Seeing Red

by Shawn Sutherland

  “Leave me out of it, Walt.”

  “Hear the way she talks to me?” He motioned to Dick. “She’s almost as bad as this crusty son of a bitch!”

  “Dammit, Walt!” Dick replied. “Shut up!”

  I cracked up with laughter and Walton joined in.

  “What about Amsterdam?” I asked. “I heard that’s fun.”

  “Oh yeah, it definitely has character. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’m a fairly conservative guy.” Dick snorted at that remark. “No, it’s true. Ignore him. So I didn’t even go to the red-light district until the last night I was there. Even then, I approached it with caution. First of all, I couldn’t even find the goddamn place, but they actually have little signs on the road with little red lights to let you know where it is.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah! And so I’m walking through these alleyways and they have these goddamn supermodel girls behind these glass windows, and all these little eighteen-year-old American kids look like they’re about to lose their shit!” He laughed. “Dick here would’ve had a goddamn heart attack. This old cocksucker hasn’t had a hard-on since the moon landing!”

  “Fuck you, Walton! I’m trying to enjoy the ballgame!”

  An hour passed and I was feeling very buzzed. Dick was talking nonsense about how the moon landing was actually a government conspiracy to scare the Soviet Union into backing down in the arms race and how he could eventually achieve an erection if he really, really concentrated and got plenty of sleep the night before. Walton and I were snickering the whole time.

  “What an asshole, huh?” Walton whispered to me.

  “Christ, why do I put up with you?” Dick sighed.

  Sensing an opportunity to gain some valuable life lessons from a couple of grizzled, seasoned veterans, I asked them, “So, if you guys were my age again, what would you do differently?”

  “Don’t get married!” cried Dick.

  Walt shook his head. “Ah, don’t listen to him—”

  “No, trust me,” Dick lamented, “you’ll rue the day. I got tricked into it twice!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Twice. And the only person I hate more than my ex-wife . . . is my wife!”

  The three of us laughed, and then clinked our glasses together. “And don’t have children!” Dick continued. “For God’s sake, they’ll take away the best years of your life. Then you wake up one morning and you look like this.” He pointed at his face and I was aghast. The thought of seeing that in the mirror every day made me shudder.

  “Don’t listen to him, Ethan,” Walton assured me. “He’s just bitter because his wife is an old bitch.”

  “Hey!”

  “No, come on, Dick. She is. She is. But if you find the right girl, there’s nothing wrong with gettin’ hitched. Hell, I couldn’t do it without Sandy. She’s a little firecracker, that one. She’s got a real Type A personality, y’know? It keeps me going. We’ve been married for, what, twelve years now? Wait, twelve? No. Thirteen.”

  “He doesn’t even know!” shouted Dick.

  Walton’s comment about finding the right girl made me think of Rachael and I had to take another drink to alleviate the tightness in my chest. Fortunately, Dick and Walton kept my mind occupied; watching those two old assholes lob insults back and forth like a tennis ball was hypnotic.

  Eventually Dick called for a brief intermission. As he strolled off to relieve himself, Walton told me, “In all seriousness, though, if I were your age, I’d get out there and see the world. See as much as you can now, ’cause when you get older, it becomes a lot tougher.”

  “I’d like to. I’ve wanted to travel . . . but I don’t really have the money to do it.”

  “Well, you don’t even have to go far! In Ontario, in Canada, there’s so much that people never see. A few years back, my wife and I packed everything into a truck and went and saw the Rockies, the Prairies, the Maritimes. . . .”

  “And Turkey Point?”

  “And Turkey Point!” he repeated. “Anywhere you go, there’s always something new, some place you hadn’t seen before. And if you catch it on the right day, man, I tell ya, nature is medicinal. It can heal you.”

  I finished my glass and motioned to Judy for a refill.

  “Whoa, you’re really pounding those back, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah. Long week.”

  “What do you do anyway?”

  “Well, I just finished my first degree, but it’s a bachelor of arts, so I can’t really get a job with it. Nobody’s lining up to hire me, put it that way. But I’m gonna study journalism in the fall.”

  He chuckled to himself. “Man, I’ve worked so many goddamn jobs over the years. Some of them good, some of them bad. The one thing I’ve learned is, just do what you love. Don’t do it for the money. What’s the point of having money if you’re miserable forty hours a week? Life’s too short. You don’t need that much to get by, really, so keep it simple. Do what you liked to do when you were a kid.”

  I turned my head, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “No!”

  Then we both laughed and took another swig.

  “Or don’t! I don’t give a shit,” he replied.

  “When I was a kid, I liked playing Nintendo and hucking snowballs at cars.”

  “That was it, huh?”

  “Basically. But building houses? That’s what you like?”

  “Oh yeah! I’ve always loved building shit. It’s not like a desk job. At the end of the day, you can actually see what you’ve put together, all the fruits of your labour. It’s rewarding.”

  Dick finally returned and sat down on his stool and Walton immediately glared at him. “Took you long enough! Does your pecker still work, you stupid codger?” With his eyes still fixated on the television, Dick held up his right hand and gave Walton the finger. The two of us were cackling again and I celebrated by ordering a couple of shots of whiskey for myself.

