Poles Apart (3 page)

I don’t think my father understood what was happening. The day after my high school graduation, there he was, looking dazed and confused at my mother’s university convocation. Oh sure, he seemed proud on the surface. He smiled for the family snapshots. But it didn’t take a Freud scholar to see that he felt his primacy in the family was threatened. His bottom-of-the-class high school diploma didn’t quite cut it next to Mom’s top-of-the-class, summa cum laude, university business degree. It was only a few months until his insecurity detonated into a mushroom cloud of selfish paranoia. You see, even back then, “perception and judgment” was never Dad’s strong suit.

It simmered over the summer as I joined my dad on the line at the Ford plant. But as I packed up my stuff and got ready to head off to Ryerson University, it happened. A letter arrived for my mother from the Faculty of Management at the University of Toronto. I found it in our mailbox when I arrived home from my final Ford shift and handed the envelope to my mother. My father was doing what he usually did at 6:30 after our traditional 6 p.m. dinner. He was having a beer, unleashing a few burps, and watching the sports segment of the evening news on
TV
in our basement rec room. My mother’s high-pitched squeal brought
him running, but only after watching the “Highlight of the Night” segment.

“What the hell is all the racket?” he said as he stepped into the kitchen from the basement stairs.

My mother and I were still holding hands and dancing around the room. I’d never seen her quite so happy. It looked good on her.

“I’m in! I’m really in!” she said, waving the letter around her head. “It took a while, but it’s happened. They just had a final space open up and I’ve been offered admission. Classes start next week.”

“Awesome news, Mom.” I beamed. Dad’s look shut me down. He looked … angry.

“What are you talking about?” he began. “And your answer better not include the word ‘university.’ We’ve been over and over this and you know where I stand.”

“Billy, when we talked about it before, I really didn’t think I was going to get in. When I missed the application deadline, I thought it was all over. But they let me in. They want me. It’s right here. It’s late, but I’m in.”

“Sorry. Not happening.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“Billy, we have to reopen the discussion now that they’ve let me in. Do you know what a rare opportunity this is? I’ve been accepted to grad school at U of T. Do you know what that means? In two years I’ll have my
MBA
and then I, we, can write our own ticket. We’ll be set for life.”

“Sorry. Not happening. We agreed when Ev started high school
that you could do your little McMaster courses but that’s where it ends,” he said, scowling at the floor.

I stayed where I was, still holding one of Mom’s hands.

“Are you actually saying that I’m not permitted to pursue a graduate degree now that Ev is completely out of the house? Are you actually saying I must just stay at home and dust, and cook, and do your laundry?” She took a step toward Dad as she said this, her voice low and level.

“I make the money in this house. I work my ass off on the line so we can live in this house and eat three squares a day. I bought you a car. I paid for your classes, and the dough those university assholes charge is a fucking rip-off! We just can’t afford to send two Kanes to university.”

“But, Dad, I’m paying for my own university,” I piped up.

“Yeah, because of the job I got for you,” he snapped. “And this is not your discussion, so shut it.”

He turned back to Mom and pointed his index finger right at her face.

“I don’t sweat on the line every fucking day so you can keep reliving your youth at university. I sucked it up and let you do your little degree, but that’s where it stops. You got your stupid diploma, but now it’s over. End of discussion!”

She looked at him for what seemed like a long time. I know it wasn’t long, but the silence became excruciating. Finally, she took a step closer to him and pointed her index finger right in his face.

“You’re right. It is over.”

Then she turned her back on him and walked out.

All this happened nearly twenty years ago, yet I can play back that scene in my memory as if it happened eighteen minutes ago. Moment by moment. Word for word. Gesture for gesture. And in my gut, I still get that tight little knot of what I eventually identified as fear.

At the time, Dad didn’t know what had just happened. Mom had pushed back before, but never like this. He assumed she’d gone out to let off some steam and would be back in time to unload the dishwasher, set the table for breakfast, and crawl into the matrimonial bed as she had every other time. But she didn’t come back.

