She mentions Cliff and Mandalay, what they’re doing, though Mrs. Giesbrecht doesn’t seem much interested. Cleo doesn’t give much detail: Oh, she’s taking a break from that. Well, she has her own business. He’s living downtown.
Mrs. Giesbrecht says that Mandalay ought to get married, that she is getting old for having kids. That Cliff ought to move back out to Abbotsford, buy a farm. The Giesbrechts congratulate themselves, Cleo knows, on steering Cliff into horticulture, to his landscaping job, but had thought he’d stay in the community.
They are delighted in the children. They have none themselves, no grandchildren, except that some of the foster children they’ve raised — those delinquent youth they took on for nearly thirty years — some of them are married now, with respectable jobs and kids, and these they dote on, as they dote on Cleo and Olivia and Sam. Mrs. Giesbrecht shows them pictures. She does not see any of them much. You’d think of all of those kids, one would have wanted to stay, take on the farm. But no. And some of them — some of the boys Cleo remembers — have come to bad ends. She remembers to ask about them. The Giesbrechts do not take children in anymore; she and Cliff were the last.
For almost thirty years they had taken in delinquent boys, worked them on the farm, made them go to church. (How? By making it more unpleasant not to go than to go. Sometimes the boys had run away, but mostly they had stayed.)
In the late eighties they had stopped. The trouble boys are in now, Mr. Giesbrecht had said. Twenty years ago it was skipping school and fights and drinking too much beer, a little stealing. Now it’s hard drugs and burning things down, cutting each other up with knives. And they don’t want to work at all! That’s not so easy to deal with.
They are hurt, she thinks: perpetually wounded, by the number of their boys who do not come to see them. Which is another reason she does. They are wounded, but you can’t say to them, you were so hard. You gave those boys good food and a clean and healthy place to live and self-respect through work, but you gave them no affection, no real kindness. Why would they want to visit? They see only that they gave of themselves (of course they were paid for it; they had stipends for it, and they worked the boys hard on the farm as well). They cannot see what they didn’t give. They wouldn’t be able to see it.
It’s for small children, only, their affection, their delight. And for Cleo and Trent, who are such model citizens, hard workers and producers of small children.
But she can navigate that. She can maintain a relationship at this node, this juncture: the delight in small children. She chatters about Sam, about Olivia. She tells the Giesbrechts, over lunch, about Sam’s fascination with books, his surprisingly big attention span. She talks about Olivia’s preschool, her cleverness. She talks about the great playground at the school and Trent’s colleagues’ beautiful houses.
If she is bragging a little, if she is casting some shadow on the Giesbrechts through comparison, she knows it is minor. It will be forgiven.
It has been so long since she has been here without Trent that she has forgotten what to be on guard for, and so it catches her by surprise, as it always used to. They have almost left; they’ve had their coffee and coffee cake — supper is a small affair, here, a small, late affair — and Olivia is playing with Mrs. Giesbrecht’s doll collection that: Mrs. G. had started buying for herself in her middle age, since she was not allowed them as a child in Germany. Sam is napping. She’s just about to wake him up, to get the kids into the car, when it comes.
Of course, Mrs. Giesbrecht says, you don’t live a very godly life, Cleo. It makes me very sad to see you without spirituality. It makes me sad that you are depriving your children of a life of faith. Every day we pray for you, Poppa and I, that your heart will be softened again. Christ is our Lord, Cleo. I know that. You know that too. I only wish for you to come back to Him.
She’s defenceless against this. The things she says — I don’t believe; you are welcome to your beliefs but please respect mine — make no impression. Mrs. Giesbrecht smiles as if Cleo were a child, an obstinate child.
It is not fair, what they do. She would never do it to them. She can’t even summon the anger she needs to protect herself from them, because she is so unable to hurt their feelings. She says, politely, that those are their beliefs, and she respects that, but she doesn’t agree, even when Mrs. G. is nearly shouting in her face. Her cheeks burn. She can only gather the children and flee, but not too quickly, not so it looks at all like she is running away.
