Every Time We Say Goodbye Part 18

"Oh, hi, Dawn," Jimmy said, faking surprise. "I didn't hear you calling."

"Then how did you know I was calling?" Dawn stood on the bank, her hands on her hips. "Grandma says get ready for church."

"I'm not going."

He said this every Sunday. He said he was an atheist. He even said it to Vera, who said, "I'll atheist you in a minute."

"What does that even mean?" Jimmy muttered to Dawn, but they both knew: it meant he was going to church.

Dawn studied her brother's face. He had changed so much in the last year that people said he looked older than Dawn; they said he looked seventeen and she looked fourteen. His jaw was long and hard, and his blondish curls had straightened and darkened into long brown feathers that fell into his eyes.

"Just come on, Jimmy," she said. "Grandma's freaking out because you aren't ready."

"She's always freaking out," Jimmy said, but he got up. "Go," he said, gesturing. As she turned and climbed the bank, she saw him push something farther into a pile of leaves with his toe. She could only see the cap, but she knew it was a bottle.

Up at the house, Vera was waiting for them at the door. "You two make me mad as hornets," she said. "You know we leave for church at 9:30. You know your grandfather is sick and I have my hands full."

"We'll be ready in two minutes," Dawn said, and they were. It didn't smooth out the crease between Vera's eyes, though.

In church, Dawn knelt and prayed. Let Grandpa get better. Let the chemo work and let him go into remission and let him live a long time. Let Grandma stop worrying. Bring my dad back and let Grandma be happy to see him and let him in the house, and let him find his mother, and let everyone start talking to everyone else again. Also, please don't let my brother turn into an alcoholic and don't let him buy any more drugs off Tony Danko.

Jimmy said the problem with prayer was contradictory requests. "Like two teams are praying, Please let us win," he said, "and G.o.d just randomly answers one team's prayers and not the other's? It makes no sense."

He had a point, but Dawn couldn't bring herself to stop praying; now that she had outgrown wishing on stars and candles and dimes in fountains, it was all she had left. And anyway, his point wasn't applicable in her case, because surely no one was out there praying, Please let Frank Turner's tumour get bigger. There was a very small possibility that Tony Danko was praying, Please let me sell all this acid and pot and pills, but she doubted it. She'd met Tony Danko; he wasn't the praying type.

What would be nice, she thought, would be someone to talk to while waiting for these prayers to be answered, like a guidance counsellor, only not Mrs. Ditmars, whose only concern was whether you were having S-E-X and who recited warnings like a robot even when you said absolutely N-O-T. Someone like the young woman with the crinkly eyes who had handed her a pamphlet in the mall last month for something called Lighthouse. Counselling, philosophy, friendship, the orange and yellow pamphlet said. But Vera must have come across it and thrown it out, because she couldn't find it now.

Dawn crossed herself, sat back in her seat and glanced at Jimmy. He smelled of Listerine. "What?" he hissed at her, and she shook her head. While G.o.d was taking care of the cancer, she might have to take care of Jimmy. After church, she would go down to the creek and empty out the bottle. If she loosened the cap and left the bottle tipped onto its side, it would look like an accident.

When they got home, Vera sent Jimmy to clear the cuc.u.mber patch and Dawn to do the laundry. Aside from taking Frank to chemo, and going to the pharmacy and counting out his pills, Vera spent all her time trying to get him to eat. She pureed vegetables into soup, laid slices of toast around a poached egg. Frank ate a spoonful of soup, took a sip of tea, then said he was full. Vera pleaded with him to keep his strength up. Last week, he had lost his balance and pitched forward, knocking his elbow into the china cabinet and smashing cups and saucers to the floor. He looked terrible, Vera said, all skin and bones.

Frank said, "I was always on the thin side."

But Dawn agreed with Vera. Her grandfather looked like a skeleton in a cardigan.

She unloaded the wet sheets from the washing machine and hung them on the line. Then she began peeling potatoes for dinner. When Jimmy came in, he said, "What's that smell? Like medicine."

"I don't smell anything," Dawn lied. It was a combination of metal and blood, dust and rust. She smelled it when she kissed her grandfather good night. It came off his skin. Up close, it was very faint, but somehow it acc.u.mulated in the air. The whole house smelled of cancer.

Jimmy sat across from her and picked up a potato.

"Don't peel it like that," she told him. He was cutting away thick slabs. "You're wasting it." She hated the bossiness in her voice, but she couldn't help it.

"You do it, then," he said, dropping the potato and knife. He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. They could hear Vera pleading with Frank to have one more bite.

