Forgiveness (26 page)

As we piled into Dad’s Chevy Suburban, he chuckled.
Education, boys, education. Make sure to get one
, he said. Our professional lives could
only go up from there. At home we climbed into our bunk beds and listened to Paul Simon’s “Train in the Distance” as a train passed through the prairie valley.

So long as Mom was sober, Carrick was allowed to sleep over at our house. Our lives were converging. Daniel and I were becoming a unit of brothers in a myriad of units of brothers. Once again as our world expanded, Mom’s closed in on her. Carrick’s sleepovers became infrequent.

Daniel’s upstairs bedroom was right next to Mom’s. He heard all the fights, even the quiet ones. They were the worst. Growls would come from the bedroom. Sitting up in bed with his Edmonton Oilers pyjamas, Daniel would inch his back into the corner of the room. He would fall asleep fearfully gripping a hockey stick.

Finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He knew he couldn’t stay. He belonged at Dad’s. He was safe at Dad’s. He was eight, but old enough to take his life into his own hands. Mom had raised him well. He asked her to sit down at the kitchen table. She lit a cigarette and looked at him with anticipation.

“What is it?”

“I’ve decided to move in with Dad.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She could muster only one more word.

“Why?”

The day Daniel moved out, Mom was upstairs in her bedroom. I helped carry some boxes down to Dad’s Suburban. Mom would not leave her room. She lay in a fetal position in the middle of the bed, her eyes wide open. Tears from her left eye rolled across the bridge of her nose. We didn’t have Kleenex so she just kept a roll of toilet paper beside her. Every second box or so I carried, I’d pop in and rub her back. She didn’t say a word.

When we were done, Daniel stood at the bottom of the stairs. He had tears in his eyes.

“Is she coming out?”

I didn’t know.

Then we heard the bedroom door open. Mom had wiped her eyes and blown her nose, but the evidence was clear.

Ever the loyal mother, she put on her bravest face, tilted her head, and gave Daniel a warm and loving smile.

“I love you, my baby.” She knelt down as Daniel ran up the stairs and hugged her.

Dad waited in the truck. His hands were on the steering wheel and his head was bowed. Four broken hearts were trying their best.

“I love you too, Mom,” Daniel said.

When the front door closed, Mom collapsed at the top of the stairs. She wailed. I had never heard pain made audible like that. I hope I never do again.

She knew
why.

After Daniel left, I took up a nomadic existence. I kept a bathroom kit and a pair of clean underwear in my school backpack. Some nights I’d stay with Mom. If the fighting got bad, I’d make my way to grandma Sakamoto’s. Every third night or so, I’d stay at Dad’s. It was no way to live. I knew that. My dad knew that. My mom knew that. I couldn’t live with my mom, but I could not leave her. I was her oldest; I was supposed to help keep her safe. I was failing miserably. We both were.

I remained in that purgatory for years. Every day after school, I’d take the bus down to Riverside. Cale Turner and I would spend the afternoon eating taco chips in grandma Sakamoto’s basement, talking about girls and Nirvana. After supper with Grandma, I’d call Mom. I would listen for clues: a slurred word; a yell in the background from Stephen. If she sounded sober, if it sounded safe, I’d walk up the Riverside bridge and stay at her house. If not, I’d call Dad and he’d dutifully pick me up. For years I was, essentially, of no fixed address. My dad let me work my way through this.

In the end, I never moved out. I waited around until Mom just stopped providing a home. It took four years. I had just turned sixteen.

On a cold winter morning, Mom entered the food bank for the first time in her life. She had not had a meal in two days. She and Stephen had bought a box of wine with their last few dollars. It would be another three days before Stephen received his modest paycheque from the pizza joint he cooked at. Mom called me from a pay phone to see if I could pick her up. The two brown paper bags were too heavy for her to carry. I made my way down in my newly acquired 1983 Honda Civic.

The food bank was on Medicine Hat’s busiest road, Kingsway Avenue. It straddled the railroad tracks. When I arrived I took the bags from Mom’s arms and piled them into the trunk, slamming the lid and getting back into the car as fast as I could. I hoped that nobody would see me.

We drove down the laneway and stopped at the corner. As I tried to find an opening in traffic to get back onto Kingsway, I glanced over and Mom lowered her head.

