Every Time We Say Goodbye Part 12

The plan was to buy a map at the bus station kiosk and sit down with a bottle of c.o.ke and figure out where he was and how far he was from Baldwin Street, but as soon as he stepped off the bus into a cloud of exhaust, he was jostled into a fast-moving crowd and carried along for blocks. The city soared up all around him in walls of concrete and gla.s.s and stone. People poured out of buildings, pooled at corners, trickled down side streets. He tried to memorize the street names-Yonge, Queen, Bay, University-so that he could find his way back, but then he stopped thinking and just walked and looked. He could feel the city's pulse in his veins. It pulsed with traffic and with something else. Everything was lit up like a Christmas tree, even though Christmas was four months gone: everywhere something twinkled or blinked or buzzed, inviting him to use Kodak film, have a coffee, buy tickets, cut keys, visit the future, drink a milkshake, come in and see the show: The Guns of Navarone or West Side Story or Splendor in the Gra.s.s or five others he had never heard of. Every movie in the world was playing here.

The city pulsed and now he was pulsing too.

From around the corner, a man appeared with a wooden signboard around his neck. He stopped in front of Dean and rapped the top of his board, where the writing started off huge-THE DAY OF THE LORD IS AT HAND and then got smaller and crazier until Dean couldn't make out anything. Something was coming and it wasn't good, was the gist of it. The man rapped the board again and Dean said, "Yeah, yeah, I got it." The man moved on.

A young woman in a short fur jacket walked past him, and then turned and looked him up and down. He winked, and to his amazement, she winked back. Then she, too, was gone.

A woman and a man stumbled out of a doorway, laughing. The man caught the woman's hand and spun her around. Her lipstick was a dark, glossy red.

Finally, Dean slipped out of the stream of walkers and leaned against a wall, his rucksack forming a cushion against the cold concrete. He had no idea how to get back to the bus terminal, and he didn't have a map. It was probably too late to start searching, anyway. He would find a place to stay for the night. A hotel. A nice one. He'd have a shower, order a steak dinner, get a good night's sleep. Why not? He had the money, and he couldn't stand against a wall all night. Although here, he probably could. In the Soo, if you were propped up outside a building for too long, someone would want to know who you were waiting for and who you were related to and if it was hard work, heh heh, holding up the building. Here, no one even glanced at him. People moved at a fierce clip. He searched faces as they pa.s.sed him, but no one except the woman who'd winked met his eye. Their eyes were fixed on some distant goal. They surged across intersections and disappeared, replaced by the next wave.

The sky was dark now. There were no stars, but who needed pinp.r.i.c.k stars in this electric blaze? Dean finally pushed himself off the wall and stepped off a curb, and a car slammed on its brakes, stopping not an inch from him and honking long and loud. The man behind the wheel rolled down his window and leaned out. Dean patted the hood of the car. "I'm all right," he told the man. "You didn't hit me."

"Eejit!" the man said. "Get the h.e.l.l out of my way or I will."

Eejit! Dean burst into laughter. He did a quick jig and tipped an imaginary hat. The man merely rolled up his window and drove on. Dean looked around: people had seen, but no one was watching. No one would report to someone who would pa.s.s it along to someone else who would mention to Vera and Frank that Dean had been seen acting up downtown, holding up traffic and dancing around like a leprechaun. He was in the City of Toronto. Town Motto: Act Up All You Want, Just Stay the h.e.l.l Out of Our Way.

He turned and found himself on a quiet road. The pulse of the city was harder to feel here. He stopped at the next intersection to read the street sign.

G.o.dd.a.m.n. It was impossible.

Baldwin Street.

He wasn't ready to find it, but he turned left onto Baldwin Street anyway. His feet kept lifting and planting themselves. They stopped, rotated him a quarter of a turn and dragged him up the walkway of the first house. When he reached the door, there was nothing to do but knock. No one answered; the house was in complete darkness. He tried the next house. A man in an undershirt with a halo of greying hair shook his head. No one here by that name. At the next house, a tiny elderly woman answered. "Other side of the street," she said.

A sudden plummeting. He reached for the banister to steady himself. "Are you sure?" he said. "Grace Turner from Sault Ste. Marie?"

"Oh, I don't know where she's from, but Grace Turner lives on the other side. Now is it 67? I think so."

His stomach was cramping painfully, like he had swallowed pins and staples and nails.

At the other end of the street, the houses were joined together in twos. Number 67 was dark, but he went up the stairs anyway and stood on the veranda. It was clean and empty-not a plant or a chair or even a welcome mat. He knocked, and jumped at the sound of a window sliding open. He almost bolted, then realized it had come from the house next door. Someone there was trying to find a radio station. A phone rang. A dog started barking. Another dog started barking. Dean knocked more loudly. Next door, a man yelled, "Aunt Theresa! Phone!"

