Letters Home from Montreal

LETTERS HOME FROM MONTREAL

Madeleine had warned me from the first day that she would want me to do most of the driving. “Peter loves the alcohol,” she said, in her rich French-Canadian accent. “If he does some drinking, I will ask you to drive for him.”

I smiled at the way her voice rose and fell: up on drink-EENG, a long vowel on heem. I’d taken two years of high school French and grown to love the accent, even when it was misplaced on English words. “Okay,” I answered, while wondering why she couldn’t take the wheel.

I really didn’t know Peter and Madeleine Houston that well. I knew that Peter had worked with my father maybe ten years ago and that they still got together for drinks sometimes. I knew that Madeleine’s family still lived in the house where she grew up in Montreal and that she visited them every summer. And I knew that they had a daughter my age, Genevieve, who most people at school called Genny. Aside from this, I knew that Montreal would be hosting the 1976 Summer Olympics and that that was why I was on my way with the Houstons on their annual pilgrimage.

August that year was so hot that I spent most of my summer days in the pool at my high school trying to cool off. I was almost sixteen, and I was counting the days until November and a driver’s license and freedom. I’d been practicing driving with my dad for a few months, but we’d spent all our time going backwards down rows and rows of parking spaces. So it was exciting that I would be asked to drive under actual road conditions. Besides, I was still fifteen, so driving, being illegal, was exciting in itself.

The Houstons picked me up on a Saturday, about midday. I had already had lunch with my family when they pulled up to the curb in front of our one-story white house. They had rented a red Volkswagen van for the occasion, and the back was already piled high with luggage. Thankful for my habit of packing light, I tossed my one duffle into the trunk and turned back to hug my mother.

“Behave yourself, Douglas,” she said. “And call. And write.”

“I will, Mother,” I said. “Tell everyone I love them.” She kissed me on the cheek and watched as I climbed into the van beside Genny.

Madeleine turned around in her seat and asked, in her beautiful accent, “Are we ready?”

“Yeah,” I said, assuming “we” meant me.

“Then let’s go,” said Peter, who was eyeing me through the rear-view mirror. He turned the ignition and pulled away from the curb quickly, not looking back. My mother waved at the van until we were out of sight, and for all I know, she stood there, just that way, for three weeks until we returned home.

~*~*~*~*~*~

We quickly drove through the only part of Southern California that had any buildings or development. This wasn’t hard in 1976 because there truly was no development. Some parts of Southern California had skyscrapers and movie studios. Some parts had tracts and tracts of housing dotted with shopping malls. The part of Southern California where I lived had orange groves and strawberry fields. My hometown of Ventura was the blight on this development, the last agricultural holdout in an industrialized area. Later these fields where my brother and I had played as children would turn into the housing developments and major cities that surrounded them. But when we drove through them they were simply acres of brown as far as the eye could see.

Peter drove most of the first day. When he thought no one was looking he took small sips out of a flask he kept in his left pocket. Madeleine sat next to him, leafing through magazines and occasionally singing in French. When she began this, Peter would look over at her coldly. Finally he turned on the radio and found an oldies station. This didn’t stop Madeleine, who switched gears into English mode and softly sang along to Elvis and Buddy Holly. Genny sat beside me on the driver’s side, reading, engrossed. I couldn’t see the title of her book. Sometimes she would absently twirl a strand of her long blond hair around her finger between page turns. I watched this motion with fascination. It was all I knew of her. I had never spoken to her in school, and beyond a brief hello when I climbed aboard, we hadn’t spoken in the van, either. That one subconscious motion was all I had to guess her personality by.

Madeleine turned around in her seat again. “Do you want something to read, Douglas?” she asked. “All I have is Good Housekeeping and some French magazines, mais peut-être...”

Inwardly I winced. Only my mother called me Douglas. But I smiled at Madeleine, not wanting to offend. “No thanks,” I said, and continued to stare out my window at the vast empty landscape swishing by. The rest of the day’s drive I spent alternately staring at the passing scenery and falling asleep.

