I left Luc with strict orders to stay right where he was until I got back.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to grab a bite to eat.”
“But you just ate,” he said accusingly. “Francis, did a bee sting you?” Luc had once been stung and now he used it as a measure of all things awful. It shows you how upset I must have seemed to him.
“Not just a bee, a bumblebee. A seven-foot-tall monster bee! Promise me you won’t move!”
Deli Delight wasn’t officially open because it was Saturday, but when I looked inside I could see Mr. D. sitting at the counter, reading the racing form. The door was unlocked.
“What’s happened, my boy?”
“Don’t call me your boy. You’re not my father.”
“Ok! It’s true, you’re not my boy. But I like to call you that anyway.” He turned back to the paper.
“It’s my mother.”
“What’s wrong with her?” He was concerned.
“She’s got a boyfriend.”
With a sigh, Mr. Deli turned on his stool to face me.
“You know, your mother is a young woman. It’s possible she will find someone else to share her life.”
When he said that, I felt sick. “Yes, but not already!” I said.
“It’s true, it’s quite early, but life goes on. Your father may be dead, but you have to continue to live, your little brother too. And your mother.”
I understood the words as he said them, and if he’d been talking about someone else’s mother I might have agreed. But I couldn’t stand the idea.
When I got home Maman was in the kitchen unpacking bags of groceries. Her back was to me. I could see that her hair had been streaked a pale blonde.
“Aunt Sophie called,” I said.
“Do you know what Luc was doing when I got home?” She didn’t turn to face me. Oh, God, I had forgotten all about him. Just let him be okay and I’ll accept any man Maman drags in. I’ll be the best man at their wedding and never say a word.
“He was playing with a lighter and the cedar branches.” She loved the smell of cedar and had placed some branches in a jar on the dining room table. “He could have set the house on fire. Where were you? If something had happened, it would have been your fault!”
“How can you say that? Why weren’t you here taking care of him like a normal mother?”
She wheeled around. “You have never talked to me like that and you are not going to start today, do you hear me?”
“I know all about it. You should be ashamed!”
“What are you talking about, Francis?”
“Aunt Sophie told me everything.”
“Told you what?”
“That you’re going out with a man.”
Her face flushed an angry red.
“That’s none of your business! As long as you live in my house, you’ll respect your mother. Get out of my sight!”
I lay on my bed, staring at the blank white ceiling, my thoughts lurching along like a roller-coaster car that’s out of control. Respect? My mother was a slut who went out with the first man who came along. It wasn’t enough that she had me and Luc. If Papa were here, he would never have allowed it. But he wasn’t here, and never would be here again. I had to face the truth. He had left me because I wasn’t worth sticking around for. No wonder Jul took off. How much can I matter if my own father doesn’t want to see me grow up? I’m ugly. I’m skinny. At work I’m worth seven dollars an hour. At school I’m worth 51 percent in math. If I’m not worth anything, I should just die like my father. If I died tomorrow, who would come to my funeral? Would Julia come? Would she cry? Would she feel guilty? Would she come alone, or with her idiot, David? Would my mother come alone, or with her damn boyfriend in his stupid green cap? One thing I knew for certain. Mr. D. would be there, just like he was for my father’s funeral. He would cry too. I’m sure.
I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and found the aspirin bottle. It was almost full. I wondered if dying would hurt. If Papa could do it, so could I. Like father like son. I looked at the bottle for a very long time. The label read EXTRA STRONG. I opened the top.
Luc knocked at the door.
“I need to pee! Hurry up!”
That kid was always having to pee! I snapped the top on the aspirin, put it back on the shelf, and opened the door.
“All yours, kiddo.” I knew that I could never do it. I wasn’t going to make my innocent little brother suffer like Papa had made me suffer. Point final.
