Every Time We Say Goodbye (17 page)

“Oh, that’s terrible,” Rose said, and she looked like she meant it. “What did she have?”

“TB,” Dean said.

“And she’s had it since you were a baby?”

“There were complications,” Dean said.

“So you’ve never seen your real mother, that you can remember?”

“No,” Dean said, and his eyes filled up with tears. Rose gave him an extra plate of toast on the house, and he wanted to leave a whole dollar tip, but then he thought better of it. He was on his own now; he needed to save his money.

His plan was to drive by the office and case the place in daylight, but out on the street, two policemen were standing beside the Packard. They appeared to be just talking, not looking specifically at the Packard, but Jesus! Cops were a complication he definitely did not need. Dean ducked into a stationery shop and pretended to study the pens in a display case near the window. The cops crossed the street and went into Delilah’s Grill. Dean bought a newspaper and hurried out of the store and got into the car as fast as he could without appearing to run.

Turning off Main Street, he looked for a strip of quiet, respectable houses where a Packard would not be out of place. He finally parked under a tree at the end of a dead-end street lined with old stone houses, and set out with his newspaper and tweed cap to find a park bench. He needed to keep some distance between himself and the Packard until darkness fell. He also needed a nap.

The front door was solid glass, but at the back of the building was a row of windows at eye level. He put on the leather gloves, lifted his hammer and chisel, and went to work. The idea was to separate the frame from the wall and slide the whole thing out, neatly, silently, cleverly. He wanted to go in like a ghost, disturb nothing, put the window back on his way out. Do it with style. After a half-dozen attempts, he’d made only a small incision in the wood; he was sweating now in spite of the cold, and his arms ached from holding the chisel at such a weird angle.
To hell with style
, he thought, and raised the hammer. The night shattered into a thousand sudden pieces. Using the chisel, he knocked out the jagged pieces of glass. Then he laid his jacket over the ledge and hoisted himself in.

He was in some kind of nurse’s room—a cot covered with an olive green army blanket, a metal desk, a white chair. The night had reformed itself into a black, silent block. He stood very still, straining to hear above the noise of his own heart. At the sight of the bed, he was overcome with sleepiness. He wanted to lie down. Just for a minute. He had a blanket just like that on his bed at home. “No,” he told himself sternly. “If you sleep now, you won’t wake up till they find you here in the morning.”

He headed for the red
EXIT
glow at the end of the hall and ran up the stairs to the fifth floor. He would start at the top, work his way down. The office doors were all open. He peeled off his gloves and pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket.

At first he was neat. He opened filing cabinets and shut them quietly, ran his hands lightly over folders. He loved the idea of leaving nothing ruffled or ajar, not a paper clip out of place. He would take what he came for and no one would know a thing. The window he couldn’t help, but he’d leave a rock inside and they’d think some kids had done it.

He slid a folder out of a cabinet drawer and opened it. It was an adoption file, all right.
Mother: Marie Louise Pacquette. Age: 18 years. Promise of Marriage: No. Previous trouble: No. Putative father: James William Black. Unmarried. Is a declaration of paternity made? No
. It was dated December 4, 1959. Last year. Everything was recent, and some drawers had nothing but notices and government letters and letters from lawyers. He went faster, and as he went faster, he got messier, and as he got messier, he got madder. It was going to take all night to go through every cabinet and cupboard. He slammed drawers and didn’t bother when they flew back open and jammed, folders sticking out.

He was coming out of the stairwell on the fourth floor when they caught him.

There were two of them, Doran and Parks. They were very casual, telling him how they’d been driving by and had seen the Packard and stopped to investigate. As they were calling it in, they just happened to look up and see a spot of light moving on the fifth floor. They were so friendly that he had to ask them, “Am I under arrest?”

