The Divide

She tucked the note into her purse, down deep between her wallet and her make-up case—a safe place. She might want it, she thought. Later.

10

Susan stayed an extra month over schedule in Toronto, living frugally on the money Dr. Kyriakides had wired her and waiting for the phone to ring.

She developed a schedule. Her mornings were her own, and she used them to explore the city, on foot or by public transit. There was always the possibility that John might try to contact her during these hours, but it was a calculated risk: she could not simply sit in her room and wait. So she would wake up, shower, buy breakfast in the hotel coffee shop. She had left standing instructions with the switchboard to take her messages—which must have amused the telephone staff, since there weren’t any messages, ever—and she was careful to get back no later than one o’clock in the afternoon, a stern rule that served to assuage her guilt.

In time, she developed a few favorite destinations. She liked riding the ferry to Ward’s Island and back, Lake Ontario bleak and pretty in the November weather. She liked Chinatown. She discovered cheap, interesting lunches in the Vietnamese restaurants along Dundas west of University—John would approve, she thought. She shopped for reading material in the second-hand bookstores along the city’s somewhat bohemian Queen Street strip. Afternoons, she would read by the phone. There were days when she spoke to no one except the waiter in the Saigon Maxima and the desk clerk at the hotel. The isolation had become a fact of her life. I am, she thought, like those people who live in caves for months on end. She had begun to lose any real sense of time.

It was Dr. Kyriakides who reminded her of how much time had truly passed. He phoned at the end of November and said, “I want you to come home now.”

“But he hasn’t called,” Susan said. “He—”

“I think at this point we have to admit that it might not happen. When was the last time he contacted you? Almost a month ago, wasn’t it?”

Approximately that. And it had been Benjamin, not John, and the news had not been encouraging—he was calling from a motel somewhere out west and he believed John was acting out some kind of regression, unwinding his life down the highway toward some unknown destination.

“But he said he’d try to call again,” Susan protested. “If I leave now he won’t be able to find us!”

“John can always find us if he wants to. That decision is in his hands. I suppose it always has been. We can’t force our help on him. But my main concern, Susan, is you.”

“I’m doing all right.” But it sounded petulant, childish.

“You’re becoming obsessive,” Maxim Kyriakides said.

“Shouldn’t I be? You’re obsessive about John. You told me so.”

“I have a legitimate reason. I’m entitled to my guilt, Susan. I’ve earned it.”

She didn’t want to explore the implications of that. “One more week.”

“I don’t see any point in prolonging the inevitable.”

“I’ll make you a deal. One more week, then I fly back—no arguments, no regrets.”

Dr. Kyriakides was silent for a moment. “You know, you’re not in a position to bargain.”

“As a favor, then.”

“Well … then let me make the arrangements. I’ll buy you a flight back to O’Hare. One week from tonight. Precisely.”

The thought of it was chilling. But he was right, of course; she couldn’t stay here forever. She was living on his money, borrowing time against an academic career she could not postpone indefinitely. “All right,” she said. The offer was generous, really. “Yes.”

“Good. I’ll call back when I have a flight number for you. You can pick up the ticket tomorrow.”

The deadline came quickly. Susan counted off the grey, cold days one by one until they were gone. She confirmed her reservation at a travel agency opposite the hotel, and on the afternoon of the day of her flight, she packed her bags.

Fu

Darkness came early these cloudy days. At four o’clock she flicked on the room lamps and began to dress for the flight. A seven-thirty flight, but Susan preferred to arrive early at airports. Dress and maybe catch a snack at the hotel coffee shop, then a cab to the airport. Check in by six or six-thirty … buy a book at the newsstand and camp out in a waiting room until the flight was ready to board.

She was standing in her slip when the phone rang.

She scolded herself for a sudden leap of hope. Reprieves did not come at the last minute. Only in the movies, Susan.

She picked up the receiver and said, “Yes?”

“Is that—” It was a woman’s voice. “Is that Susan Christopher?”

Far away and unfamiliar, tremulous and odd. Susan frowned. “Who’s this?”

“Amelie Desjardins. You remember me?”

Amelie who had lived with Benjamin. Amelie barefoot in the doorway of a slum apartment, radiating suspicion. “Of course.” Susan wanted to add, How did you get this number? She asked instead, “Is anything wrong?”

“I have to talk to you.”

“Well, I—the thing is—I have a plane to catch. I’m leaving tonight.”

“Oh, shit. Oh! Well—listen—if you could just tell me, you know, where heis—just give me a number or something—just so I could talk to him—”

Susan said desperately, “I don’t know!”

“You don’t know? I thought that was why you came here—to take him away!”

“He left! John, I mean. He got scared and he just, uh, left.” Should she be saying this? “What is it, Amelie, is there a problem?”

“It’s my fucking brother! I think he wants to kill me.”

Susan could not frame a response to this.

“I just thought if I could talk to somebody,” Amelie said. Then she added, “But you mean it, don’t you? You lost him, too.”

“Yes. Well, I—If you could get here soon, maybe we could talk. I have some time before I absolutely need to leave. Is this co

“Partly. Look, I don’t want to make a problem for you—”

“No, no!—I mean, I want to talk.”

“Well, if there’s time—”

“Can you get here inside the hour?”

Pause. “Sure. It’s not that far.”

“I’ll wait for you,” Susan said.

They met in the lobby and then found a booth at the back of the coffee shop.

Amelie’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot; her hair was down in matted bangs across her forehead. She wore jeans and a T-shirt under an oversized red plaid lumberjack shirt. Susan, sitting across from her, felt instantly helpless.

“It’s Roch,” Amelie said. “He’s my brother.”

The girl seemed anxious to talk; Susan listened carefully. She was not accustomed to having people come to her with their problems. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to her. She paid close, somber attention as Amelie spoke.

Amelie had a brother named Roch who had followed her to Toronto from Montreal. “A real son-of-a-bitch. I mean, he has trouble dealing with people. I don’t think he registers people at all, they just don’t exist for him, unless they get in his way or humiliate him—and then his instinct is just to crush them, grind them under his foot. He can be pretty single-minded about it. I learned how to deal with it, you know, how to keep from making him mad. But it isn’t always easy. When we came here—”