Hey Nostradamus! (15 page)

Mitchell Van Waters, Jeremy Kyriakis and Duncan Boyle were in my grade, and they were such total wipeouts that people could barely remember they existed. They'd come into English class in these beat-up black leather jackets, acting like they were big-shot political guys starting a revolution, and they'd sit there writing lyrics from Skinny Puppy on their cargo pants with felt pens and Liquid Paper. I remember watching Mitchell and Duncan having a wicked scrap with hunting knives down by the portables, all because Duncan brought a six-sided dice, not a twelve-sided dice, for one of those role-playing games they were into. In social studies, Duncan brought in a solid-state panel from a TV set and spent the class in the last row writing hex symbols all over it, but they were fake symbols he was inventing, which looked a lot like the pictures of crop circles he'd photocopied for class the
year before. And they wondered why nobody paid them any attention? They were messes, and there was no way you and they even breathed from the same atmosphere. So when they said you were connected to them? I think not.

I was thinking about you and October 4. You've seen the TV stuff like everyone else, but you left the scene and I don't think you ever came back, and maybe you don't know what it was like to have been there.

I was in PE, and during the class jog up the mountain, my friend Mike and I cut out and went down Queens Avenue to smoke. It was a beautiful day. Why waste it with a bunch of jocks? We got to talking with these three girls from the grade below us who were headed to the Safeway deli down at Westview. Then we heard some shots. Funny, I'd never heard a real gun fired in my life, but I knew exactly what it was. So did Mike. We heard a siren, some more shots and-I bet you didn't know this, but that first siren wasn't for massacre victims, it was for that guy you hammered down by the shop classes. Anyway, the five of us decided to walk up the hill, and the shots continued and then the
SWAT
team, the Navy
SEAL
s, James Bond, and, I don't know, Charlie's Angels, all arrived at once. And all of the students pouring out of the school? Their heads looked like Sugar Crisp being poured from a box. Everybody was running as fast as they could, but they were all trying to look back, too, and so they were wiping out all over. By the time we neared the front of the school, they were hauling out bodies and, well, no need to go into that. We were moved up to the top of
the hill, but we could tell exactly who had blood on them and who was being treated. I saw you, and you were covered in blood, but you were walking, so I assumed you were okay. And then I suddenly had a chill and I knew Cheryl was dead. I think ESP is BS, but that's what I felt.

The rest of the day was a war zone. All of the parents began showing up from work and home, and they'd leave their cars parked wherever with the engines still running and the doors open. Once family members hooked up, the RCMP moved them up and onto the football field, and so the parking lot became the place for an ever-shrinking number of parents without children. Mom and Dad showed up, and around 3:30 we heard the news about Cheryl. Our brains were so fried by that point that it didn't even make sense. Mrs. Wong from next door drove us to the hospital in Dad's car. There was no way he could drive. Her two kids were in the caf but were unhurt. She'd have driven us to Antarctica if we'd asked.

The hospital was another scene altogether-dead and mended bodies rolling around like shopping carts in a supermarket. I don't even know why they or we stuck around. It was kind of pointless by then. I mean, we knew Cheryl was lost even before we arrived. We were so messed up.

When it turned dark out, I was still in my gym clothes from PE class. Somebody, I don't remember who, gave me a windbreaker, and it was as I was zipping it up that I heard the first rumor about YOU, there in the hospital lobby. The rumors didn't even
start small. Right from the outset YOU were the mastermind, and when Mom and Dad found out, Mom went hysterical, and they had to give her a barbiturate, which is like this elephant pill from the 1950s. Dad took something, too, and for the first week they were floating on these things. Mom still is. I can always tell when it's time for her next dose, because her breathing goes all choppy. They really were out of their minds that you were to blame. I tried sticking up for you, and nearly got excommunicated from the family. And what did you ever do to those
Alive!
oids? They were brutal about you.

But I was going to say that when it was announced at the end of the second week that you were innocent of all charges, Mom went even crazier, and dragged Dad down with her. They refused to believe the RCMP's report. The you-know-whos had done a real number on the two of them.

Anyway, this is the longest letter I've ever written, and the most focused I've been since October 4. You've moved or split town or something-good for you. Lucky you. Can I come escape to wherever you are?

Be strong, buddy,

Chris

 

Through a Starbucks window I'm watching a sunset the color of children's aspirin as I crash-land on two clonazepams. I paid twenty bucks a pop for them from some Persian brat in his daddy's BMW, down at the corner of Fourth and Lonsdale-just blocks away from Mom's place.

