Stay Where I Can See You

by Katrina Onstad

  Maddie looked at him blankly.

  “Overseas Filipino Workers. She works two jobs, and sends half of what she makes back there to her parents, and his parents, and my aunt and her family. Then I give her my money from work. The big pass-along.”

  Maddie glanced at the empty containers of takeout soup. She should offer to pay him for the food.

  “I need to keep my grades up,” he said.

  “Because of your scholarship.”

  “No, it’s not that . . .” He frowned, irritated.

  She was getting it wrong, which was scary. She needed him to be happy with her.

  She tried again. “Because you owe your mom?”

  “Because she’s—it’s been hard for her. I’m the son. I take care of her.” He leaned back on the couch and shut his eyes.

  In that position, he looked to Maddie like a man, in the worst way possible, like someone just barely hanging on. He looked like her dad frantically typing at his computer late at night. He looked like the zombie dads in Shadow Pines getting out of their cars at 6:30 p.m., faces baggy, briefcases dangling from the sleeves of their winter coats.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her. “You and your mother—you could be sisters.”

  He smiled then, and so she could, too, relieved that the moment of distance between them had passed. She rested her head on his chest.

  “You’re hot,” he said, feeling her forehead, and she tried to make a joke about being hot, but was too dizzy.

  Joshua drew Maddie a bath, while she waited on the edge of her bed. When it was ready, she went in alone, shutting the door, taking off her pyjamas. She eased herself into the water, lying with her hair floating on the water, imagining drifting down one of those fake rivers at a water park, until a bout of violent coughing forced her to sit up. Joshua came in and put his hand on her back until the coughing stopped, averting his eyes from her naked body. Then he left again.

  Maddie came out of the bathroom in her robe. He had made her bed and was sitting on the soft chair in the corner. It was light blue, and Maddie had never sat in it, because why do you need a chair in a bedroom anyway? Her mom had bought it without asking. But there was Joshua, with a book in his lap. He looked up and smiled at her, and she felt entirely safe with him there as she fell into sleep. When she woke up, he was gone.

  * * *

  Carter’s family was known to call at the last minute when Mrs. Andrada was already working at another home, so some afternoons, Maddie met Joshua in the park in Leaside with the kids and the nannies. Maddie made sure Carter’s head was covered in the cold, and as the snow melted, she made sure that he wasn’t too hot in his padded jacket.

  What did they talk about? At night, in bed, reliving her time with Joshua, Maddie sometimes couldn’t even remember. They talked about videos, and school. They talked about their pasts, and Maddie was surprised to find she had one. Shyly, she offered impressions of her life in Shadow Pines: the time she was babysitting at the Chen’s and found a bunch of bookmarked porn on the desktop computer; the time she and Emma poured Kahlúa into their iced mochaccinos and went to the mall; her favourite feeling when the first snow fell.

  He was a good listener. After she rambled on, he would say, “Huh,” in this serious, thoughtful way, like he was putting all her pieces together to see her fully.

  Maddie asked him about the Philippines. It was faint, he said, kind of abstract.

  But he did remember taking the bus to visit his grandparents on weekends, out by a half-dead lake away from the city. Joshua always knew he and his mother would be getting off the bus soon when the rice fields came into view, striped rows of bent-backed women, arms in the mud. Soon after, his grandfather would be waiting at the side of the road, holding a plastic bottle of bubbles. The visit seemed serious at first, with his mother bowing, putting his grandfather’s outreached hand against her forehead, and his grandfather shy. Then Joshua would blow bubbles, and his grandfather would laugh, applauding the biggest ones. One time, after a weekend visit, Joshua’s mother told him that she would be leaving without him. “I’ll come back for you.” He cried as her bus left, leaning into his grandfather’s legs. His mother didn’t return for a year.

  Maddie made murmuring sounds to tell him she was sorry, but in a tight voice, Joshua told her that he didn’t think too much about that place. Last summer his mom and his sister rode the subway to a Jollibee in Scarborough for peach-mango pie, like this was such a big deal that Jollibee had finally come to Canada. But the pie was way too sweet. Only Alex really liked it, and she’d never even been to the Philippines.

