Splitsville Read online

  ◊

  Alice the cat hops onto the kitchen table. Sashays under Lily’s nose, then sniffs a stack of mid-terms. Picks up the scent of garbled expression, students hip to the flummery of others and yet oblivious to their own. Lily has lost plenty of red ink to lax grammar. Circles awkward structure. She strokes the cat’s tail.

  What do you think of voter apathy, missy?

  Phoebe comes in and opens the fridge door. Stares into the dull electric hum.

  How’s it going?

  Ugh, says Lily. Every sentence ends with a preposition.

  Tough to deal with.

  Har-har.

  Ready to go?

  Almost.

  Phoebe pulls out fuzzy cheddar, a jar of something gone green. She opens a carton of milk and sniffs. Her exophthalmic surprise. Guess we’ll grab a bite on the way, she says.

  There’s a deep bone chill outside Stull Electronics as they buzz the apartment upstairs. Brief chatter by the TV tubes.

  Pheeb, why are we here?

  He insisted.

  Inside, they shrug off jackets. Noses running, headlights flashing, neither woman can settle. Palette and oils on the fuliginous sofa, the armchair covered in crumbs. Lily’s stomach grumbles, her voice rises.

  Lay it on me, she says.

  Vern Dyson encompasses the dump with a sweeping gesture. She lived here after the States kicked her out, he says. I thought: you’re such a fan of hers, you’d want to see it.

  Lily fingers a crack on the wall and strolls around. The room unhaunted. No essence of the old anarchist seeps from vent or fixture, no hint of long-dead Emma Goldman goes pssst in her ear.

  Vern Dyson hands them each a beer and says, I love her line about the creative person’s resistance to all forms of conversion.

  Coercion.

  Sheesh, he says. You’ve sure done your homework.

  Lily pops an ov. I’m no schoolgirl, she says.

  ◊

  Consider this: only one day after he disappeared – June 3 – the government made it official. The Spadina Expressway was dead. Perhaps this would have made a difference. Perhaps the certainty imposed by this decision could have slowed just enough the speed of his city and left him without the need for reinvention. Or not. Maybe he was no longer able to stall. Maybe he had reached the limits of his geography.

  When he disappeared, he was the same age as you are now.

  ◊

  She stands at the big corner. Signs float above the broad avenue, flashy enticements for Neilson Chocolate and the Silver Dollar Room are in strong relief to the overcast sky. Below, sedans and cabs clog the intersection; they bleat and screech, bleat and screech, but who cares where they go because the real action is curbside. Endless migrations up and down Spadina. The steady beat of untold footfalls, sidewalk pulse that steers a sample-case schlepper through the crosswalk at College, that keeps a cadre of Guyanese shmatte workers gossiping outside the Crescent Grill. This vast block shaking with negotiation, gesticulation, ejaculation.

  What kind of city do you want? says Lily. She stands under the neon palm tree of the El Mocambo Tavern, handing out leaflets. Easy rhythm in the way she peddles her papers. Lays one on a northbound minister, hip and guitar-slung, then foists another on a young hard hat heading the opposite way. Metro wants bigger roads. Bigger buildings. Bigger contracts. And what do we want?

  Passersby are all ears.

  We want to be heard!

  A mildewed pair crosses her path. Matron in furs, droopyeyed gent who pulls out a pince-nez to glance at the tract, sniff, then toss it away like a soiled hanky. Lily stands there, suddenly speechless. Flakes of snow begin to fall. She sticks out her tongue.

  Wet snow. Tremendous globs of the stuff for two days straight. Over and over Spadina shovels out, the sidewalk fetishistically clean just in case some schmuck slips on his bean and decides to sue. So, all down the avenue truculent jobbers heft and heave, as do the truant kids who breathlessly make a buck the hard way. Boy in a blue parka digs out Cecil Street Books.

  Sachs looks out the window and sees Lily approach. Curvaceous breath, the swivel of hips. She eyes him eyeing her and comes in with the last of her pamphlets.

  Still waiting for you to make that offer, she says.

  Sachs sniffs the fresh ditto. Sweet aniline purple!

  The blue-parkaed boy comes in and stamps off his boots. All done, Mr. S.

