A Circle on the Surface

by Carol Bruneau

  25

  One fine evening early in June—the leaves in the barrens’ scrappy birch and poplar trees a soft green haze visible from upstairs—Hannah bellowed up that Hill was there to see him. Enman left Una lying in bed with the baby. Hubley was in the kitchen. Hannah had a rack of bottles boiling on the stove. They were jiggling away, a half-dozen rubber nipples and a cooling pot of formula ready and waiting. Offering a bottle of a different sort, Hill was the only one in Barrein who still didn’t appreciate that Enman fully intended to stay on the wagon.

  “How’s Missus? I hear she’s not doing so good.” Hubley passed the rum. Enman ignored it. Hill watched Hannah fit nipples onto the bottles, screw on lids. He looked incredulous, even a bit astonished. “She’s a good kid, is she? You know, at the time I thought you were out of line, pounding Twomey like you did. He’s not all bad, he never did nothing to me. Some say he deserved it, though.” Hill took a swig, nudged Enman with the bottle. “Why deprive yourself of something that takes the edge off, makes things bearable?”

  “Sure, and I’ve got a new car to sell you.”

  Enman knew why Hubley was here, Isaac’s party almost upon them. Win and Isla had been busy for weeks organizing the dance, convincing Father Heaney to rent the hall. “So much fuss, you’d think Isaac was the Second Coming himself.” Up to her eyeballs making lemon squares, fretting that no one would dance to one old guitar, Win kept dropping off samples. Bribes for Una, to coax her to get dressed and to manage the baby, even to get her to smile. “You could help yourself, Enman,” Win said, “by helping us out.”

  Simply to appease Hill, Enman took a quick sip. The burn felt medicinal, strange yet familiar, its temptation a line being jigged down inside him, sharp as a fish hook. Hannah had the baby now, cuddling her. Penny could almost hold her head up on her tiny stalk of a neck, round eyes fixing on him. He couldn’t stop searching for the old Una in them, the Una who had liked children and wanted a child. Handing the bottle back, he clipped Hill’s shoulder. “Got nowhere to practice, with Una in the house.”

  “All that Isaac’s done for you? Won’t look too good, you refusing to play.”

  “You’re shitting me. I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. You’re serious?” That was Hill’s reaction later on the phone. “Well. Get off the horn and warm up the axe!” Greeley Inkpen said Isaac nearly fell off his chair when he got wind of Enman’s willingness to play, though next evening’s dance was supposed to be a surprise. Win was relieved. “Do you good to get out and make people laugh. Kidding! I mean, you’ve still got a life, it’s a shame staying home because Una—”

  The only hitch was that Hannah had been enlisted to babysit at Isla’s. But Una insisted she would be fine at home with Penny.

  “If you’re absolutely sure,” he said.

  Enman stopped at Goodrows’ on his way to the hall. “I’m rustier than an old rooster,” he confided to Clint. “Guess it’s too late now to say I’ve got cold feet.”

  “Oh, shut it, if nerves is a problem someone’ll fix you up. Get in the truck, I’ll run you there myself.” Maybe Clint, maybe everyone, was afraid he would change his mind and chicken out.

  Really, Enman felt chuffed to be out of the house, freed from the feeling of continually walking on shell ice. He was more afraid of making an ass of himself than he was of the sweet sting of temptation.

  Sure enough, the Goodrow boy was parked out back with his truck, Father Heaney willing just this once to turn a blind eye. Maybe that was how you managed in this world, turning a blind eye. “Wouldn’t be a party without something to wet your whistle.” Clint clapped him on the back, leaving to find Win with the other ladies making tea and doing up plates of sandwiches and sweets in the hall’s big kitchen. Last year’s calendar, showing Christ and his glowing heart, hung on the wall.

  “Don’t worry about a thing. Our days of playing for free are o-ver, buddy boy.” Hubley waved a forty-ouncer as Enman stepped onto the stage. “I promise you, next time it’ll be cash money. Never mind. Have a drink.”

  “And play a decent note? Don’t think so.” His gut was a pot of squirming eels as he rosined his bow, the first time he’d taken it out since March. He should have practiced, could have stolen a bit of time at Inkpens’, after-hours.

  “You’ll be fine,” Hubley kept saying, as people trickled in. “I mean, you’ll never be Don Messer.”

