The lights of a passing ship splashed the landing. Pulling the door to, I tiptoed back downstairs.
Hugh was lighting that stub of a candle in the bedroom window. I blushed again.
“Tell me about yourself” I said softly. “How you got here, what you did before— ?”
“Same way you did, Tess. By boat. Nothing that matters, okay?”
Before I could blow out the flame, he had his arms around me and we were sinking into each other, our voices shushed by surf.
***
I woke early, but not before Sonny. Slipping out of bed, I felt a draft. The back door was ajar, a dampness sighing through the kitchen.
Oh, shit.
Hugh hadn’t stirred. He lay on his side, his arm flung out as if still encircling me. The light from the window tinted everything green as I threw on my clothes. Imagining the plop of stones behind the breakwater. Picturing him slipping, a close call, then running, barefoot, wet, into the woods.
I listened to Hugh’s breathing, a soft, untroubled backup to the whisk of surf, an echo. A clamminess spread through me as I thought of Sonny waking in his strange bed and seeing the smooth one across from it, then tiptoeing downstairs and peeking in.
Alex. I had to let go of that baby name I’d saddled him with. Except, then he’d seem less mine, somehow. As if you can own a child. There it was: the urge to hoard something close to your heart, wrap your arms around it, as if hoarding made it more sacred, secure.
I imagined Sonny climbing the hill to the fort, crawling under wet boughs, reindeer moss in his hair.
There wasn’t time to wake Hugh. But as I climbed the path, the air dripping around me, I wondered about my boy and me: where our being together and being separate ended; whether there’s a bottom to the loss you can feel. Sonny was only nine, but as the cool moisture seeped through my clothes, it struck me that as long as I could remember I’d been grieving something, and not just my mother. It was the simple fact that people grew up, grew apart, grew old. Aspects of Sonny already outgrown like sleepers, like snakes casting off old skins, and what was I supposed to do?
Maybe at that moment I wasn’t thinking straight, wanting only to find him; embrace him if he’d let me, and say that no matter what, as long as I breathed, I’d be his mom. I imagined him firing a rock, kicking the ground. His grown-up voice saying: That’s supposed to make it better? Speculation, of course; but it only hurts the heart guessing what someone else will do.
The beat of a chopper pulled me out of myself. The sound came closer, then faded, the aircraft out of view. I wasn’t religious, had no time for stuff like that, but it reminded me of locusts, invisible threats infesting the air beyond the tree buds.
What was I doing here? The feeling shuddered through me as Sonny appeared, a reddish bloom in the misty tunnel of green ahead. “Alex!” I shouted, barely able to keep from screaming. “Wait up!”
“H-how could you…do that? Don’t you like Dad?” he blurted out before I could catch my breath. He had his Nike jacket on over his pyjamas. His face was pale in the needled light. “Why are you doing this to me?” He made a choking sound. “Are you and Dad…getting divorced?” His words were like an axe. He was almost my height; pushing hair out of my eyes, I went to touch him, let my hands drop.
“Sonny. Listen.”
“Sonny, listen,” he mimicked, bending to squash a June bug. He sniffed, looking away, then sniffed again and spat, “So,” it could’ve been Charlie talking, “when’re we going home? There’s a Star Wars thing on channel ten and I gotta—”
My thoughts flew to Hugh, awake now perhaps. Moving around the kitchen, shirtless, fixing coffee. And Sonny, the night before, bent over Scrabble. The candle flickering in the window, like a tiny face reflected in the pane. Hugh’s words as I blew it out: “Wouldn’t it be nice, sometimes, if the world would just back off?”
I imagined Sonny and me tramping up the steps at 12 Avenger, Charlie’s voice on the machine. Hi. It’s me. Calling, like we said. Guess you slipped out—for a video or something? His edgy laugh dissolving to dial tone.
“We don’t need to go home. It’s a little holiday, from school,” I told Sonny. He broke away, climbing a grassy ledge, a rampart. A couple of dandelions bloomed at my feet. When he was tiny, he’d have picked them. Catch! he’d have said.
“Come back, now, and get dry,” I yelled, turning towards the path.
There was no rewinding: the damage had been done. How could I explain: Grown-ups have needs, too?
