Father Sweet

by J. J. Martin

  “You tell Mother?”

  Jamie laughed. “Last time I was there, Mum thought I was some kind of entertainer.”

  We both laughed. It devolved for me, into a deep, hollow place, until I sobbed and couldn’t stop.

  Jamie rose and retrieved a roll of paper towels Clare left when she was cleaning the windows last week. I blew my nose. He took the needle off the record and sat on the edge of the sofa. We were face to face.

  “Look. I don’t know if I’ll be able to talk afterward.” He swallowed, and his eyes dilated. “I hope so. But maybe not, they said. It’s near the speech area of the frontal lobe. But not the comprehension area, which is weird. That’s a different spot. I may be able to understand what people are saying, but not be able to respond in any way.… Oh god.… Fuck me.”

  I stared, incredulous. “How’s Clare? The kids?”

  “The kids,” he said and touched his scalp. “You know I’m an optimistic person. But my worst nightmare is something happening to those kids.

  I sipped my whisky. I had been thinking about how to tell him about Dad, about the boxes and what they held, but now doubts came.

  He looked over and we both flexed our mouths, but said nothing. He worked up courage.

  “Listen, I’m going to tell you this because I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to say it again,” he said. “You’re my brother and I love you. Haven’t we always been honest?”

  I didn’t reply.

  “I’m going to need your help with this,” said Jamie. “I need you to do something.”

  “Anything.”

  “No, no. Listen.” He bowed his head. “I don’t know how to say this except to just come right out, but here it is. Clare is all right. The kids are all right. We are all right. Okay?”

  I thought maybe he was saying this to convince himself. And that I was his witness. His confessor.

  “Don’t hate me for this, but you’re not all right … I feel like there’s something that’s been wrong for a long, long time. Something you haven’t told me. I don’t know what it is. And I worry I’ve run out of time to help. I want you to get help.”

  If anyone else had said this to me, I would have punched him in the face. But as it was, I could only listen, and sniffle. How things had turned.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I mumbled. I wondered how to give him what he needed when I wasn’t sure myself of the language.

  “I can’t say I’ll be there to give you help,” he said. “I wish I could. You’ve always been there for me. You are my best friend. You’ve protected me, you’ve cheated for me, you’ve scrounged for me. I can’t say thank you enough. But I feel like this is the last chance I might have to say the only thing I want from you is for you to remove what it is that’s — that’s … blocking you. That has made you so unhappy.” He attempted to catch my eyes. “I’m not talking about you not holding down a job. I don’t care about that. What’s kept you from living a life that makes you happy?”

  He stood and went to his suit jacket, draped over a box near the front door.

  “Here,” he said. “They’re shrinks. I know. Don’t even say it. Therapists. Call someone. Please get help.” He exhaled like he had just set down a barrel.

  “You want someone to hear my confession?”

  “I did not say that.” Jamie raised a finger.

  He was right, of course, and I was being childish.

  “Do you have something to confess?” he said.

  How could I say I did not even know where to begin to pull on the knot of yarn inside? I lied. I said I would call someone.

  “Good,” said Jamie. “I think it’s overdue.”

  “I’ll do it for you.”

  “Do it for yourself.”

  “Too late for that.”

  His head tilted, and I immediately regretted saying something so self-pitying. But he let it go. The rain let up a little outside. It was quiet.

  “You were going to tell me something about Dad,” Jamie said.

  I shuffled to the kitchen to rinse my juice glass in the sink, stalling for time. I shook the Crown Royal bottle to see I’d drunk two-thirds of what was left. How could I pile on more worry when Jamie was fighting for his life?

  “Right now, I’ve got a headache,” I said, at last. “Too much Geddy Lee. And I just want to go to sleep.”

  We called it a night. Jamie pulled his mattress into my room to sleep on the floor beside my bed, as if we were back in school and weren’t middle-aged men sleeping in an abandoned house, haunted by our own past.

