Corked (19 page)

 

M
y father's fork hovers over my clam pasta. Repositioning my own so the prongs are aimed at him, I let the fork slice through the air sideways. The two pieces of metal make a clanging noise and his fork flies out of his hand and onto the floor. He raises his eyebrows and smiles. I lean over, pick it up, make a show out of cleaning it with my napkin, breathing on it and wiping it down, and hand it back to him.

“Do you want to make a deal with me?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“When you want some of my food, ask me first. You know, instead of just helping yourself.”

“Deal. Hey, Toots.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Give me some of your pasta?”

I push my plate closer to him.

“Hey, Toots.”

“Yes?”

“Can I tell you a story about me?”

“Of course.”

“I don't know…this story might not move you in any way….” He hesitates. “But maybe it will explain to you why I act strange sometimes. I don't know, maybe not.”

He swallows a sip of his champagne. “So, in the spring, in 1965, I was living in Montreal, in a very small apartment.”

“That was when you were working for Air France, peddling gourmet food to the drunken bloaters on the plane.” I pluck a gray clamshell from the tangle and perch it on the tip of my nose. “Continue, please,” I say gravely.

“Yes.” He takes note of the clamshell, but continues without laughing. “I was woken up in the middle of the night by a lot of loud banging outside my door. There was banging and yelling—a big noise. I went to my door to check out what was happening. When I opened the door, there were men standing there in police uniforms. They came into my
leetle
apartment and threw me against the wall, then let me go, then told me to put some clothes on.” My father is speaking in an eerily calm voice.

“What—why was this happening?” I remove the clamshell from my nose and place it slowly back onto the plate.

“I'm getting there, Toots. Stay with me. The story is a bit long. The men said I had five minutes. While I put on my pants and jacket, they walked around my apartment and knocked things over. They made a mess of everything. I was thrown in a car, and taken to a room in the police station. It was a gray room. I sat there for a long time, probably a few hours. There were no windows in the room, so I didn't know what time it was, or how long I'd been sitting there.”

“You're burying the lead, Dad. What was
happening?
” I repeat, suddenly anxious.

“I had been arrested, with a group of other Air France employees, in a huge heroin bust.”

I stare at him, perplexed.
How is this coming out only now?
A piece of pasta dislodges itself from my molar and catches in the back of my throat. I cough into my napkin.

“For three days, three policemen worked in shifts, interrogating me—one detective with the Royal Mounted Police, one from the FBI, one agent with Interpol. They questioned me for hours and hours. They threatened me, insulted me. Then they would stop and become gentle. They were empathetic, understanding, and then they would turn it around again—bigger threats, more violence. Sometimes they would stop and put me back in my cage so that I could sleep for 15 minutes.” Now he is punching his words. He grabs his glass of champagne so that the liquid sloshes around. I want to tell him to put it down, to wait until the end of his story.

“This sounds like a cop movie,” I say.

“Like in the fucking most predictable cop movie you've ever seen,” he spits.

“What did you do? What did you say to them? What did they say to you?”

“Nothing, Toots. I did nothing. I said nothing to them. I stayed on my little chair and kept quiet. I went to another place. I disappeared in front of their eyes. I was still very young—I was just 26. You know what it is like to have an
expérience déterminante
—a bad one—when you are so young.”

I move my head up and down. “You have to keep going with the story.”

“At the end of three days, the cops were very frustrated with me. The one from Interpol—he was a short man from France—put his hand on my shoulder and said in my ear, ‘
Des petits mecs comme vous, tout ce que ça merite c'est douze balles dans le dos.'”

“All you deserve is 12 bullets in the back.”

“Yes.”

“What were you accused of, exactly?”

“There were three crimes: illegally importing drugs, trafficking, and being a member of a drug ring. Each charge was a minimum of seven years in prison. The operative word, of course, was ‘minimum'.”

“But they were just accusations, and you didn't admit anything.”

“I said nothing to them. When they put me back in the holding cell—my cage—I thought about Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta. During their sixth fight—their final fight—Sugar Ray had Jake up against the ropes. Jake's face looked like pudding, totally deformed. His eyes were so fat they were only
sleets
. He had his arms up and Sugar Ray was raining punches on him. The referee stopped the fight, and raised Sugar Ray's hand above his head. He was the new middleweight champion of the world. Everyone was cheering, but then Jake walked over to Sugar Ray. He looked at him with his poor broken face and said, ‘You couldn't knock me out, Sugar Ray. You couldn't knock me out.'”

“And so?” Under the table, I am tearing a cardboard coaster into a million pieces.
He didn't get knocked out, though. Neither did I
.

“And so I had my first van ride, in handcuffs. And my first cavity search. And my first tiny penitentiary cell at Bordeaux prison. It had dirty walls and a bed that was all caved in. It was the first time I felt massive contempt for humankind.”

“But you didn't do anything WRONG.”

“Ah, yes, but that was not the point. I was accused. If I remember correctly, something like ten other men were accused with me. Everyone was interrogated. One man—a man named Aubert—had accused me. He was covering for someone. Who? We'll never know.”

“You were accused by only one man. So you went to jail anyway.”

“Yes.”

“What about your lawyer?”

“I had one. He was bad—incompetent. He did not believe my story.”

