A Handbook for Beautiful People

by Jennifer Spruit

  Trees and garbage cans hurtle down the river, dragged downhill. That’s all there really is—gravity. Inertia. The work is rewarding, but gravity is winning. At dawn, he can see that no amount of sandbagging will prevent this town from washing out. And so, Gavin paddles in a flotilla of canoes and rowboats and dinghies, rescuing people whose houses are already filling up with water. Everyone works together, stern, yet resolute. This is their town. When he feels tired, he thinks about Kamon. Dani told him everything would be all right.

  Gavin gets a ride back to Calgary with a guy named Keel, which seems like a last name, although Gavin isn’t sure. He has a boxy head, and he’s wearing real overalls, not just ripped sweats like Gavin. He smokes in the truck with the window open.

  Gavin tells Keel to drop him off in Sunnyside, which is where Keel’s girlfriend’s basement suite is. “Hope … flooded … all this shit, you wouldn’t believe.” Gavin nods to be polite, trying to think of what he could lose that would mean anything at all.

  Keel parks in front of a pale purple house. There’s water on the road now, so much that Liam’s little car wouldn’t have made it. The lights are out all down the street but there’s a note taped to the door.

  Keel rips it off, slopping through the lawn in his boots. “…gone … school that’s where people … you’re okay?”

  Gavin nods, staring at Keel’s girlfriend’s empty house. No one lives here tonight, and maybe for a lot of nights. When Gavin turns around, Keel is gone.

  Gavin wades down Memorial Drive to the bridge at Centre Street, trying to picture this water laying on the flat floodplain across the river that is downtown. Tonight, the stone lions look angry. He had read that they were copied from the lions of Trafalgar Square for the northern gateway to downtown, and that they were rumoured to wander Chinatown at night. The bridge is longer than it needed to be, crossing the river at an angle to stay on axis and make a dramatic entrance. Maybe it’s hubris, not just for him, but for this whole city—nothing and no one can ceaselessly reinvent while ignoring reality. But that’s unfair. No one is personally responsible for the way the river rushes, how it can’t handle all the water coming down. He wishes he could hear it. It would be so much louder than the thoughts in his head.

  Water sloshes against the lower bridge deck, which is now closed to traffic. Gavin walks uphill to Liam’s, past the video store and the carwash and the diner. He turns right at the lights.

  The door is open for him, the light on. No one is awake.

  Gavin peeks in the spare room to see Dani and Marla in the early morning light, Kamon on the floor. He watches them sleeping, Dani’s bare legs sticking out of the sheets, Marla’s heavy belly on its side, like she ate a rock. They’re safe. This is what he can’t lose. He feels a terrible surge of protectiveness, wishing everything could be this simple and right forever. Dani rolls over in her sleep, then leans over the bed and pukes into a mixing bowl. Gavin steps back, conscious of his dirty clothes and bumps into the doorway. He feels too big for this space, too fucked up and messy, and goes back outside to sleep on the porch.

  The morning is promising, with birds squawking and sunlight streaming in. Seems like a long time since the weather has been dry. Or hot. Marla sits up, sweaty in just a tank top and panties, peeling herself from Dani, who’s curled in a ball, clammy and rank.

  Marla pulls clothes on to take Dani’s puke bowl to the toilet, but scrapes her bellybutton against the counter. Ouch. She remembers Dani telling her how big she would get and not believing her. No one’s been pregnant forever, she tells herself, but it’s hard to believe. Eight days until her due date.

  Marla puts a cold cloth on Dani’s head and a roll of toilet paper beside the bowl. Kamon’s sleeping, his mouth open with drool hanging out. He seems like a happy enough kid, proud of his special backpack with some cartoon character on it and sleeping like a starfish. She gets that having Dani as a mom would not be awesome, but Kamon looks like any kid you’d see getting on a school bus or having a water fight. A totally normal little guy.

  She makes eggs and coffee, not wanting to hear the news. It’s probably fine, she tells herself. She’ll go back to her regular life, and everyone who was hoping for a really big thing will be disappointed. Like making history really matters.

