I Was There the Night He Died Page 18

  “That’s good,” I say. “That’s good for the city.” Which it is, I suppose, even if an abandoned and darkened three-story Edwardian building has more tragic dignity than a refurbished community playhouse specializing in local productions of Oklahoma! and the inevitable Christmas Nutcracker. But the desolately sublime doesn’t pay anybody’s bills. And Sara, who grew up in Toronto, said her parents took her to the Nutcracker every year and she hated it until the year they didn’t go, when she missed it so much she made them attend the following year and every year after that until she left home. So, good for the Capitol Theatre. Good for Chatham.

  We’ve reached the end of King Street; Eddie flicks on his blinker. “Let’s check out the old school,” I say.

  “You got it,” Eddie says, just glad to have somewhere else to show off his gleaming new monster mobile. What’s the point of having something if you can’t use it to make other people jealous?

  We take turns ducking our heads dash-level to take a sip from our beer, a pair of sensible rebels. “Hey how’s that place, that Thames View, taking care of your old man? Pretty good, I bet. Mum’s got an aunt in there and Mum says she’s never been busier or had more friends.”

  “It’s good,” I say. “They take good care of him. But my dad, he’s not … he’s in a different part of the building. He’s in the Alzheimer’s ward, so … ”

  “Right, right.” Eddie lowers his head and takes another sip, sorry, I can tell, for raising the topic. “Your uncle, he’s got to be a big help over there, though. I mean, when you’re in T.O., your dad has family there. That’s important.”

  “My uncle’s a prick,” I say. “Don’t ask me why, but he is.”

  Eddie raises a steady hand—international sign language for Your family and the shit it gets up to is off limits, I understand—and concentrates on the road. He’s not only trying to be nice, he’s also—goddamn it—right: my dad does need someone other than a paid professional to keep him company, even if he doesn’t know whose company he’s actually in. I realize at this very moment, sitting four feet off the ground in Eddie’s truck, that I’m going to have to forgive Uncle Donny. Not forget—you don’t have a choice about that—but forgive, at least enough to trust him again to be my point man in Chatham when I’m three hours away in Toronto. I’m pissed off, but also relieved. And surprised—astounded, actually—at how easy it is to change your mind about something you couldn’t imagine changing your mind about.

  “How’s the sale of the house going, anyway? Anybody sniffing around yet?”

  “Not many,” I say. “One, actually.”

  “That’s rough. Just wait, though, somebody’ll make an offer, you’ll see.”

  “Somebody already did.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “But it was under what I’m asking.”

  “Low-balling you, eh?”

  “By ten thousand.”

  “Just ten?”

  Eddie pulls the truck in front of CCI and puts it in park, lets it idle. I don’t answer him, both because it’s obvious what he thinks—thinks the same thing as my real-estate agent, that I should accept the offer—and because it’s only twenty-two more days until the vampires at Visa are due their next currency feeding.

  “Want to go for a walk?” I say.

  “Where?” Even if you don’t have a new thirty-five thousand dollar vehicle, walking in Chatham is what you do when you can’t afford to drive.

  “I don’t know. Is the football field still there?”

  “I guess so. My neighbour’s kid is going out for Junior this spring, so they’ve still got a team.”

  “For now.”

  “For now.”

  We get out of the truck and walk past the school—dark and empty and somehow the same building we filled with our voices and footsteps and nervous daydreams as teenagers—on the way to the football field behind it. The stars and the moon are all the light we need to get us there.

  “I hear you’re dating Rachel Turnbal,” Eddie says.

  “Who told you that?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember. Somebody.”

  It’s a town of less than 40,000, Eddie has lived in it his entire life, as has nearly everyone else who calls it home: I believe him. “We’re not dating,” I say. “We’re just spending some time together.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  “Why aren’t we what?”

  “Dating.”

  “Look,” I say. “The shed.”

  The shed was where all of the practice equipment was kept—the orange pylons for running agility drills, the shields for blocking practice, the sled for the linemen to work on their pushing and pulling. Junior football was in the spring, senior football in the fall. The offence and the defence took turns getting out the equipment, and in the first week of September, if you were the one with the key to the padlock, it was like opening the door to a wooden kiln. Tonight there are icicles hanging from the doorframe.

  “She sure got hot all of a sudden,” Eddie says.

  “Who? Rachel, you mean?”

  “Hell yes, Rachel. Like you didn’t notice.”

  “I noticed. But she’s still the same person she was in high-school.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. She’s nice. She’s a nice person.”

  “Is that why she’s not your girlfriend?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Because she’s nice?”

  Today was mild most of the day, and the melted snow has changed forms, has attached itself to the gravel on the track around the football field like sparkly glaze on a dirt and pebble crumble cake. Without saying anything, Eddie and I start around the track. Every practice would begin with a sprint around both goalposts. It hardly seemed worth it, it was so easy and over with so quick. Eddie unzips his fly and waters one of the goalposts. I look around to see if it’s clear and join him. Little boys can’t help sneaking a peek at the wee-wee whizzing next to them; middle age men can’t resist sizing up the gut—Bigger? Smaller? The same?—of the guy standing closest. Forty-four years later and still fretting over a couple of inches.

