A Boy at the Edge of the World

by David Kingston Yeh

  I stared at Karen. Now my head was starting to ring. Blinking jets passed high overhead, and farther beyond, satellites spun around the planet Earth. Hello. Goodbye. “Of course I do,” I exclaimed. “If I didn’t, there’d be no problem. That’s the problem.” The stars spiralled, dizzying. I inhaled into my lungs the moist fragrance of summer grasses, wildflowers and blooming trees. The sensations of the world filled me up to bursting. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry.

  My phone rang. “David, where are you?”

  I could barely make him out over the music in the background. “The sound engineer, he’s sick,” he said. “He’s hurling down by the dock. I’m on the mixer.”

  “What, right now?”

  “Yeah, I’m mixing for Three Dog Run right now. I’ve never mixed before in my life. Where are you?”

  “I’m over in the soccer field.”

  “What are you doing over there?”

  “I’m talking with Karen.”

  “The band’s on stage. They’re playing already.”

  “Yeah, I know. I can hear them.”

  “How’s my mixing?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Daniel, is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine. I love you.”

  “I love you too. Hey, you sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure. I’ll meet you after this song, alright? You’re doing great.”

  “Alright. Hurry up.”

  I hung up. “He’s on the mixer.”

  Karen took both my hands in hers. “Look, I should go find Liam. He wasn’t looking so good earlier. Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. I should go too. I think David needs me.”

  “Daniel, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For getting you involved with Marcus. If I hadn’t pushed you to ask him out ...”

  “Oh, Karen, no. No, that was, that was cool. You were great. If it weren’t for you, I would never have asked him. But, I mean, I want to thank you for that. Thank you. You’re good for me. You’re my best friend. Don’t be sorry. I regret a lot of things in my life. But I don’t regret asking Marcus out.”

  “You sure about that?”

  I nodded. “I love you, Karen Fobister.”

  “I love you too.” She stood up and helped me to my feet. “How’s your head?”

  “It’s okay.” I checked the napkin, but I’d stopped bleeding. “I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. Really, I am. Thank you.”

  “Alright.” Karen backed away. “Okay. Catch you on the flip side.”

  I waved and watched as Karen headed off. “Catch you on the flip side.”

  Close to midnight, David and I caught the last ferry back to the city. The fundraiser had been a success, and there was a lot to celebrate. Charles and Megan had taken the earlier boat. Pat, Blonde Dawn and the rest of the band were staying overnight with friends on the Island. Apparently, so was Parker. Good for him. Karen texted to let me know she’d found Liam and Jackson, and that all was well. David and I sat side by side on the main deck, sunburnt and exhausted, our hands buried in our pockets, our tired feet stretched out. David wore his big headphones, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled down low over his face. Two people strolled up. It was Marwa and Marcus.

  “Mind if we join you?” Marwa asked.

  “Hey,” David murmured, lifting one earpiece. “We were wondering if you guys were on this boat.”

  They settled on the opposite bench facing us. A wind had sprung up, and the ferry rocked as it ploughed steadily across the channel to the mainland. Marwa slipped off her jewelled sandals. Clutching them to her breast, she lay down with a contented sigh, resting her head in Marcus’ lap. Absently, he stroked her hair, gazing out the window. David put his headphones back on.

  Eventually, Marcus and I regarded each other. His hazel eyes were flecked with gold. I knew I’d been angry with him earlier that evening, but that feeling was vague now and far away. He and David looked nothing alike, yet I saw something strangely similar in the way they held themselves, and in the way they’d both gaze upon me. Marcus’ shaved head accentuated the precise proportions of his skull and jaw, the curve of his neck. He had one bare arm flung out over the back of the bench. I remembered more than once, long ago, resting in Marcus’ lap just as Marwa did now. I noticed his knuckles were freshly bruised and crusted with blood, but I didn’t think to ask what had happened. Calmly, we observed each other, breathing in unison, until the ferry arrived at the Harbourfront dock and both Marwa and David roused themselves and we all stood and gathered our belongings and waited for the corrugated metal gangplank to lower, before stepping off the boat back onto solid land, poised at the concrete edge of the luminous city at night. Then when the four of us hugged goodnight, I made a point of kissing Marcus on the lips. And this time, it wasn’t a kiss between friends or ex-lovers. After that, I took my David’s hand in my own and walked away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  We’re All In This Together

