Savage (7 page)

8. “I think I still have a photo you gave me of your mom standing with her back to the camera in front of the washing machine,” my friend told me recently. “And yeah, she had that same hairdo, the triangle bob, black or dark brown. I remember I never saw her feet; she was a bit of a ghost. If your mom was prime minister, no one would ever fuck with Canada ever again.”

For me, the skipping-rope fable was a signal post; told to me after my own run-in with deception as the 1980s opened up. It was sweet revenge some forty years later when a group of camp bullies took it upon themselves to steal my chocolate milkshake at lunch. This was when we lived on Roehampton Avenue, that period in photographs when I wore glasses (June 1978–May 1980). Mom came to pick me up and asked me about my day, and I told her that someone stole my chocolate milkshake. The drink came in a can and it was not regular fare for me. I was looking forward to it at lunch and maybe I had drawn attention to it when I unpacked my food. I knew the culprits but was helpless to confront them. Mom didn't feel this way at all, however, and proceeded to chew them out in the most ambitious toxic rant I'd ever heard up to that point. (Mom doesn't remember this happening, but it was a life lesson, a triumph; she was making up for lost skipping ropes one shaggy-haired kid at a time, and to me it was a rare act of heroics I have permanently archived.)

The docile sparkplug that would change the course of history and be added to our caustic family flag next to the rolling pin, beer bottle, jar of goose grease, pack of Craven "A" cigarettes and fish-tank bubbler, lay in wait inside our light-blue Buick's tired engine.

The morning was unscripted, tired and passed in tedious ritual as the cereal bowls, mugs, juice glasses and separate refrigerator-door seal breaches echoed in crude symphony.

Mom was antsy and full of tasks. "I have to go to the library at some point today. Do you want to go?"

We were almost finished emptying the dishwasher. "And if you have any clothes for the Salvation Army drop box," she added. "Holly's coming back tonight from camping." I wandered into the den and turned on the television.

Dad was outside, kneading the earth on his knees, his gut rubbing against the open earth; he put a mug to his lip every couple of minutes until his coffee became cold and he tossed the remainder into the garden behind him. The morning had escalated into an impromptu invasion as Dad mapped out his soil-turning conquest.

I could see him in action through the drapes as he tried to make the menacing zucchini sprawl see it his way—its green prickling tentacles and leaves had pronounced themselves vivid past the lawn's original border.

Something had to be done: Dad's way, non-stop, toiling and chewing off his Saturday inch by inch. I never saw any photos of Dad with anyone other than family members; it was great when Dad had new friends, I imagined saying, but he never did that; he didn't know how or develop the need. He read newspapers, played cards, picked weeds and wore plaid shirts on the weekends. I never saw him on the phone talking to anyone for any personal reason unrelated to family topics. Did he know people? Did he see people on the street when walking, or was it blank?

Through the window, I could see Dad's veiled outline stretched large as he came in and out of frame through the curtained window. Mom had joined him now and was gesturing like crazy. I opened the window a bit so I could hear them, just a crack. She stopped with her hands and turned away.

Dad didn't look up. Mom pleaded. "Would you stop it!" Mom growled, cawed, standing behind Dad's dig stance.

I turned the television off.

"David! Stop digging! Stop it!"

My nose was at the window, heart kicking into a rapid-beating frenzy.

Mom repeated, "Stop it!"

"It's my garden!" Dad snapped back, on his knees, his red plaid shirt a big round rectangle of sweat and sun and digging.

The cicadas were holding their notes; their song came to a halt. Inside I could feel my stomach lubricating in a layer of pre-vomit. I sprinted back into the kitchen, jumping over the open dishwasher door Mom had abandoned, running into my shoes as I blasted to the side door. I burst through high noon's Saturday heat, seeing Mom's perm and the sunlight moving through it creating a temporary golden orb. She turned around, nose red, eyes watering.

"He won't stop digging!" she cried. "Would you stop it David!"

These seconds were without sensation; it took forever to reach him, to be beside his dirt shoulder and smell his specific atmosphere.

"Stop it!" I shouted.

He was taking off his red shirt, revealing a yellow mountain of cotton T-shirt and a pair of dirty brown cords. "Stop digging up the fucking backyard, you psycho!"

Dad didn't budge. "Both of you get inside."

He wanted to keep digging. Mom kept screaming. "We will if you just stop!"

"Get inside!"

I pulled at my father's shoulder. Dad pushed me away. "Diane, get inside!"

I returned to the frazzle, now pulling him from his garden crime scene into the driveway near a pile of wood.

"Stop it, you asshole!" Dad shouted at me.

"You stop it!" I shouted back. He shoved me. I shoved back, causing him to fall into the woodpile, spilling a few logs.

Dad regained his composure, and with the weed pick in his hand, swung at me.

"Asshole!" He shouted.

I felt sick: hostile triggers and signifiers went off inside me—lighters flicking, the scent of bright-yellow beer and the gross suds filling me up from toe to head, the rage of a lawn gutted, brutally turned over, final.

The language was barbed as we struggled, clenching hands and fists while Mom screamed like a banshee.

Upon passing the driveway, one might have assumed a competitive road-hockey game was going on, but no hockey sticks or nets were in play; they lay dormant in the garage. Dad was holding Mom by the arms.

"Stop it David!"

Gusting down the hot driveway to the front door, swinging it open and pouring my eyes over the kitchen for something—anything...

...I spotted a wooden tea tray. Returning at full speed to the driveway, I saw Dad trying to shove Mom inside. I was about thirty feet away, standing in front of our car.

"Get inside!" Dad shouted, glaring at me.

"You're scaring me, David!" Mom screamed. I ran at Dad, hitting him over the back with the wooden tray.

TWACK!

