The High-Rise in Fort Fierce

by Paul Carlucci

  He reached out in the dark and tussled her hair with his fishy hands. He said he was leaving them, her mother and her. He might be back, but it could be years from now if he was. The fish company was always talking about closing the plant. Years of this now. He was done buying into that place. He said there was nothing good about a town that hung an axe over its people. He said he loved her, and her mom, but he was going to work in a granary in Saskatchewan. He’d send money. If she wanted, she could come visit him next summer. It wouldn’t be camp, but she was getting too old for that anyway. He wasn’t making promises, though, not yet. They’d have to wait and see.

  “You get what I’m saying, Mar?” He bent over, kissed her forehead with his rough lips, scraped her nose with his grizzled chin. Then he stood up and left the room.

  Before school the next morning, she went down to the shore and looked into the river. Along the marshy bank behind Ms. Baker’s house, the thin, green reeds had been flattened and, in the hard-packed mud, there were still footprints from Ms. Baker’s family. The river was murky, curtains of brown sand twisting in its currents, scraps of tree bark corkscrewing around. Marly imagined millions of tiny flakes of Ms. Baker sloshing through the water. She dipped her hand in, made a cup of her palm, and drank.

  V

  Marly never went to camp, but not because she couldn’t afford it. By grade ten, she’d gotten a part-time job at Northern Groceries. A cashier. And her dad sent money from down south, even called sometimes, and her mom seemed very happy with this arrangement. She’d put on makeup and dress nicely and sit at the kitchen table, and the two of them would be on the phone for an hour. They’d actually be laughing, and when finally her mom passed the phone to Marly, her dad’s voice was almost unrecognizable. He’d say normal dad things, like how’s school or tell me about your friends, and so Marly made up nice stories, because intuitively she understood her role in this new arrangement. Eventually, the phone calls petered out, but the money came reliably, always at the end of the month.

  Nevertheless, she didn’t go to camp. It seemed ridiculous, after a while, to do a thing like that. Because what was wrong with Fort Fierce, really? Socially, things had improved. She’d grown curves on her chest and around her hips and she could tell some of the boys liked them—she caught them staring—but a lot of guys hated them, or at least that’s what they told her. Still, she’d outgrown the most ruthless years of high school, and some kids even tried to treat her nicely, which she could tell was insincere, but at least it wasn’t cruel. Cruelty was a plague for younger kids, like pimple-spattered Norman Franklin, who recently was made to eat a lump of strange dirt that was probably dog shit. As for Marly, she had a routine and a peaceful home to live in, and going to camp would’ve meant giving that stuff up, even if only temporarily, and who knew what would replace it?

  Besides, in the dying days of grade eleven, she snagged herself a boyfriend. For a few weeks. Sort of. There was an unchanging population in Fort Fierce, a hard and immovable core of people who were born there and didn’t leave, or who moved there and couldn’t find their way out. But there was a transient community as well, surprisingly large, especially in the summer, and this because too many of the public-sector jobs demanded skills and experience the locals just didn’t have, or because people had ruined their lives in the south and been lured north by the promise of escape. That’s how she met Owen, who said he worked on an economic development taskforce the town put together to navigate yet another rough patch. He was thirty-five and skinny and tall, with a patchy brown beard, and he wore sunglasses around his neck with a ratty string. When he talked, he sounded the way a puppet might, like he was so friendly it was unreal.

  Marly had taken to walking the riverside trails at night, but she’d go out late, after her mother went to bed and she was sure she wouldn’t bump into anyone else. That way she could enjoy the sun, even if she happened to sweat through the folds of her T-shirts, which were always too tight, too clingy, but they were black, and she liked black; black was in. She’d pass Ms. Baker’s house, unoccupied since the old woman died, then Carolyn’s, and then the neighbourhood would fade away and she’d be on the edge of town, as far from the centre as she’d ever gone.

  She met Owen on one of these walks. He was sitting on a tall rock in the river shallows, smoking a cigarette with his knees hugged against his chest. She halted when she saw him, was about to turn around and slip back down the trail, but he’d already spotted her, and he waved and smiled and said, “Have a look at this over here.”

