The Monkeyface Chronicles (18 page)

Outside of school, my grandfather is all I've got left. Michael spends his spare time going to Socialite/Jock parties, hanging out with his hockey buddies, and frisking and sucking on Caitlin Black anywhere they can get away with it. At the end of the day, Michael goes to his room, and I go to mine. We see each other when we play hockey, but we're like any two random teammates rather than twin brothers. While Graham and Grant Brush play as a paired unit, Michael and I are on separate lines. We are only on the ice together on the power play and sometimes to kill penalties.

I've slipped a little in my goal-scoring; Grant Brush is now just one goal behind me for the league scoring title, and Michael trails me by two. We've got just one game left in the regular season before playoffs start, which will determine who walks away with the trophy. I don't care much about winning it, but I
do
care about preventing that asshole Grant from having it. Part of me also wants to prove that I can beat my genetically perfect Superbrother at something. I would like my father to see that happen, though it's unlikely that he will witness our final game of the season; he is nothing more than a ghostly presence in the house these days. He roars away atop his CBX for days at time, and when he returns, sequesters himself in his basement laboratory. He doesn't even eat dinner with us anymore. Our mother tells us he's involved in “very important work.”

Mom spends her free time “organizing” — arranging and rearranging the silverware and dishes in the kitchen, colour-coordinating the outfits in her closet and drawers, sorting the books alphabetically by author, stacking the magazines by date. When there is nothing to rearrange, she will pay my grandfather a visit, and if he's busy, she just stands at the kitchen counter in her usual pose of contemplation: head cocked to one side, hair flowing over the back of one shoulder.

As if there wasn't already enough tension in the Skyler household, Adeline's departure has amplified it. The day after her father took her away to Toronto, a group of protestors from the Tabernacle of God's Will, led by a red-eyed Candace Brown, assembled outside our house, waving their standard placards.
Sex for pleasure equals HELL for ETERNITY! Science
LIES, God's WILL is TRUTH!
and
Pretenders and Idolaters will
SUFFER
! as well as several hastily-made new ones:
The Mother/
Child bond is SACRED!
and, simply,
SHAME!

“Let us PRAY!” Candace Brown shouted deliriously. She jumped up and down, waving her arms in the air like a possessed cheerleader. “Oh LORD,” she cried, “this is a house full of GODLESS ATHEISTS, PRETENDERS, IDOLATORS! Make them feel the STING of your WRATH!”

“HEAR US, LORD!” shouted the crowd of pilgrim-garbed Tabernaclers.

“Oh LORD,” shouted Candace Brown, spit flying from her lips, “this is a house full of LIES! Lies of SCIENCE, lies of GREED, lies of LUST! Make them feel the STING of your WRATH!”

“HEAR US, LORD!” came the self-righteous echo.

“Oh LORD,” bellowed Candace Brown, her braided hair swinging side-to-side, “the bond between mother and child is SACRED! These people have BROKEN this SACRED BOND! Make them feel the STING of your WRATH!”

“HEAR US, LORD!” came the response, like a home team's fans after an overtime goal.

Inside our house, Mom, Michael and I tried to go about our usual Saturday business, but it wasn't easy with a screaming mob outside, even if there were only a dozen of them, dressed like extras in a Thanksgiving play. When they chanted about the “lies of greed” Michael sneered and glanced over at the picture of Dennis on top of the living room TV. After a particularly vigorous “lies of science” chorus, I'm pretty sure I saw Mom glance pensively at the floor under her feet, where our father's laboratory resides. Michael shot a nasty look at
me
when they were going on about the “sacred bond of mother and child,” as if it was
my
fault that I witnessed Adeline's Mother smacking her around and locking her up like a prisoner of war. Besides,
Michael
isn't so pure — he should think about “sins of lust” the next time he ducks into the shadows to stick his tongue down Caitlin Black's throat.

The police eventually arrived again, and sent Candace Brown and her posse back down the lane to the Tabernacle parking lot, where they've held a faithful vigil ever since, ready to wave their placards and holler at us every time we leave our house. Although their numbers have dwindled to only five or six regulars, they've been at it for the entire month that Adeline has been away.

The Skyler family has taken over the number one spot on the Sinners and Blasphemers Hit List. Everyone else in Faireville must be breathing a sigh of relief; better us than them. Inside our faux-castle home, every silent second smolders with tension. We whisper, we close doors gently, we inhabit separate rooms. One wrong move from anyone and everything could explode in a violent rush of flames.

I wish that somebody would show up in a long, black limousine and take
me
away from here.

I am startled by the sound of my grandfather's voice. When he used to drive his 1940 Ford Deluxe, the rumble of its old V8 engine let you know he was coming; his new bicycle does nothing to announce his arrival.

“Did I catch you daydreaming, Philip?”

He just rode his bike here all the way up the steep grade of our laneway, yet he's hardly broken a sweat. Not bad for a man who celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday just a couple of months ago.

