Bats or Swallows Page 2

  I want you to know this about my son: he cared about his mother. He did his own laundry; he cleaned up after himself. Before moving back in with me, he lived in Niagara Falls and he would call every Sunday evening. The only Sunday he missed was when he got into the fight and was stuck in the hospital with a broken ankle and a concussion. When he did get around to calling me, it was Tuesday and the first thing he said was, “I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner.”

  It’s not something to be taken for granted to have a son who cares. When Fred’s mother, Edna, was alive, he used to call her maybe once or twice a month. She lived in Buffalo, only an hour-and-a-half away from us in Toronto, but still far enough that she couldn’t invite us for dinner after work or drop by unannounced. I was usually the one to suggest that he make the call, and he did it reluctantly, not because he didn’t love her, but because he didn’t understand why this love had to manifest itself through telephone calls. For him it was enough that he thought of her, that he had a visit planned in a few weeks. It never occurred to him that his mother could miss him or be lonely for his voice.

  When I was pregnant and found out that my baby would be a boy, I cried. Fred didn’t understand why I was already sad that the baby, the barely human wisp swimming in my belly, would grow up and forget me, find it a chore to simply call and tell me how he was doing. A daughter, I thought, wouldn’t do that. But a son? It was inevitable. Pregnancy was making me sensitive, but beyond that mess of hormones I was sincerely scared about what it would be like to raise a boy.

  When Edna died, Fred, Jeremy and I drove down to Buffalo in a snowstorm to attend the funeral. Jeremy was fifteen and Fred and I were still a few years away from our divorce. During the service I scanned the church and was surprised by how many people had shown up in spite of the weather. We’d met some of these people individually over the years, but to see them assembled in a group was a revelation. Edna had a son in a different city and a dead husband, but she’d rallied a community around her after the men had left: her bridge club, her fellow food bank volunteers, her coworkers from the library, neighbours, even grocery store employees. And they knew her so well, better than I knew her. “I found her favourite flowers,” her Aquafitness instructor told me and handed over a bouquet of daffodils. I didn’t know Edna had any particular affinity for daffodils. I grasped the bouquet and inhaled its earthy smell. The mustiness of the funeral parlour made me queasy and I held on to the flowers like a shot of something strong, carrying it with me for the rest of the afternoon. I’d been to my own parents’ funerals, but Edna’s felt different, more instructional than mournful, like I should pay attention and learn from it rather than participate in the grief. I brought the bouquet of daffodils with me back to the car and the wet snow clung to the petals. For a few moments it was beautiful and shimmery yellow.

  When Fred and I divorced, I remembered Edna’s funeral and wondered whether or not I would be able to build up a crowd like hers, stand-ins for her real family. Fred was going to remarry and move across town, but he might as well have moved across the country. Our divorce wasn’t bitter, but I knew he wouldn’t call me again. Jeremy already lived in Niagara Falls. I kept the house and the car, but I didn’t have a bridge club and I’d never volunteered at a food bank. The house was profoundly silent.

  My sister lived in Halifax, and when Fred told me he was leaving me, she suggested that I move out East to be near her. She offered to find me an apartment and a job. She’d moved away when she got married and it was fifteen years since we’d lived in the same city. I thought seriously about going, but I was more accustomed to my life in Toronto than being near her. So, I stayed at the house, alone, and just when I felt fear creeping up on me, Jeremy began calling regularly to make sure I was okay. “Hanging in there, Mom?” he asked, not too often, but enough to know that he worried. Every time the phone rang on a Sunday night, I would feel grateful, so overwhelmed with love for him.