15 | GREEN HAT
The Anniversary came and went. Maman went to church and to the cemetery, but we didn’t talk about it at home. We had slipped back into No Talk/No Pain Mode. The summer yawned ahead. I was looking forward to two steaming months cooped up in the Deli Delight, peeling potatoes for Mr. D. Houston was going on a tour of North American baseball parks with his father, and the others were working as counsellors at a camp in the Laurentians. Luc was enrolled in Dinosaur Day Camp, and Maman was deeply, disgustingly, “involved.” Green Hat had taken root, on a more or less permanent basis, in our house.
It was a very hot day, so hot that Maman had turned on the air conditioner. Let the Good Times Roll! This was a sure sign that better financial times had come. Green Hat was sitting on the couch, his knobby, furry legs splayed out in cut-off jeans–disgusting! He and Maman were beaming at each other the way only mentally challenged people can do. She had on a red shirt–too tight for her. She had lipstick all over her face–well, only on the lips, but there was too much of it. I was obviously invisible to them, even though I was standing right there. She leaned toward him and gave him a kiss.
The poor idiot–Green Hat–had tried to win us over. What a dunce! That morning he had brought me an electric guitar. Here’s what happened:
“Francis?” It was my mother’s voice.
“What do you want?” I was lying on my unmade bed, staring at the ceiling and estimating the number of potatoes I would have peeled by September.
“Can we come in?”
We? She opened the door a crack.
“Look what George has for you!” she said brightly.
George. He had a first name. What kind of dumb name is George? Curious George. What normal woman would call her child George?
“Your mother told me you play guitar. I thought that maybe you’d like to have this,” said George. He held out a gorgeous pearlized blue electric guitar.
I had a weak moment. There’s no other explanation for what I said next: “Okay. Put it on the desk. I’ll take a look at it later.”
Maman gave me a look I hadn’t seen since she caught me trying to bite Luc when he was a baby. They backed out of the room as if I was rabid. It was a nice guitar, though. I have to admit it.
I had nagged at Papa to buy me an electric guitar. He told me that it was important to learn acoustic first, and I knew he was right, but I also knew he didn’t have the money for a new instrument. Here was George, just handing me an electric guitar as if he didn’t have a care in the world about what it cost. If Papa’d had enough money, he wouldn’t be dead today. Freaking money. Dirty money. People run after money. People would do anything to get more money, or enough money to live on. Tears coursed down my cheeks, but I was too furious to brush them away.
I didn’t notice that Luc had come in until he waggled a Cookie Monster puppet in my face.
“Look what George gave me!”
The puppet was on his right hand. Under his left arm he held a shiny red dump truck, its tipper full of Smarties. He was grinning so hard he looked demented.
“You are nuts!”
“I am not!”
“Retard! Can’t you see what he’s doing? Green Hat’s trying to buy us. He doesn’t care about you. He only wants Maman. He’s trying to steal her from us!”
Luc’s big blue eyes filled with tears and his lower lip quivered. I was glad. I’d found the magic words. I knew that Luc was afraid that Maman would leave lik
e Papa did.
“You have to be careful, Luc. If George gives you presents, we’re in trouble.”
Looking back, the ugly Grief Serpent must have swallowed my heart. Poor Luc. He bought it. I hated myself for hurting him but I couldn’t stop.
Luc’s slight shoulders drooped as he went back to his room, carrying his truck and his puppet as if they each weighed a ton. I picked up the guitar and went downstairs. I heard the lovebirds rattling pans in the kitchen, so I went out the front door and down the alley to the garage. It had a stale smell of mice and dust. I laid the guitar on the workbench, grabbed a hammer and swung at its slick blue surface. BANG. BANG. BANG. I took the scissors, and I cut every string. I found the hand drill and I made a hole in its body.
Sputnik planted his paws in the open door and barked at me as if I were a stranger.
“Francis, what are you doing, mon cher? Is everything okay?”
“I’m in the garage.” She must have been dazzled by Green Hat’s charms not to have worried about the murderous noises I was making.
“Well, it’s time to eat. Come in.”
I could barely stand to look at Green Hat. I wanted to scratch his face with the fork I was holding tightly in my right hand. I wanted to cram it into his throat and choke him. I needed a human sacrifice badly. I felt as if all my pain and anger and fear had taken on the shape of this one man.
