by Todd Babiak
“This is what your show is about?”
“Yes and no. If you think about it, Mike, a handkerchief says a lot about a man. It’s the small details…”
Mike seemed to think about it. “And people are supposed to watch this.”
“They’re not supposed to.”
“You know what? I could be at home right now, putting my kids to bed. Or at a movie.”
“I have kids,” said Randall. “Toby’s adopting a boy. Benjamin Disraeli had kids. We’re doing this because we have kids.”
“Actually,” said Toby, “Benjamin Disraeli married a much older woman and—”
“I could give a shit.” Mike stood up and intercepted the waitress with his whiskey. He downed it in one gulp and accompanied her to the cash register.
“I’m sorry,” said Randall.
“Does Mike have a dirt bike?”
“He does, actually. Why?”
Toby stared at the handkerchiefs, piled on the uneven table, as Randall and Garrett consoled him. The life and beauty of the handkerchiefs seemed to drip away into the darkness of the sticky floorboards of La Moufette. Handkerchiefs were as random and as ill-used as stuffed parakeets.
This lasted for some time, until Garrett squeezed his arm. Randall was outside, bidding adieu to Mike and indulging in a cigarette. “You’re feeling okay?”
Toby wanted to tell Garrett about the handkerchiefs, or at least about the troubling phone call from Catherine. But since his firm was handling the legal aspects of the eventual adoption, which hinged on abandonment and utter silence from the biological parents, Toby decided it was best to forget it had ever happened.
“Can I talk to you about something?” Garrett turned a hot wing solicitously around with his large fingers. “Something a bit personal?”
Toby only half listened, at first, to the real reason Tracy was divorcing Randall. An emotional drift in there somewhere, a coming-to-terms, and Tracy felt it.
“On the night she first asked him to leave—so she could think, you know—he drove over and we drank a bottle of premium Canadian whisky and watched the Star Wars trilogy and fell asleep together on the couch.”
“Like high school.”
“The next night, I made up one of the spare bedrooms for him, and I was nervous to say it, but I had to say it. I said, ‘Or you can sleep with me or whatever.’ I wasn’t going to try anything. Frankly, I didn’t know how. And you know him. He said, ‘It doesn’t matter.’ So I said, ‘Don’t feel you have to,’ and he said, ‘Whatever, I don’t. Either way, really.’ But he did sleep in my bed that night. And he still is.”
“He still is what?”
“Sleeping in my bed.”
“Sleeping or sleeping?”
“I love him. Always have, I guess. I haven’t said it to him, out loud. But…”
Toby finished his beer and poured some more.
“It was me. I ruined a marriage. I shall to hell.”
“You’re not joking.”
“This is a secret. Randall would die if he knew you knew.”
“Shouldn’t I be the easiest person to tell? I mean, Garrett, look at me.”
“What about his kids? That’s what he always brings up. Imagine Dakota in high school, on the West Island, with a couple of…with parents like us.”
“Stairway to Heaven” was playing. Toby had never heard the song outside of a high school gymnasium, with the lights out, a DJ’s disco ball spinning cookies of light over the straight coloured lines on the floor, the basketball nets, the pennants of forgettable victory. He was pleased to give himself over to anxious memories of high school—wanting desperately to dance to this song in the dark gymnasium three times a year, with Tiffany or Charlene or Melissa. Never drinking lemon gin beforehand, never hitting the parties afterward, never a fist fight or a B.J.
“I don’t know if we had it any easier,” Toby said, “and our dads were straight.”
Randall returned with his arm around Mike.
“Tell him.”
“All right,” said Mike. “I’m sorry, man, for calling your thing retarded.”
“It’s not a thing, Mike. Say it like we planned.”
“Your society. Your society.”
Toby stood up and shook his hand. “It is a little bit retarded, Mike. And I apologize for diminishing your slacks. They’re lovely.”
The members of the Benjamin Disraeli Society put the handkerchiefs aside and talked about their children. They dispersed just before nine thirty, as it was a Wednesday. Toby had forgotten his phone at home, so he could not call Randall for a tow when the Chevette stalled and died on rue Hyman. He pushed it to the side of the road, tucked in front of a minivan, and walked home.
