The World Afloat Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Part One

  Young Man with Leaflets

  Tanya’s Muffins

  How the Summer Wash Deserts Us

  The Day Is Old Enough to Have Complications

  A True Story about Normal Circumstances Including Some Insane Footage

  Everyone’s Life Is a Labyrinth

  A Frothy Moment Keeps the World Afloat

  The State

  A Noise in the World

  When the Last Straw Is a Tomato

  We Appreciate Him Now

  His Trouble

  Couple Sucks Same Candy

  Juliet Nearly Succumbs

  Bit Part / Twin Peaks

  Nothing Could Be More Like Life Than What We Were Watching

  He Could Be Droll

  Autumn Idyll

  Steak Soup

  The Freshest Look Is an Odd Shape

  Orange as a Ball

  Some of the Many Reasons

  The Times Felt Like Doctoring

  Feathers, Dirt, Bugs

  The Moment Contracts

  Part Two

  Otherwise a Blank Canvas

  No Kidding!

  Espresso

  Geese Like Carpet Bombers

  Wanting Cake

  White Sheet over Old Idea

  How Wondering Is Essential

  How the Lighthouse Meant Something

  How Some Rewrite Their Epic Poems

  How Time Expands

  How She Rations Herself

  How Mixture Causes Relationships

  How I Was Wearing the Hood That Day

  White Suit / Far-Off Reality

  Meetings That Mattered

  Say the Words

  Country Life

  Canary

  Pause and Repeat

  Jackie’s Little Town

  This Was Not Supposed to Happen

  Out of Order

  In Vain

  Nobody’s Going to Sleep Tonight

  Today’s Forecast

  Part Three

  Chickens and Us

  Last Amphibian Flees Calgary Airport

  Smooth

  Along the Way

  Our Spiritual Lives

  Once Again

  The Favoured Form

  Back Then

  Nearly There

  Story Interruptus

  An Outpouring of Generous Abandonment

  We’re Having a Foxy Time Where Everyone Gets Dressed Up

  Local Gossip

  Her Advice

  An Interesting Woman

  Private Life

  Bulletin

  Over

  Things Blowing Over

  The Smart Jam Is in Finance

  The Logic of a Dream

  The Prayer We Prefer

  The Americans Will Not Save You for Christmas

  The Rockets of It

  The Next Story

  Acknowledgements

  Also by M.A.C. Farrant

  For Bill and Anna

  A day of prodigious beauty – clouds, like the inside of your head explained.

  – James Tate

  Part One

  Tick Tock

  He was walking down the street.

  He dropped dead.

  He was a watchmaker.

  Which street?

  Young Man with Leaflets

  The young man standing at my front door offers to safeguard my heart. “I already have a couple of people doing that,” I tell him. “One of them is out back, sharpening the axe.”

  I know he wants me to commit to his superhero for the next fifty years. But I already have a superhero.

  “Her bra size,” I say, “is three times larger than a normal woman’s and she has this incredible desire to dress like a slut. A lot of men don’t like her because she’s so stunning and monumental. Girls and women,” I add, “tend not to be interested in overly muscled guys with thick necks and big chains beating each other up. Is your superhero one of those?”

  “Jesus Christ!” he says.

  “Well, mine’s such an icon,” I say. “She’s just like Marilyn Monroe. Women dress up like her for Halloween and at conventions. Do you dress up like yours?”

  He doesn’t get to answer because the phone rings, Bizzy barks, my superhero shoots through the door in her blue satin shorts, and Manny Moss comes round the side of the house swinging his axe.

  The sun flickers like it is shorting out and the young man backs away. The scene is a bit funny in a conceptual kind of way. I think, Here is a moment of perfection, one where you want everything to stop.

  Tanya’s Muffins

  I was having a really intense time with Parker, constantly taking my clothes off. I didn’t have an issue with this because his family was going through some heavy counselling. So it felt like being naked in his office was helpful for reducing his stress.

  “Tanya,” he said, “don’t expect deep messages or metaphors from me. It is what it is. It’s a ride.”

  I was okay with that. I got to sort of pop in and pop out and that was great and very relaxing. I thought, Probably the best mindset is to think of this as a project; just whittle away at it and see where it goes.

  So every day I’d deliver muffins to the pretty little secretaries and then visit Parker in his office. And every day he’d pull out his spring-loaded measuring thing and we’d measure away for twenty minutes or so.

  But then he was like, “This is terrible, this is horrible.” He was really choked, right? And all I’d done for something new was put my sword on his desk.

  The secretaries frickin’ loved it. They were like little brown birds that had been shoved from the feeder and this touched me deeper than skin.

  The sword’s a ceremonial one from the U.S. Naval Academy. It’s delicate, meant to impress, and is usually worn with a dress uniform. But I’m not trying to make people think or feel. I just like the way the sword goes so good with my tits.

  How the Summer Wash Deserts Us

  Fall arrives and the summer wash prepares for its annual migration. Bathing suits, towels, light dresses, and shirts unhook themselves from clotheslines. They become agitated like birds. And rebellious, deciding where and when they’ll be hung. From the trees near the beach, it turns out. You can catch them but it’s a wasted effort.

