After (9 page)

It just goes to show what shape I was in when I tell you that Houston, my friend since forever, and the sweetest guy you can imagine, was driving me crazy. Since the day at the bike rack I’d been spending more time with him, but it wasn’t easy. I never realized until Papa died that he talked nonstop about his father. Life at their house sounded like a neverending season of
Father Knows Best
, There was the “Houston Get’s His Dad’s Old Electric Razor” episode, and the “Houston and His Dad Go to the Mall and Can’t Find Their Car,” episode. He treated me to “Houston’s Dad Teaches Him to Drive.” He had hit sixteen.

“My father wants me to learn on his car because he says it has all these safety features. It’s a real drag because he has an old man’s car. Plus it’s white.”

“You’re pretty lucky,” I said.

“Are you serious? I’m going to be driving a car that’s white. White!”

“At least you’ve got someone to teach you.”

“How about one of your uncles?”

“Not a chance. They all have their own kids. They don’t need anybody else’s.”

Houston had hit yet another sore spot. I was full of them at the time. I know it sounds horrible now, but I sincerely wished that Houston’s father would drop dead.

There was this amazing girl in my French class. She was from Barrie, somewhere in Ontario–you know, the
center
of Canada. Her name was Julia and she always smelled like lily of the valley. She’d been there since September, but I only actually noticed her in the spring.

Houston saw me doodling her name on my three-ring binder. He passed me a note.

“Forget it. She only likes guys who shave.”

On the way home from school I stopped at the drugstore and bought a package of plastic razors. I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub to read the instructions on how not to slit my throat in French and then in English. I looked at myself in the mirror, and thought:
Papa, I could sure use some advice right about now.

Luc pounded on the door and I jumped.

“Let me in, Francis! I have to pee.”

“Hold on, Luc.” I’d cut myself in five places. I stuck bits of toilet paper on my face, like I remembered Papa doing. I didn’t want to think about what I’d look like tomorrow morning in French class. Julia liked guys who shave. I didn’t know where she stood on guys who looked like a double pepperoni pizza.

I needed Papa’s advice badly, not only about cars and shaving and stuff, but also about girls. I had been friends with Caroline and Melanie for years, but the pathetic fact was that I knew absolutely nothing about girls except that they smell good and giggle a lot. I had never kissed a girl.

I finally emerged from the bathroom and a desperate Luc pushed by me. Maman was at the linen closet in the hall, putting away freshly ironed sheets.

“My poor baby, what did you do to yourself?” She took my chin in her hand.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh! I see. You tried to shave!” She looked at me fondly.

She had said
tried.

“No. I thought I’d dab your red lipstick all over my face to see if you would notice.” I could tell that she was trying hard not to smile.

“Next time, ask me and I’ll help.” She gave me a quick kiss and turned back to her nice, orderly laundry. I was furious.

I
t was Friday. The highlight of my day would be my appointment with the school psychologist. I’d rather have stuck pins in my head. It was Maman’s idea. I was supposed to see him twice a week, right after math class. His office was beside the library and across the hall from the boys’ washroom on the second floor. I was terrified that somebody would see me coming out of his office. The Suicide’s Son times the Shrink equals Weirdness squared.

Anyway, that’s what I used to think, and for the first couple of weeks I held on to the idea like a dog with a bone. To be honest, I was so uncomfortable being there that I don’t remember much of what happened the first hour. Mr. Bergeron was fortyish, balding, and wore big thick smeared glasses on his round face. There were photos of his sons on his desk–I guessed that’s who they were–and a Rubik’s Cube. I was about to learn the man
owned, and played with, a Rubik’s Cube. Nerd alert. I wrote
Rubik’s Cube
four times in my notebook. It proved to be an excellent time filler. Try it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bergeron was also busy scribbling on his yellow note pad, but I doubt that he was writing
Rubik’s Cube.
His silence was getting on my nerves.

“Do you play any sports?” I thought I’d get the ol’ conversation ball rolling.

“Yes. Sometimes I play tennis with my two sons.” I’d guessed right. I thought that his sons were lucky–not to have a father like Mr. Bergeron, but simply to have a father.

“How old are they?” I looked at the photo on his desk.

“Fifteen and seventeen.”

“Are you teaching them to drive?”

“We don’t have a car.”

I’m supposed to get help from a grown man who doesn’t own a car? “But if you had one, would you?”

He put his grease-smudged glasses on his desk. “I don’t think so. They’re too young.”

“But will you teach them someday?”

“Maybe.”

A long silence ensued. I don’t know where that word came from but I wrote it neatly under
Rubik’s Cube
in my notebook. He wrote something on the yellow pad, put it in his briefcase and turned his attention to me.

“Why do you ask, Francis?”

“Because I’m curious. I’m here to get answers, right?”

“Fair enough.”

I stopped fiddling with my pen and looked into Mr. Bergeron’s eyes. That’s what my father taught me to do when I was playing poker. I had managed to run the gauntlet of the library and the boys’ washroom to get into his office. I might as well cut to the chase. What I asked him next may seem like it came out of the blue, but you have to understand that it was the One Big Question that obsessed me.

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Why?”

