The Big Black Hole Cont...

“Nicholas, I want you to meet Charles,” she said and we shook hands. He had our tickets in his left hand. A few months later, we moved to Charles’ big house in Rosedale, beside a beautiful park. I had my own bedroom, and his daughter Katie had hers across the hallway from mine. We had our own T.V. room, Katie and I. After a while, I got so used to hearing Katie call Charles Dad that one day I said “Dad” too by mistake and he said he loved that and that I could call him Dad from then on. I did.

Dad (Charles) was a nice man. I liked him a lot even though he wasn’t often home. Mom (Cynthia) said that was because he was importing things from other countries and he had to go away and choose the merchandise he was buying to sell here.

One day, when he returned from one of his business trips, she wanted to be nice to him and she unpacked his suitcase for him. I was there in the room with her. She pulled out his toilet bag and asked me to put it in the bathroom. I must accidentally have been holding it upside down or maybe the bottom of the bag was ripped or something, (I don’t remember) and everything fell out onto the bathroom floor. She was helping me to pick up the toothpaste and nail clippers and the other things that were scattered all over when all of a sudden she stopped. There was a strange look on her face. Her hands were shaking. She looked so angry that it scared me. She was holding some small flat square packets. They crackled in her hand. They looked a bit like After Eight chocolates. Then she saw me and she said, “Well, don’t just stand there, go do your homework.” I didn’t know why she was so angry at me all of a sudden. I hadn’t done anything. At least, I didn’t think I had. But sometimes, she was like that.

The next week, after we had moved away from there and we had finished unpacking all our clothes in our own apartment, just Mom and me, I heard her say on the phone to her friend Kerry, “But he had a vasectomy two years ago.” And then Kerry must have said something. And them Mom said, “From Thailand. He was there four times in the last year.”

A little while ago, I met Bernard. You remember Bernard, the big bachelor? Well, I ran into him at the Royal Ontario Museum. I was with my friends. He was with a woman and two little children. One was about two years old and the other was just a shrivelled little shrimp inside a stroller. I knew I was supposed to say the little shrimp in the baby carriage was cute but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. It didn’t have any hair, its nose was all squashed, and half its face was covered with a huge, blue plastic dummy. My friends didn’t say anything, either; they just kept examining the dinosaurs.

Bernard said he was really happy to see me and he introduced me to the woman and the children. “This is my wife Corrina,” he said, “and my children Danny and Jonathan.” I didn’t know whether I should shake his hand or what. I had never really said “good-bye” to him. At least I couldn’t remember if I had. He gave me a big hug, and his eyes were shining like wet marbles. I remember wondering if I would ever become all teary-eyed like adults when I grew old. He asked me where I lived now and he said he didn’t know I had been living in Toronto. He asked me which school I went to, and I told him.