The Best American Short Stories 2013 (27 page)

“There should be acknowledgment, that’s all I mean, places where people can go if they are in a situation. And not be all ashamed and guilty about it. If you think I mean brothels, you are right. If you think prostitutes, right again. Do you understand?”

Jackson, looking over her head, said yes.

“I feel so released. It’s not that I don’t feel the tragedy, but I have in a way got outside the tragedy, is what I mean. It is just the mistakes of humanity that are tragic, if you see what I mean. You mustn’t think because I’m smiling that I don’t have compassion. I have serious compassion. But I have to say I am relieved. At the same time. I have to say I somehow feel happy. You are not embarrassed by listening to all this?”

“No.”

“You realize I am in a slightly abnormal state. I know I am. There is this abnormal clarity. I mean in everything. Everything so clear. I am so grateful for it.”

The woman on the bed had not let up on her rhythmical groaning all through this. Jackson felt as if that refrain had entered into his head.

He heard the nurse’s squishy shoes in the hall and hoped they would enter this room. They did.

The nurse said that she had to give Belle her sleepy-time pill. He was afraid she would tell him to kiss her good night. He had noticed that a lot of kissing went on in the hospital. He was glad when he stood up that there was no mention of it.

“See you tomorrow.”

He woke up early and decided to take a walk before breakfast. He had slept all right but told himself he ought to take a break from the hospital air. It wasn’t that he was worried so much by the change in Belle. He thought it was possible or even probable that she would get back to normal, either today or in a couple more days. She might not even remember the story she had told him. Which would be a blessing.

The sun was well up, as you could expect at this time of year, and the buses and streetcars were already pretty full. He walked south for a bit, then turned west onto Dundas Street, and after a while found himself in the Chinatown he had heard about. Loads of recognizable and many not-so-recognizable vegetables were being trundled into shops, and small, skinned, apparently edible animals were already hanging up for sale. The streets were full of illegally parked trucks and noisy, desperate-sounding Chinese. All the high-pitched clamor sounded like they had a war going on, but probably to them it was just everyday. Nevertheless he felt like getting out of the way, and he went into a restaurant run by Chinese but advertising an ordinary breakfast of eggs and bacon. When he came out of there, he intended to turn around and retrace his steps.

But instead he found himself heading south again. He had got onto a residential street lined with tall and fairly narrow brick houses. They must have been built before people in the area felt any need for driveways or possibly before they even had cars. Before there were such things as cars. He walked until he saw a sign for Queen Street, which he had heard of. He turned west again and after a few blocks he came to an obstacle. In front of a doughnut shop he ran into a small crowd of people. They were stopped by an ambulance, backed right up on the sidewalk so you could not get by. Some of them were complaining about the delay and asking loudly if it was even legal to park an ambulance on the sidewalk, and others were looking peaceful enough while they chatted about what the trouble might be. Death was mentioned, some of the onlookers speaking of various candidates and others saying that was the only legal excuse for the vehicle being where it was.

The man who was finally carried out, bound to the stretcher, was surely not dead or they’d have had his face covered. He was not being carried out through the doughnut shop, as some had jokingly predicted—that was some sort of dig at the quality of the doughnuts—but through the main door of the building. It was a decent enough brick apartment building five stories high, housing a Laundromat as well as the doughnut shop on its main floor. The name carved over its main door suggested pride as well as some foolishness in its past.

Bonnie Dundee.

A man not in ambulance uniform came out last. He stood there looking with exasperation at the crowd that was now thinking of breaking up. The only thing to wait for now was the grand wail of the ambulance as it found its way onto the street and tore away.

Jackson was one of those who didn’t bother to walk away. He wouldn’t have said he was curious about any of this, more that he was just waiting for the inevitable turn he had been expecting, to take him back to where he’d come from. The man who had come out of the building walked over and asked if he was in a hurry.

No. Not specially.

This man was the owner of the building. The man taken away in the ambulance was the caretaker and superintendent.

“I’ve got to get to the hospital and see what’s the trouble with him. Right as rain yesterday. Never complained. Nobody close that I can call on, so far as I know. The worst, I can’t find the keys. Not on him and not usually where he keeps them. So I got to go home and get my spares and I just wondered, could you keep a watch on things meanwhile? I got to go home and I got to go to the hospital too. I could ask some of the tenants, but I’d just rather not, if you know what I mean. Natural curiosity or something.”

He asked again if Jackson was sure he would not mind and Jackson said no, fine.

“Just keep an eye for anybody going in, out, ask to see their keys. Tell them it’s an emergency, won’t be long.”

He was leaving, then turned around.

“You might as well sit down.”

There was a chair Jackson had not noticed. Folded and pushed out of the way so the ambulance could park. It was just one of those canvas chairs but comfortable enough and sturdy. Jackson set it down with thanks in a spot where it would not interfere with passersby or apartment dwellers. No notice was taken of him. He had been about to mention the hospital and the fact that he himself had to get back there before too long. But the man had been in a hurry, and he already had enough on his mind, and he had already made the point that he would be as quick as he could.

Jackson realized, once he got sitting down, just how long he’d been on his feet walking here or there.

The man had told him to get a coffee or something to eat from the doughnut shop if he felt the need.

“Just tell them my name.”

But that Jackson did not even know.

When the owner came back he apologized for being late. The fact was that the man who had been taken away in the ambulance had died. Arrangements had to be made. A new set of keys had become necessary. Here they were. There’d be some sort of funeral involving those in the building who had been around a long time. Notice in the paper might bring in a few more. A troublesome spell, till this was sorted out.

It would solve the problem. If Jackson could. Temporarily. It only had to be temporarily.

Yes, all right with him, Jackson said.

If he wanted to take a little time, that could be managed. Right after the funeral and some disposal of goods. A few days he could have then, to get his affairs together and do the proper moving in.

That would not be necessary, Jackson said. His affairs were together and his possessions were on his back.

Naturally this roused a little suspicion. Jackson was not surprised a couple of days later to hear that this new employer had made a visit to the police. But all was well, apparently. He had emerged as just one of those loners who may have got themselves in too deep some way or another but have not been guilty of breaking any law.

It looked as if there was no search party under way.

As a rule, Jackson liked to have older people in the building. And as a rule, single people. Not zombies. People with interests. Talent. The sort of talent that had been noticed once, made some kind of a living once, though not enough to hang on to all through a life. An announcer whose voice had been familiar on the radio during the war but whose vocal cords were shot to pieces now. Most people probably believed he was dead. But here he was in his bachelor suite, keeping up with the news and subscribing to the
Globe and Mail
, which he passed on to Jackson in case there was anything of interest to him in it.

Once there was.

Marjorie Isabella Treece, daughter of Willard Treece, longtime columnist for the Toronto
Telegram
, and his wife Helena (née Abbott) Treece, has passed away after a courageous battle with cancer. Oriole paper please copy. July 18, 1965.

No mention of where she had been living. Probably in Toronto. She had lasted maybe longer than he had expected. He didn’t spend a moment’s time picturing the rooms of work he’d done on her place. He didn’t have to—such things were often recalled in dreams, and his feeling then was more of exasperation than of longing, as if he had to get to work on something that had not been finished.

In the building of Bonnie Dundee, there had to be consideration of human beings, as he tackled the upkeep of their surroundings and of what the women might call their nests. (The men were usually uneasy about any improvement meaning a raise in the rent.) He talked them round, with good respectful manners and good fiscal sense, and the place became one with a waiting list. “We could fill it all up without a loony in the place,” said the owner. But Jackson pointed out that the loonies, as he called them, were generally tidier than average, besides which they were a minority. There was a woman who had once played in the Toronto Symphony and an inventor who had truly just missed out on a fortune for one of his inventions and had not given up yet, though he was over eighty. And a Hungarian refugee actor whose accent was not in demand but who still had a commercial running somewhere in the world. They were all well behaved, even those who went out to the Epicure Bar every day at noon and stayed till closing. Also they had friends among the truly famous who might show up once in a blue moon for a visit. Nor should it be sneezed at that the Bonnie Dundee had an in-house preacher, on shaky terms with whatever his church might be, but always able to officiate when called upon.

People did often stay until his office was necessary.

An exception was the young couple named Candace and Quincy who never settled their rent and skipped out in the middle of the night. The owner happened to have been in charge when they came looking for a room, and he excused himself for his bad choice by saying that a fresh face was needed around the place. Candace’s. Not the boyfriend’s. The boyfriend was a crude sort of jerk.

On a hot summer day Jackson had the double back doors, the delivery doors, open, to let in what air he could while he worked at varnishing a table. It was a pretty table he’d got for nothing because its polish was all worn away. He thought it would look nice to put the mail on, in the entryway.

He was able to be out of the office because the owner was in there checking some rents.

There was a light touch on the front doorbell. Jackson was ready to haul himself up, cleaning his brush, because he thought the owner in the midst of figures might not care to be disturbed. But it was all right, he heard the door being opened, a woman’s voice. A voice on the edge of exhaustion, yet able to maintain something of its charm, its absolute assurance that whatever it said would win over anybody who came within listening range.

She would probably have got that from her father the preacher. He remembered thinking this before.

This was the last address she had, she said, for her daughter. She was looking for her daughter. Candace her daughter. She had come here from British Columbia. From Kelowna where she and the girl’s father lived.

Ileane. That woman was Ileane.

He heard her ask if it was possible for her to sit down. Then the owner pulling out his—Jackson’s—chair.

Toronto so much hotter than she had expected, though she knew Ontario, had grown up there.

She wondered if she could possibly beg for a glass of water.

She must have put her head down in her hands as her voice grew muffled. The owner came out into the hall and dropped some change into the machine to get a 7-Up. He might have thought that more ladylike than a Coke.

Around the corner he saw Jackson listening, and he made a gesture that he, Jackson, should take over, being perhaps more used to distraught tenants. But Jackson shook his head violently. No.

She did not stay distraught long.

She begged the owner’s pardon and he said the heat could play those tricks today.

Now about Candace. They had left within a month, it could be three weeks ago. No forwarding address.

“In such cases there usually isn’t—”

She got the hint.

“Oh, of course I can settle—”

There was some muttering and rustling while this was done. Then, “I don’t suppose you could let me see where they were living—”

“The tenant isn’t in now. But even if he was, I don’t think he’d agree to it.”

“Of course. That’s silly.”

“Was there anything else you were particularly interested in?”

“Oh no. No. You’ve been kind. I’ve taken your time.”

She had got up now, and they were moving. Out of the office, down the couple of steps to the front door. Then the door was opened and street noises swallowed up her farewells if there were any.

However she had been defeated, she would get herself out with a good grace.

Jackson came out of hiding as the owner returned to the office.

“Surprise,” was all the owner said. “We got our money.”

He was a man who was basically incurious, at least about personal matters. A thing that Jackson valued in him.

Of course he would like to have seen her. He hadn’t got much of an impression of the daughter. Her hair was blond but very likely dyed. No more than twenty, though it was sometimes hard to tell nowadays. Very much under the thumb of the boyfriend. Run away from home, run away from your bills, break your parents’ hearts, for a sulky piece of goods, a boyfriend.

Where was Kelowna? In the west somewhere. British Columbia. A long way to come looking. Of course she was a persistent woman. An optimist. Probably that was true of her still. She had married. Unless the girl was out of wedlock and that struck him as very unlikely. She’d be sure, sure of herself the next time, she wouldn’t be one for tragedy. The girl wouldn’t be, either. She’d come home when she’d had enough. She might bring along a baby, but that was all the style nowadays.