Here So Far Away(80)

Forty


Dad was right: life is a bad writer. I’ve thought a lot about whether I’d rewrite my senior year given the chance. I guess this was it. But in a way, that’s what I did the first time around. Truth is, I never did tell anyone the whole story, because the facts are a bit mean and I had to work too hard to convince people that I’m alright. Unless you count dreaming of Joshua Spring’s tongue filling my mouth like a wet sausage whenever I go to bed without brushing my teeth.

I’m not a haunted person. You can’t be followed by someone who’s part of you. Though sometimes when I’m back home, especially near the edge of the great basin where the mountains begin, where you can look down at the squares of cornfields and pastures rugging the valley floor and the snatches of woodland and the villages and the sea, I think about the people who’ve come and gone from this place and I might get a little sentimental.

The punctuation mark at the end of my idiot year, as Dad once called it, wasn’t the prom. Please. I sent the others off with some dances they said brought the house down, including Serbian Disco, Seated Floor-Mopping, Speed Skater, and the soulful come-on, I Really Should Have Chewed More Before Swallowing. (Slow shuffle, hand over the heart, deep gulp, remember to maintain eye contact.) But I did go to our all-night grad party, held in an old airfield, wearing Sid’s leather jacket. He’d sent it to Bill as a birthday gift, along with three tickets to a summer Tragically Hip concert in the city for Bill, himself, and me.

“He says we need male bonding time,” Bill said, reading the card. “Someone might have told him you’ve turned into a weeper.”

Sid sounded like his same old self, but I wondered if he’d changed as much as we all had, and how much that would matter when he came back.

When I got home from the grad party at sunrise, Dad was sitting on the porch floor doing his mirror therapy. His foot was bare, pants rolled above the knee, and he had a three-foot mirror lying lengthwise between his legs so that it looked like he had both a left foot and a right one. The physiotherapist had given him a bunch of exercises to help with phantom pain, like squeezing his toes and flexing.

“You don’t look much worse for wear,” he said.

I sat with him until he finished his exercises, then told him about my final grades, which would soon be making their way to Aurora. My marks had averaged out well enough to secure my acceptance in the journalism program.

“I’m proud of you. Still sure journalism’s the thing?”

“Honestly, I have no idea what I want to do.”

“That’s what school is for. So now there is just the matter of paying for it.”

“I’m applying for a student loan,” I said. “I know that will stress Mum out, but it’ll be my debt, and I’ll get a job in the city. If that’s not enough, I’ll go to school part-time.”

This was mostly true, but I left out the other option that I’d been wrestling with for weeks, which was to sell the copy of Geography III and how I would explain where it had come from and why Constable McAdams would give me something so valuable.

“I have a better plan,” Dad said. “You’ll accept the full-time placement they’ve offered you and go live with your aunt Joanna.”

“She doesn’t have space for me.”

“She does if Junior-Junior comes and lives with us. He’s going to end up in jail or knock someone up or both, if Joanna doesn’t do something.”

“So she’s sending him to live with the Sergeant.”

“Hey, you turned out okay, didn’t you?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “You did, kiddo. You’ll have your own space in the basement with a bathroom and one of those electric stove tops, and we’ll get you a bar fridge. It’s not a free ride. You’ll be expected to do some cleaning and babysitting to cover your room and board, sorry to tell you.”

It meant living under my family’s roof for a while longer, but if it let me hold on to the one thing I had left of Francis, that wasn’t a hard choice to make.

“You must really want me to leave,” I said.

I wanted him to say no.

He nodded. “You shouldn’t choose a school because it’s the closest.”

“Scary, all of a sudden.”

“Good. You should be scared. Life is scary. So is your aunt Joanna. But you won’t be there forever, and I’m sure you’ll have friends around. Miss Prissy going to Aurora?”

“Lisa? Thinking about it.”

That was where Keith was headed, but she was also still thinking about Noel and another theater program in Montreal.

Mum opened a window above our heads. Now that Dad was smoking only outdoors, she’d begun tidying their room, perhaps working up to moving back in. I had come to see my parents’ marriage as fragile; I suppose most relationships are. You just don’t know it in the beginning, when you’re tattooing someone’s name on your body.

“Dad, do you believe in love at first sight?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you stamp Mum’s name on your arm after, like, your third date?”

“That is more a reflection of my youthful stupidity.”

“So, you don’t think you ever just kind of know right away.”

“Sounds like foresight, and I don’t go for voodoo like that. If you meet someone and it doesn’t work out, you say, Oh well, I lost my head. If it does, you say, I knew all along. Only time will tell. I don’t care how smart you think you are, there’s no substitute for time.”