by Freya North
I lie on the bed, in the crevasse between the two sets of pillows, in between where he sleeps and where I do.
Don’t go to sleep Frankie. Don’t pinch me Scott. I’m not jet-lagged. I just want to close my eyes and breathe you in.
Kyle’s on his way back. Jenna and I talk and sit and cry. I stroke her cheek, which is slightly swollen from where she bit the inside during her recent seizure. Stress and tiredness – a danger zone for those with epilepsy. How on earth is this girl meant to avoid such a place at the moment? Scott would be so worried about her right now. I’m so sorry Jenna, I wish he hadn’t been coming to see me. I wish it with all my heart. Much as I was desperate to see him, I could have waited.
She tells me what she knows but it’s hard for anyone to know exactly what happened. I don’t know what an ELT is but she says that’s how they eventually found Scott and Aaron. We’re not allowed to see them. That distresses me, and the reason why I can’t horrifies me. Images – get them out of my head.
We get very organized with lists and arrangements but this is interspersed with periods when we just slump; inane and incapable. We push food around our plates, not knowing who made what dish. The fridge is full of food in other people’s dishes and containers. Kind little notes saying heat at this temperature, eat before Friday, gluten-free, Scott’s favourite. Jenna lights a fire. We are both very cold.
‘Kyle will be here any minute,’ she says.
‘Your dad was so funny about him.’
Jenna smiles, hopeful and uncertain. ‘What did he say? Can you remember? Can you remember everything?’
I can.
‘I told him off because he said that some dufus from the mountains was going out with his daughter. I said Scott Emerson, if anyone’s a dufus from the mountains it’s you. He asked me if I knew – but I remembered you said not to tell him. So I just said I guessed. He grumbled and grouched, he said – I have to go meet this kid. I said, Kyle’s not a kid – he’s twenty-two.’ I’m laughing. ‘I’m sorry Jenna. I didn’t think. How do you know his name is Kyle? your dad said. How do you know his name when I only called him Dufus?’
Jenna laughs and her eyes sparkle. I want to keep her laughing.
‘I was mean to my dad, giving him all these rules about how he was to behave and what he wasn’t to say,’ she says.
‘You were reasonable, Jenna. But you know – he was chuffed that you and I talk. I told your dad, don’t you dare behave like a prick. He said, if I don’t think he’s good enough, I’m going to let him know it. Oh my God, I said, tell me you haven’t composed a questionnaire. He thought that was funny. I told him to trust you. Kyle makes Jenna happy, I said, and that should be enough.’
‘I had to nudge him a couple of times when they first met,’ Jenna says. ‘Like when he asked Kyle what music he likes and then Dad just sat there and stared at him like all his answers were wrong.’ Jenna pauses and her eyes fill at a memory. ‘Afterwards, he just stood so still in the car park, watching Kyle drive away with me. I watched him from the rear-view mirror.’
‘He really liked him,’ I tell her. ‘He told me so. He phoned me later and said, there goes my baby girl, there she goes.’
I remember how frustrated I was that we were in separate countries at the time. I wished I could have put my arms around him and I wish that now.
‘Kyle called him sir and my dad didn’t tell him not to – even though he hates that kind of thing. Hated.’
We consider how we keep having to change from present to past.
We go quiet.
Jenna and I aren’t enough in this house.
I sigh. I think of my children. I’m so tired I can’t remember whether to go forward eight hours or back.
‘It seems so strange,’ I say, looking around. ‘So strange without Buddy here. I really notice him not being here.’ He’s stayed with Rose since the day the men left.
Then Jenna looks at me and I look at Jenna.
‘Buddy?’ she says.
And Jenna looks at me and I look at Jenna.
It was such an idiotic thing for me to say. It’s strange being here without Buddy? Buddy – the dog? This house is strange on account of the dog not being here?
Scott tips his head back and laughs for all he’s worth. Crinkles around the eyes and his bristles dip into his dimples.
Jenna and I start to giggle. Then we laugh. Then we roar and roll about, doubled up. We bang our fists on the table with mirth. We can’t catch our breath. We honk and snort as we laugh and we laugh. We can’t stop. It’s all unutterably stupid.
