Barnacle Love (20 page)

“You can’t stay,” he said in a surprisingly soft voice.

My father turned and saw me take some reluctant steps toward him. Before I reached him, he tried to get up; his knees buckled and a violent trembling began. He reached for my wrist.

“
Filho. Meu filho.
I so cold. They no turn on the heat. I ask and I ask but no one listen to me. Take me home.
Casa. Eu quero ir para a nossa casa.
”

I couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to me in Portuguese. He sounded so vulnerable when he uttered the phrase, the words strung together. He looked so helpless and lost, not the man I remembered as a boy. Tom—that’s what the black man’s name tag read—took hold of my father’s wrist and motioned with his head for me to leave.

I turned away from my father’s cries to help him, turned my back and ran out the same blue door, punching my way through. I took a deep breath then retched beside my bike.

I leaned my bike against the garage wall and stepped into my backyard. My sister had come home; she stood behind my mother, delicately braiding her graying hair. I could see the bandage on her hand.

“
Mãe
, he wants to come home. We need to bring him home.”

There was no response. It was cold but I took off my windbreaker and threw off my sweatshirt. I sat on the flagstone walkway that connected the house to the garage and then to the laneway. I kicked off my shoes and flung off my socks. I lay back flat on the path with my arms to my sides and looked up into the dotted sky. Its beauty was in its vastness, places unseen, distances unchallenged.

Their faces, too, were turned up into the starlit sky. A cool wind began to blow. There was whimsy in their eyes. My mother’s large whirligig rattled atop the flagpole. The girl with the bangs in the painted dress spun in a cartwheel, arms and legs splayed open. Behind her was a figure that looked like Jesus without a beard, dressed all in white with red stains on its hands and robe. The fisherman reeled in his line of fish—the many small fish that he held on his line—before dropping it once again over the side of his small boat named
Avé.
The boy sat on his bike and pedaled with determination, a need to go somewhere, anywhere. Together, the propellers twirled while the figures worked in their fruitless pantomime.

MY FATHER BEAMED AS HE
held the tickets in the shape of a fan—
pick-a-card, any-card.
He laid them on the kitchen table with a rap of his knuckles.
CN RAIL
—Economy: Toronto to Niagara Falls. I had never ridden on a train. The last time we were all together on any kind of trip was when we went to Portugal to bury my grandmother. I was six then and my memories were nothing more than broken scenes: being bathed in half-barrels of cold water, soft butter, dirty feet, long worn faces, heat and sweat and dust, bread torn by hand, animals and blood, laundry soap, outhouses with neat piles of assorted rags, hockey-stick sideburns, Aunt Candy—her red lips framing crooked teeth, my grandmother like a lump of charcoal—cursed and blamed with every small gasp.

“It’s certainly not B.C.,” I said. I raised my eyes and continued to cross-hatch my sketch. My father rolled up
his sleeves and scoured his hands under hot water like a surgeon. A trip to Niagara Falls on Christmas Eve wasn’t exactly the train ride he had been promising all our lives: sweeping across Canada, west to the Rockies. He came back and stood between my mother and me, cleanshaven, looking out the window at an already darkening sky. His white shirt so crisp and fresh. He reminded me of the early black-and-white pictures he had of himself, posing outside Toronto’s city hall in a tailored suit and dark overcoat and fedora. That big smile of his that puffed out his cheeks. Or with his plaid shirts and pleated trousers in the middle of Canada’s wilderness, his foot on top of a bear he had shot dead near the rails in Kenora. Or so he said.

“What are you drawing?” he asked.

I continued to dig my pencil into the paper, short quick strokes. “It’s a bird—a dead one.”

I had found it last week, crumpled against the curb at the foot of Bathurst where I liked to go every so often on my bike to draw or read. I had found a bag in the garbage and brought it home. It was still in the box freezer in the basement, frozen with its broken wing tipped upward and its head tucked under its breast.

“I no see a bird. I see crazy lines but I no see a bird.”

“You wouldn’t,” I said.

“Why you no do math? I no come to this country for you to make pictures of birds.”

