Et cetera. The article took up one and a half of the three French pages. My crossword and “Fun French Facts” article (on the invention of the hot-air balloon) and Dylan’s follow-up piece on poltergeists were squeezed into the remaining space. We didn’t mind, because we both knew this was Winnie’s dream. She beamed with delight every time someone complimented her. “Thank you,” I heard her say at one point. “I plan on being a world-renowned journalist, and this is one small step toward my goal.” Ah, Winnie.
But as the morning wore on, my cold got worse.
“Dude,” Dylan whispered to me at one point, “you sound like you have emphysema. You should not be at school.”
I knew he was right. But where else could I go?
When the bell rang for lunch, Monsieur Thibault asked me to stay behind. “You sound awful, Felix. I have to recommend you go home and rest.”
I nodded.
“Speaking of home. Is everything okay?” He said this in English, which made me nervous.
“Yes. Why?”
“You don’t seem yourself lately.”
“Everything’s fine. I’m just sick.”
He studied me for a few moments. “Okay. Go on, then. Go on home.”
What home? I wanted to scream.
* * *
—
I didn’t go back to the van. I just couldn’t deal with Astrid. Instead I went to the library and fell asleep at one of the study carrels.
I woke an hour later to a rustling beside me. I glanced up, still bleary-eyed. An old guy was sitting in the study carrel next to mine. He was staring right at me, a huge grin on his face. Then I realized where the rustling sound was coming from.
He had his thing out, and he was holding it in his hand.
I leapt up and ran out of the library. I wandered down Broadway, feeling shaken and weak. I went into Kidsbooks and flipped through books for a long time. The staff was nice and didn’t make me feel like I was loitering. I felt bad that I was probably leaving my germs on the pages.
My stomach felt raw with hunger. All I’d eaten for breakfast was a mealy apple.
I walked west, past Ahmadi Grocery. Fruits and vegetables were piled high out front, including bananas. I love bananas.
I thought about my ledger, back in the van. Surely it would be okay if I took one banana—just one—and wrote it down? After all, I was going to pay them back eventually for the other items my mom had stolen.
I glanced around. The man who worked there—I assumed he was Mr. Ahmadi—was unloading a box of oranges. I picked up a bunch of bananas, yanked one off and stuffed it into my coat pocket. Then I started to walk away, remembering Astrid’s advice to try to look calm.
A large hand gripped my shoulder. “Young man, you had better come with me.”
* * *
—
Mr. Ahmadi marched me past his wife and took me into a tiny, cramped room at the back of the store. He stared down at me, arms crossed over his barrel chest. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I was shaking, both from my cold and from fear. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I’ve never stolen anything in my life.” This was true. My mom had stolen plenty, but I had not.
“Give me your parents’ number. I am going to call them.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes, I do. It seems to be the only way to get through to you kids that stealing isn’t a joke.”
I gave him my mom’s phone number.
“What’s your name?” he asked as he started to dial.
“Felix. Felix Knutsson.”
“There’s no answer,” he said.
That’s because she’s in a Slump, I thought. “I’ll try her on my phone. She’ll answer if she sees my name come up.”
I dialed. Mr. Ahmadi gestured for me to hand him the phone. “Hello, is this Felix Knutsson’s mother?…I just caught your son stealing a banana. Ahmadi Grocery on Broadway…Yes, that’s right.” When he got off the phone he said, “She’ll be here in half an hour.”
He perched on the small desk. “Do you know how often neighborhood kids try to take things from us? They think it doesn’t matter. But my wife and I, we work hard. Seven days a week. We make a living, but barely. When people steal from us, it hurts. We are the ones who have to cover those costs, and our margins are small enough to begin with.”
I felt so ashamed. “I’m really sorry,” I repeated.
“Why did you do it? A dare? Just for fun?”
I shook my head. “I was hungry.”
He looked me up and down. “You are skinny like a rake. Do you get enough to eat?”
“Yes,” I said. “Most of the time.”
“Hard times at home?”
“Just a rough patch.” Suddenly my stomach growled. It sounded extra loud in the quiet room.
Mr. Ahmadi passed me the banana. “Eat.”
I tried to eat it slowly. But I was so hungry I wound up wolfing it down. Mr. Ahmadi’s expression was unreadable. “Don’t move.” He left the room. I could see him talking to his wife.
A moment later, Mr. Ahmadi returned with two large plastic-wrapped muffins. “My wife says you would be doing us a great favor if you could eat these. The sell-by date is today.”
I ate them both. They were delicious. “Thank you.”
Astrid arrived a few minutes later. She looked like she’d just woken up. “He stole a banana?” she said to Mr. Ahmadi.
“That’s right.”
“How much does a banana cost? Fifty cents?” Astrid pulled out her change purse. She took her time, putting nickels and dimes on the counter while the three of us looked on. I could tell she was trying to make a point, and I hated her for it. “There. There’s your money.”
“Astrid,” I said. “Stop.”
“All this fuss over one lousy piece of fruit.”
