It was her idea. She thought to make the most of the hot water, the privacy, the unlikelihood of being found, and take a sink bath. In her coarse way, she demanded he bury his head in the corner and never turn around. Ever. He promised, and was good to his word, listening to her undress, then splash water carefully onto herself, pushing the pink foam out of the soap dispenser, droplets running down the sink, plumping into a puddle on the floor behind him. He heard her use what sounded like the entire roll of disposable hand towels to dry off, then get dressed, tucking in her shirt, zipping up her pants.
“Your turn,” she'd said, shouldering him out of the corner. But as he turned around, she was too close, and his erection brushed against her on his way to the sink. As opposed to Steven, Sam wasn't good to her word, and halfway through washing himself, naked and squatting over the faucet, she turned around, grinning at him seriously. She stepped forward, put her hands on his thighs.
The sex was fast, urgent, both of them fumbling onto the floor with their arms out, gripping onto whatever they could, the edge of the sink basin, the tiled walls, the base of the toilet. She kept her mouth open the entire time, Steven noted, and she tasted of pink dispenser soap.
That night, they went together into one of the smaller nooks of the boiler room, where she usually slept alone, both of them with a candle, two orbs of undulating shadow walking along walls of cracked cement, a hand in front of the wicks, steadying the flame. They put the candles where others had been before, a wavering flagellum of carbon flaring up through bits of chipped paint. They smoked a joint (as this was the only way for her to find sleep, he knew) and instead of having sex a second time, she asked him to lie down in front of her, and she spooned him, adjusted the blankets around their shoulders. Before she fell asleep, she whispered that she'd only ever slept like this with a dog before, a mutt she found in Toronto and panhandled with for a while (cuz, she added, people tended to give more if they thought the money was going to a canine). Steven couldn't think of what to say in response so kept quiet. Even though he really wanted to know more, more about her story, how she got there. He knew she'd lived in a group home for young women, a place designed to teach girls in foster care everything they needed to know about both the business end, and the frontlines, of prostitution. As it turned out, that night would have been the only occasion to ask her; the next day she disappeared, most likely picked up by the police. He never saw or heard anything about her again. Then, three days later, it happened to him.
Coming out onto a sidewalk from an alleyway, he felt a tap on his shoulder and was asked for his
ID
, for reasons he didn't hear, due to the pulse thumping in his eardrums. He would've run, but with another police officer flanking him (with the apt impression that he was about to bolt), there wasn't much point. He refrained from spitting in either of their faces and was brought back to the juvenile wing of the psychiatric hospital, where he met with a woman he'd never seen before who'd recently replaced the previous director. He told her, flatly, that he'd escaped because he wasn't crazy, that he didn't belong there, that he belonged in a normal home, with normal people. She explained to him that, if this were true, he would have to prove it, that his behaviour alone would dictate the length of his stay. She promised. And, likewise, Steven understood. He realized that, in the end, it wasn't only a matter of playing their game, it was a matter of winning it; that the one way to get out of an asylum and stay out of it was leaving it through the front doors, “healed.”
He asked one of the staff in the rec room about it, what he could do to expedite the process of his “recovery.” The man suggested helping out with the recreational side of things, namely doing the jobs that he and his colleagues didn't like to do. So Steven took to raising and lowering the volleyball nets, setting out other equipment, watching the games from the sidelines before gathering everything up again and putting it back in its rightful place. He was also asked to go into the adult ward to host the bingo games, picking small white balls out of a giant transparent one, staring through it as he did so, the images distended and blurry (not unlike The Bubble Door), the wobbling shapes of people sitting nearby, their giant craniums funnelling into pinheads, then widening again, eyes bulging.
Then came the day that one of the staff, who was somewhat tolerant toward Steven's general harshness and smart remarks, asked if he wanted to do a few other jobs besides just his normal routine. “Sure.” He shrugged. “Whatever. Better'en just standin' round.” When he was mopping one of the halls, knowing that there were hospital janitors paid to do that very thing, knowing that he was being tested, and was passing, he could barely keep the smile off his face.
The following Monday, he had a meeting with one of the administrators, and another two weeks of dutiful chores, behaviour that bordered on polite, and a subsequent meeting with several other administrators had them talking about releasing him into a foster home. They even believed that they'd found one suitable for him: in a suburb north of Toronto, where the lawns were nice, where the people were nice. Green and kind. Did he think he could manage that? they asked. Of course he could, he'd said, looking out the window with nonchalance. Of course.
The foster family Steven had been assigned to was in Brimley, a residential area with regularly maintained streets and brightly painted fire hydrants. His new family had come outside to greet him as he arrived, standing on their driveway, wondering where his luggage was. The family consisted of a couple that ran a flower shop together, the man's biological son (who was quite young), another foster child like Steven (even younger), and himself, who, at fifteen, was tall, lanky, with a voice that was pubescent and breaking. To Steven, they seemed like one of those families on
TV
, well adjusted, clean, friendly, smiling at nothing. It put him on edge. For the first week, he walked around afraid to touch things, easily startled by their salad spinners and steamers, their food processors and sprinkler systems. Conversely, he seemed to offend them with his language and mannerisms, most noticeably at the supper table, while he wiped his constantly runny nose with the end of his sleeve, coughing out over the salad, standing to snatch things from the centre. Once, after they'd finished eating, and a full ten days had passed of Steven going to a nearby school without a word of the friends he was supposed to be making there, they asked him to stay behind after the younger boys had excused themselves.
“So . . . Steven,” his foster mother began, “you haven't told us . . . about what you like to do in your free time. Do youâyou knowâhave any hobbies or . . . anything like that?” Steven looked down at his plate, which matched the designs on his cup, his fork, even the colour scheme on his cloth serviette. “Because I know Brady likes putting those models together, ships and cars mostly. And John flies those little Styrofoam planes.”
