by Amanda Leduc
He saw the boy on Seymour, after he’d started his way home, curled up over a grate and shivering in the dark. A boy with a sharp nose and patches of dark, greasy hair, through which his scalp shone like ivory. A boy with wings spread out before him like blankets. The feathers were dirty, grey, slick with grime.
Sam stopped walking. He did not know what to say. His own wings shifted, stretched out into the air. He crept closer until he stood over the boy. The heat that rose from the grate was overpowering.
“Hello,” said Sam. He could not breathe.
The boy stirred, opened one eye. He saw Sam’s feet and closed his eyes, did not move. Sam moved his own foot forward and poked the boy’s knee. “Hello,” he said again.
The boy sighed without opening his eyes. “Leave me alone,” he said. “I just want to sleep.”
“Look at me,” Sam said. “I want you to tell me about — those.”
Something in his voice made the boy open his eyes again and look up. He blinked and sat up slowly. His face showed smears of dirt. The holes in his jacket were ragged, the material billowing in the wind. His wings were crumpled from being so close to the ground — they unfurled sadly and sat there, bedraggled, the feathers closest to the sidewalk dingy and limp.
“Oh,” he said.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Oh.” Even in the dark, he could tell that the boy’s eyes were blue, like his own. He wanted to shout, to jump in the air and weep. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me everything.”
V
He takes her for coffee in the hospital cafeteria, and pulls out her chair as though they’re back in the Indian restaurant.
“Why are you here?” Lilah asks. She does not sit down.
Israel shrugs. “Emmanuel enjoys the ferry. And it is such a beautiful day — I thought it would be nice for a drive.”
“You’re a liar.”
He leaves her standing and sits down in the opposite chair. “That is not a very nice thing to say.”
“You didn’t take the ferry because you liked the drive.”
Israel shrugs again and spreads his napkin over his lap. “You may think whatever you want. But I am here now. You can come back with me tonight. Emmanuel, as you know, will not mind.”
She sits down because there is nowhere else to go. “And if I don’t want to go?”
He moves a spoon in circles through his drink. “But you do. You cannot wait to leave.”
Her hands shake around her mug and coffee spills over the edge and onto her tray. Is it that obvious? Is this the kind of person she’s become? “I can’t stand seeing her like this,” she says.
“Yes,” Israel says. “That is why I am here.”
She wants to weep, she’s so tired. “I don’t believe you.”
He smiles. “How surprising.”
She has no answer for that. They finish their coffees and walk back to Roberta’s room without speaking. Israel makes her mother laugh in a way Lilah hasn’t seen in years. They stay until visiting hours are over.
“I’ll call,” Lilah says, and she hugs Roberta for the first time since she’s arrived. “And I’ll be back on the weekend. I promise.”
“Yes,” says Israel. “We will be back. And perhaps we will bring Timothy, if we can find him.”
“I’d like that,” Roberta says. Her voice is thick with longing.
“Yes,” Lilah echoes. She breathes deeply to hide her sudden fear, and looks away, out the window, to where the sky is dark and quiet. To where Timothy stands on some street somewhere, shivering and lost in the cold. She hugs Roberta again, and feels her mother’s heartbeat slow against her chest.
“I’ll be okay, Lilah,” Roberta says. “Remember — we’ve been here before.”
A human life between her hands, a human life beating next to her own. Lilah nods. She hoists her bag onto her shoulder and glances at Israel, waiting by the door. Then she follows him, and they walk out of the hospital and into the night.
—
They stop at Roberta’s house to collect things — Lilah’s bag, more clothes for Timothy. Lilah pulls the old raincoat from Roberta’s closet and shoves it in with everything else. She works quickly, silently. She hasn’t said a word to Israel since they got into the car.
“I like this,” Israel says. His voice carries a hint of danger. He stands in front of the crucifix over Roberta’s door and pats it as one might pat a lover. “Always watching.”
“If you like it so much, why don’t you have one in your own goddamned bedroom?”
He laughs. Then he backhands her, casually, but with enough force to send her reeling over the bed. “And here I thought we were making such progress. You shouldn’t take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, Delilah. Surely, if you remember one thing, it can be that.”
She holds her stinging face against the quilt and inhales the scent of Roberta. One breath, two. The flicker of electricity behind her eyes, a whiff of charcoal in the air. Is that the smell of her life burning? She turns onto her back and spreads her arms. “Surely God is man enough to handle it.”
This time he hits her in the stomach, a fist down into her solar plexus. She moans and crumples into a ball on the bed. “You do not know anything about God, Delilah,” he says, breathing hard. “You cannot possibly know whether God is man enough or not.” He climbs on top of her. A dancer, swift and sure. He bends forward and tangles his hands in her hair so that her head tilts back, her neck is exposed. The world is soft and hushed and silent.
They fuck quickly, on Roberta’s bed, with the breeze coming in from the window and Emmanuel waiting outside. No antics this time. No pain. When they finish, Lilah strips the bed and leaves the sheets in a pile on the floor. She lets Israel go out before her, and as he ambles down the hall she slips back into the bedroom and touches the crucifix, reaching toward it in the night like a blind woman. Not praying, not exactly. Just holding the wood, and hoping as she does so that Timothy will go on disappearing, that he will fade into the night like smoke into the air so that Israel cannot find him. So that Israel cannot bring him back to Victoria, subdued and broken, like a slave.
—
They take the ferry back across the water, and they do not speak, and then they drive to Lilah’s apartment and sit in the car without touching. Emmanuel, as ever, is a silent ghost behind the wheel.
“Why did you say that,” Lilah blurts. “About Timothy. What do you want with him?”
Israel shrugs. “You and your mother — you’re both avoiding the truth. Putting your faith in something false, something hollow. Like children, believing in Santa Claus.”
“But I thought that made me special,” she says bitterly. “Following him to the end of the world, even as he breaks my heart. Isn’t that what you’ve waited for, all these years?”
“The quality is what makes you special,” he says. “It’s not about Timothy. You say that his life is all you can hold — I say he just holds you back. Even so, I find your devotion to him . . . curious. I would like to meet him, and see what it is about him that you think is so extraordinary. What it is about him that keeps you from me.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s not keeping me from you. I’m right here.”
“But you aren’t,” he says. His hand so hard around her wrist. “Not yet. And I want nothing less than all of you.”
“That’s creepy.” When he only smiles, she looks away out the window. In a few moments they’ll be in her neighbourhood. She can climb the stairs to her apartment and crawl into her bed and forget, for a while, the murky, layered mess that is her life. “You didn’t use a condom,” she says. She pulls her hand away and grips the folds of her coat between her hands. “Back there, at the house. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”
“Are you afraid, Delilah?” Israel asks. “Are you afraid of what that could mean?”
“I won’t allow
it.”
He looks out the window and speaks to her as though she isn’t really there. “Perhaps it is time, Delilah, to recognize that there might be a higher purpose for your life.”
“Higher purpose?” She almost spits the words. “God has nothing to do with it.”
“God — in a way — has everything to do with it.”
“I don’t even know what this is. What we are. What kind of life is that?”
“For you? Or for a child?”
“Both.” She swallows. “You won’t wear a condom now,” she says slowly, echoing what she already knows. “Will you. Even though you know how I feel.”
“No.”
“There are things I can do instead,” she says.
“You won’t.”
For a moment, she imagines cracking his head against the window. A dark bruise, and the brightness of sun on shattered glass. “And how the fuck would you know?”
“Because,” and suddenly his hand is around her throat, squeezing tight, the darkness of his smile flickering before her like a grainy film, “I know.” She gasps for air, and nothing comes. He pulls his hand away and the light comes back, slowly, filtering in. She rests her head against the back of the seat. Emmanuel, up front, says nothing.
“I don’t want a baby,” she whispers. Yet even as she speaks she feels the excitement well up inside of her — the excitement, the shock of remembered pain. She doesn’t want a child, or she wants him to beat it into her.
She hates him. She wants him.
Pick one, Delilah.
They are parked in front of her house. They’ve been parked here for some time.
—
On Thursday, she wakes up with a fever. She drags herself into the office, then pleads sickness halfway through the day and scuttles out under Penny’s disapproving eye. Once free, she buys as much fast food as she can carry and walks the downtown streets out of habit, despite the fever and the migraine climbing slow behind her eyes. There he is, suddenly — a thin boy sitting on a corner bench, twisting a knotted loop of yarn between his hands. She approaches him slowly, as though he is a wild animal, ready to get up and run.
Before she reaches him, he starts talking. “Remember when Mom took us to the hot springs?” He doesn’t look at her.
“Yes.” They’d gone to Banff a year ago, to celebrate Roberta’s remission. Roberta spent most of her time in the water; when they weren’t soaking with her, Lilah and Timothy spent hours outside, looking at the stars. Now she sits beside him gingerly, her muscles ready for sudden flight. She reaches into the bag and hands him food.
“I peed in the water,” he says now. He eats a hamburger so fast that ketchup streaks down his mouth. “Every time.”
“I was sitting right beside you!”
“I know.”
“That’s disgusting.”
He laughs, high and childish. “I just thought you should know.”
“Please tell me you peed when Mom was in the water too.”
“Absolutely.”
“That makes me feel better.” She eats her own hamburger slowly. When she reaches for her napkin she finds it spread across her lap, even though she can’t remember taking it out. Israel, whose influence is spreading faster than she can see. Israel, who ignored her at the office today as though she was an unrepentant child.
“That was after Montreal,” Timothy says, oblivious. “When you came back from Montreal, and those years in Toronto.”
“Yes,” she says, puzzled.
He turns his head to look at her, mushed hamburger at the corner of his mouth. “You were sad. It hurt to be around you.”
“What?”
“You left people behind you, in the city,” he says. She doesn’t remember talking to him about this, ever. “Sad people.”
She shrugs this off and ignores the chill that settles into the tips of her fingers. “I made silly mistakes. I broke some hearts. Everyone does.”
“Not like you, Lilah.” He licks his lips like a frog.
“Well.” Another shrug. “It doesn’t matter now.” She avoids the napkin and wipes the grease from her fingers onto her coat.
