The End of Me Read online

  john gould

  the

  end

  of

  me

  © JOHN GOULD 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical — including photocopying, recording, taping, or through the use of information storage and retrieval systems — without prior written permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

  Freehand Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Media Fund, and by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Freehand Books

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The end of me / John Gould.

  Names: Gould, John, 1959– author.

  Description: Short stories.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190213914 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190213949

  ISBN 9781988298566 (softcover) | ISBN 9781988298573 (EPUB)

  ISBN 9781988298580 (PDF)

  Classification: LCC PS8563.O8446 E53 2020 | DDC C813/.54—dc23

  Edited by Deborah Willis

  Book design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design

  Author photo by Sandy Mayzel

  Printed on FSC® recycled paper and bound in Canada by Marquis

  For Sandy

  After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

  ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, thinking

  There is absolutely no other free act granted to us, only the destruction of the “I.”

  SIMONE WEIL, praying

  I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.

  LEO TOLSTOY, dying

  contents

  Dreams of Love

  Surge

  Metal

  Faithful

  Wayner110

  Elephant

  First Kiss

  Word of Mouth

  Red Giant

  Ghost

  Squeeze

  Open

  The Physical Part

  Peacemaker

  Rat Dead Wall Disease

  Via Negativa

  Pulse

  Darjeeling

  The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying

  The Works

  Skeletal

  Sunday Morning

  Monsters

  10 Things

  Coosh

  From the Journal of Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Mass.

  Centrifuge

  Sodom

  Corkscrew

  Something Apart

  Party Game

  Project Description

  Voicemail

  About Me

  Date

  Earthlings

  Skywalker

  Savasana

  Frantic

  Canoe Lake

  Shrub

  Stage

  Many Worlds

  Creatures

  Bones

  Anthropocene

  The Purpose of Life

  Hunter

  Ex

  Customer Review

  Extras

  Squirrel

  Angel, Still Ugly

  Machu Picchu

  Crepuscular

  Welcome

  Dreams of Love

  As soon as the funeral director, Lawrence-call-me-Larry, stepped out of his office, the phone began to ring. Renée, who sat with her brother’s cremated remains on her lap, glanced over at her sister Chris, who glanced back. They were both having the same thought, which was that Zack, if he still existed, would have picked up the phone. What would he have said?

  “Remember?” said Renée.

  Chris nodded. She was thinking of the time, back when they were kids, Zack called a random number and convinced the woman who answered that Jesus had returned and needed someplace to crash. The woman offered up her guest room, which Zack declined because it was in the basement and, as the woman confessed, “not airy,” a phrase which became code amongst the three of them for anything that disappointed. Renée, on the other hand, was thinking of the time Zack took a call from a telemarketer and set about converting him to Eckankar, a religion he’d just read about in line at the grocery store, actually getting the guy to close his eyes and guide his soul back towards its source. If either of the sisters had known they were recalling different (though thematically related) incidents, it would have made them even bluer than they already were.

  The phone stopped ringing. Renée hefted the box in her lap. The box was actually a birdhouse Zack had built during his carpentry phase, the little round door sealed off now to prevent his ashes spilling out. Some weeks ago the women had lined up babysitters and spent an afternoon searching for the perfect container, lugging with them a bag of orzo to stand in for Zack’s remains. Research had helped them estimate him at twelve cups — he was alive and on a modest upswing at the time — though this proved generous. They chipped in on three different vessels that day, none of them quite right. Back at Chris’s place they shared a bottle of Malbec and gazed out on her tiny backyard, where the birdhouse hung unoccupied, between families. Between families — that was Zack’s condition too, since he’d left their family, his first one, and never settled into a second.

  Lawrence-call-me-Larry popped his head back into the office. “Sorry, bit of trouble with the printer.” He required the women to sign a waiver confirming that it wasn’t the funeral home’s responsibility if Zack’s ashes escaped the nonstandard receptacle into which he’d just placed them. It was in search of this paperwork that he’d set out. At his reappearance, Renée and Chris shared a glance which said, Weird how robust this guy is, how animated, when what he deals with all day is dead people. Or maybe not so weird.

  “No worries,” said Renée.

  Lawrence-call-me-Larry disappeared again. Almost instantly the phone resumed ringing. The sisters exchanged another glance.

  “You,” said Chris.

  “You,” said Renée.

  “Acme Morgue here,” said Chris. “You stab ’em, we slab ’em.”

  “You kill ’em, we chill ’em.”

  “You ghost ’em, we roast ’em.”

  With this, the women ran out of lines recollected from the days they’d all three still lived at home, and Zack had amused himself goading his little sisters into mischief. Chris went back to wondering how to work the phrase “not airy” into her part of the eulogy in such a way as to convey its special meaning without having to recite the whole story. Renée went back to wondering why the eulogy and indeed all these arrangements had been left to the two of them, their parents having gone useless in the aftermath of Zack’s death. How was one to judge or even comprehend another’s grief?

