Eric only spoke of the road trip once, after Larry had come out of rehab, and they’d had some half-baked idea of forming a band together. He’d phoned me to kick around some possible names and ended up drinking on the other end while I went over my accounts and listened. “You remember San Fran?” he’d asked. “Meeting Bill Graham and not even knowing it? Missing the closing of Winterland by one day, biggest goddamn Dead concert ever, six hours long with a free breakfast served the next morning.” He’d snorted and I’d heard the snick of another beer can popped. “That’s my trouble, Jude. Always wrong place, wrong time, wrong guy on the wrong damn road.”
The years passed and I became an investment manager at the firm, where I met the man who was to be my husband, who was to share a house with me in a woodier suburb of North Vancouver. We were comfortable but not ostentatious; we wore outdoor casual and shopped at Canadian Tire, we joined litter pick-ups in Lynn Canyon on the weekends.
Eric and Karen left the kids behind and visited us one summer in the late nineties. Karen had tickets for a Petty concert and she’d convinced me to go with her, for old time’s sake. We left Eric and my husband drinking beer on the patio, talking about the current political scene. Eric’s voice was as laconic as always, but my husband’s had developed an edge.
The concert hall had none of the smoke and sweat of Winterland so long ago. The joints were still there, but hidden under cupped palms and the odour blown away by the air conditioning. We watched Tom Petty on a suspended screen and heard him through giant stadium speakers, and the man himself was a stick figure on a toy stage. There was none of the swagger and cockiness, and the slow smile seemed disconnected, coming from a face drawn down by life. The songs were familiar from the radio; but they all had a bittersweet edge even when the beat drove them home. Karen grabbed my arm and told me to look around, to feel the love in the crowd. He’s just like one of us, she said, and isn’t he gorgeous? I thought he looked depressed. When we returned, my husband had gone to bed and Eric was passed out on the sofa. The house stank of weed.
After they’d gone, my husband poured me a glass of wine and told me that he couldn’t believe I was from these people, that I was once someone like them. The world’s oldest fan girl and her pothead Petty-wannabe boyfriend. I laughed, hating my husband a little.
Sheri was the only one of us that actually met Petty. She’d left Dave shortly after our road trip, and parlayed her giggle into something instantly recognizable to those who watched her morning talk show. She had her face on the downtown billboards and occasionally interviewed the celebrities that passed through Vancouver. Sheri told Tom Petty our road trip story and he flashed her a grin.
That was a long time ago, he said.
“Did you hear the news?” I’m trying to keep my voice casual, but my brother is the one I’d needed to call.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. But Tom Petty died.”
There’s a pause on the other end. I can hear the slow suck of Eric inhaling. His weed is medicinal now, something about a bad back and nerve pain.
“Yeah, well,” my brother says. “I was always more of a Springsteen man.”
And we talk a while longer, about Eric’s oldest son who is finally pulling a decent wage at the mill, and his daughter who is going to finish high school at the same time as her own kid, and if he could convince Karen to do the same, they’d have a real hat trick in the family.
It is a pleasant enough conversation, the kind we have these days.
But I dream sometimes. Swampy guitar while the crowd roars a blood beat, the singer pulled out of the churning mass stunned and white-faced before throwing off those who might rescue him. His eyes meet mine and my gut curls in disgust. That he is not what he is supposed to be. I wake with the guilt sitting on my chest like a cat, and I listen for my husband’s breath, slow and steady. Sh sh, it says. All things come to pass.
THE NIGHT PASSING THROUGH
SUGAR MOON
BUT WE LOVE OUR KIDS, they say when the police come.
The police take in the plastic patio table heaped with beer cans, the overflowing ashtrays and singed sofa, the rusty smear above the kitchen sink. The complete absence of Barbies or Lego, Xbox or Nintendo.
One police officer picks up a phone from the table and turns it over in his hands. This season’s model, and barely in the stores yet. Where did you get this? Looks expensive.
