by A. J. Banner
“Wine?” Van says to me now, uncorking a bottle of white. Jacob has gone into the kitchen to get a cold beer from Nancy.
“You remembered I like white,” I say.
His left eyebrow rises. “Halfway, like before?”
“Halfway,” I say. “I figured out I get tipsy easily. Depends on the type of wine.”
“Mystic Vineyards Chardonnay,” he says. “We get a limited selection here.”
I pick up the bottle and read the hand-painted watercolor label. Organic, no sulfites, made by Eliza Penny of Mystic Thyme.
“Not the caliber you’re used to, I bet,” he says.
“Caliber?”
He nods toward the kitchen. “I can’t compete with that guy. I’m guessing you two drink some pretty good wines.” Do I detect a slight note of envy in his voice?
“We’re not that sophisticated,” I say, sipping the wine. “This is pretty good. Smooth and slightly sweet. Undertones of apple and berries.”
“You’ve got a sensitive palate. We should all go wine tasting.”
“I’m surprised there’s even a vineyard here.”
“We like to support local businesses. My buddy made this, too.” He points down at his T-shirt. The faded picture on the front shows an old-fashioned diving helmet and the words The Original Heavy Metal.
“Clever,” I say. “Maybe he could make me one.”
“I’ve got a better one. It says, Scuba Diver Evolution: Air, Nitrox, Trimix.”
“What does that mean?” I say.
“Nitrox is a breathing mixture made of nitrogen and oxygen,” Van says. “But with less nitrogen and more oxygen than air. You don’t need to worry about it. Nitrox is hardly ever used for recreational diving. You could get oxygen toxicity. Extra nitrogen could give you the bends, but too much oxygen isn’t so great, either.”
“And trimix,” I say, feeling suddenly a little woozy. The concentration of sugar in the wine seems to increase with each sip.
“You add helium to the mix. But trimix is only for the deepest dives, like over four hundred feet.”
“We wouldn’t have been diving so deep in the pass.”
He laughs. “Hell no. You’re at maybe forty feet in the pass.”
“Ready to eat?” Jacob carries a plate of asparagus and potatoes in one hand, his beer bottle in the other. “Nancy says we have to eat now or the food will get cold.”
“If Nancy says so,” Van says.
“I hate to rush us,” Nancy says, carrying out a plate of wild rice pilaf.
“It all looks wonderful,” I say as we sit at the large oak dining table. “You went to so much trouble.”
“It’s no trouble,” Nancy says. “Harvest season always gets me in a cooking mood.”
“Nancy started cooking way back when with her Easy-Bake Oven,” Jacob says.
She laughs. “You remember that thing? I was, like, ten years old.”
“Who could forget?” Jacob says. “It was the ugliest thing on the planet.”
“It was Dual-Temp!” she says. “My best toy ever.”
“I didn’t play with ovens,” I say. “I was too busy doing ocean puzzles.”
“I played with guns,” Van says. “Toy ones.”
“Right,” Nancy says. “And he married a pacifist.”
“Opposites attract.” Van pulls back the foil cover on our casserole dish. “What did you bring?”
Nancy peers over his shoulder at the casserole. “Oh, I love pecans, Jake!”
“You always did,” Jacob says, taking a swig of his beer. It occurs to me that he may have chosen this particular casserole for Nancy’s benefit. I have a sudden urge to upend the dish and dump its contents.
“It’s a bit sweet,” I say. “It’s made with sweet potatoes.”
“I don’t eat sweets,” Van says, sitting at the head of the table. “But Nancy will have no problem eating it all.”
“Oh, Van,” Nancy says. “Don’t be a party pooper.”
“Is that what this is?” Van says. “A party?”
She swats his arm affectionately. Is she already a little tipsy? “We’re having a dinner celebration.”
“What are we celebrating?” Van says.
“Old friends,” she says, lifting her wineglass. Jacob raises his beer bottle in a toast. Irritated bees swarm through my insides. What’s going on between them?
“I wouldn’t call us old friends,” Van says. “But friends, yes.”
