“I have cut her off,” he waved his hand impatiently. “She steals it. She finds my wallet when I’m asleep and takes whatever she wants. There’s no point confronting her. She denies it.”
“Don’t carry cash,” I said. But I knew it was futile. Daddy would have the final say. By the time he agreed to have Gail committed to a rehab centre it was too late. She spent six weeks under a microscope and came home different, but the same. She was still addicted, but she no longer argued with Daddy. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. She slid around the house tending to her chores and taking care of Lucy, mincing and smiling on command. Daddy was pleased with the result but it didn’t fool me.
“You’re stoned,” I said to her one afternoon over coffee.
“You are correct, Monty,” she smiled.
“Why, Gail?”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you care about your health?”
She laughed.
“What about your future? Are you planning to drop out of high school?”
“It’s an option.”
“No it’s not. Daddy would never allow it.”
“I’ll be sixteen next week,” she said. I’d forgotten our birthdays were coming up.
I felt the block of ice move down my gullet and settle in the pit of my stomach.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you have your whole life ahead of you. You could do so much. Don’t throw it all away.”
“Oh, Monie,” she laughed. “It’s a little late now to try to push those buttons. I don’t need a mother anymore.”
“Don’t be bitter. We both lost our mother. That’s no excuse.”
“Maybe. But you had Daddy, after all.”
“We both had Daddy. He’s at his wits’ end. He doesn’t know what to do for you.”
“Yeah. Poor Daddy. It must be hard on him having a daughter like me.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“And hard on you having such a sister.”
“That’s not fair. I’ve bailed you out more times than I can count. You can’t expect people to enjoy cleaning up your messes. It’s time to take responsibility for yourself.”
“Like Mommy did?” Her eyes were cold.
“No. Not like Mommy. She wouldn’t have wanted to see you like this.”
“Good thing she didn’t stick around, then.”
Gail ran away on January 12, the day of her sixteenth and my twenty-fourth birthday. I’d bought cake and arranged for a quiet family dinner. Lucy decorated the dining room with streamers and balloons and a great tinsel sign that read Happy Birthday, Sisters! It was a dismal gathering.
We waited for Gail to come home from school. At first I thought she was slipping into her pre-rehab routine. At 7:00 I started phoning her friends. Finally I got in my car and just drove around the neighbourhood, hoping to see her hanging out at the plaza or one of her other favourite haunts.
Lucy cried when Daddy told her Gail wasn’t coming home. I didn’t cry. Gail was a big girl. She had made her choices and she’d have to live with them. She obviously didn’t care about us. Why should we care about her?
I didn’t hear from Gail during the following year. Lucy continued to receive cards and letters from her. Daddy rarely mentioned her name. I took my lead from him. Gail was dead to us.
It was a year later on our birthday when Gail finally called me. She was seventeen and I was twenty-five.
“Hi, Monie,” she said. Her voice sounded sober. I was wary.
“Hi, Gail. Where are you?”
“Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday?”
“Don’t be funny, Gail,” I said. “We haven’t seen you in a year. We’ve been worried sick.”
“Who’s been worried, Monie? Was Daddy worried?”
I hesitated. She noticed.
“Oh, well,” she said. “That’s ok. I know Lucy missed me.”
“I missed you,” I said, swallowing my pride.
“I missed you, too, Sis. Listen, could you come and get me? I can’t stay here any more. I want to come home.”
“Give me the address.” I glanced at the bedside clock. Just past midnight.
I picked her up in a West End apartment building on Islington, a fifteen storey dump with two noisy elevators. She was on the twelfth floor and opened the door before I knocked. She locked the door carefully behind her and scurried toward the elevator. We didn’t speak on the way to the lobby.
She shivered under the artificial light, folding her bare arms around her body. She was emaciated. Her dark eyes bugged out of her skull. Her black hair was cut close in tufts that stuck out all over her head. A small diamond flashed in her nose.
“Let’s hurry,” she said. “He’ll be back any minute.” She meant her boyfriend, the despicable Larry Knutt. Daddy had forbidden her to see him years earlier but the command had been ignored. I swallowed my rage and led her into the darkness toward my car.
It was only later under my own bathroom lights that I saw the bruises on her back and wept for her. That’s what it took to bring out the sister in me. I held her and hoped it wasn’t too late.
She didn’t argue when I drove her to the rehab centre. She didn’t argue when Daddy brought her home six weeks later. It was as if the fight had gone out of her. She spent the next month spoiling Lucy, trying to make up for twelve months of absence with ice cream and lollipops.
Meanwhile Lucy had her own problems. She was an enormous size and Daddy was afraid the kids at school would make fun of her. But Gail was blind to Lucy’s appearance and spent hours holding the ten-year-old on her lap. I was envious of their sister-camaraderie. Hair braiding and nail-painting had never come easily to me.
Plus I was facing problems of my own. Daddy was determined I would follow in his footsteps. I had other ideas. I wanted to become a high school teacher. It was a decent, reliable living. Not everyone was born to be a star. Some of us were just born to do the best we could. And teaching appealed to me on that level, as the best thing I could do with my life.
