by Amy Spurway
Right now, I feel more like a complete lunatic, standing in the kitchen blubbering like a baby because my doctor thinks that having photogenic tumours that are “clinically interesting” and getting a dead guy’s appointment slot somehow constitutes “good news.”
Mama wraps her mighty arms around me, cradling the back of my head in her hand. My snot and tears stream all over her broad shoulder as she tries in vain to smooth my hair with her chapped and calloused palm, managing only to snag and pull it. I hug her back harder than I’ve ever hugged anyone before. It’s like hugging a rock. I hope she won’t crumble and crack under the weight of grief when I’m gone. Maybe my twenty-year absence was good practice for what’s to come.
“Listen, missy,” she says, giving my head another squeeze before prying herself out of my death grip, “you need to go down to The Wharf. Blow the stink off of you.” Then she dumps her floor-washing water down the kitchen sink, puts the kettle on to boil, and stomps off down the hall.
The housebound hermit stink that needs blowing off now first crept in while I was still in Toronto. In the days after my diagnosis, I called in sick to work. I was scared shitless to leave my condo in case I had another neurological malfunction in a sea of indifferent strangers. But when the pile of greasy food delivery containers and the stench of my own armpits reached a certain point, a different dread set in. What if something ruptured, or my brain short-circuited while I was all by myself, my door locked and my phone out of reach? What if it happened while I was all scuzzy and sad like this? Or while I was on the toilet? What if I just died alone there, and the cops only found my body because the dude next door complained about the smell?
So I tried going back to work. Because that’s what people do who have bills to pay, fears to run from, and a life to feign. They brush their hair, put on some clothes, swallow some pills, and pretend everything’s fine. Pretend the drugs that are supposed to make the symptoms go away aren’t actually making things worse. Pretend their brain isn’t a time bomb. I should have known better than to tell anyone at the office what was going on. Maybe I did know better, but I did it anyway.
“Awww, Stacey.” Ami, the product PR guru — who passed for a friend some days — frowned a little when I told her, while her glued-on eyelash fringes fluttered at hyper-speed. “You have to try the Viva Rica Detox Flush.”
I wanted to tell her that she just had to shove a bottle of blueberry juice up her ass. Instead I smiled. Nodded. Fluttered the mascara-clumped stumps that pass for my eyelashes back at her. The next morning, I called in sick. The day after, sicker. Until finally, after ten days of swinging between numbness and dread, there came some clarity. Punctuated by the dumpster top thudding shut on my balled-up silky, pukey bedsheets. I called Mama. Started planning my exit.
Here and now, there’s no point in getting dressed or making any attempt to look as though I’ve done anything other than roll out of bed. That is the beauty of being in the woods. No one to impress, least of all the nosy neighbours who’ll be peering out windows and driving in slow motion to take a good long gander at who’s doing what, where. I slide on a pair of old flip-flops and head down the road to the second-most sacred place on the planet.
The massive U-shaped concrete structure that sprawls out into the deep water is technically “the wharf” where a ferry once docked and crossed the narrow channel in this part of the Bras d’Or Lakes, until they built the big bridge in the sixties. But “The Wharf” is so much more than just the old ferry dock. It is the surrounding beach and woods. A place of myth and memories. A holy site of secret rebellion, and the backdrop for stories you sure as hell won’t hear at church teas and knitting circles. Stories that my generation relives in loud, raucous roars around bonfires and at kitchen parties. Maybe even at funerals. The good ones, anyway. The Wharf is where I built my first sandcastle and had my first swimming lesson. It’s where I had my first kiss, my first cigarette, my first swig of Golden Glow apple-flavoured wine-like product. It’s where Allie and Char and I hosted the infamous annual May 2-4 drunken debauchery camping excursion known as Fucktapalooza. It’s also where I’d go to be by myself and to talk to my father. Not that he ever talked back.
That’s another little scrap of the story I need to stitch into what’s left of my life. Exactly what manner of tragedy befell the eighteen-year-old kid they all called Smart Alec Spenser, who went and knocked up his family’s poor young housekeeper, Scruffy Effie Fortune. Smart Alec was last seen walking this very road twenty-seven days before I was born, headed down to The Wharf to his brand new, freshly christened fishing boat, The Anastasia. Two days later, The Anastasia was found run aground on the far shore of the Bras d’Or. There was no sign of Smart Alec. Except for a broken beer bottle and a bloody T-shirt on board. You can imagine all the whispers that little mystery spawned, what with the Spensers being a pack of ruthless business kingpins on the brink of being scandalized by a bastard baby, and the Fortunes being a bunch of dirt-poor, cursed lunatics. The last person to see Smart Alec alive was my mother. She swears to God her final words to him on that cool October evening were, “You’re a foolish son of a bitch. But I love you.”
[…]
“Christ Almighty, child, I didn’t mean for you to walk! Get in.” Mama huffs out the window of Bessie, her beat-up maroon 1995 Toyota Corolla as she rolls up alongside me. I’d been traipsing down the dirt roadside for a mere seven minutes. Five more, and I’d be there. It seems silly to get in the car. But I do it anyway. I plunk my arse down in the front passenger seat and promptly start to argue with her.
“Ma, it’s not far.”
“I don’t give a flying fiddler’s fart if it’s within pissing distance. You’re in your friggin’ pyjamas, no bra on, your hair’s a rat’s nest, and you’re . . .”
Silence.
“Ma, I’m fine.”
She cocks her eyebrow to an angle that says, Liar. Then she slams on the brakes.
“Fine? Fine. Get out then. Just don’t come cryin’ to me when Peggy goes telling everyone and their dog that you were down at The Wharf this morning dressed like a streel.”
“Please. I’ve got better things to cry about.”
“Suit yourself. I’ve got to go lend Flossie Baker a hand. She hurt her hip again. I’ll pick you up at nine thirty-five on the nose for that doctor’s appointment. Here. Hot tea in that there cup thing of yours.”
“Thanks, Ma. Loves ya,” I half snort as I grab the travel mug from the console and get out of the car.
“Damn right you do!” I hear out the window as she wheels around and drives off.
I saunter down The Wharf road, a little afraid that I’ve jinxed myself with that foolish bravado, that I will wind up having a seizure, or going blind, or losing control of my legs, my bowels, or my mind down here by myself. But there are worse places for those things to happen. In a dank corner of the Bloor Street subway station, in the middle of the morning rush while doing a walk of shame home from a one-night stand, for example. Want to know what happens when a messy-haired, smeary-eyed streel of a woman crumples to the ground in a mess of vomit and piss and rolling eyes, then and there? Throngs of people just keep walking. A transit cop will tell her to move along. When she tries to explain that something is wrong — that she usually has tidier hair, less slutty clothes, and the ability to control her bodily functions — the words come as a slurry string of garbles, so he’ll call 911 and describe her as an unidentified incoherent female. Through a crack in the visual chaos of swirling colours and light, she’ll see the cop shake his head and hear him on repeat, until the paramedics arrive: “Ma’am, tell me your name and what you’re on.” The nurses will smile their best pity smiles when they see she’s got no one to pick her up at the hospital at discharge, and a cab driver from Sudan will be the first one to hear the news that she’s got brain tumours.
I was more alone in that city of two and a half million people than I am here. At least if I keel over down at The Wharf, somebody will know who I am.
Maybe even care. That’s the beauty of these particular woods, and of being a bit of a big deal around here. Even when it seems like there’s no one around, somebody’s watching. Waiting for something — anything — to happen. Especially to the likes of me.
As the summer sun ascends, my senses come to rest on what I’d been too busy to notice was missing from my life all these years I’ve been away. The mesmerizing dance of light on waves. The lullaby rhythm of waves on the shore. The salty stank of rotting seaweed and jellyfish corpses, inexplicably mingled with the smell of . . . marijuana?
Willy Gimp’s truck is parked on the beach, just down past the wharf itself.
Willy Gimp’s real name is William Matthews Jr., but the only people who call him that are people he hates — doctors, lawyers, cops, and judges. He was born with a twisted-up right side. An arm that defies cortical orders to co-operate. A hand whose default is tightly curled and fisted. A foot that turns in and drags a bit when he walks. A slight tension on the right corner of his bottom lip, giving him a perpetual smirk. Hemiplegic cerebral palsy, in medical terms. A “gimp,” according to his old man.
