Running on Empty (21 page)

“They never knew?”

“They were younger than I was, but they weren’t stupid.”

“They never talked about any of this,” said Ethan.

“I wouldn’t let them.”

“Why did you …” Ethan didn’t know how to finish the question.

“Why did I want you to think she was this amazing person?”

Ethan nodded.

His father looked away. “I had no one to look up to when I was a kid. It was important to me that you and your sister did.”

Ethan noticed he’d said
your sister
and not
Raye
. Wondered if it was a conscious decision on his part, as if he were preparing himself for something.

“I’d spent so much of my growing-up time pretending to be somebody else,” his father continued, “that I never really stopped. I was always trying to be more than who I was, more than the kid from a two-room shack whose mother whored herself for booze.”

“But—”

His father put up his hand. “Let me finish, Ethan. You need to hear this. And I need to say it.” He cleared his throat. “I did everything I could to escape that life—earned scholarships that helped with tuition, worked construction and took janitorial jobs for the rest. I told my university classmates that both my parents were dead.” He grimaced. “My roommate found a photo of the shack we lived in. One of my mother’s tricks had
taken it. He’d brought a Polaroid camera with him and paid her extra, probably to take pictures of her naked. He took a couple shots outdoors, too, one of our house and one of my mother standing beside the sheets I’d just washed. I’d stuck both those pictures inside a dictionary. I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter. The photo of our house fell out and my roommate picked it up, asked me about it. I froze, told him it was a picture of our henhouse. He said it was the first henhouse he’d ever seen that had curtains in the windows. I tore it up the minute he wasn’t looking.” Turning away, he continued, “I should’ve torn them both up.”

He took another deep breath. “I didn’t tell my mother when I graduated. I was afraid she might come to the ceremony.” He shrugged. “Not that she would have. She was never sober. The only thing she cared about was the cheque I’d started sending her every month. God help me, I was actually relieved when she died. I wasn’t her son any longer.”

He stopped, buried his face in his hands so his next words were muffled. “But I was, as much as I tried to change that.”

Looking at him, Ethan suddenly understood why his father didn’t drink: he was afraid he’d turn into the kind of person a son would rather pretend was dead. Would
wish
was dead.

A moment passed, and Jack finally pulled his hands from his face, wiped his nose with a tissue Jillian handed him, cleared his throat again. “I think I went into law because it seemed like the farthest thing possible from that Hants County life I’d been hiding all those years. I thought maybe if I was somebody important, like a lawyer, it would finally be behind me.” He sighed. “Then, maybe if I was the best lawyer in the best firm, I could be happy. Or if I lived in the best part of the city, I’d be content somehow. But I wasn’t. So I thought maybe—” He stopped, his jaws clenching, and Ethan knew he was biting back another sob.

“Maybe if he got elected.”

Ethan glanced at Jillian, surprised by her sudden input, then turned again to his father.

He nodded. “If people voted for me, then …” He paused. “It’s all about seeking approval. I’ve finally begun to understand that.” He looked at his fiancée, smiled wanly. “I started seeing a therapist in October, Ethan.”

“A therapist?”

“Jillian convinced me.
Forced
me, really. The day I took your savings to pay for the Volvo, she gave me a phone number. And an ultimatum.”

Ethan looked again at his father’s fiancée, knew now that she hadn’t put her makeup on before she came to the hospital. She hadn’t taken it off, probably had driven the streets in search of him and his sister for hours. He could see lines around her eyes. It was almost morning.

“She threatened to leave me if I didn’t,” his father said. He took another long breath. “I drove your mother away all those years ago, Ethan. I wasn’t going to do the same thing again.” He shook his head sadly. “And there was something I
should
have done. The therapist gave me an assignment.”

“Assignment?”

“Homework, I guess you’d call it. He said I had to tell you and your sister the truth about your grandmother. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want you to know what a fraud I was.” He lowered his head, and his next words were addressed to his feet. “So instead I agreed to defend the kind of man who’d get behind the wheel of a car drunk. The kind of man who killed your mother.” His next words were barely audible. “I’m sorry, Ethan. I know I drove you to do whatever brought us all here. How you must hate me.”

