James grinned. “That’s right, sir.” James looked straight at me. “I can drive the heck out of anything, and I’ve been around trucks all my life. If you need the help, well.”
“That’s good.” My father locked the door with the deadbolt. My father was much shorter than James but it didn’t stop him from patting James on the back and guiding him
toward the kitchen. “My wife she working. I make the coffee. Antonio, go get ready for school.”
The morning sun warmed my back but my feet were cold on the ceramic tile. Had I missed something? I had overheard my father fighting with my mother in their bedroom a couple of nights back. My father had replaced all his stolen tools and my mother yelled that the dump truck still wasn’t paid off, and my father wasn’t helping matters by spending so much of his time in the garage. My father insisted he had a plan. At the kitchen door, James turned to me and winked. James had a plan too.
I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. I had felt this way once before. Last winter my bike hit a patch of black ice on a busy street and slipped sideways. I hurt my wrist trying to break my fall, but all I kept thinking about were the cars and trucks that were behind me that could hit the same patch but they wouldn’t be able to stop. I remember closing my eyes so tight my body shook. I think I prayed harder than I’ve ever prayed and was answered with a loud honk. It was all I needed to give me the time to drag my bike to the sidewalk.
I got dressed, slung my Adidas school bag over my shoulder, and headed out the door. I made it to Edite’s in record time. I found her spare key where she told me it would be hidden. I needed a place to feel safe, which is what she said her apartment could be. Just as I was closing the door, I saw her stumbling into the kitchen.
“My dad hired him. James. He just came to our house and my dad gave him a job.”
“Take a breath, Antonio. It’s okay.” Edite’s hair was matted like a bird’s nest. She hadn’t washed her face. In the morning light the lines she had drawn around her lips and eyebrows were
uneven. She touched the edge of her mouth where the lipstick smeared. She raised her hand to my forehead and I ducked.
“But what does he want?”
She stood at the kitchen counter. “It won’t be so bad, will it? You have nothing to hide?” Edite said. Again, the image of James appearing from a cloud of steam flashed in my head: bare-chested, drying his hair in a towel, his jeans unbuttoned. “You kids meet up and take care of each other. You’re safe. I think that’s all your mom and dad care about.”
“They don’t know I go there, do they?”
“Relax.” She pulled out a cigarette. “Antonio, look at me.” Edite grabbed my wrists and whipped them like reins. Her voice became calm and soft. “I saw James yesterday at the bar and he told me your dad had asked him if he was interested in some work. Your dad says he can’t keep up with all the calls. Ever since word’s gotten around that you’re a healer, he’s been getting more business. Now he thinks he can run his little dog-and-pony show and have someone else take care of the real work for him.”
I wrenched my hands away. “I gotta go to school.”
“Ah, look, Antonio. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
I stood at the door, my hand resting on the doorknob.
“It was a rough night, that’s all,” she added, laying her hands on my shoulders and turning me around. “My words aren’t coming out right. Sit down. I’ll make us some coffee.”
“I’ll have tea.”
Her eyes were dark, mascara smudged into the hollows.
“You don’t look so good,” I said.
“Tell me about it.” She gave me a hug and lowered me into a chair.
Edite smelled of unwashed clothes and tobacco. “When do you need to be at school?” She plugged in the percolator, then loosened the belt of her robe and tied it again, cinching it at her waist. Her breasts jiggled under her robe. I could trace the outline of her nipples. The word
high beams
came to mind—that’s what Manny would have called them. I looked away.
“A boy needs a healthy breakfast. Just give me a minute,” and she shuffled into her bedroom. I scanned all the magazines and newspapers, the books she had piled on one of the chairs and along the kitchen wall on the floor. I took deep breaths, tried to match my breathing to the percolator, which had begun to pop and wheeze. Every so often she would yell or curse, like she was tripping over things.
It’ll all be okay. James working for my father doesn’t have to change things
. Edite hopped into the kitchen on one leg, holding her toe with her hand. Her hair was pulled back by one of those Alice in Wonderland headbands, her face all red as if it had been scoured with hot water. She poured coffee into two mugs, the grounds swirling on the surface. “Shit,” she mumbled.
