Are You Seeing Me? (7 page)

We have room service for dinner. Around eight, I watch the second half of
The Tuxedo
with Perry. It’s not Jackie Chan’s finest hour, but it’s the movie I’ve seen least often. Against my better judgment, I can recite verbatim large chunks of
Rush Hour
and
Rush Hour 2
. And it’s possible I’ve acquired conversational Cantonese from endless
Drunken Master II
reruns. When the credits roll, Perry announces he’s going to bed. He gives me a long hug that borders on a boxer’s clinch.

“I won’t cause you to worry again while we are in North America,” he says, resting his chin on my shoulder. “And you won’t have any concerns when I move away and become independent.”

I kiss his cheek. “Get some good sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

He disappears into his room. As per usual, he keeps a light on in case he wakes during the night.

I OPEN MY FATHER’S JOURNAL and turn to its most thumbed page. The entry it displays must be read before making the call. I know the words, but I need to see them. Stare them down.

30 November 1994

Your mother won’t be living with us anymore. We had a huge row last night. (How you and your brother slept through it, I’ll never know.) It was the final straw for both of us. She wanted to go away for a month to some yoga camp in the middle of Woop Woop. I told her this was not the time—so soon after getting the word on Perry—to be traipsing off to some hippie hotel in the bush to stare at your navel and play silly buggers under a full moon. We need to stick together, be there for each other. Move forward and live our lives. She went nuts. Yelled at me for a good half hour. She reckons I’m a hypocrite, that I am never there for her, that I am a selfish and cold prick. That I don’t understand the first thing about living her life, and it’s never going to change. Things are never going to “move forward.” She was always going to be an overwhelmed mother, I was always going to be a crappy husband, and Perry was always going to be handicapped and dependent on others. She said she couldn’t live a life that offered no chance to find herself, no chance to chase her own dreams. She said she’d rather die. Then she packed a couple of bags and left.

On the way out, I told her: “Good luck finding yourself doing nude jumping jacks with the tree huggers. Don’t bother keeping in touch. We’ll be fine.”

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. When you got up, I told you Mum had gone away and she wouldn’t be living here anymore. You thought about it for a minute, and then you gave me a hug. “You’re staying, aren’t you, Daddy?” you asked. I said I wasn’t going anywhere, I’d always be here with the two of you. Then you said you had to go and tell Perry, and you ran off to his room. And I tried to swallow the lump in my throat while getting breakfast together and listening to you explain to your brother that it was just going to be the three of us from now on.

I LAY A HAND ON the phone. A film of perspiration gathers between my palm and the plastic receiver. My heart gallops around my chest. The four-year-old girl in me wants to slide out of the chair, sink to the floor and stay there, Perry style, placing the onus on others to re-engage me with the world. I can’t indulge her. She doesn’t know what the nineteen-year-old knows.

I stare at the ten digits scribbled down on a piece of scrap paper. It’s a local number, sent along with our mother’s most recent letter, which arrived three weeks ago. It was the first time she’d provided any source of contact beyond a return postal address. Till that day, there’d really been no need—we’d assumed the role of pen pals for three years and I’d only shared with her the dot points of my life: the piñata calamity of my sixteenth birthday; the breakdown over Dad’s diagnosis; the standing ovation I received for a speech at school; the decision for Perry to move into a supported residence. She’d shared with me her exploits as a yoga studio owner and teacher; the personal best she’d achieved for some local climb called the Grouse Grind; the succession of failed relationships with “douche bags”; her tentative proposal to return to Australia and earn a place back in our lives.

She’d shared her number.

I look over at Perry’s room. Light streams from the crack under the door, undisturbed by any shadowy presence. There’s no movement, no sound beyond muted, rhythmic snoring. Good. I don’t want him to know about this, not until the Okanagan and Seattle are done. I turn back to the phone and lift the receiver from its cradle. My fingers prickle as I punch out the sequence. The ringing on the other end of the line commences and I feel my body dividing like a cell into two entities: caller and observer. I pray some semblance of recognizable English will form on my tongue.

“Hello. You’ve reached the home of Leonie Orr. Sorry I can’t take your call right now…”

No chance to find herself.

“…If you’d like to leave your name and phone number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can…”

No chance to chase her own dreams.

“Thank you and have a wonderful day.”

She’d rather die.

The beep sounds.

“Um, yeah. This is Justine, your…It’s Justine. Just ringing to let you know we’ve arrived and we’re staying at the downtown hotel. We’ll be on the road tomorrow. I’ve got a Canadian number—it is 778-232-4953. I also gave you the landline number for the place we’re staying at in Peachland. So, give me a ring and we can confirm our…get-together. Okay, yeah. Hope to hear from you soon…Leonie. Bye.”

I kill the call and flop back into the chair. Things would probably be a hell of a lot easier if she’d never put pen to paper, if she’d remained a ghost in our lives. But, after all these years, why should anything be easy now? And isn’t it better to be haunted by ghosts of the living rather than the dead?

In the cavernous spaces, Dad’s words buzz like mosquitoes:
Don’t bother keeping in touch. We’ll be fine.

DREAMING AGAIN.

It’s not like last time. The primal energy that rocked the island is gone. The blue-green water is calm. I’m still Crusoe, but with one significant rejig—an ice-hockey goaltender’s full regalia has replaced the castaway rags. I’m still stuck to the boat’s seat, but I’m not desperate to get away.

Perry/Xury has emerged from the wash and is standing onshore. He waves and begins walking south along the beach. My boat moves with him. The source of power is unknown until I look ahead. Dad is in the seat opposite, rowing. He’s bare-chested and wearing orange-and-lime-green boardies. His muscles bunch and flex with each stroke. He’s in the best shape of his life, a good twenty kilograms heavier than the husk of a man that died in my arms.

“The boy chose to go, didn’t he,” he says.

I nod. “He said he had to. He said we couldn’t survive like this.”

“That’s true.” Dad grunts and quickens his pace. The boat heaves forward. “He’s not alone over there.”

I turn back to land. A lone figure at the far end of the shoreline is walking toward an oblivious Perry/Xury. From this distance, it’s difficult to tell if the visitor is male or female, friend or foe, real or imagined. I pull my helmet off and squint at the shape. The trudging body remains anonymous.

Then the scene dissolves in the Seltzer-like rays of a new dawn.

30 January 1996

First day of school! You guys looked fantastic in your uniforms and carrying your schoolbags. You did such a good job, Justine, holding Perry’s hand, telling him what was going on, keeping him calm. It needn’t be all the time, though. Like we talked about last night, you don’t have to be Grandma Poss and use bush magic to turn Perry invisible to protect him and keep him safe. You still need to make your own friends and do your own thing.

We made it to Year One, hey? Since your mother left, there have been a few times when I thought I might end up going off the deep end myself. Your brother is a handful, that’s for sure. The difficulties with his potty training. The sleeping issues. The meltdowns at the shops. Trying to get him to eat a bloody vegetable. But just when I’d feel like I’d reached the end of my tether, something would happen to make it all fade into the background. And, almost always, my little tree frog, you’d be smack bang in the center of it.

Like last week, when he hurt himself on the mini-trampoline. I tried to soothe him every way I knew how so I could inspect the damage. I even sang that “Thomas the Tank Engine” song that makes me want to attach live jumper cables to my ears. Nothing worked. Then you came into the room. You went straight to the toy box, pulled out this little alien monster I’d never even seen before, brought it over to him and, without a word said, held it close to his face so he could see. The first glimpse he got of it—or maybe it was the first glimpse he got of you?—he settled down immediately. It was a magic trick Grandma Poss would’ve been proud of.