by Jeremy Tiang
Today must go better. She will do useful things, not wander along streets at random until exhaustion tugs her onto a bench in the Allan Gardens greenhouse, bedraggled beneath severe Victorian ironwork. She will buy shampoo, work out how much money she has left, try to make a plan. By the time she meets Aimée, she must be able to impersonate someone normal.
The bathrooms are shared. When she finally drags herself to the one down the corridor, two Indian girls are giggling and fixing each other’s hair in front of the mirror. They ignore her muttered greeting as she shuffles around them. Perhaps she is a little too old to be staying somewhere like this, full of backpackers expecting to be supplied with a social life along with a bed for the night. She doesn’t look like she’s having enough fun.
Toronto’s edges are too hard for the mood she is in. Every road junction is a precise right angle, and even the trees grow straight up, perfectly vertical. When she stands for too long by the side of the road, trying to work out which way is north, cars stop and wait patiently for her to cross. She yearns to find litter in the road, or someone as dishevelled as she is, but everything is well-ordered and well-fed.
The phone booth is a provocation. She intends only to put in the first few digits, to see how it feels, but as soon as she starts she has dialled the whole calling card code and then her home phone, all memorised at university and now so ingrained she doesn’t need to think of the numbers for her fingers to find them. Ringing, and then her father, Hello, hello, is that you? and her mother, faintly, Tell her we’re not angry, we just want her to—
Your mother says just come home. We won’t be angry.
She is quiet, wondering what she’d hoped to gain from this.
We know you’re in Canada, from the credit card. I check the account every morning. I just want you to know you don’t have to worry about—
After she hangs up, she removes the MasterCard from her wallet and bends it back and forth until it snaps cleanly in two. She drops each half into a different trash can a couple of blocks apart, not even slowing down as she flicks them away. Now she has no means of buying a plane ticket back, but she will worry about that at some point in the future. By mid-afternoon she has done nothing but pace restlessly across the streets of the downtown grid, and still she manages to be late.
Aimée looks good, clear-skinned, exactly the same except her breasts are larger. Motherhood suits her. She waves away apologies and orders more cake, more coffee. They talk about the baby, mutual friends, the weather. Aimée asks why she is here in the middle of term, so abruptly, but doesn’t push when she is evasive. It was right to seek Aimée out. She is a good enough friend not to ask too many questions, but not such a good friend that she will know the right questions to ask.
At five-thirty, they walk over to meet Aimée’s husband Scott. Even at rush hour, no one seems in a hurry. They amble or stand relaxed, not anxious for their streetcars to arrive. The clean lines of buildings are like a drawing, the windows neatly inked in. You live in such a beautiful city, she tells Aimée, who nods in simple acknowledgement of the fact.
They reach the pub at the same time as Scott, who has a complicated harness arrangement strapped to his front. She has to lean across the baby for a stubbly hello kiss. The waiter shows them to a table where Scott and Aimée’s other friends are already waiting. Not everyone has seen the baby, and they fuss over him while the waiter goes to fetch a high chair. Is it all right that— she says, gesturing, and Scott grins, It’s fine, the baby won’t be having any beer.
Everyone is introduced to her in a flurry, saying who they are and passing menus round. A lot of stubby, manly names like Chad and Jim. She tells the story of how she met Aimée in a hostel years ago, how they stayed in touch by e-mail and how she’s been promising to visit Toronto for years before finally making it now. She doesn’t mention that Scott and Aimée had always offered her a sofabed previously but with the child, the timing is understandably bad.
It turns out they are all teachers, colleagues of Scott or Aimée’s, or classmates from training college. She tells them about the education system in her own country, and they discuss whether it is better because more disciplined, or worse because less flexible. Without reaching a conclusion, they move on to the standardised tests that are being rolled out province-wide. She is happy to be part of this general conversation, pushing aside questions about why she is here. Travelling, just travelling with no objective.
When the waiter comes, she asks Scott to order for her. This is her first trip, he says, and so she must try poutine. This turns out to be chips—frites, they insist—and cheese curds, squeaky against her teeth. The crucial thing, they tell her, is the gravy must be hot enough to melt the cheese. She cannot finish her portion, and the waiter packs it in a styrofoam box for her, cheerfully predicting it’ll be even better the next day, when the chips have absorbed the gravy.
The baby begins to cry, not loudly but enough to remind them how late it is. The next day is a holiday. There is some kind of march most of them are going on, and they invite her along. The goodbyes are protracted, even though they will meet again in less than twelve hours. One of the men gallantly offers to walk her home. She has to admit to having forgotten his name, which turns out to be Nate. He says he does not mind—he understands what it’s like, meeting so many new faces at once.
Nate teaches Maths (he says “Math”) to fifteen-year-olds. She makes a weak joke about differentiation and is relieved when he laughs. Mostly they talk about normal things. She notices some teenagers lounging aggressively in an alleyway, all of them taller than her, and is grateful to have Nate with her like a talisman, although in truth they do not even look in her direction.