We would not, the mother protests. Could not. Her hands shake as she lights another cigarette. Her sleeve rides up over a pockmarked forearm. The police officers note this without looking at one another. It’s not unheard of, this kind of thing. Not around here.
When the parents are cuffed, it’s the father who cries.
The news loops through the village, snagging on remembered details: She never had anything nice to say to those kids. I saw her smack the boy once and the little girl was so skittish, afraid of her own shadow. She’s just the stepmother, you know. They’re not even hers. Him? Oh, he’s got a wandering eye. Already bored, already looking around. Guess she’s gone back to her old habits — how do you think she stays so skinny? Did you see her nails? Bitten to the quick. Or scrubbed. The voices lift in pity and suspicion, and there’s more than a little delight spicing the mix. Someone calls the press.
The villagers gather outside the courthouse. It’s early in the morning, so early that the moon pokes a hole in the blood-wash sky. This moon has a certain fleshy awareness today, like a lidless eye open and white. None of the villagers look up. None observe the perfect round glut of the moon and none are grateful for what they’ve got. For what they’ve been given.
Perhaps they are tired. Those who live here rarely sleep well.
The moon fades away unseen and the villagers look at each other instead. At the branded suede and designer denim, at the gleaming phones held in perfectly manicured hands. At this unexpected visitation of prosperity. Awesome, says one of the crasser ones, looking at his neighbour’s sneakers, are those real diamonds? His eyes lower in respect, before flitting to the next slick of genuine leather and polished gold. No one looks at the shadows between their jostling bodies. No one looks at me.
I’m content to observe. Today I keep my peace, with nothing more than a serene smile. Today I want for nothing. My hand strokes my swollen belly.
One villager falters. I see his gaze dart below the shoulders, to the gaps between husbands and wives, to the elders wrapped in silence. I hear the dry click of his throat as he swallows. If you’re wondering, he finally says. I sent Josh away. To his Grandma’s house. You can’t be too careful. There’s a murmur of agreement and someone else speaks. My Megan’s visiting her big sister down south. The heads nod at that; down south is far enough away. Of course, Katelyn’s staying with her mom now, no point being here with the school closed. A low hum at the perfect sense of this, and a red-faced man speaks, spurred by the congenial spirit. Connor’s still away at camp with the Boys Brigade. He’s loving it, especially the swimming.
The villagers quieten. They know as well as I do that it’s November and the mountain lake is savage with cold.
The morning rises and the moon disappears under a web of grey sky. The villagers stare at the closed doors of the courthouse and whisper amongst themselves. The man who was once Connor’s father goes to the pub. He brings back a round of beer in plastic cups, and the villagers cheer him on. Others plunge their fingers into bags of potato chips, ketchup-flavoured and family-size, donated by the owner of the Handi-Mart after a dip in sales. The store owner smiles and tells everyone that his son’s gone to France on a language exchange and the chips are the least he can do, with all that’s happened. His teeth gleam with new veneers.
Then a hundred smart phones light up. The villagers draw breath. The authorities are letting the parents talk now. There’s a blur of colour on multiple screens, resolving to the mother and father at a long table, flanked by police and surrounded by reporters.
They’re our lives, our pre
cious children. Please. The father sits stunned, comb tracks in his hair, and the woman swallows again and again. They’ve been pushed together for the cameras like a jigsaw with a few pieces missing. The reporter pokes microphones into their pasty faces, hoping for tears, and the three point lighting shines onto skin greased by fast food and despair. Please. If you know anything.
The villagers watch and lick red dust from their fingertips. Someone offer prayers. Another brays when the father’s elbow knocks the microphone into a farting cacophony. He is shushed, but not before a trickle of laughter works through the gathering.
The screens blink off. They wait.
