Across from Union Station, the old Royal York Hotel appeared frozen in time, monolithic matriarch of hospitality from a forgotten era of crisp white table cloths, heavy silverware, and doormen dressed in rich burgundy coats and hats. McKelvey moved eastward, down side streets he hadn't been on in years, not since his days in a radio car. Back then he had known every street in his division, every corner where someone might hide. Those long ago days when he never seemed to question his physical ability to wrestle another man's hands into a set a cuffs, to put him to the ground like a dog, knee in his back. Was this a brand of unquestioning confidence unique to police officers, or was it simply youthful ignorance or arrogance? He couldn't say. And while he still believed he could handle himself, there were no illusions of infinite strength. He felt the energy of his life force waning.
The radio in the car thrummed and snapped with activity, but after a while McKelvey tuned it out. He noticed the subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the geography, the transformation of old apartment blocks into trendy loft condos. When you lived and worked in the city, as McKelvey had since the age of eighteen, you eventually stopped noticing any changes until they were entirely completed. Massive structures simply appeared as though set there overnight by a child building a train set village. Urban change was overwhelming in its velocity; there was simply too much of it to absorb. There was something going on around you all the time, a minute by minute transformation of the city, renovations, new glass, paint, scaffolds rising and falling like rusted skeletons, jackhammers and trucks backing up, apartment buildings blooming like strange orchids among the grasslands of the war-time bungalows and row houses. McKelvey remembered the old days of the warehouses along the train tracks, the low thick buildings that resembled concentration camps, the smashed distillery house windows staring like black empty eyes, the vacant lots where poor kids played stick ball long before there were million-dollar condos. Today wealthy young executives ate salmon steaks overlooking the train yards and back alleys where the original urban immigrants lived in shacks insulated with newspapers. Evolution.
He wound his way northward, meandering through the old neighborhoods where he had worked, specific coordinates bringing forth the memory of vivid calls: a stabbing at this corner, a bloody armed robbery at that convenience store, all the while his mind running through the meeting with Aoki. Caroline would ask about the news from the Crown, and he would tell her that not only would there be no charges brought in Gavin's murder, but the sun had set on Charlie McKelvey's mediocre police career. Hell of a day. So many things to think about.A man could get lost in the details without even knowing it.
And then he was stopped. Stopped and staring at a traffic light.
Red.
Flakes falling almost horizontal now, mesmerizing.
McKelvey stared at the traffic light. Green now. It had changed from yellow to red to green without his even noticing. He was staring at the light, yet he was also watching himself as a young man, a kid riding in a patrol car with no experience.
And then the kid was Gavin, and he was on that
first bike they bought him, and then Gavin was just lying there
lifeless on the table, a single bullet hole to the upper left
forehead...the gunshot wound the colour of black cherry...
Someone honked.
McKelvey blinked, checked the rear view. A guy in a delivery van behind him. Honked again.
Fucking idiot.
McKelvey slid the unmarked cruiser into park, undid his seatbelt, and was out of the vehicle and approaching the delivery van, the wet flakes swirling, and he could hear himself, hear his voice, hoarse and distant. It sounded like it belonged to someone else. The driver of the van just shook his head and pulled around the car, leaving McKelvey standing there in the road with the snow stinging his eyes.
Like a magnet drawn to its inevitable destination, he pulled the car up alongside the wrought iron fence surrounding the cemetery. The snow had stopped now, and the sky was muted, grey as putty, still and cold. What a day, he thought.
The world
is talking to you, Charlie,
is what Caroline would say. She'd said it all the time when they were kids in their twenties, failing miserably in that first basement apartment they rented. A real dive. All they had back then was a futon on the floor, books and a turntable supported by milk crates and bricks. He saw an image of Caroline and himself at that age, sitting up in bed after making love, a bottle of cheap wine wedged in the tangle of covers between them, the air thick with the scent of their bodies. He saw the image, but he couldn't connect himself with the man in the picture. There was nothing.
