I Was There the Night He Died

by Ray Robertson

  “Do you want a Mountain Dew?” I say.

  Samantha is on her knees on the carpet, finishing her setup, still in her coat. She stops what she’s doing and looks up, pulls off her hood while considering my question, a revelation of long brown hair released from underneath. She has chestnut brown eyes and a plump, lipstick-less mouth, and although still a little baby-fattish in the face, is just one appetite-arresting bad break-up away from being what anyone would call beautiful. “You get wine and I get Mountain Dew?”

  “I thought you didn’t … ?”

  I pull another milk glass down from the cupboard and am pouring what there is of my wine into it when, “I don’t drink,” she says, and goes back to work. I transfer her wine back to my glass and wonder how much music we have to listen to before I can ask her to leave. Now that I suddenly need fifteen thousand dollars and fast, I’ve finally made an appointment with a real estate agent who’s coming by tomorrow morning at ten, and I am way behind on my packing, and—

  “We’re all set,” she says, popping up from the floor to the couch. I stay where I am in the kitchen.

  “You can take your coat off if you want,” I say.

  “I’d just have to put it back on later.”

  “That might be the single laziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  She looks around the room. “Besides, it’s freezing in here.”

  “It’s the furnace.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s not on.”

  “Of course not. It’s February. Why would it be?” She touches a fingertip to the palm-sized, pinky-thick piece of white plastic propped up on the coffee table and out of it miracles the ring of Buddy Holly’s white Fender Telecaster closely followed by his hollering hiccupping voice and “That’ll be the Day,” yes, that’ll be the day—when I die. By the time “Oh Boy” begins I find myself standing in the middle of the living room, and when “Rave On” comes on, I’m three-chording rhythm air guitar accompaniment to Buddy’s brush-and-broom stroke lead. If I wasn’t old enough to be her father, I’d ask—no: insist—that Samantha stand up and join me and dance. Instead, I look over and see her holding a framed picture of Sara and me at our wedding.

  “Turn it off,” I shout.

  “What?” The music’s not so loud she can’t hear me; as suspected, I’ve startled her, she wasn’t listening.

  Jabbing at the iPod with the forefinger of my strumming hand, “Turn it off. If you’re not going to listen, just turn it off.”

  “I was listening.”

  “I said turn it off.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” She slams the picture back down on the end table and does what I asked; looks at me; crosses her arms; glares at the iPod. The house is quiet again. I wish I could remove the air guitar still slung over my shoulder without anyone noticing.

  “You didn’t have to yell at me,” she says.

  “I didn’t yell at you. I just asked you to turn the music off.”

  “I would have turned it off if that’s what you wanted. You didn’t have to yell.”

  “I’m telling you, I wasn’t yelling.” Realizing I’m probably yelling, I sit down on the coffee table across from her.

  “Look, I’m sorry, all right?” I say.

  She looks off into the corner of the kitchen, in the direction of my mother’s miniature spoon collection hanging on the wall. The slits that were once her eyes tell me she’s about to either slug me or cry. I hope it’s the former. Anytime Sara would cry, she could have made me do anything. She knew it, too, so she never did.

  “Look,” I say, “you’re right, I shouldn’t have yelled. Between the wine and where I was earlier tonight and what … Anyway, that’s not your problem. The point is, I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  She wipes away her scowl with the sleeve of her jacket. I can tell she’s looking at me to determine if I’m telling the truth.

  “So what’s the big deal with Buddy Holly?” she says.

  I shake my head. “You don’t give up, do you?”

  She buries her hands in the pouch of her hoodie, shrugs.

  “Buddy Holly died,” I say.

  “What’s so special about that?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “There’s nothing special about it all.”

  * * *

  At 4:11 AM it’s not the things you adored about her that you remember.

  It was how when she sneezed it was always three times, each sneeze separated by precisely three seconds. It was how when she was tired she’d get cranky and deny it was because she was tired, that it was me saying she was cranky that was making her that way. It was how we could watch the same movie together and yet in six months she’d suggest watching it all over again, having forgotten nearly everything about it. It was how although I was the stay-at-home one and not-just-a-little-bit proprietary-proud to be in charge of the laundry and the mopping and the dishes, when for whatever reason she took it upon herself to do any of them, she did a better job than I ever did. It was how Barney followed her around the house like a hundred pound black lab baby duck, never bothering to visit me in my downstairs office unless Sara led the way. It was how she’d only eat the tops off muffins and expect me to eat the rest and would always leave the last inch of milk in the carton for me to finish. It was how she understood Bob Dylan’s music better than I do but couldn’t name more than ten song titles if her life depended on it. It was how at bedtime she’d complain that I kept the thermostat too low but by morning her feet would be sticking outside the blankets. It was how if she said a tree in our front yard needed trimming—otherwise one of its branches might fall on the house—and I said she worried too much, that you couldn’t spend all of your time trying to out-guess life’s next move, the branch would invariably fall and hit the house. It was how she’d confuse John Cale with J.J. Cale and the Flying Burrito Brothers with the International Submarine Band and not be bothered by it in the least. It was how she wouldn’t want me to use aspirin when I had a headache (bad for my liver) or how Drano was a no-go when we had a sink clog (bad for the planet) or how plastic bags weren’t good enough for picking up after Barney, we needed pet store-purchased bio-degradable pooch-poo pouches (better for the planet). It was how I’d periodically resign myself to a loving but understandably lust-reduced long-term relationship and then spot her in another aisle at the grocery store or coming home along the sidewalk with Barney from their walk and have my body remind me that my brain didn’t know what it was talking about.