“When’s the boat coming?” he hollered, following grudgingly, kicking at the bushes.
“Whenever,” I shouted back, walking faster. My voice echoed from the ruins like a stone down a well. As I reached the path, pushing back raspberry canes just in bud, a chorus inside me mocked: Make your bed, you lie in it, sweetie. Those voices from earlier postings: Get used to it—you married it. But the whisking of my jeans through the grass sang out something else: Hugh’s name. It wove in and out of my thoughts like a dragonfly. There’d never been anyone quite like him, not in my universe. My heart floated at the notion. Chances were there’d never be again.
“What’s for breakfast?” Sonny called, slowly catching up.
“We’ll see,” I said, seizing his hand.
11
CHARTS
Hugh had a fire going in the woodstove, porridge bubbling on the hotplate. The ruckus we made coming in wrecked the quiet, but he grinned in an accommodating way, moving to kiss me as we peeled off our jackets. Patting Sonny’s shoulder, he asked cryptically, “Wha’did you find?”
“Find?” I waited for Sonny to sneer, Wasn’t looking for anything. But he sat down, poking at last night’s Scrabble on the table, the way his dad would’ve poked at a faulty gauge. He gave the board a shove, then folded it roughly, dumping all the letters over the red tabletop, picking through them.
PORDGE SUCKS, he spelled with great care, the tiles clicking on the scarred paint.
Hugh made a face, rummaging through the pile. Stealing Sonny’s O, he laid out THE BIG ONE.
In spite of himself Sonny smirked and began flipping over tiles in search of another combination.
BEIN HUNGRY SUCKS TOO, Hugh spelled painstakingly, then dished out a bowlful of cereal for each of us, spilling some.
Slowly I put down: SOMEONES BEEN EATING MY. As if Sonny were two again.
Between spoonfuls, picking some new letters, Hugh swept the last two words away and put SLEEPIN IN MY.
Sonny dumped brown sugar on his cereal and began miserably to eat it.
“Nothing like having company,” Hugh said, taking our dishes. “See? You’ve saved me from goin’ looney. So if I crack up, you’ll know it’s the mercury talkin’. Right, Alex?” He winked, then let out a sigh. “Look, I’ve got a buncha stuff to do, but there’s no need for you guys to take off.”
Sonny started in about Darth Vader and Han Solo.
“Haven’t you seen that?” Hugh said.
“Six times.” There was pride in Sonny’s voice. Like father, like son.
“You must have it memorized.”
“Like it’s branded on his brain.” I laughed, but thought of the steps at home, the rusty railing coming away from the concrete, how it wobbled under your grip. I thought of the phone and some leftover chili in the fridge, and the grass growing up to the walk, and about bingo and bowling and Friday night TV.
Hugh leaned back, lanky in his green T-shirt, his hands folded on the table. A vein stood out ever so slightly on one forearm. I caught his eye. His look was nothing but calm.
“You said you’d show me that song,” Sonny crowed out of the blue, almost badgering.
“Okay,” Hugh agreed, “but up in the lantern, how ‘bout that? Somewhere the noise won’t get to your mom. She looks tired, y’think, Alex?”
“No.”
“Bet she wouldn’
t mind us out of her hair.” His eyes were on me, not smiling but warm—warm as a bath.
“Go make your bed,” I told Sonny.
“Bed?” Hugh pulled a face. “Willa, the guy’s got an agenda— a tune in his head. Nothing like a song that won’t go away, hey, bud?” He swaggered a little, swooping up the sax. I bit my lip to keep from smiling; he was dizzy with the same hangover as me.
I helped myself to the last scrape of porridge while they went off. As I watched the whitecaps from the window, the odd bleat travelled in—that, and birdsong from somewhere over the marsh, a mile off, it seemed. Heee-haaaaar, it went, as if such joy could be parsed into syllables.
Going in to make the bed—Hugh’s bed—I figured, why not? and stretched out in my clothes. A sweet mustiness seemed to fall over me.
Who knows how long they were gone, Hugh and Sonny. Their voices in the kitchen shuffled me from a dream, the kind of dream that stays with you for hours, even days. In the dream were beach stones, round and white and nested like eggs in a field of long, dewy grass. They formed a track leading up to some woods, an overgrown, grassy track that I had to follow. The spruces ahead were dense and lush, not sparse and stunted like real ones. The sun beat down, and I longed for shade. But the stones lay in my path, and I didn’t dare step on them, afraid they would break.
In the kitchen, Hugh had the sax out. He was showing Sonny how to wipe the mouthpiece with a small yellow rag, and mentioning the reed. The word sent a tingle through me, conjuring the whisper of grass, the warmth and coolness of stones.
“Listen to this,” Sonny bellowed straightaway. Clutching the sax, he squawked out a few sad notes.
Hugh slapped his thigh, counting invisible time. “Charlie Parker, look out.” He grinned at me, nodding along.
Disgusted, Sonny ducked free and thrust the sax at Hugh. Without wiping off anything, he honked out that song Sonny had been on about, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight,” bending and twisting as if we were a hall full of people, fans out of our seats. He blew and blew with his eyes squeezed shut, till you wondered what was going on behind the lids. But it gave me a chance to look at him, really look, the way I’d studied Sonny as a toddler taking his first steps. Suddenly I longed for dusk and candlelight, to see Hugh naked. Asleep. To count the freckles on his windburnt skin, the lines around his eyes; brush my fingertips against the shadow of his beard.
Hugh opened his eyes and stopped playing, the sax flagging against him like a dead duck, and I felt myself being drawn in. It was the kind of feeling Alice must’ve had being sucked through the rabbit hole. The opposite, maybe, of being born; and possibly this was exactly it, what I’d been waiting for, had always wanted. To be taken in somewhere, some place dark and mysterious, and never have to leave. Oh my God.
“Willa? Tessie?” His voice encircled me. He had a surprised look, incredulous, as if a bird had hit the window. I felt naked, as if my clothes were drying, flattened to the boulders outside, and Sonny could see me: Ew! Mo-ther! Gross! Get dressed! I imagined a squall crossing his face, tears. Had Sonny known what I was thinking, he’d have rounded up our backpacks and dragged me away. Sonny was a smart kid; at home, he could be my extra eyes.
A chill lit my spine, like granite touching the top of it: a cold granite egg.
Sonny was asking Hugh about climbing the rocks behind the tower.
“Pffft,” Hugh brushed him off. “You take a slide into the sea, who’s gonna fish you out? What do you think, Willa? Would we fish this guy out?” His voice went serious. “Don’t try it.”
Laying down the sax, he told a story about some daredevil girl, the daughter of another lightkeeper, who’d treated the railing around the lantern as monkey bars and tobogganed on the breakwater after ice storms.
“Did she die?” Sonny was mesmerized.
Hugh opened a can of Chef Boyardee, shook the contents into a frying pan. “I don’t think so. Last I heard she was in law school, something like that.” The way he said it made me feel funny—old yet undeveloped, like something still growing under a lens or in a Petri dish.
“Ravioli?” His voice lapped, far away.
The clatter of cutlery roused me. Once more I was ravenous—it must’ve been the island’s air. The red sauce coated my tongue; how good it tasted. Sonny licked his plate.
“Don’t,” I said, catching his arm. Rising to rinse my dish, I glimpsed the clock. “Good Lord, the time!”
Hugh licked his spoon. “Does it matter?”
I ran a deep bath upstairs in the blue-stained tub. The room was grey and chilly. Through the pipes you could hear Hugh and Sonny—scraps of conversation, Hugh’s deep voice and Sonny’s high-pitched one. Their talk lilted like the waves below, and lulled me. My skin looked yellowy white in the dingy water and the light from the bare window. It wasn’t a room to linger in. Not far off a bell buoy tolled, that miserly, gloomy sound not quite an alarm but a warning. Lying there, I listened to all the harbour sounds out of sight and reach, like dogs in a neighbourhood conversing: an invisible chorus of barks and yips. How odd, to be tired but not sleepy, full yet empty. Hungover without having drunk anything. But it was okay, everything was okay as I shifted in the tepid water, closing my eyes. For a moment the bath was a hammock; any second the wind would come and tip me out, but just then it was fine to sink and swing.