  Sachs hits a button on the register and the cash drawer pops open. Okay, Luis. Go get yourself a pop.

  The sign on the shop door says: Back in 5 Minutes.

  It’s a hasty love.

  After, he walks her through an aisle in History. Stands in the spot where his father had died while shelving an unabridged Pepys.

  Boom, says Sachs. His heart.

  So you helped run the place?

  He nods. Unlocks the door.

  And, says Lily, you’ve never done anything else.

  Sachs shrugs. It was always going to be temporary, he says, until it wasn’t.

  ◊

  Last week, you rode the subway uptown. Your gaze, clear and reflective, grew diffuse when the train emerged from the tunnel. The route north of Eglinton runs along a shallow open cut, meridian for the truncated expressway. Traffic on either side was fender-to-fender. You got off at Lawrence West and put on sunglasses for the short walk to her condo.

  Television voices came loud and clear from the other side of the door. You didn’t bother to ring the bell because her hearing is bad no matter what the volume. You let yourself in and stood in the hallway until your mother became aware of your presence.

  Is everything okay? she said.

  Everything’s fine, Ma. Es is fine. She’s at home.

  You should be with her. What if she needs you?

  Then she’ll call.

  Cellphones, she said, as if this settled the matter. She was uneasy about the home birth, the absence of an ob. Unnerved by the jinxed due date and your apparent calm. You were raised to expect the worst and she could only shake her head at your obtuse denial of heredity.

  I knew she’d be late, said your mother.

  You said early.

  I did not.

  Yup. When the baby dropped into position, you told us to get ready for an early birth.

  I don’t remember.

  I do.

  She patted the couch. Why are we even arguing about this? Come sit.

  You sat.

  So, tell me, she said. Have you assembled the crib yet?

  You have this sense of yourself as someone with no future, that the upcoming days will assert themselves in ways you will not be able to integrate. This is a failure of imagination. You’re well-versed in the present tense, a tension between the action in your head and the sentences you emit into the world. The past is something you’re eager to disassemble and reassemble. But you have no language for what is to come. Your standard line is you’re prepared to be unprepared.

  You don’t, of course, believe a word of it.

  Es ached. She reminded you of the trigger points that promote labour: inside of the leg, three finger widths above the ankle. A tender spot on the trapezius. She sipped lemon verbena, called by the midwife a cervical opening tea. She also suggested spicy food and sex. Five nights in a row, tofu vindaloo cooled on the table.

  ◊

  Joe Sharpe heads up the steps of a D’Arcy Street house. His index finger hits the buzzer, but the plate is unscrewed and the entire contraption pops off its wires. So he knocks. Knocks louder. The second-floor flat leased to the Malinga brothers. They’re hard workers; two lug pelt for Gilman’s Furs, another pulls double shift for a cab company. The youngest one opens the door. He’s out of work, has a fat lip.

  What happened to you?

  The kid waves his hand in a manner that could mean anything.

  Listen, says Joe. You guys got to clear out of here. Sorry. The city inspector’s on my case. I need to rewire the whole place.

  This is a lie, of course;
Joe’s got another family lined up at fifty bucks more per month. But the kid buys it. His ruined mouth quivers.

  Mr. Sharpe. We have nowhere else to go.

  Joe’s rumination is well-rehearsed. No sweat, pal. I’ve got a vacancy coming up on Baldwin. A day or two, tops. Just have to roust a few deadbeats.

  Yeah?

  Sure. It’s a little cozier than what you got now. But, y’know.

  The youngest Malinga nods. Joe slaps him on the shoulder. Good, he says. I’ll drop off the keys Thursday. You guys’ll be out by Friday, right?

  Two more houses on D’Arcy, then three on Baldwin. Joe rents ten a month from Grubb, then leases out the rooms himself. He clears two grand. The only trick is to keep the city from nosing around. Bylaw infractions cost time and money. Sure, he’s got both, but not enough to squander willy-nilly. He checks his watch. He’s got no stomach for the rest of the street: welfare mom and her moon-faced brood, the heavy smoker who sets his bedsheets on fire. More palatable perhaps is Mrs. Mintz. The old lady’s lived on Cecil all her life, but between the noisy neighbours, the cockroaches, and the influx of Chinese, she might be nudged enough to sell. She answers the door with a sneeze. Wears a toque and scarf and her bathrobe.

