Cherry Beach

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Cherry Beach Page 14

by Laura McPhee-Browne


  In my basket I had white kimchi and a box of tissues decorated with a watercolour painting of a river edged with trees. Faith had the strawberry sticks and three grape sodas—for her family, she said, who liked to sip at them when Faith visited and they watched home videos together. I told her that my family had never made any home videos, and she told me I was lucky. I told her I wondered what it might be like to see yourself as a child, moving and talking and playing. Faith said it wasn’t all that special; that it was dissociative, and that’s why her parents loved it.

  We’d been wandering the aisles for half an hour, and even the man stocking the shelves who had seemed almost asleep was watching us now. We needed to give up and leave, but I didn’t want to be the one to suggest it.

  Faith looked up at me from where we stood in front of the frozen shrimp. ‘I guess we should go?’

  I nodded, and took her hand to hold it carefully. She seemed disappointed, though I had been sure we’d both expected nothing. She had an optimism that was unruly, Faith. It wandered out in front of her and tripped her up sometimes.

  ‘I hope one day I see her,’ Faith said quietly as we walked towards the front of the store where we would pay for our pink sticks and our purple bubbles, and our white kimchi streaked with red.

  There was a woman in line for the cash register. She had on a purple-and-green woollen hat—a toque, not a beanie, I reminded myself—and a long scarf of the same yarn that she had wrapped around herself. It wasn’t so cold that night, and I wondered why she was bundled as if it was icy or stormy.

  There was nowhere to put our things yet—the woman was buying a large amount of kimchi and blood-red gochujang paste, and she had set them up in two neat rows that filled the length of the conveyer belt. The man who had been shelving was now at the cash register. I watched the delicate fingers of the woman making sure each tall tub of kimchi didn’t fall as the conveyer belt trundled and the man beeped each container against the scanner. Her hands were thin and veined with blue.

  I felt Faith nudge me from behind and I turned. Her eyes were big, and she pulled me slightly back with her hand.

  ‘It’s her!’ she whispered into the side of me, so I could barely hear it.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s her.’

  I turned back and saw that Faith was right: it was Margaret Atwood. I noticed now the sprigs of hair that curled up and out from under her hat. They were white and grey. She turned as if she knew we were watching her, and smiled with the whole of her face, shaped like an elf’s, with a pointed, cheeky twinkle. I felt my arm hairs stand and smiled back, as broadly as I could, to show her I loved her and that Faith did too.

  I wondered if Faith would say something to her, and whether she would regret it if she didn’t, and smiled again as the woman who was Margaret Atwood moved one of the plastic separators to the end and placed it down behind her kimchi so that we could begin placing our items behind hers. I saw Faith move by my side and then heard her voice, higher than usual.

  ‘I’m so sorry to bother you, but, um, are you Margaret Atwood?’ she asked, with a small laugh at the end. I turned to watch her and saw she was wringing her hands.

  The woman smiled that peaked smile again and nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I am,’ she said, and moved one hand to take Faith’s.

  They held on—not shaking, not moving at all, just one small hand wrapped close around another—and then let go. It was as if they knew each other faintly, or had meant to meet there and exchange something.

  ‘I love your books. Thank you.’

  Margaret Atwood nodded. ‘Do you write?’ she asked Faith.

  Faith reddened slightly and shook her head. ‘Oh, no—no—not like you. I just read!’

  Margaret Atwood laughed, and moved to turn back towards the checkout, where the man was waiting for her to pay, so bored and tired now that he was leaning on his elbows.

  ‘Reading is the important part.’

  ‘Yes,’ we answered at the same time, nodding enthusiastically, though I was not really a reader and never would be. The glow that circled Margaret Atwood’s face had disappeared when she turned; we looked at each other, Faith and I, with open mouths. We watched her pay and pick up her three canvas bags full of pickled cabbage and chilli. She turned once more to face us, the man behind the counter sighing.