  The thing was, Enman didn’t care about not being Don Messer, why would he? If he could choose to play like anyone, he imagined, it would be Yehudi Menuhin. “And if they don’t boo me off the stage I’ll be lucky.”

  “No, I’ll be lucky. Just joshing you, En. It’s a frigging party. No one’s gonna care if you mess up, flying the coop for one night. Getting out of the house, I mean.”

  All of a sudden, he looked up and the hall was packed. He’d have looked even stupider fleeing than staying put, sticking things out. It was more than stage fright he felt. Maybe paralysis was recompense for a few hours’ freedom?

  “You know ‘Little Burnt Potato’?” Hubley whispered sharply. “That’s a good opener.”

  Enman didn’t—he had heard it on the radio, sure, the latest hit by Messer and his Islanders. “Give me the lead and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “D major, bud—F and C sharp,” Hubley rasped, grinning at the crowd. “They’re here for a good time, Enman. Who’s here to party?” Hill boomed, then yelled, “Let’s hear it for Isaac, our man, and them lovely ladies in the kitchen—” Then Hubley started strumming—plunka plunka plunk—and there was no time to worry about eels or fingering or flubbing notes or any of it. Hubley ripped through “Potato” before Enman had barely found the key, launching from there into “Levantine’s Barrel” and “Flanagan’s Polka” so fast that already everything sounded the same. Not a pair of feet were still, though, most people loosened up with drinks. By the time Hubley was onto “Maple Sugar” it didn’t matter too much about the squawks and bleats he managed to draw out to accompany Hubley’s picking.

  A string of lights shone blue on Hubley’s forehead, accentuating the sweat. Enman supposed he looked the same under this blue that made him think of Una’s gloom. But then he peered down at the dancers having the time of their lives, frolicking in some interesting pairings, too—Sylvester Meade and Edgar Lohnes’s young wife, for instance, and Isaac, God help them all, dressed to the nines and step-dancing with the priest swishing around in his cassock.

  Jesus turns our sorrow into dancing, Ma might well have said. Indeed, he thought, and for a second it was as if Ma were out there too, twirling gamely on the old man’s arm. His parents, the two of them just young things, and Lester Finck somewhere glowering off to the side but placing designs on Iris—poor old Iris, the only Barreiner who wasn’t there, besides Twomey, Una, Hannah, and the babies. Good thing they weren’t; Enman wouldn’t need to be reminded tomorrow what a fool he’d made of himself.

  Eyes on his fingering, he caught the roughest glimpse of Win waltzing with Clint. Her shimmery pink dress showed off her bony hips and the life ring of fat at her waist and breasts that looked higher and pointier than usual. He noted this the way he did the outline of the cemetery through the darkened windows as Hubley shifted into a medley of “Twilight” and “That Man of Mine.” At the corner of his eye a pale face bobbed amidst the hail of swaying and jerking bodies and limbs, and he imagined Una. He wished it was Una, the woman in a greeny-blue dress weaving in and out among the couples. As the woman slipped forward, clapping her hands in time to Hubley’s strumming, Enman recognized her as Lester Finck’s niece. A woman who stood out like that would always be different from the way she appeared to be, Enman thought. Her appearance merely echoing some illusory version of herself, the way Una’s appearance had. He remembered Una the skater, whirling in circles on the Egg Pond’s glossy surface. She had been an illusion he had wanted to grasp and embrace and never let go of.

  Unspooling herself fr
om Clint, Win shimmied closer, beaming up at him. For a second she was the same skinny, freckled thing he’d kissed below the government wharf once at low tide, in between pulling the legs off starfish to see if they would grow back. Then Win receded and she and Clint seemed to vanish. Next the hall was emptying, like someone—Father Heaney? the ARP?—had just pulled the plug on the festivities.

  “We’re done already?” Finally warmed up, no longer caring at all if he hit the right notes or not, Enman felt a rush of disappointment.

  “It’s a fight,” someone shouted. “That goddamn Twomey.”

  He knew then, or had a pretty good idea of, what was happening. Win and Clint were nowhere to be seen. Something made him want to sit tight and keep playing—he’d master “The Little Burnt Potato” if it killed him—but Hubley had set down his guitar and, alongside some stragglers, made for the door.

