The n-Body Problem

I set up this thing tonight, at the Jubilee Church. Father and son potluck. No ladies. Split the families up. For what? I don’t get it and I don’t care. I’ve seen religious types that are worse. Far worse. All I need now is a son.

I found a bed and breakfast joint. Fancy frilly old house run by a couple real frail birds. Paula and Petra or something like that. One of them paints a lot of birds. There’s framed watercolours all over the house. Robins mostly. Stuff my son could do if I had one. I can hear the girls moving around in the kitchen. They’re quiet. Bird-like. Things are placed silently in drawers. Petra? Is that her name? The mirror in my room is the size of a wall. It’s got this wood frame and feet and it leans. I look derailed today. Hair all jackknifed up and a bright red pattern on my cheek. What is that? Rosacea, I’d say. As if that’s even something I’d worry about. No. I lean in. That’s the impression of a doily. I glance back at the fussy pillow sleeves. The light in this room is like horse piss. Everything is splashing up off the floor, down the walls. Lice on the pillows. No. SARS. Influenza. Maybe. Not today, but chances are at one time. I hate this light. Big enough to cast a buffalo shadow off a cluster fly. Not full spectrum of course, that sort of light is rare. This is stick-on light. Couple years back everything got a feel-better facelift. As if we could trap sunlight in cheerful plastics. Yellow everywhere. And commercials promising a “mood lift” like we could be driving around in Prozac cars. In fact, the colours have a pharmaceutical look, pale orange bars, powder blue bevels. Lots of cream with small red letters. I think the colours in this room predate that, though. This is old-folk cheer. It acts like happy is not going to fly out the window. But it did, didn’t it? Turns out happy was a thing just like everything else and it can leave an entire planet. Thinning and dispersing. All the earth happy, now just cold balls of paper caught in solar winds and comet tails.

“Mr. Cauldwell?”

That’s either Petra or Paula. Am I even remembering those names? I flip open the pill box. Takes me three mouthfuls to get all my meds down. I could tell you what they are, what they are for, but that could all change by later today. You have to keep mind/body/pharma pretty dynamic these days. I can hear the girls’ voices. Little bird noises. This flophouse is a damn birdhouse.

“I’ll be down in sec.”

My belt is twisted at my back. I’m too lazy to fix it. It will pinch the skin all day. I’ve gained some weight. That’s fine. Needing to lose weight is far better than needing to find it again. I’m bigger than the disease. At least for today.

I can smell toast. Going downstairs I straighten a pencil sketch of a hummingbird. The blurry wings are a cheap effect done with an eraser. Looks stupid. At the bottom of the stairs I get a shock. Paula and Petra are Asian. I had to have known that. My chest starts to tighten. It is dangerous to go off-road right this second. It’s a lapse. Just thinking it was one thing and it turns out to be another. I push my back muscles into the leather kink there. I am larger than memory problems. Liver disease can do this. Infections. Autoimmune flare ups. Spinal compression. Are their names even Petra and Paula? I can’t give a fuck.

The ladies step back from me and pause. I sit observed. Toast, no butter, and hardboiled eggs.

“Are you working here today or out?”

It’s a nervy question and I don’t think I’ll say. The other Paula and Petra steps forward to correct.

“We are going out today, so if you need lunch we’ll put it in the fridge.”

There’s a piece of eggshell stabbing below my gum line. Shell and tooth. There are infections of the gums that are fatal. The shell of a bird’s egg is separating the gum from tooth. I smell copper. There’s enough blood in my mouth that I can smell it. I have to excuse myself. I have to find a boy to be my son tonight.

parts.

I cut through some backyards. Not many sidewalks in these small towns. Birdhouses for people line the streets. White doilies and an orange film on windows from days when poison was legal.

The fountain’s dry. I do that. I look for neglected things. Not uncommon to see a flat tire on a new car. And the car just sits there. Dipped like a bad smile. I don’t give a shit about it. The ground is rising and the sky is falling. It’s okay to leave a few things lying around.

The grass is brown. I step onto the main street. Ontario towns look like a plate Lillian Gish keeps on the shelf. When the sun cuts through the drapes, it’s the drapes that light us. She’s probably watching right now. The boy I need to find. The son I should have. I have to borrow a child from the real world tonight. I’ll put him back. Don’t worry.