Every Time We Say Goodbye (20 page)

He opened his eyes. The bus had pulled into a station, and a stout woman in a rust-coloured coat was arguing with the driver about her ticket. Dean squirmed in his seat and peered out the window. In a parking lot across the street, a man in a suit got out of a gleaming white Cadillac and ran around to open the back door. A huge puff of white skirt billowed out, followed by the rest of the bride. Her hair was a dark three-tiered cake decorated with thin loops and bands of icing. Dean watched the man and his cake-headed bride walk up the steps to the banquet hall. He hadn’t thought about this possibility: Grace, married. She could very well be married, with other children, kids that she’d kept, that had turned out. Her husband wouldn’t know about the baby she’d left behind. And now Dean was going to show up on her doorstep and tell everything.

She wouldn’t want to see him. She would try to close the door, beg him to go away. “It’s nobody,” she would call out over her shoulder, and when she turned back to him, her voice would go hard and cold. “I don’t know you. You’re nothing to me. Get out of my sight.”

He wouldn’t be able to bear it. He would throw himself off a bridge.

He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. It might not happen like that, he told himself. Her hands might fly to her cheeks. She might cry out and welcome him in. She would tell him that she’d waited so long. There would be an explanation, a reason why she had left him there in Sault Ste. Marie with his aunt and uncle. It would all make sense, and she would put her arms around him and say, “At last, at last.” She would introduce him to her husband, and he would shake Dean’s hand firmly and warmly. She would say, “Come and meet your brothers and sisters.” They would be shy at first, but then they would come forward and want to show him their rooms and their stuff.

Or he would not find her at all. And then what? He didn’t know what. He was too tired to think about then what.

Outside, fields were flowing by in the dying afternoon light. He was thirsty and hungry. He wanted to eat three of Vera’s golden butter tarts, drink two glasses of cold milk and then lie down in his own bed, in his own room, in his own house. No. What he really wanted was to go back in time: he wanted to know nothing. What you didn’t know wouldn’t hurt you, unless you found out that you didn’t know it. Then it was like a wildcat trapped inside you, slashing and scratching and howling to be let out. Nor did letting it out help: it just clawed and bit you and made a mess of things. He wanted to go back to the day of the light bulb trick. He would realize that Wharton was on to him and he’d substitute another trick. He’d go home with Wharton’s money in his pocket and wait for his mother to get back from Mrs. May’s. He wouldn’t open a box or steal a car or forge a signature on a cheque. He’d be Dean Turner, son of Frank and Vera. He’d ask them no questions, they’d tell him no lies.

T
he plan was to buy a map at the bus station kiosk and sit down with a bottle of Coke 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 glass 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 Grass
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 passed 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 pinprick 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 hell 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 pass 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 Hell 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.

God
damn
. 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. “Hello?” he called. He put his hand on the doorknob 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 god’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 passed 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, passed 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.