The Monkeyface Chronicles (23 page)

“It's impossible for
anyone
to look like that! The photo of that model was taken with perfect lighting, at the perfect angle, then it was digitally altered to remove even the slightest blemishes. The woman on that ad isn't a
woman
at all. She's a
design
. An impossible standard.”

“So, what? You think I should start wearing my Tabernacle uniform again, and gain back the thirty pounds I lost?”

“You know that's not what I mean. It's great that you are exercising and taking care of yourself. But if you're doing all of that, and you still happen to be slightly bigger or smaller or shorter or taller than this artificial standard, you shouldn't feel compelled to change yourself to fit it.”

“So,” Adeline says, “you're
not
going to get your face fixed when you turn eighteen?” She folds her arms across her chest. She has laid her trump card.

“No,” I say. “No I'm not. My face is going to stay exactly the way it is. I'm not getting it fixed, because it isn't broken.” Until I said it out loud just now, I didn't realize just how strongly I feel about this. “If other people don't like it, they can look at the fake, digitally-altered, perfect models instead.”

“Well, Philip, if that's really your philosophy, I respect it. I really do.
But
,” she says, pointing again to the billboard, “I still want to look like that, and I only need to lose another ten pounds to do it.”

“Fine,” I say, “just make sure the next time you pass out from hunger, it isn't in front of a speeding truck or something, okay?”

“I feel better now,” she says. “Let's get going.”

Finding the Angel

M
uch farther up Yonge Street, Adeline stops beside an imposing gateway made of black and brown brick, with a Neo-Gothic arch and twin turrets. It reminds me of the Anglican Church in Faireville; but a mere gate here is as grand as an entire building back home. The lettering carved at the top of the gateway reads
Mount Pleasant Cemetery
.

“Do you think it's weird that I like exploring cemeteries?”

“No.”

“Good!” she says, clapping her hands together. “In that case, I am going to introduce you to some of the most famous people in Toronto. Don't be offended if they don't say much.”

I stop to read the bronze plaque to the left of the arch, which tells me that “
the first interment took place on March 13,
1876,
” and that “
by December 31, 1965, 117,705 interments had
been made in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.
”

“Wow,” I say. “Old
and
big.”

“More impressive than the cemetery in Faireville, that's for sure,” Adeline says.

We've only been walking into the lush cemetery grounds for a few minutes, and already Yonge Street seems miles away. The cemetery is a virtual arboretum; there are hundreds of huge old trees of every variety, with leaves of dark and light green, purple, red, yellow, and even a few with pink cotton-candy-like fuzz growing on them. Birds twitter, the wind hushes through the leaves overhead, and well-fed squirrels scurry around in the grass.

“This is the older half of the cemetery,” Adeline says. “Some pretty expensive real estate in here, eh?”

Between the huge trees and winding pathways are hundreds of towering monuments, most of them taller than the statue of Jeremiah Faire. There are monoliths and obelisks, Roman columns capped with orbs, stylized urns and vases, Scottish and Irish crosses, representations of Christ and many sculptures of angels. We pass the ornate entrances to three crypts built into the side of a small hill, dated from the 1870s.

“Notice a similarity between this old section of Mount Pleasant and the cemetery back home?” She doesn't wait for me to answer. “Everybody buried here was white and spoke English. Toronto in the 1880s was the same as Faireville is now! Our home town is only a century behind the times.”

We stop in front of a small but impressively carved mausoleum with just the name “CAPTAIN FLUKE” carved in block letters into the granite over the arched metal doorway.

“This will be your
nom de plume
,” Adeline says.

“Huh?”

“
Captain Fluke
. It sounds kind of like a superhero, don't you think?”

“Maybe like a superhero who stops criminals by accident, like accidentally opening a car door and tripping up a mugger. “Do I really need a fake name?”

“Come on, Captain. It's just for fun.”

“Maybe the bad guys freak out when they see my face, and they just trip
themselves
up.”

“Oh no,” Adeline says, “Captain Fluke's facial disfigurement is a sign of his courage and chivalry! His scars are respected and feared by men, while women find them dashing and virile.”

