Every Time We Say Goodbye (33 page)

Finally, Dawn told him he’d better stop. “Stop, Jimmy. Stop, or else—”

“Or else what?”

“I don’t
know
what, just
stop
, Jimmy, I mean it!”

But he had only stopped telling her what he was taking, and she knew it was something, because his eyes were often red or glazed, and he disappeared for hours at a time. She had found no more bottles at the creek, but she couldn’t stop looking. She checked the toy box, his hockey bag, the back of an old TV set in the basement. She searched his room when he was out. Between the bureau and the wall, she found an oblong blue pill, exactly like the ones Frank had been taking. It might have fallen out of Vera’s pocket. She couldn’t believe that Jimmy would take Frank’s medicine. She couldn’t believe the pill had fallen out of Vera’s pocket, either. Nothing ever fell out of Vera’s pockets. She decided to have a talk with Jimmy, but only when the time was right.

One Sunday after the first snowfall, they took their skis out and made long trails up and down the frozen creek. At the rock, they sat side by side, making patterns in the snow with their poles. Now, Dawn thought, but she blurted out the wrong words, and Jimmy turned on her in a fury.

“Jimmy, are you still doing drugs?” he repeated in a nasty, mincing voice. “Oh my gaaaawd! Drugs are so baaaaaaaad.”

“Well, are you?”

“Fuck off, Dawn.” He grabbed his poles and skied to the bend in the creek before turning around. “Just fuck off and leave me alone,” he yelled. Then he disappeared around the corner.

She took that as a yes.

The other sign they were not on the road back to normal was that Dawn couldn’t sleep, even though she was as tired as it was possible to be, and every day, she got more tired than that. Sometimes, she would turn off the light and sleep would start lapping against her, soft and warm and ordinary, but then it changed without warning into a deep, icy, black hole and she would have to tear herself away and turn on the light. If she fell into that hole, she would never wake up and never get out. One night, she jolted awake and felt an evil presence hovering in the dark just above her bed. Her thoughts flew to
The Exorcist
, which Vera hadn’t let her watch, but which her friends had related to her, scene by vile, shocking scene. She lay awake, saturated with cold, dark panic. In the morning, she was afraid to look at herself in the oval mirror above the oak dresser in case she saw a face that was not hers. Sleepiness began to overtake her at school, but even when she kept her eyes open, the lessons came pelting towards her and then bounced off harmlessly. She was falling behind in several classes, and if she didn’t keep her grade thirteen marks up, she wouldn’t get into university, an idea she had discussed at length with Laura. Her grandparents wanted her to go to Algoma University, where she wouldn’t have to throw away money on residence fees and where they could keep an eye on her. But Laura said she needed to leave the Soo to get a good education, and she needed a good education so she could be independent and lead her own life and never have to rely on anyone (i.e., a man) to support her. In fact, Laura had already set up a savings account for Dawn to go away to school. She showed Dawn the bank book. “Four thousand
dollars?”
Dawn said, her eyes widening. Laura nodded happily. “I’ve started one for Jimmy, too. All you need to do is
keep your marks up.” The problem was, every time Dawn sat down to do her homework, she was overcome by a mixture of prickly dread and sleepiness. They cancelled each other out, leaving her in a cloud until Vera called her to go start dinner. The other problem was, she was either possessed by the devil or going crazy, neither of which was helpful in remembering the timeline of the French Revolution.

All her life she had wanted to get back to normal: to live in a house where no one had secrets or cancer, to eat dinner every night with parents who had not deserted her, then go to bed without surges of terror and sleep soundly until morning.

At the bottom of a page of math homework, she wrote,

Then she forgot it was there and handed it in. Luckily, the teacher didn’t notice. But still:
not normal
.

One Friday after supper, the phone rang and it was Tony Danko. “Your brother’s here and he’s pretty fucked up,” he told Dawn. “You better come and get him.”

Dawn looked over at Vera, who was sewing a button back on to Frank’s cardigan. “On page 52,” she said. “The diagram of the paramecium?”