At the Giesbrechts’, Cliff and Cleo had shared a room. She’d taken him to school, picked him up, supervised him or hung out with him most of the time. He’d seemed fine — thriving, for Cliff. Not exactly sunny, but calm, content. When she moved out, he’d been fifteen, and had chosen to stay. He’d liked it, he said. He had his 4-H, friends. He’d been worried about Mr. and Mrs. G, who were getting older, not up to all of the farm chores. The older boys had all left by then. Cliff had told her that they needed him to hang around for a few years, while they sold off the stock. He had thought he might even want to keep living with them and running the farm.
Then, at eighteen, he’d suddenly moved out. She didn’t know why. She’d been getting ready to move, to leave Vancouver and go to Ontario, for grad school. She’d offered to take him with her, but he’d said no. He’d found a job, a place to live.
That was another thing, worrying about Cliff while she was in school, thousands of miles away. Long distance calling had been so expensive then, and Cliff didn’t have a phone, half the time.
She hasn’t called Cliff in weeks, she thinks. She is too busy, with the kids. She can’t be responsible for Cliff, now.
But she has to. She has to. Because of what happened to Che. What she let happen to Che.
On the way home Olivia complains she’s hungry — still hungry — and Cleo doesn’t want to stop because Sam’s asleep but doesn’t want to do a fast food drive-through. She sees a convenience store deli at a gas station — there will at least be sandwiches there, apples, bottles of milk. What to do about Sam, though?
She’ll leave him in the car. It’s a cloudy, cool day. She’ll lock the doors, leave the window open a crack. She’ll be in the store five minutes, and she’ll be able to see her vehicle through the store’s glass front the whole time she’s inside.
She’s standing at the cash desk, three minutes later, paying, when she sees the women standing by the SUV, looking in the window at Sam, pointing, talking. The expressions on their faces make it clear that they’re disapproving, even very angry.
She waits a moment, till they move off, then grabs Olivia and makes a dash for her car. She’s shaking. All the way home she expects a siren behind her — expects that the women have called some authorities, reported her.
IT IS AN EARLY SPRING DAY and it has been good: Ray not more than usually nasty and he had got some planting done faster than he expected, and Nicki had said, You are amazing, Cliff. He cycles back to his apartment and for once it’s not raining and he does not get splashed. Home, he flicks the light switch on and calls Sophie, though she’s usually at the door before he opens it. A small breeze, a flow of cooler air that he follows to the window, which is open too wide, the catch at the second notch instead of the first. Had he left it loose or had she forced it? The first notch is stripped and doesn’t always catch anymore; it has to be wiggled into place, made secure, and even then she works away at the window, nudging at it with her wedge-shaped head until it pops along its tracks and she can weasel out, skull, shoulders, hips in descending widths negotiating even this narrow opening. He has meant to bring home a stick of wood to lay in the track and stop the window but he has forgotten.
Now he opens the window further, puts his head out, calls her name. No answering meow, though he listens intently, straining through the baleen of his senses the hoosh of traffic on wet pavement, the dripping of the rain’s aftermath, the various growls of engines, the random blurts of horns and shouts. She’s done this before and he has found her by going out i
nto the alley under his window, and he makes his way there now, but she does not come to his call. That has not happened before.
Visions of her cold, thirsty, frightened, mangled, crying for him. Trapped. Too soon to think that. Not useful. He goes back inside. On the stairs he sees the basement door has been left open and wonders. He puts his face through, calls her again. Nothing. Back in his apartment he leaves his door propped open to the hallway. She could find her way back inside. He had found her once inside. Someone had let her in or she had found her way through a vent. Maybe he will cook some meat and the smell will bring her, but he’s suddenly not hungry. He goes to the window, calls again. A man’s voice outside laughs, says, She ain’t coming back, dude.
A soft tapping at his open door and there’s the girl from the floor below, the druggie one or maybe hooker, with Sophie in her arms. In a fluster trying to secure Sophie and not slam the door on the girl, he almost pulls her inside.
