Dearly Departing

by Geoff North

  A girl was sitting on one of the cement benches, sucking down a last bit of cigarette. She was wearing a puffy white parka—the only big thing about her. The rest of her was skinny long legs and a mess of long blonde hair. She looked up at Ray and her dark-ringed eyes opened wide.

  “Dad!”

  Chapter 5

  “I thought you quit smoking.”

  Dawn butted the cigarette in the stone ashtray and hugged her father. “I had a long night.”

  He could smell the booze on her breath. “And drinking, too? For God’s sake, Dawn. Did you drive here?”

  The young woman started to stammer. “No... It wasn’t like that. I didn’t touch the stuff until I got to the airport. Honest.”

  Yelling at his daughter in public wasn’t going to help. He guided her across the road and into the parking lot. “Where’s your car?”

  She took him to the Cruze. There were no snide remarks about the long walk. He didn’t start talking again until his suitcase was stowed in the trunk and they were both sitting inside the front. Ray was behind the steering wheel. He held his palm up. “Keys.”

  He started the car and looked straight ahead at the gas gauge. “Empty. You had money for booze and cigarettes, but not enough to get us out of the parking lot.”

  “I didn’t have a drink in over a week. I quit smoking longer than that.”

  Ray backed the car out and drove to the parking booth as quickly as possible to pay the fee. They were on a backstreet heading for the city center less than a minute later. “So why did you start both up again?” He glanced over at her and tried a gentler approach. “Seeing your old man for the first time in over a month that stressful of an event for you? I know I’m a pretty important guy, but I had no idea.”

  It all came pouring out of her as he pulled into a gas station. “I wasn’t going to drink, Dad. I don’t even remember putting that bottle in the glove box. I was exhausted, and my head was hurting so bad.”

  Ray slipped the attendant a fifty-dollar bill through the window crack and reached across the console to inspect the back of Dawn’s skull. “You’ve got a pretty good bump growing there. That bastard... We should get you to a hospital and have it checked out.”

  “I’m okay. I think I passed out from almost choking to death. I’ve taken worse hits to my head. Please, Dad—no hospitals.”

  Against his better judgement, Ray gave in to her. He spotted a restaurant across the street. “Let’s go for an early supper. It looks like you haven’t been eating all that well, either.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  They found a secluded table-booth inside and ordered burgers and fries. “It’ll be good eating Canadian food again,” he said. Ray tried his coffee and winced. “I’ll miss the Dominican coffee, though.”

  “Happy belated birthday.”

  “Thanks, Girl-of-Mine.”

  “I should’ve said that last night on the phone.”

  “You had other things on your mind. We both did.”

  Dawn took a bigger sip of coffee than her father. The heat sliding down her throat was already doing wonders for her headache. “Did you check the flights to Kelowna yet?”

  “I phoned your Uncle David as soon as we landed. Grummy isn’t doing well, but she’s stable. The next plane out doesn’t leave until tomorrow morning. There’s a six-hour stopover in Calgary.”

  “Did you buy a ticket?”

  Ray reached over and held her hand. It felt cold and fragile. “I wanted to check in with you first... make sure you were doing alright.”

  “I’m doing better now. I won’t screw up like that again. I threw most of that bottle away.”

  “You don’t have to take this on all alone.” Ray suddenly remembered the talk Dooley had tried having with him out on the balcony of their resort room. The irony made him smile. “Maybe we should travel out west together. It would be nice for the whole family to meet like that.”

  “I can’t leave. I don’t have money for supper, how am I going to come up with airfare?”

  “I’m not exactly destitute.” Ray stared at her for a long time. “Speaking of destitute... You either quit your job, or you got canned. Judging from the look of you, and your absolute lack of cash, I’m guessing you were fired.”

  Dawn rolled her eyes and looked to the ceiling. “How can you figure that stuff out so easily?” She fought off tears and started laughing at the same time. “It’s like you’ve been able to read my mind ever since I was a little kid.”

