Barnacle Love (21 page)

“Why you no dry your hands in the washroom?”

“Didn’t you reserve a hotel?”

He grabbed the side of my head. At sixteen I was now taller than him. He drew my face close to his.

“I make everything okay. You hear me?” It was a threat that had been spurred by my challenge: stupidity, incompetence, failure, whatever judgment it was that he had registered in my voice.

“Let go!” I said.

“Why can’t those canaries shut up?” Terri moved her hands to her temples. “It’s like a fucken zoo in here.”

“Watch you mouth. You is nineteen but that no mean you—”

“I’m twenty.”

My father looked wounded, but only for a moment.

“Manuel.” My mother playfully flicked at his cufflink. “What should we eat? I don’t know anything …”

My father turned to stare out the window.

“Can I take your order?” Mr. Wong bowed.

“I’d like the chicken balls with—”

“Terezinha, your father will make the order for our food,” my mother said.

My sister dropped the menu and made small circles with her fingertips at her temples.

“Mr. Wong?” I felt stupid the minute I spoke the words. “Is there some way we can stop the noise from the birds? My sister here—”

“Oh, this not noise,” Mr. Wong said.

“Squawking, chirping, whatever. Could you just get them to stop?” Terri piped up.

“Sometimes beautiful song cover up deep hurt,” Mr. Wong said.

Terri chuckled. “Confucius say …” she added.

I thought my father was going to jump out of his seat and strangle her.

“Birds in cages sing. To some, sound like beautiful song. But we do not know; we do not have the words,” Mr. Wong added. “A great puzzle.”

“These Chinese, they is smart people.” I could see my father tapping his forehead through the veil from the steaming noodles. “They come to this country with nothing and live like animals, twenty, maybe thirty in one house. Like dogs they work, in restaurants or factories, whatever, and no complaints. They is cheap and they save everything they can. Before you know they no wear their short pants and Chinese slippers anymore. No. They buy leather shoes and expensive gabardines. They pay for houses in cash-money. They is smart these people, I tell you.”

My mother had managed to eat a couple of shrimp but refused to touch the noodles my father had ordered.

“I can’t, Manuel, I’m full,” my mother said as she continued to draw the noodles to the edge of her plate. I knew she thought they looked like cats’ guts. She used to
say that Chinese people ate cats, and whenever a cat went missing, there was always a well-fed family somewhere in our neighborhood.

“
Mãe
, these are noodles,” I offered.

“Leave your mother. If she want to eat, she eat,” my father said.

“This is nice,” my mother said.

“Oh, this is nothing. When I traveled across Canada on a train, so beautiful this country. You no see nothing like this in the world. It take the breath out of me.”

“Not completely,” Terri mumbled.

“Is that it? My children laugh at me?”

“No, Manuel, they just—”

“I know what they is doing.”

The silence was broken by his fist hitting the table. “You no know how much I had in me. You can’t see.” His voice shook. “I leave Portugal on fishing boat and I know I not going to come back. I give everything away to follow something new. I no understand what but something inside push me here—to make something of myself in this land. I come to be someone in this world.
If you are going to
fazer uma América
then let this country shape you.
That is what Mateus say to me one day.”

“Who’s that?” I asked.

My father looked at my mother. “I almost lose my life once when I come to this country. I push off from the
Argus
into the ocean. Three days,” he roared, “I float in the open waters until a storm come and rip into me and my boat and I let go … dropped to the bottom of the sea …”

I wasn’t quite sure if he paused for dramatic effect or if the recollection was overwhelming him. It didn’t
matter; I just wanted the elusive story that I had heard only in snippets throughout my life.

“But I is saved. I turn my back on everything I know to make a life in Canada. Do you understand how hard that is for me?”

“
Pai.
” I surprised myself by referring to him in Portuguese. “There are people that have gone over the Falls in a barrel and they’ve survived.”

As if on cue my mother made the sign of the cross and piped up, “Never. Those are crazy people.”

He wavered, looked at my sister sternly, uncertain if he should be drawn in by my deflection. “Not exactly.” My father had taken the bait. “Is true there is adventure in all of us.” My mother looked unconvinced. “Everyone has adventure in the brains and in the heart and it make some men famous, rich even.”

