After (14 page)

“What’s up, Doc?” he said when I came to get his plate. “I want jelly beans!”

“You just had breakfast. If Maman says its okay, you can have some later.”

“I want them right now! Later, it’s going to be too late.”

“Knock it off. You can’t have everything you want right now.”

He turned back to the TV and I spread out the comics on the floor.

“Can you be my father?” His voice was matter-of-fact, as if he had given the proposition a great deal of consideration. Be his father. Me. I wanted to shake sense into him, and at the same time, I wanted to fold him in my arms.

“We can’t replace people just like that. You can’t replace a father.
Point final
”

Luc turned off the TV, and went into the backyard. I was listening to him throwing the Frisbee for the dog when I realized something. I had
said point final.
I sounded like Maman. Heaven help me.

The phone rang. It was Aunt Sophie.

“Hi Francis, is your mother there?”

“No, but she’ll be back around noon. She’s getting her hair done.”

“Oh, of course.”

“Aunt Sophie?”

“Yes.”

“I’m happy for you. He’s a lucky guy.”

“Why, Francis, what a sweet thing to say!” I could tell she was surprised. “I met him at the coffee shop between eating doughnut number two and doughnut number three. But he’s not my boyfriend.” She laughed.

“What happened? Did you break up?” When you’re a champion laugher like Aunt Sophie, the delivery and the
message are two separate things. She could be announcing the end of the world for all I could tell from the gusts of laughter.

“No! We never went out together! He wants to know your mother. That’s why I brought him for dinner. He likes her. I think she likes him, too.”

The words hit me like cold water in the face. Freaking icy water.

It all made sense: the hairdresser, the good mood, and the clean-up.
My Mother Had a Boyfriend!
I didn’t want to believe it. It couldn’t be. Not Maman. Not already. How could she dare?

I hung up the phone without saying goodbye. I wanted to gouge all that fresh paint and smash the cheery red pots of herbs to the floor. I wanted to yell until the roof shook. She should have waited. It hadn’t even been a year.

I left Luc with strict orders to stay right where he was until I got back.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to grab a bite to eat.”

“But you just ate,” he said accusingly. “Francis, did a bee sting you?” Luc had once been stung and now he used it as a measure of all things awful. It shows you how upset I must have seemed to him.

“Not just a bee, a bumblebee. A seven-foot-tall monster bee! Promise me you won’t move!”

Deli Delight wasn’t officially open because it was Saturday, but when I looked inside I could see Mr. D. sitting at the counter, reading the racing form. The door was unlocked.

“What’s happened, my boy?”

“Don’t call me your boy. You’re not my father.”

“Ok! It’s true, you’re not my boy. But I like to call you that anyway.” He turned back to the paper.

“It’s my mother.”

“What’s wrong with her?” He was concerned.

“She’s got a boyfriend.”

With a sigh, Mr. Deli turned on his stool to face me.

“You know, your mother is a young woman. It’s possible she will find someone else to share her life.”

When he said that, I felt sick. “Yes, but not already!” I said.

“It’s true, it’s quite early, but life goes on. Your father may be dead, but you have to continue to live, your little brother too. And your mother.”

I understood the words as he said them, and if he’d been talking about someone else’s mother I might have agreed. But I couldn’t stand the idea.

When I got home Maman was in the kitchen unpacking bags of groceries. Her back was to me. I could see that her hair had been streaked a pale blonde.

“Aunt Sophie called,” I said.

“Do you know what Luc was doing when I got home?” She didn’t turn to face me. Oh, God, I had forgotten all about him.
Just let him be okay and I’ll accept any man
Maman drags in. I’ll be the best man at their wedding and never say a word.

“He was playing with a lighter and the cedar branches.” She loved the smell of cedar and had placed some branches in a jar on the dining room table. “He could have set the house on fire. Where were you? If something had happened, it would have been your fault!”

“How can you say that? Why weren’t
you
here taking care of him like a normal mother?”

She wheeled around. “You have never talked to me like that and you are not going to start today, do you hear me?”

“I know all about it. You should be ashamed!”

“What are you talking about, Francis?”

“Aunt Sophie told me everything.”

“Told you what?”

“That you’re going out with a man.”

Her face flushed an angry red.

“That’s none of your business! As long as you live in my house, you’ll respect your mother. Get out of my sight!”

I lay on my bed, staring at the blank white ceiling, my thoughts lurching along like a roller-coaster car that’s out of control.
Respect?
My mother was a slut who went out with the first man who came along. It wasn’t enough that she had me and Luc. If Papa were here, he would never have allowed it. But he wasn’t here, and never would be here again. I had to face the truth. He had left me because I wasn’t worth sticking around for. No wonder Jul took off. How much can I matter if my own father doesn’t
want to see me grow up? I’m ugly. I’m skinny. At work I’m worth seven dollars an hour. At school I’m worth 51 percent in math. If I’m not worth anything, I should just die like my father. If I died tomorrow, who would come to my funeral? Would Julia come? Would she cry? Would she feel guilty? Would she come alone, or with her idiot, David? Would my mother come alone, or with her damn boyfriend in his stupid green cap? One thing I knew for certain. Mr. D. would be there, just like he was for my father’s funeral. He would cry too. I’m sure.

