The first email postcard we send from May’s secret funeral cortege comes from the Terry Fox Memorial in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The monument stands along the Trans-Canada Highway, a life-sized statue of a young man running on an artificial, metal leg.
“It’s kind of gorgeous,” I write. “The base he’s standing on is all decorated in chunks of raw amethyst. The bronze statue looks impressive but they say the metal is actually mixed with a bunch of sawdust and stuff. Maybe that’s just a rumour they spread to discourage anyone from stealing it to sell for scrap. Who knows?”
Jet-set Martin holds me to the promise of not making him leave with the rest of us in a rented SUV to dawdle through thousands of miles of wilderness. We drive to Toronto without him. A few days into the trip, a grey-haired lady appears in the online photos with us and the suitcase. She shines out of the screen with the same sunrise smile as Martin’s.
From Guelph, the four of us drive to the Atlantic coast through a blur of bad French, expensive gas, and roadside sandwiches.
When we arrive in Halifax, Ashley writes to the sisters at home. “They call this stretch of water the Northwest Arm, and it’s basically a liquid parking lot for yachts. On the shore overlooking the whole thing there’s this old, stone tower with two bronze lions sitting on either side of its entrance. At least, I think they’re bronze. Tina says they must be mostly copper. She says you can tell because they’re green now and not copper coloured at all. What kind of sense does that make?”
The sisters at home don’t hear much from us once Martin joins us and we head out to sea. It’s safer to stay away from land until we’ve got well beyond the United States with its rabid border security. They hate freezer bags. This quiet interval must’ve been hard for Suzanne.
“I wonder what they’re doing,” she’ll be asking Heather, as if Heather knows.
And Heather will answer, as if she knows.
We hide from the cold spray for the first few days at sea. When we reach the lower latitudes we lie in the still, open air trying not to get sunburnt and fat. Ewan sent along books for us to study on the voyage—typical Ewan books, really gripping stuff about the native flora and fauna and fungi of Belize.
Finally, we veer close enough to land to post a picture from my phone. The entire frame is full of water—a whole horizon of water.
“This is the Bermuda Triangle,” I write to my sisters. “Remember when Dad went to that convention in Bermuda when we were kids? Nothing here looks supernatural to me. I mean, I assume we’re still on the same planet we started from, but really, looking out at a view like this, would we be able to tell?”
Heather
[25]
While Tina and Ashley take to their boat, the three of us left behind on the plains stay closely connected. We haven’t spent this much time together since before I grew up and moved out of Mum and Dad’s house. Today, we’re gathered at Suzanne’s house for dinner, in the middle of the week.
We need to talk. Out of a long taut silence, a new photo has appeared on our screens in Canada. It’s of Tina, her mother-in-law, Martin, Ashley, and Durk waving from a sunny Caribbean pier by a marina full of white boats. They are in Belize. Ashley poses sitting right on top of the coffin-suitcase.
We sisters are not the only ones at Suzanne’s dinner party thinking about the travellers. “Boy, I bet the weather on the equator today doesn’t compare to this,” Troy says to Ewan as they look out the living room window at the cold non-Caribbean sky sulking over our northern Alberta suburb. Poor old Troy. After what happened with his dad taking off with that Australian lady, he’s got to be a bit touchy when it comes to family members sailing away without him.
Our excuse for having dinner together tonight is that Suzanne and I are trying to get better acquainted with Riker—the man so beguiling Meaghan trashed her engagement to be with him. Everyone knows a gathering of all five sisters at once is overwhelming for new boyfriends. I usually enjoy being part of something overwhelming, but I’ve settled for a quieter dinner with just two sisters instead of the full complement.
“Don’t mind him if he tries to call you Yvonne and Annette after the oldest of the Dionne sisters,” Meaghan has warned us. There’s that slightly morbid quintuplet fetish again. I don’t get it. Ewan and I looked up the quintuplets’ story and it just seemed miserable to us.
Sitting in Suzanne’s living room, balancing a plate of Meaghan’s homemade, sloppy cheesecake that didn’t set properly, Riker isn’t calling us anything. He can hardly talk at all. This casual dinner party atmosphere is loose and unpredictable. Even while he’s eating, Riker leaves one hand planted on Meaghan’s body at all times—her shoulder or knee, the nape of her neck.
I don’t believe in indulging shy people. Being shy doesn’t make them happy. It doesn’t make me happy either. So I interview them like I’m a talk show host, trying to get them to relax and say something charming. Everyone needs to learn how to hack out their own charm, and I am here to help.
Thanks to my kids, I can interview Riker about video games and Pokémon. I can add conventional old lady questions about where he went to high school, ask after any food sensitivities—because who doesn’t love to disclose their food sensitivities these days?
Suzanne sucks at this, so she asks if he has a pet. Nope. He doesn’t.
We’re as polite and warm as we can be, and when Riker finally makes a little joke, we both simultaneously flick on our phony laughter. Our fake laughs are identical in pitch and timing and voice. It’s creepy even to us. Meaghan shudders, probably contemplating throwing Riker over her shoulder and fleeing into the night. I can’t let them leave yet.
