DEN MOTHER

October 29, 2004

DEN MOTHER

The West End has become a mini-Sleepy Hollow. Windows and vestibules are ornamented in skeletons and Jack-O-lanterns produced in either China or a grade-school classroom. Indian coloured leaves act like impromptu banana peels on the moistened sidewalks. The apartment fire on the corner of Broughton and Burnaby streets is still on the tips of pedestrian tongues, the burned out upper floors acting as the local attraction like the haunted mansion at Disneyland. While the Boston Red Sox coasted to a World Series victory, small masses gathered at Nelson Park to watch the lunar eclipse above the cadaverous treetops.
In San Francisco, I always associated Halloween with violence. Every year the City would close down the Castro to bridge and tunnel revelers, out of costume, so they could take out their aggressions on the gay community. There were riots, stabbings, and shootings: my last Halloween there, I got a black eye. Vancouver is Provincial by comparison. Sure there are the usual fag bashings, but nothing compared the eight years I spent fearing for my life every October. This year, while I still try and decide if I’m going to dust off the old Superman costume, I was reminded that like Christmas, Halloween is for kids.
“I’m the only person who can take a second job and lose money,” I explained to Neil after I told him I would be needing back the shift I had given up to accommodate my crappy second job. Neil laughed and shook his head, affirming my role as the loveable loser. A couple of hours later he called to ask if I would be interested in doing some data entry work.
“We’ve switched to a new accounting program,” Neil explained. “We need to enter the past year into the computer, and Abbey can’t do it and watch Junior at the same time. You would basically be acting as her fingers. Would you be interested in that?”
“Sure, why not?”
I don’t know Abbey as well as I do Neil, despite the fact I’ve been her employee for almost two years. In that time, she has been pregnant and rearing Junior. We’ll chat briefly when she comes in to do the cash or when we’re out socially; in either case I’m usually fading after a morning of opening the shop, or a little lit. This would be the first time we would spend any significant amount of time alone, working.
Abbey figured it would take three or four days to get the job done. I would open the shop, run home, walk the dog, freshen up, and then come back to the shop to meet her and Junior. From there we would whisk off across to the Georgia viaduct to their modest home in the East End. The work was easy but monotonous. While entered cheques into QuickBooks, Abbey would either be nursing Junior or working on Halloween costumes for her other two sons.
“Want to see the costume I bought Junior at the Dollar Store?” she asked. Abbey ran up the stairs, and then came down a few minutes later. Junior was in her arms, a pair of horns atop his rolling head, a red bow-tie around his neck, and small tail poking from beneath his red vest, looking like a piece of red poo. We were both speechless with laughter, Junior smiling, oblivious.
Although I was burning the candle at both ends, working at the shop, running across town, sitting at a computer and maintaining what little social life I have, I looked forward to my afternoons in the basement with Abbey. It was like being home sick from school. The house was empty but there was no lack of activity. Abbey would field calls from either of The Shops, start dinner, and keeping Junior occupied.
“Would you like a cookie?” she asked. “They’re fresh from the oven.” I devoured two like a little kid.
I’m always telling people I hate children, but it’s a lie. They fascinate me - wish I were still one. Babies make me nervous though, I’m always afraid I’ll drop them or step on them. While I clicked away at the computer, Junior would roll around on the basement floor, taking a stack of cheques from the completed pile and put them in his mouth. Every now and then Abbey would whip out her breast and nurse him in an attempt to get him to sleep. While she was blasé about it, I would squint at the computer screen avoiding her exposed breast.
My last day there, Neil was waiting for us outside the house. He was visibly upset. “This can’t be good,” Abbey muttered under her breath.
“The school called,” Neil said as we got out of the car. “Duncan broke his ankle or something. I have to take him to the hospital.”
As I finished off the last of the data entry, Abbey tried to keep busy waiting for the call from the hospital with the prognosis. She cooed into the phone when Duncan called her for his medical card number. She cleared her throat when she hung up the phone.
“Are you going to be all right?” I asked her.
“Yeah. These things happen.”
I tried cheering her up with the story of the time I broke my ankle free-style wrestling. “I had to sit in the waiting room wearing a wrestling singlet, my foot hanging off my leg while two Asian queens pointed and laughed at me. The nurses kept referring to me as ‘The Wrestler,’ like I were an extra in a movie.” I managed to get a smile out of her. She nursed Junior, and then put him down in the small bedroom near the desk where I was working.
Abbey met Collin at the door when he came home from school to tell him about Duncan. While she was upstairs, Junior started crying in the room. I continued working on the computer, hoping he would fall back to sleep. When he didn’t I looked in on him. Junior was sitting up in the middle of the bed, bleary eyed, looking for his mother. I picked him up and he immediately wrapped his chubby arms around my neck and rested his head on my shoulder. I took him back to the desk with me, supporting him with my forearm beneath his diapered butt, and he started to gurgle in my ear as I continued to work with one hand. It was one of those magic moments, the light filtering in through the window, in a room full of toys and costumes, conjuring images of mobiles and Kaleidoscopes - pure innocence. It was so warm and comforting, like the proverbial womb.
“Awwww,” Abbey said, when she saw me.
The cab ride home was a shock to the system, like jumping into really cold water. I had gone from feeling like a member of the family to being annoyed by the cab driver who had by-passed the viaduct for a longer route, all the time talking on his cell phone. I was tempted to stop the car, and walk the rest of the way, but I was tired, and needed to get the dog out. What had seemed so attainable only minutes before – a house, a business, and a family – was once more beyond my reach.

GarpinBC