A Boy of Good Breeding (22 page)

S.F. laughed and said, “No, no, no.”

Combine Jo tried again. “See you later, elevator?”

S.F. shrieked, “Alligator! Alligator!”

Combine Jo, all
250
pounds of her, jumped back and waved her arms in the air. “Where? Where?” she screamed. “Where’s the alligator?”

By now S.F. was flapping wildly with delight. “Over there!” She pointed to a spot behind Combine Jo, who jumped to the side. “No, no, over there!” S.F. said, and Combine Jo screamed and jumped again.

“Hey, Jo,” said Knute. Jo stopped jumping and put S.F. back down on the ground.

“Yes, ma’am?” she said, laughing and out of breath.

“Do you want to come in for a cup of coffee?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Thanks anyway, Knuter, but I have some shopping to do, and a few errands to run, another time, though, eh?” She smiled and looked at S.F. “See you soon, you
big balloon. Bye, Knute, see ya, Max! Dory!” she yelled into the house. “Give my regards to Tom!” Max had already hobbled into the kitchen and was sitting at the table with Dory, reading the morning paper.

Dory said, “Will do, Jo.”

And Max said, “Don’t forget, king-size! Not lights! And thanks,” he added.

This was the situation. Dory and Knute had had a long talk about Tom, about Max, about Summer Feelin’ and about themselves. They agreed that the most frustrating thing was that they didn’t know what to do. That is, they didn’t know how to make Tom happy, how to get him out of his bed. The doctors said there wasn’t much they could do, either. If a grown man decides to stay in bed for the rest of his life, what can you do? His headaches and his confusion and memory loss and depression, all of that was real. And his heart was weaker than it had been before his heart attack, but not strong enough yet to have open-heart surgery. He had been diagnosed as clinically depressed by his psychiatrist, but he had refused to talk to the doctor about his life, his family, his hopes, his dreams, the world, his sadness, anything. Then he had refused to go altogether. So Dory had started going to his appointments instead and discussing her life with Tom. Tom was on medication for all of his illnesses but nothing seemed to change. His medication had been increased, decreased, changed entirely, stopped altogether, and then prescribed again. The doctors said he should be able to do some light work, go for walks, travel, socialize with friends, stuff like that, without too much discomfort, or none at all. Staying in bed, they said, was not going to make him well. But what do you do when a grown man takes to his bed and won’t budge? Tom was lying at the bottom of his own mysterious black hole and they could do nothing to help. All they could do was wait for him to make a decision on his own, or for
his sadness to lift. “Can you die from being sad?” S.F. had asked. And what could Knute say?

In the meantime, Dory would get on with her life. She decided that she would stop with the home renovations for a while, and go back to work full time at the labour pool, and join a support group in the city for people like her—women who love men who love beds, or something like that. Actually, it was cryptically called Friends of Houdini. They met every Tuesday night. And she thought she might try a couple of university courses in the fall.

It was also evident that Max and Knute had rekindled the old flame and Dory wasn’t happy about it. She wanted to be happy about it, but she wasn’t. “I need some time to process this,” she’d told Knute. She was still worried that Max would disappear any time and leave Knute and S.F. heartbroken once again. But Max and Knute were fine. They were in love, still, and having fun. They had plans for the future, to move to the city, to find work, and to raise their daughter together. “People can change, Dory,” Knute said. “People can grow up.”

“Yes, Knutie,” Dory said, “that’s true.”

But for now, Knute still had her job with Hosea, Dory was back at the labour pool and Max, they had decided, would look after S.F. at Tom and Dory’s place so that Tom would have some company while Dory and Knute were gone. Neither Max nor Tom was looking forward to spending their days together. When Dory had casually mentioned the plan to Tom, he spoke for the first time in days. He rolled over and said, “Preposterous. That boy has the constitution of an Oxo cube. Not to mention the resolve. Put him in a situation requiring responsibility and he’ll dissolve at once. He’s unfit to look after himself, let alone a child and an old man who happens to hate his guts.”

Dory had said, “Tom, Max is not a boy, the child is his own and they get along beautifully, and you are not an old man,
although you’re acting like one. And, furthermore, since when do you use the expression to hate someone’s guts? Really, Tom. People change, people grow up. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not a big fan of Max’s, either, but right now he’s all we have, so get used to it.”