My ears were burning. He knew I wanted to draw. Even though my teachers told him I was special, had a real gift, he always snorted his anger in the same way. “Business,” he’d say, “he will be a businessman.”

I spent most of my time in my room with the radio cranked, a bulging capsule of bass.

My mother sat beside him, not close, but near enough that she could reach to brush his leg. He lowered his head and she whispered something.

“Very nice,
filho
,” he said, straightening himself.

He hadn’t had a drink in over a year now, had found work as a custodian at the Eaton Centre.

“Too late,” I said. I scooped up my charcoal and pencils, flipped my sketch pad shut, and pushed my chair away from the table.

“He wants this for us, and he’s been so good,” she had said when my sister had blurted, “I won’t go.” My sister was twenty and saw herself as a woman who couldn’t be led any longer; she would make decisions for herself. But a private conversation with my mother had made her pack her bag and she sat slumped next to me trying to read a trashy novel.

Every time a relative of ours came to Canada, Niagara Falls was the first place we’d take them. My father got a kick out of hearing their “oohs” and their “ahhh,
mas que maravilha.
” And I knew he measured the success of the trip by the number of camera clicks as they posed holding on to the leaves of a branch, knee-highs flattening the hair on their legs or men in shiny suits on a hot day. My father took great pride in possessing the photographic precision needed to create the illusion of holding the Skyline Tower in their hands like the Statue of Liberty.

They would all come from Portugal smelling of salt and damp cotton, like the end of my sleeve I would catch myself sucking when I was a kid. They lived with us for the first little while; “just until they get their feet on the ground” was what my mother used to say, without the slightest trace of her sticky Portuguese accent. They all stayed rent-free for a couple of months, but never much more than that; there was always another letter informing my father his sponsorship had been approved by Canadian immigration officials, announcing that another family member was waiting with fresh passport in hand.

It became a lonely place when our big house on Palmerston Avenue remained empty. Rooms were cleaned with water and bleach, sheets were changed, before everything was covered with plastic or drop cloths and the doors were shut and locked, sealed like a vacuum, waiting for the next relative.

All that had stopped when I was about ten. Now that they were here, the relatives hardly visited. My father had said some awful things to them, hurtful things. For the most part we were alone and had only each other.

During the train ride, few words were exchanged. My mother smiled and squeezed my father’s arm every time he looked her way. Our sullen expressions and sighs of boredom went ignored. My father excused himself and announced he needed to go to the bathroom. He walked down the aisle, steadying himself on the backs of the seats.

“You need to know something. Your father came to this country with nothing—knowing no one. He came with a dream. He made a good life for himself, for your
sister and you and me. Your father is a proud man; he’s proud of us all.”

I didn’t want to start anything.

“I know your father loves you. But life,
a vida
, was not supposed to be this way for him. Your father made big dreams for himself in Canada. The ones he helped come to this country are now doing much better than him; their dreams have come true. It’s not easy for him. Try to understand.”

“So what was his dream?” I asked.

“I’m not sure anymore,
filho.
”

When we arrived my father struggled to read the signs at the train station, and I could tell he resigned himself to moving with the flow of the other passengers on our train. He hailed a cab from the platform. He did it with such flair, as if it was the kind of thing he was accustomed to. His regained confidence put me at ease in a strange way. He simply said, “To the Falls, please.”

My father opened the cab door for my mother. I could hear the deep roaring of the great Falls. The mist had frozen on the trees that lined the river’s edge. They looked like glass cages, crystallized branches that reached down to touch the snow. The Falls were lit, a mass of color blocks—red, blue, pink, green—that seemed to pulse underneath the raging water that tumbled over the brink. What looked like an iceberg shaped in a semicircle had formed above the cataract that deflected huge amounts of water into the gorge, a stunning backdrop of white thundered down below. Even my sister leaned over
the gorge’s railing and grinned, her breath streaming from between her teeth.

