I asked my father, “Think this place’ll fly?”
“Hope so,” he said.
“Where’re they from?”
“Dee and Gabby? Montreal.”
“How in the world did they end up here?”
My father looked at the carcass of his hen, and, shrugging, he said, “How in the world does anyone?”
Silence ’til dessert. A swan-shaped pastry stuffed with strawberries and cream and floating on a puddle of chocolate and liqueur. Drizzled with strawberry coulis. My father could not finish his. “Go on, lad, get that in you.” I got it down to please Dee, who offered coffee and digestifs. I looked at my father, flushing now after his third glass of red, and I said, “Think we’ve kept these folks long enough, Dad.”
It was then that Gabby whumped in the room, holding in his left hand three clinking snifters, and in his right an ornate bottle. To Dee, he said, “A seat,” and she said, “I think they’re on their way, hon.” He gestured in a Gallic way—thrusting lips, a prolonged shrug—and said, “Just a little brandy, no?” Dee said, “I’ll get the coffee,” and left the room. Gabby sat and poured three fingers in each snifter. “My best,” he said, “XO.” Apart from “expensive,” I neither knew nor cared what XO meant, but once we had raised our glasses and Gabby had said, “Santé!” I took a princely sip and nodded as though the burn were delicious and familiar. My father knocked back most of his. Gabby poured him three more fingers and, after setting down the bottle, clapped the tabletop. “So, you tell me, how is your meal.” I told him it was marvellous and wished him luck with his new venture. Modestly, he shrugged. “At first, I think, no chance this place. But your father he say to me, ‘Gabby, you can do it.’ Now, I try.” They raised their glasses and drank as Dee came in. Her face was flushed, and coffee spilt into the saucers as she served us. Gabby hardly noticed as he said to me, “You are at the university.”
I nodded.
“Big scholarship.”
I shrugged.
“Gonna be the professeur.”
“Times I wonder.”
“Me, I have a son at the university.”
On her way by, Dee said, “McGill.”
I watched her go, and then to Gabby I said, “Montreal’s a good town.”
He grasped my forearm. “You like the Habs.”
I nodded.
He touched my glass with his. We drank. “Your father say you are the goalie.”
“Was.”
Gabby clapped his chest. “Me too.” Then he leaned closer and pointed at a pale scar, the ends of which could be seen above and below his bushy eyebrow. “No mask those days.” He leaned back. “Your father, he say you were good in the net.”
I remembered pucks sliding between my legs or fluttering past my catcher, and my father in the stands, shaking his head. “I think the old man may be telling tall tales.”
Gabby playfully slapped my shoulder and smiled so much at my father that his right eye was no more than a fissure. I swallowed what remained of my brandy and pushed back my chair. Gabby grasped the bottle and said, “You have another.”
“No,” I said. “No, thank you.”
He spread his thumb and forefinger. “Just a little traveller.”
My father said, “Gabby.”
“Oui my friend.”
“We should let you and Dee to your Christmas.”
Gabby looked from my father to me and then at the tabletop. “Okay. Another time I see you.”
“Maybe some time in the spring,” I said. “Thanks for all this, really.”
His good eye was solemn as he said, “My pleasure.”
The three of us stood, and Dee came in with my father’s coat and mine. Farewells began. Over Dee’s shoulder as she hugged me, I watched my father and Gabby clasp-and-clap like kin again. In my ear, Dee said, “Take care of your dad. He’s one special guy.” I nodded, and thought of the stolen anthology.
IV
We sat awhile in the idling van. My father was staring out the windshield as he had been staring up Highway 7 when the bus pulled in. Then he shook his head while finding reverse and said only, “Gabby.” I thought that he might speak as the van left the parking lot, but once he had geared up, a gloom came over him, and over me too. Our fancy meal was done. His dowdy shack and his stumpy tree and—already in my guts the rich sludge roiled—his brown bucket awaited us.
