Famous Last Meals (23 page)

“She had used her detective to find Dad and Jane again and had gotten word to her somehow that she was coming to see her. It was urgent that Jane get out of the house at a set time and wait for the car a few blocks away. She wasn't allowed to say anything to Dad. I don't know exactly what she told Jane. Her life was in danger or something like that. Anyway, when we came down their street and drove past the house, there she was waiting with her little blue suitcase in her hand. She stepped back into some bushes when she saw the car. We pulled up and I rolled down the window to show her my face. She didn't take a second to look up and down the street, just made for the back door, which I had reached back and unlocked.

“I remember she looked scared slouched down in the back seat. Mom didn't say anything. I reached my hand back between the seats to touch Jane's. She said, ‘What?' and slapped it away. I think maybe I needed the reassurance more than she did.”

Tighe paused again. His breathing was heavy into the mouthpiece of the phone. A sip and gulp, then the release of breath like a gasp. Dead air for five seconds, ten, twenty. I didn't say anything.

“I knew something weird was up. You sense it. You feel it like something caught at the back of your neck, itching the crap out of you. It felt good to have Jane there. I thought, okay, three is fine. We can make do. My father, I was letting him go, it was like I was the one driving away from him, not Jane. You read about boys trying to knock their fathers off the hill, replace them, like it's some kind of rite of passage we all have to go through. You're not a man until you can beat your old pop at an arm wrestle sort of thing.

“What I remember is this two-sided feeling, like, one, I was thinking about what it was going to be like to be grown up like my father and maybe it was all right for him to be starting over with another woman, maybe he was better off without us dragging him down and reminding him of all the sad stuff. And two, helpless, because he wasn't there and he usually drove the car and where were we going now?

“She wasn't slowing down for stop signs or traffic lights. Ran a couple of reds. I mean, scary, right? Not speeding up going through the intersection like you'd expect. She was refusing to accept that they even existed, those red lights, not for her. Lucky for us the traffic wasn't too bad that time of day, but shit, narrow misses or what. It still wakes me up sometimes. You ever have dreams like that?”

I told him I did. I have one about falling to earth from a great distance, waiting to hit, but lying in bed while it was happening. Not surprisingly, Tighe's was about driving at high speed through red lights into busy intersections.

“She got us out of the city and headed over the bridge to the West Island. At Beaconsfield we turned toward the river. It might have been Pointe Claire. All I know is it wasn't familiar. Quiet streets, lots of trees, nice sidewalks, front lawns and hedges sort of place. I thought, sure, okay, maybe this is where we're moving to live now. We passed a school with a big playground, plenty of grass and running room, not like the cramped pavement of the school I was going to at the time. Baseball diamond, hoops, I liked that. I convinced myself that this was what we were doing and that we'd go back to get our clothes and furniture later.

“You think you got it all figured out, even when you're a kid. You know you don't know everything, but that doesn't stop you from thinking that what you do know makes sense. We were coming close to the water and I could see some lights from the city, the lights of cars going over the bridges. Sailboats, a marina. Maybe we we're going to live on a houseboat. I'd always thought it'd be cool to live on a boat. That's what I was thinking then, changing my hopes and expectations to fit the change in scenery. Jane hadn't said a word. I looked back and couldn't see her face very well. Her legs were going like she had to go to the bathroom. She might've been asleep. I think I asked my mother if this was where we were going to live. She kept driving as if she couldn't hear me.

“If we were going to live on a houseboat—and it sure looked like that's where we were headed, because we were inside a big marina complex now and driving along a private stretch that led to all these docks—we'd need electricity hooked up for heat in the wintertime. I wondered if we would have to pull the boat out of the water or leave it there. If we let it get frozen in the ice, that might damage the hull. Maybe the hull was built super strong to withstand the pressure. I wanted to sleep in a captain's bed with the raised wooden side designed to keep you from rolling out during heavy seas. A friend of mine built captains' bunks for his kids. I pictured keeping my clothes in the drawers built in to the bottom part of the bed. That appealed to me, still does. I don't mind small spaces as long as they're designed good. Funny thing for somebody my size to say, right? But it's true, I like the feeling of being tucked in.

“I remember it was fall, school had started and Scouts, so it was maybe late September, early October, getting nippy, the air. Nice time of year, maybe my favourite. Francesca and me, we like to drive up on Mount Royal with the kids and have a picnic at Beaver Lake. You ever do that, Colin?” 

Yes, I said, we did, all the time. 

“It's too tough a climb for them, my nippers. I usually get roped into carrying them. They're light as feathers. I can take both of them on my back and hardly notice it, they're that little, my girls. They're growing up too fast. You turn around, they're up to there on you. You know what I mean? Blink and you miss it.

“Anyway, there's other cars parked on some of the docks. All these white masts rocking back and forth, the plinking sound of ropes and wires slapping against hollow things. Like all these boats are talking impatiently to each other. When you heading out again? What you rubbing up against? Sounds like Styrofoam, it's squeaking so much. He fix that cracked keel on you yet? How does a kid know he loves boats so much when he's never been on one? Don't ask me. All I know is I was into them instantly. I wanted to get out of the car and step down into one and squeeze down into a cabin, press my face up against the glass of a little round porthole, maybe see underwater when the waves splashed high. And we could go anywhere we wanted. Head out on a good day. Up the seaway to the Gulf, around to who knows where. The Maritimes, Boston, New York, Florida. The freedom of it, the whole idea—how does something like that take a hold of you in an instant? Where does it come from? It must have been hiding in me and I never knew it. A boat. Sails. Something about floating, not being in a car, not having to stop and buy gas and drive alongside a million lunatics who think they're in the Grand Prix. I could take classes by two-way radio. We could sail around the world and I could go to school wherever we happened to be. Or not. Learn some other languages. What a feeling. Getting on toward night, it's dark, we're finally stopped on one of the docks, the whole scene is like out of a movie it's so new and strange, and fuck if I'm not planning the rest of my life around one of these sixteen-footers.

“Jane roused and said she had to go to the bathroom. I think, in her state, for her to say that out loud meant she couldn't hold it any longer. I'm jolted out of my daydream. Mom is sitting like she's waiting for something, a signal, maybe. Both hands gripping the wheel tight even though we're idling and in Park. At least I thought we were in Park, until she takes her foot off the brake and we start rolling forward, headed for the end of the dock. It's concrete, solidly built with substantial pylons or whatever you call them that the lines are tied to. These people who moor here, they must have money. Only rich people can afford to buy boats like these. The rental cost of keeping your boat there. I know how it is now. Did I, back then? I can't say for sure. I do know that whatever feeling I was having, that boff daydream about living on a boat and sailing around the world, when Jane spoke, like the bubble I was in broke and I knew we didn't belong there. Don't ask me how.

“Jane said again how she really had to go, she wanted out, and the car was picking up speed even though I don't think she had her foot on the gas. I looked at her, then ahead to the water, to her again. No change of expression. Stone rigid. Mom, Mom, I say to her, Jane has to get out. Not, Stop immediately, you crazy nutcase psycho, pathetic obsessive loser, self-destructive suicidal mental case. Jane has to go to the bathroom. Nobody else is on the wharf. There might've been people in the boats themselves, but I don't remember seeing any lights on.

“Something made me roll my window down. Maybe I was trying to get out or thinking about jumping out. Just as my hand stopped, not able to get it any lower, she hits the gas, like stomps on it full throttle, and we kick ahead, laying rubber like a dragster until the tires catch. The front wheels hit the raised edge of the dock, the impact is this jolt that brings the rear end up off the ground for a sec and then we're over. The funny thing is it's not like one of those rides. You ever been on that log ride at La Ronde? La Flume? Your stomach rises into your throat for a couple seconds, then you hit bottom and all the water splashes over you, especially if you're sitting in the front? Well, it didn't feel nothing like that. It was this slow-motion feeling. We're over, the front of the car goes down, we hit the water, start to sink. The water is coming in the window fast, holding us in. The whole car fills up in no time. I remembering breathing in some water, choking, coughing it out, taking a breath before the air pocket disappeared, and undoing my seatbelt.