God. Now I
do
feel like I'm prepping for an anger
management class. But there's no class, and if you're still doing what I'm doing at my age, then a class isn't what you need. Money, maybe? Kent got drunk as a log at his wedding, and while I was dancing with a bridesmaid, and he with Barb, he looped past me, stuck his face into mine, and with a hot breath of champagne, chicken breast and vegetable medley said, “You'll never be rich because you don't like rich people.” And then he whirled off. And he was right: I don't like rich people, with their built-in towel racks that need a heating system that comes from Scotland-
Scotland!
-with their double-door refrigerators with non-magnetic surfaces to discourage the use of fridge magnets, and with their Queen Charlotte Islands red cedar shoe closets that smell like saunas.

Here's what I did wrong: I installed the built-in towel racks on the wrong side of the bath, and Les went mental on me because the owner won't surrender the weekly payment until it's done properly. I care but I don't care, but then Les is furious with the universe because his kid has a cataract, so I
do
care, but then at the same time, for God's sake, it's just a
towel rack
for some guy who, for whatever reason, needs to get his jollies with a warm towel every morning. So in the end, it's not possible to care-it's just towels. If Rich Guy uses one towel a day for a decade, it's still going to cost him over eighty cents a towel.

 

 

And in any event, best friends don't fistfight over towels or towel racks-or, if I ruled the world, they wouldn't.
Forget about ruling the world, I can barely get the automatic doors at Save-On-Foods to acknowledge my existence. So I have to take what life sends me. I put a smile on it. I seethe. I leave work a few hours early. I get cranked in a downtown parking lot. I fly high and develop elaborate schemes to elevate human consciousness. I come down. I get cranked again, but I suspect the new amphetamine is cut with milk sugar, so I enjoy it less the second time. I think,
Wow, have I really watched two sunrises and two sunsets without having slept?
I come down hard. I buy clonazepams from Persian twerps. I sit in a café and scribble on pink invoice papers.

Off to Mom's. Got to rescue Joyce.

 

 

It's the next morning, or at least McDonald's hasn't switched over to their lunch menu yet. A fast-food breakfast; drops of grease have elevated this morning's pink invoice paper into a stained-glass document.

My brain feels like a cool, deep lake. Did I really sleep for twelve hours? I'll even make it to work by noon today, which will probably put Les in such a good mood that he'll forget the string of six near-satanic messages he dumped into my answering machine.

Well, nephews, when I went to my mother's place last night after Starbucks, your mother, Barb, was there, leaning on the kitchen counter, and the big discussion was about why Reg is such a bastard, a subject my mother has given much thought to.

As I walked in the door, they both took one look at me, and Mom said, “
You
-into the shower right now. When you're finished, change into something from the guest room closet. I've got some cream of cauliflower soup and French
bread here. You'll eat some of that, and
then
you're going right to bed in the guest room. Got it?”

From the bathroom, I heard some of what my mother and your mother were saying.

“Well, you know, the initial attraction was that his family grew daffodils-still grows them. I thought that was so amazing-I thought only good people could grow daffodils.”

“What would bad people grow?”

“I don't know. Bats? Mushrooms? Algae? But daffodils-they're the most innocent flower on earth. They're a member of the onion family. Did you know that?”

“I didn't.”

“Learn something new every day.”

“Aren't narcissus the same as daffodils?”

“They are. Most people think they're different. But they're not.”

“Wouldn't a narcissus be, well, not quite evil, but not innocent, either-vain?”

“Reg had an answer for that. Do you want to hear it?”

“Tell me.”

“He said, ‘Who are we to slap the human sin of vanity onto some poor flower that did nothing more than be given a name?'”

“That's kind of nice.”

“He also looked at the flowers at our wedding-anthuriums, ginger and birds-of-paradise-he said afterward that he thought they were ‘slutty.'”

“Oh.”

The two women watched me enter the kitchen. Neither of them had any illusions. Mom said, “Here's some orange juice. Your system's probably screaming for vitamin C.”

“Jesus, Jason. Shave already. You could sharpen a hunting knife on your five o'clock shadow.” Mom placed a soup bowl onto the counter. To them it was nothing, but to me this moment was a brief taste of heaven.

Barb asked my mom, “When did Reg start turning gonzo on you?”

“With religion?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe a year after Kent was born. There was no specific trigger. Jason, honey, use a napkin, I just washed the floor.”

“Overnight?”

“No. I remember his face hardening about the same time-his cheek muscles losing slackness. It was probably something to do with serotonin. If I'd secretly dosed his coffee with Wellbutrin or another one of these new drugs, we'd still be a functioning happy couple. But instead he just kept losing it and losing it. By the time the kids started school, we were in separate beds. I was drinking big time by then. He liked it because it kept me in one place, and because when I was drunk, he didn't need to speak to me. Not like I wanted to speak with him.”