Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  Hugh had brought along a Thermos of tea. As the flames licked the paper, shooting past his face and Sonny’s into the velvety dusk, I warmed my hands on my cup and sipped. I didn’t mind the canned milk or the chipped china. I was Robinson Crusoe. We were the Swiss Family Robinson. Hugh was the Professor, I was Mary Anne. Except it wasn’t clear where Sonny figured in the equation. He threw on too much wood and Hugh gave him a look—bemused, perhaps. I listened to the flap of wings over the pond behind us, breathing in that smell of swamp.

  I imagined Charlie coming home—from where, God only knew. I pictured him going into the kitchen, finding a note: Lasagne in the freezer, zap on high one minute or two. See you in heaven. In some other life. In your dreams. The writing wasn’t mine: I’ve never believed in eternity. Maybe it wasn’t a note from me at all, but something someone else had scribbled to make him feel…better? Then I imagined him not coming home, the note sitting there beside the toaster, unread. Charlie drinking in a mess somewhere with his buddies, drinking all night and playing darts and shuffleboard. His hair fading from grey to white, as the hours ticked by in military time, so that by dawn he was an old man. And I thought of that disease children can get that causes them to age and wither before your eyes, dying before puberty. The disease has a name, but the name hardly matters. It’s as though their bodies are mad at the world and aiming to get back at it, in a soul-shrinking fast-forward.

  I sipped my tea and felt the fire warm my cheeks. Hugh and Sonny squatted close by, the three of us watching the stars poke holes in the sky. The lights of the city leapt across the harbour. Somewhere inside myself I tapped out a message to Charlie, bolder than any note. One last cry to wherever he was, the voice inside me displaced and feeble as a voice inside a container. Help. Before I slip under waves of seasickness, of thick salt water. Are you listening? I wondered. The only reply was the snap crackle pop of flames eating wood and dried seaweed.

  As the fuel dwindled, Sonny got antsy.

  “Take a hike, why don’t you, and see what you find,” Hugh said, giving him a friendly nudge. Grudgingly Sonny wandered off—not far, just over the rocks towards the pond. He soon returned with a warped piece of board. His back to the fire, he laid it across two boulders and knelt before it, playing it like a piano, humming along. That bloody song again, “Everybody Have Fun Tonight.”

  Hugh’s face lit up; there was something kid-like and tender in his expression. He started strumming an air guitar, losing himself. Forming chords, his eyes squeezed shut, and wincing as if the notes were needles. Then he broke out laughing, and Sonny laughed too, that gurgly laugh I’d been missing since our move; the kind of laugh kids reserve for each other. Snorting, giggling, he launched into another one, “The Way It Is”—Bruce Hornsby and the Range—till the board flipped sideways. Hugh howled, lying back against the shifty stones. Just as he was looking helpless, Sonny pointed across the blackness to the city and said, “Man, we have an audience. Look, Mom—they’re all sitting there waving lighters. See? They’re watching us!”

  “Yes, yes,” Hugh bellowed, laughing up at the stars. The flames crackled; somewhere out there in the dark the buoy rocked and tolled.

  The wind fanned me alive, the air cold now, rubbery against my skin. “I could sleep out here,” I said, not quite meaning it. Already the dampness had begun to creep up my arms and my butt was numb from the rocks.

  “Your mom’s a nature girl, I knew it!” Hugh yelled.

  “Shhh!”

  Sonny looked up from his lopsided keyboard, sniffing. Puzzled. “Mom hates camping.” His voice was tired but stubborn. “The time me and Dad and her…”

  Firelight scrubbed Hugh’s face. Looking at me, he waited. Then he said, loud enough that Sonny wouldn’t miss it: “You could stay here.”

  12

  THE LOG

  Charlie came home eight days later on a leave. He had forty-eight hours before his next tour, routine exercises just offshore. He looked different to me, tanned and thinner. His head was shaved, and there was a strange hunger in his look, a new remoteness. He kissed me—“Damn, it’s good to be here!”—then asked what was for supper, what homecoming treat we had waiting.

  He glowered at his chicken nuggets. “Sheesh. You usually make those ribs, that’s all.”

  Sonny got out the ice cream cake—his idea—which we’d picked up on the run. Charlie’s face lit up and he clapped Sonny’s shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t’ve.”

