Our upright piano leaned against one of three walls in the living/dining area, probably the largest piece of furniture in our home. Elegant. The smooth rounded top of the keyboard cover unfolded from within the depths of the machine. A thin brass strip along its edge contacting a burgundy velvet pad with a soft thump when closed, strings reverberating inside.
It wasn’t played very often, serving more regularly as a coaster or bookshelf. Some evenings though, in bed staring at my faintly luminous star-stickered ceiling, I’d hear the cover opening. The rustling of papers, a quick scale in a chosen octave, or one long slow middle C before a jazzy interpretation of The House of the Rising Sun, or some other melancholy creation from my father’s own special blend of folk, gospel, blues, jazz, rock, and soul.
My dad-Bruce (he would hate it if I called him dad)-probably could have been a professional musician, or a crime novelist, or a shrink as he initially intended when he decided on a career in medicine. He eventually got interested in Pathology and Epidemiology instead, and he teaches, and does some expert witnessing for American lawyers, but ultimately he’s a scientist. The absent-minded professor.
My mother, Pat, also knew how to play, though did so more rarely than my father. Probably due to the heavy load of raising two boys, feeding and cleaning up after all four of us, and also being a successful neonatal pediatrician until her retirement last year, at seventy. She received the “Medical Award of Excellence” from Jean-Coutu, who is apparently the arbiter of such things. There was a gala. The glass trophy sits on a shelf in her office beside the honourary Nursing degree bestowed by some of her colleagues. Her name engraved on a small plaque at the award’s base, pharmacy logo much larger.
One afternoon the weather locked my younger brother Simon and I indoors. Egged on by his laughter, I danced and jumped around in front of him making monkey faces. Holding my ears wide, blowing out my cheeks, and sputtering my tongue loudly between my lips, spittle flying.
I had been told to mind him briefly while whoever was watching us was in another room doing some annoying adult thing that interrupted He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.
“Why does anybody have to watch him? He’s in his pen. He doesn’t do anything except cry and stink, he’s so stupid!”
“Your brother’s not stupid. Don’t say that. Just for a sec.”
“But Skeletor just-”
“Skeletor can wait. You’ll just miss a few commercials. All that TV’s no good for you.”
I crossed my arms and frowned at my feet, then acquiesced. “Fine…,” I stomped out of the small adjacent room in protest, purposefully neglecting to shut off the television and leaving the door open.
When my brother and I got bored with making monkey faces and spitting at each other, I pulled the piano stool from its place tucked away underneath the keyboard. Pulling myself to a standing position on top, I thrust my right fist high into the air above me, “By the power of Grayskull!”
Simon mimicked my stance, both arms held as high as he could raise them, and managed a comprehensible, “Yaaah!” Before falling over backwards. Twisting to his front, he crawled forward to the edge of his play prison and pulled himself to his feet again to watch the rest of the show. I felt like a giant looming a good two and half feet above my regular height. I stared at the dusty top of the piano behind me. Snake Mountain.
I stepped from the stool onto the closed cover, almost slipped, and caught my balance with both hands on the top edge. A nervous whine from below as I heaved myself up, clumps of dust floating off around the room. Just enough clearance to stand without my head touching the ceiling. I marched triumphantly back and forth, finishing the quote at the top of my lungs while flexing in a childish approximation of the ludicrously over-muscled brute,
“I….have…the POWER!” I didn’t notice the neglected wine stain from the night before, a sticky crimson crescent. Somersaulting over the side, I crashed into the paned-glass doors. The racket summoned everyone. My brother began to wail. I was fascinated by the slow warm trickle of red down my arm. I don’t think I ever got to see how the show ended.
The first time I tried to kill myself, I was eighteen.
This past July I had an accident. I wish I could remember what happened. I was drinking a lot, both that night and in general. I woke up in the Montreal General dazed, confused, and mostly naked with an IV in my left arm and a pretty bad headache on the same side. The green plastic mattress squeaked as I sat up.
“What the fuck…?” I put my palm to my forehead and looked around, “Oh. Shit.”
The nurse’s bald head appeared, a friendly but efficient look on his stubbled face.“Hi, Timothy. You were in an accident last night, do you know where you are?”
“Fuck.” I glanced around again, the light bothering me. I did. “The General?”
The nurse smiled quickly, “Yup. Guess you’ve been here before. Had a bit too much to drink, last night?”
“A lot too much.” I told him I didn’t remember any of it. He laughed.
