The Whole Beautiful World Read online

  When he saw the train, he lost his shit, screaming, “Train! Train!” and we were pretty thrilled about how happy he was, until we realized there was fear behind his eyes. He jumped up and down on the spot fifty feet away and wouldn’t go any closer. I stayed with him trying to help him de-escalate while the others moved on to some of the other rides. His screams slowly subsided into whispers and finally I was able to guide him back to the parking lot. We spent the afternoon at a sticky picnic table eating soft-serve ice cream.

  Still I take him out often to walk the tracks that run behind our house and into town. The train only runs on Friday afternoons and it’s a quiet walk beside the ravine. We walk silently in each other’s company, our backs to the sun.

  It was Sonya who first suggested we start walking here with George. Sonya started volunteering with Paix about a year after I moved in. She would swing by after work and help make meals once a week.

  It’s easy to fall in love here, in a place where life is slower, where people look each other in the eyes, where kindness is taught and sung and prayed. Sonya started staying late into the evenings, brought her guitar and took requests as we sang together in the living room. Then she would stay on as people were tucking in, and she and I would walk at dusk along the tracks behind the house, make out in the dewy grass along the ravine. She had a beautiful way of articulating the things I had been feeling about Paix. “It’s amazing,” she said, “the way you see things differently when surrounded by people who don’t define you by what you produce.” “There are so few places in the world where people can just be.” I liked that Sonya didn’t know about Brian, didn’t need to know, and yet I knew that whenever I chose to tell her she would listen and learn to love him without ever meeting him.

  She was particularly close to Adam, the sweet man with Down’s, and Patricia who couldn’t speak but would communicate by pointing to words on a mat on her wheelchair. But as I was closest to George, I wanted her to get to know him better. She had always been friendly with George, but kept her distance. She’s slight and gentle, and she knew he was unpredictable.

  Once during one of our walks I vented about an argument I’d had with another staff member who wanted to encourage the doctors to give George something to make him calmer.

  “I agree with her,” she said. “They need to look at stronger medication, for George’s sake.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “You think he should walk around like a zombie?”

  “Of course not! I take anti-anxiety meds, and I hope you don’t think I’m a zombie.”

  “He’s already on anti-anxiety pills! You don’t know how bad these anti-psychotic meds are, the kind of long-term damage they do. I don’t think it’s fair for us to put George through that for our own comfort.”

  “Nobody benefits from him flying off the handle, especially not him.”

  “You should see him when he’s drugged up—just a shell of himself.”

  “You need to give people time to adjust to their meds. It takes months sometimes.”

  “You can’t just hang around the people who are easy to be with!”

  She looked away, hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just think you think he’s worse than he is,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I just need to spend a little more time with him.”

  “I would love that,” I said.

  So we began walking together, the three of us, after supper along the tracks. It went well for the first few weeks, Sonya in the middle, holding both of our hands. But one day a stray mutt came running towards us and George flipped out.

  “Enemy!” George yelled. He began thrashing and smacked Sonya across the face.

  “George!” she said sternly. He turned to her with an expression that suggested she had set the dog on him and reached for her throat.

  I pulled him off of her, pinned him in a standing restraint.

  “It’s alright, George. The dog is gone,” I said, but he was livid with her.

  “Fucking enemy!” he yelled at her.

  She ran her hand along her red, raw neck.

  “Are you alright?” I said, trying to speak in a calming voice as George bulked against my arms. I was about to say sorry, but I didn’t want to apologize on George’s behalf.

  She looked at me as if I had been the one to hit her.

  “You shouldn’t have put me in this situation,” she said, barely audible over George’s yells.

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” I said. “But these things happen. It’s part of getting to know him.”

  “He’s violent and he obviously doesn’t want to be!”

  “You’re stigmatizing him.”

  “You don’t get it—you’re bigger than him!”

  I felt angry holding George still and talking about him as if he weren’t there.

  “He needs to be better medicated!” she yelled.

  “Fucking medicine!” George yelled.

  “George, it’s okay,” I said. “Sonya, you’d better go. He won’t calm down while you’re around. He feels too badly about it.”

  “At least someone does,” she said as she turned to leave.

  SHE CALLED ME the next evening. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I would have done this in person, but it’s just too hard to see everyone.”

  “I’m really sorry about what happened,” I said, though I was still angry with her reaction.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I just don’t feel like this is going to work out. Please say bye to Adam and Patricia for me.”

  “Not George?” I said hotly.

  “I wouldn’t want to upset him.”

  My anger made it easier to deal with missing her. She was right; I was bigger than him. But many other people on staff were not and they could handle him just fine.

  George climbs the slight incline up to the tracks. He crouches down and sits on one side of the iron rail, picks a tiny buttercup growing inside a wooden tie. I sit down across from him on the other rusty rail. He reaches his long arm towards me and places it on my head.

  “God made you beautiful,” he says to the buttercup.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “He’s got the whole world in his hands,” he sings softly. I sing along.

  “Yikes! Thunder,” George says.

  “Really, George? I don’t hear it.” I feel it before I see it, the tracks quivering slightly beneath us.

  “Yikes!” George says again as the rumble grows stronger. He pulls into himself, arms wrapped tightly around himself.

  “Okay, George,” I say calmly, looking up to see the spot of the dark train growing towards us. “We’re going to go sit in the grass and watch the train go by.”

  I realize my mistake as soon as I say it.

  “Train!” he says wildly from within his arms. He wraps them more tightly, presses himself down against the track. The whistle blows.

  “Fucking enemy!” he yells.

  “Come on, George. We’ve got to move.”

