My Temporary Life (8 page)

My saving grace has always been my studies. The answers come easily to me. While my classmates struggle, I seem to have this ability to go from problem to solution with little effort. I sometimes feel as though I carry a map, and the rest of them are searching for signposts. Whereas Terry can build things after seeing them in his head, my strength is numbers. I seem to instinctively know how to find the answers, without knowing the precise formulas that have to be learnt in order to get me there. My mother usually takes little interest in my marks or grades, but I know that this time she won’t give credit to my father, or Scotland and its schools for that matter. She’s out of her chair now, standing upright and very straight, and is quick to respond to his proud boasts.

“
I don’t know, Alex. I just see a lot of myself in him. I was always a very quick learner. I’m more inclined to believe that it comes directly from me.”

The back of George’s chair moves as he straightens up yet again, while he listens to her comment, and it looks like the little hairs on the back of his neck are standing up. She cuts my Dad off, and quickly ends the conversation, telling him that he can call again next Saturday if he so desires. It’s very quiet all of a sudden, as she hangs up, without giving me the option of talking to him again.

As she sits back down in the large recliner beside George, I wait for the scorn that usually comes. I wait for her usual comment, where she tells me that I sound like ‘a common Scot.’ There’s nothing though. She just smiles a strange smile and keeps watching me, watching me and smiling. I can’t hold her gaze. I never have been able to. So, I just stare down at my feet, before quickly excusing myself to go to my room.

It takes three days before it happens, but it does indeed happen. Terry has rigged wires and boxes and gadgets inside our shed. He nods and winks and tells me what I can touch and what I can’t touch. There is a large switch that he’s installed that we have to turn on and off every time we leave. It’s from a train station, he says. They switch it when they need to divert the train from one track to another, and he’s wired all of the controls into it. There are three horns hidden just behind the rafters in the ceiling, and he’s taken out the light and replaced it with what looks like a very large bell. Our little shed is alarmed as though it were Fort Knox. It won’t go off right away when the door is opened though. It’s rigged to wait for two minutes,
just long enough for them to start getting comfortable,
Terry tells me. I almost feel sorry for Marvin, almost that is, until he takes his usual daily jabs at us.

“
You little perverts finished building your amusement ride yet, or are you gonna stay late whacking off back there every fricking night of the week?” He’s wearing the same suit that he wears every day, with the same coffee stains on the lapel, as he stands yelling at us from the back of the showroom.

I keep scrubbing the car in front of me, and Terry keeps hosing it down, as we try to pretend that he’s not there. Then in his usual fashion, Terry flips him the bird just as he’s about to turn away from us.

“
Careful, you little bastard, I’d hate for your father to see you displaying that disgusting kind of behaviour towards his top earner.” His leer is so intense, so repulsive that it’s impossible to feel sorry for him. Starvin’ Marvin is at the lowest end of the food chain. I’d heard both Terry and Mr. Allister describe him that way, and I’m beginning to understand what they mean.

Terry just smiles and keeps hosing down the car. He knows, we both know, that if our guess is correct, soon Marvin won’t be leering quite so much. Finally, he gets tired of us ignoring him and slinks back to his office.

It’s supposed to happen at night when there are fewer people around. Marvin works almost every evening, and we assume that Sylvia sneaks away and joins him in our shed, while we’re in the back of the yard, on top of Brutus. We’re not sure where she smokes afterwards, but we know she must smoke somewhere, after rolling around with Marvin and his greasy suit.

Our prediction is close but it isn’t perfect. We end up being wrong about two things, two very important things. First, it’s not after hours when the alarm goes off, it’s 4:15 in the afternoon and everyone is still working at the dealership.

The noise is deafening. The bell that we mounted in place of the light is ringing as though warning us of a train barrelling through the middle of the dealership. All three buzzers are howling simultaneously, and there are people yelling. I don’t know who they are or what they’re saying, but it’s loud, very, very loud.

Our immediate reaction isn’t to run to the shed, but to cover our ears. The noise is painful, just painful. It’s awkward to run as fast as we can with our hands over our ears, but somehow, staggering in our excited state, we manage it.

Everyone from the dealership is staring at the shed and its open door. Even George and the mechanics have come from the shop, ears covered with their black greasy hands, menacingly surveying the proceedings. Mr Allister is holding his tie and forcing his way past everyone to see what the commotion is. And, to my surprise and dismay, Gloria and Sylvia
are standing off to one side. They alternate between covering their ears to drown out the sound, and covering their mouths in shock. I can’t stop staring at Sylvia, wondering why she’s there, and she keeps staring back at me. They all seem to be staring at me, not at Terry, just at me.

When I do turn and look at our noisy shed, Marvin is backing out the door and pulling up his pants. We were right about him. That part we’d predicted correctly. Unfortunately it’s not red hair on white shoulders that I see coming from the shed. It’s blonde. It’s the familiar blonde hair that I have known all my life. The second thing that we’d been wrong about was the girl. We had the wrong one. Sylvia is standing right there with Gloria, alternately staring at me and then at the shed, along with everyone else.

The noise doesn’t seem to bother my mother at all. She just steps daintily from the shed, straightening the skirt that George bought her, and returns everyone’s stares. She’s dressed up the way she gets sometimes to make herself feel better, and looks as casual as though we’ve caught her innocently drying the dishes. As she walks past, she doesn’t look at me, but her gaze does linger briefly on George, before she makes her way to the front of the dealership. Terry stands closer, supporting me, I suppose, giving them all something else to stare at. My mother just keeps on walking, seemingly oblivious to all of us now, as she weaves her way in between the cars, her high heels clicking on the asphalt.