  Liam’s wearing only his robe when he appears, scrolling on his phone. “Looks like your place is in the do-not-re-enter zone. Bow River expected to crest today.”

  “You mean it’s under water?”

  “Well, the basement will be flooded.” He turns on the TV, and images of cars up to their windows in water and houses washing under bridges appear. “I’m sorry.”

  Gavin walks through the patio door with his same dirty jeans on. He leans his crutches on the couch and watches the news. “Going back out,” he says, signing. “It’s bad.”

  “Did you sleep outside?” Liam asks, signing sleep. Gavin nods. Marla squints at him. It’s hard not to be annoyed with how he’s always doing something a bit bigger than anyone else. She tells herself to shake it off because Liam’s standing right there. She hands Gavin a plate of eggs, wondering if he’ll eat it.

  He takes it with full eye contact. “Thank you, Marla,” he says. He eats standing up, watching her. Waiting.

  “I’m glad the sandbags are helping you,” she says, but it feels really lame.

  “I’m not doing it for me,” he says. He scrapes his fork against his plate to get the last bits of egg.

  She waits until he turns to put his plate in the dishwasher. “I think you kind of are,” she says, knowing he can’t see her mouth.

  “Don’t,” Liam says. Gavin spins around. He probably knows they’re talking about him, but Marla doesn’t apologize.

  “Where’s Zigzag?” Gavin asks.

  Shit. The dog. Marla tries to remember if she left her window open. She thinks she did. “We have to go back.”

  “As soon as we can.” Liam thanks her for breakfast. He doesn’t kiss Marla goodbye, or ask if she’ll be alright even though she’s massively pregnant. If she needs anything, like an ice cream bar or a hug. After Liam leaves for work and Gavin leaves to be a martyr, Marla stands in the window like an old woman waiting for family to call or visit or need her somehow. Like Elise probably does. It’s an ugly feeling.

  Soon enough she can hear Kamon jabbering, and she feels a stab of hatred. Even Dani, stinking of withdrawal, has a kid who truly loves her. Marla abruptly steps away from the window, letting the curtains block out the sunlight.

  When Marla’s baby doesn’t come that day or the next, they pile into the car to rescue Kamon’s puppy. Gavin knows it’s a distraction, one Marla needs.

  Marla’s street is full of brown river mud. The high-water mark is clearly visible on garage doors and telephone poles at the height of a truck’s side mirror. Others have come back, and in front of their houses are piles of sodden furniture, carpet, electronics, and ripped out drywall with threads of mould. Cars full of muck, tractors pushing garbage.

  They squelch up together, Kamon piggybacked by Dani and Gavin’s ankle wrapped in a garbage bag. He repeats what Liam told him in his head: Marla’s dealing with a lot right now. She loves you. She’ll forgive you. As they get closer, Liam smiles at something.

  “What did they say?” Gavin asks.

  “Kamon asked if it’s going to be all fucking watery.”

  Dani’s making a sad face. “It might be yucky, too yucky to live in right now.”

  “Where … water … go?”

  “Back into the river.”

  “But why … come out?”

  “That’s how it is sometimes.” She gives Kamon a little squeeze. “It’s okay. You’ll see.”

  Gavin’s touched at how she speaks to him, not like he’s a nuisance or an idiot. Just explaining so he can understand. Gavin feels left out somehow, like he could have known her real self, gotten under he
r bravado and been taken care of, but now he cannot. This way of speaking is only for her son. He resents it, then feels really good about it. She should love Kamon more than anyone else.

  “You know, my mom used to swear like a sailor too,” Liam says. “And look how I turned out.”

  Dani and Gavin laugh, but not Marla. She jiggles her key in the lock. As soon as she opens the door, Zigzag bursts out. He has his tail between his legs, pissing and whining. Kamon squeals, trying to hold him.

  Marla sniffs inside. She says something to Liam.

