Humber Literary Review: vol. 10, issue 1

$7.95

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 spring + summer 2022

REBECC A MORRIS , ANNE WALK , & MOLLY MCC ARRON // emerging writers fiction contest winners NABEN RUTHNUM // interview K AR AN K APOOR & C ATHERINE LEWIS // poetry LESLIE ALE X ANDER & DORIS CORCESE // essays NONI K AUR // art PA SC AL GIR ARD // comics

PROFESSIONAL WRITING AND COMMUNICATIONS POSTGRADUATE CERTIFICATE

Featuring a third semester, industry-connected internship

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 spring + summer 2022

CONTENTS FROM THE EDITORS

3

// FICTION 4 14 MOLLY MCCARRON 23 JEN BATLER 36

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI 42 LYNDA WILLIAMS 50 REBECCA MORRIS

ANNE WALK

Exercises Au Subjonctif Sweepers Corpse Reviver Lost and Found at the Museum for Broken Relationships Godspeed The Least Interesting Thing

// POETRY KARAN KAPOOR MARK TRUSCOTT CATHERINE LEWIS SHANNAN MANN

9 18 26 40

A Mosaic of My Father Like for my husband on Father’s Day For Another

// ESSAYS 10 Booty Call 19 Next of Kin TAMARA JONG 33 Saint, Fears. Fathers, Origins: A Diptych EMILY WILLAN 45 Living the Hobbit Life LESLIE ALEXANDER DORIS CORCESE

// COMICS PASCAL GIRARD

32 [Five Comics]

INTERVIEWS // REVIEWS NABEN RUTHNUM REVIEWS

54 [Interview] 58

JAMEELA GREEN RUINS EVERYTHING

WINTER RECIPES FROM THE COLLECTIVE

UNREST

CONTRIBUTORS NONI KAUR

NINA SIMONE’S GUM

62 64 [Featured Artist]

MASTHEAD PUBLISHER John Stilla EDITORS Eufemia Fantetti D.D. Miller FICTION EDITORS Sarah Feldbloom Kelly Harness Matthew Harris Alyson Renaldo ESSAYS EDITOR Leanne Milech GUEST POETRY EDITOR Tyler Pennock INTERVIEWS EDITOR Meaghan Strimas REVIEWS EDITOR Angelo Muredda ART/ILLUSTRATIONS EDITOR Cole Swanson COMICS EDITOR Christian Leveille COPY EDITORS Tanya d’Anger Alireza Jafari Amy Ladouceur Kristin Valois Suzanne Zelazo PROOFREADER Claire Majors

The Humber Literary Review, Volume 10 Issue 1 Copyright © May 2022 The Humber Literary Review All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission.

All copyright for the material included in The Humber Literary Review remains with the contributors, and any requests for permission to reprint their work should be referred to them.

The Humber Literary Review c/o The Department of English Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning 205 Humber College Blvd.

Toronto, ON M9W 5L7 humberliteraryreview.com Literary Magazine.

ISSN 2292-7271 Layout and Design by Kilby Smith-McGregor Cover Image and Portfolio by Noni Kaur The Humber Literary Review is a product of the Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning’s Department of English Printed and bound in Canada

by Paper Sparrow Printing on FSC-certified paper Opinions and statements in the publication attributed to named authors do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning or its Department of English.

DESIGNER Kilby Smith-McGregor

ADVISORY Vera Beletzan Senior Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning, Humber College Bronwyn Drainie Former Editor-in-Chief of the Literary Review of Canada; author Alison Jones Publisher, Quill & Quire Joe Kertes Dean Emeritus, Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts; author Antanas Sileika Former Director, Humber School for Writers; author Nathan Whitlock Program Coordinator, Creative Book Publishing Program; author

FRONT COVER

| NONI KAUR

PLASMIC PLAY, 18” x 24” (VARIABLE), MIXED MEDIA ON MYLAR, 2020 PHOTO CREDIT: JASON CARREIRO

Image courtesy of the artist.

FROM THE EDITORS IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT COVID-19 WOULD FIND ITS WAY INTO THE SUBMISSIONS WE RECEIVED. Two years in, writers have been grappling with the pandemic, and the results of that are evident in a few of the creative nonfiction pieces in this issue.

In her essay “Living the Hobbit Life,” Emily Willan describes how the latest coronavirus “descended like a cloud out of Mordor,” shrinking everyone’s world to “hobbit-sized.” But Willan, who is disabled, explains that her life has always been hobbit-sized, noting how little her life has changed over the previous two years. Powerfully, she describes how the pandemic has acted as an equalizer in many ways and builds her essay around the thesis that “there’s strength for all in living small.” While acknowledging the significant negative impacts that COVID-19 has had, there is a central hopeful expectation in the piece that we will not return to the inequities that existed prior to the pandemic. She expresses hope that we will “take courage in the face of the circumstances [we] did not choose” and that a new, fairer “normal” will emerge when all is said and done.

Thinking of hope for a better future: this issue is built around the six pieces selected as winners and honourable mentions in our biennial Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, judged this year by Zoe Whittall.

Of the winner—Rebecca Morris’s “Exercises Au Subjonctif”—Whittall writes that that the story features “clear, beautiful writing,” noting the “strong arc and point-of-view” in the moving tale about a former student teacher returning for an interview at a school where a traumatizing experience occurred.

Haudenosaunee writer Anne Walk’s pseudo sci-fi “Sweepers” is, also in Whittall’s analysis, a “weird but

grounded” tale about someone’s first day at a brutally morbid job—a strange premise told with a strong, consistent style in a clear voice. Finally, our third-place story, “Corpse Reviver” by Molly McCarron, is an “interesting slice of life” describing pivotal events in the life of an expat living in Russia shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

As usual, other themes emerge unexpectedly as well.

In the deeply personal “Saints, Fears. Fathers, Origins: A Diptych,” Tamara Jong juxtaposes her breaking away from the Jehovah’s Witness faith with her mother’s separation from her father, while poems by Karan Kapoor and Catherine Lewis are addressed to fathers. Beyond these tenuous thematic connections, the poems in this issue are varied in form and approach from the beautifully imagistic to the confessional. For that, we have our guest poetry editor Tyler Pennock to thank!

And, of course, the issue looks fantastic! We’re delighted to feature freshly translated comic excerpts from Pascal Girard, and Noni Kaur’s stunning, vivid artwork is the perfect visual accompaniment to our spring/summer issue.

Finally, we have the difficult task of saying goodbye to members of our editorial team: poetry editor Bardia Sinaee and interviews editor Meaghan Strimas. While a fairly recent addition to The HLR, Bardia was brilliant as our poetry editor, and we will miss his thoughtful selections. Meaghan’s influence and importance to this publication are well known: after stepping away as long-time editor, we were delighted to have her serve as interviews editor. She’s not gone far though, because she will be leading Humber’s brand-new Bachelor of Creative and Professional Writing program. We wish both of them the best of luck in their new endeavours and thank them for their significant contributions!

Best wishes, The HLR Collective

REBECCA MORRIS // 4

REBECCA MORRIS

MICROBEADS, 18” x 24”, MIXED MEDIA, INKS ON PAPER, 2020 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JASON CARREIRO

Image courtesy of the artist.

C W: contains references to guns in schools.

T

his bus driver is an asshole. First there was the creepy way he checked out Francine as she climbed on board, winking one pale blue eye and leering his Bonjour. Now he’s driving like a psychopath, the bus lurching forward at each green light, braking lastsecond at the reds. Francine has to clutch her phone so it doesn't fly out of her hands. She makes a mental note of his driver number. Once she's back home safe, she’ll email Service à la clientèle and get this fucker fired.

The driver takes the corner onto Sherbrooke too fast, the tires riding up onto the sidewalk and then dropping hard so her molars crack together. If the worst happens, if this bus tips over, she'll brace herself against the seat, grab that metal pole and hang on tight. That little red hammer next to the window will be within arm’s reach—she’ll use it to crack the glass and then kick out the window with the heel of her boot—she’s been working out, she can do it. Or—plan B—if the bus winds up on its side she’ll clamber over to the escape hatch, pull the lever and shove her way to freedom.

She takes a deep breath and looks down at her clenched hands in her lap, folds them together to hide her fingernails. Last night she filed down the bitten edges and painted her nails in preparation for today’s job interview. The colour was a mistake, a silvery taupe called “moleskin” that blends too well with her sallow skin so it looks like she doesn't have nails at all, like she’s wrapped Band-Aids around each fingertip. That would have been a good idea, actually. This pale polish only highlights her inflamed cuticles, shiny and weeping where she’s gnawed at the tender skin.

“You're lucky you don't scar easily,” her grandmother told her the last time she drew blood, when she bit too deep into the side of her thumb while they were watching the news. Mémé has never noticed the neat

REBECCA MORRIS // 5

EXERCISES AU SUBJONCTIF

REBECCA MORRIS // 6

parallel lines running up Francine’s thighs, the faint iridescent marks along the inside of her forearm.

She straightens the long wool skirt over her legs, smoothing her damp palms over the nubby grey fabric. She bought a suit last year after she graduated from McGill but it doesn’t fit anymore, the padded shoulders of the blazer drooping off her shrunken frame, the waistband gapping at her puckered waist. Today she’s making do with an H&M blouse tucked into a Sally Ann skirt. Mémé ironed the blouse last night while Francine hovered nervously behind her, watching as the liver-spotted hands pressed and straightened the cheap satin, steam hissing dangerously every time she lifted the iron off the table.

“You don’t have to do this,” Mémé told her, lifting the trailing ribbons of the pussy-cat bow off the linoleum floor. “We’re getting by.” Francine hasn’t told her that the pharmacy’s raised the prices for her medications. With the onset of her student loan repayments, she won’t be able to keep up, even working double

What's your philosophy on classroom management? Why did you decide to become a teacher?

and triple shifts at the IGA. Besides, how can she justify working checkout when she’s got her teaching qualifications? It’s been six months since she finished her practicum at Mountainside High, six months of stocking shelves at the neighbourhood grocery while her fellow McGill graduates scored full-time positions at schools around Montreal. It’s time she got back on track.

The bus jolts to a stop in front of a used bookstore and a man in a black hoodie climbs aboard, taps a tattered wallet against the card reader. Francine tenses as he staggers down the aisle, swaying from side to side as the bus picks up speed. Straggly blond hair leaks from the bottom of his hood. His bloodshot eyes scan the crowded bus for a place to sit down.

He hesitates when he sees her sitting alone but Francine shifts over to block the outside seat, setting her backpack in the space by the window. If he even hints at making a move, she’ll scream. Her self-defense

lessons come back to her: Go for the eyes, the nose, the throat. Groin kick, elbow strike. She should have bought that bear spray when she saw it on sale at Canadian Tire. Instead she hooks her keys out of her jacket pocket, clutches them so he can see the metal bristling between her fingers. Poised, she side-eyes him from behind her dollar-store sunglasses, ready to drag the jagged edges down his scowling face.

After a long moment he moves on and she lets herself exhale. Once her heart slows down, she lifts the faux-leather flap of her satchel and peeks inside at the print-outs in their page protectors: the Mountainside emails about the French position they need to fill, a copy of her CV, the list she found online of common interview questions. She’s been rehearsing her answers for days. Some of them are straightforward: How will you incorporate technology in the classroom?

How do you modify lessons for students with learning differences? Others made her stammer and pause when Mémé read them out loud in her encouraging quaver: What’s your philosophy on classroom management?

Why did you decide to become a teacher?

She taps her fingers on the page and stares out the bus window at the broken jack-o’-lanterns scattered along the sidewalk, their orange flesh disintegrating into piles of wet leaves. She thinks about the framed photo Mémé keeps on the mantel, five-year-old Francine distributing handwritten report cards to an obedient class of stuffed animals. Then, twenty years later, the fizzing exhilaration of her first lesson at Mountainside, helping bent-headed teenagers fill in the grammar worksheets she’d created. The French department head had made a point of stopping her in the hallway afterwards. “Bien fait, Francine,” he’d told her, smiling his approval. “See how well you fit in around here?”

A

t Vendôme station she stands alone, presses her back against the concrete of the tunnel wall. As the screen counts down the minutes until the metro pulls in, she scans the faces of the people around her, bracing for the suicide attempt, the crazed commuter who’ll fling their body down onto the dirty metal tracks—or will it be murder? Who’s looking twitchy, ready to shove an innocent bystander into the metro’s path? That glowering hipster with the hundred-dollar headphones clamped over his ears, the old lady in the moth-eaten fur coat, muttering under her breath?

Francine watches warily until the train comes howling down the tracks, filling the tunnel with bright noise.

The doors slide open and she waits for everyone else to move before she darts on board. The train is

S

he has to buzz into the school. A new security system has been installed since last spring, and she leans forward to repeat her name into the square silver speaker, raising a tentative hand to the glass dome of the overhead camera. “Francine Dion. Here for the job interview?” She hates the way her voice lifts and cracks.

Inside, the school smells exactly the same. A fug of adolescent hormones, chalk dust, and floor polish. The new vice-principal meets her outside the main office.

“I’m Richard Nguyen.” He holds out one hand, slips the other down his tie to smooth it into his blazer. “I’m so glad you could come in today. We’re really in a bind.”

Francine nods and shakes his hand, hoping he can’t feel her trembling.

“We’ll go this way—Bob Garcia wants to sit in, ask a few questions.” He guides her down the hall, past a Remembrance Day display. Blood-red poppies around the cardboard cut-out of a black-and-white soldier. Lest we forget, reads the sash across his flattened chest. His grey

hands cradle an old-fashioned machine gun. Francine’s heart thrums as she stares into his stoic young face.

Richard Nguyen sees her looking, misinterprets her wide eyes. “Our assembly is tomorrow morning.

Moment of silence, bagpiper, the whole bit.” He checks his watch. “Bell’s about to ring for lunch. Let's get a move on, beat the rush.”

They speed up. Bob is waiting for them at the end of the hall, his tweed pants baggy and ill-fitting. He gives a thumbs up like he used to do during her practice lessons last spring and relief washes through her.

But wait—are they going into that classroom? “Francine—” he says, before the school bell rings and her ears stop working, her heart tripping even faster as the hall fills with silent bustling students. Bob’s mouth opens and closes like a goldfish. There’s not enough air. She gasps as if she’s underwater, as if she’s about to pass out here on the polished vinyl floor in the middle of this crowded high school hallway. Bob’s face seems to shrink as she approaches, receding into a tunnel of flickering lights, his smile evaporating into a look of concern as Francine staggers the last few steps, stretches out a desperate hand.

“It’s okay.” Bob’s warm hand grabs her arm and the sound crackles back on. “Come in, assis-toi. There now. Have some water.” He shepherds her over to the closest desk and she slides into the low seat, bent over and heaving with shame. A nudge against her shoulder and there’s a plastic bottle in her hand, the lid already off. When she tries to drink, she sloshes water down onto the varnished desktop.

A new security system has been installed since last spring, and she leans forward to repeat her name into the square silver speaker …

“—wrong with her?” the VP is asking over her head as she concentrates on her breathing, in and out.

His voice is thick with confusion, with disapproval.

Bob hisses the answer: “You remember the lockdown we had last year? She was in the room when that student, Gabe—” The sound of his name cracks her open, slaps her straight back into that day in the classroom. She’d been

REBECCA MORRIS // 7

accelerating when she notices the abandoned canvas backpack tucked under the handicap seat. The message plays automatically in her head: Baggage and personal items should not be left unattended. Her armpits prickle, a familiar flux capacitor of anxiety tightening her chest.

She looks left and right. None of her fellow passengers have noticed the backpack—most of them are staring down at their phones. A few foolhardy souls even have their eyes closed, leaning fragile skulls against dark windows. Don’t they know what could happen?

The images flash through her: the fiery burst of the explosion, the wrenching squeal of twisting metal as the car derails, vulnerable bodies hurtling forward as the compartment collides with the unforgiving concrete of the tunnel walls.

She can see it all as she pushes her way down the length of the train, the bomb detonating a little farther behind her each time she crosses another concertinaed rubber divide between the cars. She reaches the last car just as they pull into Villa Maria. She escapes onto the platform but her body stays tense until the train disappears, whistling around the bend in the tunnel, far enough away that the shockwave won’t reach.

Three minutes until the next train. Francine stares across the tracks at the people waiting on the platform opposite. She could join them, reverse her journey, retreat back home. Curl up with Mémé on their flowered couch. Call Mountainside, tell them she’s too sick to come in for the interview. She checks her phone, but there’s no service this far underground.

REBECCA MORRIS // 8

alone with the students on one of the last days of her placement, handing back a grammar test, turning to address an exasperated comment from one of the front row girls, I still don’t get when we’re supposed to use the subjonctif! Francine had laughed in sympathy. C’est compliqué. There’s usually an emotion, a hypothetical situation—and this was when she heard the gasps, when she turned to see Gabe Carpentier lurching to his feet waving his paper in one hand, a handgun in the other.

Câlisse de fucking tabernac, he was snarling, I can’t bring this home; this is bullshit, swiveling the pistol between the shocked faces of his classmates, towards Francine, up to his own buzzed-short hair and back down again.

All through the room the air seemed to thin, to harden, to crystalize into a layer of glass waiting to be shattered. Francine had stood frozen, unable to move as Gabe floundered out of his desk, his sweatshirt riding up to expose the hairy circle of skin above his jeans. His face twisted as he stumbled towards the door, students cowering and whimpering as he blundered past them.

His face twisted as he stumbled towards the door, students cowering and whimpering as he blundered past them.

She’d stood there, petrified, as he moved panting into the hall, as the other students erupted from their seats and rushed to bar the door, to flick off the lights, to press the intercom button and alert the office.

She’d been numb, stock-still, as the lockdown alarm began to wail, as the students closed the blinds and moved the desks and pulled out their phones to text for help. The students had crouched along the back wall, beckoning to her to join them but she couldn't move; could only stand there swaying alone among the empty desks.

How long had she stayed frozen in place? Long enough to hear the faint sirens of the approaching police cars, to endure the long tense minutes of the standoff and finally to register the all-clear announcement over the PA system. She’d blinked at the students as they gathered their backpacks, pressing tear-streaked

faces together and whispering theories and reassurances to each other. Already they seemed to know the truth, the gun wasn’t even loaded, he couldn’t have hurt us, we’re fine, details that would be confirmed later through official school emails, but none of it quite broke the spell of that alternate reality reverberating through Francine: the bullet, the panic, the aftermath that never was.

“Francine?” Bob’s voice is gentle, practically a whisper. “We can start again, press reset, or we can call it a day. It’s your choice.”

His words unlock something. Why did she agree to come in today? Does she still want to work as a teacher, here of all places? She straightens her shoulders, clears her throat, looks up into Bob’s concerned face. Finds her voice.

A

n hour later, on the bus ride home, Francine sits up tall on the molded plastic seat. Her stomach still aches with curdled adrenaline but her mind is clear and quiet. She checks her phone to make sure she won’t be late for her five o’clock shift at the IGA, rereads Bob’s disappointed email. He must have sent it as soon as she left the school. We’re sorry this won’t work out, he wrote. Take care of yourself. She swipes to delete the message, turns her face towards the window and gazes out at the darkening November sky. ///

KARAN KAPOOR

He saunters on water. He is made of dirt, wheat, tea, noir novels, whiskey, red meat, old Bollywood music, and seventy different kinds of hair oil.

Canoes wait on his wharf. The birch of his skin is translucent. His anchor-chain arms could hold down Greek monsters.

The salt-encrusted links hold each other and where they touch is an invasion of pain.

Contradictions kiss him.

It is foolish to impute affliction to the sea, but he does that.

He breaks on water and whiskey. Look away and listen, he’s always telling you something: To be down here, in the tar of the world’s dull stomach, the sticky surface, the scum smell— it’s not the way anyone wants to live.

The conspiracy is it doesn’t make most people kill themselves either.

A sin is its own flagellation, repentance its own forgiveness.

A man of light will burn in his shadow. ///

KARAN KAPOOR // 9

A MOSAIC OF MY FATHER

LESLIE ALEXANDER

C W: contains references to alcoholism and guns.

LESLIE ALEXANDER // 10

BOOTY CALL T

his is a mistake, I told myself as I backed out of the driveway. What am I going to do? Rescue the guy? He’s already shot the dog. He’s lost his marbles.

