No Signature

by William Bell

  “Great,” I said.

  Before my mother came home—I had called her at the office from the hospital to tell her I was back—I mowed the lawn, vacuumed the pool and even cleaned up my room. Strange behaviour for me but, to tell the truth, I did the work to keep from thinking about my mother. I failed, naturally. You can’t ask yourself not to think about something.

  While I worked I kept trying to convince myself that my mother had only done what she thought was best. That laying blame wasn’t going to change anything. That she had been lonely, too. That all three of us had suffered in one way or another.

  But believing something in your head isn’t the same as believing it in your heart. Telling myself all those things didn’t dull the anger. While I was putting away the lawn mower I laughed bitterly because I realized that the deep rage I had felt toward my father for all those years wasn’t gone at all. It was still there, like a constant, painful pressure behind my eyeballs, only now it was directed at my mother.

  Later on, around seven, I was standing at the window of my room when I saw her walking slowly down the street, bent a little sideways with the weight of her briefcase.

  When I came into the kitchen she was sitting at the table groping around in her purse. She was wearing a pink dress with a broad white belt and a pearl necklace. Against the bright material of the dress her skin was pale. She looked up at me, shaking a cigarette from the pack. As she lit it her hands trembled.

  We both waited for the other to break the tension that stretched between us like a steel band. She took a long drag, letting the smoke out slowly.

  “Have a nice trip?”

  Seeing her there, her shoulders slumped with fatigue, her face fearful, her hand shaking as she brought the cigarette to her pale lips, I held back my anger.

  “It was okay.”

  She offered a thin smile. “That’s nice.”

  “Mom, he told me everything,” I said evenly.

  “You mean—”

  “Everything.”

  She started to cry silently. She stubbed out her half-finished cigarette, rose, and took a tissue from a box on the counter. Leaning on the counter, she wiped her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  So there it was. Half of me wanted to hug her, tell her it was okay. The other half wanted to shout, to pound the words out. Being sorry is meaningless. It doesn’t change anything.

  “You ought to be,” I said. “He didn’t deserve what you did to him. Neither did I.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, well, I guess there’s nothing anybody can do about it now.”

  Later, after my mother had showered and changed, we zapped a couple of TV dinners in the micro and ate out on the patio. There was a cool breeze off the lake, and we could see what seemed like thousands of boats in the distance, their sails illuminated by the setting sun.

  Over dinner I told her about the wrestling meet and about Hawk’s accident. That’s how I described it—an accident.

  “Steve, before you went up north, remember Hawk called and you refused to talk to him? What was all that about? It wasn’t like you to treat him like that.”

  So I laid it all out for her. Her face went white.

  “My god,” she said, putting down her cup. “His parents must be devastated.”

  “They’ve known for a long time, Mom. They’ll handle it okay.”

  “My god,” she said again. “I don’t know if I can. What will I say to him when he comes over?”

  “Try ‘Hi, Hawk.’ ”

  “That’s not amusing, Steve.”

  “Well, he’s the same guy, Mom.”

  She didn’t ask about my father, but I told her about him anyway—his show, the sculpture of me wrestling. I wasn’t sure how she’d like the idea of him and me getting along. When I said I wanted to go up to the Soo for a couple of weeks before school started up again she didn’t look too pleased.

  “Well, I guess it’s your decision, Stevie.”

  “That’s right, Mom, it is. I have two parents, now.”

  She flushed a little, as if she’d been caught without her make-up on. She looked like she was about to say something. Instead, she took a sip of coffee and looked out over the lake.

  Pretty soon she grew restless and went inside to her study to do some work. I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  OVER THE NEXT WEEK OR SO I went to see Hawk every day. My father and Sharon picked me up each afternoon and dropped me off at the hospital. Hawk and I would watch a ball game on the little TV, or I’d read while he slept. He slept a lot. It was pretty boring in that hospital.

  According to his doctor, Hawk was healing well. He had a bunch of months to go before he was anywhere near normal but it looked good. One thing still bothered me, though. How was Hawk doing inside? He seemed to be coping okay, but I wondered if, when he got out of the hospital, he’d fall into a deep depression again and try to hurt himself.

  One day I wound up my courage and said, “Hawk, do you … do you ever feel like trying it again?”

  He seemed to know what I meant. “You don’t need to worry about that, Wick.”

  “Promise?”

  “I was just trying to get revenge.”

  “On who?” I gulped. “Me?”

  “No, no. Not you. On life, I guess.”

  “I read somewhere that suicide is the ultimate temper tantrum,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yeah, that’s about it.”

  He was worried that he’d never be able to do sports again, but his doctor seemed optimistic about his chances. Although he’d be out of commission for at least a year, Hawk would probably be able to wrestle again. That perked him up a lot. He and I figured he could help the Fanatic with the coaching next year.

  “I can teach the new cadets how to Go Animal,” Hawk said.

  THIRTY-SIX

  MY FATHER CALLED ME A FEW DAYS later and told me he and Sharon were heading back north the next day. “I’m getting itchy feet,” he said. “Too long in one place. Especially the city. The noise and pollution are startin to get to me.”

  Before they left, they wanted me to go out for dinner with them. “And I’ve got a surprise,” he added. “Dress up.”

  “Like you?” I joked.

  He laughed and hung up.

  When they picked me up my father was wearing a sports coat and pants that didn’t say Levi’s on them. Sharon had on a blue flower print dress, and her hair was pulled back and caught behind her neck with a silver barrette. She looked terrific. I was glad I had taken him seriously and worn a sports jacket myself.