I remembered a story from a school trip; an Indian woman had stepped into her canoe and, singing her death song softly to herself, paddled into the current and hurtled toward the Falls. But the gods or something like that saved her, and the rainbow became her gift to the people.
It’s the kind of shit you just can’t make up
, I thought.

The Chinese lanterns hung in perfect rows over the tables, their red fringe swaying to our footsteps as we were led to a booth. It was clear the restaurant had once been a kind of fifties diner; some of the old touches were still there: quilted stainless steel in the kitchen peek-through, jukeboxes in the booths—ours was stuck on a Patsy Cline page: “Sweet Dreams,” “I Fall to Pieces,” and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”—the Rolodex handles that flipped the pages long broken. The owners had tried to infuse the place with Chinese touches: scrolls of slashed writing, large plastic flower arrangements, the plucky music that played in the background, and the orange glow of paper lanterns across the red wallpaper and vinyl booths. The owners had made it into something they wanted, reinvented the place and breathed life into it.

The restaurant was empty, except for an old man who sat near the front. It was freezing outside and he looked out the window running with condensation. He slurped his twisted noodles as if eating spaghetti. He had no teeth and I couldn’t look because the way he ate with his gums reminded me of other old people, of my Grandmother
Theresa who had died only two months earlier and for whom my mother still wore black, and would most likely continue to do for the full two years she was obligated. It was the only place open that late on Christmas Eve, Mr. Wong’s.

My sister shimmied along the vinyl bench patched with squares of duct tape. She bumped me over and smiled.

“Where did your father go?” my mother asked.

“He’s by the phone,
Mãe
,” I replied at the same time my sister said, “Looking for a liquor store that’s open.”

My mother scowled at her. “Your father hasn’t had a drink in a year.” Her quick retort clearly indicated how anxious she was, uncertain of how the holiday would play itself out. “It’s important that he know we appreciate how much he wanted to do this for us.”

My sister flipped through the menu.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” I said.

I stopped by a large aquarium. Three carp barely moved within its velvety green walls. They looked bored. Beside it was a nativity scene, lit with Christmas lights that sliced through the cracks in the crèche walls and lay in colorful lines across the gathered figures. They looked like they were at a disco. They were made of blue and white porcelain and they all looked Chinese, with their thinly painted eyes. I couldn’t help but smile.

“The greatest gift,” someone whispered. I almost expected him to finish off with
Little Grasshopper.
I looked back and saw it was Mr. Wong—I assumed that was his name—the man who had earlier shown us to our booth and handed us our menus. His hair was cut too short; it stuck out at the back. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles
that made me want to trust him. His yellow fingers reached in and lifted the Chinese Jesus. He reached for my hand, uncurled my fingers, and placed the tiny figurine in my palm. I motioned that I couldn’t but he closed my fingers over its smoothness and wouldn’t accept my refusal.

“A gift of life. The cycle of birth and death. He is a great symbol of sacrifice.” He closed his eyes and it was as if he was praying or casting some kind of mental blessing, holding my hand tight as he did.

Embarrassed, I slid Jesus into my pocket. My father half-grinned as he saw me approach, rolled his shoulder away from me and lowered his voice on the pay phone. I made my way into the bathroom. The shocking white and fluorescent lights popped me into a new reality. The bathroom walls were littered with old newspapers that had been glued, I thought, but on closer inspection I realized it was wallpaper made to look like a collage of old newspapers. The stories were all about the same thing: Niagara Falls stunts and daredevils, with graphic sepia-toned photographs of men crossing the Falls on a tightrope, holding a long pole for balance, or various concoctions of boats and barrels and the happy faces of the heroes, the ones who had made it over safely. There were other, more gruesome photographs of the many who had died trying, curled up in crumpled balls within their barrel walls or puffed and bloated after being dredged up weeks later. I was fascinated. It was then that my ears adjusted to my father’s muffled questions and curses coming through the paper-thin doors.

“Nothing? Not one room for four peoples—impossible—nothing at all? … Train station closed—where I go? Where my family going to go? … I want to speak to manager. Hello … hello.” He crashed the receiver into its holder just as I walked by shaking my wet hands in the air.