Few Kinds of Wrong Read online

  “She’s just a little kid,” he answered back.

  “She’s more mechanic than you’ll ever hope to be,” Bryce said. “Now, Mr. Collins asked you to leave, and I and my friends here suggest you do as he says.”

  As he left, his toolbox not yet unpacked, I was shaken. It was just one of the many times that Dad or Bryce picked up for me. One of the numerous times someone told me I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be who I was, but it was the first time I doubted myself. It was the first time I was dismissed and understood it as that. Jed Cleary ripped more than the paper from my hand. The torn piece of me he left behind grew into an adamant feminist. I believed in nothing less than equality because I could do anything a man could do and could often do it better, but I also believed in it because good men stood behind me and they knew I could do it too.

  In front of the bad wig man, I put my hand on my hip, lean on one leg and look him in the eyes. “I fixed your car. I, this little lady, as you call me. I took your transmission out and replaced your clutch disk, release bearing, pressure plate, and slave cylinder. Me. And you paid eighty-five bucks an hour for me to do it. So, if you want to talk to the person who fixed your car, go ahead.”

  He laughs again, less loud now. Like he still doesn’t quite believe me yet but just might be starting to.

  “Well, I think I should have that bill reduced. I mean, you’re a woman so you don’t get paid as much as a man.”

  “Actually, I get paid more than anyone else here because I’m the Collins in Collins Motors. And so I can tell you to get out of my garage and never come back again. I know a couple of garages with some very crooked male mechanics. Maybe next time they can fix your car. But expect to pay through the nose and remember,” I say, pointing to him, “there’s no such thing as a hubscrew.”

  I turn and walk away.

  “Miss,” he calls after me.

  I turn around.

  “You can expect a call from my lawyer about this.”

  “Sure.” I can’t resist a smile, the first in such a long time. “But I bet mine’s better than yours. She’s a real firecracker.”

  As I walk away again, I can’t help wondering what it was he wanted to speak to me about in the first place. My curiosity doesn’t stop me from going in the office and watching him as he leaves.

  The next morning, it takes a while to figure out the noise that wakes me. A knocking that intensifies to a pounding. My clock radio tells me it’s 6:30. Who is at my door at 6:30? I’d think Mom, but she hates people dropping in as much as I do and would never show up without calling me first. The only other alternative is someone who would want to annoy me and wake me on a Thursday morning. Jamie.

  “Go away,” I say, too low for anyone more than a few inches away from me to hear.

  The pounding continues a couple more minutes before it stops. Seconds later I hear the door open. One person has the key to my house.

  “Beej?” I call out.

  Six feet of legs, breasts and hair fill my doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask and put my hands over my eyes. Maybe if I don’t see this, it’s not real and I can just go back to sleep.

  “Breakfast,” BJ says, holding up a bag with golden arches on it. My favourite. If my stomach will agree, maybe in an hour or two, I’ll enjoy it.

  “What are you doing here?” I repeat.

  “Break-fast,” she says slowly.

  “At 6:30?” I shake my head. “Were you by chance talking to my mother?”

  She shrugs.

  BJ talks to Mom several times a month and they see each other almost as much as I see either of them. BJ needs a surrogate mom since hers ran away with a Baptist minister from Wisconsin when BJ was fifteen so I understand that. But why does it have to be my mom?

  This new relationship started shortly after my father’s death. BJ ran into Mom at a local store and they started to chat. A few minutes in, BJ asked her if she wanted to grab a coffee at the donut shop next door. Two hours later, BJ and Mom were chummy-chummy and I lost out on someone to bitch about my mom with. Not that I bitch much about Mom, but every now and then you need to vent about the woman who irons her sheets.

  “What did she say?” I ask.

  “I’m not talking to you while I’m standing and you’re lying in bed.”

  “I’m not getting up yet,” I say. “I’m tired.”

  “There’s two empty flasks on your coffee table. You’re more than tired.”

