Willem had thrown another of his tantrums — “No blue! Red!” — as they packed him off to daycare. “But you don’t have red boots, Willem. You only have blue boots,” Bax had tried to tell their son. They would start out this way, reasonable, rational humans. Not that Willem seemed to notice whether they were calm or raging. When Willem, four and autistic and the cutest thing on two legs, wanted something — red boots, vanilla (not chocolate) pudding, dental floss even though he choked on it, the $60 teddy bear in the store now, the moon, why not the moon? — life stopped. The want machine, Pamela called him. When the wants piled up impossibly, they moved into war mode, with Willem sent to the corner where he screamed and banged his head against both walls, Pamela and Bax checking their watches from the trenches. Fifteen seconds of silence — self-regulation, Dr. Forrest called it — and he’d be set free. Time out. Time out for whom? Pamela sometimes wondered.
But now here at the stoplight on St. Catherine, which for an instant had turned into the face of Julian Forrest, Willem’s child psychologist — brilliant, browbeating and behavioural all the way — Pamela knew she wasn’t going to any appointment, and certainly not an appointment to discuss the behaviour of the beast behind her. She turned the van around in the middle of the intersection, barely looking both ways first, and flipped off a man at the corner who was watching and shaking his head. The van fishtailed. It was late March. Why was there still ice on the roads?
“Bad morning,” she told Emily, Willem’s daycare teacher. The kids were in a huddle around Emily and an Arthur book. Willem was no longer thrashing, looked instead like he’d been thrashed, dark under the eyes, sullen.
“Willem, we missed you!” Emily crowed. “Didn’t we, guys?” The other kids looked uncertain about this, but they made a place for him in the circle anyway. They were sensitized kids, used to Willem’s whims by now. Willem accidentally trod on someone’s finger and there was a yelp.
“Hope it gets better,” Emily whispered as Pamela backed out of the room and prayed Willem wouldn’t suddenly turn clingy. It was sometimes his way of making up. Emily was young, twenty-two, tops, and her face was sweet with the kind of love Pamela was sure she’d never feel again. She got in the van, drove a block, parked, had a good scream, and after that, contrite, let the tears fall.
“I’ll never get through to him, never,” Bax had said that morning, as he’d stooped over the boy who had blue boots and wanted red. He’d pushed Willem’s foot in, hard, and Willem had shrieked louder. They didn’t kiss goodbye — not enough emotion left for that — and Pamela had dragged their son down the stairs.
She let her head drop now against the steering wheel. She could go home. Bax would just be getting out of the shower. She could show up, make some excuse about having gotten the dates wrong for Forrest, whip off her clothes, give him a hand job, give him a blow job. Make him moan. Make him happy. Make him love her again. A strenuous fantasy. She sat on, letting time make it impossible.
Wasn’t Joanie off from work this week? She could drop over for a rare morning coffee. Joanie always had fabulous coffee and cookies, and Pamela could tell her all about this morning and Joanie would nod and get that poor-darling look on her face and then Pamela would ask about Nathan and his last chemo and they’d sink together — CBC Radio playing its comfort in the background — until they would both have to conclude, hands-down: Life’s a bitch, but what are you going to do?
Someone was coming toward the car, someone was walking down the middle of the frozen street, someone was walking and waving. Pamela recognized the smile, the hat, but not who they belonged to.
Now the hat was at her window, the smile was in her face, and Pamela sank the little bit left there was to go. Of all the people in the world God could have chosen to send her, he would send this one on the worst morning of her life so far this week. She tried to get the window down, but the power mechanism had died the week before, the thing going frrrrrp and not moving a smidge. In that moment it seemed as large a heartache as a child who only wanted, rarely gave. Pamela opened the car door.
“Greetings!” beamed Gunnie, fellow worshipper at St. Augustine’s and certifiable. “Can I have a lift?”
Pamela wondered if she could put the van into drive and skid off without injuring anyone. “Where are you headed?”
“Anywhere,” said Gunnie.
Pamela said a prayer that was more like a threat and reached over to open the other door.
“I bet you think that’s pretty crazy, don’t you, that I don’t have a destination?” said Gunnie, climbing in. She smelled like something edible. Not a bad smell, but edible.
