Enter, Night (2 page)

Jordan had always been
his mother’s favourite. She’d bought him a
secondhand guitar when he was fourteen and would listen to him practise
for hours. She encouraged his dreams and told him he sounded like Jim
Croce. Jordan loved her the way he loved no one else. His father called
it beatnik crap. Jordan was a mystery to his father, a man with neither
the time nor the inclination for mysteries, especially under his own roof.

Late at night, Jordan sometimes heard his parents arguing through
the wall of his bedroom. His father’s voice would rise and Jordan would
catch words like
normal
and
wrong
and
dreamer
and
other boys
in between
his father’s raw profanity. Those were the times he knew they were
discussing him. His mother’s voice would rise in answer. Jordan heard
words like
be someone
and
out of this town
and
success
. And
dreams,
which
sounded like a completely different word when his mother said it. Then
the furniture would crash. Things would break.

One night when he was twelve, during one of their increasingly
frequent arguments, Jordan heard the brutal smack of flesh meeting
flesh. He’d jumped out of bed and opened his parents’ bedroom door to
find his mother bleeding from the mouth and his father standing over
her, trying to pull her to her feet. Jordan smelled the liquor from the
doorway. His father stank of it. It seemed to be coming out of his pores.

“She’s fine,” his father was muttering. “She fell. It’s all right. Go to
bed. Go on, get out of here.” His mother was trembling. Her eyes were
wide open and she shook her head imperceptibly, silently imploring him
to do what his father asked.

“Mom? Mom, are you OK? What’s happening? What happened?”

“I’m fine, Jordie. Your Dad and I were just talking and I tripped on
the carpet and fell. I’m all right. I just bumped myself. It’s OK. Go to bed,
Jordan. Don’t make a fuss.”

Jordan hadn’t moved. He’d looked his father full in the face, holding
his gaze for a long, defiant moment, refusing to drop his eyes. His father’s
flat, open hand began to rise, but it stopped in mid-air. That one time he
thought better of it and lowered it to his side. As he looked down at his
bleeding wife, Jordan could have sworn he saw a flicker of shame.

It would be the last time his father exercised that restraint, however.
Jordan never saw shame again. It was as though seeing his own brutality
reflected in Jordan’s eyes extracted too high a cost, one his father bitterly
resented having to pay.

The beatings began a week later. They began as random slaps
across the back of Jordan’s head for clumsiness or for “acting smart.”
They evolved into whippings with a leather belt for chores not done to
specification, or any other occasion when Jordan failed to live up to his
father’s variegated standards of acceptable behaviour.

Jordan learned to stay out of his father’s way as much as possible,
which, in a small house, wasn’t much at all. He learned to dress in layers,
so the bruises wouldn’t show; not that he was likely to get much more
than
pro forma
sympathy from the adults around him. In Lake Hepburn,
the disciplining of children, especially boys, was a family matter and one
best dealt with inside the family. There was one consolation: when his
father’s belt came down across his body, raising welts and cuts on his ass
and legs, he knew that his mother was being spared.

“Why don’t you ever fight back, you fucking little pissant?” his
father had asked once during one of the beatings. He’d even managed
to make the question sound reasonable. “Why don’t you try to take me?
Why don’t you try to make me stop?”

But Jordan never fought back. He sensed on some primal level
that he was paying for his mother’s safety by acting as the object of
his father’s rage. Unfortunately, Jordan’s capacity to endure pain was
remarkable. The beatings lasted from the time Jordan was twelve until
he was seventeen.

The last time his father beat him was the night before got on the
bus to Toronto three months ago. His father had come home drunk from
the Legion Hall and tripped over a kitchen chair on his way to the fridge.
He’d stormed up the stairs and woken Jordan with slaps and punches,
screaming about his irresponsibility. The belt had come out remarkably
quickly considering how drunk his father was. Jordan got the worst of it
across his naked back and shoulders before his father, exhausted from
his exertions, stumbled to his own bedroom and passed out.

Jordan’s one regret, that pre-dawn morning when he’d snuck out of
the house with his rucksack and guitar and hitchhiked to the next town
over, was that his mother would be frantic. He’d left a note in her sewing
basket telling her he was going to be all right and that she shouldn’t
worry. He had two hundred dollars he’d been saving for two years, plus
fifty he’d taken from his father’s wallet.