As I climbed out, letting the water run away, the foghorn rattled the salt-streaked panes. It shook the boards underfoot, like a blast heralding the end of the world, as if the plaster might shake loose, the walls fold in. The noise scalded my eardrums, squeezed my lungs, but as it ebbed, ploughing the air, the thump of my heart replaced it.
There was scuttling, pounding on the door. “Moo-oooom! Hurry up, I gotta go. Hugh says if you don’t come out soon we’ll hafta bust the lock.”
Hugh’s voice was like chocolate: “That scare you or what? Can’t believe you’re still in there, Willa, after that.”
Sonny cackled.
“Hang on, bud. She doesn’t come out soon, we’ll give ’er another little toot.”
“Thought you said it ran on autopilot—the horn, I mean.” Shivering, wrapped in a ragged pink towel, I was quite awake now and not amused. The terry felt like dried sandpaper. As I dressed, their breathing came through the panelled door. “Manual override.” Hugh sounded gleeful.
Sonny snickered through the crack. “I see England, I see France—”
“Okay, okay. You guys are evil, absolutely evil.”
“You mean like Darth Vader?”
“Must be why you’re hiding,” Hugh sang out.
Sonny choked back laughter. Next came humming: “The Camptown Races.” Who could figure how Sonny’s mind worked? With a funny pang I wondered if, just then, he could’ve described his father’s face or smell, or whether he missed his Lego or anything else about Avenger.
Yanking on my jeans, I listened to the two of them thunder down the stairs. By the time I got there, the kettle was screaming. “Jeeez-me,” I imitated Joyce LeBlanc back on the base. “We’d better call Wayne.” But nobody moved.
“Forecast calls for clearing,” Hugh said. “We could do a bonfire tonight on the beach.”
Sonny gave me a beseeching look.
“But, Wayne—”
“Too late to call now. Buddy’ll be out on a tear, if I know him.”
“We’re not really…prepared.” I was picturing dresser drawers; mentally stuffing things into bags.
“We’ll do snoots—hot dogs. It’s not a big deal.”
I was thinking of Sonny, two days and nights in the same clothes.
“Can I light the fire?” he was already pestering. “I’m good at lightin’ fires. Mom knows, she’s seen me. Can I? Can I?” His pleas banged around in my head, just as they would have at home. Which was where, and what? A house with a phone and an answering machine and maybe a flashing light and … Charlie�
�s voice. His silence.
“All right.” I made it sound like a sacrifice, as if giving in for the first and only time. Sonny was already rooting around for matches.
“There’s a spare box in that upstairs room,” Hugh said, and Sonny pounded up the stairs. Hugh put his arms around me and I pressed my cheek to his chest. “That’ll keep him busy for a bit.” He massaged the little bump at the top of my spine with just the right pressure. As if each pore was a button on his sax; what tunes those fingers could coax.
“I believe I’m in love,” he said, sniffing. When I looked into his face, it reminded me of the moon: open and clear, unmarred by foot or fingerprints.
***
After supper we beachcombed for wood. The sun splashed the sea and sand with orange, the beach blooming with rockweed and litter. There was part of a chair I could picture in someone’s kitchen, a fence picket, and the ribs of a lobster pot. There were grocery bags that might’ve been washing around since their invention, condoms like shed snakeskins, and tampon applicators, Gatorade bottles, and rusty beer caps.
When we had enough wood, we huddled in the lee of the dune, and Hugh helped Sonny roll pages of the Herald into tight little sticks and ease them into the teepee of twigs they built on the rocks.
“This is crappy,” Sonny grumbled. “Why can’t we do it on the sand?”
Hugh wasn’t listening. I wanted to poke Sonny with a piece of driftwood to make him behave. But then I tried to put myself in his place, missing TV and wondering where his dad was and how long this little camping trip of ours would last. It should’ve made me feel guilty, like a stowaway, one of those immigrants you heard about crossing the ocean in containers: people packed into crates with holes punched in the sides. Except they were usually men, with buckets to pee in and hardly any food or water; and the air—well, you could imagine what a shortage of oxygen did to the brain.
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