Keep your ears open to the promptings of your destiny and don't worry too much if you and your destiny do not agree about what you should have, and when you should have it. Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
Robertson Davies
Joel had marked the date on the calendar, and he wasn't going to weasel out of it. It was a Friday in October, after seven. His mother's school never held meetings on Friday nights, and dinner would be over by now.
She wasn't eating dinner by herself in that big house, was she? Amanda's replacement would be there, of course. Maybe Aunt Carmel and Nana would come over, and all the other relations. Still. Eating alone seemed worse, somehow, even than sleeping alone. Coming home to an empty house, because your husband was murdered and your son is insane and your assistant sold you out to terrorists...but she probably didn't think of it that way. You couldn't, not all the time. Her husband died, her son was away at school, her assistant had been fired. The phrasing was everything.
Focus. Joel was sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone on his lap. Not comfortable. He slid down onto the floor. He used to do this at St Rita's, searching for a position that felt safe. On the floor where it was cool, back to the wall, the door visible.
He was not quite present, and he forced himself out of the Aphanes until he could feel every bristle of the carpet against his bare feet, hear every murmur coming from the other rooms in the mansion. "Being invisible is a reaction to fear," the Professor said. "Stop the reaction, and the fear will ease. We tell patients to change their posture, change their breathing. In your case, you need to stay physical. Accept that you will be uncomfortable."
Joel dialed the calling card number slowly, and listened to the entire list of recorded instructions before entering his PIN, stalling for time.
The phone rang. On the second ring, his mother picked up. "Hello?"
"It's me."
Then the usual searching questions. "How are you doing?" and "Are you eating?" and "How's your schoolwork?" Fine, Joel answered to all of these.
It was the wrong answer. "'Fine' doesn't fill me with confidence anymore, Joel. Are you sleeping?"
"Yes. Nine hours a night."
"No need to get snippy."
"I'm not snippy. I'm just..." He caught himself, and curled his fist around a handful of bedclothes. "I'm sorry. I feel guilty when you worry, so I get mad."
"Sweetheart, you don't have to feel guilty." That sound of confusion was the hardest to take. "But I don't know how else to find out what's going on with you."
"I really am doing better."
"That's good."
"Look, I called because I'm coming up for the weekends in November. I'm going to vote and then I'll go down to Montreal to see Paul. And, uh, to look at some real estate."
"Real estate?"
Joel explained it, keeping his voice neutral. "Places like St Rita's are straining. Mutants need somewhere to go if they can't live at home, and they shouldn't be forced into mental institutions or homeless shelters. I want to have a house. Not a school, like Xavier's, or a hospital like St Rita's, or a shelter like all the others in the cities. Just a house where a few people can live like human beings. A house of hospitality."
His mother took some time to digest that.
"I've talked to Father Gilles and Dr Xavier about it," Joel said, hoping to reassure her.
"And they think it's a good idea?"
"Dr Xavier does. Father Gilles was more cautious. He says I need to discern."
"Uh-huh."
"And I am discerning."
His mother was silent for a few seconds. "Do you really think your judgement on something like that is going to be sound right now?"
"There's nothing wrong with my judgement," said Joel, losing the neutral tone. "I'm not psychotic or suicidal or malnourished or drugged up or anything else. I'm finally getting my head together, and this is what I want to do with my life."
"You're still grieving," she said quietly.
His throat blocked up suddenly, and he took a few moments before saying, "I'm not going to pretend that Dad has nothing to do with this, but that doesn't make it a bad idea. I want to make him proud. There's nothing wrong with that."
"Joel. He was proud of you."
"For what?" He was genuinely curious; he couldn't think of anything he'd done to inspire paternal pride.
She snorted. "For what. You're eighteen years old, no one was expecting you to be sitting on the Supreme Court by now. We're proud of you because you're an intelligent young man with a good heart. That's enough."
Joel wanted to argue, to dig until he got her to admit they'd been disappointed about spending their last five years in hospitals, disappointed that their beloved son had attempted suicide in public, disappointed that he never brought girls home and never graduated on time. And probably those things were there, stored away in her heart like the sorrows of the Virgin. But he remembered the Professor's words, and told himself, Don't take it too hard. Forgiveness is a choice, Father Gilles always said. A choice, not a feeling. Faith was a choice too.
"Okay," he said, because it was the only response he could think of.
"You know we're just worried. I'm worried. You know we wouldn't stop you from following your vocation. Don't you know that?"
