After two dead-end years, Gus couldn’t see her way to an exit. Couldn’t bear to think about the future or the past, yet both hovered in her periphery. Never far.
And so it’s not at all strange that she finds herself here. June of 2018, sitting in the back of a cab heading down Holland Avenue toward Wellington West.
Heading back.
Augusta asks the cabbie to drop her a few blocks from Rose’s house. Needs the walk and her stomach’s growling. She grabs a breakfast bagel from the Bagel Shoppe where her mom used to take her Saturday mornings after swimming lessons. Same guy from over a decade ago is still at the cash register. He says he remembers her. Gus can tell he doesn’t. Memories have a way of dancing in your eyes. Like embers in a campfire pit. His eyes don’t dance.
Hers do as she walks the familiar streets. Twelve years ago, this was her hood. Her hometown. She used to go to the movies at the Coliseum Theatre on Carling, toboggan at the Arboretum, and swim at Dovercourt Community Centre. She knew these neighborhoods. Hintonburg, Wellington West, and Westboro, one connecting to the next. She knew the bus routes to downtown, the bike paths along the Ottawa River, and the shortcut behind the Beer Store on Scott. And she knows exactly where Rose’s house is. That rambling two-story 1920s house, two doors down from the intersection at Richmond on Island Park Drive. A wide avenue where maples border a green space running alongside the road. A prestigious street back in the day. A street lined with embassies and elite private residences.
Gus rounds the corner, barely recognizing the once elegant home. There’s a mess of wild crabgrass out front. Craggy overgrown sumacs obscure the bay window. Yellow paint peels off the wood siding. The driveway is a cracked web of moss and dandelions. The garage door hangs from its hinges. The house looks abandoned. Only it’s not. A newspaper lies on the stoop and a curtain shifts in the front window.
Someone is watching her.
3
Miss Santos
AUGUSTA HEADS UP THE FRONT PATH. UP THE STEPS. SHE IS about to knock when the front door swings open. Miss Santos flies out, stooped to one side, rolling a suitcase behind her. Thick black hair sticks to her forehead. She’s wearing what looks to be the same raincoat she wore the night Gus was brought to the house by the female constable.
“You here now. Good. I go.”
She bounces her suitcase down the steps. Gus stares.
“Go?”
“I have sister in Kemptville. I go live on her sofa. Like homeless person.”
And with that, Miss Santos is soaring down the sidewalk. True to form.
“Miss Santos, wait.”
Gus recalls the nurse never having any bedside manner. Before leaving for boarding school, ten-year-old Gus was steered upstairs by Miss Santos. One hand firmly on each of Gus’s small shoulders. Without knocking, they entered Rose’s bedroom. The old woman’s skin was yellow. Goodbyes were brief. Rose blinked through blood-rimmed eyes. Her lips parted to a slight smile. Augusta’s two-year-old dog was curled on a turquoise afghan on the bed. Rose’s hand reached down to pet his head. He snuggled close to her body. Gus wanted to strangle that stupid mutt. It was so unfair. He got to stay. He was cozy. He was wanted. As she left the bedroom, Gus glanced back at Rose and the dog. Neither looked up as Miss Santos shut the door and took her away.
It was Miss Santos who instructed the headmistress that Gus was to be kept at school for holidays. To stay behind when everyone else went home. When the other girls returned from their Easters and Christmases, they jumped on their beds and laughed about home while she pretended to be asleep, a blanket pulled over her head. None of them cared that Gus had no home and no parents. She felt completely untethered. Set adrift in a sea of dancing, happy girls. Her only relative too fragile and old to toss her a lifeline.
It was there, lying in her bed at school, facing the wall, head covered, that Gus learned to drop into the dark cave of her memories and lower herself deeply and fully into the past. Once there, she’d meander over to one of those Sunday visits at Rose’s house with her mother. They’d sit in the garden on yellow plastic chairs and eat cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. They’d sip sweet iced tea and her mother would talk about the unseasonably warm weather. Knowing her daughter was bored, Shannon would tickle her toes with her own under the garden table and make her laugh. Rose, swathed in blankets like a withered baby, would nod and chew as bits of food stuck to the corners of her mouth. In these memories, Miss Santos was somewhere in the background. Off to one side. Sitting near the back door, her bony fingers wrapped around the spine of a book she was reading. Her black hair bobbing in the light breeze.
That same head of hair now dances wildly in front of Gus as Miss Santos veers out into the road, oblivious to oncoming traffic. A car honks and skids to avoid hitting her. Miss Santos doesn’t slow down, but Augusta manages to catch up. The nurse’s suitcase bumps along behind her as she rants.
“She promise. She wreck her promise. It all in fucking letter. I leave on kitchen table. All your problem now.”
They come to a bus stop at the corner of Island Park just as the number seven pulls up. Miss Santos heaves her suitcase up the steps of the bus. At the top, she turns and looks back. Her crow eyes glisten, jaw trembles, lips quiver. Gus knows that look. She’s seen it on her own face in the mirror. The stinging expression of someone who’s been deeply hurt. As the pain ripples through her facial muscles and racks her bones, Miss Santos tries desperately to hold the hurt inside.
“I put up with bed-wetting, bell ringing in middle of night, this pill, that pill, doctor appointment, cooking meal, picking up dog shit. I say nothing. I do all. For what? For betrayal. Fine. Good. Now I go. Terminei.”
And with that Miss Santos disappears into the depths of the bus. The driver shrugs and closes the door. Brakes sigh and the bus pulls away. Sun flares dance across the windows obscuring the view inside. The bus rolls down Richmond, past Hilson, past Kirkwood. Gus watches until it is just a speck of flashing metal in the distance.
That’s when she hears the barking.
4
The Puppy
SHE WAS EIGHT THE SUMMER SHANNON BROUGHT HIM HOME. After the incident with the photo of the ballerina, Gus decided not to speak to her mother for the rest of summer break. It had been over a week of silent treatment. Shannon baked marzipan bars and played their favorite song by the Four Tops on their portable record player. “I Can’t Help Myself.” Shannon swayed her hips to the music, but Gus refused to even tap her toes. Nothing but the cold shoulder. Shannon called her “Sugar Bunch” and “Honey Pie” and ordered pizza even though it was Wednesday and not Friday. Finally, when nothing seemed to thaw the deep freeze, Shannon surprised Gus with a new puppy. But it wasn’t a real dog. It was a mutt. A mixed breed from the local Humane Society. Part spinone, part golden retriever. Gus refused to play with the shaggy creature. Refused to choose a name for it. She knew the puppy was a bribe. Meant to keep her busy. Out of the way. Gus ignored the scruffy little furball, even when it nudged her arm with its wet nose or licked her ankles with its soft pink tongue. Shannon named the puppy Levi. After Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops.
Most nights that summer ended with Gus storming to her room and slamming her door. Screaming that she hated the stupid dog and she wished her mother was dead.