The Push & the Pull (36 page)

On his approach to Montreal, the jukebox of the bike finds one reedy refrain. Long ago he biked past rationality and the conscious mind and knows by now that he has no choice about what songs he will recall or sing, sometimes even loudly. Before a flicked cigarette and a sacked campsite pulled this trip of peace into a trip of war, before that kid's face launched a thousand predatory kilometres, he had embarrassed himself with a near-total recall of most of the AC/ DC oeuvre. For days, the ride had him ringing “Hells Bells.” In the next valley he'd abruptly stick on the title and chorus of some song of Betty's,
something, something, exTRAordinary machine
. He had no interest in riding with an MP3 player. Touring, you shuffle your past, not your iPod. And today, that past his past is stuck on Neil Young's “Helpless.” There is a point in fatigue and loneliness beyond which there are no clichés. Deep into a marathon, in the double-digit kilometres, if one thinks at all, one thinks with wonder. And gratitude.

Andrew has read maybe a dozen poems that describe someone walking through a neighbourhood with front lawns awash in the blue glow of televisions. House after house, each one a link in a glowing blue chain. Most of Canada has a similar view. Eighty per cent of the Canadian population lives in the twenty per cent of land immediately north of the US border. Granted, that's also the warmest part of
Canada and has the longest growing season, but still. English Canada has its nose pressed to the American window, watching what they watch on TV. A Canadian sees or hears cultural references to Canada one time for every hundred references to New York, LA, Chicago or San Francisco. So, cleansed by sweat, his legs moving more than they are still in twenty-four hours, Neil Young's “town in north Ontario” has a hold on him. “All his changes” weren't made in Kingston, not with blood on his sole now and a bed literally under the stars, but enough changes happened there to call it home. And for him to finally want to leave it.

Pat told him he needs to have a conscience, not marry one. Betty has also given him more direction than he thought another person could. And he wants to tell all of this to Stan. More than anything else, he misses Stan's voice. He was inescapably body yet indisputably mind, and they came together in his voice. He wishes they could talk once more, precisely to talk about him being dead. Andrew wants an afterline, not an afterlife.

Tell me what you couldn't, wouldn't. Enumerate your fears. Describe your sins and what took you to them. What should I look out for in life? Here, take a little Scotch.

He wants to hear Stan talk, and then he needs to tell him about Betty. The appetite she has, the need for life undiluted. You can feel the hang of her collarbone from one glance at her jaw. She just floats.

Andrew had followed Mark on trails but Stan in life. He was the first man. The lead man, guiding me with a voice.

Avoiding the numerous highway exits for Montreal, maintaining his spin, he sees past the city's sprawl, sees ahead three hundred kilometres to the Kingston house. Avoiding the city, keen for home, he's impatient to drive a particular kind of flag into his lawn upon his arrival, to claim his own island. He can already see his new flag swaying stiffly in the breeze.

Under a Montreal overpass, bike temporarily beside him not beneath him, he sits with the damned in shrunken light. He had watched the rain gather, felt the air dampen and thicken, watched it squeeze the city's light. When the undersides of leaves began flashing regularly, he switched from flight to a fuel-up.

In the concrete sprawl outside a major city he no longer looks like an excommunicated touring cyclist. Finally he's just another guy in dirty, ill-fitting clothes, someone poor or crazy, not able or permitted to drive, another skeletal, grumbling reeker who sets chilled beer onto the counter of a corner store. Transformed from fugitive to trash, sweating in the one Canadian province free of paternalistic liquor laws, he has beer, bread, fresh cheese, yogurt and more cheese at every corner store.

Hunkering down in the fug under an overpass, sitting on the sloped, grimy concrete, he uncorks a strong beer and launches the cork across both lanes of traffic. The first sweet gulp goes down with the cork's burst still ringing the muzzy air. The pictorial label of the large brown bottle depicts a canoe flying through a burning sky. He guzzles the high-alcohol beer, trying to hop into that canoe.

Before a supper lecture from Betty, he had thought a wine bottle of strong, unfiltered beer all the explanation necessary for its name (
Maudite
, the damned) and its image of a flying canoe. Drink this and you too can sky paddle.

