“My hippocampus talks to me.”
“Lucky you.”
“Not crazy?”
“Does it help you navigate?”
“It does. Like, really.”
“Cool.”
“Um, if a kid got a whack on the head, could it damage their prefrontal cortex?”
“A severe blow certainly could. You?”
“No. Apparently, my dad got walloped with a bottle when he was little. If the story’s true, he was unconscious for three days.”
“That’s awful.”
“Or maybe awesome. He was smart and funny, gifted in many ways and he was completely, unredemptively depraved. A wacko zealot who had no impulse control.”
“That’s difficult.”
“He’s dead and I’m dealing, but I like the idea of the cause being a head-to-head with a bottle of Crown Royal instead of DNA.”
“It’s a valid hypothesis. I’d love to talk more. Schedule yourself into my office hours next week; bring coffee.”
“How about lunch?”
She nods. “Love your skirt, by the by.”
I scan myself: Mary’s red boots; turquoise skirt, a Polish work of art from Sabina; yellow sweater knit by Mike; and underneath are snazzy bra and panties from Jacquie’s boutique. Huh, Jasper, a tribe may have dressed us, and messed with us, but we put these on.
You are clothed and in your right mind.
Right brain’s the creative side. Let’s make something.
All the walk to my apartment, I step on cracks, sensing every absence and seeing Ari Joy Zajac got dressed all by herself. It’s spring. A window-opening day. An unfortunate day for the Dick to show up. That he found my nest doesn’t surprise me. Old cops have buddies who look things up. That the blue sedan still runs is the true shock. He manages now with one cane, moving like a wind-up toy when he spots me crossing the street. He lifts a fat envelope. “Just had to tell you myself, it’s settled. Mikey’s ours. I’m on my way to bring him back.”
“Yeah. Tino keeps me informed. So, tell me, Dickie, how much do disability cheques increase with a kid?”
“That’s not why. Laura misses him something fierce and he’s my kid.”
I’ve no doubt he longs for family and a life that doesn’t feel so broken. “Sorry, but living with you is no place for Mike.”
“Miss High and Mighty always thinking you’re better.”
“There’s no high and mighty about it, Dickster. I’ve readjusted my thinking. Even if you start with the best maritime clay, if you mix in too much shit, you end up with a load of crap and there’s not much you can create with it except maybe fertilizer. Give it up, or you’ll regret where this lands you.”
“What you gonna do, punch me out?”
“Tom Healy and Milt Fraser.” Colour leaks out of the Dick’s face, except for his nose that stays spidery red. “We’ve sworn statements from them that you set up the robbery at the Zajac’s store.”
“Statue of limitations, girlie.”
“Statute, dickhead. Not for murder. You’ll go down for Iggy.”
“Never in a million years would you have the balls to turn me in.”
“You ever seen the gonads on a goddess? All the dominos are in place. You take one step near Mike and the goods go to the Crown attorney, metro police, RCMP, border crossings . . . Cops in Pleasant Cove are already on alert. They’re real excited because they never get action much more than a dock fight.”
“Don’t do this to me. I—”
“What? You ever once show mercy to anyone? I hope you get as good as you gave.”
He backs up. “You little bitch. You’ve never been anything but trouble.”
“You forced me to live in your hell.” A punch rises from my good arm, piss-loaded from the place deep inside where seahorses cheer, stopping when I see how small he is, how utterly insignificant.
My hand feels a live thing as I climb to my nest. I need some clay, Jasper.
Let’s get Sunday and go, go, go.
Seventy-Three
I wake, thinking something in Skyfish is calling me, a spirit wanting out of clay. I step into Wellies and don my holey sweater. Outside the world is awash of silver. Oh, it’s moonlight on the ocean calling us.
I’m pulled to the shore. The waves are singing, Creedence Clearwater Revival as it happens, and I dance, passing from my twentieth year to my twenty-first. Jasper belts out his version of “Bad Moon Rising”: There’s a good moon rising. I see triumph on its way . . . My arms won’t lift to the sky, but they reach wide and my feet turn. I see earthmakes and lightening. I see good times today . . .
My head rises. I half expect to spot M&N or Huey, maybe even Jake on the ridge, but it’s just me, me and Jasper. What I do see is the new path emerging from the rock slide, a path made by me over the past five years, gathering rocks for my hearth. There’re enough to build Turtle Cottage for Mina and Ellis.
The cedar tree has found a roothold and grows like a broken finger from the rock face. Dance ’round tonight. It’s bound to bring you life. There’s a good moon on the rise. I collapse in a dizzy heap on the wet sand. On the very same shore where I was left as a babe, I know I’m both as solid and broken as these rocks. And from them, I’ll piece together the hearth for my home.
* * *
Just past sunrise, Mike comes barrelling along the shore and into my arms. “Happy birthday.” He hands me an envelope. “Don’t open it until Huey catches up.” A new sad little bit of a girl named Glory slows Huey down.
I scoop her up. I know from the Missus that her stepdaddy hurt her and I whisper the words that M&N heaped on me. “You’re a good girl and nothing that happened was ever your fault.” She points to the dogs and I set her down. “Smart girl. Go give Sunday a hug.” She shuffles along like Granny Clease. “She talking yet, Huey?”
