After Sunny’s gone to work, I stand on the porch of her home, thinking how her shape has increased, is a balloon in my head muscling out all other thought. Out there water assumes the colour of clouds. Boats appear, vanish, their combined wakes jollying the chop. It’s the end of fall and mist hangs low in fir trees round the yard, heavy on harbour buildings. I copy my father’s stance, not caring what it means. The sky rumbles with an invisible jet. Grey sea, grey sky: that’s where the friction lies. And the spark of a lighthouse is a flash of disappointment as big as civilization. Why can I realize the import of a moment only when the moment is past? All afternoon I body the waves in the bay. Sunny’s darkness gives birth to a light. Unfleshed Hen grows in my heart bigger than she’d been in life. The soft wooden railing lends my grip strength. Why do I find everything sad? Why is it sad that my father in his boat might die? My father, taking up the same amount of space as anyone else — a little less, surely, less than he used to but the shape is the same, the familiar posture — my father has had a good life, at least there’s been length to it. But on his boat he never looks at me. Never says anything to let me know that he’s who he is and I’m who I am. His body, better adjusted than mine to the roll of the waves, seems strong and sure. I see one of us in the other’s arms. He’ll die alone, fighting, like Hen did, like Mother. I want to pass like dogs pass, meekly, in the bosom of the family. Adjutant’s breathing stopped against Sunny’s winter hearth one December, a little moisture under his nose. The Don left us twenty-odd years later, poor survivors beneath the starry spring branches of Hen’s crabapple. The vet cried when she administered the dose. We were all there, our quiet family. Hen, diagnosed the January before the Don died, believed in recovery till the end. This afternoon silver beads thread each branch of the black twiggy elm. Dad was a signalman for the railway in England through the war. After immigration he turned into a poet. At first his poems were about trains and signal houses, later he wrote a poem for every death. When Adjutant died a dog chased a train into a tunnel. At the Don’s burial faithful dogs met trains in hope of greeting owners long dead. At Mum’s funeral Dad recalled impatiens planted in brick planters to brighten war-time reinforcements. His poem for Hen — his latest — wasn’t about the railway until the very end. In his life Dad was careless of my mother, my sister and me. He was seldom there, he was always away working or looking for work. When he came home it was as though we did not belong, as though the world moved with him and we were small external mechanisms that needed tinkering with, that didn’t quite function yet. Once he had us take turns leading him blindfolded round the house to prove how complete was his trust in us. “My selfish dark side lashed out / in anguish at that dependence,” he read to us at Hen’s grave. And then, while I tried to control my shivering under a hot July sun, there were signals changing — his voice gained strength — but not signals sending new messages: miracles changing the world of signal sending. That’s what he read.
Now it’s late. All light gone from the sky. Gusts whip the power lines and the house wails and creaks. Sunny got home and turned in an hour ago, locking the doors, closing shutters, cutting back the thermostats. Cradled in my arms, my ribs hurt. I must do something. I must find something to do. It’s not right to go to sleep without having spoken a word of love all day.
Two
Wind blew itself quiet overnight and dawn brings calm.
I will never tire of the taste of salt. Sunny’s soft-boiled are perfect.
“It’s been a long time since I was inside a church. I’ve not heard their bells lately. Do they still ring bells, Sunny?”
Sunny looks at me, frowning.
What I don’t say is that I woke up at three am from an outlandish dream to terrible heartburn and couldn’t get back to sleep. In the dream I had crossed the sea to learn that my sister would bear a child of nations. The skipper, a kind ferryman, was thirsty for tomato juice so I offered to fetch him a big can from the store, but then I realized I’d no money for the juice or to pay him for the ride. At first light I checked the Bible, Genesis, and listened to my belly. Have I found out some truth? Is this the first part of the truth I’ve been waiting for? Sunny is Sarah and Sarah was ninety when she bore Abraham a son. It matters not that my savings are all but gone, but I must not incur more debt, if only for her sake.
