The Only Café Read online

  “I can’t believe that Gloria would do that, dump everything on Aggie’s verandah.” Leo was shaking his head.

  Cyril laughed. “Everything doesn’t add up to much. My clothes. Some books, personal papers. A bunch of diaries or daily journals that Dad kept. I haven’t really had the stamina to look at any of it closely. I kinda understand the gesture. Gloria’s way of telling me to piss or get off the pot, right?”

  “Still, it was a witchy thing to do.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” said Cyril. “She’s been putting up with a lot.”

  “It’s none of my business, but besides the roast…?”

  Cyril nodded. “In the will he left me enough to keep me going for a while, at least til I get my shit together. And the books.”

  “You said diaries?”

  “I think so. Journals, day-timers, they’re in his handwriting anyway. Maybe someday I’ll get up the nerve to take a closer look.”

  Leo stood and stretched. “Okay.” He yawned. “It’s time.”

  “Leo,” Cyril said. “I have this nagging feeling…”

  Leo seemed perplexed. “What about?”

  “That my father is still out there somewhere.”

  “I thought you said there was proof…he isn’t.”

  “Yes, but people make mistakes. I think he had secrets. I’ve discovered this pub where it seems he used to hang out.”

  “Whoa! Your dad hanging out in a pub!” Leo laughed. “You need some sleep. And look, don’t feel you have to go to Aggie’s. You can stay here for as long as you need to. Consider this your home.”

  “I wish I could,” said Cyril.

  Leo rented the second floor of a house on a quiet residential street in Parkdale. It backed up against a high chain-link fence that enclosed a junior high school playing field. There was a scrim of spindly pine trees between the backyard and the fence and because the school left a light on until midnight, the trees cast creepy shadows on the wall above the couch that was Cyril’s temporary bed. When there was a breeze the shadows moved like ghosts.

  Cyril had been at Leo’s for four days, waking up each morning to the tweet of a gym instructor’s whistle, the carefree sounds of boys galloping around the running track or going through their soccer drills. The percussion of a basketball on asphalt seemed to originate somewhere in his pillow. He didn’t have to think that far back to find himself among them, when the air and sunshine and the moment were eternal. Something else that changed when Pierre moved out, half his life ago.

  Then, when he was nineteen, his father disappeared for good, an open-ended absence that had left him stranded somewhere between sadness and anger. The most comforting scenario was that Pierre was on the run, but if he was, from what or whom?

  There were a few facts and they were shared and parsed repeatedly, but they had only yielded other questions. There had been a wharf-side explosion in a remote place, Mabou Coal Mines on Cape Breton Island. There was a sunken, shattered boat. It looked like a propane explosion. But what about the missing body? And what about the rumours of a looming crisis in what had been a magical career? And what about his health, the guarded hints of cancer? Questions adding up in the minds of lawyers, corporate accountants and other cynics to an imaginative disappearing act. Suicide was a tempting answer, too, but in the absence of a body or a note, Pierre Cormier was just gone.

  For Cyril the mystery had been a source of hope, a heartbeat that kept Pierre alive, at least in his imagination where he could invent scenarios of reconciliation and even revelation. Basic knowledge—like who his father really was.

  And then, on a warm Saturday in June that year, a single bone turned up in an East-Coast lobster trap. His friends had been unable to suppress incredulous chuckles when he told them. But the fisherman who’d hauled the trap up from the depths quickly understood that he was staring at what the media would delicately call “human remains.” There was a fine gold chain entangled in a fractured joint that had once connected the bone to some other part of a skeleton. The chain, a gift from Lois, confirmed that he was dead and the family concurred that this bone fragment was all that anyone would likely ever find of a gifted man named Pierre Cormier.

  The moment marked a turning point in many ways. Cyril was living with Gloria and she was taking a rare weekend off. Her work, and his lack of work, had become a matter of tension between them. She was a first-year associate with a prominent Bay Street law firm. He was in limbo.

  But the tension had been set aside that morning. It was a day for lingering, a soft lilac-scented day of idleness and intimacy. And then the phone.

