1979

by Ray Robertson

  Last call and the only ones left are her, him, and another him who thinks that, because he’s here almost every night diligently wasting his liver and his life and knows her first name, they’re friends, and then it’s just the two of them. He hasn’t spoken a word all evening except to order another Black Label and to tell her to keep the change, but it’s the quiet ones you have to worry about. She lets him finish his beer while wiping down, washing off, and locking up until there’s nothing left to wipe, wash, or lock, and then she says, “Hotel time, friend.” This is the moment when it can all go wrong. Don’t kid yourself that it can’t. It has before and it can again.

  The man stands up, slowly, like an awoken giant testing the air up there, and pulls something out of his back pocket. She watches him do it while wiping a glass that’s already clean.

  “Thanks,” he says, putting his empty bottle on the bar and placing a ten-dollar bill beside it.

  “You’re all paid up,” she says. So he’s not violent—just stupid.

  “It’s yours,” he says.

  She looks at him, thinks she might recognize him, although not from here. She does: he’s the tattoo guy, the guy from the place around the corner.

  “I just found out tonight that my landlord has decided to raise the rent on my home and my business and that I might not be able to afford to pay it,” he says. “I might have to move my kids and me and shut down my shop. And get a job working for somebody else. If I can remember how.”

  “That’s… not good.”

  “It’s good for anybody left standing when the mall is finished. It’s good for them.”

  “Well…” Well what? What was she supposed to say? Knew what she could do, though. Pushing the bill back across the bar, “You’re going to need this then,” she says.

  “I need more than ten dollars.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “You got kids?”

  She hesitates, but only briefly, before deciding to tell him. “A daughter.”

  “How old?”

  “Eight.”

  The tattoo guy smiles. “That’s a great age.”

  The waitress smiles too. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Buy your daughter something she needs,” he says, walking away. “No—buy her something she wants. They’re only that age once. Blink and it’s over.”

  ~

  Hangovers on television were funny: the ice pack plopped on top of the head, the hilarious stories from the night before, the miracle of a life equipped with a laugh track and the familiar theme song after thirty minutes confirming that everything was all right in the end. Hangovers in real life weren’t nearly as interesting. Dad emerged from his bedroom in just his underwear and T-shirt smelling like a case of empty beer bottles sitting by the front door too long, no bathrobe or socks, and started to prepare the coffee that Julie usually made before quickly giving up and deciding to begin the day with one of my C Pluses instead. At first I thought it was because it was just him and me at home, but when he took the can of pop with him back to bed, saying, before he left the kitchen, “Put up a sign in the shop door saying I won’t be opening until two, will you?” I knew where he’d been the night before and what he’d been doing. Enough so, anyway, that I also knew it would be a good idea to get out of the house for awhile so it would be quiet and he could sleep.

  It was too early in the day to deliver the newspaper or do the week’s collections or catch the Saturday matinee at the Capitol, and because it was Christmas vacation there wasn’t any homework to take to the library. Besides, it was the first official day of Christmas break—how lame would it be to be stuck inside a building full of nothing but books? There wasn’t anyone I could call—I didn’t have a girlfriend, I didn’t have a best friend anymore, all I had was me—so I put on my coat and just started walking. I brought my football with me because I’d read that if you carried one around while doing ordinary, day-to-day things, it helped you become more sure-handed and less likely to fumble in an actual game. There were only five more months of public school plus two months of summer vacation and six months of high school until junior football tryouts.

  The sound coming from the mall construction site of a powerful machine pounding something deep into the ground that didn’t want to be there, Boom Boom Boom, over and over and over, sent me in the opposite direction, away from downtown and toward CCI. It was cold but not too cold, there wasn’t any snow on the ground, so I decided to go to the football field behind the high school. In spite of what Dad had been led to believe, the semester was over and there’d be no one there to keep me from imagining I was returning an interception for a touchdown or blocking a potential game-winning field goal attempt. I checked my pocket and had lots of change and thought I’d get a chocolate bar first.

  There were sun-bleached signs for products that didn’t exist anymore (Try Banana Breeze No-Bake Pie! and Pop a Charm’s Pumpkin Pop) hanging in the window of the old variety store near the school. Almost all of the variety stores were Mac’s Milks now. The floors were shiny clean and the frozen-food section billowed with frozen air and the air inside the store was always cool and fresh and there was a slushi machine with five different flavours and hamburgers and hotdogs wrapped in clear plastic that you could heat up all by yourself in a microwave oven. The new stores had everything. The only thing wrong with them was that sometimes in the summer mayflies would cover an entire store front, the store’s bright lights, we learned in science class, attracting them because whenever they’re in doubt they’ll instinctively head for light, the brighter the light the more powerful the sensation of safety. So many bugs would cling to the glass, you couldn’t see in or out. But it never lasted long because we also learned that they only lived as flying adults for 24 hours. Yesterday there they were, the invasion of the mayflies, the next day they’d be dead on the ground, a graveyard of bugs in the parking lot an inch thick. When you stepped on them with your running shoe they’d crackle.

