Better Off

Summer ends abruptly. The tarns have finally warmed. Ari and I laze in the backyard beneath the protracted sunlight, relishing the bite in the air, the plump tomatoes tumbling off the vine. An open book in my lap, I sit in the lawn chair, its purple cushions worn and doughy, taking note of the neglected weeds in the garden box, a few planks collapsed from time and the recent rainfall. I spot Ari nestled in the grass with his magnifying glass, searching for insects. The wind has picked up today, cutting into my perennial herb plot with a brisk and rough energy. I grab a rock to secure the stack of papers beside me. Like the watershed moment of a novel—a character suddenly killed off—the season changes too quickly, and we are left bewildered. This time of year always brings thoughts of my sister. Of Clara.

***

Look, Mommy, isn’t he cute? Ari cups a grasshopper in his palms and extends them outwards, his eyes widened with wonder, like he’s unearthed a rare fossil. His name is Jumpy. I’m keeping him. I am cheek -to -cheek now with Ari gazing at this insect: we are like new mothers, paralyzed by the awe and terror of this adorable but feeble thing, now our responsibility. I’ve never seen a grasshopper up close before. His delicate body is flanked by bulging eyes, his hind legs lengthening as he jumps. Ari catches him, placing the creature in a pail, picking grass, leaves, and twigs to form a kind of bedding. 

He likes when I rub his back, see? After six years of holding my breath, I exhale. I used to wonder whether Ari had the proper neurocircuitry for love. During the toddler years he would hit, pinch, bite, and even gave me a black eye once at the lake when I packed the wrong granola bar. It’s normal, my friends would say. He’s just a child. But inside, I questioned his character. My doubt was an illness, soaked in fears of villainous children, born vacant, freakish, polluted for some reason. Ludicrous, I know. I wanted Ari to play with dolls—to feed them, clothe them, sing them lullabies and tuck them into bed. Instead, he jumped. From the time he was able to walk, he would be jumping off stairs, hanging from monkey bars, and climbing on top of spider web ropes at the playground. He’s just a typical boy! my friends would say. But I worried. My fantasy of subverting the patriarchy by raising a tender and empathic young man would be more difficult to realize than I thought. If he didn’t give, would he just take and take? I have an idea, Ari exclaims, tromping up the stairs. I’m getting him a blanket!

***

When our parents were away, I used to tuck Clara into bed. I wrapped the sheets tightly around her body like a mummy, stuffing them beneath the mattress until she couldn’t move. I laughed, so she did, too. Whatever I did, she happily complied, or so it seemed. I would read her stories—my stories—about a girl named Sally Featherstone that went on adventures with an albatross and an eccentric man named Mr. Fortenlyfish. She’d always request the next chapter immediately. She was my biggest fan, the only one at first and for a long time. I would prepare elaborate desserts for her that we called The Special, a stack of processed orange cheese surrounded by a salty cracker fortress. She was obsessed. I was exalted for the lamest efforts, lapping up her idolatry. Like any child celebrity, I took advantage. I told Clara we would flee to Disney World in the middle of the night. Pack your bags and wait by the door! We would escape the humdrum of school and parents. We would visit the Magic Kingdom, stuff our faces with cotton candy, and never come home. Where were you? she would ask the next day. I was waiting.

***

Ari is parading Jumpy around like a doll, wrapped in a frayed washcloth, grasping him roughly, picking him up and then dropping him back in the pail repeatedly. Jumpy looks cramped in his pail, I say. I think he needs more space. Ari finds a larger bin in the backyard with beach toys and dumps them out. Back inside the house, we research: Is Jumpy a girl or a boy? Apparently you can tell by the stomach. We find a website. Grasshoppers eat leaves. They live only a few months in the wild, usually eaten by a predator or taken by the change in seasons. But a domesticated grasshopper could live up to a few years. Who knew? Our research binds us together, opens us to possibility. Perhaps we could nurture this wild thing together. How raw and organic! No purchasing exotic dragons from the pet store that consume only kale. A creature from our own garden, needing a home.

