The Master of Happy Endings (14 page)

“Which of course they did, my darling! And now maybe you will realize what is going on that you may have become too confused to notice—how you have been led into exactly the situation you haven't even recognized is one of your most compelling aspirations, because it's time you woke up at last and faced the fact that something you have left incomplete and unacknowledged for most of your life is precisely what you have been led to confront without knowing it.”

Axel Thorstad almost responded aloud—“What? What have I been led to confront?” Of course it was not Elena who had kept track of Oonagh's progress over the years, noticing the occasional photograph on the cover of some grocery-store magazine, the smallest news item in the Arts section of the newspaper—a role in some Broadway play, an award held high for the photographers determined to capture her incomparable smile—making it clear that she could not be found in any one place but belonged everywhere at once. Only recently had he noticed that she'd been photographed during a period of working in California.

When he mentioned Oonagh's name at breakfast, Mrs. Montana was able to tell him why she'd been photographed in L.A. “Retired from the stage years ago, I think.” Travis and Carl had already left the breakfast room, and Mrs. Montana was about to leave for the office wearing a navy-blue skirt and jacket, though had yet to put on her shoes. “Now she has a regular role on TV. Are you telling me you knew her?”

“A colleague once, long ago,” was all he would admit to. Mrs. Montana did not strike him as someone who would appreciate knowing more about the relationship, but it was clear that he had just acquired a little additional interest, perhaps a small amount of mystery as well.

Mrs. Montana recalled seeing Oonagh Farrell in a televised version of
The Glass Menagerie
. “I've heard she was magnificent on the stage. But then you've probably seen her yourself, if she was a friend.”

“Once. Well, twice.” This was long ago now, in New York City. “My wife and I attended a performance of
Saint Joan
.” They had hoped to see Topolski as well, but apparently the Polish dukein-waiting was on a business trip to Peru.

Oonagh had been a brilliant Joan, just as he'd expected. You wanted to rise up and follow her into war, and yet at the same time you wanted to take her away and save the poor child from herself. And, near the end of the play—Thorstad had waited for it—she had been able at last to say, legitimately, with a catch in her voice, the heart-wrenching line she had made her own on many occasions—usually during interminable and tedious staff meetings: “How long, oh Lord, how long?”—but provoking tightened throats this time, and possibly tears, rather than muffled laughter.

She had probably been smiling to herself, knowing that Axel Thorstad was in the audience recalling her staff-meeting mischief. She'd hinted at this when they met for lunch the next day, but made no reference to having been, though briefly, the centre of Axel Thorstad's life.

After lunch, Elena had chosen to shop for a black opal whose mix of colours was perfectly matched to her dark Castilian eyes, but he had returned to the theatre for the matinee performance of the same play, convinced that every word spoken by the inspired and headstrong girl from Domremy was intended just for him.

“Of course her
Saint Joan
was later shown on television,” he informed Mrs. Montana. “You may have seen it yourself. As was her
Cherry Orchard
.”

“Well! If you had told us she was an old friend we'd have watched
Another Life
last night. She plays a dotty old neighbour who claims to be Swedish royalty.”

He could not allow Mrs. Montana to see how he felt about this. That Oonagh Farrell could be in Los Angeles, and Topolski possibly with her, might be good enough reason to refuse the Montanas' assignment. Oonagh Farrell might see his sudden appearance as the sort of harassment stars were sometimes subjected to from people claiming a long-ago friendship. Neither Oonagh nor Topolski had got in touch during all those years, though they certainly must have known where he could be found.

At any rate, this did not alter the fact that he wasn't sure he wanted to be responsible for a resistant seventeen-year-old in the noisy glamour of Los Angeles. How much did he know about today's youth once they were beyond the reach of their parents? He had heard that they had little in common with the students he'd taught, and might as well have been from another planet— inscrutable, unpredictable, and dangerous. Even a clean-cut boy without a nose ring could be waiting to cross the border in order to show his true colours. And, he mustn't forget, this one was reluctant to have him along.

