Trevor Cole - The Fearsome Particles

Trevor Cole has masterminded a densely layered tale that sensitively peels away the complex facades of the individual members of a small, excruciatingly contemporary family, to reveal their (and our) most intimate fears and vulnerable desires.

Governor Generals Award jury citation

[A novel] laced with subtle black humour, a sprinkling of pathos and large doses of human failing. With writing like this, Trevor Cole is quickly gaining a reputation as a major talent, deservedly so.

Edmonton Journal

Impressivefunny, absorbing. Beautifully authentic.

Winnipeg Free Press

Humour that comes from a deeper, more satisfying place. The book soars.

Quill & Quire

One of the most entertaining novels Ive read this year. In its intimate examination of the inner lives of its characters, however, it becomes something greater, opening the door to fundamental and significant human truths. Its power comes from its narrowing of focus, and from Coles significant strengths as a writer.

National Post

In very precise and skilled prose, Cole gets us very close to these characters, and the story consistently holds our interest. The books not easy to put down.

NOW magazine

Cole is an ongoing contributor to Canadian letters who is worth watching.

Toronto Star

Norman Bray in the Performance of His Life (2004)
The Fearsome Particles (2006)

Copyright 2006 by Trevor Cole

Cloth edition published 2006
First Emblem Editions published 2007

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Cole, Trevor, 1960
The fearsome particles / Trevor Cole

eISBN: 978-1-55199-248-8

I. Title.

PS 8605. O 44 F 42 2007 C 813.6 C 2007-902015-1

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

Series logo design: Brian Bean

EMBLEM EDITIONS
McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M 5 A 2 P 9
www.mcclelland.com/emblem

v3.1

For Krista

A n animal that small, that dextrous, could be anywhere. An animal that silent. There was no defining its limits. What troubled Gerald was not the threat of the threat per se, but his sense of helplessness in the face of it.

In his imagination, in those thoughts that lay just beyond his control, the cat he called Rumsfeld was stalking him. It was an absurd idea, but as he stood in his slippers at the foot of the bed, with the new light of April stealing across a floor of cinnamon cabreuva, Gerald could not quite reach the absurdity and smother it. So he was forced, in the sense that addicts are forced by their addictions, or invalids by their infirmities, to picture the cat mincing through the cavities and recesses (what interior design people liked to call dead spaces) of the sprawling turreted house on Breere Crescent. He was obliged to see in his minds eye its white whiskery face peering around the pants press and shoe trees of his closet, looking more resolute, more purposeful, than a cats face should be capable of looking. He was compelled to imagine it ludicrous as it might sound to the great majority of people who werent him and didnt live at 93 Breere planning.

All Gerald Woodlore could do, and so did with conviction, was curse himself for thinking about the cat. Because this was not the time to be getting cat-fixated; this morning there were other things of far greater importance to be addressing, mentally. His son, Kyle, was returning home from a hostile territory with an uncertain injury. His wife, Vicki, was edging toward madness. Work entailed its own many, many challenges. For these reasons there was no force in the world worthier of invocation, in Geralds view, than the will to ignore the cats presence in their lives. And if there had been a way to call forth the will, and impose it on his thoughts the way he imposed plastic wrap on a freshly lopped lemon, to keep its spiky lemoniness contained, of course he would have. But Gerald had to acknowledge, unhappily, that he wasnt built to ignore sneaking threats to normalcy, to order, to the way things were supposed to be. He was much too conscious; he was conscious to the point of affliction. And so to him, the black-and-white cat, which a neighbour named Lorie Campeau had brought to the door in a wild panic three weeks before

LORIE CAMPEAU: Its my mother. Theyve taken her to the hospital. She fell. She lives in Vancouver and she fell! So I have to fly there today, and of course I have to take my daughter, Jewels. But we just got her this cat. Literally just got it. And we cant give it back because Jewels is completely in love. And I dont know what to do. We havent even named it!

the cat that Vicki had taken in without consultation though he, Gerald, was in the nearby den, listening and perfectly consultable, was a threat. It was a rogue presence. It was their own small, fluffy insurgency.

Gerald had named it Rumsfeld.

It was definitely skulking somewhere, at this moment. Preparing to effect cattish havoc. There was no point in looking over his shoulder. Peeking under furniture. The cat, Rumsfeld, was never seen until it wanted to be seen, until it was too late. Until you were walking through the dining room at midnight, naked, with two glasses of your wifes selected Youngerton Pinot Noir in your hands and a kalamata olive poised between your back teeth. Then it was there, ready to trying to

But see? This was what happened in his head. Reveries of menace. This was surely what rabbits felt like as the talons of eagles dangled overhead, the danger inescapable. This was what field mice felt like, when they scurried. This morning Gerald refused all rabbit rodent associations. People were counting on him, a company needed him, his son needed him, his wife He gripped his face with both hands and pressed until the flesh no longer gave.

What he needed was the distraction of concerted activity. He had already breakfasted, he had already rifled through the paper, looking for the latest references to Kyles war (he thought of it as that, though some still refused to call it a war; and Kyle was not a soldier and he was no longer there, so it, whatever it was, was no longer his and thinking of it as Kyles war was just another good reason for Gerald to shake his head at himself). Now he needed to get showered and dressed.

He stripped off his robe and flung it over an armchair. The diodes of the clock radio on his side of the bed emitted a calm, blue 8:06, which was the real time. On the small table by his wifes side, near the window, an old-fashioned enamel carriage clock pointed a thin brass hand at the thirty-first minute, because it was Vickis recent notion that she was likelier to meet her early obligations if she believed the time to be twenty-five minutes later than it was. She had worked this out, that she could no longer rely on herself to respond to time in a rational, fore-sighted way but needed to fool herself to the tune of nearly half an hour. And the fact that she could rise, breakfast, shower, dress, and