Bubby takes a couple of seconds to focus on the keypad’s huge buttons. She clicks the phone off. “Good afternoon, Mr. O’Reilly.”
“Hi, Mrs. Zimmerman.” I’m surprised she remembers my name. Let’s be honest. I’m even more surprised I didn’t screw up hers. Should I shake her hand? She doesn’t hold out hers, so I decide it’s okay not to. I push my hair out of my face and nod.
“Oh my, what happened to you? Looks like somebody beat you up.” Her little bird eyes are darting around my rainbow bruise. I forgot about that. I give her some story about bashing my face on the coffee table, to play down my resemblance to an actual criminal. I’m sure she doesn’t buy it, but she leaves it alone.
“How is tutoring coming along?”
“It’s okay. I’m not the greatest student.”
“Well, there’s always room for improvement. Leah’s students seem to do quite well in the end.”
“I believe it. She’s a slave driver. She gave me a quiz today.”
“Oh my. You did all right, I hope?”
“Not too bad. Like you said, there’s definitely room for improvement.”
Leah comes in carrying a bunch of winter stuff—coats, hats, scarves. She lays them on the sofa beside her grandmother. “Hey, Bubby. Declan’s going to join us for our walk today.”
“How nice!”
Leah’s grandmother slides her feet out of her slippers. She’s wearing men’s woolen socks. Leah helps her with her boots and her coat. Her flowered housedress sticks out under the coat. She almost disappears under all those layers.
Outside, Leah holds Bubby’s elbow. I check for the blue Taurus across the street and exhale when it’s not there. I’m beginning to wonder where Seamus is. I’m used to him turning up everywhere and giving me trouble. We haven’t crossed paths once since I threw him out of the trailer.
I shove my hands in my pockets and walk on the street beside the curb where Leah’s guiding Bubby along. What is it with Leah and that curly hair? I could watch her all day. She catches me and smiles in kind of a shy way. I’m glad it’s getting dark, because I can feel myself blushing.
“Look at the nice clear sidewalks. It still amazes me how they have machines to do that nowadays.” Bubby means the little tractors the city uses to clear the public sidewalks—unless, of course, you live in the middle of nowhere on a highway. Like she read my mind, Bubby asks me where I live. I tell her about our place in Rigaud, away from the road, and how there’s forest all around us. Leah’s eyes get big when I say my parents bought a trailer instead of a house.
“How clever,” Bubby says. “It sounds like paradise.” Maybe it’s because I left out the part about the tires and the broken toilet, but she made me feel good about where I live and why I love it. She really listened to me.
“Declan’s going to be studying World War II and the Holocaust in history. I promised him you’d tell us a story about what happened to the Jews, like maybe about Kristallnacht and the yellow stars? He’ll need to know it for the exam.” Leah helps her grandmother around a patch of ice as we cross the street. I see now why she went ballistic when Robbie and Seamus sped past her house.
“Kristallnacht. Declan, do you know about Kristallnacht?” Bubby asks.
I love the way she pronounces the word, with a hard ckt sound at the end. I try it myself, but it sounds more like a cat coughing up a hairball. Leah and Bubby stop themselves from laughing out loud, but Leah has to turn her head away.
“Don’t worry, Declan. That was a good try,” Bubby says.
“Yeah, great!” Leah’s still trying not to piss herself.
Bubby continues with her story. “It started with the Nazis painting yellow stars on the windows of Jewish businesses to discourage people from going in. Germany was in a bad way economically, and the Nazis publicly blamed the Jews for it. During Kristallnacht, Jewish businesses were vandalized, windows broken, stores looted. Do you know what Kristallnacht means?”
“Isn’t it ‘crystal night,’ because of broken glass in the street or something?”
Leah tips her head in an approving nod. I’ve redeemed myself from my hairball.