  George holds firm to his place. I grab for his arm. He swats me away.

  “Come on,” I say firmly, leaning over him and trying to pull him up to stand. George has curled into a ball, his arms wrapped tightly around his legs so I can’t drag him by the chest. Finally he has learned how to beat the restraints I’ve been taught.

  I try to push him gently by the shoulders but he won’t budge. The whistle blows wildly. He begins to thrash at me with his fists. His fist lands in my eye and I pull back. I put my hand to my throbbing face.

  “Damn it, George! Get off the fucking tracks!” I hear the train’s brakes squealing but it is still reeling towards us. My eye burns and begins to run.

  I stand over the rumbling tracks. I dare not look at the train, but sense the wind of it approaching. I push hard against his knees. He screams as he tumbles backwards down the grassy incline and I roll after him.

  When I reach him I crouch over his sprawled body to put him in a hold. The train ro
lls by, still whistling vehemently. He reaches up from the ground and punches me again, same eye as before.

  I punch him in the stomach. George wails and pulls into himself.

  I stand in front of him.

  George is huddled on the ground, hands on his stomach, winded. He looks up at me like a dog that’s been kicked.

  I move my mouth to say, “I’m sorry,” but I can’t, even though I feel like shit. It’s possible to be drenched in guilt and still not be sorry.

  “You’re the enemy!” says George breathlessly into the grass beneath us. He lifts a fist to punch the air at me then flinches away.

  “I fucking saved you!” I yell back. I say it over again in my head, convincing myself.

  “You fucking saved me,” he says back, as if it hurts him to say.

  I reach in the emergency pack over my shoulder and pull out George’s tranquilizer pills. I pop the blister pack, pass him a water bottle, take his palm and place the pill in it. “Please take this,” I say.

  “You tried to kill me!” he yells and throws the pill at the tracks.

  “George, you know that’s not true,” I say, but I’m not sure if he does. “You know I want to take care of you.” I grab another pill and take his hand again. I’ll have to find the pill later or fill out the paperwork to account for it. His long fingernails dig into my palm. My eyebrow starts to throb. I wonder how I will account for his bruises, how I will tell my boss that I punched him, if I’ll be fired, and where else I would go if I couldn’t be at Paix.

  “Look at me,” I say. He looks into my eyes. “Please take this. It will make you feel better.”

  He looks back at me with a look I can’t interpret. You mean it will make you feel better, I imagine him saying.

  He puts the pill on his tongue and takes a swig of water, then another, then gulps back the whole bottle. He crushes the flimsy plastic in his fist.

  He lies back in the grass and I wait for the drugged smile to creep across his lips. “You know I love you want to take care of you,” he says into the clouds.

  “I know,” I say.

  “You know I’ve got the whole world in my hands,” he says. “The whole beautiful world in my hands.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many of these stories are set in a fictional town inspired by the beautiful community in which I grew up. While the landscape and atmosphere inspired the setting, all stories and characters are fictional.

  Great thanks to the literary journals that published earlier versions of these stories: The Puritan, Grain, Joyland, Paragon, Ryga, Joypuke, A Common Thread, and Here Be Monsters.

  Thank you to Hugh Cook, who first guided me through the short story writing process; to Katherine Govier for the feedback, hospitality, and kindness; to Michael Winter for helping me find details that spark in a story; to Rosemary Sullivan for wisdom and inspiration.

  Many thanks to my creative writing program workshop buddies: Laura Hartenberger, Susannah Showler, Phoebe Wang, Molly Lynch, Andres Vatiliotou, and Jennifer Last, as well as Andrew Sullivan, Brendan Bowles, and Catriona Wright. Special thanks to Sharon Helleman and Laura Hartenberger for her support and for creating a lovely atmosphere in which to write from home.

  Thank you to Taryn Boyd for being such a wonderful support and companion in making The Whole Beautiful World a reality, to Colin Thomas for exceptional insight and warm encouragement, to Tree Abraham for the cover design, to Pete Kohut for the interior design, to Kate Kennedy for copyediting, to Renée Layberry for all the editing support, and to Tori Elliott for getting the word out. Thanks, Brindle & Glass, for making the creation of this book such a great experience.

  Much love to Peter Norman and Melanie Little for helping me through the bookmaking process.

  Thank you to countless friends and family who have read these stories and offered your thoughts and inspiration in the writing process.

  Thank you, Dad, for your unending love and interest in everything I do; and eternal thanks to Mom—though you are not here to read my words, I think of you with every story I write.

  To Elliott, for allowing me a little time during your new life to do revisions. Finally, thank you, Mark Norman, my sounding board, my best friend, my love.

  MELISSA KUIPERS was born and raised on an egg farm in Aylmer, Ontario, and grew up in a tight-knit Dutch-Canadian Christian community. She holds an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing at the University of Toronto. She has been published in the Rusty Toque, Grain, Joyland, Ryga, Qwerty, and the Puritan. Melissa lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with her husband, Mark, and infant son, Elliott.

  Copyright © 2017 by Melissa Kuipers

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact the publisher at:

  Brindle & Glass

  An imprint of TouchWood Editions

  Brindleandglass.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Colin Thomas

  Copy edit by Kate Kennedy

  Proofread by Cailey Cavallin

  Cover design by Tree Abraham

  Interior design by Pete Kohut

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Kuipers, Melissa, author

  The whole beautiful world : stories / Melissa Kuipers.

  Issued also in electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927366-62-2 (softcover)

  I. Title.

  PS8621.U39W46 2017 C813'.6 C2017-903030-2

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

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