  Jeremy moved back in with me after the fight in Niagara Falls. He didn’t give me many details about it, but it had been over Laura. He lived with her on the American side. He first met Laura when he was only thirteen years old on a visit to Edna’s in Buffalo. Edna hosted an annual Fourth of July barbecue, and one of her food bank volunteer friends had brought her daughter along. Laura had straight blonde hair and green eyes. She had a brittle skinniness that she never grew out of, tomboyish as a child, but enviable as a young woman. The day of the picnic I could tell Jeremy liked her by the way he talked to her. He was still young enough that he hadn’t learned how to hide the awed, dumbstruck look of a new crush. Laura was also thirteen, but she was more mature than him and reacted to his clumsy flirting with something haughtier and nonchalant. I noticed this and then I let it go, forgetting how powerful it is when you combine that kind of naïve love with the first inklings of adolescence. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about: it was a sunny summer day and I was surrounded by my family, holding a cold beer, smelling freshly mowed grass. Everything radiated joy, but I only appreciated it later.

  Jeremy and Laura saw each other whenever Jeremy was in town visiting his grandmother and sometimes he would go down on his own. I didn’t discourage their relationship—it was innocent. Saturday afternoon matinees, meetings in the food court at the mall. Fred referred to Laura as Jeremy’s “Buffalo girlfriend,” as if our son had a string of them in different cities across North America.

  After Edna died Jeremy still asked us to bring him to Buffalo. That Jeremy pursued Laura so doggedly always surprised me. I knew there were girls interested in him at home because they would call and I could practically hear them blush when they asked for him, but he longed only for Laura. He ran up long-distance phone bills sneaking calls to her at night until Fred noticed and disconnected the phone in his room. I never wished for a passionate love affair for my son. I’d hoped for him to find something more practical, something that could flourish and grow rather than sizzle and fade out.

  The day after Jeremy graduated from high school he told us he was moving to Niagara Falls in September to live with Laura. He had American citizenship through Fred and I’d wanted him to use it for something more spectacular: an Ivy League school, maybe six months in Alaska. I didn’t believe he was really going until he showed me that he’d saved all his money from his part-time jobs. He moved and soon after that Fred left and everyone was gone. That’s when I thought about Edna again and wondered how she’d done it.

  Jeremy started stripping in Niagara Falls, I knew that much. There weren’t many job opportunities and he needed money to pay the rent. Laura was in college and she worked part-time at a bar, but it wasn’t enough. He had other options, and said he started stripping as a joke, for laughs, but then he actually earned a decent living. Jeremy was a good-looking boy. He got it from Fred. He was pretty as a child, matching his good looks with muscles as he grew older, but I never imagined it would lead to that kind of career. He continued stripping when he moved back to Toronto, after his cast was removed. At first he told me he was a bartender and I had no reason to doubt him. He told me the truth when he started doing bachelorette parties and had to leave the house in costume. The parties paid better, and he needed more money if he wanted to move out. The evening he told me about stripping he was already wearing the policeman uniform.

  “I see,” I said after he explained. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The money’s good. It’s fun.”

  “Do you have to dance?” I wanted to know if he was being paid to have sex, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

  “Yes, Mom, strippers dance.”

  “I didn’t know you could dance.” I couldn’t even remember the last time I saw him dance. I didn’t understand how stripping could be fun and I wondered if it was an offence to impersonate a police officer.

  He held his cap in one hand. “Mom, it’s okay. It’s legal.”

  “Do you use your real name?”

  He hesitated and told me he had a stage n
ame. “I go under Mike Love.”

  “Like the singer in the Beach Boys?” I asked, confused, but relieved that he wasn’t using his real name, that it couldn’t be recognized by anyone we knew.

  “The Beach Boys? I thought I made it up.”

  “Silly,” I said to him. “He’s the skinny one with the lovely voice.” I couldn’t stop myself from laughing and he smiled too and, I couldn’t deny it, Jeremy was handsome in the uniform, with that smile of his. Mike Love wasn’t a bad name for a stripper: there was something solid about it, tender instead of lewd. I was surprised that no one had ever pointed it out, not his boss or a customer, but he said he had a coworker named Elvis, so maybe it wasn’t unusual to name yourself after a singer.

  The next morning while I was driving to work a Beach Boys song came on the radio. The voices in harmony were sweet and simple, the sound of a sunny day. They were singing a song about a girl in love with the wrong kind of boy. Such normal problems. Fun, fun, fun, but only up until a point.