  She’d grown to recognize false friendliness in the way people talked, because that’s how bullies sometimes lured her in, but she didn’t hear anything like that in Owen, so she approached and found him enthralled by a few deer tracks in the soft muck at the edge of the river.

  “Look,” he said, releasing his knees to gesture at the tracks. “Totally magical, don’t you think?”

  Marly sucked her upper lip and shrugged. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess they are.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I get it. Local girl, right? Seen it all. But just like me, you can’t sleep with that sun so bright at night, am I right?”

  He jumped off the rock, easily clearing the little gap of water that separated him from the shore. He was wearing a faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt and khaki shorts and his keys were attached to a belt loop by a little blue carabiner. They jingled when he landed, and Marly thought he might be a creep. She took a step back. He smiled, took a jingling step forward.

  “Wait,” he said. “Before you go. I need your help.”

  If she ran, he probably wouldn’t chase her. That would be too much. But if he did chase her, she’d get maybe ten or fifteen paces ahead of him, and then he’d pour on the speed and catch her in no time. So she didn’t run, because what was the point? “I don’t know. I should be getting back.”

  “Of course,” he said, but then he started talking about his job and how the town had asked him to survey young people. “Just to gather some data, you know. How many want to stay? How many want to go? Of the ones who stay, what do they see themselves doing for work? What would they like to do? All that kind of thing.”

  Oh, thought Marly, her guard dropping. He was just one of those nerdy men who appeared in town every now and then and couldn’t get over all the northerny stuff they were doing, like eating caribou and staying up all night on the summer solstice. He said he had a wife and kid in Ottawa and he tapped his wedding ring and in the same breath asked her what it was like growing up in a place like Fort Fierce.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess that depends who you are. I’m, you know, getting used to it.”

  He frowned and made a sympathetic noise.

  “But let’s say you’re Carolyn Parker. If you’re Carolyn Parker, you’re blonde and beautiful and your parents are rich and you date athletes, so naturally you just love it shitless.”

  Owen scratched his beard. “Carolyn Parker, eh? A friend of yours?”

  Marly thought this over. “She might do your survey. I could ask her. But I want to do it first.”

  He clapped his hands. “That’d be great. Let’s sit under this tree here.”

  So Marly told him about her job at Northern Groceries and how after she finished high school, she’d probably just keep working there. Maybe she could manage one of the departments. She liked produce, and she liked the bakery, and how cool would it be to head up one of those sections?

  Owen nodded and said it would be very cool, but Marly could tell he wasn’t impressed, which was fair enough, because her vision wasn’t all that impressive. She lapsed into an awkward silence and he just looked at her, eyes combing her face, down her neck, up again, and she said, “Well, actually, my real dream is to open a grocery store for myself. Right here in town. I’d like to open a store and make it the best in Fort Fierce.”

  Owen gave a long, low whistle. “Wow. Now you’re talking, kid. Let me tell you, it pays to dream big. Your parents must be proud. What do they do?”<
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  “My dad isn’t around anymore, but he sends us money. My mom’s a teller at the bank.”

  “Super cool. You live around here?”

  “Yeah. About a fifteen-minute walk from where we are.”

  “Well, maybe we should head back, then. It’s getting late.”

  He didn’t seem creepy at all anymore. He seemed like a bit of a loser, actually. Working on his survey off-hours. Spouting clichés about dreaming big. Worried that it was getting late. Owen was probably a total nerd, and once she realized this, Marly found she liked him. He probably grew up just like her, alone and misunderstood and tormented by his peers. Was it weird to have a friend as old as he? Probably. But Marly was already weird. Why not have a buddy while she was at it?

  He talked about his son on the walk home, a three-year-old named Benjie, already expressing himself in complete sentences. Then he talked about his wife, said she worked at a bank, just like Marly’s mom, except she worked in the loans department, and he rolled his eyes, like what could be more boring?

