The Good Father

by Wayne Grady

  The article was a bomb waiting to explode and the account of a bomb that had already exploded. It was everything good journalism was supposed to be. He told them so when he saw them in class the next day.

  “You can publish it if you want,” Melissa said. “I just wrote it. Blaine did all the work.”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Blaine. “It’s your story.”

  “Do you feel better now,” Harry asked Melissa, “for having written it?”

  “You mean for reliving it?” she said. “No, not a bit.”

  “I think it should go into the magazine, though, don’t you?” Harry said. “It’s exquisitely written, and it might help others avoid what happened to you. I’ll give it to Leona to edit, but I don’t think it needs much more. Blaine, do you have sources for all the stats?”

  “I do.”

  “It took a lot of courage to write this,” he said to both of them. “And it’s going to take more courage to publish it. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

  Melissa looked apprehensively at Blaine, who took her hand and smiled. She nodded. “We’re sure.”

  * * *

  —

  Go Mad was ready by the last week in April, just before the end of classes. The layout was done, the stories fact-checked and fine-tuned, the ads in place, the cover copy composed. “Rabbits” was the lead story: one of the photography students had taken a shot of the campus at night, with a small rabbit eating a carrot in the foreground. All that remained was to get the final green light from the dean, a hurdle that Harry had cleared before and was confident he would clear again. The dean considered Harry an annoying but harmless drudge, too far below her radar to be of concern. He doubted that anyone in her office actually read the magazine; they merely objected to its existence on principle. They would no doubt look at the cover photo of a rabbit and assume the story was about Easter.

  He ought to have known better. Really. He could have written the ensuing scene himself. But when the email arrived requesting his presence at the dean’s office, he actually thought he was going to be commended. The fact that the scene played out in clichés emphasized how easy it should have been to anticipate. Did he think the dean was going to be happy about publishing an article in a house organ that depicted Madawaska College as a place where young women were drugged and raped? Did he think any parent would send their child to such a place?

  “But it is such a place,” Harry said, as though that were the point. “That’s what happened. To one of our students. People should know.”

  “You have a daughter, do you not?”

  “I…Yes, but she…”

  “Would you send her here after reading this article?”

  “I hardly think—”

  “No, of course you wouldn’t. And as to the student in question, a quick check with the registrar’s office would have revealed she is only seventeen years old. Did you know you were sending an under-aged female student alone into a bar to research an article on illegal substances on campus?”

  Seventeen? Blaine had told him she was twenty. But he wasn’t going to shift the blame onto them. He should have checked.

  “A student has been sexually assaulted,” he said. “Are we to do nothing about it?”

  “But how do we know she was assaulted? Or even drugged? Did she report the assault to the police? Did she identify her assailants? Were drugs found in her system?”

  “You’re going to sweep this whole thing under the rug, aren’t you?”

  “No, Harry, we’re just not allowing you to publish this article. If the young woman concerned wants to come to us and file a report, then I will be happy to see that it goes to the proper authorities. But as dean of this college, I cannot let unreported incidents and unsubstantiated accusations jeopardize our reputation. We court donors, Harry. We solicit endowments from corporate sponsors. What happens in the classroom is a small part of what Madawaska College is all about. Go Mad has been an embarrassment to this institution before this, and now it has become a full-fledged threat. I blame myself. I should have nipped this endeavour of yours in the bud when you first proposed it. But fortunately, it isn’t too late to do so now.”

  * * *

  —

  Harry told Melissa and Blaine that the magazine would not run their story. He told them why. They shrugged. Melissa even seemed a bit relieved. He made Leona’s story about gender discrimination in sports the lead and assigned a new cover photograph. The dean nixed that story as well. In fact, the dean cancelled the entire issue. Harry put up a token fight, but he knew it was no use. He began to look for another job. There was no good reason to stay in White Falls, he told himself. He spent time on Internet job sites, sent out feelers, reworked his resumé. He made a few phone calls. He had a few nibbles. He began to feel better.

  One day he received a call from a friend from his university days who was teaching at York University, in Toronto. One of his colleagues was going on maternity leave, and the department was looking for a temporary substitute. Would Harry be interested? Harry called the departmental secretary and made an appointment for an interview the next day.

  That night, after Daphne had gone to bed, he talked the situation over with his wife. They stood in the kitchen, leaning against opposite sides of the island, Harry with a glass of wine, his wife with a cup of herbal tea, a pale green concoction that Harry privately referred to as her silage. She’d come home late, as usual, and was still dressed for work, as though her real life was at the office with the mayor and she was only making a pro forma visit to their house. She expressed sympathy with Harry’s plight, was suitably outraged at what had happened to Melissa, and when he told her about his meeting with the dean and his feeling that it was time to move on, she asked him what he intended to do.

  “Look for a job somewhere else,” he said.

  “You mean move away from White Falls? Absolutely not,” she said. “No way.”

  “I spoke with someone at York this afternoon,” Harry said. “One of the journalism profs is taking mat leave. I might be able to fill in for her.”