  I pull myself up to half sitting and lean back on my elbows. “There was almost nothing left in one of them when I started.”

  “I’m not here to measure what you drink. I’m here to give you breakfast and to tell you that your mom is sorry and wants to talk to you.” BJ lays the cup of coffee on my bedside table and the bag on my bed.

  I sit up and take a good gulp of coffee before I speak. “She said she was never happy with Dad.”

  “I can’t win if I say anything, but she’s sorry.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You heard me.” BJ walks to the door and turns, her long brown hair flicking around. Even at 6:30 in the morning she looks like a supermodel on the catwalk. I should hate her. If I could muster the energy, I might find a way.

  “Have a good day and call your mom,” BJ says.

  “BJ, what do you mean, you can’t win if you say anything else? Did Mom tell you anything about why she was never happy?”

  “No, she doesn’t talk to me about stuff like that. But…”

  “But what?” I want to know almost as much as I’m scared to know.

  “Just think about her life, that’s all. Just think of her life as anyone else’s, not your mom’s. How many times did they go to dinner together? To a movie? How many evenings was he even home an hour before he went to bed? How many days did he spend more time with her than at work? Than with you?”

  “What?”

  “Just ask yourself,” BJ says with another shrug. “And while you’re at it, ask yourself when you ever talked to him about something other than work.”

  After she leaves, her words hang in the house and pick at my fuzzy head. I wish I’d saved something in one of the bottles on the coffee table. My coffee needs something extra this morning.

  6

  AN HOUR AND a half later I show up at work for a day of busy. A day to keep my mind off where my mind wants to go. Face and eyes into an engine job or a complicated electrical problem and I’ll forget everything BJ said. I just have to go to the office and find the hardest job in the stack of work orders.

  As I walk in the garage, I see that Bryce and Jamie are talking to someone in the office. Even before I see who it is, a sick feeling in my stomach tells me it’s Mom. I turn to leave. Good day to call in sick.

  “Jennifer,” Rick shouts out, and when I turn, I see the three faces in the office staring at me. Mom’s smile looks like more of a plea. She waves.

  With a big grin on his face, Jamie sticks his head out and calls me into the office. I know he knows I don’t want to go in there. My upper lip twitches.

  “I have a lot of work to do,” I call out to him.

  “You haven’t got a work order yet,” he shouts. “And we’re not even fully booked.” His smile broadens and my eyes go searching for something heavy I can hit him over the head with, even if it just has to be in my imagination. A rubber mallet fits the bill and, as I go to the office, I stop to pick it up. At least I’ll have the option if the urge overtakes me.

  “Hi,” I say. Everyone looks uncomfortable, except Jamie, who is still giving the Cheshire Cat a run for his money.

  “Let’s go to work, boy,” Bryce says, grabbing Jamie by the arm. Jamie opens his mouth but the look from Bryce shuts it. “I got a nice greasy job for you.”

  “How are you?” Mom asks. She leans against the desk then stands up, moves slightly then leans against the desk again.

  “Tired. Your messenger woke me at 6:30.”

  Mom puts her hand to her throat, a
move I once told Jamie was her effort to try to find something to say, to encourage her throat to utter the right words. Every time she doesn’t know what to say, Mom’s hand flies to her throat.

  “I just asked her to talk to you, not to wake you.”

  “And when did you decide to come here and speak for yourself?” I don’t care that my tone is angrier than I thought it would be.

  “Please,” she says in a whisper.

  Please what? I think about asking, but I know there are a number of requests behind that one pleading syllable. Please forgive me. Please understand. Please let me be happy. Please love me. Please don’t speak to me harshly. Please make everything right. Please don’t drag this unpleasantness out.

  BJ’s questions from this morning play in my head, as they have every second since she uttered them. Something in them makes me feel guilty. I give Mom a huge hug.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  The resulting smile on her face looks out of place with the tears in her eyes. I can’t help wondering if she is happy or if, like me, she’s just relieved that we’ve avoided all the things we don’t want to say.

