The Desperates

by Greg Kearney

  “Your father’s a bit edgy because he has something to say to you.”

  She nods at his father. He grabs for his reading glasses on the dashboard, reaches for something in the pocket of his shirt. Is he going to profess his love and say all the sweet things Joel has always wanted him to say?

  “Okay, so this is something that your mother and I both need you to do for us. You listening?”

  “Go on, I’m totally listening.”

  “Okay. We need you to go to Winnipeg, by yourself, on the bus, and get us a book. It’s called —” he says, putting on his reading glasses and opening the bit of folded paper. “It’s called This is the Final Exit, and it’s by a guy named Derek Humphry. I looked it up at the library.”

  “Nuh-no, Hugh, it’s called The Final Exit, not This is the Final Exit.”

  “No, actually, it’s called Final Exit. Really, Mom? You’re gonna … When? How?”

  “The ‘when’ is none of your beeswax, and the ‘how’ we don’t know yet, which is why we need The Final Exit or Final Exit or whatever the hell it is. This is something that your dad and I have decided together. It’s something your dad is going to help me with; we just need you to go get that book. We were going to take it out of the library, but that would look suspicious. And there’s a copy of it at Scott Books downtown, but, of course, that’s owned and operated by the biggest shit stain in the world, Jocelyn Walsh.”

  He’s silent. He wants his mother to die with dignity and everything, but — when? Surely it’s too soon? And what if they try it and bungle it, and she ends up worse off than she is? Although, he guesses, if they had proper instructions like Final Exit, they wouldn’t bungle it.

  “And I’ll pay for the bus ride and incidentals and you can have a nice lunch at that place by the Bay while you’re there,” says Hugh.

  38

  HUGH DRIVES JOEL TO 488 Kirkpatrick, where Donald said he’d been invited for dinner and drinks. Kirkpatrick is the town’s fancy street, with fourand five-bedroom houses, perfect curbs, some modest attempts at topiary and even an inground pool. The trailer park is a two-minute walk away, but while Joel had plenty of trailer park friends in school, he didn’t have a single Kirkpatrick friend.

  “So you get back to us soon about the Winnipeg thing,” Hugh says as Joel gets out of the car. “Don’t dawdle over it.”

  The house looks like a yellow barn. The driveway is filled with cars. He feels a clutch of dread as he approaches; only once did he trick-or-treat on Kirkpatrick, and then only one house. “Who are you?” said the lady who answered the door. “I’m a genie,” Joel answered. “No,” the woman said, holding a mini Kit Kat above his open goodie bag, “I said, ‘Who are you?’”

  A vaguely familiar woman answers the door. She has braces on her teeth and a clinky drink in her hand. “You’re Donald’s helper-friend,” she says. “I’m Michelle. Come on in!”

  The house is filled with women sitting like mermaids on the furniture and floor. He doesn’t see Donald, and then he does: he’s leaning against the living room window, talking with a woman in a white angora dress. As he gets closer Joel sees that the woman is Jocelyn Walsh, mother of Joel’s grade-school tormentor, bookstore owner, long loathed by his mother. Joel first sees her in profile; her neck wattle, which she always used to hide with turtlenecks even in summer, is gone. Hers is the first obvious plastic surgery Joel has seen in his hometown. It looks good, not grotesque at all. He can’t wait to tell Teresa. He thinks of future gossip he won’t share with his mother.

  “Hi, Donald Tait and Jocelyn Walsh,” Joel says with showy neutrality. Jocelyn turns slowly to Joel. She looks drunk.

  “It’s Joel,” Jocelyn says with her underbite smile. “We were just talking about you. Don here says you really helped a lot with ‘Buttons! Buttons! Buttons!’ I think that show should be at the Royal Ontario Museum, I really do. It has elevated our town. See what can happen when you make an effort at something? Hopefully this will spur you on to other things.”

  “Yeah, hopefully. You look great. I like your new — look.”

  Jocelyn laughs. “My new look? What new look?” She puts a protective hand to her new neck. “Nothing has changed about my look in ages! I’m a rough-and-tumble girl that way; I couldn’t care less about my appearance. Woo, someone is seeing things! Woo!”

