Liberty Street (33 page)

“Is that really you?” he asked, studying Dooley's face and then holding out his hand to shake. “Have you been down here all this time? Almost twenty years, right?”

Dooley remembered him now, remembered that he was a Canadian, and that he'd had a girlfriend named . . . what? Izzy? Dave and Izzy. He was a high school teacher now, Dave told him, sliding onto the stool next to Dooley. He gestured toward his own bare arms, white skin. “Just got here. Quick vacation with the fam, good deal on an all-inclusive. But look at you. Still with the long hair and brown as a Mexican. I should have tanned before I came down, but I didn't have time. Wow. Those were the days, weren't they? Those days on the beach. A long ways from teaching social studies. I'm bored out of my mind half of the time, but it's a living. How about you? What are you up to?”

“I'm a gardener,” Dooley said. “Can I get you a beer?” He motioned to the waiter to bring Dave a beer. “
Y otra para mí, por favor.
”

“Ha ha,” Dave said. “Same old Dooley.” Then he said, sobering, “Shame about Angela, eh?”

Now Dooley remembered that Dave was from Vancouver, that he'd been one of the people with Angela that first day in Tijuana.

“What about Angela?” Dooley asked.

Dave stared at him. “You know. When she died. Too bad. Everyone liked her.” Then he saw the look on Dooley's face. “You didn't know? Sorry, man. I thought you would know. You were—I don't know—you and Angela. And it was a while ago . . . six, seven years, maybe. Sorry, Dooley. I assumed that . . .” He trailed off, not knowing what to say.

Dooley looked away from Dave, looked down at the empty beer bottle with his hand wrapped around it, managed to ask what had happened. He was thinking,
Six or seven years ago. Not long after she left here, then.
That's why he'd never heard from her. Why hadn't someone told him?

“I don't know for sure what happened,” Dave said. “But she had some kind of weird disease, some blood disease that she'd had in childhood, I think, only it came back and got out of hand when she was down here in Mexico. When she got home, it was too late. I don't know. That's what I heard. Maybe it's not right. Maybe she had, you know, breast cancer or something. Sorry to be the one to tell you. Are you okay?”

Dooley stood up from his stool. His bad leg gave out and he stumbled, almost falling into Dave, but he caught himself and grabbed on to the bar, only he knocked over the full bottle the waiter had just placed there and spilled beer all over the counter. He fumbled in his pocket for money to pay, and he could tell Dave was embarrassed for him.

“Hey, I've got it, Dooley,” he said. “Don't worry about it.”
So Dooley just left without even saying goodbye to Dave, and he knew he was weaving as he walked out of the bar but he didn't care, didn't care what Dave thought. So what if Dave thought he was a hopeless drunk? He tripped on the cobblestones and almost went face first into the street, but a Mexican man in a neat white shirt grabbed his arm—“
Estás bien, señor
?”

“
Lo siento, gracias,
” Dooley said, and he found his legs and was able to walk back to the casita, which Lola and her absent husband seemed to have deserted.

Could it be true, what Dave had told him? He knew it was.

That night, he broke into the casa and slept in the master suite, in Angela's bed. He dreamed about her. He hadn't dreamed about her in a couple of years, but there she was in her yellow bikini, standing in . . . what was that? White sand? No, it was snow. She was standing in her bikini, her skin whiter than he had ever seen it, bare feet in the white snow. Snow began to fall all around her. She didn't look cold. She looked bewildered. When Dooley woke up, he was covered in sweat. He went to the kitchen and almost expected to see her there, making herself a pot of tea. But the casa was in darkness and she wasn't there, hadn't been there for a long time. Hadn't been anywhere for a long time, as it turned out. He went back to the casita.

He began to dream about snow almost every night. Snow falling, sometimes gently down like confetti, sometimes whipped into a whiteout, or a blizzard. Other times the snow drifted up against his casita until it was completely covered and he'd wake up feeling smothered, as though he'd been caught like a backcountry skier in an avalanche. He began to think about snow during the day when he was sweeping up
bougainvillea petals, imagining himself with a shovel instead of a broom, wearing snowpack boots instead of
huaraches.
He began to wonder what he was still doing there.

