Hey Nostradamus! (13 page)

The bedroom is where the good stuff ought to have been, at least that's what I'd hoped. Again, dark furniture left over from his split-up with Mom, and all of it too big for the room. On his dresser top was a blue runner, on which stood framed photos, yellowed and bleached, of him, Mom, Kent and me. I remember when each photo was taken-the sittings were torture; it was simply weird that he had photos of Mom and me there. Kent sure, but
me
? And
Mom
?

His bed was queen-sized. If he'd had at win bed, it would have been so bleak I'd have had to flee. I went and sat down on his preferred side, which smelled of pipe tobacco, smoke and dust. There was an olive rotary phone, a can of no-name tonic water and an aspirin bottle. What would be in the two drawers beneath it-girlie mags? A salad bowl filled with condoms? No. He had Bibles,
Reader's Digest
Condensed Books and clipped newspaper articles. Oh, to find something human like an escort service card or a gin bottle to go with the tonic, but no. Just this garage sale jumble, all of it so blank, so totally anti-1999 as to evoke thoughts of time travel back to, say, North Platte, Nebraska, circa 1952. The thought of my silent, sour-faced father walking from room to room-rooms in which phones never ring, where other voices never enter-it almost broke my heart, but then I realized, Wait a second, this is Reg, not some monk. Also, before I take too much pity on him, I ought to note how much his place is like
my
place.

I fetched the items on the list: pajamas, T-shirts, underwear, socks, and so on. The contents of his dresser were all folded and color-coded as if waiting for inspection by some cosmic drill sergeant on Judgment Day.

I grabbed his bottles of old people's medications, a toothbrush and contact lens gear and headed for the front door where, passing a little side table, I came close to missing a photo of my father with a woman-an ample and cheery woman-in a pink floral dress. His arms were around her shoulders, and, alert the media, there was a
smile
on his face.

The heart of a man is like deep water.

 

 

I've been writing these last bits in a coffee shop. I'm now officially one of those people you see writing dream diaries and screenplays in every Starbucks, except if you saw me writing, you'd maybe guess I was faking some quickie journal entries to hand my anger management counselor. So be it.

Around three I went to the hospital with the white plastic Save-On shopping bag full of Reg's personal needs. In the building's lobby I had the choice of dumping it at the desk or asking what room my father was in. What came over me? It was nearly eleven years since I'd last spoken with him, me shouting curses while he lay on the blue rug at the old house with his shattered knee. We hadn't spoken at Kent's wedding, the funeral or yesterday's memorial. I figured he must have learned something between then and now.

The hospital's central cooling system was malfunctioning, and guys in uniforms with tool kits were in the elevator with me. When I got off on the sixth floor, I was invisible to the staff, while the air-conditioning guys were treated like saviors.

I found Reg's room. The odor outside it reminded me of
luggage coming onto the airport carousels from China and Taiwan-mothballs, but not quite. I had a short moment of disbelief when I was outside the door and technically only a spit away from
him
. Yes? No? Yes? No? Why not? I went in-a shared room, a snoring young guy with his leg in a cast near the door. On the other side of a flimsy veil lay my father.

“Dad.”

“Jason.”

He looked awful-bloodless, white and unshaven-but certainly alert. “Here's your stuff…the hospital asked me to get it.”

“Thank you.”

Silence.

He asked, “Did you have trouble finding anything?”

“No. Not at all. Your place is pretty orderly.”

“I try and run a tight ship.”

I shivered when I thought of his hot dusty lightless hallway, his mummified TV set, his kitchen cupboards laden with tins and packets and boxes of rationlike food, and his cheapskate lifestyle, in which not tipping some poor waitress is viewed more as a way of honoring God than of being a miser with one foot in the grave. I held out the bag. “Here you go.”

“Put it on the window ledge.”

I did this. “What did the doctor say?”

“Two cracked ribs and bruising like all get-out. Maybe some cardio trauma, which is why they're keeping me here.”

“You feel okay?”

“It hurts to breathe.”

Silence.

I said, “Well, I ought to go, then.”

“No. Don't. Sit on the chair there.”

The guy in the other bed was snoring. I wondered what on earth to say after a decade of silence. “It was a nice memorial. Barb sure gets excited.”

“Kent should never have married her.”

“Barb? Why not?”

“No respect. Not for her elders.”

“Meaning
you
.”

“Yes, meaning me.”

“You actually think you deserve respect after what you said to her?”

He rolled his eyes. “From your perspective-from the way
you
look at the world, no.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“It means,
relax
. It means Kent ought to have married someone closer to his own heart.”

I huffed.

“Don't play dumb with me, Jason. It always looked bad on you. Kent needed a more devoted wife.”

I was floored. “Devoted?”

“You're being obtuse. Barb could never fully surrender to Kent. And without surrender, she could never be a true wife.”

I fidgeted with his water decanter, which seemed to be made of pink pencil eraser material. Why does everything in a hospital have to be not just ugly, but evocative of quick, premature and painful death? I said, “Barb has a personality.”

“I'm not saying she doesn't.”

“She's the mother of your two grandchildren.”

“I'm not an idiot, Jason.”