In the summertime, he would sit in the car on days like this and watch people come and go from the cemetery, human traffic manoeuvering through the landscape of grief. He rolled the window down, and he could taste the city in the back of his throat, wet dirt and ash. He sat in the car, where not so long ago he would get out of the vehicle to walk across the emerald lawns manicured to perfection, walk through those rows of stones, through generations of families laid to rest, and believe with utter conviction that the soil beneath his feet was the dust of living beings, who, at one point, had laughed and cried, won and lost, and taken for granted the dependability of the blood running through their bodies. He would understand that because he was made of the same bone and blood as those who had gone before, there could be no hope for escape; the soil patiently awaited his embrace.
He had once possessed the ability, indeed perhaps the courage, to step from the vehicle, to make the long walk to the place where his boy rested in perpetuity. To kneel and touch the soft grass there, find the mettle to speak a few words. All the long moments Caroline never knew about, all the secret promises and pledges he made with himself, the lost hours parked at the cemetery. He sat there now, and he searched for the thrust to propel him up and out through the door of the car, through those rows of stones. He glanced in the rear view and saw a stranger's set of eyes, a stranger caught in mid-life, in mid-stride, entangled in the lines and nets of his own setting. He understood this was the point of embarkation; he squinted and made out a doorâslightly ajarâjust up ahead. It bled a little light.
He opened the car door and walked through rows of stones, his dress shoes and pant legs wet from the fresh snow. The place was empty, lonely as only a cemetery could be. The headstones rose up from the earth like stoic grey perennials. The trees that ringed the perimeter were dusted like the trees on the front of a Christmas greeting card. His body found the stone it sought through the remembered geography of the heart and soul. He stood there before it. A simple stone, simple but right. He turned and crouched and touched it.
His boy.
He touched the face of the stone, the letters of one life etched for all time.
We build monuments,
he thought,
to prove
we have come through this place. Or perhaps for the false
comfort of those who remain.
He touched the grooves of the letters and dates, the bare statistics of a life stamped in granite. The natural rhythm of the lives of those who are left behind is necessarily set off-kilter; yes, he had lost his balance there for a long time, but now he felt himself coming through to the other side of something, a new window opening within himself. He couldn't say what it was exactly, or even where things were headed. But it was something different to feel, something besides the feeling of utter helplessness. It wasn't optimism, no. It was something more like hope born of desperation. And it was okay. It was okay. Anything but
this,
the status quo of hauling grief around like a bag of stones.
“It's okay,” he said, and stood. He took a deep haul of the chilled air, and it felt like being born again. He brushed some snow from his knees. “It's okay, my boy. I'll do this one on my own.”
H
e walked back to the car, and his breath was visible in small clouds. It was getting dark out already, the afternoon fading imperceptibly. He went back to the office, parked the vehicle, checked his messages and had made up a few lies when Hattie stopped by his cubicle with a stack of files under her arm.
Detective Mary-Ann Hattie had transferred in from Halifax a couple of years earlier, and she and McKelvey had worked together on a series of armed robberies. They'd been printed up in the
Star
together for netting the so-called “Royal Bank Bandit”. She was a genuine fisherman's daughter. She was lanky, owned unruly red hair, and her skin was as white as milk. McKelvey always thought she looked like somebody's kindergarten teacher.
“Want to grab a beer and burger up at Fran's after work?” she said. “First snowfall always makes me a little lonesome for home. Looks so pretty falling out there on the ocean.”
“Could always go look at the lake,” he said, fiddling with some yellow stick-it notes.
“Just doesn't have the same magic,” she said, smiling.
He checked his watch and said, “I'll have to take a rain check.”
