by Daniel Perry
THE OLD BROWN Buick is all that’s left of Susan’s life in the bungalow on the acre beside the tracks — the house John, then Mike, then Nancy left before Susan sold, when Vaughan’s Bakery went out of business. She moved back into the empty farmhouse where she was raised, and the car’s become a second home since then, forever driving to her new job at the Westmount Mall Zellers in London or all over MacKinnon County, volunteering with the church caterers.
All this I learn behind the Buick’s wheel, with Susan passed out between Paula and Nancy on the backseat. Claire rides up front with me. As it turns out, I’m the only one other than Susan with a licence. Claire waved me over as my parents waited for me outside the church, her other hand on the Buick’s blistered hood. She blushed when she admitted she let her licence expire in Toronto. Paula, having grown up there, had never bothered getting one; Mike used to drive her everywhere. Nancy took the train back and forth to college in Sarnia. Claire handed me the keys, brushing my hand with her soft one. After I explained through the window of Dad’s Cadillac, he and Mom followed us out of town.
I’ve renewed every five years, but this is my first time driving since I moved away. I keep the radio off and roll too slowly onto Main Street, swivelling my head at the intersection for cars and pedestrians that aren’t there. As we pass the town limit, Nancy mentions that she and Paula are staying with Susan. “To answer the phone and help with cooking and stuff.” Paula adds, “And keep watch on her drinking,” which sucks the air out of the car. I turn the radio on after all.
I let out a heavy breath when I park in the farmhouse laneway. Nancy and Paula get out and, each draping one of Susan’s arms over their shoulders, they lead her up the porch stairs and call, “Thanks, Dave.” Claire looks at me and says, “Really. Thanks,” getting out of the Buick and walking to Dad’s car. She pulls open the Caddy’s back door and slides over to let me in. She seems to know her dress has climbed clear of her knee, but she doesn’t show any intent to fix it.
WE DON’T TALK in the backseat, awkward as thirteen-yearolds on a movie date, praying the adults won’t ask.
Mom turns slightly.
“How was it?”
“What?”
“Driving.”
I shrug.
“Fine.”
“Do you think that maybe you’ll get a car, and — ?”
“Mom, really ...”
“Sorry, Dave. Sorry. It’s just, it’s been so long since — ”
“Since,” I say. “I know.” I exhale. “Just because I can still drive doesn’t mean I like to. And all the traffic, the 401 speedway? Forget it.”
“But out here?” Mom says.
“Out here’s the same as always,” I say. “There have never been other cars on the road.”
Mom purses her lips and resumes quietly facing the windshield.
“So just to your house, Claire?” Dad asks when we’re nearly back to Currie.
“Actually, if it’s all right,” she says, looking at me, “I’d like to come and wait for the train with you.”
Dad glances at me in the rear view. I return an I-don’tknow brow lift.
“Sure thing,” Dad says. We stay on Main Street until it becomes County Road 17 again and we follow it to the on-ramp, eastbound to London.
MOM AND DAD must see it coming, too. They say goodbye early and let us out at the station, making an excuse: they’ve been meaning to browse Home Depot’s wainscoting on their next trip to the city. They say they’ll come back for Claire.
In the lounge, she eyes the Tim’s kiosk and says, “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Milk or sugar?”
I shake my head. My watch shows ten to seven. Departure is at oh-five but there’s no hurry — no train yet, no crush of students on a Wednesday. I pick a cold seat in the blue plastic row and in a moment Claire returns, paper cup in each hand. She gives me mine and sits beside me. I thank her and sip, burning my mouth a bit.
“So,” she says. “Twelve minutes and you’re out of my life again.”
“Was I ever really in it?” I ask.
Her features sharpen into a hurt look.
“I was almost your family.”
“Your father would have loved that.”
“My father wouldn’t have loved anything,” she says. We both laugh. She sighs and says, “Even if I had picked the right brother.”
I blow on my coffee and sip again. She pushes a long strand of hair off her shoulder, down her back.
“What’s happened all these years?” she asks.
I listen for the train but hear nothing.
“What do you mean?”
“Ten minutes,” she says, smiling. “What have you done with your life?”
“I’ve taken some trips,” I say. “Seen some great movies. I’ve known the odd woman.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. The good stuff.” She smiles wider. Her teeth are still bright white and perfect.
“I’ve never seen much as good or bad,” I say. “It’s just been what it’s been.”
A snarky whish comes out her nose.
“The more things change,” she mutters, “the more Dave McLaren stays the same.”
Finally a whistle sounds in the distance. A soft rumble nears.
“And what will you do now?” she asks, putting a hand on my forearm.