  “Mom wanted to,” Sonny said. Then, “Gotta be at Derek’s for seven. There’s this project for math, and a wrestling special on TV. Can you drive me?”

  “Walk,” said Charlie.

  Once the cake was back in the freezer, we found ourselves in the bedroom, just the two of us.

  “Willa,” he said, like a wind-up toy, the kind that beats a drum. “I missed you.”

  An image of his captain flashed through me, that fireplug dynamo with highlighted hair, and the way she spoke from the side of her mouth, like Jean Chrétien.

  It was as if we were reading from a maintenance manual: a three-month checklist.

  My jaw clenched when he kissed me. When he slid his hand inside my jeans I got up, leaving him lying there. He looked like the ceiling had just opened and a pipe burst.

  In the kitchen bits of uneaten cake left beige pools on the plates. I cleaned up. The phone rang, and my heart seized. A wrong number: someone looking for pizza.

  When I slipped into the bedroom again Charlie was asleep, sprawled on top of the covers. I picked up Sonny, and that night made my bed on the couch. The two days before Charlie left again, we were countries on opposite sides of the world.

  “We need to talk. There’s something I’ve—”

  “Not now, Willa. For chrissake, put a sock…I’m a little preoccupied? Beat is more like it; can’t you see?” As if it were up to me to fix it.

  “You’re right,” I said, tearing up. In spite of everything.

  “It’s this goddamn job.” But the way he spoke, I knew he didn’t mean it.

  You’ve always been married to your job, I wanted to tell him then, but couldn’t. Not with Sonny, my confidant, lying there watching cartoons. Sonny who could’ve laid bare everything, my cranky little soldier. Peacekeeper.

  “See ya, Dad,” was all he said.

  ***

  The day I picked to leave was foggy; it was right after school ended. It’s almost obscene, really, how easy it was. I left a note, but one that said little—blood-from-a-stone little—signed, simply, “Willa.” No love, sincerely, regrets, or yours truly. It took three tries to get the wording right, a barebones explanation with no hint of apology. The remark that Sonny was my biggest concern, that in the long run he’d be better off, too. I’d met somebody, I said. Hedging on an address and phone number, finally including both in case of emergency. No point coming after me or thinking things would change, I wrote. This was love and it meant everything. You would know about that.

  I left like a thief, whispering to Sonny as we moved through the rooms grabbing last minute items, as Charlie surely would’ve, in my position. A few times Sonny said, “Mom?” too loudly and I shushed him, as if speaking in normal voices would trip an alarm, deter us.

  The only thing I waffled over was Joyce’s snapshot from Family Day, the day my heart had nearly failed, watching Sonny dangling from the cargo door, two thousand feet up. The day I’d learned a little of what it meant having wings. I couldn’t decide whether to bring the picture or leave it taped to the fridge; it was the only one taken since our move east, the three of us together, Charlie, Sonny, and me. I peeled the photo from the fridge and put it in a drawer.

  I called a cab, leaving the Dodge in the driveway. It would only be a burden. The taxi came, as if to take us shopping or to the airport. I’d have liked our exit to be invisible, leaving nothing changed or amiss, as if we’d gone on an errand and w
ould be back in a few hours. Charlie wasn’t due home for two weeks, but I left the fridge well stocked, the kitchen and bathroom spotless. Not a crumb or speck of dust to be seen.

  Crossing over in the boat that morning, I couldn’t see five feet in front of us. As we zipped along, the water was like shale, the air completely still but for the engine’s whine and the port’s distant rumble. It was early—too early, I guess, for Wayne, who as usual didn’t speak.

  It was like being in a vacuum, the only certainty the feeling of speed. I worried about slamming into something, another boat or an animal in the water; couldn’t help imagining a wall of steel or shiny flesh breaking through the fog suddenly. Still, there was something—and I hate the word—appropriate about going by open boat, as if all the world should see us, Sonny and me. The underworld, too, as if the creatures below should’ve had periscopes. But the only thing popping the surface was a cormorant, its skinny black neck and bill like the mouthpiece of Hugh’s sax. It made me gasp, a spectre jutting from the water like the tip of a shipwreck.

  Wayne looked hungover. It was hard to tell if his face was dirty, or he was growing a goatee. I closed my eyes and felt the dampness pinging my lids. An image of Hugh swam up: the reddish tinge of his beard, the roughness of his cheek. And I thought of Charlie: how, if he’d grown a beard, I mightn’t recognize him, except for his eyes, that simmering impatience. What colour would his beard be? The question stung as we skipped along, a smooth stone over smoother water.