We stopped at a diner for dinner. The food was simply diner food, greasy and nearly tasteless. I’d eaten the same thing at every diner on every road trip in my life. We stuck to cheeseburgers and fries all the way around. Genny, at her mother’s prodding, ordered a chocolate shake. Peter ordered a beer and by the end of the meal had drunk three. Madeleine elbowed me on our way out and loudly suggested that I drive.

“I’d be happy to,” I said, approaching Peter for the keys. He didn’t look drunk, but he stank of alcohol and he walked a little slow.

“It’s okay, boy, I can drive,” he said.

“Peter, we promised Robert that we would let his son practice the driving. Perhaps it is time now to trade with him.”

Peter still looked reluctant and angry, but he handed me the keys. He sauntered over to the passenger’s side. I happened to catch Genny’s gaze as I opened my door, and her brown eyes were sad and apologetic. I understood. My father drank too.

I drove for two hours that first night to a motel across the Nevada state line. Peter slept in the front seat next to me, and Madeleine and Genny slept in the back. To keep myself awake, I composed in my head the letters I would write once we reached Montreal. Dear Tom, they would start, for my older brother, we drove to Nevada today. Or Dear Mom, I miss you and the family. Or Dear Dad. But I couldn’t think of anything to say after Dear Dad, which was fortunate anyway because we arrived in Nevada.

We got two adjoining rooms in a small, Bates-style motel. Madeleine and Genny took one, and Peter and I slept in the other. There was only one queen-size bed in the room, so we lay down next to each other. Peter smelled like the alcohol he’d been sipping all night. He sniffled a little, but he fell asleep quickly. I was not so lucky. I lay on my back in the darkness, willing myself not to roll over or hog the covers in the night.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Up until Vegas, the second day passed pretty much the same as the first. Peter drove the morning and his hangover away, Madeleine sat quietly reading in the passenger seat, Genny sat quietly reading in the back next to me. Like mother like daughter. I sat behind Madeleine, impatient, bored, and staring out the window at the passing towns while waiting for something to happen. Most of the morning flew by the window before anything did. We all saw the lights before we saw the buildings. Even in the broad desert sunlight, the lights of Las Vegas were hard to miss.

“Lunch break,” Peter said, pulling into a parking lot near the Mirage.

“Mais mon cher, it is ten o’clock. It is too early for the luncheon.”

“We’ll take a break and then eat lunch and then go on.”

Madeleine didn’t look pleased, but she got out of the car, motioning to Genny and me to follow her. The four of us headed into the casino. Peter quickly staked himself at a poker table and began placing bets and ordering liquor. Madeleine put a quarter into a slot machine. A quick pull of the handle resulted in a few more quarters coming Madeleine’s way, ringing their way free from the machine with the sound of metal on metal. After this first modest victory, Madeleine sat down at the machine and resigned herself to her fate. Genny sat near her, observing, as though it were a golf match, silent and serious.

I wandered the casino, wondering if anyone would take me for older than I was, maybe even old enough to gamble. It had happened before. Tom had a fake ID that he rarely used. He had pressed it into my hand before I left, reminding me how much we looked alike, making me promise to have a good time. I could have used it if I wanted to. I was mature looking for my age: tall, thin, with auburn hair and a brownish moustache. Tall was a credit to my mother’s gene pool, thin to long hours on the track team practicing five-minute miles with Tom. The hair and moustache ran on both sides of my Scotch-Irish family. I thought about walking to a table and casually presenting the ID if the dealer asked my age, but I didn’t want to risk it. Instead, I found a stool near a craps table and watched the smooth motion of the dice. I almost went over to the roulette table, but roulette was my mother’s favorite game; I missed her more than I was willing to admit. And I almost sat by Peter at the poker table, but he would have pressured me to join him for a hand, and I’d just decided not to gamble. Anyway poker was my father’s game.

I happened to look over at Madeleine, who was still sitting at the slot machine. Genny sat next to her. Madeleine had acquired a modest pile of quarters through her good luck and was playing them out, seeing where they would go. Surreptitiously, Genny took one of the quarters and placed it into her own machine. A pull of her handle revealed nothing. After such ill luck, Genny settled back to watch her mother. I was intrigued, surprised, by mild-mannered Genny gambling, even with one quarter. There’s a lot I don’t know about her, I thought, but I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted to know.

