My Temporary Life (13 page)

The only light is from the streetlamp, and a porch light that keeps flickering on and off, but it’s enough. It’s enough for me to see that her face has blood on it, and she’s holding her side in pain. Rose and I are beside her as soon as the car pulls over, and when she sees me, there is just a hint of her usual cockiness, her usual confidence. “Malcolm, well I’m sorry that you have to see your mother in this state. I truly am sorry for that.” She tries to sit up straight, trying to show me that it’s still her, that she’s still in control. “There, there we go, now I can sit up and see you properly.” When she begins teetering again, Rose is at one side and I’m at the other, and I barely notice as George quietly makes his way past us, through the front door and into the house.

Rose takes control of my mother right away. “Help me up with her, Malcolm. We’ll get her into the car. We’ll get her fixed up, don’t worry, son.”

It’s not until we’ve placed her in the back seat that I realize my teeth are clenched together in anger, and that my hands are shaking. “I don’t understand, Rose. Did he hit her? Did he do this? Did he do this to her?”

My mother has her head resting on the back of the seat and is turned away from us. Rose’s mouth opens and is about to speak when a noise from the house gives me my answer. There is a crashing sound that is instantly followed by a very unmanly sounding scream. I know the voice of the screamer, of course. It’s Marvin. It’s the same Marvin who bullied and bothered Terry and me every day of the summer. It’s the same Marvin who was pulling up his pants and coming out of our shed while leaving my mother partially dressed inside. The same Marvin who ran from George the day of the incident while George just stood there, enduring the pain.

A scream is a terrible sound to hear, but there are worse sounds. There is the sound of the silence that comes after the scream. Rose is holding me, trying to stop my body shaking with anger, as we stand looking at the open front door of the house, waiting for another noise to come, hating the sound of the silence. The seconds hang in the air as I look back at my mother’s battered body hunched over in the back seat, then at Rose as she holds her breath and stares at the front door. I want to take the watch out of my pocket. I want to see the seconds ticking by and not feel as though we’re standing still, caught in a time that doesn’t move. I can hear my mother’s breathing from the back seat. I can feel Rose’s heartbeat racing fast against me, while she holds onto me. I just can’t stand still any longer. I have to move. I have to do something, anything. I break away from Rose’s hold, and ignoring her pleas, move towards the front door. I’m moving fast, just as fast as I did when I moved towards Stuart Douglas only weeks before.

I’m almost at the door when George walks out. He keeps walking and doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look at any of us. He just goes to the car and swings his big body into the driver’s seat. He sits patiently, looking ahead, doing up his seatbelt, while Rose climbs in the front. I stare at the front door of Marvin’s house for a moment before following George, and by the time I jump in beside my mother, he’s already started the engine and is pulling the big car out onto the street.

I don’t know what to do. I’m still shaking, and I’m not sure why. I need to hold onto something. I need to feel something. My mother is turned away from me, and sways back and forth, bumping into me in the darkness, as the car gently turns the corners. I put my arm around her small, weak body to steady her, to steady both of us. I can see George quickly glancing in the rear view mirror. His knuckles are bloody and his grip on the steering wheel isn’t as firm now. I know what bloody knuckles feel like, and I know what goes on in your head after you’ve hit someone, so I wait. We all wait until he’s coasted the car back through the nighttime streets, far from Marvin’s house, before we speak.

Rose is looking at her brother’s hands, then back at his face with a questioning look. “Georgie, is he? Georgie is…?”

George’s voice is steady and has a tone of finality to it as he cuts his sister off. “It’s sorted, Rose. It’s all sorted. He won’t be bothering nobody, not for a while anyways, not for a while.”

Rose looks at the road behind us, imagining I suppose what Marvin looks like back there. George takes his bloody hand off the steering wheel for a moment and strokes her shoulder before answering. “It’s fine, Rose. I dialed the phone. I gave him the phone before I left, somebody’ll come help him. He’s going to be okay. He’ll be okay.

We hear the siren from the ambulance before it passes us. George is the only one who doesn’t watch it as it speeds by. My mother raises her head for a moment and watches it too. When she speaks she spits out the words, angrier than I’ve ever heard her. “Bastard, he’s a bastard, deserves everything he gets. Bastard.” I try to keep holding her, try to put my arms around her, but she just slumps her body away from me. Her momentary strength seems to be gone now, and she clings onto her end of the back seat, trying to support herself without my help.

The rest of the drive home and even the next few days go by in uncomfortable silence as my mother is there, in George and Rose’s home, but then again she really isn’t there. All I see of her is the closed bedroom door and her occasional trips to the kitchen, or bathroom at night, while I sleep on the living room sofa. She doesn’t stay very long at of course. Within a couple of days her cockiness is almost restored, and she’s off staying at a friend’s home, ready to start the next part of her life. She does hold me and hug me once before leaving. Then, just as abruptly and strangely, she releases and almost pushes me away, before turning and picking up her things and heading out the door. I’m not hurt by her coldness. I’m used to it now, but I will worry about her. I know now that she’s not invincible. I know now that she can be hurt too.

The call comes to George’s house a couple of days after she leaves. It’s the day before I’m due to start my new school, and George hands me the phone, smiling with his mouth still hanging half open.

It’s been a while since I’ve heard Mr. Allister’s voice. “Malcolm, it’s Bill-Bill Allister here. I want to talk to you, son. I want to, well, I want to make you an offer.”

