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Believing Cedric

Page 25

by Mark Lavorato


  “Well? Don’t you think?” Annette repeated, a little impatient.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.” Melissa switched on the tape deck, turning it up a bit, rolled her window down farther, and went back to watching the fields as they moved past, fields strewn with hay bales now, like course-haired creatures, she fancied, hunched over and sleeping, oblivious to that exceptionally wide-open sky and the elephantine clouds that padded along the prairie with their shadows.

  In the evening of day five, after they’d decided to take the shorter, though less scenic, southerly route through the Rockies, they passed through a city that Melissa had heard the name of innumerable times growing up. When she saw the first exit ramp slide away from their lane, she tried to look through the chain-linked fences that were choked with tumbleweeds and plastic bags, and over the concrete sound barriers into the town proper, as if straining to see something in particular.

  “Are you looking for a restroom pull-off or something?” asked Annette. “Or you wanna get some orange juice for tomorrow morning again?”

  “No,” Melissa shrunk back into her seat, almost managing to look guilty. “It’s kinda weird. This is where I was born. But then we moved to Toronto when I was two, so I have no memories of it.”

  “Really? Whoah. Well . . . I dunno—do you wanna stop or something?”

  “Uhh. Not really.”

  “Whoah. So do you, like, still have family here and stuff?”

  “No, not that I know of. My mom’s parents moved to Burlington a few years after we did, and my dad’s folks were killed in a car wreck when I was eleven, on some country road around here, I imagine. The story goes that my granddad was famous for falling asleep at the wheel. Something you can only be famous for for so long, I guess. So if I do have relatives here, they’re distant ones. I remember my dad flying back every once in a while, just for weddings and funerals kind of thing, so, who knows, I might. But if I knocked on their door—I mean, what would I say to them?”

  “Yeah, right,” Annette acceded, doing an over-shoulder check and changing lanes. They’d driven past most of the exits to Lethbridge now and were cutting between the coulees, crossing a broad river valley where Melissa watched an extensive railroad bridge as it ran parallel to the highway, towering pylons as black as the coal it was initially built to transport. It struck her as one of those industrial eyesores that had since become quite funky, in that chic-urban steampunk kind of way. She was about to comment on it but didn’t. They drove up the other side of the coulee where the highway opened onto a yawning skyline and a road-gridded carpet of prairie that unrolled all the way out to the Rockies. They found a cheap-enough campground just as the peaks started to rise and shoulder into the wide panorama that their eyes had become used to. It was near the site of a devastating landslide that had buried part of a town in 1903, the sprawling boulderfield so barren it could have happened yesterday. They clambered to the top of one of the larger rocks and ate submarine sandwiches for dinner, talking disjointedly about all the houses that had never been excavated in the wake of the disaster, the homes that were buried beneath them.

  Two days later, after a ferry ride and a flat tire, which a brusque middle-aged woman had pulled over to help them change, counselling them on car maintenance and emergency preparedness as she did so, they pulled into Tofino. A few icebreaking activities transitioned smoothly into the orientation of their sleeping quarters, live-in policies, and the whereabouts of the cleaning supplies. Annette effortlessly fit in with the other staff, the rally of small talk and niceties, anecdotes of alcohol and university bashes. Melissa nevertheless felt herself budged out onto the wayside. She was beginning to come to terms with the fact that she was more socially awkward than she’d ever imagined herself being, more reserved, introverted. She reminded herself, however, that she hadn’t come all this way for the party scene, for the marijuana nebulae and beach fires. She’d come here for the beach itself. Or for the ocean anyway.

  It was the first time Melissa had ever been to the seaside, let alone lived on one. Everything she looked at was a surprise, or bizarre, seemed to have sprouted directly from the pages of an implausible science fiction novel. She was most taken with the tidal pools, stepping out among the green anemones and their orifices of filament tentacles, the tiny sculpins invisible in their camouflage, shore crabs scuttling into recesses, limbs tucking tight, the hiss of seagrapes. She liked the tracks and traces in the wet sand that adjoined the pools, the life that had ventured out of them. And the purple, orange, and maroon starfish that clung to the rocks in expressive positions, their reaching arms, shrugging shoulders, hanging heads, splayed out on the barnacle-sprinkled surfaces like sailors having just crawled onto land from a shipwreck, limp and exhausted, reduced to ragged stickmen.

