You Could Believe in Nothing Page 7

  The girl tumbled to her back, legs churning. “Be a lady, please, Viv,” said Joey, pulling her velvety dress back down around her. Looking to Derek, he pinched a thumb and forefinger to his lips and jerked his head towards the garage.

  “Cyn? Derek’s helping me in the garage for a minute?”

  “I’m mashing potatoes, Joe.”

  “Quick one.” Joey looked into the kitchen. “They’re watching Nemo.” The girls had moved to the television, with Vivian expertly working the remote. Natasha pulled off a shiny shoe and stuck the toe in her mouth.

  Through a low doorway and into the garage, Joey pulled the string hanging from a bare light bulb and gestured to a pair of old kitchen chairs, the kind made from vinyl cushions fastened to metal tubes. He pulled a blackened, half-smoked joint from a tin box. The chill of the seat shot through Derek’s legs.

  “So the missus is off to Ottawa?”

  “She got a job up there, and there’s a friend she can stay with for a bit.”

  In his navy-blue sweat pants with elastics at the ankles, Joey might have been a gym teacher from Derek’s youth. But instead of sneakers he wore old brown loafers with cracks at the instep. He smoked carefully, face bunching into creases above the glowing tip of the joint.

  “My brother lives near the Glebe. Don’t know if you’re looking to buy or what. I can put you onto him if you like.”

  “She’s looking at condos,” said Derek, ignoring the question raised about his own future. The joint was flabby in his fingers and left a burnt taste in his mouth.

  “Buddy had a job offer up there,” said Joey. “Turned it down, said he couldn’t leave his girls. Fucking joke. I mean, how often does he even see them? Didn’t show up last week.”

  Trouble between Cynthia and Rob had surfaced not long after Vivian was born. Rob moved out, but matters didn’t come to a head until a year later, when Cynthia got pregnant with Natasha. Why, Derek had asked Nicole, would his sister keep sleeping with this guy? And if she was going to screw him, why not be extra careful? Nicole shook her head. “Sex isn’t something women give to men,” was all she said.

  “Do you know he missed Viv’s birthday?” said Joey. “Showed up the next day like a goddamn hero. I wouldn’t have answered the door except she saw him in the driveway. Prick.”

  The end of Cynthia’s marriage had been dreary rather than despairing, its heartache obscured by legal muck and strategic grievances. Within weeks of the divorce she was engaged to Joey, an old friend from school. He moved in and set about getting the house in order. But the despised Rob loomed larger than ever, with his increasingly erratic behaviour and dreaded weekends with the girls. He insisted on treating Joey as a new friend, and once showed up on the doorstep with a paintball gun: “Come out with me and the guys for a few laughs.” Joey declined.

  The joint was unravelling. Joey wet a finger to mend it, and leaned over for one more loud suck as embers dropped to the floor. He launched into a dirty joke making the rounds at the office. “So buddy’s got the premier’s wife up on the desk, giving her a few strokes, when who should walk in…” It was left unfinished when Cynthia’s head poked through the doorway.

  “Natasha wants to know where her uncle is,” she said in a singsong voice.

  Back in the glare of the living room, the girls were sprawled in front of the television. The older one turned to Derek with a maniacal smile. She was on her stomach, chin in her hands and feet in the air.

  “Hi, Vivian.”

  Natasha, the more serious of the two, brought him a round cardboard box.

  “Hello, you.” Derek sat on the edge of the couch with the box in his lap. Eyes fixed in concentration, she silently filled it with toy animals—chubby domestics like pigs and cows mingling with jungle creatures from a different set—and pushed the lid over the top, but a loose staple prevented it from sliding into place. She frowned and pressed harder.

  “Wait, Tasha.” Derek plucked the staple and dropped it in his chest pocket, then helped her fit the cover. She pushed the box under the couch, kissed the knee of his jeans, and stretched her arms to him with an expectant smile. Derek gathered her to his lap and sang into her scalp.

  Her hair it was red and her bonnet was blue,

  And her place of abode it was Harbour Le Cou

  Natasha giggled as his lips formed the words in the watermelon smell of her hair.

