Jake asks. “Open window?”
“He means ‘The Parting Glass.’” I say and start singing, “Of all the comrades that e’er I’ve had . . .”
By the time Jake joins in, all the windows in the sky are open.
“ . . . but since it falls unto my lot that I should rise and you should not, I’ll gently rise and softly call, good night and joy be with you all.”
Mike says, “Your singing together is sugar wind.”
My voice is bell-clear like my mum’s. And mellow like my dad’s. Blended, it is unlike either of them. It is singularly my own.
* * *
The boys wake when I gas up in Kingston. Mike asks, “Is this where O’Toole is?”
“Yep, Kingston Pen.” We drive on, Jake at the wheel, me raiding the cooler.
“You think he was ever good?”
“I’m told back in the day he was a premium catch.” I pass Mike his favourite: peanut butter and honey. “I gotta believe that everyone starts as good clay.”
“He’s an eel that got himself stuck in hot water. You think he could be good now?”
Jake says, “Huey told me the only way to stop being a shit is to stand up, square my shoulders, and stop being a shit.” We all sit up a little. “And listen to that voice inside that tells us what’s what.” Jake has never really entered the seahorse crazy with me and I feel a little like dancing when he says, “Kira was right to tell you to come, Mike.”
“She was,” I admit.
Mike leans forward, peers out the windshield. “Look. The hood ornament.” A chrome bird sculpture was the thing that sold me on this truck, more than the mechanics. “Remember William Walrus saying that I’d travel back home on a wing?”
“Geez, that was, like, five, six years ago?”
“Thanks for coming with me.” He talks with his mouth full of sweetness. “Did I make you miss a lot at school, Jake?”
“I’ll stay down and work through this weekend. That’ll get me all caught up.”
Seventy-Six
I sit under the tree where Jake told me to meet him. Dalhousie’s campus buzzes. They’ve won conference finals two years running.
You want me to stuff a volleyball down your snout?
Hey, I hear Jewel.
So do—I spot Jake, moving across the quad playing, single-handedly. A tidy contraption fastening the bow to his stump. I lift my skirts in a little step-dance as he finishes with a toe-lifting flourish. “Well, what’d you think?”
I appraise the invention. “Black velvet band’s a nice touch.”
He snugs his arm around my waist and introduces me to the man with him. “Ari, this is Professor Zimmerman.”
“So, this is Ari. That uncle of yours has opened up the most exciting research of my career.”
“Pardon?”
Jake says, “The mirroring.”
“Jake’s been doing some remarkable work at the centre with the kids.”
“I know. I met a few after my physio.”
Jake smiles, soft, confident. “What if I said music’s good as gold for fillin’ cracks?”
“Then I’d say a potter and fiddler could turn broken pots into something pretty spectacular.”
“Better get a move. Sadie gave me a list of things to pick up before heading home.”
I wait while Jake zips into the printers. He drops the package on my lap and I open the box to the aqua programs, “The Marriage of Sadie Ellen O’Shaughnessy and Dr. David Patrick Macpherson.”
“Whoops, they made a mistake; it says Jake Butters.”
“That’d be me. What if I said for Huey’s birthday gift, I’ve claimed the name I believe belongs to me?”
“I’d say nothing would make him prouder.”
“You gave me the idea.”
Ari Butters. I like. I like.
When he stops to pick up his suit, I reclaim the wheel and we drive up the coast. “Jake, what were you about to tell me before Laura crashed in?”
“It’s hard for me to say.” His head turns away.
“Have your feelings for me changed?”
“O’course.” The passing miles near absorb his words. “Love you more now than I thought it possible to love.”
“For pity sake. Talk to me.”
“Ellis is the one who called me after your mum died. He got me to call you.”
“I know. And didn’t that moment of lifting your head out of the deep feel good?”
“It did. I stopped drinking—thinking maybe I could come help.”
“Why didn’t you go back to rehab?”
