Seeing Red (15 page)

As I prepared to leave, I said to Dick and Walton, “Thanks for the advice. It was nice meeting you guys.”

“You too, my man.” Walton replied, shaking my hand for a third time. “You gonna be alright?”

“Oh yeah. At ease, gentlemen,” I said as I shuffled toward the exit. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain in the pit of my stomach and a sweet taste at the back of my tongue—my body's signal that I was about to vomit. My walk accelerated into a sprint as I rushed through the door and ran toward a patch of grass at the side of the building where I heaved my innards onto the ground. The rum and whiskey burned my esophagus and stung my sinuses. Wiping my mouth, I stumbled across the road to the Widowmaker and struggled to find the keys in my pocket. Then I unlocked the door, collapsed into the backseat and awkwardly pulled a blanket over my torso before passing out, unconscious.

About an hour later I heard someone tapping on the car window, waking me from an uncomfortable sleep. I rolled over and saw Walton's face pressed against the glass, peering inside like that dinosaur from
Jurassic Park
. Dick was a step behind him. I dragged my upper body to the driver side door and opened it.

“Can I help you?” I said, still feeling groggy.

“Kid, are you sleeping in your fuckin' car?” Walton asked. Obviously, he already knew the answer.

“It's a lot roomier once you get inside. Like the Hilton and shit. Don't worry about me.”

“Nah, my man, this won't do. You can't be sleeping out here like this. Come on, I got a pull-out couch back at the castle.”

“Look, Walton, I appreciate the concern, but I sleep like this all the time. Besides, I can barely feel anything—”

“It's just around the corner. About a five-minute walk. Take one look, and if you don't like it, you can come back here and sleep like a goddamn hobo.”

“No, I'll be fine. Thanks, though.” I reached over and began to close the door.

“My old lady makes a really good breakfast. Belgian waffles, maple syrup, three-cheese omelettes, the works.”

I stopped for a moment and realized I was hungry. I probably hadn't eaten a full meal in several days. “You had me at Belgian. Now help me up, would ya?”

Walton grabbed me by the arm and hoisted me to my feet as I closed the door behind me. We said goodnight to Dick, and then I stumbled behind Walton as he led me to his cottage, which he later explained actually belonged to his sister-in-law. The exterior was small and green with a driveway barely big enough for a single car. There were two steps leading up to the front door and the inside smelled of old wood and sawdust and the walls were decorated in maps and advertisements from the first half of the twentieth century. We had to be quiet because his wife was fast asleep; Walton showed me how to pull out the brown couch in the living room and then he fetched me a pillow and blanket before turning off the light and leaving through the hallway.

“Sleep it off, kid, and we'll see ya in the morning.”

TWENTY-SIX

I awoke several hours later to an unfamiliar room and initially I had no recollection as to why I was there. It took me a moment to orient myself; I vaguely remembered the conversations with Walton and Dick, the shots of whiskey, the vomiting, the sleeping in the car and the subsequent walk to the cabin. Having become accustomed to the backseat of a car, the pull-out couch was a vast improvement, but I felt extremely dehydrated and desperately needed something to drink. I couldn't find my jeans on the floor, so I decided to carry on without them—the kitchen was only a few steps away anyway. After checking two of the cabinets, I eventually found a stack of green plastic cups and poured myself a glass of tap water. Then another one. And another.

As I was exhaling in relief, standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a cup of water and wearing nothing but my underwear, Sandy walked into the room. She gasped, clutched her chest and nearly jumped out of her morning gown. “Jesus Christ!” she cried.

I finished my sip before answering. “Walton told me I could stay here for the night,” I said, pointing in the hypothetical direction of the master bedroom. “I'm Ethan.” I held out my hand while she continued to glare at me for a few seconds before storming into the hallway and shouting “Walton!”

Perhaps I should have put on my pants. I heard them whispering in the other room as I searched for my missing jeans. I eventually found them underneath the pull-out couch and put them on one leg at a time. Sandy returned from the hallway as I was fastening my belt.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “We're not used to having company.” I stood there and examined her face for the first time and, like Walton, she looked as if she would have fit right in with the hippie generation. Time had worn her down a little, etched lines into her face and forced her to wear glasses, but she still had that glint in her eyes, that spark of energy. She must have been quite a catch in her day. “Let's try this again. I'm Sandy. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Well, if you can hold out for half an hour, I'll whip up some food.”

Sandy was true to her word. By the time I had smoked a cigarette outside on the deck, breakfast was served. The kitchen table was absolutely smothered in food: there were scrambled eggs, golden hash browns, smoked sausages, buttered toast, a bowl of sliced mango and cantaloupe, and whipped cream and chocolate syrup for the waffles. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I hadn't eaten a breakfast like that in years—typically I would just toast a bagel or pour a bowl of cereal because my stomach would be too upset to digest any real food, but not that day. Seizing the opportunity, I wolfed it down.

“Sorry for the surprise, sweetheart,” said Walton. “I didn't wanna wake you up last night only to tell you that Ethan here would be using our couch.”

“Oh, it's alright,” she sighed. “I just thought he was an axe-murderer.”

