by Donna Milner
Julie makes her way across a narrow spot in the creek and walks over to the far side of the field. Shimmying through the bottom two logs of the snake fence she heads toward the woods below the western ridge. The thick forest hugs her as she enters the dappled shadows. A carpet of weathered brown needles and moss covers the ground. The earthy aroma of fungus and dried pine needles fills the air. Not bothering to wave away the black flies and mosquitoes, she follows the winding animal path through the dense undergrowth. The first few times she hiked this way she had had to watch each step for the obstacle course of roots and rocks that could trip her up. Now she’s familiar with the terrain. She no longer shivers when she brushes a cobweb from her face, or feels repelled by the strings of black moss hanging from branches like witches’ hair.
From somewhere behind her comes a low groan. Startled, she stops short and turns around slowly. In the slanted light on either side of the empty path, every dark shape, every shadow takes on an ominous quality. But there is no sign of movement, only a maze of tree trunks, tangled brush and decomposing logs. Another creaking moan followed by an answering screech sounds from the other direction and she spins around again, her heart racing. A gust of wind rushes through the forest canopy above, followed by an even deeper groan. Julie glances up and discovers the source of the strange animal-like sounds. High above her, a group of trees lean against one another, their thick trunks at odd angles as if knitted together. Their intertwined branches supporting each other, they rub together moaning and creaking as they sway with the wind. Julie lets out a nervous laugh of relief.
She presses on, aware as she goes of other ‘talking trees.’ On every side of the trail, the evidence of ancient deadfalls, whose root systems had not held during a windstorm, litter the landscape. Lacking the support of nearby trunks and branches the fallen trees lie like rotting skeletons on the forest floor. Isolation equals vulnerability. Everyone needs support, even trees, she thinks wryly.
Yet she has spurned it. Who is there anyway? In the last year she has come to the realization that while she was in town her friends were either colleagues, business acquaintances, or clients. The circumstances of Darla’s death have alienated them all, in one way or the other. Out here her isolation is complete. Except for Jessie, who is so far away, who is there to lean on?
Ian? Ian is more rootless than she is. He was an only child. His parents are gone. Julie is all he has left. She longs to be able to lean on him, to have him lean on her. He is the only one who can possibly understand the pain she feels, the pain that threatens to bring her to the ground. But the lines of communication between them—where Darla is concerned—are severed.
At first they had clung together, shell-shocked, their keening wails rising as if from a single voice. Then later, after the horror of discovering Darla’s message on the phone, the questions, the searching for a ‘why’ had escalated into a string of ugly reproaches. There was no taking back the accusations made in the hysteria of finding out the unthinkable.
“She was grounded! What were you thinking letting her go to a party?”
“You weren’t there! Where were you?”
“How could you have locked the bloody doors?”
“If you had been there... What was so damned vital that you missed her play?”
“Why didn’t you answer the door, or the phone for God’s sake?”
“Why weren’t you home?”
They threw their tortuous barbs at each other, as if the frenzied screaming, the desperate search for reason, for fault, could reverse the outcome. And then silence. And then it was too late. The night after the funeral, the first time they found themselves alone, Julie listened in stunned silence to Ian’s business-like confession. He would tell her once, he said, would not discuss it ever again. The night of Darla’s play, after working on Valerie Ladner’s taxes, he had explained, he went with her to the restaurant down the block for a late dinner. They both drank far too much wine, had stayed even later for coffee. In his pragmatic manner, he admitted that after walking back to their cars, in a moment’s indiscretion, they had shared a kiss. It went no further, he swore. He wouldn’t lie and say he wasn’t tempted, if the time had been right… if…
“I have no excuse,” he offered, without meeting her eyes. “But I want you to know it was nothing more than a moment of weakness. I swear that nothing like this has ever happened before in our entire marriage. I give you my word it never will again. I’m sorry.” He did not ask for her forgiveness, yet Julie felt his need for it.
“It doesn’t matter,” was all she could give him. She left him sitting alone in the darkened living room while she went up to the guest bedroom. She didn’t want to know the details. His transgression meant nothing, neither did his mea culpa. The worst that could happen had happened. Nothing else mattered.
They no longer reach for each other in the night. Sleeping alone is the new norm. After moving out to the ranch they had each staked out their territories in the house, coming together only to share forced and halting conversations with their meals.
Ian has chosen to bear his sorrow alone and in silence, shutting out any discussion about the very thing that binds them together. Julie feels helpless, there is nothing she can do for him. The best she can do, the only thing she can do, is to stay with him until he no longer needs her. He’s Darla’s father, after all. But she has given up trying to speak to him about her. And so she goes on replaying the last day of their daughter’s life over and over again, unable to forgive Levi, or Ian, and most of all herself.
11
Here’s the thing, Mom, until you do I have to hang around here.
I wish I could tell her that, but I can’t. At least that’s what Mr Emerson says. He’s the one who met me here.
