“A police officer,” Mom says, pulling the lid out of the can.
“About the girl?”
“About the girl.”
We stand in the kitchen listening to the clock while Mom stirs soup, swaying from side to side like she’s listening to the radio. “Matt had a friend over today,” I say.
“Did he?” She stops swaying and looks up at the ceiling.
“And the girl’s dad came here.”
“Really?” She turns to give me a look that says, I know there’s more to this story. A crinkle, like a little worm, forms in the middle of her forehead.
“But I didn’t let him in.”
“Why not?” she says. She’s not looking at me, but I can tell she’s listening carefully because she tilts her head in my direction.
“You told me not to.”
“I said strangers.”
“He’s a stranger.”
“Well.” She scrapes the inside of the empty can. “Well, well.” It’s something she says when she runs out of words. She twists her hair again, this time in a knot on top of her head. “Have people been saying anything to you?”
“Who?”
She looks at me and shrugs. The hair unravels and falls around her shoulders. “Kids at school.”
“About what?”
She turns back to the stovetop and talks to the pot. “Sometimes your brother makes the wrong choices, but he’s a good person.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” She stirs the soup. Her hips move from side to side. Bubbles pop and send splatters over the stovetop.
“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” I say.
“If you have a bath.”
I LOCK THE BATHROOM door behind me, checking it twice before turning on the tap and letting the tub fill. I dip my toes in first then stand ankle-deep while my feet adjust to the heat. Slowly I lower myself into the water. When I was younger Mom wouldn’t let me lock the door, in case I slipped or drowned. She promised not to come in, but she always did, saying, I’m covering my eyes, I’m covering my eyes, searching like a blind lady for whatever she wanted.
When I turn off the tap I hear sports on TV. Channels switch, flicker, flip. “People talk,” Mom says, over the noise of the announcer. “People make assumptions.”
“You’re paranoid,” Matt says, laughing the way he does when he thinks someone’s stupid. Scores ring out on the TV. The tips of my fingers are white. They’re wrinkled like they could be picked apart.
“Pay attention to me,” Mom says. The TV noise goes dead.
“Give me the fucking remote.”
“Be quiet.”
“F-off.”
“Dawn will hear you.”
“Fuck Dawn.”
I disappear under the water. There could be more bubbles in here, but it’s too late once you’ve poured the bath. The dead girl floats into my head, her skin white and picked apart like the tips of my fingers. I wonder: if the girl was in the river, why didn’t it carry her away? The river never freezes. When I come back up from the water Mom is knocking lightly on the door. “You okay in there?” I keep myself as quiet as possible. I keep the water quiet around me. I hold my breath and watch the door. “Dawn?” The doorknob jiggles and Mom shouts. “Dawn, answer me!” Her body thuds against the door, trying to force it open. “What?” I call, splashing in the water.
“Why didn’t you answer me?”
“My head was underwater.”
“Don’t do that again.” Mom is so close I hear her lips brush the door, her body against the wood. Her breathing makes me feel lonely. I blow bubbles in the water until she goes back to the kitchen. My hands glide over the skin on my stomach. I don’t like that part of my body because there are no bones to protect it. The skin is pink from the heat, and soft — rabbit skin. Rabbits are too squishy and terrified. They’re always running. My nails dig into my tummy, leaving rows of white moons.
WE LEAVE EARLY AGAIN this morning. Overnight everything has turned to ice. Mom and I hold hands down the sidewalk and I take long, skating steps, but Mom squeezes my hand and tells me to stop. She’s wearing nice clothing and dressy shoes that are too slippery for snow. She says she wants to give the lady in the brown house our condolences. “They found that poor girl dead” — that’s what Mom said this morning. When I asked where, she thought for a second then said, “Down by the river.” She wanted Matt to come with us, but he didn’t come home last night.
