Sundowner Ubunta (9 page)

I was about halfway there when an odd noise attracted my attention. I stopped, glanced about, but the shadowy streets were barren, everyone happily snuggled up indoors on this refrigerated evening.

I kept on.

There it was again.

This time I didn’t stop, but slowed my pace considerably and controlled my breathing so I could make out the sound more clearly. It was definitely coming from behind me-clump, scrrrrrape, clump, scrrrrrape, clump, scrrrrrape.

I stopped.

The noise stopped.

I started up again.

So did the noise.

There was no doubt now. I was being followed.

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3/15/2011 11:02 PM

Clump, scrrrrrape. Clump, scrrrrrape. Clump, scrrrrrape.

I stopped and swung around as menacingly as I could. I peered through the falling darkness that seemed to be following me down the street-darkness and someone with a limp. But no one was there. Or was there? Were there places someone could be hiding? Behind trees, fences, cars? Yup, lots of hiding places.

Or was I being paranoid? Could be. Maybe the sound was someone shovelling their driveway, or pulling their garbage out to the curb. All I knew for certain was that I was getting colder by the minute, and I either had to start chasing my ghost in and out of every cubbyhole on Elliott Street or get indoors.

I turned and marched towards Ash House, my ears at the ready. Nothing. Either I’d imagined it, whoever it was was innocent and finished with whatever task they had been doing, or the bad guy was onto the fact that I was onto him and wisely decided to stay hidden.

Ash House was one of those enchanting properties that really stick out, like a chocolate-covered, jam-filled bismarck decorated with frilly icing, sitting in a bakery display window amongst a bunch of plain-Jane, powdered-sugar doughnuts. I could picture people walking by, wondering why their own homes and yards didn’t look nearly as good. The house balanced the unusual colour combination of an earthy burgundy mixed with highlights of harvest yellow and dusk blue. Small patches of lawn were bordered by trellises and clay pots that in spring would likely explode with colourful flowers and shrubs.

Benches and tables beckoned passersby to sit for a relaxing spell, amongst bird feeders and musical wind chimes. Edwardian lampposts welcomed me down a brick pathway to a rocking chair on the porch and a gaily painted front door with a big brass door knocker that looked like a lion’s head.

My knock on the cheery door was answered by a lovely looking, white-haired woman wearing a bright teal outfit, matching scarf, lots of gold jewellery and a wide smile.

“Hello, young man. May I help you?” she asked, showing an abundance of bright white dentures and a bit more excitement than I’m used to eliciting on unexpected visits. “Oh my stars, it’s gotten cold out there. You better come in before you catch something.” She grabbed my forearm and pulled me into the foyer, closing the door and shutting out the cold behind me. “Now, who was it you were looking for?” She gave me a quick, assessing look with inquisitive eyes and asked, “Are you Frank’s grandson, Ted?”

“No, I’m not,” I answered.

“Good thing,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “He hasn’t time for a visit tonight. It’s movie night, you know.”

“Oh. What are you seeing?”

She shrugged with another delightful grin. “Who cares?” She turned and invited me to follow her.

“Come along, the movie crowd is in here. That’s if you dare. We’re a rowdy group tonight!”

I followed her into what looked like a sitting room and library with a blazing fire in the fireplace, around which three others were huddling. Including the woman who answered the door, and excluding me, the average age in the room was about eighty, but the energy level was that of a gathering of twenty year olds on the first day of spring break.

“Everyone, this is…” The woman looked at me, shocked to realize she’d invited me in without knowing anything about me, never mind my name. She burst into gales of laughter and laid a delicate, gold-and-diamondized hand on my arm to steady herself. I noticed her nail polish was fresh and the exact same shade of teal as her outfit. “Well, I have no idea who this is!”

The others, a man and two other women turned to greet me. Their names were Frank, Hortense and Edda, and Loretta was the woman who answered the door.

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“Are you here to visit someone?” Frank asked.

“I thought he was your grandson,” Loretta confessed with another laugh as if it was the gosh-darn-funniest thing she’d heard all day.

“I was hoping to speak with Mr. Ash,” I told them.

“Ethan, oh well, you better hurry, he’s warming up the van to take us for dessert and a movie,” Frank said. “You don’t want to make us late,” he added with a decidedly bothered look on his face.

“What are you so worried about?” Loretta asked him. “You’re late for everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if you show up late for your own funeral.”

The others tittered while Frank, a tall, distinguished looking man, coughed up some phlegm.

“Look who’s talking,” he finally shot back, a little off on his timing. “It takes you so long to get ready in the morning you think lunch is breakfast.”

“What’s going on in here?” I heard a deep voice from the archway that led into the room. “I could hear the laughing all the way from the garage. You want the neighbours to complain again?”

I turned around to face a man I was certain was the same Ethan Ash who was once Matthew Moxley’s boyfriend. He’d changed only a little since Gladys Nussbottem last saw him; he was still six feet tall with long, brown hair and big feet, but the beefiness she’d talked about had been moulded into a sturdy, well-toned frame. His little-boy smile had matured into one of those confident, friendly, manly smiles that fill a face, from small crinkles around sparkling, laughing eyes to a matching set of dimples, one below each rosy cheek. I caught his eyes resting on mine for just a tad longer than was necessary before he strode up, offering a big paw of a hand.

“Oh hello, I’m Ethan. Didn’t know we had company,” he said as we shook. “These old folks been bothering you, sir?” he questioned me in mock seriousness.

I grinned and said, “Not yet, but I can certainly see it heading in that direction.”

The oldsters tut-tutted at the suggestion and started herding Ethan Ash and me out of the room toward the back of the house.

“We don’t want to be late,” Frank insisted again, obviously concerned about missing a minute of his night out on the town because of me.

“This young man is here to visit you,” Loretta told Ethan.

“Don’t be so pushy, Franklin MacIntyre, perhaps these boys need a moment alone,” intimated Edda, a near-ninety-year-old woman who used considerably less makeup and care with her wardrobe and hairstyle than Loretta, and something about her told me she probably wouldn’t be caught dead with a cup of tea, knitting needles or a blanket over her knees.

“There’s lotsa moments in the van, now let’s go,” instructed Frank, not easily deterred and not very subtly urging the women to move along.

“I don’t want to be late,” Hortense spoke up for the first time. She was a tall, horsey-looking woman with ruddy skin and a pageboy dyed coal black.

“We won’t be late,” Edda assured her. “We’re going for dessert first, remember? The movie’s not till nine-ten.”

“It’s an eight-person van, there’re only five of us. This Mr. Whoever can come with us,” proposed 43 of 170

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Frank, halfway down the hallway leading to, I guessed, his coat, galoshes, the back door, and a warmed-up van.

Ethan Ash and I listened to this exchange in silence and, for some unknown reason, I heard myself saying, “I can come along.”

“I call shotgun!” this from a disappearing Frank.

And so I found myself in an eight-person minivan, Mary Kay pink, heading downtown. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing, but I wasn’t even up front with my intended interviewee, instead finding myself in the back between Edda and Hortense discussing the
Farmer’s Almanac
forecast for a long, wet spring.

Eight o’clock on a Tuesday night in March at Colourful Mary’s is surprisingly busy, probably because Tuesday is cheap movie night at some theatres, and with the money they were saving, other people had the same idea as the Ash House residents: pre-movie dessert and coffee. The restaurant-slash-gay-bookstore is owned by Mary Quail-who looks after the business end of things-and Marushka Yabadochka-who looks after the cuisine end of things, and judging by their longevity and popularity they do a good job of both. Marushka was in the back preparing her baba’s famous
lyougoomeenah
(hot, creamy rice pudding with spiced apple and cinnamon) for the next day, and Mary had a rare evening off, so a hostess by the name of Crystal Beth showed our troop to a table for four-for Frank and the trio of women-and another for two-for me and Ethan Ash so we might have some privacy to talk.

“I’m sorry about all this,” Ethan apologized with the warm laugh that seemed to simmer just below the surface of whatever he said. “For dragging you all this way. As soon as we get them into the movie theatre I can drive you back to your car.”

“You’re not seeing the movie with them?” I asked.

“Sometimes I do, but although I like chick flicks as much as the next gay guy, four in one month is my limit. Poor Frank doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into.”

I nodded in hearty agreement and accepted a chai latte from a server.

“I still can’t believe they coerced you into coming with us,” Ethan said, taking a sip of his own hot drink. “I know your name, but that’s about it. They said you wanted to talk to me? Is there something I can do for you, Russell?”

I chuckled. “In other words, Ethan, you’re very politely asking me what the heck it is I want from you?”

He dimpled up. “Yeah, that’s about right.”

“I’m a detective. I’m looking for an ex-boyfriend of yours.”

“Oooooooo boy,” he responded quickly. “You’ll have to be more specific than that, or we could be here all night.”

My eyes widened with surprise until I caught the glint in his chestnut eyes and realized he was kidding me. Humph, that’s usually my shtick. “Matthew Moxley,” I told him.

I find that the very first reaction to any subject matter, verbal and non-verbal, is usually the most accurate one, and from Ethan I got a small smile that told me his memories of Matthew Moxley were not bad ones. “Matthew, yeah, what do you need to know?”

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“Do you know where he is?” I started with the question at the top of the heap, hoping this case was going to take a turn for the easy.

“I don’t, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen Matthew for several years.”

Blasted beeswax! Ah well, at least I was moving along Matthew’s life path. I’d gotten out of high school and into his early working and university days. Now with Ethan Ash I was nudging slowly but surely a little bit further.

“Can you tell me about when that was, and why you lost touch?”

“Oh sure. Matthew and I were together for four years. We met at the U of S. He was in Education, and I was pursuing a social work degree via a rather circuitous route we won’t go into right now,” he said with a self-deprecating quirk of his eyebrows. “We moved in together after knowing each other for about six months. Hey, who told you about us anyway?”

“Gladys Nussbottem,” I told him.

He sniggered. “Oh yeah, she was a real hoot. I kinda liked her though; she had a lot of rules, but you always knew where you stood with her, you know, nothing left to chance. Anyway, Matthew and I moved in together. He was a nice guy, but kind of a loner. He didn’t have many friends and no family to speak of…actually none at all that I knew of. He put all his energy into school and work and volunteer work.”

“Volunteer work?”

“Matthew is the kind of guy who falls in love with anyone who can’t help themselves, like kids or the elderly or disabled people. He volunteered for years on the pediatric ward at RUH and even helped out at Ash House whenever he could. My dad was running it then, and he just loved having Matthew around, so did the residents.” He smiled with warm reminiscences. “And, of course, so did I.”

I was nodding my head in wonderment as I listened to Ethan’s tale of Matthew Moxley’s life. This young man seemed to have completely turned himself around after a rough start in high school (once he left Matthew
Ridge
behind).

Although I couldn’t be certain, between Ethan’s testimony and what I’d heard from Clara Ridge, it seemed Matthew had never attempted to re-establish ties with his parents after leaving reform school, actually going to extreme lengths to avoid it by changing his surname and, really, his entire identity. It was as if he didn’t want to be found. But had his parents tried? Based on what I knew about Matthew’s father, I was pretty sure the answer was no.

The people from his life when he was Matthew Ridge didn’t seem to know about Matthew Moxley, but I wondered if the people from his life as Matthew Moxley knew about Matthew Ridge. It was time to find out. “Were you aware, Ethan, that Matthew Moxley was not his real name?”

Ethan Ash didn’t have to answer; the tale was told on his handsome face, now drawn into a stunned mask. “What are you talking about?” he finally whispered.

“Does the name Matthew Ridge mean anything to you?”

As if desperately wishing for something, anything, to steal his brain away from the altered reality I was presenting to him, he shook his head and shot a quick glance at his charges who were chortling away in a non-stop back-and-forth joke fest across the room. Yes, Ethan Ash’s relationship with Matthew Moxley had been over a long time ago, but that didn’t make what I was telling him any less incredible. “Are you absolutely sure we’re talking about the same guy?” he volleyed back weakly.

I nodded and fought off a desire to reach across the table and lay a comforting hand on Ethan’s.

Instead, I looked into his troubled eyes and told him the little I knew of his ex-boyfriend’s life before 45 of 170