“There’s something else you don’t know, Ethan.” This from Jillian, whose voice was stronger than Ethan had ever heard it.

“Don’t,” said Jack.

She shook her head. “He needs to know,” and Ethan remembered the text she’d sent him.
You don’t know everything
.

“What?” he asked her.

She looked at Jack. “Don’t make me be the one to tell him.”

He sighed, the sound ragged as if some interior part of him were separating, tearing away. “Your mother—” he began, then turned stricken eyes toward Jillian, who nodded encouragement. “Your mother was an addict, Ethan.”

“What?”

“Prescription drugs. It’s why I left her. I couldn’t put up with it. I wouldn’t. I loved her, but I wouldn’t go through all that again.”

“No,” said Ethan, shaking his head. He had no memory of his mother like that.

“She was good at hiding it. Better than most. It was when my career began to take off. You and your sister were both small and I was working eighteen-hour days. She was lonely, I know that. And overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t want something to make the days easier? It started with antidepressants.”

“I don’t—” Ethan began, intending to say that he didn’t believe it, but what he could feel coming out was
I don’t want to hear any more
. Jillian placed her hand over his and squeezed. He didn’t pull away.

“It was my fault,” said his father. “I was so focused on my work. When I finally realized what was happening, I tried to help her. Do you remember those extended visits she used to take to your grandparents’ and your Aunt Carol would come stay with you?”

Ethan nodded.

“Stints in rehab. She’d come home clean and promising this time would be different. But it never was.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” whispered Ethan, his free hand tracing
Beloved Mother
on the cold, hard granite of his memory.

His father stared at his feet.

“Tell him,” Jillian said again. “He deserves to know.”

“She—” He took a long, quaking breath. “Your mother was high the day she was killed.”

“But the other driver—”

“—was drunk, yes,” said his father, raising his head. “His autopsy proved he was DUI. But so did hers.”

My mother? DUI?
Ethan’s brain had no way to process this information. Instead, it searched for safer territory, leaping to the physics of that moment on the highway, conjuring the coefficient of static friction in relation to the normal force. And then, as if seeking that normalcy, his brain two-stepped again, clutching at the laws of averages and probability, wondering what planets had aligned, what forces had conspired to create the head-on collision of two cars driven by similarly afflicted human beings. It was too much. He shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to understand. “Then how—?”

“I called in some favours, had that information suppressed.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t—” He tried again. “I didn’t want—” But he couldn’t finish.

Jillian said it for him. “He didn’t want you ever feeling about your mother the way he felt about his own.”

Ethan felt the numbness return. His head was suddenly too heavy for his body, and he leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. He felt his father’s hand on his shoulder, heard him try to speak again but fail.

“That’s why he got so upset at that reporter who came to the house,” said Jillian. She placed her other hand on his father’s arm, closing the triangle they made in that waiting room.

Jack finally managed to force out words. “I didn’t want someone digging it all up again, maybe finding out the whole truth.” He shook his head sadly. “I know you’ll think I was
worried about my image, but it wasn’t that. I just—” His voice broke but he struggled through it. “I didn’t want you and your sister to be hurt. I love you both too much to let that happen.”

Ethan heard those words echo in his head as though coming to him from the end of a very long corridor.

I love you both too much
.

I love you both
.

I love you
.

“Tell him the rest,” said Jillian.

“That’s enough.”

“No, it’s not,” she said, her voice firmer. She looked at Ethan, squeezing his hand more tightly. “He agreed to defend that politician—”

“—because of my mother,” Ethan finished for her. What were his father’s words?
He made a mistake!
So had Olivia Leanne Cameron-Palmer, Beloved Mother.

And so had Ethan. More than one. Too many to count.

Something caught in his chest. There was so much he understood now, and so much he’d probably never understand. And there was so much he wanted to say. “Dad—” he began.

“Mr. Palmer?”

All three looked up at the doctor who loomed over them, his face ashen and drawn.

