Alison Preston - Norwood Flats 04 - Sunny Dreams

by Alison Preston

  “You’re a kind person,” I said. “I really like you.”

  “Come on now. Stand up,” she said. “I like you, too.”

  “I love you,” I said, as I got to my feet. I was a little wobbly but I soon found my legs.

  Isabelle chuckled by my side and we strolled amiably through the night streets.

  “I’ve heard of that guy, Tag, you were talking about,” she said.

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. And I think he’s still around. I heard someone talking about him downtown.”

  “What?” I asked. “Who?”

  “Let me check my facts. I might be all wet.”

  She walked me home, the entire way.

  “Do you have a little sister?” she asked at my door.

  If she had requested a kiss I wouldn’t have been more surprised.

  “I did have,” I said. “I don’t anymore. Someone stole her a long time ago. Why? What makes you ask that?”

  “It might be that I heard somebody talking about it. The same guys that were talking about your friend Tag. Actually, it was Dirk Botham and those Willis creeps — the guys that wrecked our clothes.”

  Nausea took me over and I heaved up potato whiskey and my long-ago supper into the mock orange shrub in front of the verandah.

  Isabelle stayed with me till I was done. “I still think we should get them for that,” she said, “even though it was my least favourite pair of shorts that they mangled. They used to belong to Charles.”

  I shivered in the warm night air and sweat ran down my face. I worried that my dad or Helen would wake up and witness the mess I was in. When I was pretty sure I was done throwing up, I sat down beside Isabelle on the steps.

  “My sister’s name was Sunny,” I said.

  Isabelle brought her face to within a few inches of mine and said, “Are you okay?”

  “I think so. Just kind of shaky.”

  Her talk about Sunny had sliced through my drunkenness but only enough that I made myself remember to pursue it with her at a later date. Tomorrow.

  It was probably just that Dirk mentioned the kidnapping to the Willises in passing, as a point of interest for criminals. He, of course, would know all about it. And the Willises would have remembered that time long ago when they had searched for Sunny in the hope of winning the reward. Maybe they regretted cutting my clothes to shreds if they knew I was the big sister of the kidnapped baby. No. No chance. Their eyes had been only on the money.

  I was confused, as usual. Drunkenness certainly didn’t help my reasoning powers. I felt dull-witted and ineffective, like a puddle person. Isabelle seemed so clever and decisive next to me. I needed to lie down.

  “This Sunny business…” I said.

  “Let me put my ear to the ground,” said Isabelle, “and see what I can come up with.”

  I laughed. Her words reminded me of a line from a hymn we used to sing in Sunday school, a thousand years ago. It went: And they shall bite the ground.

  My friends and I used to practically implode with suppressed laughter at that line. When one of us thought to ask an adult about it, we found that it had something to do with the defeat and death of soldiers. We had pictured people literally biting the ground and it had struck us as hilarious.

  I didn’t have the energy to explain this stupid story to Isabelle.

  “Are you going to be able to get in all right?” she asked.

  “Isabelle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you find it kind of scary that they knifed our clothes to bits?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  She waited till the door closed behind me before she started off down the street.

  I’d forgotten to ask her what she believed about the pope, but I think I already knew the answer.

  “Fuckin’ pope,” I whispered and laughed quietly.

  Dad and Aunt Helen were in bed. They both called out to me as I made my way to the bathroom and then my bedroom, crashing into more than one piece of furniture along the way.

  “Goodnight, all,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as odd as I felt.

  Fully clothed, I lay down on my bed. The room seemed to whirl around me. I had to keep my eyes wide open to ward off the sick feeling. Sunny. What could Isabelle possibly have heard about Sunny? She would tell me. She was my good friend. Better than Gwen. I started to cry. What if Jackson was fired from his new job and gone before I saw him again? I blew my nose and before long I fell asleep for a short time.

  When I woke up my alarm clock said quarter to three. Dad was snoring. I still felt slightly drunk but no longer sick like I had before dropping off to sleep. I crept down the stairs and out the front door. If Helen heard me, tough. She wasn’t quick enough to stop me.

  Chapter 25

  Inside the moonswept landscape I wove a clumsy trail to the construction site on Crawford Avenue. I breathed deeply over and over again. It amazed me that the breaths went so far inside me and came so smoothly. Why couldn’t I breathe with this kind of ease all the time?

  I stood in the back lane and stared at the cluttered yard. The men had built a small fire between the tents and embers still glowed against the dark earth. Then I saw the end of a burning cigarette and made out a form near the dying fire. I could smell the smoke from the cigarette and I knew it was Jackson. He sat cross-legged on the dry dirt.

  “Psst!” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Psst!” I said again.

  “Who’s there?” said Jackson.

  “It’s me, Violet,” I said. It sounded like: iths me. I hoped he hadn’t noticed. Certain things about being drunk were difficult.

  “Violet?”

  “Yes. It’s me.” Yesh, iths.

  “What are you doing out there? Come here.”

  “No. You come here.”

  “You come here.”

  I went in through the gate and knelt on the dirt beside him.

  “What are you doing?” he asked again.

  “I wanna kiss you,” I said. Kith.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he said.

  “So?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “So?”

  “You shouldn’t drink.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Why because?”

  “It’s unbecoming.”

  I laughed. “Heaven forbid.” Words sounded funny to me. Like, heaven forbid. Had I really said that? Was it something I said on a regular basis?

  “Kith me, Jackson,” I forced myself to say it. That whiskey was really something.

  “No.”

  “Why? Do you think I’m ugly?”

  He chuckled, barely. “No. I don’t think you’re ugly. I think you’re crazy.”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  It seemed impossible to me that he didn’t want to kiss me. How couldn’t he? Isn’t that what boys usually wanted to do? Kiss and then fuck?

  “Do you hate me?” I asked.

  “Would that give you some satisfaction, if I told you I hated you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” It would be better than nothing.

  “No, Violet, I don’t hate you.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “What is it that you hate about me? Is it my face?”

  He chuckled again. “You’ve got a nice face,” he said. “I could never hate your face.”

  “Is it because of Aunt Helen?” I asked.

  “Go home, Violet.”

  “Is it because of Helen?” I asked again. “Are you in love with my Aunt Helen?”

  He laughed out loud now. “Don’t be ridiculous, Violet. Your Aunt Helen is…well… she’s your Aunt Helen. What about Fraser?” he went on. “Isn’t he your boyfriend? I don’t want to ruin anything for you.”

  “You’ve ruined my whole life if you won’t kiss me.”

  I had no pride. The drink had taken it away.

  “This is so unlike you, Violet.”

  “Unli
ke me? What do you mean? What am I like?” It angered me that he claimed to know me at all. What did he know? What did I even know?

  He did know how badly I hungered for that kiss. He was on his knees now too and he brought his face close to mine.

  “Violet,” he whispered.

  “Jackson,” I whispered back.

  “Violet,” he said again, softer yet. He was so close. He brushed his lips against the corner of my mouth, softly, like a moth. It was barely a tickle, but a rush of sickening desire tore through me. And then he pulled away and stood up.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  That almost kiss wasn’t leading to something else and it wasn’t because he thought better of it for any good person’s reason or even because I tasted like vomit. He did it to torture me; I was sure of it.

  “I hate you,” I said again as I scrambled to my feet.

  “Violet,” he said as I tripped through the yard.

  That word meant nothing to me.

  Aunt Helen’s hatpin was still in my pocket and when I felt it there I wanted to drive it hard into my own body.

  I didn’t look back; I needed every ounce of my remaining wits to get out of there without breaking an ankle in the rubble. With any luck at all, neither Fuzzy Eakins nor Benny Boat had witnessed any part of the fiasco.

  My head hurt when I woke up in my bed later on that morning. I thought about Jackson and my stomach rebelled. Then I thought about Isabelle and was relieved to realize there was nothing about my time with her that I regretted. She wouldn’t judge me, and she knew far stranger lives than mine. It was okay that I’d confided in her. Had I dreamed the part about Sunny? No.

  Later that day with a heavy achy head I walked by Crawford Avenue and saw Benny and Fuzzy at work — no sign of Jackson. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. My plan had been to find Isabelle.

  I didn’t want Jackson to see my face again so soon. I approached the back fence cautiously. Next time I saw him I planned to be very quiet, maybe not utter a sound. Anything and everything was ruined between us and I would be silent.

  Benny saw me and came over. “Jackson was let go this morning,” he said.

  “Let go?”

  “Yeah, sent packing,” Fuzzy said as he joined us at the fence. “For not pullin’ his weight.”

  “Go back to work, Fuzz,” said Benny.

  “You go back to work,” said Fuzzy.

  Benny sighed and gave his co-worker a look that sent him sloping back to his job, which looked to be removing rusty old nails from lengths of well-used lumber. Benny did have a way about him. Maybe it was all those trances he went into. They gave him a certain power. He had become the unspoken foreman of the job site. But he didn’t have enough power to save Jackson’s job.

  “Where did he go?” I asked.

  “I do not know. He said he would look for Tag.”

  “Does he know that Tag is still around?” I asked.

  “No, I do not think he knows anything like that,” Benoit said.

  “I think he is,” I said. “Still around, that is.”

  Isabelle’s words from last night came back to me in partial form.

  “How do you know?” asked Benoit.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know.”

  Benoit kicked at the dry dirt under his feet. “Jackson left his knapsack here so he will be back for sure before he leaves town.”

  “Good riddance!” Fuzzy called over.

  “Shut up, Fuzzy,” said Benoit.

  He stared at me then for a long moment. “And… I know there is something else he is here to do that he has not done yet.”

  “What? What the heck is it you keep hinting at?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “It is not for me to say.”

  “Come on, Benoit.”

  “No.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “No.”

  “I won’t tell that you told.”

  “No, Violet. Sorry.”

  I went looking for Isabelle, but I couldn’t find her, so I went home and straight to bed. I think Dad and Helen knew that I’d been drinking the night before. They must have heard me throwing up into the bushes; both their windows would have been wide open. But they kindly didn’t mention it. They must have discussed it and figured it was best left alone. I was suffering enough without them adding their two cents’ worth. Tomorrow I would do something nice for them, I thought. I was asleep before I figured out what it would be.

  The next day, the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, I went back to Isabelle’s place. Her brother, Charles, was the only one home. The rest of the family had gone to Grand Beach for a couple of days to stay with an aunt who had a cabin there. A last hurrah before the two little ones were due to start school.

  I asked Charles to tell Isabelle that I was looking for her. Then I went home and baked a lemon pie, my dad’s favourite.

  Chapter 26

  On Monday, Labour Day, I went to see Benny again. It was the day before university began. Jackson still hadn’t been back for his gear.

  “I have a very bad feeling,” Benny said.

  “A regular bad feeling or a trance-like bad feeling?” I asked.

  “Regular,” said Benny. “Trances, as you call them, do not make bad feelings.”

  I still didn’t have much of an understanding of his hypnotic-type experiences.

  “Sorry, Benoit,” I said. “What do you call them?”

  “I do not call them anything. They need no name.”

  “Please don’t be mad at me right now,” I said. “I have a very bad feeling too.”

  “Something has happened to him,” Benoit said. “He should have returned.”

  “He’s dead,” I said, and my eyes grew warm.

  “No, he is not dead,” said Benny, “but something keeps him from returning for his things.”

  “What’ll we do?” I asked.

  “Nothing, I am thinking,” he said. “I have searched in the evenings, asked men I saw. I went to the hobo camp in Transcona. No one knows him. I think he is gone and without his things.”

  “What makes you think he’s not dead?” I asked.

  Benny shrugged.

  Back at the house I told Helen about Jackson. She already knew.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t sure there was anything to tell,” she said. “I thought he might turn up overnight.”

  There were lines and sags on her face that I’d never seen before. I swear they just arrived that weekend, with the news of Jackson’s disappearance.

  The next day I went to Wesley College to pick my courses. My heart wasn’t in it. I chose English, history, French, philosophy, and sociology. I didn’t care. I still had no idea what I wanted to be. Physical therapy had seemed like a good idea to me for a day or two after I’d visited Warren. I’d be able to help people like him. But I was pretty sure you needed sciences for that, and sciences and I didn’t get along.

  When I got home, Helen was waiting for me.

  “Let’s go over and rummage through his knapsack,” she said.

  “Isn’t that kind of invasive?” I asked.

  “No. Not at this point,” she said. “What if there’s something in there that gives us a clue to where he’s gone?”

  “Only if Benny says it’s okay,” I said.

  “Benny?” she said. “Since when did Benoit become Benny?”

  “Since forever, in my head,” I said.

  Helen smiled at me from inside her new old face.

  “We do not see him for three days,” Benny said when we got there after supper. He held up three fingers.

  “What do you think of the idea of looking inside his knapsack?” I said.

  “I do not think…” said Benny.

  “We have to,” Helen said. “Get it, Violet.”

  I went inside the tent and picked it up carefully, noting its exact position against the wall
in case Jackson turned up expecting to find things as he had left them. I didn’t want to be caught twice, even though we had a dang good reason this time. And this time Helen could be blamed. Holding it to my face, I breathed deeply. When I turned around Benny was at the door of the tent. He saw me do it. I felt the colour rush to the roots of my hair.

  He must have known how I felt. He had to be used to women falling for Jackson by now. Look at Helen, and even Maude Foote, for goodness’ sake! It had been written all over her egg salad sandwiches. Probably girls all the way from Montreal to Winnipeg had looked at Jackson with that same naked humiliating craving that I had been feeling all summer.

  When I took the knapsack outside I looked inside it and saw that the contents were a jumbly mess.

  “Hmm,” said Benoit. “I do not like this.”

  “Where’s Fuzzy?” I asked.

  “He hitchhiked to Grand Beach for today,” said Benoit.

  “Good,” said Helen. “We certainly don’t need him poking his nose in.”

  Benoit dragged over a wooden worktable and I emptied out the contents onto its rough surface. The picture of Bertram Shirt drifted to the ground. Benny picked it up and stood quietly looking at it while I spread out the rest of Jackson’s stuff.

  “That’s Jackson’s little brother,” I said, in case he didn’t know.

  Benny was struggling with something; he looked positively ill.

  “What is it, Benoit?” asked Helen. “Are you all right?”

  “Please,” he said. “Sit down. I must tell something to you both.”

  Helen and I sat down right on the dry dirt of someone’s future backyard and Benny sat with us.

  “One,” Benny said, “I believe Jackson told you he comes from Westmount in Montreal.

  “Yes,” said Helen. “He told us.”

  “That world has this year fallen apart. Jackson’s father has died and his maman has become…an insane woman.”

  “Yes,” Helen said again, “He told us that too, in so many words.”

  She took my hand and I let her. The trains clanged from across the river. I think it was the noise they made when two cars were being fastened together. It must take huge strength to be a trainman, I thought. And you sure wouldn’t want to get a hand caught between two of the cars as they banged together.