Daddy Lenin and Other Stories (6 page)

“You want me to come over there and take it? Is that what you’re asking for?”

“Maybe.” He and Janacek stared at each other as if they
found themselves stranded in a stupefying dream. Then Melvyn began to lumber forward.
Okay
, thought Brewster,
at least one thing will get settled tonight. Eva will be appalled. Finished with me
. He could hear her saying, “Are you insane? Do you think that’s the way to deal with problems? Physical violence? At your age?”

His hands were balled tightly at his sides, every drop of hurt squeezed out of them. They were wrung clean of pain.

His eyes fell on an oil slick on the garage floor. Iridescent under the fluorescent lighting, it shimmered a palette of queasy, vividly unnatural colours, a petroleum-based aurora borealis that was a perfect reflection of the fear coiling in his gut. It was the most beautiful thing Brewster had seen in a long time. He couldn’t take his eyes off it even as he listened to the footsteps drawing nearer and nearer.

Inexplicably, he felt his hands relax, slowly rise to cover his face, preparing himself for Janacek to strike. And that was the moment he understood how it was going to turn out, realized how happy it was going to make him to cower in just the way Ronnie Peel, the boy who had once shamed and humiliated him, who had used his swimwear as an ashtray, had cowered and whimpered as Charley Brewster rained blows down on him.

And then Melvyn Janacek’s fist painted Brewster’s brain with the same weird colours of the northern lights that he had seen trembling on the concrete floor, that grey, unyielding, punishing surface that now rushed up to meet him as he dropped gratefully to it on his knees.

I WAS FIFTEEN THE SUMMER
my mother had her third nervous breakdown in four years. My father, John Dowd, was working on a crew that constructed bridges all over the province – rinky-dink affairs thrown across muddy creeks, piddling streams, and trivial rivers. His job kept him away from home for two-week stretches, so he wasn’t there to apply the brakes the day Mother got it into her veering, hectic head to phone just about everybody in Groveland and list the sins, scandals, and missteps they had been involved in. I tried to stop her, but as my father used to say, “She had the fight on.” She couldn’t be stopped, not by me. A lot of people got their feelings hurt in the wild, wide swath she cut. Mother reminded them of what they believed had been long forgotten, dragged their dirty little secrets kicking and screaming into the light of day, said what had gone discreetly unsaid for years. By the time I got in touch with Father, the damage had been done.

When he walked in the door, still in his work-soiled clothes, face grey and flabby with exhaustion, and said to her, “Marjorie, what you need is a good long rest,” Mother bared her teeth in a scathing smile and replied, “Well, Johnny, if you say it’s time for another tune-up, I guess it’s time for another tune-up.”

What with all the urgent business at hand – calling in the family doctor to sign the papers and make the phone call to the mental hospital in Weyburn to have Mother admitted, stuffing a few clothes and toiletries into a suitcase, and hastily bundling her into the truck for the two-hundred-and-fifty-mile road race to deliver her for treatment – Father didn’t have a lot of time to consider what he was going to do with me. On the three previous occasions that Mother had been hospitalized, he had packed me off to my grandparents in Manitoba, but several episodes of bad health had left them very frail and unwilling to take responsibility for a teenaged boy.

The long drive home must have given Father time to sort through the problem. When he got back I was informed that, although I was old enough to stay alone in the house now, he was afraid that a boy who had never so much as boiled himself an egg could not be trusted to eat properly when left to his own devices. I would need at least one good, substantial meal a day, preferably a hot supper. A working man, my father put great faith in meat, potatoes, and gravy.