“It’s okay, coffee is good.”
“Isn’t that what you asked for?” She stabbed at the sugar bowl, managed to chisel off a couple of chunks, which she plopped into the mugs.
“You should put some grains of rice in the bowl. Rice-A-Roni even.” She looked over at me. “The sugar bowl. My mom says it sucks up the humidity.” The lines on Edite’s forehead vanished with her first sip of coffee. “The humidity gets sucked up and the sugar stays loose.”
Edite sat back in her chair and licked her spoon. “How about the rice?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“The rice … how do you make sure the grains of rice don’t fall in your coffee?”
I had never thought about that. We’d always had rice in our sugar and I just thought everyone did the same thing. “I guess you have to be careful. Mom has a sugar dispenser she bought at Kresge’s.”
“Your mother thinks of everything.” Edite brought the spoon down from her mouth and twirled it in each mug. I wasn’t going to say anything about sharing spoons. We didn’t do that either. She stared out the back window. Her collection of Red Rose animal miniatures had grown to twenty-three. Some were doubles my mother didn’t want. Edite’s were lined up on the windowsill, a way of keeping count of her time here, I figured. It was her favourite part of being in Canada, she had said, the tea that comes with figurines.
“What’s all this?” I asked, pointing at the stack of papers on the table.
“I was up all night poring over documents, psychological assessments, interviews with people who were friends or worked with some of the men accused of killing the Jaques boy. I’m helping out one of the reporters. I have a couple of police friends that are slipping me some juicy bits. It’s hard to get this information. Everyone in our newsroom is just too polite so they asked me to use my American know-how to dazzle a few answers out of them.”
“Who are the reports about this time?” She’d kill me if she knew I had shared that secret information about Saul Betesh with my class. There was a pact between us—a pact I felt guilty for breaking—that allowed her to share information if
I kept it to myself. I still needed to ask for it, though, like poking a bug to get it to move.
“One of the accused, this Werner Gruener, came to Canada from Germany when he was seven. He grew up in a small town.” She whispered it like it was a bad thing.
I sipped the coffee. It was strong and bitter, despite the sugar, and I was tempted to ask for a smoke too. Manny had been smoking since he was ten, and I knew Ricky smoked in secret, though every time I asked him he denied it.
“His parents were very religious.” Edite pointed at me. “Always a problem. Anyway, he grew up with a head filled with good and evil and thoughts of eternal damnation.” She laughed. “Hell, you know about that.”
Fuck off
, I wanted to say, wanted to run out of her apartment, maybe kick over a chair on my way. But I nodded instead. Edite dug under some magazines and old newspaper. She pulled out a clipboard and flipped a couple of pages over.
“His father left them when Werner was eleven years old, took off somewhere, just disappeared. Shortly thereafter, his mother had a mental breakdown. He was thirteen. No, fourteen.” Edite tapped the report before she laid the clipboard on the table. I reached over to see it for myself. Her hand swooped down and pinned the clipboard to the table. I tucked my hand under my ass, as if she had slapped it.
Edite picked at a fleck of tobacco that clung to her lip.
“Did he help murder Emanuel?”
“Well, he opened the door. Ran down two flights of stairs when he heard the doorbell and opened the door for his friend Saul Betesh and the boy, Emanuel.” She laughed again, a smoker’s laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“This Gruener guy was pissed because all the knocking interrupted his favourite show,
Three’s Company
. He heard the knocking just when Jack was trying to juggle two women on the same date. According to the report, he kept repeating he missed the best part.”
Edite reached back to the counter and brought the percolator to the table. I tried to read the report upside down. She poured herself some more coffee—tar black—and was about to do the same for me. I placed my hand over my cup.
Edite got up and leaned against the kitchen wall, her coffee and a cigarette in the same hand, and looked out the window.
“What do you and James talk about?” I said.
She brought her mug to her mouth. I could hear her gulp. She looked over her shoulder. “He’s trying to make ends meet. He’s determined to take care of Agnes.”
“Why can’t she come here?”
