Sweeter Life (58 page)

With Janice’s help he drew up a proposal and presented it to the local council. If the town could come up with a trailer for Po, Hank would rent him a spot at Lake Isabel where disturbances were unlikely to be a problem. He would also keep an eye on him and monitor his medication. The councillors discussed the matter, spoke with social services and gave the go-ahead. The Rotarians bought Po a trailer, which Hank described as “no bigger than a breadbox and about as crummy.”

He had concerns about sharing his space, of course, but they were soon allayed. Proper and regular doses of medication kept Po as quiet as a mouse, and during daylight hours he had his litter work along the Marsh Road to keep him busy. Little by little, Hank began to appreciate having him around. Sometimes they cruised together around the pond or sat at the picnic bench, not talking so much as inhabiting the same location. Before long, he even had Po fetching things from town and helping out with a few chores. He was certainly strong and, as long as the requests were simple enough, could manage them without too much difficulty. The week before, they had driven over to the beach, where Hank got him to load the cart with wide flat stones. After a few trips, they had enough to make a little patio by the pond. That’s where Hank was sitting when Cyrus and Janice drove up.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” he called out.

Cyrus turned in a circle to take in the full lunacy of his brother’s new home. “And look at you, you bastard, like Ben Cartwright on the Ponderosa.”

Hank laughed at that and waved them forward. Janice kissed him on the cheek and, pointing to the stonework, said, “This is new.”

He laughed again, knowing it looked kind of crappy but proud of it all the same. “Me and Po made it,” he said. “And Cy, check this out.” He rummaged under the seat of his golf cart and came up with a paper bag full of bread crusts. He tossed a few pieces onto the surface of the pond. One by one they were sucked under by a black mouth. “Catfish,” he explained. “Bill Krause give ’em to me. Ain’t it cool?”

It was only then that Hank remembered Cy’s troubles, and he turned and looked him over carefully. “How
you
doin’, kid?”

Cyrus wiggled the fingers of his left hand. “I’m glad to have the cast off, but I’m still not good for much.”

“Hell, at least you can scratch your ass with both hands now.”

Cyrus and Janice climbed onto the back of the cart, and Hank drove them to his trailer. There, he levered himself into his wheelchair and led them up the ramp to his living room. “It’s not much,” he said, “but then I don’t need much, right? Winter might be a bitch, I guess. Haven’t really figured that one out yet.”

The room itself was large and more or less empty. He had his stereo set up on a card table. There was a black-and-white TV and a threadbare recliner, a wobbly wooden chair, a pile of TV tables folded up and leaning against the wall and, propped in a corner, a battered-looking acoustic guitar with a hula dancer painted on the front, an instrument so warped that the strings looked to be six inches from the neck. No sign of the synthesizer.

Cyrus knew what role he was meant to play here—his brother needed encouragement. Under the circumstances, that would require a few lies, or at the very least some exaggeration; but he and Hank had always been straight with each other. These conflicting thoughts made him hesitate, and his silence only made matters worse. Janice wanted him to be helpful. That was probably one of the reasons she had invited him to come down.

He walked to the window to admire the view—acres of mud still bearing the mark of Joe Filmon’s backhoe. Without turning around, he said, “I hear you got Po Mosely for a neighbour. What’s that like?”

Hank rolled his chair forward into his galley kitchen. He poured water into a kettle and put it on the stove. He grabbed a big jar of Nescafé and plunked it on the counter. Then he turned around and said, “Po’s Po, I guess. No different than ever.” He looked at Janice, then Cyrus. “I guess I’m the one who’s different. Coffee?”

Janice got out a tray, a carton of milk and a sugar bowl. She carried it all into the living room and set it on a TV table. Sounding like the affable sidekick on a talk show, she said, “Po helps you out quite a bit, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, Po’s all right. Likes it when I call him my partner.”

Cyrus waited a few seconds before he drifted over to the TV table. He tested his coffee, added some sugar, and then sipped again. “I didn’t mean anything,” he said. “It’s good you’re doing stuff. Really. What else have you got planned?”

Hank rolled over to the recliner and pulled some papers from the side pocket. “Here,” he said, holding them out to Cyrus. “See for yourself.”

