Every Time We Say Goodbye (38 page)

Dawn nodded. According to Mrs. Ditmars, it was still something shameful. “But did they know who his parents were?”

Grace said, “They got him through the Children’s Aid. I don’t think they were given much information.” She got up. “You know what? I have all the letters.”

The letters were in a battered red tin box with flaking gold trim. Dawn sat in bed, with the letters spread out around her. They were written on all kinds of paper, some in pencil, some in spidery blue ink. They were short, one or two paragraphs, but there were dozens, still in their envelopes, which had been neatly slit, and some had photos.

the first one began.

The next letter said,

The photo was slightly out of focus: a baby bundled in a white blanket, a white cap on his head.

The next photo showed a child being bathed in the kitchen sink.

“What does that mean?” Dawn asked. “My dad didn’t know he had a pair of legs?”

Grace said, “I think it means he was kept in a crib in the foster homes or wherever he was. So he didn’t have a chance to begin crawling.”

“But he was a good baby. He never cried.”

Grace was quiet for a moment. “Well, you know, Dawn, babies are
supposed
to cry. It’s how they call for us.”

Dawn said, “When my sister was born, Grandma said that Geraldine—that’s my stepmom—was giving the baby the wrong message because every time the baby cried, Geraldine went to see what was wrong.”

Grace smiled. “I never did understand how that was the wrong message.” She stood up and said she was going to pack for the trip north.

Dawn studied the rest of the pictures, her father in diapers, in shorts, in long pants with a fishing rod. A teenager in a white jacket, his hair falling into his eyes. A wedding picture of Laura and Dean, Laura smiling directly into the camera, Dean talking to someone off to the side. There were pictures of her and Jimmy as babies, as toddlers, opening Christmas presents, standing side by side under the apple tree.
Grandkids with us now
, Frank wrote.
Probably for good. Mother not likely coming back
. She skimmed through the rest of the letters, news of the garden, the neighbourhood, Dawn taking piano, Jimmy starting at a new school after some trouble with windows. The last one, dated eighteen months ago, ended with,
Should get up and fix the leak in the basement sink. Tired lately. Feeling my age, I guess
. The box was empty now, except for two mismatched buttons.

Dawn reread the letter that announced her mother’s departure. There it was, the unthinkable written down as if it were the weather report.
Spring colder than usual. Mother not likely coming back
. What made him think that at the time? What had her mother said? How had it all unfolded? Why didn’t she know? It was suddenly the craziest thing she had ever heard, not what had happened, but that no one had bothered to explain it to her, aside from her mother’s speech about being left holding the bag.
As if she and Jimmy were something to be stuck with.
What a thing to say
, she thought. And her father! “At least you know who your parents are.” As if that made it all right. She kicked back the covers, scattering the letters as she got out of bed. As soon as she got back home, she was going to start asking questions, whether people wanted to answer them or not.

Replacing the letters in the little red box, she looked one last time at the first picture of Dean, the hazy white bundle. The thought of a baby crying for someone until he just gave up trying brought tears to her eyes. She wasn’t even sure if it was her father she was seeing.
It could be any one of us
, she thought.

Dan arrived in the rental car and handed Dawn a black cotton sweater and a long black skirt. “Left behind by a roommate,” he said. “I thought you might want a change of clothes.”

Dawn ran upstairs to change. When she came back down, Dan was saying to Grace, “—left a message to call home.” He smiled at Dawn. “I found your dad.”

“You talked to him?”

“No, someone he works with. We have his number now.” Dan smiled. “I’m a pretty good detective, if I do say so myself.”

Dawn didn’t have the heart to tell him how many ways a phone number did not count as finding Dean.

They got to Sault Ste. Marie at dusk. Dawn had to give directions to Dan, because Grace was no longer sure of the way. They passed the school, the corner store, the cemetery, and then they were on Sylvan Avenue, sitting in the driveway, all of them looking at the three-storey red brick house. Dan said, “Well, it’s certainly the most beautiful house on the street.” Dawn could see what he meant: the hedges were flowering, roses climbed the trellises, and the apple trees spread their arms over the garden.
Inside, her grandmother would be knitting and her grandfather would be dying, but there was no way around that.

Dawn opened the front door and let Grace go in first. Frank was sitting in the armchair under the lamp, with a blanket in his lap. “Gracie,” he said, and Grace burst into tears. Amazingly, she only cried for a second. It was like a sneeze. “Frank,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you. Vera, how are you?”

“As good as can be expected, under the circumstances,” Vera said.

Then the door opened and Vera’s face went slack. Dan strode in, set down the luggage, kissed Vera on the cheek and shook Frank’s hand. “Hello, Aunt Vera,” he said. “Hello, Uncle Frank.”

Jimmy came downstairs, and there were more introductions and handshakes. Vera told Jimmy to bring the luggage upstairs and Dawn to set the table for dinner. She had made fried chicken, and even Frank sat at the table and ate a tablespoon of mashed potatoes. Afterwards, Dan helped clear the plates, and Dawn made tea. Grace watched Frank, Frank watched Vera, and Vera’s eyes followed Dan everywhere.

“Did you recognize the neighbourhood?” Frank asked Grace. “It started to fill up after the war. The Cherniaks sold first. After John went overseas. You remember him, Grace?”

Grace held the teacup to her lips, blowing to cool it. “Yes,” she finally said, and set her teacup down.

“He came back a different person,” Frank said. “Drink? Boy, oh boy. And mean? Scare the fleas off a cat. And his son was the one that got Dean into all that trouble with the law. Left him holding the bag.”

