coffeehouses of the run-down Yorkville section of Toronto. They told Jeremy about a club called The Purple Onion where they had been invited to perform. Annie told him he reminded her of her baby brother, Victor, back in Estevan.
When they stopped at a Red Barn on the side of the road just before Durrant, Annie bought him a Big Barney and fries, and a chocolate milkshake. Jeremy was certain that nothing he’d ever eaten before in his life had tasted as good as that hamburger. She watched him devour it as though he’d never seen food before and quietly ordered him another one. He ate that one slower, but only marginally.
Back in the van, he fell asleep in the back seat to the sound of them singing “Jimmy Crack Corn” in four-part harmony. When he woke up, it was early evening. They had arrived in Toronto and were driving down Yonge Street. Looking out the window at the shops and the people, he touched the breast pocket of his jean jacket where the carefully folded piece of paper with Jack and Christina’s address was, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. If he’d believed in God, he would have said a prayer. He felt entirely safe for the first time since he was a small child.
At Bloor Street, the musicians let him out. Annie tucked a five-dollar bill into his pocket and told him to come see them play sometime.
“I’m sorry we can’t take you right to your brother’s, but we’re running behind schedule as it is,” said Wolf, squinting down at the map in his hands. “The neighbourhood you’re looking for is called Cabbagetown. According to this, it isn’t far. Just walk east till you get to Parliament, and then turn right. You should be able to find Sumach Street real easy. If you can’t, just ask.”
“Thank you guys so much,” Jeremy said. “And thanks for the burger, Annie.” Impulsively and clumsily he reached out and hugged her. Inhaling in the caramel scent of her hair and skin, taking the soft, warm, nurturing femaleness of her, he marvelled at the difference between her hug and the agate-hard brittleness of his own mother’s hibernal embrace. Jeremy held tightly to Annie for a moment, and then let go.
“Be safe, little man,” Annie said, ruffling his hair. “Have a big life.” Then she climbed back in to the waiting van and the door slid shut.
The red Volkswagen turned right on Bloor, towards Yorkville; Jeremy turned left on foot towards Cabbagetown, each in the direction of their respective destinies.
Arriving at the house on Sumach Street, Jeremy rang the doorbell. Jack answered the door. Before Jeremy even had a chance to speak, Jack pulled him into the house and hugged him as though he would never let him go. Behind him came Christina and five-year-old Morgan. When she saw that everyone else was crying, Morgan companionably burst into tears, which made all of them laugh.
Late that night, in front of the fireplace, he and Jack talked while Christina and Morgan slept upstairs. Jack wept when Jeremy told him about what they’d done to him at the Doucette Institute with the express permission of their mother. He, in turn, explained to Jeremy that his mother had tried to pay Christina’s parents to force her to get an abortion. When they refused, Adeline Parr had warned them to be careful, because a mining town was fraught with potentially fatal accidents. Christina’s parents told Christina what Adeline had said, and Christina, in turn, told Jack.
Jack confided to Jeremy that they believed that Christina’s life- and the life of the baby she was carrying-would be in danger if they remained in Parr’s Landing. So they’d escaped that night much like Jeremy had.
“I’m so sorry I left you,” Jack said. “Forget our mother. Forget everything you knew before. You can be yourself here. If you want to be… well, you know, if you want to be with… men, that’s OK with me. It’ll be fine with Christina, too. We’ve known… homosexuals before, you know. There are some right here in this neighbourhood. They’re nice fellas, run the antique shop on Parliament. We’ll make our own family here. A new family. You don’t have to go back.”
“What if she comes looking for me? What if she tries to force me to come home?”
“You’re turning eighteen in a couple of days, Jeremy. Remember, last year they lowered the age of consent from twenty-one to eighteen. She can’t touch you even if she wanted to, from a legal standpoint. She can’t
“You know she hired detectives to find you and Christina,” Jeremy said fretfully. “She knows where you live and everything. She’ll know I’m here.”
“Let her,” Jack said defiantly. “I don’t care. Also, she didn’t try to get me to come home, remember? She just wanted to know where I was. She wants to be in control. That’s always been the most important thing for her, our whole lives. Besides,” he added, “I don’t think she’ll come looking for you. She’s probably happy to have you out of the way. You can’t embarrass her here.”
“She sent me away. She can do it again. If we get any hints that she’s after me, I’ll have to leave. I just can’t go through that again. I’d rather be dead.”
“Don’t worry, Jeremy. I won’t let her.”
Then Jack held him as Jeremy wept against his shoulder. When Jeremy’s sobs had subsided, Jack took his brother’s hands in his own.
“Stay here, Jeremy. Be an uncle to Morgan. Be Christina’s brother-in-law. Love whomever you want. I don’t care, and neither does Christina. I’ll protect all of you. I’m never, ever letting you go again.”
It was a promise Jack kept faithfully for the next ten years. He kept it right up to that night in February, nine months ago. Driving home from an out-of-town sales call in Guelph in a sudden snowstorm, he hit a patch of black ice on an eastbound highway while trying to avoid an oncoming snowplow. The car fishtailed, then spun into a three-sixty, crashing into the guardrail. He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. The outward trajectory of his body was stopped only by the steering wheel, which crushed his chest and lungs in a fraction of a second.
Jack Parr died of thoracic trauma and internal bleeding while waiting for an ambulance from Guelph that finally arrived twenty minutes later. By that time, Christina had been rendered a destitute widow, Morgan had been rendered a half-orphan, and Jeremy had been rendered the only son of Adeline Parr, the long-abandoned ogress of Parr’s Landing.
CHAPTER SIX
“What?” Jeremy was startled out of his reverie. He turned to Christina. “Sorry, Chris, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“I asked you what you were thinking about. And keep your voice down,” Christina whispered. “I think Morgan’s asleep.” She checked her rearview mirror and saw that her daughter was, in fact, sleeping in the back seat of the Chevelle, with her head leaning against the wadded-up sweater she was using as a makeshift pillow.
“Oh, I don’t know. I was remembering things. I was thinking about Jack.”
Christina was silent, her eyes on the road. Then she said, “I know. I’ve been thinking about him all day myself. This is the one thing he never wanted to happen. But what can you do? Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans, right?”
“You know, it could be all right. She might have changed, you know.”
“I don’t see her forgiving any of us for leaving-especially me, since she blamed me for-” Christina looked into the rearview mirror again. “Well, for the way I changed her plans for the family. I also have a feeling she blames me for Jack’s death, too. She didn’t directly say it in the letter, but it was there all the same.”
“Having the surviving son be someone like me wasn’t part of her plan for the glories of the Parr family, either, Chris. Don’t take all of this on yourself. She never forgave me for being queer, let alone for failing her loving attempts to cure me. I still have nightmares about that sadist. Dr. Gionet, I mean,” he said wryly. “Not Adeline. Though she’s been known to haunt a dream or two, as well.”
“Well, I have nightmares about Adeline all the time.”
Jeremy peered into the darkness through the windshield. There was no light anywhere except what was provided by the Chevelle’s headlights bouncing off the gnarled logging road. “It’s pitch black out here. I guess I forgot what it’s like at night. Jesus, it’s Saturday. If I were home I’d be dancing with handsome men at the Parkside or the St. Charles right now, with my shirt off and a bottle of poppers in my nose. Ah, memories. They’re all we’ll have to sustain us out here in God’s country. Where the hell
Christina said, “We’re just south of Marathon and about five miles to Hattie Cove. After that, about half an hour.”
