You Could Believe in Nothing Read online

  In the days after that picture was taken they collected Curtis, saw Bobby Hull, and boarded the train back to St. John’s. Cynthia arrived after a couple of years, followed by Derek thirteen months later.

  Pop music’s bristling innocence ripened florid and fleshy in the 1970s. “Sweet Lou” Langdon they called him then, the laid-back FM deejay in his aviator sunglasses and burgundy leather jacket. Lou and his cohorts bestrode “the scene,” voices rumbling with late-night cool. Songs were “tracks.” Bands were “artists.” The sixties were “the movement,” a magical age of deliverance, burning bright in the imagination. This was Derek’s first memory of his father’s music, how it crouched in the long shadow of the past, its preening and fist-pumping dampened by an air of wistful, druggy psychosis. Lying in bed, long after he should have been asleep, Derek would watch the number tabs flip on the clock radio as his father’s voice descended from the clouds. Later he would stir awake at the sound of the front door, hear the unbuckling of boots and clattering hangers in the front closet. Then the droning kettle and smell of toast; quiet groans of fatigue as slippered feet shuffled to the bathroom.

  Lou Langdon branched out as an impresario, managing a local band called Steamboat. They came to the house, pulling up in a rusty blue van, slouching about the basement and scratching patchy beards, oblivious to the constraints of ordinary lives. They looked like Curtis, tall and lean and stooped as if passing through a low doorway, faces obscured by curtains of greasy hair. It seemed odd to Derek that his father would find common ground with these strangers when every conversation with his stepson ended in shouting and slammed doors.

  Derek recalled the giddiness surrounding the release of Steamboat’s first single. A real vinyl record, the black disc sliding from its paper sleeve with a barely audible swish, pristine and fragile. It was an old song called “Spanish Harlem.” The singer’s nasally voice echoed behind pulsing drums, evoking the dark, sweaty ethnicity of faraway urban landscapes. The band broke up soon after, and the keyboard player was later arrested for exposing himself to girls behind the Arts and Culture Centre.

  “You’re early,” said Ruth, peering over the front desk as Derek stamped his boots in the lobby. “He’s on the air till noon. Come down and wait in his office.”

  She swivelled from her chair and down the hall in one motion, heels cracking a rhythm on the tiled floor. Derek followed and waited while she fussed with the lock.

  “Look!” said Ruth, lifting a locket from her flowery blouse. She popped the lid, and a wrinkled infant glowered within. “My new granddaughter!”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “Are you married, Derek?”

  “No.” He averted his face to hide the morning beer breath. She took this for bashfulness and squeezed his arm.

  “Oh! A man like you should be making babies! Natalie has two boys now.” Natalie was around Derek’s age, and some years ago Ruth had envisioned an alliance between the families. Derek had escorted the girl to her class formal.

  Ruth turned up the speaker on a faux-antique console radio, and left without another word.

  …Jake the Snake is lining up your daily top ten, brought to you by O’Brien’s Quik Mart. Today it’s the top ten heartbreak songs of all time, so get out those hankies. Coming up, Gina will be along with your Classix 490 traffic update. Taking us there, from 1974, the Stylistics. “You Make Me Feel Brand New.” Ah, baby, don’t you know you do!

  The office was a shrine to the golden years, a gallery of photos autographed in practiced hand—“Thanks Sweet Lou!” and “Rock on Louie!” alongside the more reserved “Warmest regards.” A few overexposed Polaroids showed Lou Langdon arm in arm with the stars. The rest were standard publicity shots, the artists set against vacant backdrops, as if they had arrived fully formed from another dimension. Derek knew a few names, like Tina Turner and Huey Lewis, but most meant nothing to him: Lighthouse, Gowan, the Tipsters, 12 Gauge, Johnny Green and the Green Men, the Ink Spots, Keith Hampshire. The flashbulb glamour of early black and whites gave way to a gaudy earnestness in the seventies and eighties: the hairy-chested bass player in his beret; the permed, vainglorious guitar god; the girl singer, lips curled in a promise of slutty delights. They glared at the world with youthful disdain.