Or that’s how Dory told it, anyway. She was proud of her firm response to Tom’s indignation. She would have loved him to have gone on about it, to argue and rant, to jump up and down on the bed, to refuse to have Max in the house, to have said anything more at all, but he didn’t. He rolled over and didn’t say another word. When Knute told Max about the plan he responded, initially, with laughter. “Tom hates me,” he said.

“We all do, Max,” said Knute, “you’re a parasite.”

“I know, I know,” he said. “But, Knute, it’ll be pure hell, I have to take care of him?
And
Summer Feelin’?”

“Yes,” said Knute. “That’s correct.”

And now he had a broken leg, too. But that was the situation. Dory and Knute were confident they would manage somehow.

That morning, before Max showed up with his cast and crutches, Knute called Marilyn. She told her all about the night before and they had a good laugh. Then she told her all about Tom. “Are we young or old, do you think, Marilyn?” she asked.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Knutie,” said Marilyn. “We’re young, sort of. Young enough. Tell me what you said when S.F. asked if you can die from sadness.”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Knute. “I didn’t know what to say. If I had said ‘yes,’ she would have worried about Tom, and also would have felt she could never feel sad about something without risking her life.”

“So why didn’t you say ‘no,’ then?” asked Marilyn.

“I don’t know,” said Knute. “It wouldn’t have been the truth, really, I don’t think. To say ‘Of course you can’t die from sadness’
would be a terribly clinical thing to say, Marilyn. To say, ‘Well, technically, the heart stops beating, the brain stops sending signals, the internal organs shut down and that’s how a person dies. End of story,’ she’d grow up to be a cynic. I just think it’s more mysterious than that. I think you can die from sadness.”

“Well,” said Marilyn, “it’s like a passive form of suicide, just letting go, checking out. Though I still think it takes more than one botched response to your kid to turn her into a cynic.”

“Okay,” said Knute, “whatever. It’s not his fault. It’s not a lack of willpower.”

“I know,” said Marilyn. “Drugs might help Tom, but then again they might not.”

“They don’t,” said Knute. “They don’t seem to, anyway. And you know, this sadness … as far as I know, Tom’s had a happy life, except for his heart attack and now the mental lapses …”

“Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?” asked Marilyn. “Sometimes it’s just the fucking sadness in the world, from the beginning of time, and no end to it in sight that begins to eat away at some people. A lot of people, I think. But a lot of people do things about it, like drink too much, or work too hard, or sleep around too much …”

“Tom just floats on it,” said Knute, “and it takes him out to sea. He gets lost.”

“How do you get him back?” asked Marilyn.

“I don’t know …”

Knute had to go to work, and Marilyn had to answer the door so they said good-bye. Marilyn said it would be a while before they could all get together again because Josh had the chicken pox and she had met a nice guy who was fixing the street in front of her place, so maybe her social life would pick up. But they agreed to talk again soon.

H
osea stood at his window and watched as Knute watered the flowers along Main Street. Red and white petunias, thought Hosea. Yes, that will work. He watched Knute turn around and say hello to a young woman about her age. She was smiling and nodding her head vigorously. Then she pointed to the flowers and laughed. She looks so much like Tom, thought Hosea. She really does. For a second or two Hosea thought about his own child residing within Lorna’s womb and he wondered, would he or she look like him? He watched Knute say good-bye to the other woman and light up a cigarette. She smokes too much, he thought. She’ll end up having a heart attack like Tom. But then Hosea remembered that Tom had never smoked, except for a couple of cigarettes one summer night up on the dike when he was a kid, because Peej had forced him to. Actually Peej had tried to force Hosea to smoke the cigarettes, but Tom had told Peej that Hosea was asthmatic and could die if he inhaled. “Here,” Tom had said, “gimme those damn things, I’ll smoke ’em myself.”

Hosea opened his office window and wedged a fat felt-tipped marker under it to keep it up. He tried to make out the emblem on the front of Knute’s baseball cap. He thought it was the Brooklyn Dodgers. Tom’s cap, he thought. That’s Tom’s old cap.