Dean knocked again. "h.e.l.lo?" he called. He put his hand on the doork.n.o.b and twisted. Locked. Next door, the man yelled louder for Aunt Theresa. A woman yelled back, "Tell him I'm not home."

"Why doncha tell him yourself?"

"Ha ha. Close the window, Danny, it's freezing in here. And don't tell your mother I took this call."

Yes, for G.o.d's sake, close the window, Dean thought. He put his ear to the door: nothing. (Although it was hard to tell with the racket next door.) He leaned as far as he could over the railing to look into the front room, but he could see nothing except curtains and the back of a sofa. Kneeling, he lifted the mail slot and peered through.

No use. Not home. Again.

Back on the sidewalk, Dean appraised the house. No glimmer of light came from any part of it. The front door of the next house opened, and two dogs bounded out and went straight for Dean. He froze, and they circled him, barking happily, all aquiver with excitement. "They won't bite," someone called. Dean looked up. A tall young man with dark blond hair was coming down the walkway. "Sorry," he said. "They're complete lunatics. My mother rescued them from the pound years ago, and they still can't believe their good fortune." He scooped up the squirming dogs, one under each arm. "I saw you from the window. Are you here about the guitar?"

Dean said, "No." He could hardly hear himself. "No," he said more loudly. "I was actually looking for the person next door."

"The Hanleys? They're at the hospital."

"Will they be back soon, do you think?"

The guy shook his head. "Probably not. Their kid has polio. We've hardly seen them the last couple of weeks." The guy looked at him more closely. "You okay?"

"Stomach ache," Dean said.

"You want to come in for a minute? Use the bathroom or something?"

"No, thanks," Dean said. The guy nodded and went back inside, one squirming dog under each arm.

The Hanleys. Grace Hanley. It was worse than he had suspected. Not only was she married with a kid, but her kid had polio. She'd need a visit from her long-lost son like she needed a hole in the head.

Except, he realized, he wasn't long-lost, and the realization made him stop right there on the sidewalk. She had always known where he was. If she had wanted to see him, she could have. And she hadn't. Which meant she didn't want to. For some reason. For what reason? The same reason she left him in the first place. He was a fool, on a fool's mission, running around the province, prowling around strange cities, looking for someone who didn't want him, who had never wanted him, for whatever reason.

He hurried back towards the city's pulsing core and asked the next person he pa.s.sed for the name of the city's nicest hotel.

The Royal York was full, except for a suite that cost twenty-eight dollars. The clerk looked younger than him, with oily hair and a face to match. He looked for Dean's luggage and then said, "There are rooms at the YMCA if you-"

"I'll take the suite," Dean said coolly. He counted off the bills quickly.

The clerk hesitated. "Do you have some-some identification, sir?"

Dean raised one eyebrow. "Are you kidding me?" He pushed the bills across the counter. "The airline misplaced my luggage. Please send it up as soon as it is delivered."

The room was thickly carpeted, with gold plush chairs and a sofa and a television built into a heavy mahogany cabinet. The canopied bed was in an alcove behind French doors. Dean pushed back the heavy maroon curtains: one set of windows looked out over a net of sparkling lights; the other, a vast darkness. The lake, he thought. The United States was on the other side. Land of the free, they said. He had money; he could cross the border and join them.

He stripped, showered and sat at the desk in a towel to order dinner. Tomorrow, he would go down to the bus terminal and get a ticket. New York or California. He would get a job, find a place to stay, start a new life. Meet women who fell out of doorways laughing. He would be the mysterious stranger. Where did he say he was from? a woman with dark, glossy lipstick would ask, and the other woman would say, I heard Montreal. Someone else would have heard Moldavia. He could write a new history for himself, and it would be true. He would live at hotels like this one, as the founder, president and voice of Turner Incorporated. He would go downstairs to the breakfast room every morning; he would eat in a different restaurant with a different girl every night of the week, except for when he was tired. Then he would do exactly what he was doing now: stretch out on the sofa in a towel and wait for the discreet knock at the door that signalled the arrival of his steak and baked potato and bottle of wine.

He wouldn't spend any more time trying to find the mother who had left him behind, given him up, pa.s.sed him along-Here, take this-or the father who probably never even knew he existed. Tonight, he would sleep with an emblazoned city, an entire continent, at his feet, and tomorrow, he would wake up in his new life.

He slept until noon and woke with a headache. He shaved, put on his tie and grey sweater. His clothes looked cheap and school-boyish in the gilt-edged mirror. He checked his wallet: sixty-eight dollars left. He'd have to go easy until he found work. At a diner a few doors down from the hotel, he ordered toast and coffee. A few blocks farther, he went into a department store, and before he knew it, he was trying on suits. He turned in front of the mirror, eyeing the line of a charcoal-coloured jacket from over his shoulder. Italian wool, the clerk said, finest wool in the world. He pinned up the sleeves and said, "Our tailor can do this for you right now, sir." Dean slipped off the jacket and said he needed to make a trip to the men's room before he made his selection.

