1979

by Ray Robertson

  But the Buzby boy. He knew something. Paying him on Saturdays when he’d come to the house to collect, giving him a tetanus shot in the office when he’d stepped on a rusty pop top in his bare feet, he wanted to ask him… what, exactly? He didn’t even know the answer to that. And even if he did, how would it look, a fifty-nine-year-old physician asking a teenage paperboy how, if there’s no guarantee that the sun will rise tomorrow, everybody nonetheless acts as if it will? More: has to act as if it will.

  He paid for his week’s worth of newspapers, he gave him the shot and told him when he could take the bandage off, he didn’t ask him anything.

  ~

  I just delivered the news, I didn’t pay attention to it—not on purpose, anyway. But if you wanted to listen to the University of Michigan Wolverines football game on Saturday afternoon on WJR, AM 760, you were stuck with the news updates that came on between quarters and during halftime. You could get up from your desk and turn the volume down until the game resumed, but if you were trying to get your geography homework done before it was time to start collecting for your paper route it was a pain having to get up and down, up and down. Some things you just had to put up with. The world was one of them.

  Player personnel turned over so quickly in college football, you were really only cheering for the jersey and the team. In the case of the Wolverines, the team plus Bob Ufer, U of M’s radio play-by-play voice and number one cheerleader, whose piercing cry of “Meee-chigan!” punctuated every Wolverines touchdown and pivotal defensive stop. His heart, he informed listeners at least once per game, was made of “cotton pickin’ maize and blue” (the team’s colours) and he blew a horn after every Michigan touchdown, the same horn that had once been a part of General George S. Patton’s jeep. Football was war, and Bob Ufer had a military metaphor ready for every possible game situation. Today Michigan was way ahead late in the fourth quarter and Coach Bo Schembechler knew what to do: “General Bo’s gonna stay on the ground now. There’s no Luftwaffe. He’s got the tanks in.” Good. Saturday afternoons felt like Saturday afternoons were supposed to feel when the Wolverines won.

  The game was over—Michigan 24, Purdue 7—before I was done identifying all the Baltic States and which ones bordered which and what the major sea routes were, and if I wanted to start collecting and be done in time for dinner I didn’t have time to be messing around with the radio.

  … the hostage-taking in Iran… the deposed Shah flew to a military hospital in Texas to recuperate from his operation in New York… claim that the Shah is a murderous dictator who needs to be brought to justice… the Shah is a sick old man being hounded by religious fanatics and political radicals… ultra-conservative Islamists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca in an apparent attempt to overthrow the US-supported Saudi Arabian government… Muslim Pakistanis stormed the U.S Embassy in Istanbul and killed two US servicemen… sports, weather, and traffic right after these messages.

  I snapped off the radio and shoved my homework in my gym bag and went downstairs to the kitchen for a C Plus. The phone rang and I answered. It was the owner of the building who said he needed to talk to Dad. Ordinarily, Dad would be downstairs in the shop, but he’d said he was going to close up early today to make sure he got to Colour Your World because he wanted to make sure he had what he needed for tomorrow, when they’d be closed. Sunday he was going to start painting our bedrooms. We’d gotten to choose our own room colours. I’d picked blue.

  “Please make sure he gets this message and that he calls me back as soon as possible,” the man said.

  “Okay,” I said, and hung up. I was going to write Dad a note, but I when I heard the downstairs door bang open I figured I’d just tell him instead. But it was only Julie and Angie.

  “Hey,” Julie said, heading straight for her bedroom without even taking off her coat. I knew she was going to get changed for her Saturday shift at Dairy Queen. Angie would probably walk with her to work. Angie didn’t have a part-time job. She liked to tease Julie about hers, sometimes called her the “Ice Queen.”

  “What’s going on, Tom?” Angie said, leaning against the kitchen counter, gloveless hands in the pockets of her baggy green army jacket. Unless it was freezing or storming, high-school kids tended to wear flimsy coats and running shoes and never wore gloves. Looking cool didn’t seem worth freezing your ass off.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Nothing,” she said in a deep voice, her attempt to sound like me. “Nothing,” she said, deeper still. “Nothing.”

  “Whatever,” I said, getting my pop from the fridge.

  “So what’s the Miracle Boy up to today?” she said.

  I stood there with my unopened C Plus in my hand. Angie smiled, having achieved the effect she’d obviously been aiming for.

  “I saw the article in your sis’s scrapbook. Not everybody makes the front page of their hometown paper. Congratulations.”

  I pushed the tab on my can, took a sip. I took another sip. “Julie never lets anybody look at her scrapbook,” I said.

  “I didn’t say she did.”

  “You shouldn’t look at other people’s stuff without their permission.”

  “This coming from the guy who opens his neighbour’s box of sex toys.”

  “I didn’t know it was somebody else’s until I opened it.”

  “Of course you didn’t,” she said.

