As a Thief in the Night (7 page)

Two weeks later it was decided. They would move to Windsor that summer. She would miss her house and her vines, but Gord would take some vacation time and they would be back for vintage each year. The rest she thought she could live with.

The winter had hung heavy on the morning she'd told Layne and Ezra. The boys had lain in Ezra's bed listening to the radio and talking until they'd fallen asleep, but now, as the weak winter sunrise began to define the room, she woke them gently and explained what had been decided.
 

Of course the news that Elsie brought that morning was only words; what it would mean
was lost in the veil of what was to come. This was especially true for Ezra, who shared Olyvia's lack of contact with reality. For them, reality had to strike before they had any understanding of its consequences. And it was not until that rather violent moment of recognition that they at last realized how badly they had underestimated the situation that they had, Quixote-like, drifted into. For Ezra the year went on much as it had. For Layne, things were as Elsie had thought: water off a duck's back.

He could tell what kind of reaction she'd had to the principal's call by the speed at which the car turned the corner, and when the old Beaumont pulled into the school parking lot and came to a jerking stop, the rusted door swung open and he saw Elsie mouth a profanity as she stepped directly into a muddy puddle of water, and then storm up to the school's front doors. Ezra got up quickly from the office bench to try to divert her, or at least to slow her down. He was afraid she would cause a scene, something she was certainly known to do from time to time.

Seeing the rising bruises all over his face, she gasped. "Who did that to you?" she demanded, the anger in her voice still restrained but obviously building.

"Elsie, it's okay! Please!" he pleaded and tried to block her progress.

"No, it is definitely
not
okay!" She held his face in her hands to examine it. Looking him over, she quickly dismissed the possibility of serious injury, then sidestepped the obstacle of his body, flung open the glass doors, and began to search for someone on which to focus her maternal vengeance.

No, it was explained to her, it had not been solely the other boy's fault. She looked at Ezra for confirmation of what she was being told. He nodded silently, looked down at his lap, and played a game with his fingers to avoid looking up. The principal explained calmly that it was the school board's policy to suspend any student involved in a fight, regardless of where the blame might lay.

They drove home quietly. Ezra looked out the window with tears running down his cheeks and listened to the strange new noise the Beaumont had begun making. Elsie held his hand as they drove.

Gord's parents were in town visiting and were sitting down to tea in the kitchen when they pulled into the Y-shaped driveway. Elsie told them that Ezra had hurt himself doing high jump in gym class. He went in, quickly said hello, then retreated to his bedroom and shut the door behind him. The thought of returning to school made him panic, and his eyes filled with tears again. He lay crying until the world outside his window began to darken. It began to rain, and the raindrops rhythmically struck his window pain. His thoughts slowed and calmness came over him. Tap, tap, tap, the drops hit the glass, and he listened until his limbs went slack and sleep came.

At last the month of May settled around him and Ezra prepared for the move and imagined great poems and paintings of how his time in Windsor would be spent. Schoolwork had been more or less forgotten days ago, and all that mattered now was the graduation trip to Boston.

Elsie dropped Ezra off in the early morning. It was still dark outside and there was a coach bus running in the school parking lot. Its lights fell on the morning fog and its motor hummed evenly against the odd few words spoken by teachers and students as to where luggage should be placed. Elsie pulled up at a distance from the commotion, parked the old Beaumont, and silently gathered up his lunch for the bus ride. When she was finished she reached into her purse, pulled out a black vinyl wallet, and placed it in Ezra's hand. 

"What's this?"

"It's for you, for your trip. Keep all your things organized inside it. All your health information and phone numbers are there."  She took it from him, opened it up, and showed him the things she had placed in the clear plastic pockets. "It's all right here, see?"

"Yeah, okay", he said and looked anxiously at the other students boarding the bus.

"And there's a little something your uncle and I put in the back for you," she said nonchalantly, and handed the wallet back without looking at him. He pulled out the folded bills in the back pocket and counted out a hundred and fifty dollars.

"Are you serious?" he asked wide-eyed.

Her face was turned towards the driver's side window, but he could see tears running down it.  "You'll be needing it for your meals and all that." She put her hand on his leg. "And make sure you buy yourself something small. Something you'll be able to keep."

"I will."

She wiped the tears from her flushed cheeks, sniffed, and composed herself. She patted him gently on the leg. "You'd better be off now."

"Okay," he said with a compassionate resolve that sounded as if it had come from a grown man. Ezra moved over in his seat and hugged her sideways. "Thanks, Elsie. I love you."

"I love you too." She held him close for a second and kissed him on the cheek. "Okay, you'd better get going."

They run through the hotel room door falling over one another and laughing. Pale light is provided by one small lamp. The two double beds are separated by a cheap nightstand with a remote control and a program guide on it. Art that says nothing hangs on the walls. Beds are claimed and drawers are searched. The only discovery made is the lonely, unopened gift of the Gideons. They check the channels of the television hoping to come across naked bodies in the midst of lewd acts. The screen flashes across their anxious faces as K.J. Kalafati quickly flips through the channels: nothing. They have already been blocked by hotel administration at the request of the teachers. The teachers! This possibility being exhausted, a wrestling match breaks out between all four boys. Standing on one bed they jump across the small space to the other, and then back again. In mid-air they collide, and arms and legs are tangled with one another as they writhe on the beds liberating the sheets and blankets from their appointed places. Profanity is used freely. All this must be done. And when the necessary mischief comes to an end, the other rooms can be visited and compared with their own. Plans of escape can be formulated. How will the teachers on night duty be avoided? How will the masking tape on the door be dealt with? How will they reach the girls' rooms?

