Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (5 page)

Things only got worse after that. Now, so many years later, Brewster realized how much he had resented his parents for having bowed to the school’s advice to accelerate him through the elementary grades. Back then it had seemed to him that he had been grinding along with a nose in a book, playing catch-up his entire short life. He felt that something had been stolen from him, that his humiliations had cheated him out of some share of childhood innocence and freedom.

Somehow he had identified his anger with freedom, blowing off steam by drinking and brawling, by hanging out with
a tough crowd that looked for trouble at a dance hall at a nearby lake. One night as he and his buddies were leaning up against a Dodge Charger in the Danceland parking lot, passing around a bottle of rye, the owner of the car, a guy easily ten years older than any of them, came storming over to shoo them off his precious vehicle. Brewster hadn’t moved quickly enough for the man and he took a kick in the ass to hurry him along. That night he fractured both hands on the face of the owner of the Charger and finished high school wearing casts signed by all his new best friends.

After graduation, he got a job on a railway extra-gang. His marks had plummeted during his last two years of high school and he had barely earned his diploma. The railway crew worked six days a week, Sundays off. One of those Sunday afternoons Brewster hitchhiked into a nearby city, took in a matinee, and then dropped into a pizza house to get something to eat before heading back to camp. In the booth across from him, two couples whom he took to be university students were talking loudly and self-importantly about their classes, blah blah Psych 213, blah blah Poly Sci 333, blah blah Socio 211. They were pointedly ignoring the waitress who had come to take their order, an exhausted-looking middle-aged woman with sagging, laddered nylon stockings and a pencil tucked behind her ear. Finally she interrupted them by saying, “Have youse guys decided yet?”

One of the young men answered, “Plurally, us guys have decided on all-dressed.” His friends broke up, laughed even harder when a bewildered look skimmed over her face. When she had gone, the jokester took a pen out of his shirt pocket, slipped it behind his ear, and said, “I keep my
writing implement close to my deep thoughts.” More hilarity.

The waitress reminded Brewster of his wan Aunt June, who had served tables for forty years of her life. “Hey,” he said in a loud voice, “so in Psych 213, what did they teach you?”

“What’s that?” the comedian said.

“They teach you how to be the biggest asshole you can be? You must have got full fucking marks in that course.”

“What’s your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem. You do.”

“And what’s that?”

“Me,” said Brewster. “I’m your problem.”

“I don’t think so,” said the funny man’s buddy. “Maybe you’re the one who has the problem and doesn’t know it. For your information, Johnny here is on the varsity wrestling team.”

Brewster smiled, got up, and started to walk towards the door, leaving his pizza half eaten on the table. Johnny said, “I guess somebody suddenly got second thoughts.”

“You’re right,” he said. “On second thought, I’m terrified of tangling with you. Of getting dry-humped by a rubber-mat-fucking
varsity wrestler
.”

The two young men followed him out of the restaurant. When he shattered Johnny’s orbital socket that was the third and last time Brewster fractured a hand. Bad luck for him, it turned out he had done damage to the wrong guy, the son of a prominent doctor, an honours student, a young man of promise who would suffer visual impairment in his right eye for the rest of his life. During the trial, Brewster refused to cooperate with the court-appointed lawyer in his defence because he sensed that he had come to a place where if somebody didn’t
stop him, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. The judge could barely contain his outrage, took great pains to point out how lenient he was in giving him two years less a day, a sentence that would put him in a provincial facility rather than the federal pen. Where he so richly deserved to be incarcerated.

Through a pilot program at the jail, Brewster took several university-level classes, kept his nose cleaner than clean, and earned time off for good behaviour. On his parents’ regular visits his mother encouraged him to pursue his studies, his father simply sat beside her, silent and withdrawn.

Brewster’s parole officer urged him to continue his education, which he did. In fact, now it seemed to him that he hadn’t known when to stop going to school any more than he had known when to stop smacking people. On the curriculum vitae he submitted for his first teaching job he put down a sixteen-month backpacking tour of Europe to cover his prison stay. What he was about to confess to Eva he had never divulged to anyone before.

