The Clay Girl

by Heather Tucker

  “I never felt like Daddy hated me.”

  “You were the only one that looked like him.”

  “Please, please don’t tell me I’m like him.”

  “He was a selfish, arrogant bastard. You are nothing like him on the inside. You have his colouring. That is the sum total of it.” Her hand reaches across the table. “You won’t believe this but I always wanted you.”

  My head turns. “Pardon?”

  “When your mum brought you home from Mary’s I was smitten. You were this jabbering little button with the wildest mane and the most pleasing spirit. Theresa complained so much about her burden that I offered to take you.” Her sigh moves the trees in a gentle sway. “She took too much delight in my childlessness to let go of the pleasure it brought her. I know I was a sour old prune with you. At first, I thought if your mum believed I didn’t like you she’d reconsider. Then it became a way of cushioning my sadness. Before long, it was habit.” Her eyes connect with mine. “I’m sorry for every unkindness.”

  “I always saw the alpaca in you.”

  “An alpaca?”

  “They may spit now and then but they have eyes that soothe the soul and the softest fur in the universe.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  William Walrus punches my ticket.

  “You have any secrets for me?”

  “I see a grand young man waiting at the end of the line whose heart is near bursting.”

  Mikey says, “That’s Jake.”

  “And you, laddie, can let all your worries go.”

  “What about me?” I ask.

  “For a time, little miss. For a time.” William winks and moves on.

  Hours in I wander to the snack bar looking for sticky food that will shut Mikey up for a while. William walks by and checks his watch. “If you don’t unload that heaviness, we’re never going to stay on schedule.”

  “This year has left me with a lot of suitcases.”

  He pulls out a stool. “Up you get.”

  I perch so that I can see Mikey back in his seat snuggled up with his book. “What do you think is worse, a dad who doesn’t love you right or a mum that doesn’t love you at all?”

  “Can’t be compared.” He pours me a milkshake from a metal shaker. “Mums are your arms, they teach you to hold. Dads are your legs, showing you how to stand. That’s why you’re seahorse kin.”

  I wobble on the stool. “How’s a seahorse supposed to take care of a dragonfly?”

  “Just rest. Your arms and legs are coming in straight and fine and right on time.” My eyes close under the warmth of his hand on my head. “Ahead is a season of joy. Let the heaviness go.”

  When I was little I’d watch the faithful being slain in the spirit, babbling as they were filled with the Holy Ghost. In this present moment I’m certain their ecstasy couldn’t come close to being baptized by a walrus. The fierce white-hot stab of my sisters’ pain explodes into a thousand points of light. My oppressors turn to ash, carried west on a strong wind. A giddiness follows me back to my seat.

  Mikey watches out the window as advertisements flash by, playing billboard mash-up, “You’re on your way with—the best to you each—Kool menthol—easy peasy lemon—things go better with— Brylcreem, a little dab will—Hey, Mabel, look for the Black—Heinz 57 . . . Each meadow, barn, and gap-toothed fence draws me home.

  Things go better with Jake, eh, Ari?

  Yeah, Jasper, they do.

  Jake gets bigger as the train pulls in, white T-shirt over his fiddler’s arms, driftwood hair drifting over his eyes, smile lighting his face. He more dances than lifts me off the stairs.

  When the arms holding me are Jake’s and the road travelled leads home, the bump and throw in the back of the truck matters none. Mary stops the truck before Skyfish. Jake jumps out then opens his arms. “Come on, love. Get yourself down here.”

  I tumble out. He seizes my hand, hurrying me across the grassy shore piece between Skyfish and the Butters’. If we kept going we’d fly off the edge into the ocean but we stop about middle of the field. “What are you doing?”

  “Giving you your birthday present.” He points to a large black rock with a fat vein of quartz running through it. “This is your rock. A piece of Cape Breton.”

  I test the movability of the Volkswagen-sized bit. “It’s lovely, but how do you suppose I transport it?”

  “You’ll just have to leave it here. Build a house nearby.”

