Yeah. I knew what she meant. Don’t let yourself backslide. But backsliding felt pretty damn good just now.
“So you never saw fit to tell me? To give me a clue? Didn’t I deserve at least that?”
“Oh, Benjie, you think it slipped my notice that the museum is everything to you? I just didn’t see any point getting you in a state when it might not even come to pass.” As usual she and Rossi were on the same wavelength. I sometimes thought that he seemed more like her natural son than I did.
“In a state? In a state? A state is for when someone nicks your bumper. If I lose this, I’m left with a shitload of nothing.”
I glanced across the street at my co-workers gathered under their nicotine umbrella. “Am I the only one who was in the dark?” I had visions of all 872 employees tsk-tsking behind my back. “The whole world knows, right? I’m the only dope who didn’t have a clue. And why not? Because my own mother, who you’d think you could count on, held out on me.”
There I was. At it again. Letting her have it not because she was guilty but because she was handy. And she took it. Always had. Whenever I got wound up like this growing up, her self-defined job was to let me lash out at her till I wore myself out. How could she stand me?
“Benjie. Get a hold of yourself. Nobody knows anything. It’s all just hearsay. You know how it is whenever the new owners come in on a flying visit. Everybody’s on tenterhooks and the rumour mill starts churning. It’s only natural. But that’s all they are. Rumours. Nothing’s been announced. Nothing’s been signed. Nothing’s closing down yet. Nothing’s for sure.”
That repeat repeat repeat technique of hers swept me back in time to my teen-aged feral days. Mum used to pull it out when she wanted to soothe me. It was the oral version of a back rub. Maybe it used to work when I was a younger, but now it drove me up the wall.
“Don’t pull that Om crap on me. I’m not twelve.”
“Honey, I never meant to hurt you. You believe me, don’t you? I guess I was trying to will it not to happen by keeping it to myself, under lock and key sort of.” I did believe her, but it didn’t help anything.
“What am I going to do?”
“There’s nothing to do. Just go to work as usual. Keep the place running. I know it’ll be rough, but just you wait. I’m betting all my many millions that it won’t even turn out to be true.”
“From your mouth to God’s ear, as Grandpa would say.”
9
Well, I guess God’s ears were in need of some serious irrigating because it did turn out to be true. They were shutting me down. RIP.
Nobody from HR came over and told me about it to my face, me who was most intimately affected. None of them even put themselves out to phone my local. How did I get word in the end? A fuckin’ memo. The bosses blamed that all-purpose punching bag, the economy. My little museum, whose monthly expenditures didn’t amount to a hill of beans in the grand balance sheet of the retail giant, my little museum was closing because of pig futures and the world debt crisis? Give me a break. Oh, and by the way, thank you for your service.
I didn’t go postal. How could I when it felt as though my whole body was shutting down?
Inside my skull I could hear all the little switchmen in my brain flicking their levers to off. But before the cease and desist order made it down to my feet, I got them to walk me over to the cafeteria. I looked through the window to the kitchen where Rossi was elbow deep in bread dough, communing with the gods of leaven. He was too engrossed in his kneading to notice me, but Bernard gave him a you’ve-got-company nudge and he glanced up. When he saw me miming my neck suspended from a noose, he shot right out of the back to join me.
“Come with me, Benjo, what you need is to lose yourself for a while.”
He didn’t ask any questions which was okay by me. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I wasn’t sure I’d have control of my voice. Rossi just led me out of the store and into the first bar we came to. It was one of those chains with fakola country antiques mounted all over the walls, washboards, and ox yokes, and lanterns. The walls were panelled in bleached pine boards that looked like they’d been pried off a homesteader’s privy. If Rossi’d been intending to get my mind off the museum, this wasn’t the best choice. Everything my eyes landed on, except for the big-screens, reminded me of my about-to-be-dismantled collection. We should have walked further when we left work, towards a no-nonsense corner taverne, dim, still reeking of cigarettes smoked ten years before, and where the only effort towards décor was the queen’s portrait on a twenty.
