UNDERNEATH
THE WATER
WITH THE FISH
Copyright © 2020 Carol Malyon
Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.
Cover design: Val Fullard
eBook: tikaebooks.com
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Underneath the water with the fish : stories / Carol Malyon.
Names: Malyon, Carol, 1933– author.
Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.
Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200208195 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200208209 | ISBN 9781771337496 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337502 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337519 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337526 (pdf)
Classification: LCC PS8576.A5364 U53 2020 | DDC C813/.54—dc23
Printed and bound in Canada
Inanna Publications and Education Inc.
210 Founders College, York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax (416) 736-5765
Email: inanna.publications@inanna.ca Website: www.inanna.ca
UNDERNEATH
THE WATER
WITH THE FISH
SHORT FICTION
CAROL MALYON
INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.
TORONTO, CANADA
This book would have been dedicated
to Else Shimrat;
it’s dedicated to her memory instead.
ALSO BY CAROL MALYON
POETRY
Headstand (1990)
Emma’s Dead (1992)
Colville’s People (2002)
SHORT FICTION
The Edge of the World (1991)
Lovers and Other Strangers (1996)
NOVELS
If I Knew I’d Tell You (1993)
The Adultery Handbook (1999)
The Migration of Butterflies (2004)
Cathedral Women (2006)
CHILDREN’ BOOKS
Mixed-up Grandmas (1998)
NON-FICTION
griddle talk (co-written with bill bissett) (2009)
Table of Contents
Bad Men Who Love Jesus at the Last Minute
In Bed Beside a Stranger
Bruise-Woman
Cathay
Dawn
Dome Car
The Keel Hides Underneath the Water with the Fish
Leaves
LitCan is Coming
Long Point
Luv: A Librarian Fantasy
Marking Time
Meat Market
Memories: Early, Early
Missed Carriage
A Moving Story
Neighbours
Newspaper Report
Paper Serviettes
Postcards
Smile. You’re on a Greyhound Bus
Smoke
Thanksgiving Dinner
Unborn Baby in Trailer Park
A Woman Wakes Up in the Morning
Acknowledgements
Bad Men Who Love Jesus at the Last Minute
DADDY WAS ALREADY SIXTY-SEVEN before he decided to give his soul to the Lord. Lucky for him that God’s so patient. He’d been a rotter all his life, then suddenly he turned into someone I’d read about in the Bible and heard about in Sunday sermons: that prodigal son.
Sixty-seven plus eleven months to be exact, and not likely to make it to sixty-eight. “I saw the dazzling light last night, Kiddo,” he told me. “I had a vision, just like Joan of Arc. Those saints and holy martyrs have them all the time. I saw Jesus walking toward me, just ambling along. Why would He bother hurrying anyway? Time means nothing to Him. Ain’t that right? We were far off in some empty desert, nothing else in sight, not even a camel or cactus plant. That’s how come I could see Him from so far away. I didn’t know who it was at first, just some guy in a white bathrobe, and wearing sandals, casual, like swimming pool thongs. When He got close I knew I’d seen Him some place before, maybe in some bar or donut shop. But then I remembered all those churches with stained-glass windows. Dammit, I was scared shitless; you better believe it. I was pretty sure my time had come. So I flopped down on the burning hot sand and touched the hem of His dusty bathrobe. Somebody did that in the Bible, so it seemed like a good idea.”
I started shaking, my teeth kept chattering. “Oh no!” was all I could say.
Daddy rambled on, looking smug. “It was so hot. Sweat was dripping into my eyes. I guess that’s why I didn’t recognize Him at first. It was hot like you can’t imagine. My clothes were soaking wet with sweat. I told Him I had a couple of regrets. I don’t, but it seemed like something He’d wanta hear.”
“But you’re old now, Daddy. You’re ancient. How come you waited so long to get religion?” I had to holler because he can’t hear so good.
“I don’t know, Kiddo. I just kept putting it off until next year and then the next. But last night I was feeling so poorly. Suddenly I knew I’d better hurry up. I hadn’t much time.”
It isn’t fair.
