“You mean that?”
“How can you even ask? One thing, and don’t you dare take this as meaning I’m ashamed of anything between us, but we can’t sleep together. It’d upset my parents.” I catch a flash of gold and jump out. “Ari?”
“Brother Aaron, I’ll be the epitome of Amish. Excuse me. I’ve another love to hug.” One whistle and Zodiac stops his play, lifts his head, searching the air. Then the moment becomes the Hollywood run between lost lovers, ending in a dive into his fur, ecstatic wiggles tumbling us onto the grass.
A man who can be none other than Aaron’s father smiles down. “You must be Ari.”
The mature woman in me dusts off my jeans and extends a hand like a lady. Mr. West bypasses it for a meaty hug. “Can’t say how happy we are to finally meet you.”
Aaron’s mom comes hurtling across the lawn to get her hands on her boy, then seizes me with goodness in one arm and kindness in the other.
By evening, we’ve washed off the road and grandparents, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, first, second, third, and fourth fill the yard for a barbeque. Luke, six, looks me over.
“Are you the Luke who helped Aaron with the Zodiac painting?” I ask. He nods. “It was the best present ever.”
He saddles up close, patting Zodiac’s head at rest on my lap. “Is it true you got caught up in a gunfight?”
“I did.”
“Did it hurt?”
“A lot. But kind people helped me feel better.”
His pudgy hand pats my foot. “I’m glad.”
“Do you think we could paint something together before I leave?”
“Could you do a dragon?”
“They’re my specialty.”
He scrambles away. “Mummy, Ari paints special tea dragons. Can she come play tomorrow?”
Uncle Peter nabs the empty spot beside me and Jasper spins in the salt of him. Aaron’s the spiriting image of him. See, Ari, we’re more set in water than stone.
“How is it this prairie birthed two dolphins?” I ask.
His dimpled smile is exactly like Aaron’s. “Many times, I’ve despaired that Aaron wouldn’t find his way out of this land-locked sameness. I’m so grateful to you.”
“Grateful enough to do me a favour?”
“Anything.”
“Go visit Aaron when he’s in Peru? Stay awhile if the loneliness is too big?”
“My bag’s always packed.”
* * *
Sunday morning, Aaron knocks and opens the guest room door. “Breakfast in thirty.”
Zodiac jumps down to see if there might be a pre-breakfast bacon bite. Aaron hesitantly hangs our garment bag on a hook. “Um, it’d mean a lot to my parents if we went to church.”
I sit up. “Is it head-covering Amish?”
“Just a gathering of non-judgmental saints. Except Emily. She’ll be judging without mercy.” He opens his hand. “Would you consider wearing my school ring?”
I rise and rummage through my pack for Nia’s ring. “How about I sport this?”
He nabs it, slips it on my left hand, moves in for a kiss. “Oh, baby. Thank you.”
“Go on. I’ve got work to do.”
Unclasped and unzipped, I turn helpless circles as my shoulder refuses to go over my head. I need Aaron or at least arms that bend back. His mom pokes her head in. “Breakfast’s up.” My face nears Madame Tussauds’ wax works in a hot sun. “Here, let me help.” She hinges my bra, zips my dress, tamps my face, and makes my hair look party perfect.
Aaron, white shirt and tie handsome, looks ready to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy” again when I enter the kitchen. His sister Katie says, “That’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen.”
“My sister has a great closet to raid.” A white sundress with scattered sprays of navy flowers fits me spectacularly.
* * *
I like the plainness and the light wood, the simple hymns, the way Aaron sits close, whispering memories in my ear. I like, too, that Emily is one row behind.
After church, a lunch extravaganza unfolds. Ladies cluster around a great island, organizing food on platters. Margie, the church lady who needs to know everything, observes. “That’s a lovely ring. Did Aaron give it to you?”
“He slipped it on my finger, for certain sure.”
Emily looks ready to murder a loaf of multigrain when Margie asks, “So you’ll be marrying then?”
“Aaron’s taking on a big project in Peru and I’m going back east to school, so the future’s one that will be full of the twists and turns Aaron loves.”
Margie snits at Aaron’s mom, “Don’t know where you went wrong with that boy. A man who can’t settle is one with a troubled heart.”
“Oh, ma’am, have you got things muddled. Believe me, I know about parents going wrong. The Wests are as close to perfect as I’ve ever come across. It’s because Aaron’s been so nurtured that he takes risks, jumps at challenges. Everywhere he goes, he makes the world better. Do you know how many master’s theses mildew on shelves? Not Aaron’s. He’s applying his and thousands of children who’ve never held a shiny yellow pencil will.”
“All fine and good, but a man needs a family to be complete.”
“Not all men. Not men who think more about what the world needs than what they want for their own self.” I schlep a heaped bowl of potato salad to the table. Aaron’s mom follows with cold cuts.
She plunks it down. “I really hate ham.”
“What? Me, too.” She half smiles into my face and I see a mom who loves her boy. “I know it’s hard to let him go but he’ll always come back. True home has a way of doing that.”
She shakes no.
