by William Bell
“Couldn’t you at least have told me why?”
“No.”
“Bullshit!” I cried. “You could’ve. You didn’t even say goodbye when you left, didn’t say hello in a letter. You just sent those stupid postcards. You were so damn lazy you didn’t even write out the address! Don’t tell me you loved me and you’re sorry and you missed me. Save that crap, will you.”
“I—”
“Jack,” Sharon said in a calm voice, “tell him!”
The old man was facing me finally, his face wracked with pain and something worse than pain that I couldn’t identify.
“Steve, I … I just couldn’t,” he said. “I—”
“Yeah, you couldn’t Sure. Couldn’t drop a line to your own son. What are you, for god’s sake, illiterate or—”
At that instant I knew what I saw in his face along with the pain. It was humiliation. And at that instant things dropped into place the way the tumblers drop into place when you put the right key in a lock and turn it. Things from way back in the past. Things from the present.
The old man used to listen to the news and talk back to the radio every morning while we had breakfast. But he never read the paper.
He bought me dozens of books, but never read them to me.
He would never help me with my homework, but he’d spend hours helping me with a Lego construction.
When we were shopping in Sudbury he drove into the wrong place—the I.D.A. drugstore instead of the IGA grocery. When he asked directions to the IGA, he asked for landmarks, not street names.
His tapes and CDs were arranged by coloured dots. He sent postcards with my address and DAD stamped on them. No handwriting. No signature.
I felt like a fire cracker had exploded in my brain.
“Jesus,” I said as his face reddened. “Jesus, you couldn’t write to me! You …” I ran out of words.
“Go ahead and say it!” he shouted, throwing his pipe clattering onto the table. “Go ahead! I’m illiterate! Your father’s a stupid moron!”
“That’s not what I—”
He jumped up, kicking back his chair, and turned to the door. But Sharon was on him in a flash. “No, no! Not this time, Jack! This time you don’t leave!” But she couldn’t hold him back. He stumbled out the door, letting it slap shut behind him.
Thoughts whirled inside my head the way dust swirls in the corner of a building on a windy day.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I said to Sharon.
She nodded. “Thank god it’s finally out,” she said, the way you say ‘Oh boy’ when you put down a heavy load. “I couldn’t tell you, Wick. I’m sorry, but I owed it to him to keep my mouth shut. I promised him. Now you’ve got to go out there and tell him to stay.”
I was too mixed up to think for myself so I did as she said. I ran outside and found the old man yanking at the van door, cursing, as if yelling at it would unlock it. I stood for a moment, wracking my brains, not knowing what to say to him.
I reached into my pocket and held out his keys to him in my open palm. He looked at me, his face streaked with tears and humiliation, then down at the keys.
“You can go if you want,” I said. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for leaving the first time. That’s the honest truth. But now I’m asking you to stay.”
He took the keys from my outstretched hand, then weighed them in his own hand, as he looked first at the house, then at the van, then at me.
He put the keys into his pocket and went back into the house. I followed him in.
TWENTY-TWO
“TO EXPLAIN ALL THIS I GOT TO GO back a ways,” the old man said around the stem of his pipe.
The three of us were sitting at the table. We had eaten supper and Sharon and the old man had done the dishes while I stacked the mountain of firewood I had chopped that afternoon. The old man hadn’t asked me how I had come up with his keys and I didn’t tell him.
“Your mother and me met a little more than a year before you were born. I found the job at the tire plant and she was takin’ business courses at Humber College. We went out for about six months before she took me home to see your grandparents. They didn’t like me, but you probably know that. No education, no good job, no prospects for one. Sometimes I wondered myself what your mother saw in me. I knew that part of the reason she married me was to rebel against her parents, but I loved her, and when you love somebody you don’t look things over too close.
“Anyway, we got married when your mother was still in college and by the time she graduated she was pregnant with you, and a few months later you were born.” The old man paused, took a couple of drags on the pipe, a half smile on his lips. “You sure were a cute baby. I was in the delivery room while you were getting’ born.
