Knucklehead & Other Stories (24 page)

People come into the store from HydroCarb. Guys he used to work with, some are still there. They do a double take. Hamish lets them think it's his franchise. He's keeping the bills paid, he's doing all right. Kevin's BurgerWorld has become the top-performing store in Western Canada since Hamish started as manager. He's even cracked the Canadian top five a couple of times. Kevin looks after him, he's looking after Kevin.

But maybe he can do better for himself.

Each folder he pulls from the cabinet has a worksheet clipped to the front, a table listing capital, assets, sources of credit, potential returns and income. At the bottom of each worksheet are two underlined numbers. The first number is potential annual income. The second is the cash he needs to buy in. With the best of franchises, that's what you need. No loans. Not even from family. Cash. He brings a folder to the top. Affordability versus profitability. His future is donuts.

He crouches in the fresh snow, looking through the basement windows of his own house. The flakes accumulate on his shoulders and hat. His knees begin to ache from the crouch. He knows when he stands up his right hip will be stiff. Yet he continues to peek. There are two windows along the side of the house. Scuttling back and forth he can see most of the basement. In the long finished front room, Kimberly sits astride the cello. Quarter-profile, her right side and shoulder. Her hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, its almost-white blonde contrasting with the black turtleneck sweater. Black turtleneck and black tights, the only thing she wears outside of performance. That hair she brushes out a hundred times each night. For years when she was a little girl he sat beside her to count out the strokes. When did he quit doing that? Why? Is it gradually, or all at once? Over her shoulder on the music stand, he can see the score she is learning. The notes drift up through the glass. One of those modern pieces, fast, technical. He doesn't understand it. He is so proud of her, what she can do. When she plays in concert, the audience hangs in rapt attention. Complete strangers weep when she plays, it makes him cry too because they are crying, because his daughter's playing makes them cry. He is so proud. Yet he can feel his cheeks start to tingle with shame. He adores his Kimmy, he is awed by her talent. But he has never been able to overcome his indifference to the actual music. Supple and firm, her hand glides up and down the neck of the cello. Her other hand draws the bow back and forth in sure, fluid strokes. It dips and dives, stops suddenly as she plays a short passage
pizzicato.

He moves to the other window. Helen is in the semi-finished laundry and workroom. Wearing her housecoat, sorting her inventory on a long table. Most of it boxed or packaged, but every once in a while she picks up a merry widow or a pair of stockings that are loose, folds them. As Hamish watches, she undoes the belt, shrugs the housecoat from her shoulders. She is naked except for a garter belt that rests low on her hips, holding up silk stockings. She looks over, almost at him. Hamish draws back. Then he knows she is looking the in mirror on the wall below and a little to one side of the window. She smoothes the folds of the stockings over her thighs, adjusts a garter. She turns side to side, looks over her shoulder.

She is almost ten years younger than Hamish. He has worked to stay in shape, rides his bike, watches his diet, but his skin grows slack, bags accumulate under his eyes. Helen still has smooth olive skin. She cups her small rounded breasts, holds them up against their slight sag. Her nipples are stiff in the centre of the dark brown aureoles. Her stomach plumps in a slight curve, he can just see the two lightning bolts of the pregnancy stretch marks and the crescent moon of Robbie's caesarean scar. Thick thighs frame her dark pubic patch. She slips into a brassiere from a box on the table. Hamish pays attention to her body for the first time in weeks. She is the only woman in the world he ever holds close to his own body, the only woman in the world he makes love to, the only woman he has ever loved. He watches her pull on a pair of panties, two skimpy triangles of silk. She checks herself in the reflection. Tucking here, rearranging there. Her body is a mystery he learns over eight thousand nights. Sleeping side by side, scratching her back, bathing her feet. Holding the belly swelling in pregnancy, watching as she opens her womb to let the world swallow her children. He learns her mystery as a witness to its change. And now this, this woman in lace and silk. She never dresses in this lingerie for him, he never asks her to. He sees her as other men see her, as a lover might.

The back door opens and closes in the house next door. He hears the jingle of collar and licence at the fence behind him. The neighbour's dog growls, presses its snout through a crack between boards. Hamish looks behind, sees teeth as the dog snarls. “Shoo,” he says. The dog growls again. Hamish's knees pop as he straightens up. “Easy, boy,” he says to the dog. The dog barks. Hamish breaks into a run, in his peripheral vision he thinks he sees Helen move to the window, thinks he hears the cello stop playing. As he moves to the back, the dog follows on the other side, barking and scratching at the fence. He drops a mitt, fumbles for his keys at the door to the garage, locks himself inside. He hears Mrs. Klemmer calling to her dog, “Heidi! Heidi. Vass is das?” He stands inside the door, holds his breath, feels his beating heart. His hands sting.

He calls a family meeting one morning, before school. They cram themselves around the kitchen table. “When was the last time we were all at the table at the same time?” Robbie asks. He pushes Shredded Wheat around his bowl with his spoon. He answers himself: “Probably last Christmas.”

Mike is eating his way through a stack of toast gobbed with peanut butter. Fingers clutch a pen as he copies something from one notebook to another. Headphones clapped over his ears, the thumping bassline, rap vocals. Bent head bobs to the beat. Alan slouches in a chair, blows on a cup of tea. Leans back, closes his eyes.