“I offered. She said she wanted to stay with James.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why does she choose to stay or why does he want to take care of her?”
“Both.”
“She’s had it rough and so has he. He says she’s the closest thing he’s got to a family.” Her voice sounded like it was going to crack. “That’s why the baby— My head’s pounding,” she said, before plopping herself back down on the chair.
“Can I get you something?”
“I want you to listen to me,” she said. “James is a good guy. A bit rough but he means no harm. He won’t hurt you,” she whispered, before kissing her finger and plinking me on the
nose with it. “Jesus, I’m tired. I didn’t sleep very much. I was out all night looking for him.”
“Who?” I asked.
“My Johnny,” she said.
“I thought you said you spent last night—”
“What?”
“You told me you were looking over the reports.”
She pressed her temples, made small circles with her white fingertips. “I’ll go back to bed. I’ll just have a refill and a smoke.” But she never moved toward her bedroom.
“I better go,” I said.
“Let me write you a note.”
Edite tore off a blank corner of the newspaper, then got up to look for a pen. I stared at the coffee grounds sticking to the inside of her mug.
S
ATURDAY MORNINGS
were quiet at our house, except for the sound of our screen door slamming when Senhora Rodrigues delivered her fresh cheese. Before cleaning, my mother went to Czehoski’s on Queen Street for Polish cold cuts and to Future Bakery for sliced rye. She’d do her banking before heading to Kensington Market, where all the rest of her grocery shopping was done. My father started the morning early with a basement excavation job. He’d be home for lunch and then get ready for the afternoon disciples. My mother called them visitors, which made them sound like friends or family. James was going to take over in the afternoon, dumping the truck’s load of dirt in one of the city’s landfills.
I stood outside James’s garage in the morning, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth, the way we were taught in gym class.
The light in the garage was powdery. My eyes inched over a bicycle frame that hung from a hook, across to the hot plate, to a few baseboard heaters, unplugged and piled against a wall, over the shiny blue trunk and up to the window in the door that burned in the morning sun.
James stepped out from behind the curtain. “I know why you’re here. You want me to quit.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would it have made a difference? I thought you were old enough to understand.”
“What do you want?” I said.
“Extra cash. The baby is on the way. When your dad offered me a trucking gig on Saturdays I didn’t think twice. My hope is he’ll like my work and he’ll offer me a few weekdays too. Look around you. This ain’t no way to live, especially with a kid. I want to get something better for me and Agnes and the baby.”
“But
we’re
helping you.”
“Yeah, I just don’t want this to get messed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, we gotta keep an eye on Manny, for starters. He’s getting sloppy. If that little prick gets caught stealing bikes, it leads the cops back to me. And then what? Who’s gonna take care of Agnes?”
“So tell him to stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“You know how much a baby costs?”
“Well, Ricky and me can—”
“Ricky is a problem too. You and I both know about Ricky and what he does. He can’t get caught down on his knees,” James said. Dribbles of pee blotted my underwear. James took a step toward me. “He was doing this shit long before I came around. You just need to know that I’m offering him a kind of protection, that’s all.” Instantly the room turned hot. I couldn’t look at him because all I kept wondering was what else he knew. “Ricky came in here crying the other day because at the billiards, Amilcar’s dad, Poom Pooms or something, bent down and peeked through the hole.”
“What did you do?”
“Let’s just say I’m taking care of it.”
Next thing I knew I was pounding my pedals along Queen Street, racing so fast that I passed a streetcar, James’s last words—“Don’t leave!”—pulsing in my head.
Sunday morning, I woke to the sound of stones being thrown at my bedroom window.
I pressed my face to the mesh screen and yelled through clenched teeth, “Are you nuts? What time is it?”
“That thing freaks me out,” Manny said, glaring at Jesus on our lawn.
My father had spruced Jesus up by applying Spackle to its chipped nose and painting its flaking face. The sacred heart, the size of an India-rubber ball, burst through Jesus’s robes, shiny from a fresh coat of glossy red nail polish. My father had also cut some Plexiglas in the outline of the tub, caulked and screwed it in place, trapping Jesus in a sweating coffin.