by Ivan Coyote
My mind reeled through the rest of our conversation. The details rolled around my head and only stuck later, because I had yet to fathom the first line. I heard her say he just got up and poured it all down the sink, that it had been over a month now, but I was still stuck on imagining my father without a drink in his hand and wondering what his voice might sound like, thin-tongued and without a tinkling soundscape of ice cubes behind it?
When I visited in July, he was clear-eyed and full of wisdom; simple, yet sublime. “I realized,” he said to me, swirling black tea with one sugar and tinned milk, “that it looks like I’m probably going to have the same wife, the same job, the same house, and work on this same little piece of ground for the rest of my life.” He paused to light a smoke with steady hands. “And that the only thing I could change was my attitude.”
We drove around town, going to pick up sheets of aluminium, welding rods, one-inch square tubing, and two-inch fine thread bolts, talking the whole time. It was just like when I was a kid, the only difference being that my dad now would allow the proud-biceped kid who worked in the warehouse load the really heavy stuff into the back of his pick-up. “Better his spine than mine,” he whispered to me out of the corner of his mouth by way of explanation. His hair was a streak of silver, so startling, I could never lose him in the aisles. He seemed shorter, somehow, than I remembered him.
He lit a smoke when we got back into the truck, letting it dangle from one corner of his bottom lip as he backed the truck up with one hand, his right arm draped over the back of the seat between us. He has always been able to do almost anything with a cigarette in his mouth like this. Somehow, the smoke never gets in his eyes. “You know what?” he asks, eyes on the road. “I used to drive downtown, just like this . . . before.”
“Before” is the term my dad uses. He will not say “when I was drinking.” He does not use the word alcoholic. Everything is just before, or after. You have to just let him talk. He won’t answer direct questions. I don’t push him, I’m just so glad it’s after now.
He continued, because I said nothing. “I used to drive around, and everything seemed like it was broken, or abandoned, or it needed a paint job. Nobody smiled. I really felt like it was hell right here on earth, some days.” He cleared his throat. “But now, I come down here, like today with you, and all I see is new construction, heavy equipment, girls in tight shirts . . . and a lot of chrome.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, to register my comprehension. “You know, all the things I like.”
After I got back, I was afraid to phone him all summer, afraid to hear that his voice had slowed and dropped, afraid he would let the phone ring and ring and I would know. Scared that things had changed, or worse, that they had gone back to being how I thought they always would be.
I called him last week; I had to finally, to see what he wanted for Christmas. He sounded fine, but the stone in my stomach didn’t dissolve until I heard him laugh. He didn’t laugh that much, before.
“Don’t get me anything. I’m good. Don’t you worry about me. Or, how ’bout you get me something we both know I’ll like. How ’bout you get me a carton of smokes?”
Comfort Food
The guy in the video store looked like he had shrunk; his skin hung over his skeleton. He sniffed, miserable, and half-tried not to cough on my video or my change. He was wearing his sickness like a lead poncho.
“You okay, man?” I asked, shaking my own head to answer so he didn’t have to. “You need some ginger ale?”
He furrowed his brows over red-rimmed eyes. “Ginger ale?” he snorted. “Why would I drink ginger ale? I’m sick, I’ve got the cold.”
His mother obviously had never introduced him to the magical healing powers of ginger ale, the poor dear. Maybe he only had a father, but still, his dad should have picked it up from his mother. He must be an orphan, I thought, feeling even sorrier for him. All alone, working, sick, and without parents or ginger ale. Makes a person realize how lucky they really are, I thought, as I walked with my collar up and fists in my pockets, the video steaming under my arm inside my winter coat.
I have always maintained that January in Vancouver curls my toes in fear more than the bitterest Yukon blizzard ever could. I remember blissfully playing outside as a kid up north, in minus thirty-two degrees Celsius, toasty and hatless. Earlier, I had stashed my toque and scarf in the mailbox at the end of our driveway so I could put them on while going back into the house, just to keep my mom off my case. Ask any fresh-faced prairie girl or northern tomboy, we all say the same thing for a reason. It’s a dry cold back home, a weather you can dress for. Not this wet snow and damp wind, this melt and freeze, this devil’s mix that wraps its moldy fingers around your bones and squeezes the heat right out from the middle of you.
