The Good Father

by Wayne Grady

  That was Saturday, and she didn’t get to that job interview. She almost didn’t make it to class on Monday. Paul was sweet then, and he obviously had more money than one person could spend in two lifetimes. On Friday nights, he did shooters with his friends in a back room at the Casa Rojo, and when the deals were made he brought the boys back to the house to meet the girlfriend, who was her, and do some serious partying. They were nice guys, they liked her, they thought it was cool that she was going to university to learn how to read books. She couldn’t talk law with them and they couldn’t talk literature with her, so they got on perfectly. On Sunday mornings, Paul cooked. He collected vinyl jazz records. He had a baby grand in his living room, and a forty-two-inch TV in his bedroom. His total library consisted of half a dozen cookbooks, Mexican and Californian, food with lots of red meat. She thought between them they made a normal couple. Not normal normal, but normal enough.

  That first weekend, though, she assumed she was just a temporary amusement. He probably had a fiancée somewhere, or a wife on Salt Spring. He was going to drop Daphne off at her class on Monday and that would be that. But then she kept getting texts from him. And not just “What’s up?” but fairly explicit texts about what he wanted to do with her and where and for how long, and she’d show her friends and text back: “OMW.” She didn’t tell anyone who the texts were from, though. Paul was big-time, or at least his firm was, and while he didn’t mind his buddies knowing he was dating an undergrad, he didn’t want it out there among clients. Back in White Falls, she hadn’t been able to brag about Kyle because, well, what was there to brag about? Now she had someone she wanted to brag about, but couldn’t.

  * * *

  —

  It’s funny how the universe always evens itself out, isn’t it, Sandra? A tit for every tat. I bragged about Paul to Dad and Elinor at that dinner table. I wanted them to at least be interested in my life, to think that something I did mattered. I didn’t want a pat on the head—that would have been demeaning—I wanted them to treat me like an adult. I didn’t know then that adults don’t go around demanding to be treated like adults.

  I guess all they wanted was to know how I was doing, they were showing their concern for me, but at the time all I saw were the paternalistic, duty-bound concerns of colonizers for the “uncivilized” Caliban standing between them and their dreams of empire. They wanted to know that I was okay, because if I wasn’t I wouldn’t be as productive as they needed me to be. I might even rise up in opposition to them. I couldn’t take it.

  So the next morning Dad drove me to the airport and I flew back to Vancouver in a complete and total self-righteous snit. I couldn’t wait to get back to Paul’s, have a long soak, do a few lines, and be ready for him when he got home from the office. Thanks to Paul, I’d been able to tell Dad and Elinor that I didn’t need their money anymore. I guessed that made them uncomfortable because they didn’t have anything else to give me. How about some support? How about, We’re proud of you, Daphne? How about some interest in my life? I would take the loyalty my father wanted from me and give it to Paul instead.

  One year, for her birthday, I got Elinor a psychologist’s watch. I thought it was funny, it showed only forty minutes to the hour. She frowned when she opened the package, like she was trying to figure out what I was really telling her. She recovered nicely, though: Oh, I get it! How great! She put it on and wore it for the rest of the day, and then I never saw it again. Black hole. There’s a planet out there somewhere with all the stuff I’ve ever given her on it. One day, astronauts from Earth will land there and find, like, a whole stack of birthday cards, “To Elinor, with love from Daphne,” and a little frog-shaped plant pot with bean shoots growing out of its back, and a painted wooden jewellery case in the shape of a covered wagon. I loved that jewellery case. I used to lie in bed in the basement imagining Elinor’s gold bracelets and necklaces and earrings all jumbled up in it, a wagon full of treasure sitting on her dresser. Isn’t love supposed to be a feeling like that?

  To be fair, what did I expect Elinor to do with those old birthday cards? Frame them? It was a bit more complicated with Mother’s Day. My mom would have had an embolism if she’d caught me buying a Mother’s Day card for Elinor. But I did. And I signed it “With Love from Daphne.”

