31
TRUE NORTH | Part Eight
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Conclusion
It was the summer before his junior year of high school. Ollie was fifteen -- sixteen in a week -- and the only thing on his mind was getting his Driver's License. He spent his summer evenings at hockey practice; his summer days watching TV, playing on the Internet, and baby-sitting Henry, then eight years old.
In the living room, Ollie sat in front of a fan, half-watching in Days of Our Lives, when Henry came in the house. The boy walked slowly, deliberately, over to his brother and stood in front of the TV.
"Move," Ollie commanded.
He didn't budge. He stared towards his brother, but didn't seem to be looking at him.
"Why are you such a little freak?"
Henry walked over to his brother and tugged on his shirt. The boy was completely silent and in shock.
Ollie immediately got up off the couch, his tone completely transformed. "Henry, what's wrong?
Henry continued to pull on Ollie's clothes, and led him out of the house without a word. On the back porch, Mike, Henry's best friend, was sobbing.
"What is going on? Is Mike hurt?"
"No," Henry said. "Just come with me." These were the only words he would speak for the rest of that day.
Henry led him into the woods. Once they made it past the wall of willow trees, Ollie knew what his brother needed to show him.
In the distance, he saw some alien shape hanging off of True North. It dangled, and swung back and forth a bit, though there wasn't even a hint of wind.
As they got closer, Ollie realized what the shape was -- it was a person, a man, and he was strung up to the tree house by his neck. With that realization, Ollie broke free of Henry's grip and ran towards the treehouse.
When he was about fifteen feet away, he finally looked at the man's face.
It was his father.
His father had left a note.
Ollie pressed his mother for answers after the police, the reporters, and the body were all gone from their property. She insisted that his father's death had been an accident, but Ollie wasn't stupid. He asked her incessantly for the note - he knew there had to be one - and finally, instead of denying its existence, his mother let slip, "You're too young to read it."
It was the day of the funeral. The widow June North held a reception at their house for family and friends. Ollie, forced to wear a suit he usually hated but unphased by it, dodged the family's priest -- they were Catholic then -- and avoided his uncles and cousins of his father's side, the True Norths of the family.
Using the reception as a distraction, Ollie snuck into his parents' bedroom and searched for the note. He knew that she must have kept it. The same masochistic need that drove him to find it had forced her to keep it.
He looked in her dresser drawers, in the nightstand, under the pillows -- finally, he found it between the mattress and the box spring.
There were three envelopes. One addressed to June, one to Henry, and one to --
There it was. A plain white envelope with one word written on it, printed in his father's handwriting --
Weak-kneed, he sat down on his parents' bed. He loosened his tie and fingered the envelope. It was already opened -- by his mother, no doubt. Read only by her and then, certainly, by the police.
He imagined taking the note out, unfolding it, and reading it over. It began:
I know what you are, Oliver.
He chose not to continue the thought. He knew he could not make his father into a monster, despite his best efforts. It would've been much easier to mourn a father he hated -- who'd hated him -- but David North, calm, kind, and appropriately stern, was a good man and a good father.
In his mind, he opened the letter again. This draft read:
I love you, Oliver. I'm so sorry.
It offered no explanation, just an apology. Ollie knew it wasn't his fault, despite his Catholic conscience and attraction to self-blame. He knew it was money or marital problems, perhaps both. Or a hidden depression that finally overcame his father. Or it could've been a secret life that David had kept well-hidden from his family, a secret so big it drove him to suicide. The boy chose not to speculate any further.
He started crying for the first time since he found his father's body. He sat on the edge of his parents bed, the envelopes still in his hand, and sobbed.
He couldn't bring himself to actually read the note. Not then. Not ever.
There were a few boards still nailed to the tree, one or two which had once made up the ladder up to True North. Ollie still remembered the day his Uncle Rob came and took it down, not long after his father had died.
Ollie passed the tree, with Chris, as they strolled through the woods, wasting time before dinner. The hour or so that Chris has been at the North house had gone smoothly. His family greeted the new addition warmly, especially James, sniffing and licking, welcoming him to their home. Both his mom and Henry had been quite friendly and uncharacteristically normal. The four of them easily slipped into a conversation standing in the kitchen as June finished the meal. Ollie had brought his boyfriend home for Thanksgiving and it was no big deal. This was too much for him, and he had to escape from the house with his gay lover, lest it become too mundane.
There was something about having Chris there with him, at his home, in Vermont, out in the back woods, that made Ollie swell with guilt. Everything was going well, but he still felt awful about bringing him there. But still, it was a surprise to Ollie when, no long into their walk, he found himself blurting out: "My dad didn't die in a fire."
They stopped walking. Chris looked puzzled.
As detached as he could be, he revealed: "He killed himself. My dad killed himself."
