The Whole Beautiful World Read online

  Months earlier I would have asked about a way to contact him. But “I miss him too,” was all I could say. And “I hope he’s doing alright.”

  The cottage looked as it should, dark and empty and in need of a good paint. In the back the balcony was still broken, the jagged stumps of posts pointing towards the clouds.

  When I opened the door to the boathouse, a raccoon hobbled towards me and hissed. I could hear her kits whimpering from some unknown place.

  I sat on the dock and threw bits of cracker into the water. After a few minutes the grey fish gathered and bopped around below me, but it was the turtle I wanted to see.

  I ran out of cracker crumbs and so I took to throwing tiny stones from the garden. It was cruel to trick the fish this way but I needed to keep them searching to draw out the turtle.

  After an hour I gave up. Perhaps he had abandoned this place with us no longer here to entertain. Perhaps he had tried to cross the causeway again and had not encountered a vehicle kind enough to pull over.

  THE WHOLE BEAUTIFUL WORLD

  “FUCK YOU, TEDDY BEAR,” GEORGE says quietly, pointing to the centre of his blankets piled on the floor. His normally slurred speech is crisp with consonants. I’m helping him make his bed as I do most days. It’s a slow process that consists of my asking questions like, “What do we do next, George?” and “Where do your pillows go?” He usually mumbles about something unrelated while I encourage him to join me in picking up blankets and spreading them across his train-track bedsheets.

  “What do you want to wear today, dude?” I ask. Often he’ll give me an up-down with his eyes and then base his decision on what I’m wearing. “Shorts,” he says today. I guess he trusts my assessment of the weather. “Stripes.”

  “What’ve you got against Teddy Bear?” I ask, pulling a pair of shorts from the dresser drawer. He doesn’t have any stripes, but plaid will do.

  “I don’t know why Teddy Bear is so upset,” he says. “I tell him, Teddy Bear, watch your mouth, Teddy Bear.”

  I haven’t been correcting George on his swearing lately, even though we’re supposed to find ways of “redirecting his language.” But his speech impediment makes it difficult for strangers to discern what he says, and don’t we all have the right to say what we want in our own bedrooms?

  I’ve made this argument to the other home-care workers, who nod with understanding smiles and then say, “But Marty, George doesn’t always know the difference between private space and shared space.”

  “I think George knows a lot more than he lets on,” I’ll say. It’s a bit of an unfair response as we all know it’s true, not only for George but for many of the members of Maison de la Paix. And no one can argue as I spend more time with George than anyone.

  Most days George doesn’t talk like this. Most days he’ll stop and say, “I love you,” and put a hand on your arm, smile at you with that smile he and his mother share when they sit together on the porch swing after her suppertime visits, her cradling his face in her hands. This is appropriate behaviour, the kind we are supposed to affirm, unlike hugs, which can be unpredictable, which can turn into a headlock without warning. Despite the fact that he does little to stay active, I’m guessing I’m the only person in the home who can match his strength. I’m guessing because I’ve never had to test it.

  It’s mostly his parents who are upset by his swearing. He hasn’t learned it from us, and he certainly didn’t learn it from them. His brother Bill who visits from time to time says George picked up his colourful vocabulary during his half year of Grade 10. He was energetic as ever and was getting too big for his mother to care for him. The principal assured her the high school had all the resources to “make the necessary accommodations for people like him.” George had a good first month, despite picking up a bit of foul language, until a boy in his special needs class eyed his bright train-engine pencil and grabbed it out of George’s hand. George stood up and pulled him into a strangling headlock, the boy’s face bulging and purple, his tiny hands reaching up and clawing at George’s pale forearm until it bled.

  The educational assistants managed to set the boy free, still cradling the broken pencil in his hands. They pinned George face-first to the ground, hands clasped behind his back, chanting their mantras of “It’s alright, George. Everything’s going to be fine, George,” while he kicked and cursed. “Fucking enemy! Fucking Satan!” “Mainstream students” gathered around in the hallway, listening and taking turns peeking through the doorway, frightened and entertained.