George drops his hands from his ears and stares a sad, sad look at my mother as she passes by. Marvin is running. I’m not sure where. Maybe he thinks that George will be coming for him. He doesn’t have to worry though. George is lost. I know that look. I’m familiar with it. He isn’t interested in Marvin at all. He’s just lost.

As Mr. Allister yells at Terry to
shut that
cotton picking thing off
, I realize that I know very little about life. I’m fourteen years old and I have one Scottish friend and a new Canadian friend. I like the music that George has shown me and the way that it makes me feel. Sometimes there is nothing better than being with my dad. But I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about my mother. I certainly don’t know why she did it, or how she managed it without anyone knowing, or even how often. I don’t even know how she knows Marvin. There is only one thing I know for sure, and as I look over at my Canadian friend and the rest of the workers as they stare at the poor little Scottish boy, I feel as though they know it too. My Canadian summer has come to an end, and I’ll be heading back to Kilmarnock very, very soon.

CHAPTER 10

You can stare out the same window for a long, long time and see nothing. Even if there’s something happening out there, it can barely register in your mind. George and I do this. We watch the comings and goings of the street. We see people leaving for work. We see the odd stranger or friend arriving at the same doors later in the day, then leaving afterwards, and we see the same people coming home from work. I’m not watching for any particular reason, other than just to watch. And George, well, he’s looking and not seeing. He has this vacant stare in his eyes. He looks as though he’s asleep and awake at the same time. Every time the phone rings he tells me to let the machine answer it, and continues to watch the outside world from the safety of his recliner, while the television remains turned off.

“
George, it’s Bill, listen, you take as much time as you need, Pardner. Sort out things on the home front, make that right first. You come back when you feel like it. No worries at all. You just take your time.” I can picture him adjusting his tie with one hand and holding the phone with the other. Then, in what sounds like an afterthought, he adds, “Oh, and tell the kid that everything will be okay. Tell him it’s all okay. And oh yeah, Terry says hey, and Brutus too-whoever the hell Brutus is.”

I smile at the thought of Terry, probably whispering to his Dad, while Mr Allister leaves the message for us. There is no mention of my returning to work, so I assume that my days as a Lot Lizard are over.

“
Georgie, it’s Rosie, call me honey. You call me, and stay strong. You just stay strong.” Rose is George’s sister, and although I’ve never met her I know that his eyes almost always light up when he talks about her. It doesn’t matter who calls; his expression still doesn’t change, as the messages accumulate on the machine. He just keeps staring as though he just doesn’t care what happens. When we finally hear my mother’s voice, he makes no effort to get up, but tells me to take the call if I want to.

“
Malcolm. Malcolm.” There is a long pause, and I stay in my seat, listening to the frustration in her voice grow as we sit there, ignoring her. “Fine. Malcolm, I want you to get ready to leave, and yes, I have notified your father that you’re going home. Make sure you pack everything that’s in that house that belongs to you. There’ll be a ticket at the airport waiting on Friday. If you have a problem getting there,” another pause, “just let me know and I’ll make alternative arrangements for you. I will try very hard to be at the airport, but my schedule is very, very hectic right now.” Then, there is a longer pause before she comes back and in quite a breezy, carefree voice, gives us the flight numbers and times. And finally, with what sounds to me like the slightest of hesitations, she says goodbye and that she’ll be in touch.

It’s difficult to describe how her voice sounded. She didn’t sound worried or concerned at all, but then again I hadn’t expected her to be. I decide that perhaps I know my mother a little better than I thought I did. She’s a survivor, I can see that now. And, she’ll remake herself into whatever she has to in order to survive. Is she with Marvin, or is there someone else? It doesn’t matter to me, and from the look on George’s face, it doesn’t seem to matter to him either.

I thought he’d fallen asleep, but a few minutes after she leaves the message he tells me that he’s going to keep his promise, the promise that he made weeks ago. Although part of me knew that he would, part of me wishes that he wouldn’t. Truthfully, I just want to leave. I don’t want to think about the look on those people’s faces as they watched my mother climb out of that shed. I want to go home, even though it’s earlier than usual, and run away from it all.

“
We’re still going, Mal. We’re still going to go, just like I told you we would. A man keeps his promise; a man always keeps his promise.”

“
George, you don’t have to, it doesn’t matter. You really don’t have to.” I want to go, and I don’t want to go. It’s hard to explain. I want it to be the way it was before, and I want his face to light up the way it did when he first told me that he would be taking me to a concert, a real rock concert. Now things are different. Now it doesn’t seem as though he’s taking me to show me what the music will feel like. Now it seems as though he’s taking me out of a sense of duty. Either way, I can tell by his solemn look that we’re going, and I’ll have one more new experience on my last night in Vancouver.

They’re just local boys, probably not much older than I am, but they play in a band, a real band, and that’s something that I’ve never seen before. George explains to me about festival seating
.
That means the earlier you get there, the better seating, or standing in this case, you can count on. It doesn’t matter though; we don’t have to line up for seats. He knows a guy. George always knows a guy. When we arrive, our local park looks as though it has been taken over by some kind of a circus. There are large green tents set up with young women selling beer and pop, and a stage has been erected in the middle of a cluster of trees where crowds of excited young people press up against each other, waiting, waiting for something to happen.