Mrs. Ahmadi stiffened. “It isn’t just about the fruit,” she said. “Your boy is hungry.”
Astrid’s fierce expression wavered; she had no retort for that. “Let’s go,” she said to me. She turned to leave.
Mr. Ahmadi fixed his gaze on me. “Stay strong, Felix.”
I felt like they could both see right through me. And that freaked me out, so I just hurried after my mom.
A week passed and Astrid’s Slump showed no signs of letting up. It was her longest yet. “Are you taking your pills?” I asked her one morning.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Had to make a choice this month. Phone bill, or pills.”
I looked after her as well as I could. I made our meals and gave her pep talks. But I also stayed away from the van a lot. I became a fixture at Dylan’s, to the point that one night Mrs. Brinkerhoff insisted on talking to my mom. I called Astrid and handed her my phone. I could hear snippets; Astrid gave the performance of her life. “Working long hours at a new job…grateful to know he’s welcome at your house…so glad our boys have reconnected…I’ll have you for dinner as soon as things settle down.”
Whenever I could get Wi-Fi, I checked my phone for any word from Who, What, Where, When. So far, nothing.
One evening I heard Astrid on her phone as I neared the van.
“Now’s not a great time,” I heard her say. “I’m swamped at this new job.”
Lie.
“I can ask him. But he’s awfully busy at school.”
Lie.
“I think he’s on a field trip this weekend.”
Lie.
I slid open the door to the van. Astrid looked caught.
“Who are you talking to?” I asked in a loud voice. Loud enough that whoever was on the other end would be able to hear me.
Astrid forced a smile. “It’s Daniel.”
My dad.
Daniel is—was—my mom’s best friend.
After Original Felix died, Astrid moved to Toronto to get as far away from the memories, and her parents, as possible. She went to U of T, her third attempt at higher education. She studied anthropology. On a whim, she took a couple of evening classes at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
That’s where she met Daniel Palanquet. Daniel is two years younger than my mom. “He could speak fluent French. He was utterly gorgeous. He was funny, kind, everything I ever wanted in a man,” Astrid told me. “Except he was gay.”
Astrid has told me the story of their friendship many times. They hit it off right away. She dropped out of U of T and enrolled in OCAD full time. The two of them moved in together, living illegally in a warehouse space that was supposed to be for work use only. There was no shower, just a toilet down the hall that they shared with other artists, and a sink that only had a cold-water tap.
But they didn’t care. They were happy. They were artists. They hosted huge parties. And they loved each other. “We were like a couple in every way. Well. Almost every way, if you catch my drift.”
Astrid sometimes overshares.
Daniel stood by my mom through everything. She had a lot of Slumps in the first few years after Original Felix’s death. He’d make sure she ate and got dressed, but he also didn’t tell her to just buck up, or smile, or try to look on the bright side. He understood that it wasn’t that simple.
Things went really well between them for years. They weren’t having any luck getting galleries interested in their work, but they told each other it was only a matter of time till they both got their break.
Then Daniel met a man who was twenty years older than him, named Yves. He moved into Yves’s house in an area of Toronto called Cabbagetown. Astrid wasn’t very nice about it. She made a lot of cracks about the guy’s age, and his wine collection, which was worth more than their rent for an entire year.
She was totally jealous. She says so herself.
A few months later, Daniel and Yves went to Paris for two weeks. Daniel convinced Yves to let Astrid house-sit. He thought he was doing her a favor letting her stay in a house with hot water, a well-stocked fridge and a big TV.
When they came back, everything seemed fine. But over the next few days they realized Yves’s expensive cashmere scarf was missing. As was a very, very old bottle of wine, worth thousands of dollars.
They found the bottle in the recycling bin. When Daniel confronted her, Astrid admitted she’d gone into the off-limits cellar one night, plucked it out and drank it.
Daniel probably could have forgiven that. After all, she didn’t know just how expensive the wine was. But she also told him she had no idea where Yves’s scarf was. So when Daniel dropped by the warehouse unannounced one day and saw the scarf hanging on a hook by the door, he lost it.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Astrid says every time she tells me the story, which she does whenever Daniel pops, briefly, back into our lives. “We didn’t talk for a long time.”
A year went by. Astrid shared the same warehouse space with a string of other people, but none of them lasted for more than a couple of months. She missed Daniel.
“I never thought I wanted a kid. But when I turned thirty-one my biological clock started ticking. None of the guys I knew were even close to father material.”
One day, Mormor called. Astrid’s father, Fredrik, had died of a heart attack.
Even though she had a love/hate relationship with her mom, Astrid knew she couldn’t abandon her. She made arrangements to transfer to Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. It was time to go home.
It was also time to swallow her pride and reach out to Daniel.
They met at their favorite bar. She apologized, for real. She told him about her dad. They sat in the bar for five hours, catching up.
She waited until their third get-together to ask him to be her sperm donor.
“I told him I could think of no better genetic material for fifty percent of my child.” She also told him he wouldn’t have to be involved; she would raise the child on her own, wanted it that way and didn’t want a penny in financial assistance. By this point Daniel and Yves had broken up, and Daniel was working as a gallery assistant, so he didn’t have any money to give.
