Dearly Departing

by Geoff North

  “Archeology?”

  “Don’t be silly, Dad. That’s what you wanted me to take. I want to work more with people.”

  “Work with people—like your mother? Nursing?”

  Dawn laughed. “Nah, nothing that close up where I’d actually have to touch people. I was thinking more along the lines of psychology.”

  “You want to be a shrink.”

  “Well maybe eventually. There’s lots of options.”

  Ray nodded, and they finished eating without saying much more. He started to clear the table. “School’s expensive. You have no money, and I don’t have that much saved away to help you get started.”

  “I can find a part-time job in the evenings, it’ll be enough.”

  Ray was getting an uncomfortable feeling. “We both know part-time work in the evenings won’t be enough. Where’s the rest of the money going to come from?”

  Dawn was beside him at the sink now, towel in hand and ready to dry the dishes he was washing. “Mom said she would help some.”

  Mom. She means Edgar. I don’t want my daughter getting any help from goddamn Edgar.

  “You said you talked to her yesterday. How’d that go?”

  “I had to tell her about Grummy. How did you think it would go?”

  Ray had to be careful. Finding out how his ex-wife was through their daughter was the only way he had of knowing. He couldn’t pick the phone up himself—that would mean possibly having to speak with Edgar, and Ray wanted no part of that. The man had taken away the woman he loved. Ray wasn’t a hateful man, but it wouldn’t make him unhappy if the good doctor dropped dead and Caroline returned home. He still held on to the slim hope she would one day come to her senses and fly back to Canada. “I know you phoned about Grummy, but besides that, how was she?”

  “Happy. She sounded happy.” There was a long pause. “You could be happy, too, if you let yourself.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “A ball of joy.”

  Ray dabbed the end of her nose with a plop of soap bubbles. “Do I have to stand in this kitchen all day and listen to you be a smart-ass, or are we going to get started on this adventure?”

  They were ready to leave half an hour later.

  He sent Dawn to wait in the car while he went through the house turning down heaters. He turned the water off down in the basement and left the faucet on in the kitchen sink. Ray watched the last little bit trickle out, making certain the lines were clear. It was the smart thing to do this close to winter.

  He grabbed his backpack at the front door—the same piece of carry-on luggage from his Dominican flight with a couple changes of rumpled clothes stuffed inside—and headed out to the car. Dawn was waiting in the driver’s seat.

  Rokerton was about as small as a small town in western Manitoba could get. It only took them a minute to drive through most of it. Ray spoke his thoughts aloud as the population of less than a thousand slipped behind them. “It was a good town to raise a kid in. Good people for the most part, a nice sense of family unity.”

  “You always said Rokerton looked best in the rear view mirror.”

  Ray laughed. “Yeah, I did, didn’t I?”

  “Are you sure everything’s okay? I know you’re sad about Grummy, but you seem especially moody this morning.”

  “Never felt better in my life.”

  It took another forty minutes to reach the TransCanada Highway. They would remain on it for another thousand miles or so, through the vast, flat expanse of Saskatchewan, and the rolling hills of Alberta, all the way into the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, and the Okanogan Valley beyond.

  A flutter went through Ray’s stomach. Butterflies, he thought. It had been an awfully long time since he’d felt the sensation. The trip out west with his parents and brothers back in ’82 came to mind again. Almost forty years ago. They had taken a Dodge pick-up with a cap on the back. Ray, Bruce, and David had travelled in that cramped area, sleeping and fighting on a couple of green foam mats that smelled of chemicals in a rumple of sleeping bags, luggage, and a big spare tires all spread out over a bed of metal and dust. Looking back now, Ray wondered how they had made it all the way into the mountains without tearing each other apart.

  “So, what do you think of me taking psychology?”

  “Huh?”

  “Me going back to school. Is it a dumb idea?”

  He thought of Dooley’s idea of returning to the Dominican to be with a woman he hardly knew. People always needed reassurance it seemed. “Of course not. You can do whatever you set your mind to. I’ve never doubted you.”