She called later that night from her parents’ home. They’d retired by then and moved back to Toronto. Through his closed bedroom door, I could hear Dad talking to her. It wasn’t a long conversation. Years later, Dad admitted to me that when he hung up the phone that night and laid his head on the pillow, he still thought she’d relent and come home. She didn’t.

I felt terrible. I felt helpless. But still, I left for Ryerson the next day.

The family unit splintered into its three constituent elements. My father stayed in Oakville while my mother and I packed up and moved to Toronto. I spent my first year in residence at Ryerson while Mom rented an apartment not far from the University of Toronto. Her parents, who had harboured grave doubts about
Billy Kane since Evelyn first brought him home more than twenty-five years earlier, were more than happy to underwrite her rent and tuition. In their eyes, she was back on track, and still only in her thirties.

It took a while, but my mother and father sold the family home, split the proceeds, and inked a divorce. Dad paid some alimony in the early stages, but it wasn’t long before Mom was making more than he was, so his payments eventually ceased. Dad worked at the Oakville plant for a few more years but then moved back to Detroit, bought a little bungalow, and returned to the line at the Dearborn plant, for another thirteen years. Then, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown that hit the auto sector so hard, Ford was looking to reduce its labour force and streamline its operations even more. So at the age of fifty-seven, and after logging nearly forty years of service to the company, Dad took a package and retired. Ford gave him his full pension and lifetime health benefits. It was a deal he couldn’t refuse.

As a city, Detroit was spiralling into urban palliative care, so he sold his little bungalow while it still had some value and headed south. It helped that he hated the winters more and more each year. Besides, Florida real estate was cheap then. Still is now. He bought a nice little condo in Orlando, cash on the barrelhead, and did what he could never do when he was married and working shifts. He golfed, almost every day. His pension was more than adequate to keep food on the table and golf balls in his bag. He no longer drove a Mustang but was quite happy with
his top-of-the-line Ford Focus purchased with the employee discount. Hanging out most of his waking hours with a bunch of golfers cut from the same cloth gave him a certain sense of belonging, while his language and jokes regressed to late adolescence. To my knowledge, he has never dated after Mom, though I can report as a first-hand witness that he still leers and flirts, a lot. (Of course I call him on it each time. I can’t help it.) But after everything that’s happened, he seems okay. He even seems happy.

On the other hand, my mother seems more than okay, and more than happy. She found her place, too, in a big way. Her only regret is that she didn’t find it sooner. She finished her
MBA
on schedule and with top marks. She’d gravitated to the tourism and hospitality sector during her studies and quite quickly landed a marketing job at the Toronto headquarters of the Pearson Group, one of the leading developers and owners of luxury hotels and resorts in North America.

She was born to the business. She was a star. Within two years, she was running Marketing. Then she spent five years climbing the ladder in the Property Management division. Finally, she took over the New Property Development team and learned the ropes, fast. She negotiated land deals, oversaw the design of resort properties, and then managed the construction phase from sod-turning to ribbon-cutting. She was tough, and smart, and worked harder than anyone else in the company. She racked up success after success, added a few coups along the way, and two years ago, at the tender age of fifty-five, was named the Pearson
Group’s
CEO
. Yes, it’s true. My stay-at-home mother is now running a global company.

When the appointment notice ran in the
Globe and Mail
, her parents were bursting with pride. I was bursting with pride. Dad? Not so much. I think, deep down, he was proud of her. But I don’t think he had any idea how to push through his own insecurity, unearth that tattered shred of goodwill in her success, and express it. So he golfed instead.

It’s been eighteen years since my mother walked out on my backward father. Since then, I’ve made it my mission to be a son, an only son, to them both, equally. It hasn’t been easy. My father is, well, difficult, and my mother is, um, difficult, too, for different reasons … and for some of the same reasons. I guess I probably knew I’d be going down to help my father even before my mother asked me. I really didn’t want to go. But I’m the son. I’m their son. And this is what good sons do, even if they don’t want to.

I know what you’re thinking. Haven’t I left something out? What’s happened to me since I headed off to Ryerson eighteen years ago? All in good time. All in good time.