“Oh, I forgot something.” Nancy jumps to her feet again, goes to the kitchen, and brings back a bowl of dinner rolls. “Homemade,” she says. “I love baking bread.”
“You’ve gone to so much trouble,” I say again, feeling suddenly inadequate. I learned to boil an egg for the first time in college, and even then, I wasn’t good at it.
“Did you make the casserole?” she says to me. She must know I didn’t.
“Jacob’s the cook in our family,” I say.
“Must be because I taught him,” she says.
“Oh?” I say. “What else did you teach him?”
She looks down at her plate, and an awkward silence follows.
“Sorry,” I say, although I don’t believe I should be the one apologizing.
“Me, too,” Nancy says.
“Let’s all enjoy our dinner,” Van says.
The room tilts, and I feel my breathing quicken. I get up abruptly, scraping back my chair. “Bathroom,” I say.
“End of the hall,” Van says, pointing through the arched doorway.
“Right.” I escape down the narrow hallway, taking deep breaths. Jacob’s voice drifts down the hall. “How’s the solar panel repair coming along?”
“. . . have it ready for you in a couple of days,” Van says.
In the small bathroom, decorated in a beach theme, I take deep breaths, absorbing the solitude. I examine my gaunt, pale reflection in the mirror. Nitrox, trimix. The words sounded familiar. We’re using nitrox this time, Jacob said. We were on a beach, testing our scuba tanks. I turned the valve halfway, and Jacob told me to sniff the air coming out of the tank. It should be odorless, he said. Was it?
I flush the toilet, wash my hands, and slip back down the hall. I peer into a study with a desk, walls of books, and photographs. Murmured conversation wafts toward me from the dining room. I make a detour into the office. On the desk is a photograph of Nancy, Van, and a teenage boy who must be their son. He looks like a blond version of Van—built strong but with Nancy’s coloring and her narrower nose. I pick up the picture and peer closely at it, trying to detect some evidence of marital discord. The boy appears to be the glue holding the three of them together, his arms around his parents’ shoulders. If he lets go, they will fly apart.
“He just turned nineteen,” Van says behind me.
I whip around, my face burning. I put the picture back on the desk. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be in here. I walked by and saw the picture—”
“We’re hoping he’ll come home for Thanksgiving,” Van says. “We thought he’d be back for the summer, but he picked up a job in the city. Nancy was devastated, but there’s nothing here for the kid to do.”
“It does seem like a difficult place for a teenager,” I say.
“He’s a good kid, a hard worker. He would find something to do wherever he is. I’m glad he came into this world.”
“Even if . . .” I stop myself before the words come out.
Van cocks his head and gives me a wry look. “Nancy’s been busy bringing you up to speed on our life story?”
“She may have mentioned that a child wasn’t necessarily part of your original plan.”
Van laughs. “Is anything ever planned? It doesn’t matter in the long run. We fell in love.”
You fell in love, I’m thinking. Nancy’s laughter drifts out from the dining room. She’s a flirt. Maybe she doesn’t even know what she’s doing. “She does love you,” I say.
“Yeah, I know. Maybe more when your husband isn’t around.” He st
eps closer to me, pain and confusion in his eyes. Longing. He touches my cheek, and I flinch.
“Van,” I say.
“Sorry.” He withdraws his hand.
“This isn’t about you and me. This is about you and Nancy. You need to talk to her.”
“I know I do.” He has to deal with her complexities, her crush on Jacob.
Do you think? Van asked me, a long time ago. If circumstances were different?
They’re not, I told him, backing away. You’re only upset about Nancy. The edges of our tangled relationships begin to blur, the blacks and whites fading to gray.
“We need to get back,” I say. “I shouldn’t be in here with you.”
“Right,” he says, taking a deep breath. “You’re a beautiful woman, Kyra. Jacob is lucky.”
“Nancy is lucky, too,” I say. “I hope she knows that.”
He gives me a half smile of resignation, of acceptance of a path not traveled. “My turn to hit the head,” he says, going down the hall to the bathroom.
