The Sweetest One

by Melanie Mah

  “What!” she says, defensive. The ghost of a British accent.

  “What happened yesterday?”

  She looks at me.

  “What’d he do yesterday?”

  “Nei sheung wa mut?” What are you trying to say?

  “Well,” I say, “he cooked?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kuey yao mo bo hai.” Did he fix shoes?

  “Yao.” Yes.

  “Kuey yao mo mai sic mut?” Did he buy food?

  “Yao.”

  “Did he serve customers?”

  “No.”

  You served them all by yourself? You’ve been serving them alone for a week?

  “What else did he do?” I say.

  “Have nap.”

  “What else?”

  “Loa shun.” He got the mail.

  No. No. No. No. No. “Did he tell you anything? Did he say if you got any letters?”

  “He give me bill.”

  “Anything else?”

  She thinks, then shrugs.

  “Mom, I have to tell you something.”

  She looks at me.

  “Promise not to get mad?”

  Mild expressions on her face: a little sad, a little curious.

  “I’ve been getting letters from Trina,” I say. She sags before it’s all the way out of my mouth. “He must have seen one. That’s why he left. To find her.”

  She looks at me, but it’s like she’s looking through me.

  “I’m sorry I hid them from you, but now we have to go.”

  Silence.

  “Mom,” I say, annoyed, “let’s go!”

  There are still people in the store. She can’t go. She has to wait until they leave and sell them stuff before they leave. A young family — man, woman, and baby — comes in.

  “We need to close the store and go,” I say.

  Kyle Bigchild comes to the counter with a frilly pink shirt. He wants to know if it comes in extra-small. My mom rushes out to help, but I hold her back, my hands on her shoulders as she struggles and tries to pull away. My wrist pops. Throbbing pain. She’s stronger than she looks.

  “I’m sorry, Kyle,” I say, “but we have to close the store right now. It’s a family emergency.”

  “Let go!” my mom says. Anger is rare for her. My wrist hurts, but I don’t let go.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. I mean to say it to her. He drops the shirt on the counter and beelines for the door, probably thinking how fucking rude.

  I stand on the stool at the front counter and announce to the store that we’re closed. As far as I know, this is the first time in the history of Jack’s Western Wear that we’ve had to close early. People think it’s a joke. “Please leave,” I shout, pausing between my words for effect. “There is urgent family business to attend to. We need to go.”

  My mom, trembling and agitated like seaweed in changing currents. “Why you do that? You don’t have to do that. They’ll come back.” A customer comes up to the register and she starts ringing him out.

  I’m still trying to get everyone to leave. Some are quick to go, others dawdle. I speak to the stragglers individually. Luke’s mom, Ruth Carcadian, asks me why. Her daughter Laura’s getting married tomorrow and her youngest son Les has nothing to wear.

  “It’s my dad,” I say. A blank look on her face like she’s acting dumb on purpose. “He’s gone. He went away. We need to find him.”

  “We need five more minutes, okay, Chrysler? He’s in the fitting room. And he’s got a couple of pairs in there with him.”

  “Mrs. C., it’s an emergency.”

  “Just give us one or two minutes.”

  Ruth Carcadian is the biggest gossip in town. I picture her making small talk at the iga over what that Wong brat said to her as she kicked her out of the store. She’ll say, Those Wongs are rich enough to turn away business. I’ll bet they jack up their prices. She’s got me and she knows it. She starts acting like I’m not there, like the case is settled and her chubby son can go on trying pants till close, or later if he wants. She pulls a pair off the shelf by the waist, fwaps them open to see the fit. Pair after pair she does this to. Leaves a mess. Someone’ll have to fold them back up. Me or my mom. My fifty-eight-year-old mom, taking all kinds of shit from people just to make a couple of bucks. After combing through the aisle, Mrs. C. turns to me, a pair of pants flopping in her mauve-taloned hand like a dying fish. “Could you see if you have this in a thirty-eight?”

  “No, I can’t. Your one or two minutes are up now, Ruth.”

  I head to the back of the store and turn off most of the lights. Back at the front, I hold the door open. Hundreds of dollars of sales walk out, my mom watching as I spit in the face of everything she’s worked for, eleven hour days six days a week, tens of thousands of work hours, more than twenty years in business. A bony hand on her chest, she’s leaning forward. She could have a heart attack now, and it’d be my fault. Both parents gone because of me.

  Mrs. C. guides Les out the door. “No wonder he left,” she said. “Crazy family like you.”

  Trina would’ve ran her out, would’ve screamed at her and her tires as they screeched up Main, would have screamed at the dust clouds and the settling dust bowl. My dad maybe would have, too.

  My mom’s eyes on me. I shrug. If she had better English, she’d say, I hope you’re happy. If she were the swearing kind, she’d call me a stupid fuck. Instead, being who she is, she tries cashing out the till, setting up for a regular start tomorrow.

  I lock the front doors, scribble out a sign and stick it in the window: CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. Then I pull her away from the till towards the back of the store, careful not to hurt her, though she struggles. Bills in her hands, she yells at me for fifteen feet to let her go. When I’m convinced she won’t go back to the till, I do, I follow her to her office, where she sorts the bills in her hand and puts elastic bands around each of the piles.

  “Ready?” I say when she’s done.

  She’s not ready. She needs her licence. We go upstairs. I look for Trina’s last letter, if there really was one, and come up empty. There’s no telling where he is, how long we’ll be gone. I pack bags for my mom and me: coats, clothes, and toiletries, put some books in mine, a Walkman and some tapes. A musty smell from my mom’s closet as I try to pick her some clothes. Which one of thirty plain long-sleeve t-shirts will she want? Which one of thirty pairs of loose-fitting blue jeans? This is the plight of someone who spends eleven hours a day in a clothing store. Sometimes there’s nothing to do but look for a new shirt.

  While I’m in her room, I go into the top drawer of her dresser to make sure she got her licence. Two dust outlines, one for each of their wallets. Right now, my dad’s — brown, greasy, overstuffed with cards — is in the truck glove box, rattling down Highway 11. Or maybe 22. I picture him thumbing through it in some faraway small town pharmacy. Oh. You need id? I got some right here. His cute accent.

  IT TAKES SOME stern talking, some pleading, but I get my mom inside the car. This is a job for two, after all: one to drive, one to keep a lookout. But she looks small and powerless and just plain wrong behind the wheel. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her there.

  She’s barely in the car before she gets back out again. What’s she doing? Wiping the mirrors with tissue. Side windows, too. I get out and help. Napkins from the glove box. I do ninety per cent of the work, run back in like I’m in a car chase scene. Where’s Mom? I roll down her window, stick my head out. She’s picking shreds of toilet paper off the car.

  “Mom!”

  She gets in, shuts the door twice, and adjusts the mirrors. I help her pull her seat forward. She adjusts the mirrors again, brings down the wheel height, and pulls out the seatbelt. I help her buckle up. I do mine up, too, even though it’d be easier to look out all sides without it, because it’s safer and because I don’t want to give her any reason not to leave.

  “Okay,” I say. “You remember how to do this?” As far as I know s
he’s driven a handful of times in her life. Plus the test.

  She’s quiet.

  “Well, do you?”

  “Yeah!” she says, annoyed, like she’s the kid and I’m the mom.

  I open the garage door. She puts the key in the ignition, looks down at the centre of the wheel with mild interest, as if the answers to the universe’s big questions were there if only she wanted them.

  “Mom,” I say, softer this time. “Ready?”

  She turns the key like it hurts, puts the car in reverse. It creeps out slow as shit, straight out, she almost nicks the mirror on the wall. She backs out an extra ten feet over Current Electric’s gravel pad across the way before turning down the alley. Her foot barely on the gas, it feels like gravity pulling us down the hill, not combustion. My mom is even worse than me when it comes to being scared. She probably thinks of cars as death machines, especially after Reggie. She hasn’t been in one since Gene died.

  I’m proud of her. I wanna say so. Instead, I suggest we tool around before we leave, to ease her into driving. She likes the idea, so we go for snacks, run over the curb on the way through the Dairy Burger drive-through. My mom is a healthy eater so I love watching her enjoy junk food. Next stop: Red Mart. I fill the tank and buy a bag of ripple chips, a tub of garlic dip like old times. Add a couple of sandwiches, and a big bottle of water for good measure. I pay for it all on the debit card my mom gave me.

