Part 2 (2/2)
”I'm not kidding.”
Mitch.e.l.l shot at Jason and missed, and then I saw something that looked like a lump of gray art- cla.s.s clay fly through the air and crack Mitch.e.l.l on the side of his head, so fiercely that I could see his skull implode.
At this point, the boys in the camera club lifted up their table and used it as a s.h.i.+eld as they charged against the sole surviving gunman, Duncan Boyle. It was covered with paper bags and some cookies that had been glued in place by blood. They charged into Duncan, pressing him against a blank spot of cinder-block wall. I saw the rifle fall to the ground, and then I saw the boys from the camera club laying the table flat on the ground on top of Duncan and begin jumping up and down on it like a grape press. They were making hooting noises, and people from the other tables came and joined in and the table became a killing game as all of these children, boys and girls, who fifteen minutes earlier had been peacefully eating peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches and oranges, became savages, killing without pause. Duncan's blood dribbled out from under the table.
Lauren called out, and Jason came over and lifted the table off me like a hurricane lifting off a roof. I know he said something to me, but my hearing was gone. He tried holding me up, but my neck was limp, and all I could see was across the room, children crus.h.i.+ng other children. And that was that.
To acknowledge G.o.d is to fully accept the sorrow of the human condition. And I believe I accepted G.o.d, and I fully accepted this sorrow, even though until the events in the cafeteria, there hadn't been too much of it in my life. I may have looked like just another stupid teenage girl, but it was all in there - G.o.d, and sorrow and its acceptance.
And now I'm neither dead nor alive, neither awake nor asleep, and soon I'm headed off to the Next Place, but my Jason will continue amid the living.
Oh, Jason. In his heart, he knows I'll at least be trying to watch him from beyond, whatever beyond may be. And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will always be darkness in this world.
Part Two
1999: Jason
You won't see me in any of the photographs after the ma.s.sacre - you know the ones I mean: the wire service shots of the funerals, students felt-penning teenage poetry on Cheryl's casket; teenage prayer groups in sweats and scrun-chies huddled on the school's slippery gym floor; 6:30 A.M. prayer breakfasts in the highway off-ramp chain restaurants, with all the men wearing ties while dreaming of hash browns. I'm in none of them, and if you had seen me, I sure wouldn't have been praying.
I want to say that right from the start.
Just one hour ago, I was a good little citizen in a Toronto-Dominion bank branch over in North Van, standing in line, and none of this was even on my mind. I was there to deposit a check from my potbellied contractor boss, Les, and I was wondering if I should blow off the afternoon's work. My hand reached down into my pocket, and instead of a check, my sunburnt fingers removed the invitation to my brother's memorial service. I felt as if I'd just opened all the windows of a hot muggy car.
I folded it away and wrote down today's date on the deposit slip. I checked the wall calendar - August 19,1999 -and What the heck, I wrote a whole row of zeroes before the year, so that the date read: August 19, 00000001999. Even if you hated math, which I certainly do, you'd know that this is still mathematically the same thing as 1999.
When I gave the slip and the check to the teller, Dean, his eyes widened, and he looked up at me as if I'd handed him a holdup note. ”Sir,” he said, ”this isn't a proper date.”
I said, ”Yes, it is. What makes you think it isn't?”
”The extra zeroes.”
Dean was wearing a deep blue s.h.i.+rt, which annoyed me. ”What is your point?” I asked.
”Sir, the year is nineteen ninety-nine, not zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one nine nine nine.”
”It's the same thing.”
”No, it's not.”
”I'd like to speak with the branch manager.”
Dean called over Casey, a woman who was maybe about my age, and who had the pursed hardness of someone who spends her days delivering bad news to people and knows she'll be doing it until her hips shatter. Casey and Dean had a hushed talk, and then she spoke to me. ”Mr.
Klaasen, may I ask you why you've written this on your slip?”
I stood my ground: ”Putting more zeroes in front of '1999' doesn't make the year any different.”
”Technically, no.”
”Look, I hated math as much as you probably did - ”
”I didn't hate math, Mr. Klaasen.”
Casey was on the spot, but then so was I. It's not as if I'd walked into the bank planning all those extra zeroes. They just happened, and now I had to defend them. ”Okay. But maybe what the zeroes do point out is that in a billion years - and there will be a billion years - we'll all be dust.
Not even dust: we'll be molecules.'”
Silence.
I said, ”Just think, there are still a few billion years of time out there, just waiting to happen.
Billions of years, and we're not going to be here to see them.”
Silence. Casey said, ”Mr. Klaasen, if this is some sort of joke, I can try to understand its abstract humor, but I don't think this slip meets the requirements of a legal banking doc.u.ment.”
Silence.
I said, ”But doesn't it make you think? Or want to think?”
”About what?”
”About what happens to us after we die.”
This was my real mistake. Dean telegraphed Casey a savvy little glance, and in a flash I knew that they knew about me, about Cheryl, about 1988 and about my reputation as a borderline nutcase - He never really got over it, you know. I'm used to this. I was furious but kept my cool. I said, ”I think I'd like to close my account - convert to cash, if I could.”
The request was treated with the casualness I might have received if I'd asked them to change a twenty. ”Of course. Dean, could you help Mr. Klaasen close out his account?”
I asked, ”That's it? 'Dean, could you help Mr. Klaasen close out his account?' No debate? No questions?”
Casey looked at me. ”Mr. Klaasen, I have two daughters and I can barely think past next month's mortgage, let alone the year two billion one thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. My hunch is that you'd be happier elsewhere. I'm not trying to get rid of you, but I think you know where I'm coming from.”
She wasn't wearing a wedding band. ”Can I take you out to lunch?” I asked.
”What?”
”Dinner, then.”
”No!” The snaking line was eavesdropping big time. ”Dean, there should be no complications in closing Mr. Klaasen's account.” She looked at me. ”Mr. Klaasen, I have to go.”
My anger became gray emotional fuzz, and I just wanted to leave. Inside of five minutes, Dean had severed my connection to his bank, and I stood on the curb smoking a hand-rolled cigarette, my s.h.i.+rt untucked and $5,210.00 stuffed into the pockets of my green dungarees. I decided to leave the serene, heavily bylawed streets of North Vancouver and drive to West Vancouver, down near the ocean. At the Seventeenth and Bellevue CIBC I opened a checking account, and when I looked behind the tellers I saw an open vault. I asked if it was possible to rent a safety deposit box, which took all of three minutes to do. That box is where I'm going to place all of this, once it's finished. And here's the deal: if I get walloped by a bus next year, this letter is going to be placed in storage until May 30, 2019, when you, my two nephews, turn twenty-one. If I hang around long enough, I might hand it to you in person. But for now, that's where this letter is headed.
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