Poles Apart (2 page)

She sighed, but her tone softened.

“Honey, you got to stop doing that. Promise me you’ll stop. It’s unnatural. It’s not how men work. And it freaks women out. It’s just weird. They can’t keep up. Dial it back, or keep it under wraps for as long as you can. Or you’ll die alone and deserve to.”

“Wow, thanks, Mom.” I exhaled like it was my last breath. “I don’t know when I’ve felt such parental warmth, encouragement, and understanding.”

I suffer from a mild sarcasm habit.

“Honey, the truth is hard to hear sometimes,” she said. “Okay, enough of that. Let’s get back on track. We’re not quite finished here. So what’s this new project you have?”

“Well, I’ve got a contract to write a big profile piece for a national trade magazine. It might even be the cover story,” I said, trying not to sound desperate and hoping she wouldn’t ask me which magazine. “It’s a big deal and will take a lot of work.”

“Congratulations, honey, that’s great news. And do you have a laptop computer?”

“What? Of course. Every freelancer I know has a laptop,” I replied, walking into the propeller. “It’s getting old and weighs about the same as a late-model Honda Civic, but it still works well enough.”

Actually, I was lying. Not about laptop’s automotive weight
class, but about how well it worked. To get it to turn on, I had to use both hands to flex the laptop diagonally while using my chin to hit the Power button—embarrassing while in Starbucks, but almost always effective.

“And do you sometimes carry it places with you so you can write outside of your—I mean, my—condo?”

“Come on, Mom.” That didn’t slow her down.

“And do you have this newfangled thing, oh what’s it called again, I want to say something like … 
‘email’
?”

Okay, now you know where I got my sarcasm habit.

“Mom, I know what you’re doing, and I know where you’re going …”

“Stay with me, Ev, we’re almost there,” she interrupted. “And if I’m not mistaken, they also have this email wonder service in the United States, including in that beautiful and temperate oasis known as Orlando.”

She paused to take a breath, but it was a short one.

“Oh yes, and there’s one more thing. I seem to recall, given your birthplace, that you enjoy dual Canadian-American citizenship, so you’re able to work in either country without risking deportation. How convenient. What a lovely tight little package we seem to have.”

She already knew from my breathing that I was unfurling my white flag, but she went for the big finish anyway.

“So in summary, when you said that you’re a freelance writer and can’t just pack up your life on a moment’s notice and fly to
Florida for an indefinite period, what you really meant was that you’re a freelance writer and you actually
can
just pack up your life on a moment’s notice and fly to Florida for an indefinite period.”

“Wow, Mom. I don’t remember you being like this when I was growing up. When did you become so tough and ruthless and—cynical?”

“You know the answer to that question.”

“Yes, I do, Mom. But I was asking rhetorically.”

“So you’ll go?” she asked, already knowing.

I moaned a bit, but not for long.

“I guess I could juggle a few things around and head south for a bit.” I sighed. “But I’m not going to live with him. That I will not do.”

“No, I agree, that would be pushing it too far,” she said.

“Remind me never to negotiate with you,” I said. “I just caved so fast.”

“Ev, honey, you didn’t ‘cave,’ as you so delicately put it. You did what families do in these situations. You did the right thing. These moments of responsibility seldom come at convenient times. And you won’t be on your own for long. I’ll be down to do my part as soon as I can. I promise,” she replied. “And I’m not even married to him anymore. But you’re still his son.”

“Yes, and you’re still my mother.”

She took a deep breath.

“Okay, Ev honey, here’s the deal. I’ll buy you a new laptop of your choosing. I’ll cover your return airfare and rent for as long
as you’re down there. I’ll give you enough cash to keep you in groceries and beer. And you’ll always have the undying love and affection of your parents, even though it’s hard for them to spend much time in the same room together. Deal?”

Ten minutes later, after she gave me Dad’s number at the hospital, I said goodbye to my mother and goodbye to my life in Toronto, at least until my father could walk again and pick up a dime with the fingers of his left hand. I also found a moment to visit the Apple website and pick out a new laptop. Finally, I did a quick Google search on strokes. Yes, I know. I should have done my stroke web browsing before I headed to the Apple website. I know. As it turns out, strokes on the right side of the brain don’t just affect motor control on the left side of the body but can also impair what Wikipedia euphemistically calls “perception and judgment.” I didn’t like the sound of that. Then again, I didn’t think my father was particularly well-endowed in that department to begin with, so perhaps this wouldn’t be an issue.

So, free flights, free rent, free cash, and a brand spanking new MacBook Pro with Retina screen to use while living temporarily in sunny Orlando, Florida. You might think I walked away a winner from the call with my mother. And I confess at the time, I was not that unhappy with the outcome. Then again, you don’t know Billy Kane.

I am their son, Everett Kane. Somehow, I think my name would be cooler in reverse, as in Kane Everett, intoned in a deep, raspy, movie-trailer voice. But even in its original configuration, it’s not a bad handle, I suppose. An only child, I was born in Oakville, Ontario, Canada, thirty-seven years ago. Despite some parental pyrotechnics just as I headed off to university, my childhood seemed quite conventional. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My father is Billy Kane, the one now with partial paralysis on his left side, and perhaps even lower scores on the “perception and judgment” meter, though he didn’t exactly rock that particular needle before his stroke. Billy Kane. I know. It sounds like a name in a novel, or a
TV
show, doesn’t it?
Billy Kane!
He was sixteen years old when he met my mother, Evelyn, in the corridors of the Detroit high school they both attended. She was thirteen years old, and Canadian. Her parents were both visiting professors at the University of Michigan in Dearborn. They moved from Toronto when Evelyn was ten years old.