  “The archeology thing didn’t work out so well.”

  Ray sighed and watched the flat land slip by through the passenger window. “You were eighteen. Most kids have other things on their minds once they leave high school.”

  “It wasn’t that long ago. I’m still young and irresponsible.”

  “Welcome to adulthood. The fact you can admit to being irresponsible and doubting your capabilities is a good sign.”

  “That’s one hell of a way to start a pep-talk.”

  “It’s true. Why do you think so many kids build up a mountain of debt and quit university after the first year? It’s because they’re too young to fully understand what they want out of life. They should take those first two or three years away from home and just live, work those crappy jobs and see some of the world.”

  And don’t listen to anything your parents tell you.

  Ray had wanted Dawn to become an archeologist. He wanted her to live the life he wished he could have had. Those wishes had been forced on his daughter when she was less than ten years old, and the girl had clung stubbornly to the idea throughout high school. Ray should’ve been more like Caroline. He should’ve let Dawn figure out what she wanted to be on her own. To Ray, dropping out of university had been more his failure than his daughter’s. His life had been a series of failures and screwups. Dawn’s schooling. The marriage to Caroline.

  His sister.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Ray looked at her incredulously. “What?”

  “I quit university. I know you think you pressured me into it, but no one had a gun to my head. I could’ve switched what I was taking and tried something else.”

  “Oh.”

  “What did you think I was talking about?”

  Ray didn’t answer her. He watched the steady vista of featureless browns and greys pass by instead. An endless ocean of flat, cold land. In another month or two—when it was coated in a hard blanket of snow—he could wander out into it and surrender his life to the extreme temperatures. It would be even easier than trying to drown in the ocean. Just walk out there a mile or so where no one driving by can see, take off my clothes and lie down. Look up to the sky and watch the clouds drift overhead. It would be over soon enough. They see freezing to death is relatively painless once the brain starts to shut down.

  He pushed the dark thoughts aside. “You said your mom sounded happy?”

  “Yeah, believe it or not, she’s been getting along just fine since she left.” The words stung, but she wasn’t finished. “Mom’s not coming back, Dad. I know you still love her, and I know that somewhere deep down inside you still think the two of you can get back together, but it just isn’t going to happen. I hated her for it then, but I let it go. I let her go.”

  “Don’t talk about your mother like that.”

  “I’m not talking about her… I’m talking about you. Did you meet any women on your trip? Did you even try?” Silence. “Have you dated anyone in the last few years?”

  “I don’t think this a conversation we should be having.”

  “Well if you won’t talk to me, who then? Did your buddy Dooley try and set you up with anyone in the Dominican?”

  A string of lame excuses came to Ray’s mind. It was too soon. He was too old. He hadn’t met the right woman. He was too scared. They were all true, but the simple fact that he was still in love with Carolin
e outweighed them all. Ray knew she would never come back, that she no longer loved him—perhaps she’d never really loved him at all. “I’m done with all that. No more dating, no more girlfriends.” He tried joking his way out of the conversation. “It’s too damn expensive looking after the one Girl-of-Mine. I don’t need a second female to worry about.”

  “There’s still lots of time, and you’re not that bad looking for an old geezer.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  Dawn laughed and turned the radio on. “Let’s find some travel tunes.”

  She settled on some awful rap station that strained the car speakers with pounding bass. Ray shouted over it. “When it’s my turn to drive, we listen to something I like.”

  Dawn shrugged, and they continued down the highway.

  Tyler knew it was hopeless. He walked amongst the cluster of travelers waiting for their luggage on the slow-moving carousels, searching for Dawn, knowing full well the odds of spotting her were practically nil. They would’ve been through here hours ago. He didn’t know where her father had travelled from, what flight he would have been on, or when he would have arrived.