  It was how I’d find myself awake at 4:11 am, when the only thoughts you’re likely to have are thoughts you shouldn’t have, and I’d anchor my hand to her hip to help me flee my mind and she’d inevitably roll over without waking up before I fell back asleep, but it would be all right, I’d know she was there, I’d know I wasn’t alone.

  Chapter Seven

  The name didn’t click until I saw the face. Oh, that Laura Mackenzie. Laura Mackenzie, daughter of two-term Chatham Mayor Denis Mackenzie, the same Laura Mackenzie who was CCI’s head cheerleader, grade thirteen Prom Queen, and understood to be most likely to attend university for the express purpose of marrying the right kind of up-and-coming young man able to take care of her in the style she so deserved and to give her the beautiful babies nature intended her to have. All of which occurred according to plan apparently, and if you don’t believe her, just take a look at the photographs on her phone. Laura reigned near the top of the high-school hierarchy, treating her fellow-student subjects with mostly benign indifference. Encouraged by her long red fingernails and the spiked heels visible underneath the flares of her blue pantsuit, I’m predisposed to dislike her all over again. Surprisingly, I don’t, both because she conveys an unexpected familiarity with what I do for a living and because she makes no secret of her disastrous first marriage and her second husband Bob’s ongoing heart problems. It’s hard not to like a person who
doesn’t attempt to hide their hurt.

  “Sometimes, though, it does feel like work,” she says, taking the other end of the measuring tape and walking to the opposite end of my parents’ living room. “It’s like you’ve got to accept it almost as a job. Otherwise you’d start feeling sorry for yourself. And Bob doesn’t need that. None of us needs that. But sometimes it feels like if we’re not at the hospital, we’re seeing specialists in London or Toronto. Thankfully Barbara and Trevor are both in university now and doing great, just great. They’re my kids from my first marriage. It’s Justin and Jennifer—my two youngest, Bob’s and my kids—who I worry about. They love their dad and understand what he’s going through, but they’re kids, you know? Okay, now you stand over there and we’ll get the width. I just sold a two-bedroom, two-bath, finished basement, one-car-garage rancher just like this one over on Wyandot last month and the living room was 250 square feet.”

  I go to where I’m told and hold the measuring tape taut and Laura reads what’s there; tells me to let go of my end and I do, watch the yellow metal tape slither back inside its silver shell. When she writes down the measurements on her clipboard, I can’t help myself. “How many feet?” I say.

  Laura permits herself the slightest pleased professional’s grin. “250.” She finishes what she’s writing and snaps the pen in place to the clipboard. “Okay. Now let’s get a look-see at those bedrooms.”

  I haven’t indicated where either bedroom is located, but Laura nevertheless leads the way and I follow. Although what was once pert and striking is now merely fit and pretty, the change is for the better, time has done Laura a favour. The streak of premature grey in her hair and the slight sag in her backside are honest at least. Laura’s halcyon high-school beauty always seemed slightly phony, like a hundred million dollar promotional budget for a second-rate movie. She unfurls the measuring tape a couple of feet for me to take hold of and walks to the end of my parents’ bedroom.

  “That house on Wyandot I was talking about?” she says. “The one like this one? I’m happy to say that the seller did quite well, just a little bit under what we were asking.”

  There may be silver in her hair and a little more flesh on her bones, but I can still hear echoes of cheerleader Laura, even the simplest declarative sentence cadenced into a question. I can almost see her in her white headband and leg warmers while secretly playing with her Rubik’s Cube at the back of Mr. Janacek’s geography class. “And how much was that?” I say.

  “Two-twenty.”

  Which would certainly be enough to keep Dad nursing-home affluent and then some for the rest of his days. “Let’s do it,” I say.

  “A motivated seller. I like it.”

  In less than an hour Laura has measured and noted every room and feature in the house and I’ve given her the okay to list it on her company’s website and plant a sign in the front yard. Slowly wrapping what has to be a six-foot-long red scarf around her neck, “And don’t worry,” she says, “I’m not going to ask you to bake cookies every time a potential buyer shows up.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “But I do think we need to talk about a couple of things that might keep us from getting a deal done as quickly as we both would like and for the price I believe we can get.”

  “Okay.”

  “You have to get the furnace turned back on. I can’t be expected to sell a house that feels like a meat locker.”

  I allow myself a moment’s silent rebellion. “All right.”

  “All right. Good.”

  “What else?” I say.

  Laura tucks the end of her scarf into the top of her overcoat and pushes it down, down, until she’ll probably need a pair of pliers to get it out. “Understand, I’m not here to judge you, Sam. I’m only here to try and help you sell your house.”

