Beautiful Scars

by Tom Wilson

  Bunny Wilson gave everything she had to us. Janie, Thompson, Madeline, me and especially George. Bunny was a warrior, and now she was dying. The feeling I had first had when I was four years old came back again. The fear of Bunny’s death, the fear I could not live without her. Thompson and Madeline immediately stood up and walked out of the party. We headed over to St. Olga’s. I sat at Bunny’s bedside. The room thick with the smell of old—not death, just old. The late afternoon sun travelling over King Street West, beating through the windows and off the walls in Bunny’s room. Firing straight into the corner and onto the single bed where Bunny lay, still and silent, the light surrounding her frail, blanketed body. I thought of the Bible-story painting on the wall of St. John United Church on East 38th Street. And I thought that I could roll away her stone, just like Jesus, and Bunny would stand up, and I would take her to Swiss Chalet for a quarter chicken dinner and we would have a couple of laughs.

  But Bunny remained silent and still, the way she had been for months. It was hard to tell what, if anything, had changed. It was hard to tell that now she was finally dying. Bunny had suffered from Alzheimer’s for seven years, and the disease had moved in and made itself comfortable before anyone even noticed. But then Bunny’s eyes glazed over, her face changed, she stopped recognizing herself in the mirror. Like it had with George years before, time faded away until Bunny’s simple functions shut down. She could not swallow solid food. And then finally she could not swallow fluids.

  I sat in the chair beside her bed for hours. I don’t remember speaking. Not to Janie. Not to Thompson or Madeline, not to the nurses. Not to Sandy, who arrived later. Even Madeline’s dog Phil, a rescued coon hound who was out of control almost all the time, was flat out on the floor, awake but in a state of quiet reflection. The sun went down without me noticing. The lights came on above Bunny’s bed, and I just stared at her short white hair on the pillow.

  For the next day and a half, it seemed, none of us left. We didn’t have to. We were already home. We sat with Bunny and waited for mercy to take her away.

  —

  Rain is my summertime salvation. When the house gets dull and dark and still, and the few cars that pass swish small ocean swells over the sidewalks and onto the grass, I feel safe.

  My annual fight with summertime depression is no big deal really. It happens every day between 4 and 9 p.m. from late May to mid-September. Let’s just call it four months, or 122 days, or better still, 610 solid, relentless hours every year since I was about five years old. I’ve been fighting this feeling ever since Bunny and George used to shut the house down after the daily five o’clock suppertime hour and ready themselves for a long summer sleep.

  I talk about Bunny in all sorts of ways, and I toss her flaws and cracks into the mix of memories of her. But late at night, when the noise gets turned down, it’s different. I lie awake thinking about Bunny and her massive, loving heart.

  Every day I wish she was here.

  I want to hear her voice and touch the thin skin on her hands and face. I want to laugh at her wisecracks and hear about her pain and know how she commanded her secrets to lie low. To stay in the dark corners. She was like a spy. Living undercover. Protecting me from who I was.

  If Bunny Wilson were here, I’d ask her to tell me all the things she remembers about me growing up. How she saw me. How she didn’t see me. I want to add it up and subtract it. I want her side of the story. The way she saw me fitting in. How she tried to make it work. How exhausting it must have been to have a baby, live with a child and watch a wild spirit and a beast come of age. She accepted me regardless of how far out I went. Drugs, women, disappearing acts, music and desires and addictions she could not confine. She watched me make incredible mistakes. Watched me drive my life into the ditch. I hope she knows I finally crawled back out to be a better man. The man she intended me to be. The man she hoped she’d raised.

  TRUTH

  THE TRUTH

  The truth is a constant seeker, a warrior with the tenacity of a travelling salesman, knocking on every door, looking to make its heavy-hearted delivery to exactly the right person.

