Every Time We Say Goodbye (37 page)

The earth was soft and springy under her feet.
It’s fine, it’s fine
, she told herself.
Just walk straight. You’ll hit the highway and you’ll get a ride
.

The earth began to slant up, and she was breathing heavily. Mosquitoes whined in her ears. She focused on the ground, stepping over logs and roots and rocks. Then the earth fell away into a deep ravine and she had to stop. Below, in the last of the light, she could see withered trees poking up out of a black swamp. There was no way across it.

Out of breath, she slumped down at the base of a tree and pulled her jacket up around her head against the dive-bombing bugs. Maybe Justin was out looking for her. She let that thought grow into a movie in her head. He had come back for her and Krista had told him, “She’s gone. She just walked off.” Justin was furious. “You let her go? By herself? On foot? You fucking bitch.” He stormed over to his car. He had to find her. She couldn’t have gone far. He was driving up and down that rough road, and any minute now, he would get out and begin calling. He would have a flashlight. When he heard her voice, he would say, “Don’t move, Dawn. Just keep talking. I’ll come to you.” A beam of light would flicker and disappear, then reappear, growing brighter and brighter, and then Justin would wrap his arms around her and say, “Dawn! I thought I’d lost you.”

She opened her eyes. It was completely dark now, except for the car lights across the ravine. Maybe Justin was driving up and down the rough road. Or maybe her father had called home and Vera had said, “Oh, thank god. Dawn’s run away,” and Dean had said, “I’ll find her.” Or maybe her mother had called the millionaire with the helicopter and they were flying over the farmhouse right now. She could sit here all night thinking up ways everyone could come back and realize their mistake and fall in love with her and never let her go. But a voice in her head said,
You have no time for that nonsense now
. It sounded a lot like Vera.

And she had to agree. She had to rescue herself.

She stood up.

Turn around and walk back
, the voice said.

She had to test each step with her foot, groping at the space in front of her, clutching at prickly striplings to keep from falling.

She stumbled onto the road and skinned one palm on gravel. Even on the road she had to go slowly because it was so dark she could barely see her feet. She walked until the road curved and
went over a wooden bridge and ended at tarmac under a streetlight: the highway.

It began to rain, and a car stopped instantly. It contained an elderly couple, the Hendersons, they said, and they were appalled to see a young girl walking along the highway in the dark. Whatever was she thinking? She said she had gone for a walk and lost track of time. “I’m going to call my dad,” she said. “He’ll come and get me.” They let her off at a gas station. Inside, she asked for a phone book and found the number right away, between Turner, C.K., and Turner, Donald. Turner, D.

As easy as that. All this time. He had been in the phone book.

The phone rang. A man answered.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?” But it didn’t sound like him, so she hesitated.

The man cleared his throat and said, “Did you say Dad or Dan?”

“Dad.”

“Thought so. Wrong number.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

Dawn hung up. She would have to call her mother or her grandparents next. Then she dialled D. Turner’s number again. Before he could say hello, she asked, “Is your mother’s name Grace Turner?”

R
ain ran down the window in rivulets. Inside the gas station, Dawn followed their progress, remembering how she and Jimmy had tried to use telekinesis to move water droplets after seeing a man on TV bend spoons with his mind. Jimmy gave up quickly, but Dawn concentrated until her head hurt. None of the drops had even quivered. She had been so certain she could do it, right up until the moment she was certain of the exact opposite. How was it possible, she wondered, for something to be right and true one minute and impossible and a pipe dream the next? This morning, she had been the most advanced-for-her-age Lighthouse practitioner on the path to freedom and truth, and Justin had loved her. Now she was standing in a gas station, Justin was gone, and the only path she wanted to be on was the one that took her home to her math textbook and bed.

The man behind the counter said, “There are your people.” Dawn watched them getting out of the taxi. The bell above the
door rang, and they walked straight to her, smiling. Grace was small and bird-like, with bright dark eyes and a wide forehead and short, rusty-coloured hair shot through with grey.

Dawn said, “You—you look like my grandpa.”