  Josh McMurtry asks if I’m going camping. His nice blue eyes.

  “No,” I say. “Road trip.”

  Back in the car, my mom wants to tool around some more. Every minute, my dad gains a few kilometres, but what can I say? I’m not the one who’s driving.

  We pull out of Red Mart and cruise down the highway at forty. It’s fine till a truck comes up fast in the rearview. He rides our ass, a young annoyed guy in a red ball cap, he horns us, swerves, barely misses an oncoming car before he swerves back in.

  My mom tries to be attentive but is so consumed by fear and is thinking so much about safety that she doesn’t see all the cars. She’s nervous like a little bird, one I’d keep in a cage to protect, but I don’t want to die, and for once, there is something more important than her or my or someone else’s feelings.

  “Mom,” I say, trying to be gentle.

  She turns off the highway and we chug down dirt roads, end up in the industrial part of town. We head for the new subdivision, cross into older neighbourhoods, spend entire minutes trying to three-point-turn out of crescents. We sail past Conrad’s house, past Mr. Berkson’s house, famous for its Christmas display, dormant now and gaudy as hell when it’s turned on. There’s the trailer park, the junior high school, the town’s second elementary school. Churches. That hill Gene broke his leg on being front man on a toboggan. The park where I got drunk with a French exchange student. Cops came. We hid our bottles under the table behind our poker hands. Everything, all I know, all my stories, set here. We cover it all twice in just over half an hour, even pass a couple of spots more than that. The beauty of being young in a small town is that you can only go as fast as you can walk.

  I keep half-expecting to see my dad’s truck, his hunting cap crooked on his head, age spots on his face like a constellation, let’s call it the Old Traveller. But that would’ve been too easy. I tell my mom it’s time to leave town.

  “Which way?” she asks.

  If my dad is looking for Trina, he’ll be driving either west on Highway 11 or north first on Highway 22. Twenty-two is the more efficient way, faster, but 11 is a bigger road with wider shoulders and fewer animals.

  “Highway 11,” I say. “West.”

  He’ll be stopping in towns along the way to stay the night. His eyes get worse at dusk. He knows this. He’ll do what’s safe, won’t he? But what if he doesn’t? I imagine him losing control on a curvy mountain road or slamming into an elk or big-horn sheep. Maybe he gets out to take a look at something, stretch his legs, go for a walk. Maybe he encounters a bear or someone who sees he’s by himself. Sees the bulge in his front pocket.

  My mom takes the long route to the highway like she’s hoping to get lost on the way. This town she’s lived in for thirty years. We pass the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran, on that strip Stef nicknamed Saviour’s Way.

  “You know where you’re going, right?”

  She knows. We drive in a jagged arc towards Highway 11. She turns and turns then turns again. Why is she doing this? It’s fine. At least I know we’re leaving now. I put my feet up on the dashboard. She glances sideways. I slouch down further. My feet stay where they are. I check the map, though I already know a route by heart.

  We’ll take the 11 to the 93, then drive north through the mountains to Jasper before taking the 16 west. Highway 16 was the road Trina took, and once we’re on it, we’ll go pretty much the way she went, except we won’t stop in Prince Rupert. We’ll take the 16 to the 37, the road that runs parallel to the islands, then we’ll take the 37 up to Upper Liard, where the 1 to Whitehorse starts. I’ve been tracing this route for weeks now, months. We’ll stop and look for his truck in all the bigger towns. Stop in Jasper, Prince George, Whitehorse, plus anywhere my mom wants to rest. We’ll go to places he likes to go. McDonald’s. Arby’s. Tim Hortons. Tony Roma’s if there is one.

  Right now, it’s four o’clock. Can we make it to Jasper by the time we have to stop? Look up at the highway businesses. This may be your last chance to see them. 7-Eleven, Fountain Tire, strip mall, Red Mart, Treasury Branch, iga, then nothing for a while, and then the high school, the water tower in behind. It’s the side of the highway I like less. The other side, the way to Red Deer, is more familiar. But we are, of course, here by necessity. Community centre on the left, then eventually we run out of businesses, hit the 80k speed limit sign going sixty, pass kilometres’ worth of houses — suburban Spring Hills — then the pond, a town limit sign, on the right. This is it. We’re finally leaving.

