Shadow of Ashland (Ashland, 1) Read online

  The sun, even after six, was still hot as we walked.

  "What's your son's name?"

  "His name's Adam."

  "What does he do all day in the summer while you're at work?"

  "Plays with his friends. I hope," she added. "Lots of baseball."

  "Who looks after him?"

  "My parents. That's where we're going now."

  "Nice of them."

  "It's mostly my mother," she said. Then: "Where you staying?"

  "The Scott Hotel."

  "Don't know that one."

  I smiled. "I'm not surprised."

  She walked beside me unselfconsciously. I guessed that she had thickened at the waist in the last five years or so, but her figure was still quite feminine, without attracting attention. I considered my own shape now, aware of how my chest had somehow begun to slip toward my beltline of late. I had thinning hair and new creases in my face. We were both, I realized, safely anonymous, and it made me feel comfortable to be with her.

  "What do you do in Toronto?"

  "I work for the Toronto Star. It's a newspaper."

  "Doing what?"

  "Circulation manager. They divide up the city into districts, and there are a dozen of us. We look after home and newsstand delivery for our district. Handle accounts, routes, like that."

  "They need twelve of you?"

  "Toronto's a big city. Three million people."

  "I didn't realize."

  We waited at a traffic light. "How big's Ashland*?" I asked.

  "About thirty thousand."

  I thought about it. "Could a person get lost here, permanently?"

  "What do you mean?''

  "Could he come here and hide forever?"

  "Don't know if you can do that anywhere." She looked at me. "You thinkin' of doin' that?"

  I shrugged. "No," I said. I squinted into the sun, shading my eyes to peer across the street. "I was thinking of someone else."

  The light changed. We crossed the road.

  We went up the steps onto the porch of the modest frame bungalow on Carter, east of 30th, and opened the wooden screen door.

  "Mom?"

  "Inhere."

  We went inside.

  Mrs. Berney was a small, portly woman in a large house-dress. She looked at me curiously.

  "Mom, this is Leo Nolan."

  I held out my hand. "Pleased to meet you."

  She accepted the gesture. "Nice to meet you." Her hand was warm.

  Jeanne glanced around. "Where's Adam?"

  "Down at the lot. Playin' some baseball with Kenny."

  "Good. Thanks. See you tomorrow morning." She kissed her mother on the cheek, squeezed her shoulder, and headed back toward the front door.

  I followed. "Nice meeting you, Mrs. Berney."

  "Pleasure." She placed her hands on her hips and watched us as we went through the screen door. I thought I saw a smile on her face.

  The lot turned out to be a vacant, fenced-in parking lot, adjacent to a boarded-up factory. There were two kids in it—one hitting fly balls, the other catching and fielding them. What made it challenging was the weed growth and the intermittent six-inch-high, six-foot-long cement parking dividers still in place.

  We watched for a minute. The kids didn't seem to notice either the field's limitations or us.

  "Adam!" Jeanne raised her arm.

  The kid in the field put his hand over the visor of his cap, shading his eyes more fully, then raised his own arm.

  "Who's Kenny?" I asked, indicating the tiny batter.

  "Neighbor. They spend a lot of time together."

  Adam Berney trotted over, a tiny imitation of every major league fielder headed for the bench that he had ever seen on TV. His mother bent down, gave him a quick kiss on the side of the head. Ignoring her, he waved to his friend, who waved back.

  "Adam, this is Mr. Nolan."

  "How you doing, Adam?" I held out my hand.

  He looked out at me from under his Cincinnati Reds cap, a squint of uninterest, then shook my hand. "Fine," he said.

  "We're going to dinner with Mr. Nolan."

  He looked from one to the other of us.

  "But you get to pick the place." His mother waited.

  He brightened. "McDonald's," he announced.

  I looked at Jeanne for a signal of some sort. She smiled at him, then turned to me, still smiling.

  "McDonald's it is, then," I said.

  "All right!" Adam Bemey pounded his tiny fist into his baseball glove for emphasis.