  Sometimes, falling asleep to the swelling rumble of the surf, she would think about the waves on McKenzie Beach, the campground’s own, about the way they rolled in so consistently, insistently, unyielding, undying. She would lie in her tiny room that smelled of particleboard and new paint (which was already losing the battle against the mildew) and consider how long these waves had been rolling in for, in exactly the way they were then. And exactly as they are now. Right now. Rolling onto the sand, turning over in the sun, in the dark. Like they have for millennia. Like they will for millennia. Whatever way you stood beside it, the sea had a way of reshaping, of eroding, your humility.

  Melissa would call home to tell Julie about most all of this, talking from a phone booth in the parking lot, leaning against the glass door to stare up at the lamp in the one streetlight of the parking lot, the bulb aswirl with a snow-flurry of moths. But enough about her, she would finally say, how about you, Mom, how are things over there? You enjoying your pottery classes again? What do you mean you talked to Dad? Yeah but, why bother? Seriously. A groan while hanging up the phone, the mood of her night suddenly soured.

  On her days off she would walk into town, grey skies, drizzle brightening the colours of the yellow sea kayaks on the water, of the orange of the customers’ survival suits aboard the whale-watching zodiacs. Girls on long skateboards steering clear of puddles; bicycles with surfboard racks, riders’ arms drooping from the handlebars in a wet-dog slouch; organic coffee shops, soya sprouts in every sandwich; all while abrasive float planes bore down on the village overhead, with their pontoons like skis dangling from a blaring chairlift, the artists in their boutiques seemingly deaf to it, some of them white illustrators wearing crystal pendants, specializing in Haida art.

  Looking back, it was more like the dog found Melissa than the other way around. She’d been reading on the beach one evening, with her back to the butt-end of a driftwood log, when it stepped out from behind her and sat down well within arm’s reach, wagging its tail and watching her with a familiarity that suggested it had known Melissa all its life. While petting it, Melissa had looked around for the owner, assuming that, whoever they were, they were sure to be nearby. But after a long scratch that progressed to an ecstatic belly rub, no one had come forward or even seemed to be looking at her. She read on, a hand on the perky-eared mutt, a black mongrel that was lanky and long-haired, its fur salt-clotted, sand-speckled. An hour passed and still no owner. Then two, three. She finally walked the length of the beach, expecting the dog to spot its master for her, but failing to do so, she circled the entire campground with the dog in tow, hoping for the same. Nothing. The poor thing, she thought, looked to be pretty hungry too. She rummaged up a bag of chips and some milk-soaked bread and spilled it all out on the tarmac near her room. As night fell, wondering what she should do with it until the morning, where it was going to sleep, the dog suddenly stood up and sauntered off, back toward the beach, conversely, as if it had never met Melissa in its life. But the beach is where she found it the next evening, after it had spent most of the day with another prospective adopter. The pattern was set. Sometimes the people the dog had spent the day with would ask if Melissa was the owner, as it lay down next to her in th
e sand, as soon as she’d finished her shift. She would shrug her shoulders, say that no, it was a complete mystery who it belonged to, and both of them would look down at the dog, who would then jump to its feet and trot out to the waves to chase shorebirds. Melissa bought it some dog food in town and tried to guess its name, shouting common canine-sounding monikers out over the beach, watching for a reaction, and deduced that it was something that had a few syllables and ended with an “ah.” A guess, she would learn, that was right on the mark.

  It was a rare sunny day and she was taking her lunch break on the beach, a hand on the dog’s belly while it squirmed on its back, mouth open, eyes closed, when a bearded man stopped at Melissa’s feet and stood there, smiling. “Hi,” Melissa said, squinting hard, thinking it a bit strange the way he’d approached.