We used to go for walks along the river before Mom got her job in Kelowna. Once we saw a dead bird. It was black like it had been stuck in the oven for too long, but I can’t imagine a dead girl. There are always teenagers down there, wild like packs of wolves. They always seem hungry, but all they do is smoke. I never look at them when we walk by. When we had our dog, Tucker, we would take him for walks along the river, where he’d sniff out beer bottles and sometimes find clothes or a shoe. Matt would come with us, taking the leash and walking ahead. Tucker would look back to make sure Mom and I were still there, but that was a long time ago. Matt watched the groups of teenagers like he was hungry, too. One day he knew some of them and stayed down there while Mom and I took Tucker back home. That night Mom waited for him, pulling back the curtains, but she got used to it. After that we didn’t walk down there much.
I don’t tell Mom about the dream I had last night about the poor dead girl. She was running and I was chasing her. I was angry, but I kept forgetting I wasn’t supposed to be. I was trying to tell her something, throwing my arms up and yelling. She kept running and falling. She had rows of bloody moons down her stomach. She didn’t have blond hair like I thought.
We get to the brown house and there are colourful cards and flowers all over the front steps. It’s like a candy machine exploded. We have to step carefully around them. Some of them are buried in the snow, wet and soggy, the ink running so you can’t read people’s words. Mom finds a spot for our flowers in a dry corner near the door. She puts them down gently and we start back down the stairs without ringing the bell or saying hello. It seems too quiet to make any noise at all and I don’t even like the sound of my own steps crunching down the walk. When we get to the street I hear a window opening above us. A woman sticks her head out, pushing the window with her flat hand. “What are you doing?” I stare up at her, my mouth open to the sky. “What are you doing here? Where were you when she was screaming?” the woman yells at us. “Get out of here.”
Mom stiffens and takes my hand. I can’t look at her. We turn around and walk away.
IT SNOWS AGAIN. SAM stays after school so I walk home by myself. It keeps snowing again and again, like the town is trying to be new every day. Or maybe it’s trying to be the same. I can’t imagine anything quieter than snow falling off trees, and white piled on white makes no difference.
I take the shortcut through the mall parking lot even though Mom doesn’t want me going that way. There are too many cars, too many doors that could open with people waiting to snatch me away, but it’s cold and I want to get home quickly. When I get to the mall only a few cars are parked near the doors and a snowplow clears spaces, piling white hills around the lot. The automatic doors swish, opening and closing as people hurry around inside. Matt’s car is in the lot parked sideways, but it doesn’t matter because there are no lines for the spaces. I brush the snow off his bumper and sit down, waiting for a ride. Once he picked me up from school and we went to A&W. We didn’t go through the drive-thru, we sat inside to eat our burgers. When our fries were done he bought us more to share so we could stay longer.
Matt comes out of the mall with the same girl, the girl from the house, and they walk along the covered sidewalk. I can only see them from the chest up because of the snow piles. Matt climbs the bank and holds out his hand to the girl. She’s wearing the same short skirt. A car door opens near them and the girl�
��s father gets out. They all stand staring at each other without saying anything. I have one of those bad feelings you can’t ignore, so I start walking toward them, calling Matt’s name. The dad holds out his hand to the girl, but she jumps away and slips on the ice. Her skirt lifts up and I can see her purple underwear. Matt tries to help her, but she pushes him away and hops off the snowbank. She doesn’t cry or look back at him, but walks to the mall entrance, disappearing into the warm, colourful air. The dad is shouting, pointing his finger at Matt, and I start to run.
“Go home,” Matt says as I stop in front of him, before I even have a chance to speak. He doesn’t look at me. The mall parking lot suddenly feels bigger, like it’s spreading.