  There was a box of our old comics in the corner, and I dragged it over between us. If their covers weren’t worn out like leather and the pages crumpled from overuse, they would be priceless. Jamie found X-Men 98, holding it as reverently as scripture, and I read New Gods. We silently flipped through these precious artifacts, each of us propped up on an elbow like the old days. I sighed with satisfaction.

  Finally, Jamie rolled over and I clicked off the light.

  9

  Next morning, Jamie was up and gone before dawn.

  Later that afternoon, I tackled the garage.

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said to the junk pile. Dad had a brand new set of golf clubs, or so they looked to me. Shiny and cleaned. A treasured possession. A half-dozen tags showed off the courses he’d played all over the region, from Gatineau semi-privates to the Hunt Club and Royal Ottawa. Dad was not an idle golfer.

  I moved some boards. There they stood. The CCM Mustang bikes Jamie and I cherished as kids, beaten, scraped, and dented into clobbered-up steel bones, all four tires flat. The bicycles were smaller than I remembered, though they were perfectly fit for two strong boys. I wiped dust from mine and admired the yellow chrome paint clinging to the frame. Both saddles worn smooth by our bums and the stuffing coming out the back edges.

  The past is not dead, it’s right here. It’s always here. It won’t die like it ought to. Not until it gets what it wants. Gets its bill paid.

  I hefted the golf bag onto my shoulder and placed it in the bed of my pickup.

  Less than ten minutes later I rang the doorbell of Padre’s rectory.

  On his front lawn, a collection of sparrows was frantic to eat the remains of something I bent closer to see.

  Padre opened the door and a big smile lifted his face. “What a nice surprise to see you!”

  I pointed at the birds. “What you think these birds have convinced themselves of? That to get the seeds they’re after is worth eating the shit they’re buried in, or that eating a pile of raccoon turd is no shame if you’re hungry?”

  Padre blinked at me, narrowing his eyes. He frowned and examined the birds before looking up at me. He shrugged. “I guess, lunch is lunch to get by?”

  “That’s faith,” I said.

  His smile vanished. “Look. How can I help you? I’m busy.”

  “I brought you a gift,” I said, blushing. I didn’t know why I started off so hostile. “You mentioned golf. I don’t play golf myself and Jamie can’t use these clubs.”

  “Okay, okay. Come in.” His face softened, and he nodded. “I’m glad you came. I’ve wanted to talk with you.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “There’s someone here.”

  “And the clubs?”

  “Just set them there.”

  He patted my shoulder as I crossed the stoop. I put the golf bag down.

  “Hey, brother,” said a voice. Behind Padre, a middle-aged man stood in the hallway with a playoff beard and the same unstyled, unwashed hair as mine. He wore dirty jeans and a sweatshirt with a big clown announcing the Blackburn Funfair. Around the eyes, which were shaded under brown-tinted lenses, I recognized a deeply familiar visage.

  “Hello, Danny,” I said. “Awful long time.”

  “Danny’s … I’m letting him stay here a few days till he gets sorted,” said Padre. “But that’s a secret. From the parish.”

  “I’m a danger to society,” said Danny i
n a plain, flat drone.

  “Don’t joke,” Padre said into his armpit.

  Danny and Padre looked down, but I held up my hand to my forehead and watched them.

  “Come in, I’ve got something for you,” said Padre.

  Padre’s rectory was sparse. I remembered the florid, maximalist clutter of Father Sweet’s home, stuffed like an enchanted curio shop with urns, books, musical instruments, and statuary. This rectory, in a different, modernist building from the one I knew as a kid, felt as welcoming as a men’s hostel. Or a halfway house. Long after I stopped going to church, the parish finally built their heavy concrete bunker to worship in, and to house its priest in connected apartments.

  “Too early for beer?” Padre called, leading us to the Scan-dinavian-furnished lounge.

  “Never too early for beer,” I replied.

  We sat and Padre joined us, carrying three bottles of Export and an opener. We each took our turn.