  When the police arrived George’s pained anger turned to uncontrollable excitement: he’s always loved people in uniform.

  “Policeman! Policeman!” he screamed with joy, banging his knees against the floor, his bleeding arm still pinned by the chanting EAs. The police reached for their tasers, as police do when confused. Fortunately George had already begun to hyperventilate and passed out before his heroes could jolt his body into submission.

  His father had been out in the field and his mother, who spoke mostly Low German, couldn’t understand what the secretary was saying until she got to the word hospital. She ran out to the field to get George’s father, and they drove up together, not knowing what to expect.

  When they arrived at his room, he was sedated, lying happily in a white bed with a fluffy blue teddy bear hanging from his bandaged arm. In the ensuing weeks he would pick the scabs, leaving himself with scattered scars and patches where his arm hair refused to grow back.

  I didn’t know him at the time, but I imagine George greeting his parents with his first ever drugged smile as they walk in and are introduced to this half-present version of him. It’s a smile I’ve seen from time to time after he’s had an aggressive episode or when his psychologist experiments with his concoctions of pills. Often after a vicious spell, when a housemate has been hit or a volunteer announces she won’t be coming back, one of the home-care workers suggests we revisit his meds. The new treatments leave him as peaceful as can be, but virtually lifeless, sleeping fifteen hours a day, or roaming around with a pasty smile and blank eyes, touching the wallpaper trains in his room. Drugged, he is disinterested in his colouring books or building blocks or anything else.

  “He’s not happy when he’s violent and angry all the time,” a worker will say.

  “But he also doesn’t want to sleep all day,” someone will respond.

  “He deserves to live in peace.”

  And we’ll debate together the best way of life for him, what each of us thinks he wants, or what we want him to want.

  What’s better, to be victim to your own strength and emotions, or to not even know what they are?

  While he was growing up, George’s parents determined that he had enough challenges communicating with society without trying to fight through two languages. So even though George’s father and five siblings switched gracefully between Low German, Spanish, and English, when George began to speak at age three the older children and their father strictly limited their conversations to English. This meant George had few words to share with his mother; as a stay-at-home Old Colony Mennonite she never felt it necessary to become fluent in English. I guess it also meant that, for George’s sake, conversation between his mother and the rest of the family was strained.

  “For George’s sake,” is a phrase his brother Bill uses from time to time, laced with affection and resentment. “Our parents caved and finally got a TV, for George’s sake.” “We couldn’t go camping, for George’s sake.” “Mom stopped working at the bakery and stayed home, for George’s sake.”

  For George’s sake they moved him into Maison de la Paix, Bill told us. But we know it was more for his mother’s sake. One afternoon a few months after he was kicked out of high school, when he had grown to his full height of six feet, his mother scolded him for tearing all the carrots out of the garden prematurely. He wrapped her in a frustrated hug so tight he broke two of her ribs.

  She’d hobbled out back to the field to get George’
s father, who stormed back to find George sitting on the front porch, rocking quietly, Teddy Bear in hand. His father slapped him so hard that George fell off the porch onto the cement walkway.

  I don’t know this part for sure. I only know that he had two skinned knees and the handprint still on his cheek when he moved into the home.

  We found out from his brother that George’s mother was distraught about him leaving, and not too thrilled about him joining a Catholic group home. But she had little say in either matter, and as his father said, “Catholic is better than heathen.” He had been ready to send George to a state-run home, but spending a little extra on a Christian organization was his way of making peace with his wife after his very unpacifist impulse.

  George’s brother Bill claims he had never been violent at home before that episode. Of course the event corresponded with his finishing puberty, a time when boys with brain injuries often become more physical and violent. And of course, it’s possible he hit his mother from time to time before that and she never told anyone for fear that she would lose him.

  Still, she only visits once a month. Some of the staff think she’s guilt-ridden about George having to live without her. Others think George’s dad is afraid of him hurting her again, and, because she doesn’t have her licence, she can’t come without him.

