by Joan Thomas
She drives on along a highway that bisects the bush in a straight line. She hasn’t met a car in miles. For the first time she notices a terrible stink in the car. It’s the diaper from yesterday, rotting on the floor of the hatchback. Then she realizes that the screaming has stopped. She tilts the rear-view mirror. The baby is sitting with a look of pure sorrow on her face, but she is alive.
This is Zach’s corner. There’s the sign: MO’S MARINA AND ENGINE REPAIR. Sylvie could drive up there now and see the old boathouse where she and Noah kissed; she could stand in the echoing darkness and listen for their voices. But the boathouse and the cabin will be covered with fish flies, which seem to follow human settlement like a plague. And Zach or his family might be there.
On impulse she turns left onto a gravel road and follows it for a few miles. Then a trail angles off the road, grass growing up the middle of it. Drive me, the trail says, so she turns off and drives into the bush. Stop here, the bush says after a little way, so she does. She stops and presses the window down and sits for a minute, listening to insect sounds and the twitter of birds. Then she gets out. She opens the hatchback and picks up the dirty diaper. The baby is asleep. She’ll sleep now until noon, and then she’ll wake up in a panic as if she’s about to starve to death. Sylvie is an expert regarding this baby. She closes the hatch as quietly as possible and looks for a minute at the white dome of her daughter’s head, dead to the world on the other side of the tinted glass, before she starts to climb the ridge.
A little way into the bush, five or six young poplars are brownly dying. People have been here, the earth is torn up, exposed as pure golden sand for no reason that she can see. Thistles are growing at the edges of the scar. There’s a Cheetos wrapper plastered onto the sand. Cotton takes how long to degrade? But it will, eventually. She crouches, scooping sand with her fingers, feeling how cold it is just under the surface. A crow lifts in disapproval off one of the dead poplars, floating upwards. As she stoops, Sylvie feels how heavy her breasts are. She hadn’t really believed she and Noah would make love. She just pictured how he would run his fingers tenderly, sympathetically along her scar.
She has never before worried about his liking other girls. Never once. I had the idea I owned Noah, she thinks. Because I knew him when he was little. I made up a story about him, and now he’s stepped out of it. The silver falconer’s sleeve – it was armour made from beer cans, as it turns out. At one time it glowed in her mind like a talisman. Not magic exactly. Meaningful. Or sacred. Will she ever see that force in things again? Or was it only inside her – some molten underground stream that she crouched beside and dipped things in to make them special?
She buries the diaper and then stands and starts to walk along the ridge. She’s wearing flip-flops, she has to watch her footing. There’s no path but there is a natural way. She can see the lake lying like fresh cement along the horizon. This is mixed forest, untouched: spruce, oak, aspen, poplar, Manitoba maple, birch with its chalky paper, and lots of scrubby bushes she can’t name, rising and falling by a logic of their own. As she walks, her eyes lay squares over it. If she’d gone to botany field school she’d have been given a square metre of this land, and she’d have taken it apart with tweezers and identified every single bit of plant life in it.
She’s over a second ridge when she finds what she’s looking for. It’s a perfect little diorama of bush, a square of permaculture. Her eyes peg it at its corners. It’s sunken, as if it may have been a creek bed long ago, or the source of a spring. There are poplars all around, but her square metre is mostly tiny shrubs and lichen. Three shoots of spruce like miniature trees. A single stem of oak with wavy adult-sized leaves. She’d have had a whole summer to spy on the secrets of these plants and how they make a garden for each other, and if she was lucky she’d have discovered some synergism nobody has noticed before.
She crouches by her square metre, taking it in. And then, from over the ridge, she hears her name. A deep voice, a dream voice, like God’s. Syl-vie. She scrambles to her feet. Now there is sun, as there has not been sun in all these weeks. Now it’s hot – she finds herself in a different day, lightheaded from the sun. She goes to brush off her shorts and her hand encounters a small, soft bit of ectoplasm. Panicked, she flings it at the bush – a fish fly. Something flails in the corner of her eye, white, spasmodic, and she leaps in the other direction, startled. It’s her hand, it’s her fucking hand.