When he was five years old, Willy Gimp wanted to play hockey, but his father laughed. “That body will do you no favours. Best learn to use your head, Willy Gimp.” And so he did — out of spite and pride — use his head instead. Willy was smart as a whip. He was also bad at sports and worse with girls, so he had ample time to hit the books. More than anything else, he used those brains to get in and out of trouble.
Willy lived just off the highway between Loch Bhreagh and the turnoff Down North, a stretch called Centre Loch Bhreagh Bay Look-Off, according to the road signs. He was a year ahead of me in school, but in grade twelve, he transferred from the preppy-ish, small-school comfort of Loch Bhreagh Rural Consolidated to the industrial remedial program at the mean concrete edifice on the hill between The Mines and the Northside, in Town. Sullivan High School was its real name. But everybody called it The Jungle.
Why did sharp-as-a-tack Willy Gimp go from being honour roll at LBRC to being a grease monkey in The Jungle? Two reasons. He decided he wanted to be a mechanic, and The Jungle was a bigger market for the phenomenal pot he grew in the backwoods of his grandfather’s property in Big Harbour. Gimp had been growing it since he was sixteen, and smoking it since he was twelve. Said it eased the spasms in his arm and leg and made the stupid people of the world just a little more tolerable, funny, even.
But Gimp was a businessman at heart. In grade ten, he had both the wit and the balls to turn his little grow-op into a “hypothetical” Junior Entrepreneur Club project, complete with a detailed business plan, thorough analysis of the competition, and a kick-ass marketing strategy. He didn’t win any prizes for it, but he managed to drum up a fair amount of non-hypothetical business. Within a year, he had a sizable stash of cash and contacts, and it was time to grow the business. So he ventured into The Jungle, already well known and much sought after. By the end of grade twelve, Willy Gimp had enough money to put himself through school to become a licensed mechanic. He bought his own garage and a three-room shack on the highway into Town, where he fixed cars, pumped gas, and moved massive quantities of pop, chips, and weed.
Ten years ago he got busted, charged with trafficking, and went to jail, where he was, of course, a model prisoner. He meditated and lifted weights. He studied environmental ecology, philosophy, and got a business degree. He made friends with everybody — the inmates, the guards, the janitors, the spiders in the corner of his cell. Willy Gimp emerged from the clink stronger and smarter and better connected. He got home, fixed up his little house and his garage, and went back to rebuilding his business.
And now, here he is sitting in a shitty old truck, having a little wake-n-bake at The Wharf.
I sneak down along the beach, making sure to stay out of range of the truck’s mirrors, which Willy Gimp is no doubt monitoring with due paranoia. Then I duck down low and creep right up alongside the passenger door. I pause for a moment, listening to the first few bars of The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You” swagger out the driver’s side window on a waft of pungent smoke, then rise sharply to rap my knuckles hard on the window and bark, “Out of the truck, Mr. Matthews” in my best cop voice.
Without flinching, without trying to hide the joint, without even taking his eyes off the copy of the newspaper that lies splayed across the steering wheel, Willy Gimp grunts loudly, “It’s legal. I got a medical licence. Ya can fuck off now, thanks.” He glances up, sees me, and everything turns on a dime. His bloodshot eyes brighten and widen. A laugh shakes through his shoulders, cracking his face into a crooked smile.
I ignore the quick flicker of orange fireworks that my eyes invent around his ears, and smile back.
“Ohferthalovagod, Crow! What’s goin’ on? Christ, get in the friggin’ truck and come have a puff with me, woman!” His spastic arm deftly swings the door open, and I climb in.
“Real cops don’t ever come to the passenger side window, eh. Or pop up like a friggin’ jack-in-the-box. I figured it was Shirl Short comin’ to hassle me. Lucky I didn’t chuck a piss jug at ya.”
Before I can ask Gimp if he really does still keep piss jugs in his truck like he used to, he passes me the joint. I hesitate. The voice of the cop on the Bloor Street subway platform ebbs into my mind. Tell me your name and what you’re on. Maybe I shouldn’t smoke weed. Then again, I’m home now and on borrowed time. So maybe I should.
