A sparrow showed some interest in Morrie’s flirty chirping and settled himself on a low-hanging branch above us. He checked out the vicinity for the babe who’d called him over but when he saw it was just Morrie faking it, he flew off in a huff.
“So this invitation to join you all out here,” he said as we watched the conned bird disappear, “it was meant to put me in my place, right? Stomp on me but good?”
“You figured that out, did you?”
“I don’t have Alzheimer’s yet, son. I could see I ticked you off back at the Bay. But how was I to know you were such a fanatic about the fur trade? For you, I figured it was just a job. I had no way of knowing you were a kindred spirit.”
What he said was no more than true. Why should he have assumed that a minimum wage flunky would have any serious bond with the items in his charge? Tank tops at the Gap, antiquities at the Bay. To him interchangeable. I was wrong to take offence. Mind you, if I wasn’t in my right mind at the time, who could blame me? I was as sleep deprived as a new father and totally jacked up from taking a prisoner. I was well within my rights to be unhinged.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “It was low. Oh, and mea culpa about the lump.”
He probed gingerly around its golf ball circumference. “No need to apologize. I had it coming.”
“It’s just that I never met anyone who shared my interest before. I didn’t even know there was anyone else out there. I thought I had the market cornered.”
“I know. You get proprietary, don’t you? My wife always says you and your fur trade, like I own the patent.”
“My family thinks I’m nuts. They’d rather I pick something more mainstream to throw myself into. Something that doesn’t make them roll their eyes every time I open my mouth. But that other stuff they’re always suggesting to me to take its place, it’s all so trivial. It wouldn’t grab you by the throat the way this does. You get what I mean?”
“Exactly,” he pounced on what I’d said. “There are times a man needs to have something so intense going that it helps him blank out parts of his real life. For a while at least.”
He got it dead on. Bashert, my Nana would have said. Fate. It was fate that I came together with this complete stranger who knew me like I knew myself. It sounds crazy, I grant you, but I was starting to consider myself lucky that he’d targeted my museum of all places. Otherwise, I might never have crossed paths with my soul mate.
Now, what exactly it was in his life that Morrie wanted to blot out he didn’t go into. That he’d lost his job and was seriously strapped for cash I already knew, but somehow I didn’t think that was all there was to it. Still, I respected the guy’s reticence. It’s not like I was about to spill my guts after so many years dedicated to keeping them in lockdown.
“Your wife, what does she think of your hobby?” I was careful to pronounce it with quotes around it. We both knew that the h-word didn’t do justice to our mutual obsession.
“She tolerates it. Says she’s glad I spend my time at home burrowed in my fur trade room rather than out gallivanting with other women. Not that I would,” he hurried to clarify when he caught me sizing up his potential as a golden-age womanizer. “A thief I may be, but that’s the limit to my extracurricular activity. I’ve always been faithful to my Lena. I swear to God.”
“What kind of stuff do you keep in this room of yours?”
He closed his eyes as if to bring up a picture. “You name it, I got it,” he said with a re-blip of the hubris he’d shown back at the museum. “Books, maps, sketches, artifacts that I picked up here and there. A to Z. See, I’ve been collecting since before you were born.” He was winding up a little like my Grandpa did before a lengthy dip into the pool of his youth. “Back in the dark ages, before there was any Internet, it was a real challenge to track things down. But that was the fun of it. When you did make a score it gave you such a charge. I can’t describe the feeling.
“I even did a little archaeological digging when I was younger, by York Factory. God that place was the back of beyond. You could only get there by canoe, up the Hayes River. Even today that’s the only route. As accessible as the moon. That’s when I first picked up the paddling bug. Anyway, there was a Hudson’s Bay trading post on that spot for almost three hundred years. The ground around the site was so thick with treasures, they practically jumped up and bit you on the nose. You wouldn’t believe what I picked up there, dice, bone needles, a ladle, musket balls. A harmonica even. Once I cleaned it up you could still blow a few notes out of it. I came by things any way I could, and little by little my room filled up.”
