The Higher the Monkey Climbs

by Bruce Geddes

  It seemed likely that Inés was counting on that.

  Slowing to a stop at the first stop light in Wanstead, I turned off the radio. The streets were dark and empty, the parking lots deserted. I was tempted to drive into one of them, to make donuts until the tires went bald. I opened the window and inhaled a familiar, slightly acrid smell. The air felt moist on my skin.

  Because the truth—I can now admit—was this: Inés and I had been struggling. Maybe not struggling; the word implies that we had been putting some effort into the downfall of our marriage. For the same reason we weren’t on the rocks, or teetering. Ours was a passive kind of disintegration, friction without heat. It didn’t help the coolness between us that with her night job we rarely saw each other for more than a couple of hours a day, hours that were spent dealing with administrative matters. Has the water bill been paid? Can I throw out these flyers? Did you make the dentist appointment? Could you sign Sagipa’s report card?

  When it was good, ours was a socially active marriage but we no longer entertained, our ongoing series of dinner parties and cocktail gatherings suspended when our most frequent guests and hosts began to produce schedule-impairing children. Or if their new children weren’t the problem then it was that so many of my friends were doing so rewardingly well. Senior partners, out of debt, into second homes and third cars, Alfa Romeos kept under canvas in their garages, brought out only in summer. Full-patch members at the Granite, Toronto, and Rosedale Clubs. Tutors for the children, readying for entrance exams to UCC and BSS. While we made do at Leon’s they furnished their homes at Roche Bobois and set their dining room tables with Bernardaud and Sambonet, the hostess complaining one night that the maid had laid out cabernet glasses after she had been told three times that the main course for the evening would be Chilean sea bass. (“It’s on the endangered list, I know,” she had explained. “But better to eat it now before it’s all gone, right?”)

  We had always enjoyed those evenings, the multiple courses of grilled meat and sauced fish, the elegant wines and bubbly water, the cutlery that felt heavy in our hands. Snooping, we made a point to peek into bedrooms, even going so far to sit on the beds, king sized wombs of goose down and thousand thread counts. But when we returned to the townhouse, the taste of Morbier and ice wine lingering on our tongues and in our stifled belches, we surveyed our shrunken space and knew we could never reciprocate. For a while, we tried to feel superior because we didn’t have as much money as them. But that didn’t work for very long.

  Inés, who disliked most of humanity, disliked nearly all of my friends. She reserved her greatest odium for their spouses, dismissed their fruity martinis, their three-hundred dollar hair appointments, their chatter on fluctuating real estate values and newly tested restaurants. When one of them, the be-pearled wife of a newly knighted partner at McNaughten Fletcher, gave birth to their first child, Inés was disappointed to learn it had been via Caesarean. “Too bad,” she said. “I’d have hoped a natural birth would loosen the cunt up.”

  When she insulted my friends like that, I said nothing. Even when I agreed. Because I knew somewhere buried in her jabs was something directed at me for keeping their company. At the same time, the two dozen words of Spanish I had mastered, all nouns modified by either mucho or poco, kept me seated and silent or hiding in the kitchen pretending to wash dishes whenever Inés’ circle of Colombian ex-pats gathered to reminisce about better climates and sweeter fruits. What it meant, I have come to realize, was that our social life only served to underline what we mostly had in common: that we were both outsiders in each other’s worlds.

  And then, turning onto O’Neill Street, I thought about Sagipa. Poor Sagipa. For all his talk about the need to adjust to the coming Chinese era, I didn’t know how well he was equipped to deal with the kind of upheaval about to flood his life. After eight years of me, there would be a new man emerging shampooed and towel-wrapped from the bathroom. He would enforce new rules and policies on agenda items like shoes in the house, week-night curfews, and web surfing. There would be new television habits to absorb, new table manners to tolerate. Manolo would impose structure where none existed before and topple existing foundations to make room and even the most flexible soul can get bent out of shape when that happens. It made me think of the changes in our house after Gord died and the way my mother and I went loopy in uncomplimentary ways.