  3

  "What are you going to get?" she asked me as we got in line.

  "Not sure." I was reading the menus behind the cashiers.

  "I want a Quarter Pounder with cheese, fries, and a Coke," announced Adam. "And one of them." He pointed to the plastic Smurf figure that was the 59¢ throw-in.

  "You got kids," she said to me, "you got this menu memorized."

  We sat down. The eyes from under the baseball cap peered up at me inquisitively.

  "Nice glove," I said, trying it on for size. "Got a good pocket."

  "Cost me forty-nine dollars. On sale. I just about died," interrupted his mother. "Can you believe it? Forty-nine bucks?"

  Adam glanced from one to the other of us, stuffing the french fries into his mouth with his fingers.

  I shifted my index finger outside the leather at the back for support, flexing it open and closed. "Good quality," I said. "Good value."

  She looked surprised. "Really?"

  I nodded. "Will last a lifetime. He can give it to his son someday. It'll still be good. In fact, it'll be better. Worked in."

  Adam beamed a sudden smile.

  I undid the cord at the end of the baby finger, pulled it tighter, then retied it.

  "It's a beauty," I said, handing it back to him.

  There was no answer, but he continued to smile.

  "Who do you like on the Reds?" I asked.

  "Dave Parker," he said. "Mario Soto."

  "Great players," I said. Biting into my burger, I confessed, "I've never had a Big Mac."

  "You're kidding," said Jeanne.

  I shook my head, chewing.

  "Don't they have McDonald's in Toronto?"

  I nodded. "Yup. But I don't go there much." I had always thought there were usually too many kids there.

  "You from Toronto?" It was Adam's first real attempt to communicate with me.

  I stopped chewing, pleased. "Yup."

  "You watch the Blue Jays?"

  "Sometimes. Who do you know on the Jays?"

  "Dave Stieb. Lloyd Moseby."

  "Good men," I said.

  "Jays are pretty good this year," he said. "For a change."

  "And the Reds are kind of disappointing, aren't they?"

  "They got Pete Rose back, though." His face was hopeful.

  "It's a good move. He'll help. Bring some zip to the club. They can use it."

  Adam hollowed his cheeks, sipping his Coke through the straw, not taking his eyes from me.

  Jeanne sat back, watched the byplay, smiled.

  "So this is a Big Mac," I said, taking another bite, chewing, considering.

  We stopped outside a two-story frame house, painted pale blue. It still wasn't dark.

  "This is it," she said. "We rent the upstairs."

  The three of us formed a comfortable triangle on the sidewalk. Jeanne placed her hand on her son's shoulder.

  I sighed, looked around, put my hands in my pockets. Forty years old, I thought. You never quite get the hang of it. "Thanks for the company," I said.

  Jeanne smiled. "Thank you," she said. "It was very nice."

  "Thanks," said Adam.

  I tugged his cap down over his face playfully. He giggled, pushed it back up. "It's Detroit this year, I think. All the way. Morris, Trammell, Gibson, Hernandez. Who's gonna stop them?"

  He listened, all ears, the big glove dangling from his small left hand.

  I looked at Jeanne. "I'm here for a bit longer
. Maybe we can do it again."

  "I’d like that."

  She glanced at the upstairs window. "I don't think it's a good idea to invite you in this evening. Work tomorrow, and Adam and I still got some things to tend to."

  "That's oaky. I understand."

  I held out my hand. She took it warmly, firmly.

  As I returned, hands in pockets, to the Scott Hotel, I squinted into the sun that warmed my face and chest. Behind me was a long shadow with soft edges that stretched out from my feet, moving with me, touching the darkness at my back. I stopped before turning the corner at 14th Street when I noticed the sun high up on the church turret across the street.

  Then I turned, saw that the shadow was gone, saw the long street, cracked pavement and cement, dwindling off into the past.

  SIX

  A chill night breeze came whispering down from the depths of the valley, and suddenly the place was full of ghosts—shadows of men alive and dead—my own among them.

