Humanesque
JESSICA GRANT

The pigeon understands the concept of the human form, says Dr. Tiplitski.

We are in his lab. The birds are street-coloured with little gas stains on their heads.

Pretty, I say.

Dr. Tiplitski explains his experiment. The pigeons are trained to peck at a disk that contains a picture of a human shape. They are rewarded with food for recognizing the human. They do not peck at cats or horses or trees; they have never been rewarded for pecking at these. What is most remarkable about the pigeons is that when Dr. Tiplitski gives them a disk with a human shape peeking out from behind a tree, the pigeons are not fooled. I see you, you silly human shape. Peck, peck.

Later, at dinner, he tells me about a certain bird that, when given a piece of bread, will take it to the water, drop it in, then stand on the shore and wait. When the minnows come for the bread, the bird eats the minnows.

So the bird understands… what exactly?

The concept of bait, he says.

We are both having fowl for dinner. I, chicken. He, duck.

Birds, birds everywhere.

On our way into the restaurant, we crossed a street overladen with wires, and on those wires were pigeons, grey triangles unsteadily perched. I pointed up and said, Past students? He laughed and corrected me: Subjects, he said. And we’d best hope not.

He meant because we’d be recognized, silly human shapes that we are, and possibly be pecked to death.

He tripped a little after he said that – one of those who can’t laugh and look up and cross the street all at the same time – and I caught his arm and said, Careful now, Dr. Tiplitski.

When are you going to start calling me Jason? This is a date.

Right, I said, but I was looking back at the pigeons, sinking their shadows into the pavement. And I wondered: Is that what tripped him, a pigeon shadow? Or is he just clumsy?

He is quite beautiful, there on the other side of the table, and after all, that is why I’m here, because he is attractive, as bodies are attractive, or become attractive, when they cut themselves neatly out of the landscape and announce that they are not yours.

I love the body not lived in by me.

See how it enters the consciousness whole and graceful – even in its lack of grace it is graceful because its mechanics are not mine. The idea of clumsiness is coherent, nimble. It dances. I would like my body to become an idea of itself. I would like it to be his. However his is. I would like not to feel it, the way I can’t feel his.

I am safe from the pigeon who pecks at the human form because it would not recognize me as part of that family of shapes. Put me on top of a hill, a setting sun behind me – make me a silhouette – and still, the pigeon squints, baffled. What is that? A broken universe?

Plato said that every object is an imperfect imitation of the ideal. Every table aspires to be table-esque. To be the idea of table.

I aspire to be the idea of flesh, which is fleshless.

My daughter wants to fly, Dr. Tiplitski is telling me.

I met his daughter at my nephew’s birthday party, which is also where I met Dr. Tiplitski.

I recall Sara Tiplitski, very well. I think about her a moment, finish chewing, and say: Fly or die? Does she want to fly or die?

Dr. Tiplitski wags a finger. You say things others wouldn’t – and shouldn’t.

Maybe. But this is how it has to be, Doctor. Jason. This is how I am. Either I ask what I want to ask, and answer how I want to answer, or I say nothing at all. Either I’m out here with you or I’m not.

Okay, he says. Okay.

When I get home from my date with Dr. Tiplitski, I turn on the lamp beside my bed. The books on the bedside table relax under the cone of light.

I pick one up. Every book I’ve ever read is the same voice speaking. I listen to the voice a moment, close the book, put it back.

When I told my sister Wendy about the one voice, she didn’t believe me. I said: Go home and think about all the books you’ve read and tell me it’s not the same voice. The same guy talking.

She came back three days later. Yeah. It’s the same guy. Who is he?

I’m looking, I’m looking.

What I told Dr. Tiplitski is true. Either I’m in or I’m out. Granted I spend a lot of time in – inside my apartment, a silent movie, repeating. But when I’m out, I act the way someone in a book might act. I say what the one voice would say. To be out there and quiet hurts every muscle in my body. It’s like keeping your balance on a wire you’re too heavy for.

I love it in here. The walls whisper: We are orange. The furniture creaks when you touch it. The books hold hands on the shelves.

This morning I ate breakfast at 7:30 in the chair that faces the street. A car pulled up, rattling music. A boy jumped out, his cap on backwards. He faced the front of the building, arms outstretched, and called up: Talk to me. Just talk to me. Nobody answered.

Was this the voice? I got up from my chair. But he was gone.

