I Meant To Tell Her

I Meant To Tell Her....

Some country star with an irritating nasal twang is lamenting about dead dogs, broken down trucks and cheatin’ women when I regain consciousness.

At first, nothing makes sense. How did I get here, held in place by the seatbelt across my chest?

Piece by piece, my scrambled mind puts events in order. I remember having a few beers at the hockey rink, then walking to my car in the blizzard. The snow was swirling like I was wading in a snow-globe. Next I’m driving down the back road, avoiding the inevitable check stops on the main highway.

What comes next is foggy. I remember a white wraith materializing in front of the car, its ghostly image sending chills through my body. All of a sudden, the car’s in a skid, going end over end, rolling over and over like a vehicular Magic Bullet.

My head feels like I’ve been checked with a cheap high stick in the hockey game. When I realize the car’s come to rest on the passenger side window in the ditch, my brain begins to recalibrate.

My head is heavy, but I manage to lift it. The greenish glow from the dashboard is enough to see my open bag of chips has spilled onto the passenger side door. Piles of broken glass are everywhere, even on my coat sleeve.

My right arm, bent where it shouldn’t bend, drapes over the gear shift. The grotesque sight makes me puke and the movement rachets up the agony. Each breath is an ice pick through my ribs.

The air bag must have broken my nose because now I’m a mouth breather. My tongue notices teeth missing; they must be in the vomit mixing with the chips on the door. Are my eyes watering from pain, the cold, or am I crying? I look down and see my tears joining the blood dripping from my nose.

My cell phone dangling from the charging cord slowly twists and untwists, suspended in the footwell. My eyes fix on the dance.

Why didn’t I trade in this old car for one that would send out a signal in case of an accident? I mean, I didn’t have the money last year, but now it’s different. Or at least it could have been.

I grit my teeth, fighting the pain when I take as deep a breath as my broken ribs permit. I will my hand to move toward the phone. Finally, it does, but only enough to slide off the gear shift and drop to hang in mid air. Slowly swinging back and forth, each moment of the pendulum grinds bone fragments in searing explosions of pain.

I stretch my fingers. Less than a foot; just a few inches, but the phone might as well be in the trunk with my hockey bag.

How long was I knocked out? Whatever warmth was in car, has seeped away through the metal and out the windows. Ten below this morning, but when the storm started, the thermometer went into freefall. The minus thirty forecast didn’t even include the wind chill.

One lone headlight stares forlornly at the heavy flakes.

I strain to hear a vehicle crunching through the snow, but no sane person will be driving in these conditions. This road is lonely at the best of times. I start making promises to every god I know to bring someone my way. I don't want to be alone.

I can’t help but think about my life, just in case this is it.

We moved to Canada when my twin sister and I were babies. Mom and Dad never talked about where we came from. Whenever we asked, they’d say something like, “Oh, just a wide spot on the road. Not much, really.” Then they’d change the subject.

My earliest memories are of packing boxes piled in the living room. It seemed as soon as I made new friends, Mom would start packing again. It didn’t take me long to learn not to bother with other kids. I had my sister and that was enough.

Across the country, from one province to the next, we made rental houses our home. We sank into worn cushions of second-hand sofas and slept in beds that creaked and wobbled when we turned over.

Dad always found work, though. Usually as a janitor. Or maybe a clerk in the convenience store. Sometimes both.

Mom’s job was to take care of us and there were always other kids in the house. These days, we’d call it a daycare.

When Jennifer and I started junior high, Mom and Dad finally had enough of living like nomads. We unpacked, threw out the packing boxes, and settled in Regina.

Mom, a drill sergeant without a uniform, ruled the house. I know she loved us, but there was no bend in her spine.

As far back as I remember, we had chores. Chores that grew and multiplied as we got older. Looking back, I understand she needed help around the house and with all the kids she took in, but I hated responsibilities that took me away from playing with my toys or biking around Wascana Lake or, well, just being a boy. I didn’t want to do the tasks she posted on the fridge. I argued and slammed doors, but she never stopped putting the list on the fridge for Jennifer and me. My twin sister, on the other hand, toed the line. She’d hop right to ‘em, and be finished, back to reading her books while I was still procrastinating and goofing off. I was the poster child for Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

Dad was never without a job, but when he had time to spend at home, he was the fun one. We’d wrestle in the living room; play catch in the back yard; build model cars. Just me and Dad. Jennifer spent her time doing homework and reading. She’s a brainiac. Not to say that I’m not; I just didn’t pay much attention to school.

These days, I don’t see Jennifer as often as I should. In fact, I haven’t seen or spoken to her since Dad died.

I should make the effort. But my life is characterized by not getting around to stuff. When I lived at home, it drove mom crazy. When I got married, my wife shook her head and joked about it at first. Eventually she got fed up and left me.

As a result, it’s just me. Here I am, stuck in my car, can’t move, hurting like a son of a bitch. It’s -33 with snow drifting in the broken windshield, and no one is wondering where I am.

Dad died a couple of months ago. Jennifer and I had been taking turns sitting with him in the hospital, but I was there when he died. Before the end, he told me a story. He should have told my sister; she would have done something.