He thought the girl had a bald patch on her head but he sees now that it is shaven, just one side of her head up to the top of her ear, and the rest of her hair is there, but thin, kind of matted, with that dull look hair gets when its rubbed too much, or chewed. There seems to be stuff in her hair, too: coloured streaks and yarn woven in, bit of knots or beads, glints of metal. Feathers, too: striped and mottled feathers, grey and cream and burnt brown, of some wild bird. Grouse, maybe. He can’t tell if they are just woven into her hair or also hanging from her earlobes. Her eyes are dull and set deep in her skull and there is bruising around them like the stains wet leaves make on the sidewalk in fall.
She’s dressed in layers of things, as if she has dressed herself from a bag left in a Goodwill box: what appears to be an undershirt, a satiny green evening dress, a sheer, sparkling vest, another vest, or maybe it’s a denim jacket with the sleeves cut out, a couple of scarves. There is the butterfly tattoo on her neck, a professional one, and some jagged, amateur lettering on her arms. A Tibetan symbol, maybe. On her lower half she’s wearing leggings and a raggedy, dirty bit of tutu, or something like that. Her feet are bare, and their tops covered with an elaborate pale brownish design. A kind of ink, he thinks. Her toenails are trimmed and pale pink and look very clean — perhaps the only part of her that does look clean. Her fingertips are stained yellow-brown. Her arms are bare, and he can see the goosebumps, the little hairs standing up.
She says her name is Ellie. He sees that she is a kid, really. Not more than twenty, though her face is so thin, her eyes so old. Underneath the huskiness, her voice is faint, her sentences flat.
She’s still holding Sophie, who isn’t even struggling, but giving Cliff a slit-eyed smile: Come and get me. He takes the cat, now, trying to scoop her from the girl’s arms without touching her person. He thinks he ought to give her something, for bringing Sophie back. Feed her, maybe.
Do you want to smoke, she asks, then, and his mind whips so fast into another place that he feels he has been slapped inside his head.
No, no, he says. Her face smooths itself out and only then he hears his own harshness.
No thanks, he says, trying to soften it. I can’t. . . .
Probation? she asks.
No, he says. Trying. . . .
Well, good for you, she says.
Sorry.
No, she says. I mean it. What you’re trying to do, it’s good. She touches her hand to her lips, to the top of Sophie’s head. Bye-bye, sweetheart, she says. Stay out of trouble.
He locks the door and checks that the window is completely shut, fills Sophie’s food and water bowls. Little stupid, he says. Scaring me. You could have got hurt. You could have been lost forever.
He feels that old childish swelling in the throat that precedes tears or sickness, and realizes he’s shaking. He sits on his bed for a minute and then lies down, drawing himself into fetal position. There’s a feeling like a roaring in his head, like a wall of dark water coming at him, but the roaring is a feeling of force, not a sound. He hugs his knees but can’t stop trembling.
He won’t think about her. He won’t. But he does.
The other girl, the girl from when he was younger, eighteen. Her eyes, which he had thought of as doors to some sort of beautiful place in nature, like a field with sunlight and wildflowers and butterflies. She had on a white top: white embroidery on it, and little buttons with tiny perfect loops, and a string at the neck, with tassels. The top couple of buttons undone, and the tops of her breasts showing. Her eyes laugh at him, saying, I know what you want and it’s cool because I want it too. Her eyes had been really blue, mountain-lake-blue, and he’d thought, I could swim in them, and also: She knows me, all of me, already, and she’s cool with it all.
Up close her skin had been soft and taut as a baby’s. He could see that she had black stuff thickly pencilled around her eyes and he wanted to take the corner of a soft cloth and wash it off. Her hair made little wisps the colour and texture of milkweed fluff around her forehead. She was a meadow that he could lie down in and be safe and be part of nature. She was like him. She had not been scuffed up, burnt up, yet.
He should not have gone with her but it had been so clean and light, and she had asked him. That is no excuse, though, and he should not have. He should not.
He realizes he’s still lying curled on his bed, clammy with sweat and breathing like he’s been running hard. He’s disoriented, looks at the clock. He’s lost a couple of hours.