  “Okay.” I cross my arms. And here I thought that the days of Laura Mackenzie looking down her nose at me were over twenty-five years ago. What’s next? Coach Duzeria castigating me after football practice for not giving a 110% during tip drills?

  “It’ll mainly be families I’ll be sending your way, and families aren’t going to understand empty wine bottles and a bag of weed on the kitchen counter.”

  “No problem,” I say.

  “Really?”

  “Consider them gone.”

  “Thanks, Sam. I think we’re going to make a good team. I’m really glad Rachel told me you were back in town.”

  “Rachel Turnbal?”

  “The one and the same. We’re on the Save CCI Committee together. After she mentioned the other night that she’d run into you, when I saw your name come up on the client list at work I knew it had to be you, so I made sure to snatch you up before someone else did. Us Cougars have got to stick together, right?”

  “Right.”

  Laura kisses the air over both of my cheeks and I let her out. I do what my parents would have done—wait in the doorway and watch her walk to her car—and she turns around on the sidewalk and I open the front door so I can better hear her. “And you should come out to our next meeting. I know you must feel the same way as we all do about saving CCI. And besides, it’d be good for you to see some old familiar faces. You can’t spend all of your time cooped up in this house all by yourself.”

  * * *

  Bereavement professionals tell you that being alone during the holidays is the hardest. Birthdays and anniversaries, too—which, in my case, was especially true, were the only special days of the year Sara and I celebrated, another year still alive and healthy and happy along with another year still together and in love and loving and therefore genuinely worth a special trip to the liquor store for a moderately-priced bottle of chilled Freixenet and a set-aside evening of Sara and Barney and I squeezed onto the couch with me playing vinyl and us being commemoratively giddy-glad we were still here, singularly and plural. I tried to keep up the tradition; I thought it was what Sara would have wanted. But for the record, getting drunk with your dozing dog while deejaying a party of one isn’t a particularly effective way of honouring the departed. When Barney was gone less than a year after Sara—such a good dog even to the end, dying just as easy as he lived, a lump on his neck one day and a final visit to the vet three days later—I decided to stop saluting the calendar.

  The official days of celebration we rarely bothered with, Christmas included. Christmas particularly. Not being Christians and not wanting to be worse consumers than we already were, we trained both sides of our family to hold the Starbucks gift certificates and the fruit baskets full of Cracker Barrel cheese and bottles of sparkling apple cider and to donate whatever money they’d normally spend on us to the OSPCA, which—along with cheques cut to the United Way and PETA and the World Wildlife Fund—was also our once-yearly way of practising goodwill among men, women, and all the other animals. People would ask us, “Don’t you get lonely during the holidays?” but that was actually one of the auxiliary benefits of not preaching what we didn’t practice and not pretending that the most logical way of non-religiously celebrating Jesus Christ’s birthday was buying all kinds of crap. The neighbourhood sidewalks would thin out, High Park would be wintry empty, the phone would never ring, there was nothing urgent in your inbox that needed replying to. We’d go to Chinatown and eat vegetable chow mein and hot and sour soup and sit with the Jews and all of Toronto’s other Christmas delinquents at one of the big movie theatres.

  Dining alone at our favourite Chinese restaurant and realizing that bad movies are only fun to watch when there’s somebody else with you to laugh at them quickly put an end to those Yuletide rituals as well. This most recent Christmas I was home visiting Dad at Thames View during the holidays, which put me in my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, a different, potentially distracting sort of depressing. Apparently Uncle Donny was still paying the house bills back then because the furnace was working and the hot water running. I sti
ll don’t understand what happened.

  I called a taxi and made it to No Frills just before they closed for the night. I bought eggnog and a box of Mandarin oranges and several scented red candles. Then I rushed next door to Blockbuster Video and rented A Christmas Story, my mother’s and my favourite holiday TV movie, from way back in those pre-TiVo days when my mum and I would scout the TV Guide for its yearly appearance.

  I turned off the lights and lit the candles and watched the DVD and drank the entire carton of eggnog and ate so many Mandarin oranges I had a stomach ache that night and the runs all the next day. Even after calling Thames View to check in on Dad, it was only twenty-past-eleven when I decided to go to bed. There was a whole other DVD of Christmas Story special features, but I never even took the extra disc out of the case.

  * * *

  With what little savings we’d accumulated in addition to the insurance settlement, I’d done what Sara and I dreamed about but thought would take another fifteen years—paid off our mortgage. We’d always talked about how if we owned our own place we’d have the security that comes from knowing that, no matter how many dogs we might eventually decide to keep as half-crazed childless seniors or how little our combined old-age income might be, no one could tell us what to do, we’d always have a roof over our heads. Except that now that it’s ours, it’s not ours, it’s only mine. I’ve got a house, but no home.

  And after managing to shovel Dad out of the Uncle Donny-dug hole he was in, I’ve now got my own pecuniary pit to crawl out of. After first arranging it so that all of Dad’s pension cheques were diverted back to where they were supposed to be flowing, and then putting his outstanding bill on my credit card, my father is now officially debt-free and back in Thames View’s good books. And every month that my parents’ house isn’t sold I owe the beneficent folks at Visa fifteen-something thousand dollars plus interest that I definitely don’t have.