  Mom says she has a hair appointment to get to and walks out with Bryce. I watch them walk until they stop to talk. Right in front of Dad’s toolbox. She is almost touching it, unaware it was Dad’s, that no one is allowed to touch it, that I won’t let anyone use the bay so I won’t have to clean out the toolbox. Won’t have to remove the probably long-melted candy bars he kept in the small middle drawer. Won’t have to touch the chain with the little gold wrench I gave him after I got my first paycheque, the necklace he took off every morning and placed in the toolbox to keep from getting broken or caught in machinery, then put back on his neck each evening before he closed his box. Won’t have to touch the pliers full of concrete paint I spilled on them or the digital calliper I gave him that he refused to use, believing it could never be as accurate as the old dial one he’d had for twenty years. Won’t have to find a place to put every tool with every story behind it, the metal and grime reminding me of everything I miss and love about the man who used them to make machinery hum.

  I can’t stop looking at Mom standing there, oblivious to all that she’s close to. Bryce seems to be moving away from the box, trying to draw her away. A voice behind me makes me jump.

  “Everything okay?” Jamie asks.

  I nod, not turning around.

  “Bryce seemed really surprised to see her. Said she never comes by.”

  “Nah, it’s no big deal. She’s been here before.”

  Not strictly a lie. She had been here once, that I remember, the time she forgot her wallet when she went to the mall.

  “Are you happy for her?”

  I turn around. “What?”

  “Happy for her?”

  I just look at him.

  “Didn’t she tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Guess not. I’ll let her tell you.”

  “No, you don’t get to do that. You brought it up, now what are you talking about? Why should I be happy for her?”

  In the back of my mind, I’m thinking that if the word “Petch” is used in this conversation, this place is going to erupt into something ugly.

  “I won’t tell her that you told me,” I say, and suddenly I’m conspiring with Jamie, as if we are old friends, willing to plot secrets together, willing to hold something dishonest between us. Jamie won’t go along with it, I realize. His downfall was always that he’s honest to a fault.

  “It’s not that big a deal to keep secret. She’s taking a couple of courses at MUN,” he says, referring to Memorial University of Newfoundland. “One in English Literature and one in Theatre. Did you know she almost had her degree thirty-odd years ago?”

  “Sure,” I say, voice thick with the lie I give it to tell. “I didn’t realize you were talking about that. I think it’s pretty sad, really, her trying to recapture the past like that. You can’t go back in time.”

  He stares at me and starts to shuffle from one foot to the other. The Jamie shuffle, all his friends and family call it. When he debates doing or saying something, he rocks back and forth, bouncing as if his body is playing the same back and forth as his mind.

  “I think it’s more like she’s moving forward. I’m happy for her. I think she’s brave. She’s getting on with her life and doing things she wants to do. She’s not trying to go back in time. She’s trying to go ahead. She could stand still, I suppose. Could go to the cemetery every day, or maybe every night, and tell a headstone about her day. She could listen to an old message on her answering machine over and over and drink and cry herself to sleep at night. But really, don’t you think that would be sad?”

  I open my mouth to ask him how he knows that, but some foggy memory from the other morning answers my question before I can ask it. I turn away and don’t look up again until I hear the office door close.

  It’s after 10:00 pm when I hear the door to the office open and turn to find Jamie standing there, grin wider than usual.

  “Fancy you being here,” he says. “Later than normal, aren’t you?”

  I nod.

  “Not doing anything this evening but paperwork?”

  “I was thinking of …” I hesitate, not wanting to talk to him but wanting so badly to tell him he’s wrong. I can move on too and I’ll prove it to him. “Of going to Mom’s to surprise her, but I didn’t realize it was this late.”

  “I’m sure she won’t mind. You’d probably make her day, maybe even her week.”

  “Yeah, but she goes to bed pretty early. She’s probably asleep now.”

  “You won’t know if you don’t try.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You go on. I’ll lock up.”

