The Higher the Monkey Climbs

by Bruce Geddes

  “Get that case down for me, would you?” she ordered. “My mother would kill me if she knew I was buying canned tomatoes.”

  “No need to shout,” Louise.

  “But you know what—who needs the work? So fuck my mother.”

  Selecting from among competing brands of apple juice, Louise took the conversation in another direction.

  “What really happened to your face?”

  “A fight,” I said.

  “You mix with the wrong kind of people, Richard McKitrick. You’re more like Tony’s father than you want to think. So your woman left you, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Moved in with her ex, is it?”

  I pushed the cart a little faster, leaving my aunt a step behind.

  “You have to look at the bright side,” she said. “At least you don’t have to take care of the brat with the weirdo name anymore. That’s a big relief for you. Just ask Tony’s father, if you can find the son-of-a-bitch. I hope he’s dead.”

  She chose a bottle of Caesar salad dressing. Put it back. Chose Ranch instead.

  “Still, dying alone’s no picnic. You wouldn’t believe what people’ll suffer not to die alone. I’ve seen it. Grab me a bottle of pickles. It hurts to stoop. Not the dills, the yum yums.”

  At the mention of Sagipa, I thought of calling him, though this was not the right time. I resolved to send a note on Monday, asking about the move. Or maybe I’d wait until later in the week to see how he was adjusting to the new living arrangements. Then I thought I might invite him to lunch. Or to dinner after school. Making these imaginary plans, concerning myself with Sagipa’s well-being, supplanted my worries about Tony and gave me a good feeling. I felt responsible. I felt necessary. In a weird way, I was glad I hadn’t been in Toronto for their move. Being there would have precipitated a scene. With the moving van stacked with suitcases, claimed furniture, and boxes of books, Sagipa and I would have had to say something to each other, some sort of best wishes or farewell, something infused by the occasion with a kind of finality I did not want to accept.

  With an impulse purchase of an Oh Henry bar (“I just suck on it. Otherwise the peanuts get stuck in my dentures.”), Louise finished her shopping. I loaded her bags into the trunk and drove off.

  “If Tony’s not back, you’re going to have to help me take the bags in,” she said. “And there’s some things I’ll need put away.”

  Back at the house, Tony still had not returned. It was past one. Maybe he met a woman? My thoughts whirred with hope. A nice drunken romp in the firmness of a strange bed. The dampening effects of booze bested by the novelty of a peek at a new breast, the danger of an unfamiliar mouth, wiggly-fingered exploration of boundaries. Maybe.

  “Well, you might as well have lunch,” Louise said, releasing the bungee cord from the refrigerator door. “But you’ll have to open this damn bottle of mustard.”

  The plates from the ham sandwiches cleared and washed of mustard smears, I set to completing a series of tasks requested by Tony’s mother: A clog in the dishwasher drain that needed removing, a broken chair to be lugged to the back alley. I returned a large mixing bowl to its proper place atop the cupboards.

  “These bottles and cans need to go to the recycling,” she said, pointing to a cluster on the floor underneath the kitchen table. “It’s the blue bin around the side there.”

  The gathered empties released odours of rye whiskey, tuna, and tomato soup. Outside, the air warmed and humidity descended in great circles like a deflating balloon. I remembered days like these and much worse, where the smog would settle into a yellow gauze and smoke from factory stacks adhered in low-hanging clouds, too sapped of energy to rise and disappear. I dumped the recyclables into the blue bin, breaking a bottle. Louise was lucky to have Tony around for these little chores, the daily difficulties that go with aging and being alone. My own mother took advantage of cheap local labour—a woman with barrels of cousins for back up—to keep order in the house in the Turks.

  I knew I was years away from the day-to-day preoccupations of the aged, the dread, the paranoia. But here I was, a bachelor again, thinking about it.

  My tasks completed, I accepted a chilled Fanta cream soda. “It’s either that or water. And you know the water here.” Louise said and passed me the can. “There’s a glass in the cupboard.”

