Bang Crunch by Neil Smith

Author:Neil Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307389299
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

My late husband, Carl, used to say that a cucumber could be turned into a pickle, but a pickle could never be changed back into a cucumber. “Once pickled, you stay pickled,” he’d say, “even if you’re no longer soaking in your favourite vinegar.” (My favourite vinegar was a Chablis Drouhin, a Chardonnay with a hint of almond and honey.)

Carl shared my weird sense of humour. For instance, when our son, Max, was born, he hung an Edward Gorey poster beside Max’s crib. The poster consisted of comical pen drawings of twenty-six little kids representing the letters of the alphabet. Each kid was killed in a bizarre way. “K is for Kate who was struck with an axe. L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.”

Carl died in an unusual way: he was lining up a shot during a curling championship when a blood vessel burst in his thalamus. After his death, “C is for Carl who died on the curling rink” kept running through my head. In the end, I had his ashes placed in a hollowed-out curling stone. A lovely grey-blue stone.

I’m looking for that stone now.

This morning, I’ve moved into a new home, a condominium apartment on the edge of Parc Lafontaine. The movers have just left, and I’m wandering around the piles of boxes. I have time to sort through them: I’ve taken five weeks off from the clinic where I work as a dermatologist. I find Carl’s box (the box my old juice extractor came in) on my kitchen cupboard. I open the box, fish through the foam peanuts and pull out the curling stone by its curved handle.

“Welcome home, Carl.”

I talk to Carl all the time, both out loud and in my head. We have conversations insofar as I know how he’d respond to anything I say or do. Some people may think chatting with your dead husband is maudlin or the premise of a hokey Hollywood movie. But screw them. I’ll do what I want.

With the counters strewn with my belongings, I set the stone down on a burner on the stove.

Teapot by Marcel Duchamp, Carl says.

I smile at that one. But then my radio plays Nina Simone’s “Ne me quitte pas” and I’m no longer smiling.

I’ve never lived alone. Though I’m basically an introvert, I’m an introvert who has trouble being by herself. All my life I’ve lived with others: my family, roommates in university, then Carl (we married young) and Max.

Max. Max-a-Million. Moody Max (although at nineteen years old, how could he be otherwise?). A month ago, he crammed his belongings into my old Civic, his going-away present, and drove off to Boston, where he starts university in the fall.

God, I miss my kid. To cheer me up, Carl does his Nina Simone imitation. In a fake throaty rage, he sings, Don’t you leave me now. Or else I’ll whinge and whine. I’ll booze it up. I’ll binge on wine. Don’t you leave me now. Don’t you leave me now.

“I miss you, too, you son of a bitch.

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