Sid nods. “I do that at home—watch the harbor.”
“Better than TV,” Elizabeth says with a laugh. “And no commercials. Although commercials have been very good to me.”
“Good to you?” Sid is puzzled. He hardly ever watches TV and when he does he finds most of the commercials annoying.
“After my husband—your grandfather, Stan—died, I was unhappy and bored. I tried lots of old-lady things—bridge, mall-walking, bird-watching. Nothing took my fancy. Then I saw that ‘Where’s the beef?’ commercial and I got to thinking—maybe there’s a market out there for little-old-lady actors. So I found an agent and started going after the juicy parts: daft old things with ill-fitting dentures, ancient biddies in need of home care, spunky grannies who dance and rap, nasty old bats carrying wicked canes. I’ll do anything on camera—rollerblade, paraglide, mountain bike, scuba dive—anything but die. I draw the line at that.”
Sid stares at her, and then the penny drops. “You’re the Gray Matter Granny!” he says. “I love those commercials. That one where you were hang gliding was awesome.”
Elizabeth curtsies. “Thank you, my dear. Who knew geriatric vitamins could be so much fun? Or so lucrative. Next year we’re going on location in Hawaii—geezers in paradise, I call it. I’ll be surfing and biking down a volcano and hula dancing.” She makes a fluttering motion with her hands and swivels her hips.
Sid smiles and says, “Aloha.” He turns away from the window and looks around the condo. Everything in it looks brand-new. He had expected antiques and heirlooms, potpourri and gilt-framed pictures of sour-looking ancestors. Faded Oriental carpets, the smell of talcum powder. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
As if anticipating a question she has been asked many times before, Elizabeth says, “After Stan died, I sold the big house and put everything except my clothes in storage. I furnished this entire place—dishes, rugs, candleholders, soap dishes, towels—from the IKEA catalog. Once in a while I dream about Stan doing something around the old house—putting up a picture, pouring a glass of wine, unloading the dishwasher. When I wake up, I go to the storage locker and find an object from the dream and it becomes part of my waking life again. The last thing I brought back was his old wooden Slazenger tennis racquet. I dreamed he was using the side of the house as a backboard again. It used to drive me crazy. I hope I never dream that he’s dusting the figurine collection I inherited from my Great-Aunt Harriet. She had very bad taste in trinkets. I think I’m fairly safe though; Stan never dusted anything in his life.” She laughs, but there is a quaver in her voice.
“Is that him?” Sid asks, pointing at a framed photograph on a side table.
Elizabeth pulls a cloth hankie from her sweater cuff, wipes her eyes and says, “Yes. On our twentieth anniversary.” She hands Sid the photograph and he notices that her hand is vibrating slightly, like a tuning fork. He wonders if she’s as nervous as he is. Or maybe she has—what’s it called?—Parkinson’s. One of Irena’s friends has it and her head moves almost all the time, like a bobble-head doll on a dashboard. He sneaks a look at Elizabeth’s head, which sits peacefully at the top of her long neck. No bobble. The relief he feels is strange and welcome. He hardly knows her, but he wants her to be well and happy.
He looks down at the photo she has given him. A tall man in gray flannel pants, a navy blazer and a crisp, pale-blue shirt gazes out at him, smiling slightly, a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other. His tie has been loosened. He is standing in a garden next to a wrought-iron bench. Behind him are tall purple and pink flowers. Hollyhocks, Sid thinks. Megan’s favorite.
“You have the same eyes,” Elizabeth says. Sid looks more closely and sees that she is right. His grandfather’s eyes, like his, are pale gray—the gray of a morning fog—with a black ring around the iris. Unlike Sid, Stan has thick black hair and bushy black eyebrows.
“He was nicknamed Groucho when he was a little boy,” Elizabeth says. “At least you’ve escaped that fate. The red hair is from my side of the family—the Gallaghers were all wild Irish redheads.”
“I remember her hair,” Sid says. “Devi’s hair.”
“Her hair was glorious,” Elizabeth says. “Like yours. But it’s gray now. And short.”
“Yeah. I saw a picture. Of her and Wain and you.”
