Toby (26 page)

Toby’s heart seemed ready to bust out of its cage and roar across the room, throw Catherine out the picture window, and carry Hugo to bed. He understood perfectly, for the first time in his life, the potential solace of a violent act. A delicious slap in the face. All he could do was fall to his knees and hug Hugo and kiss him and whisper to him that he would be back here, home, soon, that he need not worry. He never needed to worry. Toby told him, once in each ear, that he loved him, told him that he would protect him, that he loved him
so much,
and he said it some more, as Catherine protested that the taxi was waiting, meter on. Toby said it ten times, an incantation, as there were no adequate words.

Catherine carried a knitted bag of his items: shoes, a suit, Lammy, the lamb he slept with, whatever Karen had thrown in.

Toby, still on his knees, could hear the boy’s cries all the way down the front yard, the sound weakening with each footstep in the snow. Hugo’s tears were all over Toby’s face, dripping salt slowly into his mouth. Karen walked to the window and watched. He hoped that if he didn’t watch, Catherine—in her fucking delusional hooker insanity—would change her mind and bring Hugo back.

With the help of a footstool, Karen lowered herself to her knees and crawled over to him.

“Why did you let her in?”

“She’s his mom.”

The social worker, Mireille,
received Toby on New Year’s Eve without an appointment on St. Jean Boulevard, in Dollard. He had accosted the woman outside, in what he took to be a courtly manner, a few minutes before the office opened at nine. Mireille was a large and beautiful woman from Haiti, who nodded languidly as he spoke, and clasped her hands in an official version of sympathy. His grandest worry, his conspiracy theory, which he had presented before she answered any of his questions or concerns—that the government of Quebec could not abide a francophone child adopted by a man with a Slavic-sounding surname—did not faze her. He had business cards left over from his work at the station. Ménard, Ménard. It was not yet a legal name change, but it could be, by week’s end, if she thought it would help. Anything she thought would help, it would be done by week’s end. “Everything can be done in French, you see? I speak French with him. He will always go to French schools, wherever we live. I am Québécois too.” Toby finished speaking and allowed himself to breathe properly again. He had gone on longer than necessary because he
did not want Mireille to respond. As long as he was talking, it was reason and truth. Hugo was his. His hands were freezing, even inside. He made a cup out of them and blew into it. The traffic on the boulevard whooshed through the freshly melted snow, as it had warmed enough to rain. A sound that had once comforted him, cars on a suburban boulevard, in the rain. Like the spark of a natural gas furnace.

“It is very difficult,” she said, “to take a child from his mother.”

“You’re on her side.”

“I am on no side, Mr. Toby.”

“She was prostituting herself in Paris.”

Mireille sighed. He had said too much, and angrily. “You have proof of this?”

“She abandoned him, without a word, for months. Is that not against the law?”

“It is.”

“Well?”

“She
returned.
It is more common than you think, to go through a corrective experience. You will see this, if she has the means to hire a lawyer.” Mireille crossed her powerful arms in defiance. At one point in her life, Toby was certain, Mireille had gone through a corrective experience. The lights in her office were not yet turned on, and in the dimness of the December morning it suddenly felt intimate and awkward in the room. There was no ring on her finger. Anything she wanted. Money, oral sex, film rights. She had not yet turned on the computer. Many kilometres away, on its approach or retreat, a crack of rare winter thunder. “This idea, Mr. Toby, that you would take the boy to New York City before finalizing guardianship is equally preposterous, if you will allow me to be frank.”

The electronic ticket had arrived that morning, in Toby’s inbox. The ninth of January, two seats in business class, an afternoon flight, dinner provided.

“Legally—”

“It is simple for her lawyer. She left Hugo with people she trusted, sorted herself out on a holiday, and returned. If she does it again, well, that is something. But until then—”

“I can’t wait for her to do it again. He’s my…he’s mine.” Toby breathed, closed his eyes for a moment. The social worker offered him a Kleenex from a floral-print box she kept handy. “I feed him, every day. When he’s scared, I…”

Mireille leaned on the desk and looked away from Toby, at a thin and windowless wall. Artificial materials. Two degrees, from the University of Haiti and from Laval. From this angle, Toby could see a tiny splotch of blood in the white of her left eye.

