My father makes chicken and then dumps a can of mushroom soup over it. We eat dinner on an old couch, which is so old that when I sit down I sink to the floor. Half of one of the arms is torn off, like some animal has recently been in the apartment and gnawed it.
I take my plate into the kitchen. The counters are covered with flour and broken eggshells. There are eggs just sitting out, sweating in the heat, a box of ice cream bars melting on the counter, and something that looks like vomited-up macaroni salad. A baby wails from one of the back bedrooms, and I discover it, bald and gray-eyed, in the middle of an unmade bed.
Then I am a little boy who travels to Europe with his older brother, mother, and father and shoots his father on a deserted beach. The gun is light in my hands and my heart is bursting. My father lies half-submerged in the sea.
“Wake up,” Mickey says and takes my hand. Somehow we are on the roof of a building across from Beacon Hill Park, the art deco one that looks like a wedding cake. I shift my weight. I wiggle my toes. I run my tongue over my teeth.
I look at Mickey. He is talking to himself in a low, sad voice. We are both in some kind of tragic mood, a hundred feet off the ground, looking down.
“Take the vulnerable, sweet, and secret things in life very seriously,” he says when he sees me staring at him, “if you want to be true to yourself.”
I show Mickey the piece of paper with H.C. written on it, and then all the addresses. I unwad the photocopied article about my abandonment and show it to him. My story is nothing new to Mickey. Everyone in this town, it seems, knows about me. But he takes the article and reads it nonetheless. His eyes are clearer. We’re both coming down.
“Why don’t you go find him,” he says. “This Vaughn guy.” He points at Vaughn’s name, his quote. I believe it’s an act of desperation. “He saw your mother.”
Mickey wraps his scarf tighter around his neck and picks up his trumpet case. He signals to me that our afternoon is over and disappears down the narrow set of steps that somehow got us up on this roof in the first place.
This part of the city has no name. I close my eyes and hear the rush of traffic heading into town on my left side, out of town on my right. I can feel the hash pulsing around in my head like a little hyper snake, trying to find its way out of one of my ears. The corner store is boarded up, graf-fitied, a For Lease sign swinging. The vacuum repair shop is open, four dusty vacuums on display in the window, little ancient-looking price tags wrapped around the hoses. Go, little snake. I walk inside and look around, but no one is behind the desk. I plug in one of the uprights and take it for a spin, and still no one comes. I file this information in my head should I ever need to steal a vacuum.
The city park has been landscaped further, the yew hedges shaped into perfect spheres. The tennis court is surrounded by a barbed wire fence. It’s unclear how a person enters it to play tennis. Maybe no one does. I find all kinds of trash among the flower beds, beer cans and stacks of cigarette butts, greasy newspapers that once held fish-and-chips. It is a rare, perfect day, the sky Michelangelo-blue above my head, cumulus clouds unmoving. The buzz of lawn mowers, the traffic, the stupid, stupid sun.
Raquelle’s apartment is two minutes from the park, sandwiched between two identical apartment buildings, three stories high, white stucco with brown trim, brown wooden balconies, the windows unadorned. Shangri-La, it says on the door. Did it always say that? Who names these depressing buildings, I want to know. I scan the list of names, find hers, and press the buzzer. My reflection warbles in the glass door in front of me.
I press it again after a few minutes, then I press them all. “Pizza’s here!” I shout into the intercom, and finally someone buzzes me in.
The lobby smells like old carpet and mildew. The walls are mirrored and the floor is covered in pale-pink tile, a burgundy runner shooting out in front of me and around the corner to the elevator. There’s a royal blue armchair, a stack of Pennysavers beside it. Metal mailboxes built into the wall. The hallway is lit by fluorescents, and I wonder if everyone feels as sad as I do when they stand in front of the elevator, hands full of grocery bags, struggling to push the little black button that says Up. The elevator opens so slowly it’s like something out of a horror film, a hideous man waiting to leap out at the last minute and rip me apart with terrible claws, but it’s empty, the floor with its peeling linoleum, the walls made of fake dark wood. I press the button and wait for the interminable doors to close, and the thing clunks into life, and we wearily ascend.
