by Shari Lapena
His only recourse was the bank, but he’d have to go to his own branch. He snuck a hopeless look at his watch, but naturally by now the bank would be closed.
He limped away, leaving the TV on the floor behind him, the lineup spilling around it in its rush forward.
• • •
THAT NIGHT AT supper, a wild-eyed Harold laid out his “allowance for chores” scheme, which was met with a long silence. This seemed to come out of nowhere.
John didn’t protest, figuring it was just one more example of how things never went right for him, and he was already in the doghouse. Dylan didn’t say anything either, assuming nothing would come of it. Audrey was quietly furious that Harold hadn’t consulted her about this first—if he had she could have reminded him that they’d tried it years ago (it was hardly an original idea) and it hadn’t worked. Also, Audrey couldn’t think of a single household chore that the boys would do well enough that she wouldn’t simply have to do it over anyway, and then there would be all the nagging . . . This was going to be way more work for her. She looked resentfully at Harold but held her tongue.
• • •
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Audrey and Harold were back at the doctor’s. Dr. Goldfarb had Harold sit down on the examining table, covered in a rustling white paper sheet, while Audrey stood by. Harold sat there sullenly, stubbornly mute.
Audrey had managed to get Harold an appointment. However, she hadn’t been able to get past the doctor’s secretary to speak to him on the phone, and she couldn’t discuss Dylan’s drug problem in front of Harold, so she was no further ahead on that score. But she hoped to bring this up privately, maybe when Harold was sent to do a pee sample or something. She figured she’d improvise.
Right now, though, she was more worried about Harold. Last night, right after supper, he’d gone upstairs to bed and hadn’t come back down. At least he’d come along to the doctor’s this morning passively enough.
“So, tell me why you’re here,” Dr. Goldfarb said.
Audrey answered for Harold. “He got hit on the head by a tree. He hasn’t been the same since.” She was so anxious to believe that this was the root of the problem that she almost did. She could handle anything but Alzheimer’s.
“Really? When was that?”
“About a week ago,” Audrey said. “He went to Emergency and they said he’d be fine, just a little concussion, but . . .”
“But what?” The doctor began to examine Harold’s head, looking into his eyes with his little flashlight instrument.
Audrey found it difficult to put her fears into words. She had the incriminating piece of paper in her purse, but to show this to someone else now felt like a betrayal. She finally said, “He seems depressed.”
The doctor turned away from Audrey and asked Harold, “Do you think you’re depressed?”
Harold shrugged his shoulders and remained silent.
Dr. Goldfarb said, “Last time I saw you, you were having some trouble with anxiety. Any more of that?”
Harold didn’t respond; he was still mad at Dr. Goldfarb about last time.
“I don’t think so,” Audrey said, “but he’s been acting strange.”
“Acting strange how?”
“Talking to himself, that kind of thing,” Audrey said. Harold glared at her.
“Do you think you’ve been acting strange? Dr. Goldfarb asked Harold.
Harold didn’t know how to answer that question, even if he’d wanted to, so he shrugged again.
“Well, I don’t think it’s the hit on the head,” Dr. Goldfarb said, after checking Harold all over. There was a long pause, while each one of them seemed to wonder what the problem was.
“It’s the forced meals!” Harold practically yelled. Once it was out, he couldn’t believe he’d said it.
Audrey had no idea what he was talking about. No one had ever forced Harold to eat anything. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said to the doctor, her face a perfect, horrified blank.
Dr. Goldfarb looked startled. “What forced meals?”
“Nothing, forget it,” Harold said.
“What forced meals?” Audrey said.
“Never mind,” Harold insisted.
“See?” Audrey said to the doctor.
Fortunately, at least from Harold’s point of view, Dr. Goldfarb was apt to let things go. He said, “I’ll write you a prescription for an anti-depressant. That may help. It may also help with any anxiety you might have.” He wrote out the prescription and added, “You sure you don’t want to see someone, a therapist?”
Harold shook his head emphatically.
Come back and see me in a month,” Dr. Goldfarb said.
He tore the paper off the pad—Audrey reached for it but he handed it to Harold. “Unless you feel worse, or have any unusual symptoms—then give me a call.”
Audrey was all the way out to the car before she remembered that she never got a chance to bring up Dylan’s drug problem. Also, now Harold wasn’t talking to her.
• • •
JOHN HAD BEEN talking to Nicole every day on his cell, making excuses for why he wasn’t able to see her. He found himself being excessively oblique when he was speaking to her, almost as if he were speaking in code, because he was trying so hard to hide who he really was. It didn’t seem to bother her though; the less she knew the real him, the more she seemed to like him. Now they were having one of their typical conversations as he walked home from school.
John got her on her cell and said, “Hey.”
Nicole said, “Hey.”
“I miss you.”
Nicole said, “So—when am I going to see you then?”
“It’s been crazy . . .” John said this looking over his shoulder, as if he was watching out for the cops. He wasn’t even aware that he was doing this.
Nicole said, “What have you been up to?”
“I can’t really talk about it on the phone,” John said.
“Right.”