Because the city's teachers were having some sort of professional workshop today, Thorstad assumed this would be an opportunity to discover how serious Travis was about his preparing for exams. But Travis had other plans. When he'd come thumping down the stairs from his room and paused to jam his feet into his runners inside the front door, he explained that this was his chance to put in some hours at the homeless centre downtown. “I volunteer.” He yanked a jacket from the closet. “Research for my role!”

His role in the TV series, he explained, was that of a teen who'd run away from his family to live amongst a group of street people in some New England town. His companions were dope addicts, alcoholics, released convicts, the mentally ill, and the unemployed. “This is
vital
, man!”

Mrs. Montana's protest was cheerfully pushed aside. “He can come with me! They'll be happy to put him to work.”

Axel Thorstad repressed an involuntary groan. He had no desire to go downtown, which he was sure would be a confusion of dangerous traffic and crowds of rude, impatient shoppers. Even less appealing was the spring rain that had worked itself up into a deluge during the night, the downpipes roaring at every corner of the Montanas' house. Travis was obviously determined to sabotage or at least delay his would-be tutor's opportunity to find out what it would be like to work with him.

Yet it could be useful to observe the boy when he was away from the family home.

Travis grabbed two umbrellas from a jardinière and led Thorstad out to his battered green Tercel in the three-car garage. The wheels were without hubcaps and the rear window had been replaced by a sheet of plastic duct-taped in place, but the engine roared into life at a turn of the key. Travis assured him that the rattling would not be noticed once they'd exceeded the speed limit.

They worked their way out of the neighbourhood past mansions Thorstad did not recall noticing on his way in. “That,” Travis said, indicating a large pink-stucco house out near the water, “my mother sold to a couple from Arizona who come up to stay in it three weeks a year. Empty the rest of the year, except when gardeners or cleaners make their rounds.” It wasn't clear whether he was criticizing the extravagance of foreigners with money or simply boasting of his mother's ability to attract wealthy clients.

“Now she's talking about investing in a residential cruise ship. She figures once the idea catches on there'll be big demand— retired people wanting to, you know, own a suite in a ship that never stops roaming the world!” Thorstad assumed he was speaking of luxury liners for the wealthy, but couldn't help imagining shiploads of
senior-seniors
sent out to sea and forbidden to return to land.

Once they'd turned onto a major thoroughfare and other cars were left behind in a rooster tail of rainwater, it was clear that Travis had been taught to drive by his mother. Drivers shook their fists. Horns were honked, though Travis appeared not to hear. Axel Thorstad decided that this was one too many reckless drivers to suffer in silence. “Slow down, please. Or let me off at the next intersection.”

“She hates me volunteering,” Travis said, releasing the pressure on the accelerator just a little. “She's scared I'll, like, bring home a disease. Or, even worse, street people to camp in our basement. I wouldn't be surprised if bringing you here was, y'know, to keep the guest house occupied by someone she chose herself.”

There was little about the downtown area that looked as Thorstad remembered it from occasions when he and Elena had driven down for a movie or a play. What interested him now was the number of tall cranes standing above holes in the ground. Giant billboards displayed colourful illustrations of the towers that would rise from these sites—glass and steel and lush roof gardens. “Homes for your homeless?” Thorstad asked.

“Very funny, haw haw! A one-bedroom suite in those will cost more than, you know, a four-bedroom house in Winnipeg.” While they idled at an intersection, he added, “They're being built for rich outsiders to invest in and later sell to other rich outsiders planning to retire here.” Then, as they started across the intersection, “Eventually local working families will have to camp outside the city limits in shack towns. You're looking at a future Rio.” He turned a broad grin to Thorstad. “See how I drive my mother nuts?”

An astonishing number of vehicles had been reborn as moving billboards. The back ends of buses advertised new condominiums for sale. Pickup trucks were as colourful as the Saturday comics, with Action Heroes advertising bathroom fixtures and cartoon kittens promoting toilet tissue. One Toyota advertised the company that would paint advertisements on your vehicle, and—by way of example—displayed an image of its own decorated self on its door.