The classroom buzzed with conversation. Ms. Moore had stepped across the hall to the AV equipment room to find a replacement bulb for the data projector, and most of the students were using the opportunity to catch up on gossip about the Senior SnowBall the evening before: who’d gone with whom, who
hadn’t
gone with whom, who’d broken up with whom afterwards. Many of them, though, were talking about who’d been seen making out in the teachers’ lounge, a tidbit of particular interest to the seniors since someone claimed to have caught Mr. Becker and Ms. Moore in a compromising clinch. Beaker and Moore-or-Less. Yet the world still spun on its axis.

“I got a letter from my dad yesterday,” said Allie.

Ethan looked across the aisle. It was still awkward between them sometimes, but they were getting beyond it. The hardest part was seeing her and Pete together. But they were good for each other. Good
to
each other.

Ethan still loved her, still lay awake most nights cursing himself for what he’d lost. No. For what he’d thrown away. He’d come to realize how much he’d taken Allie for granted, how much of their relationship she had shouldered while he’d just been along for the ride. She’d put up with so much the whole time they’d been together. Allie was a person who remembered six-month anniversaries, bought just-right gifts, knew exactly what to say to boost his spirits when he needed it. Yet when she’d needed him most, he hadn’t been there. Not that this
had ended them—she was the most understanding person he knew, and she’d been overwhelmed for him when she’d learned about Raye. But what she couldn’t put behind her was Ethan’s gambling, not after what it had done to her family. Twice.

While Ethan had been busy shattering his own life, Allie’s dad had been doing the same, graduating from lottery tickets to the waterfront casino, spending his lunch hour playing first the VLTs and later roulette. He’d racked up thousands on his credit cards and, without his wife’s knowledge, had taken a second mortgage on their home. Which was why Allie’s mother had been at the bank. Tugging on her necklace.

“What’d the letter say?” Ethan asked Allie now.

She shrugged. “I haven’t opened it yet.”

He reached across the aisle and put his hand gently on hers. “You will,” he said.

Ethan could see Pete across the room watching them out of the corner of his eye, so he drew his hand back. Not that Pete had anything to worry about. Allie’s heart belonged to him now. Pete, too, was a person who remembered anniversaries and bought just-right gifts. In fact, he’d given Allie a pin yesterday for no other reason than to mark the beginning of their second week together, and Ethan had seen immediately how perfect it was: a silver dancer whose arms and waist formed the letter A.

With Allie’s help, Pete was passing physics. Actually,
better
than just passing. She’d somehow shown him how to tap into that mechanical ability of his, shown him how to use it to make the physics make sense. She was amazing. Ethan had known it all along, of course, but he wished now that he’d
told
her how special she was. Wished he’d told her again and again. Not that this would have saved them, but it might have given him some comfort as he lay looking at the ceiling each night waiting, hoping, for sleep to come. He knew now just how fleeting life could be.

Pete, on the other hand, was the kind of person who never missed a moment to share how he felt with the people he cared for, telling Allie daily how much he loved her.
Showing
her. It was hard for Ethan to hear them, harder still to see them together. Outside of class, they were always holding hands. They tried to be discreet at first, their fingers brushing as they passed, but Ethan had told them not to be so foolish. They shouldn’t have to hide the way they felt. But he still had to look away when he saw them approach each other, couldn’t bear to witness what he himself now missed so desperately.

He missed Pete, too. Pete had come right over the second he’d learned about Raye, his nose still swollen and one eye blackened from the punch he’d taken. That was the kind of friend he was. Ethan was sorry for the way he’d treated him that day in his driveway, but no amount of apologizing could lessen the shame and regret he felt over what he’d done. Of course, it was more than shame and regret that Ethan couldn’t get beyond now, more than shame and regret creating this distance between them. The rest of it was knowing how Pete had felt about Allie all that time. Thinking back, Ethan realized Pete’s feelings for Allie shouldn’t have come as such a surprise—Pete always hanging out with the two of them, Pete listening to Allie’s every word, Pete following her face with his eyes. For Christ’s sake, he’d even enrolled in physics because she was taking it.