When a wealthy-looking Mexican in a suit knocked on his door to tell him he had just bought the property—Angela's casa and the casita—and was planning to tear it down and build a twenty-two-unit condo complex with a swimming pool on the roof, Dooley packed his things, including the El Nido tiles, and left. He walked away carrying the same backpack he'd come with. There was a rooster on the road in front of the casa, right in his path. It was hunkered down as though it were night instead of the middle of the morning. Something was wrong with it, Dooley saw; it couldn't seem to move. Any other time, he would have stopped to see what was wrong. Maybe it had been hit by a car. He might have picked it up and taken it, squawking, to his little courtyard, or maybe placed it in someone else's courtyard to keep the dogs from getting it.

But on this day, he didn't stop. He stepped aside to avoid the rooster, and he kept on walking. For some reason, perhaps because of where he was going, the thought occurred to him that he had not driven a vehicle since the day he crashed his truck into the bridge. They'd taken away his driver's licence then and he'd never applied for another. The country to which he was returning was a country where you had to drive to get anywhere.

Four days later, he got off a bus in a frozen town just south of the Canadian border, and he bought a pair of rubber boots with felt liners, wrapped his body in a Mexican blanket, and set off walking. He walked for hours through pasture hills and across snow-crusted fields of stubble, until he came to a paved road with a highway sign telling him the
American crossing was to the south, and he knew he was in Canada. He stood on the shoulder and waited, numb with cold. He'd slipped across two borders to get here, the way illegals did. He didn't have a single piece of ID—no health card, not even a library card—but incredibly, after living in Mexico for twenty years and smoking a football field's worth of pot and drinking a tequila distillery dry, he still had a good chunk of his nest egg hidden in his backpack.

He wondered if the rest of his money was still waiting for him in the bank where he'd left it. He also wondered if, having made it all this way, he was going to die here on the side of the road. The air was so cold he could hardly breathe it in. He thought of giving up and lying down in the ditch, but then he saw a pickup truck coming toward him out of the blowing snow. He stuck out his thumb, thinking that if the driver stopped, he would live, and if not, he would freeze to death by the side of the road.

The truck stopped. Oldies country music was playing on the radio, so loud that Dooley could hear the familiar tune—“Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”—before the door was even opened for him. The driver turned down the radio and told Dooley he was going as far north as Yellowhead. He told him this as though Dooley might choose not to get in if the destination were not to his liking. Dooley knew there was no choice if he wanted to survive. He was half dead already. The boots he'd bought had not kept his feet warm and he wondered if his toes were too far gone to be saved.

He got in the warm vehicle. They were barely back up to speed on the highway before he began to shake so violently that the young farmer looked alarmed, as if fearing Dooley
might die on him. He had a sleeping bag behind the seat and he reached back and pulled it out for Dooley, apologizing because it was covered in dog hair. Dooley took it and wrapped himself in it. His feet burned as they began to thaw. He let the young farmer believe the shaking was only because of the cold, but in truth, he hadn't had a drink since he'd left Mexico. When they got to Yellowhead, he asked if there was a detox centre in town, and that's where the man let him out. Dooley tried to give him all the Mexican money he had in his pocket, but the man sped away as if he were making a lucky escape.

Dooley stood in the snow and looked at an old two-storey house with a Salvation Army sign by the front door. He felt as though he was making one more live-or-die decision, but no, he thought, that decision had been made when the farmer stopped and picked him up.

He took a deep breath—several, felt his chest rising and falling, saw the steamy evidence of his own life in the cold air—and he walked up to the door and knocked. Then he felt all the strength leave him, his legs buckling, himself sinking, so that when the door opened, he was on his knees.

“What have we here?” a man said. “A pilgrim on his knees for Christ?”

Dooley struggled to keep himself from falling across the threshold.

“
Y usted es probablemente un idiota para Cristo,
” he said. “But as you say, I am on my knees. I need help. Have I come to the right place?”

