Thirteen Crucifixions, 107

They were getting tea from Sheila.  No alcohol.  Earl Grey and Peek Freens.  Digestives.  Plain.  Bill and Persimmon were not likely to overstay.  “This is such a beautiful house”, Persimmon had exclaimed for the third or fourth time this evening.  “It’s a shame you’re selling it.”  Bill, for the third or fourth time, answered that of course she was selling it.  It’s haunted.  They occupied the couch, but this evening there was a comfortable distance between them.  They weren’t even holding hands.

            “Who’s this young man who’s staying here now?” Bill asked.

            “A friend of Michael’s.”

            “A FRIEND of Michael’s, you say?”

            “Yes’, Sheila answered curtly.

            “And where is your son?”

            “He just returned to the Island.”

            “So he’s found religion, or what?”

            “He seems to be finding something.”

            “Perhaps he’s finding himself”, Persimmon said.

            “Yes.  I’m sure he’s finding that too”, Sheila replied patiently.

            “That other fellow who was staying here, is he there too?”

            “Glen?  Yes, he is.”

            “And your son’s other friend, that older guy?”

            “Matthew. It all started with him.”

            “I can’t get over it—all these queers getting religion!  What is this world coming to?”

            “Should it matter that they’re gay?” Sheila said tersely.

            “Hey, no need to get defensive”, Bill said, smiling with his look of “please don’t hit me!” charm.

            “But you bring it up a lot—my son’s sexuality, I mean.  I think it’s time you left off.”

            “Sorry Sheila”, he said still smiling, “I didn’t know you were taking this so personally.”

            “It’s wearisome.  And it shouldn’t matter to you, anyway.”

            “Okay, fine.

            Persimmon said, following a few seconds’ awkward silence, “Did you hear that Letitia Van Smit is missing?”

            “Letitia—“

            “I did an interview with her last month.  She’s that welfare verification officer.”

            “I’ll bet a bunch of activists kidnapped her or something”, Bill said.  “Too bad.  She was saving the taxpayers a lot of money.

            “I thought she was an obnoxious bitch”, Persimmon said. “I actually hope that’s what happened to her.”

            “I met her once.  Gorgeous!” Bill said with the dramatic flourish of a trucker savouring a jelly donut.

            “I see her as a symptom of a very frightening, encroaching type of economic fascism”, Persimmon said with pronounced distaste.

            “Hey, take it easy girl”, Bill said, reaching for a Peak Freen.

            “Why don’t you go fuck yourself!” Persimmon spat.

            “Order in the court!” Sheila pronounced blandly.

            “Sorry”, Persimmon said, blushing.

            “I wouldn’t worry, dear, I’ve often wanted to say that to him myself.”

            “Hey, wait a minute!” Bill said.

            “More tea, Persimmon?”  Sheila said.

            “Oh yes.  Earl Grey is my favourite.  Is it Twinings?”

            “It is, dear.  Bill?”      

            “No thanks.”  He was sulking.  “I was actually thinking we should probably go soon.  Persimmon?”

            “If Sheila doesn’t mind, I think I’d like to stay a while longer.”

            “Well, I think we should be going.”

            “Well, go then.  I’d like to stay.  Sheila?”

            “By all means, the night is young.”

            “Persimmon, let’s be reasonable.”

            “I want to see Sheila alone.”

            “And you’re not doing any such thing.”

            “You’re afraid we’re going to talk about you.  Aren’t you? Women teaming up against their common enemy, Man.  Well, Bill, we are going to talk about you, but only for a little while because you are not that important, and we’re bound to find some more interesting topics of discussion before very long.”

            “Then I think I’m going to stay a bit longer.”

            “Bill”, Sheila said, “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

            “You’re throwing me out?”

            “I probably am, since you’re not about to leave willingly.  But I do want to visit alone with Persimmon.  Do you mind?”

            “Yes, I do mind.”

            “Well, that’s just tough.  You can have your turn with me in a day or two, if you like.  In the meantime, goodbye.”

           

Thirteen Crucifixions, 106

            “Would you like some supper?”

            “If it isn’t any trouble.”

            “None at all.  I managed to salvage some leftover quiche from work. And some pasta salad.  We can eat in ten minutes.”

            “Anything I can do?” asked Lazarus.

            “Set the table, butter some bread.  How was your day?”