Downstairs, he ordered a milkshake in the cafeteria and counted his money again under the table. If he took a night bus, he wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room. He didn't need a new jacket to ride the bus, and anyway, Italian wool would be too hot in California. His headache was only a faint thumbprint against one corner of his skull. He leaned his head back against the vinyl headrest, closed his eyes and allowed himself to come unmoored. He was already in California sitting on a lounge chair overlooking the ocean. The sun warmed his upturned face, the breeze lifted his hair. When he looked up, he would see palm trees, and a woman would say silkily, Excuse me, is this seat taken? Instead, he heard Vera say, "Sit up straight."

Dean's eyes flew open.

In the next booth, a tall, large-chested woman with orange lipstick and a fur cape was talking to a girl with long light brown hair. The girl had her back to Dean; he could only see her hair and her shoulders in a cream blouse.

"You look like the wreck of the Hesperus," the woman said.

She didn't look so hot herself, Dean thought. Her brown pincurls looked like half-melted candies.

The girl said, "Mom, can I have french fries?"

Her mother said, "You'll have the salad plate."

Dean ordered another milkshake and shifted into the corner of his booth so he could see the girl's profile. She was pretty. The woman noticed him then, or rather, her eyes stopped on him briefly and then flicked him away. He shifted back out of her sight.

"I just don't know," the woman was saying. "I thought he would be better today. They said he was better. But he's exactly the same. Didn't you think so?"

"I thought he was a little better," the girl said. "He didn't look so tired."

"What are you talking about? He looked terrible!" the woman said. "I can't see that they're doing him any good in there. You know what that place does, Laura? It encourages him. They mollycoddle him." She took a compact out of her purse and studied her face. Dean slipped farther down into his seat. Laura, he thought.

The waitress brought their salad plates. He listened for as long as he could. Laura was not eating properly. Why was she holding her fork like that? She was slouching. She was picking at her food. When he couldn't stand it anymore, he went to the men's room. When he got back to his seat, the woman was fastening the b.u.t.tons on her cape. "I mean it," she hissed.

The girl was shaking her head. "I can't help it," she said, and hiccupped.

"I have had it up to here with you," the woman said.

"All right, okay. Just a minute," the girl said, but she didn't move. It sounded like she was crying.

The woman snapped her purse shut and marched to the front cash. Dean waited until she had disappeared out the door, then got up and slid into the seat across from the girl. She had a round face, ivory skin, delicately arched eyebrows over closed eyes. Her cheeks were wet. Her mouth was the pale pink and the texture of a rose petal. Her eyes opened; they were very dark.

"Hi," Dean said.

She wiped one side of her face and left the other side wet. "Hi," she said back.

They looked at each other. Dean raised his hand and waved at the waitress. "One order of french fries," he said, and the girl looked wonderstruck. Her eyes were still leaking, so he said, "You wanna hear something crazy?"

She nodded.

He told her a story. A boy found out he was adopted. There was a photograph and a birth certificate in a box. There were clues. He followed the trail, but when he got to the end, to Baldwin Street, he found nothing. He had knocked, and the door hadn't been opened. He had sought, but he hadn't found. She didn't move the entire time, but her eyes radiated, as if she were listening through them. They warmed him and steadied him. "Is this a true story?" she asked when he was finished. He tapped his chest just above his heart. "True story," he said. "Now you tell me one."

Her story wandered all over the place but ended with her father in a mental inst.i.tution with a nervous breakdown. Her face flushed darkly when she said it, and her eyes were skittish.

He was a welter of wants: he wanted to reach over and take her hand, he wanted to kiss her rose petal mouth, he wanted to slide into the seat beside her and put his arm around her protectively, he wanted to take her back to the hotel suite and lay her down on the bed and undo her cream-coloured blouse. He wanted to run away with her. They would leave behind their missing, mean, broken, lost, sick, soft-in-the-head, odd, off, criticizing, crazy, disappointed parents and start a new life together. He leaned forward and touched the back of her hand.

"Listen. Do you wanna come with me-" he began.

"To Baldwin Street?"

He laughed. "No, Quick Draw McGraw." Baldwin Street didn't matter. Baldwin Street was crumpled paper in the bottom of his rucksack. Tonight he would get on the bus and cross the border, and his new life would start; he didn't have time to waste on Baldwin Street. He said, "I have a better idea. Coming?"

He could see the answer in her eyes before she said it. She was from the City of Yes. Town Motto: Yes.

MRS. KRAUS.

