At the Edge of the World

by Jones, Kari;

  I cry until I’m dry inside. Until there’s no point anymore. Then I look to the highway leading to Port Alberni, to Victoria and beyond. If a car comes, I’ll take it.

  No I won’t. Running away. That’s the one thing I could never forgive myself for doing.

  * * *

  Neither Willow nor Maddie says anything when I come in. They’re watching something on the TV. There’s no sign of Des. I’m shaking with cold, so I take a shower and change before I join them in the living room.

  When I come back, Maddie leaves Willow in the living room and we go into the kitchen.

  “Any sign of Des?” I ask.

  She shakes her head.

  “Now will you tell someone?” she asks.

  But she doesn’t get it. No one does. No one ever has.

  I shake my head.

  She gasps and looks away. “Oh, Ivan.”

  “You think that just because Des is a jerk I don’t love him? That I can abandon him? I’ll kill him for sure. But I can’t walk away.”

  “No, I…no, that’s not what I mean,” says Maddie.

  “You and Bo and Peter, what you have is special, Maddie. You all believe in each other. Don’t you think Des deserves someone in the world who believes in him too? My mom didn’t, obviously. No one else around here does. Even he doesn’t. He can’t keep a job or remember he’s supposed to be taking care of a kid. He’s a fucking disaster. Of course no one believes in him, but someone has to.”

  Maddie’s voice is tiny when she picks up my shaking hand and says, “But Ivan, why does it have to be you?”

  “Because it’s always been me,” I say.

  “But why?”

  “Because he’s all I’ve got.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Maddie

  This is what emptiness feels like. No way forward, no way back. Nothing I can do to make it better. Nothing I can do to make it go away. I finally understand what we’ve all abandoned Ivan to. How we’ve betrayed him for so many years. How blind we’ve all been.

  “You can’t go on like this, Ivan, you can’t.”

  He doesn’t answer me.

  “You’re not alone, Ivan.”

  “But I am.”

  “It’s not okay what he did, leaving Willow like that. She was terrified.”

  “I agree. When I see him I’ll kill him,” Ivan says.

  “So you agree that what he did to Willow is wrong, not okay.”

  “Of course I agree.”

  “But Ivan, if it’s not okay for him to do that to her, it’s also not okay for him to do it to you.”

  My words hit him like sand in the eye, and he flinches.

  “You better go,” he says.

  And I don’t understand.

  * * *

  It’s late when I get home, but both Bo and Peter are on the deck, so I can’t avoid them.

  “What happened? Are you okay?” Peter asks, because I guess I’m wearing the fact that I’m totally not okay all over my face. “We saw Ivan running past a while ago. He looked terrified.”

  Bo puts down his mug and stands up, blocking my way back down the stairs. “Tell us now, Maddie. Enough is enough,” he says.

  So this is it.

  My hands shake as I say, “Des and Pedro disappeared almost a week ago. Ivan had no idea where they were or when they were coming back. He didn’t even know that they were going or that Willow was going to be staying with him. Des came home this morning to say he was sorry and he wanted to make amends, but when we took Willow back there for her nap this afternoon and left her with him, he took off and left her alone. We found her when we got back from surfing. She was terrified. Ivan was so upset.”

  That hardly explains it, but it’s the best I can do.

  Peter takes a deep breath. Bo puts his arm across Peter’s shoulders, and I’m not sure if he’s comforting Peter or steadying himself.

  “Des wouldn’t do that,” Peter says, but I shake my head.

  “He did.”

  “But…”

  “We’ve known Des a long time, Maddie. Since you and Ivan were tiny children. He’s had his struggles, we know, but this…” Bo’s voice is heavy, and his brow is creased.

  “We see him almost every day,” Peter says.

  “And miss everything,” I say.

  Peter gasps. “That’s not fair,” he says.

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  “What exactly have we missed?” Bo says.

