Cracked Pots

by Heather Tucker

  Sunday stays curled by the hearth when I whistle her to the truck. I think maybe Jasper prefers Skyfish too. Right, I do. But you’re stuck with me.

  My English professor hands back my essay on Revolutionary Road. “Maybe the most depressing thing I read over the holidays.”

  “Glad I could counterbalance all the merriment, sir.”

  “You really believe nobody ever lives their dream?”

  “Maybe the ones who sleepwalk through their lives.”

  He buttons his coat while following me out. “What made you choose Yates?”

  “The subject matter suited my state of mind.”

  “Where would you rather be?”

  “Maybe Peru, instead of drowning in nightmares.”

  “And what would have a talented young woman drowning in nightmares?”

  “Oh, nothing, my life is a rose garden.”

  “My question wasn’t me being incredulous that you are such stuff as nightmares are made. Your writing would indicate you’ve encountered a great many thorns in that garden.”

  “None worth talking about.”

  “I’ve never met a conversation not worth having.”

  “Are you a cat or a dog person?”

  “Dog, unless it’s in the wild, then I like cats.”

  “My brother worked with wild cats. Lions.”

  “Worked? What does he do now?”

  “He died.”

  “Oh, sorry. How?”

  “Saving me.”

  “We’ve something in common, then.”

  “I very much doubt that.”

  “My big brother worked so I could go to school. He got drafted and I got a PhD.”

  “He died in the war?”

  “He did. Losing a sibling throws the universe off-kilter, doesn’t it?”

  “Especially when he’d be alive if I’d done things differently.”

  “I’m a good listener if you need someone to talk to.”

  I like his name, Professor Eagleston. I like his peppered hair and black turtleneck worn with faded jeans. “You have the ocean in your pocket by any chance?”

  “No, it’s at my front door.”

  His house overlooks the bay. He reheats beef stroganoff while Vivaldi skirts around a silky fire. Subplot and subtext are obvious as we play author alphabet. I say, “Austen.”

  He says, “Brontë.”

  I eat a slice of orange. “Camus.”

  He licks his lip. “Dickens.”

  “Eliot.”

  He moves a rogue spiral of hair from my cheek. “Faulkner.”

  “Goethe.”

  “Homer.”

  “Lawrence.”

  He lifts a clichéd strawberry dipped in warmed chocolate to my mouth, finger lingering with an imperceptible tug on my lip. “Margaret or D.H.?”

  I follow him to his bed.

  Straddling his pale body, my hands skate across the silver hair on his chest. He cups my breasts. I kiss his neck, inhaling the scent of fresh lime. He enters me, adding fingers to the mix until I hum and he praises the gods—then it’s over. Emptiness remains, but I don’t ache as much marooned in his arms.

  * * *

  We talk about books and dead siblings, cooking and art. I return night after night, through to February. He kisses the moon-spill on my shoulder. “Let’s go somewhere hot for reading week. Bahamas, Jamaica.”

  “No. The cold suits me better just now.” I sit up. “I really should go and study.”

  He tugs my arm, gently. “Come back and keep Daddy warm.” The way I catapult up scares him. Terrifies me. “Ari?” My sweater snaps over my head. My jeans find my legs as I hop to the door. “What is it? What’s wrong?” I scramble out of the house, to my truck. He nabs the door. “Wait. Why are you crying?”

  I wrench my arm from his grasp. “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  * * *

  How I navigate the truck to Skyfish I don’t know.

  The axe from the woodpile is in my hands, thud-thud-thudding against Daddy’s linden tree. As the fragrance of fresh-cut wood hits, thunder roars from my gut. Mary and Nia appear, standing witness to a primal scream, spreading like fire over dry grass. Then I’m empty, body folding like a spent sparkler. “Let it out.” Mary touches my back. “Let it all out.”

  Nia asks, “Did a memory climb up from the depths?”

  I blubber, hard and messy. “I-I-I . . . I just saw, I saw me back then, saw the crack in my small self.”

