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mother.’
    â€˜But that’s not real love. That’s theoretical love. Like theoretically, I am deserving of your love because I am your daughter. But do you feel love for me?’
    â€˜How would you describe that?’
    â€˜There is no description. It just is. Everyone knows that one.’
    That night she got out the toothbrush for the first time.
    Last night was the third.
    This is the letter I rolled into a scroll and placed in the cold but firm chlorine hand of the Turban while the Mime, tenor, said, ‘Promise.’ This is what should be in the mail by now, and maybe, just maybe, open on Finbar’s kitchen table, his exploded face above it.
    June 8, 1981
    Dear I. I. Finbar Me the Three
Handsome Funambulist and Colossal Menagerie,
    I will keep this brief as you are either very old or very dead.
Though the unauthorized autobiography I have has been largely
distressed by my father’s palette knife, you are, by my
calculations, eighty – if you are even living. I am nine.
My name is Eugenia. My address is Number 101 Dunn
Avenue in the City of Toronto, Mother Six Kidlet Two
Robber Eight. I weigh eighty-five pounds. I am five feet tall.
My mother is Mink. My sister, Immaculata. My father, Sheb
Wooly Ledoux, portraitist. Last night, my father vanished. He
left a note behind that did not include my name. I took this to
be a sign that he was coming back for me. I think I was
wrong. I think he might be on his way to you. This may take
a while. He is not one for straight lines. In the meantime, if I
had two words written on my eyelids and I was blinking, you
would read: Rescue. Urgent. Rescue. Urgent. Rescue. Urgent.
Sheb is a forthcoming sort. Forgive him this. And please forgive
his lunatic ranting. Forgive him this at least until I get there
too. If in doubt, give him an apple.
    Whether this letter will even find you is another matter
altogether, and one that I have little choice but to leave in
the hands of two singing police officers.
    Eugenia Ledoux
    We sit in your studio and listen to Merilee Rush and the Turnabouts sing ‘Angel of the Morning’ for an entire day. Juice Newton just came out with a version, but this is the original and you insist on originals. You do not paint. A new canvas sits on your easel in the corner, a face waiting to be filled in. It is really just an eye. A left eye, floating. The only event of the day is the song. You say that you need to
understand the song
!We sit on the floor cross-legged like sages, reflecting each other – my hair, your hair, your eyes, my eyes, my face, your face. We listen, and every time it finishes you leap up, move the needle back again, scratch, scratch, to the beginning.
    A hundred listens later, your beard that much thicker, as I am about to spell it out, you finally proclaim, ‘I get it, Eugenius, I get it.’
    â€˜What?’ I pounce back.
    â€˜She is saying goodbye. She is saying goodbye before she has to, while she still has the chance.’
    The needle bumps over the blank space at the end of the record – a message being nervously tapped out. The unfinished face is your face. I look away from it to you. Tears skip into your eyes. And with that I see there is a whole layer of sadness to the world that I have not yet begun to uncover.
    June 9, 1981 . The backyard. Your funeral. Mother Mink Ledoux in black. Gloves and two girdles. Sister Immaculata Ledoux in white. Both: hair lined up and soldiered into braids. I am in your pinstripe suit, the one you left behind. Cut and sewed and shrunk. Cowboy boots too. Found glowing and snorting in a corner of the closet; I step into them, they fit.
    You must have left barefoot. In your black suit. Your winter suit.
    You have moved from the ravine now. South. Probably to a rooming house on Shuter Street. You are gathering your wits. Deciding on your next move. You have not slept since you left home. Your body is the hand of an elderly woman reaching for a teacup: