“Oh, I’m not saying that I don’t like her, Mal. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I am going to like her. I’m just saying that she’s young, even though she seems older. There’s something, something that I just can’t put my finger on, but yeah, I’m sure I’ll like her son. She makes you happy, I’ll like her. It’s as simple as that.”
By the time Rose and Heather join us, I have my legs draped over the railing, and can feel the sun on them. I can almost see new, little clusters of freckles popping up. I never really do tan, I just go red, and then my pale Scottish skin peels, and itches. I love the sun, but always forget to protect myself against it.
“Malcolm, Rose is going to make me eat cabbage. Please make her stop. And, oh my goodness, your legs are turning red,” says my new girlfriend in mock terror.
“You’ll like it. She fries it in brown sugar, and adds weeds that she grows in the garden. I’ve been eating it since I was a kid,” I answer, pushing against the redness on my legs with my finger.
“They’re not weeds, Scottish boy, and if she doesn’t like the vegetables cooked the way my Newfoundland mother and grandmother taught me to make them, she can just have a pork chop,” Rose answers, pretending to be hurt.
Rose has that old time belief that you decide whether or not you are going to like someone within the first couple of minutes, and from the sideways smiles she’s exchanging with Heather, I know that they’re already fond of each other.
“Why do you call him Scottish boy? I’ve gotten so used to it now, that I can barely hear his accent.” Heather is helping Rose dish the food onto plates on the small plastic table.
“It comes and goes. When he first got here, or after talking to his Dad on the phone, it was real strong. We spent a week, just asking him to repeat things to us, till we got him retrained.” George says, smiling at the memory. “I don’t know if you’re more Scottish now, or you were more then, Mal. I remember how you’d tell me about the rains, the great rains of Scotland that would come at you sideways and instantly soak you.”
Sometimes, it’s good to be the centre of attention. Sometimes, having your adolescent life dissected isn’t so bad, especially when it’s being done by the people that you love and trust.
“When I first met you, you were my little Scottish gentleman, running all over the streets, with that big old watch in your hand. My little Scottish gentleman, look at you now, lounging over that railing, with your sunburnt legs.” Rose’s laughter is so infectious that we can’t help but laugh along with her.
My new girlfriend shifts in her seat, laughing with the rest of us, while placing a plate of Rose’s Newfoundland cabbage and pork chops on her lap, and showing me her half dimple. “You have this Scottish look to you, like you just got off the boat and are still lost; it’s very cute.”
Something happens to you when you’re sitting in the safest place in the world, and enjoying the sun, and eating food that you’ve known for years, and having people you love, and are soon to love, saying nice things about you. You almost get into a trance-like state, and that’s exactly where I go. I feel as though I’m sleeping and awake at the same time. And it’s fine. It feels good, everything is fine until I look over at Heather, and realize that she’s taken off her jacket, and the t-shirt she’s wearing has a peep hole in it that’s right in the centre of her cleavage.
Heather is a beautiful girl, and truly, the first thing that you notice about her, are her eyes, her amazing blue eyes. But the second thing, or perhaps the third thing, after noticing her height, or maybe even her long, straight hair, is her breasts. She is the kind of a girl that my Scottish father would say, “is blessed. Very, very blessed.”
Later, when she would tell the story, Heather would say I stared at her peep hole, for a full ten seconds; I disagree, and feel that it was no more than two or three. All I know is that I was enjoying staring at the glimpse of her full breasts, through that small peep hole, and somehow forgot that there was anyone else there. I just forgot that I was sitting on that porch, being the centre of attention, and being watched by three other people. And in those few seconds, the message from my brain, to the more sensitive and responsive area of my body, made a reaction in my shorts that did not go unnoticed.
“Malcolm, you’re smiling in your shorts. Eat your dinner.” Rose drops my plate of pork chops and cabbage unceremoniously into my lap, while shaking her head like the embarrassed surrogate mother that she is.
George can hardly get any words out as he’s laughing so hard. “Is that a Scottish thing too, Mal?” He motions towards my now covered up erection when he asks.
My face burns beet red, almost glowing, and as I hurriedly eat my pork chops and fried cabbage with Newfoundland weeds, my new girlfriend puts her hand on my shoulder, and whispers mischievously, “We haven’t found out if that’s a Scottish or Canadian thing quite yet.”
That night, when I’m in her apartment for the very first time, I get to know that the girl, who used to have green hair, still has two teddy bears on her bed and a poster of an old Punk rock band on her bedroom wall. She has no pictures of her family on her bedroom shelves and mantles; instead they are filled with candles and small glass figurines of mothers holding their children. She has a fluffy comforter with seven different pillows, and when you take off the blouse with the peep hole, she has the most perfect breasts that I’ve ever seen.
“Whisper Scottish in my ear,” she teases me.
“I’m not sure I know how.” I whisper back, in the familiar Kilmarnock Secondary School voice that comes so naturally to me.
“Well, that’s a really good start,” she half gasps as we lay on her bed, undressing each other.
“You’re lovely. You really are,” I whisper, looking at her almost totally naked body.
