“I can’t exactly,” she said. Whiny.
“Why not? Who is it so important?”
Rena hesitated. She twitched her head toward the kitchen, signalling me to join her there for a private consult, but I was in no mood to budge. See how mellowness can mess with your mind? It kept me from reading the urgency in that twitch.
“C’mon Reen, spit it out.”
She could have just fabricated up Renaud or Nick on the other end of the line, but she wasn’t much of a liar, my sister, never had been. Dad hadn’t rubbed off on her in that way. Her impulse when cornered was always to take a pivot towards the truth.
“It’s sergeant somebody or other from Station Seventeen.”
Mum rocketed up out of her chair like in the old days. She had to grip the edge of the table to steady herself. “The police! Why would the police be calling you? What’s wrong? Oh Benjie.” Her words were coming out all wheezy like they always did when the world was resisting her control. The grandparents, who most meals missed out on great swaths of what was being said around the table somehow made out the word police loud and clear. It must have been on the list of words that their hearing aid bouncers had been tipped to let through. “You’re not in trouble, boychikel, are you?” Nana asked me, inspecting my face for clues out of the high-power slice of her progressives. She reached out towards me to reassure herself that I was still me. Grandpa, who wasn’t much for physical contact, put a comforting arm around her even though it was hard to tell which one of them was more in need of support. Even Zach’s jaw was hanging slack.
“Take it easy, Mum,” I said. It’s got to be a mistake of some kind. I’ll go clear it all up.” Serge’s kishkes had to be doing the happy dance that he got to see behind the airbrushed version of our family before getting down on one knee to seal the deal. If he had even the least sense of self-preservation, he’d hightail it out of there before I got back from the kitchen.
“Monsieur Benjamin Gabai?” the voice said when I picked up the phone.
“Oui. Speaking.”
“This is Sergeant Stéphanie Arbour from Police Station Seventeen. We have your uncle here. He asked us to call you. He needs some assistance.”
“My uncle?” As far as I knew Uncle Perry was still down in West Palm working on his handicap.
“Monsieur Morris Shukert,” she said.
“I’ll be right over.”
There were some basic questions I should have clarified with Sergeant Stéphanie while I still had her on the line. Like do I need to bring a gym bag stuffed with cash, or a lawyer maybe? Not that I had either. But I didn’t ask. All I could think of was that I had to get over there. Fast.
Back in the dining room everyone else had stood up to cluster protectively around Mum. It was a pathetic huddle and I hated myself for being the one responsible. Serge had his arms around her. I caught him saying “Calme-toi, Caro. If it were anything really serious they’d have come by in a patrol car.”
“A patrol car!” she burst out. Bam, the tears were brimming. If this guy was going to stick, he had a ways to go when it came to the ins and outs of Mum-handling. He was whipping her up instead of talking her off the roof. But he was a quick learner, Serge. He downshifted pronto to more white-bread soothing noises.
“Shh, it’ll be okay, Carolina. It’ll be okay. I’m here. Shh.” He planted a gentle kiss on the top of her head.
They all froze when I came in. “Mum, can I take the car?”
“Benjie, what do they want with you? What is it?”
“Nothing to do with me. Absolutely nothing.” Dummy me. I should have said that up front but this Morrie business had me majorly unglued. “It’s a friend of mine. He’s in trouble.”
“Not Rossi I hope?”
“No, no one you know.”
“Doesn’t he have parents?”
“Look, Mum, I’m in kind of a rush. I’ll give you all the details later. Okay?”
“Right. I’ll get you my keys.” Her face was so flushed with relief that I probably could have scored a car of my own if I’d pushed her for it then and there. But that would have been unseemly.
