Few Kinds of Wrong

by Tina Chaulk

  Oh, Nan, I need you to forget for today. Wrong time for one of your good days.

  I wonder about these moments of semi-lucidity when things become clear. Does she recognize that she is in a home or that she forgets most of the time? She must, I think, because she’s here in her room and has spoken of Julie. She remembers my name and the details of what’s happening with me and Jamie. But she isn’t crying as she sometimes does when she wishes she was in her old house, the one she shared with Pop for forty-six years. Perhaps there is some blessed part of her disease that lets her remember just enough and blacks out everything else.

  “What’s happening on your stories? Did Deirdre—”

  “How’s your mom?” Nan interrupts.

  “Good.”

  “That’s nice. She told me she’s going back to school.”

  “More than she told me,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Nan, I was out to Topsail Beach this morning—” “Jennifer, your father’s gone now. Your mother’s all you got, my lover. So be nice to her.”

  Suddenly I’m nine years old and am getting told off for taking strawberries from Nan’s garden.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, Nan, I heard you.”

  “Don’t snap at me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.” I don’t know where to look so she won’t find me, won’t see me, won’t judge me.

  “All right. Now, tell me about Topsail Beach. I remembers when that seemed so far away. Sure, Kenmount Road was out in the country and the only thing out there was cabins.”

  “Did you have a cabin out there?” I ask. I can hear the story for the hundredth time. I don’t mind a bit.

  10

  I LISTEN TO Nan tell me the history of St. John’s until she has to eat dinner, then I go to Lucky’s Chinese Restaurant for my own lunch. I walk into the garage a little after two, sure that, by now, Bryce would be applying for Employment Insurance in Pleasantville. One turn around the corner tells me I’m wrong. Bryce is sitting in the office. Jamie is nowhere to be seen.

  The heat in the garage is stifling. It’s twenty-five outside and maybe five or ten degrees hotter inside, even more if you’re working on an engine. I’m never sure which time of year is worse in a garage — the heat of summer days when you can’t seem to quench your thirst or breathe anything but a roasting heat, or the frozen days of winter when snow and ice melt off vehicles, water dripping down your neck and back while you work under the cars, a slow water torture all day, every day.

  “Hey,” I call out to Ray. “Is Jamie around?”

  He points to a Toyota Camry and I see Jamie’s black steel-toed boots sticking out from the car’s interior.

  “Flynn,” I yell, walking toward the Toyota and causing several heads to turn my way. I don’t look toward the office.

  Jamie bumps his head on the edge of the car door as he tries to get out.

  “Why is that man in my office?” I point at the office but still don’t turn toward it.

  “Our office. And I tried. He wouldn’t leave.”

  “What do you mean, he wouldn’t leave? I’m going out for an hour and if you have to call the cops to do it, he had better be gone when I get back.”

  “You’ll need to do it yourself,” Bryce says behind me.

  “Fine. You’re fired,” I say, spinning around to face him. “Now get the hell out of my garage.”

  “What? What’s going on?” Rick asks over the sound of an air gun across the garage.

  “Do you want to do this here? Or in the office?” Bryce crosses his arms as he speaks.

  “I’ve done it.” I walk toward the office. I go so fast I almost break into a run, hoping Bryce isn’t following me but with every certainty that he’s doing just that.

  I try to close the office door once I’m inside, but Bryce pushes back on it, keeping it open. He’s inside the office and has the door closed in seconds, moving faster than I expect.

  I look out the big office window and see Jamie standing in the middle of the garage, a couple of guys talking to him as he stares at me, mouth open. I don’t feel hate for him in this moment. My anger is altered and the target of it stands next to me. From the corner of my eye I can see that his arms are still crossed and he leans against the door.

  “Get out. Get out or I call the cops.”

  “No.”

  “Fine.” I pick up the phone and realize I can’t call 911. This isn’t an emergency in any book but mine. I need the regular police phone number and so I look for the phone book amongst the rubble on the desk.