The lunch break went on for four hours. Madeleine, Genny, and I had all tired of the casino and had long since retired to the all-you-can-eat buffet, waiting for Peter to return. None of us, however, had made much use of our all-you-can-eat privileges. No one, I suppose, was very hungry. Finally Madeleine had to retrieve Peter. He had gambled away nearly all of his money, and what he had left he had spent on shots. It was obvious now that he was drunk. His speech was slurred, his eyes were bloodshot, and he walked like a navy man on shore leave. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.”

Genny’s face turned pinker, but I said nothing. Madeleine broke the repetition. “Mon cher Pierre, we must let Douglas drive.”

After the music of Madeleine’s English, Peter’s flat Californian-drunk speech was harsh and abrasive. “No, I will drive. Dammit, Maddy, I will drive.”

“No, you made a promise to Robert, you promised him to let his boy drive.”

Hearing Madeleine speak Robert in the French fashion made me wish she knew my real first name, instead of my middle name, my father’s middle name, which I went by to avoid confusion.

Peter continued ranting. “I will drive, God dammit, Maddy. Let me drive!”

“He’s always like this when he’s drinking,” said Genny softly. I looked at her, almost startled to hear the sound of her voice. They were the first words I remembered hearing from her.

“It’s okay,” I said. “My dad is like this too.”

I knew then what the rest of the five days of travel would be like, and the five that would follow our stay in Montreal. Peter would drink; Madeleine would be diplomatic; I would drive. It was not a particularly exciting prospect anymore.

I sat in the front seat for the rest of the day, this time with the road reflecting sunlight into my eyes, complicating the task at hand. We made it into Colorado before night fell. Peter snored contentedly in the front seat. His snores cut into my mental letters home. Dear Tom, SNORE I hope you are having SNORE a good time at home. SNORE We will reach Montreal in SNORE three more days, if we make good time. SNORE Give my love to the family, SNORE especially to Mother. SNORE

~*~*~*~*~*~

I was right in my guessing. Peter drove the next day, Monday, all morning, but after lunch it was my turn after another drunken scene. Genny, I could tell, was extraordinarily embarrassed by these debacles. I completely sympathized; I hated when my father was drunk, hated when my friends were home to see it. I would always end up torn between the embarrassment of my friends seeing my reckless father and the desire to step between my mother and the punches Robert Douglas Parker, Sr., sometimes threw. I knew just how badly she wanted to hide, wanted to become a part of the engine where she couldn’t be hurt. But what could I do but take the keys and drive?

The next day’s end found us in just barely into Iowa. We stopped, as we had so many times before, at a small roadside diner with shoddy service and marginal food, but decent prices and the advantage of convenience. The meal, as with the car ride and most things, I gathered, in the Houston family, was mostly silent. Peter ordered for himself, Madeleine, and Genny, but he asked me to go ahead and order for myself. Perhaps having the paterfamilias order was a Houston family thing, I don’t know, but it made me feel a little like Peter’s equal.

After dinner, Peter wandered down the road to a bar. Madeleine, Genny, and I, true to form, trooped back to the car to amuse ourselves; Genny read her book, Madeleine leafed through her magazines, and I rested my head on the cool window. But I was tired of sitting and waiting and I was tired of being looked to as the responsible one. That was Peter’s job. When, I thought, did I become his proxy? If he considered me his equal in some strange way, I deserved the rights that came along with it.

I opened the door quietly, slowly, so as not to disturb the pair of readers in the van. I shut it with great care and walked casually towards the bar. I had passed for older than I was before, I thought. Why not now?

The inside of the bar was dark. Vague shapes hovered around pool tables to my right, and the bar itself stretched along the wall on my left. I approached the bar casually, hoping it would help me add years to my age.

The bartender took one look at me and was not convinced. “Do you have ID?”

