He couldn't, though. Not because doing so would violate social norms he cared little about at the moment, but because he lacked the courage. Stewing in impotent rage, Owen shoved his hands deep into his pockets and watched the casket sink into the ground, sinking the way Lori had sunk in that lake up north—whose name he couldn't recall—before she'd finally begun to float again, not from the force of her own will, but from the gases of her decomposition.
Death is lighter than water, he thought.
"For today we grieve the loss of a good soul," said the minister. "But rest assured, life will go on, and happiness will surely find us once more."
Surely, Owen thought grimly. In his right pocket was a handful of dirt, smooth and without stones. Between his fingers, it felt something like ashes.
2
"You look just like him, you know."
Owen had faked civility through countless condolences, had worn a painful smile for every "Sorry for your loss," "She was such a spectacular human being," and "God has a plan for everyone." But when the old man had said You look just like him, Owen took a step back to evaluate the phrase and the man who'd spoken it, falling out of line from where he stood between his mother and Gerald Kinsman, who'd already been Owen's stepfather for a handful of years by the time Lori had been born.
Just like who? Owen wondered.
The old man held Owen's hand firmly, his frail arm fully extended once Owen had stepped back. He was dressed in a cheap gray suit with moth-eaten cuffs, his white beard stained yellow-brown by what appeared to be cigarette tar. The handshake was palsied, his gray eyes quivering in their sockets as the old man struggled to maintain a nearly savage eye contact.
Owen turned to Gerald on his right: Gerald, with his ginger comb over, was tall to the point of being gangly, a full foot taller than Owen. Even their facial features were nothing alike. Gerald's nose was wide and flat, and as red as his hair from years of drinking. His chin was bulbous, and his potbelly was a round thing below his nearly concave chest. "He's not my fath—" Owen started to say, but the old man released his hand and moved on, briefly shaking hands with Owen's mother, who seemed to be obliged to fight back a snarl.
You look just like him.
Owen shook the hand of another mourner, a woman he didn't know who offered another bland cliché. He looked down the aisle of shuffling men and women, all in black attire, but the old man was gone, lost among the crowd gathered to mourn the loss of Lori Jean Saddler, dead much too young at the age of thirty-two.
Owen's uncle Ralph played "Greensleeves" on the pub's upright piano, the instrument nicked and scratched from years of shattered glasses and dart playing. The dartboard hung very near Uncle Ralph's head while he played, mesmerizing his audience, most of whom had postponed their drinking for the song's duration after realizing the man was no novice piano player.
If there was ever a time to cry, it was then, and for a moment Owen thought he might be able to squeeze out a tear or two. But the song ended before he could conjure up the necessary emotion, and everyone who'd gathered around the piano was clapping and cheering. The moment had come and gone. His eyes remained dry.
Lori's death a little over a week earlier had shaken him, yet he hadn't wept then, either. The words "Your sister's had an accident" had struck him like a bulldozer. He'd felt her death as an aching emptiness in his chest—a feeling that should have brought tears in a functioning human being, popping the cork that held back the waterworks. On an intellectual level, he knew he was sad. Lori had meant the world to him—had saved him, really. He'd been shy before her arrival in the world, withdrawn. But, in many ways, having her in his life had helped him bloom. Without her courage to inspire him, he might never have come out of his shell to acquire the few friends he'd made (and subsequently lost) over the years. Without her encouragement to dampen his doubts and fears—of rejection, of failure, of never being quite good enough for anything or anyone—he might never have graduated high school or gone on to university to become an architect or built homes and hospital additions and green roofs on skyscrapers hundreds of feet in the air. Even the wind farm, his current project located a few dozen kilometers north of the city, owed itself to Lori's prodding.
Without having had Lori in his life, Owen might have been lost. Now, with her gone, he truly was lost. He felt untethered to reality, with only his mother left to keep him grounded. And still, the tears wouldn't come.
"Don't you just wanna knock the smiles off all these fucking people's faces?"
