by E. B. Lee
“Canada?” she called. “Mad? It’s Carli. Are you here?”
“Who’s there?” asked a voice from the box near her feet.
“Carli, from Outreach. I need Madison. It’s an emergency.”
“Emergency? He’s down at the end. Closest to the bank,” said the voice.
“Carli?” It was Madison’s voice.
“Come out,” she said. “Please. I have to see you.”
With the streets still dark, and the group’s having chosen a sleeping spot away from the night lights of stores, Canada’s familiar gray hoodie was almost upon her before she saw him.
“Sorry to wake you,” she said. “It’s about Grant.”
“Where is he?” Canada asked.
“It’s bad news,” she said. “It’s ... well, he’s gone. It happened a few hours ago.”
Carli thought she saw Canada stumble backward a step before he asked, “What happened?”
By now, the other boxes were rustling.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know. Grant called and said he crashed his bike. He said he couldn’t sleep. I went to check him, and he was still soaking wet and sprawled across his mattress with a bag of pills. One pill was broken in half on his mattress. I’m thinking he took the other half. I need to know something. Did you give Grant any pills lately?”
“Pills?”
“Yes, white pills ... here, look. I need to know what this is.” Carli took a pair of pills from her pocket and said, “Close your eyes a minute.” She switched on the spotlight of her phone and focused it on her hand.
“Let me see one of those.” Canada held a pill between his fingers and lowered it into the light. Carli saw him squinting to get a better look. “I’ve seen these before,” he said. “They’re bad news.”
“Are those the ones?” asked one of the other men.
“Think so,” said Canada. He passed the pill over to the others for a second opinion.
“That’s the one. Has the red fist. See it?” said one of the others.
“Saw it,” said Canada. “I’m gonna kill him.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Carli.
“I don’t ever, and I mean ever, deal any of these,” said Canada. “These are to help you sleep. A bunch of them got on the market. Often around college campuses. Those kids take one kind of pill to keep them up and get their work done. Then they take one of these to get to sleep. From time to time, someone adds in some fent, and it becomes a killer. Might only take half a pill to do it. In fact, be careful how you hold it.”
“Fent?” asked Carli.
“Fentanyl. Tens of thousands dead from it a year,” said one of the others.
“Oh my God,” Carli whispered. “He said he was trying to sleep.”
“It creeps into other types of pills too. Like, party pills. You sure it wasn’t the crash?” asked Canada.
“We’re checking,” she said.
“Well, my guess is we’ll know in a couple of days, autopsy or not. If this is what we think it is, we’ll hear about a rash of overdoses. I could kill the guy who’s doing this.”
“Oh, my God. I had no idea,” said Carli. “I thought maybe you gave it to him. Why didn’t he get something from the pharmacy?”
“I don’t sell this stuff.” He looked straight at Carli’s eyes. “I can’t believe it.” He opened his arms wide to share a hug. Carli felt his chest gently contract and lurch as he released some of his pain.
The last thing Carli recalled was collapsing on Grant’s mattress. It smelled like his shampoo, and the sheets were still wet from the rain. This time he was truly gone, the boy who had held her captive when he playfully tugged her pigtails, and the man who teased her and captured her with his laugh. Late afternoon, after nearly a full day’s sleep, Carli crawled into his thinking chair. She touched the sides as though she were touching Grant. She looked at his paintings. They were the only things she had left of him that revealed his soul. There was no good answer. Never would be. On the heels of sadness, she hated everything, including herself. Why didn’t she come over right after his call? He would have been alive. She could have saved him.
Sister Anna, Mercy, Gretchen, and the others held a simple, private prayer of thanks in the lunchroom of St. Mary’s. Carli left it to Sister Anna to deliver the news to those who could handle it. Mercy was in her own state of shock and grief. For the first time ever, Carli saw Mercy wear black.
One afternoon, Carli found Canada leaning against the wall of the synagogue, taking a day off from work. “You okay?” she asked.
“Nothing you or I can do about it,” said Canada. “I’m sorry it happened to you. Hard to lose someone.”