  Donald laughs uproariously at Jocelyn’s display. Joel wants to punch his face in.

  “Could I borrow Donald — sorry, Don — for a moment?”

  “That depends. Are you going to have gay sex? Right here in Michelle’s house? If so, can I watch? Woo, no, no. Just kidding! Not appropriate! Whoa! You guys are great. I’m going to go into the kitchen and see about my pasta salad.”

  Donald beams at her as she toddles off. He is also drunk.

  “She’s a total homophobe, you know. She’s only being nice to you because she thinks you’re a VIP now.”

  “You’re so quick to ascribe dark motives to people. Everyone has been incredibly warm and supportive today.”

  “Well, I’m here, like you wanted me to be. Now what?”

  “I’m having a wonderful time. I feel so … known, so … heard. One woman told me she considered me Kenora royalty, and then she did the cutest little curtsey.”

  What happened to the austere I-lead-a-life-of-the-mind Donald? The guy before Joel is just some deluded nitwit who wants to be popular. Joel’s eyes alight and narrow upon Donald’s left earlobe, gone crimson from rum and Coke.

  “What I think would be really wonderful,” Donald resumes, “is if you were to go stand at the other end of the room and talk with whoever’s there, and that way people will see both of us holding our own conversationally and know that we’re so confident in ourselves and our relationship that we can truly own a room from either end. It would be like the ultimate social coup, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. I don’t really care about coups. And, to be honest, I didn’t think you did, either.”

  “My personal growth today has been nothing short of seismic. Total sea change. Terrifying, exhilarating. Please, I desperately need you to be here and be buoyant with me and gay in the old world sense of the word. Please? Pretty please?”

  “I have a lot on my mind. I — I should go.”

  Again Donald does that whiplash shift from elation to theatrical despair, that quick change that Joel has seen one too many times in recent days.

  “No, you can’t go. You cannot. Your presence is crucial. Please don’t go. If you go, I really cannot be responsible for my actions.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Fine! You’re dead to me.”

  Joel turns to leave, braced suddenly by new knowledge: for all his desire and tentacled need for harrowing, sexy truths, he is not a drama queen. What a liberating realization!

  He walks briskly down the driveway. Jocelyn Walsh runs out of the house calling his name. He turns back to meet her. She’s visibly shaken.

  “Donald has thrown himself on Michelle’s living room floor. He’s crying and he’s saying weird things that none of us can understand. Please come and take him away. Michelle is so fussy — she can’t have a big, crazy man sprawled out on the carpet like that. She’s seconds away from calling the police.”

  He goes back inside with Jocelyn. Indeed, Donald is sprawled out on his back on Michelle’s living room floor. Joel kneels beside him.

  “For one brief, teeny weeny moment,” Donald slurs, snot-nosed, “I thought I’d arrived at a state of grace. But that was just a mirage. Love is … a butcher. That’s okay, though, because I don’t want to live. I don’t. Your mother was right, the buttons are graves. Just kill me.”

  Joel grabs one side of Donald, Jocelyn the other. Slowly they pull him upright.

  “So now I’m sitting up, so what. I still don’t want to live.”

  “Let’s maybe just go into the o
ther room,” Jocelyn suggests, “so you can have a little lie-down and not be in the way.”

  “Sure, just fold me up and tuck me away like last summer’s lawn chair. As it should be.”

  “Shut. Up.” Joel hisses as they haul him to his feet. Donald lets his head flop to the side like the dying Christ. In an empty bedroom, on a bed that looks like it has never been slept on, they let Donald drop. He moans for a moment, says something about being lost at sea, then drifts off. Joel and Jocelyn listen to him snore.

  “Isn’t he a handful,” Jocelyn whispers. “Is he always like this?”

  “I haven’t seen him drunk before. But yeah, he can be a handful. He’s not a bad person, though. Most gay people aren’t, you know.”

  Jocelyn offers a look of bafflement. “Well, I know that. Oh, I so wish we could get past that awful misunderstanding from years ago. Can we please try to help each other get over that misunderstanding?”