Rossi did some corrective ordering. When I asked for a beer, he nixed it over my head with the waitress and had her bring us a couple tequilas. In his expert opinion I was in need of something more muscly than beer, a drink that came out swinging. It was only after I downed my fourth that he calculated I could handle some conversation.
“Did they say when?”
“No exact date was mentioned. Imminent was the word they used.”
“I’m guessing you’ve got some time. Everybody knows that the monster facelift they’re planning isn’t going to kick in for another five, six months. So you can probably sit tight for now.”
“What difference does it make, a week, a month? My specific expertise in fur trading doesn’t exactly set me up for a future career anywhere else, does it? When I leave that place, I’m done for.”
“Come on, Benjie, there’s lots of things you could do with your education.” I noticed he didn’t suggest any. He was doing his best to buck me up, but let’s face it, he didn’t have much substance in me to work with.
“Look on the bright side,” he said. “You won’t have to wear your elevator operator uniform anymore.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll have a ritual burning in my back yard.”
“I hope I’m invited.”
“You can light the first match.”
“Call it a date.”
After clinking glasses to that crumb of a silver lining, we sank back into broody silence for a while, but then round six, or was it seven, seemed to wake Rossi back up.
“How are they going to dispose of the stuff I wonder?” he asked.
“Do you think they’d divulge that information to me? A mere nobody?”
“Do any of the stores in other cities have a museum to transfer it to? Winnipeg maybe?”
“Nope. We’re the one and only.”
“Maybe they’ll sell it all off in a job lot to a joint like this,” Rossi said, gesturing around the room at all the phony historical tchotchkes that were the franchise theme, “someplace that’s always looking for a pipeline to a source of fresh antiques.” He was talking out of his ass but in my admittedly sloshed state of mind, I couldn’t rule it out. Those geniuses upstairs knew what to do with sweaters and jeans that didn’t move, but they’d never had to dispose of one-of-a-kinds before, priceless artifacts that documented the birth of a nation. The thought of my precious collection being offloaded like last year’s fashion blooper made me want to barf, although I guess it could have been all the shots. I signalled the waitress for another to help me chloroform that worry and that’s when Rossi cut off the flow. In his esteemed judgment it was time to head home.
I could still walk, just not in a forwardly direction, so instead of splitting up at the metro like we’d planned, Rossi escorted me all the way to my front door. He reached in and took over with the key when matching it up with the keyhole proved to be beyond my powers of coordination. His too, turned out. We might have spent the whole night on the front gallery if my mother hadn’t heard all the scritch-scratching against the door and let us in.
“Thank you for bringing him home in one piece, Rossi.”
“You don’t really want to thank me, Mrs. G. I’m the one who got him tanked in the first place. See, he got some bad news at work today.” I could see him flailing his eyebrows with meaning. “I was just trying to dull the blow.”
“You’re a good-hearted guy.”
“I’m a bum. But sometimes I get it
right.”
“I hate to hear you run yourself down, Rossi. You’ve got what it takes. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. They’ll have to answer to me.”
While Mum was busy extolling Rossi’s inner mensch, I curled up into a snail on the living room carpet. In addition to my Bar Mitzvah, getting drunk was a rite of passage I’d somehow missed out on along the way, but now that I knew how it felt I was glad I’d never before had the pleasure. I would have been more favourably inclined towards this whole getting hammered thing if only some oblivion went along with it. I’d always thought that was part of the package. But my memory of the memo was in no way blurred by the copious amounts of Jose Cuervo I’d knocked back. In fact the letters spelling out the memo’s message now popped up extra clear before my eyes, magnified into a font so humongous it could have been used for skywriting.
I studied Rossi from my vantage point at his feet, talking all serious to my mum. How was it that he was still upright?
“Did you hear?” he asked her.
She nodded. Watching her bobbing head made me dizzier, if that was even possible. “It was all over the store in a flash. By the time I got up to the museum to check on Benjie he was gone. I called his cell but he wouldn’t pick up. I’ve been worried sick. I’m so relieved to know he was with you all this time. I was afraid that…. Well. Never mind. The important thing is that he’s home safe.”