  I know I’m confusing different kinds of love here. Believe me, Sandra, I didn’t spend six hours a week in Professor Curtis’s office talking about Elizabethan literature for nothing. Maybe I will go back and write that essay on Sir Walter Raleigh’s poetry, The Ocean’s Love to Cynthia, because he deals with the confluence of sacred and profane love. What he concluded was that there’s no discernible difference: he loved Elizabeth as his queen and he lusted after her as a woman, end of story. The profane is sacred. But I digress. Sorry, Sandra, I’m doing what Dad always does. I shouldn’t: I know how ineffective it is. And how crazy-making.

  But love isn’t some tinselly balloon we carry around on a string. It’s a lead weight strapped to our chest, and our hearts get heavier every time we think about the object of our love. You know how your heart goes thump when you see your beloved? Well, that’s another lead weight being added to your heart. I think of my dad and my heart plummets with the weight. When I left Kyle in that Tim Hortons I felt like one of those lost souls in Dante, walking around with huge stones on their backs because of some stupid thing they did or said in an unguarded moment when they were alive. When I got to Dad’s after being in White Falls again, all I wanted was to feel better about myself. To feel that, okay, I’d blown it with Kyle, but with Paul I had a chance to be the person he wanted, the person my dad wanted. I thought Paul was my Prince Charming. I thought that with such a future ahead of me, I no longer needed a past.

  Ah, well. Like I said, nothing that happened is what I wanted to have happened. I mean, if wishes were horses, we beggars would be buried under horseshit.

  That’s this scribbler full. I guess if I’m going to keep writing about what happened, I’m going to need a few more scribblers.

  Harry

  NOVEMBER 19–20, 2009

  Driving Elinor to the airport, even though it’s November and threatening snow, Harry is reminded of the last time he made this drive, this past summer. It was hot in the car then, the 401 was as jammed as it is now, and Daphne sat beside him. It was the end of her disastrous trip, and they had lots of time to talk. But neither of them did. He made a few attempts, but she spent most of the time texting, probably to Paul, her hotshot lawyer boyfriend who was saving all the trees and protecting all the salmon. She kept her phone in her lap, so that when she looked down at it she looked like the most morose person in the world. And maybe she was. Or perhaps the second most, after Harry himself. Her diatribe against him the night before, when she had essentially dismissed him from her life, had been meant to hurt, and it had. It had angered him, too, and he was still flustered, but her silence in the car then, surely the last time he would see her for months, made him feel more exhausted than mad.

  Now, with Elinor in the passenger seat, he tries to push the memory of Daphne away, although the feeling of desolation and loss remains. Elinor isn’t saying much, either, but she doesn’t look dejected. In fact, she looks elated. A psychology conference in South Africa, the land of truth and reconciliation. Her suitcase weighed a ton when he heaved it into the trunk. Some of the weight must be papers she’ll jettison after the conference, but she’ll no doubt come back with others and have to pay for the overage. Daphne would say something about carbon footprint and recycled ink and ask why they couldn’t have held the conference in a First Nations lodge in British Columbia. Daphne would say a lot of things, if Daphne were still talking to them.

  He parks outside the international departures entrance, lifts Elinor’s suitcase out of the trunk and onto the sidewalk, and offers to help her wheel it inside. But the security guard by the sliding door is eyeing his car as though daring him to leave it unattended.
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  “I can take it in from here,” Elinor says.

  “Is Sandy on the same flight?” he asks.

  “Sandra. Yes, we booked our seats together. I’m looking forward to getting to know her better.”

