by Tina Chaulk
BJ continues to stare at me. “And what else? There’s something else.”
I glance at BJ then look away.
“My God, you got laid, didn’t you?”
“How’d you get that?”
“You did.” BJ smiles the way she always does. One grin can change her so she goes from gorgeous to breathtaking. Her smile, even when it’s sarcastic and smarmy, softens everything around her. It has made me laugh while sad tears rolled down my face; it has made me remember something I didn’t know I’d forgotten; and I looked for it in the days after Dad died. It didn’t come for a long time, and when it did I wanted for it to make me better, to make things right again. But not even her smile filled the space left behind.
“BJ.”
“I know these things. From the first time you did it with Craig Ferguson in Bessie’s backseat, I can pick up on it. You always look a little guilty after you’ve done the deed. Well, a lot guilty after that time in Bessie.” She giggles. “Man, we scrubbed that back seat so much I thought your dad would figure it out just by how clean it was. Never did that again, did you?”
I look at her and raise my eyebrows.
“Really?” she says.
“Jamie really liked that car.”
“Yeah, me too. Anyway, I guess last night is the reason for … for this.” Her index finger points its way up and down my body.
“What this?”
“This, this relaxed Jennifer thing. This, I don’t know. It’s like you let something go.”
I roll my eyes. “I did the nasty with Jamie, BJ. I didn’t have some kind of emotional awakening or anything.”
BJ’s eyes open almost as wide as her now gaping mouth. “Jamie? Well, you finally came to your senses, hey?” She smiles again. “I’m glad. It’s about time.”
“Came to my senses? How can you say that after what he did to me?”
“Come off it, Jennifer. We both know he bent over backwards for you and you locked him out.”
“You always take his side. I caught him. With her.”
“Doing something he had every right to do. You can’t take away someone’s food and then get mad when he lets someone else feed him.”
“What? What kind of weird comparison is that?”
“It’s called a metaphor.”
“I’d call it stupid. And I’m sick of you always picking up for him. I don’t understand. You always said he sponged off me and that he was lazy.”
“But you were good together and you were happy with him. He can’t be perfect.”
I shake my head. “I just wonder whose side you’re on.”
Her tilted head makes me want to smack her.
“Yeah, just like I figured,” I say. I pick up my coat and walk out the door.
“Jennifer. Don’t leave. Come on. I was just saying.”
“Yeah, I know what you’re just saying.” I slam the door behind me. On BJ’s front step, I stare at the pouring rain. For once, I’m grateful for it. I can let my tears go and no one needs to know.
9
BEFORE DAD’S DEATH, the worst day of my life was one where I placed a piece of paper down on a desk.
I laid the cheque down in Dad’s office. Jamie stood behind me and closed the door. Once the door closed, there was a strange silence that blocked out all the noise in the garage so that I heard Jamie’s sneaker squeak on the floor when he moved.
“What’s this?” Dad asked, looking up at me from the old orange desk chair. At least it used to be orange. It was more of a dark brown now with streaks of grease and dirt all over it. He suddenly looked small in that chair.
“It’s a cheque.”
“Yes, I can see that. But what’s it for?” He picked up his Shoppers Drug Mart reading glasses and placed them on his nose, pulling the cheque back from his face then closer until it must have come into focus.
“This is for $25,000,” he said, looking back up at me, over his glasses. “To Collins Motors.”
“We want to invest in the business,” I said.
He chuckled and shook his head, looking down. Without looking back up he tore the cheque in two, then four pieces. “It’s not that bad.”
“It is that bad, Dad. I see the books, remember? I know how much you owe the contractors and how much the lumber and supplies have gone up. I know you didn’t bargain for that idiot not allowing for the ramps and the garage door when he put down the floor, and I know how much it cost to replace that floor. So, I know how bad it is.”
He stood up. I couldn’t read his face. Was it anger or hurt or pride or love? I didn’t know. I never could read him, but in that moment I didn’t know if there was any one thing he felt. Or was I just watching a struggle going on inside him?