Daddy was appalled.
“A teacher!” he shouted across the dinner table. “But you’re majoring in the humanities. You’re at the top of your class. You could be a doctor, a professor – anything you want.”
“I want to teach high school,” I said.
“You’ll regret it. You’re wasting your talents.”
“Maybe so.”
“Maybe nothing. You’re being rebellious and childish. This isn’t like you.”
He was right. I wasn’t myself those days. I’d like to say the changes were coming from inside of me, but that would be a lie. The truth was there was a man involved. I was in love. Daddy didn’t know – hadn’t seen it coming. He expected me to spend my life reflecting his greatness. But I was young, red-blooded and beautiful. It was only natural my thoughts would turn to romance.
The object of my desire was Benjamin Williams. Ben was in his final year at Teachers’ College. He believed teaching was among the highest vocations. It was his goal to give young people someone they could look up to and respect.
Ben was the perfect man. He was idealistic, intelligent and in love with me. Maybe some of us find true love only once. I was convinced he was my soul mate.
I hesitated to tell Daddy about Ben. I knew how he would react. Being an educated man he would pretend the racial difference was ok with him. He would put on his most gracious face. He would ignore or even welcome Ben’s Jamaican accent and soft, articulate voice. He would be grateful Ben kept his black curls short rather than falling in waxy dreads.
But underneath Daddy’s magnanimous white exterior would lay his true feelings: resentment, disapproval, and jealousy — all concealing a thinly veiled prejudice.
FIVE
I managed to get Lucy settled into bed, though I knew it would be hours before she fell asleep. It was hard to get a handle on her reactions to Daddy’s death. Of course there was the s
hock over how he died. As that fell away there was the expected grief. Knowing Lucy as I did I wasn’t surprised by the extent of her sorrow. She was perhaps the most loving person I had ever met and for years the bulk of her affection had fallen on Daddy.
What concerned me was the bewilderment Lucy was struggling with. I had always assumed Lucy did what Daddy commanded out of love or fear or maybe even just because it was easier not to argue. It hadn’t occurred to me Lucy might not be capable of making her own decisions.
Both Gail and I had rebelled against Daddy in our own ways. I had refused to follow his will. Rather than seek fame and glory or, as Daddy would say, personal greatness, I became a teacher. I’d never regretted my decision, and it had been my decision.
Gail had followed her own path to rebellion, drugs and alcohol. She made her choices, regardless of how I might judge them. She would never be a follower. Perhaps that is the true measure of greatness – the determination to follow one’s own drummer regardless of the danger inherent in freedom.
I tried but couldn’t think of a single time when Lucy had disagreed with Daddy on anything. She was putty in his hands. I encouraged her to join a weight control class. She lost five pounds in the first month and I was pleased. But Daddy said she was becoming sullen and she might have to accept her obesity as a fact of life. So she quit the group and immediately gained another twenty pounds.
Lucy was not the greatest student. She wasn’t the worst either, maintaining a steady seventy-five percent average throughout public school. I was never very concerned about her grades. She seemed to work hard for them, finishing all of her assignments with diligence and care.
Gail had also been an average student, but both Daddy and I knew Gail had possessed a keen intelligence. She had inherited my father’s sharp wit and my mother’s creativity. Her problem was she just didn’t seem to care. For as long as I could remember she’d been blowing off assignments, refusing to study and cutting classes. Yet her grades seldom dipped below the same mark Lucy fought valiantly to maintain.
Daddy never said so, but I always got the feeling he thought Lucy wasn’t very bright. He treated her differently as a result. When he wanted me to do something he would use reason. If I agreed I would comply. When he wanted Gail to do something… but then there was very little he ever asked of Gail. Maybe that was her problem. He always acted as though she didn’t matter very much – as though he’d already long since given up.
But when he wanted Lucy to do something he simply told her to do it. There was never any argument, any reason or even manipulation. He simply spoke and she responded. For years I thought maybe he was right, maybe she wasn’t very bright. But lately, especially since Daddy sent her to Montreal to study, I’d seen a different side of Lucy. She was fully capable of managing the details of her own life. It wasn’t a lack of ability that kept her tied to Daddy’s waist. It was the outright need for love and acceptance that drove her. It was a force inside her that couldn’t be denied.
Daddy had never understood. Or, if he had, he had chosen to overlook the need, opting instead to cultivate Lucinda as the almost-idiot daughter who would always need him — who would always turn to him for the final answer.
I crept down the hall toward my old room. The light under her door told me she was still awake. I paused and tapped.
“Come in,” she said.
She was sitting at her little study desk, her bulk hanging over the side of the secretary’s chair and her frame nearly dwarfing the surface. As she turned I saw the little journal where she kept her secret thoughts. She closed the cover with its pink floral print. I recognised it as the gift I’d given her for Christmas. I was glad to see she was using it. A young girl’s thoughts need a safe home in order to carry meaning. I wanted her to believe her thoughts were meaningful, at least as meaningful as anyone else’s.
