Aristotle argued that matter cannot exist without form or form without matter. I used to think that the body could not exist without the mind, the mind without the body. Fletcher Blair

 

Chapter Two

 

The week following Ivy’s death seemed like one long endless day. Relatives, good friends and neighbours came and went. They brought food and snacks ‑ cold cuts, cheese trays, pickles and little wedge‑shaped crust-less sandwiches that I normally refused to eat. It all disappeared. My limited stock of liquor gradually depleted down to a mickey of Sousa Silver tequila and two bottles of Seagram’s gin that nobody seemed to want. The days following the funeral were busy as I looked after details that I have since forgotten.

Emotionally, I passed the days going from raging anger to silent grief to a total lack of comprehension that Ivy was gone. I was angry that medical science had failed us at such a time, that the doctors were so ill‑informed that they could not recognize the deadly virus that had attacked Ivy. I cried every time I touched something that was Ivy’s, every time I did something that Ivy used to do around the house. I spent hours, sitting numbed, in the empty silence of the  house thinking, believing that Ivy was not dead.

The nights were long, lonely, empty and restless, despite the little blue and red oval sleeping pills that the doctor had given me. I took time off work, using a week=s vacation and the standard three days allowed by the company, to grieve and get myself ready to join the rat race again.  The weekend came and went and it was time to go back to work.  Thomas Three Toes left a dead mouse on my front step each morning.  I guess it was his way of saying something to me.

I realized that I would have to confront a sea of sympathetic faces at the office so I tried to think of some gracious replies to the comments about Ivy and the suddenness of her death. There had to be some socially acceptable form for this type of encounter, for after all, I was not the first person to lose a loved one. I wondered if Ann Landers had written an article about this situation in her daily column, but I could not remember one, although I didn’t always read the column right after I finished the comics and the sports pages. She would doubtless advise me to say how I honestly felt, be sincere, tell the truth. Ivy had died so suddenly that I was not certain what I felt other than cheated, let down, discouraged. What I honestly believed was that Ivy was not dead, that somehow, this was all just a crazy nightmare. I knew what kind of reaction that would get from my friends.

So I mostly gave them a small smile and said nothing.

My evening meals would have been the peak of loneliness in those first few weeks after Ivy’s death, but I decided that I would simply pretend that Ivy was still there with me. Of course, I now know that it was not pretending. It was at our evening meal that we used to discuss our day’s work or any problems we had that day, tell what friends we had met or perhaps make plans for the coming weekend. So I cooked extra food, set a place for her, complete with a glass of her favourite white wine, and talked throughout the meal. We rehashed some of our favourite topics like Federal funding for conservation, the Middle East problem and why the children of today acted the way they did. It was just like it had always been. I could hear Ivy’s comments as plainly as if she were sitting across the table from me. The only thing that detracted from the illusion was that there was food left over. I managed to drink her glass of wine, but the garborator got the extra vegetables. After dinner I would do some household chores, read my paper, watch TV for an hour or two, then go to bed right after the ten o’clock CBC national news. Sleeping was automatic. The blue and red pills zonked me out within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. I did not move a muscle until the alarm rang insistently at seven a.m.

Ivy always slept until seven-twenty so I was not in the habit of waking her, I would just hit the snooze button to reset that nagging buzzer that comes with all alarm‑clock radios. I always finished my morning ablutions before she was up. I would be downstairs in the kitchen having my shredded wheat cereal and a fresh fruit while she was preparing for her day at school. I would leave the house with the humming sound of her hair dryer blowing some style into her soft blonde hair.  That was why I never missed Ivy at night or in the mornings until my supply of sleeping pills ran out ten days after the funeral.

