I Was There the Night He Died

by Ray Robertson

  Thankfully, when I finally decided I needed help, I got the help I needed. Like anything you really require, though, it wasn’t a matter of simply asking for it. You never get what you ask for—you always have to force someone to give it to you.

  “And how long have you been self-administering”—the counsellor pressed a forefinger to the three-page questionnaire I’d filled out while waiting for my two pm appointment—“dextroamphetamine sulfate?” I could tell by the way he’d studied the word that he had no idea what it was.

  “It’s basically a pharmaceutical-quality stimulant,” I said.

  Without lifting his eyes from the questionnaire, “I’m familiar with”—finger on the page again—“dextroamphetamine sulfate.” Flipping back to the first page, “And you’ve just turned forty-four?”

  “Yes,” I said, although, No, I wanted to say—I’ve just admitted to a complete stranger that I’m addicted to speed, but I lied about my age, I’m secretly really forty-five.

  “And you’re a teacher, I see.”

  “Right.”

  This fact seemed to interest him; enough so, anyway, that he looked up at me from the piece of paper. He was tennis club thin and probably no more than fifty, but, I noticed for the first time, sporting not only a surgically implanted weave and a tanning-booth baked glow, but braces. A fifty-year-old man with braces. This was the person who was going to help me get my life back? I was the one who needed professional help?

  “And where do you teach?”

  “U of T. Continuing Studies. It’s just a couple of hours a week.”

  The counsellor slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook his head—although not, I thought, without dimly smiling—and wrote something in the margins of the questionnaire, pleased, it seemed, to have discovered the source of my problem in the first five minutes of our meeting. “And do you think that two hours a week of fulfilling work is enough to satisfactorily occupy yourself as an educator?”

  “I’m not a teacher,” I said. “I mean, I am, but I’m busy with other things as well. Believe me, work isn’t my problem. It’s probably the only thing in my life that isn’t a problem.”

  He scanned the questionnaire, undoubtedly looking to determine what precisely these other things were. “Do you mind me asking you how you’re able to support yourself on two hours of part-time teaching?”

  I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Neither the present status of my bank account nor the insurance settlement I’d received upon Sara’s death that I used to pay off our mortgage was his or anybody else’s business. Sara wasn’t his or anyone else’s business. Under MARITAL STATUS on the questionnaire, I’d checked the box marked SINGLE.

  “I write books,” I said. “A large portion of my income comes from the books I write.”

  The counsellor leaned back in his chair, chin in hand, and nodded—leisurely, indulgently—not unlike an insane asylum overseer humouring an inmate claiming to be Jesus Christ.

  “I mean,” I continued, “the money’s not all from the books themselves. There are grants, readings fees, public lending rights money, things like that.”

  Another exaggeratedly benevolent nod. “These books that you speak of: are these books that you would like to write someday?”

  Now I was getting angry, and not just because I was more than a little cranky from not having slept more than three consecutive hours in who knew how long. “No, these are actual books that I’ve actually written.” I hated to be an artsy shit about it, but, “There are six novels and two collections of essays.”

  “I see,” he said. “And these ‘books’”—he made scare quotes with his fingers, he literally, physically made scare quotes—“would you say that, perhaps, some of your struggles with dextro—”

  “Speed. I’ve got a problem with speed.”

  The counsellor paused, allowing me time, it was clear, to compose myself. “That perhaps some of your struggles are attributable to your not being published? It wouldn’t, after all, be the first time that an aspiring author—”

  “I am published.”

  “Self-published, do you mean?”

  “No, published—published—as in published by a publisher.”

  Fingers in the air again, “These ‘publishers’ that you speak of—“

  “Oh, for Christ sake, Google me.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m serious, turn on your computer and just punch in my name.”

  “Mr. Samson, please lower your voice.”

  “Do it, just punch in my name.”

  “Mr. Samson, I’ll ask you again to please lower your voice.”

  “Will you listen to me? I’m telling you, Google me.”

  “Mr. Samson, I won’t ask you again.”

  “For Godsake, I’ve got my own fucking website!”

  By the time the security guard arrived, I’d managed to find the ON switch at the back of the computer and was waiting for Windows to load, www.SamSamson.ca just one click away.

  Luckily, instead of being banned from the premises, I was “referred” (scare quotes mine) to another counsellor—a big Swedish woman this time—who listened when I spoke and helped me to admit that perhaps I’d reached the point in my life when the going up so high wasn’t quite worth the coming down so low. She also gave me expert guidance and continued general support to assist me in edging off the dexys little by little, day by day, until within two months, the strongest chemical I was putting inside my body was Mountain Dew, the most caffeine-charged soda pop known to humankind, the edgy energy it delivers with every bubbly sip just the jumpy jump-start my revving-up system needs. Thank God for the Dew and my big Swedish counsellor.

  My beer is gone and the wind has picked up and my joint keeps going out; and besides, no matter how faithfully I follow the girl’s instructions, even when I can manage to keep it lit, I can’t smuggle enough smoke into my lungs to make me feel any more stoned than as if I’d just woken up from a very long, too long, nap. I empty the sudsy remains of the beer bottle onto the snow and realize that I’m just killing time, am hoping that the girl is going to join me.