  I wasn’t sure that Inés—changing the kid’s name to Cuxinimpaba, righting a wrong like a shamed accounting firm in the wake of a book-cooking scandal—would understand it that way.

  23

  The next morning, I woke up cold on the sofa at Aunt Louise’s house, my neck cramped, the plastic covering threatening fusion with the skin on one arm.

  “Last night was free,” Louise announced. “But starting tonight, it’s fifty bucks, payment due in advance.”

  “A bargain at twice the price,” I said.

  “I have enough problems.” She straightened her housecoat, tightened the belt across her rounded waist. “Food and laundry is extra.”

  A shower would have been an imposition, I figured, and so, in the downstairs bathroom, I splashed water to my face, running wet hands several times through my hair. By the time I was done, Tony was up, scratching the skin below his cast with a straightened wire clothes hanger. Louise sat on the sofa beside the folded blankets and reached for a WordSearch puzzle book, hunkered in for the day. It was my suggestion to go out for breakfast. Tony handed me my coat from the closet. I waved towards the living room, where Tony’s mother squinted at the WordSearch book, twisting for a better look at the diagonally hidden words.

  “See you later, Louise,” I said.

  “This is the world. Do what you want.”

  We started at Betty’s, ate eggs and bacon, toast and jam, drank coffee and orange juice. When Tony offered me a shot from his flask, I accepted. He must have been wondering why I had showed up last night, looking for a friendly place to crash.

  “Forgot to make reservations at the Marriott,” I claimed before he could ask. “I just figured they’d have room.”

  “I’ve never heard of the place being full, either,” Tony said.

  “Maybe the recession is over,” I said.

  At Betty’s, using a knife to reach itches below the cast on his arm, Tony peered out the window at the UCF Building and the door he had tried to blow-up. The tarp had been replaced with planking, though the edges remained charred. He was waiting for me to say something. He must have assumed I was there to talk justice for Forzante. I ordered more toast, slathered peanut butter liberally, chewed slowly, if only to keep my mouth full and quiet.

  Outside, we walked in near unison along a heaving sidewalk. The sameness of the semi-detached homes around Betty’s gave way to an older, less generic collection of houses. Homes built in the 1920s, three-storey piles that once sheltered the city’s industrial pioneers, their beneficiaries in banking and law, and a ­number of bootleggers. Harry Clifford was the most successful of the latter and he celebrated his fortune by building an enormous place on four adjoining lots. In his day, Clifford counted himself among the super wealthy, having helped keep tipplers in the United States saturated throughout the prohibition years. He once dealt directly with the Purple Gang, chummed on Hastings Street with Abe Bernstein, and held monthly consultations with Bugs Moran. The house itself was the subject of Wanstead myths. Stories told of vaults full of cash, radio rooms to speed orders, and secret tunnels leading from the house to a hidden airfield, where a pilot, Hubert ‘The Black Eagle’ Julian, remained on constant call, the engines of his Fokker always warm.

  You could see that someone was taking good care of Clifford’s old house. Hedges lining the horseshoe drive were trimmed to precise angles. Windows gleamed, the woodwork neatly painted. A recently replaced downspout still shined in copper against the grey stone. A man with a crew cut, a linebacker type, stood guard near a wheelchair ramp l
eading to the front door, twisting his head slowly to scan left, then right, his arms folded over his puffy chest, his jacket sleeves stretched taut over his biceps.

  “Who lives there now?” I asked.

  Tony looked at me as though I ought to have known. “Allistair Forzante,” he said.

  This came as a shock. When I was last living in Wanstead, the Forzante house was much more modest. Nice, bigger than ours, but not extravagant. “Forzante lives there?”

  “For the last fifteen years or so.”

  “Are prices here that low?”

