Stay Where I Can See You

by Katrina Onstad

  To that, he finally spoke. “I bet you’re a good artist. Your mom was always a creative type.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh yeah. She would make things nicer. Get a little bouquet of flowers from God knows where, put them in a cleaned out jar.”

  “What else did she do?”

  “Apples. She was always trying to make me eat apples.”

  This was something Maddie could imagine.

  He pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket and lit one without asking. The package had a picture of a woman sticking out her tongue, black and half-rotted: SMOKING CAUSES MOUTH CANCER.

  Sideways, Daniel said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t around. I didn’t know about you.”

  Today is the day of dads apologizing, Maddie thought.

  “I was a secret.”

  “Just to me. The guy who raised you—you were pretty real to him, I’m guessing.”

  “Seth. My dad.” She said the last word loudly. Maddie couldn’t tell if it hurt this man to hear her talk about her dad, but she hoped it did, a little.

  He asked, “Why didn’t your mom tell you about me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t fit her picture of this perfect family.”

  He frowned, tilting his head back and blowing upwards in a stream. The smoke immediately drifted back down over both of them. “I was in prison for a while.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah—you should, uh, stay out of trouble.” He tacked on that piece of advice like he’d been coached to do so.

  Maddie almost smiled. Then she had a thought about who goes to prison (murderers and rapists), and asked, “Why? What’d you do?”

  He looked away, expelling smoke. “Stupid stuff. Drug stuff.”

  Maddie had no idea what that stuff could be. She wondered if she would get in trouble for smelling like smoke, and this made her think of her mother, alone and asleep on the couch.

  “What else do you want to know?” he asked.

  It was better that they were sideways, because if she’d been able to see him, then maybe she wouldn’t have been bold enough to ask him about his medical history, checking imaginary boxes. Overall health? Not bad, he said, and he was lucky, considering. Family history of cancer? He didn’t know. Heart disease? Blood disease? Kidney? He didn’t know. He was from the north, he explained, lighting a new cigarette off the butt of the old one. He never knew his parents. There was an aunt, but she died, so he was in foster care most of his life. Maddie noticed that one of his front teeth was split and yellow at the seam, like he’d fallen, or been hit.

  He kept circling back to Gwen, maybe because it was the one common thing between them. Maddie learned that he loved music, like Gwen. Maddie was slack-jawed: her mother listening to a band in a bar; her mother sleeping in a park. It was confusing. The more he told her about himself, the less she knew about Gwen.

  “I had a temper,” he said. “But only when I was drunk. Or high. I don’t do that now.” “Temper” was a wide-open word. Maddie suddenly feared for this hypothetical Gwen, this young Goth Gwen who might have been in peril. But her head really swivelled at “high.” “Stupid stuff. Drug stuff.” She might have the same predilections, she thought; she was partly this man. She did have an appetite, a voracious appetite that had been sated in the past year with Joshua. She knew what it was like to want to slip out of your own body. Sex was like that—screaming, fleeing, vanishing—and these leanings seemed to suggest something unhinged inside her, something inherited, inborn. This link between them didn’t trouble her, though; it was just a curiosity, specimen-like.

  In the morning that she’d spent walking around the east end of the city alone, going through a basket of hats in a vintage shop and flipping through graphic novels at a used book store, Maddie had wondered if she would love him instantly, simply because he was her father. After a half hour in his presence, she realized that this was a stupid thing to have even considered. She didn’t love this man instantly, or at all. He was a series of mildly interesting facts in a leather jacket. He was a stranger who had never known her. On TV, there’s weeping, and the dad holds the girl’s face and says, I’d recognize you anywhere.

  “My plan now is to get away, to go west,” he said. “But I don’t have any money.”

  He got quiet then, and the air hung heavy, while Maddie figured it out: money. He wanted her money, not her.

  She let it bite, then shoved back: So what? They were both ruthless, then. She had come for one reason. He had information she needed that only he could give her, and now she had it.