  “I’ll get one,” Liam says. “Flashlight,” he tells Gavin. Liam walks with efficiency, even in mud. Gavin reminds himself to stand up straight. He can do this.

  Dani takes Kamon to the backyard to check out river garbage, but Gavin follows Marla into the house. The basement still has water in it, and black mould climbing the walls. The wooden doorframes are warped and the whole place has a terribly earthy, filthy smell. A plastic bowl of Dani’s floats near the stairwell. Upstairs, some of the chairs have tipped over, but Dani’s records are safe in their crates on the counter.

  Marla’s in her bedroom with a black garbage bag clutched to her chest, her head bent over it. There’s still some wetness on the floor. “What is it?” he asks her.

  She opens it to show him a soggy mess starting to mildew. Baby blankets. She’s crying, saying words he can’t understand, but he knows exactly what’s happening. It’s grief.

  He gathers wet baby things in his arms. “I’m sorry, Marla,” he says. “It’s going to be okay.”

  “No. They’re ruined,” she says. “Everything’s ruined.”

  It’s gravity again, Gavin thinks. The sweet seduction of falling down and giving in. “It will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.” He thinks about it. “And that’s saying something.”

  She’s got her fingers laced in the smelly blankets, kneading them. “I don’t want the baby to come yet,” she says. She shakes, bites her lip. She closes her eyes, and tears spill down her cheeks.

  “You will love him forever,” Gavin tells her. “Wherever he is.”

  Liam nods in the doorway, flashlight in hand, his mouth opening and then closing as if he thought better of saying anything.

  Marla shakes her head. She holds Gavin at arms’ length, speaking deliberately. “Don’t you see? That’s what I thought about you, Gavin. That’s how I loved you.”

  It’s harder to get up here now. Marla leans forward on the incline, grabbing at shrubs to steady herself. Liam is behind her, his hand on her wobbling bum.

  “Let’s sit here,” he says.

  “No, I want to go to the top,” she says, searching in the dark for the flat rock they always sit on when they take the path up Nose Hill from 19th Street.

  When she gets there, Marla looks down at the cars on John Laurie Boulevard, picking out the obvious buildings like the university and the malls and the technical school first, then the grocery stores with their sparsely lit parking lots, the unusual buildings, like churches and fire halls, and finally the non-spaces like the river and the looping black hole that is Confederation Park. She finds Centre Street and picks out the avenue that is most likely where Liam lives, where Dani and Kamon are now. But probably not Gavin. The downtown skyline is upstaged by a searchlight swivelling, spewing random light to the sky. Far out in the distance are little farming towns where they still grow wheat and cars on fast highways that look like toys.

  She looks for the pony she’s sure she saw, but nothing moves. “I love Hannah and Josh,” she says.

  “I know.”

  She was waiting for him to agree, to tell her Hannah and Josh are the perfect parents. That’s what he told her after they met at the restaurant, but it’s harder now. She takes his hand and kneads it like she used to. “I know it’s not easy for you either.”

  “Don’t you think about changing your mind?”

  This is the opening she would have jumped into headfirst a few weeks ago, like when they were in Banff and their lives were going to be lived happily ever after. “Always,” she says, careful. “But this is about the baby, not me.”

  Liam stares at the city. “I don’t know where I’ll be in ten years, you know that? My hands could give out.”

  “I’d still love you.” Marla whispers it, and the way he looks at her takes her breath away, his jaw moving a bit like he’s thinking of what to say. It’s going to be amazing, she thinks, all those times she expected something huge rolled into one. But it’s not. He exhales through pursed lips. “You’re a good person, Marla,” he says finally.

  Something deflates in Marla’s throat. All this time she worried it was her who wasn’t good enough, but he felt the same way. He flexes his hands, his back very straight, his feet together. She wants to cry, not just from the effort he puts in, but how it comes from fear. He wants to be perfect because he’s afraid.

  “You’re my favourite person,” she tells him.