“Not a word. Go on, open the card.”
“Who’s it from?”
“Jake sent it with his last letter. Said to give it on your twenty-first.”
On the card is an ink drawing of two seahorses face to face, tails twined into a heart. Inside: Ari, The only place I know to begin is: I am sorry. Jake.
“Will you help me work on Moondance this summer, Huey?”
“As long as you promise it won’t sit empty.”
“I’ve a sense little Glorys will be coming my way.”
“This old world will never stop making them, eh.”
Seventy-Four
Summer’s end, Jake comes home to see the Missus who has a gallstone situation. The distance he guards stresses up my hair. Mary tells me he’s softened in the hard places and strengthened in the broken ones. “He asked if anyone was courting you. Huey told him that big fish circled like you were a teaming bait ball, but that you wouldn’t be caught.”
“What’d he say?”
“Just laid his head on the table like he was searching for a prayer. He’s doing so good at school, just about got his second year under him.”
Middle of the night, Mike near scares the gallbladder out of me. He loud-whispers through the screen, “Pssst, Ari, come quick. Magic’s up.”
The wind-whipped, dew-drenching run across Skyfish and Moondance is like when I was a hope-filled girl. Music, caught in the trees, rains down. Mike hushes me with his finger, then points to the window. Blue lamplight warms Huey’s back. Sweet notes escaping through wavy glass land live on my skin. Jake stands, lining Huey in a way that makes them one body; in unison their faces lift to the music, then bow under its grace. The fiddle nestles into Jake’s neck, fingers of his left hand touching each string. Right arm rests on his father’s and Huey’s hand is given, perfectly given, to the bow’s dance over the fiddle’s body.
The music that once passed through Jake has settled in his bones echoing through the lonely hollows, and I know at last he’s hearing, “
You’re a good boy and nothing that happened, nothing that anyone did was ever your fault. Be free.” I catch sight of Glory perched on the couch, moon washing her upturned face.
Mike whispers, and I smile at the east settling in his voice, “I’ll see you home. Everyone’ll sleep a good long while now.”
* * *
Huey goes to his shed to fetch more nails. My heart bangs as Jake parts the long summer grass. He looks inside the open window. “That board’s not level.”
“What’s a one-eyed man know about level?”
“I’ve got perfect vision in the other and I know level when I see it.” He long-arms through the window, setting the level on the ridge. The little bubble veers to the right less than a hair. “Ha, see.”
I nose up to him. “So, it’s a dust mote off. What? You think my man’s going to stand in here gasping, ‘Bleedin’ Jesus, that board’s not level. How can I possibly piss straight?’ Stupid friggin’ boy.”
“What man?”
“Who?”
“What man’s pissing in here?”
I snag his collar with my hammer, delivering the words with an almost kiss. “You, Jake Butters. And if you don’t hurry yourself up, I’ll be going blind if I have to keep doing it to myself. Then where will that leave us? You half-blind and me completely in the dark.”
He stops a quarter-inch from my lips. “I still have bogs to wade through. If ever I was to hurt you again, I, I can’t ’til I’m certain I’m on bedrock.”
“Stupid man, not being with you hurts more than ocean salt on an open cut.” I take just one taste from where the fiddle touched his neck last night.
He shakes off the spell and climbs through the window. “Gotta fix this.”
Huey and Mike dance as Jake spends the rest of the day working on the house. The tie on my tool belt is knotted and hard to see over my boobs. “Little help here? I have to go to the gallery.” Jake releases the knot with one hand and a finger lingers on my belly. “Quite the fiddle fingers you have there, b’y.” I drop the belt. “Now, you better follow my plans for the studio porch. Make sure the gazebo circles the southeast corner.”
“What? Let me see those plans. It looks like a bleedin’ bandshell.”
* * *
Moondance rises like only a potter and fiddler can spin wood and stone. Both our hearts have moved in, I can tell by the treasures filling the space: a table Huey made, Nia’s heirloom rocker, Jake’s first fiddle in the corner . . .
Jake turns his cap backwards, studying the outline of the upstairs hall window. “What’re you on about woman? Windows have to be square.”
“Mine will be rounded on top, like the moon. What would you like on top?”
He pushes away the remembrance of me, of us. “I’ll swallow this foolishness, but no pine floors. Too soft.”
“I’ll go with oak plank if you agree to my totem pole in the curve of the steps.”
“No way. That belongs at the entry. It wants a window looking out.”
“Hey, you’re right, it does.”
* * *
It takes four men to install Moondance on my rock, two seahorses twined in a dance atop a crescent moon. Jake mops up his sweat as he looks up. “Christ, you make magic, woman.”
She makes love, too.
Jake blushes, like he heard loud as church bells what Jasper just whispered.
Of all the places that have kept us, slept us, we are clearly the other’s home. We spend shore weekends like when we were kids, where dying things are thrown back to the ocean and the washed-in treasures collected. Yet for every dance that moves us closer, Jake two-steps back.
