A rose bush in the front of 113½ Vanauley Way would have tasted the rains of fifteen, twenty years in Toronto and thickened and twisted its wood over that doorway like loveliness. Yes, why not a plantation of rose bushes all along Vanauley Way, millions of petals growing and falling, giving off a little velvet. It’s amazing what a garden can do. And Jackie could have sure done with a place like that. They themselves tried a few perennials in window boxes; they tried to make the best, but then had it been a garden instead of that dry narrow roadway, Jackie’s childhood might have been less hazardous.
People defended that park, saying to the city, in so many words, Don’t drop all your negative vibes on us, we’re trying to live the same as everybody, but if you couldn’t see it in your heart to put a garden in here, if you tarred over every piece of earth, then don’t blame us. Would it have killed them to splash a little colour on the buildings? Yes, it may have cost a little more in the first place to make the ceilings a little higher, the hallways a little less narrow, but in the last place think of the perspective: the general outlook might have been worth it. The sense of space might have triggered lighter emotions, less depressing thoughts, a sense of well-being. God, hope! The park wouldn’t have driven Jackie’s father and mother to drink like it had. And the dream of going back down east for good wouldn’t have faded and died right there on the narrow asphalt paths of Vanauley Way.
Even the dream of staying in this city would have survived. A barbershop of his own, maybe, for Jackie’s father instead of the penitentiary in Guelph for two years less a day—which turned out to be eight months that time—for receiving stolen goods. Another stint for B and E at a computer factory when he sold IBMs for ten points on the street. And why did he have to come back to Jackie’s mother hanging out at Wilson’s on Bloor, some asshole following her around and calling her up and hanging up in his ear? So she said to him that she couldn’t be waiting around for him forever, and he said, “fair enough,” but she knew that he was doing time for them, doing time wasn’t recreational, what did she think, he was up in jail partying? And why’d she have to rub it in his face, bring it in his house, and what about Jackie, did Jackie have to see all this shit going on, what kind of woman was she going to turn out to be if her mother was a whore?
“Whore, whore,” she said. Now he’d gone too far, now he’d gone just too far; did he want her to leave his ass this minute, this very minute, ’cause if she was a whore, she wouldn’t be with him, he should be glad she wasn’t no whore, a whore wouldn’t have time with his sorry ass, and look, look here, he had promised her a good life down here, and there it was, he was in jail half the time and they were starving or ducking the police half the time, and the nasty words he saved for her, and where was the sweet life when he could not even hold down a chair at Golden’s Barbershop for one half second and he was running the streets and had her tailing behind him and they had a mouth to feed, and where did he think she got the money to feed herself and Jackie while he was gone? Think some government cheque was enough to cover their ass, and time, doing time for them, yeah, all right, true enough, but do some time outside, do some time here with her and Jackie. Had she, she, not stayed as long as she could in that godawful job in the comb factory? Packing one green comb, one yellow comb, one pink comb, and one red comb in a box all day long for four dollars and twenty-five cents an hour. She’d packed combs until she was dizzy; she’d given combs to friends, sold extra combs at the hairdresser’s, until the novelty of working in a comb factory had worn off and she was sick of packing one green, one yellow, one pink, and one red comb into a box the whole livelong day. And love, love was about finished, where was her joystick, where was her man, she was a young woman still, where was her loving?
Jackie’s father said that he could feel his “boy,” meaning his dick, growing deader year after year. He could feel it beginning with the tip. Each year another centimetre would go. Which is why Jackie’s mother began to get terrible bruises on her face and arms, raccoon eyes, and just a low-down feeling in her gut the whole time.
They weren’t the same people who had taken that train to Toronto fifteen years ago. Well, no one ever is, but they weren’t those two people much more so than they’d imagined. They weren’t the people they were going to be or had set out to be, the people they had envisioned. Look, okay, they hadn’t envisioned. Who does, except rich people? You simply throw yourself at life, and the narcissism of being young and beautiful and handsome and strong and eager and ready is supposed to see you through. So when Jackie’s father asked Jackie’s mother to marry him and they had a big wedding at the Cornwallis Baptist Church in Halifax and everybody turned out and Jackie’s mother got pregnant that very night when they rolled around on satin sheets at the Four Seasons Hotel for that one night for which Jackie’s father had cut hair and shaved chins like a demon, they were young and in love with each other and themselves and the world. And