  “Whoa! This kid’s got the gene!” said Walton.

  “What gene?” I asked.

  “The booze gene. I’ve got it. Dick’s definitely got it. You gotta be careful! That stuff’ll kill you. Especially the hard stuff.”

  “Well, we all gotta go sometime.” After taking another shot, I flagged down Judy and bought two more. “Duly noted though. These’ll be my last two for the night.”

  “You’ve just gotta slow down, my man! You’re chugging it down like it’s water. Relax! Have a beer instead.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I slurred. “It’s not like I have to go to job tomorrow.” I took the first shot and pushed the glass forward and then held onto the second one by the rim and raised it into the air. “A toast! Here’s to you and your lovely wives.” Dick and Walton drank to that. I slammed the shot glass down onto the bar counter and reached for my wallet and paid Judy for all the liquor I had consumed. It was a steep bill.

  As I prepared to leave, I said to Dick and Walton, “Thanks for the advice. It was nice meeting you guys.”

  “You too, my man.” Walton replied, shaking my hand for a third time. “You gonna be alright?”

  “Oh yeah. At ease, gentlemen,” I said as I shuffled toward the exit. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach and a sweet taste at the back of my tongue—my body’s signal that I was about to vomit. My walk accelerated into a sprint as I rushed through the door and ran toward a patch of grass at the side of the building where I heaved my innards onto the ground. The rum and whiskey burned my esophagus and stung my sinuses. Wiping my mouth, I stumbled across the road to the Widowmaker and struggled to find the keys in my pocket. Then I unlocked the door, collapsed into the backseat and awkwardly pulled a blanket over my torso before passing out, unconscious.

  About an hour later I heard someone tapping on the car window, waking me from an uncomfortable sleep. I rolled over and saw Walto
n’s face pressed against the glass, peering inside like that dinosaur from Jurassic Park. Dick was a step behind him. I dragged my upper body to the driver side door and opened it.

  “Can I help you?” I said, still feeling groggy.

  “Kid, are you sleeping in your fuckin’ car?” Walton asked. Obviously, he already knew the answer.

  “It’s a lot roomier once you get inside. Like the Hilton and shit. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Nah, my man, this won’t do. You can’t be sleeping out here like this. Come on, I got a pull-out couch back at the castle.”

  “Look, Walton, I appreciate the concern, but I sleep like this all the time. Besides, I can barely feel anything—”

  “It’s just around the corner. About a five-minute walk. Take one look, and if you don’t like it, you can come back here and sleep like a goddamn hobo.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Thanks, though.” I reached over and began to close the door.

  “My old lady makes a really good breakfast. Belgian waffles, maple syrup, three-cheese omelettes, the works.”

  I stopped for a moment and realized I was hungry. I probably hadn’t eaten a full meal in several days. “You had me at Belgian. Now help me up, would ya?”

  Walton grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me to my feet as I closed the door behind me. We said goodnight to Dick, and then I stumbled behind Walton as he led me to his cottage, which he later explained actually belonged to his sister-in-law. The exterior was small and green with a driveway barely big enough for a single car. There were two steps leading up to the front door and the inside smelled of old wood and sawdust and the walls were decorated in maps and advertisements from the first half of the twentieth century. We had to be quiet because his wife was fast asleep; Walton showed me how to pull out the brown couch in the living room and then he fetched me a pillow and blanket before turning off the light and leaving through the hallway.

  “Sleep it off, kid, and we’ll see ya in the morning.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  I awoke several hours later to an unfamiliar room and initially I had no recollection as to why I was there. It took me a moment to orient myself; I vaguely remembered the conversations with Walton and Dick, the shots of whiskey, the vomiting, the sleeping in the car and the subsequent walk to the cabin. Having become accustomed to the backseat of a car, the pull-out couch was a vast improvement, but I felt extremely dehydrated and desperately needed something to drink. I couldn’t find my jeans on the floor, so I decided to carry on without them—the kitchen was only a few steps away anyway. After checking two of the cabinets, I eventually found a stack of green plastic cups and poured myself a glass of tap water. Then another one. And another.

  As I was exhaling in relief, standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a cup of water and wearing nothing but my underwear, Sandy walked into the room. She gasped, clutched her chest and nearly jumped out of her morning gown. “Jesus Christ!” she cried.

  I finished my sip before answering. “Walton told me I could stay here for the night,” I said, pointing in the hypothetical direction of the master bedroom. “I’m Ethan.” I held out my hand while she continued to glare at me for a few seconds before storming into the hallway and shouting “Walton!”

  Perhaps I should have put on my pants. I heard them whispering in the other room as I searched for my missing jeans. I eventually found them underneath the pull-out couch and put them on one leg at a time. Sandy returned from the hallway as I was fastening my belt.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “We’re not used to having company.” I stood there and examined her face for the first time and, like Walton, she looked as if she would have fit right in with the hippie generation. Time had worn her down a little, etched lines into her face and forced her to wear glasses, but she still had that glint in her eyes, that spark of energy. She must have been quite a catch in her day. “Let’s try this again. I’m Sandy. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Well, if you can hold out for half an hour, I’ll whip up some food.”

