by Cathi Bond
It was the banging that woke me up. “Maid!”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Lily called.
Gabe was in the bathroom taking a shower.
“Check out!” the maid called again.
“Give me five minutes,” Lily replied, motioning for me to be quiet.
“If you’re not, I’ll call the manager. I got cleaning to do.”
Lily peered through the peephole as Gabe tiptoed out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his skinny waist. Soft patches of white hair curled over a pale blue tattoo of a warship that sailed across his chest. Gabe was in the Navy?
There was no time to shower. The maid banged on the door again and while Lily yelled back, Gabe and I crept out the window and down the fire escape.
The three of us met up at John’s Open Kitchen, a short-order eatery that was once canary yellow with green linoleum floors, but now the walls were caked in grease and the floors were scratched and dirty. The short-order cook was a friend of Gabe’s from the old days and he fed us for free.
“He’s my buddy,” Gabe said, as the cook slapped down plates of French toast. “We were in the merchant marines together.”
That made sense. Gabe looked way more like the sailor on the cigarette pack than a Navy man. A gang of skinny kids came in, falling into one of the booths. They were chain smoking and talking loud and fast, yelling for coffee. Lily frowned, saying the diner was losing its class if it was letting speeders in. Speed was on my list of drugs to try, but since Lily didn’t approve, I kept my mouth shut and took a bite of toast. It was delicious. I was so hungry I could have eaten all three helpings, but it wouldn’t be polite to ask for more. Lily thought that taking drugs was the stupidest thing in the world and, giving Gabe a serious look, went on to say that it was bad enough people drank liquor. He kissed Lily’s cheek and asked her for a bottle.
“We’re saving for an apartment,” she replied.
I had to ask. “Are you guys related?”
Gabe smiled. I’d never seen such yellow teeth. If I didn’t brush my teeth soon, they were going to look like his.
“Lily’s my angel,” he said, softly rubbing her white fuzz.
“I’m not an angel,” Lily replied with a sweet smile, getting up to leave for the washroom.
Lily was wrong. Her white halo of hair glowed, and whenever I felt scared she magically made me feel safe. Gabe watched Lily cross the diner with the besotted love of a father.
“She’s everything I got.”
After thanking the cook for the meal, I went into the washroom to clean up. My hair was matted and the black eye was even worse. Using my fingers I combed through the knots, holding a cold compress of wet paper towels to my eye to reduce the swelling. My breath was sour and my clothes were dirty. I had to find a way to wash them or buy something new. Gabe and Lily went back to The Steps while I decided to try the museum.
A steady stream of yellow school buses transported children in from all over the province. Bright banners blew from the top of flag posts as lines of little kids followed teachers into the museum. I wandered up and down the sidewalk, on the lookout for anyone who would listen to a sob story.
“My eye hurts. I need money to get to the hospital.”
“Pardon me, ma’am. I’ve gotten separated from my school trip and need a nickel to call home.”
Sitting on the museum’s steps crying worked the best of all.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
“The bus left without me. I don’t know how I’m going to get home!” I wailed.
“Where’s home?”
“Oshawa.”
“Let me give you a dollar. That should help, now shouldn’t it?”
After three hours I had four dollars, but once I bought some cotton candy and two Eskimo bars from the street vendor who sold balloons on sticks, more than half of the money was gone. My stomach felt nauseous and Lily was going to kill me. Another yellow school bus pulled up to the curb, its doors yawning as teenagers spilled out. Most of them looked bored, like they’d been captured alive and dragged onto the bus against their wills.
Pitching the cotton cone in the trash can, I started walking up to Bloor Street when Dad’s Oldsmobile pulled up onto the sidewalk and he jumped out.
“Maddy!”
I thought of the police, Dad’s pill bottles, him losing his licence, the counselor shouting “pervert” and now me dirty and begging on the street. I ran.
Dad caught me by the statue of a lion, holding me in his arms. He was still faster. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Are you all right?”
So my Dad had looked for me. I tried not to cry, but then I saw the look in his eyes, the dark, lost look he’d had after Mom died. He shook it off but how long would it last? He would try again –he would kill himself if Isabel wasn’t there for him, and it would be my fault. Again. I pulled out of his arms and backed away.
“I’m not coming home.”
His hands fell to his sides. “Where are you staying?’
“With friends.”
“Give me the address so I know where you are.”
“It’s nothing permanent.”
He knew what that meant –transient.
“Let me get you a room.”
I started to say no, but he rode right over me. “Let me get you a room. Then we’ll get you some clean clothes and take things from there.”
I wanted to hug him, but I just said, “Okay.”
We drove around the Annex looking at different rooming houses while I nervously leafed through medical journals that had been tossed on the floor. Some of the houses were for university students and wouldn’t take anyone who was “between things.” Eventually Dad settled on an establishment for young ladies located above a dentist’s office. It was an old Victorian with grey shingles and sweeping turrets. I wanted one of the turret rooms because they had round windows and reminded me of Rapunzel locked away in the tower, but they were already taken. My room consisted of a single bed, a chest of drawers, a bedside table with a poodle lamp and a poster of the Eiffel Tower tacked to the wall. The poodle had a pink skirt and matching shade. I put the new clothes Dad had bought me on the bed along with more medical journals.
