Going Down Swinging (26 page)

Dad was still grinning. “Com’ere and say hi to the old man,” he said and put his palms on my ears. He didn’t hug me exactly, he sort of patted my arms and shoulders like I just fetched a stick. He leaned down and we kissed each other’s cheek. It was stiff kind of, and I was nervous about being there, telling lies and being a traitor, and worried the Shut Up Lady would start yapping at her dinner people again and I’d get all confused and he’d think I was stupid. So he said, “Hiya, how y’doin’? Sure
are
gettin’ big. You’re gonna be tall like your mother.”

I smiled. Didn’t know what to say. I wished he didn’t bring her up. So Ray talked again. “She looks like you, though, eh Danny? Same kinda crazy eyes. Eilleen’s always sayin’ she looks like a wolf,” and the two of them chuckled. Sadie and Eddy were back to arguing. Ray told them to simmer down and go play in the traffic.

“You like school?” my dad asked. “What’re you in now, grade 3?”

“Four,” I said, bugged that he didn’t know. I stood a bit away from him now; I couldn’t get comfortable being too near; I couldn’t make him and “Daddy” go together. It would’ve been easier over the phone. Now it was all weird. He asked how my mum was. And then I got a big hunk of guilt where I used to have butterflies. She was fine, she had the flu today, I told him and felt like I said too much. He watched me and asked if I was ever going to come back to Toronto to visit him. I said maybe, then probably not, then that I probably wasn’t allowed. The least I could do was show that she still said what went. Even if we were sneaking around behind her back right now, she was still Mum and he’d be stupid not to know it. I wanted to say how she was better than anybody he knew—smarter, funnier, prettier and taller, with redder hair and nicer nails and bigger boobs and higher heels, and she was crazy about me. And plus: if it wasn’t for me she’d be dead because she told me so and that’s more than I can say for you, buddy. “So I can’t be here too long cuz I’m helping out around the house today.” He smiled and nodded fast, then reached for his back pocket. I all the sudden noticed how perfect his slacks looked, how they fitted exactly to his waist, with no wrinkles except where his legs bent, and the shirt, how clean and orange it was. The collar was big and pointed and perfect. He took out his wallet and flipped it open.

It reminded me of this time in Toronto when I went with him to the used-car place he worked at. Four or five guys were there in the office, sitting at a round table, smoking and telling stories, laughing crackly laughs and talking like the guys Mum pointed out in old movies. Guys she called heartthrobs, like Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis. My dad’s friends held their cigarettes and cigars the same kind of way, with their shoulders and heads tilted the same way, their eyes squinting, smoke curling up beside their noses. I wondered if they were like TV or TV was like them. Dad said, “Hi, what’s doin’?” to the guys at the table and hung his coat on the rack. He told me to have a seat for a minute while he talked to Minky, in the back office.

I sat down beside Dad’s friend Jacky. Jacky’d been at our house once. He took a drag off his cigarette and tilted his chin back to have a look at me. His eyes were sparkly blue and he had eyelashes like a pony. “How old are y’ now, kid?”

“Seven.”

“Huh. Got lots of boyfriends?” I shook my head and made a barf-face. They all chuckled and sipped their drinks, or flicked their smokes in the ashtray. Jacky reached in his pocket, took out a quarter and slid it to me with one finger. “That’s for you.” I grabbed it and said thankyou fast.

When Dad came out of the back room, I showed him and he made me give it back. I handed it to Jacky, grounding my teeth. From now on, I was keeping my mouth shut. Jacky picked some tobacco off his tongue, flicked it and winked at me. He glanced over his shoulder at my dad’s back as he put his coat on. “Well, good to see you again, sweetheart,” and he took my hand in between both of his, squishing the quarter against my palm. He winked one of his squinty eyes again. I winked back and dropped the money in my mitt before I put it on.

My dad’s baby finger stuck out with a fat gold ring on it as he pulled a ten-dollar bill out. “Here. This is for you, yer birthday’s comin soon. Y’can get yerself a present.” I took it and felt my chest falling into me. I wanted to get the money out of here before he changed his mind.

I said, “I think I’ll put it in the bank.”

His eyes sparkled up. “That’s good. That’s real good,” as if I just did a perfect handstand or fetched a stick again.

I kept going. “Is my bank account that you opened for me in Toronto still open?” He said it was. “Cuz I was thinking maybe I should get that money and bring it to my bank account here. So I can really save it, you know? Could you maybe send it to me? Cuz there must be lots now, with the interest, huh?” I figured the five dollars he opened my account with would be around a hundred by now. After all, he told me he put a few more bucks in at my birthday last year and it’d been almost two years since we opened it. He chuckled and nodded.

Ray smiled hard and leaned against the counter, tapping a pen. “Chip off the old block, eh Dan—apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” And they both laughed. I figured laughing was a good sign and I’d have my money in no time flat. As soon as he got back, he’d send it and Mum and I could use it to do whatever we wanted. I folded the ten and put it in my back pocket, then took it out again. “Maybe I should hold it so it doesn’t fall out, huh?” My dad nodded and Ray laughed. “OK, um, well, I have to go, cuz I have to help out around the house.” He patted my back and Ray told his kids to pipe down back there before he brained them.

Walking back home, I was all weird and quiet inside. I hugged my arms around my middle—sometimes that helped make the voices go away. They got tricked into thinking someone was with me, I guess. There were no voices then, but I just wanted to trick myself anyway. I wasn’t with him hardly any time. And I didn’t know if it should be a secret. Or nothing. Just a visit. Just another way to get ten bucks. And maybe she’d be proud of that. Or maybe she’d get mad and sicker.

