Free Burridge Unbound by Alan Cumyn Page B

light and joyful. A spontaneous and utterly unreserved hug. “I hurt my head and went to the hospital!” he blurts.
    “I know, I saw you.”
    “You did?”
    “I was there. You were sleeping though. Didn’t your mother tell you?”
    The spider steals his attention and in a flash he’s back after it. “I’m trying to get it outside before someone else steps on it.”
    It seems a dreadfully important mission. Patrick herds it towards me and I scoop it up in my hand, then the three of us head for the door across the crowded room, Patrick pushing his little body between the adults, me and Dad following in his wake.
    “Is everything all right?” Joanne asks.
    “Fine. We’re saving a spider.”
    “You’re what?”
    More spilled drinks. What a night. Patrick gets white wine on his sweater and I get soda splattered on my shoes. We don’t stop. “It’s a wounded spider!” Patrick announces, pushing on. “We’re saving a wounded spider!”
    Outside, in the fresh air, I walk a few paces and then release the prisoner. My father stays right at my elbow. He seemshappy to follow along. Look at him quickly, in a certain light, and he just seems odd, not addled with Alzheimer’s. Patrick says, “Dad, you ate spiders when you were captured.”
    “Did I?”
    “You told me. You used to eat them for protein.”
    “It must be true then.”
    “Well, didn’t you? You said!”
    “I said it, so it must be true,” I say.
    “Can’t you remember?”
    “Some things I don’t want to remember.”
    “Grampa can’t remember anything. He calls me Graham.”
    “It’s because you fall down all the time,” I say. “Just like Graham.”
    “He fell from a roof,” Patrick says.
    “When does the game start?” Dad asks. Here but not here. Patrick says,
“What
game?”
    Dad says, “You know. What you were talking about.”
    “We weren’t talking about a game! I said you always call me
Graham.”
    “Where’s the fire, for Pete’s sake,” Dad mumbles, his hands shaking, shaking. It’s always been one of his great stock phrases, delivered not as a question but in affirmation of the chaotic state of the world.
Where’s the fire, for Pete’s sake
.
    Patrick tells me about school and soccer, about being in the hospital and how important it made him feel, just like his famous father. “I didn’t remember a thing!” he says about the accident. “Just like you!”
    I’ve told him this story many times, to keep him from asking for details. And he’s just young enough to still buy it, even though he knows that I’ve written a book about it all.
    “What are the goggles for?” I ask.
    “Mommy gave them to me,” he says. “They’re all steamy and I can’t see a thing. She told me I could wear them tonight so it’s all right.”
    Yes. It’s all right. We could all use a steamy pair of goggles tonight. I return indoors, talk and visit and sip soda and the clock swings round. Eventually I have to look at Maryse’s exhibit:
Shards
. A series of luminous acrylic paintings of women in ordinary scenes: standing in a kitchen at night, washing dishes in the sink; reaching for a bottle of ketchup in a hyper-coloured supermarket aisle; in a white slip brushing thick black hair in the bathroom mirror while a baby examines a red rubber boat; stepping onto a bus with a briefcase, a purse, a skirt twisted in the wind; sitting in the sun by a flower garden, a white blouse rolled off the shoulders, face lost in the shadow of a huge sun hat. In fact, the face is obscured in all the pictures – turned away, looking down, or the figure shown only from the back. The light is intense, dazzling, the colours radiant, almost overwhelming; the skin especially approaches translucence. And it’s only when you get quite close that you realize that it
is
translucent in some areas – that bones are showing underneath, naked to the world, white and ghostly in some pictures, darkened slightly in others, with fracture lines and small brownish