After

by Francis Chalifour

  Luc pounded on the door and I jumped.

  “Let me in, Francis! I have to pee.”

  “Hold on, Luc.” I’d cut myself in five places. I stuck bits of toilet paper on my face, like I remembered Papa doing. I didn’t want to think about what I’d look like tomorrow morning in French class. Julia liked guys who shave. I didn’t know where she stood on guys who looked like a double pepperoni pizza.

  I needed Papa’s advice badly, not only about cars and shaving and stuff, but also about girls. I had been friends with Caroline and Melanie for years, but the pathetic fact was that I knew absolutely nothing about girls except that they smell good and giggle a lot. I had never kissed a girl.

  I finally emerged from the bathroom and a desperate Luc pushed by me. Maman was at the linen closet in the hall, putting away freshly ironed sheets.

  “My poor baby, what did you do to yourself?” She took my chin in her hand.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh! I see. You tried to shave!” She looked at me fondly.

  She had said tried.

  “No. I thought I’d dab your red lipstick all over my face to see if you would notice.” I could tell that she was trying hard not to smile.

  “Next time, ask me and I’ll help.” She gave me a quick kiss and turned back to her nice, orderly laundry. I was furious.

  8 | HELP

  It was Friday. The highlight of my day would be my appointment with the school psychologist. I’d rather have stuck pins in my head. It was Maman’s idea. I was supposed to see him twice a week, right after math class. His office was beside the library and across the hall from the boys’ washroom on the second floor. I was terrified that somebody would see me coming out of his office. The Suicide’s Son times the Shrink equals Weirdness squared.

  Anyway, that’s what I used to think, and for the first couple of weeks I held on to the idea like a dog with a bone. To be honest, I was so uncomfortable being there that I don’t remember much of what happened the first hour. Mr. Bergeron was fortyish, balding, and wore big thick smeared glasses on his round face. There were photos of his sons on his desk–I guessed that’s who they were–and a Rubik’s Cube. I was about to learn the man owned, and played with, a Rubik’s Cube. Nerd alert. I wrote Rubik’s Cube four times in my notebook. It proved to be an excellent time filler. Try it.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Bergeron was also busy scribbling on his yellow note pad, but I doubt that he was writing Rubik’s Cube. His silence was getting on my nerves.

  “Do you play any sports?” I thought I’d get the ol’ conversation ball rolling.

  “Yes. Sometimes I play tennis with my two sons.” I’d guessed right. I thought that his sons were lucky–not to have a father like Mr. Bergeron, but simply to have a father.

  “How old are they?” I looked at the photo on his desk.

  “Fifteen and seventeen.”

  “Are you teaching them to drive?”

  “We don’t have a car.”

  I’m supposed to get help from a grown man who doesn’t own a car? “But if you had one, would you?”

  He put his grease-smudged glasses on his desk. “I don’t think so. They’re too young.”

  “But will you teach them someday?”

  “Maybe.”

  A long silence ensued. I don’t know where that word came from but I wrote it neatly under Rubik’s Cube in my notebook. He wrote something on the yellow pad, put it in his briefcase and turned his attention to me.

  “Why do you ask, Francis?”

  “Because I’m curious. I’m here to get answers, right?”

  “Fair enough.”

  I stopped fiddling with my pen and looked into Mr. Bergeron’s eyes. That’s what my father taught me to do when I was playing poker. I had managed to run the gauntlet of the library and the boys’ washroom to get into his office. I might as well cut to the chase. What I asked him next may seem like it came out of the blue, but you have to understand that it was the One Big Question that obsessed me.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “That’s a good question.” He took the Rubik’s Cube in his left hand, and pushed a little plastic square with his thumb. “I believe in God because I want to. I want to believe that Something exists, and that Something is bigger than me. And you, do you believe in God?”

  “Me? I don’t know.” While my mother was reading Theresa of Avila, at the urging of Aunt Sophie, I was reading Eric’s tattered copies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, neither of whom were big on religion.

  “A human being needs to give life meaning, especially his own life. Some people find it through religion while others find it through volunteering, arts, yoga, whatever. It’s different for each of us.”

  I studied the floor. White marble tiles. Bergeron’s office had been decorated with stark, modern furniture and apricot walls, as if it had been transported from a glossy magazine and plunked down in our decrepit high-school building.

  “Was it my fault?” The words came out of my mouth, surprising me.

  “Your father committed suicide. He was the only one responsible.”

  I hate the S-word. Could he have said it any louder? SUICIDE. Wait a second. I will write it in capital and bold letters, just to be sure I don’t forget that my father committed SUICIDE.

  “Do you feel guilty?” His voice was gentle.

  The old sea serpent was waiting in the wings. I tried to keep it down the best I could. I failed. It was awkward and liberating at the same time.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “If I hadn’t gone to New York, he couldn’t have killed himself.”

  “Don’t you think he would have done it another day?” Silence.

  “Don’t you think he would have done it anyway?” he said gently. “When you were at school? You couldn’t watch him all day, every day. You would have to let him out of your sight. You have a right to live your own life.”

  I was staring at the Rubik’s Cube as if it held the clue to the meaning of the universe.

  Mr. Bergeron continued. “You know, it’s normal to feel guilty. And it’s very good that you expressed it today. Losing a parent is a shock. A tragedy. You must know that you’re not alone. I know plenty of teenagers just like you who’ve lost a parent. It’s normal to feel pain. It’s normal to cry. It’s normal.”

  Normal. So, I wasn’t a grief freak. I was normal. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I allowed myself to smile at him before leaving his office.

  The following week, when I came back to see him, I left my notebook in my locker.

  9 | JULIA

  We were sitting in a circle on folding metal chairs in a church basement on Côte-des-Neiges, not far from the Université de Montréal campus, on the other side of the mountain. A battered trestle table was set with a paper plate of dry cookies–Fudgee-Os, my favorites–cans of pop, and a battered urn of bitter-smelling coffee. My legs were shaking and my jaw twitched. I was a quivering mess.

  It was my first meeting with Mr. Bergeron’s support group. There were ten of us between ten and seventeen years old. The ten year old was a tiny Asian girl in a Barbie sweatshirt with pink barrettes in her hair, and I heard the seventeen year old say, “I’ll meet you in an hour,” as he left his pregnant girlfriend at the doorway. The only thing we had in common was that we were reluctant members of the Lost a Parent Club.

  I was surprised to see Julia, the girl from my French class, reading a magazine while she waited for everyone to sit down. I hadn’t realized that she had lost one of her parents. I guess it’s not the first thing you say when you meet someone new: Hi! My father killed himself seven months ago. My name is Francis, what’s yours?

  Mr. Bergeron led the discussion as if he were a maestro. Maestro. Another juicy word. I wrote it ten times in my notebook so I wouldn’t have to look at anyone.

  “Good evening, everyone, and welcome. My name is Ra
ymond,” he said.

  It took me a while to absorb this. Mr. Bergeron had an actual first name just like the rest of the human beings on the planet. I thought for a moment about Mr. Enrique and how much he loved his cat, Rococo. Raymond was wearing a white T-shirt with jeans, and his glasses. He’d wound duct tape around the bridge.

  Oh, Lord! He was twirling his Rubik’s Cube in his hand. I watched, mesmerized, as he began.

  “Welcome, Andrew,” he said to the boy beside him. Andrew was about fourteen years old, and was slouched over as if the very act of sitting up required too much energy.

  “Hi.”

  “How was your day?”

  “Not so good. I thought about my father all day long. He died ten thousand and eighty seconds ago.” He looked around at us as if we were about to contradict him. I didn’t want to fish for my calculator so I was grateful when Raymond said,

  “Just one week ago.”

  Andrew started to cry. Raymond reached over and took his hand.

  “I’m supposed to go back to school on Monday, but I can’t. He’s always there, inside my head.” The words came out of him ragged and painful. “He had a heart attack and just like that he was gone. Why did it happen?” It was agony listening to him.

  Raymond turned to the rest of us. “Why? That’s the question we all have, and the question none of us can answer. Perhaps it is not why, but what we do after that counts.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore,” Andrew whispered. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

  “It’s okay, Andrew. If you don’t want to, it’s okay.”

  I remember the week after my father died, and it was awful. The fact of the death filled every part of my mind every single minute of the time. As I listened to Andrew I realized that without noticing it, I had moved beyond that horrible time.

  It took an effort, but I raised my hand. It was cold in the church basement and the cookies were doing the cha-cha in my belly.

  “Good evening. My name is Francis, and my father died last June.” That felt good, but I knew that I had only said half of what needed to be said.

  “How did he die?” asked the Barbie girl.

  “My father…he…my father committed suicide. He hanged himself in the attic.”

  There. I said it. Now everyone knew not only that my father committed suicide, but how he did it. I wanted to get it out before they asked me. People always want the juicy details. It’s like:

  “Oh! I’m so sorry about your father.”

  “It’s okay.”

  They wait a second or two, and then:

  “How did he do it? Pills, a gun, a screwdriver?”

  Stupid idiots. If they were really sorry, how could they possibly ask me that?

  The discussion moved on to something else, but I felt like I had taken a giant step. At the end of the evening, as we were folding up the chairs, I actually found the nerve to speak to Julia. This was a big deal for me, let me tell you.

  “My name is Francis, but you can call me Frank if you want.” Nobody has ever called me Frank, but I thought it sounded cool.

  “That goes for me, too.” There it was again–the delicate scent of lily of the valley.

  “What? You want me to call you Frank?” Ha, ha! Was I hilarious! It’s a wonder she didn’t run screaming for the door.

  Instead she said, “No, sorry. Call me Jul. Actually I hate to be called Julia–and tomatoes.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I hate tomatoes They’re squishy and they have those little seeds. I think they’re gross.”

  “Me, too! There’s nothing on earth that I hate more than tomatoes!” This was not precisely true. I actually had never taken a stand on the tomato issue, but apparently there’s a Talking to Girls Monster that’s as independent of rational thought as the Grief Sea Monster. I seemed to have lost all control of my brain.

