THE NIGHTMARES WERE back. The new me, the real me, would no longer have nightmares. That was the deal. I made this pledge every night for almost a month before going to bed. And it worked, until it didn’t. By July the nightmares found my new address and slid in with the heat. The fire, the shattered glass piercing me, the blood, the screaming. And worst of all…my mother hurting me. I must have been screaming, because the pounding on my door woke me up. It was the professor.
“Miss Royce, are you okay? Miss Royce! Toni, please answer.”
I was disoriented as I felt my way to the door. The professor looked moderately disoriented himself. He swayed as he gripped his glass. He apologized for his condition as soon as I opened the door.
“No, sir, please. I should be the one to apologize. It’s the dreams. I haven’t had one since I came to Toronto. I thought I left them back at the orphanage. My friends, they knew…” And at the mere mention of them my lip started to quiver, whether from missing them or the shame of the dreams I couldn’t be sure. “I am very, very sorry to have disturbed you, sir.”
“Oh dear, Miss Royce. Well, I am certainly in no position to give anyone life advice. However”—he leaned against the doorjamb to steady himself—“may I gently suggest that you find the source of your demons before your demons overtake you. Perhaps you need to find some answers.”
“Yes, sir.” I was snuffling. “I will, sir.” Was that it? I had to get to the bottom of it all? What was the bottom? I couldn’t count on the professor continuing to be as understanding about my midnight screams as Betty and the others had been. “I promise, and I apologize again for disturbing your evening.”
“Not at all, Miss Royce.” He took a sip from his glass. “Sweet dreams.”
Not likely. I was afraid to go back to bed. I turned Joe’s little transistor on real low and listened to CHUM 1050 right up until I thought I heard Grady stirring downstairs. I also started and stopped a hundred letters to Betty. When the Beach Boys came on at 9:05 AM with “I Get Around,” I got up to visit Grady.
I knocked on the parlor door.
Oh my…
“What’s the matter? Never seen anyone hung over before?” She tightened the sash on her silk robe. “What am I saying?” She snorted. “I keep forgetting you’re greener than grass.” Grady’s hands shook as she lit a cigarette. Her lipstick was smeared. Her hair was stuck flat against the left side of her head but seemed to be trying to make a break for it from the right.
“You’re ill! You shouldn’t be up.” I took her by the arm and led her to her favorite armchair. “I’m going to make you some tea and toast and set you right!”
“Geez, kid, are they all like you in that little twinkle town of yours? I’m just hungover. Eddy and I got into the sauce pretty good last night. Thing is, I pass out but I can’t sleep. You know?”
Of course, I didn’t. “Eddy?”
“Professor Zeigler. Even though he can outdrink me, I’m a bad influence on him. I’m a bad influence on everyone.” She sighed and stubbed out her cigarette. “But I won’t say no to tea, toast and aspirins. They’re in the cupboard above the sink.” She burrowed into the chair and put her feet up on the ottoman.
I started fixing things in the kitchen. What was wrong with this woman? Grady was clearly a major glamorous somebody, but she kept refreshing herself into a stupor. Mrs. Hazelton would have set her straight in a flash.
I, on the other hand, was flummoxed. She was the adult, after all. Adults were another species, all-knowing and all-powerful. I may have rebelled against that at the orphanage, but it was safe to do so there. The rules were clear.
When I returned with the tray, Grady was smearing white goop on her face and wiping it off with tissues. “Never use soap and water, kid. Ruins the complexion. I’ll get you some of this.” She lifted the jar—Pond’s Cold Cream. “I got a source. It’s practically free.”
“Thank you. Uh, I was hoping we could talk a bit.”
“Sure, kid. Take a load off.” She moved her feet over so I could sit on the ottoman. She dry-swallowed four aspirins before picking up her teacup. “Shoot.”
“Well, do you remember the other night at the Purple Onion?” Grady smiled. She actually looked more girlish without all of her fancy makeup on. “Mr. Tyson…”
“Listen up, Toni, you don’t even know what a hangover is. How do you think you could possibly have handled Ian Tyson?”
“Handled?”
“I’m assuming you’re a virgin?”
“What?” I just about fell off the ottoman. “Of course I am!”
“Ever been kissed?”
Okay, I’d been dreaming about getting kissed since forever—longer, even. I examined the floor.
“Thought so, and here you have one of the country’s biggest playboys gunning for your shorts. Honey, you wouldn’t have stood a chance, you and your little romantic dreams.”
“Romantic dreams? Gunning for me, like he wanted to…? No! Eeeww! He wouldn’t! He couldn’t! Mr. Tyson is my father!”
“What the…?” The toast dropped onto the plate, and Grady reached for a cigarette. “Why in God’s name would you think that?”