            “Didn’t do a lot.  Hung out on the Drive, looked in some stores.”

            “Did you work today?”

            “No.  I haven’t quit yet.  Can’t make up my mind, I guess.”

            “Unless it’s a really miserable situation I wouldn’t recommend quitting their job to anyone.  It’s so hard to find employment these days.”

            “How long have you been waitressing?”

            “Eight years.  I’m actually part-owner.”

            “Like it?”

            “I like the West Wind.  Waitressing’s hard work.  But it’s a nice, casual sort of atmosphere.  Anyone can feel welcome there”, Sheila said.

            “Michael says you were doing social work.”

            “We were operating a drop-in centre.  We had to close because of funding cuts.”

            “You like people?”

            “No.  I don’t, really.”

            “But you like helping them?”

            “Somebody has to do it.

            “Don’t you get anything out of it?”

            “I never think in those terms.”

            “Do you do it out of a sense of duty?”

            “I don’t really think about it.”

            “But there must be some kind of pay-off.”

            “Oh, probably.  But I never think about it.  If I get warm and fuzzy from doing someone a good turn I don’t really notice it at all.”

            “Would you say that helping others is a part of your nature?”

            “It’s part of human nature.”

            “Then you believe that people are naturally good?”

            “No I don’t.  But I don’t believe we’re naturally evil either.  We make choices.  Often wrong ones. But we make them all the same.”

            “Do you choose to be good?”

            “I try to choose against doing evil.  I suppose that’s why I help people.”

            “But you don’t get anything out of it.”

            “What’s there to get?  It seems that people nowadays assume that in doing someone a good turn, you’re being extraordinary and god-like.  That’s complete egoism.  It’s a matter of duty.  Part of my being, part of your being is that we are two persons among so many others, and the way we treat others is going to have lasting consequences.”

            “What goes around comes around?”

            “Yes.  What are your plans for the evening?” Sheila asked Lazarus.

            “It’s nice out.  I’m going for a bike ride.  What are you doing?”

            “My ex-husband is coming over with his current girlfriend.”

            “How do you feel about that?”

            “I like Persimmon.  Bill is a bit tiresome.”

            “How long do you think they’ll be here?”

            “Oh, don’t worry, you’re perfectly welcome to be here.  How’s the quiche?”

            “Hits the spot.  Sheila?”

            “Yes?”

            “What’s it like being Michael’s mother?”

Thirteen Crucifixions, 105

Listing the house for sale, but actually selling it?  She had made inquiries with the heritage council, and they were adamant about preserving it.  Which suited her fine, since she did not want it falling into the hands of a developer.  But who would want to buy a house this big?  In the East Side, where ostentatious homes on modest estates hadn’t been de regueure since the Roaring Twenties?  Still, she could expect just under a million for the place, once it was sold.  Michael was right when he claimed that it would be a perfect  bed and breakfast, or perhaps a small community centre.  Not that she needed to care.  Though she did, given the work and materials and money and time and energy she had sunk into maintaining and upgrading the place, which seemed stubbornly to resist her every effort to improve and modernize.  Perhaps Matthew had had a point about there being at least one period room in the place.  She didn’t want to return home just yet.  Though she did want to see Lazarus.  If he was around.  She wanted badly to unwind.  But she did feel happy.  She didn’t want to slow down?  Having already set out on this new journey—but where was she going, and how could she determine where she was going unless she slowed down, held still and gave herself time to think, and feel and understand?  What was the wisdom in selling the house?  Was this a wise thing to do? Where was she going to live?  Questions she could only properly answer were she to give herself time to be still, to unwind, get past this sudden frenetic euphoria.  She wanted maybe to get out of seeing Bill and Persimmon?  Bill she had little taste for these days.  She was still getting used to Persimmon, a woman she couldn’t help liking but who still was now sleeping with the man who was once her own husband.  She resented this, and she could not by force of will stop herself from resenting not Persimmon, and neither Bill, but the arrangement.  Persimmon had with Sheila shared in common the same body, the same intimate secrets of the same man.  Which made Sheila feel rather creepy around them both, and still stifling that vestigial primal jealousy.  She felt jealous.  Dog in the manger jealous.  She no longer wanted Bill, had not desired him in years.  But she still, in a vague sense, possessed him, and now Persimmon had him, which meant that Persimmon had over Sheila a certain discreet claim.  As much as she enjoyed this woman’s company she simultaneously longed and clamoured to be rid of her and her ex-husband both.  She really didn’t want nor need their friendship, neither could she figure out why they would want to befriend her.  She really had nothing in common with Bill, and had since realized that she never had, making their marriage a short-lived mistake.