  “Fuck off, Teddy Bear,” George says again, pointing angrily to the matted bear now perched on top of his pillow. I’ve been scurrying around trying to throw his Lego into the bin. We’re supposed to do his chores together, me empowering him to take care of himself, which I fully and wholeheartedly agree is the way to do things; however, we’ve been trying to get ready for an hour already and he’s still wearing the train-engine pajama top.

  “Which shirt?” I say, waving my hand towards the open drawer.

  George reaches across me towards the tie-dyed shirt that says, JAMAICAN ME CRAZY! In the process he scuffs my arms with his long fingernails. George doesn’t like his nails being cut, and doesn’t have the dexterity to do it himself without clipping off slivers of flesh. The clicking, the cutting of something from his body, puts him on edge. I’m the only one who can do it without getting swatted, but I have to wait for the right moment, and given he’s been pretty hard on Teddy Bear this morning, I’m not sure today is the day.

  I’m not sure exactly why George is the way he is—some sort of complication during birth, the umbilical cord tied around his neck when he was born, that caused a severe lack of oxygen, something the doctors should have caught earlier, and most parents would have sued over. But the family concluded “It is the Lord’s will,” and “What we often consider curses are the greatest blessings.” I guess if I had been raised in a family like that, I’d be saying, “Fuck you” to the teddy bear too, to anything that had ears.

  George pulls the T-shirt over his head without taking off his pajama top. I let him struggle for a bit, hoping he’ll figure it out. It’s an odd dance, letting him do life, make mistakes, trying to weigh when to step in and when to let him fight.

  “George,” I blurt out after a few seconds, “let’s take your PJ s off first.”

  By now he is agitated, his hands wound together in the T-shirt fabric bundled above and around his head. I’ve let it go on too long.

  “Can I help you?” I say. I take his mumbling “fucking enemy shirt” as a yes, and try to pull the cloth over his hands. He has begun swinging his arms around wildly. I duck to avoid being pummelled. I begin to sing softly in my low bass, “He’s got the whole wo-orld in his hands,” and he stops, begins to sing along with me, face wrapped in the T-shirt, arms stuck up like bound branches. “He’s got you and me brother, in his hands.” I’m tempted to just rip it off him, but I reach up and begin to untangle the shirt, setting him free.

  He tosses the shirt at Teddy Bear and I figure it’s best to just grab him a new one. I begin unbuttoning his PJ s.

  “Beautiful Teddy Bear,” he says, calming himself. “You’re not the enemy.”

  “Teddy Bear’s a good friend,” I say.

  “He’s got Teddy Bear in his hands,” George sings.

  He reaches his arms in the air to help me dress him. I won’t say it didn’t take some getting used to, dressing and undressing a man. But everything about this home is different than the way I lived before, and so all of these things have stopped feeling strange.

  I pull the shirt over his arms and his head pops through. He looks deeply into my eyes, his arms still outstretched above him.

  You really are a good-looking dude, I think. Anita tells him all the time, “Oh, George, you look so dapper! You’ll turn all the girls’ heads.” And he smiles and says, “I am beautiful.”

  My brother Brian would be the same age as George now. About the same height too. But unlike George, Brian was able to finish high school, go to a great university and pursue his PHD. in philosophy. Unlike George, Brian was well, or so we thought until he sent me an email at the end of term telling me how I was going to do wonderful things to make this world a better place. While I was wondering what brought on his sudden sappiness, his roommate and best friend found him hanging from the doorway with an extension cord around his neck, a Post-it note on his chest that said, I’M SO SORRY—SO SORRY TO DO THIS TO YOU. PLEASE DON’T HATE ME. I JUST HAD NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE.

  It was deemed a “depression-related accident” because we were all baptized Catholic and we needed to have the funeral in the Catholic Church, and the word suicide doesn’t go over well with them. I was in second year and my professors let me postpone my exams, so I came home for the summer to do nothing but sleep and eat. My parents became so concerned about me that they sat me down and offered to pay my way to Europe if I would agree to stay at a Catholic retreat centre in France. We had never been a very pious family, but it seems that, in times of tragedy, we dig into our roots as some sort of grounding.

