Vanishing and Other Stories (22 page)

“You'll want to mix that with water or something,” I say. “Put it on ice.” But she pours it straight. “That's not how you drink Scotch. Scotch is a sipping drink.”

Alicia hands me a glass. “So sip,” she says, then she puts
level
over a triple-word-score box.

 

 

WHEN GEORGE WAS AROUND
, he was the one who usually tucked me into bed and told me a story. I was eight then and thought I was too old for bedtime stories.

“Too old?” George said. “No such thing as too old.”

George's stories weren't like
Goodnight Moon
or
Peter Rabbit
or anything else my mom read me. My favourite was about a bear named Ted who lived in a forest with his wife, Louise. Ted and Louise had a small house, they ate caramels at every meal, and they were happy. That is, until Ted got laid off from his job in the caramel factory and had to go into the nearby city for work.

That's where he met a sly fox, a scout who noticed his size and bulk and convinced him to try boxing.

“So he's up against the top fighters in the world.” George told this story the same way every time. “And guess what?”

I sat up in bed, because this was a good part. “What?”

“He wins every time. It's his bear instincts. He's a born fighter. He's raking in the cash, and women love him.”

At first, Ted sent most of his winnings home to Louise, along with letters saying how much he missed her. But then he started spending his money on other things: drinks for himself and his new friends, clothes, a Lamborghini with leather seats.

“He parties hard and begins to lose his edge,” George said. “He loses matches. He loses friends. He wakes up one morning, sitting in his own piss, and realizes what a mess he's made of himself.”

“In his own pee?” This detail got me every time.

“He has black eyes, three shattered teeth, and his right ear's been slammed so hard he hears a buzzing all the time.”

I shut my eyes at this part. I hated this part.

“So he packs up his bags—his trophies, his robes, his gloves. He'd had to sell the car to pay back debts, so he gets on a bus. He goes back to the forest.”

“Back to Louise?” By this point, I usually felt sick to my stomach. “Is she mad at him?”

“Louise is a tough old bear. She looks after herself. She's been foraging for berries all summer.”

“But she doesn't like Ted anymore.”

“She likes him. But she doesn't say so. Not at first.” George was a romantic, and this was his favourite part. He'd usually lean forward and whisper it. “She takes his big bruised head in her hands and makes him promise never to box again. ‘Promise me,' she says.”

“And he promises.”

“And he means it.”

“And they're happy.” My eyelids felt heavy at this point. They closed on their own. “And they live in the forest forever.”

“You bet.” George brought the blanket up to cover my shoulders. “Forever.”

 

 

AN HOUR LATER
, Alicia and I are loaded. I'm drunk in a good way, right on the edge of falling asleep. Alicia keeps taking her own pulse and saying, “Holy shit.” She says she wants to go outside.

“I'm serious,” she says. “Why don't we go skating?”

“You've forgotten what it's like out there at night. You've forgotten about the wind chill.”

“It'll be like old times. Maybe you'll break an arm.”

“It's dark.” I close my eyes. Open them. “And neither of us has skates.”

“Come on.” Alicia stands, holds the edge of the table for balance, then goes toward the closet. “I never get to do this.”

“I don't know.” I feel myself slipping down my chair. “I'm pretty tired.”

“Don't tell me you're drunk already.” She starts pulling things from the closet: scarves, mismatched gloves, a pair of snow pants I'd forgotten about. “I could give you something for that. I could give you something that would keep you up for days.”

“You're nuts,” I say. “You're a wacko.”

“It's now or never, Dad.” She starts pulling the snow pants over her jeans. “That's what we learn in med school. Do things today, because tomorrow you'll be on dialysis.”

“They teach you that?”

“No.” She's got the snow pants over one leg. When she tries to pull them onto the other, she nearly tips over. “It's what they should teach us.”

She reaches for her shoes—the useless canvas ones. The Scotch has changed her movement, or maybe my vision, but she's not like a magpie anymore. She's got the slippery grace of a fish, those shadows under the ice.

