Break in Case of Emergency

by Brian Francis

  The phone rings and I walk over to answer it.

  “Anything yet?”

  Trisha.

  “No. I told you I’d call you.”

  “The minute he leaves, Toby, you pick up that phone. You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  After Grandma Kay and I are done our cleaning, as the late afternoon stretches itself out and the cows are lying in the fields, chewing their cuds with no idea what’s about to happen, we sit in the living room and wait. I’ve changed into my new top, the grey one with the hearts that I got with Trisha. I hope my father notices it. I hope he says something about the hearts. The smell of lemon furniture polish mixes with the smell of Grandma Kay’s peach pie, cooling on the counter. It feels like the last moment of life as I know it. It’s not that much different from when I stood in front of my mom’s bedroom door.

  “He must have family here,” I say. I’ve never mentioned this before. I’ve never asked about siblings or uncles or cousins.

  Or grandparents.

  “Far as I know,” Grandma Kay says. “But I suppose people move.”

  A few years ago, Grandma Kay and I were grocery shopping and ran into a woman in the canned goods aisle. Right away, I sensed this woman was different from the usual women Grandma Kay knew. It was the way her back stiffened. I could almost hear her bones snap.

  “Hello, Joyce,” Grandma Kay said. She put her hand on my shoulder.

  The woman looked to be around Grandma Kay’s age, but she seemed more formal. She was wearing a green and purple dress and thick, black shoes. Her coat had a fur collar, even though it was a warm day. A silver chain with a cross hung from her neck.

  “Kay,” the woman said. She wasn’t looking at Grandma Kay. She was looking at me. The expression on her face was strange, as though I was some kind of magic trick that she was trying to figure out. I watched as the woman’s eyes went from my windbreaker to my jeans to my sneakers. I wished I’d combed my hair. There was a stain on my jacket.

  “Nice to see you,” Grandma Kay said.

  “I think spring is finally on its way.”

  “I certainly hope so. How’s your husband? And family?”

  “Fine. And yours?”

  “The same.”

  They spoke in a guarded way. I felt a sense of danger, as though they were two wolves circling one another. As though talking was stopping them from doing something else.

  “I should be going,” the woman said. “I’m hosting my women’s church group tonight and need to pick up a few things. No rest for the wicked.” She looked at me again.

  “No rest indeed,” Grandma Kay said and told me to come along. Grandma Kay didn’t say my name or introduce me, and we walked so fast down the rest of the aisles, it was hard for me to keep up.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “No one of importance,” Grandma Kay said.

  Later, I realized who that woman must’ve been. My other grandmother. My father’s mother. It was the way she looked at me, as though she already knew who I was. There was a whole other side to me that I knew nothing about. My father’s family. Where did they live? Did they all know about me? Why hadn’t they ever come to visit?

  Then I slowly came to understand.

  They’re ashamed of me too.

  * * *

  Just before six o’clock, there’s the sound of low rumbling in the distance. Grandma Kay sits up straighter in her chair and I notice the way the sunlight catches her face and how, in spite of her wrinkles, it makes her seem young and full of hope. The rumbling grows louder until it becomes clear what the sound is.

  A car. Heading our way.

  Grandma Kay gets up and walks over to the front window, pulling aside the curtain. I want to join her, but I can’t. I stay glued to my seat, my heart beating faster as the rumbling gets louder and louder.

  “Is it them?” I ask, just before a blue Chevette comes into view. Shirley’s car, followed by a small dust storm. It slows in front of the entrance to the farm. Grandma Kay freezes in place. I watch.

  The car turns into the driveway. I stand up. From this distance, I see someone sitting next to Shirley in the passenger seat.

  My father, after all these years, is finally here.

  Chapter 12

  I watch, my breath stuck in my lungs, as the passenger door swings open and my father steps out of the car. First one leg, then the other. An arm, a shoulder, then his head, until he’s standing, and I can take him all in for the first time in my life.

  I’m relieved to see he’s not wearing a dress.

