Finding edward, p.27
Finding Edward, page 27
Cyril felt for the motion of the train, its steady travel along steel rails. He pictured the passengers, all of them white, snoozing in their seats or reading. Maybe talking. One snaps a finger and calls for George. Edward must have hated that. Cyril’s leg began to ache, and he slowed his walk, just a touch. It wasn’t his pain. It was Edward’s.
* * *
Edward is at a veterans’ dinner. It is in a Legion Hall with many tables set about the room. Each of them is decorated with a central feature vase of plastic daisies. A Canadian flag hangs above an upright piano alongside a framed photograph of Queen Elizabeth II. There is a small bar with Export beer for sale at $3.25 a bottle. Edward remembers when beer was fifty cents, and he says this to the big woman with the thin, pink lips behind the bar. She gestures with the back of her hand, a dismissal. She says she has heard this complaint so often that she hears it in her sleep. That he should spend his money in the fancy restaurants where they sell microbrews for eight dollars a glass. Edward has three beers, which help to soothe his aching leg. There are a couple of East Coast Blacks here. Guys who worked the trains. Both of them were army. They have what Edward thinks of as Their Conversation: about the sergeants and the train conductors and the good old union days. The women they all remember so fondly, in such intimate detail, who have never aged.
These days, Edward is visited sometimes by flashbacks of sound and smell from that awful time on the beach. It happens to him this evening, and he panics. Somebody drops a bottle, and he starts up from his chair, much too quickly; his cane falls to the floor, and, as he swings around to grab at it, he hits the knee of one of the volunteers. Things are spilled — a tray of cheese and crackers, red-tipped toothpicks pinned to squares of yellow scattered all across the floor. Edward has to leave. He leans on his cane, a little unsteadily now because he is drunk. One of the women is very kind. “Be careful on your way home now, Mr. Davina. You don’t have far to go, do you, dear?”
Edward needs to get into the air, away from the clatter of noise in the room and the grating music that seems to peak sometimes in shots of piercing sound. He nods at her, grunts a response. He wants to say, “Help me home, please.” He wants to say, “When I’m struck with this thing, I want some comforting.” But he’s learned, really quite effectively, how to manage it on his own.
The air is clear. The rain that nearly stopped him from coming this evening is long past, dried by a chill breeze that forecasts winter. His room is just a few blocks from the hall. He has only to focus his walk and not let go of his cane. To remind himself that he is walking along King Street in Toronto, heading home on a beautiful late-fall night. A streetcar passes, and he braces himself, mutters, “Streetcar, streetcar, streetcar.” He names it, and it cannot frighten him. He battles against the noise.
He has been going to this Legion for ten years. Ever since he moved in to the King’s Arms. His home. He won’t be moving house again unless it’s into a casket. He pushes at the door with his good arm. It is stiff, and Edward has complained; he has said, “We are the old and infirm in this place, but that door could stop a baseball team.” Security Sam appears, pulling the door fully open. “Hey, Eddie, you remembered to come home. I’ll bet those girls at the club were disappointed.”
“Leave them wanting more,” said Edward. “Thanks.”
This evening’s beers mean there’ll be nothing for tomorrow. A whole day’s budget gone to a night on the town that’s been spoiled by a panic attack. Still, it was nice to see the boys. They are good people. He has known lots of good people. In all the years of scraping by, he’s always said he’s never been lonely. Didn’t need more money — he loved the freedom of Pickup-and-Leave. You could do that when you worked temporary. He’d got to know the country that way. Caught the travel bug from the rails. There was so much to see, and he was a guy with the time to do it.
Not so good being old, though. His time as a porter was far too short to get him a pension. He doesn’t even have the CPP; nearly all of his work was under the table. Not that it would make that much difference. Lots of the guys in here have it along with their Old Age Security, and it doesn’t buy them any better than this. He’s always known how to work hard. He did some logging. Worked one of the big freighters for a while. One of the best was on a Parks Canada crew, where he booked in for months at a time. Hard physical work. Lots of good men.