“Don’t forget dead,” my sister added, wiping the corners of her mouth.

“
Mãe
, they go over in a barrel and the barrel is filled with padding and pillows so I think you just come out of—”

“Balance,
filho.
No forget balance. This is most important. I say you have to know how the barrel goes over, in what direction and angle.” My father seemed pleased with the turn in discussion.

“I think it’s stupid,” my mother said. “You can die.”

My father looked incredulous. I knew she was playing along with it. But his tone was becoming insulting, and soon even she wouldn’t want to play any longer.

“A man need to make a mark in this world. You still no understand,” he said. “Women no understand these
things. A man have dreams.” He stared at the water-stained ceiling and scratched his stubbly neck with his knuckles.

Mr. Wong came over to clear the table. He left four fortune cookies on a small dish and took the thirty dollars my father had laid on the table. He was leaving Mr. Wong a seventy-eight-cent tip and waved him off as if he should be pleased with his generosity.

“
A closed mouth gathers no feet
,” my sister read. She crumpled the fortune between her fingers then flicked it across the table. “What the hell does that mean?”

My mother copied the way we had cracked our cookies, then handed the paper to me to read.
A dream is not responsible to the one who believes in it.
My mother crunched on the cookie and looked pleased.

“Let me see mine.
Thing are lost when not used.
”

“Ooooh, like your manhood,” my sister smirked.

“Shut up!”

“Why you no be more of lady, like your mother. I no want to remember Christmas like this.” My father’s strong hand had pinned my sister’s hand to the table.

“Manuel, Manuel, Manuel,” my mother whispered through clenched teeth as she scanned the room to see if anyone was looking.

“There is no one here,
Mãe
,” I said.

“You no have respect! You make fun of everything I say.” He pressed down hard, his arm rigid.

I grabbed him by the wrist. “Let go,” I said as I squeezed harder and wedged his hand open. He drew his trembling hand away then tucked it under the table. My sister glared at him. She was not afraid.

“Who make sure there is food on the table?” he began. “Who give you school, to teach you right and wrong, huh?”

My mother started moving in her seat, rolled from one ass cheek to the other.

“Manuel, everyone is tired,” she pleaded.

“I no come to this country to make a life for myself and for you to laugh and throw this in my face like paper you clean your ass with.” His voice was raised. Mr. Wong and the cook remained in the kitchen area.

“You is good-for-nothing—all of you. After all the things I do for you. A nice house, clothes, and—”

I blurted a laugh, a quick snort that made his head snap in my direction. It stunned my mother and sister both. But for once there was no reprimand, and there was no use backpedaling.

“You think it was easy for us. All you talk about is how hard it was and
when you were my age
and all that martyr shit. But did you ever think how hard it was for me? How hard it still is to try and live a dream you never claimed?”

“
Filho!
” my mother interjected softly.

I raised a hand to stop her. My father sat silent; his face betrayed nothing and, in so doing, welcomed me to push further. I leaned over the table, moved closer to him until I could clearly see the spider-like veins that crept across his nose and cheeks.

“Do you even know what I want out of life? Does it even matter?”

He looked straight at me. I could hear the blood pulsing in my ears. The room began to spin, brilliant lights that wobbled in my head. The only figure that
stood clear and resolute was that of my father. His silence was beginning to drain the power I thought I held over him. I was uncertain of what I had done.

“I’m tired,” my sister yawned. “Let’s check in to the hotel.”

“More like the train station,” I said.

My father’s scowl moved over me. He was disgusted with my betrayal. It was the same expression I had gazed upon all my life. He didn’t want to understand. The love was there, but only beneath the bruised surface of our relationship.

“Manuel?”

“That’s great! That’s just fucken remarkable.” My father did not flinch at my sister’s outburst, her choice of words. “Stranded here in Niagara Falls on the coldest day of the year and nowhere to go.” Terri began to scramble through her purse, pushing the contents aside, looking for something.

“Manuel, we’ll have to go home,” my mother said.

I buried my face in my hands, scratched my itchy scalp with my palms. I was tired and just wanted to disappear, wanted them all to just disappear.

