“You seen Francis yet?” Aisha asked, startling me back to the library.
“Not yet,” I answered.
“How’s your mother?” she asked next.
“She’s, you know, okay.”
She nodded and went back to reading. I hadn’t planned to tell her about Mother’s outburst, but a few minutes later, when the overhead lights of the library flashed to warn us of closing time, I changed my mind. As we rose to go, I mentioned the pickle-throwing incident as casually as possible.
“You need to tell Francis,” Aisha told me.
“He’s probably with his friends at Desirea’s.”
“So? Go visit him.”
“I’ve never been there before. He hasn’t invited me.”
“He’s your brother. What sort of invitation do you need?”
—
I walked alone down the avenue and towards the intersection of Markham and Lawrence. During the day, the whole area bustled, but now, just after sunset, even the convenience stores were closed, their windows dark and empty looking. Despite its bright, unshielded security lights, the parking lot facing the avenue seemed haunted.
A cop car passed by. Its flashers on, but no siren.
Desirea’s was at the back of the mall, in the much less desirable wing. The area here wasn’t as well lit. The windows of the cheaper storefronts were cracked or boarded up. I passed a rusted orange dumpster bleeding a sludgy smear towards a storm sewer. There were pools of oily standing water and the funk of garbage.
One business looked open. Thumping music edging on noise coming from within. There was no sign advertising services provided or wares sold, no spiralling pole set out front. The windows papered with posters for concerts and dances and parties, a clutter of print that seemed designed to obstruct rather than to inform.
“Shut the door, fool!” a voice shouted at me. “The air conditioning.”
Entering Desirea’s, you walked into a solid fog of smell, a collision of body warmth, colognes and hair products, thick in the nose, waxy on the tongue. You were hit with a mash-up of sounds and rhythms halted and restarted. A bass so deep and heavy you could feel it in your jaw.
“Yo, Dru,” said a voice. “Tell this punk we’re booked solid till midnight.”
A dozen young men sat on cracked vinyl couches or beat-up chairs. They were wearing loose jeans and stencilled shirts; baseball caps with flat rims cocked sideways; hair picked out or slicked back; do-rags or fades with sharp and sorcerous cuts. I recognized Dru, the thick man who ran the shop. He was standing at a barber’s chair, cutting the hair of a young man who now lowered his folded newspaper to stare at me. That picture of Anton again. Dru now gesturing at me with his clippers, yelling over the music.
“Hear that, little man? We got no walk-ins this evening.”
“Guy needs attention, Dru. Check out the car-wreck hair!”
“Hold up, should someone get Francis? Isn’t that his brother?”
Just then, the music changed, and I caught the set-up of turntables in the corner. Standing there, surrounded by yellow milk crates of albums, his attention fully on the record spinning before him, was Francis’s friend Jelly, but in a state I’d never seen before, never imagined. Still minding the turntables, he pulled a record from a crate, cued it up, flicked switches, held a headphone to his ear with a cocked shoulder. The backbeats changed, and then a high, pained voice filled the room, maybe a woman’s, maybe a man’s, slowed under the friction of his hand, human but barely so. Mourning against the almost deafening rhythm.
—
When Francis appeared, he took me to a room in the back of the shop. A bedsheet covered the small window, and I could see, besides cleaning supplies and bike parts and a broken barber’s chair and more milk crates of records, some of his clothes hung up to dry as well as the cot that he must be using as a bed. His face was screwed up bad at me. I’d showed up unannounced, but when I told him about the tinfoil, the pickle jar, Mother’s state, his expression softened. He said he’d give me some money for groceries and asked if I’d had anything to eat that day. I shook my head.
“Okay,” he said. “Just give me a second.”
He went back to Jelly, and as they talked I got my first real look at Francis’s friend. He was thin and dark, with a patch of onion brown on his temple shaped, somehow, like a forgotten continent. They were whispering, their heads bent into each other. Jelly passed my brother a set of keys, and they slipped palms and joined fingers and hugged and stayed, and when they pulled apart there were sweat marks where their bodies had touched. Jelly spotted me watching them, and he chinned a greeting.
“Come on,” Francis told me. “Let’s get going.”
We left the shop and he walked me towards an old Honda convertible with the top left down. Hub caps were missing, and paint was stripped from a good third of its outside. Francis got in and started the car, doing all this very carefully and deliberately. I hesitated, then opened the passenger door and settled in. I started doing up the seat belt but then, catching Francis’s frown, let go of it. Francis turned the ignition key once more even though the engine was already running, and this made the most frightening pterodactyl sound I’ve ever heard. He told me to stop jinxing him by looking so worried, and he concentrated once more and then shifted the car into first gear and touched a pedal. A sharp burning smell came up, and he took the hand brake off before trying the pedal again.
“Whose is this?”
“Mine with Jelly,” he said.
“You bought it?”
“Of course we bought it. How else could we get it?”
“When did you learn how to drive?” I asked.
“Quiet! Stop distracting me!”
“Do you have a licence?”
“Yes, I have a licence. Shut the hell up!”