“Shake your head all you want. I’ve seen the list. You and I both know Aaron will accomplish everything he sets his heart to.” We head back for more bounty. “Did you know last month he jumped out of a plane?”
“Dear Lord Jesus, give me strength.”
“Ask the god of our mothers. I find her more hands-on helpful.”
* * *
Zodiac and I lie listening to worms whispering under the grass. Aaron obliterates the sun when he stands over us. “What’d you do?”
“Well, certainly not you. How do Manitoba Mennonite maidens maintain morals with all this fine-bodied horse flesh around?”
“Stop being so Ari-sistible. What’d you say to Margie Klassen yesterday?”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“She’s always needling Mom about something. I’m told you put her gently in her place. My parents also just said they support my decision to go to Peru and they’re proud of everything I’ve done.” He helps himself to the other side of Zodiac. “Feeling like I’m disappointing them is the one thing that beaches me.”
“If your parents weren’t walking across the lawn right now, I’d kiss you.”
His dad calls, “We’re just going to town for groceries. You kids want to come?”
“Thanks, but Ari needs more Zodiac time before we meet everyone at the Ranch House.” Aaron waves at the truck pulling away, then whips around quick. “Fifteen minutes to town, twenty to shop, at least ten to gab, then fifteen back. There’s something not on the list, but I’ve dreamt of happening on that single bed of mine since I was fourteen.”
I leap up. “Zodiac, guard the perimeter.”
“Will you wear my basketball jersey?”
I handle his ass. “Let’s play ball.”
* * *
His mom discovers me in the yard with Zodiac. “Ari? It’s four a.m.”
“My shoulder kicked me out of bed.”
She pulls up a chair and massages the ache. “I don’t know how you’ve survived all you’ve been through.”
“I’ve had more people pulling for me than anyone deserves. You’ve helped me more than you’ll ever know.”
“Me?”
“You raised Aaron to be who he is. Whenever I landed smack in the worst of the bad, he’d sit with me on our bench just letting me absorb his good.”
“I don’t understand why you’re letting each other go.”
“We’ll never let the other go. What we share won’t be troubled by mountains and oceans.”
“I just see how much you love each other.”
“Exactly. That’s why I could never ask him to stop at the ocean’s edge, and he wouldn’t ask me to ride any more tsunamis.” Her hand rests on my hair and I relax into it.
“Ari, if you need to take Zodiac, I’ll understand.”
“I know how being uprooted feels. This is his home.”
* * *
As distance separates us from the prairies, I understand more why a child raised on the vast constant of good yearns for rugged mountains. With each mile, Aaron becomes more fully Aaron. More than the guy I nested with in Toronto. Greater than the son held under his family’s wing.
In the after-quiet of a heavy rain, he weighs on me, full and satisfied. Fat drops tap out improvised rhythms on the canvas above us and the river kicks up a fuss. His breath heats my cooling skin as he asks, “Are you scared to have things change between us?”
His hair, rich with the dirt of our day, feels mouldable beneath my hand. “I’ll not let how much I’m going to miss your physical presence touch me right now. It’d cost me this moment.” He elbows up to take in my face. Clouds have moved on and moonlight mixed with shadow splits him in two. Nia is right about things missed in the light. “Aaron, if I didn’t know for certain your North Star pointed south, I’d grasp onto you with every muscle of Jasper’s tail.”
“I’ve been thinking deep on this. What if I just got things set up, then came east while you go to school? I could teach in Antigonish. A dolphin would thrive so close to the ocean.”
“No need. I’ve decided not to go to school. I’m going to Peru with you. Exquisite pottery comes out of the south. I’ll find someone to study with there.”
His mouth readies for protest.
“How’d hearing that make you feel? In your gut.”
“It’s what I’ve been hoping for and—it feels like dirt, not clay.”
“Yeah, what you said made the salmon in my belly start swimming upstream.” I pull him close. “The only option for a dolphin and a seahorse is to discover a whole new dimension to being.”
Sixty-Four
I know that no homecoming waits at the end of this drive. People in Coombs told us that a woman matching June’s description left long ago but an Ian Mercer might know her whereabouts. I knock on the door. A flame-haired woman with a baby in a hip sling says, “Can I help you?”
“I-I’m looking for my sister.”
“Just Ian, me, and little Raine here.”
“The lady at the general store said Ian might know something.”
“He’s in the shop.” Her chin lifts to a log cabin. “Hope you see something to buy while you’re fishing.”
Ian looks up from his work bench, swallowing as he takes in my face. “Oh, I-I’m—hello.” He has animal sprits bulging from his coveralls, squirreling out his hair. “Shop’s open. Come on in.”
“I . . . um . . . Do you know where I might find June Appleton?”
“Who?”
“Blonde hair, child named Spring.”
“Who’s looking?”
“I’m Ari, her sister.”
“Amber said she had no family.”
Oh Ari. One by one, the J’s are becoming A’s.
I touch a wolf so perfectly carved I near feel its breath on my cheek. “It’s just easier to scrap us than to explain us.”
“Amber followed a band outta here three years ago.”
“What band?”
