Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
2001
After the break-in all those years ago in Jamaica, Kingsley and Evelyn had sat at their kitchen table, dinner uneaten, staring at each other as they imagined all that could have happened. All that may happen in the days and weeks to come.
“You called the police?” Kingsley had nudged his untouched plate away from himself.
Still trembling, Evelyn nodded.
“And they didn’t come?”
She shook her head—trying not to relive that blast of fear at the shuffling under the bed, the terror that followed as the man scrambled out from under it.
Kingsley’s voice lowered to a growl. “Those dogs.”
“It’s not their fault.” Evelyn reached her hand out, resting it on Kingsley’s. When she’d gotten the animals to settle, she’d seen traces of fur, meat, and blood in their mouths. Drawn away, most likely, by an accomplice with roadkill who figured he’d left enough time for his comrade to get in, raid the place, and get out, unaware that Evelyn had arrived home in the midst of it, leaving the intruder trapped.
Kingsley’s fist clenched, the veins in his arms rising into long, angry cords. Evelyn uncurled his fingers and rubbed hers along his palm. “It could have been worse. We’re lucky.”
“Exactly.” Moisture glistened in Kingsley’s eyes. “It could have been so much worse. He could have done anything—to you, to him.” He gestured to the bedroom, where Antony lay in his bassinet. “It’s getting bad out there. Scary. You don’t know.”
“I know.”
Kingsley’s voice deepened, the urgency of it making the hair on the back of Evelyn’s neck rise. “You don’t.” He told her what her friends had. The bodies he’d seen. More. How every day, the tensions were building. How in the past few months, it’d risen to a fever pitch. “I’ve applied to City University,” he said. “In Toronto. For my PhD. I’ve gotten in. With a partial scholarship.”
The air around them buzzed and pulsed, muffling words she wished she hadn’t heard. “Toronto?”
“I didn’t tell you. I know I should have, but I thought it was such a long shot. I thought…” Kingsley hesitated. “I know you said when you married me that this was your home now, that you had no intention of going back.”
“I don’t.”
“But we have to. We have to get out. There’s no life for us here, no future.”
“You don’t know that.” Evelyn pulled her hand from his, the air still thick, weighted with the bitterness of betrayal—that he’d made the choice to apply without her, that, as far as she could tell, they’d be leaving whether she liked it or not.
“I’ll get my degree in a few years. And if things get better, we can return. If not, with your citizenship, we should be able to stay.”
“You don’t know what it’s like.” Evelyn stood. She turned from him, paced this house she’d chosen, in the country she’d decided to make her life in, raise a family in, leaving everything from the past behind. “The cold. You couldn’t handle it.”
“We’ll get parkas.”
“I don’t just mean temperature-wise.” She turned back to him. “I did my training in Toronto. People don’t talk to each other. There’s no community. It’s dirty.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“How? We’ll have no money. No support.” Evelyn sat back down, placing both her hands on his. “The gals were telling me the government has gone crazy. We’d have to leave the house. We’d only be allowed to take a hundred dollars each out of the country. We’d have to start over with nothing!”
“But we’d have a start,” he said. “We’d have our lives. And there are ways to get more money out.”
“Illegal ways.”
“Then we’ll break the law.”
Toronto. Canada. A place she’d fled, vowing never to return, the entire country tainted with the memories of her childhood—her father’s fists, her mother’s cries, her own perpetual fear. Growing up, she thought she’d never have children, never have her own family, for fear that any man could one day morph into her father, and that even if he didn’t, her father, always, could find her, hurt her—and them.
But then she’d stepped off the plane in Kingston, and all that panic seemed to melt away. She’d felt safe. She’d felt far enough removed that the looming shadow of terror her father cast couldn’t reach her. She’d met Kingsley and known, within days, that he could never be the man her father was. That with him, she would be safe. That any children they had would be safe, too.
She turned back, hands on hips, anger and understanding swirling within her as she stared at the man she’d put her trust in, who was asking this of her: to keep them safe. “I don’t know…”
“You’re right. You don’t know.” Kingsley’s voice broke, his eyes closed. “Omar.”