When he doesn’t continue, Elizabeth says, “It’s all a bit of a shock, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” Sid says, thinking of Wain’s blue-black skin, his white grin. “Did you really not know about me?” It’s hard for him to imagine keeping such an enormous secret for so long, although if he is honest, he knows he’s probably capable of it. He wonders how Devi felt after she left him with Megan. Ashamed? Worthless? Sad? Even so—not telling your own mother that you have a child—that’s huge. And kind of cruel.
“The first I heard of you was a week ago, when Wain disappeared and Phil decided to tell me Devi’s secret. He’s been a good friend to her—and to me—but I wish he hadn’t waited so long to tell me.” Elizabeth reaches over and touches Sid lightly on the arm. “But you’re here now—that’s what’s important, yes?”
“I guess,” he says. “I’m not really sure why I’m here though. I mean, how am I going to find Wain when you and Phil can’t?”
“I don’t know, dear,” Elizabeth says. “Mostly I just wanted to meet you. I’m sorry if that seems selfish. And we can certainly use your help trying to find Wain. The police are aware that he’s run away, but he’s run away so many times, I don’t think they’re looking all that hard. He’s never been gone this long though. And with Devi gone…well, I’m not as young as I used to be and I don’t have the energy to go out after dark and search for him. Wain and I aren’t as close as we once were. I don’t know his friends anymore. Or where he might go.”
“But I don’t know him at all,” Sid says. “And I don’t know the city either.”
Elizabeth sits on the couch and pats the cushion beside her.
“Sit down, and I’ll tell you about him. Maybe that will help.”
Sid turns back to the window. TMI, he thinks. That’s what Chloe would say. Too Much Information. He needs some time to take it all in. A huge gray ferry with a red stripe near the waterline is angling into the harbor—Coho, it says on the bow. It looks impossibly large for the space, a Godzilla of a ship about to crush the tiny wharf. Miraculously, it doesn’t. “I’d rather go for walk,” he says. “If that’s okay with you.”
Armed with a school photo of Wain and a map of downtown Victoria, Sid sets out alone, promising to be back by lunchtime. Phil says he has things to do and that he will pick Sid up after lunch. Sid worries that Elizabeth is already disappointed in him, but he needs to be alone. She can tell him about Wain over lunch.
When he comes out of the condo building, he turns left and follows a waterfront walkway in front of a hotel and onto a pale-blue bridge that looks like it’s constructed of rusty Meccano. The pedestrian path is made of wooden planks that vibrate slightly as the cars go by on the other side of a metal railing. There is a red wharf to the right, and Sid smiles at the sight of it. Just like home. He can see people on a grassy verge above the wharf. Maybe he should talk to them about Wain. But as he approaches them, he realizes that they are homeless men, much older than Wain, dirty, some obviously drunk or high. Sid turns away and heads up the street. He passes small stores selling expensive clothing and explores a brick courtyard where a juggler is entertaining a crowd of kids. He knows he should be showing people the picture of Wain, but he’s not ready yet. Besides, most of the people in the courtyard look like tourists: souvenir T-shirts, cameras, tourist maps.
He needs to find some local teenagers, but right now he is content to wander. Just before it’s time to head back to Elizabeth’s, he goes into an art supply store and treats himself to a new set of colored pens and a small sketchbook. Megan had slipped him $200 before he left. For necessities or emergencies, she said. He left his sketchbook locked up at home, but now he wants to draw the b
lue bridge, the juggler, the monstrous ferry, the kayakers. He figures this counts as a necessity, if not an emergency. Around the corner from the art supply store is a bakery. He remembers that Megan always brings a small gift when she’s invited to someone’s house for a meal. He buys half a dozen cookies from a girl about his own age, with spiky platinum hair and a ring through one eyebrow. As she is counting out his change, he pulls out the picture of Wain.
“Have you seen this kid?” he asks.
She peers at the picture for a long moment and then says, “Who is he?”
“My brother. He’s missing.”
“You’re kidding.”
Sid can’t tell if she’s responding to the fact that Wain is missing or that he’s Sid’s brother.
“Half brother, yeah. He’s been missing for a week.”
The girl shakes her head. “Sorry, no. Haven’t seen him.”
Sid pockets the picture and picks up his bag of cookies. He feels deflated, although he knows it’s ridiculous to think that finding Wain would be as easy as showing his picture to one person.
“I’ll let you know if I see him,” the girl says.
“That’d be great,” Sid says. He turns to walk out of the bakery, and she grabs his sleeve, laughing.
“Name? Phone number?” she says.
Sid blushes as she holds out a scrap of paper and a pencil. “My name’s Sid. I’m staying with my grandmother, Elizabeth Eikenboom. She lives over by that hotel on the harbor. I don’t know her phone number.” He feels like a dolt. He should have thought to get Elizabeth’s phone number before he left.
“No cell?”
“Me? No. They don’t work where I live.”
“Where do you live? Outer Mongolia?”
Sid laughs. “No. On an island up north.”
The girl nods. “That explains it then.”
“Explains what?”
“Your air of—I dunno—mystery. Maybe a whiff of innocence.”
Sid blushes again as the girl sticks out her hand to shake his.
“I’m Amie. With an ie. Like French for friend,” she says, rolling her eyes. “My little sister’s name, Harmonie, also with an ie. I won’t tell you what my mother’s name is. It’s too embarrassing. I’m here seven to twelve, Wednesday to Sunday. If you bring me a copy of that picture, I’ll ask around. And we could look for him together too.”
“You’d do that?” Sid says. “Why?”
Amie laughs. “Because you look lost. Because I’m a sucker for redheads. Because your brother is so young. Because I’m bored. Pick one. Anyway, it’s kinda tough if you don’t know the scene.”
“The scene?”
“You know. Where kids hang out. Where not to go. That kind of thing.”
A customer clears his throat behind Sid, who steps aside to let him order.
When in Doubt
“I made Wain’s favorite lunch,” Elizabeth tells him when he arrives back at the condo. “Cheese dreams and apple boats.”
“Sounds good,” Sid says, although he has no idea what a cheese dream is. “I brought cookies.” He holds the bag out to Elizabeth.
“How thoughtful,” she says. “Now go wash up and I’ll pop the cheese dreams under the broiler.”
It turns out that cheese dreams are what Megan calls cheese toasties: English muffins, cheddar cheese and bacon broiled until the cheese melts and the bacon crisps. Bacon twice in one day, Sid thinks. That would never happen at home.
“I used to ask Megan to make these all the time,” Sid says. “She didn’t use English muffins—no white flour in our house—and we had them with applesauce. But apple boats are good too,” he hastens to add. “If the apples aren’t mushy.”
“Agreed,” Elizabeth says. “There’s nothing worse than a mushy apple.”
They eat in silence for a few minutes. Elizabeth hasn’t yet asked about his morning. She seems very calm for someone whose daughter and grandson are missing. Maybe she’s a naturally calm person or maybe she’s had to learn to be calm, with a crazy daughter and an outof-control grandson. Sid isn’t used to taking the lead in conversations, but he wants her to know that he made a bit of progress, if you can call it that.
“I met a girl today who says she’ll help me look for Wain,” Sid says. “Her name’s Amie. She works at the bakery where I got the cookies.”
Elizabeth nods.
“So could I have some more copies of Wain’s picture? And I need a contact number for people too.”
“You should have a phone while you’re here,” Elizabeth says. “One of those throwaway phones criminals always use on TV.” She smiles. “Although you don’t look like much of a criminal to me.”
“A burner phone, you mean?” Sid says, thinking of his shrinking two hundred dollars.
“Is that what they’re called? I’ll ask Phil where to get one. And don’t worry. I’ll pay for it.”
Sid starts to stutter that he can pay, but he doesn’t sound very convincing, even to himself.
“I’m a rich old lady, Sid,” Elizabeth says. “And you’re my grandson. I have some indulging to catch up on.”
“Okay. But I don’t need, like, an iPhone or anything. There’s no service on the island. And I’m not going to be here very long.”
“I understand,” Elizabeth says, and Sid believes her.
