On Death and Jian Ghomeshi

The story below doesn't really have a title yet, so I'm open to suggestions.
It, too, came out of a story club assignment a long while ago. Which helps to explain some of the slightly odd vocabulary (gadroon, for one, and injera). It's been revised slightly since, but it remains one of my favourites!


*



Heaven sucks.
This isn’t an appropriate thought for a good Catholic girl, I know.
Fuck it.
“HEAVEN SUCKS!”
My bellow would make Pavarotti proud, and “ux ux ux” rings off the peaks around me.
But I’ve gotten ahead of myself.
I’m Ace.
Not really, but it’s better than Alice Catherine Elizabeth – the moniker I got saddled with courtesy of two grandmothers and a great-aunt who was supposed to leave me her fortune.
Except I kind of pre-empted her on the whole dying thing.
Which is funny, considering she’s a miserable eighty-seven-year-old who should have choked to death on her own bile years ago, and I’m a fit twenty-four-year-old with no health problems whatsoever. Except the random bruises, skull fracture and assorted internal injuries suffered when I took a header off a slippery log while crossing a creek during a romantic hike to Kokanee Glacier.
In seventeen more minutes, Cameron was going to propose.
I didn’t know that then. I know now, though. Now that I’m dead, I know everything.
Which isn’t as useful as you might think.
Does it help me to know that Derek Goldman had a crush on me in Grade 9? Or that Emily has lustful thoughts about Gabriel Martinez (so lustful, in fact, that I have to tune out – there’s some things you don’t need to know about your baby sister).
It’s shitty to know this stuff and not be able to tell anyone.
Have I mentioned heaven sucks?
For one thing, it looks like Kokanee Glacier Park. The only thing that’s different is the signpost at the top of the first hill that used to read ‘Cabin 6 km.’ Now it just says ‘Heaven,’ with an arrow.
The ‘To parking lot’ sign that pointed downhill is gone.
I tried walking downhill when I first arrived. I kept walking and walking and walking till I got bored – I have no idea if it was nine hours or nine days, since heaven appears to be stuck at three in the afternoon. When I stopped walking, I was still at the edge of the lake.
Cute trick, God.
Ever since I turned and started walking the other way, following the arrow to heaven like an obedient schoolgirl, it’s been boring as hell. (Pardon the expression.)
I haven’t been tired, mind you. All that walking – apparently, heaven doesn’t have mountain bikes – and no burning quads. No aching back. No blistered toes. I’d feel envigorated, actually, if only Cameron were here. Or Emily. Or Mom. Or anybody.
I’ve lost all track of time. I’ve passed the sapphire lake and the wildflower meadow and the flat rock where we always stop for lunch.
Lunch.
Even as the thought occurs to me, it appears: a plate bearing flat brown bread. It’s a nice plate, too, like Granny’s wedding china, rose-patterned with gadroon edging. (I was getting that china, by the way, when I married Cameron.)
Not that I dwell long on the plate. I’m more drawn to the brown hand that holds it and the person attached to the hand. A twentysomething male person of the lean-but-muscular variety, in jeans and black T-shirt, with a mane of black curls falling into his eyes.
A familiar person, at that.
I blink.
I didn’t expect to run into Jian Ghomeshi. Especially since, as far as I know, he’s very much alive and – if it’s still 1994 – touring with Moxy Früvous.
I don’t try to figure it out. Who am I to mess with some divine plan? I just reach for the bread.
Is this what manna looks like?
I don’t ask aloud, but Jian chuckles anyway.
“No, not manna. It’s injera.” He tears off a chunk and pops it into his mouth. “But it takes like anything you want.”
Apparently, I want jalapeño poppers, since that’s what the first bite tastes like. Then it’s Aunt Elizabeth’s Branston pickle. Then, weirdly, smarties.
Cheap tricks, God. Aren’t you above these Willy Wonka stunts?
Jian laughs again.
“We have to do something to get your attention.”
His chocolate eyes dance merrily, and I’ve gotta admit I’m hooked. Whatever mysterious plan God has devised, he could’ve done worse than to send Jian.
Who, naturally, laughs again. (This mind-reading is starting to get annoying.)
“I’m not Jian, by the way.” His polite, resigned tone suggests he’s explained this one before. “Like this place” – he gestures sweepingly around the mountain peaks – “I merely take the form of someone the new arrival can relate to.”
He grins.
“Yesterday I had to look like Don Cherry, and that’s not easy to pull off. Those ties, you know.”
I nod rather stupidly. There doesn’t seem to be any way to respond to that.
And it begs the question of who, exactly, this guy is.
“You’d probably know me best as Peter.”
I sense I’m being mocked.
“As in, Saint Peter? Guardian of the pearly gates?”
I refrain from pointing out there’s not a gate or a pearl in sight.
He chuckles.
“A gate is merely a physical representation of a metaphysical concept. But it’s a nice image, don’t you think?”
And, ta-da, there they are, as shiny and sparklingly pearly a pair of gates as ever graced the pages of a catechism book, with cherubs pirouetting and jetéing around them. At least, I assume they’re cherubs. They look like those creepy, chubby little dolls that Aunt Elizabeth bought for me and Emily one Christmas. Just add fluffy wings and snowy white dresses.
So this is heaven. Cheap tricks and stupid jokes. Nice job, God.