  Maddie stood up. “I should go.” She hadn’t drunk any coffee. The cup sat at her feet.

  “Okay. I’ll drive you.” He stood up, too, grinding his cigarette butt with the heel of his work boot.

  “No. That’s okay.”

  “Just come on,” he said firmly. She hesitated, but he said it like a command, and one more time. “Let’s go.”

  Maddie nodded.

  She followed him to the parking lot, past a flock of loud Canada geese on the grass, away from the people on the beach. Maddie tiptoed to avoid shit.

  His car was banged up—a loaner, he told her. As he fumbled with the lock on the door, a goose approached. Suddenly, the goose charged, screaming its strangled cry.

  “The fuck . . .” said Daniel, and then, in a split second, he leaned down and grabbed the beast by its neck. It thrust and screamed, and Maddie was sure it would peck out his eyes, but Daniel heaved and flung the feathered thing. It went sailing through the parking lot, smash landing on the concrete in front of a minivan, a gnarled heap of unmoving feathers.

  Maddie gasped, and when she looked at Daniel, he looked back at her with still black eyes.

  “Those things will attack,” he said. “Get in.”

  Maddie looked across the parking lot at the bird, lying still on the ground. She searched for other people, anyone to bear witness, but there was no one else. She got in the car, heart racing.

  Daniel flicked at a piece of lint on the dashboard before driving. Maddie did up her seatbelt nervously as they drove past the limp bird.

  Maddie stared out the window at the city, repeating the names of the streets in her head to stay calm. He didn’t say much. She had the feeling that it was her job to keep him level, to get herself home. Take the safest route, she thought, like her mom would, giving him directions, performing normal.

  “You should come with me,” he said. “Have you ever seen the Rockies?” She hadn’t. “You’re almost done school, right? Think about it.” She would.

  At their driveway, he said, “Nice house,” craning to look. As he did, his jacket fell open, and Maddie saw the black handle of a knife in a sheath, strapped across his chest.

  Eli had once been given a toy plastic combat knife with a serrated edge from a neighbour. After a few days of Eli waving the knife around, popping up behind furniture and out of corners with it in his hand, Gwen took it away. This knife looked the same, carbon black and heavy, strapped to his chest, at the ready.

  Maddie pretended not to see it. Her throat went dry.

  “Well, bye.”

  “Think about it,” he said.

  And as Maddie walked away—fast, without looking behind her—she wondered if he knew she’d see the knife. She wondered what was intentional and what was an accident. She headed toward the house, and her heart sank: He knows where we live.

  GWEN

  A delivery van brought elephant ears and begonias. The plants stood in the front garden in attentive little pots, waiting for the gardener to come the next morning. But in the afternoon, after a day of unsuccessfully trying to reach Maddie on the phone, Gwen decided to plant them herself. A distraction. She had new gardening gloves and tools, and she dug down deep in the soil, turning and sniffing the sweetness. This was good work; she had forgotten how much she liked it. The sun rested on the exposed back of her neck, and she could almost forget the chaos, and her daughter, unmoored in the world today.
r />   Eli came on the front porch, carrying a bowl of cereal.

  “I like the orange one,” he said.

  “Me too. Sunburst,” said Gwen, wiping her face with the back of her glove.

  “Isn’t there a dude who does this for us now?” said Eli, shovelling Cheerios.

  “Yes, but it’s nice to do things for yourself sometimes, isn’t it?”

  Eli nodded lightly, unconvinced, then said, “Who’s that?”

  Gwen looked over at a grey sedan sitting on the road. In the land of driveways, nobody ever parked on the road. Gwen stood up. The car idled.

  The passenger door opened, and Maddie appeared. Gwen dropped her spade and began walking to the car, leaning to see who was in the driver’s seat. She caught a glimpse of black leather jacket and drew closer. Maddie slammed the door.

  “Mom—”

  Before Gwen could get there, the car revved and sped away.

  Gwen spun toward Maddie, who was walking toward the house quickly. “Was that Daniel?”