It was a fresh but windless night, with a gentle snowfall. Toby cut through Centennial Park, where the artificial lake was nearly ready to emerge as a skating pond. The neighbourhoods were silent but for the whoops and cackles of unsupervised adolescents out too late, shovel on sidewalk, a distant honk. The slices of conversation, mostly about weather, suggested a world he had already relinquished: the moderate, workaday, jean jacket and running shoes, kids-are-in-bed-so-let’s-have-a-beer world of mothers and fathers and influenza and credit cards. Knowing that he was leaving this place in a little more than a week made it much easier to adore. Already he felt the way he was destined to feel, like a man from afar briefly visiting the country of his birth—a warm and prosaic and condescending feeling he cherished. His posture was kingly. He briefly pretended, among the aspen trees, hidden from the Christmas lights of the suburb, that it was the seventeenth century, that he was leading a small band of brave missionary soldiers to destroy the godless Iroquois downriver. A stupid mission, but pure and memorable, inspired by perfection, stripped of the irony that threatened to render his own generation pointless and forgotten. His technologies were the technologies of transition. The golden eras of television and cinema were over, yet the digital revolution had not yet begun. None of this would endure like the Battle of Long Sault, in which Adam Dollard des Ormeaux sacrificed his flesh for the ascendance of the European story. Certainly not Toby a Gentleman, or whatever they wished to call it in New York City. There was a short list of possible titles circulating through a focus group. How to Be a Gentleman in the Twenty-First Century was apparently well loved by William Kingston, who had final approval over everything. Toby had vowed not to be precious, even if they wanted to give it a cumbersome and boring—post-boring?—title. He had been exchanging e-mails with the producer, pretty and thoughtful Jill, whom he would call and court upon his arrival in Manhattan, to discuss the first month of topics—twenty shows. Cellphone etiquette, weeping in public, introducing one’s wife or girlfriend at a party, tipping, the trouble with the word “cheers,” elevators.
There he is, Dollard des Ormeaux, loading up his canoe with supplies and inspiring his fellow martyrs with a speech about Jesus and his sovereignty. Gentle warriors of Christ, worry not for your blood. Already I can see it, just downriver, the promise of our reward.
A taxi idled in front of the house on rue Collingwood, its exhaust system even more harmful than that of the Chevette. The driver was reading Le Devoir with the window open. It was slightly below freezing, not nearly cold enough for idling to be necessary.
“Who are you waiting for, sir?” said Toby.
“The woman?”
“What woman? Karen Mushinsky?”
He shrugged and turned back to his newspaper. The car smelled like an alley behind an Indian restaurant.
Toby heard Hugo’s cries through the door. It was almost ten o’clock, much too late for him to be awake. A nightmare, surely. From time to time, usually in the middle of the night, the boy would cry out about a dog, or a bear, or his snack, and Toby would lie with him, rubbing his back, until the sobs powered down like an old engine, the intervals between them longer and longer and longer. The first stanza of “You Are My Sunshine” quieter and quieter and quieter. Toby had vowed to learn the rest of the song, in the i
nterest of self-improvement and to enhance the boy’s vocabulary.
It was unpleasant to wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes two or three times. Nothing was more pleasant, however, than giving the boy a glass of water and a hug, both of which he asked for as though they were equal commodities, and lowering him to his pillow, a kiss on his warm forehead. In the parenting books, they warned against going into the child’s room several times a night, for water and whimsy, but Toby did not see how it could harm Hugo. Soon enough, he would be a teenager—a monster of sleep. Soon enough, Hugo would not need hugs or back rubs or “You Are My Sunshine.”
Toby rushed in, eagerly, and nearly ran into her. Her hair was shorter, and she had acquired something in between a suntan and a permanent layer of dirt on her face. It was makeup, he realized. Catherine was hiding something—the largest pimple in the world or, more likely, a bruise.