“The fact that he was half-naked didn't tip you off, huh?” Walton joked.

I looked up and smiled while still chewing fervently.

She smiled too. “Nope! I was thinking he might be a perv or something.” Then she turned to Walton and said, “Next time, a little heads-up would be appreciated.”

“I figured I'd wake up before you.”

When we finished eating, I volunteered to do the dishes but Sandy was already scrubbing them in the sink. Walton told us he had to drive into Simcoe to pick up some supplies from the hardware store, and he offered to drop me off at my car.

“No, that's okay,” I said. “I can walk.”

“Nonsense! I'm going that way anyway. Come on.”

I cleaned up the living room and thanked Sandy for her hospitality, and she told me I could come back for waffles anytime. Walton drove me down the road to my car and then he turned off the ignition and we sat there quietly in his truck.

“So, where're you off to next?” he asked.

“I don't know. Probably head back to Toronto.”

“What about your family? Where do your parents live?”

“They divorced when I was eight. My old man died a few years back, and my mom lives out of the country. We don't see each other much.”

“Jeez, I'm sorry, kid. But you can't be sleeping out here in your car forever.” He paused. “Just do me a favour, would ya? Go easy on the booze. I used to be a lot like you—until I learned how to ease up. And it got me into a lot of trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Man, you name it. With the law, with my family, with my first wife . . . I couldn't even hold down a job. I was just young and angry and lashing out at everything, like a bull seeing red. Then, one day, I woke up with a hangover so bad I couldn't take it anymore. Couldn't do it to myself again. If that day ever comes for you, remember it. Etch it into your brain. Find a way to remind yourself every goddamn day what it felt like to be at that point. To not have a single friend left in the world. Rock bottom. Trust me, you'll never want to feel that way again.”

I stayed silent, so he continued: “Alcohol's a double-edged sword, my man. Some of the best times I ever had were when I was piss-loaded. But a lot of bad things happened too. It's funny, of all the places, I met Sandy at a bar. She was sitting there with a friend of hers and I was knocking back the hard stuff with a buddy of mine and we eventually got to talking. If I hadn't been drinking at the bar that night, I probably never would've met her.”

I think I understood what he was trying to say. Our successes, our mistakes, even our failures, when they're all added together over the course of a lifetime, they ultimately lead us to where we're supposed to be.

“Thanks for everything, Walt.”

“And hey, don't worry if you don't have everything figured out yet. At your age, you're not supposed to. Here, I'll give you my card. You gimme a call if you ever need any construction work done or anything else.”

I stepped out of the truck and got back into my car and watched as Walton waved and honked the horn twice before driving off in the opposite direction. I opened the glove compartment and placed his card inside and then reached across the passenger seat to retrieve an old yellow map of Ontario. I unfolded the map and planned my route back to Toronto and started driving. A few months later I met Doc and sold my car to him and I haven't left the city since.

—PART III—

WHITE MICE & ROSES

TWENTY-SEVEN

Hollywood always gets it wrong. Alcoholism isn't about seeing pink elephants or having hallucinations about bats chasing mice. The pathetic fallacy that it's always dark and raining when you're hungover is completely untrue. In reality, the hardest mornings are when the sun is shining and you wish you could feel it, be a part of it, but you can't because you're bedridden and buried beneath a mound of blankets. It's like being in limbo, comatose, in a cocoon. Survival requires you to work around the addiction, to try to tame it, to work it into your schedule and live with it. Once you've gotten used to the lifestyle, it would be impossible to revert overnight. But that's what happens in the movies. They wrap it up nicely in the third act. The alcoholic simply decides not to drink anymore. Problem solved. But they're missing the point entirely. In my experience, alcoholism is a
symptom
—a symptom of a much deeper disease.

For me, it's a social crutch, an excuse, a painkiller and an escape. Sometimes it works in your favour, but you can easily take things too far and do and say things you ultimately regret. You can act carelessly and admit you don't remember anything and people will forgive you once, maybe twice, but you can only apologize so many times before your words become empty and hollow. Eventually that becomes the only person they know, and they have no choice but to cut you loose, leaving you feeling all the more dejected, isolated and lonely. For me, alcohol provides a temporary relief from the boredom, the emptiness, the constant pain in my chest and the sleepless nights—all of which are caused by the fundamental feeling that something is
wrong
with the world. Something is seriously fucked up. And I don't fit into it.

I'm sleeping on a bench at the end of a pier when I'm suddenly awoken by the sound of Doc's voice. He's kneeling beside me, trying to shake me back into consciousness. “Hey! Reid! Come on, man, wake up!” He lifts my shoulders off the bench, forcing me into a seated position, and my eyes gradually begin to open. Then he passes me a bottle of water and I try to drink from it, but the water seeps down the back of my throat and I cough.

This isn't the first time he's come to help me. Last winter, I was stumbling home from a bar one night when I got lost in the midst of a violent snowstorm. I trudged through the ice and blowing snow and tried to make it back to my apartment, but to no avail. Eventually, I became enervated by the cold and my legs failed me and I collapsed into a snowbank. Before I fell unconscious, I called Doc and told him where I was and said that I might freeze to death. He immediately hailed a cab and within minutes found me lying deep in the snow. The cab driver refused to take me because he thought I might vomit or die in the backseat of his car, so Doc propped me up by the shoulder and carried me all the way home. I've cheated death like that probably a dozen times. Yet, somehow, I was still alive while so many more deserving people lay cold in the ground or with their ashes stored in urns above the fireplace. It's an unjust world.

