The Leaving Year

by Pam McGaffin

  SO now we’re on an airplane drinking 7UP and eating smoked almonds. Dena was kind enough to give me the window seat, but all I can see are clouds. She’s between me and Mom, who needs easy access to the restroom in case of another crying jag. The stewardess assumes Mom’s fragile state is due to her fear of flying. Every time she passes, she asks her, “How are you doing, dear?”

  The ferry trip took three days. Flying the same distance takes an hour and a half, the equivalent of a Walt Disney movie. Still, I have to occupy the time somehow, so I get out my pen and notepad and start a list.

  Things I Learned about Dad in Alaska:

  1. He didn’t fish alone.

  2. He and Trinity were probably just friends.

  3. He supported a center for Native youth.

  4. Miss Red was his boat.

  5. He told great stories.

  6. He hummed the same song.

  7. He probably isn’t alive.

  Dena reaches over and covers my hand with hers. “You saw where he went. That has to count for something.”

  I nod. In a weird way, my time on Nagoon told me as much about Dad as meeting Trinity and going to The Salty Dog. I close my eyes.

  I wake up and we’re fifteen minutes away from the Seattle-Tacoma Airport, where it’s clear and 75 degrees. I don’t know what day it is—I’ve lost track—but I do know it’s August, and that an anniversary is fast approaching. We found out Dad was missing on the 17th. I remember writing the date down in my notebook of homecomings. Guess I won’t be doing that anymore. Without Dad, there’s no point.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 30

  Chums

  A species of salmon, also called dog salmon and fall salmon

  My time in Alaska was short, less than two months, but I felt like a different person when I got back to my room in Annisport. Everything—my collection of troll dolls, my stuffed animals, my notebook of homecomings, even my movie posters—seemed to belong to someone else. It was like coming back to elementary school and seeing all the kiddie chairs, tables, and drinking fountains for the scaled-down size they really are.

  Aside from this weird maturity warp, it’s a relief to be sleeping in my own bed, soaking in a bathtub, and changing into clean clothes. Mom will never be able to get the smell out of the jeans and T-shirts I wore in Alaska, not that I’d ever want to wear them again. I’ll definitely need some new clothes before school starts. All my old pants are baggy around the waist and short in the legs. When I look in the mirror, I can’t help but admire how fit and strong I am. Even Mom wouldn’t call me chubby anymore. Come to think of it, she hasn’t said anything about my weight, hygiene, or habits since we’ve returned, though she did take me out to get my hair cut after I got the stitches removed from my scalp. I no longer have to go around looking like I have a hole in my head. Mom says the pixie cut shows off my eyes, but I just love how easy it is. I can actually use a comb versus an industrial-strength hairbrush. Now Dena wants to get hers cut too.

  The two of us, plus Sophie and Gerry, are spending the afternoon on Dena’s patio, sunbathing and listening to the radio. Stretching the antenna of her transistor radio as far as it will go, Dena tries to tune in something from Alaska, but the closest she gets is a classical music station out of Vancouver, BC, so we turn it back to KJR and the Top 40.

  “I hated it, but now I kind of miss it.” Dena rubs Coppertone on her neck, lies back on her lounge chair, and places two walnut shells over her eyes.

  She tans better than I do. We put our arms together to compare, and she’s always about two shades browner. Sophie is a rosy golden color, and Gerry, being a redhead, just burns and peels. She lets us pull the dead skin off her back in ragged strips.

  “I only hated the sliming,” I say. “I’d go back to visit Jody.” For Gerry and Sophie’s benefit, I add, “She was my roommate on Nagoon Island. We stayed in these Army barracks-type houses.”

  “You got Army barracks. I got the Scar. A fish-processing ship.” Dena’s walnut shells move slightly as she scrunches up her nose. “Its real name was Star of Alaska, but it’s so ugly, people call it the Scar. It stank, too. And I thought I was used to fish smells.”

  Dena and I go on to describe every gross detail of canning work until Sophie screams, “Stop!” and Dena snorts, upsetting her shells.

