The clouds are making beautiful shapes just beyond my little oval window. The flight so far has been smooth, the plane cutting through these shapes like icing. I could stay up here forever, but the flight attendant’s fuck-me gaze is slowly but surely shifting to fuck-you as I linger over my meal tray. She has tried to snatch it up several times and I’ve only saved it by latching on with an iron grip. But if there was a fight to the death between us, my money would be on her. I would never bet against a woman who could wrestle her hair into a bun that uncompromising. A bomb could blow this plane out of the sky and among the wreckage they would find a perfect sphere of hair, still intact, with not a honey-gold strand out of place.
When we land, the U.S. border agent seems skeptical that my reason for traveling here is “tourism” but probably can’t imagine what damage I could do to Detroit that hasn’t been done to it already. From the airport I rent a Chevy Impala and, driving through the city in the late morning light, I can see why he stopped giving a shit. Abandoned buildings everywhere. Run-down streets. People who won’t look each other in the eye. It is a violent shock to my system, especially coming from one of the most beautiful—and least affordable—cities in the world, where so many people want to live that almost nobody gets a chance.
To this. Detroit.
It isn’t hot or smoky like Vancouver was when I left it, but there is something thick about the air here. Something heavy. It smacks me straight in the nose, like a jab that’s come and gone before I’ve had time to react. Or maybe my mind is playing tricks again.
I check into a cheap motel in Midtown and try to get my bearings. I was told that it was in a good pocket of the city, near the university, but the demolished lots on the block tell a different story. The motel itself seems okay and the sheets are clean but in a faded flower pattern that is unbearably hopeful, given the motel’s depressing location. I can’t bring myself to get into that bed but I don’t want to go outside until I must, so I sit with the curtains drawn, in an armchair that might just collapse under the weight of one more ass. I’m living on the edge, though, so I don’t give it another thought.
I dream of a little girl covered in a man’s blood, who slips in it as she opens her mouth in a silent scream and scuttles away. Then I wake up feeling like the city of Detroit crumbled while I slept and most of the debris has fallen on top of me. I have not thought of that little girl in a very long time. And I have never, not once before today, dreamed of her. It’s a good thing that it’s almost evening, and time to pay a visit. So I can push all the happy childhood memories aside for now.
I don’t bother looking at maps, because there’s too much in the world that seems incomprehensible to me right now to pay attention to street signs and operate a moving vehicle at the same time. I just follow the GPS on my phone until I arrive at the address on the postcards. The two-story brick house must have been nice once, but its glory has faded over time, in tune with the decline of the entire city. From a quick web search last night, I found out that this neighborhood in southwest Detroit used to be a predominantly white area, but is now more mixed than it had been in its heyday when Americans had dreams and the Motor City was the place they came to live them.
The man who opens the door looks as ancient as the paint chipping off the porch and is so heavy that the walk to the door seems to have taken up the store of strength that he has left for this evening. But his eyes are sharp and clear as he looks at me standing in his doorway. Behind him I can see a little girl peeking out. She puts her finger to her lips. A request for my silence.
I ignore her and focus my attention on the man. The sun is setting just over my shoulder, cradling us both in soft pink light. I don’t say anything for a moment. Now that I’m here I wonder if perhaps he’ll see something of my father’s features on my face. I stay silent, a part of me hoping for recognition.
“Who the hell are you?” he says, by way of greeting.
“My name is Nora Watts. I think you knew my dad, Samuel.”
His startled gaze sweeps over me, taking in my jeans and hooded sweatshirt, and the way I stand with my right shoulder angled slightly back and my left foot a half a step forward. Like a fighter. He moves back and is about to close the door in my face. “I don’t know who that is.”
I stick a foot in the doorway to buy myself some time as I search my coat pocket. I pull out the postcards that were sent to my father, held together now by the scrap of blue silk, and show them to him. “Do you know who sent these? They came from this address.”
He pretends not to look at the cards, but I know from a tiny shift of his gaze that he has seen them. “Get out of here. I’ve got nothing to say to you.” I take an unconscious step back at the fury in his voice. He slams the door in my face, but not before I see a hint of something that I recognize in his expression. Something that looks a bit like despair. I linger on the porch for a moment, staring at the little girl who is peeking through the curtains at the nearby window. I would bet the rental car that I have recklessly declined to put additional insurance on that he has not only seen the postcards before, but that it was his hand that addressed them.
Because when I asked him if he knew my father, he lied flat out to my face. I’m almost certain of it. It’s that little bit of intuition that I used to get when someone lies rearing its head again. The ability that used to come so easily to me now only trickles through in dribs and drabs, but there is enough of it still left to make me wonder at the man who has just slammed the door in my face.
The little girl opens the window and beckons to me. Her brown hair is piled into a messy ponytail at the top of her head and she’s wearing eyeglasses with blue frames that keep slipping down her nose. She has a lollipop in her hand, which she now offers to me. I don’t know how to assess the ages of children, never having been a part of Bonnie’s upbringing, but I think she might be just slightly older than a toddler. Maybe kindergarten age. I take the lollipop, unwrap it, and hand it back to her. “For you,” I say.
“Sanks.” Her two front teeth are missing and she has a slight lisp. She pokes her tongue through the hole and grins at me. I may have just encountered the most adorable creature that has ever existed.
“Is that your dad who answered the door?”
She shakes her head.
“Your grandad?”
She nods.
“Does he ever leave the house?”
That gets me a deep gut laugh, the way that children do, that is as surprising as it is delightful. If anything could melt this cold heart of mine, it would be a laugh like that.
“We go to school,” she says, still grinning. Then she puts her finger to her lips again, waits a moment while she listens to a sound inside, then goes back to smiling at me. It’s astounding to learn the young age at which girls start keeping secrets from the alpha males in their lives.
“Do you like it? School?”
Another headshake.
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “You don’t really need it. You’ve got to make your own way in the world, you know what I’m saying? Don’t end up like me. Be your own person. Follow the money.”
She nods very seriously at this piece of unsolicited wisdom. I unwrap the blue silk ribbon from the postcards and hand it to her. “Walk extra slow tomorrow when you go to school, okay?”
I step off the porch and head back to my rental car, which I parked around the block. When I get to the spot, it takes me a minute to realize that the Impala is well and truly gone. Stolen. Disappeared. I cross the street toward the bus stop nearby. The people under the shelter make no attempt to create space. They stand there with their eyes carefully empty, knowing full well that my car vanished in front of them, but nobody’s willing to discuss it. Just an everyday occurrence. Nothing special about it.