“Not really,” said Pamela. “The truth is…” But she didn’t want to get into it with this strange person. She would drive around and drop her off somewhere central, near a Métro, buy her a ticket if necessary, a strip of tickets, get her on her way, because what she didn’t need this morning was another crazy person.
Gunnie, decked out like an antebellum heroine in her wide-brimmed hats and long, flowered skirts — even in winter — petitioned each Sunday in church for help in her slipping-down life. First it was cancer, then getting evicted, then a fire in the friend’s place where she was staying. Lately, as if all the disasters couldn’t be listed anymore, she’d begun to pray out loud: “Jesus Lord, please remove all my poverties!”
From the beginning, from the first day Gunnie had walked into St. Augustine’s, she’d fluttered around Willem, waving at him, trying to touch him. “What’s his problem?” she asked. Pamela was used to all varieties of reactions to her son: stares from the less sophisticated, careful concern from the more, and everything in between. The truth was Pamela didn’t much like any of the reactions. She didn’t much like the problem.
“He’s autistic,” Pamela explained as she tried to talk to the woman, outlandish in her sun hat and too-dark foundation. “Plus he’s hyperactive and has global developmental delays. His speech…” blah, blah, blah. She sounded now, after nearly three years, like a medical précis.
“You mean he’s retarded,” said Gunnie. “Poor kid.” She tried to stroke Willem’s cheek, but he darted around her.
Pamela must have answered something as she hurriedly began collecting Willem’s little trucks from the pew and the pieces of pretzel he’d scattered during mass. Maybe she’d said, “That’s not what we call it.” Or, “He’s actually very smart, probably smarter than you.” Pamela didn’t remember now what she’d said, although it was probably something neither exceptionally friendly nor exceptionally brave. Whatever she did say, Gunnie was still standing there in the now-empty church, smiling under her hat, and in no hurry to leave.
“Have you ever heard of colonics?” she’d asked. “They stick a hose up your ass” — she looked up at the stations of the cross as if in apology — “and pump in a load of nice, hot water. Takes the shit right out of you. Maybe they could help your little boy.”
Over the next Sundays Pamela learned that it was fatal — even in church, even with God’s endless compassion as her protection — to say to this woman, “Hi, how are you?”
“Where would you like to go?” Pamela asked again as they reached the stop sign on Monkland Avenue.
“Tell you in a minute,” said Gunnie, who had closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “I’m asking Jesus Lord.” Her hat — synthetic orange straw with a fuchsia-print bandana — crumpled around her ears.
“I like your hat,” said Pamela.
“I do, too,” said Gunnie. “That’s why I wear it.” Then, as if worried, she sat up straight and looked at Pamela. “But is it appropriate for winter?”
“Does it keep your head warm?” Be logical, thought Pamela, answer logically. Otherwise, there will be two lunatics driving around in a van with a broken window, nowhere to go, asking Jesus Lord where to take them next.
She turned right at the stoplight, heading not for the nearest Métro stop, Villa Maria, but the next nearest, Vendôme. She didn’t want Gunnie to feel totally unwelcome. She had it all planned out now: she’d park on Marlowe, go into the Métro station with Gunnie, get money out of the guichet, do the slightly extravagant thing with the strip of tickets, maybe even buy her a juice and muffin in the station’s little depanneur. The plan made her, in that moment, feel almost good.
“How’s your boy?” asked Gunnie. And it was gone. Happiness in the last few years was a drive-by experience. What she mostly lived in was a sad/anxious/guilty/mad hum. Anxious like now, mad and guilty like this morning. Sad, like always. Chronic sadness, Joanie called it once, and Pamela had wept at the recognition. Joanie knew about chronic sadness, with Nathan duking it out with a brain tumour, round three.
“Not so good,” said Pamela.
“Tell Gunnie about it.”
They were only a few blocks from the Métro now. It was a wind tunnel on this part of de Maisonneuve, people hurtling through the cold, nearly doubled over. “We had a huge fight with him this morning,” Pamela said, regretting each word as she said it.
“Fights are never good,” said Gunnie. “Me, I should know. Lord Jesus doesn’t want us fighting.”