“I might be able to get away—to see you.”
“When?”
John answered as if he were suddenly in a hurry, “I’ll get back to you.” He snapped his cell phone shut.
Good question. When was he going to see her? He couldn’t keep up this cloak and dagger stuff forever. He had to pin his mum down and get his freedom back or he’d take another chance on the window. A girl like Nicole wouldn’t wait around forever. He would have to make sure the old bag across the street wasn’t watching, though. He wasn’t sure how he’d do that exactly. In the meantime, he had to persuade Dylan to help him make something for his dad’s birthday. It was still a couple of weeks away, and he didn’t think his dad cared one way or the other, but John needed to curry all the favour with his parents that he could. His plan was to start on something for his dad right after school—he had no idea what, but necessity was the mother of invention—and show it to his mother as a work in progress, in the hope that she’d be so delighted that she’d immediately lift the grounding order.
With any luck, he could see Nicole tonight—or tomorrow at the latest.
• • •
HAROLD HAD EVERY intention of trying again. He would leave work early again today, even though he felt guilty for coming in late after his doctor’s appointment, and go to his home branch first and take out some cash. Then he’d return to Future Shop and hope the snotty girl was working the register. Although Audrey had doled out some money to him that morning as a temporary measure until their credit was reinstated and their cards were back in operation, it was nowhere near enough. She’d also handed him a stack of bills and correspondence forwarded from the bank. “Here,” she’d said, “Go through these.” But Harold hadn’t wanted to wade through the financial mess he was in.
Now, after lunch, Harold sat at his desk in his office and pulled the bundled envelopes, which Audrey had encased tightly in an elastic band, out of his scuffed briefcase. They felt heavy in his hand, and he was discouraged at the effort this would
undoubtedly take. He was tempted to stuff them back into his briefcase and hand them back over to Audrey. But then he pictured Audrey’s face if he were to do this, sighed, and reluctantly opened up the first envelope. It contained a Platinum MasterCard bill in his name and Harold’s eyebrows climbed higher and higher as he read it. Whoever it was who had stolen Harold’s identity, he was having way more fun being Harold Walker than Harold was himself.
Here was a trail of blazing glory! Harold already knew about the sports car, but now for the first time he learned about the expensive shoes, the electronics, the massage parlor charges, the escort services, the designer luggage, and the hotel in Brazil. The credit card limit of $50,000 had been attained. For an uncharacteristic moment, his mouth agape, Harold imagined himself driving to Pearson International Airport in an Infinity G-35 sports coupe (he now knew what one of these looked like; he’d looked it up on the Internet), flying first class— he’d never been anywhere—sipping fancy cocktails on a veranda in Rio de Janeiro—
“Harold—what are you doing?” a colleague hissed from the office doorway. Harold’s mouth clamped shut. “You’re supposed to be in the meeting. We’ve already started.”
At four o’clock Harold was still in the meeting, fuming invisibly and powerlessly while a government higher-up droned on and on. Any other day Harold might have been at risk of falling asleep, like one or two of the other overweight, middle-aged people in the meeting—whose occasional involuntary jerks Harold recognized all too well—but today he was too incensed at being held hostage to his job to be sleepy. Because after all, this meeting wasn’t actually accomplishing anything.
By quarter to five Harold was in despair. His window of opportunity had closed; he’d never get to the bank on time now.
• • •
“LET’S JUST DO it and get it over with,” John said.
Dylan was slouching on the old couch in the basement watching TV, not even taking his eyes off the screen to answer his brother. “Why? You know it’s a stupid idea. Anything we can make will be completely retarded.”
Dylan was absolutely right, but that wasn’t the point.
“Yeah, but it’ll make Mom happy.”
“Don’t you see how fucked up that is? It’s Dad’s birthday.”
“Fine. You stay here watching Gilligan’s Island. See if I care.” John turned on his heel in frustration and went through the door to the unfinished part of the basement which housed his dad’s workroom.
It wasn’t really a proper workroom, just a small area beside the furnace. There was a closet with shelves where he tucked away his bigger power tools, a workbench against the parged and flaking brick wall, and a pegboard above it with everything on it neatly labelled. The washer and dryer were there too, the empty laundry basket waiting on the uneven concrete floor.
John realized that without Dylan’s help, he was limited to the materials he could find in and around the house, since he wasn’t allowed to go out. Poking around, he discovered some Mason jars, leftover ceramic tile, old paint cans, plastic milk crates full of vinyl records from their dad’s university days, a piece of chipboard, and some rope. The only thing John had ever made in his life was in shop class, when he made a lamp out of an old tree stump, but that was back in grade nine, and he’d had a lot of help.
He found an old bag of cement, leftover from when his dad put in the post for the backyard gate. John kicked absently at the bag and thought that what he’d like to do was make a huge piece of modern art out of all this crap—a big chunk of concrete with all this junk stuck in it—the Mason jars, the ceramic tile, the old paint cans, the vinyl records, the chipboard, and the rope—and put it in his mother’s front garden. That would be expressing himself.