“Give me a minute,” I groan. “I'm not ready to go yet.”

“Sure,” he says, slumping down on the bench beside me.

This is the hangover Walton warned me about. Although I can barely recall anything, there is an inherent feeling of guilt and embarrassment constricting my entire body. Then I remember the awful text messages I sent to Natalie. The uncertainty makes my heart clench and tighten. My bones ache and my eye is swollen and my nose is clogged and runny. The discomfort is inescapable, excruciating. I never want to feel this way this again. He was right.

Doc tells me it's almost six o'clock in the morning and the sun should be rising soon, somewhere over the lake. Even now, I can see the first signs of daylight as the sky gradually changes from pitch black to powder blue.

“What the hell happened to your eye?” he asks.

I shake my head without answering.

“Did you punch him back?”

“No.”

Pause.

“Did you sweep the leg?”

“No, I didn't
sweep the leg
!”

A few moments pass.

“Man, I feel old,” I say.

“I know, man. Me too.”

“You realize it's been, like, seven years since we left high school? Our ten-year reunion is coming up soon.”

“That's crazy. . . . I don't know where the time went.”

“There's no way I'd ever go to the reunion. I haven't done anything I wanted to do since then. . . . I just drank and took some classes. I wouldn't know what to tell people.”

“Me neither. But nobody else from my school has done anything either. I mean a few of them have jobs, but nothing special.”

“But how many of them are married now? Or have kids? I can't imagine having kids at this age.”

“I'd be terrible at it.”

“Yeah. Maybe when I'm, like, thirty-five. But now? Shit, I still feel eighteen.”

“Me too.”

Another long pause.

“Remember the days when we didn't have to be loaded drunk to have a good time?” I say. “When you could just play basketball or video games on a Friday night and still have fun?”

“Yeah, man! Me and my friends used to play ball hockey every day after school. I'd totally be up for it if other people were. Why don't we do that anymore?”

“Nobody has any equipment.”

“Still, that can't be hard to come by.”

“Yeah . . . I miss those days.”

I brandish the hip flask from my pocket.

“There's still a bit left,” I say. “Want some?”

I pass the flask to Doc and he takes a swig. Then he exhales and hands it back to me and I do the same. A moment later we spot a police boat patrolling the harbour in the distance.

“Think they'll mind?” I ask.

“Nah, fuck 'em.”

Doc takes the flask from my hand and holds it up high in the air, waving it at the boat. Then he drinks from it again. Time passes slowly as we sit there gazing into the water. The waves gently rock back and forth like a cradle and I can hear seagulls cawing on the other side of the channel.

“Man, if my ten-year-old self could see me right now, he'd be so pissed off,” I say.

Doc laughs. “Same.”

“I thought I would've done so much more by now. Orson Welles was working on
Citizen Kane
when he was our age. Neil Young wrote ‘Old Man.' What have I done?”

“Man, we've still got time. We should just
go
somewhere. Go to fucking Asia and teach English or something. . . .”

“I knew a guy at my old job who did that. I think he went to Japan? He said it was awesome.”

“See? Why don't we do that?”

“I don't know. He also said it was kinda like . . . putting your life on hold. You make a bit of money, you get to live in a different country, but eventually you've gotta come home. And when you do, all the same shit is still here waiting for you, only now you're a year older.”

Doc considers for a moment. “Still, it'd be better than staying here and doing nothing, wasting our lives. . . .”

“Maybe. . . . I know I can't keep doing this every night, going out and drinking like this. What's the point? I just end up spending a bunch of money and feeling like shit the next day anyway. And even if I meet a girl, I usually never see them again, so what's the point of that? The hangovers keep getting worse and worse, too—some days I can't even get out of bed until, like, four in the afternoon. Honestly, it's not even fun for me anymore. I don't have a job, I don't know
what
the hell I'm doing in school, I'm running out of money. . . .”

Doc nods his head and looks down at his feet for a while before saying, “Well, I'm gonna get that teaching certificate. Then I'm gonna look into one of those programs. Some of them even pay for your flight and accommodations.”

“Yeah, I remember you talking about it. Don't you have to sign a one-year contract though?”

“I think so.”

“I don't know if I could do a whole year. . . .”

“Ah, c'mon, man. A year will fly by. What's keeping you here?”

I try to think of an answer, but take too long to respond.

“You've been to Hong Kong before, right?” he asks.

“Yeah. My old man took me when I was twenty.”

“We could go there? They must need teachers?”

“I don't know, man. . . .”

“Well, I'm doing it. I'm definitely going. If not Asia, then somewhere else. And you should too.”

In lieu of answering, I glance over at Doc and grin and then lift up the flask and finish the last remnants of alcohol. We both stare out at Lake Ontario and watch as the sun rises over the horizon and the city begins to wake once more.