And then she hears it again. Syl-vie. With a yelp she starts to run, clumsy in her flip-flops. Syl-vie, the ridge calls. She turns, slips, and rights herself. Around her the aspens quake and spruce trees clutch the earth with knuckled roots. Syl-vie, the voice calls again, and she scrambles in terror up the ridge in the opposite direction.
THREE
14
The Wilds
LIZ SLIPS OUT OF BED, LEAVING AIDEN ASLEEP, and goes down to the kitchen. She smells baby in the house – puked-up milk and the diaper pail and the ancient perfume of talc – and she feels more buoyant than she has in ages. She puts on coffee and reaches for her tattered recipe file. She still has a day and a half of quiet ahead of her. She’ll get a stew going in the slow cooker for their dinner tonight (they can be carnivores while Sylvie is away), and she’ll make a couple of vegetarian casseroles with an eye to restocking the freezer. Then in the afternoon, if it’s warm enough, she’ll take the phone and a glass of wine out onto the deck and get caught up with Char.
She’s at the stove browning cubes of flank steak when Aiden wanders in, looking like death warmed over. “What time did you get home?” she asks.
“Around midnight.”
She pours his coffee. “The kids don’t have a very nice day at the lake.”
“It might be warmer up there.”
“How about pancakes?”
“No, I’m okay.”
Doctor Jekyll has left the building, she thinks as she sets the coffee pot back on its element. This is our own Mister Hyde, hunched on a stool in his tattered Eric Clapton sweatshirt. Then something wiry inside her asserts itself, and she turns back to Aiden. “So how was the concert?”
“Didn’t get in.”
“Oh. I thought you had tickets.”
“I never said I had tickets.”
“So what did you do?”
“Just went for a drink.”
“How’s Neil?”
“I didn’t see Neil.”
“Who’d you go with?”
“Jake.”
“Jake. You know a Jake?”
“Defrag. My client.”
“Since when do you socialize with your clients?”
“It was a one-off.”
“Still.”
He gets up and opens the bread drawer and drops two slices into the toaster.
“What have you got planned for today?”
“I plan not to plan. That’s my plan.”
“Well, you need to clean up all that tree debris, for one thing. The grass is never going to come up.”
“Okay, I’m on it.”
He eats his toast and drinks his coffee, a cone of silence over his head. After that he settles into the armchair in the living room and works his way methodically through the weekend Globe and Mail. He does something with a pencil, the crossword or the Sudoku. Finally he goes upstairs for a shower. Then, when she’s chopping vegetables for a peanut stew, she hears him out in the hall, putting his boots on.
“Where you going?” she calls, keeping her voice friendly.
“I thought I might ride over to Don’s Photo.”
Liz puts down her knife and steps into the hall. “Don’s Photo? Whatever for?”
“Oh, just to look around. I’d like to have a video camera. Or at least a webcam. While the baby’s tiny like this.”
She is truly aghast. “You’re planning to buy a video camera. You’ve got that much spare cash at the moment.”
“They’re not that expensive, Liz.”
“You’re not thinking, Aiden.”
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br /> “What’s to think about? It’s not that big a deal.”
“Everything’s a big deal. Do you have any idea how much the diaper service costs? As just one example.”
“Oh god, Liz, we could live on half of what we earn now.”
“Aiden, you are so full of shit.” By then she’s too furious to talk.
He’s gone several hours, during which she rehearses her arguments and cooks, quickened by her rage. “He’s a wanker,” she says to Max, slamming the cutlery drawer shut. “He’s a total goddamn wanker.”
By the time he comes back, the evidence of her industry is lined up and cooling on the counter. She looks over at him when he appears in the doorway but she doesn’t speak.
He shrugs. “Don’s was closed. I just rode around the park.”
“Well, that’s five hundred dollars you didn’t blow.” Her overly-pleasant voice is going to put him on his guard. She drops her dishtowel and lowers herself into a chair. “But you know, we do need to sit down and have a serious talk about finances. Now might be good.”