I opened my wallet pulled out Tom’s parting gift. Still unsure about using it but more confident in the dim light of the bar than I had been in the brightly lit casino, I passed the ID to the bartender, who nodded.

“Scotch on the rocks with a twist,” I said, accepting the card and replacing it into my wallet. I had heard my father order the drink a few times, and I thought echoing him lent me maturity and believability.

The bartender slid me the drink after a few busy moments. I held it in my hands for a minute or so, listening to the way the ice cubes rattled against each other. Then I took my first sip. The sensation was something like having the wind knocked out of you in a schoolyard brawl. Hoping my face showed little of what I felt, I took another sip and another, growing accustomed to the cold, sharp alcohol.

“Another?” the bartender asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Hit me.”

I must have been on my third or fourth of those before Peter finally noticed me sitting at the bar, alone. “What are you doing here, Doug?” he asked. He was already slurring his words, but his drunkenness seemed less awkward when I had liquor in my hand.

Afraid he would send me out to the car, I opened my mouth to explain but my breath wouldn’t rise to my voice. I scratched out, “Drinking.”

Peter laughed at that. “You don’t know the first thing about it,” he said, and took the scotch from my hands and raised it to his lips. The ice cubes sounded louder now, reminded me of Madeleine’s voice, of the music that it made. “What do you have to drink about?”

I didn’t know what he meant, but I answered as best I could. “I was sitting alone in the car, and I thought –”

“No, Doug,” Peter said abruptly. For a moment there was silence, then he said, “I have house payments to make and a job I hate. I have a daughter to feed and to send to college in a few years. She wants clothes and books and to go to the movies and to go out on dates. I have a wife that wants to go to the theatre and go to dinner and give our daughter the best of everything. I want all those things, but they cost money, and to get money you have to work. I have to work, morning to night, in an office that could go on without me and probably should. But I give my family the best, without complaining, and I make the house payment every month. And if I go out to a bar every once in a while, so be it. I’ve earned it.”

I stared at him and let the words rattle around in my head. They felt cold, like ice cubes, and the sound of his speech was no different. “I guess I drove,” I said, and let that be enough.

“Yeah, you drove,” Peter said. “You drove. You drove.” Even drunk I knew the rare moment of lucidity was over. Peter was done. “Hey, barkeep,” he said, turning, and the bartender sauntered over to us. “Get this man a beer. Put him on my tab and get him a beer. Get him however many he wants.” He patted my shoulder and walked back towards the shadows of the pool table, still sipping my scotch.

I sat with the beer for a few minutes before things began getting fuzzy. I think I had another beer before I stopped remembering things altogether.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When I woke up I was in a motel room, lying on a bed with a cool washcloth on my head. The curtains were drawn in the window but the ring of light around them proved that it was already mid-morning. I fluttered my eyelashes helplessly and felt the washcloth lift. Slowly, surely, Genny swam into view.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Doug,” she said, her voice far-off and inaudible.

My head was pounding and the light, dim as it was, forced my eyes shut again. I tried to sit up, but it only made me hurt worse, and I didn’t struggle as Genny gently guided me back to the bed. “What was that?” I asked.

“I said, you shouldn’t have done that.”

It was forward of her. But it was still true. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have.”

Genny seemed surprised to hear me say that, but she didn’t argue. It was her point, after all. “Just because our fathers drink like fish doesn’t mean that you should.”

“How do you know about my father?”

“That’s what our fathers do together, right? Drink?"

I glared at her from behind my eyelids. “Yes.”

“I just assumed.”

“Well, don’t assume, okay? You’re too right on to be clever or funny.”

“I’m not trying to be clever or funny.” Genny looked at me carefully and replaced the washcloth. “This would probably go better if you didn’t have such a hangover.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

“Sorry to offend you,” Genny said. She didn’t sound hurt, but somehow her voice compelled me to apologize.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, blame the hangover. Jeez, you’re right a lot.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she said, smiling.

Like how often she read minds. “Like what?”

She looked at me with something in her eyes, mirth or a secret or something. “Do you know what I’m reading?”

I was surprised she chose that as her big secret. All the same, I didn’t know. “No.”