I picked up the phone and dialed the hospital.

“Hello, stroke central.”

“Dad? Is that you?”

“Everett! How the hell are you? How’s it hanging?” he replied, as if he were calling from a bachelor party.

“Dad, are you okay? Mom just called me.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d be on the blower to me tonight. What kind of son would you be if you weren’t?” I assumed he was asking rhetorically. “Hey, how was your mother? Did she seem upset? Was she concerned? Was she crying at all?” he asked with what seemed like anticipation.

“Dad, of course she was upset. She wasn’t really crying, but you know she’s very good, um, at internalizing emotions. She’s a
CEO
now. I don’t think she’s allowed to cry anymore.”

“Oh.”

“Dad, I’m kidding. I think she probably was sniffling a bit when she told me,” I salvaged. “So how are you feeling?”

“Well, I can’t walk worth a shit. My left hand is fuckin’ useless, and my left leg feels like a broken drive shaft from an F150. I just drag it around behind me.”

“Holy shit, really? Is your leg, you know, totally paralyzed?”

“Kind of half-paralyzed, I guess. I’ve got some feeling there, but not much. It kind of feels like pins and needles, but not exactly,” he said. “And what’s worse, my golf game is in the crapper and won’t be getting better any time soon.”

“Sorry about your golf game, but I’m more interested in your prognosis.”

“Yeah, well, my prognosis wasn’t affected. It’s still working fine,” he said with an edge. “I have no fuckin’ idea what the word prog-fucking-nosis even means.”

“Sorry. It sort of means what’s going to happen to you. Are you going to get better?” I explained.

“Well, why didn’t you just say that,” he snapped. “The docs say I’m going to get better, but it’s going to take some time and I got to relearn stuff like using my crippled hand and my cement leg.”

“Okay, so what do they have you doing?”

“Well, in the mornings I do a couple hours of physio, or what I call Torture Time. Then in the afternoon, I got to walk around the big backyard at this place until my left leg starts to keep up with my right. And I got to squeeze my balls with my left hand.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I love saying that,” he said. “They gave me these two little black rubber balls. I got to spend all day squeezing them with my left hand.”

“Okay, got it. I was confused for a moment there … well, you know …”

“Yeah, well, I guess if I squeezed my own balls all day, they’d be black, too.”

“Thanks, Dad. That’s just the image I was hoping to have stuck in my head.” I paused, but not for long. “So, do you have your own room?”

“Yep, and it ain’t half bad. The bed’s kind of hard. You know, somewhere between old carpeting and three-quarter-inch plywood. But I got a
TV
on this funky boom gizmo so I can watch it in bed. Hell, I could yank it down and watch it under the bed if I wanted. And my physioperists are mostly hot. They’re always coming in and cooing in my ear, and rubbing my left arm and leg. A shame I can’t feel much there yet. But give me time. One
day a guy came in to work on me, so that was a little weird and uncomfortable. But the rest are fine. Anyway, the women are all over me, you know? Three and four times a day. Who can blame them?”

“Physiotherapists.”

“What?”

“Dad, they’re called physiotherapists.”

“I know what they’re fucking called. I was just messing with you.”

“Dad, why did you wait so long to call?”

“I was just waiting to see how long it took you to call me,” he said.

“I’m coming down, Dad,” I said. “I’m moving down for a while. I’m going to help you walk it off. We’re going to do it together.”

“Hey, thanks, Ev. That would be nice. To see you, I mean, and talk a bit,” he started. “But, listen, rather than saying ‘We’re going to
do it
together,’ how about just saying ‘We’re going to
get through it
together.’ Okay, son?”

“Ah geez,” I said to no one in particular. “So have you gotten to know any of your fellow patients?”

“Well, I got my eye on a few of the women limping around the grounds. I think they’re a little older but I figure that just means they got more experience.”

“Dad, I wasn’t asking if you were cruising the patients, or scoring with them. I just wondered if you’d met any of them? You know, and had a normal, civilized conversation, the way people sometimes do.”