  In the car I was scared for Jeremy, panicked that he was now in too deep, past the kinds of every day problems that could be sung about so breezily and innocently. I wondered if I could’ve done something to prevent this outcome, if I should’ve been more persistent about him staying away from Laura when he was younger. It was his relationship with her that led him to this life. Fred and I were going through our divorce when they were spending the most amount of time together, and maybe I’d been too distracted to pick up on warning signs that something unhealthy was developing.

  It’s crushing to be disappointed in your child because you can’t help but feel like you’ve also failed. A double whammy. So, I tried to separate the sexual aspect of Jeremy’s work from what he was doing, but this didn’t amount to much more than being left with a stage name and some costumes. I imagined Jeremy was like the magician Fred and I had hired for his sixth birthday. The man had shown up on time with a duffel bag, some props, done his routine quickly, but effectively, collected payment and left, leaving a trail of children in his wake, all of them awestruck, hopped-up on sugar and wonder. There was a kind of power in that performance. Jeremy was powerful, too, but it was different from the power of a businessman or police officer or fireman. A magician. I could accept that.

  When Jeremy moved to Niagara Falls, I was prepared for his departure as much as any mother can be prepared for their child moving out. I took a deep breath, cried a little and watched him leave. But, the second time he moved out was swifter. There was no sign it was coming. After he told me he was stripping, our lives fell into a steady pattern. Because Jeremy worked nights, I often went days without seeing him, only being aware of his existence by cereal bowls in the sink or a new pile of folded laundry by the machine.

  He left a note, but I’d assumed it was a grocery list, so it sat there for a day until I picked it up. I was on my way out the door to buy a roast from the store. Jeremy didn’t tell me where he was going, but he wrote, Thank you for letting me stay here. I’ll call. Love you, as if I’d done him a favour by allowing him to move back in. I looked in his bedroom and most of his clothes were gone. He had really left.

  He didn’t call that night and I didn’t know what to do. I should’ve been prepared for this—I knew him living with me again was only temporary—but I still couldn’t believe it had happened so quickly and without a proper goodbye. I even considered calling Fred and asking him for advice, but I knew he and Jeremy rarely spoke. I almost called many people, but in the end I didn’t call anyone. After another four days I still hadn’t heard from Jeremy and the stillness of the house rattled me. I got into the car and drove downtown. Maybe I could catch him at work, make sure everything was okay.

  Jeremy’s bar was on the second floor of a building off of Yonge Street and after I parked and walked towards it, I realized that I didn’t want to go in. I didn’t want to see him on stage or see people at the club. Even worse, what if he wasn’t there? What would I do? I was worried about other things too, like what the place smelled like or what I would say to the bouncer at the door. Below the club at street level was a convenience store and a psychic. A woman sat at a desk in the window of the psychic’s and talking to her seemed less intimidating than facing whatever was at the top of those stairs.

  The door made a muted ringing sound when I opened it. “Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for my son. Maybe you can help.”

  The woman got up and smoothed her sweater. “You’re lucky I don’t have any clients at the moment. Why don’t we go into the back room.” She pulled the curtain behind her. “My name’s Christina. What’s yours?”

  “I’m not here for a consultation,” I said. “I don’t have to go in the back. I’m just wondering if you know anything about my son. He works upstairs. His name is Jeremy.”

  Christina sunk back into her chair, unimpressed. “There are a lot of boys who work upstairs,” she said. “I don’t know anyone named Jeremy.”

  “He also goes by Mike Love.”

  “Mike Love’s your son?” Her body language changed and she was warmer, more open.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Of course I know Mike. He’s sweet. Is he really missing?”

  “He hasn’t been home in a few days.”

  “He was here on Sunday. He used my phone to call Laura. I thought he was just heading down to Niagara Falls.”

  “Why was he using your phone?”

  “I sometimes let the boys use my phone for emergencies. If I’m not busy, I don’t mind having them around.”