For a moment, I actually put my foot on the brake. The thought that got me moving again was a cigarette. I’ll bum a smoke from him, and we’ll chat, and I’ll settle him down. I was worried he was going to hurt himself.

This fucking COVID. It’s driving everybody bananas.

We’d have fires every night and look up at the Northern lights. He’s rich, but simple things make him happy.

Me too.

He’d been drinking a few days. He sent me a message on Valentine’s Day, first thing in the morning: a smiling heart emoji. Surprise! Not his usual style. He followed it up that evening with a boozy booty call. No surprise there. He’s been trying to get me back in the sack, on and off, since lockdown began. “Will you be my bubble?” he asked. I don’t think he has anybody else. His wife is long dead, his parents too. His brother caught the virus and died on Christmas Eve. All he has are his dogs. Scratch that: dog. Assuming he hasn’t shot the other one as well by now.

COVID. It has everybody texting their exes.

People are lonely. I have to admit, it’s been kind of sweet to have him ringing my bell again after the way he treated me. But the days I’d go running out to the ranch on his command are long over. He could turn the charm on and off like tap water; I never knew what to expect. When he’s sober, his wit is razor sharp; when he’s drinking, he’ll pick a fight with a guy twice his

size, get his ass kicked, and come away laughing. One of these days he’s going to get himself killed.

At some point I asked myself, if he wasn’t so filthy rich, would I still be hanging around? It was a good question. Wealthy people can get away with stuff that other people can’t; they just throw a few dollars around, and things start rolling their way. I used to call him the Tyrant King. He liked that. He didn’t exactly treat me like a queen. There were no fancy restaurants or expensive gifts. Mostly, we just hung out at his place and laughed while he drank. But people with money have an aura of possibility about them; there’s a sense that they can make anything happen. It’s seductive. He used to talk about buying a piece of land in the Yukon and the two of us building a log cabin, planting a garden, and living off the land. We’d have fires every night and look up at the Northern Lights. He’s rich, but simple things make him happy. Me too.

It wasn’t so much his money that attracted me, but the character that went into collecting it. He’s what my dad calls a self-made man. Grew up poor, worked his ass off, and made a fortune in the mining business. And he likes to spread it around. That’s how we got back in touch again. I was distributing masks when our town got hit with an outbreak. He paid for a huge carton even though we were giving them away for free—told us to use the money to make more. He went around to all the stores and businesses, giving them out to frontline workers. Once, he took me to a fundraiser at the library, and I watched him scribble a $10,000 cheque and walk away without a receipt. He enjoys tipping with hundred-dollar bills. The night we met, he offered me 500 dollars to dance with him. I told him to fuck off. He liked that.

After his wife died in childbirth, he had a memorial garden and a playground put in behind the maternity unit at the hospital. His baby daughter hung on for a month; he practically lived there until they turned off the machines. I guess he doesn’t blame the doctors.

got that nice dizzy feeling you get when you haven’t smoked for a while, then instantly felt a little sick. I quit after we split up, and here I was smoking again. Stupid.

“What happened?” I asked.

It was difficult to piece together because of the mashed potatoes. But as far as I could tell, he’d passed out in front of Eskimo TV in the trophy room and left the dogs outside. That’s what he called it when he had the fireplace going: Eskimo TV. Cultural sensitivity was never his strong suit. Neither was introspection, but I had a feeling he’d been spending a lot of time in there lately, thinking of better days. Staring into the flames surrounded by the ghosts of all the animals he’d killed: polar bear, grizzly bear, cheetah, lion, and Cape buffalo, just to name a few—all of them expertly stuffed and preserved. There are even a couple of crocodiles in one corner; he got them in South America.

He says he’s a conservationist—that the money for the hunting tags goes into protecting the habitat, and the meat goes to the locals. None of that makes any difference to the polar bear, I’m sure. Of course, now, the Tyrant King is hobbled like everyone else. Even he can’t just take off on an exotic hunting trip any time the mood strikes. He’s not used to that.

When he woke up, the dogs had disappeared. I can imagine him stumbling through the snow, yelling into the wind, while his million-dollar hunting dogs, imported from England, roamed the countryside. Eventually he discovered they’d surfaced a few miles away and had been having a grand old time harassing somebody’s prize thoroughbreds. The owner wanted him to come pick up the dogs, but I’m guessing he was too drunk to drive or even to form a coherent sentence. Certainly, he didn’t apologize. There was an argument, and the guy threatened to shoot the dogs. Somehow, he’d commandeered Bob to rescue them, and now he was stewing.

“What’s more important, a dog or a goddamn horse?” he shouted. I couldn’t answer that question to his satisfaction since I regarded them as equally important and at least as important as a lion or cheetah or polar bear. I guess it all came down to the question of who was holding the gun, and why.

“What good is it to shoot Browning?” I asked. He loved his dogs. As far as I knew, they were the only things he did love. “How does that make sense?”

“She’s the problem,” he said. “She takes off, and Remy goes with her. I’ll shoot him, too.”

“You’re the problem,” I said. “You weren’t looking after them.” He didn’t disagree.

“When was the last time you ate?” I asked. He looked like he’d lost ten pounds since I saw him last.

LESLIE ALEXANDER // 11

He does blame the cops. He hates them. They peeled him up off the family plot at the cemetery one night, where he was howling at the moon so loud he woke up the neighbourhood. He put up a fight and wound up in the drunk tank. That was a dozen years ago, and he’s been disintegrating ever since. For about five minutes, I actually thought I could mend his broken heart, that he’d sober up and we could have a life together. Fat chance.

All the windows were dark when I pulled up to the house. This is a mistake, I told myself again, as I banged on the door. I heard a shout from inside, so I turned the knob. He stood at the top of the stairs, weaving, a man-shaped vortex of darkness silhouetted against the kitchen light behind him. “Whoozat?” he mumbled. “Izzat you?”

“It’s me,” I said, taking off my boots. “Where’s Browning?” I asked.

“I didn’t shoot her,” he said. “Not yet. The dogs are out at Bob’s. But I’m going to shoot that asshole’s horses.

And I’m going to shoot her, too.” He sounded like he had a mouth full of mashed potatoes. I could barely understand what he was saying. Whatever shit had gone down, the dogs were safe for now; Bob’s kennel is a sort of doggy hotel where they stay when he’s on a trip or too drunk to look after them.

His phone buzzed. He stumbled into a chair and started pecking at it, one eye closed for focus, while I hunted for his package of cigarettes. What a manipulator. He knew I’d come running if something was up with the dogs. I peeked over his shoulder at his phone to see Bob was asking for money. I’ll leave it in the mailbox, he was saying. Good plan. A face-to-face wasn’t a great idea right now.

“You look good,” he said. I looked like hell, but he was so cross-eyed with booze I doubted he could see me anyway. “Thanks for coming over. I’m fucked-up.”

No kidding. His face was grey and haggard, his hair raked into a halo of spikes sticking up in every direction. Obviously, he hadn’t seen a barber since the beginning of the pandemic. And it looked like he’d been wearing the same clothes for a week. The place was a disaster; but then, it always was. Beer cans, bottles, and boxes of bullets littered all his fine antiques. On one arm of his chair was an overflowing ashtray; on the other, a bowl of decaying chicken bones. I was amazed at how they remained balanced perfectly while he, the tornado, rocked and rolled between them.

“Where’s your lighter?” I asked. He had no idea. I had to fight him for his lit cigarette so I could light my own; he was in that kind of mood. I took a long pull and

LESLIE ALEXANDER // 12

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“I don’t remember,” he said. “You know I hate cooking by myself.”

I went to the kitchen looking for a clean glass. He was shriveled like a prune, needed water. The sink was piled high with week-old dishes. He always left them for the cleaner, used every plate in the house until they ran out. For some reason, there was a garbage can on the counter. In the end I washed out a mason jar and filled that.

“Drink this,” I said. “All of it.” To my surprise he took it without argument and drained about half of it.

His hands were shaking.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I was wondering that myself, now that I’d finished my smoke. But I figured if I could get some food and water into him, he might go to sleep and wake up sane tomorrow. I’d brought some pills with me. “Take this,” I said, handing him one. “It’s just an Advil.” He peered at it suspiciously, pretended to put it in his mouth, and stuck it in his pocket instead. Well, maybe I could get him to eat.

I went hunting for some bread so I could make toast. Here I am again, cleaning up his mess, I thought, as I moved stuff around trying to make space. Muscle memory. He came up behind me and tried to put his arms around me.

“Back off,” I said. “I’m making you some toast.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said. I ignored him, popping bread into the toaster.

“Remember when you showed me how to make pea soup?” he asked. I think it made him feel homey to have a woman in his kitchen; he hated restaurant food, and when he was sober, loved a good home-cooked meal. He’d ask me to teach him how to make something; we’d make a list and go to the grocery store.

When we got back to his place, I’d clean the kitchen, we’d lay everything out and get started. He would take direction very humbly, chopping and stirring; he even dried the dishes and put them away. I always thought it made him miss his wife less, doing something normal like making a meal together.

I found some cream cheese in the fridge, spread it on the toast, and cleared a space on the kitchen table.

“Sit down,” I ordered him. Usually he didn’t take orders; he sat down, but he wouldn’t eat the toast. I set a couple more Advil and a sleeping pill on another plate. “After you’re finished, drink the rest of the water, take the blue pill, and go to bed,” I said.

“It’s useless going to bed,” he said. Ushless. “I can’t sleep. You know that.”

This is a mistake.

“Just eat your toast and take the blue pill,” I said, breaking away. “I gotta go.” He grabbed at me, pleading. But he was too clumsy and slow.

“Please shtay,” he was calling as I shut the door behind me.

I pulled down the driveway counting my lucky stars.

I’d gotten off easy. But I wished I had another cigarette.

By the time I got home, there was a fresh volley of messages on my phone—more threats to shoot the horses and the dogs, and anybody that showed up at his door. I toyed with the idea of calling 911, but I could imagine what kind of trouble he’d get into if the cops went out there. And any paramedic who came near him was going to need medical attention himself. He was just yanking my chain, trying to make me come back. I figured he’d fall asleep eventually; I hoped so, anyway.

When I woke up in the morning, there was a new message on my phone. He’d sent it at dawn.

“I’VE GOT GUNS LOADED AND NOTHING TO LOSE.”

I could smell booze and cigarettes, and beneath that the familiar scent of him: dogs, wind, and earth.

I thought of one September afternoon when we were walking down by the creek, the sun shining on acres of golden grass waving in the autumn breeze.

It was one of those days when just being outside is enough to make you happy to be alive. His skin was ruddy with windburn, and his eyes were snapping as he talked about selling his company, retiring, and spending the rest of his life adventuring. I told him if he stopped working, he’d probably kill himself drinking.

Our voices startled a covey of partridges; as they exploded into the sky, he pulled up his shotgun, took expert aim, and brought one down with a crack. It was a casual movement, as easy for him as brushing lint off his jacket. He left it lying on the ground as if it didn’t matter, as if he hadn’t just ended a life for no reason.

I didn’t call him back. ///

LESLIE ALEXANDER // 13

“That’s why I brought the blue pill. Take that and you’ll sleep for eight hours straight.” He always was an insomniac. The guy vibrates. I knew it probably wasn’t a great idea to take a sleeping pill on top of all that booze, but it wouldn’t kill him, and a few hours of unconsciousness would bring him some relief. And for a while, he’d be out of trouble.

“I’ll shleep if you shtay,” he said. “I could always shleep when you shtayed.”

“I’m not staying,” I said. “If you ever sobered up and started taking care of yourself, then I might.”

He stared at me across the table. The whites of his eyes had a yellowish cast, shot through with blood, sunken deep into pockets of shadow. He looked haunted.

“Leave,” he said suddenly. The word came spitting out like a bullet from a gun. He actually looked surprised at what he’d said. It was easy to see he didn’t mean it; that little ogre inside him, the evil gremlin that wants to kill him and everything else, was whispering in his ear. But he’d given me an out and I was taking it.

I got up instantly and started putting my boots on. The dogs were safe; I’d given him water, food, and pills; there was nothing more I could do. He jumped up after me as I headed to the door.

“Wait,” he said. “Give me a hug. Please.” He never said please; he gave orders and was used to having them followed. But he just looked so wretched: the big man brought low. I put my arms around him, thinking of the virus. Well, he never goes anywhere or sees anybody anymore; it was probably safe. There is nobody in my bubble, either. He pulled me close. He was unsteady, almost causing me to become unbalanced; we rocked back and forth for a moment until we rested, motionless. His unshaven cheek prickled against my forehead. I could smell booze and cigarettes, and beneath that the familiar scent of him: dogs, wind, and earth. He tucked my head into his neck, and we just stood there under the hall light while I felt his heart beating, too fast. Something inside me broke a little. I held him closer, and he let out a huge breath.

“It’s been so long since anybody touched me,” he said softly. “When you wake up in the morning, do you ever wish you didn’t wake up?”

He sounded sober as a judge.

I thought of running him a bath. I’d wash the day away gently and dry him off like a child. I’d lay him down on the bed and stroke him until he stopped shuddering. I’d hold him until I could hear the soft breaths of sleep. Then I’d sleep myself, with a warm body in my arms. In the morning, we’d talk about rehab.

ANNE WALK

C W: contains mentions of violence and suicide.

ANNE WALK // 14

SWEEPERS J

amie Hill steps into his white coveralls and zips them up. It’s a little tight going over his belly despite sucking in, and he catches his T-shirt in the teeth.

“Shit.”

He pulls it free and is left with a dime-sized hole in front where the zipper bit through. It’s his favourite T-shirt though it doesn’t look like much. It’s just a plain white T-shirt with a crew neck and a chest pocket he’s never put anything in. The bottom hem is already ragged from being washed and worn so many times and the threads are disintegrating, but it’s his lucky shirt and, as long as he keeps it tucked, no one’s any the wiser.

He puts his finger through the hole. Yup. Clean through, alright. He’ll have to leave the coveralls on for the day to hide it. He’s not about to change into a new one, not on his first day on the job.

This shirt has brought him luck since he picked it up in one of the stalls at the CNE. He’d worn it the night that he got into a fight at the racetrack. Some drunk guy in a Harley hat thought Jamie was hitting on his girlfriend and clocked him in the chin, and, when he fell, stomped Jamie’s knee. The next thing Jamie knew, he’d pulled out his blade and stabbed the guy in the liver. Self-defense! That’s what he’d argued in court, and it was true, for the most part.

He was lucky because the guy lived, and he’d only gotten eighteen months in county and not life in Kingston. He was lucky because the judge had taken pity on him on account of his knee which the doctors set wrong and now he walks with a limp. “There goes your lacrosse career,” his cousin Jesse had joked when Jamie was released, and Jamie had laughed because he was never the athletic type to begin with.

Yeah, he felt lucky.

But even an eighteen-month time-out can cause trouble with work. They’d let him go at the construction site and now, with a record, no respectable place wanted to take a chance on him. Other guys might go the usual route, break-ins and other petty stuff, but not

Jamie. His mother expected better than that, despite his being raised hand to mouth. No, if he was going to make money, he’d have to get creative.

He’d gone in with Jesse in an old cargo van. It was the last of the nest egg his German grandma on his socalled father’s side willed him and was supposed to be for higher education, but what else could he have done? His back was against the wall and the old lady was long dead.

He and Jesse had taped up flyers on telephone poles hoping to hire themselves out as movers and they’d managed to get a few bites. They’d cleaned out junk from abandoned rentals and helped empty nesters downsize into condos. They’d driven boxes of dead people’s memories to estate auctions in the warehouse district.

Then Jesse broke up with his girlfriend and shot himself in the head and business petered out. Who was going to hire a one-guy ex-con moving company?

The van sat idle in his mother’s driveway while Jamie washed dishes under the table at a nearby fish and chip place. He’d sat in the back between shifts reading the Pennysaver and that’s where he’d seen the ad. “Street Sweepers wanted. Anyone can apply.” Well, shit, Jamie had thought. I’m anybody.

Jamie remembers the street sweepers from when he was a boy. They drove tractor-looking vehicles with big round brushes on them and went down the gutters sweeping up cigarette butts and leaves and trash. He and his friends used to chase them down the street.

They’d heard stories about kids getting caught in the brushes, so they’d follow along, watching, not knowing what they’d do if it actually happened. Would they watch the kid get brushed up, making a big red skid mark running down the street or would they play hero and risk themselves to save the day? Jamie still wonders about things like that, about what he’d do if it came down to it. So far, he hasn’t had to find out.

The Street Sweepers ad wasn’t for kind of sweeping though. There weren’t any tractors with brushes as far as he knew. You were expected to bring your own vehicle.

ANNE WALK // 15

OF EARTH SHE BECOMES. (INSTALLATION VIEW), 10' x 20' (VARIABLE), DESICCATED COCONUT, FOOD COLOURING, MIXED MEDIA, 2018 | NONI KAUR

Image courtesy of the artist.

ANNE WALK // 16

So, he put on his lucky shirt, fired up the van, and went down to the meet-up to see what it was all about.

The job was for a kind of street sweeping you did with power washers instead of brushes. Fifty-someodd guys showed up. A couple of women, too, but they didn’t last long because, you can sugarcoat it any way you like, the job was pretty gruesome.

Plus, you had to have your own vehicle, a big one like a truck or a van, and that thinned out the herd too.

Not many people had the vehicle for it, not in the city.

You needed a power washer too, but the guy was offering them with monthly instalments, no interest for the first year. Jamie had rubbed his hands on his lucky shirt and signed up on the spot.

His mother wasn’t impressed. She’d looked over the paperwork and slammed her hand on the table.

“Dammit, Jamie. What are you doing? This isn’t a job for a decent man. You’d be better off selling smokes out of your cousin’s trailer.”

“… What are you doing? This isn’t a job for a decent man. You’d be better off selling smokes out of your cousin’s trailer.”

“You won’t be so mad when the money starts rolling in,” he’d said. Jamie had big plans. This wasn’t an hourly wage job. He’d be his own boss, a real entrepreneur.

The training wasn’t all that hard. He already had first aid that he got back in high school, not that he saw any pressing need for it as a Sweeper, but you never know. His trainer was impressed with Jamie’s van.

He’d said that white was a good colour for a Sweeper van. It inspired hope.

Besides a vehicle, there weren’t any particular requirements for the job. The trainer said it was one of the benefits of the business model. Street Sweepers merely provided a roster of independent businesspeople available for hire. Some of the guys were even hiring themselves out for illegal side work, which the trainer didn’t condone but didn’t exactly ban either. Jamie tried to ignore the stories. He’d spent enough time behind bars.

The white overalls shush between his legs when he walks. He puts the bag with his gloves and ventilator in the van’s glovebox and throws his Stanley thermos on the passenger seat along with a couple of magazines to thumb through while he waits. Then he heads downtown.

The job is at King and Yonge, 11:00 a.m., according to the app. He has a couple of hours to kill until then.

He pulls over. Even though his stomach is churning, he could do with a bite and a coffee. He goes into Jo Jo’s and sits at the counter. He’s been going to Jo Jo’s Diner since he was a kid. All-day breakfast. Now that he smells the bacon frying, he’s ravenous and orders the Hungry Man Feast. He hunches over his plate, dunking toasted triangles into soft yolks with one hand and feeding sausages into his mouth with the other.

He can see some of the other diners staring at him while he eats. Sweepers hasn’t been in business that long, but everyone already knows who they are. Some people are glad for the convenience but not everyone wants to see it take off. There have been petitions, online and off, and protests outside of the downtown office.

Jamie ignores the stares, watches the TV on the front wall and chews. Basketball players are fighting over a ball and the announcers are getting wound up.

He doesn’t really like basketball, but he’s not watching the game. He’s watching the ticker at the bottom of the screen for today’s number. There it is. Seventeen.

After eleven, it’ll be eighteen. He gulps down his coffee not waiting for it to cool, and it burns his throat.

When he gets back out to the van, there’s a small slip of paper flapping under one of his wipers. Great.

Fucking great. Jamie tears off the ticket and stuffs it into one of the pockets of his coveralls, climbs in and drives over to King Street. He’s not allowed to park on the street, but he does because the city has been looking the other way. Now that he’s on the job, he gets out the Sweepers decal and slaps it on the side door. It’s a cartoon of a man in white overalls leaning against a broom. He’s smiling. Then, he gets back into the van and puts his seat back. He grabs a magazine and flips through it, looking at the pictures.