  “What bothers you the most?” he asks.

  “You’re bothering me.”

  “No, what’s bothering you the most? Is it me or her? Is it that she’s happy?”

  “I don’t know that she’s happy. Just that you found your way into her bed. Maybe she’s just a—”

  “Watch what you say about her,” he interrupts, and I realize I’m not sure how I’d have finished the sentence. All the words that race through my mind make me feel like I’m less of a person for thinking them. I feel my face turning red.

  “I’ll say what I want. You’re not my father. You just play him here. And now in his house too. You’re not half the man he is.”

  “Was. The man he was. That’s what you need to realize.”

  “Get out.” A trickle of sweat runs down my face but I won’t wipe it away.

  “You’re certainly his daughter though. Your way or the highway, isn’t it? You don’t care who it hurts as long as things go the way you want them to. You’re just like your father. Selfish.”

  I feel his face on my hand before it registers what I’m doing. The red mark on his cheek stings my palm. I bite my lip until it hurts more than my hand does, and get the metallic taste of blood.

  Bryce opens the door and turns away, standing in the doorway, his back to me. “Your problem is the truth. You can’t accept it. It’s not always pretty but the truth is the truth, and whether you like it or not, at some point you have to face it.” He turns his head enough that he can look at me from the corner of his eye. “He’s dead. She’s not.”

  He closes the door behind him and I watch him walk out. He’s shaking people’s hands, patting them on the back. The guys are standing there with open mouths and wide eyes, shaking their heads. Every now and then one of them glances at the office then looks away.

  It starts with Rick. He turns his look from Bryce to me, walks to his toolbox, puts the wrench he’s been holding into a drawer, turns to me again and slams the box shut. Alan follows, then Ray. They all close their toolboxes. Rick walks over to Gerry, who leaves the counter and walks out of the garage with the rest of the guys.

  Jamie stands in the middle of a quiet, empty garage and shrugs. I stare at him until he storms into the office.

  “Do something,” he shouts. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite this panicked. “They’re leaving. They’re all quitting.”

  “I didn’t ask them to leave. I can’t work with Bryce.” I shake my head. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “Bullshit. You can ask them to come back. Let Bryce come back. I get a say in this, you know.”

  “How can I forget?”

  The anger is draining out of me and I’m being filled with nothing else. I’m empty and I don’t care anymore.

  “If you can’t work with Bryce and the guys won’t work without him, then maybe you should leave.” He stands taller and pulls back his shoulders, thrusting out his chest. “Maybe you need to take one for the team.”

  I know that if I wasn’t so devoid of feeling, I’d roll my eyes. Jamie and his crazy sense of drama. Take one for the team. Well, I’ll match your drama.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.” Words I never thought would come out of my mouth. And I stand up, walk through the doorway, out the garage door, past the group of mechanics gathered in the parking lot who are telling me it’s no good for me t
o try and change their minds, to the gravel parking lot behind the garage where all the staff park. All the stress lifts away from me as I get in the car and drive out onto Kenmount Road, to the liquor store, and then on to home.

  In my dream, I’m in Dad’s old 1986 Ford F150 truck with a black ghost. We’re driving along and I’m trying to pretend that I’m okay with the ghost, when my back gets itchy. I ask Dad to scratch my back, but the ghost, who suddenly has eight-inch long fingernails, starts scratching. First it feels good and it’s such a relief to get rid of that itch, but then it starts to hurt and the ghost is gouging my back and I’m still trying to act cool and not show any weakness. Then the engine starts knocking loudly and my dad starts shouting at me. “Jennifer, Jennifer, open the door. Open the door, Jennifer.”

  I wake up, unsure what’s going on. Someone is banging on my front door and calling my name. It takes me a minute to even realize where I am. My mouth is dry and the room seems to move with every thud against my door. The clock on the VCR says 7:13, and with the blinds drawn, I can’t tell if it’s a.m. or p.m. There’s only a quarter of a 26-ounce bottle of Bacardi on my coffee table.

