Boyhood, Manhood, Fatherhood, Death (Part 2)

***

We lived in the suburbs of Montreal for ten years — a clean, spacious suburban house on a clean, spacious suburban street, which resonated with the wails of French speaking children. As Anglophones, we were outsiders in this strange province where poutine was queen, where you had to be answered in French everywhere by law, and from which we were almost sent packing by the séparatistes in 1995.

We moved back to Toronto in ‘98, when I was twelve. The year of the Great Ice Storm. That year our street was scratched and potholed by the mechanical shovels that chipped away at the two inch-thick ice to free the macadam underneath, inevitably damaging it in the process. Those two weeks without school were pure bliss. Both my family and Vincent’s had chosen to stay. Stranded, without electricity, we huddled around battery radios for news and made hot chocolate on the fondue burner. At night I had to sleep with my sister for warmth. My mom tucked us in with three extra wool blankets — to make sure, I had thought, we would not die of hypothermia.

During the day I would put on my winter coat and pants, and go pick up Vincent at his place. Our street bordered a small national park, and we spent much of our time there both in the winter and the summer. We had never seen the woods look like this before. The branches, encased in thick, translucent ice, were bent over into wide, hanging arches that refracted the winter light into a gradation of cold blues and white. The effect was dazzling — like a giant crystal cathedral. What struck me most during our walks in the woods in those days was the sound. The forest was hushed, except for the clanging fall of shards of ice that crashed through the canopy of frigid branches, like dropping chandeliers, echoing in the mild air as they shattered on the forest floor.

Vincent and I were already pushing into puberty by the time I moved away, but in essence I have always seen our friendship as rather boyish. It was infused with the constance, the innocence, the dumb bravado and true valor of male friendship, untainted by the complications that come with growing up — hormones, girls, booze, and drugs. We were too close for our own good. If we had continued to grow up together it would have inevitably turned sour.

I met Vincent in kindergarten. I don’t remember how, exactly. We lived on the same street, we shared the same bus stop, we attended the same bilingual elementary school, which he could attend because his mother — who didn’t live with him and his father anymore — was American. The habit of seeing each other constantly brought us closer. Habit turned to necessity, then into a budding commitment. By the end of the school-year we shared the same girlfriend, a freckly girl called Samantha, whom we quickly forgot when summer came.

Vincent and I shared the first letters of our first names. This discovery cemented our friendship. It was an unbreakable bond — we were brothers. The double V became our trademark of sorts. We started to use it everywhere. The trick was to cross the letters very close to the base, so that it would not look like a W. We pencilled this symbol on the first pages of our Choose Your Own Adventure books, we engraved it in tree bark, scratched it on rocks, stamped in on the soles of our feet with a permanent marker, like a tattoo. The marker turned out to be not so permanent, so we grew more bold and drew it on each other’s arms, just above the short sleeve mark so no one would notice. I drew the crisscrossing lines on Vincent’s arm with a quick, sure hand, and watched the ink bleed in the spiderweb of miniature ridges on his skin.

When we were not in the woods — where we spent most of our time together, catching tadpoles in the stream, making plans for a tree house, pretending we were indians, druids, conquistadors, or anything else that could creep in the woods stealthily and kill things — we played hockey or soccer in the street with the other children from the neighborhood. Rainy days were spent indoors, building forts with sofa cushions and watching Walt Disney movies, and later James Bonds (my father had the whole collection on cassette) and other action flicks.

At least once a week during the summer we had sleepovers, usually at my place. This meant three-hour long Super Nintendo tournaments, paused every ten minutes to grab handfuls of popcorn, ketchup chips, and gummy bears, all washed down with Mountain Dew. At 11 o’clock my mom would shout at us to hit the sack. We would close the TV and slip into our sleeping bags, the loud bangs from the game still reverberating in our brains. Then we would talk and joke around for hours, kicking each other in the dark whenever there was a silence to make sure the other was still awake.