"Yes, Mum," said Joel. Half of him meant it; the other half was listening to the voice in his head. More stupid psychobabble lies because she feels sorry for you and you always have to suck them dry, you spoiled brat, spoiled as eggs and meat will spoil, too much i' the sun. Half was better than nothing.
But then his mother said, "Carmel will have to teach you to cook this summer, if you're going to be running a house."
And not even the voice in his head could gainsay Aunt Carmel.
Over the next few weeks, Joel started edging quietly out of his room. He didn't exactly join in the conversations of the other mansion kids, and he certainly didn't do anything with them, but he brought his books down to the common room to read, and left his door open occasionally. One night in the common room, as Piotr Rasputin sat engrossed in the Red Wings-Canadiens game, Joel quietly slipped the marker back into his copy of Dubliners and came to sit down on the couch next to him. Piotr wasn't a big talker either, so they limited themselves to brief exchanges about eye injuries and retiring players.
"You ever play?" Piotr asked once, idly, during commercials.
"A little, when I was a kid. Defence. I'm too slow to be any good."
"That was my problem too." Piotr grinned. "I could take a hit pretty well, though."
"Goalie?"
"Yeah. Too bad we can't flood the basketball court in the winter. Maybe the Professor would let us have a rink somewhere else. Bobby could be our Zamboni machine."
"He must play."
"I think he did, back in Boston. We could round up a few guys, maybe even a girl or two. It's a fun game when you don't have to be good."
The game came back on, and Joel sat quietly amazed at how easy, how miraculously painless, a short conversation could be. I'm all right. I'm all right. You would never know there was anything wrong with him. Two teenagers on a couch in New York watching Detroit at Montreal and eating Doritos.
The early fall darkness behind the reflections in the window reminded him of an odd fragment of memory, something unimportant that he thought he had forgotten: a night in winter several years ago, when he and his cousins were watching the Olympics at Aunt Carmel's house while the adults downstairs played euchre over coffee. Joel had felt safe, uncommonly safe, but at the same time it was like falling into the Aphanes he was separate, not really there. It was before his manifestation, but after the seizures had started.
As his two younger cousins started a foot-fight on the couch and Robin argued with Brendan about city planning and transport, Joel saw the house, the streets of the Glebe, the whole city, every city fade to nothing. There was only the darkness in the trees, the sound of the wind, the snow everywhere yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland falling softly on Tunney's Pasture, falling on the Gatineau hills, swallowed in the tamed black rapids of the Ottawa River, and drifting over the first bald mountains of the Canadian Shield. But there would be no more names. No words, no thought. Nothing but the silent passage overhead of the great grey clouds that travelled invisibly in the darkness until, in the clearing of the moon, they broke into the light. Pale grey light that was no light. He was bodiless and mindless, yet he could hear the boughs of the dark pines moaning and creaking in the wind, and there was nothing else. In this silence, he was certain that he knew something inordinately precious, that if he could only...
Then a noise from the television the crowd in Vancouver made a sudden wail of mourning and the O'Brien brothers in Ottawa answered, Brendan going so far as to kick the coffee table. From downstairs, Aunt Grace shouted, "What's going on up there?"
Then, as now, the shock as he fell back into his body was severe. Detroit's centre slipped a cupcake across the ice and into the hands of Montreal's left wing man, and Piotr groaned and flopped back on the couch, making the frame squeal along with the springs. "That stupid fuck."
Bobby wandered in from the kitchen, a glass of milk in his hand. "You're going to break the springs if you bounce around on it like that."
"Thanks, Mom. And you're not supposed to bring food to your room."
"So?"
Piotr snorted. "Exactly."
"Was that some grand ironic statement on the futility of rule-making, or what?" Bobby sat on the arm of the La-Z-Boy and drank his milk noisily. "Maybe I won't go to my room, smart guy. Who's winning?"
Then he glanced down at Joel, who was leaning forward in a sudden sweat. "Are you okay?"
Joel's brain was making a buzzing sound, like a telephone's dial tone. He knew that feeling, and managed to whisper, "I'm going to have a seizure."
The dial tone became louder, and there were other sounds in it, like the buzzing of the bees that followed the Irish saint's ship, and the distant sound of Notre Dame's bells when they clashed with the chimes of the Peace Tower. Louder and louder; Piotr and Bobby were moving him, arranging his body on the couch, getting a bit more panicky than they had to, but the bells were too loud for him to apologise or explain.