  A handmade sign taped to the heavy wooden door of the variety store read DOOR STICKS, PUSH HARD so I did, and instead of an electronic burp, the dingle of a bell announced my entrance. The bell sounded old and stupid until I realized it sounded like the one in Dad’s shop. I pushed the door shut behind me and walked past the shelves stacked with dusty cans of beans and cat food and stood before the rack of chocolate bars. An old woman drinking a cup of tea with the bag still in it perched on a stool behind the counter. Another woman, not young but not as old as the other one, was on her knees an aisle over pulling Twinkies out of a box and restocking the shelf.

  “What would you rather have?” the one on her knees said. “Cancer and a million dollars or no cancer and not a million dollars?”

  “How bad would the cancer be?” the old woman said.

  “You’d have a year to live.”

  The old woman sipped her tea. Slurped her tea—she didn’t have any teeth, it seemed. “Would I have all my hair?”

  “No. But you could buy a wig.”

  “That’s true. I never thought of that. That’s a good point.”

  The old woman slurped her tea again; the other woman continued to slowly transfer the Twinkies from the cardboard box to the shelf. I grabbed a Snickers bar and dug a quarter out of my pocket. Candy bars were easy to pay for because they were always a quarter. Were always a quarter since the day, a few years back, when everyone offered up their usual dime and were informed that the price had increased to twenty-five cents. A fifteen cent increase might not sound like much, but for a kid on an allowance it was devastating to discover that his number-one junk food had gone up 150 percent in price overnight.

  The old woman took my quarter without saying anything and rang up the sale on an ancient cash register with a clanging bang. I pulled hard on the metal door handle and heard her say, “Would the money be tax-free?” and shut it just as hard behind me. I tore open the Snickers bar and took a
big bite. By the time I was finished I’d arrived at the football field behind the high school.

  Wow. The CCI football team. Not all of it, maybe a dozen or so players, and without helmets or shoulder pads, but in their actual green-and-white game jerseys and occupying half the muddy field, not goofing around on their Christmas break with a friendly game of pickup but working out, several balls soaring though the air at the same time as receivers ran sharp routes, defensive backs backpedaled, linemen exploded out of their stances. There weren’t any coaches and they were practicing because they wanted to stay in shape and stay in rhythm and to get better—not because someone said they had to. They were like I was with my Journal of Consumption, doing what they did just for the sake of doing it. Except that all I was doing was writing down what I ate and drank. I wished there was something I cared about enough that I did it when no one was watching. Something that mattered.

  “Hey!”

  I looked behind me.

  “You!”

  I pointed at myself.

  “Yeah, you. Throw that football back.”

  I looked at the football cradled in my right arm. I’d done such a good job of instinctively holding on I’d forgotten it was there.

  “Give it back, kid,” another player yelled. Several others were now standing with their hands on their hips staring at me staring at them. I knew I should say something, should explain that the ball was mine, that I hadn’t stolen theirs—I wanted to be one of them, why would I steal from them?—but all I could think was that, if I was seeing what they were, I’d think I’d stolen one of their footballs too and that anything I said would sound like a lie.

  I turned around and ran.

  The yelling, the cursing, the threats were the soundtrack to my sprint not towards a touchdown, but home. I’d been standing far enough away from the football field that they must have figured I was a lost cause, and my training with Allison paid off, I didn’t stop running until I was standing on William Street cement in front of our door. I didn’t feel safe until I was catching my breath going up the stairs.

  The tattoo parlour was closed, so I tried to be quiet in case Dad was still sleeping. Before I took my coat off or even had a glass of water, though, I wanted to record the Snickers bar I’d eaten. I was hot and sweaty and thirsty and still a little scared, but I knew what would make me feel better the quickest. Dad was coming down the stairs as I was going up.

  “Did you know your sister went to Toronto with her friend Angie?” He’d stopped halfway down.

  “No.”

  He looked into my eyes, briefly, then walked past me down the stairs. I stayed where I was, wanting to go to my room and shut the door, but knowing I should follow him and find out what happened. I thought I’d be afraid if he found out what Julie had done, but instead I felt sorry for him. I walked back down the stairs and sat across from him at the kitchen table.

  “Julie’s in Toronto?” I said. I knew it was what I was expected to ask. “What’s she doing there?”

  His hands were folded on the table, like he wanted to pray but was too tired to raise them. “She was,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that she shouldn’t have been. And that she’s on her way home.”

  Julie was coming home and I didn’t get caught, only she did, and the worst that was going to happen was she’d get grounded. “What time is her train getting in?” I said. I didn’t want to be around when she got home from the station. I hoped it was the afternoon train so I’d be out collecting when he let her have it.

  Dad looked up from his hands. “Who said she was taking the train?”

  “Nobody, but… How else would she get home?”

  Dad lowered his eyes again. “Your mother is bringing her back. They should be home any time now.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I prayed. I prayed for the first time since I got lost in the sewer.