“You think so, eh,” he says, opening the fridge, and the danger she senses is a heady foretaste she hasn’t encountered in quite some time.
“Yes, I do,” she says. “I’m overdrawn at the moment, and I suspect you are too. It’s going to be years before Sylvie is on her feet. It’s going to be really tough. We’ll need a second car, for one thing. My salary is frozen, and your practice is not exactly growing.”
He opens the cheese drawer and checks out its contents. At the sight of him rummaging in the fridge, her fury thrums in her chest. “Aiden. Please don’t eat now. It’s too late for lunch. I’ve made a wonderful dinner, boeuf bourguignon.”
He pulls a package of corned beef out of the meat tray and lifts it to his nose.
“You know … you won’t like what I’m about to say, but you need to start thinking about it. We’re going to have to sell the cottage. It’s our only disposable asset. And the taxes are ridiculous.”
“What?” It’s clear this has never once crossed his mind.
“Think about it. You never get up there, and Sylvie and I haven’t been in ages. Sell it to some back-to-the-earth types. Some kayaking kids. It’s not doing us any good. It’s not accessible.”
He stands very still. She actually sees his neck thicken. Then he puts the meat back in the fridge and closes the door and turns towards her. “And why am I not up there?”
“Well, I know, this spring has been weird. But even last year – didn’t you go just once last year?”
“Yes,” he says. “Just once.”
Her heart contracts at the venom in his voice and the brutal downturn of his mouth, and for the first time ever she thinks, He looks like his dad.
“Congratulations,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“You have finally found a pretext. To get at the one thing that matters to me. It was only a matter of time, I guess. But I never thought you’d stoop to this – using this crisis, our daughter’s baby. To take away the one thing, the one thing I care about.”
She is seeing it; she is finally seeing into the vault. She stands up. “The one thing,” she says, taking a step towards him. “We don’t matter? Our life together? Our daughter and this tiny baby? Do you hear yourself?”
Their voices are low, they’re both breathing hard. Max is on high alert between them. “Don’t twist things,” Aiden says. “You know what I mean.” The phone on the counter rings. He swings an open hand and knocks it off its stand and it clatters to the floor.
“What the hell is that?” she says. “You’re trying to intimidate me?” She smells the meat in the slow cooker, she feels the cork, cool under her feet. She sees his exhilaration, what it means to him to accuse her like this, his hatred open and undisguised at last, and she feels a dark rush too: she sees he’s right, she has been waiting for this chance. Their eyes are locked, neither of them is going to look away. She’s tasting blood. He has no idea, no idea what he’s up against, the carcass of their sorry marriage is well within her sights – and a dial tone drills into her consciousness.
“Pick it up. It could be Sylvie.”
He bends for the phone. In his movements, in the angle of his head and the stoop of his back, she sees his regret already setting in and satisfaction warms her. The phone rings again as soon as he sticks it back into the base, and this time she grabs it.
“Elizabeth Glasgow?” It’s a man.
“Yes?”
“You’re the registered owner of a silver 2012 Jetta SE?”
“Yes.”
“Licence MIE 466?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Constable Glowicki from the Powerview detachment of the RCMP.”
“The Powerview RCMP?” she repeats, trying to make the words mean something.
From the ridge Aiden can see the lake, a dark molten body to the left. The sun hovers above it. It’s going to be a long, long twilight. Mosquitoes hit at his arms and temples. What do you call this sort of country? It’s scrubbier than forest, not as friendly as a wood. It’s bush.
He’s standing on a rise above a little trail about twenty miles north of Presley Point. On that trail are parked three RCMP cruisers and a couple of trucks belonging to kids from the research station, and the Jetta, of course, sitting crookedly in a big square of police tape.
He and Liz drove up in Rupert’s car with Max in the back seat. On the way, as they rolled north out of farmland and into bush, they tried to get their minds around what the police had said on the phone.
“She was not dehydrated – did I tell you that? They said she’s absolutely fine.”
“She can’t have been there long. The kids will be nearby.”
