As she approached the cottage, she smelled wet green and rotting fish, and heard Kevin’s stereo softly playing a track from Nirvana Unplugged. Then Kevin’s voice. She walked quickly, feeling giddy and light-headed, perfect timing, she thought, and then froze. Two voices, soft, bantering. Something not right.
She stood outside the door, clutching the damp grocery bag, her fingers numb. This made no sense, she thought, it was crazy. Like the bat’s jaws, moving in silent exclamation.
She felt cold moving down her arms, as though she was shrinking, the ice in her stomach, escalating.
There was something she was missing, something on the edge of her understanding. Probably nothing, her mind countered, and then it was as if her feelings and her mind entwined in an intense flash of unconscious dialogue.
No, not nothing. Say it.
I know the voice.
Still that means nothing.
Nothing or everything.
The longer she waited, she knew, the worse it would get. About this, her mind and body agreed. So she opened the door, stepped inside, and felt as if she had been knifed in the stomach.
At the end of the galley kitchen, Althea could see someone sitting on Kevin’s kitchen counter, barely visible in the doorframe. A woman’s tanned limbs, a gold watch, arms around Kevin’s neck, and legs around his waist. Kevin was leaning into her. Tori.
Althea stood stunned at the door. They hadn’t heard her come in. A lump lodged in her throat, growing until she could barely breathe. She wanted to scream, couldn’t. Her body felt as if it had been dropped into a pot of boiling oil. Then something like shock set in and she watched with detached fascination, as if she had left her body and was watching someone else. Couldn’t be real.
The back of Kevin’s head was visible and his mouth was on what Althea knew was Tori’s throat. His arms were moving, and though Althea could not see his hands, she knew they were under Tori’s shirt. She saw his right arm move down to an area between Tori’s knees and as the muscles in his arms flexed, Tori’s legs tensed and Althea could hear her groan.
Kevin was pressing into Tori in such a familiar way, Althea could imagine what it felt like, his hands gentle and firm, his cock hard, how his mouth felt. Shit, they had even done it at their kitchen counter before.
As she watched them, she felt what Tori was feeling, Kevin’s mouth, his clean laundry scent, and she was mesmerized, couldn’t take her eyes off them.
Pain bubbled up inside her, her throat tightening as if she had swallowed molten rock, and because she didn’t know what else to do, she dropped the grocery bags. The wine bottle made a piercing shriek as it shattered, fused with the screams of her heart.
• • •
A HALF-HOUR LATER, she was on the 401 Highway heading west toward Toronto, shaking, numb. Her throat was raw and swollen, she could barely speak. Kevin had wanted to come with her. She had to get out of there. During their brief exchange, Tori had been doubled over on the couch, sobbing. Althea couldn’t even look at her.
Althea’s eyes were glazed and her hands felt cemented to the steering wheel. She opened her window. It was cooler now that the rain was over, and she needed to feel the air moving. Cry later, just get home. Traffic slowed. A policeman waved her into the right lane. Ahead of her, a wisp of black smoke rose from within a crumpled mini-van. She pulled off the highway, following a detour.
She felt hot, her face suffused and blotchy. In her head, a dull pain grew. Her mouth filled with saliva. She stopped and threw up on the shoulder of the road. Traffic was thinning. Driving again, she tried to focus on
the two of them in the kitchen, her two best friends
what she could see of the road
what she couldn’t see behind the counter
the road
Kevin’s fingers inside Tori, whispering
not now
when were they going to tell her
That was what last weekend was all about, that was Tori’s tiredness, her sadness. And I’ve been worried about her, well fuck them their bodies intertwined and as much as she wanted it to stop, she couldn’t let go of the image of Tori’s brown legs wrapped around Kevin, coaxing him. Not only that, but the tenderness — their hushed voices and
the shriek of a horn as a green Chevy sped past her. A gaunt-looking blond leaned out the window, giving her the finger.
She bolted alert, and jerked her steering wheel. She was in the oncoming lane. When she hit the brakes, her tires screeched and her world slowed, spinning sideways, backwards and coming to a stop with a lurch, three feet from a bridge overlooking a dried riverbed. Fuck, that was close.
She sat silently, the blood thumping painfully in her ears. The green Chevy was gone. After ten minutes, which felt like thirty, she tried the ignition. Nothing.
Her heart burned and anger flashed not ready can’t and she hit the steering wheel, accidentally blowing the horn. She liked the sound and leaned into it again.
The angry horn rang in her ears. She looked around, shaking. Learn to read a map, why don’t you? You’re a bright girl. What, and take all the fun out of it? Kevin and she bantering.
Kevin’s mouth between Tori’s legs.
Tears welled up, and anger. She struggled to regain control. She was on a detour, though she didn’t recognize the road. It was a two-lane highway, lined with deciduous forest. A back road. No detour signs in sight. And no traffic. She was lost.
Ten minutes went by. No one passed. She decided to walk in the direction she’d been driving. The sun was lower in the sky and the air was cooler now. After twenty minutes, a car approached from the opposite direction. It stopped. A blue Lexus. The man driving opened his window and leaned out.
“Do you need a lift?” He wasn’t much older than she. He had fine brown hair, wire-rim glasses and a small nose. As he stopped talking, his mouth turned up as if she amused him.
She shook her head, her heart pounding. She wanted him to go away.
“Is there a gas station this way?” Her words sounded hollow to her, her tongue thick.
“About a mile, over the hill,” he said. “I can give you a lift if you want.” His voice was soft. He looked at her for a moment, as if he wanted to say something else.
She averted her eyes, shook her head and walked on. She heard crunching gravel as he pulled away.
chapter 4
MICHAEL FOSTER PULLED AWAY from the woman walking by the side of the road slowly. He looked in the rear view mirror before he accelerated, just in case she changed her mind.
The woman was arrestingly tall, with fair skin, and thick red-gold hair, a color Michael had never seen before. Her round blue eyes gazed at a place just beyond him. He had the feeling that she might walk right by the gas station down the road because of what was behind those eyes: something that had nothing to do with her car breaking down.
He was curious about her and could tell she probably needed someone to talk to. Today, if she had allowed him, he may have given her a ride all the way home.
Even if it took the rest of the day.
Michael was on his way to his in-laws’ estate in rural Caledon, an hour and a half from Toronto. He and his wife Lara had agreed to meet there. After a sumptuous dinner, a few glasses of wine, and cocktail party chat, they would calmly and rationally tell her parents that they had decided to separate.
Why had he agreed to meet Lara today? Why put himself through this? He had asked himself that a hundred times, and the reasons were simple: because the Bradshaws had been the only family he had for the last fifteen years, because Lara had asked him, because they had always made major decisions together — that was part of the plan. Most of all, because he still loved her, and he didn’t know what else to do.
He drove along the small highway lined with green fields, trees on gently rolling hills, and miles of well-kept white fences. With his window open, he could smell the sweet scents of hay and manure. Horse country.
The sun was coming out again. It was so beautiful
here, so peaceful. When the leaves were turning color, Caledon was nothing short of spectacular. His in-laws had built their family estate here over thirty years ago. His father in-law, like many of his neighbors, owned horses. Among other things.
Lara came from money, but she didn’t rely on it. He had always admired her for that. They both knew that her parents would have jumped at the chance to help them out. They also knew that any help they received from them would incur a different kind of cost.
Lara and Michael had met in high school. At fourteen, Michael was sensitive and creative, and an only child. The day before Michael’s fifteenth birthday, his world unraveled, and he and Lara grew closer. At eighteen, he knew he wanted to be an accountant. Numbers could be controlled. They were predictable.
Lara had a regal quality about her. She was smart, self-sufficient and confident, and Michael relied on her quiet strength. He also enjoyed breaking down her unruffled exterior, and early on, had made it his mission to find ways to make her laugh.
They dated throughout university and married two years after graduation. He never understood why she chose him. She became everything Michael had imagined she would be. She was a star: beautiful, ambitious, smart, respected — a Ph.D. in economics, a prestigious position in the banking community, and a sought-after opinion in the business media.
Her life was going according to plan. And for the two of them, things had been good for a very long time. Longer than Michael had ever expected.
For a year and a half, Michael had struggled with depression. When his insomnia got worse and his symptoms escalated, Lara had encouraged him to see a psychiatrist. He’d been seeing Dr. Leigh Reynolds for three months and he wasn’t sure if she was helping. The last time he saw her, she too must have been unsure, because for the first time, he had left her office with a prescription.
The bag with his first month’s supply of antidepressants lay on the passenger seat beside him, unopened. It had been sitting there for a week. He recalled Dr. Reynolds’s words in one of their early sessions.
“Do you dream Michael?”
“No.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”
That wasn’t true.
It was true that he didn’t dream. At least, not at night. For the last twelve months, he had felt as if something was trying to communicate with him. The first time it happened, he was riding his bicycle on Ward’s Island, just off Toronto’s Harborfront. Whenever he rode, he was usually attuned to movements that might threaten his safety. Emotionally, he felt open to everything, the water, the sand, the green, the coal-black pavement and the clusters of multi-colored flowers.
Then it happened. Not voices in his head — not like that — but crystal-clear images, visions, impressions, insights, articulations. Impulses. All felt, rather than stated, like a download, as if he were a glass filling with liquid. While on his bike that day, that first time, his senses were overwhelmed. He couldn’t see what was in front of him. He fell, toppling over the handlebars, spraining his wrist, scraping up his right side.
He was lucky. That was a year ago this summer, and he had dismissed it as an isolated incident. It didn’t happen to him again for a number of weeks.
Then the episodes became more frequent.
It always happened at times like these, when he was alone and occupied, driving, sitting at the computer, holding on the telephone. When it happened, he’d struggle to concentrate on something concrete, something he could understand, touch, calculate. After a few minutes, the images receded and were replaced by a free-floating sadness.
The visions frightened him. Whatever was inside of him was beginning to have a life of its own.
Something clearly wanted out.
He could see the red, white and blue prescription bag on the seat beside him in his peripheral vision.
“The antidepressants will stimulate your dreams,” Dr. Reynolds said. “After you start, if you do remember a dream, even a fragment, write it down and we can discuss it next time.”
Write it down. Sure thing. After that session, he wasn’t sure that there was going to be a next time.
He pulled past a bright orange tractor with its hazard lights on and adjusted his sun visor to block the late afternoon sun. The only thing keeping him sane was that in few weeks, he would start his MBA at the Rotman School of Management. The course would be intense, he’d be meeting new people, and the work would ground him. When he moved out, he’d need that.
He turned, one intersection closer to the inevitable, the startled-looking russet haired woman fading from his memory. The white bag beside him beckoned. The first one’s free. His mind flickered.
As he drove, a grey heaviness settled behind his eyes and he wished he could pull over and sleep. Instead, he thought about life without Lara, and for a second imagined what it would be like to unleash what was mounting in his head and in his heart.
He drove, turning the feeling around, viewing it from all angles, like a collectible that he wasn’t sure he wanted to buy.
chapter 5
ALTHEA TURNED INTO HER driveway, exhausted, almost rear-ending a car that was blocking her entrance. A friend of the other tenants. She swore, and drove around the block until she found a place to park on the street.
Getting home had been a nightmare. The garage the Lexus guy had described as a mile down the road apparently did such good business, it was closed for three weeks for holidays. Numb, her feet blistered and her head aching, she stumbled to the next station a few miles further on. It was open. The mechanic had gone home, but she was able to call roadside assistance. Ninety minutes later, she was heading home.
