Episodic Tremor and Slip

              We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.
                                       Ralph Waldo Emerson

               Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS) is a process that occurs deep below the Earth’s surface
               along faults that form the boundaries of tectonic plates. It involves repeated episodes of
               slow fault slip of a few centimetres over a period of several weeks, accompanied by
               seismic tremors.
                                       Natural Resources Canada

1 We Step In

There is no place to start with the mess.
Clothes crumpled, sills stained, grime
on every surface, flat
and vertical. Stench. Blinds down. A cat.
There sits our son, sullen and hunched, head
clamped under headphones. We can no longer start
from hope, we can only approach, sit
in our responsibility and listen when he rants
about landlords, employers, multi-fucking-national
corporations. The great forces
that push him around.

He is 27 and will go nowhere with us, will not travel
this territory, will not reason and accommodate. The place shakes
with his explosions, his booming. Plates rattle, cleavers tremble
and—hearts jumping—we are in full retreat again.

We live in retreat, making plans
for the wrong emergency. Prepare
for what has passed. There is always hope,
friends say. Friends didn’t see that basement
suite we rented for him the fall we hoped
he could go back, finish a high school course.
The landlord calls. We step in
and here’s a window screen, flimsy
frame wobbling, mesh cut out. Knife blades
scorched into enamel, the kitchen range stripped
down to bare burners. Someone needed to get closer to the flame.

Soon he will sell his dead car for less than he owes, fly
to the east coast where he knows
no one, and over time we will
locate him, go, sit again. Listen.

I don’t want to go on.



2 Small Matters

Another job lost five weeks ago, no biggie,
he says, didn’t want to upset us, scraping up
rough unready words now
through the smoked-out booze-burnt throat
and — wait for it — there’s the matter
of rent. When I phone his grandmother
I mention neither. Such are the ways
we believe we lift ourselves above the common
mantle of our lives. Little tricks.

Remember, as a kid, on a perfect summer day,
when a push suddenly sent you skidding
down a slope, how gravel embeds
in the darkened skin of your knees? Earth’s
grit in your blood. And you jump
back up, bite your tongue ever so gently? Substitute
the small hurt for the other one.



3 Plan B

We always had a Plan B except Plan B never worked
any more than Plan A and all subsequent plans
became named Plan B, over and over, so really
we should have been numbering them B1, B2, B3.
Where would we be now? B52? The bomber or the retro
rockers? Shrug. Whatever. Football. Hockey. Piano.
Judo. Katimavik. We always knew what needed to happen.
(Training? Rehab?) But here we are. Not knowing. Reduced.



4 Calls from Across the Continent

I’m on a bike ride, or in a distant airport, or at a dinner, or
the wedding of a niece. His number comes up.
             Hello    ugggh            I’m dying
I tilt the phone away from my ear
when the dry heaves begin, having learned.
He can’t keep water down. Doesn’t want a cab
or ambulance to take him to care.
            They don’t do anything for me          blaaaagh               dying

When did you start drinking?
This time, I mean. How many
hours, litres? How recently
did you stop? Did you stop? Look,
what can I do?
           You can’t do anything

Every few hours, his thumb pushes
our speed dial as if to deliver a fix.
Water, I say. Hospital, I offer. Detox. Water.
My words an intravenous drip of sorts.
           blaaa—ugh

I sleep. At 3 a.m. another call and he
is ready, he says.
           Call an ambulance. Call.



5 On Alert

He agrees to fly west, perch near us,
here on the Juan de Fuca fault. Makes
no difference to me. Does detox. Gets clean.
Goes to work, hauling his battered case
of knives from one kitchen to another. High-end, then
the pubs and family grills, then whoever will take him.
Another eviction, furniture abandoned
on the lawn of a kind and weary landlady. We take in
his cat. Clean her up, a cute lion
cut. The cat unimpressed.
One morning she stands alert, ignoring
us and her food. Staring, staring at
nothing, unmoving. Must be sick. Later
in the day, news of a 4.7 quake we never felt,
80 kilometres offshore. Right at the time
we put her food down. Oh, what we miss.