Best Canadian Stories 2018

by Russel Smith

  “I didn’t marry my mother. I didn’t marry my mother. I didn’t—”

  “Tell her I say not to listen to you.”

  “She invented that advice.”

  If I had to guess, I’d say Alice had cracked a brief smile, which I took to be a minor victory. Then she asked, “What’s tomorrow hold for you?”

  “The term ‘paddy wagon’ is actually a slur against the Irish,” Rodney says. He’s across from Dad and me in the back of the van taking us into Winnipeg. We’re seated on a cold metal bench and so is Rodney. Protocol is Dad’s supposed to be anchored to the floor by shackles, but when we got settled in Rodney said Screw it, I won’t tell if you don’t. “Whenever anyone calls this a paddy wagon, I try to correct them.”

  “My apologies,” I say. Dad’s dozing and, with every bump, his head clunks against the van’s metal side. I stuff my gloves inside my toque and place it behind him as a pillow.

  “My uncle has Alzheimer’s,” Rodney says. He looks at Dad all sorry. “Last week he booted my cousin in the gut. She was trying to light his smoke for him. Drives to his care home nearly every day to sneak him a smoke.” He looks at me with a dismal smile. “And what does she get? A kick in the gut.”

  He’s got this tone like he wants to have a serious chat, which I owe him, given how nice he’s been, but I can’t bring myself to talk about Dad as though he’s not here, napping beside me. All I can do is shake my head.

  “Was your old man really a drinker, like the paper said?”

  “No.” I chuckle for posterity. “Furthest thing from.” But there it is, talking in the past-tense like he’s dead and gone. I tell Rodney the story of the dui. Dad was curling with buddies he had curled with for twenty years when, mid-game, his skip had an aneurysm and dropped so fast and hard, his head cracked open on the button. Dad and his buddies got carried away after the wake and Dad drove into a lamppost. He cried in the court, even before the verdict came.

  “This is all such garbage,” Rodney says.

  “Tell that to Penny Whallen’s family.”

  “No, not that. I didn’t mean that. I mean more that this is how your dad will be remembered. That anyone down the road, searching him out, putting together a family tree, stuff like that, they’ll see all this and think it’s the man he was. It’s garbage.”

  None of what Rodney said had occurred to me. I tell him that.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to bring you down further.”

  “I think there’s still a ways to go.” I’ve taken the clown nose from my pocket and I’m rolling it between my palms.

  “Yeah, well, that’s true for everyone.” He drums his palms on his lap as he sits up straighter and breathes deeper. The Jets beat the Blackhawks last night and before I can shift us onto the inane topic of that hometown win, Rodney asks, “What’s with the clown nose?”

  The name of the clown who got it all started was Dr. Feel Good. Surprise, surprise, Dr. Feel Good was a creep, eventually fired for groping a nurse. But that seedy side of him wasn’t apparent when I was seven years old. What was apparent was Dr. Feel Good was hilarious and could make the pain and worry slip away from my older sister’s face like nobody else. Tabby was nine and losing to leukaemia. When she would hear the squeak of Dr. Feel Good’s shoes she would jolt up all smiles from her hospital pillow. Dad would have to hold her back so she didn’t tear the iv from her wrist.

  “I want him here every day,” Tabby once said. She would spend over three weeks in the kids’ ward before she died and on her second last day, the last time she saw Dr. Feel Good, she told him he made her feel stronger.

  But he was a volunteer, a Shriner. And he was the only one.

  A few days after Tabby’s funeral I caught Dad in the garage making balloon animals. His workbench was covered with dogs and pigs and a pink jackrabbit leaning against his band saw. “Check this out,” he said and from the car he pulled a white suit with thick rainbow pinstripes.

  I called for Mom and he sushed me. “Not yet. It needs to be right.”

  And I guess it was right later that night, because his unveiling was in our living room. He had Mom and me sit with the lights dimmed. From around the corner his voice boomed, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the silliest, most stupendous specimen of super smiles, guaranteed to make the grossest hospital food bearable and the best hospital food gross.”

