Things Go Flying (18 page)

“Everything all right at home?”

For a moment, Harold wished he had the guts to tell Stan the truth. He felt—intensely—how unfair it was that he was being plagued by the dead because of his mother, and that he couldn't even tell anyone without bringing his sanity into question. It occurred to Harold with sudden, absolute certainty that of course he was being documented. There were great disability leave benefits at the government, but Harold didn't want to spend months at home with Audrey, even on full pay.

“Everything's fine,” Harold insisted, feeling the dampness in his armpits, in the back of his shirt.

How wonderful it would be, he thought, if one of the dead would help him out now. How wonderful if the empty coffee cup sitting on his desk pitched itself across the room! Followed by, say, the computer monitor. Harold put the pen down and sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest.

Stan saw Harold fold his arms across his chest—a classic defensive posture—and recognized that he had a problem.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Harold was waiting— in vain, it turned out—for help from beyond the grave. When it didn't come, he got a little desperate, not to mention a little angry. He was so tired of being let down!

“There's nothing wrong with my work, is there?” he said, almost aggressively.

“To tell you the truth, Harold, it hasn't been up to your usual excellent standard.”

Harold recognized that while this was true, he also knew that his work had been at least acceptable. Suddenly inspired, and hoping to cut his supervisor off at the knees, he said, “It's just that my best friend died recently—rather suddenly. Maybe I haven't been concentrating as well as usual.”

“Oh,” Stan said, sounding as if he was hoping there was more wrong with Harold than that. Then he added, somewhat slyly, “Perhaps that's who you've been talking to, in your office, when nobody's there?”

Shit.
Harold hadn't known he'd been observed. He didn't know what to say.

“Maybe you could use some time off,” Stan suggested at last, tired of beating around the bush, wanting to get home.

“No!” Harold almost shouted. “No,” he repeated, more quietly. He forced himself to be calm. “I don't need time off. Really, I'm fine.”

Now Stan was frustrated. Harold wasn't going to go quietly, obviously. But Stan had to lay the groundwork for future attempts. This wasn't over.

“What we need perhaps, Harold,” he suggested, “is an action plan.”

“An action plan,” Harold repeated.

In the department, they were great fans of
the action plan.
Harold had never had one applied to himself before though. It was ominous; it implied that he must take action or face consequences. He must measure up—get better!—or his superiors would decide what to do with him. Harold was pretty good with action plans, as far as departmental business went, but he did not like to take action, as applied to himself. He certainly didn't like the sound of a Harold Walker Action Plan.

Turning the screws, Stan grabbed a piece of paper and the pen off Harold's blotter and started to write a heading across the top of the page.

Harold read it upside down—
Action Plan: Harold Walker
. He felt himself blanch.

Stan wrote 1. in the margin and looked up at Harold. Harold was dumb.

Eventually his supervisor sighed, glanced at his watch, and said, “Why don't you give this some thought, Harold, and then we'll draft something together.”

“Like what?” Harold asked nervously. He had no idea what was expected of him.

“Try to come up with some ideas—some steps you might take— to recover your equilibrium,” Stan said, pleased with his wording. “Perhaps you could see a grief counselor, for instance, if you think that would help.”

What the hell,
Harold wondered
, was a grief counsellor? Was there such a thing?

“Perhaps some time off.” Stan dangled that out there again, for good measure. He pushed the paper back on the desk toward Harold, handing the problem over to him. “Give it some thought, and we'll talk about it. Come up with a timeline.” He got up to leave. “Good night Harold. Let's meet on this again in a few days. See you tomorrow.”

Stan left but Harold didn't move.
A timeline.
How much time would he be given, to solve all his problems?

How the hell would a deadline possibly help here?

• • •

T
HAT NIGHT, HAROLD
was sitting in bed with a book on his lap—a blank piece of paper on top of the book—and chewing anxiously on a pencil. He was thinking about the Harold Walker Action Plan, but so far, he wasn't coming up with much.

