Dark August

by Katie Tallo

  “I hate this house!”

  She limps to the stairs and grabs the rail. It snaps off in her hand. Stupid old-lady house. She whips the rotten rail to the floor. It clangs off the edge of a box tucked under the stairs and skids across the floor. Gus leans sideways to get a better look. It’s not a box.

  It’s a trunk. A blue trunk.

  She knows it. She drags it out from under the stairs. Pins and needles prick her neck.

  It’s her trunk.

  The one she named Blue.

  The one her mother called her treasure chest. A place to keep her most precious things. It used to sit at the foot of her bed in their house in Hintonburg. She can’t believe it. She touches it gently with one hand, rubbing dust from its lid.

  How did it end up in Rose’s basement?

  Levi has come to the top of the stairs to see what all the commotion is. She looks up as he lowers his chin.

  “Guess what I found, dog?”

  With all her might, Gus drags the trunk upstairs. Levi scoots under the table as she pulls it into the kitchen. Gus sinks to her knees. Grabs the lock. She knows the combo by heart. Her birthday. 5–2–9–8. She rotates the numbers until they line up and it clicks open. She lifts the lid, holds her breath, and looks inside.

  It feels like mere seconds since she last peered inside her trunk. But here are all her things. Right in front of her. Proof that time can stand still. Her Hilroy notebooks filled with doodles. Her plastic art kit, pastels, crayons, and colored pencils worn to the nib. Sunny, her yellow-haired doll with the ceramic feet, wearing the same pink pinafore with the lacy pockets. A collection of clip-on earrings in the emerald silk bag. Her Barbies. Her beanbag frog, Louis. Class photos from Junior K through grade three. Swimming medals. Olympic coins. Her sticker collection. And rolled up right where she left it. Her pink pashmina scarf. The one her mother gave her their last Christmas together.

  Levi ambles over and sticks his head inside the trunk. He gently takes Louis in his mouth and walks away. She barely notices. She softly closes the lid. Tears in her eyes.

  It’s not until much later that day, well after dark, fortified with sweet sherry from Rose’s dining room hutch and dressed in her grannie nightie, that Gus drags Blue down the hall and into the living room. She swigs sherry straight from the bottle as she opens the trunk. And sitting on the carpet, she slowly pulls out each item and arranges them in front of her. Lovingly touching her plastic earrings. Lining up her Barbies side by side. Sipping sherry. Wallowing in these treasures from her past. In her childhood. Touching the worn ends of the pink and green and orange pastels in her art kit. Placing her stickers in neat little piles, next to a row of Olympic coins and her swimming medals.

  Levi peers in the living room, thinks better of it, and heads up to bed.

  Gus picks up the stack of class photos from the bottom of the trunk. Each is framed in a cardboard sleeve. She sits cross-legged with them in her lap and prepares herself for a sherry-soaked trip down memory lane. One more swig and she starts. Junior Kindergarten. Opens the sleeve. A column of names is written carefully in pencil on one side, opposite the class photo. Three rows of four-year-olds pose next to their teacher, Miss Temple. Miss Temple’s smile is distorted because the photo is bulging where her face is. Gus tries to smooth it, but there’s something behind the photo. She lifts the edge and peers underneath. There’s a piece of paper tucked in behind it. Despite her sherry fog, Augusta can clearly make out two words.

  Missing persons.

  Gus leans closer. The other folders tumble from her lap. Grade two flips open. She lifts the corner of that class photo. A newspaper clipping is tucked behind it. She checks the others. Behind Senior Kindergarten is a legal document. Behind grade three is a collection of photographs. Behind grade one, a photocopied image. She slips each item out from behind the class photos, then gathers them into a pile. Two newspaper clippings, a photocopy of what looks like a security camera image, a handwritten document, a missing persons report, and three photographs.

  She knows these things.

  She’s seen them before.

  Above the workbench her father built in Kingston. The one Shannon insisted the movers bring to their new house in Ottawa. The bench where her mother set up her makeshift office and where she spent most of her evenings poring over documents and photos.

  These documents. These photos.

  Gus closes her eyes and curls her feet up inside her nightie. She topples to one side in a fetal position. Her head spins.