There were two pencil sketches. The first was a view of the pond surrounded by mature trees, lush parkland and well-tended paths. There were tidy-looking trailers, and people sitting in lawn chairs and chatting with their neighbours. The sun was shining. There were big puffy clouds, a happy couple in a canoe. A flying saucer hovered near the horizon. The second drawing was on grid paper, a site plan showing exactly where trees and paths would go in relation to the pond and parking lot.

The professional nature of the drawings, and the fact that Hank had made them, surprised Cyrus. The classes with Janice had obviously sharpened his brother’s perception and trained his hand. More than that, Cyrus was shaken by the thought that Hank, who had spent his life reacting to the past, now had a plan for the future.

When he finally looked up, he said, “This is great, Hank.”

“You don’t think it’s stupid?”

He looked at the pages again. “No, it’s a great idea. Really.”

While they finished their coffee, Hank talked non-stop about the handful of successes and the many disasters of the past few months. Even his complaints carried a note of satisfaction, however, the way new parents lovingly recount the sacrifices they’ve made for their children.

When it was time to leave, Cyrus gave his brother a hug. Pointing to the guitar, he said, “You play that ugly thing?”

“I hack away at it, but not much comes out.”

After that, Janice and Cyrus drove around town awhile. He didn’t pay much attention to the scenery. He kept thinking about Hank and his plans, and how surprising the whole thing was. For lunch, they parked at the dock and got a couple of foot-long hot dogs. Janice said, “He needed that, you know, your approval. He’s not always so upbeat.”

“He seems to count on you a lot, too.” He looked at her and said, “You’re not falling in love with him, are you?”

She calmly held his gaze, an indication that she, too, had pondered the question. Placing her hand on his arm, she said, “I’m fond of him. He’s unlike anyone I’ve ever known before. But …” She let her hand wander up his arm to his shoulder, his face, his hair, her touch so gentle and reassuring that the rest of her words were unnecessary.

Cyrus didn’t have the strength to see any more of Wilbury, especially Isabel, so they stayed in for dinner, drank too much wine and made love until they were exhausted. Next morning, while they were still lounging in bed, Hank phoned. “I forgot to tell you about the party. Think you can come down again next month? It’s Izzy’s turn to hit forty, you know.”

Cyrus chewed the side of his thumb and stared into the darkness of the open closet. “She’s pissed off at me,” he said. “I’d just ruin everything.”

Hank scoffed at that. “Izzy never stays mad at anyone. I know this from experience, believe me.”

After a bit of hemming and hawing, Cyrus promised he’d attend the party. He’d already been wondering how to arrange another visit with Janice. Before he hung up the phone, he said, “I’m really happy for you, Hank. This whole new plan of yours seems great.”

“Well,” he said, “I’ve been a loser all my life, kid, just like the old man. I guess I figured it was time I tried something else.”

CYRUS STRUGGLED
through his first week back in Toronto. With Chu still away, he had twice as much work to do. He came home most nights with a sore hand. It was boring, too, to sit all day without Chu beside
him, a feeling made even worse by the fact that Tina was absent all that week. Not well, Eva said.

When Tina came back to work a few days later, her eyes were swollen, her shoulders slumped, her eyes downcast. All day long the women hovered around her, clucking and fussing and comforting. Eva told him later that the government had deported the father of the child, news that seemed to cast a pall over the entire department, as if they realized suddenly how much their lives, too, were subject to change. Cyrus suggested they take up a collection, and Eva thought it was a good idea.

It was only when Chu returned to work a week later that the mood began to lift. He brought everyone presents and gave Cyrus a small copper box with a hinged lid. The box was just large enough that it might hold two dominoes, one atop the other, and Cyrus worked the lid a few times and said, “Hey, this is cool. I could keep all my money in here.”

The joke went right over Chu’s head. With a look of great seriousness, he took the box from Cyrus and set it on the workbench. Then he placed Cy’s tiny screwdrivers in the box and closed the lid. “See?” he said. When Cyrus laughed, Chu smiled with relief.