He had to prepare something convincing, something unassailable, or else he'd be out on his ear for who knew how long. Some people were on stress leave for months! Harold knew that if he was forced into inactivity for that long, he really would go crazy. Just spending that much time with Audrey was enough to send him up the wall. So Harold chewed his pencil and tried to manufacture something to satisfy his supervisor, something that wouldn't look too bad in his permanent file—where it would most definitely be placed—and drew a blank.

To get himself going, he wrote
Harold Walker: Action Plan
across the top of the page. He was pondering this intensely when Audrey suddenly loomed over his shoulder.

“What's that?” she said, making him jump.

“Don't sneak up on me like that!” he said testily.

“Sorry,” Audrey said.

Harold had hoped to work on this undetected before Audrey came upstairs, but now that he'd been caught, he thought maybe she could help. He had to admit she was a good ideas person. And although he was naturally reluctant to hand over the reins of the Harold Walker Action Plan to Audrey, he told himself that he wouldn't have to actually follow through on this stuff. As long as he showed improvement at work—no more forgetting about meetings, no more talking to the dead, increasing his work output—Stan wouldn't actually be able to do anything to him.

So he told her about his talk with Stan, and the Harold Walker Action Plan. The sudden over-concern on her face annoyed him. “Don't worry—he can't fire me. My job is perfectly safe. He's given me a few days to come up with something.”

Somewhat reassured, Audrey wrinkled her brow. She'd never heard of anything like this before. But she could certainly recognize an opportunity when it presented itself. She could take a ball and run with it.

“Let's see,” she said, grabbing the book, the paper, and the pencil from him and sitting down on the bed. She didn't want Harold to be forced to take time off either; there had to be a better way.

Assuring Harold that this was just a rough draft—rough notes really—she wrote:

1. Anti-depressants. (When will these kick in?)

2. Exercise. (Regular exercise will improve mood, alleviate depression and improve sleep.)

3. Counselling. (Psychiatrist or psychologist?)

4. Short vacation?

Audrey stopped, unable to come up with anything more. Really, if the anti-depressants started to work, he began a regular exercise program, and she could get him into counselling, that would be pretty much her whole wish list as far as Harold went. The short vacation was just down there for form's sake.

She handed the list to Harold, who read it silently. She could tell when he got to number three.

“What do you think?” she prompted, when he didn't say anything.

“I don't know,” Harold said. But that wasn't honest—he knew exactly what he thought of it. He was already taking the antidepressants, he supposed he could
start
a moderate exercise program, if absolutely pushed—even take a short vacation—but he was damn sure he wasn't going to any psychiatrist or psychologist.

“Well, you must have some feelings about it,” Audrey prodded.

“I'm not going to a psychiatrist,” Harold said stubbornly.

“How about a psychologist then?”

“No.”

“Why not?” Audrey said, exasperated.

Harold didn't answer her. He didn't want to see a psychiatrist or a psychologist because he was afraid they would find out about the dead people somehow—what if they hypnotized him?—and that they'd have him certified. Harold was very worried about this—they had an Employee Assistance Program at work with an entire flock of psychiatrists and psychologists on call, just waiting for someone like him. He was terrified that he'd be forced to go. Of course they wouldn't understand about the dead people—they would think he was nuts.

Audrey sighed heavily. “Do you think your boss will go for just the anti-depressants and exercise?” Audrey asked.

“I don't know,” Harold said. “Maybe.” Then he had a flash of inspiration. “Change
Counselling
to
Reading Self-Help Literature
.”

“That's not bad,” Audrey agreed, writing it down.

• • •

H
AROLD WAS EATING
his sandwich in the lunchroom the next day when something pierced through his glumness and caught his eye. It was a small ad in a university newspaper which read:
Depressed? Looking for answers? Maybe philosophy has the answers you seek. Flexible appointments. Reasonable rates.

