Falling Backwards: A Memoir (29 page)

A pacemaker?
What and why and when? That was for old people, wasn’t it?

Dr. Wise explained that I had two unique heart conditions. I had alternately a very fast heartbeat and a very slow heartbeat—the fast heartbeat couldn’t be treated with drugs because it would affect the slow heartbeat I experienced at night. My head was whirling around like one of those dervish people sans the white flowing outfit.

I had been diagnosed with something called sick sinus syndrome, which has nothing to do with your nose. My heart needed to be prompted to beat a little faster when I was sleeping. I was relieved somewhat that I would no longer have to be awake to keep my heart going in the wee hours of the morning. I would have a little machine doing that for me. They weren’t exactly sure what to do about the fast heart rate, but they’d figure that out at a later date. That was comforting.

I checked into Foothills Hospital and was operated on the very next day. I was only twenty years old. I stayed in the hospital for about a week and then they sent me home armed with a user’s manual for my new Medtronic pacemaker. The nurse told me to try not to stand in front of a microwave for too long.

Jesus.

Leslie and the two Olympic boxers had to go on to the party without me. It had, after all, been over a week since they’d dropped me off at the emergency ward. Four years after I had my pacemaker installed, Willie de Wit won a silver medal at the Los Angeles Summer Olympics. I had been carried across 12th Avenue to the hospital by the man the papers dubbed “the Great White Hope.” Thanks for the lift, Willie.

I thought I was going to die within days of getting my pacemaker. My dad assured me that I wasn’t. “You’re not going to goddamn die, for Chrissake.” He was very comforting. I was stupid enough to pull out my stitches because they were itchy and driving me bloody crazy. The scars became a lot bigger than they should have been. I used my mother’s sewing scissors and a pair of tweezers to cut and yank the stitches out. It felt wonderful, but the whole area ended up looking pretty terrible. It was like pulling out giant black fly legs.

The pacemaker was the size of a hockey puck. I kept looking in the mirror at the bulge in my chest. It was visible through my T-shirts. I had so much to think about and I didn’t know where to start. The first thing I had to do was drop out of college because, let’s face it, I wasn’t doing anything but learning how to smoke and pretend I was a dancing mushroom.

I got a job at a little restaurant in Calgary, where I was a singing
waitress, of all things. I would wait tables and then go up to a small stage and sing a few songs. I was the worst waitress in the world, but I think my customers forgave me because I was somewhat entertaining. One of the men who owned the place was an alcoholic who wandered from table to table, spitting on people as he welcomed them to his establishment. It was a nightmare. I hated the job because I felt like I was actually going backwards and not forwards. I was twenty years old and still not doing anything.

One of the other girls who worked at the restaurant, Colette, said she had a place out in Vancouver that had an extra bedroom that I was welcome to rent if I wanted to. She was going to be driving out there in a few weeks. She had come to Calgary to look after her ailing dad and, since he was on the mend, she was ready to go back. I had to think about it. I had never been away from home. I didn’t know what I would do for work. I was, as they say, unskilled. Colette seemed to think I would find a job right away. She said she knew people.

I didn’t know Colette all that well; she seemed nice enough and was a hard worker. She was a real firecracker, that’s for sure. She could talk the leg off the lamb of God. I had two weeks to decide if I was moving or not and I had no idea what I was going to say to my parents. I kind of felt like it was now or never, and if I thought about it for too long I wouldn’t go anywhere, ever!

I am sure I waited until the last possible moment to tell my mother that I was moving. She was speechless at first. She looked at me with this terribly sad and disappointed face and told me I was making a mistake. She told me it was my decision, though. My dad didn’t say much of anything. I think he was fed up with me flitting around and thought that moving out there would knock some sense into me. I felt so torn. I knew I had to do something to sort myself out, and moving to Vancouver seemed like something to me. My mom asked me what I was going to do out there; I told her I was
going to get a job in a band. I realized how foolish I sounded, but I said the words anyway.