The van now trundled up Airport Hill, its feeble beams disappearing in darkness a few yards ahead. Ours was the only vehicle on that stretch of Highway 30, and the distance between Dee and Gabby’s and my father’s turnoff seemed like double or triple. I realized then how much the van had slowed down after descending the hill, and I looked at my father. His vacant stare. Then he said, “Me and Doherty. We took the call.”
“What call?”
“Coupla months back. Near ten at night. An accident at Gabby’s. Between you and me, this.”
I said, “All right.”
“We went out Code Three,” he said. “Wheeled into the lot. ‘Place looks all closed up,’ I says, but then we see Dee screamin out the door. Smeared with blood. ‘You all right?’ I says. She nods, but the face on her. ‘Where’s Gabby?’ I says, and she can hardly say, ‘Upstairs.’ ‘Mind she’s all right,’ I tell Doherty. Then I get my bag and go in. Just back of the old kitchen I find this rickety flight of stairs. Up I go. Some rooms up there where Dee and Gabby stayed when they first bought the place. Stunk of grease, but she’d done it up nice. Curtains and all. Anyway. ‘Gabby!’ I says, and I hear this grunt. The bedroom. I thought, What in fuck? So in I go and there’s Gabby slumped against the bed. Legs straight out in front of him. His face swollen all to hell, and blood—I mean soppin—from here to fuckin here.” My father touched his chin and his thigh.
“Conscious?” I said.
“Wide awake. Looks at me and waves hello. I says, ‘Gabby, what have you done?’ ‘Hut-masel,’ he says. ‘Hurt yourself? Yeah, I see that, Gabby. How?’ Doherty’s there now and has a look. ‘Holy Christ!’ he says. ‘Shush,’ I tell him. ‘Gabby!’ I says. ‘Look at me, now. What have you done?’ He shakes his head and says, ‘Ah uck’n hut masel.’ Then he cocks his finger. Points it at his mouth. ‘Tellin me you shot yourself?’ He nods. ‘O Christ,’ Doherty’s moanin, ‘O my fuckin God.’ ‘Quiet now,’ I tell him, and ‘With what?’ I says to Gabby. He jerks his thumb back over the bed. I step round. There it is.”
“The gun?”
“Lyin right there on the floor. He’d been settin on the other side of the bed. Gun in his mouth.” My father opened his own mouth wide and for a moment put his finger in it. “Bang! It sent him straight across the bed and down the other side.”
“Impossible,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“The gun was in his mouth?”
“Angle. Straight back and he’d have blown out his spinal cord, but it was like this.” My father poked the roof of his mouth. “Through the hard palate, deflects this way and lodges in the skull, just here.” He pushed his cheek in and up against his eye.
“What did you do?”
“Doherty wasn’t much help to me, I’ll fuckingwell tell you that. Hands on him shakin.” My father held out his hand and trembled it. “Anyway. Staunch the blood and in the rig and blast on down to Kingston.”
“You drove.”
“No. Doherty was better off up front. I stayed with Gabby. Kept him awake.”
“How?”
“Jokes and stories.”
My father hit the blinker and we said nothing more until we were in his drive, the engine off and neither of us moving in the dark. “Why,” I said, the heart in me banging, “have you never told me this before?”
My father shrugged. “Tellin you now.”
“He all right these days?”
“Gabby? They’re still rebuildin
g his mouth. Sees a what-do-you-call-it.”
“Speech therapist.”
“Aye, that too.”
I unbuckled my seat belt and so did my father, but as I pulled on the door handle he said, “I asked him, you know.”
“Asked him.”
“You know who means it. I’ve picked them up. I’ve scraped them up. On the wrists it’s a full deep X. Right to the fuckin bone.” My father emitted a sound between a retch and a snarl. “You could say he should have used a shotgun. Lots of them do. No comin back from that. But I’ve seen smaller guns than what Gabby used do the job. He fuckingwell meant it, and I asked him. Coupla weeks back, I says, ‘You didn’t fart round the edge and have a wee peek. You fuckingwell dove.’ He nods at me. He says, ‘Yeah.’ I says to him, ‘Well then. What’s it like down there?’”
