Break in Case of Emergency

by Brian Francis

  “Don’t you blame this on me,” Grandma Kay says, slapping the table. “It’s too easy for everyone to point fingers.”

  There’s a moment of silence before Grandpa Frank speaks.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to tell her the rest?”

  “There’s more?” I ask. I don’t think I can take it. I’m feeling claustrophobic, only from the inside, like I’m trapped in my body.

  “We don’t need to get into all that,” Grandma Kay says. “Not today.”

  “He’s a fella that gets all dressed up,” Grandpa Frank says.

  “Frank!”

  “Puts on dresses.”

  “Stop it!” She turns to me. “I don’t know if he still does. He did, at one time. I’m sure things are different now. Maybe. I just wish I could believe that.”

  Before either of them can say another word, I get up from the table and run out the front door. I grab my bike from the side of the house and start pedalling away as fast as I can, Grandma Kay’s voice calling after me.

  “Toby! Toby! To-beeeee!”

  Chapter 7

  As usual, I have nowhere to go, but I can’t go back home. Not yet. Not for a long time. Not until my mind settles out. I keep thinking about my grandparents’ words. And what was it Grandpa Frank said about dresses? By that point, I had mostly tuned everything out. All I knew was that I needed to get away.

  I keep expecting Grandpa Frank’s truck to pull up behind me, but every time I glance back, there’s nothing. Maybe they’ve decided to let me be. For once.

  Then I see a sign that tells me Tilden is ten kilometres away, so I keep pedalling because at least it’s a destination. I decide to visit Trisha, but then second-guess that. The last thing she needs is me showing up on her doorstep with my screwed-up problems. And even though Mike is at the farm today, it would feel weird being inside his house. But where am I going to go in Tilden? Mr. Whitlock’s? That’s not even an option, especially after I kissed him last night. My old apartment building? Why? So I can stand outside and look up at our old window and feel like a stranger in my own life? To replay over and over again the guilt I feel about my mom’s death? Why do I need the apartment building for that when it’s something I already do every single day?

  Then I think: Shirley.

  She’s the one who spoke to my father. She knows why he’s coming. And maybe she’ll have the answers I’m looking for, even if I’m not sure I know the questions. So even though my legs are burning, I keep going. Because if I stop, something will catch up to me.

  * * *

  One night, a few weeks after my mom told me about my father, we were sitting on the couch, watching a TV movie about a woman dying of cancer. The actress, who was bald and had dark circles under her eyes, reunited with her high school sweetheart just before she died. The actress cried a lot and the music swooped and swooned like giant waves. At the end of the movie, I looked over at my mom and saw that she was crying, even though there weren’t any waves in our living room.

  “I still remember that day so vividly,” she said, reaching for the tissue box.

  “What day?” I asked.

  “The day your father told me he was leaving.”

  My mom said he swore her to secrecy. The night before he left, they arranged to meet at a playground. My mom wore lipstick.

  “Something bright and pink,” she told me. “I thought he’d like that. He always said I never wore enough makeup. He’d say, ‘Heather, God gave you good bone structure. Start using it.’ Of course, I didn’t consider that it would be dark outside, that he wouldn’t even see my face. I felt so stupid afterwards, standing at the bathroom sink and scrubbing my lips with a washcloth until they were raw.”

  My mom said my father asked if she’d visit him. He planned to get a big apartment. They’d go dancing until dawn. My mom told him she was already saving her money. My father said he’d buy her a bus ticket. My mom asked if he’d write to her and he promised he would. A letter a day. She asked if he’d come back, especially for Christmas.

  “Say what you want about Tilden,” she told him, “but the downtown is always so pretty with all the lights. There’s nothing that a fresh layer of snow can’t hide.”

  He promised he’d return.

  “But even as he said those words,” my mom said to me, “I knew he wouldn’t.”

  She turned to look out our window. I remember that was the first time I felt my mom was far away from me. It was important to remind her that I was still there, a few feet away. I took a drink from my glass and crunched down on an ice cube. The noise startled my mom.