  “There go your eyes,” Gerry says.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” Dena says, putting them back.

  “I’m going to miss you guys,” I whine.

  “Aww, it’s tough being the baby.” Gerry puckers her lips and gives me air kisses.

  “You can always come visit,” Sophie says with a consoling pat on my knee. “See the big city. I’m going to get a place in the U-District. That’s where most of the students at the U-Dub live if they’re not in the dorms or pledging to a sorority.”

  “U-Dub?” I ask.

  “Short for University of Washington.”

  “Oh.”

  “We could all share an apartment.” Sophie clasps her hands together like a little girl praying. “You guys could work on the Ave and drive to your night classes in Shoreline,” she says to Dena and Gerry.

  “The Ave?”

  “Oh, Ida, don’t you know anything? The Ave is the main street near campus where everything happens. My mom says to watch out for hippies selling drugs on the corners. It’s pretty wild. This spring, there was a big student protest against police harassment.”

  “At least it’s not boring,” Dena says. “Ida, you’ve got to get your driver’s license so you can come down whenever you want.”

  “If Mom ever lets me drive.”

  “So how is Aunt Christine?”

  I make the so-so sign with my hand. “Small things set her off. Like, the other night, she was making soup and just started bawling, and it wasn’t the onions.”

  “Have you tried talking to her?” Sophie asks.

  I shake my head.

  Dena gives me an exasperated sigh without moving her head. “Why not?”

  “I’m kind of afraid of what she’s going to tell me.”

  “This from the girl who went to Alaska looking for answers.”

  Gerry and Sophie snicker.

  “I know.”

  “Make up your mind,” Dena says. “Do you want the truth, or do you want to live in eternal darkness?”

  “Eternal darkness?” I giggle. “You’ve been watching too much Dark Shadows.”

  Dena bites her lower lip to affect vampire fangs.

  “Now you look like a rabid squirrel,” I tell her.

  Dena erupts in laughter. Her shells go flying. Sophie, Gerry, and I all collapse in hysterics. When I’m finally able to breathe, I realize something’s different. Joy no longer brings guilt, like I’m betraying the memory of my father. He was a joyful person, after all. He’d want me to be happy and live life. I take a mental snapshot of the flushed and grinning faces around me and will myself to never to forget this moment.

  CHAPTER 31

  Spawn

  The eggs of fish; to deposit eggs in water

  Mom sits cross-legged on her bed, a pile of photographs, letters, and cards spread out before her, a box of Kleenex in her lap. On the floor is the drawer I went through months ago, now empty.

  “I never got around to organizing these.” She holds up a black-and-white snapshot of me in the tiger costume. “We certainly took enough pictures of you. God, you were cute.” She sniffs. “Still are.”

  I clear a spot on the side of the bed and sit so I’m facing her. Her eyes are red and puffy from crying. The rash around her neck is fading, but she’s still way too thin.

  “I have that tiger suit somewhere,” she says.

  I nod. “It’s in a box in your closet.”

  “Of course, you’d know.” She picks up some random photos and tosses them aside. If there’s any organization to what she’s doing, it isn’t obvious.

  “Can I help?”

  “I didn’t think this would be so ha
rd,” she says, sniffing.

  I take that as a yes. As I start to gather up all the letters to get them out of the way, I see photos of Dad spilling out of a manila folder labeled “Departures and Arrivals.”

  “I was wondering where those were.”

  “Coffee table drawer,” Mom says. “You mean to tell me you didn’t look there?”

  “I guess I didn’t think of checking somewhere so obvious.”

  She shoots me a sideways glance.

  I shrug. “I’m not perfect.” I dump the contents of the folder and start lining them up according to date, departures in one row and their corresponding arrivals in another. It’s easy to tell the difference. In the former, he’s always clean-shaven. In the latter, he’s weather-beaten and bearded.

  “Why did we do this? Take all these pictures of Dad?”

  Mom grabs a tissue from the box and wipes her nose. “That was him. After he got the boat, he wanted photographs.”

