “I’ll be out in a minute.” She returns to the mirror as if nothing has happened; as she drinks, her left hand absently fondles a breast. In a minute she’ll leave and the man will enter, it’s always the same: standing at the bedroom window, smoking and staring into the garden, he’s waiting until she opens the door. He’ll come into the bathroom and after putting his underpants in the laundry basket, he’ll pee noisily and with obvious satisfaction: then he fills the basin with hot water. He washes himself meticulously and always in the same order. First his hands, his arms to the elbow and then, standing on a towel, he soaps his armpits and, leaning over the basin, rinses them thoroughly: next, his crotch and between his buttocks with water dribbling down his thighs; when he’s finished that, he empties the basin and dries himself. It never varies. Bending close to the watcher in the mirror, their eyes are less than a foot apart, squeezing blackheads from his nose and forehead, brushing dandruff from his beard, he refills the basin, he scrubs his face and neck until the skin is red. Urquhart puts her glass beside the basin, she removes her brassiere and examines each breast as if searching for something, then she vigorously brushes her teeth. She spits into the basin and he’s startled to see the blood in her saliva. He concludes it’s from her gums.

That blue light on his hands, on his legs. The stairs, that door, the alley. Why does he do it? He moves with empty grace, his feet make no sound, he slides through under-brush, a path along the edge, he walks beside the road because sometimes there are others . . .

He stops under the railway bridge. He’s almost there, he’ll smoke a cigarette. Then he’ll cross the stream and climb to the pavement, the lights, their house. What will they be doing? what will he see them doing tonight? He hears water rushing against the concrete support, it stinks of the cemetery half-a-mile ahead: seeping among the graves it gathers in pools, he remembers the pools, it overflows and fed by the city becomes a stream that smells of bodies.

By the garage, excited because nobody knows he’s here, pressing himself into its shadow with catalpa leaves resting on his shoulders. There are lights in the apartment but nobody appears in the windows. Music from a radio, perhaps a record player, is playing somewhere. He doesn’t recognize the song. Noise from the traffic on Yonge Street is curiously soothing, like the sea, although he’s never heard the sea, or wind rushing across the land, some land, somewhere . . . Resting his face against the brick, he’s breathing easily because he’s in no hurry. In a minute he’ll climb onto the garage roof, using the fence and one limb of the catalpa tree, he’ll wriggle forward and lie unseen to watch them . . .

Fumbling beneath his coat to find his fly he hears it, he knows it’s the dog, he knows it’s been hurt, it’s gone mad, it’s been injured: his feet on the frozen road, he’s supporting himself with both hands, the sound of his feet, the wind, its body crushed and struggling, white bone in its side, kill it to stop the noise! he can hear it, broken, the snow is black, he doesn’t understand, the noise, he tries to turn away, he falls . . .

He’s driving back down along the road they entered. Snowbanks on either side, he accelerates beneath the sky. It was dead when he revived, beside him, nestled against him, he’d been dreaming, he remembers a valley full of lilacs in summer rain, mauve and purple at the bottom of an eroded hill, he descends with difficulty because it’s steep, yellow mud sticks to his boots: there’s a stream at the bottom, he arrives at the bottom, the smell of lilacs bursting on him, the long grasses bend down behind him in a path.

He’s driving back down the road they entered, descending to the lake; he turns to the right, the heater is beginning to thrust warm air into the car, it isn’t enough. He’s icy to the core, his fingers are swollen and painful, his mouth is bruised: he almost welcomes the pain. He drives with one hand gingerly on the wheel, the other is pressed into his armpit beneath his clothing. He’s failed. He doesn’t understand. Why didn’t he do something, why didn’t? strangling there, the sound of his feet, why didn’t he kill it? with the jack handle, he could have, that’s something he could have done, he could have killed it in Toronto. The road rises and falls with the land, there are no cars, he passes houses without lights clustered at crossroads.

Driving south from winter, through Primrose, south to Camilla and still the highway’s empty, his hands still hurt, driving into Orangeville, turning left at the lights: stopping at the outskirts he turns on his wipers, with difficulty he climbs out of the car, he throws snow on the windshield to clean it, another handful, his body is bruised and stiff, he gets back in. He lights a cigarette. His hands are throbbing. He turns on the radio and sits smoking without hearing the voice. Then, forcing the butt out the no-draft, he accelerates onto the crown of the road.

Through Ballycroy on 9 with music on the radio, driving at night with fields of snow on either side. He believes he did this often as a boy. Driving in a sealed car, a winter night, smoking alone and listening to the radio, climbing into the Laurentian shield, driving for hours and sometimes with others, in the back seat perhaps, with a girl, taut bodied and sighing, their mouths dry, surely it happened to him as well, it must have: sharing Molson’s from a quart bottle, the taste of it in their mouths, young bodies, hands at his face, his belly inside his shirt, how can he know for sure? protesting mile after mile, I must get home, it’s late, oh please! reluctant thighs and hungry faces in the light of passing cars. And then, one night for the first time, it must have happened, a damp hand between his legs, such a long time ago, the noise of their breathing in the swaying car, the radio, he remembers a small hard nipple between his teeth.

The signal’s stronger as he turns south again: radio voices sing of peace, of love and snowbanks collapse upon themselves as he drives into Palgrave, its houses isolated along the road. A woman raped and murdered in her bedroom. He’s driving out of winter, away from the snow: black fields and the highway glistens in his lights. He’s very tired. He doesn’t think about the dog, not now, perhaps never. He’ll leave the car for Walters, that’s all. Music in a closed car driving very fast, he discovers it’s over: he’ll never work for that man again, the prick, Felix would have done something, he’d have helped the dog in some way. If he hadn’t fallen, if his body hadn’t betrayed him, it’s like a seizure, he doesn’t understand, like a fit of some kind, he doesn’t want to think about it. The inside of his mouth is dark and bruised, his fingers are like sausages. Radio voices sing of peace, of love. There was a girl with brown legs, he remembers her name: a young girl with blue underwear, they lay on the livingroom floor. She went away, he doesn’t know why she went away. Blond hair and gentle mouth, she lived with him for a week one summer and then returned to California. Music from the hi-fi, she danced in her bare feet, her lithe body and her laughter; she never answered his letters, she wouldn’t say anything on the telephone. He knows where she lives. Finally she sent him her picture. She must have had her reasons. Is it because they talked about love? he’s convinced they talked about love, they lay together on the livingroom floor: did she talk about her love for him then? It’s the usual thing to do. Her name, he recalls, is Morag.