The doorbell rang before he got around to that. Eva said, “There’s your Chinese food. Let’s hope an
MSG
high cheers you up.”

“No,” he said, hauling himself off the sofa. “I never placed an order.”

He opened the door to tiny Dina Janacek, her face rubbery and swollen from weeping. A little gold stud in one nostril was surrounded with a rosy aureole of inflammation. “I’m sorry,” she said in a rush. “The superintendent isn’t in. And I don’t have my apartment key so I can’t get into our place. Melvyn got mad at me and took off with my purse in the car. So I don’t have my car keys, my apartment keys,
my phone, my money. Nothing. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you want to use my phone? Call a friend?”

“What is it?” Eva called out.

“One of my neighbours. She’s in some sort of trouble.”

Dina Janacek started to sob, noisy heaving gasps. Eva hurried to the door and took charge.

Dina Janacek’s story wasn’t very concise or coherent. Melvyn and she had gone to a club. One of his friends had asked her to dance; Melvyn had got pissed when she danced with this other guy because Melvyn was such a no-good, crazy, jealous bastard. Even though he never danced with her, she wasn’t supposed to have any fun. They had had an argument and he had pulled her hair, twisted it like. When she had told him she had had enough of his shit and was done with him, he jumped in the car and drove off with her purse. She had no friends, didn’t know anybody in town because she had just moved here from Calgary to be with Melvyn. They had met on an Internet dating site, where he had seemed like an extremely sweet and good person, and before she knew it she had married him in a beautiful wedding back home. But Melvyn was definitely not the extremely sweet and good person she had thought he was and he was getting meaner day by day. She was terrified of what he might do to her now that she had told him she was tail lights. So she had thought her best bet to keep safe was to go to the neighbour who had called the cops on Melvyn because he seemed to be a really responsible and caring person.

Eva was in her element, magnificently decisive. “Okay, here’s what we do. I’ll drive you to the women’s shelter. If there isn’t a bed available there you can stay with me tonight.
In the morning, we’ll get hold of the superintendent and arrange for the police to escort you back to your apartment so you can collect your belongings in safety. And if I were you, I’d file an assault charge against your husband. It’ll make the police more cooperative if they know you mean business.”

“Well,” said Dina, “Melvyn really only pulled my hair.”

“That’s assault. He has no business laying hands on you in anger. Don’t forget it.” Eva gave Dina a moment to weigh that. “So what do you think? Does that sound like a plan?”

“Yes,” said Dina, but she looked doubtful.

Eva grabbed her laptop and began to hustle Dina towards the door. “Obviously, I won’t be back tonight,” she said to Brewster.

“No,” was all Brewster said.

When Dina and Eva had departed, he fell back down on the sofa. An eventful evening in some ways, but still nothing resolved between Eva and him.

For the next two hours, he channel-surfed and drank Scotch. Around midnight the phone rang. It was Eva.

“Well,” she said, “there was a bed available at the women’s shelter. I’ve got her settled.”

“That’s good.”

“But there’s something I think you should know.”

“Yes?”

“I had to use the restroom. And when I was gone, Dina grabbed the chance to use the shelter’s phone to call her husband. He didn’t pick up so she left him a message.”

“And?”

“The message she left asked him to drop her purse off at your place. She told him she’d get it from you in the morning.”

“Ouch. Double ouch.”

“Okay, so she showed a lack of judgment.”

“A spectacular fucking lack of judgment. Superlatives cannot do it justice. So now I might have to deal with the irate husband.”

“She’s young and very upset. Put yourself in her shoes.”

“Better hers than mine.”

There was a long pause. “If you’re so worried, you can spend the night with me at my condo.”

Brewster pondered this amazing concession. It was the first time Eva had ever invited him over to stay. She had often told him that she thought of her living space as personal, sacrosanct, her “room of one’s own.” “No,” he said. “It’s fine.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“If anything happens, call the police. That’s what they’re there for.”

“Yes,” said Brewster, “to protect and serve. Right.”

“I’m exhausted. I’ve got to get some rest,” Eva said. She was back to normal, abrupt and tart.

“Okay,” he said, but Eva was already gone.