            At least he had a normal sexual appetite.  Unlike Frank, who was queer but managed to forget his queerness long enough to help her produce Michael, their first born, and every bit as queer as his father.  Thank God that Suzanne and Jason were both conventionally heterosexual.  Thank God that Suzanne had made her a grandmother twice.  She wasn’t so progressive or liberal-minded after all.  But who could blame her after thirty years plus of Frank using her as a cover, as an alibi and then replicating himself like that in Michael, her handsome, sensitive, brilliant and combative son, certainly far surpassing his extremely average and mediocre siblings in brains and looks and general appeal: the children he might have fathered, the grandchildren he might have bestowed on her!  This was a side to his mother she dared not let him see, though surely he knew it was there.  Of course he knew.  She judged him.  Always.  Constantly.  How could she not?  Sheila could be tolerant and liberal towards anyone’s gay progeny except her own.  But didn’t a lot of mothers feel this way?  How could she know, since she didn’t know any nor wanted to.  She hated feeling this way, at times she wanted to sink in front of her son into a weeping mound of contrition.  He had suffered, Michael.  Terribly.  From day one he had had to fight for everything, every morsel of respect he could grab from his peers, from his family.  Never once did he play the victim, never once did he ask for or expect pity from anyone.  And why did she still not respect him?  He was entitled to it.  Surely he had, far and above his very conventionally-sexed siblings, earned it?  Yet she loved him; and she loved her son with a ferocity and a tenderness that she could not, dare not name.  She did not feel this way towards Suzanne, nor towards Jason.

            But now Michael, like his mother, was encountering the Divine, and now Sheila was selling the house.  She locked up the café and stood out in the late afternoon sunshine.  It had become a beautiful day.  Surely she could think of some place to go, besides home.  Slowly she began to walk in a direction that, even if she took her time and made detours along old streets lined with huge trees and vintage houses and sumptuous gardens, would still surely take her home.  She no longer felt like singing.

 

Thirteen crucifixions, 104

                                                          2001

 

            There was no one left in the café.  Melissa was gone, they’d done a good take today.  No one would notice if the West Wind was closed twenty minutes early.  It wasn’t that Sheila felt tired or overwhelmed.  Since putting the house up for sale the other day she was feeling energized, liberated.  Happy.   Twice she caught herself in the mirror smiling.  She was even singing at times.  Sheila hadn’t sung in an awfully long time.  Max the cook had already gone home.  The kitchen was spotless.  She’d already cleaned the floor, tables and glass.  There was nothing left but to do the cash.  Melissa seemed more anxious than usual.  Her boyfriend had gone missing on a camping trip.  A search party had been sent out.  Her hair was blue now, instead of green, and a bit longer.  It suited her, a vibrant peacock blue.  If she could appreciate green or blue hair on a young girl’s head then maybe Sheila wasn’t such a fossil after-all.  Lately, she was just overflowing with good will and equanimity.  Even Michael's young friend, that boy, Lazarus, she’d taken a shine to. A rather pathetic young man, homeless, orphaned and clinging to Sheila like a mother substitute.  She found him interesting, if somewhat hard to reach.  It was a lot of work convincing him that he was welcome in her house for as long as the place could be of use to him.  She thought it ill-advised that he’d just left his job, and was all set to join Michael and Glen at their religious community.  He was barely twenty, far too young for making drastic decisions.  He’d hardly had time to live.  But Sheila was never one to give unasked advice.  She wished that she knew what it was about Lazarus that appealed to her so. They didn’t really talk very much.  They didn’t seem to need to.

