No Safeguards (18 page)

“Does Jonathan have a girlfriend?” Anna asked when I was in second-year university.

“I don't know.”

That second year at McGill, Jonathan and I spent December 27-29 at his parents' chalet in Lac Sept-Îles, some 50 km northwest of Quebec City. Jonathan brought along snowshoes for both of us. He helped me put on mine, put on his own, and showed me how to walk easily in them. We slung on our backpacks and trudged through thick snow and naked yellow birches for about 200 metres to reach the chalet. Below it, at the bottom of a steep slope, was a clearing that showed their jetty, the boathouse, and the broad field of ice that was the lake, its solid white surface glowing in the late afternoon sun. To the right two of its seven islands were visible. There were over a dozen skidoos crisscrossing it.

Downstairs of the chalet, there was a well-equipped kitchen, a living room and dining room, a bedroom and a toilet. Upstairs there were three bedrooms.

Quickly we took wood inside from off the porch and lit the stove. It was a struggle keeping the cold out. We closed the trapdoor to the floor upstairs to prevent the heat from escaping and shut the doors to all the other rooms to concentrate the heat in the living room. Even so, by the time we got the temperature to 12 degrees, the sun had gone down. All around the lake gleamed, lit by the thin line of houses of those who lived there yearlong. The rest was forest all the way up the slopes. Up to 8 pm, the skidoos were still racing along the lake, their headlamps beaming. Jonathan wanted us to go walking, but at that hour I didn't feel like tromping about. Indoors it varied between 11 and 13 degrees, depending on the strength of the wind, and outdoors −22 without factoring in the wind.

We slept on sleeping bags and blankets in front of the stove. I vaguely remember hearing him adding wood to it during the night. When I awoke next morning my nose felt frozen and I would not throw off the bedclothes until, in a tussle, Jonathan pulled them off me. Two years ago, while he and I were watching
Broke-Back Mountain
, I wondered what would have happened if Jonathan had moved his sleeping bag close to me that night and pulled me into his arms.

“
C'est ça, l'hiver québécois, l'hiver que mes ancêtres ont vécu. Goûtes-y, mon vieux!
” (“This is the Quebecois winter of my ancestors. Taste it, buddy.”) In those days, he spoke to me almost exclusively in French, to improve my listening and pronunciation skills. (Paul never had such language problems; overnight he became
un petit Québécois grillé
.)

After breakfast I bundled up: double gloves, a long, thick scarf piled around my neck, a toque pulled down over my ears, four layers on my torso, two on my lower limbs; Jonathan not specially so — he wasn't even wearing a toque and certainly no long johns — and we went walking on the lake, Jonathan occasionally pushing me into snowbanks and throwing snowballs at me. We walked for a good two hours, circling three of the islands and keeping out of the skidoo paths. It was around one when we returned to the chalet — icicles hanging from my nostrils and sweat saturating my underwear, Jonathan's face wind-burnt a bright pink — to eat crackers and a pot of soup we'd left to heat on the woodstove. Next day, we drove for about a kilometre along the lake road to the entrance to Parc Jacques-Cartier, put on our snowshoes and went snowshoeing on a path that paralleled a road used to bring timber out of the park.

It was on the drive back to Montreal that Jonathan told me that he was gay. I visualize the furrows in Jonathan's forehead and the sweat dripping from the steering wheel as he awaited my response. “It's alright, Jonathan.” It had taken me a long time to say so, because I hadn't known what to say, and it didn't feel right that Jonathan should tell me.

Paul was around 14 and had already figured out that Jonathan was gay. I hadn't. My mind returns to Anna's obsessive fear that we might be gay — put there by what Bulljow told her when she first came to Canada.

***

I stand, stretch, touch my toes, and walk to the visitors' lounge. I check my cellphone to see if there's a message from Jonathan or Paul. I left a message on the answering machine at home telling Paul to call me on my cell as soon as he got the message. In fact it's the only reason I have a cellphone. I'm exhausted to the point of staggering, as I walk back to Anna's room, too exhausted to even feel sleepy. I stand at the bedside and try to get a view of Anna's face before I sit down again.

