February

by Lisa Moore

  The act of being dead, if you could call it an act, made them very hard to love. They’d lost the capacity to surprise. You needed a strong memory to love the dead, and it was not her fault that she was failing. She was trying. But no memory was that strong. This was what she knew now: no memory was that strong.

  What are you doing, she said. Louise was taking off her bikini top. Her breasts flopped out white as potatoes, the dark liver-coloured nipples hard as stones.

  When will these tits ever see the sun if I don’t do it now, Louise said. She lay back down, nudging her shoulders into the sand under her towel.

  The youngsters came, bang, bang, bang, just like that, Helen thought.

  Get the diapers out of the way, her motherin-law had said. Have them all at once. And it was like the snap of a finger. The whole thing was over. At first it had seemed to last forever. Then it was over in a snap.

  … . .

  The Kite, 1977

  LET GO, CAL shouted. Let go, let go. He was out on the lawn with four-year-old John and the child let go of the kite when he was told, and the kite leapt up in the air and cut through the sky, this way and that, over his head. John put his arms over his face.

  When the kite met the air it sounded like a sharp intake of breath—surprise or fear or elation. Then the snap and ripple of the plastic. The kite sliced the air again, and this time it rose higher, and with another leap, higher, and then it was very high.

  Cal yanked the line, flinging his arm behind him. He gave hard little tugs or he yanked with his whole body, bending back as if doing the limbo.

  The kite dipped down, and then, out of spite, cut up even higher.

  It dipped and rippled.

  Cal tied the string to the clothesline and he went around the corner of the house. Helen could hear the chink of his shovel hitting stone. For a while the kite line was slack, but then it went straight and the kite was nothing more than a speck. The lawn was big and dew-soaked and sparkle-riven, and there was fireweed swaying in the back of the garden. The seeds floated across the lawn.

  Their house in Salmon Cove. Helen has a picture of John from that time. A royal blue T-shirt and red shorts and his blonde ringlets, and the stain from a purple Popsicle on his lips.

  Cal had taken the children down to the beach to give Helen some peace. He’d found a plastic Barbie Doll kite stuck between the rocks, torn and faded. It was pink and showed Barbie’s blonde hair and white smile.

  Lulu was on Cal’s shoulders, and Cal had John and Cathy in a wooden cart he was pulling, and he had the broken kite in his hand, coming up over the dusty gravel road.

  This is the kind of thing Helen remembers, bits of afternoons that sharpen in focus until they are too bright. Just moments. Tatters. How the kids climbed on Cal. Flung themselves. How they clambered over him. He tickled them. Gave them horseback rides. Told stories. He did the airplane. Lying on his back, his legs in the air, their little rib cages resting on his grey wool socks. Soaring.

  Cal repaired the kite in the garden with duct tape and John was watching Cal intently and Cal was talking to him all about fixing a kite, aerodynamics, and maybe the strangeness of Barbie and her brilliant, bleak smile.

  Helen was in the kitchen window looking at the ocean with the binoculars. She could see Bell Island, a smudged, smoky blue across the bay, a few windows along the coast flashing like mica. Then the loud glitter of the ocean. She thought she could hear whales and she was trying to find them. The binoculars were heavy and smelled new, like the expensive leather case they had been kept in. When she looked through and twisted the wheel in the centre, the fuzzy burrs of light on each wave sharpened, every sparkle hard as a diamond, and after a long time she finally saw the whales. The tail of the mother slapped the water. It was a blue-black tail and shiny, and the water fell off it in a clear sheet, and the whale blew up spray and beside the mother was the baby whale, a small black blur under the skim of water, born a few days before, a fisherman had told them.

  Helen lowered the binoculars in time to see the rip of pink. The kite was shooting down, a vicious and calculated dive. The plastic rattled and it was like an arrow hurtling towards John’s head.

  It flapped down and banged into John’s shoulder and covered his face, and John cried out in fright. He shut his eyes and his fists were clenched at his sides and he screamed a piercing scream for his father.

