Watermark

by Christy Ann Conlin

  “I can’t stay up here.”

  A detail.

  “Too cold is it?”

  “Yeah. Too cold. I’m homesick.”

  Oh my. Details.

  “You’ve just got to make a go of it.”

  “But I want to come home. I want to come home. Can’t I make a go of it at home?”

  “Well, you’ve spent your life since you were fifteen trying to get away from here. How do you think coming back is going to make it any better?”

  “You did. You came back. You brought us all back.”

  “And many’s the time I’ve wished I’d not come back, my girl.”

  Declan was standing in the doorway, watching her. He was giving them time to talk one on one, but she could tell he couldn’t stand to listen to them fighting. Lucy looked at him and then away. It had been Declan’s constant drinking way back then. How he couldn’t hold a job. Everybody’s goddamn boozing had been enough to make Lucy want a drink, though she never took to it the way all the drunks around her did. She just took to the garden. But Declan’s drinking had stopped, and now he stood there in the doorway nervously, watching Lucy say goodbye to Deirdre, watching her hang up the phone and sit there staring out the window.

  Later Lucy saw him watching her from the window while she worked in the garden, and she saw him come out holding her sun hat, and she felt his shadow as he stood over her.

  “Should wear this, Dear.” He placed the straw hat on her head and she didn’t flinch. “I got some work around here she can do, Luce. And David won’t be home this summer, all the way over there in Africa with Médecins Sans Frontières.” Lucy adjusted the hat and pulled out a weed as she listened to Declan butcher the French words.

  “All the way over in Africa doing the volunteer work,” she said. “Lord. Declan, doesn’t anyone make a salary anymore? Everyone working for free these days?” She waited for him to justify why their children were so different from their friends’ children.

  “Aren’t a lot of jobs out there now, Luce. You know that.”

  Lucy pulled out another weed. She was very tired. It was as though the disappointment of her entire life was trying to press her down into the earth. “What’s she going to do around here?” Lucy’s voice was barely a whisper and Declan answered in a gentle tone, as if he were trying to match her voice and keep hers from rising.

  “Lots of stuff. You know I can’t do what I could before, what with the bursitis. Lots of stuff, the house needs painting or we’re going to have to take off them shingles and put on the siding.”

  “You know how I hate the siding.” Luey yanked out a fistful of weeds but the effort to pull them felt like she had ploughed an entire field by hand. It was stifling hot, worse than normal.

  “I know you hate the siding, and that’s why we have to keep the paint on the wood so the rot don’t get in. If you want to live in an old house, then you got to do the upkeep. Deirdre could help out with all this, all the stuff Davie used to do.”

  “I’m not moving into a bungalow. I may be retired, but I am not moving into a bungalow.” Lucy sat down on the lawn.

  “Lucy, the sun’s too bright for you.”

  He went in and came out with some pink lemonade and peanut butter cookies, and they sat in the shade together, watching the hummingbirds sipping at the nectar in the trumpet honeysuckle. There were more hummingbirds than ever this year. Over two dozen. Declan counted them every morning and every evening. They hardly ever alighted, constantly feeding, drawn to the exotic beauty around them.

  “Dec, that’s a fine feeder you’ve hung up there.”

  Lucy watched Declan as he sipped his lemonade and peered up into the sky, tracing the birds with his pinkie finger.

  “I know you’re not moving into a bungalow, Lucy. I’m not saying that —”

  “Then what are you saying, Declan? What are you trying to say?”

  “Well, if you let me finish, I’d say it.”

  “Well, say it.”

  “I’m saying let Deirdre come home and help us out around here, for the summer.”

  A bird hummed by Lucy’s head. She didn’t know where it had all gone wrong, why every year passed and yet she never felt happy, why her family was always letting her down.

  “And then what?”

  “Well, then she’s got her master’s in linguistics now, don’t she? She’s not just a walking mess of problems. The girl speaks five languages. That’s something, Lucy.”