The man took Dooley's arm and helped him to his feet.

Led him inside to thaw.

       
1)
 
Get busy. Begin immediately.
DO NOT PROCRASTINATE
.

       
2)
 
Take everything to the church rummage or the dump.
DO NOT
get hung up on the fact that the good people in Elliot will end up with the family fortune (ha ha).

       
3)
 
Ask Mavis to sell the house and then GET THE HELL OUT OF TOWN.

I
STUDIED THE
plan I'd written for myself twenty-four hours earlier and then stuck to the fridge door with a flower magnet. It wasn't bad advice, although “get busy” and “begin immediately” were perhaps not explicit enough. I'd spent the previous day gazing at the horses across the road, and had not done a single useful thing.

I took the last two blueberry muffins from the fridge and went outside to eat one of them on the step . . . where I discovered a jar of homemade orange marmalade in a recycled store-bought jam jar. It gleamed like amber, with the morning sun shining on it. I reached down and picked it up,
and the glass felt warm in my hand, as though the marmalade had been freshly spooned inside. It was such an intense colour, my mouth watered just looking at it. I carried it into the house, thankful that there was no need to return either the pie plate or the jar, since they were both disposable, although I didn't know how I would do that even if I wanted to because of Mavis's odd denial of responsibility. I called her again right away. It had to be her. Again she said it was not.

“Really?” I said. “Because nothing else makes sense.”

“You must have an old friend in town,” she said.

“I don't.”

“Not even one?”

“I never did, so how could I now?”

“It couldn't be the trailer guy, could it?”

“What old bachelor makes marmalade?” I said. “Can't be him.”

I ended the call and thought about the possibility that it
was
my neighbour. Do those old campers even have proper stoves? I wondered. This thought made me thankful there were a couple of lots between Vince's house and the trailer. I pictured the trailer blowing up in a spectacular propane explosion, not from something as nefarious as a crystal meth lab—which, when I thought of it, did not seem completely unlikely—but from a home-canning accident.

It had to be Mavis, and the denial was just some strange form of humility. I ate the last muffin with a big dollop of orange marmalade on the side, and then put the jar in the fridge and decided I had to go for groceries, like it or not, because I was still hungry and couldn't get through the day on marmalade.

I got in my car and drove across the tracks and up Main
Street, straight to where the little Co-op grocery store should have been but wasn't. There was an empty lot surrounded by a board fence plastered with flyers and graffiti. I parked anyway and got out of my car and looked up and down the street, trying to see something that resembled a grocery store, wondering what I was going to do for food, and if I would have to drive all the way to Yellowhead for supplies. Just then a woman with an expensive three-wheeled baby stroller came jogging up the street and said, I thought, “
Hola.
” She stopped, barely puffing, and asked if I needed help, and I said I was looking for someplace to get a few groceries. While her toddler stared at me, she directed me to the new Co-op superstore on the highway west of town, and then she jogged on up the street.

I drove to the road I had come in on from St. Agnes and soon found a monstrous new building with metal siding and a bright orange roof and gas pumps, a grocery store, a feed supply, and a lumberyard. I parked near the entrance to the grocery and went inside, wondering how I had missed it. The young clerk at the till gave me a quick once-over, but then went back to texting when she realized she didn't know me.

I grabbed a cart and quickly threw in a few things: bread, milk, peanut butter, fruit, sandwich meat, a few cans of soup, a bag of Cheetos, coffee, dish soap, toilet paper, and at the last minute, a canvas lawn chair in a bag. When the clerk routinely asked, “Co-op number?” as though it were unthinkable that I wouldn't have one, my parents' number came immediately to mind—371—and I almost said it out loud before I could stop myself. The clerk's hand hovered over the till keys as though it were not possible for her to sell groceries to a customer without a number.

“Sorry,” I said. “No number.”

She rang in my groceries and bagged them, and I carried them to my car and left. I stopped at the hotel on the way home and bought a case of beer.