  He’d been loitering around the airport for too long. He had missed her, simple as that. A few people were beginning to give him second and third looks—people that worked there. The last thing Tyler needed now was having some security guard question him. He knew he looked like shit. His mother would call the appearance dopey and dishevelled. Tyler didn’t need the attention. He needed to find Dawn, and he wasn’t going to find her here. He started back the way he’d come—out of the arrival area and past the long corridor of airline terminals checking in travelers’ luggage to wherever the fuck it was they were going.

  “Hey, guy!” Somebody called out. Tyler kept walking. “Hey, buddy!” It was coming from one of the long lineups behind him. Probably not for me. Just some loudmouth wanting to get someone else’s attention. He shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and moved faster.

  “Tyler! Is that you?”

  He stopped instead of breaking out into a run towards the exit. He hadn’t done anything wrong—at least not here. There was nothing to hide. He turned and saw a middle-aged man with a frizzy mop of greying hair waving at him from the end of one of the snaking lines. There was something familiar about him. Tyler moved slowly towards him, trying to look as carefree and inconspicuous as possible. Where did he know this guy from?

  “Sorry, it is Tyler, right?”

  “Yeah… Tyler Wahl, Do I know you?”

  The man excused himself to a few people standing in line behind him, allowing them to move ahead while he worked his way to the back. “I’m a friend of Ray Wallace’s.” They were now standing face to face, the only barrier setting them apart was the yellow nylon rope of the lineup. “Delbert Doole. We met last spring in Rokerton. You came down for a weekend with his daughter.”

  He offered Tyler a meaty hand to shake. “Oh yeah, I remember now.” Tyler shook his hand. The fat asshole that came over to Dawn’s father’s place for a backyard barbeque. He drinks like a fish and thinks he’s the life of the party.

  “How you been, kid? Are you still seeing Dawn?”

  Tyler nodded. “For sure. Things couldn’t be any better.”

  “Good to hear.” Delbert finally released his hand and studied him intently with his dark, beady eyes. “I haven’t seen you since. Thought maybe the two of you had gone separate ways. What brings you to the airport?”

  Tyler thought a lie up quick enough. “Waiting for a friend from the States. His flight was delayed a couple hours. Where are you headed to?”

  “I just got back from the Dominican Republic with Dawn’s dad yesterday. Bought myself a ticket to go back there, and I’ve been waiting around here for the last eighteen hours.”

  Tyler could care less where the fat shit had been or where he was going next. The mention of Dawn’s father was the only thing keeping him there. “You saw Dawn. She picked her dad up here?”

  Delbert shrugged. “Well I guess she did. Never actually saw her. Ray walked out of the airport with his luggage and I haven’t seen him since.” He started to laugh, and it made his Einstein hair waggle back and forth. “I hope she picked him up.”

  Tyler had to be careful. He needed to find out where the two went without triggering the idiot off with more information than he needed to know. “I haven’t seen Dawn for a few days… I’ve been away on work. I thought she said something about picking someone up from the airport on the phone, but I lost that last part of it… service was bad, you know?”

  Delbert Doole’s smile wasn’t as wide as it had been a few moments ago. There was a guarded, suspicious look in his dark eyes. Like a fat rat… Like a big, fat rat fink. He’s going to call someone. Dawn’s father.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. You’d expect in a country as rich as ours we could at least have better phone service, hey?”

  Tyler nodded and pushed for more, fearing the flow of information would trickle to a halt in the next exchange or two. “I just got back from work this morning. Dawn wasn’t home. I’m kind of worried about her… what with her grandmother dying and all.”

  The suspicious look Tyler thought he’d seen behind Doole’s eyes vanished. In its place was mild sorrow and genuine concern. “Yeah, I was sorry to hear about that. Ray said he was going to catch the next flight out to Kelowna, but like I said, I haven’t seen him since yesterday afternoon. Maybe they decided to drive out west. It would be cheaper than flying.”

  “Maybe.” Of course, they had driven. Dawn hadn’t come home, and this moron hadn’t seen her father in almost a day. It was the only thing that made sense.