Ollie gazed down at the ground, kicking around some dead leaves and pine needles. "I don't talk about it. We don't talk about it. My family, I mean. But I wanted to tell you, so you would know." He had planned to stop there, but he didn't. He found himself talking, about his father, about True North, about times before and after his death. He delivered a monologue for ten full minutes, never once pausing, never once looking at Chris. The whole time, he still stared down, relieved, overwhelmed, closer to the verge of tears than he'd been in ages. "I didn't mean to lie. I just didn't know how to--"
"Its OK, Ollie." Chris touched his boyfriend's arm, forcing him to look up, his eyes were filled with the threat of tears. And in the aftermath of truth, Ollie saw in his face, for once, no pity for him -- just compassion. Chris led him to a fallen tree nearby and, in the crisp autumn air, they sat, holding gloved hands in silence for a long while.
"Ollie," Chris finally said, "I have something to -- something to say." Ollie looked up at him, curiously. Chris immediately faltered. "Shit. This is so not the right time for this."
"For what?"
Chris ignored the question, and began talking to himself. "But there's never going to be right time, a perfect moment, is there?"
"What?" Ollie was puzzled.
His hand toyed with something inside his jacket. "I'm so bad with this kind of stuff."
"What are you--? Are you -- breaking up with me?"
"What?"
"Oh, God. You are. You're dumping me. On Thanksgiving."
"No! God no, Ollie! I'm not breaking up with you! I want to ask you to, um, to --" He dropped whatever he was fumbling with in his jacket. "Shit!"
Chris quickly fells to his knees and frantically searched for what he had dropped. He found it and hid it in his palm before Ollie could see what it was.
He shifted. On one knee, he looked up at Ollie. Suddenly serious, suddenly confident, Chris revealed the contents of his hand.
It was a ring.
On their way out of the woods, they kissed, under the willow trees, behind the house. Not far from True North. But far enough.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/31/05 at 7:04 PM | Comments (4)
Tagged: True North
25
This Train Don't Stop There Anymore
Yesterday, when I got home from work, I was gripped with the sudden and immediate desire to finally watch Before Sunset, which I picked up on DVD used a month or two ago at Blockbuster. So I did. Now I'm not a big Ethan Hawke fan, but 1995's Before Sunrise -- which spawned this 2004 sequel -- is one of my favorite films. Top Five, perhaps. A few years back, I was excited to hear that auteur Richard Linklater was making a follow-up to such a great flick, but for some reason I avoided it when it was in theaters. I avoided it when it came out on DVD, too. I avoided it even after owning the damn thing for over a month. Despite hearing overwhelmingly good buzz about Sunset, I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I was afraid that revisiting the whole affair might just ruin it.
Was I right? Fifteen or so hours after the end credits began to roll, I'm still haunted by the film. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Overall, it affected me, perhaps more than the first one. I found myself both enthralled and disgusted, pleased and disappointed, by the whole thing, and afterwards, I spiralled into a small sort of funk that I now teeter back on the edge of, even as I type. I loved this film. I hated this film. I was shaken by this film.
I am a romantic. Try as I might not to be, I am. That's why the original is one of my favorite films. I am one of those melodramatic fools, neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it... And the follow-up was just as sweet and passionate as the first. Seeing Before Sunrise in high school, back in 1996, was important. It was one of those rare formative films, one that actually, truly shaped the kind of lover I would become, the kind of love I longed for. So much so that everytime I am on a bus or train, I fantasize about what might be. Every single time.
There are moments I love, and there are moments when I love the whole damn movie. The chemistry between Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Delpy (Celine) is still there. It's palpaple. When they are sitting on the bench at the film's midpoint, gazing at each other, my heart ached for them to touch, to kiss, to be together. In the car, as Celine reaches out to Jesse, and they almost connect... it's electric. It's maddening. When Delpy dances at the end, I want so badly to be heterosexual, to be Jesse, to have her. But, ultimately, watching two thirty-somethings carry on this way, after nine years apart, fills me with a great sadness. Why, when the film ends on such an ambigious, but hopeful, note? Because I don't want that to be my sad, silly, romantic future. Will I, in my thirties, still be chasing the same romantic ideals as I do now? Will I be past all the dramatics yet, happy, settled, in love? Or will I be unfullfilled, chasing after one foolish notion or another? There lies the film's flaw -- nine years later, I don't want to relate to these two. And yet I still did. This, ultimately, is why Before Sunset shook me.
Posted on 10/25/05 at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)Tagged: Film & TV , Love Life , Review
And That's Terrible.
Tagged: Pop Culture
22
TRUE NORTH | Part Seven
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Seven
« Previous (Part Six) | Next (Conclusion) »
The cart was a good one, new. It didn't have a squeaky or crooked wheel, and it glided around the store without a single jerk or sound. Ollie cursed his luck for picking the one uninteresting, non-defective cart in the supermarket.
His mother needed cranberry sauce, marshmallows, french-fried onions, milk, and wine. She's asked him to go alone, but he begged for company, afraid to return to the place he'd slaved away at for four years during high school and early college. He always felt something between pride and guilt when he returned to the store. He worried that, in their eyes, he was the big, bad college boy, returning to rub his success in the noses of the lifers and high school kids.
Ollie lazily pushed the cart behind his mother, as she slowly browsed the shelves of silver cans with colorful labels. She quickly placed a can of green beans in the basket, and with her back to him once again, said, "So Henry tells me you're thinking of marrying Chris."
