The Figgs, page 22
Vanessa texted furiously on her phone. “Leslie’s car won’t start.”
“You mean you weren’t planning on coming in the van?” Randy’s shoulders slumped.
Vanessa looked at her father. His gas station sunglasses were propped up on his head.
June saw Fergus’s obituary on the top of his stack of papers. Vanessa noticed this too.
“Yes,” Vanessa stammered. “She was just going to drive over here first.”
“We can pick her up,” Randy said. “That’s no problem.”
“I’m going to get dressed.”
June stopped her. “Cage first.”
A gargantuan sigh and Vanessa mobilized, cleaning up the broken plate in the process.
June made Jaxx a bottle.
“Do we have any apples?” Randy packed a grocery bag with granola bars and a can of nuts.
“There’s a bag in the pantry.” June pointed with her foot.
It was 9:40 by the time they were loaded into the van and parked in front of Leslie’s older-looking apartment building. She was waiting on the front step with a faded MEC backpack that had all sorts of strings hanging off it. Her blond hair was hidden beneath a grey beret, the knees of her pants patched. Her army boots still shone a hint of polish from a parade square long abandoned. She waved when the Figgs pulled up. A bus behind them honked.
“You can’t pull over here,” Vanessa said, holding on to Randy’s headrest. “Go in the driveway.”
Randy pulled forward. The bus honked again. He turned into the driveway and stopped on the side of the brick building.
“Hello.” Leslie slid open the door. She put her pack on the floor and belted into the seat next to Vanessa. Jaxx whimpered from the back row.
“I think we’re ready.” Randy smiled and made an eight-point turn to get out of the driveway.
June watched Leslie pull a thermos out of a side pocket and carefully unscrew it as to not disturb Vanessa, who had rested her head on Leslie’s shoulder. Tom was slumped forward in the back, eyes heavy from last night’s shift. Derek had his arm around the car seat and was staring at his son. June was struck by the purpose of the trip. They were going to say goodbye. Randy would not be looking at his son, but standing on top of him. They would all be standing on top of him. They would look at the gravestone and their feet might get wet if the grass was damp and long.
Randy turned on the radio. A documentary about people eating monkeys was playing. It made June feel sick. She probably hadn’t eaten enough. She unwrapped a caramel from her purse, but only thought of the monkeys skinned and stacked at the market. She gagged. “Can you change the station?”
“Pardon?” Randy was in a daze.
“I don’t want to listen to the monkeys anymore.”
“Sorry.” He fidgeted with the dial. “I wasn’t even paying attention.” He shut the radio off. “What if we get to the gravesite and there’s people there?”
“I doubt it’ll be busy on a Monday.”
“But what if it is?”
“So what?”
He rubbed his chin.
The traffic on Deerfoot Trail was light heading north. They zipped along in the right lane with no one to pass.
“What if it’s locked and we can’t get in?”
“They don’t lock cemeteries during the day,” June said. “That’s only at night to keep weirdoes out.”
Tom snored in the back. A low and tolerable snore that June found rhythmic and soothing.
“Are there headphones up there?” Derek asked.
Randy checked the console. “None up here.”
“I don’t want to listen to that.” He nudged Tom with his elbow.
“Let’s play a game.” Randy stretched his neck to look in the rear-view mirror and smiled.
“I’m not playing a game.” Vanessa took off her seatbelt, shifted, and put it back on.
“Come on,” Derek urged, mockingly. “Games are fun.”
“Why don’t you put the radio back on?” June suggested.
“I’ll play a game,” Leslie offered, twisting the lid back on her thermos. “How do we play?”
Vanessa sighed. “Fine, I’ll play. Someone wake up Tom.”
Derek elbowed his brother. Tom stretched his arms over his head, fingers splayed on the car ceiling. He cleared his throat.
“Great,” Randy said. “You can play too.”
“Sorry, did I just wake up in 1995?”
Randy ignored Tom’s comment and proceeded to explain the rules. “I’ll pick a topic, for example, food, and then we go through the alphabet thinking of foods. Apple, banana, cauliflower…”
“Monkeys,” June said, picturing their skinned pink bodies in a wheelbarrow.
“I’ll go first,” Vanessa said. “What’s the topic?”
“Professions,” Randy said. “Asshole,” Vanessa replied.
