The Age Page 23

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  Outside, a clump of wheelchairs blocks the door, residents in robes and gowns, a bald woman with tubes up her nose. A man in street clothes leans against a pillar, smokes with his back to the entrance, wavy grey hair tangled and dirty-looking. As Gerry passes him, a sound catches her, a jingle of coins. She circles around and checks his face, then steps in front of him. He looks up, shakes his head, waggles his cigarette. “Last one.”

  “Dennis, right?”

  The coins clatter faster.

  “I was at Clem’s.”

  His gaze rests on something beyond her, smoke curls up into his nostrils. The door swooshes open behind them, and he nods with recognition. “You’re the kid.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  He grins, tiny yellow teeth darkened around the edges, points his cigarette. “Why? She forget to leave you your allowance?”

  “I have to talk to her. About Ian.” She waits for the name to register with him, for a shadow of respect to pass over his face.

  Dennis sways on his heels, stares past her as if he hasn’t heard.

  “She’ll be wanting to see me. To explain things.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Where is she?”

  “Who knows? She’s long gone.” He shakes his head. “Probably getting the hero’s treatment. That was one helluva fireworks display.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “These things never go as planned.”

  “A person died.”

  Dennis shrugs. “Whatever happened had to happen.”

  “I need to talk to her.”

  Lazy eyelids droop over his gaze. “She doesn’t need to talk to you. A thing like that, it gives you troubles to wrestle. Lifelong troubles. Her battle’s just beginning. Not that you’d understand.”

  “You weren’t even there.”

  The coins stop. She expects him to get angry. Instead, his face softens and opens. He draws his hand out of his pocket.

  Because of its constant jittering, the hand appears, at first, to be a fist bound in strips of brown tape. Until she makes out the crude thumb and pinky poking out at each end, burnt skin binding the knuckles in folds and puckers in between.

  “Homemade.” His cheeks puff as he blows the sound of an explosion through his teeth, widens his eyes and mouth in mock amazement, then arcs back in a mime of trying to shield himself. He laughs at his own performance. “The thing about self-sacrifice is, you have to have the stomach for it.” He nudges the twitching limb toward her face. Gerry rears back, turns her head so she doesn’t have to look.

  Dennis laughs, flicks his cigarette into the air, shoves his hand into his pocket as he heads for the entrance.

  WHEN HER MOM DISCOVERS the notice for Henry’s funeral in the newspaper, she stares at Gerry, mouth open, a piece of half-buttered toast in her hand. “Henry,” is all she says as she slides the newspaper over. The photo shows a younger Henry, tan, with thick sideburns and darker hair, below his picture, details of a service arranged by the station. Gerry skims her bare feet over the cold tile floor, stares at Henry’s name until her eyes refuse to focus. Her mom shakes her head and pulls Gerry close. “It might help to talk about it,” she says. Gerry can only poke at her cornflakes and shrug.

  Someone at her mom’s work recommends a doctor, an expensive trauma specialist. In the car, Gerry’s mind feels blank as glass. The city pummelled with spring rain. Despite the day’s gloom, her mom is giddy with hope. Gerry can’t bear to look at her, turns to face the window, breathes its dank smell.

  “I think the doctor will have some answers.”

  Gerry tries to block out her voice, lets the drag of the wipers whine in her ears. On the streets, drains flood up into long, mucky lakes, bus tires spray waves onto the sidewalk. The car drifts, loses traction on skiffs of water as they stop and start, sloshed by the downpour. Even inside the car, she feels as if she’s drowning, an undertow in her stomach. “Pull over.” She fiddles with the door lock.

  “What is it?” The car’s turn signal clacks, her mom erect with instant alarm. The tires skid as Gerry swings open her door. “Do you need to be sick?”

  Gerry leans down, stares at the muddy stream beside the curb, a sludge of garbage and dead blossoms. Her stomach seizes, but nothing moves. She waits, listens to the rain patter the car, then closes the door.

  “Are you okay?”

  Beside them, a fire station, a school field strewn with litter. Red trucks sleep behind the panelled glass door, excused from emergencies. She stares at her hands.