Phil buys Sid a phone at a 7-Eleven, and when they get back to the garage, Sid goes up to the loft and calls Chloe. He knows it’s long distance, but he doesn’t care. He needs to talk to her. Of course, she doesn’t answer her cell; even if she is in an area that gets service, his number will show up as Unknown. He leaves her a message. “It’s me. I have a cell. Yeah, I know. I said I’d never get one, but I need one down here. Call me. Please. I miss you. I know you’re mad at me for leaving, and I’m sorry.” He leaves his number, disconnects and then phones home. Megan doesn’t pick up either. He leaves his number again, feeling lonelier than he has since he left the island. He climbs down the ladder and watches Phil sand a chest of drawers.
“No luck?” Phil looks up and stops sanding.
Sid shakes his head. “Is there a bike I could use?” he asks. “I thought I’d go for a ride. Check out the ’hood.”
“My bike has two flat tires—I don’t use it much—but you can take Devi’s sit-up-and-beg or Wain’s BMX.”
“Sit-up-and-beg?” Sid has never heard of such a thing. It sounds like a dog, not a bike.
“You know, a ladies’ bike with a low bar, high handlebars and a chain guard. Devi’s bike is hot pink and it has a wicker carrier basket. And a bell.” Phil grins.
Sid shudders. He’d rather crawl on his hands and knees than ride a bike like that. “What about Wain’s bike? He’s big for thirteen. Should be okay.” Sid wishes he’d thought to bring his dirty gray mountain bike with him. BMX bikes always feel strange to him—as if he’s stolen a bike from a six-year-old.
“It’s on the back porch,” Phil says. “He loved that bike. For a while he talked about getting into competitive riding—he’s really good—but lately it’s just been sitting on the porch, gathering dust.”
“Cool.” Sid heads out the door. “When should I be back?”
“Couple of hours,” Phil says. “I thought we’d order in some pizza, strategize.”
“Strategize?”
“About Wain.”
“Right,” Sid says as he shuts the door behind him.
Wain’s bike is bright green and expensive. The words The Green Knight are written in an old-fashioned script on the bottom bar. Sid laughs. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Awesome. He still has an illustrated version of the old tale from when he was about ten. He remembers how the Green Knight put his severed head back on his shoulders, how Gawain confronted an ogre, a dragon, a pack of wolves. How it all turned out well in the end. He swings the bike off the porch, checks its tires and rides down the bumpy driveway to the street, feeling like a giant on a midget’s bike.
He turns left and then right, heading f
or the ocean. At least he thinks he is. He figures he can’t go too far wrong—they are on an island, after all. A bigger island than he lives on but still an island. A few blocks later he can smell the sea, and he follows a road that winds along the shoreline. He passes a marina with a life-size model of a killer whale out front. Next to the marina is a small park. A mile or so farther is another park, this one with a children’s playground and a long promenade. He stops to watch some kids making a sandcastle, and then continues up a hill to another park with a boat launch. He rides the Green Knight over the rocks to the water and watches some sailboats race across the choppy waves toward an orange buoy. In the distance to his left is an enormous snow-capped mountain. It looks, improbably, like a postcard of Mount Fuji propped up on the horizon. He’ll have to ask Phil its name. He thinks it might be in the United States, but he’s not sure. All he knows is that everything here feels both familiar and strange at the same time. The same coast, but different. If he rode his bike for half an hour at home, he would be in the wilderness, or close to it. Here, after a half-hour bike ride, he is still surrounded by the evidence of civilization: waterfront mansions, SUVs, tour buses, well-dressed women walking designer dogs on fancy leashes. Overflowing trash cans. Hip-hop blasting from a car stereo. And yet, the rocks, the sky, the water, the wind, the sun—all the same. He imagines the water rushing up the narrow strait from here to the island. If he threw a message in a bottle into the fast-moving whirlpools here, maybe Chloe would pick it up in the cove. Maybe she would reply. He needs to talk to her: about Elizabeth, about his dead grandfather, about the Green Knight.
He sits for a while, watching the boats navigate the orange buoy, listening to the gulls fight over some garbage, and then hops on the bike and heads back to Phil’s.
“It’s not really much of a strategy,” Sid says to Amie the next day. “More like a plan. In the daytime, I’m going to spend some time downtown, show Wain’s picture around. At night, Phil will drive around, talk to people.”
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