That old bastard will be on his way to glory, his elbow nudging open that heavenly gate. St. Peter will try to slam it shut but Daddy will shove his foot inside, like when he was still a door-to-door salesman and selling vacuum cleaners to gullible housewives.
Will he see Baby Alice up there? Will they have to be united again? My little sister that he shook senseless? Will he be able to shake her again? Poor sweet innocent Baby Alice. I sure hope not.
And what about Momma? All her bruises must be faded by now. Will Daddy start bashing her again?
“The Lord doesn’t stock any shelves with liquor,” I hollered. “Bet you didn’t think about that.” My daddy’s been a mean drunk ever since I can remember. He can’t ever keep a job because of sneaking a mickey inside his lunch pail.
Daddy started laughing. “Guess I’ll have to find out where they stash the communion wine. Heh, heh, heh.” But then that laugh turned into a cough.
“Take those words back,” I hollered. “Tell Jesus you were kidding. Say you changed your mind. Heaven is supposed to be beautiful. I don’t want you up there staggering around, vomiting your guts out, smashing dishes and knick-knacks, messing up the place.”
I hate listening when Daddy hacks like that. Finally, when he got his breath back, he scrunched his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep.
I kept hollering at him anyway. “Damn you, Daddy. Wake up and tell Jesus you made a mistake. You’ve been a sinner all your life. A no-good rotter. It’s way too late to change.” I dared to say this because I felt safe inside that hospital ward, and anyway he was too sick to chase me. “You’ve been a low-down weasel ever since I can remember. Beating us kids with your belt until we were bleeding. Always cheating on Momma. Fucking every woman in sight. Babysitters and neighbours, even me, your only daughter. You’ve been a bad man all your life. Don’t chicken out now. Don’t pray for forgiveness at the last minute.”
At least we live in Canada. In the U.S. they think beating your wife and family is nothing. When a man hurts a woman, it’s just a big joke. It happens all the time in the movies and on TV. Examples ought to be made. Then maybe the men would stop.
Why don’t churches do something about it? Why didn’t Momma? Why doesn’t God?
Daddy sneaking into my bedroom at night. How come Momma didn’t pay attention to that? Didn’t she notice? Didn’t she care? Maybe she was just glad he wasn’t bothering her.
She always said I was making up stories. She wouldn’t notice a lamp post if she bumped her head against it. No light bulbs clicking on inside her brain like happens in comic strips.
My own Momma thinking I must be crazy. I’d be listening to my Walkman, laughing sometimes, and she thought I was hearing voices. That woman. What can you do with someone like that? I mean, I loved her. She was my Momma after all. Every Christmas I bought her a present. Also birthdays. And a fancy card on Mother’s Day with a gushy verse and pictures of pink flowers. I always smoked my cigarettes outside, but all that’s not good enough.
She paid a doctor ten dollars to break into my room and say I was crazy. That way he could fill me up with drugs,giving me bad trips with sleeping pills or placebos or something. Trying to murder my brain. Doctors! They’ve got no right to do that. They act like veterinarians. I’M A PERSON!
Some people take drugs and others don’t. I don’t want any chemicals messing up my head.
Those doctors sniffed cocaine and then stuck poison needles inside me. They tried to numb me into a zombie. They do whatever they want. They want me to just sit still like a lamp post or flowerpot. I need some civil rights.
I started hollering at Daddy again but he didn’t even bother to answer, so I unfastened that plastic oxygen tent. I grabbed hold of his shoulders and shook him. “Listen here, old geezer. Pay attention to what I’m saying! This is important!”
But a buzzer was making too much of a racket and a bunch of people started running around in the room. They shoved me out into the hall, but I pushed right back in again, and hollered, “Watch it. I belong here. I’m the daughter.” Someone stuck a big needle into Daddy. Somebody else was pounding his chest.
I started yelling, “Oh no! Is he trying to die? Oh no!”
And I yelled at Daddy. “Don’t do it, Daddy. Don’t go yet. Don’t head for that dazzling tunnel that leads straight into heaven. Stop! Don’t go zooming along it.”