When I got back to the house, I could see a dish on the porch next to the geranium before I even got out of the car. I looked more closely and found homemade macaroni and cheese with a breadcrumb topping. My first thought was that this was a new development, because the dish would have to be returned. I carried my groceries and the beer inside, leaving the chair and the casserole on the porch, and called Mavis.

“This has to be you. Because you're truly the only person who knows I'm here.” I was staring at the trailer as I spoke, wondering if I was being watched.

“Sorry to disappoint you, not I,” Mavis said. “Anyway, it's a small town. I imagine someone has noticed you.” She sounded chipper, which was more frustrating than if she'd spoken the words with sarcasm. Then she again denied that she'd left anything on the step. She was a vegan, she said, and didn't eat cheese. The only casserole she ever made—and it wasn't really a casserole, more of a stew—had mushrooms and lentils in it.

I tried to reconcile yoga and lentils with real estate. I wondered, Who in the world—the guy in the trailer or anyone else—would leave me these gifts of food? It was not as though there'd been a death.

“Have you changed your mind about meeting in person?” Mavis asked. “Tomorrow's a yoga-class day.”

“Let's wait a few days,” I said. “I'm still not organized here.”

I put the groceries away and then looked at the casserole
through the screen door and thought of a stray dog lying on the step—a golden Lab, perhaps—and then I thought that I couldn't just leave it there, so I went back out and picked it up and carried it into the house. I set the casserole down on the kitchen counter. It was still warm.

I stared at it through the glass lid, slightly steamy. It looked so good, the top perfectly browned. I lifted the lid and smelled warm, melted cheddar cheese. Why waste it? One taste on the tip of a spoon and then I was devouring it right from its Pyrex container.

After the empty casserole dish was soaking in the sink, I went to the west-facing bathroom and studied the trailer through the window. I saw no movement or indication that anyone was inside, although the truck was there. That night after dark, I looked out the bathroom window again and saw a string of patio lanterns glowing.

The next morning there was no food delivery, and by noon I'd still heard no car on the road, no footsteps on the porch. Good, I thought, maybe cordiality had run its course. I spent the afternoon wandering aimlessly through the house, looking into kitchen drawers and mostly empty closets, and finally I plopped myself down on the couch and stared at my mother's old record rack, which automatically shuffled through the LPs as though they were a deck of cards (another vintage item that Mavis had retrieved from the basement). I pictured myself at the garbage dump, winging records out the car window onto an enormous pile of unrecycled small-town trash, and with that thought, I got up off the couch again and unlatched the door to the basement, which I knew I'd been avoiding. I flicked on the light and descended into the clutter of my family's possessions.

Cardboard boxes stacked on wooden pallets, the wagon-wheel armchair with garbage bags full of old clothing piled on it (I recalled that we'd thrown out the couch), a hideous chrome pole lamp, two mismatched coffee tables that I barely remembered, a wood veneer bookcase complete with old books and glass doors that didn't properly close, my old twenty-five-dollar guitar with the neck warped absurdly, a metal clothing rack full of barn coats mingled with town coats, including my mother's three-quarter-length muskrat, which was what women bought when they couldn't afford mink. I shuddered, imagining it full of moths or sow bugs or whatever it was that got into old animal fur.

I didn't want to touch the coat. I didn't want to touch any of this.

I went back upstairs, turned out the basement light, and closed the door again.

By suppertime, I was regretting that I'd eaten all of the casserole, since I would now have to cook for myself. I decided on mushroom soup from a can, but it reminded me of salty, flour-thickened gravy. I ate only half the bowl before I threw the rest out and washed the pot, and then I ate most of the bag of Cheetos. I couldn't help thinking of Ian as I looked at my orange-stained fingers. He hated Cheetos and didn't see how anyone could think of them as food. I wondered if he had considered calling me. Probably not.

Before I went to bed, I stepped out onto the porch to catch the night air, and there at my feet was a plate of cookies. Two kinds, chocolate chip and oatmeal, on an old-fashioned blue-and-white china dinner plate and protected from insects by a serious triple wrap of plastic. I picked up the plate and carried it inside.

