Break in Case of Emergency

by Brian Francis

  “Arthur is visiting from out of town,” I say. “He offered to do my makeup for me. We were just about to head home.”

  “Well, you do look stunning,” Mrs. Richardson says. “I hardly recognized you when I first saw you. All grown up. Not the girl who used to play Barbies with Trisha in the basement. Don’t let me keep you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, stepping down from the stool. “It was nice seeing you.”

  “You, too, Toby,” she says, and the look in her eyes makes me want to cry.

  “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Turner.”

  “Oh, please. Call me Liza.”

  She raises her eyebrow.

  “I want to talk to you sometime, Toby, in private,” she says. “After things settle out a bit. I just want to know you’re doing okay.”

  “I am, Mrs. Richardson,” I say. “Don’t worry about me at all.”

  “Easier said than done.” She gives me a quick hug before walking away.

  “Nice meeting you, Bettina,” Arthur calls out.

  Mrs. Richardson turns around, pauses, her forehead a wave of lines, and turns back around, leaving my father and me alone again. What is she going to tell Trisha?

  “That woman screams vanilla,” he says. “Speaking of vanilla, how about we get an ice cream?”

  * * *

  We sit on a picnic bench outside the Dairy Queen on Colborne Street. The neon OPEN sign in the window flickers like it’s on its last leg. I’m eating a small strawberry sundae, even though I was told that was the “most boring thing anyone could ask for at Dairy Queen.” He’s eating a hot fudge sundae with nuts.

  “The Spanish kind, though,” he told the counter girl. “I like my nuts with a bit of skin.”

  I’ll never be able to set foot in this Dairy Queen again.

  “The hot fudge sauce is too hot,” he tells me. “You see how it’s all run down the sides of the ice cream and pooled at the bottom of the cup? It should cling to the ice cream. Hot fudge should always cling.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” I say.

  “You have a very sarcastic side, young lady,” he says, waving a finger at me. “I approve of that.”

  We eat in silence for a few moments. I watch some of the people going in and out. Parents. Kids dressed in sports uniforms. Elderly people. Young couples on dates. Everything seems so innocent.

  “Do you know why I brought you to this Dairy Queen?” he asks.

  “It’s the same one you took my mom to,” I say. “That night after your driving lesson in the cemetery.”

  “Not only are you sarcastic, but you’re smart too. Do you remember what I told you earlier? About how your mom said she’d never escape Tilden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mom tried to kill herself that night. I don’t know if it was the first time, but it was the first time since we’d been friends. She tried to cut her wrists. Kay was the one who found her, I think. They took her to the hospital. After a while, she was fine. But I understood then that Heather was dealing with something much darker than I’d believed. It seemed to me like she was trying to outrun her shadows, but she never could. Legs cramp up. Or the shadows are faster. I’m telling you this because whatever your mom was dealing with, Toby, was there long before you came along. She wasn’t trying to escape you, in case you think that. She was trying to escape herself.”

  I look at the flickering lights of the OPEN sign. My mom had tried to kill herself before. When she was around my age. Why hadn’t Grandma Kay ever told me this?

  “In some ways, it was brave what Heather did,” he says. “I don’t mean it like it sounds, like it was an honourable act, but it takes a certain amount of bravery to know what you’re leaving behind. She wasn’t a coward to do what she did. That’s what people think when someone commits suicide. They’re cowards. But I don’t think so. Sometimes, it’s about facing something head on.”

  “I don’t think that’s true at all,” I say. “My mom wasn’t a coward, but what she did wasn’t brave. It wasn’t the only option.” Even as I say the words, I know how two-faced I sound. A few days ago, I was certain suicide was the only option for me. I’m not sure how I feel now, only that Arthur has no right to talk about my mom and what she left behind when he’s the one who left everyone in the first place. If he had stayed, she might not have killed herself. She would’ve had him for a husband. Or, if not a husband, then at least a friend. Someone she could confide in. Or laugh with. Someone who’d make her feel like less of a freak.

  “You don’t think it was inevitable?” he asks. “What she did?”

  “I think my mom needed help,” I say. “But she didn’t get it. Not the kind of help she needed. I tried, but I wasn’t enough. She needed more than me. But I don’t think she knew how to find it. I don’t know if she knew where to look. It’s hard to find your way when you’re surrounded by darkness.”

  He clears his throat. “I brought you this. Kay gave it to Shirley, who gave it to me.”

  He extends his hand. He’s holding something square between his fingers. I take it from him. It’s the photograph of him and my mom. That day at the carnival.

  “This was with you at the cabin,” he says. “Along with a stuffed parrot. I’m not going to ask about that one.”

  I feel myself blush. “My mom kept this in her dresser,” I say, quietly. “She showed it to me after she told me about you.”

  “It’s funny, but I have no recollection of that photo being taken. Or of that day.”

  “My mom said the two of you were at a carnival in a parking lot and that you were making fun of other people. You won a stuffed animal for her. A lion or a tiger. Something like that.”