I went into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet, and found the aspirin bottle. It was almost full. I wondered if dying would hurt. If Papa could do it, so could I. Like father like son. I looked at the bottle for a very long time. The label read
EXTRA STRONG
. I opened the top.

Luc knocked at the door.

“I need to pee! Hurry up!”

That kid was always having to pee! I snapped the top on the aspirin, put it back on the shelf, and opened the door.

“All yours, kiddo.” I knew that I could never do it. I wasn’t going to make my innocent little brother suffer like Papa had made me suffer.
Point final.

T
he Anniversary came and went. Maman went to church and to the cemetery, but we didn’t talk about it at home. We had slipped back into No Talk/No Pain Mode. The summer yawned ahead. I was looking forward to two steaming months cooped up in the Deli Delight, peeling potatoes for Mr. D. Houston was going on a tour of North American baseball parks with his father, and the others were working as counsellors at a camp in the Laurentians. Luc was enrolled in Dinosaur Day Camp, and Maman was deeply, disgustingly, “involved.” Green Hat had taken root, on a more or less permanent basis, in our house.

It was a very hot day, so hot that Maman had turned on the air conditioner. Let the Good Times Roll! This was a sure sign that better financial times had come. Green Hat was sitting on the couch, his knobby, furry legs
splayed out in cut-off jeans–disgusting! He and Maman were beaming at each other the way only mentally challenged people can do. She had on a red shirt–too tight for her. She had lipstick all over her face–well, only on the lips, but there was too much of it. I was obviously invisible to them, even though I was standing right there. She leaned toward him and gave him a kiss.

The poor idiot–Green Hat–had tried to win us over. What a dunce! That morning he had brought me an electric guitar. Here’s what happened:

“Francis?” It was my mother’s voice.

“What do you want?” I was lying on my unmade bed, staring at the ceiling and estimating the number of potatoes I would have peeled by September.

“Can we come in?”

We? She opened the door a crack.

“Look what George has for you!” she said brightly.

George. He had a first name. What kind of dumb name is George? Curious George. What normal woman would call her child George?

“Your mother told me you play guitar. I thought that maybe you’d like to have this,” said George. He held out a gorgeous pearlized blue electric guitar.

I had a weak moment. There’s no other explanation for what I said next: “Okay. Put it on the desk. I’ll take a look at it later.”

Maman gave me a look I hadn’t seen since she caught me trying to bite Luc when he was a baby. They backed
out of the room as if I was rabid. It was a nice guitar, though. I have to admit it.

I had nagged at Papa to buy me an electric guitar. He told me that it was important to learn acoustic first, and I knew he was right, but I also knew he didn’t have the money for a new instrument. Here was George, just handing me an electric guitar as if he didn’t have a care in the world about what it cost. If Papa’d had enough money, he wouldn’t be dead today. Freaking money. Dirty money. People run after money. People would do anything to get more money, or enough money to live on. Tears coursed down my cheeks, but I was too furious to brush them away.

I didn’t notice that Luc had come in until he waggled a Cookie Monster puppet in my face.

“Look what George gave me!”

The puppet was on his right hand. Under his left arm he held a shiny red dump truck, its tipper full of Smarties. He was grinning so hard he looked demented.

“You are nuts!”

“I am not!”

“Retard! Can’t you see what he’s doing? Green Hat’s trying to buy us. He doesn’t care about you. He only wants Maman. He’s trying to steal her from us!”

Luc’s big blue eyes filled with tears and his lower lip quivered. I was glad. I’d found the magic words. I knew
that Luc was afraid that Maman would leave like Papa did.

“You have to be careful, Luc. If George gives you presents, we’re in trouble.”

Looking back, the ugly Grief Serpent must have swallowed my heart. Poor Luc. He bought it. I hated myself for hurting him but I couldn’t stop.

Luc’s slight shoulders drooped as he went back to his room, carrying his truck and his puppet as if they each weighed a ton. I picked up the guitar and went downstairs. I heard the lovebirds rattling pans in the kitchen, so I went out the front door and down the alley to the garage. It had a stale smell of mice and dust. I laid the guitar on the workbench, grabbed a hammer and swung at its slick blue surface.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
I took the scissors, and I cut every string. I found the hand drill and I made a hole in its body.

Sputnik planted his paws in the open door and barked at me as if I were a stranger.

“Francis, what are you doing,
mon cher?
Is everything okay?”

“I’m in the garage.” She must have been dazzled by Green Hat’s charms not to have worried about the murderous noises I was making.

“Well, it’s time to eat. Come in.”

I could barely stand to look at Green Hat. I wanted to scratch his face with the fork I was holding tightly in my right hand. I wanted to cram it into his throat and choke him. I needed a human sacrifice badly. I felt as if all my
pain and anger and fear had taken on the shape of this one man.

I didn’t say a word during supper. I was looking at my plate.

“What did you do today, sweetheart?”

“Lots of things.”

“Such as?”

I had read once that a human being breathes 840 times an hour. It was about 7 p.m.

“I breathed about 15,900 times. That’s what I did today.”

For dessert I went and got the guitar corpse from the garage. I put it on the table, beside the chocolate cake. I stormed upstairs, knowing that I was acting like a colossal jerk, but feeling free just the same. I could hear Luc yelling at Green Hat: