Congratulations On Everything

by Nathan Whitlock

  When the payroll came due, it was like navigating an 18-wheeler with flat tires between two sets of rickety scaffolding overloaded with schoolchildren. They got through it with no room to spare – an inch either way would’ve brought the whole works crashing down. On his way to the bar in the morning, Jeremy had to roll down the windows of the Jeep to let out the panicked air. The traffic lights fell asleep on red, and the radio hosts paused nervously between jokes about the Oscars and the weather. He fully expected to arrive to find the Shack had slid down the hill into the river in the night. He stood out on the deck, breathing deeply the way Dr. Harwood had shown him.

  * * *

  Jeremy knew there was no point talking to the bank about further loans, or in trying to change the terms of the ones he already had. His meetings with his loan managers were painful. They made him wait while they chatted with each other in glass-walled offices. He could see them in there, and they knew he could see them, but would only call him in once they had flirted themselves out. The woman he dealt with had to keep refreshing herself on the details of his business, and always seemed perplexed by the notion that he might require money to help stay afloat, money from the very bank for which she worked. She wore silk, button-up shirts that opened at the top like a scoop every time she leaned forward to find something in the drawer of her desk, giving him a lingering view of the tops of her breasts. He openly drank the view in, staring hard, committing it to memory. Normally he would have been more discreet and pretended not to notice, but he felt that he was owed something.

  And so, after another close call with the payroll, he resigned himself to asking his sister and brother-in-law to invest in the bar. Marie and Brian had refused to put any money in the bar at the beginning – or, at least, Marie had refused, telling him that having a kid was a bigger investment than he could imagine. Brian may never have been given the option. Out of pride, Jeremy had never asked again. What made him change his mind was the new pile of money that had slid into their lives. Brian’s elderly mother had finally died after nearly a decade of being confined to a rest-home bed in Montreal. When the inheritance came through, Marie invited Jeremy to dinner at their house to celebrate. He got the sense, from the way she worded the invitation in her email, that they’d already had their real friends out for an inheritance party, and that he was being asked over partly out of duty. Maybe he’d be eating and drinking the leftovers from the first one.

  He said yes.

  They lived out in the country, between two working farms. Theirs was a faux farm. That was what Marie called it – she always acted dismissively toward the things she was most proud of. Nowadays, aside from some vegetables she had planted in the backyard garden and some pear trees way out back that shed rotten fruit for the squirrels and raccoons, there was almost nothing actually growing on the property. Mostly dandelions and some stray cats. There were at least five cats sitting on the long driveway up to the house when Jeremy arrived. He had to drive slowly enough so that these arrogant squatters had time to stand, stretch, give their fur a significant lick, and wander out of the path of the Jeep’s wheels. He parked near the barn, which Brian had converted into his studio. Through the window, Jeremy could see the oversized poster his brother-in-law had once made as a kind of art project: a shot of a thickly mustachioed Joseph Stalin looking gruff and self-satisfied, with the old, rainbow-coloured Apple computer logo in the corner next to the words Think Different. He’d planned to do a whole series of them using people like Karla Homolka, a Newfoundland priest who’d been caught molesting children, and an illiterate Texas teenager who was on death row for beheading his girlfriend in the bathroom of a Walmart. Marie let him make only the Stalin one, and insisted that it stay in the barn.

  She met Jeremy at the door.

  “I’m surprised you don’t have a butler doing this now,” he said.

  She stepped back and lifted her foot. She had on a pair of red high heels that gleamed.

  “These are literally the only thing I’ve bought that hasn’t been groceries or clothes for the kids. I haven’t even had my hair done in months.”

  Jeremy held up the case of beer he’d brought – samples from a microbrewery in Kingston. A treat for Brian. Each bottle had an ace of spades symbol on the label.

  “Those look dangerous. Don’t get Brian drunk. He’s got a meeting in the morning.”

  “Oh, he’ll be fine. He’s a big boy.”

  Marie took the beer from him, as well as the flowers he’d picked up at the last moment. They walked down her long front hallway. There was dark wood everywhere – they had preserved as much of the original farmhouse as they could. His sister liked to say that she wanted some of the spirit of the house’s original occupants to be absorbed by her children. She hated the idea of them growing up in a world where so much was disposable, and hoped the house would give them some sense of a connection to an older, sturdier time.

  “Creaky floors build character,” Jeremy said.

  “I know you’re making fun of me, but sort of, yes.”

  Some of the framed photos on the walls in the hallway were old portraits of hard-looking farmers and random pioneers that Marie had found at flea markets and antique stores. These, too, were there to communicate a spirit of endurance and inheritance. To Jeremy, it always seemed as though they were being forced to stare out from their own grim and deprived times at the relative playground that was his sister’s life. By forcing the ghosts in the portraits to watch, Marie was rubbing their noses in it.

  She stopped and leaned against the hallway wall with her eyes closed.

  “You okay?”

  “Brian has been so vulnerable lately. Because of his mother and everything.”