  “Let’s jog the rest of the way,” I say.

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Come on. For old time’s sake.”

  “Screw old time’s sake. My running days are over.”

  I run on my own the rest of the way around the posts, stand panting in place back where I started. Eddie’s laughing when he finally gets there.

  “Man, you need a beer,” he says. “You look like you just ran a marathon.”

  * * *

  Dad has a fever and some liquid in his lungs and abnormally high blood pressure. Nothing to worry about too much at the moment, the doctor says, but definitely something worth keeping an eye on. Alzheimer’s patients don’t die of Alzheimer’s—the body eventually just packs it in after being beaten and battered so hard for so long. Stroke and pneumonia are two of the most common causes of death among patients in advanced stages. Stages don’t get any more advanced than Dad’s.

  Uncle Donny was at Thames View when I got there, had gotten the same phone call that I had. The first thing I noticed wasn’t Dad, who, fever and liquid in his lungs and raised blood pressure or not, looked the soporific same, but Uncle Donny, specifically the cell phone hanging in its cheap black plastic case from his belt. He saw me see it too, said, “After they called me about the fever, I picked it up at the 7-Eleven on the way over here. I don’t want to be somewhere and then have them call me and me not know what’s going on.” He was holding ice chips to my father’s lower lip to help ease the fever. I believed him.

  When Dad’s temperature dropped and visiting hours were over, we walked in silence to the parking lot without Uncle Donny offering to drive me home or me asking him to, but him doing just that anyway. I slipped one of his Rat Pack CDs into
the car’s disc player so that neither of us would have to say anything. Dean Martin serenaded us home with “That’s Amore.”

  Once inside the house I decide to phone Rachel, to tell her we need to talk, but when I get her voicemail I say I’m just checking in, no big deal, no need to call back. There’s nothing left to pack or to throw out or to donate—what little that’s left is what I need to get by while I’m here—and I finished the second to last chapter of Lives of the Poets (with Guitars) last night, sound compositional practice dictating that I wait at least a couple of head-clearing days before beginning what will be the end of the first draft. What I want to do is what I’m afraid won’t happen. If I take my usual spot on the park bench and Samantha doesn’t show up, I feel as if I won’t ever see her again.

  I stand on the front porch, neither here nor there, pretending that’s where I want to be. The night is starless and windy, but late-March almost-mild, you can smell the earth beneath the neighbourhood lawns beginning to wake up. I’m wearing gloves, but I don’t need them, drop them to the porch and stick my hands inside my coat pockets. Samantha’s front door opens and closes and I hear her crossing her lawn.

  Except he isn’t she. He is her father. Crossing my lawn at a steady clip and not, for a change, wobbling; walking straight and standing tall, in fact. And talking to me.

  “I want you to stay away from my daughter.”

  “Pardon?” I say, although I understand him just fine, at least the words that he’s using.

  “You heard me. You’re lucky I don’t call the cops. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  You’re not alone in holding that opinion, but would you mind being a little more specific? “Look, I don’t know what—”

  Samantha’s father raises his right forefinger; is standing on my parents’ front lawn less than five feet away from me. His face is very white and his nose very red and his eyes an unfortunate coupling of both. “Save it, buddy. I’m a lawyer. I know how the legal system works, all right? Supplying drugs to an eighteen year-old girl is not something that the criminal system looks kindly upon, believe me, even if it is just pot.”

  Now it’s my turn to instruct and enlighten with my finger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, pointing right back. “Your daughter, she’s … ” He’s dropped his hand now and is listening, I can tell. “Your daughter, Samantha … ”

  “I know very well who my daughter is. My daughter Samantha what?”

  “She’s a good kid,” I say.

  Samantha’s father peers at me like he’s inspecting a bowl of soup for a hair. Satisfied it’s particle-free, “Then stay away from her. It’s hard enough for kids these days to do the right thing without having a frigging drug dealer living across the street.”

  “I’m not … ” I sputter, before I can stop myself.

  “You’re not what? Don’t lie to me. We both know what you are.”

  I pick my gloves up off the porch and slide them back on. “I’m not going to be around here much longer,” I say, pointing at the For Sale planted in the middle of the yard.

  “Good,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  And because that, apparently, is that, Samantha’s father goes back the way he came and I go back inside the house. Where Buttercup Village’s very own, home-grown dope dealer pours himself a big glass of red wine. I should be insulted, upset—irked, at least—but I’m not. That guy, he may not be much, he may be exactly who he seems like, but that guy, he’s Samantha’s father.

  * * *

  They have Starbucks on mountain tops in Tibet, but not in Chatham. Theoretically, this is a good thing—anti-multi-national mumble mumble, locally-owned business et cetera. Practically, this only means that corporate head office definitely knows what it’s doing, a four dollar cup of coffee as suspect to most Chathamites as paying for a book when you can get it for free from the library, or some pinko kook who doesn’t support our troops (whatever it is they’re doing over there, wherever there is). This also means that I’m waiting for Rachel at Coffee Time, the Tim Hortons down the street simply not appropriate for the sort of mid-afternoon tête-à-tête I have in mind. Location, location, location, even when you’re just gently but firmly letting someone know it’s not them, it’s you.