This time, Jian doesn’t laugh. He draws his brows together in a frown that makes me quake a little. I’m not sure what happens if you piss off Saint Peter – or someone claiming to be a rather sexy rock’n’roll version of him – but it’s probably not a good thing.
Would it help to recite the Act of Contrition?
I can tell by the quirk of his mouth that Jian is amused.
“Words are just words, Alice. It’s not about what you say, it’s about what you feel.”
What I feel, actually, is pissed off.
I don’t bother to wonder if Jian knows that. He knows I think God was cruel to let me slip and to let Cameron be just out of reach and to let that rock be there and to let my head strike it and my body get sucked up in the current and float away like flotsam and to let that sadly, hauntingly, desperately beautiful sapphire ring sit buried at the back of Cameron’s sock drawer.
I’m twenty-four, for Christ’s sake. What did I ever do to you?
More to the point, you fucking asshole, you with your signposts and gatekeepers and stupid cheap tricks, what did Cameron ever do to you?
A warm hand touches my arm, so softly I sense more than feel it.
“You can’t hold onto this anger, Alice. Let it go.”
Let him go.
The words hang there, unspoken, and I shake my head. I can’t let Cameron go. Not yet. Not when we’d barely begun.
“Watch.”
Jian’s voice is gentle, but something in it commands me to look up.
A large silvery screen has appeared in front of the gates, and the words ‘Cameron Anthony McCormack’ scroll across it, flashing on scenes of a baby in his mother’s arms.
So now he’s Frank Freakin’ Capra. God couldn’t think of anything more original than this?
Jian turns his chocolate stare on me again.
“God sends messages in the form in which you are ready to receive them.”
So all I’m ready for is some schlocky Hollywood takeoff? Gee, thanks God.
Jian’s eyes search my face. He says nothing, but suddenly it’s not a movie anymore. I’m not watching Cameron from the safe distance of that floating silver screen. I am him.
I’m wet and bewildered and cross as I’m dragged out of the warmth and softness of my mother into the harsh fluorescent light of the hospital room.
I’m soothed in the safety of my mother’s arms.
I’m scared when I start school. I wonder if I’ll pee my pants and if the other kids will laugh at me.
I’m nervous when I pick up Andrea Miller for the Grade 11 formal. I’m sweating profusely in the car afterwards when I realize she isn’t going to stop me from unzipping her blue taffeta dress.
I spiral on, through jobs and exams and friends and parties, till suddenly, there I am.
Foolishly, helplessly, unabashedly staring at a girl across from me in Statistics 331.
A small girl with straight red hair whose nose is a bit crooked, whose smile is lopsided, whose ears stick out and who seems to me just then to be the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.
“Hi.” She grins. “I’m Alice. My friends call me Ace.”
And then it’s all about her.
Ace with her head cocked to one side, listening intently in class. Ace watching TV on my couch. Ace naked under my old blue comforter. Ace giggling as I run my fingers gently up her spine. Ace laughing as she runs ahead on the trail.
Ace falling.
I see nothing more.
I only feel.
Pain. Searing. Wrenching. Gut-tearing. A cold hard band tightens mercilessly around my ribcage.
I can’t breathe.
I try to scream. To cry. To say I’ve had enough.
I make no sound, but here I am.
Ace again. Beside Jian on the hillside.
“What the hell was that?” I spit the words at him.
His voice is gentle.
“Not many can bear the pain of a broken heart.”
Jian reaches out again with that fleeting touch.
“It’s up to you, Alice. You can see him again.”
Hope floods into me – only to be dashed when I see the look in those deep eyes.
“There’s a part of him that wants to be here. With you. Say the word, Alice, and he can come. You can wait for him here.”
I know there’s a gigantic “but” coming.
“But.” Jian smiles slightly. Mirthlessly. “He’d have to leave this behind.”
And in a whirl of silver and sound and sense I’m him again.
Smiling at a short, brown-haired woman whose frizzy curls bounce as she runs along the beach.
Laughing at the whistle and squeak of the warm golden sand beneath our feet.
Curling up with her in the hammock at our beachside hut.
Reaching out for her. Feeling her warmth as she slides closer to me.
Whoa whoa whoa.
I’m not Cameron now. I’m Ace on the hillside and I’m more than a little pissed off. Even God can’t expect me to sit through this. And what the bloody hell is Cameron doing? I’ve only been dead – well, come to think of it, I don’t know how long.
Jian touches me gently on the cheek with one finger.
“Six months.”
He touches my other cheek.
“It isn’t happening yet, Alice. He hasn’t even met her. He doesn’t ever have to.”
He can come to me instead.
The thought is there before I can stop it.
Jian nods, slowly.
“He can if you truly want him to.”
I look away from Jian.
Without his guidance, I see it. The diamond ring and white dress and packed church. Her glowing skin and growing body and the small perfect girl-child who emerges blinking into the world. Chubby hands and skinned knees and math homework. First date and first broken heart and first real love. The next diamond, the next white dress, the next packed church.
And Cameron’s smile.
A lifetime of Cameron’s smiles.
I turn and look into Jian’s watchful eyes.
Slowly, I shake my head.
A smile lights his face, and Jian reaches out for me.
“Then come, Alice.”
I feel myself wrapped in a warm embrace, and the mountain vista starts to dissolve, like the fade-to-black of an old movie.
“But where –”
A warm finger touches my lips, and we’re on our way.