He read it again.
He
was depressed.
He
was looking for answers, sort of. Maybe this was the alternative to psychiatry he'd been looking for. Maybe he could add this to the Harold Walker Action Plan! He surreptitiously ripped the little square from the bottom of the newspaper—feeling subversive, but justified in the circumstances— and put it in his pants pocket. He thought about it off and on, throughout the day.

That night after work, Harold got off the subway one stop early, at Broadview instead of Chester. It wasn't a planned thing, more of a whim. It was a chilly evening, and he walked steadily south on Broadview, past the jumble of storefronts—pizza, antiques, chiropractic—past Loblaws, and along the ridge of the park with its swooping hill leading down to the running track. When he got to the statue of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, he cut across the grass and headed down the curved, paved lane that led to the pedestrian bridge. The maple leaves littering the ground were blemished with dark circular splotches, like coins—some kind of blight. He passed under the
Discovery Walk
plaque and walked up onto the bridge that spanned the Don Valley Parkway. For a minute he paused and looked north at the Bloor Street Viaduct, with its graceful black arches and its fretwork of steel cables, almost invisible from here, meant to keep the suicides from jumping. But they'd just moved north, to the Leaside Bridge. Harold thought about them, the jumpers—all those souls taking flight.

He turned away and headed down the descending curve of the bridge, pushed open the chain-link gate at the bottom, and began his ascent up through Riverdale Farm. The leaves rustled crisply underfoot. There was almost no one around. It would be dark soon. Audrey would wonder where he was.

He passed a pond on his left, scummy and still; a cedar rail fence bordered the path all the way up through the trees. By the time he reached the top of the steep path he was winded, and he slowed. Where he came out there was a paddock with two draft horses standing head to rump by the fence in the failing light. He could smell their sharp equine smell, and hay, and apples. He went past the horses, past the barn where they milked the cows, and out into the park.

It wasn't so different.

He used to fly balsawood airplanes here, the cheap ones with the red plastic propellers and the elastics you wound up with your index finger. He hadn't thought about those planes in almost forty years. His kids had never played with anything like that. They'd never had anything that simple.

He didn't know why he was here; something made him cut through the park and walk up Winchester Street—glancing warily over his shoulder at the cemetery to his right—then turn off Winchester onto his old street. Now he was going slowly, looking carefully at the houses, a tired, respectable man in a suit and a dark coat. The houses had changed more than the park. Some of them he wouldn't have recognized.

At last he stopped across from the one he was looking for. He was on the opposite side of the street, to be able to see it better, or maybe it was to keep his distance. He stood there on the sidewalk, looking at it. He was sure it was the same house but it looked smaller. Different. He remembered peeling, scabby grey paint over red brick, drab woodwork and original glass, a small, patchy lawn behind the wrought iron fence. But the brick had been sandblasted clean, the windows had all been replaced, and there was fresh white trim and a tiny landscaped front garden. A baby carriage on the flagstones below the front steps was ruining his concentration.

He stood there on the sidewalk staring at the house for a long time, trying to remember it the way it was, fingering the scrap of paper in his pants pocket.

• • •

D
INNER WAS RUINED
because Audrey had left it in the oven, waiting for Harold. She kept opening the oven door and looking at the shrivelled roast, adjusting the temperature, and pouring on more red wine. They usually ate at six, when Harold came home. But tonight Harold wasn't home, and the boys had grown so hungry that they had invaded the kitchen and made themselves two peanut butter and jam sandwiches each and taken them back downstairs. Audrey wasn't happy, but teenaged boys had to eat.

Every once in a while she glared with loathing at the new TV on her kitchen counter. Its blank, greenish-black face seemed to follow her around the kitchen like something out of the future. And it took up at least two feet of much-needed counter space, which nobody else seemed to consider.

The paternity test kit had arrived the day before—discreetly—in the mail. Eventually, Audrey had gone upstairs and used the bathroom tweezers to pluck some hairs out of Harold's brush and then dropped them carefully into the envelope provided. Then she went to Dylan's room and did the same thing, putting his hairs into a second envelope. While she was at it, she'd lifted Dylan's mattress and counted the pills.