The Big Black Hole Cont...

Once, when I asked my dad (Bernard) when my dad would come to take me to the zoo again, he said, “You mean Arthur? I don’t know if he’ll come again.” And then he said, “I’ll take you to the zoo. I’m your father now. He’s Arthur. Call him Arthur.” And then I learnt to call him Arthur, but I didn’t often ask about him anyway.

I think Mom was still at law school; she must have been. Bernard, I think, was her professor. Or he had been. Or something like that.

One day, I think it was the last week that I was in grade one, my mother sat on the edge of my bed; it must have been a Saturday morning, and she said, “Nicholas, I have something very important to tell you.” I was staring out the window at the lilac tree; all the perfumed flowers had fallen off and it was just an ordinary tree now. First she gave me a Teddy Bear and she asked me if I liked it. It was nice and soft. When I said I did, she said, “Would you like him to be your best friend?” And I told her that I already had a best friend, but she said that she didn’t mean that kind of best friend; she said that she meant the kind of best friend that can go with you everywhere you want him to go. So I said, “Okay.”

Then she said, “Nicholas, your dad is coming to get you next weekend and you will be going with him to Kingston.”

I said, “Do you mean Arthur?” I had sort of figured she meant him.

“Yes,” she said. “But you should not call him Arthur. He is your dad, you know.”
“I thought Bernard was my dad.”

She explained to me that both were. But I really didn’t understand anything. At school, I had one friend who didn’t live in his dad’s house but he didn’t have another dad instead. “Remember to call him Dad and not Arthur,” she said.

The next week, Mom started packing my things; she was crying. I watched her for a while and I asked her what she was doing and she said, “Remember? I explained it to you the other day: you’re going to Kingston with your dad.”

“But I don’t need that many clothes,” I said.

Everything she was holding in her hands fell onto the floor: my socks, my underwear, my slippers, everything, and she came over to me and she grabbed me in her arms and put my head against her shoulder and she said, “Darling, you’re going to live in Kingston with your dad.”

“With Arthur?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, “you’ll have to learn to call him Dad.”

I didn’t want to go and live with Arthur. I didn’t want to go away from my mother. I felt like crying too, but when he arrived, my dad (Arthur) had a big bag of candies just for me. My dad’s friend, Brenda, she drove, and Dad (Arthur) sat in the back with me and he let me put my head on his lap even though I told him Mom would be angry if I didn’t wear my seat belt.

“Don’t worry about your mom,” he said. “You’ll be living with us now, with Brenda and me. Brenda’s going to be like your mom now. Brenda and I will tell you if you have to wear your seat belt or not.” I cuddled Teddy and soon I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning, I had no idea where I was but Arthur was sitting beside my bed, and when I saw him there, I remembered.