“I can get more money from the bank. Now, go on out there and don’t let me hear this from you ever again.” His voice was stern, one reserved for slow-to-pay customers and errant mechanics. “It’s just a shortfall.”
I just stood there. I knew I couldn’t leave the office, knew I had to accomplish this mission. But my mouth was so dry I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a sound if I opened it.
“No, sir, you can’t,” Jamie’s voice from behind me said. The exact reason he had come here with me.
We’d argued about it the night before.
“I don’t need you to come with me, Jamie. You’re nuts. He’s my father,” I’d said. I took my feet off the coffee table and stomped them on the floor.
Jamie was in the kitchen when he’d started the conversation. He walked out to the living room and stood over me.
“Yes, and that’s exactly the problem. If he says ‘no’ or ‘drop it’ then you’ll just give up. Damn it, why are you so stubborn with every single person except him? Oh, that’s right, you are him.” He motioned his hand toward me in a karate chop. “Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn. But if Daddy says ‘boo,’ you put your hands up and admit defeat.”
“That’s not true,” I said, my voice even.
“See, just the fact that you’re not screaming at me that you’re right and I’m wrong means that I am so right.” He knelt down in front of me and put his hands on my knees. “Where’s my fighter? Where’s my heels-dug-in, immovable object, battle-until-the-death fighter?”
“I’m here. I just don’t want to fight Dad. You know he won’t want to take it. Everyone knows that and still, here I am, committed to making sure he does. I’m all in on this. No going back now.”
“We’re all in on this.”
“It’s not the same for you and you know it,” I said.
“Just because I didn’t put in as much as you. If Mom and Dad could have loaned me more, I would have.”
“I don’t mean that. I know you gave everything you could.”
“Nah, just another time I’m Jennifer’s sponge.”
“What?”
“You heard me. Jennifer’s sponge. I know that’s what BJ calls me. I heard her say it lots of times.”
“It’s just a joke, Jamie.” I shook my head and smiled. “She doesn’t mean it.”
“She pretends it’s a joke. She laughs and winks when she says it, but you know she means it. And I know you used to argue with her about it. I know you asked her not to say it.”
“How …” But before I could form the question I realized the answer. “Michelle should shut up.”
“It’s not her. It’s not even BJ.” He touched the side of my face with his soft, gentle hand. “It’s your opinion that matters.” He took his hand away and turned his head. “And I overheard BJ call me that again the other night. At Billy Newman’s party. And you didn’t say a word to defend me. Just bent your elbow and tipped up your glass.”
I didn’t have anything honest to say to defend myself. “I didn’t hear her say that.”
“I just think that with both of us investing in this, I can feel like I’m contributing.” He stood up, crossed one arm and his voice got soft. “I don’t want to be the sponge. That’s why I got the money from Mom and Dad.”<
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I stared at him for a second or two, waiting to spot some sign that he could see the irony in what he just said. But I could tell he didn’t.
“It doesn’t matter either way, Jamie. He won’t take it.”
“Well, that’s why I’ll be there. I can stand up to him better than you.” He looked down at the floor. “Even a sponge can stand up to him better than you.”
In the office, Dad looked past me to Jamie. “What did you say to me?” Dad squinted his eyes and I knew it wasn’t because he couldn’t see Jamie.
“I said that you can’t get money from the bank. Not against the debt you already have. With the garage already mortgaged and your house still not paid off, you can’t get a loan for what you owe.”
Those were my words I’d practiced the night before over and over. Jamie even used the same tone and intonation as I had in our kitchen, emphasis on both “can’t’s.”
Jamie walked past me and put another cheque on the desk, the same as the one Dad had just torn up. I hated to think Dad was predictable, but Jamie had been exactly right in knowing what my father would do. Even though I argued with him and told him Dad would never tear up something I gave him.
“I can rip up this cheque too, you know,” Dad said, standing up and staring Jamie in the face.