  She kept looking at me. I looked at the floor. I didn’t have to stand there, I could have gone to my bedroom.

  “That must have been a real drag for you,” Angie said. “Dealing with all of that miracle bunk.”

  “It wasn’t bunk,” I said. What was it then? “It was…”

  “It was what? Don’t tell me you believed that stuff? Well, I guess you were just a kid. Still, it wasn’t very fair of them to lay all of that on you. I mean, I get poetic licence and everything, and I know they’ve got to sell newspapers, but, c’mon: ‘The boy who came back from the dead?” Gawd.’”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, “but—”

  “But what?”

  “I mean, the fireman did say he thought it could’ve been fatal.”

  “Yeah, and he was obviously wrong. We’re not talking about a Nobel Prize-winning scientist here, we’re talking about a fireman. A Chatham fireman.”

  “What’s being a Chatham fireman have to do with anything?”

  “You’re probably right. People everywhere need something to gossip about. And believe in.”

  It was my turn to say something. I looked at the kitchen floor again.

  “Hey, Tom,” Angie said.

  I looked up.

  “Do you want a Hertz Donut?”

  “What?”

  “I said, ‘Do you want a Hertz Donut?’”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Okay,” was the only thing I could think of to say.

  She punched me, hard, in the shoulder. “Hurts, don’t it?” Angie laughed and laughed.

  Julie came into the kitchen wearing her Dairy Queen uniform underneath her unzippered ski jacket. “What’s so funny?” she said, already smiling even though she didn’t know what she was smiling about.

  “I just gave your brother a delicious ‘Hurts, don’t it’.”

  “Oh, man, you fell for that?” Julie said.

  I walked past both of them as slowly, as casually as I could to the stairs, careful not to rub my arm. It itched more than it hurt.

  Chapter Twelve

  I listened from the other room when Dad called the owner back after getting home from the paint store. He sounded sunnier than I’d ever heard him on the telephone, never his favourite form of communication (“Hello, Frank, Bill Buzby here returning your call, how are you doing?”). He sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him sound anytime anywhere (every swear word I knew and a few that were out-and-out revelations). He sounded scared (�
��But I could go back to the bank and tell them I need more money… I didn’t say it would be simple, I said… It’s not too late, I just told you I can get it… I’ll just tell them I need a bigger loan… It’s not too late, Frank, I’m telling you it’s not”). He sounded desperate (“I mean, the amount of work I’ve done over there, you have no idea. Look, we had—what do you call it?—a verbal contract, right? You can’t just double the asking price just because you feel like it. Maybe I’ll sue, then. Yeah, well, you let me worry about that”).

  My father had been right, things were picking up downtown now that the mall was under construction. Property values were increasing. Except that they were supposed to rise after we were property owners, not before. I went upstairs to my room and shut my door. I sat on the edge of my bed, didn’t bother putting any music on. I felt bad, like I should have hung around the living room in case Dad needed to… I don’t know, talk about what happened or just to have somebody around he could be mad at. I thought about all of the brand new cans of paint and brushes and rollers still in their Colour Your World shopping bags sitting in the kitchen. And that didn’t make me feel too good either.

  Julie was talking about going to Toronto again, but this time she wasn’t bothering to talk about it with Dad, just Angie. And me, because they needed my help.

  If Dad had been barely okay with the idea of her going before—and then only if acceptable accommodation and supervision were arranged in advance—now was definitely not the time to hope he’d seen the light and softened his attitude. After a lawyer he consulted advised him that, while he certainly could sue the owner of the building, number one it could end up being very expensive, number two he probably wouldn’t win, Dad decided that no one was to ever mention our once-upon-a-time new home or the new mall. It was like when Mom left: it was all anyone could think about, it was something we didn’t talk about. It was like the stale smoke that stayed in the air of the tattoo parlour long after a customer had put out his cigarette and left. And it was December, it was too cold to open a window to let any fresh air in.

  This time the discussion wasn’t about if, only how. When was already settled, was obvious: after Julie and Angie’s final Christmas exam. There would still be nearly five more months of school left after the winter term began in January, but Angie explained that once the results of their Christmas exams were in and their overall grades tabulated, these were what the universities would use to evaluate the entry applications due in February. Ace the Christmas exams and don’t stumble too badly on the way to June’s finish line and that was that, bye bye Shat-ham and hello T.O. And because getting grades good enough for UofT apparently wasn’t incentive enough, they’d also decided to treat themselves to a Toronto holiday if they got the job done to Julie’s fussy satisfaction. Angie was in charge of the celebratory carrot (which bands they were going to see, what bars they had the best odds of sneaking into, whose couches they were going to crash on); Julie’s job was to make sure they deserved it (endless flash cards, a semester’s worth of notes mastered by rote, dirty hair tied back into ponytails because who had time to shower every day with all the studying they had to do?).