  “That Des is an alcoholic and can’t take care of himself or Ivan.”

  “I mean, we know he drinks. We’ve talked to him about it,” Peter says. “We thought he had it under control.”

  “Ivan hid it for him,” I say. “He hid how bad it was.” The truth of my words hits them, because both of them sag, and Bo sits down, and I can’t help saying, “You should have known.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Ivan

  Willow and I make it through the night, and in the morning we have cereal like always.

  “Do you want to go to the playground today, Willow?” I ask. I’m so tired I’m shaky, but I’m not letting her out of my sight again. She starts to answer me, but then someone knocks at the door, so she hops right off her chair and runs toward the door.

  “Wait.” I scoop her up as she passes.

  I hoist her onto my hip and go to the door. For some reason, don’t ask me why, I decide to look out the peephole before I answer the door. It’s Pedro, with Des coming up behind him. I don’t think the word anger covers what I’m feeling right now.

  “Hold on, buddy,” I say. I take a deep breath and open the door.

  “Hey there, Willow,” Pedro says. Des moves to walk in the door, and Willow stiffens in my arms so that it’s hard to hold on to her.

  “Let’s go home, eh?” Pedro says.

  But Willow burrows into my chest. She’s got a death grip on my neck, making it hard for me to breathe.

  “I brought you some candy,” Pedro says.

  Neither Des nor I say anything, but I kick the door and shut it on them.

  “Hey!” I hear Des shout from outside.

  “Let’s go out the back way,” I say to Willow. “We’ll run down the garden and straight to the playground.”

  Willow doesn’t say anything, and she’s still got her death grip on me, so I make my way to the back. As soon as we get outside, Des and Pedro come around the side of the house, so I hitch Willow around to my back and run.

  “I’ll call the police,” Pedro says, which is a bunch of bullshit, but still, I run faster.

  “Come on, Willow,” Des says. Pedro and Des are coming up fast behind us, and it’s hard to run with Willow bouncing on my back. She’s still clutching me so tightly I’m having trouble breathing, and her heart is beating so fast it feels like it’s going to explode.

  Des is fast, and he’s catching up with us, so I veer to the right and duck into the forest. There’s no point in sticking to the trails—Des knows them as well as I do—so I scramble over a fallen tree and head downhill. Des keeps calling after us, but his voice grows fainter as he loses track of us.

  I slow down and pick my way through the undergrowth. My lungs ache for air. I stop and bend down so Willow can get off my back, but she just hangs there, frozen in position, arms wrapped around my neck.

  “Ivan!” Des’s voice is closer than I’d like, so I shift Willow back into position and keep moving. The undergrowth is thicker here, and the slope gets steeper the closer we get to the beach. I need both hands to grab onto roots and branches. My foot slips, and suddenly we’re falling. Willow screams, and I land badly in the roots of a fallen tree, my whole weight on my arm. I swear I can hear it crack. Pain bursts through me, so I hardly remember to roll away from Willow. She’s still screaming, and I don’t want Des to hear her, so I grab her arm and shout, “Shut up, Willow.”

  Her eyes go wide and she gulps huge sobs, but she does stop screaming. I’m tangled in roots and ferns, and my arm feels like it’s g
ot a sword sticking through it. It’s hard not to scream and gulp and sob like Willow, and all I can do is lie back and wait for the pain to subside.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I say over and over once I can speak again. There’s no sound of Des, and I hope he and Pedro have gone away.

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I think I broke my arm,” I say.

  She just looks at me, her eyes still wide.

  “Let’s find Maddie,” I say, because that’s the only thing I can think of.

  Willow nods and tries to climb onto me again, but I can’t carry her with my arm broken, so instead she helps me up and we stumble the rest of the way through the forest until we reach the beach, then run together to Maddie’s house.

  My arm is killing me, and I’m finding it hard to think, so when we get there I let her knock on the door, and I sit on the edge of the deck and wait for someone to come.