Trevor, one of Lori's childhood friends, stood beside Owen at the table of hors d'oeuvres. Uncle Ralph was playing an upbeat tune Owen didn't recognize. Mourners wore smiles and chatted again, raising glasses in toasts and moving their heads to the music. Owen chewed the mouthful of cracker and Hungarian salami—which he'd just shoved into his face before Trevor had interrupted—and swallowed it dry.
"It's nice they're smiling," Owen lied. "Isn't that what wakes are for? To celebrate life?"
"Sure, but look at them." His whisper was conspiratorial, a devil on Owen's shoulder. Trevor wore a neatly tailored black suit jacket atop a kilt, the black of his jacket sharply offset by splashes of blood red in his pocket square and thick knee-high socks, over which he wore sandals. His caramel-brown pate, shaved to the skin, glistened under the bar lights. "You'd think this was a wedding," he remarked.
"The way that minister was going on," Owen said, "she might've married Lori to Jesus."
Trevor snickered and clapped him on the back. "You're sick, man."
Owen mused at how accurate Trevor's comment was, despite being a backhanded compliment.
"It's really too bad about Lori, man," Trevor said. "She was a good kid. I'm really gonna miss her."
Owen nodded and stuffed another cheese-laden cracker into his mouth.
Trevor watched him chew for a moment. He seemed to recognize the mouthful had been meant to halt the conversation, and returned Owen's nod. "You take it easy, Ownsy," he said. He eyed Owen queerly and moved past.
Owen swallowed. "Yeah," he said, still half-chewing and glad for the easy out. "You, too." He watched while Trevor ambled over to another crowd of friends. Trevor glanced back at him with another strange look, and then raised his glass for a toast. The others responded by raising theirs.
Owen stood alone by the food table—reliving those junior school dance parties all over again—and began to wonder how much longer his mother intended to be here. He'd already had drinks with some of Lori's friends, and he knew they were likely to celebrate into the wee hours, then move on in search of an after-party. He decided that, if he and his mother were obligated to stay until the last of the mourners decided to call it a night, then he would excuse himself early.
A young white guy dressed in a Middle Eastern kurta approached the table, picked up a napkin and plate, and began loading the plate with enough food for a group of three. "Excuse me," he said, reaching the place where Owen had planted himself. "Oh, hey. You're Lori's brother, aren't you? Don't tell me…"
"Owen."
"Of course." The kid smiled pleasantly. His whitened teeth gleamed against his deep tan. "I'm Hanson," he said, holding up his free hand in a motionless wave.
"We met at Lori's twentieth. You're the diver, right?"
"Did we?" Hanson said absently. "Yes, diving is one of my passions." He gestured toward one of the snacks on the table. "Are these vegan, do you think?" He answered his own question with a shake of his head. "Best not to risk it."
"You taught Lori how to dive," Owen said.
"That sounds like it might be an accusation," Hanson replied, though it didn't seem to bother him enough to spoil his appetite.
"It's not—" Owen hadn't meant to accuse the kid of criminal negligence, but he supposed somebody had to be to blame for Lori's drowning, and her diving instructor seemed to him the likeliest culprit. Still, he didn't want to get into a fight at his sister's funeral. "I don't mean it's your—"
"Have you ever dived b
efore, Owen?"
"Not unless I was pushed."
Hanson chuckled. "Well, Owen, it's an unfortunate fact that things like this happen. It's a tragedy, of course, but it's something you have to consider when you go under. Something as simple as a kink in the hose could—sorry to be blunt—kill you. You can die of panic if the water's deep enough. Think about that for a second. We call it blue orb syndrome. You become disoriented; you can't decide what's up or down, the bottom or the surface. You hyperventilate. You may see things that aren't necessarily there."
"I guess," was all Owen could think to say.
"Respectfully, Owen, you're not qualified to guess."
Oh, but I do know, Owen thought. I know too much.