“My mother's company advertises on great long moving vans. It takes a lot of space to show a townhouse complex big enough to, you know, bury a produce farm.”

Of course all of these vehicles were shedding rainwater. Rain poured off awnings in front of stores, ran in rivers along the curbs in search of drains, danced on the lake-like surface of intersections, and defeated the best efforts of the Tercel's windshield wipers. The interior of the car was loud with the wipers' thrashing and the steady drumming of water on the roof, increasing Thorstad's sense of having entered a city in the throes of a clamorous panic. He felt a touch of alarm himself.

They circled the block twice before finding a vacant parking space, then waited for a break in the traffic before dashing across the street to come up onto the sidewalk beneath an awning, stomping their feet and shaking rainwater from their umbrellas. Thorstad's stomach told him he was about to become an intruder in a foreign world.

In this covered space outside the squat green stucco building, they were amongst people who'd come outside and started off in one direction and then turned back, perhaps surprised by the rain. Smokers and lounging dogs formed a sort of hub around which others revolved. Shopping baskets piled high with garbage bags sat parked by the window. Thorstad watched a cyclist pedal past, pulling a trailer stacked with cardboard cartons. An elderly Chinese, adopting a custom of his ancestors, balanced a long slim pole on one shoulder, a bulging black garbage bag hanging from either end.

He hadn't thought to expect such noise inside, or so many people. Seen from the doorway, this was rather like the first glance at a crowded Breughel painting, where individual faces might belong to any of the overlapping dark-clothed bodies. Several round tables were occupied—some people chatting, some only staring into the table's surface. As he followed Travis through the crowd inside the door, he saw there were also clusters of people engaged in conversation while standing. On the floor along a side wall, several dressed in winter coats appeared to be sleeping against a pile of camping gear, while above them silent stock cars tried to demolish one another on a wall-mounted television screen.

There were too many people for the space, and yet more streamed in. Already his toes had been stepped on, his elbow pushed aside. It wasn't all that easy to breathe. He was aware of sweat breaking out on his forehead. How was it possible for there to be so many in need of this place? Some came to the counter where mugs were available while others pushed through to a side table where they could make toast. Travis explained that after a night of sleeping in cardboard boxes or under bridges this was the closest thing these people had to the comforts of home— though the bare plywood walls and marked-up flooring brought to Thorstad's mind a bingo hall or small-town community centre.

Wherever he stood he was between someone and something that person needed—the coffee urn, the small computer lab, the outside door, or the entrance to the pool table area. Fingers plucked at his sleeve. “Hey you—Stretch! Yeh, you! You know where Neil got to?” A woman who looked as though she hadn't slept in recent weeks put herself directly before him to demand attention: “I don't remember your name but I'm looking for the dumb shit who took my mug before I'd finished my drink.”

Thorstad wasn't sure he could deal with so much evidence of
need
without betraying signs of pity, or an instinct to apologize— for what, he didn't know. But Travis seemed to be comfortable. He stopped to chat at a crowded table, then turned away laughing, calling back something as he walked away. While gathering mugs at another table, he appeared to be listening hard to a diminutive woman's earnest monologue, her hand clamped to his arm. When he'd been freed to turn away, he was confronted by an obviously distressed man who stood solidly before him, struggling hard to explain something. He walked this man to the back of the room where he knocked on a closed door and waited for it to open.

Eventually Travis showed him how he could help by gathering up used coffee mugs and taking them to the counter where they would be washed, then carrying a plastic tub of clean mugs back to the table of coffee urns. Thorstad was soon using paper towels to wipe up spills, returning the knife to the peanut butter jar, and tidying the sliced bread that seemed to get scattered across the side table every time someone used the toaster. He spotted his own crop of abandoned mugs to carry to the kitchen, where a large man with a blue plaid shirt and wide suspenders dumped them into a sink of soapy water. No one asked why Axel Thorstad was here. He could have been just another of the regular volunteers, or a felon sentenced to community service. He smiled, to think of Lisa Svetic reporting this to the others: “Old fool left to become a rich boy's teacher and found himself cleaning up for the down-and-out!”