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11:00 a.m.
“Would you like some tea, son?” Dad called, from the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said. “Do you need a hand?”
After my interrogation, I couldn’t face work, the questions, and the lies that I’d have to make up. Instead, I headed home on the HSR bus to my parents’ house. I just needed to return to old comforts.
“What?”
Dad’s hearing was going.
“I said, do you need a hand making the tea?
“I’m making tea, son, not an atom bomb. It’s no’ complicated.”
“Right.”
“Stop your mumbling, son.”
“I said right.”
“I heard you the first time! I’m not deef, you know.”
I sighed in disappointment. I’d been kidding myself, thinking that my parents were going to make everything okay. They were true Scots—they’d do anything for you, but touchy-feely was not in their genes.
“So, how’s your knee, Mum?” I asked her from the recliner I’d plunked myself down in. A month earlier she’d had a knee replaced, and Allison and I had brought my old childhood bed down from upstairs and positioned it in the middle of the living room so Mum could watch television and be close to the bathroom. The sheer curtains that covered the living room sliding doors were badly yellowed from years of cigarette smoke. Mum sat up in bed, her pink, cotton-candy hair flattened a bit from lying down.
“Achh, not too good. You know, Donny, getting old’s no fun.”
“Can’t be easy.”
She shook her head. This latest pink hair made her look like Dame Edna.
“What are you writin’ that rubbish for?” Dad asked, approaching from the kitchen, his brogue thicker than the last time he spoke. Most people had no clue what my dad was saying. While my mom’s accent was crisp and exact, my Dad’s always sounded like he was half-way into a bottle of Drambuie.
He handed me my cup of tea.
“It’s complicated.”
Dad scowled. “What a rubbish heap. The bing of filthy words. The nest of lies. You’re writin’ out your arsehole on this one, Donny. You’ll be out of a job and a career if you keep it up.”
“And what does Allison think of this?” Mum piped in her sweet lilting voice. “There’s a name for people who lie. Do you know what it is, Donny?”
I groaned. “Mum, don’t say it.”
“Donny, do you know the name for people like you? Say it out loud.”
“Aw, Mum, c’mon. Please.” I felt like a kid again. How did she manage to do that? “Donny?”
I hung my head in defeat. “Okay. A bletherin’ fibber.”
“Aye, Donny, that’s it. Now, you haven’t changed much, have you?”
It occurred to me that she was right. It wasn’t a very nice feeling.
Dad set his cup down on a side table, tea sloshing over the side of the cup onto the carpet, then toppled in the matching recliner beside me. Big, sputtering coughs rolled out, and I half-expected his one remaining, cancer-free lung to hurl out of his mouth.
Mum rolled her eyes, and chided, for the millionth time, “That’ll be the death of you, Archie! Bad enough you’re missing one lung and you’re still smoking, you daft idiot.” Her knee spasmed and she clutched it, groaning. I got up from my seat to offer some help, but she waved me down. She dragged an ice pack onto her knee and leaned back into her pillow, half-propped up. Typical Scots—they’d perform surgery on themselves if they could, rather than let someone help them.
Dad reached over to the side table, removed a pack of Export A cigs, and lit one up, mid-cough. “I’ll not take orders from a woman with dolly hair!”
One of the reasons Allison and I had moved back to Hamilton was to help my aging parents. What the hell were we thinking?
“Next thing you’ll have cancer of the throat and you’ll being smoking a fag through a bloody hole in your neck!” Mom said, her voice rising in pitch.
“Whisht, woman, you’re haverin’! I’ve told you, I’ll die the way I choose, not the way you want me to. If you can’t have a smoke at my age, then when can ya?”
“Well, I won’t be far behind you, not wi’ all that second-hand smoke you’ve forced on me!”
“Move out then, woman. But you’ll have to be carried out the door by the bletherin’ fibber, wi’ the shape your knees are in.”
“Achh,” she said. “Take a hike.”
I picked up the television remote, or the “flicker” as my parents called it, and turned on the television. Some things never change. As a kid, their constant arguing used to upset me, but now I just found it comical.
“How’s your tea?” Dad asked, exhaling a massive cloud of smoke.
“Great,” I said.
“Is that Norbert Reingruber?” Mom said, disbelievingly, pointing towards the television, her face scrunched up.
“Achh, you’re haverin’, woman. That hair dye has damaged your brain.” Dad said. “Are you referring to that chubby egg-heeded boy that used to play wi’ oor Donny?”