  “York University?”

  “I have an interview tomorrow.”

  “Jesus, Harry. I have a job here, you know, a good job.”

  “I know.”

  “And Daphne has her circle of friends.”

  “I know that, too. But she’s not safe here. There are drugs in the schools.”

  “And you don’t think there are drugs in Toronto? Harry, wake up! Daphne’s a hundred times safer here than she would be in Toronto. How much would this job at York pay?”

  “Less than I’m making now.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I know. But it’s an in.”

  “An in. You never thought you were good enough to teach at a university.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what they think.”

  “I’ll tell you what they think. They think, here’s a guy with a BA trying to pass himself off as a university professor. Let’s have him down for a laugh.”

  “It’s just an adjunct position. Not very high in the hierarchy.”

  “And you find that encouraging, do you?”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because you’re not going to get the job, Harry. This is a waste of time.”

  “I can’t go back to Madawaska.”

  “Yes, you can. The mayor is a friend of the dean’s. I’ll get him to have a word with her. This is just your ego getting in the way of your common sense.”

  “No, I do not want any favours from the mayor.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. The mayor will do it for me, not for you.”

  “All the same. The interview’s at two o’clock tomorrow. I’ve already bought a train ticket. I may as well go and see what happens.”

  “I’ve alre
ady told you what will happen. But go ahead. You’re just going to make a fool of yourself, as you always do.”

  * * *

  —

  It was true, he hadn’t thought he would get the job. There were dozens of candidates, most of them better qualified than he was, at least academically. But the interview went well. There were three people on the hiring committee, including the departmental chair, a stout, walrus-faced man in stained chinos and a very old tweed jacket who was a former magazine editor and still respected journalistic ethics, quaint and nostalgic though they both agreed they were. He told Harry that experience in the field was worth at least a master’s. Harry told the committee about Melissa and Blaine’s article, saying that when the dean canned it, it had felt like a newspaper publisher killing a story because it conflicted with one of their ads. “I felt I had to walk,” he said. There were nods around the table. For the first time, Harry felt he was among colleagues.

  He was offered the job and accepted it on the spot; a contract position, with his pay dependent on how many students registered for his course. But he had savings, and he could do some freelancing on the side. He was shown his office and introduced to the departmental secretary. He would start with a summer course on the history of journalism that began in three weeks—could he be ready? He could. In his hotel room that night, he looked for an apartment in north Toronto. With two bedrooms, he told himself, for when Daphne visited.

  He thought a year away from his wife would be good for both of them. He would see her and Daphne whenever he could. What did he think this new position would mean? Did he regard it as temporary? When the regular prof returned, would he go back to White Falls and find some kind of work there? What if he were offered another adjunct position when this one was over? Would he ask his wife and Daphne to join him in Toronto? And if they refused?

  He was fairly certain his wife would say no—she’d been clear enough about that—but if he were offered a full-time position she might relent. Her mayor wouldn’t be mayor forever. And if York let him go, there was Ryerson, there was the University of Toronto, there were other community colleges. If he did end up staying on, and his wife still refused to move to Toronto, he would ease Daphne into his new life gradually, weekends and holidays, and when she was old enough to decide for herself where she wanted to live, perhaps when she was ready to start high school, he would talk to her about moving in with him. He would be a better father to her if he had a job where he was respected. A better model. The relationship of trust and companionship he had built up with her over the years would ripen. It would triumph over peer pressure and resistance from her mother. Daphne would have the best of both worlds. Everything would work out.

  But perhaps he was getting ahead of himself.

  He spent the weeks before the course started in Toronto looking for an apartment, setting up his office. He returned to White Falls on the weekends, where his wife pretended nothing of significance had changed. He wondered if she was nervous about the prospect of spending an unimpeded year with the mayor. He didn’t care. He took nothing from the house except some clothes and a few boxes of books, telling himself he didn’t want Daphne to feel sad every time she looked at an empty spot in a room where a chair used to be. But really, he was excited about buying all new furniture, a new sound system, new sheets and dishtowels. There was a kind of purity to it, a monkish quality. This might have told him how serious he was about coming back at the end of the year, if he’d been listening. It was possible his wife took note of it, but if so she didn’t mention it. She suggested he would need to keep the car. They slept together as usual, ate meals together, went shopping, made love, had friends over, bought a new carpet for the living room. All so as not to alarm Daphne. When he finally left, on a Monday morning—well, not finally; he’d be back on the weekend—he felt he had handled the whole thing well. They both had. There’d been barely a ripple on the smooth surface of Daphne’s life. Look after your mother for me, he said to her. He thought she would know what he meant by that.

  He really was an idiot.

