The Book of Stanley Read Online Free

Diggers , the dance number. And all this talking.”
    â€œAll what talking?” Frieda, who faced the rear of the bus, shook her head.
    Stanley turned to behold the babbling riders. It was clear by their eyes and their expressions, all the apologies and hopes and hymns and ordinary wonderings, that these people were speaking. “If she doesn’t, fine, I don’t either,” said a man in an Oilers cap, as he tapped his index finger on the window. “ Necessito ir a la izquierda ,” said a girl with bad skin. The singer was a large woman with a stretched plastic Safeway bag full of mittens. Her voice rose but her lips did not move.
    No one’s lips moved, yet no one on the bus was silent.
    Â 
    We’re in the money, the skies are sunny,
    Old man Depression, you are through,
    you done us wrong.

 
    FOUR
    I n the rotunda of the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a pianist played a Chopin nocturne. The man wore a black suit with a white shirt opened at the neck, and closed his eyes inmock-ecstasy when he stroked the high keys. On the mezza-nine, several patients sat or stood and listened. The very young and very old, thin and stricken, sat quietly and reverently in wheelchairs, their wrists attached to saline bags.
    One woman in a red spring dress and black cardigan stared at the pianist through thick glasses. An elderly gentleman, her father, shivered in a wheelchair. She held his hand as she watched. With her other hand, the woman pushed her glasses into place. She wondered whether the pianist’s choice of music was appropriate in the daytime. This was the sort of music the woman in the red spring dress wanted the pianist to play at night, in her apartment, as she sipped wine and schemed to unbutton his crisp white shirt.
    As he continued past the woman and toward the elevator, Stanley endeavoured to shut off his ability to listen. He heard everyone in sight, the patients and doctors and nurses and janitors, all but Frieda. The empty elevator, finally, was silent.
    â€œAre you nervous?” Frieda rubbed the back of his neck as the car rose to the sixth floor. “You look it.”
    â€œSomething like nervous, yes.”
    Like all doctors’ offices, Dr. Lam’s was deliberately un-impressive, with fading paint on the walls and thin vinyl chairs in the waiting room. An infant sat near the coffee table with a communal Fozzie Bear, sucked by thousands of toothless mouths, pulling the bear’s arm and screaming intermittently. The baby’s mother sat talking on a cellphone, something about picking up a box of frozen dry ribs on the way home. Four others read People magazines from the previous century and various sections of the day’s newspaper, and Stanley heard them aloud.
    â€œAre you sore?”
    Stanley moved his arms around. “No.”
    â€œHow do you feel?” Frieda squinted. “Right now. I mean, do you feel nauseous or weak or forgetful?”
    â€œForgetful isn’t a feeling.”
    â€œWhat’s your mother’s name?”
    â€œFrieda…”
    â€œTen seconds. Your mother’s name.” She looked at her watch and began counting down, silently.
    Stanley pretended to be insulted by the simple question. Even though he had just looked it up a week ago, just written it in his notebook so he would not forget, Stanley had forgotten his mother’s name. He wanted to guess Alice but it didn’t seem to match the quivering image of her. One good memory: a hayride at Lake Wabamun, his mother and father sharing a thermos full of hot chocolate and whisky. His youngest sister, whose name he also could not recall, had already died of polio. It was just Stanley, his other sister, Kitty, and their parents. How old was he? Seven or eight. “Alice.”
    â€œAlice?”
    â€œYes. My mother’s name was Alice.”
    â€œYour mother’s name was Rosa.”
    â€œDamn.”
    â€œI’m coming into the room with