  “Hey, kid.” Doole reached across the rope and slapped his shoulder. “Don’t hold it against me, but you look like shit. You should go grab some breakfast or at least head home and get a bit of shuteye.”

  Tyler wasn’t hungry, and he’d slept too many hours away already. What he wanted more than anything was to punch this prick in his fat pillow gut and watch him drop. “Yeah, I’m tired as hell.”

  Doole started reaching for his back pocket. “Hey, why don’t I give ol’ Ray a call right now for you, and see what’s up?”

  Tyler held his hand out. “No, it’s okay. It’s still early. I wouldn’t want to wake him up or anything. Don’t worry about it, I’ll try calling Dawn in another hour or so.” Tyler stuck his hand out further and shook Doole’s hand again. “It was nice seeing you again, Mr. Doole… have fun back in the Dominican.”

  “I plan on it. Maybe we’ll see each other again at another barbeque someday.”

  Don’t hold your breath, fat-ass. “I’m sure we will.”

  Tyler left him in the lineup without looking back. He feared Doole would be phoning Dawn’s father before he even had the chance to get back to his truck. Maybe not. The guy has other things on his mind. His flight south would probably be in another hour or two. He would have to turn off his data on the plane. Hopefully he would talk to other travelers until then. Idiot likes shooting his mouth off to people he barely knows.

  Delbert watched the young man slip out between the big sliding doors in front of the terminal. Something funny about that kid… Looked higher than a kite. He couldn’t remember that much about him from the barbeque. He never smiled. Didn’t talk all that much, either. How had someone as outgoing and personable as Dawn Wallace ended up with someone like that?

  He reached again for his cell phone. It wouldn’t hurt to check in with Ray one last time. The phone made a single weak vibration as he tried to turn it on. The screen remained black. “Well, shit,” he muttered. “When’s the last time I charged this thing?” Dooley shoved the phone away and shuffled along another four feet in the line. He would call his friend once he was good and settled at Marta’s. He was almost certain nothing could go wrong in that short amount of time.

  Chapter 7

  1979

  “No fair,” Alicia shouted at her two oldest brothers. “Why are the t
eams always split like that? It’s always me and Raymond against you and Bruce.”

  David yanked on one of her ponytails. “Because, little sister, that’s just the way things are. If you and Bone-Head want to play hide and seek, then you have to play by the rules already in place. The two oldest versus the two dumbest… I mean the two youngest.”

  She swatted his hand away. “Don’t call him Bone-Head. I hate that name.”

  Raymond was sitting a few feet away in the grass. His older brothers were sitting in the swings, rocking back and forth slowly, taunting Alicia even further.

  “He doesn’t mind being called Bone-Head, do you Ray?” This came from Bruce. He was only a year and a half older than Raymond, but a sudden burst of growth in the last few months made him look more like fourteen-year-old David. They were both tall for their age, long and gangly like unruly weeds. Raymond was still small and generally pudgy all over.

  “I don’t like it when you call me Ray. My name’s Raymond.”

  “My name’s Raymond.” Bruce imitated back in a voice that sounded more like Alicia. “Maybe we should just stick with Bone-Head, so the little baby doesn’t start crying.”

  “Call me whatever you want, just don’t call me late for supper.” Bruce and David stared at him with twin sneers on their faces. Either the old joke they’d heard their father say about a million times was that bad, or it was still above the older boys’ curly brown heads. “Are we going to play or not?”

  Bruce and David hopped out of the canvas swings in unison. “Okay, let’s get this over with,” the oldest brother said. “Me and Bruce hide first. You two close your eyes and count to thirty.”

  “Still no fair!” Alicia pouted. “You two always get to hide first. Why can’t me and Raymond find a spot?”

  “Me and Bruce are getting a little old for this dumb game,” David countered. “If we’re going to play at all, then we’re playing by our rules… got it?”

  If Alicia’s bottom lip pouted out any more, it would’ve enveloped her chin entirely.