The Ambassador of What

by Adrian Michael Kelly

  ~

  The VCR read 9:08. Janice had opened the windows wide, and was making her second lap of the house, holding aloft a spuming can of potpourri-scented Glade. Tim rinsed mugs and dishes. I stood in front of the fireplace and stared at the dwindled Duraflame log, pretending not to listen to either of my nieces, who were having a giddy go at me, mimicking bulbous stares and thin, squeaky breathing.

  “Okay, girls,” Janice said. “Teeth and PJs, please. Cheer up, little brother.”

  “Think I’ll take a walk.”

  “You’re not gonna call from the airport, are you?”

  “No. Just a walk.”

  “He’s going to Brewster’s Pub,” said Beth.

  Tim said, “That’s his business. Teeth and PJs now.”

  For the second time tonight, Beth thumped my leg.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Much obliged.”

  She said, “It’s an HONOUR.”

  ~

  In a booth to myself by the big Scotch pine, I forced a double whiskey down. The pub was all but empty. Less than half an hour ago, I could think of nothing else except being here. Now that I was here, I wanted to go back, catch some L.A. Law at ten, then bed and Keats’s letters. Mum was going to marry Jack, a decrepit man I didn’t know. Sometime soon, he would die. Mum would get his money and end up chucking most of it down the gullet of a slot machine. I thought I should feel broodier, and I hunched over my whiskey like a man in an Edward Hopper print, but I was my only audience. The five or six other customers all were sitting at the bar, yakking and keeping an eye on the game, Calgary at Vancouver. Al MacInnis wound up and let one of his bullets go: it dinged off the post. I wanted to give a shit, but hockey was another thing fading from my life. Maybe if the game were played on a pond, and the jerseys had no crests, no affiliations. The Total Anonymities. I could cheer for them.

  ~

  Yellow and orange-bluish light flickered in the garage windows. I stole a look. Tim in his mask and coveralls welded a broken God-knows-what on his latest project, a deep-purple dune buggy. He called it Plum Crazy. I thought I might join him for a chat and maybe even a beer or two, but I had tried that in the past, and it had always felt forced, like handshakes at Camp David. Let him do his thing.

  Inside the house, Janice had poured a glass of wine and was sitting on the chesterfield. A book lay open in her lap.

  I said, “Sorry to bother you.”

  She dog-eared a page. “Not at all. Come and sit. Glass of wine?”

  “Tepid water.”

  We laughed and shook our heads.

  Janice said, “Poor man.”

  I sat on the floor in front of her. “Mum is fifty-what?”

  “Sixty, in July.”

  “Still looks good.”

  “She does.”

  “Good at her job. Accomplished. Why in the world can she not meet—”

  “A halfway normal guy? They see what she wants in a second.”

  Now a pneumatic drill clanked and rattled in the garage. I nodded toward it.

  “How are things with you?”

  Janice shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Okay as in better?”

  She turned to look at the darkened hall, then drew her knees up, hugging them, and stared into middle distance. “I’m taking this Child Psych course. You know, as an option. And . . .”

  “What’s his name?”

  “My God, is it obvious?”

  “Educated guess.”

  “Tom,” she said. “Mature student. Around my age.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “We’ve been talking.”

  “Talking talking?”

  “After class. A coffee.”

  “Good-looking guy?”

  “More than that. I mean, sure. Tall, athletic body. But he’s well-travelled, knowledgeable. Been all over Africa. And when we talk, I feel . . .”

  “Good?”

  She looked around the room. “When did life get beige?”

  I said, “Leave.”

  She said, “I can’t.”

  “Why? The girls? They’ll survive.”

  “I’ve been married eleven years.”

  “So?”

  She said, “You’re young, and I’m tired. Finish this glass of wine?”

  “I’m good.”

  “There if you want it. I have to go to bed.”

  I sat there by myself awhile, then took the awful wine with me to my basement room and drank it sitting up in bed, leafing through a People. Next to the clock radio, Keats’s letters lay inert. Just two days before, the book had felt so urgent. I simply had to have it, and I walked out of Odyssey Books into rain on Princess Street, buttoning my trench coat, the book and all its promise shoved down the front of my fraying Levi’s. Keats, Keats, Keats. He would show me how to live.

