Jacintha

by Lorraine Davies

  “No, I have to keep moving,” she said. “I need distractions. The Mexican sun. Hot food, hot music.”

  “And hot men.”

  “Yes, those, too. Could you please call me a taxi now to get me to the bus back to the airport?”

  * * *

  In the taxi, she opened her suitcase. She had packed lightly, not counting the things that were heavy with memory and loss. She took out her camera to look yet again at the photo of Richard she had taken in class when his attention was on another student who had asked a question. He looked so handsome, with a lively, engaged expression and a slight smile. She put the camera back into the suitcase, alongside her mother’s photo taken in the pub, and Blake’s Songs of Innocence, and lifted out a small towel in which nestled the clay dog she had stolen. She stroked its bristly back for a moment, then carefully wrapped it up again. Precious mementoes.

  Maybe she would be less sad as time went on if she could think of Richard as a part of her, she herself a kind of memento. Flesh of his flesh. Never parted.

  FORTY

  “LET’S INVITE CAROL over for dinner on Friday night,” Frances said. “She’s ready to see you.”

  Frances had visited Carol a couple of times in the past week, but Carol had yet to visit Richard again.

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “She’s been trying hard to understand what happened and says she sees you were more sinned against than sinning.”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Richard, you’ll have to join the real world sooner or later.”

  “You have no idea how real my world is.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Here’s some good news. I actually cried when I saw a starving child on TV last night.”

  “You congratulate yourself for realizing that someone is worse off than you are?”

  “No, of course not. I just mean the scar tissue has thinned a little, or the scab is cracking, letting in some air and light. Or some other cockamamie metaphor to say my self-pity eased up for a minute or two, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? It’s better than nothing.”

  “It’s minimal.”

  “How about it, then? Carol on Friday?”

  “All right, but I fear it won’t go well.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “I’m a bit averse to surprises these days.”

  “Yes, I know. I meant pleasantly surprised.”

  They decided on a menu and then sat with their drinks, watching the fire in the fireplace as it spat and crackled.

  “Green wood,” Richard said.

  “Just a bit damp, I think,” Frances said. “Richard, why don’t you have a look at Aubrey’s books? That shelf just to your right has his philosophy collection.”

  “I find it hard to read these days. Can’t concentrate.”

  Frances got up and took a book from the shelf. “Marcus Aurelius, Meditations,” she said. “Aubrey loved this, read it frequently — to keep himself humble, he said. There’s a lot about the futility of wanting fame, and Aubrey tended to want fame. But it has a lot of other wisdom, too.”

  She handed the book to Richard. He looked at the cover photo of a bust of Aurelius in bronze, or maybe gold. A sad face, it seemed to him. He opened the book and read silently: “One philosopher goes shirtless; another bookless; a third, only half-clad, says, ‘Bread have I none, yet still I cleave to reason.’”

  I’m bookless, he thought, my books drowned like Prospero’s, although Prospero chose to engage more fully with the world through reason, whereas I’ve turned away from the world and my reason is shaky.

  “What did you find?” Frances asked.

  Richard read aloud the line about cleaving to reason.

  “Good advice,” Frances said.

  “Unless you’re half-mad.”

  “Don’t dramatize. You’re not mad at all. Only suffering.”

  Richard sipped his Scotch and savoured the rich, smoky taste — a moment or two without suffering.

  On Friday morning, Richard made an apple pie using a frozen crust from the freezer. He couldn’t do pastry, so it would have to be without a top crust or fancy latticing. Standing rib roast was as simple as could be. It was in the oven by four o’clock. Carol was arriving at six. He kept busy enough to hold his nervousness at bay, but by five o’clock he had begun to sweat and his hand shook as he poured himself a straight Scotch. He took the bottle and his glass upstairs and ran a deep bath. He was still in the tub, the hot water having been replenished several times, the Scotch not quite as often, when the doorbell rang.

