“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I’ve taken the day off, Dad.”
“To be with Mum and me?”
“My colleagues are understanding. My sked’s flexible. I don’t have to book compassionate leave or anything like that.”
“Thanks, just the same.”
She’d made contact just in time. Buddy hadn’t pulled out of his parking spot in front of Dr. Blinkhorn’s office when his mobile went off, tickling his hip. He wrestled himself sideways under the constraining force of the Matrix’s seatbelt, pinched the phone between his thumb and forefinger, careful not to touch the hang-up button with his activating flesh, and wriggled it out of his jeans pocket.
I thought for a moment it might have been Leanne. Maybe she’d been too harsh and wanted to apologize for the way things had ended. Not reconcile in the full sense of the word, but enough that we could remain friends. “No, dear,” I might have said. “You continue living in the house; I’ve got a place in Chemainus. I don’t need the basement suite.”
Instead, ‘Gloria’ was announced in blaring Helvetic on the phone’s sleek screen.
“Hi Dad!” she said, her cheerfulness forced.
“Hi Hon. What a pleasant note to end a crappy day on! I suppose you’ve heard the grim details.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I won’t say I’m fine, but I’m fit to drive.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I’ve got a place to stay in Chemainus. No need to worry.”
“A place to stay? Like a hotel? An apartment? A cardboard box? What?”
“Now there’s a an architectural niche for you, hon,” he laughed. “Designer cardboard habitation.”
“No joking, Dad. This isn’t funny.”
She verged on frantic, like maybe it was her fault I’d been ejected from the family nest, and she’d be haunted by the ghost of her homeless dad for the rest of her life.
“I’ve got a perfectly suitable home, dear, in a Bigfoot camper, parked in the back drive of some very nice people in Muraltown—you remember Chemainus, right? How could anything bad happen there? It’ll be fine.”
“Are you still in Victoria?”
“I was just about to hit the road.”
“Can we meet? Maybe have some dinner before you go?”
‘Oh god,’ his body groaned. I just want to get back home, back to my hermetically sealed Looner Module. My fibreglass cocoon.
“Sure.” Buddy forced an enthusiastic note.
“Where would you like to go?”
“White Spot. Douglas and Caledonia… I know it’s not a venue where you millennials like to gnosh your sushi, but it’s where I can order my comfort food.”
She laughed. “I don’t really consider myself a millennial, Dad.”
That’s my Gloria! he thought as he pulled out, heading for The Spot.
En route, he mind-flipped through a time-warped version of family life with Gloria and Robbie. He’d been able to imagine the adult versions of them in their childhood faces. At least once they were beyond the pudgy phase of infancy, and the elasticity of their features had tightened into something definitive. But I can’t rewind the process. He couldn’t flip through the sequence in reverse, tracing back from young adulthood, to youth, childhood, infancy.
Even sitting opposite Gloria, when they’d settled into their window booth, I couldn’t see the girl in her—he toothy, smiling girl I knew she’d been.
“So how’s your mother?” he asked, once their meals had been served.
“Mum, you mean?”
“Point taken.”
“She’s angry, Dad. Hurt, actually. Me and Robbie feel like we’re caught in some kind of Greek tragedy. Like someone’s going to get stabbed or have their eyes scratched out.”
“A bit melodramatic, don’t you think? Does she hate me that much?”
“She’s hurting!” Gloria shot back. “Love curdles when it’s exposed to angst.”
“And that’s my fault?” he probed gently, not wanting to come across as angry or accusing.
“Not talking about ‘fault’ here, Dad. None of us have as much control over our feelings as we’d like to think. Sometimes they just are what they are.”
He chomped into his Monty Mushroom Burger, wolfed down a couple of fries, and took a swig of coffee while Gloria watched, waited.
“How’s Robbie coping with all this?”
She shrugged. “Best speak to him, Dad, but I think he’s processing things his own way.”
“Which is?”
“You know. Thoughtfully. Trying to understand both sides of the equation as if he was researching a psychology paper on the dynamics of family dysfunction.”
He laughed. “That’s a harsh characterization, don’t you think?”
“Just being honest.”
“You and him aren’t at odds over this, are you?”
“No. We’re not taking sides.”
Trying not to, he corrected.
“Good,” he coached.
They lapsed into silence.
There’s something needs saying, Buddy thought. But he couldn’t figure out exactly what, and neither could she, so they ate their dinners for a while, like penitents under a vow of silence. The cathedrals of our skulls filled with the noises of mastication and dining room clatter.
Then Gloria suddenly stopped, a marionette whose controller had hung her up mid-performance to take a smoke break or something.
“You okay?” he asked.
Jolted, she looked up, her face contorted as she tried to reassert some measure of control, tears rolling in rivulets, following the channels between cheeks and nose.
“No, I’m not okay,” she quavered. “I love you, Dad; and I love Mum, which makes me collateral damage. And I don’t know how to fix myself without hurting either of you. I always thought we’d make it as a family, that the happy times would outweigh the sad, and we’d get back to a version of the way things used to be.”
He reached across, touched her wavy blonde hair, traced the channel of her tears with his thumb. A memory flashed of her as a child, laughing at her silly dad making one of his faces as he stooped to give her a bear hug.
“We’ll always love you and Robbie, Hon,” he said. “No matter what, that part of us will hold me and your mum together. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, more out of pity than conviction, dabbing her eyes with a paper napkin.
Next: Over the Counter