Lands and Forests

by Andrew Forbes

  I lay listening to her breathe, and to the traffic, and the dogs. She slept, finally, without me ever knowing what it was that set her off. I drifted off, too.

  In the morning, I woke in a panic and had to call in to say I’d be late.

  “It’s my daughter,” I said.

  ***

  Candace had always been a good sleeper, quick to go off and hard to wake, but that seemed to be gone. The next night, she again awoke frantic, and would fight sleep in the evenings that followed with a screaming desperation which frightened and frustrated me.

  It wasn’t until one evening, many weeks later, that she finally fell quietly asleep: in the back seat, as we went to pick a few things up at the store.

  So began a period when, every night after dinner, I’d take her for a drive. We’d eat and I’d wash up, then maybe read a book with her or watch something, and then I’d put her in her PJs and we’d get into the car and go. She would start pointing out things she saw, or asking me questions about the things we passed, then she’d grow quiet, and soon, usually by the time we hit the limits of Yuma, she’d drift off.

  It felt fragile to me, her sleep, so I’d drive around awhile longer. A lot of nights I’d head for a turnoff I’d found up in the hills, east of the city. Just a little spot where you can duck off the highway, a gravel patch that peeks from between some hills, back toward the city. I’d pull off and park there, and I’d listen to the radio softly.

  I still believe in radio, in the waves that float through our lives, available for capture. A way to communicate, a way to pass information, a way to feel a part of human enterprise. Words and music. Everywhere I go I am aware that I am passing through radio signals, and that they are passing through me. I’m happy they’re there, and that they’re free.

  What I found, sitting up there and scanning the dial, were signals rising up from Mexico. I do not speak Spanish, nor understand it, but I found these stations mesmerizing and, in a way, comforting. A world right there, next to me, that I did not know but which beat on anyway. It was the narcocorrido songs that caught my attention most: earnest, dramatic songs about the drug wars. Folk heroes. They seemed cut out of time, or as if I’d found myself in some pocket of the past. Parked up there, with a partial view of Yuma’s twinkling lights, and the soft night air, Candace would sleep in her car seat, and I would sit and listen to that music, trying to imagine an outlaw’s life.

  ***

  A month passed, six weeks. I was beginning to despair a bit where Shona was concerned, thinking I’d misread her desire to be with me, but then she told me one night that she’d decided to come see us. It both surprised and pleased me.

  “You mean that?” I said.

  “Are you happy?” she asked.

  “Jesus, Shon, I’m. Yes. When?”

  “Second week of March,” she said.

  It wasn’t so far off. Just a few weeks. I wanted to tidy up my life ahead of her arrival, so I cleaned the house top to bottom. I hung photos on the walls. I bought new cutlery. Got a haircut. Took Candace to a little salon and got her all cleaned up. I went to a mall and bought two new shirts for me and some new clothes for Candace. I put wine in the fridge, clean linen on the beds, and flowers in a pickle jar on the kitchen table.

  Her trip took her through Los Angeles, with a connection to Yuma in a tiny prop plane that skimmed over the mountains. Candace and I waited in the small airport late that afternoon, me nervously watching every face coming through the gate. When I saw Shona, and she saw me, her eyes lit up and a small smile crept across her face—a smile like relief and mischief rolled together. We walked toward one another quickly. She looked good. Weary but healthy. I put my arms around her and my face over her shoulder and into her abundant hair. Her voice in my ear, saying to me, “I told you. I told you I’d come.”

  “Yes, you did.” I pressed against her and I felt her back’s long curve, felt her breathing.

  Candace squealed a bit, standing at our feet. She tugged on Shona’s jeans.

  “She’s been looking forward to this,” I said. “She’s made you gifts.” They were scraps of paper she’d cut out into shapes like hearts and glued together, with crayon scrawls on them. They were welcome hearts, Candace said, and she carried them in a little Hello Kitty satchel she wore everywhere.