  “What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Was driving by and saw the light on.” He smiles. “Thought maybe you were in here trying to cook the books.”

  I pass him the stack of papers and motion to the computer I’ve been plugging numbers into. “Here, check it out. And then lock up, will you? I have somewhere to go.”

  He nods and I’m glad he doesn’t do or say anything more than that.

  Leaving the parking lot, the car almost tries to turn left on its own, up Kenmount Road to the cemetery. I sit there in the car as the traffic light a few metres up the street changes from red to green and back again several times. No signal light on, debating which way to go.

  The world is silent as falling snow. There is nothing but the sound of an unblinking signal light, waiting to see which way this car, this day, this life, will turn.

  It decides to turn right and drive down Kenmount Road, onto Freshwater Road to stop at Stockwoods Bakery and pick up some of the chocolate éclairs and macaroons Mom loves. It will be a nice surprise for her.

  As I drive, I feel something lift from my chest and I take a deep breath, deeper than I’ve breathed in months. A whole breath, unencumbered by the hunch of my shoulders or the desire not to cry. I know I’ll never let Jamie know it, but I’m pleased with myself. I’m not sure if I’m moving forward, but at least I’m not standing still.

  A variety of goodies from Stockwoods sits next to me in the car as I pull into Mom’s driveway. The lights in the house are all off. I debate waking her up, but decide against it. I can leave the treats for her anyway. Finding a piece of paper in the glove box, I grab the pen in my shirt pocket and jot a quick note:

  Came for a visit but saw you were gone to bed.

  Enjoy these for breakfast.

  Love

  J

  The click of the lock is barely audible as I gently turn the key and open the door. I lean into the porch to place the Stockwoods bag on the deacon’s bench by the door. I’m back outside and pulling the door shut when I see it, out of the corner of my eye. It’s just in my peripheral vision for what must be half a second, and I almost have the door locked again when it registers. I push open the door again and there it is, plain as the white hair
on Nan’s head. A jacket with a perfectly pressed seam running down the arm, hanging on a hanger on the coat rack like it’s always been there. It looks as at home as anything I’ve ever seen on that rack.

  Slowly, my eyes make their way down to the boot mat next to the rack and what I see confirms something that makes no sense. Polished workboots sit perfectly lined up against the wall.

  But all the lights are out, I tell myself. He can’t be here. A nauseating, stabbing pain running from the pit of my stomach to the compressed feeling in my chest, opens the door and drags me inside. I hold my breath as I tiptoe into the house, feeling as if someone else’s feet are making the journey. I creep through the kitchen, into the hallway, past the room that was mine for so long, past the room where Nan’s body stayed as her mind left her, past the spare room where Dad would so often sleep rather than wake Mom when he’d go to bed late, moving forward until I’m in the doorway of the master bedroom.

  I stand motionless until my eyes adjust to the darkness. I’m conscious of my breathing, trying to ensure that I continue it, despite the involuntary way I seem to be holding my breath. While at the same time I’m afraid my breath will be too loud and will be heard in the room. I make out the image of two forms asleep in the bed. Close enough to almost touch, the contented sounds of comfort coming from them. On each side of the bed an alarm clock sits on an oak table. The clock on Mom’s side says 10:24. From the red glow of the one on Dad’s side of the bed, I can see a book and reading glasses. A bookmark is tucked inside, about three quarters of the way through the book. The reading glasses sit on Dad’s box, the one Mom called a jewellery box but Dad called his change box, where he would dump a pocketful of change every night and empty it back into a clean pocket the next morning.

  A water glass sits full on the table, on a wooden coaster. The red lights of the clock make its contents look like Kool-Aid or Purity Syrup. Purity Syrup like Dad loved. With a bit of light rum. Purity Syrup like I’d leave for Santa, who visited me after supper every Christmas Eve, telling me to go to bed early as Mom and Dad looked on with smiles. Until I was nine and learned who Santa really was.