  “But they’re all so similar.” As soon as I say it, I realize it’s not true. Dad’s much younger in the earlier black-and-white photos and more like the Dad I remember in the later color photos. It’s not a complete timeline of his fishing career because he was fishing before I was born. It’s more a timeline of me and him, our joint time on this earth. When I come across the departure photo taken a year ago last spring, I get a chill. I study it for any obvious clues to his fate, something he or we forgot that broke the run of good luck and safe returns. But it’s all there—the red sweater, the name of the boat, my dad’s smile. He has more wrinkles around his eyes, more gray in his hair. The boat is the only thing that looks the same from the first photo to the last. He was so meticulous about maintaining her.

  “His first and last love was that boat,” Mom says, as if reading my mind. “Or should I say Miss Red?”

  “No!” My outburst makes her flinch. In a quieter voice, I say, “Lady Rose was her real name.”

  “She was named after you. I think that’s what got you started on boat names. Remember how you used to write them all down?”

  “I won’t be doing that anymore.” I place 1962’s spring photo above its late-summer mate.

  “I’m sure the arrivals, in particular, would be hard to take,” Mom says. “Besides, you—we—will be busy doing something else this month.”

  I look up from Dad’s faces into Mom’s. She’s smiling like she’s trying not to cry again. “What?”

  “I want to have a memorial potlatch.”

  For a second, I think she’s joking. Then I remember she doesn’t joke. “A potlatch? Like the one we went to in Alaska?”

  “Well, sort of, but our own version, with fewer speeches and no gifts.”

  A number of questions fly through my head, including when and how, and what about the fact that we’re not Native, but I settle on, “Why? What’s changed?”

  “Everything. You. Me.” She dabs her eyes with the tissue in her hand. “Your running away. Excuse me, running to. If you were that desperate to find out about your father … well, I figure there’s a reason we have these things. Can I count on your help?”

  “Uh, sure … absolutely.”

  “At a memorial, you’ll hear stories, Ida. You’ll learn things you never knew.” She purses her lips. “No snooping required.”

  I blush.

  “Well, I’m guilty too,” she says. “I went through your room. I was trying to find some evidence of where you’d gone. I didn’t find any, but I did find this.” She reaches into the breast pocket of her blouse and pulls out the piece of photo I tore off to make our trio a duo. The rip cuts off Mom’s left arm. It’s just her maimed figure in front of the rose bush.

  I cringe. There’s no explaining away what I did.

  Mom sets the photo down on top of the Kleenex box in her lap. “It hurt to find this. I won’t lie. But I can’t say it was a surprise.”

  “It’s not … I …”

  She holds up her hand to stop me. “You loved him more. I knew that. Maybe you still do.”

  Without thinking, I shake my head no, which prompts Mom to place her hand over her heart. “I have to say, I was bitter for a long time about the, um, bond you two had. I felt so left out. I mean, here I was, the one who was home with you. I was the one who saw us through all those long fishing seasons, year after year, but all you cared about was when he would be getting back. You’d ask me that over and over again when you were younger. I got to hear how much you missed him, how resentful you were that he had to go away for so long. We suffered together, you and me, but that didn’t bring us together. It seemed to drive us apart. Then when he returned—usually with some ridiculously extravagant gift—you forgot all about me.”

  The gift-giving. I’d never tried to see it from Mom’s eyes before. “Is that why you gave away my coat? The white one?”

  “Oh, God. That.” She winces. “Not one of my prouder parenting moments, I’m afraid. But, oooh!” She shakes her head. “I was so mad at your dad. A white fox-fur coat for a five-year-old? Honestly.”

  “You said it made me look ridiculous.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. If I could take that back, I would.” She sighs. “That coat, besides being wholly impractical, just smacked of pandering.”

  “Guilt talking, you said.”

  “Yes. And I should have let you wear it even though it didn’t square with the tough, resilient girl I wanted you to be. You’re a fisherman’s daughter, for Christ’s sake, not some spoiled rich kid.”