  April Wine. He knew that one. That was the year his parents were apart. Derek never knew where his father slept that winter. He knew only their Saturday afternoons in the car. Curtis was finished high school by then, living in the basement, picking up and dropping courses at the university, venturing into the kitchen at odd hours to gorge on toast or cereal. He made sport of the broken marriage, turning his spotty face to Derek with a look of mock horror, forming an “O” with one hand and sliding a forefinger in and out. Derek didn’t quite grasp the literal meaning. But he knew it was lewd, and responded with tears.

  When Lou moved back into the house, Curtis shouted at his mother and moved out. A few weeks later he started hitchhiking, and didn’t call until he reached Edmonton, where he took a job at a brewery. He had lived out west ever since.

  The reunion of Derek’s parents and departure of Curtis filled the house with renewed energy and purpose. That’s when Lou Langdon walked away from radio, trimmed his sideburns, and moved the family outside the city to Mount Pearl, where he joined two partners in a string of brake-and-muffler shops. On the first day at his new school Derek mentioned that his father owned a real stereo, and that afternoon two boys showed up at the house with records by the Clash and Elvis Costello. Derek wasn’t much interested. But he wanted friends, and welcomed them into the basement. As the din filled the room, his father slipped in to listen for a few moments, and withdrew without a word. Lou Langdon’s music still ruled radio, but the frisson of youthful rebellion was lost, hijacked by snot-nosed hooligans. An aging disc jockey was reduced to salary man in cap and bells.

  Derek’s teenaged years were measured out in the failure of the brake-and-muffler enterprise: skittish early days, brief inklings of success, foundering and refinancing, a long, quiet decline, then public ruin and the hushed anguish of his parents’ voices behind their bedroom door. Luck intervened when an old radio man bought up a string of independent stations across the province. The oldies format was a proven winner on the mainland, and Max Ivany figured a voice from the age of innocence would deliver the desired demographic. Returning to St. John’s and to radio, Lou was reborn as a morning man and community stalwart. He chaired the campaign to build a new wing at the children’s hospital. He stood by as the mayor lit the municipal Christmas tree. He manned the Classix 490 Boom Box on Regatta Day. He entertained banquets, taking the podium as the smell of congealed gravy soured the room. Pop music and Lou Langdon had led parallel lives; after difficult middle years, the music was embracing its dotage, complete with cardigan, comb-over, and ample belly. “Hey-Hey Lou Langdon” they called him now, cuing his show with musical snippets that played on the name—usually the Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! refrain from a Beatles song.

  Classix 490 traffic, brought to you by Augustino’s Funeral Home. A pre-planned funeral means peace of mind and security for your loved ones. Back from her holiday in the sunny south, Gina Lush is out and about in the Classix 490 Road Cruiser. Hey, Gina.

  Hey, Lou.

  Nice trip?

  Great trip. Relaxing. Got a great tan.

  Do a little dance? Make a little love?

  Dream on, sailor.

  Ah, you know I will. Let me know if you want all the details.

  Let’s stick to the traffic details.

  Looks like smooth sailing on the Kenmount this morning, right outside the Classix 490 twin towers. How goes the weekend driving, Gina?

  Such flirtatious banter was a staple of Lou Langdon in the Morning, Derek’s father playing the randy uncle to Gina’s cheerful ice queen. She was a remarkable radio instrument, biting down on throaty vowels, her mouth red and cavernous in the mind’s eye. He
r laugh was explosive, a shock of pleasure you could follow all the way down to her painted toenails. Gina’s elusive Road Cruiser, prowling the city streets, was the most palpable manifestation of the horniness bubbling beneath the stale music and workaday chatter of Classix 490. The station was hugely popular with men over fifty. Its catchphrases and tag lines were a secret language of past glories. The music you grew up with! (Your first backseat hand job.) The music that changed the world! (Those marathon slippery sweaty sessions with that girl in university, when you had to pretend it was about her politics.) Rock and roll never sounded better! (That summer you were fucking your secretary.)