  It would’ve been wiser to stay put. But curiosity got the better of him.

  The Mounties were outside with their cruiser. Father Heaney was begging them not to press charges. Consider it a one-time error in judgement, the boy didn’t mean any harm providing refreshments, think of the young fella’s parents. Clint was stooped over the boy himself, Joey or Grayson or was it Garson, holding a hankie to his son’s nose. Robart and Greeley had Twomey in a half nelson and a chokehold, one on either side of the guy. “Never a dull moment,” Sylvester Meade jeered. “Raw justice, fellas. What happens when youse oversteps yourself. What about poor Bart here? It’s his territory.”

  Win fled back into the hall, Enman right behind her, loosening his tie. Despite gulps of fresh air, he was still in a sweat. Win was crying, her shoulders shaking through that flimsy dress of hers. He put his arms around her. Hugging her tight to his chest, forget how sweaty he was, he felt her beery breath through his shirt. Nestled there, she was like a rocking buoy. “That’s it, girl. Don’t you worry. It’ll come out fine,” he was saying—not quite believing a word of it, but still—when Clint strode up and peeled his hands from her back. Never mind he was patting her the way he patted the baby, getting her to burp.

  “Enman Greene, you smug-assed bastard.” Pulling Win away, Clint marched her outside. Meanwhile, Father Heaney had come back in with Hubley. “Guess we’d better pack it in now, fellas.” His dog collar looked whiter than white, never mind his hair slicked to his scalp. Isaac kept shaking his head, saying he would kill Twomey himself for wrecking a good time. “Cops’ll handle him, so you won’t have to,” the priest said.

  “So that’s it?” Enman reluctantly put away his bow, eyeing Hubley. “Steady on, Steady Hills? Next time I’ll be in better form.”

  “That’s right, sir. Good enough. Come up the house for a nightcap? Tea?” Having no wife to disturb, Hubley could invite company at any hour.

  “Can’t.”

  Enman walked home feeling more pleased than he had in ages, despite the little misunderstanding with Clint. But the instant he entered the kitchen he sensed something was off. The light was on and Penny was crying in her makeshift cradle by the stove. An empty bottle of formula rested on the table, its glass cool to the touch. Hannah was still at Isla’s; they’d wanted her to stay late, settling their baby in.

  Una wasn’t in the front room or upstairs, nor was she in the cellar, where he’d rigged a line for drying diapers. She wasn’t on the front step, or in the yard. In a panic, carrying the baby, he checked the privy. She was nowhere to be seen.

  He called down to Isla’s. Una wasn’t there either. A few minutes later Hannah burst in, out of breath.

  “Where is she?” His whisper was a hiss as he tried to avoid making Penny cry.

  Una’s purse was gone and her pretty winter coat too, of all things, though it was warm enough, finally, to do without one.

  Aside from herself, her coat, and her purse, nothing else was missing. Aside from the baby being left alone—surely not for more than a few minutes?—nothing in the house seemed amiss.

  “Hannah. Be a pet, run next door. Ask Mrs. Goodrow to come over.”

  It was odd how Win avoided looking at the baby, avoided looking at him as she bustled in, bustled around. It was as if she feared pitying them.

  “Good thing she’s on the bottle, that’s all I can say—there’s one way she’s not missing her mum.” The one way she won’t, Win’s tone hinted. She seemed edgy, anxious to leave, but stayed to rock Penny while Hannah ran over to Meades’ and he got on the phone. Despite the hour, almost midnight, he started calling around. Robart’s wife hadn’t seen her nor had Iris Finck, whom he roused from a very deep sleep.

  As if moving about under water, hitting on the obvious, fighting disbelief, he dialled Kit’s number. Kit had come to visit and Una, somehow, had gone back with her to enjoy what she could of a change of scenery, some brief entertainment.

  “She said she’d be here, with me?” Kit sounded dodgy, then distressed.

  Enough bloody runaround, he almost said. “Look, put her on the phone. If she won’t come on the phone, put her in the car, bring her home.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” But Kit seemed more afraid than peeved. “Enman. She’s not here.”

  The baby had fallen asleep. Win put her upstairs in her crib and went to get Clint. A little while later the Goodrows came over together, Clint acting as if his outburst earlier hadn’t happened. One o’clock arrived and, fearing a mishap—Una had taken herself out for a breather, a stroll in the dark, had fallen, twisted an ankle, and, befuddled, disoriented, become lost—Enman had Clint help rally a search party.