  I storm into the house, angry at myself, disappointed with myself, something.

  * * *

  I spend most of the morning addressing e-mails that can’t go unanswered any longer; then, because Uncle Donny won’t be here to pick me up until noon, waste nearly an hour Googling myself, in the process discovering absolutely nothing about me that I didn’t already know. Anyway, that’s what best friends are for, lovers are for, Sara is for. Was for. The final grammar lesson that no one wants to learn: the difference between is and was isn’t just a different vowel with an extra consonant thrown in.

  My big Swedish counsellor was only wrong about one thing. When she advised me to compile a list of all those friends who might, by virtue of their own nasty habits, impede my desire to remain dexy-free, I told her it wouldn’t be necessary, I didn’t have any friends. When she replied, more kindly than accusingly, that that seemed unlikely, I realized it would be easier to concede she was right. But I was telling the truth. For the longest time, I didn’t need any friends. For the longest time, I had Sara.

  Dearest Emily Dickinson opined “The Soul selects her own Society/Then shuts the Door,” and the old girl never wrote righter. I had people I knew when we met and Sara had plenty of the same, but over the course of twenty years together our society naturally selected down to just us. Sara and me. Me and Sara. Sara and Sam. Sam and Sara. Us.

  People we hadn’t seen for months—nice people, good people, other writers or people in publishing I knew; people who worked with Sara in fundraising at the OSPCA—would run into one or the other of us and say, “We never see you guys anymore. We really need to get together.” And e-mail addresses would be verified and phone calls would be promised and another few months would go by and it would still be just Sa
ra and Sam, Sam and Sara. It wasn’t misanthropy; we never fell out with anyone; it was never anything we planned on happening. But even when we fought, we knew there was only us. We’d snap, we’d snarl, we’d scream at each other, but it was almost like arguing with yourself—as if, until a soft word or firm embrace finally stopped the shouting, you simply weren’t whole anymore, were only half of what you were supposed to be.

  Uncle Donny honks, but my laptop is still turned on and the electric blanket is still plugged in, and by the time I get everything shut off and am putting my coat on, he’s at the door, not bothering to knock or ring the doorbell, going straight for the door handle. Which is locked. Which causes him to pound on the door with his fist and yell, “It’s me, let me in.” Which I do.

  “It’s the middle of the day, what are you doing locking your door for?”

  Every time I came home from university for a visit, Uncle Donny would remind me over another of my mother’s epic Sunday dinners, “You know, if you lived in Chatham, you could eat like this all the time.” I made the mistake only once of attempting to explain to him that St. Clair College, Chatham’s local academy of higher learning, was renowned more for its certificate in air conditioning repair than for its liberal arts course selection. “Which reminds me,” he said, turning to my dad. “I’m gettin’ water running all down the back of my damn a/c unit. Seems to me like it’s working way too hard for what it’s putting out.” My dad poured some more creamed corn over his mashed potatoes and promised to drop by the next day and have a look. Uncle Donny never needed an air-conditioning repair man; Uncle Donny had my dad.

  I get my other arm through the other coat sleeve and slap my jean pocket to make sure I’ve got my keys. “Do you want a pop?” I say. Uncle Donny quit drinking alcohol and began drinking pop before I was born, replacing a vodka bottle with a pop can virtually overnight, sacrificing only his teeth and giving himself a mild case of diabetes in return for the salvation of his liver and his life. Never seeing Uncle Donny drunk is one of the things I’ve always been most grateful for.

  “What have you got?”

  “Mountain Dew.”

  Uncle Donny makes a face.

  “I’ve also got Diet Mountain Dew.”

  Uncle Donny keeps making a face; adds a dismissive shake of the head to the mix. “I’ve got one going in the car, let’s just get a move on.”

  Uncle Donny doesn’t approve of my not driving, not driving being a fault of mine as a man, not owning a car being a fault of mine as the grandson and son and nephew of two generations of auto workers. I was a teenage driver, of course, borrowing the family’s ’67 Buick Skylark every chance I got, but who needs a car in Toronto when you’re nineteen, twenty-one, twenty-five? And by the time there was a reason to get behind the wheel again—car-rented road trips with Sara when we were first going out, visits to her parents or mine once we were married—Sara always did the driving because she was the better driver, and one year it just seemed silly to pay eighty bucks to renew a piece of paper that was only going to rot in my wallet. And I still don’t need a driver’s licence to live in Toronto. Living in Chatham, however, I’m not so independent. Living in Chatham, I need Uncle Donny.

  Before he turns the key in the ignition Uncle Donny goes right for the cooler resting on the backseat, plucking out a fresh can of Cott Cola, not wanting to risk getting caught mid-destination without a fistful of his favourite beverage. I know the routine and do my passenger-side part: pop open the glove compartment and hand him the can opener; wait for him to make an equal-sized, triangle-shaped hole at each end; carefully re-wrap the dish towel around the opener before putting it back inside so it doesn’t rattle around. Do they even still make Cott Cola? They definitely don’t manufacture cans without push-tabs anymore. I don’t ask Uncle Donny where he gets his contraband cola supply for fear he might actually tell me.