  Because when the rains come, the wash heads north for the frozen shores of Labrador. That’s something to watch – shirts flapping towards the far horizon, dresses gliding alongside.

  But wait! Their departure signals the return of the wash from Ecuador. We’d forgotten about that, about the pink and yellow socks that will soon be wintering on our lines, their cheerfulness hauling us through another dark season.

  The Day Is Old Enough to Have Complications

  In the morning there are eyelid kisses and Uncle Roger saying, “Let’s visit spring today.” And we’ll go to the mall and stand beside tables filled with colourful tank tops from China and just inhale the smell.

  But best are the shoe stores. That’s where you hear girl clerks asking why Brandon and Jerome aren’t more important than discount shoes, or hear long conversations about love and the problems with Father.

  There’s a belief here that those who die shopping return to the mall as ghosts. On sale days you can see them creeping about at night as if it were a dark, smoking wood.

  The bored clerks stationed in The Bay’s menswear department know this. That’s where old men in beige slacks go to die. It’s where we’re headed now, Uncle Roger having developed a sudden interest in tube socks.

  A True Story about Normal Circumstances Including Some Insane Footage

  I’m notorious for doing things. One of my challenges is to be not boring. It’s like you
are real but only if you’re interesting enough to keep people awake. Otherwise, you might as well work in a nursing home.

  It’s naive to think you deserve to be where you are. It could go away real fucking fast. People come apart and shit happens. Then all of a sudden that thing you thought would last forever goes away and you’ve got the dead eyes of a zombie.

  So to help people out I organize this annual event, this zombie walk after-party basically. Hundreds of zombies wander downtown and then they just shamble about mindlessly. I look at it, like, half-life can be difficult, so I’ve added some wonderful heartfelt elements for the zombies to engage with, such as gas-filled buzzards and neck and shoulder massage.

  For years and years there were limitations on what the zombies could do. It was, like, “Nope, no acting weird on city streets.” But times now are a bit brighter and shinier. Now it’s more like, “Oh, we like the community feel of where you have come to.”

  Mainly, though, I want the zombies to be real, but only if they’re positive. So I kind of do want them to fake it if they’re feeling negative. I don’t want to show zombies as pissed off. Maybe if we keep that perspective we’ll be like clouds today, almost like a birthday.

  And, yes, that is a small Asian woman in a birdcage.

  Everyone’s Life Is a Labyrinth

  There are many corners to turn. This is something people are doing: turning corners. You have to turn a corner if you want to move on.

  I don’t remember how I came to turn the corner leading to Glenda’s party. But hanging up my coat I noticed three perfect cabbages growing on the back wall of the closet. I reasoned that cabbage seeds had been shat there by a closet-flying bird of some sort. I remember wondering if the cabbages were a sign that I would soon be moving on.

  I did, but only to the kitchen where Glenda pulled open the cutlery drawer to show me what was inside: several large, clean, white potatoes sitting on a cushion of dirt. Each potato was attached to the dirt by a potato umbilical cord. That makes sense, I remember thinking, and also that each potato was a singular and exquisite object. I wanted one of those potatoes badly.

  But before I could offer Glenda the dried tangerine in my purse in exchange for a potato, I turned another corner and moved into her living room where three elderly musicians were leaning against the wall complaining about their hearing aids. “Only eighty percent reception at best,” said the one dressed in black. The musicians were attached by a nest of cords to a large sound system. I understood there would be no more turning corners for them.

  I think it was then that I noticed the live tomatoes hanging like streamers from the ceiling and came to understand that at Glenda’s party umbilical cords were everywhere, like a theme. And that they were feeding the living, the live potatoes, and even me because something was tugging on my arm.

  It was then I remembered my dog. He was attached to me by a lead made of wool. Or perhaps I was attached to him. In any case, my dog was made entirely of brown wool – little trotting feet, little ears.

  I have my dog, I remember thinking, and together we will turn another corner and reach somewhere else. I can’t remember if I was also made of wool but I felt sure we were moving in the right direction.

  A Frothy Moment Keeps the World Afloat

  Thin frowns at the black sky outside the kitchen window. You can’t tell which is blacker – Thin’s face or the sky.

  So I say lightly, “Compared to the little hairy thing I just shooed out the door, I’m a big bald thing.”

  “Not bald enough,” Thin says, hinting of paradise lost.

  He wears rue to the dinner table like an old black coat.

  In high school I majored in perkiness and keeping your mister happy and keeping the moment frothy so I know what to do.

  We’re eating sausages, salad, raw broccoli, celery. For dessert I’ve planned one chocolate cookie apiece.

  “Guess what?” I say, putting my training to work. “There’s a surprise in your salad!”

  “I hope it’s lysergic acid,” Thin says, and begins poking through his lettuce. He looks like a bored boy pulling apart a birthday cake for dimes. What he finds are the surprise cashews.

  The candles flicker in merriment if not in transcendence.

  Unlike me, Thin is hairy. I have a bald, pinched little face that I’ve learned to thrust bravely forward. Sometimes I can even make it grin at Thin, like now.

