A Good Death (21 page)

Since my father’s health has improved, and he eats whatever he wants, and my mother has learned all our recipes, and the doctors scratch their heads over this Parkinson’s remission, William, also known as Sam, and I no longer know what role we’re supposed to be playing. Sam swore to me that his grandmother’s cassoulet was better than his own, more unctuous, he said, and I marvelled that a teenager would know that word. He was offended. We’re friends again now because we share this terrible secret, the imminent death of my father and my mother. I wonder if they brought sleeping pills with them and if they’ll commit suicide in the trailer while Sam and I are asleep in the tent, since he and I have chosen to freeze to death in the tent rather than cohabit uneasily in the trailer. Preoccupied by these thoughts, I drive somewhat erratically, and my father complains. Of course he would rather be driving himself. We’re taking him home. My mother is humming a tune to herself.

For my father, the Baskatong was the Kenya for safari lovers of the 1950s. Rhinoceroses and lions guaranteed. This immense reservoir formed by the construction of a bridge by a paper company harboured huge lake trout and enormous pike. Only serious fishermen came here, those more in quest of trophies they could display than of fish they could eat. As I recall, we had only partial success. Pike weighing a few kilos, but never the lake trout that lurked a hundred metres below the surface and could wrench the pole from your hands.

It’s three in the afternoon when we arrive. We’ve been driving for six hours and my mother suggests we eat. She has made canapés and gizzard salad. Sam busies himself putting up the tent, a small blue dome that he sets up on a mound of moss still yellow from the winter. It’s the 20th of May but there is still a bit of ice in the water. My father is sitting in his wheelchair, looking out over his lake.

“Now. Fish.”

The two words came out smoothly, without hesitation, perfectly formed. They are an injunction, an order. Sam has already taken the poles and tackle box out of the trailer. He, too, wants to get out on the water and catch a fish, which he has never done. My father explains hesitantly but clearly about spinners and lines, leads and hooks. Sam tries a few casts, a precise and attentive pupil. My mother smiles and tells me they haven’t yet decided when they will die but it won’t be far off, and that they have all the sleeping pills they need. Is there something we can do? Yes, you can let us do it.

Proud as punch, my father sits enthroned like a king in his wheelchair in the centre of the boat. Sam is in the stern, steering the outboard motor according to my father’s instructions. My mother sits in the bow, trailing her line in the water. I’m amidships. Mother asks me why I’m not fishing. I let my line fall into the lake. We drift on the gentle waves, little shivers of water. My mother’s smile tenses. “A bite!” my father cries, and laughs. He makes fun of my mother. “Useless!” Mother, who knows nothing about fishing, reacts instinctively by jerking her pole up. It bends ominously. At the same moment my own line is yanked down into the depths. My mother becomes slightly excited. My father laughs even more. Mother’s pole bends more sharply and she panics. She hands it to me. I know, I can sense, that at the end of my line is an enormous fish, a trophy like the one my father spirited away from me, a lake trout that haunts the depths of the lake. I need both hands, and my father laughs at our mutual disarray. My mother loses her pole. I grab it as my fish pulls me towards the bow. I am now holding two poles, each now obviously having hooked an enormous fish. Sam is jumping with excitement. My father is still laughing. My fish pauses, trying to trick me, but I don’t know that. Here, Dad, take my pole. He stands partway up, takes the pole in both hands and tries to set the hook. Big, he says, and in the deep, dark water a lake trout gives a sudden powerful pull. Dad! Grandpa!

He’s already out of sight. I don’t know how to swim, I explain to Sam. Then I turn to my mother, who gives a timid smile and takes my hand.

“Push me,” she says.