Turn Us Again (36 page)

THIRTY

I
will have my revenge. I know there is one thing that I can do to hurt him.

I wake up early the next morning and pack my bags, moving stealthily around the house, as though I am a burglar. I do feel like burgling something. First I go into the kitchen and make enough sandwiches to feed me for a week. Packets of bacon, cheeses, yogurts, chocolates, chips and cookies. Bottles of English beer that you can't get in Canada. This means the flight will be ruined by anxiety about Canadian customs, but I don't care. I want to take stuff.

Now my suitcase is so crammed I cannot fit in another pair of underwear. I can hardly lift it. I resign myself to the inevitable and call a taxi, croaking whispered instructions into the mouthpiece. All the time, my body is filled with tension and adrenalin. I want to burgle something else. After all, I'm never going to see him again. I creep through the house, freezing every time a floor board squeaks. There's a photo album spanning my life from seven to ten. My father and mother look so young. Smiling. That doesn't mean anything — photos are always taken during happy times. There's a solid silver plate that once sat on Grandma Golden's dining room table. I would probably inherit it anyway. I wedge the album and the plate into my hand luggage — a large gym bag which contributes to my travelling anxiety in case they decide it's too large and don't let it through as hand luggage. The additions lend its vastness a demented air.

I realize the taxi might beep and break out into a sweat. Nightmare minutes are spent in a delirium of anxiety, struggling to drag my hefty bags outside without making any noise.

During the taxi drive I recall every sound that I made in the house, wondering if my father had woken, what he would think. I battle with the first twinges of regret, banish the image of his face when he realizes I've gone. He will be unhappy. Left to die alone.

I have left him. In any relationship, one has the prerogative to leave. It is the strength of the weaker half. Every child holds that threat over its parents, once it becomes old enough. Even when the stronger parents are controlling, manipulative or even abusive, in most cases they want the child to stay with them. They need and love the child. They've invested huge amounts of energy and time into this being, every year increasing their investment. Not so the child. Instead, every year increases their independence and their desire for individualism and separation from the parents. Through leaving, they have the power to destroy their parents' lives.

The same applies to the weaker spouse in a marriage. Whether they have been controlled all their lives by a subtle guiding string, or yanked off their feet by a rope around the neck, they can always leave. It seems to me to be the ultimate revenge.

Until I reach Heathrow, I'm not sure where I'm going. I still have two weeks left out of my month's ‘holiday,' and part of me still yearns to travel around. But I feel exhausted, as though all my energy has drained away through emotions and anger towards my father. I cannot bear the thought of poring over maps, deciding where to go, the weariness of getting there, finding a place to sleep.

I sit in the smoking section (there are still smoking sections in Heathrow, thank God) and drink tea while I nibble at the magnitude of squashed goodies I stole. Then it becomes clear.

I want Jenny. I want to pour out the wounds of my heart and have her swaddle them in loving bandages. I yearn for her. It is evident to me why I have chosen to be with her. She is predictable, steady, loving. She provides all the joy in our union — nice dinners, surprise presents, getaway weekends. And unlike other women, who revel in martyr-like complaints about how much they give and how little they receive, she patiently teaches me how to do her birthdays right. A present, of course. I think I'm quite good at those — I found a jewellery store which has been most successful. Even when I buy clothes, they are tasteful and in fashion. But Jenny taught me that presents aren't enough. You need to arrange a treat, in addition to a nice dinner. A movie perhaps, theater is better. In her heart she wants a party, but I can't quite manage that.

In return, she gives me wonderful birthdays, each one more extravagant than the last. One birthday she told me we were going to a movie (her motto is, keep it as close to the truth as you can, and you won't be found out). Once we were in the car she held a water pistol up to my head. “Now drive where I tell you.” She directed me to a beautiful hotel on the beach, where we stayed for two wonderful days.

I trust her opinions and her instincts. I need her to justify my leaving, tell me my father is a shit. And it's Saturday, so she'll be home when I get there.

I get up, pushing my laden trolley up to the Air Canada desk.

“The date on my return ticket is two weeks from now, but unavoidable circumstances force me to return immediately. Are there any extra seats on the next flight? There are? Great.”

I get on the flight, and nine hours later I'm inserting my key in the lock of my suddenly dear little home, anticipating the look of joyful surprise on Jenny's face.

Instead I am confronted with her sister.

“Oh hello,” Susan simpers in the direction of my smile, which has dropped to the floor. “We weren't expecting you.”

We? Since when have she and Jenny constituted any type of ‘we'?

“I wasn't expecting you either,” I say in a pleasant, conversational tone.

“Jenny invited me, because you… well, it seemed like a good time for a visit. She'll be back soon, she's just doing a little shopping.”

I drag my suitcase over the threshold (complete with stolen goodies; there were too many dark-skinned passengers to persecute for customs to bother with me) while Susan struggles ineffectually with my gym bag.

I stop short. Our hallway is a battleground. Toys are strewn helter-skelter, and there is a huge doll bent double over my leather boots with her face in a bowl of putrid milk. My horrified glance careens into the pudgy pink face of what might some day be my niece.

“Hi April,” I say in a jovial fashion. I must try and remember not to say ‘fuck' when she's around.

April grabs the doll and simpers behind it, while clumps of milk curd slide competitively towards my boots.

Susan brings a cup of tea into the sitting room and perches on the opposite chair.

“We didn't expect you back so soon.”

