Tara McGuire | Issue 21
Excerpt from Holden After & Before: Love Letter to a Son Lost to Overdose
Excerpt from Holden After & Before
The rain kicks up as Holden steps off the bus near Granville Street and walks along Georgia Street by the Bay with its golden doors and huge windows full of weirdly tall white-plastic people in expensive clothes. He sidesteps the long line of slick raincoats waiting at the bus stop—obedient penguins beneath umbrellas—and walks under the glass awning, his breath keeping time to his stride, which is keeping time with the Wu-Tang playing in his earbuds. There’s a smell of wet pavement, the smell that says his socks won’t be dry anytime soon. It’s oddly comforting.
Down near the corner, on the last dry section of sidewalk, a figure sits, leaning against the wall. As he gets closer, Holden can see that the man has oozing eyes and matted hair and is wearing several layers of dirty jackets, but just one shoe—his exposed foot is puffy, almost magenta, and raw. Nicotine-stained fingers hold a worn piece of cardboard that reads, Smile If You Masterbate.
The man flitters the sign in his direction. Holden plucks out one earbud.
You got me on that one. He grins, digs into his pocket and flips a loonie to the man, who snatches it from the air with surprisingly quick reflexes.
I thought so!
The block of darkening sky he can see between the buildings fills with a symphony of crows. Thousands of black wingbeats brush the slate canvas. They move with both freedom and intention, like fireworks, like an underwater school of fish, like a time-lapse video of a flower blooming. Every morning they leave from someplace in Burnaby, he thinks, to scatter, move, and reassemble along the musical staff of power lines down by the rail yard. He’s watched the murder many times while painting trains. Like living quarter and half notes, they change the tempo of their song as they caw and fight on the wires. Then, each night, on some unheard 5-6-7-8 count in, they swirl en masse back to the lake to roost. Every morning. Every night. A beautiful charcoal wingstorm.
One means anger; two is mirth; three a wedding; four a birth; five is heaven; six is hell; seven is the devil himself. So, what does five thousand mean?
By the time Holden gets to Claire’s apartment, the shoulders of his jacket are soaked, his hair and the beard he is attempting to grow, dripping. He shakes like a wet dog outside the building. Claire buzzes him in.
At the top of the stairs, Holden sees a long tattooed arm extending into the hall through a crack in the door. The hand holds a green can of beer. Holden laughs and takes the can. The door closes. He hears laughter. Claire flings open the door and pulls him into the small apartment. The mothball smell of thrift-store clothes and cigarettes.
Hello! Claire’s smile is huge, and her voice sounds like a seven-year-old’s. She hugs Holden tightly, hangs up his jacket, then pushes him over to the green striped couch against the wall where DESER is scrawled in red across the back. She drops beside him, making the cushions bounce.
Sorry about that. Holden gestures to his tag on the back of the sofa.
No big. I’m thinking about painting the whole thing. Making it an installation.
In that case, you’re welcome. He cracks the beer.
Somebody say they want to get drunk as fuck tonight? She asks, opening her own beer.
As fuck, Holden says, chugging half the can.
Just how drunk is as fuck?
Somewhere between blackout and stomach pump.
Roger that. Tough week? Claire swivels her angular body to face Holden, folding her long legs. He thinks of a mantis.
You could say that, he begins. He stops.
Claire nods but stays quiet, so Holden has to fill in the silence.
I’m living with my dad. He’s cool and everything, but the place is pretty small. I just don’t have another option at the moment. My dad wanted me to do something called Sober October with him.
Sounds excruciating.
It actually wasn’t that bad, I made it, like, two weeks.
Claire raises her hand for a high-five.
My mom wants me to go to rehab and she’s not even here, she’s in fucking Portugal or Thailand or something. She keeps sending me articles about Deepak fucking Chopra.
My dad sent me to rehab and it totally cured me, Claire says.
Obviously.
They both laugh and knock their cans together.
I’m just fucking sick of talking about it, Holden says.
In that case, perhaps you’d like one of these? Claire reaches for two shot glasses sitting on the coffee table, already full of light-brown liquid. When she smiles, Holden notices the shadow of rot darkening several of her teeth.
To not talking about it, Claire says.
To never fucking talking about it.
She refills their glasses. To Sober October, she says.
May she rest in peace, Holden says and swallows his second shot.
Claire hands him the bottle, then reaches for a wooden box on the table. She pulls out a joint and lights it, exhaling a blue-grey stream.
How’s the new job?
She passes the joint and Holden takes a deep drag, inflating his chest, growing taller. He holds the smoke for a moment, then exhales, deflating his body and roaring, Ahhh. It’s okay. The people are nice. I help old ladies buy acrylics so they can make shitty still lifes. Flowers and fruit. So much fucking ochre. And canary. I basically just wear a cardigan and sell yellow for eight hours a day. I am a yellow seller.