“Are you ok?” I asked.
“Yeah. I can’t sleep but I’m ok.”
“Would you like a cup of cocoa?”
“No, thanks. I’m just trying to figure out what I should do. Daddy wanted me to come home. What do you think?”
She turned pleading eyes towards me, looking for a new guide, a new source of answers.
If I were forced to advise her I would probably recommend Lucy stay in Montreal. She seemed more suited to its old-world charm. This city was too fast-paced for Lucy. Toronto’s politicians had let the infrastructure run down over the past twenty years, but even so the incredible ethnic mix had kept its ambience fresh and exciting. It was hard for someone like Lucy to keep up with the popular culture.
Besides, there was another factor that might draw Lucy to Montreal – the cuisine. In her unguarded moments Lucy would rave on about the culinary pleasures of “la belle province”.
“Don’t think about it yet,” I said. I knew if she made a decision now, this weekend, it would be based on whatever she thought Daddy would have wanted. Or worse, on what she believed I wanted. I didn’t want to be cast in that role. “Wait till after the funeral. Then we can look at all the options.”
“I just can’t believe he’s really gone.” Her eyes filled up again.
“Me neither.”
“I feel so awful. I just want to go down to his den and find him and tell him the terrible news.”
I smiled. It’s too bad when we die we have to miss out on the biggest drama of our lives. Daddy would have loved hearing about how his body was found, and how shocked the literary world would be once the press got the story. He would have relished our grief and would have loved listening to the praises that were sure to be sung in his memory.
That was Daddy – never one to let irony slip past him. He would have so loved to bask in the review of his own greatness. But being dead, it was quite unlikely he’d get the chance.
Lucy caught my grin and couldn’t help laughing through her tears. “I expect he already knows,” she said.
The strain of the past few days must have finally caught up with me, because suddenly I was laughing uncontrollably. “Just like Daddy to go out with a bang,” I said.
“I bet that ended the argument,” Lucy roared, pointing her finger at her forehead and pulling the imaginary trigger.
“I wouldn’t count on it. You know Daddy would find a way to get the last word.” We both giggled like little girls, our bodies heaving with pent up emotion. The tears fell down our faces and we lost the power of speech, but we continued laughing. Somehow the image was a hysterical one: our indomitable father raging at his assailant long after the bullet had pierced his skull. Come back here and fight like a man, Coward! It was hard to picture the great man falling. An enemy as trivial as a bullet would surely annoy the hell out of him.
Finally, though, our raw emotion spent itself and the laughter let us go as suddenly as it had gripped us. Lucy slouched over her study desk and I fell onto the end of her bed. A wave of exhaustion passed over me and I was about to leave when I noticed her shoulders moving up and down as the silent grief swept through her.
“Lucy, don’t cry,” I whispered, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. “It’ll be all right. Daddy would want you to be happy.” I knew it was a lie, but it was a harmless one. The old bastard would be thrilled to hear us weep for him. But that wasn’t the image that was going to help Lucy to be strong.
I stayed with her until the tears faded into sleep, pulling the girlish white duvet up to her chin. For a big girl, Lucy had a hard time staying warm enough. She wore sweaters in almost any weather and often complained about the cold when even I found it to be warm. I tucked the blanket in at the side like I used to when she was little and left her there, a lost child asleep in a behemoth of a body that heaved and snored like a great rumbling mountain.
I was weary but I knew I wouldn’t sleep. As much as I missed Daddy, I could find a way to deal with the loss of him. He had lived the life he’d wanted. There is no greater fulfilment than that. There was nothing else I could have wished for him. His story was complete.
As I saw it, my challenge over the coming months was to help Lucy to cultivate her own strengths and to teach her to listen to her own desires. Fat or thin, Lucy had a right to happiness. I wanted to help her to find the key. I needed to help her. I had no illusions about my own motivations. Like Lucy, I was a product of the losses I’d experienced.
I needed to make everything all right.
If I wasn’t careful I could make things worse for Lucy. I promised myself I would not smother her with my good intentions.
All these high notions flew through my overwrought brain in the moment it took me to walk down the hall to my old room. Nothing had changed beyond that door. Daddy had often threatened to tear down my horizontal venetian blinds and turn my blue-green ‘mood’ room into a proper guestroom. But he never got around to it. I twisted the cord and allowed the street lights to pour in through the slats. I loved sitting like that, cross-legged on my green comforter in the dark, watching the yellow glow of passing headlights play with the shadows on my pale blue walls. When I was a girl I would imagine I was sitting in a hotel room and the voices coming from elsewhere in the house belonged to strangers. They weren’t my family. I was just passing through.
If only…. But no matter. I was never one to shirk responsibility. Still, it was a nice fantasy.
I crossed the room to my own study desk and turned on the lamp. Like my bedroom, my desk was large. Daddy had chosen it for me when I was too young to appreciate its warm oak glow. Eventually I grew into the desk. I had inherited my father’s intimidating height as well as his Nordic good looks.
The Noon God Page 4