  Louise sat down and began to fold a napkin, the skin on her hands crumpled like unravelled tissue paper. She put the can down and sighed, broadsided by a wave of melancholy.

  “You know what Tricky? Sometimes I miss the days when you two were closer. It was a better time. Tony was a good kid then.”

  “Isn’t he a good person now?”

  “He was happier then. Even with your rotten influence. When you left this city, I figured he’d be better off. Even with Bernard being born. I didn’t like being a grandmother so young. But you know what? They’d have been okay as a family.”

  I was with her on that one. I would have liked to have seen the old Tony back, too. The kind of Tony who didn’t dress as a clown and paint fecal letters on his buttocks. And there was also that sense of honour I had always resented but now admired in a distant way, his once steady belief that he just had to be good and honest and the world would be a better place for it.

  It was nearing three. I would have to leave soon to get the car back to the agency or be dinged an extra day’s fee. I could call Tony later in the week, but wanted the advantage and satisfaction of a face-to-face meeting. Somehow, I thought, some ancient intuition would inform me if Tony were making things up. I’d heard of novice poker players who, with the pot and the pressure mounting, would betray a losing hand with a tell—a scratch to the temple or a lick of the lips—something a seasoned opponent would notice and profitably exploit. But then there were complications. There was a difference between lying and simply being wrong. The same player who deliriously misreads his cards, truly convinced he has a winning hand, would never have the impulse to volunteer a tell.

  32

  The next day passed quickly. And so did the evening that followed, much of it spent seated on one of the uncomfortable barstools at The Barrington, sipping house scotch on ice, chatting idly with Lena. She asked about my blackened eye and when I told her that my cousin had slugged me, she nodded as though more than a few of her customers had arrived to their stools with similar stories. Lena, I learned that night, had given notice at The Barrington and was preparing to move back home to West Margaree where she planned to open a Yoga Studio & Spa.

  Isn’t that terrific, I said. Well, I’m a bit nervous, Lena said. Don’t be, I said. I don’t know, Lena said. Hey, it’ll be tough at first, but you gotta believe in yourself, I said. You think? Lena said. I do, I said, I really do.

  A few more hours of that sort of thing, interrupted only when Lena replaced my empty with a full one or tended to another customer, were followed by a few more hours of shallow sleep in the guestroom, Inés having claimed the queen-sized bed in the master suite. And then it was Tuesday, and instead of heading straight to The Barrington, I walked home, a lazy, forty minute stroll that took nearly two hours when I paused at a park to watch a few innings of a Pride Week softball tournament game, the Clam Slammers in tight against Venus Envy. Another crappy night of semi-sleep and it was Wednesday. Seated in my office chair, I swallowed a mouthful of buttered bagel and dialled Louise’s number.

  “Someone needs to put the air conditioner in the window,” she said. “It gets hot at night here.”

  “So you haven’t heard from Tony at all?” I asked.

  “Not a peep,” she said.

  “Louise, listen to me. It’s been more than 48 hours. You need to call the police and file a Missing Person’s Report.”

  “The police?”

  “Aren’t you worried about him?”

  “He’s just gone off again, that’s all. H
e’s done it before. He takes off for a few days. They put him in the hospital once. He always comes back. Sometimes a week. I don’t know where he goes.”

  “What about the air conditioner? And your shopping this week?”

  A pause. “Will the police be able to bring him back?”

  “I’m sure it can’t hurt.”

  An email exchange with Sagipa produced a new telephone number. We made plans to get together the following week. Dinner on Spadina followed by the Tian Zhuangzhuang retrospective at Cinematheque. And when he hung up, it came to me that I already missed having him around.

  But then things went sour on Thursday. Amanda Lu dipped into my office, her face long and strained, and told me that the house counsel at Newsys had telephoned to tell her that the company no longer required our firm’s services.

  “Well, that’s no good,” I said.

  “It’s a big blow, it hits us pretty hard,” she said. “No reason given. Did anyone there say anything to you?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “This was a big client,” she said.

