Leaving the World

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘You should’ve seen winter back then,’ he told me.

  You should see winter now, Dad. And you should see where life’s random cruelties have landed me.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  It was the woman at the front desk. In her twenties, black-haired with a decided Eastern European accent. How had she landed herself in Calgary?

  ‘I was looking for a room for a couple of nights.’

  She explained that they had rooms from $275 to $800 per night. I blanched – and she noticed that.

  ‘It’s a bit beyond my budget,’ I said.

  ‘How many nights would you be with us?’

  ‘Maybe four or five. I’m new in town and will be hunting for a place to live.’

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘Just last night.’

  ‘You have a job here?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Family? Friends?’

  Again I shook my head.

  ‘Why Calgary?’ she asked.

  ‘Random selection.’

  ‘Like evolution,’ she said with a smile, then added: ‘I studied biology back in Poland.’

  ‘And here?’

  ‘I still study biology at the university – and do this to pay my bills.’

  ‘But why Calgary?’

  ‘Random selection.’

  She tapped away at her computer terminal for several minutes, then picked up the phone and spoke in a low voice to someone. When she ended the call she was all smiles.

  ‘Things are a bit slow at the hotel this week – so if you are willing to commit to five nights here I can offer you a special employee’s rate of a hundred and fifty per night. It won’t be one of our larger rooms, but it’s still pretty nice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, handing over my debit card.

  ‘Jane Howard,’ she said, reading my embossed name. ‘Any thoughts on what you’ll be doing in Calgary?’

  ‘None,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a start.’

  As described, the room wasn’t big – maybe 200 square feet. But after the nightmare motel, it was more than adequate. There was a queen-sized bed, a good armchair, a desk, a very clean functioning bathroom. I unpacked my bag, turned on my radio, found the classical music station of the CBC, ran a hot bath, undressed and sat in it for the better part of an hour, contemplating my next move, trying to grapple with the daily gloom. But ‘to grapple’ is to attempt to come to terms with a set of circumstances. There was no antidote to all this. There was just the matter of trying to get through the day.

  So, after my bath, I picked up the phone and called the concierge – and explained that I was moving to Calgary and wanted to rent an apartment, but knew nothing of the city. The concierge was named Gary – a very friendly type, eager to help.

  ‘You in the oil business?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh, no . . .’ I said, just a little bemused.

  ‘Calgary’s a big oil town – the Dallas of the North – so most of the relocating executives we get staying in the hotel are in petroleum.’

  ‘I’m a teacher.’

  ‘Then I guess you’re not going to be after some big executive pad.’

  ‘My budget’s pretty modest.’

  ‘Any idea where you want to live in town?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Do you have a car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Will you have a car?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And you teach what?’

  ‘Literature.’

  ‘In high school?’

  ‘I was a professor.’

  ‘Right – then you’ll probably want to be near some bookshops and decent cafés and not far from the art cinemas in town.’

  ‘There are art-house cinemas in Calgary?’

  ‘Don’t sound that surprised. There are three – and even a couple of very good theaters and not a bad symphony orchestra.’

  Well, this was news.

  ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘my advice to you would be to look either in an area called Kensington or somewhere around 17th Avenue SW – and I do know a realtor who might be able to help you. How fast are you wanting to move?’

  ‘I need a place in a couple of days.’

  ‘OK – I’m on the job . . .’

  Within fifteen minutes he called back to say that a realtor named Helen Ross would be calling momentarily. This she did.

  ‘Understand you’re looking for a rental unit in either Kensington or Mount Royal. What’s your budget?’

  ‘I really couldn’t spend more than seven hundred a month.’

  ‘Furnished or unfurnished?’

  ‘Furnished would be preferable.’

  ‘Then we’re probably talking a studio, if that’s OK with you.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  ‘Mind me asking what you do?’

  I knew this was coming – and had a straightforward answer prepared. I had taught university. The contract had ended. I was now looking for work.

  ‘So no gainful employment right now?’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Not if you can show you have adequate funds to cover the year’s lease.’

  Damn. That would mean contacting my bank in Boston – as she would probably need a reference as well. By getting in touch with the bank I’d be informing someone of my whereabouts . . . unless my guy there could be trusted to stay shtum about this. Are bankers like priests?

  ‘I can provide you with anything you need,’ I said.

  ‘Very good then. I have a viewing this morning, but say I came by the hotel at three this afternoon?’

  I was waiting for her in the lobby when she drove up in a silver Lexus. Helen Ross was in her fifties. Well preserved. Well dressed. Two serious diamond rings on her left hand. A hint of Botox around the eyes. Direct, pleasant and evidently not wanting to spend too much time on such a small-beer letting, but still determined to be professional and courteous. I could see her looking me over, sizing me up, probably categorizing me as an eternal-student type . . . which wasn’t too off the truth. In a very casual way she asked me about my background. I provided her with just enough to satisfy her curiosity, mentioning my Canadian father, my doctorate from Harvard (that made her glance at me with care – gauging whether I was being straight with her or was some fantasist) and how I was now ‘between jobs’ and had decided on ‘a change of life, a change of scene’.

