The Sound and the Timbit

Earl Faulkner

The shocking story you are about to read is true. It was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today. But the past, I’ve heard it said, is never dead. It’s not even past.

And so I remember (or perhaps I dreamed, for in dreams there is a clarity that waking life cannot bear) the day we set out from Montreal, that cracked jewel of a city, for Burlington, Ontario, a Toronto exurbia less a town than an interlude between intentions, with one purpose and one only — to impress the in-laws, those twin sphinxes of judgment who spoke in silence and sighed in parables, Rekha’s parents, whom we shall call, because names are anchors and I had none left of my own by the end of it, Mr. and Mrs. Singh.

And Rekha, sweet Rekha, beloved of my middle years and cause of my joy, light of my life and fire of my loins, Rekha who said, “It’ll be fine,” and I, the Printer who drank, I believed her, eddying toward doom like a little bird with no legs at all, one of those sparrows that live their whole lives on the wing and sleep on the wind.

The car had been vacuumed — yes, vacuumed! The smell in the backseat, that ghost of fast food or mildew or childhood regrets, momentarily vanquished, the cassette deck loaded reverently with Kishore Kumar’s Greatest Hits, every song a hymn to a more sensible past, when men did not attempt to win approval from people who believed seafood was a conspiracy.

Niagara Falls was the goal, the myth, the symbol, the roaring metaphor to which I had pinned my fate, cascading ceaselessly like my own hopes over a precipice. We arrived within view — within misting distance, within the realm where a man could weep from the majesty of water and not be questioned.

And then Mrs. Singh said, “This is it?” with a sniff so sharp that it could have sliced through the labyrinthine simulacrum of images, distorted lenses, two-way mirrors and hidden cameras of the foolish, idiotic optimism of any printer who drank. Including the one behind the steering wheel.

She squinted, as if trying to peer into a dimension in which she might not be disappointed. “So many people. Foam hats. Why am I not seeing the Statue of Liberty?”

And Rekha, gentle and futile as the memory of love’s refrain, said, “Mummy, please.”

But the matter was settled. Mummy would not leave the car.

Because why would she, when the golden Saturn with the plastic body offered sanctuary from joy, from crowd, from falling water and metaphors? She clutched her handbag, that monstrous relic, that portable vault containing tissues, vengeance and the memory of every slight ever delivered across three continents. Not to mention a healthy assortment of Halls Mentho Lyptus cough drops, just the ticket for making crinkly wrapper noises in church.

I turned to Mr. Singh, whose windbreaker rustled with ancestral stoicism, and whose humming along to “Roop Tera Mastana” suggested a man lost in the erotic fog of 1960s Bollywood and Sharmila Tagore’s half-lidded desire before the half-open shirt of the legendary Rajesh Khanna in Aradhana, a place and a time where waterfalls were less awash in soulless, avaricious tourism. The Printer ventured, “Daddy? At least you?”

He looked at me with the eyes of a man who had seen too much and hoped for too little. “We arrive together. We leave together.”

We did neither.

They sat. Listening. Not to the roar of the Falls but to its cheap echo against the windshield, which sounded, and I say this with the authority of a broken ink-stained printer of a wretch, like a distant toilet. A toilet flushed by God.

Which reminded Mr. Singh that it was well past time for a spot of urination. Like the song says, go go, Jason Waterfalls.

So we fled to a nearby Tim Hortons, the cathedral of doughnut holes and hot liquid mediocrity. And for one blasphemous moment, there was peace. Mrs. Singh consumed a Timbit as though it were holy communion.

Mr. Singh entered the single-stall washroom. And did not return.

Minutes passed. Civilizations rose and fell. I watched time fold in on itself. Straight out of The Wild One, starring the young Marlon Brando, a motorcycle gang arrived — of course they would — a cloud of exhaust and leather and ennui. Brando tried the washroom door. It was locked. Four minutes later, Lee Marvin knocked. “What’s he doing in there? Writing a novel?”

And in that moment I thought: Yes. He is. He is composing an epic, a toilet odyssey, a bowel elegy.

Twenty-five minutes later Mr. Singh emerged, smiling, zipping his jacket as if reborn. “Very strong hand dryer,” he said. “You’ll enjoy it.”

To judge by Brando’s expression as he entered, he would not.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time, an undertaking that can be expedited exponentially when the outlaws meet the in-laws. Moreover, only when the clock stops does time come to life. It was dancing a jig on my chest as I hustled the family out like a man defusing a bomb made of resentment and yeast.

Then Hamilton. To the seafood restaurant Cathy had recommended. Cathy, whose name fell upon Mrs. Singh’s ears like a curse from a long-forgotten aunt.

“Cathy suggested this?” she asked.

Rekha nodded.

“No. I will not eat where she eats. Not after what she said about my rasam.”

And there it was. The Rasam Incident. Diwali, 1981. The wound would never close.

So we drove for another hour. Past ruins of suburban hope. A shuttered bowling alley. A massage parlour advertising “healing hands” and discounts. A dog grooming place that also sold shawarma.

Eventually, a sign: Delish Fish. I swerved in like a man who had spotted salvation in a neon glow. Call me Ishmael.

And so we sat. The fluorescent lights flickered like dying angels. A pretty waitress came, her smile full of innocence and worthless boyfriends. “What can I get you to start?”

Mr. Singh raised a finger. “Eggs,” he said.

“Sir?”

“I would like eggs. Scrambled. With onions.”

“This is a seafood restaurant, sir.”

“And I am a free man.”

Mrs. Singh: “Next time, we will go to Red Lobster only.”

And I, less a free man than a printer who drank, stirring lukewarm coffee the colour of regret, whispered, “My mother is a fish only.” (Faulkner quote only. I have no idea what it means either.)

There was a wisteria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry, vivid sound before going away. A man in a dirty apron came to the door and emptied a pan of dishwater with a broad gesture, the fading sunlight glinting on the metal belly of a gold Saturn parked by the door. The scattered tea went with the leaves and every day a sunset died.

As I lay dining, Mr. Singh ate his eggs and smacked his lips with a pleasure as vast and as deep and as mystical as the Falls he would not live to see.