“The fuck?” Tony said. “You hear me?”

Dawn’s face burned, but she continued, “You have to label it.” Vera got up to get more thread, and Dawn said softly, “I’ll be right there.”

When she got to Tony Danko’s, Jimmy was lying on the sofa in the rec room, staring at the ceiling. He blinked when Dawn talked to him but didn’t move his head. Tony Danko said he would drive them home, but Dawn said to take them to Riverview Drive. It took twenty minutes to sit Jimmy up and put his coat on and half-drag him into the car. They got out at the park outside Laura’s apartment and sat on a bench facing the building. “We’ll just sit here until you feel better,” Dawn told Jimmy. Jimmy said he was coming down, but Dawn thought he was still going up. “Less go home,” he slurred.

“In a minute,” Dawn said.

“This Laura’s? Why’re we at Laura’s?” Jimmy tried to sit up straight.

Dawn said shh, she was trying to think, but now Jimmy wanted to talk. “ ’Member the first time we came here?” he said.

“I remember.”

Jimmy said, “An’ I spilled grape juice on the carpet ‘n’ she got so pissed?”

“She wasn’t pissed, Jimmy,” Dawn said.

“Oh my god, Dawn, you are so …” His head flopped over and he swallowed the rest of his words. She reached over and moved his head so that it looked less uncomfortable. A car crunched quietly over snow somewhere behind them, and overhead, the sky glittered with stars.

Jimmy lifted his head and mumbled, “It’s what kids do. They spill their fuckin’ juice.”

Dawn patted his arm. “It’s okay, Jimmy. She wasn’t mad at you.”

“Well, fuck her if she was. Why’d we have to go there, anyway? One Saturday. Why only one Saturday?”

Dawn didn’t know. The arrangement was for the first Saturday of the month, from nine until five. Vera said it was what was proposed and what was agreed to, and Dawn had never thought
to ask who had proposed and who agreed. Their whole lives had been a series of arrangements she hadn’t agreed to. People made decisions, and even when they told you why, you didn’t really understand. You just said, “Oh, okay,” and went to get your jacket.

“Dawn,” Jimmy said. “I wanna go home.”

To distract him, she asked him what he had taken.

He said half a twenty-sixer of vodka and then the pills.

“Why did you take them both?” Dawn asked. Why wasn’t it enough to be drunk
or
high? Why was it never enough until it was too much? “Where do you get the money?” she asked.

“Allowance,” Jimmy said. “I’m cold.”

“We can’t go home yet,” Dawn said. “It’s only 8:30. Grandma and Grandpa will still be up.” Even if Frank weren’t still recovering from the chemo with an unknown prognosis, she couldn’t bring Jimmy home like this. Frank and Vera hated alcohol, but they became hysterical at the mere mention of drugs. All drugs came under the category of Dope, and all Dope was lethal. If you didn’t die of an overdose on the spot, you would end up killing a little old lady for her handbag. Her grandparents would be beside themselves if they saw Jimmy like this. She needed a different kind of grown-up.

“Stay here,” Dawn told Jimmy. “I’m just going to the pay phone over there.” Across the street, she placed the icy receiver against her ear and dialled Laura’s number. The story came out jumbled, but at least Laura got the basics. She said, “Dawn, honey, that’s terrible. I’ll call you a taxi right away. He needs to be in bed.”

“I
can’t
take him home,” Dawn said, exasperated. She had just gone through all that. “That’s why I brought him here.”

“But I can’t do anything for him that your grandparents wouldn’t do,” Laura said. “And they need to know he was drinking. In case it happens again.”

“Again?” It came out too loud. The start of a shriek. Across the street, Jimmy slumped over and then curled up on the bench. “It happens all the time,” Dawn said. Her voice was full of holes, and the holes were filling up with tears.

“Well, that’s what I mean. They have to know. I mean, what can I do for him? He doesn’t live with me. I can’t ground him.”

“Can’t he just stay for a while, until he’s sober enough to go home?”

