by Kurt Palka
The watch on her wrist was still the good Swiss automatic he’d bought her years ago on an anniversary trip to New York. She looked from her hands to his, and the wedding band was still where she’d slipped it on his finger all those years ago.
She’d met him in her second year at Osgoode Hall Law School, at the cow gate at the Queen Street entrance. He was so engrossed in it, she had to stop and watch him operate it, crouching down to observe the assembly, the way the thing worked. A simple machine of enamelled cast iron, it seemed to her. She watched for a while because there was something she liked very much about him, perhaps the quality of his attention. She stepped closer. “Is there something wrong with it?”
He looked up. “What? No, no. Nothing’s wrong. It’s just this amazing piece of history. I mean, look at it. And could there really have been cows grazing here at one time? Cows, here?”
That had been the beginning. In order to find out everything she could about him, to see him clearly in a cool light, she held back for months and would not allow intimacies beyond perhaps a touch of fingers or a kiss on the cheek, but already she was crazy about him. She enjoyed talking with him because Jack talked straight from the heart and looked you in the eye, and unlike with many of her fellow students, everything he said seemed pure and there was nothing hidden in his words ever.
She brought him home and Father liked him as well, approved of him and of his plans for the future. A mining geologist he was going to be, not a soldier like his father and grandfather. As they sat at the dinner table in the house on Colin Avenue, she watched his hands shaping and describing strata and outcroppings to Father, and all the while her brain had stopped and she was imagining those very hands undressing her in some fine cool bedroom, and her undressing him. At that moment much of the fear about intimacy after Lakewood and Thérèse’s warnings in Paris about boys and men went out the window. Because here was the real thing, Jack Bradley and his power of attention, and Jack’s well-shaped hands and how would their touch feel on her skin?
She told Aileen about her mining geologist with the brown eyes and the good hands on the telephone from Toronto. So excited, both of them. Aileen was engaged to Don Patterson by then, who had steady work on fishing boats off the South Shore. They were doing it, said Aileen. Of course they were. It was so sweet that a few times she’d practically fainted. For birth control she was using the rhythm method, the Knaus-Ogino. Aileen said she’d done her research and under the right circumstances it was the best and she was very, very careful counting days and keeping an extra two days as buffers toward the middle. But in any case, they would be getting married as soon as they had saved enough money. By then Aileen had already passed her exams and she was a fully qualified nurse at Clearwater Hospital.
* * *
—
They agreed that the Thai food was good. An interesting flavour. All that coconut milk, probably. Jack talked about Argentina, and he was describing the silver mine going down and down four levels when the telephone rang. He stood up and went to answer it and then she heard him in the hallway. “All right,” he was saying. “I understand. I’ll check my schedule.”
He came back and sat down. “That was the Vancouver office about the forward core samples on the new silver mine. They want me to come out there for the evaluation.” He paused. “Unless you’d like me to stay here a day or two longer. I could probably arrange that.”
When she said nothing, he put his hands flat on the table and prepared to get up. But then he sat back again.
“Margaret,” he said. “We need to move on from where we are, where we are stuck. Can’t we do it together? As a team?”
He sat looking at her, waiting. After a while he shook his head. “You see. There it is again. Your silence. Your unwillingness to meet me halfway. And we used to be so close. We could talk about anything and work out every last problem. We’re mature and we can think. So let’s please help each other.”
Surely there was something she could be saying now. Should be wanting to say, if only she could see it clearly. Perhaps that she felt the same way but that she was lost and couldn’t find her way back. That she sometimes wished she were dead, and that what she felt was much deeper and older, and if Michael was right it was even primal and mostly female, with no way across the divide that she could see. And suddenly she could not breathe again…
Abruptly she pushed back her chair and stood up and touched her eyebrow.
“So would you like me to postpone British Columbia?” he said. “Stay a bit longer?”
“Maybe not just yet, Jack. But thank you.”
He sat watching her, and he never said another word while she fumbled up her plate and cutlery and took them to the kitchen and then picked up her briefcase and purse and hurried away, down the back stairs to be alone again.
* * *
—
She walked with the fingers of her left hand pressed to her eyebrow and talked to it. No, she told it. Not now. Please. But it was not listening and the pain expanded and became the red cloud, and then on the path near the cottage she fell but managed to get up and make it through the door. She dropped the briefcase and with her hand pressed to her mouth ran to the bathroom and in the dark fell to her knees by the toilet and vomited into the bowl. For a while she hung over the rim, then she let go and lay face down on the tiles with her feet out the door and her nails digging into the grouting for a finger hold or keep falling. She pressed the offending eyebrow to the hard ceramic chill and concentrated on the calm side of her brain.
After a while she rolled over and put the palms of her hands over her eyes to make it all even darker. Lying flat on her back in her black suit with her legs outstretched, like some thing fallen from a great height.
After a while she stirred and poked the emergency pill out of her jacket pocket. She bit on it and moved the crumbs under her tongue and let her arm fall to her side.