Comfort food weather, and luckily I was already prepared.
Everyone has their own idea of comfort food; it is a cultural thing, for sure. I’m from simple stock, born and raised in a place where fresh vegetables had to travel four days by truck for a good part of the year, so most of my culinary comfort comes via a can opener. Lonely? Cold? Tired? Take one package of pork chops out of the deep freeze, thaw on counter while at work all day. Place in shallow oven pan. Add one can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and half a can of water. Make some rice. Do not invite vegetarian girlfriend for dinner, or mention to most of your friends what you are cooking. Your neighbour who grew up in the commune will not understand, but your buddy from Flin Flon or Yellowknife will be right over with a six-pack of Extra Old Stock. You can add sliced mushrooms and steam some broccoli as a side dish if you want to get fancy with it, but the true beauty of this meal lies in its adherence to tradition. Salt and pepper to taste. Best served at sixty-thirty while watching Jeopardy! or the news. If it’s the news, then you have to interject over mouthfuls of food, saying things like: “Have they all gone crazy? See what I mean, what happens when you put too many rats in one cage?” or, “They’re all most likely hopped up on speed,” or, “For the love of Christ, look who’s on the TV! Quick, get your sister on the phone.” Halfway through the news, switch the channel to the hockey game.
For dessert, you can follow this meal up perfectly with Neapolitan ice cream, making sure to leave the strawberry stripe still in the bucket.
My mom worked a lot, and could rarely take days off when my little sister or I were sick, but she used to do this thing for us that I still remember fondly. If I had the flu or a cold or something, when I dragged my ass downstairs wrapped in a comforter, I would find a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup sitting unopened in a saucepan on the counter. Beside these would be a can opener and a soup spoon, and directly to their right would be a carton of orange juice and a big glass. No matter how late or early I got up, this was exactly when the phone would ring.
“Did you find the soup?” she would ask.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Did you find the juice?”
“Sure did.”
“I’ll come home straight after work with some ginger ale. Make sure you stay warm.”
This was a point on which my parents disagreed. My mom would let us turn up the heat a bit when someone in the house was sick, whereas my father seemed convinced that having a furnace in the first place made a person weak, and thus prone to illness.
“Jesus,” he’d pant on his way in the door. “It’s like a fuckin’ sauna in here. What are we now, growing tomatoes?”
“The girls have colds, Don, so I let them turn the thermostat up a little.”
“I bet they’re sick,” he’d sneer, “with a tropical flu. I feel nauseous in here already.”
Comfort food for my dad was what he called “breakfast for dinner.” Bacon and eggs with hash browns, or French toast.
I recently surveyed a few friends, and asked them what comfort food meant to them. Here are the results, in no particular order: macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes (with or without gravy), Minute rice, rice pudding, Lipton chicken noo
dle soup in a foil-lined envelope, Campbell’s chicken noodle soup in a can, canned apple juice, canned peas, canned mandarin oranges, fish sticks with bake-in-the-oven French fries, hot chocolate, popcorn, and pancakes. Apparently starch and/or sugar equal sanctuary, and butter makes you feel better. Figures, eh? What makes you feel good isn’t all that good for you.
Except, of course, for ginger ale.
What I Did to My Finger
The show was over. The dancing girls had dropped their last sequins, the chanteuse was finished shedding feathers from her boa, the sailor boys were sipping scotch from pocket flasks, and it was time to pack up the sound gear so we could party.
People always say that time slows down during an accident, that every second stretches like an aching muscle through your memory in stop-motion, and it’s true. I remember having enough time to think, “Hey, I think that Exacto blade slipped and maybe I nicked myself a little and who the hell is bleeding all over the floor, anyway?”