The woman who lives across the street, Patty, may be pregnant. She walks like she is. Though we could all look pregnant, I realize, if we walked like her. Probably we could all be pregnant, if we just learned the proper walk. The body can be fooled, just like a neighbour, by a good simulation. If she is pregnant, and if she has a baby, this will mean someone new to watch from my window. It will mean, perhaps, eighteen years of unbroken narrative. I could watch a person grow up from in here. Assuming Patty doesn’t move. Assuming the child doesn’t run away. Assuming the child lives.

Each car I test drive seals up like a fortress. No matter how fast I go, these cars make no sound.

I test drive five cars from five dealerships. I take the same route with each car. I drive hell bent for leather up the strip, then veer off to the west, into the suburbs, where I turn a very tight circle in a cul-de-sac called Abigail Place. I’ve never been to Abigail Place before, but I happen upon it during Test Drive # 1, and before I know it, it’s a habit. I try to break it on Test Drive # 4, but find I’m unable. I spin the same circle, in each car, before returning to the dealership.

I will buy the fifth car because it has a compass on the rearview mirror, and because the compass keeps its composure in the cul-de-sac, no matter how fast I turn. No matter how dizzy I make myself and the poor residents of Abigail Place, the compass never loses its bearings.

I’ve been passing this guy in army fatigues and a beret on Lexington Drive. He’s sitting at the bus stop – and there I go, there I go, there I go again, each time in a different car, and each time, I nod and give him a little army salute with my left hand, which he doesn’t return. Now, on my way back from Abigail Place in the car with the compass, I stop and ask him if he wants a lift.

His name is Russell Aucoin. He leaves for Afghanistan in three days.

I tell him: The man you’re after rides a black horse and lives in a cave at the heart of a mountain.

What’s your point?

You’ll never catch him.

On TV recently, I saw a woman in New York freak out about those black spots on the sidewalk. They’re everywhere, she said. We all see them. But can anyone explain them? Thinking it might be some kind of airplane fluid, dripping from the sky, she’d had the substance analyzed. The results were inconclusive.

The spots come in weird shapes, she said. She pointed to the one at her feet. See this one, it looks like a horse. It’s like someone’s trying to tell us something. I don’t step on them anymore. And I don’t let my kids step on them. I try to decode the message. I mean, a horse. What do you think that means?

My nephew’s birthday party was out at the airport.

Airport parties are all the rage, Wendy explained. The kids get to meet a real pilot, visit a cockpit, and eat airplane food.

I can’t believe they’re allowing this. What about all the increased security?

They go through security, Wendy said. Like everyone else. That’s part of the fun.

Airports aren’t toys, I said.

Wendy told me to lighten up. A lot of kids are anxious about flying these days, she said. I don’t want Corey to grow up afraid.

As soon as we entered the terminal, the kids started tearing up and down the wide open floor, sneakers squeaking, arms spread. No kid can resist a floor like that. An indoor runway. Run, run, run. Just try to stop them.

Where’s the anxiety? I asked Wendy. We could use some.

She went off to speak to the party coordinator. I tried to keep an eye on everyone. I pulled one child off an escalator going god knows where.

Help, I yelled.

Wendy waved happily from the ticket counter.

The few parents who’d come with us were chatting in a group. No anxiety there either.

While the kids “checked their bags” – they’d each brought something to check through – I collapsed into an S-shaped seat and tried to regulate my breathing. Corey was wearing a pilot’s hat and doing the moonwalk on the shiny floor. He’d lost his shoes.

I was about to get up to investigate when a tall man from the parent group made himself into an S beside me. Your first airport birthday?

I nodded.

My third.

No kidding?

He introduced himself as Dr. Jason Tiplitski. Father of one Sara Tiplitski. He pointed her out. She was the child I’d rescued from the escalator.

My daughter Sara wants to be a pilot, he said.

On the whole, things went smoothly. We never did find Corey’s shoes. One kid walked through security with a dinner fork in each pocket and claimed, when questioned, that he was conducting a “test.”

Then a chilling moment in the cockpit when Sara Tiplitski had her turn in the pilot’s seat.

Where are we going, Sara? the real pilot asked her.

The CN tower, she said.

No one said anything.

Toronto? I said helpfully.

I’m a suicide bomber! she blurted. Her little hands yanked at the steering column. This plane’s going down!

Sara, said Dr. Tiplitski.

Corey started to cry.