  “Won’t Gus Mulligan have something to say about that?”

  “Gus sold the place.”

  “Jake?”

  “I picked it up for a song. Well, actually more like a thousand songs but still it was a deal.” My legs snap around his waist nearly dashing him against my rock. He laughs, “So any chance I’m getting last dance, m’lady?”

  “What if the cliff gives way and the whole lot falls into the ocean?”

  “Then we’ll live on our boat.”

  “What if I gain five hundred pounds and sink the boat?”

  “Then I’ll build us a tanker.”

  He gives me a foot up, then moves himself up like a mountain goat. We survey our kingdom. “It’s the best present any girl ever got. I’ll live on this rock forever.”

  “Aye, she’s queen of the land.”

  We kiss, a wild missed-you-for-ten-long-months kiss then grudgingly, I let him go to haul in supplies for Nia before he and his fiddle have to head to St. John for a week. Mary scolds, “You best be taking your books with you, b’y.”

  “They’re in the van.” His head tilts asking for a walk out. I climb into the unloaded van, lying back with his sweater under my head. He crawls up, snuggling in close. “After this there’s only local stuff, okay?”

  “In a couple of weeks men are going to the moon. You could go that far and it wouldn’t stretch thin my love for you.” Hair, as soft and generous as Zodiac’s fills my hand. “I’m sorry about Danny.”

  “He went so fast.”

  “Did his dad come?”

  “Children’s Aid couldn’t locate him.” He fidgets with a button on my sleeve. “He was one lost little kid. He saw a chorus of snowy owls on every crest of a wave. I don’t know how many times he asked me to feed him to them.”

  “Did he ever tell you why he set the fires?”

  “He said they ate up the disappointment, but it was always hungry for more.” Jake’s sigh falls like an iron band onto my neck. “He stopped when he saw the ocean swallowed it all and said enough.”

  “That’s a poem.”

  “And here’s the last line direct from him, ‘My father’s disappointment made me small and my death don’t matter at all.’” Jake bites back tears. “How do people become such shit parents?”

  “They feed the disappointment and they don’t pay attention and . . . they stop being astonished by a snowy owl in the surf. I bet you told him he was magic, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe so, but all he really wanted was to hear it from his dad.”

  “Jake, listen for the voices that matter. Your dad was a liar, liar.”

  “We’re talking Danny.”

  “We’re talking all of us, the unthinkable ones, the invisible, the throwaways.”

  “I want so much to stay and talk away the hours, but I really do have to head out. I’ll be back in a lamb’s shake, then time will be ours.”

  Nia looks up from luring an ocean goddess out of burl maple when I return. “Jake okay?”

  I sit on my stool, pick up my brush, and paint another friggin’ lighthouse on a weathered piece of wood. “Danny’s dying hit him like a thousand-pound tuna.”

  Mary says, “He’s wearing himself ragged. If he’s not playing, he’s working at the docks or out on the boats, fishing or taking out tours. He’s not giving himself a moment to think.”

  Nia hunches low as if
telling the wood secrets. “He was eight when the Butters finally got him. There’s a lot of hurt that went on before then that needs healing.”

  “Did you know his parents?”

  “Betsy was a mute mouse. She took her two young girls back to her mum’s in Newfoundland and left Jake here with his dad. A brute bastard. Wee Jake would exist for hours in that filthy hovel, scared, cold, and hungry while his dad was off. Kindest thing he ever did was drown.”

  “How could she leave Jake with him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two armfuls were all she could run with at three a.m.”

  Mary drops a pot, on purpose, skittering rusty bits of clay across the planked floor. “Bloody fucking fuckers. His dad and his mum.” An intact chunk explodes under her foot.

  Her anger is like a wave and it’s maybe the safest I’ve felt in my sixteen years on this earth.

  “Now, let’s get the talk out of the way before Jake gets back.”

  “What talk?”