  ‘Divorced?’ she asked.

  ‘We weren’t officially married, but . . .’

  She nodded grimly.

  ‘My husband left me last year – after twenty-three years together. I got the big house and the Lexus and a lot of grief that doesn’t seem to want to go away. You know about that too?’

  ‘I know about grief.’

  Helen Ross took that in – and correctly sensed from my tone that I didn’t want to pursue this subject. Instead, she changed course, telling me that Calgary was now booming. House prices had doubled in the last eighteen months. Biggest growth of any Canadian city. Some of the best restaurants in the country. Cool arts scene, the city having finally gotten wise to the idea that fostering a ‘creative community’ was a boon to business. And, of course, with the Rockies just forty minutes away by car . . .

  It was like being with a one-person Chamber of Commerce. But I liked Helen Ross – and her forthrightness with me about her post-divorce emotional injuries immediately made me realize that I was wrong to judge her simply on the material evidence of her well-upholstered life. She bled like the rest of us and she wanted me to know that as well . . . which, coming from a complete stranger, had an honest poignancy.

  ‘Now I have only three places I can show you – and the first is the best.’

  It was located in an area called Mount Royal, right off 17th Avenue SW.

  ‘This is one of the trendiest parts of town.’

  At one end of 17th Avenue SW were some ugly apartment blocks (they seemed to be a Calgary specialty) and a 7-E
leven. As the avenue progressed I did note some cafés, some boutiques, a collection of renovated brick buildings, a few bookshops and quite a number of restaurants. All right, it wasn’t Harvard Square. But after my initial shell-shocked impressions of Calgary . . . well, this wasn’t bad at all.

  We turned into a side street and pulled up in front of one of the few old buildings in the area. By old I’m talking l930s – and judging by its institutional girth, it had started life as an educational establishment.

  ‘This was an old schoolhouse,’ Helen Ross said, ‘but is now a very nice apartment building.’

  The ‘unit’ that Helen had earmarked for me was located on the second floor, right in the back of the building. (‘But it still gets great morning sunlight.’) As promised it was a studio – maybe 250 square feet at most – but nicely renovated. Plain off-white walls. Stained hardwood floors. A modern alcove kitchen with all the basic equipment. A modern neutral bathroom. A sofa in gray fabric. A matching armchair with an ottoman. A floor-to-ceiling set of doors that opened to reveal a queen-sized Murphy bed with a reasonably hard mattress. A Paris-style café table and two mahogany bentwood chairs.

  ‘There’s one very decent walk-in closet. There’s a communal laundry in the basement. There’s room for a desk on that wall over there by the window. It’s wired for cable and broadband . . .’

  ‘I don’t watch television and I don’t have a computer anymore,’ I was going to tell her, but decided not to sound like a Luddite crank.

  ‘And if you’re willing to sign a two-year lease I can get the price down by a hundred a month to six twenty-five.’

  ‘Sold,’ I said.

  But I still needed to provide references. So the following morning, I called Laurence Phillips, the manager at the local branch of Fleet Bank in Somerville, where I deposited my money. We’d had few dealings with each other – and though he took my call immediately, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear from me.

  ‘I was aware of the fact that you had left the Boston area . . . just as I had also heard about your dreadful loss. I am so sorry. I don’t know if you received our letter of condolence . . .’

  ‘I couldn’t read any of them.’

  ‘Of course you couldn’t. How can I help?’

  ‘Are you good at keeping a secret, Mr Phillips?’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t entail anything illegal.’

  ‘It’s nothing illegal. It just has to do with my whereabouts.’

  Then I explained about how I had landed in Calgary, leaving out the failed suicide attempt . . .

  ‘I simply need you to fax the realtor my bank statement and a letter from you stating that I’m a client in good standing etc . . .’

  ‘I’m happy to do that.’

  ‘I also need you to promise me that you will not mention my new location to anybody.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  Later that afternoon Helen Ross phoned me at the hotel to inform me she had received the necessary bona fides from Laurence Phillips and the lease would be ready to sign tomorrow. I would have to provide one month’s rent in advance and an additional one month’s deposit.

  ‘No problem,’ I said.

  We met at the apartment the next day. I signed the lease. I handed over $1,250 in cash. I went shopping. At Helen’s suggestion I also rented a car for a couple of days – she had a friend at the downtown branch of Alamo who gave me a sub-compact for three days for $100, all taxes and insurances included (I was conscious of every dollar I spent). She also pointed me in the direction of a mall called Chinook just fifteen minutes from my house where she told me I could buy everything I needed.

  Before we parted she put a hand on my shoulder and said: ‘We naturally had to run basic background checks on you. And I did use a search engine to find out about your academic career. That’s when I also read about your tragedy.’

