Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland Page B

woman was selecting melons at Super Valu. “I wish my husband could have been here to meet you. You look a bit like him. He was killed in a car wreck some years ago. In Hawaii.”
    “I know. Please. Sit down.”
    “No. I want to look at you a second.” She circled Jeremy, surveying him from all angles. This clearly made him uncomfortable. She said, “There’s your father in there, Lizzie—can you see him?”
    “A bit.”
    Jeremy said, “Please. Sit down.”
    I said, “Do you want some coffee?”
    “Do you have any of that Baileys left?”
    “All out.”
    “Then no thank you.” She looked at Jeremy. “So where did you grow up, then—Vancouver?”
    “No. In the sticks. All over the place.”
    “Oh—was your family military?”
    “I wish. And it was families plural. Eleven, all told, and always within B.C. ”
    “Eleven?”
    “Yup.”
    Mother looked at Jeremy as if he’d been marked with a thirty percent discount, but he ignored this. “Most of my families were religious. Whenever something went wrong, religion always surfaced during my interviews with Social Services, and they always thought a different religious family out in the boonies could fix me.”
    “It’s not like you needed fixing,” I said.
    “No. I could have told Social Services about being chained to the laundry pole for sixteen hours during bear season. But my foster mom would have raised one eyebrow, looked skyward and said, ‘Kids. The imaginations they have.’”
    Mother said, “Oh. Well, I only wanted to know where you were raised.”
    “Now you know,” I said.
    “When did you two meet? How?”
    “I contacted Liz.”
    “We were always told it was impossible to find you.”
    “It is, unless—”
    I interrupted. “Jeremy found a loophole in the system.”
    Mother said, “I’ve thrown thousands of dollars at the system for years, and I could never find out anything.”
    “You what?”
    “I pray in a closet for him. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since the day we signed the papers.”
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “We never talked about him— you —Jeremy. Ever.”
    Jeremy said, “I insist—you two need coffee.”
    Mother began speaking like she was talking in her sleep. “I’ve also thought about you during the days, too. Usually it’s when I’m preparing dinner, and in my head I’m wondering how many portions to make. I’m at the sink peeling potatoes, or maybe it’s while I’m ironing a shirt. Don’t ask why. I’m standing up and doing something dull with my hands. Leslie and William have kids, but for some reason it’s you I’ve missed. You were the first. I worry about Leslie’s kids, but when I think about them, I’ve never pulled over to the side of a road, out of the blue, feeling like I’ve been kicked in the chest.”
    A bit of my wind had left me. “I don’t think I can take any more emotion here.”
    Mother ignored me. “Leslie says you’re sick. That you called Liz from the hospital.”
    “In a sense.”
    “You look fine. What’s wrong with you?”
    I said, “Multiple sclerosis.”
    “Oh.”
    I tell you, those two words are charged, yet nobody knows with what. Perhaps bones darkening and shattering; bruises that come and go without reason, or skin feeling stung by a bee, the skin then wasting away, even while in bed. The dreaded wheelchair, or a plastic bubble, and doubtless dozens of brown plastic medication bottles. I don’t know. Even now that I know what the beast is, it still makes no sense to me.
    Seeing us both standing there at a loss for words, Jeremy had mercy on us and launched into a brief description of the disease. Mother bit her lips; afterwards she asked Jeremy how he was feeling right then.
    “Okay. I had a nap.”
    “He’s going to be staying here tonight.”
    Mother said, “Here? Why would anyone want to stay here?”
    “Thank you , Mother.”
    Jeremy said, “I’m sleeping on the couch.”
    “No you’re not. You’ll come stay at the