  When I was small, the truth was whispered by my ancestors, who sat under the dull glare of out-of-fashion Bakelite lamps while I peered out between the bars of my cheap wooden playpen. The truth disguised itself to me. Sometimes it was an alien landing saucers in my backyard outside my bedroom window. Once, after I got my tonsils out, the truth appeared to me in chloroform hallucinations. Druggy, dreamy, lost information that bobbed and weaved and staggered its way to my bedside like a drunken father home from the Legion.

  For years after, the truth strangled me with its unknown details and made me question myself and attempt to shut out love and drove me to countless attempts at self-destruction. The truth left me paralyzed and gasping for breath, struggling to free my voice from deep inside my guts in the middle of the night while I was sleeping.

  I trick myself into believing that I hunted down the truth. But the truth found me, and it wasn’t the harmless, lily-white right-thing-to-do that we’re taught it is in grade school, and there were no immediate rewards from it. The truth is a fucker.

  —

  I was fifty-three, a slightly overweight grandfather of two, a bad cook and a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. I’d been hired to join some publishers, music supervisors and SOCAN members to do some speaking gigs on the creative process and songwriting. For an hour at a time I’d talk to green writers and artists about surviving in a world that does not need what they have to offer. It was an easy hour to kill. My entire life I’d been struggling to maintain my self-respect while doing whatever it was that I wanted to do creatively, dodging depression and criticism and resisting the urge to find a closet to hang myself in. It was work I liked. I could be honest and still try to motivate my audience. It’s work that took me to colleges and universities, medical conferences and corporations. I’d start my lecture with a simple line. “If you don’t have to do this, don’t. If you don’t have the burning desire to wake up and create something, if your life does not depend on it, then please stop. You’ll end up wasting your time and time of anyone who crosses paths with your creation.” I would look back into the eyes of my audience and I see them thinking, “I can’t believe I spent all this money to get lectured to by a guy who looks like he sleeps in his car.”

  I packed up a small bag and the guitar and put them by my front door and made myself some lunch and hung around the house waiting for the limo to take me to the airport. The knock came. The PR company’s handler and coordinator was a young woman—when I say “young” I mean she must have been about thirty-four or thirty-five, so not that young really but young to me. I knew she was Mary Simon, a singer and songwriter from around town, but I couldn’t remember if I had met her before. I have a terrible memory for names and faces and as a result I am constantly offending people by not knowing who they are. People can be very sensitive about this kind of thing, I’ve learned. Mary stood in my doorway putting her hands out to take my bag and my guitar. “You might have to pay me and get me where I’ve gotta be and tuck me in and wake me up in the morning, but you don’t have to carry my luggage or put up with any of my shit, okay?” I told her.

  I walked down my stone pathway through my garden, past the fountain on my lawn and up the stairs to the sidewalk, dropped my guitar and my bag into the hands of the limousine driver, walked around, opened the back door and jumped into the back seat of the limo.

  It was within a minute of the car rolling down the street and turning onto Kent Street that Mary proclaimed that this was going to be a great three-day trip. “We’re going to Regina and Winnipeg, and I’m really happy that you’re coming out because I’m a fan of your work and you don’t know this but I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time because my family and your family were friends years ago here in Hamilton and…”

  I stopped her there. I looked at her, told her no offence but I’d heard that family-friends
stuff before, mainly because of my last name. Wilson is common everywhere but seems to be especially so in Hamilton. I told Mary that my mom and dad didn’t have any friends here in Hamilton. They barely talked to any of the neighbours. They were older, like in their late fifties–early sixties when I was a kid, and my father, who was a tail gunner in a Lancaster bomber, was blinded in the Second World War. His massive head injury made him shut down and uninterested in people’s company as a result of years in the torching dark. He wasn’t comfortable making friends. So even though Mary thought her family was friends with my family, I could tell her that they probably weren’t. The only people that were even allowed in our house were some relatives who came down from Quebec: a collection of ragged aunts, cousins and one Mohawk uncle that was actually my aunt’s boyfriend, and they were all from my mother’s side of the family.

  “Oh no, no, no,” she said. “My grandmother Mary Brennan. She was best friends with your mother, Bunny.”