  Dad didn’t go into depth about what had happened, but Julie Angie Godamn Toronto Toronto people underage drinking of course maybe drugs who knows alcohol poisoning hospital could have been really sick enough wasn’t thank goodness next of kin Mom’s phone number coming home Mom driving her home told me enough to make me worried about my sister, about Mom being back in Chatham, about all of us.

  I went upstairs to my bedroom and put on my Glenn Gould record because it was the closest thing to religious music I owned, and got down on my knees, elbows resting on the side of the bed. I asked God for help—for Julie to be okay, for everything to be all right—but when I finished and stood up, I felt ashamed. Not because I prayed, but because I hadn’t spoken to God in seven years and the first thing out of my mouth was a request for a favour. Plus, my bedroom floor was carpeted and felt spongy on my knees and I knew that it should have hurt, at least a little bit, that talking to God shouldn’t be so easy. I turned off the record player and joined Dad at the kitchen table.

  I hadn’t seen Mom in a long time, so even though Julie was the one we were worried about, I couldn’t help looking mostly at her when she and Julie came through the door. It took a few moments for her to look like herself, but once she did, she was Mom and it didn’t feel uncomfortable or odd at all. She wordlessly winked at me like she used to do sometimes when there were other people around and she wanted me to know that she saw me, and I smiled. That was what I used to do.

  Dad sprang from his chair and went to Julie and hugged her for a long time, like he was reminding her who her real family was, before he remembered he was also angry with her. Finally letting her escape his big arms, “This is entirely unacceptable behaviour,” he said. “We need to talk. Right now.”

  Julie hadn’t said anything, not even Hi, just stood there in her coat looking small and exhausted, like she’d just worked a double shift at the Dairy Queen after having been up late studying the night before. “Dad, I know. I know I screwed up. Believe me, I know. But right now, right now I just—” And then she started to cry, and then she buried her face in Mom’s shoulder and wrapped her arms around her, and then Mom started to cry and put her arms around Julie and the two of them cried and held each other while Dad and I looked at each other like we didn’t belong there.

  “She’s just tired, Bill, that’s all,” Mom said without letting go. “I tried to get her to sleep in the car, but she was too worked up. Just let her lay down for awhile and you can talk to her when she’s rested.” Julie’s blubbering had shrunken to a soft sobbing, but she was still holding on tight to Mom. “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” Mom said, gently running her fingers through Julie’s hair. “You’re home now, Dear, your father and brother are right here and everything’s going to be fine.”

  Dad mumbled something that helped give the impression that he actually had a say in what was going on and Mom put her arm on Julie’s back and eased her up the stairs to her bedroom.

  Dad sat back down at the kitchen table. I looked at the small pool of water that had gathered on the floor from the snow that had melted off Mom and Julie’s boots. He joined me in silent contemplation.

  “I’ll talk to her after she’s gotten some sleep,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “She must be worn out.”

  I nodded again.

  “Anyway, the main thing is that she’s home and safe.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  We were both still staring at the water.

  “Tom?’

  “Yeah?”

  “Get the mop out of the closet, will you?”

  Mom still loved Jesus. Any question about whether or not she was once again PG (pre-God) Mom was answered around the dinner table when she took Julie’s and my hand in hers before proceeding to say grace. Julie, up from her nap but still looking raggedy and pasty and dressed in pajamas although it was only seven o’clock, put her hand out for Dad’s and he only hesitated a moment before taking it. Then Mom closed her eyes and low
ered her head while she gave thanks (for Julie being home safe if not entirely sound, for the food we were about to eat, for all of us being together again) and Julie and Dad and I looked at each other like three actors who’d wandered into the wrong play. We didn’t drop our hands or interrupt Mom’s prayer, though, and eventually she finished and Dad removed the lid from the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and we filled our plates and began to eat.

  When we lived on Vanderpark Drive and had a backyard, sometimes, in summer, Dad would take Julie and me with him to Kentucky Fried Chicken to pick up coleslaw and potato salad and french fries and a loaf of warm Grecian bread to go with the steaks he was going to barbeque. If it was hot enough, Dad wouldn’t wear a shirt or even running shoes or sandals when he was outside, and he’d drive to KFC the same way, with Julie in the front seat and me in the back, and he’d get her to go inside the store to order and pay. I’d carry the big white paper bag with the Colonel’s picture on it into the kitchen and Dad would light the barbeque and Mom and Julie would set the picnic table in the backyard and I’d stand by with four plates ready to deliver our steaks as soon as they were done. If we ate late enough in the evening and it was the right time of summer, fireflies would come out just as we finished eating, and we’d sit there at the picnic table and see who could spot the next one to light up the dark.

  I hadn’t thought about any of that in a long time and didn’t bring it up now. The coleslaw might have been the same—as kids, Julie showed me how if you put some of it in a strainer and ran the tap over it, its green colour washed away—but it was December and cold and we were sitting in our second-storey kitchen overlooking William Street and there weren’t going to be any fireflies tonight. I was still hungry and Mom must have seen me eyeing the last few french fries in the box.