Oh, My Darling

by Shaena Lambert

  Of course Shulamith was to blame, Nancy thought a few minutes later, as she took the trail to the guest house. Shulamith had folded and contorted Ramsey, not exactly into her own image—that would be too simple a formula—but she had kneaded and pressed him so that he conformed to the negative space around her. Ever since Copenhagen, Shulamith had been depressed. She was caught (she had said it more than once, in tears, on the telephone) in a world that felt hopeless. She had done her diva-like all at the summit, accosting the first minister of China at a cocktail party, this strikingly beautiful, huge-haired woman suddenly turning to ask what he meant by not signing the protocol, then the next day hanging a banner from a bridge: Stop the Burning of the Earth. Banners. Cocktails. She had been gone for a month. She had fought, worked, cried, and now (this is what she had told Nancy on the telephone) she felt gutted.

  Shulamith and Charlie lived on a bluff overlooking Trincomali Channel, in a forest of big-leaf maple, arbutus and second-growth cedar. In spring the maple trees put out curls of electric newness, but now the leaves were yellow, rustling above Nancy’s head, a whooshing that carried from tree to tree down the bluff, where it was picked up by the cedar in another, darker register.

  At the guest house Nancy changed into her rain shell and runners. The cabin smelled of woodsmoke. A bed nook covered by a Hudson’s Bay blanket had windows on three sides made of horizontal French doors, so that in bed, in the rain, you could look out at the forest through walls of paned glass. Charlie had done that. He had made glass walls out of scrounged doors. Nancy transferred her cigarettes from her purse to her rain shell, lit one, took a few puffs, then lifted the lid of the wood stove and threw it in.

  Dear God. Poor Ramsey, Nancy thought, as she closed the driftwood latch of the guest house and started down the trail toward the island school. Friable leaves crunched under her feet. She pictured Shulamith holding the telephone close, whispering the words of the scourge, timber beetle, toxic waste, polar melt, trying to keep this burden from Ramsey, just the way you might try to protect a child from the knowledge of death itself, only to have it accumulate in the shadows, a pattern of grainy darkness.

  Shulamith and Nancy’s friendship had started ten years before, in the Temagami Wilderness Committee: they had been clasped side by side (bike locks and industrial-strength chain) to the wheel shaft of a logging truck. TV reporters turned out, and Shulamith managed to twist her body to face the cameras, assuming a praying mantis position, doing interview after interview about the desecration of the forests. In between Nancy had amused Shulamith with stories of her dog.

  They both went on to work for the International Campaign against Climate Change (Nancy drawn to administration; Shulamith scaling the heights of campaign stardom), and they both moved to the west coast. When Shulamith got pregnant, everyone wondered what sort of mother she’d be. “Can you picture it?” Nancy said. “She’ll be in jail, and she’ll suddenly think, ‘Oh fuck, my baby!’” They would have to hire a new admin person: post-protest baby finder. But Shulamith surprised them again. She strained organic baby food and expressed milk before every demonstration. She spoke from the stage with the baby strapped to her chest. Nancy admired Shulamith for proving them wrong, but she couldn’t help but feel, whenever she spent any time with Shulamith, that a brush fire was being set in her own body. Did they always have to talk about Shulamith’s problems, her difficult marriage, the baby’s sleep patterns? But it was more than that. Shulamith was just so big—so full of the belief that she was the centre of her own drama. Sometimes, when they spoke about the planet, it was as though they were actually talking about Shulamith. That was how big she was. The forests were her red-gold hair. The mountains were her copious, wobbling breasts. The fishy waters were the gorge between her thighs.

  Nancy stepped from the forest path onto the gravel shoulder of the road and almost bumped into Charlie.

  “Wow. Nancy.”

  “Charlie.”

  “Man. You startled me.”

  “I didn’t mean to leap out at you.”

  “You didn’t. I was lost in thought.”

  He gave off the powerful rays she associated with him, a sheen of attractiveness, like shafts of light from a Renaissance angel. But what got her were his eyes. She felt the jolt of recognition as their eyes met: like looking into the eyes of an incredibly well-known-to-you dog. Or meeting your own eyes in the mirror. And then that half-smile on his lips as he looked away, because he had felt it too.