Next day Chu talked more than usual and more poetically than Cyrus thought possible, about his vacation, about his brother who worked now in the tannery, about his parents and their lives. It was clear how much he missed that world, the nights in particular, when he and his brother and father strolled through the city arguing about politics. The food, too, he said. And the heat. And the newspapers he’d grown up with. Cyrus could feel the ache of that longing in his bones, knew from his days on the road how the fanciest hotel in the most exciting city in the world could pale beside the simple idea of home.

The sense of being rootless and alone followed him throughout the day, and that night in his apartment, almost out of habit, he picked up the National. After a few simple chords, however, his knuckles ached terribly, and he knew it was no use. So he sat in the darkness awhile, holding the guitar in his lap, thinking that Janice was right about Chu. Even though he might talk longingly of home, he would stay in Toronto, at Dominion Optical. He was a bridge for his children to cross into the promised land. Without that, none
of it made sense. When Cyrus thought of his own situation, he was ashamed he had embraced defeat so completely.

The day before Izzy’s birthday, he closed his savings account—nine hundred dollars in cash. After lunch he asked to speak with Dean Lawrence. He took a seat in the single wooden chair in front of his boss’s wide desk and said, “I know I’ve only been here a few months, but I kind of need a few days off.” Dean nodded, his hands steepled in front of his face. He had the look of a man who would be surprised by nothing.

Cyrus thanked him and then walked to the door. Turning there, he said, “It’s too bad about Tina.”

Dean leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head. “It’s tough, but they’re young. They’ll get it together eventually. One thing I’ve learned, people are resilient. They bounce back from stuff you think would kill them. It’s the only thing that makes this job bearable at all.”

Cyrus nodded and went back to his bench. A big manila envelope for Tina was making the rounds. When it was his turn, he signed the card and quietly placed half his savings inside. He went to the washroom then, and sat in one of the cubicles, hoping Dean was right.

After work that night, he called Janice and told her he had rented a car and was driving to Wilbury. He planned to surprise Hank and stay at Lake Isabel. “Good idea,” she said.

When he arrived just before midnight, the marsh was bathed in the waxy glow of moonlight. The air was warm and humid, the lake churning in the distance. Somewhere on the marsh a flock of geese complained. As he came around to the screen door of the trailer, he saw his brother in his recliner, half asleep. Po sat beside him on the wooden chair, transfixed by the blue flicker of the TV. It was such an odd and private scene that Cyrus immediately backed away. He walked over to the bench on the stone patio and sat down to wait for the end of their program. He was in no hurry. It was a glorious night to be outside, the kind of evening when he used to sit on the veranda with his guitar after Clarence and Ruby had gone to bed.

A few minutes later Po shuffled outside and headed over to the other trailer, with Hank shouting instructions through the open door. “What’s happening tomorrow, Po? Izzy’s big party, right? So I’m not going to be
back until late. And what are you going to do? Stay home, right? Take your medicine like you’re supposed to? And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Cyrus stayed at the pond another few minutes. When he approached Hank’s door again, his brother had one of the armrests of his wheelchair folded down and was holding the acoustic guitar in his lap. As Cyrus watched, Hank played the five-note theme of “The Bridge.” It was out of tune, without vibrato or finesse of any kind, the phrasing only approximately right, but it was unmistakably Cyrus’s music, his forgotten masterpiece. And the sound of it on that summer night, in the place that had once been their home but was now his brother’s new beginning, was too much for him to take in. It conjured his mother’s sweet face and his father’s sad defeat, and all the people he had ever known, all the things he had ever done, all of it coming back, all of it flowing out of the night and into his aching heart, all of it. And not knowing what else to do, he backed up, his face covered with his hands, and ran as fast as he could to the rented car where he lay across the hood and wept.

When he straightened up again, Hank’s lights were off, so he drove to Orchard Knoll. Though it was late, Janice was working in the shed, still fiddling with her father’s monument. When she looked up and saw him, he said, “It’s better, I think, if Hank gets some rest tonight.”

She nodded her understanding and set down the electric drill she’d been using to etch letters and texture into the surface of the stone. Then she slowly and methodically removed her work gloves, safety glasses and the kerchief she had tied around her head. She stepped out of her coveralls and was wearing a pair of shorts and a sweat-stained T-shirt that was ripped on the shoulder. Instead of moving into his arms, she circled him, as though appraising a statue. She stopped in front of him and said, “I miss you like crazy, you know that?”