            Bill and Persimmon wanted to see her this evening.  Though Sheila liked Persimmon she didn’t particularly feel like seeing Bill, who no longer interested her.  She was almost certain that he was on Prozac.  She had never seen him so relentlessly cheerful.  Perhaps Persimmon was just what he needed.  She wasn’t sure if Persimmon would agree.  Last week she’d caught her muttering, “Gawd, he annoys me.  How could you stand being married to him?”  Sheila, refilling both their glasses with sherry, simply replied that he couldn’t seem to stand being married to her, and appeared to be doing much better with Persimmon, who at least was his age.  What she didn’t bother to mention was that Bill wasn’t particularly bright, and unless she enjoyed thinking for two it was going to be her purgatory, and not his.  But Persimmon, astute, intelligent woman that she was, simply murmured that this was not unlike dating George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan.  Sheila just smiled.

Thirteen Crucifixions, 103

“I have lost time.  I don’t know how long I’ve been here, and mostly I have slept, and dreamed. I cannot remember my dreams here, none of them.  But while I have them they are vivid, complex, dramatic, then I awake in almost complete forgetfulness.  For some reason I don’t find this frustrating.  I have been mostly left alone since I came here last week?  Month?  Last year?  Three times a day a meal on a tray is left at my door.  A soft knock summons me but when I open the door there is only the food and the sound of softly receding footsteps.  I still have not ventured outside, so great has been my need to rest, but now it compels me.  The air that blows in through the window is sweet, and fragrant with sea salt and cedar. I always hear gulls, crows and other birds, sometimes eagles.  Yet, outside of my inevitable treks to the bathroom, I never leave this room.  I have become like Proust.  My single recreation is writing in this journal. Someone now is knocking at the door.  I have only finished lunch, so it can’t be time for dinner.  Though it’s hard to say, since time doesn’t seem to follow the usual pattern to which I’ve always been familiar.

            “It was the old woman, the one whom I am to call “Mother.”  She was courteous and asked if she could come in.  Well, how could I refuse her?  I hadn’t realized how tall she is, taller than me, towering almost.  I hadn’t noticed this when I first saw her.  Her hair seemed more under control, and her eyes were very bright and very young.  Her voice had a lilt, a musical cadence, but I must say that I felt diminished in her presence.  I could not look in her face, though she was very kind and good.  She sat down in the comfy chair in the corner, I reclined on the bed.  Perhaps she was yet another dream.  I could no longer tell the difference.

            “Do you know why you’ve come here?” she asked.

            “To rest?”

            “You’ve been rediverted.   You were on your way to commit an act that, while in itself innocent, would have precipitated great evil over the earth.  You will still end up in Nicaragua, and there you will marry Maria, a diplomat’s daughter by whom you will father a child.  Because you have been summoned here, the harm you might have brought on the earth will come only upon you.  There is a man in Managua, a CIA agent, who has just yesterday died from a heart attack.  Had we not intervened he would have found you, and used your influence over the diplomat’s daughter to destabilize the new government in Nicaragua, and with tragic consequences.  The American-backed forces would gain in strength and momentum thus toppling the Sandinistas, and bring in first Cuban, then Soviet intervention.  Then the US war machine would be displaying its most ugly and naked might, only to be matched by the Russians who would bring in their nuclear missiles.  Do you recall the Cuban Missile Crisis?  Had we not intervened at the eleventh hour by bringing a certain person of influence here to our Refuge just in time, this planet would now be shrouded in the cold darkness of a nuclear winter.  And once again, by diverting you here, we have again rescued your planet from destruction.

            “When you came here you were carrying many wounds and heartaches, along with your stubborn refusal to reckon wisely with your conscience.  Thus you would have brought to a particularly dangerous and explosive part of the earth your own psychic and spiritual toxins that would have set off an irreversible chain of events.  It is one of the many tragedies of your species that you have not yet learned to reckon that the spiritual, invisible properties of your beings are in themselves the most real, and therefore the most vital and powerful forces in this planet.  Behold now the great destruction that has thus been wreaked on this jewel of the Cosmos, your Earth.  Slowly the air and waters that sustain all life are being poisoned with the venom of your very human greed, fear and violence.  Since the advent of your kind, this planet has seen an acceleration of species extinction unprecedented since the ending of the Age of Dinosaurs.  And now your atmosphere is rapidly losing its protective shield.  Soon the very sun, that gives life, will become your terror and destruction.

            “Were you less stubborn and wilful, we would have embued you with the charge and all the necessary power to influence change among your kind, such change as would cause each of you miserable creatures to turn your selfish hearts of stone into giving and living hearts of beating flesh.   Long we have watched you, to see if you would turn and repent and you would not.  Now, the best we can do for you, is that we render you incapable of harm.  Your own end will come soon enough, after which time you shall be returned to us, that you might complete your healing.”