  “Hey,” he replied, at which point the dog, recognizing his voice, spun around and sprung to its feet, giving him an excitable and long-awaited greeting. “See you found an interim owner again, eh pup?” While he patted her, he looked up at Melissa to speak. He had cold-green eyes and a thick leather string tied around his neck, the knot acting as the ornament, a pendulum keeping time over his clavicle. “She’s probably ‘lost’ for about a week a month, on average. Though it’s worse in the summer, when the people she adopts aren’t locals and don’t know she’s mine. Takes a bit longer to find her. Hey, Lolita?” He thumped the drum of her rib cage. “Hmm? You unloyal little floozy.” After this, having given a more than adequate conciliation dance, Lolita’s ears cupped with attention at the waves where a group of plovers had landed on the shore. She was obliged to lope out and investigate, leaving Melissa and Jim (she would learn his name was) to talk idly about Lolita, the plight of the migratory birds that she ceaselessly accosted, and finally where each of them were from, what they were doing in Tofino for the summer. He was a surfer first and foremost, making ends meet by guiding sea kayak excursions through the tourist season. He lived off a logging road that was a bit of a drive from town, the main reason he was losing Lolita all the time, who would find a promising flock of birds while he was out surfing and then become a black dot in the fog-bank distance, eventually disappearing. Jim’s home was apparently a shack he’d constructed himself, mostly out of salvaged lumber that he’d found in various places, including the beach he lived on, a rocky shoreline that had a good set of waves over the winter, with plenty of tidal pools and wildlife around. Actually, he’d said, if she ever wanted to come out and see it for herself, she was welcome to. Sensing her hesitation he added that she could bring a few friends, make a day trip out of it, see something new in the area.

  Melissa thought it over, following Lolita as she traversed the beach in a wiry sprint, pivoting in an about-turn, and bounding back the same way she’d come. A child unexpectedly broke away from his parents to chase wildly after her. “Yeah. Sure, why not?”

  It was the morning of Melissa’s next day off, with three of the other campground workers, when they all piled into his corroded Datsun pickup. Jim collected another friend and some beer in town along the way, everyone settling into their places for the ride, in either the cab or the box, seat-belted in or balancing on the wheel wells. Melissa was in the back, where the wind whipped her hair so hard against her face that it stung and she had to duck down out of it, easing onto her back in the bed of the truck, hands behind her head, ankles crossed. Above the truck on the highway, a daytime moon was gliding between the trees, half full and following them, a crooked Cheshire-cat smile. They turned onto a gravel logging road where the leaves on the roadsides were frosted over with dust, the logging-truck tires kicking up clouds, coating the heavy leaves, smudging them like the skin of plums.

  Lolita met them at the beach, the bustle of people hopping out of the back, scattering out along the rocks, throwing sticks that the dog couldn’t have cared less about, Lolita curiously eyeing the pieces of wood as they bounded off the stones, then a quick bemused glance at the thrower. Melissa and Jim drank beer on a log overlooking the water, moss climbing the trees at their backs. She’d seen his simple shack that smelled of cedar, driftwood table chainsawed flat, a two-burner camp stove, foam bed, two jugs of water with plastic valves placed over a sink that he’d salvaged from a demolition site. He spoke with quiet satisfaction about his own resourcefulness and innovation. And before the end of the day, he’d leaned in and kissed her, inviting her to come back whenever she wanted. Like the next day she had off, he proposed, shrugging the potential in her direction. Melissa had smiled, given a nod. “Sure. I’d be into that.”

  It was how she spent every one of her days off for the rest of the summer. He would pick her up in the evening after work, and if it wasn’t raining, they would wile their hours away in front of his fire pit; if it was, they would cook in his shack, the eaves trickling with long silver threads outside, while inside, the one window dripped with steam from his dented cooking pots. Among the pinecone artefacts and faded rocks on the windowsill was a small prism that he’d found, separating what it could of the feeble light that filtered through the rain clouds and the sweat of the glass, dealing out the dimmest hues onto the wood in front of it, the colours of a nighttime rainbow. They would prepare shellfish that they’d dug up themselves, Melissa setting his too-low table with plates and utensils that didn’t have a single matching pair among them. During the meal, she would often ask him about surfing, never losing her fascination with how elusive he was about it. You just knew, he would say—you knew. When you started off surfing, it might take weeks before you actually stood up on your board. But once you did, after that first time, there was something you caught a glimpse of, there, during that brief moment when you were connected to—when you were actually a part of—an ocean swell rolling in. And it was something you couldn’t see or learn or study anywhere else, it was just a sudden knowledge, a divinity; you knew that this was what living was all about. After listening to this, Melissa would look out the window, through the beaded curtain of droplets streaking the glass, and wonder what, for her, living was all about. Most of the time she thought she knew. Most of the time, she was pretty sure she had her own version of catching that glimpse.