  I suddenly stiffened . . . and wanted to be anywhere but here.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know how—’

  ‘Stop, please,’ I said.

  She withdrew her hand.

  ‘Excuse me. I didn’t mean to seem like I was prying.’

  ‘You weren’t prying. It’s just . . .’

  So this is how the world now worked. You met someone, you discovered they might have a credential or two, you Googled them, and you found out . . .

  But this knowledge simply made me resolve to limit all human contacts to an absolute minimum. I just couldn’t bear any form of decency or kindness right now. People always asked questions about you. Even though they were usually well-meaning questions they were still questions. And questions led to answers. And answers led to . . .

  So I would withdraw completely.

  But before that, I needed to buy some essential items for my new 250-square-foot world.

  The Chinook Mall was like all other malls – all those brand names and designer emporiums tempting you to purchase all sorts of things you didn’t need. Still, I did find a household goods place where I bought two sets of dark gray sheets, two pillows, a duvet and two gray covers, bathroom towels, a coffee maker, basic pots and pans, a set of white plates, cutlery, glassware. All in, I dropped just under $1,000 – but for that money the apartment was completely set up, bar a small stereo which cost me an additional $200.

  I returned home. I unpacked everything. I plugged in the stereo. I found CBC Radio 2 – the classical service. I sat down in the armchair. Out of nowhere, it all hit me again, and I found that I simply couldn’t stop weeping until I was so wrung out there was no choice but to stagger into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face and grab my coat and car keys and . . .

  Drive.

  As I had the car for another two and a half days I decided to take advantage of it and . . . drive.

  So I spent the time exploring as many parts of Calgary as possible. And what did I discover . . . ?

  That cab driver I met on my first morning in Calgary was right – the city was a sprawl. Like all sprawls – especially those set on prairies – it often had the feeling of being jerry-built, thrown up in a hurry, half thought out. There was no sense of a past, a heritage, a coherent urban identity. In a used bookshop on 17th Avenue SW I came across some 1920s photographs of Calgary, all of which showed a bustling North American cityscape of the type that mixed frontier architecture with certain turn-of-the-century Chicago flourishes. Bar the occasional remnant in the downtown core, it had all been detonated away, replaced by towers of glass and steel. There were some interesting neighborhoods. Kensington – which fronted the Bow River – had an excellent bookshop, an old-style picture house which showed art films, a couple of terrific coffee places and a general Cambridge-style atmosphere. There was also a nearby area called Mission with similar trendy shops and restaurants, and Inglewood, a warehouse district just beyond the ‘downtown core’ (as Calgarians seemed to always call it) with a burgeoning attempt at what design magazines call ‘a loft scene’.

  Then there were the millionaire-oilmen houses in Mount Royal, the expensive bachelor pads around Eau Claire, and the endless ’burbs – track after track of the same ranch-style house or bungalow, stretching into near-infinity on the prairie. All these subdivisions and estates had fanciful names: Killarney, Sweetwater, Sunridge, Westhills. All were grouped around shopping centers and strip malls. All had the sort of uniformity one associates with military housing. All represented so much of the prosaic and the stifling in modern life. As I toured their byways, the sight of a mother loading up her daughter into the family SUV would detonate a sorrow that still seemed limitless. This was accompanied by the knowledge that, no matter where I turned, I would always see children. They would be in shops, in malls, being pushed in strollers, getting off schoolbuses, being guided through museums, walking home with parents after school. It wasn’t just the three-year-olds who cut me to the quick. From this time onwards, every child at every stage of life – right up through adolescence and beyond – would remind me of all th
ose stages we would have gone through together . . . what could have been, what now never would be.

  So I decided to steer clear of these suburban enclaves because they had a higher density of children than the area around my neighborhood. I did a little more shopping for the apartment – a desk lamp, a floor lamp, a rug for the floor – and then returned the car, vowing not to venture outside the central core of the city again.

  Once I had the apartment set up, a routine developed. I would wake most days around noon. Then I would walk down to 17th and 9th – and my morning haunt, Caffé Beano. It was a 1950s retro coffee joint. They knew how to make excellent espresso. They served proper bagels and muffins. They sold that morning’s edition of the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. They left you alone . . . though, after I had showed up every morning for a while, the barista on duty asked me my name.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Jane,’ he said. ‘I’m Stu.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Stu.’

  End of conversation.

  I would spend over an hour and a half in Caffé Beano, then I would haunt the two or three used bookshops on 17th. Here too the staff got to know me, especially at Prism Books, where I scored a complete hardcover edition of Remembrance of Things Past and a 1902 English edition of the complete Dickens. I could have kept buying more, except that my small apartment would only take so many books and I was very conscious about curbing my expenditure.

  Jan was the girl behind the counter at the bookshop. She was somewhat punky – her hair had been dyed the color of cotton candy – and she told me she’d already had a couple of ‘out there’ stories published in small magazines. She also tried to engage me in dialog.