Page 79 of Glass Half Full
“I’m about to be incredibly understaffed at the bar, aren’t I?” she asks dryly.
I don’t have to say it. It’s clear I won’t be keeping my job. Even if I asked for it, she’d be insane to let me keep managing when I just said myself it was a mistake for me to even start.
“You’ll stay on until I find a replacement, right?”
I nod. “Of course, for as long as you need me.”
It’s not like I have anywhere else to go. The overwhelming sense of being lost, of spinning in circles in the dark while searching for the way home, threatens to take hold of me the way it’s been doing ever since I watched Renee walk away.
“Will you do me another favour?” Monroe asks.
“Anything.” She sure as fuck deserves it.
“Take a few days off. I’ll cover for you. I think you’ve got some...searching to do.”
“Searching?” I repeat. “Sometimes I think you’re hiding your clairvoyant powers from us all. Are you sure you can’t see the future?”
“You think I’d need to drink this much coffee if I could see the future? I’d know if we’ll turn a profit this quarter and wouldn’t be driving myself to insanity every night.”
I shake my head. “Not buying it. I think you know more than you let on.”
“Oh yeah?”
I nod.
“Well in that case...Let me just say I don’t think you should write a shot with Renee off just yet.”
My face falls. She might be able to see things way too clearly, but Monroe wasn’t there that day at McGill. She didn’t hear what was said, see what was lost.
“Don’t go staring at me like a sad puppy,” Monroe orders. “You’re a grown ass man. That’s not going to get you anywhere. Do what I said and go searching. Sometimes my advice is actually pretty good.”
“It’s always good,” I assure her, “and I’m grateful to have it.”
* * *
Turns out ‘searching’leads me somewhere I haven’t set foot in almost a year: my old neighborhood. The day after my meeting with Monroe, I find myself getting off the bus just a block from the street I grew up on. The place has cleaned itself up a little over the past few years. The row houses still sport sagging front steps and mossy shingles peeling off like dead skin. There are still boarded up windows, and someone’s got a mouldy mattress taking up their whole front yard, but there are also houses with little gardens surrounded by chicken wire and carved pumpkins lining the laneways. One address is even decked out like a haunted house. No one bothered putting more than pumpkins out when me and my brother were kids. Everything else would have gotten stolen. Even the pumpkins usually got smashed.
I usually only come here for Christmas. My family can at least pull itself together enough for that, although the tension creeps in from the second my brother and I arrive in the morning and grows to the point where we can barely sit through dinner. Every awkward moment and strained silence is just one more reminder that I did this. I ripped us apart.
I don’t intend to knock on my mom’s door. I didn’t come here to bother her. I just came here tosearch, to walk the same sidewalks I did as a kid, to try finding that place in my memory I can point at and say, ‘This is what started it. This is where it all went wrong.’ Maybe I wouldn’t be so fucking terrified of screwing up again if I knew just what made me screw up in the first place.
I kick a few dead leaves around as I make my way up the road. I’m getting closer and closer to our address. The place Kyle grew up isn’t far either. Every inch of pavement here holds stories, holds parts of what made me who I am.
When I finally reach the house, I stop. The neighbours on either side aren’t so bad, but Mom’s tidiness still stands out. She’s always kept the place so tidy: tidy little front lawn trimmed every week, tidy flowerbox under the window already pruned back for winter, tidy polished numbers screwed to the tidy paint job on the front door. She’s not a neat freak by any means, but she likes to make a good impression. She always said living in a bad part of town didn’t give us an excuse to be bad people, and making the most of our shitty, poorly heated, kind of crooked home was just one of the ways she didn’t let herself be defined by her circumstances.
I need to keep walking or somebody watching will think I’m casing the house and call the cops. There are a lot of people around here who don’t have much to do besides stare out between the gaps in their curtains all day. I’ve just turned away when I hear the door swing open.
“Dylan?”
My mom is pretty. She aged fast, much faster than she deserved. I can’t remember a time when she didn’t have silver strands in her hair, and the lines in her face run deep, but that doesn’t hide how pretty she is. You can see the Irish heritage in her pale skin and green eyes, and even wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, she’s got an undeniable grace to her.
“What are you doing here, Dylan?”
There’s no malice in her question, just surprise.
“I, uh, I was...passing by.”
She raises her eyebrows at me, challenging my lame excuse for an explanation, and pulls the door open wider.