  But the hum beneath all their time together, if Maddie was completely honest, was sex. When and where and how, and when they couldn’t and where they couldn’t. Never at Carter’s house (that was work; Joshua got paid). Sometimes at Maddie’s, but they had to be careful there because Gwen had everyone on lockdown these days. When Alexis was at the community centre for choir, and Mrs. Andrada was picking up an extra shift—which was pretty much all the time—they would go to Joshua’s bedroom. Then they would pick a playlist and have sex. The more they did it, the better it got. This was a surprise. Maddie had thought sex was like eye colour, a constant. But as she lost her doubt and they began to talk to each other, just a little (“This?” “Yes . . . this?”), she watched Joshua’s expression buckle because of her, and she thought, “Hey, I’m figuring this out.”

  And then, in April, Joshua vanished.

  * * *

  For a week, he wasn’t in school. No texts, no social. Dr. Goldberg told Maddie that he had called in sick, but it didn’t make sense. Nine days, including weekends. Maddie was swollen with anxiety; at night, she didn’t sleep. Her mom tried to find out what was wrong, and her sympathy and hungry curiosity made Maddie recoil. All she wanted was an answer, not more questions.

  She hoped that maybe Joshua would show up for Give Back Day, so on a cool Saturday morning, Maddie entered the auditorium. The event was just getting started, balloons bobbing and inspirational pop music blaring: “You lift me up, up, up! You make me the best, best, best!” Kids in Homes for Humanity T-shirts were hammering at wood planks, building what looked to be a doghouse. They wore shiny, newly purchased tool belts.

  Maddie, already exhausted with worry, found herself further irritated. Since Joshua—since sex?—her eye on the world was surgical, and she was diagnosing some serious bullshit here at the U.

  A kid came up to her and tried to get her to sign a petition for something. Maddie felt as accosted as she did by the cell phone salespeople and perfume pushers at the mall. She signed whatever it was, scanning for Joshua.

  Maddie moved past a Hurricane Relief booth (precisely which hurricane required relief was unclear), and a massage table (20 DOLLARS = 1 MASSAGE!—read the banner—PROCEEDS TO REFUGEES!). Across the room, in front of the stage, Clara sat at a long table covered in clipboards of petitions and info sheets. She waved at Maddie and pointed to the sign above her head: CHILD RESCUE. Clara rolled her eyes and lolled her tongue. The song continued: “You lift me UP UP UP!” Maddie made her way through the dance-a-thon in the middle of the room, looking for Joshua.

  She felt grim: You are doing the girl thing, the thing of songs and movies. You are being that girl who stalks and sulks. She wanted to be the other kind of girl, even though she wasn’t sure what that kind was exactly.

  Maddie felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around quickly, but it was only Ms. Harrison, the guidance counsellor. A tattoo leaked out of her T-shirt sleeve, wrapping her right arm, a black spiral of thorns and petals. Along her forearm, the words: “By any means necessary.” “UP UP UP!” went the song.

  “Madeline, nice to see you,” Ms. Harrison said, her straight red hair flapping, her black-rimmed glasses low on her nose. “Any word on your applications?”

  Maddie didn’t want to tell her that she hadn’t been thinking about her university applications at all. She’d used Seth’s credit card to pay the fees and handed in exactl
y the same package to each school.

  “Not yet,” said Maddie.

  Ms. Harrison looked at her, weighing her next question.

  “Madeline,” she said finally. “Would you mind—if I can ask you something off the record . . .”

  Maddie tried not to look at the flower twisting around on Ms. Harrison’s arm, so of course it was all she could see.

  “Okay.”

  “Is it true that your family won the lottery?”

  Maddie not-looked at the tattoo. “Yes. It wasn’t a huge amount.”

  “Well, good for you.” Ms. Harrison was trying to catch Maddie’s eye, and Maddie refused to give it to her. “You didn’t mention it on your application essay.”

  “No. It didn’t seem . . .” Maddie paused, and Ms. Harrison jumped in: “Sympathetic. Good instinct.” Then Ms. Harrison added, “You know, some people think the lottery is immoral.”