  Mary hushes my hair. “Ari, did your Daddy rape you, too? Is that what you saw?”

  “That’s the thing, Auntie. He didn’t.”

  “Ohhh.” Nia’s breath curls in the cold, dissipating like maritime fog, and there she sees me, the misnamed, unclaimed child. “Come in now, out of the cold.”

  The fire sparks. I’m suspended somewhere between numb and thawed. “How’s it possible I feel, I don’t know, betrayed? Left out?”

  “You were left out. Your mum, and your dad, set you apart from the J’s all your life. What set you on this road tonight?”

  “Remembering a night the week Daddy died. Jillianne was snugged with me in our couch cave, on the edge of sleep. Then she was being lifted. Daddy was home after what seemed like weeks. He whispered, ‘Hey, Jillibean, come keep Daddy warm.’ I was sad, sad because he didn’t want me. Then Jillianne was screaming. And, and, Jacquie . . . got backhanded.”

  Mary says, “He hit her?”

  “No. Mummy did. The rest you know. Next day, Jacquie told Aunt Elsie that she was pregnant. That all the J’s were broken. Then Daddy checked out. Mum cracked up. And the sister-house collapsed.” I poke at the flames. “How fucked is it that being the least fucked Appleton makes me so sad?”

  “Because it is sad.” Mary makes tea in Grandma’s Brown Betty pot.

  “But I shouldn’t be, I got sent here and—”

  “For god sake, Ari, I swear if you were handed a cookie chocked with shit chips, you’d be, ‘Oh, well, least I got some spectacular crumbs.’ It’s nauseating, and exhausting, really. Be sad, bloody sad. Hell, be furious. It doesn’t negate what you’re grateful for.”

  Sixty-Seven

  Five a.m. The fire shimmers low. Sunday tucks her soft self on my feet and Jasper pokes me. Open it, open it.

  The fragrance of June arrives on turning to the first page: weed, cedar, strawberry, and that smell air has before it rains. I lift the book to my face, placing her hand-touched page on my cheek.

  This book is for treasures, something a lioneagle set me hunting for. I’ll start with my garden. I thought, on principle, everything I touched would croak but up come bushy leaves: beans, tomatoes, pumpkins even. Everything is growing, my garden, my belly, my hair. Will you think I’m crazy for wondering if my sugar snaps hurt when I bite them? I chew soft, thankful for what they give to this seed growing in me . . .

  * * *

  I fan through pages, plump with seed packets, Shakespeare in the Park tickets, a photo of Yellow June smiling down at her baby, bits of hand-dipped cloth . . .

  Ian hates the markets but I dream of winter’s end and weekend noise.

  Tree, silent bark.

  Lake, mute liquid.

  Sky, deafening blue.

  Radio, dead.

  I’d kill for a battery.

  “Nice to see that smile, eh, Mary.” I look up to M&N watching from their bedroom door.

  “Just reading June’s awful poetry. Yellow June is in here, side by side with Black June.”

  “Dark and light.” Nia revives the fire and Mary makes cinnamon French toast. “C’est la vie.”

  “Would you guys mind if I went to Toronto for the rest of reading week? I want to share June with the sisters.”

  “Depends. How’re your grades?”

  “Aces. Despair has served me wel
l.” I force down bites of toast to ease Mary’s worry. “I actually love my classes.”

  “What’s your favourite course?”

  “Geology.”

  “Really?”

  “You’d think a rock is a rock. But igneous rock can change into sedimentary rock or metamorphic. Did you know, depending on what chemicals are thrown in and how quickly magma cools, during the transformation of igneous rock, sapphires are made?”

  “I do know there’s a hell of a lot of heat and pressure to birth a gem.”

  “If a rock can change, then people surely aren’t set in stone. Gives me hope that Jake will find Jewel.”

  Mary says, “Fill your boots with hope for him, but for goddess sake, learn to dance on your own steady feet.”