And Scott thinks, will you look at my two beautiful girls.
* * *
There were so many people in so much pain sharing so much love and sorrow.
Jenna read e e cummings.
Jordan Sturdy spoke. I listened to everything that was said. My name was mentioned. I can’t remember a word.
There was a plain box. A coffin. Scott Emerson was in that coffin, apparently. And then the coffin went into the furnace and soon Scott Emerson will be in a little urn.
Imagine that.
I can’t.
* * *
That evening, back home, Kyle, Jenna and I sit next to each other staring at the flames licking up in the fireplace. Tiredness doesn’t begin to describe it. We’re aware of lights coming up the driveway – a procession of cars – and Jenna and I look at each other as if to say oh please no more people, not tonight.
So we don’t go to the door. We sit where we are and stare at the fire.
Then we hear it, the sound of drumming. Emphatic and strong and rhythmic as blood through veins or a stream over boulders.
Kyle goes to the door.
‘You need to come,’ he says.
When the Ĺíĺwat drum it is as the heartbeat of their nation, the pulse of their landscape. Made by hand but never for themselves, always as gifts, their hand drums are from elk and deer rawhide, soaked and stretched over cedar and laced into wind-catcher patterns with beads at the back, the front painted with their symbology. The Ĺíĺwat drum when they lose their loved ones. They drum at nine o’clock, then at three and again at seven. Sometimes, up to 100 drums.
It’s just coming up to seven in the evening. Immediately, I see Rose. Then I recognize others I may have seen when Scott held up a hand in passing, or when Aaron proudly took me and the kids around the Úlĺus community centre. There are also many, many people I don’t know.
They stand on Scott’s porch and on the steps leading up, they stand on the paving and on the grass. I don’t know how many. A lot. There they stand and they drum for Scott, the white man who had a brother in Aaron.
* * *
I hike to Joffre Lakes by myself. I’ve never done anything like that in my life – being out in true wilderness on my own. There were hikers way in front of me but they were fitter than me, more nimble, and soon it’s just me and the mountainside, the trees and the rocks and the Joffre Creek – swollen and frenetic, a thousand drops of glacial water racing over boulders. The noise is deafening and I find it immensely soothing.
Then I wonder if I’ll see a bear and I feel a little frightened, somewhat exposed and vulnerable. I said to Scott so many times, I wonder if I’ll see a bear. The first time he took me here to Joffre, he told me a lot about humans and bears. I’m at the middle lake now. I find a slab of rock right near the shore of the turquoise water and there I sit, hugging my knees, remembering how we chatted, Scott and I.
‘First bear I saw up close was when I was camping up at Birken. I was with Aaron and my dad. I guess I was maybe seven or eight years old. It was a real big bear and he was very near. About as close as that tree right there.’
What did you do Scott, oh my goodness what did you do?
‘We made a lot of noise, Frankie. That’s what you have to do. They’re shy, really, and they don’t like noise. So we banged our pots and pans over our heads.’
I remember now how I stared and stared at him. I couldn’t compute w
hat I was hearing. You banged your pots and pans – over your heads? Good God, I said.
Scott shrugged in that easy-going way of his when he shied away from praise. ‘It’s what you do – when you’re camping and there’s a big hairy fucker wanting to get close.’
But you banged a pan – over your head?
And he looked at me, puzzled. ‘Sure.’
That’s insane, I laughed and I walked on.
‘Wait,’ he said.
And he caught my arm, wearing a grin that glinted in his eyes. ‘Frankie – you thought we banged our pots over – on – our heads?’
Yes, I said. That’s what you said. Insane!
‘So – you thought that the bear took one look at us and thought whoa! those crazy fuckers are so hard they hit their heads with their pots and pans. And the bear thinks man, I’m outta here?’
I nodded. Confused at why he was clinging onto me, laughing.
‘Over our heads,’ he said. He dropped my arms, smoothed hair from my face, kissed me gently and looked at me quizzically, as if marvelling at this daft idiot he was in love with.