  “Mary Brennan? Your grandmother was Mary Brennan? I remember your grandmother. I remember her name but I haven’t heard it in about fifty years. I was just little when she used to come around and I forgot about her completely until now.”

  I felt myself soften, realizing after all these years that Bunny actually had a friend here in Hamilton. I thought that she was a complete loner, sometimes bordering on lonely, sitting at the table with only blind George to keep her company, drinking rum, smoking cigarettes, playing cards. “So no shit, eh? Mary Brennan.”

  “Yeah, they were really close. Best friends for a while, I heard. In fact, they were so close that my grandmother was there when Bunny and George adopted you…”

  “What?

  “Wait…What?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about…”

  She looked at me, shocked. Her mouth actually fell open. “Shut up….Fuck off….Don’t kid around, Tom, don’t fuck with me like you never knew you were adopted.”

  I don’t remember anything for a while after that. The limo was speeding down the QEW heading to the airport, and I must have fallen into a dream. My mind flew past the traffic and straight up over the hydro towers and the rooftops and I was gone.

  DRIVING JANIE HOME

  I have a video of Thompson’s third birthday party. In it Janie and Bunny stand shoulder to shoulder, just outside the madness that encircles the birthday boy: kids yelling; Sandy marching the cake, all lit up, through the room; Madeline trying hard to be in the centre of the action, spinning on one foot and sucking up all the energy like it was ginger ale; Thompson happy and calm as ever; and Ralph Nicole and me stoned, playing guitars and singing “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain,” “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” “This Old Man,” and “Bud the Spud.” And then about five feet back from it all, Janie and Bunny, dressed like they’re going to church, stylish, ironed and arranged, ready for high tea or a meeting with the priest.

  Bunny was quietly in charge, letting Sandy and me be parents, but I can tell by her face in the video that she was just barely keeping her cool. Janie was beside her; together they formed the two-headed matriarch of our family. After Bunny died, Janie assumed matriarchal duties on her own. Janie went to the head of the table for Thanksgiving, Christmas and family birthdays. And it was on the occasion of another birthday, my own, that I finally drummed up the courage to ask her questions that had been burning inside me since Mary Simon had revealed the secret of my adoption three years before.

  Of course, questions had been swirling around Janie long before that fateful drive to the airport. Women in my life were all too comfortable voicing their suspicions. For example, when I first started seeing Cathy Jones a decade or so before. Cathy was a five-sided coin, a Newfoundlander with a beautiful heart and a knee-jerk honesty that could hurt if you were in her line of fire. We met and fell in love on the spot. She and her boyfriend came to a Blackie and the Rodeo Kings show at Barrymore’s in Ottawa. We got right into it fast—instant friends—flirting and laughing until her boyfriend came up to us and asked how things were going. Cathy turned and gave him her report plain and simple: “I’m going home with him” and pointed across the table at me. So perhaps not surprisingly she took one look at Janie, one look at Bunny, then back at me and bellowed out, “There is no fuckin’ way Bunny is your mother. She’s too old, Tom. Janie has to be your mother. And I’m going to find out for myself if you don’t.” More than once I’d have to pull Cathy back into her seat and tell her no. We had a four-year love affair that was so intense we should have known it wasn’t going to last, and it didn’t.

  Later, a different girlfriend, Andrea Ramalo, was beyond persistent. I think she was attracted to the possibility of my Mohawk blood raising exotic interest on the white-bread Queen Street art scene. It seemed like she woke up every morning asking me when I was going to talk to Janie, and asked the same question as I closed my eyes to go to sleep at night.

  Mostly I was annoyed by how confident these women were in their opinions, how willing they were to instruct me on how to deal with my family, my life. Ultimately I’m kind of thankful to them for edging me closer to the truth. But what they didn’t understand was that it was my story, my life, and I’d deal with it when I was good and ready to deal with it. Not a second sooner.

  Now that second had arrived.