He swore off women, although one or two made it through. And Rachel. He sends her cards, sometimes. Celia left him red-sore underneath. Women didn’t like that when they found it. He lost a couple of them after Celia, but he never, ever loved anyone else the same way. Never again considered marriage and children. That would have been a thing: children.
He still sends money to help the little kids with school. Has kept it up since he left Africville, how many decades ago? Something to be proud of, that. First it went straight to the school, sent from wherever he was — unless he was inside, then they had to wait until he got out and found a job. Nova Scotia stopped segregating its schools in 1953. They closed the school in Africville, and Black kids had to be bussed to the white schools. The Black students were put into special classes — they had a really hard time, those kids. Edward didn’t stop sending the money. It went to the church for a while, to tutor the children, and now there is a little charity that does its best to help. He likes to think that’s what happens with his monthlies — helping a whole parcel of children, year after year, learn how to live right in the world. That is the cycle that never ends.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Cyril waited for the walk light at a busy intersection on the downtown’s west side. Parkdale’s southern border was the lake, and he’d walked down to look at it. He’d seen it before from a number of places, but the lake had been unexpected this day. When he’d caught his first glimpse of it, before the King streetcar began its curve north toward Roncesvalles, he’d been surprised. He often forgot that Toronto was a city on a lake.
He stomped his feet. Someone on the streetcar had said it was cold enough to snow. It was a ten-minute walk up to Queen Street and the office of the important sociologist’s generous colleague, the research consultant who would show him the data. He felt for signs, any indication of how close he might be to finding definitive answers on Edward. But his senses were overwhelmed by a persistent apprehension that had troubled him all week.
Four days earlier, he’d dreamed of a hospital room, lit bright and scrubbed clean. A TV-show scene with sounds that bothered his ears, hissing white noise, beeping machines. As he’d pushed his head deeper into his pillow, he had found Edward, lying on his back in a hospital gown, shrunken and old, hooked up to tubes and wires. His eyes were closed, but he was conscious, and Cyril could feel his fear.
He’d know soon enough, thought Cyril, who was impatient to move. Five main roads met at the intersection, and the traffic light was interminably long. He watched as a man drove a motorized wheelchair along the sidewalk toward him. He looked about fifty, though alcoholics like that could be any age. A few long strings of grey hair hung down from under his hat and lay flat against his black leather jacket. The hat was a big, dark cowboy thing that looked as though it had been around since the sixties. The woman behind him, whose age was equally uncertain, had extended her arms to hold on to the back of his chair by the push handles. Hers was an ordinary, non-motorized wheelchair on which she sat with a big case of empty beer bottles balanced and belted onto her lap. She was also dressed in black — leather jacket, sweatpants, and runners. Her ball cap was a faded and stained blue, topping long, lank brown hair. The pair stopped beside Cyril and waited for the light to change.
The woman being pulled didn’t move her eyes from her partner’s back. She looked numbed, not a part of the street or the crowd. It was just the two of them in their exacting world with their single purpose: getting to the Beer Store and getting home again. Cyril wondered what their house looked like. No images came to mind. As the light changed, the man turned his head to the woman behind him and said, “Are you ready, baby?” in a voice so caring and gentle that it shook Cyril from his thoughts. “Yes, darling,” the woman said and grimaced with effort as her chair followed his, pulling at her arms, rattling the bottles, bumping down into the road and then picking up speed as he motored them both to the other side. Cyril blessed his legs and his health.
Cyril was excited about meeting the researcher, whose work looked at the historical and contemporary inequalities of economic opportunity for Black people in Canada. She had studied several major Canadian employers, including the Canadian Pacific Railway. She had a data table that recorded lifetime earnings and compared the entitlements of the Black Brotherhood members to those in the white union. Everyone who’d been employed by CP Rail since the Brotherhood was formed, cross-referenced to their Canada pensions and income tax returns.
She met him in the lobby: short, round-faced and smiling, tight black curls. She was totally unlike the tall, austere sociologist. “So nice to meet you, Cyril,” she said. “Let’s get you down to business right away?” She led him to an elevator that took them to the fourth floor and stopped at a big glass door where she swiped her security card and pushed it open. Inside were offices ranged along a square of corridors, rows of closed doors, many pinned with posters and signs. “The offices have all the windows,” she said. “That’s why it’s so dark in here when the doors are shut.” She flipped a switch that turned on a second row of lights and stepped toward the end of the hallway. “This is mine.” Inside was a desk, filing cabinets, bookshelves. A computer. “The deal is that I can only log on from here,” she said, “and I have requested access for just two days, right?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“If you don’t find it today, you can try again tomorrow. I’ll be here all morning. But after that, I’d have to ask them to extend the privilege, and I’d rather not. On the other hand, if the name you have is really what your man went by, it won’t take any time at all.”
She sat at her desk and started her computer, motioning Cyril to pull up a chair. He slid in beside her as she entered the security code for the database along with her name and authorization. When the reams of data scrolled up onto the screen, she rolled sideways in her chair so that Cyril could sit in front of the monitor. What he saw were dozens of columns and countless numbers.
“Looks like a spreadsheet,” said Cyril.
“These,” she said, “are the social insurance numbers. And those columns are government benefits. Here are the union benefits.” She moved a finger down the screen. “Look how many of them were Americans, or from the West Indies. Lots of Jamaicans.”
“They were supposed to be less demanding workers, right?”
“Yes.” She leaned across Cyril and moved the cursor over to the left. “And these are the lifetime earnings.”
Cyril looked where she pointed as he began to make sense of the data.
“Go on then,” said the researcher. “Put his name here in the search field. This is the first five years after the Brotherhood was formed.”
Cyril keyed in Edward’s name. In seconds the screen changed, and Edward’s name was at the top. Edward Davina’s social insurance number. He got Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement. The union benefits column was blank. In the column beside it was a special note explaining that Edward Davina had been removed from his job, and the union, before entitlements became due.
“There’s an address category,” said the sociologist, obviously pleased and excited for Cyril, who remained silent. “Just move the arrow to the right.”
“This is too weird,” said Cyril as the columns rolled out across the screen.
“Double-check that you’re still in Edward’s data row.”
Cyril scrolled quickly to the left and back again to the city column.
“He lives in Toronto!” They both said it at the same time.
“And here,” said the researcher, pointing at one of the pink-coded columns. “The deceased box is empty.”
“He’s alive?”
“Here’s his address. Though he might not be living there anymore. This data is more than two years old. He could be in a nursing home by now. Or might have died, I guess. He would be ninety.” She watched while Cyril copied the address down into his book, which was hugely unethical and legitimate grounds for firing. But she didn’t hesitate for a minute.
“Oh man!” Cyril’s smile collapsed, and his lips trembled. The office seemed suddenly huge and the world a very strange place. He felt as though he’d stepped off its edge. The researcher patted his back, her bangle-encircled wrist jingling along with her firm touch, a reassurance that all of this was real. She closed the record, then encouraged Cyril to search the address on a map, right there on her computer. Edward was less than a kilometre from where they sat. “Oh, man,” said Cyril.
It was already dark when Cyril walked the short block from the Weston bus stop to his basement room. A couple of the houses had Christmas lights up. Cyril had loved those fairy lights as a kid. His mother once had four strings of them that she said his father had bought. They’d managed to keep them going for years, stripping them one by one for replacement bulbs until the last one was gone. About four years before Cyril’s mother died, Grandpa Nelson had given Cyril money to buy her new ones. Nelson had died a few months after that. He only saw those lights up once.