Mr Emerson used to be my English teacher. Behind his back we always called him Waldo. No one really knew his first name, but he would spout Ralph Waldo Emerson lines like, ‘I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.’ That one always made us groan because he was forever quoting philosophers and writers.
He looks just the same to me as he did then, with his black-rimmed glasses, thick hair and goofy smile, just like the character from the Where’s Waldo books. I think he was on to us calling him that, because in winter he often came to school wearing a silly white knitted toque with a huge red pom-pom.
Maybe because he was one of the few teachers who didn’t take himself so seriously, I really liked him. Everyone did. Then last year, he died. Just like that, he was gone. Something burst inside his brain; he went to bed one night and never woke up. All my friends went to his funeral, for most of us it was our first real up-close encounter with death. I was devastated and felt guilty about calling him Waldo behind his back. I wouldn’t have felt nearly so sad if I had known then what I know now.
Anyway, he said he was here to meet me because he was someone I knew in life who had passed on before me. I wondered why not my grandfather, but then he died when I was so young that I never really knew him. Maybe I would have recognized him from Gram’s photographs. Still, meeting him might have been a little scarier than meeting Mr Emerson, so it makes sense. I could always talk to him. Although I wouldn’t call how he and I communicate here talking. It’s just a sort of knowing. An understanding of the meaning without speaking out loud. Mr Emerson says I only see him the way I do because it’s how I knew him on earth and that when I understand more I won’t need to see his earthly form to recognize his presence.
When he died it was his dead wife who met him, so it was real easy for him. Although there were people still on earth who loved him, they hadn’t held him back because in their hearts they believed he was with her. They were right. But for me, until everyone I love lets me go, I can’t move on through the white light, to whatever is next.
In the meantime, I get to watch. That’s all I get to do. I found that out right away. At my funeral service.
Being there, and not being there, was pretty strange and cool at the same time. The whol
e school turned up, even kids I didn’t know. Probably some just grabbed the opportunity to skip classes. Who knows? My real friends, especially Kajul and Levi, clung to each other, shaking as they walked in to take their seats. No one really wanted to be there. I knew that.
My mother insisted on the casket being closed. It was covered in white lilies and of course yellow roses. I think if she knew the truth, if she really needed to blame something, she could have blamed the yellow rose she gave me, the rose that I undid my seatbelt for. Probably a good thing she didn’t. She would never be able to look at one again.
I hoped that they would bury me in my Grease costume. How cool would that have been? But Mom let Aunt Jessie go into my room to pick out my outfit. She chose a dress that looked brand new, that was because I always hated it, so had never worn it when I was alive. It didn’t matter now though. No one saw it except for my family, and if it made them feel better, I’m down with that.
The funeral parlour wasn’t large enough for everyone. They brought in extra chairs. Even then most of the kids had to stand out in the receiving area. I felt really bad for the cast of Grease, because they were not only sad because of me, but because the play was cancelled. That was just wrong. It didn’t make any sense, and from where I was looking I would have liked to see it go on. I tried to get into our drama teacher, Mr Reid’s head and tell him so, but like Mr Emerson said, that was not possible.
Just as it was impossible to comfort Mom and Dad. Through the entire service they never touched one another. I could feel their hurt. They cried silently, the tears spilling down their cheeks unchecked, especially when my friends got up to speak.
Gram though, now she doesn’t know how to cry quietly. She wailed with great body-shaking gulps. Her moans and sobs punctuating each speech. Aunt Jessie tried to console her, but I could hear her thinking how dramatic her mother was, how her loud crying sounded insincere, that she cried like someone who needed attention, not someone who felt real sorrow. But Aunt Jessie was wrong. I was afraid Gram was going to have a heart attack right there, she was in such pain, for both me and for Mom.
I wanted to tell her, to tell Mom, Dad, Levi, Kajul and all my friends that it was all right. That I was okay. But unlike all those television shows now, where everyone is talking or whispering with ghosts, I can’t find a way to communicate with the living. That’s just not the way it is, Mr Emerson says. Still, like everything else now, that’s perfectly all right. Funny, as I watch what Mom and Dad are going through, there’s no judgement, no opinion. I can only feel the love for them, and sadness that they have to hurt so much. At the same time there’s no notion of right or wrong, good or bad. I asked Mr Emerson about all that.
He replied with his own question, asking me what I thought the white light was.
I don’t know.
Yes you do.
I do?
Yes. But don’t worry. You’ll remember.
I wanted to ask him if it was God. But in our family the Bible was nothing more than a very long and complicated storybook. It was truly hard to imagine a Supreme Being that was so human-like, including having the capacity for jealousy, vengeance and murder. I agreed with Mom’s view that the warfaring, eye-for-an-eye God of the Bible, who commanded the smiting of enemies, along with their women and children, did not jive with the loving and forgiving turn-the-other-cheek God. According to her, that was one giant plot hole in the Bible. There was just too much war and mayhem brought on by blind belief in religious books written by men.