  So boldly I asked her to walk on the strand,

  She smiled like an angel and held out her hand…

  “We used to sing that when I went to school,” said Derek. “Are you going to school someday?” But the girl had turned to her mother, watching her lay out steaming plates in the dining room.

  “Cut up a bit of carrot for them?”

  Joey sawed at vegetables, then turned a corkscrew into a bottle. Cynthia tore a dinner roll into small pieces. Vivian skipped to the table and planted her fingers in the pickle dish. Her mother scolded her and wiped her hands, then hovered over Derek as he set Natasha in her high chair. “Careful of her legs,” said Cynthia. “Careful now!”

  The conversation turned to the coming week and how the family would cope while Joey was away. Much depended on a woman with kids in the same daycare. Joey called her “Lorna Big Ones” with a wink to Derek. Cynthia rolled her eyes.

  “I mean, oh, man,” said Joey, dropping his fork and cupping his hands under his chest.

  Derek had no response for this, so he asked about the trip to Stephenville.

  “Well, it’s funny,” said Joey. “The action plan was stuck at the ministerial level for, my God, how long was it? Now they finally sign off on it.”

  “There’s no real authority up there,” said Cindy. “It’s like they don’t even believe in what they’re doing.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind. I’ll go where I’m told. But when you’ve got matching funds that don’t come through until next fiscal, that’s a hard go.”

  The girls didn’t eat much. Ignoring orders to sit properly, Vivian climbed to her knees and stabbed at her potatoes before asking for crackers. Natasha watched everyone, following slabs of food into masticating mouths. Joey’s face darkened, and on his second glass of wine he resumed talking about work and the road trip.

  “I mean, that’s a hard go. They don’t get it, you know what I mean?”

  “How long do you have to be out there?” asked Derek.

  “All week. Playing the minister’s blow boy.”

  “Joey. Language,” said Cynthia.

  “It’s not like it was years ago. I tell you, there used to be some old tail hauled off on those road trips back when McCown was minister.”

  “That’s enough.”

  Derek checked his sister for an ominous look or awkward pause, a sign that she understood the truth. But she showed nothing, sweeping bread crumbs from the tablecloth into the palm of her hand. Joey was free to indulge his appetite for little-boy ribaldry. Cynthia held him in check only when the girls were in the room, and didn’t pretend to any innocence on her own behalf. It was a vestige of the audacious young woman she had been. A Bob Dylan album played quietly on Joey’s little stereo, and Derek thought of the time Cindy slept with the guy who had tickets to the Dylan concert. Even at the time, she admitted she didn’t like him much.

  Joey took the girls upstairs. Derek gathered plates but didn’t scrape them into the garbage, mindful of the composting protocol. Cynthia took over, loaded the dishwasher and set its cycle, then scoured the roasting pan. Her hips shook vigourously with the effort. Drying her hands on her legs, she lifted a letter from a basket above the sink and handed it to Derek. Two pages in a small envelope, joined together by a paper clip.

  Dear Mrs. Butt:

  Your letter was received on Monday last.

  I became acquainted with your husband while working as manager of the Holiday Inn in Mount Pearl. This corresponds with t
he time period to which you refer.

  Louis got along with everyone. Occasionally we sat down for coffee and a friendly chat.

  I hope this will put to rest any false rumors you may have heard.

  I was not aware that Louis was not the father of your oldest son. He never mentioned anything, and I am not one to pry. I am sorry to hear of Mr. Ogilvie’s passing.

  My husband recently passed away and I will soon be leaving the province to be closer to my grandchildren.

  Faithfully in a TRIUNE GOD:

  Carmel St. Croix

  The letter was written by typewriter, on feathery paper, the kind an old woman uses to send delicate notes, carefully folded. Commas and periods nearly punctured the page, and each “r” was slightly askew, half a space above the line. It was dated 1990.

  The second page was different, a handwritten note:

  If I can say anything, it is only that we are bound by the choices we made, no matter what. We have to make it work, for everyone’s sake. For the future.