A few days later, I packed up my clothes and my guitar (which I was still paying off) and rolled out of our driveway in Colette’s red-and-black station wagon. My mom stood there in the middle of the road as we drove off, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back. I was crying and I knew that she would be crying too. Colette probably thought I was being a baby. I had borrowed money from my parents to get out there too, which made it all seem even more pathetic.

But the fourteen-hour drive through the Rocky Mountains was gorgeous. When we arrived in Vancouver the ocean was right there! I could jump in if I wanted to. Everything looked so green and lush. The sun was shining and it was warm and humid compared to Calgary. I had been to Vancouver a few times when I was a kid, but I didn’t remember it being so lovely. This city looked like it was made of glass.

Colette’s apartment overlooked the harbour, which was absolutely stunning at night. This whole thing might just turn out to be the best idea I’d ever had.

I needed to get a job. I didn’t want to be a waitress and I sucked at it anyway. I didn’t have a car, and I wasn’t about to start taking buses anywhere, so I needed something I could walk to. I grabbed a newspaper and started circling things I might be able to do. I started walking around the neighbourhood every day to check out employment opportunities and get to know my way around.

I walked a few blocks down to the waterfront, where there were a bunch of shops and restaurants and a beautiful little harbour filled with boats of every description bobbing up and down in the water. There were signs in windows that said inspiring things like “Dishwasher wanted nights” and “Part-time sous-chef wanted mornings.” I wasn’t
sure what a sous-chef was, but I was sure it involved some kind of cooking, which I was definitely not qualified to do. I had no clue how to land a job singing in a band. I thought that a rather lofty ambition. I hadn’t ever been in a band before and I assumed one would need some experience. But how do you get experience? You have to get a job in a band. When I stopped long enough to think about what I was up against I was really scared. I wandered around for a few weeks until I finally found something that I felt like I could at least apply for. There was a distribution warehouse close to where we lived that had an ad in their window for a sales clerk. The job didn’t seem to require any kind of prior experience, so I applied and somehow landed the job. (I think I may well have been the only person who came out for it.)

The owners of the business were each about 450 pounds. The woman had bleached-blond hair with jet-black roots, and looked like a villain in a Disney cartoon. She had a giant mole on her chin with three or four coarse, grey hairs sticking out of it that I couldn’t help but stare at. Her husband was about four foot eleven and was completely bald except for nine hairs that he combed over the top of his greasy head. Their warehouse was filled to the brim with crap. They sold stuff that had either fallen off a truck or been acquired at some dead person’s estate sale—everything from blue jeans to canned won ton soup. My job was to stand behind the cash register, ring up purchases and put whatever people had bought into a plastic bag.

I worked Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. I was allowed to heat up my lunch—one of the eleven thousand dented cans of soup they had on the shelves—in a microwave in their office. Everything they sold out of that warehouse was generic. I had never heard of any of the brand names on any of the products we sold. I mean, Carter Klein underwear? What a rip-off.

I lasted two months. I was so bored out of my mind that I thought I would go crazy and start shooting customers with one of the eight hundred pellet guns we were trying to flog. They weren’t happy when I handed in my resignation.

Sylvia asked me why I was leaving and I told her that I was moving back home to Calgary to go to school. Yes, I was lying. She said she was happy for me but she still wasn’t thrilled to see me go. She told me I was the best employee they’d ever had.
I didn’t do anything!
How would that make me a good employee? I had no idea. I got my last paycheque and wished I were going back home to go to school. I had to stay in Vancouver, though, because I had to make something of myself. I didn’t want anybody saying I told you so, least of all myself.

I don’t know if it was that I was so far away from my parents or that I had so little life experience or that I was depressed or what, but I started drinking more than I ever had in my life. It was a way to pass the time and have fun and feel like an adult. In Vancouver it just seemed like I was slipping away from who I was. Alcohol was creeping into my body an ounce at a time. I felt homesick and lost, but managed to bury it somewhere deep inside of my body.