  Sonny hung over the side, trailing his hand in. It must’ve been early; he was so quiet. You could feel Wayne giving him the once-over, taking in his holey sweatpants and sneakers with the rubber badge peeling off one ankle. Wayne seemed pissed off, as if the ten bucks I’d handed him weren’t nearly enough, though it should’ve been. Within minutes the trees loomed, the pier with birds dotting it like clean socks. But he’d taken note of our knapsacks, heavier than usual, the garbage bags of clothing, not to mention Sonny’s grocery bags of comics, and other paraphernalia including his bike—all the stuff a kid would need to amuse himself in an island paradise. Of course, the water was too polluted for swimming and already, with summer barely started, the bugs would be murder. What bugs? I thought gleefully. As we swung about to dock, the fog broke at the end of the channel and on the spit-blue horizon I could just make out the light and houses on Devils Island. It looked so flat I could imagine it sliding under the ocean, disappearing like Atlantis.

  Hugh had told a story one night about a boy finding the print of a cloven hoof there, pressed into the island’s gravelly sand. No way could it have been an animal’s, he’d insisted. Devils was too far out and hard enough for people to land on, let alone deer. Curled close to him, I’d imagined the undertow pulling stones—that sucking clatter—and fog, endless fog. Now I thought how lucky he wasn’t the lightkeeper there. I couldn’t have done that to Sonny. Imagine, fearing the devil and nowhere to run but in a circle, an endless circuit of sneaker prints in the sand.

  As he cut the motor, Wayne eyed Sonny’s blue CCM lying in the bow. The “sissy” bell on the handlebars, my idea of a necessity for riding on the street, wasn’t an issue now.

  We stayed put while Wayne hoisted the bike onto the wharf and tossed up the rest of our stuff. An osprey watched from its nest atop a telephone pole, a nest the size of a Little Tykes wagon. “Look, Sonny.” I pointed. “It has babies!” You could see the little heads poking up.

  But Sonny wasn’t impressed. He was watching the woods for Hugh, who emerged suddenly and walked slowly towards us. Wayne had already started the engine. “Hey, buddy!” he yelled and Hugh waved. I was clutching at bags, balancing the bike and hauling on my knapsack while Sonny sauntered ahead with his comics.

  The water licked the sand as I dropped everything and waited. Hugh was smiling, taking his time. It looked like he was limping. He squeezed Sonny’s shoulder and pointed to something rusting in the sand, the ribs of a hull. Soon he was beside me, grabbing our packs and shaking his head, laughing.

  “You look like two fucking runaways,” he teased. “Like the guy on Bugs Bunny.” Amid the jumble he kissed me—a kiss that turned my knees to kelp. The feeling spread, as if I were swimming. My heart floated, it did, as if I’d sucked in water. If Sonny hadn’t been there. I’d have taken everything off and lain on the sand. But as I watched Sonny kick at a rusty spike, the urge drifted away, leaving an ache as the fog parted overhead, showing a glimmer of blue. It was like the sea and sky cracking open, and there we were, everything spread before us.

  “I didn’t think you’d do it,” Hugh said quietly, strapping on my pack. “Jesus, what’ve you got in here?” Already I was wondering what I’d forgotten, running down a mental list: shampoo, hairbrush, soap, et cetera. Earrings, bug dope, sunscreen, the special comics that wouldn’t fit in Sonny’s pack.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Hugh marvelled, rubbing my arm and leaning close. “You’re here, I mean. Please. God. Don’t let me wake up and find I dreamt it. I’ve been going stir-crazy without you.” We’d been apart for days, waiting for school to be over. His face danced before me, so close I could see each bristle on his jaw, and smell his smell of wood smoke and leaves and salt air. As we reached the path he whistled to Sonny.

  “That your bike?” Sure enough, there it was back at the dock. “You might have a time riding it, Alex,” Hugh shouted. “Least you won’t get lost.” I thought, guiltily, that was too bad. How much easier, were Sonny still small enough to nap.

  He scowled at the dock.

  “Go on. We’ll wait,” Hugh said, and for a second Sonny looked about to argue.