  “Better tomorrows,” said Padre, raising his bottle. We drank.

  “So, Danny,” I said, “you a priest or something?”

  Padre stared long and hard at Danny, who turned on the television and flipped through channels from his chair until landing on the sports channel showing highlights from yesterday.

  “Danny is taking a leave of absence,” Padre said.

  I drank and asked why.

  “Working through some things,” Padre said.

  It sounded suspicious and my eyes automatically shifted into a squint. “Like what?”

  “Almost forgot!” Abruptly, Padre stood and left the room.

  I observed Danny, transfixed and silent, watching a soccer clip. He chewed his bottom lip, making the whiskers of his beard prickle and bend.

  Padre returned with a magazine.

  “Look at this,” he said, handing it to me and pointing out a feature article to which he’d bent the magazine open. It was a story on Griff Kelsey, the Hollywood actor. I peered over at Danny, who seemed in a fugue.

  “My mother reads this sort of magazine,” I said to Padre.

  “You’ll want to read that,” droned Danny, not taking his eyes from the television.

  I looked down. It was an article about the creation of King of Blood, a Jesus-flick that hit cinemas last year. Griff Kelsey was the director.

  “Look,” said Padre, and lowered his fingertip to the article.

  Padre’s finger traced down the sentences until it rested on a name that made a sibilant hiss in my mind, coiled around twenty-five-year-old memories.

  The production’s resident pastor is Traditionalist Catholic Reverend Benjamin Sweet, who performs Mass for the production every morning before shooting begins.

  The article came at me as hieroglyphics, at first. That name wouldn’t go into my mind, so I read past it, though the sentences unsettled me without understanding. It dawned on me, though, how much Padre may know about me. “Why are you showing me this?”

  Danny, eyes still glued to the television, said, “Father Sweet’s not satisfied playing the small-town circuit anymore. He’s gone Hollywood.”

  “What do I care?” I said.

  “Aren’t you interested?” Padre asked, searching my eyes.

  “No. I don’t care to know,” I said, pushing the magazine back at him. He refused to take it.

  “Keep it.”

  “You’re mentioned,” Danny said.

  “Danny!” Padre snapped.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Not you per se, but you’ll recognize someone,” Danny said. “I know I did.”

  I stood and rolled the magazine into a club. Danny, infuriating and sloth-like, rolled his eyeballs up and rose from his seat while I towered over Padre and felt the heat in my face, ready to fight.

  “Danny, I will spin your jaw. I don’t know what you two —”

  Padre cut me off. He raised his hands as if to embrace me and whispered, “Peace. Peace. I know how upsetting this is.”

  “It’s not,” I shouted. “Not at all. I don’t care.”

  “Don’t think about it. Just take the mag. You’ll want to talk.”

  Somehow, gently, he guided me to the front door, where the afternoon sun greeted me like a light at the end of a tunnel. We walked past the clubs.

  “Let’s talk golf another time,” he said.

  I gave him an affirmative look.

  He waved me goodbye as I started up the Datsun Sport truck and drove back to the house, with the copy of Tinsel Circus curled on the seat beside me. I regretted leaving that beer on Padre’s coffee table.

  10

  I brought chocolates for my mother, which she didn’t touch and peered suspiciously at like they might be poisoned. I immediately regretted not getting donuts for the nursing staff, who were upbeat and hard-working and deserved donuts. Bad planning.

  On the best days, Mother could walk perfectly fine, but she stayed in her room unless the nurses coaxed her out, or there was a meal in the common room. She sat on her bed and stared out the window. Clare had decorated her room with pictures of the children and their drawings. One picture, drawn by Harry, showed us all as stick figures. My dad, mother, and me all wore sad faces, and Clare, the kids, and Jamie had happy faces.

  She said nothing as I gently reminded her who I was. I moved the chocolates to the bedside table. Her eyes remained on the treetops outside.

  I sat down beside her and placed my hand gently on her knuckles. She recoiled a little. I waited for her to acclimatize, the way an iguana might assume the temperature of its environment.