‘Over our heads, Frankie.’
And he clapped his hands. High above his head.
* * *
I spend the afternoon with Rose. I fall to my knees when Buddy comes over, wagging his tail, butting his nose at me to say it’s you, it’s you – say, have you seen Scott?
Rose is wearing leather straps over her wrists and ankles and around her middle – to signify to all that she’s in mourning. She tells me she must sleep on cedar boughs for seven days. Johnny and Tara are being Johnny and Tara. Do they know? Do they understand?
‘Children have old souls,’ she says. ‘They’re doing OK. They are open and accepting. More than me.’
I’m not having a good day today. I feel unwell. I can’t remember what was the last thing I ate or when that was. The hike to Joffre was hard – my legs felt weak, my head throbbed and my lungs burnt. I didn’t make it to the top lake and I felt shit about that. The turquoise didn’t stun me, it didn’t gladden my heart. It wasn’t magical or soothing – it was just there. Now I feel tired and out of sorts. I miss my children desperately – I have this horrible sense of not knowing how to get back home to them.
I look at Rose and I feel swept through with guilt. I bow my head. ‘Rose – I am so sorry.’
She sits very still, looking beyond me. It’s like she’s not breathing. I want her to hit me, shout at me, curse and swear at me. Then she slumps a little and our eyes meet.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Not your fault.’
‘But Scott was coming to see me,’ I whisper. ‘That’s why they were – up there.’
‘Please forgive Aaron,’ is what she says. ‘If he was here – he’d be sad. He’d think he was to blame.’ I can see she’s thinking about her man. ‘I married an eagle.’ She sounds so proud.
‘Will you stay here, with the Ĺíĺwat? Will you go back to your Squamish?’
‘This is my home,’ she says. ‘This is my children’s home. But will you come back Frankie? You didn’t just give a little of your heart to Scott – this place has a bit of it too, right?’
I think about that. Of course it’s true. This part of British Columbia has become my spiritual homeland like no place before it.
‘Frankie,’ says Rose, ‘we mustn’t forsake nkweĺánk – the sunny side of the mountain. It’s always there.’
* * *
Tomorrow I leave here. Today Jenna, Kyle and I are pottering around the house, looking in drawers and cupboards and sorting papers and mail. It feels rude and intrusive to be doing this. I don’t like it and I’m not pulling my weight but Jenna seems OK with that. She knows who Scott’s accountant is and their attorney is a family friend – people I don’t know, names I’ve never heard. I feel awkward – there was so much of Scott’s life that preceded me. A lot has nothing to do with me. We were together a short while in all, a small percentage of his lifetime, but it felt so total and I’m struggling.
‘My mom is going to visit,’ Jenna says, coming off the phone.
‘Your mum? Here?’
She nods. Her mother didn’t come to the funeral. It hurt Jenna even though she told me she hadn’t actually expected her to turn up.
‘Shall I make myself scarce?’
‘Are you kidding?’ says Jenna.
And so I meet Lind. Scott’s ex-wife and the mother of his child. She doesn’t look like an alcoholic to me, if I was expecting a lurching stagger of an unkempt woman. Very blonde hair, dark blue jeans, shiny high-heeled boots, a smart jacket and a capacious handbag. She’s quite bony, she looks brittle and forlorn. Scott didn’t talk about Lind much; it was so long ago for him, a lifetime away. He tolerated her and he made sure she was OK financially and he never spoke unkindly about her to Jenna. Jenna told me that one. When Lind arrives she starts to cry, holding out her arms to Jenna who seems a little reluctant to go into them. I realize that, even for Lind, Scott retained a distinct place in her life. However little they had to do with one another, still he signified steadiness and reason in her routine chaos. Take that away from Lind and life must seem quite scary and unbridled.
I keep back.
She’s all over Kyle, touching his cheek as though he’s a boy. Jenna sends a private roll of her eyes over to me. Kyle is wonderful with Lind. Scott – you have nothing to worry about, Jenna is onto a good thing there. Then Lind sees me and she tilts her head and stares.