“I’m calling Luis. He’ll pick us up.”

Luis was my sister’s boyfriend. She had been invited to spend Christmas Eve with his family this year, had accepted then had been embarrassed to have to say no.

She moved to the pay phone. On her way she grabbed a folded tablecloth, snapped it into the air, and draped the suspended canary cage with it. “Driving me fucken nuts.”

“
One cannot lose something they never had
,” my father whispered, then flicked his fortune on the table. He had
rubbed the narrow strip of paper between his thumb and forefinger until it coiled like a tiny spring. It sat on the table slowly unraveling. The snow had begun to fall. It was dark now.

“
Pai
, I didn’t mean—”

“I know,
filho
, I know,” he replied, his eyes fixed on the window, brimming with tears. “This not the place for old mans, is for the young and strong.”

“As long as we’re together. That’s the most important thing.” My mother wove her arm with my father’s. He did not resist.

“Only a few people have ever survived the Falls.”

I waited but there was no answer.

“I read on the bathroom walls about the stunts that happened over the Falls,” I continued, but still there was only this ominous silence. “They became famous. But how could you survive?” I was trying to tangle myself in his web so he could show me his superior knowledge of science or brilliance in engineering. He liked nothing more. I thought it would knock my father out of his strange daze, alleviate the concern carved on my mother’s forehead.

“
Pai
, did you hear me?”

He looked at us and smiled generously.

“I can’t get a hold of him. They’ve probably gone to midnight mass,” Terri said.

“Oh my, it’s time. Manuel, I saw a church before we came, St. Elizabeth’s, I think.”

My father nodded.

He stood up, reached for his wool coat and buttoned it with one hand. We were all shuffling out of the booth,
still caught somewhat off guard by his quiet but agreeable nature. We heard the door swing open; curled wisps of snow streamed in as he left.

The three of us huddled and walked headfirst into the blustering wind. The icy snow pelted our faces. I raised a forearm across my brow and caught the almost ghostly figure of my father walking against the storm. He turned left from Victoria Street onto Clifton Hill, walked in the direction of all the old horror shops and souvenir places that sold pencil sharpeners in the shape of the Maid of the Mist and little Indian dolls with fur-trimmed parkas rimming dark-skinned faces. He would disappear for a moment, then his silhouette would take shape once again through another blast of wind and snow that dragged its nets down the empty road, trawling for scattered garbage: coffee cups, newspapers, leaflets, lost gloves.

We had dressed for the cold but not for the snow. My mother had wanted to look nice for the weekend. She had worn her black suede heels that she kept in a velour bag with a drawstring and only wore to funerals. She almost tiptoed along the sidewalk, careful of where her feet came down.

The road descended toward the lip of the gorge and its lookout points with stand-up binoculars, twenty-five cents for five minutes. I could see my father leaning against the thick railing.

“The church is not here, Manuel,” my mother said. But a gust of wind hit her open mouth, forced her to swallow the frigid air. She turned from him, shielded herself as she pleaded, “My toes, Manuel. They’re frozen.”

“This is better than the church,” he said as he smiled. He swept his arm over the railing as if slowly casting grass seed. “So beautiful.”

It was a magical sight; the thunderous roar of the Falls, the mist that crystallized wherever it settled, and the snow, huge snowflakes that now spun and twisted in a gentler wind. It was Christmas Eve and I thought of what the evening had meant two thousand years ago, how everything must have been heightened for Mary and Joseph on the eve of that birth; how, denied a place to stay for the night, the miracle was born.

When I turned from the railing, my father had moved on, dragging his hand along the thick iron that stood between the tourists and the Falls. He turned to look at us. My sister was a bit farther behind, crouched with my mother, arm in arm, making slow headway against the wind.

I could hear my father singing something, a fado from long ago about life and love and things lost and all that other crap my family spoke of incessantly. He was walking with purpose, confidently placing one foot in front of the other, certain of where he was heading. We were close to the park by the river where we would often picnic with our family, near the botanical gardens where the women would go with their scraps of tinfoil looking for seeds or samples to pinch and bring home.