  He swallows what’s left in the old can before dropping it to the floor in the back, grabs the cold reinforcement from between his legs. “You given any thought as to how you’re going to get everything you’re keeping back to Toronto?”

  “It’s not going to be much.”

  “Well, they’re not going to let you take it all on the train, I know that.”

  He doesn’t know any such thing—Uncle Donny has never been anywhere further away than London General Hospital (for a skin cancer scare in the 1980s) and he certainly didn’t take the train (riding the train when you can drive akin to an able-bodied man choosing to sit down to pee)—but I let it slide, concentrate instead on an obviously drunk man in an overcoat and fedora swaying on the girl from the park’s front step, unsuccessfully fitting the key in his hand into the keyhole in the door. I hope it’s not some stranger, I hope it’s someone she knows. The key falls from the man’s hand and he slowly descends to his knees like a very devoted something or other; jabs his hand in and out of the bush as if every time he pulls it back empty, he can’t quite believe it. I hope it’s not someone she knows, I hope it’s some stranger.

  “And isn’t it about time you got hold of a real estate agent? The economy down here isn’t the best these days, so you want to get on that.”

  It’s not just that what he says makes no economic sense—nobody’s working, so nobody’s buying, so there’s really no hurry—I also don’t like being told what to do with my dying father’s house, particularly because he’s just that: dying, not dead. I know he’s never going to get better—never going to be even him again—but planting a For Sale sign in the middle of the front yard of his home is a white flag I’m not comfortable flying quite yet. Besides, there have to be more things I want to hold on to that I need to pack up. At least more than half a box’s worth.

  “It’ll happen—sooner or later,” I say, pleased to take the patronizing adult role for a change.

  “Well, it should be sooner than later.”

  “It’ll happen when it happens. I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment.”

  And that, apparently, is that—until Uncle Donny rests his can in the beverage holder and pulls an envelope out of his coat pocket and hands it to me.

  “What’s this?”

  Pause. “We might have a situation on our hands.”

  “What kind of situation?”

  Pause. “You better read it.”

  Uncle Donny drives, I read. It’s a good thing for him he’s driving: if I was to kill him, it might mean I’d die as well in the resultant crash. Which, at the moment, does have its appeal.

  “How could you let this happen?” I say.

  “It’s some kind of mistake.”

  “It had better be some kind of mistake. But how could you let it get to this? It says here you’ve known about it for months now.”

  Uncle Donny’s got his can of Cott Cola back; takes a drink, then another, like if he just keeps drinking, he’ll never have to answer me. “I thought it was under control.”

  “It says we owe Thames View over fifteen thousand dollars.”

  “I know.”

  “How is that having it under control?”

  “That place isn’t cheap, you know. It’s the best long-care unit in town.”

  “What has that got to do with anything? All that matters right now is that it’s the best long-care unit in town that’s going to put my father out on the street unless they get the fifteen thousand dollars they say we owe them.”

  We sit at a red light, which gives me time to think and Uncle Donny time to apologize. Hypothetically, anyway.

  “I didn’t ask for this job, you know,” he says. “I’ve got my own problems too.”

  “What job? Since when is looking after your sick brother a job?”

  “That’s not what I mean. You know that.” The car is moving again, just like our tongues.

  “When my dad was alive … ” Uncle Donny looks at me. “You know what I mean. Before—before he wa
s sick—anything that was wrong with your car or your TV or your eaves troughs was just a phone call away from being fixed. A phone call to my dad.”

  “I did plenty of things for him too, you know. It wasn’t a one-way street. I helped him out all the time too.”

  “Letting him know when Bic razors are on sale and when Loblaws is putting their day-old donuts out isn’t quite the same thing.”

  And now we’re here, at Thames View for our afternoon visit, Dad’s loving brother and devoted son united in their single-minded desire to instill warmth and cheer into yet another otherwise empty day. There’s a van parked out front that’s blocking our access to the free family parking spots. DENTURES ON WHEELS, it says on the side. I can’t help but hope they’re not here for Dad, that his teeth aren’t half as decayed as his mind. Apparently, he’d be lucky if we could afford a spool of dental floss.

  “You’re his son.” Uncle Donny says it not like he’s trying to score a point, but as if he’s actually reminding me of something I might have forgotten.

  “So?”

  “So … where were you?”

  Uncle Donny has lit a cigarette while we’ve been waiting for the van to move; smokes it with his face almost pressed to the rolled-up window. There’s smoke all around the back of his head.

  “We can go now,” I say.

  “What?”

  “The van. It’s gone. We can park now.”

  Chapter Four

  I commiserated with my dad when he was diagnosed. I met with every new doctor every sad step of the way. From the beginning until it didn’t matter anymore, we talked on the telephone two, three times a week; about the Red Wings and his yard work mostly, the other thing—the main thing—not something there was much to talk about. I was there to watch the light go out in my father’s eyes.