  The words come slowly at first. Each phrase plugged with tears releases the truth a fragment at a time. She tells the story backward, begins with the pool, the walk home, then the rally. When she says Ian’s name, her body stops her completely, a soundless sob. The telling brings no relief.

  She watches her mom’s face, the crease of her forehead, the squint in her eyes, searches for signs of her closing off, proof that when they arrive home, she will vacate herself, her heart, be polite and efficient, and beyond reach.

  Her mom blinks. Tears spill over the rims of her eyes. She breathes through open lips. “I don’t know what to say.” Her face crumples, but quickly she collects herself. “You know, I feel like some stupid, useless child.” She laughs as she brushes the tears from her chin. “All this time, I was supposed to be taking care of you. What was I doing? What was I doing?” Her hands smack her face. “What kind of mother are you!” She hits herself again and again.

  Gerry tries to reach for her. Her mom folds over the steering wheel. Gerry can only wait, slip her arm under her mom’s, feel for a sign of closeness between them.

  Her mom stops beside a phone booth, stares at it through the rain. “I don’t think you understand how serious this is. What they could do to you.”

  If Gerry closes her eyes, she can feel Ian behind her, the tug as she let the knapsack slip from her arms. She wonders if it happened then, while she was struggling with Megan, the plastic tab cracking, tearing away. Or whether it was earlier, her carelessness in the crowd. “I understand.”

  “I know he was your friend. But this won’t bring him back. He was trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  “I’ll go on my own if you’re not going to take me.”

  “Gerry.” Her mom’s face is tight with defeat.

  She watches as her mom stands in the phone booth, digs through her wallet for a business card, then punches the number in, plugs her ear to speak, nods as she listens, quickly, then slowly, the person on the other end carrying the conversation. Her mom gets back into the car, her clothes splotched with rain. “He agrees with me. You don’t have to do this. We could just wait and see what happens.”

  Gerry shakes her head.

  “Okay.” Her mom sighs. “He’ll meet us there in two hours.”

  Gerry starts to shiver, her body prickling with cold. She pulls her jacket tight.

  “Here.” Her mom slides her seat back. Her hands guide Gerry to crawl over the console, the gearshift. Gerry settles in her mom’s lap, wedged by the steering wheel. Her mom strokes her face, rocks her, shields her from window’s harsh light.

  They park outside the police station. Her mom fills the time with worried glances, questions about whether Gerry is hungry or thirsty or cold. Policemen walk to and from the building, guns in holsters, batons dangling. Gerry waits for one to approach their car, to ask her to step out and turn around, and handcuff her. When someone does finally approach, it’s a shadow on her mom’s side, a tap at her window. “You stay here, okay?” She nods as if she herself isn’t sure, then unlocks the door, steps out with her purse clutched in her hand. Gerry turns in her seat as they round the back of the car and stand on the sidewalk. A man in a suit carries a briefcase. They talk for a few minutes under his umbrella, her mom gripping the strap of her purse. Gerry hears the man say, “Okay,” and her mom approaches Gerry’s door, opens it. “Sweetheart, you remember Larry? You’ve spoken to him on the phone?”
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  She always imagined Larry Walsh Esquire as a cartoon, a heavy man with porklike wrists and bright pink skin. He stands before her tall and slim with tidy grey hair and a warm, narrow smile. Fear bubbles up as panicked laughter she has to bite her cheeks to fight. As he squats in front of her, the hem of his raincoat drags on the pavement. “They’ll just want to talk to you today, get your statement. Probably a few police officers, a lawyer for the Crown, they’ll have a video camera in the room.”

  The mention of a video camera makes Gerry start to cry. The shock of actions recorded and preserved.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  She feels like an animal he’s trying to calm. It isn’t a bad feeling.

  “I’ll be sitting right beside you. Your mother will be watching from outside the room.”

  Larry Walsh steps back and her mom leans down into the car. “I’m not going home without you.”

  The police station begins like a dream. Even as she answers their questions, her voice is not her own. The descriptions she gives them, of Megan, of Andri and Michelle, are like descriptions of strangers. When she tells them about testing the device and Michelle’s family farm, two men hurry out of the room.