  Half-drunk, he had trouble dressing. Buttoned his shirt wrong, rebuttoned it, found he’d put on one grey sock and one black. Spent several minutes choosing between jacket and sweater, jeans and grey flannels. Was halfway downstairs in jeans and tweed jacket when he realized he hadn’t combed his hair. Went back up.

  He could hear Frances and Carol speaking softly in the kitchen. Smelled the meat and vegetables. Delicious. Nauseating.

  He sat down in the living room.

  “Richard, there you are,” Frances said from the kitchen doorway. “Come in here and join us.”

  He sat down without looking at Carol. Looked at a plate of crudités.

  Carol picked it up and held it out to him, an offering. “The dip Frances made for these is good,” she said.

  “No thanks.” He looked into her eyes.

  She kept holding the plate aloft.

  “Oh, Richard,” she said and set the plate down hard.

  The clattering made Frances, who was fussing with something at the counter, jump and turn around. She turned away again, quickly.

  “Richard,” Carol said again, and started to cry.

  “Don’t,” Richard said. “Don’t.”

  But she kept on crying.

  “Could we open that wine, Frances?” Richard asked.

  Frances poured three glasses. “The roast needs to rest a while,” she said, and left the room with her wine.

  Carol shuddered, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, stared at him, her eyes too round. “How are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You look quite well. Are you feeling a bit better?”

  He wanted to scream at her effort at normality. “Yes. I guess. A bit.”

  “That’s good.”

  In the silence that followed, Richard could hear the hundreds of unsaid words, cries, accusations, lamentations.

  “This is so awful,” Carol said at last. “I miss you. Won’t you talk to me?”

  “I don’t know what to say. My vocabulary has become strangely inadequate.”

  “I know. I know. Don’t worry. I can see I shouldn’t push you. I’m glad I can just sit here with you for a while.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to eat anything,” Richard said.

  “Neither will I.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, I literally don’t know what to say. Only, I’m sorry I hurt you.” He heard his cold, matter-of-fact tone, but felt incapable of saying the words with feeling. “I think I need to lie down for a while. Will you excuse me? Sorry to be so formal. Absurd. Sorry.” He stood up abruptly, almost knocking over his chair, walked clumsily from the room, his legs like lead. Upstairs, he lay on his bed, his heart pounding.

  When he heard footsteps on the stairs, he prayed it wasn’t Carol. From outside his closed door, Frances said, “She’s gone. But she said she’ll be back, maybe in a couple of days. She says she knows how hard it is for you.”

  Richard said nothing and Frances left. Then, with a sense of relief, he cried, not for himself this time, but for Carol.

  FORTY-ONE

  RICHARD SAT IN the dark cabin with his overcoat on, clutching a glass of Scotch and watching the sky lowering between the fir trees. It would rain soon.

  Memories erupted painfully, as though they’d been lodged in his flesh — small, silent explosions. Or buzzed like bluebottles in his ear; swat and flail at one and another attacke
d. The faint, teasing whispers were the worst: bittersweet reminders of things never to come again.

  He’d found the cabin on the Sunshine Coast — a misnomer for a place that seemed in winter as grey and wet as anywhere else in BC — in an online ad, met the owner for keys and directions, handed over a certified cheque, and was on the ferry the next day. He’d left a note for Frances saying he was going away for a while, not to worry, but didn’t tell her where. He’d bolted to avoid Carol’s imminent visit and the threatened visit from Gabe to discuss his “concerns.”

  The waters of the Georgia Strait were near but not near enough to see or hear. He’d thought of going to the west coast of Vancouver Island, but the trip was much longer, and also his memories of his honeymoon in Tofino with Carol might have added another level of pain.

  The village, here by the less-primal waters, was only a mile away from the cabin, and would be easy to walk to when he needed to call a taxi to the ferry. The place was well equipped for off-season rental, but had no phone (he still had no cellphone) or TV or radio, which suited him fine. He’d brought along two bottles of wine, and one of Scotch. He’d had the taxi from the ferry wait at the village store while he picked up canned beans, tuna, sardines, soup, bread, butter, jam, honey, apples, eggs, coffee, and milk.