  The phone continued to ring. Its ringtone was a horribly synthesized version of the famous somber bit from Franz Liszt’s Liebesträum, a title either of them could have produced but which only Zack, if he were present, could have translated from the German as Dreams of Love.

  Both women reached a decision at the same moment. Chris was closer to the phone, so she was the one who snatched it up. “Hello?” she said. Anticlimactic, but a start, she figured. The thing was to take action, just as Zack would have done, trusting i
nspiration to arise from the moment.

  Dial tone — the caller had hung up. “Yes, that’s right,” Chris said into the phone. “How can we help you in your time of need?” She made a what-have-I-got-myself-into face at Renée.

  Renée made a you-go-girl face back.

  “Yes, of course,” said Chris into the phone, “we’ll come right away and collect … Albert, is it? We would like you to consider, though, that Albert may already be elsewhere. Or nowhere. That is to say, what we collect may not be Albert.”

  Renée raised her eyebrows, wow. She also raised the birdhouse, briefly, and set it back down again.

  Chris shrugged. “But Jesus,” she said, “and the Buddha and so on, aren’t they all saying the same thing, way down deep?” She paused and listened intently. “No, deeper than that.” She paused again. “Deeper.” Another pause. “Well, that nothing is the nothing of the nothing.”

  She grimaced at Renée, who gave her a thumbs up.

  “Uh-huh,” said Chris into the phone. “Uh-huh … Well, that’s a great question. And there are a lot of other great questions too. Such as …” She flashed Renée a panicky look.

  Renée whispered, “Who’s a good dog?”

  “Who’s a good dog?” said Chris into the phone.

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Do you know the muffin man?”

  “Do you know the muffin man?”

  No question, Zack was there in the room with them, present in what passed between his sisters. He was also absent, of course, and in this way too he was present. This was precisely his style, after all, to get himself strung out between two true things that couldn’t both be.

  Renée whispered, “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?”

  “What shall we do with a drunken sailor?” said Chris into the phone.

  Renée reached out her hand.

  Chris took it.

  “Who knew?”

  “Who knew?”

  Surge

  What you’re supposed to do with your life is get ready to die, or anyway that’s what the dead guys you read in first year say, and also your girlfriend’s sister’s creepy guru if your girlfriend is Cassie, which mine is. I’m pretty sure. The basic thing being to get so far past your own selfness that when you die it’s no big deal because it’s already happened, you’ve let stuff go. But to be honest I don’t have that kind of time. The ball cancer (my therapist says go ahead and call it that, and so does my gynecologist which is what I call my oncologist just to mess with her), so yeah, the ball cancer has spread, it’s not just in my left ball anymore but all over the place. Including my brain, so I wouldn’t necessarily buy any of this. Besides which, I haven’t a clue what death is, so how would I get ready for it? The whole selfnessless thing, what if that isn’t even the point? How can a guru that creepy be right about stuff?

  Like I say, it’s mostly that I don’t have the time, or the energy either. Just tapping this out I have to take a nap after every other sentence practically, which is pretty fricking good for me these days, to tell you the truth. So what I’m getting ready for isn’t my death but my Final Surge of Energy, which is actually an actual medical thing. A couple of days or even hours before you croak (my therapist says go ahead and call it that, just be real about stuff) the tiredness is suddenly sucked out of you and you fill up with whatever you used to be full of. They think it might be your brain gushing out all its chemicals before it quits, and suddenly you can talk if you haven’t been talking or tear into a good meal if you haven’t been eating or whatever.

  Here’s how I imagine it. You’re at a party or a bar or something but you’re totally bummed because the girl you like (Cassie, in my case) isn’t there and your friend smoked the weed he was supposed to share with you and the spiced rums you had at home to save a few bucks aren’t giving you any sort of buzz at all, and you figure you’ll sit in the corner and glare at all the other pathetic morons for the rest of the night or maybe go down to 7-Eleven and buy a dozen Ho Hos and head home to crash on the couch in front of the Doctor Who marathon. But suddenly your song comes on, the one with the amazing bass line, and the rum kicks in and Cassie shows up and grabs you by the arm and pulls you out into the middle of everything and you’re jumping around and spinning like a little kid or like one of those dervish guys who do it to get close to God. The difference being that when the dance is over you’re gone, poof.