  ‘Take care,’ she said, and walked out. She was small in the dark of the night outside the supermarket and she turned right as we watched, towards her house in the Annex, in her pixie shoes.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Faith said, her voice loud again. ‘I can’t believe we saw her!’

  ‘Was that real?’ I said, and put a hand over my mouth.

  That night we said goodbye at College and Shaw. Faith skipped there, yelling out to no one that she had just met the love of her life, Margaret Atwood, and telling me she could now die happy.

  When she slowed down and snuggled into the side of me, my arm around her shoulder, she told me she didn’t think I should come stay the night, but wanted to see me again soon, and asked if that was all right. We kissed briefly as a pack of teenagers in costumes walked past us shouting, and told each other we would text.

  It was cold walking the rest of the way home to Marjorie on my own. I huffed my warm breath into my jacket and wondered again where Hetty was.

  LAKE

  lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean

  The police came like they do in the movies, and when Ingrid answered the door they asked to speak with me. I suppose Ingrid was scared, and worried for me, so she went to Dill’s room and asked him to wake me up. It was after midnight, and when he came into our bedroom and gently shook my shoulder, the first thing I thought was: Where is Hetty?

  It had been seven days since I’d seen her at the Eaton Centre and I’d heard nothing. I had planned to go to the police to tell them she was missing but I didn’t know when I should do it, and whether it would be something I might regret when she inevitably resurfaced.

  As I walked slowly down the stairs towards the front door, I tried to prepare myself for something bad but I couldn’t seem to hold the possibility. My brain felt fat inside my skull, and in the corners of my eyes there were chunks of sleep so big that it almost hurt when I blinked.

  I realised near the kitchen that Dill was still beside me and that he was holding my hand. Whitney was at our feet, getting in our way, making peeping sounds. Robin and Clark were in the living room—I saw their long bodies bent against the couch, and I held my breath.

  There were two police officers: one woman, one man. Their faces were lit up by our front-door bulb and they weren’t smiling.

  The female officer asked me if I was Vanessa and I said yes. She asked me if I knew Hetty and I said yes, but the word got caught in my throat from the fear that had arrived inside. I paused, and said it again so she could hear me, hoping the two of them could give me time. That was all I knew, then. That I needed time.

  Later, in our bedroom—my bedroom, just mine now—Dill told me what the officers had said, because I’d collapsed in the doorway after they said it and I needed to hear it again.

  He told me that Hetty had drowned, that she had been found dead on the shore of Cherry Beach that evening by a couple on an after-dinner walk, and that her body had been waterlogged and fully clothed, her eyes shut. The police didn’t know much more yet—they were trying to find out why she had been in the water.

  ‘But I know why,’ I told him.

  Dill waited, watching me.

  ‘Because she was swimming,’ I said, and he nodded. ‘She was trying to find the sea.’

  In the morning I was still awake. The policewoman had told us the night before that I would need to come to the station as soon as I could, to identify Hetty’s drowned body—though she hadn’t said drowned; I had added that bit in my head because it was true. I don’t remember where it was I went, but I walked there in the early dark and had to bang on the door to be let in when I arrived too early.


  Hetty’s body was under a covering like the bodies in BBC crime shows, and I remember the colour of it—a pale yellow, like a dying cat’s sick—and when they lifted the sheet I saw her grey forehead and the jump of her nose and my body ripped apart and I was screaming. I had to say that it was Hetty, and I did, but then I needed to vomit and they ordered a taxi to come and get me and I was back at Marjorie before I knew it, blinking to try to get rid of the image of her face, so still and dead.

  Later, Dill gave me a valium and took me to Cherry Beach in his old green Honda Civic, and we stood on the shore. Through the loud thrum in my head I thought about how it was so unfair that I’d never even been to this beach with Hetty, that we had never even talked about how sweet the name was, that we would never come here together to laugh at the lake waves and wonder at the sand. I couldn’t let myself feel anything more than that unfairness, because if I did I knew I would die too, and so I let Dill cuddle in to me, and when he asked if he should call Faith I said yes in a voice that seemed separate from me and strange—like an echo.

