After Read online

  One night as I lay in bed staring at the barren stretch of ceiling, a new thought started to gnaw at me. What if my mother died too? What would happen to me and Luc? I left my door open to listen for any creaks on the stairs, in case my mother was headed for the attic.

  One day Maman was fifteen minutes late coming home from the post office where she worked. She tried to get as much overtime as she could, but she always called me to let me know. This time she didn’t.

  My whole body shook as I pressed the buttons on the phone. “Hi! Is Lisa Gregory still there?”

  “No, sorry. She left, maybe ten minutes ago.”

  “Are you sure she’s not there?”

  “Yes, I am. Sorry about that. Is it urgent?”

  “No, no. It’s Francis, her son.”

  “Oh! Hi, Francis! How are you?”

  “Fine.”

  Fine was apparently the right word to say, even though I felt anything but fine. I turned on both the radio and the TV, in case there was news of an accident. Now that my father was dead, any calamity was possible. I thought that if Maman had died, I would die too. All I had in the world was her and my little Luc. The thought of losing either of them was unbearable.

  I finally saw her car turn into the driveway. I can’t describe the relief. She threw her bag and her keys on the hall table, like a baseball player throwing a ball with all of his strength. She sat down on the bottom stair to take off her winter boots. There had been an early snowfall.

  I wanted to yell: Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been! Instead, I said, “Maman, I made vegetable soup for you and Luc.”

  “That’s nice, but I’m not hungry, honey.” She sounded exhausted.

  “You have to eat something, Maman.”

  “I will, dear, later.”

  It was always the same thing. Later. She didn’t eat anymore. Each night, she would stand at the kitchen counter peeling onions–maybe to be able to cry in front of us without having to hide her tears. Her frantic cleaning of the summer was over. After she put the food on the table and fed Sputnik, she would go into the living room and sit watching the fire in the fireplace until she fell asleep on the couch, Papa’s wool vest clutched in her arms.

  I cleaned up the kitchen quietly and put Luc to bed. In those days I was trying my best to be good. I wanted to show everyone how strong I was, even if deep down I wanted to collapse and disappear under the ugly living room rug forever.

  Snow muffled the trees and roofs like a white shroud. I had started getting stuck on words, wanting to say them or write them over and over. You won’t be surprised to learn that shroud was one of those words. This time it fit.

  Luc brought home a form letter from kindergarten advising us that he would be a lamb in the Christmas pageant. The teacher had added a hand-written note that we were not to worry. There was a leftover lamb costume from last year’s Easter pageant.

  “When are we getting the Christmas tree?” he asked at supper.

  “I don’t know,” said Maman. She looked at me with a slight shake of her head. The Christmas decorations were neatly packed in a box we kept in the attic. No one had been up to the attic since Papa died there. “I just don’t know.”

  Though we didn’t talk about my father he was everywhere in the house. Each room was rich with memories: the kitchen table that could instantly be transformed into a card table, that hideous living room carpet that turned into a perfect wrestling mat, the brown sofa cushions that morphed into the most comfortable tent in the whole world.

  “Francis, there’s a call for you.” Maman shouted up from the living room without moving from the couch.

  “Who is it?”

  “Houston.”

  “Tell him I’m busy.” Five minutes later Maman knocked on my door. I was staring at a page in a Superman comic instead of studying math. Let me take this opportunity to mention once again how very much I hate math. It is supposed to be logical, but nothing in life is logical. I also hate math class because Houston sits right in front of me and he spends every possible second clowning around for Caroline’s benefit. All that stupid childish stuff was getting on my nerves.

  Maman opened my door carefully, as if she was afraid it might be booby-trapped.

  “Are you mad at Houston? He’s called five times in the last two days, and you always say that you are busy.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Houston was your best friend. Now you won’t talk to him or anyone else. What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you have an argument? Did he say something?”

  “There’s nothing wrong! Leave me alone.”

  She shut the door quickly. From behind it, she said:

  “Well… I don’t know what to say…. If you want to talk to me, you know that you can, sweetheart, Maman is here. I love you, honey.”

  Of course I knew that I could talk to her, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to cry in front of her. I thought that if I cried, she would too and we’d never stop. The plain truth was that I didn’t want to talk to Houston because he loved a good laugh, and because he still had his father.

  I was walking around with this big ugly thing inside my chest that actually hurt. Whoever came up with the image of being brokenhearted really knew what he was talking about. A nice twist of the knife is, that just when you need to distract yourself with books or with music or with movies or with your friends, you can’t. The pain fills up every nook and cranny of your mind, and you can’t focus on the things you used to enjoy. You end up feeling completely alone.

  I wasn’t about to dump any of this sick stuff on Luc. He was just a baby. As long as he had Sesame Street and Sputnik and Aunt Sophie he seemed to be fine, but who knows? My friends didn’t get it either. Here’s what my friends knew about pain: not much. Caroline’s idea of pain was having a crush on a person who was obviously much more interested in being a moody poet in a black turtleneck and who listened to Bob Dylan than he was in her. Houston’s emotional state rose and fell with the fortunes of the Montréal Expos. As for Eric, who was a short redhead with a pug nose and braces, in his heart he was a Mississippi blues man who carried the woes of the world on his shoulders. But he had no idea about loss. Even the dog he got when he was a little kid was still alive. As for Melanie, it’s hard to know what went on in the mind of Serial Giggler. She could laugh for Canada. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not some kind of monster who wanted my friends to suffer. I knew in my head that I used to have a riot with them, but it was like someone drained all the color out of being in their company.