“We’ll be back in a sec,” is all I offer as an explanation for dragging Suzanne away from her hostess chores and Meaghan away from her boyfriend’s social angst. I clamp my hands around my sisters’ wrists and retreat to the privacy of Suzanne’s bedroom.
“I’ve thought of something,” I begin as I shut the door, “something we need for things to unfold in a more natural way.”
Meaghan groans. “Natural? He’s really cool once you get to know him.”
“No, I don’t mean with Riker. I mean with—May.”
They wince.
“No. No, everything’s going well in Belize,” Meaghan argues. “You saw the pictures of the suitcase. I know it’s hard for you, but try to trust other people to get things done in their own way. Stay out of it, Heather.”
I turn to Suzanne. “I’ve been living with a law-man for ages. I can anticipate the questions that are going to be asked when May doesn’t come home in a few weeks.”
I can tell from the pink flares in Suzanne’s skin that she knows she has to listen to me.
I say, “Troy needs to start worrying about why his mother has been out of contact for the last few months. His lack of interest is moving out of the realm of neglectful son behaviour and into the realm of suspicious son behaviour. And the remedy is for him to start asking questions, right now.”
“But—but he doesn’t have any questions,” Suzanne argues. “He asks if we’ve heard from her every once in a while and I always tell him ‘no.’ And he just leaves it at that.”
“You can’t let him leave it. Pick it up and throw it back at him every time he tries to leave it. He has to look into what’s happened to his mother before the officials do. If he doesn’t, he’ll seem like a brat at best and a criminal at worst.”
She’s accepting it. “So I have to get him to call someone—like, the Canadian Consulate in Belize.”
“No!” Meaghan and I yell.
“It’s the Canadian Consulate in Guatemala,” I correct Suzanne. “No one has any idea there’s a connection between May and Belize. As far as anyone knows, she never went farther than Guatemala.”
“Gua-te-ma-la,” Meaghan repeats.
Suzanne scrubs her face with her hands. “How am I ever going to do this
?”
Meaghan grips her by both of her arms. “Think, Suzanne. You’ve already hauled your mother-in-law’s dead body out to the woods and burned it up. The hard part is definitely over.”
“Relax. I’ll get you started, Suzanne,” I say. “We’ll go back in there and I’ll help you get Troy to start thinking about something other than himself.”
I shouldn’t have said it that way. I know that. I always know. It’s like that time I told Meaghan’s high school boyfriend to get out of some of the shots when we were snapping photos on her graduation day. “Just so we can have some of Meaghan by herself for after you break up.” I knew it was cruel, but he was no one’s destiny and—that boy, he’s lucky I never chased him down, spread his legs, and scraped his insides out.
Suzanne isn’t mad. She’s nodding and nodding.
“All you have to do is agree with whatever I say and look worried.” I check Suzanne’s face. “Yeah, exactly like that.”
She catches my arm as I reach for the doorknob. “We’re going to do it now?”
I push her toward the door so she can open it herself. “Yes. Think, Suzanne. We probably should have done it the minute Tina and Ashley docked that yacht. Go on.”
I herd my sisters downstairs, driving them from behind. In the living room, I tackle Ewan into a chair so I can sit in his lap, right next to Troy.
“So how’s your mom doing?” I ask Troy, interviewer-style. “Cleaning teeth in—it’s Guatemala she’s in this time, right?” I add, because it’s not Belize.
Troy cocks his head. “Yeah, Guatemala.”
“Gua-te-ma-la.”
He shrugs. “It’s going good, I guess. She loves it down there with the heat and the lizards and the poor people. Hey, we haven’t heard anything from Mom lately have we, Sue?”
Once Suzanne starts talking, the things she needs to say come easily. And why not? They make sense and they’re all true. “I told you, Troy,” she says in a voice like the ones I’ve heard in hospitals, when someone’s waking me up to give me a shot, “we haven’t heard anything from her since she left. Not one word.”
I sit up straighter in Ewan’s lap. “Really? Nothing at all? How long has it been?”
My questioning sounds scripted and calculated, like our chorus of phony sister-laughter a few minutes ago. But in-laws talk to each other like this all the time. It’s what happens in relationships where both candour and company manners are demanded at once. It’s a paradox. And it’s working.
Troy squints at Suzanne. “Mom’s been gone for just about six months, right?”
“Yes. She’s been gone since late last spring. But she’ll be home for Christmas.”
“Wow,” I say. “No contact with her for half a year. You’ve got nerves of steel, Troy. I’d be worried sick by now.”
Troy knows the long, silent absence should worry him. He also knows it doesn’t. “I don’t know. No news is good news, right?” he ventures. “Mom’s been down there twice before, so she knows where she’s going and how it’s supposed to work. Besides, no one’s called here looking for her, right Suzanne?”
“Well, no,” she says. “But May might not have given anyone our phone number. There might be hundreds of calls looking for her at her home number.”
Troy strains against the upholstery of his chair. “No, there wouldn’t be any calls at her place. She doesn’t keep a landline anymore. Remember? She just uses that old pink flip-phone for everything. And I’m not sure what she did with it when she left the country. She could have it with her right now.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Meaghan says. “Our mom never calls us either.”
