He stood there on the sidewalk staring at the house for a long time, trying to remember it the way it was, fingering the scrap of paper in his pants pocket.
• • •
DINNER WAS RUINED because Audrey had left it in the oven, waiting for Harold. She kept opening the oven door and looking at the shrivelled roast, adjusting the temperature, and pouring on more red wine. They usually ate at six, when Harold came home. But tonight Harold wasn’t home, and the boys had grown so hungry that they had invaded the kitchen and made themselves two peanut butter and jam sandwiches each and taken them back downstairs. Audrey wasn’t happy, but teenaged boys had to eat.
Every once in a while she glared with loathing at the new TV on her kitchen counter. Its blank, greenish-black face seemed to follow her around the kitchen like something out of the future. And it took up at least two feet of much-needed counter space, which nobody else seemed to consider.
The paternity test kit had arrived the day before—discreetly—in the mail. Eventually, Audrey had gone upstairs and used the bathroom tweezers to pluck some hairs out of Harold’s brush and then dropped them carefully into the envelope provided. Then she went to Dylan’s room and did the same thing, putting his hairs into a second envelope. While she was at it, she’d lifted Dylan’s mattress and counted the pills.
Adding to her stress was the constant flurry of phone calls for Dylan. It wasn’t just girls anymore; now there was some man calling him—it certainly didn’t sound like a boy Dylan’s age—and Dylan had been typically evasive about who it was, saying it was “just a friend.” The day before, after one of these calls, Dylan had gone out. The man had just called for Dylan again, a few minutes ago. She was trying not to leap to the conclusion that it was his drug dealer.
So, when Harold got home shortly after seven, Audrey was ready to take his head off, but she only called out succinctly, the minute his foot was in the door and before he had his coat off, “Dinner’s ready!” She didn’t go to the front door and give him his usual hug, either.
“Sorry I’m late,” Harold said, coming into the kitchen. “Meeting went on forever.”
“Well you’re here now,” she said crisply. “Let’s eat.”
Audrey pulled the desiccated meat out of the oven and banged the metal roasting pan down on top of the stove. They peered down at it. The roast looked as tough as a football and the potatoes resembled blackened golf balls.
“Want me to carve that?” Harold offered warily.
Audrey stepped aside leaving the carcass to him and went to call the boys.
“Ah, pemmican,” Dylan said, eyeing the meat as he sat down at the table.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Audrey said crossly. She said this so frequently that smartass wasn’t considered a swear word in the Walker residence, but it was the first time anyone could remember her saying it at the dinner table.
“It looks great, Mom,” John said. “I’m starving.”
“I’ll have some of that,” Harold said.
Audrey wordlessly handed him the platter of meat and started stabbing a serving spoon into a bowl of peas. As the usual awkward silence began to settle on the table, Harold reached for the remote which he now kept on the table within arm’s reach and flicked the set on to CNN. Audrey had her back to the TV but the rest of them automatically pivoted their necks to look at the screen.
Audrey bleakly ate her meal and watched them watch the television—watched them chew without even noticing what they were eating. She didn’t even try to make conversation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Harold’s first appointment with the philosopher was for five o’clock, so he’d left work a bit early. Earlier that afternoon, Stan had looked over his Action Plan and been stumped, at least for the moment.
“You’re taking anti-depressants?” he asked in surprise.
“Yes,” Harold admitted, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t think they’ve started to work yet though,” he added, in his own defence. He suddenly wondered what it would be like when they did. It could be any time now. Would he wake up smiling, and sing in the shower? Would he laugh at everything, and want to make love to his wife—like the guy in the Viagra commercial? It seemed unlikely. If there was such a pill, everybody would be taking it.
“What kind of exercise?” Stan inquired.
“Stationary bike—we have one at home,” Harold lied.
Stan looked at him skeptically. “Everybody has one of those at home. I have one. I never use it.”
“I’ll use it,” Harold hastened to assure him. “My wife will make me.”
“I don’t understand number three,” Stan said.
Harold leaned over to look. “Is that the self-help books or the philosopher?”
“Seeing a philosopher,” Stan read out loud. “Don’t you mean seeing a psychologist?”
“No, a philosopher.”
“But we don’t have any of those in the Employee Assistance Program. You must mean a psychiatrist.”
“No, a philosopher,” Harold said, starting to sweat. He would do almost anything to avoid dissection by a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Harold’s idea of philosophy was that it was an abstract discussion about nothing in particular, and therefore, perfectly safe.
“What good will that do?”
“I’m not sure,” Harold admitted, “but I’d like to give it a try.” Stan stared at him. “I’m motivated,” Harold added for good measure.
“Do you even know any philosophers?” Stan asked.
“There’s one at U of T,” Harold explained. “Flexible hours. Reasonable rates,” he added, and then found he had nothing further to say, because beyond that, he had no idea what seeing a philosopher was all about.
“So, you’ll be paying for this,” Stan clarified, “out of your own pocket.”
Harold nodded. Surely that showed that he meant to improve.