“Crow. Took our Spring and headed to the States. Minnesota, maybe. Haven’t heard a word from her since.” Dust shimmers as he sands the arc of a crane’s graceful neck. “Thought we had a good thing.”
“June wouldn’t know what to do with a good thing for very long. Pain was more her barometer of what’s real.”
“Makes no sense.”
“Prickles make no sense to a sunflower, but thistles get them.”
“Pardon?”
“Being stung was June’s measure of being here on this planet. Is that totem behind you for sale?”
“Why that one?”
“I can’t tell where the east ends and the west begins in the carving.”
The flame-haired beauty brings us lemonade in mismatched glasses. She says, “It’s four hundred.”
“Well, that gives you maybe a nickel for each hour’s work.” I write down Skyfish’s address along with a cheque. “Can you ship it here?”
The woman nods. “Freight will likely be another fifty.”
“Just let me know and I’ll send a cheque and a picture of where it lands.”
Ian says, “I’d like that.”
“If you ever do hear from June or Spring, please tell them they can find me at that address.” I turn at the door. “You should know, it wasn’t you she ran from.”
Aaron stops the jeep at Ian’s holler. He puffs over and drops a patchwork book on my lap. “Eileen thinks I burned this, but I couldn’t. Her family should have it.”
“Thank you. You really captured her likeness on the totem.”
We take a slow trek across Vancouver Island, stopping for the night at Englishman River Falls. Smoke rises like a Japanese brushstroke as Aaron blows on the kindling. The fire catches and he settles beside me. “Where’s June’s book?”
“In my bag. I’ve spent so many years creating a safe world for her. For now, I need her there and . . .”
Numbness spreads from my shoulder into my hand and I can’t feel Aaron’s thumb drawing circles on it. “And what?”
“I’m afraid I’ll see me mirrored on the page. I never thought I looked like my sisters, but I saw myself in the faces Ian carved on that totem.”
“Ian saw June’s face in yours the minute he lifted his head. And it’s inevitable you’ll see flashes of your life in whatever your sister wrote. Even if it’s not there, you’ll write it in to make meaning of what she left behind for you.”
“Do you think I’m running away?”
“Wish I could say yes, but honestly coming with me would be the running.”
* * *
In Tofino, my country farthest west falls into the ocean. From our cabin bed, we witness the heavens change. Light has long been swallowed by the ocean, and now, like ideas, stars turn on one by one. I don’t ask how long we have or what happens when he points the jeep south. I just hold him, knowing not many on this planet get to ride with a dolphin for so long. He asks, “How is this, this connection between us, explained?”
“Can’t define it, but I’ll be grateful all my days that I took hold of it.”
His head settles on my belly. “This has been like skydiving every day.”
“Wait ’til your dolphin shows up and takes you ocean diving.”
“I think there will only ever be you.”
“Don’t you dare burden a little seahorse with that.”
* * *
I collect shore bits, pictures, and poetic thoughts. Aaron walks toward me looking Sea Hunt fine in a wetsuit get-up and what could be a gigantic kazoo on his head. “Suit up. We’re going kayaking.”
“We’re going on the ocean in that vessel?”
“Come on, it’ll be fun.”
Libby would in a minute.
Shut up. I struggle into something more like a hot water bottle than apparel. Stupid friggin’ men that have no sense.
Sea kayaking is a little bit fun, but to be honest, I don’t love it. Jasper also wishes he’d kept his snout shut. Aaron, on the other hand, disembarks whooping
happy.
A man from the lodge sets up a breakfast. We picnic on our little piece of the shore, the winds still stirring between us; suspect they always will. Aaron releases his chest from the suit. I tug slow—very slow—on my zipper. Aaron rushes in, peeling me like a banana. “I added ‘naked on a beach’ to the list.”
“Get a blanket; there’s no romance in a butt full of sand.” I fold on a rock while he launches into the cabin.
Jasper hides in the hair flowing over my shoulders. What if somebody comes along?
Just be thankful he didn’t want to do it in that skinny boat.
Aaron stands, staring, and I lift my face. “You, Ari, are the most magical creature to have ever inhabited this earth.”
“No, West, I’m just a cracked pot.”
He spreads the blanket against a rock, inviting me to his lap, parting the sea of hair covering my breasts. “If anyone spots us, they’ll think I’ve landed a mermaid.”
After the climb, the shuddered cry, the long after-holding, we eat and chatter, then come to a silence. “Bet you’d like some coffee.”
“Coffee would be good. I hear the best cup I’ll ever get is from Peru. Go.” He pulls on the T-shirt I made him years ago, slides into his jeans, tossing me his UW sweatshirt. His perfect self disappears through the cabin door.
Offshore, birds dart and dive. How are we going to survive this present to absence, Jasper?
It feels an eternal sit, grief flowing and ebbing with the waves.
I study the couple walking down my beach, recognize the familiar shapes. Hear their voices. “You wanted a coffee?”
Their legs feel real, but I can’t bring them into focus through the big tears. “Ellis? Mina?”
“Aaron thought you might need company.”
“How?”
“He knew we were on Queen’s Island.”
Cracked Pots Page 33