I didn’t say a word during supper. I was looking at my plate.
“What did you do today, sweetheart?”
“Lots of things.”
“Such as?”
I had read once that a human being breathes 840 times an hour. It was about 7 p.m.
“I breathed about 15,900 times. That’s what I did today.”
For dessert I went and got the guitar corpse from the garage. I put it on the table, beside the chocolate cake. I stormed upstairs, knowing that I was acting like a colossal jerk, but feeling free just the same. I could hear Luc yelling at Green Hat:
“You’re mean! You want to steal my Maman!”
I heard footsteps and then the creak of my door opening.
No polite knocking this time.
Maman marched in. “For God’s sake, what did you say to Luc?” She looked like Alice Cooper, her makeup smeared all over her face. “Why are you acting this way? Francis? Answer me!”
I didn’t understand why, I just knew that I was in a rage. Her mascara had made black football player smudges under her eyes.
“Why are you so mean, Francis?”
“I am not mean. You are!”
“Why can’t I have a little bit of happiness?”
“What about Luc and me?”
She clasped her hands to her head and repeated softly, “Why can’t I have a little bit of happiness?”
I felt that the air had been knocked out of me. “It’s only been a year, Maman. Only one year.”
“I’ve cried enough, I think.” Her voice had grown calm and cool and it enraged me.
“How dare you replace him like that, with freaking Green Hat?”
“His name is George! Stop calling him Green Hat!”
“You can’t replace Papa.”
“I don’t want to.” Her composure vanished and she collapsed on my bed, curled up on her side, and cried like a baby.
I don’t know how long we were frozen in place, but eventually she sat up. I handed her a Kleenex and she snuffled. “You know, I’m really angry with your father. He cut out and left me with no money and two kids to raise alone.”
“You’re not alone, Maman. I’m here with you.”
“I know, but it’s not the same thing, Francis. Someday, when you fall in love, you will understand what I’m talking about.”
Huh! Falling in love. I wasn’t about to do that again. I’d learned my lesson.
“Okay,” she sounded defeated. “I understand it’s only been a year. I will ask George to leave. But listen to me very carefully: I’m doing this because of you. It’s the first and last time in my entire life I’ll do this. Do you hear me? The first and last time. Now, I don’t think I want to talk to you for a while.” She closed the door and left me alone.
The day after the Leaving of Green Hat, Aunt Sophie appeared at the deli. It was around six on Monday evening. There were only two or three customers sitting at the back. Mr. Deli was in the basement fretting over the bagel oven. The Cranberries were playing on the radio. It was raining softly.
Aunt Sophie shook out her umbrella and sat on a stool at the counter so she could talk to me while I sliced potatoes. “Your mother told me everything,” she said. She looked like a big potato herself, in her wrinkled linen dress with her face drawn into unaccustomed lines. I concentrated on the cutting board.
“I’m disappointed in you. If I were you, I wouldn’t be proud of me,” she said.
The more I agreed with her inside, the madder I got. When you’re already beating yourself up for doing something stupid, you don’t need anyone else’s help. Aunt Sophie had always been in my corner. I didn’t want to feel ashamed in front of her.
“You aren’t me!” I was yelling without meaning to.
She leaned across the counter. “Look at me, Francis.”
I clenched my fist. “You’re dumber than this potato and I hate you.” I heaved the potato at the window. Luckily I hit the newspaper rack.
“You’re crazy, just like your father!” Aunt Sophie stood and shook her umbrella at me.
I guess at that minute I was. I started chucking all the potatoes I’d peeled at the door. She left. The three customers sat looking at me. Mr. Deli came huffing up the stairs.
“What are you doing? You can’t throw potatoes like that! You can’t do that!” Mr. Deli looked at me as if I had three heads. He unfolded a green garbage bag and started picking up the potatoes. “Violence begets more violence!”
“Oh, great. More words of wisdom.”
Mr. D. didn’t look angry so much as confused. And disappointed.