  He took my phone and left me to stand nearby, and I wondered if I was swaying as I heard him speaking, asking Faith to come, telling her softly what had happened. It made me angry, that he could share something so private with everyone, just because it was true.

  When he finished the call I asked him in a loud voice, ‘What the fuck am I supposed to do?’ and he shook his head with tears swishing out from his eyes, wetting the sand around us.

  ‘Is this even real sand?’ I yelled. ‘I never even bothered to find out for her,’ my voice said, watery with tears, my nose bleeding snot.

  Hetty had been sick and I hadn’t helped her at all, I told him. He shook his head but I asked him to let me have that truth, and after a while he nodded and we sat on the cold tiny crumbs of rock. Then Faith was there and I drank from the bottle she gave me and closed my eyes in the circle of their arms, and the wind felt like the passionate kisses I’d never been able to give Hetty and I knew I’d never love anyone else again.

  SEA

  sea is sometimes confused with see

  I stayed in Toronto for three more weeks after Hetty was found and then I had to leave because she was everywhere and nowhere at the same time and I couldn’t imagine not feeling terrible. Marjorie was full of the same people it had been before, and they were even more caring and available after Hetty was gone, making sure I was fed each morning and night, giving me cuddles on the stairs, letting me shower first and making me coffees I couldn’t drink next to untouched plates of toast and sliced, browned apple.

  I couldn’t speak at the beginning, because I knew I’d let Hetty down and I knew that if I said this to anyone they would tell me I was wrong, would ask me to be kind to myself, which was impossible. I let Faith call and call, my phone vibrating on the bedside table or under the doona, my head in my hands. I let her visit me and try to talk to me and I let myself say sorry, but not much more. Nothing burned in my body or curled in my groin when I thought about Faith or when she was near me. My pelvis was numb, my breasts hardened. Even now, I still can’t orgasm the way I used to. I suppose that height of passion died along with Hetty.

  After a week of eating only not to faint, and getting out of bed only not to disappear into the linen completely, I reasoned that I still loved people and should still be pretending I was alive, but that just brought more of the same guilt in a different way. I began googling Hetty’s symptoms before she had walked into Lake Ontario—her autopsy had come back, and I knew now for certain she had drowned and that she had been sober when she did it, and to me that left only an illness I could have seen and could have helped her get treatment for. I read website after website that, in my mind, confirmed it.

  She had been grandiose and she had been deluded at the end, and it was suddenly obvious that she had been psychotic and could have been given medication that might have helped. If she hadn’t been so confused, she wouldn’t have walked into the water in the way I imagined over and over she must have—perhaps crying, perhaps determined, trying to find the salt of the ocean. I felt sick in my stomach about it, and found that the only way to feel a bit less sick was to dot the insides of my arms and thighs with a safety pin until there were tiny spots of blood.

  I spoke to my father briefly, then my mother for longer, and told them I was okay. Nothing else seemed to be worth telling, though when I heard my mother’s voice I felt the tears spring and wished her skin was against mine and I was just a baby. I asked my parents to call Hetty’s after I had tried myself and the phone had rung out every time. My mother asked in her quavery voice if I would be coming home. I told her I would be.

  I went back to work to fill the days before I left, because I hoped it might help the thunder and the utter stillness inside me. My first shift was on a Tuesday in December, and I walked to Cafe Art Song wrapped in one of Hetty’s scarves and a hat and a big dark coat. The cold we had been waiting to experience had begun but I had no one to compare notes with. I could feel how harsh the wind was as I walked, and understood why the eyes of Torontonians went dead when you asked them about winter. It was already too cold, and this was the kindest winter month. I walked along Spadina and Dundas past people wearing balaclavas as if on their way to rob a bank, and it suited my dark mood.

  When I arrived at Cafe Art Song it was warm inside and Minnie hugged me for a long time. When she pulled back to look at me there were tears in her eyes.