“Well, stayin’ at home and takin’ care of you woke your mother up to reality real quick. That’s when things started to go bad. Oh, I don’t mean it was because of you, don’t think that, but she grew so damned frustrated at home all day. I guess she had lots of time to think things over. And I guess she realized she made a mistake marryin’ me and tyin’ herself down.
“I figured it out little by little, over time. I can still remember the day I realized she didn’t love me no more and maybe she never really did. But we went on. A year or so later she wanted to go to university, so we scrimped and saved and borrowed a bit here and there. She took accountin’, and when you were six she graduated, got her papers and stepped right into a pretty good job. She got ahead fast—you know how smart she is. And ambitious.”
He got up and poured coffee into Sharon’s mug and his own.
I was wondering how Sharon was feeling about all this stuff. I mean, sitting there, listening to the old man talk about being in love with my mother and all.
“Anyhow,” he went on, “the more she accomplished, the farther she got from me. Hardly spoke to me. Came home from work, had supper with us and worked on stuff she brought home from the office.
“I knew she was ashamed of me, just like her parents were. She never said nothin’, of course, but I knew. We fought quite a bit, and a couple of times she said she was gonna leave, but I always talked her out of it. I said it was better for you if we stuck together, and I didn’t want to lose her. But deep inside I knew it was only a matter of time.”
He cleared his throat a few times and fiddled with his pipe, tamping the tobacco down, relighting it.
“Did … did she know?”
He looked up at me. “No. I never told her. I was gonna, after we got married, then I was scared to.”
“But how could you keep that a secret from your own wife? How come she didn’t notice?”
“Oh, there’s ways. She knew when she met me I never touched a book. Lots of people don’t. And after a life-time of coverin’ up, you learn a lot of strategies. Besides, like I said, once things started to do downhill we didn’t spend much time together. We didn’t talk much any more. Listen,” he added, and his tone changed, “I’m not sayin’ it was all her fault. I can be a real horse’s ass to live with sometimes. She’ll tell you that.”
He nodded to Sharon, who smiled and patted his arm.
“True,” she said, “but worth it.”
“Anyway, time came she got her promotion. She was real happy about that, I can tell you. The bosses in the company were having a big party for all the staff and they decided to announce her promotion at the party. She said I was invited too. I tried to get out of it—what did I want, sippin’ wine with a bunch of suits, not knowin’ what to say to anybody—but she said if I didn’t go it would look bad for her. I decided I was bein’ selfish and maybe I should go. Stupidest thing I ever did.
“So there I was with all them confident educated people in some fancy lounge at the University of Toronto where one of the bosses had connections, tryin’ not to put my foot in my mouth and disgrace your mother, I had a few glasses of wine to loosen up, didn’t talk unless I had to. Then the shit hit the fan.
“Your mother and me
were in a group of about half a dozen, talkin’—them, not me—mostly stuff about the office. Her boss was there, his wife, a younger guy from the office and his wife. The younger man was one of these loud pushy types, thinks he knows everythin. ‘Hey, Jack, I must show you this joke card one of my clients gave me,’ he says. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a card about the size of a birthday card and hands it to me, smilin’. There were a couple of cartoon characters on it, a man and a woman, both naked, and the woman’s got a surprised look on her face. There was some writin’ underneath.
“I looked up at the guy. ‘Go on, read it to us,’ he says. I looked down at it like I was readin, then tried to fake it. I laughed and handed it back. Your mother’s boss says to me, ‘Read it to us, Jack.’ He had a big grin on his face.
“I figured they were settin’ me up, makin’ a joke or something because I was only a factory worker, no education, and they were hot-shot intellectuals, and I got mad as hell. Who did they think they were, I thought. A bunch of puffed-up bastards in expensive suits. Your mother had a look on her face like I was embarrassin’ her in front of the jerks and phonies she worked with. I got even madder when I realized that.