She pulled her book out of the knapsack at her feet and handed it to me. The cover said, in golden letters, Moby Dick. I looked at sweet, feminine Genny, amazed.

“I have Catcher in the Rye in here too,” she said. “Dad probably wouldn’t appreciate my reading these; he’d say they weren’t for someone like me.”

“What?”

“You know, a girl.” I turned my eyes from the book’s cover to Genny, but hers had reverted to the golden inscription. “But I like Moby Dick. And I’m sure I’ll like Salinger too, once I read him.” She looked at me strangely again. “Do you want to borrow Catcher? It’s more interesting than the backs of your eyelids or ‘French magazines’.” She did a perfect impression of her mother, so perfect I almost had to laugh.

“Sure,” I said.

“You probably didn’t bring anything because my mom told you you’d be driving,” Genny said. Her mood had changed. Now she was embarrassed; red crept up her neck and pinkened her cheeks.

“Right again,” I said, sounding like a game show host, hoping humor would ease the sudden tension. Genny didn’t meet my eyes, so I touched her hand. “Hey,” I said. “It’s fine. Really. You’re right. My dad is like this. I understand.”

Genny looked at me, still blushing, and nodded. At least I saw her eyes. She changed the subject. “You writing to your parents?”

I tapped my head. “Up here,” I said. “I’ll send the letters from Montreal.”

“Good,” she said. “They’ll want to hear from you.” She went back to mopping my forehead, and I went back to lying, relaxing, recovering, on the motel bed. I didn’t tell her about my epistle mental block. I wouldn’t have known what to say.

~*~*~*~*~*~

That day passed the same way as every other, with two variations: a late start to allow for my recovery and a book in my hand instead of staring vacantly out the window. There was one other thing that I couldn’t help but notice – Madeleine bore a fresh bruise where her neck and shoulder joined. I could only imagine how she had gotten it.

The morning saw Peter behind the wheel. The afternoon passed and it grew closer and closer to my turn. I could tell by the two beers at lunch and the sipping from the flask that continued to mark Peter’s behavior. Finally, after dinner and a couple more beers, Madeleine uttered the words that had become characteristic.

“Peter,” she said, “let’s let Douglas drive.”

“No,” he said. It was always the same; the drunker he was, the more likely he was to resist turning over the keys. I had thought after last night he might trust me. Silly me. In all likelihood he didn’t remember last night. I reached for the keys anyway and he pulled them back from my groping hand and began cursing at me. “Dammit, Doug, I can drive. Goddammit, Doug, you lazy motherfucker, stop trying to be me. I am the father of this family!”

I wasn’t sure why he was ranting at me. Perhaps he was hoping his family would back him up or realize how they’d been treating him, or maybe he was too drunk to know or care what he was saying. I didn’t know.

“Give him the keys, Dad.” Genny’s voice was hardly more than a whisper.

I didn’t think I had heard Genny address her father at all throughout the trip. But it worked. Madeleine held his shoulders, whispering words of comfort I couldn’t hear, and Peter, still swearing, handed me the keys. I climbed into the driver’s seat. Peter sat in the front seat and was soon snoring again, calmed by an alcoholic stupor. Madeleine sat behind him in the seat I usually occupied. Genny, reading done with the advent of night, leaned her blond head against the window and tried to fall asleep.

It was night, it was late, and the desolate roads were empty. The last sign I had seen had said “Leaving Chicago”, but I thought we must be in Michigan by now. I drove faster, feeling the speed as the barren land rushed outside the van. I didn’t look at the speedometer, and I didn’t notice that we were suddenly doing 80 down a road with a speed limit of 55.

The sound of the siren was unmistakable, and the flashing lights blinded my rear view mirror. Shit. I pulled over, embarrassed and afraid. I didn’t have a license. Shit, shit, I was going to jail, I would never get to Montreal, the Houstons would hate me, Peter would have been a better driver than me. The cop approached the window slowly, taking his time, making me squirm. I don’t know if he saw beforehand that I was young or if he just guessed, but either way, he enjoyed the torture of making me wait for the fateful words. The conversation was punctured by Peter’s snores from the passenger seat.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked.