  —Charles Nordhoff And James Norman Hall

  Mutiny on the Bounty

  1

  Sometimes what we become and where we end up is of greater surprise to ourselves than it is to others. Plans get skewered. Logic falters. We become human, terribly so, stumble, try to recover, fail, choose another direction and move onward, shadow and sunshine, the road behind us disappearing, the one ahead unknowable.

  It was 1:00 a.m. I could not sleep.

  The streets of Ashland led in all directions as I walked in the summer night.

  Ashland, like all places, is a very tangible entity. It has a skin that you can feel brushing you as you stand still, fingers that stroke you as you walk, a voice that whispers to you at the edge of hearing. And at night, the entity hums like an electric generator.

  "Lots of times he came home and slept. Others, he'd just wander around."

  Its dark warmth blossomed in misted, prismatic halos, perfectly still about the streedamps overhead.

  My footsteps were silent.

  Life, to a great degree, is about loss. Our experience tells us this. We lose our hair, our teeth, our muscle tone, the acuity of our vision, the smoothness of our skin; we lose money, books, pencils, keys, shopping lists, gloves, umbrellas; our cars rust out, neighbors move away, we discard the favorite slippers with the flopping soles.

  Our hope is that it can be contained to the externals, that the damage to our internal landscape can be minimized.

  When my son was stillborn, I lost a part of myself that was so large and that went so deep that I feel its absence to this day. When the marriage subsequently died, my optimism lapsed.

  I lost the house I lived in. Standing in the hallway of the house that I had shared with Fran for three years, staring for the last time at the furniture, the array of photographs on the walls and end tables, the pine baseboard that I had lovingly installed in the living room, the rugs, the drapes: the memory of it flashes like a snapshot in my head. I see myself closing the door, hear it shut with a solid click, feel my chest constrict. Then it is gone.

  I lost part of my self-esteem. I lost friends. I lost the illusion that I was somehow immune to the reversals of modem life.

  When my mother died, I lost my youth.

  There is a sequence that the mind and the soul can accept. It is a form of entropy: the tendency of all things to collapse, given sufficient time. It is when the sequence is disrupted, when that which has not run its normal course and span collapses into disorder, that we feel the steel lance in our hearts, see the vacuum open to swallow us. This happens when youth precedes age into oblivion.

  It happened when my son did not live.

  It must have happened when my mother's little brother disappeared.

  Yet I know that I have not fully matured, even yet, because I know that there will be more.

  Am I happy? To have suffered the loss and death of loved ones, one would have to be a bit obtuse to consider himself happy.

  I am content. I am wiser.

  Life is interesting.

  At night, the King's Daughters Hospital on Lexington Avenue is any hospital, in any city.

  Beneath a streetlight a cab driver sat, his left arm propped out the window, a newspaper folded against the steering wheel. He eyed me briefly as I stood with my hands in my pockets, looking past him to the building.

  A young man came out the front door, stood a moment, oblivious of both of us. At a distance, and in the dark, his features were blurred. Early twenties, I guessed; the short sleeves of his white shirt hung from his elbows as he lifted his hands to run them through black, curly hair. He turned and walked with an unhurried gait up the street.

  Watching him, the humidity and stillness seemed to ring in my ears.

  I began to follow him. I could offer no reason even to myself for doing so. It just began to happen. Like everything else.

  For almost a year following the end of my marriage back in the seventies, I experienced a kind of clinical depression, hovering on the edge of nervous breakdown. I lived in a small studio apartment by myself, went to work daily, read books, watched TV. I went out seldom—had little interest in it. Some friends, who I now realize were the most perceptive and sensitive, sought me out, since I rarely sought them out.

  For a while, in the evenings, I took to playing solitaire at the dining table while the television played in the background. The rhythm of the cards was soothing—mindless yet fascinating. It became a Zen-like activity: repetitive, calming. And with the periodic and irregular flow of numbers, colors and suits, with the random serving of patterns, success and failure, came insights that helped me get through it all, helped steer me back into the mainstream of life.