  “Nia and I know there’s about as much chance of keeping you out of each other’s knickers as there is leashing a whale and taking it for a walk.” Mary pulls up a stool. “We’ve had the talk with Jake and now, you listen up, missy. You will use protection. We’ll joy in the day you give us a grandbaby, but that day is not today. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Does that mean we have your blessing?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Nia chimes in. “Well, you sure have mine. It’d do you both a world of good to discover the joy of it. Lord knows you’ve had an overdose of the evil.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  I walk the shore then struggle up the craggy cliff to my rock.

  Jake bought this for us, Ari. We’ll live our days with him and my Jewel, between the Butters and Aunties M&N.

  We will, Jasper.

  Remnants of a split-rail fence zigzag around a small wood, maybe half an acre and two smaller stands. The foundation of the old Mulligan house possesses charred memories of an eight-kid family. Echoes of their dogs, Ginger and Tag, barking on my way past from school, linger in the long grass.

  Jake has built a small screened summer house near the ridge. The air inside is spiced with sweet cedar and salt. Most nights we steal away from our beds and lie outside body to soul on the ancient quilt. I think about him inside me but fear is a sticky thing. Jake feels it and tells me he’ll wait forever if that’s what I need. My hand paints his canvas of skin and his fiddler fingers play out the music in me. Then comes the long afterholding where we dream talk about our ever after.

  I saunter to my rock and stand atop. I want a home, Jasper. One that’s truly mine. Mine and Jake’s. I don’t care to count my life in miles travelled or money stored. I just want to love like those on my right and those at my left.

  I feel proud, noble even until Jasper whispers, Then we have to go back at summer end, don’t we?

  Shut it. I mean it. You say that once more during my worry-freed vacation and I’ll pickle you and cork the lid. I swear.

  I trudge back to Skyfish and take the wheel. Mary lifts my head. “Ari, you’ve been crying,” I bend low. “Go on, salt the pots. It makes them more beautiful.”

  I look pretty, splayed on the summer grass. At least the look on Jake’s face says I do.

  “They’re setting up a TV at the community centre to watch the moon landing tonight. You want to go?”

  I sigh, the kind of sigh that takes a long while to work its way out. “Did you know they’re landing on the Sea of Tranquility in a little ship called the Eagle? Let’s take Huey’s boat round to our little inlet and just watch the moon, imagine it all from there.”

  Jake elbows up; strokes my cheek. “You’re too good for me, Ari.”

  I whap his head—firmly. “You say that again and I swear I’ll murder you. You’re the best man there is and that includes those two hurtling toward the moon.” I brush myself off. “Stupid pigheaded boy that has no clue how spectacular he is, tries my patience more than wet-afternoon mosquitoes. I’m gonna throttle him, I swear, Jasper.” I yell at the indent in the grass as I head back to work. “Pick me up at seven and smell soap-nice.”

  Jasper prattles as I make preparations: featherbed and blankets.

  In case a cold front moves in. Right?

  Lacey bra and silk panties.

  In case we crash against a rock and have to go to the hospital.

  Fancy glasses for the ginger ale.

  In case we need extra bailers.

  Mason jars with candles.

  Just in case Buzz and Neil short-circuit the light from the moon. Good planning, Ari.

  Jake schleps the paraphernalia onto the Tura Lura and we sail into our own sea of tranquility.

  “Not many people get to disappear into a sunset and rise with the moon.” We make more of a nest than a bed. “You still mad?”

  I hand him a glass. “One toast and I’ll forgive you.”

  He clinks my glass. “To Ari, my earth, moon, and stars.”

  “Say, ‘To Jake Tupper, the only man in this universe good enough for Ari Zajac.’” He wanders around my face. “Say it. There can’t ever be an ‘us’ if you don’t believe this one thing.”

  He says it slow and measured, filled with a small seed of belief.

  I unbutton his shirt. Kiss his chest, down to an unzipping of his jeans, stripping away threads separating me from his skin. I sit back on my heels, pull off my sweater, my tank. Atlantic cool startles up my nipples as I unfasten my bra and let it fall. I stand, dropping my jeans. Pink panties float down my leg. I linger in the moonmilk, letting him drink. He fills to the brim, pulling me down, shivering and heating me in the same breath.

