The falls had no answers for Agnes, offered no magic bridge or levitating mist, so she turned around at Kingsbridge Park and looped back to drive onto Lundy’s Lane from the west. Callum’s protest had ebbed to a soft warble. She pulled into the parking lot of the Flying Saucer diner, hoping some cosmic junk food would help soothe his wounds.
“Feel like some grub, kid?”
That won a pause in his whimpering, even the hint of a smile.
“Is it a spaceship, mom?”
“Close enough. Come on.”
She hauled him out of the car and into the Saucer’s dining room, where dozens of families sat, drinking sodas and scarfing fries. They all looked so happy. Whole. Agnes felt her chest constrict, her shoulders tense, was suddenly hyper-aware of her leg tattoos and undyed roots. A waitress came up, glanced back at the dining room.
“Got a couple seats at the bar,” she said.
Agnes nodded. They were always bar people.
It went fine through the sitting down and looking at menus and ordering Cokes and cheeseburgers, right up to when the TV above them filled with a picture of the sleek blue dome, its exterior alive with projected light. “Immerse yourself in the wonder of Niagara Falls,” said a soothing voice. “A marvel of technology that brings you below the flow. The 360° Waterdome. ONLY in Niagara Falls, New York.” She watched Callum’s eyes go dark and his shoulders slump again, lines of frustration cut into his face, mapping disappointments he understood and did not.
Glen had come to visit her just twice in Millhaven. Once right after she’d told him she was pregnant, once three weeks later. Both times, sitting in the plastic visitor’s chair in the same dirty Bills cap he’d been wearing during the flight, talking about how excited he was, how amazing it would be. How of course he’d be there for the kid. How sorry he was that Agnes had taken the fall for them both. How he’d make it up to her — not by turning himself in, of course. That wasn’t possible. Somehow, though.
The water had been rising ever since Agnes jumped out of that plane.
She tried again to explain.
“You know your mom isn’t perfect,” she said to Callum. The door to the Saucer’s kitchen sprang open and the smell of grease wafted out at her, settling thick and oily on her skin. “What I did when I was younger, it was stupid. I didn’t know then, that you’d be here. That it would end up on you. I know it’s not fair.”
“I could go without you,” he said.
She considered him. She had no idea where he’d gotten his blond hair — Glen’s hair, when he was younger, maybe. Or maybe Callum was just growing into his own creature, in defence against the defects of his parents.
“Not without me, kid,” she said. She’d thought about sending him over alone, watching from the border as he crested the curve of the bridge. Waiting the hours for him to come back. She always got to the part where he didn’t. The exercise stopped there.
“It’s not fair,” he said, as though she hadn’t just told him the same thing.
The burgers came and she ate them both, Callum sulking behind his milkshake.
Later, when the sun was low over the river and a sheen came into Callum’s eyes, she drove them to Clifton Hill. The air was still hot and the tourists were thick and jostling, but the aroma of funnel cakes and the pulse of music pumping out into the avenue and the ka-ching! of arcade games gave everything a softness. You could always be young here; the falls would always be older. She wanted to believe that there would always be bells and lights and candy for sale. But you couldn’t stay in this kind of place — not with the grey past behind you and the border in front, with the river engorged and the Waterdome looming, a rigged choice between a future worshipping empty light under a fibreglass carapace, or drowning.
When she saw the red door with the sign overtop, the name hit her like warm fuel.
MADAME PSYCHE
Palm Readings Tarot Fortunes Told
All the sounds around her dilated and mixed. Her back muscles shifted, aching for new alignment. She squeezed Callum’s hand. He was in a daze, so tired. Inside, he could sit and rest. The falls roared at her. The border leered. The red door, nested in the shadows of a crook between a candy shop and a wax museum, drew her like an open palm. She needed fortunes told.
Up the street, an automated barker called: SEE!! The most a-may-zing . . .
“Cal,” she said. “Want to sit down for a bit, hon? Mom wants to go in here.”
The red door whispered, Yes.
The light inside was haunted red, blood in yellow water. Shadows webbed the jewelled chandeliers, the few working bulbs glowing gold halos amid grey, burnt-out cousins. The smell of incense was thick and sweet. The circle of light around the central table, cast by a red glass lamp, was the only tangible universe. Callum sat on a mound of tasselled cushions in the dimness behind them, watching as Madame Psyche stroked his mother’s upturned palm, eyes closed. Channelling secrets. Agnes, tired, let herself get lost in the spell. There were answers here; you could buy them for twenty dollars a half hour.
“I sense a burden in you.” Madame Psyche’s voice was like a pearl cloud, deep and smoky. “You are being . . . pulled apart somehow.”
Agnes nodded.
“You bear fierce love in your heart. But a piece of you is lost in time. I see you in a blue place. A vast blueness. You are light, weightless . . . in trouble.”
Agnes frowned. She heard Callum rustling behind, turned and checked on him, locked eyes: we’re okay. When she turned around again, a blast filled her ears, a huge mechanical roar that blurred her vision and pressurized her chest. She knew the sound. Glen’s Cessna, barrelling south, hauling skunky cargo to the cross-border market. She was inside. Young. On an adventure. Then, six sirens blaring on, one by one. The sound echoed in her head like mad laughter, swirled around to mingle with Callum’s injured wailing, with the roar of the falls, with Glen’s chopper-blade laugh as he threw her a thumbs-up from the cockpit and then again through the Millhaven visitation room’s Lucite barrier: a-MAY-zing!
She grabbed the lip of the table and took a deep breath. Madame Psyche gave a curious look. In a sliver of silence, Agnes’s eye caught the figure of another child, standing behind the fortune teller in the dark doorway to an interior room. A girl, not much older than Callum, long black hair falling almost to her waist, green eyes gleaming in the lamplight.
Madame Psyche turned and frowned.
“Sofia! You know not to bother me when I’m with clients.”
“Sorry, Mama.”
The girl paused for a second to look at Callum huddled in the cushions. Then she was gone, ducked back behind the inner door. Agnes looked at Madame Psyche, who was staring quizzically at where her daughter had been.
“My apologies,” she said, fingering her hoop earrings. “I’m not sure when to begin teaching her the family business. Or if I should at all.” Some of her mysticism fell away, and Agnes saw the plain beauty of a mother puzzling over her child.
“It’s okay,” Agnes said. “How old is Sofia?”
Madame Psyche smiled. “She’ll be nine next month.”
“Callum is seven,” she said.
“Hi,” he said, sleepily, behind her. Always listening.
Agnes looked up at the ceiling. She felt the darkness press on her, the damp weight of Millhaven. Out of habit, she folded her hands in front of her on the table. Inside was Callum, a tiny figurine, cocooned by the skin and bones of her fingers. When he was born, she’d held his warm body for just an hour before they took him away. For the first three years of his life, she’d known him only in the hard fluorescence of the visiting room, a small creature in the laps of her tired, disappointed parents, leaving him over and over again to walk back to her grey cell, escorted by silent guards. She’d gotten out early for good behaviour, and since then she’d held flesh and blood Callum as close and as much as she could. Still, she would always carry a miniature version of him in the hollow of her palms, a weightless sprite containing hi
s essence. That, at least, was a thing prison had taught her: there’s always something they can’t take, something only you can create.
She felt tears coming.
“What if I die before I can fix it?” she whispered to her folded hands, wetness on her cheeks. “What if I can never get across?”
Madame Psyche sighed. She leaned in and put her hands on Agnes’s.
“Look,” she said. I don’t usually give out this kind of advice. My trade is . . . inexact. But I talk to a lot of people. I’ll tell you what I learned. My guess is, you’ve made mistakes. We all have. You’re no angel. No devil, either. You’ve made sacrifices, like any mother.” She sighed. “People like us, we live with ourselves. But we’re changed by what we love.” She pressed on Agnes’s hands with a strength that Agnes felt resonate up her arms and through her back.
Agnes sat, stunned in a momentary suspension of time. She’d come for answers. There were none to speak of. Nothing resolved. Some things would never be resolved. But hearing this woman talk, honestly, of love — it was as though a great spring was uncoiling inside of her, a release of some torqued constraint that had held her to the ground since the day she jumped. Warmth bloomed along her spine. The chandeliers tinkled, even though the air was still. She looked Madame Psyche in the eye.
“I was in prison when I gave birth to Callum,” she said. She closed her eyes. “He doesn’t really understand that yet.”
“No. It’s difficult, to find the right time.”
“He wants to go see the dome.”
Madame Psyche shook her head, leaned back, and grimaced. “Goddamn dome,” she said. “It’s a one-trick pony, a bunch of high-tech hocus-pocus. We’ve lost 30 per cent of our business over here.”
Agnes smiled. “Do you mind if I ask your name? Your real name?”
Madame Psyche considered this, then nodded. “Laila,” she said. “Laila Zayid.”
Agnes stood, unhooked her purse from the chair, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Laila Zayid, who raised an eyebrow.
“I haven’t finished reading your palm,” she said.
“Thank you, Laila,” said Agnes. “Really. But I’m ready to go now. Callum, hon. Let’s go.”
They walked back to the falls, drifting through the mist and the sounds of the protesters chanting, past Skylon Tower and the strip of big hotels, taking the riverfront park trail out to where the tourist area gave way to decommissioned power stations. Callum, asleep on his feet, stumbled along until she was almost dragging him. She picked him up and carried him on her shoulder, feeling a new strength centred there. They reached the old Rankine Station, a prisonlike brick bunker on the edge of the river. It had been dormant for over two decades. But Agnes could feel energy coming from it, some residual charge that lingered like a spirit around its iron gates. She paused at the mouth of the bridge over the intake reservoir and put Callum down on the grass by the boardwalk. It was late now, the far end of dusk. Most people were clustered in the tourist parks, waiting for the projection light shows to start — or across, on the south side, being awed by the marvel of the Waterdome. Out here, there were only a few stragglers on foot, and the passing headlights of cars over the bridge. Beyond the lip of the gorge, the falls roared, casting up sheets of mist.
