The Good Father

by Wayne Grady

  Hotel Vancouver occupies the block of West Georgia between Hornby and Burrard. A four-star hotel, with doormen, valet service, security, three-fifty a night, what is Daphne doing here? Meeting her lawyer boyfriend with a gash in her hand? There is of course no parking anywhere near it. He finds a space two blocks away and walks back. The snow crunching on the sidewalk emits a lambent glow, as though the city were lit from below, and taxis prowl the streets silently, the sound from their tires muffled by snow. Daphne may have come to the hotel simply to get a taxi, although that doesn’t make much sense. But it’s better than Mariela’s theory that she came to find a doctor.

  He goes in through the Hornby Street entrance, glancing into rooms on either side as he makes his way to the hotel’s centre court. A restaurant, an art gallery, a gift shop, a conference room, but he does not see Daphne in any of them. Christmas music makes everything seem jolly and bright. She is not at the reception desk, nor has the clerk there a record of her having taken a room. There is a bar at the centre of the rotunda, and he looks there. Still no Daphne. Another, smaller bar-café is at the West Georgia entrance, but she is not there either. He imagines he can sense her presence, like a mist of perfume hanging in the air, but he cannot, there is no mist. He is not going to find Daphne. He’s had this feeling before, it’s close to the feeling he had when Elinor was in South Africa and he convinced himself she was not coming back. It is not an irrational fear; all reasonable signs point to the fact that Daphne is lost to him. But he continues searching; he is like water trickling down a hill, easier to keep going than to stop. He will search until he is blocked by a force outside himself. He watches the door to the women’s washroom until he becomes aware that the concierge is watching him. He goes to the concierge’s desk and asks her to check the women’s washroom. “My daughter went in there some time ago,” he says. “She wasn’t feeling well, and I’m a little worried.” The concierge gives him a sympathetic look and goes into the washroom. She comes out shaking her head. “There’s no one in there,” she says. “But there’s blood on the counter. Do you want me to call Security?” Harry apologizes and says she must have gone out to the car. He looks again in the bar, climbs the two steps to the seating level and walks among the softly lit tables. A waiter approaches and asks him if he wants to sit down, and Harry says no.

  “Has there been a young woman in here?” he asks. “A woman with her hand in a bandage?”

  “Ah,” says the waiter. “She left without paying. Just now.”

  “Which way did she go?”

  “You pay and I’ll tell you.”

  Harry gives the man a twenty, and the waiter points towards the Burrard Street entrance. “Ten minutes, no more,” he says. “She left this,” and he hands Harry a black-and-gold credit card.

  Ten minutes. He looks down Burrard. She could be in a cab and halfway across the city. She could be walking down an alley. She could be lying under a layer of snow.

  “Did a young woman with a bandaged hand come through this door about ten minutes ago?” he asks the doorman.

  “I think the lady took a cab, sir.”

  “Where to?”

  “I heard her tell the driver something about Gastown, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem, sir.”

  He has to go back through the hotel to the Hornby entrance to get to his car. Precious minutes. The snow has stopped now, and the air is darker. Does she at least have a warm coat? Boots? Gloves? Why Gastown? It’s Friday night, everything will be open. She could be in any of a dozen restaurants and bars. He stops when he realizes Gastown is next to the Downtown Eastside, then hurries to his car. There are more drivers on the streets tonight the closer he gets to the east side, and more people on the sidewalks. He parks on Water Street, gets out and walks towards the statue of Gassy Jack, who stands on a barrel, feet spread, arms held away from his body, as if in shock, or perhaps fury, as though he’s yelling at a barking dog. Behind him is a row of snow-covered chairs and tables belonging to a sidewalk café that evidently doesn’t check weather reports. On a previous trip he sat at one of those tables and watched a young woman shaking her fist at Gassy Jack, yelling, “I am Queen Boadicea! You will kneel before me!” She yelled it repeatedly, each time more furiously, but Gassy Jack refused to kneel. Customers at the other tables laughed. The woman was Daphne’s age and build, and for a tormented, perhaps prescient, moment, he thought she might even be her. She came panhandling along the line of tables and he gave her two dollars, payment for not being Daphne; she took the coin and shouted at him, “Kneel!” He smiled and, like Gassy Jack, looked away.

