Growing Up Next to the Mental Read online

  Oh, ha, ha.

  “Just a coincidence, right?” I replied.

  “Right on. Anyway, you’re welcome.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Savin’ your hide. Again.”

  Again?

  “Whaddaya mean again . . . Mr. Monchy?” There. I said it.

  He looked surprised, all right. But not shocked, like I’d imagined.

  “Well I’ll be,” he said. “Took ya long enough. How long ya holdin’ that one in your back pocket?”

  I had more.

  “C’mon,” I said, sarcastically rehashing his own words of incredulity from our last and first conversation. “You can’t be that shocked that I knows yer name. We’ve been neighbours for a while, ya know. Goin’ on eight years.”

  “Touché,” he said, turning to march away.

  “Wait,” I said, cautiously getting up with eyes peeled for white vans. “It is Monchy, right? Gerald or Gerry.”

  He stopped, slumped, and sighed with a look to the heavens.

  “So ya did a little homework on me. I’m flattered.”

  He continued his departure and I, against better judgment, followed like a stubborn lost puppy a dozen or so feet safely in tow. It wasn’t till we neared the far end of the field where it sloped down to the haphazard maze of old hospital structures that he stopped again to look back.

  “Where ya think you’re goin’?”

  “As far as I can,” I said.

  “Careful what ya wish for,” he laughed again, this time more reserved. I got the double entendre with my name, but the rest went right over my head.

  “It’s a saying,” he said. “It means you might not end up liking what you get or wanted. Get it?”

  I did now, but it was weird getting an education in idioms from a mental patient.

  No offence, but I’d grown up under the distinct impression that when it came to intellect, they had none. That some could be smart or even brilliant flew in the face of everything I’d ever seen or heard about the Mental.

  But given the coherency of our banter to date, I could only conclude he had a little more going on upstairs than the majority of his oft-zoned-out roomies. That didn’t preclude him from being insane, by any means. On the contrary, it may have increased the odds.

  Still, as naturally volatile as the Mental was, I couldn’t see them letting a killer—regardless of his rehabilitative progress—roam as free and unescorted as the now-confirmed Mr. Monchy.

  I wanted to just flat out ask him if he’d ever killed anyone—to “put it to ’im,” as they say in the news business. But I feared upsetting the bit of progress that had been made to date.

  So I decided I was good for now and forged on into unfamiliar territory, just tagging along until he or someone else told me not to.

  The moment we were off the field, his march morphed into a slow, easy stroll as he lowered and tucked the flag stick under his armpit like he was preparing for a joust.

  “He who marches out of step hears another drum,” he said half under his breath. “Got that from a book.”

  We went up one narrow laneway, down another, in between several Sanicare dumpsters, and past a large door kept ajar by an empty milk crate.

  Steam, and loud fans to reduce it, were on blast as we passed what was obviously the busy hospital kitchen kicking into gear for the supper hour.

  We turned one more corner before coming upon another, smaller but thicker steel door with a small square window high in the middle. He twisted the butt end of the flag stick down into a bucket of sand that helped keep it upright against the brick wall.

  “They won’t let me take in inside anymore. It’s always knocking over stuff.”

  He pried open the thick, heavy door, reaching down to pocket a small rock that had kept it open wide enough just to get his fingers in.

  “End of the line, kid. For real this time,” he said. “Maybe next time you get the grand tour. I’m sure you can find your way back.”

  I nodded without really hearing what he said on account of the wheels grinding out a plan in my head. A plan that could finally get me inside the only part of the Mental I’d never been—the dreaded basement.

  Getting into and being run out of the polished hallways of the administration and doctors’ offices—that was easy peasy and just a summer holiday’s pastime when the staff were as lazy and oblivious as the warm, breezy days.

  Accessing and exploring the “restricted access—staff only” areas required some inside help, which, until now, I hadn’t had.

  15

  I can’t say precisely when my preoccupation with breaching security at the Mental began.

  I suspect it was simply a snowballing desire to see the inner workings of the freaky place I’d lived next to since birth. Or maybe it was just because we weren’t allowed.

  Like the field, right?

  Either way, it had become an obsession now that a door had literally opened a crack.

  The plan was pretty simple in and of itself: wait till Monchy was up in the field, then beat it down to that door, taking care not to disturb the little rock that he’d left for himself.

  It was foolproof except for one problem: no Monchy and no rock. He’d suddenly gone AWOL or something. No sign of him for days, then weeks.

  Meanwhile, spring thaw came and went, introducing summer unusually early that year, which was music to the ears of the people putting off the ’77 Canada Games. It was all anyone was talking about or going to, dominating the news cycle and pushing stories normally destined for the front pages to the back ones, if they made the cut at all.

  Fickle bunch, the media.

  And I was proud as a peacock with one of my older sisters playing on the hometown Newfoundland field hockey team—having honed those and her athlete-of-the-year soccer skills down in, you guessed it, the Mental Field.

  It seemed the only place not buzzing with some kind of Games interest was the Mental.