Agnes looked out at the far bank. She thought back to the summer of three years ago, to her first few weeks out of jail, when she’d taken Callum to a city park. They were running in a wide sunlit valley. White clouds coasted across the blue sky. There were power lines along the edge of the park, but Agnes had let Callum fly his kite anyway, careful to not let him go too high. She looked up, into that remembered sky, the broad glare of its sun. Then she blinked and came back, to Callum now, in the rose Niagara evening. Maybe the idea wasn’t to be invisible, after all. Maybe there was still enough light.
She crouched and squeezed Callum’s upper arms.
“Callum, hon, I need you to stand up.”
He stood, wavering, and she steadied him and brought him to the guardrail at the edge of the water.
“Now, listen to me. I want you to hold on, Callum. Hold on to me. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“Okay. Hold on.”
She knelt and took him and clutched him to her chest, as tight as she could without hurting. He wrapped his arms around her neck. She could smell sweat and sunscreen on him, feel his breath on her shoulder.
“Hold on,” she said.
She hugged him tighter. Inside, she felt a noise, rising. At first, she tensed: it was the same sound from Madame Psyche’s, Cessna blades roaring in her chest, paralyzing her. But her muscles twitched, she held Callum closer, pressed him to her torso, and she felt something else there — a rustling, a buzzing, a thing coiling up from within her muscles, threading its way through her. Pain flared in her neck. She cried out and squeezed Callum tighter. A wave of motion rolled over her upper back, pressing upward like fingers through soil. When the two barbed tips burst through her skin, sending spurts of blood across her face and Callum’s hair, she started to weep. Her body shook. She wept, tears soaking into Callum’s collar, as two spindly tendrils sprouted from her shoulders, dripping gouts of red tissue as their feathers unfolded like the petals of a massive white lily. The falls roared and her muscles trilled with the rumbling in the earth and the rising in her body. Deep in her back she felt new roots fusing to her bones. She wept into Callum’s neck, and he cried along with her now, giving little shudders. On a gust of misted wind, Agnes pushed upward, taking her and Callum off the ground. They rose slowly, her wings sounding a low, musical drone, the dusk wrapping around them like an embrace. Agnes looked across, to the flickering dome, then down to the river rushing toward the precipice. She told Callum, hold on, hold on, as they rose into the air, weeping.
Up high, in the twilight, the border was barely there at all.
Acknowledgements
To Bethany Gibson, Susanne Alexander, Julie Scriver, Alan Sheppard, and everyone at Goose Lane Editions, thanks for giving this book a caring, attentive home. Many people read these stories as they stumbled toward completion; thanks to all my early readers, especially Dave McGinn and Chris Burt, and to the various editors who lifted the stories with their suggestions, especially Pamela Mulloy, John Barton, Shashi Bhat, and Kathryn Mockler. My copy editor, Peter Norman, made this a much better book. Cheers to Andrew F. Sullivan, Andrew Battershill, and Dimitri Nasrallah for sharing advice on publishing. To Jared Bland, Janice Zawerbny, House of Anansi, Anita Chong, Kirby Kim, Alissa York, Michael Helm, and Tonia Addison: thanks for your help and support. Menon Dwarka: may we find the perpetual lunchtime. Thanks to the good people at the Bristol Short Story Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada, for programs that create great opportunities for writers. Fist-bumps to James Heaslip and Fouad Elgindy for the boss photos. Respect and thanks to Carolyn Smart at Queen’s University, whose imparted wisdom grows with time. Thanks to my parents for their unwavering love and to all my friends and family for tolerating the whole writer thing. A nod to my grandfather, who shared some of his stories with me. Everything else to Amy and Danica, for whom my love goes beyond words.
To all the writers out there, locked in rooms, searching for the right verb: I acknowledge you.
“How the Grizzly Came to Hang in the Royal Oak Hotel” was first published in EVENT. “Neutral Buoyancy” appeared in Joyland. “Home Range” was first published in the Malahat Review. “Little Flags” appeared in the Danforth Review. “The Last Ham” was first published as a digital single by House of Anansi Press. “Sheepasnörus Rex” was published in the New Quarterly. “Between the Pickles” was in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, Vol. 8. Thanks to all of these publications.
This book received financial support from the Toronto Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Council, for which I am deeply grateful.
J.R. McConvey’s stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Matrix Lit Pop Award, and the T
homas Morton Prize. They have also been published in Joyland, EVENT, the Dalhousie Review, and the New Quarterly. McConvey’s poetry has appeared in carte blanche, filling Station, and the Carbon Culture Review, and he reviews books for the Globe and Mail. In 2016 he won the Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction from the Malahat Review.
In addition to fiction, McConvey also works in film. He created the National Parks Project, a cross-platform exploration of landscape, which was narrated by Gord Downie and went on to win a Gemini Award. He has also been nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for Mission Asteroid and recently produced five virtual reality pieces for SESQUI, a Canada 150 project.
Different Beasts is McConvey’s first full-length collection. He lives by the lake in the southwest corner of Toronto.
Photo: James Heaslip
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