I had clearly cracked. Mr. Reptile Brain had taken over in my skull. I had managed to terrify Luc, wreck Maman’s plans, and alienate both Aunt Sophie and Mr. D. Good going, Francis! A triple-header. No, a quadruple-header. No wonder Papa couldn’t stand me.
I washed my face at the tiny sink in the men’s room and left the deli. It was raining so hard that I took off my T-shirt. I walked down St-Denis and turned on Mont-Royal.
I didn’t stop until I came to the big statue of an angel at the entrance to the cemetery. She looked as if she was giving me a high five. Everything was clear in my mind. I had to leave.
Aunt Sophie had loaded Luc and Sputnik into her car and taken them to a holiday camp in the Laurentians for a week. Maman and I had hardly exchanged a word since the End of the Affair. I had convinced myself that nobody would miss me if I left.
August 14, 1993. My own private D-Day. I was going to fly on my own wings, but, truth be told, I felt more like Tweety Bird than an eagle. After I bought my bus ticket I had two hundred and fifty dollars in potato-peeling money sorted neatly in my brand-new wallet. My knapsack was packed with a couple of bottles of Pepsi, my Walkman and tapes, some underwear, a couple of T-shirts, and a map of Toronto.
I took the métro to Berri-UQAM. From there, it was only a five-minute walk to the bus station, but I was drenched with sweat as I stood in line for a ticket. Part of my brain knew that what I was doing was not the brightest of moves, but it was overruled by the litany of reasons I had assembled to convince myself that I had to go: I wanted to leave all the pain, frustration, anger–wait a second, where’s my synonym dictionary? Okay. Just found it–disappointment, fury, rage, resentment, and bitterness behind me. I also had plenty that I wanted to forget. For instance, there was making a fool of myself over George, and telling Jul that I liked her. But most of all, I wanted to forget that Papa hadn’t loved us enough to stick around. Those were the push reasons. The pull reason was Password: Black Jack.
16 | THE SAILOR
The bus was ne
arly full. I sat down in an aisle seat next to an old woman in a pink pantsuit with soft white hair and glasses on a beaded cord. Before the bus pulled out of the station she told me that she was from Barrie, Ontario, and that she was on her way home from visiting her granddaughter. I wondered if she knew Jul, but I had a horror of speaking to strangers so I didn’t ask. I slept until the bus stopped at Kingston. There was a Tim Hortons there, and though I wasn’t hungry I bought a turkey sandwich. The old woman gave me an apple.
“Where are you going, dear?” she asked.
“Toronto.” Ever the snappy conversationalist, me.
“Do you have family there?”
“No.”
“Is this your first visit?”
“Yes.” Was she never going to stop asking me questions?
“Lord, Lord, you’ll enjoy yourself. You know the Exhibition is on. My, it’s fun, what with the roller coaster and the midway. There’s the Food Building. My, I used to love going to see Elsie the Cow carved out of butter, but now it’s all…”
“Excuse me.” I got up and lurched down the aisle to the minuscule washroom to get away from her. I came back to my seat, hoping that the Inquisition was over. It wasn’t.
“Are you from Montreal?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yes.” I was going to have to jump off this bus. I didn’t care if it was speeding down a highway. I chose the only other option. Lurch down the aisle to the washroom again, and when the smell got to be too much, lurch back to my seat.
“How old are you, dear?”
“I’m sixteen.”
“Oh, my dear! Sixteen! If only I could be sixteen once again with all the experience I have, dear! Life would be so cool!”
Cool? I’d never heard an old lady use that word. Weird.
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
What kind of person was this? The source of my profound knowledge of the citizens of Barrie was Jul, and she had led me to believe that they were normal. Not if this lady was an example. She was odd, strange, and if I hadn’t written the word weird three lines up, I would have used it again here. What was strange about her was not the persistent questioning, but the fact that I somehow felt compelled to answer. I had never needed to be told “don’t talk to strangers.” Shy was my middle name. By some magical force, she had me spilling my guts.
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