“When I heard you’d been near killed, I thought my wanting you back had caused it. I convinced myself you were better off.”
“I get that thinking. It’s easier knowing we’re not that powerful, isn’t it?”
I slow, coming to a stop to let a moose cross, and Jake watches its essence long after it has disappeared. “We aren’t and we are. I never told you how your letters kept me afloat. There was one that felt like the times we’d just ramble and talk. I actually went to the library to find out what Ma Griffe was. What kind of name is that for a perfume?”
“It means ‘my claw’ and it smells like too much, a complicated everything when all you’re longing for is the simple scent of your match. I’m a lonely seahorse, Jake. I keep spinning and spinning and you just close your heart.”
“It’s not you. It’s . . . I suppose about too much stink, but it’s not you.” He talks to the padded roof. “I’ve sifted through a mountain of shit, found treasures, and pitched a ton. The standing feels right, but the holding . . .” He sponges his face with his T-shirt. Exhales, inhales, then exhales again. “I don’t know how to get the stench of those lost years off me.” He folds away. “There were women. Mismatches I crawled into. Anything breathing that had nothing of you in them.”
“I made stupid mistakes, too.”
“Not like me. I-I got Dulcie pregnant.”
“We have a baby somewhere?”
“For Christ’s sake, Ari, you’re supposed to hate me for that.”
“Oh.”
“She ended it. Couldn’t stomach the thought of havin’ my kid.”
“Oh, Jake, I can’t know her reasons, but I do know you’re the best man for me.”
“I don’t know how to touch you. It doesn’t feel right. You should be with someone like the doc.”
“Because he has clean hands?” He half shrugs. “Jake, I’m a potter.” I stretch my scarred clay-etched hand in front of him. “You know what’s on these hands. All of it. Horrors and joys.” My fingers find the small wave of hair at the nape of his neck. “Mary always said you had to break to get at the hurt your father created, but what your mother did was the most terrible wounding. I know what it’s like to be the invisible child, to be less than the pesky spray of a sneeze. Least my father noticing me felt a little like love.”
He leans into my hand. “It’s sweet, eh, that Mike was witness to his mum wanting the best for him?”
“It was. And just you know, Jake Butters, there’s a woman on this earth that wants the best for you.” An hour along, I turn off on a road he’s likely never travelled but where M&N have taken me several times.
“Where’re you going?”
“I promised to get Sadie something.”
“What’s in Maitland?”
“The Shubenacadie. There are shiny stones on the bottom she wants.”
I stop near a river curve that creates a shallow bowl of mud.
“There’re no stones here.”
My T-shirt peels over my head as my skirt hits the ground.
“Ari, get back here.”
Icy mud eats up my toes, then feet, before oozing over my ankles.
“Ari!”
The muck consumes my arms as I search
for gems.
“Sadie will skin us if we’re late for the rehearsal.”
“I’m stuck.”
“You are not.”
I pull and panic. “Really, my foot’s caught. Ow, oh, ow. Jake, help.”
He hops out of his shoes and jeans and tosses his shirt. “Bleedin’ Jesus, why you doing such a stupid thing as this?” As he sets to rescuing my foot, I take him down in one clean swoop. “What the hell?”
I land on him. “Jake Butters, I love this stuff. I don’t give a frig how stinkin’ dirty you are, you dumb fool boy.” My arms windmill launching dollop after dollop. “You’re clay, not dirt.”
He sits, looking as bewildered as an ostrich discovering two big arms have sprouted out of the ooze. He throws a blob which splats on my neck and the war is on with more whoops and fun than anybody deserves. With his last scrap of wind, he takes me down, flopping onto his back to catch his breath. Soon, he lets go, resting deep into the liquid earth. The sky above shimmers silver. Two hawks eye us before sailing up on a thermal.
“In my dreams, I had the baby in my arms. I’d take him home and stop messing up because he needed me to take care of him.”
