One Good Hustle

TWENTY-TWO




SATURDAY MORNING, I WAKE in the camper and the air is stifling. I move as quietly as I can, trying not to shake the whole thing as I step outside.

When I come into the house it feels quiet and empty.

I call out, “Hello!”

Silence. It’s funny how you can always tell when there’s someone in the house. Even if they’re dead quiet or asleep somewhere, you feel it in your gut. Ruby and Lou are definitely not here.

One of the bandages from last night is flapping on my heel. I reach down and peel it off, stand on one foot so I can get a look at what’s underneath: red circles of raw skin and scabbiness. Pink radiates out from the red and yellow foot-guts.

That dorky church movie flickers through my mind again: millions of people taken up in the Rapture. I’m glad I didn’t see that movie when I was seven or eight years old; it would’ve scared the crap out of me. As it is, I’m imagining Drew and all the other good people thumbing a ride to heaven with Jesus. Everyone but me. And Jill—I just left Jill in the camper, out cold, arms framing her face like a pin-up girl. I’ve never known anyone who can sleep like Jill can: ten or eleven hours straight.

In the kitchen, the coffee pot is still warm and half full. I shuffle back to the front room and look out the window—Lou’s big black truck is gone.

Back in the hall, I look at the phone, the pad of paper on the wall. Gone to Safeway, it says. Mom and Dad.

I wander into the bathroom to pee.

I don’t know if I’ve ever been completely alone in this house. Sitting on the toilet, I gaze at the blue dolphins on the shower curtain—The phone rings sharp through the quiet and I jump.

It rings again. I look up at the crown moulding and consider whether Ruby and Lou actually own this place.

The phone rings a third time. I grab some TP and wonder how that must feel, owning your own house. Sam owns his own house. Houses.

Holy shit. What am I doing? That could be Sam.

I wipe and flush and haul up my pyjama pants as I go.

Rushing into the hallway, I grab the receiver off the wall. “Hello?”

The line clicks dead.

I hang up and stare at the phone, wait for the ringing to start up again.

I should just call. A normal daughter would call.

I pick up the receiver and run my dad’s number in my head. I check my watch. Sam sleeps late. Sometimes he doesn’t get in from work until five or six in the morning. It would be after 2 p.m. in Toronto, though. He’d be up.

When I was little, in the days before you could unplug your phone, Sam used to take the receiver off the hook and bury it under a mountain of pillows and blankets so that he wouldn’t have to hear the crazy whining noise that phones make if the receiver gets knocked off for too long. I stand holding the phone so long that it actually starts up with that crazy whining noise. I push down the hook switch. When I get a dial tone again, I start dialling: 1–416 …

After four or five rings, someone picks up. There’s rustling and then a sniffling. “Hello.”

Shit. Peggy. She always sounds as if she’s got a bad cold.

“Hi, um, this is Samantha. Is my dad home?”

“Oh.” She pauses as if this is pretty strange that I should be calling her number. “Hello, Samantha. He’s out of town, working.”

I try to think of how to say this. “Well, um, well … I just wondered if you might have a number where he could be reached.”

“What for?”

“To talk.”

“Aren’t you in Vancouver?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s where your dad is. I’m flying in to meet him tomorrow.”

I stare at the pad of paper on the wall: Gone to Safeway. “Can I leave my number?”

She coughs as if her cold has turned into pneumonia and it’s all my fault.

I read the number off the phone to her. My insides are winding tighter and tighter and I start to feel as if I might scream. I say, “Fat Freddy wants to get in touch about this thing of his. I have the details. Thanks. Bye.” I hang up before she can say another word.

He’ll have to call me now.

The phone rings. My skin jumps.

My hand hovers but I don’t pick it up. What if it’s Peggy again?

But it could be him.

Taking a big breath I clear my throat, clear out the gravel and the venom. “Hello?”

It’s quiet on the other end.

“Dad?”

There’s a clunk and whirr and then I hear a Fleetwood Mac song: Stevie Nicks singing “Storms.”

Drew. This is Drew’s music. On the day that he gave me the straw hat for my birthday, he also gave me a mix tape. He’d put all his favourite Fleetwood Mac songs on it: “Dreams,”

“Rhiannon,” “Tusk.” The song that was especially for me, he said, the one that made him think of me whenever he heard it was “Storms,” because, he said, “You’re always in storms.”

I hug the receiver to me and let my forehead fall against the wall as I listen. In my ear, Stevie Nicks says she has never been a blue calm sea, she’s always been a storm.

Where is my tape, the one that Drew made for me? I need to listen to the whole thing again and think of that day, sitting on the bench in Stanley Park together, eating cheeseburgers and drinking Orange Crush and listening to the tape on Drew’s portable cassette player.

“Drew?” I say, as the song ends. “Can you hear me?”

There’s some shuffling and then the clunk of the cassette player stopping. More shuffling and then the line goes dead. I put the phone back in its cradle. Maybe he didn’t want to actually talk to me. Who could blame him?

At least he phoned. My own dad won’t phone me. Drew keeps on being Drew, no matter what I do. And Sam keeps on being Sam.

I pick up the receiver again and stare at it a moment before I dial Drew’s number. When he answers, I say, “Can’t I hear you talk for a sec? Please? I mean … what I mean is, can I see you today?”