  She leaned in closer. The hardest part, she whispered, was having to listen to him go on about how wonderful the old woman was. What a joke. She never came to visit them: they had to go all the way to Montreal if they wanted the kids to see their rich grandmother. And when they were there, she wouldn’t talk to anyone but Brian. Never said a word to her daughter-in-law, not even hello – it was as though she thought Marie was the nanny. And nothing for her grandkids.

  “Anyways, we’re all going to miss her, blah blah blah. Oh, by the way, don’t get mad if there’s no red meat tonight. I have to hear about it from Dad every time he comes over. I don’t need to hear it from you.”

  That meant Brian was cooking, so Jeremy could look forward to some kind of salty Asian salad full of bitter weed-like greens that would cut the insides of his cheeks.

  “I’m okay with anything.”

  In the kitchen, Brian leaned against the counter with the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, looking as though he’d been waiting to be discovered in that pose. Next to him on the counter was a tray piled high with expertly scorched chicken breasts. Most of the space in the room was taken up by a broad wooden table, made from the floor of an old shed they had found way at the back of the property when they first bought the house. On it were plates of fresh-baked bread, a big bowl of Caesar salad, gleaming strawberries and blueberries, and little plates of olives and cheese. No sign of the bitter salad.

  Jeremy offered his hand. “Sorry to hear about your mother.”

  Brian looked thoughtful, and paused before extending his own hand.

  “It was hard to accept for a while, but more and more I’m thinking I’m just glad I got as close to her as I did while she was here. That’s what life is about, right?”

  He smiled broadly, his face cracking on either side into long, deep dimples like ruts left in the ground by a storm. Brian was tall, and even Jeremy could admit he was handsome, if a little ape-like in his features. He was much better looking now that he’d cut short the long curly hair he had when he and Marie first started dating. Jeremy used to call him the Rock Star, which he, aggravatingly, never took as an insult. At their wedding, Brian had longer hair than Marie, who at the time – unbeknownst to eve
ryone except the bride and groom – was two months pregnant with their first baby, the one who died in the womb.

  Two of the children were already asleep upstairs. Marie had spent the day with them at the zoo, she said, then took them to her gym to use the pool. Logan, the oldest, was sitting at the far end of the kitchen table, picking away at a small bowl of fruit cocktail. There were scraps of paper all around him, as well as markers and pencil crayons. He didn’t acknowledge that Jeremy had entered the room until told to by his mother.

  “Hi, Uncle Jeremy.”

  “Hey!” Jeremy shouted. “Hulk Hogan! Fruit cocktail? Cool!”

  “Eat up, sweetie,” Marie said.

  Beyond the sliding doors at the back of the kitchen was the barbecue that only Brian was allowed to use; it looked as though it could fit a whole cow inside of it. Brian took the beer away from Jeremy and held one bottle up to the light to admire the label.

  “I haven’t tried this one before. I thought I’d tried them all.”

  “You have a meeting tomorrow morning, remember,” Marie said.

  “He’s a big boy,” Jeremy said. Brian gave him the thumbs-up.

  The food was mostly ready, but Marie insisted they sit around the table and chat. “This isn’t a diner; we can wait a couple of minutes before stuffing our faces.” From out of nowhere appeared a bottle of expensive bourbon that Brian had brought back from their last trip through the American South. He’d smuggled three bottles of the stuff back. While they drank, Jeremy told them a few stories about the bar – he knew they liked hearing about the messier things that happened there, as it always helped confirm the wisdom of their decision to avoid all such messes. Someone had set some napkins on fire in the middle of a dinner rush while trying to demonstrate a trick with a lighter, he told them. Someone else lost her eyebrows trying to put it out. A dishwasher went to a birthday party before his shift, came in drunk, and fell asleep on some bags of flour, which is where Jeremy found him. Phil managed to beach his car on a concrete barrier in the parking lot on his way out, and had to call a tow truck to get it free. The city was demanding Jeremy pay to replace the barrier.

  “If it had been anyone else, I’d be royally pissed off right now, but not that guy. Not sure why. Maybe because if I started getting mad at him, I’d never stop.”

  “Which one’s he?”

  He gave them Phil’s highlights – his fling with the other teacher, the divorce, the occasional collapse into tears and yelling, and the heart attack that had landed him in the hospital.

  “That’s a sad case,” Brian said.

  “There’s nothing sad about it,” Marie said. “You said he cheated on his wife, didn’t you? Well, now he has to live with it.”

  “You should be a social worker,” Jeremy said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry – I should feel sorry for him? He had his fun. His wife has to be on her own now and raise their daughter while he’s out getting piss-drunk at your bar.”

  Brian cleared his throat and nodded at Logan, who was busy drawing what looked like a whole colony of ant people living on a giant tank bristling with weaponry.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a quieter voice. “I’m sure it sucks to be him, but I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for guys like that.”

  “Honestly, when I look at someone like Phil,” Jeremy said, “I don’t see how messed up he is, or what mistakes he’s made – or keeps making, more like. I look at him and I’m just impressed he’s still walking, you know what I mean? And he’s harmless – there’s a lot worse out there, people who give off a real negative energy.”

