Last Night in Montreal (16 page)

34.

Michaela’s father returned from the United States in a wheelchair. He spent hours staring out the window in the living room, blinking and sometimes shaking his head. Private nurses came and went. His car had gone sideways off a highway in the mountains, he said. When pressed he was able to give the date of the accident, but he was vague on the question of how exactly it had occurred. He said he might have fallen asleep at the wheel. Over the next two years he began walking on crutches, and then with a cane, stiffly, dragging one leg, not at all like the way he had walked before. He was given light assignments by the private investigative agency, mostly photographing cheating spouses from cars, and he drew a small pension from his years on the police force.

There was no more talk of Lilia’s case. He told Peter the trail had gone cold; Peter reported that Lilia’s mother had screamed at him and threatened to sue. But in the few years that followed Christopher used to disappear for a few days at a time, traveling back into the States whenever he could. Just a long weekend sometimes, driving from Friday to Monday and arriving at work on Tuesday exhausted and worn. He had decided before the accident not to chase them anymore, but the circumstances of the accident made him fear for Lilia’s safety. He would never bring her in, not anymore; all he wanted now was to watch over her. Michaela had been reading his notes for years, but his notes were only part of it: the other part was the way he woke up at night in his bed in Montreal and knew where Lilia was, the way he could glance at a map of the United States and realize with absolute, inexplicable certainty that she was in West Virginia, the way he tried to ignore his terrifying clairvoyance and forget where she was and couldn’t, the way he knew where she was but had to keep driving south to check, the horror of always being right: he saw her face in the crowd on Sunset Boulevard, he stepped into a hardware store in St. Louis at the moment she stepped out of the deli across the street, he stood on a corner in a run-down neighborhood in Chicago and watched her emerge from an apartment building down the block. After each sighting he returned north more depleted, more frightened, less intact.

The last time Michaela saw him was in the evening, when he’d just returned from the United States. She’d lost her job earlier in the day. In the six years since she’d left high school she’d fallen into a pleasant double life: she worked at a clothing store five days a week and walked on ferociously dangerous tightropes strung across alleyways in the old city on weekends. But her manager had fired her in the early afternoon for speaking the wrong language on the sales floor, walked her to the door, shaken her hand when they got to the street. “Good luck,” he’d said brightly, as if she were a needy stranger to whom he’d given a quarter, as though he hadn’t just put her out of a job. “I hope things go well for you.”

“I hope you die,” Michaela said sweetly. She turned away from his aghast expression and soundlessly moving lips and wandered down the street in the cool September light, hands in her pockets and shaking inside, and the store receded instantly into the distant past; it seemed inconceivable that she’d gone to work there just that morning. It seemed inconceivable that she’d been living a life so ordinary for so long now, so long, living in her father’s house in the almost-suburb of Westmount and folding clothes for a living. People were talking and laughing and the leaves on the trees hadn’t fallen yet. The air was bright. A little girl was playing a violin at the corner of St. Catherine and McGill; she was no older than ten, and her face was a vision of impeccable serenity. Michaela stood watching her face for a while, but she couldn’t hear the music above the din of her thoughts. A band of tourists passed, speaking English, and only then did she notice that everyone else walking past her was speaking French. It struck her that she’d rarely been so lonely, or so incompatible with the world, or so strange. She spent some time in the park and arrived home after nightfall, slightly drunk.

The newspapers had been collected from the front step. The front-step newspapers were a private marker; she let them pile up in the weeks when her father was traveling, and when they disappeared it meant he was home and she knew what to expect when she opened the front door. When she came in this evening, her father was eating dinner in the dining room. He looked up and smiled briefly as she walked into the room; she sank into a chair across the table from him and sat watching him eat for a moment.

“Where did you go this time?”

He swallowed, and took a sip of water before he answered. “Chicago,” he said.

“Chicago.”

“Yes.” He swallowed another spoonful of soup and took a bite of bread. “I was following a lead.”

“You were following Lilia.”

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which he finished his bread, sipped at his water again, and set the glass back down on the table with perhaps slightly more force than was strictly necessary.”

“Well,” he said, “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it, yes. I was interviewing a girl who knew her there.”

“What was her name?”

“Erica.”

“What was she like?”

He hesitated a moment. “She was sad,” he said. “How was your day?”

“I lost my job.”

“At the clothing store? I’m sorry,” he said. “You were laid off ? Business was slow?”

“Fired, actually. I said hello to a little kid on the sales floor. His mother complained to the manager.”

“Why would she complain to the manager? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” said Michaela. “I said hello in English.”

“Oh,” he said.

“She felt quite strongly about the issue, apparently.”

“Zealots,” said Christopher. He shook his head. “You just have to ignore them. What did your manager say?” It occurred to him that this was the most substantial conversation he could remember having with his daughter since she was nine or ten, or possibly ever, and he tried not to look pleased.

“He was regretful. Said she’d told him she was going to call the language commission, said he liked me but we’d been through this before and he couldn’t afford to be fined by the language police again, hoped I understood, but I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Understand. I don’t understand this place. I liked working there.”

“Well. I don’t think it’s right either. But maybe there’s a chance of getting your job back in a week or two, once he calms down a little. How did you leave off with him?”

“I told him to drop dead,” said Michaela.

He wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. There was a certain look about her eyes that reminded him of her mother. He dipped a piece of bread in his soup and ate without looking at her.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve got some news of my own. I’m selling the house. An appraiser’s coming by tomorrow.”

“What? Why?”

“I need the money,” Christopher said, “to be honest with you.”

“You have a job.”

“I do,” he said. “Photographing people from cars, mostly. But I want to do some traveling, so I’m going to have to leave the job for a while.”

“Don’t you have savings?” she asked.

“I did,” he said.

“But where will we live?”

“Well,” he said, “I’ll be traveling. And you, well, I thought maybe you might want to find your own place one of these days. Have a little independence, maybe live closer to downtown?”

“But I just lost my job.”

He had nothing to say to this.

“By traveling,” she said, “you mean following Lilia?”

“Yes. It’s an open case.”

“There isn’t a retainer? You said once there’s always a retainer when you’re following someone.”

“It ran out a while ago. The contract expired.”

“There’s something that I don’t quite understand,” she said.

He glanced up briefly, and then down at his soup. She was making him uneasy. He reached out with his left hand and his fingertips passed nervously over the smooth handle of his walking cane, leaning against the table by his side.

“What’s that?” He lifted the glass of water a few inches, changed his mind, lowered it to the table again, and adjusted his napkin on his lap.

“Why you’re still following her.”

“She’s an abducted child,” he said. “That’s what I
do
.”

“An abducted child? Do you know how old she is?”

He swallowed a spoonful of soup and chased it with a sip of water. He set the glass down on the table and then, with a thumb and two fingers, moved it carefully an inch to the left.

“Of course I know how old she is,” he said quietly. He didn’t take his eyes from the glass. “I know almost everything about her.”

“She’s two months older than I am. Do you know how old I am?”

A spoonful of soup was halfway to his mouth; he lowered it back into the bowl and touched a corner of napkin to his lips.

“You’re my daughter,” he said.

“It seems very strange to me,” Michaela continued, very quietly now, “that you would chase a twenty-two-year-old woman to Chicago. She was abducted quite some time ago, wasn’t she?”

“Don’t,” he whispered. He wanted to explain it to her: the cufflink he’d found on the floor that morning, that tie on the floor of the closet, the way Elaine had sometimes looked at him when he got into bed at night, with such
contempt,
as if he couldn’t find a lost sock, let alone a missing child, but it came to him suddenly that it was years too late.

“You’ve been chasing her since we were both eleven years old,” said Michaela relentlessly. She felt giddy and dangerous, slightly drunk, and she couldn’t stop talking although she knew she should. “And now she isn’t a child anymore. Not that that negates the crime, but then, if you were trying to solve the crime, you’d be chasing her father, wouldn’t you?”

He didn’t speak. A muscle in his jaw worked uselessly, and his face was slowly turning red.

“You’d be chasing Lilia’s father,” she said, “except that you’re obsessed with Lilia. And I wish you’d just admit it.”

“Admit what?” His voice was a croak.

“That you want to fuck her,” Michaela said.

It would have been difficult to predict what happened next. He had, after all, never even hit her. But then the glass in his hand was abruptly airborne, almost of its own volition; he couldn’t remember deciding to throw it. He watched the trajectory unfold in slow motion, the girl in the gradually-becoming-clearer line of flight, the intersection of her forehead with the edge of the glass, her backward fall, the sound she made. His cane was in his hand, although he couldn’t remember having reached for it; he made his way around the table and saw her lying still and white in the overturned chair. There was blood on her forehead. He was aware in that instant of nothing but color and light: the deep-blue evening behind his ghostly reflection in the dining room windows, and fragments of light from the chandelier caught in the broken angles of glass, spilled water. He had shocked himself. He reeled backward, touched the wall with his hand and slid down it. He was clutching his cane with both hands, white-knuckled. The room was moving like a boat on rough water.