  I giggled. Mom didn’t. I looked over at her on the couch beside me. She had her hands clenched between her knees. I put my hand on her back. She felt so tight.

  “Albert?” she said. “What is this?”

  And with that Dad leapt into the room, wearing his rainbow suit, a red felt top hat, and the ruby-red nose, his face painted white with red diamonds around his eyes. He broke into a march, a finger pointed in the air, and circled the room. The shoes he wore were massive, like red flippers, and when he stepped they squeaked.

  “I present to you, the one, the only—”

  “Stop this.” Mom said to him. “Stop this right fucking now.”

  He halted with an unfortunate squeak, but he didn’t stop smiling. “Angie, babe, this is a good thing.”

  “She’s gone. This isn’t going to make her not gone.”

  “Yes, it will.” It was his smile I won’t forget, its rock solid sincerity.

  “Stop.”

  “No.” He put his thumbs in his ears and made his gloved hands into antlers, then stuck out his tongue.

  Mom began to cry into her hands and as she did Dad started up again with his marching.

  “I’m sorry little lady, but there’s no crying allowed around Mr. Pickles.” He glanced at me and winked.

  Mom asked, “Did you say Mr. Pickles?”

  Without breaking stride, Dad said, “I certainly did. Mr. Pickles, Pickles the Clown, at your service.”

  Mom fell back into the couch. “That’s the worst clown name.”

  Dad stopped. “It’s a fine name.”

  “Absolutely the worst,” Mom said.

  He looked at me and back at Mom. “Pickles will make you tickles.”

  “What?”

  “Pickles will make you tickles. It’s my—”

  “You! Can’t! Tickle! Her!” Mom had her eyes closed as she yelled.

  “Yes I can.” Again, he winked at me. “And besides, we’ve moved on from whether or not this is happening. It’s happening. Now we’re onto the name. Mr. Pickles.”

  There was a thought my parents seemed to share for a moment, staring at one another. A tear was about to drip from Mom’s chin and I reached over and touched it. She looked at me, confused, like she forgot I was there.

  She said to Dad, “It’s the worst name.”

  “Ira, come on, what do you think? It’s not so bad, right? Mr. Pickles?”

  Mom looked at me. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “It’s the worst.”

  But I didn’t think it was so bad and said so. Mom asked if I was crazy too and I said, “Tabby’s favourite food was pickles.”

  Mr. Pickles was a hit, the kids and the staff loved him. Dad still worked his regular job as a carpenter, but after falling from a roof and busting his shoulder, he couldn’t swing a hammer the same. And right around that time Dr. Feel Good was fired for following a nurse to her car and pressing his polka-dot pants against her, so the hospital was clownless. To help Dad out, they created an extra janitorial position. Part of the time he worked maintenance and the rest of the time he clowned for the sick kids.

  “Sometimes I change in the janitor’s closet.” Dad kept staring at me when he’d said that, like I was supposed to pick up on something impressive. “You know, from my janitor’s outfit and into my clown gear. Who does that remind you of?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Think of a phone booth instead of a janitor’s closet.”

  Mo
m was in the other room and she hollered, “Ira, the answer is Superman. He wants you to tell him he’s just like Superman.”

  “Superman doesn’t change beside a bunch of mops.”

  “Well, yeah, I know. But, same idea.”

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah, bud?”

  “You’re just like Superman.”

  I’ve stepped out into the cold. Dad’s still seated in the van and I’ve reached up to help him shuffle over and step down. But instead of taking my hand he stares out behind me. There isn’t much to see, just dirty snow swirling from snowbanks. Rodney’s holding open the steel door to the courthouse.

  Dad’s eyes dart around. Something is happening, he knows it.

  I smile and tell him I love him and those words grab hold of him. He looks at me, hyper-focused. “Dad, I’m gonna be right here the whole time.”

  He’s breathing heavy now. “Okay, that’s good to know.”

  I ask him to come on out so we can get things started.