“I can’t have him here, Dawn. Your grandmother would have a fit. Plus, I have people from the foundation coming here for dinner in less than an hour.”

When she got back to the bench, Jimmy lifted his head. “Dawn, I’m so tired. I gotta lie down.”

“You are lying down.”

“I mean in a bed.”

“Soon,” she promised.

In an apartment on the other side of the building, facing the river, her mother would be arranging a platter of vegetables and dip. She would be wearing a silver-grey dress and putting out black and white coasters.

Dawn’s eyes grew hot, but she refused to cry. These things happened and it was stupid to cry. Her brother was in a drunk, stoned stupor and her mother was having a dinner party for work. It was just bad timing. Frank had cancer and Vera was stricken. That was just bad luck. Her father lived in Toronto because the Soo suffocated him, and Geraldine lived on the other side of town and didn’t call very often because she and Vera didn’t get along, and Laura could only see them one Saturday a month because that was what had been proposed and agreed to, which meant there was no one to help her now, but it was no one’s fault. Nothing was deliberate, so it was pointless getting all worked up about it.

But what
would
Laura do, Dawn wondered, if she just showed up? If she just went over there and knocked? Dawn saw herself pounding on the door with her fist, slapping it with her palm. When her hand got tired, she kicked the door. Up and down the hall doors opened and closed, but Dawn did not stop yelling: “Open the door! Open the door!” Her hand ached, but she did not stop pounding. She
was
possessed. She was on a rampage. “Open the goddamn fucking freaking door,” she yelled. Beside her, Jimmy sank down onto the hallway carpet. “Stop it, Dawn,” he whispered. “Just stop.” A sinkhole of dread opened in her stomach. She wasn’t dreaming it. She had no memory of walking across the street or getting into the elevator with Jimmy.

There was a click, and the door opened. Laura was in a bathrobe, her hair dripping wet. Dawn pointed to her brother. “Help him,” she said. She didn’t recognize her own voice. “Okay,” Laura said. “Okay.”

After Laura called an ambulance, she called Vera and Frank. “I made an executive decision,” Dawn heard her say. “Well, I did. Meet me at the hospital.” At the hospital, Laura didn’t know Jimmy’s health card number. Dawn sat in a hard plastic chair and tried to think if this was the same chair she had sat on when Jimmy ate the hash brownies and if everything in her life was going to repeat itself. Would a social worker show up next?

Vera and Frank arrived, and for the first few moments, the discussion was surprisingly courteous and smooth. Frank said, “Thank you for calling us,” and Vera said, “I just can’t believe he would do something like this,” and Laura said, “I know, I know. It’s a terrible shock,” and they all stared at the floor. Since it was going so well, Dawn decided to tell them the rest, the bottles and pills and Tony Danko. Vera put her face in her hands and Laura said, “Let me get you some water.” The nurse came and said Jimmy was fine, he was
asleep, they would keep him overnight for observation. Everyone thanked the nurse, Frank thanked Laura again, and Dawn thought,
That went really, really well
.

Then Laura said, “We should probably talk about how we’re going to handle this.” She squeezed the fingers of one hand and then winced, as if she had hurt herself.

Vera said, “He’s not going to see that Tony Danko anymore, for one thing.”

Laura said, “I want to ask my colleague to consult with us, maybe tell us what programs are available. She’s a social worker.”

Dawn thought, I
knew it
.

Frank said, “Programs?”

Vera said, “He doesn’t need a program. He needs a shorter leash.”

“Like counselling,” Laura told Frank. “Or maybe even a prevention program for addiction.”

“Addiction! He’s fourteen years old, for heaven’s sake!” Vera said. “You tell a kid he’s got a problem like that, and the next thing you know, he’ll have a problem like that.”

“But he does have a problem,” Dawn interjected.

Vera told Dawn to keep her nose out of it. She told Laura that Jimmy did not need any of that nonsense.

Laura looked like she had been slapped. “Why is it always nonsense to you? You said the same thing to me when I was depressed and suicidal.”