  Elinor is highly organized, as usual. He, on the other hand, has made no plans for while she is away. He’ll try not to drink too much, he’ll make decaf Americanos and read mystery novels in the sunroom, play basketball on Tuesday afternoons, meet a few of his wine clients for lunch. His importing business has gone a bit soft of late. This makes him think of Daphne again. If he’s a capitalist pig, he isn’t a very successful capitalist pig. But then, what would count as success in a pig? Uninterrupted consumption, he supposes. Is that how Daphne sees them? Elinor’s professorship at the university is what’s keeping them both consuming at the moment, but then the fall is always slow in the hospitality trade. People save up for the big end-of-fiscal blowout at Christmas.

  The darker cloud on the horizon is the colonoscopy he has to undergo tomorrow. He doesn’t know if he’ll be able to drive home afterwards, but he can take a cab, or get Bernie to pick him up. Bernie is his accountant, also friend, one of the guys from basketball.

  “And don’t forget to call Daphne,” Elinor says.

  “I won’t,” he says. “Right after the colonoscopy.”

  “No, Harry, you’ll forget. Call her tonight.”

  “I won’t forget.” How could he forget? He’s called her a dozen times since July, but only managed to speak to her twice. “But all right. I’ll call when I get home. And you email me. Let me know you arrived safely.”

  “I will,” she says, and kisses him. “Don’t just leave a message. Keep calling until you reach her.”

  “Okay.” He looks over her shoulder at the guard. “You’re going to miss your flight. Go.”

  “Call Daphne.”

  “I will. Love you. Bye.”

  * * *

  —

  Driving on the 401 is a lot like lying awake at three in the morning: the mind drifts into whole unexplored realms of negativity. With Daphne gone, and now Elinor, the two absences spar with each other in his heart. The pain he feels at Daphne’s departure blends with the unease he expects to feel at Elinor’s. Daphne’s seems the more permanent, but Elinor has been acting distant lately, too. Daphne has always been distant. He has to think she’s deliberately avoiding speaking to him. When she moved out west, she found an apartment in an older building, and it still had a landline. Somehow he thought he’d feel more connected to her through a landline, perhaps because when she answered, he could picture exactly where she was. Except she almost never answers. Especially now, since her trip, he leaves messages on her answering machine, tries calling at different hours of the day, early morning, late at night, and gets no response, no return calls, no emails. And she seems to change her cell number weekly, and either forgets to give him her new one or lets him go straight to voicemail. He’s looked up her address on Google Earth; it does exist, it looks like a decent building. But he doesn’t know where Paul lives. It’s as if she’s been abducted from his life. There’s a photo Elinor took of the two of them at the airport that day, Daphne squinting at the camera with a sly, apprehensive smile. He’d watched her go like a father watching his child head off to war in a distant country. Of course, she was no doubt thinking her whole life lay ahead of her, while he believed she was leaving everything behind. He still thinks her real life is back here with him. It’s an odd feeling, being so certain of something he knows can only be wrong. Or perhaps the feeling isn’t wrong, it’s just that he’s the only one who has it. Elinor says he must separate the emotion of the situation from the story he tells himself about the situation, and to put the story away in a drawer somewhere while he deals with the emotion. He’s never dealt well with emotions. Until recently, he didn’t even know he had them.

  Daphne seems to have forgotten about him, with this Paul character in the picture. Christ, listen to him: he sounds like a rejected lover. What he is, says Elinor, is a father who’s been replaced by a lover. A natural process. But why can’t Daphne have a father and a lover? Do the two have to cancel each other out? He thinks about the books he’s read as he takes the Dufferin Street exit towards home. Surely plenty of daughters have boyfriends or husbands and still maintain healthy relationships with their fathers.

  The house feels empty without Elinor, even though usually at this time of day she would be at the university. But this is a different kind of emptiness. If Elinor was in town, there would occasionally be the possibility of lunch. Or a just-checking-in phone call. Now she’s thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic, out of radio contact with Earth. And Daphne is five thousand kilometres in the opposite direction. He finds himself dwelling on the low places in his life more than he used to, the tasks left undone, the phone calls not returned, the empty bed, the hollow rooms. He looks at the clock in the kitchen: only eleven a.m., too early for a drink. He’ll call Daphne, but first he pours a glass of wine.

