After

by Francis Chalifour

  “I’m sick of being sad.” As I said the words, I realized they were true. I stayed on the floor with Maman’s arms wrapped around me, not wanting to move. Then I went up to bed.

  I had grown to dread the long, dark hours when I would lie awake and my thoughts would roar inside my head. Mr. Bergeron had told me that we’re programmed to be afraid in the night, so that we stay put in our caves and saber-toothed tigers can’t get at us. There were lots of nights when I would rather have faced any beast than the thought of Papa hanging from a rope. That night I dreamed about him, something I hadn’t done since he died. In my dream I was walking home when I saw him sitting on the porch waiting for me.

  “Papa? Is it you?” I called. “What are you doing here?”

  He smiled. “I’m waiting for you so that we can have a game of poker, son. The cards are on the table and I got here in time to clean up the kitchen so that your mother can play with us. It’s been a while.”

  He seemed so solid that I thought I could reach out and touch him.

  “Papa?”

  “Yes, son.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you, too. Did you hear me crying for you?”

  He ignored my question. “Hurry up, before the wind blows the cards away. It will be too late then.”

  As I reached the house, a gust of wind caught the cards and sent them flying up in the air. I grabbed at them, but the wind was too strong. Then, it lifted everything–the cards, the swing that hangs from the maple tree, the house, my father.

  I yelled, “Papa, come back! I beg you. You have to stay!”

  His voice came to me faintly. “I have to go. I have someone to see. Don’t worry, son. I love you.”

  He vanished and took everything with him, leaving me alone on the sidewalk. A few of the cards drifted down from the sky. There was no other trace of his passage.

  I woke up feeling comforted, as if I’d eaten hot chicken soup on a blustery day. I took my father’s chest out of the bottom drawer and reread the scrap of paper.

  You have to remember that everything that year had the surreal quality of a dream. It’s the only way I can explain what happened next. I was not what you’d call a world traveler: the only time I’d been away from Montréal by myself was the school trip to New York, and going with classmates and teachers is hardly what you’d call alone. That’ll give you an idea of how farfetched this sounds. I decided I was going to go to the poker reunion. All the while, the tiny part of my brain that was thinking clearly was asking questions: How was I going to get to Toronto? What would I use for money? Where would I stay? I ignored these. All the while I was making plans, I knew it was crazy, but deep down, I hoped that Papa would be there.

  12 | CLEAN-UP

  “What’s up with your house?” Houston had his headphones on as we walked home from school so his voice boomed. I looked up the street and could see that the front door and all the windows were flung wide open.

  I left Houston behind and ran, my heart throbbing in my chest, and pounded up the steps.

  “Take off your shoes this instant! I just washed the floor.” Maman was dressed in a torn Grateful Dead T-shirt and shorts, her hair tucked under a baseball cap. She was on her hands and knees polishing the floor with wood soap.

  “And stay away from the walls, they’ve just been scrubbed.”

  “Why? They looked fine to me.”

  “The house was due for a cleaning. After I’m through here, you and I are going to attack the attic.”

  The attic. No way. “I’m not setting foot in it.”

  “Did you hear me, Francis? You have to help me.” She leaned back on her heels and wiped her hands on her shorts.

  “Why? You’re the one who wants to go up there, not me.”

  “Don’t start.”

  I looked around the living room. Cardboard boxes from the liquor store were piled on the dining room table and in the hall. They had been packed and labeled.

  “Papa’s clothes?” I asked.

  “Yes. Uncle Ted’s coming around to pick them up,” she said firmly.

  “You’re giving everything away?”

  “I have enough souvenirs of your father in my head. I need to clean up.”

  “But maybe I’ll fit into them someday.”

  “I put away his favorite T-shirts and his good sweaters for you and Luc. The rest of the stuff will never fit you. You’re a skinny one.”

  Skinny. Hey, I hadn’t noticed. I was so skinny that if you shone a flashlight at me you could see the light through my body.