“They have to be real jobs, Vanessa,” Randy said. “That doesn’t count.”
“Fine. Anaesthesiologist.”
“Bartender,” said Leslie.
“Carpenter,” Derek yawned.
“Two points for Derek,” Randy beamed.
“Dickhead,” said Tom.
Vanessa laughed.
“A driller then.”
“Electrician,” Randy offered.
June looked out her window. The sky was big and cloudless and faded blue, where it almost wasn’t blue. Like a white garment washed with a new pair of jeans.
“June?” Randy gently smacked her arm.
“What?”
“You’re F.”
“Forester,” she said with immediate regret. Randy would think of Fergus, but when she looked over at him she could tell he was figuring out what letter he had next.
“Gynaecologist,” said Vanessa.
“Sick,” Derek replied.
“It’s not sick,” June said.
“Mom, I watched his birth.”
“Horticulturist.” Leslie sipped again from her thermos.
“This game sucks,” said Derek. “Can’t we play something else?”
“How about Who Am I?” Tom said flatly. “How do you play, son?”
“Dad, I was joking,” Tom replied. “These are kids’ games.”
“What about I Never?” Vanessa suggested.
Randy changed lanes to pass a horse trailer. “What’s that one?”
“It’s a drinking game,” Derek said.
June did not listen to the rules. She thought about her birth parents. The thought of them still being together made her swoon, but it also made her want to hit someone. In the picture, they looked like lovers. She bet they had pet names for each other. Doris looked like the kind of woman who made hot breakfasts for her husband. He probably rubbed her feet at the end of the day. She wished she’d been able to witness it growing up. Her adopted parents no doubt loved each other. They were kind and respectful, but not the kind of lovers that made babies in snow forts. Lovers, too, the way she imagined Randy and Glenda. Helpless and innocent and making love under a homemade blanket. Or Birte and Earle, who were touchy and big. Birte even said they sometimes showered together. That it was erotic. For weeks June couldn’t get their wet squat bodies with all their flaps and folds out of her mind. June was too thin to shower with Randy. She had to stand under the stream of water or the backs of her arms would get cold. Randy would take up too much room and he would try to touch her. It would annoy her, not arouse her. Maybe she had a problem. Maybe she had to loosen up and have sex in the snow or in the pantry beside the recycling.
“I never had sex with a teacher,” Vanessa said.
“Vanessa!” June gripped the handle above the window. Maybe she needed to have sex with a teacher.
“Don’t panic,” Randy assured her. “It’s a game. You only drink if you did have sex with a teacher.”
June looked in the back. Derek took a long swig of root beer.
“Derek!” she cried. “Tell me you did not do that. That’s illegal! That’s statutory rape.”
“Not if it was last year.”
“Okay,” June said. “This game is over. It’s inappropriate and upsetting.”
“I never spent a night in jail,” Derek said.
This time it was Tom who took a drink of water.
“You went to jail?” June was horrified.
“Remember that time Tom said he was going paintballing with his friends?” Derek said.
The vague memory resurfaced.
“He was in the drunk tank because he passed out at the fuck park with no pants.”
June covered her eyes, feeling marginally relieved that he was only picked up for public drunkenness and not for trying to do inappropriate things under the slide in a basset hound costume with an elderly person.
“Where were your pants?” June said.
Tom shrugged. “I lost one of my shoes, too.”
“Put on the dead monkeys,” June ordered.
Randy turned on the radio, but lowered the volume. June strained to hear the conversation, but it was no longer about eating monkeys in Bioko. It was a documentary about homophobia in the NFL. She switched it off.
“I never had a relationship with someone who was married.”
June closed her eyes. She wanted the game to end, but when she reopened her eyes, both Randy and Leslie were drinking.
“Randy!” June flicked his ear.
“Ouch. I didn’t know she was married.”
“Neither did I,” Leslie said.
June crossed her arms. “When did this happen?”
“Long time ago. Before Glenda.”
“I don’t want to hear any more.” She looked out her window again for some sort of landmark. They were only in Didsbury. Red Deer was at least another forty-five minutes away.
“One more round,” Randy said.
From the back, Tom yelled, “I never had a threesome.”
Randy took a drink. “Sorry,” he said, “just thirsty.”
Vanessa took a long exaggerated sip of her iced tea.
“Nice,” Derek said, patting her shoulder from the back seat. “I’m jealous.”