“No, no, no,” French-immersion Betty had explained, “this is a crucial French-Canadian myth. All the big themes: isolation in a merciless wilderness; humans fighting an inhuman climate for home or profit; hairy men alone in the woods. These guys — all guys — are chopping down wood in the middle of Nowhere, Quebec. This is pre-electricity, pre-Confederation. No light other than the fires of their camps as far as the eye can see, nor woman either. Saw wood in the winter; tend your farm in the summer.”

“Tend your wife in the summer.”

“And make the annual new mouth to feed. Hence the isolated wood cutting.”

“Ugh, get wood, cut wood.” He shuddered.

“They cut their trees and make their cash. Christmas approaches, but they won't be getting out. Too much snow. Too much money to be made. Tyrannical boss. Greed and need keep them working in the woods while their wives and kids huddle somewhere under the same sky trying to make the apples last. Whammo, here comes the devil to take bets on a cold night. Hey, fellas, who wants to toss down the axe and head in for a night of soft flesh?”

“Or who wants some titty with their shag for a change?”

“Right. Everybody's game, and that's the clincher. Voila, one wave of the devil's hand and here's a flying canoe. Sometimes the canoe's on fire.”

“Soundtrack by Hendrix.”

“To keep their souls, they all have to come back, together, before sunrise — one big canoe. They all want sex as individuals, but have to work as a team to get it. The very reason the sky canoe is tempting is that they
don't
want to be with each other. But give in to the need to leave and who's going to return? So they all go down. Individual versus communal want.”

Now on his wet concrete perch Andrew eats a lonely meal out of grubby hands. Drinking his beer, he watches car after car pass empty save for the driver, sees the individual match and the collective SUV fire.

In his debates with Betty, when they each temporarily became a bloodhound for hypocrisy, she didn't have to say much to disparage his (inherited) car compared to the Eurorail pass she had bought for herself. Yet he was the cycling advocate.

The Argument of Slavery

“Nearly one-third of North American car trips are for five kilometres or less. Nearly one-third of North Americans are obese. Any connections here?” Andrew ranted. “Slaves used to be skinny, used to be housed; now chemistry has let them go fat and free-range. Get in the car to get cigarettes or
chips or pop. Gasoline and nicotine. Gasoline and trans fats. Where's my Prozac? Chemical warfare. Class warfare. You can even get jerseys:
Riding is revolutionary
.” “You have a car,” Betty pointed out. “Which I don't use to get to work or to do most errands and rarely drive alone.” “Aren't you going to use it to move out east? Won't you be a driver out there?” “No, I won't. I'll leave it in the garage,” he said, surprising each of them. “I'm trying to be part of the solution here.” “By doing the grunt work for your
super
visor? By being a slave?”

Now, under a Montreal overpass, he tips his orange canoe and drinks, already keen to make various appointments in Kingston. He'll give concessions then confessions.

In a breakup, you might get officially pushed or pulled away from your partner's family and friends, but friendship and affection don't honour custody agreements. Not only does the ride finally have Andrew thinking affectionately of his mother, he's also been thinking repeatedly of Betty's parents. As he returns to his own house, he thinks of the week when part of the furniture of her childhood home moved into his.

Aside from having to clean (“So, that's dusting?”), Andrew had been keen to finally meet Elaine just before Easter. Elaine was Betty's mom, not his, so he had chores but no worries. Betty, however, dashed around all week, acquiring a suddenly crucial lemon zester, two kinds of German chocolate, Polish vodka and South African white wine. Foolishly, they cooked a joint along with their late afternoon snack, so by six p.m. Andrew suggested she just bring the mirror down to the kitchen rather than going up to check on herself every eleven minutes. They were recuperating in each other's arms when Elaine's knock finally found the door.

Andrew genuinely regretted that his eyes weren't the only thing noticing Betty's mother. Throughout the evening he'd forgive himself a little, reminding the court that her ecru shirt could not possibly have been intended to cover the visible straps of her black bra. Here in the entranceway, shaking a ringed hand, trading cheek kisses as brief as whispers, he could feel all too well how long she was in the leg and spotted a familiar volume in the chest. Damn it.