  That August, we planned a Garneau family road trip up to the Good Medicine Cabin to scatter Grandma’s ashes. Over a hundred people had come out to her funeral: staff and residents of the nursing home, neighbours, and friends. Even some of Grandma’s former students turned up, a few with grandchildren of their own. Grandma hadn’t taught high school in over fifty years. One of them was Grandpa’s classmate who introduced himself as Frank. He sported a diamond-studded tie pin, and a carnation in his lapel. During the reception at the nursing home, Frank caught up to me by the potato salad table (I counted six different selections). He produced a whiskey flask and poured a generous portion into his coffee. “Care for something stronger?” he asked. Taking my blank stare for an affirmation, he topped off my own cup. “This,” he said winking, “was a gift from your grandpa. See here.” I peered more closely at an inscription on the flask: TO F. MY BEST MAN, T. “That’s right. I told my folks I was going camping, and drove myself all the way down to Toronto just to see them hitched.”

  “Wow.” I sipped from my coffee. I had to admit, the addition was an improvement. “You two were close?”

  Frank chuckled. “Oh, your grandpa Tom and me, we were a tight pair. He was a bull back in the day, star kicker in our senior year. I was quarterback. And your grandma Josie, well, I gotta tell ya, she had this classy chassis that would put Liz Taylor to shame. No disrespect, mind you. Every straight-shootin’ boy in school had his eye on her. But Tom, he was on the hook.” Frank tapped the side of his head. “It’s craziness, you gotta understand, a kind of insanity. Being in love.”

  “Especially with your English teacher.”

  “Oh.” Frank blinked in surprise. “He told you that, then, did he? Not everyone knows that, not anymore these days.” He lowered his voice and elbowed me in the side. “Well, you have it right. Long and short of it, your grandpa was real gone. He didn’t care what anybody said. After graduating, he took off after her. I’m proud to say, I was the one who lent him the money to buy his bus ticket. Counting the justice of the peace, it was just the four of us at their wedding. That night, I slept on the couch. I’ll tell ya, the walls were paper thin in her apartment, I could hear everything. They apologized for it the next morning.” Frank laughed. “I whipped up breakfast and served them in bed. Oh, we had a blast. Yes we did. Tom and Josie and me, we were odd balls, I’m not ashamed to say that.”

  “Odd balls?”

  “Well,” Frank said, leaning in, “let’s just say, the three of us, we didn’t care much what the world had to think.” He plucked a devilled egg from a silver tray and popped it into his mouth. “I helped your grandma Josie raise your father while Tom was off fighting the Nazis. Then after the War, I helped build them that cottage of theirs up north. It took us two years, but we got it done. Back then you built things to last. Oh, the summers we’d spend up there. Your grandma, she christened it the Good Medicine Cabin. You could drink the lake wa
ter then, sweet as rain. There was fishing, partridge, jackrabbits. Now, Josie, she could shoot a gun better than any man I knew. I remember plugging your father’s ears with cotton whenever we took him out hunting with us.”

  “He’s never talked about this.”

  “Oh, he would’ve just been an ankle-biter, not more than three or four. I’d doubt he’d remember much. I moved away after that, to New York City.”

  “No, I meant Grandpa.”

  Frank squinted across the dining hall at Grandpa who was chatting with a small group of women, most of them in wheelchairs: Grandma’s poetry club at the nursing home. The late-afternoon sun slanting in through the floor-length windows edged them in a brittle, pale light. “No,” he reflected. “No, I don’t imagine he would. Tom and me, we were always straight with each other, and it was time I moved on. No regrets. Now me, I’ve gone through three wives. One of them I loved, two of them I was extremely fond of. I have no regrets. Your grandpa, he loves you boys very much. You’re all he has left in the world now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I am sorry what happened to your parents. I’m sorry I wasn’t at their funeral.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, well. I should’ve come. New York wasn’t ever that far away. I suppose that is one thing I regret. I could’ve seen her then. Now it’s too late.”