“Wha—”
“Cherry’s son. He went into town for some produce. The people were protesting. The bullets started—”
“No!” A sharp burst of anguish shot through Evelyn’s core. “He’s twelve.”
Kingsley yanked his forearm across his eyes, smearing the wetness there. “If we want to keep our lives”—he gestured down the hall again—“keep his, we have to leave.”
Evelyn had nodded, then put her hand in his once more, entwining their fingers. And in the days and weeks to come, as their community shrank, she saw, more and more, the truth in his words. Many fled. Others didn’t have the chance: her director at the Red Cross, one of her fellow teachers, two more neighbors, caught in the crossfire.
Evelyn jumped at the sound of her name, then turned to see Kingsley, suddenly two decades older, standing in the shadows. She leaned forward in the rocking chair, her gaze on him as he crossed the room, then sat. “I think of those days a lot,” he said. “The weeks and months before we left.”
“This isn’t there,” she whispered, the memory of that night at the kitchen table, her hand on his as he’d revealed his decision to bring them here, so fresh in her mind.
“It could be.”
“Here,” she said, “police don’t stand on corners with machine guns. Here, people don’t run through the streets wielding machetes. Here, it’s safe.” She paused. “Safer.”
“But not safe enough.” Kingsley shook his head. “Where does it come from? This political obsession. This…I don’t know.” He slumped. “I just want to shake it out of him.” Kingsley held up his arms and shook them.
Evelyn met the eyes of this man she’d loved almost since the first moment they’d met, with whom, despite the struggles, the secrets, the ways in which they hardly knew each other at all, she’d made a life, a family.
She wanted to comfort him, but also, she wanted to see him heal the fractured relationship he had with the son they had upended their lives to protect. “Maybe we shouldn’t fight him on this.” She spoke slowly, her tone soft, hoping it would help him listen, consider. “Maybe we should try to meet him halfway.”
“It’s foolishness!” Kingsley cut his eyes at her. “The boy missing an exam for a rally. Not even a rally, to prep for it. As if what little difference they could make would compare to throwing away his life, his future.”
“Do you want to lose him over it?” Evelyn leaned forward. “Have him stop coming home? Or, maybe worse, do you want to win, and see the passion fade from his eyes?”
Kingsley’s head shook.
Evelyn interlaced her fingers with his, the same way she had that night a lifetime ago. “I don’t think we could stop him, even if we tried. We’re definitely not going to yell it out of him, so maybe…” She hesitated, torn between wanting to support both of her men, not knowing how, but desperate to figure it out. “Maybe we try to understand him, listen instead of argue, and help him understand us, what we’ve been through, what we know that he doesn’t. We came here to protect him from that, but maybe protecting him now means letting him know.”
“I don’t want to dredge any of that up. He’s not stupid. He’s so interested in the past. He must know what happened in Jamaica, the fighting, the killing. Know and not care. Know and think he’s immune.” Kingsley clenched his fists. “It’s too dangerous, what he’s doing. And where will it lead?”
Evelyn inhaled, choosing her words carefully; their best bet of reaching Antony was to remain a team. United. “Your father wanted certain things for you, and mostly, you listened. But maybe that’s because those were the things you wanted for yourself. Antony’s different than you, than us, and maybe that’s okay, if the path he takes isn’t—”
“We’ve worked so hard to make a life for him here, to provide a future.”
“One missed exam won’t destroy that.”
“It’s a pattern.”
Evelyn nodded, seeing it, too, fearing it, but fearing more the loss of her son, the resentment that could build from these arguments, that could one day push him so far away they’d be lucky to receive a card at Christmas. “Well, maybe it’s a pattern we can alter. Suggest he finish out this semester with focus, there’s only a few weeks left, then next semester take fewer classes, giving him time to focus on his future and his passion. Like you said, both, if he must.”
Kingsley shook his head, brow furrowed, but didn’t argue.
“So we try,” said Evelyn, despite his actual agreement. “Pose the suggestion. Say if he graduates, he can continue to live here, rent free.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We cross that bridge when we come to it.”