31

Seeing my chopped up, bruised face later that morning, Louise panicked.

“What happened?”

“An accident,” I said. “Is Tony here?”

“He’s not with you?”

“No.”

“He didn’t come home last night. I don’t know where he is! He was supposed to take me shopping two hours ago. I thought he was with you.” She was dressed to go out, wearing dirty white sneakers and a coat that was too heavy for June. A canvas handbag dangled from her forearm.

“I just came down yesterday afternoon.”

“I always go shopping on Sunday morning. Always. It’s not so crowded,” she said. “You weren’t with him last night?”

“No.”

“You didn’t see him?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? They don’t let me drive because of my eyes. Tony takes me every Sunday. It’s the only thing I ask. Every Sunday. Then you show up and he does a Harry Houdini. Just like his vagrant father. What am I going to do? Where could he be?”

I thought of a wasted clown, showered, scrubbed, sprawled on a sofa or armchair, dozing off his triumph. “I’m sure he’s fine,” I said.

“Who’s going to take me shopping? I’m old. I’ll starve.”

“He’ll probably show up any minute. I was hoping to see him myself.”

“Not until I do my shopping you won’t.”

“Of course not.”

I looked at my watch. Depending on how late the victory party lasted, Tony could be hours. Louise paced in her filthy shoes, pausing as she reached the edges of her front porch to peer in each direction down the empty street.

“Say, Aunt Louise,” I said. “I have a car here. Why don’t I take you shopping?”

“You?”

“It would be my pleasure.”

“What kind of pleasure?”

“I only meant that I would be happy to keep you from starving this week.”

“Good. Because Tony told me your woman left you. But I’m an old lady.”

Strolling up and down the aisles of Bob and Lynn’s No Frills, Louise’s mood softened. A sale on canned tomatoes piqued her excitement.

“Get that case down for me, would you?” she ordered. “My mother would kill me if she knew I was buying canned tomatoes.”

“No need to shout,” Louise.

“But you know what—who needs the work? So fuck my mother.”

Selecting from among competing brands of apple juice, Louise took the conversation in another direction.

“What really happened to your face?”

“A fight,” I said.

“You mix with the wrong kind of people, Richard McKitrick. You’re more like Tony’s father than you want to think. So your woman left you, eh?”

“That’s right.”

“Moved in with her ex, is it?”

I pushed the cart a little faster, leaving my aunt a step behind.

“You have to look at the bright side,” she said. “At least you don’t have to take care of the brat with the weirdo name anymore. That’s a big relief for you. Just ask Tony’s father, if you can find the son-of-a-bitch. I hope he’s dead.”

She chose a bottle of Caesar salad dressing. Put it back. Chose Ranch instead.

“Still, dying alone’s no picnic. You wouldn’t believe what people’ll suffer not to die alone. I’ve seen it. Grab me a bottle of pickles. It hurts to stoop. Not the dills, the yum yums.”

At the mention of Sagipa, I thought of calling him, though this was not the right time. I resolved to send a note on Monday, asking about the move. Or maybe I’d wait until later in the week to see how he was adjusting to the new living arrangements. Then I thought I might invite him to lunch. Or to dinner after school. Making these imaginary plans, concerning myself with Sagipa’s well-being, supplanted my worries about Tony and gave me a good feeling. I felt responsible. I felt necessary. In a weird way, I was glad I hadn’t been in Toronto for their move. Being there would have precipitated a scene. With the moving van stacked with suitcases, claimed furniture, and boxes of books, Sagipa and I would have had to say something to each other, some sort of best wishes or farewell, something infused by the occasion with a kind of finality I did not want to accept.

With an impulse purchase of an Oh Henry bar (“I just suck on it. Otherwise the peanuts get stuck in my dentures.”), Louise finished her shopping. I loaded her bags into the trunk and drove off.

“If Tony’s not back, you’re going to have to help me take the bags in,” she said. “And there’s some things I’ll need put away.”

Back at the house, Tony still had not returned. It was past one. Maybe he met a woman? My thoughts whirred with hope. A nice drunken romp in the firmness of a strange bed. The dampening effects of booze bested by the novelty of a peek at a new breast, the danger of an unfamiliar mouth, wiggly-fingered exploration of boundaries. Maybe.

“Well, you might as well have lunch,” Louise said, releasing the bungee cord from the refrigerator door. “But you’ll have to open this damn bottle of mustard.”

The plates from the ham sandwiches cleared and washed of mustard smears, I set to completing a series of tasks requested by Tony’s mother: A clog in the dishwasher drain that needed removing, a broken chair to be lugged to the back alley. I returned a large mixing bowl to its proper place atop the cupboards.

“These bottles and cans need to go to the recycling,” she said, pointing to a cluster on the floor underneath the kitchen table. “It’s the blue bin around the side there.”

The gathered empties released odours of rye whiskey, tuna, and tomato soup. Outside, the air warmed and humidity descended in great circles like a deflating balloon. I remembered days like these and much worse, where the smog would settle into a yellow gauze and smoke from factory stacks adhered in low-hanging clouds, too sapped of energy to rise and disappear. I dumped the recyclables into the blue bin, breaking a bottle. Louise was lucky to have Tony around for these little chores, the daily difficulties that go with aging and being alone. My own mother took advantage of cheap local labour—a woman with barrels of cousins for back up—to keep order in the house in the Turks.

I knew I was years away from the day-to-day preoccupations of the aged, the dread, the paranoia. But here I was, a bachelor again, thinking about it.

My tasks completed, I accepted a chilled Fanta cream soda. “It’s either that or water. And you know the water here.” Louise said and passed me the can. “There’s a glass in the cupboard.”

Louise sat down and began to fold a napkin, the skin on her hands crumpled like unravelled tissue paper. She put the can down and sighed, broadsided by a wave of melancholy.

“You know what Tricky? Sometimes I miss the days when you two were closer. It was a better time. Tony was a good kid then.”

“Isn’t he a good person now?”

“He was happier then. Even with your rotten influence. When you left this city, I figured he’d be better off. Even with Bernard being born. I didn’t like being a grandmother so young. But you know what? They’d have been okay as a family.”

I was with her on that one. I would have liked to have seen the old Tony back, too. The kind of Tony who didn’t dress as a clown and paint fecal letters on his buttocks. And there was also that sense of honour I had always resented but now admired in a distant way, his once steady belief that he just had to be good and honest and the world would be a better place for it.

It was nearing three. I would have to leave soon to get the car back to the agency or be dinged an extra day’s fee. I could call Tony later in the week, but wanted the advantage and satisfaction of a face-to-face meeting. Somehow, I thought, some ancient intuition would inform me if Tony were making things up. I’d heard of novice poker players who, with the pot and the pressure mounting, would betray a losing hand with a tell—a scratch to the temple or a lick of the lips—something a seasoned opponent would notice and profitably exploit. But then there were complications. There was a difference between lying and simply being wrong. The same player who deliriously misreads his cards, truly convinced he has a winning hand, would never have the impulse to volunteer a tell.