prelude/background: this is actually a short story i wrote for a class assignment three years ago, we were tasked to simply just write a short story. it’s much more than an assignment though. it’s an old piece of mine, but i just re-visited it today, and wanted it to live here on this blog for a while.
Brampton. Ugh. I hate this shit hole. We drive down the 410 in silence, alone but together. The weather forecast with Harold Hosein drones on in the background, just like it always does.
“Mixed weather conditions today, with a light fog coming in from over the valley. There might be a chance of rain later tonight”
— Thanks, Harold.
I turn to you. Your eyes remain fixed on the road. “So…what’s for dinner, today?”
You don’t reply. Not at first. I know this routine all too well. I cajole you:
“Dad?” I ask again. Your eyes are still fixed on the road ahead, your mouth is drawn into a slim, tight grimace. But I know that you can hear me. “Dad?” I repeat. Your eyebrows rise in unenthused acknowledgement. “What’s for dinner today?”
“Food”, you whip out a response almost immediately; it stings. “Just eat what you get”.
Fair enough. Your usual response. I always thought that was a strange thing for someone who loved cooking so much to say. I thought you’d love to talk more about what you had created.
My eyes retire from your face to the window, and stare out at the buildings sorely stuck beside us. They never change. Too short to be skyscrapers, and too tall to look like houses — perpetually in an uncomfortable height. Awkward.
The white factory is rather tall though. And it still puffs out dark, rich plumes of smoke like a dragon. Do you remember when I used to think it was a chocolate factory? I’d get so excited when we’d drive by it; I’d pump my small balled up fists into the air and ask if we could just stop the car quickly and scurry inside for a taste, or maybe — if we were lucky enough — we could catch a tour. Oh, I would just get so excited! But then, one day, amid all my wonder and childish intrigue, you told me that they only made glass inside there.
The white factory recedes into the distance, and I rip my nostalgic gaze from it. We continue to drive down the highway, and you pick up speed — as usual. It’s almost your only thrill these days, so I don’t complain that we’re well over the limit. Harold continues to yak and yak about the five day forecast. The weather forecast is incessantly long for some reason; perhaps it’s a slow news day. I guess it always is in Brampton.
Your face looks different now. Different than it did a few weeks ago, different than it did a year ago. Harder, maybe. But, maybe a bit more weathered at the same time — if it’s possible for someone to be both those things at once. When did you and mom move here? How did you decide to come here? What was it like the first time you drove down this highway, to start a new life? Was the white ‘chocolate’ factory here back then too?
I bet it was far more exciting back then — at least, that’s what mom told me. You were both in love and were setting off to face the world together. It’s strange then, that you both settled on Brampton of all places — surely it can’t have been your very first choice to stay in. Maybe it was your third? I always wonder where you would have liked to live most of all, if you could have picked from anywhere. Mom always complained about being stuck in Brampton, about being married, about having had kids at all… but even though there’s nothing left for her here any longer, she now says that she won’t move. She says it’s because you don’t want to, and she says that she’s okay with that now. I can tell that she isn’t. You’ve both collapsed into suburbia. Alone, but together.
We drive by the plaza that used to house the Discovery Centre and a cheap movie theatre. It’s funny how time changes things, how time wears and sands things down. Everything in that plaza is different now, except for the convenience store. It’s been there forever, for some reason. Although the buildings around it are new, they look less vibrant — faded, grainy, and dull — just like the city. Just like us. There’s an Oceans now where the Herbies used to be, and a Pennington’s where the XS Cargo used to stand. I remember coming here often. First for play at the Discovery Centre, then for cheap movies, and then for groceries. One time I swiped a Kit Kat bar from Herbies and never told you or mom. I felt a thrill when I did that, amidst all the normalcy of Brampton. I ate it at school the next day at lunch. Then Herbies went bankrupt, and I thought it was all my fault. I still think about that Kit Kat bar from time to time.
We pull into a parking space in front of the convenience store.
“I’ll be back” you say gruffly.
“Okay”.
I know that you’re going inside to pick up some chewing tobacco, that’s the only reason we’ve ever come to this convenience store. Well actually, that’s not true. I came here once before to get banana popsicles with Victoria. We purchased them after a long, hot, sticky summer bike ride, with some change we found the week prior in the bottom of the Wave Pool at Canada’s Wonderland. (It seems that the artificial waves from the pool are so strong that they knock the coins out from men’s swimming trunk pockets onto the floor of the deep end, and Victoria and I — well, we used to hold our breath and swim around to scoop it all up — feeling like deep sea scuba-divers. We’d find all kinds of trinkets and treasures down there, too. Bobby pins and earrings; and one time I found a necklace). It was the best banana popsicle that I’ve ever had.
You emerge from the convenience store without any banana popsicles. You fold your receipt into your coat pocket and open the lid of your new chewing tobacco tin. I can’t see the top of the tin from here, but I’m sure that it reads: SKOALS TOBACCO — you always buy that kind. I wonder if you’ve tried others. You take a lump of it and stuff it under your top lip, hungrily. I wonder what it tastes like. Probably not as good as banana popsicles.