The hip-hop artist at the bar saw the whole thing happen, and she grabbed my elbow and dragged me into the bathroom. “Jesus fuck me, what did you do to yourself?” She held my left hand under the cold water and pumped the paper towel dispenser with her foot. It is indeed true that alcohol thins the blood.
We pulled my hand out of the sink to survey the damage. A very deep, clean, slice pulsed red red over the second knuckle of my first finger. A calm, kind voice appeared, attached to a cute, blonde woman I had never seen before. “My name is Laurie, and I’m a gynecologist. Let me see your finger.”
The most quotable thing I had heard all night. Laurie the gynecologist took a stern look and proclaimed that a stitch or four was in order. So did the paramedic in the tuxedo, and the industrial first aid attendant in fishnets, both of whom had arrived in the tiny bathroom shortly after the gynecologist. This confirmed for me that the safest place to injure yourself is in a crowd full of dykes. Turned out we had a full emergency room staff in the house. My finger was wrapped in something that resembled a tall, skinny maxi-pad, and everyone resumed dancing.
I proceeded to attempt to get drunk enough to go to the emergency room still dressed in my sailor suit. One of the other sailors poured scotch into my wound as an added safety precaution, and sealed the maxi-pad back up with a strip of duct tape. More scotch was poured down my throat. I decided I didn’t need stitches after all, that a hospital visit would only take the edge off of my buzz. Besides, my finger hardly hurt at all anymore.
The next day, I woke up to my favourite kind of injury, the kind that looks really bad and is located on a readily visible area of your anatomy. I am willing to withstand quite a lot of pain, provided I have something to show for it. Bruises and swelling are good. Slings are enviable. Splints and crutches I can deal with, especially if they come with a good story. You know, hockey injury, saving a helpless kitten from a tree, foot crushed working in the pits at a monster truck rally, something like that.
The kind of pain I really resent is invisible pain. Lower back stuff. Sore knee. Headache. Pain without the accompanying booboos to show off. What fun is that?
Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark, when Harrison Ford gets dragged behind the truck and then gets a sponge bath from Karen Allen, and you can almost see her nipples right through her man’s dress shirt? I was twelve years old when that movie came out, and my best friend Joanne and I went to see it five times. We both loved that scene. She wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. I wanted to be the guy who hurt himself. I wanted the cold cloth and the iodine. I wanted the beautiful woman to crawl on top of me and kiss me in spite of my sling, cast, contusion, or split lip.
We had a really hot health nurse at my school for a while. During that time, I broke my collarbone, three fingers, sprained my ankle, stepped on a nail, and suffered various road rashes and assorted cuts. Our health nurse had extremely soft, warm hands and a French accent. She wore tight shirts and called me cherie. She would bandage me up and say, “Go back out dere and show dem ’ow it’s done. A leetle pain have never stopped you.”
One day I ripped my calf open on a peeled-back piece of chain-link fence. It was an excellent injury, bleeding and jagged, plus it was from a potentially rusty source. I immediately limped to the first aid room. There was a new health nurse. She smelled like cigarettes and wore a faded grey cardigan that was missing a button. I think I had met her once before, with my grandmother, at Wednesday Bingo at the Legion.
“Is Marie-Claude home sick today?” I asked her from the doorway.
“Marie-Claude is no longer with us. She has moved back to Montreal. My name is Mrs. Bunkis. You will need to remove your pants so I can properly inspect and clean your injury.”
I wasn’t any less accident-prone after Marie-Claude moved back to Montreal, I was just far less likely to seek medical attention. Mrs. Bunkis had icy hands and constantly sucked on cough drops that clicked against her false teeth. She said things like, “What, do you kids think, band-aids grow on trees? I’m on a budget here,” and, “I’ve always maintained that tire swings should be outlawed.” She only seemed to smile during vaccination week.
I couldn’t believe Marie-Claude had just up and left us like that, after all we had been through together. She could even remove stitches. She drove a metallic-blue Vega with dark-tinted windows, and in the spring, a motorcycle. Mrs Bunkis thought motorcycles should be outlawed. Said they were a hazard. Said a heath nurse ought to be setting a better example.