Helen babysits a stack of paper in the fax document feeder. “Oh no, it was sooner than that. That's almost a year ago. Easter at least. Didn't we have that barbecue last summer?”

“Barbecues don't count,” Robbie says. “We're all in the yard, but not at the table.”

“Thanksgiving dinner?”

“I was away Thanksgiving,” Kimmy says. She peels a banana, slices it into her organic yogurt and granola. She pulls one of the books away from Mike. “Hey, that's my book. What are you doing?”

Mike pulls it back. “I need that.”

“You loser, you're copying my homework. That's two years old.”

Robbie speaks up: “Mike says Mrs. Boyle's still handing out the same assignments. He says I'll be able to use it too.”

“Pathetic. Hey,” she says. She reaches over, yanks the headphones from Mike's ears. “That book was in my room. Did you go in my room?” Mike keeps his head down, copies more homework. “Mom, Mike went in my room.” She snaps the phones back. Mike slides them down on his shoulders, stops the tape.

“What's the big deal. Everyone else does.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Mike shrugs. “Ask Dad.”

She turns to her father. “What's he talking about. You go in my room too? I told you, Mom. I told you. I'm getting a lock.”

Hamish speaks: “There will be no locks on any doors in this house.”

“But—”

“No buts. No locks. End of discussion.” Spoons clink against the rims of bowls, Alan slurps, Mike's pen scratches. The fax completes its transmission with a beep. Hamish clears his throat.

Robbie says, “You have a lock on the garage.”

“That's different.”

“Why?” Robbie holds a spoonful of cereal in mid-air, waits for an answer. Mike and Alan exchange smirks. Kimmy nibbles her yogurt. “Why is it different?”

Hamish's face turns red. He rubs his cheeks. Sweat forms on his upper lip. Helen intercedes: “I don't think your dad asked us all together to talk about locks and doors. Let's save that discussion for another day.” She comes up behind Robbie, massages his shoulders.

“When?”

“Later,” Helen says.

Hamish clears his throat again. A hive the size of a horsefly bite bulges on the end of his nose. “I thought we should have a little meeting so I could let everyone know about some things I've been giving a lot of thought to.”

“Is this gonna be long, because I gotta leave to catch my bus in like nine minutes.” Mike closes the books.

“We'll see how long it takes and you stay right in your chair.”

“Okay, okay. You're the one who has the big hairy about being late and missing classes.”

“I'll drive you if you miss the bus,” Helen says.

“Mike's got a point. I don't have to be to school till ten, but I can't sit around all morning. I want to practise.”

“Enough! We will sit at this table until I say so. You too, Helen. Sit.” Helen is back over by the sink. She pours a coffee, stands to one side. “I've been thinking about a lot of things. The future. What's best for us. The family. I've decided we need to change some things.”

Helen: “Don't you think we should talk about this first?”

“Just listen, Helen. I've thought long and hard. I've decided to face the facts. I realize I need to change careers.” He stops. Waits.

Robbie: “You're not going to work at BurgerWorld anymore?”

“No. I mean geology. I'm not going to be a geologist any more.”

Alan stirs from his slouch. “Gee, Dad, no offence, but that's a no-brainer. I mean, what's it been? Three years?”

“Twenty-eight-and-a-half months.”

Helen: “Where are you going with this?”

Mike: “Yeah, Pops, what's up?”

“I've been at BurgerWorld a couple of years and I've learned a great deal about the fast food industry—”

Helen groans, puts her cup down.

“—I've seen your Uncle Kevin have great success leveraging his capital—”

Helen: “Don't do this, Hamish. You can still stop.”

“— and I see no reason why we can't be successful too—”

“I knew it. I knew it.”

“—It would be an excellent opportunity for the whole family—”

“I can't believe this. I can't believe you never once asked my opinion.”

“—to participate and help out and earn a little money too. What do you think?”

Silence. Helen shakes her head. Five pairs of eyes avoid his gaze. Finally Robbie says, “What do you mean, Dad?”

“He means,” Kimmy says, “that he wants to own his own restaurant serving up dead cows and dead pigs and dead chickens.”

“Cool,” says Mike.

“And he wants us all to work there like some sort of family slave labour.”

“Oh. Not so cool.”

Hamish clears his throat again. He rubs at his nose. His fingers feel like Italian sausages swelling and burning with their own heat. His nose feels like a foot stuck to his face. “Not burgers.” He flips open the file folder face down in front of him, pulls out a brochure. “Donuts. Tim Hortons Donuts.”

Robbie: “Wow.”

Helen: “And how do you propose to pay for this, the dutiful wife asks, dreading the answer that she thinks she already knows.”

“We'll take out a mortgage on the house.”

“Okay, I'll bite. Will that give you enough for a Tim Hortons?”

“Well, no. In point of fact, it won't. We'll need to come up with some more.”

“Borrow it? Are you going to ask Kevin for help?”

“Well, no. They don't like partnerships. A family loan would be construed as partnership. Franchisers like to see liquidity. Unencumbered cash.”

“And where do you suppose we'll find cash of the sort you're talking, let alone unencumbered?”

“We'll have to be creative. Look for assets with a value. Think of how we have to create a value proposition.”

“Cut the crap. Like what?” Helen presses.

Kimmy jumps in: “You're talking about my cello, aren't you?” Hamish doesn't answer right away. “You are. You're going to sell my cello. Say it.”