  Sandy was true to her word. By the time I had smoked a cigarette outside on the deck, breakfast was served. The kitchen table was absolutely smothered in food: there were scrambled eggs, golden hash browns, smoked sausages, buttered toast, a bowl of sliced mango and cantaloupe, and whipped cream and chocolate syrup for the waffles. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I hadn’t eaten a breakfast like that in years—typically I would just toast a bagel or pour a bowl of cereal because my stomach would be too upset to digest any real food, but not that day. Seizing the opportunity, I wolfed it down.

  “Sorry for the surprise, sweetheart,” said Walton. “I didn’t wanna wake you up last night only to tell you that Ethan here would be using our couch.”

  “Oh, it’s alright,” she sighed. “I just thought he was an axe-murderer.”

  “The fact that he was half-naked didn’t tip you off, huh?” Walton joked.

  I looked up and smiled while still chewing fervently.

  She smiled too. “Nope! I was thinking he might be a perv or something.” Then she turned to Walton and said, “Next time, a little heads-up would be appreciated.”

  “I figured I’d wake up before you.”

  When we finished eating, I volunteered to do the dishes but Sandy was already scrubbing them in the sink. Walton told us he had to drive into Simcoe to pick up some supplies from the hardware store, and he offered to drop me off at my car.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “I can walk.”

  “Nonsense! I’m going that way anyway. Come on.”

  I cleaned up the living room and thanked Sandy for her hospitality, and she told me I could come back for waffles anytime. Walton drove me down the road to my car and then he turned off the ignition and we sat there quietly in his truck.

  “So, where’re you off to next?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably head back to Toronto.”

  “What about your family? Where do your parents live?”

  “They divorced when I was eight. My old man died a few years back, and my mom lives out of the country. We don’t see each other much.”

  “Jeez, I’m sorry, kid. But you can’t be sleeping out here in your car forever.” He paused. “Just do me a favour, would ya? Go easy on the booze. I used to be a lot like you—until I learned how to ease up. And it got me into a lot of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Man, you name it. With the law, with my family, with my first wife . . . I couldn’t even hold down a job. I was just young and angry and lashing out at everything, like a bull seeing red. Then, one day, I woke up with a hangover so bad I couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t do it to myself again. If that day ever comes for you, remember it. Etch it into your brain. Find a way to remind yourself every goddamn day what it felt like to be at that point. To not have a single friend left in the world. Rock bottom. Trust me, you’ll never want to feel that way again.”

  I stayed silent, so he continued: “Alcohol’s a double-edged sword, my man. Some of the best times I ever had were when I was piss-loaded. But a lot of bad things happened too. It’s funny, of all the places, I met Sandy at a bar. She was sitting there with a friend of hers and I was knocking back the hard stuff with a buddy of mine and we eventually got to talking. If I hadn’t been drinking at the bar that night, I probably never would’ve met her.”

  I think I understood what he was trying to say. Our successes, our mistakes, even our failures, when they’re all added together over the course of a lifetime, they ultimately lead us to where we’re supposed to be.

  “Thanks for everything, Walt.”

  “And hey, don’t worry if you don’t have everything figured out yet. At your age, you’re not supposed to. Here, I’ll give you my card. You gimme a call if you ever need any construction work done or anything else.”

/>   I stepped out of the truck and got back into my car and watched as Walton waved and honked the horn twice before driving off in the opposite direction. I opened the glove compartment and placed his card inside and then reached across the passenger seat to retrieve an old yellow map of Ontario. I unfolded the map and planned my route back to Toronto and started driving. A few months later I met Doc and sold my car to him and I haven’t left the city since.

  —PART III—

  WHITE MICE & ROSES

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hollywood always gets it wrong. Alcoholism isn’t about seeing pink elephants or having hallucinations about bats chasing mice. The pathetic fallacy that it’s always dark and raining when you’re hungover is completely untrue. In reality, the hardest mornings are when the sun is shining and you wish you could feel it, be a part of it, but you can’t because you’re bedridden and buried beneath a mound of blankets. It’s like being in limbo, comatose, in a cocoon. Survival requires you to work around the addiction, to try to tame it, to work it into your schedule and live with it. Once you’ve gotten used to the lifestyle, it would be impossible to revert overnight. But that’s what happens in the movies. They wrap it up nicely in the third act. The alcoholic simply decides not to drink anymore. Problem solved. But they’re missing the point entirely. In my experience, alcoholism is a symptom—a symptom of a much deeper disease.

  For me, it’s a social crutch, an excuse, a painkiller and an escape. Sometimes it works in your favour, but you can easily take things too far and do and say things you ultimately regret. You can act carelessly and admit you don’t remember anything and people will forgive you once, maybe twice, but you can only apologize so many times before your words become empty and hollow. Eventually that becomes the only person they know, and they have no choice but to cut you loose, leaving you feeling all the more dejected, isolated and lonely. For me, alcohol provides a temporary relief from the boredom, the emptiness, the constant pain in my chest and the sleepless nights—all of which are caused by the fundamental feeling that something is wrong with the world. Something is seriously fucked up. And I don’t fit into it.