“He’s so obstinate, so stuck,” Pamela said. “He lands somewhere, someplace totally unreasonable, and then we can’t get him back.”
“Maybe it’s good enough where he is,” said Gunnie.
“That’s actually not very helpful, Gunnie,” said Pamela, thinking wrong person. Wait till she told Bax about this, but then she remembered that as far as Bax knew, they were at that moment getting cured. She’d never even made it to a phone to call Dr. Forrest’s office with an excuse: We have a dead battery, we have a strep throat, we have a complete failure to cope.
“Tell me about the fight,” said Gunnie. “As much as you can remember.”
“You sound like a therapist, Gunnie,” said Pamela and smiled, really smiled at her for the first time.
“I know a few of those guys,” said Gunnie. “Most of them are crazy wacko, if you know what I mean. Forgive me, Jesus Lord.” She leaned closer and dropped her voice, “They tell you how you’re supposed to act.”
So Pamela told her how Willem had, quite obediently, gone to get his blue boots out of the closet that morning. How he’d almost smiled at her when she’d said, “What a great boy. Good listening, Willem.” How he’d let her hug him, though, of course, his arms had stayed down as usual, had not circled her back. How he’d nodded when Bax had said, “Hey, Buddy, can I be the lucky guy who gets to put these on you?” And then how the sky went suddenly dark as Willem retracted his foot as if in pain and cried, “No blue! Red!”
“Buy him the boots,” Gunnie said.
Pamela had parked the car now, having found a space, a rare thing, right on the corner of Marlowe and de Maisonneuve.
“They’ll put a smile on his face,” said Gunnie. “Me, I think that’s important.”
“Where do you buy boots at this time of the year?” Pamela could hear her voice going up. “It’s practically April.”
“Follow me,” said Gunnie.
Pamela could hear Dr. Forrest as she pulled out of the parking spot two cars were already jockeying for: “You are defying the laws of conditioning! There is no ceiling to a child’s demands! Give in now and you will be giving in for the rest of your life!”
Pamela had managed to never set foot in Village des Valeurs, though friends swore by the place: great, used buys in the funkiest of atmospheres. “It does smell funny,” admitted Joanie, a bargain maven. But the years of high funk were now apparently over. The store had been cleaned up. It looked now like Zellers’ once-colourful, slightly shabby cousin: a vast white space with red signs — Haut de Gamme! Top of the line? Who were they kidding? Gunnie took off for the hats, as if she’d forgotten Pamela, Willem, the red boots, their quest.
Pamela followed at a distance that might look as if they were not together. She watched Gunnie swoop down on a red beret in the hat department, though to dignify any spot in this store as “department” would be pushing it.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” called Gunnie. Pamela turned down the aisle in time to see Gunnie slip the red beret into her hemp bag. “This thing doesn’t keep me warm,” she said and thrust the orange sun hat at Pamela. “Hold it, would you? I’ve got decisions to make.”
Pamela watched as Gunnie poked her head — amazingly small and neat without the usual sombrero-wide brim — into one disastrous hat after another. People, she realized, do not give away lovely hats. They give away joke hats, hats with chartreuse veils, with funny knobs on top. Gunnie put each hat on and looked at herself in the small hand mirror provided for customers of the hat department. There were no mirrors on the walls, the better not to see the linty sweater, the faded skirt, the better to preserve those illusions.
Gunnie turned her head this way and that. She smiled. She hummed.
A woman, a mirror. Something from long ago was coming back for Pamela. A high, rusty gate, the gate of an asylum. The gates open and they flood through, saying oh, oh, oh, as they come tripping out in their white coats and white bonnets, every second more ecstatic. King of Hearts. Pamela had so loved that film. Oh, oh, oh, they say, looking at the sky, streaming into the streets of their French village, abandoned because it is World War I and the Germans have wired it to explode at midnight. Barefoot and in pajamas, the inmates are free at last. This had been their town until someone had said: too strange, too nervous, too much, lock her up. The foppish one immediately installs himself in the barber shop, throwing on a black wig and pink scarf. A man in a nightshirt dances on tiptoe into the cathedral’s sacristy and dons the bishop’s scarlet robe. A red-haired woman runs up the staircase of an old building to find an ancient lipstick in an ancient vanity, clears a circle of dust from the mirror and leans in to look at herself for the first time in years. She shakes her head, rueful, and begins to fill in her lips, first one curve of her upper lip and then the other in glorious, brothel red.