“That’s really awful.” June shook her head. “I’m so sorry for you, Vanessa. That’s just really wrong.”
“It was actually quite liberating,” Vanessa said.
“I think it’s awesome.” Tom took off his seatbelt. “Way to go, Vanessa.”
June cried, “What is wrong with you people? Aren’t you the least bit embarrassed to be saying all of this in front of your parents? Didn’t I teach you respect? Have you no shame?”
“It was Dad’s idea to play,” Derek said.
“In fairness to me,” Randy said, “I just wanted to play a game. Everyone apologize to your mother for offending her.”
In unison, “Sorry, Mom.”
“And say sorry for being bad,” Randy added.
Derek was the loudest. “Sorry for being bad.”
June had a hot flash. Within seconds her skin was a slick mess. She pulled a map of Montana out of the glove compartment and waved it in front of her face. There was a pack of Clorets in there too. She punched one out of the blister pack and put it in her mouth. Bits of its shell flaked off on her tongue. It was hard, but she carried on. “Keep calm and chew old gum,” she said.
“Keep calm and stay in the right lane,” Randy replied. He smiled and rubbed her leg affectionately.
“It’s not a new game,” she clarified.
“Keep calm and have a threesome,” Derek mocked.
Vanessa lifted her head, which she’d rested back on Leslie’s shoulder and said, “Keep calm and be a single dad.”
“Good one,” Tom said. “How about keep calm and have a hot flash.”
June stopped waving the map in front of her face. “Why don’t you put on some headphones or something?”
“You told us we weren’t allowed to ignore each other.”
“Keep calm and put on some headphones.” Randy grinned.
“Keep calm and look out for the deer!” Leslie shouted.
Randy’s knee-jerk reaction was to swerve, though the deer Leslie was talking about was well off to the side of the road. June placed her hand on her chest as if to slow down her heart rate. Her hot flash ceased.
“You have my permission to ignore each other,” June said. “I’m turning the radio back on.”
Classical music danced from the speakers like tumbleweed on a country road. It was exactly what she needed. She sank heavily into her seat and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were in Red Deer, parked outside the gates of the cemetery.
Red Deer Cemetery was written in metal on an arch that bridged two squat red brick buildings with white doors and wrought-iron hardware. It looked militaristic and official. A checkpoint. Near-black conifers bowed and bent over the site like protective hands. It was dark, though still morning. Randy followed the winding road through the gate. Loose gravel crunched below the tires and reminded June of backing over plastic shovels and water guns in the driveway.
“How do I know where to go?” Randy asked.
“You don’t know where his grave is?” Vanessa asked. “We’ll be here all day.”
“I know he’s buried on the west side.” Randy looked left and right as he crept forward. “Section M or N.” He pointed to his stack of papers in the netted console between him and June. “There’s a map of the cemetery in there.”
She picked up the papers and rifled through the stack until she found the map. Hundreds of rectangular plots were organized by row and labelled with a letter. June turned the page ninety degrees. “Assuming we entered down here, it looks like we turn left and then go all the way to the end.”
Randy turned left, but the road ended abruptly and he was forced to turn again.
“Left or right?” He asked.
She paused. “Left.” She tried to sound confident, but June was terrible at navigating. She longed for a new vehicle with a fancy GPS. Randy turned left as she recommended and drove to the end of the lane.
“Do I stop here?” He looked all around. “Should he be here?”
“Just a minute.” June stepped out of the van, leaving the door open and took a few steps toward the edge of the grass in search of an aisle marker like at a grocery store. CEREAL, CONDIMENTS, CAR ACCIDENT VICTIMS. This is ridiculous, she thought to herself. She turned three hundred and sixty degrees to take in the setting, and noticed a small building across the way. That must be on the map. She got back inside the van. Randy was flipping through papers.
“See if you can find that building.” June gestured with her thumb.
“Can I interrupt?” Leslie said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “You need to turn it this way,” she said, spinning her finger counter-clockwise. “See that road over there? That’s this one on the map. See how it curves? We should have turned left back here.”
“I couldn’t find him alive and now I can’t find him dead either.” Randy was agitated.
“Here,” June said, “let me see the map again.” She grabbed it out of his hands and tried to make sense of Leslie’s directions but she might as well have been looking at a map of Machu Picchu.