Doreen was gone when I got back and Mum was curled on her side with a plate of chicken and rice beside her on the bed and a glass of wine on the nightstand. I stuffed the ten in my back pocket again. Mum said hi without moving. I asked where Doreen was. Mum said she took off without hardly saying goodbye but that I should have the chicken and rice she brought. I took the plate in the light to make sure it didn’t have any spilled wine or hairs on it. Didn’t look like Mum even touched it. I bit off some chicken and then spilled my guts—“Daddy’s here. He was at Ray’s store and I went down to see him.”

She was quiet a second, then, “Son of a bitch,” and quiet and then, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see him? I probably would’ve said no.”

I forked some rice in. “Well. Good that I didn’t ask then.” She glared at me and grumbled something in her pillow. “It was just for a minute and he gave me ten bucks.” The chicken skin was the perfect crispiness and I folded it and stuffed it in my mouth.

She lifted her head. “Oh, he did, did he? Ten whole dollars. Stupid bastard.” She reached for her wine, took a sip and set it back. “Ten bucks! Isn’t that charming as hell. He doesn’t pay a dime for child support but he can dole out a pittance and look like a big fucking shot.
This
… shit hole—and he gives you ten bucks. La Dee Dah.” That was twice she said la-dee-dah. It bugged me. Doreen said la-dee-dah. And usually Mum never said stuff like “shit hole” either.

I swallowed, “Yeah, but Mummy—”

“Mummy nothin’. Goddamn prick. Ten bucks. From now on you tell me if he calls here. I don’t want you alone with him, and if he ever comes to your school, you don’t go anywhere with him.”

I kept stuffing my face. “Why not? He’s my
father,”
and she said nothing. “Mum!”

“Because. I said so.”

“Why!”

“Because he might just grab you—that’s why. Kidnap you and take you back to Toronto. You think you’re so smart but that kind of stuff happens, you know, men stealing kids from their mother and nobody hears from them again.” She reached for the wine and knocked a bottle of aspirin on the floor.

“He is not going to grab me. He didn’t even hug me. He can’t just grab me—I could escape! Nobody can just
grab
. You’re being goofy.” I scooped the rest of the rice up in my fingers, dropping some down my shirt and on the bed.

“I mean it, Grace, I mean it. I’m telling you, if I ever lost you, if you ever disappeared, if anything ever happened, I’d die. I. Would. Die,” and her eyes welled up. “Just please do what I say and don’t be a smartass … please.” She hugged the side of her pillow. I finished the rest of the plate.

The buzzer went. It was Doreen. Again. I didn’t want her here. “Mum’s just sleeping right now.”

“Yeah, sweetheart____” (static scratched through half of what she said) “____OK, so I just gotta come up for a sec.” I wiped my mouth and thought a second, then buzzed her in, listening by the door before I opened it. There were other feet; she wasn’t alone. She was bringing people over? Fine, then—she was going to get the big kiss-off like the guys on the phone. I opened the door to her and two cops.

The cops smiled and scrunched their leather. Doreen’s smile looked all like she felt sorry for me or something. “Let us in, sweetheart. You see this,” she said to them and flapped her hand at me. She yanked one of the cops by his sleeve and I moved out of the way. She waved her arms and her silver coat around, yapping away in that voice of hers that sounded like a crow with a hangover. “She’s got a little girl here and she’s taking pills and booze—she’s trying to kill herself. She’s gonna end up dead and this little one here—just come on and take a look at this place, she’s trying to kill herself.” And they all clunked down the hall to the bedroom. My heart started going and I couldn’t figure out how to stop them. Too many people. And there shouldn’t be cops. And they shouldn’t be looking at her when she’s sick. I ran after them. Wishing Sadie and the Shut Up Lady would scream their guts out at them all.

One cop moved in to the head of Mum’s bed, talking all slow and dumb, like she was about three. “Hi there, what’s going on? You’ve got some people pretty concerned about you here. Have you been drinking?” And he picked the empty bottle that the yellow pills used to be in off her night table, while the second cop poked around and Doreen blabbed about dying and the child and pills and booze.

I yelled over her and the cop, cuz they were acting like I wasn’t there—“She has the flu, she’s just taking
222s
. It’s just, it’s for a—she’s trying to sleep and she had a headache.” The second cop backed me out and took me down the hall while I tried to catch what else they said behind me.

He sat me down on the couch and I suddenly remembered Henry’s litter box because of how bad it smelled. Mum’s voice was small and shaky from the bedroom. The first cop clomped back toward us and left Doreen in there. The two of them sat on either side of me on the couch with their belts and holsters squawking every two seconds. I got up and started back to the bedroom. “That’s OK, maybe you oughta just stay here and have a chat with us.” I didn’t see who’d said that, but I stopped and sat on the arm of the chair. Henry jumped on the coffee table and tiptoed around it until they patted him.

“He’s a pretty nice kitty. He’s got nice stripes,” the first cop said, and I wished he’d shut up so I could hear what Doreen was up to now. “Your name’s Grace, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Officer James and this is Officer Duncan. Have you had anything to eat today? Did your mummy make you any dinner?”

“Um, yeah.”

“What did you have?”

“Um, no, I mean, I’m not hungry. There’s chocolate cake. Made from—would you like some Scratch Cake?”

“No thanks. Grace, your mummy’s not doing too good. She might need to go to the hospital. Do you have any relatives you could stay with for a few days?”

“Um, no, I should stay here—she’s just got the flu, y’know. Doreen doesn’t know anything. She’s not really that, um—there’s just aspirin there and that’s all she took. She’s fine, though. We’re fine. Everything’s OK, y’know.” They both nodded and smiled and patted my cat.