  As the questions go on, she feels as if she’s suffocating, has to remind herself to breathe. She worries about feeling dizzy, about the floor tipping under her feet. Larry asks them to bring her a soda, and she sips it slowly, a syrupy trickle in her mouth.

  Details are what break the spell: the small red light of the video camera, the dusty rows of venetian blinds, the wire grid embedded in the room’s windows, the way the other lawyer’s chewed-up Bic looks like a tube of crushed glass. Her voice settles in her body, a vessel of shame and guilt. They ask her to repeat her answers, her voice too distorted by emotion to be heard clearly on the tape. When she talks about Ian, the words come out a mess and everyone clambers for her to slow down, forget about elementary school and summer holidays, focus on the group, the march. Their questions about Ian are pointed and sneering. By the way they say his name, lean into each other, she can tell they have no interest in accidents, in Ian’s attempts to keep her safe. No one believes she was the one making the drop. The more she talks, the further the truth is buried.

  At the end of the interview, Larry Walsh uses words Gerry doesn’t understand: coercion, duress, diminished capacity. He makes the men an offer, her testimony against the others for a lesser charge as a minor. She remembers Andri’s talk of prison and feels like she might be sick. A bitter worm of acid pushes up in her throat. She holds her arm against her stomach. The policemen shake their heads. One of them says, “Not on the floor” and slides a metal garbage can beside her chair. The other lawyer nods, cleans his glasses with a wrinkled handkerchief, says he’ll take it all under consideration.

  Outside the police station, her mom and Larry talk under his umbrella while Gerry waits in the car. Distance makes her mom a stranger, an elegant woman with wavy hair, a straight back, elbow hard over her purse as she talks to a handsome man, and Gerry wonders at the life her mom might have had without her father, without her.

  “He’s hopeful,” her mom says as she gets into the car. “He said we should stay positive.” Washed by tears and rain, her face looks girlish and delicate, the ribbon-fold edges of her mouth, freckle dust over her cheeks. Gerry imagines her mom before she was married, gentle and optimistic, smart enough to study chemistry, certain and secure. She touches her mom’s fingers, traces the divot left by her wedding ring.

  “I always wore that thing too tight.”

  Gerry rubs to smooth the dented skin. “Do you ever wish you didn’t have me?”

  Her mom’s face pinches, concerned. “Never.”

  “It’s okay for you to say so.”

  “Why would you think such a thing? Is that how I make you feel?”

  “You got stuck with me. It wasn’t exactly fair.”

  “I didn’t get stuck with you, I fought for you. I wanted you. Even before I met him, I wanted you.”

  “You wanted a family.”

  Her mom’s eyes crinkle. She holds open her hands. “Ta-da.”

  Gerry sniffles. “Oh, is that what this is?” She wipes her face with her sleeve.

  Her mom smiles at the sarcasm, a gentle, closed-lip smile, her gaze warm and unwavering as she brushes a hand over Gerry’s head. “That’s what this is.”

  THE BOY RETURNS TO FIND THE GIRL pacing the cabin, nipples leaking into her dress. As he hands her the baby, she searches his face, grateful but wary. The baby wails until she latches, then sucks with fervour, fingers flexing. The boy circles the cabin, gathers items into a sack.

  What are you doing?

  He opens and closes drawers. The baby isn’t safe here.

  The girl looks down at the feeding child, then back at the boy, her eyes frantic. Why? What happened?

  He ignores her questions, knows she will go along.

  She swaddles the baby in a folded bedsheet, stuffs rags between the layers for warmth. He ties two sacks of meagre possessions across his back. They wait for night, for the huddle of men to move away from the campfire and out into the woods. The boy and girl trail far behind, then continue deeper into the forest after the men turn for the road. He braces the girl as she stumbles in the dark, tries to guide her. The white circle of his flashlight dances at her feet.

  When the sky lightens, they rest, sleep against each other on the forest floor. They head east, through the cover of trees just above the water line. They walk for two nights without food, drink muddy stream water that the boy sieves through a shirt into their mouths.