“Can I drive?” Leslie asked.
“Sure,” Randy said, frustrated. He unbuckled his seatbelt and squished in beside June.
Leslie moved to the driver seat and studied the map for a minute or so, looking out the windows in ten-second intervals. Eventually she put her seat belt on and began backing up.
Randy’s body was heavy against June, and she nudged him. “You’re squashing me.”
He adjusted his weight and put his hand on the glove compartment to steady himself. His neck was stretched long and alert as though they were on a safari and he was hoping to spot the giraffe before anyone else. The back seat was silent. Tom and Jaxx were asleep. Derek was scrolling his phone, and Vanessa appeared to be picking and eating the chocolate chips out of her granola bar. The van wound through the cemetery, backward at first, and then forward like they were in a maze. June thought of the puzzles Derek had done as a child. The mish-mash of loops and lines and dead-ends. The instructions. Help Fluffy get to his doghouse. Help Randy find Fergus’s grave. Leslie pulled over and put the van in park. “The M’s should be there and the N’s just to the right.”
Randy climbed over June and rolled out of the van, jogging toward the first row of graves that Leslie identified as being part of section M. Derek elbowed Tom to wake him up, then stepped over him. He passed Jaxx’s carseat over to Vanessa, who passed it back once Derek was outside. June straightened her pants, which were bunched and stuck to her legs, and watched as Leslie chivalrously helped Vanessa step out of the van by taking her hand. Big Gay Prom, June thought. They wandered off towards the N graves. Tom was last out of the van. He stretched his arms over his head. The laces of his sneakers were loose and untied, his hoodie unzipped. He looked slimmer beneath all the looseness. He headed in Randy’s direction. June stood beside Derek, who was bent over the car seat, tucking a receiving blanket around Jaxx’s shoulders. The baby’s head lay low on his chest like his neck was too weak to support it. Candy apple on a stick. His deep-sleep weight pulled down his lower lip so he looked disgruntled rather than peaceful.
“You go, if you want,” June told Derek. “I’ll wait here with him.”
Derek nodded and headed toward the larger section N.
June breathed in the fresh air, which had an odd sweetness one would not associate with a burial ground. Pre-summer Alberta air. Green with a dash of ice. A mojito. Randy was jogging faster now, slowing down only to read the tombstones. But it was Vanessa who found him. She waved both arms over her head. It looked as though she was on her tiptoes.
“Here!” She cupped her hands around her mouth and said, “Charles Fergus Zacharellis,” into the wind.
Randy ran, weaving through stones with the agility of a bike courier until he reached Vanessa. June ran too, but at the pace of a six-year-old, the car seat swinging and thumping against her leg. She was certain it would bruise. Derek met her halfway and pulled the car seat all the way up to his waist. When June reached Fergus’s grave, Randy was bent over, perpendicular to the plot, hands on his knees, out of breath. Gasping. When he stood up, he looked dizzy. His glasses had fallen to the end of his nose and his eyes were flooded. She’d never seen such a mass of tears collect without falling and she thought of that casino game where the coins were continually pushed to an edge but never seemed to fall. She’d never seen them fall. Then Randy stumbled and let out a breath. A baritone one. Like cracked pavement. A pain breath. And as he staggered forward to the grave, his live children all took a step back. It was June who moved in when he fell to his knees. She remembered that feeling from her father’s death. Of not being able to stand. Of being amputated by grief. Randy wailed like a cow separated from its calf. He carried on for several minutes, starting and stopping, clutching his stomach. June found herself glancing left and right to make sure no one was watching. The kids shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether to watch or hide or speak. They looked at one another with a mix of horror and embarrassment and sympathy when Randy walked on his knees, toddler style, over to the tombstone and wrapped his arms and one leg around it like he was trying to mount it. It was the leg that did June in. It was lifted at a high and awkward angle so that his pant leg fell up his shin revealing several inches of hairy skin and his signature wool sock. Vanessa cringed. Derek looked at June, eyebrows raised, hands up in a gestured plea for her to intervene. Tom cried. Sensitive Tom. June knelt down behind her husband, unsure of what to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Leslie give Vanessa a sizeable nudge. Elbow to hip. It bumped Vanessa a step to the right, and then Vanessa jog-walked to the van. She returned holding a gift bag with straw-like handles. She cleared her throat.
