Things Go Flying (31 page)

“He went completely insane.”

“Was it—from thinking too deeply?” Harold asked.

“Maybe,” Will conceded, nodding. “Or it could have been syphilis.”

Harold enjoyed his discussions with his philosopher, but in the end, Harold didn't know what eternal life was all about
.
And, for all his learning and his high forehead, his philosopher didn't know either. It was all still an unfathomable mystery—a leap that he must take, someday.

But for now, Harold took small steps.

He sat on his bench in the backyard and thought about things, even though the weather, by late November, had taken a turn for the worse. It was cold, grey, and often wet. The patch of grass in front of his bench had turned to mud, and the backyard, with the leaves stripped from the trees, felt more exposed. Even so, Harold had moments when he felt better than he had since long before Tom had died.

“Are you ready to talk?” His mother said to him one day.

“I think so,” Harold said.

“I understand that you're angry at me, but it's really not as bad as you think,” she said.

“I'm not angry anymore,” Harold said.

All his life he'd embraced the ordinary, Harold knew now, because his childhood had been so extraordinary. Avoidance—such a useful survival mechanism for him as a child beset by forces he couldn't understand—hadn't served him as well as an adult. He now understood that he couldn't be fully alive—he couldn't
feel
alive— unless he opened himself—at least a little bit—to the extraordinary.

“I just wanted you to realize that there is more to life than
life,
if you know what I mean.”

“I understand that now.”

“And that you can't blind yourself to things forever. Forever is a very long time.”

“I get it, Mom.”

“You know, I've always considered my gift to be truly a gift—even if sometimes it was inconvenient. You have that gift too. To a more limited extent, of course.”

“I know. I see what you mean. Thanks, Mom,” Harold said.

“You're welcome.”

These days, Harold was doing the best he could with what he had, as Voltaire advised. He'd made his peace with Audrey. She was no longer sleeping on the floor, and he'd taken to packing a treat in her lunch bag before she went off to work. He'd made his peace with Tom, too—he had to agree that tying Dylan's acting to his grades had been a stroke of genius. And he'd finally had a talk with Dylan about his parentage.

He asked Dylan to come out and sit with him on his bench. It was awkward; Harold didn't know how to begin. Finally, he blurted out, “Dylan—I'm not your biological father.”

“I know, Dad. John told me.”

“He did?”

Dylan nodded.

“I love you just the same, anyway,” Harold said, looking at him. “You'll always be my son.”

“I know, Dad.” They sat there in silence for a little while. Then Dylan said, “Are you going to tell me who my biological father is?”

Harold realized that he should have been prepared for this—it was an obvious question. What the hell—why not tell him? Dylan had a right to know.

“Tom Grossman.”

“The dead guy?” Dylan said. Harold nodded. “The doctor.” Harold nodded again. Dylan was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “Maybe that explains why Mom wants me to go to medical school.”

On the whole, Harold thought that Dylan had taken it pretty well. It was a relief, really, to get it over with.

Lately, Harold had become very worried about global warming, its effects on the weather, on various species. He'd been reading all about it. He'd taken the Government of Canada's One-Tonne Challenge and had learned that he, personally, was responsible for producing a whopping 8.94 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, way over the average of 5.5 tonnes per year. He was horrified. He'd always thought of himself as going through life causing no harm to anyone, and here he was contributing more than his share to environmental disaster.

But, if he kept his vehicle maintained according to manufacturer's instructions, maintained appropriate tire pressure, never idled the engine, and never went over the speed limit—changes he thought he could live with—he dropped right down to 7.6 tonnes. He could do that! He could meet the One-Tonne Challenge to reduce his greenhouse gas output by one tonne per year with almost no effort at all. The fact that he was still above the average was worrying, but one step at a time.

If he programmed the thermostat to be one degree lower during the day and two degrees lower at night, and left the grass clippings on the lawn—he could do that!—it brought him down to 7.4 tonnes.

It was heartening to think that such small, incremental shifts could have such enormous significance down the line. If everybody in North America reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by one tonne per year, what a difference that would make!

He found this empowering. Forget that he had no control over the millions of people it would take for this to work. He could only cultivate his garden, like Candide.

The other day, when Harold opened the door to a solicitor— Audrey was at work—and was about to shut it in her face, something stopped him. He listened to the earnest pitch of the volunteer from Save the Children and found himself wondering: If everyone gave just one dollar, how many children would that save?

He asked the young woman, “If everybody in Toronto gave one dollar, how many children would that save?”

She was entirely unprepared for the question. “I have no idea,” she admitted.

“You probably don't even know what the population of Toronto is,” Harold said, though not unkindly.

She shook her head in defeat, then rallied, “But I'm sure it would save
a lot
of children.”

He gave her a dollar, and decided that from now on, he'd do his small bit for hummankind.

This gave him an identity in addition to his previous identities as an underachiever, an inadequate father, a consumer of goods, and a cuckold. He could be someone who contributed, someone who made a difference. He had to blind himself to how small, how minuscule a difference, because otherwise he'd give in to despair.

And besides, Harold asked himself, sitting on his bench in the backyard, who was to say how small his contribution was? Everything was relative. A bug might live for only a day, a star for billions of years, but both had a contribution to make.

The universe was a wonder.

There are some things, Harold told himself—lifting his eyes from the ground to the trees, the sky—that we may never be able to get our minds around.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my agent, Samantha J. Haywood, for believing in me wholeheartedly, for being excited about my work, and for her tireless efforts to promote it.

I would like to thank my publisher, Ruth Linka, for her enthusiasm and for her wisdom in all things bookish. Sincere thanks also to Lynn Coady, a caring and brilliant editor.

Heartfelt thanks to the writers who candidly assessed my work: Eliza Clark for her friendship, support, and sound literary advice; David Adams Richards for his support and guidance; and Dennis Bock, the first person to read any of these pages, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to come out of the closet, so to speak. Thanks to Diana Fitzgerald-Bryden and David Whitton for being early and insightful readers. Thanks to Leslie Mutic for friendship and inspiration.

Thanks especially to Manuel Lapeña, for always being in my corner.

• • •

S
HARI
L
APEÑA
was a lawyer and English teacher before turning to writing fiction. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and in 2004 she won the Great Toronto Literary Project contest. She has been featured in
The Dalhousie Review
and
The Globe and Mail
, and is an alumnus of the Humber School for Writers. She makes her home in Toronto.

Copyright © 2008 Shari Lapeña

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—electronic, mechanical, audio recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher or a photocopying licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada.

Originally published by Brindle & Glass Publishing Co. Ltd. in 2008 in softcover
ISBN 978-1-897142-30-1.

This electronic edition was released in 2011
ePub ISBN: 978-1-897142-68-4
PDF ISBN: 978-1-897142-67-6

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Editor: Lynn Coady
Cover image: Jane Zednik
Author photo: Manuel Lapeña

Brindle & Glass is pleased to thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its contributions to our publishing program.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

www.brindleandglass.com