Again, he lifted his hand behind his ear as if to scratch, then stopped. “You share the same name,” he said. “Antoine … Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.”
I tried to calm myself by running my fingers across the raised letters of the author’s name. He knew my name?
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about a boy like you.” Peter held his breath. “I worked in a library.” He raised his meaty hands in the air, palms open, as if he was supporting their weight. “They were weeded from stacks or left in boxes on garbage day.”
“Have you read all of these?”
Peter nodded. He stepped closer to them, his nose almost touching them, to take in their smell, as if it was a drug that made him calm and happy.
“I don’t know why they come to see me,” I said, unsure why I was confessing to him. “I don’t have any special powers.”
“They come because they need someone or something to explain the world to them. What they expect to feel when they kneel in front of you is what they want to feel, nothing more. You don’t need to be frightened by it.”
“How do you know?”
“Most of them are looking for a miracle. They’re desperate because they’ve tried everything else and they have nothing to lose.”
“They believe I can make their fingers grow back or make their cancer go away.”
“Believing feels good.”
“You want me to try it on you?”
“I don’t believe. It’s all lost. Gone.”
“What? What’s gone, Peter?”
His eyes welled up. “My name is Adam.” He reached for his red scarf, slowly wound it around his neck. “And you should go now,” he said.
— 6 —
ACOUPLE OF DAYS LATER, right after the final bell rang, I took a different route over to James’s. Everything was about staying alive, mixing things up, avoiding the laneways where Amilcar might be hiding. He had changed schools. After he failed last year his parents switched him to Charles G. Fraser, which wasn’t a catholic school. Manny told me he hardly ever saw him; he had a job in Kensington Market, stocking shelves at Melo’s Grocery Store.
Agnes told me I would find James at the park. She looked shabby. “Every morning I make sure I’ve got all the things he likes all ready for him. His coffee, the newspaper, toast with butter and jam. He likes apricot.” She sounded tired, the way she went through the things she did for him, the things he liked. “But he’s been coming home mad because they’re not giving him as much work. He says he’s getting too old for his kind of work.” I wondered if she knew exactly what it was James did downtown, and if she did I wasn’t really sure she’d tell me. “Thank God your dad gave him that job. It helps.” She stopped to look up at the TV. “People are staying away. Even from the new mall. They’re afraid. James says he sees gangs of boys, some of them from our neighbourhood, gathering down there and beating the crap out of other guys, the ones they think are queers.”
For weeks the rumours had been spreading that Manny’s brother, Eugene, and Amilcar had been involved in some of the beatings. Most Portuguese in the neighbourhood were just glad homosexuals were being scared off. I had even heard my parents say as much.
“Does James scare you?” I asked.
Agnes placed a candy in her mouth. “He makes me feel safe.” She turned and looked straight at me. “He touches me so gently, it makes me want to cry.” She drew her hands to her belly. “I didn’t want to keep it, you know, but James said we’d make a perfect family. He said he’d take care of things.” I caught a whiff of her minty breath. “He’ll take care of us all.” She tried to twirl her hair in her finger. It would have worked if she still had her long hair. “You better go. Alexandra Park. He’s there with Manny. They’ve been together all day.”
“Do you want to come?”
Agnes shook her head, then grabbed a rung on the ladder and climbed up.
I made it to the park in record time: one minute, twenty-seven seconds. The faster I rode my bike, the slimmer the chance that Amilcar could ambush me from some nook or hideout along the way. I took in the rattle of dry leaves, the way they crunched under my tires, and thought of my mother and how she scoured our walkway and sidewalk with bleach trying to scrub away the rusty stains left by the rotting shells of horse chestnuts. Last fall I had suggested we try cooking them. I was certain the thought had crossed her mind too. We gathered a few handfuls and my mother roasted them in the oven for a couple of hours. Their shells blistered and cracked. But the insides stayed green and bitter.
