Free I Don't Have a Happy Place by Kim Korson Page B

decided then and there that I never wanted Nathalie to come over to my place because all we’d do there was listen to records on my hi-fi and watch the Yorkie hump his Charlie Brown towel that everyone called his girlfriend. Or my father would tell her that dumb story about how during Ace’s Hockey Night in Canada–themed bar mitzvah, he forced me to pop out of a cake. Worse, she’d find out about the deal he was trying to broker with me, the one about how he’d absolutely get a nose job but only if I got one, too.
    How could I bring Nathalie over for any of that? Yes, my father was well-meaning, everyone liked him; you couldn’t help it. He was kind and golden retrieverish and he often carried Freshen Upgum in his purse. He drove my brother to early morning hockey practice and walked the dog down the driveway to pee because my mother wasn’t outdoorsy. You never even saw his skin crawl when his father came over to see the new car and Zaida Max called him a big shot, which he said through a smile, and Nana Esther sighed, assuring him the car was beautiful. Yes, my dad was all right. But, if we’re being honest, it was a goddamn bummer that there would be no situation in which my father would pull a knife on any of us. There was nothing going on at my house, ever. The only action we saw took place on Quincy.
    It was all fun all the time at the Tremblays’, and on the rare occasion that we’d find ourselves with nothing to do, I’d bring up her father, hoping to hear the latest installment of doom. She was always pissed about him and we spent a good deal of our after-school hours holed up in her room, eating Fudge Stripes and hatching plots of murder and revenge. Here, finally, I had something to add, since I’d clocked many hours in front of Guiding Light and knew all about how to get back at people.
    â€œWe should slash my dad’s tires,” Nathalie said, biting the chocolate backing of the cookie with her sparkly beaver teeth. “Or put thumbtacks on the driveway.”
    â€œOne time at summer camp, they put Saran Wrap over the toilet,” I said, hoping to keep our nefarious activities indoors; I was scared to be outside at night.
    â€œWe could poison him. Like put Drano in his beer.”
    â€œWe could leave something at the top of the stairs that he could trip on,” I said. “He could fall down the stairs and get amnesia.”
    â€œThat would be loud,” she said, and we paused to imagine her ginormous father plummeting down the stairs. “No! I got it.”
    She explained to me that the cordwood business was an all-cash one. That even though Grizzly Adams was tricky and no one knew how he’d act at any given time, eventually, no matterwhom he insulted or tried to stab, he’d always step out of his jeans just before passing out in his bed and not wake until morning. It was like clockwork, she said. Nathalie got out a composition book she had laying around to illustrate the plan. She drew a bed and her father’s giant outline in it. Then, on the floor next to it, she sketched out his crumpled jeans and a wad of cash as a lump in the back pocket, a bubble arrow pointing toward the potential loot.
    â€œWhat if he wakes up?” I asked.
    â€œHe doesn’t. I swear. Once I poked him with a broom.”
    She continued with the diagram and explained that my job was to secure a sleepover for the coming Friday. It was then the heist would go down.
    I spent the next few nights tucked in my bed, imagining Mr. Tremblay out in the world. How, after teaching clarinet to small children, he’d probably get into the red pickup with his name across the door and start with the drink. I liked to think he had a small cooler on his front passenger seat filled with Labatts, which he’d dig into as he drove down the streets of Montreal, throwing out the empty bottles when he was done with them. He’d also toss bundles of wood out