  When they got to Shorelines, he asked her if she wanted him to walk her home, just to be safe, and Marly pointed at her house and said not to worry, she lived right there, and he gestured at the high-rise and said that’s where he slept.

  “And man, is it ever late. I’d better be getting to sleep, or I won’t function at work tomorrow.”

  “Um,” said Marly. “You know what? I could meet you tomorrow, if you wanted. Help you with your survey a little more.”

  Owen smiled. “Oh, that would be just perfect.”

  So for the next few weeks, she met him on the trail every second or third night. They talked about how she could start her own grocery store—capital, she’d need access to capital—and how his research was going—it was tough, he said, to find friendly kids in this town.

  “Say,” he said one night. They were both sitting on the same rock she’d seen him on when they met. Their legs were touching, and he didn’t seem to mind. “I had an idea.”

  Marly’s heart started beating hard.

  “Could you bring me your yearbook? You know, point out the friendly kids for me? I’m getting nowhere with my survey.”

  It wasn’t what she was expecting, but it seemed reasonable, so the next time they met up, she had it with her. As far as Marly was concerned, there were no nice kids in town, not when it came to surveys or anything else. But she’d been careful not to let him know the extent of her situation, just in case it spoiled his opinion of her. She’d left him with the impression that she was friends with Carolyn, and after a few minutes of flipping through her yearbook, Owen asked which one was the blonde girl Marly always talked about, what was her name again, oh right: Carolyn.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” said Owen, tapping his finger on Carolyn’s class photo. “Don’t you think?”

  “Um, yeah. She is.”

  “You think she’d do my survey? Remember you said you’d ask her?”

  “I think she would, yeah, but I don’t know. It’s been hard getting ahold of her recently. She’s got, um, a new boyfriend.”

  Owen frowned. “Oh. Well, that’s too bad. You’ll try, though, right? It’s important. So far, all I’ve really got is you, and that’s not enough. My boss said so.”

  Marly promised she would, and she even considered knocking on Carolyn’s door, asking her if she wanted to go for a walk one night to meet a man along the river, but even though she wanted to help Owen get his work done, she could feel his attraction to Carolyn building and building, like when she was a kid and in the winter time she pressed her hands against the windows in school, and it didn’t hurt at first, but eventually the cold got so intense it bit her flesh.

  “I haven’t been able to get in touch with her,” she told him the next time they met.

  “Why not? You said you would.”

  Marly looked at her feet. She was wearing a dress her mom had bought her. It was black with white stripes, and this was the first time she’d ever worn it outside the house. She thought Owen would say something about it, but he was too upset about his survey. “Sorry,” she said. “She’s just never at home.”

  “What about at school?”

  Marly hung her head, saw that her stomach had been sweating through her dress. “Yeah, but she’s always busy, you know, because it’s the end of the year and all.”

  “Look,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’m sorry. This is me being a jerk right now. It’s just stressful, you know, trying to get this research done. That’s all.” He took a few steps down the trail, back toward town. “I’ve actually got to get going. I need to do a bit of work tonight.”

  It was hard keeping up with him on the way home, like he was trying to outpace her or something. They didn’t speak until they got out of the woods.

  “Bye,” she said, turning toward home.

  “Oh,” said Owen. “Which house is Carolyn’s, by the way? I’ll have to ask her parents about arranging an interview.”

  “The big one,” Marly said, reluctantly pointing up the street.

  “Great,” said Owen. “That’s perfect.”

  He started walking toward the high-rise. It was all Marly could do not to burst into tears. She stood there, struggling to control herself.

  “By the way,” Owen called out, looking over his shoulder with a smile. “That’s a lovely dress, you know. It really is.”

  She smiled like her face would explode. Smiled until he was out of sight. Smiled when she crept back into the house. Smiled while she lay in bed, trying to sleep.

  But she didn’t get to talk to Owen again. She went to meet him, dozens of times, but he never showed up at their spot, and when she did finally see him, the school year had ended and it was the middle of the day, raining. She was on her break at Northern Groceries and he was walking across the parking lot with Carolyn, holding an umbrella over her head, the two of them deep in conversation.

