Pasha Malla - The Withdrawal Method

Womack looked away. On the table before him, splayed open to a page titled "When to Go," sat the travel guide. Womack imagined Adriane surfing on a ratty shoelace along the river from Apocalypse Now, heads on spikes lining the shores, bullets whizzing through the air. All around, crumpled Styrofoam tubs sat like ruined sandcastles. Womack placed his hands over his ears, tightly. There was a dull echo inside his skull: the empty, hollow rumble of a stalled train.

FEEDING THE BOY is easy; he eats mechanically, unquestioningly. Womack sits the boy in his wheelchair and scoops spoonfuls of pureed food into the boy's mouth, and the boy swallows. At the opposite end of the table sit the boy's mother and brother and sister with their plates of leftovers, but they are in a different world, apart. While Womack feeds the boy, Andrew shovels mashed potatoes and corn at his face, spilling most of it on the floor; Jessica eats demurely, telling stories about which boys at school she dislikes this week; Sylvia takes it all in, nodding, smiling, pushing her food around, hardly eating. Womack feels invisible, as if he were watching their meal through a two-way mirror — collecting evidence for a trial, a detective, or a spy.

IN THE MIDDLE of December, Womack surprised Adriane with dinner reservations at a Vietnamese restaurant. Adriane smiled at this. Encouraged, Womack kissed her on the cheek and took her hand in his as they walked down the street.

At the restaurant, a woman in a Santa hat seated them at a table for two and handed over menus they struggled to read in the dim light. Womack, squinting, made a few suggestions — What about number twenty-three? Or sixteen, the shrimp? — before the waitress arrived and Adriane ordered a bowl of soup.

Soup? said Womack. He looked apologetically to the waitress. Why don't we share a couple things?

I'm not that hungry, said Adriane. She gazed around the restaurant, up at the walls decorated with posters and maps of Vietnam, at the shelves of ornaments by the door. A few booths over, a couple were drinking with their arms entwined.

Womack decided on the shrimp dish for himself, plus a half-litre of house wine for the two of them, to share.

The waitress left, smiling. Womack looked at Adriane, then over at the romancing couple, then back at her. He rolled his eyes.

What's wrong with that? she asked.

Nothing, said Womack. Just a little cheesy.

They were silent until the food and wine arrived, and even then, their meal was only punctuated by Womack asking, How's your soup? to which Adriane responded, Good, how's your shrimp? to which Womack responded, Good, and then Adriane slurped her soup and Womack chewed his shrimp, which were not good at all but overcooked and rubbery, and when the meal was over Adriane put it on her Visa and they left the restaurant and walked home, Womack behind Adriane, single file.

Back in the apartment Adriane went directly to bed, and Womack, tipsy from all the wine he'd drunk alone, sat at his desk with the computer monitor off, staring at the blank screen.

WHEN HE IS full, the boy moans. Womack excuses himself from the table with the boy's dishes, rinses them in the sink, stacks them in the dishwasher, and then wheels the boy into his bedroom. Womack sits on the bed and tells the boy, You need to digest your food. The boy moans and rocks slightly in his wheelchair. Womack looks out the window of the boy's room, at the sun setting or the children's swing set in the backyard, and thinks about the novel he is writing. He has wanted for some time for this boy to become a character — someone tragic, his novel lacks pathos — but how to write about a dying child without resorting to sentimentality, to cliche?

THAT THURSDAY, two days before Mike and Cheryl's wedding, Adriane announced to Womack that she would only be able to make it to the reception.

There's this Hot Yoga class starting on Saturday afternoons, she told him over a dinner of fish sticks and peas. If I don't go to the first one, they won't let me sign up.

Hot Yoga? said Womack, stabbing at a single pea with his fork. Ade, these are two of my best friends.

Really? When was the last time you talked to them? Halloween?

Whoa, said Womack. The pea rolled away; he put down his fork.

I'll he there for the reception — that's what matters. They won't even notice me missing at the ceremony. And you know how I feel about church and religion and all that.

I've cancelled volunteering for the day, Ade. You don't think you could just do your Hot Yoga some other time? He looked at her. What the fuck is Hot Yoga, anyway?

Sorry, she said, and reached across the table, unexpectedly, to squeeze Womack's hand. He felt something like warmth at this contact and hated himself for that.

At the wedding ceremony Womack sat at the end of a pew in the back of the church, the space beside him conspicuously empty. When Cheryl came up the aisle he turned with everyone else, beaming, trying to catch her eye. She stared ahead, some strange mix of terror and joy on her face, and walked deliberately through the middle of the congregation as though she were trying to ignore everyone there.

After the vows and photos and everything else, and the two hundred-person congregation had shifted to the community centre across town, Womack found his seat at a table with strangers, right near the front of the reception hall. The folded card on his plate read Womack + Guest. The room began to fill, and Womack kept asking the woman on the other side of the empty chair between them what time it was, before, finally, just as the head groomsman was about to give his speech, Adriane came breezing in. She was dressed in black pants and a black sweater, and her hair was still wet from the shower.

Thanks for showing up, whispered Womack as she sat down.

Adriane shook out her napkin and laid it across her lap. That was some hot yoga.

Right, said Womack, and pulled away.

The speeches began. They were long. Adriane sat there, her back to the stage, staring into space. Womack drank a few glasses of wine and began to feel disappointed that he hadn't been asked to speak. He would have been good. He was a writer, for fuck's sake.

Then the speeches were over and Cheryl was standing up at the front with a big white bouquet, back to the crowd, and a cluster of women were gathered jostling at the front of the hall. The deejay got on the microphone and everyone joined in the countdown, and at Zero! Cheryl launched the bouquet upwards over her head, and even before it landed, Womack could trace the trajectory, could see in horror that it was coming toward his table. When it smacked down on Adriane's plate he could only stare into all those flowers, the ivory gloss of them. He was aware vaguely of Adriane saying something like, Oh, fucking fantastic, and felt nothing when they got home later and her first move was to the kitchen, where she stuffed the entire bouquet into the trash underneath the sink.

AFTER THE Boy digests dinner it is time for his bath, and Womack fills the tub and strips the boy down and lifts him up and eases him into the water, which Womack takes great care to ensure is the right temperature. The water sloshes around and Womack struggles for a simile to describe it to himself in his head, but the boy is floundering about in the water and needs calming, so Womack abandons similes and instead attempts to soothe the boy by putting his hands over the boy's ears. The boy's thrashing subsides; he sinks down into the water with Womack's hands on his face, smiling, laughing. Then Womack sponges the boy down and shampoos his hair, and when the boy is pink and rosy and clean, Womack lifts him out of the tub and towels him off.

TWO WEEKS BEFORE Christmas Womack decided to buy a turkey. At the supermarket he scooped one from the deep freeze and brought it home on his bicycle in his backpack. When Adriane came home that evening from yoga, after she turned off his music and reappeared in the kitchen, Womack opened up the refrigerator door and displayed it to her, proudly, as if it were something he himself had constructed or laid.