In the kitchen, Karen stood in front of the stove, ready to collapse. Hugo cried next to Catherine, his new snow jacket over his baseball, baseball glove, and baseball bat pyjamas. His face a mess of tears and transferred foundation. He reached up to Toby, and Toby picked him up. Mid-cry, Hugo sobbed, into Toby’s ear, so loudly that it hurt, “You want to stay.”
Slowed, perhaps, by beer, Toby did not at first realize that Catherine intended to take him away. Then he did. “Non, non, je suis désolé,” he said, as gallantly as he could muster, “you can’t take him.”
“He’s my son. Thanks for babysitting. I’m taking him home.”
“No, you’re not. What home?”
“Our apartment.”
“You don’t have an apartment. A strange man lives there. This is Hugo’s home now, Catherine. Why don’t you come back tomorrow, for breakfast, and we’ll discuss it. For now, Hugo needs to be back in bed.”
Catherine reached up and pulled Hugo from Toby, who did not fight her off. The boy wiggled his way out of her arms and onto the entrance mat, and stomped next to Edward’s winter boots. He was nearly incoherent now, weeping and shouting a mixture of English and French. His eyes were red, he was recently awakened, and no one was listening to him. Hugo tried to make it simple, using his finger to conduct and punctuate each short phrase. Mommy will live here. Poney will live here. Grandma will live here. Ici, ici.
“I’m his mother. He’s mine.”
“Not anymore.”
“How about I call the police. I wonder what they’ll say. Do you want to be kidnappers, maybe?”
Toby’s heart seemed ready to bust out of its cage and roar across the room, throw Catherine out the picture window, and carry Hugo to bed. He understood perfectly, for the first time in his life, the potential solace of a violent act. A delicious slap in the face. All he could do was fall to his knees and hug Hugo and kiss him and whisper to him that he would be back here, home, soon, that he need not worry. He never needed to worry. Toby told him, once in each ear, that he loved him, told him that he would protect him, that he loved him so much, and he said it some more, as Catherine protested that the taxi was waiting, meter on. Toby said it ten times, an incantation, as there were no adequate words.
Catherine carried a knitted bag of his items: shoes, a suit, Lammy, the lamb he slept with, whatever Karen had thrown in.
Toby, still on his knees, could hear the boy’s cries all the way down the front yard, the sound weakening with each footstep in the snow. Hugo’s tears were all over Toby’s face, dripping salt slowly into his mouth. Karen walked to the window and watched. He hoped that if he didn’t watch, Catherine—in her fucking delusional hooker insanity—would change her mind and bring Hugo back.
With the help of a footstool, Karen lowered herself to her knees and crawled over to him.
“Why did you let her in?”
“She’s his mom.”
Fifteen
The social worker, Mireille, received Toby on New Year’s Eve without an appointment on St. Jean Boulevard, in Dollard. He had accosted the woman outside, in what he took to be a courtly manner, a few minutes before the office opened at nine. Mireille was a large and beautiful woman from Haiti, who nodded languidly as he spoke, and clasped her hands in an official version of sympathy. His grandest worry, his conspiracy theory, which he had presented before she answered any of his questions or concerns—that the government of Quebec could not abide a francophone child adopted by a man with a Slavic-sounding surname—did not faze her. He had business cards left over from his work at the station. Ménard, Ménard. It was not yet a legal name change, but it could be, by week’s end, if she thought it would help. Anything she thought would help, it would be done by week’s end. “Everything can be done in French, you see? I speak French with him. He will always go to French schools, wherever we live. I am Québécois too.” Toby finished speaking and allowed himself to breathe properly again. He had gone on longer than necessary because he did not want Mireille to respond. As long as he was talking, it was reason and truth. Hugo was his. His hands were freezing, even inside. He made a cup out of them and blew into it. The traffic on the boulevard whooshed through the freshly melted snow, as it had warmed enough to rain. A sound that had once comforted him, cars on a suburban boulevard, in the rain. Like the spark of a natural gas furnace.
“It is very difficult,” she said, “to take a child from his mother.”
“You’re on her side.”
“I am on no side, Mr. Toby.”
“She was prostituting herself in Paris.”
Mireille sighed. He had said too much, and angrily. “You have proof of this?”
