THE THINGS THAT ARE | Max Szredni

He waits until the highway to ask how the MRI went. 

 She tells him it was loud. Loud and strange. “Results still pending,” she says.

 “Why was it strange?” 

 She studies the bandage on her forearm. Daily moisturizer and collagen, yet still she tore like tissue paper when she caught a crinkle on her dresser last week. “The musicality,” she says. “First it sounded like a piano. Then it sounded like a cello. Then it sounded like that music kids listen to nowadays. With all the drums and robot sounds.”

 “EDM?”

 “Perhaps.”

 Surrey, Langley, Abbotsford, Chilliwack—they pass by each before she next speaks.

 “The oncologist told me about this treatment they use for persistent cases. It’s odd. Very odd.”

 “What is it?”

 “Tuberculosis.”

 “What?”

 “It’s tuberculosis. They put the bacteria in a solution, and you drink the solution.”

 “I don’t understand.”

 “That’s what I told the doctor. ‘Won’t I just get tuberculosis?’ I said. But he said the bacteria is ‘defanged.’ That was his word. ‘Defanged.’ He said it’s like a vaccine. Gets your immune system to recognize the bad cells. Eliminate them.”

 “Still doesn’t make sense.”

 “That’s what I told the doctor.”

 He rolls down his window to freshen the cab. To his left towers the Cheam Range of the Cascade Mountains, their peaks still snowy despite the late spring heat. His gaze twitches over the slopes, then he looks at the road again.

 “Sounds promising,” he says.

 “Yes,” she says. “That’s what I told the doctor.”

He turns onto a dirt road, and a moment later they are surrounded by eczematous pine and shimmering aspen. He drives them to a river, then, slowly, he pilots them across the channel, onto another dirt road. Branches slap the truck’s windshield and stones crackle under the wheels and twice he has to leave the truck to haul aside fallen pines. Soon the road forks, and he veers down the right prong, until a cabin with a shingled roof comes into view. He rolls down the property’s driveway and parks in front of the porch. 

 He opens his door to the sound of crickets and purling riverwater. After a quick leg stretch, he clambers out of the truck and circles around the grille to open his mother’s door for her. He helps her down and tells her to go sit by the firepit, then he makes her a fire with the wood and newspaper stowed in the truck’s bed. While she minds the fire, he ferries their belongings to the porch and forms a cairn beside the door. Once he finishes erecting the cairn, he walks to the door and keys the knob’s keyhole.

 Something off though.

 Something different.

 With a wrench of his wrist, he locks the door. Then he twists the key to the left again, gauging the resistance. When the key can turn no more, he recentres it and feels out another twist. He repeats this sequence two more times before he finally opens the door. He scans the interior of the cabin. No dirt on the floor. No moved furniture. Nothing broken, nothing absent, nothing abused. He exhales, then begins to take their stuff inside. He unpacks her paints and leaves them on the kitchen table for her, and he lays her Atwood novel on the duvet of the downstairs bed. With a match, he ignites the kerosene lamp on the bedside table. He takes a second to admire its glow, then he heads out to the firepit with a bag of food—sausages, buns, ketchup, mayo, and mustard; a case of beer, a bottle of soda water. He lays the plunder between their chairs, and together they skewer the sausages and hold them over the fire. The starry sky magnetizes both their gazes. An air pocket pops in the fire, releasing a host of embers. The specks skitter merrily above their heads.

 He sips his beer, says, “I left the door unlocked.”

 “Which door?” she says.

 “Cabin door. Last time I was here, I left it unlocked.”

 “Anyone break in?” she says.

 “Don’t think so,” he says. “Just can’t believe I left it unlocked.”

 “It happens,” she says. She rotates her skewer. “You used to be such a forgetful kid. Remember your lunchbox? How I’d have to drive it to school?”

 “Yeah,” he says. “I remember.”

 A minute later, she takes her sausage out of the fire and inspects it. Then she clasps it with a bun and pulls it free of the skewer. She squirts skeins of ketchup and mustard over the meat. The hotdog fumes dangerously, but still she takes a bite. Through open-mouthed chews, she says, “You’re worried about your memory?”

 He opens his mouth. Closes it. Sips his beer.

 “It’s normal,” she says. “After fifty, it’s normal to forget.”

 He sips his beer again. “Dad didn’t even recognize me by the end.”

 “No,” she says. “But he still loved you.”

 “How can you love someone if you don’t remember them?”