According to the officer involved in the case, they had found Lori's body in the low, muddy reeds where fishermen trolled for smallmouth bass. Owen had pressed for details when he and his mother had gone to the police station, but his mother had strangely not wanted to hear them, and in fact had insisted he take her home without receiving any answers—but death was no longer a mystery. Police dramas and murder books, especially the ones by Martin Savage that his mother liked to read, had filled in the details like some macabre checklist, so that Owen and his mother knew all the signs a forensics team would have looked for: blood in the lungs, burst blood vessels in the eyes, bloating, a bluish tinge to the flesh, dirt and algae under the fingernails, metabolic acidosis, acute renal failure. He had called later to talk to the officer in charge, but they had ended up playing phone tag. He knew from a handful of television programs that proving homicide in a drowning case could be extremely difficult. Still, some dark part of him suspected foul play must have been involved.
"You're right," Owen said, distracted—not by thoughts of Lori's death, but by his mother, who seemed to have gotten into an argument with the old, jittery-eyed man who'd accused him of looking like his stepfather. "How would I know about drowning?" he said, watching his mother show the old man to the door with a fierce thrust of her hand.
Hanson squinted at him. "It's all right to grieve," he said, laying a hand on Owen's shoulder. Owen looked down at it and said nothing, while across the large, dim room, the old man leaned in close to Margaret Saddler to voice his parting words. She slapped the old man hard across the face. Owen had never seen his mother slap someone before, despite the countless times she'd lost her temper, and wondered what he must have said to deserve it. The old man gave a disheartened nod, turned his reddened cheek away from her, and slinked away.
"Just know that Lori isn't just here," Hanson was saying, and when he laid a palm flat on Owen's chest, Owen snapped his gaze back to the kid. "She's also here," the kid said, and swept a robed arm to encompass the totality of the pub, indicating Lori's eternal oneness with Everything.
Owen looked around himself, not quite getting it. His sister's philosophical friend scowled, and took that moment to slip away.
3
A few hours later, Owen sat on the steps outside the pub, clearing his head. A light rain was falling, a cool mist on his skin, the sun sinking behind the big Anglican church down the street, when Gerald stepped outside for a smoke.
"Hiya, Owen," Gerald said. He wore his characteristic hangdog expression. Not that he necessarily felt guilty for anything—though he had much to feel guilty about, in Owen's opinion. It was just how his eyes were shaped, drooped at the corners, his mouth downturned from the weight of his jowls.
"Gerald," Owen said, avoiding eye contact, looking instead at the passing traffic.
"You know," Gerald said, hovering behind him, "Lori and I were reconnecting before—well, before she went up to that place."
Reconnecting, Owen scoffed. More like meeting for the first time. Gerald Kinsman had only been around full-time for the first five years of her life, and had been blind drunk through most of those.
"She told me."
"Any idea what she was doing up there?"
"Where?" Owen said, his tone laced with anger.
"Chapel Lake. Did Lori… did she tell you anything, Owen? She never said anything to me about going up there, never even called, like she promised—"
"Why would she tell you anything, Gerald? You were barely in her life. She didn't even know you."
The man's stubbly Adam's apple bobbed as he choked back an emotional response: whether exasperation or grief, it was difficult to tell. "Someday you'll understand how hard it is, walking into a family that's not yours," he said, his tone eerily calm. "Being the outsider. Trying to step into the shoes of a father who was never there to a kid who never wanted one."
"Like you ever tried," Owen said. He wanted to hit the old man as hard as he could, this man who'd once claimed to want to be his father, pretender to the throne in the Saddler house. He wanted to dig his hand into his pocket and fling Lori's ashes—not really ashes at all, he reminded himself, only unnaturally smooth sand—right in Gerald's face. Instead, he said the worst thing he could say to a recovering alcoholic: "All you did was drink."
"That's a goddamn lie!" Gerald shouted back. He shot a look into the bar, where gatherers still drank, oblivious to the argument outside.
"I saw it, Gerald. But you were good at it, I'll give you that. It's just too bad you couldn't make a career out of that."
