“What’s that awful smell?” he heard the woman’s voice cry, clear as a bell.
His mother murmured something in response. Then the knocking began in the room downstairs, and keys were slammed on the piano, as if a fist had been brought down forcefully and repeatedly on the keys—from the higher octaves to the lower—which had a very dramatic effect.
The woman’s voice rang out into the sudden silence, “I don’t think that’s my husband!”
Next Harold heard the doors to the front room flung back so violently that they crashed against the wall behind. Heavy footsteps— like those of a large man in work boots—ran out of the room and up the uncarpeted stairs, and Harold almost fainted with fear. The footsteps reached the landing, and then thundered up and past his bedroom door and up the narrow flight of stairs to the third floor, where they suddenly stopped.
Harold heard the front door being wrestled open and the woman gasping “Ahhhhh, Ahhhhh” to herself as she fled out the door and down the short walk. Harold, who’d scrambled off his bed and backed away from his bedroom door until his back was up against the window, turned his head and looked out. He saw the woman—whom he now identified as Mrs. Mohan, a neighbour—run out into the cold dark night and down the street. She’d left her coat behind.
When his mother had come up to check on him, she’d asked him if he’d mind returning Mrs. Mohan’s coat the next morning before school. He’d left it on her front porch when she wouldn’t come to the door, even though she’d heard his knock. Harold knew, because he saw her peeking out the curtains.
Funny how he’d forgotten all about it until now, but there were big gaps in Harold’s memory. And since that was a fairly striking and memorable event, he wondered how it was that he’d forgotten all about it.
There’d been enough drama in that house to mark a life. Which is probably why drama was something that Harold strove to avoid.
A few minutes later a cruiser silently pulled up—no screaming alarms, no flashing red lights—and parked behind Harold on the quiet street. Two officers got out of the car and approached him, one on either side.
“Sir,” said one of the officers from behind and to his left, and Harold bolted nearly out of his skin. The officers reacted also. They certainly didn’t jump—they were experienced officers, and they’d seen it all—but they were more wary.
Harold turned and saw two men in uniform. He noticed the holsters, the silver cuffs glinting in the rain, and the black and white cruiser beyond.
Just then the front door was flung open, and a woman came down the steps holding a baby, and cried, “That’s him!”
What happened next was pure Kafka.
“Arrest him!” she said.
“What for?” Harold said in disbelief.
“Just a minute,” the first officer said to the woman, whose baby was starting to cry. He turned to Harold. “This woman called us because she says you’ve been looking in her windows.” At Harold’s startled look, he added, “She says it’s not the first time.”
“I haven’t been looking in the windows,” Harold said in some alarm. “I’ve just been looking at the house from the sidewalk.” He smiled at the officer. No doubt this would all be cleared up. It was just a misunderstanding. There seemed to be so many misunderstandings.
“Why are you here?” the officer asked.
“I grew up in this house. I just wanted to see it again.”
The officer seemed to think this was reasonable—he looked as if he’d heard much more bizarre things—and turned to the woman complainant.
“Ask him if he’s a mental patient,” the woman insisted.
“I’m not a mental patient,” Harold protested, and then wondered guiltily if the fact that he’d been hearing voices and that he was on anti-depressants qualified him as a mental patient. He wasn’t sure— had he just lied to the police? Now he was nervous, and the officer who was questioning him noticed, and seemed to change his attitude toward him, seemed to want to rattle him a little to get at the truth.
“You say you’re not a mental patient,” the officer said, slightly accusing.
“I’m not sure,” Harold said, shifting his eyes away.
Now he was sounding like a mental patient, and the woman said, “See!” triumphantly.
“Do you have any identification?” the officer asked.
Harold produced his new wallet and watched the officer pull out and study his recently replaced driver’s licence. Everything was in order there. The officer appeared uncertain. It looked like he’d like to let him off with a warning, but the woman wasn’t going to let that happen.
She asked, “Aren’t you going to arrest him?”
“I can describe the house,” Harold said, a little desperately. He pointed at the upstairs window and said, “That used to be my bedroom.”
“Don’t believe him!” the woman said. Then she added, “I think he’s been following me.” The officers—and Harold too—looked at her in surprise. “I wasn’t sure, but now that I get a better look at him, I’m sure I’ve seen him in the park, following me and the baby.” She hugged the crying baby more protectively. She didn’t appear to be even aware that she was lying; perhaps, Harold thought, she was so unnerved at having a strange man watching her house, felt so justified in wanting to be rid of him, that she’d convinced herself it was true.
In the end, the officers decided to take him to the station. Harold got into the backseat of the cruiser in amazed disbelief and looked dumbly out the window as his childhood home fell away. The woman stood on the sidewalk in the rain, watching him go.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Audrey had chosen this precise moment to confront Dylan about his drug problem. It wasn’t a planned thing; it arose out of her general frustration and her need to be doing something constructive, and also from her inability to get any timely advice on how to handle this from Dr. Goldfarb, who, it turned out, would not discuss it with her without an appointment—the earliest would be next week. She wanted to push the matter, but she didn’t dare because if Dr. Goldfarb dropped her she knew she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of finding another family doctor. And then where would she be? So she bit her tongue and made the appointment for the following week—and took things into her own hands.