  Grandpa glanced across the room, and caught our eye. Cloud-shadows passed across his face. He smiled, raised his glass and nodded once.

  Carefully, Frank wrapped two cucumber sandwiches in a napkin and tucked them into his pocket. After that, he took out a cigar and unwrapped it. “Don’t mind what the world thinks. In the end,” he said, gesturing widely to take in the whole reception, “it’ll come to this. It always does.” He cut the cigar head. “And then, what’ll be important?” He patted my shoulder and strolled away. I watched him and Grandpa exchange a few words. The two men excused themselves and exited through the side door leading into the frozen gardens out back.

  The reception was starting to wind down. Most of the guests were gone. Earlier, I’d gotten a number of photographs enlarged and put them on display. I went up to one which I’d set on a side table by a vase of lilies. In the sepia-toned image, Grandma sat on a wooden swing beneath a leafy branch, in a paisley dress, her slim legs folded, and an open book in her lap. Someone had stuck wildflowers between her naked, painted toes. It was a candid shot and her expression was one of bemused annoyance. She might’ve been in her mid-thirties. Not far in the background, you could see Grandpa turned away from the camera, shirtless, fishing lakeside with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, looking for all the world like a young Jack Kerouac. For the first time, I wondered who it was who’d actually taken this picture.

  Outside, Frank and Grandpa shared the cigar, their shoulders bowed against the cold like muskox, their breath forming great white clouds about their heads. Beyond them, past the arbour and skeletal apple trees, the unbroken snow glowed amber in the deepening light. I knew I should bring Grandpa his overcoat, but I didn’t move. Pat and Liam arrived to stand next to me (Liam looking practically unrecognizable in his jacket and tie). “What’s up?” Pat said around a mouthful of food, his plate piled with mini sausages. They followed my gaze out the far window.

  “Who’s that with Pépère?” Liam asked.

  “That’s Frank.”

  Karen and her little sister joined us. Karen rested her hand on my shoulder. “Who’s Frank?” Anne asked.

  “An old friend.” Kitchen staff had begun clearing the scattered cups and saucers. The Miltons and a few others were already helping to wrap tin foil over the potato salads and fancy sandwich trays. “Come on,” I said, “we should start packing things up.”

  “What are we going to do with all these flowers?” Anne asked.

  “We can donate them to the home,” I replied. I’d already made arrangements with the chaplain and Betty the nursing manager. The staff worked with efficient, easy familiarity. They dealt with receptions like this all the time. I was going to miss this place. We’d been coming to visit Grandma here over ten years. Maybe we could still volunteer our time during the holiday seasons, or at least bring over some of Grandpa’s tourtières and sugar pies. They were always a big hit. Then suddenly I found myself wondering where Grandpa himself might be in five, ten or fifteen years. In the photo in front of me, the smooth-limbed youth fishing in the background was barely recognizable. I wondered what I would think if I met this young Tom in the present day, star kicker in high school and crazy in love.

  “She’s beautiful,” Anne said.

  “What?”

  She pointed at the photograph. “Your grandmother, she was beautiful.”

  I stared into the photograph. I discovered if I softened my focus, I could actually begin to see Grandma through Grandpa’s eyes. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, she was.” I wondered how it was possible I’d never seen it before. Almost, if I just relaxed enough, I felt I could reach out and step into that picture. In that moment, I felt closer to Grandpa than I’d ever felt before. But it was time to go.

  I went to fetch his overcoat.