The crowd grows around him, a mix of commuters trying to get to work, tourists, and assorted voyeurs climbing up on cars and dumpsters trying to get the best view. Jamie watches their excitement and, while he doesn’t share it, he’s not disgusted by it either. He’s got a job to do. He has to maintain a professional distance The first time Jamie saw one was online. Jesse had sent him a link to a video, and they’d watched it over public Wi-Fi, trashing the file afterward.

“That’s fucked up,” Jesse had said. Jamie hadn’t really seen anything on account of the shaky footage. Maybe it wasn’t even real. People fake all kinds of things online these days. “Sick bastards.”

They watched it a second time in slow motion.

“Whatever,” Jamie had said at last.

bother to cordon off the area. By the time Jamie rolls the van into the centre of the scene and hops out with his gear, they’ve already loaded the body into the back of the ambulance.

“We got coffee over here if you want any,” one of the attendants says.

Jamie holds up his thermos and shakes his head.

He’s good.

Jamie looks down on the sidewalk where the body hit the ground. There’s less blood than he thought there’d be but enough to make a job of it. Other stuff, too, that turns his stomach when he tries to make out what it is. Better not to put two and two together. Just wash it away as quick as possible and everyone can get on with their day. That’s what his trainer said. Extra points for speed.

He gets right to work, spraying and brushing, picking up what won’t wash away and throwing it in bio containers. He picks up the trash too. The pop cans and fast-food wrappers, empty cigarette packs and wadded-up tissues. He finds a shoebox and thinks someone must’ve dropped it on their way through.

Some poor shopper who ended up going home with nothing. The picture on the box is for a pair of heels, high-end heels by the looks of it. Maybe they’ll fit his mom. Maybe then she’ll see that he made the right decision. But there aren’t any shoes in the box. Only a little dead bird.

Jamie holds the box up to his face to get a good look. He should know what kind of bird it is but he’s

It’s happening. Hands point to the sky, and he looks up, scans the buildings, floor by floor.

not particularly outdoorsy. He’s lived in the city his whole life. He doesn’t know what kind of bird it is, and it makes him feel like less than he is. He puts the lid back on the box, the tiny body still inside, and tosses it into the bio container along with the rest of it, takes a last look around to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, then signs off on the app. ///

ANNE WALK // 17

Today will be the real deal. Jamie wishes Jesse was still alive so that they could watch together. He sits in the van with his feet up on the dash, waiting. He should go back to the diner. They serve beer after eleven. But he’s here now, and he might as well stay, or he’ll lose his parking spot. And he has to admit to a certain curiosity, not about the event but about his reaction to it.

He thinks he should feel more than he does. Is there something wrong with him?

The crowd is bigger than he expected. They sip on Big Gulps and throw their cups in the gutter. They smoke like there’s no tomorrow and flick the cigarettes through the air, not bothering to butt out. Jamie wonders if he’s responsible for cleaning up their mess as well. The trainer never mentioned anything about the trash the crowd makes. He sends a message to the app and gets a form email in response directing him to the FAQ. He sighs and puts his phone in his pocket and zips up.

Soon enough, the van is surrounded so he gets out.

Out of the air conditioning, he sweats in his coveralls.

The fabric is non-porous, unforgiving. Rivulets run down his chest. He wishes he didn’t keep his jeans on underneath. The air stinks of cigarettes, B.O., and pot.

He sniffs his own armpits. He’s going to need a shower when he gets home.

And then the crowd swells forward, shouting. It’s happening. Hands point to the sky, and he looks up, scans the buildings, floor by floor.

Jamie follows the crowd forward without thinking. He doesn’t know what he hopes will happen. He doesn’t think at all. He’s caught up in the movement of it, speeding up when the crowd speeds up. From above, they must look like a single thing, opening in the middle, ready to swallow.

Everyone has their hands in the air. He finds the dot in the sky, the dot that grows larger until it’s completely obscured by countless onlookers, and when the crowd falls silent, just for a moment, he knows the jump has happened.

He feels disappointed.

The crowd, more or less, disperses. Some are crying, some pat each other on the back like they’ve done something worth doing. A woman holds another woman’s hair while she pukes into the gutter. Jamie makes a mental note of the location. He’ll get to it later with his spray washer. On the house.

A siren honks on and off and the ambulance crawls past. They give a professional nod to Jamie as they pass, and he nods too and heads back to the van.

They won’t be there long. A lot of the preliminary stuff has been dispensed with because it’s a scheduled jump.

There are no cops, no investigation. They don’t even

MARK TRUSCOTT // 18

MARK TRUSCOTT

LIKE A leaf fallen on leaves, like a soft step in the backyard unheard, too small, too blurred, too like the others to matter much. But watch the effect of the many glowing so bright they burn in your vision, as in a current, as your eyes close and then open, stained by the newly captive light. ///

DORIS CORCESE

C W: contains mentions of miscarriage and family death.

NEXT OF KIN t was a Monday in July, and I was wrapped in my housecoat, resting on the sofa, feet up, as the doctor ordered. I was crying and praying, worrying, and wondering. I remember because, later, I went over those moments a thousand times, trying to connect to the precise moment when the unthinkable happened.

I had miscarried six years before, so I knew that, regardless of the doctor’s assurances, it was likely happening again. The bleeding had started on Saturday and, as before, immediate bed rest was ordered and an ultrasound scheduled for Tuesday. I was already imagining how that would go.

This time, I won’t ask to see the baby on the monitor.

Last time, the technician jumped off her chair, told us the doctor would be in touch, and promptly fled the exam room. This was two days after I had been so filled with energy that I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed every floor in our rented farmhouse. Later, the doctor assured me that this had nothing to do with losing the baby. Nature chooses the course, he said.

Days later, I ran to the edge of a vast field that had just been plowed and readied for planting. As I kicked at the soft chunks of mud, I thought about how my unborn child’s life had been so hastily written and unwritten. Worse, I had likely caused the miscarriage by my vigorous scrubbing of floors. As my tears spilled onto the black soil, I imagined the tiny seeds that would soon be buried there. In time, they would burst into the sun and grow into tall stalks of corn. Perhaps, like this fallow field, we would try again.

But, over the next six years, no hint of a baby arose. Everyone’s best advice, “Avoid stress,” dwindled into thoughtless chatter, punctuated by the reality that children are conceived every day, in every corner of the world, in times of great stress, famine, and even war.

As a clerk in a small but busy police office, I took reports from victims of crime, dispatched emergency calls and condensed the evidence of other people’s tragedies into neatly bound investigational files. From there, I entered the details of fatal accidents, homicides and other incidents into the computer and studied the

histories and statements of suspects, witnesses, and victims of crime. Sometimes, in sudden deaths, there were no victims, only natural ends to short or long lives, the final convergence of genetics, choices, and chance.

Within the paper files, police officers scribbled or typed the details of the Next of Kin notifications— short, factual paragraphs, sometimes embossed with coffee cup rings: Attended So-and-So’s residence to advise that their son/daughter/husband/wife died today as a result of a <insert reason>. Just a few lines. A necessary public service. The scrawl of an anguished hand fading like invisible ink at the end of a long shift.

Occasionally, the eyes of children gazed up from photographs, moving me to sift through the traces of their brief lives for some meaning beyond time, place, and physics. If charges were laid, the Victim Impact Statements would arrive, packaged carefully for Crown Counsel by grieving families and accompanied by

Just a few lines. A necessary public service. The scrawl of an anguished hand fading like invisible ink at the end of a long shift. collections of family photographs, artwork, academic awards, and Certificates of Achievement, all decorated with calligraphic writing and shiny gold stars. Within these keepsakes, there was indisputable proof of talents lost, dreams shattered, and futures unlived.

In the midst of this, on an April morning, my husband placed his coffee mug in the kitchen sink and stared out the window. I was certain he was admiring a cluster of red tulips bursting under the canopy of a tall maple. “Aren’t they gorgeous?” I asked, eager for the sound of his voice.

DORIS CORCESE // 19

I

DORIS CORCESE // 20

Without looking at me, he said, “Do you think we should get a divorce?”

“A divorce?”

“Are you happy?”

“Why? Aren’t you? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, leaving and slamming the screen door behind him.

We worked opposite shifts, had different interests, different friends. Often, on his days off, he drove into the mountains to hunt deer or travelled hundreds of miles for elk, caribou, or moose, while I joined an environmental group, participated in community theatre, and imagined the hollow of our house filled with the laughter of children.

As the weeks passed, there was much to distract me from the moon’s cycles, basal thermometers, and my approaching 32nd birthday. I was barely surprised when my husband presented me with a Separation Agreement. Swallowing my despair, I clung to an unfamiliar relief. I was now free of the burden of his expectation. Then, days later, an unusual tiredness settled upon me and I realized, even within my inexperience, that I was pregnant again.

If there is a divine hand in the creation of life, the timing could not have been more unkind. But nothing could suppress the happiness I felt. Reluctantly, I chose to keep the news from my husband, fearing that guilt might drive him to attempt reconciliation.

I reasoned that, if we couldn’t be together without a baby, how could we be together with one? Soon, I

Weeks later, a thin trail of blood raced down the inside of my thigh, and I knew it was happening again.

would join the ranks of single mothers all over the world in one of the most challenging vocations ever.

My future had been chosen for me, and I intended to embrace it with joy.

After our plans to separate were in motion, my husband phoned me and asked, “Do you think we could try to work things out?”

I hesitated. “Why?” “I want to try.”

When he got home from work, I was waiting with the news.

“Are you sure?” he beamed.

“One hundred percent. I’ve been to the doctor.”

Weeks later, a thin trail of blood raced down the inside of my thigh, and I knew it was happening again.

So, here I was, feet up, as the doctor ordered, except this time there was no vigorous scrubbing of floors.

Nature was again simply choosing the course.

As the eldest of four children, I understood the roles of nurturer and protector. I had grown up mothering my two younger brothers and sister as the four of us explored the forests and mountains surrounding our town. My sister and I chased after our brothers as they tubed river rapids, dove off rock cliffs into rivers, and sneaked onto a nearby farm to ride horses bareback.

But it was mostly my brother Frank who lived life on the edge, and his fearlessness was often manifested in cuts, bruises, and broken bones. No matter how many times we warned him, he was an unstoppable force that blew through our lives like a playful storm. Though, sometimes, the storm resembled a hurricane.

Once, the police came to my door to tell me that Frank had been badly injured in a car crash. A drunk driver struck his vehicle head-on, and Frank wasn’t expected to survive. Thankfully, he did survive, though, tragically, one of his passengers was killed, as was the drunk driver who hit them. Frank came out of a coma after several days, spent a month in Intensive Care and a year recovering from the traumatic injuries. Though I was not a religious person, I thanked God over and over for the miracle of my brother’s survival.

Recently, Frank sustained an injury at work. He was logging when a cable snapped at fifty yards and struck him in the face. A close call, he escaped with only a black eye. Fortunately, that job was finished, but now he was headed to a remote, fly-in logging camp near Bella Coola to make even bigger cash. He would be in camp for two weeks, and his earnings would bring him closer to his dream of leaving the logging industry forever to train as a hospital orderly so he could spend more time with his ten-year-old daughter.

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” I pleaded.

“Don’t worry, I always am.”

“I mean it, Frank. I worry about you.”

“No, really, Dor, I’m careful. I really am,” he said gently. “Don’t worry.”

Now, after keeping my feet up all day, my husband and I lay in the darkness, a bridge of blankets between us. Suddenly, our bedroom was illuminated by headlights as tires crunched the driveway. My husband jumped out of bed and peered out the window. “It’s a police car.”

I wondered if an emergency had come up at work.

D

Dazed, we make the thirty-minute drive to my parents’ home to deliver the news, but, once there, I am unable to speak. If I say the words, they will be true— and I do not accept them. Eventually, they are said for me, and I am broken by my mother’s wail and my father’s cry, my youngest brother’s pained silence, and my sister’s shrieking. It is an unending night of weeping and tethering phone calls and questions from grieving and unbelieving relatives.

Before sunrise, my husband and I return home.

We have been awake for almost twenty-four hours and collapse into fractured sleep. Long before the alarm clock sounds, I am awakened by a ferocious ache. It is the sorrow of loss, the wrecking ball of anguish that swings against the soul of a condemned house.

It is the morning of our scheduled ultrasound, and my husband and I drive to the hospital in silence. I examine his profile as he drives. He looks different, hunched and tired. I know our marriage won’t survive this.

At the hospital, I climb onto the exam bed while the ultrasound technician chats about the good weather.

I force a smile, unwilling to share the calamity of this moment. She warms the jelly and rubs it over my swollen belly. My husband sits beside me and takes my hand. The monitor is angled away from us.

The odds are remote. It’s silly to hope.

The technician slides the instrument over my skin, and I examine her face, searching for any change of expression, tic, or frown.

We are all fish caught in a cruel net.

She asks, “So, you’re about three months along, right?”

“Yes, twelve weeks.”

“You’re at the end of your first trimester then.”

“Yes.” I want to tell her, Like last time.

“You may have a bit too much water in there,” she says, pushing on my stomach.

I close my eyes, suppressing a surge of tears.

Surrender.

“Would you like to hear your baby’s heartbeat?”

My husband and I glance at each other, puzzled.

She adjusts the volume and turns the monitor toward us.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

The heartbeat is unmistakable. Strong. Steady.

Seraphic.

She continues, “We can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl right now, but maybe next time.”

Overwhelmed with gratitude, we gaze at the hazy, fluttering image on the monitor and sob. ///

DORIS CORCESE // 21

aryl, a policeman I work with, stands at the back door. With him is my close friend, Erin, a volunteer at the Detachment. We invite them in, and they’re apologetic, knowing they’ve come at a bad time.

“What’s happening?” I ask, tying my robe. I’m thinking they can’t find a file, a key, or a phone number at the office.

“We’re so sorry to bother you, but …” The corners of Daryl’s mouth drop, and his eyes fall to the floor. I notice his black boots, scuffed by the gravel of roadsides, and a chill ripples through me.

“Has something happened?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

Daryl starts to speak and stumbles.

“Is it my mom and dad? Are they okay?”

This is my first thought, as Dad had been paralyzed by a stroke six months before.

“No. It’s your brother, Frank.”

I gasp, and he pauses and pulls a piece of paper from his jacket. Trembling, he asks, “Can I read you the CPIC message from Bella Coola Detachment? I don’t think I can say the words.”

I nod and clutch the back of a chair.

“A Wilderness Air float plane departed a dock at a logging camp near Bella Coola today at approximately 2:20 p.m. and crashed into the side of a mountain, exploding into flames.”

The words tumble and strike the floor, clattering like marbles on tile. He reads on, but I can no longer hear his voice. Images of fire and water scatter in my mind, and I imagine my brother standing on a dock in Bella Coola, watching a plane crash into a mountainside.

“Do you mean Frank saw a plane go down?” I ask, thinking that perhaps my brother was injured by flying debris.

Daryl shakes his head, and I see our reflections in the kitchen window, above a stack of dirty dishes. No scrubbing of floors, no housework, no washing dishes, as the doctor ordered. The house is a mess, and a split second of shame washes over me before a loam of panic begins to choke me.

“Is he okay?”

Steadying his voice, Daryl says, “I’m sorry, but Frank was on the plane. There were no survivors.”

These are the moments in life when time begins to warp, like a car skidding on a blind corner. Caught in the momentum, you must go with it, knowing that the outcome has been predestined by the collision of a thousand invisible forces. You cry and pull and tear away from the incomprehensible, desperate to find your way back to that illusory door that led you to this moment—anything to undo, rewind, reverse, and erase the impossible and unacceptable.

PLASMIC PLAY (DETAIL), 18” x 24” (VARIABLE), MIXED MEDIA ON MYLAR, 2020 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JASON CARREIRO

MOLLY MCCARRON // 22

Image courtesy of the artist.

MOLLY MCCARRON

CORPSE REVIVER nna announced she was leaving early in November, the worst time of year. It was dark and getting darker, but too early for any alleviating holiday brightness. The festive season started later here anyway: the Soviets had shifted the big holiday to New Year’s, and while the Russian Orthodox church, in this first decade after Communism, was already reclaiming ground—a huge church under construction along the river, headscarves and crosses retrieved from under beds— Orthodox Christmas was on the Julian calendar, and the holiday period didn’t begin until near the end of December. November was just dark and cold.

The night she told him, Nick had stopped at a small local grocery on the way home and picked up a spicy carrot salad. He was assembling a dinner of leftover chicken and potatoes around it, when she said from her place at the kitchen table, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“Do what?” he said. Their ancient tape player was tuned to the local oldies station, Radio Nostalghia. The song that was playing sounded like a 1950s Rat Pack standard but might have been from ten years ago for all he knew. When he’d first arrived, schoolgirls still wore uniforms that could have doubled as maid outfits in a French farce. Colour photography had been slow to take hold. Russian pop culture was harder to carbon date.

“This Russia … venture.” “‘Russia venture’?” he said.

“This,” she said. She gestured at the table: the plastic container of Korean carrots, an almost empty bottle of cheap Sovietskoye Shampanskoye bubbly, a Russian tabloid gaudy with bloody headlines. She swept her arm toward the windows and the view of the sprawling city beyond. “That. All of it. I’m not going to renew my contract. It’s time to go home.”

He could have said he understood. It was exhausting to be there, every day a struggle in some small but wearying way, never relaxing. Moscow was a massive city. Nothing worked. No one was reliable. Everything was in transition, collapsing and remaking itself. All that was true. But he didn’t feel that generous.

“Home?” he said instead.

“I mean, I think I have to return to Sweden. It’s time.” She gave him a small, determined smile and repeated it, this time in Russian. “It’s time.”

He sat down opposite her at the table.

“Don’t you think about going home?” she said.

“We can’t stay here forever. We don’t belong here.”

“I’m used to it,” he said.

He’d avoided thinking about it in any conscious way.

He didn’t know how long he would be in Moscow. He was freelancing, a stringer, working off a multiple-entry business visa that he needed to renew every now and then, a tenuous status—but he had, as yet, no post-Russia plan. He was in a liminal state of being in Russia, itself in a liminal state of post-Communism. Every day was a reason to stay and see what the next one would bring.

“And us?” It was an unnecessary question. Anna, while here in Russia, was in this same twilight place as he was: that’s why it worked. Why it had worked. Had been working. He’d felt entirely out of place on his one visit to Sweden with her. They, as a unit, belonged only in Moscow.

He’d been in Moscow before they met. Now he’d be there after she left.

A few weeks earlier, she’d been testy about speaking English all the time. He didn’t speak Swedish, and her English was stronger than her Russian, which was better still than his own. English was the only viable option for a household language. She worked for a Swedish government agency, he’d pointed out, heard her native tongue all day, so it wasn’t that she was always at a linguistic disadvantage.

Her English was so good, in fact, even idiomatic, that he forgot it was extra work for her, until she was suddenly at a loss for a word and would say it two or three times in increasingly insistent Swedish, as if repetition itself could serve to translate. In those moments he’d wonder how much was left out between them and catch a glimpse of an unknowable, parallel Anna who didn’t exist in English. The Anna who needed to go home.

MOLLY MCCARRON // 23

A

MOLLY MCCARRON // 24

A

t the airport they bought beer from a kiosk that also sold large gingerbread cookies in the shape of onion-domed churches. They stood at a counter to drink it. Anna looked happy.

“You’ll be here going back to Canada some day soon,” she predicted.

“I don’t know. I like Moscow.”

“I like Moscow too,” she said. She pointed at her flight, halfway down the departures board. “I just don’t want to live here.”

“I like Moscow,” he said again after a few moments of silence. “There’s always something happening here.”

“Yes,” Anna agreed. “Usually something bad.”

They clinked their bottles together. An inarticulate announcement came over the speaker.

“That might be my flight,” she said. She handed him her can. “This is it. You are always welcome to visit.

Dobro pozhalovets v Stockgomye. Do svidanya.”

“Hej do,” Nick said. Goodbye: one of the only things he’d ever learned to say in Swedish. As he watched Anna walk down the hall to the security gate, her hand reaching back to pull her little canvas backpack straight, he wondered if he should have made more of an effort.

