Sunny Dreams (16 page)

Inside the moonswept landscape I wove a clumsy trail to the construction site on Crawford Avenue. I breathed deeply over and over again. It amazed me that the breaths went so far inside me and came so smoothly. Why couldn’t I breathe with this kind of ease all the time?

I stood in the back lane and stared at the cluttered yard. The men had built a small fire between the tents and embers still glowed against the dark earth. Then I saw the end of a burning cigarette and made out a form near the dying fire. I could smell the smoke from the cigarette and I knew it was Jackson. He sat cross-legged on the dry dirt.

“Psst!” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“Psst!” I said again.

“Who’s there?” said Jackson.

“It’s me, Violet,” I said. It sounded like:
iths me
. I hoped he hadn’t noticed. Certain things about being drunk were difficult.

“Violet?”

“Yes. It’s me.”
Yesh, iths
.

“What are you doing out there? Come here.”

“No. You come here.”

“You come here.”

I went in through the gate and knelt on the dirt beside him.

“What are you doing?” he asked again.

“I wanna kiss you,” I said.
Kith
.

“You’ve been drinking,” he said.

“So?”

“You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“You shouldn’t drink.”

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Why because?”

“It’s unbecoming.”

I laughed. “Heaven forbid.” Words sounded funny to me. Like, heaven forbid. Had I really said that? Was it something I said on a regular basis?

“Kith me, Jackson,” I forced myself to say it. That whiskey was really something.

“No.”

“Why? Do you think I’m ugly?”

He chuckled, barely. “No. I don’t think you’re ugly. I think you’re crazy.”

“I’m not crazy.”

It seemed impossible to me that he didn’t want to kiss me. How couldn’t he? Isn’t that what boys usually wanted to do? Kiss and then fuck?

“Do you hate me?” I asked.

“Would that give you some satisfaction, if I told you I hated you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” It would be better than nothing.

“No, Violet, I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “What is it that you hate about me? Is it my face?”

He chuckled again. “You’ve got a nice face,” he said. “I could never hate your face.”

“Is it because of Aunt Helen?” I asked.

“Go home, Violet.”

“Is it because of Helen?” I asked again. “Are you in love with my Aunt Helen?”

He laughed out loud now. “Don’t be ridiculous, Violet. Your Aunt Helen is…well… she’s your Aunt Helen. What about Fraser?” he went on. “Isn’t he your boyfriend? I don’t want to ruin anything for you.”

“You’ve ruined my whole life if you won’t kiss me.”

I had no pride. The drink had taken it away.

“This is so unlike you, Violet.”

“Unlike me? What do you mean? What am I like?” It angered me that he claimed to know me at all. What did he know? What did I even know?

He did know how badly I hungered for that kiss. He was on his knees now too and he brought his face close to mine.

“Violet,” he whispered.

“Jackson,” I whispered back.

“Violet,” he said again, softer yet. He was so close. He brushed his lips against the corner of my mouth, softly, like a moth. It was barely a tickle, but a rush of sickening desire tore through me. And then he pulled away and stood up.

“I hate you,” I said.

That almost kiss wasn’t leading to something else and it wasn’t because he thought better of it for any good person’s reason or even because I tasted like vomit. He did it to torture me; I was sure of it.

“I hate you,” I said again as I scrambled to my feet.

“Violet,” he said as I tripped through the yard.

That word meant nothing to me.

Aunt Helen’s hatpin was still in my pocket and when I felt it there I wanted to drive it hard into my own body.

I didn’t look back; I needed every ounce of my remaining wits to get out of there without breaking an ankle in the rubble. With any luck at all, neither Fuzzy Eakins nor Benny Boat had witnessed any part of the fiasco.

My head hurt when I woke up in my bed later on that morning. I thought about Jackson and my stomach rebelled. Then I thought about Isabelle and was relieved to realize there was nothing about my time with her that I regretted. She wouldn’t judge me, and she knew far stranger lives than mine. It was okay that I’d confided in her. Had I dreamed the part about Sunny? No.

Later that day with a heavy achy head I walked by Crawford Avenue and saw Benny and Fuzzy at work — no sign of Jackson. I wasn’t sure what I was doing there. My plan had been to find Isabelle.

I didn’t want Jackson to see my face again so soon. I approached the back fence cautiously. Next time I saw him I planned to be very quiet, maybe not utter a sound. Anything and everything was ruined between us and I would be silent.

Benny saw me and came over. “Jackson was let go this morning,” he said.

“Let go?”

“Yeah, sent packing,” Fuzzy said as he joined us at the fence. “For not pullin’ his weight.”

“Go back to work, Fuzz,” said Benny.

“You go back to work,” said Fuzzy.