  He’s shorter than I was expecting, with black, curly hair that spirals out from his head. He’s wearing a white shirt, wrinkled from his long trip, and a pair of dark pants. He’s also wearing boots. This strikes me as strange because never once did I imagine my father in a pair of boots. When he goes to pat his hair down, I see he’s wearing a large gold ring on the middle finger of his right hand. This seems strange as well, but maybe men wear larger jewellery in Europe. Then again, he’s a drag queen. My thoughts are racing all over the place.

  After all these years. After all the television shows I’d watched, pretending he was an actor playing a father, after all the times I imagined seeing him in the most everyday places. The grocery store standing next to the cantaloupes, on a bench in the park, pumping gas next to a station wagon. Or as the guidance counsellor at school, the one who always wore cardigans, and I’d think how nice it would be to be hugged, to be taken into a man’s arms and feel safe and protected.

  And now, my father is here, in the flesh. Finally. And while I’m a little let down to see that he doesn’t look like a movie star or someone you’d think twice about if you passed him on the street, he’s still my father. And I’m his daughter. His blood runs through me.

  He puts his hands on his hips and looks around, his head turning this way and that. It’s hard to figure out the expression on his face. It’s somewhere between bored and puzzled. I realize he looks nothing like the photograph my mom had, of the two of them at the carnival, but I guess that’s not surprising. People change, after all.

  The driver’s door opens and Shirley steps out, looking frazzled.

  “I am NEVER driving on the 401 again!” she yells to no one in particular. There’s a pair of sunglasses perched on her head. She walks around to the front of the car, resting her hands on the hood and closing her eyes, like she’s saying a prayer.

  “They’re here,” Grandma Kay says, and I walk closer to the front window, to where she’s standing. This is the first time she’s seen my father in over fifteen years, so it must be overwhelming for her too.

  “Who’s that?” she asks, her head tilting to one side.

  I stop in my tracks. “Isn’t that him?”

  “It’s been a few years, but my eyesight isn’t that bad. That’s not Arthur.”

  I look at the man. If he’s not my father, then who is he? And where is my father?

  Shirley walks over to the driver’s side, leans in and gives the car horn two long honks. The hens start to cluck.

  “We need some help out here!” she yells.

  Grandma Kay turns to me. “Oh no,” she whispers.

  I watch fear spread across her face.

  * * *

  Grandpa Frank goes out to the car, followed by Grandma Kay. I stand at the front door, hidden behind the gauze of the screen. I can’t bring myself to step out of the house. I can’t be seen. Not yet.

  “What’s all the fuss about?” Grandpa Frank asks.

  “In the back seat,” Shirley says. “Bruno, stop looking at the chickens and get over here.”

  Bruno?

  Grandpa Frank looks at him. “You a hitchhiker or something?”

  “I no understand what you ask,” the man says.

  “Frank, I need you to focus,” Shirley says. “The back seat, please. I can’t do this on my own. I don’t have the strength.”

  Grandpa Frank opens the car door. I watch as he takes a st
ep back and puts his hands on his hips. “For the love of Christ . . . ,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Please tell me he’s not—” Grandma Kay says, coming down the front steps.

  “He sure is,” Shirley says. “Some homecoming.”

  “Oh my Lord,” Grandma Kay says.

  I’m trying to make sense of the scene in front of me, but it’s impossible. I can’t understand anything. The faces and voices are blurring together. Shirley’s car. This Bruno man. Grandma Kay’s voice. Grandpa Frank’s disgust. What’s going on?

  And is my father in the back seat?

  “Give me some help here,” Grandpa Frank says to the man. “How he’d get this way, anyway?”

  “It begin with a rye and ginger,” the man says. “It end with a martini.”

  “It always does,” Shirley says with a shake of her head. Her sunglasses slip down in front of her eyes.

  Grandma Kay is standing at the base of the front steps. I can’t see her face, but I can see the tightness of her neck and shoulders.

  I watch as Grandpa Frank and the man pull a shape from the back seat. At first, I think it’s a carpet. But then I see it’s a person, wrapped in a brown cloak or blanket. I can’t see the face. The person’s head is slumped forward, like they have no neck bones.

