Danny shakes his head. He doesn’t know how to tell her that they could be the best of friends if they had the time, or that he would like to go home with her and create his own little nest in a pile of her clothes where she could tell him stories about dancing and parties. He owes her so much, for the cigarettes and the belt and this glimpse into a life that must be exciting and always bewitching. But he has taken far too long already.
Danny says in his best grown-up voice, “We’ll meet again. You’ve captured my heart forever.” He shoots her what he hopes is a debonair look before running away, one hand clasped over his belly, the silk bow a ball in his small fist. Her laughter bounces off the buildings and multiplies, until he is sure he is being chased by church bells, ringing and ringing for souls both lost and found.
PART ONE
THE RETURN
1982
This neighbourhood. Crooked sidewalks cracked by tree roots, eroded from rain and the burdened feet of people hurrying to work or hurrying home. Garbage from the twenty-four-hour convenience store is piled around the bus shelter. A cat meows. The dampness in the air shimmers as it rises, and Danny stands, staring at his parents’ house through the haze.
Everything looks the same, only greyer and smaller. The same windows fogged over with years of cooking grease. The same front steps that tilt to the right. The same gutters, choked with twigs and old leaves. He blinks slowly. When he opens his eyes, he is still here, his hand on the gate, sweat coursing down his back and pooling in his waistband. He might just pass out.
Fourteen years ago, he left this place in the early morning. Every sinew in his body was stretched taut as he rushed westward, headlong into the crush of buildings and traffic and the ever-present noise of downtown. He swore to himself, I am never going back. That is not where I belong. He stayed away completely, taking winding and circuitous routes whenever he came within ten blocks of this place. He had removed this yard and those windows from his head on purpose. And yet he is here, all because Cindy’s eyes drooped at lunch last week describing their mother’s sallow and soft face in the living-room window as she waited for Cindy to come home from a date.
“I can’t do it by myself anymore,” she said. “All they do is wonder where I am.”
And he’s back because maybe this visit will exorcise the reverberations of his father’s voice in his ears.
“You’re weak.”
“What kind of boy are you?”
“A dog would be more useful than you.”
In all this time, Danny has only heard his parents’ voices on the phone when he called at Chinese New Year or Christmas. In person, he hopes his father will be less viciously articulate, and be round and jolly instead. He doesn’t dare hope anything for his mother.
His eyes travel over the chipped wooden siding. He looks behind him at the cars speeding down Dundas, each revolution of their wheels making a rhythm: run run run. When he was younger, his dreams beat to the same pace. Unrelenting. Continuous. At eighteen years old, he hurriedly and silently packed a small suitcase. As he drove off in his best friend’s car and counted every block they passed, it took all his willpower not to say the numbers out loud.
He had jobs, learned how to be a passable wedding photographer and lived in apartments in squat buildings that were half hidden by the high-rises blotting out the sky. He looked for and found lovers who asked him no questions. Living in a world of his own making and escaping from a house in which he never belonged are his two successes. He is, after all, not the famous photographer he thought he might be, or the spectacularly dressed owner of a high-rise penthouse on English Bay. But everything else he dreamed of at eighteen and worked for is his. His own apartment. A little bit of money. No one sitting in the dark when he gets home at night, asking him pointed questions about where he’s been, or whose smell he carries on his breath.
Still, when he’s being honest with himself, he remembers how he sometimes wakes in the middle of the night, groggily wondering when his mother will call him for breakfast, or if his father will hustle him out the