It was a man driving a truck who spotted the car and stopped to check it out. He found a tiny baby alone in it and took her to the closest town, to Pine Falls. Was the car locked? Presumably not. Sylvie’s things were in it. When the police called, Liz gave them Noah’s name, and Thea’s.
“They’re hiking,” Liz said to Aiden as they drove. “Obviously. It’s a beautiful day. They’re having a great time and they got carried away. ‘Come on, one more bend in the trail!’ I can just hear Sylvie. I can hear her.”
“With the baby alone in the car? I’m not seeing it, Liz.”
“You’re right, of course. It’s beyond belief. It’s breathtaking that anyone could be that stupid and irresponsible, but let’s face it, that’s what they are. Your cerebral cortex is not fully developed until your late twenties, I’ve read that. I can see it in Sylvie, I’m sorry to say. And Thea – well, just look at the girl. But I thought Noah might be a little more mature.” He was so plucky as a kid, she said, after the swing hit him. He insisted on walking on his own, even though his eyes had pretty much vanished.
She talked nervously until about the time they passed through Brokenhead First Nation, and then she stopped and sat with her arms tightly folded, staring straight ahead. “Well, at least they’re together,” Aiden said into the silence at one point. She didn’t answer.
But in fact, as Aiden and Liz discovered when they got to the site and an RCMP officer walked soberly over to the Caprice, it’s just Sylvie who is lost; she is lost alone. After talking to Liz, the police tracked down Noah. Sylvie had spent last night at his place, but then she took off on her own and drove up to this road and left the baby in the car. Noah’s in Pine Falls now with the child welfare authorities. Thea? Thea was never there.
When Aiden walks back from the ridge, the police are taking photos of tire marks, hoping to figure out how many vehicles drove up that trail. “I’m going to hike a little further up the escarpment and take a look,” he says to a cop with a ponytail.
“No point. We’ve been back and forth over about five square kilometres in the past few hours.” She puts a hand on his arm. “Listen, you’ll just make our job harder if you head off in the dark. Would you mind stepping into the cruiser? We’d like to ask you a few questions.�
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So Aiden and Liz climb into a back seat with no door handles. “Did she have your permission to take the car?” asks the cop in the driver’s seat.
“Of course. Did you think she stole it?” Liz stares at them fiercely.
“Well, we see your daughter’s not a licensed driver.” They’ve got her purse, her phone, they’ve gone through everything and they’ve hatched their theory. That Sylvie, upset because of a fight with her boyfriend, has walked or hitchhiked back to the highway.
“Oh, come on!” Liz cries. “Without her things?”
Aiden asks whether Noah reported an argument. “He says there was tension,” the female cop says.
They hear barking and shouts and the police let them out of the cruiser. Max is dancing in an excited circle of young people, Noah’s friends from the research station. One of them opened the door of the Caprice and the dog headed straight up the ridge, sniffed around, and started to dig in a spot where the turf has been torn open by ATVS. And he found a diaper! Recently buried, the sand sticking to it. The kids open it, they display the orange smear inside.
“Yes,” says Liz, reading the entrails. “Of course it’s hers.”
Aiden crouches with his hand in Max’s ruff. “Sylvie,” he says urgently. “Let’s find Sylvie! Where’s Sylvie, Max?”
Max smiles and butts his head against Aiden’s thigh. Play! he barks. Throw something, Aiden! When no tennis ball materializes, he appeals to the cop with the ponytail, pawing flirtatiously at her thigh. You love me, he barks. I can tell.
The male cop from the car is at Aiden’s side. “Can I ask you not to bring your dog tomorrow? If we get a sniffer, it will just complicate things.”
“Yeah, of course. I’m sorry. We didn’t quite have the picture when we left the house.”
The Jetta’s being towed to the RCMP detachment in Powerview for a forensic examination. There’s a little motel in Pine Falls that will let them stay with the dog. Its stucco walls are covered with the transparent wings of fish flies, and dead fish flies litter the sidewalk. Where people have walked, the separate wormy bodies have been ground into muck. A teenage desk clerk slides a big, flat key across the counter.