1979

by Ray Robertson

  “And another thing about bicycle couriers,” she said, and another thing and another thing and then another, until I heard the door open and someone in the hallway.

  “I guess I better get going,” I said.

  “I can’t believe it’s nearly eight-thirty,” she said. “Have I been talking too much? We were supposed to be talking about your birthday.”

  “No we weren’t. We were just talking.”

  She God blessed me and told me to take care of myself and we said goodbye and it was Julie who’d come home, still in her Dairy Queen duds. If being an NFL player didn’t work out, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to work for a courier company or have to wear a uniform and serve fast food. What you didn’t want to do with your life seemed almost as important as what you did. I put the receiver back in place on the wall.

  “Your annual Mom birthday communication?” she said.

  “Yeah.” I went to the refrigerator and got a C Plus. “You want one?” I said, holding up my can, the fridge door still open.

  “Since when do you share your sacred stock of C Plus?”

  “You want one or not?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. She watched me pop the tab and take a drink. “It was so dead tonight. I had more slushies than any person ever should plus a couple of Dilly Bars because I wasn’t already enough of a pig.”

  I faked the laugh that was expected of me and said I was going to my room.

  “Don’t you want your birthday present?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “Wait here.” She went upstairs to get it while I stood there drinking my C Plus. When she came back down she’d changed into jeans and a faded blue T-shirt and had a sealed record album in her hand.

  “Welcome to fourteen,” she said, handing me the record. “It only gets better.”

  We didn’t bother wrapping each other’s gifts. Thirty seconds more of surprise in return for a hassle for you and a bunch of garbage for them. I set my can on the counter and took the album. “Thanks,” I said. “Although of course I don’t know who they are.” The band was The Undertones, and that must have been them on the cover, just a bunch of ordinary-looking guys with short hair sitting on a brick wall staring at the camera.

  “I knew you were going to say something like that, so I was going to get you the new Blondie record because I know you like the one I got you last year, but it sucks, they’ve totally gone commercial.”

  “Thanks,” I said, putting the LP under my arm and picking up my pop. “I’ll listen to it tonight.”

  “Trust me, you’ll like it. Play ‘Jimmy, Jimmy’ first. You won’t be able to stop singing it. If you listen to the words, I won’t tell you what it’s about, but it’s actually really sad, but you won’t be able to not sing it.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Just play it. Trust me.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m serious, you wang.”

  “So am I.”

  I don’t think she knew what to say to that, which made sense because I didn’t know why I said it, so I took my pop and new album and went upstairs. Halfway up, “Happy birthday,” she said.

  Average Guy Lives Average Life

  “It’s Not That It’s Bad; It’s Just That It’s Nothing”

  DON’T MISUNDERSTAND: HE never felt as if he were destined to do something special, to be someone important, that he deserved to live a life of unremitting interest, ease, and pleasure. Even as a boy he knew he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He recognized he’d never burned with ambition. He acknowledged he was average. Acknowledged it and was okay with it. What was wrong with being average? Not everyone can be someone. Better to be happy with who you really are than unhappy trying to be somebody you’re not. Say what you wanted about him, he always knew who he was.

  Forty-seven years old, he knew he was fucked. How many years already of: an hour to get ready for work; half an hour to get to work; eight hours of work; half an hour to get home from work; an hour to wind down from work; set the alarm for work; sleep; an hour to get ready for work; half an hour to get to work; eight hours of work; half an hour to get home from work; an hour to wind down from work; set the alarm for work; sleep; an hour to get ready for work; half an hour to get to work; eight hours of work; half an hour to get home from work; an hour to wind down from work; set the alarm for work; sleep. How many years more of the same?

  Of course, it wasn’t all work. His high-school football team finished second in the county his senior season and he had a good seat on the bench to watch the march to runner-up. There’d been almost three semesters at the University of Windsor before he realized he was in over his head and dropped out. There were two marriages and just as many divorces and a couple of kids he rarely saw. There were several funerals and weddings, a few stays in the hospital, 1,537 hangovers. Eighteen more years of work and he could retire and wait for the cancer that was going to kill him.

  He never expected his life to be exciting. He never wanted to be the center of attention. If life was a movie, it was all right to be a supporting actor or even an extra, every film needs those too, not everyone can be a star. But he never imagined that life was like the same movie, every day the same goddamn movie—being in it, seeing it, seeing yourself being in it—the same goddamn movie.

  There’s the alarm; hit the snooze button, just five more minutes, just five more minutes. There’s the alarm.

  ~

  Halloween used to be easy. What could be easier than dressing up as your favourite superhero and holding open a pillow case for people to fill with free candy? But fourteen was the gateway age to hanging up your costume: too old to put on a plastic mask and tights and pretend to be Spiderman for the night, too young to be content to stay home and be the one handing out the candy. Content or not, though, you couldn’t trick or treat when you were fourteen. Dale, for instance, was vice president of the student council—how would it look if the vice president was seen begging for miniature Snickers bars while wearing a rubber Frankenstein mask? Grade eights simply didn’t trick or treat.