            “Who are you?”  I asked.  “I mean, you’ve already told me you’re my mother.  But, who are you?”

            “I am of the Millionth Council, and it is our task to watch over your earth and especially over your species.  Because you have become corrupted and sinful you have wrought great destruction here, and have gone entirely contrary to the charge that was first given you—that you take care of and nurture this planet.  You have created a charnel house of Eden, but still we labour and strive with you, and against your great harm, for the record of your species is not yet complete, and we hold out for you in the greatest redemptive hope.”

            “What is this place?”

            “You are in the Refuge, one of many portals between the dimensions.  Here it is that our watchers and agents gather to determine the outcome of this planet and how best to preserve your species against its own destruction.”

            “Who are these watchers and agents?”

            “You are neither.  We have had to rescue from you one of our agents, for she is, and for many years to come will remain, torn and conflicted as to her role and calling.  Only following your death will she come to resolution and begin to faithfully carry out her task.”

            (By this I knew she could only mean you, Carol.)

            “What exactly is a watcher?  And what is an agent?”

            “I would never be able to fully explain to you those mysteries, because our natures are so different.  Yet I shall give you an idea.  The watchers are such as I.  We live throughout the earth, but we are not of the earth.  We appear as mortals, but we are not mortals.  We are the guardians who have been placed in charge of all the celestial and the earthly orders.  Your religions and mythologies speak of us as angels, as spirits, and so we are, yet we are more, much more.  The agents are ordinary mortals such as yourself, who have been chosen to express and show forth the Divine Intention.  Many, sadly, fail at their task, yet they also shall be rewarded.

            “And now, Richard, you shall soon be dismissed from the Refuge.  You will leave here your writings, which I shall promptly post to her who is called Carol Hartly-Atkinson.  You will wake up on the beach near your hotel in Tofino, and you will have forgotten entirely your writings and everything about your sojourn here, until the last moments before your death in Nicaragua, after which time you shall be returned to us.” 

           

           

Thirteen Crucifixions, 102

They had all gone out for dessert.  Glen, Marlene, Randall, his mother, Doris, Stephen and Pierre.  Maria had left early with her child, followed by Margery, then Dwight who seemed concerned about Margery.  Carol and Derek had also left.  There had been evident discomfort between Alice and Derek, and Carol had confided to him that she felt caught in the middle, having made several lame attempts to facilitate a reconciliation.

            Their collective mood became again buoyant—Maria hadn’t had a lasting impact on them by defecting.  He was particularly impressed with how comfortable everyone seemed with one another, particularly Stephen and Pierre.  The gathering had been for all, or almost all, a success.  But eventually they had to disperse.  It was getting late. Glen was tired.  He still had to clean up. He forced himself to do it now, having no intention of waking up to a messy apartment.  He had got everyone out in time, for when Glen returned the couple who lived downstairs were shrieking in coital ecstasy.  He reckoned that they wouldn’t be in much condition to feel disturbed by whatever noise he would be making while cleaning.

            He was finished, yet one thing seemed still to require doing.  He looked, and looked throughout his place.  It would have to go, that huge loose canvas of the naked Christ crucified, his first of the Thirteen Crucifixions.  It had always hung there, for all of the five years of his tenancy.  He didn’t know why, but now it must go.  It was no longer needed.  He rolled it up then fit it into a closet.  Now remained a naked white wall.   Perhaps he might hang there a small crucifix, but why anything?  The bare wall had its own beauty, with its blank, brilliant whiteness.  It was the only unblemished surface in the apartment.  He looked around at the ceiling, the other walls, with their stains, cracks and weird looking disfigurements.  Why had he covered for so long the only flawless surface?  And now he could recognize and admit that it hadn’t been Timothy transformed into Christ that had captured his attention in this painting, but Christ transformed into Timothy.  He could no longer have it this way.  The painting would have to go.  But where?  It couldn’t always remain in the closet.  He could perhaps sell it.  Maybe the Vancouver Art Gallery would want it, for their sumptuous new quarters.

