Stay Where I Can See You

by Katrina Onstad

  Gwen wondered if she had summoned the money from some other world, a place of ghosts and gods or exploding black holes. It arrived just as Gwen was waking at night with the strangest thoughts: We could move into the city. And then, defiantly: If Seth won’t go, I could go alone. She had, just this spring, before the money, found herself on the computer one night, perusing apartment rental listings. Apartments high in the sky, with one bedroom, and views of twinkling glass columns. Her family was nowhere in this scenario. She had climbed back into bed shaking.

  In raising the kids and running the home, there had been no time for unhappiness, and she’d rarely felt it, really, or not in the way of women who were overlooked by their husbands, or tethered to unhappy children. For Gwen, the stirring was a need for completion; the possibility to revisit a life that was just beginning when it had been interrupted by motherhood. Her hometown was landlocked. The river had dried up when she was a baby and most of the stores on the main street were empty. Procter, Ontario, was for leaving, and Gwen’s truncated youth, just a couple of years long, belonged entirely to the city.

  And now the opportunity was upon her again. It was upon all of them, and that was even better. They could go together, back to Toronto, and plug themselves into the great socket and come to life. She didn’t have to choose between her family’s safety and the city.

  She told herself that the money made the threat recede. They would have a good security system installed in the house. So much time had passed anyway. For years, when she’d driven in for a museum trip or an appointment, she’d kept her eyes wide, and her kids tightly in hand. But surely the danger wasn’t real anymore. They could live in a nice neighbourhood, far from where she’d lived before, surrounded by people she’d yet to meet, people who were softened and cocooned by money. Together, in this imagined Toronto, the darker elements of the city would be kept at bay.

  The music wrapped itself around the detritus of the house they were leaving, and settled on Gwen, lying on her back, looking up at the ceiling, smudged eyes closed.

  So they moved.

  The bell rang in Maddie’s school.

  Gwen strained to spot her daughter through the crowd of kids moving past the windows of the school. This was Gwen’s last September with Maddie in the role of a child, and she wanted to see her for just a few more minutes, to take her in, to revel in her.

  Gwen checked her watch. Eleven thirty. Surely, time to go—back to the house, the unpacking, the purchasing. A man and a woman walked by quickly, blocking Gwen’s view. The man was talking angrily, his hand gripping the woman’s upper arm, tightly. The woman looked straight ahead, unresponsive, as if she were pretending she was walking alone, somewhere else. Gwen’s body seized sharply.

  The couple disappeared, and the hallways of the school emptied out. Gwen’s breathing settled, but the familiar distress remained. It was time to go but she couldn’t bring herself to move from the bench. It wasn’t only that she wanted the rush and comfort of seeing Maddie. There was something else keeping her in place: Gwen felt that she was standing sentry over her daughter. She was her protector. There was duty in it. She would stay for just another hour.

  3

  GWEN: BEFORE

  At seventeen, Gwen left home. She didn’t exactly “run away,” breathless and chased. She took a bus to the city and no one stopped her.

  Gwen’s mother had a thin, tapering voice and unfocused eyes. She had been a Home Economics major at community college when she met Gwen’s father, who worked at the cement plant. She didn’t finish school, but she was industrious. She could sew, and bake, and made curtains for the living room out of fabric scraps she found in a department store basement. It was a tremendous performance of domesticity for a very small audience—Gwen, her sister, Nancy, and Gwen’s father—but the truth was that she was severed from her kids, as from the world. She left the house only for errands. On the first of each month, she sat at the kitchen table with a stack of twenty-dollar bills handed over by Gwen’s father. Gwen watched as she put them in smaller stacks, each bundled with an elastic and marked by a strip of white paper with her perfect, musical handwriting: mortgage, groceries, bills, gas.

  After school, as she fed Gwen and her sister toast and orange slices, she would lean on the counter and stare at them, her eyes dialling in and out. She looked at her children like she couldn’t believe they were hers. Then when the plates were empty, she’d wash them in the sink, and retire to bed at 4:30 p.m. The alarm rang just before 6:00, when Gwen’s mother rose again and returned to the kitchen to cook dinner, so she would be in process when the front door opened at 6:15.