“So you're the young Bluebeard she doesn't stop talking about.” Elaine handed over a tall bottle of chilled wine.

“It's hardly a castle.”

“Or a prison, Mom.”

“Well, Andrew, let's with the tour. Betty, are you getting us drinks? Hey, bevelled baseboards. Somebody once cared. Were you ever here for these French doors? Don't worry, inside they just take up space.
Oh, thanks, Bet. Cheers. Mm, chilled Gertz, you peach. Was that once a pantry back there? Oh, that inherited lamp, just tear off the old shade and recover the frame with rice paper. Then rice paper blinds here and there. At Toronto's Hoa Viet, they must rip them right out of the prison workers' hands they're so cheap.”

“Mother.”

“What, Andrew's a big boy. You ever have to sell, Andrew, you'd pay dearly for this little gab. The work, though. However you acquire a house, you sell it on your knees. Scrub. Scrub. Scrub. Oh, a Turkish rug would be perfect here. Just go to Turkey. Shall we go up? New railing. Home Despot really can't be beat on the retrofits. Nice orange there. Skylights would be perfect here. Have you thought of a reno loan? Remember, parents buy houses, not kids. Enlarge this bathroom into that bedroom, pave the thing in the tile and let junior have a smaller room. All right, Betty, but as we walk back down, I want Andrew to picture a deck off the kitchen. Trust me; I've seen it a hundred times. Renovation is the best way to mourn.”

“Mom, that is not appropriate.”

“Well, Betty, it just happens to be true.” Turning to Andrew with a complex smile, she added, “I say death makes us live.”

As they sat for dinner — “Stuffed eggplant. I'm probably impressed.” — Elaine slipped off to the washroom and Betty dropped her forehead down onto her empty plate.

“I'm so sorry,” Betty murmured. “I think it's men. I'm so used to her with other women. I had no idea. Be flattered if you can.”

“She's a scream, an absolute scream.”

Betty rolled her forehead to one side of the plate to look up at him. “I get fucked after this, right?”

Always.

Wine and conversation flowed. No glass sat empty for long. “Andrew, do you mind my asking if your father got funnier as he got sicker?”

“Well, it was such a steady — I was really, really young — no, yeah, absolutely. He did. I never realized, but sure.”

Flush with wine, Andrew started in on the leg bag story, was just about to get to Stan's astronaut jokes when the ringing phone gave way to a man loudly barking into their answering machine.

“Where's Betty Craig? I got these walls —”

Betty rushed to the phone.

“Hello. Hello. This is Betty. What? No, that's no longer true . . . No, the nineteenth was once
a
date. Then
the
date became the twenty-sixth . . . I left a message. Of course messages count. No, that's impossible. Impossible in a variety of ways . . . I agree. I will have to take them. On the twenty-sixth, no — impossible. Do you think the Better Business Bureau would agree, It's now or the dump? Sounds like we're threatening each other . . . Your warehouse is not my concern . . . Not at that price. Do it for two and I'll leave the porch light on . . . Cash in hand is what it is. Fine — 149 Collingwood.”

Betty returned to the dining room, looking at each of them in turn. “Andrew, I'm going to hold you to that
mi casa
speech. Mom, Dad's walls will be here within the hour.”

Elaine, Jim and Betty's house of hope, their house of resentment and their house of unwelcome cards had been intended, Elaine always claimed, as a “modular” set of cubes. This “unitization” included built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookcases for the walls of Jim's study, walls he quickly found demanded he sacrifice a view or fresh air for excessive storage space. Redoing the house at fifty, he now wanted windows and agreed to let Betty sell off the wall units.

“I couldn't have heard you correctly,” Elaine told Betty.

“The storage walls. You know he's demolishing. I've been selling off the pieces for very good money. These walls are sending me to Europe. Would you rather they go to the dump?”

Andrew checked for frost on Elaine's collar. “Maybe I'll step out and think about that deck,” he proposed.

“Stay there, Andrew. I'd never want to be accused of driving a man out of his own home.”

“Mom, don't.”

“Wouldn't want you to feel caged within your own walls, Andrew.”

“It's just wood, Mom, saleable wood.”