At first it seems that everything will work out, that everything will be okay. The ice creaks and shudders, but it holds. The herd steps out, hoofing and snorting, breathing in like the wind will hold them.
The ice breaks near the middle of the lake. It happens fast; the surface juddering and pitching, black fissures snaking underneath, the sheets buckling up and over each other. The entire herd goes through.
How long it takes, who can say? There are no people in this story. There’s no time. At some point, the water stops churning and the wolves loop back through the birches. The ravens circle once, twice, before settling. The coyotes sing the moon into the sky.
When the wind stops and the water is calm, when the light is low and your eye unclouded, you can see to the bottom of the lake. Picture this; row upon row of ribcages, leg bones scattered and antlers reaching, skulls turned over like empty cups. When the light is right, you can see those bones. But I never have. And every time someone tells the story, I think of my Grandfather wiping his mouth and lifting his chin, staring at me like he knows something I don’t, something the story doesn’t tell. I think of my little sister swearing there’s a burial ground for horses under the school playing field, or the camp counsellors and their Jesus dead and rising, or my old science teacher describing the cat in a box. Same look, same tone of voice, every time. We got something you don’t.
The Lake of Bones was where I took Staci the first time we hooked up. But she wasn’t one of those girls. It wasn’t like that. The lake was always so pretty in late spring. I had Grandfather’s canoe and I knew the quiet places where we could paddle, away from the drinking parties and make-out couples. I had a good job and a mobile home on an acre of land off the rez. I could drink legal and pay for it too. But when Staci climbed into my pickup truck and wedged her book bag between her knees and looked at me, I could hardly breathe. Staci is the kind of girl who can speak long strings of French and balance equations, who can connect each war to the other and draw the inside of a lily. Staci is the kind of girl who rocked her last year of high school while I sat behind her, red-eyed and smirking. She’s taking a few courses at the community college and planning to go to university, and she says I should come, maybe try for some kind of trades bursary off Indian Affairs. And I say yeah, maybe I should. But the mill pays good and steady, and the only thing I use my status card for is cheap gas and ciggies at the reserve Stop’n’Go. I don’t even look Indian, no more than she does anyway.
So I sit in my truck, flipping through my playlist, thinking of putting on something old and classic and true, something my dad might’ve listened to if he’d stuck around. Springsteen, John Cougar Mellencamp. But I don’t have anything like that.
The truck rocks and shifts when Staci gets in. I turn down my music. She hates the boom bass, says the words are disrespectful to women.
You need to listen to me, she says.
Okay, I say.
She begins to cry and pokes around in the glove compartment for the paper towel. I start the engine and wait. But then she wipes her eyes with her fists and looks straight ahead so I drive us to the Lake.
It’s early in the season and no one else is there. We find the canoe under the willows where we’d left it last summer. I brush out the leaves and check for packrats and snakes. Staci takes off her sneakers and places them side by side on the shore, then guides the bow into the lake. It’s so quiet I can hear her breath, the glide of water against her calves, a hermit thrush wavering somewhere above us. There’s no wind and the water is glassy and full of sky.
I stroke out and Staci sits with her back to me, paddling in time, steady and sure and not needing to look. I don’t know where we’re going except away from shore, towards the middle of the lake. I figure she’ll talk when she’s ready.
In the end it’s me that stops. My arm muscles are fine, toughened up by the lumber lot, but the shore is a long ways away on every side. I think of the water, the cold of it, the black weight closing overhead, and I put down my paddle. Staci shifts around.
My auntie has the summer cabin, she says. We could fix it up. Make it nice.
Yeah, I say.
This isn’t a bad place to raise a kid, she says. You got a job. I could run cash at the Stop’n’Go once the baby’s older. Once he’s in preschool.
He?