Billy’s father worked on the line at the Ford plant. In fact, he died on the line, too. He was found sprawled out on the rear bench seat he’d been installing in a Mercury Marquis as the car slowly moved down the line to the next station. Heart attack. Billy revered his father and only ever wanted to follow in his footsteps, minus the early coronary. Without getting into all the details, Billy and Evelyn fell in love, early and hard. They were inseparable through their high school years. He wasn’t the captain of the football team, and she wasn’t the head cheerleader,
but their relationship had that vibe. They were certain of their lasting love, and much too young to doubt it. At the insistence of both sets of parents, Billy and Evelyn waited until she graduated from high school at eighteen before the inevitable storybook wedding.

Billy had graduated from high school with grades that just barely secured him a spot in the upper three-quarters of his class. He was actually quite smart but had really only applied himself to Evelyn. College was not really in the cards. He was much more focused on earning money, buying a home, providing for his wife, and starting a family. This all unfolded back in the seventies. But as I describe it now, it feels much more like the fifties.

Right after high school, Billy landed a job on the line at the Ford plant, alongside his father. They looked like father and son. Both were of average height and wore crewcuts. His father’s gut hung over his belt. Billy’s belly would get there eventually. Soon after he started at the plant, in one of fate’s cruel spasms, it was Billy who discovered his father stretched out on the back seat of that Marquis, his hands still pressed over his heart. Billy took it hard, but he was tough, like his father. So after a week of bereavement leave, he went back to work to honour his father and to secure the dream he shared with Evelyn.

Sure, it was shift work. But it was a good job, a great job. It paid well, with benefits and a pension. He also gladly joined the United Auto Workers and embraced the union movement. Billy Kane was a living paradox. He proved it was possible to be a
flaming right-winger and a devoted union brother, simultaneously. He sustained this ideological super straddle split jump for his entire working life without so much as a pulled groin.

By the time Evelyn graduated and they walked down the aisle, Billy was snagging all the overtime he could and bringing in big bucks. To his credit, he’d socked away enough money for a down payment on a modest semi-detached home. Billy and Evelyn moved in and started living an all-American
Leave It to Beaver
existence in suburban Detroit. Two years later, when she was twenty and he just twenty-three, there were two big developments in the young couple’s life together. First, Billy got a big promotion and a transfer. When the Ford brain trust shifted manufacturing of the Mustang from Dearborn to their newer facility in Oakville, Ontario, Billy was shipped to Canada to help set up the new line. And second, not long after Billy and Evelyn settled themselves in Oakville, a leafy bedroom community of Toronto, I arrived on the scene. As you might expect, my parents were ecstatic. Their vision of the future was unfolding just as they had planned.

Why “Everett”? It was certainly not a play on my mother’s name as some thought. Rather, Mom just loved the
TV
show
Medical Center
and its star, Chad Everett. Dad had suggested “Billy Junior.” But Mom persuaded him that giving me a name that could and would be abbreviated in the schoolyard as “
BJ”
was cruel and unusual punishment. He agreed to “Everett.”

Not long after they brought me home from the hospital, Dad willingly, eagerly, traded in his beloved Mustang Mach 1 for a
used Country Squire station wagon. He was very attached to that Mustang but loved the idea of a family even more. In his mind, real families drove station wagons. So we graduated to that massive faux-wood–panelled metallic monstrosity that George Carlin once dubbed the Ford Country Shit Box. And man, was it boxy. Never again will so many right angles be assembled in one vehicle. It made the Volvos of that era look positively curvaceous.

Over the years, life in Oakville slipped into a routine. Well, I suppose it might have been a rut, but that only occurred to me in hindsight. Dad worked a rotating schedule of shifts at the Ford plant while Mom stayed home and focused on me, the house, the groceries, and three meals a day. As Dad used to describe it to anyone who would listen, he made the money and Mom spent it. He usually chuckled when he said it. But over time, the chuckling dwindled and eventually stopped. When he worked the night shift, spending time with my dad was difficult for me and for my mother. Left to handle all the house-related duties, and most of the child-rearing responsibilities, Mom began to chafe under the ultra-traditional home life Dad expected and eventually demanded. She read voraciously, novels and nonfiction, but wanted more contact with the outside world. They wanted more children, especially Dad, but none ever arrived. I found out why many years later.

Mom and Dad seemed to start arguing more when I was in grade six. They initially kept it behind closed doors, but the
tension, the jibes, the glares, and the silence between them was clear, even to a ten-year-old. The cracks my dad always tossed out to make us laugh eventually became sharper, crueller, and deployed to wound. My mother stopped laughing. And I guess I did, too. But we persevered. Things even took a turn for the better when I started high school. I remember the day my mother told me that Dad was finally “allowing her” to take courses during the day at nearby McMaster University while I was in class at Oakville Collegiate, as long as dinner was on the table by six. Liberated from the daily drudgery of housekeeping, Mom seemed like a new woman, at least for a while. She drove to McMaster in Hamilton most mornings to take courses part-time, as a mature student, toward a business degree. Even Dad seemed happier, at least for a while.

High school flew by. I did well. I had friends. I had fun. My best marks were in English and history. I sensed, rather than knew with certainty, that I had some facility, maybe even a flair, for writing. I just seemed to be able to assemble words into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and stories with greater ease than my classmates. I couldn’t explain why, then. I still can’t now. But it felt true. So it seemed natural and comfortable to pursue journalism at university. (Even at that age, I knew it was easier to make a living writing news stories than short stories.)

I was tired of being marooned in the suburbs, so I applied to Ryerson University in the “big smoke,” Toronto. Ryerson said yes. In my five years of high school, my very organized, goal-oriented
mother somehow finished her part-time four-year Bachelor of Commerce. She worked her butt off, if I can say that about my own mother. She redefined the term “part-time,” as it was not unusual for mature students to take more than ten years to complete a part-time degree.