  Daphne

  MARCH 3, 2010

  Look at yourself, standing in Paul’s kitchen like that, your hands splayed on the cutting-board counter, elbows straight, staring off into space and feeling like shit. No more coke buzz. The wine wearing off, too. Engines sputtering, tapping the fuel gauge didn’t help. You only came here to get your things and go back to your own apartment, where a string of messages from your dad were not going to cheer you up. You’d listened to a few of them before giving up on the whole keeping-in-touch thing. You felt like you couldn’t stand any more of it, but until now you hadn’t known exactly what “it” was. The strain. The conflict. This thing with Paul that was now over. This other thing with Wendell. This other other thing with your father. Why would he phone Professor Curtis? What made either of them think they knew the depth of your unhappiness? You knew that sounded trite. Internally displaced persons in Pakistan were unhappy, people during the Great Plague of London were unhappy, but knowing that didn’t make you less unhappy. If anything, it made you more unhappy to think about all the unhappy people there have been in the world, multitudes of unhappiness that now included you.

  Who did you know who was happy? Professor Curtis, Alyssa. Wendell? No, Wendell was in the neutral zone on the happiness continuum. For all you knew, though, people in Pakistan and even during the Great Plague of London were happy as shit compared with your own colossal, ever-expanding, all-consuming unhappiness. At least they knew precisely where their unhappiness was coming from. Whatever it was with you, you couldn’t take any more of it. This life, these failed relationships, these End Times.

  When you were little and felt like shit, your dad would take you out and buy you ice cream and the two of you would sit in the park and watch the birds. Or you would go for a drive and you’d fall asleep and wake up with a kink in your neck but feeling better. It was all so easy. Even after he left, when you came home from school you’d take a kitchen chair and a bowl of peanuts and raisins and sit on the back porch looking up into the trees between your yard and the neighbour’s. There was always something happening in the trees. Grey squirrels running along branches and down to the ground, butterflies and birds landing for a few seconds and then flying off again. Once a porcupine. Once a large hawk landed at the top of a tree and ate a blue jay. Once a chipmunk came up onto the porch and stole a peanut. You felt better just watching all that normal activity, life going on, laws of nature duly observed. You didn’t go out one day and find a whole tree had disappeared overnight. The animals looked after their young, brought them worms and acorns, the wind didn’t suddenly turn black and cover everything with scum.

  When you were older you sat out there and smoked joints. Kyle would come over and drink beer. When your mother came home, she’d see Kyle’s dad’s car and say having a vehicle in the driveway made her feel safe. If she smelled weed or noticed the beer she never said anything. There was an understanding with her that you never had with your father. You would make dinner and your mom would ask Kyle to stay. The unfortunate way she put it—“Lord knows what you’d be having at your place”—didn’t matter, Kyle always stayed. On those nights, your mom would go to bed early. She had a TV in her room. You thought maybe you could get through it, that maybe this was how things were meant to turn out. That you’d get pregnant, Kyle would start looking for a small apartment, the mayor would give you a job in one of the sweatshops he owned in town, and that would be the it you could get through.

  The sky outside Paul’s kitchen window, what you could see of it above the cedar hedge, was a uniform grey. Not cloud grey, more as though someone had stripped away the blue to reveal another sky behind it. Two inches of snow covered the top of the hedge. Jesus, what was the point of leaving Ontario? Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Your dad must have called Professor Curtis to find out if you were going to classes. Where was the trust? Who else had he
been calling, besides you? Leaving those oh-just-thought-I’d-see-how-you’re-doing messages. How were you supposed to respond to them? I’m doing great, Dad. I’ve dropped out of school, my boyfriend is a fascist dickhead, I’m in Vancouver during the snowstorm of the century, and my dealer isn’t answering my texts.

  You had a memory that made you flinch: those flannel pyjamas you were wearing when your dad left, they had Tweety and Sylvester on them, just like on Wendell’s boxers. Holy shit, you’d forgotten that. Hello, Herr Doktor Freud. And there were grey clouds painted on your bedroom ceiling, you looked up at them while your dad read you stories. Your astounding innocence, finding comfort in fake clouds and books about flying pigs. Cats swallowing canaries that did not then die. Your dad still loved your mom then. Your mom still loved you. Miss Finch at Pearson Elementary was nice. You loved everyone. You were pretty sure you were getting a kitten for your birthday, you could see it gambolling with the chickens up there among the painted clouds. None of it was real, of course. Miss Finch was only nice when you behaved, which wasn’t often. The kitten was a compromise between a My Little Pony and a dog. Your father would have been okay with the dog, but your mom was, like, no way, absolutely not, no effing dog. Dogs stink, they chew on everything, they have to be walked three times a day, and they shit everywhere. There was no way she was going to walk around town with a plastic bag over her hand so she could pick dog shit up off the sidewalk. The guy at the butcher’s put a plastic bag over his hand when he picked out her meat. Your father had tuned out, as usual, like he was solving one of the Millennium Prize Problems in his head. What about a kitten, then? you asked. Kittens cost money. No, they don’t. Dad, tell her. People put ads in the paper to get rid of kittens, don’t they, Dad? Yeah, because they’ve got to be fed and have their shots, and get spayed. And then they go and get run over by a car in front of your house. No, they don’t. What’s spayed?