  This year Halloween fell on a Friday and Dale and I were spending it at my house. Dale’s parents made as big a deal about making their house Halloween-menacing—cardboard tombstones on the lawn, a glow-in-the-dark plastic skeleton hanging in the front window—as they did ensuring that, come Christmas time, they were Ho-Ho-Ho-certified (wooden cutouts of Santa and his reindeer on the roof, every inch of the house brightly lit and dependably blinking). Dale’s TV was bigger and got more stations than ours, but if we were at his house he’d have to help his mother give out candy. Because we lived over top of dad’s shop, no costumed, sugar-searching children ever came calling on us. Dad said that next year, after we’d moved into our own building, Halloween would be like it used to be when we lived on Vanderpark Drive.

  “Why are we listening to this?” Dale said.

  It was too early for a horror movie to be on TV, and I’d slipped on my Glenn Gould album after the Alice Cooper record Dale had chosen was finished. I shrugged and pretended like I didn’t know what he meant. “Yours was over so I put this one on.” I didn’t want him to think I was trying to get his attention, but I wanted him to notice what I’d put on, for him to ask me questions so I could tell him what I knew. I picked up the empty record jacket and looked at its cover.

  “Did you know that Glenn Gould is Canadian?” I said.

  “Who’s that? The guy on the cover?”

  I nodded. “He’s the piano player.”

  “They’re called pianists.”

  “Just because you don’t like classical music doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk.”

  “They are,” Dale said. “My sister studied piano for, like, five years. Somebody who plays the piano is called a pianist.”

  “Yeah, and somebody who
plays the violin is called a scrotum, I bet.”

  “Not penis,” Dale laughed. “Pianist.” He picked up the LP jacket and looked at it. “Oh, yeah, I know this guy. My sister has tons of his albums.”

  “I doubt it,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I didn’t like it that someone else owned a Glenn Gould record. I didn’t like it that someone else knew about Glenn Gould before I did. I didn’t care that it didn’t make any sense. “There was only one of his records at Sam the Record Man,” I said.

  “So?”

  “So I doubt if they ever had more than one. Two at most, maybe.”

  Dale put the record cover on top of one of my speakers and stretched out on my bed; yawned. “She probably got them in Toronto,” he said. “Her and my mom used to go there all the time when she was serious about playing. That’s where the Royal Conservatory is. You know what that is, right?’

  “Duh,” I said, sitting at my desk now and with my back to him, busy pretending to be looking for something in the messy middle drawer.

  “What is it then?”

  “What? The Royal Conservatory?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What does it sound like?”

  “That’s what I asked you.”

  “Duh.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Because you don’t know, do you?”

  “Whatever.”

  “You already said that too.”

  A single scream, two people laughing, a thump, footsteps in the upstairs hallway. “Is that your sister?” Dale said.

  “Probably.”

  “Who’s that with her?”

  “Probably her friend Angie.”

  “Oh, man, you mean that one with the black fingernail polish and the green hair who was here that time before?”

  “It was only green for a week. She dyes it whenever she’s bored.”

  “She’s hot. Weird, but definitely hot.” Lady’s man Dale. Goes out with a girl for four months and all of a sudden he’s Burt Reynolds. And not just that: Dale talking about Angie’s hotness bothered me the same way his talking about his sister knowing all about Glenn Gould bothered me.

  A knock at my bedroom door; I got up to answer, and Angie on the other side wearing padded hockey pants held up by suspenders, a thin, white, virtually see-through T-shirt, and bare legs and feet. Even for her this was a bit much. Then I noticed that the hockey pants were mine, Pee Wee discards from years ago. I laughed. Then she laughed and I laughed some more.

  “Just hurry up and ask him,” Julie yelled from her bedroom.

  “Ask me what?” I said. “How you ended up looking like a hockey hobo?”

  “Hockey hobo—that’s pretty good, actually. Did you make that up all by yourself?”

  “Me, myself, and I.”

  “Just ask him!” Julie shouted. “We’re going to be late because you have to flirt with every single person you talk to.”

  “Yeah, like I’m flirting with your little brother,” Angie yelled back.

  “Just ask him and let’s go.”

  Even if I knew she wasn’t flirting with me, I liked it that someone thought she might be. I crossed my arms and leaned into the door frame.

  “Have you got any more hockey equipment?” she said. “Julie found these”—she plucked the suspenders with her thumbs—“but I need at least a stick or something.”

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  “It’s Halloween, Dummy. Don’t you have a calendar?”

  “Yeah, Dummy, but I’m also not ten years old. We’re hanging around here tonight.”

  Angie popped her head inside. “Who have you got hiding in here?”

  “Dale, this is Angie. Angie, this is my friend Dale.”

  “Hello, Dale, friend of Tom’s.”

  Dale was sitting up on the bed, knees up to his chin, hands cupping his knees. “Hi.”

  Angie and I looked at him. He looked at us. Angie turned back to me.

  “So. What else have you got?” she said.

  “Nothing. I haven’t played hockey in a million years. I don’t even know where Julie got those.”

  “C’mon, you’ve got to have something.” We both looked around my bedroom.

  “What’s this music?” she said.