“Yes.” There was no point in beating around the bush. “I was speeding.”

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

“No.”

“You were going eighty miles an hour.”

“I believe that.”

“Let me see your license and registration please.”

Shit, there it was. “Um, I don’t have a license –”

“You don’t have a license?” The officer was incredulous.

“Monsieur, s’il vous plait, listen to me.” Madeleine’s voice from the backseat was so unexpected that the officer stopped reaching for his ticket book and stared at her. She had leaned halfway into the front seat, her lean frame supported on an elbow leaned against the seatback. Her black hair, cut close around her head, was completely untousled by the sleep she’d been getting before the red and blue lights lit up the car. “May I explain the situation to you, monsieur?”

“Certainly, ma’am.” He was reluctant, despite his words.

“My husband, here, he is drunk. He sleeps like the log. He snores like the, what-you-say, the lumberjack. He could not drive us, but we must drive. We cannot stop every time my husband is drunk. He is the alcoholic. He is always with the liquor. He is a good man, my husband. He gives us everything, and all he has left is his pride. So we protect the pride from all the little bruises he sees people giving it. He wants me not to drive. He will not let his wife drive him around. It would be the bruise to the pride. And he wants his daughter, his Genevieve, he wants her not to drive either, unless it is necessary. He wants her to have a man to drive for her. And then sometimes he gets drunk and he is, how-you-say, unreliable. He does some things he would never do without the alcohol. And he does things worse, sometimes, with the alcohol, and the driving is one thing he does worse with the liquor. And so we must find someway to keep going without Peter keeps driving. And so we bring along Douglas here. A good driver, far better than my husband when he is drinking. But Douglas, ahh, here we have a solution that fits his pride and allows a young boy to attend les Jeux d’Olympics in Montreal. And if he goes a little fast, we say, ‘It is the night, it is empty, and he is young. Peter would crash the car now, but Douglas, he will get us there in one piece.’ You cannot punish him. He does only as we ask. He does only what protects us, and we protect my husband by having him here. You cannot punish him, because it would hurt my husband’s pride. And then he would drive and be a danger to us all. If you must inflict punishment, monsieur, punish me for permitting it. You must allow me to protect my husband and my family, as he protects us. Punish me, monsieur, punish me.”

The officer looked from her to me. Maybe he was struck by what she had said, or maybe he was struck by the bruise, purple and black, on her shoulder. Either way, he said only, “Don’t speed again,” and left us.

I turned to thank Madeleine, but as I spun in my seat, I was drawn by the bruise. It was larger than I remembered, vibrant in the headlights of the police car as it passed. A yellow color had begun to surround the deeply colored center. “Did Peter give you that?” I asked.

“Just drive, Doug,” said Genny from the backseat.

I caught her eye in the rearview mirror. The look on her face was the same way I’d guess I looked when she’d told me my father drank like a fish. Remembering the feeling, I dropped the subject and pulled back into the road, careful to stay below 55 this time.

The rest of the night, I composed my mental letters. Suddenly, I found I had words for my father. Dear Dad, Do you and Peter get drunk together often? He’s been doing it quite a lot without you. Are you a good man like he is? Can you be a good man and still hit your wife? Do you hit Mom when you get drunk? Do you hit her sober? Have you ever hit me sober? I don’t want you to drink anymore. I hate it when you’re drunk. You aren’t the same man. Peter isn’t the same man. And I never want to drink. And I never want to be like you. You are a good man, Dad, but I never want to be like you. Your son, Robert Douglas Parker, Jr. I turned the words over in my mind. I could see them on the page; could see my illegible handwriting, shaking with emotion, covering a half-sheet of stationary; could see my signature scrawled to it.

I knew I would never write the letter.

The lights of a motel came up on our right. I pulled into it. God, it was already eleven. I guided the car into a spot in front of the office and loudly announced, “We’re here.” Slowly, the sleepy passengers awoke and stumbled into the office to rent two rooms for the night.

Tomorrow, I thought, we’ll make it to Montreal.