“That’s a good question.” He took the Rubik’s Cube in his left hand, and pushed a little plastic square with his thumb. “I believe in God because I want to. I want to believe that Something exists, and that Something is bigger than me. And you, do you believe in God?”

“Me? I don’t know.” While my mother was reading
Theresa of Avila
, at the urging of Aunt Sophie, I was reading Eric’s tattered copies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, neither of whom were big on religion.

“A human being needs to give life meaning, especially his own life. Some people find it through religion while others find it through volunteering, arts, yoga, whatever. It’s different for each of us.”

I studied the floor. White marble tiles. Bergeron’s office had been decorated with stark, modern furniture and apricot walls, as if it had been transported from a
glossy magazine and plunked down in our decrepit high-school building.

“Was it my fault?” The words came out of my mouth, surprising me.

“Your father committed suicide. He was the only one responsible.”

I hate the S-word. Could he have said it any louder?
SUICIDE
. Wait a second. I will write it in capital and bold letters, just to be sure I don’t forget that my father committed
SUICIDE
.

“Do you feel guilty?” His voice was gentle.

The old sea serpent was waiting in the wings. I tried to keep it down the best I could. I failed. It was awkward and liberating at the same time.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“If I hadn’t gone to New York, he couldn’t have killed himself.”

“Don’t you think he would have done it another day?” Silence.

“Don’t you think he would have done it anyway?” he said gently. “When you were at school? You couldn’t watch him all day, every day. You would have to let him out of your sight. You have a right to live your own life.”

I was staring at the Rubik’s Cube as if it held the clue to the meaning of the universe.

Mr. Bergeron continued. “You know, it’s normal to feel guilty. And it’s very good that you expressed it today.
Losing a parent is a shock. A tragedy. You must know that you’re not alone. I know plenty of teenagers just like you who’ve lost a parent. It’s normal to feel pain. It’s normal to cry. It’s normal.”

Normal. So, I wasn’t a grief freak. I was normal. I wasn’t entirely convinced, but I allowed myself to smile at him before leaving his office.

The following week, when I came back to see him, I left my notebook in my locker.

W
e were sitting in a circle on folding metal chairs in a church basement on Côte-des-Neiges, not far from the Université de Montréal campus, on the other side of the mountain. A battered trestle table was set with a paper plate of dry cookies–Fudgee-Os, my favorites–cans of pop, and a battered urn of bitter-smelling coffee. My legs were shaking and my jaw twitched. I was a quivering mess.

It was my first meeting with Mr. Bergeron’s support group. There were ten of us between ten and seventeen years old. The ten year old was a tiny Asian girl in a Barbie sweatshirt with pink barrettes in her hair, and I heard the seventeen year old say, “I’ll meet you in an hour,” as he left his pregnant girlfriend at the doorway. The only thing we had in common was that we were reluctant members of the Lost a Parent Club.

I was surprised to see Julia, the girl from my French class, reading a magazine while she waited for everyone to sit down. I hadn’t realized that she had lost one of her parents. I guess it’s not the first thing you say when you meet someone new:
Hi! My father killed himself seven months ago. My name is Francis, what’s yours?

Mr. Bergeron led the discussion as if he were a maestro. Maestro. Another juicy word. I wrote it ten times in my notebook so I wouldn’t have to look at anyone.

“Good evening, everyone, and welcome. My name is Raymond,” he said.

It took me a while to absorb this. Mr. Bergeron had an actual first name just like the rest of the human beings on the planet. I thought for a moment about Mr. Enrique and how much he loved his cat, Rococo. Raymond was wearing a white T-shirt with jeans, and his glasses. He’d wound duct tape around the bridge.

Oh, Lord! He was twirling his Rubik’s Cube in his hand. I watched, mesmerized, as he began.

“Welcome, Andrew,” he said to the boy beside him. Andrew was about fourteen years old, and was slouched over as if the very act of sitting up required too much energy.

“Hi.”

“How was your day?”

“Not so good. I thought about my father all day long. He died ten thousand and eighty seconds ago.” He looked around at us as if we were about to contradict him. I
didn’t want to fish for my calculator so I was grateful when Raymond said,

“Just one week ago.”

Andrew started to cry. Raymond reached over and took his hand.

“I’m supposed to go back to school on Monday, but I can’t. He’s always there, inside my head.” The words came out of him ragged and painful. “He had a heart attack and just like that he was gone. Why did it happen?” It was agony listening to him.

Raymond turned to the rest of us. “Why? That’s the question we all have, and the question none of us can answer. Perhaps it is not
why
, but
what
we do after that counts.”

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Andrew whispered. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

“It’s okay, Andrew. If you don’t want to, it’s okay.”

I remember the week after my father died, and it was awful. The fact of the death filled every part of my mind every single minute of the time. As I listened to Andrew I realized that without noticing it, I had moved beyond that horrible time.

It took an effort, but I raised my hand. It was cold in the church basement and the cookies were doing the cha-cha in my belly.

“Good evening. My name is Francis, and my father died last June.” That felt good, but I knew that I had only said half of what needed to be said.

“How did he die?” asked the Barbie girl.

“My father…he…my father committed suicide. He hanged himself in the attic.”