She sat in her parked car, her eyes blank. The adrenaline that for the past hours had kept her from running her car off the road was subsiding. As she opened the car door, a biker cycled past, startling her. The letter to Kevin that had been in her back pocket fell out on the pavement. She ripped it into pieces. Each step she took toward their apartment brought her grief closer to the surface, unrefined and raw. An aching heaviness settled in her throat and chest.
Her voice mail message light was flashing. A call from Kingston. She picked up the message, her hand shaking, holding the handset away from her ear as she pushed the keys to delete it. She unplugged the phone. She was awake and exhausted, and moving mindlessly, not unlike how she felt when she had to meet a late-night deadline. She wanted to sleep, to forget, but couldn’t. She wanted to do anything but feel what threatened to break through. As long as she kept moving, she could hang on. She took a shower, cooling the water gradually until the cold forced her awake. She put bandages on her blistered feet and covered them with thick, clean socks and her most comfortable running shoes. She looked in her fridge, staring. The phone rang, then stopped. Her cell phone on the counter rang. She had to get out of the apartment. Now.
“Milk, coffee, aspirin,” she said, as she locked the door behind her. Her chest ached, a solid mass of pain. Her feet felt like clubs. She fought the tears. Not yet.
She barely noticed the sky as she crossed the quiet street. It was the dusk of late summer. The streetlights had just come on and the houses around her were receding into grey. It started to rain, gentle at first, then harder. She made no attempt to cover herself.
She was across from a 24-hour grocery store. The light turned red and she stopped. Her cotton t-shirt was now soaked to the skin and her hair dripped. A group of teenagers waited impatiently on the other side of the street, huddling under a storefront, darting out into the rain, then stepping back. A tall figure with a long coat stepped past them into the street. She squinted into the rain. The figure moved gracefully, like a dancer, and when she felt him coming close, she moved to get out of his way. He stopped a few feet away. She could feel him staring. Her eyes darted toward him, looking for an indication of what he wanted from her — directions? Change?
She caught a glimpse of his eyes, which were impossibly g
reen and almond shaped. A flash of fair skin. Shoulder length dark wavy hair. Something not quite right.
Their eyes locked. She couldn’t move and he smiled at her, silent. A hot flush moved up her face despite the cool air. She didn’t know him. Was he with those kids? She looked up. The light was still red and the kids were hopping as they hid from the rain, hands deep in the pockets of their baggy jeans.
He extended his hand to her. She turned away, walking fast, stepping off the curb as the light turned green, her heart beating quickly. She crossed the street and turned toward the grocery store, glancing behind her. He was still there, standing still under the dim streetlight with his arm raised toward her in a still wave. Anxiety tickled her belly as her city instincts kicked in. She entered the store.
What was it about him?
“Your change, ma’am. Have a nice day.”
Her heart felt tight. She stuffed her change into her damp jeans pocket. Kevin’s arm’s moving under Tori’s shirt, his lips on her breasts. Pain crept toward the surface.
She felt the anger, pushed away everything else. Maybe if the man was still there, he’d come home with her tonight, help her forget. Her heart turned cold. She felt sexually aroused, reckless, on the edge.
“Don’t forget your bags.”
She looked back at the cashier blankly and picked up her groceries. She emerged from the store, her chest tight with anticipation. She scanned the sidewalks, slick and wet, dotted with circular flashes of falling drops.
He had disappeared.
Her desire dissipated into irrational disappointment. She wished he had waited for her. She wanted him to help her forget.
I’m here to help you remember.
The thought came from nowhere. Something not quite right. He had been standing in the teaming rain, and his hair was completely dry — just past his shoulders, dark, wavy, and completely dry. She was sure of it.
She walked back to her apartment without getting lost, except in the caverns of her mind. First, she was held captive by a thread of memory green that clutched at her heart, her anxiety, her arousal and dry hair in a rainstorm.
Moondance Page 3