“We’re moving,” she said.

“Where?”

She nodded towards the tracks.

I looked up, letting my eyes focus in the distance. I knew exactly where she was moving. I saw the big old dilapidated brick building right across the street from the railway. The sign hung by a wire above the once-grand entryway of Medicine Hat’s first posh hotel. My mom was moving into the Cecil.

I looked at her with tears in my eyes.

“Oh, Mom.”

We wept quietly all the way home.

Like the ships off the Magdalen Islands coast, my mom’s life was shipwrecked.

Dad was worried about what the wreckage would do to me. Soon after Mom’s move, he asked me to go for a drive with him. We hadn’t gone for a no-reason drive since I was six. We drove around town for an hour or so, then up to the world’s largest teepee. Town Council had brought it to Medicine Hat after Calgary
showcased it during the 1988 Winter Olympics. We got out and circled around it. The wind was howling and blowing through the painted poles. Dad seemed uncertain. We got back in the Suburban.

“Let’s try something. Together,” Dad said.

A few minutes later, Dad parked at the Provincial Building on 3rd Street. We walked through the lobby and down the hall. It still smelled of new paint and engineered air. We walked past the Licence Bureau, the By-Law Office, and Family Services. We stopped at a frosted glass door. A sign that looked like it had just been hung read: A
L
-A
NON
. I had no idea what it stood for.

The door was locked. Dad knocked and a kind-looking woman answered and welcomed us in.

“We’re just getting underway.”

I flashed Dad a look:
getting what underway?

The office had a small front desk and seven black folding chairs set up in a circle. The woman we had spoken to went to sit at the top of the circle. Three younger kids were already seated. Another woman stood with her back against the wall. Dad sat down and I sat beside him.

I sat in shame and hunched my back, feeling relief in not knowing the three kids beside me. I don’t remember what we discussed at the meeting. Everything was drowned out by the ringing voice in my head:
I am not a victim.
I hated the pity I saw in the counsellor’s gaze. I could feel my cheeks redden.

A few days later, Mom called me from a pay phone asking me to come by and visit. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see her there. I didn’t want to be
seen
there. I pleaded to take her for lunch or coffee instead. She refused. I had no choice.

I parked at the side of the building. Inside, the lobby was smoke-stained and dark. It took me a minute to orientate myself when I stepped in from the bright afternoon light. It stank of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and decades of neglect. The stairs to the right took me to the basement. As I descended, I remembered Al-Anon’s
discussion about the addict’s rock bottom. I was descending into Mom’s, one dirty step at a time.

I knocked on the apartment door. When it opened, I saw what rock bottom looked like. The apartment was one step away from homelessness. The kitchen had a small table and two rickety wooden chairs, a sink, and a makeshift counter with a Bunsen burner on top for cooking. There was a beer fridge in the corner by the bathroom door. The living room had a couch, a low table that housed the cigarette rolling machine, and a television, the only item of value that had not yet been taken to the pawnshop. The bedroom had a closet, a broken dresser, and a queen-size mattress lying on the floor. Clothes were strewn about. There were no windows. The air stank of musty smoke, and the smell of stale beer permeated everything.

At rock bottom, you float up or you drown. Mom did not float. The weight of the water above was too heavy. She was drowning.

She did try. She fought. She gulped for air. Most nights erupted into a vodka-fuelled screaming match. She’d throw what was left of their ornamental possessions, a small Inuit carving or a brass vase. It would smash into one of their few unbroken picture frames. He would throw her to the ground. She would lie there crying on the dingy floor. He would go for more vodka in the tavern upstairs.

She’d always call me during the lull in the violence. It would be late. One time, not long after she moved into the Cecil, she called me at Dad’s at two in the morning. I knew, even before I picked up the bedroom phone, that she would be drunk. Her speech was slurred, hurried, and desperate, as it always was those days. She was making a break for it. She couldn’t take this life, the abuse. She asked me if I could come and get her. This time was different, she said.

I made myself believe it every time. I had made this run before. It always made me nervous. No; scared. In a storm, you just never know what could happen; what the force of the storm could do. I never knew what shape my mom would be in when the door opened. I never knew if Stephen would be there, or if he’d return while I was there.

This time the door was left ajar, so I peeked in. Mom was in the bedroom, in the midst of throwing her tattered Friday Image blouses into a garbage bag. She was crying. The light in the room was burnt out. Only the kitchen light worked. I called out to her. She told me to grab her purse on the couch and make sure some smokes were in it.

I waited with her purse, hoping the door would not open. Mom hurried. When she emerged from the bedroom, she looked like she hadn’t slept in a week. Her hair was knotted, her eyes were red with tears, and her face looked cigarette-skin grey.

“Let’s go!” she cried.

I grabbed her bag, cracked the door, and peeked down the hallway. There was only one way out of the basement. I waved her through and we were off. I don’t think Mom even closed the door behind her. I took her hand as we were about to start up the stairs. Then I heard a voice around the corner. Two drunks. I stopped. We stood motionless at the foot of the stairs. Mom breathed heavily. She hadn’t stopped crying.

Once the voices faded, we climbed the stairs, made a break for the front door, and fast-walked to my car. I threw the garbage bag in the back seat as Mom settled into the passenger side. Her eyes darted across the street, down the alley, to the reflection in the rear-view mirror.

I peeled out of the Cecil’s gravel parking lot. It was 2:30 a.m. I had no idea where I was going from there. It didn’t really matter; anyplace was better. We drove back up to Crescent Heights. She was glad to be out of the hotel; I wanted to be closer to our past. But there are no motels in Crescent Heights and it was too late to drive to Calgary. I took her to the Sun-Deck hotel on the outskirts of town, by the airport. It was a typical two-storey cinderblock motel, a way station for truck drivers and frugal motorists. Mom was coming off of her drunk a little. She sat at the edge of one double bed with her head in her hands. I threw the garbage bag on the other bed and tried to comfort her.

We ordered a pepperoni and mushroom pizza from Farroh’s. She ate. She was still shaking like a leaf. I put a blanket over her and she fell asleep. I crawled into the other bed and did the same.

The next morning, we woke up at the same time. She was sober. Her only hangover was fear. I went out and got two breakfast sandwiches, two coffees, and two orange juices at the A&W across the highway. When I got back, Mom was in the shower. She came out looking better. A little more like herself. She ate again.

We tried to put a game plan together. I pleaded with her to let me take her to Calgary. She could stay with Grandpa Ralph, dry out, maybe get a job. She was unsure. She was, more than anything, an addict. She needed alcohol, even if it came with the life she was living. I managed to convince her to stay another night so we could talk more about it. She knew I had to go to work that afternoon; she was buying time. When I came back after my shift, I went to the motel office to pay for another night.

“Two-oh-three? Another night?” The lady looked at me, confused.

Mom had checked out.

There were many more late-night rescue attempts. Once we even made it onto Highway One en route to Calgary. But Mom sobered up by Gleichen and made me turn back.

A year later, the only trips we were making together were to the women’s shelter. During a violent fight, the bartenders upstairs would hear the noise and someone would call the police. I’d drive down to the Cecil hoping that the cops had beat me there. I was so preoccupied with each particular emergency, on each particular night, that I never saw the headlights of my dad’s Chevy Suburban following me. I never knew.

The Cecil Hotel is close to the police station, so the cops were often there before I arrived. Sometimes they’d take Stephen to jail for the night. Sometimes they’d take them both. But usually I’d
take Mom to the shelter. There, the fear dripped from the walls; it pooled on the floor. I could not stay very long. The staff were cautious and secretive in order to protect the women and children under their care. Fear filled everyone’s eyes, the same fear I had seen so many years ago in the eyes of the animals Mom was saving at the S.P.C.A. Whenever Mom was at the shelter, she would act as if she were a volunteer taking care of the other women in the house, looking after their children, helping the staff. She was not in their care, she was assisting with the care. This was not happening to her.

The ghosts of brutality haunted that women’s shelter. The men who place their wives and children in such a situation have an appetite that feeds off others’ fear. It is cowardice of the worst kind. My car would be filled with murderous
mens rea
every time I left. I hated what going there did to me, the slow burn of rage that it lit, the certainty that she’d return. The inability to make the cycle stop.