“I want you to stay away from her,” the dad is saying. His voice is so shaky I think he might give up. Matt looks away from the father with a smirk on his face. He smirks at the snow, he smirks at the mall entrance, he smirks at the snowplow circling. I step closer to Matt, standing between him and the father. “I don’t need this,” Matt says, smiling at the snow on the ground. His warm breath floats down on top of my head. When he turns to walk away the dad reaches out and puts his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “She’s my daughter.” The words are gentle, but Matt turns and shoves the dad. “Worthless punk,” the dad growls, slipping on the snow. “You’re nothing. You’re a loser.” The words fly out of his mouth. Matt looks down at me, and for a moment, I think he’s going to pick me up and carry me to the car, but instead he punches the dad in the face. It’s not something I expect. One second Matt is standing, arms loose at his sides, the next he is throwing the punch right over my head. The father falls against one of the snowbanks and everything freezes. Matt is breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling. He looks right through me and then walks quickly to his car, shaking out his hand. The engine revs and his car slides from side to side on the ice, skidding out onto the road, but there’s nothing for Matt to hit even if he wanted to.
The father takes a handful of snow and holds it up to his nose. His glasses fog and there are drops of blood at his feet. “Your brother is a pervert,” the dad says, through the snow. He looks right at me when he says the words, but I don’t blink. I spit on the ground, aiming the glob near the dad’s shoes. I was saving the saliva in my mouth without thinking, swishing it around with my tongue. A shock cuts through my body, breaks me in half, leaving me standing off to the side, watching. I can feel the curl in my lips, hot words in my mouth, ugly and new. “You fuck off.”
“You’re not so different from him, are you?” the father says, shaking his head like I’m a shame. He looks at the bloody clump of snow in his hand and I squint at the parking lot. The man in the snowplow waves at me and I wave back. The dad doesn’t say anything else. He puts new snow on his face and gets into his car. “Go home,” he says, before he drives away.
I stand in the parking lot by myself. The plow is on the other side of the mall. I don’t want to go home, but there is nowhere else to go. I take off running because it’s cold. There’s nothing in the air but the sound of my breathing and the word pervert, pervert, pervert. No one is at the bus stop. The neighborhood houses look abandoned. The curtains are pulled shut like eyes sleeping tight. When I get home my lungs are burning and snot runs out my nose. I can taste it on my upper lip. Matt’s car isn’t in the driveway. There are muddy tracks from the tires, tracks from Matt’s boots in and out of the house. His room is messy, clothes everywhere. In the bathroom, his toothbrush is gone. His gun is gone. His Scarface poster is still there.
I get my box of cereal and turn up the heat.
ONCE, MAYBE LAST WINTER, I watched Matt from the trees and he never found out. He had only been back a while. I came home from school early to see him, the thighs of my snowsuit rubbing. The noise was annoying. I lay down in the snow behind our house, in the middle of all the tall pine trees, waiting for him to come home. There was no snow falling that day. Everything seemed frozen together. I even felt frozen together. Like if I went inside and sat on the heat vent, I might fall apart. I fell back, lying there for a while, trying to see if I could melt snow off the trees by staring at it long enough. It didn’t work. I lay there until Matt came out. The sliding door swished open and closed. He shot three times and hit nothing. I could hear the bullets zip through the trees above me and get lost.
I go lie in the backyard like I did that day. I pretend I’m hunting rabbits. It’s harder than you think. Rabbits turn white in the winter and everything else is white. The sun shines white rays and if you look hard at anything you go blind.
Matt’s been gone a week. Mom called around, but no one’s heard from him. When he comes back I might ask him to take me rabbit hunting. Then we could have rabbit stew for dinner instead of canned soup. I would stand over the stove stirring for hours, and by the time Mom got home from work the house would be full of the smell of meat. We’d all be at the table. The smell would be so good, Matt would have to sit down. We’d be so busy chewing, no one would talk.
I imagine Matt and me crouched down in the snow, our elbows propped up, our guns ready. I’d see it even though everything would be white on white. I would squint my eyes and shoot. Matt would laugh in a good way like he couldn’t believe it was me. I would pick the rabbit up by the ears. The ears would be the softest things. The rabbit would be heavy. I would have to hang on tight.