  I try to stand up and fall down, hitting my shoulder on the corner of the coffee table. I’m rolling around the floor, pain everywhere, and there’s still the knocking on the door. I finally recognize the voice as Jamie’s and decide to stay on the floor.

  Until the knocking turns louder and I’m pretty sure it’s Jamie’s foot, not his hand that’s banging against my door.

  “I’m going to kick the door in,” Jamie shouts as he continues kicking.

  “I’m going to kick your ass,” I say, as I stumble toward the door.

  When I open the door, Jamie must be just about to make contact with it, but since I’ve moved the door out of the way, his foot lands between my chest and stomach and I fall back with a grunt, smacking my head on the hardwood floor.

  “Oh my God,” Jamie shouts, kneeling over me. “Are you okay?”

  I can’t manage any words, only a gasping for breath. The over-indulgent headache that had battered me seconds before is a memory now. The searing pain in the back of my head is dwarfed by the pain in my chest and the awful sensation of having the wind knocked out of me.

  “Why?” I pant.

  “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” Jamie is touching my head then my chest. “I thought maybe, I don’t know, that you’d done something stupid to yourself. I saw the car outside and I was afraid you might have … done something.”

  I hadn’t done anything. I’d gone home. I pulled down the blinds. I locked the door. I sat in front of the TV with my bottle on the coffee table, a glass in one hand and the remote in the other. I watched Nan’s soap opera and found out the baby Brady was having for her brother isn’t his at all but belongs to her boss, the cosmetic company magnate. I wondered what Nan thought of that revelation. I took a couple of tranquilizers, along with the drinks, because I figured they would help, and if bad things happened as a result, they weren’t my fault. I finished most of my bottle in the hour it took to watch the soap and the next thing I knew steel-toed boots were hitting my door, preparing to knock me over. As pleasant an afternoon as I could hope for before the door-pounding.

  “Idiot,” I try to say but my breath has not returned yet and it comes out as a gasp.

  “I just thought. Things have been changing so much lately and … I was afraid you’d, you know, do something. Bad. To yourself.”

  “I’m really hurting,” I find the air to say.

  “I know you are and I want to be there for you, to help you with everything. I think last night means we should be together. I know we’re still right for each other and we’ve finally gotten through all the—”

  “No, I’m really hurting,” I interrupt with a whisper. “I can’t breathe right. I think I might have broken something.” I try to move and cringe.

  “Oh shit, I better get you to the hospital.”

  Jamie tries to pull me up and I holler. “I’ll do it myself,” I whisper. I try to raise myself up on my elbows but it hurts too much to move.

  “Just pull me. Count to three and pull me up.” I lift my arms and Jamie takes my hands.

  “One, two …” He pulls me up to my feet as I scream.

  “I said on three.” I punctuate every word with a smack to his arm.

  “You’d tense up and it would hurt more.”

  “I can’t even trust you to pull me up when you say you will.”

  Jamie puts his shoulder in my armpit and my hand grabs his other shoulder. We move at a pace of about ten steps per hour, but we finally make it to Jamie’s old GMC Sierra truck.“ I can’t climb up there. That’s Mount Everest. We’ll take my car.”

  “You sure?”

  A grimaced look answers him.

  I take the keys out of my jacket pocket. Passing the keys to him seems as easy and practiced as buttering toast. He hesitates for a second and I know dozens of times we handed off keys must be going through his head too. The day we had to put his dog Max down and he passed me the keys because he couldn’t see through tear-blurred eyes. The time he collided with a cement post in drive-thru at McDonald’s and I nagged him and teased him until he stopped the car in the middle of four-lane traffic on Prince Philip Drive, shut off the engine, and passed me the keys. The night of every last day of work before Christmas at the garage, when the boys and I would have a few drinks and I’d swear I’d be okay to drive myself home and he’d end up picking me up after a night of too much. Jamie, sober as the judge and grinning at me every second. The day I laughed and told Jamie he could take Bessie for a spin around the block as long as I went with him, handing over the crystal ball chain as I said it. It surprises me that moving a set of keys from my hand to his can cause such a flood of memories and a new, deeper ache in my chest.

