May lived downtown, in an area the cabbie called Kensington Market. I had him drop me at the edge of it and walked a little, passing through crowded streets jammed with stalls selling everything from lobsters to African beads. This was obviously an old immigrant district. The Jews had gone decades ago, leaving behind a couple of restaurants and a boarded-up synagogue. Most of the shouting around me was in Portuguese and Italian, and even the Italians and the Portuguese, I suspected, were on their way out. On Spadina Avenue the faces were mostly yellow, and behind them, in turn, were fresh hordes, the most surprising of alclass="underline" refugees from the suburbs, rich kids all stuffed with health food and pot. On May's street, the signs were everywhere: exotic plants dangling in windows, workmen off-loading drywall, young matrons pushing wicker prams down the street. Today, this was a slum-in-transition; five years from now, it would be a chic address for young marrieds which, it occurred to me, was just the sort of investment a rich man might make for his daughter.
I went up to the door and rang the bell.
No answer.
I waited a moment; then, setting down my bag, I walked around to the side of the house. There was a lane here, with an orange Volkswagen Beetle parked halfway up it the only car May ever drove and a board fence down one side. Peering over this, I could look into her garden. It was very long and narrow. A brick path ran down the middle of it and on either side of this, completely filling the space, grew shrub roses, a tangle of gray thorny canes, dabbed here and there with clusters of blood-red rose hips. It was now after four and the day was fading fast, but a patch of wan sunlight had found its way between the surrounding houses and sheds. Peering into this halo, I could see May halfway along the path, squatting with her back to me. Her long, reddish-blond hair cascaded over a blue wool poncho which, in turn, was worn over an ankle-length burgundy dress. Squatting as she was, she'd pushed the dress between her legs, making a basket of her lap, and was filling it with dead canes as she worked. Her secateurs snapped, then she duck-walked ahead. I was about to call out to her, but something held me back and I watched her in silence. May had always possessed a mysterious quality it had been part of her attraction and now, as I felt it touch me again, I thought I understood what it was. The garden, in this strange autumn light, was like an old photograph, faded, cracked, creased, all bent at the corners a long-ago photograph of girls in large bonnets whose eyes are forever lost in shadow as they squint into the sun. That was May's quality, I thought; she didn't quite belong to this time? But now she stood up. Holding her dress in front of her, she walked back down the path toward a weather-beaten shed at the back where she spilled the cuttings onto a compost heap. When she turned around, she saw me. A shadow, quizzical and anxious, fell across her face. But then she smiled. "Robert? Robert!"
"I just arrived. Should I go around to the front or can I get in here?"
Bustling forward, she showed me where two boards had been hinged to make a gate and I stepped into the garden; then she took both my hands in hers and we kissed? just a sociable brush of her lips on my cheek. But then, with a sigh that was almost a groan, she fell against me and I held her. "Thank God you've come," she whispered. "You're sure you don't mind? I was afraid?"
"Of course I don't mind."
With a shudder, she started to cry, pressing her face into my shoulder. I squeezed her against me, but it was odd holding her, I felt completely alone, as if there was something false in her tears. Then I understood: she was crying out of fear, not sorrow, and you can't comfort fear. I held her more tightly. "Don't worry," I whispered. "He'll be back. It'll come out all right."
Getting her breath, she eased away and tried to smile. "This is awful."
"No."
"Yes, it is. I think I brought you all the way up here just to be able to do that."
"A trip worth making, then."
She smiled again. "Thank you? for coming. For saying that."
I smiled. "I'll always come. You know that."
Did I mean this? In truth, I wasn't quite sure though I had come, after all. Maybe she had her doubts too, for she looked away almost shyly, then took my hand and led me up to the house. At the rear, looking onto the garden, was a breakfast room; beyond this lay a large, comfortable kitchen with a quarry-tile floor and old pine furniture. Sitting on the edge of a table, I watched her make coffee Colombian beans, Braun grinder, Melitta filter and was again struck by the sense of dislocation I'd felt in the garden. There, because the garden itself seemed out of time, she'd fitted right in; here, where everything was right up to date even the antique furniture? she seemed out of place. But each small gesture helped her get a grip on herself and finally she started to talk, small talk about getting the garden ready for winter, questions about my trip, Charlottesville, my writing. As best I could, I brought her up to date on my life and got the impression that her own hadn't much changed. She'd taken up the flute, was studying composition at the Toronto Conservatory of Music; she had her house, loved the garden, saw just a few friends. She'd moved to Toronto three years before, but still traveled a lot? As she went on, she became more composed, though nothing could hide the terrible anxiety she was feeling. More than was justified? Probably not her father had disappeared, after all. Yet something about her anxiety brought the question into my mind. Her face was haggard and etched with worry, and while the coffee dripped through, she excused herself and went off to the bathroom, looking a bit better when she came back? except in her eyes. For when the rest of her was calmer, you could see even better the quick, darting fear that lurked in them. But perhaps this wasn't really surprising I reminded myself that it had been going on for ten days. In any case, when we were sitting, and quiet, with second cups of coffee in front of us, I said, "Do you think you can tell me what happened?"
She lifted her cup, then set it down. "There's not much to tell. It was the police who found out, actually. On Saturday, around three in the morning, a squad car drove past my father's place and saw that the door was open? standing open. It almost looked deliberate, they said. One of the patrolmen rang the bell, but there was no answer, so he went inside. No one was there. They waited around, but after twenty minutes or so they sent in a report on their radio and locked the door. An hour later they came back but there was still no answer, so they sent another car in the morning. A neighbor gave them my name."
"This was Saturday? the eighteenth?"
She nodded. "But I suppose he left during the day, on Friday. I don't think it was Thursday because I spoke to him then."
"And nothing seemed wrong?"
"No, not really. It's hard to say? when you look back?"
"Yes. But once you knew, what happened then?"
"The police made their checks they were serious to begin with because they knew he was wealthy and I started calling his friends. But no one had seen him or heard from him. He wasn't in hospital, he wasn't dead in the morgue, he?"
Her voice trailed away. She'd been in control of herself, but all at once she was right on the edge. I tried to keep my tone neutraclass="underline" "Were there no signs that he'd gone on a trip? Clothes missing? Luggage?"