‘Mom, this is Frankie.’
‘I’m Lind.’
‘Hello.’
We shake hands. Her fingers feel like a loose bundle of pencils.
‘You’re the one,’ she says.
I don’t know what she means and I can’t work out her tone. Is she accusing me?
She can see my confusion. Her eyes go gentle and her voice drops soft as she shakes her head, smiles sadly, and says it again.
‘You – you’re The One.’
* * *
I’m gut-curdlingly homesick now. In fact I threw up this evening and I never throw up. I want to be back in my kitchen with Annabel doing her homework yabbering, and Sam coming in from the late bus moody, all scruffy and untucked. I want to be cooking something they’ll moan at me for and I’ll say fine, don’t eat it but that’s all there is. All the scuffles for time on the computer with each child deeming their homework the more important. Sam saying, I don’t need a shower Mum and me saying, Sam – I can smell you from here, get in the shower or I’ll bath you myself. Annabel yelling at me when I brush her hair, proclaiming she likes knots. The day-to-day, something I know how to do because I’ve done it a million times. I can do Mummy without thinking. But I have no idea how to mourn for my man, how to grieve. I don’t really know who I am in all of this. I’m not even a widow.
Lying on Scott’s side in Scott’s bed.
I can no longer smell him on his pillow. Nor in the clothes of his that I’ve packed in my case. A sweater. A plaid shirt. A layered T-shirt I’d forgotten about but cried when I saw. The faded design of a man fishing, a bear on the shore. Blanched pistachio green and washed-out damson with the lettering in vanilla. I told Scott he looked like ice cream in it.
So where exactly are you, Scott?
I’m so fucking angry with you right now. I’m going back to my side of the bed, turning away and facing the wall. How dare you just leave me?
* * *
I want to take Jenna with me and I don’t think she wants to let me go. To each other, we each embody a little of Scott. It takes me a long time to leave and our farewell embrace is protracted. We know, once we let go, we’ll be doing precisely that; letting go. Once I’m off the porch and in the car, it will signify the end of this hazed in-between time; it will mean an unequivocal return to real life, to getting on with things, inching forward in time without him, creating a blunt and increasing distance from the day Scott no longer lived. But I have to go and she has to let me. She goes back inside and shuts the door befor
e I’ve reversed and I drive away not able to look back at the house.
Airport Road seems an awfully grand name for the little runway that licks along the grass, the couple of small buildings where operations are run from. Skydiving, helicopter tours. Aaron’s little business. I need to make this detour. I have to stand where Scott last stood. What I’m not expecting to see is his truck parked there. For a crazy second, which I want to last for hours, I think oh! See – he’s here after all!
They will, at some point, find the spare keys at the house and they’ll drive Scott’s truck back home for Jenna to decide what to do with it.
Today, though, it’s here. There’s no one else around. I park the car and step outside and walk towards the truck. There’s still deluded hope in my heart but the tears catching in my throat are in combat with that. I do something really crazy. I walk past the truck and out to the airfield and actually look for Aaron’s little plane. Scott was in a box and apparently he’s now in an urn. The plane is, I know, a tatter and scorch of torn, charred and pulverized steel on a lonely mountainside. But, just now, I’m ignoring all of what’s known and I’m going to have a little look.
I can’t see Aaron’s plane.
I go over to his office and peer through the window. It hasn’t changed a bit since I was last here though of course everything has changed beyond comprehension. I stand on the decking for a few moments. It’s so peaceful. The sun is out today and the sky is that diluted blue that’s as strong as it gets so early in the spring. Scott’s truck shines and glints and I leave Aaron’s office and go over to it. I try the handle of the passenger door and it’s unlocked. Why would it be locked? This is the tiny airfield in Pemby – no one needs to lock their truck. Aaron was only going to be gone a couple of hours. He’d’ve popped Scott’s keys in his pocket. I stand awhile with my hand on the open door, then I clamber up and sit in my seat, shutting the door and putting my seat belt on. I just look straight ahead because I don’t want to see the driver’s seat empty.