She opens the front door and hauls in the milk. The light catches the side of her face and I see the girl she was, the passion that has been streaming from her all these years.
It’s so cold in the car on the way to the marina, I can’t tell the difference between nerves and chill. But I warm up getting the gear in the boat and the boat in the water. Now I’m leaning forward, pulling back, watching the shore recede as sun dries frost on the oar locks and pink flames play on Sunny’s face. During the storm, Dad’s boat dragged its anchor and now sits under blue winter skies almost at the opening of the bay. As I row out I’m thinking of our future. My limbs are liquid, head full of fire. I’m rowing through the layered sludge of generations. I can see my breath. We’ve always owned the gate of those who made us. It’s bought and paid for. I just need the trick of its opening and closing.
“Dad?”
“Ahoy, Jasper! Come alongside. How are ya, boy? Come along. We’ve shifted in the night.”
“So I see. I’ll row you in.”
“I like it here. Kind of a new perspective. How are ya, Sunny?”
“I think you’re suicidal.”
“I’m not suicidal.”
“She’s upset,” I say.
“Do you good, some fresh air. You know what’s the problem in this modern world? Everything’s in short supply, every kind of truth. These are scarce times, Sunny. Anything that’s not worth anything, anything that’s not got a price stamped on it, this stuff around you — it’s pretty sad fare to the modern eye. You bring coffee, Jasper?”
“I did.”
“Good boy. Send it all up to me.”
Potatoes, onions, rum, bacon, cheese, eggs, oranges, lentils, beans, salt, coffee, tea, water, toilet paper, vapour rub, aspirin, wool pants and shirts.
“Come on. Climb aboard.”
“I can’t,” says Sunny.
“Help her up, Jasper.”
A spiffy white launch puts out from one of the floats. Dad’s clinker feels solid, unsinkable, as it rides the swell of the launch. The styrofoam between our boats squeals as Sunny, with me pushing, hauls herself on board. The ocean horizon shows black beyond the bay. The water’s glassy, dark blue. Dangerous. Wings beat the air as a flock of gulls yanks free of the marina to wheel above the point of land. On a sand bar herons are poised.
“I’m sad there are no grandchildren, Dad.”
“Nonsense. The world’s full of children.”
“No children in my life.”
“You never wanted children.”
“No. When Hen was alive . . . ”
“You’re regretting your past then, Jasper?”
“Last night I was thinking about you and about Mum and about how me and Sunny were the end of the line — ”
“Make yourself clear.”
“And how sad you must have been. I mean you’re old and can’t start over —”
“Who’s old? Who can’t?”
“Miracles are changing the world.”
“Sure they are. But stop trying to count them.”
“They are, Dad,” says Sunny. “Jasper means miracles like your signals. Your train signals?”
“What’s all this, kids?”
“You can come back to shore,” says Sunny.
“No, I can’t.”
We drink our coffee and then I help Sunny from his boat to mine. None of us have touched. He pushes us off, watches me set the oars.
“Listen, Dad, anything you want I’ll bring. You name it.”
I remember how exciting it was waiting my turn while Sunny, giddy with laughter, towed our blind father upstairs, through the hall and bedrooms, so quickly that he banged into w
alls and furniture, his arms slashing like a furious windmill, Mum standing at the open front door, dead serious, and me following, my heart in my mouth. Yet when my time came, I didn’t know where to go, how to lead. I was scared of my father falling.
“Dad,” I say. I play the oars to keep facing the clinker.
“What?”
We stare at each other. I dig in, heave back, baring my chest. The distance between us widens. Sunny’s face is pale.
Three
In the afternoon we take an orange taxi to the cemetery and tell the driver to wait. I leave Sunny with Mum and go to Hen’s grave. Green horsechestnuts lie in the grass beside her stone. I crouch to find a split one to see the dark swirls of its damp glossy fruit. Crows swoop tree to tree. “Hello, sweetheart.” The early morning pain returns to squeeze me hard, so hard that saliva tastes metal in my mouth, begins to fizz; the cab pours exhaust into an angel’s face.