  There are tracks in the snow along Powell Street. And in front of a scent shop called Litchfield, close to the wall, two tiny spots that, in the light from the shop window, are definitely blood. Daphne stopped here, maybe to look at the Christmas display: spray perfumes, facial powders, hand-milled soaps, all wrapped in red and gold ribbons. Why was she interested in these? Two drops of blood. Either she stood here for a while or she is bleeding steadily. Was she waiting for him to catch up? Sitting on her red-and-white two-wheeler at the corner, looking back to see that he was behind her? Happy, trusting. He turns to look at Gassy Jack, the scabrous face turned away from him as if to say he’s too late, she’s gone. Then ahead, along Powell, towards Oppenheimer Park. A few parked cars, a van, a pickup truck, here and there a light from a shop window. He walks back to retrieve his car, knowing now where she’s heading, the circuit he has to trace.

  He drives slowly, ignoring cars behind him. A cop would be suspicious, but there are no cops, only parked cars, people on the streets, sudden glances, furtive retreats into darkened doorways. He slows for each of them, takes his time. After making two rounds, he parks and walks along rows of rooming houses, help centres, women’s shelters, the Second Mile Society, the Buddhist Temple, the Native Health Clinic, the Crabtree Centre, the Union Gospel Mission. Emboldened by knowing she is here somewhere, he looks into lighted windows, through gaps in sagging sheets pinned over broken panes, at ceiling fans, empty bottles lined up on the sills, dead plants, children’s broken toys, cooking pots, takeout boxes, candle stubs, a plastic figurine of the Virgin, pebbled vases, little that is useful or sellable, nothing that can’t be left behind. A crib, a supermarket cart filled with newspapers, a television, a grey sofa, a pink dresser, a kitchen table, a saucerless cup, a yellowed glass, a blackened spoon. He can’t see Daphne in any of it. He circles Oppenheimer Park, afraid at first to go in, then plunges down a path that takes him to the centre of it. Tents have been pitched on both sides of the square, among the trees, stretched over benches, blue and orange tarpaulins, plastic sheets over clotheslines. Each is lit from within; the park is like a Christmas pageant, a scene from the Holy Land. As he passes through, a hand appears from beneath a flap and grabs a pair of work boots, pulls them inside, rezips the flap. A male hand, not Daphne’s. There is much coughing and clearing of throats, some singing, some yelling, some groaning, some pleading. He emerges onto Dunlevy Street, where it crosses East Cordova. Was she in there, in one of the tents? He doesn’t know, he may have passed her, or she may have scored her drugs and gone home. How far could she go before sitting down to take them?

  And then he sees her, a figure on the sidewalk across Dunlevy, coming down from Powell. He knows immediately that it’s her, but then looking more closely he isn’t sure. Is it? Crumpled skirt, dishevelled hair, two bags over her shoulders. Yes, it’s Daphne, he recognizes her walk. A sharp pain runs through him and he nearly falls to his knees. His daughter looks like a homeless person. She weaves down the sidewalk. Winston Curtis said she was fine at lunch; where has she been since then? He might have missed her if he’d stood by the tents for a minute longer, hoping to hear her voice or see her emerge from the trees, or if the snow on the streets hadn’t slowed his progress around his circuit. The tiniest change would have cost him his daughter. As it is, he is the perfect dis
tance from her. He can watch her, follow her, protect her from harm, and she won’t be aware of his presence. She needn’t run from him. It’s his fantasy, his fiction, he in the Sylvia, she across the street watching television, stroking her cat. He can be to her what believers ask their God to be, what he believes she has asked him to be: the benevolent invisible parent. Her safety net. Leave her alone but catch her when she falls.

  He steps back a few feet into the park, away from the light. She doesn’t have a warm coat, or a hat, or gloves. He did cast her naked into a blizzard. Her boots are high, but they’re not winter boots. A leather shoulder bag is slung over her shoulder, and she clutches a cloth bag by its neck with her right hand, like a sack of snakes. She walks unsteadily but with determination. She seems to be headed for a place called the Needle House, in the middle of the block, beside an alley.

  His phone rings. Damn! It may be Paul, but he doesn’t need to speak to Paul anymore. Or Mariela, either. But when he pulls the phone from his pocket he sees it’s Daphne’s, he forgot he had it, and it isn’t a call, it’s a text from someone named Wendell.