  On the drive to the Health Sciences Centre every pothole feels like a knife stabbing in my side. In St. John’s this means my sides feel like they’re stabbed every metre of the way. A muted grunt escapes my lips with every bump, and by the time Jamie turns onto Clinch Crescent my hands are wet from tears I keep trying to wipe away, turning my head toward the window and hoping he doesn’t see. I look over and he averts his eyes.

  The ride to the hospital seems like a leisurely stroll when it comes time for Jamie to help me out of the car. Nothing seems to work as we try a number of different ways to get me out, and the grunts are no longer muted as he tries to pull me. The smokers gathered around the ER entrance, standing under a cloud of nicotine fog, look at me with pity. A couple of them move forward tentatively, like they want to help but aren’t sure if they should. Jamie says, “I’m sorry” after every second attempt to move me.

  “If you say ‘I’m sorry’ one more time, I’m going to punch you in the face. I could do it. My arms aren’t hurt.”

  “I know.” And Jamie hauls me right out of the car and onto the sidewalk. No counting, no warning, just rips me out.

  My feet are on the sidewalk and I’m bent at the waist.

  “I’ll help you straighten up now.”

  “No,” I shout. “I’m good this way. I need to stay this way. And preferably not move. Ever.”

  “I think you have to move. And you’ll look like you’re searching for change if you walk like that.”

  “I don’t care what I look like.”

  Walking, slow excruciating step by slow excruciating step, bent over and wincing, still fairly drunk and hungover all at once, I’m pretty sure I look about as pathetic as one can. This does not deter the ER nurse who makes me wait in line then asks me inane questions, takes my blood pressure, temperature, and pulse, then suggests I take a seat in the waiting room.

  “I can’t sit. I need to stay bent.”

  “Okay, then lean against a wall in the waiting room,” she suggests.

  I open my mouth but Jamie stands in front of me and tries to lead me away. “Don’t piss off the nurses,” he whispers.

  “I didn’t s
ay anything.” I walk, my body a right angle, to the waiting room.

  “You were going to.”

  “She told me to lean against the wall. Not overly helpful, was she? And she didn’t look too pleased with you when I told her you kicked me.”

  “You didn’t need to say that. You could have said you fell against something.”

  Jamie sits in a chair and I remain standing, bent. He looks at me then stands up. Looking up at him hurts my neck.

  “Sit down. And the nurses will have to know what happened. They’ll figure it out. Telling the truth will never cause any problems.”

  Jamie raises an eyebrow. Can you rip off an eyebrow?

  “Shut up,” I say.

  As I wait, I memorize the patch of floor over which my head hangs. CSI forensics could not know more about what’s on the floor: a brown, faded shoeprint I hope is mud; a gum wrapper; a piece of old, petrified gum; two deep scratches, one below the gum and one next to the footprint; a soggy band-aid; and a cotton thread I’d guess is from some gauze. It doesn’t help that I’ve been standing close to the garbage can. Aim, it seems, is not the forte of those in the hospital ER.

  When my name is called, Jamie helps me get back to the triage area but is intercepted by the nurse before he can step inside.

  “Patients only,” says a tall, broad woman with a round face and porcelain skin. Her nametag says Amy. She helps me stand next to a seat and then notices Jamie hovering nearby. She stands up and marches over to him, with a firmness that makes her soft, white shoes thud on the floor. “Please wait in the waiting room,” she says loud enough to make a couple of heads turn.

  “But I want to help her if she needs to get back to the waiting room. Or if she goes inside to another room.”

  “What’s your name?” she asks, picking up a pen and a piece of paper from the nearby desk.

  “Jamie Flynn.”

  “I’ll call you if she needs you. Now please sit down.”