Maybe I like this game after all. “Do I get to have a first name, or will you just call me ‘Captain'?”

“Your
nom de plume
will be Captain
Tobias
Fluke?”

“Tobias?”

“It sounds
dashing
!”

“Ah. And do I get to pick
your
assumed name?”

“Mine will be
Cassandra Silverstone
. She's beautiful, sophisticated, charming, and in desperate need of saving by a hero like Captain Tobias Fluke.”

Okay, I
do
like this game.

“So here is your mission, Captain,” she says. “I've got a favourite angel in this half of the cemetery. If you can find her, you will win a special prize. You get ten guesses.”

“There must be a hundreds of angels in here. The odds are not exactly in my favour.”

“I'll give you some hints along the way.” She smiles coyly, and wanders up a twisting side path. “Well, come on, Captain.”

I point to an angel engraved onto the face of a modest sandstone marker.

“Nope,” Adeline says. “Nine guesses left! Now follow me — there's somebody up ahead that I want you to meet.”

We stop before the grave of William Lyon Mackenzie King.

“Didn't you do a presentation on him in grade ten history class?” Adeline remembers.

“I did.” I put on my presentation voice: “King was one of Canada's longest-serving and shrewdest politicians. King was Prime Minister through half the Depression and all of the Second World War.”

For such a famous person, I'm impressed at how simple his grave marker is. Just his name and the dates. Just the facts. He still seems to have his admirers; dozens of tokens have been left at the foot of the grave — little Canadian flags, flowers (both plastic and real), a small potted tamarack adorned with embroidered white doves, artfully arranged stones and pine cones, and, strangely, a freshly-cut house key.

“That's the way to do it,” I tell Adeline, “live a life so big that all you need is your name on a slab, and generations later, people still remember you.”

“Not for me,” Adeline says, “I want a house-sized mausoleum with arches and Greek columns and roses and vines and religious icons, stained glass windows and a tower with a bell, at least a dozen sculptures of horses and dragons and fairies and cherubs, and my name,
Cassandra Silverstone
, lit up in pink neon for all eternity!”

“What about Adeline Brown?”

“Oh, Adeline doesn't care what you do with her body after she's gone. Grind her up and use her to fertilize a vegetable garden for all she cares. ‘My,' the guests will exclaim, ‘aren't these tomatoes to
die
for!' ”

She laughs at her own joke and scampers away from King's grave, through a grassy area bristling with tall, elaborate monuments. One of the stones is sculpted in relief with a portrait of a male angel playing an intricately carved harp.

“No,” Adeline says. “My angel is a girl. Eight guesses left, Captain.”

We cut back onto a path. Atop a large pedestal is a life-sized sculpture of an angel with wings spread fully open. Her granite robes appear as if they are being swept back by a strong wind, her sharp-featured face looks upward in an expression of triumph. Her right hand is raised high as if it may have once held a sword that the elements have since knocked from her grip.

“Nope. My angel is softer, more demure.”

We walk along a shaded path at the top of a steep ridge. Between two large monuments there is a small bronze sculpture of two little boys in bathing suits, with similar physique, size, and facial features: twin brothers. One brother is seated on the ground, washing his hair, while his brother stands behind him, pouring a pail over his head to rinse him. The simple oval plaque on the base of the sculpture reads
“Why has God picked
all of his beautiful flowers first?”

Of course I can't help thinking about Michael. I would be devastated if anything ever happened to him.

Adeline has skipped ahead of me. She calls to me over her shoulder, “You've got seven guesses left, Captain.”

“What about this one,” I ask, pointing to a statue of a baby girl with little wings in the centre of a flower garden.

“Baby angels are called
cherubs
, Captain,” she says. “My angel is a young woman. Six guesses.”

She leads me along another paved pathway, and we stop in front of the elaborate mausoleum of the famous Massey family. It looks like a miniature cathedral. On the roof, supported on an ornate platform, is a larger-than-life angel. Her right hand rests on her collarbone, her left atop a large anchor, the symbol of hope and faith. She is definitely more “demure” than my first guess.