  But if he felt it, how could he live without it?

  He said: “So you’re here.”

  Again, the eyes. The jolt.

  “I’m here.”

  “Has Shulamith put you in charge of the pickup?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ramsey’s been acting out.”

  “What’s it all about?”

  He scratched at the gravel with the toe of his running shoe. “Shulamith is overcomplicating things, but I have a feeling you’ll figure it out.”

  “Don’t be too sure.”

  “Oh, you will.” He shook his head, amazed by her: that was what that look said. Then he placed his hands on her shoulders. A surge of electricity ran down her spine, into her vagina, a tweaking action, like tightening a screw. He stepped forward and enfolded her. He was wearing a Cowichan sweater. He smelled of sheep lanolin. “Can I see you tonight?” he murmured into her hair. “Just to talk?”

  She wanted to memorize the details for later, but it was an onslaught, like collecting rocks and being hit by a slide. She even heard herself think: How will I ever sort all these pieces? She felt his lips at her ear, hot breath against the whorls, his tongue. Then he stepped back.

  “I’m sorry, Nancy.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “We said we wouldn’t do this.”

  You said, she thought. You said. “Yes, you can come,” she said. “But just to talk.”

  “To talk.”

  “That’s right.”

  He shook his head, looking amazed all over again, and then he checked his watch. It was an involuntary gesture, and when he noticed she had caught it, he smiled ruefully, already regretting it, as he clearly regretted much else. He hugged her again, a brotherly hug this time, and then they parted, Charlie up the wooded trail, Nancy along the ocean road to the school.

  Ramsey was in the schoolhouse, drawing a dog on the computer. When Nancy tapped him on the shoulder, he seemed not to notice, then looked up and realized it was her. He called out Nancy, Nancy, Nancy and threw himself into her arms. He was heavier, and Nancy was astonished, all over again, at how beautiful he was. She smelled him like a rose: smelled his scalp, dirty and sandy. Could I love you any more than this? Nancy thought. But what she said was, “I have chocolate.”

  “What kind?”

  “You’ll see. Put your coat on.”

  His eyes darted to the window. A look of fear.

  “Hey—go quick,” she said. “They’re M&M’s.”

  That worked. He went to his cubby and found his running shoes and Velcro’d them on, then pulled on his fleece and put on his Spider-Man backpack.

  The whole place smelled of melted wax. The teacher, wiping her hands on a paper towel, came toward Nancy. She had a cadaverous face, hawk nose and frizzy hair. “We made candles,” she said dourly. There they were on a central table, inside toilet-paper rolls, wicks held in place with chopsticks. Nancy nodded, but she was thinking about Charlie, his tongue in her ear. Now that was something to think about. She sat down in a small red plastic chair, the better to relive the charge. In fact, his tongue had been a bit big, cowlike even, but in retrospect the feeling it gave off was pointed, precise.

  The one and only time she and Charlie had made love was a year and ten months before. Boxing Day. The Christmas tree was in the corner, covered in chains of cranberries and popcorn. The house smelled like a forest. Shulamith went of
f to bed upstairs, but Nancy and Charlie stayed up late, drinking wine on the couch—and then that remarkable gesture: he reached out and put his hand on her heart. Why had he done that? It was what she always thought of, more than the sex, which wasn’t, she had to admit, of the first waters. He wanted her to put her legs up, wrap them around his back. (Was this something women were supposed to be able to do easily? She did not have flexible hips, and supposed that Shulamith must.) Afterward, she said: Well, I’m glad we got that out of our system, knowing, without feeling it yet (the way you know things after a death), that everything would be different forever. What surprised her though, and interested her even, looking at it with a scientist’s objectivity (a love scientist—ha ha), was how the memory acted. She could go for a morning not thinking about it, and then, bang, walking down the street or standing in a bank lineup, it would buckle in her gut, a bubble of life opening inside her—and with its own, electric attachments. It made her stop and groan, feeling him inside her in that way.

