Westlake Soul (7 page)

Still breathtaking. That was the adjective I had used when she played Beethoven’s
Sonata pathétique,
referring not to her playing (which
was
dope), but to
her.
And despite her lack of faith, and her wanting to
end this,
it still applied.

My eyes tracked toward the sunlight like two lazy flowers and a long thread of spit hung from my lower lip. Inside, I was coming apart. Thrashing and weeping. I wanted to release—fly to the ocean and let every wave crash against my bruised soul. But I stayed with Nadia, because some things have to be endured. As much as it hurt, I needed to end this, too.

This is who I am,
I thought, remembering the pristine girl at the piano.
Take it or leave it.

She stood up, wiped her eyes again, then glided toward my bed. I could smell her body. The familiarity was overwhelming. Her hand inched forward, tentative, then curled around my forearm. I expected the cardiac monitor to explode, but it didn’t sound any different.

“I would have married you,” she said. “A thousand times over. I
wanted
to. You know that, right?”

I know that,
I said.

“And I don’t regret one single moment I spent with you.”

The hurt . . . I just wanted it to end. And still I threw my heat at her—even tried to twitch the muscle in my forearm, desperately wanting her to feel
something.

“If I could change just one thing,” she said, more tears spilling onto her cheekbones. “I would go back to that pink morning in Tofino. I would pin you to the bed and stop you from leaving. And you’d be . . .” She let go of my forearm, used both hands to wipe her face. Her body jerked as she broke again. “You’d . . .”

She couldn’t finish.

I know.
I wanted to hold her. One last time. To feel her body in my arms. To give her my strength.
I know, baby.

“It wasn’t supposed to
be
like this,” she spat, and for just one second that cold rock inside her glowed. A momentary light. Then it was gone. She shook her head, perhaps at the unfathomable cruelty of the world, and stepped toward the door.

I listened to the tears fall on my soul. A sound like the high notes on a piano. B-flat, C, B-flat again. The world laughs at you sometimes. Wocka Wocka.

“Goodbye, Westlake.” She looked over her shoulder one final time, just as she had in Vancouver. “I’ll always remember you.”

I couldn’t speak. Not even inside. I watched her leave forever and then took flight. A breathless, heartbroken rush of light. To the ocean, where we roared together. I let the waves rush through me, knowing they couldn’t hurt me any more than they already had. Then I soared toward the sun, breaking through the exosphere into outer space, until—ninety-three million miles from home—I arrived at my destination. I threw my arms open and let it burn me. Ten thousand Fahrenheit. The world’s light. The world’s
love.
But still it couldn’t make up for what I had lost.

The tension remained thick and uncomfortable in the Soul homestead. Hub was right; some unrighteous shit was going down, and there were too many silences for me to get to the bottom of it. Dad and Mom would often be in the same room, looking at each other, but rarely communicating. The occasional stiff smile, perhaps. Maybe a hug. One time Mom started crying on Dad’s shoulder and he stroked her hair—as loving as I had seen him in quite some time—whispering, “It’s okay, sweetheart . . . everything will be okay,” over and over, until his throat was choked with emotion and he couldn’t get the words out anymore. I held them both, wishing they could feel me.

Niki isn’t the most astute seventeen-year-old in the world. I’ve often thought that, if she were a bird, she’d be the kind that would fly into a window. Pretty feathers, but a little bit dim. Even so, she picked up on the vibe, as well. One evening, at the dinner table, and during a particularly leaden silence, she slammed her knife and fork down so hard that her plate almost tipped over.

“Like,” she started, “what the
fuck
is going on?” Then she clapped a hand over her mouth and her eyes switched between Mom and Dad with a clicking sound, reminding me of those executive ball clickers you find in . . . well, executive ball clickers’ offices.

I hovered over the mashed potatoes, eager to hear my parents’ reply. Equally eager to see them haul Niki over the coals for dropping the F-bomb at the dinner table. Given the mood in the house, I thought it possible they’d be burying her in the garden at sundown.

Mom and Dad exchanged a look. I saw Dad’s jaw flex as he gritted his teeth. Mom gave him a near-imperceptible shake of the head, then went back to her Polish sausage.

