My Architecture
A child fell from that building.
I hear you say this after we’d been living in its shadow for years, looming outside our window. Decades old sun-faded concrete, five ’o clock shadow of mold. Big balconies jutting out — these bulging excrescences. Old construction. They don’t make balconies that big anymore.
Where’d you hear that?
Read about it a few years back. I remember the photograph. It was newer back then. Obviously.
I’d always had a strange feeling about that building, this elusive sense of dread. Like looking upon a cenotaph. An outgrowth, swollen with disease and decay. Festering unchecked upon the earth.
How did it happen? The child.
An open window. Two years old. Must’ve just learned how to climb.
Jesus. Probably just letting in some air.
Sorry I brought it up. Just popped into my head.
Later, before I go to bed, I think about the child as I look in on all the illuminated lives stirring within the building’s windows. These pockets of artificial light, powerless against the sea of darkness.
Tonight, I dream that I am climbing. As high as I can then higher still, towards the sky framed in the window. I use my limbs to bring my body into the air, until the carpet becomes a distant memory and it feels like the entire world was built for me alone. I climb and I can see the sky and I can feel the wind. I hear the birds and I hear the shrill cries of children and I want to go out there — into that world.
I reach for the sky before me, extending my arms, my fingers.
I do not fear what lies below.
For the first time in weeks I get out of bed before the afternoon sun enters my window — its light muted by the smoke carried here on northern winds from Chinook Head. After you leave for work I find the local story you must’ve read years ago. No names. The writer refers to the child, the parents. No mention whether it was a girl or a boy.
When I step outside in my pyjamas and house slippers, pulpy smoke from the distant fires enters my lungs. Souls of ancient trees. The sun hangs like a blood orange suspended in a milky gray sky — an insect encased in amber. The streets are deserted save for a few cars cruising past me, only to scuttle back into the obscurity from which they came.
It doesn’t take long for me to reach the high-rise. As I approach I notice a dry cement fountain standing within a courtyard of withered, yellow grass. Everything is dead and as I look up at all the windows — each identical to the next — I realize that I’m searching for a sign. Some way to discern the window from which the child fell. I try to picture what it was like. The sickening recognition of what’d occurred, that first moment looking down.
Your child’s shattered body on the sidewalk.
Were both of them home? Had they fallen asleep alongside the child? Or maybe they were basking in a temporary respite, a moment all to themselves?
A sip of peppermint tea. A kiss on the neck.
And as these scenes play in my head I’m suddenly startled by a security guard, emerging from the smoke with the languid pace of old age. Strands of white hair cling closely to his liver-spotted scalp while his uniform looks loose against his thin body.
Looking for someone, miss?
Yes. Well, no. I was just leaving.
This smoke. News says we shouldn’t even be outside in this.
I should really start watching the news again.
I turn towards the direction of home, soot peppered all over my clothes, my hair, my pale arms, and when I look back the security guard is already gone.
Almost like he’d never even been there in the first place.
When I return to the wilted courtyard the next day, the smoke is thicker than before. Breathing takes effort. My eyes sting and my throat is parched, but I conduct my vigil regardless. Coveting their grief. Scavenging for scraps of tragedy.
This time I picture the way down. Did they take time to put on shoes? Wait for the elevator? Was the sun shining above their heads that day? The mother wails and the husband pounds the cement until his hands break and suddenly I am the building. Human lives writhe within me, hundreds of them — my walls soak up their smells, their voices, their flesh and their tears and somewhere inside I know there is a void, like an air bubble floating in a syringe. A void that can never be filled.
I come back the next day, and the day after that. The smoke tears at my lungs, my skin, and each night I wash the soot out of my hair until it clogs the bathtub drain.
On the fifth day the smoke is so dense I can barely see to the roof of the high-rise. I sit on the stone border around the arid fountain while residents walk past. Some give hellos, some dirty looks. Not a single one surrenders a smile.
Then, after a while, I see the same old security guard approaching me — his pace more measured, more purposeful this time. Someone must’ve complained about a sad, disheveled, pyjama-clad woman loitering around their building. An additional eyesore in their sorry-enough courtyard.
Hello again miss.
Hello again.
May I ask you why you’re sitting here?
I don’t know, I say, honestly. I guess to understand.
Understand what?
What happened. When the child fell.
The child. The security guard hardens his face, as if bracing for a blow to the chin. That was years ago. Couple is long gone. Lovely young couple. What an awful thing.
Which window was it?
The security guard is silent for a moment. Then he lets out a heavy sigh.
Will you leave if I tell you?
I nod.
11th floor. West facing. Leftmost window.
I count the floors and find the window, then I look at the spot directly below. Nothing indicating any tragedy. It’s just like any other window and any other piece of sidewalk that unknowing people tread upon every single day. I don’t know what I was expecting. There’s no cathartic release, no sense of healing or enlightenment. Nothing changes.
What was the child’s name?
Another beat of quiet. Another sigh. Heavier.
Gabriel. It was Gabriel.
Gabriel. The sounds feel funny in my mouth. Like a fizzy drink. Mine was Thomas. That’s what we settled on at least. Came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Doctors couldn’t save him.
The security guard clears his throat looks at me again. As if for the first time.
I’m so sorry.
No. I’m sorry. Just rambling. I promise I’ll stop bothering you.
When I stand up the world spins — blood escapes my brain and fireworks bloom across my eyes.
Alright, miss?
I’m not on drugs, I swear, I say, laughing. Not that kind anyway. Just got up too quick.
I turn to leave, but just as I begin to walk off I hear his voice from behind me and I stop.
Miss. You know, Joanna and Arthur — the parents. They had another kid.
Did they?
I saw them once, a few years ago. At the beach.
I’m — I’m glad to hear that, I say, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. Sorry. The smoke.
I leave the security guard and dissipate into the silent, gray world. Thinking of sandcastles instead of concrete.
I look out at the building as we lay in bed. You’re pretending to read a Malcolm Gladwell book, but it’s been a while since you’ve turned a page. Your eyes don’t move — you’ve gone elsewhere. Maybe it’s the same place where I go. You want to be strong for me, but I know inside you’re still hurting too.
I hope they fix that building up one day, I say. Could do with some new paint.
When you look up from your book your eyes are hard and numb, glazed with a shellac coat. You weigh this idea, chew it over all slow, meticulous — like cattle grazing in the field.
Maybe we just need a change of scenery, you say.
Yeah? Where would we go?
North. Big country. We could probably afford a detached home up there. Look at mountains from our bedroom instead of depressing high rises.
Not sure I want to be up north right now. Those people in Chinook Head…
Then we go east. Get a lake house. Learn to fish. Doesn’t that sound nice?
My mouth opens to speak but not words come out. I don’t have the will to tell you. To shatter these dreams.
Outside, late summer rain has exorcised the smoke from the air, and as I look out at the building from our bedroom window once more, I see no trace of that old sadness. Instead I see persistent, enduring life. No longer a cancer but a scar. One you won’t escape no matter how far you go.
I don’t tell you this.
I don’t tell you that even if we find those mountains, that lake, it’s always going to be there. Casting its concrete shadow over our lives. I don’t tell you that any window we look out from, any view we find, that building will remain.
Forever claiming a piece of our sky.
George Nevgodovskyy was born in Kiev, Ukraine, but has lived in Vancouver, Canada for most of his life. He has previously been published in East of the Web, Rejection Letters, Literally Stories, Fairlight Books, and others. He does his best writing after everyone else has gone to sleep. Check out his work at georgenev.blogspot.com.