When the pain began to lessen she rolled over and stood up slowly. She turned on the small mirror light and took off her jacket and slapped away the floor dirt. She slapped angrily at the skirt too and then washed her hands and rinsed her face and mouth, refusing to look up into the mirror.
* * *
—
She could have talked more to him just now. Slowed herself down and said something kind when he offered to delay his trip for her. An explanation, but of what, using which words? And not with this pain coming.
So much change. If she were to step out the door now and look toward the elderberries, she’d see the spot where Jack and she made love for the first time. Finally letting go had been such an enormous event, so very daring and liberating at the same time.
Just down the slope a bit, in the grass.
Late summer, a Saturday night. They’d had dinner with his mother, who did not talk much any more—not since the event, as his father’s suicide had been called. After dessert they sat a while longer, then they excused themselves. He kissed his mother on the cheek and Margaret said, Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Bradley, and good night, and then they left her sitting at the table. Like a shell. Abandoned. Margaret paused at the door and, feeling guilty, turned back to say something more, but the woman was not looking at her and there was really nothing more to say. In the kitchen the maid, Anna Maria, was washing dishes and Margaret called out good night to her, and then like giddy children they hurried down the back stairs and along the path and past the cottage all in darkness, deeper into the garden.
Watching Jack across the dinner table talking to his mother, watching his face and seeing the care in it, she’d fallen in love with him all over again and she’d made the decision, or it had made itself. At one point Jack looked at her, and he must have seen it in her eyes or in her smile. And he stopped talking and got all red in the face and lost his train of thought.
And how perfect it was.
For a while she was still conflicted even though she knew it was a safe day, but how sweet even that, giving herself permission to le
t go. In the dark amid the scent of the grass, a sliver of moon and a million stars, starlight like milk on their skin. And his hands on her, finally. And hers on him, completely overwhelmed by all this.
How long ago? Not so very long. Not so long.
Six
ON MONDAY EVENING Aileen saw the lights of the police boat heading out, red and blue lights flashing, and briefly she could also hear the sound of the engines. She watched from her window as the lights moved away and eventually she lost them on the horizon. The police boat, going where?
Next morning, when she was up in the roadside blueberry patch, a car came her way trailing dust. It slowed at the turnoff, drove past it, then stopped.
She shielded her eyes with her hand to see against the low sun. The car backed up and turned into their gravel road. A black car with wide tires and something mounted on the dash. The sun gleamed on its side and dust danced around it. Small stones leapt away from the rolling tires. She saw all this with an ominous clarity,the black car and the way it came rolling into her world.
There was just one man in it, a man in a suit jacket and a blue shirt and tie, and he turned her way going past and gave a quick nod and drove on. On the rock shelf in front of her house he stopped and climbed out and looked around.
* * *
—
Franklin was there, working on her Vauxhall, and he saw the man and put down the tools and spoke to him. There was a short exchange and then Franklin looked her way and waved an arm for her to come down.
She took up the blueberry pail and climbed slowly down from the rise onto the road, holding on to plants and roots. She was annoyed at the interruption. Her hands were blue and sticky, and she was dressed not for company but for picking, in a windbreaker and a balding pair of corduroys and her old boots.
Franklin had gone back to working on the car, and the visitor stood waiting for her by the picnic bench. Under one arm he held a yellow file folder, and he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a card. He held it out to her.
“Inspector Jack Sorensen, Mrs. McInnis. I was hoping to find your son Danny here.”
She took the card and looked at it.
“And what’s this all about?”
“We want to talk to him.”
“What about?”
“Ma’am, is he here?”
“No. Danny doesn’t really live here any more. He just visits.”
“He owns a boat, right? And he looks after summer properties in the off-season?”
“Yes, he does do that.”
She put the card on the picnic table and stepped to the outside tap and turned it on. She rinsed her hands and then took her time with the towel, hoping it would calm her.
Over her shoulder she said, “Danny is a grown man and I’m not checking up on him any more.”
“But surely you know where we can find him.”
“Well, no. It depends on which loop he’s doing. North or south, and in his truck or in the boat.” She hung up the towel and turned to him. “The boy is busy and he often stays over at places.”
“When was the last time you talked with him?”
“That would be a few days, maybe a week now. Maybe more. A good while, anyway.”
“You don’t know how long ago, Mrs. McInnis?”
“No. Not exactly.”
He stood looking at her, taking his time, and she disliked him for his calm, for the trouble he was bringing.
“All right,” he said finally. “If he calls or shows up, please tell him to call the number on the card. Or call Sergeant Sullivan at the station. They’ll find me. It’s important.” “You still haven’t told me what it’s about.” “Ma’am. Your son is wanted for questioning by the police. It’s as simple as that.”
He nodded at her and then climbed into his car, closed the door, and started the engine. He didn’t bother to look at her again, just made a three-point turn with pebbles grinding on the rock and drove off.