Or she. Whatever. Does it matter? The cabin’s big enough and we could do up the inside. Paint it up. Any colour you want, and keep the front room for the baby. Sit at our own kitchen table and drink coffee in the morning, buy a real nice sofa for the living room, maybe leather like the one Jaylen’s got, and get one of those big flat screens. We could do up the back bedroom and sleep in our own bed and make as much noise as we want. I can learn to cook. It’s not too late to put in a garden, maybe lettuce to start, carrots and peas and beans next year if we plan ahead.
And I can see this, the bed and the sofa and the garden. Staci as she was, her hair tangled and our skin salted together, her face turned against the late light slanting across the lake. Staci as she would be, drowsy on a Sunday morning, arms flung and in no hurry, all the time in world and no worry of her auntie walking in. How this could be.
We could make it our own thing, she says. We could do it different. You’re not your dad.
I can see this. I’m not my dad. I would stick around. I can see her and me, making it our own thing. I can see the mill day passing, me coming home and her holding the baby, the dinner in lidded pots and the cutlery in folded napkins just like a magazine, how she’d try so hard to do it right. The days and the days and the days. How this could be.
God. Say something.
I look at her. There’s no wind and her hair lies in damp strings around her face. The water is a solid greeny black and I got the feeling the canoe is suspended, that if I was to lean my hand over the side it would bounce off something hard as glass.
Yeah, I say. Maybe.
Oh God, she says. Her fists ball and mash at her eye sockets.
I pick up the paddle. There’s a skitter of light on the lake, a fleshy oval dipping and spiralling; a paddle, a face turning away.
You don’t love me, she says.
I love you. I’m sure I think the words. But it’s freaking me out, all that water beneath us and how far to the bottom you can’t even tell.
Staci’s crying hard now. I know I’m supposed to do something, to find the right thing to say and make it okay. I stroke over one side, then the other. The water grabs and pulls against the paddle, my arms strain, and for a while this is all I can think about, the push against that flat heavy lake and the need for land.
I love you, I say, when she’s shoving into her sneakers.
I love you, I say, as she stumbles up the bank.
And it feels like love, this long deep breath that pushes past my throat and uncurls in my lungs. It feels like love to be on my feet while the ground settles beneath me, like love when the lake closes over the wake we cut through it.
Staci says hello when she’s back in town over the holiday breaks. She’s usually with her university friends so we don’t talk much, just hello how’s it going and see you around, yeah? She looks all right. She looks the same.
I got my job at the mill. Sometimes I hook up with one of the girls at Roxy’s, depends on the Saturday crowd and what kind of mood I’m in. I don’t call them after and they don’t expect me to.
Sometimes I go out to the lake. I sit on the overturned canoe with a beer or a joint, doesn’t matter what so long as I got something to do with my hands. The water is always that flat green black. The idea that you could ever see to the bottom is someone else’s bullshit. I think of the clean white bones, no flesh on them. A thing of beauty once the blood is gone and the sinew stripped. You could pick up those bones and run your hands across them, you could turn them over and over and get no closer to what they mean.
Sometimes when the weed buzzes through my blood, when the wind stills and the light slants across the lake just ri
ght, I get a sense of it. The ground shifts under my feet and the water looks solid as glass. How it must have been: the steaming panic, the shock of descent, the crushing weight of water. How it must have been; the last one left on shore and the glitter of eyes between the birches, the creak and pitch of ice ahead. The split second to choose.
WAYLAID BY BEAUTY
LUCE IS THINKING HOW STUPID, how stupid to walk all the way there, in a silk dress and stumbling shoes with the sky bunched for rain (and never mind the sunlight and lark song and how it rolls over the meadow like an exemption), how stupid and how to explain to Simon without looking stupid when out of nowhere the deer clatters across the gravel shoulder and onto the path. It wobbles and splays, then folds at her feet.
Her knees lock. She stares.
It’s small, not grown enough for the season. Its fur is spotted with white and its flanks heave under jutting hip bones. She can see the rain beading the eyelashes, and the astonishing marbled blue of the iris. A summer fawn.
“Where’s your mommy?” Luce intends a whisper, like you’d use on a sleeping child, but her voice sounds rusty and wrong. Some other woman’s voice. Some other woman’s words.