  Her father had violence in him, though it never landed directly on their bodies. He kicked at walls, and raged at injustices meted out by his bosses. He drank beer out of the can, one after the other, standing in the kitchen until he couldn’t stand anymore. Mostly this happened late at night, and Gwen could shut her door, put on her headphones and wait it out. Her mother never engaged, and her father’s rants were lengthy and for no one. The hum of them was like listening to the same song every night. Sometimes doors would bang. Something might smash. Then, the next morning, Gwen’s mother would be standing in the kitchen blankly, and eggs would be waiting for Gwen and Nancy.

  In adolescence, Gwen transitioned into Dorothy, locked in a dream, always inside the tornado. She walked through the school halls inside the tornado, sat at the back of class inside the tornado, ate dinner in the tornado while her mother and father ate in silence. Music helped; it cut through, as did the drinking. Her best friend, Laura, was the source of vodka and albums, and they would take the bus two hours into the city and wander the mall downtown, shoplifting eyeliner and white foundation. Gwen remembered the comforting touch of Laura’s hands on her head, dying Gwen’s triangular haircut black in the bathroom at the mall, the dirty sink streaked with dye and the girls running out, laughing, faster than the security guards.

  Their favourite bar was Palmer’s, at the edge of Chinatown where the smell of restaurant fish steamed up from the grate out front. It had a neon palm tree sign and the best bands. Gwen could see herself from above, with the other girls in their leather jackets and tank tops, saying Yes, yes, yes to whatever was offered—to the weed, the fingers, the alleyways.

  The proposition of adulthood was marbled with danger. A billboard appeared at the mall: a man with a scabbed face and Jesus-cheeks. A counsellor had come to her class in Grade 7, rolling in a TV on wheels to show a video about condoms: “Don’t get AIDS—like ME,” warned the dying drug user, a line Gwen and her friends repeated to each other in the cafeteria, holding up hot dogs, giggling. Still, they snatched handfuls of free condoms from the walk-in clinic, filling their purses.

  So Gwen had never expected pleasure, exactly. The stories of the first time, traded at sleepovers and next to lockers on Monday mornings, never included pleasure. More often, the details involved boredom. They usually included the humiliation of boys who were stupid and finished fast and said comical things when they did. (Laura had lost her virginity on a summer trip to Europe with her parents, in a barn with an Austrian boy who right after shouted “America!” and offered her a handful of hay to clean off.) Boys were unearthly and difficult to make sense of. Yet Gwen had hoped—at the very least—for kindness.

  “Let’s not go back to Procter,” shouted Gwen to Laura, bouncing up and down in the mosh pit. And they didn’t.

  * * *

  Daniel was the sound guy on the nights when he made it in. Gwen stood far away, watching him set up the stage, then retreat behind the mixing board, fingers working the mysterious knobs. His lean face seemed to be melting, slipping between boy and girl. When he first looked up and smiled at her, she gasped.

  Laura asked if he was Métis.

  “He’s from Sudbury,” said Gwen, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what that ruled out. (Everyone she met was from somewhere else, small towns that Gwen looked up in the atlas at the reference library where she went to k
eep warm, poring over art books and napping between the stacks. She liked to locate her new friends’ hometowns on maps: Gull Lake, Smithers, Sault Ste. Marie.)

  So that would be her first time: with Daniel, on a piece of foam he used as a bed, in a tiny room in an apartment he shared with two other guys. She wondered if he could tell she was the only girl in the world who hadn’t had sex. To her relief, lying completely still seemed to suffice. Through the whole thing, Daniel kept shaking his long hair out of his eyes and asking her if she was all right. “You okay?” and on and on, for exactly eight minutes, marked by a blinking digital clock in the shape of a beer can. And afterwards, he held her close so she could barely breathe. Only when he fell asleep could she finally relax, her head against his skinny chest.