  Lucy wiped her forehead. “Yes, Lord yes, it is, I’m not going to argue about that. She’s just got her frigging thesis she can’t finish. But they all got their master’s these days. They’re either volunteering or working in a café. No one does anything normal anymore. Deirdre went and learned languages hardly anyone speaks. How practical is that?” Lucy was yelling now, almost crying.

  “If she wants to learn languages hardly anyone speaks that’s something we should be proud of. How many people around here would even bother? There’s just no pleasing you. Lucy, God almighty, if she wants to come, then let her come home. She never wanted to come home before.”

  It was true, Lucy thought. Deirdre never had wanted to come before. Not through the detox, the hospital, the unemployment, the welfare, the in and out of university, all the endless breakups with one man after another. Lucy could never keep their names straight. Just a spattering of phone calls, sometimes drunk ones in the middle of the night, sometimes hung-over calls in the middle of the afternoon, never after supper or on Sunday when most people called. They’d been phoned and told item by item, no details.

  I’m off the booze.

  Went to detox.

  Went to rehab.

  Learned a new language.

  Going to university.

  Graduated.

  Broke up with Matthew the lawyer, Reverend John, Jason the guitarist, Charles the interpreter, Professor Patrick the leprechaun, and the Pied-Bloody-Piper.

  Learned another new language.

  Started my master’s.

  Dropped out of my master’s.

  Met Dr. Bob.

  Going up north to work with the Grey Nuns.

  Learned Inuktitut.

  Broke up with Dr. Bob.

  Canoed on the river with migrating beluga whales.

  Ate an eyeball.

  Any time Lucy wanted, she could sit down in the comfy chair on the verandah, shut her eyes, smell the roses, and think back to the vomit. It was easy to imagine Deirdre in a coffin in the funeral home, just like her grandfather, all laid out and done in by her heart. And Lucy could scatter pieces of her own heart on the grave. She told Declan that Deirdre could come home.

  * * *

  Lucy and Declan were in the shade having iced tea, escaping the high noon sun, when the car came down the driveway. It was almost six weeks since the horrible eyeball phone call. July was always a stunning month, a month you could count on. The roses were in full bloom, the raspberries were on, and the blue sky hung over like a stretch of lake. Lucy was exhausted again. The heat had never bothered her this much.

  Deirdre had written a letter mentioning she was going to arrive this Sunday, but of course, didn’t say how or when. Just said she didn’t need to be picked up at the airport, and Lucy didn’t ask any questions. These days she was too tired to think about the particulars, asking the right kinds of questions. At square dancing last week she hadn’t even noticed the others, and she could hardly follow the calls, turning the wrong way, getting dizzy when Declan would swing her, not able to even do a grand chain without losing her breath. Lucy just wanted to sit in the shade and watch the hummingbirds feasting.

  But there she was, Deirdre, in a little beat-up lime-coloured car, back seat packed full of boxes. And there Deirdre was looking all old and grown up. Funny how you always remember them as little — Deirdre sitting barefoot at the ta
ble, laughing at the bowl full of mouse turds. When Lucy’s own mother was dying five years back, she would cry out Oh my little girl to Lucy. And now here was her own daughter looking like she was an adult, all big and round in her stomach, a detail she of course hadn’t offered and what must have brought her home. Little lines by Deirdre’s mouth, by her eyes, on her forehead. Lucy hoped they were laugh lines. She understood then Deirdre was home for some love, love Lucy had never been able to give her, or anyone.

  It is then Lucy feels a tight pain in her heart. Her daughter standing by the car door, smiling and walking over to her, moving slowly over the grass, running awkwardly as Lucy falls down in the sweet roses. Thorns piercing her arms as she gasps for a breath which does not come, choking on the honeyed details she finally tastes and savours, her eyes closing and flickers of green and white becoming a veil against the horizon of her mind as Declan and Deirdre’s voices blur and are lost in the beating of a thousand luminous hummingbird wings.