Benny sighed and gave his co-worker a look that sent him sloping back to his job, which looked to be removing rusty old nails from lengths of well-used lumber. Benny did have a way about him. Maybe it was all those trances he went into. They gave him a certain power. He had become the unspoken foreman of the job site. But he didn’t have enough power to save Jackson’s job.

“Where did he go?” I asked.

“I do not know. He said he would look for Tag.”

“Does he know that Tag is still around?” I asked.

“No, I do not think he knows anything like that,” Benoit said.

“I think he is,” I said. “Still around, that is.”

Isabelle’s words from last night came back to me in partial form.

“How do you know?” asked Benoit.

“I don’t know. Maybe I don’t know.”

Benoit kicked at the dry dirt under his feet. “Jackson left his knapsack here so he will be back for sure before he leaves town.”

“Good riddance!” Fuzzy called over.

“Shut up, Fuzzy,” said Benoit.

He stared at me then for a long moment. “And… I know there is something else he is here to do that he has not done yet.”

“What? What the heck is it you keep hinting at?”

“I cannot say.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“It is not for me to say.”

“Come on, Benoit.”

“No.”

“Please tell me.”

“No.”

“I won’t tell that you told.”

“No, Violet. Sorry.”

I went looking for Isabelle, but I couldn’t find her, so I went home and straight to bed. I think Dad and Helen knew that I’d been drinking the night before. They must have heard me throwing up into the bushes; both their windows would have been wide open. But they kindly didn’t mention it. They must have discussed it and figured it was best left alone. I was suffering enough without them adding their two cents’ worth. Tomorrow I would do something nice for them, I thought. I was asleep before I figured out what it would be.

The next day, the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, I went back to Isabelle’s place. Her brother, Charles, was the only one home. The rest of the family had gone to Grand Beach for a couple of days to stay with an aunt who had a cabin there. A last hurrah before the two little ones were due to start school.

I asked Charles to tell Isabelle that I was looking for her. Then I went home and baked a lemon pie, my dad’s favourite.

On Monday, Labour Day, I went to see Benny again. It was the day before university began. Jackson still hadn’t been back for his gear.

“I have a very bad feeling,” Benny said.

“A regular bad feeling or a trance-like bad feeling?” I asked.

“Regular,” said Benny. “Trances, as you call them, do not make bad feelings.”

I still didn’t have much of an understanding of his hypnotic-type experiences.

“Sorry, Benoit,” I said. “What do you call them?”

“I do not call them anything. They need no name.”

“Please don’t be mad at me right now,” I said. “I have a very bad feeling too.”

“Something has happened to him,” Benoit said. “He should have returned.”

“He’s dead,” I said, and my eyes grew warm.

“No, he is not dead,” said Benny, “but something keeps him from returning for his things.”

“What’ll we do?” I asked.

“Nothing, I am thinking,” he said. “I have searched in the evenings, asked men I saw. I went to the hobo camp in Transcona. No one knows him. I think he is gone and without his things.”

“What makes you think he’s not dead?” I asked.

Benny shrugged.

Back at the house I told Helen about Jackson. She already knew.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“I wasn’t sure there was anything to tell,” she said. “I thought he might turn up overnight.”

There were lines and sags on her face that I’d never seen before. I swear they just arrived that weekend, with the news of Jackson’s disappearance.

The next day I went to Wesley College to pick my courses. My heart wasn’t in it. I chose English, history, French, philosophy, and sociology. I didn’t care. I still had no idea what I wanted to be. Physical therapy had seemed like a good idea to me for a day or two after I’d visited Warren. I’d be able to help people like him. But I was pretty sure you needed sciences for that, and sciences and I didn’t get along.

When I got home, Helen was waiting for me.

“Let’s go over and rummage through his knapsack,” she said.

“Isn’t that kind of invasive?” I asked.

“No. Not at this point,” she said. “What if there’s something in there that gives us a clue to where he’s gone?”

“Only if Benny says it’s okay,” I said.

“Benny?” she said. “Since when did Benoit become Benny?”

“Since forever, in my head,” I said.

Helen smiled at me from inside her new old face.

“We do not see him for three days,” Benny said when we got there after supper. He held up three fingers.

“What do you think of the idea of looking inside his knapsack?” I said.

“I do not think…” said Benny.

“We have to,” Helen said. “Get it, Violet.”

I went inside the tent and picked it up carefully, noting its exact position against the wall in case Jackson turned up expecting to find things as he had left them. I didn’t want to be caught twice, even though we had a dang good reason this time. And this time Helen could be blamed. Holding it to my face, I breathed deeply. When I turned around Benny was at the door of the tent. He saw me do it. I felt the colour rush to the roots of my hair.

He must have known how I felt. He had to be used to women falling for Jackson by now. Look at Helen, and even Maude Foote, for goodness’ sake! It had been written all over her egg salad sandwiches. Probably girls all the way from Montreal to Winnipeg had looked at Jackson with that same naked humiliating craving that I had been feeling all summer.

