The Video Watcher (5 page)

“Hi.”

I must have sounded weird, because she looked startled. She quickly recovered the smile though and asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Do you have martinis?”

“Okay, I'll bring you the list.”

“I'll just have a gimlet?”

“Sorry—what was—”

“A gimlet. Just gin and lime juice.”

“Oh. Okay. I'll ask the bartender.”

After she left, Kris said, “Patterns, Trace, patterns.”

When the gimlet arrived, I expected Kris to stop me, to tell me that I was the designated driver, or that I was becoming an alcoholic like my father. She didn't.

She let me order one gimlet after another.

And when it was time to go home, we had to order a taxi, and she and Steve helped me into the backseat.

 

The hour hand was almost at one. I raised my head and waited for the headache. When there wasn't one, I sat up. I ran my tongue around my mouth and over my teeth. My teeth had a fuzzy film on them and my mouth was dry and tasted sour. Sometime in the night I had vomited, and there was a small stain on the rug by the closet. (There'd been red specks in it, and I'd panicked thinking that I was bleeding internally; before realizing that the specks were pieces of red pepper.)

No one was in the kitchen. I poured myself milk using one of the McDonald's glasses I had collected with my grandparents as a child; and leaning against the fridge, chugging the drink, I imagined me standing there as a scene in a film, like Malcolm McDowell drinking “milk-plus.”

A cool breeze blew through the open patio door, and I put the glass in the sink and went outside.

When I caught sight of Kris, she was lying on the chaise longue on the far side of the pool, tanning, her arm covering her eyes. Her mouth was half-opened, and her two top front teeth seemed more bucked than they normally did. As I sat on the grass beside her, I noticed that her breasts seemed larger than the last time I saw them, the nipples darker and more wrinkled.

On the table next to her was a pack of Matinée Special Mild, a Danielle Steele novel, and a glass of white wine.

“Hi,” I said.

Squinting, she looked at me.

“Oh, you
decided
to get up,” she said and covered her eyes again.

“Aren't you going to cover up?”

A loud sigh. “If it bothers you that much.” She reached for her polo shirt. “I swear, you're as prudish as your grandparents were.” she said and draped the shirt across herself. “Who would think that Jack was your father?”

“Where's Steve?”

“Out. Golfing, I think. Are you going to mow the lawn later?”

“If you want.”

“That would be nice. How do you feel?”

“Not bad. A bit weak.”

“Now if you were Jack, you'd start drinking again.”

“I can't imagine that.”

“Give it time.”

I turned to the house, but then asked, “Where? Where would he start? At home?”

“No. He never drank around your mother. He would go to some expensive hotel downtown and drink—the hypocrite. He would never pay for your mother to go first class or to stay in the penthouse when they went on holidays. But when he went drinking it had to be the best. There probably isn't a good hotel downtown he didn't stay in, the Hotel Vancouver, the Bayshore. All Jess had to do was call the most expensive hotels to find him. And he wouldn't go dancing or to the dining room or the lounge—you know, what people normally do when they stay at an expensive hotel—he would just sit in his room and drink himself shit-faced, pass out, then wake up and drink some more. He could have done it in a Super 8.

“Then two or three days later he would call Jess—I can't believe I'm related to such a stupid woman—he would call and see if the waters were calm, and that stupid sister of mine would forgive him and he would come home and be nice for the next month or so, and then do it again.

“And it always happened during a full moon—you should check if last night was a full moon—and Jess and I would make plans for that weekend, because we knew he was going to go on one of his benders, and we would go with other friends and on dates and then wait for him to call.”

I waited for more.

“Anyway, if you're not going to say anything, please leave. I don't want tan lines” she said, taking off her top.

 

On Saturday Alex had another party. After an hour, I was bored and decided to go home.

I was half out the door when I remembered my trench coat. Alex had put it in her parents' bedroom. When I went in there to get it, I found Diane propped against the headboard, smoking a cigarette and drinking a glass of wine. The bedside lamp was on, and a bottle of red sat next to it.

“Sorry. Don't mind me. I am just taking a break,” she said, looking as if she were about to cry.

“Do you want me to leave?” I said, backing toward the door.

“No. It's okay. Just come in. Shut the door behind you. I don't want any of
them
in here.”

I closed the door.

“Here. Sit down.” She leaned forward to move my coat from the foot of the bed, and I sat down.

She took a long drag off her cigarette, and held it in while studying me, then exhaled.

“You must think this is terrible.”

“What?”

She waved her hand in a semi-circle. “This!”

“You mean the party?”

“The
party.
The
kids—everything
.”

“Um, no. Not really. I think it's kind of—interesting.”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling wanly. “Interesting! That's a good word. Letting my daughter and all her friends get stoned at my house—I bet your aunt wouldn't be allowing this to happen.”

I coughed. “At least you're supervising them, right?”

“Supervising. There's another good word.” She took a drag of the cigarette and exhaled. “I like you. You make me feel better about myself. You make me feel like I'm a
responsible
adult.” She picked up the wine glass. “She raised you?” she asked.

“Who—Kris?”

Diane, taking a sip, nodded.

I shook my head. “I was with my grandfather. Until he got sick a few years ago.”

“Is he in a home now?”

“No—both of them are dead.”

