unfit and that his children are being subjected to detrimental or dangerous conditions. For this reason it is crucial that the separation remain amicable. If she declares war, she will win.
Unless, of course, he can show proof of a dangerous liaison with the art student.
He can’t help admiring the husband in New Brunswick who went on an arson rampage to revenge his wife’s affair with the local fire chief, setting fire to three storage barns and two covered bridges. He has been found guilty on five counts of arson and vandalism. That the arsonist chose structures in which no life was sheltered endears him to Reese. Unlike the husband in B.C. whose revenge was to burn down his former house with his children in it, leaving his wife screaming in the arms of police. The husband sat in his Buick with the windows rolled up and watched his children burn.
Reese unrolls the Chagall. A red woman wearing a crown and blue shorts is lying upside down. A blue-green chicken is standing on her leg, a blue fish is floating above her, and a green horse is staring at her. There’s a sliver of a moon with an eye playing a violin. What’s it all mean?
He replays scenes, conversations, arguments. He remembers Roberta’s irritation when he responded to Clara’s questions with information about the dire condition of planet Earth.
“Shoving bad news at them isn’t going to improve their quality of life,” she’d informed him, dicing onions. “Do you want them to be depressives? They’re children.”
“How are they going to know if we don’t tell them?”
“They’re children, Reese.”
“They’re our future.”
She pointed the knife at him. “I don’t want them turning into you. I’m not going to let that happen.”
Prior to the separation, she’d become remote, no longer insisting that they have the occasional dinner out, sitting mutely at a table, fingering their wine glasses. He has always been comfortable with silence. She has not, gnawing words out of the air, questioning when there were no answers, joking when there were no laughs. As she began taking anti-depressants, there were fewer night fears and tears and he realized that he missed the sleepless nights, the silent closeness that they brought. Artificially freed of inner conflict, Roberta slept well on her side of the bed.
He rolls the litho back up and turns on the local news, watching the steel-haired anchor announce surging energy costs, increased taxes, rising homicides, then suddenly, after the car commercial, himself, muted. The steel-haired anchor speaks for him, calls him “a welcome vigilante in this age of terrorism.” A passport photo of the “suspected terrorist” is shown briefly. His name was Amir Kassam and he was a Canadian citizen. Surely the autopsy will reveal that he died from some pre-existing medical condition turned fatal due to intoxication and high altitudes. A man doesn’t die when tackled, it’s not as though Reese had him by the throat. Amir Kassam’s photo is replaced by slabs of butter, gobs of lard, buckets of bubbling oil while the steel-haired anchor delivers the latest news on fats. Reese gropes for the converter and surfs for Elena’s sci-fi show. Elena, his former grande passion, who died from some pre-existing, undetected medical condition twelve days ago. Elena, whom Reese might be able to forget were his marriage not in disrepair. With Elena’s passing he has gained control of their memories, can edit and revise to his satisfaction. Dead, Elena — unlike Roberta — understands, respects, loves, and desires Reese. He spots her spitting alien venom at a cringing human. Beneath her scales he admires her body, remembers its feel. Her name was Elena, but everyone but Reese called her Lainie. He’d breathed her night and day, and when she became pregnant he saw no reason for her not to have it. Elena saw many, and requested funds to terminate the pregnancy. He protested, sitting helpless in his bath while she sponged makeup off her face. “I’m too young for this,” she said. He went with her, sat motionless in the waiting room with the mothers and lovers of equally too-young girls.
It was never the same after that. His complete inability to fraternize with the right people began to irk her. She was ambitious, regularly going through her Rolodex, calling directors, producers, writers, and friends of directors, producers, writers to curry favour. When Reese suggested she walk the dogs of the directors, producers, writers, or the dogs of the friends of directors, producers, writers, she began to go to parties without him, and to stay out later. He continued to pine for her, munching Doritos on the bed, watching Cheers reruns. He’d wake in darkness and reach for her, distraught not to find her there. Then she would arrive, rumpled but still Elena, and he would want to hold her, unable to be angry with her, wanting only to possess her. She began to suffocate, as she put it. His attraction for her — his lack of pizzazz, his “groundedness” — became irritating, hindering, and she left on a plane. Now she’s dead. He finds this frightening because she still lives in his nerve centres. His lips can still feel the soft hairs on the back of her neck.
He pulled her bio off the Net, and an obituary written by someone called Kyrl Dendekker who claims to have known Lainie for years and who wrote that she was truly a renaissance woman — engaging, sensitive, spiritual, kind, funny, extremely intelligent, and enlightened. According to Kyrl she was an incredibly talented actress and a wonderful and inspiring friend, “a ray of light that has left us too soon.” What Reese wants to know is, did Dendekker do her? Photos are included with the bio: Lainie, bare shouldered, gazing at a parakeet perched on her finger, and Lainie as the alien. Reese keeps these pictures on his person. He does not know why. Except that Elena remembered him young.
Kyrl Dendekker has made his e-mail address available for anyone “who needs to talk about Lainie.”
What’s inexplicable is that she seems more present dead than alive. Because she could be anywhere, flying around watching Reese, observing what a fuck-up he’s made of his life. Alive, she was in California, remote in front of TV cameras. Alive, she was mortal and aging. Dead, she will be forever young.
The sci-fi show ends. Reese turns off the TV to hear his neigh-bours no longer practising Mamma Mia! numbers but bumping and grinding in the bedroom. When his children heard these noises and asked what was going on, Reese told them they were moving furniture.
Before they began singing and dancing they must have been frying hamburgers because his apartment stinks of scorched beef. It almost always smells of fried something: potatoes, bacon and eggs, grilled cheese. He lies on the futon. Even it smells of fried hamburgers. He must buy a proper bed, a brand-new odourless bed. He doesn’t think he’s ever slept on a bed that has never been slept on. The bed he shared with Roberta had been hers. All manner of men had slept on it before Reese. But it was a quality bed, she insisted, she’d paid a lot of money for it. He has never bought a brand-new bed because nothing saddens him so much as beds and mattresses put out for garbage pickup. Beds and mattresses full of lust lost and found, destined to be crammed into landfill sites. No, he believes in use and re-use. Sleep on the bed until it collapses beneath you. Roberta’s bed saw him come and go. Roberta’s bed is harbouring the art student in the Ford Festiva. Even the hamburger-smelling futon was pre-owned by a Greenpeace canvasser who changed her name to Tree when she left for Tibet.
He sniffs his fingers again. They still smell of vomit.
The call display feature has robbed him of the element of surprise. Roberta is not picking up. He pictures her seeing his number and continuing on with her day, not to mention her sordid affair with the art student. They probably meet at lunch, fondle each other in the cafeteria, smother each other in the Ford Festiva. Disgusting.
He removes his wedding ring. Immediately his hand feels lost, unhinged. His thumb repeatedly reaches across his palm to feel for it. In its absence there is a white band of skin undamaged by the