No Good Brother

‘You coming for a walk?’ he asked his nephew.

The way he said it wasn’t a question. Big Ben folded his hand and followed his uncle outside. We played a few more rounds and Evelyn made a pot of coffee and we got to talking about payday and the cheques we all had coming our way. Albert was going to install a new furnace in their place out in New West, and Evelyn, she was putting some of her share away for a trip to Palm Springs. But even then I had the feeling that it was all preamble. I was still waiting for whatever it was they were going to spring on me.

‘What about you, Tim?’ Tracy asked. ‘You got any big plans once this taskmaster sets you loose?’

‘Ah, you know me. I ain’t got much imagination.’

‘No raising Cain?’ She elbowed me. ‘No lady friend to buy pretty things for?’

‘Well, there is one.’ Evelyn stopped sipping her tea. They all looked at me, waiting. ‘Old woman by the name of Evelyn,’ I said. ‘Might need a new dishwasher.’

Evelyn got up and slapped me with her flipper mitt.

‘No sir,’ Albert said, playing along. ‘Nobody buys my woman a dishwasher but me!’

The joke ran its course, and as Evelyn settled back down she said, ‘Albert – why don’t you tell Tim. Tell him what we were talking about.’

‘Oh no,’ Tracy said.

Albert frowned at her, and cleared his throat, and then spread out one hand to stare at the fingernails. The cuticles were rimmed with black: a lifetime’s worth of engine oil and grease. He ran his thumbnail beneath the nail on his forefinger, as if removing some. Then he said, ‘You know we normally head up to our cabin in Squamish for a week at the end of season. Well, we’ll be heading up this Saturday, after we finish, and wondered if you wanted to come.’

‘Wow,’ I said, which was all I could think to say. ‘That’s real kind of you.’

‘Our boy Rick will be there, with his kids, and Tracy.’

Tracy was staring into her teacup, as if trying to read the leaves.

‘That would be really something,’ I said.

‘Of course,’ Albert added, ‘if you got other things going on …’

‘No. No I don’t got anything else. The only thing keeping me here would be my mother. If she needs me, I mean. Seeing as I’ve already been away for a while.’

‘Of course, Timothy,’ Evelyn said. ‘You’ve got to look after your family, too.’

‘It would only be for a few days,’ Albert said.

‘That sounds real nice.’

‘Think about it, anyway,’ Evelyn added.

‘I will. I really will.’

She stood up and began to clear the cups, even though mine was only half-finished.

‘Well,’ Tracy said, ‘I better get back. Shift starts in an hour.’

She was working security at a local college, while undertaking her training.

‘I’ll walk you out, if you like.’

The docks were quiet, aside from a few old-timers on one of the boats, drinking to celebrate the end of season, their voices and laughter echoing across the water. Tracy and I walked in silence until we crossed the gangway. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry about that. They like to play matchmaker.’

‘It’s a nice idea.’

‘Nice is an easy word.’

‘I mean it would be fun.’

‘Well, maybe it would be.’

We reached her vehicle: a classic Jeep that she’d salvaged from the scrap heap, and fixed up. She’d parked in the same spot that Jake had earlier. She unlocked the driver’s door and before she got in I hugged her again. In the dark, away from the others, I could have held onto her longer, and maybe I should have. But it was funny. I still acted the same way.

That night, it wasn’t hard to slip away. I just waited until Sugar and Big Ben were asleep (this was easy to determine because they both snore like bears) and then crept out of the cabin, eased open the galley door, and lowered myself down to the dock. Sneaking off felt shady and dishonest but those were feelings I generally associated with my brother, and any plan of his which involved me.

The Firehall, where we were meeting, is on the corner of Gore and Cordova, just a few blocks away from the Westco plant. It isn’t a firehall any more. It’s an arts centre and performance space now – a fairly well-known one. They produce shows of their own and also put on work by touring theatre and dance companies. The outside still looks like a firehall: worn brownstone walls, glossy red doors, and those high-arched windows.

The night I met Jake, a company called The Dance Collective was performing. The name was spelled in block capitals across the marquee, and on the A-frame board out front a series of posters listed the various dancers and their pieces. I walked cautiously up the wheelchair ramp and stood for a time outside the doors, peering in through the glass.