***

Bill agreed to have Paul come to the remaining classes. At one point Bill said that he'd been one of the students who took over the faculty club at UBC when Jerry Rubin spoke there. Paul applauded. Paul and he became fast friends. Bill plied him with books and sometimes they met for coffee. Paul probably saw him as someone who'd rebelled and who was therefore “real.” I find their friendship both a puzzle and a relief: a puzzle because of Paul's homophobic taunts, a relief because it tells me Paul was merely posturing.

Anna found out about their relationship after overhearing Paul and me speculating about Bill's sexual fantasies. She questioned me about it in Paul's absence. “Ma, first: remember that Paul is 19, so if he's sleeping with Professor Samson, which I'm pretty certain he isn't doing, it's perfectly legal. Second: Professor Samson is good for Paul. Paul looks up to him. It means that he'll be able to influence Paul in a way you and I can't. To go back to school, maybe. Don't knock it. Third: You fundamentalists are apoplectic now because you've just lost your
divine right
to persecute gays. Don't count on Paul and me to help you. Fourth: Shouldn't you be having this conversation with Paul?”

Her shoulders drooped. “I never thought you'd turn against me.”

“No one has turned against you, Ma. Not even Paul. His behaviour is bluster. Let go, Ma. Let go. We have to feel our own way and make decisions for ourselves, good and bad, and discover who and what we are. Just like you did. You defied Grama and dropped out of high school when you were 13 or 14 because you thought Christ was coming on a certain date.”

She winced.

“I'm not blaming you, Ma. You've made up for it. And you defied Grama when you married my father.”

She winced again.

“Tell me something. Let's say, for argument sake, you discovered that Paul or I or both of us were gay, what would you do? Disown us?”

She clenched her teeth, crossed her arms, and tried to fold her shoulders.

“I hope
my mother
is intelligent enough to know that any religion that urges her to reject her children for whatever reason is not worth belonging to.” But I felt guilty for hurting her feelings and added, because I didn't know what else to say: “Don't worry about Paul. I'm pretty sure he isn't gay.”

“And you?”

I hadn't anticipated the question. A long pause.

“And you?” Desperation. A laser stare. “Since Tamara . . .”

“I don't know.”

“You
don't know
. You don't know
what
?” Her voice a shriek.

“If I'm gay.”

Her eyes narrowed; she frowned, pursed her lips, took a deep breath, opened and closed her fingers several times, wordlessly left the dinette, entered her bedroom, and closed the door.

***

It was the second time in two days that Anna had asked me about Tamara, a girl I dated my second year at McGill. Tamara was doing a degree in social work at McGill. “Rass-clart!” she screamed at me the last time we were together. We were in her apartment, a studio, on Aylmer. She stormed out of bed, turned on the light, put on her bathrobe, shook her fists and growled at me. “You're worse than useless. Stay away from women. Stick to wanking off.” It was the third time we'd attempted to have sex, and the third time I'd ejaculated before entering her, after which my penis went limp. A couple of months later I saw her in the arms of a muscular, African-looking Italian, a phys-ed major. She worked at the library checkout counter, and would sneer at me whenever I met her there.

Ma never questioned me about my sexuality after that nor objected to Jonathan's occasional visits to the apartment. At times she muttered: “Why is God punishing me so?” About a year before she questioned me about my sexuality, she'd spoken to me about Kirk, a gay colleague, a Mohawk. His brother's naked dead body had been found covered with cigarette burns in a downtown parking lot. Kirk told her then that both of his male siblings and one of his four sisters were also gay. I wasn't sure what astonished Ma more: the brutality of the crime or Kirk's revelation about the homosexuality in his family. And one morning, just before she got sick, she returned from work distraught. She'd got news that night that Kirk — he'd gone to work at another hospital — had just died of AIDS. I related the story to Jonathan, and he said that three of his own cousins were gay, and his parents knew families in which all or almost all the children were gay.

***

I stare at Anna's rattling body. Ma, I wish I could have poured my feelings out to you. It's not so much who I'm attracted to; it's the anxiety I feel when it comes to sex. Not something a boy feels comfortable discussing with his mother, and certainly not a mother like you, who thinks the answer to all problems is to become a born-again Christian.