  “Don’t do that, Toby,” she said. “It grates on my nerves.”

  I felt better knowing that she knew I was there, so I slowly sucked on the ice cube until my tongue felt numb and thick.

  “I told Arthur that Shirley said he’d never come back,” my mom said. “He called Shirley a twat.”

  “What’s a twat?” I asked.

  “Never mind. It’s not a nice word. Shirley and Arthur never got along. She said he was fake, that he only ever thought of himself and no one else. Maybe that was true, but I loved him all the same. He promised me he’d come back. He said he’d bring me expensive chocolate and fill me with scandalous stories about life in the big city. I started to cry then because I realized what I was losing. Inside my head, the shadows were already taking shape. Arthur was the only one who made me feel normal, who made me feel right. We were freaks together, he used to say. But now that he was leaving, who would I have?”

  I watched my mom’s eyes travel to the window again. I felt the same loneliness as before, but I didn’t touch my ice. I held it on my tongue, waiting for my mom’s next words.

  “I was sitting in a swing, like a big baby, and he came over to me and knelt down in front. He wrapped his arms around me and said, ‘Heather, my little daisy. You’ll be fine.’ I asked him what I’d do when the voices came back. Who would help me chase them away? He just hugged me tighter.”

  I imagined that scene, my mom on a swing, my father’s knees in the sand, for many years. Then, my mom said, something happened. A very beautiful thing.

  “We became one person, there in the darkness of that spring evening, the stars a sparkling canopy above us. Afterwards, we lay there, in each other’s arms, looking up at the sky for what seemed like a long time, both of us wishing for something we couldn’t have.”

  My mom kept looking out the window. I kept looking at her.

  “That was the night we made you, Toby,” she said.

  * * *

  Grandma Kay doesn’t know my mom told me this story. So how can my father be . . . what she said he was when I know for a fact what happened that night? Grandma Kay is confused, that’s all. She’s thinking of someone else. Someone who isn’t my father. There’s no way I could have a father like that. It’s impossible.

  Carnation Acres is even more depressing than usual. The grass out front is brown and flat. It looks like someone ironed it. The empty flowerbeds in front of the basement apartment windows are sad shoeboxes. The awnings are droopy eyelids. There are dog turds everywhere.

  I made a mistake coming here, I think. But I still lock up my bike against a No Parking pole. It’s close to 11 a.m. I don’t even know if Shirley will be home.

  Her apartment building is so old there’s no buzzer to get inside. I walk right in and down the steps to the lower floor. Shirley’s apartment is at the far end. The hallway smells like frying meat, bleach and baby-powder freshener. I pass a door with a cardboard bunny taped to it with “Please Stop Here” written beneath. Easter was two months ago. I hear television laughter coming from behind one of the doors and a man coughing behind another. It sounds like he’s trying to bring something up.

  I reach apartment 7, still wondering if I’ve made a mistake, but I knock anyway. I take a step back and wait.

  “If it’s Jehovahs again, I’m not interested,” Shirley’s voice calls out from behind the door. “I already sold my soul t
o the devil.”

  “It’s not a Jehovah,” I say. “It’s Toby.”

  “Toby?” I hear her repeat, more to herself.

  I hear the chain sliding off the lock and instinctively wince at the sound. It reminds me of the door at my old apartment, of that day, when my mom died. I remember going to our door, sliding the chain across and opening it to the hallway, the outside world. I remember the black sludge sliding past the doorway, across our parquet floor, inching toward my feet.

  The door swings open. “Well, what a surprise!”

  Shirley’s hair is a different colour. It used to be blond. Now it’s reddish-brown. It reminds me of a crayon. Her hair makes her face look whiter. More exposed. Older. She’s wearing an oversized T-shirt that’s slipping down one shoulder and purple leggings that make her legs look like grape Popsicles.

  “I was passing by,” I say. “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  “Not at all,” Shirley says. “I was just about to contemplate my sad existence over a cup of tea.”

