by Jamie Zeppa
He’d left no note. Eventually, it would leak out. Did you hear? he imagined people saying, Dean Turner is gone. Really? Where? No one knows. He just disappeared in the night. Stole his parents’ car. Right out of the garage. They’d all be jawing over it for weeks, trying to figure it all out, cooking up one wrong story after another.
He didn’t care what they came up with, because he wasn’t ever coming back.
Now you see him, now you don’t. Common magic had its uses, after all.
Half the town must have known he was adopted. You couldn’t just come home with a kid one day and say it was yours. It was old news to everyone except him. He had always thought people looked at him differently, too closely, at church, walking down Queen Street, at the doctor’s office. All this time, he’d thought they were saying, That’s Dean Turner, who climbed out a window at school after the teacher locked him in the detention room. And when the teacher turned around, there he was, sitting right back in his seat. Now he knew. All this time, they had been turning to each other, telegraphing their knowledge with raised eyebrows (Did you know? Oh yeah, I knew), while he blathered and boasted and carried on, oblivious.
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING SAULT STE. MARIE, a sign said.
“Good riddance,” Dean replied.
Easiest thing he ever did, until the first complication: the car ran out of gas, a few minutes outside of Sudbury. The sun was just coming up, a pink stain on the horizon. He let the car sigh to a stop on the side of the road and made a mental note to add to his instructions: Before you leave, check the gas.
He fetched his bag and an empty jerry can from the trunk and headed to town, rehearsing the lines in his head. “My dad and I ran out of gas. Just down the road a bit. He said I should go on account of I’m young and my joints aren’t acting up yet.”
A delicate layer of frost covered the brown fields and the still-bare branches of trees along the road. He walked faster. From somewhere, a rooster crowed. The jerry can smacked his leg, and the hammer and chisel in his bag bit into his hip. The gas station was dark and silent. He kept going. In town, outside the Empire Hotel, he stopped at a row of cars and began pressing his face against windows, peering into the dark interiors. He saw nothing of interest until he came to a dark blue Packard: the owner had left a pair of leather gloves on the dashboard and a tweed cap on the passenger seat. Not his style, but useful additions to the currently empty disguise compartment of his bag of tricks. Dean slid in and fitted the cap onto his head. “Not bad, old chap,” he said to the rear-view mirror. If only he had a pipe. He was wriggling his fingers into the leather gloves when he noticed the keys in the ignition. He shook his head. “Oh, that’s very kind of you, but really, I couldn’t.” The key turned easily and the engine cleared its throat and began to murmur softly. “Well, if you insist,” he said, shifting the car into gear. By now the sun had hoisted itself above the barren hills and was glaring at him through the windshield. Dean pulled down the sun visor, and an unopened packet of cigarettes fell into his lap. He smiled. “Don’t mind if I do.”
It was mid-morning when he reached North Bay, the early spring sun appearing as polish along the tops of everything. He parked the Packard outside Delilah’s Grill and checked his face in the rear-view mirror: he was pale, with dark wells under his eyes and in the hollows of his cheeks. He smoothed back his hair and got out. Inside Delilah’s, he ordered bacon and eggs, toast and chocolate milk. The waitress had fluffy blond hair pulled back from her face with a blue hairband. Her name tag said ROSE. She called him honey and said he looked tired. He said he had been driving all night and waited to see how she reacted. She didn’t look surprised or say, “What? Aren’t you kind of young to be driving all night by yourself?” She just nodded and asked if he wanted coffee as well. When she brought it, he told her he was on his way to meet his real mother for the first time. “She gave me up when I was a baby because she was too sick to look after me,” he said. “But she’s better now.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” Rose said, and she looked like she meant it. “What did she have?”
“TB,” Dean said.
“And she’s had it since you were a baby?”
“There were complications,” Dean said.
“So you’ve never seen your real mother, that you can remember?”
“No,” Dean said, and his eyes filled up with tears. Rose gave him an extra plate of toast on the house, and he wanted to leave a whole dollar tip, but then he thought better of it. He was on his own now; he needed to save his money.
His plan was to drive by the office and case the place in daylight, but out on the street, two policemen were standing beside the Packard. They appeared to be just talking, not looking specifically at the Packard, but Jesus! Cops were a complication he definitely did not need. Dean ducked into a stationery shop and pretended to study the pens in a display case near the window. The cops crossed the street and went into Delilah’s Grill. Dean bought a newspaper and hurried out of the store and got into the car as fast as he could without appearing to run.
Turning off Main Street, he looked for a strip of quiet, respectable houses where a Packard would not be out of place. He finally parked under a tree at the end of a dead-end street lined with old stone houses, and set out with his newspaper and tweed cap to find a park bench. He needed to keep some distance between himself and the Packard until darkness fell. He also needed a nap.