The place hadn’t changed much. On the left was the box office, and on the right was the bar – a classy-looking affair, with a marble bar top, chrome beer taps, and leather stools. On some of the tables platters of appetizers and hors d’oeuvres had been laid out: smoked salmon and pastries and little vegetable rolls. In the foyer thirty or forty guests – a mix of well-dressed artists, hipsters, and bohemian types – stood chatting and milling about. All of it looked so eerily familiar I felt like a ghost, lurking in the cold and haunting my old life.

I have to admit: I just about turned and walked away.

But my brother was in there, waiting for me. So I went ahead, passing through the glass doors and falling backwards into memory. I knew exactly where to find Jake too: hunched at the bar, ignoring the room and world.

I sat down next to him and he said, ‘So the old man let you loose.’

There were three empty bottles of Molson in front of him and he was already looking a bit belligerent.

‘He said he wouldn’t stop me, if I snuck off.’

‘Better make the most of it.’ He motioned to the bartender, signalling for service. ‘Two more Molson and two shots of Wiser’s.’

‘Only beer, for me,’ I said.

‘Forget that. You just got back from sea, sailor.’

‘I’ll be scrubbing holds at six thirty.’

The bartender – a slim, trim guy with a stud earring – looked at us in a way that made it clear he’d rather be serving anybody else.

‘Do you want the whisky or not?’ he asked.

‘I ordered it, didn’t I?’ Jake said. Then, to me: ‘Get this bartender. I been tipping him big and behaving myself and he still treats me like a dishrag.’

Jake folded a twenty in half and flicked it towards the guy. The bill fluttered in the air like a demented butterfly, before coming to settle in front of the bar taps. The bartender took it reluctantly and smoothed it out before slipping it into his till and pouring the drinks. When the whiskies landed in front of Jake, he nudged one towards me.

‘Drink up,’ he said.

‘I ain’t playing, Jake.’

He shrugged and scooped it up to knock back himself.

‘You been drinking here all night?’ I asked Jake.

‘Hell no. I saw the show.’

I looked towards the stage doors. A few of the dancers were coming out, now. You could tell by the way they dressed – tracksuits or tights and leggings – and also by how they held themselves: that particular upright posture, chins outthrust, heads perfectly level.

‘You watched the whole dance show on your own?’

‘Why not? I know more about it than most of these posers.’

The bartender, bringing over the beers, frowned when he heard that. Jake waggled his head and stuck out his tongue at him, as if to imply some kind of uncontrollable insanity.

‘Was it any good?’ I asked him.

‘It was hit and miss.’

‘Any unarmed turnips?’

Jake snorted and sprayed beer on the bar top.

Before one of our sister’s performances, we’d seen this guy do a modern dance in the nude. He’d swaggered up to the front of the stage, swinging his pecker like a little lasso, and announced that he was an unarmed turnip. That had been the benchmark, from then on, and the kind of thing that Sandy had to rise above: the legions of unarmed and untalented turnips.

‘No – no turnips, thank God,’ Jake said, wiping his mouth with his hand. ‘But hardly any of them were classically trained. You can tell. They just don’t have the range, like her.’

‘Nobody did.’

That wasn’t really true, but it was true enough, in our minds. My beer was still sitting there – I’d been eyeing it but hadn’t touched it yet. Now I reached for it, in a way that felt momentous. It tasted smooth and cold and nice as ice cream. I swivelled around on my stool and leant back against the bar to watch the crowd.

‘I ain’t been back here since,’ I said.

‘That’s because you’re trying to forget.’

‘I haven’t forgotten anything.’

‘Except the anniversary.’

‘I was at sea. The season was late, this year.’

‘On your boat with your little fishing family.’

‘They’re good people.’

‘They ain’t kin.’

‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

‘Your body is.’

A dancer came up to the bar beside Jake and ordered a vodka lemonade. Her hair was pulled back into a tight bun, so you could see where the roots tugged at her scalp, and she still had sparkles and stage make-up on her face.

Jake glanced sidelong at her, then down at her feet.

‘This is one of the real dancers,’ he said to me. ‘She’s done ballet.’