  The State

  I have always taken pride in my defensive manoeuvres but Thursday morning I was caught off guard. Dwain was suddenly standing before me in the mall looking bad. I hadn’t noticed his approach because I’d been transfixed by a 70% Off Everything sign. So I caught the state from Dwain. He said he hadn’t slept a wink the night before and saying this was enough to infect me. That’s how this state begins, through airborne words.

  For a while I thought I might have escaped the state. Even when Sherry giggled and pulled off the bedcovers I thought this was true. But the state was in its incubation stage. And I knew I was in trouble when for no reason my thrust got sore. One moment it was fine, the next, raw as a rash. So I said to Sherry, “Slow down, my thrust is sore,” and with a grunt she slid to the far side of the bed. I lay there and thought, Fuck, I would be staring at the walls for hours now; the sound of no sound was going to be loud.

  Around midnight the state went to my head. Every stupid, heartless thing I’d ever done took up residence there. All the lies and deceits, every pathetic bid for attention filled me with disgust.

  By two forty the state overtook me completely. I turned grey and did the Swedish belching thing. Thinking everything in life is worth precisely as much as a belch is what the Swedish belching thing is all about.

  A second night of the state can be hell. Dwain was probably experiencing the aftermath of night two when I had seen him at the mall. He’d shrunk in size and looked crushed, burned, and sawed.

  So here is the situation. Tonight I can expect to lie in bed like a skeleton and await the flesh and sinew of demons to clothe me. Sherry will be wearing her sleep mask and earplugs and lying as far away from me as possible while I will be lost in the dark, unfathomable rooms of my soul. And my thrust will still be sore. But around daybreak I’m hoping the state will subside. This is because I’ll be spending the night practising a rigorous antidote. This consists of nothing more than developing my determination that I never become so lost I get religious. I will repeat this thought over and over like a mantra. It’s the insomniac’s best defence.

  A Noise in the World

  Being October the dinner party theme was dead leaves and orange candles.

  I was sitting across the table from Scott, my handsome neighbour and host. Beneath the table, and out of sight, Scott was massaging my right foot, which I’d placed in his lap as a party gift. And while he was massaging my foot, and paying particular attention to the base of my big toe, which was causing waves of pleasure to flood my brain, his wife, Lori – she’s an artist in wool – was showing off the latest sweater she had knit. It was off-white in colour and had a design of off-white leaves that were raised and nubbly.

  “The sweater,” she said, “is like bas-relief sculpture only the medium is wool not stone. My work is a noise in the world.”

  And everyone admired her noise.

  I was thinking, while still enjoying the foot massage and registering that Scott had moved on to my instep, which he was kneading like a slab of bread dough, I was thinking that we all go through the same dramas, we look in the mirror and say, What happened? Once we had muscles and slowly they deteriorate, which meant that I was actually observing how we were all pretty old at the party despite the distracting jewellery and the cleavage and the exercised bodies everyone had.

  Then, as if to counter my unexpressed thought and to keep the world afloat a little longer, Lori asked me to retell an amusing story I had told on a previous visit and everyone looked at me thirstily. But because of the foot massage that was still in progress my mind went
blank and I couldn’t remember how the story went. It was something about Mother feeding me moods in her kitchen, or maybe it was Scotch and cigarettes.

  I was puzzling over this when Scott, with his significant great qualities, indicated by a squeeze of my heel that I would soon be delivered of mental struggle. So I said, “Perhaps if I went home for a copy of the story I could read it to you,” knowing full well that squirrels and possibly wild rabbits would be prowling the suburban streets that lead to my house and that Scott might offer to protect me on the walk, which is exactly what he did.

  Needless to say blood rushed everywhere then, especially when I was putting on my shoes and coat and watching Scott grab his high-powered flashlight. Anticipation, you could say, lit up the mud room as if someone had stuck a finger in my eye and I was seeing, not the faces of my friends, but fairy lights.

  And then it occurred to me as we were saying goodbye and telling everyone we wouldn’t be long, that the universe wanted to be tough for Scott and me. It was a special kind of exhilarating toughness, and there was no better feeling. A feeling so emotional and stark it left me believing I could even seduce a mirror. A feeling like I was a fifty-nine-year-old woman newly returned from studying with Sigmund Freud and now I knew everything.

  When the Last Straw Is a Tomato

  There was a turkey dinner with everyone in the living room waiting, including four babies and seven kids. Elaine and Axel were in the kitchen getting things ready. As usual, Axel had delegated Elaine to make the green salad, which caused her to feel, she said, so seventy-nine, which is exactly what she was. But she made the salad because Axel was making everything else. He always did.

  “No one wants salad at a turkey dinner,” she often said. “It’s all about turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, and the big man getting the praise.”

  She’d pushed her walker to the fridge and got the lettuce and started tearing it apart at the counter and filling the salad bowl. Then Axel, who was making gravy and had one of her striped tea towels stuck in the front of his pants as an apron, kept on at her about when was she going to add the tomatoes to the salad.