I was going to argue, but the way her voice sounded when she said father got to me. It was like she’d hauled off and sucker-punched me in the gut. I had a hard time getting a breath.
“You can use my computer if you want,” she said. “Check out Canada 411 and some other sites.”
“What’s the worst thing that could happen, just looking?” she asked when we’d walked another half block without me answering.
“Okay, okay!” I said. “But, if we find him, I’m not calling him then and there. I’ll think about it if we get anything.”
“Sure. No pressure,” she said quickly. “You can decide all that later on. When you’re ready.”
When I was ready.
I wondered if I would ever be ready.
chapter twenty-four
Sounds of aircraft gunfire met us when Lavender opened the door to her place. Her dad was in a big easy chair with a bowl of popcorn on his lap and a bottle of pop on the end table beside him. There were also wrappers from a Snickers bar and a couple of ice cream sandwiches.
“Dad likes to snack when he watches movies,” Lavender said.
“Hey kids,” he said, pressing pause on the DVD player. “You come to see the show?”
“No, Dad, we’re just going to do some research in my room,” she told him.
“Okey-dokey,” he said. “Don’t forget to leave the door open.”
“I know,” she said, reddening. “You don’t have to say that every time.”
“Sorry about that,” she said when we were out of her father’s earshot. “My parents are so weird!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s just looking out for you.”
“I suppose. But they don’t make sense, you know? I mean, you were here this afternoon and no one else was home — at least for part of the time. And that was okay. But I can’t shut the door if we’re in my room — even when my dad is right here. It’s just stupid.”
She was right, the rule didn’t seem logical, but I had other things on my mind right then. As if she knew what I was thinking, Lavender turned to her desk and clicked on the mouse to wake up the screen.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she said, sliding into the chair. Then she flashed me a quick smile. “Don’t mind me. I am so impatient about waiting.”
“Should I make a mental note of that?” I asked, noticing how small and delicate the back of her head looked.
“Wouldn’t hurt.” She laughed. “I’m not really that bad, though.”
While she talked, she moved the mouse to bring up her favourites and I saw that she had a folder of sites for locating people and places. She clicked on one and then turned to me questioningly.
“What’s your dad’s first name?”
“Steve. Or Steven, I guess. With a v.”
She typed that in, asked if his last name was Delancy, too, and added that. She searched all across Canada.
In novels, it’s always the very last place that gets results. Just when hope is almost gone, there it is. It didn’t work that way for me. On the first search she did, Lavender turned up not one but two Steve Delancys. One of them was in British Columbia, the other was in Brampton.
“Think one of these guys is him?”
“I dunno. Probably.”
“Think it’s the guy in Brampton?”
“Could be either one.” But the thought had hit me hard. Was it possible that my father was that nearby — maybe had been all those years — and hadn’t once bothered to get in touch?
“That would be fantastic!” Lavender said. She jumped up and hugged me, kissed me kind of half on the mouth half on the cheek, and started dancing around holding my hands and trying to drag me along with her.
“Right. Fantastic,” I said. I extracted myself from her grip and stepped back a few feet. She stopped twirling and looked at me. I saw confusion on her face, then hurt. She pulled her gaze away, let it wander past me without focusing on anything in particular.
“Could be that neither of these guys is my father,” I said. I didn’t know why, but I felt angry, and it was taking her in.
“I, well, you ...” Her voice trailed away helplessly. She plunked down on her bed.
“I’ll just write the information down for now,” I said. I was being a jerk and I knew it. At the same time, part of me wanted to smooth things over with her before I messed up totally.
“Paper’s in the top drawer on the side,” she said. She waved a hand indifferently toward the desk.
I opened the drawer and pulled out a sheet of paper, reached for a big old coffee mug full of pens, pencils, and markers, snagged a pen and copied out the details of the two Steve Delancys. As I did, I was acutely aware that I might be writing down my father’s address and phone number.
“Are you going to tell your sister about this?” Lavender asked.
“I dunno. Maybe,” I said.
The truth was: I hadn’t even thought about it. It seemed wrong to keep it from her, but at the same time I knew if I gave this to Lynn she might tell Mom about it right away. I didn’t think that would help matters and I sure didn’t want to be forced into anything before I was ready.
I had the strange feeling that if I made a mistake now, it might close the door for good. When the time came that I got in touch with my father, it had to be on my terms. No one else’s.
If, that was, he even wanted to be contacted.
That thought hit me like a sidewinder and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me before.
Maybe my father would hang up without talking at all. Actually, when I ran it through my head, that was the most likely case scenario! A man who’d first abused and then abandoned his kids twelve years earlier was liable to dismiss a phone call as easily as he would shoo away a fly.
“He might not want anything to do with me — or Lynn,” I said out loud.
Lavender looked a bit startled. Of course she hadn’t been privy to the thoughts racing around in my head, so the comment had come out of the blue for her.