  “Yes,” said Maddie.

  Gwen walked fast to keep up with her.

  “Who’s the guy?” asked Eli, when the three of them were on the porch.

  Maddie pushed past him into the house. Gwen followed her to the kitchen, dropping her gardening gloves as she walked, tracking dirt.

  “Why would you bring him here? I told you—it’s not safe.” She was trying very hard not to scream. Screaming might set Maddie off, send her back out there.

  Maddie didn’t answer. She took a glass from a cupboard and filled it with water, still without answering.

  Gwen asked, “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing you don’t know, presumably,” said Maddie, drinking. “He’s some kind of addict, huh?”

  Gwen winced. He’s more than that, she wanted to say. She scrambled to handle the situation. Why hadn’t she prepared for this? “Maybe. I don’t know. Maddie . . . I . . .” Gwen didn’t know what would keep her tethered, so she went back to the beginning. “I love you. I don’t say it enough—”

  “You let me know that all the time.”

  “But not the words.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know I’m lucky.”

  Gwen was confused by Maddie’s leap from love to luck.

  Maddie went on, suddenly spilling over: “There are all these people out there—so many places where no one gets what they want.” She had a faraway look on her face.

  “Well, we can do more,” said Gwen. She remembered how little Maddie had counted her UNICEF pennies at Halloween before she counted her candy. “We’ll find an organization, something we can donate to or—”

  Maddie snorted. “You know it’s all bullshit, right? The system is rigged. We can cut as many cheques as we want, but none of it matters. You get your place on the ladder, and you just hang on there.”

  “You sound very teen right now.”

  Maddie shrugged. “Those are my people.”

  “What are you fighting about?” Eli appeared, looking back and forth between the two of them.

  “Nothing,” said Gwen. “Eli, why don’t you give us a few minutes?”

  He nodded, backing out of the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to worry. He doesn’t care about me. He just needs money,” Maddie said, and her voice faltered.

  “Oh, Maddie . . .” said Gwen, moving closer. “He doesn’t know you.”

  Maddie put her hand out to keep Gwen at bay. Gwen felt the cord between them unravelling, faster and faster.

  “He told me you guys were homeless one summer. Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  Her voice was thick with disbelief, suspicion. Gwen grasped for the words to pull her back.

  “Mom . . .” said Maddie, her voice ravaged, pleading.

  The way forward was simple, and dreadful.

  “Sit down,” Gwen said. “I’ll tell you.”

  Gwen told Maddie as much as she could remember about those years, her version at least. After, she promised that she would go to the police and inform them about the attack in the shop.

  Maddie stared. “Oh, Mom,” she said.

  Gwen cringed at the compassion in her voice. She wondered how altered she was in Maddie’s eyes. She felt unfamiliar to herself, too.

  She couldn’t dwell on this shift between them. Urgently, she asked Maddie to wait to see Daniel again, wait until everything had been sorted out.

  “I don’t need to see him. He’s leaving anyway,” said Maddie. “He asked me to go with him.”

  Gwen started at the revelation. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” said Maddie. “He’s kind of scary. He wears this knife—”

  “What?” Gwen gasped.

  “And anyway . . .” Maddie said, shoulders still stooped, looking up at her mother, speaking shyly, “I have a family already.”

  * * *

  Gwen stood in front of the tower, next to the parking lot, and counted the floors, up to the third, where Daniel was staying. The tower was at least twenty floors higher than that, on the edge of Cabbagetown, across from a cemetery and the entrance to the freeway. Next to the parking lot, a group of tenants had set up lawn chairs on a patch of grass, gathering around a bubble-shaped barbecue in the semi-shade of a thatch of skinny trees. The smell of barbecue smoke met up with the smell of cut grass and the sound of people laughing, making a happy early-summer afternoon scene. A young man, muscular in a tank top, a decade younger, offered Gwen a plastic cup of beer. She said no, no, she couldn’t—

  “You sure?” He smiled at her, a big gappy smile, jiggling the cup flirtatiously. “Beautiful day for a drink.”