“Eat your dinner, Phereniki,” Dad said. The use of her full name indicated his displeasure, but it was still a monumentally disappointing reaction. I thought food was going to fly. Maybe knives, too. Niki lowered her hand and went back to her meal, incredulous that she had gotten off so lightly. Her eyes continued to click from right to left, though, still wary of being sucker-slapped by a half-pound of grilled kielbasa.

But more disappointing than not seeing a reenactment of Passchendaele over the dinner table was the fact that my parents didn’t answer Niki’s question. Did this mean that it was too serious to discuss with her, or not serious enough? I waited through another uncomfortable silence, hoping someone would speak. But no one did. Only the clash of cutlery on dinner plates. Eventually, I gave up and reentered my body—went inside and surfed the universal wave function. When I emerged, the house was dark and sleeping.

So I consoled myself with the knowledge that, if I needed
to know, I would know. Wasn’t much consolation, to be fair, but short of violating my parents’ minds—their secrets
—
it was all I could do.

It’ll pass,
I had said to Hub.
Trust me.

I believed this, but it was taking longer than usual. Even when Dad had fried the old home computer with viruses from porn sites, and Mom had thrown her favourite Laughing Buddha ornament at him, it hadn’t taken this long for the icicles to thaw. Thank God I could release, and did so often—preferring ghost-like wanderings to the bum vibe at home.

Whatever was wrong, I didn’t think it spelled the end for our tight family unit. Mom and Dad had weathered worse (me, for instance), so I had little doubt the mood would improve. Maybe Mom had found an inappropriate text on Dad’s cell phone. Something to—or from—one of the secretaries in his office. Or maybe his performance at work had dipped and he’d been given his marching orders. I saw no point in trying to guess the problem. It could be one of many things, or an accumulation of petty annoyances. The deep ocean of married life. Sometimes smooth enough to skip stones on. Sometimes wild enough to ride. My concern was that it was because of me—that, when you stripped everything away, I would be bedded there like a leech. Hell, I know the situation; they love me, but I am hard work.
Emotionally draining.
That could be my epitaph:
Here lies Westlake Soul. Son, brother, surfer. A badass dude, but EMOTIONALLY DRAINING.
Had Dad sought comfort in the arms of a secretary, or failed to secure lucrative contracts, because his home life was a tower of stress? Had Mom been getting a little too familiar with the Crown Royal because wiping the sleepy sand from my eyes every morning was all too much?

I went to where the world was light, and where there was hope. A field full of poppies in Belgium. A pearl-white waterfall in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. Rescue centres and moments of triumph. Maternity wards and kindergartens, where children—babies, really—held hands and absorbed the planet through wide, beautiful eyes. I rode elephants across the Serengeti, and swam with a pod of orcas in the deep of the Atlantic. I knew I was turning my back on the problems at home, but the escape was like a balm.

Darryl came to see me, which was unexpected (he has only visited me at home a couple of times—he finds it difficult, seeing me the way I am), but welcome. His empty-headed manner helped soothe the tension, albeit temporarily. Mom and Dad—never big Darryl fans—threw their arms around him before he had even kicked off his sneakers.

“Whoa,” he said, grinning sweetly. “Good to see you, too.”

He dropped by so he could show off his new car. A 2011 Chevy Camaro, straight out of the showroom. Dad lifted me into my chair and we went out to see it as a family. Even Niki came out, somehow lured from watching The Situation flex his abs on
Jersey Shore.
It was, all told, a nice moment. Darryl’s new car was mean and green, easy on the eye, but I found the smiles and laughter—after such a long period of sullenness—more appealing.

After much complimentary cooing over such things as the Synergy Green paint job and the twenty-inch rims (Hub wanted to piss on those rims as a left-libertarianism revolt against the exploitative ideology of a capitalist society—I told him not to spoil the good vibe), Darryl offered everybody a ride. But he looked at me awkwardly, realizing that I would have to sit up front, flopping around and drooling all over the interior. Mom registered Darryl’s expression and came to his rescue.

“You guys go,” she said, clasping the push handles of my chair. “I’ll take Wes back inside. Maybe he can . . .” She trailed off, as if she had forgotten what she was going to say. A glance at Dad. An uncertain smile.