  The plan for Labour Day Weekend was for Blonde Dawn, Pat, David and me to drive straight up to the Good Medicine Cabin from Toronto, where Karen and Liam and Grandpa would meet us. We’d bring our camping gear and spend three days. Seven adults in all, plus Jackson. Plus Grandma’s ashes in a box. For the last eight months, Liam told me, Grandpa had kept Grandma’s remains on the pantry shelf, between the sugar and the Metamucil. Before she got sick, the kitchen was her favourite place in the house. Grandpa wanted this weekend to be an end-of-summer celebration, and we did our best to convince ourselves this would be the case. After this weekend, I’d start my second year in med school, Three Dog Run would release their EP, and Karen’s sister Anne would move to Toronto. The kid had gotten into OCAD on a full scholarship. The Ontario College of Art and Design was the largest and oldest school of its kind in the country. The coming September marked a new chapter in a lot of our lives.

  Liam said he and Grandpa had a surprise waiting for us at the cottage when we arrived. I had no idea what to expect. Unlike Pat, Liam had the best poker face in the world, and there was no hope trying to pry out anything more from him. A week before the road trip, David asked me if I’d come out to Grandpa yet. “No,” I said. “No, I haven’t had a chance.”

  We were repainting the main space in our loft. We’d moved all the furniture into the centre, including David’s framed Che Guevara poster, a tandem bike he’d been building, a male mannequin (which we’d found in a dumpster out back), my potted palm, and at least a dozen milk crates full of my DVDs, textbooks, and David’s comic book collection. We’d covered the floor with tarps Rick had rummaged out for us. David was finishing up with the roller and I was working on the trim. “It’d be nice if you did,” he said, “before he meets me.”

  “It was Grandpa’s idea to have you come up.” I pried the lid off a small can of paint. “He asks about you all the time. David, he knows.”

  “Then you should have no problem telling him.”

  “I’ll tell him.” I stirred the can and settled down cross-legged by the front closet. “I want to tell him.”

  “Then why don’t you tell him right now?” David picked up my phone and tossed it into my lap.

  “What? Right now?”

  “Right now. Give him a call.” I stared at the phone. “There’s no problem, is there?”

  “Sure. No problem.” I wiped my palms and fingers clean on a paper towel. “But look, can you keep a secret?”

  “Totally.”

  “I mean it. I haven’t told my brothers or anyone. I don’t want you saying anything to them about this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about Grandpa.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you know how he built this cottage of ours right after the War, right? Someone named Frank helped him. So I meet this Frank guy at Gr
andma’s funeral. Apparently, he was best man at their wedding. They played high school varsity together. They were like best friends. But Grandpa’s never mentioned him, and I keep wondering why.”

  “Okay.”

  “Grandpa and Grandma and Frank, they were really close. The three of them would spend summers up at the cottage together. I think, maybe, Frank might’ve been in love with my grandma.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I dunno. There was just something in the way he talked about her, I can’t put my finger on it.”

  “You think he and your grandpa had a falling out? And that’s why he’s never mentioned him?”

  “Maybe. Back then, those two would’ve been exactly our age, David. They would’ve been just like us.”

  “Except straight.”

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean nothing ever happened. You know what I’m saying? Can you picture it?”

  “Sure. Two young guys, barely out of high school, shacking up with an older woman, in the 1950s. It’s hot.”

  “You see where I’m going with this.”

  “You think they were a threesome?”

  I dabbed at the baseboards by the closet. “I really shouldn’t be thinking this way.”

  “Yeah, you’re one sick puppy, Daniel. Come on, it’s not that big a deal. Stuff like this goes down all the time. Look, why don’t you just ask him?”

  “Grandpa? Are you kidding me?”

  “Yeah. So hey, Grandpa, did you and Frank ever get it on together with Grandma?”

  “No,” I blurted, “I am not asking him that.”

  “Alright.” David shrugged and dipped his roller into a paint tray. He hefted the long handle and started on the last patch of cinder block wall. “Well, we’ll never know then, will we?”

  “No, I don’t suppose we will.”

  “So?”

  “What?”

  “Are you going to call him or not?”

  I realized I still had the phone in my lap. David raised his eyebrows. I put down my brush and speed-dialled Grandpa. On the sixth ring, he picked up.