“No!” Adeline laughs. “She's not even an angel! She's just a regular woman — she doesn't have any wings.”

Oh. Right. Wings.

“Come on, Adeline, you said you would give me some clues.”

“
Cassandra
, if you please,” she says. “Okay, here's the best clue you're going to get: my angel won't just jump out at you. She's hidden, and you have to find her.”

And then I see it, at the back of a well-populated plot, atop a tall, slender grey marble column: an angel with her wings folded behind her back, both arms crossed on her chest, a look of patient anticipation on her face. She may have once held onto something, but one hand is broken at the wrist. The top of one of her wings has also been fractured. She's beautiful, but she's damaged; somehow I think that this would appeal to Adeline.

“You're close this time,” she says. “My angel and this one could be sisters. But mine can still fly.” Then she segues into her Cassandra Silverstone persona, gesturing grandly and declaring, “and now, on to Millionaire's Row! Will the good captain find his lady's angel there? Only time will tell!”

She leads me to a semicircular path at a secluded edge of the cemetery property, which is shaded by dense growths of ancient trees. Standing before the stone wall that separates the cemetery from the neighbourhood beyond are impressive monuments and private mausoleums, some of which are larger than the family homes on the other side of the wall.

The first mausoleum is decorated with four solemn Greek columns. I peek through the open slats on its bronze door at a glowing stained glass window on the rear wall, which depicts a doe-eyed female angel, each feather in her wings dotted with the turquoise “eye” of a peacock feather. This angel seems a bit showy for Adeline's taste, but it might suit the style of her alter ego, Cassandra Silverstone.

She steps up beside me and peeks through the window. “Peacock feathers? Are you kidding me? My angel stands on her own two feet,” she says. “You were closer with the last one. Three guesses left, Captain Fluke.”

At least now I know I'm looking for
Adeline's
angel, not
Cassandra's
.

Each mausoleum along Millionaire's Row is larger and more elaborately decorated than the one before it, until we reach the ultimate final resting place, the tomb of Timothy Eaton, founder and figurehead of the Eaton's department store empire.

Adeline points to the two family homes just over the wall behind the Eaton mausoleum, and says, “The families in those houses can brag to their friends that they live right next door to Timothy Eaton.”

“Although he can't brag to anyone, can he?”

“Good one, Captain Fluke,” Adeline says. “Speaking of that, do you know what Timothy Eaton has in common with the anonymous beggar buried in Grave 69 in the cemetery back in Faireville?”

“They're both equally dead?”

“You got it,” Adeline says. “Nobody lives forever.”

We stand in front of Eaton's mausoleum for a while, contemplating the bronze lions and nine steps to the huge bronze door and the twenty-eight Corinthian columns and life and death. I can feel time flowing past us, like the breeze that rustles the foliage of the trees overhead, and I remember the words of Virgil that my grandfather quoted when he gave Michael his pocket watch on our thirteenth birthday:
Time
meanwhile flies, never to return.

As if she's reading my thoughts, Adeline says, “I guess we'd better make use of the time we've got left, eh? You've got a mission to complete, Captain. And a reward to collect if you succeed. And the object of your quest is
right beside you
.”

I look around for a female angel, a young woman, standing on her own two feet, holding onto nothing. Could Adeline be referring to
herself
? Is she her
own
angel?

She reads my mind again, and rolls her eyes emphatically. “It's not me!” she says. “You can't be your own angel!” She grabs me by the shoulders and turns my body away from Eaton's tomb. “She's
hidden
,” Adeline says. “You have to
find
her. She's right in front of your nose!”

I scan the plots across from Millionaire's Row, but all I see are lines of ordinary, rectangular gravestones; there isn't a single angel anywhere. Then I realize that one of them is not just an ordinary stone but the platform for something else, something hidden under the drooping branches of a huge old tree. I walk over. Beside the trunk, which is grey and wrinkled like the leg of an elderly elephant, is Adeline's Angel.