  There’s a kick from inside, and Liam startles, then busies himself to the task of finding the baby, identifying its moving limbs. The baby is the reason they’re here, why they’ve put so much emotion out there at each other, evading the messy crap that happens and scooping up the little moments that are worth holding onto. “We don’t even have a name for him,” Liam says.

  “He will have a name. A beautiful name.”

  “Or a present.”

  “Maybe Gavin can fix up the crib,” she says, and tips her head over her shoulder to kiss Liam.

  “No,” he says, pulling his head back. “We can’t.”

  She’s suddenly freezing in the summer breeze with her T-shirt and cut-offs. She stares into the night and realizes she can’t see her own house. It’s somewhere beyond the curve of the hill, full of black mould and river mud.

  “I thought we were—”

  “A couple?” He stares at her like Dave did when she broke the casserole dish. “But we hardly know what we’re doing.”

  “That’s the thing, Liam! You can’t know everything—like I don’t know how to have a baby. Other women are scared of that and practise stretching and opening and breathing for months.”

  He takes her hands. “Marla, I’m here. I will be there for the whole thing, holding your hand and stretching and opening and breathing with you. I’m not leaving.”

  She shakes her head, impatient. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about us.”

  The search light does its lazy rotation. “Can’t we just get through one thing at a time?”

  “No,” she tells him. “Real life doesn’t work that way. We have to stop pretending, accept that nothing’s perfect.”

  His wraps his arms around her. “I’m not pretending.” She concentrates on how warm his breath is on her neck and almost doesn’t hear what he says next. “Just afraid.”

  Marla inhales, her whole body softening as the long grasses bend in the night breeze. To the north, silhouetted against the lights of the city, is a doe. “Me too.”

  Gavin was nervous at first, but finds himself enjoying his second meeting with Justin, and loses himself in signing. It’s good, except Justin can’t keep up, and he uses home signs Gavin doesn’t recognize.

  “Why so hard?”

  Justin makes obvious mouth shapes. “Mainstreaming … friend … I … nobody … to sign.”

  “Not your family?” He shrugs. “They … just learning.”

  “Got to be other deaf people.”

  “You … the first.”

  Gavin feels a terrible sense of loss for Justin, shouldering deafness all alone. “We’ll go out, meet people.” Justin nods.

  “You’re great with him,” Justin’s mom says, signing. “You ever think of working with kids?”

  “I wanted to be an architect,” Gavin says, remembering his other life.

  “You should.”

>   When Gavin returns, he finds Liam and Kamon on the couch with the handbook, the boy tracing pictures with his finger and rubbing his cheek on the fabric. “This is the best fucking book,” he tells Gavin, “but it’s kinda broken.”

  “You’re right.” Gavin gets tape and string and twisty-ties and elastic bands so Kamon can bind the book, then draws a bird singing music notes. “This is your mommy’s handprint,” Gavin tells Kamon, signing.

  “I wanna do my foot!” So, Gavin traces it for him. When Marla brings Dani around the corner wrapped in a blanket, feverish, Gavin jumps up, but Dani shushes him.

  “Keep going, Gavin. It’s okay.” Dani takes a lipstick tube out of her pocket and draws a smiley face on the open page.

  Gavin exhales, realizing he’d been holding his breath. He knows exactly who to give the handbook to.

  Weather Forecast:

  Thursday, June 27 Friday, June 28

  Cloudy Periods Mainly Sunny

  High 23, Low 10 High 24, Low 11

  Saturday June 29 Sunday, June 30

  Sunny Cloudy Periods

  High 25, Low 12 High 26, Low 13

  Monday, July 1 Tuesday, July 2

  Mainly Sunny Sunny

  High 27, Low 14 High 28, Low 15

  Wednesday, July 3

  Sunny

  High 25, Low 12

  Every day everyone but Marla goes to work: Gavin does cleanup, and now Dani faces cans and bottles of salad dressing at the grocery store. She’s working on getting her mom’s permission to have Kamon overnight once a week as soon as she gets her own place. So, each morning Marla sits alone at Liam’s house which is not her house and watches the sun rise in the sky, heavy and round.