“Here, do you want some? Sorry I don't have another glass, but just take a sip from the bottle.” She held it out to me.

“No. Really it's okay.”

“No. Drink some. It will help you keep
those
demons
at bay. You're making me feel like some kind of alcoholic.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Drinking alone, you make me feel like some kind of alcoholic.”

“No. The other thing.”

She looked at me confused.

“Demons,” I said.

“Oh! The
demons
,” she laughed. “You know—those pesky thoughts. Those voices telling you you're nothing. Your husband climbing into bed with your sister, your daughter's a slut—don't you hear those voices?”

I quickly shook my head.

“
Of course
not
,” she said, sounding almost bitter. She took a drag off the cigarette.

A boy outside the door yelled, “Ozzy's god!”

“So… are you and Alex sleeping together?”

“Uhh…”

“Never mind. Don't answer. I shouldn't have asked. It's really none of my business. I think it's great Alex is going out with you. You'll certainly treat her better than a lot of guys. Some of the people at this party.” She shook her head.

“And if the two of you are having sex—no—please don't say anything. I know Alex is responsible and she's using protection, so I'm not worried. Though I think it a bit strange that a guy your age wants to hang out with all these kids.”

She drained her glass of wine and refilled it. She offered me the bottle.

This time, I took it. I took a big drink and handed it back to her.

“No. You finish it. I shouldn't have anymore. After all, I have to be the ‘responsible adult,'” she said, using her fingers to indicate the quotation marks.

I took two large gulps, and finished the bottle.

She got up and opened the door. I retrieved my coat and followed her. A group of kids stood near the door, and as we passed them, one stared at me. He had a “My name is” sticker on his T-shirt, and it said that his name was “Satan.” When I turned my back, one of them mumbled, “Motherfucker,” and I was certain that it was him.

 

Though I'd spent the last week avoiding her, I found myself wishing Kris was home when I returned from the party. The wine hadn't had much effect, and the house was dark and looked ominous set back from the road behind a row of hemlocks and towering spruces. I walked quickly up the driveway, and after two failed attempts, jabbed my key in the lock.

As I stepped in the foyer I was struck by how the scene would appear in a slasher film. The viewer, taking the perspective of the killer in the master bedroom, would see my figure appear down the hall in the distance. A dissonant synthesizer chord would suggest his deranged state.

I slipped off my loafers, and turned on each light I passed on the way to the kitchen. I fixed a gin and tonic. In the living room, I put
Dark Side of the Moon
on the turntable.

It was in the middle of “Time” (and my second gin and tonic) that the phone rang. I sat there listening to the ring, waiting for the answering machine to cut in. Then realized that even if it was one of Kris's clients, I wanted to hear someone's voice.

“Patterson Reality,” I slurred. I giggled, covering the mouthpiece, and waited for a reply.

Silence.

I looked down the hall toward the master bedroom. Someone started laughing hysterically on the phone. The laughter stopped. “Traeee. This is Sadie. I'm sooo horny. And my double penetration anal vibrator is broken. And I was just wondering if maybe you could cooome over and Pen neeee trate me.” It was a male voice imitating a female's.

“Damien?”

He began to laugh again.

As I waited for him to stop, I picked up a memo pad and sketched a beard around Kris's face. She started to look like Charles Manson, and I added a swastika to her forehead.

“Guess where I am?” Damien finally said.

“You're joking.”

He laughed.

“You were just there.”

“Cool, eh?”

“Wait a second. Let me change phones.”

After I got the portable from the study, I returned to the living room and turned down the volume on the stereo. “You're joking, right?”

“Nope.”

“You were just there.”

“They found the bodies, the severed heads, the—”

“Seriously.”

‘I
am
serious.”

I didn't respond.

“I'm serious,” he said and started laughing again.

I put the phone on the coffee table and finished the gin and tonic. When I picked up the phone again, he was saying, “—changing my meds again. The last ones were making me sleepy. They're going to try something different. They think it will make me feel better. There might be side effects so they want to monitor me.”

I heard someone shout in the background.

“Got to go. Bring some beer.”

Before I could say “Yes” or “No” he'd hung up.

 

I don't know what medication they put Damien on, but when I went to visit him the following evening he was a different person. For most of our visit he lay on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. When I asked him something, he either just remained silent, or answered in monosyllables. At one point I got so bored I picked up the biography of Jeffrey Dahmer and paged through it. In the middle, there was a picture of Dahmer as an infant, and I could imagine him getting excited for presents at Christmas, and decorating jack-o'-lanterns at Halloween.

Near the end of the visit Damien took me out to the cafeteria, where he pointed out this middle-aged black woman with sagging breasts, and asked me if I didn't think she was hot.

 

It was nine when I left hospital. The sun was gone, there was a pink afterglow in the West. I didn't feel like going home.

For about an hour I drove aimlessly around North Van, down Lonsdale—along Marine Drive, past grain elevators on the low road and up Third Street—all the while trying not to lose it. The strategy that I had used since childhood to deal with life was failing me. The effort to see myself in a movie was becoming increasingly difficult, and the real story was looming into view. Damien's trips to the psychiatric ward weren't scenes out of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
or an image from a Green Day video. For the first time, they were assuming their true reality: a sad beginning to what would probably be a sad life.