  “Uh,” said Maddie, growing hotter, wondering why grown-ups did this, pranced around with “Some people” when what they really meant was “I.”

  “You’ve heard that argument, I’m sure. The lottery is a tax on the poor, because they pay to play but they never win. It’s an economic shakedown. Yada yada yada.”

  Maddie watched the thorns and petals emerge and retreat from the sleeve. Maddie didn’t know why Ms. Harrison was bothering. She already felt guilty; she didn’t need this woman to smack at her with this particular broom.

  “I had an aunt who spent her welfare cheque on the lottery, week after week, and then had to go to a food bank to feed herself.”

  Maddie frowned. “If she was your aunt, why didn’t your family feed her?”

  Ms. Harrison cleared her throat. “Well, we did, of course. But sometimes when people are ill, or addicted, you have to just—let them figure it out.”

  Maddie looked up at the rafters, anywhere but at Ms. Harrison.

  After a pause in which Ms. Harrison seemed to be expecting something (an apology? Maddie wondered), Maddie asked, “How do you even know that about the lottery?”

  “Is it a secret?” asked Ms. Harrison.

  Maddie didn’t answer. She made the right sounds to escape Ms. Harrison, only to turn and find Dr. Goldberg in her path.

  “How’s the altruism, Ms. Kaplan? Is the world rightly cured of its ails since your participation in the dance-a-thon?” he asked.

  At that moment, in the wake of Ms. Harrison’s earnestness, Maddie welcomed Dr. Goldberg’s default archness.

  “Listen, Maddie—” he said, his voice dropping. “You hang around with Joshua Andrada, correct?”

  Now he had Maddie’s attention. “Yes.” Even the teachers knew she was with Joshua, then.

  “Have you heard from him this week?”

  “No,” she said. “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t . . .”

  Dr. Goldberg looked around, and with that shifty gesture, it occurred to Maddie that they were under surveillance, that school was another kind of authoritarian regime, like the ones they studied in Dr. Goldberg’s class. This explained the wormy feeling she carried with her every time she walked the hall. She was tempted to look above her for a camera’s eye in the auditorium rafters.

  “We haven’t heard from him since Monday, or his mother.” He looked at Maddie kindly, the tenor of his voice gentle. “The administration is working on it, but I thought you should know. Will you tell me if you hear from him?”

  This was the first time Maddie considered that Joshua hadn’t just left her; he had left everything. She knew now that something was wrong. She strode to the exit, through the dancers, past the charity tables.

  At the double doors to the gym, Maddie was blocked by Sophie standing with a little girl, holding her hand.

  “Hey, where have you been? You didn’t come help us tutor—” said Sophie. “This is Jennica, my reading buddy.”

  Jennica held up a picture book with a tiger wearing a hat on the cover.

  Maddie looked at Jennica, then up at Sophie. “Does it ever get to you? All this? Rich kids fattening up their university applications?”

  Sophie, who had a way of curling herself small, straightened to her full, minimal height, tipping her chin up. “Well, I’m not rich,” she said. “I’m on financial aid. I used to go to the school Jennica goes to.”

  “Charles Tupper Junior,” said Jennica, not looking up from her book.

  Maddie was surprised. She’d seen Sophie and Clara as two-headed, and assumed that Sophie’s house would be as vast as Clara’s, her holidays as luxurious. “I didn’t know—”

  “I’m not embarrassed about it. But this stuff . . .” Sophie gestured around the room. “I know it seems . . . fake, but people mean well.”

  “Do they? What do they mean?” Maddie asked the question sincerely, but even to her ears, it sounded sarcastic.

  Sophie gave her a harder look and said, “You don’t know everyone’s story, Maddie. Not everybody is an insider.”

  Clara danced up to them, arriving in a plié. “Bonjour, mes amis,” she said, gushing lightly over Jennica, who showed her the tiger book with the same solicitude. Clara then turned her attention to the others.

  “I hope Sophie’s giving you hell for being such a ghost, Madeline,” said Clara. “You missed, let me see . . .” She began counting on her fingers: “The spring gala, Andrew D.’s house wrecker, the DJ Rav show . . .” One finger was left: the pointer, perfectly manicured and wearing a familiar green ring.