She looked at him, startled, still holding a ten up for the bartender.

‘How’d you know that?’

‘You’re standing in third position. Only ballet dancers do that.’

Jake said all that without looking at her. He said it in a calm and certain way that is difficult to describe and unlike how anybody else talks – at least unlike how they would talk to a stranger, off-the-cuff. She might not have liked it, but he had her attention, all right.

‘Did you enjoy the show?’ she asked.

‘I liked your dance, and a few of the others. But you want some advice? You need to work on your arabesques. You bend your back leg too much.’

She turned to face him more fully, almost as if she were squaring up to him.

‘It’s not ballet. Modern isn’t as strict as that.’

‘An arabesque is an arabesque.’

‘I can do a proper arabesque if I want.’

‘That’s what I’m saying.’

Her drink was ready, and she took it without thanking the bartender, as if it was an inconvenience or a distraction. She looked about ready to dash the vodka in Jake’s face.

‘You sure know a lot about it,’ she said.

‘Our sister used to dance. She used to dance here.’

The dancer put her drink down. She looked hard at Jake’s face, and then over to me.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘You’re Sandra’s brothers, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right. Jake and Tim.’

‘I’ve met you. I danced with her. It’s Denise, remember?’

Without waiting for a reply, she hugged Jake, and then me. She started tearing up, so I patted her forearm, in a way that felt awkward, even to me.

‘It’s so good to see you. It’s been so long.’

‘Ten years,’ Jake said, tonelessly.

‘I still think about her.’ She was wiping at her eyes, now. All her mascara had run down her cheeks in black streaks and it was hard as hell, seeing that. I don’t know. It was as if she were crying for all three of us. ‘I was younger than her. She was the one we all looked up to. She was the dancer we all wanted to be.’

‘Me too,’ I said.

‘Oh – you wanted to be a dancer, too?’

Jake started laughing, and I had to explain that no – I meant I’d looked up to Sandy.

‘Of course. Everybody did.’

Denise took the straw out of her drink and threw it on the bar top and drank most of her vodka lemonade straight from the glass, knocking it back. When she finished, a little breathless, she asked, ‘What are you guys doing here, anyway?’

‘Just came down to see the place, again.’

‘Are you coming to the after-party? We’re going to the Alibi Room, I think.’

Jake said, ‘I got to take my brother somewhere. But we should meet up later.’

‘For sure.’

She pulled a pen from her purse, jotted down a number, handed it to him. Then she hugged Jake again, and me, longer this time – really squeezing the breath out of me. I could feel the strength in her body, thin and lithe as a wire cable, and she still smelled of sweat and activity, of a body in motion. All of that was so familiar, like hugging a memory or a dream.

‘I should mingle,’ she said. ‘But I’ll see you later.’

She took another look at us, not quite believing it, and moved off. We swivelled back to the bar and drank our beers in silence and after about five or six seconds Jake said, ‘Jesus.’

‘I know.’

I motioned to the bartender: two more whiskies. When he brought them this time he treated us with a kind of deference, his eyes downcast. He’d overheard some of it, I guess. I gave him another twenty and waved away the change and Jake and I knocked back the shots. I felt the belly-burn, that old familiar smoulder.

I said, ‘You said you wanted to take me somewhere.’

Two months before Sandy died, she auditioned for a dancing job in Paris with the Compagnie Cléo de Mérode, and landed it. At first I didn’t understand the significance of that. I just knew it meant she would be living in Europe for a while. But the full extent of her achievement was made clear to us at the celebration party. It was held at the house of one of Sandy’s dancer friends and all the people there were either dancers or choreographers or artistic types of one sort or another, aside from me and Jake and Maria, who he was still with at the time, and who has her own part in this story.

Jake and I were working the bar, mixing cocktails and pouring drinks and generally acting like jackasses. It was magical and heavenly to be surrounded by, and serving, all of these lean-limbed, long-necked women with perfect posture, who seemed to float from room to room and every so often stopped to order from us and teasingly flirt with us because we were Sandy’s little brothers and in that way were little brothers to them all.

