Fight Night(16)

What happened is we met a friend of Mom’s who is a director. Mom said oh god, don’t look now. Fucking kill me. I looked and saw a tall guy come walking towards us. Mom tried not to embrace him but he bent down and hugged her so then out of politeness she hugged him for under one second and just with one arm barely touching him. She pointed at me and said, this is my daughter, Swiv. I waved. He said, Oh! I thought you’d say son. Mom and I looked at him. Pleasure, he said. He nodded at me. Mom asked him how he was and he said he was involved in an epic struggle with his demons. Mom burst out laughing and said really? Wow! He said yes, more and more as I get older I’m finding evidence that supports the fact that I’m a tragic character. Mom laughed again. The director looked confused. He said, It’s not funny, really, it’s painful. Mom couldn’t stop laughing. Then I started laughing a bit too. The director frowned and looked away, down towards the far end of the park towards the off-leash pit. Mom said she was sorry. The director said it was fine. He was trying to smile. Finally he left and Mom sat back down on the bench and watched him disappear. When he was far enough away Mom said oh my god, what a douchepetard. She told me he had touched her all over—and she means all over—during one rehearsal when he was trying to show her how to simulate love-making. She said he’s banged every young actress in town and super talks down to everyone. Mom said we can’t afford therapy anymore even with the sliding scale and even with giving the therapist free tickets to the theatre because doucherockets like the tall director aren’t giving her roles anymore because she’s too old and because of Gord and also because he knows she’s got his fucking number. Now she has to audition for fucking tooth-whitening commercials.

But where’s Dad? I asked her. She said a bunch of things but basically she doesn’t know.

Of course, you already know where you are, unless you were kidnapped and taken somewhere with a blindfold and spun around three times. Grandma told me that everything she was taught in her dumb town to be true turned out to be lies. And when you figure that out you have to start all over again.

We sat on the bench watching the timid wankers play mini-tennis. People with tennis rackets sat beside us waiting for them to finish. Mom shouted at the mini-tennis players. Hey! If you’re not gonna use the whole court let someone else use it! Go play in your back yard! The mini-tennis guys looked at her. Mom pointed at the people waiting on the bench with their rackets. The people waiting said oh, it’s okay, it’s okay. Mom grumbled away. I was dying. I said in a low voice, “More and more as I get older I’m realizing that”—then Mom laughed and laughed and forgot about her commitment to harassing the mini-tennis players. She told me she thinks I should have more friends, or at least one friend. I slumped over again and said, I have friends! You said friends could be dead! What dead friends do you have, she said. She asked me if I would consider returning to school. Wouldn’t it be nice to see your living friends? I told Mom about King of the Castle. I told her I was obsessed with being King of the Castle. I fought everybody, even grade six boys tooth and nail to be King of the Castle. I bled every recess and all my clothes got ripped but I won and I like my clothes like that and it was worth it. Mom said congratulations, that was definitely a fight, but not exactly the kind of fight she was talking about. That’s a lonely position to be in, isn’t it? she asked me. I hate that therapy voice she gets but I was happy when she said the question was rhetorical which means I didn’t have to answer. I wished every question in the world was rhetorical. She talked about her big panic attack, the one that happened the night after Grandpa died, when I was a baby. She woke up and couldn’t breathe and her chest hurt and she thought she was having a heart attack and was going to die. She didn’t want to also die because that would be too much for Swiv to handle. Two deaths in two days. Plus she didn’t want to wake you up because there was no point to that. She and you couldn’t both go to the hospital and leave me alone because I was a baby. And besides she didn’t want anyone to know she was dying. She drove by herself to the hospital in the middle of the night and the people there said oh, c’mon in. She told them she thought she was dying and they asked her if she’d had any stress in her life lately. They told her she was young and looked very healthy. She told them about Grandpa and they said oh, that is stressful. They checked her out to make sure she wasn’t dying. They said she’d have to stay there for a few more hours so they could do the tests again. She said no, she had to get back home and into bed before you and I woke up and noticed she wasn’t there.

I can’t believe it! I said. I didn’t know you did that! You really pulled a fast one! Mom said yeah, she had managed to almost die and then not die without a single person finding out. I said, Wow! I was impressed by that. But it was a lonely time, she said. She said that looking back on it, she felt sorry for her almost-dying, terrified self doing that all alone, sneaking off to the hospital and not telling anyone. She said there were fights and then there were fights. She said it was like me playing King of the Castle at school. (I don’t play King of the Castle.) Lonely. She told me about another time she’d driven herself to the hospital. It was the night I was born. The reason she knew I was going to be born was because she went to the bathroom in the night and there was a blob of blood-streaked mucus on her panties. That’s how you announced your imminent arrival, Swiv! With a blob of mucus in my underwear! Ha! Sexy, right? We were still on the bench in public sitting next to the waiting tennis players when she said this. She told me she’d driven to the hospital by herself again because when she told you she was in labour you barely woke up and just moaned oh god, or something not encouraging like that, and it made her really fucking mad. So she went alone to the hospital and even parallel parked in the darkness with her giant stomach. The nurses said she was seven centimetres dilated. She held her hands apart to show me. This much, she said. That’s disgusting! I said. You drove a car like that? With this gigantic hole? The point is, she said, that again looking back that was a lonely thing to do. It was a kind of fight, maybe, she said. Like she was saying fuck you, bro, if it’s not worth it to wake up for the arrival of your fucking baby after I’ve already told you I’ve got mucus in my underwear then I’m going without you! But that’s not the kind of fight we need. Look at the Raptors, she said. She stood up and started walking. We need teams. We need others to fight alongside us. She said the reason the Raptors are so good is because they’re collectively trying to win, not a single one of them just trying to break personal records or up his stats or whatever. Lonely fights are the worst, she said. She’d rather lose a lonely fight. She’d rather join a losing team than win a lonely fight.