  Sleep tugs her eyelids closed. She can hear a noise. It’s in her bedroom. She forces her eyes to open. It’s her mother. Gus wants to call out, but her mouth won’t open. She’s too sleepy. Shannon’s face pops up from behind the open lid of the trunk at the end of her bed.

  Mama.

  She smiles. Wipes her tired eyes.

  Go to sleep.

  Gus closes her eyes like a good girl.

  Back soon, Sugar Bunch. I promise.

  Augusta drifts off to sleep.

  Then and now.

  Not sure which is which but sinking deeply into both.

  10

  Henry

  CRUSTY-MOUTHED, GUS ROLLS ONTO HER BACK. NIGHTIE twisting around her legs. Pain stabbing her temples. Sherry pain. She peels a photo off her cheek.

  Levi is sprawled across the foyer. He lifts his head as she stirs. He’s been waiting. Daylight slices through the curtains. Daggers in her eyeballs. Augusta sits. Nausea swims up her throat. She squints at the photo, a snapshot of a young man flanked by two adults. They’re all smiles. He looks about seventeen. High school graduation. Gown. Cap in hand. Dark hair and dimples. Handsome.

  Augusta drops the photo and crawls to the sofa. Pulls herself to her feet. The room sways. She vows never to drink sherry again. Levi heads for the kitchen and Gus stumbles after him.

  Put kibble in dog bowl.

  Set coffee to brew.

  Down jug of water.

  Open back door to let dog out.

  Coffee. Black.

  Gag.

  Dry toast with mashed bananas.

  Gag.

  Three Advil.

  Nibble Honeycomb.

  More coffee.

  Rest forehead on kitchen table awhile.

  Breathe.

  Watch dog slip back inside through broken screen.

  Glance at Haley-Anne’s to-do list.

  Shake pins and needles out of legs.

  Throw up in garbage can.

  Stumble back to living room.

  Stare at mess on carpet.

  Spot photograph.

  The Polaroid.

  The one she’s never forgotten. Gus knows every detail of that picture of the ballerina. The awkward little body in the sagging white leotard circled by a pink tutu. The bony shoulders strapped with butterfly wings. The Coke-bottle glasses and that jet-black hair tied in a messy bun with a pink bow. The girl is about seven. Her small hands are clasped above her head, arms forming a halo. She’s posing on the edge of the veranda of a big house.

  Gus picks up the Polaroid. Holds it close. The girl’s eyes are far away and her smile is only half there. Gus flips the photo over. On the back, there’s writing in red marker. It’s upside-down. She turns it so she can read what her mother wrote.

  Gracie Halladay, April 2002.

  All these years, Gus never knew the girl’s name. It was on the back this whole time. She’d never dared touch the photo to flip it over. But the name was there. Shannon was hiding it. She was protective of this girl. This photo. Of all her things. Everything in her workspace in that garage. It was off-limits. Gus was to stay out. She even had to keep her bike in the front hall. Shannon didn’t share her work with anyone. Colleagues. Fellow cops. Friends. Not even Uncle Rory who stopped by every Christmas. He was a policeman too, but that didn’t matter to Shannon. Her work was for her eyes only.

  And now, the very photo that made Shannon shut the door on her daughter’s face is the same photo Shannon put
in Augusta’s trunk. Along with her most private papers and documents. Things that preoccupied her days and nights. Things she held close. She took them off her corkboard and she hid them. She was afraid someone might see them. She was protecting the little ballerina. Just like she’d always done.

  Fuck Gracie Halladay.

  Augusta rips the Polaroid in half and tosses it into the black hearth of the fireplace. Her fingers are suddenly icy cold. She shivers, trying to shake off the chill.

  Levi barks and scratches at the hall tree in the foyer where his leash hangs. Gus turns to snap at him, but the look on his face is priceless. Tongue hanging out, mouth wide. He looks like he’s smiling ear to ear.

  “You’re right. Let’s get the fuck out of here, dog.”

  After throwing on a T-shirt, jeans, her sneakers, and a ball cap, Gus heads outside with Levi. An orange sun warms her face as they walk. The chill inside her begins to thaw a little with each step. Levi is bouncier than usual. They make their way down the tree-lined drive, winding uphill toward Byron. They veer off the main road and take the walking path that skirts alongside the Tramway Park where empty swings rock in the light breeze.