  “Mother, I wanted to tell you about what happened this week,” I said, deciding at last to be simple and come out with it. “Jamie and I had Dad’s memorial service, and we buried him at Notre Dame on Montreal Road. I thought, maybe I could take you there one day, if you like?” That last part I regretted the instant I said it. Why would I say such a thing? I did not want to take her anywhere. Maybe I wanted to lessen the blow a little?

  “Who?”

  “Your husband.”

  “What about him?”

  “I know you don’t remember but we talked about this last week.… It doesn’t matter. When the time is right, you’ll be next to him. Jamie ordered a space on the headstone.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?”

  “Sorry Jamie couldn’t be here,” I said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Your son,” I said. “I’m your son. We are your sons.”

  “Pff. I don’t have any children.”

  I sighed. “You don’t, eh?”

  “No, no. My husband is coming to get me later today. We’re going to Mustique.”

  It was an interesting and very specific choice of location, I thought. I looked down at the stack of old Hello! magazines on her bedside table. None were from the past three years. Why bother?

  Mother had been a fan of Princess Margaret and used to follow her jet-set lifestyle in the magazines, never passing up a copy of Hello! or People, especially if it held a photo spread of Margaret and her holidays.

  “Must be nice,” I said, and I meant it.

  “Oh, yes. We have a sailboat. A big one. There are lots of parties on the boat. We have many, many friends. I love champagne and I drink as much as I like.”

  The delusion cheered her. The mind, as it fails, seizes on to the most powerful bits of a person. In her case, the power of celebrity. I imagined other adult children in this place might have parents fighting dementia and brain damage from stroke with all their might, angry and raging at their world’s demise. Mother had feathered for herself a happy and glamorous fantasy. I found it comforting. Better that than enduring her yelling at me, fighting me, which is what one would have predicted, based on her cheerless personality.

  “That sounds lovely,” I said.

  “You wish,” Mother said, suddenly filled with spite. “You’re not invited. Our friends are all rich. You’re not rich.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I live in a mo
uldy apartment in Old South. And I’m on the dole.”

  To me, she looked the same as ever: bone-thin, with a long neck and coarse hair like warped steel, grey as it had always been. When she jerked her head, I got the impression of an angry turkey.

  “My husband is a movie star.”

  “He must be busy.”

  “Oh, he is. He’s working on a new movie right now. He’s very famous. I bet you’d like to meet him, wouldn’t you? But you can’t.”

  “Okay.”

  “You got a cigarette?”

  “No, Mother, you don’t smoke anymore.”

  “The hell I don’t. What good are you?”

  I sighed.

  “Mother, do you have any recollection of Dad’s job? Your husband’s job before — uh — before he became a movie star? Maybe he worked for the Canadian government? Does that ring any bells?”

  She laughed scornfully. “You gormless little twat. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  I grit my teeth.

  I had come to tell her about Jamie’s pending surgery, but that seemed absurd now. It occurred to me if I never came back to see my mother, her shambolic mind couldn’t care less. I suddenly worried the same might happen to Jamie afterward. After he went in for his procedure.

  A chill went up my spine.

  Mother being this way I could handle. Not Jamie.

  But a thought relaxed me. The kids would carry on. Kitty and Harry. It didn’t matter about us. The kids were safe.

  Clare would save them. Clare, whom Mother hated from day one, regardless of everything Clare had done for our family to keep it functioning. Without her, our family would be nothing. Jamie and Clare had already saved their children by giving them a good foundation, good insurance for life. More than that. They gave them the trajectory for a brilliant life. They were sensational parents who provided a good home. That’s what mattered, right? The thought strengthened me. I smiled, relieved that my parents’ twisted piety hadn’t poisoned Jamie’s kids.

  “Remember, Mother, every day above ground is a good day,” I said.

  “Ha! That’s a laugh.”

  On my way out, I stopped at the nursing station and thanked them for looking after my mother.