Mystery man |
Issue 19
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When Jack went into the restaurant that evening, there was a girl behind the counter he’d never seen before. She looked about the same age as Jack. She was wearing the uniform of the girls’ Catholic school a few blocks away: white blouse, plaid skirt, dark blue knee socks. She was helping the boy who was always working there when Jack arrived. Jack figured she was the man’s sister. The boy was older, but they both had dark hair, brown eyes and a dark complexion.
Jack’s school was downtown, and he lived much farther out in the suburbs with his mother and his sister. But two or three times a week he got off the bus and went to the library to study. When he was finished, he went to the restaurant. He was in no hurry to get home. Usually, he was the only customer. This evening, after the girl brought his coffee and pastry, he loosened his tie, opened his book, Siddartha, by Hermann Hesse, and started reading, until he felt someone looking at him. When he looked back, the girl didn’t turn away the way most girls did. She didn’t smile, either. She just looked curious. When he went to pay his bill, the girl wasn’t there, but her brother surprised him. “My sister wishes to know you,” he said. He tore a page from his pad of yellow chits and slid it with a pencil across the counter. “Please,” he said, “your phone number. We will call.” The man in the restaurant had caught Jack off guard. All the way home, he imagined the way his mother would react if the young man called. She’d ask questions about the man and the girl, about their family. Jack would have to tell her that the man and his sister came from some foreign country and were probably Catholic. His mother would want to know why the man was calling and how he’d got the phone number. Jack would feel defenseless. He knew his mother didn’t want girls in his life any more than she wanted boys in his sister’s life. She didn’t want her children to think about sex. She knew where that could lead. That’s why she’d moved them away from their father. All the way home, he wished he’d given the man a false number. Then he’d never go to the restaurant again. Jack was an obedient son. His mother left him alone and didn’t ask questions. It was because of her that Jack had written the entrance exam that had led to his acceptance by his school downtown. She knew the school set high academic standards for its boys, and she didn’t mind if Jack stayed late at the library to study. In any case, she had her hands full with his older sister. Mary was failing at school, hated studying and was gaining weight. She often seemed angry and defiant. She resented the way their mother had removed Jack and her from their father and still tried to erase any evidence from their lives of Daddy’s presence. Daddy had now been absent for more than seven years. Jack seldom thought about him. If anyone asked him how it felt to live without a father, he just shrugged. His nonchalance made him feel stoic. But his sister still missed Daddy, still talked about him as if he might return, as if, in fact, he was still alive. As soon as he walked into the house, he heard his mother and sister arguing in the kitchen. He had to walk through the kitchen to get to his bedroom. He took off his coat and hung it on a wire hanger in the closet. Then he carried his books into the midst of the argument, looked at the two of them, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders and kept going to his room. He closed the door, sat down on the side of his bed and wondered if the phone would ring. The phone was mounted on the kitchen wall beside a swinging door that opened into the dining area. If it rang, he intended to lunge from his bedroom and get to it before his mother or sister could react. But then, even if he spoke to the man in a whisper, his mother and sister would listen and be curious. He’d feel nervous and anxious. Almost certainly, he’d have to reveal himself not as a man of mystery but as a boy who just wanted to keep his mother happy. Minutes passed, but the phone didn’t ring. Gradually, Jack began to feel relieved. Later that night, Jack was in his bedroom studying Latin declensions, when he heard his sister rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, looking for a snack. In her struggle to lose weight, she had started a regimen of Metrecal, a foul-tasting liquid that came in a can and contained all the nutrients required to sustain life but not enough to alleviate hunger and nothing at all that might provide any pleasure. Once she’d gulped down her evening allotment of the supplement, she spent the rest of the night nibbling on anything she could find that looked edible: maraschino cherries, soda biscuits, stale Christmas cake, even the multi-colored sprinkles that their mother spread over a birthday cake to make it look festive. These days, Mary was constantly hungry, and their mother nagged her constantly. Tonight, their bickering began as Mary slurped from a bowl of puffed wheat cereal. “Are you sure you want that, dear?” “Yes,” his sister said with grim defiance. “I do. Mother.” “You’ll spoil your diet.” “So?” “You’ll never lose weight if you keep on eating.” “So?” “You haven’t even tried.” “All right,” his sister cried. “I won’t eat it.” Jack heard a spoon bouncing into the aluminum kitchen sink. He heard his sister open the garbage bin to throw away the cereal. He heard her slam the bowl into the sink and turn on the tap. “Satisfied?” she said. “You didn’t have to do that,” her mother said. “That’s what you wanted.” “I didn’t say that.” Their voices got louder above the drumming of the water in the aluminum sink. “You said not to eat it.” “I didn’t say not to eat it.” “That’s what you were thinking.” “Eat what you want. You’re the one who wants to lose weight.” They stopped abruptly. Jack hadn’t heard the phone ring, but he heard his mother answer it. “Hello,” she said. His sister turned off the tap. Their mother voice turned icy, the way it did with strangers, cold enough to freeze sunlight. “Who’s calling?” she said. Jack stopped breathing. He waited for his mother to call him to the phone. But after another pause, he heard his mother say, “You must have the wrong number.” And then she hung up. “Who was that?” his sister said. “Some man,” said their mother. “I could hardly understand a word he said.” His sister turned the water back on. She washed her bowl. When she finished, she went to her room and closed the door. Now their mother fussed in the kitchen. Jack heard her open a cupboard door, close it again, open and close the refrigerator, scour the sink. He heard her turn off the fluorescent light. She went into the living room and sat down in the chair by the window. He heard her light a cigarette. Tomorrow, he would get on a bus and go downtown again, a man of mystery. |
BRUCE MCDOUGALL grew up in Toronto, graduated in 1973 from Harvard, and worked as an airport attendant, bouncer, taxi driver, social worker, newspaper reporter and freelance writer. His published work includes a novel, two collections of short stories, a non-fiction novel called The Last Hockey Game and several biographies.
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