Sophie is kneading his back, making those sucking sounds she makes, dreaming. She wasn’t weaned properly, he always thinks.
Focus on holding each breath back a little, then a little more. The door in his mind slides shut on its tracks, the meadow and sunshine snapped off. Gone.
He feels so tired, as if he’s run up a mountain, and his muscles are now crying out for nourishment though his stomach has made itself into a locked fist. He has missed a program he wanted to watch on Kodiak bears but there’s one just starting on sea turtles, their long lonely journeys. The females heave themselves up beaches to squeeze their glistening soft eggs into scraped-out holes. The cameraman has used some sort of infrared camera and the turtle and its eggs seem on the screen to be made of gleaming wavering dots. They seem ghostly, or like space messages. He watches the eggs glisten, distorted, at the end of the turtle’s opening, and then pop out and fall, regaining their rounded shape, into the nest. He feels in his shoulders the effort of hauling his mass up the shore, in his forelimbs the effort of scraping the sand. He feels in himself the pressure on the egg and the release.
Turtle, eggs, nest: they are all containers. Boxes inside boxes. What is the turtle thinking, hunkering in the alien sand, weeping silvery mucous? Is she aware or is it all instinct? She knows to choose the right night of moon and tide, the right beach. She knows to bury the eggs. But is that all instinct? Is there nothing going on in her mind about her babies? No worries or thought about their safety?
By the time they hatch she’ll be hundreds of miles away. She’ll never see them. Most of them will perish.
And yet, not knowing about them, she has provided for them.
Cliff sits, Sophie in his lap, until the program ends. Another starts, on deserts. Sophie gets up to eat, meows to remind him to leave out her treat, which she only gets at night. When he opens the fridge, he feels hungry now himself. Not for chicken, though. Or eggs. He prepares a package of pasta with cheese-flavoured sauce. Does not eat it from the pot, but puts it into two bowls, and eats one, and then the other.
Sophie sits beside him, watching him, never blinking her large, light, protuberant eyes.
THE BOY OR YOUNG MAN is giving close attention to the paintings on The Seagull’s gallery wall. He’s dressed in the usual Gore-Tex and baggy earth-coloured hiking pants that students favour. His hair isn’t long enough, his little beard is trimmed too neatly, to identify him immediately as a potential consignor, an artist.
Mandalay drifts over, as unobtrusively as she can, to ask if she can help him. He turns at her approach
. He looks slightly familiar. A regular, perhaps. Not likely a customer for art: too young. And though she has the sense that she knows him from somewhere else, not the café, he’s twenty-two or three at most, too young to be someone from her past. He still has that roundness, that downiness, to his cheeks.
He says, Mandalay? And takes a step closer, looks at her as if he’s trying to place her.
She says, Can I help you? And he goes pink and then pale and says, I think you’re my sister.
So very little drama for this moment that she has dreamed and rehearsed and polished over in her imagination for the past twenty years. Here it is, the sky casually splitting open. She says, her voice cracking a little: Bodhi.
He nods. I was, he says. I’m called Ben now.
Is it possible? She has carried the image of a toddler in her memory for all of these years, even knowing that her brother must be growing up. But she can see aspects of both Cleo and Cliff, even of her own face, shining at her with such obviousness, now, that she doesn’t know how she could have been blind to them.
He holds his arms out, then, in that gesture that men use in awkward social situations: We might as well hug. And so she steps in, and embraces him, in the tentative way of strangers embracing.
It is her baby brother, returned to her after all of these years. And it is, at the same time, not.
He says, I saw your photo in the airline magazine. He has the page with him, ripped out, folded to fit in a wallet.
She’s staring at him too intently. She has to do something, say something. How did you know I was your sister, though?
He says: I’ve known your name for a few years. You registered with the agency.
So she had, back in the mid-eighties, when it had become possible. For a few years? she asks.
Now he flushes, again, wings of pink staining just the tops of his cheeks. Yeah, he says. My parents told me about the registry when I was still in high school, when I was about seventeen, but I didn’t know what to do with the information. I guess I wasn’t ready.
What is Going to Happen Next Page 10