  Ray chuckled along with her. “You were my only kid. You had all of my undivided attention.”

  Their meals showed up a few minutes later. Dawn’s headache was completely gone, and her appetite was ravenous. She’d finished cleaning off her plate before her father had even eaten half of his cheese-burger. She let out a long, low belch and started laughing again. “Whoops.”

  “You have any room left for dessert?”

  “Probably, but I don’t plan on finding out.”

  They talked about Grummy for awhile. Ray ordered a second cup of coffee and told some of his stories about growing up on the farm—how it had been with his two older brothers, and the weekly visits with Gramma Minnie.

  “I love your stories, Dad. It must have been wonderful. I wish sometimes I’d had a couple of brothers and a sister to play with.” She saw the smile drop from his face. Dawn wished she could’ve taken that last part back. He never talked about Aunt Alicia.

  Ray thanked the waitress and gave her a generous tip. They stood outside in the gathering gloom of the early evening by Dawn’s car. She leaned against the hood and lit a cigarette.

  “Well at least you’re not smoking in the car.”

  Dawn shrugged. “I had a few in there last night.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question. You want to travel out west together?”

  Dawn took a deep drag and exhaled. “I don’t know what I want to do. I’m not going back to my apartment, and I’m sure as hell not sleeping in the airport parking lot again.”

  “Forget the airport. I’m sick of planes anyway. It’s around a twenty hour drive to Kelowna and your car has a full tank of gas.”

  “Really? You seriously want to drive all the way out there?”

  “Why not? The weather’s good. It might be fun.” Waiting for his mother to slip away could hardly be classified as fun, he thought, but the time with his daughter might be what the both of them needed most. “When did we last spend any real time together?”

  “This is crazy.” Dawn flicked her cigarette into the gutter and threw her hands up into the air. “This is all I have. No other clothes, no tooth brush or makeup. I look like shit.”

  “You’re fine—a little rough around the edges, maybe, but there are dozens of shopping malls along the way. I’m sure we can get you looking half-way decent again.”

  She wrapped her arms around his wide shoulders. “Yes, I’ll come with you! Thank you, Dad. Thank you so much for everything.”

  Ray ended up taking his daughter to a shopping center that same evening. He sat on one of the benches between stores and made some calls while Dawn bought clothes and other essentials.

  “Hey, David. How’s Mom doing now?”

  “No change. She’s resting comfortably, I suppose.” There was a long pause and Ray was beginning to think the connection had been lost when his oldest brother spoke again. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s comfortable... maybe she isn’t. That part of Mom we knew and loved is gone, Ray. She just lays there now and stares up at nothing. The only thing she can do is breathe and eat. No, not even that’s right. She can swallow food if you feed it to her. She’s like a baby... a spoon-fed baby.”

  It was hard for him to hear it, but Ray appreciated his brother’s honesty. “Does she... does she still look like Mom?”

  “You haven’t seen her in three years. People change the most when they’re really young and really old. I won’t sugar-coat it, little br
other—she won’t be the same Mom you remember.”

  Ray felt a stab of guilt for not seeing her in such a long time, but he knew David wasn’t taking a shot at him. Nancy Wallace had lived a long, healthy life, and had been living on her own up until these last few days. Most of the family had ended up out west years earlier. David had been an accountant, retired in 2012 and moved to Winfield, the same small town his mother lived in on the outskirts of Kelowna. David’s wife, Charlene, still worked in a personal care home. She had gone down to part-time and looked after their mother on her days off. Bruce Wallace was selling ridiculously expensive sports cars in Vernon, less than twenty miles away.

  His older brothers had done well for themselves, and they provided for Mom. She was better off out there with them and the in-laws. She was taken care of. All Ray had to do anymore was call her every Sunday. Even that simple task had become a chore.

  When did I call her last?

  “You still there, Ray?”

  “Yeah, I’m still here.”

  “Like I said, Mom’s holding her own. There’s no rush to get out here. The doctor and nurses figure she could remain this way for weeks... maybe even months.”