“Look at this thing, would you?” Gunnie was pouting at herself in the mirror, a tuque the colour of baby poop pulled down over her ears. “This is why I prefer summertime hats.” And she took off down the aisle, pompom bouncing, for more haut de gamme.
“What about the boots?” Pamela called after her.
“Jesus Lord, don’t put the pressure on,” said Gunnie.
Pamela browsed the shelves around her. Housewares you might call this part of the store: mostly glass salt and pepper shakers, china sugar bowls and creamers, things you could buy at the dollar store for cheaper. It was all ugly, but not outrageous, interesting ugly. This stuff couldn’t even qualify as kitsch.
From women’s wear, Pamela heard Gunnie yell, “Hallelujah!”
They take back the town, these sane zanies, pedalling on their bicycles, strolling arm and arm in the village. There are ostriches, Pamela suddenly remembered. Ostriches and lions and llamas strolling about, too, because they free the animals from a travelling circus. “One must exaggerate…life is so dull,” the madam says to Alan Bates, the Scottish soldier sent to save the town, and whom the inmates crown their King of Hearts. At three minutes to midnight, as Bates despairs that they have only three minutes to live, Coquelicot, his betrothed, says, “It’s wonderful…three minutes!”
Pamela had wept and wept the first time she’d seen Philippe de Broca’s sixties, anti-war film. She’d promised herself: I will not be afraid to live. I will stay open, open, painfully open.
“We almost forgot that boy of yours.” Gunnie was back and leading her by the elbow, not gently, toward another wall of the store. Children’s Shoes. The sign was bigger than the selection. But between pairs of fuzzy, mangy slippers, was a pair of boots, rain boots, red, like miniature fireman galoshes. They were a size too small, but as Gunnie said, Willem could scrunch his toes up and it was the idea that was important anyway.
“You understand a lot, Gunnie,” said Pamela at the checkout.
“It takes a crazy to understand another crazy,” said Gunnie.
“Willem’s not crazy,” said Pamela. “He’s autistic.”
“Fancy word,” said Gunnie. “Poor lamb.”
“He’s not crazy,” said Pamela.
“Course he is,” said Gunnie, and put her head on Pamela’s shoulder.
“Are you buying the hat?” asked the checkout girl, pointing to the tag that hung from the side of Gunnie’s tuque.
“She is,” said Pamela and paid the $2.99, though she felt tolerance and patience leaving her. Maybe it was all sentimental bullshit about the insights, the access, the deeper humanity gained through mental illness. Sometimes a crazy person was just crazy. And worse, sometimes just as cruel as a normal person.
The cashier wrapped each boot separately in tissue paper and placed them carefully inside a plastic bag. They were a Band-Aid, a little solution to a big, long problem. But the boots would make them all a little happier for a little while.
“Such a beautiful kid,” Gunnie told the girl. The girl looked at Pamela and smiled. “Really, you should see him. He’s just about the sweetest kid you ever saw. And smart, too. Oh, I forgot this,” Gunnie added, pulling the red beret from her purse. “I won’t be taking it now that I have this.” And she batted the tag on her tuque. The girl looked at Pamela, smile fading.
“Can I buy you a coffee?” Pamela asked in the parking lot.
“Sure,” said Gunnie.
“Second Cup, OK?” Pamela asked.
“I got someplace better,” said Gunnie.
Pamela had walked by the coffee machine in Provigo many times but had never stopped, assuming the coffee would be better nearly anywhere else.
“Best coffee in town,” said Gunnie, taking the two loonies from Pamela’s palm and putting them in the machine.
“Haut de gamme?” said Pamela.
“Sure,” said Gunnie, handing her the first cup. “Listen, would you mind if we prayed?”
“Right here?” said Pamela, but Gunnie already had her head bowed over her Styrofoam cup.
“Jesus Lord, those little boots sure are cute. And this coffee’s great. You really know how to treat a person.”
The coffee, Pamela had to agree, was not bad at all.