The oxygen catheter under Dad’s nose bothered him so he kept pulling it off. I kept putting it back until he feebly pushed my hand away.

“Stop it, Jason. I’ve got something I have to say, and I don’t want this thing on.”

He paused, trying to catch his breath.

“I meant to tell you kids about this, but I wanted to make sure it was safe.”

“Safe, Dad?”

He didn’t answer. “I was afraid we were being watched.”

“What are you talking about Dad?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why we’ve never gone back to England? Why we moved so often? Why no relatives visited?”

I nodded, “Yes. I asked you plenty of times.”

He struggled to answer. “We left our life behind. You and your sister were still babies when your mom and I left the old country.”

I nodded and waited for him to continue.

“But there were a lot of things we never told you. Too many things we kept from you.

“We changed our names. We didn’t tell anyone where we were going. We couldn’t let anyone know where we went.”

His skin was so thin his veins showed blue just beneath the surface, a sad contrast to the strong, meaty hands I remembered. I gave his hand a gentle squeeze, “Our names?”

He closed his eyes, maybe to picture the past, and told me the story.

My dad, the janitor and convenience store clerk, helped fence the tons, yes tons, of diamonds and gold stolen in the Brinks MAT robbery in 1983. He wasn’t in the warehouse when it was stolen but helping after the fact made him as guilty as if he’d loaded the loot into the getaway van.

The rest of the gang were arrested and ended up in jail, but Dad managed to get out of the country before the cops caught up to him. We landed in Canada.

When he finished, he opened his eyes, tears trickling down his temples into the sparse white hair. I remember when it was thick and fell over his eyes when we bent to glue those models together.

“I wish I would have treated your mom better. I never told her the real reason we had to leave everything in the middle of the night. I just told her that I’d crossed the wrong people. I let her live in fear, Jason. No one would have killed us, son. I just didn’t want to go to jail.

“I wish I’d told her the truth; bought her nice things. I always acted like we didn’t have the money, but Jason, that wasn’t true. Money, plenty of it, was sitting. Waiting.”

He shifted, trying to find a comfortable position. I plumped a pillow for him and found a warm blanket from the warming cabinet down the hall. When he settled, he continued, “Enough time has passed for you and your sister to live a great life.”

All the talking exhausted him. I waited for him to catch his breath. It made him cough. A weak, wet cough. I gently wiped his lips. “Would you like a drink, Dad?”

He shook his head. “Jason, there’s a bank account, in Switzerland, that I’ve never told anyone about. You and your sister. It’s yours. I wrote down the bank account number and it’s on a piece of paper in the recipe book your mom always used. The one with the red cover. It’s just a bunch of numbers. A telephone number. A bank account number.

“You and your sister have access to the account. Call the number. Your sister will figure out the rest.”

I waited for more but either there was no more, or he’d run out of time. A few minutes later, he was gone.

I meant to tell my sister, but what with one thing and another, I didn’t get around to it. And then I pissed her off and she didn’t want to talk to me. I figured she’d get over it, like she always had, and then we’d call that number.

Damn it’s cold. The car, on its side, is buffeted by the wind. Snow sifts in the broken windshield and window at my shoulder.

I meant to call her at Christmas, sort of a Christmas present. But then I didn’t. Went skiing and it kind of slipped my mind.

Mom was right. Someday, she said, you’re going to wish you didn’t put things off.

My blood, as it drips down my arm and off the ends of my fingers is forming a stalagmite on the door, slowly growing taller. It reminds me of Michelangelo’s painting The Creation of Adam. I saw it on a high school trip to Italy. Why I remember it, I don’t know. But seeing my finger reach out – reminds me of that painting.

Jennifer and I stood, heads bent back, mouths open. We were jostled by hundreds of others, also awed by Michelangelo’s masterpiece. I think of Jennifer now and know Dad’s secret hoard could have made her life so much better.

I really meant to tell her.

The dash lights dim but the radio’s still playing. It’s easy listening stuff now, not that country shit. Maybe the battery is running down because it’s not as loud as it was.

My eyes keep wanting to close. I don’t suppose it matters. If I look outside, all I can see is snow. No point in looking to see if anyone is coming to get me. Only a fool would be out on the road in this weather. Yep. Me. I snort an attempt at laughter and am rewarded by another onslaught of pain. I fight back the urge to puke again, my mouth filling with saliva.

As long as I stay perfectly still my shoulder and arm don’t hurt too bad, so I keep my breath shallow. Little pants. Every once in a while, I have to take a deeper gulp and curse at the agony.

It’s exhausting keeping my head up, so I let it fall forward and rest on my chest.

I jerk awake at the sound of something outside. I open my eyes in time to see the wraith reappear. A Snowy Owl, her ghostly shape peering intently through the broken windshield, ruffles her feathers and folds her wings. She seems content to watch me.

The radio died and the only sounds I hear now are the gurgles of my breath and the wind moaning across the prairie. A layer of snow weaseling its way into the car blankets me.

I'm not alone anymore. The owl is good company.

I’ve stopped shivering, I notice. In fact, I feel warm. It’s quite peaceful so I close my eyes.

Maybe I’ll take a nap.