“Oh my God!” I said, spilling some hot tea over the rim, burning my fingers.
I couldn’t believe it. On Channel 11 news, a reporter was interviewing Norbert Reingruber. He was sitting in his mom’s basement. Reingruber was in a time warp—taped to the panelled walls was the same Ted Nugent Double Live Gonzo poster he’d bought when he was sixteen, as well as the Rush 2112 and Led Zeppelin Zofo posters that had been there since I’d known him. The famous Raquel Welch poster was still there, too. For a Grade Eight boy, that poster had been a little piece of porno heaven.
Reingruber was dressed to the hilt. He’d feathered his hair like he’d worn it in the Seventies. His gut hung over a pair of tight jeans, his flab squeezed out of a Kiss Army t-shirt, and he wore a brand-new pair of vintage ROM Adidas running shoes. He was plunked down in an orange bean bag chair, happy as a boy of eight, or an arsonist pushing forty.
“Oh yes, Steven and I were very close. In fact, of all his friends I was the closest.”
My jaw dropped. “Bullshit!”
My Dad growled, “Hey, watch your tongue now, Donny! I’m no’ too old to tan your fuckin’ hide, and don’t you forget that.”
The Channel 11 news reporter’s microphone was visible at the edge of the camera field.
“Had you always known Steven would be famous?”
Reingruber sounded professorial, as he gazed up at an old stain on the ceiling tile. “Oh my goodness, yes. The man has seeds of greatness within him. No offence to the great Mr. Hugo Weaving, but I believe Steven would have made a very fine Elrond in The Lord of the Rings. I must also say, though it may be heresy, and though I am a huge fan of Mr. Harrison Ford—”, he gave a reverential nod of his head and pointed to what appeared to be a small shrine to Star Wars in his bedroom, “I believe Steven McCartney would have made an epic Han Solo.”
The interviewer was flabbergasted. “He must have been quite a talented actor, even in high school,” he stammered.
My dad hissed in disgust. “, he’s full o’ shite, that one. Livin’ in his parents’ basement. Time that lad’s mother kicked him to the curb. He’ll no’ become a man, rotting in that basement. Maybe a laggard or a wastrel, but never a man.”
“Too late,” Mum crisply added. “He’s stunted for life, that one.”
“Look at the fat on him,” Dad said, pointing at the television. “He’s the size of a zeppelin.”
“...Grade Thirteen was Steven’s zenith, that’s when he became aware that he would ascend the heights of greatness, no matter what he did. He also put a band together with a very old friend of ours.” He stroked his greasy beard.
“You must be referring to Hamilton’s own Donny Love.”
“Yeah, yeah, Donny. Anyway,” he said, shifting in his chair, “here is my archive of photographs chronicling this important stage in Steven’s rise to fame.” The camera zoomed as Reingruber flipped through his photo album, revealing images of Steven from grade school up to the shots of Steven entering and leaving comedy clubs, plus photos of Steven’s old writer’s digs down on Barton Street. Even a Peeping Tom shot through Steven’s window, showing him banging out something on his old Royal typewriter.
“I played drums in all of Steven’s bands,” Norbert said, dropping the photo album in the bean bag chair. He hurried over and sat behind a massive drum set that would’ve made Neil Peart from Rush jealous. He almost fell off, he was so excited. “Remember John Bonham’s solo in Black Dog? I can play it pound for pound, man.” He started hammering the skins. One of his drumsticks flew out of his hand and landed at the feet of his mother, who was smiling at the camera from the foot of the stairs. In her hands she carried a tray of milk and cookies.
The reporter turned to face the camera to wrap it up. He looked alarmed at the racket going on behind him. He had to raise his voice to a yell. “This is Jamie Dawson reporting on the Steven McCartney phenomenon right here in the basement of Steven McCartney’s best childhood friend, Norbert Reingruber!”
“Best childhood friend? I can’t take any more of this crap!” I said, jabbing at the power button.
“There was always something not right about that boy,” Mom said sweetly.
“Aye, he’s for the looney bin, that one,” Dad said.
I had to get out.
“Well, we’ve got another birthing class today at seven,” I said, walking towards the door. “If I’m late, Allison will have my head. Thanks for the tea. I’ll drop by again on the weekend.”
I’d only made it half-way across the living room when, beyond the large window, the scene on the street outside froze me in my tracks.
A Channel 11 News Truck pulled up against the curb, followed closely by a City Pulse truck, and the CBC.