Manny’s hair was the first thing I saw. I pedalled harder and found James slouched beside him on a park bench, a brown paper bag in his hand. At Manny’s feet was a bottle of aguardente—Portuguese moonshine. They both held joints pinched between their fingers.
“What’s wrong with you guys? A whole lot of help you’ll be if Amilcar comes after me.”
They looked at each other and burst out laughing.
“I’m outta here!” Anger burned my face. They were too stoned or drunk to notice.
“No, no, no, no,” James said. “We’ve got to talk, little brother. Let’s just talk this through.”
“What are we going to do? I’m a walking target and so is he.” I pointed to Manny, who fluffed it all off like he didn’t care. “It’s been a week since you stole the bike. Amilcar’s waiting to pounce, I know it.”
Manny spat over his shoulder. The bike had been sold; he’d given half of it over to James and pocketed the rest. Not a penny for me.
“Remember, protection, baby.” James smiled, his eyes blistery red.
Adam appeared in the distance. He walked across the park’s baseball diamond. I hadn’t told anyone his real name. Even when Manny pressed me on how I managed to get away from Amilcar, I hadn’t mentioned being in Adam’s garage. It felt good to keep something from them. The only thing I told them was what Amilcar had done to the cat. Manny still wasn’t as freaked out as I thought he should be. As I was.
Adam veered close to the other side of the path when he saw us, his red scarf trailing behind him. He looked straight ahead, made sure he didn’t look our way.
James caught me looking and followed my gaze. Suddenly, he was on his feet and crossing the path to the other side, purpose in his step. “Hey, bud, what you got in there?”
Adam moved onto the grass.
I shot a glance at Manny, who just grinned.
“Let me take a look,” James said.
“Don’t!” I said, running after James, but he ignored me.
Adam tried to walk faster to avoid James, but James shadowed him. If Adam turned, James blocked him. Every time Adam tried to sidestep, James pursued him.
“Check what’s inside!” Manny shouted.
Adam’s stubbly face glistened with sweat.
James flicked at his ears with his fingers, snapped Adam’s scarf against his face. Adam didn’t flinch.
“Stop!” I yelled.
“Holy shit, man. What’s that thing behind your ear?”
“Let him go!” I wanted Adam to walk away but he was just standing there, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
James laughed. “You should keep that thing covered up,” he said. He grabbed the red scarf and wound it around Adam’s head like a turban. Then he whipped the red scarf off Adam’s head. Adam spun like a wooden top. He wobbled a bit before he banged into his bundle buggy and fell over it. The cart tipped and books, newspapers, and magazines spilled from the garbage bag lining. They lay scattered on the path and in the dry leaves.
James fell to the ground, lying down on the carpet of books.
“Books? All he’s got are books!” he yelled back to Manny.
Adam was on his knees and with his bent arm he tried to scoop everything back into the upturned cart. James got up, allowed Adam to collect the books and magazines that had been underneath him. Adam was almost done, reaching for the last of the books on the ground, when James stepped on his hand, crushin
g his fingers under his boot.
“I’m serious, Manny. You gotta check out the alien bubble on this dude’s head.”
“Leave him alone!” I shouted, punching James in the chest, then grabbing his overall straps and yanking him hard. It was enough to get his boot off Adam’s hand. “You’re an asshole!”
James turned to face me, his eyelids no longer heavy.
“Let him go home,” I said, calmer this time.
The Dickie Dee Ice Cream bike passed. There was a transistor radio duct-taped to the handle, the antenna extended two feet out. In that moment the world froze. We all stopped to watch it pass us by. The Dickie Dee man smiled and waved, flicked the row of bells on his handlebars. It was late in the season to be selling ice cream. He had come from nowhere. The distraction allowed Adam to scramble to his feet. He was already on his way. The cart was missing a wheel and the axle carved a white line into the cement path. Adam was whistling the Dickie Dee tune, and he never looked back.
James held the red scarf taut between his white-knuckled fists.
“Give it to me,” I said.