“Well, somebody found you on the street around 4:00am and called an ambulance.”
“You were unconscious and bleeding from that gash on your eyebrow. It took five or six stitches to close it up. Quite the shiner. Change the bandage regularly and keep it clean and dry. You also have two cracked ribs, a cracked sternum, and a large contusion on your left lung.”
“Great. Got anything for the pain?” I managed, sounding less grateful than I should have.
“Advil.”
“Nothing stronger?” He shook his head with a mixture of apology and pity. “I’ll take it.”
After attending to some of my fellow Saturday morning emergency room patients, he returned with a conical paper cup of water and two tablets in one hand and a clear plastic bag with my personal effects in the other. He handed me the pills and water and dropped the sack under the gurney, then pulled a small flashlight from the breast pocket of his bright green scrubs. “Look straight ahead.” Flashes of light. “Okay, it doesn’t look like you’ve got any concussion so we’re discharging you.”
“Cool. Can you take my IV out, please?” I had grown frustrated with waiting for someone to do so the last time I’d been here and ended up pulling it out myself, the guy in the bed next to me puking at the sight of the blood spraying when I’d done so.
“Sure. Get dressed, I’ll be right back.” He checked something on the clipboard hanging from the foot of the bed and disappeared again. I started to pull out my belongings, the abundance of dried blood on them having created an ominous tie-dye on the inside of the transparent garbage bag. My jeans were in wearable enough shape, but there was a noticeable lack of choice when it came to the upper half of my wardrobe. The two halves of the audaciously white blazer came out next, a neat zigzag down the spine from where the EMT must have scissored it off. My striped blue oxford shirt was in a similar condition. About a third of it and the jacket were covered in red streaks.
The nurse came back with the IV-pull, ripped the tape and swab covering the vein off, yanked it out cleanly, and then replaced the dressing. I was impressed by the fluidity of his movement, no wasted effort. “Um, I don’t have a shirt,” I pointed out.
“Oh,” he chuckled, “grab all your stuff and follow me, I’ll find you something.” I buckled my pants and heaved myself into a standing position. “You okay?” I definitely was not.
“Yeah, fine. Thanks.” The floor was cold on my bare feet. I leaned back on the bed and put my shoes on without socks before following him out of the ER to a shelf full of gowns and scrubs in a small room off the entrance from the street.
He grabbed a shirt the same colour as his and handed it to me. “Will this do? I can probably find something else if–”
“No, that’s perfect. Thank you very much.” He nodded and walked briskly back inside. I dug around in the bag I was still holding for the remainder of my stash and tossed the rest in a nearby can. The light outside on Cote-des-Neiges was too bright; it was windy. I walked down the hill and vomited in the gutter twice before hitting Sherbrooke street, much to the chagrin of the more upstanding citizens passing by. I bought a pack of cigarettes, chain smoking as I shuffled home to sleep it off.
My doorbell rang around 7:00pm that night. I groaned, rolled over, and buried my head in the pillow stained with dried blood. It rang again a moment later and I forced myself to the top of the staircase leading to my front door. I flicked the light switch and looked down, remembering my brother’s birthday dinner scheduled for that evening as I saw my mother’s face on the other side of the glass. Her expression changed from irritated to deeply concerned as I unlocked the deadbolt and turned the knob.
“Oh my god! What happened?”
“Bike accident. Sorry…I forgot about dinner. I don’t think I can make it.”
“Oh god, Honey…are you okay? You don’t need to go to the hospital?”
“No, I woke up there. I just need to rest. I’m really sorry.”
“Oh my god. It’s fine! It’s okay, I mean we’re all really sorry you can’t come. You’re sure you’re alright?” I peered outside and saw my brother in the passenger seat of the idling black station wagon, staring up at me neutrally. I waved, then shrugged, pointing to my most obvious wound and then finishing the gesture with a sorrowful shake of my head.
He nodded back and looked away.
“Well…okay, you sure you don’t need anything? Someone to stay with you? Oh god Tim, how long are you going to keep doing this to yourself?” My mother perseverated. I sighed and replied,
“I don’t know. I’m–I’m really sorry.” It was her turn to sigh and shake her head.
“I just wish I could help you.” She paused, squeezing my arm, which turned into a hug. She added without a hint of anger, “I will call you tomorrow. Feel better. Get some sleep.”
I locked the door and went back upstairs to do exactly that, dreaming about dying.
Timothy Case 