  “Is that what you meant by ridiculous?”

  “I shouldn’t have used that word.”

  “I thought you meant that it made me look fat.”

  Mom clamps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no, Ida, no. Have you been thinking that all this time?”

  I nod.

  “I’m sorry.” She removes her hand from her mouth and strokes my arm. “I know I haven’t been the best mother to you. I’ve taken out my frustrations. I’ve lost my temper. I’ve been critical.” She stops, takes a breath. “If I’ve been hard on you, it’s because I want you to be a strong person in your own right, not someone who can be bought with pretty things or swayed by looks and charm … like I was.”

  “Dad.”

  “Yes. We possibly weren’t the best match.” She grabs another tissue to dab her eyes. “I’m going to tell you something that may come as a shock, but I figure you’re old enough to hear it now.” She takes a deep breath and meets my eyes. “You weren’t our first child. We had a son, Jack, who died. You probably saw photos of him when you went through the drawer.”

  My mouth hangs open as I take in what she just said. Then I remember the photos of Mom and Dad at my grandparents’ house with the baby I thought was me. The date stamp was three years before I was born. I just assumed it was a mistake.

  “He’d be eighteen or nineteen, right?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Heart defect. We didn’t know. He was small, but we thought he was healthy. The day he died, your father was out fishing. I woke up to find Jack dead in his crib. Grandma Grace tried to comfort me by telling me we would have another baby. I remember wanting to slap her.” She balls up the tissue in her hand. “Your grandmother didn’t understand. When Jack died, I felt my life had ended too.”

  “Is that why you and Dad never told me?”

  “Yes. And, well, I didn’t know how or even why I should tell you, to be honest. I didn’t know what purpose it would serve. Dad and I didn’t even talk about it. Jack’s death was hard on both of us, but harder on him. He always dreamed of having sons he could take fishing, just like Grandpa took him and his brothers. I think he saw it as a legacy.”

  “Ending with me.”

  “Oh, Ida, your dad cherished you. You have to believe that.”

  “He never took me fishing.”

  “He was traditional. Girls don’t fish. Alaska had plenty of young men hungry for the chance. I think that may have been why he conne
cted with Trinity. He needed deckhands, and he wanted to help a kid who could really use the job, not some college boy hoping to make big money, not that Dad could pay it.”

  “But why didn’t he tell us?”

  “I wondered about that too. Then I remembered something. You see, after we had you, I had two miscarriages before the doctor told me I couldn’t have more children. Right or wrong, I felt like a failure—at everything. I couldn’t give Dad the son he wanted, and I thought it was too late to start the career I wanted. I dreamed of becoming a writer. Did you know that? I was going to go to college and major in English, but that all went out the window when I met him. We were so in love. And naive, as it turns out. I thought our love was strong enough to endure all that time apart, the worry, the not knowing if he would return. I was wrong. We fought—not in front of you so much, but we fought.” She stops, grimaces. “I don’t know how much of this I should be telling you.”

  “Mom, I’m not a baby.”

  “No, you’re not.” She sucks in her breath. “Well, after we found out you would be an only child, your dad told me he was thinking of becoming a scout leader—of boys, not girls. It wasn’t so unreasonable, what he wanted, but it infuriated me at the time. I took it as an insult, to you and to me. I accused him of not being satisfied with the way things were. With us.” She looks down into her lap. “I was unfair to your father in other ways, too. We had a … loveless marriage. Maybe because I knew I couldn’t have another child, I lost interest, and it frustrated him. Then I found that note from Trinity and those condoms, and—”

  “You thought he was cheating.”

  She nods. “I think I was looking for signs of infidelity to make myself feel better, more justified in rejecting him, if that makes sense.”

  “Um-hum.” I think back on my own tendency to look for signs to explain the unexplainable. Alaska, with all its surprises, seems to have cured me of that habit. “The problem with signs,” I say, “is you only see what you want to see.”

  Mom cocks her head and smiles. “True.”

  “Who did you think Dad was seeing in Alaska? Trinity?”