The milk in the glass was now gone, a white film remaining. The television was grey and silent. He didn't recognise the room, although he remembered the milk glass. Someone else's house. Aunt Carmel's? No, the Professor's.
Joel pulled himself up on his elbows; someone had tucked the red plaid motor rug around his feet. Piotr checked his watch and breathed a sigh of relief. "We were about to call Dr Grey."
"What time is it?"
"Ten to twelve," said Bobby. "You were only shaking for about three minutes, but then neither of us were sure if we should wake you up or not. I think they told us to do it in health class once, but Piotr said no, so we figured we'd wait."
"Jesus. Thanks. And yeah, don't bother waking me up, if it happens again." Which, he realised, it would. "You didn't have to wait up with me, either. But thanks."
"Was it the TV?" Piotr asked.
"No, light doesn't do it. I don't know why it happens. I thought I wasn't going to have any more, after my manifestation. That's what Dr McCoy said, anyway."
"Dr McCoy was wrong?" Bobby grinned. "I knew it was possible. Call the papers."
"I'll walk you to your room," said Piotr, picking up Joel's book and straightening the motor rug on the couch.
They took the elevator. Joel had to ask the time again; he'd forgotten. Piotr answered with a yawn, rolled his wide shoulders. In the moment of silence afterward, as the elevator hummed and beeped, Joel was filled with admiration for him. Ordinary, unnecessary kindness. Joel himself knew that he would never do something even this simple for one of the other kids in the mansion. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid. Afraid of doing something wrong, making some little slip that would embarrass him. The fear of receiving so much as an odd look had kept him from from everything, he realised, everything.
Piotr strolled down the hall, waited as Joel fished his key out of his pocket and opened the door. "No roommate. You're lucky."
"I guess." He was suddenly aware of his body, the stale smell of the air in his room and the warm, clean smell of Piotr standing behind him. Wool and Ivory soap, and a sweetish tang of something he couldn't identify. Just sweat, perhaps, the smell of human flesh at the end of the day. Aware that this hypersensitivity was sometimes an aura, he sat down on the bed, listening within until he was sure that his brain wasn't going to go under again.
He tried to smile at Piotr, but he knew that his nervousness was visible. "Thanks, man, seriously."
"No problem. You'll be okay? Goodnight." Piotr closed the door soundlessly behind him.
Joel sat still on the bed, wondering why these things were simultaneously so easy and so hard. Then the last few minutes came loose from their moorings, and he forgot exactly why he was still awake. Like patting down his pockets to be sure of what was inside: a seizure, yes, that explained the headache that was now starting to pierce the backs of his eyeballs. No wonder the room looked strange: he was in Westchester. Everything will be all right, said the inner voice, the one he always trusted, though it often didn't speak. Snow was general all over Ireland, but here there was only a sucking black emptiness in the sky.
Emptiness. If he knew anything he knew what that was but he had always missed the point of it, even though it was so easy, so clear.
A driving rain was falling outside, drumming on the windows like handfuls of stones. Charles had dialed up the heat in his office to take the edge off the chill. Joel, swathed in a thick white Arran sweater rather than his usual blacks and greys, was pale but alert present, not lost in his own thoughts as he often was in session. A dab of paste from the EEG electrodes was still on one temple.
"So the seizures are back," said Charles quietly. Henry and Jean had told him, but even if they hadn't, it was obvious from the telepathic taste of the boy's mind. Charles was a neurological connoisseur, and the shocky salt flavour of the postictal brain was as unmistakeable as horseradish.
"I think they never left," said Joel. "Maybe Dr McCoy was right, and all those times I lost control of my power were just a type of seizure. It makes sense."
"Perhaps."
"So you know what that means."
Charles suspected, but he just raised an eyebrow and let the boy say it.
"It means I never really learned how to control it. I just got lucky for awhile."
"You were lucky," said Charles, "but that's far from the whole story. You've been using your powers. They are under your control. Just not when you're having a seizure."
And Joel, mirabile dictu, actually nodded and agreed. No arguments, no sullen silences or veiled suicide threats. Despite his gloomy talk, a calm radiated from him, solid and lulling, a feeling almost like the weighty comfort of sleep paralysis. Charles could sense an arborescent tangle of thought, like the wild grape and ivy that grew on the back fence in Manotick, and the tender all-encompassing calm settled easily in drifts like the snow. Charles pushed back (he kept his shields flexible while working with patients), and the snowdrifts fell away. Joel felt the touch, and looked a question at him.
"You're broadcasting," Charles observed. "You seem very peaceful."
"I actually" began Joel, and he hesitated, not in nervousness but just to choose his words. "Before I had the actual fit, there was this strange feeling...not the aura, not the usual sort of thing at all. I felt like I was out of my body, out of everything, not myself. I can't explain it. But it was beautiful. Everything is so delicate, there's so much space around it..."
He trailed off, looking distracted, and suddenly his eyes were shining with tears. He reached for the box of tissues. "I'm sorry. I get weepy after the big seizures."
"It's all right," said Charles.
Joel smiled, a warm, genuine smile. It transfigured his face; the beauty of his fine features was at last awake, a light kindled from within. "You'd laugh if I said anything more about it, probably. No one my age knows how to talk about that kind of thing without sounding like a stoner. But it was it was beautiful."
Charles made a note: Depersonalization prior to seizure, euphoria? "Tell me more about it?"
Joel did; it sounded to Charles like a more involved version of the drop into the Aphanes, all winter bitterness and isolation. Yes, said Joel, exactly.
"But you always hated that feeling."
"I understand what it means now," said Joel. The tears were running down his face, but his quiet voice was steady and matter-of-fact. "Being invisible is just nothingness, knowing and feeling and having and being nothing. And I realised that if you never had anything, if there was nothing to have, but then there's something and it's small and weak, and the nothingness was pressing in around it, and it was all alone except for you you would love it, you'd love it more than anything. That's how we are, we're so small and alone. God is poor, He only has us. We have everything and He has one thing, one thing to protect against all of the nothing. That's what it means."
He took a breath and wiped his face, staring upward at the ceiling to stop the tears. "I wish I weren't crying. It probably makes me look crazy."
And in fact Charles was on the lookout for psychosis or mania, which was not unknown in some epileptic patients...and which might explain some of the paranoid episodes at St Rita's recorded in Visineau's file. But even if Charles had possessed the sangfroid necessary to stomp all over a young man's intimations of immortality, there was no need. "If you're worried that you look crazy, it means you aren't."
"Right."
"What are you feeling?"
"I don't know. I feel like I've got Stendhal syndrome or something."
Charles had to laugh. "Stendhal syndrome? Have you been collapsing in Florentine art galleries without informing your therapist? Shame, Mr McCree."
"It's the same principle, though," said Joel with a half-smile. "Worn out and overstimulated, hysterical for no good reason."
"On the contrary, the sufferer of the syndrome has a very good reason for his symptoms. He is in the presence of works that have shaped his psyche from childhood, if he's an educated European of a certain age, as Stendhal was. When we come in direct contact with our origins, with beauty and the sacred thrown into the mix, it's not surprising that the body responds as well as the mind. I think you're too inclined to forget about your body, until it gets your attention with seizures and blackouts."
"And is colloidal silver the answer, Doctor?"
"Mocking the doctor is always the first milestone on the road to recovery. Stendhal syndrome is a temporary setback. I'd recommend that you go to a multiplex and eat some McDonald's food, to get your mind off beauty and the sacred altogether. But alas, you seem to be carrying your Florentine gallery inside your head."
"This is the first time in years that I might be able to go to a multiplex, you know. I feel...I feel okay."
No one but a depressive could invest that word with all the delights of Beatrice's heaven the way Joel did. "Only okay?"
"Happy, maybe. I'm not sure what happy's like, for grown-ups. I remember when I was eleven, I was in a dentist's office reading some celebrity interview, and this actor was saying 'I'm not a happy guy, I don't know what that's like.' And I thought that was such bullshit. My life wasn't great then, I was getting kicked around at school a lot, but it never occurred to me to say I didn't know what happy meant. But I don't, now."
"I think the answer will come to you," said Charles. "For now, we won't aim for happy, if the word is too vague. We'll aim for healthy, where nothing hurts very much and you can get up and do your work every day. And happy might arise out of that."
"I hope so."
And he did Charles could feel it, a little green shoot in the Arctic night.
Quotes and Notes: The Irish saint who kept bees as a novice (and whose bees followed behind his ship when the monk left for Wales) was of course St Modomnoc. There are several nods to James Joyce and Robertson Davies in this chapter; at least I hope they're nods and not utter rip-offs.