While Mum was upstairs rooting through her purse, Serge pulled me away from the others who were re-attacking their dessert with gusto now that peace had redescended on our table. “I know this isn’t the best time,” he said, “but I’ve been looking for a chance to tell you. I didn’t want you getting your hopes up, you know, because of this … situation between your mother and me. The thing is, I can’t undo the decision that’s been made about the museum. It’s beyond my power. However much I’d like it to be different, the museum’s going to close. There’s nothing I can do to change it. I’m more sorry than I can say.” If he expected me to be disappointed that he’d flubbed his first test of loyalty to the Gabai clan, he was way off base. Finally in this house I had an example of a stand-up kind of guy. If all my interfering had ended Mum up with Serge, then I guess I’d done good in the end.
16
It wasn’t like on TV. They didn’t pass Morrie back his shoelaces and wallet through a slot under the bulletproof window. There was no window. Just a counter. Weird. Even Place des Arts had a window where they sold you tickets to the ballet and you’ve got to wonder what their clerks had to be so afraid of. When I told her my business, the officer on greeter duty checked her online roster and called out into the public area, “Monsieur Shukert, your nephew is here.” Morrie was slouched in a moulded plastic chair against the wall. His eyelids were fighting a losing battle to stay open. I was so focused on busting him out of the joint that I’d walked right past him without noticing.
“Let’s get you out of here,” I said. I reached down to cup him by the elbow to help jack him up out of his seat. The guy looked drained. He started talking but I cut him off. “You can fill me in out in the car.” Even if it was way less scuzzy in there than I’d expected, decorated faux-perky in outdated Operation Red Nose posters, it was still a police station and I wanted us out. The desk cop waved bye-bye and we put the place behind us.
Well, not that far behind actually. We sat in the parking lot with the ignition off next to a lineup of blue and white cruisers on break from kettling demonstrators or whatever the hell they do. “Care to tell me what I’m doing here, Uncle Morrie?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as if a spring from Mum’s rattletrap Corolla was jabbing him in the back. “Let’s just say they couldn’t make the charges stick and we’ll let it go at that. Then, just after they released me, I started having heart palpitations like I do, so they did me a good turn and called you.”
“What? Why didn’t they call an ambulance? Or take you to the hospital themselves with the flashers? You weren’t their business anymore? Or were they too busy filing their nails?”
“Don’t get yourself worked up. They did right by me. I just needed my pills but I forgot them back at home. I didn’t want to pull up in front of the house in a police car and give the neighbours an eyeful. It would make Lena angry. So I asked them to phone you. Which they did. There, now you’re all up to date.” Hardly, but I’d pressure him later for all the gory details.
“What made you call the land line? I told you, always call my cell.” “I was a little confused I guess. I had your number mixed up. They had to look your house up in the phone book, or on the computer, however they do. Sorry if I messed things up on your end.”
“It’s okay,” I said, even if it was no-kay. He’d mucked up the separation of church and state that I’d always tried to maintain between my fur-trade and non-fur-trade lives. “Forget it.”
I started the car and drove us over to his place. He conked out the second the engine turned over. Was I being too cynical to suspect it was a strategic snooze? I wouldn’t be able to give him the third degree if he was out cold, now would I? I know, I know. He didn’t want to be grilled. Just wanted to turn the page. Said as much back at the station. But you can’t always get what you want, like the song goes.
; No problemo. I’d just wait him out. He’d have to answer to me eventually. And it wasn’t as if my questions were all that mysterious or tricky. They were your joe-normal what-do-you-ask of-a-friend-who-just-pulled-a-botched-robbery-for-no-good-reason-and-landed-in-the-slammer-and-got-out-by-the-skin-of-his-teeth type questions. Didn’t I deserve to hear the whole story? Me, his saviour? But the longer I drove with Morrie’s snores drowning out the radio, that jumble of questions I’d been sorting and stacking jelled into just one. Prime and essential. One shining jewel of a question. A question that distilled all my curiosity to its syrupy essence. What the fuck were you thinking?
