Every Time We Say Goodbye

by Jamie Zeppa

  No use. Not home. Again.

  Back on the sidewalk, Dean appraised the house. No glimmer of light came from any part of it. The front door of the next house opened, and two dogs bounded out and went straight for Dean. He froze, and they circled him, barking happily, all aquiver with excitement. “They won’t bite,” someone called. Dean looked up. A tall young man with dark blond hair was coming down the walkway. “Sorry,” he said. “They’re complete lunatics. My mother rescued them from the pound years ago, and they still can’t believe their good fortune.” He scooped up the squirming dogs, one under each arm. “I saw you from the window. Are you here about the guitar?”

  Dean said, “No.” He could hardly hear himself. “No,” he said more loudly. “I was actually looking for the person next door.”

  “The Hanleys? They’re at the hospital.”

  “Will they be back soon, do you think?”

  The guy shook his head. “Probably not. Their kid has polio. We’ve hardly seen them the last couple of weeks.” The guy looked at him more closely. “You okay?”

  “Stomach ache,” Dean said.

  “You want to come in for a minute? Use the bathroom or something?”

  “No, thanks,” Dean said. The guy nodded and went back inside, one squirming dog under each arm.

  The Hanleys. Grace Hanley. It was worse than he had suspected. Not only was she married with a kid, but her kid had polio. She’d need a visit from her long-lost son like she needed a hole in the head.

  Except, he realized, he wasn’t long-lost, and the realization made him stop right there on the sidewalk. She had always known where he was. If she had wanted to see him, she could have. And she hadn’t. Which meant she didn’t want to. For some reason. For what reason? The same reason she left him in the first place. He was a fool, on a fool’s mission, running around the province, prowling around strange cities, looking for someone who didn’t want him, who had never wanted him, for whatever reason.

  He hurried back towards the city’s pulsing core and asked the next person he passed for the name of the city’s nicest hotel.

  The Royal York was full, except for a suite that cost twenty-eight dollars. The clerk looked younger than him, with oily hair and a face to match. He looked for Dean’s luggage and then said, “There are rooms at the YMCA if you—”

  “I’ll take the suite,” Dean said coolly. He counted off the bills quickly.

  The clerk hesitated. “Do you have some—some identification, sir?”

  Dean raised one eyebrow. “Are you kidding me?” He pushed the bills across the counter. “The airline misplaced my luggage. Please send it up as soon as it is delivered.”

  The room was thickly carpeted, with gold plush chairs and a sofa and a television built into a heavy mahogany cabinet. The canopied bed was in an alcove behind French doors. Dean pushed back the heavy maroon curtains: one set of windows looked out over a net of sparkling lights; the other, a vast darkness. The lake, he thought. The United States was on the other side. Land of the free, they said. He had money; he could cross the border and join them.

  He stripped, showered and sat at the desk in a towel to order dinner. Tomorrow, he would go down to the bus terminal and get a ticket. New York or California. He would get a job, find a place to stay, start a new life. Meet women who fell out of doorways laughing. He would be the mysterious stranger. Where did he say he was from? a woman with dark, glossy lipstick would ask, and the other woman would say, I heard Montreal. Someone else would have heard Moldavia. He could write a new history for himself, and it would be true. He would live at hotels like this one, as the founder, president and voice of Turner Incorporated. He would go downstairs to the breakfast room every morning; he would eat in a different restaurant with a different girl every night of the week, except for when he was tired. Then he would do exactly what he was doing now: stretch out on the sofa in a towel and wait for the discreet knock at the door that signalled the arrival of his steak and baked potato and bottle of wine.

  He wouldn’t spend any more time trying to find the mother who had left him behind, given him up, passed him along—Here, take this—or the father who probably never even knew he existed. Tonight, he would sleep with an emblazoned city, an entire continent, at his feet, and tomorrow, he would wake up in his new life.

