Bugs Bunny
Anne Lévesque On weekdays we were a happy family. When my father came home from work I liked to sit beside him on the back step, chatting about my day while he emptied his boots of wood chips and peeled off his heavy wool socks. My mother cooked roast pork and patates jaunes and bouilli de légumes. A different dessert every night. My brother and I watched television and played with our baby sister. We all went to bed early. Things were different on Saturday. On Saturday my mother plotted, schemed and watched out. One strategy was to have us accompany our father when he went out after lunch. This must have worked at some time, I don’t know. From the alley, my brother and I watched him back the car out of the garage. The building had once been the town’s first church. It still held a whiff of sanctity with its hardwood floor and black ampoules of fire extinguisher in sconces on the walls. The communion wine had been replaced by the sherry my father stashed in the firewood closet, the altar by his workbench and the pews by his tools and fishing gear and car; a two-tone blue Meteor, then a hot red Mercury. A vinyl-topped Pontiac the colour of cold butter. My sister remembers her first ride in the Pontiac. A few miles outside of town, just before a good straight stretch on the Trans Canada, my father turned to her and said: ‘Lie down.’ Her cheek against the new smell of the dark gold carpeting she had closed her eyes while he pushed the accelerator all the way down. Because a man needed to know just how fast his car could go. On Saturday afternoons however, my father never drove fast, or far. He went to the hardware store, the chainsaw dealership, the beerstore (my favourite because he let me sit on the case of empties and I could see everything) and sometimes to the town dump. We knew it was over when he let us off at the corner of our street. I was always a little sad walking home. I knew that we had failed in our mission. On the rare occasions that he drove us right into the garage there was usually a last stop. I remember the dusty pot-holed parking lot, as wide and beige as the afternoon, the railway tracks, the smell of hot upholstery. My brother and I could have easily walked home, it wasn’t far, but we didn’t. He left us waiting like that in a strange town once. It was strange to us, but he had worked there and knew many people. That day we lost heart. A man walking by saw us crying and went in to tell my father. He appeared a few minutes later holding two bags of potato chips. He chided us, but gently, for being so foolish. Then he left again. But on most Saturday afternoons we were home with our mother and he was gone. As the day wore on I remember listening for the car in the alley, the clang of the metal garage door, his steps in the porch. This is what I remember: Bugs Bunny and Wile E. Coyote. The tension. The Barber of Seville. The tension. My mother at the counter, preparing supper. The tension. Hockey Night in Canada. The tension. My brother and I had a false brittle cheerfulness then, like the sun on a cold winter day. We made up clever inventive games. We were good as gold. And then we heard it. It surged through the walls of the old church into the alley and yard, the houses of our neighbours, all the rooms in our house. It was my father, gunning the car’s engine before turning off the ignition. As if he wanted to make sure that everyone knew he was coming home drunk. |
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About the Author:
Anne Lévesque's poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Canadian and international anthologies and journals. She lives on the west coast of Cape Breton Island.
Anne Lévesque's poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Canadian and international anthologies and journals. She lives on the west coast of Cape Breton Island.