Seeing Red (14 page)

TWENTY-FOUR

When I sleep, I dream Rachael is still alive. It's only when I wake that she disappears again. In my dreams, it was all a misunderstanding: she's alive and well and I was simply mistaken. It's the first day of July and we're watching fireworks go off by the water like we did when we were kids, and she's telling me about how they were better last year and the night sky is bright and clear.

In the real world there was no sign of Rachael anywhere. No phone calls, no emails, no trace of her left on the internet. Sometimes, when I was drunk in the middle of the night, I would type her name into search engines and find nothing. She trusted me with every password she ever had—occasionally, she would ask me to check her email for her when she was away from the computer—so once, late at night, I tried to login to her email account. The old password still worked. There were thousands of unread messages. She hadn't clicked on any of them. It wasn't a prank, a mistake or a delusion. She really was gone.

My father died nearly three years before she did. After his funeral, I locked myself in my room for several weeks. I received many consolatory messages from people saying things like “everything happens for a reason” and “he's in a better place now,” but Rachael was the only person who actually came to visit. She took time off work and stayed with me, cramped inside my tiny apartment. I was living by the ocean at the time and one day we walked along a gravel path by the edge of the water and she suddenly gave me a long hug. I asked her, “What was that for?” and she said, “Looked like you needed one.” We were in our own little world. She told me things she said she would never tell anyone else. “Don't you trust anyone else?” I asked her. “No,” she said. In our brief time together, I felt like I was at peace again. Like I was home.

Rachael talked me through it. She wasn't afraid to call me on my bullshit either, often criticizing me for trying to laugh everything off and keeping my feelings bottled inside. She said I was emotionally detached and she was right; I took stock of what she said and genuinely tried to improve, to get better. She encouraged me to be confident, to trust in myself, and she always stayed patient with me, despite my tendency to disappear for weeks at a time or to drive people away entirely. Somehow, we always came back to each other.

On the last day of her visit, I accompanied her to a hotel lobby where the airport shuttle bus was soon to arrive. We talked about when we'd see each other again and what we wanted to do in the future. It was a beautiful sunny day.

“If I could do anything, I'd run a coffee shop,” she said. “I'd sell coffee by day, and you could turn it into a bar at night.” I told her I liked the idea, but I wasn't ready to settle down in one place. I had to do something important first, something special, something that would make her proud, like become a musician or a journalist or travel the world working in international development. At the time, I thought I could do anything. That was the thing about Rachael: she made you feel like you could do anything.

“When I leave here, you're not gonna disappear for weeks again, are you?” she asked. “No,” I said, “I'll be in touch.” She told me I should have more faith in people, rely on them more, and not try to live through everything on my own. I responded with my usual stubborn posturing, assuring her I didn't need anybody. After losing my dad I didn't want to depend on anyone like that ever again. I thought relying on others made you weak. “I can take care of myself,” I said. She tilted her head to the side with affection and perhaps a little pity and said my life sounded lonely.

The shuttle bus pulled into the driveway. I held her close as we said goodbye and then we kissed one last time. As she was walking out the door, she turned back to me and said, “You should come home.”

“I will,” I said. “But there are some things I want to do first.”

“By yourself?”

“Yeah.”

“I want to travel, too, but I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. I'd miss my family and friends too much.” Then she paused for a moment before adding, “The timing never seems to work out for us.”

She boarded the shuttle and I watched her take her seat and stare out the window as the bus drove away. I planned on inviting her to Toronto to see my new apartment once I settled in, but that never happened. And it never will.

I was lying on a pile of pillows and blankets in the centre of the room when I received a phone call from an old friend at three o'clock in the morning. He told me Rachael had died in her sleep. They didn't know why. She suffered from epilepsy and they thought it might be related to that. I hung up the phone and once again locked myself inside for weeks. I didn't go to the funeral. I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't move. I tried listening to music, but nothing sounded right. It felt like my chest was hollow and I hated myself for not being there for her. For ten years she was the one constant in my life. Now, the memories of the time we spent together are only in my mind. Nowhere else. When I'm gone, those memories will disappear too, into thin air. Did they ever really happen? Did I dream them all? What if everything I remember about her was merely imagined?

TWENTY-FIVE

A month after Rachael died I grew tired of living like a recluse, so I loaded up the Widowmaker with a few essentials and drove south. It was sometime in August and the weather was warm. I had no plan or destination in mind—I just knew I wanted to get out of the city and be closer to the water. I didn't get very far. That first day, I came across a small town on the northern coast of Lake Erie called Turkey Point. A long beach ran alongside the main street from end to end, and separating the town from the sand was a metre-high wall made out of two layers of grey rock. I drove by a quaint motel with a green roof next to an old orange arcade and a food stand where they sold burgers, ice cream, poutine and two-dollar rounds of mini-putt. There was little else aside from the road, the sky and the water. Several boats had anchored a few yards away from the shoreline, proudly displaying flags of different provinces and countries. Some played the radio while their occupants jumped in and out of the water, while others were dead silent, reveling in the calm. I parked on the side of the road and found a spot at the edge of the beach where I leaned up against the rock wall wearing nothing more than a pair of blue trunks and sunglasses. Occasionally, I would go for a swim, but there was a lot of seaweed at the bottom of the lake and it slithered against my feet, so I mostly floated on my back and looked skyward.

On the second day, after having slept in my car overnight, I returned to the same spot and soaked in the sunshine. I passed the time by reading a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury, including one called “The Lake,” which I read and re-read several times. Suddenly, I heard someone call out from behind me, “Hey! You there! Can you help us out?” and I turned around to see a tanned, middle-aged man hollering at me from across the street. He had long, curly hair, an unkept goatee and a bare potbelly. He and three other men, who were all so baked from the sun that their skin looked golden brown, were building a wooden frame for a new house. “We need a little help here, my man! It'll only take a second.”

I closed my book and plodded through the sand, crossing the road to where they were working. The man gave me directions on where to stand and what to lift. I grabbed onto the bottom of the frame and he said, “Okay. On three. One—two—
three
!” and then the five of us mustered all of our combined strength to hoist that wooden monstrosity into the air. Eventually we managed to prop it upright, and I steadied it while they hammered it into place. “Phew, alright! Thanks a lot, my man.” He extended his arm and I shook his hand.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” I said. Then I returned to my spot on the beach and read my book and spent the next couple of hours lying alone in the sun.

At night the anxiety attacks returned. My heart was palpitating and there was a sharp, piercing pain inside my chest that I knew only alcohol could relieve. I went to the small pub inside the motel and expected the room to be full, but the place was nearly empty. Two elderly men were quietly watching a baseball game on TV and a group of forty-somethings had congregated at a table in the corner where the bartender was busy chatting with them. I pulled up a stool at the bar and hunched over the counter and proceeded to order several rum-and-cokes.

“Can I get another?” I asked the bartender. She unenthusiastically obliged me before heading back to the table to continue conversing with the locals. I was about to call it a night by ordering a bunch of shots and drinking them all in succession before passing out in the backseat of my car when I heard two people walk in. One of them was the long-haired, potbellied man from earlier, and the other was an even older fellow with a paper-thin frame, a green trucker's cap advertising a small town drywall company, and a denim jacket that smelled as if it had spent a lifetime smothered in cigar smoke. They approached the bar and the first man recognized me. “Hey! It's you again! How ya doing, buddy?” he asked, patting me on the back. “I owe you one. What're you having?” It was then I realized he reminded me of Jeff Bridges—albeit a loud, Canadian version.

“Oh, that's alright.”

“No, I insist! Hey! Judy!” The bartender looked up from the table. “Can we get two Molsons? And put his next one on my tab.”

“Only if you promise to actually
pay
that tab.”

“I'll pay it when you . . . stop . . . lookin' so good!”

She laughed. “Flattery. Nicely done.”

The man turned to me and extended his hand for the second time that day. “My name's Walton and this is my friend, Dick. Don't bother talking to him, though . . . he's a grumpy old cunt!”

I nearly spit the rum out of my mouth.

“Oh, piss off, Walt!” Dick replied. “I'm watching the game here.”

“See?”

“I'm Ethan. Nice to meet you.” I lifted my glass and nodded my head as if to say “cheers.”

“Where're you from, Ethan?”

“Uh . . . I just moved to Toronto about a month ago, actually.”

“Ooo, the Big Smoke! Did you come all the way out here by yourself?”

Normally, I might've been annoyed by someone like Walton, but, on that particular night, I was just happy to have somebody to talk to. I hadn't spoken to another soul in weeks.

“Yeah. I had to get outta there.”

“Oh I would too, if I lived in Toronto. I'd run for the goddamn hills. A young guy like you shouldn't be sittin' here all by himself though. How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“Whoa! Twenty-three! At your age—Christ, we're talking thirty, forty years ago now—I was off backpacking through Europe. Me and my buddy brought a tent and we hitchhiked from place to place, sleeping in people's yards. We really knew how to keep it cheap. You ever been?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Oh man, you gotta go! It's unreal. I've been back a few times since. You can hop from country to country like that” —he snapped his fingers— “and they're all different. Sweden was my favourite, bar none.”

“Yeah? Why's that?”

“The women! They're all blonde, they can speak English, and they're super smart. I felt like I needed a master's degree just to keep up with 'em.”

“So why the hell are you still in Canada?”

“Good fuckin' question! Well, I got married a few years back, so that means I have to stay away from the ladies now. Right, Judy?” he called out.

“Leave me out of it, Walt.”

“Hear the way she talks to me?” He motioned to Dick. “She's almost as bad as this crusty son of a bitch!”

“Dammit, Walt!” Dick replied. “Shut up!”

I cracked up with laughter and Walton joined in.

“What about Amsterdam?” I asked. “I heard that's fun.”

“Oh yeah, it definitely has character. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm a fairly conservative guy.” Dick snorted at that remark. “No, it's true. Ignore him. So I didn't even go to the red-light district until the last night I was there. Even then, I approached it with caution. First of all, I couldn't even find the goddamn place, but they actually have little signs on the road with little red lights to let you know where it is.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! And so I'm walking through these alleyways and they have these goddamn supermodel girls behind these glass windows, and all these little eighteen-year-old American kids look like they're about to lose their shit!” He laughed. “Dick here would've had a goddamn heart attack. This old cocksucker hasn't had a hard-on since the moon landing!”