  She declined again, looking up, counting the floors a second time. On a balcony, a woman leaned against a rusty railing. Others sat, fanning themselves. Music spilled out of apartments, overlapping.

  Ran into some problems, his text had said. Can’t leave until I pay off this place. $1,000. And instantly, Gwen had come as summoned. She drove numbly, trying to construct a plan, the final one.

  One elevator was broken, and the other crowded. They packed in together, hot, stopping at every floor, the doors wheezing with effort. Gwen got off on the third floor to a muffled TV blaring. A mother held the hand of her toddler and unlocked a nearby door, giving Gwen a neighbourly nod as she disappeared inside.

  Daniel opened the door in bare feet, his forehead damp. The guy who rented the place was a slob, Daniel explained as Gwen entered. Even with the balcony doors open, the small space was stifling. Clothes were strewn across beige wall-to-wall carpet. Gwen stepped around plastic toys and video game equipment. The couch had been made up into a tidy bed, with the edge of a sheet pulled back in a perfect rectangle, and a neatly folded stack of clothes at the foot. Daniel had built a corner of order for himself, but still, the room smelled oily. Gwen breathed shallowly, catching grease and heat in her lungs.

  He led her outside to the small balcony. She stood next to a webbed lawn chair, as far from him as possible.

  “Out west there’s warm winds in winter,” said Daniel, closing the sliding doors behind them and lighting a cigarette, leaning against the railing. “Covered in snow and a warm wind comes in, warms you right up. Sounds pretty good to me. I’ve had enough winters.”

  Below, the man in the tank top was talking animatedly to a woman who was laughing and swaying, almost dancing, her loose Afro shaking. Cars slid by on the freeway beyond, through the valley that snaked through the city. Gwen looked at Daniel from the corner of her eye, taking in his pretty lashes and concave cheeks, his languid chatter about weather. Then she noticed a sudden bend in his knee—a flutter. He blinked slowly, wobbling. His human timing was just a fraction off. Gwen snapped to attention: he was on something. He wasn’t drunk, which she would have recognized. This was a different kind of high. He stood soft and still, with half-mast eyelids, lips slightly apart. Gwen’s shoulders folded in protectively. She was an idiot to have come.

  “Did you ever go there, Gwennie? Alberta?�
�� Daniel swung his cigarette outward, as if pointing west, though he wasn’t. “You used to go to the library and look at those big picture books of places, like you were always going to leave.” She was surprised he remembered those books. He was the only person on the planet who knew her when she was young. He held her memories, and when he was gone, those memories would be gone, too. Her heart began beating faster, but she willed herself to stay calm, to keep talking and contain him.

  “I’ve been raising kids for eighteen years.”

  “Mmm. You got it all right at home.” A jab, Gwen thought. “Maddie might come with me, to Alberta,” Daniel said, eyes unfocused. “She’s a good kid. I’d like having her around. I could show her things. Adventures.” He slowly rotated his wrist on “things,” cigarette circling. “My turn with her.”

  Gwen swelled with panic. “She’s not going with you.” Daniel rubbed his lips together. She said, “I already told her everything about you, about us.”

  His eyes drifted to a space behind her. “But you don’t know everything about her, do you? You don’t know what she wants.”

  Gwen realized then that he would never leave them alone. He would come back, again and again, for her money, for her time, for Maddie. He had never left, really. She carried traces of him on her body, and in the way she had lived her life. Maddie bore those traces most of all.

  Gwen spoke slowly, words she had prepared, lines she had rehearsed on the drive over, unsure if she would have the strength to say them. “I need you to go away. I don’t want you to contact Maddie again, or come to my house. I’ve hired people. They’re watching you. I have the money to do it.”

  “Do what?” He was teasing her, forcing her to say it.

  She placed her right hand on her bag, feeling the outline of the gun. This time she had left it resting on top of her wallet, the first object at the mouth of her open bag.