  “What’s this?” asks Bo when he steps out onto the deck.

  “Ivan broke his arm,” says Willow.

  “What? Let’s take a look,” says Bo, and he strides over to where I’ve collapsed and peers at my arm, which is pretty swollen.

  “This is going to need X-rays. What on earth were you doing?”

  “We were running away,” says Willow, which I would not have told Bo.

  “What!”

  “It was super scary,” she says.

  “What on earth?” says Bo.

  “Can you please go get Maddie?” I say.

  “She’s in town with Bea,” he says, and it’s the last straw. I start to cry, even though I haven’t cried in public since I was about six.

  “Where’s Des?” asks Bo.

  “He’s probably up at the house. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Let’s get you to the clinic,” says Bo, and he takes my elbow and helps me stand. He and Willow and I walk up the road and get into the car, and he drives us to the clinic in town.

  “Willow, you keep Ivan company, okay? I’m going to find Maddie,” says Bo after we’ve checked in and are sitting in the waiting room. Willow nods her head solemnly and sits next to me.

  “Do you want me to read you a book?” she asks. When I nod, she chooses Winnie-the-Pooh from a pile of books and pulls it onto her lap.

  When Bo arrives with Maddie, she sits down next to me and takes my hand. “I hear you think you’re Superman.” She’s trying to make me laugh, but the best I can do is smile at her and squeeze her hand.

  “Does it hurt a lot?” she asks.

  “Like a son of a bitch.”

  “I’ll see if I can get you something for the pain,” says Bo. He puts out his hand for Willow, who hops up and takes it, and the two of them go in search of a nurse.

  “What on earth were you doing?” Maddie asks.

  “Trying to escape.”

  “From what?”

  “From who, you should ask.” I want to tell Maddie the whole story, but my mind is too focused on the pain in my arm, so instead I put my head in her lap and close my eyes. She runs her hand through my hair and doesn’t say anything.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Maddie

  Ivan’s swept away by painkillers. He moves in slow motion, and his voice is thick, and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s drugged or because of what’s happened that he collapses into a deep sleep even while he’s waiting for the cast. He rouses a bit when the doctor comes in and sets the arm and puts on the plaster, but I’m not sure he knows what’s going on. I am sure he doesn’t know Des is there, watching everything, or that Pedro’s come too.

  When Des leaves the room to go to the bathroom, Pedro sits down next to me and says, “Hi, Willow. I brought you some candy.”

  She stays on my lap but accepts the candy.

  “I’m sorry you were scared earlier when we came to the house. I should have told you I was coming. Silly Grandpa, eh?”

  Willow nods and sticks a piece of candy in her mouth. Bo, Peter and I all watch, and though I am silent, my heart is racing. I have a million things to say, but I don’t want to scare Willow any more than she’s already been scared today.

  “You didn’t get hurt when you ran away, did you?” Pedro asks. Willow shakes her head.

  “Were you trying to fly? How high did you get before you fell? I flew once, but I didn’t get very far,” Pedro says.

  “People can’t fly,” Willow says.

  “No? Oh, I wonder what it was that I did then. It sure felt like flying.”

  Willow laughs, and I see this is how it’s going to be. When Willow tries to stand up to follow Pedro out, I clutch her and hold her tightly to me. Bo stands, and so does Peter, but Pedro bends down so he’s looking at me face-to-face and says, “She’s my granddaughter, and I have legal custody of her.”

  “She enjoyed staying with the kids, Pedro. Maybe she should stay for a while, just until you get yourself sorted out,” Bo says.

  Pedro reaches out his hand to Willow, who slips off my lap and takes it.

  “See you later, alligator,” Willow says.

  “In a while, crocodile,” I reply, and they walk out the door.

  We all stand in silence as they make their way across the lobby to the front door, but then I can’t take it anymore and I rush across the lobby to catch up with them.

  “Leave her with me,” I shout, but Pedro doesn’t stop.