“And you lost.”

“I lost, and they threw me in the slammer.” He pronounces it
slah-MURR
.

All at once, I notice how screwy my face feels. Rage had settled in my cheeks, drawing them up, causing my eyes to squint. My jaw had tightened, causing my mouth to gape. I smooth my hand over my bangs and down, grazing my nose and chin.
He was 26 and he was in jail. I am 26 and I'm on a wine trip
.

“Keep going.”

“Well, you know, I adapted. If I stood on my toes and grabbed onto the bars of the window in my cell, I could lift myself up and see some sky. But there were awful things in there. I saw a man get stabbed in the line for lunch one day—with a spoon that had been shaped into a sharp point, so I shut my mouth. I shut my mouth and went along with the routines.”

“How long were you there?”

“At the beginning, I did not think I'd be there for long, but after the terrible lawyer, and so much bad luck, and the injustice, I had no idea—about anything. Toots, I had no
idea
. At one point, I had to start to believe that I'd be there for the full sentence. I had to move on.”

“Move on from WHAT?”

“Just move on from the idea of being free.”

“Oh, Dad.” I reach across my plate and tap my index finger on the back of his hand. My eyes become teary.

“There were weeks when I would not have one conversation. For a little while, at the beginning, I developed a relationship with the man in the cell next door. My neighbor was a municipal worker and a member of the
Front de Libération du Québec
. He had been convicted of making homemade bombs and dropping them in Canada Post boxes. This lasted for a little while, but he could not endure it. On the Sunday before Easter, he'd been very upset. He missed his wife and his two daughters, so on Easter Monday, he used the leather strap he needed to hold his wooden leg in place and hung himself with it.”

My gaze drops slightly and stops at father's neck. I watch his Adam's apple pop in and out as he swallows another mouthful of his champagne.

“Did you think about suicide?” I ask him this in my quietest voice.

His face becomes stern. It is the same face of the man who held me by the shoulders in that summer of 2001 while I cried and fretted over a meal of orzo.

“It almost
keeled
me,” he says.

But your life is no longer your own once you are loved
. Something inside me solidifies.
I have the courage to be accountable to the people I love. His parents were waiting on the outside of the disaster, helping when they could. Mine had done the same, in their way
.

I stop picking at my leftover clams. They are too cold to eat. Instead, I place my fork next to my plate, grab the edge of the table with both hands, and squeeze it.

“You have to tell me how you got out—now,” I demand.

“My mother saved me, and luck, I guess. My mother found a very good attorney, a man named Jacques Bédard. The trial began. Every other week, I sat in front of an elderly judge. He had no time for me or the defense. Every month, Bédard would put in a bail request with him. It was rejected over and over again. But then, in the summer—the late summer—there was a new judge who was called to do the bail hearings. His name was Larose. Larose and Bédard were friends from childhood. Larose trusted Bédard. My bail was set at $20,000. A friend of the family, a dentist, Dr. Capelle, wrote the check. He signed over the title to his house as a guarantee to the bank. I left prison after being there for almost six months. In June of the following year, the two others were sentenced to 10 and 15 years in prison. And in October 1966, I was acquitted. Oh, and the reason I had the reaction to hearing the name Aubert, you know, in the car, was because it was the last name of one of the men who was charged. It was just a gut thing, a bad reminder.”

We look at each other for a while. I smooth out the napkin on my lap. He pinches several
frites allumettes
, squashes them together so they're a squashy potato mass, dips them in mayonnaise, and crams his fingers into his mouth. Walking my fingers over to his plate, I mimic him. I swallow and run my tongue around my mouth to taste the residual starch and salt.

“Dad.”

“What is it?”

“You were innocent, right?”

“What do you think?”

“I think yes.”

“I guess I am the only person who will ever know.”

“Come on, Dad.”

“Yes, yes. Yes, Tootsen. I was. It was my great test. I came through. I did not fold. My innocence carried me through. It enabled me to deal with whatever life threw at me for all of it—for the rest of my
life
.” He slams his hand on the table with anger or defiance or both. Our glasses wobble.

I pause and think about this.

“I wish you had told me that story earlier. I wish I could have known that about you.” I waver for a moment.
Would it have really helped to know this about him last year, two years ago, four years ago?
“It maybe would have helped me make sense of some of the things about you that scare me—that make me nuts. I could have at least understood a little more about the place you go when you get quiet. That it is not about you rejecting me, you not loving me.”

“Of course it is not about that!”

“But the accident—the way it affects my decisions, my behavior—it would have been nice to know about that piece of you so that I could have deciphered your language a little better. We could have maybe compared notes….” I trail off.
His story isn't The Answer, but it is one important variable in a big pile of other variables. It's like knowing whether he had a rainy or a dry October
.

“But now you know. You know some of my ghosts,” he says.

“Yes.”

“And I know some of your ghosts.”

“The accident?”

“Not the accident, but what it has done to you. Your accident has made you afraid of endings, Toots. I see that now. When I disappear in front of you, or when I become a crazy person, you are watching the end of the man you know.”

He's dying a little death every day. At least you know a little more about the he who is dying
. I shudder a bit, then stop.

“I am a lucky guy,” he says.

“Sure, I guess….”