  Cal came around the corner and he picked John up in his arms. He put his hand on the back of John’s head and pressed the boy’s face into his chest. Cal swayed with him. The whole thing was over in a minute and forgotten. John wriggled out of Cal’s arms and was off around the corner. The whole thing was forgotten just as if it had never happened. Let go, let go.

  … . .

  Helen in Greece, 2007

  ON THEIR WAY home, Helen and Louise had nearly missed their flight from Heraklion Airport in Greece to Stanstead in England. They had discovered they were at the wrong gate and they’d had to run. Louise was told to leave her water bottle at security or she could drink it on the spot, and she slammed down her bag and screwed off the cap and put the bottle to her lips, and tipping her head way back she drank for a long time, water dripping from the side of her mouth and the glug glug of it audible and the security guards watching her. Big bubbles went up in the plastic bottle, and finally Louise lowered it and screwed the top back on and dropped it in the garbage bucket, and wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. The men said, Is okay. Is okay. Go, go, go.

  But Louise set the buzzers off and had to turn back and remove her shoes and then sit and put her shoes back on.

  They were the last people on the plane and then it was delayed on the tarmac for two hours and they only had three hours in a Best Western Hotel in Stanstead before catching a bus to Heathrow. They’d been given a room with a double bed and Louise showered and Helen just fell asleep with her clothes on and woke every twenty minutes terrified they’d overslept. She leapt out of the bed at 4 a.m. When the phone rang and grabbed the receiver afraid someone had died, but there was just a buzzing on the other end and then music, and it was the wake-up call.

  We were in an outdoor hot tub with snow falling on our hair, a woman told the driver on the bus to Heathrow. She and her friend had got on the bus after Helen and Louise, and one of them had two walking canes. She was florid with exertion and panting hard from climbing the three steps up from the sidewalk and she told the whole bus, Don’t mind me sticks. She gripped the chrome pole and waved one of the canes and started down to her seat.

  The driver pulled a lever and his chair sank with a pneumatic wheeze, and he took up a clipboard and crossed off a few lines with a pen. He put the clipboard away and spoke into a hand mike. Settle down, ladies, he said.

  They pulled out of the bus terminal and after a while the driver spoke again on the hand mike and he said they would arrive at Heathrow Airport in an hour and fifteen minutes. He said the bus had a bathroom in the back and smoking was prohibited and in England seat belts were mandatory on buses, and he asked them all to belt up. This bus will be going sixty miles an hour, he said. Sometimes the wheels will leave the ground.

  Louise had fallen in love. She did not say love. She hadn’t said anything to Helen. But Helen knew.

  On their last night in Greece, Helen and Louise had eaten in a restaurant attached to the hotel. It had been recommended by the guidebook. They had ordered Greek salad, and Louise had asked for the octopus and was surprised when it came that it looked so much like octopus. The tiny suction cups and purple tendrils unfurling on the plate.

  I’m going to try things, Louise said, I’ve never tried before. She decided to start with the sardines.

  The fisherman just brought, the waiter said. He flicked his pen towards the ocean to show how fresh. Just now, he said. He made a frown and nodded, showing how judicious Louise’s choice of sardines would prove to be.

  Helen had never used a guidebook before and she was astonished to find the restaurant right where th
e book said it would be. She and Louise were surprised to find the affable twin brothers that the guidebook said were the owners, right behind the bar, looking exactly like each other except one wore a pink shirt and the other a white shirt.

  There was outdoor seating under a thatched roof, and the evening sun shot down spears through the weave. The locals sat at wooden tables on the sidewalks on both sides of the narrow cobblestone road. They were drinking something amber and smoky-looking from shot glasses. The few passing cars nearly brushed their knees. Men with sunburned faces and broad cheeks and pitted, spongy noses that drooped over their upper lips. Stout old women who wore all black and black kerchiefs and leaned on wooden walking canes. The old women walked down the middle of the street and the traffic idled behind them and the smell of exhaust hung in the air, and there were geraniums against the white stucco and cobalt shutters.