  “Don’t be a baby. You’re sixteen now. You’re old enough to understand.”

  Sweet Sixteen. I had turned sixteen on April 13, and it was, to say the least, nonfestive. The only thing I knew was that I didn’t want a party with my friends. The ol’ Grief Monster wasn’t tamed enough for me to be sure it wouldn’t show up, an unwelcome guest, so in the afternoon we visited Grandpa at the nursing home and spent forty-five long minutes listening to him call me Ben while we fed him a carrot muffin. Sputnik sat expectantly at his feet in anticipation of the inevitable crumbs. Mom had invited Uncle Ted and Aunt Sophie for supper. Uncle Ted didn’t show up, but Aunt Sophie did. Maman made lasagna, my favorite food. Aunt Sophie gave me the new U2 CD. I kissed her and her explosion of laughter actually made me smile. Luc gave me a drawing of Sputnik. Papa’s birthday was April 14th, and Maman had always baked a cake for us with both our names on it. That year, his name was not there. Mine took up all the space.

  It was one of those yo-yo days when I went from feeling okay to zoning out to feeling happy. Aunt Sophie left around seven. Look Who’s Talking was on TV she wanted to watch it. So ended my big day.

  “Francis, did you hear me? Yoo-hoo! Where are you? Francis? I’m talking to you.”

  “About what?” With a snap I came back to the living room smelling of lemony soap. “Throwing out my father’s things?”

  I slammed out of the house and coasted on my bike down the steep street to Deli Delight.

  Mr. D. was pouring coffee at a table where four old men were shoveling in eggs and fried onions and having a full-volume enthusiastic argument that had to do with a racehorse. When Mr. Deli saw me he put down the pot and came over.

  “I have exactly what you need.”

  He brought me a cup of coffee and sat down on the stool beside me. The old men were wrapped up in stories of bets gone wrong and paid no attention to us.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So, what?”

  What’s wrong? Let’s see. Everything. Feeling like a prize dork about Jul. Being scared that my mother would crack apart and vanish like Papa. Worrying about Luc who seemed happier playing catch with Sputnik than being with kids his own age. Having been such a disappointment that my father didn’t think it was worthwhile to stick around while I grew up. I wanted to run, the farther away the better.

  “My mother wants to give my father’s clothes to my uncle Ted. What’s he ever done for us? Now he’s going to have Papa’s vest and even his shoes. There’s nothing left for me.”

  “I see.”

  “And she even wants to clean up the attic.”

  “Sometimes it’s good to clean up. We have to brush away the cobwebs.”

  “You don’t understand.” Mr. D. waited while I furiously stirred sugar into my cup. “I’m scared of the attic.”

  I didn’t know how to say it. I didn’t know how to spit out the words that were choking me.

  “It’s where Papa died.”

  Mr. D. nodded in silence. I wanted to cry but instead I said, “Have you ever been to Toronto?”

  “Sure. We used to sail down the St. Lawrence with all kinds of cargo.” Mr. D. looked at me suspiciously. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason. Have you ever heard of a place called The Sailor?”

  He laughed. “Oh, that takes me back.” He shook his head as if to rattle a memory loose. “What are you getting at?”

 
“Do you know the password?”

  “Fellows, it’s time to close up.” Mr. Deli got up and started clearing the old men’s table. I knew he wasn’t going to answer me.

  13 | DELI DELIGHT

  I was sitting on a stool in the deli’s dingy basement kitchen, peeling potatoes for pancakes and french fries. Upstairs the deli was packed. It was hot, and I was sweating.

  “Are you done with the potatoes?” Mr. D. called down the stairs.

  “I’ve got six or seven more to do.”

  “Leave them for now, and come on up and give me a hand.”

  I can’t say I liked working at the deli, but the money wasn’t bad and Mr. D. let me pick the music for the tape recorder that was always on. I brought in Jacques Brel and U2.

  “Francis, go serve the man at the table by the window.”