  The word linger came to Ray’s mind. “Dawn and I are leaving first thing in the morning. We’re driving out.”

  “Hey, that’s great. It’ll be nice seeing my niece again. How’s she’s doing?”

  Ray could see his daughter purchasing some clothes at the counter in the store ahead of him. She looked like a homeless person. “She’s had some rough months.”

  “Yeah, it’s tough being a kid these days.”

  “Yeah.” Ray’s phone vibrated weakly in his hand. “My phone’s about to die. We’ll see you in a couple of days.”

  “Take care of yourself, little brother. Drive safe.”

  Ray went to a pay phone and called work informing them he wouldn’t be back for at least another week or two. They understood, of course, and told him to take as much additional time as needed. Ray had no intention of ever returning.

  He met up with Dawn a few stores down. She was laden with colourful shopping bags. “Is there anything left in my bank account?”

  She handed the debit card back to him. “I tried going easy... I only bought sale items.”

  “I’m joking. Get what you need, sky’s the limit.”

  “I think I’m finished. When are we heading out?”

  Ray was tired. He was physically spent and mentally exhausted. Preparing to end your life twice in twenty-four hours could do that to a person. Staying in a hotel on the outskirts of the city would’ve been the smart thing to do, but Ray wanted to keep moving. He needed to get this over with. “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive to Rokerton. If we leave now, we should be home by midnight.”

  “You look wiped, Dad. I can drive.”

  “I’ll be fine. The coffee will keep me awake.”

  “You sure?”

  Ray grabbed half of her bags and they worked their way towards the mall entrance. “I’m sure. I’ll get a solid six or seven hours of sleep once we’re home.” They put her things in the back seat. “You should try and nod off yourself on the way there. I’m going to make you drive most of the way through Saskatchewan starting bright and early in the morning.”

  Dawn groaned. “Ugh... the prairies are so flat and boring.”

  Ray pinched her cheek and drove out of the parking lot. “Boring as hell. But you have to drive through the prairies to make it to the mountains.”

  “I’ve never seen the Rockies before.”

  “Been a long time for me, too. Only went through them once by car. Mom and Dad drove us when we were kids in ’82.

  “They had roads back then?”

  “Did I say car? We travelled on horseback.”

  Dawn was asleep by the time the last few strings of hotel and gas-station lights were fading in the rear-view mirror. Ray set the cruise to a hundred and ten and headed off into the black of night.

  The first thing Tyler did when he woke up on Dawn’s couch was check for his wallet. It wasn’t in his back pocket. Shit. He saw it a moment later, sitting open on the glass coffee table. He reached for it and looked inside. Driver’s license. Birth certificate. Social Insurance... Goddamn it. She stole the credit card.

  He dug around through the clothes and blankets on the couch and eventually found it buried between two of the cushions. I must have tried hiding it just before the crazy bitch attacked me. Tyler put it back in the wallet and shoved it deep into a front pocket of his jeans. She’s not going to get it in there. I’ll break her goddamn hands if she tries.

  The credit card was all he had. It was a five-thousand dollar fix meant to get his life back together. Our fix. For both of us. Why did she get so mad? Doesn’t she understand how much I love her?

  He checked his watch. 10:03 PM. What day? He looked for the date on his phone. His dry mouth went suddenly drier. Tyler had been passed out on his girlfriend’s couch for twenty-four hours. He had to stop the drugs. Dawn had been right about that part of their relationship. Too much of a good thing resulted in too many lost days. He had to slow down. They both had to cut back and concentrate on their finances.

  Didn’t she tell me she was fired? That made two of them. Tyler had been given his walking papers at the beginning of the week. It all came back to the too much fun, too many late and lost days stuff. Employers didn’t put up with that shit. Tyler had been down that road far too many times. The credit card would’ve made things better. They could have started over again. They would start over again.

  Where is she?