  She sweeps her arm across and I step inside. Every wall is painted a different colour. The hallway is green and blue. The living room is red, yellow, purple and cream. There’s an orange glow coming from the kitchen, as though the sun is setting behind her appliances.

  “I’m a bit cuckoo for colour, I know,” she says. “I used to have everything white. White walls, white rug, white wicker furniture. But it felt too much like a doctor’s office. Like I should be telling people they had gonorrhea. Plus, I’ve always been afraid of going blind on account of my diabetes, and it seemed like colours were that much more important. Isn’t that the way life is sometimes, Toby? It’s only when you lose something that you understand what it meant to you.”

  I watch as she becomes aware of her words, how she wants to pull them back, like they’re attached to a string. But she can’t. It’s always this way with people. They’re always so careful around me, as though I’m bits of a mirror that need to be stepped around.

  “Were you really in the area?” Shirley asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Your grandmother called. She suspected you might come here. I’ll call her to let her know you’re safe. Then we’ll have a talk. About why you’re here.”

  Chapter 8

  She asks me if I drink tea and I say I do, even though I don’t. I just want something warm to hold.

  “I can order Chinese food,” Shirley says. “You like Chinese food, right?”

  “Don’t bother,” I say. “It’s too early and I’m not hungry.”

  “You sure? There’s a place not far from here. Although it’s not very good. The chicken balls are more ball than chicken. And I don’t think they change the oil very often. It’s not real Chinese food, anyway. The best Chinese food I had was in Toronto, where there’s a Chinese community. Chicken balls aren’t real Chinese food. You know that, right, Toby? The difference between something that’s real and something that’s fake?”

  The kettle starts to whistle.

  “That’s the problem living in this shitty hellhole of a city. Everyone has to conform. It must make the three Chinese people who live in Tilden sick to their stomachs.” She takes the kettle off the stove and fills the cups. Steam rolls upwards.

  “There’s a Chinese girl at school who eats Pop-Tarts and peanut butter sandwiches every day for lunch,” I say. “And I’m pretty sure there are more than three Chinese people in Tilden.”

  Shirley drops the tea bags into the cups. “Not much more, I’ll tell you that. This city’s all about sameness, never about difference.”

  She brings a mug in each hand and sets them down at her dining room table, which is really just a card table with a purple tablecloth over it and some green, plastic fold-out chairs.

  “Speaking of fake,” she says, “how much did your mom tell you about your father?”

  “A little,” I say, shifting in my seat. The plastic is hard and uncomfortable. I have a feeling I’m not going to like whatever it is Shirley has to say. “That they met in high school. That he moved away. He’s a singer.”

  Feathery. Was that the word Grandpa Frank used? There was a smirk on his face. It’s clear Grandpa Frank thinks my father is a joke. A punchline. The complete opposite of what my mom thought. How can two people have such different opinions about the same person? And whose opinion are you supposed to believe?

  “An entertainer,” I say. Suddenly, I feel so stupid and embarrassed, but I’m not sure why.

  “An entertainer,” Shirley repeats with a snort. “That’s one way of looking at him.” So she thinks of him the same way as Grandpa Frank. She fishes her tea bag out of her cup. “I suppose he had his good qualities. Heather certainly saw them. She was so protective of Arthur. Of his ‘gift,’ as she called it.” Her fingers hook around the word. “You couldn’t ever criticize Arthur. Not when Heather was around, anyway. ‘He’s easily broken,’ she used to say. Oh, God. That was rich. If anyone was broken . . .”