Grace hugged her and then the man hugged her. “Hello, Dawn,” he said. He was tall, with longish dark blond hair. “It’s nice to meet a relative at last.”

She hadn’t told Dan much on the phone, only that she was Frank Turner’s granddaughter and she was stranded in Toronto and couldn’t find her dad. That seemed to be enough explanation for him. He told her to stay where she was, they were on their way. “This is very nice of you,” she said to Grace. “To come and get me.”

“Of course we would come and get you,” Grace said.

In the taxi, they gave her a can of orange juice. She watched the city grow denser and taller from the window. The taxi pulled up in front of a red brick house on a street of squeezed-together houses. Some had stores downstairs, but Grace’s house had a greying front porch and a green lawn. They ushered her in and sat her in an armchair. A purring cat immediately jumped on her lap. “Dawn, you must be hungry,” Grace said. “I’ll warm you up some soup.”

“Ma,” Dan said, “I don’t think we should inflict that soup on relatives we’re just meeting for the first time.”

Grace looked surprised. “Why? Theresa made it when she was here yesterday. It’s full of vitamins.”

“So is pizza,” Dan said, picking up the phone. “And it has the added advantage of not tasting like dishwater.”

Another cat climbed up and was negotiating for space beside Dawn. She stroked the cats and looked around. The furniture looked old, the wooden floor was bare, and none of the lamps or end tables matched. On the mantel above a white brick fireplace
was a rather ugly stone carving of a huge-hipped woman, next to a brass plaque that said,
KNOCK AND THE DOOR SHALL BE OPENED
. She wondered if Grace was poor or if she just liked things that were old and odd and didn’t match. There were also plants everywhere, in pots and trays on the windowsills and tab-letops, and a row of photographs on a wooden desk. She got up to look at them: a round-cheeked boy sitting on top of a pile of clothes in a wagon; the boy holding on to a wriggling puppy; the boy being swung by his hands between two women—Grace, obviously, with cropped dark hair, the other with loose curls and freckles; the boy in a baseball uniform; in shorts and a white shirt and a tie; with a cat and a dog; with his arms around the neck of the freckled woman, who was laughing. In each photo, he got closer to the grown-up Dan.

Dan said he was going upstairs to put sheets on the bed in his old room, and Grace brought Dawn another can of juice. “Dan doesn’t live here?” Dawn asked. She wasn’t sure yet whether Grace was her great-aunt or her grandmother. Most likely her great-aunt, given the fact that Dan called her Ma, but with this family, it was best not to jump to conclusions.

“No,” Grace said. “He has his own apartment near the restaurant. He’s a chef.”

“Really? Do you—do you work at a restaurant too?” It was a ridiculous question, but Grace didn’t seem to mind.

“No. I sold my business a couple of years ago. I had a little cleaning company. Now I grow herbs for Dan’s restaurant and a few other places.”

The doorbell rang. “Pizza’s here,” Dan called. “I got it.” Grace went into the kitchen to get plates.

At the window, Dan pulled a few leaves off a plant. “Fresh basil?” he asked Dawn, who said, “Sure.” He tucked three tiny leaves onto a pizza slice and handed her the plate.

Grace shooed the cats off Dawn’s lap, then sat on the sofa and accepted a plate of pizza from Dan. “Now, Dawn, how did you come to be stranded in the city?”

“Ma, maybe she doesn’t want to talk about that right now.”

“It’s okay,” Dawn said, swallowing. The sharp, sweet taste of basil cut through the hot, oily taste of the pizza. “I don’t mind.” She didn’t feel as bad as she thought she would. She had lost Justin, but she hadn’t handed over her university money to Andre. She had lost Lighthouse, but she had found her way in the dark, and then she had found her long-lost relatives. She was actually feeling pretty good. Grace had never heard of Lighthouse or Universal Consciousness, but Dan said, “Universal con artists, more like. They hand out pamphlets on Yonge Street, right?”

They also wanted to know about her dad, where he lived, what he did in Toronto.