  I waited for it: Ah, Mooom, no one’ll steal it. Who’d want a blue bike anyway? In my other life, the one I’d stepped out of, I’d have gone back for it and wheeled it home.

  “Alex?” I let myself be pulled along, the warmth of Hugh’s hip against me. Hesitating, kicking sand, Sonny ran back. There was the ticking of spokes as he caught up.

  “You’ll figure out the trails,” Hugh said, glancing over his shoulder, smiling into my eyes. “They all lead pretty much to the same place. That’s the beauty of it.”

  The fog lifted as we cut uphill. The woods were dense and lush with moss and ferns and thickets of knotweed alive with birds. The only sounds were the bike’s swish through foliage and the wafting roar of the city a million miles off, punctuated with birdsong. It was so sweet and startling, exotic as the call of birds at the world’s first dawn it struck me as I slapped at mosquitoes. Enthralled, I barely noticed when the path forked and Hugh picked a different route. My heart lifted with each perfect note. If not for the bugs, we could’ve walked naked. We could’ve been Adam and Eve and Pinch Me, the three of us.

  Then we came upon a swampy trench. It was full of rusted frames and gears and pulleys half hidden by trees—a rifle range, Hugh explained, for training soldiers in one war or another.

  “Bloody military owns half of Thrumcap, like it’s this big playground or something.”

  “Sweet!” Sonny burst out, despite the mosquitoes and the burden of his bike. “I’m coming back here!” Like a vow to revisit a comic book store. He stopped for a closer look at some gears, then poked around inside a crumbling cement bunker.

  It clouded over again, the sun like a white-hot marble trying to burn through.

  “Place’s got quite the history,” Hugh said, explaining that, once upon a time, the island had sheltered cholera victims. Luckless Irish immigrants nursed by the Sisters of Charity, their corpses dumped at sea.

  “Shit, you must’ve brought the friggin’ kitchen sink,” he said. “This stuff’s getting heavy.”

  “ALEX!” I yelled. “Let’s go!”

  The path widened to a mossy track between some tamarack trees. Their tiny red cones were miniscule roses among the feathery needles. “Look,” I said to Sonny, but he didn’t care. When the trail straightened, turning gravelly, he s
wung onto his bike and pedalled ahead.

  “Wait up!” I called as he disappeared.

  Hugh poked me. “It’s okay, Willa. Tessie. He can’t get lost.”

  “I know, but...”

  The woods gave way to a thicket of rose bushes with masses of dark pink blooms. The scent was sharpened by the salt air, and I turned to Hugh, locking my arms around his waist. I closed my eyes, drinking it all in.

  “What’re you takin’ so long for?” Sonny’s voice drifted towards us. He’d gotten off his bike. My face felt warm as the sun suddenly bloomed through the clouds. Hugh breathed into my ear.

  “It’s all right—he’s gonna have to get used to it.”

  When we caught up, Hugh ran his palm over Sonny’s head, letting it hover as if gauging the height of his fresh buzz cut, enjoying its feel. I loved it when Sonny got his hair cut; the day before, I’d watched his face in the mirror as the barber combed and snipped. The best part came later, in the parking lot, touching that silky, springing hair—until he’d yelled, “Quit it, Mom. Someone’ll see.”

  Hugh blinked; he seemed almost dizzy. “Here we go,” he murmured as the lighthouse came into view. We took a sandy path that separated the wide green pond from the marsh, and as we headed towards the spit, the wind picked up and the clouds pulled apart, showing stitches of blue.

  “Almost home,” Hugh said, squeezing my hand.

  Sonny had dropped his bike on the rocks and was pelting stones at the waves. I let the breeze fill my lungs. It was like being little again, even younger than Sonny: the feeling of lightness. Like being walked back along the block to early childhood, some open-ended place of safety. Where time—summer—was water spilling over loose, green stones, a place where everything was cool and green.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Hugh, clutching his arm and not letting go.

  13

  THE CHRONOMETER

  The rest of that first day—our first day living with Hugh—floated past. By the time Sonny and I emptied our bags and found spots for our things, the sun was blazing. That afternoon, the three of us took a walk to another fort, retracing the route behind the pond and following the path to the island’s highest point. Cutting through a grove of knotweed, we passed a cemetery, the stones worn smooth and slanting into the bushes. Nothing like Memory Gardens where my mother was, with its black, polished monuments.