She walked over to Franklin where he stood by the open hood of the Vauxhall, watching her, holding a rag and a spanner.
“What was that all about?”
“A policeman. Wants to talk to Danny.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. Wouldn’t give an inch.” She felt upset, and before Franklin’s questions could make it any worse she changed the topic and nodded at the car. “What’s it this time?” “Same old thing. The electrics. I think you should replace the cables and the distributor cap. The cables get brittle and the cap gets cracks, and when it’s damp the sparks go everywhere. I never understood why you had to buy one of these foreign things anyway.”
“Because it was cheap and I needed a car. What’s that going to cost, Franklin?”
“Not much. Sixty or seventy at the dealership.”
“That’s still a lot,” she said. “Nine years ago the whole car cost just a thousand new. Can you fix it for now?”
“I did already.”
He leaned into the cabin and started the motor. It ran a bit ragged at first, then it smoothed out. In the darkness of the engine compartment she could see electricity, blue like St. Elmo’s fire, crawling around the distributor cap and along the wires.
Franklin grinned at her. He picked up his tools and wrapped them in the rag and left.
Less than two hours later he was back.
He and another man stood knocking at her door and when she opened, Franklin said, “You know Galway. I bumped into him at the marina just now. He has quite a story, and I said he should tell it to you because I think Crieff Island is one of the places Danny is looking after. Maybe that’s why the inspector was here.”
They sat in the kitchen and she took beers for the men out of the fridge and uncapped them. Then she and Franklin sat listening to Galway’s story and no one interrupted him even once. As she listened she felt cold suddenly, and got colder and colder as his story went on.
* * *
—
Last evening, Galway said to them, he’d been heading home from Medway when his engine developed problems. He changed course to Crieff Island, where he made fast at the floating dock.
He saw some unusual footprints, like blood, he thought, but could it be? So much of it, and he followed them up the ladder to the cribbed dock and then up there he could see it clearly all over the planks, the reflections and the darkness of it. Yes, it was blood. A lot of it. It hadn’t rained in days and some of it was dried and soaked into the wood grain, some of it congealed and cracked where it lay thickest.
He walked to the edge of the dock and looked down, and that was when he saw something in maybe four feet of water, snagged in the rocks and beams of the cribbing. He got a hand light from his boat and shone it down. And then he went to his wheelhouse, picked up the phone and made the call.
The police took his name and location and the name of his boat. They ordered him to remain at the scene, and he sat and waited as the sky went from orange to black.
When they came he saw them from far off, the flashing lights, and not long thereafter there was the sound of the big outboards. They made fast on the other side of the floater and told him to remain on his boat. There were three of them. One of them was Sullivan, a local boy but a sergeant now, and he was in charge.
They climbed the fixed dock and looked around and talked about it. They had good hand lamps and they beamed them down into the water, and then they cordoned it all off with police tape and Sully came stepping across the float to talk to him.
“Come aboard, Galway?” he asked, and Galway stood up and said, “Sure, yes, of course.”
He gave the boy the transom bench, and he sat down on a lobster crate. Then Sully began asking questions and writing down the answers. He asked about times and conditions, what Galway had seen and his reasons for tying up at the dock. Galway said he was running an old two-stroke engine and the spark plugs kept fouling, and he’d tied up for some quick maintenance.
“Would you happen to know them?” said Sully. “Those tw
o.”
“It’s hard to tell from up here. But I don’t think so. They look like just kids. A boy and a girl, are they?”
“Could be. This is a summer property, right?”
“Yes. I hear it’s people from New York that own it. I don’t know their names.”
“We can find that out. Who is looking after it in the off-season?”
“Not me,” said Galway.
“Okay. But do you know who is?”
“No. I don’t.”
“Want to take a guess?”
“No. But right now there’s only a few guys doing the islands. Guys with boats big enough for out here.”
“But you wouldn’t want to take a guess?”
“And get them in trouble? No, I wouldn’t,” Galway said.
* * *
—
When the men had left, Aileen went outside and sat for a while on her rock. She had put on a wool cardigan and she sat hugging her knees, looking out to sea. Gull Rock deep red out there in the last sun. The tidal pools like molten silver and the cold sea foaming across rocks that moved and rumbled and spoke in the dark. You had to be quiet inside to hear that.
The very bones of this patient earth laid bare by glaciers long ago, her father used to say. He’d liked reading National Geographic. Vast slabs of stone, just look at them, Aillie, he’d say. Bald and smoothed and ancient. Like whales petrified in the very act of breaching. Colossal foundling rocks on these barren shores. Look at them. Rock slabs balancing on other rocks for a thousand years and impossible to fathom how.
She stood up and wiped at the seat of her cords and walked away toward the house. The wind was turning. She could feel it. Backing to nor’east. Something was coming this way.
In her house she kept the cardigan on but kicked off her boots and walked around in sock feet. She heated some of yesterday’s stew and then she sat by the window, eating with the light out. Waiting for the fox.