Do you get a discount on cans? Claire asks.
Not yet, but I will after three months. They keep that shit locked up because of vandals like us. Holden hands her back the joint.
I’ve got a few cans, she says. We can paint after the show if you want.
Holden takes a pull straight from the bottle. He looks again at his tag scribbled across the back of Claire’s couch. DESER.
He’s done with Sefer, has been for a while. It’s Deser now. In Dutch it means the one who gets to decide. He holds up the bottle. Can I bring this?
Be my guest.
Holden takes sips from the bottle as they walk to the club. At the mouth of an alley they pass a Dumpster embroidered with tags. Holden pulls a thick white marker from his pocket and shakes it, stirring the ink inside.
They don’t keep these bad boys locked up, he says. He bites the lid off the pen and holds the cap in the corner of his grin like he’s smoking a cigar.
Claire laughs and shakes her head.
Holden scrawls DESER across the end of the Dumpster and hands the marker to Claire. She squats low and adds the words Drunk as Fuck under his tag. He laughs and hands her the bottle. She takes a swallow and gasps, shaking her head, then offers what’s left back to Holden, who drains the bottle and lobs it into the Dumpster with a loud echoing clang.
The earlier showers have pushed people even deeper into doorways and under the faded and ripped awnings that line East Hastings Street. Garbage litters the sidewalk like nowhere else in the city. Paper, glass, strips of fabric, and broken pieces of plastic. A snowfall of cigarette butts. And gum, there’s always so much gum. Small groups huddle under old tents and dilapidated structures made from shopping carts, bent umbrellas, and scrap metal draped with tarps and dirty, wet blankets.
Gaunt figures dart across the street and swoop around corners into alleys. The street is alive with perpetual motion. Bodies rocking, twisting, and shifting remind Holden of sand fleas on the beach scattering in panic when their sheltering seaweed is raked away. He notices pockmarked faces, angry faces, ones with bulbous comic-book noses, women with dark smears of makeup below their eyes, ones who pace and talk to themselves. The smell is piss and garbage.
This part of town has made Holden sad ever since he was a little kid driving through with his mom and she said something like, Look at these poor souls. What happened to them? At some point they were all somebody’s baby. That day he’d been shocked and afraid. Now he’s used to it. Most of the people he’s met painting in the alleys have been pretty decent.
A man with long black hair and a beak of a nose sits hunched against a building, a collection of bike parts, sunglasses, and tools laid out on a stained towel in front of him. A dented cowboy hat with a long feather tucked in the band is pulled low over his forehead.
Hey, buddy, what’s for sale? Holden says.
The man’s small black eyes scan Holden.
All kinds of shit. He extends an arm above the array of objects they both know are stolen.
Claire stands back while Holden bends to look more closely at the collection of junk on the towel. Can I buy that wrench?
For five bucks you can.
Holden’s fingers emerge from his pocket with a folded ten-dollar bill. He picks up the crescent wrench, turning the heavy tool over in his hand, rolling the worm screw up and down under his thumb, watching the jaws open and close. The man slowly pats his breast pockets, searching for change they both know isn’t coming.
That’s all right, man, you keep it, Holden says. Hey, what’s your name?
Percy.
Nice to meet you, Percy, I’m Holden. He extends a hand toward Percy, who pushes his hat back on his head and slowly shakes Holden’s hand. The two nod to each other. When Holden straightens up, he loses his balance. Claire grabs his arm and pulls him down the street toward the Rickshaw.
You idiot, now you’re totally broke, she says.
Tara McGuire is a former broadcaster turned writer. Her book Holden After and Before, a hybrid work in memoir and fiction exploring grief, motherhood, and the opioid crisis, was recently published by Arsenal Pulp Press. (September 2022). She lives with her family under the tall trees of North Vancouver, BC.
Holden After and Before Tara McGuire Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022
Purchase Holden After & Before from Arsenal Pulp Press
Holden After and Before is a moving meditation on grief in the same vein as Helen Macdonald's H is for Hawk: a stunning book that traces Tara McGuire's excavation and documentation of the life path of her son Holden, a graffiti artist who died of an accidental opioid overdose at the age of twenty-one. Beginning with Holden's death and leaping through time and space, McGuire employs fact, investigation, memory, fantasy, and even fabrication in her search for understanding not only of her son's tragic death, but also of his beautiful life. She navigates and writes across the many blank spaces to form a story of discovery and humanity, examining themes of grief, pain, mental illness, trauma, creative expression, identity, and deep, unending love inside just one of the thousands of deaths that have occurred as a result of the opioid crisis.
With poignant honesty and a heart laid bare, Holden After and Before is a beautiful and moving elegy to a son lost to overdose.
Issue #21 of Send My Love to Anyone
Excerpt from Holden Before and After: Love Letter to a Son Lost to Overdose by Tara McGuire
The First Time: “This amazing kind of energy moment” by Kirby
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