When he’d arrived in Toronto late that first night, Jordan had
checked into a dirt-cheap hotel on Jarvis Street frequented by hookers
and their johns that stank of industrial cleaner and cockroach spray, and
underneath that, pussy and dried semen. After a week in the hotel, his
chest and legs were covered with bedbug bites. He’d found a “roommates
wanted” notice tacked on the bulletin board of a bookstore on Spadina,
not far from the university. Two men in their early twenties shared the
apartment with a girl who was pregnant by one of them, though she was
unsure of which one. None of the three seemed to find anything unusual
in the arrangement.

“It’s all beautiful,” she said. “We’re all, like, one, you know?”

At that first meeting, the older of the two men, Mack, had been
pleasant enough towards Jordan. The younger, Don, had regarded him
with distrust. The girl, who said her name was Fleur, seemed entirely
ambivalent, if friendly enough. After she’d introduced herself, she went
into the kitchen and made herbal tea. She’d asked Jordan if he wanted
some. He politely told her no. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her he had
no idea what herbal tea was.

Mack told him, “There’s a mat on the floor near the kitchen. It ain’t
much, but it’s clean. First and last month’s rent would be great if you
have it. First is OK, I guess, if you don’t. You got a sleeping bag?”

“No, afraid not,” Jordan had said. “But I can buy one, I guess. Still
cheaper than a bed.”

“No problem,” Mack said. He’d gestured towards the closet. “Brian
left one, I think. He OD’d. Bad trip. He don’t live here no more. You can
have it if you want it.”

Don, who was sitting on the floor stroking Fleur’s hair, suddenly
looked up. He glared at Jordan. Then he turned to Mack. “Why don’t you
just give the place away for free, for fuck’s sake?”

“What’s your problem?” Mack said mildly. “He don’t got a sleeping
bag. We got an extra one. What’s the issue?” Fleur leaned her head back
on Don’s chest. She closed her eyes and sighed as though this were a
conversation she’d heard before, and it bored her.

Don said, “How old is this fucking kid?” He pivoted his head and
glared at Jordan. “Seriously how old are you?

“I’m seventeen,” Jordan said. He smiled tentatively. Don’s sudden
aggression had momentarily driven away any thoughts of the intrinsic
creepiness of sleeping in a dead man’s sleeping bag. “But it’s OK. I have
money for the rent. I brought it from home.” He patted his jacket pocket.
“Right here.”

Don said again, “For fuck’s sake. Do we need a kid here? Are we that
fucking broke?”

“Jesus, what’s your problem? He’s fine. In case you haven’t noticed,”
Mack said, looking pointedly at Fleur’s swollen belly, “we need some
bread right about now.”

Jordan said, “Hey, if this isn’t going to work out, you guys—I mean,
I don’t want to get in the way, you know what I mean?” His voice cracked.
He sounded like a kid now, even to himself.

Fleur giggled and, for the first time, gave Jordan her full attention.
She smiled widely. “Relax, man. It’s beautiful. Don, relax, baby. It’s cool.
The kid’s all right. Aren’t you, kid?”

“Yeah, sure. I mean, yes. I’m all right.”

She laughed. “You’re cute, kid. What was your name again?”

“Jordan. Jordan Lefebvre.”

“Nice.”

Don flushed a deep red. The cords on his neck suddenly stood out in
sharp relief. He scowled and looked away while Jordan and Mack shook
hands awkwardly.

“Welcome, man,” Mack said. “Don’t worry about the sleeping bag.
We washed it. It’s clean.”

That afternoon, Jordan had returned to the hotel on Jarvis. He’d
packed his rucksack and put his guitar back in its case. He paid the bill,
and checked out. He sniffed the sleeves of his flannel shirt, catching a
whiff of roach spray. His nose wrinkled in distaste.

As he set out across downtown towards the apartment, Jordan had
allowed himself to believe, for the first time since he’d arrived in the city,
that he might have some sort of future here, free of his father’s shadow.
The July sunlight had been hot and bright. Jordan felt sweat gathering
under his armpits and along the line of his back. He stopped and shrugged
off the strap of his guitar, placing it gently on the sidewalk. He took his
flannel shirt off and tied it around his waist.
Yes, better.
Jordan squinted,
shielding his eyes with his left hand. He scanned the still-unfamiliar
cityscape and assessed the quickest route to his new apartment and the
beginning of what he believed was to be his real life.

