When Mom came home after rehearsal she went to her room and cried. Geoffrey and Gretchen went home. Mom turned her humidifier up high so I wouldn’t hear her crying but I heard her anyway. I lay down beside her and she smiled and blew her nose four hundred times. She said sorry, sorry, sorry, god I’m just so exhausted, Swiv, don’t worry.
Worry about what? I said. Because I wasn’t worried until she told me not to worry. What shouldn’t I worry about? I asked her.
Anything, she said. Just don’t worry about a thing.
I felt my whole body freeze up. I couldn’t move it. As if Mom had tucked me into a blanket of worry that was the world’s heaviest blanket in the Guinness Book of World Records. Do you have your letter? I asked her.
What letter? she said.
Your assignment, I told her. Of the letter. Grandma already handed hers in and they’re due.
Mom said oh god, right, yeah, I think so, maybe, let me check my bag, or maybe it’s on my computer, hang on, I think I’ve got it, or maybe I’m not done, actually I don’t think I’ve …
I lay beside Mom while she said all those things and more. The truth was there was no letter. I didn’t say anything for a long time. Mom rubbed my back as if a massage could be a substitute for a letter. I’m disappointed, I said. Mom said she knew, she was sorry, she knew a deadline is not a suggestion but—
It’s just that you’re so exhausted, I said. Mom was quiet and we breathed together quietly. We could hear the Raptors game blaring away on Grandma’s TV. You know what Swiv, she said, I’m gonna finish tonight. May I please have a one-hour extension? I tapped my chin and squinted at Mom. You’re treading on thin ice, my friend, I said. Mom nodded, she knew, she knew. I managed to get out from under the cement blanket of worry and stood up next to the bed. One hour! I said.
I stomped downstairs to watch the Raptors and set the timer on the stove. Grandma asked me what I was timing. Mom, I said. Was it nice seeing your friends? Grandma asked, and I said yeah. Did you have fun? she said. Does it make you want to go back to school? I was getting a rhetorical vibe from her questions. I can’t go back to school! I said. I’ve been suspended! I know, said Grandma, but after your suspension. I don’t know, I said. Grandma wanted to talk about it more, but I didn’t. We stared at the TV.
The Raptors weren’t playing hard. Grandma was mad. She told them, C’mon you guys, wake up and smell the coffee. She said that’s a terrible, terrible way to lose, by not trying and not fighting. You play hard to the end, Swiv. To the buzzer. There is no alternative. Do they all have the flu? Then she said she was so disgusted that she couldn’t watch anymore and she switched the TV to Jeopardy!
One hour was almost up. Just as I was about to go upstairs to tell Mom, I heard her coming down the stairs. She came into the living room pretending to be all nervous and curtsied to me and Grandma and then handed me her pages. She kept her head down and her eyes on the carpet as she handed them to me. My lady, she said. As you requested. I’m grateful to you for the mercy shown. Forgive me. Then she crawled backwards out of the room with Gord hanging down from her stomach and almost scraping the rug. The timer went off. Fun and games! said Grandma. I hid my smile with Mom’s pages.
I gave Grandma her seven thousand evening pills. In two days I’d have to get some of her prescriptions renewed at the drugstore. I went into her room and put a thin-rimmed glass of water by her bed and moved her nitro spray closer on the bedside table—but not too close, so she wouldn’t knock it off in her sleep. I put her cellphone with my number taped on it beside the bed and made sure it was charged. I went back into the living room to say goodnight to Grandma. I put her nitro patch on the fattest part of her arm to really soak up that TNT. I asked her to drink a glass of water before bed even though I know she wouldn’t. She says she gets her water from coffee. I asked her to floss her teeth because it helps prevent heart attacks. She laughed. She said that’s rich. She wanted to hug me for a long time. Embrace your humanity, Grandma, I said. I whispered it into her fat. I told her the next day I’d help her shower and we could use Mom’s expensive Italian shower gel. Mom wouldn’t notice because she was too preoccupied with going insane. Grandma told me she loved me very much.
I went to my room to read Mom’s assignment.
Dear Gord,
For now you’re a part of me. Your life is dependent on mine. For now your world is tiny, but soon—well, listen—I’m an actor, not a writer. Swiv gave me this assignment, of writing you a letter, but I just don’t know what to say. And I’ve got this deadline … I mean, I do know what I want to tell you one day, but I don’t want to write it down here. Why don’t I want to write letters? My sister, your aunt, she’s dead, asked me （begged me!） to write letters to her and I didn’t. Why didn’t I write the fucking letters? I remember reading an interview with a writer once and she said that she was writing against death, that the act of writing, or of storytelling, that every time she wrote a story I mean, she was working through her own death. She didn’t care about impermanence. She didn’t care if anybody read her stories. She just wanted to write them down, to get them out of her. Gord, you’re a story inside of me. You’re everything, man. Every joy, every sorrow, every joke, every heartbreak, every freedom, every sweetness, every rage, every humiliation, every fight, every serenity, every possibility that has ever existed. Can I keep you inside of me forever? I want to. Just like I’d still like to be inside of my mother! （Grandma. Who I really hope you’ll meet, but … chemicals are keeping her alive right now, I think.） Well, on some days. Many days. I mean on many days I’d like, still, to be inside of her and not this world. This world, man … you have to know who you are. Know you are loved. Know you are strong. I’m not a writer! Remember these words. “They can kill me, but they can’t scare me.” Your great-grandfather said that. Freedom comes at a cost, Gord. Men who are otherwise sane and respectable will lose their shit when women attempt to set themselves free. They lose perspective and they lose all shame. They will abandon babies and go to Shibuya forever. They will steal your passport and strand you in Albania. They will mock you when you refuse to take your clothes off. They will claim ownership of your work and steal your royalties. They will tell their friends you’re crazy and send you Google maps that look like targets with your house circled in the centre as the bullseye. They will demand your wages. They will try to fuck you over every which way from Tuesday. I had a dream last night that I had planned for three interviews to take place at our house in Toronto and I forgot about every one of them. All the interrogators arrived at once. I made an excuse to go to my car, to get something out of the back seat. The interrogators said that while they were waiting they would very quickly repaint my staircase. I ran out of the house. I got behind the wheel and took off, but then found myself in a parking lot and couldn’t find my ticket to get out and through the wooden barrier. I decided to smash through it. Instantly a young woman appeared next to me in the front seat. I told her, Well, looks like you’re coming with me. Do you want to be my friend? She said no, quickly. There was no pause before her answer. I was devastated and angry and determined, more than ever, to smash through the barrier. Afterwards, careening about on the city streets, I tried to check my e-mail on my cellphone. I couldn’t get it to work. I saw the e-mail of everyone I knew, for some reason, but not my own. I handed my phone to the girl, the one who definitely did not want to be my friend, and pleaded with her to fix my phone so that I could see my own e-mail. She grabbed my phone, sneering, pushed one button quickly and handed it back to me. It worked. She was so disdainful. I was so grateful, but troubled.