  “I’ll give them to you in the car,” Candace said.

  “Sounds good,” Shona said, and knelt down for a hug. When she stood up again she looked right at me and she seemed almost giddy. “Yuma!”

  “Yuma,” I said. “Welcome. We’re glad you’re here.”

  “Well,” she said, “show me Yuma.”

  I drove slowly down 32nd, past the airbase. It appeared busy. Silver contrails sutured the sky. The sand all around was a deep golden amber. The desert stretched out and disappeared, and the hills shimmered like blue smoke. I thought Yuma was showing its best aspect to Shona, and I hoped it was making an impression on her. In the passenger seat she smiled through her green-framed sunglasses.

  That night I did not drive Candace around, but simply put her down to bed, and she chatted with her unicorns and bears for a long while. From her bedroom, Candace’s voice was lazy and soft. I imagined sleep as a swimming pool, and my baby girl crouched on the edge, her toes curled over the lip, reluctant to slip in. Finally, finally, she was quiet. I hoped that meant she was over her sleeping troubles—that perhaps she’d been missing Shona, too, and insomnia was her way of expressing it.

  Shona and I stood in the kitchen, slouched against the counters, talking in low tones. I kept moving in close, hooking a finger into the belt loops of her jeans. I did not wish to let her go. When we were sure Candace was asleep, we devoured one another, then fell into a deep, dumb sleep.

  In the middle of the night, my lover woke and went to the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open. I got up, too, pulled on my jeans, and followed her. She was standing in front of the sink, drinking a bottle of beer.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “I was thirsty,” she said, tilting the bottle and giving an impish little shrug. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Maybe the time change,” I said.

  She had on blue underwear and my plaid shirt, open, her navel winking out at me. Her hair was a riot. She held the bottle out to me. “Sip?”

  “I’ll take my own,” I said, opening the fridge and grabbing one.

  She turned and looked at her dim reflection in the window over the sink. Outside, lights winked, windows glowed, lives were lived. A dog barking somewhere, and the persistent buzz of traffic on the Interstate. I placed my beer on the counter, moved in behind Shona, and wrapped one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. I looked at our reflection. She smiled.

  “Look at that,” I said. “We fit.”

  “We fit,” she said, and leaned her head back. I squeezed a little tighter and she pushed back into me. Her warmth and her smell nearly knocked me down. My shirt hung down below her hips but I held her bare stomach. It was hot to the touch. I was so happy in that moment. I have trouble capturing it. I wanted to make everything last forever.

  I thought to myself, here is the woman—what took you so long to find her? Here is the one who will give you a home, the one who will save you from drift, from aimlessness. Here is the woman who will know you and see your value, who will show it to you. Here she is, Russ, and you’d best not fuck this up.

  “Come back to bed,” I said.

  “Will it be worth my while?” she asked.

  “I believe it will,” I said. And I believe it was.

  In the morning, she was in a light mood. She sat at the kitchen table looking at her phone.

  “Know what they call people from here?” she asked.

  “No, what?”

  “Yumans. Isn’t that hilarious?”

  “I hadn’t heard that. We’re surrounded by Yumans.”

  “They’re everywhere!” she said, and then laughed. I laughed, too.

  Candace, who was
eating Cheerios, looked up and said, “Who is everywhere?” and seemed annoyed when we kept laughing.

  We drove out into the desert that afternoon, just to have a look, then had dinner at a Mexican place downtown. I put Candace to bed and we watched a movie, but didn’t make it to the end. Shona fell asleep on my shoulder and we had a quiet night, but made love in the morning and showered together before my little girl woke up. It was beginning to feel as though Shona had come to stay, but I was careful not to bring it up—I didn’t want to hear otherwise.