Also, there was no one else around at the moment because Harold had called earlier and said he would be late coming home from the office. The rest of them had already had Campbell’s tomato soup and tuna sandwiches for supper. John was in the basement at the computer, ostensibly doing his homework, and Dylan was upstairs in his bedroom.
Audrey went up. She was apprehensive as she tapped on his bedroom door.
“Yeah,” Dylan said.
She entered the room, closing the door behind her. Dylan was lying on the bed. His school books had been dumped on the floor; his desk had the appearance of a clean slate. But she noticed that there was a book about acting on the bed.
“Do you have a minute?” Audrey said, looking at the desk, the books on the floor.
“Sure.”
Audrey sat down on the edge of the bed, forcing him to move over. She was suddenly conscious of the fact that she was sitting right on top of the illicit drugs, and this gave her strength and firmness of purpose.
She’d thought about this, and she’d decided to say that she’d been turning the mattresses that morning and that was how she’d discovered the pills. She would simply not mention the pornographic magazines or the condoms—that would be too embarrassing. She hoped he wouldn’t mention them either, but feared he might, knowing Dylan.
“We need to talk,” Audrey said.
“About Dad.”
“No, about you, actually.” Dylan seemed surprised, Audrey thought; he obviously had no idea what was coming.
“I was flipping the mattresses today”—she noticed he suddenly went still and tense—“and I found something that made me very upset.” She paused. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to put it, she’d better mention the drug
s right away, steer him away from the other stuff—“I found some pills, Dylan.”
He shifted uneasily on the bed, but he was still looking her in the eye. “You shouldn’t look under people’s mattresses, Mom.”
“I was doing housework!”
They glared at each other for a second. Then Audrey said, “And anyway, this isn’t about me, it’s about you.” She blurted out, “Are you doing drugs?” Anxiety had bled into her voice, giving it a harsh, accusatory quality.
“No.”
“Tell me the truth—I can take it.”
“No, Mom, I’m not doing drugs.”
She didn’t believe him. “Then what are those pills doing under your mattress?”
“Somebody gave them to me.”
“Who? Who gave them to you?”
“It doesn’t matter, Mom. I’ll throw them out if you want.”
“You’re damned right you’ll throw them out! And you’ll tell me who gave them to you—right now.” She glared at him while he bit his lip, as if weighing his options. “What are they anyway?”
“Ecstasy,” he said, flushing at the word.
So, she’d been right about that. “Who gave them to you?”
“I can’t tell you,” Dylan said stubbornly.
A horrible thought occurred to Audrey. “You’re not dealing are you?”
“No, Mom. Honest. I would never deal drugs. Besides, I could make a lot more money doing TV commercials.” He smiled at her hopefully.
“It’s that guy who keeps calling you!”
“No! Like I said, he’s just a friend.” Dylan looked away. “He’s got a deep voice.”
“I don’t know what to think!” she said.
“It was Terry,” Dylan said.
“Terry who?”
“Terry—your best friend’s son?” he said, his tone mildly sarcastic.
Audrey’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then she said, “Well, you’re not going to see any more of him.”
“That’s not fair!”
“I don’t care. That’s the way it is.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to stop seeing Ellen,” Dylan said.
“Why should I? It’s not her fault Terry’s doing drugs.”
“Yeah, right,” Dylan muttered.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Terry got the ecstasy from her.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Audrey exclaimed. But Dylan looked smug, and she was suddenly sure that he was telling her the truth.
“He took them from her dresser drawer, in her bedroom.”
Audrey made Dylan dig the pills out from under the mattress (while she averted her eyes from the rest of what was under there) and marched him into the bathroom, where together they flushed them down the toilet.
“And you can just forget all about acting,” Audrey said severely.
• • •
HAROLD DIDN’T WANT to speak to anyone. He’d seen enough on television to know that whatever he said would be used against him. He believed it too. Also, he was afraid of what might come out of his mouth. He was agitated; he didn’t trust himself.
The officers were also silent, ignoring him while they drove to 51 Division. Harold stared out the window in quiet desperation. His thoughts were random, loosely connected; he couldn’t focus on the problem at hand, and he didn’t want to.
When they got to the station, the officers took him inside. He wasn’t cuffed; he was as cooperative as could be. There was no outward sign of the rage that was quietly seething inside him. But there was rage all around him, even this early in the evening; drunks yelling and throwing punches, hookers jeering. Harold was appalled.
They took him to a small room with a table and some chairs. They offered him a chair. They even offered him a donut. Harold declined the donut—he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, up under his lungs—but the two officers rummaged through the Tim Hortons box and chose, respectively, a French cruller and a maple dip. The same officer did most of the talking. His mouth was full and the air carried a pleasant, yeasty smell, when he said to Harold, “So, tell us what you were doing at that house tonight.”
