Bow Grip (10 page)

“I think so.” I could feel my scalp being moved, but I couldn’t feel her moving it.

“History of high or low blood pressure, high cholesterol, or heart attacks?”

“My dad died of a heart attack four years ago.”

She stopped, looked down at my face for a second. “When was your last check-up?”

“Six weeks ago. My mother. She insists. Everything was fine.”

“You ever have anything like this happen before today?”

I shook my head. She reached for a tiny pair of scissors, and I felt a far-away tug somewhere above my eyes. She then felt my pulse, then checked my blood pressure. When she was done, she pulled a pink pad from the pocket of her coat, and clicked her pen.

“Your pulse and blood pressure seem normal. I don’t think this was about your heart, so you can relax about that. Please, hold out your hands in front of you.”

I extended my hands like she had hers, palms down, fingers splayed. They were shaking.

“Have you ever heard of a panic attack, Joseph? Because I strongly suspect that is what you may have just had. Did you experience any dizziness or shortness of breath before you fell? Anything you would describe as an out-of-body experience? Fight-or-flight response? Any inability to concentrate? Excessive perspiration?”

I told her about the teapot getting big in front of my eyes, about the elastic band feeling around my chest, only then becoming aware of the damp circles under my arms.

“My mouth is parched and my armpits are leaking.”

She nodded, scribbling on her notepad. “I’m going to suggest you make an appointment with a colleague of mine. She’s a therapist. Here’s her number. In the meantime, I’m
going to recommend you avoid all caffeinated beverages, alcohol or other drugs. Here’s a prescription for Tylenol 3’s. You’re not allergic to codeine, are you?”

I shook my head. “A therapist? You mean this is all just in my head? I made myself pass out?”

There was a quiet knock on the door. Allyson peered in.

“I’m Joey’s … wife. How is he?”

“Your husband is going to be just fine. I’ve given him eight stitches in his head. You’ll need to check on him tonight several times, as he’s cracked his noggin pretty hard, and we need to take the usual precautions for a head injury. I’ve explained to him that I suspect he’s had a panic attack, and given him a referral.” The doctor ripped the top two pages off of her note pad and passed them to Ally.

“Those are for the inevitable headache he’s going to have. Keep him off his feet, and make sure he takes the next few days off work, and makes himself an appointment with Dr Witherspoon.”

After the doctor left, Ally slumped into the chair beside me.

“Which one of us do you think should call your mother?” She paused. “I think it should definitely be me.”

A
lly flipped her cell phone open as soon as we were outside the emergency room doors, and called my mother. She had her on the speed dial. I didn’t realize they were still that close. I never got around to things like programming anyone’s number into the speed dial. Only in the last couple of years I finally figured out how to make the VCR stop flashing 12:00. Not that I found that kind of thing complicated once I got down to it.

Ally got halfway through a calm explanation of the events of the last hour when my mom took over. Ally paused, listening. “He’s fine, Ruth, he’s standing right here beside me. Do you want me to put him on the phone? A panic attack, the doctor said. Pan-ic. No, it’s not a heart thing, she checked all that out. He didn’t really pass out, he fell and hit his head. No, he seems fine now. He’s got eight stitches. Okay, I love you, too. Here he is.”

Ally passed me the phone, silently mouthing the words, “Calm her down.”

“Mom?”

“Joseph, honey, do you need me to come to Calgary? I can have Jeffrey or Sarah drive me, I can be there in a couple of hours.”

“I don’t need you to come, really, I’m fine. I just cracked my head. A few stitches and a couple of painkillers, and I’m good as new.”

“Don’t you bullshit me, mister, good as new and painkillers my ass. You’re going to march yourself into that doctor first thing tomorrow morning and get to the bottom of
this. I’m not going to argue with you about it either. I won’t make that mistake again. I’m calling Franco right away, to tell him you’ll be gone a few more days. They’ve got medication for these things now too, things that can be done. And if you pull that bullshit macho dumbass number your father taught you, I swear to God.…”

You could always tell when she was worried. Concern really brought out the foul language. “Mom, you’re breaking up. I’ll call you when I get back to my motel room, okay?”

“Motel room? Are you even listening to me? You’re staying with Allyson tonight. You’re obviously delirious. She can keep an eye on you. I will not have my only son slipping into a coma in a motel room. Put Allyson back on the phone.”

“We’ll call you when we get back to her place. I’m hanging up now, Mom.”

I flipped the phone shut, took a deep breath, touched my sticky, numb scalp.

“Kathleen is bringing the truck around,” Ally said. “We’ll take you back to our place, put you on the futon in the living room. We can stop on the way home and get your prescription filled, and I’ll make you an appointment for tomorrow.” She was talking in clipped, efficient bursts. I used to call it her St John’s Ambulance voice, after the guy who taught me first aid when I was a Cub Scout. She used it when someone cut their hand really bad, and when Buck had that tangle with the porcupine out at the lake. And when Dad died. We had only been married for a year, but Ally had gracefully swung into action, making calls and spreading calm and coping, the only one in the family who seemed to already believe that we were somehow going to get through it all, as long as we had a plan, we kept putting one word in front of the other, and following them.

“I’m not staying at your place tonight, Allyson. I really appreciate the thought, but I’ll be fine at the motel. Maybe you could drive my truck back for me, get Kathleen to follow us there and drive you home? I seriously feel fine right now.”

“Joey, I know it’s not the most comfortable situation, but I think we can all put that aside for one night, just until we make sure you’re okay.”

Kathleen pulled up in the truck, ending the conversation. I got in and slumped against the passenger window, liking its coolness against my forehead. Allyson recounted the doctor’s findings to Kathleen, who just listened, mercifully silent. It was mid-afternoon by the time we parked in front of their building. The sky was pale blue and too bright white, seemed to bounce off the inside of my eye sockets. My skull thrummed. I needed a smoke. I wanted to lie down.

“Please, Ally, just drive me and my truck back to the motel. I have a friend in the room next door, Hector. He’ll check on me. I promise you, I’ll be fine.”

Allyson raised her eyebrows, made like she was going to speak, then didn’t for a second.

“Okay, but I’m calling you every hour on the hour, and if you don’t answer I’m coming over. If you slip into a coma, I’ll kill you. Your mother will ride my hide into the next world. I will curse your memory forever.”

“Look at my pupils, Ally. If you are going to slip into a coma, your pupils go weird. I’ll get Hector to drive me to the doctor in the morning. I feel okay, I swear to Christ I do. I just want to lie down. Alone. Please.”

“Give me your keys then, tough guy. Kathleen can follow us there.”

Ally let us drive all the way in silence. I had always liked how we used to be able to do that, sometimes sit for hours together around the fire when we were camping, or hike for miles without having to speak, just being quiet together, but alone in our own heads.

She looked small in the driver’s seat of my truck, hunched right forward, like only the end of her ass was touching the seat, her hands wrapped into fists around the wheel. She had her thinking face on. I couldn’t remember if we had ever been in the new flatbed like this, together, but with her driving. I had never looked at her from the passenger seat before.

Of course I was thinking about my dad, probably all of us were, it was too obvious to not trip over it in your head. Anytime I drove past a hospital, or pulled over to let an ambulance pass, it reminded me.

Already four years had gone by. A Saturday afternoon, the beginning of September, lots of long shadows. He and I had taken the little boat out to the south end of Little Bear Lake, to one of our secret grayling spots.

The willows were heavy with brilliant yellow leaves, the branches leaning down and rippling the lake. I flicked my Zippo open, and the flame stood straight up - there was no wind. A couple of seagulls were loitering in the blue above us, eyeing the three silvery fish we already had in the plastic tub, until an eagle swooshed in above them, and they squawked off in a huff.

My belly was full of the roast beef sandwiches and potato salad my mom had packed for us, and my head was buzzing a little from the three or five beers I had drank. I laid my rod against the gunwale and stood up in the front
of the skiff to piss, what was left of my last cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth. My dad rocked the boat from side to side, trying to get me to pee somewhere I didn’t mean to.

