Factoring Humanity

25

After his lunch with Stone, Kyle had three hours free until he had to teach a class. He decided to leave the university altogether, riding the subway down the University Avenue line, around by Union Station, and up to the penultimate stop on the Yonge line, North York Centre. He exited the station, walking through the concrete blight of Mel Lastman Square, and headed over to Beecroft Avenue, one block west of Yonge.

On the east side of Beecroft, filling the space between it and Yonge, was the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts. Kyle remembered the first play that had been presented there: Showboat. It had had its initial run here before going to Broadway. That was—what?—almost twenty-five years ago. Kyle had gone to that one—he still fondly remembered Michel Bell’s rendition of “Ol’ Man River”—and to every production since, although, since he and Heather had separated, he hadn’t yet been to see the current blockbuster, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of Dracula.

The west side of Beecroft also held powerful memories. There had been vacant lots here in his youth, and he’d played football with little Jimmy Korematsu, the Haskins twins, and—what was his name? The bully with the misshapen head. Calvino, that was it. Kyle had never been much of an athlete; he played the game to fit in, but his mind was always wandering elsewhere. Once, when he’d actually caught the ball and kept from fumbling it, he’d run—oh, it must have been eighty meters, no, eighty yards (this was the 1980s, after all)—all the way into the imaginary end zone, its perimeter marked by a Haskins’s dropped sweatshirt.

All the way into the wrong end zone.

He’d thought he’d never live that down.

The fields were just the right size for football games, and at their margins were wooded areas.

Those held fonder memories.

He’d made out there, often, with his high-school girlfriend Lisa, after movies at the Willow or dinners out at the Crock Block.

Now, though, the fields were paved over—parking lots for the Ford Centre.

But behind them, as it had been since before he was born, was York Cemetery, one of Toronto’s largest.

Some of his schoolmates had made out in the cemetery—there was a wooded strip, perhaps fifteen meters thick, running along its north edge so that the houses on Park Home Avenue didn’t have to look out at tombstones. But Kyle could never bring himself to do it there.

He walked into the cemetery, following the curving road. The grounds were beautifully kept. In the distance, just before the cemetery was bisected by Senlac Road, he could see the giant concrete cenotaph, looking like an Egyptian obelisk, honoring the Canadians who had died in the World Wars.

A pair of black squirrels—ubiquitous in Toronto—scampered across the road in front of him. Once when he was driving, he’d hit a squirrel. Mary had been in the car; she was four, maybe five years old then.

It had been an accident of course, but she wouldn’t talk to him for weeks.

He was a monster in her eyes then.

Then, and now.

Many of the graves had flowers on them, but not Mary’s. He’d meant to visit more often. When she’d died, he’d told himself he’d come every weekend.

It had been three months since his last visit.

But now he didn’t know where else to go, how else to speak to her.

Kyle stepped off the roadway, onto the grass. A man riding a power mower was passing by. He averted his eyes from Kyle—perhaps just indifference, perhaps not knowing what to say to a mourner. To him, doubtless this was just a job; surely he never stopped to think about why the grass grew so luxuriously.

Kyle shoved his hands into his pockets and made his way over to his daughter’s grave.

He passed four tombstones before he realized his mistake. He was in the wrong row; Mary’s plot was one row farther along. He felt a pang of guilt. For Christ’s sake, he didn’t even know where his own daughter was buried!

Kyle had walked across graves often enough in his life, but he couldn’t bring himself to cut over to the next row that way. Not here; not this close to Mary.

He retraced his steps down the path, walked along the road, and made his way down the proper row.

Mary’s stone was made of polished red granite. The flecks of mica flared in the sunlight.

He read the words, wondering if someday they would be as illegible as those on the worn marble slabs he’d seen in old churchyards:

It had seemed an appropriate epitaph at the time. They’d had no idea why Mary had killed herself. The note she’d left, written in red pen on lined paper, had said simply, “This is the only way I can stay silent.” At the time, none of them had known what it meant.

Kyle reread the last line on the stone again. At Peace Now.

He hoped that was true.

But how could it be?

If what Becky said was true, Mary had killed herself convinced that her father had molested her. What peace could she have?

The only way I can stay silent.

A sacrifice—but surely not to protect Kyle. No, she must have seen it as being for her mother’s sake—to protect Heather, to save her from the horror, the guilt.

Kyle looked down at the grave. The wound in the landscape had healed, of course. There was no rectangular discontinuity, no scar of dirt between the old ground and the sod laid overtop of it once the hole had been filled in.

He lifted his gaze back to the stone.

“Mary,” he said out loud. He felt self-conscious. The riding mower was far away now, its sound having diminished to almost nothing.

He wanted to say more—so much more—but he didn’t know where to begin. He became conscious that his head was shaking slowly back and forth, and he stopped it with an effort.

He was quiet for several minutes, then he said his daughter’s name once more—softly, the sound almost lost against the background noise of birds, a passing skimmer, and the mower, which was now slowly returning, cutting another swath through the lush lawn.

Kyle tried to read the headstone again and found that he couldn’t. He blinked the tears away.

He thought, I’m so sorry, but never gave the words voice.