  Gus empties her brain of Gracie and Shannon and focuses on the soft patter of the dog’s paws and his light sweet breaths. He sniffs garbage cans and the occasional passing dog’s bum. He pees every couple of blocks. Saving it up for this curb or that hydrant. Marking his territory. Claiming it as if he’s the last dog who’ll ever mark that patch of grass. She sinks into the simplicity of Levi’s world.

  Augusta and Levi loop back to Wellington Street where she stops to grab a coffee at the local Bridgehead. She wraps his leash around a metal bike rack, then goes inside to order. When she comes out, a slim woman in neon-pink jogging pants is petting his head. The woman places her Ottawa Citizen newspaper on a nearby table and stoops to one knee so she can ruffle Levi’s ears. He’s eating it up. Augusta tells her his name as the woman presses her face to Levi’s snout and talks baby talk.

  “Who’s a beautiful boy? You are. You’re a beautiful boy. Yes, you are.”

  Gus places her coffee on the table so she can untie Levi. The picture on the front of the newspaper catches her eye. It’s of a young man. She picks it up.

  COLD CASE MYSTERY SOLVED: BODY FOUND FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER BOY’S DISAPPEARANCE.

  She knows that face. It’s the boy from the photo. The one she peeled off her cheek this morning. She scans the article for a name. Henry Neil. She glimpses random phrases.

  No foul play suspected.

  It was just an accident.

  She tears the front page off the newspaper and, before the woman can object, Gus frees Levi and hurries down the street. The woman hollers something about Gus owing her money for the paper, but Augusta can’t hear her. She’s tuned in to the fierce and steady drumbeat of her heart. To the two words that thump thump thump across her brain.

  Cold case.

  * * *

  Shannon and Augusta are sitting on the front porch eating spicy Thai noodles out of greasy cardboard cartons.

  What’s a cold case, Mama?

  Gus heard the word on a rerun of Murder, She Wrote. She’d heard her mother say it too. Shannon chews her noodles.

  It’s a case nobody’s solved yet.

  Why cold? Does it need warming up?

  Shannon smiles.

  It does. If it’s not kept warm, people might forget about it. Then no one’ll ever know the truth.

  They twirl their noodles around chopsticks.

  Is that what you do in the garage? Keep cold cases warm?

  Shannon stops twirling and goes quiet, chewing slowly. Gus holds her breath. Has she crossed one of those invisible lines? She wishes she could swallow her words. But then Shannon softens.

  I try, Honey Pie.

  * * *

  Levi naps on the kitchen floor. The walk tuckered him out. But Gus is wired. She has the torn front page of the newspaper in her hand. She feels an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. As if she’s seen something so familiar, something she knows so intimately, only she shouldn’t know it at all. This feeling carries her down the hall and into the living room.

  Gus drags the standing lamp that sits in the corner over to the main wall. Pulls off the lampshade and floods the room with light. She steadies herself. Then she goes to work.

  She hauls the furniture away from the wall. Then begins to clear it off. The Canadiana wildlife paintings of the bald eagle and the wolf pack. The mounted wooden box that holds Rose’s teaspoon collection bearing the crests of each province and territory. It all comes down.

  Now she needs supplies. She hunts the house for Scotch tape. Finds it in a kitchen drawer. She rummages through the red toolbox in the basement. Finds a hammer. Back in the living room, she removes the leftover nails with the hook of the hammer.

  Sitting on the sofa, staring at the blank wall, she lets her gaze slip out of focus. Then she takes hold of her eight-year-old hand and goes back with her.

  * * *

  Shannon is asleep. Augusta sneaks downstairs. Goes into the garage. Into her mother’s office. She blinks, sleepy-eyed, at the corkboard above the bench. There are faces and sentences and numbers. There are lines drawn in red marker between the pictures and words. Augusta’s eyes follow these red lines, leading from one photo to the next, one piece of paper to the next. Numbers are written on top of these lines.

  * * *

  The world around Augusta rolls back into focus. Those same faces and sentences float in front of her on Rose’s living room wall. Before they can disappear, Gus gathers the items scattered on the carpet. One by one. The pieces her mother left in her trunk. She attaches tape to the top edge of each newspaper article, photo, and document. Then sticks them helter-skelter to the wall. She steps back.