Whoever had wrapped the cookies had done it so thoroughly I needed a knife to get at them. Once I had the plastic off, I was torn between the anticipation of pleasure and the uneasy thought that something was wanted of me. No one could be that persistently welcoming, not without wanting payment in return. I studied the cookies for a long time before I bit into one, and then I closed my eyes and savoured. I couldn't decide whether I liked the oatmeal or the chocolate chip better. I wondered why the cookies had come on a china plate when the muffins had been delivered in a disposable pie plate. It seemed like an escalation.

The next morning, an aluminum pot was waiting on the porch. When I removed the lid, I found a good-sized serving of freshly made paella, the top sprinkled with peas and chopped egg. I looked around. All was quiet. No signs of traffic on the street, no dust in either direction, no sound of a vehicle in the distance. I looked toward the trailer. It was appearing more and more likely, I had to admit, that my neighbour was responsible. I considered throwing the paella out, just tossing it over the side of the porch in hopes that the cook was watching and got the message.

What message, though? So far, I'd eaten everything that had been sent my way, so would that not be like the restaurant customer who sends back a meal after eating three-quarters of it? And who throws out a pot of homemade paella? Even with the lid back on the pot, I could smell the onions and garlic and seafood, and when I removed the lid to look at it once again, I couldn't help myself. I got a big spoon from the kitchen, and even though it was still morning and toast would have been more appropriate, I sat down on the step and ate it right out of the pot, one spoonful after another, as though I
hadn't seen food in weeks. I could hardly believe it when the pot was empty. I went inside and washed it, then I realized I was still licking my lips and wishing there was more.

I stood in the kitchen and contemplated the empty food containers. I felt an invisible cloak folding and unfolding around me, like slowly beating wings, and thought I must be going mad.

I phoned Mavis and asked her whether I should be calling the police about the food deliveries, hoping that she would fess up to being the Welcome Wagon. She assumed I was joking. “Wouldn't that be funny,” she said, “if you called 911 about a plate of cookies?”

Yes, hilarious.

The next morning, there was nothing. That afternoon, after spraying myself with repellent from a can that I found in the bathroom, I went for a walk up Liberty Street, avoiding even a glance at the trailer as I passed by. When I reached the end of the street, I turned away from town and walked down the grid road into the country, farther than I had intended to walk, seduced by the smell of cut hay. When vehicles passed on the road, I put my head down. When one driver slowed alongside me to make, I presumed, the inevitable offer of help, I waved him on. Best not to speak, I thought, and give the inhabitants of Elliot a story to pass around like a chain letter.

When I got back to the house, I found an old Coca-Cola tray with the rusty image of Santa Claus waiting for me on the top step. An appetizer—three shrimp carefully arranged and swimming in butter and garlic. A bowl of gorgeous-looking pasta with what appeared to be a marinara sauce. A side salad with cherry tomatoes and cheese slices and fresh basil leaves.
There was also a small plate containing a serving of cake with chocolate shavings on top. Tiramisu? Really? Each dish was carefully wrapped in plastic.

I carried the tin tray inside and put it on the kitchen table, and then sat down and thought about what I should do. In spite of the aroma escaping the plastic, I decided to take a chance and return the meal to the trailer—it had to have come from there—but then I hesitated, and that moment of hesitation was just long enough for my willpower to reduce itself to nothing, and then I couldn't stop. I was at the plastic with a knife, and I ate every bite.

When I was carrying the dishes to the sink I dropped the dessert plate, which broke perfectly in two with a sharp crack as it hit the tabletop, and this crack seemed to tell me it was time to put an end to the anonymous deliveries. They had to have come from my neighbour. I washed the dishes and stacked them all—everything that had arrived over the past few days, including the broken halves of the dessert plate—on the Coca-Cola tray. There was still a half jar of marmalade in the fridge, so I emptied it into the garbage can, washed the jar, and put that on the tray too. Then I carried it all through the grass to my neighbour's.