  He remembered grabbing Dawn by the throat. Tyler hadn’t planned on hurting her. He was merely defending himself and trying to shake some sense into her. She kicked me in the balls. I fell back... pushed her away from me. He saw the broken remote on the floor and spotted the dent in the drywall. She fell. It wasn’t my fault.

  Tyler assumed she was sleeping in the bedroom. He went to the kitchen and drank two full glasses of water.

  We’re going to be okay. We’re going to forget this ever happened, and make things work.

  Dawn wasn’t in the bedroom. Shit. Shit. Shit. Another thought gripped him. She’d gone to the washroom and tried taking a shower. How hard did she hit the wall? What if she’d fallen inside the bathtub?

  The washroom was empty.

  The cold water he’d swallowed down lurched around in his gut. Tyler thought it might come rushing back up. “That bitch... She left me.”

  How far could she get in one day? Where would she go?

  She had said something about her grandmother dying. Her Grummy. Tyler racked his brain trying to figure where the old woman lived. Was she even in Winnipeg? The phonebook. He would go through the listings and call every goddamn Wallace there was.

  Tyler searched for it in the living room. He went through the cupboards of the kitchen, and ended up in the bedroom, rummaging through Dawn’s dresser. He left the room in an even messier state but didn’t find what he was looking for. I’ll phone her dad. He’ll know where his own mother lives.

  He went for his cell phone and stopped. Dumb idea. There was a good chance Dawn had already told her father about the fight. She would twist the story around—make Tyler look like the bad guy. Maybe her old man was already looking for him. He had to get out of the apartment.

  Halfway down the stairs Tyler remembered the rest. Dawn was going to pick her father up from the airport. That would’ve been this morning... maybe this afternoon. They were probably gone already, but Tyler was a hopeful kind of guy. Planes got delayed all the time. Flights could get cancelled altogether.

  He got into his truck and started for the airport. Tyler had no desire to tangle with Dawn’s father. The bastard was big and scary-looking. But he was in his fifties or sixties. Tyler was twenty-six. He wouldn’t let an old janitor stop him from patching things up with the woman he loved.

  And if Dawn couldn’t understand that, well too bad. Sometimes a guy h
ad to put his foot down in a relationship to make things work.

  Chapter 6

  Ray wasn’t worried about the eggs. They could keep a long time in the fridge. The half pack of bacon concerned him a little more. The best before date was still two weeks away, but he’d opened it the day before leaving on vacation. Raw bacon had no discernable smell to speak of—it was tough deciding whether the stuff was spoiled or not. Sometimes color could be a giveaway, or the complete lack of it. He remembered something his mom used to say in the mornings when he was a kid—if it’s grey, stay away. This bacon wasn’t grey, but it was hardly pink anymore, either. It didn’t smell good or bad. He threw it all into the frying pan and listened to it sizzle. He would know in the next little while if it was worth eating or not. Cooking things at high temperatures was the ultimate test.

  Dawn staggered into the kitchen a few minutes later. The bacon was good, Ray decided. The smell had pulled her out of bed, so everything was fine. She helped him butter the toast and the two sat down together.

  “You sure this bacon is okay?” She asked.

  “The bacon’s fine.” It was nice having someone to cook for again.

  “I checked the weather online,” Dawn said. “It’s raining in Calgary, but not freezing. It should be good driving all the way out to Uncle David’s.”

  “How’s the head?”

  Dawn patted the back of her skull where her hair was still damp from showering. “Bump’s pretty much gone. I’m good to go.”

  Ray still wanted to take her to the hospital to be sure. Blows to the head could be tricky things. Concussions had a way of sneaking back up on people if they weren’t careful.

  Dawn could tell what he was thinking from his silence. “No doctors. I said I was fine. The headache’s gone, and I feel great.”

  “I still think we should call the cops on that jerk.”

  “I just want to get our trip started… get away from Winnipeg for a few days and recharge. Things will be different when we get back. No more booze, no more drifting from shitty job to shitty job. I was thinking of going back to school.”