Cat's eye

I know he isn’t the real Santa Claus, just someone dressed up like him. Still, my idea of Santa Claus has altered, has acquired a new dimension. After this it becomes hard for me to think of him without thinking also of the snakes and the turtles and the pickled eyes, and the lizards floating in their yellow jars, and of the vast, echoing, spicy, ancient and forlorn but also comforting smell of old wood, furniture polish, formaldehyde and distant mice.

Three – Empire Bloomers

Chapter 8

T here are days when I can hardly make it out of bed. I find it an effort to speak. I measure progress in steps, the next one and the next one, as far as the bathroom. These steps are major accomplishments. I focus on taking the cap off the toothpaste, getting the brush up to my mouth. I have difficulty lifting my arm to do even that. I feel I am without worth, that nothing I can do is of any value, least of all to myself. What do you have to say for yourself? Cordelia used to ask. Nothing, I would say. It was a word! I came to connect with myself, as if I was nothing, as if there was nothing there at all. Last night I felt the approach of nothing. Not too close but on its way, like a wingbeat, like the cooling of the wind, the slight initial tug of an undertow. I wanted to talk to Ben. I phoned the house but he was out, the machine was on. It was my own voice I heard, cheerful and in control. Hi there. Ben and I can’t come to the phone at the moment, but leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Then a beep.

A disembodied voice, an angel voice, wafting through the air. If I died this minute it would go on like that, placid and helpful, like an electronic afterlife. Hearing it made me want to cry.

“Big hugs,” I said into the empty space. I closed my eyes, thought about the mountains on the coast. That’s home, I told myself. That’s where you really live. Among all that stagey scenery, too beautiful, like a cardboard movie backdrop. It’s not real, it’s not drab, not flat, not grubby enough. They’re working on it though. Go a few miles here, a few miles there, out of sight of the picture windows, and you come to the land of stumps.

Vancouver is the suicide capital of the country. You keep going west until you run out. You come to the edge. Then you fall off.

I crawl out from under the duvet. I am a busy person, in theory. There are things to be done, although none of them are things I want to do. I check through the refrigerator in the kitchenette, dig out an egg, boil it, dump it into a teacup, mush it up. I don’t even glance at the herbal teas, I go straight for the real, vile coffee. Jitter in a cup. It cheers me up to know I’ll soon be so tense. I pace among the severed arms and hollow feet, drinking blackness. I like this studio, I could work here. There’s the right amount of makeshift and dinginess for me. Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I’m in better shape than they are.

Today we hang. An unfortunate term.

I tuck myself into my clothes, handling my arms and legs as if they’re someone else’s, someone not very big or not very well. It’s the powder-blue sweatsuit again today; I didn’t bring very much clothing with me. I don’t like to check things, I like to jam it all under the airplane seat. At the back of my mind is the idea that if something goes wrong, up there in the air, I’ll be able to grab my bag out from under the seat and jump out the window, gracefully, without leaving any of my possessions behind. I head out into the open, walk quickly along the street, mouth slightly open, keeping time in my head. Keep happy with the nappy Gang. I used to jog but it’s bad for the knees. Too much beta carotene turns you orange, too much calcium gives you kidney stones. Health kills. The old emptiness of Toronto is gone. Now it’s chock-full: Toronto‘s bloating itself to death, that much is clear. The traffic is astonishing, there’s honking and barging, people drive right out to the middle of the intersections and sit there when the light changes. I’m glad I’m on foot. Every building I pass down here among the warehouses seems to cry Renovate me! Renovate me! The first time I saw the word Reno in the real estate section I thought it meant the gambling resort. Language is leaving me behind. I hit the corner of King and Spadina, walk north. This used to be where you came to get wholesale clothing, and it still is; but the old Jewish delis are disappearing, replaced by Chinese emporia, wicker furniture, cutwork tablecloths, bamboo wind chimes. Some of the street signs are subtitled in Chinese, multiculturalism on the march, others have Fashion District underneath the names. Everything is a district now. There never used to be districts.