  The weight of him on me feels light. His lips, hungry but not greedy, taste my neck . . . my right breast, lingering on my left. His fingers play a slow song down my body. I open my legs, pulling him to me ’til he feels how much I want him inside. “Jesus, Ari, I . . . I didn’t bring anything. Mary will take my pecker for a turn on her wheel if I don’t keep you safe.”

  “Tonight you can be an astronaut without a suit. We won’t make any little spacemen.”

  “How?”

  “A pill that puts my eggs under lock and key until we’re ready for them.”

  “You did that for me?”

  “For me.” My teeth capture his ear. “And you.”

  Feeling the sweet pain as he slides inside, our rocking with the rhythm of the water beneath us, opening my eyes to the graceful arc of his neck, the ecstasy on his face, and the seahorse spinning in the moonlight through his hair, colours over the darkness.

  In the afterfall he catches me, reels me close. “You’re shivering, love.”

  Our ocean is heavy with ghosts: my father, Jake’s father, Danny . . . I force tears down into my belly. “Sing our world into place.”

  Unhurried and gentle, he fills the night around me with Gaelic jewels and soon the roiling inside me calms, grief transmutes into something nearing joy.

  “Is it almost eleven?”

  “Aye.” He props our pillow against the coil of rope, tucks the blanket under my chin, then circles me with his arms. “They should be stepping out about now.” He kisses my headtop. “For them it’s a walk, but Jake Tupper just danced on the moon.”

  I tilt back to see his face. “Our first dance.”

  “Save me last?”

  “What if that moon falls from the sky?”

  He reaches down, cupping my bum. “No matter, I’ll have this one.”

  Summer houses and boats, long grass and moonlit shores make love-making easy and each time I love it more than the last. Everything I create, think, touch, want, say . . . is connected to Jake, to us. I want, I need, to be with him forever.

  I go looking for Mikey and find him tucked in a corner of the veranda. “You’ve bee
n awfully quiet.” I slide down beside him. “What’s up?”

  “Just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “I heard the Missus tell Huey it was a blessing you were finally free of having to go back.” His voice sounds as small as one might expect of a dragonfly. “Kira wants me to tell you that it’s okay. We’ll be okay. I know how to do it now. You showed me.”

  “Chase said I’m not allowed to spend a minute thinking about this. So you tell Kira there’s a lot more summer to enjoy before she can say another word about it. Now, don’t waste a minute of happiness worrying about what’s ahead or Nia will skin you. Go have fun. Go on.” He buoys, floats, then takes off to the Butters’, leaving me in a puddle of grief. I rake myself up and trudge over to Skyfish; get my hands good and mucky. My neck aches and my shoulders burn but I keep on working out the crack inside my chest.

  “Excuse me.”

  I look up to an exquisitely aged woman. What I imagine Jennah will look like in thirty years—and my mother won’t.

  “The proprietor said I could get a picture of the potter at the wheel. I just bought Dirt Music in the Key of Wonder. You’re the artist?”

  I nod.

  “Why are you crying?”

  “Because I love this place,” I catch a tear with the soft flesh of my arm, “and I love a boy who belongs to this ocean.”

  “Lovely. Just lovely.”

  My head bows over the wheel as she wanders around the studio focusing, studying the light, choosing angles and clicking thoughtfully.

  “My name is Lorraine.” She places a card on the workbench. “Lorraine Monk. Could I see the piece you’re working on when it’s finished? I’ll be back this way two weeks from Saturday. Will you be here?”

  “I hope to be. We’ll hold it. If I’m not out front just ask to see, Where Questions Sleep Answers Lie.”

  No matter how late the hour when Jake returns from a gig, my body tingles at his touch. His whisper brushes my ear. “There’s no music without you, Ari.” His smile is felt more than seen when I turn to him. The goodness of his weight on me. The fit of us. The magic of our seahorse dance is more alluring than sky seen from the ocean’s floor.