“You didn’t have to.”
Sometimes, after supper, we put on our mittens and hats and walked to the movie theater a few blocks down toward the capitol. We split the cost for two seats, two Cokes, and a bucket of popcorn. The movies Rom chose were always unrelentingly loud, full of cops shooting over the hoods of cars; still, I found it restful to sit there in the pulsing dark. The louder it was, the sooner I slept, my head against the seat back, my shoes sticking to the floor. I didn’t mind missing the car chases, the explosions. It was reassuring to feel that something important just went on happening while I slept, something with guns.
Afterward, Rom would test me to see when I’d fallen asleep. “That guy with the face that turned into a fish?” he’d say, when we were walking out. “Did you see that?”
And I’d say, though I usually hadn’t, “He was incredible.”
When I’d been in the Cities for about eight months, when the holidays rolled around, I showed up at Rom’s apartment on Christmas Eve carrying a little package I’d wrapped in red reindeer paper and a thin green bow. Rom opened it on his unmade bed, sitting cross-legged. His feet were bare, yellow nailed, but he was wearing stiff new jeans and a black button-up shirt, untucked. I watched as he broke the green ribbon with his teeth and lifted from the box a dog’s spikey collar and heavy leather lead. It took a moment for him to unwind the leash, and it’s weird how joy goes through a grown man’s face, so that for a second you can see him the way he was as a kid: all smooth faced and unguarded. Then that look was gone, and he was squinting at me as I wiggled out of my jeans, as I unhooked my bra and got completely naked. I took the leather collar and fastened it around my neck. For an instant he looked so disheartened, so disappointed—like I’d done the one thing that could truly hurt him—but then I sniffed his crotch and handed him the leash, so we had a good time.
“Bad girl,” he told me.
I pulled against the leash. I wouldn’t go where he said.
“Down,” he warned, a glint in his eyes. “Stay.”
His present for me was a Swiss Army knife. “Fool’s protection,” he explained, looking a little nervous, leaning in so I could hear the stud in his tongue click against his teeth. This was after we’d gotten dressed again and were sipping eggnog in his bed straight from the carton. He waited until I said, “Cool. Thank you,” before showing me all the things the knife could do. Peel an orange, scale a fish. I didn’t tell him I had the exact same knife in my purse, though more banged up. I didn’t tell him I already knew which metal slit to pull with my fingernail to get the wire stripper out, or the three-inch blade. It was like so many other things between us, that gift. It was exactly right and totally wrong for me.
That same winter, just after Christmas, I received a bright red envelope in the mail. Ann and I were sorting bills on a dark afternoon when she held up the envelope with a Santa stamp, a Florida return address. “Is this from your family?” she asked. I took it from her. Her pale, plucked eyebrows arched hopefully over the rims of her glasses. It bothered Ann—it broke her strict code of Canadian niceness—that I hadn’t any formal holiday plans, that I wouldn’t tell her even the littlest thing about where I’d come from.
I hesitated long enough to flip the envelope chestward before saying, “Yep.”
I stood and carried the envelope to our kitchenette. Inside was a holiday card with reindeer and HO HO HO’S in black cursive. When I opened the card, out winged a photograph of a whitehaired man with his arm slung around a dog. It was creepy in a way, but also not. It was just a guy in a lawn chair, a guy with his hound—a palm tree shadow floating over his head.
I could feel Ann watching from across the room.
“Where in Florida does your family live?” she asked.
I couldn’t look at her to answer. I couldn’t bear to talk about Loose River, so I headed toward the doorway instead. “I want a snack. You want a Diet Coke from the corner store?” She always did. I whisked up my jacket, stuffed the photo and the card inside a pocket. Opened the door and rode the elevator down four floors, taking in all the jittery, stuttering sounds of invisible machinery. On the ground floor, there was a clank and a bounce. Why tell Ann I hadn’t been in contact with my mother in more than eight months? Why tell her that? Outside the apartment, traffic crawled steadily over icy roads, exhaust and snow mixing in the air. The cold instantly tightened the skin on my cheeks, calmed me. After a moment, I circled back through the rotating door and stood in the warm foyer again, where the light was bright over the mailboxes.
“Dear Mattie,” Mr. Grierson wrote in his card.
His cursive went loop-loop-loop.