Colette was a big drinker, perhaps because she worked at a bar. I didn’t often see her without a drink in her hand. I was finding out things about her that were very surprising. Not just about the drinking. She was controlling and compulsive. She cleaned constantly. She vacuumed her carpets on her hands and knees using just the nozzle. Once a week she’d take everything out of the cupboards and wash it thoroughly—cups, plates, cutlery, pots, pans and ornaments—and then she moved on to walls and ceilings. It seemed completely crazy to me. She washed every leaf on every plant with soap and water. The whole process took hours. It turned out she was a pothead too. Duray smoked pot, but Colette made him look like a lightweight.
She was always rolling up joints, getting high and then cleaning like a madwoman.

Colette had a secret existence. I wasn’t sure at first, but after a few weird incidents it dawned on me that she was having sex with men for money. Was Colette an actual hooker? She was some strange version of one, apparently. There was a giant Italian man who showed up at her apartment from time to time. After he’d leave, she’d have a surplus of cash, the fridge would be full of food and wine and beer and she’d act like she’d swallowed a canary. There were other men, one really old guy that she gave a bath to. I couldn’t hear everything that was going on in the bathroom, but you didn’t have to be a genius to figure it out. I wanted to run out of the apartment and just keep going.

I was pretty sure my time in her apartment was going to be coming to an end. Where else to live, I couldn’t imagine. I didn’t want to think about it. It was easier to drink a bottle of cheap wine. So I did.

After six months in Vancouver I was still spinning my wheels and wasting my time and not much else. I didn’t have much money to contribute for the rent and the utilities and food. Colette told me that I could go down to the welfare office to apply for assistance. Why would I want to do that? She told me that it was easy—that she did it every month. So she was working at a nightclub, collecting social assistance and hooking on the side. She was a small corporation.

Finally I gave in. I felt terribly ashamed going down to the welfare office. Filling out those forms was one of the most humiliating things I’d ever done in my life. I felt so depressed. A few weeks later I received a cheque for $319. I signed the back of it and handed it over to Colette. I collected welfare for three months, and then I marched down to the office and had it cancelled. I told them I had a good job and the lady said to me, “Good for you. Glad we could
help get you back on your feet.” I was getting better and better at lying.

After that, I did manage to get a decent job selling women’s clothing at a store called Designer Save. A wonderful forty-year-old English lady named Jean hired me to help her a few days a week, pricing and racking and doing up the display window. I don’t think she even needed the help but she hired me anyway. Jean was married to an alcoholic named Chuck and had two kids whom she loved more than life itself. Though her mother was still alive, Jean told me she was a domineering matriarch who was practically impossible to reason with, so I think Jean felt motherless in many ways. She was convinced that her life was as good as it was going to get, and she would grin and bear it.

Jean was the first real friend I made in Vancouver. I liked working for her and she really looked out for me. She took me out for fancy dinners and let me borrow her car (it was a Ford Pinto, of all things). She had me over for sleepovers and movies at her house once in awhile. She was my little bit of sanity. Jean would ask me what the hell I was doing in Vancouver and I spent many hours trying to explain my hopes and goals to her. I told her all about my family and how much I wanted to go home. I told her all about my music and the songs I had written. She said she’d buy me a bus ticket whenever I wanted to go back to Calgary.

Jean didn’t care for Colette, and told me she thought Colette was evil. She actually said “evil.” And I do think that living with Colette was doing something to my soul. Not that it was at all her fault, but I was becoming more and more promiscuous. I’d drink too much at the nightclub where she worked, dance half the night with some guy I didn’t know from a chair and then go with him and, well, have sex. It happened time and time again, and I didn’t have a clue about why I was behaving in such a dangerous way.
I was doing things I didn’t even want to do. I hated myself for it.

Every month I prayed that I wasn’t pregnant. I actually had a prayer that I recited more times than you’d care to imagine. I would make a deal with God that if he could make me
not
pregnant that I would
never
have sex with anyone again. I often thought of my mom when I was in those precarious situations. I’d picture her there in the corner of some guy’s cheap, messy apartment, watching me guzzle beer and smoke cigarettes and roll around in filthy sheets with a complete stranger. It made me cry all the way home. How had I gotten myself to this place? I had to get out and I had to get it together.