  “Glenn Gould. It’s Bach’s Goldberg Variations.” I wished I remembered Bach’s first name. At least I didn’t call him a penis.

  “I didn’t know you actually had any musical taste,” she said. “You’re okay for a squirt.”

  “Take a look in the mirror: you’re the one going trick or treating, not me.”

  “For one thing, it’s a Halloween party, and for— A hockey puck!” Angie spotted the commemorative Chatham Maroons Senior A hockey puck they gave out the first year the Seniors were back in town. I’d kept it because the team folded again a couple of years later and someone said it might be worth something someday. “Can I borrow it?”

  “Sure,” I said. I grabbed it from the top of the dresser drawer and handed it to her.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I said. “You can’t just walk around with a hockey puck in your hand.”

  She thought for moment, tossed the puck in the air and caught it. “I don’t know yet, but I promise I’ll bring it back.”

  “You better,” I said. “Have fun.”

  “Thanks again.”

  I closed the door and turned around and Dale was still sitting up on the bed looking like he was waiting for someone to tell him he could stop.

  “What time is it?” I said.

  Dale looked at his watch. He’d gotten an expensive Timex for his fourteenth birthday, the kind like in the ad on TV that took a licking and kept on ticking. Whenever you asked him what time it was he usually answered “Time to buy a watch” before eventually telling you. This time all he said was, “Almost 9:30.”

  I looked where the hockey puck used to be. The spot where it had sat on the dresser was a shiny perfect circle of not-dust. “Still two hours until The Ghoul.”

  “More like two and a half. They moved it to midnight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  More laughter from Julie’s room. I wondered what she was dressing up as. I should have asked when I had the chance.

  “It’s your turn to pick a record,” I said.

  “Okay,” Dale said, but he didn’t move.

  I lifted up the dustcover, turned over the Gould, and dropped the needle.

  The better Dad’s mood, the more likely we were to eat takeout. Who wanted to plan a meal and shop for it and cook it and clean up afterwards when there was so much excitement going on? William Street Tattoos wasn’t doing any better—business was even slower than usual, in fact, probably because, if there wasn’t much incentive to go downtown before, jackhammers and wrecking balls and the taste of demolished-building dust provided even less—but Harrison Hall was coming down and the mall was going up and, along with it, Dad’s expectations for the local tattoo trade. He hadn’t signed any papers yet, making the new building officially ours—the owner always seemed to be at his house in Florida golfing or fishing—but that was just a formality.

  “How about some egg roll with your plum sauce, Tom?” Julie said.

  “Bite me.”

  “Hey,” Dad said. “We’re eating dinner, all right?”

  “She started it,” I said, crunching into my favourite part of the Lucky Dragon’s Dinner for Four. You needed lots of sweet plum sauce to compliment the crispy fried dough if you wanted to maximize all of its Chinese goodness, the same way that doughy chicken balls were best enjoyed saturated in warm orange sauce.

  Forking a squiggly helping of chop suey onto his plate from the tinfoil dish, “I don’t know why we always
order so much chinky food,” Dad said. “We’ll never eat all of this.”

  Julie set her fork down. “I think it’s called Chinese food.”

  “What did I say?”

  “Chinky food.”

  Dad chewed, looked at Julie while he chewed, swallowed. “It’s just an expression, sweetheart.”

  “A prejudiced expression.”

  “If I’m not prejudiced—and you know I’m not—using a word doesn’t make me prejudiced. It’s just a word.” He must have known he was losing the argument because he looked at me when he’d finished.

  “What about a really bad word,” I said, “like—”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” he said. “I don’t know why we always order so much Chinese food.” Julie picked up her fork, Dad shook his head, I squirted some more plum sauce on my egg roll.

  We always ordered too much food because there was Dinner for Two, Dinner for Four, and Dinner for Six, but no such thing as Dinner for Three.

  “I’ll have the other egg roll if no one else wants it,” I said.

  “I bet you will,” Dad said. “Eat something besides the chicken balls and we’ll see.”

  “You won’t be able to keep up with your girlfriend next time you’re out jogging if you don’t eat your vegetables, Tom,” Julie said.

  I was supposed to be bothered by the insinuation I had a girlfriend, so even though I wasn’t—kind of liked it, actually—I made a face. Because Dad’s mouth was full of chop suey, he could only look from me to Julie, and we dropped it, concentrated on filling our own mouths.

  If Dad decided we were going to eat takeout at home, it was usually either Chinese food or fish and chips, never just burgers or pizza. When Julie and I were kids and there were still the four us, Friday was grocery day, and after we were done shopping and the trunk was packed with brown paper bags full of next week’s necessities, we’d stop off on the way home to eat somewhere, usually A&W. Dad would park beside the speaker and we’d tell the scratchy voice on the other end what we wanted and then the girl would come out and attach a tray to the rolled-down driver’s-side window and bring out our food, which Dad would distribute around the car. I didn’t like it when Julie and I would get our usual Teen Burgers to go with our fries and root beer and Dad would order the Papa Burger, but sometimes, instead of getting the Mama Burger, Mom would order a hot dog. She wasn’t supposed to do that. She was supposed to get the hamburger that was the hamburger just right for her and be like the rest of us.