***

Well before Paul left for Latin America, he understood that no one totally drops out of society. At first he berated Rubin for his contradictions, but later came to see that already, in 1969, Rubin was laughing at himself. Of course, Paul knew what eventually happened to Rap Brown; knew too that Rubin had a career on Wall Street and in advertising before he died in 1994; I filled him in on Huey Newton's fate; and Paul saw from the last episode of
Making Sense of the Sixties
the value and limits of the Sixties Rebellion. And the living proof was Samson himself who'd gone on to study and become a professor.

W
HEN PAUL ANNOUNCED
his voyage to Latin America “to test [his] independence,” we didn't believe him.

“You can't be serious?” I said.

“I have to go. I'm in both of your fists, and you squeeze tighter and tighter. When Ma gets tired you take over. I can't breathe. I have to get away.”

He demanded the $6,000 each of us was immediately eligible for from Grama's will. The bulk of Paul's inheritance from her — $40,000 — was to be used for post-secondary education, or, failing that, would become available when he was 30. The evening that Anna informed him of this, he called Grama a “traitor . . . a control freak,” and much more in a volley of expletives, until his breathing became like a broken mill and his gaze went feral. I shoved him onto the sofa and jabbed an EpiPen into his thigh. When his breathing settled, he erupted into gulping sobs. She was the only non-revolutionary he venerated; her name was sacrosanct; she was infallible. That evening she seemed fated to be tossed from his halidom. But the next day her photo was still on his dressing table.

At first Anna refused to give him the money. She explained that she would now buy a house, and Paul should use the money to furnish his room. “I won't let you give it to airlines and hotels; my mother and father worked too hard for it.” Her voice a screech.

“Legally you're obliged to give it to him,” I told her in Paul's absence.

“Even if I think he's going to get himself killed in Latin America?”

“Yes. It's his life. He isn't your property, you know.”

“And if I still refuse? I gave life to him.”

“You know Paul. He'll take you to court if he has to.”

In the end she gave in. When Paul began churlishly to display his airline ticket, I told him a story, making it up as I went along:

“Seeker set out on a long journey in search of Truth. Seeker visited the eminent philosophers. They told Seeker they'd never met Truth. They'd only glimpsed him darting into the bushes from afar off, and his face was always turned from them; it was only from his silhouette that they figured out it was he. One philosopher told Seeker he should visit the pope. He was said to be infallible. But Seeker had already learned that many popes had been liars; and, as to human infallibility, Seeker had profound doubts. In China they told Seeker to follow the ‘Way' but refused to tell him how to find it. In India they told Seeker that Brahma was truth. But to meet Brahma Seeker had to get rid of all desire. So Seeker began to rid himself of desire. That's the story.”

“You call that a story! What's your point?”

“Whatever point you see.”

“I see none.”

“Then there's none.”

“Want some free advice? If you're gonna talk shit, make it funny. Otherwise use your mouth for something useful — like catching flies.”

“Cheap! I thought you'd moved beyond this.”

“I'm entitled to a relapse or two from time to time. Remember, I don't turn the other cheek. You all get boned — in every hole.” His face grew serious, reflective. “I shouldn't have said that. Sorry. I take it back.”

“You'd have been able to tell your own version of this story if you'd read Thoreau carefully.”

“You ain't such a crack reader yourself, or you'd know Thoreau says we shouldn't follow his example; we should come up with our own quest. Ber!” He stuck his tongue out at me.

“When I pass by the Van Horne Shopping Centre I'll get you a pacifier.”

“And a tube of KY for yourself.”

“And while I'm at it I'll get two or three for you and a carton of condoms. Carry a good supply with you.”

“You're such an asshole.” He grinned widely. “One day I'll disown you — totally. And watch how you'll go down on your knees and beg me to become your loving brother again. You piss me off all the time, but I'll forgive you this time: the last time.”

“I appreciate it. Now how about acting like a
loving
brother.”

He gave me a sheepish grin and hugged me.

***

The evening before his departure for Cuba, the first of several destinations, Anna worked the evening shift. She'd exchanged her Saturday dayshift for a Friday evening one so she could accompany Paul to the airport. That evening Paul was sitting on the living room sofa, feet on the coffee table, TV remote in one hand. I was at the dining table.

“Hey, Bro,” Paul said, looking across at me.

I waited for him to speak.

“Maybe if I call you loser, you'll look at me when I'm talking to you.”

I was in no mood for his games.