“ ‘I forgot my glasses,’ I says. ‘I can’t make it out.’ ”
“Your mother laughed the way you do when you’re real nervous. ‘Jack!’ she says, you don’t wear—’
“I cut her off real quick. ‘I can’t make it out. Do you hear what I’m sayin’? I can’t’
“Your mother turned deathly white, then red, then her mouth dropped open in shock. Because she understood, see, she realized what I was tellin’ her. She excused herself and dashed off, spillin’ her wine on her dress as she rushed away. I went after her and caught up with her outside. That was some trip back home, I’ll tell you.”
The old man related the story as calmly as he could, but his hands shook like leaves on a branch when he relit his pipe.
“A couple of days later she comes home from the office real late—you were in bed—and says she wants to talk. She thought things through, she says. The marriage is over, it’s been over for a long time, and now she wants to call it quits. One of us has to leave, she says, and it isn’t gonna be her. So she wants me to get out. She says if I don’t she’ll tell you I’m illiterate, she’ll phone the factory and tell them. She’ll tell everybody she can. But if I agree to leave she won’t tell nobody. Solemn promise. She says she’s gonna get a divorce from me anyway, and she’s gonna fight for custody of you if she has to. And if I fight her, she’ll bring it all out in court that I can’t read or write, and she’ll win. No judge is gonna give custody to an illiterate father who can hardly hold a job instead of an educated mother who just got a big promotion in an accountin’ company. She said I had to go away and stay away.”
The old man wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Sharon got up and stood behind him and held his shoulders. He looked into his coffee, then at me.
“I’m sorry, Steve. Maybe I should have fought her. But I knew I’d lose, and I couldn’t stand it if everybody knew. They’d have laughed at me. They’d’ve thought I was nothin’. I’d hid it for my whole life, I was so ashamed. From everybody. Even from your mother. You meant everythin’ to me. I was your hero, I knew that. How could I face my little boy, him knowin’ his dad was an illiterate idiot?
“It broke my heart, leavin’ you, Steve. It broke my heart.”
I felt the tears come as Replays flashed into my mind and I saw myself waiting for him to come back home, ripping up the postcards, shoving my BMX off the trestle into the river. Missing him and hating him at the same time.
I looked at Sharon. She held tight to my father’s shaking shoulders. Her eyes were telling me what to do. I stood up, stepped over to my father. Sharon backed away and I put my arms around him and he grabbed me hard around the waist, burying his face in my chest.
“I missed you, Dad,” I said.
TWENTY-THREE
EVEN THOUGH I WAS TIRED from chopping and stacking firewood I couldn’t sleep for the longest time. My mind was going full tilt, like those big computer banks in the old sci-fi movies, different-coloured lights flashing without a rest.
I couldn’t get up and watch the tube the way I’d do at home because the TV was too close to the bedroom—everything in Sharon’s house was close to everything else—and I’d wake Dad and Sharon up. I figured they both deserved some rest. Dad was pretty wrung-out and Sharon must have been, too.
So I lay there and thrashed around, bashing my pillow a thousand times, twisting the bedding into a tangle, getting more and more frustrated trying to fall asleep. Finally I gave up and let the thoughts run.
For the first time in my life I thought about how hard it must have been for my father when he left home. He had wandered all over North America, it seemed like. I wondered about the places he had been to, how he had supported himself—any kind of job he could pick up, I guessed. There were lots of things I didn’t know about him. Ten years’ worth of things. Like, how do you fake not being able to read or write? How do you fake it so well that even your wife and kid don’t know?
I’m not saying my mind was full of warm happy thoughts about him. Like I told him, I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forgive him for leaving. I knew the reasons now, but that didn’t make the hurt go away. Explaining stuff doesn’t always make it better.