Jesus Christ—now him she believed in. Not believed in as in ‘worshipped,’ but believe that he existed—that he was a man who once lived on earth. A man, like Buddha, Confucius, or Allah, and now the Dalai Llama, all spiritual men, peaceful men, who had something to teach the rest of us but who time and other men had turned into Deities. My parents never bought any of the worship part, and neither did I.
But I have to say that when you’re dead your whole belief system is in doubt. I suddenly wanted there to be a God, but not the one in the Bible. I didn’t want to tell Mr Emerson any of this because I had my suspicions, so I asked: Are you God?
He smiled at me with such warmth that I felt it in my heart, even though technically I no longer had one.
It’s all semantics, he said. But, yes. Everything is God.
His words brought a wisp of memory. Like smoke, the harder I tried to grasp for it, the more it eluded me. It doesn’t matter; Mr Emerson promises that in time I’ll get it. Time. It isn’t the same here. There’s no possible way to explain that in earth terms. Just as there is no way I can influence what happens there. I only wish I could tell Mom that I’m okay with hanging here for as long as she needs.
12
An unseasonal arctic front sweeps through central British Columbia at the end of August. The black flies of summer, along with the annoying mosquitoes, disappear from the valley. Thunderheads boil up in the west. A week of chilling wind and rain on the Chilcotin plateau washes away the last threat of forest fires. The low elevation and the mountain ridges surrounding the ranch protect it from the extreme drops in temperatures common to the rest of the Chilcotin. Those same conditions cause the valley to turn into an oven of oppressive heat after another about-turn in the weather as the month winds down.
Unable to sleep Julie tosses and turns, trying to find a cooler spot on the sheets. The digital clock on her bedside table casts a green glow in the room. She glances at it again. It’s ten minutes later than when she last checked. One thirty in the morning, and she’s still awake. Her cotton nightgown clinging to her sweat-soaked body, she rises from bed. Bathed in moonlight streaming in through the living-room windows, she creeps downstairs and makes her way to the kitchen. Pouring herself a glass of red wine, she takes it, along with the rest of the bottle, out to the front patio and settles on the chaise lounge. The outside air is cool, but not nearly as chilling as some nights she’s experienced this summer. There isn’t a hint of wind; the air in the valley still clings to the day’s heat.
Lifting the crystal wineglass to her lips, Julie takes a long sip, only then noticing the eerie glow in the northern sky. She lowers the glass and studies the jagged horizon at the end of the lake. Above the treetops, spirals and wispy fingers of colour undulate and dance against a black star-filled backdrop. Julie recognizes immediately that for the first time in her life she is witnessing the aurora borealis, the northern lights. Stunned by the unexpected display, she sits back to watch the brilliant colours and changing shapes in the night sky. Like an electrically charged curtain, ribbons of greens, fuchsias and yellows lift and fall, arch and intertwine, in an ethereal light show across the northern horizon. Spirits dancing in the night, she thinks. In another life she would have hurried upstairs and dragged Ian from sleep to see this. And in their other life he would have come, laughing at her childish excitement. Perhaps they would have gone skinny dipping to cool off, then made love. He probably would now if she could bring herself to go up to his room. This is what she misses most about him, his laughter, and his willingness to embrace any experience for the sheer thrill of sharing it with her. For a moment she is tempted. Forcing her thoughts away from there, she refills her suddenly empty glass.
When the bottle is finished, drawn by the brilliant night sky, and perhaps by the power of the wine, she rises and makes her way down the patio steps and across the lawn. At the water’s edge, she tugs her nightgown over her head and lets it fall to the ground. Wading slowly into the water, she cringes at the cool temperature. The water climbs up her legs, to her waist, to her chest. Rather than shrink away from the numbing cold, she embraces the sensation, letting it pull her forward. She imagines herself continuing out to the middle of the lake, walking underwater until her breath is gone, and then her lifeless body floating in darkness, her hair fanning above her. Without warning the lake bottom drops away, and she is sinking, sinking into nothingness. She surrenders, lets herself go, feels herself smile at the simplicity of it. A painless way to end a
n endless pain. But her body, her exploding lungs, betray her. Against her will her arms and legs fight her inertia. Her head bursts through the surface, her mouth gasping for air. She beats her traitorous arms against the water with a choked cry. Treading water she catches her breath, and then, forcing herself to relax she turns over and lies on her back, her arms outstretched. She is tired, so tired. She feels as if she can float like this forever. Overhead, a million pinpoints of light glow above the dancing colours. The eerie sensation of the world being turned upside down, that she is looking down upon the universe instead of up, magnifies her feeling of insignificance. She closes her eyes. Beneath the surface, her ears pick up the distant vibrations of a loon’s lonely call. She remains as still as possible, listening to the sound waves travelling through the water. Is anything more plaintive than the sorrowful call of the loon? Yes. The silence of a childless father, unable to say his daughter’s name out loud.
The answering warbles turn into music. Julie lifts her head and shakes the water from her ears. A volley of echoing cries fills the night. And something more. Behind the mournful chorus she imagines she hears the strings of an accompanying violin. She even recognizes the melody. The haunting music sounds just like the strains of “Moonlight Sonata.”