            But from now on, for whatever remained of his tenancy here, must this wall remain naked, and more naked than the naked body of Christ posing as Timothy, from whom Glen had not heard in all of the seven years that had passed since his return to Vancouver.  He was still painting flowers.  He didn’t think that he’d return to human anatomy. He didn’t know why.  But flowers were right for him to paint, for now, anyway.

            He wasn’t aware of having set on the table the journal of Richard Bertholdt.  He picked up the battered envelope, and pulled out all the pages:

Thirteen crucifixions,101

“More cocoa?”

            “Yes.  Please.”

            “How do you feel?”

            “Alright.  Better.”

            “Can you explain what just happened?”

            “PMS.”

            “But nothing personal?”

            “Nothing.”

            “Margery?”

            “Yes Dwight?”

            “We do love each other.”

            “Yes.”

            “Maybe not as husband and wife?”

            “It doesn’t matter.  Does it?”

            “No.”

            “Dwight?”

            “Yes?”

            “Are you sorry?”

            “About?”

            “That I’m not a conventional wife, that—I don’t share your bed?”

            “No.”

            “Are you telling me the truth?”

            “I can’t go back.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I can’t go back, not to what I had with Jeanette.  I’m no longer there.”

            “Me neither, I guess.”

            “What are we doing together?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “I suppose it’s better than not being together.”

            “I suppose it is.”

            “But you are not convinced?”

            “I am, actually.  But I’m going to need some time alone.”

            “Me too.”

            “How are we going to do this?”

            “I’ve been offered the use of a condo in Grand Cayman Island for next month.”

            “Take it.”

            “You don’t mind?  I was afraid you might.”

            “Don’t be a ninny.  Just go.”

            “You’ll be okay?”

            “I have Carol and Glen, and I suppose Doris and maybe Greg if I should start hitting the walls.”

            “You honestly don’t mind?”

            “You don’t need my permission.”

            “It isn’t as if we’re actually married.”

            “It isn’t as if we’re chained to each other.”

            “How’s your cocoa?”

            “Wonderful.  Hey, Dwight?”

            “Yes?”

            “I think I’m going to change my surname.”

            “To?”

            “’Orion’.  ‘Margery Orion’”.

            “I like that.”

            “I figured you would.”

            “But why not your first name too?”

            “For instance?”

            “Andromeda.”

            “Andromeda Orion.  Maybe.”

Thirteen Crucifixions, 100

After Maria left, a palpable silence filled the room.  Some people were still eating, though Margery and Dwight were already in the kitchen, cleaning up.  Carol came in with a couple of dirty plates.  “All I can say”, she said, “Is that woman has been making my life hell ever since she came to this country.”

            “Well, she comes from a different culture”, Margery said.

            “She’s well-educated.  She’s lived in Europe. I would expect her to be a little bit open-minded.”

            “She’s old guard.  A supporter of Samoza.  Don’t expect too much of her.”

            “I guess it’s hard not to.”

            “Have you discussed this openly with her?”

            “I think I’m afraid to.”

            “Because of Richard?”

            “Yes.”  She was starting to cry.  “Sorry.”

            “It’s okay.  It can’t be easy for you.”

            “Thanks. You’re very understanding.”

            “You’re a good friend, Carol.  The best.”

            “Thanks.”

            The two women embraced, while Dwight washed the dishes.

            She didn’t know why she had left early. Perhaps it was Maria’s influence, or simply her own need for solitude.  All these people together had drained her of her energy.  Now Margery needed time to recompose, for silence.  She felt tired, but unsettled.  Derek had offered her a ride, as had Dwight.  She didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially men. Almost she took a cab, but she wanted to ask for a female driver.  She rode the bus.  It didn’t take as long as she’d feared, and the fresh cold air of the November night hit her like a tonic.  She felt grumpy and edgy.  A little too sensitive.  She hated this PMS.  She hated being.  She felt like crying, she wanted to strangle someone. She wanted eight inches of manhood inside her, or the sublime services of a vixen’s tongue.  She had been barely civil towards the bus-driver, a man.  Margery wanted to tear, to rend, kill and devour, she wanted to eat the raw living human flesh.  She was lonely, unbearably lonely, yet she craved now more than ever her solitude.  The dove now ate raw meat.  Her reflection in the bus window revealed a calm and composed young woman.  The cramps were starting. A long warm bath was what she needed.  It was particularly Stephen she wanted.  She didn’t care that he was gay. She would surely have him.  In drag.  Giving head to a young gay man wearing a white wedding dress with a Princess Diana thirty-foot train.  She could not recall when last she had felt so brutally carnal.