Anticipating the likelihood of a late-night visitor, Brewster saw no point in going to bed. He stretched out on the sofa and stared at his throbbing hands. The hours ticked by, one o’clock, two. Some time around three he fell into a restless doze from which an ominous hammering woke him. When
he went to the door, an incensed Melvyn, shaved head gleaming malignantly under the hallway tube lighting, fired questions at him. “Where’s Dina? Where’s my fucking wife?”

Melvyn was a lot shorter than Brewster had realized, stocky and wide, as if he were the offspring of two cigarette machines that had somehow mated and reproduced themselves. Drawing himself up to stand as tall and imposing as possible, Brewster said, “I have no idea where your wife is.”

Melvyn was bobbing his bald head from side to side, trying to peer around Brewster into the apartment. “Dina!” he shouted. “If you’re in there, you better get your ass out here right now!”

“She’s not here. I’ll say it again.
She’s not here
.”

“People can say a lot of things,” Melvyn said, squinting up at him menacingly. “People who stick their noses in other people’s business should maybe think twice before they get themselves a new asshole ripped.”

“I have no interest in sticking my nose in your business. The only interest I have is that you take what you call your business off my doorstep. And do it right now.”

“What did you say to Dina? What ideas did you put in that bitch’s head?”

“None.” He produced an ominous pause before intoning, “Mr. Janacek, we are often the architects of our own misfortunes.”

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means go away.”

Suddenly Melvyn’s face crumpled, his eyes gleamed with tears. “This isn’t over, you fucking old shit,” he choked out.
“By no means. That slut is going to get what’s coming to her, and get it fast.”

“Maybe not. Because I don’t believe she’s available at the moment,” Brewster said.

“Yeah, well,” said Melvyn, “there’s more than one way to tune her in. Believe it.” His composure had returned, or rather his viciousness. He swung around and stalked off down the hallway. Brewster stood in the doorway watching him go. To duck back into his apartment would seem like a cowardly retreat.

Janacek didn’t stop at his apartment but carried on to the elevator. His parting shot, shouted to Brewster was, “There’s more than one way to fuck somebody up! Like in their head! Leave them something to think about!” The elevator’s doors opened, Janacek stepped in, and down it creaked.

So what did that mean?
Brewster asked himself.
What’s he up to?

Then he remembered how Janacek had accused him of vandalizing his car. Had Melvyn projected one of his own hobbies onto him? Did the man’s mind run to themes? Was he about to do a little bodywork on Dina’s vehicle?
Remember what you told him
, Brewster reminded himself.
I have no interest in sticking my nose in your business. Words to live by. Still
.

He took the stairwell to the underground garage, slippers slapping on the concrete steps.
There’s footwear designed to strike terror in the heart of Melvyn, overawe him with your avuncular, cozy Je ne sais quoi
, he thought ruefully. Easing open the door to the underground parking, he stepped into the exhaust-fumes-saturated belly of The Marlborough.
The buzzing, snapping fluorescent lighting cast a sickly, yellowish-green pall over everything.

He spotted Melvyn hunkered down beside a Toyota Camry, industriously scratching away at the driver-side door panel, completely unaware he was being observed. Brewster took his cellphone out of his pocket and aimed it at Janacek. “Say cheese,” he said loudly, and as a startled Melvyn jerked around, he snapped his picture.

Janacek clambered to his feet. “Give me that fucking phone.”

Brewster studied the photo to make sure it had turned out. It had. “You take a lovely picture, Melvyn,” he said and popped the cell back in his pocket.

Melvyn was swelling up, bloating with wrath; even at a distance he could see the tendons bulging on his neck. “Just who the fuck do you think you are?” Janacek roared at him.

“Me? I guess I’m a rusty time bomb. Either that or an old clock running down. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,” Brewster said, gently swinging his head from side to side.

Melvyn gaped at him. “You are one crazy cocksucker,” he said.

“That too.”

“You better fucking give me that phone and give it to me
now
so I can lose that picture.”

“I think not,” said Brewster. “This is the first time in a long time that I can’t guess how things are going turn out. It’s an interesting feeling.”