  ~

  I woke in my clothes at 2:00 a.m. An awl turned inside my head, and I was very thirsty. On the basement stairs, I thought my ear was ringing—it tends to misbehave when I fly—but then I saw the ghostly light in the vestibule and realized I was hearing a television test pattern. A rainbow spectrum of vertical bars glowed on the Sony, and Tim in his tatty sea-green robe lay fetal on the loveseat. His snore sounded like recess in a distant schoolyard. The remote had slid nearly underneath his ribs. When I tried to ease it out, his eyes fluttered open, and he said, “Time is it.”

  “Late. Go to bed.”

  He stood like a forward shaking off a hit, scratched his shaggy paunch, and muttered down the hall. I pointed the remote—change the battery—then knelt in front of the set. After I had turned it off, I stayed there a little while, tickling my fingertips in the static on the screen, but sharp, heavy edges torqued in my head. I came back from the washroom with a couple Tylenol, and swallowed them at the open fridge with gulps of Minute Maid. More, my body said. I poured another glass, took it to the front room, and sat and watched the tree: red and blue and gold and green, three times all together, then slowly, one by one. I looked for a pattern, memorizing sequences, and do not remember falling asleep or even moving to the lounger. When I woke, a lamp was on, and Beth was a foot away from me, taking a sucker from her mouth.

  “Why are you out here?”

  I blinked at the clock—7:05—and said I was only dozing.

  “You were talking to yourself.”

  “So. Everybody does.”

  She mimed the tossing of my head. “‘Out of the way.’”

  “I said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you scared?”

  “No. Dad does it all the time.”

  “Are there any Golden Grahams?”

  “He ate them all. Mini-Wheats.”

  I said, “Even better,” and held out my arm.

  She put the sucker back in her mouth and grabbed my wrist two-handed. Helped pull me up. The room moved like a ship at sea, and my neck was stiff, but Beth said, “Allons, mon oncle,” and dragged me into day.

  ~

  Janice made feeble joe in an automatic drip thing. I dug out her Bodum and spooned in ruthless heapers. One cup purged my constipated plumbing, and the second was pure shazam. I even worked on my thesis, a slouching and becrippled thing on the minor plays of Beckett, but this morning it felt relevant, my singular contribution to the glory that was Literature. When Janice called my name through the basement laundry drop, I looked at the bedside clock, and then I looked again: three hours had elapsed. I whistled on my way upstairs.

  “Sis, I am a genius.”

  She pressed her palm against the phone. “Mum wants to speak with you.”

  “Tell her I have cancer.”

  “She’ll marry you,” said Beth.

  Glenny said “Gross” around the ice-cube in her mouth, and Janice passed the phone.

  “Hello, Mother d
earest.”

  “You’re in a good mood.”

  “I just wrote eighteen pages.”

  “Have you eaten lunch?”

  “Need of food subsides in the presence of the duende.”

  “What in the world . . .”

  “No. I have not eaten lunch.”

  “Good. Just the two of us? Then I’ll show you Trinity.”

  “What about Jack?”

  “He’s out in Okotoks, staying with his family.”

  “You’re doing the old not-seeing-each-other-on-the-night-before thing?”

  “We are, yes. Tradition. Shall I pop round now?”

  “Need to shower first.”

  “Chop, chop,” she said. “I’m famished.”

  ~

  The waitress cleared our salad plates, and Mum lit a cigarette. Through a French inhale she said, “How are things at the house?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You and Tim getting along?”

  “Found him on the couch last night. After two, telly on.”

  “It’s hard for him, you know. With Janice off improving herself.”

  “Mum, she’s getting a degree.”

  “I understand that, but someone has to pay the bills.”

  “Dad kept a roof over my head. That make him a hero?”

  Mum looked at the tabletop, and brushed away focaccia crumbs. “Have you seen him recently?”