“How could you have gone and said something so insensitive last night-suggesting that one of the kids might not even have a soul. Are you really as mindlessly cruel as you seem?”

“The modern world creates complex moral issues.”

“
Twins
are not complex moral issues.
Twins
are
twins
.”

“I read the papers and watch the news, Jason. I see what's going on.”

I changed the subject. “How long are you in here?”

“Maybe five days.” He coughed, and it evidently hurt. Good.

“Are you sleeping okay?”

“Last night like a baby.”

A mood swept over me, and as with any important question in life, the asking felt unreal, like it came from another person's mouth: “How come you accused me of murder, Dad?”

Silence.

“Well?”

Still no reply.

I said, “I didn't come in here planning to ask you this. But now that I have, I'm not leaving until you give me a reply.”

He coughed.

“Now don't
you
play the little old man with me. Answer me.”

My father turned his face away, so I walked to the head of the bed, squatted down and grabbed his head, forcing him to lock eyes with me. “Hi, Dad. I asked you a question, and I think you owe me an answer. Whaddya say,
huh
?”

His expression wasn't hate and it wasn't love. “I didn't accuse you of murder.”

“Really now?”

“I merely pointed out that you had murder in your heart, and that you chose to act on that murderous impulse. Take from that what you will.”

“That's all?”

“Your mother, as you'll recall, stopped the dialogue at that point.”

“Mom stood up for me.”

“You really don't understand, do you?”

“What-there's something to
understand
here?”

My father said, “You were perfect.”

“I was
what
?”

“Your soul was perfect. If you'd died in the cafeteria, you'd have gone directly to heaven. But instead you chose murder, and now you'll never be totally sure of where you're headed.”

“You honestly believe this?”

“I'll always believe it.”

I let go of his head. The guy in the next bed was rousing. My father said, “Jason?” but I was already through the door. From his cracked and bruised chest he yelled the words, “All I ever wanted for you was the Kingdom.”

He'd stuck his saber through my gut. He'd done his job.

 

 

It's around midnight. After I left Dad, my choice was to either become very drunk or write this. I chose to write this. It felt kind of now-or-never for me.

Back to the massacre.

Two weeks after the attack, videocassettes were mailed to
the school's principal, to the local TV news programs and to the police. They had been made by the three gunmen using a Beta cam they'd rented from the school's A/V crib. It pretty much laid out what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, and why-the generic sort of alienation we've all become too familiar with during the 1990s.

You'd have thought these tapes would have cleared me completely, but no.
Someone
had to arrange for the tapes to be mailed, and
someone
had to be filming these three losers spouting their crap: it was a hand-held camera. So even when I was cleared, in the public mind I was never spotlessly cleared. There was never any doubt with the police and RCMP, thank God, but let me tell you, once people get a nutty idea in their head, it's there for good. And to this day, whoever shot the video and mailed the dubs remains a mystery.

A few celebrities emerged from the massacre, the first being me, semi-redeemed after two weeks of exhaustive investigation revealed my obvious innocence. But of course, for the only two weeks that really mattered, I was demonized.

The second celebrity-and the biggest-was Cheryl. When she wrote
GOD IS NOWHERE
/
GOD IS NOW HERE
, she'd finished with
GOD IS NOW HERE
, which was taken for a miracle, something I find a bit of a stretch.

The third celebrity was Jeremy Kyriakis, the gun boy who repented and was then vaporized for doing so.

During the weeks I spent in motel rooms, I often had nothing to do except reread the papers and watch TV while I exceeded my daily allotment of sedatives and thought of Cheryl, about our secret life together and-I can't express
what it felt like to be trashed for two weeks while at the same time Jeremy Kyriakis was being offered as poster boy for the it's-never-too-late strain of religious thinking. It was Jeremy who took out most of the kids by the snack machines-and shot off Demi Harshawe's foot, too-as well as producing most of the trophy case casualties, but he
repented
and so he was forgiven and lionized.

In the third week after the massacre, Kent returned to Alberta and we moved back into the house. Now I was a semi-hero, but at that point screw
everybody
. On the first Monday, around 9:15 in the morning, just after the soaps had started on TV, Mom asked if I was going to go back to school. I said no, and she said, “I figured so. I'm going to sell the house. It's in my name.”

“Good idea.”

There was a pause. “We should probably move away for a while. Maybe to my sister's place in New Brunswick. And change your hair like they do on crime shows. Find a job. Try and put time between you and the past few weeks.”

I made some forays into the world, but wherever I went I caused a psychic ripple that made me uncomfortable. At the Capilano Mall, one woman began crying and hugging me, and wouldn't let go, and when I finally got her off me, she'd left a phone number in my hand. Downtown I was spotted by a group of these dead Goth girls, who followed me everywhere, touching the sidewalk where my feet had just been as if their palms could receive heat from the act. As for school-related activities like sports, they were off the menu, too. Nobody ever phoned to apologize for abandoning me. The principal showed up on Tuesday-the For Sale sign was already on the lawn by then-and there were still eggs and
spray-painted threats and curses all over the house's walls. Mom let him in, asked if he'd like some coffee and settled him at the kitchen table with a cup, and then she and I went through the carport door and drove down to Park Royal to shop for carry-on baggage. When we got back a few hours later he was gone.