My Temporary Life (29 page)

The anger doesn’t go away. It doesn’t subside. It simmers. It finds a place deep inside, and stays there, waiting. I’ve been lied to the whole time I’ve been in Woodbine, longer even. I’ve been lied to ever since the camping trip at the lake. And now, the man that I’ve come to confront, to hunt almost, has turned out to be just a decent man who has pictures of his family on his desk. He made a mistake. He turned a blind eye when he should have done something, but it isn’t up to me to be his judge.

He reverts back to being the businessman that he was when I first came in his office. He knows police officers. Most of them worked for him when they were kids. And when I tell him the story of my police station beating and jailing, he says that he knows Ellison, the young officer who was with me. He trusts him, and thinks that he can get some information from him. The phone call starts out as an almost jovial chat, but soon reverts into a low voiced conversation. I can tell that he’s pressing the man on the other end of the line, almost begging him for information.

He listens intently for a moment, his eyes darting back and forth. I can tell that his mind is racing. Then, he speaks firmly to Ellison again, telling him that he just needs a little information, a little help.

He hangs up and looks at me as though he’s proud of himself. “She’s not at the police station. They were en route there, but then got ordered to take her to Thornside. She’s still there, but under guard.”

He answers my perplexed look before I can even get the question out. “It’s a hospital, a facility for the mentally challenged. Oh, and there’s more, he says it’s very interesting, but there haven’t been any charges laid, none at all. It’s all being handled by a senior officer, her father, presumably, and nobody seems to be saying what’s happening. In fact nobody seems to know what’s happening.”

My mind races; if she’s in hospital then she’s probably okay. She has to be. And, no charges, that doesn’t add up, but then again maybe it does. Maybe her father thinks that this will all just go away again. “Where’s Thornside? Is it local?” I look at the snow coming down, outside the window.

“
No, it’s about an hour from here. You’re not going to get there tonight. They’re real good at clearing the roads, but I’ll bet that it’ll be tomorrow morning before you can travel on them. There’s the main highway, and then the one that takes you to the hospital. They’ll be treacherous in this snow.”

My mind is working again. I can still feel the anger. I can still feel the betrayal, and want answers to my questions, but I know that I have to take one step at a time. “Let’s call the hospital. Let’s call Thornside, and see if we can check on her status.” I have an ally now. I’m not sure how much help he’s going to give me, but I’m going to take advantage of it while I can.

He looks up the phone number and quickly calls them. The conversation is businesslike again. I think of the mental image I had of this man. I’d considered him a monster.

He hangs up the phone. The discussion was short. “They confirmed that she’s there. She was admitted three days ago. She’s medicated and resting. That’s all I could get out of them. But it sounds like she’s okay.”

“
You did good, Michael. You did really good.” He has done well. He’s gotten me more information than I’d been able to get, stuck in a jail cell, yelling my questions at Macklin.

I stand up to leave not knowing whether or not I should shake his hand. He speaks first. “I wonder if you’d do me a favour. I wonder if you’d meet my boys, meet them properly.”

For some reason it’s important to him. It’s as though he needs to show me, show me that he really is a decent man. I nod as we make our way out into the snowy afternoon.

When we reach the yard, we see that the boys have been clearing the snow. Tom has a shovel, and the other boy has a small plough attached to the front of the forklift, and is methodically clearing the yard. They have playful grins on their faces, as though they know that it’s falling faster than they can clear it. Their father waves them over towards us, as we stand in the shelter of the building. “Guys, this is Malcolm. He’s a friend of Heather Postman’s. You probably remember Heather from when she worked here.”

The young men each hold their hands out for me to shake, both confidently looking into my eyes. The forklift driver speaks first. “It’s good to meet you. I remember Heather. She’d climb all the way to the top of the feed sacks, and sit up there eating lunch all by herself sometimes.” He smiles at the memory. His face changes as he seems to remember more. “She dyed her hair once. I remember that. Her dad didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.” He looks at us as though we should know what he means.