            She left the bus, went past a hooker, then a drug dealer, then along the quieter streets of the West End, where citizen vigilantes had recently chased out all the hookers.  It had stopped raining, and a strong steady west wind had blown away the clouds.  As Margery paused to reach for her building keys she heard someone yelling nearby.  She turned, looked up and beheld the constellation Orion.  The Hunter.  She went into the apartment for a warm sweater and brought out a kitchen chair.  Margery sat on the front lawn where she beheld Orion, and communed silently with her ancient nemesis.

            She wasn’t expecting Dwight to return this soon, but saw not Dwight but man, her enemy.  The enemy of all women.  “Hello Margery.”

            She ignored him.  He paused, looked at her, then Dwight, but not-Dwight, the Man, the enemy, approached not-Margery, but the Woman.  She didn’t want him.  He was a predator, a werewolf, he would surely try to kill her and drink her blood.  He came nearer.  She sprang out of the chair and ran away.  He gave chase.

            “Margery! It’s Dwight.  Come here, come back here!”  She outran him, turned the corner, then paused, hyperventilating, by a dumpster on which she leaned for support.  She knew she was being stupid, that she must face him, apologize, plea for his understanding.  The man, the enemy of all women, of all life had again won, had vanquished.  She submitted under the steady gaze of Orion as he trained his spear on her.

Thirteen Crucifixions, 99

Margery was still in a heightened kind of state.  This had been going on since this morning, when she and Dwight had several times caught themselves on the edge of quarreling, then returning into the silence together, only to end up bickering again.  She wondered if it might be sexual tension between them.  She was also approaching her period, and he was beginning to look to her a little bit tantalizing.  She felt that she should revive the ancient custom of the woman shutting herself away in confinement until the end of her mensus.  This subject had frequently come up in the women’s collective.  They were all quite divided on this issue.  To Megan, this business of women’s confinement simply smacked of old-time patriarchy.  Women should make the most of tampons and whatever other modern conveniences, without the worry of men being able to use biology as destiny as a convenient excuse for reinforcing the economic-industrial construct of the type of profit-driven capitalism that has come from patriarchy.  Women had been thereby duped into denying their bodies and their natural power as women by forcing themselves to live as pseudo-males, relegating their natural cycle as an inconvenience slightly more distasteful than farting in public.  Women must reclaim the power and the glory of their own menstrual blood, and celebrate its rich metaphor of fecundity and life, and thus smash the patriarchy.  She still wasn’t resolved about this.

            “What are you thinking?” Carol asked.

            “That I feel my period coming on.”

            “Oh good.  Me too.”

            “Again.  I guess we’re synchronized now.  But I was also thinking of going into confinement.”

            “Oh?”

            “I want to find some way of celebrating the life cycle.”

            “Well”, said Marlene, “I think it’s all a bloody nuisance.”

            Glen started laughing.

            Randall said, “God, I don’t know how you women can live with it.”

            “We get to have babies and you don’t”,  Marlene said.

            “Aw!”

            Stephen said, “But we get to pee standing up.”

            “You like to pee sitting down”, Pierre said. “Remember?”

            “Oh!  Don’t listen to HER!” Stephen said.

            “Well”, Doris said, “I’m happy to announce that I no longer have to suffer the inconvenience.”

            “I too”, Alice said.

            “For me”, Carol said, “It’s the PMS.   That’s the hard part.”

            “Tell me about it”, Derek said.

            “Oh, who asked you?”

            Maria had been looking around the room in horrified silence.  Then she rose up, showing the full glory of her pregnancy.  “I find it absolutely appalling”, she announced, “That Canadian women are so ignorant as to carelessly flaunt such matters in the presence of men.  And in front of my little girl!  I wish to leave.  At once.  I would like someone, please, to call me a cab.”

            “I can drive you”, Derek said.

            “I prefer to travel alone.”

            “Are you sure?” Carol said.

            “Yes.  I am sure.”  She stared them all down in silence, then went into the bedroom for her coat and shoes, dragging her daughter by the hand.  As soon as they came out, clearly ready to leave, Glen reached for the phone and dialed a taxi.