Stay Where I Can See You

by Katrina Onstad

  “Can you get into her email?”

  Again, Eli had the little brother codes. In the Sent file were forms to the hospital with check-marked boxes: “Any history of family cancer?” One column was headed “Mother”: “No,” Maddie had ticked. Under “Father,” she’d ticked “No.” She had answers to all of the “Father” questions from just that one meeting with Daniel, Gwen realized with awe.

  And then, near the top of the Inbox: plane tickets.

  Gwen grabbed Seth’s arm with one hand, curled her fingers and dug in. Then she pried herself away from him and went to find her purse and her passport.

  MADDIE

  The taxi sped along the expressway, cutting through suburban sprawl, past the giant inflatable gorilla advertising tiles, past IKEA and the multiplex. Maddie pulled the mohair throw, taken from Gwen’s bed, tight over Mrs. Andrada’s knees. Out of the hospital and in the back seat of the taxi, Mrs. Andrada looked even more ragged, a tiny old woman with an inflated face.

  “I know that this is dangerous, but also, it is very safe,” Mrs. Andrada said, and Maddie nodded. She had said exactly that to Mrs. Andrada several times. “I must thank you.”

  “No, no . . .” Maddie waved her off.

  “What you are doing, it is difficult. I did the same thing once, for Joshua. You knew that, didn’t you?”

  Maddie nodded.

  “So we are the same,” she said. Then Mrs. Andrada scanned Maddie, searchingly. “You will be a good adult. You did what only God can do. You will be rewarded.”

  Maddie didn’t want a reward. Less. She felt the pull of less. Less body would be the first step, and then maybe something else. She would try university, at least for a year, to put off her parents, because she loved them, and they needed that from her. But after that—she might veer. She could imagine vanishing for a while. There were other ways of being, she was certain of it. Other places. Other people. Places where she was the other person. She would see all of it.

  The taxi went by a cluster of apartment buildings. She thought of her mother, bloodied on a balcony. Suddenly, she wanted her mother as urgently as she had wanted her when she’d woken up from a nightmare as a child. She wanted Gwen to appear, but only for a moment, just long enough that she could say, “Look at this kind thing I’m doing. And I’m not afraid.” Her mother would be proud, maybe. Gwen must have been bold herself, to leave her parents, to sleep in a park, to have a baby all alone. It occurred to her for the first time that Gwen wasn’t actually scared of the world, as Maddie had always assumed. Her mother was, in fact, fearless, and that’s how she had survived.

  GWEN

  At every step, the credit card acted like a prison guard’s key in a jailhouse, opening door after door. In the cab to the airport, Gwen used it on her phone to buy a plane ticket. She paid for a hotel room. When she went through security, the credit card was in her pocket, not her wallet, like a talisman, and she dumped it in the plastic bin, watched it go through the machine, leaving an X-ray trace.

  Once through security, Gwen rushed to the gate, checking clocks, checking boards, almost sprinting. She was dizzy and breathless, the lace on her right running shoe clacking on the gleaming airport floor.

  MADDIE

  In the lounge, Mrs. Andrada was asleep in her wheelchair, her mouth slightly open. Maddie sat next to her at the end of the row of seating, watching the rushing people, considering the stirring inside her. Night had arrived at the window, wrapping the big white airplane.

  She saw her mother before her mother saw her. Gwen’s foot was trailing a shoelace. She was turning this way and that, frantically searching.

  “Mom . . .” Maddie rose and moved toward her. Gwen’s embrace was so familiar that Maddie’s defiance fell away. She was suddenly glassy with fatigue. The presence of her mother released her from her courage, and relief took over. She could never fall off into the precipice, not entirely, while her mother was in the world, fixing Maddie in place with her watchful eye.

  “You’re too young, Maddie,” said Gwen, into Maddie’s ear.

  “I’m not so young,” said Maddie, still holding her mother.

  She disentangled from the hug. Mrs. Andrada opened her eyes sleepily.

  “She’ll be okay. I promise,” said Gwen to Maddie.

  Maddie tried to remember a promise her mother had broken, but there wasn’t one, in all those years—not one.

  Fall

  19

  GWEN

  When Gwen pulled in, Eli’s bicycle was lying on the grass, as it had been the day before. She should get him to lock it up as soon as he gets home, she thought, but then again—did it matter?

  She sat in the car for an extra moment and took in the house, because it pleased her. It was white-sided and plain, like a house in a children’s book, with a triangle roof and twin squared eyes for windows. But it was messier in the back, bordered by an untended row of balsam firs that went on and on, and through them, only more trees. To see another house, Gwen would have to get in her car and drive straight down the gravel road for ten minutes.

  She had taken the afternoon off work and driven into the city. The detective who had recorded her statement hadn’t seemed interested in talking to her the first time, but she went to the station again, demanding to see him. When he finally ushered her inside, she sat on the other side of his desk, and he explained—again, as he had on the phone—that there was no record of a violent crime at the donut shop, which was now an espresso bar. And certainly no record of a murder (Gwen had him repeat that certainty twice). There was no record of a manager named Steve, either. Maybe he was an illegal, working under a false name. Perhaps he had survived whatever violence she had witnessed, and vanished into the city. The file would stay open, he told her.

  Gwen tried to feel unburdened, but she wasn’t used to it yet. She would never fully believe in her own innocence. Even with this exoneration, she wasn’t inclined toward self-forgiveness. I could have done more, she believed, as some mothers do. Forgiving herself seemed like another form of denial, or erasure, and she didn’t want to forget her story, after the agonizing effort to do so all those years. Instead of soothing herself with forgiveness, she would take comfort in the fact of goodness, reminding herself of other people’s goodness, which was all around her, again and again, and had been throughout her life, if she remembered it right.

  She stepped out of the car and inhaled. Autumn had begun.

  Tonight, she and Eli would make dinner together. This was a new evening ritual, because it was usually just the two of them until Seth arrived on the train from the city. Some nights, he slept in the apartment they kept downtown, purchased with money not from the lottery, but from BuzzSwitch. Against all odds, the company had become a success. The money had begot more money. But Seth still tried to get back to his family before dark, a change he had committed to after Enid died. She had passed suddenly in July. Gwen noted that mothers died suddenly, dramatically; a blood clot to the brain, like Enid, or a car crash, like her own mother. Isaac wanted to stay in Florida for now, but they had made sure there was room for him in the new house, when the time came.

  In the wake of his mother’s death, Seth was frequently solemn, holding Gwen tight at night. She would drive over to the train station and pick him up at 6:35 p.m., while Eli finished cooking.

  There was a bedroom for Maddie, though she had only seen it once, the week before she left for university. She had gone west, to a school by the ocean. Gwen suspected that she wouldn’t stay long. A new restlessness had taken over her daughter. She was growing into someone a little shambolic, and it suited her. She was in process, privately becoming, out of Gwen’s view. She texted sometimes but called only once a week, on Sunday nights, telling Gwen and Seth about the big ideas banging in her head, and sighing at the beer-pong–playing students down the hall, and the general dumbness of collegiate life. It was fun, she agreed, but only for now.

  On a FaceTime call, Maddie told Gwen that, one day in the future, she m
ight do a DNA test, and try to figure out who Daniel’s people were. Maybe that aunt he mentioned, the one who took care of him, had some kids? Maybe someone up there would want to know that he had died. She was thinking about going north, she said, a question mark in her voice, but defiant. Even on the tiny cracked screen of her phone, Gwen could see that Maddie’s shoulders were back, face tilted up. Gwen took a deep breath and said: Go.

  Daniel was Maddie’s now. Gwen had no say in what his daughter would make of him, no ability to train the story in one direction or another. This felt like liberation.

  Gwen found herself surprised to have survived Maddie’s leaving. The job at the doctor’s office helped. She liked the charts, filled with personal, sometimes grotesque details. The potty-mouthed doctor, a young woman barely older than Maddie, relied on Gwen, and respected her. Gwen appreciated a climate of gratitude.

  She needed a bath before dinner. She would strip down and look at herself in the mirror, examining the shark-bite scar around her right side. She looked forward to this daily reveal. When Seth saw her admiring the scar in the mirror, he would say, “Your stigmata,” coming up behind her, kissing her neck.

  He was wrong, though. The mark didn’t stand for sacrifice. She was glad that Mrs. Andrada was doing well, and grateful for Joshua’s emails, which arrived every few months. They were coolly written medical updates, as if Gwen had sponsored a child in a village in a developing country. Perhaps he was as shocked by what had transpired as Gwen, as all of them. The greatest good fortune had turned out to be that these two families were linked, mirroring one another in deepest, invisible flesh. Gwen had passed the same tests as Maddie, astonished at each step of a long process that scrutinized her blood, antibodies, genetic markers—and the verdicts came, one after another: compatible. Two women, strangers, in an accidental moment, in an accidental place, had matched and were now coiled together forever.

  Joshua was studying at the university next to the U, living with his mother and his sister. There would be no dorm life for him, no beer pong. But he had a mother who was alive. Gwen savoured it, she had to admit. She revelled in the very fact of another human’s life, just as she had when Maddie and Eli were born.

  The scar looked cool, she thought. She had it because Maddie didn’t, which was the right order of things.

  Gwen wrapped her bathrobe, expensive and soft, around her. She played a song on her phone, a loud song by angry women, a band she’d seen years ago, when she was young.

  She brushed her hair, which was growing out, roots revealed, while walking into the bedroom. On the dresser sat the Lawren Harris study of the sagging house in the ice blue evening. Gwen didn’t yet know where she wanted to hang it.

  Julia had come by for a visit the week before. The two were forging a friendship. Gwen liked her, and realized that what she had mistaken for pretentiousness was actually a kind of eccentricity. Julia knew Gwen’s whole true story now, and sat with it, unfazed.

  In the yard at the new house one cool evening, wine in hand, Julia asked Gwen why she had bought the lottery ticket. No one except that long-ago reporter had asked Gwen that question. She had never bought a lottery ticket in her life.

  She told Julia that she had filled the car at 7-Eleven, and gone inside to buy the newspaper. She was the only one in the family who read the paper on paper anymore, and it was her small indulgence a few times a week to purchase one after dropping off the kids, in anticipation of an hour at the kitchen table, reading the news and feeling sorry and safe.

  In front of her, a man was slowly examining the lottery tickets under glass. The woman behind the counter pulled out a scratch ticket, and the man shook his head, rejecting it, pointing at another. The clerk grew impatient. The customer grunted. His shoes were untied and thick-soled—prescription shoes, for a damaged limb. He filled in the circles, scrawling outside the lines, and bought three more tickets from the machine, which the woman rang through with irritation. Bells beeped. Waxy pepperoni pizza warmed in its glass case. Gwen tried to smile to put the woman behind the counter at ease. She wanted to convey that she was in no rush. After her newspaper, she would have to get groceries, and take Eli to swimming class after school. But that was all she had planned for her day. Nothing to hurry toward. Gwen was not bothered.

  When the man finally shuffled out the door, Gwen turned to the woman behind the counter, who seemed shaken, and said, “I’ll take a Quick Pick,” an expression he’d used. She added the cost (two dollars) to her gas and paper debt, paying with cash to avoid bankcard fees. There was no science or poetry in the numbers. A machine had plucked them from its digital brain and seared them onto paper, and the paper became Gwen’s because of the lottery-ticket–buying man in front of her in line, and the morning, and Gwen’s melancholy about the end of print newspapers.

  A week later, she sat at the kitchen table, considering the crumbed breakfast dishes her kids had left behind. This was the time of day when a coolness crept over her, and she fell into her past memories, and would slip sometimes into a trance that could last an hour, even two. There was too much nothing on either side of her mornings now that the kids were older. Soon she would not be their mother like she was their mother now. The days of constant touch and endless need, of Gwen as the centre of everything—those days were gone. This was her incantation then, in the morning, before lunch.

  But not that day. She would, instead of mourning, sit and read the paper.

  The lottery numbers were on the front page. She remembered what she’d done, and went to her wallet, where the ticket was folded, tucked between two five-dollar bills, untouched. The first number matched. Then, the second, the third, and so on. Then she was laughing, laughing until she was crying. She called Seth with rubbery fingers. He answered her gibberish squeal with fear. “My God! What’s wrong? Gwen? Gwen? Is it the kids?”

  * * *

  Gwen was dressed now, and sitting on the edge of her bed. The steam of the drained tub drifted in through the bathroom door. The song had ended, and in the quiet, she heard the screen door bang open downstairs. Eli. There would be only so many comings and goings before the final one.

  “Mom!” he called joyfully, his feet running up the stairs, closer and closer. “Where are you?” he called, and the question rang out through the big house, a voice on the edge of cracking.

  Acknowledgements

  I want to thank Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council for their support of this book.

  Many people generously gave their time and wisdom along the way through reading, listening and research. Thank you sincerely to Stephanie Hodnett, Lisa Gabriele, Andrea Curtis, Maryam Sanati, Kate Robson, Robyn Matuto, and Gary and Cindy Onstad.

  I was inspired by a decade of excellent reporting in the Toronto Star on the stark realities of caregiving. I also want to thank the caregivers who shared their stories with me, but I can’t reveal their names, for privacy reasons.

  I was grateful to have encountered the excellent documentary Tales from the Organ Trade, by Ric Esther Bienstock, while writing this book. I encourage anyone who hasn’t already signed up to be an organ donor to do so (www.beadonor.ca).

  Thank you to the wonderful team at HarperCollins Canada: publisher Iris Tupholme; my extraordinarily talented editor, Jennifer Lambert; and copy editor Angelika Glover. And I am so lucky to have Fletcher and Company in my corner, especially Christy Fletcher and Sarah Fuentes—thank you for your intelligence and support.

  Much gratitude to the Toronto Writers Collective for the afternoons among bold, brave writers who helped shape this story.

  And to Judah and Mia, and Julian, for everything, always.

  About the Author

  KATRINA ONSTAD’s novels include How Happy to Be and the bestseller Everybody Has Everything, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Katrina’s award-winning journalism has appeared in publications around the world, including The Globe and Mail, The New York Times M
agazine and The Guardian. She lives in Toronto with her family.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at harpercollins.ca.

  Copyright

  Stay Where I Can See You

  Copyright © 2020 by Katrina Onstad.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

  Cover photo: Niall McDiarmid / Millennium Images, UK

  Cover design: David A. Gee

  EPub Edition MARCH 2020 EPub ISBN: 978-1-44-345724-8

  Print ISBN: 978-1-44-345723-1

  Version 02192020

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  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Stay where I can see you / Katrina Onstad.

  Names: Onstad, Katrina, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2019016848X | Canadiana (ebook) 201901684898 ISBN 9781443457231 (softcover) | ISBN 9781443457248 (ebook)