Stan sighed testily and said, “Sounds crazy to me, but I suppose I can’t stop you.” He stood up and said, “Let’s give it a few weeks, and then reassess.” His wife wouldn’t be happy, but what could he do? He couldn’t force Harold to take disability leave, not on what he had. His hands were tied.
Harold had been almost limp with relief.
Now Harold got off the subway at Bedford. Being back in the vicinity of the University of Toronto again made him feel old. It had changed so much since he was there as a student that he hardly recognized the place.
At last he found the office he sought, on an upper floor of the OISE building, in the counselling department. The door to the office was closed, and taped to it was an enlarged copy of the famous Peanuts cartoon of Lucy lounging at a kiosk with a sign that read The doctor is in. Advice 5¢. Only doctor was crossed out and the word philosopher was inserted above it.
Harold took a seat, realizing that he was early. The waiting room was empty. There were other offices down the hall; a common waiting area just off the elevators served them all. Harold wondered if all the offices contained philosophers.
The elevator doors slid apart and another man came in and dejectedly took a seat opposite Harold. He was dark skinned, younger than Harold, with long, wiry hair; his big brown eyes looked sad and harassed. He was hunched over as if the weight of the world was pressing on his thin shoulders.
“Are you here to see a philosopher?” Harold asked impulsively after a few minutes.
The man nodded. “I’m early,” he said, looking at his watch and smiling forlornly.
“Me too.”
“My name’s Sayed,” he said, holding out his hand.
Harold shook his hand. “Harold.”
“My cousin’s been kidnapped—back home in Iraq,” he explained, “and my family wants me to come up with ten thousand dollars. us.”
“Oh,” Harold said.
“Everyone back home thinks that because I’m in Canada, I’m therefore rich. They think I just have to go into my spacious backyard and pluck us dollars off a tree.”
Harold could o
nly smile politely.
“I actually live in a small apartment, on the tenth floor.” Sayed sighed heavily. “It’s the second kidnapping in my family this year. The first one didn’t turn out so well, even though we paid the full ransom.”
Harold was appalled at the implications of didn’t turn out so well.
“What happened?” Harold asked, clearing his throat, not wanting to know and yet wanting to know.
“Oh! Ahmed struggled when they tried to cut off one of his fingers— by accident they chopped off three at once with the cleaver.”
Harold raised his hand to his mouth and bit down on his knuckles.
“This so enraged the kidnappers that they chopped off his baby finger and his thumb too.” Sayed threw his arms up in a gesture of disgust. “Now Ahmed is back, but with no fingers on his right hand. He’s useless!”
Harold could only stare in horror.
“After this, any more kidnappings . . .” He shook his head, and added with resignation, “I have a very large extended family.” He looked at Harold with his sad brown eyes and said, “Why are you here?”
After hearing Sayed’s story, Harold felt he couldn’t simply say he was depressed and anxious, that he felt his life was pointless. To his own surprise he found himself confessing, “The dead speak to me.”
“Yeah?” Sayed perked up. “Really?”
Harold nodded.
“Do you think you could get my brother Amir for me?”
“Uh—I don’t think so,” Harold stammered.
“My favourite brother. He had a terrible death,” Sayed said, shaking his head dolefully. “He—”
Just then a tall, long-haired, bearded young man emerged from the elevator. He was wearing jeans and carrying a heavy backpack. He pulled out some keys and opened the door to the office with the Lucy cartoon, while looking over his shoulder at the two men perched apprehensively in the waiting room. “Harold?” he said.
Harold stood up.
He followed the philosopher, who introduced himself as Will Bausch, into the small, windowless office. There were books everywhere, by people that even Harold had heard of—Socrates, Plato, Hegel, Nietzsche—as well as many others he hadn’t. In addition to the books, there were cheap busts of varying sizes all over the place, which Harold assumed were likenesses of the people who’d written the books, and not one of which he could have put a name to. He could only recognize busts of people like Elvis, and maybe Beethoven. The philosopher flung his knapsack into a corner and sat down at his desk, bumping his knee against it and causing one of the heads on the desk to land face first in a pile of papers.
Harold was terribly intimidated. Looking more closely at Will, who appeared—at least in this setting—to live and breathe philosophy, Harold observed the physiognomy of the intelligent man—the high forehead, the piercing eyes full of lively inquiry (and yet he was almost ridiculously young)—and was absolutely petrified.
Will said, smiling, “So. Tell me what’s troubling you, Harold, and we’ll see what the great thinkers throughout history have had to say about it.”
When Harold found himself speechless, Will said encouragingly, “There probably isn’t a problem you have that hasn’t been experienced in some form by others—perhaps by millions of people. There is no human problem that isn’t, at least in some way, universal.”
When you put it that way, it didn’t seem so bad, Harold thought. Also, he was much more comfortable with the universal than with the personal. But he still wasn’t going to divulge anything to this stranger. He was here because he had to see somebody, or else Stan would make him go through the Employee Assistance Program. He wasn’t here because he actually thought it would help.
Harold, when he felt threatened, usually retreated into silence, which is what he did now. It was not easy to draw him out.
“Perhaps,” the young philosopher said, “you don’t know precisely what your problem is?”
Harold remained tight-lipped, even grim.
