The Second Son
Authors: Bob Leroux
Tags: #FIC000000 FIC043000 FIC045000 FICTION / General / Coming of Age / Family Life
The Second Son
Bob Leroux
GENERAL STORE PUBLISHING HOUSE INC.
499 O’Brien Road, Renfrew, Ontario, Canada K7V 3Z3
Telephone 1.613.599.2064 or 1.800.465.6072
ISBN 978-1-897508-79-4 (Pbk)
978-1-77123-263-0 (EPUB)
978-1-77123-264-7 (MOBI)
978-1-77123-265-4 (PDF)
Copyright © Robert Leroux 2015
Cover art, design: Magdalene Carson
Printed by Image Digital Printing Ltd. dba The IDP Group
Printed and bound in Canada
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, Ontario, M5E 1E5.
Cataloguing in publication data available at Library and Archives Canada
OR, if available, the full data, following:
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Leroux, J. Robert, 1945-
Second son / Bob Leroux.
ISBN 978-1-897508-79-4
I. Title.
PS8573.E668S43 201
C813’.6
C2010-901930-X
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, are coincidental.
The Second Son
I STARTED WRITING THIS DOWN
in the summer of ’87, after my father died. It has sat in a drawer ever since, waiting for my mother to die. The reason for that will be obvious — I am not a monster. I just want people to understand what really happened, back there in Alexandria on July 1, 1958.
I’ve told the whole story, from start to finish, good and bad, as best I could. The more I wrote, the more the memories kept bubbling up. For the parts about my childhood, I just cast my mind back and let the story come out the same way I saw things back then. I’m not sure all the pieces fall in the right order. Sometimes I felt like a cow meandering its way back to the barn, moving from one grassy patch to another, chewing on whatever came up.
Whether it is a cautionary tale, or just another story about life in a small town, I will leave to the reader. At least it will give people a better idea of what we were like in the old days, my family and me. I’m not expecting forgiveness. I realized a long time ago that knowing the reasons behind a person’s behaviour doesn’t make it any easier to accept. Maybe there are some things in life that can’t be forgiven.
Mike Landry
December 2009
May 1987
WHEN I CAME THROUGH
the kitchen door that night, my mother was standing by the fridge. She turned and gave a little start, a faint echo perhaps of all the times I had come rushing home with a child’s big news. She straightened and her face softened as she took a step toward me, her hands by her side, open, ready for an embrace, a kiss. I took a half-step, then stopped. I couldn’t do it. All those years of holding back could not be let loose with one soft look. I watched the hope fade from her eyes as we muttered our hellos.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” she said as she ushered me past the backroom where the kids were watching television. “Say hello to your Uncle Mike, children.” There were quick greetings as we kept moving through the dining room and into the parlour.
Andrew grunted at me from the couch. Jean got up and came over to give me a quick hug. I didn’t mind. She had always tried to overcome her misgivings, and I appreciated that. My mother pointed to the recliner by the bay window. “Take your father’s chair. It’s the most comfortable.” I hesitated but she had already moved to her chair by the reading lamp, so I sank reluctantly into the overstuffed leather recliner. It was warm. Someone had been sitting in it. I looked over at Andrew.
There we were, at the family home on Elm Street, brought together once again by bad news. And it was there with us, the same old monster I knew so well. The monster I had stroked and coaxed and kept alive through all these years, ready to come home with me whenever the occasion called. It was funerals mostly, that brought me back. I didn’t do weddings. I figured young people getting married didn’t deserve a monster on the guest list. Except maybe my brother, Andrew.
I wanted to show up for his nuptials but I chickened out and got drunk for three days, never getting any closer than a motel in Cornwall, about thirty miles down the road from Alexandria. I tried to sneak home for Christmas a couple of times, without my old friend. I even bought presents for everyone, thinking it would be safe enough if I concentrated on making merry with Andrew and Jean’s kids. Couldn’t keep it from creeping back, though. Not even the laughter of innocent children could scare away the monster. It always seemed to suck the life out of everybody. After the second uptight Christmas at home I cut back to funerals, a better fit for me and my dark shadow.
My brother and I were the only ones who knew the monster’s true dimensions, its size and its shape, the sharpness of its bite. And maybe my parents, who knew but didn’t want to know. The others only thought they knew. Jean and the kids — old enough by now to have heard their father’s version of the family disgrace — the rest of the family, the good people of Alexandria, they probably thought the big bad wolf was tethered to me. Just because it showed up every time I arrived home from out West, up North, wherever I’d been hiding. They didn’t know I had only been babysitting it all these years, caring for it until I could find the right moment to dump it off where it belonged. Maybe this time, I was thinking as I waited for someone to say something.
The old man was sick in the hospital, not expected to live. I had stopped by for directions. They all stared at me for what seemed like a long moment, and I was suddenly sorry I had come here at all. This is a mistake, I thought. Who are these people? Where’s my real brother, the golden boy of Glengarry? Who is this overweight, balding man? And this old woman? This is not the mother I remember when I think of home. How could I possibly have thought there was anything left for me here? And the old man? God knows what’s waiting for me there. “So,” I finally asked, “where did you put him?”
My mother’s eyes narrowed. “We didn’t
put
him anywhere. He’s being cared for at the Hotel Dieu, in Cornwall.” When I didn’t react, she added, “Are you planning on going there tonight?”
“Should I?”
“Tomorrow should be soon enough.” She seemed to ponder what she meant by that, then took a deep breath before continuing, “He’s in C Wing. Just ask at the reception. It’s not hard to find, on McConnell Street. North. I’ll write it down for you.”
“It’s his heart?”
“Yes,” Andrew answered, “congestive heart failure. He’s suffered several small strokes, because of the blood pooling in his heart. One leg is almost useless, and his mind has been going downhill the last few weeks.”
“He’s just a little forgetful,” my mother clarified.
“How long has he been in there?”
“Three months,” she answered.
“Jesus Christ, why didn’t you call me?”
She surprised me with her calm response, refusing to go on the defensive. “We brought him in for tests after he had the first stroke. They said it was a mild one and he could be expected to recover fully. Then he had another one while he was in there. All along we thought he would be coming home. It was only in the last week, when the water retention started, they told us his heart was giving out. That’s when I called you.”
My mother, still the lioness in her den. Good bone structure and good posture had seen her through the middle years and into the beginning of old age, her past glories shining through the aging skin and blue rinse hair. She had been retired for only a few years and still had the quiet confidence she had gained after she started working in the post office. That frailty I remembered from my childhood seemed submerged, somehow, as though her delicate beauty had morphed into this graceful matriarch, leaving behind the limitations of youth.
“That must be a pain,” I finally conceded, “driving into Cornwall every day.”
She stiffened ever so slightly. “I go every second day. Andrew and Jean go on weekends.”
I tried not to react. She was ready for it, the challenge there in her eyes. “I see,” was all I managed. I looked at Jean, wondering if she approved. I had a soft spot for this woman.
“A good Glengarry girl,” my father had described her, “solid and sensible, raised on the farm, used to hard work and plain food.” She was also blessed with good looks, looks that lasted. I always hated that Andrew had her. Maybe because she had kept her looks. Still had that tight ass and flat stomach, and a rack that wasn’t going droopy on her. And she was no pushover. She had the kind of courage it took to marry the brother of the infamous Mike Landry, something that endeared her to me even as I resented Andrew’s good fortune.
Maybe he picked up my thoughts, because he broke the silence. “That’s the way Dad wants it. He’s happier knowing Mother isn’t on that highway every day.” Then he tried to make a joke. “He never did have much faith in Mother’s driving. Right, Mom?”