I take a deep breath, swallow all disappointment and try to be nice. “There were unexpected developments.”

“Well, Jenny has told me I can stay here as long as I like.”

My hackles rise. Down boys. “Are you on holiday?”

“Sort of. A long one.”

“Well, we're happy to have you. But just in case I want to buy theatre tickets a few weeks down the road, do I buy two or three? I mean, do you have a ballpark idea how long you'll be staying?”

“As long as I need. What about you? Why did you come back early?”

Where I'm so obviously not wanted. “Let's wait for Jenny to come back, so I can tell you both at the same time.”

“Well, that's a dead-end. What are we supposed to talk about?” Susan asks, rudely.

We have never gotten along well, this is my house, and she's batting me over the head with the fact that she'll stay a year if she feels like it. Still, I want to be nice. I do.

“Will Dave be visiting too?”

Susan stares at her mug. “I'm not sure. Maybe Jenny should explain things.”

Another dead-end.

April approaches my knee and holds out the doll.

“Nice doll,” I enunciate to April, then turn to Susan. “Couldn't you get a smaller doll? It's bigger than April. It's scary too. Do all dolls' eyes stare like that?”

“Oh shush, she loves that dolly. April, would you like to go to the door and see if Auntie Jenny is coming?”

April doesn't move. “Look, dis Mr. KaKa,” she says to me, and pops a pacifier into the doll's mouth, rocking it all the while.

“Mr. KaKa has a pretty dress, April,” I say.

The door bangs, and we all give a sigh of relief. I rush out so I can greet Jenny alone in the hallway and envelop her in a huge hug.

“Gabriel! What are you doing back! We didn't expect you.”

“I need to talk to you … alone.” I whisper in her ear.

“Of course, darling. We'll go out for dinner tonight, how about that? An early dinner, because you're four hours ahead, aren't you?”

Blessed sympathy and understanding. Dear Jenny.

We go to our favourite restaurant. The owner ushers us to our table. Everything is familiar and comfortable. “I feel so safe here,” I say to Jenny.

“You always said Halifax made you feel safe. Safe and dull.”

“I haven't been back long enough to feel the dull, so don't remind me. Let me revel in the safe for a while. How long is your sister staying with us?”

“We haven't worked that out. She's having some problems with Dave.”

This was interesting. The world's most boring couple is managing to have problems. “Aww, what's the matter? Dave forget to take out the garbage once too often?”

“They're thinking about having another child, but Susan had to do everything by herself the first time. Dave says he'll help her more next time, but he still doesn't do anything with April.”

“Of course, the perfect family has to have two kids, to eat all four portions in the family-sized frozen meals. Preferably a boy and a girl.”

“That's not very helpful. Poor Susan is going through a rough time.”

“Sorry. I'll try to be nice to her, don't worry. But you know I go fucking nuts when people stay in my house for more than two or three days. Can't you obtain some type of time limit?”

“Give me a day or two, anyway, so it's not obvious that my queries about the length of her stay coincide with your coming home. Now tell me about your father.”

We work our way through a huge basin of mussels, followed by baked haddock, as I launch into the story of my mother's manuscript, describing how it had awoken the memory of fear with which I had grown up. I linger on the most horrifying aspects of my father's violence, my voice trembling with emotion. Jenny lays down her knife to grasp my hand.

“How sad. It seems like they just missed a successful relationship, through stupidity. It could so easily have been different.”

“I doubt whether he could have acted in any other way. He had a dysfunctional upbringing and he perpetrated dysfunction in his own family. He was extremely violent.”

“I still don't think you should have left like that. Perhaps you should consider going to counselling together.”

“You think he's going to change now, after a lifetime of violence?” A surge of annoyance overwhelms me. “Even now when he's old and sick and desperate to make amends before he dies, he pushes me so aggressively I fall backwards!”

“For your own healing you should go back and face him, work out the things you might have done wrong. It was immature, running out like that.”

“Could you possibly be a bit more sympathetic? I don't want to analyze, I just want to unload, okay?”

“Keep your voice down. So unload. Why did you feel like you had to leave when he pushed you? Did all the times he had hit you in the past come flooding back?”

This question irritates me too, but I try to quell it because I know I'm being unreasonable. The truth is, I can't remember too many times. I think he stopped hitting me altogether when I became a teenager. Before that I remember three occasions, including the one in my mother's manuscript. The fact that I remembered that time, even though I had only been about five or six, inclined me to suspect that there weren't too many others. Striving for Jenny's compassion, I wish there had been hundreds.

“I remember a couple. Once he smacked me across the face because I called him a dirty kyke. We were having this stupid argument and I was accusing him of not loving me enough, because we were moving again and I had just managed to make some friends. And once he threw me up against the wall.”

“But didn't you move to Halifax when you were about six, and stay here?”

“Yes, but we moved districts several times, and I had to change schools. I always had problems making friends and I hated change.”

“Most kids hate change. Why did he throw you against the wall?”

I hesitate for a second. “Because I was rude to my mother. He was always big on showing respect to parents, so I couldn't even make faces when she asked me to help with the cleaning and stuff, like other kids do.”

“Well, that's good, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it's great. He punches her whenever he feels like it, and punches me when I dare to sneer in her direction. Great fucking role model.” Why can't Jenny just let me indulge in the cruel father image and commiserate?

I can see she wants to question my statement. She twiddles the stem of her wine glass, then looks up and gives me a half-smile.

“It must have been terrible.”