“He probably won’t want anything to do with us,” I revised.
“What makes you say that?”
I filled her in on what I’d been thinking and I could see that the idea alarmed her. Scared her even.
“You’re not going to know until you call,” she finally said. Her voice was really soft and I knew she was still confused from the way I’d acted a few moments ago.
I didn’t answer right away because scenes were running around in my head. I could picture him telling me to get lost, maybe denying that he was the right guy, or rudely asking me what I wanted.
The more I envisioned that kind of thing happening, the more likely it seemed to me that it would work out that way. And the thought of it made me madder than I’d been in a long, long time.
I looked down at the paper in my hand, noticed that it was shaking, and forced myself to take a couple of deep breaths to steady myself.
“You know what,” I said, “I think I will call him. I think I’ll call him right now.”
Lavender’s eyes got wide and scared. I’d put money down that she wanted to suggest this might not be the best time — after all her nagging earlier! But she said nothing. She simply grabbed her bag off the floor, reached inside, and passed me her phone.
I didn’t hesitate, didn’t pause to think of what I was going to say or how I was going to say it. I punched in the numbers for the Brampton guy and lifted the phone to my ear.
It rang three times before anyone picked it up.
“Hello?” It was a kid’s voice — I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or boy.
“Uh, yeah,” I said, wondering if I’d dialled wrong. “Is Steve Delancy there?”
“Uh-huh. Just a minute.” The phone clattered on a hard surface and I heard the kid calling in the background.
“Dad! Pho-one!”
Dad?
I would have hung up right then, if my whole body hadn’t frozen with shock.
“Hello?”
“Is this Steve Delancy?” I aske
d when I could get my voice to co-operate again.
“Yes.”
Then I didn’t know what to say. This might not even be the right guy. But how could I eliminate him without asking questions? And what could I ask that wouldn’t sound bizarre if he was a total stranger?
“I, uh,” I faltered. “Did you ever have, uh, I mean, me and my sister …”
“Who’s calling?” he asked. His voice had taken on an edge that I couldn’t quite identify.
“I think I have the wrong person,” I said.
I heard him take a deep breath.
“Is this …” his voice trailed off to a whisper but I was almost positive I heard my name at the end, though it was barely audible.
I said nothing, which is what I owed him.
“Porter?” he repeated. It was stronger this time. Hopeful.
“Yeah.” It came out harsh and angry. He started to speak again, and I heard the word son as I pulled the phone away from my ear and snapped it shut.
chapter twenty-five
I had never thought I wanted things to be different than they were, but stuff was churning around in me and suddenly nothing seemed clear anymore. It was all there, pushing up to the surface — things that weren’t even supposed to exist — disappointment and buried wishes and hope I hadn’t known I felt.
Okay, I might have had a slight idea, now and then, that there was something missing, but I hadn’t cared about it. I think I’d have noticed if I’d been walking around with this big empty space in me, just longing for a father to fill it.
“I couldn’t care less,” I said.
“What?”
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud until Lavender’s startled question brought me back into focus. It wasn’t fair, but it irritated me that she was there, watching and listening.
“Nothing.”
“That was him, wasn’t it? That guy was your father!”
“If you can call him that.”
“So, what happened?”
“Nothing happened. I just realized I had nothing to say to him.”
She spent a good fifteen minutes trying to persuade me to call back. All it did was make me want to leave. I came up with a lame excuse and almost felt guilty when her face told me she knew it was a lie. Still, that was the end of her attempt to talk me into something I had no interest in doing.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure why I’d called in the first place. I thought this over as I walked aimlessly, not ready to go home and too restless to be around anyone else.
It took four more days of thinking, avoiding everyone, and letting my thoughts burn and churn before I was both curious and angry enough to call him again.
There were things I wanted to tell him, things that had circled in my head over the past few days — hard, cutting words. I knew I had to say them, even though it wasn’t likely he’d even care. He’d proven that long ago.
At the very least, I was going to demand some answers. Whether I’d get the truth was another thing, but I figured I’d be able to tell.
I started to dial the number from my place a few times but it was too risky. That would give him my number — assuming he didn’t already have it. There would be big problems if he called there sometime and Mom answered. Seemed foolish to take that chance, so I presented myself at Lavender’s door like I hadn’t ignored her calls for the last few days, and told her I’d needed thinking time, which was true.
She wasn’t happy. I hadn’t expected her to be. But I knew I had a sure “in” and I used it.
“I’ve decided you were right. And I’m going to call him back.”
“Really?” Just like that her face was lit up and smiling.
“Yeah.”
“When?” Her hand fluttered up to her throat. “Now? Did you come here to share it with me?”
“Yeah, sort of.” I couldn’t quite look at her. “Is it all right if I call from your room? For privacy?”
Of course it was. She went with me to (as she put it) get things ready. That apparently meant clearing the desk and putting a pen and paper out.