  I look down at my half-empty sundae cup. I’m embarrassed by how much this story has been burned into my memory, how I imagined that day at the carnival over and over, the smells, my mom’s laughter, the life underneath the flat photograph in my hand. I needed to know every detail, even if I had to make most of them up. And I realize, for the first time, something I never have before.

  Everything I’ve lost makes up everything I am.

  “I don’t remember that day,” he says. “But don’t put too much emphasis on an old photo. We were just a couple of stupid kids. While Heather and I might have been your parents, we were never the mom and dad you should have had.”

  I start sobbing. I can’t help it. It feels like there’s an earthquake inside of me and the ground is splitting and hot lava is spilling out, and even though I’m trying to hold everything in, I can’t. I just watch everything split and flow and crackle and burn.

  I feel his hand on my back, rubbing it back and forth. My tears are falling onto my ice cream, and all I keep thinking is, He’s right. Strawberry is the most boring flavour.

  “You were the one who found her.”

  “Why didn’t my mom make arrangements that day for Shirley to pick me up? Why did she do what she did, knowing that I’d be coming home from school? Knowing that I was just a little kid? How much did she hate me to do something like that? To her only child?”

  “She wasn’t in her right mind, Toby. You have to know that. She loved you.”

  “No, she didn’t,” I say through my tears. “You don’t do something like that if you love other people.”

  “But you tried to do it too, Toby. The same as Heather. And you love people.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t.” My words are wet and mushy.

  “You’re telling me you don’t love your grandparents?”

  “Not enough. If I love someone . . .” My throat won’t let the words out, like it’s trying to strangle them. “If I love someone . . .”

  “If you love someone, what?”

  “I’ll lose them.” The words escape and fly into the air. Something breaks open inside of me and I fall onto the hard parking lot and bring my knees into my chest as an endless river of my tears flows across the black asphalt.


  * * *

  We sit in the car in my grandparents’ driveway.

  “I’m sorry to tell you this,” he says, “but you look like a raccoon. Had I known you were going to turn into Niagara Falls, I wouldn’t have applied so much mascara at Sears.”

  I wipe under my eyes. Although my tears have stopped, I still feel their stain on my cheeks. “Are there any tissues in here?”

  “I’m assuming Shirley has some lying around. No doubt she’s shed her fair share of tears in here. It’s a Chevette, after all.”

  He pulls a crumpled box of tissues from the back seat and passes it to me. “I’m guessing these smell like cheap perfume.”

  “You should be nicer to Shirley,” I say, taking a tissue. “She’s not a bad person.”

  “I never said she was,” he says. “She’s just fucking annoying.”

  I laugh before I can stop myself. It feels weird to do it, considering I was bawling like a baby just a short time ago. But maybe laughing and crying aren’t so opposite. Maybe they’re closer together than I realize.

  He’s right, though, about the tissue. It smells like perfume. Roses. Not real roses, but the fake kind with plastic dewdrops on the petals.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod again. “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to go inside with you?”

  “No, that’s okay,” I say. “I’m fine. Thanks for the Chinese food. And the ice cream. And the makeup. And for the stories. About my mom, I mean.”

  “I know this is a lot to digest.”

  “What happens now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is this the last time I’ll see you?” I ask.

  “Do you want to see me again?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  All of a sudden, he’s the one who’s crying. He hunches over the steering wheel, his hands covering his face.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “You don’t want to see me again?”

  “It’s not that. It’s not that at all.” His voice is muffled from behind his hands. His words come in spurts between his sobs. “I was so . . . afraid to come . . . here. You don’t know what it was like . . . for me, living here. How much I hated it. How . . . much everyone . . . hated me. Even my own family turned their backs . . . Except for your mom. You were the one . . . I was most afraid of. Because I let . . . you down. I wasn’t there . . . for you when you . . . needed . . . me. And you want to see me again? Why would you . . . feel that way? I’m nothing. I’m nothing . . . but a piece of garbage.”

  “No, you’re not.” I want to reach out to him, the same way he reached out to me in the Dairy Queen parking lot. But I can’t. My arms stay frozen at my sides. Instead, I just watch his back shake as he cries.

  “I went to my house . . . to see my mother. I stood on the porch . . . and I knocked . . . I was so nervous. I haven’t . . . spoken to her . . . in all these years.”

  Joyce. The woman from the grocery store.

  “And when she opened the door . . . I said, ‘Hi Mom.’ And . . . she looked at me . . . Do you know what she did then? She . . . she . . . she closed the door.”

  My hand goes to his back as he sobs. I rub it back and forth, back and forth.

  After a while, he lifts his head, sniffs loudly and takes a tissue out of the box.

  “I never thought it would go like this,” he says. “Not in a million years.”

  “Go like what?” I ask.

  “Sitting here, with you. Getting to know you. After all these years. I don’t blame you for being angry at me. I don’t blame you for never wanting to speak to me again.”

  “I’m still angry,” I say. “You can’t undo fifteen years in a couple of days. But I don’t hate you. I can’t hate you. You’re . . .”

  He looks at me. The word is there, at the top of my throat. I have never said this word and even the thought of it scares me to pieces. But it feels right. So I let the word out before it gets buried deep inside me.

  “You’re my dad.”