I hated to rain on his jaunt down memory lane since he was so clearly blissed out, but I couldn’t help myself. My late lamented plate haunted me like a phantom limb. I could still feel the contours of its cracked border scraping against my fingertips.
“So why didn’t you fence your own stuff then instead of raiding mine?”
“You think I didn’t? Anything worth anything bit the dust a long time ago. What I just described to you? I was fudging, okay? It’s how things used to be, how it still looks in my mind. All I really have left now wouldn’t sell for shit if you’ll pardon my French. I had to branch out. And as we both know that’s what brought me to you.
“Look,” he went on. “I know it doesn’t make up for anything, but I’d like to invite you over to come see the place. I still have some interesting objects up there, even if it isn’t a patch on what it was in the old days. No one ever visits. It’s my private sanctuary. Like the museum is yours. Besides, it would give me a chance to introduce you to my Lena. She doesn’t get much company and I know she’d be thrilled to have you drop by. Come. Please. Pay us a visit. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“So,” Rossi said on the following Monday, “Let me make sure I got this straight. First you invite the crook out for a boat ride, then he invites you to his house. So now it’s your turn to invite him to the prom?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Look Benjo, you’ve screwed this up royally, but we can rescue it. Nothing’s stopping you from turning in the prick. Just because you shared a few heritage minutes with him in your canoe, that can’t hold you back.”
“Kayak.”
“Whatever. What’s his name?”
“Morrie.”
“Morrie what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know his last name? You didn’t get an ID on the guy?”
Rossi’s shock at my incompetence knew no bounds. He thought he’d trained me up better than that. It was the first time I’d seen him since the foiled robbery and the outing on the river with Morrie. I explained it all to him in the greatest of detail. Well, almost all. How I’d toppled Morrie, how I thought at first I’d killed him, how Morrie and me got to talking about the fur trade, and how I’d impulsively invited him out to kayak with the guys. I only snipped off the tail end. Our almost-rendezvous with the brethren out on the water was nobody else’s business yet.
“But I didn’t invite him out in friendship. It was to stick it to him, to show the gasbag he was no bigger an expert than I was.”
“You didn’t keep your eye on the ball. Didn’t I teach you anything? The point of the whole exercise was to get back what he stole if you could, and scare him into never coming near your place again. Did you get your plate back?”
“No, he’d already fenced it. But he’ll never come back. Not to steal anyway.”
“And you know that how?”
I forced myself to say it. “We clicked.” It was embarrassing to put it that way but it was true. My sixth sense told me Morrie would never bother the museum again now that he knew I was his brother from a fur trade mother. He’d find some other mark.
“You clicked? Like you hooked up on eHarmony? Clicked, he says. Benjo, wake up and smell the coffee. The guy’s manipulating you. Take it from me, the manipulators are the worst. Worse than the thugs. They never leave off. He’s got you wrapped around his l
ittle finger. Of course he’ll come back. Guaranteed. He probably tickled all the state secrets out of you already so he can come back and loot the joint with no trouble. You’ll come in one day and the place’ll be cleaned out down to the paperclips. What am I going to do with you, Benjie? You’re hopeless.”
“I have his address,” I offered up in compensation.
“What did you major in at university again?”
“English lit.”
“Right, ’cause if you’d majored in math, you’d be able to figure out the odds of that address existing. Even I know it’s zero and I can hardly add.”
“But he came out with me to kayak, didn’t he? He could have just disappeared on me. But he came.”
“I can’t explain it, but my advice is, steer clear of the guy. He sounds like a dangerous character to me. Unpredictable. Wacko. Maybe he’s old but that doesn’t mean he’s a pussycat. Watch out, Benj. You’re in uncharted waters here.”
I was in uncharted waters with Morrie all right. Literally. And that’s exactly where I wanted to stay.
6
So in my immediate entourage, which granted wasn’t all that big, I had Rossi pissed off at me for being a premium dummkopf and my mother on top of the world. Suddenly I was home more, looking rested and scrubbed up. Mum was still in the dark about the whole Morrie business. I’d purposely filed that information under classified. The danger in unloading on her was too great. She might slip up and blab about the museum break-in to one of her co-workers and I couldn’t have that. The degree of separation between my mum down in Ladies’ Purses and the bosses up in the executive suites was way less than six. In no time we’d both be out on our ear. Or ears.