“
I don’t remember that. Didn’t she always have the same hair colour?” Michael asks.

“
Nope, she dyed it. Her dad hated it. It wasn’t a good scene. We didn’t see her for a few days. Then when she came back, her hair was back to normal.” He looks from his father and then back to me, as though he’s trying to get us to read between the lines.

We let the silence surround us as the snow softly falls on the ground.

I still don’t really have a plan. I have an idea. I ask Michael for help one more time. “Michael, can I ask a favour? Do you have a vehicle I can borrow, something that might drive a little better in this weather than my car?” I point towards my rental car, sitting on the street.

He doesn’t hesitate. I suppose some of it is his conscience, but I have the impression that he’s the kind of a man who’d help a stranger out in almost any situation. He quickly organizes the boys to bring an old pickup truck around to the front, and it’s decided that we’ll drive in a convoy, back to the motel, me in the rental, Michael in the truck, and the boys in the family sedan.

When we arrive, the parking lot is empty, and Claude is nowhere in sight. I leave the rental car parked in front of the motel room, then jump in with Michael, as he backtracks, and we park the pickup right along the side of the main highway.

We jump out of the old truck, and he gives me the keys, not asking why I’m leaving it at the edge of the road. The boys sit in the family car, parked behind us, waiting. “It burns a little oil, but it runs great. And there’s some weight in the back of it, from the wood piled there, so you should have good traction, but wait till tomorrow, or you just won’t get through.” He’s talking about the truck, but keeps looking at me, making no attempt to go join his sons. “We’ll give you a ride to your motel. It’s probably a mile’s walk to get back there.”

I shake my head. I want to see exactly how long it’ll take me to trudge through the snow, with my bandaged leg. Somewhere, my plan is becoming clearer. I shake his hand, but he still doesn’t turn to leave. He has a questioning look on his face. “She told you it was me. She told you I was the father. I wonder why. I wonder why, me?”

I want to give him an answer. I want to somehow make him feel better, but I have the same questions myself, so all I can do is guess. “I suppose that there was a time when she trusted you, liked you.” It still doesn’t add up for either of us, and he keeps staring at me. “I don’t know. Maybe she knew this would happen. She must have known that I’d come to you, come to see you. Maybe she wanted to give you another chance. Maybe she knew that you’d help me.”

He looks down at the ground, as the snow keeps falling around us, and when he looks up he seems to be himself again. He passes me a small piece of paper, with numbers scribbled on it. “It’s my number, my cell phone number. Use it if you have to.” I take the number from him and watch as he turns and walks away, before jumping into his vehicle and driving off with his sons.

It takes ten minutes, walking quickly in the cold, to reach the motel. I open the door of the parked rental car, and slam it a couple of times, until I see Claude at the window of the office, peering out at me. I half-heartedly wave at him, trying to appear distracted, hoping that he didn’t see me walking down the highway. I walk deliberately to my room. I want him to know that I’m here.

Heather packed a small carry-on bag for the plane trip. I empty it out and pack some bare necessities in it, my identification, some clothing, toiletries, only the things that won’t weigh me down. Then, I zip it closed. I want it to look like I’m coming back to the room. I pile the bedding to one side of the bed, and push a couple of pillows under the sheets. It almost looks like someone is sleeping in there, and in the dark, it might gain me a minute or two. Somewhere in my mind, my plan continues to take shape.

I stand at the bottom of the bed, enjoying the heat and letting the sweat from my walk run down my face. I think of the lake at the end of the world. I think of a scared girl, carefully placing all of her little figurines on the shelves around my bed. I think of the way she looked at me when she did it, the way she looked at me for my approval. I don’t think of the lies, or the betrayal. I think of a girl with a half dimple, sitting at the lake at the end of the world, afraid to tell me who the father of her child really is. I open up the small bag once again, and go around the room, picking up some of her things, and adding them to mine.