The Allister Motors Scholarship was probably conceived a couple of days after our trip to Marvin’s house. I can imagine Terry and his Dad hearing about Marvin and my mother, and deciding that they were going to do something to help me. I don’t know how long it took Terry to convince his Dad, or whether it might have been Bill’s idea to begin with. I only know that I only thanked his father once. That was part of the deal. There weren’t many conditions that had to be met, but that was one thing that Bill Allister was definite about. I was only allowed to thank him one time.

As I listen to the man on the other end of the line I realize that my mouth is slowly opening, larger, and larger. “We’ve established a scholarship fund here at the dealership. It’ll enable you to go to school with Terry. You’ll attend the same school. It’s a damn fine institution, son. It’s on Vancouver Island. You’re going to learn lots. It’s going to be so good for you.”

I’m not sure what to say, so I stammer. I’m thanking him and asking questions at the same time. It’s words that are coming out of my mouth, but I’m not sure that they’re making sense to anyone. Rose and George are looking at me with a bemused look on their faces as though I’ve lapsed into another language.

“
Hold on, there just a second, cowboy.” Mr Allister is laughing on the other end of the phone, giggling almost, as he tries to explain to me. “There are some stipulations. First of all, you need to maintain good grades for the scholarship to be renewed. You need to have a B average.” There’s a pause as though he’s thinking to himself. “Or at least a C+. Yes a C+ would be good too. Damn it, as long as you’re trying, as long as you’re learning and doing well then I’ll renew it every year until you graduate three years from now. And you’ll need to work during the summer. You’ll work here of course at the dealership with Terry, with my son, if that’s okay. Are you with me so far, Malcolm?”

I didn’t cry when I sat beside my Dad on the couch while he told me that I’d have to move to Canada. I held it in. I didn’t cry when I heard Hardly’s voice on the phone, and knew that he was going to be okay. And, I didn’t cry when I wanted to punch Marvin with all the might that I could gather. But, now I cry. The tears come streaming down my face as Mr Allister speaks. I don’t think they’re tears of happiness. They’re tears of relief. I quickly mumble that it’s okay. I tell him that I want to work for him anyways. I just don’t want him to stop talking. I want him to be explaining it to me all day, giving me all the details, telling me that everything is going to be okay now.

“
There’s only one more thing, Malcolm. If you agree to this, if you want to take advantage of this scholarship, you should thank me, of course, but only once. I mean it too. I don’t want you to feel indebted to me or that you owe me something or any of that bullshit. If you want this, then you just go ahead and thank me now and get it over with. What do you want to do, Malcolm? What are you going to do?”

He’s stopped giggling and sounds serious now. It sounds as though his voice is breaking too. I think of him sitting in his office, holding the phone in one hand and nervously playing with his tie with the other.

“
I want it, of course I want it. I can’t thank you enough. I don’t know what to...” I want to tell him how much it means to me, how much it’ll mean to my Dad, to George, to Rose.

His voice cuts me off and is kind but firm. “One time, Malcolm, just one time. I’m delighted, absolutely flippin’ delighted that you’re going to take it, so now just get it over with because you’re only gonna get to do it once.”

Nothing comes out for a moment, so I just do it in the way that my Dad has taught me ever since I was a little boy. “Thank you, Mr Allister. Thank you very much.”

“
Right, I’ll make the arrangements and we’ll get you on a ferry over to the island right away. Congratulations, son, you’re going to do fine. You’ll make us all proud.”

George and Rose each grab for me as I hang up the phone. They know. I can tell that they know. Mr. Allister must have spoken to them before he spoke to me. They hold onto me tight, one on each side, congratulating me. Rose has been cooking, and the smells of our dinner are coming from the kitchen. I look around the living room and can see the pile of LP records stacked in the corner, the big console TV sitting over by the front window. I’ll miss the sounds and smells of their house, our house. But, I think that everything might be okay now. It really does feel like everything is going to be okay, or at least it might be for a little while. Nothing in my life has ever been forever anyways. Everything is always just temporary, always temporary.

CHAPTER 15

VANCOUVER, CANADA 1996

Terry and I have a game that we play sometimes. We try to find Brutus.

We drive to an area that we’re unfamiliar with and look for a car wash. If it’s a newer one, we know that it isn’t Brutus, but if there’s an older service station, we seek it out, and if it has a car wash then sometimes, just sometimes, it’s a Brutus. Terry still gets a look of satisfaction on his face when we drive through the rinsing rack and hanging over the drying blaster we see a plaque that says, very simply, ‘Brutus, built by Allister Enterprises’.

Terry, of course, left car washes far behind years ago, but it all started with the contraption that he made out of old parts in the back of his Dad’s car lot, the machine that we called, Brutus.

Bill Allister had been right. The Provincial Academy on Vancouver Island was a good school. It was a safe, conservative school, and Terry and I put in our time there without ever really standing out. After my tumultuous childhood, I welcomed the chance to have some kind of normal, some kind of typical life. When I left the academy, I disappointed my father by not returning to university in Scotland, and instead, enrolled at a community college in Vancouver. Terry decided that he’d had enough of teachers telling him what to do, and opened a small manufacturing plant adjacent to his dad’s car lot, building portable car wash machines. He called them Brutuses of course, and sold them to service stations all over Canada and the United States.

From there Allister Enterprises grew and grew, and Terry diversified. Today, he manufactures and sells novelty electronic equipment. You’ve seen them; you may even own one or two of them. There is everything from portable polygraph machines (78 percent accurate), to an electronic best friend. For three hundred and ninety dollars you can have a machine that will know you as well as any best friend should. You program all of your personal likes and dislikes into it and carry it with you all day long. Throughout the day it will make comments such as, “Sushi for lunch today? You know it’s your favourite.” Or, “Let’s watch that show on TV tonight. You know, the one that only you and I enjoy.”