  “But I’ve never served anyone!” Talking to strangers was not high on my list of skills. My face burned as a I flipped open the little order pad and asked the man what he wanted to have.

  “A clubhouse sandwich and make the bacon well-done.” He said without looking up from his newspaper.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t have any bacon here.”

  “Is this a deli or what?”

  “Yes, but it’s a kosher deli. Dairy.”

  “Shit!”

  The man took his newspaper, and left.

  “What happened?” Mr. D. asked.

  “He wanted a club sandwich.”

  Mr. D. just shrugged and said, “Finish the potatoes.”

  It was something like thirty degrees outside–freakishly hot for the month of May. I was soaked by the time I rode home up the mountain. Despite the heat, Maman was humming happily at the kitchen table, repotting her herbs into bright red ceramic pots. She had opened all the windows, but the house still smelled of fresh paint. In the last week she had painted the living room, the kitchen, and all the rooms in the house, except mine. I wanted to keep my room the way it was, pure white. There was color everywhere else–yellow in the kitchen, blue in the living room, and green in the bathroom. She had also cleaned up the attic with Aunt Sophie. I couldn’t do it. Point final.

  In old movies, they show you that time has passed by having the pages fly off a calendar. Without my noticing, the pages that marked the year were disappearing. Maman was happy more often than she was sad. She had left the post office and had gone to work in an architect’s office, cheerfully organizing things to her heart’s content. She was earning more money and sometimes she went out with Aunt Sophie for a drink or to the movies while I baby-sat Luc. My little Luc. I picked him up at day care yesterday and as I was admiring a fingerpainting he’d done he said, out of the blue, “I think that Papa is really dead now.” He hadn’t talked about Papa for ages, so he caught me off guard.

  “What makes you say that?”

  He’d obviously given this a lot of thought. “Because he didn’t come for your birthday. He’s dead for good. Can we have pancakes for supper?”

  The hard days were getting farther apart, so when they came they surprised me. I was hanging around in the boys’ washroom waiting for a break in hall traffic so I could go to see Mr. Bergeron when I was hit by a memory. Papa and I were up on Mont-Royal. He pointed at the tallest oak. “See that tree? It’s dying. Even the tallest trees die some day. They go back in the soil and feed the others.”

  I talked about it with Raymond–Mr. Bergeron. “Was that his way of telling me he was going to die too? Was he asking me for help, but I didn’t realize it?”

  “Maybe he was just telling you about trees,” said Mr. Bergeron.

  “Knock me over with a feather.” That’s what Papa would have said, relishing the news. It seemed that Aunt Sophie had met a man. He was a widower, and he didn’t have children, but he had a fat, bad-tempered dachshund. Aunt Sophie brought the man and Spaetzle, the dog, over for Sunday dinner. This event could have won the Horrible Family Dinners Derby hands down.

  The whole time, I was afraid to catch Maman’s eye because I knew that once we started laughing we would never be able to stop. First, there was the fact that Luc had never seen Aunt Sophie with a man before and he gawped unselfconsciously as she fussed away at him like a southern belle. If she’d had a lacy handkerchief, I’m sure she would have fluttered it. Then there was the malodorous dachshund panting under the table, having commandeered all of Sputnik’s toys between his stubby paws. On top of that, there was the man himself. When he took off his green baseball cap, I recognized him as the guy who’d ordered the club sandwich at the deli. I don’t know if he remembered me or not. It was the first time that a man, other than my father, had eaten at our table. The evening was a mess. A few months ago it would have made me angry or sad. Now it made me laugh.

  14 | REPLACEMENT

  I woke up with a start to the sound of Luc crying. I found him lying on his bedroom floor–he must have fallen out of bed.

  “Can I sleep with you? I’m scared.” When I knelt down to rock him, I could feel his fragile body trembling in my arms. Saber-toothed tigers. By the time I had settled him in my bed, he was asleep again.