But Harold wouldn’t talk.
The cop coaxed in a friendly way, “We just want to clear this up. Can you tell us about when you used to live in that house?”
But Harold didn’t want to talk about when he’d lived in that house. He was afraid he might blurt out something about the séances, like he had to Dr. Goldfarb about the forced meals. If he told them the truth—about the séances, the voices—they would probably have him put in a mental institution. The possibility terrified him.
“Have you ever followed that woman before?”
When Harold resolutely refused to talk, the one officer said to the other, wiping his sugary mouth with a paper napkin, “I don’t think we have a prowl by night here.” The other shook his head in agreement and reached for another donut.
“Is there someone we can call for you, a family member?”
When he was released to Audrey, a little while later, he was like a bird being coaxed from a cage—he couldn’t believe that he was free to go.
• • •
WHEN THE POLICE had called, saying that they had Harold and could somebody come get him, Audrey had replied, “No, Harold’s at work.” When it had finally sunk in, she’d told the boys that she was going to the police station to get their father and drove all the way with her jaws locked and her hands gripping the steering wheel as if hanging on for dear life.
The person on the phone had been determinedly unforthcoming about what Harold was doing there, and Audrey was assuming the worst—that he’d been found wandering the streets talking to people who weren’t there, flailing his arms around.
She didn’t want to park illegally in front of the police station, but there was no parking anywhere, and this was an emergency. She arrived at the front desk agitated and out of breath, and then had to wait while other people with other problems were dealt with. The longer she had to wait, the more agitated she became. She wondered if she should go move the car.
“Can I help you?” the woman in uniform behind the desk finally asked.
“Someone called me—I’m Harold Walker’s wife?”
“Just a minute.”
While she was waiting, Audrey remembered that she hadn’t picked up the dry cleaning. She wished that she was picking up the dry cleaning instead of picking up Harold.
“Mrs. Walker?”
Audrey jumped. A police officer had appeared at her elbow.
“Relax,” he said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
“What happened?” Audrey demanded. “Is he okay?”
“We had a complaint.”
This wasn’t what Audrey had been expecting. “A complaint?”
The officer walked her away from the desk, and said, “A woman said that your husband was looking in her windows.”
“What do you mean, looking in her windows?”
“She reported a peeping Tom.”
Audrey’s mouth dropped. “No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “He was probably just confused.”
“How do you mean?” the officer asked.
But Audrey snapped her mouth shut.
“Is he a psychiatric patient?” the officer asked.
Oh God. People—professional, objective people, people who ought to know—were wondering whether Harold was a psychiatric patient! She needed to sit down. She patted the air around her. Without saying anything, the officer led her by the arm to some hard plastic chairs against the wall, where Audrey sat down heavily. She felt like a piñata that had been beaten with a stick till all her stuffing had fallen out. At last she said, “He’s not a psychiatric patient. He has been a little depressed lately.” She looked earnestly at the police officer. “But he’s no peeping Tom,” she said. “She must be making it up.”
“When we got there he was standing on the sidewalk staring at the house. He says he gr
ew up there.”
“In Cabbagetown?”
“Yes. Do you know the address of the house he grew up in?”
Audrey shook her head. “No, but it was in Cabbagetown, I know that.”
The officer nodded. “That’s good enough for me. We’ll let him off with a warning. He shouldn’t go near that house again, though.” He stood up and offered Audrey his arm. “Let’s go get him, and you can take him home.”
• • •
JOHN WAS IN his bedroom, riding the emotional roller coaster. He’d gone from feeling like a million bucks when he was with Nicole, to recognizing the world for what it was—a dangerous and quixotic place—in the space of a few hours.
It was useless to try to do his English homework when his father had just been hauled home from the police station for who knew what. He and Dylan had stood on the porch and watched, dumbstruck, as their mother helped their dad out of the car. Then they’d followed inside and watched her get him out of his coat and up the stairs to their bedroom, divulging nothing, quelling their questions with one meaningful look. Their father had seemed almost disoriented; he hadn’t even looked at them.
As usual, their parents weren’t telling them anything, which had Dylan totally pissed off. Now Dylan burst in through John’s bedroom door and flung himself into the chair, tossing John’s dirty clothes onto the floor. “Well,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“You talked to Mom?” John asked. Dylan nodded. Of course Dylan would get to the bottom of it, John thought grudgingly. He was fearless. “What’d she say?”
“Some woman made a complaint that Dad was a peeping Tom, but the cops didn’t believe her and let him go.”
“Oh,” John said.
“Mom says he was just hanging around the house where he grew up, and the owner freaked out.”
“What was he doing that for? That doesn’t sound like Dad.”
“You think being a peeping Tom sounds like Dad?”
“No! It’s just that—he never talks about when he was a kid.”