James’s eyes would not meet mine. His hands relaxed. He unwound the scarf and placed it in my hands.
“It belongs to Adam,” I said. “His name is Adam.”
I knocked a few times on Adam’s garage door, but no one answered. I managed to push the garage door open enough to shimmy the scarf in, piece by piece. I was almost done when the door gave. I stepped in and adjusted my eyes to the space.
Adam returned to his chair and sat down.
“Thought you’d want this,” I said.
He reached for the scarf, lifted it to his face. He took a whiff—long and deep—then slowly wrapped the scarf around his neck.
Adam had pulled his cot closer to the stove with its long tin stovepipe. The cot was neatly made, an extra blanket folded at the foot and a crisp pillow at its head.
“I gotta go,” I said. I had to be home by five o’clock. I was nearly at the door when Adam started talking.
“Twenty-three years ago, last week. Hurricane Hazel.” He looked up into the blackness of the ceiling. “This was my daughter’s scarf. She was three.” A smile stretched across his face. “With every jump she thought she could take hold of the clouds. There wasn’t much time. There was no place to go. Things flashed in my head but—” He stopped to catch his breath. “The house got dark and the thunder cracked louder than anything I thought possible. Furniture shifted with the crash. I thought my wife and daughter would be safe under the kitchen table. Our windows blew out.” He held his hands up to his throat, as if a cold wind was ramming down his throat. I inched closer to the door. “And then it stopped. Everything was quiet. I looked up to the sky where our roof once was. Half the house and the backyard had slipped into the river. They were gone.”
I turned to go. I didn’t want him to see my tears welling up. I wanted to take a step into the laneway, but instead, I placed my forehead against the wood, looking straight at the flaking paint. “How come you weren’t afraid? James was going to beat the crap out of you and it was like nothing, like you didn’t care.”
“I have nothing left to be afraid of,” he said.
I kept my forehead pressed to the door as I took hold of the handle and turned it slightly.
“The moment you’re afraid, you close your eyes,” he said. “That’s when the earth opens and swallows you up.”
It was October sixteenth, the Feast of St. Luke; the clock in my room read 6:40 p.m. “Get over here!” I heard Terri yell, traced her voice back to the rear room on the second floor. “Look,” she said, pointing out the window with its clear view of the laneway. “You’re a star!” she laughed, “in New York and L.A.…” I elbowed her lightly. There must have been hundreds of people, some holding lit candles, huddled outside our garage. Others lingered in a line that stretched halfway up the lane. Their black dresses, veils, and hats made my skin prickly and hot. I imagined whiskered faces of men and women planting kisses on my knees, some tickling my toes with their lips. The room spun. I wanted to close my eyes and lie down—go to sleep until it was all over.
“Look!” Terri said, tapping the window. Ricky stood on the peaked roof of our garage like a funny gargoyle. He leaned into the sky, raised his hand and waved. His smile was kind. Everything’s going to be okay, it said. Tomorrow, after school, we’ll be riding our bikes through the laneway like we always did.
The house was hot because my father had turned on the furnace and my mother had roasted chicken and potatoes for dinner. I passed through the kitchen; the walls were sweating—house tears, my mother called them.
I could hear my mother and Edite downstairs. From the landing I could only see their legs and laps as they folded laundry. Edite had a glass of wine at her feet. My mother never drank.
“I want to forget him. Start fresh.”
“Can you?” Edite asked as she lifted the glass of wine to her lips.
“Nothing happened.”
“Nothing?” Edite giggled.
“I love my family. I’m not going to throw that away.”
“When are you going to be honest with yourself, Georgina? You deserve more.”
“I have my children to think about. It’s not that easy.”
“There’s a way you can have it all, you know.”
The floor creaked as I shifted my weight. Their voices grew softer.
“I’m going,” I said, loud enough so they wouldn’t think I’d been spying.
“Okay, filho,” my mother said. I wanted her to stop me.