  Dead Time

  guilty, guilty, guilty their eyes all say, the words scratching themselves into the concrete walls. Beige. It’s the worst colour. So boring. So flat, just like all the people around me, like the life they want to force me into. But I am the consort of scarlet fire beings and sirens of the blue ice. The bland brittle world my captors exist in will never hold me, will never break me. In my mind I stand gazing upon the tall marble palace looming over a glittering sea that lashes and whips the unbreakable twilight. The exploding sun and the molten moon are infused in my blood. Through the grey mists and streaks of lavender smoke I alone see what stands in the turret and looks down upon me with glowing eyes, eyes the deep aqua of a cunning ocean which holds all the mystery and darkness of the world.

  But these bland walls, where their judgment latches itself, this beige revolts me. The whole penal institution is this colour. That’s what this place is, a penitentiary, even though they call it a youth centre, like it’s a community club — a locked club with bars on the windows.

  But I’m telling you, I’m not guilty. There was nothing I could do once Sergei started. He would have killed me. He was in a rage, and all I could do was scream.

  * * *

  I’m sitting here with my father. He’s not saying a word. He looks exhausted. His skin is shades of dirty beige except for around his eyes where it’s yellow and green, as though he hasn’t slept in days. He’s like a snake, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he could go for days without food or sleep, just slithering about behind people. That’s the kind of man he is. He hasn’t shaved and his fingers stroke the stubble on his chin and he puts his face in his hands. He’s totally wrapped up in his career as a politician, calling the shots, the backroom deals. I know the kind of people who live in that world, obsessed with themselves, monsters creeping toward the manger.

  That’s what the youth worker accused me of when I got here. Being obsessed with myself. Can you believe it? We were in the dining hall, and I said I wasn’t going to eat the dried-out mashed potatoes from a box.

  “The food sucks in here,” I said in a loud voice. Well, didn’t that fat youth worker at the end of the table tell me to be quiet. I was so pissed off.

  She was standing right over me. And she laughed. I couldn’t believe it, like I was a big joke. No one laughs at me.

  “Yes, Isabella, I can tell you what to do. And I’ll tell you it would be smart to stop obsessing over yourself and what you want. Think about other people for a change. Maybe the girl who died. The girl they say you killed. Maybe think about her for once.”

  Her. Lulu. Like I wanted to think about her.

  * * *

  My father still isn’t speaking. Time is crawling by but there is a clock in here and I know it’s only been a few minutes. His face is still in his hands. He needs to cut his fingernails. He hasn’t had time for that either. My mind is galloping, a wild horse tearing through my past, through my life, showing me every horrible thing that has ever happened, all those crazy people who have tried to pull me down.

  It was Lulu, Sergei’s stupid ex, who caused all these problems in the first place, starting the day we saw her at the store. Lulu didn’t go to the same school as us, and I never really thought much about her until that day when we were buying Popsicles. She was tiny, with long hair, a ruby-red nose stud. “Hi, Sergei,” she said in this cutesy voice, looking down at her feet and then looking up. She didn’t even wait for him to say hello, just walked out. Right before she did she winked at him, right in front of me, a sexy wink with her long eyelashes, all coy.

  What nerve. Winking was our thing. How we got together. I’m the one who winks at Sergei, not her. She’s not winking these days, now, is she?

  I was watching him all the time after that. Sergei denied it, said she didn’t wink. Like he thought I was blind. How insulting. It was so obvious. He said Lulu was really shy; she wouldn’t do something like that. I didn’t talk to him all the way home, and when he parked the car in my driveway, he told me not to be jealous. I wanted to stick a fork in him then. Of course I was jealous — but I wasn’t going to let him know. Who did he think he was to accuse me of being jealous of her? I made myself laugh, like I didn’t care. “Why would I be jealous? You dumped her,” I said with my eyes almost closed.