Thornside, is listed in the telephone directory that’s in the drawer of the small bedside table. The listing shows an address and some basic directions. Michael was right; I’ll have to change from the main highway to another one, and then to a road whose name I don’t recognize, but I’m fairly sure that I can find it. I dry the sweat off my face and find some leftover fruit and granola bars amongst our things. I eat silently, sitting by the window, waiting for the darkness to come.

The snow subsides for a moment, then starts again, falling even harder, and faster than it was before. I look across the parking lot, at the closed door of the laundry room, feeling the key, still in my pocket. I wait until I see the lights from the motel office go off. I picture Claude, retiring to the back, a glass of whisky in his hand. I wait, watching for any movement, but there is none. The main highway is quiet with just the odd car every few minutes, struggling along slowly, through the snowy night. I listen, hoping to hear the rumble of a snowplough, but it’s quiet, almost serene.

I close the curtains, and unscrew the bulbs from the overhead light and the bedside lamps. Quietly, I open the front door, still looking, listening, for any activity. I lock the door behind me, watching the dark office, and the laundry room door. As fast as I can, I make my way across the snowy parking lot, carrying the small, bag that’s packed with our things. The laundry room door lock turns just as easily and silently as it did earlier, and I enter the dark room.

There are no rumblings of washing machines this time. Fortunately though, it’s still warm inside, and I can hear the faint humming noise from the electrical panels in the back utility room. I feel my way around in the dark, getting my bearings. I look in the back room, to see that it’s just as I left it, earlier in the day. I suspect that the key I took was a spare, and that Claude, or his lady friend, automatically locks the laundry room door at a designated time each day with their own set of keys. There is a small window at the front. I tilt the venetian blinds on it and can look directly across the parking lot at my idle rental car, parked in front of my room, right where it should be.

My breathing returns to normal. I hadn’t noticed how tense I’d been as I stole my way across the parking lot, watching for any sign of movement from the road or the office. I can see the snow, falling lazily now, not with the force it had earlier, filling the footprints that I left. There is no noise. The highway remains eerily quiet, and the weather drops a muffled blanket over any outside sound. There is a room with a light coming from it at the far side of the motel; another overnight traveller I suppose. After a while, it goes out and the darkness quickly settles over everything. I’ve rarely seen Canadian snow during my mild Vancouver winters, but I have seen Scottish snow. I’ve experienced that.

I went back to Scotland for a month after I graduated from college and travelled around the country. I took my dad, and my girlfriend of the day to all of the places that we never visited growing up. My dad gave us a running commentary on the battle of Culloden when we reached Inverness. He told us about William Wallace when we visited a monument in Stirling. We reached the gateway to the highlands; I drove us through the snow, even farther. I took us as far north as we could, all the way to John O’ Groats. I was born farther south, in Kilmarnock, but this still felt like my country, all of it.

My mother met my father when she took a trip to Scotland as a young twenty-something year old girl. My father charmed her as the Scottish gentleman that he is, and she charmed him into thinking that she could be a good faithful partner. When she tired of what she called his ‘dour Scottish moods and the gloomy climate’, she took me back to the motels of Vancouver. My father never did recover from her leaving, but he was always glad to have me back in Scotland.

He talked to me during that trip, talked to me as an adult. We drove through the early winter snow in the north of the country, over roads that tourists never make it to, and he talked to me about the past. I drove carefully along the twisting highland curves, as my girlfriend slept in the back seat, with my dad beside me, reminiscing. He told me how I had kept his life complete, even though he didn’t know anything about raising a child. He told me how I’d intimidated him with my knowledge and the ease with which it took me to acquire it. I looked straight ahead at the road as he talked, not wanting interrupt the emotions that were finally coming from him. He tried to turn me into him for a while, he said, a brawling, football playing, man’s man, but it didn’t work. I became me. He said that he loved me and smiled, saying that he liked what I’d become.