“And they both like sports,” Brady's father inserted. “Play them, watch them, collect cards.”
“Oh, and those wooden model dinosaurs! I don't even think you have to glue them, isn't that right, Walter? You don't have to glue them?”
“Nope. No glue.”
His wife tried to laugh. “Anyway,” she said, turning back toward him. “We just wondered what
you
like, Steven?” Both of them grinned warmly, waiting.
He blinked, eyelashes raking quickly through the freon-circulated air. What, he wondered, if he really
was
crazy? Or worse, what if he was too sane, what if he'd already lived too much, seen too much, understood people too well? What if he'd become the type of person who would never be able to pretend this greenness, this kindness? What then? Where would he go then?
It soon came to his attention that the monthly allowance his foster parents provided didn't amount to much. Even if he'd had the fervid hankering to click together these non-glue dinosaur skeletons (as a means of whittling away those pesky free hours he might find between his birth and his death), he barely had enough coinage for a bag of chips and some Gummies to keep him from stealing over his lunch hour. Fortunately, he knew a simple way to make a little extra cash on the side and had soon gravitated toward the only other dealer in the schoolyard. The principal notified his parents of this poor choice in company, and when they confronted him with it, he told them what he thought of
their
company, spitting invisible saliva onto the ivory-coloured carpet in their living room. Once the unhappy decline had begun, phone calls made, meetings had, it only took two months for another car to appear in the driveway, this time with a social worker from Child Services, who stood beside the car while Steven got in, wondering why he didn't have any luggage.
The mould was cast. For the next three years he would almost lose count as to how many foster care placements he had, how many municipalities (and hence social workers) he was put under the jurisdiction of, how many times he ran away and lived on the streets until he was picked up a few weeks later, how many schools where he was scribbled onto the end of the attendance rosters, then scratched out again. From emergency shelters to group homes, from foster parents with extended families and low incomes to middle-class nuclear units, all of it interrupted by “trial weekends” with potential adoption couples who would always find him “too” something. Too coarse, too vulgar, abrasive, deviant, or too angry, too quiet, too brooding. Until he was too old for adoption at all, while still, luckily, remaining too young for incarceration.
And for the system, the idea of juvenile detention was indeed a viable option, and one that was even recommended to him by a social worker who'd seen Steven through five of his “transitions” in a single year. It was following his fifth that he said it, sitting behind a desk eating an apple, chewing it quickly while looking Steven over, who sat with his arms across his chest, scowling at his feet. “Steve, I'm going to be frank with you here.” He was clearly exasperated, swallowing large chunks of apple-matter down his gullet, throwing a hand in the air to help him explain. “I think we both know that you're . . . well, you're a bit of a fuckup, hmm? But the problem is that you're
such
a fuckup, you can't even fuck up right. I mean, you
could
do something really bad, couldn't you? Get yourself landed in kiddy jail, keep yourself away from functioning families and other people who are just trying to care for you, provide for you.” He checked himself, sighed. “We just . . . we all want what's best. And you? You throw it away, every time. Every time, Steve.”
He lowered his hand, looked out the window, pointed. He was speaking quietly now. “That's Alex in the parking lot. Nice guy. He'll drive you to your new home. It's a . . .” he leaned forward to read from a piece of paper, “a family running a bed and breakfast in a small town up north, cottage country.” He waved a dismissive hand toward the door, pulled his chair closer to his desk. “Now go. I'll probably see you in a few weeks anyway.”
Besides the stream of highway images while driving to and from these different placements, flashes of linking towns and sprawling municipalities, Steven had never really seen life outside of a city, didn't even understand how it could exist. The term “cottage country” made him uneasy, knowing that, were the need to arise, he might not have the option to run, deal, beg, or even find a warm squat to sleep in. There was probably nothing for miles around but inbreeders, bleak forest, and muskeg, moose standing docile and still, shredding twigs between their molars.
It was near Algonquin Provincial Park, or so he assumed, with all the brochures and tourist information piled high near the reception. The bed and breakfast was supposedly “family run,” but it was really the couple's twenty-two-year-old son and the foster children that did the work, changed the sheets, made breakfast, and cleaned the rooms; duties that, surprisingly, he didn't really mind. There were six foster children in all, most of them girls, and as Steven was a burgeoning man of seventeen, the person he should have related to most was the couple's son; however, as he essentially held the position of “boss,” Steven made a point of steering clear of him whenever possible. He spent most of the time that he wasn't working alone and, something else that surprised him, outside. Because the residence was on the distant outskirts of a drowsy town that took five minutes to walk the breadth of, there wasn't much point in going there, and his bedroom was nothing but a gloomy hovel, in a basement, with no television. So he spent his hours sitting in front of the lake that bordered the property, smoking slow cigarettes near a dock that pointed its planked wooden arm out into the water. A dock where herons sometimes landed on its tip and stood, pensive and regal, for so long that they became part of the landscape, their poise both curled and erect at the same moment, like lifted shavings from a planer still attached to the wood. A tall bird, a tall boyâstaring out at the featheredge horizon where lake sheen met the clotted reflections of spruce treesâgradually forgetting each other.
Until the evening he went outside to find a person on the dock, one of the younger girls, clamped up into a ball, rocking back and forth, apparently crying. He looked over each of his shoulders, not knowing what to do, feeling stupid. While thinking he would have to find someone else to talk to her, he sauntered in her general direction until he was there, squatting down next to her, like his cousin Kipp had done with him. When he put an awkward hand on her back, she seemed to wake up, snap out of the trance she was in. She twisted around to look disgustedly at his fingers, flung them off, and ran away. He watched her disappear into the trees, mulling the incident over. Until it all fell into place.