  “Month, month and a half ago. Nana died.”

  “He take it hard?”

  “Flat on his back in bed, out. Thought he’d tupped himself.”

  The waitress came with our gnocchi. We watched her work the pepper mill, and when she was gone, Mum said, “Did he go back for the funeral?”

  “Didn’t have the cash.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.”

  “Is he not working?”

  “Part-time on the ambulance. A little painting here and there.”

  Mum stared out the window. “Missed his calling, your dad.”

  “Doctor?”

  “No. That was me. Your dad should have been a singer.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “He was a lovely tenor. Used to sing to you.”

  We ate in silence for a while, neither of us with relish.

  “How are those first few bites tasting?”

  We both answered fine and wore forced grins. I ordered another Valpolicella.

  “Mum, mind if I ask a medical question? Draw on your expertise.”

  “All right.”

  “I keep hearing about Prozac. Antidepressant drug?”

  “That’s right. Works neurochemically.”

  “Does it have any side effects?”

  “Aspirin has side effects. Why do you want to know?”

  “Curious is all. I mean, I have my funks.”

  “Depression is not a funk, dear.” She pushed her gnocchi round a bit, then said, “Has your dad ever seen someone?”

  “You mean like a shrink? Doubt he’s even thought of it.”

  Sheepishly, she said, “Did you tell him about the wedding?”

  I said yes without hesitation. “In fact, he sends his regards.”

  “He does?”

  “‘Tell her I said congratulations. Hope she’s very happy.’”

  Mum lit up. “He said that?”

  “Been meaning to let you know.”

  In a sober moment, the old man might remember I was out in Calgary, but not the reason why. I had told him I was spending Christmas with my sister, and I didn’t mention Mum, an old unspoken rule. Not once had he asked after her in the years since their divorce, never mind wishing her happiness. But in a lifetime of falsehoods, the one I just told Mum did not rank among the worst, and may even have been worthy. I had not seen her beam like that since I was eleven, when she took me to the horse track, and we nailed a fat triactor.

  ~

  Despite the caffe lungo, my energy took a nosedive, and I entered Trinity Seniors Lodge grinding recent dental work. Mum had been head nurse here only since the summer, and I was sure she would be seen as the scheming Grimhilde who had cast a spell on hapless Jack. Rarely have I been more wrong. In the TV lounge and games room, the library and atrium, old folks and personal care assistants smiled at the sight of her. Residents who stopped to chat all spoke of her glowingly. “Special lady, your mom.” “What a difference round here.” I played the proud, admiring son and didn’t have to force it. Gladys, Blanche, Maureen, Bill: she knew every name. Mum was on her turf, exuding expertise.

  On our way to see the chapel, she pointed down the hall. “Here comes one of my favourites.”

  A tiny old woman in a white housecoat left the side of her PCA and tottered straight toward us, carrying a bundle in pale pink fleece.

  Mum threw open her arms and said, “Hello, my little duck egg.”

  The woman lay her veiny cheek against Mum’s chest, and stared at me intensely.

  “Elsie, honey. This is my son.”

  Her eyes were blue and bloodshot, glassy but also prescient. I felt seen-through and wrong, all my moral lesions lit up as if by X-ray, but she took a baby bottle from the pocket of her housecoat, and urged it into my hesitant hand. Mum threw me a quick wink. I bent toward the swaddled doll, and my head recoiled, it was that realistic: a small, scrunched face, and little, gripping hands.

  “What’s her name?” I said.

  Mum answered. “Rosemarie.”

  I put the plastic nipple in the puckered plastic mouth and waited a couple seconds.

  “Do you think that’s enough?”

  Elsie nodded and stroked my face.

  “Bath time,” said the PCA.

  Elsie leaned into Mum for another cuddle. Then we watched her go. I asked was it Alzheimer’s, and Mum said, “Middle stage. Then suddenly she’s lucid, and it breaks your heart, the stories.”

  “How do you mean?” I said.

  “Did you not see her arm?”

  “No.”

  “The number tattooed there. I forget which camp, but it’s where her daughter died.”