  “And you get yourself grounded, miss.” Nia waggles her fork. “Don’t think we haven’t seen you’ve been higher and more off-key than the soprano section of the Presbyterian choir.”

  “Murdering that linden felt like removing that rock splinter from my cheek. Now, I think I’ll butcher Mum’s hawthorn.”

  Mary says, “Then we’ll line the shitbox with the pair of them.”

  “You know what I know, M&N?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not the name I was saddled with. I know whose daughter I am.”

  * * *

  I stop in Montreal. Sister five comes with me to the river, to the place where Daddy blew his head off. I expect waves to surface. In unison we just inhale and exhale, then meander across the park where, as kids, we walked the dog, somersaulted, sang for pennies. Anne says, “Do you feel like we’ve outgrown a childhood illness? Holes closing like should’ve happened at first breath.”

  “Filling with gold. Can you drop me at the train?”

  “Not driving?

  “No, I owe a walrus a penny.”

  * * *

  “Ari?” Ellis near trips over his painted turtle. “Mina. She’s here.”

  “Who’s here?” Mina pokes her head from the kitchen, phone in hand. “Ari? I just dialled your number.”

  “Did M&N call? I swear I’m on steady feet.”

  Ellis scoops me toward the sofa. “No, no, just some things I wanted to talk over.”

  “About what?”

  “First things first. What’re you doing here?”

  “Revisiting the sister-house.”

  “And?”

  “The architects are dead and it stands; astonishingly, we all stand. Why were you calling?”

  “About Jake.” Ellis sits on the old trunk. “You know that from our first trip east, he and I connected. We’ve written these past years.”

  “He answers your letters?”

  Ellis nods. I fold away. He turns my face. “I was keeping a promise to him not to tell.”

  “Does he know I betrayed him?”

  “So, you dated Aaron,” Mina says. “Get over it. Jake broke things off. How’s that betrayal?”

  “In his last letter,” Ellis says, “he wrote that all he wants is to go home but he’s stuck in one of those rip currents, so close to coming out but completely exhausted. I’m going to go see him. Can I tell him there’s still hope with you?”

  “I tell him in every friggin’ letter.”

  “He’s turned a corner, I think.” Mina passes me a letter, back-folded to a starting place. How is it that the faintest remembrance of her keeps me from stepping off the world?

  I search their faces. “Why can’t he say this to me?”

  “He’s put it in writing.” Ellis seals my hand around the promise.

  * * *

  Through the February window, I take in the blank canvas stretching the miles back to Montreal. William smiles down. “Well, little miss, how was your visit?”

  “A pilgrimage, paying homage to the sister-house.” I look to his face, leathered like an old bible. “Can I tell you something terrible?”

  He stretches his hand for a penny. “Why’d you think I happened on this run?”

  “I broke my papa’s pot. The one he left me when he died.”

  “Something in it must be wanting out.”

  “What?”

  “I suspect it’s your own self.”

  “Pardon?”

  “There’s nothing, no thing, no person, as grand as meeting your own self, and welcoming that self inside. Your Jasper has set up some fine rooms.”

  “Really, William, how do you know all this shit?”

  “Magic.”

  “Surely it’s time I transitioned into reality.”

  “No, no, no, you’re nearing the big magic, when the whole world tilts right.” He points to the pouch. “Have a peek at what remains.”

  Out of the pouch slides the last penny, shiny as mint, 1961. At our very first meeting, William wrote 1961 on my palm and said, “See, little miss, the whole world can turn upside down and still land right.”

  “How? This isn’t what was here.”

  He winks, turns.

  “Wait. Please, William tell me how to navigate this last penny.”

  “Set in place your own walls, doors, and windows, truth by truth.”

  Sixty-Eight

  Professor Eagleston knows it’s me knocking, but the door remains closed. I shiver on a rock near the water’s edge, waiting. He gives in around midnight and comes out, remaining a safe distance. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I needed to see you before classes start, let you know I’m dropping your class.”