 She shrugs. “How can tuberculosis cure cancer?”

 “Don’t say that word. I’ve asked you a hundred times not to say that word.”

 “Sorry,” she says. “You’re right. I’m sorry, hon.”

 With a tick of his wrist, he removes his sausage from the blaze and lays it on a bun. He squirts a thread of mayo over its length. While it smokes in his hand, he finishes his beer and extracts another from the case. He pulls open the tab and slurps at the foam. Then he bites into the hotdog. He chews, swallows, says, “I met someone new.” 

 She sips her soda water. 

 “Her name’s Gloria.”

 She looks up at the stars. “Pretty name.”

 “Yeah. Pretty. And she has a son.”

 “What’s he like?”

 “Hard to say. I haven’t met him yet. But she says he’s a good kid. Wild but good.”

 “Maybe I’ll meet him some day.”

 “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.” He bites into his hotdog again and washes the bolus down with a swig of beer. “What do you think of the sausages? Gloria recommended the butcher.”

 “They’ve got a lot of fennel in them.”

 “Yeah,” he says. “Too much fennel.”

In the morning, they stand at the edge of the deck and empty their piss buckets together. His pours in a flaxen cascade; hers pours pink-red. He offers to walk her bucket down to the river to rinse it for her, but she says she can walk. She says she feels fine. She says the morning is beautiful and that she’d like to walk to the river. So together they walk to the river and rinse their buckets. Then they head back to the cabin.

 After he returns his bucket to his bedside, he attaches a propane tank to the stove and cooks them up a breakfast of fried banana, tomato, and eggs—sunny-side-up for him, over-easy for her. While he cooks, she goes outside with a cloth and wipes the dew off a pair of plastic chairs. She sits on one of them and watches the forest. He watches her watch the forest, then he plates her food and carries it outside to her, along with a cup of mango juice. He returns to the kitchen to retrieve his own plate. On his way back out, he grabs a beer.

 When he returns to the deck, she points at the trees. “Look,” she says.

 He looks. On the far side of road, a doe and a fawn traipse through a pine stand, heading for the salt lick he set up earlier in the year.

 He places his plate on his lap and cracks open his beer. The sound startles the deer, but they don’t run away. He sips his beer, and she sips her mango juice, and together they watch the deer tongue the salt. Then the deer wander away, and they eat their breakfast. After they finish eating, she brings her paints outside. She stands her easel on the side of the deck that faces the meadow. Speckled throughout the meadow are patches of lupine, columbine, paintbrush, and yarrow, and along the south border are clusters of beardtongue and fireweed. 

 “A painter’s paradise,” he says to her.

 “Yes,” she says. “Paradise.”

 He sips his beer and watches her paint—sips and sips until his can is empty. He casts the dregs off the porch and says, “I’m going to take a nap, okay?”

 “Okay.”

 “Are you comfortable?”

 “I’m okay.”

 “Do you need anything?”

 “I’m okay.”

 “If the whisky jacks come, you can feed them out of your hand. There are raisins in the pantry. You can feed them the raisins right out of your hand.”

 “Okay.”

 “You’re okay?”

 “Yes,” she says. “I’m okay. Now go and rest.”

In bed, he conjures and catalogues memories. The names and faces of old friends. His father’s voice. His sister’s laugh. The gait of the family dachshund. The texture of the jello his mother used to make. Then his memories melt into dreams: an orchestra, a swamp, a bed of clay, his body buried to the neck, a pair of forceps clamping his temples. Tighter and tighter the forceps squeeze, until it feels as if his skull’s about to shatter. Then a voice calls out his name and the forceps vanish.

 He opens his eyes to the sight of his mother pointing a shotgun at him.

 “Darling,” his mother says, “how do you load this thing?”

 He bats aside the gun’s barrel. “Mum,” he says. “You shouldn’t be playing around with that.”

 “I’m not playing. I’m loading.”

 “Mum, please put the gun down.”

 “Just show me.”

 He knuckles the sleep from his eyes, squinches them tight, then opens them again. “You want to load the gun?”

 “Yes.”

 “Have you tried already?”

 “Yes.”

 “Are there shells in there now?”

 “No,” she says. “That’s why I woke you up.”

 “You woke me up because you want to shoot the gun?” he says.

 “Yes,” she says. “But I need to load it first. Or is that not the order of operations?”

 “That’s the order,” he says. “But why do you want to shoot the gun?”

 “Because I’ve never shot one before.”