The Chevette was still dead on Hyman, and Karen had a meeting with Steve Bancroft. Toby filled a garbage bag with toys and clothes and walked to the train station, where he picked up an abandoned copy of a community newspaper,
The Suburban.
All the way across the West Island and into downtown, he read the newspaper with the growing suspicion that he himself was in the midst of a corrective experience. It was an old copy, from the previous summer. Had no one cleaned since then? The top story concerned the international flora show in the Old Port. In the filthy slush, lopsided from carrying a stuffed garbage bag, he had soaked his brown suit to the knee. Another suit ruined. His shoes, a pair of black
brogues, were also compromised. The mud and salt had begun to dry and cake off by the time he reached Central Station. Two representatives of the Metropolitan Transit System, passing through the cars upon their arrival, stopped to consider him for a moment—soaked, carrying a garbage bag.

In the underground mall of the station, Toby bought a bouquet and a bottle of champagne. He was tempted to buy a new book for Hugo, but once Catherine listened properly and surrendered the boy, unconditionally, to Toby, he would have all the titles of rue Collingwood at his disposal again. UPS would deliver them all to New York, once they were settled in the temporary apartment on the Upper East Side. He silently practised his speech in the metro, the dirty metro, where a homeless person with a garbage bag was perfectly acceptable as long as he made it through the turnstile. Thank you, Catherine, for everything you have done for the boy so far. But listen to reason.
Papa a raison.

The apartment in Pie-IX looked as though it were peeling in the cold rain. Somewhere on the island, or retired in a bright condominium development in Boca Raton, the architects of despair huddled over their life’s work and quietly mourned this place. From his bedroom in Manhattan, Hugo would see a sliver of Central Park.

Toby pressed the buzzer and began manufacturing a smile. Catherine unlocked the door without verifying his identity, another strike against her; who was to say he wasn’t a jihadist? She stood in the doorway, her black eye not black but a swirl of gold and pink and brown. Her hair was short, cut into a bob, and dyed. Behind her, Hugo stood smiling in his brown pinstripe suit, his shirt unironed and his tie a mangled mess. Both of them in brown suits. “Poney.” He
clapped. “I’m here.”

“
I’m here,
” said Catherine, in English. “You made him a snob.”

“I taught him some manners.” Toby lifted the garbage bag. “Some of his clothes and toys. I brought flowers and champagne. I thought we could ring in the new year.”

“I’m all wet,” said Hugo. “Come in, come in.”

Catherine took the bag, peeked inside, and closed it up. She slid it into her apartment and, without a glance at the flowers and wine or another word, closed the door. As it swung shut, Hugo extended his arms toward Toby and wailed.

For twenty minutes Toby sat on the peeling white linoleum of the hallway floor. The boy cried for some time, and then he stopped and all was quiet inside the apartment. Toby knocked on the door. When Catherine opened it, her rough little hands folded into fists, he offered the gifts. To trade pretty things for the boy. In New York, they would buy a new bed for Hugo and decorate his room with photographs of animals and planets. On the weekends they would visit the children’s zoo in Central Park, the marionette theatre, the carousel.

“I can make him happy. Let me take him, and I’ll give you whatever you want. You want money?”

“You’re insane.”

“My job is in New York.”

Hugo appeared in the room again. “New York!”

“Read the latest studies: there is no better place to raise a child.”

“You stand in my hallway, plastered in mud, talking about stealing my son. Taking him across a border.”

My son, my son.
“My suggestion is entirely sane: to give Hugo all the advantages of—”

“All he needs is love. And that’s my job.”

“You left him.”

“I did what I had to do. Now I can be a better mother to him.”

Toby did not make eye contact with Catherine. He looked past her, at the boy, who waved Toby inside. The jacket was gone. Now he stood in his deranged shirt and tie, like a tiny vacuum cleaner salesman. “I have to fix his tie.”

“No.”

“You can…come to New York with me. We’ll be a family.”

“Insane.”

Toby kissed her. She pushed him away, shouted, kicked his left knee. “I’m calling the police.”

A man in a white T-shirt, a bottle of 50 in hand, emerged from a door across the hall. “Is everything all right, Catherine?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“If you need help, just yell.” The man lifted his chin at Toby and went back inside.

“You left Hugo with me for a reason.”

“Back then you didn’t seem crazy.”

“I can’t just
leave.
”

“But you must.”

“I want a few hours with him tomorrow.”

“We are very busy.”

“Catherine. Please. I’ll beg.”

She looked back into the apartment. “After his nap.”

Toby wandered through Montreal for the last time, past his condominium, his cafés and bistros and miniature parks. For
one night of the year, almost everyone was properly dressed. Shortly before ten, he arrived at Sunnybrooke station and waved down a taxi.

His mother and Steve Bancroft sat in the living room, Karen in her recliner and Steve on the chesterfield, a bottle of dear-looking Rioja nearly empty before them.

Karen stood up when she saw him. “What happened to you?”

“I tried to get him back.”

“Were you in a fight?”