I stood up. “Well, there’s the music thing. I got music in my bones, except I don’t have any real aptitude for it, but you know my radio’s on all the time, and there is an undeniably strong resemblance, except maybe he’s actually prettier than I am, and the age is right, and I have this playbill, and Big Bob said that if Mr. Tyson were in Toronto in the late forties, well, he’d have gone to Gerrard Village, and I think the age works, and did you see his eyes? They’re just like my eyes, and not only that but the hair too, and did I mention the Willa’s playbill, and—”
“Take a breath! You’re turning purple.”
I gulped some air.
“Ian wasn’t playing the Toronto clubs back then.” She shook her head. “Honey, he was out west. He didn’t come out here once in the forties. I’m sorry, kid. He may be the daddy to a lot of little girls for all I know, but he’s not your daddy.”
But it was all so perfect.
I sat down with a thump. I had been so certain. It all fit…but, of course, it didn’t. I had done that thing, the orphan thing, talked myself right into a fantasy. Was the need that big? Even in the cold-water shower shock, I saw it for was it was. And here I’d been mocking the others. I’d even read up on Sylvia in the magazines. I was pretty sure we would have gotten along.
Was the new me, the real me, an idiot?
“And what got into your head about Gerrard Village and your daddy anyways?”
Well, in for a penny…“I’ll be right back.” I took the stairs two at a time, unearthed my precious but pathetic clues and raced back down with the playbill.
“This is one of the only clues I have about who I am, see.”
Grady held the purple playbill at arm’s length and squinted at it. “Yeah, Willa’s was in the Village, all right, but it is no more. My second husband owned a lot of those clubs. Not that one, but a lot of them. I see where you got the idea your dad’s a musician though.”
I was still licking my wounds over Mr. Tyson, but my curiosity about Grady momentarily trumped my disappointment. “Second husband? Uh, how many…?” I cleared my throat.
“Four, but who’s counting? Like I said, I’m a bad influence.” It looked like she was going to say something, then changed her mind. “I need a refreshment.”
“But it’s only ten thirty,” I called after her.
“Hair of the dog, kid.”
What? But Grady came back brandishing a tall glass of tomato juice, so I relaxed.
“I never paid much attention to my husband’s club scene in those days,” she said, settling back into the chair. “I was too busy restarting my film career. Ha!” She rolled her head back in the chair on the ha.
“Grady, it’s important. It could be that my father—okay, not Mr. Tyson, I see that now—but I bet my real father played there or worked there or was there, you see? All I’ve got is this playbill, my hospital-release form and a restaurant menu. It’s a real clue, Grady.”
She took a gulp of her tomato juice and softened. “Sure, I can see how you’d think so. But Gerrard Village doesn’t exist anymore. It’s just a bunch of seedy bars, users, hookers and players. No place for you to go poking around. It would make Tyson look like a walk in the park.”
She had lost me again.
Grady took another gulp. She must’ve been dehydrated from the hangover thing.
“You know who might know? Brooks! Brooks was into the scene in the late forties. He was just coming up, but he would been around those clubs.” She was nodding to herself. “Yup, Ethan was a baby and Brooks was scrambling for gigs. It pissed off his old lady, Janice, something fierce until she came right around and then…” She shrugged. “You know Brooks is actually a lawyer?”
Two things hit me at once. Maybe that was why Ethan wanted to be a lawyer, and, much more important, the coloring was exactly right. Not Ethan’s, Mr. Goldman’s.
“Actually, Janice stepped up big-time. Looking back, it couldn’t have been easy. She had this kid and, poor thing, she marries a lawyer and ends up with a musician, you know?”
He was the right age. Sure, his hair was gray now, but you could tell it must have been brown, and the eyes were right. Bright blue. Ethan was dark—dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair. He must take after his mother.
“But man, she hounded him at the start.”
Hmm…Troubled marriage. I’d read about this kind of thing in the True Romance magazines Tess had sneaked into the orphanage. It happened all the time in your big cities.
Mr. Goldman must have played at Willa’s.
“So talk to him.”
She was nodding. “Yeah, Brooks might have something for you.”
He’d been real nice to me right off the bat, fatherly-like. Mr. Goldman? Yes? No? Maybe. I argued with myself as I stood there until I wore myself out. It was an intense exchange. It made way more sense than the whole Ian Tyson thing, after all.
But wait. Would that make Ethan my stepbrother? Or, worse, my half brother?
“Yeah.” Grady nodded dreamily. “Brooks knew the scene back then. Hell, he was the scene.” She drained her glass and looked much comforted until she saw the look on my face. “What is it?”
I couldn’t tell her about my hunch. It was too new, still brewing. They were friends, after all. I needed more information. I was going to be sensible this time. Yup. Wait. Wait! Did this mean…?
Holy mother of God, I was Jewish!