  It was almost as if the place had become jealous of the attention it wasn’t getting when we woke one morning to news that it had yielded yet another resident, found in the park by an early-morning jogger.

  Morbidly typical scenario, I’m afraid.

  As weird as it seems, I almost got sick.

  I half-urged on the spot, drawing curious gazes from all parts of the kitchen. Thank God nothing came up, and they all carried on as if they were normal.

  I, however, had to get out of there. Bathroom to puke what I’d been holding in, first. Park, second.

  Must be Monchy, I thought as I pedalled hard downhill until I spotted the telltale emergent commotion right across from the perpetually vandalized, urine-stinking Metrobus shelter.

  Could be Monchy, I thought again, second-guessing my initial conclusion.

  His absence from the field had caused us all to speculate as to his fate. He hadn’t seemed like the suicide type, but then, what type was that? There were unpublished stories every day about people unexpectedly ending their own lives.

  Could it really get that bad? I guess they thought so. Of course, it can always be argued that those who commit suicide weren’t in their right, rationale minds to begin with.

  I didn’t think that of Monchy, though, to the point where I had myself believing that he must’ve had good reason, if in fact it was him.

  Or maybe it was just some kind of freak accident.

  “They had to cut him down from that big maple,” I overheard a TV reporter tell his cameraman outside the police tape, pointing to the tree just down over the hill from the road.

  So much for the accident theory.

  I sat back on my bike, arms folded, observing every individual person going about their various duties at such a scene. From the reporters and the ambulance attendants to
the firefighters and the abnormally high number of Newfoundland Constabulary officers, many of them just standing around trying to look busy while holding the scene.

  “They’re bringing him up now,” the same reporter yelled to his colleague.

  The heads of rubberneckers (guilty as charged) strained for a glimpse of death as a handful of firemen carried the bagged body up the hill in a bright orange rescue basket.

  An overly grim Cap’n Mike led the way, helping raise the stretcher over the fence toward the waiting ambulance. He caught sight of me at about the same time I saw the body bag side-on. I knew then that it couldn’t possibly be the six-foot-plus Monchy.

  The relief was incredible. Everything was okay again, except for the poor soul being hove in the ambulance.

  “You shouldn’t be down here, Wish,” said Cap’n Mike, removing his helmet and wiping his brow as he approached from the other side of the yellow tape.

  “It’s all right, Mom knows.”

  “Why don’t you come with me. I’ll give you a lift back up to your place.”

  “Whaddaya mean? I got my bike. I can ride back later.”

  His long, speechless look into my eyes caused my heart to drop. I didn’t know why, it was just the feeling that came over me.

  “C’mon anyway. Gotta get something from my vehicle,” he said, lifting the tape up and over his head and leading me to his little red and white pickup.

  “What’s going on? What is it? Who is it?”

  He waited till we were out of others’ listening range before assuming that familiar squat-down position in front of me.

  “It’s Rodney.”

  His words echoed in my head like the moment just before the gas knocked me out at the Janeway. I felt like I couldn’t stand up, or didn’t know how to all of a sudden.

  For a moment, time seemed to stand still—like the pause between the moment you suffer a deep cut and when the blood starts letting.

  I was pretty good at not wearing my heart on my sleeve in public, of masking whatever I was really feeling. But the unequivocal confirmation that Rodney Carter, my lifelong neighbour, classmate, bully, and yes, friend, was dead—had actually killed himself—unleashed emotions I never even knew I had, and I began crying almost uncontrollably.

  Not fear-of-the-Janeway crying, but deeper, involuntarily emotional bawling.

  Cap’n Mike immediately pulled me in for a hug.

  I resisted, turning to look for Rodney, but he was already gone.

  He was really gone. I couldn’t believe it.

  No dream. No joke.

  16

  “What I wants to know is what the hell that child was doing at the Waterford in the first place!”

  That pretty much summed up the tone and tenor of Open Line the next morning, and for weeks after Rodney hanged himself in the park.

  It took a while before I could bluntly say those words to myself, let alone hear them from others.

  To their credit, the justice and health ministers were out in front of it from the get-go, saying all the legally safe and right things publicly.

  “This is clearly a very, very difficult time for everyone—family, friends, staff at the hospital,” went the spiel from both, with slight variations. “But rest assured there will be a full investigation into how this young man came to be at an adult psychiatric institution. Beyond that, and for privacy issues, we just can’t comment further.”

  Young man? He’d turned all of thirteen the day before he died, according to the brass plate affixed to the side of his sky-blue metal casket at Caul’s.

  I admonished myself for once believing you could wake the dead at wakes, but as I blessed and lowered myself onto the plush red cushion kneeler in front of him, I really wished we could.

  “Jesus, who did your hair and makeup?” I’d ask, trying to lighten the mood.

  He really didn’t look anything like him. Too peaceful, too motionless, too dead. Too much like buddy in the river, save for the pose and his clothes. I had never seen Rodney in a suit, and I almost laughed aloud at the thought of him approaching the pearly gates in that.