  “Did u take my stuff. Where r u?”

  He puts the phone back in his pocket and looks across the street. Daphne is not there. “Shit!” She was right there! She was walking towards him. Did she see him? He runs across Dunlevy and goes into the Needle House. It’s a safe-injection site; four men are sitting in the waiting chairs. The woman behind the counter looks up at him calmly. She must be used to people rushing in in a panic. He turns and runs out. She’s probably used to that, too. Between the Needle House and the next building is a narrow alley.

  Fresh tracks in the snow lead down the alley, away from the park. He follows them, letting the tracks take him out of the light.

  She can, though every face should scowl

  And every windy quarter howl

  Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

  —W.B. YEATS, “A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER”

  Daphne

  SUMMER 2018

  She sits beside Tom in the passenger lounge during the forty-minute ferry ride from Quadra Island to Cortes Island. Tom Blair, film director, not famous but, as they say, respected in the industry. Mostly documentaries, two features. She is working now as a location scout, freelance; today she is showing Tom a place she’s found that she thinks will be suitable for a film he’s making for Snakejack Studios in Vancouver. They are surrounded by a dozen kids returning to the island from high school on the mainland, she nervously sipping bottled water while he wonders aloud if the Cortes of Cortes Island was Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico, for whom the Sea of Cortez was named, and if so why are the two places spelled differently? And why didn’t someone correct the error when it was discovered? He seems genuinely bothered by the inconsistency. Daphne isn’t so much.

  “It’s like Carlton Street in Toronto,” she says.

  “Are you from Toronto?” he asks her.

  “No, but my father lived there,” she says. “I visited him, then lived with him for a year. Carlton Street”—she spells it—“was named for Sir Guy Carleton, with an ‘e.’ ”

  Tom shakes his head. “I guess the spelling of things wasn’t nailed down in those days,” he says, trying to think of another example. “Gabriola,” he says.

  “Really? What’s wrong with Gabriola?”

  “It was originally called Gaviola, which means ‘seagull’ in Spanish.”

  “Wow,” she says. “I did not know that.” Coincidentally, she’s been watching a gull flying alongside the ferry like an escort. “I always thought Gabriola was the name of some Spanish explorer.”

  “That was Galiano.”

  They’re almost at Cortes Island. The gull veers sharply away, its job done.

  “I guess once a thing is named,” she says, “it’s a pain in the ass trying to change it, even if it’s wrong. You must have to apply to an international tribunal, UNESCO or something, you can’t just say, Okay, from now on we’re spelling Cortez with an ‘s.’ ”

  “Yeah,” says Tom, unconvinced, “but still, you’d think.” Instead of finishing his sentence he watches the approaching island. It looks to be all rocks and trees, here and there a rooftop. Daphne worries that he’s already inclined to dislike it. That it’s wrong for the film. It’s even spelled wrong. Too far from the mainland, no decent hotel or restaurant, no caterer, they’d have to bring in a cook, drivers, carpenters, no building supply, no computer or camera repair, no truck or car rental, and a forty-minute ferry from another island that has none of those things either. And even the so-called mainland is an island. Why did she bring him here? But she thinks it’s perfect, and she’s usually right, she’s good at what she does. He’s trusted her enough to come this far.

  “It must be strange,” he says, “living on an island. I know people who live in the Gulf Islands, but they’re only an hour or two from Vancouver.”

  “We could ask these kids,” she says, looking around. Most of them are staring at their phones.

  “There’s cell coverage here, right?” he asks suddenly, panicking.

  She nods. She has no idea, but there must be. She takes out her phone and checks. Coverage, but maybe just on the ferry.

  As the ferry rounds a point and enters the harbour, a woman’s voice comes over the intercom advising car passengers to proceed down to the vehicle deck. She and Tom stand. Can you proceed down? she wonders. It’s the kind of word game she and her father would play before he died. Earlier, he would have said something about the Zee of Cortez. Dad jokes. She misses them. None of the kids move or look up from their phones.