He’d found a job washing dishes and occasionally busing tables at a
restaurant on King Street that paid him just enough to cover his rent and
keep from starving. His roommates, by and large, ignored him, though
Fleur and Mack seemed to like him, which made him feel like an adult.
Occasionally Fleur brought him a cup of herbal tea when she was making
some for herself.

He sometimes caught her staring at him when she thought he
wasn’t looking. Once, when she’d been looking, he’d turned to smile at
her. She’d smiled back, but it wasn’t the sort of smile she used when Don
and Mack were present. It seemed somehow private, somehow inviting,
though Jordan would have been at a loss to identify exactly what sort of
invitation was being extended.

On one of those occasions, he’d become aware of Don standing in
the doorway. Don looked from Fleur to Jordan, and then back again. His
eyes had been cold as two chips of black ice. Jordan had felt a territorial
menace coming off Don in waves. Unlike Mack, who was always amiable,
even if he seemed perpetually stoned, Don had never relaxed around
Jordan. And he watched Fleur the way a wary dog watches a piece of
meat—covetously and on guard for challenges to his primacy.

In the three months that he’d lived with them, Fleur’s belly had
grown round and full. Jordan occasionally wondered what it would be
like to be born in this apartment, not knowing which of the two men was
your father.

He’d asked Fleur once, when they were alone, if she knew. She smiled
at him and pressed her index finger against her lips.

And then, that afternoon, after three months of silence, he’d called
his mother in Lake Hepburn to tell her he was OK. He called from a
payphone in the early afternoon when he knew his father was at work.
She finally picked up after six or seven rings. When she came on the line,
Jordan knew there was something terribly, terribly wrong. Her voice
was small, and her words sounded like she was speaking them through a
mouthful of meat.

“I’m fine, Jordan. Are you all right, honey? I’ve been so worried.”

“Mom, what’s going on? What’s happening?” Jordan squeezed his
eyes together against the images that rose in his mind: his mother’s
careworn face bruised purple and swollen, her body crisscrossed with belt
marks. Broken glass, broken doors, holes in the walls.
I should never have
left,
he thought.
I should have tried to take her with me, at the very least.
On
her end, he heard his mother begin to sob and he damned himself with
guilt.
I should have known that if I left, he’d start hitting her instead of me.

“Mom, I’m coming home. Right now. I’ll be there by tomorrow.”

“Jordie, listen to me. I want you to stay where you are. Don’t come
home. I don’t know what he’ll do. He was real mad when you left.”

“Can you go stay at Aunt Lee’s?”

“I’ll be all right. Please don’t come back here, at least not now. I’m all
right, I promise.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, Mom. I’m coming home soon. Then,
I’m going to kill him.”

Jordan had walked back to the apartment in the rain. When he
arrived, Fleur was sitting at the kitchen table writing in her journal. She
raised her head and pushed her long hair out of her eyes. When she saw
that he’d been crying, she stood up, her face softening into an expression
of concern.

“Hey baby, what’s the matter?”

The simple kindness of her question had threatened what little self control Jordan had still been able to exert.

“Ah. Nothing. Rough day. Lost my job,” he lied. “I don’t think this is
for me after all. I should never have left Hepburn.”

She stood up and reached out her arms. He allowed himself to
be enfolded, welcoming the tenderness. Then, Fleur was kissing him
and unbuttoning his shirt. He kissed her back, at first with a virgin’s
tentativeness and then with an entirely unfamiliar, instinctive aggression.
He smelled patchouli and Halo shampoo as he pressed himself against
her awkwardly, feeling the rise of her belly wedging them apart.

“Are you sure we should—”

Fleur slipped her tongue into this mouth, cutting him off. She ran
one hand through his hair, still damp from the rain. She slipped the other
down the front of his jeans, taking his cock—which felt harder to Jordan
than it had ever been—between her fingers and squeezing it with an
exquisite, expert skill. She undid the button and pulled his jeans and his
boxer shorts down across his naked hips. He pushed them the rest of the
way down till they were tangled at his feet and kicked them away, naked,
for the first time, in the presence of a woman. If his nakedness shamed
him at all, it was transitory. Jordan had three thoughts simultaneously.
The first, that he was going to get laid—seriously and thoroughly laid—
for the first time in his life. The second was that the first woman he
was ever going to fuck was pregnant with another man’s child. The third,
that he didn’t give a good god damn because he was going to get laid—
seriously and thoroughly laid—for the first time in his life.