  Since then they had said they would stop. And they had—because there wasn’t really anything to stop. It was a one-off, a mistake. He had made that clear. But sometimes he came to the guest house and talked to her. They drank wine. And twice they ended up groping and touching (like snakes, like villains) while Shulamith worked late hammering out her press releases and responding to e-mails. They could see the light from her window through the trees.

  “Okay,” Nancy said to Ramsey. “Let’s go.”

  They walked out the door and through the driftwood gate of the school garden.

  Ramsey stopped. “Where’s the car?”

  “I didn’t bring it.”

  He looked as though he might run back to the schoolhouse, fling himself to the floor and scream.

  Nancy said quickly, “I wonder which pocket holds the M&M’s?” She made a bulge in one pocket with the bag, the other with her fist, and led the way around the schoolhouse to the trail. They started down it, through the trees, toward the shore, while he triumphantly guessed which pocket, then which hand, then which M&M. Ducking beneath an umbrella-shaped nest of cedar branches, they emerged onto the beach. It was the site of an old midden: a million crushed clamshells sparkled in the sun. The water was sharp blue. Together the two colours were like snow and sky, that clear and bright. The clouds had lifted and Nancy realized it was a beautiful day. She turned to Ramsey to say something about living in Paradise, but he was standing stock-still, sniffing the air like Nancy’s old dog, Riley. Then he took hold of Nancy’s jacket, moaned in terror and crumpled into a fetal position.

  Nancy knelt, shocked.

  “Ramsey? Yoo-hoo.”

  Nothing.

  She turned over a rock and tiny black crabs scuttled out of the wetness. “Oh—crabs!”

  She could feel Ramsey willing himself to stay rolled in his ball.

  “I can’t touch those things,” she said. “They freak me out.”

  He sat up then and looked at her with the eyes of an angry king. “I’m telling Mum and Dad. You’re not supposed to bring me down here.”

  “I bet these crabs bite.”

  Tears gathered, and rage grew in his body. Soon he would be howling, and she would need to pick him up and carry him back through the forest. But no: in the next second the fury passed through him. The entire drama was so internal she might have imagined it. He reached forward, plucked a crab from the watery divot left by the rock and held it in his cupped hands.

  “They don’t hurt, Auntie Nan,” he said. “Hold out your hands.”

  He placed the crab in her hands, where it scuttled from palm to palm. “Ooh. Feels weird.”

  He squatted beside the hole, letting it go. Nancy moved to a snaky pile of kelp swarming with sand flies. She picked up a bulb and walked backward, letting the seaweed whip drag behind her. It was at least ten feet long, ending in a clutch of rubbery fingers. Ramsey ran and took it from her. He was back. He was himself.

  You’re amazing. (Charlie would whisper.)

  How did you do it? (Shulamith.)

  Firmness, she would tell them later. Firmness and M&M’s.

  They walked on, and the sun shone down on them. Ramsey whacked the bull kelp against the sand and the end leapt up.

  A sandstone point marked the end of the beach. They would either have to clamber around the low-lying rim, past smooth caves in the rock, or cut across the top. Without a word Ramsey scrambled happily along a crack in the rock and onto the top.

  It was like climbing onto the back of an animal. Even through the layers of running shoe and sock, the sandstone felt warm. Tidal pools glinted, their surfaces rippled by the wind. Below, on the flat, wet rocks, a seal spotted them and waddled to the water, where it became liquid—a flip of tail and it was gone.

  Ramsey ran to the largest pool, seeming happy now, and Nancy felt a rush of gratitude and plea-sure—the same feeling she had had stepping onto the bright beach. She came and knelt beside Ramsey, and he unhooked his Spider-Man backpack and sat on it. One of his Velcro shoes had come undone, but he didn’t seem to notice. The pool had a purple starfish in it and a clutch of anemones, tentacles outstretched.

  Nancy said, “You look like your daddy.”

  No answer.