G

iles was Nick’s inherited friend, gifted by a Canadian colleague who’d subsequently left. He was fast-talking and educated, if not cultured. He managed things at a German bank that had radiated quickly across Russia once the Soviet Union collapsed; his job involved travel and lunch. A chauffered car sat outside his office building throughout the day and could be summoned back with a single call at night. Giles had only ever been on the famous Moscow metro once, on a tour of the stations, dropped in and out as part of a group without actually riding the train. He wouldn’t be caught dead waving down a random car for a ride, which Nick did several times a week, negotiating a fixed rate with a few words before sliding in the back seat of whatever vehicle stopped at the side of the road: a postal truck, a discarded limo. Tonight someone’s Lada, kept alive with masking tape and coat hangers, had delivered him to the Sandunovsky Baths near the Bolshoi.

Banya night with Giles was a perfect post-Anna activity, a prophylactic against morose reminiscence.

In the changeroom, wrapped in sheets, they sat on benches and drank beer while they waited for the steam to be hot enough. Nick and Giles and Giles’s compatriot, Simon, who was at the British embassy, talked about potential replacements for Yeltsin. Every few months when the president disappeared from sight, rumours of his imminent departure increased. They’d yet to pan out.

Behind them, on the other side of the twosided bench, a group of middle-aged Russian men were already halfway through a bottle of vodka. As Giles got louder, making some arch, semi-informed comment about Boris Nikolayevich in his posh head-prefect voice, Nick noticed the group behind them stop talking and go quiet. One of the men, dark-eyed with a bald head, squinted toward Giles and said something in a bitter, guttural tone that made the others laugh. Nick sensed a note of menace in the laughter. He was aware, suddenly, of how the braying, world-weary dismissals of Simon and Giles carried through the room at a different timbre than the Russian conversations around them. He felt uncomfortably conspicuous and uneasy with the proximity to this other group.

“The steam is ready,” announced the wiry man whose job it was to stoke the oven. They unwrapped themselves and followed the crowd into a wood-lined room. In the dark it was easier to blend in.

Nick’s Canadian constitution couldn’t keep up with the British when it came to a night of drinking. And he definitely couldn’t keep up with Russians. Usually, he’d bow out before the last bar or yet another round, and go home, which over the last year and a half had meant going home to Anna, but now would mean going home to the half-empty apartment. So tonight, after several rounds of steam, he slid into the back seat of the black Mercedes with Giles and Simon and continued onto the next place, a dismal bar right on the Garden Ring with a dance floor packed with other expats with no place else to go.

“Vova’s going to look into getting a blue light,” Giles said as they sped along the multi-lane road. Cars topped by blue lights could scream by in the middle lane on any road and traffic would part like the Red Sea. There were so many of the lights on the road that it was clear they weren’t all official. All you needed, it seemed, was cash and entitlement.

At the bar Nick matched them drink for drink. He danced, though he hated to dance. They yelled and he yelled back about how crazy it was here, how cursed the country was, how everything was bad and even though there had been a moment, the tiniest second of hope, a few years back, it was now all going south. It would never be a normal country, they agreed (whatever that was). It was a mess.

Simon looked over toward the bar. Nick followed his gaze. A clutch of statuesque young Russian women looking to escape the poverty of economic collapse and failed reform scanned the room for wealth.

“But a gorgeous mess,” Simon said.

I

The driver reappeared. He leaned in as he opened the door and thrust his hand into the back.

“Take it.” Nick looked down. Two hot fried discs on a piece of tin foil. “Syrniki.” Little sweet cheese pancakes. His stomach turned and then growled.

The driver turned up the the radio as the car rattled to life. The news was now being read at high speed.

Yeltsin disappeared. Inflation, an insane exchange rate.

Another oligarch shot in another square. Always something happening.

“Nu shto,” sighed the driver. He turned the dial and lush classical music, Tchaikovsky maybe, took over.

“Better.” He looked at Nick via the rear-view window.

“Not hungry?”

Nick nibbled at one of the cheese pancakes. Delicious. He nodded. He felt like he owed this friendly man an explanation of some sort. “My girlfriend moved away,” he said. “Back home. To Sweden.”

The driver, stopped at the light, double-blinked slowly in acknowledgement. He had finished weaving through neighbourhood streets and was now on the many-laned Ring Road. The massive building around the corner from Nick’s apartment, one of seven huge towers built by Stalin, came into view.

“Buivayet. It happens,” he said phlegmatically. He turned onto an abrupt turning lane and then merged into smaller local streets.

He slowed down and pulled over where Nick indicated, a few blocks from Nick’s building. The rest of the way was a warren of narrow side streets, and he could use the walk.

“How much?” Nick said.

“As agreed,” the man said. “Dollars are best.” Nick couldn’t remember a negotiation from the night before—let alone getting into the car at all—and pulled out the amount he usually offered for in-town rides.

The man took the dollar bills and tucked them behind the visor. He turned to Nick from the front seat.

“It happens,” he said. “But life continues. The world is crazy, but not everything is bad.” Nick nodded. He closed the door behind him. He could now see the outside of the car, a black Volga, a bureaucrat’s car. The car of someone who’d held status in a system that had, until recently, seemed as solid as a tank and then disintegrated on contact, like a termite-ridden joist. The car of someone who ferried blacked-out foreigners to earn some cash that would hold its value.

The sky was a lighter grey. It wasn’t yet dawn. He unwrapped the second cheese pancake and walked home to see what else would happen. ///

MOLLY MCCARRON // 25

t was still dark when Nick woke up, but he knew somehow that it was morning, not night. He was in the springy back seat of a Soviet car, not Giles’s sedan, and he could see the top of someone’s head in the driver’s seat. He jolted himself upward. The broad face of a man poked through the front seats.

“It lives!” said the man in a gravelly voice. “Good morning.”

“Good,” said Nick. In Russian you could just say the first part; the rest was implied. Sitting up, he could see that the car was parked in a courtyard in the middle of an apartment complex that could be anywhere, one of thousands of identical sets of buildings thrown up in the sixties and seventies to address a housing crisis. The radio was playing at a low volume, not oldies this morning, but current Russian pop with an infectiously buoyant beat. Nick noticed a thermos on the passenger seat.

“And now, finally, I can take you home,” said the man. “Which is where?”

“Where are we?” said Nick. He had fully woken up now and felt a prickly awareness of the precarity of his situation: in a stranger’s car, before dawn, in an unknown neighbourhood. “I live in Krasnye Vorota,” he added.

“Not far,” said the man, opening the driver-side door. “Just a second.” He walked toward one of the building entrances and disappeared inside.

Early the previous morning Nick had seen a corpse at the edge of an ad hoc market of kiosks near his apartment. He’d taken it as a clumsy symbol, the universe seeking to underscore for him that his relationship was over—just in case he’d forgotten, just in case he hadn’t noticed he’d woken up that day in a half-empty apartment. It wasn’t subtle, but Russia, mystery-enigma reputation notwithstanding, was a place that didn’t fear melodrama. Symbolism could slap you in the face.

The body had been so white and so still he hadn’t felt a need to stop to verify. He wasn’t going to embroil himself in the misfortune of the departed by alerting the authorities. He’d just moved on.

Now he was God knows where and still shaky. If he disappeared it would be days before anyone noticed. He felt for his wallet—still there. He thought about getting out and walking until he found a main street and a bus stop.

Any bus would take him to a metro station, and out on a road, at least, there would be other people around. He’d be less likely to become a forgotten, passed-by victim.

The aroma of tea wafted back from the front seat.

An Orthodox cross on a beaded chain hung down from the rear-view mirror, entwined with a Moscow Dinamo football team medallion.

CATHERINE LEWIS // 26

CATHERINE LEWIS

FOR MY HUSBAND ON FATHER’S DAY for my husband on Father’s Day, reads each card I flip through for my man in late May, early June as I stand alone at the greeting card racks year after year thank you for being a wonderful father to our children,

one card reads I automatically put it back so thrilled we became parents together, I shove this card back too for there is no card that sums up thank you for being a great father to your teen by your ex, not that I don’t always try to be a good stepmom not that it can ever be enough after all our IVFs failed not that your kid doesn’t already have a great mom only one of us has a holiday Father’s Day an annual gustatory adventure wherever my foodie husband wants to have dinner I’m just along for the ride as longstanding stepmother

your pandemic Father’s Day now a cross-generational Zoom dinner pandemic Mother’s Day now a silent occasion a day that’s not mine a day when I open a full bottle of bubbly and don’t even think of sharing it for there’s no gift or card or meal my husband has ever been able to buy me to make up for how this day is broken but early June though there isn’t exactly a card for us I (somehow) select the right for my husband on Father’s Day card year after year no phrases implying we started this family together nothing referring to the kids as ours a card that only thanks him for how he takes care of all of us that will never be able to sum up how hard he’s had to work to balance this new wife with his kid with his standard #DivorcedDadDrama it’s two fresh greeting cards from his kid and me that my husband smiles at every year over our blended family’s Father’s Day dinner hours before he proudly displays them on his nightstand’s mantel ///

CATHERINE LEWIS // 27

Mother’s Day a non-event not that I didn’t try not that I didn’t try to sneak my way in through the fertility clinic doors not that I didn’t try to sign myself up for macaroni Mother’s Day art made in kindergarten class for cracked nipples and complaining about milk coming in for years of diapers and worries about kids with all our sass not that I’m not always worrying about your kid but who really needs a third parent fussing over them why Stepmom’s Day doesn’t really exist

PASCAL GIRARD // 28

CREDIT

COMICS

FACE

PASCAL GIRARD // 29

PASCAL GIRARD

PASCAL GIRARD // 30

FACEBOOK

COMICS

FALL

PASCAL GIRARD // 31

PASCAL GIRARD

PASCAL GIRARD // 32

TIM HORTONS

COMICS

TAMARA JONG

SAINT, FEARS. “THE SAME CUP IS NOT THE SAME CUP.” —BETSY WARLAND,

BREATHING THE PAGE: READING THE ACT OF WRITING

I

t was unbearably hot and humid the summer I travelled to my Québécois hometown to see Saint André’s heart. It was the week before my fifty-first birthday, and the drive—without working AC—felt like hell (if I believed in one). The person looking back at me in the rear-view mirror was a fright.

Plans for a silent retreat in the States had fallen through, so I decided to return to Montreal for answers or comfort, I didn’t know for sure. I wanted to trace my past by visiting the places that had scared me as a child and were a part of my story as much as they weren’t.

My therapist, Muriel, told me that sometimes you must go backward to go forward. I needed to see versions of my past self, to witness the old, the new, and what remained of my faith. Had I become the type of person hoping to see Jesus in her multigrain toast?

The thought of taking the shuttle bus up seemed ridiculous, so I scaled the 283 sweat-filled steps up Mount Royal to St. Joseph’s Oratory. I marveled at the devotion of pilgrims who had crawled up ninety-nine steps on their knees reciting a prayer in an area marked Réservé Aux Pèlerins qui Montent À Genoux. If the devoted could go up on their knees, I could certainly walk up a mountain.

I hadn’t planned for my trip to be so very Catholic, but it was predictable. As a formerly religious Jehovah’s Witness, teachings that other religions and their

churches were part of Satan’s Christendom had made me uneasy. We believed that giving veneration to any religious images was idol worship, which left me curious about people’s attachment to them. Once, I found a tiny Jesus, Mary, and cross hidden within a secret compartment in a thrift store wallet. I tossed the whole thing in the trash in case it was possessed.

As part of my trip, I also visited St. Patrick’s Basilica, the Musée Historique Canadien, and the Musée des Soeurs de Miséricorde. The Musée Historique Canadien was a wax museum featuring an exhibit of Christians being eaten by lions; as a kid, I was terrified and begged Ma not to make me pass by the mutilated faithful. The Musée des Soeurs de Miséricorde, a convent right across the river from where I grew up, mystified my brother, sister, and me. What had I been so afraid of? In those buildings, there was a disembodied heart, wax dummies, and mortal women in habits. My great-aunt, Sister John of the Cross, a nun, had penned some lovely letters to me even though I was of a different faith. What could any of these people or objects do to me?

I knew, however, to be afraid of my parents’ anger—the violence, the yelling, the leaving—and how it ripped into our dreams and life with little warning. I both feared and loved God, but God’s wrath and the upcoming war of Armageddon (along with the images of fire and earth swallowing up the wicked) were burned into my child’s brain. If these prophecies came true, I wouldn’t be sailing into paradise on Ma’s coattails. I had to carry my own load by being faithful in body and mind. Being a child wasn’t an excuse. Was my devotion and faith to Jehovah built on love or fear?

Was there a difference?

TAMARA JONG // 33

SAINT, FEARS. FATHERS, ORIGINS: A DIPTYCH

TAMARA JONG // 34

They say that baby ducklings imprint on the first things they see. In my baby pictures, my face is serious, unsure, emo-ish, or smiling cautiously. Ma often punished me for getting in trouble at school. Starting in kindergarten, she would ask me for the daily report of my activities, my expression giving me away. If I behaved, Ma was happy with me, and she’d continue trying to turn me into a God-abiding, Jesus-Christfollowing, dress-wearing little girl. I couldn’t lie to her—Ma’s approval was love to me.

Ma and I were both lapsed Catholics. She had converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses when I was two and asked for us to be removed from the Catholic Baptismal registry since she no longer wanted to be considered a member of their church. Ma didn’t speak much of her past Catholic life, and we were now active in our newly chosen faith. We attended Bible study meetings three times a week, followed strict guidelines, and preached about God’s Kingdom. I had no memory of anything to do with St. Patrick’s Basilica where I was baptized.

I didn’t even know the Lord’s Prayer or what a Hail Mary was, or how to make the sign of the cross. Ma was a strict disciplinarian and made sure I knew that Jehovah was always watching. She didn’t need to tell me: I felt it.

When I was six, Brother André’s heart was stolen at night from St. Joseph’s Oratory and held for a $50,000 ransom. The church wouldn’t pay. The heart was later returned through an anonymous tip. It reminded me of the pickled brain held in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab that was in the haunted house at Belmont Parc, where the brain gurgled, “Help me!” Before I went to see Brother André’s heart, I took a walk in the Gardens of the Way. When I came across the sculpture of Jesus at the third station of the cross, where he fell for the first time, it affected me unexpectedly. Just a few days earlier, my heart began beating so fast on approaching St. Patrick’s Basilica, church of my baptism. I wasn’t prepared to have feelings about any of these places, and now in the garden, I felt a bit of heaviness in my body, with each step I took. If I had been my old praying self, this would have been the time. But which God would I pray to, the one at my first baptism or the God of my second?

When I went to see the heart in the Great Reliquary of the Basilica, I saved it for last. It was daylight still and very quiet, with few visitors in the vicinity. The reliquary jar sat atop a marble pedestal. The gates, thick glass, iron grill holding a few prayers tucked into it, all separated me from the jar containing the saint’s heart.

When I looked at the urn, the contents were cloudy, and my reflection looked back at me. I had just seen the three dioramas of Brother André’s life: the white

iron-framed bed that he died on with the pencil-thin mattress, plain white linens, and two pillows; the story of his miracles and the crutches hanging up to bear witness to those miracles; his tomb and humble church and beginnings. But his heart wasn’t visible to me. I was too afraid to ask the faithful pilgrims nearby what their experiences showed them. After coming all this way, I didn’t want to be the one who couldn’t see.

FATHERS, ORIGINS “WHEN ONE HAS NOT HAD A GOOD FATHER, ONE MUST CREATE ONE.” —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

W

hen Ma finally kicked out my father, I was fourteen. She’d had enough of his affairs, and he’d had enough of her drinking and breakdowns. We kids welcomed the quiet. We heard that he fought to see us, but little kids’ sources are suspect. Later, my father would take us to Burger King, just like those typical after-school TV shows. We went to his apartment once, a small place he shared with his friend Johnny, with his clothes lying all over the place. He gave us a phone number scribbled on a piece of paper so we could reach him. He would drop by to see us sometimes, but he didn’t take us to his place ever again. “Don’t call me Daddy,” he warned us when we were out in public. If we needed to get in touch, we could call the restaurant where he worked, The Ho-Wah. My brother, sister, and I wondered if he was part of a gang or if he’d gotten an upgraded family. These fictions protected us from the truth we weren’t ready to see.

When I was eleven, I broke away from the Jehovah’s Witnesses though I had been brought up in “the truth” since I was two years old. To bring me back to the fold, Ma had my brother and me study the Bible with a young family from our local Kingdom Hall. At first, my studies were a joke; we wouldn’t pay attention, or we’d miss our study times. Then, during one of our weekly Tuesday meetings, I finally made some important connections. I began to understand the prophecies and how they applied to the last days. It was a time of clarity for me: a moment that led me to a series of events that would culminate in my baptism and commitment to Jehovah God. I felt warmth and calm within. Before, I had been unfocused and without purpose, but now my beliefs and relationship with God were steadfast, and I wanted to serve him forever. You can never go back, you know, to that one moment when you thought you knew everything.

according to the congregation and Jehovah. I see now that I needed the Jehovah’s Witnesses, that I had nowhere else to go, that I needed to feel safe. My mental health started to fall apart just before my thirty-second birthday when I was hospitalized for a suicide attempt after being diagnosed with clinical depression. I felt better with meds and some therapy but jumped right back into my faith. When the depression hit me again at thirty-eight, I was referred to a Jungian therapist.

I didn’t trust that this type of therapy could help me.

All I wanted was to get my brain fixed and to get back to Jehovah and the congregation. I would be like the prodigal son; the heavens would rejoice at my return.

Instead, I ended up questioning my beliefs and whether Jehovah even existed. Anger at God deep within me quickly turned to doubt and disbelief. I wonder now if Ma’s sudden death was a catalyst that would eventually lead to my leaving. All I know is, faith made me see, and then one day it didn’t. ///

TAMARA JONG // 35

Once my parents split up, my father didn’t seem as interested in us, or me. I would easily replace my earthly father with a different kind of Father who promised to always be there for me. He was the alpha and omega, a God without beginning or end, and he felt real enough to me in prayer that it didn’t matter if I didn’t know what he looked like or where he came from. After all, the Bible told me in Exodus 33:20, “No man may see me and yet live.” The Watchtower magazine told me God was too powerful to be viewed by human eyes. That we don’t see gravity or electricity and yet they exist. In 2 Corinthians 5:7, the apostle Paul says we need to “walk by faith and not by sight.” I was young and lost. This language gave me a sense of belonging, meaning, and community. I was eighteen when Ma was disfellowshipped and shunned by me and the congregation as the scriptures dictate. When she drowned two years later, my relationship with God was the main constant in my life that kept me whole. I had finally found a Father who would never die or leave me.

My father didn’t talk to us about himself or his extended family that much. My grandfather died in South Bend, Indiana when I was four, and my father had been estranged from him for several years. Even now, when I ask about my grandfather’s personality, my father said he didn’t know him that well since he left South Bend as a teenager. Our conversations are often cut short when I ask too many questions, but I still push the limits of his patience. Should I stop? I wonder. It’s taken me so long to get up the courage to ask him anything.

Much like my father, the mirror doesn’t tell me who I am or where I come from. In 2017, I took an AncestryDNA test, because I wanted to know what I was made up of. Something to tell me who I am, which people I belong to. If I knew where I was from, who my kin were exactly, and could confirm it on a map, perhaps it would help me end the searching and the questioning. The first results told me I am more Asian, less Scottish, less white. As if I needed a test to tell me this. The data keeps changing with more samples. Now it says I am an even split mix of Chinese/Dai/Vietnamese and Scottish/Irish descent. Sometimes when I log in, there’s a new percentage, a new mix. Maybe I must accept I may not find what I’m hoping to find. Religion had taught me not to question. If anyone wondered anything, in God’s due time, the answer would be revealed; faith would always have to be enough.

I don’t know the exact moment I started wavering from my religion as an adult. I had been an obedient member of the congregation and its doctrine, rarely questioning its truth. I was a faithful full-time pioneer at one time, just like Ma. She had raised her kids right

JEN BATLER // 36

JEN BATLER

LOST AND FOUND AT THE MUSEUM FOR BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS THE MUSEUM OF BROKEN RELATIONSHIPS HAS LOCATIONS IN LOS ANGELES AND ZAGREB. IT IS OPEN EVERY DAY.