  He slept until noon and woke with a headache. He shaved, put on his tie and grey sweater. His clothes looked cheap and school-boyish in the gilt-edged mirror. He checked his wallet: sixty-eight dollars left. He’d have to go easy until he found work. At a diner a few doors down from the hotel, he ordered toast and coffee. A few blocks farther, he went into a department store, and before he knew it, he was trying on suits. He turned in front of the mirror, eyeing the line of a charcoal-coloured jacket from over his shoulder. Italian wool, the clerk said, finest wool in the world. He pinned up the sleeves and said, “Our tailor can do this for you right now, sir.” Dean slipped off the jacket and said he needed to make a trip to the men’s room before he made his selection.

  Downstairs, he ordered a milkshake in the cafeteria and counted his money again under the table. If he took a night bus, he wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel room. He didn’t need a new jacket to ride the bus, and anyway, Italian wool would be too hot in California. His headache was only a faint thumbprint against one corner of his skull. He leaned his head back against the vinyl headrest, closed his eyes and allowed himself to come unmoored. He was already in California sitting on a lounge chair overlooking the ocean. The sun warmed his upturned face, the breeze lifted his hair. When he looked up, he would see palm trees, and a woman would say silkily, Excuse me, is this seat taken? Instead, he heard Vera say, “Sit up straight.”

  Dean’s eyes flew open.

  In the next booth, a tall, large-chested woman with orange lipstick and a fur cape was talking to a girl with long light brown hair. The girl had her back to Dean; he could only see her hair and her shoulders in a cream blouse.

  “You look like the wreck of the Hesperus,” the woman said.

  She didn’t look so hot herself, Dean thought. Her brown pincurls looked like half-melted candies.

  The girl said, “Mom, can I have french fries?”

  Her mother said, “You’ll have the salad plate.”

  Dean ordered another milkshake and shifted into the corner of his booth so he could see the girl’s profile. She was pretty. The woman noticed him then, or rather, her eyes stopped on him briefly and then flicked him away. He shifted back out of her sight.

  “I just don’t know,” the woman was saying. “I thought he would be better today. They said he was better. But he’s exactly the same. Didn’t you think so?”

  “I thought he was a little better,” the girl said. “He didn’t look so tired.”

  “What are you talking about? He looked terrible!” the woman said. “I can’t see that they’re doing him any good in there. You know what that place does, Laura? It encourages him. They mollycoddle him.” She took a compact out of her purse and studied her face. Dean slipped farther down into his seat. Laura, he thought.

  The waitress brought their salad plates. He listened for as long as he could. Laura was not eating properly. Why was she holding her fork like that? She was slouching. She was picking at her food. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he went to the men’s room. When he got back to his seat, the woman was fastening the buttons on her cape. “I mean it,” she hissed.

  The girl was shaking her head. “I can’t help it,” she said, and hiccupped.

  “I have had it up to here with you,” the woman said.

  “All right, okay. Just a minute,” the girl said, but she didn’t move. It sounded like she was crying.

  The woman snapped her purse shut and marched to the front cash. Dean waited until she had disappeared out the door, then got up and slid into the seat across from the girl. She had a round face, ivory skin, delicately arched eyebrows over closed eyes. Her cheeks were wet. Her mouth was the pale pink and the textu
re of a rose petal. Her eyes opened; they were very dark.

  “Hi,” Dean said.

  She wiped one side of her face and left the other side wet. “Hi,” she said back.

  They looked at each other. Dean raised his hand and waved at the waitress. “One order of french fries,” he said, and the girl looked wonderstruck. Her eyes were still leaking, so he said, “You wanna hear something crazy?”

  She nodded.

  He told her a story. A boy found out he was adopted. There was a photograph and a birth certificate in a box. There were clues. He followed the trail, but when he got to the end, to Baldwin Street, he found nothing. He had knocked, and the door hadn’t been opened. He had sought, but he hadn’t found. She didn’t move the entire time, but her eyes radiated, as if she were listening through them. They warmed him and steadied him. “Is this a true story?” she asked when he was finished. He tapped his chest just above his heart. “True story,” he said. “Now you tell me one.”

