You're on the phone with your daughter who in her first days of medical school has finally entered a room of cadavers – humans, dead – under wraps, not an ankle showing. And you look up and are halfway into a kind of crime scene, in the middle of the block, fire engines at both ends, police cars, neighbours in pajamas (!?) No one seems too concerned that you’ve wandered onto the stage, as it were, as a newbie stagehand might, and you are allowed to cross through.
No news tonight, your dad says, when you arrive for your regular news’n’nibbles. You’d known something was up because he hadn’t left the door ajar, and there was no tray ready with two beers wrapped in napkins. No beers in sight at all. “The power is down,” he says, opening a drawer beside his bed and pulling out a flashlight, which he turns on and off, which makes you laugh, since it’s still daylight, but mostly because he is so practical, and you are not, so his practicality looks like obedience, but to logic, which is invisible as a god. He is practicing some kind of atheistic fealty, a lifeblood of his, like electricity itself. “They say the electricity could come back on anywhere between two hours and” -- he pauses for just the wrinkle of time -- “two weeks.” “Well, they sure know how to manage expectations,” I say. “The elevator’s working,” I add. D. answers, “Yes, we believe there’s a generator.” We. He has been out in the hallways, chatting with neighbours. The unifying force of minor calamities. And earlier this afternoon he’d spent an hour trying to get past a call queue to a human. “What about your meat?” “I’m not hungry.” “No, I mean in your freezer. Thawing.” “Just don’t open it.” “Well, I’d like a beer,” I say. These news’n’nibbles have me trained. “Me also,” he says. “I’ll be quick,” I say. And so we both watch as my right arm pulls the fridge door open and my left arm plunges in, grabs two beers, careful not to select the 0% Iota, knocking over a can but not taking the time to right it – phewph! We sit at the table and drink our beers, going over what we know of the news of the day, a kind of oral storytelling news-reporting. The headline about 10,000 penguin chicks dying because ice melt forced them into the ocean before they’d grown their waterproof feathers was a bit of a stinker. D cast about for a silver lining, a feather of comfort. I start thinking about D’s supper. “You’ve got a gas stove, so that’s good—” I say. “Yes, we think we can light it with a match,” D says. So the stove’s igniter is electric – no tiny person person with a flint lighter. D wants to see what’s going on down on the street, especially after I describe the crime scene and interrupted Shakespeare play. We finish our beers, check the thermometer, he grabs a jacket. and we go, risking a ride on the generator-powered elevator. The scene is quite reduced, no fire engines or police cars. “There was police tape across there,” I say, pointing lamely. Still, right at the epicentre of all that transpired, a city worker is wrapping a hunk of electrical pole in warning ribbon. He hops in his truck and drives away. We approach a physically impressive man watching from across the street. (The playwright?) “What have you figured out?” D asks him. “I don’t know,” the man answers. A moment elapses. “I think a distribution transformer blew.” Phew! We launch in, discussing wheres and whens, pointing at the top of the pole, the chunk left on the street. “I was a general,” the man says, letting a bit of time elapse, “contractor. So I know a bit about this stuff.” But his answers dwindle and contradict. D points this out: “The more we ask, the less you know.” “Yes, it’s true,” the man says. A moment passes. “But at least I’m honest about it.” “Honest?” D ribs, “I thought you were a general contractor." “I went to confession,” the man says, “the day I retired.” D laughs helplessly at his, then he tells a boyhood story about being invited to camp by a neighbour kid. “'Does anyone want to be saved?’ a woman asked at some point. That sounded good. Why not? So I got up there and was saved - for life!” “Can I touch you?” the general contractor asks. D puts out his arm. Out of the mist a woman in loose Batik pants and a thick cardigan comes towards us pushing a dog in a baby carriage. “So, was it hit by lightning?” she asks. This seems preposterous, what with the over-loaded transformer, worn-out insulators, obstruction by cherry tree -- but of course, it makes perfect sense considering the afternoon's thunderstorm with all the trimmings. We cross the street and wander around the burned telephone pole, one end all charcoal. “Could it have been lightning?” I ask delicately. “Definitely,” the general contractor says. A 10-year old skips up. I give her a chunk of the blackened wood. "Take this -- it was burned by lightning!” Her eyes light up. “I’ll give it to my dad. He loves lightning. When we were camping in Bobcaygeon, there was a huge storm, and he slept through the whole thing.” The general contractor wanders off -- "well, that's the end of comedy hour" -- and D heads home to start the stove with a match. I head home too, loving my neighbourhood, and wistful for a pre-digital, pre-phone-queue world. Cutting through Irving Park, I notice the sequoias are turning brown where they are always green, and think about those sinking penguins again. Later I call D. The electricity is on, and he is not convinced after all that it was lightning that caused the fire. I have the thought that if the medical school cadavers had been uncovered, we would know exactly what happened.
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AuthorSara Cassidy posts short creative non-fiction pieces on Instagram @sarascassidy The longer ones are in full here. Archives
January 2024
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