The front door was solid glass, but at the back of the building was a row of windows at eye level. He put on the leather gloves, lifted his hammer and chisel, and went to work. The idea was to separate the frame from the wall and slide the whole thing out, neatly, silently, cleverly. He wanted to go in like a ghost, disturb nothing, put the window back on his way out. Do it with style. After a half-dozen attempts, he’d made only a small incision in the wood; he was sweating now in spite of the cold, and his arms ached from holding the chisel at such a weird angle. To hell with style, he thought, and raised the hammer. The night shattered into a thousand sudden pieces. Using the chisel, he knocked out the jagged pieces of glass. Then he laid his jacket over the ledge and hoisted himself in.
He was in some kind of nurse’s room—a cot covered with an olive green army blanket, a metal desk, a white chair. The night had reformed itself into a black, silent block. He stood very still, straining to hear above the noise of his own heart. At the sight of the bed, he was overcome with sleepiness. He wanted to lie down. Just for a minute. He had a blanket just like that on his bed at home. “No,” he told himself sternly. “If you sleep now, you won’t wake up till they find you here in the morning.”
He headed for the red EXIT glow at the end of the hall and ran up the stairs to the fifth floor. He would start at the top, work his way down. The office doors were all open. He peeled off his gloves and pulled the flashlight out of his back pocket.
At first he was neat. He opened filing cabinets and shut them quietly, ran his hands lightly over folders. He loved the idea of leaving nothing ruffled or ajar, not a paper clip out of place. He would take what he came for and no one would know a thing. The window he couldn’t help, but he’d leave a rock inside and they’d think some kids had done it.
He slid a folder out of a cabinet drawer and opened it. It was an adoption file, all right. Mother: Marie Louise Pacquette. Age: 18 years. Promise of Marriage: No. Previous trouble: No. Putative father: James William Black. Unmarried. Is a declaration of paternity made? No. It was dated December 4, 1959. Last year. Everything was recent, and some drawers had nothing but notices and government letters and letters from lawyers. He went faster, and as he went faster, he got messier, and as he got messier, he got madder. It was going to take all night to go through every cabinet and cupboard. He slammed drawers and didn’t bother when they flew back open and jammed, folders sticking out.
He was coming out of the stairwell on the fourth floor when they caught him.
There were two of them, Doran and Parks. They were very casual, telling him how the
y’d been driving by and had seen the Packard and stopped to investigate. As they were calling it in, they just happened to look up and see a spot of light moving on the fifth floor. They were so friendly that he had to ask them, “Am I under arrest?”
They escorted him to the cruiser parked out front. Doran told him to watch his head as he got in. They hadn’t bothered with cuffs. He thought briefly about making a run for it, but it would be so damn undignified if they jumped into their car and caught him before he got to the end of the road. At the station, they took his wallet and escorted him into an office and told him to wait while they contacted his parents. He was disappointed it wasn’t a cell. A cell would make a much better story. Not much he could do about it, though, and anyway, the real story he had to worry about was the one that would explain why he had been rifling through files in the Children’s Aid Society office at three in the morning. He could use part of the story he’d told Brother Nick: he was doing this for his cousin, guy just found out he was adopted and he was so upset he was threatening to kill himself, so Dean came down here to try to find something out. Yeah, it was wrong, bad, against the law, but for crying out loud, what would you do if you looked up from your egg salad sandwich to see your cousin practising noose knots with his school tie?
The door opened and a man came in with Frank’s hammer and chisel. He said, “Dean Turner. Sergeant Cooper.” At the sight of him, every thread and shred of Dean’s story vanished down a deep hole. Dean recognized Cooper instantly as an inhabitant of the City of You Think This Is Funny? Town Motto: This Is Not Funny.
He had a colourless brush cut and bulging blue eyes in a big, florid face. He also had a way of pausing and blinking every few words. As if his words were so dense they needed an extra few seconds to be absorbed. He said Dean had committed very serious crimes (pause, blink) for a fifteen-year-old boy.
“But I didn’t take anything,” Dean said.
Blink. “You ever hear of breaking”—pause—“and entering?”
“Yeah, but people usually break and enter to steal something. What was I going to steal in an office building?”
Blink. Blink. “You tell me.”
“Actually, sir, my question was rhetorical,” Dean said. “Translated roughly, it means there is nothing to steal in an office building. Hence, breaking and entering for the purpose of theft would be null and void.”
“You think this is funny?” Cooper pushed back in his chair and aimed his hard-boiled egg eyes at Dean. “Let me tell you why I do not think this is as funny as you do. Charge one: breaking and entering.” Pause. “Charge two: grand theft auto, two counts.” Blink. “Charge three—”
“Grand theft auto?”
“Your parents’ car, which they told us you took and which we assume you left outside of Sudbury before—”
“I don’t think you can charge a person with stealing their own family car,” Dean said.
“—before you picked up the Packard which was reported stolen yesterday morning.”
“What Packard?”
“You didn’t steal the Packard from outside a hotel in Sudbury?”
“No, sir.”
Blink. “Then how’d you get here?”
“I hitchhiked.”
“And the thief who stole the Packard just happened to leave it outside the office you broke into?”
Dean shrugged. “Weird, huh?”
Cooper gestured to the tools. “You steal these?”
“No.”
Blink. “You just happened to find them under a smashed window?”
“I brought them from home.”