As I walked down the narrow path to the garage door, my thoughts bounced around. It’s the right thing to do. Another step. Soon, Pai will be happier. Mãe will love him again. I moved closer, almost there. He’s giving it to the church. Adam said I didn’t have to be afraid—they just needed to believe in something. Just don’t close your eyes.
When I stepped inside the garage, I was met with a flurry of hands signing the cross. Some people genuflected. Then they tried to touch me, my hair, my cape, anything. After the needle incident my father had pushed the ropes farther from the door. He stood in his pressed suit at the front of the line, holding the rope in his hand, traces of worry across his face. Things had become bigger than he’d expected.
I stepped over the frozen limpet and sat on the chair. I looked at the crowd in the garage. There were more people outside, mumbling the novenas of the rosary. Everyone’s thumbs keeping count to the rhythm set by Roy Orbison, who sang of candy-coloured clowns and sprinkles of stardust.
My father nodded, then unhooked the rope.
The first person in line, an older man with few teeth, shuffled along the floor with his cane. I guessed that the two women at his side were his daughters. They held his elbows and lowered him onto his knees. He whacked their shins with his cane to shoo them away. “She needs to leave me,” he said in Portuguese. “My wife haunts me,” he whispered, as if she might be listening. “My wife’s been dead for fifteen years. I was always afraid she’d go to another man’s bed in the middle of the night. That’s why I beat her. Now it’s my turn not to sleep.”
My father had suggested ways for me to speed things up. At the thirty-second point, I could press my thumb to their foreheads and whisper a prayer, “even if they’re still talking,” he said. Or I could wave the sign of the cross in the air to get the crowd going and encourage lingerers off their knees. “Whatever works,” he said, and I knew he didn’t care. My father raised the handle again, before setting it down on the record with a pop and scratch. The baseboard heaters had been turned on; ribbons of orange glowed at the foot of the walls. I was getting drowsy in the heat.
The man sobbed. One of his daughters tried to get him up, and he swung his cane and hit her thigh. She stepped back. He wasn’t going anywhere. I felt the crowd getting restless. I saw my father urging me to do something. I slowly reached out my hand. I wanted to close my eyes, but I fought the urge. My thumb pressed to his forehead and I ma
de a tiny sign of the cross. The man grabbed me by the wrist and kissed it, wet kisses, his stubble prickling my skin.
Minutes dragged on for hours. People kept falling at my feet, but the line never seemed to get any shorter.
I stood up, struggled to untie the cape at my neck. The sounds drowned out. I swallowed my spit to see if my ears would pop, but the stale air in the room was making me sick. I only saw sombre faces, the crowd swaying in unison. I wanted to close my eyes, but Adam had said when you close your eyes you get swallowed up. It was only when I lowered my face that I realized it was James. He had made his way through the crowd and was kneeling in front of me, a fisherman’s cap on his head, his blond ringlets poking out from under the rim, his blue eyes looking up at me.
My eyelids flickered and then the light went out.
I wasn’t sure how long I was passed out. Someone was fanning my face, the circulation of air giving me the breath and the strength to open my eyes once again. “James?” I whispered. The faces in the crowd were blurry. “Where’s James?” My father stood up and looked over the crowd. I could have said something then. I said nothing. I scanned the room of faces for James. The visitors had parted, stepping aside for someone to enter.
“Padre Costa,” my father said, ears red as the priest came into focus and stood in front of the limpet and me.
“Manuel, it’s been a while,” Padre Costa said. He lifted his heels for a second, then stood again, smiling like the Cheshire Cat. “Antonio.” He nodded. I wanted to throw up, but I managed to sit back in my chair.
We all knew how conceited he was. He must have been at least sixty but he still used Grecian Formula and had his teeth capped. According to Manny, he tanned in the rectory’s backyard in a Speedo. He prided himself on knowing scripture but he would often get names wrong or mixed up. No one dared correct him. It wouldn’t have made a difference.
“I was wondering when you’d drop by.” I was thankful my father had found his voice.
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