Dawn wished that tomorrow was a Laura day. At Laura's, the past did not carry over, and she could be a better Dawn, someone who didn't squabble with her brother or cry for no reason. She could become a different person altogether: pretty, popular, normal. "I wish we could live at Laura's," she said, reaching for another potato.

"Yeah, but where would we sleep?"

Dawn sighed. It was true: there was no room for them in the s.p.a.ceship apartment. "Anyway," Jimmy said, "I'm going to live with Dad in Toronto."

"Oh, Jimmy," she said.

"What?" He scowled at her. "Oh, Jimmy, what?"

"Nothing," Dawn said, reaching for another potato.

The last time they'd seen Dean, a year ago, he took them out for dinner at Rossi's and told them he was looking for a new apartment and, as soon as he moved, he'd send them their plane tickets in the mail and they would come down for a long visit. They'd have their own rooms, a hundred dollars for walking-around money and the city at their feet. "When?" Jimmy asked, and Dean had taken out his red leather address book and calendar. Happiness surged through Dawn: maybe this time it would come true.

Dean said they could come in May.

Dawn's gaze fell to her plate, where the juice from her steak was congealing into splotches of pale, speckled fat. She said, "We have school in May."

Jimmy glared at her.

Dean waved school away. "You can take some time off. Or come in June."

Dawn knew then that they were not going to Toronto in May or June, but Jimmy was still waiting for the tickets. "I'm pretty sure he's going to call this weekend."

Dawn nodded.

Upstairs, they could hear Frank throwing up.

Jimmy said, "I'm going to clear the cuc.u.mber patch."

"I thought you already cleared it," Dawn called after him.

Vera came downstairs with a pill bottle in her hand and stood at the calendar, counting days. "That pharmacist is cheating us," she said. "Next time, I'm going to count the pills right there in front of him." She turned and inspected the colander of potatoes. "Dawn, you're not peeling those right. You're wasting half the potato! If you can't do something right, don't bother doing it. Where's your brother?"

"In the garden," Dawn said. Vera went back upstairs, and Dawn looked out the kitchen window. The garden was empty. She didn't remember the bottle until she was falling asleep, and when she went out in the morning before school, it was already empty. She walked through the cuc.u.mber patch on the way back, weeds whipping her bare ankles.

Dawn began to wake up at three in the morning and had a hard time going back to sleep. Sometimes she trembled with cold, no matter how many extra quilts she piled on, and even during the day, a chill lay over her. Normally she would tell Vera, who would slap a mustard plaster on her chest, but Vera was busy with appointments and pill bottles, and anyway, Dawn didn't think a mustard plaster would help. She didn't know what would help.

She fell asleep in math cla.s.s. It wasn't really sleep, only a grey, watery subst.i.tute, but Miss Minelli kept her after school, and by the time she let her go, Dawn had missed the school bus and had to drag herself to the city terminal on Queen Street. People were walking around with their faces tilted upwards and their jackets tied around their waists, but even in the direct spring sunlight Dawn still felt cold and sick.

She stopped in front of what had been the Yellow Brick Road, then Gary's Pizza, now Coming Soon, Consumers Distributing. The building had new white stucco walls and large gla.s.s doors, and inside, workers in navy overalls were installing racks where the circular bar had been. She would want to tell Jimmy when she got home, but he never wanted to talk about the past. "What do we have to reminisce about?" he once asked. " *Remember the time Geraldine punched a hole in the wall?' *Remember the time I ate hash brownies and had to have my stomach pumped?' "

Dawn said, "But there's so much we don't know. Like what happened to Vincent. Remember Vincent, who was with us when we lost Geraldine's money in the snow? Where did Del Cherniak go? And whose brownies were they?"

Jimmy said, "Who cares? Knowing doesn't change anything."

Then why was she standing on the sidewalk, wondering if a strip of Emerald City or sc.r.a.p of mural remained inside the soon-to-be Consumers Distributing? Maybe a worker was in the women's bathroom right now, looking up at the starry ceiling and wondering what that was all about. She could tell him, "That was for Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. This was my dad's club, the likes of which this town had never before seen." Except he wouldn't really care, because who was she to him? He'd just repaint the ceiling and then go out and have a smoke in the parking lot.

The building next door had a new paint job as well. The storefront was now orange, and the large window was lined inside with a translucent white curtain. In the bottom corner, a familiar-looking yellow sun radiated long, curly arms to the far edges of the gla.s.s. On the door, the word "Lighthouse" danced in black letters. Below, a neatly handwritten sign said, Peace. Freedom. Counselling. Come in, friend.