“Wherever that little spark landed, it’s dancing because you’re finally taking care of you.” I rise like a vanilla wafer out of a chocolate fondue and extend my hand. “It’s time we were getting home.”
Auntie Mary pokes her head through the side window when we arrive at Skyfish. She asks, “Should I fire up the kiln?”
“No, we’re done.”
* * *
Salt Wind is reunited for the wedding. “Silver and Gold” fills the air as little girls in pretty dresses line up. Last count there were twenty-one. That’s Sadie’s way, anyone who wants to be her flower girl, put flowers in your hair and come. Before they are released, Mike ushers the Missus to her well-earned place of honour. For a month, students at Pleasant Cove have been cutting tiny tissue petals and they rain on the guests as fairies dance up the grassy aisle. David’s best man moves like a pigeon-toed penguin, but he’s a good sport as he twirls and cavorts the pair of us toward the alter. Laughter hangs like stars as Sadie appears and takes hold of Huey’s arm, the man who has fathered her since she was five. Theirs is a sweet and graceful waltz with a twirl landing her at David’s side.
Glory moves away from the fluttery girls. Her small hand tugs my dress and she says her first word since arriving in the Cove. “Up.”
I scoop her up and she nestles under my hair like a duckling under a wing. I hear a voice, but it’s not Jasper. You want to see the rooms in Ari? Everything you need to feel safe is here. Glory nods, like she’s hearing each word. The Missus catches my eye, touches her nose. Well, Glory be, aren’t you light and isn’t every stone in her set right. As I turn back, I spot him beside Nia—William Walrus. He smiles, and in the wink of his eye, I’m eight years old and hearing, “See, little miss, the whole world can get turned upside down and still land right.” Auntie Nia shrugs innocence.
After the I dos, I find William in the throng and sigh. “So, there’s no magic? Just bean-spilling aunties?”
“No magic? Well, I’ve never heard such a thing. Your aunties have loved you for your whole life and have been watching over you.” His great strawberry palm opens on my face. “And when they couldn’t be at your side, they sent out word to all the clans to watch out for you. That’s big magic.”
“How do you know them?”
“Nia’s daddy and me worked the railroad. I came for visits all the time. Huey and me became best of mates.”
“How’d you know I’d need ten pennies to see me home?”
“See a lot of travellers in my line. Most have two cents’ worth of trouble, a few a nickel’s. Occasionally, I come across a sad sack with two bits, even a dollar of disaster. With what I knew of your mum at one end and your aunts at the other, a dime seemed a good bet.”
“It helped seeing the load get lighter over the years.”
“Never got lighter. You just got stronger. And that, little miss, is the biggest magic. You, you, didn’t throw your pennies away on wishes, you kept riding the rails, earning that muscle.”
“I have sturdy arms and legs now. I’m ready for that dance you promised.”
“There are many ahead for us. Old William sees it. And that last penny is for keeping, a reminder that no matter what comes your way the world can always turn light side up.”
* * *
Jake’s spot is empty for the last set. A lift of Huey’s chin points me to Moondance. I follow Jake’s song to the front porch, wind stirring the gossamer layers of my dress like ocean froth, lifting it as I climb the steps. “What’s that melody?”
“‘The Calling Home of Jewel.’” His gray eyes soak right into my centre. “You look like blue moonlight on the ocean.”
I fan the skirt. “Just like Sadie to pick such a spectacular dress for her maid of honour.”
“Snot on the shoulder’s a nice touch.”
“Had a cuddle with a duckling.” The porch support holds my back. Through the big window, I see a candle flickering in Len’s pot on the mantle. Jake sits, kilt handsome, collar loosened, on a twig chair, one bare foot perched on the rail. “You look so right sitting there.”
“It’s the home we dreamed.”
“And built.”
“So, I’m a little scared to pose this ‘what if.’”
“Try me.”
“What if I said I need to keep discovering what I’m discovering and I’ll likely have a few years of school ahead?”