  In the sunroom, he sets the glass on the table beside his chair by the window and picks up a copy of Wine Spectator. Because of the colonoscopy, he’s not supposed to be drinking anything except water and ScourPrep, but wine is mostly water. The human body is mostly water. The planet is mostly water. He feels, as he opens the magazine, that he is living in an aqueous universe. “While it is difficult to imagine a better value than Cono Sur’s 2007 merlot,” he reads, “Chilean wines in general suffer from Canadian liquor boards’ intent on providing the cheapest possible branded wines at the expense of more high-end imports.” It’s the kind of thing he used to write in restaurant reviews for the Daily Observer, knowledgeable but lacking in specifics. Does it mean liquor stores in Canada are stocking the 2007 Cono Sur because it’s a good bargain, or that they’re not stocking it because it’s too expensive? He puts the magazine on the stack destined for recycling. What the article doesn’t mention is that if he wants to bring in better wine, he has to do it through the Ontario liquor board, which jacks the prices up even higher. And with the economy still recovering from last year’s recession, he can hardly sell a case of decent wine to restaurants that, before the crash, would have taken ten cases a week. All will be back to normal by spring, they promise, they’ll have bigger patios and revamped menus and exciting new wine lists. But in the spring, it’ll be the weather as well as the economy: too cold, too hot, too wet, no one wants to sit on a patio, and corporate expense accounts are being gone over by forensic accountants, senior politicians raked over the coals for charging a few glasses of Château d’Yquem to the public purse. Jesus, listen to him, he sounds like a Harper supporter.

  Thinking like a capitalist: Daphne really would disown him. But the wine business depends on there being a few diehards out there, a few good old boys, people who tell themselves that a bottle of wine at lunch isn’t really drinking if you’re sober by the time you go home. Daphne says Internet shopping is the new entertainment; maybe he should start selling online. Or writing blogs. He used to be a journalist, after all. Daphne could help set up the website, do some of the research. It would give her a summer job. Then again, she probably doesn’t want a summer job now that she has Paul. Especially a job that involves working for her father.

  Daphne. Right. He has to call her. He keys in her number and listens to her phone click over to the answering machine.

  “Hi, Daph, it’s me. Eight a.m. your time. Just calling to see how you’re doing. Call me when you get this. Love you, bye.”

  His mother used to leave messages like that. Practically word for word. He’ll need to come up with something better. Next time.

  Something is definitely going on in his insides. He’s been feeling lousy for months. Volatile acidity in his chest every time he eats, sometimes waking him up in the middle of the night. His doctor says she can’t find anything wrong, but she has three thousand patients and would probably rather
be lecturing to eighteen-year-old pre-med students than dealing with his chronic complaints. He gets that. When he taught journalism, he never tired of the pure thrill teaching gave him, and he was sorry when the university let him go. Daphne was wrong about him quitting. He sometimes gets that feeling selling wine, chasing down an elusive contract, landing it, feasting off it. But these days the chase seems to ruin his appetite for the feast.

  Could these cramps in his gut be liver malfunction, he asked his doctor? She didn’t know. She’ll refer him to an internist. His father died of stomach cancer, his grandfather had prostate cancer, his mother had a breast removed. They’ll run some tests. No, your liver is fine. She isn’t overly worried about his prostate, either, it’s enlarged, but something else will get him first, probably hypertension. Right, hypertension from worrying about his prostate. Take these pills, slow down with the drinking, get some exercise, sleep on your back. If he’s really worried, she’ll schedule a colonoscopy. He was really worried.

  He doesn’t actually drink that much, a glass or two a day. No, be honest: a glass or two at a time, two or three times a day. Daphne’s mother used to say he drank like a fish, and it was true, he drank more when he was with her.

  “You are a serious alcoholic,” she told him during one of their fights.

  “No, I’m not,” he replied. “I’m a facetious alcoholic.”