“I'll call you queer, then. Aren't you queer? Admit it.”

I glowered at Paul.

Paul winked, got up, and walked over to the table. He put a hand on my shoulder.

I stiffened.

“Relax, Bro. Relax.” Then he placed both arms affectionately around me, letting them fall down to my chest. “You're lousy sometimes but mostly you're my loving brother,” he said into my ear, as if telling me a secret. “You wanna share a joint with me?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Please? Just once. Please? I have something important to say to you, but I'll tell you only if we share a joint together.” He clasped me tightly.

I shook my head.

“Then to hell with you!” He removed his arms violently and boxed me hard in the right shoulder.

“Paul, go smoke your joint. You don't need my permission.”

“Why're you such a wet blanket? Why, Jay? Why?” He was wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. He walked toward the door, opened the coat closet, put on his jacket, and left the apartment.

Instantly I knew I should have begged him to come back. It has haunted me since.

When Paul returned, he headed straight to his room. It was past midnight, and Anna was already home from work.

At the airport next morning, he hugged Anna calmly, genuinely, and said: “Ma, I've made your life miserable. I know I have. I wish I hadn't. Sorry for the sleepless nights, the trips to the police station. I'd take it all back if I could.” She was crying and made no attempt to hide it. When he embraced me, he said: “I better say it now, in case we don't see each other again. Thanks, man. Thanks.” He paused and I could see he was trying not to cry. “You've been a good brother. You've always been there for me. In Kingstown, and afterwards here.” He swallowed. “I've been too arrogant to tell you.” He pressed me closely. “But I'm not forgiving you for last night.” He let go of me and wagged a finger at me. “You dissed me, man. Everyone's not as strong as you. I wanted to tell you — only you, because I know you care and you'd understand — the real reason I'm setting off on this journey.”

“You'll write to me about it. Here's a copy of the
Tao Te Ching.
I've found it helpful.”

“I
won't
write to you about it. I won't.” He pushed the book into the outer pouch of his carry-on case.

By then we were standing outside the security zone. Paul walked to the threshold, then turned and waved to us. A second later, he disappeared behind the door's frosted glass. I have dreamt about that door twice. Once it was Paul's rapping, his shadow moving frantically on the other side of it, trying to break through to me. The other time it was like the morning Paul left, but he'd forgotten his medication, and I couldn't get beyond the door to give it to him.

What did he want to tell me? There were times when I thought that his asthma was in some way responsible for his anger; anger that was attenuated in St. Vincent because everyone fussed over him, and he did not yet know the limits asthma would put on his life. Here, he came to understand those limits and the drugs he'd have to take until he died. Ma and I had spoken about this as the possible cause for his delinquent behaviour, but, beyond inviting him to tell us what was bothering him, we'd never raised it with him; and after his 14th birthday we stopped asking him to tell us because his response was always: “You all won't leave me alone: that's what's bothering me.”

After returning from the airport, Anna spent the day in bed. She came out of her room around 7 pm, her eyes red from crying. At the last minute, when Paul couldn't get an appointment with his own doctor, she'd got Dr. Ramnaran, whom she worked with, to prescribe him a large supply of anti-asthma drugs and to give him a standing prescription for more, with suggestions of alternatives in case the first choices weren't in stock. She worried that he'd have an asthma attack in some remote place and be out of medication.

Was I wrong not to share a joint with him? Why didn't I? Jonathan and I have done it with school pals to put them at ease. Couldn't I have done the same with him? What has he gone to Latin America in search of?

I feel no need for any such journey. One day I hope to go to Africa to satisfy my curiosity. Maybe even work there, but not for reasons of self-discovery. Am I already jaded? I have no illusions about people's capacity for good and evil. Studying history, I reflect on the foibles of so-called great men and women, know about that need so many have to dominate others lest they become the dominated. Eat lunch or be lunch, as they say in the corporate world. If you are not at the table, you're on the table. We keep our booted foot on others' necks so our necks won't be under their boots, and find rationalizations for not lifting the foot: like Britons who rule the waves and enslave so they never will be slaves. Yet their missionaries go around proclaiming the golden rule. Contradictions that Paul certainly understands. I hope he never embraces the so-called logic of ruthless power. Occidental ideals: freedom, justice, democracy — true only for the ruling elite. Professor Johnson, his electric-blue eyes riveted on us, once said: “There's a huge difference between tyrants and democrats,” and paused for a good 15 seconds: “Tyrants do their dirty work in daylight; democrats do theirs at night.” Empires eagerly succeed one another and build with the remnants of the empires they've ruined. Manifest Destiny! God's chosen peoples — authorized to enslave, pillage, steal, entire continents even. God's rain falls on the just and the unjust. Yeah right. Go ahead and kid me while you turn me into a tool. And the powerless masses, they indeed lead lives of quiet desperation, and must keep their desperation quiet to avoid being punished. ‘Laugh and the whole world laughs with you; weep and you weep alone.'