It was hard to tell when the ending actually arrived, partly because it came disguised as a series of new beginnings: a bag of money, a sparkling clean house, baby Amy, Opening Night. For a while, Dawn blamed the bartender at the club for the whole thing, because if he hadn't taken Professor Pollo and stuck him behind the bar like some kind of ornament, Dawn wouldn't have left Jimmy unattended, and Jimmy wouldn't have ended up in the hospital having his stomach pumped, and the police wouldn't have come to the house and found a stolen car in the garage.

It was Jimmy who found the bag of money. He appeared in Dawn's room one afternoon, gesturing crazily, with a look on his face like he had to pee really bad. She followed him to the spare room, which was going to be the baby's room but which was latched and locked because Dean said there were rusty nails sticking up out of the floorboards, and he was going to clear it out and paint it, and Dawn and Jimmy were going to help. Someone must have gone in there earlier, though, and left in a hurry, because today the lock was hanging open off the latch. "I already went in," Jimmy whispered. "There are no nails."

Dawn pushed open the door. Inside was a bed with a naked mattress, a lamp without a shade and a bunch of empty cardboard boxes. Jimmy told Dawn to sit on the bed, hold Professor Pollo and make a wish. His eyes were so bright, Dawn felt spooked. She sat down and accepted the Professor. "All right. I wish for a million dollars. There. Happy?"

Jimmy was wriggling and wiggling all over. "Yes! Yes! Now look under the bed."

Dawn looked, then got down on her knees and pulled out the garbage bag. When she saw what was inside, she gave a little scream.

Jimmy said, "See?" He plopped Professor Pollo down on top of the bag and said, "Whaddaya think of that, sunshine?"

They stared at the bag for a long time. Then Dawn said, "Jimmy, you know what we have to do?"

Jimmy nodded. "Go to the store."

"No, Jimmy. No. We have to count it."

They were still taking out handfuls of money when Geraldine called from downstairs, "Dawn? Jimmy? Are you up there?"

"Coming!" They stuffed the money back and barely got themselves out of the room before they heard Geraldine start up the stairs. Dawn was so terrified, she clicked the lock shut, and they both collapsed on the floor and pretended to be playing with Professor Pollo. "What are you two doing up here?" Geraldine asked. "Why are you sitting in the dark at the end of the hall?"

"We're just playing," Jimmy said.

"Well, come downstairs for dinner."

They watched her waddle back down the hall. "Why did you lock it?" Jimmy whispered. He was furious. "That was so stupid!" Fat tears rolled down his face.

"She was gonna see the lock was open. Then she'd know we were in there."

"So? So? Who gives a care if she saw?"

"We'll get back in, don't worry. We will, Jimmy. We will."

They looked at each other. Jimmy wiped his eyes. "I know how it got there, too," he said.

"How?"

"Bank robbers. They hid it there."

But that wasn't it at all. Dawn had just figured it out. She told Jimmy about hermits: rich old geezers who didn't trust banks and hid their money under their mattresses. They ate stale bread and reused their tea bags and saved every last penny.

Jimmy said, "Are Vera and Frank hermits?"

"No, they believe in the bank, see. But hermits hate banks. This house belonged to a hermit. He lived here all alone, and he had no family, so no one knew about the money. He died and no one thought to look under the bed."

Jimmy wanted to know how he died.

"He choked to death on a chicken bone."

"You said he only ate stale bread."

"And chicken wings. He got them cheap from the grocery store." She considered telling Jimmy the rest-the old man's body had been partially eaten by his cats-but Jimmy was really too young for that.

Every day the next week, when they came home to find Geraldine sleeping, they searched the house for the key. It was most likely on Dean's big key chain, but Dean was working every day and night at the club, and when he did come home, he was a whirlwind of instructions: "Jimmy, go upstairs and get me a clean white shirt." "Dawn, pour me a gla.s.s of orange juice, please." "Geraldine, I need the phone book. Hurry up, hurry up, I haven't got all night, they're putting in the bar and I have to get back."

Then something so surprising happened, they forgot about the money, or at least Dawn did, at least temporarily: they came home from school to find the whole house clean. The bathroom sink gleamed, the kitchen floor was light blue again, all their clothes were neatly folded in their drawers. Even the garbage pail was scrubbed white and smelled like a Christmas tree. They hadn't seen the house like this since they moved in. It was even better than the day they moved in, because the beds were made.

Geraldine was awake and sitting at the kitchen table. "There's something special for you guys in the fridge."

It was a tray of yellow cupcakes with thick orange icing. Geraldine asked them to get her a pencil and paper. She wanted to make a list of things they needed: new shoes, underwear, jeans, sweaters, whatever. Dawn asked if they could afford all this, what with the baby coming and everything. She didn't want to mention the bills on top of the fridge. Geraldine said she had been given a bonus at work. "Now, get your coats on," she said. "We're going shopping!"