  ***

  Once the week began and I was back to work, Shona took it on herself to get to know Yuma a bit. I was hopeful that her aim was to become familiar with the place where she’d be living. She’d get up with me and drive me to the site—still out east of town—and then take my car for the day. She found a yoga studio called the Sea of Tranquility. She bought herself boots and jeans and cowboy shirts at a Western-wear shop. She went for a hike in the hills. She and Candace would come out at the end of the day to pick me up, then we’d go home and cook dinner together. Candace loved all this, the feeling of family, I guess you’d say, and just how much more lively the house was with Shona in it.

  Toward the end of the week, with Shona’s return to Ottawa the elephant in the room, my baby girl asked, out of the blue, “Sho-sho, do you live with us now?”

  “Not yet,” Shona said, her eyes on me. “I need to talk to your dad about that.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s talk about it.”

  “Okay,” she said, “let’s.” She wore a funny grin that seemed to express excitement over the idea, while also gently mocking my serious tone. A dimple grew in her left cheek.

  “We’d love you to. I think you know that,” I said. “I know there are questions to answer, things to work out. But it’s been so good having you here. I’d like this to go on.”

  “Me too, Russ,” she said. “I think this is what I want.”

  I became all tensed up—my eyes, my throat, my chest. I was happy she’d said that, happy she’d been feeling about the week the same way I had. “Okay,” I said, “okay. Where do we start?”

  She stood and held her arms out. I stood and moved into her and we hugged.

  “I guess we just. Just start,” she said.

  And that’s what we did. She extended her stay into April, and we went on living that life. She started to have some say in small things, like the colour of the placemats I bought, and the decision to put Candace in swimming lessons down at the Y. It seemed like she was taking her first, early steps into what would become our home.

  What she hadn’t told me was that she’d been having trouble sleeping since she arrived. Spent the nights lying awake next to me and trying not to toss too much. Perhaps it was the decision to stay: trying to make it, and then, having made it, experiencing some doubts. I missed it all, was oblivious. I assumed her lack of rest was due to the early mornings, getting me to the job site so she could have the car. Shona’s more of a night person than a morning one. But I should have known it meant something when the skin beneath her eyes darkened. I think I chose not to.

  She flew back to Ottawa, to settle things was how she put it, and figured she’d be gone a month before joining us in a more permanent way. We drove her to the airport in the early morning of a Saturday, stood by the fence, and waved as her little plane lifted away.

  We spoke each night after she left, but not until Candace and I had done our driving routine, which was once again proving necessary. I’d sit in the driver’s seat, listening to the narcocorridos as winged things clicked against the windshield, until my girl’s breathing slowed. When we got back to the house, I’d tuck her into bed and then dial Shona’s phone. Sometimes we’d talk an hour, and sometimes we’d chat five minutes, but hearing her—telling her I missed her, hearing her tell me the same—I’d feel good about what lay ahead for us.

  ***

  By the time Shona returned, in May, it was beginning to get well and truly hot. She shipped me a couple of boxes of her things, then arrived with two overloaded suitcases. She’d stored everything else in her sister’s basement in Ottawa.

  “It was kind of great to pare down,” she told me. “Who needs all that stuff?”

  We had a little party—for its own sake, I suppose, but also to celebrate Shona’s decision to stay. Joe and Mercedes came. They were something like friends to me now, and I wanted to share my happiness with them. Their little ones played with Candace in my tiny yard while the four of us sat laughing and drinking in lawn chairs. The sky went dusky and I plugged in a string of lights I’d hung along the fence. “Fancy!” said Shona.

  I cooked chicken and corn on a little hibachi atop the picnic table, and we ate on paper plates. Shona had bought a tray of cupcakes at the Walmart. The kids raced around, kicked a ball, walked dolls through the dry grass and sand. Then it got late, and though I was wobbly, I felt the tug of responsibility to get Candace to bed.

  Shona knew, she could see it in the way I was watching my daughter through the little kitchen window as I put the paper plates in the trash and scrubbed the things I’d used to cook the chicken. She read me so well. “Can I get Candace ready for bed?” she asked. “I’d like to do that.”