  She shuffled her feet on the carpet, her hands stuffed in her pants pockets where she appeared to be squeezing at something. That should have been the end of it, I thought. I was relieved to have lost the Newsys file. It was a burdensome, awkward thing. I looked at the silver card holder from my mother. I’d have to send it back, fill my note with contrition. Amanda looked at the legs of my desk.

  “I guess you know what this means,” she said.

  With the contents of my office in a trio of boxes stacked in the living room, I occupied myself the following day by rearranging the remaining furniture in the townhouse, spreading each piece, moving plants away from the walls, transferring books from full shelves to empty ones, all designed to make the place appear less abandoned. Amanda Lu, sympathetic Amanda, had passed along the name of her real estate agent in case I wanted to sell, to move somewhere new, somewhere smaller perhaps. For a change of scenery, she said when we hugged at the elevators. For a fresh start.

  That same night, I christened my severance cheque at The Barrington, discussing the city’s plans for the West Don Lands with Jarrod, Lena’s replacement. But it turned out that neither of us knew anything about it and I went home earlier than you’d expect of someone who’d just been fired and had such good reason to get drunk.

  And yet, even without booze disturbing my sleep it wasn’t until the following afternoon that I woke, reaching for a ringing telephone. On the other end, Tony’s mother.

  “Idiot!” she cried. “I called the cops like you said, but guess what, Judge Judy?”

  “What happened?”

  “When I told them Tony was missing, told them how to spell his name and everything, they told me he was in some violation of his bail terms, the sons of bitches. They think he’s run away! And now, Mr. Bullshit Artist, they’re not only looking for my son who has disappeared, but they made a warrant for his arrest. I’m looking out my front window right now. Guess what? There’s a cruiser parked outside. Right outside my house. When are you going to stop causing trouble in my life?”

  I rubbed my forehead, squeezing at boney bumps above my eyes. Once again, the essential details had eluded me.

  Tony’s return home seemed a distant possibility. If he tried to come back, he would stumble around the corner, see the cop car in front of his mother’s house and, thinking they had found him out as the clown and meant to rough him up again, he would run. And run. And run. For who knows how long, he would run.

  “Well, Perry Mason?”

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “Don’t you lawyers have some obligation to protect your clients? A duty? You should be booted from club for this one. Your membership card ought to be torn up.”

  There was no point to telling her about being fired. “Look, let’s not overreact here. I’m sure he hasn’t run away.”

  “I never said he did.”

  “Me either. But that’s what the police are thinking, right? What I’m saying is that with the cops looking for him, he’s sure to turn up and the whole misunderstanding will be cleared up.”

  “How the hell would you know?”

  She had nailed it. How would I know? I didn’t. It was just as likely that an order to pick up Tony Langlois would be twisted and reinterpreted as ‘shoot on sight’.

  “Louise, you’re going to have to sit tight for now. Let me make a few calls.”

  “You’re going to get him killed.”

  A real possibility. I really ought to leave everything to the cops, I thought. I spoke with Louise for a few more minutes, coaxing her into calmness, suggesting a drink for her nerves.

  “It’s not even eleven,” she protested.

  “But it’s happy hour in Rome,” I said.

  I rose from the sofa, washed my face with vigorous rubbing and stepped outside to breathe less stale air. In the sky, grey haze, muzzy blue. A red medi-vac helicopter drifted overhead, delivering a sick patient or an iced kidney to St. Mike’s, the whoopa-whoopa-whoopa bouncing off the buildings.

  Inside, I turned on an element for eggs and clicked on the radio. The newscaster announced the date, June 23, and I paused at the familiarity, as you would at seeing a television actor on the street without being able to place the name or the show. I remembered. Gord’s birthday. Eighty-two years old, he would have been. Dead now twenty-six, his body resting under an impressive headstone at Wanstead Grove. That was Forzante’s suggestion. The cemetery next to Argyle Road United, where he had attended church as a child, was too small, he said, and besides, with so many Catholics in the UCF, plus a growing number of Muslims, a more inclusive cemetery would be more suitable.