Some moments later I asked, “What did he say?”
My father’s answer was a slow, simian shaking of his head, but on our way to the cottage he grasped my arm. “Watch your step, son. Those leaves are slippy.”
V
While my father carried the standing lamp into his bedroom and closed the door behind him, I stayed in the living room, where the kerosene stove glowed like a tribal fire and warmed a pot of water to wash with before bed. The last two tins of beer were still coldish, and I opened both and filled our glasses. My father came in holding the lamp like a standard in his right hand, and on the left he balanced two gifts in silvery wrapping.
“We said just one, Dad.”
“This year’s different.”
“Give us the lamp?” With it I went through to the kitchen and, checking my shoulder, ducked into his room. There on the bed lay a three-pack of wrapping paper with two of the rolls unused. I tore at the plastic and grabbed one (bells and holly on a red background) and then, amidst the litter of coins and receipts and mismatched cufflinks on his dresser, I saw the Scotch tape and yellow X-Acto.
Calling “Won’t be long” on my way across the kitchen, I went into the other room, and there I ineptly wrapped Modern Scottish Poetry. Despite the cool air, my armpits were swampy. I took off my blazer and brought both gift and lamp into the living room.
“Nice paper, that.”
“I think ahead.”
“Hang on, now.” My father unplugged the lamp and then plugged in the little tree. It was pretty. He said, “You start.”
I said, “All right,” and began with the smallest box. A bottle of British Sterling. “Won’t have a beard forever,” he said.
“Probably not. Thank you, Dad.”
“Welcome. On you go.”
The next box was large but light, and I thought it held a sweater, but my father was grinning impishly.
It was a Habs home jersey. Not until I held it up did I see the signatures.
“Don’t know what to say.”
“Let’s see it on you.”
“Shouldn’t wear it.”
“Once won’t hurt.”
I stood and burrowed into the jersey. Pulled it down. Examined unfamiliar names.
“Your man’s not there,” my father said, referring to Patrick Roy, who had recently been traded to the Colorado Avalanche. Back in Bantam and Midget, I had copied his V-stance. “Missed him by a week or two.”
“It’s okay. Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
“Was it Gabby?”
“His son. Knows a guy who does physio for the team.”
“I’ll pop in and thank him.”
“He’d like that. Looks good, doesn’t it?”
I struck a V-stance and awkwardly sat down, the tightness returning to my shoulders and neck as I looked at the remaining gift.
“My go, is it?”
“Sorry it’s just the one.”
“Never you mind.” I watched while he popped tape and slid the book free. “Poems!” he said, in two syllables, and then reached across the table to shake my hand hard. “Been needin a new one.”
“New one?”
“That Yeats you gave me.”
“In the van.”
“I’ve worn it out.”
“You liked it?”
“Pick and choose a bit. Faeries and the end of the world, no thanks, but that tread softly, now, for you’re treadin on my dreams—know that one?”
“Not very well.”
“Fuckin great. Makes a difference.”
“How do you mean?”
“Rhythm of my day. The guys in that ambulance office. Parked in front of the goggle box. Game shows and soap operas. Grown fuckin men? Give your head a shake. I take a walkie-talkie and go on up the stairs. Quiet place near the tuck shop.”
“I remember it.”
“Tea and read. Same when I’m paintin.”
I nodded at Modern Scottish Poetry and said, “Don’t want to lug that one around.”
“Aye, hefty.”
“It has lots,” I told him, “that other ones leave out.” But I’m not sure he heard me. He was leafing pages. Here and there he paused and his gaze concentrated. Other times, his face relaxed wholly. Then he laughed to himself and said, “Like that one.”
“Read it.”
“Out loud?”
“Out loud.”
His shoulders came up, but he said, “All right,” and swallowed some beer. Then he cleared his throat, and in the accent that was his when I was a boy he read,
helluva hard tay read theez init
stull
if yi canny unnirston thim jiss clear aff then
gawn
get tay fuck ootma road
ahmaz goodiz thi lota yiz so ah um
ah no whit ahm dayn
tellnyi
jiss try enny a yir fly patir wi me
stick thi bootnyi good style
so ah wull
“You read it great, Dad.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemme find another.”