  “I have gotten over it.”

  Jocelyn’s eyes brim with tears. Joel feels bad for his icy tone.

  “Honestly, I’m really okay about that whole thing. My mother, on the other hand …”

  Jocelyn chummily tugs Joel into the hallway by his forefinger. “That Teresa. At this point, I have to laugh. I wish we could just have a drink together and really hash things out. How is she doing, by the way? Has there been any progress?”

  He’s unaccustomed to such inquiries. Donald’s attempts are always forced. He is a little undone. He’s never spoken to Jocelyn Walsh, and she is warm, attentive.

  “No. No progress. It’s hard.” He cries, puts a hand to his face. Jocelyn gently pries his hand away.

  “I can just imagine. That’s your mom, after all. I know how crazy about you she is. And I don’t care how old you are, when you lose your mom … You sweet boy.”

  She puts her arm around him. She’s not a monster. She’s just another protective mother.

  “It’s mostly just surreal now. She’s even started talking about, like, her options. You know.”

  “Her — oh. You mean. Right. Oh, gee. It’s just an impossible situation. Is there anything I can do? At all?”

  “Just talking like this is really great. We don’t really have a support network at all. Thanks for listening.”

  “Anytime. I mean that. Any time of the day or night. I’m a mom, too, you know. I’m first and foremost a mom, so when I see a kid in pain — any kid — I automatically reach out with all my heart.”

  They chat a bit longer. Finally, Jocelyn decides it’s time to get Donald home, so they rouse him and push him through the house into the back seat of Jocelyn’s car. And, once at Donald’s, it’s only when she has seen them both inside and Joel has reassured her that both he and Donald will be okay, that she, hesitantly, walks back to her car.

  Joel watches Donald sleep for a while, listens to him snore and, periodically, fart. Donald doesn’t need him now. He doesn’t need Donald. Jocelyn Walsh’s kindness has soothed and stabilized Joel, and he sets off on the long walk back to his parents’ house.

  HE SLEEPS DEEPLY, well into the late morning, when he’s awoken by his mother, shouting. Dazed, numb-armed, he gets up to find his mother. Is this it? The pre-arranged moment of her death, that they refused to reveal to him?

  No. She’s at the kitchen table, in her spot.

  “Look what that fucking bitch put in my mailbox!” she seethes, flapping the book in her hand. “That bitch sent me Final Exit! That is just fucking sick! And look what she wrote inside!”

  He takes the book from her. On the empty first page, Jocelyn Walsh has written, in girlishly loopy handwriting: Dear Teresa, I thought you might enjoy this, more than any murder mystery! Lots of love, Jocelyn.

  “Did you tell Jocelyn Walsh that I was looking for Final Exit?”

  “No! Of course not. As if.”

  “Then she put this in my mailbox out of pure spite!”

  He considers Jocelyn’s act. While it was incredibly presumptuous of her to send his mother Final Exit, and with such a shockingly glib inscription, he’s not convinced that she acted maliciously — or, at least, not only maliciously. It was actually quite intuitive of her, given how vague he was when they spoke.

  “On the bright side, it saves me a trip to Winnipeg,” he offers.

  “She’s fucked me. She has fucked me right up the ass. I can’t go through with it now. I can’t give her the satisfaction. I’ll have to just go natural. Oh my God, wait — You don’t think — What if your dad told her … in bed, like?”

  He looks at his mother and laughs; the idea of Hugh, in bed with Jocelyn Walsh, sharing family secrets: that is some other family, some other set of lives. Even Teresa, despite her anger, has to chuckle at the thought of it.

  39

  HUGH SAYS THERE’S NO REASON why they can’t go with their original plan, but Teresa won’t hear of it. She already had misgivings about putting Joel through such an upset, and Jocelyn Walsh’s prank settles it. She’ll just have to go through the motions.

  It’s not so hard. She’s in bed a lot now. Last night she was about to call for Hugh to bring her the heating pad when this swooping sense of déjà vu came over her and her right side tingled and she couldn’t speak. A seizure of some sort. Her doctor had warned her about them. It passed. She didn’t mention it to Hugh — what could he do if she did?

