The Taken

double and a raisin tea biscuit. He got himself a steeped tea and a maple dip. These first twenty or so kilometres were the most familiar to them: they paced them out of everything that meant home to them, or told them that they were returning to it. But even here, things were changing; the suburban imperative was spreading farther north. Just before the town of Dublin, cornfields were being converted to “Modern Country Living,” which was to say, a grid of streets surrounding a shopping centre were going to be plunked down in the middle of what was still good land. The sign along the highway announced excitedly that the ground-breaking would take place in the fall. She noticed Andrew shaking his head.

An hour later, they passed Barrie and the highway angled into its final, long approach to the city. This length of road always soured her stomach and made her heart race – in anticipation of the difficulties to come or just because she was truly out of her element – and this time it was no different. The urban lichen was well established at this latitude (a preview of what awaited them at Dublin), and the new suburbs, each one built around an unwieldy palace of worship – a giant mosque, a towering white church, an outlet mall – had much the same architectural weight as the plastic buildings on a Monopoly board: a tidy arrangement of buildings that hid the fact that the environment was built for money, not for people. It was intended to capture and keep captive some segment of the population, upend them in the crush of prettiness, and empty their pockets. It occurred to her that, at least, the city itself could not hide its agendas. What it wanted from you it asked for once you passed through its gates.

They were driving eastward beside Lake Ontario. Its bright blue-black expanse shone in the sun, with the green gem of the Toronto Islands just a kilometre offshore. Ahead of them the towers of the city rose over the downtown like crystal, the needle of the CN Tower at its centre; from this vantage point the buildings looked like massive toys ajumble in a box. It seemed impossible that this much steel and glass and concrete could be in the same place, but as they approached it, the buildings stepped apart and the streets appeared between them, and then the cars and the bicycles and the people themselves and they were within it and part of it. There was always a strange thrill here, for Hazel, to be in this bustle, no matter how it scared her. “I think this is the first time since the girls moved out that we’ve been here for some reason other than to put out some fire in their lives.”

“Well, Emmie lives in Vancouver now. Harder to drive to.”

“It just seems like a different city without some small problem to attend to. Like anything could happen here.”

“And it usually does,” said Andrew.

“Let’s get the street guide out and let’s try to follow this guy’s directions.”

Andrew took the Perly’s out of the glove compartment and flipped it open to the page they were driving over. The world outside the car windows flattened out to red and yellow lines. “Spadina goes up past the no longer new stadium,” he said. “And into Chinatown.” They drove north past the theatre district and into bustling Chinatown. At a stoplight, a vegetable seller hacked the tops off coconuts with a heavy machete. North of Chinatown, the crazy quilt of restaurants and grocery stores gave way to more institutional buildings. This was the western boundary of the University of Toronto. They tracked up to Russell Street and pulled over.

“Okay,” said Hazel. “This is where you get to shine. Find me a tree-street. Or a fruit-street. With a church on it or somewhere near.”

He held the mapbook open in his lap and clutched the page from the story with the directions to the house in his right hand. His eyes shuttled back and forth between his hand and the Perly’s. She leaned over toward him and scanned the pages along with him. There was a Hazelton Avenue, but not a Hazelnut, and a Concord, as in grape, but no Apple Street, no Banana Avenue. Leaning this close to his shoulder, she was reminded of what her mother had said about her father’s book bag and she pulled back a little.

“There’s a Chestnut Street pretty close to here. Beside City Hall,” he said.

“Church?”

“Not close by. Holy Trinity tucked in behind the Eaton Centre.”

“What else?”

“ Birch Avenue, up at Summerhill. Oh, there’s Elm Street too. That’s close. And there’s a church on St. Patrick Street, right around the corner.”

“Well, let’s go take a look at it,” she said.

He directed her into a U-turn and sent her east along College Street as he continued to study the mapbook.

“I just wanted to thank you again, Andrew.”

“For what?”

“For coming to our aid.”

“Your aid, you mean,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m getting a sushi lunch out of it, don’t forget. Turn right here.”

She drove south down Beverly, cut across Baldwin to McCaul. Elm Street was a short jog south, and they parked illegally and got out. There were no houses on the street, just big apartment buildings and offices. They were behind the hospital strip of University Avenue. Midtown rose up at the end of the street. “Doesn’t feel right,” she said.

They walked down the street. From the top of St. Patrick, they could see the spire of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. But the topography was all wrong. There wasn’t a front porch for miles around. Nor chestnut trees. “Maybe we should go down to City Hall and look around,” she said.

Andrew had the Perly’s open with the story held against one of the pages. He’d narrowed his eyes to slits. “No,” he said. “Listen to this.”

“What?”

“‘He was following her back into the living room,’” Andrew read, “‘as if magnetized to her. He could not tell a lie: he remembered now how much he’d loved her, how, in the beginning, when they lived in that house together, he would have done anything for her.’” Andrew looked up into Hazel’s questioning eyes. “He could not tell a lie. When they lived in that house together? On Cherry Tree Lane?”

“You really have always thought I’m much smarter than I actually am. Spell it out, Andrew.”

“Who cannot tell a lie?”

“Pinocchio?”

“George Washington, dummy.” He shifted the story over to the right-hand page. “There’s a Washington Avenue back off Spadina.”

“Why doesn’t he just say this, if it’s so fucking important to him.”

“I think he wants it to be important to you too.”

“Let’s go.”

Washington Avenue was lined with chestnut trees, and at the end of it there were two small green spaces and, where it made a “T” with Huron Street, a church. They parked and stepped out and a horripilating thrill went up Hazel’s back. It felt now that she had stepped into someone else’s territory and she wasn’t entirely sure that they were safe. “Would you be offended if I suggested you wait in the cruiser?” she asked him and he said he would be, so the two of them set out along the sidewalks to find the house under a chestnut, with a verandah and a view of both parks and the church. The houses on the south side of the street didn’t afford these views, so they focussed on the northern side of the street. Those houses closer to Spadina lacked the necessary vantage, and they ruled out the first half of the street. Four big Victorian duplexes took up the second half of the street, two with verandahs and two without. But only one stood directly in the shade of a chestnut tree, number thirty-two. Like all of these houses, many of which were owned by the university, number thirty-two was divided into apartments. There were five of them and five buzzers under different names. They buzzed P. Billows, J. Cameron, G. Caro, and D. Payne before they got a response. It was a woman’s voice. “Hello?”

“Police, Ma’am, sorry to disturb you. Who am I speaking to?”

“How do I know you’re the police?”

“I’m in a police uniform and I have police ID. Those will be your first two clues.”

There was a pause, and they heard a window open above their heads. A young woman in jeans and a white T-shirt leaned out to the side of the verandah with her portable phone to her ear. Hazel held her ID up over her head. “What do you want?” said the woman.

“You’re Miss Caro? Or Miss Payne?”