***

Clara left the nest eventually—I was long gone by then, studying overseas. I learned from my parents she wasn’t doing well, not able to complete her first-year exams in college. It was her mood, they said. Her spirit was heavy, her body turned to lead. Change always plagued Clara, even the most natural kinds. I was born this way, she would say of her illness. But it was true. I imagine even the affliction of birth stung Clara, the snugness of the womb and its rhythmic vibrato ravaged by delivery. 

I rushed back to Vancouver to visit her in the dorms. The blinds were shut, and she was fingernail-thin, her expressions devoid of their natural zing. I was so oblivious then, imagining a strong espresso and her favorite pastry could do the trick. If only we could turn back time, I could whip up a special dessert like when we were kids, and conjure up the old ever-excitable Clara. But the melancholy had colonized her like a parasite.

***

Mommy, something happened. I go outside to investigate. Ari is cradling the bug in his hand. Jumpy’s leg came off. And lo and behold, there was the grasshopper, missing a leg: a leg he needed to jump. His whole life’s purpose, his main strength, his evolutionary advantage. Gone.

Mommy, it’s okay, he’s still happy, see? Ari is aware that I’m upset, and he assumes why. He shoves Jumpy’s bulging eyes in my face. The thing looks exactly the same as he did before, just one leg shy. Maybe Ari was right. Maybe Jumpy is happy. Maybe he doesn’t feel pain or sadness, shame or isolation. He’s a grasshopper, not Viktor Frankl. But a part of me wondered—what if Ari had been gentler? 

***

Clara disappeared late on a Sunday. She had recently been released from the hospital after a six-week stay and had returned to our parents’ home in Nelson. At the hospital, Clara had received electroconvulsive treatments, her brain zapped with currents meant to reboot her like a computer. At home, Clara was calmer, but empty: a perfect vacuum, a blank space. Maybe she was hibernating, I thought, and would arise in a few months from her dormant state like a brown bear in spring. But then she began wandering the halls at all hours like a ghost, muttering to herself, writing erratically, praying, sustaining odd postures. She left that Sunday night with a suitcase in hand, climbing to the top of Pulpit Rock, on a mission of sorts. A final act of plummeting, a sermon of sorts. Was this revenge for deserting her in those early years? Instead of Disney, was she escaping to another Magic Kingdom, free of life’s misery? She left no note, but toppled over a jagged cliff meant for bouldering. 

***

Ari decides to toss Jumpy back into the garden. I am relieved. I couldn’t bear to have this insect in our purview any longer. What were we to do: watch him slowly deteriorate, observe his depressing new sedentary life? Of course he was better off dead at this point. No longer our problem, we cast him to the cosmos.

Is Jumpy dead now, Mommy? 

I don’t know.

I don’t ever want to die. 

Me neither. 

Did you kill him? 

Did I?

Or me?

Jumpy was fragile. 

What’s that?

Like something that can break easily. 

Oh, like when my LEGO plane broke.

Yes, just like that. 

In this moment, I feel powerless. Naked to the reality of loss, of tragedy, of injustice. 

It was an accident, Ari says. 

Yes, it was.

I grab his hands in mine. I must say something. Because words are a form of action when there are no actions left. 

I’m going to say a prayer for Jumpy, I tell him. Repeat after me. 

He smirks. Repeat after me.

 I eye him suspiciously. Oh, do you want to say it instead?

Ari climbs onto the picnic table and raises both hands above his head like he’s a gymnast about to flip off the high beam. He says:

Jumpy was a very cute grasshopper. He was so cute like my baby cousin Raffi. He always smiled and ate grass. I liked him better than the dog because he was more quiet and never barked. We think he was a boy and he was a hundred years old. We are sorry his leg fell off, but it’s okay because he didn’t cry. He didn’t like jumping anyway. It’s good he’s in the garden now because he can find his parents. He might get extinct soon, but for now he’s probably really happy.

Ari jumps down from the table, giving me a high five. I clutch his hand, then pull his body tightly to my chest, not wanting to let go. 

 I’m hungry, Mommy. 

I pick a few tomatoes off the vine, popping one into my mouth, letting the red fleshy orb burst between my teeth. They grow better in raised garden beds, I have learned. That way I can watch them more carefully, water them more generously. Try one, I say, lifting one to Ari’s mouth. They’ve never tasted this sweet.