  It was Lois and she sounded tense. “Something has come up. About your dad. Can you meet me at your mom’s place?”

  He felt a flash of fear that swiftly turned to hope: “He’s surfaced?”

  There was a long pause, then a suppressed ironic laugh. “No. I’m afraid not. I’ll explain.”

  Gloria went with him, though she always found Cyril’s mother to be judgmental. She could understand why Aggie had ended up alone. She didn’t know Lois but she could imagine the contrast—Lois young and modern, Aggie a container full of prejudice and anger.

  His mother’s door was open and they’d walked straight into the commotion. Cyril had experienced a deep emotion, somewhere between revulsion and despair, witnessing the two women who had once despised each other now clutching, weeping, comforting. His mother saw him first.

  “There you are,” she said, wiping her face. “It’s all over, dear. He’s really gone.”

  Lois turned and walked toward him, blue eyes flooded, searching his. She seized both his hands, lightly kissing both his cheeks.

  “Oh Cyril,” she said.

  “I’m okay,” he mumbled. “What…”

  “They’ve turned up proof. A part of his remains.”

  He was distressed by his lack of emotional reaction to the news. “I don’t think you’ve met Gloria. Gloria Frame.”

  Lois held her arms out toward Gloria. Her warmth was genuine and it sealed what Gloria had suspected—between Lois Klein and Aggie Lynch there would have been no contest for any healthy man.

  “So what’s the proof?” asked Cyril.

  His mother ignored the question. “Poor Pierre will not be coming home. That’s all that matters now.”

  Leaving there that afternoon he’d tried to engage, to draw Gloria out of what had become an awkward silence halfway through the visit.

  “Can you believe it? A fucking bone, it comes down to that.”

  She wagged her head from side to side, said nothing.

  “I mean, it would be funny, in a sick way, if it wasn’t real.” He looked in her direction, awaiting a response. She was frowning, walking with her arms folded across her chest. She sighed.

  “I remember that little chain. Lois gave it to him. I think he said some Holocaust survivor—”

  “Cyril. Jesus Christ, I know I shouldn’t be so self-absorbed, not on a day like this. But why do I feel invisible around your mother?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And she took his hand.

  2.

  A phone was ringing on the coffee table. The merry chime of his new BlackBerry. He was sweating, still caught in the anxiety of a dream that evaporated in a sudden panic. Something about him and Lois, or maybe Gloria. They’d kept shifting shapes and faces. He grabbed the phone realizing that he was late for work. He missed the call—he was still trying to figure out the mysteries of the new stupid smartphone, a gift to himself when he first got the call inviting him to intern. There was a message. It was his producer-mentor, Hughes, wondering if he’d forgotten the meeting scheduled for—half an hour from now.

  He’d have to take a cab. He quickly washed his face, pulled on jeans and sandals. Sniffed through T-shirts in his backpack until he found one that was odour-neutral. Grabbed a jacket and the backpack and headed out the door. Luckily a cab was dropping someone off across the street
.

  The meeting was already underway when he arrived. There were ten people in the room and they all turned as he closed the door behind him, nodding and mumbling apologies. It was obviously important because the anchor, Lloyd Manville, was on the speaker-phone from home. Cyril’s face was flushed and underneath his jacket the T-shirt was already soaked. He could imagine noxious fumes creeping out of his armpits. Doc Savage, the executive producer, was staring at him as he clumsily sat down, then pointed at him with his pen. The sweaty T-shirt suddenly felt clammy. Savage turned toward the speaker-phone that sat like a large and menacing insect on the middle of the boardroom table and spoke to it. “Suzanne, he’s here now…what was it you wanted to ask?’

  Suzanne Reynolds was the network’s star correspondent. She was in London, on her way to cover some aspect of the civil war in Syria, an expanding story that, for the whole month he’d been working as an intern, he’d been struggling to understand. The prospect of being asked a question by Suzanne in front of everyone was terrifying.

  “Hello, Cyril.” Her voice crackled through the speaker.

