Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall (7 page)

~

You can only get the money in factors of twenty. Sometimes the machine will give you more money than you have in your account.

The question on the machine was:
Which account? Press a green button
.

~

Before I left, I made him pancakes.

Then I went around the corner, out of the kitchen, and he went, “Daaaddy,” and started to cry.

So I went back in the kitchen.

I had on one shoe.

I turned his high chair around to face the window. I wanted him to look out and blow me kisses when I got out in the driveway. There were still some pieces of pancake in his bowl.

I find empty rooms to sit in. Then I listen to footsteps outside. I wait for the footsteps to stop. I listen for the door to open.
This is it
, I think.

I turn his chair around and I say, “You wave bye-bye to Daddy. Blow kisses,” and I walk out the front door.

When I was a little guy, my dad used to tie our sled to the back of his car and drive us around the streets in our neighborhood, my sister and I dressed up in our coats and boots, propped up like little dolls, the snow white and clean around us.

T
OM
GOES
across the parking lot in the early morning light. He goes into the mall and meets up with the other guys, who are all hanging about by the railing on the overlook. All the guys, hair stiff with gel, are smiling and they all have wonderful gray complexions. Tom has this lick of hair which falls over his forehead. For a while he stays near the guys, listening to their jokes. Eventually, though, he drifts away to buy a coffee at Druxy’s. He stands at the condiment stand, stirring his coffee. He watches the lady behind the counter in the way fellows named Tom do.

Tom goes back out into the parking lot and buys a paper. He tucks the paper under his arm and carries it back across the parking lot to the office building where he works. He goes in. Rhonda is there, sitting at her desk, staring off into nowhere, with her red hair and freckles.

“You’re in early,” Tom says.

“I was over near here, so I thought I might as well just come on over here and be here. So here I am.” Rhonda often talks like this, especially early in the morning.

Her hair is especially red today
, Tom thinks.

“Did you dye your hair?” Tom says.

“No,” Rhonda says.

Tom takes sips of his coffee. He keeps taking sips until all the coffee is gone. He closes one eye and squints the other so he can look into the little hole of the takeout cup.

“I think I have some kind of perceptual problem,” Tom says. “I think there’s something going wrong with me. I keep cutting my fingers, for example.” He holds up his hands to show Rhonda he has two Band-Aids on one hand and one on the other. “I think there’s something really going wrong with me.”

“You should see a doctor,” Rhonda says.

Anyway, that’s it for Tom. Thanks again.

O
NE
TIME
,
Wiley Pocock wrote this long, convoluted poem and read it to the class. This was in grade three. It was the assignment. It didn’t have to be a long poem. Some of the kids wrote short ones. One kid, whose name was Chuck, wrote a poem two lines long, with the word “time” at the end of the first line and the word “lime” at the end of the second. At recess, after Chuck read his poem to the class, he went outside and beat up a bunch of kids in the school yard. He went around the school yard for fifteen minutes beating up kids.

~

I used to drive a school bus in the summer, taking kids to a camp in the city. I picked up kids in the High Park area. It was always warm and humid, even early in the morning. I would go down to pick up the kids and I would have the door of the bus open to get air into the bus to cool me down. The area where I picked up the kids was the same area where I one day wanted to live. I would drive down early, park the bus in front of the school where I made the first pickup, and then I would get out of the bus and walk around, looking for someplace where I could buy a coffee. There was a girl, Sarah, and a guy, Brett, who were counselors at the camp and who were in love. Sometimes they came to the bus stop early and sat together against a wall of the school. Sarah was like summer, because she looked warm and swollen and ready for anything.

~

The other day I took Tutti and Sammy to Guelph. I told them Guelph might be a good town to live in. Tutti wants to live in another town. I had heard about some parks in Guelph that were supposed to be fun for kids, so we went to look at these parks to see if Sammy would have fun playing in these parks. While we were there in Guelph walking in one of the parks, Tutti got poison oak. A couple of days later, Sammy got it, too.

~

Say I knocked, though, and Tutti would not open the door. Say she had the baby in her arms and she was saying, “Hush, that’s your daddy out there. Hush now, and don’t make a sound.”

~

Somebody has been ripping out the pages with naked pictures of Madonna on them. This is happening with all the magazines, including the Greek ones, which always have pictures of naked women in them. Just so you understand, what we are talking about here is every single article with naked pictures of Madonna, in every single magazine we have here.

The other thing you ought to know is, someone is randomly deleting people’s reserves for the book where the naked pictures of Madonna are coming from. We are talking about an employee here, someone inside the system, someone who is going into the computer, calling up the reserve list for the Madonna book, and telling the computer to delete people’s reserves. We don’t know who it is, but whoever it is is deleting vast sections of the reserve list. Management has come out with a strong statement concerning the seriousness of this crime. In the statement there is no mention of the missing naked pictures.

There are two theories amongst us members of the staff here. Number one, someone on staff wants to get to the top of the reserve list so they can have the book and see the naked pictures of Madonna sooner. Number two, someone thinks they’re doing people a favor by not letting them see the book with the naked pictures of Madonna in it. In other words, for this second one, we are talking about censorship.

Finally, after much searching, I’m able to find one magazine with a picture of Madonna, naked. This is one of the Greek ones where I find it. When I first pick it up, I have no reason to believe it will be any different from the others. Like the others, there is a picture of Madonna on the cover. The picture on the cover is not a naked picture. Most of the article is gone, along with the pictures. But for some reason, whoever did it did not rip out the first page of the article. It is the picture where Madonna is in leather and her nipples are coming out through the leather bra she is wearing. On the page facing the picture it says,
Let me teach you how to fuck
.

~

I hate McDonald’s coffee, but when McDonald’s starts giving away Batman pogs with every drink purchase, I go over on my lunch hour and buy a coffee and three packs of pogs. That night I give the pogs to Sammy and he kisses me and tells me he loves me.