  I wondered: What would Gord look like now? And then: What would he have done with his retirement? I had never before considered it, having been more focused on how Gord’s death affected me. Now I felt a new wave of sadness for his retirement years, the days spent tending to the garden or fixing small engines or brewing his own beer in the basement, all that leisure my father had missed. Or, for all that I knew, maybe there was something greater planned for his golden years: secret accounts fed by secret deals with management at auto plants, hotels, newspapers, and hockey rinks. Now, in addition to my ongoing confusion, there was a kind of anger.

  I felt I was hanging onto a thread, as a spider swinging wildly, awaiting the breeze to still.

  I forgot my eggs on the stove, ­filling the air with smoke and the smell of burnt.

  I called Drew Herringer and filled her in on everything and she offered to look in on Louise. After arranging for another rental for six o’clock, I stretched out on the bed for a rest, kicking off my shoes, trying to cool off. But the idleness led my thoughts to Tony’s disappearance and in that stupefying blue heat, I felt worn out, beaten up. And I had yet to do a much-needed load of laundry or pack. Halfway down the stairs to fetch my overnight bag, the doorbell rang. The car was early. I looked at my watch. No, six on the nose. Time was accelerating? In the bedroom, I sorted through drawers, selecting from buried pairs of underwear and mismatched socks, tossing several samples of each into the bag. My trousers needed pressing, but Inés had taken the iron and the board. My shirts, still cased in plastic, were impeccable, but there was only one left, my weekly trip to the cleaners forgotten. In the bathroom I scooped up the essentials: toothbrush, paste, razor, shaving cream. And then I made the mistake of looking in the mirror.

  Jesus, what a mess. My hair was pasted to my forehead like stray wiring, my skin had turned to the colour of smog, sagging with perspiration. My eyes were red around the rims, two half-donuts of dark underneath.

  If I wanted to make it to Wanstead that night, time was growing short. And I was tired. Hoping a bracing shower would revive me, I peeled off my damp clothes and dialled the shower to the cool side. In the stall, I turned slowly, allowing the wate
r to lift the heat from my head and skin. I leaned against the blue tiles and then, adjusting the nozzle, slid down the wall to the floor, gathering my knees with my arms to my chest. I closed my eyes, felt my blood retreating from the cold and my heart unravelling. I was beginning to believe Tony. I was beginning to think that Allistair Forzante had killed my father.

  What had changed? I can’t say why exactly. The old mixture of logic and faith? I don’t know. The steady sound of falling water put me in a contemplative way. With all that Forzante knew he must have also known that Tony was ready to accuse him of murder and maybe had evidence to prove it. No one would believe Tony’s charges of course, his sketchy past would never stand up credibly to Forzante’s glorified legacy. It would be David versus Goliath, except with more predictable results. But it was that same shortage of credibility that made it so easy for Forzante to make Tony disappear, allowing the rest of the world to believe he had simply run away.

  And I think there was also this: I was beginning to see my cousin as a victim, which granted him the unwarranted authority of all victims. It’s a kind of power, victimhood, whether sought out or not. It’s what makes for heart-heavy documentaries; it ensures that theirs are the full-page photographs on the front of the tabloids. There’s more: The go-to experts on emotional abuse are always the victims, never the perpetrators who, it is never argued, probably know as much about abuse as anyone. History is rife with rascals made good, those who emerge from tragedy or injustice in better shape than ever on account of injuries suffered: Look at Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, look at Eva Peron. JFK, even. Victimhood has halted countless hot debates: Who was the best Beatle of them all? The one who got shot, of course.

  And now Tony. For me at least, Tony was rooted in that camp, which made it too easy to clear up a lot of confusion about where I stood at that moment. It made it easier to ignore the still-convincing counter arguments. In the shower stall, the water pooled around my backside. I closed my eyes and inclined my head, sliding through a sheath of water on my forearm. The sun slid behind a neighbouring house and by the time I woke, my skin bumped with chill, the exhausting details arranged in my head, it was completely dark.