Raquelle’s floor smells like soup and Chef Boyardee, and it hits me hard because I remember it. I stand, eyes closed, willing some specific memory to come into focus. The little snake in my brain is flicking its tail. Flick, flick. I breathe in deeply, imagine myself being pushed in a stroller or carried down the hall in someone’s warm arms, but no memory comes.
Raquelle’s door is the same fake wooden brown as the others. One of the digits of the apartment number is tilted and slightly farther apart from the rest. I want to fix it, but the little gold sticker won’t budge. I peer into the peephole, wishing I could see her before she sees me, and I knock.
A skinny boy with glasses and an Iron Maiden T-shirt answers the door, and when I ask for Raquelle, he tells me to skip off. It looks dark in the apartment, beer bottles on the floor. A cat meows in the back. He slams the door before I can explain myself.
I take the bus downtown, walk to the Inner Harbour and through the heavy doors of the Empress Hotel. Everyone is having high tea under the cut-glass chandeliers. I watch an old woman struggle with a tiny sandwich, the roast beef caught in her teeth. A little boy, her grandson, I guess, globs Devonshire cream onto a raisin scone. I sit on a bench and eavesdrop, listen to the woman’s phony British accent. She is the type of person who comments on everyone’s movements and then speculates on their motives, i.e., “Oh, she’s getting up. She must be going back to her room. Nope, she’s just going to the bathroom. Oh, look, here. Now she’s coming back.” It is nauseating to listen to.
The little snake has almost disappeared completely from my brain and I’m tired and starving. I try to put it in perspective—the fight with Miranda, Madeleine not being able to help me, getting high, not finding Raquelle—but I feel doomed. My whole life seems doomed.
I slip into an elevator and get off on the sixth floor, behind two reed-thin people wearing bucket hats, khakis, and those hideous sandals that look like harnesses for feet. I follow them until they get to their room and then slip down another hallway, trawling for room-service trays. The Empress uses beautiful silver cutlery and it occurs to me suddenly that I could steal it. I could amass an outstanding collection of forks, teaspoons, and butter knives under my bed.
There is murmuring behind the doors, someone’s television. At the end of the hallway I find a tray, lift the huge salver, wipe a fork on my pant leg, and slip it into my pocket. When I see a man coming down the hall in neatly pressed black pants, patent shoes, maroon vest, white shirt, and black bow tie, I make a run for it, slamming my body against the heavy door of the emergency exit stairwell, down the concrete steps, down down down, my body flying around each curve in the stairwell, my backpack pounding against my back, such momentum built up that when I get to the last story, I just kind of let go and lift off and sail down the last flight of steps and land on all fours. I can hear the man shouting down the stairwell as the door clinks shut behind me but I’m off, off down the pathway that leads back to the harbor, past the buskers, the cartoonists, a man wearing a gas mask as he paints neon landscapes with something that looks like a gun, the First Nations people selling their turquoise jewelry and little jade animal things, then down onto the causeway, with its mess of tourists swarming the docks. A seaplane flies over my head, kicking up huge ribbons of water as its big white feet make contact with the sea, and I push through the crowd, past the hot dog stand and the stinky public restrooms and to the parking lot, until I’ve reached the park beside the Johnston Street Bridge, a group of men
huddled around a huge burning spliff. They holler at me but I run past the orca mural and up Store Street, all the way to the homeless shelter and Value Village and then up through Chinatown, down Fan Tan Alley onto Pandora, so that I can run through Centennial Square, see if anyone I know is hanging around, but they’re not, so I run all the way down Quadra Street until I’m spitting huge gobs of phlegm into the drain in front of the YMCA, sides aching, so nauseous I could vomit.
The YMCA is in a brick building and I like it immediately. Miranda used to take us swimming at Crystal Pool or Oak Bay Rec but never here. It’s kind of hard to get to by bus. The towers of Christ Church Cathedral rise up behind the Y like huge stone rabbit ears.