“Somehow, don't ask me how, I pull myself up out the window and I swim to the surface. It doesn't take too long. The water's maybe ten, fifteen feet deep and the car's on the bottom. Not much of a current there. We're in this protected bay. I start yelling for help and before I've stopped yelling and crying I hear a splash in the water and then another, close by me. Two men on another dock must've seen the car go over and they come running over. Dive in. I try a duck dive to go down to the car again, but it's too dark to see anything. I have to come back up. It feels like I can hardly keep my head above water. Somebody's arm comes around my chest from behind and I'm being pulled toward the dock. He gets me to grab hold of the ladder. Can you get up? Yes, I think so. I tell him Jane is still down there.

“I try climbing up the ladder, but got no strength left, so I loop my arm through and float there, waiting for I don't know what. It's too long a time. There's people now above my head. They're asking each other what happened and is anybody down there. Beams of light move across the surface. I try to get up the ladder again. Somebody spots me from above. A life ring on a rope drops beside me. I put it over my head and shoulders so it's snug under my armpits and then they're pulling me up. Fresh catch. Look everybody, caught me a live boy! I don't realize I'm cold until they lay me out on the wharf and put a jacket over me and I start shivering, my whole body shaking uncontrollably. Somebody says, ‘He's in shock.'

“I try to ask about Jane and my mother, but my teeth are chattering too much. I hear a siren. Strong red light flashing. An ambulance backs down the dock until it's close. The back doors open. ‘
Bouge pas, p'tit, sois calme
,' a man says, wrapping me in a heavy blanket. They lift me onto a stretcher, it rises up on wheels, and I get slid into the compartment. It's a nice feeling. Snug, like I was talking about before. The lights are on and I start looking around at the equipment. It all looks important. Everything has something written on the side in French. One of the attendants gives me some water, asks me if I'm hungry. No, I say. Where's my...? Where's my...? But I can't get it out. Don't worry, he says. They're okay. They're in the other ambulance. I don't remember nothing else. I guess I passed out.”

It was eight on a Saturday morning when Max came by in a rental truck, and we drove first to his office to get some boxes of personal effects. His hair, still black, was returning in soft, wispy patches. As he unlocked the office door, he said, “Of all the people she knows, Chandra will miss you and Beth the most. She wanted me to ask Beth not to come today. Did you know that?”

“Nothing would have kept her away, Max.”

“Oh, I know, and I told her that. She was adamant, though. I asked her if she felt it was just too hard to say goodbye, take too much out of her. She said no, it wasn't that exactly. She said she was afraid that if she saw Beth again she might not be content to go. She said something about it being messy, her wanting to drag a piece of this world away with her. Funny.”

I didn't think it was funny at all. Max grew quiet and his breathing laboured as we carried cartons down the corridor from the office to the elevator. The upper level of the mall was beginning to fill with shoppers.

When we arrived at the house, I got out of the truck and began to direct him down the steep drive. The slope and design of the laneway demanded three tight turns, a difficult enough manoeuvre in a car, and I had to keep sending him back up to make new approaches. He looked like he was becoming bewildered, as if he had been awakened by my voice, only to find that he was not in bed but seated at the impossible wheel. He'd hired a man with a backhoe to line the entire driveway with large boulders, and these now stymied the truck's progress. I said as much to him. What I said—and I knew as soon as I'd said it that it was a poor choice of commentary—was that I wondered what had possessed him to make the approach to his house impassable.

He climbed down from the cab, leaving the driver's door wide open and the engine running, brushed by me, stomped down the pavement and slammed his way into the house. A man named Tim, who was married to Angela, one of Max's colleagues, brought the truck the rest of the way down.

Beth was sitting with Chandra on her bed, helping her sort through various piles of papers.