“Are you sure it’s not what you were looking at earlier?” she asks, teasingly pushing her dangerous breasts together.
“No, it’s all of you. It really is,” I answer, and I mean it. Every word.
I do this thing sometimes, when I’m in a really good place. I ask myself if there is anywhere else in the world that I’d rather be than where I am right at that moment. And, as I kiss and caress the body of the beautiful girl, I know exactly what the answer is.
“You touch me like you mean it. I like that. It’s like you’re gentle and strong at the same time,” she says.
We let the comfortable silence surround us, and I don’t think about Terry and his maybes or his foreplay before the foreplay, or even Natasha and our failed relationship. I don’t think about any of it. I just enjoy being with her, and for the first time in a long time, I know that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
CHAPTER 18
In between working with my precious numbers, and Heather’s job as Terry’s marketing assistant, we phone each other’s answering machines. We leave questions, filling in the gaps of our lives with the actual facts. Sometimes she sends an answer back, and sometimes, she evades it by sending me another question.
She tells me her middle name is Allison.
“Just like the song,” I send my message back.
“What song?” she replies, mischievously underlining the difference in our ages.
I respond by tunelessly singing the Elvis Costello song, in my Scottish/Canadian accent, into her phone machine, wondering if I’ve ever sung for a girl before.
She leaves me a message that says, “I sometimes think we’re sharing a head, or a mind. We seem to think the same things, at the same time. Are you psychic, Malcolm, or do you just know me this well already?”
We take turns, lying in my bed, looking out at the water, or in hers, staring at her little glass figurines. Sometimes, there’s a faint dark flicker in her eyes, as though she’s thinking about something else. It comes, and then leaves just as quickly, and she comes back to me, back to our shared laughter, our shared head.
I wait until we’re in the darkness of her bedroom, surrounded by her little glass figurines, before I ask her why s
he looks so sad sometimes.
I can feel the warm air from the summer night coming through her window, hanging in the air between us, as she speaks. “My mother died when I was young. I was fifteen, almost sixteen. I think about her sometimes. I still feel a little lost sometimes. I just never had my mom when I needed her. That’s it. That’s all it is.”
She tenses up beside me and I wait a moment before continuing. “I’m sorry, Heather. That must have been hard. It must have been really hard. Was it just you and your Dad. Are you still in touch with him? Are you close?”
In the dark, I can’t see the flicker in her eyes, but I know it’s there. I can sense it. I can feel it.
For the first time ever, she turns away from me, and there’s no reply. When I tell her again that I’m sorry, there’s still no answer. It’s a long time before I hear her breathing change, and realize that she’s fallen asleep.
You get to the point where summer feels like it’s going to last forever, and other than the odd dark flicker, life is really good. Life feels right. Then, all of a sudden, everything can change. Everything ends. It has to. That’s just the way things are. I know that something is wrong as soon as Weldon walks into my office, and I know it isn’t work. I know it’s personal.
Weldon Grimes is my office supervisor. He looks after our day to day business when I’m not there. He’s a good man. He can rarely talk to me without telling a joke. It usually takes every bit of inner fortitude that I have for me to laugh at his jokes, but I do laugh. I do try. This time is different though. When he walks into my office, nervously rubbing his hands together, and fingering his wedding band, he isn’t telling jokes. He’s looking at me, concerned, and points to the phone, telling me to lift up the receiver, and take the call, before quietly closing the door behind him.
I think of my Dad right away. Then George, and Rose, or my mother, even, but it’s not them. It isn’t any of them. It’s Hardly. I should never have doubted it. It was always going to be Hardly. Always.
“He’s been shot, Son. Ireland. Feckin’ Ireland. They sent him back to Ireland, again. It’s his leg. He took a bullet in his leg. He’s lost his leg, son. Are you hearing me, Malcolm? Are you receiving me?”
No matter how many times I tell him, my father still believes that you have to speak very loudly into the phone in order for your voice to be heard during long-distance telephone calls. In fact, throughout the years, perhaps because of Hardly, he’s somehow acquired the voice of a military man, and speaks as though he’s speaking into his radio.
“Yes, Dad, I can hear you fine. Take your time. Tell me what happened. Is he okay? Is Hardly okay?”
My Dad tells me about a routine patrol, and a couple of boys pointing their older brother’s rifle out of a tenement window. Nobody knows what they were aiming for, and it could have been much worse. If it had been higher, if their aim had been more accurate, who knows where it might have hit him. The bullet struck him in the lower part of his right leg, shattering the bone. He’s lost part of his leg. They had to take it off but he’s going to be okay. That’s all that we know. “He wanted you to know, Malcolm. He called me and wanted me to give you a ring.”
Hardly, true to his word, tried to join the British Army the moment he turned 15. He was happy living with my Dad, but wanted to get as far away from Rab, his father, and Kilmarnock, as he could. So, he did. They resisted taking him at first, probably because of his small stature, but he was persistent, and finally, Hardly became a soldier. They sent him everywhere too, Germany, England, Ireland. Always, Ireland.
“I thought it was okay over there now, Dad. I thought there was a truce or something. He told me that. I’m sure Hardly told me that.”
“It’s better than it used to be, but it’s not safe. It’s not safe to be a soldier anywhere. This’ll be the end of it, though. This has to be the feckin’ end of it. He won’t be on active duty anymore. He can come home. He’ll be coming home.” There’s anger in his voice as he speaks. I can hear it. Maybe he’s angry at the Army. Or, maybe he’s angry at the boys who shot Hardly. Or, maybe he’s just angry at the decisions that Hardly and I have made. I can’t tell. It’s been too long, and there are too many miles between us.
“Malcolm, I should be signing off now, Son. I should be disconnecting. You can phone him, though. He’s at the military hospital in Glasgow. He can take calls, you know. ” His practical phone manners return, as he waits for me to speak.
“I will Dad. Tell him that I’m thinking about him. Tell him that I’ll call him.” I get the phone number from him, and try asking my Dad how he’s doing, but it’s too late. He’s saying ‘Cheerio’, and hanging up the phone, while I’m still talking.
When I tell Heather about Hardly, I tell her all of it. I tell her about Rab, and how he hit Hardly with the iron, and the beatings, and my Dad taking Hardly in. I even tell her about getting pissed on at our tree. When I tell her the part about two boys shooting at him from a window, I can’t talk anymore. I don’t want to think of my friend out there on the street, dressed in his uniform, vulnerable.
“Are you going to go see him? Are you going to go to Scotland?” We’re sitting on the edge of my bed, and the late September sunshine is streaking through the windows of my apartment.
“No, not right now. I’ll try and go back once he’s out of hospital. I spoke to one of his doctors. He’s going to have lots of rehab, lots of work to do. They’ll fit him with an artificial leg but he will walk. He will walk.” I feel guilty as soon as I say it, and it seems as though she can sense it too.
“So, what are you going to do? Work? Should we just work all summer to forget about it?” She’s not angry. She says it as though she really wants to hear the answer.
I look out my window, at the sun, wishing that summer was beginning, instead of ending and I know that I need to do something, anything to help me not think about my friend lying in a hospital bed. “Nope, let’s get out of town. Can you get some time off from Terry? Let’s get out of here and do something.” It makes perfect sense. We both want to prolong the summer so, why not? Why not do what people do in every city of the world do when the sun begins to fade and the nights get shorter?
At first she just stares into my eyes, as though she’s questioning my motivation, but after a moment there’s no doubt. Her smile tells me that we’re going. Her smile tells me that summer might last just a little bit longer.
Her idea is to camp in an old army tent, at a lake that she’s heard of, that’s two hundred miles away, in the interior of the province. She wants to sleep under the stars, cook over an open fire, and howl at the moon, while drinking a bottle of Indian whisky, that’s been in her cupboard for years. I’ve never heard of Indian whisky, and even in my wildest days, can’t remember ever howling at the moon.
I want to find a nice bed and breakfast, far away from the city, and gaze up at the stars from the comfort of a room that has a warm fireplace.
The compromise comes when I spot a ‘For Sale’ sign, on an old motorhome sitting by the side of the road. I phone her, and suggest that we can still go to her lake, and still cook outside, and yes, she can bring her bottle of Indian whisky. This way though, with the motorhome, we can be warm and dry, and it will give us some privacy from other campers.
And with the ease of an early relationship compromise, she answers, “Yes, I can’t wait.”
The motorhome is sound, and I fill four lined pages with notes from the operating instructions and tips that the previous owner has given me. It has a heavy feel to it on the road, and although it’s smaller, compared to some of the others that pass us; it’s still the largest vehicle that either of us has ever driven. I check the side mirrors, as I drive, then look over at her, and gaze just a moment too long at her bare legs.
“You’re going to get us into an accident. Why don’t you just pull over, gawk at my legs for a while? Then you can drive on safely.” Her smile is playful, as she says it.
“You shouldn’t have worn those sh
orts if you didn’t want me to look at your legs.” I smile back at her, trying very hard to keep my eyes on the road.
“I didn’t say that I didn’t want you to look at them. And if you want, I can take my shorts off.” She means it. I can tell, as she bravely keeps her gaze on me.
“Keep them on. I’ll concentrate on the road.” I laugh, and it feels good, as I watch her, from the corner of my eye, mischievously pulling at her shorts.
The old motorhome bounces and coughs along the scenic roads, with the engine sounding like it wants to rest.
“It doesn’t feel like it wants to go camping.” She holds onto her seat as she says it, letting the sun beat down on her face.
“It’s reliable. I had it checked out, old but reliable.”
“I know you did. I trust it. I trust both of you.”
We pass other campsites on the way to our campground, where other campers are also trying to pretend that it’s still summer. We see boat launches and barbecue pits and signs telling us who the campsite hosts are. They all look like small miniature villages, with people pretending that this is their real home. I keep thinking that I’ll see a fast food restaurant, situated right in the middle of one of them. As we drive on, I start to enjoy the feeling of being away from the city, and silently hope that our campsite will be more private, more remote.
My Temporary Life Page 12