  The door opens, and the manufactured smile Rachel grants me upon entering doesn’t make sense—I’m the one who’s here to let someone down easy. If anyone is going to spare a stoical smile, it’s me. Except she’s also first off the mark with what I was going to lead with, tells me she’s really glad we’ve had a chance to spend some time together since I’ve been back.

  “Me too,” I say which is easy to say, because it’s true.

  “But,” Rachel says—but I was going to say But—“to be completely honest, I’m at a point in my life when I don’t have time to spend on something that I know isn’t going to work.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she says, placing her hand on top of mine. “You’re a great guy. I know that sounds like some kind of kiss-off line, but it’s true. Besides, you’ll be going back to Toronto soon enough, and we’re both too old for a long distance relationship.”

  True, true, and true. This time Rachel smiles a real smile, a smile borne of obvious relief, and it’s a sunny Saturday afternoon and sometimes parting is such sweet, sweet ease and aren’t we both so wonderfully civilized? In the Coffee Time parking lot the Chatham Classic Car Club is having their weekly whatever-you-call-it, men with their jackets undone standing around their vintage cars talking to other men standing around their vintage cars, the occasional hood lifted up to better appreciate the gleaming bad boy underneath. I know I should just be thankful things turned out the way they did, as easily as they did, but we’ve both still got coffee left in our cups, so what the hell, I ask what can’t help but be on my mind.

  “Just out of curiosity, what did you mean when you said you knew it wasn’t going to work?”

  Rachel squeezes my hand; you’d think we were on our second date, as opposed to just breaking up. “C’mon, Sam, let’s just enjoy our coffee and this beautiful day. They say it might go up to as high as eleven by Monday. Can you believe it? It’s about time. I’m so sick of winter.” One day during grade eight math class we were told to put away our textbooks and forget everything we knew about what things weighed and how long things were and what the temperature was. Rachel must have been better at math than I was, I’m still a Fahrenheit and pounds and inches man.

  “I’m not going to get upset,” I say. “Like I said, I’m just curious.”

  “Sam, let it go, okay? I already said you’re a great guy, and I meant it. Just take the compliment, all right?”

  “All right.” I sip from my coffee; Rachel does the same.

  “It’s just that you’re the first woman I’ve been with since my wife, and I guess I want to make sure that whatever I did wrong I won’t do again.” Which isn’t true, but which certainly sounds like it.

  “Who said you did anything wrong?”

  “No one. But you did say you knew it wasn’t going to work, so I can only assume … ”

  Rachel puts down her coffee cup and stares out the window at the men buffing their cars and inspecting each other’s motors, and then at me. “Like I said, it’s nothing wrong with you, per se, it’s just that who you are isn’t—for me, understand, I’m just talking about myself—someone I can see myself with long-term. Okay?” She flashes a hopeful little smile.

  “Okay. But you still haven’t answered my question. What is it about me specifically that makes me a less than ideal long-term partner?”

  “Geez, Sam … ”

  “C’mon, I can take it, I’m a big boy.”

  Rachel steels herself with the rest of her coffee. Setting down her cup, “You’re selfish,” she says.

  “Okay.” I promised to b
e a big boy, and big boys sit quietly until the person they’re speaking to is finished speaking.

  “Maybe selfish isn’t the right word. But as far as I could tell, pretty much all you ever did when we weren’t together, when you weren’t visiting your dad, was write.”

  “How does that make me selfish? I’m a writer.”

  “Look, I’m not going to argue with you, Sam. I told you I didn’t want to talk about this. You’re the one who insisted.”

  “Okay, okay, but … it isn’t odd to complain that a writer writes? That’s kind of what they do.”

  “I wasn’t complaining.”

  “Okay, but … ”

  This time when Rachel looks out the window I can tell she’s attempting to figure out the best way to say what she’s thinking.

  “Maybe it’s just because I’ve never known any other writers. Maybe it’s an occupational hazard or something. But I got the feeling whenever we were together that even though you were there, you weren’t really there, you know?”

  “Not really, no.”

  Rachel looks out the window again. “It was as if doing things—life things, the kind of things that people do every day—wasn’t very interesting to you. I got the feeling—and again, this could just be me—that you would have rather been off writing about something than actually doing it.”

  She’s obviously tried hard to answer my question, so I give what she’s said a moment to sink in.

  “Well?” she says, stretching her mouth sideways into an exaggerated, hope-I-haven’t-offended-you grin.

  “I hear you,” I say.

  “But?”

  “But honestly, I can’t help but take what you’re saying as a compliment.”

  “A compliment.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rachel exhales through her nostrils and stares at the ceiling. “It’s not just about not wanting to do things, it’s … ” She turns her gaze on me. “It’s like how you never asked me about my weight loss.”