  Tony pushed his ball cap back on his head with an open palm. “You really think Al Forzante needs to hunt bargains?”

  The sun was out now and the warmth was pleasant and clean. We passed the old high school, our beloved Richmond C.I., once known for academics, now recognized for an innovative stay-in-school program for pregnant teenagers. I was ­thinking I would tell Tony about Inés and was digging around for the best tone when suddenly, before I could even comment, we were turning onto Aberdeen, the street where I grew up. We weren’t wandering at all, I thought. Tony had led me here. Somehow, I was surprised.

  A few hundred feet on and Tony stopped us in front of the old house, our footfalls simultaneous. I took a good look. Plastic toys lay scattered from the tulip beds to the driveway. I noted the changes: Venetian blinds, many of their slats bent at odd angles, had replaced chiffon draperies. An iron safety railing now surrounded the porch. The stone sidewalk had been torn up, replaced by smooth, easy-to-shovel concrete. There were other changes I’m sure, but I couldn’t claim to remember every detail. The house was different, that’s all.

  A young woman, maybe thirty, her hair tied back and tight like a cheerleader’s, came onto the driveway. On her chest, a strapped-in infant struggled against its restraints while a second kid tugged at her hand. She pushed a button and lights on the mini-van blinked. With one kid secured in his seat, she began working on the other and then noticed Tony and me standing near the opposite curb.

  “Is that you, Tony?”

  “Heya, Rachel,” Tony said.

  “You look well.”

  Tony nodded.

  “It’s good to see. I’m glad.”

  Tony cleared his throat, phlegm gurgling. I waited for an introduction that never came. Tony seemed a little embarrassed. When her kids were secured, the woman drove off, waving to us through the tinted window.

  “You know her?” I said.

  “She’s a nurse at the Vic.”

  “You were in the hospital?”

  “My mum was in there for a while, so . . .”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They didn’t tell you?”

  “Something with her stomach?”

  “Serious?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Do I look like a doctor? Rachel’s married to some accountant. I don’t even know if she still works at that hospital.” Tony was staring at the house, into the living room where Gord once promised him a pardon for his violence in the boxing ring.

  “I like that about this city,” I said. “People know each other. They know who’s married to who. They remember names.”

  “What are you saying you want to move back?”

  “I’ve thought about moving,” I said. “From time to time I think about it.”

  We started walking again. “Toronto no longer to your liking?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I get this feeling I don’t really belong there.” I was talking about the feeling of detachment. “Plus it’s too expensive and the traffic is terrible.”

  “And all the sports teams suck,” Tony said.

  “Which is the biggest reason of any,” I said.

  We arrived at a small park where the Richmond Cougars once played their football games. The program had been cancelled and the field was gone now, replaced by random trees, a jungle gym, and a wading pool, emptied of its water for winter, its slopping banks dotted with dog shit. “This rotten city,” Tony said. “What do we pay taxes for?”

  “Inés and I are breaking up,” I said.

  Tony looked at me. He nodded.

  “For good?”

  “It just happened,” I said. “Just yesterday. I think it’s for good. That’s why I needed to crash at your place. I really didn’t want to be at my house.”

  “Things not working out?”

  “People grow apart.”

  “Is that what happened with you?”

  “I guess we’re just not the same people anymore.”

  “Is that why you’re splitting up?”

  “We’re actually very different, when you think about it.”

  “Is that what’s ending it?”

  I swallowed and steadied my hands by stuffing them into my jacket pockets and looked away from Tony’s blunt questions. Still, it felt good to speak with him about it and I think I was grateful that he was so willing to ignore my attempt to keep to the shallow end of the story.

  “She’s leaving me, actually,” I said, beginning to walk again.

  “You never know what women want.”

  “She wants to be with her ex.” I told Tony about Manolo, his migration to Canada, his fledgling career as a business ­writer.

  “No,” Tony said. “No, no, no. That is not right. You do not do that. Walk into another man’s house and steal his wife? No. Never. These are principles. Rules.”