The air was biting cold, snapped at Cyril’s face and neck. He pulled his scarf tighter. Here comes the real winter, he thought. His second Christmas in Canada. A number of weeks back, he’d packed a box full of toys for his brother and sister. Each item wrapped in bright paper, with extra sheets in case the customs people tore them apart and his aunt had to rewrap. He could imagine the litter of colour and squeals of delight on Christmas morning. Both of them were already taller than they’d been in the summer. Lately, when he talked to Daren on the phone, it was like a real person on the other end. More grown-up than he’d been in person a just a few short months back, he had things to say about school, football, his friends. The kid had a life. And his sister wasn’t far behind, though she still rambled on in her funny little overexcited voice, and Cyril often didn’t really understand what she was telling him. He always understood the last bits, though, when she said, “I love you, Cyril. I miss you lots and lots.” He was very glad that he’d seen them in the summer. And now he was ready to risk seeing Edward.
* * *
Edward is going to the community hall for Christmas. He’s been there every Christmas for twelve years. This year, he will deliver one of the after-dinner speeches. They are short, the only sort he is interested in. He will give sincere words of thanks for the efforts the volunteers put in all year long on behalf of those less fortunate. Most of the time, Edward doesn’t mind being less fortunate. He is never sorry for himself. Only sometimes wishes that he fought harder, got involved with the activists, so that today’s kids could have a better shot at life. But he stayed away from politics after the trains.
Edward searches for his big, brown sweater. It is damned cold out there, and he has to bundle up to get to the shop. He needs wrapping paper for the shot glass, the Token Gift that he’s bought for Security Sam. Inside his room it is as hot as Hades. The boilers bang away on their own schedule. The people nearer the front of the building walk around in their T-shirts in the winter — it’s that hot. The guys at the back of the building have to keep their jackets on inside. The way the heat works is stupid and wasteful, but the management says it would cost too much to fix. Edward isn’t allowed to open his little window in the winter because that would waste heat, so he suffocates in the stuffy room. Today his door is open to let in some air. As he digs through the clothes in his drawer, he hears Timmy and Marg rattling along the hall in their wheelchairs. Timmy’s wheelchair makes long, dark stripes along the length of the corridor wall all the way down to the room he and Marg share at the cold end. Management charges the social services extra for the regular paint jobs. A motorized wheelchair. Edward thinks he could maybe use one of those himself. Not yet, though. He isn’t decrepit yet.
He spots the brown sweater under the laundry that’s piled on his armchair. Tomorrow is washing day, with the long trek down to the basement where an unreliable machine bangs and shakes through the cycles. It is much better than the old days, though, when he had to haul everything to the laundromat a couple of blocks away. As he leans down to pull the sweater from the pile, a Dizzy hits him so hard that he tips off-balance, has to hold on to the chair to find his feet, and then he can’t hold anymore as pain grabs at his chest and squeezes like it won’t let go, will bust right through. The fear, the outright scare of it, is worse than the pain, and his voice doesn’t work, so he lies with his face to the open door, and his mouth gasps for breath.
TWENTY-EIGHT
On the seat beside Cyril was a big, green bag that he’d found at the Goodwill store. It contained the child’s blue suitcase, the sailor doll, and the children’s home book of records. The photograph album and the letters were inside the suitcase. The doilies too, though Cyril had never understood their place in the mystery. He clung to the handle of the bag as though his cargo were potentially life changing.
Mr. Addo had been most reluctant to let his treasures go. He’d only relented when Cyril presented him with the binder of research that included the precious newspaper photograph of Edward in the lineup of bad boys. Mr. Addo had put a framed copy of that in the display case. He hadn’t seen Edward’s signature before, the large, round, looping letters with an ink point at the end. “This is really him?” He shook his head, slow, side to side. “His handwriting. Good lord. I never dreamed you’d find these things.” He handed the binder back to Cyril. “If he really is there, please take a photograph for me? I’ll give you my camera. We can get it printed big and frame it. I’ll put it in the display case. And if the gentleman is able to travel, perhaps he would come and see it for himself.”