  It was undated, but there was no mistaking his father’s script. Derek turned the pages over, not because there was more on the back—he knew there wasn’t—but to make a show of his bewilderment.

  “I found them together,” said Cynthia. “Pinned together like that.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s Joan St. Croix’s mother,” said Derek, showing the feathery letter. “We went to school together.”

  “Did you know her? The mother?”

  “No. How did you get your hands on all this?”

  “Poking through old Christmas cards and stuff.”

  “You went looking through Mom’s mail?” It was a mistake to challenge Cynthia like this. She always had an answer that put him in his place.

  “It’s all here in my own house, in the basement here. Mom left those boxes with me when they sold the house on Hamilton Avenue. You can’t expect me not to look.”

  Derek examined the pages again. Hard to know what to make of his father’s note. It looked hasty, but he had taken the trouble to use blue stationery. As for Carmel St. Croix, his mother must have asked frank and pointed questions to prompt such a response.

  “So they had an affair,” said Cynthia. “What other rumours would be worth talking about?”

  He would have called it an adrenalin rush, though it was probably just a rise of gastric juices. It was how Derek recalled his high school crush on Joan St. Croix. He pictured a regal figure, a wintry princess in a long dark coat, her collar turned up against big snowflakes falling from the night sky. She turned his stomach, such were the state of his nerves back then. The possibility that his father lusted after Joan’s mother just as he lusted after Joan…he wasn’t going to entertain it.

  “Did you find anything else?” he asked.

  “Nothing worthwhile. A lot of receipts and pictures from my wedding. The first one. Go through the crap in those boxes and you wouldn’t learn much. They never kept much, really.”

  “Are you going to bring this to Mom?”

  “God, no. Would you?”

  They had grown up in a house where history went unexamined. You didn’t dwell there. You left the past where it was. Derek figured it had something to do with his father’s music. It was relentlessly forward-looking, full of young people waiting for salvation, and nights bursting with redemption. But now those songs were old. They told a history—something they were never designed to do—and Hey-Hey Lou Langdon exhumed that history every morning.

  Derek couldn’t see the justification for barging in on ancient correspondence. But this was the legacy of Cynthia’s divorce. A new ideology of duty and common sense, forged in family court. The duty was invariably unpleasant, the common sense meddlesome and fanatical.

  “Funny that Mom would have told this woman about Curtis’s father,” she said. “What’s that got to do with Dad’s affairs?”

  “I don’t know if it means anything.”

  Neither Derek nor Cynthia had ever met John Ogilvie. The impression that lingered was of a ne’er-do-well leading a debauched life in urban America. Because he was a single man, it had been agreed that the boy would be better off with a family, with a mother and father and siblings. John Ogilvie died some years later. Derek couldn’t recall when, or how they received word.

  That’s the way the story was told, on the few occasions it was mentioned at all. Derek wondered whether Curtis ever saw his father after their parting in 1965.

  Cynthia took the papers from his hand and stuffed them back in the envelope. The scar brightened, and Derek knew he had let her down again. How could she expect any better from a man who would let his woman traipse off to Ottawa when she should be staying home and building a life together?

  “It’s a bloody strange pair of letters,” she said, pointing the corner of the envelope at him. “There was terrible trouble back then.”

  “Of course there was trouble,” said Derek. “They were the black sheep. You know that. You can imagine the shit they must have stirred up, the scandal for their families.”

  They could only imagine, because they had not known their grandparents, and Lou and Elizabeth had never been close with their siblings. Derek recalled an Aunt Theresa who used to send Christmas gifts from Toronto. That was about it.

  Cynthia removed her glasses and wiped them on a cup towel.

  “Never mind,” she said, and began wrapping a chunk of ham for him. “Joey’ll be back down in a minute to smoke another joint, if you want a puff before you go.” She pulled the cellophane tight, squeezing bubbles of white fat from the meat. Did the Bobby Hull story mean anything to her? She had never joined Derek and Lou on their long winter drives. Perhaps she had heard it and not retained it. Cynthia was rigorous in how she filtered memory, discarding what she considered inconsequential.

