Watermark

by Christy Ann Conlin

  The reality is, I hang here like a disabled bat in a red bra. I wore a red bra under my wedding dress because it seemed the only vestige of the rogue I had thought I was. Until we were in front of the preacher.

  Actually it started when I saw Elizabeth’s head, the back of her head. I admired her hair and thought what a nice style it was, wondered why it was done so daintily, with little violets in it. She didn’t normally dress like that. The perfection of her bridesmaid updo made my eyes water. But the flowers became fuzzy, one big blob of purple. The floor seemed to tilt. I wondered about this too until I heard, “Psssst.” I jumped. But it was a female voice, not the Roman. It was Birdie. She was at the back, by the door. “Get going. It’s time.”

  The violets were blurry because they were now up front at the altar with Darren and the preacher and Darren’s best friend from university who makes bad jokes and smacks everyone on the shoulder. I was still standing at the back of the church. And it all hazed over. The room was tipping. I put my arms out for balance but still the hardwood floor seemed to slant, an illusion.

  “Go.” At least Birdie’s voice was clear. And so I went. I went up to the front through the fuzziness, and I wondered if they could see my red bra, at least the suggestion of the bra. It was lacy, really pretty — a push-up. But I didn’t think so. I was the only one who knew about it besides Elizabeth, who had helped me dress. The antique dealer sat in a pew, winking, his wife beside him smiling, wiping a tear with a lace hanky. He was wearing a black suit and sunglasses, like an undercover agent sent from my past, lest I forget my snafus, my terrible choices. Our little secret, Serrie. Come again and I’ll give you a good price on what you bring next, as long as you can stay and visit.

  My mother invited him to the wedding. Bucolic Valley. Claustrophobic country life along those sickly-sweet country roads. Keeping up appearances.

  I looked away from the Burgesses. I focused on the teeth. There were so many teeth. Probably because people were smiling. At weddings people usually smile, right? Goddamn, it was like being surrounded by Mormons. I always think of Mormons as people with big white teeth. But no one was Mormon here. It was the Foster First United Church. My face was rigid with an enormous pink lipsticked smile. Inside I was panicking, electric zaps in my brain, my heart thrashing against my ribs. What if Seneca appeared, chastising me, imploring me to stand fast and quiet, come to terms with my past?

  The teeth became like a haze of cotton and the music was squeaking and droning. God, it was terrible, which surprised me — my brother is a concert violinist. I must have put my hands to my ears because Elizabeth asked me if I was okay. I could see her then, her brown eyes, and I could see her lips moving but I only heard the okay? part. She knew I was going to bail and I knew I was going to bail and Birdie must have been suspecting it back there by the doors where she had been coordinating it all, and I shook my head at Elizabeth and my eyes filled up with tears because even I’m not so selfish I didn’t feel a bit of guilt.

  I bolted. I was carried away on wings woven with fine threads of thrill and speed, Seneca behind me shouting a plant which is frequently moved never grows strong. Shut up, Seneca, I shouted back at the fat, miniature floating man only I could see.

  Tits to the wind. The second vamoose. The last bail-out. I ran down the aisle and Elizabeth ran after me, the pews filled with tall, gasping shadows. At the steps, I threw the flowers away and ripped off the bodice of the dress. Birdie was saying, “What the fuck are you doing, Seraphina?” and I was saying, “Get your van, get your van.”

  And she did. She went and got the van and I was running down the street to the corner with Elizabeth behind me and I would have kept running if Birdie hadn’t roared up.

  “Serrie, get in. Get in the fucking van. How could you do this?”

  And now I am dangling here, dying for a smoke. “Can someone give me a cigarette?” Birdie rummages through her purse, one hand on the wheel, one hand passing back a cigarette which Elizabeth sticks in my mouth and lights. They don’t notice I’m hooked to the wall. They must know. They do know. This is where they want me.

  The stillness of this tiny suspended moment is excruciating. Antique dealer wants to crawl into my head. Such bad breath. So heavy. Now run home to your mother. Sticky crotch. Old-man sweat on my soft teenage skin. Washing up in the bathroom. Crying on the walk home, money in my pocket.

  As soon as I got in the van on the church corner, I used Birdie’s phone — my first time using a cellphone — to book a ticket. “I want to go to Europe, anywhere in Europe,” I told the airline guy. “Halifax to Europe. Right now. Right now.” I gave Elizabeth’s credit card number. She was crying. She took the phone from me and called her cousin Cindy and told her to go to my mother’s house at the top of the Mountain on the Lupin Cove Road. She should pack me a bag, the old black hat-box suitcase. We would meet her at my house as soon as we could.

  “The key is in the outhouse out back. Just get there as fast as you can and pack. Put anything in the suitcase,” Elizabeth yells into the phone. “Some shorts, a bathing suit. Just go through Serrie’s drawers.” She turns red as she listens. “Don’t ask questions. Just pack it,” she screams, “and don’t ask me why. And don’t call me Bethie. My name is Elizabeth.”

  We don’t talk while Birdie drives us all the way over the Valley floor and up the Mountain to my rundown house. Elizabeth will deal with my mother after I’m gone. She’ll tell her I wasn’t ready for marriage. Elizabeth understands wanting to leave the past behind. I won’t speak to my mother for months. Elizabeth suspects. She remembers high school. She knows I can’t stay in the Valley. Best-friend intuition. And then there is Seneca. Go away, Seneca, I whisper, but he holds up his hand and speaks: A change of character, not a change of air, is what you need. Though you cross the countless ocean; though, to use the words of our poet Virgil, “Lands and towns are left astern,” whatever your destination, you will be followed by your failings.