The fawn opens its baby mouth and bleats. The sound pitches Luce backwards and her heels spike in the mud.
Has it been hit, was there a car? She didn’t hear anything passing. The fawn gazes at her with its marbled eye. Its fur is perfect and unmarked. There’s no dragging leg or twisted spine or gash of blood.
It bleats again, raw and hurt.
“Shh,” Luce says. “Shush little baby.” She crouches and her hand reaches out, hovers, comes to rest on the skinny neck. The fawn lies perfectly still. She strokes down its back, feeling each vertebrae like prayer beads under her fingers. Maybe there’s something wrong inside?
Luce sees how this could be. It happens all the time; the bump of metal on flesh, the panicked escape and shudder of internal organs, a slow rupture. You wouldn’t know by looking. But maybe it wasn’t an accident, maybe there was something wrong from the start. It’s so small. Too small for the season.
The fawn closes its eyes. Something wrong and now this. Nature’s way.
She should call someone. Who? SPCA, Wildlife Rescue? Simon would know, but Simon is not here. She gets to her feet, wipes her hands on her skirt and fishes around in her bag. No phone. Of course not. It’s with her umbrella on the motel room table. She can’t even call to say she’ll be late, that she decided to walk after a sliver of sun caught her eye and gladdened her, that this feeling was like happiness. She can’t call to let Simon know she’s trying.
The fawn lies with its chin in the dirt, motionless except for the flanks heaving in and out. The drizzle beads on its fur and the spots are luminous in the grey light. Pretty. Maybe it isn’t hurt at all, just stunned. She takes a few steps backwards, scans the field of golden grass, the late summer tansy. Nothing moves.
The mother will come for it. Luce is sure that she’s read this somewhere . . . best to leave things be, best to move on. Let nature take its course. The mother will come.
At least it’s stopped raining. She takes a tissue from her handbag and dabs it over her face, cheek to cheek, forehead and chin. It’s late. She needs to go. Luce leaves the fawn in the dirt and walks on.
A fawn, fallen right at her feet. She’ll need to tell Simon. She’ll tell him about the marbled blue, the way the eye looked like a tiny galaxy.
He’s already there and talking to the waiter, his back to the door and one arm draped over his chair. Casual but arranged, cuffs rolled neatly and nape of neck newly shorn. He must have seen the barber. He must be trying. Luce knows how a haircut changes him, takes him from beautiful to beyond question, bone by sharpened bone. The waiter sees this too; it’s there in her wide eyes, the swallow swoop of her smile as she listens to him.
“The Cotes du Rhone? Or the Beaujolais? Which do you think?”
The girl has ruddy cheeks, a trace of baby fat still softening her jaw above the starched white collar. Young enough to be one of his students, and perhaps she was. Or is. “The Beaujolais would be good, I guess.”
“With the Filet de Chevreuil? You guess?”
The girl flushes. She tries a smile.
Simon shrugs. Luce can imagine the look on his face, the push and pull of it. “I mean, you’d want something strong and tannic. Something muscular, something that can handle the gaminess.”
No smile from the waitress now. She’s fiddling with the wine menu, dragging her finger down it like she’s going to find the right answer there.
Simon leans forward and gazes up at her. “Something big in the mouth.”
The girl’s eyes are fixed. She could go either way now: play the game and hope for a good tip, or call the manager. But Simon’s gaze can be very blue when he wants something. When he’s closing in. He taps the menu. “The Cotes du Rhone is what you’d want. I guess.”
The girl nods and steps back, nods even as the menu slaps against her breasts. “I can check, okay? I’ll check for you, sir, the Beaujolais or the Cote du Rhone.”
“Okay.” He raises his hands, palms open to show that he means no harm. “Okay, relax. It’s no biggie. Whatever you think, I’ll go with that.” Not smiling now, about to lose interest. She’s been too easy.
Luce could leave. There’s time; he hasn’t seen her.
She could step back, and back, and out the door into the sunlight steaming on wet pavement. She could retrace her steps through the meadow and back to the motel. She could check if they’ve replenished the mini-bar yet and pop a few pills along with a vodka. She could turn up the air conditioner for its soothing hum, then lie on the bleachy sheets and watch the ceiling to see what happens next. She could tell Simon she forgot the date, or couldn’t find the place, or lost track again. He would believe that.
But then Simon turns and grins at her. There was a time she might have suspected a heightened awareness, the same sense of molecular displacement she felt when he entered a room. But then she sees he has seated himself in front of a mirrored wall. Of course. The better to see you first.
He watches her cross the room. She can feel the damp silk clinging and bunching between her thighs, the blister hobbling her left foot, but she smiles and mouths hello. Relaxed. Happy even.
“You look good.” He’s on his feet now. “Have you lost weight?”
She’s considering how to answer that, whether to hug or kiss or seat herself without doing either, when he places a hand on her arm and presses. She sits. His hand slips down her arm and across her wrist, thumb brushing pulse point and circling the mound of her palm. Her blood rises despite herself. But he’s looking at her with blue eyes crinkled, chin tucked at just the right angle, and she knows this look, knows what it is supposed to do to her. She slides her hand away.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“Don’t be like that.”
She knows to stay silent, to wait him out.
“We’re still married.”
“Yes, we are.” She tries for her own crinkled eye and tilted chin, then catches sight of herself in the mirror. She looks medicated. “I’m sorry, Simon. This is hard.”
“For me too.” He leans back. “What do you want? Because you know what I want? I want you well. I want you happy. I want things back to normal. I’ve been good to you. I’ve tried to understand, you know that. Jesus, I’ve been patient.”
The waiter is back and hovering, eyes darting between the pair of them, alert to any discord and water at the ready.
Simon leans forward and touches Luce’s hand. “I want whatever’s best for you. You know I’d do anything for you.”
The waiter gazes at him, her baby pink lips parted. She’s playing her part beautifully.
Simon smiles at the girl, then turns his bluest gaze back to Luce. “Why don’t you order? You know what I like.”
Luce feels the waiter’s eyes on her. The waiter is young enough to envy her, to believe that compliance mean
s consent and either is the same as love. Luce orders, stumbling only a little, on the throatiness of the r and not on what he likes: the foie gras, the filet de chevreuil — and she smiles when she’s done. Well and happy and perfectly enunciated.
There’s a pause.
“And you, ma’am?”
She doesn’t know. Her hands freeze on the menu.
Simon glances at the waiter and grins. The waiter has been welcomed back into the fold. “She’ll have the same. We’ve been married for ages.”
“How lovely,” the waiter says, and scoops up their menus.
The wine comes — the Cotes du Rhone, not the Beaujolais — and Simon waits until the second glass before he asks her how long she needs. To be well and happy. To come back to him. He wants her to know that she has been missed. Her yoga instructor keeps phoning, the faculty dinner is coming up, and they need to make a decision about the timeshare. Old Mrs. McDougall saw him walking Bella alone and left a casserole on the doorstep, something grey and greasy, and not even Bella would eat it. Luce sips her wine and listens to the rise and fall of his voice. It sounds like another woman’s life. It sounds appealing and comfortable, like other people’s lives so often do. By the third glass of wine, she’s laughing at the stories he tells; the bad students and their dumb mistakes, the dumb teachers and their bad accents. Je t’aime, je l’aime, je m’aime. Tame, lame, maim. The waiter returns to light the candles and gives them an indulgent smile.
“You’re such a gorgeous couple,” she says.
And they are. She can see this in the mirror, how the light flickers over her face and his, softening flesh and history and offering return. They could be happy, people like them. Je t’aime. She remembers this, when he could say the words and she would forgive him. Simon leans forward and takes her hands in his. Chin tilted, blue eyes luminous. So damn pretty.
“There was a fawn,” she says.
But he’s working her hands, turning them over in his, thumbs rubbing circles. “We could try again,” he says.
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