The Noon God (2 page)

I had steeled myself for that moment. Just the same I wasn’t ready for the wave of reality that rose in my throat. I turned away, afraid I would vomit. Dr. Nil waited patiently.

Finally he said, “Is this J. Caesar Fortune?”

“
Yes,” I answered. “This is my father.”

The image on the screen offered no hint of the man I had known. The essence of his greatness was gone. His jaw fell away from his mouth in loose folds. A bullet hole sat proudly in the centre of his forehead, rising above his useless eyes as magnificent and as unforgiving as the midday sun.

My father met death the way he had met life – headfirst. He would not look away from that final judgement. Thankfully Dr. Nil had cleaned the wound so I wasn’t forced to study the blood and the bits of grey matter that had been part of him. Dr. Nil turned off the screen and my father’s face disappeared. I thought, “So this is it. This is the great J. Caesar Fortune stripped of eloquence and dignity.”

I filled out the paperwork and authorised the autopsy. His personal effects – clothing, wallet and keys – were all still in evidence. I carried nothing out of that room except my memories.

~~

I was seven years old the summer Mom and I spent with my Uncle. Willard Brown was a bachelor back then. He still is, only now I understand the reason for his marital status.

I ran indoors from the yard where I’d been playing. It was one of those sweltering summer days that live in memory. I grabbed a Popsicle from the freezer. My mother sat on the couch with one leg folded under her and the other stretched out. She looked at me over the rim of her glass. Her slow smile covered me like honey.

“
What kind is that?” she asked, pointing at the Popsicle.

“
The red kind,” I said.

“
Are there any more?”

“
Nope. You can have half of mine.” I tried to split the Popsicle down the centre. Mom laughed and took it from me. She broke it against the edge of the coffee table. We sat in silence sucking on the cherry Popsicles.

Later I made Kraft Dinner the way Mom and I liked it. Uncle Willard was out on a date. It was just the two of us. Mom lit the candles on his oak table and we sat facing each other like a couple of grown-ups. I said Grace.

Mom sang while we washed the dishes. It was good to see her happy. We laughed and tinkled the ice in our glasses, dancing around my uncle’s kitchen.

That night I had trouble sleeping. Those were the days before air-conditioning was common. My hair was damp against the pillow. I stared at the streetlights shining through the curtains. I finally drifted off.

I woke to the sound of my u
ncle’s shouts. “For God’s sake, Angie! What are you doing?”

I couldn’t hear her answer.

“
What’s the matter, Will?” My ears perked up at the sound of an unfamiliar voice.

“
In here, Steve. Come and give me a hand. Let’s try to lift her.”

“
Oh my God,” said Steve.

“
Yeah. This looks bad.”

“
I’ll call 9-1-1.”

“
You’d better hurry.”

“
What’s going on?” I asked. I was afraid to look at the heap on the living room floor. Instinct told me it was my mother.

“
Nothing, Sweetie.” My u
ncle grabbed my arm and lifted me over his shoulder. He carried me back to my bedroom.

“
What’s the matter with Mommy?” I asked.

“
Don’t worry, she’ll be ok. She fell off the couch. We’re going to take her to the hospital now.”

And then I knew. Just like that the truth came flying through the screen of my innocence and hit me squarely in the face. My mother was not the perfect person of my ideals. And just like that all of her love and all of my childish adoration meant somehow less than they had only moments before. My mother was a drunk. I’d heard my father say it a hundred times.

“
She drank too much, didn’t she?”

“
There’s a good girl, Monie. You go back to sleep.”

My u
ncle wrapped his arms around me and for a moment I felt safe. Then I saw the tears in his eyes and the illusion of security evaporated like a raindrop in the August sunlight.

The next morning my Uncle Willard drove me to the hospital. I didn’t want to go. I was tired and embarrassed by my mother’s behaviour. She was asleep when we arrived. Her wrists were wrapped in bandages and her face was pale.

“
Is she OK?” I asked the nurse.

“
She hurt her arms when she fell,” my uncle said. He looked at the nurse over my head. I knew he was lying, but it didn’t matter. However she had hurt herself the reason was the same. She was a drunk.

We sat in hard chairs waiting to see if she would wake up. Finally a nurse told us they had given my mother something to make her sleep and it would be better if we left her alone. Uncle Will went to find a pay phone. When he came back we left the hospital. I realised he was taking me home.

“
Daddy!” I shouted. I ran up the cement walkway to our house on Scollard Street. “I missed you!”

“
Of course you did. I missed you, too.”

“
Caesar,” my u
ncle said.

“
Hello, Willard. How is she?”

“
She’ll be ok. They think she passed out before she could do any serious damage.”

“
Thank you for bringing Desdemona home.”

“
They think Angie should go into rehab.”

“
God knows I can’t help her.”

“
How long has she been like this?”

“
Oh, come on, Willard. You know as well as I do she never really pulled herself together after your father died.”

“
But this bad? I never saw her like this.”

“
She’s been worse lately.”

“
What about Mona?” my uncle asked.

“
Desdemona will be fine. She’
s staying here with me.” He stroked my hair with his fingertips and I clung to his leg.

My mother checked herself into a clinic not far from home, near the University of Toronto. Daddy was busy with his writing and his lectures. Uncle Will took me to see her most days after school. At first I didn’t want to acknowledge her existence. One afternoon she was sitting in the visitors’ area instead of lying in her room. Soft light flowed through the curtain behind her. She closed the book she was reading and gave me one of those excruciating smiles that covered me like love. I melted.