“Sure. Okay. Whatever,” Darryl said. Carefree words, but he spoke and moved too quickly for them to have substance. He was behind the wheel, gunning the engine, before Mom had even turned my chair around. Niki hopped in the back and Dad in the passenger seat. They ripped out of the driveway in a flash of green.

Mom wheeled me back inside with Hub padding along behind, grumbling under his breath. She pushed me through to the living room, where I sat in a belt of sunlight while she read
The Globe and Mail.
I watched her for a moment. My beautiful mother, holding her figure at forty-eight, but with too many creases on her brow. Not enough laugh lines. I reached for her and, coincidentally, she looked up from her paper.

What is it, Mom?
I asked, still reaching.
What’s been getting you down?

No reply, but she kept looking at me, studying me, the way I used to study the ocean—gauging break and current—before going in. I would ask just one question, almost without fail (and the one morning I didn’t ask, it cost me everything):
What do I need to do?
Without reading her mind, or needing to, I could see that same question flickering in her eyes. As clear as moonlight on a lake.

I know it’s breaking heavy, Mom,
I said.
But you just have to stay focused. You have to ride this wave out.

I tried to do something to convey my support. Soften my eyes. Open my hand. Twitch my lip in the merest of smiles. But the motor cortex was a ghost town, and though I ran through it screaming for help, I got no response. Not a shutter clapping in the breeze. Not even a tumbleweed skittering along the barren street. Hub came in and helped me out—jumped onto the sofa next to Mom and rested his head on her thigh. She put the newspaper down. Stroked his golden fur.

Thanks
,
I said to him.

He gave his tail a single happy thump. Mom managed half a smile and scratched behind his ear. And then she said, suddenly:

“What do you want, Westlake?”

The question surprised me, mainly because the answer was obvious, but also because she had asked with such earnestness, as if expecting me to swivel toward her, steeple my fingers, and provide a detailed, eloquent response. I did these things, of course, but
inside
,
where she couldn’t see them . . . where I was alive.

I want the cloudy vibe to go away,
I said. Sunlight winked off my wheelchair’s aluminum tubing. A single spark of life.
I want you and Dad to smile again. Niki, too. But most of all, I want to recover—re-flip the iceberg and go back to the way things used to be. And I
will
do it, Mom. It’s so hard, and it’s taking far too long . . . but I’ll get there. I promise.

I tried to push this bubble of optimism toward Mom, transfer it via the particles between us. An emotive shockwave. Hub felt it—slapped his tail again. Maybe Mom felt it, too, although her reaction was not what I had hoped for. Her face rippled. Her tears flowed. I couldn’t bear it. In a whisper I was gone, tearing from my broken body, into the clear sky above our house. Higher still, a ribbon in the cold air, until Hallow Falls stretched below me—parks and parking lots, neat roads lined with maples, houses as colourful as children’s building blocks. I spied a green Camaro turning onto Ernest Clayton Street, recalled the brief but welcome relief that Darryl’s visit had brought, and swept toward it like rain. Within a heartbeat I was sitting in the backseat, next to Niki, hungry for an atmosphere that wasn’t soaked in tears.

Darryl was showing off his upgraded sound system. Lady Gaga thrilled the speakers at light-bending volume. Niki was digging it, dancing as freely as she was able behind her seatbelt, while Dad nodded politely. He had never looked so old. I could see the small white hairs in his beard trembling.

Darryl finally turned the volume down and they drove a few blocks listening to the engine purr.

“She’s sweet, eh?” Darryl asked, turning onto Main, heading toward home. I braced to fly away—didn’t want to go home yet.

“Sick,” Niki said.

“It’s a nice car, Darryl,” Dad said. “You be careful. And drive the speed limit. Police are always more likely to pull over a car that stands out like this, particularly if it’s being driven by someone who wears his baseball cap sideways.”

“I’m always careful,” Darryl said. He flicked Dad a cautious glance. “Especially after what happened to Westlake. Shit like that makes you stop and think. You don’t always get a second chance, right?”

“Right,” Dad said. He pursed his lips.

Another two blocks where the only sound was the engine growling, and then Darryl—speaking as if the words had been shot from his larynx by a miniature cannon—said: “I thought he was going to get better if anyone could it would be Westlake no doubt eh?”