I say, “I’ll probably go to work tomorrow.”
She furrows her brow.
“Goddammit,” she says. “I’m coming onto you, Dave.”
“I know.”
“And you ...”
“And I can’t,” I say, making to get up.
She squeezes. One fingernail scratches me.
“My kids are gone,” she says. “My parents are dead.
My sister’s my only friend and she’s never been anywhere.” Her eyes start to plead as she stands. “I’ve still got some money from the Toronto house — the divorce. We could be happy.”
“You could,” I say.
She frowns.
“But I’m not.”
“So why are you here?” I ask.
“It’s just — it’s who we are.”
I shake my head and pull my arm away.
“No it isn’t,” I say, standing up. “Not us.”
She scowls and says, “Fine. Go.” And then she stands and shouts, “Fuck you!” as the train whistle drowns her out. When it finishes she’s still standing there.
I say, “You’re just like I remember — just like in high school.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she snaps.
I step back and look closely at her face. Her jaw is soft and her eyes are tender; perfect makeup, not a crease in sight. Her mouth hangs slightly open as I put my arms around her. I kiss her gently on the cheek. Brakes squeal. “Take care of your sister,” I say. “And look me up if you come back.” But with finality she shoves me off. I turn and walk toward the glass door. It slides opens automatically and I step onto the platform. A sob creeps through the pane and Claire’s teacher heels click, slowly then faster as they fade. I don’t turn around. On the train, I sink into a window seat and let my lungs fall into time with the chugging engine. As the train leaves the city, dusk turns to night, and outside cars barns houses blur, back into dark and nothingness.
Afterword
With the exception of “Young Buck”, written in early 2016, the stories in this book were initially composed between 2009 and 2012. “Funeral” and “The Expiry Dates” were born of my first-ever writing course, Richard Scarsbrook’s Expressive Writing I at George Brown College. Thank you, Richard, for taking me seriously.
“The Expiry Dates” was the first of my stories to be published, in Broken Pencil ’s 2011 Death Match contest, a savage, week-long online affair involving hourly voting and an open, heavily-trolled comment board — seven whiteknuckled, unsleeping, friend-harassing days for which I’m immensely grateful, as they galvanized me as a writer and somehow avoided scaring me o
ff the whole enterprise or my friends and family off of their continued support.
For publishing the stories in this collection in slightly or very different versions, thank you also to the editors of The Broken City, White Wall Review, Nōd, The Sunday Paper (Wooden Rocket Press) The Dalhousie Review, echolocation, The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature, Sterling, Exile Literary Quarterly and Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology, In/Words, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, The Acrobat (Tightrope Books), The Loose Canon (Siren Song Publishing), Scrivener Creative Review and Great Lakes Review.
“Mercy” was a finalist for the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Prize in 2012. It also earned a Summer Literary Seminars Unified Literary Contest fellowship that year, as “The Expiry Dates” had in 2010. Thank you SLS for the opportunity to participate in the 2011 workshop in Vilnius, Lithuania.
“Five Stages of Sorry” benefited greatly from advice and encouragement provided by Farzana Doctor, when she was Writer-in-Residence at the Toronto Public Library and my manuscript had the good fortune to be plucked from the pile. In a small writing group Farzana put together, Nicole Baute and Sarah Simon provided helpful feedback on some of these stories. Sarah read the entire manuscript, too, in 2013, as did Julie McArthur, which was a remarkable achievement given how far the book’s come since then. Many of the stories in this book were also improved in the F&G Writers Workshop that Julie co-ordinates; thanks also to members Susan Alexander, Robert Shaw, Nadia Ragbar and Brad Weber for your continued support and friendship.
The fledgling drafts of these stories, back in 2010 or so, were also read by a great many friends; thank you Marshall Bellamy, Eric Johanssen, Marcin Mokrzewski, Magda Kus, Jean Larivière, Sidonie Wybourn and others I might have forgotten for reading my work before anyone read my work.
Some lines in “The Territory” are borrowed from Emily Dickinson’s “There Is No Frigate Like a Book” and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. François Truffaut’s remark used as this book’s epigraph was originally made in the French magazine Arts in 1959, though my source for it was the special exhibit in his honour at the Cinémathèque Française in late 2014.
Pauline Durand took me to that exhibit, and all that’s happened since is still just the beginning. All my love, my favourite reader, my wife, mon petit chat.
About the Author
Daniel Perry’s first short fiction collection, Hamburger, was published in 2016, and his short stories have appeared in more than 30 publications in Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and the Czech Republic. He grew up in small-town Southwestern Ontario, has an MA in Comparative Literature, and has lived in Toronto since 2006.