I don’t know why he agreed. All I know is that he did, because I’m the living proof. I don’t know the details of how, exactly, the transaction went down, nor do I want to. I just know that they signed some sort of legal papers, and a few months later, Astrid was back in British Columbia, living with Mormor and pregnant with me.
Daniel came to Vancouver shortly after I was born and brought a huge gift basket full of baby clothes. He told Astrid that I looked like ET. Since then, I’ve seen him once or twice a year, when he travels out west. He still makes art; from what I’ve seen it’s mostly sculptures that look a lot like Rubik’s Cubes. But he hasn’t sold many pieces, so he still works as a gallery assistant to make ends meet.
I like Daniel. I like knowing he’s out there, even if he is, as Astrid says, “a nineteen-year-old boy trapped in a forty-year-old man’s body.” Sometimes, when she’s being really unkind, she calls him my Sperm Donor Dad.
I don’t like it when she calls him that. Me, I usually just call him Daniel. I mean, if I don’t call my mom Mom, there’s no way I can call him Dad.
But when I climbed into the van and Astrid handed me the phone, I said, “Hi, Dad.” Just to get up her nose. It worked; her lips screwed into a little knot.
“Felix, my man. I just landed in Vancouver. Sorry this is so last-minute, I’m here for a job interview. But Astrid says you’re going away on a field trip—”
“Nope. I’m here.”
“Great! Can we have brunch on Sunday?”
I love brunch. Brunch is the best invention ever. Breakfast and lunch combined—what’s not to like? “Absolutely.”
“I invited your mom, but she says she has plans.”
I locked eyes with Astrid when I answered. “That’s right. She can’t make it. It’ll be just the two of us.”
“Are you guys still living near Burnaby? I don’t have a car, unfortunately.”
“It’s okay. Just pick a place and I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m staying in the West End. Want to go to the Elbow Room?”
“Sure.”
“Eleven?”
“Perfect.”
“All right. See you then, kiddo. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me too.”
Astrid was gazing at me when I hung up. Her forehead was creased with worry.
I just stared right back at her without blinking until she looked away.
* * *
—
We lay in our beds that night, listening to the relentless rain. “Felix,” Astrid said into the darkness. “I know you’re mad at me. And I don’t blame you. But please, don’t tell him anything. I’ll fix this, I will.”
I didn’t answer.
“If you tell him, it might set things in motion, things we can’t stop.”
I watched my breath float through the air. My nose, the only part of me that was poking out from my sleeping bag, was cold. I’d wrapped a towel around Horatio’s cage before it got dark, hoping to help keep him warm.
“You could be taken away from me,” she said.
“Maybe I want to be taken away from you.”
Neither of us spoke after that.
It was a cruel thing for me to say. But I didn’t take it back. Not even when I heard her crying softly, her face buried in her pillow so I wouldn’t hear.
But she was about three feet away from me, so good luck with that.
The Elbow Room is a truly original Vancouver experience. Their breakfasts are awesome, and their waiters are sarcastic and sometimes rude. If you don’t finish the food on your plate, they make you give a
donation to A Loving Spoonful, a local charity that helps people living with AIDS. Their motto is Food and service is our name. Abuse is our game.
I knew beyond a doubt that no one would be getting a donation from me today, because I was ravenous. Plus, I had no money. But I knew it didn’t matter, because Daniel always paid.
“For two,” I said to the waiter at the door. He was tall and lean with spiky hair. He grabbed a couple of menus and led me to a table near the back.
“Coffee?”
“Tea, please. With lots of milk.” I slid into my seat. I’d made up my mind the night before that even if it meant betraying Astrid’s wishes, I would tell Daniel the truth. On the bus I’d calculated roughly how much money we’d need to pay first and last month’s rent on a small apartment, plus two more months as a buffer while Astrid tried to get another job.
I was going to ask Daniel for a loan of five thousand dollars.
My stomach roiled just thinking about it.
The waiter plunked a pot of tea in front of me a few minutes later. I filled my cup halfway, then added a bunch of milk for the calories, and four packets of sugar.
Eleven came and went.
At quarter after eleven, Daniel still hadn’t appeared. I took out my phone to see if he’d texted. The battery was dead. I hadn’t thought to bring my charger.
“Kid, you going to order or what?” asked my waiter. His name tag read QUENTIN.
“I’m meeting my dad. He’s late.”
“Well, he has five more minutes before I give this table to someone else. I’ve got to make a living, you know.”
I felt a rush of panic. All I had with me was my bus pass. I wondered if they’d let me wash dishes to pay for the tea, the way you sometimes saw in the movies.
At 11:20, Daniel still hadn’t shown up. Quentin slapped down the bill for the tea on the table. “Okay, kid, hit the road. Pay at the till.”
I’m ashamed of what happened next.
Tears filled my eyes. They must have been lurking really close by, because they appeared immediately, plopping one after another onto the table.