Back in the dining room, Nancy and Jacob are in deep conversation. Nancy is completely focused on Jacob, clearly taking delight in his presence, while Jacob taps his fork on the tablecloth, looking distracted. He looks relieved when he sees me, but he gives me a questioning look.
“Are you going to make a go of it on your own?” Nancy is saying. “Raise poultry or livestock?”
I sit next to Jacob. “Um, no,” I say. “We’re going to plant a garden.”
“Oh?” Her brows rise. She stabs a potato with her fork. “Where will you get your meat? Fishing?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” I say.
“We’ll figure it out,” Jacob says.
“You’re a gardener, then?” Nancy says, pressing on.
“Not exactly,” I say. “But I’ll give it a try.”
“She’s an excellent gardener,” Jacob says. He rests an arm around my shoulders. “You don’t remember—you took up container gardening and developed an interest over the last couple of years.”
“I did? Well.” I laugh, a little nervously. “I guess I did.”
“Do you grow starters in a greenhouse?” she asks.
“Greenhouse?” I say. “We don’t have a greenhouse.”
The toilet flushes down the hall. I hear the water running.
“We’re going to pick up some plants from the nursery and start that way,” Jacob says. “In the old garden.”
“The old garden!” Nancy says, chewing her potatoes. “I remember that garden. We had a lot of fun there.” She gives Jacob a knowing grin.
Van comes back in and sits down, making a sour face.
“We did have fun,” Jacob says.
“Oh, what did you two do . . . in the garden?” I say.
“We stole carrots,” Jacob says, downing a gulp of his beer.
“And put them back in the soil,” Nancy says. “Half eaten.”
“We pulled all the rhubarb and ate it with sugar—”
“And the berries, lots of berries,” she says.
“Those were the days, huh?” Van says in a flat voice.
Nancy’s smiling at Jacob, smiling at the past. An invisible wall goes up between Van and Jacob, a palpable tension in the air.
“His mom chased us out of the garden more than once,” she says. “We thought we were sneaking but somehow she knew.”
“My mom had a sixth sense,” Jacob says. “We must’ve aggravated her no end.”
Nancy sips her wine. “She was always laughing. Your mom had a beautiful laugh.”
“She did,” Jacob says. “So does Kyra.”
Van’s lips are turned down at the corners, and he’s picking at his food.
Nancy seems to stare into the past. “We did have a good time back then. You know that old, beat-up Ford we used to hang out in? It’s gone. Someone must’ve hauled it out of the woods and used it for something.”
“Oh?” I say, looking at Jacob. “What beat-up Ford is this?”
Van clears his throat. “It was some old rusted heap of metal someone illegally dumped in the woods here. How they got it out there, nobody knows.”
“We used to pretend it was a spaceship,” Nancy says. “Jacob was the captain. He was always the captain, no matter who played with us.”
“I’m not surprised,” I say.
Nancy reaches for a plate of wild rice pilaf. “He was so good at creating this whole universe out in space.”
“And who were you?” Van says.
“I was his first officer,” she says. “But come to think of it, why didn’t I ever get to be captain?”
“I was better-trained,” Jacob says smoothly.
“No, it was because you always insisted on having your way,” she says.
“It worked out,” he says.
“Well, you can’t have a ship here,” Van says. “You would need communications. We’re off the grid.”
“We didn’t need the grid back then,” Nancy says. “But I wouldn’t mind being a little more connected now.”
“We do fine,” Van says. “We’re not the only island off the grid. Look at Lasqueti. Ninety miles from Vancouver with no connection to BC hydro. Solar panels for heat, fireplaces, water from a stream.”
“We choose the life we want,” Jacob says. “We make our own world here.”
“You’re an expert at that, aren’t you?” Nancy says. “Weren’t you a hacker? It makes total sense that you would become one.”
Jacob’s face flushes. “Not a hacker.”
“Computer whiz, then. Creating worlds for video games.”
“I started with video games a long time ago. And then—”
“You were a hacker?” I say, elbowing him.
