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Live Ones
by Katia Grubisic

"Why don't you come in summertime," they said to me. Year after year, as soon as the snow melted and I made my dutiful birthday phone call home, "why don't you come in the summer?" I had excellent excuses to stay in the city and continue to renounce my grimy, shameful heritage. Summer courses, house-sitting for a friend, no time off work...

A weight sits on my chest now, made of guilt, and restrained tears, and trying for so long to disown my family. And now my little brother on his deathbed, and home I go. Six years erased in one letter, a mere twenty-three misspelled words. I didn't even know he had leukemia.

Alain is my half-brother, to be exact. He lived with his mother for most of my life. I reason with my culpability; we never grew up together, we were never really siblings.

The drive through the Muskoka region is gorgeous. The sun crashes through the open window, warming a patch of skin on my bare leg. Golden fields of wheat whisper frantically, almost ready for harvest. Lone trees stand sentinel in the middle of pastures, ostensibly to protect animals from summer's pounding heat. In the lazy serenity of Indian summer in this tentative wilderness, I can feel the familiar quiet seeping into me. What once seemed like resignation might only be freedom.

I can almost shrug off my now-cancelled Labour Day trip to Cancun, a long-anticipated girls-only vacation. All the more needed now, I muse, that Marcus has just dumped me. Asshole - it would serve him right to see me return from a week in the sun with a margarita in one hand and some nineteen year old bronzed cabin boy in the other. I'm sure he'd be equally impressed by the cow shit on my shoes and "funny that way" cousin Patrick.

Maybe I'll just stay out forever, give in to the impossible boredom, crocheting and baby making that are my genetic destiny. Or, buy myself a small house, become a lonely cat lady, mucking about in clay and oil paints, spurring on neighbourhood children's rumours of my insanity. Eccentricity would be a welcome change, sometimes, from the high heels, carefully maintained image, eighty dollar haircuts and fourteenth floor office. But, no, I know what life is like out here, and I know I cannot bear the apathy and numbness.

The peace might be nice, though.

My car lurches on towards that farmhouse I remember, on that bumpy muddy road. Puddles splash my white Honda brown and my cigarette is hanging out the window. The world is resplendent and that wonderful organic smell of manure pervades; I am heading home.

I leave highway eleven and turn off into a field, onto the snaky path through the forest, that looks like it might almost not be there. I was half-afraid I'd miss it, but apparently, my muscle memory still knows where to go. I light another cigarette. I haven't seen my brothers since I first left for university witha suitcase full of clothes and my Walkman on my head, six years ago. Returning is strange; I no longer know these people, they are not a part of who I have become, and I'd rather keep them at arm's length now.

The road is uncertain, uncleared and full of holes, maybe the footprints of that terrifying beast, memory. My car's shocks will be worn to nothing by the time I arrive. Worrying about such mechanical mundanities provides a useful distraction from my destination now that all the radio stations have gone fuzzy.

Trees rush past, trees I climbed as a kid, knocking out four baby teeth by jumping from a tall branch. After my days spent climbing, roaming and gathering neat things, I tracked mud though our living room, over the threadbare green carpet that chafed my elbow when I plopped down in front of the television.

The little foldout card tables are probably still stacked in the corner. I smile involuntarily, thinking of the treat of Kraft dinner nights, courtesy of my cuisine-illiterate father, spent crouched together watching Guinness records shows, a bottle of ketchup passed around and tapped by each of us in turn. "I seen this one, " I recall my father saying, "where they had this one kid who balanced stoves on his chin, and he just kept goin' 'I can do a jeep, too,' and the whole time he's got this stove on his face just balanced there. I think he held it up for twelve seconds before the thing fell over."

You could never tell what my dad would get a kick out of. His favourite jokes were overtold *ad nauseam*. "How does a Newfie spell 'farm'?" "I don't know; how?" "E-I-E-I-O!" And raucous laughter followed, while the three of us groaned.

My aunt's Buick is parked out under the trees. She never could back out of our driveway. In two minutes, I will see the white wood peaked roof above my bedroom window. As the girl, I got the good room. As the girl...

I pass the pit where we played marbles, and the long-empty doghouse. I hadn't expected my heart to be pounding quite this hard.

After he lost his eye and his sense of humour, my father's days were spent on the couch, vacuous, eating constantly. He watched everyting but *Oprah* - "*They*'re no good, and here she is tellin' me how to live my life" - but he was especially fascinated by those Guinness world record tales of ludicrous superhuman achievement. "Leigh, c'm'ere, check this out. This is awful. This guy's swallowing live goldfish! He just opens his mouth and pops them in. That ain't courage he's got, nor strength, sweetie, you remember that." My father heaved himself over, sofa creaking, and looked at me intently. His bad eye rolled. Frightened and repulsed, I turned away. "That's just mean, those are live ones, live livin' creatures. This guy's just a cheap mean freak show. You watch and you know, Leigh, that he's not got guts. Live ones..."

I pull my keys out of the ignition and remain unmoving, hardly breathing. The backs of my legs are stuck to the vinyl seat, and I imagine the thin membrane of my lungs adhering to my insides.

The house looks utterly dilapidated, the wood unpainted, the veranda overgrown with weeds. Plastic and rubbish and bicycle parts litter the yard, labels of poverty, weakness, lack.

I can't possibly belong here. This is not my home. I live in a bustling metropolis, I shop for expensive perfume and suede shoes in brightly lit department stores near my cleverly decorated apartment. I ride in elevators and subways, striding down concrete streets, in pace with the crowd. On weekends, I follow friends to nonchalant bars where we laugh together, loudly, over mixed drinks, and we move steadily on into comfortable, predictable existence. And yet, that clutter is not home either.

My shaking hands shoved into my pockets, I climb the rotting staircase and hesitate before the doorbell. Am I allowed to just walk in? Am I a guest, a prodigal daughter, an orphan? I nudge the storm door with my running shoe. It opens with a creak, and still I hold my breath.