  “She’d love that.”

  “Will she make a fuss over Sonny and Annie still being up?” I’d already explained to her about the approach Joe and Mercedes took to bedtime for their kids.

  “I think having you get her ready will offset that,” I said.

  Shona kissed me quickly on the mouth and gave me a look with her hazel eyes that seemed to hold a promise in it. She then called Candace in, had her say goodnight to her friends, and took her by the hand and led her into the bathroom. As they walked by me, my daughter gave me a conspiratorial look. It was a look that said, Look how I have captured her for you. She loved Shona. I could see that. And what wasn’t to love?

  They were talking. I could not hear what they were saying, but there was laughing, and some serious conversation, too. After they moved into my little girl’s bedroom and a nightshirt was slipped over Candace’s head, Shona began to read to her. I could hear the easy, measured tones of a storybook in her voice.

  “Sho-sho read the paper-princess story,” Candace said, when I went in to kiss her goodnight.

  “Did she like it? Did she do a good job?”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  The room was warm. It was full of them. The light came from a lamp with a pink shade, made everything feel close and safe. We all smiled. Things felt so good, like they lined up the way I had hoped they would. It seemed Candace felt safe, felt she was home—and because she felt it, I felt it, too. Something was taking root in the desert, the accidental charge of life suddenly visiting us. I meant to capture it, to harness and hold it.

  Shona sat on the side of the bed. I stood over her, smelled the fruity heat of her head. I couldn’t see her face but I could still feel the smile there. Candace’s eyes were so narrow they were almost shut, and her breathing was slow.

  “How do you like having Shona tuck you in?” I asked.

  “Can she do it tomorrow?”

  “I guess I have my answer,” I said, and we laughed.

  We kissed Candace goodnight and switched out her light. She was asleep before we closed her door, I think. Then we rejoined our friends in the yard. Sonny had fallen asleep in Mercedes’s lap. Annabel sat cross-legged at Joe’s feet, telling him a story about a queen who lived up among the stars, which were beginning to make themselves visible over our heads. The light turned a deep blue and soon Annabel was asleep, too. We adults got high and laughed quietly. Tears came to my eyes as I inventoried my luck.

  ***

  We’re always making decisions, and then following through on them, without ever truly believing in their wisdom or suitability. It might be that’s where Shona found herself: she was content, primarily, just to have a path to follow for a time. I don’t quite know. She’s never said so to me. She
seemed happy enough. But maybe that’s what I wanted to see. Piecing together things now, I am able to imagine that she couldn’t quell some yearning, or doubt, or small, nagging objections. There was something she missed—something that wasn’t in Yuma.

  Meanwhile, I had got it in my head that we were on the edge of a new period of our lives, one that felt to me open, bright, and thrilling. Those were days of gorgeous desert sunrises, the new light over the east throwing its spectacular neon arms through the window, the smell of coffee, the sound of the dogs as they were roused. Shona had lucked into work leading classes at the Sea of Tranquility. It was just three of them a week, but she also got on the odd shift waiting tables at the Red Lobster. It had been so long since I’d even thought about the radio job that I began to see myself only as a labourer on road crews. It no longer felt like a temporary thing, and that was all right. I had Candace, I had Shona, and our little house, and friends to share a drink and a smoke.

  Happiness was a recognizable thing. I looked at Shona as a source of it—or rather, I looked at the life we had, and would have, as a thing that might invite happiness in a more reliable way. And there was Candace, whose thoughts and actions fascinated and excited me even as they nudged me toward a sadness at the thought that she’d one day up and leave, to start her own life without me.

  On all counts, I continued to view happiness as a thing that blesses us intermittently—a periodic dusting of gold down over our lives—and not as a thing to which we are entitled at all hours, every day. I did not believe it possible to banish sadness completely from one’s life, nor did I think it desirable to do so. Sadness, I thought, was a reasonable and healthy response to a frequently sad world. I still think that.