  Nev Connolly’s turned out to be Cap’n Jack’s Galley, a diner down the road from the station. It was built like an aquarium, with huge panes of smoky tinted Plexiglas on all sides. Derek and his father took a seat at the front. Derek wanted bacon and eggs, listed on the menu as “Cap’n Jack’s Daybreaker.”

  “Bacon and eggs,” he told the waitress.

  “Daybreaker?” Her upper lip rose quizzically, opening cracks in the purple lipstick.

  “Yeah. Please.”

  She lifted her pen, revealing a belly-button ring that waved to Derek as she rocked on her heels. Her hair was dyed an unnatural black, with a blue tint.

  “The Salty Dog for me,” said Lou Langdon.

  “Regular or Mega Scoff?”

  “Mega Scoff. But listen now. Tell them to leave off the fries and give me extra cod tongues instead.”

  The belly button stopped dead.

  “You don’t want no home fries?”

  “No, my love. You just tell them in the kitchen that a couple of extra cod tongues will do nicely. And tell them plenty of paprika.”

  The purple lip arched again.

  “It don’t say that on the menu.”

  Derek’s father grinned. “Is Nev in today?”

  “Mr. Connolly? Yes, sir.”

  “You go and tell Nev that Lou Langdon is here for his lunch and he’s getting upstrapless.”

  The tip of her tongue appeared, exposing a silvery stud. She left them without another word.

  Lou bowed his head to his daily planner, scribbling purposefully. His late-Elvis pompadour was streaked with grey, but the salt-and-pepper effect suited him. What might have been an outlandish head of hair matched well with a ruddy complexion and three grooves etched into the forehead like distant gulls in flight. Derek had made himself stop wondering what kind of woman would take up with this man.

  “Eh, a lot of bullshit at head office,” said Lou.

  “Hmm?” Derek looked to the shoppers racing up and down Kenmount Road.

  “Bullshit mostly. Accounting and the like.” The pen tapped rhythmically on the table.

  “Now, my son. It’s time to stop that friggin’ about!” Nev Connolly grabbed a chair and flipped it around, leaning his chest into the backrest.

  “You got to get this place in order, now buddy,” said Lou. The two of them roared with laughter.

  “How’s the radio world?”

  “Old Max Ivany is expanding again. Maritimes.”

  “There’s a niche waiting to be filled,” said Nev, knitting his brow.

  “Yes, with the shakeup right now? Consolidation while the market’s vulnerable.”

  Food arrived, and Nev stayed to finish an enthusiastic account of a wedding he and the wife had attended on the weekend.

  “Three salons opened right up at the hotel, with the band and the dancing and the smoked salmon and the whole shmear. Open bar, mind you.”

  “Now, b’y!”

  Men like Nev and Lou hoarded space with their great, immovable bodies. Legs wide to the floor, hairy arms cast about, voices booming common sense. Expansion, consolidation, smoked salmon, the whole shmear.

  “More coffee, boys?” asked Nev.

  “Only from a fresh pot.”

  “You’re shittin’ management now, buddy.”

  “Friggin’ and foolin’!”

  Nev topped up their coffees and went on his way, slapping a palm against the swinging door to the kitchen. Lou worked through his tongues without bothering to cut off the jellied bits. Buttered bread slices were folded over and downed in two bites.

  The waitress took their plates and stepped back, looking at them in silence.

  “Is the tapioca fresh?”

  “I—I can ask Mr. Connolly.”

  Lou chuckled, as if the question had been a joke. “I’ll have the tapioca and a refill. Derek?”

  “Just the coffee for me.”

  Derek had to find sugar packets at another table.

  “Is Mom okay?”

  “She’s good, good.”

  Lou stirred, set his spoon down, and began drumming his pen on the table, which was dusted with paprika from his cod tongues.

  “Is she okay with Curtis?” asked Derek. “Have they talked?”

  His mother had been thrown by the abrupt wedding announcement. No call. No photo. The email from Curtis revealed nothing of the woman or how she had appeared in his life. They had married in the barn of her sheep farm and “danced under the warm Pacific rain.” The farm was a place of “unchanging truth,” he said. “I now understand that life is hard, and life is good.” The rest was a lot of nonsense about sheep—flushing, insemination, birthing. Curtis had always been good at talking nonsense. He mentioned only in passing that a baby was on the way.