So he contacted Groveland’s only landlady, Mrs. Burke, a sour-faced woman who provided room and board for three or four bachelors, to see if she would agree to feed his boy. Unfortunately, Mrs. Burke had been one of those on the receiving end of Mother’s truth-telling spree, been told that
none of her four children had even a passing likeness to Mr. Burke, but that they certainly bore a strong resemblance to several of her former tenants. Mrs. Burke made it clear that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any child of my mother’s, although she did acidly mention that Delphine Koenig was looking for boarders.
If he was desperate enough, he just might try her
. Father was desperate enough, and soon he and Delphine had settled on terms. Before he headed back to work, Father gave me a cheque for Mrs. Koenig and ten measly bucks that he grandly referred to as my “emergency fund,” laid an awkwardly consoling hand on my shoulder, and murmured, “Just hang in there. Your mother will come home right as rain. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Watching him drive away in his clapped-out half-ton, I knew in my bones everything wasn’t going to be fine. Far fucking from it. If Mother’s good neighbour policy towards her fellow citizens hadn’t already made me a leper, my clueless father had sealed the deal. But being able to convince him of that was as likely as his shitbox truck rocketing him into the next galaxy. My father always insisted on walking the sunny side of the street, refused to face facts. If I had pointed out what was obvious, that associating in any way whatsoever with the Koenigs was social suicide, Father would have behaved just as he did whenever I dropped a hint that maybe things were going amiss with Mother. He would have said,
Wherever do you get these funny ideas, Billy?

He would have deserved it if I had screamed at him,
Don’t tell me you have no idea why the Koenig twins are nicknamed Stinky and Smelly! And do you really think Jennifer Koenig is called Jenny Likes to Play the Squeezebox
because she plays the accordion and wails “They Call the Wind Mariah” off-key at talent shows at the Legion Hall, you fucking dope? Not likely
.

Because the Koenigs, right down to the youngest, grimiest, scruffiest little shoplifter and vandal in training, were the town’s number-one pariahs. Everyone knew the Koenig twins were nothing but mean, lying, conniving, cowardly snot-gobblers. Like a pair of foraging jackals, they slunk about Groveland High sniffing for anything they could five-finger discount, and if they happened to get caught helping themselves to somebody else’s property – a transistor radio, money left in an unsecured locker – they cringed and crybabied for mercy before getting a taste of teenager justice, a punch in the chops or a swift boot up their skinny asses. Their home-barbered white-wall haircuts, old coot’s fire-engine red braces, broad-checked polyester pants, and brown oxfords contributed to making them even greater objects of disdain. It was only human nature to assume that Stinky and Smelly, in fact all the Koenig brood, had been put on earth for one reason and one reason only, to make the rest of us feel better about ourselves.

Except maybe for Sabrina Koenig, who was two grades ahead of me. She was cut some slack and given some sympathy because a bout with polio had left her with a withered leg and a painful-looking limp. Sabrina was also rumoured to be smart, which was regarded as one of nature’s mysteries since the rest of the Koenig crew were a universally dim-wattage crew.

To tell the truth, I wasn’t going to win any popularity contests myself, but at least I had avoided attracting persecution by keeping a low profile. Association with the Koenigs
would end that, so it’s little wonder that for the first three days after Father headed north I stayed well away from them. I had had enough of bad situations. I needed a recess from having to deal with my mother’s recent bizarre, sometimes downright scary behaviour. I could finally get some sleep, could get a break from listening to the bathtub taps gushing on and off all night, from hearing her yell at the overworked hot water tank when it ran cold. Mother imagined the hot water heater to be part of a vast malignant conspiracy to deny her any solace and comfort in her black despair. Nor would I have to swear that I would forever be on call to push the wheelchair she believed was in her future, to pledge that I would never, ever desert her. Every time Mother lost her grip on reality, she became convinced she had multiple sclerosis and was going to end up just like her best friend, Janet Kasper, had. That she would be a woman abandoned by her husband and left to moulder away in a care home.

School was out, nothing had any claims on my time, and I was able to take it easy, do exactly as I pleased. In his rush to get Mother on her way to the hospital, Father had overlooked to pack a carton of her cigarettes. That and the forty-ouncer of Canadian Club, which Father kept stashed in the linen closet in reserve for
special occasions
, was all I needed to celebrate in style. If this wasn’t a special occasion, I didn’t know what was. I figured both parents owed me.

For the next several nights I sat up watching television into the early morning, chain-smoking cigarettes, guzzling rye and Coke, stroking and petting my self-pity. I staggered off to bed drunk, slept until noon, idled away afternoons reading James Bond boner-popping novels until five o’clock
rolled around and I headed for The Hot Spot, a café haunted by hairy-eared retirees, a place no self-respecting teenager would be caught dead in. It seemed to me the safest location to gobble a couple of hamburgers and chug a milkshake without being noticed. But even there attention proved inescapable; the coffee-row crowd either stared at me with disapproval or, worse, flinty-eyed sympathy. I was
That Dowd boy. The one with the crazy mother who called up my Myrtle and gave her what for
.