Anna became convinced that Paul's going away was to punish her. On her days off, I would find her sitting on the sofa, hands supporting her chin, staring blankly at the living room wall. She stopped wearing lipstick, stopped dyeing her hair and going to the hairdresser. Instead she bought a cheap black wig that she slipped on whenever she went out. Before, she'd obsessively iron everything that wasn't knitted. Now she never bothered with an ironing board; on occasion I felt forced to tell her that her dress was crumpled. She settled on wearing brown and beige knitted tops and sweat pants, except when she went to church.

When she saw the damage Stan had inflicted on Guatemala, she thought we'd hear from Paul; at the very least he'd let us know that he was all right. One of the hardest hit areas was Atitlán, which Paul had described in a letter to me. I kept this information from her, and reminded her that from Paul's last letter it was possible that he was no longer in Guatemala. She began to worry that he might be dead, and hounded me to get in touch with Foreign Affairs to see what information they had on those Canadians in Guatemala when Stan struck. Paul's name wasn't on their list. Insomnia took over her life and she lost her appetite. Within weeks she shed 35 of her 150 pounds, the flesh on her arms jiggled, her cheekbones began to look shorn, and hanging skin replaced her double chin; her face became anaemic, hard, and creased. Occasionally I heard her sniffling and would turn to see her crying.

In February, she began to have trouble climbing Linton's slope and the four steps to our ground-floor apartment, and was given sick leave a month before her heart truly failed. Then she mentioned Paul in every conversation. I listened quietly, sometimes with my arms around her.

Two days before she became too out-of-breath and delirious to speak coherently, she said, her eyes closed: “Paul, where is Paul? Jay, don't let him go to the dogs. He listens to you. He pretends he doesn't but he does. Keep at him. You promise me?”

“I will, Ma. I promise.”

She opened her eyes and angled her gaze at me sitting on the chair to her right.

“I'll try, Ma. Rest. You need to rest.” I leaned forward and placed a hand on hers.

“Jay . . . was I wrong . . . was I wrong to leave you all and come away?”

“Rest, Ma. Rest. You're overtiring yourself. Paul is one of those children who must have their way, regardless.”

“I was selfish.”

“No, you weren't.”

“I shouldn't have come away.”

“It's okay, Ma. I don't blame you.”

“Paul does. I could have worked . . . in the store with Mama . . . be there . . . for you all.”

“Rest, Ma.”

“He came to a stranger. It was a stranger he came to. He needed a mother. He came to stranger, Jay.”

“No, you were not.” I squeezed her hand. “Stop worrying, Ma. Stop blaming yourself. If Paul were here, he'd tell you the same thing. I'm sure he knows now that you've been the best mother you could be.”

“But not . . . the mother . . . he needed.” She began to cry.“Remember when he first came, he asked me why we were here? ‘So you can earn a living emptying bedpans'?” She paused. “Mrs. Mehta opened my eyes. ‘Send him back to St. Vincent to finish his schooling. Here's not the right place for a child like Paul.' But it was too late. I didn't listen to what Paul was saying.”

Beads of sweat popped up on her forehead. I took a tissue from the box on her night table and dabbed them. I upped the oxygen meter by half a point. She nodded. “Jay, he needed a mother who could follow him in what he was thinking and learning, somebody like Mama. Jay, he was telling us that the school he was in would destroy him, and we didn't listen.” She paused. “For four years, Jay, I've wanted to beg him for forgiveness. Now I am dying and he isn't here. Say sorry to him for me, Jay. Tell him I'm sorry I didn't listen to him.”