Only I never did get to ask it. At least not then. The timing was all wrong. We were men on a mission, so I could hardly object when Morrie shot out of the car at his house without letting another word slip. I tagged along behind. He headed up to his medicine cabinet to do his drugs and I wandered into the kitchen meanwhile. It was the only room on the first floor with any chairs in it outside of Lena’s studio, and it was just too ghoulish to cool my heels in there. For something to do, I checked out the fridge. All that was in it were the beers we’d chug down after a canoe workout upstairs and a well-intentioned piece of fish that might have been just edible a couple of weeks before, masked under a goodly glop of tartar sauce. At least I thought it was fish. But was it a veal chop maybe? That hunk of protein was too far gone to know if it came to Morrie’s fridge by land or by sea. I would have needed a HAZMAT suit to get close enough to make a positive ID.
The ex-con came back down in fresh clothes, slightly neatified. He must have passed a washcloth over his face and made a few half-hearted swipes with his comb but I have to say, in the interest of the truth, that he still looked rotten. His normal ruddy skin tone had gone all chalky and his jowls hung a good half-inch lower than I’d remembered. And did I detect a new stoop in his posture since this whole thing went down?
“They feed you in there?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Sandwiches with some kind of mystery meat. I took a pass.”
“You mean to tell me you’ve been running on empty since they took you in?”
“Pretty much.”
I sized him up closer, co-opting the patented Carol Gabai stare. It was a diagnostic tool I’d never had reason to try out before. I’d only ever been on the receiving end. But now I was seeing just how powerful it was. In the space of a few seconds the readout fed me the appropriate Rx for the situation at hand.
“You’re coming with me,” I said, expecting some push-back. But nada. Not so much as a blink. He just stood there like he’d checked out of his own premises. My mannequin buddy Alexandre showed more signs of life. “You’re coming with me,” I said again and waited for a reaction. Three beats, four. “Hell-o-o. Anybody home? Knock knock.” I took hold of him by the elbow for the second time that evening. Normally I wasn’t the touch-y type but this zombie act he had going had me worried. No joke. I figured a bit of human contact might snap him back to himself. And it did. Finally. Just as I was revving up my finger to call 911.
“Where’re we going?” he asked me as if we’d never fallen into a conversational pothole.
“To my place.”
“Your place?”
“Yeah. Got any objections, Unc?” He shook his head, too malnutrished to put up any resistance. Didn’t matter anyway. I wasn’t about to let him call the shots in his condition. Serge’s SUV was still in the driveway when we arrived home. At least I hadn’t broken up the dinner party. “So look,” I turned to my passenger, or my captive, depending on how you saw it, “as far as my family’s concerned they don’t even know you exist, so just follow my lead.” He nodded his understanding but just how compos mentis he was at that moment I couldn’t gauge. On top of his recent bout of out-of-it-ness, this was the guy who’d spooked me back at the station by talking about his late wife in the present tense. How he’d behave in the hair-trigger bosom of my family was anybody’s guess but we couldn’t turn back now. I opened the door to him. “Welcome to the fun house.”
It felt like forever since I’d raced out of there after the phone call, but it hadn’t been that long at all by the clock. Everybody was still sitting around the table sipping their decafs and chasing crumbs around their dessert plates. Here I’d completed a successful rescue mission to pry Morrie from the jaws of justice and to reunite him with his meds so his heart could quit its tipsy beat and I hadn’t even missed a course.
I stumbled a bit over the introductions when I got to Serge. He was my mother’s … what exactly? Friend? Was that the right word? Nah. It felt too washed out to describe their relationship. Was boyfriend more precise? Maybe so. But that was a word with zits on its face. I’d seen the term lady-friend before in books I’d read, and it seemed to zone in on the right age bracket for Mum, but the opposite sex equivalent, gentleman friend, sounded too mint julep for down to earth, rock-digger Serge. So in the end I tossed them all and just introduced him generically, name alone, minus rank and serial number.
As for Morrie, friend was bang on and that’s how I pitched him. Now I’d brought home friends before, nothing new there, but none of them ever had liver spots. Maybe that was why everyone rose from their seats when we came in, as if I’d walked into the room with Churchill or something. This demo of hands-across-the-generations was going to take them a little getting used to. Understandable. They were entitled. Totally. Before Morrie stumbled into my path, I’d have been first in line to think that a half-century age gap between pals had a kinky ring to it.