  The man in the pink shirt served Helen and Louise. He had pouches under his eyes and a pen and pad, and he listened as Louise read out from the menu what they both wanted even though his cellphone was ringing in his pants pocket. It kept ringing, so Louise stopped and waited, and the man sighed and closed his eyes and took the phone out, and his brow furrowed, and he spoke and listened and began to get angry, and listened and wandered away from their table and didn’t come back for a long time.

  The other waiter brought a basket of bread and two beers they hadn’t ordered, and there was olive oil and vinegar on the table to pour over everything.

  Finally the first waiter returned and licked his finger and fluttered the pages of his little pad, and he asked Louise if she wanted her fish fried or baked.

  I think fried, he said, without giving her a chance to answer.

  My sister, you know, the waiter said to Louise. She phones, what can I do?

  I know what you mean, Louise said. There was a cat with white and caramel and black patches and green eyes at Helen’s feet. It had pressed its back against the chair rungs and the black patch of fur over one shoulder blade rose and fell as it turned and walked away, a scrawny stilted strut. Then the cat stopped so it could whack at fleas with its hind leg. Thumping the flagstones with a kind of soft violence.

  The ocean was dark except for a line of white foam that ran almost the length of the shore and moved in and out, erased itself and returned, erased itself and returned. The waiter kept bringing Louise and Helen beer, and the street got more crowded, and there were Dutch tourists and some old Brits in knee socks, and Louise laid her hand on her chest and put her other hand out flat so Helen would shut up. Louise’s eyes watered and she coughed and knocked her chest with her fist.

  What?

  A bone. Louise coughed and coughed and drank down Helen’s glass of water. Then she got up and went around the corner.

  You’re not supposed to do that, Helen said.

  I’ll be right back, she wheezed. And she came back with tears running freely, and the waiter in pink came back and he had more bread and he drew up a chair and rubbed Louise’s back.

  He said, A fish bone and you eat bread.

  She ate.

  Gone, she said.

  See, the waiter said. I told you. The restaurant was nearly empty and the air was starting to feel cold. But the waiter stayed where he was, telling Louise all about his sister, her controlling interest in the restaurant, and his mother whom he remembered saying, all his childhood: A fishbone, you eat bread. He tapped his temple.

  This I remember, he said.

  I think I’ll head up, Helen said.

  You go, Louise said. The waiter jumped up and came back with two shot glasses and a small jug.

  You are married, he asked.

  My husband died two years ago, Louise said. He was a dear, dear man. We loved each other very much.

  Strong water, he said. He poured one for Louise and one for himself.

  I’ll be up, Louise said to Helen. In a little while.

  But she and the waiter in the pink shirt had ended up in the room next to Helen, and in the morning Helen was out on her balcony and they were out on his.

  There was a white stucco wall dividing them, and the blue sky above and the ocean in front of Helen, and all the white roofs, and some men were mixing cement on the street in a tumbling drum and the wet clay sloshed over, and Helen saw that her shadow was very blue on the white wall. She could see the curls in her hair and the edge of her sunglasses and even her water glass with the water’s parabola of light shimmering on the wall’s surface. It was a hard-edged shadow. Then she heard the wooden doors open to the balcony next door and it was Louise. Helen could hear Louise and the waiter talk.

  She could not hear what they were saying but she heard them remark on the sun. She had the feeling Louise was talking about the glorious light. Louise could be theatrical. I could just drink in this light, Louise was probably saying.

  Helen heard their cutlery and dishes. The waiter lived in the hotel, it seemed, and he had cutlery and a hot plate. Or they had ordered up.

  Helen heard Louise shake a packet of sugar. She couldn’t hear what they were saying but she heard the packet flicking back and forth between Louise’s finger and thumb and the granules bouncing. And her sister was fifty-eight, if Helen was counting correctly. She heard Louise tear the sugar packet. Helen didn’t move; it would look like she had been listening.

