Cold Hands (9 page)

I threw the frog off the flyover onto the car below. I trained the airgun on the kid on the bike. I hurled the wee girl’s shoes into the pond. I asked the woman in the chippy for a swatch at her vag. I told the teacher to fuck off. And, as I did these things, as I heard the boys laugh and honk their approval. I felt their acceptance. I felt their affectionate gaze.

Yes, I felt their love.

* * *

I put the car in the huge garage, the headlights picking out the towers of packing crates towards the back – old furniture, stuff we never used, earmarked for charity shops and
garage sales – and turned the ignition off. I breathed out. I’d felt anxious all the way back, every set of headlights that appeared in my mirror had seemed filled with significance, with menace. Even in the garage now, crossing the chill, empty breeze-block space towards the door that connected with the house, I felt jangled, nervy, fighting the urge to look over my shoulder.

Irene was reading a book in the vast living room, her feet folded up beneath her, and she looked up from her pool of light as I came in. ‘Hi, Donnie,’ she yawned.

‘Hi there. Well, how was he?’

‘A little angel. He went down just after you rang. Not a peep since. Were the roads OK? Looks like it’s getting pretty heavy out there.’

‘Fine really. Gritters were already out.’

I flopped down on the big sofa opposite her, loosening my bow tie.

‘And how was the big party this year?’ Irene asked, almost girlishly. She figured Sammy and me for local celebrities and I think she found our lives impossibly glamorous. Irene never went anywhere.

I made a face. ‘Not my thing really.’

‘Who was there?’

‘Oh, the usual – politicians and moneymen. Tell you what, I was going to have a little nightcap. Fancy one?’

‘Oh, just a ginger ale if you have some.’

‘Come on, Irene, live a little.’
That song, the summer of 1982, on the radio all the time, right after it all happened . . .

She laughed. ‘Doesn’t agree with me at all, Donnie. You know that.’

I crossed to the full wet bar in the corner: the
stainless-steel sink, the little glass-fronted refrigerator for the beers, white wine and soft drinks. I reached in and took out a can of Canada Dry. I opened the double doors of the big drinks cabinet above the sink – row upon row of spirits, everything from amaretto to Campari to several different malt whiskies. Irene whistled behind me. ‘My,’ she said. ‘You could open a liquor store with all that!’

‘Yeah, Sammy keeps it well stocked,’ I said over my shoulder, pulling the cork from a bottle of Macallan. ‘I think she’s inherited it from her parents, you know? The kind of people who’re used to “entertaining”.’ I poured a hefty glug of the whisky into a crystal tumbler. The ice bucket was empty. ‘Do you want ice, Irene?’

‘Oh, don’t worry, it’ll be fine as is.’

I filled a little jug from the tap, poured a splash of water into my whisky and brought the drinks over. ‘Mmmm,’ Irene said, sipping hers.

‘Cheers,’ I said, raising my glass as I sat back down.

‘Cheers,’ Irene chorused, raising her sugar water. I had noticed over the last year or so, when Irene came over for barbecues, or for dinner occasionally, or to use the pool in summer, that she never drank alcohol, but I’d never asked the question directly before.

‘Have you never drunk, Irene?’

‘Oh, I’ve tried it of course. Where I grew up, in Macon? It’s bootlegger country. A couple of generations back everybody had a pot still in the yard. Everybody drank back home.’

‘Not you though.’

‘Well, I just always hated that feeling of losing control, you know? As soon as the room started spinning or you felt
yourself getting light-headed, I’d just think “that’s enough”. And considering it only took me about one drink to get there . . . it didn’t really seem worth it.’

‘I bet your friends loved you.’

‘Huh?’

‘Always having a designated driver on hand.’

‘Oh yes. That was always me all right!’

I took a long pull on my drink and looked at the wooden beams of the ceiling high above, holding the glass just below my chin, the rich fumes tearing my eyes.

‘Does it remind you of home?’ Irene asked.

It was my turn to say ‘Huh?’

‘The whisky?’

‘Oh, right. Well, a little bit, I suppose.’

Yeah, right. A fifty-dollar bottle of single malt – that was a regular feature round our way. I thought of the whiskies my father drank – the half- and quarter-bottles of Bell’s or Whyte & Mackay. The occasional full bottle of a supermarket’s own brand.