They escorted him to the cruiser parked out front. Doran told him to watch his head as he got in. They hadn’t bothered with cuffs. He thought briefly about making a run for it, but it would be so damn undignified if they jumped into their car and caught him before he got to the end of the road. At the station, they took his wallet and escorted him into an office and told him to wait while they contacted his parents. He was disappointed it wasn’t a cell. A cell would make a much better story. Not much he could do about it, though, and anyway, the real story he had to worry about was the one that would explain why he had been rifling through files in the Children’s Aid Society office at three in the morning. He could use part of the story he’d told Brother Nick: he was doing this for his cousin,
guy just found out he was adopted and he was so upset he was threatening to kill himself, so Dean came down here to try to find something out. Yeah, it was wrong, bad, against the law, but for crying out loud, what would
you
do if you looked up from your egg salad sandwich to see your cousin practising noose knots with his school tie?

The door opened and a man came in with Frank’s hammer and chisel. He said, “Dean Turner. Sergeant Cooper.” At the sight of him, every thread and shred of Dean’s story vanished down a deep hole. Dean recognized Cooper instantly as an inhabitant of the City of You Think This Is Funny? Town Motto: This Is Not Funny.

He had a colourless brush cut and bulging blue eyes in a big, florid face. He also had a way of pausing and blinking every few words. As if his words were so dense they needed an extra few seconds to be absorbed. He said Dean had committed very serious crimes (pause, blink) for a fifteen-year-old boy.

“But I didn’t take anything,” Dean said.

Blink. “You ever hear of breaking”—pause—“and entering?”

“Yeah, but people usually break and enter to steal something. What was I going to steal in an office building?”

Blink. Blink. “You tell me.”

“Actually, sir, my question was rhetorical,” Dean said. “Translated roughly, it means there is nothing to steal in an office building. Hence, breaking and entering for the purpose of theft would be null and void.”

“You think this is funny?” Cooper pushed back in his chair and aimed his hard-boiled egg eyes at Dean. “Let me tell you why I do not think this is as funny as you do. Charge one: breaking and entering.” Pause. “Charge two: grand theft auto, two counts.” Blink. “Charge three—”

“Grand theft auto?”

“Your parents’ car, which they told us you took and which we assume you left outside of Sudbury before—”

“I don’t think you can charge a person with stealing their own family car,” Dean said.

“—
before
you picked up the Packard which was reported stolen yesterday morning.”

“What Packard?”

“You didn’t steal the Packard from outside a hotel in Sudbury?”

“No, sir.”

Blink. “Then how’d you get here?”

“I hitchhiked.”

“And the thief who stole the Packard just happened to leave it outside the office you broke into?”

Dean shrugged. “Weird, huh?”

Cooper gestured to the tools. “You steal these?”

“No.”

Blink. “You just happened to find them under a smashed window?”

“I brought them from home.”

“For the purpose of breaking and entering.”

For the purpose of sticking them up your ass
, Dean thought. A wall of fatigue rose up, and he crossed his arms and settled down behind it. This conversation was over.

Cooper left the room and Dean slid down in the chair. “Don’t show weakness,” he told himself, but he was tired in a way he’d never been before. He was tired of all his thoughts, and they were tired of themselves. They just lay there in his head, limp and flat and disconnected from everything. If Cooper came back and said Dean was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, he’d shrug and shuffle off to his cell.

He must have fallen asleep, or into that grey in-between place, because when Cooper came back, he could see by the splashes of
light on the floor that it was much later. Cooper stood there waiting for Dean to look up. Dean could feel him blinking.

“Your parents just got here.”

“They’re not my parents,” Dean said.

“Really? Who are they, then?”

They’re liars
, Dean thought. He didn’t answer.

“Well, they sure drove a long way for someone else’s kid.”

Dean said, “I was adopted.”

“I gathered that,” Cooper said, and sat down at the desk.

“Why?” Dean straightened in the chair, alert again. “Did they say something?”

“No,” Cooper said. “But why else would you be going through files at the Children’s Aid?” He opened a drawer, fiddled around with something, closed the drawer. “I was adopted myself,” he said.