  To change the subject, he told them about the repairs he’d been doing to the Shack. Some were routine, he said, the kind of thing you had to do every year, but he’d also been looking to improve things, to freshen up the place. It was mostly small things so far – new paper dispensers in the bathrooms, new baskets for the condiments – stuff most people didn’t even notice. He had grander plans, though. The Shack was overdue for a renewal.

  “The hard part is finding the money. Even if I do most of the work myself and get Benny to help out, the materials alone are killer.”

  “Oh fuck, not that guy.”

  The sound of a swear word made Logan look up from his drawing.

  “He’s not still hanging around your place, is he? That creep?”

  “Oh, come on – Benny’s all right. He’s been around forever, and if the job’s easy enough, he does it cheap.”

  “You get what you pay for,” Brian said.

  “You get more than that – you get that creepy guy coming into your house when you’re in the shower!”

  Jeremy laughed, but Marie’s face was stern. “I’m not kidding!”

  “Who’s looking at you in the shower?” Logan asked.

  “Nobody, honey. Mommy was making a bad joke.”

  Having put the idea of money out there, Jeremy was happy to cede the floor and drink more of his brother-in-law’s good bourbon. Brian talked about going to Montreal for his mother’s funeral. He had gone alone, saying it would have been confusing and upsetting for the children to see their father in such a state. Jeremy suspected that Brian simply wanted a weekend on his own, with no wife and no kids.

  “My brother and I sat in the lobby of the church and we bawled our eyes out. We’ve always been pretty tough with each other since we were kids, but we just broke down completely.”

  Brian lowered his head, and Marie put her hand on his arm. The room was quiet for a while, except for the sound of Logan jabbing his markers into the paper. Jeremy helped himself to more of the fancy bourbon, which had been left on the table.

  “Montreal can really mess with your mind,” Brian said. “It’s so beautiful, you get sucked up into it. And all you hear all day is French – oh my God, I felt like I was constantly being seduced. I was amazed to find I could still carry on complete conversations. You never totally lose it.”

  Logan looked up from his drawing. “Parlez-vous français, Uncle Jeremy?”

  “Un peu. Just un peu. You’re probably a lot better at it than I am, hey?”

  Logan said he was and went back to his drawing. He had his father’s habit of accepting every compliment as his due, deflecting none of it out of some inauthentic sense of modesty. At some point, many generations back, Brian’s family ditched a sense of humility from its genetic code.

  Marie must’ve given a silent signal that they had fulfilled their pre-dinner conversational quotas, because Brian got up and started bringing the chickens to the table. He did so solemnly, as if he were recreating his mother’s funeral. Marie and Logan both stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads as the tray of heavy, artfully scorched birds were placed in the centre of the table, right next to a bulbous knot in the wood that must’ve tripped up those long-dead hunters when they came back to their cabin late at night. The rest of the food came to the table in the same solemn way. Jeremy poured himself more bourbon and filled his plate.

  “This chicken is really good, Brian. What kind of sauce did you use on these? I could sell this at the Shack by the shitload.”

  “Jeremy.”

  “Oops.” He turned to Logan: “Sorry for swearing, Hulkster.”

  “I could tell you what’s in the sauce, Jer, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Marie laughed, almost choking on her wine. She was on her fifth or sixth glass.

  “You would kill Uncle Jeremy?”

  “No, no, of course not – it’s just a joke.”

  “An old joke,” Jeremy added.

  “Speaking of old, whatever happened with all of your mother’s things from the home?” Marie asked Brian. “What happened to the Eavesdropper?”

  Jeremy laughed. “What’s the Eavesdropper?”

  Marie pointed at her right ear. “She could barely hear us speak when we were there.”

 
“She could hear just fine,” Brian said.

  “Well that’s worse – that means she was ignoring us. Anyways, it’s not true: she was as deaf as a doorstop.”

  “When you said Eavesdropper, I imagined, like, another old lady hiding in the closet, listening all the time,” Jeremy said.

  “I would not be surprised,” Marie said, then turned to her husband. “So what has happened to it? And all the rest of her things?”

  “It’s all taken care of. I donated the books and the magazines to the other residents. The photos are in a box in my studio – I might do something with them sometime. I have some ideas. The Eavesdropper I gave to the staff as a gift for whoever needed it the most.”

  “That was an expensive little gadget, and she wouldn’t ever put it in,” Marie said. “I had to keep telling her what people were saying. We’d sit there and watch TV, and I’d have to repeat everything.”

  Brian smiled. “She was stubborn, all right. I can already see that stubbornness in Emily.”

  “Emily was driving me crazy today, by the way. I think you need to talk to her.”

  “She’s alright.”

  “Here’s to Estelle,” Marie said suddenly, lifting her glass. “And thanks for all the money!”

  “Take it easy,” Brian said.

  Marie pouted. “I was just joking.”

  “That was funny, Mom.”