  She dropped a mussel shell onto the centre of an anemone, where its stomach was. The tentacles closed in slow alarm. Behind them, in the forest, a breeze made its rounds in the trees, touching the tops of the cedars, receiving a shushing reply from the maples. It sounded like gods speaking. While Ramsey experimented, prodding the anemones with bits of shell, Nancy lay back on the sandstone and let the sun heat her face.

  The wind was making her remember her grandmother’s farm in the Ottawa Valley. She had been eight or nine, and she had stood in a field on a lichen-covered rock while the wind hit her fiercely, and spoke in her ears, and flapped at her clothing. It felt like it could have happened yesterday, she remembered the wind on her face so vividly, but she had been so different then, still master of her soul, the subject of her universe, leaping from the rock, trying to get picked up by the wind.

  She sat up and stared at the bright water.

  When had she stopped being her true self? When had she become this other Nancy, who made up lies and slept with her best friend’s husband? She would reclaim herself, that was all. She would begin anew. When Charlie knocked at the guest house, she would tell him not to come in. She would change her life, move someplace completely new, like Moose Jaw. She had passed through once on the train. All around the small city, fields of yellow canola blazed in the sun. There would be bees everywhere. She would buy a new dog.

  But there was more too.

  She stood up now and began to pace, she was so excited. Here it was, as clear as the sun on her hands and face. She had an answer for Shulamith about why Ramsey had been afraid—not because nature was small, or suffering and diminished, but because it was so large still, and rustling, and thick, and alive. We don’t have to grieve for the planet. This was what she would tell Shulamith triumphantly, as she led Ramsey across the driveway, through the front door. You don’t have to grieve, my dear friend, or carry that immense weight a second longer, or worry that you’re damaging Ramsey with your fears, because this thing, this spirit moving in the branches, it’s bigger than any of us, and it simply can’t be killed. It can’t even be understood.

  Nancy felt an easing in her chest, like the release of a barrel hoop, and in an impulse of love she squatted beside Ramsey and kissed the top of his head.

  He flinched.

  No. That was not what happened. (She thought about it many times after. Many times.) What happened was this: he did not look up from the pool, but he shivered. It was a cold gesture, as though he had been touched by a snake, and it seemed to emanate from his bones.

  Nancy put her hand out again, experimentally, and stroked one of his long curls.

  �
��Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t touch my head.”

  “Don’t touch my head, please.”

  He placed a mussel shell on the water’s surface. They watched as it took on water.

  “Why can’t I touch your head?”

  “You’re not supposed to touch somebody unless they ask.”

  This was the stuff they learned at preschool, but knowing this did not make Nancy feel any better. She shifted her weight a fraction of an inch, and he looked up at her.

  “Your shadow’s in the way.”

  He was right again: her shadow had obscured the bottom of the pool. She stood and walked around the pool. “If someone as close to you as your auntie Nan kisses you, I think it’s okay.”

  No answer.

  “You don’t want to be too strict about these things or people won’t feel like kissing you at all.”

  She knelt on the other side of the pool. A current caused the shell to float past the anemone. Ramsey placed the shell within the tentacles. Frowzy legs groped, then began to tuck the shard into the flesh of its stomach. Would it hurt? At what point would the anemone realize its mistake?

  Her voice sounded loud when she spoke again. “What do your parents say about me?”

  There was a pause.

  “I mean when I’m not there.”

  Ramsey found a twig in the tidal pool, and he used it to pry the shell out.

  “Does your daddy say anything?”

  “You can call him Charlie, not my daddy.”

  “What does he say?”

  Nothing but concentration on his task. But she could feel him thinking. He reached in and grasped the shell, wetting his sleeve. In the commotion she almost missed his words. “He says you should get a life.”

  The sting of these words was so sharp it was almost interesting, like a wasp bite. Ramsey again placed the shell on the surface. “But,” he said calmly, “you don’t have to get a life—you have one already. Everyone does.”

  “Everyone does.” She repeated the words to buy time. Nancy thought of how Ramsey had controlled his tantrum, folding it deep inside. Was he letting it out now, in this careful display of malice? Were children capable of this? She had no idea. She wasn’t a parent. She didn’t have a life.