“I don’t have his new number,” Dawn said. “He used to live on Spadina, but that was last year. He was looking for a bigger place. He was working at a club. I don’t know the name.”

Dan said he could find Dean. He knew people in the business; he would ask around.

It was close to midnight when Dan left. Grace said, “Dawn, I know it’s late, but you should call your grandparents and let them know you’re here.”

Dawn said, “They’re going to be so mad.”

“They’ll probably be more relieved,” Grace said. “And surprised. I haven’t talked to my brother in years.”

Dawn’s hand flew to her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” Grace asked.

Dawn realized that Grace didn’t know about the two ugliest words in the English language.

Dawn talked to Vera first. Vera asked her if she was all right, and was she sure, and when Dawn explained where she was, there was a long pause. Then Vera said, “I’m going to wake your grandfather.” Dawn passed the phone to Grace and went upstairs to see the room Dan had prepared for her. It was a boy’s room, with a shelf of trophies and a dismantled drum set. Two more cats were asleep on the freshly made bed. She opened the door to the other bedroom, which contained only a bed with a wooden chair beside it and a small dresser. On the dresser, a framed photo of the baby Dan stood next to an old-fashioned hairbrush. There wasn’t even a mirror. Except for Dan’s old room, it was the barest house she had ever seen, and yet it was perfectly comfortable and clean and warm.

At the end of the hallway, on a little wooden table, a small, polished statue of the Buddha sat between a book called
Zen Koans
and a tumbler of water containing three purple tulips. Under the table, a very old black dog slept on a blue rag rug. He lifted his head when Dawn knelt beside him and looked at her with rheumy eyes. Downstairs, she could hear the murmur of Grace’s voice. “This is very sad,” she told the dog. It was happy because it was a reunion, but it was also sad because of all the wasted time. “My grandpa’s going to die,” she said, and her throat ached with unshed tears. “And my dad doesn’t even know.” The dog put his head in her lap.

The next morning, Grace brought her up a cup of hot chocolate in bed. Her eyes were red, but she smiled at Dawn. “I told Frank we would drive you home. Dan’s going to rent a car.”

“But we’re going to wait until Dan finds my dad, right?”

Grace said, “I’m sure Dan will find him. He knows a lot of people. But Vera thinks—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Vera thinks we should come right away.”

Afraid she would spill her hot chocolate, Dawn put the cup on the bedside table. “At Lighthouse, they said those who couldn’t face death didn’t understand life. Do you think that’s true?”

“Maybe,” Grace said, “but it doesn’t make it less sad.” She studied her hands for a while. “I was just a small girl when my mother died, and I couldn’t face it. Frank was older. He was okay. But there’s no way around the sadness, whether you face it or not.”

One of the cats jumped up on the bed and curled up on Dawn’s lap. Dawn scratched between its ears until it began to purr.

Grace said, “If Dan can’t reach your father before we leave today, he’ll keep trying from Sault Ste. Marie.”

Dawn reached for her cup again. “Did you know my dad was adopted?”

Grace nodded. “Oh, yes. Frank wrote me.”

“So he’s not your son, then?”

“No.” Grace looked confused. “Dan is my son.”

“But he thinks you’re his mother.”

“Who does?”

“My dad. He found a picture and a birth certificate,” Dawn said. “He thinks he’s Daniel Turner and you’re his mom. But obviously, if your Dan is that Dan, then you’re not my dad’s mom.”

Grace said, “A birth certificate? But Dan was born before Frank and Vera adopted your father.”

Dawn shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. It’s all mixed up. I think he only saw the papers once. After that, they hid the box or something. He said Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t tell him anything, but he heard from other people, like neighbours or something, that Grandpa had a sister who had a baby.”

Grace said she had left Dan with Frank and Vera to find work in southern Ontario. It took her over a year to be able to set up a home, and when she went back to get the baby, Vera didn’t want to give him up, but Frank said they had to let him go.
“They adopted your father after that,” Grace said. “But people didn’t talk about adoption back then. It was all a big secret. Because it meant the mother had had sex before she got married. That was something shameful in those days.”