Evelyn Toronto
Evelyn
Toronto
2004
Shivering from a cold that had worked its way into her bones, Evelyn put her key in the lock. Large chunks of snow fell from her coat and hat, and as she hung them, she paused to let the hook hold a fraction of her weight.
The living room was empty; the kitchen, too. Kareela was likely in bed, Kingsley in his study. She stared at the closed door, trying to imagine what work could keep him so cloistered over Christmas vacation. She had a mind to burst through the door, tell him to get it together. Start living. Disenfranchised grief? Well, it didn’t have to be an excuse. They could choose to be acceptable. Grieve how society expected. Go on with their lives, even if life had stopped feeling worth living.
She stepped toward the door, stopped. She couldn’t tell him what to do, how to handle this grief that could not be handled, just as no one could tell her. They were separate now, the bullets that tore through Antony tearing through the union she’d once thought unbreakable.
She turned, her hand on the door of the shrine she’d unwittingly allowed Antony’s room to become. Five months since her son had entered this room. More than three since she had.
Evelyn slipped inside. She started with the wall. Posters of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday and, finally, Dudley Laws and Charles Roach, local activists Evelyn had only learned about in her weeks of research. She wondered, staring at the images of these two men, if they were who she should have gone to. If they were the ones who could have stood beside her, started a rally cry. If they were even still living.
But it was too late for that now. She took down the posters, folded them, piled them on Antony’s bed, then started for the closet. She pulled out sweaters and shirts, jeans and sweats. She emptied his drawers, making trips to the kitchen and then the basement for bags and boxes. Returning to his desk, she opened the drawer she’d stored her research in, then piled the papers in a box marked for recycling. Another drawer held folders, binders, and file folders full of old schoolwork. She kept the essays, depositing them into a box she’d labeled “Antony” in big black marker. She discarded the tests and math equations and notepapers, then opened another drawer full of pens and markers, rulers, tape, and Wite-Out. It made sense to keep them, let Kareela use them one day, use this desk, too. But would she be able to look at her daughter, sitting at the same desk Antony had? Could she crouch over her to help with homework, knowing her son had held the same pen?
She closed the drawer. She’d decide later. She went to the bed, picked up the pillow, pressed it to her face. Not even the faded scent of chlorine from Kareela’s curls lingered. She let the pillow fall, then pulled off the quilt, the sheets. She should wash them before putting them in a bag for Goodwill, but that was asking too much—all that water and soap flushing away fragments of Antony, his DNA, that still lingered. She held the fabric against her, then spread her fingers to the edges, snapped, folded, and stuffed the sheets in a donation box. Someone else could be the one to send those last remnants of her son down the drain.
She returned to a bag of clothes, rooted through, finding Antony’s YMCA sweater, which he’d gotten the summer he was a camp counselor. He wore it so much over the years, the fabric was threadbare. She added it to the Antony box, then continued working, until the room, too, was threadbare, nothing but a stripped bed, desk, dresser, and a pile of bags and boxes.
Waves of something she couldn’t quite label—heavy and uncomfortable—pushed along the muscles of her chest. She opened the door and dragged two of the bags up the hall.
“Evelyn?” Kingsley stood in the living room, the TV flickering behind him. “Where were you? When did you get home?”
“A while ago.” Evelyn yanked the heavy bags, then thrust them up against the wall by the front door.
“What are you doing?”
“Cleaning out his room.”
“What?” Kingsley stepped forward, his eyes wide and frantic.
Evelyn looked up at him, her hands on her hips, her heart thumping from the effort of dragging the too-full bags. “Cleaning out—”
Kingsley rushed past her. He stepped through the half-open door. Evelyn followed, watching his shoulders rise, then fall. He spun. “Are you insane!”
“We’re not—”
“How could you…without even talking to me?”
“I—”
“You just packed him away.” He stepped back, as if from some terrifying threat. “Why?”
“Because why wouldn’t we?” Evelyn’s arms fell to her side. “Are we going to leave it like this, untouched, unused, collecting dust for a year? Two? Ten?” She paused. “So if not, why not now?”
“Why ever?”
“Kingsley.”
“I use it.” He turned from her, his hand on the wall where the Billie Holiday poster had been, the paint slightly brighter than the rest. “I come here.”
“What?”
“I look at his yearbooks. I sit on his bed. I touch his clothes.”
A shiver of uncertainty spread through Evelyn.
“Not every day. But I do. I have.” He turned to her, achingly fragile, his expression sending stabs of guilt, like pinpricks to her heart. “So what if it’s a shrine? What’s wrong with that? He deserves a shrine. He deserves a place we can remember.”
Moisture sprung to Evelyn’s eyes. She reached out, wanting to breach this chasm between them. “I…” Her hand fell as he stared at her with something, not hate exactly, but something too close to it for comfort, in his eyes. “I’ll put it back. All of it.”
He turned from her. “There’s no point.” And she heard what she’d been hearing for months, the refrain that had been playing in her mind, in her sleep, from the moment she put away her research and closed Antony’s door. No point. No reason for any of it. Their son had died for nothing. Kingsley surveyed the room. “You were just going to get rid of it. All of it.”
“I kept a couple of boxes.” She pointed to the two marked Antony. “Keepsakes.”
He nodded, his shoulders drooped. “Let me look through, before getting rid of the rest. I may have my own things to keep.”
“I should have asked. I should have thought.”
“Just…” Kingsley paused, his face looking as if it were about to crumble. “Why?”
How to explain? She’d have to start with forgetting Kareela’s birthday. Then on to the church basement, all those sad people who, as far as she could see, had succumbed to their grief, not even looking for a way out. How that couldn’t be her. She had a child to take care of, a house to pay the mortgage on, a family to keep.
It would take more words than they’d exchanged in months, and, inevitably, those words would fall short.
“Violet,” she said, the idea forming like a light rising out of the fog. “I thought we could invite Violet. And if we were to invite her to stay, we should have a place for her. A place that could be her own.”
Kingsley stared blankly, as if she spoke in some unknown language.
“An extended stay. It could be good…for all of us. You always said you never really got a chance to know her—being taken from her home when you were just a boy. Plus, Kareela is her only grandchild now, and she’s only met her twice. She went back so quickly last time.”
“She had to get back to the store. And Chevelle. You know Chevelle can’t manage on her own too long. It’s too much burden on the neigh—”
“Maybe it’s time Violet sold the store,” said Evelyn, the idea spreading like salvation. “Or found a long-term manager.” So Violet could be here to help take care of Kareela, of Kingsley, of her. “And Chevelle has a fella now, doesn’t she? I’m sure he could look out for her. It wouldn’t have to be so rushed this time.” Violet, to help lighten the load.
Kingsley scratched his head, exhaustion drawing down his features. “I don’t think she’d want to. Jamaica’s her home.”
“But we could ask. Tell her we have a room for her. Tell her we want her.”
He sighed, his eyes traveling over the bags and boxes. “We can ask. Just”—he stepped forward, his hand gesturing—“don’t take anything out. Not yet. I’m too tired tonight. But I’ll look soon.”
Evelyn nodded, then stepped aside as Kingsley walked into the hall. She leaned against the doorframe.
Violet. To remember birthdays and Christmas. Violet, who’d lost two children of her own but still managed to smile. Violet, who during Evelyn’s time in Jamaica, had become the mother Evelyn hadn’t even known how much she needed.