“Do you need any help getting him upstairs?” My mum always brought out the gentleman in Rossi.
“No thanks. We’ll manage.” Her focus on me dropped for a second while she let her breathalyzer gaze rest on Rossi. “You’re welcome to stay over on the sofa-bed if you want. Continental breakfast included.”
“I’ll take a pass. I think I’ll just make my way back home. It’s not so far. Thanks anyway. Oh, and sorry for your loss.” You could tell Mum thought Rossi’s funeral-home farewell was over the top, but to me it sounded right on target for the circumstances.
Mum didn’t even try to get me up to my room once Rossi left. She could have called Zach down from upstairs to do the heavy lifting, but I guess she figured I was comfy enough where I was. Besides, she knew what was what. Why give Zach added ammunition? She tugged off my shoes like they always do in the movies although I never understood why, dragged the granny square afghan off the couch to cover me with, and slipped a throw pillow under my head.
“Do you need the bucket, do you think?”
“No. I’ll be okay. As long as I don’t talk. Or blink. Or breathe.”
“My poor Benjie. What am I going to do with you?”
I think I felt her kiss on my forehead before everything faded to black. Finally. All that alcohol was delivering. Yes!
10
The suits didn’t waste any time. A delegation from the sixth floor came down for a tour of inspection the very next day. Needless to say I wasn’t at my best. I wasn’t even up to my worst. Not that it mattered. My input wasn’t being solicited by my esteemed employers who barely acknowledged my hungover presence. Monsieur Duhamel, the capo di tutti capi, skipped clean over the hello-how-are-you niceties. He just nodded in the direction of the official key-chain hanging from my belt, and then held out his hand for me to give it over. I doubt if Dreyfus could have felt any more of a wrench when they marched him out in front of all Paris and stripped the medals off his chest.
Once I gave up custody of the keys for their visit, they shut me out. I had the impression they’d been planning on asking me to clear out for a while so they could poke around without a peanut gallery, but it was one of those rare times when the museum was jammed with visitors, a set of laissez-faire parents and their four sugar-amped kids, so the higher-ups had to put up with my presence. It’s not like they were about to play babysitter. The bosses went about their business kicking the tires of the collection, their pinstriped backs turned to block me out, murmuring to one another with the volume tuned to low. I had my eardrums fully cranked up to wiretap mode but the kiddies kept badgering me with questions, little brats, so I could barely pick up any of their discussion. When the execs handed me back the keys on their way out, (no thanks or goodbye to the hired help, of course), I was none the wiser.
Which was why when I next showed up at Morrie and Lena’s, I couldn’t fill them in on any of the particulars. It was a Sunday of wild winds hitched onto the butt end of a stubborn storm front, no day for kayaking on the river, but I dropped by all the same hoping they’d have the kettle on the boil for me as usual. And they did.
I’d spared them the rumours. Didn’t they have enough to deal with? So the news of the closure, coming unpadded as it did, clobbered the pair of them. Maybe that had been the wrong strategy, crueler than keeping them in the loop. Well, it was done now.
Enough time had elapsed since the memo that at least I was able to relay the news flat-voiced. That was because before coming, I’d stashed all my misery away in my usual hiding place, somewhere due south of my ribs, and slammed the door shut on it. Which wasn’t easy. After so many years it was getting pretty crowded in there. But it was wasted effort putting on a brave face. They could see right through me, those two. Lena was horrified on my behalf and offered me the solace only a fur trade widow would know how to provide. She understood how the prospect of losing my beloved museum was tearing me apart.
“I know it would kill my Morrie to have to part with even a fraction of his collection from up in his room. He simply couldn’t do it, not even with a gun to his head. He’d give up an arm first. How you must be suffering my poor, poor boy.”