“No.”

“There’s probably a glass left in the bottle, if you’d like one.”

“Thank you. Hello, Mr. Bancroft.”

“Steve, please.”

“What did she say?”

Toby sat in his father’s recliner. There was no smoke in the air. Neither Karen nor Steve Bancroft said much as Toby flatly explained his attempt to negotiate for Hugo. Karen poured him a glass of wine and opened another bottle.

“You think he should stay with her, Mom?”

“I don’t know what I think.”

“You know what she did.”

“I have a compromise,” Steve Bancroft said, leaning forward and clapping his hands. Like a football coach, Toby thought. For an instant he was angry, thinking the clap would wake up Hugo, sleeping down the hall. The wine was good. Steve Bancroft was a football coach with an appreciation of fine wine. “It isn’t perfect, but what is?”

“A lot is, Steve, if you care to concern yourself with it.”

Steve Bancroft blinked three times. “My business manager,
Fred—you don’t know him—he looked at your proposal. He did some research. And you know what?”

“What?”

“It checks out. This bubble tea thing has legs. That’s why I’m here. We’re going into business together, your mom and I.”

Your mom and I.
Toby had not eaten in hours, and the heat of the wine rose up and turned to gunmetal in his mouth. “Let’s go outside.”

“Who?” Steve Bancroft looked around, as though there were someone else on the chesterfield. “Why?”

“Let’s go outside and sort this out, once and for all.”

“Sort…sort what out?”

“Don’t act dumb, Steve. Cuckolder. Prepare to defend yourself.”

“Toby.” Karen left her recliner and sat next to Steve Bancroft on the chesterfield.

“I see what’s going on here.”

“You see nothing,” she said.

Steve Bancroft finished his wine. “I’ll leave.”

“I’ll go with you, and we’ll have a reckoning.”

“A reckoning.”

Toby had never been in a fist fight, though looking back he wished he had punched Dwayne in his office. How he would actually
summon
a punch, and how that punch would be received and reciprocated had always mystified him, but not now. Now, Steve Bancroft’s confusion, his endearing handsomeness, his sincerity, only strengthened Toby’s resolve. They would fight on the front lawn, in the snow, like a couple of baboons.

“I don’t know if this is a joke or something, but I’m sixty-two. I don’t fight.”

“Coward.”

“Two years ago, I had an angina attack. Do you know what that is? I could actually be
killed
in a fight.”

“That’s a risk you’re going to have to take.”

Steve Bancroft stood up. Toby stood up and punched his left palm. Steve Bancroft said, “Karen, I’m leaving now.”

“Just a moment, Steve.” She put both her hands on his. “I’m going to take this one down the hall and speak to him for a few minutes. And then we’ll come back.”

Karen pulled Toby by the lapel of his ruined suit. He dished Steve Bancroft the stink eye on his way out of the room. Once he had started to act the bully, Toby had found it quite enjoyable. Karen led him into the master bedroom, her bedroom, where the smell of Edward Mushinsky continued to linger with the cigarillos and perfume. She closed the door. Before he had a chance to defend himself, she slapped him so hard he fell back against her chest of drawers and sliced his hand on the likeness of a butterfly painted on a sheet of corrugated tin.

“Goddamn it,” she said, and staunched the bleeding with a pile of Kleenex. The sound of the Kleenex coming out of the box in quick succession—
floof, floof
—reminded him of his childhood bloody noses. “You are not fighting anyone.”

“What the hell’s the cuckolder doing here?”

“You invited him back into our lives, if you remember.”

“Our
business
lives.”

“I love him,” she said.

Toby pressed the Kleenex to his wound.

“I’ve loved him for as long as you’ve been alive.” Her eyes were slow and wet. “I fell in love with him.”

“Dad knew? That explains things.”

Karen slapped Toby again. Then once more. Then she hugged him. His face hurt, and he wanted to say so out loud, to blame his mother for the suicide attempt on the driveway, for the cancer, for marrying his dad in the first place.

“I loved Edward too. Such things are possible. But I made a decision, for you. We made a decision, Steve and I, to stay away from each other. We sacrificed. And we held to it. Whatever you think he’s up to, Cassius Clay, it’s beyond your understanding. Everything,
everything
is more complicated than it seems. It might help you to keep this in mind as you…as you damn Hugo’s mother.”

Toby’s hand was cut between his thumb and his index finger, deeply enough that the loaf of Kleenex had just about soaked through. There was really nothing he could say. He retired to the bathroom. Over the cold water running in the sink from fixtures so neglected and so clogged with soap scum they turned like antiques, Toby could hear his mother pleading with Steve Bancroft to stay.