I took another long swallow, the alcohol hitting me now, everything slowing and relaxing, the anxiety of the drive, of the last few days, melting away.

‘You don’t talk much about back home, do you, Donnie?’

‘I, uh, I guess I don’t. No.’

‘I thought you Scots were meant to be ultra patriotic. Always talking about how great the old country was.’

‘I suppose they do. I guess because I left so young and I don’t have much in the way of family back there . . .’

‘Sounds sad,’ Irene said.

‘Nah. To be honest, I don’t really think about it much.’ This was true until recently.

‘Anyway, you’ve got your own little family here now.’

‘And the extended family,’ I said, gesturing to my tux. ‘Pain in the ass though they can be at times.’ She laughed. There was a pause. I watched the snow blowing by the tall window behind her. There was another question I’d never asked Irene. Braved by the whisky I went ahead. ‘Can I ask, and please don’t be offended, but how come you never had children, Irene?’

‘Couldn’t,’ she shrugged. ‘Jim and I wanted to. It just never seemed to happen.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, touched by the straightforwardness of her answer. She waved a hand.

‘Oh, it was such a long time ago. I suppose today we’d have been in and out of IVF clinics and goodness knows what but back then, the seventies, early eighties, it just seemed more that folks accepted what nature dealt them.’

‘You’re very good with Walt, you know.’

‘Oh, he’s a sweet boy.’

‘Mmm. When he wants to be.’ I looked at my watch. ‘Christ, speaking of which the wee bugger’ll be up soon enough.’

‘Yep, past my bedtime too.’ She put the half-drunk glass of ginger ale on a coaster on a side table and we both stood up.

‘Thanks again for babysitting.’

‘Any time, Donnie.’

I saw her out then walked along the hall to check on Walt. Pausing by the door to his room I looked through the hall window and saw Irene’s tail lights vanishing into the snow. Unexpectedly, I felt a little sad and protective towards her, going home alone, to a dark, empty, rented house. I’d talk to Sammy. Make a point of inviting her over
for dinner more often. Maybe there was even someone we could introduce her to, a friend of Sammy’s parents or something. I’d talk to Sammy.

‘
AWW, DADDY, MAKE
pancakes. Please.
Please!
’

The morning after the party, Walt bent over in supplication in the kitchen, almost on his knees, knowing that a plea for this kind of doughy, fried breakfast on a school day would receive short shrift from his mother and that I was more malleable. Behind him the snow was falling steadily through the wall of glass, as it had been all night. I looked at the time on the bottom of the TV screen, next to the rolling news feed (
‘oil prices set to hit 150 dollars a barrel, economists say . . .’
) and saw it was 7.32. The bus came at 8.15. ‘I . . . shit, OK, Walt. Sit down and drink your juice.’

‘Yaayyy!’

I kept an eye on the TV weather while I slapped the small blue Le Creuset pan onto the hob and got the eggs and butter from the fridge. Now, in the morning light of the kitchen, last night’s anxiety – the headlights – seemed ridiculous. It was Friday. We had a clear weekend ahead of us: no parties or visits or engagements.
Yaayyy
, as Walt liked to say. We’d hang around the house. Maybe get the snowmobile out.

I beat an egg into the whisked flour and milk, the pan almost smoking hot now, and turned back to the TV. The weather girl was gesturing at a huge grey cyclone. ‘These very strong winds are going to keep pushing south, past Saskatoon and into the Regina area by mid-afternoon, driving this heavy snow into real blizzard conditions . . .’

‘Can I have chocolate spread on my –’

‘No way, dude. Lemon, OK?’

‘Aww.’

The phone rang and I picked up the one on the wall nearest to me, the caller ID saying ‘APARTMENT’. ‘Hi, Sammy,’ I said, reaching for the pan. ‘How’d it go – Ahh, fuck!’ The pan, already red hot.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I just burnt myself. Ow!’

‘Daddy swore.’ Walt, in the background.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I was just, uh, making us some pancakes.’ I was turning my hand under the cold water now, the phone cradled in my neck.

‘Oh, don’t give him pancakes, Donnie. Let him have his oatmeal or some –’

‘I just, look, if I don’t get a move on he won’t get any-fucking-thing!’