  Maddie stared. “Where did you get that ring?”

  Clara rolled her eyes. “Duh—where do you think?” she said. “I’m kind of a genius shoplifter.”

  Maddie’s jaw seized. She looked to Sophie, but Sophie was heavy-lidded now, biting her lip.

  Maddie turned to leave.

  “Wait, Maddie—” Sophie called.

  But Maddie had shoved open the doors, pushed through them onto the field, into the light—and was gone.

  * * *

  Maddie banged on Joshua’s apartment door until someone shouted from behind a different door to shut the fuck up. It was not her first visit.

  Then she took the streetcar to the food court. At 11 a.m., it was still quiet. Grey cages covered the unopened stalls. A woman swept. A few people sat alone at tables.

  Behind the counter of the sub shop, an older woman held a clear plastic bag the size of a pillow. She turned it over one of the silver trays and shook out the snowy white lettuce.

  The woman smiled at her. “I know you. We met that time,” she said.

  Maddie didn’t remember but nodded and smiled, trying to make up for not remembering.

  “Joshua hasn’t been at school—”

  The woman’s smile vanished. “His mother is very sick,” she said. “She’s in the hospital. I tried to get them to hold onto Joshua’s job, but I don’t know. They don’t like us taking holidays, you know? Even if it’s Joshua. He’s such a good worker.”

  Maddie caught her breath. “Which hospital?” she asked.

  The woman told her, and said, “Do you want a sandwich? No charge.”

  “No, but thank you.”

  “Just a bun?”

  Suddenly, Maddie couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

  “Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The woman wrapped the bun gently in a napkin and handed it to her with concern. As Maddie walked to the hospital, she ate it up in three ferocious bites.

  * * *

  At the hospital, Maddie signed in as a relative of Mrs. Andrada’s. It was easy. She had thought it would be more like a prison somehow, with patients like inmates.

  When Maddie got to the door, she saw the nameplate: Andrada, S. She realized that she didn’t know what the “S” was for. When she opened the door with her sticky, disinfected hand, Joshua’s mother lay directly in front of her. There were three other beds in the room, but only one other person, shapeless on her side.

  Joshua’s head was down, reading a book. After all that worry, Maddie
couldn’t believe that he was just there in his body, sitting in a chair.

  Joshua’s mother’s head poked out of the sheet, eyes closed. Maddie was relieved: his mother suffering was better than Joshua suffering, she thought, even though it was cruel. A machine beeped, and on the fourth beep, like it was a musical cue, Joshua looked up, directly at Maddie. He frowned when he saw her, and his jaw clenched. Somehow Maddie had expected a joyful reunion, but instead, she was making him angry, just by being there, by being an intruder.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked in a whisper.

  Anger didn’t suit him, but there it was, burning in the narrow line of his mouth. He didn’t stand up, so Maddie stood in front of him stupidly, looming above his tiny mother.

  “Everyone’s worried,” she whispered. She felt like crying, but only a little for his sick mother, mostly for Joshua, and for herself. She wanted him to stand up now, and touch her, like before. She wanted to be enfolded.

  “She has a kidney infection.”

  “Oh no,” said Maddie.

  Joshua rubbed his face in his palms. He looked tired. A little red zit glowed on his cheek.

  Maddie asked, “Both kidneys?”

  Joshua stood up finally, close to Maddie, and looked down on his mother’s sleeping body. He exhaled, gently whispered something to her that Maddie couldn’t make out.

  “Can she hear you?” asked Maddie.

  “She’s so drugged she keeps thinking I’m her dad.” Joshua moved his hand to the sheets, just above where his mother’s waist would be. He reached under the sheet and pulled briskly, like a magician doing the reveal.

  Alarmed, Maddie said, “Don’t . . .” She didn’t want to see anything. Whatever it was could not be unseen, and it was bound to be something terrible. “Please . . .” she said, but Joshua pulled back the sheet and the side of his mother’s gown, revealing a waxy mannequin torso.

  “Look,” said Joshua, and Maddie forced herself to look where he was gesturing, at his mother’s side, below her ribcage. She saw a long white scar, gruesome and badly stitched. It hugged her side, leading to her back.