Vincent had a complicated family life. His American mother had moved out when he was still a baby. He had never met her. Once he showed me a photograph of her which his father had given to him. Vincent kept it hidden in the air duct opening under his bed. It showed a younger, smiling version of his father, and a tall brunette with electric blue eyes, which her son had inherited.

Vincent’s father had remarried to a very shy woman called Andrée, prone to searing migraines that left her moaning in bed for entire afternoons. If we were at Vince’s when Andrée was ill, we had to play video games on mute and talk in whispers.

Andrée had a daughter, Melissa, from a previous marriage of her own. Melissa was a couple of years younger than us, and she was retarded. That’s how we referred to her problem, anyway. The acceptable term was “mentally handicapped.” Something was always askew with Melissa. Sometimes her socks didn’t match, sometimes she had yellowed, crusty peanut butter smeared on her chin, sometimes she forgot to pull her pants back up after having gone to the bathroom. Most of the time she looked like she had not washed in days, stringy blond hair falling in greasy locks across her face.

Vince was always kind with his stepsister, and helped his father and Andrée take care of her as much as he could, but I knew deep down he did not like her. Her glazed eyes had this strange, lost stare which always swept in our direction whenever we were talking about something secret or important. Sometimes she would creep up on us when we were watching TV or playing a game, she would scream very loud or jump up suddenly from behind the sofa, scaring us shitless, and then she would walk away abstractedly, as if nothing had happened.

Sometimes, Vince’s dad asked us to play with Melissa, to get her out of the house. We would bring her into the woods with us. While we pretended to hunt down wild boars or hid from orcs and goblins, Melissa would hum quietly, picking up flowers and leaves and tightening them into small bouquets in her fist. Then she would throw the bouquets up in the air, poised like a ballerina, until the organic debris showered down on her, tangling in her hair.

***

I stayed in my bath for two hours, motionless. I emerged shivering and goose bumped, and was met by the image of my dying father in the bathroom mirror. My skin had wrinkled and become translucent, the veins underneath apparent, bulging and blue. My eyes had sunk into stained sockets. I looked old and shrunken, a tiny standing corpse.

I went straight to bed and lay in it for several hours. I did not sleep well. Dreams, memories, and the present mingled as I tossed and turned for hours. Finally I was wide awake on my back and I knew it was useless to try any longer. I got out of bed, refreshed myself in the shower, and made my way back to the hospital.

I managed to talk with the doctor, who explained that my father’s condition was stable, but not very good. The blood clot that had caused the stroke had been neutralized, but he was still in a coma and there was no way of knowing how much damage had been done to his brain, nor when he would have another stroke.

He said it as if it was a certainty that he would have another one.

My sister came back around dinner time, with a bag of Chinese food. We ate it in the hallway, catching up and talking about Dad. I did not tell her about Vincent. After my sister left I went back into my father’s room and started reading to him. I remembered seeing in a movie that you were supposed to read books to comatose patients. I had brought Journey to the End of Night, by Céline. Rather depressing, but I was not one for lighter reads, and it was well-paced and sonorous. My father was a rebel at heart, I was sure he would enjoy.

After about half an hour, a nurse came into the room and I stopped reading. She played around with the tubes and wires around my Dad, and jotted down some readings from a machine on her pad. She smiled at me and I saw her glance down at the closed book in my lap. My thumb still stuck in between the pages where I had stopped. I felt the urge to talk to her all of a sudden.

— Do lots of people do that?

— Do what?

— Read to comatose patients?

— Not really. You see that in books in movies, but I don’t often see people actually doing it.

— Does do it do anything?

— What?

— Does it help? With the coma, I mean. Or with anything?

— I don’t know.

She paused, and then, suddenly, became very thoughtful.

— I guess maybe it helps the people reading more than the patient. It gives them something to say.

She muttered something inaudible, an excuse, maybe, and walked away rapidly.