It was when I stopped taking the pills that my troubles began. It was one thing to live in my own fantasy world ‑ talking to Ivy at meal times, commenting to her while watching TV ‑ but when she started having sex with me, I knew I needed some professional help ‑ the mental kind. Well, I thought that I should at least talk to somebody. I knew that a healthy young man has certain biological needs, but I had not really thought about such things since our marriage. It started with a Awet@ dream, something that I had not experienced since adolescence. I had forgotten how realistic they could be. Only on awakening would I know that I had been dreaming. The damp sheet was a bit of bother afterwards. When you sleep in the buff, as I do, the cold wet remains of moments’ passion can be discomforting. But I began to look forward to the dreams, anticipating the feeling that I was with Ivy. That sense of companionship, love, was what I enjoyed, not the pseudo sexual release of bodily fluids. I somehow felt that Ivy was enjoying it too. How could she? Sex may sooth the mind and it surely relaxed the body, but I knew that Ivy was not here in any form that I could see or feel. And if she had no form, was she here at all? That separation of mind and body had always bothered me, because I was inclined to think that they were one and the same. Even if she were with me in  so-called Aspirit@, could she possibly have feelings, emotions?

I tried to rationalize my behaviour ‑ all this talking and dreaming with Ivy ‑ it must just have been a normal reaction to the considerable stress connected to the loss of a loved one. I did wonder if I were enjoying the fantasy too much, depending on this make‑believe world more than the real world. I knew I should talk to someone about my behaviour, but how do you tell someone that you think you are having sex with a ghost? Bad enough to have dinner with one.

   

A. . . the determination of the mind, and the desire and determination of the body . . . are one and the same thing.@ Spinoza

 

Chapter Three

 

I made a conscious effort to stop talking and dreaming but all I received for my efforts was a sore right breast. My nightly dreams now included Ivy nibbling on my right breast and my usual reciprocation, which was rather satisfying to me even if it was a dream. Of course, I knew this tenderness on my chest was some psychosomatic reaction, not Ivy’s sharp white teeth playing with one of my E zones.

It was a bright clear Sunday morning, the thin blue haze of the day before had been blown away by the northerly wind, the start of a week of fair weather, according to the shapely weather person on channel 6. I planned to cut the grass and weed the flowerbed at the front of the house, but then I saw the mess on the BMW. I should have remembered to park the car inside the night before, away from Thomas. I rolled out the watering hose and picked a clean chamois cloth from the bag under my work bench. I was washing the cat tracks off my car, cursing under my breath that one day I was going to catch that Thomas Three Toes walking the length of my car and then I was going to wring his neck, when I was startled to hear Ivy’s voice right behind me.

“Hi, Fletcher, how have you been keeping?”

I turned around to face my neighbour from across the street, Judith White. I could see my shocked expression mirrored on her face. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you coming up behind me ‑ you scared the pants off me!” I said. I pointed the water hose away from my foot and towards Thomas who was accompanying Judith. “I’m fine,” I said in answer to her question.

“Charlie has been wanting to invite you over for dinner and we thought tomorrow night? I don’t work Monday, so I could cook a pork loin roast and maybe even one of your favourite raisin pies. Is tomorrow okay?”

“Sure, that sounds great, Judith. I’m running out of ideas of what to cook. I never realized how small my cooking repertoire was until now.” Her voice was exactly like Ivy’s! I had not noticed this before. It was a little eerie.

“We’ll have a roast of pork, then. I think you said once that you liked sweet potatoes with it, didn’t you?”

“Wonderful,” I said. “I’ll bring a bottle of rosé for us.” Charlie did not drink wine.

“I also wanted to hit you up for a ticket,” she said, offering me a printed card that featured a skating symbol I had seen on the television lately. “It’s Jane’s Figure Skating Clubs’ trials for the Canadian Open. We think Jane has an excellent chance to represent our division this year. Jane knows that both you and Ivy are figure skating fans but she didn’t know if you would feel like going so soon after Ivy’s death. I said it was just the therapy you needed.”

“Yes, you’re right. I must get out again. And this is exactly the show Ivy would have enjoyed immensely. She often said that she had dreamed of being a figure skater when she was a youngster. I’d love to go. How much for the ticket?”

I fished a twenty and five out of my wallet and gave them to Judith. I could not get over how much her voice sounded like Ivy’s. I finished washing the cat tracks off my car and then rubbed it down with the chamois. I decided that I needed a cold beer before cutting the grass so I headed for the recreation room. As I sipped on the cold beer, I could not stop thinking about the similarity in those two voices. I knew there was no similarity ‑ Judith’s voice was much lower than Ivy’s. I had been thinking about Ivy before Judith arrived so that might explain it. I tried to make some connection. Jane, the daughter, was a figure skater. Ivy had wanted to be a figure skater. Perhaps the mother reminded me of the daughter who reminded me of Ivy whose voice did not sound anything like Judith’s. It was all very confusing. Maybe it was ESP. Something like that.