  The retreat centre was covered in vegetable gardens and trees and had hundreds of places to sit with your thoughts and everyone was kind. You couldn’t walk past a person without getting a smile. We were all assigned chores around the grounds and gathered for meals. We gathered in the mornings and evenings for candlelit services where we sang chants—beautiful, simple chants. By night we hasten in darkness to search for the living water. Only our thirst leads us onward. Chants that made me feel for once that I might be able to carry a tune, that allowed me to shut down my thoughts and be present and yet tuned out. Come and fill our hearts with your peace. Chants that let me join with whatever cosmic force was out there, join the people gathered around, enter into something that didn’t have words.

  But they were rigid about wake-up times and attending meals and showing up for your chores and I grew tired of structure and ritual. Or maybe it was the weight of the kindness and having too much time to think while gardening and walking through the hilly grounds. Either way, after two weeks of being woken up by an incessant bell at six-thirty in the morning, I took off to backpack France and Spain.

  Everywhere I went I kept humming or singing those chants, down dirt roads and in old cathedrals. I found myself drawn to old pilgrimage trails. I’d step onto them for a few miles or a few dozen, meet others on the journey, stop at small churches and sit. If there was no one else there I’d sing, “Only our thirst leads us onward.” Sometimes I’d sing even if someone was there, and sometimes a voice would join mine. It seemed that at every hostel I stayed at, every bar I stopped at, I’d run into someone who had visited the retreat centre. And I’d want to sing the chants with them, to see if they knew the same songs, to feel the comfort of someone else’s voice joining mine. It happened again and again, to the point where I felt I must be missing out on something, and that something might be awful or it might be wonderful—there was no way to know in advance. But there was only so long I could miss it for.

  So I returned to the retreat in late summer and stayed into the fall, ran into the academic year with no desire to finish my degree. I worked the gardens and did w
hatever heavy lifting was needed around the property, memorized songs and prayers, made friends with people who were passing through, and was happy with the transience of my relationships. After we harvested the vegetables I ran out of my parents’ money and realized I needed to see them again. I came home to find they had split up. I had no way of knowing whether that’s what they had in mind when they sent me away in the first place.

  I decided to visit Maison de la Paix. I’d heard about it over the years, Christmastime offerings at Mass and things like that. Something about my trip to Europe had made me unafraid of approaching new people, so I biked over to the address by the ravine and rang the doorbell.

  A man with Down syndrome opened the door. “Welcome to Paix,” he said. “How can we welcome you?”

  I had come to see if they had any volunteer needs, but found myself saying instead, “Do you have any room for a newcomer?”

  “We always welcome newcomers,” he said then called for Anita.

  Anita told me they usually asked participants to volunteer for a month before moving into the community. “But I have a good feeling about you,” she said. It might have had something to do with the fact that they needed someone with muscles. Whatever the reason, I moved in the next day and have been living here for three years.

  Now when I tell people what I do, they commend me for “giving back,” as if what I do isn’t for me but for the people I live with, and as if I had anything to give to begin with. When people consider the diaper changes and restraining holds and lifting people who can’t walk and hanging out with people who can’t talk, they say, “I could never do that,” and I remember how I used to feel like that.

  When George has washed his face and brushed his teeth, chewing the bristles for most of it, I ask, “What do you want to do today, George?”

  “Walk the train tracks.”

  Walking the train tracks out behind the house has always felt like an excitingly risky game with George. Despite his love of the hulking machines, his constant insistence on wearing his conductor’s hat (sometimes with nothing else on), he’s afraid of them in the steel, when they’re moving. Once we took the group for an outing to take a train ride—one of those little things that run in a circle around the other rides at the midway. We thought he would be thrilled and he was for the three days leading up to it. “Going to take the train!” we could hear him yell to himself over and over while trying to fall asleep the night before.