Okay. A little aside here. The comfort is what I came for and Lena was delivering it in bulk, but it was getting all muddied up in my mind with guilt. So call me selfish but that angle I hadn’t anticipated. Morrie’d had to go through the same kind of withdrawal, the same kind of pain as me. A zillion times worse probably, because he’d tracked down every single item in his collection on his own, built the whole thing up from nothing. He told me once that in the pre-Lena days, if it came down to a choice between spending on a must-have map or artifact he’d come across, a real hole-filler, or buying food for his supper, he went hungry. Like those Impressionists and their paint tubes. The nitty-gritty of every separate acquisition was burned on his brain; the hunt, the haggling, the documenting, the restoring, the displaying. He could rattle it all off. I’d heard him do it. Selling off his precious collection bit by bit, well for Morrie it was death by a thousand cuts. The megadose of sympathy Lena was shovelling my way rightfully should have been lavished on him. But the secret life he’d been leading meant that now he could only listen in on her there-there noises and absorb them second hand. A cost of business.
Lena stroked and calmed, knew exactly what magic words to choose that would grant me an afternoon’s vacation from my troubles. Hard to believe she didn’t have kids of her own. She seemed like a real pro, although I guess it’s easier to give that kind of credit to people who aren’t your own parents. Her husband didn’t pitch in.
“Morrie, dearest, you’re very quiet.”
It was true, he’d barely said a word. Usually when we got together there was no dead air. This was a couple with what to say. They springboarded off each other’s sentences so regularly you could hear the boings. “I guess the news just hit me hard,” he said.
He sat in his usual chair at his wife’s side, his head bowed in thought. What was running through his mind? I took a stab at it. That he should have emptied out the museum when he had the chance? He would have made a decent buck or two and now where was it all disappearing to anyway? My fur trade treasures, surrogates for his own, wouldn’t even be there for him to visit. Then again, maybe I was way off base. At mind reading I was no expert.
Morrie stood up suddenly. “Ready to go upstairs?” he asked me. It was our Sunday routine to plug away on the canoe once Lena’s eyelids started to droop, not that she had a clue what we were up to. With the two of us working on the project together, it was really starting to take shape.
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“Darling, use your head,” she whispered to him, clearly still wide awake, and with an opinion or two to put into play. “Isn’t it a bit insensitive to rub Benjamin’s nose in your collection when he’s about to lose his own?” Morrie ignored his wife’s unsubtle zetz to steer him in a more compassionate direction and asked me again. “Are we going upstairs?” The upswing for the question mark was there, but still it came out sounding more like an order. Blunt. No coddling from him. Lena pursed her lips in disapproval. Maybe not a flashy show of anger but enough. That she was even capable of being p.o.’d at him came as a surprise to me but then a breach of politesse under her roof was beyond the pale.
“Yeah sure,” I said to him. “Let’s go.”
“You needn’t go up just to please him,” she said in a steel-toed voice aimed at hubby, not me.
“Really, I don’t mind at all.”
I headed upstairs ahead of Morrie to give them a chance to make up in private. Too bad he’d long ago sold off the Iroquois peace pipe from his collection. I’d heard him describe it, all quillwork and feathers. One of his gems. This would have been the perfect time for the two of them to take a toke, see if it still performed as advertised.
Up in his room, the canoe was already uncovered and waiting for me, the tarp neatly folded away. I did my usual walk-around to admire our handiwork. Before this whole canoe business fell in my path, my experience with woodworking was minimal. I’d made a popsicle-stick truss bridge for a science fair project once, if that counts, but it collapsed in the very first round of weight trials. So I think it was fair for me to assume that if I couldn’t construct something out of friggin’ tongue depressors that would hold up, wood and me weren’t a match made in heaven. But looking at what Morrie and I had accomplished, the boat’s perfect curves, its gutsy bow, I treated my self-image to an upgrade. This was a rare event for me. Down was my more usual direction.
We’d done all the binding which seemed to take forever. That day’s step was laying the tiers of planking to make ready for the ribs. It was a satisfying step, closing in on the finish line. Morrie had the planks all laid out to dry. They’d been soaking for weeks in his special sauce, his personalized swill of tea, ammonia, shoe polish, saffron, and whatever the hell else that would age the planks to the eye, but not eat away at them. It was a delicate chemical balancing act, but he’d finally hit on the perfect formula. In his next life he could run a meth lab.
My True and Complete Adventures as a Wannabe Voyageur Page 10