  The baby cries for hours, the girl’s breasts flatten, her legs buckle from walking too long. As they settle again to sleep at dawn, it comes to the boy that they are walking to their deaths, the three of them wasting to skeletons amidst the deadwood of the forest. He curses his instincts, whatever tricks of mind led him to torture his own wife and child. The gun he brought, a small pistol from behind a panel in the writer’s desk, he imagined for hunting, but more and more he thinks he will have to use it to end the girl’s suffering if the baby dies. As the girl sleeps, the boy prays into the baby’s swaddle, begs her to stay alive.

  The boy’s prayers are answered. The next night, a glow on the beach in front of them. A fire. They pad down softly through the trees, hide as they watch. The aroma of cooking meat brings tears to the boy’s eyes. There are many, thin but not weak. Each moves with purpose, stacks wood, passes utensils, turns food on a grate over the fire. A gale of laughter rises. A group of women. Farther down the beach, more gather by the water. The baby starts to cry.

  Faces turn. Those around the fire remain still. Those closer to the water hurry up the beach, stand between the campfire and the forest. The boy recognizes the slap of metal and wood: at least one has raised a rifle in their direction.

  Come down from there! Now!

  The girl nudges the boy. He scuttles ahead, reluctant, looks back over his shoulder at her and the baby. As they approach, the boy sees that three women have stepped forward. Two hold long loops of rope, ready beside the one with the gun.

  The boy stops, raises his arm, and helps the girl manoeuvre the sandy rocks before the beach. He holds the crying baby while the girl climbs down in front of him, then passes the bundle to her. She shakes as she stands above the women in the camp, their bodies alert and sinewy. He watches as she tries to mask her fear by jiggling the baby. The baby writhes and fusses, lets out an indignant wail. Some of the women laugh, eyes blinking in wonder. The woman with the rifle keeps her gun on the boy.

  The boy knows the women will invite the girl to stay, ask him to leave, and, when they do, the girl will refuse, follow him instead. But he has nothing left to offer her. The weakness he tried to escape has followed him, belongs to him. Inside he still feels like a child, a boy, unskilled at taking care. All along he has relied on the girl’s strength.

  He steps back into the shadows, the baby’s name on his lips. Wit
h each step, a picture of who she will be through the months and years grows in his imagination, until over the rise of a hill, crouched in a nest of boulders, it explodes in his mind like a star. So that when the girl turns around, an easy smile on her face, she finds nothing behind her but a distant echo, a shiver of light through the dark stretch of trees.

  THE DAY BEFORE HENRY’S FUNERAL, a postcard arrives through the mail as if through a time machine. A massive cloud of ash erupts from the peak of Mount St. Helens. On the back: love, Henry in a flourished scrawl.

  Gerry and her mom arrive early, wait in the car. Buffered against the cold morning wind, they watch each guest cross the grass to the small white canopy.

  The rows of chairs fill before the service begins. A carpet of faded Astroturf twists and buckles under their shoes as they find a spot along the side, stand next to a television camera. Henry’s coffin, plain, polished wood, rests on a heavy brass frame at the front. On an easel, a blown-up version of the newspaper photograph, Henry with lean cheeks and mischievous eyes. Gerry tries to read the program with its many thank-yous to donors but finds herself distracted by the men in the crowd, a likeness to Henry that unsettles her, until she places it: local talent, the same shiny suits, the same on-air posture and moulded hair.

  After a droning eulogy, colleagues rise to share their stories. How Henry spent months in Africa covering famine relief, how as a cub reporter on the crime beat he made a point of eating his breakfast at the morgue, and how for two decades as an anchor he tossed the same fifty-cent coin before every broadcast, refused to take his seat until it came up heads. Gerry stuffs her hand into her pocket, runs her fingers over the ragged edge of the postcard, clings to the Henry she knows.

  Mrs. Cross’s arrival takes Gerry by surprise, her careful steps, her wiry frame in a stiff black coat. She enters alone, unnoticed except by a man on the far side of the canopy who stands to offer his seat. A ball of tissue gripped in her hand, she sits on the edge of the chair, shoulders forward, knees to the side, as if she might leave at any second. She wipes at her nose and eyes, and Gerry wonders if, in spite of everything, she still thought of herself as Henry’s wife, if the feeling of family was difficult to undo. Out on the road, a car slows to drop off latecomers. Gerry turns, feels her mom turn with her, waits as driver and passengers emerge.