Soon enough I had done the math and realized that café dining would shortly run dry the “emergency fund” Father had left me. And I knew he was going to be seriously pissed to learn I hadn’t honoured his arrangement with Mrs. Koenig. The more I thought about it, the more I came to see that eating with the Koenigs would not only free up cash for cigarettes and racy paperbacks, but also might even be marginally less painful than getting gawked at by the regulars of The Hot Spot. If I was very careful and had some luck, I might even be able to slip in and out of the Koenigs’ house without being spotted by some kid all too eager to spread the news that Billy Dowd was consorting with untouchables.

The Thursday after Father returned to work, I took a deep breath and set off to keep my supper date with the Koenigs. I didn’t give much thought to the fact that I had already missed three meals without giving notice to the cook. But I assumed some vague lie about having been “under the weather” and Father’s cheque would give me a pass on that score.

I got there by a circuitous route, by skulking down alleys. It was a scorching, breathless day, the leaves of the poplars
hanging on their branches like tiny washed-out rags. The sun-stunned neighbourhood dogs didn’t even have the energy to bark as I went by. The Koenigs’ property was unfenced; a jungle of weeds and volunteer Manchurian elms fondled my legs as I waded through them to the back step. I rapped on the screen door and Delphine Koenig suddenly loomed before me, a massive, wheezing middle-aged woman who let loose a laboured sigh and said, “Well, he’s here,” and cracked open the door just enough for me to scoot through and trail her swaying hams into the kitchen. Mumbling my lame alibi, I passed her the cheque. She tucked it away in a drawer without a word of thanks. I saw no evidence of supper, caught not even the faintest whiff of home cooking. Towering pyramids of dirty dishes were haphazardly stacked on the counter and the table was covered in pots encrusted with the cysts and tumours of ancient leftovers. The whole house smelled like a laundry hamper stuffed with clammy, dirty undergarments.

“It’ll be a while,” Mrs. Koenig said. “Go in the living room and make yourself comfy.”

I acted as per instructions. A quartet of the younger family members were sitting on the floor of the living room about a foot from the
TV
. Their towheads swivelled as one, levelled a glazed, eight-eyed stare on me, then swept back to the screen in perfect synchronization. Neither Stinky nor Smelly were anywhere to be seen and neither was Jenny Likes to Play the Squeezebox. That was a relief. As for making myself comfy, all the furniture in the room was buried under piles of soiled clothing, the source of the smell that had penetrated as far as the kitchen. Pushing laundry to one side of
the sofa, I sat down and joined the Koenig youngsters in their mute, glassy-eyed worship of the television.

A few minutes later, Sabrina Koenig hobbled into the room, a book clutched in her hand. As soon as she saw me, alarm flickered on her lips, alarm that she quickly tried to hide by ducking down to shovel a heap of clothes out of an armchair and onto the floor. She settled down and began to read, a look of utter absorption pasted on her face.

Being given the silent treatment by the smaller Koenig kids was one thing, but receiving the cold shoulder from a girl I passed almost every day in the school hallways was a bit much. I had never spoken a word to Sabrina Koenig before, but as a paying guest I felt I was owed a smidgen of courtesy. I fidgeted irritably on the sofa, trying to catch her eye. “Hey,” I finally said, my voice as sharp as I could make it, “school’s out if you haven’t heard.”

Sabrina slowly lowered her book. “Thanks for the news flash.” The book went back up, but now I had a clearer view of her. Sabrina Koenig was no beauty, but her abundant strawberry-blond hair was surprisingly clean and shiny-looking. Small pale freckles lazily drifted down her cheeks, and her teeth were of a normal shape and size, unlike Stinky and Smelly’s, which were huge and rat-like and looked capable of chewing clean through heavy-duty electrical wiring.

I squinted at the title of the book. It had something to do with Abraham Lincoln. “What I want to know,” I said, “is why you are reading a boring book like that when it’s summer vacation?”