They reach the hotel, which is next to an all-night ramen bar. They stand on the pavement surrounded by people eating noodles. He is vague about how much further he has to walk, and she worries she may have taken him out of his way. He seems unwilling to leave, and they linger over this and that. She finds herself volunteering that no one knows where she is, that she just walked away from her job one day and got on a plane. But are you married? Children? he says—No? Then you’re an adult with no obligations and you’re free to do what you like. She tries to explain that it doesn’t work like that, at least where she comes from, but he is leaning into her and she thinks he might—but the kiss is just on her cheek, and then he is upright again, the warmth of him withdrawing.
I’ll see you in the morning, she says, meaning it, having decided she will actually get up early and go to this thing she doesn’t even know the purpose of. Don’t forget to put the poutine in the fridge, or the cheese will go strange, he says, then bounces on his heel and leaves, waving jauntily over one shoulder. She thinks she hears him whistling.
This isn’t the kind of hotel that has fridges in the rooms, so she balances the box on the sill where it is at least a few degrees cooler. She watches it for a moment, gleaming white against the fug of sweaty night, before pulling the curtain shut.
A few hours later, she jolts awake, her chest heaving as if against an invisible weight. It is at least a minute before the pressure lets up. There is definitely a voice, guttural sounds coming from uncomfortably close by.
Keep still, she thinks, like a child. Be very still and the devil may not notice you. Yet the noise is not a dream, solid enough that it pulls her into full wakefulness and she draws the curtain. Straw-coloured sunlight dribbles in, over her strewn clothes and the wreckage of her sheets. On the window sill is a black squirrel, a few inches from her face, frantically gnawing at a wodge of cheese curd. It has torn apart the plastic bag and box. Jerking its head between bites, it detects her and barks twice, peremptorily, then scurries a few feet down a drainpipe to its tree branch escape route, disappearing before she has time to release the breath she didn’t realise she was holding.
By the time she has cleared up the gummy mess and got out of the shower, it has begun to rain. Not a cleansing storm, but the sort of drizzle that seems determine
d to seep on for hours. She is tempted to get back into bed with a book—no, Nate is expecting her. And she feels a fleck of enthusiasm for the march itself. She has never protested anything before.
After just a couple of days here, she can find the street corner without a map—how simple, their names, like coordinates on a graph: Yonge and Bloor, King and Spadina. Such a lot of people, milling good-naturedly. The brilliant red of Aimée’s hair flashes out at her, and she sees them, Scott next to her brandishing the baby like a trophy.
Some faces she remembers from the night before, including Nate. They will be marching with the Union of Teachers. What are we demonstrating against? she asks, and they laugh as they explain this isn’t a protest, just the annual Labour Day march, all the unions turning out to remind the fat cats who actually does the work in this country.
The start time passes and still they wait. She goes into Tim Horton’s to pick up coffee and a doughnut, and Nate comes to stand in the queue with her. When they return, everyone is still standing stoically in the rain. The atmosphere is stolid, yet there are flashes of carnival. Aimée squeals and rushes to hug friends from other schools, while total strangers come up to Scott to compliment him on the baby.
There is a stir in the crowd ahead that ripples down and then they are moving. Behind them the union of musicians plays something stirring—Sousa? Someone thrusts a flag into her hand which she holds stiffly, like a tour guide, until the others encourage her to wave it in time to the music. They march along Queen Street—all furniture shops and sushi restaurants, turning residential away from the city centre. As the rain clears, people emerge from their houses to watch the parade go by, some bringing out lawn chairs to set up on the pavement.
Later, her recollections of the morning will be fragmentary—a young woman and toddler on an upstairs balcony, dancing and throwing flowers down. People dashing ahead when they spot a coffee shop, hustling the counter staff to pour faster before the parade leaves them behind. An Asian woman in a green suit, handing out flyers—Kuroda for council member—that have Scott muttering darkly about trying to steal the labour vote. She worries that someone will accuse her of hijacking the march, but nobody questions her right to be there.
She is unused to walking long distances, but the climate is mild and the crowd so full of energy she forgets she is moving at all, as if she remains still while buildings and streetlights flow past on either side of her. From time to time the rain starts again, and a flurry of umbrellas rises through the crowd. She finds herself laughing joyously, for no reason at all, and nobody around her finds this in the least bit odd.
After an hour and a half, maybe two, they have walked five or six miles. This end of town is definitely rougher. There is a sense of openness as the buildings drift apart from each other. She realises they are headed towards the lake.
She’s not sure who started it, but suddenly everyone is singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” and she is too, amazed she remembers all the words. She never sings. The route narrows, like the end of a marathon. In a scatter of raindrops, they go through a grandiose arch into a fairground of some kind, set up on the lakeshore. What is this place? she asks, as someone announces the Union of Teachers through a megaphone and everyone on the stands applauds, as if they were a high school football team. This is the Canadian National Exhibition, someone explains to her, and people on the march get in for free—a treat for the workers. Aimée takes a picture of them all, grinning widely, the baby wrapped in the flag like a revolutionary hero.