Afterward we drive a long way along a street of stark beeches. The car smells of mould. “He is not sure of anything,” Sunny murmurs, “as far as I can see.”
In the mall people are laughing. They’re nearly laughing themselves off the benches. It’s tricky to tell, sometimes, with some people, the difference between laughing and crying. There are groups of kids, but they seem insubstantial. Many women are by themselves. The men too, a lot of them, are alone, but they don’t seem as lonesome as the women. The men’s looks say don’t trouble us, we’re like this. One guy is familiar; his hangdog worried stoop, the only sour detail in someone otherwise smart-seeming and plump, belongs to a teacher I once had. He’s a bit younger than my dad. Apparently not shopping, he rides escalators between floors and leans out to survey the crowds.
I catch up with him beside a running-shoe shop. His hair is sandy and thinning. I say my name. He looks blank. I tell him I know him. He has a braying sort of laugh.
“Name’s Bomford,” he says. “Dickie Bomford.”
“That’s it,” I say. “I remember you. You taught me chemistry in high school. And you were a Sunday school teacher.”
“That’s right. I’m retired now.” His gaze fixes on the middle distance. “I had a lot of students over the years. My wife is dead. She was barren.”
His word, barren. Today of all days. I let it pass. Words are not everything. He’s like me, alone in the world. We walk slowly through the crowd.
“I’ve been digging a fishpond on my property,” he says. “It will fill with water when the rains come.” He shows his blisters, smiles a little. We find an empty bench and sit side by side. “My house was built over an old mine shaft. A slag hill covered in thistles and gorse hides the house from the road. There’s an old orchard planted by the original owner of the house who was the founder of the mine. Four apple trees, two pear, three plums, two filberts, two walnuts. In spring and summer I keep the grass short. That’s my main job. My wife’s vegetable garden has gone wild. It’s nothing but tall grass and weeds, but I can still pick a few blackberries, raspberries, in season.”
He gazes into space, and in the atrium of the busy mall I put my head in my hands, shut my eyes. Music pads the air between us, and a grass path follows the garden fence, skirts the slag hill and runs through an overgrown meadow where once Dickie Bomford and his wife pastured a cow. He’s saying he enjoys mowing paths and on the other side of the far gate is a wild sea of mint and brambles and scrub willow and alder and young balsam poplar. Here, in a small clearing, is the hole he has dug. Over winter the water will rise, the sediment will settle, and come spring when the pond’s full and clear he’ll install pots of lilies and float water hyacinth and he’ll release two goldfish. The fish will multiply. He’ll sit on a bench and watch the sun strike the fine clear water and make fish shadows on the bottom. Parrot’s feather will cover the pond. Trapdoor snails will graze the undersides of lily pads. A snake will swim from one side to the other through schools of golden fry milling close to the surface, following his fingers as they scatter coloured flakes. Marsh marigold and irises and cattails in the moist banks where since the last ice age there has been only dry land. Between the derelict garden and the thorny slag, through the gate in the fence, this bright water, where he’ll sit on his bench to wait for the fish.
Now these are the generations of fishes.
“I was a poor student,” I say. “I live with my sister now. Sunny was a few grades ahead of me.”
He shakes his head.
“Our father lives on a boat.”
Dickie stares back as though I’m disappointing him.
I say that I dreamed Sunny would have a baby. “She’s sixty-two,” I say.
“I read that in Italy a woman older than that has given birth. It seems unlikely. Hardly possible. But then holding water in a dry place seems impossible.” He laughs. He asks what I am, what I’ve done, what I did, what will I do, but my own life’s work seems barely important enough to remember.