Instead of walking towards our car, you pivot towards the Metro. I notice that right beside Metro is an LCBO which has opened only two doors down from the convenience store. I haven’t been back to Brampton in such a long while that this is the first time I’ve seen it. I cringe and sigh to myself, hoping that you don’t walk inside it. Waiting in the car for you while you enter the LCBO is an all too familiar feeling — it’s one of the worst ones that I know. It reminds me of the feeling you get when you feel your throat start to get sore a day before you get sick. You know that something bad is bound to happen soon, but you just can’t do anything to stop it. I always know what you will pick up to drink. You’re very efficient each time, you don’t browse through the racks or collections. You get either vodka or a Chilean wine, usually both, and you empty the bottles quickly in the night. You sometimes have your vodka mixed with water — which sounds downright foul to me — but it seems to do the trick for you.
The first time I had a drink at a house party near my university, it was vodka too — and when I took my first swig my mind flew back to all the nights when I could smell lingering vodka on your breath in our living room, by the neon glow and hum of the television, and to the sight of empty bottles in our living room in the morning — like ominous glass figurines. The taste of the stuff had burned my throat then (as it still does now), and the liquid had barreled down like a drill pick into the pit of my stomach, making my eyes water and blink it all back. Back then I wondered if it did the same thing to you too, or, if it slipped down your throat in a sly and quiet way so that you couldn’t feel the burning, scorching trail. Maybe that’s why you drank so much of it. When I had a second shot that my friends egged me on to take, I heard all the sounds of nights filled with yelling and intoxicated rage between my ears and over the roar of the party music, and I wondered to myself if the neighbours back home in Brampton had ever heard any of that cacophony that still fills my dreams. If they ever did, they never said anything about it. On my third shot that night, I wondered why and how this stuff conjured so much hate and rage inside of you, when all I could feel was sadness seeping all throughout my body. On the fourth, I wondered if it was true when you said that everything was all my fault.
When you emerge from Metro you walk past the LCBO and towards our car carrying a bag full of vegetables. I let out a sigh of relief. You open the door and pass the vegetables to me, and I seat them on my lap as you buckle yourself in to the driver’s seat. I wonder how you’ll cook them tonight, but I dare not ask again. We drive.
We’re on the highway again, and my gaze has found the passenger window once more. It usually does. This time, I search the grassy slopes beside the highway for any sight of groundhogs. Mom always used to look for them, and she’d point them out to us. I wish I could find just one to point out to you. Beside the highway now is the park with the red and yellow twisty slide. But now the red and yellow twisty slide is black and blue, and the park looks different. Victoria and I used to play there often, when the slide was red and yellow; one day we would be spies, and the next day we would be acting out the stories that we wove together in our heads. Times were different back then. It feels like so long ago.
And then we pass by the public pool at Ellen Mitchell Recreation Centre. I still don’t know who Ellen Mitchell was, but I did love that pool they named after her. You used to take us there all the time — you taught us both how to swim, and how to hold our breath, and how to dive deep under the water. Victoria and I got really good at it. And soon, we started to go by ourselves, without you. You didn’t want to come. Then Victoria didn’t want to go either. We stopped going completely.
We drive down Great Lakes Drive and everything looks the same as it always has. Sure, the Zellers became Target and then the Target became a Giant Tiger, but aside from that, everything else is the same as it was when things started to turn sour. It’s like we’re frozen in time; stalled. Stagnant. I wonder if things will ever get better. I wonder if things could ever get worse. I wonder if things might ever change again.
Before we get to our house, we pass the collective mailboxes for our street. I remember when I used to go on walks with Mom after getting the mail with her; and I just loved that time I spent with her. And now — getting the mail is just a chore, and she doesn’t want to walk. I remember in 2009 we got a free ‘Year of the Ox’ calendar from the Mandarin for Chinese New Year in the mail (I remember, because I picked it up from the mailbox with Mom), and it’s hung on our wall by the staircase ever since. It’s 2015, but it’s been the ‘Year of the Ox’ at our house since 2009. We haven’t taken it down since. We used the calendar to cover up the hole in our wall that you made when you threw Victoria’s ‘Athlete of the Year’ trophy into it. If you had better aim, you could have made that hole in my head. I suppose we left the 2009 calendar up there for so long because we all knew what was behind it, but we never wanted to see it again. I wonder if you remember that it’s behind the calendar still.
We turn on to our street. Nothing has changed in this sleepy neighbourhood.
I just want to shake you all by the shoulders and scream, “Mom… Dad…Victoria… Why can’t you hear me? Why can’t you see what I see? We can all be happy. Please, just listen to me. Follow me. Trust me. I know a way out of this”.
Instead, I don’t say anything. I just let my thoughts consume me some more.
How did we even get here? Why are we still here?
We pull into our driveway, and you grab the bag of vegetables and unlock the door.
I sit by myself in the car.
Alone –wishing we could all be together.