Her hand grew a mind of its own. It reached out and opened the door. Inside the big room, mismatched chairs lined the walls, and the air was heavy with a sweet smell Dawn could not identify. Underneath that, she could smell paint.

"h.e.l.lo?" she called. She had expected a desk, a rack of brochures, a receptionist. Do you have an appointment? At the back of the room was an orange plaid sofa and a closed door. From behind the door, Dawn could hear a kind of chanting or singing, she couldn't tell which, in short rising, falling lines. Then the singing stopped and a bell rang, and chairs sc.r.a.ped over a wooden floor. She considered running out to the sidewalk, but it was too late. The door opened, and a guy with loose blond shoulder-length curls came out. When he saw her, he beamed. "Hey!" he said. "Hi!"

Dawn glanced over her shoulder to see who he was talking to, then blushed.

"I'm Justin," he said. "Welcome to Lighthouse."

She started to explain that she had just been walking by, but something caught in her throat and she started coughing. Hard. Her face flamed and her eyes watered. Justin disappeared into the back room, and Dawn put her arm over her mouth and coughed into her sleeve. Every time she thought she was finished, a deeper cough rattled up from the bottom of her lungs. Her chest began to burn.

Two girls appeared. They took her by the arms and led her over to the sofa. "It's okay," they said. "Just breathe." Dawn tried, but she could only cough.

Justin reappeared and handed Dawn a gla.s.s of water. "It's the paint fumes," he said. "Everyone's been coughing."

One of the girls handed her a tissue. Dawn wiped her eyes. They were bent over her, looking at her with concern. She tried to say "Sorry" and "Thank you," but the coughing started again. "It's okay," one of the girls said. "Don't try to stop it. Let it come."

The girls sat on either side of her, stroking her arms and patting her shoulders. Justin pulled a chair around in front of her and sat with the tissue box in his hands.

It's almost like I'm crying, Dawn thought.

The two girls, Annette and Ca.s.sie, looked like sisters, with the same auburn hair pulled back into complicated braids that reminded Dawn of pastry, but they weren't related. Annette had crinkly eyes. "You gave me a pamphlet," Dawn said, and Annette said, "At the mall? I remember you." Perry had a scraggly ginger beard and invisible eyelashes and was studying forestry at college. Dawn thought they were all twenty or twenty-one, except for Krista, who seemed older, maybe even thirty. "We've just finished a session," she told Dawn. She had straight ash blond hair to her shoulders, a pale, serious face and small, unwavering blue eyes. Her voice was low and clear and cool. "Why don't you stay and have tea?"

Dawn didn't drink tea, but they were all so nice that she said yes, and besides, she was starting to feel better. The tea was not the thick, brown, bitter stuff Vera drank, but clear and golden and faintly sweet all on its own, without sugar. It was called Radiance. "It a.s.sists in opening the third eye," Ca.s.sie said. "It comes from India."

They didn't explain what a session was, and didn't ask her why she had come in, which gave her no opening to ask about counselling. They asked where she went to school and what she was taking and what she had for homework, and when she said math and made a face, Perry said, "Let me see. I'm good at math."

He looked at her homework and saw immediately what she was doing wrong. "Here," he said. "Write x + 2 here. Then this becomes a4."

Annette and Ca.s.sie said their hair was in a French braid and offered to do hers, so Dawn sat in a chair while Ca.s.sie worked on her hair and Perry went through her homework on the floor, and the others laughed and talked, springing up from their seats like gra.s.shoppers to pour each other tea. They reminded Dawn of the Waltons: they all had apple cheeks and clear skin. Maybe it was the tea, she thought.

"Oh, let Dawn have it!" Annette said when Justin called out from the back room that there was still a sandwich left from lunch, and he waltzed out with the plate balanced on top of his head and presented it to her with a bow and a flourish. The late-afternoon sun came in through the white curtain, and Dawn sipped her tea and felt warm for the first time in a long time.

"Come back tomorrow," Krista said. "We can take you through the pre-steps."

"Pre-steps?"

Justin touched her arm. "Preliminary steps. To join Lighthouse," he said. "We'd love to have you, Dawn."

"Thank you!" Dawn said, but then she remembered: tomorrow was a chemo day. She had to be home to start dinner. And keep an eye on Jimmy. "Tomorrow I can't," she said. "Maybe Thursday-no, wait." They waited, their faces kind and patient. "My grandfather's sick," she explained, and they all murmured soothingly and understood completely.

"Here," Krista said, pressing a card into her palm. "When he's better, call us. We'll be here."

On the bus, Dawn traced the embossed sun on the card. She could still feel the imprint of Justin's touch on her arm. By the time she got home, the imprint had faded and she was cold all over again.