When he opened his eyes she was staggering to her feet, bleeding from the forehead, backing up and clutching the table. She swore softly and spat at his feet. She left the room like a sleepwalker, leaning to the right. The door slammed. He heard her fall once on the gravel outside, her receding stumbling footsteps, and then silence. The room had stopped spinning in her absence, but everything was too bright. He sat still for a long time, looking at the way light caught in the angles of broken glass and spilled water and along the glinting handle of her soup spoon, on the varnish of her chair lying on its back, in a smear of blood on the hardwood where she’d fallen.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or to his ex-wife; he talked to Michaela’s mother sometimes, the old Elaine, the circus Elaine who hadn’t disappeared yet, before they were detective and real estate agent and before Michaela was even born, playing on the midway before the show opened, riding together in the house trailer from town to town and looking out the windows at the prairie passing by, holding hands in the shadows behind the tent. It hadn’t really been so bad in retrospect, traveling around like that, and he found himself speaking to her sometimes in moments of disarray. He stood up unsteadily and returned very slowly to his side of the table, leaning heavily on the cane as he sank into the chair and lifted his spoon. He found himself looking at the spoon for several long minutes, almost unsure what to do with it, but he eventually resumed eating his soup.

35.

Erica was outside Lilia’s apartment in the morning. The last morning, the day Lilia left Chicago; she stepped out with her suitcase and Erica was there on the sidewalk, blue-haired and shivering in an old velvet smoking jacket the color of peaches. She was leaning against the side of the building, staring at her feet, or perhaps her eyes were closed—her hair fell over her face—and Lilia had the impression that she’d been standing there for some time. The lines of her shoulders spoke of exhaustion and night.

Lilia said her name, and she looked up quickly with swollen eyes.

“It’s so early, Erica, what are you—”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

Lilia set down her suitcase. Erica took a cautious step toward her, stumbled forward and was suddenly in Lilia’s arms. She was wearing perfume; she smelled like roses and cigarettes.

“Erica,” Lilia whispered into her blue hair, “Erica, I’m so sorry, I really am . . .”

“What’s in New York City?” Erica’s voice was muffled against Lilia’s shoulder. “Why won’t you stay with me? You don’t know
anyone
there.”

“I’m so sorry, but I have to go.” Erica’s shoulders were shaking now. Lilia held her awkwardly. “You knew I wasn’t staying here long when you met me.” Her own words sounded unforgivable when she heard them, but she closed her eyes and pressed on nonetheless. “You know I always leave again.”

Erica pushed away from her then. She was still crying, but she wouldn’t meet Lilia’s eyes anymore. Blue hair falling over her face. She turned and almost seemed to drift as she walked away down the cracked sidewalk, hands deep in her pockets. An empty, narrow-shouldered figure, hair like tropical water and shadows gathering underfoot, slouching and broken on the predawn street. At the corner she turned left and she was gone then, but it was several minutes before Lilia could pick up the suitcase and turn away from the scene of the crime, and she kept looking back. Half expecting that Erica would come running up behind her, half hoping she would.

Lilia stood at the corner with her suitcase waiting for the light to change, and all she could think of was dancing with Erica last night, when she told Erica she was leaving and at first Erica was acting so hopeful and so adorably brave; she gave Lilia her silver chain necklace to wear—“to remember me by,” she actually said— and it was a while before it warmed to Lilia’s skin. “So you’re finally going,” Erica said, “just like you said you would.” Just like I said I would. I’m sorry. Yes. Tomorrow morning I’ll be leaving. The ticket’s in my pocket. We are almost out of time. Lilia didn’t say,
And you’re the first one who ever mattered enough to me to warn in advance that I’m leaving.
“Well, good for you,” Erica said. The beginning of the only argument Lilia ever had with her. “I think it’s courageous.”

Erica’s voice trembled a little. She went upstairs to the dance floor and danced ferociously. She was beautiful. Lilia followed her up there and watched her for a while, leaning against a wall, not sure what to do with herself, and then she moved to join Erica in the throng. Thinking as she danced that she could just get a refund on the ticket, that this one time perhaps she could stay, and knowing even in the midst of these thoughts that it was hopeless: if she didn’t leave now she’d only leave later, and Erica danced with her eyes closed, sweat and tears shining on her face. Lilia danced in front of her for a few minutes, but Erica refused to look at her. Later they sat together in the mezzanine of the bar and argued about courage and bus schedules. The second-to-last time Lilia ever saw her.

The last time Lilia saw her she drifted away around the corner, the way newspapers drift when they’re caught in slow wind. Every detail of the moment was clear to Lilia later, when she closed her eyes in a departing bus and tortured herself with the scene: Erica disappearing around the corner in the watery predawn light. The striking, final lines of the apartment buildings of this particular neighborhood, the kind of low ugly buildings that look to stand a fair chance of surviving a nuclear holocaust with their freight of cockroaches intact. The sidewalk shining a little, cement fraught with crushed glass, the neon lights of the restaurant across the street. A police siren in the distance. A decrepit woman passing by on the opposite sidewalk, shuffling unevenly and pushing a cart heaped with cans and old clothing. The quiet stoicism of a man across the street, leaning on the wall of the restaurant. One hand in his pocket, the other on his cane. Watching her, perhaps, from under his fedora.