  I allowed my mind to wander all over the place like that to avoid darker thoughts that kept trying to pry their way into my head. Like whether any of this, in any way, was my fault.

  Should I have told someone, for example, that he might be getting a rough ride at the Janeway? Would that have made any difference? And what about that time with the gun upstairs in his parents’ room? People were always saying you have to watch for signs, but I didn’t speak a word about that.

  I never would’ve told my parents, but I did consider telling Cap’n Mike. Even middle brother. But I was just too scared Rodney would find out. It would somehow get back to his parents, who’d punish him, and then he’d kill me.

  Guilt and paranoia can be awful, mind-bending things.

  I glanced down at his hands. The same ones that made the fists that kept me on edge most of my life were now white and clasped on his chest, inset with the wooden rosary beads given to all of us at our first Holy Communion together at the Basilica.

  I took one last look at his eyelids, half expecting them to dart open for one final shit-bake.

  Instead, I almost gagged with fright as a hand fell on my shoulder.

  I looked up to see Mona Carter looking down at her only child.

  “He liked you, ya know,” she said with a soft smile, never taking her tired red eyes off him.

  If there was an appropriate response to that from the kid he forever bullied, I couldn’t come up with it.

  “He was happy you came to see him, too. He talked about it for days after . . . how good it was to see a familiar face, someone from school, a friend. He didn’t have many.”

  I managed to get to my feet, we hugged, then a little tighter, and I left as discreetly as I could through the maze of mourners.

  I heard my name a few times but steadfastly refused to look up or around as I walked with purpose through the main hallway, out through the double glass doors, and into the blocked parking lot.

  I waited in the station wagon for my father, who had been in conversation with Monsignor O’Keefe. Neither one of us spoke a word until we passed Corpus Christi.

  “They want to know if you would do a reading, at the funeral. And I think you should.”

  The thought of it terrified me. The only time I’d ever been up there was in the role of altar boy, or to have my feet washed at Easter.

  But I knew I couldn’t say no.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Mrs. Carter. She wanted to ask you back there, but she forgot and you were already gone.”

  “What am I supposed to read?”

  “They have that all taken care of—one of the readings they use for funerals. I’ll find it for you when we get home, so you can practise it.”

  After supper, of which I ate none, I headed up to my room just to be alone. I sat cross-legged on my bed for a few minutes before jumping off to haul a box of school yearbooks out of my closet.

  There we all were, right back to kindergarten. Smallest me standing on the floor, front row centre, and him directly behind on the first riser, looking down even then with that look of, “You’re gettin’ it right after this picture is taken.”

  I had to laugh at that, but started to tear up again at a much more recent photo of our peewee hockey team. I was still convinced he had the kind of natural talent that, with the right formula of coaching and parental guidance, could’ve cracked the NHL.

  The more I thought about it, the more I prayed he’d be eulogized by someone who knew him.

  “Aloysius?” Dad gave a couple of taps before entering with Bible in hand.

  “Here’s the passage they’ve chosen,” he said, laying the Good Book down next to
me, open to the page.

  I obliged with a cursory glance at the words. It certainly seemed appropriate enough, in a religiously generic kinda way.

  “I’ll leave it here so you can go over it.”

  “Dad, who’s doing the Mass?”

  “You mean who’s saying Mass?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Father Brennan.”

  I tried not to look upset, but I was. No offence to this fine man of the cloth, but he didn’t know Rodney Carter from Adam, nor Eve for that matter. He had just transferred from a parish in rural Nova Scotia to assist Monsignor O’Keefe until another priest arrived fresh out of the seminary in Ontario.

  There seemed to be an inordinate amount of that going on for some reason: priests being shuffled around so much they barely had time to get to know their parishioners, especially those who attended Mass as rarely as Rodney and his parents.

  “Don’t worry about your paper route in the morning, okay? We’ll get one of the drivers to take care of it for tomorrow. And Wish? I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, picking up the Bible to review the passage again, then tossing it aside as soon as he left the room.

  I dug back into the box of yearbooks that also included an old Evening Telegram photo of our class leading a Christmas singalong in the lobby of the old Newfoundland Hotel—renamed Hotel Newfoundland in the early ’60s to adhere to owner CN’s new bilingualism policy. I’d kept that photo to myself for fear Dad would have a canary.

  Rodney looked hilarious in the oversized Santa hat that he purposely positioned to droop down and cover his face.

  Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind as I continued scouring through everything I ever had that involved him. At some point I involuntarily laid back on my pillow, dropping one of the heavy yearbooks on the bridge of my nose as I started to nod off. The emotionally exhausting week had finally caught up with me, and I fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  We must’ve made that three-minute drive from home to church a thousand times, but I will never forget the ride that morning. They’d found him on a Friday, waked him over the weekend, “. . . funeral Mass Monday at 11:00 a.m., from Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church, Waterford Bridge Road, with interment to follow at Holy Sepulchre. Donations in Rodney’s name may be made to the Dr. Charles A. Janeway Children’s Hospital.”