  ‘I am so sorry, so sorry,’ she said delicately, as if I was sick or elderly.

  I couldn’t cry anymore, so I just nodded and thanked her and touched her shoulder so she knew she’d done enough.

  We worked away together through a busy lunchtime, serving side by side, moving past each other with plates of savoury pancake and beans and bowls of berries, our hips swaying like we were dancing. I was glad for the movement and the demand, and when at three there were no customers left and the CD we had been playing ended, I was devastated. We stood in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at each other.

  ‘I keep forgetting and thinking about what I’ll say to her when I see her,’ I told Minnie, who started to cry then, properly, making a small sad noise along with the tears, which made me feel terrible and almost better at the same time.

  ‘Oh, Ness,’ she said.

  I didn’t want her mind to be whirring, trying to work out what to say that would be most helpful. Nothing was helpful, but just having her near me seemed a comfort. That was all I could expect then, and I knew it.

  ‘It’s okay, Minnie. Don’t worry. I’m just wading through,’ I said, making the action of swimming with my arms, as if the sadness were a body of water and I had fallen in.

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Over the remaining hours a few more customers came in, all on their own, all wanting cake and coffee, and I wondered what losses they had needed to bear in their lives, and whether it was etched into the lines of their faces the way mine would surely be. I tried to remember how it had felt to serve people before Hetty died but I couldn’t. The serving felt like nothing now, except if I really held eyes with the person. Then it felt lonely, as if I would never really know them and that was one of the problems, though I didn’t really have the energy to imagine why or what or who they were.

  We closed at six after the last person wandered out, and Minnie made us lime drinks with rum. Except for that first night, I hadn’t wanted to drink alcohol since Hetty had died because it felt like I would slip away from her, or that the feelings would get drunk too and I would tip over the edge. I knew it was normal to want to drink enough to block out the pain but I couldn’t imagine how much it would take. Sitting there with Minnie, the rum and lime was perfect down my throat and into my tummy.

  We sat at the bench that looked up and out onto the street and watched the legs and torsos of people leaving work, arm in arm, so nakedly full of life.

  ‘Is everyone just blissfully happy except me?’

  ‘Not me,’ Minnie
answered, and tipped her glass to drink.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Think about how many people aren’t out walking,’ Minnie said in her peaceable voice. ‘There are many people who haven’t left their house today because they are too sad.’ She paused. ‘You’re not alone, I promise you.’

  ‘Hetty was alone, though, Minnie. That’s what I can’t—can’t get over. She must have thought she was so alone, to go into the water with all her clothes on and try to swim away.’

  I’d not spoken to anyone about how much it was haunting me. I replayed the image of Hetty walking into Lake Ontario, in her boots and her long dress with the velvet cuffs and her pepper-coloured corduroy jacket, over and over. She had cared about those clothes; she had cared about her life, and me, and lots of things; and yet she’d said goodbye to all of it. Two weeks after she had been found, the pathologists had made their decision—suicide. My heart and lungs burned.

  ‘She wasn’t well and I didn’t do anything.’

  I started to cry again, and it felt the same way it had every other time, like it wasn’t going to get everything out.

  ‘What do you think was happening to her, Ness? I know you were worried before it happened.’

  I thought about what I understood, what I almost knew. ‘She was psychotic, I think.’

  Minnie’s eyes widened slightly and she nodded.

  ‘It sounds so intense,’ I said. ‘But I think she was. Things weren’t making sense, and she wasn’t herself.’

  I could see Hetty’s face whenever I closed my eyes, and it was the face she had made when she showed me that tattoo on her back that wasn’t real, the face when she had let Sean go in Yarra Bend Park, the face when we were twelve and she’d told me that a man had come up and touched her out of nowhere at the dam in Kangaroo Ground. Her pretend face, like she was okay. When she clearly hadn’t been, hardly ever. I’d been completely wrong about her and that face—it wasn’t her okay face. She had been scared, over and over, and hadn’t known how to shake me, to make me understand.

 

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