  Now Louise made her way down the aisle of the bus holding on to the backs of the seats as she passed, and the driver watched her in the rearview. England looked like England rolling past the tinted windows. It was lush and green and there was a field of sheep. It was as if Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence had written down exactly what they’d seen and it had all stayed that way, or as if everybody here had read those books and made the landscape look like it was in the novels. There were trees and hedges and stone walls and sheep. The sheep, scattered here and there on the green hills, were an authentic touch.

  Louise had gone to the bathroom and she was in there a long time, and then there was shouting at the back of the bus. Louise was shrieking and kicking the bathroom door, and Helen leapt up, and the driver was pulling over, and everybody turned in their seats, looking towards the back. The bathroom door slammed open and bounced shut, and Helen was screaming, Louise, Louise, Louise.

  The door flew open and it was raining hard inside the small cubicle and Louise was shrieking. Her pale blouse was plastered to her chest and the lacy texture of her bra was visible, and when she pulled the blouse away it sucked itself back onto her skin, and there were little pockets of trapped air inside her blouse, and her hair was plastered down and her mascara ran down her cheeks.

  Jesus Christ, Helen said. She had her sister by the arms and she was looking into her face. She was looking for blood or a bullet wound or some kind of gash, but there was nothing. Louise was soaking wet. And the rain kept pouring down in the cubicle and it ran out of the bathroom in widening rivulets and people in the back began lifting their luggage off the floor and mincing their shoes to the side. Little mincing steps to the side.

  The driver spoke into the hand mike and his voice was relaxed. Later on Louise and Helen would describe it as a bedroom tone. A voice full of sarcasm and mirth.

  There will be no smoking in the bathroom, the voice said.

  Briefly the driver and Louise were standing out on the side of the road. Louise had her arms crossed and she was tapping her foot. She was nodding. The driver was pointing at the bus and pointing down the road and he had some ideas, it seemed, about duty and proper behaviour and the evils of smoking in general. He believed in punitive action, and he had some well-hammered-out thoughts about clean air and second-hand smoke and the importance of following rules on public transportation while visiting the United Kingdom.

  Louise looked as if she were taking these views into consideration for the very first time. She looked as if she had never heard of them before.

  People behind Helen were tutting and sucking their teeth and lifting themselves up in their seats to watch and d
ropping back down, and someone said loudly, for Helen’s benefit, that she had a plane to catch.

  Louise came back on to the bus and grabbed her things; she gathered her purse and luggage and her little jacket.

  You go on, Helen, Louise said. I’ll meet you there.

  I’m staying with you, Helen said.

  Helen, stay on the bus, Louise said. Do you hear me? We won’t give that bastard the satisfaction of throwing us both off.

  They left Louise on the side of the road. Helen watched Louise pull the little retractable handle out of the luggage, and she watched Louise set the bag on its wheels and tilt it up, and she watched the bag bounce around behind Louise on the crushed gravel. The bus pulled away and two big plumes of dust rolled up and Louise was gone.

  Hours later, Helen was in the departure lounge of Heathrow Airport and she dropped down into a chair and opposite her there was a young Indian man—he looked Indian—clutching a briefcase, and he was fast asleep.

  He had a knapsack beside him and his cheek rested on a corner of the briefcase, and his mouth was open and a thread of saliva hung from his top lip to the bottom one, and it shivered with each breath he took, and his hold on the briefcase was fierce but his glasses were askew. One arm of the glasses stuck off his face at an odd angle and one lens of the glasses was up by his eyebrow.

  It was a committed sleep and it made him vulnerable and Helen felt a ridiculous wash of love for him. Or it was for someone else and she couldn’t quite think who. And then she remembered Louise covered in the roiling clouds of dust from the bus pulling away.

  The noise in the waiting area washed in and out, and there were cash registers, and babies crying, and couples flung over each other in sleep, and gentle-voiced reminders about watching your baggage, and gate announcements. It washed in and out and Helen could not pay attention, and the young Indian man’s glasses were in danger of falling off his face.