C

W

e touched down in the late afternoon and after checking in at the pension we went for a stroll, mouths open, pores open, our bodies swallowing the heat.

“I’m going to buy a white linen suit,” I announced apropos of nothing.

“There’s supposed to be a restaurant here where you can get a seafood tower with twelve different kinds of shellfish,” Grusha said. “They serve it with lemons.

The lemons are the size of your head.”

I believed her about the lemons. It was that Mediterranean sunshine and light, a salve over everything, I could feel it between my toes. Grusha and I paused to turn our faces up to the sun in tandem photosynthesis.

I’d dated a guy from Australia who pointed out that everyone in Vancouver looked so young. “It’s the sun,” I told him. “We don’t get any up here.”

The Australian considered this.“That’s not depressing?”

“Oh sure, I’m depressed, but see?” I touched my face. “No wrinkles.”

As soon as I recalled this exchange I winced and looked for shade. My generation is burdened with sun guilt. Also earth guilt, but the sun at least was an orb I could avoid.

Since we weren’t going to the museum until the following day, we walked off our jet lag hunting for the seafood place. Grusha could be dogged in her pursuit of Yelp-reviewed eateries. We couldn’t find it but she refused to give up until we were both starving and bickering, backs aching from hoofing it down dozens of winding stone streets. Then, Grusha stubbed her toe lunging sideways to avoid a scooter and exploded into a brash, public sob-fest. I pushed her into a doorway so no one would see.

The flight was long and Grusha was crap company on long trips; she’d fall asleep in any type of vehicle: planes, trains, subways, taxis.

“I told you not to wear flip-flops.” I don’t know why but when other people hurt themselves, I get angry, I can’t help myself. I looked at her toe; it was fine. I put my arms around her until she simmered down. I let her wipe her face on my shirt collar.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“That’s okay, baby, you’re just hungry. It’s the time difference.”

We backtracked to a street we’d passed earlier, rows of touristy restaurants with the tables outside.

It was packed. We found a place that could seat us called NY Pizza. We ordered margherita pizzas and Cokes, and then laughed at ourselves for being pathetic tourists, secretly relieved that the menu was in English. The sweaty cheese and tomato tang brought us back to ourselves. From the daffy look on Grusha’s face I could tell she was pining over her lost love, The Prick.

“You think I’m sexy, don’t you?” she piped up.

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Image courtesy of the artist.

JEN BATLER // 37

roatia might seem like a long way to go to get over a broken heart, but when Grusha begged me to be her sidearm, I thought beaches, I thought salt on skin, and off I went. To Zagreb, which I learned just before takeoff is landlocked and nowhere near the sea.

I should have known better. Grusha is a terrible traveller. She showed up every place with a head stocked full of social media photo ops and ran them down like she was checking off a millennial bucket list. We’d gone on a few trips together when we were in college. They were exhausting. But she’d just been dumped in the worst way by The Prick (that’s what we were calling him now), and we were on a pilgrimage to the Museum of Broken Relationships with a shoebox full of keepsakes from their tenure together.

The flight was long and Grusha was crap company on long trips; she’d fall asleep in any type of vehicle: planes, trains, subways, taxis. To keep her lucid, I pulled the shoebox out of her carry-on.

“What have we got here?” I asked.

She lifted the lid reverently. I already knew what was in the box, but she walked me through it again, an avid cataloguer of her own miseries, a picker of scabs both physical and emotional, my friend Grusha.

The USB key he’d lent her when she’d lost hers— that was how they met. The ticket stubs from an early date. Novelty panties he’d given her as a gift, unused.

And my favourite: a Band-Aid yellowed with old pus, applied lovingly by Grusha when The Prick had gone down on bended knee and scraped it on hard cement.

She thought he was proposing, but it was just a joke. “I mean, who proposes to someone ON HER BIRTHDAY as a joke? Ugh. What a prick.” She gave the Band-Aid a quick sniff before dropping it back in the box. Revisiting these memories made her gloomy so I ordered us two vodkas and then we listened to the Mamma Mia soundtrack, one earbud apiece.

JEN BATLER // 38

“Monumentally,” I assured her. “If you were a dude, you wouldn’t be safe around me.”

They’d been together for about four years, and then one day The Prick came home from work and told her he wasn’t attracted to her anymore. Just like that.

“It’s just so traumatizing, you know?” she said.

There was a slick of chili oil making her chin shiny, but I didn’t think the time was right to mention it. “I have trauma. I’ve been traumatized by it.”

When he brought the bill, the waiter caught my eye; I tried not to look. That’s not what you’re here for, Aidan, I told myself. Be a good friend. Travel-weary, we returned to the pension. We were sharing a double, the narrow beds loaded with blankets of assorted provenance, but it was so hot we slept on top of the covers, as chaste as a monk and a nun sharing a room for some reason.

K

nowing Grusha would sleep in, I went out in the morning to wander around alone. When it comes to travel, I’m not a planner. I don’t like to have an itinerary, prefer to drop in and hope that immersion happens. It hasn’t happened yet. Usually I feel as out of place abroad as I do where I was born; as if I’m skirting a stadium trying to find a way in after the concert’s already started.

Zagreb was nice, but the old world churches and dulcet language meant nothing to me. I scoped out the men and women on their way to work, trying to divine if they knew anything here that we didn’t on the other side of the world. But no; the people here were the same as people everywhere. This should have been reassuring

We looked at claddagh rings, his and hers. We looked at a stuffed bear missing an eye, at belly button lint. but I found it disappointing. If the world had secrets, she was doing too good a job of hiding them from me.

Church bells bonged ten and I returned to the pension. Unlike me, Grusha travelled on a schedule and she would have the day planned down to the hour. I was right: she was waiting for me, the shoebox tucked under her arm, freshly showered, her cowlick showing. She pulled hair over it, lamenting the lack of a hairdryer.

We went to a bakery and had small, nutty cakes for breakfast, then straight to the Museum for Broken

Relationships. I’d rolled my eyes when Grusha told me about it, a place where people sent mementos of their failed romances to be displayed like historical artifacts or works of art. But as we looked at the exhibits, I warmed up to the idea because there is fallout from our entanglements. Like when a bomb detonates, there’s residual material left over that has a long halflife, sometimes longer than the actual relationship.

And this detritus has to go somewhere. It can’t be destroyed: it’s radioactive.

We looked at claddagh rings, his and hers. We looked at a stuffed bear missing an eye, at belly button lint. At an axe, which had pride of place on the back wall. A murder weapon—the ultimate fallout. Grusha caught my eye, winked. “We’ve all thought about it,” she said. I worry about her, sometimes.

She went to find the museum curator or whoever was taking care of all these remnants. I read a series of love letters pinned to a wall and realized that I had never written one, and more shattering, no one had ever written one to me. I was thirtyish; this seemed to me an ominous oversight. I looked for Grusha to get her opinion on the matter and found her pleading her case with the gift shop clerk.

“But I came all the way from Canada,” she was saying.

“I’m very sorry,” the young man responded in precise English. “We’re not accepting any new items to the museum right now.”

Grusha spun on me, utter disbelief on her face.

“They won’t take it,” she said, meaning the shoebox.

“Didn’t you email ahead or anything?” I asked.

Her jaw slid forward and she got her stubborn mule moue on, the one she got whenever she hadn’t done her due diligence.

“Can you pivot?” I asked. This was a word everyone at my job used, and now it was in my vocabulary, there was little I could do about it.

Pensive, Grusha confronted the store clerk again.

“Is there a bridge anywhere close?”

“Yes, you could go to the Liberty Bridge, or the Hendrix Bridge. Both are very beautiful.” The clerk pointed out a stack of tourist maps near the exit.

“Sorry baby,” I said to Grusha. “Guess they’re just full up on broken hearts right now.”

I hadn’t meant it for her, but the young clerk took my comment seriously.

“Yes, we are,” he said, wide-eyed. “The world is sick with love currently.”

He had a plush lower lip I wanted to press with my thumb, but I was being a good friend and Grusha, determined to satisfy her agenda, had already left. I followed, but the clerk’s strange statement stuck with

T

hat night we went out to a nightclub that was on the action-item list Grusha kept in her head. We drank our signature cocktails and jostled each other on the dance floor. We bought some coke from a slinkylimbed girl hanging out by the bathrooms and snorted it inelegantly off Grusha’s cell phone.

“I’m having the best time,” she screamed over the music. “Aren’t you having the best time?”

The drugs emboldened her with the men who danced close to her. One of them stared nastily at me over her shoulder while she ground her butt into his groin, probably thinking I was her cuckolded boyfriend. I gave him the thumb’s up. I knew what the deal was. The Prick had put a dent in her confidence and she was out to prove something to his memory. But she always shied away from these Lotharios as soon as they got handsy, wanting to impose a confidence of their own.

A song came on that we liked and she jumped on me, ecstatic, licking the sweat off my neck. I turned my head away before her searching tongue found my mouth. This was a pattern, Grusha making a move on me whenever she was having a hard time. Because I was there, because I was safe. Because she was, in her words, “open to whatever,” and didn’t quite believe that I wasn’t the same way. I was more than over it. I put her down and sought out the bar, leaning against the icy glass.

A man, not too young, had been watching me dance with Grusha. His interest nudged my tripwires, a tickling inquiry and its answer in one. When he saw I was alone, he came up and introduced himself. Josip.

“Aidan,” I said.

“You are from England,” he told me.

“No—Canada.”

We talked, sort of, we could barely hear each other over the bass. In a while I went to find Grusha and told her I was going home with him.

“What?” She trailed us out, tugging on my elbow and uttering warnings without lowering her voice.

“No!” Out on the street I stopped so she could make a proper scene. “Please don’t go with him,” she pleaded.

“Stay here with me. He looks sleazy and desperate.”

“I’m sleazy and desperate,” I countered.

“You always do this to me,” she slurred. “One of these days, something bad is gonna happen.”

She wobbled after us on the pavement so I asked Josip to wait and flagged down a taxi. Knowing she would fall asleep in it, I repeated the name of the pension twice and made a show of taking down the plate number. Then I joined Josip, who stood by watching the show, waiting for me.

W

hatever Grusha was worried about, nothing bad happened. Josip lived in a nice apartment, was sweetly matter-of-fact in bed, his breath melting deeply into sleep right after. I slept next to him, his mattress a dream compared to the hard cot at the pension. I woke up early enough to watch the rooftops of Zagreb turn from eggplant to terracotta in the morning light. I looked around Josip’s bedroom, an opaque assortment of things to me, but if I stuck around long enough they would become important: that jar of pomade, that discarded shoelace under the dresser, that belt. And after the end, what would I do with the remainders in a world so sick with love its broken heart museums are overflowing?

Though I speak no other languages, there is one word I know in several. In Russian, it’s toska. In Portuguese, it’s saudade. There isn’t really a word for it in English. Nostalgia comes close, but isn’t quite the same thing. What it is, is a yearning for something that’s not there. A sadness for something lost which cannot be found. A longing for I know not what. When Josip woke up I would ask him if there was a word for it in Croatian so I could add it to my collection, a souvenir from the trip. ///

S TAY I N TO U CH:

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JEN BATLER // 39

me on our march to the bridge. The world is sick with love currently. Did he mean lovesick? Maybe it was a mishandled translation, a Croatian idiom that didn’t sound so dire in its native tongue.

We reached the river and stopped in the middle of the bridge. After a final glance inside at the contents, Grusha flung the whole box out over the water and we watched it fall. Halfway down the lid flew off and all the trinkets splashed down separately, soundlessly, before they floated out of sight. For having come all this way, the event felt anticlimactic.

“You know,” I mused, “some poor fish is gonna choke on that Band-Aid and die.”

To her credit, the expression on Grusha’s face was one of remorse.

SHANNAN MANN

SHANNAN MANN // 40

FOR ANOTHER In this house of slaughter, you’re crying for another.

I am dying for you, you’re dying for another.

On a spree we hunt all the bazaars of the city.

I am buying for you, you’re buying for another.

“I’ll bring you Orion.”—“I’ll cocoon you in my womb.”

I am lying for you, you’re lying for another.

Incensed, I turn to smoke and slip in through your window, you aren’t home. I am trying for you, you’re trying for another.

You are sleeping with the ocean, I’ve borne the rain.

I am crying for you, you’re crying for another.

Hush, little baby, don’t cry, I’ll put a needle in your eye.

I’m lullabying for you, you’re lullabying for another.

I am the lusterless moon, you’re blue-green earth.

I am flying for you, you’re flying for another.

Go to hell, Shannan, they’ll char you in a pan of boiling oil.

But already I’m frying for you, you’re frying for another. ///

PATHOGENIC BACTERIUM , 18” x 24”, MIXED MEDIA, INKS ON PAPER, 2020 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JASON CARREIRO

Image courtesy of the artist.

SHANNAN MANN // 41

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI // 42

GODSPEED E

than rides to work every morning on his ten-speed.

It’s chilly, so he’s got a fuzzy woolen lumber jacket on over his once-black Judas Priest T-shirt. It billows behind him like a sail.

I gave Ethan that jacket. We called them bush jackets growing up. Everyone’s got at least two of them hanging in their back porch. Mine was a hand-medown from Uncle Vic so it’s extra worn in. No matter how many times it’s been washed, I can still smell the wood chips. Ethan wasn’t supposed to keep it, though.

It really irks me that he’s still got it, that he’s wearing it around like a prize.

Since moving to town to live with Grandma, I’ve had insomnia. There’s too much light, too much noise, too much shit going on. So I walk to McDonald’s, sit near the window with a coffee and the paper. There’s never any good news.

I first saw Ethan about a month ago. Hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, since that summer, which is practically impossible in a town where everyone knows everyone. Eventually we’re all just piled up on one another like a deck of cards.

He looks exactly the same. Same scowl. Same beaklike cheekbones. Same intensity plus insecurity shielding his eyes. I wonder if he’d think I look the same, too.

I used to think he was interesting. Mysterious even. A puzzle that would click together if you could just get all the pieces to line up.

“Y

ou don’t talk like any girl I know,” Ethan said, pulling his shoulders up to his ears like he was trying to absorb the words back into his body.

We were standing on the CN Rail tracks. It was the end of October, when the damp air eats at your bones, when frost clings to the grass and leaves, spreading over the asphalt with its sparkly crust. Before the sun burned it off, we power skated across the rails in our beat-up Converses, the treads long sanded smooth.

Tested how far we could go before falling off. It’s what we did for fun. Then we lit up a joint. Our hands in fingerless gloves, our jackets gaping open.

“How many girls do you know?” I asked. Ethan was a soft city kid so I was giving him the gears the way I did with all the kids sent to summer Bible camp to learn good country values. Once the summer is up and routine is king, they stop coming. Ethan stuck around.

Even found a piece-of-crap car to drive because the city bus stops at Twin City Crossroads and that’s still a helluva ways from First Baptist.

“I don’t know many,” he said, his lower lip jutting out slightly like he’d done something bad and was sucking up. Or like he was following the rules but wanted you to know he wasn’t happy about it. The same way he’d sweep in late for church service.

“Does your car have a name?” I asked. The stink of car exhaust stuck to him like a leech.

His car was obviously running rich. I could have told him that, but then he’d be looking to me for the solution and I didn’t need to be anyone’s problem solver. Already had one of those at home. My cross to bear. Yada yada.

Not the first person to have a deadbeat for a mom, not the last. I’m not asking for pity; I don’t know what I’m asking for.

“You mean, like, what kind is it?”

“No, it’s obviously a Chevy of some sort,” I said, tucking my arms under my pits. My fingertips were starting to ache. Arthritis. At 16. There oughta be a law.

“The guys out here name their cars, usually something female. It’s kind of a stupid thing, but it’s the thing nonetheless.”

“Oh.” “Yeah.”

“I guess she needs a name then,” he said flipping the joint in his fingers. “Any ideas?”

“I think you need to be the one who comes up with the name.”

“I think I’m going to call you Stickler.”

“Look, you don’t have to.”

“No, I want to. It’s just, I don’t know many girls.”

Bingo. Ethan never took off his leather jacket, even when it was a hundred degrees. And he smoked a pipe.

The guy was seriously trying to get laid.

I

spied on him during Sunday services. Watched his long fingers fold the church bulletin into a paper airplane that never flew. The way his hair feathered around his ears like frozen waves. If my eyes caught his, he was always the first to look away.

“I get a bad feeling from that guy. Do you still talk to him?” asked Randi-Lynn, pushing her way to me after the final hymn was over, her King James New Revised Standard Bible squeezed under her arm like a purse. Randi-Lynn was full of bad feelings. And her arms used to be regular-sized but have shrunk like sticks since she went on her Jesus fast.

“Not really,” I said. Not adding the part about how the closer I tried to get to him, the more distant he got.

“Those shirts he wears are satanic,” she said, her voice shrill. “Drew, he’s probably a devil worshipper.”

The shirts weren’t really the problem as far as I could see. Beneath the long hair and the jacket and the metal T-shirts, he was innocent. Almost too good.

Everyone in life is crap on legs. That includes everyone at church. Especially at church. We check our shit at the door and then pick it up again on the way out.

Ethan was different.

Me and Randi-Lynn used to hang out together all of the time before her brain went kablooey because of the do-gooder diet. Esther Mains from school is also starving herself but without pinning it on Jesus. I’m doing a compare and contrast. So far Esther is winning. She looks like a lollipop. All she eats is a teaspoon of hummus and three corn chips if you want to know how it’s done.

E

xcept for that one time, Ethan and I never hung out alone again. After that it was always in threes: Ethan, me, and Randi-Lynn. We balanced each other out.

“Macbeth isn’t a proper name,” I told Ethan when I found out what he’d named his car.

Especially because he insisted that everyone yell it at full volume with a phlegmy Scottish accent: MACBETH! “Sure it is. Sometimes I call her my lady.”

“That is the silliest thing you’ve ever said.”

It was the end of summer so we decided to take MACBETH! to Nelson’s hole—our favourite swimming spot. It was also kind of a farewell to Ethan because he got a job pumping gas at Crystal Variety out in Pass Lake, way the heck on the other side of town.

Usually I can call someone’s number right away. It’s my special power.

Randi-Lynn was swanning about in a new twopiece. Her hip bones jutting from her body like tent poles. I wore the same Sears special I’d had for years: a one-piece in watermelon pink.

Everyone was in a good mood. Ethan was all puffed up because he was our chauffeur: Mr. Responsibility. Randi-Lynn was happy to say sayonara to Ethan.

Though he’d more than made up for his threatening devil worship ways by helping her to shill Avon. Somehow, he got Mrs. Riggins to wear colour on her cheeks and lips by trying it on himself first.

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI // 43

“If I were you, I wouldn’t name it after someone you know.”

“No?” “No.” “You cold?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously cold.”

“I’m obviously fine.” I was bummed that I didn’t feel stoned. Getting high was the only thing that mellowed the voices in my head. Well, that and sex.

“Fine, I’ll think of something. Because you asked so nicely,” he said, standing up and jogging on the spot. He looked like Rocky—his grey hooded sweatshirt sticking out of the back of his leather jacket like a tongue. “The girls in town talk a lot but what they do and what they say are two very different things. It’s confusing.” He brought the joint to his lips. “You’re not confusing.”

“Sounds like you need an instruction manual.”

“Imagine if Girl Guides was actually, like, a way to learn about girls?”

Clearly, Ethan was still a virgin. Initially I had taken him for a wolf: looks enough like a dog but there’s something wild and skittish about him. What surprised me was that suddenly I wanted him even more because of it. Me, the girl with a wooden heart.

“Why do you care what girls think so much?”

“Not all girls. Just some girls.”

The city guys think country girls are virgins, but it’s the opposite. You don’t even need to be that attractive to get some. I’m quite average. It’s fine. Average means you can fly under the radar.

“Right.”

Usually I can call someone’s number right away.

It’s my special power. This guy, Ethan, though, it’s like the more time I spent with him, the less I understood what made him tick.

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI // 44

Randi-Lynn called shotgun so I slid in the back seat. The metal buckle was so hot it seared my skin but I winced in silence.

“Room for one more?” Chad Nevus lifted the door handle and poked his head in.

“Of course!” said Ethan, almost a little too enthusiastically.

Randi-Lynn flipped the sun visor down, used her finger to dab on raspberry lip gloss, which ended up on her chin because gravel roads are relentless.