  Grandpa Frank and the man struggle as they slip an arm underneath either side and begin the slow walk up the gravel driveway to the front steps.

  “Easy does it,” Grandpa Frank says.

  “Be careful,” the man says.

  “Watch your back, Frank,” Grandma Kay says.

  A white arm, thin and smooth and almost glowing, pushes out from the brown material, lifting high into the air, like it’s saying hello or surrendering.

  Shirley is leading the way, the world’s most depressing band leader.

  “A few more steps,” she says. “That’s right. Just a few more steps.”

  “How could you do this?” Grandma Kay asks when Shirley reaches her.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Shirley says. “All I did was pick him up.”

  “You didn’t have to bring him here. Like that. You could’ve let him sober up first.”

  “I drove with the windows open the entire way,” Shirley says. “Look at my hair if you don’t believe me. But nothing was going to sober him up in time.”

  “Don’t talk to me about time. More than fifteen years have gone by and nothing has changed.”

  I’m frozen behind the screen door, watching as the limp parcel makes its way toward me. I understand now that the man I first thought was my father isn’t my father. Instead, this thing, this shape heading toward me, that’s my father.

  As they get closer, I notice a smell. Sour milk.

  “Toby, hold the door open,” Grandpa Frank says.

  I do as I’m told and step out, like a robot, holding the door as widely as I can.

  The three of them walk past me and into the house.

  Chapter 13

  They take him to my grandparents’ bedroom and lay him out on the bed. The sound of his snoring escapes past the half-closed door.

  “Honestly, Kay,” Shirley says. We’re all sitting in the living room. “What was I supposed to do? Leave him at the airport?”

  “You couldn’t take him somewhere else?” Grandma Kay asks. I’ve never heard her so angry before. “Instead of bringing him here? Instead of letting her see him like that?”

  All eyes turn to me. I see expressions of anger and confusion. Pity and shame.

  “And who are you again?” Grandma Kay asks, looking at the man. Her eyes narrow as if she’s trying to bring him into focus.

  He sits up straighter from his place on the sofa. “I am Bruno. The manager of Arthur. He ask me to come. He no like to travel alone.”

  “He doesn’t travel well, period,” Grandpa Frank says. “The man stinks like a back alley on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Frank . . . ,” Grandma Kay says sternly.

  “Sorry,” Grandpa Frank says. “I didn’t know we were trying to hide the fact that he’s so sauced he can barely walk.”

  “How does anyone get that drunk on an airplane?” Shirley asks.

  “He make friends with the stewardess,” Bruno says. “And it’s a long flight from Rome.”

  “Is that where you live?” Grandpa Frank says. “In It-lee?”

  “Italy,” I whisper, wishing he didn’t sound so much like a farmer.

  He nods. “That’s where I’m from.”

  “Well, why didn’t you try to stop him from drinking so much?” Grandma Kay asks. “You’re his manager. Aren’t you supposed to look after him?”

  “It’s best not to try and stop Arthur.”

  Grandma Kay lets her head fall into her hands. “I knew it would be like this. All these years later and still the same. I almost hoped . . . well, never mind. It doesn’t matter what I hoped. It doesn’t mean anything. Hope doesn’t fix what’s in the bedroom.”

  I keep staring straight ahead, beyond the glass of the living room window, past the driveway and the road, looking at the evergreens, imagining the space where I’ll lie down. The grass will feel so cool against the back of my legs. So soft. Inside me, there’s a noise, like a lid sliding over the opening of a well, closing out any last pieces of light.

  “You should’ve hung up when he called,” I hear Grandma Kay say. “You got some of those phone calls in the past yourself, just like I did. The middle of the night and he’d start talking garbage in that slurred voice. I hung up years ago. You should’ve done the same.”

  “I couldn’t hang up,” Shirley says. “Not after hearing what he had to say.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “He said . . . He just . . . All he said was that he really wanted to come home. That it was important to him.”

  “And why wasn’t it important any other time?” Grandpa Frank asks.