The Exhibition consists of a few large sheds, animals and farm produce on display. Nobody is very keen on this, so they go straight to the food, ravenous from the walk. Their picnic table fills with plates of barbecued meat, grilled vegetable skewers, onions sliced and then deep fried so they blossom open. They eat and eat. The afternoon is formless. Nate insists she try something called a beaver tail—some sort of pancake. A spiky French teacher is designated beer monitor, and brings round after round of Samuel Adams to the table as they toss him banknotes. She loses track of how much she is spending and tries to count. Aimée asks if she is all right and she says yes, just confused by Canadian money.
They wander amongst the fairground booths. Some people can’t hold their liquor and go home, others who couldn’t get out of bed in time for the march join them now. They skip the rides—probably wisely, given how much they have eaten—and seek out the games. The boys take turns to compete against the Test Your Strength machine, joking about who is the manliest. Aimée hands the baby to Scott and takes the hammer, beating them all, but they insist the stall-owner rigged it for her. Nate spends a fearsome amount of money on crockery-smashing until he wins a giant panda toy.
As it grows dark, they head to the Annex for a nightcap. Giggling, they dash to catch a streetcar and cram in higgledy piggledy, the driver opening the rear doors so Scott can get the baby’s stroller on board. A surprisingly short ride later, they are sitting at a long outside table bickering over menus, calling for more beer, more frites. She tells them about the squirrel that morning, and they laugh as though it is the best joke ever.
Halfway through her first glass, she knows she must leave and stands up, looking unsteady enough that no one tries to stop her. Nate offers to make sure she gets home safely. Are you afraid I’ll run away again? she says, trying to smile. Her legs are all anyhow, and she must lean quite hard against his forearm to stay upright. Why can’t I be good? she thinks. When they get to the hotel, Nate presents her with the stuffed panda and she invites him upstairs.
At dawn the next morning, she wakes suddenly but does not stir. There is a whisper of fear before she turns and sees Nate’s broad, golden back, half-covered by a sheet. He smells healthy, like laundry drying in the sun. She touches his dense, oil-black hair as gently as she can and whispers his name, then lies back down, carefully, watching for any sign of movement. She intends just to stay there looking at him, but her eyes drift shut, contentedly. When she wakes again later that morning, he is gone.
Harmonious Residences
THEY FOUND HIS decapitated body on the forty-first floor. Earlier, his head had travelled down in the lift and rolled out to meet two startled showroom girls, who had come in early to preen themselves before the first customers. They became understandably hysterical and had to be given the rest of the day off, which would have been quite inconvenient if the police hadn’t closed off the site.
Foul play was suspected until closed-circuit footage from inside the lift showed no one present apart from the man himself, staying back late to finish a particular job—nobody knew what, there were so many things to be taken care of every day. His hands full, he tried to stop the lift doors with his head, but a sensor was faulty and the doors kept closing, trapping and then severing his neck.
I was on secondment to the Housing Development Board at the time, and had been sent down to the site as a kind of floating officer. These placements were usually uneventful, but I knew this incident would be seen as a test for me. Harmonious Residences was supposed to be a flagship project, an Executive Condominium with the kind of sleek, imposing design that wins architectural awards. It was in nobody’s interest for the new buildings to seem unsafe.
Mercifully, press reception the next day was sombre rather than outraged. The blood had been cleaned up as soon as the police left, so the photographs showed nothing more gruesome than an ordinary lift landing—even if it was, as The New Paper insisted on calling it, “An Elevator to Death”.
The deceased was a construction worker from China, surname Chen. Not much was known about him; we don’t keep files on these people. “At least there’s no family to make a fuss,” said Li Hsia. When I pointed out that he must have one somewhere, she amended that to: “No family with access to the media.”
Li Hsia was also a scholar. The HDB had sent her to Oxford to read Geography, and now she was on a fast-track to the top. She would clearly not be spending much longer hanging around construction sites, but the Pa
rty always makes you spend a bit of time getting to know people on the ground before you leave them behind, so if you do well enough to stand for election you can claim to have grassroots support.
She was quick off the mark, as expected, and arrived at work having already drafted a press statement on her Blackberry. Meanwhile, I was showing the police around and trying to get things back to normal. It was agreed that the chain of unfortunate events was clear enough and, there being nothing to investigate, we would start work again the next day. Of course, no one would use the lift until it had been safety-inspected.
None of us wanted to talk to the workers, until finally Soong volunteered. They seemed to like him—some evenings he kicked a football around the site with them, not something I could imagine myself doing. He spoke to them in his disjointed English, a pidgin simple enough for them to understand, reassuring them this was no more than a freak accident. They probably didn’t miss Chen; he was too new to have made friends yet.
Things had just got back to normal when Mr Seetoh phoned, ordering me to meet the widow. “Your Chinese is not too bad, right? It’s okay, you won’t have to say much.” I imagined his round face with the phone clamped under one ear, ticking my name off his list of tasks. Before I could say yes or no, he had hung up, my assent assumed.
I was reluctant to go through something so potentially awkward, and tried to persuade Li Hsia to take my place, but she was busy dealing with Minister. There were bound to be more questions asked, in Parliament and by the press, and he had to have all the facts at his fingertips, as well as reassurances that the launch would not be delayed. She waved me away, preoccupied with the dossier she was compiling.