“Right! And vandals used the yellow stars to identify which businesses belonged to Jews. No one stopped them. The government, the police. Everyone stood by and watched. It was the beginning of cleaning the streets of anyone who didn’t fit in with the Nazis’ plan. And it was where the idea of forcing people to wear identification badges came from. First it was Jews and the yellow star. But then other badges started to turn up, on the streets and especially in the camps. There were all kinds of people the Nazis wanted out of the way. Political people who spoke out against the government, communists, blacks, Poles—”
Poles? I must look confused, because Leah whispers, “People from Poland.”
“Our choir director was a lovely gay man who wore the pink triangle on his sleeve.”
“The pink triangle?” I’ve never heard of the pink triangle.
“Oh, there were quite a number of gay men in the camp. They wore a pink triangle instead of the yellow star. There were many different badges, actually—red triangles, black triangles. They all meant something different.”
“But the pink triangles. What were they for?”
“Homosexual men. I think in some ways it was worse for them, because not only were they singled out by the Nazis, but they got very little sympathy from the rest of the prisoners either. Somehow, homosexuals didn’t fit with anyone’s plan.”
“You knew them?” My voice sounds jittery.
Leah motions for me to take Bubby’s elbow while she bends down to tie a bootlace. So I’m actually holding Bubby’s arm while she’s talking to me. I can barely feel it, deep in the layers of her winter coat. It’s bony and weighs nothing.
“I sang in a children’s choir in Theresienstadt—that was the name of the camp. The Nazis put us on display, paraded us around to make the rest of the world believe we were all happy and healthy.” She stops walking and looks right into my face. “Can you imagine?”
I shake my head. I can’t imagine living through any of that. I can’t believe I’m holding her arm. It makes me feel connected to her story—to her—and I like it.
“He was wonderful, our choir director. It may sound odd, but we felt lucky. He’d been an opera singer before the war. Of course, there were other prisoners who couldn’t stand what he was, you know. But I loved him. He was so good to my brother and me after our parents were taken away.” She puts her free hand on her throat, raises her chin in the air and turns to me again, proud. “He told me I had a beautiful voice.”
“Oh, it’s true, Bubby, you do,” Leah says, and Bubby starts to sing, right there in the middle of the street. She hums a clear, sad tune—not anything I’ve ever heard. Her voice is a bit shaky, but it’s beautiful.
I try to imagine being in that concentration camp. Forced to pretend in front of people who could help. Not screaming about what was really going on because if you did, you’d be killed. And at the same time, feeling lucky or happy that someone liked your voice. How do you feel lucky when you’ve lost everything?
“What happened to him?”
“Oh, he was killed—beaten to death and violated. They left him in the yard, with his hands tied and his pants down, for everyone to see. A lesson. They liked to do that. What was he supposed to have done about being gay? How could he have hurt anyone? I prayed that there was a heaven, because I needed to imagine him there. I couldn’t think of him, such a good man, like that.”
A good man. I’m supposed to be steadying Bubby, but I’m pretty shaken, and I don’t want her or Leah to know. I clear my throat and take in a big breath of fresh air. Leah’s house is up ahead. We’re almost there.
Bubby’s smiling. I can tell she adores Leah. “Thank you so much. That was really lovely. Soon it’ll be spring, and you won’t need to prop this old woman up. Thank you for yo
ur help, Declan.”
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Zimmerman. That was an incredible story. I never met anyone before who…”
“Of course, dear. And that’s probably a good thing. But as I say to Leah, soon we’ll all be gone. It will be up to you youngsters to remember.”
Leah puts her arms around her grandmother and kisses her. “I love you, Bubby.” She unlocks the door, and we make our way back inside. The house feels warm and familiar.
Seventeen
Turns out Leah’s dad was the one driving the big white SUV I saw at the school. It even has heated seats. He’s an archaeologist, which explains all the old stuff in their house. Leah rolls her eyes when I ask him, “Like Indiana Jones?” But he says yes and tells me about artifacts like the Parisian toothpaste that they dug up right in Old Montreal.
He asks me about my parents. I say they’re divorced and that I never see my dad, hoping he won’t ask me any more questions. Leah has this strange look on her face. I pretend I don’t notice.