Mum had such a trusting nature. I had no trouble at all leading her to the conclusion that the trumped-up girlfriend and I had split up. She was too relieved to even think about gloating. Instead, she took the high road and prepared couscous merguez, my favourite. It was a major-effort meal that relayed sorry for your troubles without actually having to say it out loud. In the old days she would have been all over me with her consoling slobbery kisses. She was a major gusher, Mum was. But she’d toned down her tactics with us kids over time to adapt to our teenage prickliness, choosing instead to relay her repressed maternal feelings towards us undercover, through food. If she’d lived back in fur trade times she probably would have sent us smoke signals.
Rena, Zach, and I were sprawled out on the couch in front of the TV with our ice cream. Nana and Grandpa were deep into their after-dinner dozing at the kitchen table, and Mum was flitting through the den every ten minutes modelling various outfits for one of her rare blind dates. She almost always begged off when some well-meaning friend or relative tried to jockey her off the shelf, but this time the wad of excuses she kept handy in her pocket must have slipped through a hole in the lining and out popped a yes.
“What do you think of this?” she asked, twirling around in front of us. She was blocking the screen so we all said she looked great.
“Not too tight across the tuchis?”
“Just tight enough to keep him interested.” This comment from Zach sent her scrambling back to her bedroom for a wardrobe rethink.
“I hope this guy gets her in bed,” Rena said once Mum was out of earshot.
“Yoy, Rena, this is Mum you’re talking about,” Zach said. “Keep those thoughts to yourself, do you mind?” For once I was right with him.
“Whether you two want to listen to me or not, my diagnosis is that she needs to get laid and she needs it bad. That’ll unwind her.” Neither of us figured Rena to have had any personal bedside experience with the subject yet, even though she was plenty old enough, but her plain talk hinted at a certain street cred. And maybe she was on the right track. Mum’s meltdowns seemed to be increasing in frequency. If she didn’t find some way of relieving the pressure, we’d be sitting around the kitchen table one day, me and Zach sniping at each other, and her head would rocket off her shoulders like a champagne cork.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Zach said. “You know these dates never go anywhere. Has she ever gone out with a guy more than once? In living memory?”
“According to her, nobody ever measures up to Dad, so what’s the point?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That pedestal she puts him on is too high for anyone else to climb up. Besides, it’s a greased pole. I don’t think even Dad would make it up there if he were to come back to life today.”
It was ten years since Dad kicked the bucket. Plunk in the middle of my Bar Mitzvah. There I was, limping my way through my haftorah portion, massacring the ancient chants that were atonal to begin with, when he keeled over dead. Bang. Plotzed right in front of the bima. The one doctor in attendance, my mum’s Uncle Jack from Windsor, a dermatologist, tore open Dad’s made-to-measure dress shirt and pumped on his chest as if he knew what was what, but the zit specialist couldn’t manage to make Dad’s heart reboot. Dad was gone from one second to the next, and the Bar Mitzvah guests reassembled two days later at the cemetery.
Which left us with a problem. On top of his death I mean. Since Dad’s untimely demise cut off the Bar Mitzvah ceremony before it was over, before all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed, technically speaking it meant that I never really became a man. None of us in the family felt like returning to the synagogue in the months that followed to finish it off. Naturally enough. Not even in the rabbi’s back study, though he’d encouraged us, where we could do it privately and by the way hand over the way past due envelope. So I was left in a state of arrested development. And now here I was, out of university, working for my keep, but still not a man. All the outward signs were there of course. It’s not like I didn’t have hair on my schmekel. But I couldn’t help thinking that this was why I’d never made anything of myself. I was stunted, unfinished. And who did I have to thank for my condition?