  Despite the hour, despite the dark, all the men in the village, including the priest, the Inkpens, Hubley, Sylvester Meade, and his son—pretty much everyone but Bart Twomey—combed the barrens and the shoreline in both directions, east and to the west past the third beach at Shag’s.

  When by daybreak they turned up nothing, others came from O’Leery to join in the search, Timmy Flood and all three Goodrow boys including Joey, and even Twomey, begrudgingly, parties fanning out into the woods. They found nothing, no trace.

  In the days that followed, the police helped check the East Coast Port’s hospitals, the bus and train stations, even the docks and harbourmaster’s office for ships’ departures and manifests, and, eventually, the city morgue. Out of desperation Enman called the superintendent of schools, and the cousin of a cousin of Una’s who’d died in a torpedoed convoy, and even her former principal who offered the name and number of a fellow named Gregory. But nobody could say or would even hazard a guess about where Una might have disappeared to.

  There was no note—he turned the house upside down, looking for one—nothing with her writing but the poetry book with her name penned inside, and a grocery list with items jotted down. Canned salmon, cornstarch, Brillo pads. On the back, in Hannah’s printing, was a bit of gibberish, the words “kan n e 1 b to god?”

  Puzzling it out, he whispered into the baby’s downy scalp, “I don’t know, do you? Can a father be that way, too good?”

  “I’m sorry for your troubles,” Hill said over the phone, which was better to hear than “for your loss.” Because as far as Enman was concerned, Una was gone on a vacation, that was all. A dastardly, heartbreakingly selfish one, granted, but her smell was still in the house, her old smile hovering in those yellow walls, lingering in their gaudy paint whenever he noticed it. “Get out your axe. Play some tunes. Keep busy.” Hubley’s advice, as if his days of noodling on violin weren’t finally over.

  If he hadn’t gone off to play, she would not have been alone.

  Win was an angel doing what she could to help, short of becoming a wet nurse or doormat, though careful to leave diapering to him and Hannah. “Been there, done that.” Understandable, he supposed.

  Without Win, Hannah could not have managed on her own. And he could not have managed half as well as Hannah did. It was a good thing Hannah liked babies. Not knowing what exactly
had happened to Una threatened to bury him alive.

  A couple of weeks after Una disappeared, on a run to town, Robart spotted something floating in the waters near the Sisters bell buoy: something blue, Robart reported.

  Hearing this, Enman got Clinton to take him out in his boat and they circled around and around, looking and looking, motoring slowly toward the vast, rocking harbour. It was barely summer and threatening rain, and the sea had a steely roll to it. Yet suddenly, strangely, Enman had no fear. He had no fear of the water or the sea at all, he realized.

  He and Clinton hugged the shoreline and scouted it as closely as they could. Seeing nothing, nothing at all, they veered out deeper again, and not far from the Neverfail can buoy, Clinton spied a piece of clothing hugging the swells.

  Clothing, that’s all it was when Enman managed to snag and gaff it aboard. Foolish, foolish, the strange leap of something, a flare, not exactly of hope, in his chest. It was just an old rag left to float, cast adrift, lost by someone off some longliner, perhaps. A ragged old coat, its wool was streaked with salt and gnawed by fish and propellers, battered by waves. A bearded mussel clung to one cuff—you couldn’t even tell what shade of blue the coat might have been, though something about it suggested a bright cornflower hue.

  As he turned it over in the bottom of the boat, peering down, he looked and looked again. And he recognized a button.

  There was just the one that the sea hadn’t stolen. It was a scratched, faded blue that once might have been almost black, inset with a tiny circle of mother-of-pearl that had somehow survived the surf. Seeing that mother-of-pearl, he hung his head over the side and vomited, aware of Clint stepping past him to the wheelhouse.

  Neither of them spoke as they steamed homewards with their find. What was there to say? Enman knew then with certainty that Una was not coming back.

  He buried the coat in the garden, unsure about what else to do with it. It felt like some observance of church ritual. He kept the button, though, in a little wooden box Una had given him to keep his cufflinks in. She’d bought it when he bought her the coat for her birthday, at Wood’s department store.