The Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19. Jocelyn Brown

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СКАЧАТЬ Rita’s a counsellor and that’s how she met Leonard. We don’t talk about that because I don’t think counsellors are supposed to do it with their clients. Rita also teaches yoga and I even went to one of her classes, which was my très generous attempt at bonding. Leonard was all pleased.

      George’s Grill was Leonard’s one semi-healthy habit. We came here about a thousand Sunday mornings while Paige and Joan went to church. Maybe they still don’t know. Them: small dry communion hosts. Us: fat, buttered blueberry pancakes. Sorry, Jesus. So, you’d come in, you’d hear Willie Nelson, you’d say, ‘Thanks, George,’ after he said, ‘Don’t you look fabulous, Andrea,’ and you’d get your pancakes. It was the best possible way to start Sunday – stuffing yourself on high-fat carbs while reading the news with Leonard. That is the George’s I want to remember.

      The George’s I walk into involves incense, drums, as in the embarrassing kind, and ten pounds of ashes previously known as my father. And that’s only the front. The back tables? A long row of moon faces staring at us with hungry little smiles. In the middle, four big tables full of AA people, mostly guys, mostly skinny and ponytailed, all swivelling their heads around like pigeons. I turn back to Rita. What have you done, I think.

      She has this whole gauzy thing going on that begs to be set on fire. Bits of fabric and bangly bits hang everywhere. She holds out Leonard like he’s a box of cookies then pulls him back like no, she wants him all to herself. Joan’s still doing this apologetic thing about the bus. Rita looks confused, probably because she doesn’t get the concept of public transit, then says, ‘He loved you girls.’

      ‘He liked you too,’ I said.

      OMFG. I bend down, extended eye contact with Rita not being what I need, and I say, ‘Hey guys,’ to the drummers. ‘Guys, can you stop that? It’s hurting me.’

      When I stand up, Rita is testing the mike and says, ‘Leonard is in such a peaceful place.’

      ‘Unlike us,’ I whisper to Joan.

      How incredibly strange that after walking through basically a tornado, Paige still has a perfect French braid. She goes straight to a table, very sensible, and, like Joan, disassociates. Before this, I have never looked at Joan and thought, OMG, poor you. I have thought other things – I mean, Joan inspires thoughts of a violent nature. But I’ve got to say I feel sorry for Joan as she squeezes between chairs to get to a table. I think, god, can you imagine being married to someone for fourteen years and reproducing twice with them and sitting at a table off to the side at their funeral thing? How wrong is that? I say, ‘Mom, we’re going to order some food.’ What else do you say? I want to make her something, crochet a bright and funny lizard. She likes lizards which, at the moment, is endearing.

      The purple waitress is our server, always purple top and hair-band. She takes people’s orders in a whisper as if eating is the most embarrassing thing you could possibly do. And so she whispers, ‘Would you like to start with one?’ which is what, in fact, I usually do. Joan kind of nods, weakly, and Paige puts up one finger, and I hear myself say two blueberry and two buttermilk. I re fill Joan’s coffee like I always re filled Leonard’s and get more hot water for Paige’s peppermint tea. The photo’s been above the coffee machine since forever, but when I see it now, my heart hurts: Leonard, George and a couple of their friends smiling after a big breakfast. Hey, Dad.

      Paige is the only family member who doesn’t pay serious homage to caffeine which is maybe why she can sit so still for so long. Maybe she’d like a lizard too – no, she’s more squirrel. Maybe that’s tonight’s blog: memorial crafts for surviving loved ones. My blog is for people who genuinely don’t have money, not the ones who happen to have tons of excellent supposedly free stuff lying around or a car to shop at the best Value Villages out of town, not to mention a glue gun, soldering iron and colour printer. That’s just to point out that waiting for your father to be memorialized is like every other kind of waiting as far as your thoughts are concerned. They don’t change.

      Everything I can think about had been thought by then except the thing that can’t be thought – which is, WHERE IS IT, DAD? Where is it? And so while George, who loved Dad, clears his throat into the mike, I scan the room. It’s true, Dad, I’m looking to see if you left a clue in the restaurant although it’s totally illogical because you didn’t know you were going to die, but OMG, where can it be? You cannot have left me with nothing. You cannot have ditched my gala birthday treasure hunt. It’s like I’m on a different planet that looks exactly like the old one. I’m supposed to be in Toronto in two days, Dad, so c’mon. Get it together. But there you are, in a box smaller than my backpack. I did an excellent job on the collage.

      ‘Leonard passed on,’ George says, which is what kind of phrase? His voice shakes and he starts again. ‘Leonard passed on while walking around his lake with his beloved Rita, two of his favourite things.’ Ouch. Things? ‘He went in a place of beauty and he went in peace.’

      Not exactly, George. Because first Leonard said, ‘Let’s sit down,’ then he said, ‘Oh no,’ then he crumpled face first into a pile of logs. Rita told me exact details. ‘I couldn’t turn him over,’ she said. ‘And you know your dad wasn’t that big. That’s how I knew he was gone, you know, dead weight.’ Nicely put, Rita. The last ten minutes have lasted basically a decade, so how long was Leonard’s last minute? Really long, I’m guessing. And how beautiful is face down in a woodpile if you’re not a chipmunk?

      What you realize when you’re in room full of older people, I don’t know how old, but at least as old as Joan and Leonard and mostly older, what you realize is that they know life sucks. You look at their faces and they know they’re putting in time and, yes, they have their little rewards like TV and alcohol and pharmaceuticals and yoga. But nothing means anything, you can see it. I don’t know if it’s always been this way, you can’t imagine it has, because then what’s with reproduction? Revenge? Anyway. If I needed evidence that the whole human experiment was over, and, really, I don’t, but if I was about to have an optimism seizure, well, all I’d have to do is look around and, uh, no. What does everybody clearly know once they’ve tried out something supposedly major-life-event like marriage? Dread plus hunger minus ambition. Which is what I feel sitting there not seeing a clue to my fifteenth-birthday treasure hunt. I order another pancake.

      A lot of AA people have to talk. I’m Bob, I’m Joe, I’m Francine. Really, when you get down to it, the whole funeral thing is a performance event for people who otherwise can’t get enough attention. How mean is that, but Bob just said, ‘Leonard saved my life,’ and I seriously doubt it because after Leonard’s first AA meeting, he emailed me to say, ‘Never become an alcoholic. You can’t imagine how boring these people are.’ Nobody talks about the things he loved, like his Coleman stove, or the things he hated, like Liberals. And nobody talks about how genius he was at treasure hunts which anyone who was really his friend knows. Only one person mentions Paige and me and not how much he loved us.

      If you’ve ever sat on a suitcase with all your weight, that is pancake number six. A woman two tables away smiles at me as I cut it up. I smile back and Joan turns to see and goes all oh-hi, but doesn’t look exactly happy. ‘Who’s that?’ I whisper. ‘Old friend from Timbley,’ she says.

      I conquer the pancake then crochet like a demon, especially when the drumming involves tambourines. At least they don’t know that Paige plays handbells. The lizard tail’s almost done, and I’m all about getting it pointy. We’re bubbled in our sadness, and it’s just about over. Rita invites everyone over to her home, still Leonard’s home too, she says, to chant and scatter his ashes. How heinous. But I have to go look through his den. Joan half-smiles at me, as in it’s almost done, when Rita says our names. ‘I’m so honoured to know Leonard’s girls,’ she says, holding up Dad. ‘Dree? Paige?’

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