“Yes, I know you can. But we have a whole box of them and we can keep signing them as long as you keep tearing them.” Jamie turned, put his hand around mine, and pulled me along with him, turning me around as he did. He opened the office door. I stopped and stood still until Jamie pulled a little harder. I took three steps toward the door before Dad spoke.
“Where’d you get the money?”
I took another step.
“Where’d you get the money?”
“I don’t think that matters,” Jamie said, standing outside the office door. I’d pulled my hand away but Jamie reached out to me, motioning to take his hand again.
“Jennifer. I know you don’t make that much money to get another big loan. Not with the mortgage and the car … payment.”
The pause after car. He knew and I didn’t have to turn around to see it. I could feel it in the way the air in the office changed, in the way the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Come on, Jennifer,” Jamie said, stepping inside the doorway and touching my hand.
“Tell me that if I go out to Storage Mart, I’ll still find her there in the container.” Dad’s voice was full of panic.
“She did what she had to do, Mr. Collins,” Jamie said, squeezing my hand and looking past me as he spoke. “She said it was the hardest thing she’s ever done but she did it. For you. And I got some money together too.”
“Jennifer.” Dad’s voice sounded like someone was letting the air out of it. I heard the squeak of the orange chair as he sat down. “My dear, go buy it back.” His voice was soft until his next word — loud, firm and angry. “Now!”
I shook my head, still not turning around. “Buddy’d never sell her back to me. He’s been wanting one like her his whole life. He loves that car.”
“Like me. Like you. Like you did.”
I finally turned around. His face was full of anger and pain but mine was full of tears, and when he saw them he looked away.
“I did what I had to do, Dad. I, we, could lose her or you could lose everything. My car. My choice. I wish there was some other way but …” I looked down. “My car. My choice.”
This time, when I turned around, I managed to keep walking, out the office door, past Jamie, out to the bathroom where I stared at the grey concrete floor and cried.
Dad never said another word to me about it. His lawyer came in the garage the next day and Jamie and I signed partnership papers with lots of heretofores and aforementioneds and not withstandings and the party ofs. When it was done Dad didn’t hug me, which I didn’t expect anyway, or didn’t even shake Jamie’s hand. He just got up and walked out of the garage. He didn’t come back until the next morning when he greeted me as he always did, with a gruff “good morning” and a “probably going to be a slow day today,” a phrase he used superstitiously to avoid such slow days.
Mom whispered to me, the following Sunday when we went for dinner at her house, “Thank you. He won’t ever say it, but I know he appreciates it too.” She shook her head. “And I’m sorry. I know how much that car meant to you.”
“Do you really think he appreciates it? That he’s not mad at me?” The words, the desperate tone behind them, were out before I could think not to say them.
“Yes.” She touched my hand and nodded. “I know he appreciates it and I know he’s not mad at you.”
And just like that last year I still believed in Santa Claus but began to have my doubts—started noticing that Santa’s gift wrapping and tags were always the same as the ones Mom bought and the wrapped presents under the tree always had a faint scent of Mom’s perfume on them — I told myself she would not lie to me about something important like that.
When I leave BJ’s, it’s too early to visit Nan. Mornings at the home are a time of bathing and breakfast and nursing reports. I need to kill a couple of hours before Bryce gets fired, so after I run home for a quick shower, I get dressed in workpants and a Newfoundland Liberation Army t-shirt from Living Planet, my favourite t-shirt store. I go outside town to Conception Bay South, where I don’t expect to run into anyone I need to avoid.
I pick up a few groceries at Sobeys and a couple of bottles at the liquor store. When I come out of the store, the rain is gone and the sun is shining. The temperature gauge in my car tells me it’s twenty-two degrees already. I wonder if it’s this nice in town. I’ve seen it raining in St. John’s and sunny and ten degrees hotter in CBS. Seen it the other way around a couple of times too but not many.