We drove past Sawchuk’s place. Windows cranked open. Ethan hummed “Enter Sandman” because the radio was busted. No two tires were the same so MACBETH! pulled to one side like a sonofabitch. It was a horrible car.

“Well, here we are!” Ethan said, half-turning to me, the apple-shaped air freshener swaying near his chin.

Everyone except Ethan was dressed for swimming.

He had on his usual uniform: a T-shirt, leather jacket, jeans with frayed white strings at the bottom like silkworms. It’s like he was allergic to the sun.

“Let’s go while the sun is high! C’mon Drew! Last one there is a rotten tomato!” yelled Randi-Lynn.

I hate tomatoes. They make the top of my mouth feel funny. “You coming?” I asked, Chad.

“Oh yeah, yeah, sure. Be right there.” But he didn’t move. Let me tell you about Chad.

Delicate features. Used to listen to Mozart and play the violin as part of a trio during the service. He also used to wear glasses and then he went through a transformation of sorts. Got coloured contacts, only wore one bright blue one so he looked like David Bowie. He was a weird one.

Randi-Lynn and I splashed around in the water.

Sunned on the flat rocky ledges. Sipped our lukewarm Tahiti Treats through a straw until our teeth felt fuzzy.

“What are the boys up to, you figure?” I asked.

“Who cares?”

“I care. I’m gonna go see what’s shaking. You coming or staying?”

“I’m staying.”

“Fine. Remember to turn over before you fry.”

“Yup,” she said lazily, a curl pressed to her chin like a question mark.

I started back from the swimming hole when I saw his jacket hanging over a shrub. A few steps more and there was Chad, leaning against a Jackpine, his eyes closed. Ethan’s head bobbing against his crotch.

I turned from them in an inferno of rage. Traitor. Fucking traitor. I tore his jacket from the shrub

on the way back. Stomping on it before chucking it in the river.

I walked all the way back home in my bathing suit.

Tried to thumb a ride, no one would pick me up. The skin on my feet was so badly mangled from the gravel I still have scars. When I got to a creek, I stopped and washed them because they were bloody, watched the red swirl around my toes. I wanted to stay mad at Ethan, but I couldn’t. Mostly I was mad at myself. If I didn’t think Jesus could save me, what the hell was a stupid boy going to be able to do?

I

could ditch my coffee and run after Ethan. I could tell him I’m living in town now too. That I finally left the bad scene with mom. And the church. But then I’d have to explain. Oh, and I lied earlier. I didn’t really give him my bush jacket. Randi-Lynn must have.

Ethan crashed MACBETH! on the way home.

Everyone was fine but MACBETH! had to be towed from the ditch with McFarlane’s skidder. Ethan stopped coming to church. Chad stopped wearing his stupid contacts. Randi-Lynn went to a clinic and I got the hell out. We didn’t speak again after that day. After a while you don’t need to talk to people anymore because you know exactly what they’re going to say.

Ethan would say some shit like I keep moving further away from the problem as a solution. Still, I try to play it out in my mind.

Hey home boy.

This gets his attention.

His eyes narrow. He stops pedaling. Hey. Looks like rain.

He looks to the sky. Naw. It’s going to clear up.

Nice jacket.

Thanks. Got it from a nice girl.

I guess you did.

You, uh, you can have it back if you want.

But that’s as far as I get because after all of this time, I don’t know what it is that I want, then or now.

When it comes to Ethan, my brain has a gap in it.

He rides away. His bike looks rusty. He never was very good at taking care of things so this shouldn’t surprise me. There’s stuff you need to know about a bike to keep it working. You can’t neglect moving parts. I watch him until the jacket no longer has a pattern—it’s just a blur of red and black.

///

EMILY WILLAN

W

hen COVID-19 descended like a cloud out of Mordor, I was reminded of the words of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins: “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door.” Many have seen their world shrink in scale since March 2020, becoming almost— dare I say it?—hobbit-sized. More than two years on,

the news is replete with stories of people struggling to adjust to the constantly altered realities of life during COVID: the tension of various and multiple waves of disease, ever-shifting lockdowns, a cacophony of information, misinformation, measures, and mandates, all of it finally boiling over into protests. Yet when the

MICROBIAL FEASTS (DETAIL), 18' x 12', DESICCATED COCONUT, FOOD COLORING, MIXED MEDIA, 2020 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JASON CARREIRO

Image courtesy of the artist.

EMILY WILLAN // 45

LIVING THE HOBBIT LIFE

EMILY WILLAN // 46

pandemic began, I was struck by how little it changed my daily life. For people like me, life with a disability meant living Shire-style long before COVID and continues to be reality now that vaccines have opened doors again. What I hope to share, for as long as others find themselves in hobbit country with me, is that it’s not so bad here. Limitations have been a reality of life for most these days, and whatever the cause, whether due to disability, as in my case, or the pandemic, as it has been for so many others, J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits in The Fellowship of the Ring have taught me that there’s strength for all in living small.

For those unfamiliar with Fellowship and its hobbits, I have to ask, where in the hallowed name of Eru Ilúvatar have you been for the past sixty-eight years?

But I’ll take a deep breath, remind myself that other people have lives, and elaborate. Hobbits are a quaint people, the smallest in stature of all the peoples of Middle Earth, known for their curly heads and huge, hair-covered feet, dwelling predominantly in an idyllic

What I hope to share, for as long as others find themselves in hobbit country with me, is that it’s not so bad here. green country known as the Shire. To grossly truncate my favourite story of all time, Fellowship is the first of three volumes comprising The Lord of the Rings, which tells the story of a hobbit, Frodo Baggins, and his quest across Middle Earth to destroy the One Ring of power.

The Ring, created by the presently diminished Dark Lord Sauron (the eponymous Lord of the Rings) must be destroyed to stop Sauron from returning to full strength and destroying Middle Earth—and, most importantly of all to Frodo, his home, the Shire.

While hobbits are never counted as a worldly people, at the opening of Fellowship, generations of peace and prosperity have made the hobbits even more insular, and they are in turn almost entirely ignored by the world beyond the Shire. For those of Middle Earth who do know hobbits, once they get past their abundant absurdities, their gleeful gluttony, and their borderline obsession with quality pipeweed (settle down, Tolkien assures us it’s a variety of tobacco), they find that

hobbits are not as simple as they first appear; they are a hardy people, remarkably tough and adaptable, often more than they realize themselves. And perhaps most of all, they always have the capacity to surprise.

I’m sure my parents read Tolkien’s work to me as a young child, but it was when I first saw one of the films around age eight that a die-hard Ringer (and future Mrs. Orlando Bloom, I was quite sure) was born. The story brought indescribable wonder to my childhood and youth, and in adulthood I reverently return to Middle Earth, basking as much in the wonder of the works as my fond memories of experiencing them. But in those early days, I did not want to be a hobbit.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of being an elf.

Not the adorable hat-wearing, toy-dealing, Santachasing variety, you understand, but a Tolkienian elf: wise, worldly, willowy, lithe, artistic, dignified, and noble—the opposite of a hobbit, I thought. Tolkien’s elves seemed to excel in every situation, floating through the vast world untouched and unfussed by the messes and cares of mortals. I wanted to be good at everything, look good doing it, and make it all look easy. You will not be surprised to learn this is not what happened. Elves, as it turns out, are not real.

But hobbits are.

It was in my early teens, many years after I was introduced to Middle Earth, that I began to become acquainted with what I’m calling the Hobbit Life.

The decline of my health happened slowly, like the Ring taking hold of a new bearer, exploiting frailties I hadn’t known I’d had all my life. Mine is not understood to be a terminal illness, only a progressive one, so that you fade over time but do not vanish (at least, not from that!). Illness brought home to me Bilbo’s description of the Ring’s effect upon him in a way I hadn’t been able to appreciate before: he feels “thin,” he says, “stretched … like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” This too articulated the feeling of struggling sickly through the world—the things I had dreamed of, hoped, and planned for growing mountainous before me, stretching ever farther out of reach while my place in it constricted corset-like around me. Over the course of several years, trips out of the door—that most dangerous of ventures— became the exception. As time went on, I became increasingly bedridden. I was keenly aware of the shrinking of my life like a map being slowly focused in from the immensity of Middle Earth to its tiny northwestern corner of the Shire. I was dismayed to find I was not, in fact, an elf after all, and ashamed to

swarms with harrowing tales of the social and psychological impacts of distancing and lockdowns, with some mental health experts going as far as to call this widespread phenomenon of mental illnesses “the second pandemic.” Themes common to many of these stories are the rise in loneliness, people struggling with being confined to smaller spaces (physically, geographically, and socially), and the difficulty of accepting a life with fewer choices. While many people have shown great creativity in terms of how they have maintained relationships and even created new ones despite pandemic restrictions, I can’t help thinking the burden might be easier to bear if we look to the hobbits, for example: accept this present season for what it is and nourish relationships with the people we most cherish and by whom we are most cherished.

As I have learned, to have a smaller community is not be without one; in fact, a smaller community is often a more supportive one.

The second thing I have learned from hobbits is to hold onto compassion, even in the face of fear.

Bilbo is a shining example, for as the wizard Gandalf relates to Frodo, though the older hobbit had the opportunity to kill the villainous Gollum in the caves beneath the Misty Mountains some sixty years earlier, he was too moved by “pity” to do harm to the hobbit-like creature who was so long tortured by the malevolent power of the Ring. Tolkien balances Bilbo’s reaction with Frodo’s revulsion and incredulousness at Bilbo’s decision to spare Gollum (though

There is much in my experience that will doubtless now be recognisable to anyone living through COVID …

Frodo later makes the same choice himself, repeatedly). Sméagol/Gollum epitomizes the uncanny for Frodo; the creature has recognizably hobbit-esque characteristics, and yet his need for the Ring has choked out most of the goodness once found in him to produce a vile, murderous villain—which “might have happened to others, even to some hobbits that I have known,” Gandalf points out with all the subtlety of a staff blow to the head. And yet this is only Frodo’s

EMILY WILLAN // 47

find it hard to let go of life as I’d known and perceived it. Like Bilbo, who appears untouched by time, my illness and the changes it wrought were largely invisible, making it difficult for many (including family) to understand. Many days, I would stare out the window from my bed and imagine all the life I was irretrievably missing. Like Frodo and Bilbo, I yearned for the world outside, the world of the Big Folk—a feeling I think most people understand more than ever before in COVID times. But I have come to see a different side to this Hobbit Life.

The first thing that hobbits have taught me is to nourish things that grow. Though hobbits are remarked upon for their tender approach to nature, even more important is their way of nurturing relationships.

Bilbo’s reclusiveness sets him apart in the clannish environment of the Shire, but in truth he is more exclusive than reclusive. Bilbo selectively cultivates relationships with people who understand him (like his cousin, Frodo) without shutting out the wider community altogether, evinced by the vast scale of his 111th birthday party. While I can only aspire to have the bravery and the brains to drop epic one-liners like “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve” on guests in the middle of my party, I found a kind of liberating validation in Bilbo’s frank unrepentance for valuing quality relationships over quantity, regardless of how he is perceived for it.

Bilbo’s social transformation comes when he returns from his adventures chronicled in The Hobbit; for me, illness has brought a more gradual pruning of my community. Those who have followed me into the Shire are mostly family and friends confident enough not to take it personally when illness sometimes forces me to change my plans. Each excursion out of the house requires a mental checklist of potential accessibility issues and then a weighing of the social pros and physical cons. While I have often been at pains to keep up more casual friendships and acquaintances out of some sort of misplaced Canadian chivalry, I have learned to be kind to all, but prudent in choosing the relationships I actively cultivate. Not only are these the most sustaining relationships, but they provide much needed and meaningful work for the good of others that brings me out of myself in what can be an isolating environment.

There is much in my experience that will doubtless now be recognizable to anyone living through COVID, which has made complex social decisions and isolation a common state of being. The internet

EMILY WILLAN // 48

When the world and its woes feel too big for me, like Frodo, I must remember the goodness of the Shire. reaction to the abstract idea of Gollum and the fears he represents from the comfort of his house; when actually faced with his first terrifying situation, Frodo’s response is quite different. Realizing he invites grave danger to the Shire by remaining now that Sauron has discovered the Ring was brought there, Frodo decides to leave to protect his community. Though he admits at times to having conflicted feelings about his home (who doesn’t?), his fear draws his attention to

the Shire’s good qualities. It pains him to leave the Shire behind and go into exile while it also strengthens him to think of home as “safe and comfortable” behind him. Frodo’s compassion is fortified by successive hardships and even shelters him from the malevolence of the Ring, and its foundation is laid here, with his soft yet steadfast heart for his community. I can be as prone to self-pity, doubts, and anxiety as the next hobbit, particularly when pondering my fears in the abstract like Frodo. The view from the softness of my sickbed drapes tasks great and small in impossibly daunting shadows, transforming every action into a monumental act of will. Illness and fear are faster friends than allies in evil Saruman and Sauron, but I find that the more I experience fear and hardship, the more it produces empathy. Like Frodo, sometimes I have no choice but to get to my feet, and from there, the view changes. As in Frodo’s example, I find that the only antidote to self-focused fear is found in remembering needs around me, for it’s not enough

perceptions of courage and its symbols. Hobbits have taught me courage lies in the determined application of grace to seemingly small, everyday choices, even—especially—in hardships not of your making.

As with any calamity, responses to the pandemic have displayed the gamut of human courage and cowardice. No generalization is possible. Fears for the future are real and many. But like Gollum, they only seem unsurmountable in the abstract. Once more, I nod to the hobbits. What gives hobbits and the books they inhabit such enduring relevance is their profound relatability, and with good reason: Tolkien knew fear and loss. An orphan, a religious outsider as a Catholic in a vehemently Protestant country, and a veteran of the First World War, he wrote the book in the years before, during, and after the Second World War. The resilience of the hobbits comes from real struggle, and their courage is hard-won. As we emerge from this pandemic, the work is far from over. I can think of no better time to remember that, as the wise elf lord Elrond says, even “small hands” can “move the wheels of the world.”

I can think of no better time to remember that, as the wise elf lord Elrond says, even “small hands” can “move the wheels of the world.”

I am not an elf. I’m thankful I’m not an elf. If I had an easier, more photogenic life, I might never have been inclined to learn from the Little Folk. For a time, we humans across the world have all been living this Hobbit Life together. After this time has passed into history, my Hobbit Life must go on and so must my learning. It’s my hope that others will remember the view from down here in the confines of the Shire as they return to the world of the Big Folk, for as Gandalf says, “hobbits really are amazing creatures.” /// OPPOSITE: MICROBIAL FEAST (DETAIL), 10' x 20' (VARIABLE), DESICCATED COCONUT, FOOD COLORING, MIXED MEDIA, 2019 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JAMIE AM

Image courtesy of the artist.

EMILY WILLAN // 49

simply to feel empathy—it must be acted upon. When the world and its woes feel too big for me, like Frodo, I must remember the goodness of the Shire.

Through the pandemic, we have seen how few things turn the mind to home like disease and physical illness. They remind us how much we don’t know about the world and how small we are in it. Our minds seek comfort in the familiar, and we crave a sense of belonging and community. The need to build a home has had positive manifestations worthy of any hobbit, but it also has a dark side. Toronto saw a 51 percent spike in hate crimes in the first year of the pandemic and only increased in the second, with similar trends across the country. As in the case of Frodo’s initial condemnation of Gollum, it is the reduction of people to an abstract fear that allows for such hard-heartedness. It is not Gollum’s difference that most alarms Frodo, it’s his intrinsic similarity and the reality that Gollum represents: Frodo might be as vulnerable as Sméagol proved to be to the Ring, but he neither knows his strength nor the full consequences of carrying the Ring. So, too, is the case with us. Abstract fears of the “Other” are easily subsumed into larger fears amplified by the pandemic, and it is only by answering fear with compassion, like Frodo has for the Shire, that it is defeated.

This last Hobbit Life lesson has perhaps been the most important of all to me: to take courage in the face of circumstances you did not choose. Even my stoic soul never fails to be stirred by Gandalf’s words to Frodo as the hobbit laments his inheritance of the Ring from Bilbo and its dark, complicating presence in his life and the world generally: “‘I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’” Only eleven pages later, Frodo is humbly ready to take on the burden, “whatever it may do to me.”

I freely admit, it took me rather longer than eleven pages (whatever that is in real time) to come to terms with my circumstances (though I grant that chronic illness rather pales in comparison to a quest to defeat a Dark Lord). Nonetheless, this excerpt has been a whisper of calm, particularly in my moments of anxiety about the future. Some years ago, I had a gold ring made and engraved with the Irish words “Tháinig misneach dom,” meaning “I took courage,” which I wear as a reminder and a pledge. It wasn’t until working on this essay that I realized its connection to Fellowship and how Tolkien’s hobbits subconsciously shaped my

LYNDA WILLIAMS // 50

LYNDA WILLIAMS

C W: contains depictions of eating disorders.

THE LEAST INTERESTING THING T

he thing I love most about my sister is the water pressure in her shower. You think I’m joking, but Lindsay and I haven’t been close since we were kids, and I don’t know the person she’s become the way I know the settings on her shower head.

She greets me at the door with her standard mix of dismay, judgment, and anxiety. “Finally, you’re here.

They misspelled Adele’s name on the cake and I don’t have time to return it to the bakery.”

Does she know we’re all going to chew it up into human waste? Does she think my niece’s name will be permanently misspelled inside my colon? Does she think Adele will notice? All these reassuring thoughts bounce inside my head as I peel off my jacket, Dean’s leather jacket to be precise.

She hugs me and pulls a face that lets me know I reek of sex, booze, and cigarettes. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek instead of telling her that she smells like Listerine.

“You need a shower. There’s clean towels in the basement. You’ve got ten minutes.”

That’s what I appreciate about my sister. She really takes an interest in how I’m doing.

When I step out of the shower, Adele is waiting for me, perched on the closed toilet seat in a pink tulle skirt, brandishing a star-shaped wand. “I knocked.”

“But did I invite you in?”

She shrugs and asks if I know she’s five today. I tell her that’s why I’m here.

“To watch me turn five?”

“Yup, to watch you turn five and eat tons of cake.”

Her shoulders slump. “You missed it, Aunt Quinn.

It happened in the night, before I woke up.”

I ask her if she wants me to sleep over when she turns six. She nods. “I’m sorry you missed it, Auntie Quinn. I’m sorry you’re always late.”

Did I mention how much I love the water pressure here?

There’s a moment in your life, if trauma hasn’t already come along and plastered shit over everything, when it’s all new. Love, the apartment, your commute, buying groceries, and paying rent. It’s all precious and delicate, wrapped in tissue paper like a bra from Victoria’s Secret. It’s that moment before you cut the tags off and commit to the underwire, the padding, and the lace that leaves a pattern on your skin (and maybe that’s new for awhile, too, say three washings), and then you notice that love has funky toe nails and makes a shitty roommate. The apartment is the size of a bathroom stall, and your commute is a slow march towards death, culminating with your arrival in hell where you spend eternity waiting in the wrong queue at Safeway, and every day is the first of the month.

My life is past three washings. I live with three roommates, I’m sleeping with a married man, and I’m working the front desk at a Motel Super 8 to support myself while I try to make it as a spoken word artist.

It’s not a career path I would recommend, unless you enjoy having people stare at your shoes once you tell them what you do.

By all standards I am fucking it up. It being life.

I’ve won the odd poetry slam, but I have over a hundred manuscript rejections and nothing forthcoming in any journals. I am peak fucking it up in the relationship department. The whole married man thing puts frost on Lindsay’s ass. She doesn’t understand what I see in him, and to be fair, I get it. Dean isn’t a headswivelling phenomenon, but the first glance doesn’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes people are attractive until they open their mouth, and then, once you’ve tasted the lukewarm hot-dog water of their personality, the hotness evaporates. Dean is the opposite.

wanting to leave his wife, but he also makes me feel cared for in a way that no one else does. My brother-inlaw, Chris, came close once when he said, “You know he’s not going to leave her for you.” I nodded, and he just smiled, raising his whiskey glass. “Well then, go break your teeth.”