  “And say what? I attacked you?”

  “What? No. There’s no trouble to be made from this.”

  “You’re crazy, you know.”

  “I am, but not because I freaked.” He braves looking at my face. “My dad he . . . he did things that he shouldn’t have done. This hole in Jillianne had me on the edge, you calling yourself ‘Daddy’ sent me squirrelling over.”

  He tugs his hair through his fingers. “Don’t drop my class.”

  “It’d be best.”

  “And what do I say when the dean asks why my brightest student left my class? Reconsider. Please.”

  “If I hand in a spectacular essay, how will you mark it?”

  “With the same appreciation I’ve had for all your assignments.”

  “What if I give you a shitty one?”

  “D for disappointment.”

  “Okay, I’ll stick it out.”

  “You’re shaking. Come inside and warm up.”

  “My dog has me on probation. I need to go let her out.” I back away. “You asked me before if I believed that no one ever gets to live their dream. That shouldn’t even be the question.”

  “What should it be?”

  “Does anybody really live their awake? Most are asleep and call it a life.”

  * * *

  A salting of snow floats past a spring moon. Through another power outage, I warm under Babcia’s feather wonder. The shelf seen from my bed holds gold-veined pots, stories written in cracked lines: absences, wounds, mistakes and misfortune. Kintsugi wasn’t right for Len’s pot. The fractures were too beautiful to fill. A candle burns inside, scar lines dark where the glue held, light escaping through cracks and tiny holes. My favourite bruise is a bit of turquoise glaze that remains where a chunk of clay has fallen away. Beside it is an unfinished work, about a quarter done, like me. It looks like a cupped hand.

  Noise—knuckles rapping on my door, a party in the apartment above, the crunch of chips between my teeth—weaves into my book. Hey, Ari, here’s an Iggem: the world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

  I close Farewell to Arms and snug down with Sunday. Moon shadows puddle on my art assignment— Crapdom, oil on canvas. For art class I had to capture a house I once lived in from memory. Three weeks ago, the craphouse seemed a subject of in
terest, a contemporary tragedy. Now, it sits on the easel like a smug lie. No one ever lived there, Jasper.

  * * *

  The schlepping in of tidy masterpieces by classmates has me calculating how long it would take me to go back and grab Crapdom from my easel. My professor asks, “Where’s your assignment, Ari?”

  “In the truck or at my apartment. Haven’t decided.”

  “Which one will be here before class ends?”

  “With a little help, the one in the back of my truck.”

  Tyler helps me haul in The Sister-House, acrylic on closet door. We lean it against the windowed wall.

  “What the . . . ?”

  “Sorry, it sacrificed itself when the story wanted out.”

  Tyler says, “You must’ve been on some weird shit.”

  My professor studies it slow, starting at the bottom where bodies, layered like sedimentary rock, pepper the grass with what they’ve seeded. Hell-edged grace is as near as can be described. He moves up to Jillianne, jigsawing through the cracked floor—to yellow mortar interrupting black June—then windowed Jennah, skeletal beneath sunlit gossamer—up to Jory, snaking rainbows from the roof—settling on Jacquie, my solid yellow door. Around the edge is a Rumi quote: “I have lived on the lip of insanity, wanting to know reasons, knocking on a door. It opens. I’ve been knocking from the inside.”

  “You once lived . . . here?”

  “Resided.” My sigh settles the chatter but not the current in the room. My professor bends forward to the door’s keyhole and meets the child’s gray eye looking out.

  Sixty-Nine

  I never tire of ocean pictures as I drive, or weary of Sadie’s jabbering as I give her a lift most Sundays as far as Port Hawkesbury. “Saw Jake at the Dublin House last week, cryin’ in his full mug, but it wasn’t ’cause Dulcie’s gone. It’s that he doesn’t know how to set things right. He up and left without downing the ale or chaser. That says a whole bunch, more than a dictionary, wouldn’t you say, Ari?”