  Her story wandered all over the place but ended with her father in a mental institution with a nervous breakdown. Her face flushed darkly when she said it, and her eyes were skittish.

  He was a welter of wants: he wanted to reach over and take her hand, he wanted to kiss her rose petal mouth, he wanted to slide into the seat beside her and put his arm around her protectively, he wanted to take her back to the hotel suite and lay her down on the bed and undo her cream-coloured blouse. He wanted to run away with her. They would leave behind their missing, mean, broken, lost, sick, soft-in-the-head, odd, off, criticizing, crazy, disappointed parents and start a new life together. He leaned forward and touched the back of her hand.

  “Listen. Do you wanna come with me—” he began.

  “To Baldwin Street?”

  He laughed. “No, Quick Draw McGraw.” Baldwin Street didn’t matter. Baldwin Street was crumpled paper in the bottom of his rucksack. Tonight he would get on the bus and cross the border, and his new life would start; he didn’t have time to waste on Baldwin Street. He said, “I have a better idea. Coming?”

  He could see the answer in her eyes before she said it. She was from the City of Yes. Town Motto: Yes.

  MRS. KRAUS

  It was hard to tell when the ending actually arrived, partly because it came disguised as a series of new beginnings: a bag of money, a sparkling clean house, baby Amy, Opening Night. For a while, Dawn blamed the bartender at the club for the whole thing, because if he hadn’t taken Professor Pollo and stuck him behind the bar like some kind of ornament, Dawn wouldn’t have left Jimmy unattended, and Jimmy wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital having his stomach pumped, and the police wouldn’t have come to the house and found a stolen car in the garage.

  It was Jimmy who found the bag of money. He appeared in Dawn’s room one afternoon, gesturing crazily, with a look on his face like he had to pee really bad. She followed him to the spare room, which was going to be the baby’s room but which was latched and locked because Dean said there were rusty nails sticking up out of the floorboards, and he was going to clear it out and paint it, and Dawn and Jimmy were going to help. Someone must have gone in there earlier, though, and left in a hurry, because today the lock was hanging open off the latch. “I already went in,” Jimmy whispered. “There are no nails.”

  Dawn pushed open the door. Inside was a bed with a naked mattress, a lamp without a shade and a bunch of empty cardboard boxes. Jimmy told Dawn to sit on the bed, hold Professor Pollo and make a wish. His eyes were so bright, Dawn felt spooked. She sat down and accepted the Professor. “All right. I wish for a million dollars. There. Happy?”

  Jimmy was wriggling and wiggling all over. “Yes! Yes! Now look under the bed.”

  Dawn looked, then got down on her knees and pulled out the garbage bag. When she saw what was inside, she gave a little scream.

  Jimmy said, “See?” He plopped Professor Pollo down on top of the bag and said, “Whaddaya think of that, sunshine?”

  They stared at the bag for a long time. Then Dawn said, “Jimmy, you know what we have to do?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Go to the store.”

  “No, Jimmy. No. We have to count it.”

  They were still taking out handfuls of money when Geraldine called from downstairs, “Dawn? Jimmy? Are you up there?”

  “Coming!” They stuffed the money back and barely got themselves out of the room before they heard Geraldine start up the stairs. Dawn was so terrified, she clicked the lock shut, and they both collapsed on the floor and pretended to be playing with Professor Pollo. “What are you two doing up here?” Geraldine asked. “Why are you sitting in the dark at the end of the hall?”

  “We’re just playing,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, come downstairs for dinner.”

  They watched her waddle back down the hall. “Why did you lock it?” Jimmy whispered. He was furious. “That was so stupid!” Fat tears rolled down his face.

  “She was gonna see the lock was open. Then she’d know we were in there.”

  “So? So? Who gives a care if she saw?”

  “We’ll get back in, don’t worry. We will, Jimmy. We will.”

  They looked at each other. Jimmy wiped his eyes. “I know how it got there, too,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Bank robbers. They hid it there.”