  Without warning, we lurch to a stop. I’m thrown forward and the seat belt locks me in. Vehicles horn, almost rear-end us, shake the car with their wind as they pass. We’re not even on the shoulder. There are no stoplights or stop signs here. What’s wrong? Is it something with the car?

  “What’s going on?”

  Silence.

  “Mom?”

  Her hands are on the wheel and she’s staring straight ahead, out the windshield, like she’s still driving. I lean over. The engine’s still running. No warning lights on. The car is fine.

  “Mom. Is everything okay?”

  My dad on a quest to find his favourite living daughter, leaving his wife and the daughter he likes less behind. If that was the only way to think of it, I’d say fuck it and leave him to it. But it’s not. There’s family togetherness. Life and possibility. And danger. His failing eyesight, poor driving, the mountain passes, the bad roads. If we find him in time, we can save him, keep a lookout. If they’re both in Anchorage, we can meet them, bring them home.

  The air splits open, roaring. The car shakes. A semi.

  “You’re gonna get us killed. Mom. Go.”

  She acts like she doesn’t hear me. I’m in a tv nightmare. Waking up invisible to the ones you love the most.

  “What is it? Are you scared? So am I. But I need you, Dad needs you, to keep going.”

  But she can’t do it. Or she doesn’t want to. Reg died in a car. Stef in the water. Gene with a bullet in his head. No wonder. But I have to try.

  “Is it any safer here?” I say. “This last year alone, I’ve been hurt at least half a dozen times. Who’s to say that you’re not gonna be working some day when some guy comes in and tries to rob you? Someone with a gun, trying to get your money.”

  Silence.

  “People burn down buildings here, they get into fights. Remember that guy who died last month? Larry Kneebone? Got hit by the train. It’s not safer than the outside here. You tell me how it’s safer and I’ll be fine with you not leaving.”

  Her bit
ter face, like I’m my dad forcing her to eat when she’d rather starve.

  “Larry slept on the track,” she says. “He was drunk. So stupid. He deserved to die.”

  “Mom, I swear. Are we going or not?”

  She turns off the ignition.

  You know sometimes when you do something and don’t realize till after you’ve done it? Some actions are beyond logic, beyond thought, beyond feeling. Either that or they’re pure feeling. A hand pulls a lever, a leg pushes a car door open, feet hit the pavement. I grab the bag I packed, put the sandwiches, water, and my wallet in, sling it over my shoulder. Leave the rest.

  My mom turns to me, opens the window, but has nothing to say. We stare at each other. I’m waiting — for last words, for wisdom or something. But words have always failed her. Nothing to say, even when it counts. But all it takes to talk is an open mouth. It’s mechanical — larynx, pharynx, palate, tongue — it’s something we’re made to do. But words have always failed her.

  I look down the highway, then back at her. My mom’s small hands on the wheel. Big knuckles. Her eyes, soft and blank, on me. Only her eyes will ever look at me that way.

  “Bye, Mom. I’ll call you,” I say. She has no friends. She’ll be lonely. Working all by herself at the store. Eleven-hour days. But this is an emergency. This is how it has to be. And maybe sometime down the road, I can visit. Maybe we can all come back.

  I turn, take one step down the highway, bracing myself, expecting to fall down or die, expecting a herd of wild bulls to come charging. I take another step — tell myself to breathe — then another. And another. So far so good. I turn around to see if she’ll follow. She doesn’t. So I walk faster. So I run. It feels good, moving like this. Soft, flat shoulder. I wobble because of the bag, I’m not in shape, and I keep looking back — she’s still there, crying? — I’ll miss her, already miss her. But she’ll take care of herself.

  Slower, I say, be careful for your heart, it’s okay if you walk instead. But I don’t, I keep running, round the bend on Five K Corner, the loop on a track and field course that leads you home. Only this time it won’t. I’ve only ever gone over Five K Corner in a car, with my family. My mom and dad singing along to Chinese opera, my mom with her socks half off, the pull of the turn, my mom’s head swimming with private thoughts or maybe there weren’t that many. A side of the highway feeling, freedom. Where to eat, sleep, go, what to do — all scary thoughts for me to put out of my mind.