  “He never tells me anything,” said Lou. “His mother hardly hears from him. But she’s fine. I believe they’ll be talking next week. He’ll call her.”

  The long-ago battles between Curtis and Lou remained vivid for Derek. For them all, he suspected. A platter of spaghetti heaved across the kitchen, blood coating his father’s temple and dripping from his chin, staining a white shirt. Voices ringing in the street as Curtis tried to start the car and Lou reached through the window to rip the keys from the ignition. His mother flying down the steps as they wrestled. Derek had climbed on his dresser to watch that one from his bedroom window. They were memories saturated in colour and noise, and still arrived with a knot of tension.

  “It’s accounting, anyway,” said Lou. “The way they used to do it, you did your own claims and Ruthie just put them through.”

  “What claims? At work?”

  Lou nodded. “Travel claims. Dinner, gas, what have you. Technically you’re not supposed to sign off on your own.”

  He sipped coffee, placed a pinky in his ear and gave it a brisk wriggle.

  “A good name is only as good as your front-line people.”

  Derek recognized the language that had enraged him as a teenager, back when everything his parents said seemed an attempt to impose false order on the world.

  “You put in your travel claim to Ruthie”—Lou’s hand thumped the left side of the table—“she signs off”—thump the middle—“and the cheque’s issued in the next pay period”—a final thump to the right.

  “So what’s the issue?”

  “Now they’re after taking it out of her hands. All claims go through Halifax. And they’re reviewing, reviewing the last ten years or more.”

  He tossed his chin and lifted a hand, helpless.

  “So it’s money?” Derek felt a bit stupid.

  “Claims are all over the place. Paperwork’s poor.”

  Surely this must be piddly shit. Lou Langdon’s road trips took him to the likes of Placentia and Carbonear for the Rotary pancake breakfast or a midnight madness carpet sale.

  “If there’s missing receipts. Is that it? You’ll probably have to cut a cheque,” said Derek.

  “Now you can understand,” Lou took a balled-up napkin and swept away the paprika in front of him, dark grains drifting to the floor and around his loafers. “You can understand, a man on the road…Companionship, eh?”

  The waitres
s reappeared and silently proffered the coffee.

  “No, thanks,” said Derek.

  “Can I leave your cheque? Because I’m coming up to my smoke break.”

  “No problem, my dear,” said Lou.

  In this interval, companionship crept up on Derek. Part of him had known all along that the conversation would take this turn. But that didn’t relieve the small convulsion in his gut, or the cinching around his hips.

  “Are you getting trouble from somebody? A woman?” The word felt vulgar, as did the thought of naked women, their ridiculous asses and teats and inexplicable pubic hair.

  “Oh no! Entertainment expenses…straightforward, you know.”

  “So there’s not someone…Is this about you and Mom—”

  “No, no, no. This is money spent on road trips.”

  The waitress grabbed a large handbag and stepped outside. Without a jacket, she hugged herself against the breeze, lit a cigarette, and retreated to the corner of the doorway, not five feet from their table. The goose bumps rising on her forearms prompted a remote stab of desire. Derek often responded to anxiety like this, with a dull urge to ravish.

  “You have to tell me if this is about girls,” he said finally. Why had he said that? Girls. Because he couldn’t say women again. Women are more substantial. Derek was following his father’s lead, trivializing what couldn’t be swept away.

  Lou blew a sigh to the floor and placed his hands on his hips.

  “I was spending my entertainment dollars. That’s designated, mind you. Designated entertainment dollars.”

  Entertainment dollars.

  “Travelling men know the lay of the land,” said Lou. “There’s a network of information, from town to town to town. Companionship is out there.”

  With an odd relief, Derek finally understood. There was no affair. There was no woman, as such. Instead, there were furtive phone calls, or cars slowing at poorly lit street corners. A wad of cash folded and tucked under the lamp of a bedside table, later collected by a thin girl with stringy hair.