Blink & Caution (8 page)

“I’m here,” you say, looking around, wanting to know where “here” is.

“What’s your name?” she says, trying to sound gentle, like she’s asking a child who is lost at the shopping center.

“I’ll call you back.”

“No, don’t hang —”

But you do. You really need to concentrate. You’re almost there.

Your mother always said you lived just past the Raceway. Greenwood Raceway was what she was talking about, except they tore it down the year before you were born. Your daddy worked there as a horse trainer. They closed the place, then tore it down, and there’s just a fancy off-track betting place now, a movie theater, shopping plaza, and expensive condos. You used to wonder if maybe your mother didn’t know they tore down the track. She doesn’t get out much.

You turn up your mother’s street, as the early darkness settles in and any warmth the day might have gathered around itself is sucked right back down into the ground. Most of the places along here have been gussied up. Rich folks moved in, stripping the paint off walls and putting in stained glass and lampposts and bright-colored doors with warnings printed on them about the alarm system. It would have been good to have an alarm system at your place: something to tell you when Stepdaddy was on the warpath.

But he’s not home tonight, as far as you can tell. His trashed-out Pontiac isn’t parked out front. He’s not at supper. She’s eating in her kitchen window, alone. Never did get those curtains up.

Maybe he’s gone?

Oh, Blink. I’m so glad you’re here. Eddy left a few weeks back, and I’ve just been hoping you’d call or drop by so I could give you the good news. I’ve stopped drinking, and I never cry anymore. Actually, Eddy died, and he even left a little money he’d been hoarding away.

Ha-ha, Blink. Nice one.

Nothing you’ve seen so far of life suggests there are miracles, unless this is one, this unexpected day. And so far, apart from a miraculous new pair of sneakers that fit, this one has been about 30 percent good and 70 percent weirdness, verging on dread.

And yet standing outside your mother’s house, all you can think about is that what this day has brought you is something new. And then you want to hit yourself on the side of the head because all this day has brought you to is this.

Your gaze wanders to the blank eye of the upstairs window. Maybe he’s up there, sleeping it off. Maybe he’s lying dead on the living-room floor with a poker through one eye and a look in the other like,
What the fuck?

You’d like to see that.

So, if he’s not there, where is he?

You want to go in. You want to take that chance. Mostly you want out of the cold. It’s way too late in the day for the Blessed Breakfast Uniform. Way too late in the year. You are shivering like nobody’s business.

Look up.
That’s what you want to shout to your mother.
Look out your window. Your son is standing here just where the light ends. You could find me if you looked up from the table.

Then the bitter feelings rise up in your gut, and there isn’t time for this bullshit now. There isn’t time for blame and anger. You need all the strength you can get to keep this thing going — whatever the hell it is. You step a little closer, anyway, until you are standing right on the bright side of the light coming through her window. You wait there, like a batter at home plate waiting for a fastball. But she doesn’t look up. Maybe those muscles don’t work anymore, the ones that lift the head. So you step back out of the light and start walking.

Your feet have a plan, even if you don’t. Your clever feet in their fine new shoes. There’s this bar he sometimes drinks at. It’s him you want. Right, Blink?

And there it is, after a long cold while, the No Holds Bar. You stop outside, where the Molson sign and the Bud sign in the window buzz with all that neon blood inside them.

You’ve seen Stepdaddy stumble out of this place a time or two. You even helped him home some nights when trying to get along still seemed like an option.

You step inside the smell: spilled beer and nacho sizzle. You hang out on the edge of the noise by the doorway in the vestibule. It’s shadowy there, and the man at the bar can’t see you. He’s too busy, anyway, serving up brews and shots. You let your eyes go ahead of you into the room, searching out every booth and recess. The place is hopping with the after-work crowd and the slouching dregs of the no-work crowd. The no-work crowd have had such a head start on happy hour, there’s no merriment left in it at all.

You move in a little closer and crane your neck to see where the bar goes when it rounds the corner. And — bingo! — there he is, the Grand Prick himself. He’s drinking alone. His scuffed-up leather coat hung over the back of his chair, about as worn and torn as he is. He’s got both wrists resting on the bar, with a quarter-filled beer glass between them and an unlit cigarette in his mouth. There is no smoking in the place, so he must be planning an exit.

Now what?

You hold your ground. From the look in his eyes, he’s not going to be moving too fast. He talks to someone, the cigarette bouncing up and down on his lip. No one seems to be listening.

Then he pats his chest pockets, his pants pockets, and draws out a lighter. You ready yourself. He stands and wanders off toward the back of the place, to the can it looks like. Either that or he forgot the way out. He winds his way through the drunken seats and the sprawled-out legs and the chatter and the clinks of glasses and outbursts of laughter, until he’s gone from sight.

Move. Now!

You take a deep breath and squeeze your way down the bar to where the brown jacket holds Stepdaddy’s place.

It only takes a second. You’re gone before the bartender even notices your underage self. You leave, and it doesn’t feel as good as you hoped it would. You wanted to close the door on him — that was all. And now it feels as if you closed it on your own hand. And there’s a stab of loneliness as you step back out into the cold. You’ll miss that vibrating in your pocket.

“I
t’s a Remington rimfire, bolt-action Model Five. Perfect for partridge and rabbits.”

Spence sights down the barrel. Then he hands the rifle to Kitty.

“It’s a .22,” he adds.

She wrestles the butt up to her shoulder.

“What’s ‘twenty-two’ mean?” she asks.

“It’s the caliber.”

“What’s that?”

“The measure of the inside diameter of the barrel. A .22 caliber rifle has a bore of 22/100 inches.”

“Bang!” says Kitty, aiming at a shiny tin can sitting on the fence. “Bang!” she says again.

