Across from Union Station, the old Royal York Hotel appeared frozen in time, monolithic matriarch of hospitality from a forgotten era of crisp white table cloths, heavy silverware, and doormen dressed in rich burgundy coats and hats. McKelvey moved eastward, down side streets he hadn’t been on in years, not since his days in a radio car. Back then he had known every street in his division, every corner where someone might hide. Those long ago days when he never seemed to question his physical ability to wrestle another man’s hands into a set a cuffs, to put him to the ground like a dog, knee in his back. Was this a brand of unquestioning confidence unique to police officers, or was it simply youthful ignorance or arrogance? He couldn’t say. And while he still believed he could handle himself, there were no illusions of infinite strength. He felt the energy of his life force waning.
The radio in the car thrummed and snapped with activity, but after a while McKelvey tuned it out. He noticed the subtle and not-so-subtle changes to the geography, the transformation of old apartment blocks into trendy loft condos. When you lived and worked in the city, as McKelvey had since the age of eighteen, you eventually stopped noticing any changes until they were entirely completed. Massive structures simply appeared as though set there overnight by a child building a train set village. Urban change was overwhelming in its velocity; there was simply too much of it to absorb. There was something going on around you all the time, a minute by minute transformation of the city, renovations, new glass, paint, scaffolds rising and falling like rusted skeletons, jackhammers and trucks backing up, apartment buildings blooming like strange orchids among the grasslands of the war-time bungalows and row houses. McKelvey remembered the old days of the warehouses along the train tracks, the low thick buildings that resembled concentration camps, the smashed distillery house windows staring like black empty eyes, the vacant lots where poor kids played stick ball long before there were million-dollar condos. Today wealthy young executives ate salmon steaks overlooking the train yards and back alleys where the original urban immigrants lived in shacks insulated with newspapers. Evolution.
He wound his way northward, meandering through the old neighborhoods where he had worked, specific coordinates bringing forth the memory of vivid calls: a stabbing at this corner, a bloody armed robbery at that convenience store, all the while his mind running through the meeting with Aoki. Caroline would ask about the news from the Crown, and he would tell her that not only would there be no charges brought in Gavin’s murder, but the sun had set on Charlie McKelvey’s mediocre police career. Hell of a day. So many things to think about.A man could get lost in the details without even knowing it.
And then he was stopped. Stopped and staring at a traffic light.
Red.
Flakes falling almost horizontal now, mesmerizing.
McKelvey stared at the traffic light. Green now. It had changed from yellow to red to green without his even noticing. He was staring at the light, yet he was also watching himself as a young man, a kid riding in a patrol car with no experience. And then the kid was Gavin, and he was on that first bike they bought him, and then Gavin was just lying there lifeless on the table, a single bullet hole to the upper left forehead...the gunshot wound the colour of black cherry...
Someone honked.
McKelvey blinked, checked the rear view. A guy in a delivery van behind him. Honked again. Fucking idiot. McKelvey slid the unmarked cruiser into park, undid his seatbelt, and was out of the vehicle and approaching the delivery van, the wet flakes swirling, and he could hear himself, hear his voice, hoarse and distant. It sounded like it belonged to someone else. The driver of the van just shook his head and pulled around the car, leaving McKelvey standing there in the road with the snow stinging his eyes.
Like a magnet drawn to its inevitable destination, he pulled the car up alongside the wrought iron fence surrounding the cemetery. The snow had stopped now, and the sky was muted, grey as putty, still and cold. What a day, he thought. The world is talking to you, Charlie, is what Caroline would say. She’d said it all the time when they were kids in their twenties, failing miserably in that first basement apartment they rented. A real dive. All they had back then was a futon on the floor, books and a turntable supported by milk crates and bricks. He saw an image of Caroline and himself at that age, sitting up in bed after making love, a bottle of cheap wine wedged in the tangle of covers between them, the air thick with the scent of their bodies. He saw the image, but he couldn’t connect himself with the man in the picture. There was nothing.
In the summertime, he would sit in the car on days like this and watch people come and go from the cemetery, human traffic manoeuvering through the landscape of grief. He rolled the window down, and he could taste the city in the back of his throat, wet dirt and ash. He sat in the car, where not so long ago he would get out of the vehicle to walk across the emerald lawns manicured to perfection, walk through those rows of stones, through generations of families laid to rest, and believe with utter conviction that the soil beneath his feet was the dust of living beings, who, at one point, had laughed and cried, won and lost, and taken for granted the dependability of the blood running through their bodies. He would understand that because he was made of the same bone and blood as those who had gone before, there could be no hope for escape; the soil patiently awaited his embrace.
He had once possessed the ability, indeed perhaps the courage, to step from the vehicle, to make the long walk to the place where his boy rested in perpetuity. To kneel and touch the soft grass there, find the mettle to speak a few words. All the long moments Caroline never knew about, all the secret promises and pledges he made with himself, the lost hours parked at the cemetery. He sat there now, and he searched for the thrust to propel him up and out through the door of the car, through those rows of stones. He glanced in the rear view and saw a stranger’s set of eyes, a stranger caught in mid-life, in mid-stride, entangled in the lines and nets of his own setting. He understood this was the point of embarkation; he squinted and made out a door—slightly ajar—just up ahead. It bled a little light.
He opened the car door and walked through rows of stones, his dress shoes and pant legs wet from the fresh snow. The place was empty, lonely as only a cemetery could be. The headstones rose up from the earth like stoic grey perennials. The trees that ringed the perimeter were dusted like the trees on the front of a Christmas greeting card. His body found the stone it sought through the remembered geography of the heart and soul. He stood there before it. A simple stone, simple but right. He turned and crouched and touched it.
His boy.
He touched the face of the stone, the letters of one life etched for all time. We build monuments, he thought, to prove we have come through this place. Or perhaps for the false comfort of those who remain. He touched the grooves of the letters and dates, the bare statistics of a life stamped in granite. The natural rhythm of the lives of those who are left behind is necessarily set off-kilter; yes, he had lost his balance there for a long time, but now he felt himself coming through to the other side of something, a new window opening within himself. He couldn’t say what it was exactly, or even where things were headed. But it was something different to feel, something besides the feeling of utter helplessness. It wasn’t optimism, no. It was something more like hope born of desperation. And it was okay. It was okay. Anything but this, the status quo of hauling grief around like a bag of stones.
“It’s okay,” he said, and stood. He took a deep haul of the chilled air, and it felt like being born again. He brushed some snow from his knees. “It’s okay, my boy. I’ll do this one on my own.”
He walked back to the car, and his breath was visible in small clouds. It was getting dark out already, the afternoon fading imperceptibly.