  But that wasn’t it at all. Dawn had just figured it out. She told Jimmy about hermits: rich old geezers who didn’t trust banks and hid their money under their mattresses. They ate stale bread and reused their tea bags and saved every last penny.

  Jimmy said, “Are Vera and Frank hermits?”

  “No, they believe in the bank, see. But hermits hate banks. This house belonged to a hermit. He lived here all alone, and he had no family, so no one knew about the money. He died and no one thought to look under the bed.”

  Jimmy wanted to know how he died.

  “He choked to death on a chicken bone.”

  “You said he only ate stale bread.”

  “And chicken wings. He got them cheap from the grocery store.” She considered telling Jimmy the rest—the old man’s body had been partially eaten by his cats—but Jimmy was really too young for that.

  Every day the next week, when they came home to find Geraldine sleeping, they searched the house for the key. It was most likely on Dean’s big key chain, but Dean was working every day and night at the club, and when he did come home, he was a whirlwind of instructions: “Jimmy, go upstairs and get me a clean white shirt.” “Dawn, pour me a glass of orange juice, please.” “Geraldine, I need the phone book. Hurry up, hurry up, I haven’t got all night, they’re putting in the bar and I have to get back.”

  Then something so surprising happened, they forgot about the money, or at least Dawn did, at least temporarily: they came home from school to find the whole house clean. The bathroom sink gleamed, the kitchen floor was light blue again, all their clothes were neatly folded in their drawers. Even the garbage pail was scrubbed white and smelled like a Christmas tree. They hadn’t seen the house like this since they moved in. It was even better than the day they moved in, because the beds were made.

  Geraldine was awake and sitting at the kitchen table. “There’s something special for you guys in the fridge.”

  It was a tray of yellow cupcakes with thick orange icing. Geraldine asked them to get her a pencil and paper. She wanted to make a list of things they needed: new shoes, underwear, jeans, sweaters, whatever. Dawn asked if they could afford all this, what with the baby coming and everything. She didn’t want to mention the bills on top of the fridge. Geraldine said she had been given a bonus at work. “Now, get your coats on,” she said. “We’re going shopping!”

  They wore their new outfits to see the finishing touches being put on the club. In the green-walled room, crescent-moon seats encircled high round tables. This was Emerald City. Another room was red: plastic red flowers hung from the ceiling, and red flowers with black centres were painted on the walls. There were no chai
rs in here, only benches against three walls, and a stage. The mural in the main room was almost finished; through the middle, a road made of yellow funk wound its way to the sparkly red shoes Jimmy had found at the flea market. In the centre of the room, like an island, was the showpiece: a circular bar.

  Antoine was finishing the ceiling in the women’s bathroom. On the black surface, he was painting silver stars around a black-and-white picture of a surprised woman’s face.

  “Why is I Love Lucy here?” Dawn asked.

  Antoine said, “This is a different Lucy. This is Lucy in the Sky.”

  But anyone could see that it was Lucy from I Love Lucy. Dawn said, “It should be Dorothy.”

  Antoine said, “Well, you can call her Dorothy. How’s that?”

  That, thought Dawn, was just stupid. But instead of answering, she went to find Jimmy. He was in Dean’s office, a windowless room under the stairs, trying to open the safe behind the desk. He was still looking for the key to the spare room, even though Dawn had told him over and over to forget it—the lock, the key, the bag of money. She wasn’t even sure she believed in the money anymore. It seemed so unlikely that it might have been a mirage, like on Bugs Bunny. She suggested this to Jimmy.

  “Come on, Dawn,” Jimmy said scornfully. “It was a bag of money.”

  From the doorway, Dean said, “What bag of money?”

  Jimmy looked to Dawn for help. Dawn said, “It was on TV.”

  Dean looked from one to the other. “Get your coats,” he said. “We have to go home.”

  Things were very bad because of the money. Dean stamped up the stairs, yelling his head off for Geraldine to get her ass up there right now. When he came out of the spare room, his face was pale and sweaty. “Go get it,” he said. “Right now.”