They talked for a minute about some of the cases that were on the go, the usual suspects holding up Chinese convenience stores, lottery booths, a recent and violent trend towards armed robberies at the after hours booze cans. Then Hattie smiled at him, a sort of sad smile he thought, and she moved on to her cluttered desk. McKelvey called his wife at home, but Caroline did not answer. Then he remembered that she was out with four other women, fellow sufferers in grief. Drinking red wineâthen, later, desserts and cappuccinoâat a cozy Italian restaurant in Yorkville. She had told him all of this in the morning as he was getting ready for work, but he either didn't hear her or had forgotten. It hardly mattered.
McKelvey left a message, speaking quietly into his phone. “Hey,” he said, “I'll be home late. You don't have to save supper.”
He thought of telling her about his day but decided it would only cause her unnecessary worry. He waited awhile at his desk, fiddling with pens and papers, before turning off his desk light and slipping out. The sky was black, devoid of stars. The city was quilted in fresh white, which made everything look clean and new, as though the whole place had been built just a year ago. The dusting would be gone by midmorning under the glare of the early December sun. But for now, at just after six, the new snow made the city almost look like a place where bad things never happened. It covered up the filth, McKelvey thought, the way a hooker covers up the bruises on her cheek with foundation.
He drove for a while before pulling into the parking lot of a convenience store a few blocks from his home, then he was standing in the phone booth in front of his car with his collar pulled up, the receiver cradled against an ear, reading the ads for chips and pop and candy bars posted over in the store window. Everything was on sale, two for one. Everything was a necessity. The use of payphones was not necessary, however, as the force supplied a cellular phone with which McKelvey had made a compromise: he would use it for work, but that was it. He could push himself towards the emerging technologies only so fast, so far. He still owned milk crates full of record albums, as yet unconvinced that the mysterious compact disc was here to stay. There was something about pushing a quarter into a phone, something about closing those folding doors off to the rest of the world. The streetlight overhead turned the flesh of his hand yellow as he dialed the number Paul had given him at the hospital group. A crumpled piece of paper dug from his pocket, words recalled. He couldn't say why he was calling, exactly, or what he hoped to accomplish.
A man answered on the third ring. “Hello?”
“This Tim Fielding?”
“Speaking.”
McKelvey dug in his outer coat pocket for the package of cigarettes he'd bought after the meeting with Aoki. Player's Light Regular. His old friend the old sailor. He lifted the foil flap, fished out a smoke with his teeth. His stomach fluttered with the anticipation of the first nicotine rush, that sick twinge of guilt. All the things that kept him coming back.
“It's Charlie McKelvey from Tuesday nights. Tuesday nights at the hospital group,” he said, fumbling for the two-cent matches that advertised rare coins. “I got your number from Paul there, the moderator.”
He had thought about hanging up one ring before the man answered, and now McKelvey was wishing he had. He struck the match and lit the smoke, and with the first flood of nicotine and hovering tendril of blue smoke knew that he was in trouble now. No way to explain away the stench of smoke that would cling to him in this enclosed space. He supposed this carelessness meant he was beyond the point of caring now. In the end, that's what carelessness always boiled down to, an indifference to the consequences. It was how most criminals eventually got themselves caught.
“Oh, Charlie, right, right. The policeman,” Tim said. “Paul gave you my number?”
“Well yeah, you know, he said you might help me with something I'm going through.”
Tim laughed, and McKelvey took a long drag on the cigarette, holding the smoke until it began to burn his lungs like mustard gas. His eyes watered a little, and he released the smoke through his nostrils in two long funnels. Fuck it. He wasn't going to quit these.
“Me help you, right. He wants you to mentor
me,
I suppose. Sounds like something Paul would try to orchestrate behind the scenes. Anyway...” Tim said, and waited for the conversation to resume.
“Mmmm, that's right,” McKelvey said. “So how about it. One night this week, maybe?”
“How about tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Why not? Just stupid cop shows on TV,” he said. “No offence.”
“None taken. I can't stand to watch them myself,” McKelvey said. “Everybody thinks we're running around with our guns drawn half the time.”