“Fuck off, Dad, you’re gonna make me piss in your boat.”

“Isn’t my boat anymore, son. I gave it to you, remember?”

“You just gave it to me for a while, when the transom was leaking. I thought you took it back after I welded it.”

“I never took it back.”

“You did, when you and Mom went to Montana, remember? You came and got it.”

“I borrowed it, I didn’t take it back.”

“Then why do we keep it in your garage, and not mine?”

“I’m still borrowing it.”

We used to talk like that all of the time.

He squinted up at the sun. “It’s getting late. We should head out of here pretty quick. Me and your mother have to go to the Bowies’ place for dinner.”

I always wonder how things would be different now, if it had been me who had sat in the back of the boat that day.

My dad reached out and bent the tip of his casting rod over, hooked the lure to one of the eyelets, and stashed it under the gunwale of the boat. He turned and pulled the ripcord on the tiny outboard motor, which stuttered, then sighed. He yanked on it ten or so times in a row, started to curse under his breath. He checked the primer on the tank, ran his hand along the hose, tweaked the choke a little, pulled the cord a couple more times. Still, nothing.

“Fuck me. Now it smells like it’s flooded. Did we bring both oars? Did you drain the carbs on this thing recently? It’s been cold at night, maybe there’s condensation in the lines.”

“Why would I drain the carbs on the outboard? You’ve had it all summer.”

“Because it’s your boat. You should really take better care of your belongings.”

He turned and pulled the cord, three more times, rapid fire.

“That reminds me, Joey. Don’t let me forget I need to.…”

He stopped in the middle of his next word, his mouth open, like someone had just pounded him on the back. His face filled up with pale. He dropped the ripcord, and it slapped the air around him as it rewound itself inside the motor casing.

“Dad?”

“My … it’s….” Then his mouth kept making the shapes of words but no sound was coming out. One hand gripped the gunwale, the other opening and closing into a fist, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt, his breath coming fast and shallow.

I almost fell over the side of the boat trying to get him around me so I could take his place next to the outboard. Great beads of milky sweat appeared in his hairline and rolled down his face. I propped him up in the bottom of the boat, wrapped my down vest around his shoulders.

I looked up into the one marshmallow cloud, grabbed the cord, and pulled.

The motor caught, chugged a bit. My prayers were answered.
I cranked the throttle up slowly until the idle steadied itself, then opened it wide up.

I left the boat on the beach tied to a fallen pine and half-dragged half-walked my dad over and into his truck. I fished the keys out of his pants, and whirled out of the clearing next to the lake in a burst of dirt road dust and gravel. I barely touched the brakes all the way back out to the highway, talking to him non-stop, a steady stream of “everything is going to be okay we’re almost there,” shifting gears at top speed and returning my right hand to his shoulder, holding him upright.

I stopped at the cutoff, racing into the Esso and screaming at the guy to call 911, have the ambulance meet us on the highway, the little blue Ford Ranger, my dad has had a heart attack.

He had another one about five minutes and eight kilometres later, on the stretcher on the side of the highway on his way into the ambulance. But it was the third one that actually killed him, fifteen or so minutes later, in the emergency room, just before they got the paddles on him. Just before my mother got there. She had been out back, in the garden, picking greens to make a salad to bring to the Bowies’ for dinner, and she hadn’t heard the phone at first because for some reason Chester, my dad’s little Jack Russell, had been barking non-stop for the last forty-five minutes.

We stopped at a strip mall and Ally ran in to the drugstore to get my codeine prescription. Then I showed her where to turn so she could park my truck as close as she could to the door of my motel room. Kathleen pulled up right next to us.

“Classy place, Joey. A pool and everything.”

“Home sweet home. Thanks, Ally. For everything. Hey, let’s get your stuff out of the back, while you’re here, and load it into the other truck.”

“Don’t worry about my books. I can get them tomorrow, whenever.”

“Might as well, is all I’m saying. The truck is right here. They’re pretty heavy.”

“What are you going to do about dinner? You want us to go pick you something up? Your mother is going to freak when she finds out I left you alone.”