  They made love with an intensity and frequency that varied a great deal. Sometimes with a carnal fervour, rushed and impatient, pieces of clothing still left on, or the stitches strained to a slight ripping sound as they were being pulled off. Or they would take their time, often following a frigid evening swim, after which beads of seawater would seep from his beard for hours, globules sidling through the knots of its dense hair, shifting through the bristles like mercury. The only thing constant in their sex was a peculiarity of his, the way he would slide down afterwards, in the post-coital calm, and with his face near her breasts, run his fingers lightly around them, exploring their surface and touch as if it were a first-time experience, running his lips over them as if trying to find a word to describe their taste. Once, he fell asleep with her nipple in his mouth, and she cradled his head like a child, stroking the side of his beard. She thought then about how much things had changed since the first time she’d had sex, in her parents’ basement at seventeen.

  It had been with Nathan (who she still hung out with at times), with his nervous and hyperactive gestures. It was over within seconds, hurt, and ended with his falling asleep a few minutes later, facing her, his mouth open, teeth hanging, bad breath. She remembers how outrageously far it was from what she’d always been sure it was going to be. This act that had been such a taboo all her life, that had been seen as a rite of passage for so long, guarded by so many hurdles that she’d had to, not jump, but fumblingly knock down along the way, lifting the veil of guilt, of unshakeable societal views on purity and women; it was the one act and urge that was bolstered with enough trimmings and hype to give it centre stage (or at least an unacknowledged main role) in almost everything that people ever did; and there she was, lying on her parents’ couch, having learned that, after all the buildup and anticipation, in reality, the
act was just—utterly—lacking. An insight that felt overwhelming at the time, almost revolting. She’d eased off the couch, collected her clothes, and went up to her room where she slid open the drawer she kept her spiral-bound notebooks in, some empty, some full, and wrote the thing that she needed most to write.

  How different it was now. How sustaining, enjoyable. It was understood between her and Jim that their relationship would be limited to a summer affair, and nothing more. Which, strangely, was what allowed her to be as involved as she was in it, as open, as present. Now when she eased away from the warmth under the sheets, it was only ever to put on her sandals and walk to the toilet outside, into a night that was wild and roiling and black, void of any artificial light. On the way she would think about the two bears she’d seen in the area before, foraging along the shore near the outhouse, eating seaweed and sending the scavenging ravens into flight; ravens with their moulted wings leaving spaces between their feathers like fronds of bracken, slats of grey sky sieving through before they landed in one of the arbutus trees nearby; those trees with their strange bark unfurling, illicitly peeling themselves back to naked ochre skins. And once she was there at the outhouse, she wouldn’t close the door, having learned to appreciate even this, squatting over the toilet seat that Jim had carved, listening to the cedars tower, with their croaks and whispers, releasing volleys of collected raindrops every now and then, while below, the soaking wind would comb through the ferns and horsetail, their leaves dark and palaeozoic, where she imagined animals, crustaceans, and slugs, hidden and probing the busy shadows with their tentacles and whiskers. Walking back through these nights, slipping into a bed that was as warm as childhood.

  At the end of that August in 1999, she packed her clothes and a jar of seashells that she’d collected over the summer into the back of Annette’s car, gave Jim a tight hug and Lolita a pat (which the dog hardly noticed), and drove away. She hadn’t exchanged an address or phone number with him, or even, it occurred to her on the ferry back to the mainland, learned what his last name was. Melissa, leaning on an upper-deck railing, watching the mossy islands slide past, knowing—with a kind of sudden knowledge—that if she were to do it all again, she wouldn’t change a thing.

 

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