Neighbourhood Watch Rhonda Mullins (my reading book TXT) 📖

‘Madame, you need to maintain a distance of fifty metres from your daughter until we have proof of your rehabilitation.’

Other empty words are threaded on the necklace, while Meg and Mélissa vanish a little more.

• • •

Kevin.

A church basement. Showy lights, strobe flashes, heavy metal.

Behind the smoke, a rough-looking crowd. Children, adults, excitement peaking.

‘LET’S GO, BIG! KILL ’IM! KILL ’IM!’

In the middle of the room, a ring. Two wrestlers face to face, dressed in bright colours, faces distorted by grimaces and makeup.

In the crowd, Kevin, eyes glued to the match.

Smaller than the others, gets jostled but stays riveted to the ring, spellbound.

He gnaws on his lips, nervous.

The larger of the two wrestlers sends his adversary bouncing off the ropes, grabs him, throws him to the mat, jumps on him. The crowd goes wild. Ding ding ding. Big is declared the winner. The other guy is lying knocked out on the mat.

Kevin jumps for joy. ‘Yesssssss!’

The winner, in a red cape, salutes the crowd in triumph. Shines under the white light.

‘BIG! BIG! BIG!’

Kevin chants along with the crowd: ‘BIG! BIG! BIG!’

His dad won again. When his dad wins, Kevin wins.

* * *

Roxane.

Gets off the metro at Georges-Vanier. The Salvation Army is right across the street. She goes there often; she knows everyone there. The guys like her. They all say Marc is lucky to have a daughter like her.

‘You’re lucky, Marc. That’s one special daughter you’ve got there.’

Roxane goes often. Not just because it’s the only place in the world she’s special. But because her father’s been there a few months. Now he’s done. Tonight he gets his certificate. That means he’s won. He’s still going to stay there until he finds a job and to make sure he won’t backslide, but he’s done, he’s won, he’s gone through all the steps. He’s stopped drinking.

It’s the fourth time he’s dried out. The other times he fell off the wagon; he faltered. But the fourth time’s the charm.

Roxane walks through the wall of smokers at the entrance. ‘Hey, Louis. Hey, Pascal. Hey, Charles.’ She goes inside. She feels good here. Everyone talks to her. Everyone thinks she’s the best daughter in the world.

Her father is on the other side of the room, in a corner. Looks nervous.

The room is decorated with garland and lights. They’re handing out free Cokes and coffee as you come in. Christmas is coming.

Her father got spruced up. Put on a blue shirt tucked into his pants. Slicked back his grey hair. Looks tired, his face weathered.

He spots her from across the room. Walks toward her. Long, unsteady strides. As if he might fall off his feet.

She’s all he has left. You don’t walk the same when you’re walking toward the only thing you have left. He reaches her, finally, as if reaching the other side of the world.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey, Dad.’

Around them are others. Warriors. Some at the end of the battle, proud and restless. Others still making their first forays, a halo of alcohol as their shield.

Roxane takes her father’s large hand in hers. They go sit on one of the benches set up in a row. At the front of the room, a mic and a Christmas tree the guys have trimmed. A few Christmas lights blink tentatively.

A man takes the mic. He is tall and pale, with all the panache of a basement in winter. His voice reverberates through the room.

‘Tonight, we’re going to celebrate winners. Big winners. For the new guys in the room, for those of you who are struggling and think you won’t make it, the twelve guys you’re about to see thought the same thing when they got here.’

Roxane looks at her father out of the corner of her eye. His aged face. His green eyes lost in the hollows. Turns toward her. Breaks into the remains of a smile.

The tired face of a survivor. She hugs him.

She’s loved him for so long.

She wants to save him for good.

It’s hot as hell in the room. And yet it’s winter. There’s something in here. A distillation of humanity. Guys, raw men.

‘Our next winner’s an old-timer … He’s fallen off the wagon a bunch of times. But now he’s on it and holding strong … Marc, come on up.’

Marc stands, unsteady.

‘I’m going to ask his daughter, Roxane, to give him his certificate.’

Standing in front of a mic that’s too short. A tank, a guy you’d picture at the throttle of a Harley, decked out in leather and tattoos.

But now he’s standing in front of the guys, sunk into his shoulders. Trembling.

Emotion. He takes his time, because if he opens his mouth too fast he’s going to cry too loud.

So he clears his throat.

Swallowing his tears, Marc tells the story of the end of the world that everyone in the room is familiar with, and the asshole you become at the end of that world. When your anchor is a goddamn brown bottle. When everything you are is contained in a few gulps, and your last breath is a burp. How it seems like you’ll never get back on your feet. How you’re hollow inside; how you’ve dug your own grave. Swallowed what was left of your pride. In over your head.

Marc grips the mic in his clammy hands. He has so little carapace left; he’s so real it almost hurts.

In one breath to get to the end of it, he touches on Hell, the phone calls from his daughter – he looks at her – the phone calls from his daughter and her ‘Don’t give up, Dad,’ the nights when he grabbed life by the scruff and bellowed whatever dreams he had left at it. His native Gaspésie, a wooden house at the edge of a cliff that plunges to the sea, a house all his own. Small – it doesn’t have to be big – but on the ocean. And a motorcycle parked out front. To fly down the beautiful country roads. Free. With the