Now that, Dawn thought, was the correct usage of the phrase.

“That’s a shame,” Grace said. A message went between her and Vera that Dawn couldn’t read. Then they both drank their tea.

After tea, Dan said he was exhausted from the drive, and Vera and Jimmy took him upstairs. Dan was going to sleep in Jimmy’s room, Jimmy in Dawn’s room, and Dawn and Grace in the attic room. Downstairs, Dawn listened from the kitchen while Grace told Frank about her business. Her company had cleaned offices at night, Grace said. Her employees had had young children, and they had rotated child care. It hadn’t always worked out, though, and sometimes they had lost clients because the head of maintenance didn’t care whose kid hadn’t come home from school or whose boyfriend had locked her out of the house in her nightgown. He only wanted the wastepaper baskets emptied on time. But the business had managed to survive. It had never made a profit, but everyone had gotten paid.

Dawn had finished drying the dishes, but she lingered in the kitchen, refolding the dishtowels, standing on a chair to wipe down the cupboards and the blue-faced clock.

“It must have been hard, though,” Frank said. His voice was raspy, and he had to rest in between sentences. “All by yourself.”

Grace said, “Oh, we had a lot of help. Theresa—you remember Theresa—she sent money. Came to stay. Looked after Danny.”

“He’s a good boy,” Frank said.

“He is,” Grace agreed. “But it was hard for him. He spent a lot of time at other boys’ houses. When he was fourteen, he practically lived at his friend Joey’s. They had a nicer house, a car, a backyard full of toys. A father.” She sighed. “He always wanted more family than I could give him.”

“You did a good job, Gracie.” There was pause, and Dawn could hear her grandfather struggle with his breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t do more to help you.”

“You did the most important thing,” Grace said.

“It was hard for her.”

Dawn heard a quick little sob.

Grace said, “She’ll be all right, Frank.”

Over the next few days, Dawn noticed that Vera and Grace didn’t like to be in the same room, but Vera and Dan had taken a shine to each other. “Let me do that,” he said, taking the broom or the duster out of her hands. He helped with all the cooking and went through Vera’s recipe cards, asking questions and copying things down in a little leather notebook. They talked for almost an hour about pastry and the particular advantages of lard. It was funny, Dawn thought, because Dan didn’t look like the kind of person Vera would go in for. His hair was too long and his jeans had rips at the knees and he wore a leather wristband. But when he said he would drive Vera to the pharmacy at 3:00, he was ready at 2:45. And when he cooked, he cleaned up as he went along, so that when the meat pies went into the oven, the stovetop was shiny and the counters were clear.

The house was busy. Laura brought a pot of soup, a pan of lasagna. She never stayed for long, but Vera always said thank you for the food. Geraldine brought flowers, and Vera scolded her for wasting money, but she washed out a vase and put them on the dining-room table. Amy sat on a stool beside Frank, who lay on the couch, and showed him photos of her dance competition. Frank could only stay awake for short periods of time. He took in long, slow, noisy breaths, but he said he wasn’t in pain. “Do you have to get back?” he asked Grace. She shook her head. “Dan has to go back on Monday, but I’m going to stay.”

Dan was planning dinner for everyone for Saturday night, using six kinds of preserves from the basement and all the vegetables in the freezer; Vera was going to make the dessert. A year ago, it would have been almost unwishable: having Laura,
Geraldine, Amy, Vera, Frank, Grace and Dan all at the same table. Even adding Dean to the table, Dawn thought, was not unthinkable. He could probably sit right between Laura and Geraldine; there were so many abnormalities now that one more wouldn’t make any difference. But no one mentioned Dean.

Saturday was unusually warm. Dan cooked the roast early in the morning so the kitchen wouldn’t get too hot, then made pancakes topped with Vera’s raspberry jam and whipped cream, and they all sat on the dark green benches under the apple trees to eat them. In the afternoon, while Grace went to the cemetery and Vera crocheted a doily, Jimmy and Dawn helped Dan in the kitchen, learning the difference between chiffonade and shredding. When the kitchen got too warm, they took Dan down to the creek, where a little breeze skimmed over the green shallows. They walked from one end of the overgrown path to the other, and then squeezed themselves onto the flat rock under the chokecherry tree. “Apparently,” Dan said, “my mother used to bring me down here when I was a baby.” In the riot of green across the bank, birds carried on a noisy conversation. The sun was strong on their hands and faces.

“Does it look familiar to you?” Dawn asked. It was weird to think that Dan had been a baby here. It was weird to think that they had all been babies here, beside the same creek, under the same roof.

“A little, but maybe magical places look familiar to everyone. Hey—wild leeks!” Dan pulled one out of the ground and nibbled on the green stalk.

Jimmy stripped a handful of chokecherries from overhead and tossed them one by one into the creek. “So, are you like our uncle or cousin or what?”

“Well,” Dan said, “your grandfather is my uncle, so that makes us … What
does
that make us?”

“And technically, he isn’t our grandfather,” Dawn said. “You know, by blood.”

Dan made a face of mock anguish. “Argh! Now you’re just making it complicated.”

Jimmy decided they needed something cool to drink and went up to the house for pop. Dawn wondered who Dan’s father was, and if he had grown up making birthday candle wishes for his dad to show up. It didn’t seem right to raise such a personal topic, but then she thought,
We’re family
, so she asked. “Dan, you never met your dad?”

“My mother said he went to war. He wasn’t killed over there, but she never saw him again.”

“Were they in love?”

Dan shrugged. “I don’t think so. She never had much to say about him. She didn’t even have a picture.”