I know it’s harsh to hold it against Dad, but did he have to check out at that very instant? I mean really, couldn’t he have hung on for a stinkin’ half hour? Typical. His timing was always off where I was concerned. Or maybe it was my timing. If only I’d been able to walk to shul faster in my toe-pinching new shoes, if only I hadn’t spent so long in the crapper before my insides felt ready to face the congregation, if only I’d studied harder so my delivery wasn’t so halting and sputtering, then we would have been finished by the time he croaked, and I’d be a full-fledged man today instead of a child stretched to extra tall. If I sound heartless, well, it’s not like we never had our issues Dad and me.
Mum reappeared in pants, a blazer, and an Oxford shirt that made her look like Monsieur Goudreau, our high school vice-principal. “Mum, you’re not even trying,” Rena said. “Come on, I’ll go back with you to your closet and we’ll pick out something less butch, okay?”
Zach polished off Rena’s unfinished Häagen-Dazs and then turned to me during a commercial. “Want to go to the car show with Eli and me tomorrow? Michael bombed out so I have an extra ticket.” I had a rough time saying no to his invitation which had a certain brotherly pull to it. It was the first time since forever that he’d asked me to go someplace with him, even if I was only being invited as a pinch hitter. When I was a kid, I tagged along everywhere at his heels and he tolerated my presence with just some token grumbling. We’d throw the ball around, torture Rena together. Brother stuff. But back at that point in my life when things started to fall apart big time, my relationship with Zach was the first casualty. See, Dad started to focus so much attention on me, the son in free-fall, that Zach became all but invisible to him. And they’d always been tight those two. Among the guys in the family, Zach wasn’t accustomed to being third-wheeled. That was my traditional position. If I had to sum up Zach’s feelings, not that he ever expressed them in so many words, it would have gone something along the lines of What the hell! Suddenly it’s you Dad loves best and me he treats like dirt? Now the thing is, I had it on good authority that Zach was dead wrong, and would have happily let him k
now so if only I’d been at liberty to say. But since I was hamstrung we drifted apart. Our relations after that were what I would generously call strained. Sometimes better, most times worse.
At first, I figured his car show invitation as a baby step towards a reconciliation. Maybe Zach was finally ready to let me back in after all these years. Nothing would have made me happier. The timing made no particular sense, but who was I to look a gift horse in the mouth? Could be the daffy Nathalie had worked him over. Civilizing the guy she’d latched onto when she fell for his ringtone on a crowded bus was a major preoccupation of hers. But then it flitted through my mind that this invitation, so out-of-the-blue, had Mum’s fingerprints all over it. Like maybe she’d floated my brother the cash for a spare ticket. She wasn’t above arm-twisting us into closeness. If it worked, then she’d be able to rest easy in her grave, knowing that we boys would always have each other to lean on. Mum was a major advance planner.
Whatever under-the-table negotiations prompted the invitation, no way could I accept. It would have meant bailing on my visit to Morrie’s, and that I was not about to do, even if Rossi had succeeded in rattling my confidence. He almost had me convinced that Morrie’d slipped me a dummy address, and that I’d approach the Westmount number he’d given me only to find an empty lot.
Well, it wasn’t the lot that was empty.
The following afternoon as I walked up the street towards the house-number Morrie’d jotted down for me, I was relieved to see the addresses increasing by neat multiples of four, mathematically predicting the existence of a house bearing the number on my slip of paper. Rossi was all wet, turned out. There was a house with that number all right, and not just your garden variety semi-detached. This was a house on steroids. Back when I was too young to protest, Mum used to drag me and Rena to Sunday open-houses. She wasn’t in the market, and sure as hell not for the kind of über real estate she traipsed us through, but she loved to snoop around through the designer interiors of the upper crust. After a few years of keeping her company on those outings, I knew my carriage-trade real estate inside out. 556 Roslyn wouldn’t quite qualify as a mansion. It was one of those wannabe houses that real estate agents labelled a deluxe home in the handout, or maybe a lavish stone manor. I could rattle off its amenities without even going in. It probably had a library, a butler’s pantry, a wine cellar, maid’s quarters, and panoramic city views. Ensuite this, walk-in that, and built-in the other. The taxes alone could pay my annual salary at the museum with a few cents change. So even if this joint didn’t have all the frills of a card-carrying mansion, it was still a house and a half.
My True and Complete Adventures as a Wannabe Voyageur Page 6