Poles Apart (4 page)

“Oh, I’m working on it, Ev. I think my gimpy left leg might be a turn-off. But I’m working on it.”

My father is nothing if not predictable. By the time I said goodbye, we were on pretty good terms, though it’s often hard to tell with my dad. But I think he was looking forward to spending some time with his only begotten son. I might even have been looking forward to spending some time with him.

Just before I headed to bed, I received an email notice of a bank transfer. I opened my online banking and accepted the transfer from my mother, moving it into my chequing account. Beforehand, there had been a grand total of $632.88 in the account. I wasn’t exactly flush. When I shut down my soon-to-be-replaced laptop a few minutes later, the bottom line in the account was $10,632.88, and I’d ordered my new MacBook Pro. Why thank you, Mom.

My flight arrived in Orlando in the early evening. Visiting hours at the rehab hospital were flexible enough that I probably could have visited my dad right then. But it was too late in my mind. Or perhaps it was too soon, for I didn’t quite feel ready to see him yet. The concierge at Dad’s condo was expecting me and handed over a key. Dad’s unit was on the fifth floor overlooking a somewhat weedy golf course. The fairway was brown in spots, waterlogged in others, and cut too long. You can often judge an entire golf course by the condition of a single fairway.

I turned on the lights and surveyed my father’s rather confining unit. It could not have been more than six hundred square feet. I’m not sure how to describe the decor. Early American Frat House might be a start. Yes, it definitely had a kind of Tappa Kegga Beera vibe to it. I can’t say I was surprised. In fact, it was just about what I expected. Dad had been freed from the burden of Mom’s housekeeping eighteen years earlier, and his
condo was, well, not in great shape. There were dust bunnies auditioning for tumbleweeds, and enough clutter to sustain several garage sales and a shot at an episode of
Hoarders
. Without Mom, Dad had regressed, which is saying something, given his starting point.

On the walls, I found a mix of golfing prints and Ford product publicity posters, with a clear bias toward the Mustang. I discovered an alarming number of empty beer cans and Doritos bags scattered about the place. A stack of porn mags sat on the floor beside a mucous-coloured recliner. My dad was kind of old school. I tapped the touchpad of the laptop on the kitchen counter, and a porn site awoke on the screen. Okay, perhaps my dad wasn’t completely old school. I was impressed that he had a laptop, porn site or not. I shut it down.

He had made some effort to put his own personal stamp on his home, I mean beyond the Coors empties and skin mags. On the living room wall was a flat-screen
TV
the size of a freeway billboard, with an array of speakers and subwoofers powerful enough to rattle windows all the way to Miami. Dad loved his
TV
sports. The kitchen was quite nice, though I was unable to picture my father turning on the front burner, let alone preparing a meal. The dishwasher was filled with plates and glasses. Some of them were even clean. As I suspected, I could find no trace of dishwasher detergent anywhere on the premises. As for the fridge, I cannot accurately describe what I found resting on a paper plate on the top shelf, but it seemed to be moving all on its own.
(I was unable to determine if the movement was an attempt at locomotion or just respiration.)

The bedroom was in a similar state. The king-size bed was unmade, although “unmade” was a serious understatement. The chaos of the sheets, blankets, and pillows suggested the bed had never been made. Not once. There was another colossal television mounted on the bedroom wall to allow viewers the convenience of retinal damage in two different rooms.

I did find a high-end vacuum cleaner in the front hall closet. It might be that my father actually pushed it around the wall-to-wall broadloom on a regular basis. I made a mental note to remind him to try plugging it in next time. You know, just to change things up a bit. After slipping out to buy some dish soap, I spent a solid hour vacuuming, dusting, washing dishes, wiping counters, and generally tidying. With much of the clutter and garbage gone, it was easier to see just how badly Dad had decorated his home. Nothing, and I mean nothing, matched. The whole look, and you couldn’t call it a look, made me wonder if Dad might be colour blind. Exhausted from my efforts, I dug out a clean sheet I was amazed to find in Dad’s linen closet, and crashed on the living room couch.

The next morning, as we had arranged, a rather nicely turned-out realtor named Graeme Harris met me on the sidewalk outside a prospective apartment. He had that used-car-sales-guy swagger and a mouth that wouldn’t stop.

“Nice to meet you, Everett, my man. I’m telling you, you are going to like this baby. All your boxes are checked,” he soothed. “It’s close to the hospital. It should be quiet because there’s only one apartment. It’s quite new. It’s clean and mucho spacious. It’s just been painted. And you’ll get sun streaming in the afternoons. The rent is reasonable for the area. The wood floors are freakin’ awesome. The bus runs from the corner. And you can take it month to month if you want. Like I said, checkmarks everywhere.”

He paused to take a breath.

“Hi, Graeme. Nice to meet you, too.”

He blathered on about the unit for a few more minutes before I held up my hand.

