IV        Going Home

 

            So two men went home that night with much on their minds, calculations and ideas spinning wildly.  For one, those spinning thoughts had been doing so for many years, an almost constant barrage of what if I’s and maybe’s that infiltrated every time he entered his house.  For the other, a possibility was just opening up, but more to the other story.

            For Pancho, there was a nagging bitterness that clung to him, unable to let its fierce hand go.  Sometimes he was okay with his name, his life, but then when that feeling of naiveté passed, usually once a year, he realized that he couldn’t stand it anymore.  Often that was followed by violent thoughts of what he could do with a chainsaw.  Thankfully no one in his family was all that skilled with machinery so those thoughts never came to reality.

            The deep reality was, however, that no matter how much he wished for his life to change, he had neither the money nor gumption to make anything happen.  So at 6pm that evening in the north part of Riverdale, near the corner of Fairview and Broadview, Pancho arrived at his parent’s home, his home, tired for every reason in the world and hoping he might be able to slide in, eat supper and go to bed.  Of course nothing was that easy in Pancho’s life.  His father was already on him at the door.

            “You look like shit.”

            “Hi Dad and how are you?”
            “You are covered in dirt like a poor Chinese man in a field.  You were never meant to grovel in the dirt.  You should be able to hold your head high, not drag it in the mud.”

            “And what’s the encore?  I can do a scene from “Oliver”.  ‘Please sir, I want some more.’”

            “I don’t understand you.”

            “Smartest thing you’ve said.”

            In the dining room, the food was already waiting for him.  Steamed rice, barbequed pork in sauce, a week’s worth of vegetables lined the table.  His mother, clad in a floral dress, head lowered to the table, was already sitting, patient in her silence.  His father’s chair at the head of the table, a grand oak chair with a high back with very elaborate carvings illustrating various conflicts in China’s history sat ready, his own chair to the right of his father, small plastic by design, remarkably inferior.  Pancho sat down, realizing how much shorter his chair really was and began grabbing food.  His mother ate in silence, rarely lifting an eye to meet him, his father sat sternly at the head.  Finally when he finished, he went to rise from the table when his father’s voice rose first:

            “I have made it so everyone can eat at the table.  I have made my keep for the sake of the family.”

            “Thanks Dad.”

            “Someday you will have to make your keep.”

            “Are you saying I have to leave?”

            “No I cannot do that.  You are ill prepared and poor.  You would not survive a day without me.”

            “Thanks for the vote of confidence.  I could do just well on my own.”

            “No I do not think so.  I think you would fail.  Now leave and clean yourself.  You smell like rotten garbage.”

            Rotten garbage was exactly the first smell that Byron smelled as he entered his apartment.  “What the hell is that smell coming from?”

            As he climbed the stairs to the second landing and the majority of the apartment, the smell increased in intensity and would have knocked him out and made for a beautiful death scene had a hand not reached over the railing and placed a clothespin on his nose.  At the top of the stairs, Byron surveyed the surroundings:  a heaping pile of trash next to the fridge with fruit flies lingering around, calling his apartment home, a TV blaring with the sounds of guns and alien languages and a roommate completely oblivious to anything going on except the clothespin on his nose.

            “You know, taking out the trash would make these clothespins obsolete.”

            “But that would require movement of which I don’t feel is necessary.  Do you ever see the people on the starships take out the trash?”

            Well maybe if your existence were nearly as important as a starship captain instead of a call centre operator at Rogers, garbage would be a rather meaningless job, Byron thought.  Stepping over clothes well past its date and a couch littered with bar wrappers and Coke cans, Byron got a good look at the man who was his partner in crime.  Metal rimmed glasses, hand always near or around his mouth (which by the way never stopped drooling), beer belly holding up a shirt full of food stains, Byron could not help but think that there had to be more to his life.

            “You know I could use some help keeping this place up.  The landlord could stop by and give us shit.”

            “Well until that day, my friend, my life will have no meaning whatsoever.  Now keep quiet.  I’m watching Battlestar.”

            And with that, Byron walked into his bedroom, his hiding space from the world and at this moment, his bomb shelter from the rest of the apartment.  Flopping upon his quilted bedspread, a present from his parents when he moved, rustic and old fashioned, he almost felt like giving up and leaving, just catching a bus away from Toronto, away from this crazy city.  He had almost gotten up to reach for the phone to call his parents when his wallet fell out of his pants.  Reaching down to pick it up, he realized that he had forgotten about the phone number waiting patiently inside.  He picked up the receiver, took out the number and dialed.

            “Hi, is this Gary?”

            Byron swore this would be the last time he would smell the garbage again. 

In a house not really that faraway, lying on his bed, Pancho stared at the ceiling, fluorescent stars hovering above, a place to reach for that had existed since his youth.  He raised his hand to touch them, too far from his semi-comatose body.  Somedays I do feel like rotten garbage, he thought.