I get them to drop me at the rink so I can pick up my check before I go home. It’s payday. I’ll get Rita, who works the afternoon shift at the canteen, to cash it for me. It’ll be nice to have some cash of my own again. I still can’t find my wallet, and at lunch I had to borrow from Dave just to get a cookie.
The automatic doors open to the usual smells: ice, French fries, Zamboni exhaust. The Rigaud rink is one of the old rinks with wooden benches that freeze your ass. Not part of a big rec center. No gyms. No bars. No heaters. No hockey parents drinking beers and yelling at the refs. Just one flat-screen TV attached to the wall in the waiting area, and some wobbly tables and chairs. And you can see your breath when you’re on the ice. The canteen’s cozy, but it’s a basic burgers-and-fries operation.
I unlock the reception-booth door and find my check in my cubby. Phil is on the rink with the Zamboni. Parents are chilling around the TV, watching sports highlights from the latest Habs game, checking stuff on their phones. I jostle through them on my way to the canteen.
Rita’s standing on a chair, up to her elbows in the slushie machine; it’s jammed and making an ugly grinding noise. When she sees me coming, she smiles like I’m her long-lost best friend. She needs me. I can fix it.
“I can’t believe you’re here. Would you mind?” She sounds like she’s ready to throw the machine from the bleachers.
When no one’s looking, I vault over the counter, just missing a jug full of gummie worms. She screams and laughs. It takes me a couple of seconds to work my magic. The grinding stops and the giant bag of colored syrup gurgles and flops into place. Purple and orange crushed ice swirls around to the machine’s familiar grrr-urrr-urr.
I leave the canteen with my cash and run into Phil coming off the ice in his hat and coat. “You going out?” I ask, wondering if he wants to join me outside for a smoke.
“Nah, gotta unplug a toilet in the girls’ bathroom. Wanna help?” He takes off his coat and hangs it on the hook in the caretaker’s office.
“Gee, I’d love to, but I hear my mommy calling.”
“Chicken.”
“You got it!”
He gives me the finger.
I wave goodbye to Rita, who blows me a thank-you kiss, and head for home. I’m glad for the chance to really stretch my legs. I enjoyed walking with Leah’s grandmother, but propping up an eighty-three-year-old woman isn’t exactly a workout. I light a cigarette.
I catch myself scanning for Seamus and the car. Where is my stupid brother? I’m not going to lie. I’ve enjoyed a few trouble-free days, but he should have turned up by now.
For the longest time after Dad left, I thought the worst thing anyone could be was gay. It was the reason my family fell apart. How was I supposed to feel? I always knew not everyone feels this way, and I don’t really have a problem with other people being gay. But it’s different when it’s your dad. It’s confusing. What Leah’s grandmother said really made me think. She loved that gay choir guy because he was a good person. She didn’t care about him being gay. The Nazis did though. My dad could have been hunted down, imprisoned, tortured, killed. Because he didn’t fit in with some plan?
What if he really is cool, like Mitch says? You can’t always trust Mitch’s judgment on this kind of thing. His family is different. When Mitch started hanging around with me and Dave, his mom asked both our moms to one of her yoga retreats. My mom’s a chain-smoking, coffee-guzzling hummingbird with limbs like dry twigs. She’d rather have her toenails removed with pliers than spend a weekend like a pretzel with a bunch of inner-peace flakes. But she said yes to be polite. She came back amped up and miserable, smoking twice as much as she had before. It wasn’t for her. Square-peg-in-a-round-hole kind of thing.
I wonder if I’m a square peg, trying to pass history and graduate? It’s sure as hell not an easy fit. I almost blew it today.
And what about Dad? I understand why he and Mom had to end it. But what about the rest of us? Maybe it isn’t right to say someone doesn’t fit in their own family. This isn’t Nazi Germany, but we did kind of push him out, like he wasn’t part of our plan.
Man, there’s too much stuff floating around in my head. New thoughts are trying to find places in my brain, and they’re fighting with all the old ones. Everything has to shift. Like it’s a puzzle and somebody gives you a bunch of new pieces and says, Make room for these.