  The next day was Monday Have I mentioned that on my Hit Parade of Hates Monday mornings are right up there? I poured Luc’s cereal into his bowl. Maybe it was the influence of Raymond, but I was on a talking kick. Talk about things. Don’t hide them.

  “What happened last night?” I said.

  “A nightmare.” He was pressing down on each Cheerio, one after the other, to try to sink it in his milk.

  “Really?”

  “Nightmares are not funny, Francis,” he said sternly.

  “No. They’re not.” I waited.

  “I had a dream,” he said.

  “Was it a nice dream?”

  “No,” he said in a sharp voice.

  I kept excavating for words from him. It was hard work. “What was the dream about?”

  “A candy dream.”

  “You dreamed of candy, and it was a nightmare? That’s hard to believe!”

  “But it’s true! I dreamed I was hungry, and there was nothing I could eat in the house, except for SpaghettiOs. I thought maybe there could be at least some jelly beans in the jar, but there were none.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I cried.”

  “Why didn’t you eat SpaghettiOs?”

  “Because I wanted to eat candy. Not SpaghettiOs.” He looked up at me to make sure that I understood.

  After school I did a shift at the deli. Mr. D. was in what was, for him, a talkative mood. “I’m happy to see you. There’s a ten pound bag of potatoes with your name on it, my son!”

  My son. The words made me want to cry. I went down the narrow wooden steps to the basement and took up my post, peeling spuds, glad to be alone. It was safe down there, with no one to tell me to do my math homework or to nag at me to eat or to ask me to go to the convenience store to buy some milk. When I was done peeling the potatoes, I hauled them upstairs and started to fry them. That is hot work, let me tell you. The green-hat man came back, and this time he asked for a bagel with fries. When I served him, he looked at me in a funny way. He left me five bucks for a tip. I couldn’t believe it. Usually, it’s a loony–or a toony when it’s Aunt Sophie, or Maman–that people give me.

  Maman had started going to the hairdresser on Saturday mornings, so I was alone with Luc. I planted him in front of the TV while I cleaned up the kitchen. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his plate balanced on his lap, making a mountain of buttery toast crumbs as he stared at Bugs Bunny.

  “What’s up, Doc?” he said when I came to get his plate. “I want jelly beans!”

  “You just had breakfast. If Maman says its okay, you can have some later.”

  “I want them right now! Later, it’s going to be too late.”

  “Knock it off. You can’t have everything you want right now.”

  He turned back to the TV and I spread out the comics on the floor.

  “Can you be my
father?” His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he had given the proposition a great deal of consideration. Be his father. Me. I wanted to shake sense into him, and at the same time, I wanted to fold him in my arms.

  “We can’t replace people just like that. You can’t replace a father. Point final”

  Luc turned off the TV, and went into the backyard. I was listening to him throwing the Frisbee for the dog when I realized something. I had said point final. I sounded like Maman. Heaven help me.

  The phone rang. It was Aunt Sophie.

  “Hi Francis, is your mother there?”

  “No, but she’ll be back around noon. She’s getting her hair done.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  “Aunt Sophie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m happy for you. He’s a lucky guy.”

  “Why, Francis, what a sweet thing to say!” I could tell she was surprised. “I met him at the coffee shop between eating doughnut number two and doughnut number three. But he’s not my boyfriend.” She laughed.

  “What happened? Did you break up?” When you’re a champion laugher like Aunt Sophie, the delivery and the message are two separate things. She could be announcing the end of the world for all I could tell from the gusts of laughter.

  “No! We never went out together! He wants to know your mother. That’s why I brought him for dinner. He likes her. I think she likes him, too.”

  The words hit me like cold water in the face. Freaking icy water.

  It all made sense: the hairdresser, the good mood, and the clean-up. My Mother Had a Boyfriend! I didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be. Not Maman. Not already. How could she dare?

  I hung up the phone without saying goodbye. I wanted to gouge all that fresh paint and smash the cheery red pots of herbs to the floor. I wanted to yell until the roof shook. She should have waited. It hadn’t even been a year.