  She doesn’t care so much about anything, lately. It’s not that she’s depressed, or indifferent; it’s more like she’s narcotically calm, and is only roused by the secret, wordless utterances of her failing body. Even the Jocelyn Walsh episode: while it did get her goat, it didn’t get her goat good like it would have even a month ago. But that’s okay. Hugh and Joel are here all the time now. It’s nice to have them close by all the time. Dallas sent a nice portrait-studio picture of him and Shary and the baby; in the photo he stands behind Shary in a chair. She has the baby in her lap. Everyone is smiling, but if you look close you can see that Shary is clearly leaning forward, to avoid Dallas’s hands on her shoulders. Interesting. There was no mention of marriage in the letter enclosed.

  She pulls the heating pad to her chest. She turns on her right side. Thank God for the heating pad. It’s her and her heating pad, from here on out.

  40

  HE HAS FOUND HIS PLACE alongside his father in caring for his mother: Hugh tends to her intimate needs — cleaning and dressing her, helping her in the bathroom, portioning out her morning and evening pills. Joel keeps house. He can’t cook, but he is always on the lookout for ready-made cuisine at the grocery store. After a few unbalanced loads — and another, colours and whites mixed, that stained everyone’s underwear a faint purple — he is able to use the washer and dryer.

  Mainly, he sits with her. As she grows less and less talkative, he talks more and more. He reads the newspaper to her, reports any gossip he’s gleaned on his trips to the grocery store. Eventually, having run out of news, he curls up at the foot of her bed and free-associates on any topic that wafts through his head.

  He won’t settle romantically again, he tells her. He is finished with fucked-up older men. He’d consider dating someone his own age, but they would have to be extraordinary, singular, with a unique world view and some job security. He will not play the fool or subjugate himself simply because of his effeminacy, or somewhat flabby buttocks, or his blue-collar background, or his small-to-average-sized penis.

  Every now and then he’ll ask his mother if he’s revealing too much, or if she’s bored, but she always shakes her head and says to keep talking. She is soothed by his chatter.

  He has never had much interest in drag, he tells her. And he’s so, so grateful that he doesn’t have to contend with the added headache of being transgendered, of hating the fact of one’s own genitals. That said, he does think it’s important that he at some point explore transgenderedness himself, even though he’s not transgende
red, because only through first-hand, journalistic experience can he be the best trans ally possible.

  “Boring now,” she whispers. “Tell Mom about how you used to want to be that girl from Fleetwood Mac, ’member that?”

  “Oh my God,” he says, rolling his eyes, “I am so over her. I was over her like six years ago.”

  “Come on, ’member when I walked in on you and you were having an imaginary fight, as the girl you like, with the other, nanny goat girl in Fleetwood Mac? Oh, you were so angry at her. You pretended to slap her.”

  “Mort-i-fy-ing. But yes, I did feel the need to champion Christine McVie. She was so talented and she just got shoved off to the side because she wasn’t as conventionally pretty as Stevie. And she carried that rejection with her, and now she walks the highlands of Scotland all alone with her dog and her cigarettes, with no makeup on.”

  “What? I — can’t feel my face. No, wait — yeah I can, sort of.”

  “Do you want me to get Dad?”

  “No, it’s fine. Keep talking.”

  “And in her solo concert video from ’84 she looks terrified and she refuses to come out from behind her piano. She’s like a beaten pet. It’s so sad. And when she starts to sing her only solo top-ten hit, ‘Got a Hold on Me,’ she —”

  “Okay, Jolie, that’s enough. Mom’s tired. You come back later.”

  Joel gets off the bed. This is how it’s been, and he doesn’t take it personally. She is so depleted that the mere presence of an upright, able-bodied person exhausts her. He goes to his room, sits before his video camera. He thought he’d have something to say, but now that he’s recording, he realizes he doesn’t have anything to say, only several languid poses he needs to strike for posterity.

  His dad calls for him. He checks his clock radio. It’s nearly nine pm. He’s been playing in front of his video camera for over an hour.