The next morning I’m at work and Sammy calls me. He can’t find some of the pogs I got him. He starts to cry while he’s talking to me on the phone. I can picture him standing there with the phone by his ear. I can see the way his little chin goes when he cries. I tell him not to cry. I tell him I’ll find the pogs when I get home from work.

I know what Tutti is thinking while I’m saying these things to Sammy over the phone. Tutti is standing there in the kitchen listening to what Sammy is saying, listening to him cry, thinking the way I deal with Sammy is turning him into a baby. This, I realize, is the danger in everything I do with Sammy.

In my heart, though, I cannot believe Sammy will ever turn out to be less than perfect. In my heart, the way my heart feels, I know that Sammy will always be as perfect as the little boy I’ve been dreaming into existence since the day I first saw him come out of his mother.

~

A friend of mine at work eats this French-Canadian stuff called Bdoings (pronounced like “boing”), which is curly noodles with cheese sauce on them. One time when she brought in Bdoings, I wanted to see them to see what they looked like, but I came into the lunchroom too late. My friend had already eaten her Bdoings. I picked up her Tupperware container and pulled off the lid. There was something in there which seemed like a tomato she had chewed up and spit out. All the librarians were there, having their lunch, so I go, “Never look inside a person’s used Tupperware container.”

My friend says, “It’s not Tupperware.”

So I say, “You can use Tupperware generically now.”

“You can?” Librarians love this shit. She says she is going to look “Tupperware” up in
The Dictionary of New Words
.

I tell her, “You look it up.”

Then my friend looks on the lid of her container and finds out what she has is called Lustroware. All the other librarians start looking to see what their containers are. One of them has a container that actually is Tupperware. Another has a Frig-O-Seal.

~

When I get home from work, Sammy locks himself in the bathroom and refuses to talk to me. I go outside and look at the flowers in the garden. When I come back in, Tutti is sitting at the kitchen table looking at the grocery flyers. I tell Tutti I have to go out. She says we should all go out. She says we can walk. She goes over to the bathroom and talks to Sammy though the door. “Sammy,” she says. She holds her head sideways so her ear is near the door. “They have Batman cornflakes on sale at Kmart.” Sammy comes out of the bathroom. He goes over to Tutti. He stands there with Tutti for a moment. Then he goes back to the bathroom because he forgot to turn the light off.

~

Picture a man. Any man you want. Picture two men if you want. Picture your dad. Picture anyone you want. Or don’t picture anyone at all. Picture whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to give you all the details. Because the truth is, I don’t even know what this guy looks like, and as long as we’re on the subject, I don’t care. Picture yoursef if you want.

And another thing, while we are on the subject. If you’re looking for one of those things where they give you the weather every five pages or so – it was a cold, but dazzlingly brilliant winter day, that sort of thing – go somewhere else. Because listen. I am not the weatherman. You want the weather? Watch the Weather Network. Okay? I am
not
he fucking weatherman.

~

I kept thinking I should write Mom a letter. I made some coffee. I opened the back door and went out onto the patio. For days we had had this terrible heat, but now it was cold, and I was standing on the patio thinking I should write Mom a letter.

This was when Mom was living near the beach. She was living near my sister, out near the beach. I’m talking about the beach we used to go to when we were kids. For some reason everybody has ended up living near the beach.

~

Then one day people with ink spots on their shirt pockets start gravitating toward me.

I
THINK
it is this: I am not sure if I am coming in or going out. This is what I think it is. But I am not sure. I have the key in the door. I don’t know whether to turn it to the left or the right. I think it’s because I don’t know whether I am coming or going. Lately things have been that way. I can’t tell if I am coming or going.

~

A dog is waiting by the back door of our apartment building. Tutti says, “Whose dog is that?” We sit in the car for a while, looking at the dog. Tutti doesn’t want to get out of the car.

I drive around to the front of the building and let Tutti out there. I tell her to meet me at the elevator.

“This is stupid,” she says. She gets out of the car and closes the door. She looks around to make sure the dog has not followed us. Then she walks across the sidewalk and goes in the front door of the building.

I drive the car back around to the parking lot and park in our spot. The dog is still there, sitting by the back door. He comes over to me when I get out of the car. He follows me as I walk around to the front of the building. When I get to the front door I say, “Go away.”

Tutti and I go up to our apartment. As soon as we get inside, Tutti goes over to the window to see if she can see the dog.

~

This is the paradox at the heart of my troubles. Somewhere, deep inside me I suspect, lurks a bowler. This is the dangerous edge I fear will cut into my being, my speech, my table manners.

~

“What did you do down there?” He wanted to know.

“I picked up garbage outside a library in North York,” I told Him. “And also, I plunged toilets.”

“Where is North York?” He asked.

I showed Him on the little globe He kept on a pole by His desk. He went over to the window.

“Shouldn’t you know where North York is?” I asked.

“I know where North York is,” He said to me. He stayed where He was, His back to me, looking out the window.

“The mafia kingpin for the Toronto area used to live in North York. He wore lime green safari suits. This was late in his life, when he was old. He went over to the mall in these awful-looking suits.

“He fell in love with beautiful women whose pictures he saw in fashion magazines. He would show pictures of these women to his sons. He sat in the kitchen of the big house where he lived, and smoked. His sons would go out and find the beautiful women and bring them home and the old man would marry them.

“By this time the old man had only one lime green safari suit he was willing to wear, and he wore it all the time. It was very dirty, and it was crumpled, and he came to his weddings in this suit, and the beautiful women he was marrying, who were always there against their will in the first place, were disgusted by this smelly old man in the ugly suit, but the sons were there with submachine guns, so the women could not leave.