The Y is small. A royal blue awning covers the entrance, and I can see people lifting weights and using machines through the windows and people eating in the little café. Something like a hundred bicycles are parked underneath the awning. Between the cafeteria and the glass doors of the entrance is a stretch of stone wall. Birds are chirping their little bird heads off and the traffic on Quadra is busy. In the cemetery beside the cathedral, a group of young men sit in a circle, banging on drums. One of them is playing hacky sack. They pass around a joint, and I can smell it all the way from over here. Please, no more dope. Not ever again. There are dogs, too, dogs tied up in front of the building and dogs in the cemetery, skinny homeless dogs with bandanas or studded leather collars. They’re circling the drummers. One of the guys stops drumming to reach out and swat the dog for some offense I can’t discern. The dog yelps and runs to the guy with the hacky sack. There are other men around, men on benches in trench coats, men huddled in the parking lot across the street, men on the corner. One is throwing a pair of dice into the air. I can see all the way to View Towers from here, but I’m not close enough to see if anyone’s about to jump off.
A woman is standing in front of the cathedral with a basket in her hands. She looks up and down Quadra as if she’s waiting for someone. But she’s not that interesting, so I run my hands over a yew hedge, kick a couple of dead rhododendron flowers off the bottom of my shoes—rhododendrons are the ugliest flowers in the world; when they die, it looks like a bunch of dirty toilet paper lying on the ground—and stare at the Y. It always sounded kind of virtuous to me, abandoning a baby at the YMCA, but this place is a goddamn shithole. Sure, there are a hundred yuppies milling in and out and getting on their bicycles in their gross head-to-toe spandex, as if you need to dress up like Spiderman to ride a bike, but they’re not going to be here at a quarter to five in the morning. These homeless guys, though, they’d be here. There’d be even more of them than there are right now. They’d be all over.
“What would you do if you found a baby?” I’m standing beside the drum circle, yelling over the bongos. “What would you do if you came here one day and there was a baby here? What would you do?”
The guy who slapped his dog rests his palms on the bongo drum and looks up at me. He’s short-lipped—I can see all his teeth even though he’s not saying anything. Big yellow smoker’s teeth. He looks young but he’s got huge lines around his eyes like someone carved up his face. His head is shaved and he’s wearing a green army jacket that looks a little too small. “What’s up, little honey?” he says. His friends keep drumming. He digs in his pocket, pulls out a baggie. “Weed, little honey? Huh, little baby?”
The men on the bench are more interesting to talk to. One of them, Vincent, I’ve seen before. He wears a white tennis shoe on one foot and a black Nike sneaker on the other, a green nylon jacket, a purple scarf, and ill-fitting black pants. He’s a mumbler. He has short black hair cut awkwardly around his face, which is dark-skinned and heavily creased, like a Cree’s. I like this man. I run into him every time I go downtown.
“Shannon,” he says, and takes my hand in his.
The man beside him tells me his name is Dean. He talks about himself for a while, and Vincent doesn’t say anything. He smells his fingers and plays with his scarf, the ends of which are covered in cigarette burns.
I look at Vincent. “If you came here one day and you saw a baby lying on the ground, what would you do?”
“Dead baby?” Dean squeezes the tobacco out of a bunch of cigarette butts and rolls a cigarette with the half-burnt tobacco. He licks it shut, takes a big long drag, and passes it to Vincent, who sucks on it like it’s helping him breathe.
They hold it out to me, but I’m not that hard-core yet. “Just a little baby,” I say to Dean. “Alive. Wrapped in a sweatshirt.”
Dean shrugs, and Vincent takes another deep hit of the cigarette. His fingertips are dark yellow, dirt caked and encrusted in every groove of his nail. I’m not sure I like this Dean guy, but I press on. “I was found here. Right over there, in front of the Y. When I was a baby.”
“Oh yeah?” Dean makes eye contact with me for a second and then goes back to the cigarette. “Vince, finish it.”
I can see they have no interest in me, so I cross the street and stand in front of the entrance to the Y. I take the fork out of my pocket and carry it inside with me like a spear.