At one point Sandy and Maria came up together, and Maria ordered them both a Bloody Mary. This was a unique opportunity because Sandy hardly ever drank, due to the demands of being a dancer, and even when she did it was seemingly impossible to get her drunk. Our sister was always focused, severe, in complete control – both of herself and us. She was the only one who could keep Jake reined in, seeing as our old man was no longer around, and our ma, well, she’d had it tough for a while. And since Sandy took care of all of us, she never relented in what I would call her vigilance.

That night we made a good go of it. Jake mixed the Bloody Marys and dumped a good splash of vodka in both. He served them the real way – over ice, with salt around the rims – and Maria scooped hers up and raised it high to toast and passed on what some local hotshot choreographer had just told her: he’d said that Sandy getting in with the Compagnie Cléo de Mérode was the same as if she’d won the gold medal of modern dance.

‘Gold medal winner,’ Maria repeated.

‘Solid gold sister,’ Jake said, and kissed her on the cheek.

Sandy laughed it off, but the phrase stuck with me, and the memory of the night. Sandy had two more Bloody Marys and sat Jake and I down, very solemnly, and laid out her plans for moving the whole family to Europe so we could stay together. Jake could make his music and I’d apprentice to be a carpenter and Ma would sit on our balcony and have coffee and croissants every morning. Maria claimed she wanted to come too and Sandy said that was fine, but she – Maria – would have to marry Jake and when they had kids Sandy would be the godmother. Then once Sandy hit thirty she would retire and marry a French plumber and start a family of her own and we would all move back home and buy an acreage in the Okanagan, and I could build houses for each of us and her husband would fit the plumbing and together we would set up polytunnels and vegetable fields and start our own farm.

She had all these plans, crazy but brilliant enough to believe in. At the time, we had an unquestioning faith that Sandy could shape our future through her force of will, and even now it doesn’t seem to me as if that faith was naïve.

Later in the night, when Jake and I had abandoned our posts at the bar, we built this makeshift sedan out of broomsticks and a kitchen chair. We put Sandy in that and hoisted her up on our shoulders and carried her around the party, with Maria clearing the way in front of us. When we passed everybody cheered and applauded, and Sandy played her part perfectly: sitting upright, looking stern and commanding as Cleopatra, our golden queen and champion.

Chapter Three

Jake had his truck at the Firehall but he was too far gone to drive (he was very particular about that, on account of what happened) and instead we took a cab down Granville and west on Marine Drive towards the Southlands area. There are some huge spreads out that way: big rancher-style houses with sprawling yards, which might have been smallholdings or farmsteads back in the old days. We cruised past those and I had no idea what we were doing, or why, but something in me – my brotherly pride, I suppose – refused to pester him about it.

Jake told the cabbie to drop us at a place called Castle Meadow Stables and Country Club. The sign out front was small and discreet: just a brass plaque mounted on a gateway beside a curving drive. We walked up the drive in the dark, crunching gravel beneath our bootheels. At the end of the drive was a parking lot, and the clubhouse. Over to the left were the stables, still and quiet at this time, and beyond them a field or paddock or what have you.

As we approached the front doors, I finally gave in and asked, ‘You going to tell me what we’re doing way the hell out here?’

‘Just getting a drink,’ Jake said, and pushed through the doors.

They opened into a foyer, leading on to the clubhouse and bar: a big room with low ceilings and hardwood floors. The walls were lined with wainscot panelling, and above the wainscot hung black-and-white pictures of old racehorses, presumably famous ones. The place felt like an old-time golf club, crossed with a western-style saloon. In one corner a cluster of video poker machines bleeped forlornly.

It was getting on near ten o’clock and the only other customers were a bunch of good old boys wearing plaid shirts and cowboy boots and, sitting a little apart, two younger guys in suits. At the bar Jake ordered us two more Molsons and two shots of Crown and asked the bartender to put it on his tab. The woman smiled at him and punched it into her screen, and I figured this was partly why we’d come out here – just for me to witness Jake order on a tab.

We sat down and knocked back our shots, which were tasting better and better. After being dry for so long it was going to my head and I felt very tender towards my little brother.

I said, ‘How’d you get membership in a place like this?’

‘I ain’t a member.’

‘How’d you get a tab, then?’

‘This is where I work.’

‘I thought you had a cleaning job.’