“
I love you, Mommy.”

“
I love you, too,” she said.

It hurt not having her there when I came home from school. It was hard coming to see her in the clinic with the sick people wandering around.

“
Look at me, Monie,” she said. “I’m getting better every day. Before you know it I’ll be back home with you.”

“
And Daddy?”

“
That’s right.”

“
And Helen?”

“
Who’s Helen?”

“
She’s Daddy’s friend. She comes to let me in after school.”

“
Well, Honey, Helen won’t need to come anymore once I get home. Right?”

I nodded but I wasn’t sure. It seemed to me Helen might want to stay even after Mom got home.

Mom was in the hospital for four months. She could have been released sooner, but I heard her tell Uncle Will she didn’t want to rush it. She had to be OK, for the baby’s sake.

“
I’m not a baby,” I said.

“
Of course you’re not,” she said, climbing into Uncle Willard’s car.

“
You’re a big girl now,” my uncle said.

“
I hate these seat belts.” My mother struggled to wrap the strap around her enormous belly.

Gail was born on January twelfth. Through a coincidence that now seems strangely meaningful, we shared the same birthday. That was the year I turned eight. She was a beautiful baby, with blonde hair like Daddy and dark eyes like Mommy.

For a long time Mom didn’t drink. Daddy wasn’t around much. He kept himself busy working on his book. It was a girls’ world in our house, with Mom and me and Gail. We worked in the garden and went for walks in the park.

Most nights Daddy would come home for dinner. He would sit at the table across from Mom and ask me questions about my day. Then he would listen to me as if I was the most fascinating person on earth.

“
That’s my girl!” he would say. “Keep up the good work. You’ll make us all proud one day.”

Gail followed me everywhere. She was like a little doll we could dress up and play with. But she was a person, too, as it turned out. I didn’t know about the nights my mother stayed up with her during bouts of colic.

“
For God’s sake, Angelina!” my father roared. “Can’t you do something with that child?”

“
What would you like me to do, Caesar?”

“
Take her to the doctor. See if he can give her something.”

“
He says it’s just a phase.”

“
Then maybe Abigail should live with him.”

“
One bloody night!” my mother said. “It didn’t kill you. I listen to it every night.”

“
You are her mother, aren’t you?”

“
Aren’t you her father?”

“
That’s the question.” He stormed out of the kitchen, almost knocking me over where I stood in the doorway.

He turned to me and smiled. “Desdemona, shouldn’t you be brushing your teeth? You’re going to be late. Come on, I’ll take you to school.”

“
Mona, how about a kiss before you go?” Mommy said.

“
Make it quick,” Daddy said. “I’ll start the car.”

I stepped out of the shower and reached for a towel, struggling to fight back another wave of nausea. I shut my eyes and gripped the counter. When I looked up I was surprised to find myself unaltered.

It was official now. I was an orphan. One more rite of passage had been achieved without outwardly changing me. I still had my father’s eyes, big and startling blue, and his wide sure forehead. My blonde hair fell in loose curls, as full and fair as his had been.

I was my father’s daughter in all his golden glory. I wondered what, if anything, my mother had contributed to my making. I remembered her wiry little dancer’s body and her short mop of dark hair. I remembered those brown eyes that could make you laugh or cry with a glance. She was forever memorable and yet instantly forgettable, the kind of person who could slip between the cracks of your life unnoticed. Once she was there, though, there was no denying her.

My father hadn’t been able to deny her in the early days. From the first time he saw her perform he knew he had to have her. Back then Angelina Brown was training as an understudy for the National Ballet and taking jobs with any troupe that would pay her. She never complained about giving up her dancing. Being a mother was what she had always wanted.

I combed back my wet hair and decided against makeup. Mascara was not a good idea under the circumstances. There were arrangements to make. It would only look cheesy in the summer heat.

Without warning his face flashed into my mind and I vomited into the sink. Thankfully I hadn’t eaten. I splashed cold water on my face and rinsed my mouth. I’d have to get used to it. Once upon a time I could call his face into my mind in a hundred different expressions all within the bat of an eye, laughing or shouting. But now his living face was gone. All that remained in my memory was the dead grey mask with the bullet hole burnt straight through his magnificent brain.

My father believed the road to immortality lay through the fires of greatness. Immortality was very important to my father. It was the thing he aspired to above all else and I think he achieved it. After twenty published novels, countless smaller works of all shapes and sizes and thirty years as a professor of Literature at the University of Toronto shaping hungry minds, my father had lived an extraordinary life. Of course he would have argued he wasn’t finished yet. At sixty-five J. Caesar Fortune was still writing, still teaching and still winning honours in the towers of ivory.

“
Greatness does not sleep, Desdemona,” he would say. “Greatness does not simply curl up one day and die. One must continue the pursuit of greatness until death, reaching the end of days not with a whimper but with a bang.”

That was how he spoke. That was how he thought. It’s hard, even now, to judge him. It’s hard to crack through the majesty that was him to find the fault, the one big tear that could destroy everything.

Was he capable of love? Of course he was. I never had any doubt of his love. Just like my mother, my father doted on me. I was his fair-haired princess.

Was his love for me tainted? That was a fair question given its intensity. But overt sexual abuse had never been my father’s modus operandi. He preferred grown women in that department. No, his love for me was pure.

Is love enough? Who the hell am I to judge?

I picked up the phone and called my sister at the boarding school.

“
Monie,” she said. “I can’t talk long. My friends and I are going to the mall.”