  He nods, takes one of my hands and with the other finds a grip on the van’s wall.

  “And this, you’ve done all this before?”

  I’m about to lie to him, to tell him I’m an old pro, only because that’s all I can think to say, but when he steps down onto the ground it’s like he doesn’t trust me and in his panic his knees buckle. He slips, back and over. I have him by the arm and try to keep him up, but the full weight of him is too much and he pulls me down. As he falls on his ass I land on him.

  The fall wasn’t hard, but my elbow got him in the gut. He’s winded and makes this horrible groan. Rodney runs to us as I try to get off Dad, but Dad has my arm clenched high and I struggle to rip it away. Rodney gets his hands between us. Right before Dad releases me, his eyes lock on mine, terrified.

  Rodney pulls me from him and I slide on my back across the hard snow. “It’s okay, Mr. Wakefield,” Rodney says. “The air’s coming back. Just relax.” And from the ground, propped on my elbows, as the air returns to Dad, as he moans what seems to be unintelligible questions, he wraps his arms around Rodney’s neck and Rodney lifts him.

  When they’re standing, Dad’s arms still wrapped around him, Rodney looks down at me in the snow. “Do you need a hand?”

  Dad’s lawyer is a man name Jack Harris, who I’ve yet to meet in person but have spoken to on the phone. He was nice enough to pick Mom up at home today and bring her down to the courthouse while I went out to meet Dad in Selkirk.

  Jack, Dad and I take our seats on the defense side. As the proceedings begin, Dad leans over to me. “I don’t even know whose funeral this is.”

  “It’s not a funeral. Something sad happened and we’re gathered to talk about it.”

  “Talking doesn’t help. Laughing helps.” He straightens up and is looking for something on the floor near his chair. “Where’s my clowning duffle?”

  “It’s not here, Dad. That was a long time ago.”

  He pats at his pockets.

  “Dad, you need to settle, okay?”

  “I can be helping. Don’t you tell me to settle.” And as he spoke those words he shoved me, clawing at my face and jamming a finger in my eye. I had to grab hold of the table so I didn’t topple over.

  Rodney and another sterner looking guard come at us. Rodney says, “Mr. Wakefield.”

  Dad sunk into his chair at Rodney’s show of authority, mumbling to himself as I blinked through the pain and told Rodney it was all my fault.

  Jack was about to give his opening statement and decided Dad’s enraged act of confusion helped. He said into the record that Dad thought he was a clown and that he could help us all by doing a goofy routine. There was something flippant about his tone, and with the way he started to almost twirl around the room, like he was showing us how ridiculous someone would have to be to think clowning could help anything, let alone a court room and a murder trial. Even the judge and the prosecutor smirked. It was so cute to them, the old brain-dead clown.

  Court rises. I leave Dad with Rodney and tell them I’ll be right back. My hope is to catch the Whallens in the hall and have a quick word. They’re already standing outside the courtroom, conversing with their lawyer. Mrs. Whallen’s son is about my age and from what I’ve pieced together he’s with his wife and teenage son. Their lawyer sees me approaching and says, “This is a private conversation.”

  “I want to introduce myself.”

  The lawyer is about to speak when Mrs. Whallen’s son raises his hand, hushing him. “My name’s Jaime.” We shake for a wordless moment. I look away first. Jaime says, “I know what you want to say and how hard it is to say it.”

  “That’s decent of you.” I smile at the three of them, though Jaime’s son won’t look at me. “But I’m going to anyway. On behalf of my family, please accept my apology. I can’t imagine what this has put you through.”

  “This is my son, Dominic,” Jaime says, nudging Dominic toward me. I extend my hand but he keeps his hands in his pockets and refuses to look at me. “What Mr. Wakefield is doing takes balls, Dominic.”

  Dominic doesn’t care.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t want to cause more trouble.”

  Jaime Whallen shakes his disappointed head and introduces his wife, Marie. Marie and I shake, though she seems too timid to say much of anything, which Jaime doesn’t take issue with.