  You’d think that in the Larger Fish Tank of School, there’d be other kids in my boat, but I didn’t know any. There was a girl, Sydney, in my biology class, whose parents got a divorce that was so ugly it made the newspapers. There were other kids whose parents had divorced in a less dramatic way, but I didn’t know anyone whose father or mother had died. I was ashamed to say that my father was dead. I was ashamed to say he committed suicide. I didn’t want to be seen as an extraterrestrial of some kind.

  Here’s some advice: steer clear of canned Christmas cheer if you’re feeling down. It will kill you. Right after school on the first Friday of December, I went to the mall. It was lousy with Christmas cheer. Over the loud speaker Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” three times in a row. I was walking down the electronics aisle at Canadian Tire when I thought I saw my father. He wore a coat like Papa’s, and combed his hair the same way. I followed him, but he kept disappearing between the rows of blenders and tool kits. Finally, I turned into an aisle and there he was, reaching for a toaster. I could see his face. It wasn’t Papa.

  After Luc was in bed and Maman was asleep in front of the fireplace, I snapped on Sputnik’s leash. It was a brilliantly clear, cold night. As I walked down the dark street, I could see in the windows where blinds hadn’t been drawn for the night. The people inside seemed impossibly happy and warm. I walked down to Houston’s house, which is not far from mi
ne. I thought that maybe we could talk or play Nintendo, like we used to in the days when we both believed that the Transformers would save the world, but when I got near his house I could see that he and his dad were in the garage fiddling with the car. I turned back before he noticed me.

  You might be wondering where the rest of our family was all those weeks. Nowhere, is where, except for Aunt Sophie. Every week or so, Maman took us to visit Grandpa in the nursing home. He’d ask where Papa was. Sometimes he’d call me Ben. Maybe nature was being kind to him by letting him forget that his son was dead.

  As for all my uncles–and there are tons of them–I don’t remember seeing them that year. Our family is big, but that’s not unusual in Quebec. My mother has six brothers, and my father, ten. And then there are all my aunts and their husbands. They phoned Maman every now and then, but I don’t remember any of them turning up to see me or Luc. My father had been a disgrace, a suicide.

  Uncle Ted did a vanishing act. For the first time in my life I needed him. I wanted him to call me to say something like: “Hey Francis! What are you doing this afternoon? I have two tickets to see the Expos. Wanna come with me?”

  Or, “Wanna help me to fix the old clunker? The muffler is broken, my boy. And you know what? After that, I could even teach you how to drive.”

  He never did. I heard Maman tell Aunt Sophie that Uncle Ted liked to drink water, the kind that you put in a tray and it becomes ice cubes, and then it swims in a glass of Scotch.

  I wanted to make sure that Christmas was okay for Luc’s sake. To avoid going up to the attic for the Christmas boxes, I had bought new tinsel and Christmas decorations at Canadian Tire. Luc was curled up in front of the TV watching Barney when I came in with my packages. The curtains were drawn against the dark, even though it was only five in the afternoon. I went into the kitchen and put the bags on the table.

  “Why did you buy that stuff, Francis? How much did it all cost?” Maman sounded exhausted.

  “It’s Christmas, in case you haven’t noticed!”

  “What did you use for money?”

  “Last year’s birthday money from Grandpa.”

  She looked at me as if I was Spock from Star Trek. Spock used to scare me. Actually, so did Barbra Streisand. When I was little, I would lie in my bed in the dark, afraid that they would come into my room and kidnap me. I was a weird kid, what can I say? It was a terrifying thought at the time, but now it would have been a relief to have them come for me.

  Frowning, Maman poured herself a cup of black coffee. “Next time, before you buy junk, think of buying food instead. It would be more useful.”

  That was all the thanks I got. I left the Christmas decorations in their plastic bags piled on the kitchen table, and went to my bedroom.

  Despite the decorations and Luc’s stage debut in a pink and white lamb costume, Christmas was a big zero. Now I could add Christmas holidays to the long list of things I had grown to hate, which included going to church on Sunday and locking my keys in the house. Aunt Sophie suggested that we go to a restaurant for Christmas dinner, and Grandpa invited us to the Family Fun Christmas at the nursing home. Maman told them we needed the time alone, so Luc and I sat in the living room, with tinsel tacked around the windows and across the mantel, and a crackling fire in the fireplace. That was our big Christmas entertainment, watching the fire.

  Since I can remember, we’ve had a family routine. At six o’clock on the nose before we sat down to a dinner of salmon, Maman and Papa handed out the Christmas gifts. Luc and I had bought Maman a candle that smelled of pine in a holder shaped like a Scottie dog. She wiped her eyes when she opened the box and thanked us.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t wrap your presents, boys, but here they are. Francis, this is for you.”

