IRETURNED THREE DAYS LATER. There was even less left in James’s garage: the hot plate, a couple of propane canisters underneath the counter, the old kitchen table, and the blue trunk.
“You came,” James said.
I jumped. He had entered through the door from the backyard. “I thought you had left.”
“Not yet, but when I do I don’t want you to see me go.” He ambled toward the shelf near the hot plate. The crock, once filled with colourful bills, was gone. In its place was the tin my mother had offered.
“My father would kill me if he knew I was here.”
“So why did you come?”
“To make sure you’d gone,” I said, wondering if Agnes still fit into his plans somehow. “You going alone?
“Agnes is tagging along. Sit down,” James said. I looked around for a chair. James patted the lid of the trunk. He went and leaned against the table. “I’ve done some bad things. I didn’t mean to—” He dropped his face into his hands and exhaled deeply. “You were here, weren’t you? When your father came to see me?” He wiped his eyes, swiped at the snot above his lip, and shook his head in disbelief. “You saw everything.”
I couldn’t look at him.
“I get lonely,” James said, collecting himself before walking over to me. He took in a deep breath and straightened himself up. He cupped my cheek and with his rough thumb he stroked my bottom lip. “It’s the only life I know.” I could feel the nervousness between my legs.
“You understand?”
“Don’t touch me.”
James let go. I thought of Adam, what he said about not letting fear get in the way.
“I gotta go before—” I shifted, about to get up.
“Everything is kind of safe for you, isn’t it?” He said safe as if it was a bad word. “You don’t want your life to be about that, do you?” He lit a cigarette, pinching it between his fingers so that his hand curled. “Come with us, Antonio.”
I didn’t say anything at first. All the words I had expected to use were jammed in my head.
“I came to say goodbye.” I got up and took a few steps toward the garage door. He strode across the garage to block me.
“I’ll leave when I’m ready,” James said. The goose pimples crawled up my arms and back. I shuddered. He hugged me tight, his chest next to mine.
“I know your secret,” James whispered, squeezing tighter. I couldn’t breathe. “We’re the same, Antonio.”
“Let go!” I pushed him—hard enough that he fell against the metal door. He looked much older just then. “I’m nothing like you,” I said.
I woke up to the sound of my mother buffing the kitchen floor and the smell of lemon paste in the air. There were times Terri and I would come down wearing fresh tube socks and we would slip and slide with the radio on full blast. That would never happen now, I thought, as I grabbed the paper from the veranda, my bare feet stinging on cold concrete. I ran upstairs, dove into the pocket of my still-warm bed.
The front page of the Toronto Star ran a story on the verdicts in the trial, but the headline had already been dwarfed by other news, about how fast the Concorde was, Prime Minister Trudeau’s defence of a fifty-thousand-dollar campaign blitz with public money, how the little guy was facing insurance hikes, and how seal hunt protestors from the U.S. had turned violent. All we got was a little paragraph buried in the middle of the paper, no bigger than a stamp.
Saturday, March 11, 1978
Werner Gruener walked out of the courtroom a free man last night, leaving two of the only friends he has in the world behind. Werner Gruener was acquitted of first-degree murder in the slaying of Emanuel Jaques. His co-defendant Joseph Woods, a man he describes as a good friend, was found guilty of second-degree murder, while Saul Betesh was found guilty of first-degree murder. The 11-member jury took two hours to reach its verdict in the Supreme Court. Werner Gruener, as he was being led away from the courtroom, read the Bible continuously and murmured, “God bless. God bless.”
I heard a light rapping on my bedroom door. “Can I come in?” My mother’s muffled voice sounded uncertain.
“Okay,” I said, a little confused by her need for permission.
My mother stepped into the room wearing her hospital uniform and her Dr. Scholl’s shoes. She wore the same outfit every Saturday when cleaning the house. But something was different about her. At first I thought she had her hair tied back, but when she got closer I realized she had chopped off her long hair.
“Mãe!”
“Do you like?” She cupped her hand behind her head and raised it a couple of times. She was playing it up but I could tell she wasn’t too sure it had been a good choice.
“You look nice,” I said. “But isn’t Dad going to freak out?” My father had always loved my mother’s long, wavy hair. He had said once it was the thing that made him fall in love with her. I tried to bury the image of her washing her hair in the basement, my father behind her.
“It’s my hair,” she said, a bit shakily. “If your father doesn’t like it he can find himself another wife.” She began to giggle and plopped herself onto my bed like a schoolgirl. “I heard you talking in your sleep this morning. You were calling out names. Some of them I didn’t know. Adam? Baby Mary? Who are these people, Antonio? Are you in danger?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m okay.” I turned the newspaper over, hoping she’d change the topic.
But she flipped it back to the page I had been reading, and a look of satisfaction washed over her. “God bless!” she said. She repeated the words, then turned quiet and distant.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Funny,” she said, hugging herself as if a gust of wind had blown into the room. “It’s what I came to ask you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Because so many things have happened.”
“I’m fine.”
“I need to ask you something, Antonio. It’s about Agnes’s baby.”
I dug my face into my pillow, but soon the sobs came. Her hand made small circles on my back.
“Look at me,” she said, calmly. “Is that who Baby Mary is?”
I nodded, breathed deeply into the pillow, let it soak up my tears and snot.
“Filho, it happened and you can’t change that. I just want to make sure you’re okay. It’s not fair you were put in that position. You need to know it’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’re a strong boy, I know. I’m proud of you. I trust you. There was so much I didn’t want to say because not saying it made things easier. I know that’s not right now.”
I lifted my head from my pillow.
“He’s gone, Mãe.”
She had shifted herself on my bed and now sat on the corner, looking up to the ceiling as if in prayer.
“Did he hurt you?” she said.
“Never, Mãe,” I said, and the colour returned to her face.
My mother’s body softened. “Antonio, I don’t want you to be afraid of life.” Her lips trembled, even after she said the words.
I sauntered to my window and looked down onto Palmerston Avenue. Some of the neighbours were outside scrubbing down their front walkways and sidewalks. A few people had begun to chase the suds and chemicals with a hose, washing the dirt onto the road where it all would collect and then pour down the sewer.