When I took the knapsack outside I looked inside it and saw that the contents were a jumbly mess.

“Hmm,” said Benoit. “I do not like this.”

“Where’s Fuzzy?” I asked.

“He hitchhiked to Grand Beach for today,” said Benoit.

“Good,” said Helen. “We certainly don’t need him poking his nose in.”

Benoit dragged over a wooden worktable and I emptied out the contents onto its rough surface. The picture of Bertram Shirt drifted to the ground. Benny picked it up and stood quietly looking at it while I spread out the rest of Jackson’s stuff.

“That’s Jackson’s little brother,” I said, in case he didn’t know.

Benny was struggling with something; he looked positively ill.

“What is it, Benoit?” asked Helen. “Are you all right?”

“Please,” he said. “Sit down. I must tell something to you both.”

Helen and I sat down right on the dry dirt of someone’s future backyard and Benny sat with us.

“One,” Benny said, “I believe Jackson told you he comes from Westmount in Montreal.

“Yes,” said Helen. “He told us.”

“That world has this year fallen apart. Jackson’s father has died and his maman has become…an insane woman.”

“Yes,” Helen said again, “He told us that too, in so many words.”

She took my hand and I let her. The trains clanged from across the river. I think it was the noise they made when two cars were being fastened together. It must take huge strength to be a trainman, I thought. And you sure wouldn’t want to get a hand caught between two of the cars as they banged together.

“Go ahead, Benoit.” Helen removed her cold hand from mine.

“Jackson was the only child. His parents tried for another, a brother for Jackson — his maman desired another boy — but she had mis…”

“Miscarriage,” said Helen.

“Yes, miscarriage. She had many of those and her doctor said to her, no more. So they decided to adopt. Girl babies were easy to get, but Jackson’s mother would not have a girl.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Helen put her cold hand on my arm and I bit my tongue.

“I do not know, Violet,” said Benoit. “Mrs. Shirt is not a normal person. Many years ago I am sure she is beautiful and kind the way Jackson describes, but crazy does not come in one day. Who knows why she wants another boy baby? Not me.”

“Okay, sorry, Benoit, go ahead.”

“I should tell the whole story as I know it and then you ask your questions,” Benoit said. “It will save a lot of words.”

“Okay.”

“I tell you, there is much I do not know.”

“Just go on,” said Helen.

“Okay. So the wait for a boy was long, too long for Madame Shirt, so she went to the underground and found someone who would get her a boy, however grand the cost.”

“Oh, dear God,” said Helen and picked up the picture of Bertram Shirt.

“This was, uh, eleven years ago,” said Benoit.

Helen looked at me. I still didn’t get it.

“So these underground men were worse than even Evelyn Shirt understood. She thought she was paying very much money for a baby from a house for not married mothers — not in the law, but with the blessing of the baby’s maman. But the man she hired put the money in his pocket and stole babies right out from under the noses of parents or sisters or nannies or who. He even took them from hospital wards. Madame Shirt did not know this. She paid enough to not know.”

A trickle of cold sweat ran down my sides and gathered at the waistband of my slacks.

Helen passed me the photograph.

“Bertram isn’t a girl,” I said. I kept up my struggle against the truth, against the strange recognition that I had sensed the first time I saw the picture. It wasn’t Jackson that Bertram resembled, it was my dad, in the pictures I’d seen of him as a boy.

“Bertram is a girl and her name is not Bertram. It is Beatrice,” said Benoit. “This is not a good part of the story. The baby-taker grabbed what he thought was a boy and by the time he knew different it was too late. He had a woman with him who cared for the baby on the return to Montreal. She did not know the importance of the sex to the future maman. She cooed its name, “Sunny,” which was what the thief heard the baby called by its maman and older sister. I guess by you, Violet. He heard it as “Sonny,” and thinks the baby is a boy.”

“Wait,” I said. I got up and lurched toward some wild yarrow growing in a corner of the yard. I threw up my supper and what felt like part of my innards.

Helen and Benoit sat quietly till I returned to the small circle we made around the photograph.

“Okay”, Benoit said, “remember now, that all information I have is third-hand from Jackson, so some could be wrong or not quite right.”

“Go on,” Helen said.

“Is she still alive?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Benoit.

Helen and I looked at each other.

“Benoit, you’ve got to come back to the house with us and tell it all to Will, before you go any further,” said Helen.

“I know I do,” he said.

“Why is she all got up like a boy in the picture?” I asked. “Why is Bertram written on the picture? Jackson didn’t say anything. We talked about Bertram.”

“You surprised him, Violet. He was not ready yet to explain, so he agreed with Beatrice being Bertram.”