“For the purpose of breaking and entering.”
For the purpose of sticking them up your ass, Dean thought. A wall of fatigue rose up, and he crossed his arms and settled down behind it. This conversation was over.
Cooper left the room and Dean slid down in the chair. “Don’t show weakness,” he told himself, but he was tired in a way he’d never been before. He was tired of all his thoughts, and they were tired of themselves. They just lay there in his head, limp and flat and disconnected from everything. If Cooper came back and said Dean was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, he’d shrug and shuffle off to his cell.
He must have fallen asleep, or into that grey in-between place, because when Cooper came back, he could see by the splashes of light on the floor that it was much later. Cooper stood there waiting for Dean to look up. Dean could feel him blinking.
“Your parents just got here.”
“They’re not my parents,” Dean said.
“Really? Who are they, then?”
They’re liars, Dean thought. He didn’t answer.
“Well, they sure drove a long way for someone else’s kid.”
Dean said, “I was adopted.”
“I gathered that,” Cooper said, and sat down at the desk.
“Why?” Dean straightened in the chair, alert again. “Did they say something?”
“No,” Cooper said. “But why else would you be going through files at the Children’s Aid?” He opened a drawer, fiddled around with something, closed the drawer. “I was adopted myself,” he said.
Dean smirked. “Sure.”
Cooper said, “It’s true. My cousin told me. We were arguing over something. I was eleven. I said I was going to tell my dad, and she said, ‘That’s not your dad, anyway. You were adopted.’ ”
Dean studied Cooper’s face. “Did you believe her?”
“No. But I went in and asked them. My mother said no and my father said yes. So I knew it was true.”
Wow, Dean thought. That was as bad as What kind of talk is that? “Did you ever find your real parents?”
“I did.”
Dean leaned forward. All his thoughts had come awake, and hope was flickering and humming just off to the side. “How? Where?”
Cooper was playing with a paper clip. He straightened it out and then bent it into a V. “Where did I find them? I’ll tell you where I found them.”
The hope flickered out.
“I found my mother in the kitchen, making my lunch for school. I found my father in the backyard, fixing my bike. I found them every day when I came in the door. Every time I sat down at the table to eat the food they had bought and cooked for me.”
Dean slid back down in the chair.
“Look at me, son,” Cooper said, and Dean looked up, his face aflame.
“I may be adopted, but I sure as hell am not your son.” Although as soon as he said it, he realized Cooper could very well be his father. Just about any male past the age of thirty on the whole goddamn planet could be his father.
Cooper straightened the paper clip again and it snapped in two. He placed the pieces carefully on the blotter. “I know you’re thinking about the woman who gave birth to you and the man who made her pregnant, and you’re wondering who they are and why they didn’t keep you.”
Wrong, Dean thought. I’m thinking that you are the biggest ass I’ve ever encountered in my long and varied history of encountering asses.
“But the truth is, those people out there in the waiting room, they’re the ones who wanted you. They’re the ones who are bringing you up. They’re the ones who didn’t sleep a wink after they found out you were gone.”
Dean turned to look. He saw only their backs, but he recognized them immediately. His mother’s wide back, his father’s thin one. His mother’s dark brown hat. His father’s battered grey fedora. A feeling of tenderness and longing opened in him, and his throat and nose itched furiously. He averted his face. He didn’t want to bawl in front of Cooper so that Cooper could later claim it as victory. Yep, finally got through to the kid. Had him in tears by the end of it. The wetness in his eyes had nothing to do with Cooper.
“Think of what you’re putting them through,” Cooper said.
A surge of anger drowned the longing. Think of what they put me through, Dean wanted to shout.
“The thing is,” Cooper went on, “those other folks,
they aren’t anything to you. They gave you up because they had to, and that’s the whole story. It wasn’t personal.”
Dean stared at him. It wasn’t personal? The people who were supposed to want you for the most indispensable, irreducible, unquestionable reason of all—because you were their own flesh and blood—didn’t want you and they gave you away to people who, when they saw your true colours, didn’t much want you either, and it wasn’t personal? Dean swallowed hard. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I understand now.”
Cooper missed the sarcasm completely. He nodded and stood up. “You think you want to know, but trust me, you don’t. They keep those records closed for good reason.”
“Oh, very good, sir. You’re very wise, sir.”
Cooper glared at him. “There’s no need to get snarky with me, young man.”
As he was closing the door, Dean called out, “It’s not personal.”
He watched Cooper talk with his parents in the hallway. Cooper had probably been the kind of kid his parents wanted. A homework-doing, Mouseketeer-cheering, old-lady-helping kid who didn’t have to always be showing off or playing the fool. A colourless kid who would stand between them at church and think good thoughts instead of wondering how hard it was to get into the sacristy and whether the wine in there would be worth the effort. Then they were walking towards him, Cooper in the middle, and Dean remembered the photograph of Vera and another woman and a baby between them. There’d been another birth certificate. Mother’s name: Grace Turner. A relative he’d never heard of, a woman hidden in a closet for having a baby before she got married.
His mother.
UNDERCOVER