The kitchen was communal and everyone shared the television. A chubby girl with a scowly face hogged the sofa. There were five boarders all together. The dentist’s assistant explained the rules of the house.
“Rent’s every Monday. Don’t eat anyone else’s food.” She tried not to look at my dirty clothes. “There’s a washer and drier down in the basement, a payphone in the hall and whoever’s first at the TV gets their choice.”
The chubby girl looked like she lived on the sofa.
“Curfew?” Dad asked.
“Eleven o’clock and we lock the door.”
I couldn’t complain. It was better than sleeping in a park with monsters.
Dad and I stood in front of the open refrigerator, stocking my shelf.
He glanced over at my face. “How’s the eye?”
“It’s okay.” I didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t press.
Dad handed me a carton of eggs. We’d gone out shopping for food and come back with eggs, bacon, bread, chocolate ice cream and salt and vinegar chips.
“Are you sure this is going to be enough?” he asked, glancing into the empty brown paper bag.
I nodded. It was so nice to have him here with me. He looked different, as if he was clearer or slightly more defined. A white handkerchief peeked out of his breast pocket.
“Is that a new suit?”
He nodded. “Do you like it?”
“Spiffy.”
“Isabel picked it out.”
I slammed the eggs into the keeper.
“Don’t break them.”
I didn’t want to talk about Isabel. “When will I see you again?” I asked. “For rent and stuff.”
“If you need money call me at the office.”
That meant he didn’t
want me calling at home. He just wanted me gone.
“Why don’t you leave me some just in case?”
Dad frowned. “I’ll need to check in and see how you’re doing.”
“What if you’re too busy?”
His hands started to shake as he looked around the kitchen. “I don’t know if this is a good idea.”
It’s not like I could go home. Isabel wouldn’t allow it. “What if you forget?”
“Maddy…I wouldn’t forget.”
His face looked so hurt it made me feel sick. “I might be out looking for a job when you come by. If you leave me money I can take care of it myself.”
Silence. I could feel him weighing out what would happen if he brought me home. And then I couldn’t help it. “I could always call the house.”
Dad’s face went fast into fear as he pulled out his wallet and handed me forty dollars. “Make sure you keep it somewhere safe.”
I shoved the cash into my pocket. Forty dollars. That’s how much I was worth.
We walked into the foyer. The Mighty Hercules cartoon was playing on the television in the living room. A centaur was running round yelling, “Daedalus has got Helena! Daedalus has got Helena!”
Dad looked down the stairs. “Do you want to see me out?”
I couldn’t bear to say goodbye. “I think I’ll stay here. I want to get my room set up.”
He grasped the banister and I saw the fear wasn’t alone. The sad darkness was with it. I put my hand over his, squeezing it. “It’s okay, Dad.”
Then he started tearing up. Crying was bad. If he cried he might get sick again, and I had to make him feel better, make him see that he was a good Dad and I was the bad one. No wonder he didn’t want me calling him at home. He didn’t want me infecting the boys.
I pulled the handkerchief out of his breast pocket and reached out, wiping the tears away. “This is just what I needed to get me back on my feet.”
The handkerchief had been freshly ironed.
He blinked through the tears. “Isabel thinks counseling might be a good idea. Might help you sort things out.”
Isabel wanted to put me in a mental ward. That was their plan. They wanted to lock me up. I stuck the handkerchief back in his pocket.
“By the next time we talk I bet I’ve got a job.”
“Maybe you could think about school?”
“Maybe…Well I guess I better get my bed ready and stuff.”
“I guess so.”
We didn’t hug, just stood there for an awkward moment.
“If anything urgent comes up, you call the office. I’ll be right down.”
And then he was gone.
The chubby girl didn’t leave the sofa all week. Maybe it was better being in the park or sleeping on the stinky broadloom in the Warwick than lying all alone in my room staring at the ceiling. I’d tried to talk to the other girls in the kitchen, but they were bank tellers or secretaries and we had nothing in common. I didn’t belong here, I didn’t belong anywhere. There was no point looking for a job because I didn’t even have Grade Ten. If Dad’s medical journals were right I had a severe mental disorder and they’d lock me up and throw away the key. That was me –a throwaway. Granddad always examined newborn animals, claiming that you “kept the best and drowned the rest.” It wasn’t mean. It was just practical. You couldn’t have deformed animals on a farm because they’d pollute the bloodlines, and soon you’d have two-headed cows and three-legged cats and that was no good at all. I thought of Hercules’s centaur. Everyone loved him. But that was a wonderland. I wondered what Granddad would do with me and started to cry. Here I was, all alone, dumped in a rooming house because nobody wanted me.
The next day I was back at The Steps.
“Look who’s here!” Gabe cried. “We got a bottle last night. You missed it and I woulda shared with you Maddy, I really would. Lily’s no fun. She don’t drink.”
I gave him a big hug. He smelled sweet, like whisky and unfiltered cigarettes. Lily pocketed a dollar bill from a businessman and ran happily back to The Steps. She didn’t make me feel like Ginnie or Mary, but whenever I saw Lily and Gabe it felt like home.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“This and that.”