PROGNOSIS UNKNOWN.

When the final round of chemo finished in November, the garden was nothing but pale, broken stalks and wet black leaves, and Frank was almost translucent. Maybe it was because the chemicals had bleached his insides, or maybe it was because there was so little left of him that the light shone straight through. He said the prognosis was unknown. "The doctors said we just have to wait and see."

Vera said they could finally get back to normal now that they didn't have to run down to the hospital every other week, but "prognosis unknown" didn't sound like the road to normal to Dawn.

Plus, she was still worried about Jimmy. Last year, he had been eager to tell her what he was trying and what it was like. Pot: everything was much more interesting, you could climb into an idea and stay there for hours. Acid: time stopped, s.p.a.ces stretched and contracted, then all the colours came out. Some pills Tony Danko got from a guy in Sudbury: floating in a little golden boat surrounded by mist, and nothing could touch you, nothing would ever bother you again.

Finally, Dawn told him he'd better stop. "Stop, Jimmy. Stop, or else-"

"Or else what?"

"I don't know what, just stop, Jimmy, I mean it!"

But he had only stopped telling her what he was taking, and she knew it was something, because his eyes were often red or glazed, and he disappeared for hours at a time. She had found no more bottles at the creek, but she couldn't stop looking. She checked the toy box, his hockey bag, the back of an old TV set in the bas.e.m.e.nt. She searched his room when he was out. Between the bureau and the wall, she found an oblong blue pill, exactly like the ones Frank had been taking. It might have fallen out of Vera's pocket. She couldn't believe that Jimmy would take Frank's medicine. She couldn't believe the pill had fallen out of Vera's pocket, either. Nothing ever fell out of Vera's pockets. She decided to have a talk with Jimmy, but only when the time was right.

One Sunday after the first snowfall, they took their skis out and made long trails up and down the frozen creek. At the rock, they sat side by side, making patterns in the snow with their poles. Now, Dawn thought, but she blurted out the wrong words, and Jimmy turned on her in a fury.

"Jimmy, are you still doing drugs?" he repeated in a nasty, mincing voice. "Oh my gaaaawd! Drugs are so baaaaaaaad."

"Well, are you?"

"f.u.c.k off, Dawn." He grabbed his poles and skied to the bend in the creek before turning around. "Just f.u.c.k off and leave me alone," he yelled. Then he disappeared around the corner.

She took that as a yes.

The other sign they were not on the road back to normal was that Dawn couldn't sleep, even though she was as tired as it was possible to be, and every day, she got more tired than that. Sometimes, she would turn off the light and sleep would start lapping against her, soft and warm and ordinary, but then it changed without warning into a deep, icy, black hole and she would have to tear herself away and turn on the light. If she fell into that hole, she would never wake up and never get out. One night, she jolted awake and felt an evil presence hovering in the dark just above her bed. Her thoughts flew to The Exorcist, which Vera hadn't let her watch, but which her friends had related to her, scene by vile, shocking scene. She lay awake, saturated with cold, dark panic. In the morning, she was afraid to look at herself in the oval mirror above the oak dresser in case she saw a face that was not hers. Sleepiness began to overtake her at school, but even when she kept her eyes open, the lessons came pelting towards her and then bounced off harmlessly. She was falling behind in several cla.s.ses, and if she didn't keep her grade thirteen marks up, she wouldn't get into university, an idea she had discussed at length with Laura. Her grandparents wanted her to go to Algoma University, where she wouldn't have to throw away money on residence fees and where they could keep an eye on her. But Laura said she needed to leave the Soo to get a good education, and she needed a good education so she could be independent and lead her own life and never have to rely on anyone (i.e., a man) to support her. In fact, Laura had already set up a savings account for Dawn to go away to school. She showed Dawn the bank book. "Four thousand dollars?" Dawn said, her eyes widening. Laura nodded happily. "I've started one for Jimmy, too. All you need to do is keep your marks up." The problem was, every time Dawn sat down to do her homework, she was overcome by a mixture of p.r.i.c.kly dread and sleepiness. They cancelled each other out, leaving her in a cloud until Vera called her to go start dinner. The other problem was, she was either possessed by the devil or going crazy, neither of which was helpful in remembering the timeline of the French Revolution.

All her life she had wanted to get back to normal: to live in a house where no one had secrets or cancer, to eat dinner every night with parents who had not deserted her, then go to bed without surges of terror and sleep soundly until morning.

At the bottom of a page of math homework, she wrote, Frank was not frank,

Vera was severe,

Jimmy jimmied open a bottle of pills

And it was always darkest

Before the Dawn.