  “I understand the legal steps you’ll be taking,” I say. “We don’t intend to lodge any big fight against you.”

  Their lawyer interjects. “This is an entirely inappropriate conversation.”

  But I keep going. “We have every intention to settle this and move on.”

  The lawyer squirms in his suit. “You can’t make a statement like that without counsel, Mr. Wakefield.”

  Jaime says to his lawyer, “Hal, shut up.” And Jaime and I both smirk. “Ira, if I can call you that, you seem like a good man. I appreciate you coming to us, but I can assure you I have no interest in letting this fade away. What happened to my Mom could happen to anyone’s loved one and I intend to drive change.” I try to chime in but Jaime keeps on. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to go away. I want politicians held to account. I want more staff in these homes so people are protected. I want big systemic change. Our parents, they’re casualties. But they can be martyrs. This can all result in a better world, but we have to make that change happen.” He points at me and back at himself.

  “My father is still alive. This isn’t who he is. This isn’t his legacy. This is a tragedy. It’s a horrible tragedy.”

  “And it will stand for something.” He places his hands on my shoulders and I catch myself wondering how Dad did it, when he hit Mrs. Whallen: was it just a shove and she fell or did he deck her good?

  “Ira, we can make this stand for something. Don’t you want this to stand for something?”

  After seeing Dad back to his room—or cell, or whatever the hell they call where he’s stowed—I drive back to Winnipeg. My phone’s hooked up to the bluetooth in my rental car and I’ve dialled home to fill Alice in and get an update on Tim. Snow falls in thick flakes that glow red in the press of brake lights. The phone rings through the car speakers.

  “Hello?” It’s Tim. A horn honks. The lights have turned green. Cars move. “Hello?”

  “It’s Dad,” I say, easing off the brake.

  “Mom’s not here. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Wait! Just, just hold on.”

  Tim’s breathing into the receiver. It sounds like he has me surrounded. “What?”

  “Are you expelled?”

  “Mom’s not sure. She’s meeting again tomorrow.”

  “Do you think you’ll be expelled?”

  “Probably not. Mom’s good at this stuff.”

  It’s true. Maybe too good. “Do you care if you’re expelled?”

>   He lets out a lippy huff. “No.”

  “Yeah, who cares, right?”

  After a moment he says, “Anything you want me to tell Mom?”

  “You can tell her your grandfather hit me today, in the courtroom, in front of everybody, and you can tell her it’s taking everything in me not to tell my son that I couldn’t care less what happens to him.”

  “Well,” he says. I no longer hear his voice around me.

  “Well what?” I say. The windshield wipers whoosh as they push away snow.

  “I hope Grandpa hit you good.”

  This gets a laugh out of me. “The lunatic eye-gouged me.”

  Tim laughs. “Good! Reminds me of a time my dad threw a remote at my head.”

  “I should have thrown it harder, knocked some sense into you.” Then I ask, “How’s your mother seem?”

  “I don’t know. Fine, I guess.”

  “I bet she’s been crying.”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “You probably could, you just don’t like what it means for you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Could you do me a favour?”

  “I thought you didn’t care what I do?”

  “That’s not what I said. I said I was trying not to say that and I think I’ve been successful.”

  “One way to put it.”

  “For real. A favour.”

  “What?”

  “Find your mother, hug her and tell her you’ll be there for her.”

  “Be there when?”

  “It doesn’t matter when. Just promise her.”

  He’s silent.

  “Tell me you’ll promise her.”

  “Fine. Anything else?”

  “I’m going to tell your grandmother you love her and miss her. Is that okay?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  The answer to that question—“Why not?”—is because it feels like a lie. “Be sure to hug your mother. Sell all the Oxy you want. Just hug her.”

  He doesn’t respond right away. I hear a choked inhale. “I’m gonna hang up now,” he says.

  “Tim,” I say, but he’s gone. So instead of getting the chance to tell him I love him, or I’m sorry, what I hear is the call click away and the sound of teeny pop rise from one of the pre-set stations.