  VI

  Ten years passed before Marly met another outsider, a guy named Mike. He chose her queue at the grocery store. He set his milk carton on the conveyer belt, put his hands in his pockets, and stared at the floor.

  “Excuse me?” Marly whispered so none of her co-workers would overhear. “That milk’s expired. By like a couple weeks. You really gotta watch for that around here.”

  He had a small, cherry-coloured mouth that matched his eyelids. He smiled, cleared his throat, made fleeting eye contact, and said he’d buy it anyway; he was in a rush.

  Marly touched the carton with her index finger. “But it’ll make you sick.”

  “No, no,” he said. “I’ll just pour it down the sink.”

  His wallet appeared between them and he fumbled to remove his credit card. His fingers were pale, the skin peeling of their tips in white, prickly looking strips. He managed to get the card out but dropped it on the conveyer belt. They both looked at it. They both reached for it. Their fingers touched for a second, and Marly said, “Swipe right, stripe inside.”

  Mike was a manager at one of the diamond mines, two weeks on, two weeks off. He was rangy and tall, with nervous eyes, and on their first date at the pub he spilled his rum and coke on the bar and left trembling. Marly paid for the drink and had another one alone. Then she went home. He called her the next day but didn’t speak until she said his name, and then he apologized in a tiny whisper. He took medication for anxiety. He got nervous waiting for Jeopardy to come on. Marly felt bad when she imagined the likes of Niles Willis walking all over him on the job site.

  Mike lived on the tenth floor of the high-rise. The only picture on his walls was in the living room, above the couch, a school portrait of his sister when she was a little girl, barrettes and dimples and a toothy smile. She’d become a real estate agent in Miami and he hadn’t seen her in years. For their second date, Marly came over with fixings to make macaroni and cheese. She made tuna salad to go with it and brought him a fresh carton of milk. They watched Jeopardy and Mike knew where is Kathmandu and who is Key
nes and what is the Boer War. Marly knew who is Gordon Lightfoot. Mike threw up after they had two minutes of sex on his leather couch and Marly brought him a glass of water with ice. His fridge was spotless. He showed her where he kept his medications, just in case.

  Marly’s mother said time was of the essence in a situation like that, and if a man shows you around his medicine cabinet, he’s shown you around his heart. This made sense in some ways, but in others not at all.

  Still, Marly showed up at Mike’s one night with two expensive bottles of red. She tried to bake two fillets of trout, but she burned them because she’d drunk too much wine and each time she went pee, she also stood in front of the mirror, teasing her hair, adjusting her breasts, clearing her throat. Why had she worn a T-shirt? It seemed right at home. Now it seemed flippantly casual, especially because Mike was wearing a collared shirt buttoned right up to his throat.

  She took the fish out of the oven and unwrapped the foil and they ate it off the counter, picking around the burnt spots, and when it was done, Marly said, “Want some water? Want to get married?” Mike’s mouth fell open and stayed that way, and at first Marly took this as a rejection, but then she saw that he was nodding. Just barely, but barely was good enough. Barely was still nodding.

  They got married at town hall. Marly and her mother wore matching dresses, kissed each other on the cheeks in front of the registrar, and then Marly moved in with Mike. It was wintertime and they had their honeymoon in the apartment. They watched the aurora dance around, and Marly whispered about how she’d accidentally killed Ms. Baker when she was thirteen. Misplaced anger, she said. Mike said that was impossible and Ms. Baker’s skeleton did not descend from the sky to prove him wrong.

  A year later, she cheated on him with Niles Willis. It was March, and Mike was onsite way up north of Yellowknife, where there were no roads leading in or out, only a little airport the company had built. Marly was home alone, bored, so she went to see a blues band at the bar, the same band that played every Saturday, and they were always too drunk even to play the twelve-bar standards, so the singer just shouted George Thorogood lyrics while everyone else tuned their instruments.