  “Whatever,” I said. “Just leave me out of it, okay?”

  I meant it—it would be bad enough being the only one around when Dad hit the roof, I didn’t need to add guilt or suspicion of complicity to the agenda—but I had to admit, it didn’t feel terrible to be invited in on their scheme, kind of like the way I hadn’t been happy that Dad had been considering suing the building owner even though it was undeniably neat to think that he might. Suing people was something people who were rich or who lived in big cities did.

  “Don’t be a total douche, Tom,” Julie said.

  Whatever a douche was, it wasn’t good, you definitely didn’t want to be one. But even douches have their dignity. “Why can’t you just—”

  “Because,” Angie interrupted, “we already said. Without your saying that you saw her and talked to her, your dad isn’t going to buy it for a minute.”

  Angie rarely took anything seriously. The trip to Toronto must have been important. Important enough for them to plead with me to assist them in maintaining the Dad-deceiving illusion that, while they were really in Toronto for three jam-packed days and two nights of post-exam jollies (whether or not Julie’s virginity was still on the agenda, I tried not to think about), Julie was burrowed away at Angie’s place studying because there were fewer distractions there; no meal times or housework to worry about, a study-space change of pace was as good as a scholarly rest. It wasn’t as if Dad would have a clue that CCI’s last exam was Friday, December fourteenth and not Monday, December seventeenth.

  “What if he doesn’t believe me?” I said. “Then I’ll be dead too.”

  Although Dad was at work, we were in Julie’s bedroom with the door shut and locked and The Ramones on the stereo. Ramones music made me nervous. I liked it, but it made me nervous. I wished we were listening to my Glenn Gould record instead. Bach was difficult to explain—even to yourself—but one thing about it was for sure: it made you feel the opposite of nervous.

  “He’ll believe you,” Angie said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he won’t have any reason not to. Plus, he’ll want to believe. People lie to themselves all of the time. All they need is a good excuse.” Angie winked at me.

  Ramones records were loud and fast, but all the songs were short and now the side was done. While Angie flipped it over, Julie looked out the window like she was worried Dad’s spying eyes might somehow appear at any second. One-two-three-four one of the Ramones counted off the first song on side two of the record.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

  They both screamed at once and suddenly The Ramones didn’t seem so loud anymore. Julie jumped up from her desk chair and hugged me. Angie just smiled and said, “I knew you’d understand.”

  It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t as good as the week before summer vacation—classes weren’t cancelled so that we could go outside and play softball (or organize a mass snowball fight instead), people didn’t stare out the window and wonder why the minute hand on the wall clock was broken—but the countdown to Christmas break was better than there being just five more days of school. There was Secret Santa, for instance, everyone’s name in a hat and keep it to yourself and nothing over three dollars, please. I drew James Dawkins, so doing my Ho Ho Ho duty was easy, anything food-based a guaranteed gut pleaser, a book of Life Savers picked up at the BiWay for less than the spending limit and the job was done. I’d been hoping for a three-pack of blank Maxell cassette tapes—luck of the draw made Dale my personal Santa, a secret he made no secret of—but now I would have settled for someone to talk to about having to play Secret Tom when Julie and Angie made their big city escape. At least I wasn’t going to end up stuck with something stupid, like a book of Life Savers.

  And at least the luck of the hat hadn’t made Allison my gift giver or me hers. In the interval since the kiss that wasn’t, we’d managed to avoid each other at school reasonably successfully, no enforced opportunities at water fountains or waiting to use the pencil sharpener to encourage us to talk about what had happened, or hadn’t. And no chance for me to look at her and wonder if she knew that I knew that she’d never wanted me to kiss her because what she’d really wanted was Sarah to kiss her because she was… a what? A lez? A dyke? A homo? That’s what people like that were called. I was standing at the bus stop just outside the school gates watching a stream of dirty water that only three days ago was freshly fallen white snow disappearing into the sewer grate.

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

  It was Allison, with a basketball under one arm and her gym bag hanging over her shoulder, just in time for the bus that took you downtown and home. I was startled but not surprised. You can only put off what’s supposed to happen for so long.

 
“No practice tonight?” I said.

  “Not until the new year.”

  “Right.”

  “How come you didn’t get a ride from Mr. Brown?”

  “Teacher meeting or something.”

  Allison nodded, made a dam with the side of her white running shoe. We watched the water momentarily pause then rush around it to get where it wanted to go.

  “So are you guys moved into your building yet?”

  Our building. As if what hadn’t happened there between her and me wasn’t embarrassing enough.

  “No, that’s not…” I used my own shoe as a water break like Allison had and the same thing happened to me. Water knew what it wanted. “We’re not moving,” I said. “We’re staying where we are.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  The bus slowed down and stopped. The door swung open with a loud mechanical sigh and we stepped up and dropped in our seventy-five cents and walked to the back. There was just us and a woman at the front reading a paperback.