‘Again! Daddy!’

‘Sorry! Christ.’

‘OK, OK. I was just checking in.’

‘Have you seen the forecast by the way?’

‘Yeah, I’m watching it now.’ I pictured Sammy alone in the apartment, in the open-plan kitchen living room, eating her own oatmeal, watching the same channel I was. ‘I’m
gonna try and leave around lunchtime. Looks like the worst of it isn’t gonna hit us until late afternoon.’

‘OK. Look, I gotta run, bus’ll be here soon.’

‘Give Walt a kiss from me.’

‘Drive safe.’

I threw the pan back on the heat, using an oven glove this time, and Walt ate his second pancake in his gloved hand as we struggled through the gently falling snow towards the bus stop. There was no trace of the mess where I’d found Herby. It was all covered by fresh, virgin snow. But the spot still made me feel uneasy.

Back at the house I remembered I had a saccharine romcom to review for the following week: two big teen stars in what looked like a Jane Austen rewrite with text messaging and iPods. I lay on the sofa for a long time, sipping tea and tapping the DVD against my knee, until I wandered down the hall to my office and stood over the desk, my finger tracing over the smooth plastic pad of the laptop, the cursor hovering briefly over the icon for Mozilla Firefox – that flaming orange-and-white beast encircling the globe, the pathway to Google, the mortal enemy of the stay-at-home writer – before moving along the toolbar and hovering over the Word icon. Fuck it. The review could wait. I slid the cursor further along and clicked on the foresty-green Final Draft logo and, with a heavy sigh, steeling myself, opened UNTITLED.

The last scene I’d been working on had been my first-act climax (falling around page 30 on a 120-page script, all the manuals said), where Welles, the hero, is rooting around in the ruined basement of an office building and he accidentally stumbles upon an ancient laptop, something he has never
seen before, that has somehow (and how indeed, I hadn’t quite cracked this part yet) retained enough power to be turned on. I noticed that the scene was almost falling on page 40 (I had some fat to trim) and read through what I’d last written: squirming, sighing and occasionally letting out a small cry of pain at a particularly heavy-handed bit of dialogue. I deleted chunks, thought for a moment and then typed:

The creative writing MA had convinced me I wanted to do
something
literary with myself, but I was thoroughly terrified by the idea of attempting a novel. Three or four hundred pages? Treading in the footsteps of Joyce, Nabokov and Proust? The screenplay, on the other hand, could be just a hundred or so pages long. With a lot of indented dialogue. And you were treading in the footsteps of, who exactly? Joe Eszterhas? Or the guy who wrote
Earth Girls are Easy
? This seemed less intimidating.

Like many fools before me, I was wrong, of course. Over the last five years, inspired by a stack of screenwriting manuals, I had attempted three scripts, all abandoned somewhere between the first and second drafts. There had been the sci-fi western: a reimagining of
Rio Bravo
set on the hostile moon of a remote planet. (‘
Take the essential elements of a classic movie and recast it in a strikingly different setting.
’) There was the ‘creature feature’, a horror about huge prehistoric bugs discovered in a deep, abandoned mineshaft. (
‘Good low-budget horror ideas are always very marketable.’
) Then there had been the road trip idea about two old college buddies trying to track down their former girlfriends. (‘Bromances’ seemed to be hot.) What I learned over the course of these disasters was that the screenplay was, in fact, very difficult to write. That the form depended on economy, compression and, most of all, like all forms of fiction, upon the vital throb of energy brought only by injecting the writer’s own experience onto the page.

I was a good student in many ways. For years I applied all of the stuff I learned in writing class. I set aside a specific writing time each day to work. (‘The muse is more likely to show up if she knows where you’re going to be every day,’ Stephen King said.) I understood the importance of William Goldman’s aphorism that ‘storytelling is structure’. I got Syd Field’s ‘Know Your Ending!’ maxim. Most of all I truly felt David Mamet’s observation that artists are driven to ‘lessen the burden of the unbearable disparity between their conscious and unconscious minds, and so achieve peace’. But this was where I came up short.

For I found only a void in the place where I needed to
speak from. Well, not a void exactly, since it wasn’t empty. Rather it was a locked vault, my own basement scene.

I reread the page, deleted most of it, and decided to go in to town for lunch.