  It was my fifty-sixth birthday party, and I was about to drive Janie home. She always likes to leave the party early; she likes to waltz through the door as dinner is hitting the table and gets the hell out when the dishes are being cleared. I walked her out to an old van that Thompson used for his band Harlan Pepper and buckled her into the passenger seat. We drove off down Amelia and Kent streets, then across Aberdeen to Bay and around a few more corners to her apartment on Charlton Avenue.

  I pulled into the driveway and through to the back parking lot of her apartment building. The June sun beat down on the windshield and I began to sweat. I tried to stay calm, but my thoughts were racing around in my head and I became more animated. My voice got louder and more direct, and my hands flew in front of me as I spoke.

  There were questions I wanted to ask, but I needed to make sure Janie had a way out, that she’d be able to open the van door and disappear into her apartment without much effort. I wanted to make it easy on Janie. So I slowed my mind down and grabbed the steering wheel to keep my hands still. I started out nice and cool, like I was pointing out a blue jay or a robin dropping down on the lawn in front of us.

  “Hey, Janie. I found out a couple of years ago that Mom and Dad weren’t my real mom and dad. They weren’t my birth parents, anyway, and you’re the only relative I have now. You were also really close to Bunny, so if at any time in the future you remember anything about where I came from, anything you’d feel comfortable sharing with me, please do.”

  She asked me how I found out. I said that Mary Brennan’s granddaughter had told me.

  “That damn Mary Brennan. She always had a big mouth,” Janie said.

  “Well…okay, yeah,” I said.

  What happened next, happened fast, and was so final it left me numb. Words that had been tied down to railroad tracks for fifty-six years broke free and shot across the fields—liberated truth in such full colour it made me dizzy.

  Janie turned to me and her eyes teared up. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t know how to say this. I hope you forgive me…I’m your mother.”

  I stared straight ahead at the wall of Janie’s apartment building for what seemed an eternity. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die? Well the same happens when you’re being reborn.

  Janie began to cry, and I put my arms around her and told her it was okay. Now I could finally be there to take care of her, to protect her. I wanted her to know that the secret she’d been keeping was not going to change how much I loved her.

  The truth was out, and this moment was ours and no one else’s. I leaned back in my seat and followed my instincts. Here we were, mother and son for
only the second time in our lives, and my first act was to keep her on the sunny side of the street.

  “It’s okay, Janie. Don’t worry about a thing. Everything is going to be just like it’s always been. Better in fact. Nothing is going to go wrong. I’ll make certain of that. You’re still Janie to the kids. You’re still Janie to the grandsons and all our friends and family.”

  It was hard to believe that it was this easy. From the back of my mind it seemed impossible; from deep in my heart it was simply forbidden. But in reality it all came down to Janie and me, and nothing could hold us down this time. In the end, all it took was one drive home together.

  A MOTHER CONFESSES

  Janie is my mother. I still call her Janie, and so do her grandchildren, Madeline and Thompson, and so do Madeline’s boys, Janie’s two great-grandsons. Janie and I both come from places where our options were limited. Janie comes from Kahnawake. I come from Janie. We circled around one another for fifty-six years, never coming clean and never acknowledging the obvious. For two people to manage this situation is a full-time job. You’ve got to look the other way at exactly the right moment or the other person will catch you being yourself. Being the son, being the mother. The effort took its toll on us both.

  Janie lived with Bunny and George after they took me in on East 36th Street, but by all reports she wasn’t allowed to bathe me or feed me or put me down to sleep or comfort me when I cried. I can’t begin to imagine the mental torture she went through being that close to her own baby and not being able to care for him. Him—me. That was me.

  Despite her generous and loving heart, Bunny made her secret, this lie, her full-time job until the day she died. “There are secrets I know about you that I’ll take to my grave,” and by Jesus she did. I knew I was an outsider. I knew I was in the wrong place. I knew I was supposed to be somewhere else, but I didn’t know where that place was, or even how to find it on a map.