“She abandoned him, without a word, for months. Is that not against the law?”
“It is.”
“Well?”
“She returned. It is more common than you think, to go through a corrective experience. You will see this, if she has the means to hire a lawyer.” Mireille crossed her powerful arms in defiance. At one point in her life, Toby was certain, Mireille had gone through a corrective experience. The lights in her office were not yet turned on, and in the dimness of the December morning it suddenly felt intimate and awkward in the room. There was no ring on her finger. Anything she wanted. Money, oral sex, film rights. She had not yet turned on the computer. Many kilometres away, on its approach or retreat, a crack of rare winter thunder. “This idea, Mr. Toby, that you would take the boy to New York City before finalizing guardianship is equally preposterous, if you will allow me to be frank.”
The electronic ticket had arrived that morning, in Toby’s inbox. The ninth of January, two seats in business class, an afternoon flight, dinner provided.
“Legally—”
“It is simple for her lawyer. She left Hugo with people she trusted, sorted herself out on a holiday, and returned. If she does it again, well, that is something. But until then—”
“I can’t wait for her to do it again. He’s my…he’s mine.” Toby breathed, closed his eyes for a moment. The social worker offered him a Kleenex from a floral-print box she kept handy. “I feed him, every day. When he’s scared, I…”
Mireille leaned on the desk and looked away from Toby, at a thin and windowless wall. Artificial materials. Two degrees, from the University of Haiti and from Laval. From this angle, Toby could see a tiny splotch of blood in the white of her left eye.
The Chevette was still dead on Hyman, and Karen had a meeting with Steve Bancroft. Toby filled a garbage bag with toys and clothes and walked to the train station, where he picked up an abandoned copy of a community newspaper, The Suburban. All the way across the West Island and into downtown, he read the newspaper with the growing suspicion that he himself was in the midst of a corrective experience. It was an old copy, from the previous summer. Had no one cleaned since then? The top story concerned the international flora show in the Old Port. In the filthy slush, lopsided from carrying a stuffed garbage bag, he had soaked his brown suit to the knee. Another suit ruined. His shoes, a pair of black brogues, were also compromised. The mud and salt had begun to dry and cake off by the
time he reached Central Station. Two representatives of the Metropolitan Transit System, passing through the cars upon their arrival, stopped to consider him for a moment—soaked, carrying a garbage bag.
In the underground mall of the station, Toby bought a bouquet and a bottle of champagne. He was tempted to buy a new book for Hugo, but once Catherine listened properly and surrendered the boy, unconditionally, to Toby, he would have all the titles of rue Collingwood at his disposal again. UPS would deliver them all to New York, once they were settled in the temporary apartment on the Upper East Side. He silently practised his speech in the metro, the dirty metro, where a homeless person with a garbage bag was perfectly acceptable as long as he made it through the turnstile. Thank you, Catherine, for everything you have done for the boy so far. But listen to reason. Papa a raison.
The apartment in Pie-IX looked as though it were peeling in the cold rain. Somewhere on the island, or retired in a bright condominium development in Boca Raton, the architects of despair huddled over their life’s work and quietly mourned this place. From his bedroom in Manhattan, Hugo would see a sliver of Central Park.
Toby pressed the buzzer and began manufacturing a smile. Catherine unlocked the door without verifying his identity, another strike against her; who was to say he wasn’t a jihadist? She stood in the doorway, her black eye not black but a swirl of gold and pink and brown. Her hair was short, cut into a bob, and dyed. Behind her, Hugo stood smiling in his brown pinstripe suit, his shirt unironed and his tie a mangled mess. Both of them in brown suits. “Poney.” He clapped. “I’m here.”
“I’m here,” said Catherine, in English. “You made him a snob.”
“I taught him some manners.” Toby lifted the garbage bag. “Some of his clothes and toys. I brought flowers and champagne. I thought we could ring in the new year.”
“I’m all wet,” said Hugo. “Come in, come in.”
Catherine took the bag, peeked inside, and closed it up. She slid it into her apartment and, without a glance at the flowers and wine or another word, closed the door. As it swung shut, Hugo extended his arms toward Toby and wailed.