“I was employed by a security company to prevent hacking. There’s a difference. I helped protect consumers. I built a business on protection.”
“But aren’t identity thieves getting more innovative?” Nancy says. “The only way to protect ourselves is to stay offline.”
“You’ve got a point,” Jacob says.
I stuff a forkful of casserole into my mouth.
“Life is simple off the grid,” Van says. “I do my work, go on my dives. Stay offline.”
“Life is a little too simple,” Nancy says. “Maybe a little too relaxed.”
Van frowns at her.
“But it’s better now that you’re back,” she says. She’s looking at Jacob again. Van reaches out to take her hand, and she shifts her gaze to him and smiles.
Jacob fills my glass with water from the carafe on the table. Conversation motors up again. Nancy gets up to bring dessert from the kitchen. “Homemade cheesecake with blueberries from our garden.”
Everyone ooohs and ahhhs. Van coughs. Once, twice, three times.
“You okay?” Nancy says.
His face reddens. He gasps for breath.
“Drink water, honey.” She tries to hand him a glass. He shakes his head. She puts the glass on the table.
He’s wheezing loudly now, his eyes widening.
Nancy leaps to her feet. “What did you eat?”
Van shakes his head, as if to say he doesn’t know. He’s wheezing.
“There’s no shellfish here!” Nancy says, looking confused. “What was it?” She looks at his plate in shock.
“Do you have an EpiPen?” Jacob says.
Nancy looks around, flustered, blinking. “In the bathroom. Under the sink.” She rushes down the hall.
“Where’s the phone?” Jacob says.
Van coughs and sputters, pointing behind him.
Jacob goes into the kitchen. “We’re on Dream’s End Lane,” he says to someone on the phone. “You need to get here right away.” He comes back into the dining room. “They’re on the way.”
Van coughs and wheezes, gasping for breath.
Jacob pats him on the back. “Easy, buddy.”
I’m frozen in place, the scene surreal, time slowing.
“Where is it?” Nancy yells from the b
athroom. “Where’s the EpiPen?”
Van slumps over in his chair. Red welts form around his mouth. His lips are swollen.
“Hey, buddy,” Jacob says. “Deep breaths.”
“What can I do to help?” I say.
“Help her look for the EpiPen,” Jacob says.
I rush to the bathroom, find Nancy sitting on the floor, toiletries strewn around her. “It was here. It’s not here!”
I kneel beside her. “Where else could it be? Think.”
“I don’t know! Bedroom.”
“Go and look in there. I’ll keep searching in here.”
“There’s nothing here,” Nancy says. “We have an EpiPen. But it’s not here!”
“Everything is going to be okay,” I say, although I’m not sure this is true. “The medics are on their way.”
“It’ll be too late!” Nancy says, but she goes out to the bedroom.
As I search the bathroom, I try to ignore the horrifying sounds coming from Van—choking and gasping. There’s nothing here. No EpiPen. But I find a bottle of pink liquid in a drawer. Benadryl. Better than nothing. I race back to the dining room, open the top, and offer the bottle to Van. He can’t even swallow. He chokes, and the liquid spills down his chin.
“How long is it going to take the medics?” I say, putting the bottle on the table.
Van’s barely breathing as the sirens approach, bright lights flashing. A red firetruck parks right in front of the house, and two men rush in with a stretcher. They’re in yellow suits, one man gray-haired, the younger one with jet-black hair.
“Oh, Earl, thank goodness,” Nancy says, rushing in from the bedroom.
“What happened?” the older man, Earl, says.
“No EpiPen! I don’t know where it is! Honey, breathe!” She whacks Van on the back. He keeps choking.
“Nan, out of the way,” Earl says in a calm voice. “We’ll take it from here.” He and the younger man put down the stretcher and motion to everyone to move back. Earl plunges a syringe directly into Van’s thigh, right through his jeans.
Van cries out. The younger man wraps a blood pressure cuff around his arm. We all stand back, watching the men work.
“Van, you hear me?” Earl says, shining a penlight in each eye.