I nodded but stifled a yawn and said, “Sorry.”
“Fadin?”
“Guess so. You?”
“Think I’ll sit a wee while. If that water’s too hot, you can cool it some from the jug out in the kitchen.”
“What about the lamp?”
“I’m fine sittin here.”
I tested the water with my fingertips—it was hot but not scalding—and took the pot in one hand and the lamp in the other, leaving my father by the now unlighted tree. The lamp I stood just outside the washroom door, and then I plugged the drain and poured half of the steaming water into the sink. Over the shower curtain rod, I carefully draped the autographed jersey. Two player names, Vincent Damphousse and Mark Recchi, came back to me, and I was searching for their signatures when my father called, “Just out for a pee!” “Okay!” I answered, lathering my face and neck with Pears. The hot water was a magnificence, and, standing, I let it trickle down my back and my chest. Then I listened. I listened hard. Called my father. Called him again.
Snatching the lamp, I ran to the front. Bashed the door open and the screen. It smacked hard against the outside of the cottage, and down at the river my father whipped round.
“Fuckin hell, boy. Threw a fright in me.”
“What are you doing?”
He pointed up. “Lookin at stars.”
“Coming in?”
“Minute. Get that door shut. You’ll let out the heat.”
I ran back and threw on the jersey and then joined my father. He pointed east. “Orion,” he said. Then, pointing north, “There’s your Big Dipper, Ursa Major too.”
Shivering and goosefleshed I said, “Beautiful.”
“Some nights,” he said, sweeping his arm across the sky, “it’s a fuckin blizzard of them, son, and diamonds in the river.”
After a sile
nce, and tensing my body against deep shivers, I said, “Dad, the PUC bill.”
He said, “What about it?”
I said, “How much?”
He looked down. “A thousand. Plus the same again.”
“Same again?”
“Reconnection charge.”
“I can give them that.”
My father shook his head.
“Scholarship cheque. Comes next week.”
“Keep your money, son. You deserve it.”
“Dad, it’s a fuckin joke what I do.” What did I do? I went to bed late. I got up late. I ate pho. I worked out. For this, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada was giving me three times what I’d lived on as an undergraduate, and here was my father in Scottish coal mines by the age of eighteen, and in the British army by the age of twenty-one. “Dad,” I said, “let me loan it you at least.”
“Coupla jobs comin up. Big one on Grand Road. Umpteen rooms. I’ll be all right.” Calmly, my father reached in the left pocket of his blazer, and a moment later I heard the tinny rattle as he took out the box and shook a lozenge into his palm.
“What are those called again?”
“MacInney’s Strong. ‘For Your Best Voice.’ Want one?”
“Please.”
As the lozenge began its aromatic work, I looked upriver to the pair of islands in the middle of the channel, and I remembered shivering in the prow of an aluminum ten footer my father had long since sold. I was eight years old then, and collared in a lifejacket. My father, newly full time on the ambulance, had bought me my own rod. On the obsidian early-morning water, my bobber hardly moved. Down in the stern, my father sat facing the opposite direction, and I watched the spangle of his vaulting lure and the motion of his forearm as he jigged. Between us lay the new first aid kit and his pale green tackle box. On the top tier with the leads and sinkers I saw the MacInney’s Strong. Quietly, I reeled in and gently stowed my rod, and then down the boat I stole. Got hold of the tin. Eased up its lid. Between my thumb and first two fingers I pinched four and then five of the glossy black pellets and in one go I popped them. Made as much spit as I could. Scour and scorch in my nose and throat, but I swished the lozenges and then locked them beneath my stupefied tongue. I knew what my father could do. I knew about his breath. It could stopper the mouths of the dying and keep their souls inside their bodies, and I hoped that I might pilfer just a portion of that magic.
The Ambassador of What Page 9