The Ann Ireland Library. Ann Ireland
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Toby said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put all the quarantined people together, maybe in the old TB hospital in the west end of the city. He got all worked up about it, a man of vision. They would be well fed and given interesting things to do during the two-week period, learning crafts like pottery and carving canoe paddles — a sort of camp. Doctors could try new antivirals and other experimental treatments. Then he stopped speaking, for in that second he’d felt the virus hover, waiting opportunistically for an opening.
Evening fog draws off the lake, and Toby shivers. Inside, Jasper shivers, too.
Three
Toby knocked on the door of his father’s house in the Beach and waited for the slow clump of footsteps. It was always the same: Klaus would swing open the door, gaze at his son for a moment, then say, “I’d just about given up on you,” because Toby was a measly ten minutes late. Six o’clock was six o’clock in Klaus’s books.
He knocked again; maybe his dad was in the bathroom. Old guys can have trouble in there. And so he waited, spinning on the concrete step and looking across the street toward the rickety clapboard bungalow belonging to their neighbours. Not many original cottages left in the Beach.
Another knock and still no answer. This was weird, for Klaus was a man of habit, an apostle of routine, and it was Wednesday evening, Toby’s designated visiting hour. The car was parked in the driveway and the hall light was on. Fending off a spritz of alarm, Toby let himself in with his key. He stood in the foyer and waited to hear something, that characteristic clearing of throat, footsteps, anything.
“Papa?” he called out. His voice echoed in the hallway, bouncing off the shiny floor and walls.
“Papa!”
Zilch. No sound of toilet flushing, no clicking of shoes on tile. Now Toby was getting officially alarmed. His father never walked anywhere, didn’t see the point when he owned a car and paid insurance on it. The place emitted an overwhelming pong of furniture polish and floor wax.
It might happen like this, Toby thought. A day like any other except his father will have collapsed somewhere in the neat two-storey house and it will be his task to find him.
He sucked in a breath and marched down the hallway, switching on lights and calling out, “Papa? Wo bist du?”
The only response was a thrum from the ancient refrigerator. Everything looked to be in order, spic and span. Toby entered the kitchen with its spongy vinyl chairs and freshly mopped floor — and that was when he spotted the note propped against the toaster: “Gone to live in Lakeview. Please dispose of household contents. K.H.”
Man of few words.
Why on earth would Klaus move himself to that cheerless institution?
Holding the note, fountain pen written on the back of a recipe card — waste not, want not — Toby felt only dismay. Klaus had no need to set foot in Lakeview again, not after his wife died. You’d think he’d be grateful to be clear of the place and its antiseptic smells.
Toby began the job right away. The overhanging roof made the rooms darker than they needed to be, and he turned on lights as he prowled from room to room. When his mother was up and running, she’d fling open the windows in the spring, but she’d had no say in years. Karen had been resident in Lakeview Terrace longer than anyone, starting at age forty-seven when, the story goes, her moments of peculiarity turned into lapses of judgment and an urge to set fires. She died in neurological chaos, a slight woman with frizzy hair whom Toby didn’t visit often enough. In the early days he used to take his guitar to Lakeview to play for some of the old ladies; they made a fuss over him, child among the ancients. But Klaus never missed a day during those long years, striding into C Wing to feed his wife supper because without his loving hand she refused to swallow. Not a word of complaint ever passed his lips. Say what you might of Klaus as a father, he was one hell of a husband.
Swoosh went prefolded napkins and a chipped butter dish into the garbage bag. This was the original stove, circa 1969, and ditto for the fridge, both softly aerodynamic and kept rigorously clean and in working trim. The burner coils were sausage-like, style of the day. The set of etched juice glasses were fished out of detergent boxes. No way brother Felix would be interested in any of this subpar loot, living in Powell River with snooty Leah and their kids.
As Toby tossed things into cartons and plastic bags, he felt himself move from sadness into an inchoate anger: why did the old man deliberately deprive himself? Cereal bowls were filled with those toggles that held bread together; jars that once held peanut butter were packed with elastic bands. So ostentatiously frugal, as if to buy something new or to toss something old was a moral failing. Lucky thing Jasper wasn’t on hand to witness this. He had a sore spot about what he called “The German Thing” and would find all this neatness and thrift creepy.
Toby knew what was coming next when he swung open the closet door. First, he unhooked the straw broom made by the blind and set it in the corner of the kitchen. When the boys were still at home, they had regular chores and a monthly calendar indicating who did what and when. Taped to the inside of the door now was a sheet of paper ruled into columns that itemized duties from washing shutters to floor waxing and laundry. Along the top were printed dates, and tick marks noted job accomplished. A bustle of vacuuming occurred two days before Klaus entered Lakeview with his plaid suitcase. Last Thursday he’d flipped the mattress, the same mattress that Toby would soon drag down to the curb.
He roamed the house, plastic bag in tow, swinging open cupboards he’d never dare open in the presence of his secretive father. His gut clenched with each potential revelation: surely somewhere he’d discover inklings of the old man’s real life, the one he’d left behind — the German life.
Instead of crispy air mail envelopes he found bundled socks in a drawer, and tucked next to them a list: “5 pair black, 2 pair white, 4 pair dress.”
No yellowed letters from Klaus’s own father, a Luftwaffe pilot turned owner of a popular seaside resort — just a dried-up avocado pit set into a jar on the dresser, toothpick running through its midsection.
Toby stood at the entrance to his and Felix’s bedroom at the rear of the house. This was the only room that had noticeably changed: bunk beds replaced with a sofa bed and next to it the cabinet hi-fi that used to be downstairs. The meagre stash of LPs dated back to the early 1970s — Strauss waltzes, Beethoven’s Fifth, and Klaus’s favourite, Yma Sumac, the Inca Princess, whose soaring voice filled the house during weekend breakfasts.
The old Yamaha guitar stood in its cardboard case against the wall. Toby sat on the sofa, unsnapped the case, and pulled out the instrument, noting a hairline crack near the bridge. Dry winter days had taken their toll. He had to wrench the plastic pegs to get them to turn on the headstock. The strings felt stiff and dead, untouched for years. Tuning the best he could, he started in on that old chestnut, “Spanish Romance,” the first real piece he’d learned. This room was his safe haven, and he’d practise here for hours, often beginning when he heard Klaus’s car swing into the driveway. By the time Toby made it downstairs, Klaus would be cooking dinner and news from the visit to “your dear Mama” would have been forgotten.
Toby won that guitar-shaped clock hanging on the wall at some dopey talent contest when he was in junior high. They were always so proud of him, Mama and Papa.
The day she died, last December 25, Toby was basting the turkey when he got the call, Jasper hovering, fussing over internal fowl temperature.
Karen wasn’t always off her rocker. For years she’d been a real mother. That’s what Jasper forgets when he calls her existence “tragic.”
What was that smell? Toby hesitated at the entrance to the bathroom, though he knew without looking what it was: medicinal aroma of old country shampoo imported by specialty shops. Not that Klaus had much hair left to work with. Toby imagined Jasper snickering, “The man keeps a well-scrubbed scalp.”
Does Klaus ever complain of loneliness?
Never. He likes to say that he expects little from life, so he