Then they wheeled in an electric machine. Some nurse grabbed me and turned my head so I couldn’t watch. She hugged me so hard it hurt, and then shoved me down on the floor. “Kneel and pray for your daddy’s soul,” she said. “He’s on his way to meet the Lord.”
So I started screeching. “Watch out, St. Peter. If you let Daddy inside heaven you’ll be sorry. He’ll wreck the place. You’d better fasten the deadbolt and put a chain on the door. Hang a NO VACANCY sign outside. Just yell at him through the keyhole to go away. To take a flying leap and land in hell where he belongs.”
But I already knew it was too late. God damn it.
A nurse held me tight and said it’s all over. “Your daddy’s gone to be in paradise with God and the angels.”
I’ll have to learn to shoplift. I’ll knock over sweet little old ladies and steal their purses. “Sorry,” I’ll tell them. “I’ve got no choice. But be careful landing. Don’t break your hip.”
I’m going to have to learn to shoot dope and striptease and lap dance.
I don’t want to do those things, but I’ll have to. No way I’m going to end up in the same place as my dad.
In Bed Beside a Stranger
ANNIE WAKES UP BESIDE A STRANGER and wonders why this always happens. Perhaps this is a man she has been dreaming of, buying clothes to be noticed by, getting a different hairstyle so he will want to run his fingers through it. “It’s so soft,” he will say, meaning her, meaning her hair, her lips, her nipples, the pink petals he unfolds between her legs. This man she thinks up witty comments for, trying to impress, and gets off the bus three stops too soon hoping to run into, invents reasons to call up on the phone, hoping this time he will recognize her voice, remember her name.
Perhaps she wakes up beside someone she’s been living with for a week, a month, a year. Annie can’t be sure of the time because the person in her bed seems to keep changing.
Anyway, this seems fair, because every morning she wakes up a different person than whoever she was the day before. She thinks this is because she always wakes up beside a stranger. She thinks that this makes sense.
Annie checks her daughter’s photograph to see whether the stranger in her bed bears a family resemblance. She could phone her mother to make sure her stepfather isn’t missing. Doesn’t she have a stepfather? She isn’t sure.
She calls friends, neighbours, women from work, but no one seems to know who she went to bed with the night before. Annie wants to warn them to check their beds for strangers but hates to alarm them. Anyway, they will notice soon enough.
A stranger slumbers beneath the quilt her mother-in-law stitched when her son and Annie got married; that nice woman Annie can hardly remember, though she still sleeps beneath that quilt. The son thought he knew what he was doing and handed Annie a ring; she thought she did too, so she took it. And all his mother could do about it was stitch a quilt, with scraps left over from making flowered aprons. A double wedding ring design. Interlocking rings that Annie hardly noticed at first, then tried to get used to, but finally couldn’t bear to look at because men hate seeing women cry.
It is some sort of family tradition to give this quilt to couples. They’ll stay together so long as they never get out of bed.
Annie is used to the interlocking rings by now and hardly notices them at all, but she notices the stranger underneath them.
The stranger could be dangerous. Annie reads of so many weirdos in the newspaper and hears about them on the news, and never feels sympathetic. How could that woman have let a stranger into her house? Her bed? Her body? This is the kind of thing Annie always wonders.
As though there comes a moment when men stop being strangers. When it is safe for a woman to open up her house, her bed, her life. A time to cover the man with a quilt, rings interlocked on top, the man and woman interlocked underneath. As though there’s a time when it’s all right, and women have some way of knowing when.
She wants to phone a lost and found to inquire about missing persons; if no one matches the stranger’s description she could report a found person, but they would probably assume she was joking and hang up.
She could phone the police department, but she knows he didn’t break in: no windows are smashed; two wine glasses are on the bedside table, and the stranger’s hands are not the part of him that makes her nervous. Even though she can feel his fingerprints all over her body, and knows that if a detective placed her under ultraviolet light they would show up everywhere. There is no part of her body his hands haven’t touched. She is conscious of the feel of them, like semen on her thighs, like a memory almost forgotten, like a feeling she washes away, then wants right back.
Annie wakes up beside a stranger. This sometimes happens. She doesn’t know what to do about it, so she touches him anyway.
Bruise-Woman