He stopped the cart immediately, in the middle of the aisle. She kept walking, browsing the shelves.
"You two plan this? He said you'd said the same thing."
"That's funny."
"Hilarious."
"Well, are you?"
"Mom, I am not having this conversation while we shop for marshmallows."
"We've already got marshmallows, honey. Now we're onto the cranberry sauce."
He couldn't do much else but sigh. "Why do you always do this?"
"Don't be such a Drama Queen, Oliver." It was her new word. She'd used it exactly three times since she'd picked him up at the bus station. She must've started taking notes while watching Will and Grace. Watching that and Rosie O'Donnell were his mother's idea of supporting his homosexuality. She liked Ellen, too -- both of her sitcoms -- before she was cancelled. "The grocery store's as good a place as any to have a heart-to-heart."
She was into having important conversations in odd places. Some people get off on having sex in the kitchen or in public; Ollie's mother liked to air revelations in places where people were likely to catch them. Sometimes she was nonchalant. Other times she was intense. She was always embarrassing.
"Not right now, mom," he said. "We'll talk about this later."
As if he'd planned it, they were interrupted by the store's intercom. "Attention shoppers," someone announced. "The store will be closing in fifteen minutes at one o'clock. At this time, please make your final selections and bring them to the front registers. Thank you, and happy Thanksgiving."
"Shit. It's almost one?" Ollie said.
"Well, that's good. Should get back home anyway. The turkey's in the oven, and I don't trust your brother to watch it."
"Chris is going to be here any minute!"
He ran for the wine and she grabbed some frozen peas. They met at the front and then stood in silence, impatient in the long checkout line. Ollie avoided eye contact with the familiar faces that worked there. He picked up a copy of TV Guide and flipped past the bright, glossy pages right to the ugly, newsprint program listings. For some reason, just as he noted a Thanksgiving marathon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he started talking to her again.
"I am thinking about it, mom." He threw the magazine on the belt with the groceries.
"Thinking about what, honey?" she said, barely glancing up from her issue of some women's mag.
"Marrying him. Asking him to marry me. Civil Union me. Whatever."
She looked up, a blank stare, then threw the magazine on the belt with the TV Guide. Her face filled with emotion as his revelation sunk in.
"I'm thinking about it --just thinking --but I --"
"Oh, Oliver," she gushed. She hugged him tight. "I didn't think you were actually -- oh, this is so exciting!"
As they both became aware of their surroundings, and the eyes of their fellow customers, their hug grew awkward and loose.
"I'm so--so--" she stumbled.
"I know."
"Oh, damn it. I forgot the milk." She broke their embrace and ran off towards the dairy cooler.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/22/05 at 1:16 PM | Comments (5)
Tagged: True North
21
TRUE NORTH | Part Six
True North | A Story By Patrick Raymond
Part Six
« Previous (Part Five) | Next (Part Seven) »
He was six when his father built the tree house. During the sweltering month of July, young Ollie spent his days with his pregnant mother -- at the local pool, the air-conditioned supermarket, or at the doctor's office -- and his evenings and weekends in the woods with his father. Ollie would play and pretend to help while his dad worked away up in the tree.
Ollie wandered off one day, not far from the construction site. He played under the willow trees, which formed a wall between their back yard and the woods. He played with sticks and rocks, and sang to himself.
He was poking around with a stick, exploring, when he discovered the thing under the tree.
The beast, with mangy fur and beady eyes, starred up at him. A blank stare. The squirrel was covered in blood and still. Ollie knew it was dead.
He dropped his stick and ran back towards the tree house.
"Dad!" Ollie cried up to him. "Dad! There's a -- a thing, in the willows!"
"A thing?"
"A dead thing. A squirrel."
His father came down from the tree and scooped the boy up into his lap.
"Dead things can't hurt you, Ollie. It's just a squirrel. It probably died -- probably died for a reason."
The boy asked questions, about the squirrel, about death. David did his best to answer. As soon as his father stopped talking and took him off his lap, Ollie began to whimper some more. He couldn't help it. "Can we bury it, dad?"
"Come on, Ollie," his father said. Ollie tried to remember the voice as angry or frustrated. But he knew, as always, it was calm and firm. "It's just a dead squirrel. Toughen up, OK? Be a True North."
True North. He'd heard the expression countless times in his youth, and it always made him giggle. The words had a silly sound when strung together, and their meaning eluded him. He didn't know what a True North was, aside from being the name of his grandfather's fishing boat. He knew it had some deep, serious meaning, a proud meaning held dear by all the men in the North family. But Ollie always knew, before and after he was six years old, that he never was, nor never could be, a True North.
He stopped crying as soon as his father used that dreaded phrase. He pulled the bottom of his t-shirt up, wiped his eyes and nose, watching his father climb back up into the tree. He examined his father's face, clenched and sweaty, as he pounded nails into the fort.
It was in that moment that he decided - for his grandpa, his father, and his unborn little brother - to name his tree house "True North."
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Posted on 10/21/05 at 12:21 PM | Comments (4)
Tagged: True North