with my buck teeth and tan corduroy suit for as long as Gord is willing to hold it up in front of him.
Without even thinking about it, I’ve shoved the laptop aside and am on my feet, reaching out to retrieve the snapshot, which Gord is now holding out to me.
Why did I want to see it again? As I turned it over in my fingers, I could see that I hadn’t forgotten a single detail. It was all there, the late morning sunlight, the gleaming cars behind us, the expanse of beige corduroy, purchased in a panic because I’d had the first of my two major growth spurts practically the day before and it was the only thing in the store that fit me. And, oh, it was godawful. And I was godawful. I was a post-growth-spurt mess. My teeth seemed to stick out a mile. My tie, which was Gord’s tie, was about the same distance wide and a glaring kelly green. If I had still looked like a child, this clown suit would have been okay, passable, because kids can get away with anything — kids are meant to look ridiculous — but I looked like a young man. A young man with no idea how to dress. Therefore, an imbecile. To top it all off, I still had my pre-growth spurt haircut — prodigious, everywhere, past my ears. Fine on a child, insane on a man in a corduroy suit. Why hadn’t Sylvie cut it? Like I said, I had grown up in a day, practically. None of us was ready.
In the photo, I am grinning from ear to ear. Sylvie is also grinning from ear to ear. She is peeping out from behind me, with her arms wrapped around my waist and her tiny hands locked together against my abdomen. There’s a slight look of incredulousness on her face, because I remember her exclaiming, as we posed: I can barely get my arms around him anymore! And that’s when I started laughing, giving the buck teeth a nice healthy airing, at which Gord started laughing, followed by Sylvie, who was also grunting as she reached around me, to indicate what an incredible effort it took.
And then, snap. Shot.
We are like — I don’t know how else to explain it — Sylvie and I are like two suns in this picture. We radiate.
And then Gord ruins it. As Gord has always ruined it. He nudges Owen.
“Young Gordie was always a bit of a mama’s boy, truth be told.”
I remember being this angry only a couple of times. Once was in that room at the courthouse with Sylvie, Gord, and Trisha after Gord insisted my suffering mother should absent herself from my trial and I, in turn, insisted I was going to kill him and Trish, in turn, insisted Gord should go get a drink from the water fountain down the hall.
The other time — you remember. You were there. And Kyle was there. And Kyle stood his ground pretty impressively, it seems to me now.
And I think something must happen to my face at that point, because Owen jumps to his feet.
I am talking. In a very low drawl, like a slowed-down recording, I hear myself say: “You know what Gord?”
But Owen won’t let me tell him what. His body is suddenly against mine and he is kind of fox-trotting me into the kitchen and out the front door, calling something to my father about us taking a walk out back to see the creek. I can hear myself talking over him the whole time, still in that low-slow tone but getting louder the farther away Owen manages to get me from my father. Have I mentioned Owen is only around 5 ' 11 "? So I don’t know how he accomplishes this exactly. Years of experience wrangling teenage gland-cases on the ice I suppose.
So we stand on the lawn in front of the house, and I notice I am still yelling, and as I slow down enough to take actual notice of what I am saying and maybe nuance it a little I also notice that my father’s own fulsome shouts are — as always — sounding in vigorous counterpoint to mine from somewhere inside the house. I even hear him bash the crutch against the wall a couple of times by way of emphatic punctuation. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the two of us sound like a couple of