  Chapter 44

  Grandma Kay is waiting for me. No surprises there. She jumps up from her recliner as soon as I walk in.

  “Well?” she asks. “How did it go?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “What happened to your face?”

  My fingers go to my cheeks. “Oh. We experimented a bit with makeup. I’m going to wash this off now.”

  I start making my way down the hall toward the bathroom.

  “Wait,” she says. “Don’t go yet. Tell me more. What did you talk about?”

  “Things,” I say, turning back. “A bit about my mom. About him. About me.”

  “And how are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” I say. And I realize it’s the truth. “I’m feeling better now.”

  “That’s good. When are they leaving?”

  “The day after tomorrow,” I say. Then I have a thought. “Can I ask a favour?”

  “Sure,” she says.

  “Can we have them over for dinner?” I ask. “Just one last family dinner? Things went so wrong the last time. But I don’t think they would this time. I’m pretty sure about that.”

  “Okay,” Grandma Kay says. “We can do that. A family dinner.”

  A family dinner. It sounds so strange.

  “A family dinner,” I say. I turn around before she can see my eyes starting to well up. My tears don’t seem to have any end. “I’d like that a lot.”

  * * *

  I have to deal with Trisha. And Mike. I’m not really sure where to start. Both situations are very complicated.

  I decide to start with Mike since he’ll be the first one I see in the morning.

  Same as the other day, I get up early and sit by the window to wait for his car to pull into the driveway. I wait for what seems like a long time, and I start to wonder if he’s coming in or not, but then I see his car pull up in front of our house, slow down and turn into the driveway. I take a deep breath, get up from my spot and walk out to the front door.

  I’ve changed out of my pyjamas and I’ve put some blush on my cheeks, making sure I followed Arthur’s advice about blending. I almost stop before I open the door, but I remind myself I have to do this.

  I need to take responsibility for my actions. There’s no one else who can take ownership but me. I remember the psychiatrist saying that.

  Mike looks up when he hears the front door open. He looks surprised to see me. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s just surprised that I’m actually showing my face. I go down the front steps and walk over to him.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “I don’t know where to start, Mike. But thanking you seems like a good place. So thank you. For rescuing me.”

  He looks down, making a line in the dirt with his boot. “You’re welcome.”

  “And thank you for the drawing you did. It’s amazing and I love it.”

  “You’re welcome again,” he says again. He’s still not looking at me.

  “I think the next thing I need to say is that I’m sorry.”

  He looks up then, biting his lower lip.

  “I’m sorry for doing that to you. For lying. About why I wanted to go to the cabin. It was a shitty thing to do. And then to have you come back and find me like that . . .”

  He shrugs and squints, even though the sun is just cracking the horizon.

  “How did you know to come back?” I ask.

  “Something told me,” he says. “I’m not the smartest person, but something didn’t seem right. The way you were acting. The things you said. Plus, your mom.” He looks down again. “Knowing what I knew, I just stopped the car and turned back around. You remember anything?”

  “No,” I say. “Everything is a blur. Was I awake when you found me?”

  “Sort of,” he says. “You were kind of mumbling. Something about a mask. Or hiding. I didn’t know what to do, but on TV they always
make people puke, so I tried to do that. And you did. All over my hand.”

  “Sorry.” I’m so embarrassed by all of this. “Again.”

  “Then I put you in the car and tore off for the hospital. I kept talking to you the whole way there. Told you jokes. Sang songs. Yelled at you. Anything I could think of to keep you from . . .”

  Now it’s my turn to look down. “I know.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you do it? Was it something I said? Or did? I’m trying to understand, but it’s not easy.”

  “It wasn’t about anything you did or said. It was about me, Mike. That’s all.”

  When I say the words, something goes off in my head. My mom’s suicide. What my father said. It wasn’t about me. It was about her. I think I finally understand that for the first time since her death.

  “I was in a dark hole,” I say. “And no matter who came to the opening of the hole and looked down or offered me a hand, it didn’t matter. I didn’t want help. I only wanted to stay inside the hole. It was comfortable. I guess I thought I deserved to stay in the hole.”

  He looks off toward the cows. I look over too. They’re slowly coming in from the fields. Time for their day to begin. The way it does every day. It must be so boring for them. In the distance, I hear the long whistle of a passing train. I stop for a second to listen, remembering my plan, wondering if it’s still the plan.

  “You realize what could’ve happened, don’t you?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “I do.”

  “I would’ve been the one. To find you the next day. If you went through with it.” He turns back to me. “Did you think about that? What that would be like? For me?”

  I feel something cold, like an ice cube, run down my spine. “No,” I say, but I’m not sure he hears me. My voice is more like a breath. How could I do that to him? The same as what my mom had done to me? But I’m not lying. I hadn’t thought about Mike at all. Not about the consequences. What would happen after I died. I only thought about dying. How could I be so unfair to him? Why would I do that to someone I care about? Maybe it was the same for my mom. Maybe she wasn’t even thinking about me coming home from school that day. Maybe she was too busy thinking about more urgent things. Not the future, not the consequences, just the moment she was in, blind to everyone else.