FISHTAIL
TED CAN SEE THE vague outlines of the girls’ heads bobbing around the foggy car as he stands beside the ticket booth, shouldering the cellphone to his ear, trying to focus on the numbers his client is shooting at him while he waits for the vending machine to finish spitting out its last drops of coffee. Getting away early on a Friday afternoon isn’t normally done in Ted’s office, but it was his managing partner at the firm who suggested the trip. “I have a nice plot of land on Quadra I just put on the market. Five acres,” Jim said. “You should go take a look.” Jim offered his cabin, suggested Ted take Heather and the girls. “Those kids’ll be grown in no time,” he said. “Take a holiday while you still have your hair.” Ted didn’t see any reason to tell him the girls were already grown, Leslie in her last year of junior high and Anna in her first year at Camosun College. Sometimes he finds it hard to believe himself. In the mornings, as he checks his shave in the mirror, he likes to appreciate the clean-cut features he sees reflected back at him, though lately he’s been taking a closer look and finding some unsettling evidence of decline: a softness in the skin under his eyes, a fine webbing of spider veins around his nose, a slackness along the line of his jaw. He’s in the habit of giving his face a couple of brisk slaps in the morning, like saying: Hey, smarten up!
The girls didn’t want to come on the trip. Convincing them took some arm-twisting, but he knew how to lay it on thick: How often were the three of them together without Heather? When did they ever get to enjoy quality father-daughter time? How will they feel when dear dad is old and grey? “You are grey,” Leslie said, “and I feel fine.” “It’s called salt and pepper,” Ted replied.
So far the trip lacked the camaraderie and good humour he was hoping for. He hadn’t anticipated the dim panic he felt during the drive up along the Island Highway. His usual tricks with the girls weren’t working. Anna sat sullenly, refusing to crack a smile as he went through his standard comedy routine, and Leslie bounced and chattered in the back seat like she’d had a bag of sugar for breakfast. He can’t calm Leslie the way Heather can — a hand between the shoulder blades, soft words, kindness. At home the girls hole up in their rooms behind closed doors. On occasion a head pokes out with a demand or complaint; he obliges. Conversation takes place during commercial breaks or chauffeured trips to the mall. But Ted is confident that once they reach the island and the girls are surrounded by forest and salt air, everything will sort itself out.
He waits for the last of the coffee to splash into the cup before heading back to the car — he will need every drop. The dull clutch of a head
ache is tightening the base of his skull. He gets back just before his lane starts loading onto the ferry. The client on the phone is looking for an informed answer and Ted gives him his standard investment banker’s dictum on maximizing profits — higher risk, higher return, words applicable in most scenarios. The rain is coming down hard now, fat drops they were lucky to avoid on the highway. As he opens the car door, he’s hit with the damp, flowery smell of the girls’ mingling perfume.
“Oh my God, Dad! Where were you?” Leslie says, gripping the back of Ted’s seat and giving it an aggressive shake. “The ferry’s leaving.” He holds a finger up to his lips, pointing to the phone. She leans forward, positioning her nose an inch from his face, her cheeks puffy and red with excitement. She holds an imaginary cellphone up to her ear and pretends to have an animated conversation. In the rearview mirror, Anna rolls her eyes.
“We’re getting onto the ferry now. I’ll be back in Victoria on Monday,” Ted says into the phone. “All right — I’ll call you back in twenty minutes.” He puts the phone on the dashboard. “Seatbelts,” he calls into the back seat.
“Why?” Leslie rolls down the window and ducks her head out. “We’re next.”
“I thought I was going to have to drive on without you, but you didn’t leave the keys,” Anna says without looking at him, her finger tracing swirls in the condensation on the window. “You should always leave the keys.” She reaches over and yanks on one of Leslie’s belt loops. “Sit down. Quit being such a little shit.” She’s been taking harsher tones with her sister, but it might be what Leslie needs. Ted remembers road trips when they were girls, with their armies of stuffed animals and whispered secrets. A distance has grown between them lately, one that only seems to make Leslie crave her sister’s attention more. “Hey, remember that trip to Tofino? That was fun,” Ted calls into the back seat. The memory is vague at best in his own mind — he’s grasping.
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