There is a law that persons aged eighty and over must write a test and get their eyes examined every two years in order to keep their driving licences; some are randomly asked to take a road test as well. When my grandfather turned eighty, and later eighty-two, Faireville still had its own Provincial Licensing Office, which was run by Pearl Bunyon, a former town councillor and a staunch ally of my grandfather when he was mayor. Pearl always renewed my grandfather's licence as a matter of course. However, since Clarence Brush was narrowly elected as the mayor of Faireville three years ago, many things have changed, including the closing of the Faireville Licensing Office.

Yes, Clarence Brush, my former elementary school principal, father to Graham and Grant Brush, is now the political leader of our little town. My grandfather is not happy about it, to say the very least.

“He's using the mayor's chair as a stepping stone,” he complained as we drove together to the Gasberg Licensing Office. “It's no secret that he wants to run in the next provincial election, so he's allowing all the government services in Faireville to be closed down to show them he's on board with their plans to
consolidate
and
privatize
everything. It makes me sick. A mayor's first responsibility is to the townspeople who elected him, not to his own political ambitions.”

He gripped the steering wheel in his left hand and firmly downshifted with his right, easing the solid old car around a hairpin turn at the edge of a lakeside cliff. For generations, people have referred to this treacherous aberration of Gasberg Road as
“Suicide Curve.”

“Back when I was mayor,” my grandfather said, “I tried to get a motion passed to get this section of road straightened. Of course, Clarence Brush convinced the other councillors that the expense was too great, that all that was needed here was a flashing yellow light and a small fence. Every time I drive through here I'm reminded of the smug look on Brush's face as my motion was voted down.”

He stared into the straight stretch of road beyond the curve, accelerated back to highway speed, and jammed the shifter into high gear. Unlike when I went in to get my beginner's driver's licence on my sixteenth birthday, my grandfather was brimming over with confidence, actually
hoping
to be randomly selected for a road test; he would show
them
that he was the same man he'd always been.

He was, in fact, selected for a road test, which he easily passed. He got a perfect score on the written test. All he had to do now was go through the formalities of posing for an up-to-date photo for his licence card and taking a vision test, and he would be free to drive his 1940 Ford for another two years.

I sat in the waiting room and watched him standing in line, squinting at the glaring fluorescent lights like a baseball player about to step up to the plate to hit a Grand Slam. Finally, the young woman behind the counter called out his name. She raised the eye-testing device up to its maximum height, and my grandfather leaned forward and nestled his eyes into the rubber cups.

“Please read the second last line for me, Sir,” she said sweetly.

“C, L, Q, T, R, N, O.”

“Good!” she chirped. “Now read the last line.”

“Umm . . . O, W, G, umm . . . O again, N . . . M?”

“Hmm,” said the girl. “It appears that you've become slightly nearsighted since your last renewal, sir. You'll need to visit your eye doctor to get some corrective lenses prescribed, then you can schedule another appointment to . . . ”

“What?” my grandfather protested. “I've never needed glasses! My vision is as good today as it's ever been.”

“Sir, I'm afraid . . . ”

“Let me try again. There must be some mistake.”

To a chorus of sighs from the other people in line behind my grandfather, she put a different letter card into the machine, and he tried again, with the same result.

“I do
not
need glasses. I've
never
needed them. My vision is
perfect
, and has been for my entire eighty-four years!”

“Well, sir, I can't renew your licence until . . . ”

“I passed the driving test! I got
perfect
on the written test!”

“All you have to do is go see your eye doctor, and . . . ”

“I don't
need
glasses, and I am not
getting
glasses.”

“Sir,” the flustered girl said, “Because of your vision test result, I can't renew your licence. You'll either have to return for another test when you've been prescribed corrective lenses, or . . . ”

“Or what? You'll take away an old man's only means of transportation? Force me to ride my
bicycle
into town to get my meat and eggs?”

“Look,” she sighed, “I'm just doing my job, okay?”

“To borrow a phrase from Junius,” said my grandfather, “I will
neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures
. And the requirement that I get glasses to continue driving is
most
arbitrary. I do not
need
glasses, and I refuse to
get
glasses.”

“I guess you'd better trade your car in for a new bicycle, then.”

She ceremoniously placed a small sticker on my grandfather's licence card, which read:
For Identification Purposes
Only — NOT A DRIVER'S LICENCE
.

And that was that. My grandfather slid his neutered licence card into his wallet, then fished in his front pocket for his car keys, which he dropped into my palm. “Take me home, Philip,” he said.

He gazed out the passenger-side window while I drove the old Ford Deluxe back to Faireville. Neither of us spoke until we reached Suicide Curve.

“Why don't you just go get some glasses?” I finally said. “Don't you think you're being a bit stubborn?”

“The only way I ever accomplished anything in life was by being stubborn,” he said. “If I had been a bit more stubborn while I was still the mayor, maybe there would still be a licensing office in Faireville, and I would still be able to drive my car. The moment I ease off and let others control things, everything starts falling apart.”

When we arrived at my grandfather's house, I backed the old car into the garage and silenced the gurgling V8.

“Well, Philip, to quote Emily Dickinson,” he said, as we ducked under the open garage door,
“Old age comes on
suddenly, and not gradually as is thought.”

My grandfather pulled the garage door down with a whoosh and a bang.

It has not been opened since.