Helpless Read online

  At the end of the song, with just the waitress and the black man clapping, her mother goes straight into the opening chords of “Besame Mucho.”

  “Rache, do you want to help me out?” she says, aiming the microphone toward the doorway.

  Everybody looks around. Rachel lets her mother start, then comes in at “Each time I cling to your kiss…” The whole room has gone quiet. An old lady with frizzy pink hair like cotton candy conducts with a stir stick, but when the song is over and her mother brings the microphone to her mouth and says, “My daughter, Rachel, ladies and gentlemen,” the lady swivels back to the bar.

  Rachel smiles at the other customers, all of them clapping, and a woman scoots across to the vase and tucks in a blue bill. Five dollars. The black man gets up and puts a ten in the vase, then comes over to Rachel.

  “I just want to tell you I think you have a beautiful voice,” he says. His own voice is deep and important sounding.

  “Thanks,” she says.

  “I’d like to shake your hand,” he says, “if that’s all right with you.”

  They shake. Her hand in his is almost white. She gets a delicate feeling, as though she were made of thin glass. “You wouldn’t happen to be from New York City,” she says, “would you?”

  “Afraid not. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered.” She looks at her mother, who has started in on “Sophisticated Lady” and is watching her and the man.

  “Rachel has to leave us now,” her mother says. “Perhaps she’ll join us later, before we both have to say good-bye at nine thirty.”

  “Thanks for the song,” the man says. “You take care of yourself now.”

  He returns to his seat.

  Rachel rubs her hand on her skirt. The hand he shook. One day she’ll run into a black person who is from New York City and who will know her father. For a reason she can’t explain, she’s certain this is going to happen.

  Chapter Three

  RON COMES OUT of the Casa Hernandez Motel so agitated that he can’t remember having parked his van up the street at a closed gas station. He looks around the motel’s lot, then goes to the neighbouring motel and looks there. It must have been towed, he thinks. Or stolen. “That’s just great,” he mutters. He starts walking toward the intersection, where he’s more likely to find a cab. The sun is low but the heat of the day still swarms up from the pavement, and after a minute he’s raining sweat. It occurs to him that if he were to drop dead from a heart attack, Rachel would hear about it. A man died yesterday, right outside.

  Halfway to the intersection he remembers about the gas station and has to walk all the way back. The van is stifling; he should have left the windows opened an inch. He turns on the engine and gets the air conditioning going. How many drinks has he had? He isn’t sure. Two, maybe. Two doubles. He gropes around in the glove compartment for the flask he has taken to stashing there. It used to be that after a couple of drinks he thought everybody could see right through him. A waitress saying “Do you want your check?” was really saying “Get lost, pervert.” At his father’s funeral a woman told him he had always been different, and in the second before she added, “Taking apart your mother’s toasters and things,” her smile seemed pinched with disgust.

  That kind of paranoia isn’t the problem now, though. He almost wishes it was: anything but this tension, this anguish. He couldn’t believe it when Rachel appeared in the doorway of the bar and started to sing, and it wasn’t the performance of an innocent little girl, either, the way she smiled and swayed her hips. What sort of mother encourages her daughter to behave like that? Doesn’t it amount to child abuse, forcing a girl Rachel’s age to sing in a bar? When Rachel left, he quickly paid up and followed her. He wasn’t even thinking beyond the fact that she’d probably be returning to the kitchen, where he’d glimpsed her earlier through the open door. And yes, there she was, hopping on one foot in front of the chef, who waved at her with a cleaver. An odd sight, and Ron knows that after another few drinks he might have taken it the wrong way and rushed in. Instead, he kept walking, right out of the motel. She’s fine, he told himself. But he wasn’t convinced. There were still all those guys in the bar…the black guy who had pretended to want to shake her hand so that he could touch her.

  The flask, he now remembers, is on his kitchen counter. He considers going back into the motel and ordering a drink from the restaurant. Except that the place is almost empty; he’d just be drawing attention to himself. He wonders if the mother has noticed him hanging around her house. Not that she seems to be the vigilant type—far from it. But that doesn’t make her a complete fool. He was careful, following her here, to stay a car length behind, and in the motel bar he sat in a corner, behind a stack of chairs. All the same, it would be pushing his luck to show himself again. He guesses he should go home.

  Not yet. Leaving Rachel in that bar with those men goes against all his instincts.

  HE SAW her for the first time a week ago Tuesday. He was returning from Tindle’s Electrical Supply when he decided to head over to Spruce Court Public School. He knows all the elementary schools within a fifteen-minute drive of his shop and about once a week, if it’s coming around to three thirty and he happens to be out on an errand anyway, he visits one he hasn’t been to in a while. Sometimes it’s just a slow drive-by. Other times he pulls over and pretends to consult his Perly’s Street Guide.

  That day the only parking spot was behind the school bus. He took it, although he usually parks farther down the street, where he’s less likely to draw attention to himself. He switched off the engine, grabbed the Perly’s guide, and rolled down his window.

  Almost immediately the bell rang. A minute later the kids began pouring through the doors, the youngest ones first. He waited. Really young girls have never interested him. Neither have girls whose faces and bodies are starting to show their adult contours. His type is skinny, with olive to light brown skin and features that through some fineness of bone structure promise to remain delicate.

  A pair of identical twins—Chinese or Korean, about eight years old—caught his eye. They had Dutch-boy haircuts and wore matching brown dresses with long full skirts. He imagined that they’d just arrived in the country and was touched to think how self-conscious they must feel in their unstylish outfits. One of them waved to somebody behind him. He shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror. An elderly, bowlegged woman was approaching from down the street.

  When he looked up again, his view was being blocked by a tall Asian boy who was standing next to the van’s front fender. Move, Ron silently ordered. As if he heard, the boy glanced around. He squinted at Ron, then read the side of the van…he actually mouthed the words: Ron’s Appliance Repair. Ron bent over his Perly’s guide.

  “Rachel!” the boy called. “I’m going!”

  Ron looked up. A thin blond girl was running across the lawn. A mixed girl, Caucasian and black. He’d never seen her before.

  “I forgot to tell Luca something,” she said when she reached the sidewalk.

  She had enormous pale blue eyes.

  “Where is he?” the boy said.

  “I don’t know.” She scratched her neck, displaying the lovely line of her jaw. “I thought he was right behind me.”

  Her skin was light…tawny. Her hair, a miraculous chromium yellow, was pulled into a ponytail of tiny spiral curls, like the springs in old ballpoint pens. She had on purple jeans and a mauve T-shirt with “Super Star” across the front in silver letters. She searched up and down the street, and for a moment her gaze landed on Ron. A murky, underwater feeling enveloped him.

  “I guess he’s not coming,” she told the boy.

  And then they were walking away.

  Ron jerked out of his reverie. He got the van going but waited until they had reached the end of the block before starting to follow. He stayed well back, slowing more than he needed to for the speed bumps. At Parliament Street he made the turn just in time to see them disappear into a video store. Shou
ld he pull over? No, too risky…the boy might recognize the van. He kept driving.

  That evening, as planned, Nancy came around and cooked supper: baked ribs, potato fritters, and brown-sugar squash. The Number 5 Special she called it, because that’s what it is on the menu at Frank’s Homestyle Restaurant, where she waitresses. Ron filled his plate twice, then started in on a quart of chocolate ice cream. Nothing ever interferes with his appetite, but keeping his mouth full was also keeping him from having to talk, which, of course, Nancy picked up on.

  “Something happen today?” she asked finally.

  Yes, he said to himself, something happened. I fell in love.

  Only as he thought it did he realize it was true. A ripple of terror went through him. He held up the ice cream container to see if there was anything left. No. Carefully, he set his spoon inside. “That guy I told you about,” he said. “From Kentucky? He put in an offer on the Westinghouse.” This happened to be the truth. As soon as he got back to the store, the call came in.

  Her shoulders relaxed. “Really? A high offer?”

  “Very high.”

  “Which Westinghouse is that again?”

  “I only have one.”

  “Right, right.” She tapped ash onto her plate. “Oh, the I Love Lucy vacuum!”

  “Tank Cleaner, 1952,” he said. It irks him when she gives the vacuums nicknames.

  “I forgot to tell you. I saw that episode just last week at Angie’s. Poor Lucy, she’s lugging the vacuum all over the place, she’s got the hose part hanging around her neck, and nobody wants to buy it and I’m like, if only she knew how much that thing would be worth in fifty years’ time.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell Angie,” he said.

  “Tell her what?”

  “How much the thing is worth.” Angie operates a nail salon that caters to hookers and welfare mothers whose boyfriends all seem to have spent time in Kingston Penitentiary.

  “No, no,” Nancy said, her forehead creasing. “I wouldn’t do that. So, are you going to sell it to the guy?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  He watched her clear the table. When he first met her she could stack six plates along her left arm. That stopped about a year ago, after her right leg started to spasm. All her sisters (a slew of them up in Timmins) get leg spasms apparently, but Nancy used to do hard drugs, and an old boyfriend kicked her unconscious once, so Ron suspects there’s some neurological damage going on. Luckily, her boss has no complaints, provided she remains her friendly, perky self. Being cute doesn’t hurt, either. She’s Ron’s age—thirty-seven—but from a distance you’d put her at seventeen.

  “I told you Frank’s revamping the menu,” she said. “Right? Making it more kid friendly?”

  Ron’s thoughts were back with the girl. Rachel. His heart knocked painfully against his ribs. “I’m going to go down and check out the Westinghouse,” he said, coming to his feet.

  “I’ll run a bath then,” she said with a coy smile that seemed nearly incomprehensible to him, nearly lewd, for being so far from the pure and tender vision he was trying to hold on to.

  It’s a two-storey house. There’s his shop on the ground floor at the front, kitchen at the back, living room, bedrooms, and bathroom on the second floor, and in the basement, under the garage, the locked apartment where he stores his vintage vacuum collection. As he passed through the shop he was hit by a tremendous urge to jump in his van and cruise the streets near Rachel’s school on the thousand-to-one chance he’d see her out playing. His head swam, a film of sweat coated his body. Close to panic he opened the door to the basement and thumped down the stairs, fumbling in his pocket for the key.

  Once inside the apartment, he moved around, gripping handles. He went over to the Westinghouse and felt a stab of grief to think of it gone. All his vacuums are in mint condition: chrome polished, motors and brushes refurbished, original unused bags. It’s the Westinghouse, though, with its zeppelin-shaped housing, that gives him the most pleasure.

  No, he thought, he couldn’t sell it. Business was slow, especially on the home entertainment side, what with the cost of parts and labour almost equalling the replacement cost of TVs, VCRs, and CD players. But he’d survive. You don’t sell a Westinghouse Tank Cleaner unless you’re a lot more emotionally prepared than he was right now to deal with the loss.

  Back upstairs he took down the bottle of Seagram’s, half full and untouched for five years, and poured himself a double. Something had to give, he reasoned, and better this. Above him in the bathroom Nancy sang “Yellow Bird.” He’d heard her play it on the banjo (she had an old banjo that used to belong to her mother) but when he was right there in front of her she sang so softly the strumming drowned her out.

  He went still for a minute, listening. She sounded good. He thought what a nice person she was…not overly bright, but then he could do without bright. All she wanted was for the two of them to get married and live together in this house. Him, a fat appliance repairman, and this house, a redbrick dump in the middle of an industrial strip of auto body shops and burger joints. If he didn’t appreciate how little he had to offer—so much less than she imagined—he’d be flattered. He isn’t proud of the fact that he lets her think he balks at marriage because of her hysterectomy. It’s an excuse she can accept, though. Every so often, as if she wishes she were selfless enough to release him to a fertile woman, she says, “You’d make such a great father.”

  Would he? He once read somewhere that the incest taboo is a powerful deterrent, but people don’t go around admitting to desires like his, so who really knows? And yet look what happened with Rachel.

  His heart started drumming again. What exactly had happened with Rachel? Were his feelings those of a father, a protector, or was he romanticizing his lust? He topped up his glass and tried to think about this honestly. Both feelings were there, he decided, one shielding the other. Like lighting a match and cupping your hand around it against the wind.

  HE WOKE up the next morning believing that whatever had come over him was out of his system. The thought of Rachel gave him the expected pleasure, but nothing beyond that. Nothing he couldn’t handle.

  So he felt at breakfast. By nine thirty he was standing at the window and thinking about her mouth. An hour later, haunted by the image of her playing at recess, he closed his shop and drove to her school.

  He parked two blocks away. The recess bell rang as he was getting out of the van and he had to force himself to keep an inconspicuous pace. At the bank of newspaper kiosks near the northeast corner of the playground, he bought a Star and pretended to read as he searched the playground.

  She was over by the swings, playing a clapping game with another, bigger girl. Her T-shirt was pink today, the same pink as her lips. She had on the purple jeans again. White sneakers. “Okay, like this!” he heard her yell, and she demonstrated a series of quick, complicated claps. He watched until the bell rang, then he folded the paper under his arm and returned to the van, where he sat in a stupor of happiness.

  Back at the shop he tackled a job—replacing the voltage control on a finicky model of microwave—he’d been putting off for two days. His happiness inspired him. But a customer phoning to complain about his repair of her humidifier broke the spell, and he began to see himself for what he was: a man gearing up for suffering. His meaty hands, as he sorted through a box of sockets, seemed to belong to somebody who would never rise above the small gratifications of his craft.

  Around noon he made himself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and ate them sitting on a kitchen chair out in the yard. His mind turned to Nancy’s plans to grow tomatoes along the fence if he ever invited her to move in. He has always pitied her for loving him, but now that he loved somebody just as hopelessly he found himself in awe of her faculty for self-denial and acceptance. He decided to phone her, see how she was.

  He caught her just as she was leaving for work. She told him she was feeling guilty about Tasha, her dog. “This place boil
s with the air conditioning off,” she said, “but if I leave it running I’ll get evicted.”

  “Bring her here,” he said. It wasn’t an offer he’d ever thought to make before.

  She arrived almost weeping her thanks. She kissed his hands. He smelled marijuana smoke in her hair but decided to let that ride.

  At two thirty a woman came by with a Black & Decker lawn mower he could see right away needed an overhaul, likely a new flywheel. The woman hoped he’d be able to fix it before tomorrow afternoon. “I’ll do my best,” he said, but by closing the shop earlier he’d put himself behind schedule and the prospect of working long hours made him anxious. What if he felt an urge to drive to Rachel’s neighbourhood? Already the craving to see her again was leaking back. As soon as the woman left, he poured himself a rye and water, took it down to the basement, and drank in the company of his vacuums. That helped. Not enough.

  He went back up to the shop and stood looking at his computer. Thousands of little girls were in there, but how did you get to them? If you wanted to open a site you had to click on a word or image, which he had a terror of doing in case he found himself confronted by something violent or sick. Beyond that he was fairly certain that downloading made you vulnerable to surveillance.

  He told himself not to risk it. He finished off his drink and considered Tasha, trembling in her basket. “What’s going on?” he asked with a stirring of sympathy. She cast her bug eyes from him to the door, and after a moment his real reason for taking her in was, it seemed, revealed. He glanced at his watch. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s find your leash.”

  He parked, as before, a couple of blocks from the school. This time, however, he thought to put on sunglasses and a baseball cap. He paced himself to arrive just as the bell rang, then he let Tasha slow down and sniff telephone poles until he spotted Rachel coming out the double doors.