  “I think this time is different.” Shirley looks quickly at Bruno. “I think he’s learned a few things.”

  “Not from what I can see,” Grandpa Frank says.

  “Well, I’m sorry to say but he’ll have to be your problem,” Grandma Kay says. “You can bring him back when he’s sobered up. When he’s ready to start acting like a decent person and not a drunkard.”

  “He’s not staying with me,” Shirley says. “He’s staying with you.”

  “What?!?”

  “I have a one-bedroom apartment,” Shirley says. “Where are they going to sleep? On the sofa?”

  “Who’s ‘they?’” Grandma Kay asks, before looking at Bruno. “Well, we don’t have the space either.”

  “You live on a ten-acre farm! Why wouldn’t they stay here? They came to see you. And Toby, of course.”

  Grandma Kay shakes her head. “No, I am sorry, but that will not do. That was never discussed or agreed to, Shirley. And I find that very deceptive of you.”

  “I never lied.”

  “You didn’t tell the truth either,” Grandpa Frank says. “This might be the first time I’ve ever said this in my lifetime, but Kay is right. If your intention was that he was going to stay here, you should’ve said so.”

  “We ask her what she want, no?” It’s Bruno. He’s gesturing toward me. “She is why we visit.”

  “What do you want to do, Toby?” Shirley asks.

  “Yes, what do you want?” Grandma Kay asks.

  “I want—” The words start but become trapped. “I want—”

  The only thing I want are the pills. I want darkness. I want to erase. To forget.

  “I want—”

  “How about giving an old whore a light?”

  Everyone turns. There, in the doorway of the living room, a man is standing. At first, I think he’s naked, but then I see he’s wearing a pair of beige underwear. There’s a blond wig on his head, the hair knotted and shooting in all directions. His mouth is a gash of red lipstick. There’s a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

  “What in the hell?” Gr
andpa Frank says.

  Bruno gets up from the couch and grabs the man’s arm. “Arthur, go back to sleep.”

  “Don’t you manhandle me, you meatball,” he says, yanking his arm free. “I can’t sleep. That bed smells like Aqua Net and failed dreams.”

  His voice is raspy, higher than I’ve heard from a man. I remember what my mom had said, that my father’s voice was neither male nor female but somewhere in between. He runs a finger along the elastic band of the underwear. I see then that they’re not men’s underwear.

  “Are you wearing my panties?” Grandma Kay asks, rising out of her chair.

  “I didn’t know they still make this kind,” he says. “Please, no one put me near an open flame.”

  “You went through my dresser drawers?”

  He saunters into the centre of the living room. I see how pale he is. There isn’t a hair on his body. His belly hangs like dough.

  “This is outrageous!” Grandma Kay says. “You get out of here.”

  “Now how do y’all like that hospitality?” he asks. “And here I thought Pa would have his squeezebox out and we’d have us a little jig round the outhouse. By the way, Shirley, you’re a horrific driver. I’ve never heard anyone scream like that at a transport truck.”

  “He kept veering into my lane!”

  “Does anyone have a light, or will I have to start rubbing twigs together?”

  “Get him back to bed, Frank!”

  His gaze lands on me. He slowly walks over. He bends down so that we’re eye to eye. I’m looking into his green eyes just like I always imagined. But there are no emeralds. His eyes are the colour of puke. His hand goes to my knee. It’s then that I see his fingernails are red.

  “And you must be the long-lost daughter,” he says, the corners of his smile like two knife points.

  Chapter 14

  They manage to get him back to bed. Bruno and Grandpa Frank lead him down the hallway while he sings “Clang! Clang! Clang! Went the trolley! Ding! Ding! Ding! Went the bell!” at the top of his lungs. Once things quiet down, we sit, silent, in our chairs and on the sofa. It seems like everyone is afraid to speak. Or they don’t know what words to say, as if words could erase any of this disaster. I keep seeing him in Grandma Kay’s panties, that messy blond wig, his cruel smile. It’s the fingernails, though, that bother me most. They were blood red.