  “It’s not okay, what you did.”

  He opens the door to an old-looking car and lets Willow in.

  “Pedro, please. I’ll phone social services,” I call as I run across the parking lot, but he gets in and drives away before I reach them.

  “There’s nothing we can do right now,” Peter says. He’s followed me outside, and together we watch the car disappear.

  But that can’t be the end of it. Not after everything we’ve been through. If Pedro thinks he’s getting away with this, he’s got another think coming.

  “Yes, there is. I’m phoning social services,” I say. “I’ll tell them everything I know about him.”

  Peter nods. “Yes.”

  “Yes,” I say again. Because it’s always better to try.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Ivan

  Des has been nice to me for a while. He cooks me food and even finishes the back orders for shelving and a set of stairs I got behind on. Maddie comes in the mornings and sits with me in the front yard and reads me stories, or sometimes she brings her paints. We can hear Des working around back. Bo and Peter come by too. They bring fish. They help Des with the work. And when it turns out that Des has somehow, miraculously, still got his delivery job, Peter tags along to give him company. For a week or two life seems so good. The truth is, my arm is much better. Still broken, of course, but there’s no pain anymore, and I could do most things for myself, but I like being waited on.

  The only thing that makes it hard is that Pedro and Willow have disappeared.

  “It seems they never even went home,” she says. Des and I are in the backyard, looking at the specs for a chair a woman in town has ordered. I’ve never made a chair before, so Des has agreed to help.

  “How can a person just disappear?” I ask.

  “Somehow, they have,” Maddie says. She turns to Des and asks, “Have you heard from him?” Maddie asks Des, but he shakes his head.

  “I don’t think I’m likely to. He wasn’t too happy with me when I made him come back for Willow,” Des says.

  “You mean the day you left her here alone?”

  “I didn’t think I’d be gone long.”

  “Several hours is long,” I say.

  “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?”

  “Why should I?” I say.

  He stares at me and Maddie for a second, then throws his goggles to the ground and stomps across the yard and into the house. Like a kid. A fucking kid.

  “It’s my fault,” Maddie says.

  “That Des is acting like a kid?”

  “No, that Pedro and Willow ar
e gone. I told him I was going to phone social services.”

  “You think that’s why he’s gone? So they don’t come and get Willow?”

  “Yeah, probably,” Maddie says. “It makes me so mad to think about it. So mad.”

  “Yeah. A kid shouldn’t have to grow up like that,” I say.

  “No kidding,” Maddie says. She leans over and taps my cast. “No kidding.”

  * * *

  By the time Maddie leaves and I get myself into the house, Des is sitting in the living room watching TV. There are three empty beer bottles beside him, and I know we’re starting again. I knew it wouldn’t last. It never has.

  “Beer?” he says, pointing to the case beside him.

  “Thanks,” I say. He reaches out to grab me one, but I beat him to it, only I take the whole case.

  “Hey!” Des says.

  “Enough, Des. Finally, enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t live like this anymore. I’m your son, not your caretaker. I shouldn’t have to pick up after you. I shouldn’t know how to make you throw up.”

  “I’m only having a few beers,” he says.

  “That’s what you always say, and then you drink so much I end up cleaning up after you.”

  “You don’t have to do anything.”

  “I shouldn’t have to come home every fucking night and check that you haven’t lit yourself on fire or choked on your own vomit or left broken bottles lying around where we can step on them. I shouldn’t have to do any of that, and I’m not going to anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  Three beers isn’t a lot for Des. He’s still pretty much with me right now, so it’s a good time to say this. “I’m moving out.”

  He laughs. “You don’t have any money or anywhere to go.”

  “I don’t need a lot of money, and I do have somewhere to go. Bo and Peter have offered me their back room until I can find somewhere else. Maybe I’ll move to Victoria and get a job. I could probably stay with Maddie’s aunt Alex for a bit until I got settled.”