  “But I love Dijon mustard!” I couldn’t believe I said that. But anyway, we both laughed. She had warm hazel eyes, brown hair, and best of all, she was shorter than I am. I like girls who are shorter than I, though there aren’t many of them. She was also younger. I was born in April, and she was born in October. I liked the way she was handling her soda. So sexy! She had a nice, white toothy smile. Teeth are always the first thing I notice in girls. Well, the second thing. She must have noticed my fixation.

  “I had braces for at least five years. My teeth were terrible! I could have given Dracula a scare!” This brilliant conversation went on until the other kids had left and Mr. Bergeron was clearing his throat loudly at the door.

  On meeting nights, I spent hours in my bedroom picking through what you might generously call my wardrobe for my least dorky clothes, and–very important–shaving. I tried to comb my hair like Tom Cruise, and I patted eau de cologne on my face. That was something I’d never done before. I used Papa’s because I didn’t have money to buy a new bottle. I could never figure out the point of cologne before, but it seemed like a good idea.

  The highlight of my week was talking to Jul after Group. We’d take our plate of cookies and our cans of pop and perch on the edge of the dusty stage that ran across one end of the basement. We talked about her mother and my father. What she went through was different from me. I guess every death is different. Her mother died from breast cancer when Jul was eleven. Last year her father sold his construction company in Barrie. Jul went to Paris on a school exchange while her sister and dad moved to Montréal. After that first conversation about tomatoes, no matter where we started we always ended up talking about death. She told me that she had had time to prepare herself for her mother’s death, but when it came, it was still a shock. Jul told me that since her mother had died she had more or less stopped eating. I noticed that she hadn’t touched the cookies.

  You’d think that after that kind of heart-to-heart, talking to Jul at school would be no problem. Wrong. Outside the church basement, Mr. Cool, here, was tongue-tied. It took me ages to psyche myself up, but finally, on a Friday afternoon when classes were over, I asked her to go to Deli Delight with me. The owner’s an old potbellied man who wears a skullcap and speaks French with a strong Yiddish accent. He is one of those people that you can know forever, without ever knowing his name. Even Papa, who had known him for years, called him Mister Deli. Mr. Deli had been at the funeral.

  We slid into a booth and I ordered sodas, tuna salad on bagels, and fries. We picked up the familiar Theme of Death conversation before the food came. Jul began.

  “She suffered a lot. I’ll never forget every minute of the last day. The nurse came to her room and gave her a shot. An hour later, she was dead. She held my hand till the end. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I didn’t cry for the whole two years she was sick.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wanted to show her that I was strong and that she wouldn’t have to worry about what would happen to me after she was gone. I wanted her to be able to go in peace.”

  “In a way, you’re lucky. You knew your mother was going to die. You could tell her that you loved her. I never got the chance.”

  “I did say it a lot to her, but I also said stuff I can’t believe now. Once, about six months before she died I was mad at her for something. I don’t remember what–maybe because I had turned the radio up too loud and she yelled at me. I yelled back that I wished she were dead. I kept thinking about that during the last days when she actually was dying. I’d give anything to take those words back. Then, at the end it was so awful that I wanted my mother to hurry up and get it over with. I really did wish she was dead. It’s horrible to say that, isn’t it?” Jul studied my face.

  I reached across the table for her hand. This incredibly sicko thought formed in my mind. I wanted to become the tears that rolled down her cheek just so that I could touch her skin. I must be a pervert.

  “I felt two emotions at the same time,” Jul continued. “I wanted my mother to die so that she wouldn’t suffer anymore, but at the same time, I wanted her to live, b
ecause I loved her and couldn’t bear to lose her. Nobody seems to get it.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was beginning to figure out that sometimes listening is the best way to communicate. Some people (like Aunt Sophie) are afraid of silence, so they fill it with sounds. Don’t cry. Cry. You’re the Man of the House now. How do you feel? It was all for the best. Let me tell you, when it’s your turn to be a good friend to somebody who is in bad shape, just listen. Forget words. They can be worse than useless.

  Mr. Deli brought us our sodas, humming I don’t know what–it sounded like “All That She Wants” from Ace of Base. I watched Jul pull the paper wrapper off her straw and take a sip.

  “I don’t know if it’s like this for you,” she said, “but I’m jealous of people who have both their parents. You know Reine?”

  “Reine Green?”

  “Yes. We walk to school together sometimes, and she’s always talking about going to buy a dress for her graduation with her mother, and how her mother likes white dresses and what stores she likes and on and on and on. It makes me want to scream. When it’s my turn to graduate, I won’t be shopping with my mother. My mother’s never going to see me graduate or get married, or have kids, or anything.”

  I thought about my fury at Houston’s ongoing saga of Father Knows Best. “Yes, but your father and your sister will be there.” I don’t know why I said that. I had my mother and brother, and that didn’t make the pain any less.

  “It’s not the same at all. I love my father, I really do, but there are things that a girl wants to talk about with her mother.”

  “I know. It’s the same for me.”

  “Besides, my father never shows his emotions. He’s about as warm as the St. Lawrence in January!”

  Oh, my God! She said as warm as the St. Lawrence in January! I thought I’d made that expression up. We use the same expressions! We were obviously meant for each other.