Troy is pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, flicking through his list of contacts, looking for his mother’s number. The phone he’s calling has been taken to a gravel pit and scorched and melted into the litter of broken glass and pallet staples. No one will answer. We know that. Yet my sisters and I wait, tense, as a recording is activated to offer Troy excuses.
“Voicemail box is full,” he says.
“Well, there you go,” I say. “The number is still in service, anyways. Now you know she’s well enough to be paying the phone bill. Unless, she’s arranged for the bank to withdraw the payment automatically.”
Troy lowers his phone.
“Like you said, Troy,” Meaghan goes on. “Your mom is an experienced Central American traveller and everything. She’ll get her phone sorted out eventually. But just to be sure, if you really couldn’t get a hold of her, who could you call to find out how she’s doing—if you were concerned about it?”
“You’d call the aid agency she’s working with,” Ewan says, fingering the ends of a lock of my hair. “And if she hasn’t checked in with them then you’d want the Canadian embassy in Guatemala.”
“Right. Hey, why don’t you make a few of those calls tomorrow, Sue? I’m booked solid at the clinic.”
“Inquiries like that are always better coming from next of kin,” Ewan says, weaving my hair between his fingers. His voice is calm and lazy, but the words are deathly. Only dead people have “next of kin.” Ewan is acclimatized to function best in a heavy, doom-ridden atmosphere like this one, but all the extra gravity is pulling Troy into the floor.
“Alright, alright,” Troy says, low in his chair. “I’ll call them myself, first thing in the morning. But I wish I knew some Spanish. Do they speak any English at the Consulate?”
“Oh, for sure. English and French.” It’s the first spontaneous thing Riker has said all night.
Ashley
[26]
How can it be this hot when there’s still so much cold outer space between us and the sun? This is inland Belize, jungle Belize. It’s drenched in thick, humid heat. I’m sheltered from it in a luxurious rented pickup truck, an air-conditioned glass and metal bubble riding over an engine and wheels.
“I don’t want to go back out there,” I say to Durk. “So hot. Maybe we could just roll down a window and empty it on the side of the road. People must scatter ashes like that sometimes. And Heather said to be sure not to hide her too well, right?”
Durk knows I’m joking but he explains anyway. “This is the main highway through here. It’s no good.”
I lean toward the windshield. “Highway? This is a track through a tunnel of trees.”
Durk smiles. “Welcome to Central America, Ash.”
I sit back in my seat. “Try not to call me ‘Ash’ today, would ya?”
“Right, sorry.” He glances into the backseat. “I think I’m nervous. And not just because—you know. I want to do a good job of this, the same way we always set the headstones so nicely back home. I’ve been with the grey lady a long time now.”
I hum. “No matter what happens, we can call this our most memorable wedding anniversary ever.”
He hums too. “The year we disposed of the body.”
“Hey, Durk, you know those charts inside the pocket calendars they used to give out free in greeting card stores?”
“Uh—no.”
“Well, they’d tell you what material your anniversary gift should be made out of, every year. You know, like, silver for the twenty-fifth anniversary and that kind of thing.”
Durk is nodding. “Right. So what kind of gift should we be giving each other for our eleventh anniversary today?”
“I have no idea. Though I doubt it’s human bone.”
“Good thing we don’t need presents. Me, I’m just happy we made it here without any trouble.”
He’s right. No one asked any questions in the port in Belize City when Martin dismissed the yacht and its little crew. The customs officers might have met the captain later, but we and May were all gone by then.
Without May, it will be safe for us to make the return trip to Canada in a normal commercial aircraft. After she’s buried here in Central America, the rest of u
s will clear the security checkpoints at the airports without any worries. We plan to leave my green suitcase behind and bring my things back in a brand new one to make sure the airport hound dogs don’t detect traces of anything too smoky or too human.
Tina chose our resort because it’s deep in the forest. It’s in the eastern part of the country, not far from ancient ruins and other cool things none of us has much of an interest in, honestly. Heather and Suzanne would have liked them.
From the resort it’s easy to get to this road, winding through dense forest, reaching for the Guatemalan border.
“There,” Durk said this morning as he scanned the map and pointed to the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest. “We’re heading through there.”
It’s a national park. I don’t know why it surprised me that foreign countries have them too. It’s nice that a park will be May’s graveyard, maybe until the end of time.
Tina and Martin and Martin’s new mom didn’t come along for the trip into the forest. They’re staying at the resort while Durk and I pretend to be off on some sappy, solitary anniversary picnic. Martin cracked a bunch of lewd jokes and handed Durk the keys to the rental truck.
It will be a quiet day at the resort, indistinguishable from yesterday. Martin will act like he’s relaxing on the pool deck when really he’s lobbing endless volleys of business emails. His mom will drift through the chlorinated water on a floating chair, sipping drinks and remembering what she liked best about Martin’s cheating father. Tina will sit in a lounge chair looking at the same page of chick-lit for hours, fretting.
Out in the jungle, I’m wishing I knew how close we’re getting to Guatemala. “Do you think we’ll meet a bunch of guys with machine guns if we get too close to the border?”
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