  He drank until he fell asleep in the chair. When he woke, stiff and cold, he found the thermostat, turned on the furnace, ate some bread and cheese, undressed, and fell into bed. He dreamed terrible dreams, of which he couldn’t remember the details in the morning — only that he’d been threatened and shamed in a kind of dim, confusing purgatory by people he thought he should know but couldn’t place.

  After a breakfast of toast, a fried egg, and coffee (plus Tylenol and two glasses of water for his hangover), he set out for the beach. When he arrived, he found that he and an elderly woman walking a dog were the only ones out there. There was always someone walking a dog. The woman wore the costume du jour: running shoes and a thick fleece hoodie. Her Lhasa Apso was off his leash and bounding ahead of her, rushing with mad enthusiasm at seagulls. Richard was glad to see the woman briskly following the dog. He didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  He sat on a log, watching the waves crash on the shore, over and over. A satisfying, heavy sound. Roar, swoosh, roar, swoosh. His mind was blessedly empty for seconds at a time. Roar, swoosh, roar, swoosh.

  He took a few deep breaths of the salty air. It was the first time he’d been to a beach since he was stabbed; he had been a bit nervous about how he might react, but it was all right. If it were dark, it would be different. He was pretty sure he couldn’t face a beach after dark, but here, in the drizzly daylight with the tide going out and the solid log under him, and no one but the woman and the dog sharing the beach, he could almost relax.

  Someone else was striding toward him. A man — medium height with a square, sturdy build, wearing jeans, a windbreaker, a toque. Panic overcame Richard and he ran back to the trail and was halfway to the road when he turned to see if anyone was behind him. No one. He walked swiftly back to the cabin, where he closed the curtains and locked the door.

  He drank a glass of wine, sat still until his heart slowed down, and finally concluded that he’d been a fool and that he must guard against paranoia.

  What had he really come here for? To try to escape. The crazed squirrel in the cage. He could understand how men ended up sleeping under dirty blankets in doorways. How many of them couldn’t forgive themselves for some crime against their wives and children?

  “You can’t change the past, only how you think about it,” was one of the current mantras. But how do you change your thinking about the unthinkable?

  Maybe if he wrote some of his thoughts down. He found his notebook and a pen, thought a bit, but nothing came to him. Not a word.

  He poured himself more wine, drank it down quickly, poured another glass, and drank half of that.

  He dug into his duffle bag and found the Marcus Aurelius book. He’d grabbed it from a shelf just as he was leaving Frances’s house. He needed some professional philosophy now. Stoical input.

  Hell, yes. Now is the time for stoicism. He laughed, already a bit drunk.

  He opened the book at random and read: “Accustom yourself to give careful attention to what others are saying, and try your best to enter into the mind of the speaker.” Whose mind should he enter? Jacintha seemed the logical choice. She’d been saying a lot, and he remembered so much of it word for word. “It was the way I knew you would suffer the most.” He wrote this down in his notebook.

  She’d said, “We have to stay together. I’m flesh of your flesh.” Get inside her mind. She’s happy believing she owns me, but I have to make her unhappy for her own good, to save her.

  “Our connection isn’t really about sex; it’s an expression of our deeper connection, a marriage of our souls,” she’d said. “A kind of holy ritual.”

  If our bodies joined. Flesh of my flesh. No! I can’t think about that.

  He threw the notebook across the room.

  Enough of this useless pondering. He needed a distraction. No damned radio. He had a newspaper. Might as well see what was happening in the crazy, fucked-up world at large. On most days there were hordes of the criminally insane roaming freely.

  He decided to bypass the front-page articles, full of international tensions, wars, and local incidences of violence. Names and places changed, but little else.

  Further inside the paper he saw a small item about a man in the U.S. who had thought, one night, that an intruder was on his porch. He shot first and looked afterward. He had killed his son, who was coming home late from a party.

  Poor, stupid bastard.

  And here was another one. A teenaged boy had beaten his sister for flirting with boys. “It was my duty,” he said.