  “Hi,” he replied.

  “You’ll have to speak up,” Doc said.

  Cyril leaned forward, pulse racing.

  “Cyril,” Suzanne said, “I’m trying to remember something you told me just before I headed for the airport.”

  There was no trace of the annoyance he was braced for. He felt a flood of warmth.

  “Something about Lebanon,” she said. “Some family connection.”

  “My dad.” He had to clear his throat. He repeated more loudly, “My dad. He was from there.”

  “That was it,” Suzanne said. “I can’t remember if you told me whether you’ve ever been, yourself. I’m sorry. My brain is tired.”

  “No,” he replied. “Never.”

  “But you’d have family there.”

  “I suppose so,” he said. “My father never mentioned…”

  “Can I ask something personal?”

  “Sure,” he replied.

  “Is your dad a Christian?”

  “I know he was a Catholic, but he wasn’t much for religion.”

  “Uh-huh. And do you happen to know where he came from, exactly.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Would you mind asking him?”

  “My dad is, uh, dead.”

  “Oh Jesus, I’m sorry.” She seemed to mean it. “You didn’t mention that.”

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “But there was something else,” she said. “I asked you about your name.”

  “Cyril Cormier,” he said.

  “No, no,” she continued. “Your middle name. Where it came from. The ‘B.’ ”

  “Oh,” he said. “Bashir?”

  Someone in the room exhaled loudly.

  Cyril stared around the table but nobody bothered to explain the significance of Bashir, assuming that he was familiar with the violent politics of his father’s homeland. He had no idea why his name was interesting and became quickly lost as the discussion shifted to Syria and its potential to cause havoc in Lebanon, maybe even reignite a civil war that seemed, Hughes observed in passing, to have been going on intermittently since the dawn of time.

  Mercifully nobody asked him to contribute, and he was relieved when they decided to send Suzanne to Beirut where she’d prepare a long analysis of how Syria was exacerbating old sectarian hostilities in Lebanon, splitting up communities and forging unlikely alliances between…

  Cyril maintained an attitude of rapt agreement, reinforced by the occasional strategic nod. As soon as this was over the Google-oracle would help him to discover everything he needed to know, starting with the name Bashir. Then he remembered the BlackBerry in his pocket. He opened up the browser, went to Google, typed in Lebanon Bashir. Google answered quickly with Lebanon Bashir Massacre.

  “And there’s a great story,” Hughes was saying, “if we can get at it, about the weapons trade. Beirut is probably crawling with Saudi and Iranian arms dealers who are supplying the militias in Syria.”

  Suzanne asked, “What about a look-back at the Sabra and Shatila massacre? We’re coming up to the thirtieth anniversary.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the exec. “We did the twenty-fifth anniversary and I don’t think there’s enough new to say about it.”

  “Whatever,” said Suzanne. “Let’s keep an open mind if I’m going to be there anyway.”

  “Right, then,” said Doc. “Check in when you get to Beirut and we’ll see where we go from there.” He stood and turned toward Cyril. “You okay?”

  Cyril tried to smile. “Yeah, great.”

  “Come see me in half an hour. I have some ideas to run by you.”

  Alone in his cubicle with Wikipedia he discovered that the name Bashir is Arabic for “the one who brings good news.” Perhaps an omen. Bashir. The perfect name for a reporter. His spirits lifted, but then his phone rang and he saw Gloria’s name in the display. He let the call ring through to voicemail. Not a chance there would be good news there.

  He winced remembering their final confrontation just five nights earlier. There had been growing tension. Unemployment does that. Then he got the internship, but the strain between them only worsened and he realized it came from somewhere deeper. “All you fucking do is work,” he had complained. “But at least you get a paycheque. At least they have something real invested in you, they have you working in reality…”

  “Well, quit,” she shouted. “For Christ’s sake quit and find something else to do. But for God’s sake stop the whining.”

  It was just a word, but it hit him like a hammer. Whining? What more emasculating word might she have used?