“Graeme, I don’t want to interrupt, but how about we look at the apartment since we’re right here, rather than you just describing it.”

“I like your style, Everett,” he replied. “I was just setting the scene for you. Let’s have a look.”

“Thank you.”

There were two ways to get in. You could go through a door adjacent to the double glass doors of the vacant space on the first floor and then walk up the inside stairs to the front door of the apartment. This was probably the route I would usually take. But there was construction going on downstairs and the door to the stairs was blocked off. So we had to climb the outside staircase, really a fire escape in the side alley, to the small second-floor veranda, and enter the apartment’s back door into the kitchen.

For all of Graeme’s frenetic hyperbole, I liked the apartment. I liked it a lot. It was in an okay part of town. Not too upscale, but not sketchy-ghetto either. It was big and airy, and as Graeme explained, over top of a restaurant that had closed down recently. It was the only apartment in the building, as Graeme had said. Hardwood floors all over, including in the large kitchen. It was open-concept layout with the living room, dining room, and kitchen all spilling into one another. This made it feel open and spacious. Built-in bookshelves ran the length of the living room wall, with a space for a
TV
in the middle. This would save me buying and trying to assemble an Ikea bookshelf. I had quite a few books that I just couldn’t leave in Toronto. In fact, they were en route. The bedroom was large and so was the bathroom. The fixtures and appliances all looked quite new, and the scent of fresh paint hung off the walls.

“So what’s going in downstairs, and when?” I asked.

Graeme hesitated before answering.

“Well, to be honest, we don’t know yet. I know that sounds strange, but the building owner has been sworn to secrecy by the new tenant. I did see industrial kitchen equipment being unloaded earlier this week, so I’m assuming it’s another restaurant. Nothing to worry about. Renovations resume next week. So it might be noisy for a bit, but whatever’s going in is supposed to be up and running within the month. Then things should settle down.”

“Is it possible it’s a fish restaurant?” I asked. “I hate seafood and the stench that goes with it.”

“I asked them the same question and you’ll be pleased to hear the answer is no.”

Graeme showed me three more apartments in the next two hours, but for one reason or another, none of them matched the first one. Not even close. So back we went to do the deal with the landlord who’d agreed to meet us there. It didn’t take long. On the spot, I signed a month-to-month rental agreement, laid down first and last month’s rent, and held the keys in my hand ten minutes later. Other than the minor question of furniture, plates, cutlery, and a shower curtain, I could move in anytime. I’d been in Orlando for less than twenty-four hours and had already nailed down my accommodations. Though the thought of spending much longer at Château Billy Kane was great motivation to do the deal quickly.

Dad wasn’t in his room when I got there just after lunch. I knew he’d been tied up in physio all morning, hence my early afternoon arrival.

“Hi, I’m Everett Kane, Billy Kane’s son. Do you know where I can find him?” I asked the older black woman filing charts at the nurse’s station. Her name tag said Yolanda Robinson.

She wore a mint-green, um, nurse’s outfit, a pantsuit I guess you would call it, with Nike running shoes. Her gold-rimmed glasses rested up above her forehead as if assisting a second set of eyes nestled in her closely cropped black hair.

“Well, there you have it! The big man was telling the truth, after all,” she said, stepping back to give me the once-over and a big smile. “We had a little pool going on on the floor based completely on whether he’d been able to extend his unique line of
DNA.”

It was clear to me she meant this in a nice way. For the uninitiated, this might have seemed an odd opening line. But remember, she was talking about Billy Kane.

“Did you win?” I asked.

“I surely did,” she replied. “I always try to see the best in people.”

“Well, you must have very good vision.”

She laughed.

“Well, sir, you have got quite a father there,” she said with just the slightest suggestion of an eye-roll.

I was still pretty sure her tone was good-natured, but a less discerning observer might have called it exasperated.

“Yes, I know, he’s a bit of a character,” I replied. “Sorry about that.”

“No apology needed,” she said. “I can see beneath his macho bluster, overt leering, and constant flirting. And there’s good stuff there, I know. I can see it.”

“Really. Well, I’m glad you can see it. He doesn’t always make it easy to find,” I said with a sigh. “So he hasn’t escaped, has he?”

“No, no, sorry, I should have mentioned, he’s out walking the grounds. He’s been very committed to his treatment, and he’s making pretty good progress, so far.”

“Will he get back to normal? I mean, his walking?” I asked.

“Everett, right?”

I nodded. She leaned her elbows on the counter top of the nurses’ station and leaned toward me.

“Everett, it’s hard to tell at this early stage. But if he does make a full recovery, it’ll be because he’s really worked hard at it. So far, he has.” She pointed down the hall. “If you take a right at the Exit sign and go out the doors, you’ll see the walkways crisscrossing the property. Don’t push him too hard. He’s teaching his leg to walk again. It’s hard, boring, exhausting, and it’s going to take time.”

I nodded.

“Thank you.”

I headed off toward the stairs.