Mondays are always bad days for me. I am not certain whether it is because I forget what I was doing on Friday when I left work or whether the work complicates itself over the weekend. I was sure that my latest project was all but complete, but that Monday I when I did the recap, I found an error. I spent most of the day revising last week’s work. It was almost 5:30 when I arrived home so I quickly changed into a bright sports shirt, grabbed the bottle of Mateus out of the refrigerator where it had been chilling since yesterday and headed for the White’s for a dinner of my favourite roast pork. Thomas Three Toes was sitting on the driveway washing his feet and rubbing them on his face.

“Well, Thomas,” I said, “You did a nice job on my clean car yesterday.”

“Murrrp.”

“One of these days I’m going to catch you and wring your neck!” I said. I knelt down beside him to rub his ears and scratch his chin. “I guess you don’t realize how much work you are making for me. It takes half an hour to shine that car, you know!”

Thomas AMurrrped@ again and stretched. I scratched his ribs. “It’s a good thing you’re Charlie’s cat or we would have settled this long ago.”

The cat perked his ears at something, rubbed himself against my leg then, tail erect,  ran up to the house. Charlie’s car was coming up the street. The cat must have recognized the sound of his master’s vehicle before I heard the car. As I stood up, I glanced at my trouser leg. Covered in cat hairs! I swear that cat can loosen his fur whenever he wants to. I would have to be wearing my new dark blue woollen slacks, too.  I wondered if I should buy a pair of slacks that matched the colour of Thomas= fur.

Charlie was wearing a three‑piece dark pinstripe suit, not his usual rather casual attire.

“Job interview today?” I greeted him as he got out of his car.

“Hi, Fletch. Yeah. Good one, too. I think I got it. They were very impressed,” he said. “Come on in and grab a cool one. I think that I could get you on there too, if you want.”

       “Great. What job did you get?”

“President.”

“No shit!” I said. We went inside, said Ahello@ to Judith, gave her the wine and then headed downstairs to the recreation room bar.  “President of what?” I asked.

“The World.”

“How did you find out about the opening?” I could see we were on a roll with this. Being APresident@ of the World is Charlie’s fantasy. He has all of these bizarre ideas that only a President of the World could hope to implement. I wanted to hear what he had dreamed up lately.

“Classified ads. Didn’t you see it? Last Thursday.@

“No, I missed it.”

“Pay is not bad. $500,000 per year plus all expenses.”

“Hey, that’s not bad. You said you could work me in somewhere?”

“You want Vice‑President?”

“Well, I dunno. What does it pay?”

“$400,000, plus expenses. You want a Miller or a Canadian Light?”

“Canadian, please. That’s almost as good as President.”

“Not quite. You have to work.”

“You mean the President doesn’t?” I asked.

“Nope. Not much, anyway. Vice President has to cover most of the things.”

“Such as . . . “

“Well, all the National Holidays. Every country.”

“You mean I have to go . . . “

“Yep, every one. But there are only about a hundred and thirty countries and I am cutting that number down.  Going to amalgamate some of those small suckers.”

“All right, I guess that’s not too bad. One hundred and thirty‑five days plus travel . . .  I should still get a few months off.”

“Not quite. Religious holidays.”

“You don’t mean I . . . “

“Yep, Vice President does all the religious things.”

“Can the Vice President consolidate some of those religious holidays? I mean, there are hundreds of them!”

“Well, yes! Amalgamate and Consolidate. That’s what we’ll do. Good idea! Give yourself a raise.”

“Okay, another ten thousand.”

“How about me? I’m the President, don’t forget.”

“You haven’t done anything yet.”

“Okay. Law One.” Charlie took a long glug of beer. “Bring back the noose.”

“Red neck,” I said.

“Nope. Gotta hang a few just to assert the authority. You know the old saying, AYou have to hang a few generals . . . A. I plan to do it on TV to make examples. Anybody commits a crime of violence - terrorists or murderers ‑ dead, hung!”