The funk of cigarette smoke alchemizing with his crap cologne hung in the air that separated us. I stared deeply into Dad's steel-wool eyes.

"Just get inside!" Dad shouted as I dropped the tray.

"Nate!" Mom screamed.

"Diane, inside!" Dad barked. "Call the police!"

"You're insane!" I shouted. "When they get here, I'm gonna make sure they lock you up forever!"

"Diane, call the police!" He was behind the screen door now.

"You're such a fucking piece of crap!" I said, staring into his glazed grey eyes.

I moved towards the screen door to pull it open. Dad slammed the side door shut in my face, and I heard the lock click, digesting my family inside.

I stood in the driveway alone, the wooden tea tray at my feet, the sun now fully outstretched in the cloudless sky.

Across the street in a bright deluge, several neighbours were huddled in their best late-morning wear.

I dropped out of sense, out of sync from it all, and began shouting with ribbons of tears streaming from my hot face.

"Call the police; he's insane! He's going to kill her!"

I watched my house from down the street. Dad came outside and was standing in front of the car. "What's he doing now?!" I shouted. Even more neighbours were gathering beside me.

The show-stealing antics were rewarded in kind: two police cruisers showed up, just as Dad was fidgeting with the car's engine.

"What's he doing now?" I asked hysterically, looking at my father playing with the car's guts.

The police moved up the driveway, one officer taking Mom to a police car, the other, as far as I could see, talking with Dad beside the car. Dad closed the hood.

I disembarked from the group of local spectators and crossed the street towards Mom.

"What's going on?" I said, sidling up to Mom as she lit a cigarette. She dabbed it out after three tiny puffs.

"They need a statement from me," Mom said. "This is so embarrassing."

I looked at our house now, feeling as if a sinkhole had risen up and formed. In it we would now—
all of us
—slide towards a new-fangled dent in the property schematics, a dismal abyss in wait.

The officer had finished speaking to Dad. He nodded and walked towards Mom and the other officer, passing a few neighbours who had frozen along the way.

"What?" Mom said, her voice rising as she continued, "They're letting him go!?" She was marvelling at the police officer standing next to her, face in a twist of creases and astonishment.

"He's putting the spark plug back in," Mom said, sobbing. "He took it out so we couldn't leave!" she cried, snot dripping from her nose.

I stepped back from the police car and watched as Dad finished operating on the car's engine.

Fucking asshole
, I thought, watching Dad drive away. "He's going to cool off at his folks' place," the officer told Mom. "He said in Kingston, right?"

Mom was dripping with wet and mucus. She nodded shamefully, not making any eye contact. "We just need to take your statement, Mrs. Moore."

Slowly the gaggle of neighbours and onlookers thinned out, and we returned to our domestic shell.

"You want to call one of your friends?" Mom asked, blowing her nose with Herculean pomp. She tossed her cigarettes in the trash.

Later in the afternoon, Andrew came over with a baseball bat. Mom served us lemonade on the front porch; her eyes were now dry and open, awaiting another soft deluge. Telling Andrew what had happened both excited and shamed me, as if sharing the malicious porch gossip would provide fodder for the future judgment and ridicule I knew my best friend was capable of propagating. We rented two movies and ordered a pizza. Mom, Holly and I engaged in a silence with occasional facial recognitions in key comedy points. Otherwise, we were hypnotized for several hours wearing flatline expressions.

Dad returned the next day, said nothing to anyone about the incident, quietly milled about the house, avoiding chaos, carpet shocks, raised tones or eye contact.

"Hello, Nate," he said as if nothing had transpired. It was the absolute most terrified I'd ever been.

Within the high noon showdown, we both flinched, and my fantasy uncoiled, spoiling a reel of seamless smiles. Each toothy grin killed forever.

*

At school, I submitted to the boys and their phys-ed steak arms, glistening in dark hairs, and new deodorant, their skin scabbing in places, from battles from sex, from falling down new and drunk. These growing and grizzly fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys would pick me up vertically, my head under their pits, my feet way up above their own heads, then they fell back on a gym mat. It was called a suplex. I stood five-and-a-half feet, weighed 118 pounds. When I had a bad headache from anxiety or illness, Mom suggested an Aspirin intervention while I sought to believe in the gods of synchronicity, not logic.

Weeks passed, and I thought this one rip in the psychic fabric was a one-off thing that wouldn't repeat itself or linger, but it wasn't the case. By mid-September, the after-school special-type treatment was in full effect and unravelling in bounty.

It was nearing four in the afternoon, a time of relishing the pre-dinner vortex, I thought, walking up the front steps. Despite the glare from the warm sun, I felt a deep coldness washing over me.

I opened the screen door, and Mom emerged in a cloud of cotton, backed by the distinct chugging of the dishwasher, racing through silverware. I knew something was up when she greeted me at the door with a crooked grin Scotch-taped across her pink face.

"Oh, hi, Nate, glad you're home," Mom said, in a calm but definite voice, slowly turning her body to the living room. Her movement in the hallway was its usual, spectral shift, with the creases in her forehead coming together in a linear fashion.

"Come on, now," she said, rushing me to de-backpack and unshoe myself, waving me in towards the familiar set of pink couches. I imagined a camera crew in the living room, doing light readings, setting up boom microphones over the coffee table.
Something was up
.

"Why are you home so early from work?" I said, moving lethargically into the living room behind her.

"I wanted to just, now, this is Mary, she is a counsellor, and she's here to talk to you."

"Talk to me?"

"About you know, how you're feeling, and you know..."

I moved cautiously into the living room where a woman sat on the couch holding a pad of paper in her lap.

"Hello, Nathan, my name is Mary Greene from Child Services," she said, not getting up.

"What do you want? What is this going to accomplish? He's not even here!" I said. "He's the problem … "