 He takes a deep breath and smells a familiar odour. “Mum,” he says. “Have you been toking?”

 She blinks. “I found a few of your marijuana cigarettes in the box by the furnace.”

 “They’re called joints.”

 “Yes,” she says. “Well, whatever they’re called, I don’t much like the taste. I put it out after a few puffs.”

 “Are you high?”

 “Hard to tell with the painkillers I’m on,” She looks down at the shotgun. “Are you going to teach me how to shoot this thing or not?”

 “You’re still in your nightie.” 

 “If I change out of my nightie, will you teach me?”

 He examines her gaunt cheeks, her inky eyes, the mottled wrinkles piled under the nimbus of her perm. “Alright,” he says. “I’ll teach you. But not with the shotgun, okay? The kick will break your arm. We’ll use the .22 instead.”

 “Deal,” she says. Then she hands him the shotgun and plods downstairs.

They meet on the deck. In her hands is a bag of empty cans, and in his hands are the .22, a box of ammunition, earplugs, and safety glasses. At the edge of the deck, the meadow painting stands unfinished. Near the top of the portrait, a stickman rides a dragonfly, and at the bottom, a gnome smokes a pipe at the base of a tree.

 “How long was I out?” he says.

 “Hours.”

 Together they amble to the meadow. In the middle of the meadow, a fallen pine lies on its side. He lines the cans up on the trunk, then says, “Take fifteen steps back. That’ll be the line of fire.”

 “Just fifteen?”

 “Just fifteen.”

 She steps back fifteen paces and toes a line into the dirt. He joins her at the line, hands her the rifle, and talks her through the loading process. With his help, she ejects the magazine, thumbs in ten rounds, then reinserts the clip. He tells her to keep the safety on and to keep her finger off the trigger and to never point the rifle at a person.

 “Like I did when I woke you up?”

 “Yes,” he says. “Never ever do that.”

 “Heard,” she says. “What now?”

 He shows her how to draw back the breech bolt. She tugs on it, lets it slide forward. “What does that do?” she says.

 “Chambers the round.”

 “Meaning?”

 “It’s ready to fire. Also, remember what I said about pointing the gun at people.”

 “I’m not.”

 “My foot.”

 “Oh,” she says. “Right. Sorry.” She points the gun at an anthill, and he hands her a pair of safety glasses and earplugs. Then he shows her how to line the sights. She can only keep the gun aloft for a few seconds at a time. Following her third attempt to hold it steady, she grunts and shakes her head. “Why’s it so heavy?”

 “That’s just how guns are,” he says. “Ready to take the safety off?”

 “I suppose,” she says. With her forefinger, she punches in the safety, then she drops onto one knee and aims at the log. She sights, sighs, mashes the trigger. The .22’s crack echoes through the valley, causing them both to flinch.

 “My word,” she says. She sets down the butt of the rifle and studies the cans. “Was I close?” she says.

 “No. Take a step in and try again.”

 Her next shot misses too, as does her next, and her next. Each time she misses he has her step forward. “Pathetic,” she says after her ninth bungled shot.

 “It’s your first time.”

 “Still pathetic.” She raises the rifle, attempts to aim again. The barrel drifts in circles. No matter how she breathes or repositions herself, she can’t stop making circles. She lowers the gun and says, “I feel like if I miss, something bad will happen. I don’t know why, but I feel that way.”

 “That’s just your mind,” he says. “That’s all that is.”

 She glances at him, then takes five steps forward. She holds up the rifle so that the barrel is within an inch of the middlemost can. She closes an eye, caresses the trigger. Then she bites her lip, takes her finger off the trigger, and switches on the safety. “Today’s not the day for this,” she says. “Today’s not a day for shooting things.”

 “Alright,” he says. “We can try again tomorrow if you want.” He collects the gun from her and ejects the last round. 

 “May I see?” she says.

 He passes her the round, and she rolls its brass casing between her thumb and forefinger. 

She says. “Why don’t you take this one home? As a keepsake?”

 “Sure,” he says. “A keepsake. I’ll put it on my mantle.”

 He holds out his hand and softens his palm into a bowl. She holds the round over his flesh, then lets it drop from her fingertips.

Max Szredni is a Vancouver, British Columbia–based writer and small business owner working in the holistic health and wellness field. He graduated from the University of Victoria in 2019, where he studied psychology and fiction. Outside of writing, his passions include breathwork, hiking, athletics and travel.

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