O-Sara bin Laden! she screamed. This plane’s going –

That’s enough. Let’s go.

But she was up and running, through first class and towards the back of the plane. You’ll never catch me, she yelled, triumphant. You’ll never catch me.

I wake to a fall day. Outside in the sun and the wind, the leaves crackle like they might ignite. I’ve got one foot on the floor. I’ve slept this way, a sure sign there’s someone in the bed other than me.

Russell’s camouflage fatigues are in the living room. I can see them through the open door, draped over the bamboo chair. I pass them once on my way to the bathroom, then again on my way to the kitchen. I drink a glass of water and think about putting on Russell’s clothes, hiking up the hill behind the building, lying under a tree, lying in the undergrowth, all camouflaged. Russell comes looking for me. He’s wearing my Buffalo Bills sweatshirt, the only thing of mine that fits him, and boxer shorts. He’s calling my name. I don’t answer. I wait for him to enter my field of vision, which he does soon enough, his head all stubbly against the blue sky. He looks down.

I ask him: Can you see me?

Sure can.

I lift my hands and he holds them and pulls me up. So much for camouflage.

I pass his clothes for the third time on my way back to the bedroom. This time I pick them up, take them to the window, hold them up against the trees. Not the same colours at all. But do they smell like leaves?

Just what are you up to?

He’s standing in the bedroom doorway.

Camouflage is a joke really, isn’t it?

No it’s not a joke. He takes the clothes out of my hands. What do you mean, a joke?

Outside, I can see Patty, my maybe-pregnant neighbour, getting into her car.

Breakfast? I say.

I practice my Patty walk on my way to the kitchen, but I realize I want coffee more than anything, and if I’m pregnant I’m not allowed, so I give it up.

Your back bothering you? Russell asks.

He has two bowls of Frosted Flakes to my one.

I could put down two more bowls, I say, but I choose not to.

He grins. I believe you.

So let’s say I want to be in the army. Tell me, Russell, how do I go about that?

He lifts an eyebrow. You come down to the recruiting centre.

Is it instantaneous?

No.

When do they issue the clothing? When do I get my own fatigues and a little sideways beret?

Couple of months.

And in the meantime, what do I wear?

He drinks the last of the milk from his bowl. Just so you know, he says. Most people in the army don’t read Thomas Pynchon.

I figured.

I’m the exception, he says.

I gaze at him across the table. I don’t really want to join the army, I tell him. Last week I thought about getting into the oil business because it’s the most impossible thing I can imagine. The oil business – I mean, what is that? The army is a close second.

Is that why you slept with me?

Why did you sleep with me?

Because you’re a nut who passed me five times in five different cars and saluted like a moron each time. I was curious.

I start laughing. I did that, didn’t I? Wow. I love seeing myself from the outside.

Later, at the door, I tell him: If we have to have an army, Russell, I wish everyone in it was like you. I wish you weren’t the exception.

He kisses me and I brush my hand over his barely-there hair.

Thank you, he says.

Nothing would have come of Russell Aucoin and me had he not mentioned Thomas Pynchon in the car. The author no one’s seen in decades, reputed to have vanished to Mexico. Books appear, but no interviews, no pictures.

You’re a fan?

I’ve read everything.

No kidding?

I have an MA in English, he said.

Literature?

That’s right.

Well, well. I tried not to be impressed. I’ve read The Crying of Lot 49, I said finally.

I had to teach that novel to a class of undergraduates, he said. The hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Harder than killing people?

I could feel him staring at me. I nudged him with my elbow. Just kidding there, big fella.

He considered a moment. Yeah. It probably would have been easier to kill the students. You’ve read the book, right?

I’d read it. It frustrated the hell out of me. But I liked it, in the end, because the woman in the novel and I were sharing the same impossible tasks, repeating the same patterns. And she knew, as I knew, and no doubt Pynchon knew too, about the one voice.

There’s this scene, I told Russell, I remember. Where she’s looking down at that California city –

San Narciso.

Yeah. And she can almost hear a voice – you remember that?

Of course.

The one voice, I said and looked at him for longer than was safe, considering I was driving.

The one voice, he repeated. Yeah.

I looked back at the road. I have this new boyfriend, I said. A Dr. J. Tiplitski. You may have heard of him. He’s doing some revolutionary work with pigeons.

Fraid not.

I like him a fair bit. He doesn’t know about the one voice, though. He believes in the one shape.