I don’t understand why people throw parties for children. As far as I’m concerned, it isn’t a party until someone starts cutting lines of cocaine on the coffee table. As for birthday parties, when I was kid we got to choose between a box of Louises or Mae Wests, and I don’t see why this needs to be augmented with a bouncy castle and gifts from half the neighbourhood. I can tell all the fuss stresses Lindsay out, and I’m pretty sure Adele is just as likely to remember her Mom yelling at her to keep her dress clean as she is Buddy the clown and his balloon giraffe.

MICROBIAL FEAST (DETAIL), 10' x 20' (VARIABLE), DESICCATED COCONUT, FOOD COLORING, MIXED MEDIA, 2019 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: JAMIE AM

Image courtesy of the artist.

LYNDA WILLIAMS // 51

He transforms when you hear him speak, and not just because his voice is deep. He has a dry sense of humour and a quick wit you have to pay attention to appreciate, and he doesn’t talk to hear the sound of his own voice.

His words are worth hanging onto.

He told me once that he could tell by the way I laughed that I’d been sad for a very long time. I suppose that’s why I keep going back to him. He knows me in the most human way that we all want to be known.

In the way you have to know someone if you’re going to manipulate them. When you pay attention to something that’s neglected, it’s only natural for attachment to follow.

When I had appendicitis, it was Dean who took me to the hospital, and when I came home after the surgery, he was the one who came to visit with minestrone soup. He may be lying about his intentions, about

LYNDA WILLIAMS // 52

Lindsay’s kitchen is three times the size of my bedroom; I half-expect to hear an echo when I talk. It has white cabinets, granite counter tops, and a farmhouse style sink. I open a drawer in search of a knife to perform my surgery on the cake. Everything matches: the measuring cups and spoons, the whisk and the spatula, the soup ladle and the potato masher. They’re all teal.

Same as the dishes. Or is it aqua? Is there even a difference? It all says Le Creuset, and I know that’s French for expensive as fuck.

I feel bad for hating her house so much. It’s just that it’s such a far cry from the way we came up, mopping our dishes clean with rags cut from worn out T-shirts.

Sure I’m jealous, because I know it isn’t going to happen for me, but I really just want to ask if she’s so much happier in her modern, colour-coordinated kitchen, or if she ever misses opening a can of spam, slicing it on a diagonal, slathering it in mustard, microwaving it for two minutes, and devouring it on a piece of white toast. Does she ever take a can of tomato juice and reheat it with elbow macaroni on a rainy afternoon, the way our Mom did for us, or has she hosted too many cocktail parties to remember how to prepare peasant food with a can opener? Does she even own one? A teal can opener?

I guess that’s what happens when you marry a corporate lawyer. You move up. Away from the hood, into the suburbs, so you can raise your kids away from all the condoms and needles and broken glass on the sidewalk. Feed them fresh and organic, keep them so precious they won’t even need tetanus shots.

Lindsay’s kitchen is three times the size of my bedroom; I half-expect to hear an echo when I talk.

The theme of the party is Frozen. I haven’t seen the entire film, but I’ve seen parts of it repeatedly, so I know that Sven and Olaf are the comic relief, and I understand why Lindsay sings, “Turn it off, turn it off,” to the tune of “Let It Go.” The kids play musical chairs, pin the carrot on Olaf, and smack a Sven-shaped piñata. This is followed by gifts and cake. My job is to

take pictures, which is the perfect excuse not to engage with the other adults who invariably start the conversation with “which one is yours?”

Partway through the afternoon, Dean texts me to say I left my underwear in the backseat of his car.

When I look up from my phone, Lindsay is staring at me, her lip curled in disgust.

The whole day is a yawn until I run upstairs to Lindsay’s bathroom for some Tylenol. I can hear her retching. It’s the soundtrack of my childhood, so this isn’t exactly a shock. She looks like a Calvin Klein model from the nineties, updated with micro-bladed eyebrows.

The first time I caught Lindsay purging, we were in a bathroom at McDonald’s. She slammed me into the side of the stall and made me swear not to tell our mother.

It was the last promise I made to her. I was eleven.

I raise my hand to knock on the door and ask if she’s okay, but when I open my mouth to speak nothing comes out and my hand falls to my side. I know she’s not okay, and I know she’ll tell me she is. I forget about the Tylenol and go back to the party. I hand out treat bags and thank people for coming. Adele falls asleep on the couch within minutes, and I carry her up to her room. Lindsay and I clean up the kitchen in silence.

I’m hauling the Hefty bag filled with plastic forks and paper plates to the back door when I spin around and blurt, “How many times a day?”

Her eyes widen for a half a second before she lowers them and I’m sure she’s going to bullshit me.

Her shoulders slump a little. “Two, sometimes three.”

“Jesus.”

“I need you to stay with Adele.”

“For the night?”

“No. I need you to stay with Adele while I’m in treatment.”

“What makes you think Chris can’t handle it?”

She wanders to the living room and sinks into the couch. It’s leather and it makes a farting noise as she slides back into the cushions. “He’s having an affair.”

This, too, is not entirely shocking. It explains a lot.

Like why she hates me so much.

“I see.”

“I don’t want him bringing her here. I don’t want Adele to find out. I really need you to do this for me.”

I grew up listening to my sister vomiting as discretely as anyone could. I want Adele to hear a different lullaby.

“I’ll have to ask for time from work.”

“Like Dean won’t grant you any favours.”

I’d sacrifice my front teeth to a hockey puck to never hear those words from any human being, never mind my five-year-old niece.

“You don’t want to be like me?”

“I’d rather be like Mom.” Married to a cheat, purging three times a day, driving alone for eight hours to a private clinic that charges twenty grand?

I turn on the lamp.

“I wanted to be like your mom when I was little.”

She gives me a look, as if to say what happened. “But I turned out like me, and you’re going to be you, and whoever that is, whatever she looks like, it’s fine.” She doesn’t seem persuaded. The Disney princess damage has already been done. “Look, there are two things I need you to remember: First, how you look is the least interesting thing about you, and second, food is part of how we say yes to life.”

She scrunches up her face. “What does that mean?”

… I’m almost certain she’s asleep when she says, “Sometimes I starve myself, so I don’t get fat.”

“It means when you’re old, I don’t want you to remember going to bed hungry. I want you to remember eating cake. You’ll understand later.”

“When I’m six?”

“Maybe seven.”

“Aunt Quinn?”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the most interesting thing about me?”

My phone vibrates. It’s Dean. I was supposed to meet him tonight. I let it go to voicemail, turn to Adele, and drop a kiss on her forehead. “Your imagination.” ///

LYNDA WILLIAMS // 53

Even when she’s asking for my help, she’s judging me. “Do you know who she is?”

“His personal trainer.”

No wonder she’s puking. And how did we get so far from reheated spam? My-husband-is-sleeping-withhis-personal-trainer isn’t a problem working-class people tend to have. “Does he know that you know?”

“He’s the one who told me.”

“So it’s over?” She gives me a withering look that reminds me there was a time when she could make me cry with one cutting glance.

“Hardly.”

Who confesses to an affair without promising to break it off? For a minute, I want to choke this trainer with her own resistance bands, and then I remember who I am, and that in different ways, we are each being used. Chris is the one who has it all. Well, not just Chris.

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.”

I’m about to reply that I don’t know either when Adele appears. Her eyes are still heavy from sleep.

She climbs on the couch between us and turns on the television. From the menu, she selects a movie, and of course, it’s Frozen. Lindsay goes upstairs to soak in the tub, and I resign myself to the cartoon. It resonates more than I’d like—sisterhood and shit—but the princesses make me want to tear my eyelashes out one by one. They’re all the same from one film to the next.

Bouncy hair, tiny bodies, and eyes that take up half their faces. When I was Adele’s age, I was obsessed with the Little Mermaid, but at some point I became aware that the only person built like me was Ursula, the sea witch. It was my first lesson in fat equals villain.

At 6'1", Dean is just tall enough not to make me feel like Big Bird. On a good day, I’m a size—screw that. On a good day, I eat dessert twice and never think about what size I am. I take up space, and if you think that’s brave, I can’t begin to tell you what courage it takes to have brown eyes and curly hair.

I need to introduce Adele to Mulan.

After the movie and a peanut butter sandwich, Adele asks me to tuck her into bed. Apparently my sister told her tomorrow comes faster when you go to bed early, and she’s excited for tomorrow because Daddy gets home from his trip, and she gets to celebrate her birthday again with him. I’m lying on the twin mattress next to her. She has her Frozen comforter pulled up to her chin, and I’m almost certain she’s asleep when she says, “Sometimes I starve myself, so I don’t get fat.”

[INTERVIEW] // 54

[INTERVIEW]

NABEN RUTHNUM: SCREAMING AT THE AUDIENCE [WITH NATHAN WHITLOCK]

PHOTO CREDIT: PATRICK TARR

HLR: A Hero of Our Time is about a lot of things—

there’s a lot packed into it—but primarily it’s about identity and authenticity, and the difficulty or impossibility of nailing those things down. And also how the good intentions of people or organizations can mutate into something very inauthentic. It’s almost like a companion book to Curry, or a novelization of the same ideas. Which suggests they are still very much on your mind.

NR:

The one thing you left out there is that Hero is also about good intentions and image and identity acting as a vehicle for the desire for power.

That kind of underpins everything I do.

HLR: One of the identities that gets slippery in the book

is authorial identity. In Curry you write about adopting the name Nathan Ripley for your thrillers, based on Sigourney’s character in Alien and the “most WASPy analogue” of your first name. (I had assumed you were just cashing in on how successful all Nathan-writers are … ) At this point, you’ve published two books as Ripley and three under your own name. So where do you stand now in terms of navigating those authorial identities for yourself?

[INTERVIEW] // 55

IN THE HALF-DECADE SINCE THE PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST BOOK, TORONTO AUTHOR NABEN RUTHNUM HAS COVERED A LOT OF GROUND. In 2017’s Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race, he explored the complex and often problematic correlations between the dish most associated with South Asia and the literature made by writers with roots in that part of the globe.

For a pair of dark and violent thrillers, 2018’s Find You in the Dark and 2019’s Your Life is Mine, Ruthnum adopted the pen name Nathan Ripley, an alias that allows him to keep genre work separate from literary, but also to, as he wrote in Curry, “[escape] the expectations of what a brown writer is supposed to make.” Ruthnum has two new books out this year: Helpmeet, a grisly body-horror novella set in 1900 Buffalo that author Craig Davidson calls “a remarkable throwback,” and A Hero of Our Time, a twisty, satirical work that shares a title and some moral DNA with Mikhail Lermontov’s notorious and influential mid-19th-century novel. In Hero, Osman Shah, a thirty-something man for whom a collection of literary first editions substitutes for a moral core and a true sense of self, narrates his own doomed attempts to survive in a corporate realm even more hollow than he is. The Humber Literary Review spoke to Ruthnum about juggling multiple names, the occasionally frustrating discourse around decolonization, and his belief that literary fiction might finally be done for.

NR:

It’s become both easier and weirder. Because after this horror novel [Helpmeet] I have a book coming that’s a YA supernatural, '90s-set thing [The Grimmer, coming in 2023]. There’s so much of my own youth in it. It was written with an audience in mind, as my thrillers were, so I thought maybe it makes sense as a Nathan Ripley book, but in another sense, it seems so strange to have this young South Asian protagonist with many of my own memories, and then to be using the pseudonym. So now the pseudonym is strictly for modern thrillers, because that’s the most specific and circumscribed genre that I write in.

There’s a large proportion of people who like my Ripley thrillers who would have no interest in A Hero of Our Time, none at all. I feel like they’re written so differently, even on a sentence level, that it would almost be consumer deception for me to have the same name on those two books.

HLR: And Helpmeet is set right at the end of the 19th

century and start of the 20th in Upstate New York. So what seems to be your most ostensibly WASPy book, at least in its setting and plot, is under your actual name.

NR:

Well, the influences in that one are Wharton and James, then leading up to, like, Clive Barker or David Cronenberg. But Nathan Ripley’s name would fit better on that cover, it’s true.

fiction being a vehicle of popular entertainment and pleasure is really coming to a close, which is devastating for me, of course—not just professionally, but because it’s the main way I’ve interpreted and enjoyed reality since I was a small boy. That bubbles up in a lot of my work.

In Hero, that sort of direct address to the reader is a drowning man screaming at someone. That character is sort of screaming at the audience, and I guess so am I. Maybe I wouldn’t feel this way if I were doing Sally Rooney or Elena Ferrante numbers out there.

HLR: Speaking of the 19th century, there is an aspect

[INTERVIEW] // 56

of Hero where the narrator addresses the reader directly and gets very self-conscious about the fact that he is writing a narrative, which feels both like a 19th century literary conceit and something almost post-post-postmodern. Was that always part of the book’s construction?

NR:

It came in pretty early but it wasn’t always part of it. I wrote a lot of those sections almost in isolation from the rest of the text. I think a lot of all the discussion of book collecting in the book— all the harkening back to the 19th century that you’re correctly pointing out—also has to do with the crisis of the novel right now, which people have been talking about since radio got popular, but I think this time it’s actually real.

It seems increasingly impossible that somebody born in 2022 will ever read a novel like this one except as an object of study. The age of literary

HLR: The joke I always make whenever poets fight with

each other—and I can say this because my wife is a poet—is that it feels like a fight has broken out in the meeting of the remote control airplane club. Its intensity is only matched by its complete irrelevance. Now I’m starting to feel that way whenever novelists fight with each other.

NR:

When you see our peers discussing a work online, it’s almost always a television show or one of the three novels that made an impact in the previous year. It’s impossible for me to take a writer’s work seriously once they’ve conceded that they have a hard time concentrating enough to read a novel. Those are the people who are making this stuff, so who’s the audience?

HLR: It’s like that question that always pops up on

Twitter: what’s the major work of literature that you don’t like to admit you’ve never read? I mean, there are thousands of great works I’ve never read, but I’m genuinely embarrassed about that.

But there’s this sort of pride in saying, “Yeah, I’ve never even bothered with Ulysses …”

NR:

It feeds into some of the things I’m talking about in Hero: you can actually say now, “I don’t have to do that decolonizing work because I haven’t put all that stuff in my mind.”

I find that discussion really interesting and full of so many relevant points, but almost always at a certain point when I’m having it, whether it’s on a panel or with a friend, I find it weird: like, I’m a brown guy in Canada, speaking in English to you about books written in English.

There’re all sorts of definitions of decolonizing I don’t fully understand or grasp, but it’s something I’m always exploring—just not using that terminology, I guess. I don’t feel that Hero is a colonized book, but god is it about colonialism.

HLR: That leads me to my next question, which is that

whenever a book is coming out, a publicist will come to the author and ask for a list of “comp” titles—the books that they they can imagine their book sitting on a shelf alongside. The expectation is always that those comp titles will be popular, contemporary and fairly well known.

I’m always curious about the actual comp titles in a writer’s mind, the ones they’re afraid to tell their publicist because they’ll get nothing more than a raised eyebrow. What do you see on the shelf next to Hero?

The ones I wouldn’t have mentioned to the publicist because they won’t help sell a book right now are Kingsley Amis and Philip Roth.

Roth, especially: there’s so much about diasporic Indians that is very much like diasporic Jews in America, but like fifteen or twenty years later. If you haven’t read Roth, what leaps to mind about his work is masculinity, sex, etcetera, etcetera. What was most exciting to me when I read a bunch of it in the past few years is the creation of personas, and then the leaning into those personas’ unpleasant characteristics to an impossible degree. There’s a certain sort of artistic courage there. Don DeLillo is a big part of it, too, in terms of that non-realistic dialogue, these sort of big, torrential speeches.

And Saul Bellow. In my thrillers my aim is for realism—not for punchy, television-simulated realism or a more flowing, literary style, but what it might sound like if these people were actually talking. It was really nice not to be doing that in Hero.

HLR: The idea of these Rothian characters who are so

almost cartoonishly awful or cartoonishly corrupt, is that also part of the link to the Lermontov novel from which you borrowed the title?

NR:

The Lermontov, I have to admit, comes more from his introduction to the second edition of the novel than from his book itself. In my Hero, like in Lermontov’s Hero, the title is very ironic, in that the romantic hero of these episodes you’re about to read is not a hero at all. He’s not a nice guy. In the introduction to the second edition, Lermontov talked about how the reading public had been shocked that someone would write these stories that are so clearly about himself, that are so transparently about his own bad behaviour, and not expect to face public censure.

HLR: With literary fiction there’s often this fear about not

understanding or not liking a book, especially if it is performative in its moral virtue. I feel we got away from that for a few years, but for a number of very important reasons, we’re back in that zone of these are the good people and these are the bad people.

NR:

The dynamics you’re talking about are the reasons why I was reconciled to the idea of this novel either not getting published or not doing well. Especially if we’re talking about Canadian literature by people of colour, those good–bad dynamics have become almost ubiquitous. I think the best part about literary fiction is ambiguity. That’s the thing it does better than any other art form. I just don’t have much use or patience for literature that doesn’t do that.

HLR: That reminds me of the interview I did with Casey

Plett in the last issue of the HLR, where she talks about how when mainstream books with trans characters started to appear they were full of one-dimensional noble trans heroes that all of society grinds down and hates and beats upon, and her feeling was, like, I don’t know any heroes. Her literary project, if you want to put it that way, is to bring that ambiguity and that nuance to her characters.

NR:

And that’s a big reason why her stories are so good. I’m just speculating, but she probably talks and thinks about it this way after the fact.

I imagine that when she’s writing those stories, she doesn’t have that project in mind, she’s just writing the stories, and that’s how they emerge because there is, in fact, no agenda. I’m speaking of myself now—I don’t want to speak for Casey—but the removal of agenda is crucial for art-making. ///

NABEN RUTHNUM

LIVES IN TORONTO AND IS THE

AUTHOR OF A HERO OF OUR TIME, HELPMEET, AND

CURRY: EATING, READING, AND RACE. AS NATHAN RIPLEY, HE HAS WRITTEN TWO THRILLERS: FIND YOU IN THE

DARK AND YOUR LIFE IS MINE. HE WON THE JOURNEY PRIZE FOR HIS SHORT FICTION, HAS BEEN A NATIONAL

POST BOOKS COLUMNIST, AND HAS WRITTEN CRITICISM FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL , HAZLITT, AND THE WALRUS. HE ALSO WRITES FOR FILM AND TELEVISION.

[INTERVIEW] // 57

NR:

His response to readers was this book is not about me, it’s about you. Which I really love.

REVIEWS // 58

REVIEWS JAMEELA GREEN RUINS EVERYTHING

By Zarqa Nawaz (Simon & Schuster) Reviewed by Emily Stewart I had the pleasure of attending an event for author Zarqa Nawaz’s memoir, Laughing All the Way to the Mosque several years ago, where the author spoke of coming up against the expectation that Muslim women’s stories aren’t or shouldn’t be funny. Laughing All the Way to the Mosque certainly subverted those expectations, as did the hit series Little Mosque on the Prairie. Now Nawaz is back with further proof that Muslim women are funny with the ambitious satirical novel Jameela Green Ruins Everything.

Like Nawaz herself, the eponymous hero of this novel is an author. Jameela wants one thing: for her memoir to be a bestseller. And she’s willing to turn to faith to make it happen. She seeks out the aid of Ibrahim, the new imam at the local mosque, who tells her she should do a good deed to earn God’s favour.

She agrees, but when the homeless man she attempts to help joins a terrorist group and Ibrahim subsequently disappears, Jameela soon finds herself at the centre of a plan targeting the leader of a terrorist group, putting her and nearly everyone she cares about at risk.

If the premise of a woman seeking literary success ending up ensconced in international terrorism and espionage schemes seems absurd, that’s because it is, unabashedly so. This absurdity is a key part of the novel’s humour and helps drive the plot forward. Small actions escalate quickly, leading characters down unexpected paths: coffee with a homeless man leads to joining a CIA mission, tea and cookies lead to an opulent wedding with a terrorist, competing memoirs lead to a kidnapping.

Another key element of the novel’s humour lies in characters exhibiting unexpected behaviour, especially in the face of grave situations. For example, while Ibraham is being flown to an unknown location and questioned about possible terrorist ties, he worries about an expiring pizza coupon rather than what awaits him. This character-based humour also comes

out in dialogue; Jameela often quips about pop culture and responds to others with sarcasm while Ibraham’s faith and naïveté are revealed through his discussions with Jameela, the police, the CIA, and terrorists. I can’t help thinking Nawaz had a fun time writing dialogue and internal monologues—especially the amusing prayers between chapters; there’s a sense of play in the misunderstandings, non sequiturs, rambles, and rejoinders.