The doors swing open and the villagers surge, their phones raised. The police chief comes first to part the crowd and demand order. There’s a whisper of complaint, and a single piggy snort, but the villagers step back. Then the father appears with his arm over his face. The woman follows. Her glassy eyes wobble and fix, and wobble again. She’s lost weight and her cheekbones jut; she’s almost luminescent. A sigh wavers through the crowd and a few women reach their hands towards her. She would not. That sigh again, like a tide turning. Could not.
She passes close enough to me that I can see where they’ve caked the makeup over her cold sores. Her eyes rise and fasten on mine, and for a moment I think she is going to speak. That she is going to tell.
She does not. The father pulls her away and she’s swallowed by the reaching hands, drowned in the flash of bulbs. The crowd strings along behind her.
The judge who might sentence these parents won’t find anything to incriminate them. Should she stumble upon a discrepancy in the transcripts, she’ll lose her place when the moonlight slices through her window. The light will glance off the back of her hands, silvering her veins, fascinating her mind and eye. The file will sit on the desk in front of her, solid as a fat red toad, and she’ll be unable to find it. She’ll report it stolen and go back to staring at her hands. The couple with the missing children will be sent home. The woman will scrub and sweep and pack. Her husband will help. They’ll settle into their new home, with its king-size waterbed and patio hot tub, with crayon-free walls and pristine carpets, and they will look at each other like they’ve just woken from a bad dream.
I have no remorse for what I’ve done. For what I am. They want it. They ask for it, every time.
The village square is almost empty. The day has eaten the moon, but I can feel its pull in my swollen belly. And something else. I can feel something else here.
My nose twitches. Something’s different.
That smell: sea salt and sugar cookie and blood-red reek.
Children.
They’re grouped on the cobblestones, staring into a shop window. The girl stands under the sheltering arm of her father and the mother reaches for the son. Oh yes, they’ve got good instincts, these parents.
But they’re not from the village. The father wears well-fitted boots and the mother is an expensive shade of blonde. They call their children by the folkloric names favoured by the elite, and the children whinny and flute back, their teeth white and prominent. My ears prickle and warm. I’ve never had such rich blood before.
I follow them to the village bed and breakfast, which has been renovated with expensively shabby antiques since it changed hands. The landlady lets me in, with a mumbled apology and an offer of tea.
“And how is your little one?” I ask. “What was her name now . . . Alice?”
“Alison,” says the landlady. Her gaze is fixed on the tea tray. Her pupils have blossomed like bruises.
“Forgive me. I am old. And where is little Alison?”
The tea tray rattles. “In the city. Working in an office. She’s met a nice young man, with a good job.”
“She’s not married him? No visiting grandchildren yet? Oh, I do like the little ones.” Age has made me cruel.
The landlady stares at the dull blue teapot. “Away in the city. A nice young man, with a good job,” she whispers. There’s a sudden sharp smell of urine.
The visitors are expecting a welcome and they are pleased to see me. I am a bit of local colour, a gap-toothed crone bearing a tray of steaming hot tea and sugar-crusted cookies. Their woollens are slung over the radiator and the children are plump and ruddy with health. The girl reaches for a cookie and the mother stops her with a soft hand.
“Oh God, no,” she says, “No sweets between meals. Awful for the tooth enamel, simply hideous. Not to mention the calories.”
It’s going to be difficult. These are not local people swayed by the lure of a widescreen or a barmaid’s bosom or their very own modular mansion. These ones can buy whatever they want. For a moment, I wish for the old times when it was a simple exchange: an eldest daughter for a winter of fat cattle, a first son for an endless stretch of harvests. A time when the children came and went, a flux and flow as natural as the swell of the moon.
The girl is whining and grizzling now, and the boy tries an experimental snuffle.
“Oh do stop,” says the mother, pinching the bridge of her nose. I can see the skin drag under her eyes, the fine lines blossoming at the corners. I can see the shape of her skull under her thinning skin.