“I think that was admirals, but okay. Still going to have a trial or just string ‘em up?” I asked.

“Sure, we’ll have a trial. What do you take me for?” Charlie affected an injured expression.  I knew how he felt about terrorists and could only agree with him.

“What else?”

“Law Two. No more war. All disputes will be settled by unarmed combat.”

“Kung Fu? Karate?”

“No, no, far too rough! Saturday night wrestling for the combatants after they have played ten games of Trivial Pursuit. Winner gets to talk to me.”

“That should stop it all right. What about the nuclear arms race?”

“Over. All stockpiles are to be dismantled. I’m giving them thirty days, then I press the switch.”

I knew better, but had to ask, “Switch?”

“Yep, got a switch . . .  from Radio Shack. Fella sold it to me on the way home. Push the button and all the bombs in arsenals all over the world go off.”

“What if they start a war before you throw the switch, say in twenty‑nine days?”

“Going to fool them. There’s a bonus if they are done dismantling in twenty days. I am going to push the switch early just to keep those suckers on their toes. Nobody wants all their atomic bombs going off in their own backyard!”

“That should do it, for sure. Okay, I’ll give you $10,000 more.”

“How are we doing? Let’s see. We’ve amalgamated, consolidated and thinned them out with the switch. And I suppose you’ll cut down on the religious holidays once you’re in office.”

I nodded my affirmation. “What about the poor?” I asked. Distribution of the world’s wealth is one of Charlie’s favourite topics.

“I’m giving everybody a raise,” he replied, taking another long pull on his bottle of beer.

“How much?”

“Ten per cent, across the board. Then I’m going to put ceiling on it.”

“Ceiling . . . why?”

“Got to stop the greedy ones. How much do you figure the Chairman of General Motors is really worth?”

“Shit, no more than a hundred and fifty thou . . . maybe throw in a new Chevy every year as a perk.”

“Okay, $150,000 is tops. Anybody makes more than that, we apply the new tax law.”

Not another tax law I thought, but hoping for something unique from Charlie, I asked, “New Tax Law?”

“Across the board taxes ‑ twenty per cent for everybody. Anybody making more than $150,000, the rate goes up to one hundred and twenty percent.”

“Ah ha! Good idea, Mr. President. I’d give you a raise, but it would be taxable at 120% ‑ you’d loose money!”

“The President and Vice President are exempt from all taxes!”

“Thanks, you just got yourself another ten thousand.”

Judith came down the stairs. She had been listening to our foolishness. “The Under‑Secretary of State announces that dinner is served in the upper chamber.”

“Give the Under‑Secretary a raise,” ordered the President.

“How much is she making now?” I asked.

“$140,000 a year.”

“I can only give her another ten thousand then ‑ new Tax law, remember?”

“Okay, give her ten. Throw in a Rolls Royce . . . perks are allowed if you’re under the $200,000 mark.”

“What colour do you want?” I asked the cook.

“Silver, of course! Come and eat, you nuts!”

Dinner was most enjoyable. Judith had roasted the pork tenderloin perfectly, the outside brown and crisp, the inside just a trace of pink, the way I like it. Sweet potatoes and fresh green garden beans along with a salad made of Boston lettuce, all topped of with a dessert of home-made raisin pie. She added a generous scoop of French Vanilla ice cream to the hot pie that slowly melted and mixed with the touch of cinnamon spice in the pie juices. It was wonderful to have a great meal and good company. I realized how little I had been talking to other people and it was very pleasant to be back into the routine of social banter. We had a lively conversation that ranged back and forth all evening, covering all of our favourite sports teams, the state of the local politics, right up to the way the Federal government needed a good rebuff at the polls in the next election. Judith and I drank the bottle of Mateus and we all had a round of liqueurs after dinner.

       Charlie finally threw Thomas and me out about eleven but I was relaxed and feeling better than I had since Ivy had died.  Thomas walked me home.  I fell to sleep thinking about Charlie and his constant daydreaming of being the President of the World. I wondered if he would not have made a fair and benevolent dictator if things had been in the cards for him in another time and another place. I slept like a log until the alarm buzzed at seven.