  His hands got tight on the steering wheel and the yellow skin on the side of his index finger from all the weed he smokes was bright against the black vinyl. “So?” he said.

  Lulu. Who did she think she was that she could just wink and come on to my boyfriend? Like I was invisible, like I was some stand-in for her.

  * * *

  Maybe my father is sleeping. Maybe time has stopped and the clock has been slowed and he can’t move his head from his hands. Maybe we’ve been pushed into a time warp. But I’m not going to say anything, just sit here with my arms crossed and wait for the warp to shift or for my father to lift up his head and face me.

  Just like that stupid youth worker who stood looking down at me, like she thought I was going to suddenly say I was guilty or something. I could feel my heart going boom-banga-boom-boom and then I just lost it. I stood up and threw my mashed potatoes right in her pudgy face, plate and all. Well, they came from everywhere, the youth workers, throwing me to the floor, arms behind my back, and they carried me like I was an Egyptian mummy into the cell they insisted on calling my room, in this stupid effort to have us think we were at a resort or a vacation camp. They took out everything and left me there on the concrete floor. Bastards. I was so mad. Who do they think they are that they can do this to me? They sent in the officer-in-charge for the night, and he told me I was lucky the youth worker wasn’t going to charge me with assault.

  “For throwing a plastic plate of mashed potatoes?” I said to him. I rolled my eyes. “Come on. It’s not like she didn’t deserve it.”

  “You can’t even see how it’s wrong, can you?” He looked like he was feeling sorry for me, but not because I was trapped in here, but as though he believed I was some heartless freak. His pager went off and then he left, but not before looking at me and shaking his head. I’d like to give him a shake.

  I hate them all. They keep telling me I need to work on my attitude, honesty is important, taking responsibility is important, like they think I’m a liar. I have no problem telling them where they can shove their comments, because who the hell are they to talk down to me?

  * * *

  The time warp shifts. My father stands up. He needs to use the washroom. He knocks on the door and some guard comes and opens it. He says he’ll be right back. I’m alone in the beige.

  It’s been three months I’ve been sitting in here. It took three weeks for my throat to stop aching from screaming at Sergei. Just let her go. He didn’t have to prove anything to me. He turned on me then. The bruises on my face have faded now. At first they turned green and red as though I’d rubbed my cheek on some weird plant in a pond deep in a forest, some magic pond. Bad magic. In
fairy tales girls like me turn the magic around. The heroines always take control. The sky erupts and terrifying smoke of pink and purple slinks down and around the girl’s wrists and pulls her up, and she becomes giant, looming over them all, her laugh a million smashing thunderbolts which rip and shred her foes into pieces.

  I press my lips together, lips that would feel better with lipstick, but there is no lipstick in this place. No nail polish. It’s all about pale here, washed-out walls, dull carpets. Boring colours that don’t tell you anything. You can’t trust beige.

  It will take a long time to move past all of this, everything that has happened, the way they are treating me in here. My father says I’ll need a lot of counselling. He says the police say I did it, but my lawyer is going to demand that I be released once they give Sergei’s statement to the court, saying that he was the one. My lawyer’s going to tell the judge I have post-traumatic stress disorder from watching Sergei murder that girl. PTSD. It sounds like the name of a band.

  The door opens. The warden is old, almost fifty, I bet, older than my dad. There is no kindness in his blue eyes. There’s something else in there, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. I will. But he’s got a shield up. He’s seen it all, he tells me whenever he meets with me.

  They act like everyone in here is guilty, even me, on remand, with no trial yet. The warden says he knows I’m afraid, it’s normal, but I need to show respect. I can’t yell at the staff. I can’t throw things. It doesn’t matter how angry I get, how upset; there are appropriate ways to behave, and I’ll be in here for a lot longer if I don’t behave.

  “Even if they’re rude to me?” I ask him. “If they don’t show me respect?”

  “Expecting you to do what they say, when they say it, isn’t rude,” he says.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be locked up.”