“I’d say if you leave me here, you needn’t be afraid that distance will change my feelings. If you want me with you, then I’d say I’m well practised at being home wherever I land.”
“What if U of T was doing research on what I’m studying and my professor thinks I should apply after graduation?”
“I’d say Mina and Ellis would piss themselves. I’d say the nest is waiting.” The air holds the fragrance of a forest after a heavy rain. “Plus, and it’s a big plus, if you run out of subjects, I know a guy who murders limbs.”
He closes his good eye and scans the acreage between us and the drop to the ocean, the crescent where the ridge collapsed six summers ago. “Wish you could see what I’m seeing.”
Fireflies wink in the greening wood. Fingers of mist search the grass for notes falling from a dreamy waltz sent from Skyfish, and beyond, sprits surface, all of them, devils and the divine, white and black robes trailing as they ride the waves before rolling under. “I see them.”
“Who do you see?”
“All the ones that shaped us into the unthinkable ones.”
Jake rises, moving to the rail like a king before his people. “Thank you, you crushers and healers, pounders and lovers, foes, carers, teachers, tormentors, holders, releasers, sinners, and saviours, you have given us our life.” He swallows tears, the ones that taste sweet. “Now, the lady and I can take it from here.” The half turn of his body and tilt of his head sets our own universe into orbit. “What if I told you when I was small, a seahorse pair jumped out of my pocket and one wandered off when they heard a baby crying alone on the beach?”
“I’d say Jewel is the most unselfish of seahorses to have let Jasper stay with me until I was safely grown.”
“What if I told you Jasper’s in my pocket right now?”
“I thought things got switched around in that mud bath yesterday.”
“Mouthy bugger, isn’t he. Set me straight on a lot of things.”
“That’s Jasper.”
“He says Jewel and he have been separated long enough, and if I don’t do something about it, he’s going to poke me in my good eye.”
“Then you’d better let Jewel out of my bra and Jasper out of your pocket and get our seahorses into some water right quick.”
“You ever going to p
ut that imagination to bed?”
“Never.”
“Right answer.” He moves close, touching my face with both hands. Ocean breeze ripples the night around us like seagrass moving beneath the waves. “Last dance, Ari?”
In slow circles we turn. “What if our house burns down to the dirt?”
“We’ll lie under the stars and I’ll warm you in my arms.” He pulls me close.
“What if all our babies die like Huey and the Missus’s?”
He kisses the tiny scar on my cheek. “I’ll mourn them forever and love a hundred in their memory.”
“What if pirates think you’re their Captain Hook?”
Neck, kissed. “I’ll tell them all the treasure worth having is already mine.”
“What if a great white helps himself to your other hand?”
“I’ll teach and I’ll dance and”—shoulder kissed—“I suppose you’ll always have to be on top.”
“And what if I die?”
He lifts my chin. “Please Ari, don’t ever ask me to ‘what if’ that.”
“Okay.” Like dancing with light and water, earth and air, I hold on. “I won’t die until I’m one hundred and you’re a hundred and three, then we’ll sail off the world together in our boat, The Seahorse Dance.”
“Ouch!”
“What?”
“The bugger just bit my ear. Says our boat is Jasper’s Jewel.” On the ribbon of moonlight he twirls us ’round, lifting me through the door, and we are home.
Acknowledgements
This book is about resilience, and resilience begins with family—the one we are born into and the one we piece together. Thank you to my sister, Susanne, who for my entire life has encouraged me to believe in myself. And to my brother-in-law, John: you inspire me.
Thank you to my spectacular children: Sarah, Ben, Mike, Mary, and Elisabeth. You have given me more stories of compassion and overcoming than any writer deserves. And, to my grandchildren, Jyn, Gemma, Desi, and Teddy, great-niece and nephew, Danica and JJ; extraordinary kids who give me hope for our planet’s future and the promise of a library full of adventures.
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