  It’s all wrong.

  She looks at the front page of the newspaper that she took from Neon-Pink.

  COLD CASE MYSTERY SOLVED.

  Compares the picture with the grad photo of the boy and his parents. Yep. Same guy. Henry Neil. Was this the cold case Shannon was keeping warm? Just an accident. It makes no sense. Feels too easy. Too simple for her mother not to have figured out. Shannon didn’t obsess over an accident. Didn’t shut out her own daughter because of some missing teenager.

  Gus stares at the misshapen collage on the wall. At the pieces that look like they have nothing to do with Henry Neil or each other. She closes her eyes. Searches for a strand. A stray memory she can tug on. Unravel. She lets her breath guide her deeper. Then she finds one.

  Gus opens her eyes and grabs Henry’s grad photo off the wall, then retapes it dead center where it belongs.

  Yes, says a voice in her head. That’s more like it.

  But it’s not her own voice. It’s Shannon’s. Maybe her mother wasn’t hiding these things in her trunk so much as leaving them for her as a gift. Gus reaches toward the wall but doesn’t touch it. She senses her mother’s presence close by. Her scent. Her cells. Her DNA is deposited on these documents and photographs like a fine dust. The fragments begin to reassemble in Augusta’s mind’s eye. And as they do, she moves each piece into its proper place.

  Good girl.

  The missing persons report for Henry Neil goes below the grad photo. Below that goes the photocopy of the grainy security image. In it a young man is walking onto a porch toward the front door of a house. His face is turned away from the camera. A hand can be seen holding the door open. The date stamp says July 14, 2003. Written across the top of the photocopy, in her mother’s red marker, is a simple question.

  Henry?

  To the left of the wall space dedicated to Henry, Gus tapes the newspaper clipping from a publication called Lakes and Islands. The headline reads, “Local Woman Killed in Freak Accident.” Gracie’s Polaroid belongs directly above this article. Gus reaches into the fireplace and picks up the two pieces of the ripped Polaroid. She carefully tapes the picture back together and sticks it in place.

  Everyt
hing comes into focus.

  The handwritten document called a deed of trust and a business article from the Globe and Mail go to the right of Henry’s zone. And last is the photo taken from inside a car looking out toward an intersection. A man is crossing in front of the car. Gus tapes this photo underneath the business article.

  She stands back. She’s done it.

  Each item is arranged exactly as it was on her mother’s wall in the garage. But there’s something missing. She sinks down into the sofa. An oddly contented feeling envelops her entire body. The sofa feels warm and solid beneath her sitting bones.

  This is a beginning. Even if incomplete and uncertain. Everything feels right and real to her in this moment.

  And yet Gus has no idea what she’s looking at. If Shannon were sitting next to her, she’d put her arm around Augusta.

  Do you see it, Gus?

  Augusta closes her eyes.

  Not yet, Mama.

  11

  Senator Halladay

  LATER THAT NIGHT, A CRANBERRY TURKEY MEDALLION dinner in her belly, Gus reads the full article about Henry Neil that she stole from Neon-Pink.

  He went missing in July of 2003 and his remains were discovered this week by a group of spelunkers exploring an abandoned mine near Newboro, Ontario. Fifteen years ago, Henry had been studying earth sciences and geophysics at Western University in London, Ontario.

  A promising young man with a bright future ahead of him is how one of his former professors describes him.

  His parents reported him missing when they didn’t hear from him for a week. At the time, he’d been away on a summer internship conducting mineral surveys in the Township of Rideau Lakes. He was billeting in Elgin, Ontario, with a local senator who was overseeing the mineral study. A man named Kep Halladay. No foul play was suspected, and a body was never found. The case went cold. Until now. The article says police have closed the case. He fell. It was just an accident.

  Gus grabs the Scotch tape and sticks the newspaper clipping on the wall near the other items about Henry. She traces her finger across Henry’s story. From his body being found this week, to a possible sighting on a porch in 2003, to his missing person’s report that same year, to his graduation a few years earlier. It’s a timeline. She gets a sudden flash of Shannon absently twirling a red marker between her thumb and index finger.