John Tavares

Jacob and Olivia walked along Yonge Street, past the youth drop-in center, the video arcade and billiards parlor, the strip clubs, the record stores, fashion shops, electronics stores, cafés, and restaurants with the sidewalk and street humming and buzzing with traffic, especially around Dundas Square and Eatons Centre. They boarded the nearly empty streetcar, dimly lit, at the Queen Street traffic intersection, amidst the virtually abandoned office towers, department stores, and the huge shopping mall downtown. They rode the all-night streetcar to Woodbine Park. In the rear seat of the double-length streetcar, a homeless man sang about old-time religion while two drunk college students, in the middle, argued about the best bars for live rock bands on Queen Street and the best nightclubs for dancing in the entertainment district. The streetcar windows were wide open, since it was hot and humid, the kind of night he loved, he explained to her.

He said they had that much in common: they were both nighthawks. The late hours jived with his work, because he received calls to work as a conductor on the freight trains on the most ungodly days and unorthodox hours, especially memorable in winter during the middle of the night, at -35 degrees Celsius, not including the wind chill. Sometimes he even covered for conductors who wanted to spend quality time with their families. As Olivia snuggled next to him, he couldn’t remember the last time he experienced the intimacy of a woman. At the beach, they strode along the broad expanse of the sandy beach and watched the moonrise across Lake Ontario. They walked along the boardwalk, chatting, and then strode along the sandy beach, holding hands as they gazed at the moon rising above the lake. The broad expanse of sand encompassing the big city beach was abandoned, but the setting he thought couldn’t have been more romantic.

She was adamant about making love on the shore. She insisted that he come inside her. He never thought about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, when, he realized later, these risks and potentialities should have been foremost among his concerns. Then they swam in the nude in the chilly waters of Lake Ontario and stretched out on the towel from his backpack. They chatted before they succumbed to drowsiness and napped on the beach, a broad expanse of dry sand that stretched for kilometers along the lake. As the sun rose like a huge fireball on the Scarborough horizon, the midsummer heat and humidity grew thick, muggy, and hazy, and he decided to take her back to his hostel room. He was caught escorting her through the fire exits that led to the back alley and parkette behind the co-op building, but the security guard allowed him to take her inside without her showing identification. They slept soundly on his bed until noon.

“Why don’t we go out and buy you some new clothes?”

“I thought you were leaving today.”

“I’ll take the next train. I work for the company that owns the tracks the passenger trains use and I should be able to manage. They give me a big discount. They used to give my father, a railroader for life, free tickets because he possessed a pass that allowed unlimited rail travel.”

He urged her to wash and helped clean and bandage the gash on her foot again as he sat on the toilet seat and she lay in the bathtub. He admired her femininity until she snapped her fingers at him and ordered him awake from his trance. Then they had coffee at the Burger Queen restaurant, and afterwards he followed her around the Eaton’s Centre, covering her expenses with his credit card, carrying her shopping bags. He was reminded why he didn’t like clothes shopping and preferred thrift shops, where clothes were cheaper and he could afford to make mistakes in terms of style and sizes. She bought a few more shopping bags of brand-new clothes, and he took her to a movie before they returned to the hostel.

“I don’t want you living on the street and sleeping in the park.”

“I won’t,” she said.

Jacob worried over an image of Olivia lounging in pool halls and video game arcades and sleeping in doorways, on park benches, and the streets. He told her he would pay for two months rent on this room, until the end of the summer, at which point she could decide if she wanted to return to high school or college or find a job. She replied matter of factly she wasn’t looking for a father figure or a sugar daddy. 

“How about somebody who loves you and cares about you?”

She started to sob and clung to him, which made it difficult for him to pack his backpack and duffle bag and leave. She rode the subway train with him to Union Station, and she walked with him through the tunnels and passageways. He bought her coffee and ice cream from the café and parlor in the concourse between the subway station and the train terminal. She even waited with him in the lounge until his train departed. He gave her his Sioux Lookout telephone number and address, but they both understood it was goodbye, probably forever.

***

Nine months later, after training to operate freight trains, he stayed at home waiting impatiently, playing video games, and reading books. He answered the telephone and the voice sounded familiar; he wasn’t sure but played along.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m awaiting the results of an accident investigation. My train collided with a minivan at a railroad crossing.”

“Your train collided with a van?”

“The guy was depressed, I guess. He was a trapper and commercial fisherman from the Lac Seul reservation. He deliberately drove his van onto the railroad intersection close to the residential school. He waited in the driver’s seat for my locomotive to broadside his vehicle. The accident investigation is trying to determine if I blasted my freight train horn enough times, but I don’t see what difference it would make.”

“How’s the guy?”

Jacob logged off the desktop computer. “I don’t believe he wanted to live, and he didn’t survive. How could a guy in a minivan expect to survive a collision with a freight train travelling at full speed?”

 Olivia sighed and took a deep breath. “I just had your baby.”

“Wait a second. Is this who I think it is?” he asked, in shock. The memory came through strong and vivid, and he remembered Olivia. 