Every Sunday he drives me down to Antigonish. I ask him up. He says, “Can’t. Have an early class.” He accepts my offer of the truck to take him back to Halifax, then Friday he returns, redwood bigger, stronger, rooted but branch-broken, still unable to take hold of me.
I wait on the sidewalk for our trek home. An eye-popping blonde has his head hanging out of the passenger window as the truck pulls alongside the curb. “Whoa, who’s this?”
Jake reaches to move him over by the collar. “Second Chance.” The Zodiac clone springs out the window after Sunday. “Looks like he thinks Sunday’s one sweet bitch.”
“Least one of us might get lucky.” I whistle Sunday back and assess the long plastic-wrapped tube in the bed of the truck. “What’s that?”
“A present for all the birthdays missed.”
“Is it a whale penis?”
“Why the bejesus would I be gifting you with a whale wang?”
“Because I miss yours?” He squirms and I ease off as we journey home. “How was your week?”
“You should see the results coming in on the mirroring study we set up at the centre.”
“I’d love to see it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and I’m due for a session with Ryan.”
He bypasses Skyfish, takes the driveway to Moondance, hoists the tube out of the truck, into our house, setting it in front of the hearth. “Turn on the lights.” With a push of his boot, a hooked turquoise rug unfurls. It takes a moment for the rusty lines to form.
“Seahorses?”
“Couldn’t believe when I saw it in a shop near the harbour.”
“Can I kiss you? Please say I can.” I read the wetting of his lips as a yes. It’s soft and sweet, seductive and simply spectacular. “Thank you.”
I’m helping myself to second kisses when—give me a friggin’ break— Mike opens the door. “Sorry, I, um, have a situation. I promised not to tell, but think I should.”
I ready for Dickaster. “What’s wrong?”
“Alex.”
“Koshkin? Please don’t tell me—”
“He’s in my nest.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“Do his parents—?”
“They think he’s on a class trip.” Mike shrugs. “He just showed.”
Jake cares little about the hows and whats; he just heads straight for a twelve-year-old that navigated his lone self more than a thousand miles. He sits on the bed, gathering Alex in a way that is exactly like Huey. “There’s a good, lad.” Alex collapses against Jake, trying to catch his breath between sobs. “Okay. There’s nothin’ so wrong that can’t be made better.”
It’s a heavy tale: failing grades, bullies, a belief that his dad wishes he’d died instead of Natasha.
Mary calls before the Koshkins can be tortured over news that Alex isn’t where he’s supposed to be. The sorting is left to M&N and we take Alex to the shore. An ocean, dogs, a friend are good medicine. Jake watches them jumping rock to rock while my eyes drift to him. “What’re you smiling at, Ari Joy Zajac?”
“You. You’re so much like Huey.”
“Right. I am.”
He stretches his arms above his head, sun filling the space where his hand once was. He asks, “When you marry, will you be keeping your name?”
Kick him. He said you, not we.
“I won’t ever let AJZ go, it’s too hard won. What if I said I hope to add yours but want none of your father’s?”
“I’d say Ari Joy Jacob Zajac would be as big a mouthful as J.J. Jingleheimer Schmidt.”
“Good thing you’re registered for summer semester. You need to learn some seahorse sense.”
Seventy-Five
The school year behind, clay days ahead, Jake and I bookend the couch, spending drowsy hours before he heads back to Dal. The prototype on his right arm captures my interest more than Watership Down. With it, he can pinch hold of his book. “What if I told you that wonder you designed has the look of a seahorse about it.”
He smiles easy. “I’d say if you don’t stop interrupting my studying, I’ll never get phase two completed.”
The phone rings and I expect it’s the Wests. “
Well, at least someone on this planet wants to talk to me.” I answer, “East here.”
Our phone chats are kept as economical as possible. Libby asks for details on Alex.
“Some better. He unwound once Mary got him spinning at the wheel.”
“He still there?”
“His dad came. They stayed a few days, then went back to check out a school associated with U of Guelph. It’s small. Lots of outdoor and creative play.”
I imagine Aaron’s head cocked close to Libby’s when he says, “Can’t believe he got himself to the Cove.”
“He said Mike and here were his only connections to a time when he felt okay.”
“He in big trouble with his folks?”
“Mr. Koshkin was as loving as a Labrador. That he’s like that after enduring the most terrible thing any human can feels the biggest treasure of any.” I absorb their wonder-full chatter, then reluctantly say, “I should let you go. Send pictures of my goddaughter.”
Jake stops reading his text and nabs the phone. “Aaron? This is Jake. I’m looking forward to getting to know you and Libby, and thanks for being there for Ari when I couldn’t. Yeah, you’re right about that.”
He returns to studying and I say goodbye. I poke Jake’s bum with my toe. “Right about what?”
“Nothin’. What is it they called the babe?”
“April. If she’d been a boy, he would’ve been saddled with Eagle, Aaron Peter Eagle West.”
“Eagle? APEW?”
“Yeah, thank the god of our mothers it was a girl. Stop changing course. Right about what?”
“He said you were”—he half peeks over the book—“the kind of buggered-up wind that lands everything right where it belongs.”
“Aaron said buggered?”
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