She walks toward me, the snow pants swishing as her legs touch. I knew this would happen. I knew one day I wouldn't recognize my daughter—she'd be a stranger, someone I find fascinating and frightening. She looks at the board and puts down
rely
.

“There,” she says. “I win.”

 

 

MY MOTHER MET MY FATHER
when she was eighteen. His eyes reminded her of pictures of Antarctica she'd seen in
National Geographic
—pictures of dense blue ice. Not that he was a cold man. “He was funny,” Mom told me. “He made me laugh so much my insides hurt.”

Now he lives in Lethbridge, where he grew up. Once, a few years ago, he drove up to have coffee with me. We met at the Lazy Loaf and Kettle, and he wore a bleached denim shirt the same colour as those eyes. His hair had gone grey and he had the shy look of a person who's wasted his life. I think he wanted to be friends. Or maybe he only wanted to tell me his story. I didn't care to hear it. Instead, I told him about Mom. She was still working as a home-care nurse. She took care of people who couldn't walk to the bathroom on their own, who couldn't cut their own toenails. “People,” I said, “who have no one left to look after them.”

“She's a hard worker,” my dad said, and I resented that. The way he talked like he still knew her.

“My wife left me thirteen years ago,” I said. “She never called in all that time. Except once, in the middle of the night, when she was feeling lonely.”

But my dad—his name is Christopher, same as mine—nodded
like he'd heard this kind of thing a hundred times. He stirred NutraSweet into his coffee.

“When Claire left, my daughter was at this age where she was curious about everything. Always asking questions.” I took a sip of my coffee. “She kept asking where her mom had gone, where exactly. Eventually I quit making things up and told her the truth. Which was that I didn't know.”

“You have a daughter?” my dad said. He didn't seem to get that this was possible, that time had whipped past him so quickly.

 

 

WE
'
RE UNDER THE BRIDGE
where kids like to scrawl graffiti, standing on a spill of mud that leads to the water. The cold has sobered me up a little.

There aren't any street lights here, but sometimes light from a passing car catches on the water and shivers there. The river isn't totally frozen and chunks of broken ice rasp against each other.

I'm in my workboots, my parka, and a toque I don't normally wear because it's got an Oilers logo. Alicia is zipped into one of my old coats and has a blue scarf wrapped around her neck. She's brought what's left of the Scotch, holding the bottle by the neck with a mittened hand. She leans against me, her arm in mine, and watches her own breath spill away from her. She takes long drinks from the bottle.

“This stuff is good,” she says. “Once you get used to it.”

Then she lets go of my arm and walks to the edge of the bank. She's drunk and full of nerve. She heads out onto the stretch of ice that's formed over the water, and I can hear snow crunch and the
ice creak under her weight. She stops at the edge, where water laps at her shoes. She's far from me, her body tilting toward the river. She kicks at the water and the spray catches some light, maybe the moon, and looks like a bottle shattering.

“It's different here,” Alicia calls back at me. “This used to freeze solid.”

She kicks at the ice she's standing on, digs at it with her heel. And I try to imagine what happened to George, where he got to, what he's doing.

“Come on,” I say. “Let's go back.”

She kicks again, and a piece of ice breaks off this time. It drops into the water. Either George got fat or thin. Either he grew old or he didn't.

“Alicia, let's go. You'll catch a cold.”

Alicia drinks the last of the Scotch and pitches the bottle into the river. I hear it hit the water, then it turns and bobs in the current. “I don't feel the cold anymore.”

That's when I move. I walk toward her and nearly slip on the frosted-over mud, but catch myself. I don't care that I don't know her anymore, and that she's too old to be held. I grab her hand. I hold it so tight it's like I can feel the bones and blood and nerves. “Yeah,” I say. “But you will.”

 

 

AND THEN GEORGE WASN
'
T AROUND
to tell me stories. I don't remember much about his leaving. I guess he might have packed up his things, but I don't remember that. I don't think he said goodbye.