  We ate at an upscale Japanese restaurant in Mississauga, laughing at each other as we struggled with the little pointed chopsticks they give you.

  “Why Japanese food?” I asked him, struggling with some whole-wheat noodles that tasted like seaweed and kept sliding from between my chopsticks. “I thought your favourite was Italian.”

  “Oh, just to set the mood,” he said mysteriously. Sharon rolled her eyes.

  After we left the restaurant, my father piloted the van onto the Queen Elizabeth Way.

  “Hey,” I pointed out, “you’re taking the wrong ramp. This is westbound.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, puffing great clouds of smoke into the air. “We’re going to Hamilton Place.”

  “Oh, no,” I moaned.

  Sharon laughed. “Yep. Madama Butterfly?”

  Sure enough, there we were in centre orchestra, my father and I with Sharon between us, listening to the fat folks on stage blasting away in Italian even though they were all dressed up like Japanese samurai who had escaped from one of those medieval martial arts movies.

  “I think I prefer Willie Nelson,” Sharon said a few minutes into the opera.

  “I think I would, too.”

  The story was about an American sailor who was stationed in Japan some time during the early 1900s, and who apparently had nothing better to do th
an stomp around and blare tunes at anybody who came near him. Instead of taking the opportunity while he was in Japan to hit the malls and pick up a cheap stereo or the latest computer, he put the move on this Japanese woman. In fact, from what I could gather, he sort of bought her and played house with her for a few months.

  The woman fell in love with him, naturally, and just before he took off back to the States—he was probably sick of eating seaweed and rice balls and wanted to sink his teeth into some genuine California junk food—he promised her he’d return and they’d live happily ever after and blah, blah, blah, like that—the usual. Everybody except her knew he was leading her on. You didn’t have to be a genius to know this one was going to be a tear-jerker.

  The heroines name was Butterfly. Which was a major joke. First of all, in spite of the traditional clothing, she looked about as Japanese as a Big Mac. And her name didn’t quite suit her. I mean, butterflies flutter. This woman lumbered around like a hippo, blaring at her maid every two minutes about how in love she was. Later she had a baby, so she warbled away at him a lot, too.

  I suffered through most of the opera, fidgeting as the story unfolded, relieved when the intermission came. In the last act the sailor was visiting Japan with his American wife. Without knowing why, I just knew Butterball was going to lose her son. Then, I hate to admit it, I got kind of interested.

  At one point, she was singing this pretty nice tune about how she never lost faith in the sailor, how she knew in her heart that their love was so powerful he would never forsake her, how all the pain and anguish of waiting for him, wondering where he was, what he was doing—all that would end, and things would work out okay.

  And as she sang, even though all the circumstances were as different as they could be, I tuned right in to how she felt. Deep in the cellar of my memory the laser clicked on and I went into a Replay, seeing myself when I was seven, sitting in my room and looking at the postcards for the millionth time, wondering where my dad was, what he was doing, and full of ache because I didn’t know why he had left me.

  And I started to cry. Right there in the theatre, surrounded by sophisticated men and women with their expensive clothes on, I felt my throat tighten and the hot tears slipping down my cheeks. God, was I embarrassed!

  I stole a glance at my father, only to find he was looking at me.

  He was crying, too.

  We looked at each other for a split second, then both of us burst out laughing. We were laughing and crying at the same time.

  Throwing her fists out sideways, Sharon punched us both in the chest. “You guys,” she said. Then she started to laugh.

  We couldn’t stop. The people in front turned and glared at us, shushing us. We were definitely ruining the mood, but we didn’t care.

  Afterword

  Some readers may be surprised or incredulous that Jack Chandler was able to keep his secret so well, even from his wife and son. However, research makes it very clear that such cases are by no means rare. There are more than a few Jack Chandlers out there.

  — W.E.B.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following for their help in the writing of this book: for financial assistance, the Ontario Arts Council; for sharing his research, Charles Craig, director of Craig Reading and Educational Services, Inc.; for technical information on wrestling, Wayne Lennox, Peter Montroy, Jody Snider and Mike Kitchen; for support and encouragement, John Pearce; for inspiration, Brendan Bell; for advice on the story, Megan Bell and Dylan Bell; for copy-edit, Shaun Oakey; and as always, for her help in editing the manuscript, and especially for encouragement and emotional support, Ting Xing Ye.

  Also by William Bell

  Forbidden City

  Seventeen-year-old Alex Jackson is thrilled when his father, a cameraman for the CBC, asks Alex to join him on assignment in China. Not only will he get some time off school, but, Alex, who’s a Chinese history buff, knows this trip is the chance of a lifetime. But Alex and his dad cannot know that they will become part of the great historical events that sweep China in the spring of 1989.

  As students and civilians demonstrate in Tian An Men Square for changes in the government, Alex feels the thrill of being a reporter. But his excitement turns to horror and dismay as the movement turns violent and he witnesses the death of his Chinese friend. Alex and his father know they must communicate the story to the rest of the world, but at what cost to their own lives?

  Speak to the Earth

  Fifteen-year-old Bryan Troupe is at first indifferent to the bitter dispute between loggers and “tree-huggers” that splits the community of Nootka Harbour on Vancouver Island. But when a similar rift divides his own family, and affects his relationship with his girlfriend, Bryan becomes relentlessly drawn into the centre of an environmental conflict that shatters his entire way of life.