Dean smirked. “Sure.”

Cooper said, “It’s true. My cousin told me. We were arguing over something. I was eleven. I said I was going to tell my dad, and she said, ‘That’s not your dad, anyway. You were adopted.’ ”

Dean studied Cooper’s face. “Did you believe her?”

“No. But I went in and asked them. My mother said no and my father said yes. So I knew it was true.”

Wow, Dean thought. That was as bad as
What kind of talk is that?
“Did you ever find your real parents?”

“I did.”

Dean leaned forward. All his thoughts had come awake, and hope was flickering and humming just off to the side. “How? Where?”

Cooper was playing with a paper clip. He straightened it out and then bent it into a V. “Where did I find them? I’ll tell you where I found them.”

The hope flickered out.

“I found my mother in the kitchen, making my lunch for
school. I found my father in the backyard, fixing my bike. I found them every day when I came in the door. Every time I sat down at the table to eat the food they had bought and cooked for me.”

Dean slid back down in the chair.

“Look at me, son,” Cooper said, and Dean looked up, his face aflame.

“I may be adopted, but I sure as hell am not your son.” Although as soon as he said it, he realized Cooper could very well be his father. Just about any male past the age of thirty on the whole goddamn planet could be his father.

Cooper straightened the paper clip again and it snapped in two. He placed the pieces carefully on the blotter. “I know you’re thinking about the woman who gave birth to you and the man who made her pregnant, and you’re wondering who they are and why they didn’t keep you.”

Wrong
, Dean thought.
I’m thinking that you are the biggest ass I’ve ever encountered in my long and varied history of encountering asses
.

“But the truth is, those people out there in the waiting room, they’re the ones who wanted you. They’re the ones who are bringing you up. They’re the ones who didn’t sleep a wink after they found out you were gone.”

Dean turned to look. He saw only their backs, but he recognized them immediately. His mother’s wide back, his father’s thin one. His mother’s dark brown hat. His father’s battered grey fedora. A feeling of tenderness and longing opened in him, and his throat and nose itched furiously. He averted his face. He didn’t want to bawl in front of Cooper so that Cooper could later claim it as victory.
Yep, finally got through to the kid. Had him in tears by the end of it
. The wetness in his eyes had nothing to do with Cooper.

“Think of what you’re putting them through,” Cooper said.

A surge of anger drowned the longing.
Think of what they put
me
through
, Dean wanted to shout.

“The thing is,” Cooper went on, “those other folks, they aren’t anything to you. They gave you up because they had to, and that’s the whole story. It wasn’t personal.”

Dean stared at him. It wasn’t
personal?
The people who were supposed to want you for the most indispensable, irreducible, unquestionable reason of all—because you were their own flesh and blood—
didn’t
want you and they gave you away to people who, when they saw your true colours, didn’t much want you either, and it wasn’t
personal?
Dean swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I understand now.”

Cooper missed the sarcasm completely. He nodded and stood up. “You think you want to know, but trust me, you don’t. They keep those records closed for good reason.”

“Oh, very good, sir. You’re very wise, sir.”

Cooper glared at him. “There’s no need to get snarky with me, young man.”

As he was closing the door, Dean called out, “It’s not personal.”

He watched Cooper talk with his parents in the hallway. Cooper had probably been the kind of kid his parents wanted. A homework-doing, Mouseketeer-cheering, old-lady-helping kid who didn’t have to always be showing off or playing the fool. A colourless kid who would stand between them at church and think good thoughts instead of wondering how hard it was to get into the sacristy and whether the wine in there would be worth the effort. Then they were walking towards him, Cooper in the middle, and Dean remembered the photograph of Vera and another woman and a baby between them. There’d been another birth certificate.
Mother’s name: Grace Turner
. A relative he’d never heard of, a woman hidden in a closet for having a baby before she got married.