This sense of play is most evident in the name of the terrorist organization at the centre of the novel’s plot: the Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdom is far more frequently referred to as DICK, which leads to all kinds of delightfully juvenile wordplay.

Though overflowing with humour, Jameela Green Ruins Everything isn’t an entirely frivolous read. Beneath the “head DICK” jokes and absurdity, there is biting social and political commentary. Nawaz points out the ways American foreign policy has contributed to the destabilization of the Middle East, and her characters comment on the stereotyping of Muslims, the expectations of Muslim women, and the role of media in limiting what narratives are cultivated. Nawaz even manages to examine factors the drive people toward extremism.

And Nawaz does all this without being heavy handed.

She gives enough to invite readers to think and pursue more information beyond the covers, as if rejecting the burden of educating in favour of entertaining, once again proving her chops as a humorist.

WINTER RECIPES FROM THE COLLECTIVE

By Louise Glück (McClelland & Stewart) Reviewed by Keith Garebian Louise Glück’s lyrics are often about peril and fortitude, doubt and reconsideration, stasis and transformation.

As Michael Schmidt has observed, their language and occasion open “possibilities without affirming anything”—an observation borne out in these lines from Faithful and Virtuous Night: “It has come to seem / there is no perfect ending. / Indeed, there are infinite endings. / Or perhaps, once one begins, / there are

on any assured closure of meaning. Sometimes, however, ambiguity can result in inadequate emotional or intellectual pressure, with the laconic or the reticent meaning less than it promises—as in “Second Wind” and “A Children’s Story.”

Winter Recipes shows Glück clearing her mind, bridging past, present, and future (childhood, adulthood, old age), and meditating on memory and distance while demonstrating paradoxically how stillness can be entwined with change. From almost beginning to end, she is a voyeur in shifting landscapes (icy or hot) and time. There is a palpable, ineradicable sense of her probing her own self as she witnesses with scrupulous language and terse lines the interconnections of being and observing. Connected, yet alone, she remarks stoically, “Long ago I was born. / There is no one alive anymore / who remembers me as a baby.” With the help of a concierge (who could be a controlling guide), she makes plans to undertake a new journey into imagination beyond space and time. The concierge articulates the book’s core pattern and thrust: “I see, he said, that you no longer / wish to resume your former life, / to move, that is, in a straight line as time/suggests we do, but rather (here he gestured toward the lake) / in a circle which aspires to / that stillness at the heart of things / though I prefer to think it also resembles a clock.” In another poem, “Night Thoughts,” the poet admits that her “true self” is “robust but sour, / like an alarm clock.”

Epistemology is fused to metaphysics. A winter landscape is a frozen blank, but it is transformed as Glück reframes the life of the mind as it perpetually reconsiders the natural and human worlds, transforming one element into another. The social world is set parallel to a world of dreams, fables, symbols, Eastern philosophic wisdom, and parables without assured morals.

Both worlds have perils, and both require fortitude as a weapon for survival. In this book—the length of a chapbook with double or triple the scope—that fortitude is manifested by a poetic technique that modestly suggests uncertainty of its own results, while successfully reaching down to core truths of being.

REVIEWS // 59

only endings.” Helen Vendler has remarked on Glück’s unusual distinction of being “neither ‘confessional’ nor ‘intellectual’ in the usual senses of those words.”

Windows feature prominently in her poetry, as long intervals of silence alternate with seemingly listless ruminations and rhetorical questions. Though her portals of wonder have a dreamlike mysteriousness, there is a tone and a perspective that can be unexpected as well as truthful, anchored in her firm reticence and mercilessness with herself.

Glück’s new collection consolidates her skill of sharing what remains unspoken, beginning with “Poem,” which unfurls like a dream vision narrated by a distanced voice. It is a lyric of ascent and descent, a multiplicity of small worlds. In the two-part “The Denial of Death” (about a beloved sister’s death), Glück effectively generates mystery and suspense by opting for circles rather than straight lines, and by using an unnamed narrator (probably herself) and an anonymous concierge to sustain a tone that is tender as well as painful or sorrowful. The narrative moves from forgetfulness (a lost passport, an inn whose name she does not remember, an uncertainty about time) to tropes of insight where “everything is change” yet connected, and where “everything returns, but what returns is not / what went away—” While this may sound too vague to be truly meaningful, an internal reference to a Daoist parable crystallizes the metaphysical paradox of emptiness being a blessed state of emancipated desire.

Winter Recipes makes crafty use of fable, favouring recursive patterns of imagery and tone, while introducing ambiguity that weaves, like the falling snow in one poem, “side to side.” In “An Endless Story,” Glück writes: “She had been telling / some sort of fable concerning/a young girl who wakens one morning / as a bird,” more than hinting that certitude can come only through an ending: “We may never know / whether the story was intended to be / a cautionary tale or perhaps a love story … / So we cannot be certain / we have as yet experienced the end.” This reminds the reader of what she had written earlier about ambiguous endings, and puts the brakes

REVIEWS // 60

UNREST

By Emma Côté (Anvil Press) Reviewed by Michaela Stephen In Unrest, Emma Côté’s debut novel, the protagonist Mylène is too comfortable with death. The novel contains a myriad of irrepressible and engrossing changes for Mylène. While she goes on a road trip to come to terms with her estranged mother’s death, she also embarks on a journey of overcoming her social anxieties and reevaluating the career she depends on so arduously. Instead of a coming-of-age novel, Emma Côté offers a quirky and memorable rejoining-the-living story (in barely 100 pages, no less).

Winner of the 43rd annual 3-Day Novel Contest, Unrest is an impressive feat, especially for having been written over the length of a long weekend. Over 200 people entered the contest in 2020, the year Côté won, securing her a book deal with Anvil Press.

Mylène has based her entire life around death: she works as a mortician and funeral director, a career in which she pragmatically lays out the benefits: “In the state of Ohio, you can become a funeral director in about two years—half the length of time it takes to get an actual degree, and twice as useful. Death and taxes, right?” She’s good at it too; at age thirty-three, she already owns her own business. It’s only the death of her mother, Cerise, that disrupts her routine. The two hadn’t spoken in fifteen years, but Cerise left Mylène everything, including a pack of unsent postcards from different cities across the US where her mother visited significant graveyards. Despite feeling resentful, Mylène makes a spur of the moment decision to follow her mother’s route, so that perhaps in death, she can finally understand her.

Of course, there are some hiccups along the way.

The hearse breaks down in Philadelphia, where Mylène bonds with a journalist, Peter, and his husband. She agrees to be interviewed by Peter about her trip for an article, and it goes viral. As she continues her road trip, she gains even more notoriety, being interviewed

by several radio stations and offered a sponsorship by Hertz. At one point the hearse is stolen, and she’s given a free rental to continue her trip. Although these moments made me laugh in their absurdity, they also felt strangely believable. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by a mortician’s road trip?

As the novel progressed, I was curious how it would end. Although significant moments did feel abrupt and rushed—especially Mylène’s decision to change her career—I appreciated that the ending surprised me. It felt both comforting and rewarding. Mylène learned to finally take the advice that she dispenses to clients about grief. One of the greatest strengths of Unrest is it keeps readers guessing. The use of different media throughout (the letters, cost logs, articles, and radio interview transcripts) likewise give it a refreshing, episodic feel.

The book is like a letter written to the living.

Mylène addresses the reader in the second person as “you,” telling her story in a stream-of-consciousness.

While the narration sometimes rambles, it does so amusingly, as when Mylène quips, “Be suspicious, children. That’s what I always say.”

Likely due to the three-day time limit for the contest, I did feel at times that the novel lacked urgency.

Some of the major developments felt rushed into, including Mylène’s visit to her mother’s house, her decision to retrace her mother’s route, and her revelation to change her career. I expected there to be more of an unveiling as to why the women lost touch. Mostly, I wanted more tension and development with Mylène.

Though I craved more of the moments where we got to hear Mylène in conversation with others, Côté nevertheless creates a striking contrast between her protagonist and her mother. Cerise is a pleasant enigma, who we hear only through her postcards and the occasional memory. Despite that absence, she has a prominent presence. The detail that she wasn’t actually named Cerise, but instead embraced her husband’s nickname as her real name, is revealing. We learn that she named her daughter Mylène to continue their fauxFrench legacy. Cerise seems so gentle in her postcards,

NINA SIMONE’S GUM: A MEMOIR OF THINGS LOST AND FOUND

by Warren Ellis (Faber & Faber) Reviewed by Andy Scott Nina Simone’s Gum, a curious, weird, and wonderful book by Warren Ellis, musician, composer, violinist, and longtime collaborator of Nick Cave’s in The Bad Seeds, is truly a book about Dr. Nina Simone (her honorific of choice, we learn, having received an honourary doctorate from Amherst College) in title only. Her gum—a piece of chewing gum that she placed on a towel atop her nine-foot Steinway after walking on stage following Germaine Greer reading Sappho in its original Greek at London’s 1999 Meltdown Festival—is imbued here with totemic significance. It rudders and emblematizes much of what Ellis places value and collectability in, providing the conceit, in chewable Spearmint form, for a poetic miniature of a book that combines text, design, and photographs while traversing music, life, spirituality, and, most of all, the possibility of transformation that exists within all of us. And while it is the talismanlike significance of Simone’s chewing gum that is most centrally explored for its transformative potential, various and sundry artifacts abound, presented here in Ellis’s circuitous, undulating, and musical narrative voice. Whether discussing his violin, a collection of Samsonite briefcases, silver ingots, a yellow and red

Tower Records bag, a photo of Andy Gibb (for some reason), pressed flowers, Ballarat clowns, places, sounds and people whom he associates with a spiritual, transformative, out-of-body experience he had while listening to the second movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, or the mysterious woman he meets in Vienna on 2017’s Day of the Dead who guides him through Zentralfriedhof cemetery in search of Beethoven’s final resting place, Ellis’s tchotchkes and memories coalesce here to represent a life well lived.

If all of this sounds incongruent and messy, well, that’s because it is. Life, at least Ellis’s life, is as circuitous as his prose; details are offered up here as much for his own catharsis as to reify the voyeuristic impulses of readers hoping to gaze upon a truly creative thinker and multifaceted individual.

Ellis does not spend much time discussing the specifics of his musical philosophy, other than to acknowledge that he has a “personal relationship with pitch and time.”

Rather, it is the exploration of other relationships—with Cave, Mick Geyer (who first introduced him to the music of Simone and who becomes a tastemaker character akin to Barry from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity), and with his brother Steven, from whom he has been estranged for four decades—that form the bulk of the narrative and most hold reader interest.

I am curious to know for whom this book was intended in terms of its audience. While the book is about Ellis, it is not, as acknowledged, about Simone; nor is it about Nick Cave, the Dirty Three, or even about music, really. As a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenancestyled travelogue, we follow the life cycle of an (admittedly strange) inanimate object from Nina Simone’s mouth to its central place in Nick Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibition at Copenhagen’s The Black Diamond, giving currency to the journalistic mantra that if you have nothing to write about, you are not looking hard enough. Among this fascinating journey’s signposts are engaging insights, philosophical musings, spiritual discoveries, and life lessons. Come along for the ride. ///

REVIEWS // 61

while Mylène is often livid in response to reading them.

I adored Mylène’s dryness and anger, and yet I felt empathetic towards Cerise as well.

In such a short but sweet novel, Côté plays with these contrasts and dives deeply into difficult topics, including trauma, assisted suicide, and the environmental impact of death with grace. In a way, Côté acts as the novel’s mortician, helping readers ease comfortably into the world of death, broaching questions about mortality with more than enough wit and humour to prevent the book from becoming morbid. It’s well worth joining Mylène in her hearse.

CONTRIBUTORS // 62

CONTRIBUTORS CONGRATULATIONS to our contributor, Kelly S. Thompson, on the National Magazine Nomination (Personal Journalism category) for her piece “Recordings of Truths and Facts,” published in Vol.9, Issue 1 of The HLR. Kelly worked with our Essays Editor, Leanne Milech.

LESLIE ALEXANDER grew up on a sheep farm and couldn’t wait to hit the road, make a bunch of mistakes, and write about them. She wound up singing on a street corner for spare change and does not consider this a mistake. Her work has been accepted for publication in Queen’s Quarterly Literary Review, Existere Journal of Arts & Literature, and Open Minds Quarterly. Other words and music can be found at lesliealexander.com JEN BATLER’s fiction has been published in The New Quarterly, Puritan Magazine, and the Temz Review.

She writes from the traditional and treaty territory of the Michi Saagiig and Chippewa Nations.

A retired analyst, DORIS CORCESE is a graduate of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive program. In January 2022, she was runner up in the Federation of BC Writers’ Creative Nonfiction contest (2021) and recently finished writing her first novel. Doris writes on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish peoples, known as Chilliwack, BC. KEITH GAREBIAN has published twenty-seven books to date, eight of which are poetry collections, such as Frida: Paint Me as a Volcano (2004), Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems (2008), Children of Ararat (2010), Poetry is Blood (2018), and Against Forgetting (2019). Several of his poems have been anthologized in Canada and the US, and one of his Jarman poems was set to music for choir and instruments by Gregory Spears, in the company of a poem each by Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov.

Garebian has been shortlisted for the Grit/Lit, FreeFall magazine, and the Gwendolyn MacEwen/Exile poetry awards, and some of his poems have been translated into French, Armenian, Hebrew, Bulgarian, and Romanian.

TAMARA JONG (she/her) is a Tiotià:ke-born (Montreal) writer of Chinese and Scottish ancestry. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, Body & Soul: Stories for Skeptics and Seekers, and The Fiddlehead. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio. She currently lives and works on Treaty 3 territory, the occupied and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Guelph, ON). Her work can be found on Instagram and Twitter @bokchoygurl KARAN KAPOOR is a poet based in New Delhi with an MA in Literary Art Creative Writing from Ambedkar University. A recent winner of the Red Wheelbarrow Prize judged by Mark Doty, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Plume, Rattle, The Indian Quarterly, The Bombay Literary Magazine and elsewhere. You can find him at karankapoor.co.in/ CATHERINE LEWIS is a bisexual Chinese Canadian writer and poet. She is the author of the poetry chapbook ZIPLESS, published by 845 Press in November 2021. In 2021, she was a finalist in The Fiddlehead’s and The Humber Literary Review/Creative Nonfiction Collective Society’s creative nonfiction contests. A graduate of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University and of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, she attended the Banff Centre Literary Arts residency “Poetry, Politics, and Embodiment” in October 2021.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Canada, she lives in Vancouver on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.

SHANNAN MANN is an Indian-Canadian writer.

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, Rust + Moth, Wildness, and Amethyst Arsenic. She was a finalist for the Frontier 2021 Award for New Poets. Her play, Milkbath, was selected as the resident production of the Toronto Paprika Theatre Festival.

MOLLY MCCARRON writes fiction and nonfiction in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Hinterland

REBECCA MORRIS lives in Montreal, where she is currently working on a COVID novella about a ghost mountain lion mascot that haunts an online high school. She won the 2017 Malahat Review Open Season Award for Fiction and was awarded Honourable Mention in the 2018 Prairie Fire Fiction contest. Her work has also appeared in FreeFall, carte blanche, Hamilton Arts & Letters, the Antigonish Review, and Qwerty.

TYLER PENNOCK is a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta. Tyler is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation.

They are a Sessional Lecturer in the Indigenous Studies Department at the University of Toronto. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013, and currently live in Toronto. Their first book, Bones, was published in 2020 by Brick Books.

PASCAL GIRARD was born in Jonquière, QC, in 1981. He is a part-time cartoonist and part-time social worker. He is the award-winning author of Nicolas, Bigfoot, Reunion, and Petty Theft. He lives in Montreal with his family.

ANDREW SCOTT lives in Toronto, Canada, in a house amongst children, antiquated technology of yesteryear, and many, many instruments. From this location, he makes music, writes letters, narrates radio dramas, composes poems, and submits journalistic pieces. He is a professor in and the Program Coordinator of Humber’s Bachelor of Music program.

REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI was a finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada’s 24th Annual Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers. Her work has been published in Grain, The New Quarterly, and Room. She lives in northwestern Ontario and is currently working on a novel and a collection of short fiction. Find her on Twitter @rskochinski and rebekahskochinski.com

MICHAELA STEPHEN (she/her) is a queer writer based in Toronto, ON, where she works at Second Story Press. She has been published or has work forthcoming in Grain, CV2, Canthius, This Magazine, and Plenitude, among others. She lives with her cat, Banana Loaf.

EMILY STEWART has written reviews for Women Write About Comics and Arc Poetry Magazine, where she is now the reviews editor.

MARK TRUSCOTT’s third book, Branches, won the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize. New poems appear in Columbia, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Guest, New Quarterly, Oversound, and Posit, and others are forthcoming in the Hampden-Sydney Review. A pamphlet is due out from Knife Fork Book. More information at marktruscott.ca.

ANNE WALK is of Haudenosaunee (Cayuga) descent, was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and studied visual art at the University of Western Ontario. New to the writing profession, Anne has been published in Room Magazine.

EMILY WILLAN is an award-winning writer and editor with a disability who specializes in accessibility. She has an HBA in English and History from the University of Toronto and graduate certificates in Creative Writing (Fiction) and Creative Book Publishing from Humber College. Her editorial credits include stints at literary magazines as well as nine years as the owner/operator of her own editing business. She currently works for Brampton Library in Marketing and Communications.

LYNDA WILLIAMS is a student in the graduate creative writing program at the Humber School for Writers. ///

ERRATA: In the previous print issue of The HLR, the

spelling of Graeme Desrosiers last name, and title of Angela Kirby’s poem, “The Bitter Astronomer and his Sieve of Wishes,” were incorrect. We regret the errors.

CONTRIBUTORS // 63

(UK), Memoir Mixtapes, and Minola Review, where she was a finalist for the Minola Review fiction contest. She is currently a student at the Humber School for Writers, where she is working on a novel.

[FEATURED ARTIST]

NONI KAUR // 64

NONI KAUR NONI KAUR IS AN AWARD-WINNING, MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST AND EDUCATOR. Kaur’s works are an embodiment of her intersectional identity across cultures and communities. Her immersive, reactive, multi-sensory installations bridge gaps between gender, culture, the body, and the non-human world.

Kaur’s bold and sensuous canvases and ground sculptures stem from her cross-cultural heritage.

Kaur’s work has been featured in national and international venues including: the Havana Biennale, Cuba; the Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka, Bangladesh; the Fukuoka Triennale, Asian Art Museum, Japan; White Columns, New York; the Henie Onstad Kunstenter, Oslo, Norway, amongst others. Kaur lives and works in the Greater Toronto Area.

WEBSITE: nonikaur.com

INSTAGRAM: @nonikaur TWITTER: @kaurnoni

My practice explores how culture and materials are adapted or transformed in different environments according to the post-human experience. These paintings and site-specific installations trace the agency of cellular, plasmic, and parasitic forces in both human and non-human worlds. Through spatial interventions, I explore cycles of life and death, ephemerality, and nature. I work with desiccated coconut­—a commonplace, domestic commodity common to my PunjabiSingaporean heritage—to draw on the ephemeral nature of artistic folk practices and their connections to cycles of generation and degradation. Composed of organic, non-toxic materials, the artwork becomes a repository of energy for microbial life, feeding organisms that go unnoticed in the human world. My body of work has been supplemented with paintings; maps based on interior biosystems expand outward, swallowing up patrons in a microbial world that thrives silently around and within us.

PLASMIC PLAY, PROFILE IMAGE, MIXED MEDIA INSTALLATION ON MYLAR, 2020 | NONI KAUR PHOTO CREDIT: COLE SWANSON

Image courtesy of the artist.

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///////////// NABEN RUTHNUM // REBEKAH SKOCHINSKI // EMILY WILLAN // REBECCA MORRIS // KARAN KAPOOR PASCAL GIRARD // CATHERINE LEWIS // TAMARA JONG JEN BATLER // SHANNAN MANN // LESLIE ALEXANDER DORIS CORCESE // MOLLY MCCARRON // LYNDA WILLIAMS NONI KAUR // MARK TRUSCOTT // ANNE WALK /////////////

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