I’m on the way out the main road in Chamberlains, with a view of beautiful Conception Bay to the left of me. The water is dead calm, flat as the glass in the antique mirror Jamie gave me on our last anniversary, the one with the card that said so you can see how beautiful you are.
I take a detour to Topsail Beach, down the narrow, weaving road to the parking lot where I just sit and stare. There are sailboats in the bay, dogs chasing sticks thrown in the ocean; a toddler places his sneakered foot in the water in the second before his mother gets to him.
Nan would love to be here. How her face would light up whenever she’d see the salt water. A memory jabs me, places soft pain in the pleasure of this moment. A trip out here, not long before she went in the home.
“You got a new car, my lover,” Nan had said as I held her arm and eased her into the seat of my convertible Mustang. “She’s some nice.”
“Thank you,” I answered, despite the fact that I’d had the car for five years and she’d been it in many times.
We drove out to Conception Bay South, making our way to Holyrood first then back to Manuels. Nan remembered some things right, some things wrong and some things not at all, but throughout our drive she’d blended all of those memories into a collage of Nan. She spun yarns about Kenmount Road when it was just a remote place where people had cabins they would visit on the weekends, not the bustling commercial mainstay of car dealerships, hotels, taverns and restaurants it is now. She told me about cleaning house for the Crosbies when she was a young girl and remembered the day I was born.
“I never saw your father cry, not as a man, you know,” she said, a slight smile on her wistful face. “But when he called me, he said, ‘Grace had a girl.’ I heard his voice break and he couldn’t finish his words. Got all filled up, he did, and when he tried again, he still couldn’t get it out. I told him, ‘That’s all right, my love. I knows what you’re saying.’” She turned to me. “He was some proud.”
I wanted to tell her she never told me that before, but I couldn’t finish my words either.
We kept driving. Nan told me three more times that she liked my new car and must have ignored the layer of dust on the dash to even imagine it was new.
&
nbsp; We stopped at Bergs and I went inside for an ice cream cone for each of us, idly telling her I’d be back in a moment. When I walked out of the store, hurrying to get the ice cream to Nan before it started to melt, I stopped at the sight of the empty car. I was so mad at myself for leaving her alone, as if my memory had failed me and somehow I’d forgotten who Nan had become. I scanned the area and saw her, sitting at a picnic table, smiling and waving at me. I stared at her, the arrested portrait of my Nan as she once was: a happy Nan, smiling and enjoying fresh air and waiting for ice cream. I stood looking at her until melted ice cream dripped down my hand and pulled me out of my spell. I ran to the picnic table, where we frantically ate our ice cream, running a race to finish it before the sun changed it to something else.
She’d told me she wanted to go to Topsail Beach after we left Bergs, but before I could get there she started to cry, to scream really, scared of something I didn’t understand. I raced to get her back to somewhere familiar, but even Mom and Dad’s house didn’t do, and it took a long time to settle her down after I brought her back there.
The beach doesn’t hold my interest anymore. I’m thinking of Nan and when my mind does wander to something else, thinking about Nan seems the better alternative, no matter how sad it is. At least I can’t blame her for anything she does. More than I can say about most of the people in my life.
At the home, the nurses are nowhere to be seen before I get to Nan’s room. All busy, I suppose. Nan’s door is open and I know this is a good sign. I poke my head in and look around.
“Jennifer, how good to see you,” Nan says with a smile. Her hair is combed and she’s wearing a pretty blue dress she used to wear to church. I realize how much weight she’s lost as the dress hangs off her the same way Dad’s shirt and pants hung off a scarecrow we made one Halloween.
“Nan, you look beautiful.”
“Thank you. A lady has to keep herself up.” She stands up and twirls around. “Julie helped me with my hair,” she says of her roommate, who’s probably at her usual place in front of the piano in the common room.
She smiles for a bit before her face changes to a frown. “Why aren’t you at work? Now, don’t stay away just because Jamie’s there.” She tilts her head. “He’s some sweet, Jennifer. You should get back together.”