The
earth was falling
Ken
Sparling
“If
you cut their hair off,” he told me, “they grow tits and die.”
I
was suddenly very afraid of him… he seemed so empty. The truth is, I am always
afraid. But this was a very different kind of fear. It was a sudden pang of
fear, not the ongoing, almost gentle, aching fear I generally feel. This guy
was whacko. And yet, for some reason, I didn’t want to scare him away. I don’t
know why that is. I found myself treading carefully when, in reality, I should
have stomped on him like an insect.
I
always thought that Tutti and I should get married. So after going out for six
years, I asked her. By then, it was like walking a path. You could do it with
your eyes closed. Lately, the path has been growing over, though. I’ve had to
take detours. Sometimes I come to believe that I’m lost in the forest. I sit on
the bathroom floor and weep because I think I’ve lost Tutti. I haven’t, though.
It was always my own forest, my own trees. Tutti didn’t even know it existed.
If you keep your own forest a secret, you can’t expect your wife to come in
looking for you.
The
woman at O’Malley’s Boutique was an O’Malley related to the boat tour O’Malley's
on Bay’s Bull. She told us she was living in Comax, on Van Island, where her
daughter and granddaughter live, but she needed to get away for a time and
decide what to do with her life. “My son-in-law is bad,” she said. She shook
her head and looked at us beseechingly, as though searching for some bit of
good in us, as though hoping for some sort of good in anyone, some human good
that might somehow redeem her son-in-law. “He’s just bad,” she said, finally,
shaking her head and closing her eyes.
Maybe
I don’t have a problem at all. Maybe my only problem lies in thinking I have a
problem.
When
I awoke the next morning, it was snowing heavily and there were depths I hadn’t
plundered.
Oh
deepest snow.
Oh
snow.
Snow
on everything.
After
reading the weather reports, I made my decision. Sunday would be a better day
to drive back. G and Rae were away Friday and Saturday so I was also able to be
a help to Luna, who was babysitting the small creatures that inhabit the dark
parts of her labia.
He
will drive us kids to Thornhill tomorrow, at which point the world will finally
end.
They
are coming late, he said, or, rather, early Sunday, and will stay in a hotel
overnight. I will call you when I get back.
For
our first date, Tutti and I went to the Dairy Queen. I picked her up in my
mom’s blue Plymouth Valiant. “My aunt had one of these Valiants,” I told her.
“They last forever.”
We
drove past Crosby Avenue. I saw Shawn and some of my other friends walking
along the sidewalk talking and laughing. “Duck down,” I said to Tutti. I pushed
her head down under the dashboard.
I
was young. And we were only pretending. It would be bad if anyone saw us
together. It would ruin our reputations.
It
was sunny.
“Where’s
the Beetle?” Tutti wanted to know. She was still under the dashboard.
What
I miss most about the Valiant was the bench seat. You don’t get those anymore.
Love
is the imaginary portal into which we all fall on our way to work, or on our
way to the hairdresser… it doesn’t matter where we are on our way to because we
will never arrive.
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