“Morrie had a pretty rough day,” I told them, trying to break the geriatric ice. “He got robbed this morning by a couple of guys. They stole his wallet. Over by the Berri metro. They followed him away from an ATM. Manhandled him pretty good. He spent all day at the police station, going through mug shots, giving statements and stuff. I thought after all that a home-cooked meal would do him good. I know you always make enough to feed the immediate world when we have company, so I brought him over. That alright?”
“Of course it is.” Mum oozed welcome. “Since when do you have to ask? Have your friend sit down. I’ll warm him up a plate.” They all pitched in to make Morrie feel at home. Zach instantly gave up his padded dining room chair to Morrie and got himself a folding chair from the front closet. Rena made up a fresh place setting with one of her fancy in-goblet napkin sculptures that was meant to look like a fleur de lis but always reminded me more of an erection. Serge spotted the cache of bottles in the breakfront left over from my aborted Bar Mitzvah and poured Morrie a stiff belt. Even the grandparents did their bit by exuding waves of sympathy over to their contemporary. After all, if there were goons out on the streets targeting the youth-impaired, they could be next. I have to say, for all that I have a tendency to kvetch about my family, that night they did me proud.
Mum brought out a plate so overloaded Air Canada would have slapped her with a baggage surcharge. “Am I the only one eating?” Morrie asked when she set it down in front of him and he looked around. “I hate to keep you at the table when the rest of you are finished.”
“Now that you mention it,” Serge said, “I could go for another helping.” Mum jumped up. “Sit, sit, Carolina. I can get it. Anybody else?”
“I’m in,” I said. “All this excitement worked me up an appetite.”
“Okay, two number fours coming right up.” Morrie’s arrival scootched Serge up a notch on the food chain, brazening him up to edge in on the hosting duties, and once you have free rein in the kitchen, can the other rooms be far behind?
“Any leads on the guys who did it?” Serge wanted to know when he came back in.
“No,” I said. “No luck. Chances are they won’t ever find them. It’s a needle in a haystack.”
“They were probably looking to do a drug deal.” This was from Nana, noted expert on crackhead behaviour.
“There’re a lot of surveillance cameras out there,” Serge said. “You look up in the air lately and they’re everywhere. They�
��ll track your thieves down once they review all the tapes from the neighbourhood. You heard it here first.”
“But you have to factor in if they’ll go to that much trouble,” Zach said. “On TV they would, sure, but it’s not like the Montreal police put themselves out much when it comes to the lower level stuff. Wallets, iPhones, bikes, good luck. Not to get you down Mr. Shukert, but their reputation for that kind of thing stinks.”
“Did you have a chance to call and cancel your cards?” Mum wanted to know. It’s her practical streak that filtered down to me. “Feel free to do it from here if you want.”
“No need. Everything’s taken care of.”
“That’s a good thing. You’re all set then.” Mum made the rounds of the table, topping up our drinks. “So I’ve been wondering,” she said as she poured, “where did you two get acquainted?”
I should have been prepared for that question even though she’d never asked it of me before. Why would she have? The answer was always understood. School. Where else? But clearly Morrie and I hadn’t bonded in biology lab over our frog dissection. Everyone’s ears perked up. Mum had done them all a favour putting it out there.
I went with the declawed version of events, skipping over the breaking-and-entering that brought Morrie and me together. In a way, I wished I didn’t have to kiss that part of the story goodbye in the telling. You have to admit that as a beginning it had legs.
“Morrie comes in to the museum all the time,” I said. “He’s a huge fan of the collection. Knows everything about the voyageurs and the fur trade. A real authority, you might say.”
“An authority. That’s a nice change for Benjamin,” Mum said to Morrie. “I’m afraid that around here, we’re not especially knowledgeable about his favourite subject, and that’s putting it mildly. Tell me, how did you come by your expertise? Are you self taught, like our Benjie?”
My True and Complete Adventures as a Wannabe Voyageur Page 16