A few days after Allie broke up with Ethan, Pete had called him and asked if they could talk. They’d gone down to the Arm and stared at the water for a while, stood shivering, shot the shit until Ethan couldn’t stand it anymore and finally forced Pete to say what was on his mind. Although Ethan knew what was coming, he hadn’t reacted well. Had, in fact, torn into Pete, asking how he could be such an asshole after everything Ethan had just gone through, then shouted,
Sure, you’re welcome to my sloppy seconds!
On and on. That was the kind of friend
he
was.

Pete had let him rant, and when Ethan had finally run out of steam, could think of nothing else cruel to say, Pete had apologized, told Ethan he had every right to be upset, that he was a jerk for asking if he could date Allie. He’d never mention it again.

It had taken Ethan two days before he could give Pete his blessing. Seeing what Allie was going through changed his mind. All that stuff with her father, her parents’ separation, needing to sell the house to pay their debts. At least her dad hadn’t gotten his hands on the girls’ education funds, which were in their own names. Small comfort, though, when everything else had fallen apart. No. Been
ripped
apart.

All of it had taken a heavy toll on Allie. When Ethan had finally come out of his own fog, he could see it. She seldom smiled, had stopped laughing altogether, even stopped dancing when she walked, her feet earthbound like everyone else’s. And although they were no longer a couple, it killed Ethan to know there was nothing he could do for her.

But of course there was. She deserved the support of someone who cared for her. Someone who didn’t have the same baggage that had dragged down her dad. Someone like Pete.

“You sure, man?” Pete had asked when Ethan called him. Ethan couldn’t tell him in person. Couldn’t handle seeing the expression on Pete’s face that he’d seen in his own mirror the night he’d taken Allie to Irene’s Ice Cream Emporium for the first time. Could that really have been over seven months ago?

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Ethan had said.

It was natural that he and Pete would stop hanging out after that. It would have been too weird. But he missed his buddy almost as much as he missed Allie.

When it came to her, Pete took nothing for granted. He understood that she was vulnerable, that more than anything else she needed a friend she could count on. And he was definitely
that. In return, she offered to help him with his physics, and pretty soon they were spending every afternoon and evening together. She was as surprised as he was when her feelings for him changed, when she stopped thinking of him as just a friend.

Before revealing to everyone that they were now a couple, Allie had taken Ethan aside to tell him first, wanted to be sure he was okay with it. Ethan had lied, even hugged her and wished her the best, but in the week since, he had found excuses to avoid them when he could. Like the evening they came over to interview his father for their video profile. He offered to work Lil’s shift for her that night just so he had a reason not to be in the house.

Returning to The Chow Down had, surprisingly, been the easiest of all the getting-back-to-normal things he’d done after that terrible night that still haunted his dreams when he slept at all, jolted him to cold-sweat consciousness shouting Raye’s name. He hadn’t thought he could ever go back there after how he’d behaved that last time, even to pick up his cheque for the final hours he’d worked, but the phone rang one afternoon and it was Ike calling to see if he was okay. Ike had heard about what went down at Anwar’s Convenience—had heard some of it from Mr. Anwar himself when the owner stopped by to tell them he had no intention of selling The Chow Down. Ike wanted Ethan to know how sorry he was, that he knew how easy it could be for a young person to fall under the influence of someone like Link Hornsby. He didn’t mention his son, Mike, but he didn’t have to—those were two more dots Ethan had connected on his own. And before Ike hung up, he’d told Ethan that he still had a job if he wanted it.

Ethan
did
want it. He had a lot of money to pay back and the pool wasn’t hiring. Plus he still owed Boots McLaughlin his half of that lottery win, and he intended to make good on his promise to Allie. He could do that much at least.

“Found one!” Ms. Moore said, brandishing a bulb as she returned to the classroom. Ethan thought he noticed colour in her cheeks, even more than usual, and he remembered there was a connecting door between the AV equipment room and Beaker’s science lab. Ordinarily, he might have groaned at that thought, but today he grinned. It felt good to smile again. It had been a long time since his face had formed that expression without his having to force it.