Lily lit a cigarette. She never pushed for information.
“Rotten day,” she said, counting the money. “We might need to sleep outside.”
Gabe negotiated with Lily. “If we got a bottle we’d be warm.”
“No bottle.”
“You gotta think of my nerves.”
I pulled two dollars out of my pocket and gave it to Gabe. It was enough for cheap sherry.
Gabe and Lily waited downstairs in the foyer. Other than the chubby girl on the sofa, the coast was clear. We’d gone through half the bottle in the park, but it started getting cold and since I didn’t want to be alone, I invited them back to my place.
“Whaddya doing?” the chubby girl asked, when I started closing the door to the TV room.
“I can’t sleep with the noise.”
Gabe hiccupped.
The girl grunted, but still didn’t get up.
Lily’s white head peered up from below and I signaled for them to tiptoe. Gabe missed a step, but Lily grabbed him before he fell down the stairs.
“What’s that?” the chubby girl called.
“Just dropped a shoe.”
“Get in here,” I whispered, pulling Gabe and Lily into my room. “You’ve got to be quiet.”
“Aye Aye!”
I giggled while Lily examined the poodle lamp.
“That’s nice.”
I think she meant it.
“I like stuff from foreign places.”
“I been to France,” Gabe said, looking at the poster of the Eiffel Tower.
Mom never made it there but Gabe had. Lily lay down on the floor. I threw her a blanket and gave her my pillow. She curled up and closed her eyes. Didn’t they ever brush their teeth or wash their faces before they went to bed? Gabe pulled out the bottle, took a slug and passed it to me. The taste made me gag. We talked and drank for a while.
“What’s it like?” I asked.
Gabe took another chug. “What?”
“France.”
“They’re a bunch of midgets who drink all day.”
“Did you see the Eiffel Tower?”
He nodded. “It looked like something on top of a cake. And the people eat giant white asparagus and fancy bacon.”
“What about the Louvre?” Mom had always wanted to go there and see the art.
“Ain’t never heard of that.”
“Where else did you go?”
“Wharf mostly or looking for women.”
“How old were you?”
“Long time ago.”
“Before Lily?”
Gabe nodded his head, leaning down to gently stroke her hair. “I was young then.”
Lily opened her mouth and snorted. We both laughed out loud.
“Sleeps like a baby. Always did.”
“How long you been together?”
“I forget.”
There was sharp rap at the door.
“Madeline?”
The dental assistant. She wasn’t supposed to come upstairs.
“Yes,” I answered, trying to sound sleepy.
Lily snorted.
“Do you have guests?”
“No.”
Thank God the door was locked.
“I heard voices.”
“Must be the TV.”
“The television is off. Open your door.”
“No.”
“Open it.”
“Get under the bed,” I whispered to Gabe, but it was too late. The assistant opened the door with her passkey and found Gabe sitting on my bed, clutching the bottle of sherry with Lily fast asleep on the floor. She kicked Lily and Gabe out and gave me a warning. If I ever had guests past curfew again I’d be asked to leave.
Well, I didn’t want to stay. I
took Dad’s money, bought another stash of acid and started my business again. Only this time I wasn’t going to get ripped off. Unless I knew the customer personally, I only sold one hit a time. Lily kept the money and Gabe held the stash while the customer and I slipped into the alley to complete the deal. If I didn’t come out in five minutes, Gabe would arrive and start jabbing the air.
“You pay up or I’ll beat the crap out of you!” he’d scream.
But it wasn’t the threats of Gabe’s punches that scared anyone –it was the sight of this ghostly old man who screeched like a hellhound. One time a girl decided she wasn’t going to pay, but when Gabe arrived in the alley and started to howl she dropped her wallet and ran for her life.
The three of us were sitting on The Steps having our usual lunch. I dug into our loaf of bread, pulled out a couple of slices and slapped bologna in between.
“I bought some hash. It’s laced with opium.”
Gabe got up and did a little jig. “You hear that Lily? Hear that?”
Lily handed him a sandwich. “You’re not taking that. Maddy, what are you doing offering him stuff like that? You know he’s sick.”
Gabe scowled and sat while I took a bite of my sandwich. Since I’d gone back to Steve’s I’d dropped mescaline, eaten magic mushrooms, snorted cocaine, and when the opium came in Steve said I could try that too. Why couldn’t Gabe and I try it? What was so great about reality? Why shouldn’t we escape it if we had the chance? Reality didn’t make any sense when there were better, happier places to be. One night I took acid before going to sleep just so I could wake up stoned.
“You’re going to get caught,” Lily said.
I ignored her.
“And then you’re going to go to jail.”
“I’m not going to get caught. I’m too smart.”
“You’re so stupid dealing dope.”
Gabe got up and nervously skittered away.
“At least I’m not a beggar.”
That made Lily so mad her ears went pink. “No, you’re a mess! Stoned every day of the week.”
“Who’s paying for our room?” I asked, getting angry too. Since I’d been dealing we had a weekly rate with two big beds near the ice machine. The Warwick manager even called me by name.