  “Good idea,” he shouted back. “Maybe it’s time for a lot of things to change.”

  “Fine,” she’d said, arms folded. He’d walked toward the door and she’d said nothing. And then he was on the wrong side of the door, panic rising. Everything he owned was inside. Hastily he’d patted his rear end, felt the wallet. Well, at least he had that. Reached into his jacket pocket. Cellphone. Thank God, the lifeline. He’d walked off into the night.

  He’d been wandering for about an hour when he realized he’d rather die than face his mother. He considered suicide but realized he really didn’t want to die, and even if he did, he was at a loss to think of a method that wasn’t grossly messy, not to mention painful. He sat in a small park for a while but felt vulnerable there. Then he thought of Leo’s.

  There were moments in the days that followed when the billows of regret would leave him gasping like a beached fish. Small zephyrs of elation would catch him by surprise—a future unhindered by any obligation. He could become a world traveller. He could live his fantasies of sexual philandering. No ties. No emotional connection to anyone. He could become anything he wanted. But such freedom flashes were nothing more than pinpricks in the more pervasive darkness.

  He’d look at himself in the mirror in moments of real vertigo and groan. Twenty-four years old, no home, no job, no class. Loser. All his friends had lives, even Leo who had been considered all through school to be the slow learner. “Developmentally delayed,” was how the system phrased it. Bullies pestered Leo, nicknamed him “the retard.” Not now—Leo the ironworker, high rigger, fearless.

  Cyril was, supposedly, the bright one. But Cyril was nothing. Zip. An unpaid zero at the age of twenty-four. Lack of purpose, as his father often commented, is a waste of life.

  Okay, loser. Just admit it. You miss her. Yes. Painfully. He studied his cellphone for a moment, the small red light winking, daring him to listen. In spite of the dread of even deeper pain, he opened voicemail, entered his password.

  “I hope you’re okay,” she said. And after a long silence, “I hope you’ll get in touch when you feel up to it.” Long pause. “Anytime you want to talk. And look…about the books and things I dropped at your mom’s…I didn’t mean it to be what it looks like. Okay?”

  He felt lighter,
instantly. And then the desk phone interrupted. It was the boss. “I’m free just now. Come on by.”

  Doc Savage was standing at a window in his corner office, hands in pockets. “Come here,” he said. He placed a collegial hand on Cyril’s shoulder, pointing out. “Do you know what that building is?”

  It was a bland, mustard-coloured building across the street, about seven storeys high. “That’s where the Canadian spies work,” he said. “The Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Right next to the SkyDome, or whatever name it goes by now. And the CN Tower. The symbolism, eh. Authority and amusement, cheek by jowl. A few years ago a bunch of young jihadists had a scheme to blow the whole fucking thing up, including us. Sometimes—just between you and me and the lamppost—I can understand the impulse. You might recall it. We broke the story.”

  He turned his back to the window. “So what do you think? Those Lebanon ideas.” He walked around his desk and sat, gesturing toward a chair. “I guess I don’t have to tell you. Poor old Lebanon. Downstream from all the shit in Europe and the Middle East. Even Africa. All shit-streams flow toward Lebanon. And Syria is no exception.”

  A small internal voice instructed Cyril to say nothing. Easier to look intelligent than to sound intelligent when you know bugger all. But the boss was watching him, reading signs.

  Doc’s real name was Arthur. Arthur Savage. He’d picked up the nickname from an old-timer who was a fan of an American writer, Doc Savage, who specialized in heroic novels based on the wild frontier mythologies that everyone believed back in the day.

  “I think it was a good call,” Cyril said after a long pause. “Suzanne in Beirut.” He was careful with the pronunciation. Bay-root. First week on the job he’d pronounced Hebron Hee-bron and realized that everyone was staring at him. He’d also screwed up Buenos Aires. Boynas Airies. He was corrected: Bwaynose Eye-rays. “Beirut,” he said. “Historically a window on the region. And a better place to get perspective than in the middle of the conflict.” A summary of what he’d heard several others say at the meeting.