How could anyone survive living in a concentration camp? And losing your whole family? Watching friends die? When we learned about it in school, I only ever thought about how many people were killed. I never thought about the people who weren’t.
I chuck the butt of my cigarette into the snow and turn up the driveway, looking forward to being home. Right away I can tell something’s not right. Instead of the usual glow of the trailer’s front light in the distance, blue and red lights are bouncing off the trees in the dark. Police! I choke back panic and run as fast as I can the rest of the way, doing my best to avoid patches of black ice.
I reach the yard and almost bash into a cruiser parked in front of the house, the colored lights rotating silently. There’s no one inside it. In one giant step, I’m at the door. I grab the handle, take a big breath. Oh please, oh please, let everyone be okay…
Mom’s perched on the end of the sofa. Two police officers with Sûreté du Québec patches on their uniforms are sitting in the living room, one beside Mom and the other in the armchair. They’re wearing hats, and their winter jackets are open—I can see flak vests underneath. They both have newspaper under their boots. Mom made the SQ put paper under their boots? That’s nuts.
“Mom!”
“Declan. I’ve been trying to reach you. Where have you been? I called Dave’s but—”
“What’s wrong?” I’m heaving, trying to catch my breath.
The officers introduce themselves, but their names float by in a blur. All I get is that the one doing the talking has a French name. The other one looks younger. They ask me my name and I tell them. Then the guy with the French name starts firing questions at me. Where was I last night? What’s Kate’s address? Why was I there? Where did I go after? Did anyone see me? How long was I there? I’m so worked up I really have to concentrate to remember anything about last night, but I give them everything they ask for, except the part about seeing Dad and being upset. He writes it all on a little notepad.
I try to get in a few questions of my own. Did something happen to Mandy? Kate? Seamus? I still don’t know what this is about, and they don’t tell me anything. They want my answers to their questions first. Mom is stone-faced. If something happened to one of us, she’d be way more upset, wouldn’t she?
The French officer’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “Please answer the question, Mr. O’Reilly.”
I can’t remember it.
He repeats it for me. “How long were you sitting by the Dumpster before you went into the school?”
My mind
is blank, and then I remember Mr. Peters checking his watch and teasing me about being at school at 7:04. “I saw the vice-principal at 7:04.”
“At 7:04?” Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it sounds like he’s mocking me. I bet he thinks I made it up. “You’re telling us you were sitting—leaning—on this Dumpster from 6:15 to 7:04?” The officers smile at each other like they think it’s a joke. They don’t believe me. What’s worse, Mom’s lips are pressed together like she doesn’t either. It feels as if the police and Mom are on the same side, and it’s not mine.
“Yeah, he actually checked his watch. He—” I stop myself from saying he was surprised to see me. I need someone on my side. “It was 7:04.”
“You sat in the cold for forty-five minutes?”
“Sir, I didn’t feel the cold. My mind was somewhere else.”
“Your mind, Mr. O’Reilly? What does that mean?” He leans forward on the sofa and puts his elbows on his knees. He’s trying to get closer to me. Right in my face. It freaks me out that he keeps calling me Mr. O’Reilly. He probably thinks I was stoned or selling drugs.
“I was just thinking.” I don’t want to go into the whole story about Dad.
“And the vice-principal’s name?”
“Mr. Peters. I don’t know his first name.”
“If we ask him, he will tell us he saw you?” He’s trying to catch me in a lie, I think.
I explain that he drove me home. Mom nods her head. Her face relaxes. Did she really doubt me?
“Does Mr. Peters know where you were between”—he checks the little notepad—“6:15 and 7:04?”
Wow. This is a fucking interrogation. They’re questioning me like I’ve done something really bad. “I guess not. What’s going on? Can you please tell me what this is about?”
“Mr. O’Reilly, do you recognize these?”
The other officer holds up a student card and a debit card. When I look closely, I see they’re both mine. Mom gasps. They’re supposed to be in my wallet.
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