“Many of us are unhappy and have no idea why,” Will said. “Of course it’s a bit easier if there’s a specific problem, a specific cause. Then at least you know what you’re dealing with.” He paused, looked inquiringly at Harold.
But Harold was not going to give him any help.
“Unhappiness is a very big subject,” Will said. When Harold still didn’t say anything, the philosopher settled deeper into his chair and said, “Well, maybe we could start with a general overview.”
• • •
ALTHOUGH HIS MOTHER seemed to have gone, Harold knew there were others hovering, gathering strength until they could break through. He heard murmurs, whispers. He recognized a troubling heaviness in the air, as if there were someone standing right next to him, too close. Harold would fling his arms out, but there was never anything there, nothing he could touch, anyway. He had no way of knowing who these spirits were, or how many there were, or what they wanted with him. He was angry at his mother. It seemed to him that she had invited these disturbed souls into his home and his life, leaving him to deal with it all by himself. Which, Harold realized, was just like his mother.
He had no idea how to contact her. He didn’t have his mother’s skill in summoning spirits; he was only on the receiving end. Harold seemed to go through life on the receiving end. He was in the awkward position of a host who doesn’t know how to ask a group of unwanted guests—whose mere presence seemed a veiled threat—to leave.
Needless to say, he was jumpy. If somebody dropped something, he started. A knock at the front door was enough to launch him out of his La-Z-Boy. If he heard a voice from somewhere beyond his peripheral vision, he whipped his head around, making his neck crack.
It had reached the point where Audrey was careful to approach him only from the front, as if he were a large, nervous animal. She’d seen him flailing his arm around in the air at nothing. She wondered worriedly when the drugs were going to kick in. She could tell Harold wasn’t sleeping well, just by looking at him. Was that a side effect? She wished she’d read the packaging insert about side effects of the anti-depressants, but Harold had shredded it before she’d had the chance. He hadn’t wanted the neighbours knowing he was on drugs, he’d said.
“You could have waited till I read it,” Audrey had pointed out.
“I read it,” Harold had said—as if that was sufficient!
Audrey wondered if it was his birthday—a couple of days away— that was putting him on edge. It was almost as if he thought he’d drop dead the day he turned forty-nine, just because his father had died at the age of forty-nine, but that was a little ridiculous. The doctor had said that Harold’s heart was absolutely sound.
On the other hand, Audrey had heard of people in primitive tribes who, when cursed by a witch doctor, for example, would drop dead simply because they were convinced that they were going to die. But—looking strenuously on the bright side—she really didn’t think Harold’s mind was that powerful.
Just in case, she decided to put a call in to Dr. Goldfarb and see what he had to say.
• • •
HAROLD MADE THE pilgrimage a second time to the house on his old street. He stood once more on the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street, and stared dumbly. That had been his bedroom window; there was the front room where his mother had held her séances, the heavy curtains always carefully drawn shut for the occasion. That was another sound Harold now remembered, for the first time in years— the sound of the curtains closing, like a clutch at his heart. Inside, he knew, was the staircase on the right-hand side, with the landing halfway up. From the landing, you could see the closed double doors to the front room, overhear things.
He finally realized why he was here. He wanted to talk to his mother. For all his earlier avoidance, he now wanted to talk to her, urgently. He still didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but he needed her to get the rest of them to leave. If she wasn’t at his place, maybe she was here.
It was the dinner hour; it w
as already dark. A light rain began to fall, beading on his coat. He needed to get closer. He crossed the street and stood in front of the house with his hand on the wrought iron gate, debating whether to knock on the front door and ask if he could come in and look around. Tell the lady of the house that he’d grown up in this house and that he’d like to see the place again, for old times’ sake. He wouldn’t mention his mother.
He realized that it would be an intrusion, that she was probably busy making dinner. It didn’t occur to him that she might think he was a mental patient. It certainly didn’t cross his mind that she might think he was a peeping Tom. He was too absorbed in his own thoughts to consider how he might appear to someone else. He’d been so well behaved all his life—his innermost thoughts so pedestrian— that he’d scarcely ever attracted an odd glance. He’d never so much as leered at anyone.
He stared fixedly at his bedroom window, and suddenly he remembered exactly what it was like—forty years simply fell away— to sit cross-legged on his single bed, with its old brown chenille bedspread, trying to read. He remembered the smell of the pages of his Hardy Boys books—how he loved them!—and how there was never quite enough light from the lamp on the wall above his bed because it couldn’t take more than a forty watt bulb. When he looked up from his place on the bed he could see the branches of the tree outside his bedroom window. But he tried not to look up; he tried to lose himself in the safe and familiar world of Frank and Joe Hardy—those brave boys. They were so much braver than he was. But then, they had only practical, tangible mysteries to deal with.
Harold now remembered one particular evening. He remembered sitting on his bed with his book, and the dreaded sound of the front door opening, and his mother’s voice, blending with another woman’s. Then he heard them go into the front room, and heard the doors shut firmly behind them. It was quiet for a long time, as if his mother wasn’t having any luck, and then Harold heard the chandelier begin to shake, and he had to start back at the beginning of his paragraph.