  * * *

  —

  The film is a feature, about a father who raises his daughter in the wilderness, completely cut off from anything resembling civilization. Well, not completely, there’s a village where they buy groceries, kerosene for the lamps, propane for the cookstove, gasoline for the chainsaw and boat, not much else. No electricity, no Internet, and no cell phone coverage. The man has built this ginormous log house, all glass and peeled Douglas-fir, and the property is beautifully landscaped, with huge vegetable gardens, an orchard, a workshop, a tool shed, a wood-fired bakehouse. Pretty much everything they need. Well, everything the man needs. Everything the daughter needs, too, as far as the man is concerned.

  This was where Daphne put down the script, because she thought she knew where it was going and it bored her to even think about it. Young woman coming into her sexuality, isolated from boys, or kept from them by her father. Young man appears at the gate (hitchhiker taking a break from med school? tourist whose car broke down on the road? wildlife biologist? Blegh!). A series of clandestine late-night trysts in the sympathetic woods, father finds out (she gets pregnant? comes home stoned? both?), anger, tears, violence, somebody gets badly hurt or even killed and, if it was that kind of movie, secretly buried? She could hear the scrape of a shovel on stone.

  She sat with the script in her lap, looking through her condo’s wall-to-wall window over False Creek, watching birds gyre above a team of scullers wearing yellow jerseys with some kind of red insignia on their backs. The birds were glaucous-winged gulls, she’d looked them up. She’d also looked up “glaucous”: pale yellowish green, which surprised her, because the gulls’ wings weren’t that colour at all. Depressing, the things we don’t know, almost as depressing as the things we do. Oh dear, what do we think happened to the mother? Cancer? Suicide? Perhaps she simply couldn’t take the isolation and sailed off with a salmon fisher or a Texas oil billionaire, leaving the father to raise their daughter in his own twisted way? Or does the daughter, while burying her lover, discover the bones of her mother? That would be interesting.

  Besides, she thought she already knew the right location for it. A little hard to get to, which film crews and producers hate, but otherwise perfect, which directors love. Earlier that summer she’d visited Janet, a friend
from UBC who now lived on Quadra Island, house-sitting (and dog feeding and garden watering) for a couple who were spending a year in Portugal, and Janet took her across to Cortes to show her a 147-acre property that was being sold for $2.4 million. An absolute steal, Janet said, and Daphne thought about how much she’d paid for her condo on False Creek, and how, in Vancouver, house prices had become so astronomical that the numbers ceased to represent anything real. They were just pure numbers, used more as identity markers: you mention to someone where you live and watch their eyes go slightly out of focus as they calculate your net worth. “You live in Yaletown?” Two point five million. Kitsilano? Three point five. Shaughnessy? Eight to ten. Craziness. So, yes, two point four for a hundred and forty acres in the Discovery Islands wasn’t outrageous. The place had originally been owned by a writer, Janet told her, a woman who built herself a small cabin on a spit of land at the farthest point from the road and lived there until she was ninety-three before being removed to the hospital in Campbell River, where she died. The property was bought by a religious group based in California (where else?) that used it as a retreat; they built a large communal building and a dozen or so outbuildings, which they called meditation pods, as well as ten self-contained cottages for the faithful, a windmill, an array of solar panels, and a sauna. Which, Janet said, accounted for the two point four. If there was Wi-Fi, she said, it would easily be five or six, and Wi-Fi was coming to the island in a year or so. Daphne didn’t mention the Wi-Fi situation to Tom.

  She made a few phone calls, found the property managers in Nanaimo, and was told they hadn’t had a nibble since the place went on the market. The religious group seemed to have dissolved into thin air, and the management company would be happy to lease the place to the film company for as long as they wanted it, although they couldn’t guarantee what condition it was in after lying vacant for two years. When Daphne and Janet let themselves into the compound it was in fine shape. The main building—all glass and logs, with a panoramic view of the gardens sloping down to the shore of a barely used section of Cortes Bay—hadn’t even been locked. She and Janet simply opened the door and walked in. There was propane in the tank for the cooktop and fridge, and gravity-fed water ran in the taps. They boiled water for tea and made ramen on the stove, and ate at the dining table, in the warm sunlight that poured through the twenty-foot south-facing window. Across a small inlet was the point of land on which the writer had built her cabin, although the cabin itself wasn’t visible from the house. Daphne found herself thinking she could sell her condo for maybe two point seven and get this place for two or two point two. The idea of living here both frightened and drew her. She would save this place, she thought. But then, save it from what? And what would she do out here?