After a lot of reversing and forwarding, we pulled out from the parking lot. We drove through the back alley of the strip mall and, after bumping over the curb, we were off on the avenue, my brother’s arm perched showily on the top of the door. He skidded to a fast stop at a traffic light, and once, when he signalled to a guy he knew on the sidewalk, the car veered dangerously, the horn of an oncoming car blasting at us.
“Headlights?” I asked softly.
“I’ll find them later.”
We went to a grocery store and bought several cans of beans and tuna, as well as rice, condensed milk, and a bag of apples. We put these in the trunk, but instead of going home, Francis kept driving west until he hooked off Lawrence and into the parking lot of the Steak Queen restaurant. A slight rain had started, and this pressed Francis to park more quickly than he should have. In and out of the spot we went until he cut the engine, the car still more than a bit crooked, and with little etches on the bumper of the neighbouring car that we hoped nobody would notice.
In the restaurant, Francis ordered us a feast. Two steaks on buns and two burgers as well as fries and onion rings, two deluxe milkshakes made extravagant with whipped cream and cherries and extra syrup. He insisted that we get full-sized salads with Italian dressing “for the vitamins.” The man at the cash register seemed doubtful about the order and the look of the two of us until Francis put his money on the counter. It was all in small bills and change, but he even had enough for a tip.
We took a seat while the food was being prepared. An old man sat by himself with only a paper cup before him on the table. A couple tables away from us, three older girls I recognized from the neighbourhood were sharing a sundae. They had done-up nails and hair brightly streaked and they were each almost frighteningly hot when they set their eyes at you. They were looking at Francis, who nodded politely but drummed his hands nervously on the table.
We feasted quietly until we had nothing but fries. We dipped them in ketchup and just nibbled at the ends. I watched the man behind the counter who worked the grill. He was sitting now on a stool with his arms folded on his body, his eyes closed. It was difficult not to feel something for him sitting there,
catching snatches of sleep, other times growing old in the squinting smoke while the orders were shouted at him.
“Your friend, Jelly,” I began. “He’s a DJ or something? He seems pretty cool, even with that nickname. What’s with it, anyway?”
Francis shook his head. “You know,” he said, “you’ve got to work on things.”
“What do you mean? What things?”
“Like all sorts of things. Like stepping into Desirea’s the way you did. Like always looking so unsure. You’ve got to be cooler about things, and not put everything out on your face all the time. You’ve got to carry yourself better and think about your look. Doesn’t matter how poor you are. You can always turn up the edge of a collar to style a bit, little things like that. You can always do things to let the world know you’re not nobody. You never know when your break is coming.”
We sat in silence then. I caught Francis looking at me in the window’s reflection, but then he looked away. A car passed by on the road with its sound system on full blast, its undercarriage tricked up with light, a purple ghost beneath it on the asphalt.
“I’m taking you to see Dad,” he said, very softly, as if to himself, the words seeming to hang in the air between us.
—
Our dad was that man in a badly focused photograph, little more. Mother was reluctant to speak about him, and even as kids we understood that there are things about the past that you just don’t press. But she would tell Francis about our father’s struggles when he first came to this country. Going to school during the day and washing dishes at night was not easy. Some people wouldn’t rent their places to people like him. Some people wouldn’t hire men like him, or fairly pay or promote them. There were countless indignities a man like him had to face, and there had been tolls, she explained. There had been tolls. She wasn’t always this understanding. Once, when Francis asked what our father had studied at school, the reaction was sharp, and she used language we’d never heard in the home. “He was studying to be a man,” she explained, “but then the bitch dropped out.”
But Francis and I understood that we had a special opportunity in our father, greater room for guesswork and imagination than most kids had. Our father could be anything. And from an early age, Francis had developed his own theory. Our father, he announced to me one day, was “a composer.”
I wondered why a composer, why not someone who sang or played an instrument. But I never pressed. Even as kids, we had learned to be gentle with each other’s hopes and dreams.
“We don’t know our dad,” I said.
“We don’t have to know him. He’s our father.”
“We don’t know anything about him. Even where he lives.”
“I found out. He’s here in Scarborough.”
“How did you find that out?”
“I’ve been asking people.”
“For how long? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m telling you now.”
“Where in Scarborough?”
“He lives in a low-rise called the Oberlin. It’s north of the highway.”
“That’s too far away,” I said.
“We’ve got wheels now, remember?”
“We can’t just show up. It’s been a long time. It’s been…forever.”
“See?” he said. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. Not trying stuff, not believing. I’m not saying he’s going to solve everything for us. I’m not stupid. I’m just saying we’ll have a talk. Why not give it a shot?”
—
The drizzle had turned to rain. The wet black of the street reflected the street lights, and our car and the others hissed loudly. After a few blocks, the rain grew cold and stinging on our faces, and I asked Francis to put the top up, but he didn’t know how. Fiddling around, he managed to turn on the wipers, but he also ran a red light, another car skidding to a stop to avoid hitting us.
“Okay,” he admitted. “That was close.”
“This is crazy,” I said. “We need to go home.”
“Would you relax? You’re completely freaking me out.”