“I miss those days in Banff,” he says. “Those five days.”
“I miss them too.” She reaches for his hand and this time he lets her take it. There’s even a hint of a squeeze. “But we could have more days, Timothy. You know that.”
He takes a handful of fries and jams them into his mouth. He speaks through them, so that the words are slow and disfigured. “No. I can’t go back now. It’s impossible.”
The hospital, her unspoken words in front of Roberta’s door. “You don’t have to go back to Victoria. You can stay with me. For longer, this time.”
“It’s not Mom,” and he’s going, disappearing right in front of her. “It’s not you. It’s everything else. It’s just too hard, Delilah.”
“But we can help you.” She grips his arm. “Mom, me — we love you. We can help you see people, talk to people.”
He shakes his head, whimpers. “There’s nothing you can do.”
“But — ”
“Nothing.” His voice is so broken and so final that she lets go. He stares at the ground between his feet. His hands lie open on his lap, bundled in a threadbare pair of gloves. “How is she?”
Now it’s her turn to stare at the ground. “They think she has a few months left, maybe.”
His eyes well up. “Tell her — tell her I’m sorry.”
Lilah takes his hand and winds her fingers in his own. “I know,” she says. Her words are hard and sure. “I’m sorry too.”
She gives him the rest of the food and leaves him on the bench. As she turns the nearest corner, she looks over her shoulder and back, but he’s already gone.
—
Another corner and suddenly Israel is there, in front of her, dark man in a trench coat and smooth leather shoes.
“Delilah,” he says. “I thought you were ill.”
“I was,” she stammers. “I am.” She keeps walking, quickly. “I just wanted some air.”
“How interesting,” he says. He falls into step slightly ahead of her, his coat flapping in the wind. “Surely there is air close to your home, as well?”
“I like being by the ocean.”
“It is a pity you’re ill,” he says. “I thought we could go look for your brother this afternoon.”
“Oh. Well — maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. Depending on how I feel.”
“Yes,” he says. “Depending on how you feel. Shall I have Emmanuel drive you home?”
“Emmanuel,” she says, suddenly irritated. “Does he do anything else? Or do you keep him chained beside you like a dog?”
He chuckles and squeezes the top of her arm so hard it hurts. “Emmanuel is very loyal,” he says. “We have been through so much together.”
Lilah tries to shake her arm away, but Israel does not let go. “I can walk. I don’t mind.”
“Nonsense,” he says. They round another corner and there’s the car, waiting. “Emmanuel will take you home. He can also drive to the pharmacy and get you anything you need.”
“I’m fine,” she snaps. But it’s like arguing with Roberta. He walks her to the car and opens the door, then pushes her inside, gently, and closes the door. He raps on Emmanuel’s window. The driver nods and starts the car. They pull out onto the street and move away. Israel dwindles behind them until he is a dot in the middle of the window.
Emmanuel takes her home and parks in front of her building. He walks her through the foyer and up to her apartment, his hand steady on her elbow. “Goodnight, Delilah,” he says at her door.
“Goodnight,” she says wearily. Even though it is only afternoon. She lets herself in and shuts the door behind her, then stands listening in the front hall. Emmanuel shifts on
the other side of the door, and waits, and a few minutes later he moves away.
She drops her clothes as she moves to the bedroom — first coat, and then shoes, and then she kicks off her pants and leaves them crumpled in the hall. Blouse. Bra. She crawls into bed in her underwear and shivers beneath the duvet. Her head is hot. Her hands are cold. She sleeps fitfully, and sweats into her sheets.
She dreams that she’s standing in a stone corridor, her feet bare, the walls flickering from the light that shines at the far end of the stone. The man stands in front of her. Now he has wings, white and terrible. In his right hand he holds a spear, black and pointed to the ground. She opens her mouth to speak and he raises the spear and pierces her stomach. Pain bursts through her like pomegranate seeds on the tongue.
She drops to her knees. He withdraws the spear and pierces her again, this time through the shoulder. When she looks up, the man’s eyes are large and dark and filled with tears.
“Let nothing trouble you, Delilah,” he says. “Let nothing make you afraid.”
Sometime in the night, she wakes up and staggers to the bathroom. She passes the window on the way back to bed and she sees the car in the lamplight, dark and quiet, nestled beneath the trees. Emmanuel has the light on, and from where she stands she can see him leafing through another book. Reading. Waiting.
She goes back to bed, and when she wakes some hours later, her fever is broken and the car is gone.
Four
The boy’s name was Timothy. He was from Victoria, but had been living on the streets of Vancouver for almost two months.
“Since they arrived,” he said. He flexed his hands around the mug. They sat in a coffee shop and drank coffee that was too strong, ate cinnamon buns that were stale. The girl at the counter had been puzzled when Sam asked for two of everything. Two, he’d said, and pointed at the boy. She blinked and nodded. Of course. The shadows of Timothy’s face were smaller, darker than the shadows Sam had begun to carry. He rocked in his seat and darted glances around the room, looking at the waitress, the old man by the window, the couple who had staggered in laughing and drunk, looking for a coffee fix at four a.m. No one paid them any attention.