But I learned a lot from Marie-Claude. I learned that taking a risk might mean losing a bit of skin, but that you very well might get to trade that piece of skin for a sponge bath and soft hands. I learned that girls could ride motorcycles. I learned that skin heals and that scars can be sexy.
You wanna see what I did to my finger?
Take That
I had a forty-five minute layover in Ottawa, on my way to Halifax. I was halfway through my complimentary newspaper when I heard them arrive at the gate. Forty teenage girls and their thirty-something male chaperone were getting on the plane with me. The chaperone was one of those cool teachers, we all had one at some point, the kind who teaches gym or band and sports a ponytail and over-manicured facial hair. He’s the kind of guy who buffs his nails and lets the kids call him by his first name, which is usually Steve or Rick or Darryl. Maybe he smokes a little pot on the weekends, too, and plays a little acoustic guitar. He wears designer jeans and tight T-shirts that show off his well-muscled forearms. The girls all harbour not-so-secret crushes on him, because, you know, he like totally understands them, plus he’s handsome. The guys have more mixed emotions, a combination of wanting to be him and wanting to kill him, or at least one day beat him in an arm-wrestle. He calls everybody “buddy” or “kiddo.”
Steve or Rick or Darryl clapped his hands together to get the girls’ attention. “Okay, ladies, let’s line up, and have your ID ready. Don’t leave your garbage behind; let’s make a positive impression here, okay? Make sure you have your buddy with you.”
I buried my face in my newspaper. I’ve never been overly fond of teenage girls, especially in packs, even when I was attempting to be one. They’re a mean, judgmental lot, I find, and they still intimidate me. They whisper, they gawk, and they snicker. It takes me back, I can’t help it.
F.H. Collins High School in the early eighties was ruled by her highnesses Wendy, Tracy, Sandra, Jeanie, and Kerri-Anne. It was a time of big hair, small sweaters, and tight jeans. All five girls possessed all of these prerequisites. Their affections were highly sought after, and fleeting. They liked me once for half a day when they found out I was vaguely related by marriage to Jimmy Baker, my dad’s brother’s wife’s little brother, because he was cute, and had his own car. But I soon fell from their favour over my inability to grow breasts or like Depeche Mode.
At least they just pretended I didn’t exist after that. It could have been a lot worse. Ask “Pizza-Face’” Andrea Mullen or “Big-Fat” Alice Byers just how bad it could get.
&
nbsp; Not much has changed since then. The jeans cover even less skin, and the hair is a lot smaller, but the Wendys, Tracys, San-dras, Jeanies, and Kerri-Annes still rule the school, and I was getting on a plane with forty of them.
Everything was cool until I had to get up and go pee. The girls were all sitting at the back of the plane. The beverage cart was parked in the aisle two or three rows from the bathrooms. I was going to have to wait in line and be scrutinized by forty teenage girls.
My early teenage girl trauma was later complicated and compounded by the fact that I am often mistaken by them for a young man of appropriate cruising age. From eighteen rows away, I must have looked cute enough to check out. She had long, straight, copper-coloured hair and perfect skin and teeth. I disliked her immediately, just on principle. She fixed her blue eyes on me and elbowed her friend in the ribs. I pretended to be fascinated by my thumbnail and hated myself for caring about what I knew was going to happen next. Ten rows away all three girls held their heads together and giggled, still trying to catch my eye.
But five rows away, the redhead peeled her lashes back from her eyes and sat up straight. She dropped her magazine and gripped her armrests in horror. Her mouth gaped open. She stared shamelessly at me, and then leaned over and covered her face in her hands. Her girlfriends leaned in to see what was the matter. She whispered something to them and they plastered their mouths with their palms. The redhead made pretend gagging motions.
I was right beside them now, and could hear them.
“That is the grossest thing I’ve seen all year. Oh my God, what is it? Does it have boobs? You look. No I’m not looking, I feel to- tally sick. You check, Colleen, you were the one who thought he was cute. Was not. Were too. Oh my God, I can’t tell what it is.”