  She stops and looks at me. “I’m sorry. I’m getting carried away. It’s just that, with your mom, I was always so worried for her, you know? I knew that she was different, that she needed care. But all I could ever do was just be there, next to her, a friend. Because I didn’t know what else to do. I remember one Christmas, when we were teenagers, she made me come with her into the woods to chop down a tree. She brought this crappy old saw. I mean, that thing wouldn’t cut string, let alone a tree trunk. I remember her swearing and puffing and how her arm looked like a piston as she worked on that stupid tree. But she never gave up. That tree came down. I can still see the smile on her face. That was the way your mom was. Determined. She wouldn’t stop until she finished something. She was like that with Arthur too. She set her sights on him. But there was no way his tree was falling.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “Your father had a way of getting under my skin. He still does, all these years later. I felt my blood boil the minute I picked up the phone and heard his voice again.” She clears her throat, her eyes back down to her tea. “It’s just that, when he didn’t come back, not even for your mom’s funeral, he crossed a line. He had some lame excuse, something about touring and managers and breaking contracts, but it was one plane ride. That’s all it would’ve taken. To make up for everything.”

  “Why is he coming back?” I ask. “Why now?”

  She’s quiet for a long time. “I’d like to say for forgiveness. But knowing your father, I’m not sure.”

  “Grandma Kay told me he’s gay.” Even as I say the words, I feel so ashamed. I look down, unable to make eye contact with her. “And Grandpa Frank said something about him wearing dresses.”

  “Wow, your grandparents didn’t hold back, did they? I’m surprised, given how conservative they are.” She reaches over and takes my hand. I see the veins underneath her skin. I think of my mom. How she thought her veins were worms. How she wore gloves to hide her hands. Why would she ever think something like that? Why didn’t I ever tell my mom she had nothing to be afraid of? That they were only veins? Pumping blood to her heart. Keeping her alive. Maybe if I had told her that, even just once . . .

  “Sweetie, your father is a drag queen.”

  I feel my plastic chair fall through the floor.

  * * *

  “He’s what?!?”

  A couple of little kids turn their heads toward the sound of Trisha’s voice. We’re at the playground, the same one where Trisha told me to throw the eggs. Only we’re not at the tennis courts and we don’t have eggs. We’re sitting on the rickety see-saw. Trisha keeps trying to push herself off the ground, but it’s not working. My legs dangle in the air.

  “Please keep your voice down,” I say, glancing over at the kids.

  When I left Shirley’s, she offered to put my bike in her Chevette and drive me home, but I told her I was fine.

  “I need the exercise,” I said.

  “You’re sure you’re okay, sweetie?” Shirley asked. “I
know it’s a lot of information for you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, trying to sound convincing. I just needed to get away.

  “I keep asking myself what Heather would want you to do, but I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m picking him up at the airport. Wish me luck. I’m not good with highway driving. The last time I drove on the highway, I got diarrhea. Not while I was driving. But I had to pull over at the side of the road. Sorry if this is too much information.”

  I couldn’t go back to the farm. Not yet, anyway. I needed my mind to settle out. So I biked to Trisha’s because I couldn’t decide anyplace else I wanted to go. Mrs. Richardson answered the front door.

  “Toby,” she said. “This is a nice surprise. I was just taking some cookies out of the oven. Trisha is in her room.”

  I wondered what it would be like to have a normal mom, one who made cookies and invited my friends inside. But it’s impossible to imagine another version of my life.

  “Okay, let me get this straight,” Trisha says from her perch on the see-saw. “Your dad is coming—”

  “Not my dad,” I interrupt. “Don’t call him that. He’s not my dad. He’s my father.”

  Trisha’s face scrunches up. “Dad, father. What’s the difference?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, but trust me. There’s a huge difference.”

  “Okaaay . . . So your father, who you’ve never met, is coming in a couple of days. He’s an entertainer who lives in Europe. Not only is he an entertainer, he’s also big ’mo. And not only is he a big ’mo, he’s also a wig-, sequin- and stiletto-wearing drag queen.” She shakes her head and tries to push off from her end of the see-saw. “This is the most screwed-up thing I’ve heard this week.”

  I want to ask what kinds of screwed-up things she heard last week to compete with my news, but I hold back.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I say. “You have to swear to me.” None of this can get out. Not only would I be known in school as the girl with the dead mom, but I’d also have a new crown of thorns to wear: the girl with the gay father. Even the thought of people finding out makes me sick with shame.