  “I’ll get you a few potatoes,” she said. “They microwave nice.” She scratched a fingernail in the roaster. “Oh, Jesus Christ. This shit is just stuck on.”

  He was reminded again that his sister was different than she had been in younger days. People change, he thought to himself. They change and they don’t look back.

  Derek had met Billy Wright at Breaker’s early on a Saturday afternoon. Four men played pool without a word. Billy’s back curled over the bar in a leather jacket. The place was otherwise empty. Dark plate-glass windows blocked the sun. Breaker’s was gloomy by design.

  “This is my place,” said Billy. Without asking, he ordered a Canadian for Derek, and didn’t have to pay for it. They were young enough back then to drink in the afternoon as a matter of routine.

  There was a job at the insurance brokerage, and Billy said Derek would be good for the job. They didn’t know each other well, but Billy watched people, he said. The pay was much better than EnCom.

  Billy ordered another round, again without consulting.

  “How’s Kelly?” The question half-swallowed in his glass.

  “She’s good. Her Mom’s not well, you probably heard.”

  Billy nodded slowly. “I’m gonna say this right now,” he said. “And you can get up and walk out if you want. I want to marry her. I’m not gonna cut your bag. But if she was on her own, I think she’d do it.”

  He rubbed a thumbnail against his front teeth.

  “So I guess I need to know where you are. Where are you with her? It’s your bottom line.”

  Derek might have been taken aback, but he wasn’t. Neither of them registered surprise at this turn in the conversation. “We’re just taking it as it comes right now.”

  “She’d marry me if she was on her own.”

  Derek frowned and folded his arms. Kelly’s monolithic Irish Catholic charms—red hair, round, open face, ample boobs—had begun to fade for him. Such qualities were surely available elsewhere, and did he really want to spend the rest of his days with her, the astonishment with wh
ich she greeted life’s every turn?

  The bartender was back. “Fuck me,” he said.

  “Fuckin’ madness,” said Billy.

  “You hear about Picco?”

  “Little asswipe.”

  “Got suspended three games.”

  “Three?”

  “All over the ref. Un-fuckin-real.”

  “Fuckin’ blow job.”

  “Playoffs too.”

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha,” said Billy. He caught Derek’s eye, and Derek laughed obligingly.

  “One more, boys?” asked the bartender, this time looking to Derek.

  If the men of Derek’s age had been asked to locate the divine, and if they were inclined to take the question seriously, they would have spoken of the third beer. The third beer went straight to your head, mild and lucid, then burned away like mist in the morning sun. If you kept drinking from there, you crossed a different kind of threshold. But the third beer was where a guy found language, and the language found meaning. Or so it seemed.

  “Okay,” said Derek. “One more.”

  So he and Billy came to an understanding.

  Breaking up with Kelly took a while. She appeared at Derek’s apartment several times in the following weeks to call him a son of a bitch and pull him into bed, her grip leaving angry red marks on his arms and shoulders. The last time they slept together, she said she had applied for a teaching job in British Columbia. Had enough of this place, she said. This goddamn little place.

  But Billy prevailed. Now they had a boy with Kelly’s square shoulders and red curls. He had her skin too, and in moments of excitement it surely flushed pink all the way down his chest, just like his mother’s.

  Kelly had spoken of the past just once. At a wedding she joined Derek’s table for a while, drinking free champagne and explaining to him that no one can know how a life will unfold. “It didn’t have to be Billy. But it was,” she said. “There’s no shame in that, Derek.”

  They lived in a substantial house at the top of Cochrane Street. Driving home from his sister’s, Derek could see their dark windows as he drove along Military Road. Perhaps the family had retreated to the kitchen at the back, a shelter from the Sunday-night desolation. Billy might be helping the boy with his homework. Or perhaps it was too late for that. But Derek could imagine Kelly at the counter, assembling lunches for tomorrow, her eyes bright. If she looked out the window, she would see only the black, shapeless garden and a shadowy ring of trees arranged to secure their privacy, the branches heaving to and fro in shifting winds. Where her thoughts might turn at such a moment Derek could not begin to guess.