“Fuck you, Walton! I'm trying to enjoy the ballgame!”

An hour passed and I was feeling very buzzed. Dick was talking nonsense about how the moon landing was actually a government conspiracy to scare the Soviet Union into backing down in the arms race and how he could eventually achieve an erection if he really, really concentrated and got plenty of sleep the night before. Walton and I were snickering the whole time.

“What an asshole, huh?” Walton whispered to me.

“Christ, why do I put up with you?” Dick sighed.

Sensing an opportunity to gain some valuable life lessons from a couple of grizzled, seasoned veterans, I asked them, “So, if you guys were my age again, what would you do differently?”

“Don't get married!” cried Dick.

Walt shook his head. “Ah, don't listen to him—”

“No, trust me,” Dick lamented, “you'll rue the day. I got tricked into it twice!”

“Yeah?”

“Twice. And the only person I hate more than my ex-wife . . . is my wife!”

The three of us laughed, and then clinked our glasses together. “And don't have children!” Dick continued. “For God's sake, they'll take away the best years of your life. Then you wake up one morning and you look like
this
.” He pointed at his face and I was aghast. The thought of seeing that in the mirror every day made me shudder.

“Don't listen to him, Ethan,” Walton assured me. “He's just bitter because his wife is an old bitch.”

“Hey!”

“No, come on, Dick. She is. She is. But if you find the right girl, there's nothing wrong with gettin' hitched. Hell, I couldn't do it without Sandy. She's a little firecracker, that one. She's got a real Type A personality, y'know? It keeps me going. We've been married for, what, twelve years now? Wait, twelve? No. Thirteen.”

“He doesn't even know!” shouted Dick.

Walton's comment about finding the right girl made me think of Rachael and I had to take another drink to alleviate the tightness in my chest. Fortunately, Dick and Walton kept my mind occupied; watching those two old assholes lob insults back and forth like a tennis ball was hypnotic.

Eventually Dick called for a brief intermission. As he strolled off to relieve himself, Walton told me, “In all seriousness, though, if I were your age, I'd get out there and see the world. See as much as you can now, 'cause when you get older, it becomes a lot tougher.”

“I'd like to. I've wanted to travel . . . but I don't really have the money to do it.”

“Well, you don't even have to go far! In Ontario, in Canada, there's so much that people never see. A few years back, my wife and I packed everything into a truck and went and saw the Rockies, the Prairies, the Maritimes. . . .”

“And Turkey Point?”

“And Turkey Point!” he repeated. “Anywhere you go, there's always something new, some place you hadn't seen before. And if you catch it on the right day, man, I tell ya, nature is medicinal. It can heal you.”

I finished my glass and motioned to Judy for a refill.

“Whoa, you're really pounding those back, huh?” he said.

“Yeah. Long week.”

“What do you do anyway?”

“Well, I just finished my first degree, but it's a bachelor of arts, so I can't really get a job with it. Nobody's lining up to hire me, put it that way. But I'm gonna study journalism in the fall.”

He chuckled to himself. “Man, I've worked so many goddamn jobs over the years. Some of them good, some of them bad. The one thing I've learned is, just do what you love. Don't do it for the money. What's the point of having money if you're miserable forty hours a week? Life's too short. You don't need that much to get by, really, so keep it simple. Do what you liked to do when you were a kid.”

I turned my head, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “No!”

Then we both laughed and took another swig.

“Or don't! I don't give a shit,” he replied.

“When I was a kid, I liked playing Nintendo and hucking snowballs at cars.”

“That was it, huh?”

“Basically. But building houses? That's what you like?”

“Oh yeah! I've always loved building shit. It's not like a desk job. At the end of the day, you can actually
see
what you've put together, all the fruits of your labour. It's rewarding.”

Dick finally returned and sat down on his stool and Walton immediately glared at him. “Took you long enough! Does your pecker still work, you stupid codger?” With his eyes still fixated on the television, Dick held up his right hand and gave Walton the finger. The two of us were cackling again and I celebrated by ordering a couple of shots of whiskey for myself.

“Whoa! This kid's got the gene!” said Walton.

“What gene?” I asked.

“The booze gene. I've got it. Dick's definitely got it. You gotta be careful! That stuff'll kill you. Especially the hard stuff.”

“Well, we all gotta go sometime.” After taking another shot, I flagged down Judy and bought two more. “Duly noted though. These'll be my last two for the night.”

“You've just gotta slow down, my man! You're chugging it down like it's water. Relax! Have a beer instead.”

“I'll be fine,” I slurred. “It's not like I have to go to job tomorrow.” I took the first shot and pushed the glass forward and then held onto the second one by the rim and raised it into the air. “A toast! Here's to you and your lovely wives.” Dick and Walton drank to that. I slammed the shot glass down onto the bar counter and reached for my wallet and paid Judy for all the liquor I had consumed. It was a steep bill.