“Shall we load ’er up?” says Spence. Kitty reluctantly gives up the rifle and watches carefully as her big brother pulls the bolt back and opens the breech, places a single gold-and-silver shell inside, then closes it again. He smiles as he hands her the rifle, but he doesn’t let go of it. He kneels beside her, helps her tuck the butt comfortably into her shoulder, gently pulls back a strand of jet-black hair from across her eye, and tucks it behind her ear.

“Keep tight,” he says, patting her on the shoulder. “There isn’t all that much recoil from this thing, but still . . .”

“Recoil?”

“Kick,” he says, and makes the rifle rear up in her hand to show her what he means.

Then he moves her right hand farther along the stock and shows her how to tilt her head just so to line up the front sight in the notch of the back sight.

She can’t wait to pull the trigger, but he stays her hand.

“It’s about breathing,” he says. “Slowly breathe in and out, then breathe in again and hold it. This will keep you and your rifle still, right?”

“Right,” she says. “Got it.”

Then he shows her how to pull the bolt back to full cock.

She breathes in and out and holds it.

BANG!

And to her amazement, the first tin can goes flying.

“Whoa!” says Spence.

“Did
I
do that?” says Kitty.

He nods. “Rabbits, take cover!” he says.

Caution gets off the Dundas streetcar at Roncesvalles. It’s night and cold — the day old all of a sudden and tired. She digs her fists deep into her jacket pockets, turtles her head down inside her collar. She’s way across town from the apartment on Carlaw, but you can never tell with a magic man how far is far enough. She heads south, zipping along, half out of fear and half out of trying to keep warm, dodging traffic, zigzagging through the bustle and lights.

She does know one good someone in this city, and she knows where he lives, though she has never once contacted him. She walked by his place a couple of times last winter when she was desperate — even saw him once in his window but couldn’t bring herself to ring his bell. He hates her. Still, she figures, someone from back home who hates you is better than nothing.

Oh, please be here, she thinks.

It’s a rooming house, tall as a nightmare. The outside door isn’t locked. The inside door isn’t locked, either. It’s like saying to a potential thief that there is nothing in here you want. Caution is glad she doesn’t have to ring, but the unlocked doors don’t comfort her. She climbs the stairs to the first landing, climbs the stairs to the next. Listens at number seven. At first she hears nothing, but when she steps back, she can see light seeping out from under the door into the dimness of the landing. She listens again and smiles nervously: someone is playing a guitar.

She sniffs, gathers up her courage, and knocks three times.

The music stops; heavy footsteps approach the door. Caution pulls back and back farther, until her hand is on the newel post, ready to launch herself downstairs if she has to.

Then the door opens.

Wayne-Ray has gotten large. Overweight. It surprises her how much he looks like Auntie Lanie now. He has his mother’s deep brown eyes, her swarthy complexion, thick eyebrows, her heft.

“Kitty?”

It’s taken him a long time to recognize her. She nods hesitantly. It’s been a long time since she answered to that name.

He raises his hands to his head. “Jesus!” he says.

Caution glances behind her furtively, as if maybe a savior snuck up the stairs behind her. No such luck.

“Is it really you?”

She nods, a little uncertainly. She’s waiting for him to come to his senses — to remember what she did. He may have identified her, but he seems to be having a whole lot of trouble figuring out who she is.

But as large as he has gotten, he is 100 percent Cousin Wayne Raymond, right down to the XXXL Toronto Maple Leafs hockey sweater, the green sweats, the moccasins.

“Hey,” she says.

It isn’t exactly “abracadabra,” so maybe it’s the sound of her voice that breaks through his confusion, takes him to the next stage.

“Ah, heck,” he says, “come in here, you.” He steps back into his apartment, holding out his hand. She hurries past him, and he closes the door. Next thing she knows, she is bawling her eyes out all over his big blue maple leaf.

The first thing Wayne-Ray does once she stops crying is to find his phone. “I can’t wait to tell Mom,” he says. “She can phone your mom.”

“No,” Caution says, shaking her head. “You don’t understand.”

“Ah, Kitty, come on. For God’s sake. Everybody’s been worried sick,” he says. “I just want to let them know you’re okay.”

“I’m
not
okay.”

That stops him for a moment. He puts down the phone. She looks around, finds a chair, and plunks herself down in it.

“Are you, like, knocked up?” he asks. She frowns at him. “Well, you said you were not okay. I just —”

“I’m not pregnant,” she says, cutting him off. Jesus, she hopes she isn’t. “There are things even worse than that,” she says.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s just . . .”

But he doesn’t finish. Then there is a long silence, which she breaks, because she owes him some kind of explanation.

“I got myself in with some bad people, okay? Really bad people.” She looks down to escape the pity in his eyes. Then she thinks of something she can say. “I’m up to my neck in skunks, Wayne-Ray.”

He smiles, a Charlie Brown smile. His whole face is kind of crooked. He’d broken his nose bad playing baseball when he was a kid, had a scar on his chin the shape of a ground-rule double.

“Up to your neck, eh?”

It was something they used to say, although the skunks they were referring to way back then weren’t vicious, sadistic drug dealers whose stash had been pinched.

“You hungry?” he asks.

“Oh, God, yes.”

He nods. “Okay.” But there’s a question in his eyes, and she braces herself.

“What the hell’d you do to your hair?” he says.

She sits with a bowl of stew at a tiny white table in a spotless kitchen about the size of a changing room. It’s venison stew. He was home a week or so and came back with gallons of the stuff.

The stew is hot, the gravy rich, the meat tender. Auntie Lanie never bothered much with vegetables. Caution has a hold of her spoon like she’s six years old and wants the bowl to never be empty.