The rain drowned out other sounds, and at times we could see almost nothing ahead of us. We were both getting soaked, but Francis just kept driving and looking around, guided by some unseen map.
—
I have one flickering memory of our father, and of music and dance. I was very young, and I think it was winter, because I remember a cold white light falling in from a window. I remember being shown a record player, the black disc spinning, and a dark hand setting the needle very gently on a clear groove. The beginning of the very best song, a happy song, full of brassy horns. Our parents were dancing to this music in a way at once jokey and joyful, spinning each other around with hooked elbows, threatening to knock over tables and chairs, Francis’s thin arms reaching high up towards them.
I remembered him being lifted up and spun. I remembered being spun too. A wheeling room of yellow peeling wallpaper, and a glimpse, and then another, and then another, of my brother’s face. Half glee, half alarm. His feet tippy-toed, his arms reaching up.
“My turn,” he cried, again and again.
When I got older, I wondered if I really could have remembered this scene. I would have been just a bit more than a year old. How could I remember the peeled wallpaper but not remember Dad’s face? Why the dancing, when I’d never, ever, for years after, seen Mother do that?
—
The pelting of the rain eased up, and we could see more clearly now. We crawled slowly through streets that looked to my eyes all the same.
“There,” Francis said. “That’s the street. It should be just down here.”
He stopped in front a low-rise with a sign saying The Oberlin, and Rooms Not Available. The building was rough, sheets on the windows instead of curtains.
“I want to go home,” I said.
“Come on,” Francis laughed. “Aren’t you curious?”
We stepped from the car and walked wet and ridiculous towards the lobby. Francis held the door open for me, and I paused for a second, frozen at the sight of a big guy inside, maybe driven inside by the rain. Francis pushed me in and, screwing his face up tough and serious, stepped in behind me.
“Sup,” he said to the guy, who answered with a flash of gold teeth.
Francis squinted at the buzzer panel. Letters were missing from the names. Cha…Fur…dan…Ho…Most of them weren’t even half-complete, but Francis searched the scraps of letters, mouthing them aloud, and then punched in a number.
“Yes?” said a woman’s voice over the intercom.
“Sorry,” said Francis, and he tried another number.
“Yes?” said another woman’s voice. “Who is this?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Wrong number.”
“You kids get lost. You hear me? You just get lost.”
“Sorry,” he said again.
The guy behind us laughed. “You bitches lost?” he asked, smiling.
Francis put his finger on another broken word, “lco,” and then he punched some more numbers into the keypad. The buzzer rang several times before a voice answered.
“What.” A statement, not a question. A weary, thick voice. Then silence. That sort of silence that tells you somebody’s listening.
“Hello?” Francis said into the intercom.
“I don’t want none,” said the man on the other end. “Whatever you’re selling.”
“No,” said my brother. “I’m not selling anything. It’s just me.”
Stillness and silence. Even from the big guy behind us.
“It’s me,” said Francis. “It’s us. Your sons.”
Me and Francis, the guy in the lobby, we all waited for someone to speak. Someone to settle the matter.
“You’ve got the wrong place,” said the man, and disconnected with a click.
—
We were driving back to Desirea’s. The rain had stopped and the air was calm and strangely sweet. Francis reached down to the dashboard
and the headlights snapped on.
“You’re so quiet,” he said.
“I’m just thinking.”
I kept looking ahead. I felt his eyes on me.
“Why do you always have to be such a pussy?” he said.
FOUR
He arrives in our home like a ghost. Sits there, on the living room couch, being served tea by my mother as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world. He’s as thin as before, wearing dark denims worn baggy and low without a belt, checkered underwear showing, a hood drawn over his head. He’s got that onion-brown patch on his temple, that same forgotten continent. But he’s changed. It isn’t just the show of ten difficult years on his face. It’s the loss and guilt that’s palpable in him. Implicating.
“What’s he doing here?” I whisper at Aisha.
We’re in the kitchen, Aisha and I, fetching more crackers, more sugar and cream. Aisha seems, for the first time, a bit embarrassed. “I didn’t actually think he’d come,” she explains. “I sent a message through a friend. It wasn’t even a real invitation, just a suggestion that we all meet up.” She busies herself cutting thin slices of apple and cheese, putting them on crackers, adding a sprig of parsley. Hors d’oeuvres! She’s serving a boy like Jelly hors d’oeuvres!
“He just showed up this morning when you were out,” she continues explaining. “Your mother let him in. They’ve been talking.”
I look back at Jelly and Mother on the couch. They don’t seem to be talking at all. Jelly empties the container of cream into his cup after offering some to Mother. He pours sugar directly from the bowl. I catch him slipping a few of the crackers into his hoody pocket. Mother takes a delicate sip of her tea before appearing to ask Jelly a question, and he nods, still wearing headphones under his hood. I spot a foam mattress in the corner. A stuffed backpack sitting on top.
“This isn’t a good idea, Aisha,” I whisper. “I’ve warned you. I don’t want Mother disturbed or confused. She’s fragile.”
“It’s just temporary. He won’t get in the way. Your mother was the one who suggested the mattress, and there’s room. He said it’d be fine, he’s crashed in far worse places. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
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