The Withdrawal Method

THE PAST COMPOSED

IN THE END, all the ruckus seems to be about a boy up Judy's tree. I stand there at the bottom, his backpack in my hand, looking up through leaves just starting to bleed the reds and browns of autumn. He's right near the top, this boy — a dark silhouette against the late afternoon sunlight, perched on a branch, shaking, terrified. Inside the house Judy's dogs are still going crazy.

"Hey there," I say, squinting.

"A squirrel chased me up here. I think it had rabies."

"Was it frothing at the mouth?"

"Frothing?"

"Yeah, like with foam coming out of its mouth."

The boy says nothing. The dogs have stopped barking, and the only sound is the dull, faraway hiss and hum of the city.

"You want to come down? I don't see any squirrels around."

He considers for a moment, evaluating the situation — or me, maybe. Then he swings down effortlessly, monkey-like, and lands with a dull thump on the lawn. His clothes seem to belong to someone years older: a Lacoste golf shirt and beige safari shorts, with a pair of blue socks pulled tightly up to his knees.

"All right?" I ask, and hand him his backpack. He's a funny little man, maybe eight or nine. There's something familiar, and vaguely cunning, about his face.

The boy stands there, scanning the front lawn, nervous. I look around too, then up at Judy's house, where I notice, wedged between a pink triangle and a MIDWIVES DELIVER! sticker, the Block Parent sign in the window.

"Oh," I say. "I'm Les. Do you want to come in?"

The boy eyes me, then the house. Eventually he nods and replies, "Okay."

I lead him inside, where the dogs greet us with an inquisitive sniff before letting us through to the kitchen. The boy edges by them, saying, "Good dogs," a gleam of terror in his eyes. I pour him a glass of milk and we both sit down at Judy's tiny kitchen table.

"Next time you get a squirrel after you," I say, "probably best not to go up a tree."

"I came to the door first, but there was no answer."

His glass of milk sits untouched on the chipped Formica tabletop. "You got a name?"

"Pico," he tells me, kicking at the chair with his heels. "Are you even a Block Parent?"

"No, no. That's the lady who owns the house. My sister, Judy."

"So who are you?"

"I live back there." I point out through the kitchen window at the shed in the backyard.

"What?" Pico snorts. "In that thing?"

I tap his glass with my fingernail. "Drink your milk, Pico."

BY THE TIME Judy gets home I am making dinner and Pico has left. He thanked me for the milk, then headed off down the street.

Judy appears in the kitchen, the dogs snuffling eagerly behind her. She slings her purse onto the table and sits down. "Fuck," she sighs. The dogs settle at her feet.

"I've got ratatouille happening here, Jude, and there's tabbouleh salad in the fridge."

"No meat? Pas de viande?" Judy, bless her, is trying to learn French.

"Sorry."

"Christ, Les," she huffs. "You're starting to make me feel like one of those crazy vegan dykes — living on nuts and fruits and berries like a goddamn squirrel."

I laugh and tell her about Pico.

"Pico? What is he, a Brazilian soccer player?"

"No," I say, stirring the ratatouille, recalling the boy's face. "He looks more like a mini-Richard Nixon."

Judy points at the classified ads I've left on the table.

"Any luck?" she asks.

"Nothing yet."

"Not that I want you gone. I mean, you're welcome here as long as you need to stay."

"I know, Jude," I tell her, sprinkling some salt into the pot. "Thanks a lot."

After dinner I head out into the backyard and work until dusk. The table I'm redoing right now is some cheap pine thing I picked up for forty dollars at a garage sale. But with the right stain, corners rounded off, and a good number of chips whittled out of the legs, it'll go for close to a grand in one of the antique stores uptown. I can just imagine some family huddled around it for supper — Mom in her apron doling out fat slices of meatloaf, Dad asking the kids about school, and this sturdy old table anchoring it all like the centrepiece to a Norman Rockwell painting.

Soon it's too dark to see much of anything, so I head inside my little cabin. Before I moved in at the end of the summer, Judy did a nice job fixing it up for me; she put down rugs and painted the wallpaper a quiet beige colour, even brought her fish tank out and set it up in the corner. It's an A-frame, this thing. Like a tent. At first it seemed claustrophobic, but it's turned out pretty cozy.

The fish are good to watch. There are three of them, all the same species, although what that would be, I have no idea. But there's something soothing about them, these shimmering, fluttering things, all silver glitter in the light of the tank.

We always talked about getting a cat, Rachel and me. But we figured we'd try fish first, and if they didn't die right away we'd chance it with a cat. But less than two months after we moved in together, before we'd even had a chance to go fish shopping, Rachel got pregnant.