We drink tea with Sunny in the food fare. Dickie admires the three potted lemon trees. They’re courting. I feel pretty good. I start remembering something and start talking and I can tell that they are paying close attention, leaning forward like that, straining, really concerned. I tell them about Dickie Bomford, my old chemistry teacher. Dickie Bomford, who also taught Sunday school, taught valency and the hydrogen atom, and had a big pull-down chart of the table of elements. There were about a hundred unresolvable substances. Electrons were grasping arms reaching out, grasping arms grasping for something. Reaching out. Dickie Bomford’s arms hooking the air, in the middle of a Bible story, hooking space in the classroom. You could tell which elements would combine by comparing the grasping arms. There’s spirit in that reaching and it’s moral, that reaching. There’s a love that can do anything. Sunny and Dickie are strange ideas. My arms stretch wide. My mouth is closed. I’m not rowing, not breathing, I’m swimming again. There are about a hundred unresolvable substances. Blood is as salty as the ocean. I don’t want creation to end. While I’m lying on the tiles of the green room and my old chemistry teacher is calling the ambulance and Sunny’s holding my head in her hands, I enter Dad’s signal house where it’s warm and sweet smelling. A haze of wax polish rises from the glossy floor. Mother’s voice that’s been speaking forever, on and on, never still, suddenly stops. There’s a quick light giggle. In the split green shell of the signal house, arms grasp to keep me. Trees belong to no one. Sunny’s silent clear eyes have been traded for silent sky. Two dogs sit patiently on the grass verge under the climbing roses. Along the distant bridle path of a dark canal in orange light walk a woman in an apron, a man in suspenders, their child. I hear Sunny’s heart. Just outside, on the tracks, a speeding train awaits the next moment.
GRANDAD’S SHAWL
I REMEMBER WHEN THINGS FIRST STARTED to betray me. About the same time my heart began acting up. We’d moved from the south, Imogen and I, after sixteen years, our marriage in shreds, to find peace on the West Coast. The day we moved into our cottage by the sea, I ripped the boards from two basement windows and peered through the dirty glass. Grey cobwebs formed a cocoon over an old cane-backed chair in the middle of a small room. The second window showed the dirt crawlspace, and a thirty-foot log wedged under the floor joists, corner to corner of the house. The foundation blocks looked like rotted stumps. I kept the log and the stumps to myself, but told Imogen about the chair and next morning we broke into the little room. It was empty but for spiders and mouse droppings. That winter when I bellied under to wrap the water pipes with insulation tape, I found no sign of the diagonal brace, not a trace of that monstrous log, though the foundation wood was punky.
My name is Alfred Joiner, doctor of physics. I’m on the highway again, on a long distance bus, soundlessly winding all the Oregon coast scenery by, southbound toward the university where I last held tenure. I have had two wives, Sandra in Toronto, Imogen in Hattiesburg and Los Angeles, a life with each, plus a life before the dust flew, a life after it settled, one two three four. What a cat’s cradle
of longing. Now I’ve sold my last house and my fish collection, I desire only time and my new car.
Through memory you can break causality, Sophie, my philosopher granddaughter phones to tell me. Wipe out past and future!
I answer that I am as old as the brick house my father built for my mother in the Toronto suburbs, the house where I was born, the same one Sandra and I bought years later from the folks my mother sold it to. Not only the house, but the whole street has been torn down to make room for a car lot. My bedroom has become a red vintage Corvette. Last time I was in the neighbourhood I watched strangers circle the place I used to sleep, summer browsers, potential buyers, all the ghosts I ever dreamt.
I’ve always loved automobiles, fast and sleek imports the best. I smile out the bus window, imagining myself a boy waking in a red muscle car: the shift into first, foot to the gas, burn rubber all the way to breakfast, snarl at the others.
But I will soon die, with my heart. My hands, my voice, my legs can do nothing to alter how things have turned out. My brain can’t pose anymore.
It’s like the desert island question, Sophie tells me. What would you choose to take? You can hold a fistful of moments — static on the line — let go the rest.
An intense child, she calls across the continent to lecture me. She reminds me of Imogen, she’s just like her grandmother.
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