  Verkakte radiator. Mr. Sharpe, would you mind having another look?

  Sure thing, says Joe. He smiles. He’d never do this for one of his own tenants, but, hey, block-busting is an art, not a science.

  ◊

  Sachs prefers slim masterpieces, but lies down with the fat ones. Portable Faulkner, say, or The City in History. They rest on his chest, such a comforting heft. He likes to sleep with his books before reading them.

  ◊

  You once spoke with Lily Klein. This was twenty years after the expressway was cancelled. After your uncle vanished. She was, by then, a writer, an urbanist with popular appeal. She had a column in the newspaper. A book that approached the bestseller list. Twice a week, she lectured at Innis College and stumped for the intimacy of the built environment. Superblocks, she argued, had forever damaged the physiognomy of our city. She cited health statistics, Ada Louise Huxtable. She spoke without notes.

  After, she shared a chuckle with three students. They left but she remained. Elbows on the lectern, hint of clavicle beneath her pale blue scarf. She removed her half-glasses and looked your way. She squinted hard. You watched her crow’s feet deepen with uncertain recognition.

  Are you auditing my class?

  Un-uh.

  She stepped down from the stage with a steady gaze.

  You look familiar.

  It’s been a long time, you said. I was three years old the last time you saw me.

  Oh, shit. You look just like him. Does anyone tell you that?

  Everyone.

  She glanced toward the door. The accumlation of lines in her face, the looser skin, only added to her profile. She was always the most modern of characters – autonomous, fast in her habits – but also someone adept at the uses of disorder. Not unlike the system she despised; capitalism creates and discards. She had declared entire phases of her life obsolete.

  You’re not a student then?

  No.

  So, you’re here because?

  I’m curious.

  About him? Like you said: it’s been a long time.

  I know, you said. But I guess I thought.

  Honestly. I don’t know anything more now than I did back then. Probably less.

  She put her hand on her hip. She was thirty years your senior, but there was a current between you, nothing carnal, simply a charge that ran to where you stood, silently, in your rubber-soled sneakers.

  ◊

  You haven’t slept for a week. Or, rather, each night you fall asleep and wake up. Far too early. 3:18, 3:21. Today, 3:13. Your eyelids were up, strict; they denied you even that fuzzy lull between the slumbering mind and a wakeful one. Moonlight peeked through the blinds: Es on her side, the outline of her craterous belly button. You needed to piss. You once read about a study in consciousness: test subjects were woken at various intervals through the night and asked the time. Most were accurate to within twelve minutes. Although they all thought it was later than it actually was. A husband-andwife team ran the experiment. Their name was Boring.

  You were careful and quiet down the hallway. Left the toilet unflushed and continued, light on the heel, to the living room. Big red armchair and floor-lamp corona. Same as the other sleepless nights, the same head trip. A nameless anxiety approaches from far away and you do nothing to get out of the way. You’re stuck, transfixed by the near-impact of mute associations.

  ◊

  Sachs is studying the ads in Antiquarian Bookman when the phone rings.

  I can get you six large, says Joe. Maybe seven.

  Yeah?

  Is that a yes?

  No.

  The single syllable hangs on the line, gobby with recall. Joe lets loose a sigh that stretches back half a life. They once sat beside each other in school, and out of this alphabetical convenience grew a decade of matters pursued with the seriousness of chess prodigies: shagging flies like Goody Rosen, jerking off to Jane Russell.

  Problem is, pal, you’re such a goddamned contrarian. You know this is a good deal so you’ve gotta run in the other direction. You’re scared you’ll actually get what you want.

  Geez, Joe. Pop pyschology? That’s beneath you.

  ◊

  Three nights later, the door to Vern Dyson’s pad is ajar so Lily goes in and finds Phoebe, at the window, in a peignoir. Stark cerulean light and the thin fabric announce aureole and pudenda.

  Ooh-la-la, says Lily.

  Give me a break.

  Vern clomps out of the kitchen. Whiff of turpentine and testosterone. Lumberjack shirt open to the sternum, splatter on the sleeves. He opens a bottle of cheap red.