People are accommodating to someone so small. The woman behind the front desk is named Chloe. She’s got a high forehead, made even higher by her ponytail, which is pulled so tight it stretches back the skin on her head, making her look like a Siamese cat.
The Y is a noisy place. It smells like chlorine. There’s terrible country rock playing and people going in and out of a turnstile, like at the entrance to a subway. Some of the people make lame jokes with Chloe on their way out.
“Another day, another dollar,” a fat guy says to her, shaking his head as he waddles past. Chloe does this sort of half-laugh and widens her eyes at me. She is lonely; I can tell from her big eyes.
I pretend at first that I want to buy a membership, and she tells me there’s a special rate if I pay in advance for a whole year.
“I don’t think I can get my hands on that kind of money,” I tell her, and she hands me another brochure.
Chloe’s veins bulge out of her forearms, and I try not to stare. Besides, she’s staring at me. We can’t get enough of each other. Short weirdo with a bum eye; android fitness freak.
“We have financial assistance interviews,” she says. “I’m sure we can work something out for you.”
“Even if I don’t make any money at all?”
“Even then.” Chloe goes into salesman mode and starts telling me about the yoga classes, swimming, aerobics classes, state-of-the-art machines, dance classes, Pilates, and all the opportunities for volunteer work, something I’ve always hated. “We rely a lot on the generosity of our volunteers,” she says, and I give her a big bright phony smile. Then she gets a funny look on her face as if she’s seeing me for the first time—the entirety of me, bum eye and all—and asks me if I have a home.
“A home?”
“We have youth programs, too, community outreach programs. We facilitate a supported independent living program for young people. We offer counseling services, employment training, that kind of thing. We also have a program where we set you up with your own bachelor apartment, help you get on your feet. You want a brochure?”
I feel the planets aligning, the puzzle pieces sliding into place. I’ll get my own apartment. The Y will help me. It will be that easy. I look around. I could get used to this place. I could live on my own. Sure. Why not?
“We can set up a meeting with one of our social workers. Would you like me to do that?”
But then I feel the sting of tears in my eyes because I’m thinking about Miranda, and about Winkie, and Lydia-Rose. God damn it. I wish I could just be happy with what I have. Either that or coldhearted enough to leave.
“No, thank you,” I tell Chloe. She waits for me to compose myself. Finally, I do. I say, “I have a favor to ask.”
She leans toward me and, like someone has cracked me open, I start to tell her the story of my birth. I point at the entrance. I tell her the date and the year. I take out the article
about me and smooth it out in front of her. She looks at the baby in the picture, then up at me. I’m so little that I don’t even look human.
“He’s the one who found me.” I point at Vaughn’s name in the middle of the article and then stare at her face.
“I never knew about this,” she says finally. She shakes her head and then looks around as if to see if anyone is paying attention. “Vaughn’s basically a fixture here. He’s worked here for years.”
“What’s he like?”
She does another one of her half-laughs. “He’s great. He’s really great,” she says, and I see something behind her eyes—is she in love with him? I can’t tell, but there’s something there. “Look,” she says. “I’ll give you his address. He’s not in today.” She writes it on the back of a business card and holds it out to me. One of her coworkers sidles up to her and asks if I’m a new member. He’s a stringy guy, skinny as hell, his hair spiked up like a cockatoo’s. He puts his skinny hand on Chloe’s shoulder. Clearly he’s interested in her.
“She was found here,” she says to the guy, then looks at me quickly, as if maybe this is a big secret she’s not supposed to give away. I grin at her. “She was abandoned here as a baby,” Chloe continues, like a little engine gaining speed, “right out front. Vaughn found her. Vaughn. Can you imagine?”
The coworker leans over the counter to get a look at the article, skims it, then rears his cockatoo head at me. “This is you, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, man.” He looks at the article again. “Oh, yeah, look at that. Vaughn.” Both he and Chloe look at each other and then at me. And then we have nothing to say to each other, so I tap my foot against one of the turnstiles for a second and thank them for their time. On my way out Chloe hands me a sticker that says This Is a Drug-Free Zone, and I press it onto my backpack.
Y: A Novel Page 15