  In the silence that followed, I felt myself not having the feelings I thought I should. There was a sense of history and my smallness in the midst of it, my luckiness as well. But the truth is, I was tired, and the rug deodorizer, ubiquitous and strong, was getting to my eyes.

  “The chapel,” said Mum, “is just round here.”

  ~

  Three meagre rows of five folding chairs had been placed either side of the narrow aisle. A rickety lectern did for a pulpit, and weak track lighting glimmered a tall, tinny cross on the wall above the altar, itself no more than a raised platform. An old upright piano stood against the wall, songbook sitting crookedly on its music rack. In this dim, denuded space, more recess than room, my mother was to marry. “You and I will wait,” she said, “until the guests are seated and Jack and the priest are ready. Then we come and stand here. The guests will rise, the music starts, then we proceed.”

  “Trial run?”

  “All right.”

  She hooked her arm through mine, and I liked how it felt.

  “Pace okay?”

  “Fine, dear.”

  Reaching the ersatz altar took ten seconds, if that. I unhooked my arm, and would have turned to go, but Mum stayed where she was, staring straight ahead of herself, hands clasped like a choir girl. A private thought or memory played upon her face. To say she looked holy might be pushing it, but hopeful, beautiful, dignified, yes. It was enchanting. Then a voice in the hall shouted, “What is going on?” Mum rolled her eyes, and laughed. “Look out,” she said. “He’s on the loose.”

  A mad, shaggy creature in denim overalls shambled round the corner. He was pulling an oxygen tank in a metal trolley
. Clear plastic tubing hissed up his nose. The chubby PCA in pursuit held his missing shoe, a bright red Converse sneaker. He zigged and zagged away from her, sport sock flopping. Seeing Mum and me, he stopped. “Who the fuck is that?”

  The out-of-breath PCA said, “Mr. Dingle, let’s try and keep our voices down,” then looked apologetically at Mum. “Sorry, Viv. Got away on me.”

  “Need a hand?”

  “I think we’re okay.”

  “I want tapioca!”

  “First let’s get your shoe back on.”

  He pointed in the chapel. “What is happening?”

  “Viv is getting married.”

  He glared at me and then at Mum. “Are you sick? He’s a kid!”

  “Mr. Dingle,” Mum said. “I’m marrying Jack. You remember Jack.”

  Bewilderment replaced the crazy lustre in his eyes, and he watched as the kneeling PCA put on and tied his shoe. Then she led him up the hall, and Mum said, “Such a shame. He owned three Tim Hortons.”

  ~

  Mum asked could she drop me off at the LRT. Flo and Larry Vandermeer had invited her to their place for Chinese food and cribbage, and she wanted to make the drive northeast before rush hour hit. I told her that was fine with me. In the car lot at Chinook Station, she opened her purse, “Before I forget,” and handed me a hardback book, its light blue covers blank. I looked at the spine: George Eliot. Silas Marner.

  “You’re giving this to me?”

  “Have you read it?”

  “No.”

  “It was my favourite book in school.”

  “Sure you want me to have it?”

  “Tell me what you think. Here comes your train.”

  “Front foyer tomorrow, four o’clock?”

  “Three I said!”

  “Just joking, Mum.”

  “Heavens. Give me a heart attack.”

  “I’ll be on time. Have fun tonight.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  I ran and caught the train and sat toward the back of the car, away from a rowdy group of teens. Silas Marner. These days, apart from my recent peek into Keats, I read almost nothing except bleak modern plays and involuted theory. Eliot I had read last in my sophomore year. The Mill on the Floss. I remembered liking it, very much in fact, and opened Silas Marner now, releasing its smell of smoke and time. Vivian Willets, Lower Sixth was written in blue on the title page. Never before had Mum shared a thing with me about her past. Now I held a piece of it, and when I read the epigraph, A child, more than all other gifts / That earth can offer to declining man, / Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, I adopted a long and wistful stare, convinced I just had a moment, Cineplex vérité. Climax of Act Two: mother and estranged son recognize their bond. Cue the cornball music.