  The next item Richard noticed was about a proposed form of birth control: go into space. It seemed that astronauts’ sperm count went down. Laughing, he had a vision of thousands of criminals being shot into space to keep Earth’s gene pool pure, a modern alternative to shipping them to Australia, as England did in the nineteenth century.

  He turned a page and his eye was caught by the story of an unmarried woman being stoned to death for having an affair. He didn’t go on reading.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” he said and threw the paper down.

  When he finally fell into bed, he had a dream. He was locked in a closet the way his mother had locked him in once, as a punishment. In the dream he was his adult self and Jacintha, about six years old, was sitting beside him, crying. Some of her tears fell on his hand as he reached out for her cheek. Then heavy footsteps approached the door, a growl. “It’s a bear — he’ll get us,” she said, so much fear in her voice. “No, we’ll be all right,” he said, but she didn’t seem to hear him. “He’ll get us,” she said, and then was gone.

  Someone was opening the closet door. His cry woke him up. His heart was pounding. He’d felt Jacintha’s fear as though it were his own. He’d felt her terrible sadness. He hadn’t been able to help her as a child, and he couldn’t help her now.

  He lay still for a while, letting his wretchedness engulf him. Maybe that was all he needed to do: sink into the pain, not try to avoid it or rationalize it. Stay with it, drown in it, let it take its course. Maybe it would end. Maybe it would never end.

  She needed my protection, he thought. She wanted my heart before she was born.

  He tossed all night with dreams and nightmares. When he woke, it was out of a dream of Emily, in which she’d been looking at him with pleading eyes. He couldn’t help Jacintha, but he could help Emily. He would help her. He’d go back to Vancouver this morning and look for her.

  He packed quickly, didn’t bother about breakfast. He had a mission now and it gave him crazy hope, crazy because there were so many reasons to fail: he might not find her, and then might not find a way to help her. Still, he felt a buoyancy he hadn’t felt for a very long time.

  He left all the f
ood and booze for the next tenant. A nice surprise — the expensive Cabernet and the Glenfiddich Scotch — and the thought of that added to his tentative feeling of good humour.

  FORTY-TWO

  RICHARD GOT OFF the bus from the ferry at Georgia and Granville, climbed onto a No. 4, Powell bus, stepped off at Carrall Street, then walked up to Hastings. His plan had been to walk the few blocks to Main Street on the off chance that Emily was among the crowd selling their wares — salvaged things, maybe some stolen things — on blankets on the sidewalk. Drug dealers, and blank-eyed users, and women who might or might not be hookers leaned against buildings or paced nervously back and forth.

  But as soon as he stepped onto Hastings Street, he saw that a couple of blocks farther along the street had been cordoned off, and dozens of people, mostly women, were milling about, singing. Several women were drumming. As he got closer, he saw placards that read Our Sisters and Daughters Are Dying. Does Anybody Care? and We Demand Action for First Nations Women, and many others along the same lines.

  In spite of his sympathy for the cause, he couldn’t face joining the rally, or even trying to make his way through it. He decided to backtrack and find a way down to Cordova, but as he was about to turn around, he saw a woman with shiny blond hair in the middle of the crowd. He couldn’t see her face, but he could see she was wearing a sea-green jacket. And when she looked his way briefly, his heart jumped and he was almost sure it was Jacintha.

  He walked quickly toward her, keeping to the sidewalk, which was less congested. Even so, he bumped into a woman, who yelled at him and hit him on his back, not too hard, thankfully, with her placard. He’d walked only a block but it had seemed to take forever.

  He arrived breathless across from the blond woman, keeping himself shielded from her sight by the others standing near her. He breathed in sharply when he saw that it wasn’t Jacintha. An attractive face, but not her face.

  Shaken, he somehow got through the intersection at Main Street and continued eastward. What had he been thinking? He should have run in the other direction if he thought it was Jacintha. But the truth was he hadn’t been thinking at all. What would he have done if it had been her? He had thought that her being far away was essential to his peace of mind. But was it peace of mind he wanted? More than seeing her once more?