  The second time, he said, “Wait—your turn,” and each time they had sex after, she came, and with each shudder, she tilted toward love, and her loneliness receded a little.

  She called home and her father yelled, said she should never come back. Then her mother took the phone. Gwen could hear her walking away from her father, a door shutting.

  “Gwyneth—be safe,” she said, quietly. “And if you need to come home, I’ll make sure you can.”

  Gwen hung up immediately, her heart racing. Some part of her, the part of her that felt like crying, was thrilled and covetous of this surprising and beautiful pronouncement.

  She wouldn’t need to call on that kindness for a year.

  * * *

  Laura met a guy and left for Vancouver, and so it was just Gwen and Daniel. Gwen adored Daniel’s apartment, with the itchy Mexican blankets, and the thin sliver of translucent orange soap in its dish. There was the potential for squalor, with three nineteen-year-old men living together, but Daniel kept the place military clean. He lined his shoes up against the wall, and Gwen’s, too. He would climb out of bed in the dark if he sensed something was amiss somewhere in the apartment, leaving her while he scrubbed a lone plate in the sink. He hung his four T-shirts on hangers that were evenly spaced in the little closet. Gwen curled up on the foam, under the blanket, watching these gestures repeat, sometimes several times a day. “I’ll take care of you,” he said, or that’s what she felt he was saying, pulling up the blanket, kissing her on the forehead before he left, off to unknown places. “Stay here,” he said from the doorway. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Gwen didn’t take him literally until the day she did leave the apartment while he was out, walking to investigate a Help Wanted sign, then over to the library to pass the time. When she returned a few hours later, Daniel was cross-legged on the mattress, knees bouncing, eyes wide. “I got worried,” he told her. Gwen apologized, surprised to have had this effect, any effect, on another person. She liked weighing on someone, even if his outsized response tugged at her insides, a warning. Still, she comforted him.

  From then on, Gwen had to check in with Daniel’s roommates if she was leaving the apartment. This was the pact. Daniel needed to know where she was at all times, he said, because he loved her. She revelled in the word “love.”

  With his permission, Gwen took a job in a donut shop. At sunset, after wiping clean the racks and hanging up her hairnet, Gwen walked south to Palmer’s. She would nod to Gus, the twisted grey manager. He never spoke to her, just grunted in passing, if that.

  The boys revered him, but Gwen felt queasy watching his big belly testing the buttons on his plaid shirts. After the customers had gone, Gus would pull a wad of cash out of his pocket, and the boys would gather around. Very slowly, Gus distributed the bills, always making someone do just a little extra before getting theirs. “Daniel, how about you bring me a beer?” He would watch Daniel carefully, eyeing him as he walked. Beer delivered, Gus would hand Daniel his cash, holding up his empty palms. “You’ll get paid the rest tomorrow, dickheads,” he’d say. But Gwen knew there was always something left. She saw the bulge of the cash roll in the drooping back pocket of Gus’s jeans.

  Daniel got a kick out of him, though, forever a foster kid, looking to be taken in. Gus did very little but it was enough for Daniel. He slapped Daniel on the back after he’d successfully fixed the mixing board, and Daniel beamed. He invited Daniel into the tiny room he used as an office, a stinking box with a mop leaning in the corner and paper strewn across the desk. Daniel told Gwen that Gus liked to show the boys his gun, stored right in the desk drawer, maybe loaded. Gus would wave it around, especially when someone screwed up. Daniel said he thought this was stupid, but Gwen could tell that he was impressed, too, recounting Gus’s manly madness.

  On Daniel’s birthday, Gus gave him as much beer as he could drink. Daniel drank until he puked into an empty box backstage. It was Gwen who had to lead Daniel by the hand out of the bar. Gus leaned in the doorway, watching.