  I wanted to agree. I knew that Tony was speaking from conviction and not merely telling me what I wanted to hear. But this was the thing: I was not feeling the loss. Or if I felt it, it was easier for me to accept than anyone would think possible. Still: “She’s not my property,” I said. “I don’t own her.”

  “You don’t understand what I’m saying. People are fucks. That’s why I don’t like being with people anymore.”

  “I haven’t been the best for her,” I said. “She has something different with Manolo. Something we never had. Something more fundamental. Their connection, it’s just deeper than ours ever was, I guess.”

  Tony shut his eyes tight and shook his head. “That’s not the point. That’s not the point. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.”

  “It’s for the best.”

  Tony looked away from me and squinted, looking confused. He lit another cigarette and spat. We crossed an empty street against a red light. I thought I ought to explain all the things that made my marriage a bad one. But then Tony looked at his watch and, his mood shifting with an idea, suggested we go for a drink.

  “I’m buying,” he said. “To cheer you up.”

  “I don’t need any cheering. I swear I don’t.”

  “Couple shots of Jack to start and we’ll see where that goes.”

  “Look at me. I’m not even that upset. I was. But it lasted maybe twenty minutes.”

  “It’s this place just up here a bit.”

  “You mean TCs?”

  “You remember TCs?”

  “Sure, I do,” I said. “One shot and then I’m leaving.”

  Located across the street from the windowless, brown-sided Ferguson Wheel Works, TCs Bar once knew a booming lunch-time business. Those were in the rich years when Ferguson buzzed with three shifts a day and thirsty workers, lunch boxes in tow, dollar bills waving, flooded the joint at each break. At three for a buck, an accomplished drinker could finish six or nine single drafts, choke down his bologna sandwich, his carrot sticks, his Ding Dong, and be back at his station on the line, fuelled up to face the rest of the day before his twenty-three minute break expired.

  But then one unhappy afternoon, a lunchtime regular drove his jitney into a two-storey stack of wheel frames and watched gaped-mouthed as they swayed, first backward, then forward, and tumbled down onto his unprotected head. Before the corpse was in the gr
ound his widow had called the lawyers from the full page ad on the back of the Yellow Pages. Ferguson’s own counsellors insisted on an autopsy, their suspicions confirmed when the blood tests showed intoxicating levels of booze in the dead man’s blood. Popular sentiment and outrage moved the bosses to implement a strict drug and alcohol policy and from that day, workers were plucked randomly from the line and told by white-coated killjoys to piss into a cup, their sample tested for alcohol, marijuana, and opiates; one strike and you’re out. Business at TCs suffered the consequences; former co-workers cursed the jitney driver’s memory as they worked soberly through their shifts.

  When he heard about the urine testing and that the WAW hadn’t opposed, Allistair Forzante salivated at the opportunity for his UCF. “The fools,” he said. Surely the workers, the guys he knew at least, wouldn’t stand for this violation of their privacy and would blame the WAW for failing to protect their hard-won rights. Once the dead guy was forgotten, Ferguson’s would be ripe for a raid.

  He was wrong, of course. Soon enough, the WAW instituted a substance abuse program to help ease the most difficult ­transitions and in a single short year, Ferguson Wheel boasted one of the best safety records of any factory in the country, union and management taking equal measures of credit.

  Tony and I chose a table at the back and sat below a fading poster celebrating the 1984 World Series Champions, the glass cracked in a lower corner. I stretched my legs under the table, twisted my ankles in small, stiff circles and picked up a spare copy of the Echo, noting another advertisement for Al Forzante’s 90TH birthday celebrations, urging UCF members to book their tables soon. I tossed it to the side and browsed the menu.

  “I see they no longer serve pickled eggs,” I said.

  “The fried pepperoni’s gone too,” Tony said. “TC and I had words about that.”

  “What happened there?”