Now there was someone else to be mad at. My mother. It was pretty cruel, what she did to him and to me. Because there was no doubt that, if a divorce judge had asked me when I was seven who I wanted to live with, I know who I’d have picked. Maybe she knew that, knew she might lose her little boy, and that’s why she threatened him.
I remember one time in English when Ms. Cake told us—I forget why—the Bible story of the two women who were fighting over a baby. Each woman claimed the kid was hers, and they went to court to get a decision. Solomon, the crafty king-judge, said the only thing to do was cut the baby in two and give each woman half a kid. Then they’d both be satisfied.
One woman said, great idea. But, the other one was horrified. She said no, she changed her mind, it wasn’t her baby after all. Solomon knew then that she was the real mother, and he awarded the kid to her.
Well, nice story, but that’s all it was—a story. Real life didn’t work that way. In real life people would say yeah, cut him up. Then they’d argue about who got the biggest piece.
Parents. They teach you not to be selfish, but when it comes to losing something they can be worse than kids. Except we have to admit it and they don’t.
I rolled over for the thousandth time and punched my pillow again, wishing I could punch both my parents that easily.
Oh, hell, I thought, what makes you so perfect, Wick? It was just a big tragedy for everybody. There was nobody to blame. It was runny in a way. It was nobody’s fault, but everybody got hurt anyway, everybody got cut in half And everybody was alone—a seven-year-old who didn’t know what was going on; his mother, working like a mad-woman to be a big success, living up to her parents’ standards, with no husband or social life; his father, wandering around by himself, sending postcards he couldn’t write on to a son he couldn’t visit.
Loneliness, I realized, is the worst feeling in the world, worse than pain, worse than anything. Especially when no one else understands, when no one else seems to care.
And then, as if someone had slammed me in the back of the head with one of the slabs of firewood I had cut that afternoon, it hit me—the terrible isolation and loneliness that Hawk must have felt that day in the shower room when he told me his secret. There I was, rambling on inside my head about how my father had left me rather than face up to his illiteracy, feeling mad at him, saying I wasn’t sure I could forgive him. And what had I done to Hawk?
“The same damn thing,” I said aloud. “Worse. A lot worse.” My voice bounced off the walls in the dark room, accusing me. I was his best friend, and when he told me his deepest secret, when he needed me
most, I had run off and left him blubbering in the corner of the shower room.
I got out of bed and went to the phone. I punched in the Toronto area code, then Hawk’s number.
It rang about eight times and I was about to hang up when someone answered.
“Hello?” It was Hawk’s voice, and yet it wasn’t. It was weak and timid, the voice of a grade one kid talking to the principal.
I stood paralyzed, wondering what to say. Think of something! I told myself. I took a deep breath.
“Stop doing this!” Hawk screamed before I could talk. “Leave me alone! I’ve had enough, you bastards!” He slammed down the phone.
I stood there staring at the receiver until it sank in that he hadn’t known it was me. Who did he think it was? Then I knew. All the guys on the wrestling team had seen the pictures. It would have been all over the school the next day. Hawk Richardson is gay. The Athlete of the Year is a fag.
And Wick Chandler is his best friend.
TWENTY-FOUR
I SPENT THE NEXT FEW DAYS moping around, not doing much. My father went into town to his show twice a day—he came back to Sharon’s for lunch—and sometimes I went with him and hung around the mall. That got boring after a while, though. Sometimes I cut firewood for Sharon. I mowed the lawn for her, which would have made my mother die of shock if she ever found out. Sharon’s smile was hard to resist, though.
I had a couple of good talks with Sharon. Once, as we sat in lawn chairs in the shade of the oak tree in her yard, she told me about how she met my father. It had happened a little over five years before, in Sault Ste. Marie. She had been working in an arts and crafts store just north of the city and he had come in, peddling his sculptures. They talked a bit, she said, and he came back the next day. And the day after that.
“What attracted me to your dad was his gentleness,” she said. “You know, this town is full of macho types, full of swagger and loud talk. Your dad isn’t like that.”