Of course, he would never do that, and the object here was to see Nicole, but finding the cement had cheered him up somewhat. There ought to be something he could do with cement. And the instructions for how to mix it were right on the package.
“Got any bright ideas?” Dylan asked, appearing in the doorway.
John shrugged and said, “I found some cement.”
“What the hell are you going to do with cement?”
“I don’t know,” John said sarcastically. “Maybe we could make a decorative lawn ornament.”
“I told you this was retarded. We should just buy him something,” Dylan said. “Something that he’d actually like. Something that would cheer him up.”
“Mom wants us to make something,” John insisted stubbornly. They fell silent, thinking. “How about a bird feeder?” John suggested at length.
“A cement bird feeder.”
“No,” John scoffed. “Wood.”
“Too hard,” Dylan said.
They thought some more.
“If we had some wood, we could bang together a little bench for the backyard,” Dylan suggested, remembering suddenly how happy his dad used to be, puttering around out behind the house. “How hard could that be? It wouldn’t even have to have a back on it. Just a flat piece of wood on some supports.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” John said.
“He used to like being out there, in the backyard.”
“Yeah.”
“We’d just have to get some wood.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not allowed out, and you can’t drive,” John said. “And neither can I,” he added, remembering.
“I bet Mom would take us,” Dylan said.
John started nodding. “Yeah, she might.”
“And if we go to Home Depot,” Dylan said, “I think they’ll cut the wood for us. All we’d have to do is bring it home and nail it together.”
“That wouldn’t take much time at all,” John agreed, growing excited. They could have this done by dinner!
They went upstairs to tell their mother.
“A garden bench!” she said, impressed. “What a lovely idea.”
“Could you drive us to Home Depot to get the stuff?” John asked. “Right now?”
Audrey didn’t want to go anywhere near Home Depot. But she said, “I can’t right now. Your father took the car to work again today—who knows why.” She secretly feared he was developing a phobia about the subway. “But we can go tomorrow, after school.”
“Oh,” said John, deliberately looking very disappointed. “I really wanted to get started on it today.”
“Well,” Audrey said, pleased, “in that case, I’ll take you after supper, after your father gets home. You can work on it tonight. But don’t tell him—it’ll be a surprise.”
CHAPTER NINE
Audrey drove the boys to Home Depot. She was distracted and anxious about Harold, who had gone straight upstairs to bed after work and refused to come back down. At least he’d eaten some of the dinner she’d brought up to him.
She was trying to look on the bright side. The drugs would surely take effect sooner or later, although she didn’t know which, because she hadn’t thought to ask the doctor and he hadn’t offered that information. And at least the boys were doing something nice for their father. A garden bench really was an excellent idea—a place for Harold to rest when he was working in the backyard; maybe it would even encourage him to start working in the backyard again. She’d underestimated them.
She glanced at the boys in the rear-view mirror and considered whether she should tell them that their father was starting to take antidepressants, but she thought it might make John worry, and possibly spark another Nurse Ratched comment from Dylan, so she decided to keep it to herself.
She pulled into the huge parking lot and started looking for a spot. She hadn’t followed up on the paternity testing yet. She hadn’t had the time, as all hell had been breaking loose lately. But it was on her to-do list. She’d get to it sooner or later, because now she had to know, one way or the other. Seeing Tom on the day of his death was like being clubbed over the head. It was a sign.
Once inside, they grabbed one of the oversized orange shopping carts and went straight to the lumber area. There,
the three of them looked blankly at each other until Audrey said, “Let’s get some help.”
Eventually they nabbed someone. Dylan explained what they wanted. “We want to keep it really simple,” Dylan emphasized.
“Sure,” the Home Depot man said.
They got a board twelve inches wide, two inches thick, and had it cut into a five-foot length. Then two more pieces, a foot high, a foot deep, and two inches wide. One for each end.
“Put the supports in a bit,” the Home Depot man advised, “not right at the ends,” and he went away to help someone else.
Audrey looked doubtful. “That’s pretty simple, all right,” she said. She was trying to picture it.
“Simple is good,” Dylan said.
“Do you think it’ll hold him?” Audrey asked.
“Sure,” John said.
Dylan was already loading the lumber into the cart. Nails didn’t occur to anybody.
When they got home, Audrey went in ahead to make sure the coast was clear. She needn’t have worried; Harold was still in bed, curled on his side in the fetal position. She waved the boys in and went back upstairs, checked on Harold again, and then went into the bathroom and started running a bubble bath.
John and Dylan carried the boards through the kitchen and downstairs to the workroom, putting a few nicks in the walls as they went. First, they plunked the longer piece of wood down on the floor and the other two pieces beside it. This is when Dylan realized they didn’t have any nails.
“Fuck,” he said. “We didn’t get any nails.”
John said, “Don’t sweat it. Dad’s got to have nails around here someplace.”
“Yeah, well, they’ve got to be the right size.”
“What’s the right size?”
“I don’t know—big enough to go through that,” John said, directing his chin at the boards. “Three or four inches long.”
John started searching through the various jars and boxes of nails and screws on the top of the workbench while Dylan looked for a hammer. He found two. He handed one to John.