“Aren’t you going to come and see him?”

“Of course, I’ll be on the next train.”

“What? You told me the train alone takes over a day.”

“It does indeed.”

“Can’t you take the plane?”

“That’ll be expensive,” he replied.

“I just had your baby…”

“Our baby,” Jacob said, although he couldn’t help wonder why she didn’t have an abortion.

“And you’re worried about money?”

“I’ll be on the next plane. I’ll take Bearskin…”

“Bearskin?”

“…the local airline, and take a connecting flight from Thunder Bay. I should be there by sunset.” She hung up the telephone and, when he called back on his caller identification, he asked, “Well, how’s the baby, for heaven’s sake…”

“He’s …” She sucked in a big breath of air—audible over the static of the telephone line and the background noises of intercoms, sirens, and city traffic that filtered through the hospital—and added, “… I’ll tell you what: you come down to Toronto and find out yourself.”

“Sorry.”

He took down her room number and the hospital name and address on University Avenue, hospital row, as he remembered the broad boulevard that led to Queen’s Park. He checked his e-mail and discovered a message for him to report back to work after the long weekend. Then he drove his compact car to the municipal airport, where he took the next flight to Thunder Bay and a connecting commuter flight to Toronto. As the sun set behind the expressway—beyond the industrial parks, factories, and breweries alongside Highway 401—he rode the express bus from the airport to a hotel a block away from the hospital. Unable to resist the thought he was not a man singularly suited to this role, he carried a bundle of flowers and chocolates. He wondered why she didn’t simply get an abortion and figured he’d have to ad lib and improvise in the most amateurish fashion. When he arrived at the hospital, he looked around at her private hospital room: the high-end portable stereo, the luxury handbag, the designer clothes, the gifts. He was amazed at how beautiful she looked with the baby. As he cuddled and bounced the baby he wept, and when he asked her what she was naming the baby, she said, “Jacob.” Then she silenced him, stopped him dead in his tracks, as she made the revelation she never wanted to see him again. The whole while he tried to appear positive, but he must have looked stunned.

“I don’t want my parents to see me with you.”

“You told me you ran away from home, your parents were alcoholics, and you never wanted to see them again.”

“They’re also smokers, and it drives me crazy, but they’re my parents.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My parents are doctors, specialists, entrepreneurs, and they’ll flip out if they see you.”

“They’re doctors?”

“Yes, doctors, professionals.”

“Then they should understand.”

“No, they don’t; they’re demanding and intolerant, they’re upper-middle-class bigots—no they’re upper-class bigots. Anyway, I realize that what happened last summer: I was slumming. I dropped out of my first year at the U of T, where I took biochemistry, at their insistence because they want me to be a doctor. Now I’m at York University, studying women’s studies, and they worry because they believe it’s a useless major. I just tell them I’m prepping for law school, bringing up my GPA, and it shuts them up. If they see me with you, they will freak. You’re much older than me.”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t exactly hold a gun to your head.”

“No, I held the gun to your head.” She touched his cheek with the back of her hand—she wouldn’t even kiss him, he noted. “But that was my mistake, and I’m sorry, but I thought you should see your baby. My parents think you’re a nineteen-year-old high school dropout; I couldn’t tell the truth because I was afraid they’d disown me.”

“You weren’t worried about your parents disowning you then.”

“Well, I’ve had a baby and now I see the light.”

“How do they feel about the baby?”

“Delighted, ecstatic because I’m their only progeny, their only child, and now they have the boy they never had, the boy they always wanted, more than any girl, especially more than me.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way.” Her words gave him a start but he felt relieved. He couldn’t nurture any doubts the baby was his because his facial features were so similar to his own—the sharp nose, the brown eyes, the bone structure of his brow—and he wasn’t exactly an indifferent observer, who might benefit from doubt. Looking at Olivia and back at Jacob junior, he smiled; he noticed what she no doubt observed: the uncanny resemblance. Sobbing, she realized she had no choice but to call him when she looked at the baby and realized he looked so much like him.

“What happened to your dream of moving to the city and becoming a stockbroker?”

“The trainmaster insisted I work as an engineer and now I earn more than a hundred thousand a year. I suppose I’m comfortable where I am, even though I’m not thrilled when it comes to braking a three-kilometer long train downhill.”

Her eyes widened. “So you study to become a stockbroker, then you change your mind overnight?”

“No, then I met you and you showed me the true meaning of life.”

“That’s a copout. That doesn’t stop you from fulfilling your aspirations; in fact, I think that’s even a better reason to follow them. Just don’t blame me, or the baby, for abandoning your dreams.”

“No, I’m sorry, I was just joking. Those plans, those aspirations, are on hiatus.”

Then she wrote down her contact information on a hospital memo pad and said she’d tried to keep in touch, but that they had to be careful.

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t understand. My mother was the chief physician at a Toronto hospital. She’s a professor at the university medical school and owns a genetics testing laboratory that makes plenty of money. My father is having some kind of midlife crisis and wants to take a break from his cardiology practice to run for city council next year.”

Pages: 1 2 3