“About Ninette,” she said. “I just meant that it fits.”
“A hundred women in Montreal would fit, when it comes to that. The truth is, we don’t know, except that she was in good health.”
“Who was the girl in the lane? The one you were talking about.”
“Just a girl in the wrong place. Her father was a school principal.”
“You said that. Did you know her?”
“I never saw her. Missy and Louise did. Louise is my wife.”
“I know. How much did you give my dad? Not for Neil. For me.”
“Thirty bucks. Some men don’t make that in a week. If you have to ask, it means you never got it.”
“I’ve never had thirty dollars in one piece in my life,” she said. “In my family we don’t fight over money. What my dad says, goes. I’ve never had to go without. Gerry and I had new coats every winter.”
“Is that the end of the interrogatory? You’d have made a great cop. I agree, you can’t stay. But would you just do one last Christian act? Wash your hands and comb your hair and sit down and have lunch. After that, I’ll put you in a taxi and pay the driver. If you don’t want me to, my mother-in-law will.”
“I could help you take him to the hospital.”
“Forget the Fenton family,” he said. “Lunch is the cutoff.”
Late in the afternoon Ray came home and they had tea and sandwiches at the kitchen table. Nora was wearing Gerry’s old white terry-cloth robe. Her washed hair was in rollers.
“There was nothing to it, no problem,” she said again. “He needed a hospital checkup. He was run-down. I don’t know which hospital.”
“I could find out,” said Ray.
“I think they don’t want anybody around.”
“What did you eat for lunch?” said her mother.
“Some kind of cold soup. Some kind of cold meat. A fruit salad. Iced tea. The men drank beer. There was no bread on the table.”
“Pass Nora the peanut butter,” said Ray.
“Did you meet Mr. Fenton because of Ninette,” said Nora, “or did you know him first? Did you know Dr. Marchand first, or Mr. Fenton?”
“It’s a small world,” said her father. “Anyways, I’ve got some money for you.”
“How much?” said Nora. “No, never mind. I’ll ask if I ever need it.”
“You’ll never need anything,” he said. “Not as long as your old dad’s around.”
“You know that Mrs. Clopstock?” said Nora. “She’s the first person I’ve ever met from Toronto. I didn’t stare at her, but I took a good look. Maman, how can you tell real pearls?”
“They wouldn’t be real,” said Ray. “The real ones would be on deposit. Rosalie had a string of pearls.”
“They had to sell them on account of Ninette,” said her mother.
“Maybe you could find out the name of the hospital,” Nora said. “He might like to see me. He knows me.”
“He’s already forgotten you,” her mother said.
“I wouldn’t swear to that,” said Ray. “I can remember somebody bending over my baby buggy. I don’t know who it was, though.”
He will remember that I picked him up, Nora decided. He will remember the smell of the incense. He will remember the front door and moving into the dark hall. I’ll try to remember him. It’s the best I can do.
She said to Ray, “What’s the exact truth? Just what’s on paper?”
“Nora,” said her mother. “Look at me. Look me right in the face. Forget that child. He isn’t yours. If you want children, get married. All right?”
“All right,” her father answered for her. “Why don’t you put on some clothes and I’ll take you both to a movie.” He began to whistle, not “Don’t Let It Bother You,” but some other thing just as easy.
THE END OF THE WORLD
I NEVER LIKE to leave Canada, because I’m disappointed every time. I’ve felt disappointed about places I haven’t even seen. My wife went to Florida with her mother once. When they arrived there, they met some neighbors from home who told them about a sign saying NO CANADIANS. They never saw this sign anywhere, but they kept hearing about others who did, or whose friends had seen it, always in different places, and it spoiled their trip for them. Many people, like them, have never come across it but have heard about it, so it must be there somewhere. Another time I had to go and look after my brother Kenny in Buffalo. He had stolen a credit card and was being deported on that account. I went down to vouch for him and pay up for him and bring him home. Neither of us cared for Buffalo.
“What have they got here that’s so marvelous?” I said.
“Proust,” said Kenny.
“What?”
“Memorabilia,” he said. He was reading it off a piece of paper.
“Why does a guy with your education do a dumb thing like swiping a credit card?” I said.
“Does Mother know?” said Kenny.
“Mum knows, and Lou knows, and I know, and Beryl knows. It was in the papers. ‘Kenneth Apostolesco, of this city…’”
“I’d better stay away,” my brother said.
“No, you’d better not, for Mum’s sake. We’ve only got one mother.”
“Thank God,” he said. “Only one of each. One mother and one father. If I had more than one of each, I think I’d still be running.”
It was our father who ran, actually. He deserted us during the last war. He joined the Queen’s Own Rifles, which wasn’t a Montreal regiment — he couldn’t do anything like other people, couldn’t even join up like anyone else — and after the war he just chose to go his own way. I saw him downtown in Montreal one time after the war. I was around twelve, delivering prescriptions for a drugstore. I knew him before he knew me. He looked the way he had always managed to look, as if he had all the time in the world. His mouth was drawn in, like an old woman’s, but he still had his coal-black hair. I wish we had his looks. I leaned my bike with one foot on the curb and he came down and stood by me, rocking on his feet, like a dancer, and looking off over my head. He said he was night watchman at a bank and that he was waiting for the Army to fix him up with some teeth. He’d had all his teeth out, though there wasn’t anything wrong with them. He was eligible for new ones provided he put in a claim that year, so he thought he might as well. He was a bartender by profession, but he wasn’t applying for anything till he’d got his new teeth. “I’ve told them to hurry it up,” he said. “I can’t go round to good places all gummy.” He didn’t ask how anyone was at home.
I had to leave Canada to be with my father when he died. I was the person they sent for, though I was the youngest. My name was on the back page of his passport: “In case of accident or death notify WILLIAM APOSTOLESCO. Relationship: Son.” I was the one he picked. He’d been barman on a ship for years by then, earning good money, but he had nothing put by. I guess he never expected his life would be finished. He collapsed with a lung hemorrhage, as far as I could make out, and they put him off at a port in France. I went there. That was where I saw him. This town had been shelled twenty years ago and a lot of it looked bare and new. I wouldn’t say I hated it exactly, but I would never have come here of my own accord. It was worse than Buffalo in some ways. I didn’t like the food or the coffee, and they never gave you anything you needed in the hotels — I had to go out and buy some decent towels. It didn’t matter, because I had to buy everything for my father anyway — soap and towels and Kleenex. The hospital didn’t provide a thing except the bedsheets, and when a pair of those was put on the bed it seemed to be put there once and for all. I was there twenty-three days and I think I saw the sheets changed once. Our grandfathers had been glad to get out of Europe. It took my father to go back. The hospital he was in was an old convent or monastery. The beds were so close together you could hardly get a chair between them. Women patients were always wandering around the men’s wards, and although I wouldn’t swear to it, I think some of them had their beds there, at the far end. The patients were given crocks of tepid water to wash in, not by their beds but on a long table in the middle of the ward. Anyone too sick to get up was just out of luck unless, like my father, he had someone to look after him. I saw beetles and cockroaches, and I said to myself, This is what a person gets for leaving home.