Fuck it. Me and Gimp are gonna sit here in his truck smoking a doobie, listening to The Doors, waiting for Shirl Short to come hassle us, just like we did when we were teenagers. Except now, Willy Gimp is hot.
He’d always been kind of cute, I guess. Big green expressive eyes rimmed with long dark lashes. Soft, black, laissez-faire hair that curled when it got too long. Smooth skin. Straight teeth. But he was tall and scrawny. He wore socks with sandals. His skid metal T-shirts had cigarette packs rolled up in the sleeves. He wore jogging pants and had a mullet long after those things were unacceptable and long before they became fashionably ironic. He walked funny. He moved his arm funny. He was a bizarre combination of genius and clown. Nobody was ever entirely sure what to make of Willy Gimp. He certainly wasn’t dating material, by any means. But that didn’t stop me from sleeping with him for most of high school. Not that I ever admitted it.
It started off innocently enough. A pity lay, really. We hooked up at a bush party one night when I was in grade ten, and he drunkenly confessed that he was a virgin. So, compassionate little hussy that I was, I dragged him up to the road and into the back of Allie’s car — the legendary Shaggin’ Wagon — to give him a memorable first fuck. And that was supposed to be the end of that. But a few weeks later, when I realized Trevor Jessome was using me to get back at Allie, I ran to Willy, looking to use somebody myself. When Weasel Tobin broke my heart along with the pointer finger on my left hand, I ran to Willy for some tenderness. When Duke Clarke humiliated me with the Clap for Crow stunt at my graduation ceremony, I ran to Willy before I ran away. In fact, I kissed him goodbye at this very place the night before I left, planning never to return.
But here I am. And here he is now, middle age just beginning to touch and shape him. His hair is delicately salt and peppered. His face is ever so slightly etched and imprinted with the joys and pains of the last twenty years. His chest and arms — even the gimpy one — are still thin, but muscled and defined beneath his snug white T-shirt. Beautiful artwork is inked into his skin, a vibrant and detailed oceanic sleeve tattooed down to his left wrist. Not bad for a forty-year-old pothead mechanic. Perhaps another pity lay might be in order. Assuming he’ll take pity on me.
There isn’t much need for us to catch up on the ordinary details of each other’s lives. Facebook made those kinds of reunion conversations more or less obsolete, and good old-fashioned gossip fills in the gaps. I know that he still has the garage. He knows that I made a life selling super juice. I know that his father died two years ago and his mother
shacked up with his uncle. He knows that I flew Mama up to Toronto every Christmas, and that she’d bitch about being there the entire time. I know that he was engaged to Chrissy Parsons, but that fell apart a year ago when she pumped every dime he’d been saving for their wedding into a slot machine, and then got onto the hard drugs. He knows that I was engaged to the world’s biggest douchebag, until that douchebag got caught putting his penis in places his penis should not have been. Namely, in his boss’s mouth.
“Lookin’ some good there, by the way,” he grins. “Come back just to show off or what?”
This. This kind of thing right here is what I’ve been dreading. How do I tell people that my secret to dropping the extra twenty pounds I lugged around most of my life wasn’t hot yoga or detoxing? And then how do I fake optimism, and pretend I haven’t leapfrogged over the normal seven stages of grief, and invented my own single stage: Surly and Reckless Resignation to Being Doomed. And where is that goddamn gossip network when I need it? I’ve been home for nearly thirty-six hours. That’s more than enough time for Peggy to have told everyone and their dog why I’m back so I wouldn’t have to answer any questions, and everyone could just greet me with pity and pleasantries. But no, I’ve gotta do this batch of dirty work myself, I guess. Thank Jesus it’s only Willy Gimp. And thank Jesus I’m good and stoned now.
“I’m back living with Ma because —” I pause, inhaling sharply before crushing the roach out in the ashtray. “I got diagnosed with brain tumours. Inoperable ones.” And then I ramble. “Wow, that’s good weed. I haven’t smoked weed in a really long time. Like, ten years. In Toronto I hung around with all these hipsters so it was all blow and Jägerbombs. But this is way better. Not skunky either. Hey, got ‘Roadhouse Blues’ on here? Haven’t heard that tune in for-fuckin’-ever. God, did I always talk this much when I was stoned? Got any Visine? Or Doritos? The munchies, man. And the pasties.”