  It was a knapsack for school. I’d been hoping for a Play Station, but I knew I wasn’t going to get it.

  “And Luc, here’s something for you too.” A Fraggle Rock lunch box. Maman didn’t wait for us to say anything. White-faced, she ran upstairs to her bedroom. I could hear her close her door. She slept all night.

  I was left alone with Luc. It was too early to put him to bed so we sat on the rug, Sputnik between us, watching It’s a Wonderful Life on TV. I prayed for the Apocalypse or the Third World War or the Return of the Extraterrestrial or Barbra Streisand–anything that would get me out of this empty, sad house.

  When I went back to school after what could only charitably be called the holidays, Houston was full of news about all his gifts–a Play Station, a new computer, a snowboard, Vuarnet sunglasses–his father had given him. I had nothing to say.

  Although months had passed since Papa’s suicide, Luc was convinced that Papa would come back. I was sitting on the bathroom floor thumbing through a comic book while Luc played in the tub. He ducked under the surface to rinse his hair and bobbed up, rubbing his eyes.

  “When will Papa come home, Francis? Maman says he’s gone for eternity. What’s eternity?”

  Luc was always ambushing us with questions that stumped us.

  “Can Papa stop being dead for my birthday? Did I kill Papa because I told him that I didn’t love him anymore? I didn’t mean it, Francis.”

  I was trying my best, but all I wanted was for him to shut up. Did I kill Papa because I left him alone to go to New York?

  Saturday night, late. I heard the TV blaring, but when I went downstairs the living room was empty. I felt a cold blast and realized that the front door was wide open. I went out on the porch. Luc was standing on the walk in his bare feet.

  “Luc!”

  He didn’t seem to hear me.

  “What are you doing, Luc?”

  I saw that he had taken the clothesline from the backyard, and had wrapped it around Sputnik’s neck.

  “For God’s sake, what are you freaking doing?”

  “I want Sputnik to commit suicide.”

  « Stop it! Are you freaking crazy? »

  I leaped down the stairs and ripped the clothesline from around the dog’s neck.

  “I want Sputnik to find Papa.”

  I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I felt so lost. Sputnik shook himself and plodded up the stairs. He stopped on the porch and looked back at us reproachfully before going into the house.

  Luc went into High Question Mode. “Does it hurt to die? What do we eat under the ground? Who will tell Papa when to come back?”

  I squatted close to him, in the snow. What else could I do but listen?

  “Francis, Luc, what are you doing there? Are you two crazy? You’ll catch cold. Come back in the house this instant!” Maman sounded frightened.

  I’ve never been so cold. The sky was full of stars. I wanted Luc to understand once and for all that Papa would never come back, and that he had to leave Sputnik alone–poor dog. Luc’s big blue eyes looked at me as if I were Superman.

  “Luc, when we die, we don’t need to eat anymore.”

  “What about chocolate?”

  “Not even chocolate.”

  “Will I die, too?”

  “Not today for sure, Luc. Not tomorrow either. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Can I talk to Papa while he’s dead?”

  I wished he could. I wished I could, too. “Of course you can. In your heart. You can tell him all the things you want to in your heart.”

  “Can I talk to him with you sometime?”

  “We can do it right now if you want.”

  My eyes were starting to water, but I didn’t want to cry in front of Luc. I took a deep breath, and carried him up to his bedroom. I could hear Maman below us. In the kitchen, the tap was running. Luc pulled on his socks and I handed him his teddy bear.

  We knelt at the foot of his bed, and I showed him how to fold his hands and pray, something my family didn’t do a lot, except for funerals, baptisms, and weddings. To tell the truth, I had no idea what I was doing, but Luc was looking at me with such trust that I knew I had to wing it.

  “Okay, this is what you
do, Luc. You have to repeat after me.”

  “After me,” he said, squeezing his eyes tight shut.

  “Papa.”

  “Papa,” he said.

  “Good night from the bottom of my heart.”

  “Good night from the heart of my bottom.”

  “Stop it. That’s not funny.” I tried to sound stern.

  “Sorry. Good night from the bottom of my heart.”

  “Papa, I love you so much.” I whispered the words.

  “Me too,” he said.

  I kissed him on the cheek and gave him a bear hug. He climbed into his bed. I straightened his covers around him and smoothed his hair.

  There was a photo that I took last May in a Snoopy frame on the little table beside Luc’s bed. The crabapple tree in the backyard was in full blossom. Maman stood in front of it, next to Papa. Luc was perched on Papa’s shoulders, laughing right into the camera. The blossoms surrounded them in a pink halo. I looked at the photo, turned off the light, closed the door, went to my bedroom, and cried.

  4 | SADNESS

  1993. Bill Clinton succeeded George Bush as president–no more vomiting on the Japanese prime minister. In New York City, a van bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center went off, killing six people and injuring over a thousand. Kim Campbell became Canada’s first female prime minister. For about five minutes. Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands in Washington, DC after signing a peace accord. Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List were released, and k.d. lang with Eric Clapton won a Grammy for the best pop vocal performance. I started to notice these things, but there was still a hard slog ahead of me.