Replacing the bulb in the data projector, Ms. Moore said to the class, “I want to thank those students who volunteered to share their video profiles with us. I thought we could spend this last class together before Christmas break viewing some of the excellent work that was turned in. I previewed all four of the profiles you’ll be seeing today, and I have to say they’re remarkable. Pete and Allie, your piece on Jack Palmer is outstanding, especially the segment where he talks about withdrawing from politics. I hope you don’t mind, but I showed it to a friend who produces a television news program, and she’d like to talk to you about airing it. I have her card here if you’re interested. Discuss it with your parents first, okay?”

Ethan watched Allie turn wide eyes toward Pete, and he gave them both a thumbs-up. Ethan wasn’t at all surprised by the teacher’s praise. His father had told him afterwards how impressed he’d been by all the research the two had done, how he’d opened up to them on camera, talked honestly about how his childhood had influenced both his work and his personal life. He hadn’t intended to, and probably should have cleared everything with his media consultant first, but since he’d already decided not to run for office, that was all water under the bridge. There were far more important things in his life that required his attention now.

The teacher continued to talk, commenting on two other video assignments the class would be seeing. Neung Minh had
profiled her grandmother, one of the many refugees who escaped Communist-controlled Vietnam in the 1970s using makeshift boats. Jakob Singer had chosen as his subject his great-uncle, who had survived the anti-Semitic pogroms in Poland after World War II. “Both of these are extremely compelling,” said Ms. Moore, “not only because of the important historical nature of the events they depict but also because we hear those events described by people who actually experienced them.”

The teacher touched a key on her laptop and the image of a video player leaped onto the projection screen. “To begin, though,” she said, “you’ll be seeing the profile by the first student who volunteered to share.” She smiled warmly in Ethan’s direction. “What impresses me about this one,” she explained, “isn’t its political or historical significance but rather its heart. I admire the very personal way Ethan has chosen to honour his subject. Matt,” she said, nodding to the person sitting near the door. Matt Cushing reached up and flicked the light switch, throwing the curtained room into semi-darkness.

The teacher moved her cursor to the controls at the bottom and clicked Play. Opening credits crawled onto the black screen, revealing Ethan’s name and the name of the course, both dissolving to a shot of Ethan standing on the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge staring intently at the grey undulating surface below as if looking for something he had lost. The Ethan on the screen turned to face the camera and spoke: “In recent years, Halifax’s municipal government has spent millions of dollars trying to improve the quality of the water in our harbour. Despite the cost, most people appreciate the importance of this project. Like so many First Nations cultures tell us, we don’t inherit this world from our parents—we borrow it from our children.” As the camera slowly panned the harbour and the islands beyond, Ethan continued to speak: “It’s ironic, and more than a little sad, that some people are quick to recognize significance on a global
scale yet fail miserably to see what’s important in their own lives. I’m one of those people.”

The scene changed, the screen now filled with a large dot on a green background. Slowly, the camera pulled back and other dots entered the frame. “Maybe,” came Ethan’s off-screen voice, “it’s because we’re just too close to be able to see it clearly.” The camera zoomed out to reveal the bench in front of John C. Miles High School; from afar, the dots on the painted wood coalesced into a remarkably realistic portrait of Lady Gaga. “It’s only when we have distance, a different perspective, that we see what we’ve been missing all along.”

The scene shifted to an interior shot of the Halifax Shopping Centre, Ethan standing amid a sea of consumers darting from one store to another, holiday music playing in the background. “Christmas shopping. Everyone racing around trying to find the perfect gift. It’s pretty much impossible unless you know what’s important to the people you’re buying for.” The camera panned the shoppers, then zoomed in for a close-up on Ethan’s face. “Not long ago,” he said, “someone suggested that I spend some time finding out what’s important to me. At that moment, I already knew. Or I thought I did.”

When the camera pulled back this time, the onscreen Ethan was no longer in the shopping centre—he was standing in a driveway beside a black 1996 Cobra SVT. The camera circled it, showing rusted rocker panels, front and rear fenders covered with nicks and dents, tires that had parted with most of their tread, a starburst crack in the windshield under the rearview mirror, before returning to Ethan’s face. “Now, though,” Ethan continued, “I know differently.”