“Just in case,” she said. I had no idea what the ‘in case’ might be, and I didn’t ask.
Lavender insisted on bringing me a glass of water, too, and just before she left she sat a box of Kleenex on the desk. As soon as the door closed behind her I threw them over my shoulder and heard the box slap the wall before it went down.
I had the number with me but I’d looked at it enough times that I remembered it. I grabbed the phone and pressed the number keys.
I hoped that kid didn’t answer this time.
Two rings. Three. I decided to hang up after four.
“Hello?”
It was him. Steve Delancy.
“It’s Porter,” I said curtly, pleased with the hard, blunt sound of my voice.
“I’m glad you called, Porter.”
It threw me just a little, how calm and quiet his voice was.
“I was thinking about, uh, getting together.”
“Anytime,” he said, without skipping a beat. “I can come whenever you want.”
“Now?” I said.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this call for twelve years.”
You haven’t been waiting for this call, I thought. I didn’t say that — he’d know soon enough that this wasn’t going to be some kind of happy reunion.
“Okay,” I said. I told him I’d meet him at Suleiman’s restaurant and gave him the address for his GPS. He said he’d be there in less than an hour.
We said goodbye and I closed the phone. I stared at it for a few minutes like it had done this thing all on its own. I almost called back and told him I’d changed my mind but I knew I needed to get this over with. Things weren’t going to be normal again until I put it behind me.
I picked up the box of Kleenex I’d thrown and put it on the desk before going to look for Lavender. I found her curled up on the couch, facing the television. She turned when I came in, jumped up and hurried over, her face questioning.
“I have to go,” I said, even though I had lots of time. I nodded slightly toward the kitchen, where her dad was making something to eat.
Lavender grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door, stopping in the hallway just outside.
“What happened?” she demanded.
“I’m meeting up with him.”
“No way! That is awesome!” She threw her arms around me and gave me a quick, hard hug, then stepped back and looked at my face. “Are you excited?”
“I really don’t feel anything right now,” I said, surprised that it was true.
“I bet you’re kind of in shock,” she said. “Just look at everything that’s happened in a few days. You saw your dad’s pictures, then we followed that guy to his place, and now you’ve talked to your father and you’re going to see him.”
I tried to smile but my jaw felt too tight. I told her again that I had to go.
Lavender offered to walk with me to Suleiman’s. I said thanks but I really wanted to be by myself for a while. I had to get my head together.
She understood, or said she did. I’ve noticed it’s not always the same thing with girls, but I kissed her and she kissed back normal, which seemed like a good sign. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway — I really couldn’t be around anyone right then.
I wondered again why I didn’t feel more anger. I decided Lavender was right — I was a bit in shock.
When I got to Suleiman’s, I didn’t go in. There was no way I could make myself sit there until he showed up. Instead, I paced a bit up and down the street and wondered if I’d recognize him after seeing the pictures the other day. He must have changed a certain amount in the years that had passed since then.
I should have asked him what kind of car he’d be driving. That would have been a help. After all, he didn’t know what I looked like, either.
That realization made me mad. And it was right then that I felt a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it
off automatically and turned to see him standing there smiling.
“Porter,” he said.
Dad.
“Yeah,” I said. I wondered how he’d known who I was, but then I could see I looked a lot like him.
“I’ve waited a long time for this day,” he said. His eyes were starting to fill up. I barely managed to keep from asking him right then and there where all this fatherly emotion had been all the years he never bothered with me.
“Did you want to go inside,” he asked, nodding toward Suleiman’s, “or maybe take a drive, find somewhere a bit more private to talk?”
I said that was a good idea. The chance of getting some straight answers out of him would be better somewhere that other people couldn’t overhear.
chapter twenty-six
It was so strange, being in the car next to him, driving along. I bet a million other sons were sitting next to their fathers while they drove somewhere right at that moment. And for them it was just a normal thing to do. For me, it was totally surreal, like something happening to someone else.
I’ve never been hypnotized but I bet it feels pretty close to the trance-like state I found myself in. All of the questions and anger I’d been trying to sort out quieted, like they were resting, as we drove. A totally peaceful, relaxed feeling flowed through me, and I found myself sinking back against the upholstery and watching my father’s every movement as he drove. For some reason I got so drowsy that a couple of times I almost fell asleep.
I think he must have been aware that I was staring at him non-stop. For sure he saw that every time he glanced over at me (which was often) I was looking right at him. I didn’t care if it looked rude or stupid, I just let myself gawk, unembarrassed. He’d disappeared out of my life for twelve years — I figured I had the right to take a good look.
He didn’t say anything just then, except to ask if I was hungry or thirsty. I said I could use some water and he stopped at a gas station and got us each a couple of bottles.
He pulled back out onto the street and headed south, then took an exit onto the Gardiner. Before long we’d stopped at a place along the water — a little park-type spot with benches and trees.
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