  I saw with clarity that there was no reason for many things. There were only permutations, combinations, ebb and flow, flood and drought. The cards sometimes fit together in a sudden burst of accessible harmony, during which all things happened with ease; then just as quickly and randomly, they sealed off further progress. It was something I needed to see at that point in my life, and I learned to accept satori where it could be found.

  The young man walked on ahead of me through the night.

  Breathless, almost dazed, I continued to follow.

  The blanket that is night can change everything. Vision. Thoughts. Assessments.

  With silent footsteps, the air thick, we sauntered through the pools of incandescent haze spilling down from the street- lamps, him leading, me trailing, a hundred or so feet apart.

  I dared not develop the thoughts that had begun to stir, like leaves eddying, in my brain. They made no sense.

  The young man with the dark curly hair continued onward, oblivious of my presence. When he crossed the deserted street, and headed north on 14th, I stopped momentarily, a rush of adrenaline making me light-headed. Then I, too, crossed in the stillness, and fixed my gaze on him as we headed north, my thoughts swirling.

  We were headed in the direction of the Scott Hotel.

  I thought, for some reason, as I walked, of my father in Toronto, sleeping as ever in the house we had all shared. I remembered the night sounds of my youth: my brother's teeth grinding in the bottom bunk; the moan of a nightmare coming from my grandmother's bedroom—one of many that awakened us with increasing regularity in her final years; the subdued voices, muffled, of a disagreement between my parents, indistinct yet unsettling, from behind their closed bedroom door.

  Just as suddenly, I remembered being inside that bedroom with my parents, listening to them laugh as I cut out risqué cartoons from my father's True and Argosy magazines, absorbing the distinct smell of the hardwood floor on which I lay, as I pasted them into the scrapbook my mother had bought for me to occupy my child's attention span.

  Then it was winter, and I was walking along Eglinton Avenue, going home from second grade, my slippers in a plastic bag, my black rubber boots with the tops folded over on my feet, beside an enormous snowpile bulldozed at the edge of where the buses turned into the subway station. I climbed the hi
ll of snow, tumbled, burrowed, felt the cold crystals slide into my boots, then became drawn into my own world of fantasy and experiment. I buried my slippers in a deep hole on the far side of the snowpile, knowing they were wrapped in plastic, certain that I could retrieve them the next morning on my return route.

  I dug for days afterward and could not find them. And it remained a mystery that I confronted on a daily basis as I passed the spot, baffled. I did not tell anyone. I got by indoors at school by remaining quiet, in my heavy, extra socks.

  And I recalled how in the spring, when the snow melted, the plastic bag lay in the midst of charcoal slush and road salt, intact, materializing as if from another world.

  I placed the bag in a garbage can on the way home. I never told anyone. I had outgrown the slippers and could not grasp their reappearance. They belonged to the past.

  He stopped outside the Scott Hotel.

  Behind him, I slowed, holding my breath.

  He glanced up at it, hands in pockets, then moved on.

  I followed.

  He turned right and walked along Winchester, stopping again to stare at the monumental First Bank and Trust Company building.

  My eyes strayed from him to gaze at the tall first floor of the edifice, to appreciate its decorative windows, its columns set in antis between wide corner piers. Then I tilted my head back, absorbing the upper stories, noting the broadly projecting copper cornice at the top.

  When I looked back at where he had stood, he was gone.

  The street was empty in both directions.

  I stood, stunned, alone, the Ashland night flowing over me, the world silent. A fog entered my head, then lifted, leaving my vision, at that moment, cut with the brilliancy of a diamond.

  A magic place sought years later seldom materializes.

  When I was a teenager, there was such a place nestled in the rocks on the opposite side of Ashbridge's Bay on Lake Ontario. You could sit there for hours looking across the lake, down to where Woodbine Beach curved out onto the water. The rocks tumbled and fit in just the right shape and position. There was privacy and beauty.