“Quiet,” says the father. “Do you know how much those teeth cost? I reckon that’s why we’re here instead of Barbados this year.” His incisors gleam crookedly when he smiles at me. He clamps his mouth shut quickly. I sense gaps, something missing inside him.
I begin my words. Imagine this: the rasping and ancient susurration, winding through the ears and nostrils, burrowing down the throat and into the blood, fixing on the hidden and finding the want. There’s an awkward moment, when the father thumps me on the back and wants to call an ambulance, but soon he’s rocking with his hands on his knees and his eyes black with forgetting. His hand goes to his mouth, his fingers push and pull at his teeth. The mother resists. Could not, she mutters, tearing at herself, should not.
“I’m sure you could, dear,” I tell her. “You know they’re bleeding the life out of you. They’ll use you up and never thank you; I know what that’s like.” I pat the back of her hand. She stares at my swollen knuckles and yellowed talons, my age-stained flesh.
I wait.
Soon she’s sitting with clumps of blond hair in her lap, glassy-eyed and passive while her heart unknits.
The children have stopped grizzling. They watch me. I offer each a cookie and they take it. Their teeth carve crescents into the sugary flesh.
“The next empty moon. The darkest part of the forest,” I say before I leave.
“Yes.” The mother’s voice is slurred and dull. “It’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do. To keep what we have.”
“They were never ours,” says the father, still rocking. “Not ours. Not with those teeth.”
The girl’s mouth opens, spilling sugar crumbs. In the right light, with a certain persuasion, those teeth could be feral. They could be simply hideous.
“Daddy?” she asks. “Mommy?”
The mother knots another strand of pale hair around her finger, and pulls.
I walk the village while I wait. The moon is on the wane. It slivers into smaller and smaller shards, and my belly hollows in sympathy.
The news team swarms the narrow streets for a time, framing shot after shot of an empty swing set and closing in on the rain-soaked flowers leaning against a railing. From this house. The latest, recalling similar disappearances from the same school, from three doors down or across the way or next yard over. An epidemic. The reporter waits a beat. A village without children. The cameraman zooms in on an upper floor window then, letting the black glass speak of empty beds and stale hush.
I almost smile to see how they’ve got it so wrong. But then my guts clutch with hunger, and I double over, retching. Those passing by give me wide berth. Someone throws a coin at my feet. It glints and wobbles before settling into the shadows.
The moon curves sideways, its smile steadily eroding. The nights are growing
darker. I return to the forest.
The news van stops on the way out of the village, at the place where the road meets the darkest stretch of pines. The doors slam.
I stop scratching in the dirt to watch.
The reporter and cameraman get out. They want a shot of the trees, impossibly dark and dense. Atmospheric, says the reporter, symbolic. Dark times and economic failure, profit-mongering and wage-slicing and crippling debt. So the mill’s shut down, the mine’s over and done. But someone’s making money off this. You betcha.
Northern towns, says the cameraman. Jesus. Let’s get out of here.
There’s so little left of the moon. Still, its light catches a gleam of bone in the dirt before I stuff it into my sack. A bit of gristle left, enough for soup. My belly cramps in anticipation.
The reporter clutches at the cameraman’s arm. Why has no one searched the forest, why has nobody thought of that?
My stomach rumbles but I do what I must. I undo the drawstring of my sack, and grope through it until my fingers close on a crescent of jawbone. I use its sharp edge to draw shapes in the dirt. A line of circles, waxing and waning. An open eye. A gaping oval that could be a mouth, toothless and screaming.
The moon, the reporter says suddenly. Look at the moon.
Both gawp at the sky. The moon slivers the dark like a scythe. The camera slides from the man’s hands and cracks when it hits pavement, but neither he nor the reporter break their gaze.
They stay like this until morning. Later, when they talk of the forest or what happened in the village, they will sense that silvery sharp moon in their mouths threatening to slash tongue. The reporter will try to finish her piece regardless and the cameraman will record her doubled over, spitting up blood.
Lost Boys Page 11