"I haven't had a sip of booze for over a year," Gerald said, breathing deep through his nose to calm himself. "I'm trying, Owen. Can't you see that?" His eyes expressed concern. "Why do you have to be so closed-off all the time? What made you so damned unforgiving, huh? Even your mother's forgiven me. Why the hell can't you?"
Margaret Saddler emerged from inside, just then, wiping her hands on her tweed pants. "Well, the hand dryer didn't work, so I'll have to sit with wet pants."
Gerald put on a smile. Owen's mother smiled back politely. Neither of them acted as if Owen was there at all. "They'll dry soon enough," he said.
"Speaking of dry," she said, "it's a genuine pleasure to see you're off the sauce again."
Gerald blushed. "Every day is a struggle, but we persevere."
"Yes, we do."
They shared a strained smile, the awkwardness so palpable Owen forgot about his anger and just marveled.
"Well, it was good to see you again, Margaret," Gerald said, "even if it wasn't under the best of circumstances."
"You, as well," Margaret said with a deferent nod. "Well?" she said, turning to Owen. "Shall we go?"
Owen rose from his place on the stairs.
"Take care of your mother, Owen," Gerald said at his back. "And yourself."
Owen ushered his mother down the steps without a word.
"Don't be rude," she scolded him.
So Owen said, "You, too."
4
"Who was that man you were arguing with earlier?" Owen asked as they drove home. He was staying with his mother for a few days at the house in the suburbs where he'd grown up, he and his mother having moved there when he was five.
"Man?" she said, flummoxed.
"The man with the beard. You two were in a pretty heated debate, from the look of it." She couldn't have forgotten already, but he supposed she had been distracted. They'd both been distracted. "You slapped him in the face?"
"Oh," she said, and clucked her tongue. "Pish posh."
She went straight into the house once they were parked, plopping herself down in front of the TV. The two of them sat for a bit watching reruns of old sitcoms, or rather, his mother watching and Owen staring vacantly, his mind on more important matters. How did it feel gasping for breath in those last moments? he wondered. Did she lose consciousness right away? Was it like drifting off to sleep? Blacking out drunk? Or was it agony, her lungs filling with water, feeling every single molecule of oxygen dissolve, the crackling inhalations, her heartbeat slowing, her liver bloating and extremities trembling, growing cold and numb, knowing with each breath the next could be her last?
The credits from Growing Pains flashed in the darkened room. His mother had put the com
mercials on mute, and hadn't turned the volume up. For some reason Owen had never understood, she disliked TV theme songs. Even the song from Cheers, probably the most universally-loved, she'd kept on mute. This was another secret he and Lori had shared, learning the songs from videos they'd taped and chanting them together while their mother was at work.
He got up from the couch and kissed his mother perfunctorily on the forehead, her wrinkles lightly dusted with a pale, floral-scented makeup, then he left her in front of the TV. Eying the pea green carpeting on the stairs on the way up to his old room, he recalled that he and Lori were supposed to have torn it up together, a fun project for the two of them, the summer after his first year at university—yet another reminder of his failures as a son and brother.
"Do you remember…?"
Owen turned at the sound of her voice with his head just below the second floor landing, looking down at Margaret Saddler through the stair rails. She hadn't spoken a word to him all day that hadn't been dragged out of her, and the sudden sound of her voice, broken, unsteady, startled him.
"Do I remember what, Mom?"
She didn't look back. He noticed with sadness that her white hair had thinned in the back, another sign of death creeping ever closer. Soon she'd be gone, too, and aside from his work colleagues, he would come completely untethered, like a boat without a sail, with nothing and no one left to keep him around any longer.
"When you were little," she said, her words flat, without emotion, "the two of us used to argue all the time."
"I don't remember that, no."
"We did." She never turned from the television. "You'd scream bloody murder over any old thing and go charging up those stairs to your room. You'd slam the door and you wouldn't even come out for supper."
Salvage Page 2