At first having a baby seemed too big, too adult, too far removed from the safe little niche we'd carved for ourselves. But once we got talking to Judy, started considering her as our midwife, things began to take shape and make sense. At night, in bed together, Rachel and I would lie with our hands on her belly, talking about the future, how one day we'd look back on our apprehension and laugh. But I guess everyone constructs, at some point, these perfect versions of how things are going to be.

A WEEK OR so later I'm in the backyard, down on my knees sanding the table legs, and Pico appears at the gate.

"Hola, Pico," I holler. "Come on in."

Pico reaches over the fence, flips the latch, and moves across the yard toward me, plucking an old seed dandelion from the grass on his way. Today is chillier; he's in a mauve turtleneck and a pair of pleated jeans. Pico leans up against the table, twirling the dandelion in his fingers. He lifts it to his mouth, sucks in a great mouthful of breath, and blows. The grey fluff catches a breeze and lifts scattering into the sky.

"Nice one," I say.

"How come dandelions aren't flowers?" Pico twirls the decapitated plant between his thumb and forefinger, then flicks it at the ground.

"Because they're weeds, Pico."

"But they look like flowers. When they're yellow."

"Well, that's their trick."

"Yeah?"

"Sure. They pretend to be flowers so you keep them around. But they're weeds."

"They look like flowers to me," says Pico, as if this settles it.

He starts walking around the table, running his fingers along the wood. Before I can warn him about splinters, he yelps and springs back like something's bitten him, his hand to his lips. Right away, I'm up, beside him. "You've got to watch that, Pico."

"Ouch," he says, wincing.

I guide him into the shed, where he sits down on the bed. I find some tweezers, and Pico puts his hand out, palm up, quivering.

I smile, the tweezers poised. "Trust me?"

Pico nods. I raise his hand up to the light, and there it is — a black grain of wood lodged into the skin. I slide the tweezers up to it, clamp down, and pull the splinter free. Pico bucks and yanks his hand away. But after a moment, he examines his finger and looks up at me in awe.

"Nothing to it," I tell him. But Pico has already turned his attention to my fish, the splinter apparently forgotten. He sits on my bed, regarding them with vague interest.

"Cool, huh?"

"Great," says Pico.

I struggle to think of some interesting fish fact, something remarkable and fascinating.

Pico beats me to it: "Did you know fish only have memories for five seconds?"

"Huh. I had no idea."

"They forget their whole lives every five seconds — then it's like they're new fish again."

"Or they think they are."

Pico gives me a funny look. "How come you're the only Block Parent on this street?"

"I'm not — really?"

"Yep. I went around looking for signs, and you're the only one."

"It's because we're the nicest."

"Can I feed your fish?" Pico asks, standing up.

"Sure." We trade places, and I settle into the groove he's left in my bedcovers. "The food's just there. But don't give them too much — "

Pico glances at me over his shoulder, already sprinkling the coloured flakes into the aquarium. "I know what I'm doing, Les."

On my bedside table is a deck of playing cards. I pick them up and try making a house, but the cards keep slipping off one another. Pico comes over, shaking his head.

"You've got to make triangles." He sits down beside me, takes two cards, and leans them against one another. He succeeds in building a few levels before the whole thing collapses.

"Hey, want to see a trick?" I ask.

"A card trick?"

"Sure. Just pick a card and tell me what pile it's in."

This is the only card trick I know, and it's a simple one: after three times through the same routine, the person's card is always the eleventh out of the pile. But I choose it with a flourish, throwing the cards around the room, and then walking around as if confused before pulling the right one up off the floor.

Pico claps. "Again," he commands. "Again!"

"Nope. Magicians never do the same trick twice in a row."

"Oh, come on."

"Sorry. Maybe some other time, Pico."

Pico looks at me carefully. "The kids at school call me PeePee-Co, sometimes."

"That doesn't even make sense," I say. Here I am, sitting with this boy on my bed, this odd little fellow with the face of a diabolical American president. "You want to stay for dinner?"

Pico considers, tilting his head toward some indefinite place on the ceiling. "I'll have to call my nana," he says, nodding. "But I think it might be a good idea."

JUDY COMES HOME to Pico sitting on the floor of the kitchen, talking to the dogs. I've got a veggie moussaka in the oven, tomato and tarragon soup simmering on the stove, and a spinach salad tossed and ready for dressing on the counter.

"More bird food?" says Judy. She stoops down to greet Pico and his canine companions. "You must be Pico."

Pico looks up and grins. "I'm staying for dinner."

"Oh, you are now." Judy turns to me. "Did you check with his mom?"

"His nana," I tell her. But then I realize I haven't. I had stayed in the kitchen while Pico made the call from Judy's bedroom. Pico and I exchange a quick look, and then I turn to Judy. "I'm sure it's fine."

"She knows you're Block Parents," says Pico.

Judy shrugs, steps over Pico, and opens the fridge. "Don't we have any beer?"

"Beer?" I squeeze a wedge of lemon into a glass jar, add some olive oil, salt, pepper.

She slams the fridge door shut and then leans up against it. "What a day. I spend half my week wrist-deep in vaginas — you'd think I've got the best job in the world."

I frown and nod my head in the direction of Pico, but he seems oblivious, totally absorbed with trying to get the already prostrate dogs to lie down.

"Oh, shoot," she says, snorting. "Would you believe I've got another couple who are burying their placenta? Although at least these two aren't eating it. Man, these people. You'd think they'd just be happy if their kid comes out all right, it's not — "

She catches herself.

"Oh, fuck. Les — I'm sorry."

The room has changed. Even Pico is quiet. I shake up the jar of oil and lemon juice. I shake it, I keep shaking it, I stare out the window and I shake the jar, and all I can hear is the wet sound of the dressing sloshing around.

Judy is beside me. She has her hand on my arm. I stop.

"It's okay," I tell her.

"It's okay," she tells me.

We finish dinner by seven o'clock, so Judy and I ask Pico if he wants to come along while we take the dogs out for their evening walk. Before we ate, Judy had decided Pico needed to know I had a lisp when I was a kid, and he kept my sister in hysterics, calling me "Leth" and "Lethy" for the better part of the meal.

Everyone helps clear the table, and then we collect the dogs and head down to the creek behind Judy's house. We call it the creek, but it's basically dried up, just a gentle dribble through the ravine. The dogs love it, though; we let them off their leads and they go bounding and snarling into the woods.

The sun is just setting as the three of us make our way down along the path into the ravine. Judy's brought a flashlight, but she keeps it in her coat. "It's for when they poop," she tells Pico, and shows him the fistful of plastic bags in her pocket. His eyes widen.

Under the canopy of trees overhead, the light down here is dim — almost as if the ravine is hours ahead of the sunset. We unleash the dogs, who bolt, disappearing into the gloom. Judy and Pico follow them, but I move the other way, climbing over a mound of roots and earth, arriving in the dried-up creekbed. I kneel down, put my hand out, and I'm startled to feel water, icy and streaming urgently over my fingertips. But then I realize I can hear it, I probably could have all along — the happy, burbling sound of it barely above a whisper. I close my eyes, listening, my hand dangling in the thread of river.

Rachel and I went to an art exhibit once on one of our trips into the city. There was this room that you went into, and it was dark, totally black. When you entered, a single lightbulb turned on and lit up the room. And in this light you saw, written on one of the walls, text about guillotined criminals who were found to be able to communicate after their heads had been chopped off. Then, right as you read the last word, the lightbulb turned off, leaving you in darkness.

As we were coming out of the room, Rachel took my hand and whispered, "Man, that was spooky."

"Yeah," I said, but later I realized she was only talking about being left in the dark.

Out of the woods, one of the dogs comes trotting up to me and nuzzles its nose into my hand, then starts lapping at the creek. I smack its muscled haunches and the tail starts pumping. Judy and Pico are close, moving through the trees, their voices muffled. Then Pico starts calling, "Leth-eee! Leth- eee!" and Judy gets into it too, their voices ringing out in chorus. Judy turns on her flashlight — it swings through the darkness, sweeping the forest in a fat, white band. I hunker down, my arm around the dog, and wait for them to find me.

AUTUMN HAS FULLY arrived, the smoky, dusty smell of it thick in the air. The leaves are starting to fall, and in the mornings my breath appears in clouds as I putter around the backyard. I figure I'll get a space heater for the cabin once it gets really cold, but the big problem is that I don't know how much longer I'll be able to work outside. I had an indoor workshop at the old house, back when carpentry was only a hobby. It was odd moving, clearing out that room — with all my tools missing it became just an empty space in the basement, smelling vaguely of sawdust and leather. I'm sure Rachel's since turned it into the darkroom she used to talk about.

I don't see Pico for more than a week. Then one afternoon I'm out in the front yard doing the first rake of the season, and he wheels up on a bicycle.

"Les!" he yells. "Look at the bike my nana bought me."

He does a wobbly circle on the street. The bike is a throwback to a time well before Pico's birth — tassels dangle from the handlebars, and the seat curves up into a towering steel backrest. I give Pico the thumbs-up.

With some minor difficulties Pico dismounts, lowering the bike gingerly onto Judy's lawn. Today he is wearing a pink K-Way jacket about two sizes too big for him, blue sweatpants, and a pair of rubber boots. He runs up to me, and we both stand there for a minute, silent, breathing in the crisp autumn air.

"I'm not scared of squirrels any more," he says.

"Yeah?"

"I'm doing my science project on them. They bury their nuts in the fall, and then they find them later because they rub their feet on them and make them smell."

"Is that how it works?"

"Yep. People think they remember where they put them, but they don't. It's just the smell of their stinky feet." Pico starts giggling.

"Isn't that something else."

"You never showed me that card trick again."

"Help me bag these leaves, then we'll go in and I'll do it. But this is the last time."

In a drawer in the kitchen I find a pack of cards, and I deal them out on the table. Pico, eyes narrowed to slits, scrupulously watches my hands. Then I do my big theatrical bit at the end where the cards get tossed all over the room. I walk around for a few seconds in feigned indecision before snatching Pico's queen of spades off the floor.

"I saw you counting."

"No, way! This is a magic trick, it's all — "

"You counted the cards, Les, and mine was number eleven."

Pico gets down off his chair and silently collects all the cards scattered around the kitchen. I follow his lead and start to clear the table. "Well, now you know the trick at least."

Pico picks up the last card and hands me the deck, his face solemn. "Thanks, Les," he says. "I have to go home now."

And that's it. Pico abandons me in the kitchen. The front door wheezes open and a cool breeze floods into the kitchen, briefly, before the door slams closed. The house is silent. I look out through the kitchen window at the dining table sitting half refinished in the backyard.

I head back there intending to do some work, but I can't figure out where to start. After hovering around the table for a while, I rearrange my tools, then head inside my cabin, and, leaving the light off, lie down on the bed. I look over at the fish, their aquarium glowing blue in the darkened room. Five seconds of memory. A lifetime composed of these five-second instalments, just flashes of existence, only to have them vanish, recede mercifully from you like an accident you'd drive by at night on a highway.

TWO WEEKS LATER, autumn is in full swing. Every morning I wake up to a backyard buried in leaves, which I dutifully clear away before starting my day's work. By the end of the afternoon the grass is already disappearing again, the lawn just green scraps under a patchy brown cover. I've finished the dining table with one last coat of mahogany stain; I'm keeping it under a tarp out back until I find a buyer. It looks about a hundred years older than it actually is.

Judy has convinced me to go to this thing with her this afternoon — that weird hippie couple intent on burying their baby's placenta. Judy, the deliverer of the baby, is the honorary guest. Last weekend we were down at the creek with the dogs and she told me all about it.

"I'd really like you to be there," Judy said. She sat down on an old mossy log and looked up at me. Nearby, the dogs were chasing each other through the trees, the patter of paws on fallen leaves fading as they ran farther and farther away.

"Who are these people?"

"Les, come on. You used to deal with parents like this all the time — you know, the kind that think they're bringing up their kids creatively but are just breeding weirdos? They're fun."

"Jude, I don't know."

"Think about it," she said.

When we got home I went right out into the backyard and sat down at the head of the dining table, the tarp ruffling in the wind. Judy stood at the kitchen window watching me. For a moment we locked eyes, and then she pulled away.

I'VE DECIDED TO wear a suit, a starchy navy thing I used to pull out for meetings or home visits back in my days of social work. In the cabin, I struggle to knot my tie, then head out to the front of the house to wait for my sister. A chill in the air hints at winter; the street is quiet, and still. The neighbours have their Halloween decorations up: front porches are framed with orange and black streamers, cardboard cutouts of witches and ghosts perch on lawns. Daylight is just starting to drain from the sky.

Some kid is weaving down the street on a bicycle, tracing these slow, arching parabolas from one curb to the other. The kid comes closer, closer — and then I recognize the bike, that retro frame, those tasselled handlebars, the banana seat. The pink jacket. And a gorilla mask.

"Hey!" I yell.

The kid slams on the brakes and looks over at me. The mask comes off, and underneath is the face of a girl. She's probably twelve, and Asian — maybe Vietnamese, maybe Cambodian.

"Hi," she says.

I walk over to her. My tie is choking me.

"Cool bike."

"It's from the centre," says the girl. "It's old. It's only a onespeed."

"The centre? You mean the Laughlin Centre?"

"It's the only bike they have."

"They got a bike."

"Yeah."

I point up to the sign in the window of Judy's house. "We're Block Parents, so if you ever get into any trouble…"

The girl is giving me a look that says, Can I go now?

I tell her to ride safe.

IN JUDY'S CAR we listen to one of her French-language tapes. She practises her verbs along with the voice on the tape while she drives.

"J'ai eu, to as eu, it a eu, elle a eu," says Judy, and so forth. I sit staring out the window, playing absently with the power lock. "Try it, Les," Judy encourages me.

"J'ai! Eu!"

Judy grins. "Bravo, monsieur."

The woman on the tape continues to chatter away, but Judy seems to have lost interest. We pull up to a red light and sit idling while cars stream by in front of us. Out of nowhere, Judy does one of her snort-laughs. She covers her mouth with her hand, eyes twinkling.

"What's up?"

"I just remembered how when you were a kid, you used to tell Mom's friends that you could remember being born."

"What? Never."

"Yeah, always. You'd describe it to them and everything."

"Shut up." I'm laughing now too.

"Christ, Les. You were such an odd little guy."

We drive for a while in silence, then pull up in front of a grand old house, the front yard full of people. Judy cuts the engine and pats my knee. "Ready to bury some placenta?"

"Yep," I say, and we high-five.

Judy straightens her skirt. "Seriously, though — make me laugh and I'll kill you."

Not only am I the only guest wearing a suit, but there is a couple in matching muumuus and a woman with an owl perched on her shoulder. Music starts up, and everyone shuffles around until they've formed a delta with an open space in the middle. Judy and I retreat behind a tree. I look up through branches scrawling black and empty into the grey October sky.

The mother and father appear from somewhere, the mother carrying her newborn, the father toting a platter with what looks like a lump of meat heaped onto it. The placenta.

"Holy shit," I whisper, nudging my sister. "That thing's enormous."

Judy, the corners of her mouth twitching, does her best to ignore me.

The parents move into the empty space in the middle of everyone, where a sort of grave has been dug in the garden. Dirt lies heaped up around the hole in brown piles.

The mother steps forward and begins talking. I don't hear what she says. I am thinking, suddenly, of Pico, and considering what the three of us — me, Judy, and Pico — would look like together in this context. Maybe people would mistake us for a family. Sure: a father and mother, friends of the happy couple, and little Pico, who we might have brought on the way to his soccer game. We'd drive him there in our minivan, go sit with the other happy, proud parents along the sideline. Afterwards everyone would go out for ice cream; plans would be made for sleepovers and birthday parties and summer camps.

I look over at my sister and her expression has changed. She seems focused, solemn. There is applause, and Judy steps forward. She waves, then reaches back and, grabbing my hand, drags me up with her. The parents take turns embracing us. When the mother wraps her free arm around me, the baby, resting its head on her shoulder, regards me across her back: it's like we're sharing a secret.

The father lowers the platter into the hollow and hands Judy a small shovel. She casts me a quick glance over her shoulder, then steps forward and stabs the blade into the earth with a crisp, dry sound. Everyone is silent. Judy lifts a shovelful of dirt and sprinkles it over the placenta, the pattering sound of it landing below like the footsteps of a hundred tiny feet.

WHEN THE CEREMONY is over, after the placenta is buried and the last spade of earth patted down, we are all invited inside for a reception. Judy seems to know everyone. She introduces me to countless midwives and clients and former teachers, all of them wanting to know what I do for a living. At one point, I corner my sister and tell her I've had enough.

"Christ, I can't leave now," she whispers. "Can you stick it out for another half-hour?"

"I'll walk — it's nice today."

She looks at me with this weird, sad smile. "Thanks for coming, Les."

"Sure."

With that I leave my sister, I leave the party, I leave them all behind and make my way outside. An earthy smell hangs in the air and, beyond it, something cold and sharp and distant. On the front steps of the house, I survey the empty front yard. A squirrel sits in the branches of one of the trees; just as I notice it, the animal springs to life. It scrabbles down the trunk, lunges, and lands silently on the grass. An acorn appears from its mouth. The tiny paws claw at the earth, then stuff the nut into the ground. The squirrel straightens up. It turns, staring in my direction from two black buttons in its face.

Something twitches inside me, and I have to grab the railing to steady myself. I inhale, closing my eyes, and count five seconds while my breath drains into the autumn dusk. When I open my eyes the squirrel has disappeared. The neighbourhood is silent, washed in dusty twilight. I let go of the railing and step down, one stair, then the next, and begin the walk home.