Slow Recoil Read Free Page B

she sometimes smiled at McKelvey. It had been an adjustment to leave The Beach, the old neighbourhood off Queen East and Gerrard with its converted cottages and the boardwalks, the first home he had made for his wife and his son; he accepted the fact it was a geographical cure of sorts, the shaking of ghosts. It had been an adjustment, but he was getting used to it. The people in his building were as good a collection of wayfarers as he could imagine.
    Now McKelvey stood in front of his door for a moment to catch his breath, embarrassingly dizzy from the short climb. Stars and pins of light across his vision. He sat on the little red bench, the first time he’d used it in almost a year. It struck him that he had forgotten to eat lunch. A slip, perhaps, a sort of backsliding to old ways. It began with forgetting to eat. Then it was the laundry, or lack of it, wearing the same pants three days in a row, the stubble on his face coming in thick and silver. That living with Hattie had kept his life on track by offering a division of workable quotients seemed glaringly obvious in moments such as these. Living with someone gave reference to each part of the day. They became your gyroscope. There was the time you got up, the time you ate breakfast, the time you went to bed, the time you swept the hardwood, cleaned the toilets. Left to his own devices and vices, McKelvey had only himself to worry about. And therein lay the problem, at least according to Hattie.
    She said, “You’ll jump in the harbour to save a stranger, but you won’t take the time to fucking feed yourself. God, Charlie, what am I going to do with you?”
    He unlocked the deadbolt and stepped inside, the smell of the six strips of bacon he’d fried that morning still heavy in the air. The light was flashing on his answering machine across the darkened room. He drew toward the beacon like a ship guided to a distant shoreline.
    The first message was from Jessie Rainbird, the mother of his granddaughter and the last person to love his son. A runaway from Manitoulin Island, the girl had seen more than her fair share of life and all of its darkness on the streets of the nation’s largest city. She had grappled with the curse of addiction, and the myriad lessons it brought. He knew there were times when the pressure of straight life and the memories of Gavin came back to her, a haunting refrain. He knew also that she stumbled sometimes but always managed to pick herself back up. He was proud of her and had come to love her in a way he had never thought possible—they had a history, this girl and McKelvey, and he knew without doubt he would always come through for her.
    Jessie’s year-long hairdressing course was wrapping up now, and she was planning to head back to her Aunt Peggy’s place on Manitoulin Island to take a break and contemplate her next steps. She said in the message that she wanted to bring Emily over for a visit before the two of them took the Sunday morning Greyhound up Highway 69. Before signing off, she admonished McKelvey for the Coca-Cola he had served the curly-haired Emily the last time she had left the child in his overnight care while she went out with some classmates.
    â€œAnd no Krispy Kreme donuts, either,” she said. “She’s turning three, Charlie.”
    He smiled as he made a mental note to buy groceries in advance of Saturday to supplement the jar of mayo and the heel of dark orange cheddar cheese in his fridge. The smile faded as the next message came on. It was Tim Fielding, the young widower he’d met at the men’s grief group up at St. Michael’s Hospital. There solely to satisfy his wife’s desire to see him progress within the realm of healing from grief and trauma, McKelvey had somehow ended up befriending the young man. And it was through tagging along while Tim got a tattoo in memory of his wife that McKelvey had made the strange discovery of Jessie Rainbird. That