  Often, her job was to get Daniel home, his boneless legs dragging, his tall body resting on her aching shoulder. She was small but strong, and he didn’t weigh much, despite his height. Up the street they went, leaning into one another like two cigarettes in a pack. He raged lightly or hard, depending on the night, thrashing and spitting. She dropped him on the mattress. She knew to take off his shoes and line them up carefully by the wall for morning because that was how he liked it.

  At the bar, with the music, Gwen was happier than she was in the little apartment. When the bands set up, Gwen sat on her stool, beer bottle in her lap, Discman on, watching Daniel flip switches that turned the lights from red to green to blue. The crowds were men and boys, mostly. Gwen loved the girl bands, but they were few and far between, and the girl singers looked at her with suspicion. The boys were a little nicer, swaying their long hair and talking to her shyly as they set up, then springing to life with a violent thrash once the music started. They didn’t hit on her much. She was baby-faced, and she was Daniel’s, which seemed to matter.

  On the rare occasions when she was moved to dance, Gwen would slip out from behind the stage, and into the centre of the crowd. She would be lifted right atop the heads, lying on her back, carried from body to body. She would see above her the criss-crossing beams and lights, water-stained ceiling panels. One night the singer was making sounds, not words, like doors slamming, over and over, and the bassist was standing on top of the speaker, twelve feet in the air, looking down at Gwen. A hand tried to grab between her legs, and Gwen flung herself off the carpet of the crowd. Or maybe she didn’t escape; maybe she was just expelled. Either way, Gwen landed by an amp, her head hitting the stage. A chunk of her scalp scraped clear away, hanging like a tissue from the stage’s lip. She lay, dazed on her side, until a bouncer scooped her up and carried her backstage.

  “Oh, Gwennie,” said Daniel, wiping her blood-streaked forehead with a rag. He was sober that night, because he was broke. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

  Gus blocked the door. “If you leave now, you won’t get paid for tonight.” Daniel pushed past him.

  The ER nurse took one look at them and immediately found a bed, pulling the curtain shut. Daniel fell asleep in a chair, and Gwen felt a surge of relief. She used a remote control to crank herself to sitting, then crank herself back down.

  Finally, a different nurse appeared, breathing through her mouth, letting Gwen know she was giving off a sour smell of bar and donuts. Self-conscious now, Gwen noticed that her jeans were ripped at the knees, her dyed black hair unwashed. Blood had poured over her right eye, crusting it shut.

  “Are you using?” asked the nurse.

  “Using what?” Gwen was genuinely puzzled.

  “Heroin.”

  “What? Oh—no,” said Gwen.

  “What about him?” Gwen looked over, and saw Daniel as the nurse might see him, sitting slumped over, chin to chest.

  Gwen shrugged. The nurse cleaned her eye. She sighed. Then she gently lifted Gwen’s arm and examined her wrist. She touched the purple bracelet of a bruise. Gwen flinched.

  “That didn’t happen tonight.”

  “I fell at work.” Gwen pulled her sleeve down
to her fingers. The nurse looked at her, and Gwen turned away. The nurse left the room.

  Gwen wanted to tell the nurse that she shared her concern, but that all of this was temporary.

  The nurse returned with a flyer: Women’s Crisis Line. They both looked at Daniel, passed out, and Gwen put the paper in her pocket. She wanted to explain to the nurse that there was comfort with him. She required the simplicity of their life together. She wasn’t willing to let it go, not yet. Before waking him to leave, she threw the paper in a wastebasket.

  After that, whenever she was at the bar, Daniel told her to stay where he could see her. “I just like to know where you are,” he said. “In case something happens.”

  This is where Gwen would like to stop, where she does stop in her head, settling on that one request: “Stay where I can see you.” That could be the climax of a love story about a sweet boy from a northern town who looked out for a girl. But there were all the things she didn’t tell Seth, didn’t tell Maddie, as if by keeping the story untold, she would create a world where such things never happened at all.

  Still, go back to those first months. They were kids listening to music and holding hands, walking back to the boy’s apartment as the sun rose. That was the city she held close. That was the youth she wanted to remember. In love, and away from her parents. She could stop the whole story there. If only.