Then three days of nothing, nothing, nothing. The tour guides and teachers march them around in the heat to the Mayflower and the site of the Boston Tea Party and all the rest of it.
  With their schedules and routines they manage to suck the life out of history giving the students no hands-on experience, no opportunity for exploration, and only a stale story full of dead words.

Sweating, following, getting on and off the bus, Ezra hates every minute of this once anticipated trip. He hates listening to how important it all is...was. He shifts in the seats they put him in and tries to find a comfortable position in which to wait out the torture.
 

...And as the guides and teachers lecture he seeks out
her
face amongst the crowd of his classmates. She catches him looking at her and laughs, or she looks back in the direction of the speaker and pretends she has not noticed him at all. Louise Salomé plays with his affections as a cat plays with a ball of string, and he is unraveling by the minute...

Todd Booker who, wearing sunglasses and expensive sneakers, not to mention being almost a full two years into puberty, was taken as a genuine authority gave the forecast for the coming days. During dinner on the third day he announced that all the bullshit was finally over and that henceforth they would be doing the things they had come to Boston to do (whatever those might be: use your imagination, boys!). 

As predicted, they had almost the entire next afternoon as free time for shopping, followed by the Salem Witch Museum in the evening. And their last stop on Friday before heading home would be Cheers. Gord had always watched that television show in the evenings and was particularly fond of Carla's brashness. Something about the bar's entrance, only hinted at in the opening montage set to the popular song, had always interested Ezra.

He was very careful in selecting what he would buy with the money he'd been given.  A final decision as to what he would spend it on was put off until the last possible day, whereas many of the others had been impulsive, snatching something up quickly at one of the overpriced gift stores they had visited. Of the original hundred and fifty dollars he still had sixty-four dollars left. He'd spend perhaps fifteen or twenty on food for the next two days and the rest would go toward whatever treasure he finally settled on; and, if he could, he hoped to bring something back for his aunt and uncle.

They always spent their free time in the same four block radius of downtown Boston, the boundaries within which they were permitted to travel having been drawn out clearly, and early, by their chaperones. In the small amount of time he'd had in the days previous he'd broken down the possibilities of his purchase to three items: the first was a heavy book of Marvel superheroes filled with penciled character sketches from the genesis and early life of each hero, the second was a Swiss Army Knife with scissors and a strange device the clerk had told him was a lock pick (I can buy a
knife
? Just like that?), and the last was a pair of Ocean Pacific sunglasses that were too big for his head. Ezra contemplated the pros and cons of each, and his hands itched at the idea of having one of the chosen items as his (strangely) private possession during the long ride home.

When they were finally set free Ezra, Danny Hadron, Chad Lambda, and K.J. Kalafati decided that they would do their shopping before they ate lunch. Boston smelled like caramel corn to Ezra, and the sounds were those of street performers, the market places that most cities have erased in the name of progress, and the shouts of commerce. In front of an old building with huge pillars and big stone stairs a crowd had formed. The boys ducked around the columns and discovered that the building was a courthouse. At the bottom of the stairs a young magician with closely cropped black hair and light brown skin performed sleight of hand tricks. As he spoke deliberately to the crowd, which had formed a circle around him and had staggered itself upon the different levels of the courthouse steps, he seemed almost to be falling asleep. His heavy eyelids fell each time he paused to measure his words, which he did often and carefully, and in time it became clear to all who watched that the magician was not tired at all, but completely at ease, almost meditative. His body was thin and athletic; his limbs trim with discipline. The four boys watched for several minutes as he made the mundane items of everyday life vanish, pulled cards from the hands of strangers, sent the queen of hearts into the Great Beyond, and then summoned her back with hands that moved as smoothly as flowing water.
  Somehow he managed to remove a woman's ring then, without changing positions, slid it onto the hand of another woman standing right beside Danny Hadron. When he summoned the woman to the front of the crowd and showed her the ring on her finger she screamed in surprise, bent over at the waist, and covered her mouth with her hands. He smiled politely at the woman's reaction, then removed the ring from her shaking hand and returned it to its stunned owner.

After a round of applause had faded he clasped his hands together, as if in prayer, and continued: "Okay...the next thing I need is money. That's all you need to have to be part of the next trick. You don't need talent or good looks or any of that, all you have to have is money." He looked over his audience with a hint of amused expectation, but the small crowd remained silent.
  "All of you want to hold on to your money, I guess. But I'm easy to please. All I need is a quarter. You got a quarter sir?" he asked a man, two rows back, who was a full head taller than anyone around him. The man's face, clear above the crowd, startled Ezra. His memory, making use of that automatic mechanism of comparison by which we make sense of things that appear to be familiar, immediately brought before him the face of Mr. Pentheus, his communion teacher from that fall. He had to look a second time, and closer, before he was sure it was not him. The man smiled uncomfortably above the crowd and pulled his tie away from his neck,

"No, I'm sorry, I don't." Ezra examined his face closely, trying to discern what it was that made him look so much like Pentheus.

"How about you back there? You look like a man with money in his pocket."  K.J. elbowed him.

"Ez, he means you!" his friend whispered. Ezra's head snapped away from the tall man back towards the magician, who raised his eyebrows and nodded at him.

"Do you have a quarter, my friend?" Confused for a moment, Ezra quickly dug around inside his pockets and pulled out a coin.

"Uh, yeah, I do," he said, craning his head above the crowd and raising his voice loud enough for the magician to hear him.