“Why was she dressed as a boy?” I asked again.

“It was, what you call, a masquerade party. Beatrice dressed as a boy and someone took a picture.”

“And labelled it
Bertram
,” I said, “and put the name in quotation marks.”

“It was the only picture Jackson could find of his sister to bring with him. She was not in many photographs.”

“His sister.”

“Yes. His sister.”

“How did they get away?” I asked. “The people who stole her.” I remembered so vividly the search, the lengths that people went to, Ennis Foote’s promise to my dad.

“This, I do not know,” said Benoit.

“Okay. So Mrs. Shirt didn’t want the baby when she saw it was a girl,” he went on. “But she was stuck with it.”

Helen groaned.

“Her,” I said.

“What?”

“Stuck with her. Sunny is a her.”

“Yes, pardon me, Violet. So the way Jackson says it, Madame Shirt has not been a good mother to Sunny. That is the worst part of the story.”

“Dear God,” said Helen.

“Jackson was only six when Beatrice arrived,” Benny went on, “too young to question what his mother was or was not doing. But as years passed he did question and object, when he watched her ignore his sister and when he heard Beatrice cry in the night.”

“What about the dad?” I asked. “Did he ignore her too?”

“No,” Benoit said. “He was a good papa, so Jackson says, tried his best. But he was a busy man with the railroad. And now, of course, he is dead. It is my belief that Papa Shirt’s death caused within Jackson the thoughts of finding Beatrice’s family. Her true family. His worries about her grew after his papa died.

“Oh, my dear Lord,” said Helen. “We’ve got to go back to the house before you go any further.”

The three of us stood up and brushed the dirt from our clothes.

“It is important you know that Jackson came here to try to put this right,” said Benny. “He just was not sure how.”

“He was certainly taking his time,” said Helen.

“Did you know him in Montreal?” I asked.

“No,” said Benny. “It is what we said. We met on the road, near Sudbury. There was a camp there, where we both spent a few nights. That is where we heard about the sugar beets.”

“So him going out to hoe sugar beets…”

“That was all true,” Benny said. “He was going west. And he would stop and see you on the way — make it clean with you folks and leave it to you what you wanted to do.”

“Who looked after her,” I asked, “if Mrs. Shirt ignored her?”

“Jackson,” said Benoit. “Mr. Shirt, as I said, nannies, Mrs. Dunning. Thank God they were rich.”

“If they hadn’t been rich they wouldn’t have had the money to buy her.” Helen spat it out.

We trudged down Highfield Street towards home.

“How did Jackson find out who and where we were?” I asked.

“I do not know,” said Benoit. “You must save most of your questions for him.”

“If he ever turns up,” I said. “What if he doesn’t turn up?’

“He will.”

We turned the corner onto Ferndale and Benny slowed down.

“Jackson was scared,” he said.

“He sure didn’t seem scared of anything,” I said.

“No,” said Helen. “He has a very unscared way about him.”

“Especially when he found out that Mrs. Palmer had taken her own life,” said Benoit. “He got much more afraid then.”

I remembered how pale and wobbly he’d gotten when I told him about my mum.

“It has been so much in my head that I can barely believe that not one of you suspected us of anything,” said Benoit and stopped walking.

“No,” said Helen. “We none of us suspected. Now, Benoit, don’t go mentioning worst parts to Will — what you consider to be the worst parts, that type of thing. He is bound to have a differing opinion on that. Come along, now.”

And we walked past the last couple of houses to our quiet home and the unsuspecting man inside it.

We found my dad on the verandah.

“Hello,” he said. “Benoit, I hear the work is going well on Crawford. Violet, your young friend Isabelle dropped by. She seems anxious to talk to you; she thinks she may have seen Tippy.”

Helen herded him into the living room where we all sat down.

“What is it?” he asked. “What’s going on? Violet? Are you all right?”

Helen went to make coffee.

Benoit told the story again up to where he had left off with Helen and me, the part where Jackson began to object to the way Beatrice/Sunny was being treated and to worry about her sadness, the part where his dad died.

My dad was shaking. He asked Helen to pour some whiskey into his coffee. She gave us all a little, me less than everybody else.

“You need some food in your stomach,” she said to me.

My dad looked grey.

“What was Jackson planning on doing?” he asked. “Where is he?” He stood up.

“I am not certain,” said Benoit. “I know he wanted to find you and tell you. He is very worried about Beatrice, uh, Sunny. I do not think he had figured it further because then you folks would be the bosses and it would no longer be up to him alone.

“And, sir, we do not know where he is. He is gone. Disappeared. Without his things.”

My dad slammed his glass on the table. “Why, in God’s name, had he not said anything to us by now? Why didn’t you make him, Benoit?”

“This isn’t Benny’s fault,” I said.