“You lost him too,” she said.
“Not like you did.”
It took a moment for Canada’s words to sink in. When they did, Carli directed her eyes straight toward Canada’s.
“He told me,” said Canada. “One of the days I visited him at the hospital.” Carli slowly nodded. “He was happier than anything to have you in his life. All he ever wanted to do was protect you. Never hurt you.” It was what Grant did all his life. It was her brother’s way.
“Did Grant ever tell you why he got off the streets?” she asked. Canada shook his head. Carli told Canada about the dirty drug den. “It’s like you were meant to help them. You already got Grant in by sending him into that rattrap and making him think.”
Canada smiled painfully. “Could be.” Then, seized by something unseen, he raised his eyes skyward and shook his head. “You knew you’d get me. One way or another, you knew, didn’t you? Well, rest in peace, bro. Rest in peace.”
Carli and Canada locked eyes. Then, as though by some hidden signal, both knew it was time to move on.
“I’ll go see Mercy,” said Canada. After taking a step, he added, “Grant’s right. I know them all. We used to talk, Grant and me.” He turned quickly, but not fast enough to conceal a wet drop sliding from his eye. A hand raised to his face confirmed it. Carli wished more than ever Grant could be with her, flesh and soul, to witness it. Finally reaching Canada, the boisterous stalwart, felt empty without him.
Carli entered and left St. Ignatius several times, searching for answers. Then she fit herself back into Grant’s room, content to keep everything out of her life for as long as she could. She joked cynically, calling his storage room “Grant’s Tomb,” but the real tomb, she knew, had been his body.
Late one evening, feeling oddly immune to danger or, perhaps, simply unable to feel much of anything, Carli stood at the ferry terminal. The boat for Staten Island was docked, and the water was calm. She moved to the piers. They stood strong against the gently lapping water. “You bastards,” she barely whispered. “You got him. You finally got him.”
She walked along the empty streets near City Hall, convinced the powers that be were solving nothing at all, for weren’t they all still out? Sleeping church after sleeping church seemed to jump in her path. She scorned them all, but Carli knew her anger was simply a part of her grief. Unfortunately, she had felt it before. Just north of Grand Central Terminal, she saw two light-colored vans surrounded by a cluster of people. The Church Run. No doubt, Canada had met it at one stop or another along its route, along with others she knew. She didn’t stop. Couldn’t bear to. Wanted nothing to do with them. What she needed, more than anything, she couldn’t have.
Kristin was a good sounding board, as always. She even took a couple of afternoons off from work to sit with Carli on the window seat, either in silence or conversation.
“It’s ironic,” said Kristin one afternoon. “All this time, Grant claimed others were poisoned by the cult, and he ended up on the wrong end of something totally different ... but exactly the same.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Grant was right. Maybe the cult was poisoning people ... and they finally got him.”
Kristin gently took ahold of Carli’s arm. “I hate to say it, but I wondered that myself. It couldn’t be, could it?”
/> Carli lifted her eyes to Kristin’s. “Time will tell,” said Carli. “I’m banking on Canada being right.”
“What do you mean?”
“If others start making the news, we’ll know it was some lousy dealer. And if others are anything like Grant, they’ll drop like flies ... very soon.”
“In the meantime,” said Kristin, “you can’t make up for losing him by going out at all hours of the night by yourself. I mean, retracing all of his steps, and doing these night visits you’ve been doing, isn’t safe. And,” said Kristin slowly, “it won’t bring him back.”
“Canada comes with me sometimes,” said Carli. “And I don’t think we really look for anyone. Mostly we just walk the streets. Sometimes all we do is sit on a bench in the dark and listen to our hearts. At times, mine sounds like a kite soaring because I think of how loving he was. And how much I loved him. Other times, my heart feels like it’s gurgling down a drain, and it can’t get through, so water is backing up, and it’s making this awful sucking sound. That’s how it feels sometimes.”
Carli felt warm tears roll from her eyes. “I finally had him again.”
“I am so sorry, Sister. I really am.”
Carli sat alone through the cremation, clutching his turquoise ring; his police cap was with him. When the nighttime Run from First Church came creeping into the City two weeks later, Carli sought it out. Pastor Miller was welcoming, as always. She had already phoned him about Grant. He opened his arms to her, and she to him, knowing Pastor Miller had relied on Grant to help the same ones he was helping.
“It was a bad pill,” she said. “A couple of others made unexpected trips to the hospital on account of them. One other died.”
Carli visited Vera, Sarah, and Wilson as best she could. Visits felt empty. A few times, Canada walked with her, chaperoning and nudging the street clan. He even slept a few nights in a shelter, and, as promised, he had talked with Mercy. Yes, he was seriously considering a change. Carli was too. It was time to find Tessie again, and undertake a new mission, one that only Tessie Whitmore could tackle.
Thirty-One
Carli practically danced into Elena Rossi’s Galleria, eager to present her idea. The prospect of seeing Tessie Whitmore’s waterscapes and landscapes was already creating a buzz, but Carli knew she had more important works to share. Through all her days with Outreach, she had come to learn she had to connect the two worlds; the ones in the atriums with the ones outside. Of all the people who could help the people on the streets, by helping the ones reaching out, it was the patrons with their passion, compassion, resources, and clout. Carli had to reach them. And she, herself, as Tessie Whitmore, had just the right kind of clout to do it. So did Elena Rossi.
Carli quickly made her proposal: a show of street people. Not an exhibit of their art. That had been done plenty of times. Rather, an exhibit of them—portraits of people. Of Sarah and Vera, Harry and Grudge, Cedric and Wilson, and so, so many others. Individuals, who lived outside in the city. The patrons’ city. Tessie’s city. What’s more, Carli knew there had been a different beginning and, with any luck, could be a different end to their stories. It was time to show not only portraits, but the essential links between street lives, former lives, and future lives back inside. Elena applauded, in her typically-quiet-mannered but influential way. To add impact, the exhibit would travel the city. Rocky’s building would host the opening month, with Elena’s Galleria and Tessie Whitmore underwriting the exhibit’s move through many of the city’s protective glass walls. Patron parties at the Galleria and other exhibit locations, along with invited speakers, would up the ante. The exhibit, showcasing the need for Outreach, and the need for others to reach out, had Elena Rossi’s immediate support.
For the next weeks, oil fumes swelled in Carli’s nostrils as she brought the people she knew from the street to life in full color across paint-laden canvas. Thelma gladly lent photos from which Carli portrayed young Lucy Birdwell. Vera said, “Why not? Count me in. I’d like to show some folks a thing or two.” Then there was Sarah. When Carli met Sarah at the shelter, the woman said very little, which was no surprise, but Carli could tell she was glad to see her and relieved to be safe back inside. Sarah had been a dam ready to burst. When it finally broke free, it had all gushed out. Only it gushed out red. Red for the violence, for the beatings, for the misunderstandings. Her fiancé had been abused as a child. In turn, so was she … by him. It must have been hard coming from the one she most loved. Yet, she felt prolonged and stinging guilt that he had died in the crash, and she had not. Pigeons might well have become her only safe havens – if one left, another glided easily into place, and flapping wings couldn’t hurt her.
On the first of the month, Carli handed Neuman cash for the next month’s rental of the room at Cooper’s. Something inside her wasn’t ready to close the account. She found comfort in being as close to Grant as she could be in its dark and tinny innards.
Neuman had taken Grant’s death hard. It didn’t bother him that Carli took ownership of Grant’s room. Carli’s attempts to save Grant proved ample evidence that what was Grant’s was now hers. Halfway to the elevator, Neuman’s voice tripped her up. “Hey, you want his second unit too?” Carli came to an abrupt stop.
“Second unit?”
Neuman rode with Carli to the sixth floor. On the opposite end of Cooper’s, far around the outer wall from Grant’s living room, was Grant’s second rental. Neuman had thrown it in for half price. Had it been closer to his living quarters, Carli would have smelled the paint. Would have seen his other paintings before now. Together, she and Neuman lifted open the metal door to reveal a studio floor splattered with dried pigments, a corner of artist brushes, turpentine, tubes of oil paints, and canvas in every stage of completion. It suddenly made sense; explained the occasional paint on the cuffs of his sleeves and across his pants. Neuman left her to contemplate another mystery of her brother.
Later that same day, Carli approached mailbox 2647 at the city’s Main Post Office, wondering what additional information she was about to uncover. The key to the box had been hanging in Grant’s room, alongside the box reserved for his door locks. With the key engaged in the door to 2647, Carli reached inside and retrieved a single item – a post card. It directed her to collect the excess mail before it was destroyed. When Carli reached the mail counter, she was given a stack of letters bundled together and curled over by a pair of sturdy rubber bands. It must have been months since Grant had stopped in.
Seated under Grant’s canopy at Cooper’s, she stared at unpaid credit card bills, no doubt the result of manic spending. How did he even get the cards? If anyone could do it, he could. She came across a letter with a simple return address: New Jersey. It was postmarked nearly nine months prior, and looked as though it might have already been opened. Maybe Grant thought it was from the cult and never bothered to retrieve mail after it arrived. Carli tensed as she pulled out the letter. Inside was a name and address. Nothing more. Goosebumps rose on her arms; Carli now had access to one of Grant’s sons, and a new way to keep Henry in her heart. Maybe Grant knew exactly who sent it, and had left it in the box for safekeeping, or, at least, for the cult not to find in his bin.
Carli gazed around the tin walls until her sight fell into the corner of Grant’s room. Cedric stared back; a perfect portrait of a man with his cans. Grant had even captured the gap in his front teeth and all the personality that went with it. Carli felt herself brighten inside and out. Yes, she was adding it to the exhibit!
Over the course of the next month, Carli mounted several of Grant’s pieces and was privy to a surprise find: sketches of herself done in soft 5B graphite. A letter tucked between his renderings didn’t surprise her at all – an offer of admission to a Chicago art school. He hadn’t gone, of course. To Grant, the act of applying was probably another manic fling, a passing squall that he abandoned when he envisioned the framework of a new and better dream or fell apathetically ill to the barbell weight of depression.
Most likely, he never bothered to reply. The postmark was a few years prior.
An occasional tear streamed down her cheeks and soaked into Carli’s smocks as she worked. They were for Cedric and Sarah, Canada and Wilson, Vera and so many others. Of course, they were for Grant, as well. She cried at the irony of working like a maniac to meet the show’s deadline; cried with love, with grief, and for Grant’s missing the fruition of this worthy dream. Carli gained strength from her commitment, both to herself and to everyone on the streets and their broken families at home.
She stumbled through rounds, knowing she couldn’t abandon them. That had already been done to them at least once before, in one way or another, by loved ones, the system, or their own bodies. And now they had no Grant. She knew she was no replacement. No one was. With all his special qualities, troubles included, he sparkled brighter than anyone through the lunchroom, through the night, and through the protection of each and every corrugated cardboard home.
Canada helped Carli share the news of Grant’s passing with Cedric and Wilson. It was a big blow. Cedric accepted the news in stunned silence. It hurt to see him this way. Grant had worked so hard to help him. She, of all people, knew what it meant to have Grant bound into his life and then lose him. It would be up to Carli and Canada to check on Cedric. As Grant had said, you had to keep hoping for the best and forever lend support when they faced their biggest barriers. Wilson had simply cried when they sprang upon him the permanence of Grant’s absence. After the news sank in, he buried his head in his hands. He asked Carli to bring his coat from the closet. With the material surrounding him, Wilson clutched one of Grant’s coat buttons and quietly sobbed.
“It’ll be all right,” said Canada. “We’ll get through this together. I’m pretty sure he’s still with us.” He’d said the same to Cedric.
Sometimes when Canada walked with her, Carli wondered if Grant had ever spoken with him about taking care of her or taking care of the street clan. She sure wished Grant could speak with him now, but she realized she was actually learning patience. Wasn’t that what Grant had always recommended?