  Whaddya think?

  Lily turns to the unfinished caryatid on the canvas. Elongated neck and abstract countenance. Nipples akimbo.

  She looks cold.

  Never mind that, says Phoebe, now robed. The rally is this weekend. What should our signs say? They’re framing this as uptown versus downtown.

  It is uptown versus downtown.

  Tell that to the people in Forest Hill. Tell it to them in Cedarvale.

  Exactly! What happens when they want to build the Crosstown? Or the Christie? They’ll be tearing up every neighbourhood in town.

  And for what? For five minutes and fifty-three seconds. That’s what they’ll gain.

  We need to show them what they’ll lose, says Lily. We need something that hits them where they live.

  Vern Dyson hands out the brushes and paint, Phoebe does the placards. Lily’s words trampoline off the tongue. Her slogan is acrylic, acerbic, and she completes it with a grand looping serif and a great gulp of wine:

  Your House Is Next!

  Lily hungover at Harbord Collegiate. Last night’s bad wine holds her sinuses hostage. Her teeth hurt. She lists the benefits of the electoral process on the blackboard, cusses silently each screech of chalk.

  Faye passes a note to Connie. Danny, head in hand, hides the earpiece of his transistor radio. It’s the last class on a Friday and the students are no less restless than their teacher. Lily tries not to eye the clock. Tick-tock goes her interest in the syllabus, tick-tock her textbook submission. She palms an apple off her desk. Burnishes it.

  Okay, she says. Listen up.

  Muttered asides abate, but there are still too many distractions so she captures full attention with a tried-and-true tactic.

  Your parents won’t like this – she has all their ears now – and Principal Libov has already told me to cool it. But I teach civics. And I can’t in good conscience ignore the biggest civics lesson in our lives just because some people are going to wig out on me. Democracy is not just something that we talk about in the classroom. It happens outside. It’s happening right now.

  She closes in on the front row of desks and chomps her apple. Maybe you
’ve heard about the big rally tomorrow, she says.

  From the four corners they come, braving rude Fahrenheit and the uncertain allure of a grassroots movement. Hundreds of determined footfalls traverse icy fossa, trample traditional class lines: Chinatown grocer and U of T radical, Annex ratepayer and the wife of a Kensington Market fishmonger. They keep coming and coming, solidarity growing with each step. They stuff the sidewalk, jam the street, and then converge, as planned, in the middle of College and Spadina.

  The wide intersection quickly becomes shoulder-toshoulder. What’s the deal? says a cabbie on his coffee break. But the retort is cut short by a blast of feedback and the bodies that hoick and scooch beside him. He stands on tiptoes and sees, beyond all the toques and placards, a man with a megaphone. This is Powell, chair of the STOP! movement. He marshals the crowd through chants and static.

  And we will not ka-zzzt because our future is daa-zat to save our city!

  Mittened fists rattle like sabres. Lungfuls of air explode into frosty words.

  SAVE OUR CITY! SAVE OUR CITY!

  This short sentence, anthemic, surges forward even as the crowd gets pushed back. Bus 77, with an escort of mounted police, winds around Spadina Crescent and rolls unimpeded down the street. Scattered cheers for public transit go silent when an Oldsmobile tries to take advantage of the egress. Several protesters jump forward. The Olds jolts to a stop. The driver hammers his horn. Lily raps the hood. SAVE OUR CITY! SAVE OUR CITY! Someone kicks a hubcap and the police horse neighs and the contours of people shift over and over, a buzzing tremendum captured by both the television cameras and the deep-set eyes of Hal Sachs. He rests an elbow on the register.

  Look at this mishegas, says Mrs. Mintz. They should mind their own business.

  She takes tiny sensible steps toward the cash. Her face baggy like old nylons. She pecks at her crocheted change purse and counts out coins. Thirty-five, sixty, seventy.

  Sachs is patient as landscape. Glances up idly just as Lily enters the shop. It’s a seismic moment. In the crazy avalanche of seconds, Mrs. Mintz, triumphant, hits her total while the roar of approval over the blocked car reaches apotheosis. Lily plants a big one on Sachs, their backs to the fray and the snowflakes that start to fall, like confetti.