‘I do – cleaning stables.’

It took me some time to get my head around the notion of Jake cleaning stables, or being associated with that realm in any way. It just seemed so peculiar. But then, no more peculiar than delivering brake parts or laying paving slabs or working on a seiner or any of the other jobs we’d both done over the years.

‘So you’re like a stable boy?’ I asked.

‘Hell no. Stable boys actually look after the horses. They groom them and feed them and dress their injuries and crap. I’m not even really supposed to go in the stalls. I just clean the alleyways between the stalls, hose down the drainage troughs, carry loads of horseshit out back to the bin. Make sure the stable boys and trainers have everything they need.’

‘How in the hell’d you land a job like that?’

‘Connections I made inside. A lot of the gangsters are into horses.’

He nodded significantly at the two guys in suits. They were eating chicken wings and talking earnestly about something and didn’t appear drunk at all. If Jake hadn’t pointed them out I would have assumed they were businessmen.

‘What – they ride them?’ I said.

‘They ride them and breed them and race them. This is one of the places you can keep them, if you don’t have a ranch of your own. And I clean up their shit. Literally.’

‘I guess hard work is honest work,’ I said, ‘as Albert would say.’

‘Work sucks. But it’s something. And I get a tab.’

‘A tab you’ve got to pay.’

‘Not tonight I don’t.’

He looked up at the TV above us. There were half a dozen spread around the room. The screens were all the same size – thirty inches or so – and they were all showing the same image: a long shot of a racetrack in some exotic location, where the skies were dreamily blue and where everybody wore white linen clothing and wide-brimmed hats and carried parasols. It made me think of Monte Carlo or Casablanca. Some place that we’d never see, anyway.

‘Mostly it’s a farce,’ Jake said. ‘Hardly any of their horses get into real races, let alone win.’

‘But the bigshots need something to do with all that money, eh?’

‘You got it.’

We touched glasses and drained what remained of our beers. It was warm and flat and tasted almost soapy, like watered-down dish detergent. As I finished I heard a buzzer going off, and the TV screen images changed to a close-up of the starting gates, springing open. In the faraway country the horses were racing now. At a nearby table, this beefy guy with a mullet started shouting at one of the horses, telling it to come on, come on. But even before the home stretch he’d given up on that and sat watching morosely. He was all on his own.

‘How’s Ma?’ Jake asked.

‘No worse, but no better, either.’

‘I was thinking of going over there this weekend, if you want to come.’

‘I usually do, when I’m not on the boat.’

‘The model son.’

Jake picked up a bar coaster and drummed it repeatedly on the table, tapping out a rhythm that I recognized but couldn’t quite place. I knew he was holding something back.

I said, ‘Down at the plant you said you needed to talk to me.’

‘I’m going on a little trip and I just wanted to see you and Ma before I go.’

‘What kind of trip?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I’m not worrying.’

‘Worry about your other family, and your little fishing girlfriend.’

‘Her name’s Tracy. And she ain’t my girlfriend.’

‘Sure – she’s your mermaid.’

‘I don’t know what you got against them.’

‘Forget it. Tonight, I just want to have a good time with my big brother.’

Hearing that, more than anything else, made me start worrying in earnest. Jake hopped up and took our empties back to the bar and returned with another round of whisky and beer. This time when he knocked back his shot I left mine standing there.

‘Lefty,’ I said. ‘Are you in some sort of jam or what?’

‘I’m always in a jam, Poncho.’

‘How bad a jam?’

He folded his hands and rested them on the table. He looked at them for a long time and then he looked up at me. Greasy strands of hair hung out the sides of his bandana, and his jawline was shadowed with stubble. Then there was that gap tooth. But he still had this innocent look about him, somehow, which he hadn’t lost since childhood.

He said, ‘We never talked about my time inside.’

‘I wanted to.’

‘I’m not laying a guilt trip on you. I’m just trying to explain.’

Jake jerked his head at the mullet-haired race fan, as if implying he didn’t want the guy to overhear. Jake got up and I followed him out. He led me through the clubhouse to a set of glass doors that opened onto a patio overlooking the training grounds. They had tables and chairs out there, but no heaters or lights. Nobody was sitting in the cold.