Never heard of it.

Would you like to come over, Mr. Russell In-the-Corner?

Actually, literally translated, it’s At-the-Corner. But yeah. Sure.

The woman in Pynchon’s novel parks her Chevy at the top of the hill and enjoys a bird’s eye view of the city. For a brief moment, the city becomes, or almost becomes, a shape, and she hears, or almost hears, a voice speaking her life, speaking the universe.

That passage makes me ache.

Dr. Tiplitski continues his experiments, further disguising the human shapes – he puts them under trees, behind windows, in cars – but the pigeons can’t be fooled.

I say: I know you joked about it. But when you take the pigeons out of their cages, when you carry them from their cages to the test area with the disk, do you ever get pecked?

You mean, do they peck me?

I take his hands in mine and turn them over. Are there any peck marks on you, Doctor, is what I’m asking.

He hesitates.

I didn’t think so. I drop his hands. It makes me sad.

Dr. Tiplitski and I take Sara to the park on Sunday afternoon. She brings a knapsack she calls “the boat,” filled with “little people.” These are mostly Fisher-Price figures, men and women with torsos that end abruptly so that they can be slotted into any of the Fishe- Price accessories. There are, however, no accessories in “the boat.” Only little people. Apart from the Fisher-Price figures, there is Princess Pippa with real hair down to her ankles, Pipe-Cleaner Man, and a tiny Darth Vader.

The park is deserted. It’s sunny, but cold. Leaves tumble past. Sara heads straight for the circular sandpit, plunking herself down at its centre. Her people debark. Dr. Tiplitski and I sit on a bench.

He is different on Sundays, I think. So am I. Days are places we inhabit. Tuesday, for instance, is a tower. Friday, a schoolhouse. Saturday, a runway. Sunday, an empty park. The light is different in each. We are different in each.

I try to explain this to Dr. Tiplitski, expecting him not to understand. But he smiles and says, Wednesday is a laboratory.

I nod. Thursday is a brand new car.

He was duly impressed with my digital compass. It lights up in the dark, I told him. What colour? Blue. Nice, he said. Very nice indeed.

Sara sits at the centre of her circle and who knows what catastrophes play out around her. We hear the occasional muted scream, like someone falling a great distance.

Dr. Tiplitski and I are making supper when Sara comes galloping into the kitchen and announces one of her people is missing.

Which one?

He doesn’t have a name, she says, and begins to cry, as if his being lost and nameless is too much to bear. And she’s right. I feel it too, suddenly, in my chest, this little figure’s absence. I will cry with her, any moment now. I look helplessly at Dr. Tiplitski.

I left him in the desert, Sara says.

The desert, Dr Tiplitski repeats.

The sandpit, I tell him.

Oh right. He is unworried. I’ll go get him. You two stay here.

We follow him to the door. He might be buried, Sara admits. He might have died today.

Okay, says Dr. Tiplitski. I’ll find him.

Sara and I sit on the living room floor and wait. She shows me all her little people. There is only one bad guy, she explains, and he is always played by Darth Vader. Sometimes he is just Darth Vader, in which case Princess Pippa becomes Princess Leia and Pipe-Cleaner Man becomes Luke Skywalker, but sometimes he is Osama bin Laden, and he wears the black robes because there are bombs underneath.

She puts Darth Vader in my hand. His robes are plastic, so we can’t lift them and know for sure what’s under there. Does he blow himself up often? I ask her.

No. He always changes his mind at the last minute.

That’s good. I hand him back to her.

I have some of the new Star Wars people in my room, she says. But I haven’t let them join yet.

The figures make a chorus line across the carpet. From the front pocket of her knapsack, what she calls the “life boat,” she pulls out a little bald man. Uh-oh, she says.

What?

This is the guy.

Who?

The one my Dad’s looking for.

We take my car. It is almost dark. Sara pushes all the buttons on the dashboard, and we arrive with the hazards flashing like a little ambulance.

We walk across the grass, blue and lightless. The wind is gone. I can make out Dr. Tiplitski, a black shape at the centre of the sandpit, digging.

I stop and watch while Sara sprints towards him. He’s not there, she calls out. I’m sorry, Daddy.

Dr. Tiplitski’s voice: You found him?

She sinks down beside him.

Two shapes now, in the circle. Sara uncurls her hand, offers up a third. It’s amazing what I can see in the dark.

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