Peej had always wanted to fight Hosea. He knew he would win and he knew Hosea wouldn’t tell Euphemia, and even if she found out she’d probably just shrug it off or make a joke. And Hosea had no father to defend him.

Hosea remembered watching the baseball game from the relative safety of the dike. He’d known Peej was there waiting for him. Hosea rode his bike around and around the dike. All the boys playing baseball could see him up on the dike and from time to time one of them would wave. Peej wasn’t going to go up there to fight Hosea because he wanted an audience. He wanted Hosea to come down to the field where all the boys were. Finally Tom couldn’t stand it any longer and he threw his baseball glove in the grass and walked over to where Peej stood. “C’mon, you stupid piece of shit, I’ll fight you.”

This made Peej laugh. “Go back to your little game, you jam tart, you’re not the girl I’m looking for.” Tom looked up at the dike. Hosea had stopped riding and stood straddling his bike, watching.

“C’mon,” said Tom, “you big chickenshit. Fight me. If I win, you leave Hosea alone. You never touch him, ever.”

Peej laughed. “Okay,” he said. “And if I win?” Tom flew at him. He didn’t have an answer for that question. He just knew he had to win.

Tom didn’t really know how to fight. He didn’t know how to punch and kick and ward off blows, hook and jab, all that stuff. In fact, he fought like a girl. He clawed P.J.’s face with his fingernails. He pulled P.J.’s hair until his head snapped back and his tongue stuck out and that’s when he bit half of it off and spit it back into P.J.’s face. And that’s when P.J. went down and the fight was over. Tom was sobbing and trembling and he fell to his knees beside P.J. who was bleeding into the dirt and whimpering like a newborn calf. Tom looked up and saw Hosea way off in the distance, riding his bike around the dike, and disappearing. He was free.

Knute was watering the petunias along Main Street, having a cigarette and keeping a lookout for the painters from Whithers. She had hired them to paint the water tower and put the horse decal on it and they had guaranteed the job would be finished by July first, when the Prime Minister might be coming for a visit. They were coming with a few truckloads of paint called eldorado, a kind of filter-orange, Hosea had said, a colour that would blend with the fiery hues of the sunrise and make it look like the white horse was racing through the sky and not plastered onto the side of a water tower. Whatever, she had thought to herself when Hosea told her that. She figured it must have been his girlfriend Lorna’s idea. Anyway, she was watering the flowers when Hosea opened his window and called out, “Hey, Knutie, who was that woman you were just talking to? I haven’t seen her around town before!”

“It’s Iris!” she yelled back. “Iris Cherniski! She’s moved here to help her mom at the Wagon Wheel!” And then Hosea slammed his window shut, just like that—end of conversation.

Hosea put his head on his desk. Well, he thought, she’s here. Those damn Cherniski women don’t waste any time, do they? Now I’ve got Max, the triplets, and Iris Cherniski, that’s five over fifteen hundred. Hosea opened his top drawer and pulled out his orange Hilroy scribbler. Under the column New Citizens of Algren, he added the name Iris Cherniski. He put his scribbler back in the top drawer and closed it. Then he opened the middle drawer and pulled out the tattered copy of the letter from the Prime Minister, promising to visit Canada’s smallest town on July first. It has to be, thought Hosea, it just has to be. He thought of the boxes
of empty bottles in his basement and of Euphemia’s dying words, “Your father is John Baert, the Prime Minister.” He didn’t want to think about it. He re-folded the letter and put it back into the middle drawer. Wait a second, he thought. Today’s my birthday! Today’s my friggin’ birthday. He knew he’d have to remind Lorna. She often had trouble remembering her own. God, I’m ancient, he thought. People will think I’m my baby’s grandfather. Hosea flipped his hands over and checked for liver spots and any type of trembling. Had his left hand quivered? He decided to go home and make himself some lunch. He would call Lorna and have a quick nap, and on his way back to the office he would check on the painters and also on the progress of the carpenters who were busy transforming the old feed mill into a theatre. Then he would talk to Knute about Bill Quinn, and also drive out to the Welcome to Algren, Canada’s Smallest Town sign, and think about how to jazz it up.