  I hate dancing, plus why would that be the thing to do with your Final Surge of Energy? I put it out on Faceplant to get some ideas, even though that’s usually depressing. People said things like I’d get up early and watch the sun rise or I’d write a letter to all the special people in my life or I’d finally forgive myself or I’d go downtown and hug strangers and tell them life is precious or I’d rob a bank or steal a pony from the petting zoo or freebase cocaine and hump till my heart stopped or whatever. A lot of people said we should live like that all the time, like each moment is our last, and I almost but didn’t quite tell them it won’t work. I mean sure, go ahead and try to convince yourself your life could be over any moment, but you won’t believe it, not till one of your balls is gone and you can’t sit up without fainting or eat without heaving. Try to imagine this, go ahead. You’ll think you are but you aren’t.

  Almost anybody with kids said that’s what they’d spend their Final Surge on, is their kids, which gave me my idea. I still have my right ball and there’s no cancer in it, in fact my gynecologist says it’s super-powered, cranking out extra juice to make up for the one they cut off. Plus I haven’t had radiation in weeks and I’ve managed to get off a couple of times, so the new sperm in there should be good to go. I haven’t told Cassie, even though she’s been here three times this week, and one time she gave me a little tongue when she kissed me goodbye which she’s not supposed to do because I have no immune system but screw it. Actually, I did tell her about the Surge. She cried, which is about the hottest thing in the universe, a girl crying for you, and I got a bit of a boner which doesn’t sound like a big deal but it is. But I didn’t tell her what I’m hoping to do with my Surge. It has to be spontaneous. Either she’ll go with it or she won’t. When the Surge hits I’ll get up and go find her and we’ll see.

  Maybe I’ll put it out on Faceplant. Hey girls, if a guy came up and asked can I knock you up just before I die, it’s my only chance to live on, what would you say? Though when I put it like that it sounds kind of douchey. Maybe the whole idea is a bad one, maybe it’s not what I should do with my Surge. Maybe you shouldn’t decide what to do with your Surge till you’re Surging anyway, just let the energy tell you how to spend it. Like when you’re born you start screaming and then you start sucking, not because you planned it that way but

  Metal

  Back from band practice, Joni says, “Whatcha reading, Mum?”

  It’s one in the morning, way late for a school night, but I decide to leave that be. “Nothing much,” I say, because the book’s a piece of fluff, and anyway I’m not reading it. Joni frets if she knows I’m fretting, or at least she used to, so I keep something handy I can pretend to concentrate on. I miss the days I actually could concentrate, maybe get through a magazine article, but there you go.

  Joni doesn’t care, she just wants to talk. “How was practice?” I ask her.

  “Okay. We got the gig.”

  “Joni! That’s wonderful.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  She slams herself into the other easy chair. She’s fully decked out tonight — Derk likes to snark that she could be “a crack ho turning tricks in a crypt,” missing the point that this is exactly the look she’s going for. The top she’s got on tonight gouges particularly low, so you can see the goat head and most of the androgynous body of Baphomet, the beast she’s recently had tattooed onto her left breast by Spike, her guy down at Tribal. The skin around the image is still red but not, I note, oozy. Maybe she’s using the ointment I
gave her.

  “Now we need a band name,” she says.

  “Ah. And you can’t agree on one.”

  “That.”

  What’s going on here is that Joni wants everything to be communal, collective. She refuses to impose her will on the other girls, even though she’s the one who writes and sings all the songs. She got the musical thing from me (I named her after Joni Mitchell), and she got the fanatical fair-mindedness from me too, I’m afraid.

  I ask her, “What name does Deanna like?” Deanna’s the drummer. She’s generally on the other side of any rift in the band.

  “Carcass.” Joni fidgets with the thick metal ring that runs through her septum, in one nostril and out the other.

  “Hm, not bad,” I say. “But you like …?”

  “Mary Magdalene’s Twat.”

  “I see. A bit … funnier? More sophisticated?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

  This is a big deal for Joni. It’s her chance to make a mark, make a statement about who she is as a creative individual. She’s done a demo on her laptop, and she’s been pushing hard to get this gig at an outdoor festival, which happens to be dry, so their being underage isn’t a problem. Derk would love the band to break up, or at least lose the gig (which they’re pretty sure to do if they go with the word “twat”), and of course I’d love it too if Joni would go back to viola in the school orchestra and start eating and sleeping and speaking to people again, but I’ll never help my daughter fail. Not ever. Derk can go to hell.

  Which isn’t fair. He adores her, of course he does, and he’s scared (though he can’t possibly be as scared as I am), but what he doesn’t get is the innocence of it all. When Joni sings Death did me like a dog last night she could just as well be singing Jimmy kissed me on the lips last night. It’d mean the same thing to her, pretty much. She has no idea about these things, she can’t have or she wouldn’t be able to say the words. It’s art, it’s artifice. Gangbanged by the ghosts of what we’ve ruined — she’s a poet, is what she is.

  “How’s your voice holding up?” I say.