  “He called Laura?” I asked. “Do you know her?”

  “I don’t, but Mike’s told me about her.”

  It bothered me that Christina knew so much about Jeremy and yet insisted on calling him by his stage name. I’d been relieved by his stage name at first, but listening to Christina so brazenly call him something else offended me. I’d gone to a lot of trouble picking the right name for him. Jeremy was the name of my grandfather and my father’s middle name. It was important, not something to be cast aside.

  “What do you know about Laura?” I asked. I wondered if Christina really was psychic. She was in her mid-forties and wore too much makeup. Her nails were red and shiny and matched the velvet curtain behind her. She seemed tired, but maybe the burden of her psychic abilities was exhausting. All that otherworldly chatter piling up on top of the regular sounds of the city. I leaned on the counter and listened to her, but what she told me sounded more like gossip than prophecies.

  “Laura’s pregnant. She thinks it’s Mike’s baby. He’s going to see her.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Really?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I knew,” I lied. “I just wanted confirmation.”

  “No problem. Tell Mike to take care of himself. I don’t know if I trust that Laura girl.”

  I left and stood outside on the sidewalk. I could hear music coming from the bar upstairs, just the thump of the beat, a low grumble of vibration, no actual melody. I walked back to the car and drove home, the downtown lights blinking and blurry. Radio off.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jeremy was with Laura, but I was. During the fight in Niagara Falls, another man had punched him—Laura’s new boyfriend maybe?—and as Jeremy had fallen, his foot twisted around a bar stool and snapped at the ankle. “I’m moving back,” he told me after it happened. “Laura doesn’t want to live with me anymore and I don’t want to stay.” He sounded so ashamed that I was certain the humiliation would override any desire to return in the future. I didn’t think he’d seen her once since moving back.

  I was the one who picked him up in Niagara Falls. He protested at first when I offered, said he would just take the bus, but he didn’t try very hard to stop me. I didn’t want him aggravating his leg getting to the station or falling asleep for too long with his concussion. I took a sick day at work and left first thing the next morning. There was no traffic on the QEW and the customs officer waved me through at the border.
When I pulled into Jeremy’s driveway, he came out right away, a bag slung on his shoulder, crutches propping him up. The cast was bigger than I’d imagined, off-white, as if he’d already gotten it dirty. He was almost twenty years old.

  I got him settled in the back seat so that he could stretch out his leg. His face was swollen and he hadn’t shaved in a few days.

  “Where’s Laura?” I asked.

  “Not home,” he said.

  “Did you already say goodbye?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  I pulled out of the driveway and asked if he minded if I stopped to look at the Falls. By his one-word answers I knew he wouldn’t be interested in any last minute sightseeing, but now that he was safe with me, I was angry. He hadn’t thanked me for coming and I wanted to do something for myself, something as compensation for the drive. I hadn’t been in the area in years and I wondered if the scenery had changed at all. I drove through town and followed the signs while Jeremy remained sullen in the back. At the Falls, he refused to get out, so I stopped in a nearby hotel parking lot and left the car idling so that he wouldn’t get cold.

  It was late March and there was still some snow, but by the Falls everything was moist and wet. I wasn’t wearing the right kind of shoes, and my heels sank into the ground. The area surrounding the Falls was empty and there were hardly any tourists. The souvenir shops were open, but their windows were steamed up and there was one lone vendor, a man selling samosas from a cart.

  On the American side, the Falls aren’t right in front of you the way they are in Canada. You have to crane your neck to see them. I saw more visitors as I approached the water, small clumps of people here and there huddled in groups, but there was enough space between us that I felt isolated from them. I couldn’t even hear their voices. I wondered how amazing it must feel to be the only person around, if that was ever even possible. Maybe early, early morning, just at dawn. All sounds drowned out by the roar of the Falls. The mist settled in my hair and on my jacket and I could feel a thin film of water on my cheeks. I only stayed for a few minutes and then went back to the car. Jeremy had his eyes shut, but I knew he was awake.