  The van hits a bump. I close my eyes and when I open them, Seneca is gone.

  Cindy is standing on the rotting verandah with the old hat-box suitcase when we get to my house. We screech to a stop. Elizabeth slides the van door open. Cindy’s eyes pop wide open when she sees me dangling there. I laugh. Her shock delights me. She opens her mouth but says nothing as Elizabeth leans out and grabs the case, sliding the door shut as she leans back in.

  “How about another smoke?” I ask once we’re roaring on the highway to the airport.

  “How about shutting up, Serrie? Who is Seneca?” Elizabeth’s face is still red.

  Birdie stomps the brakes. “Let it go, Elizabeth.”

  I snap like undies on a clothesline. Elizabeth jerks forward.

  Birdie floors it now and yells over her shoulder, “Shut up, Elizabeth. It’s over now. Just shut up. Seneca is probably just some idiot Serrie met in a bar.” She hands another lighter back to Elizabeth who lights me another cigarette and sticks it in my mouth. She leaves me hanging there in the bra and digs through the black case, looking for something for me to wear.

  “Fuck, don’t burn me.”

  Elizabeth is trying to pull a tattered white T-shirt over my head, but I’m still hooked. She’s dressing me like I’m a baby, a big, smoking baby. We hit another corner and I fall off the van wall, landing on top of Elizabeth, who crashes over and lies there, crying. I stub the cigarette out on the metal floor, sit up, and put my arms through the sleeves. It is my superhero costume. The queen of the bolt. I close my eyes and can hear the Stoic say, Devotion to what is right is simple, devotion to what is wrong is complex and admits infinite variations.

  I turn around at Security. They’re standing there, Elizabeth and Birdie, in Tyrian purple bridesmaid dresses, arms around each other, Seneca floating at the left. But the chief cause of this disease, in my opinion, is an attitude of disdain for a normal existence. They don’t move, and I can’t stand that. Birdie’s cryin
g now too. “Tits to the wind, Serrie. Tits to the wind.”

  And I turn my back on the floating Stoic and the Bail-out Squad.

  * * *

  I see the ocean from the airplane window. In my mind there is a whisper . . . Beyond all things is the sea, Seraphina. Before Seneca can materialize, the man beside me coughs and pokes his elbow into my ribs. He wants to talk about jet lag. I don’t want to talk about jet lag. I want a gin and tonic. I want five gin and tonics. Anything to bring back the blur. I have twelve hours of travel ahead and I want to spend it in a haze, with fuzzy voices and muted sounds lulling me into sleep so time will blink by. So the imagined philosopher won’t appear. I want to forget everything I’ve ever learned. I want oblivion right now. But the man beside me wants to talk about the “New Canadians” (he means Asians). In his trimmed beard, nice shirt, clean glasses, casual shoes, I-have-a-nice-home-in-the-suburbs-with-a-few-kids-and-a-wife way, he wants to talk about “the invasion.”

  “I haven’t been to Vancouver,” I say.

  “Aren’t you going to Vancouver?” he wants to know.

  “I get off in Toronto, and then I’m heading for Zurich.” I yawn although I want to scream.

  He loves chocolate and the Alps.

  I love the Walkman Cindy packed and I reach to put it on. There is one really old cassette, John Denver, singing “Sweet Surrender.”

  The man keeps talking. I smile and touch my headphones. He keeps talking. Fuck. I mean what’s with some people? I say, “I can’t hear you.”

  He says I should lower the volume.

  I tell him it’s stuck at ten and lie back and shut my eyes. I’m not the kind of girl to cry to country music. I prefer a lyre. He pokes me in the side and asks if I want dinner. I want him to shut up. I wonder if he will have a brain aneurism. I say I’m sick. The dial moves and the loud music distorts into perfection but I know he is still talking. At least the Stoic has abandoned me.

  Later I see the airplane man at a payphone when I’m looking for the next gate. I walk by with the Walkman attached, but it isn’t on.

  He winks. Looks at my tits. “Nice bra, baby.”

  I squint and he fades into the crowd that surges forward, these faceless people arriving and departing and arriving and departing. Then I run to the gate, those tits of mine gone to the wind once more. Never look back, I hum to myself, only forward, only forward. There before me, hovering, as usual, a bit to the left, is the thing in the toga. Every day, every hour sees a change in you, although the ravages of time are easier to see in others; in your own case they are far less obvious.

  * * *

  The blue sky above the Atlantic reminds me of Darren’s eyes. At least they were bright and clear. For those who follow nature everything is easy and straightforward, whereas for those who fight against her life is just like rowing against the stream. I close my eyes and wait for sleep to come and it does, leaving when the plane is on approach, when I see Lake Zurich from the airplane window, the Alps, the white peaks soaring into endless blue, the future wide open. We touch down in Switzerland. I cruise through Customs, holding up my passport and giggling because suddenly it seems so funny I’m here and it’s suppertime in Nova Scotia and bedtime in Zurich.

  The Flying Squirrel Sermon

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

  Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

  When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

  By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

  Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

  — T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

  Ondine parked her car in the dusty driveway. It was hotter than she had imagined it would be this close to the water, but the house was on a dirt road up from the bay, so sea breezes were probably intermittent. The still air was humid and dense, as though it were a massive resting creature pressing in upon her, a presence she had to push through even as it enveloped her.

  It had seemed like a good idea to come out and do the research in person. In fact, it was the only way. The old woman hadn’t answered any of the letters Ondine had sent. And she had no phone. It was almost unheard of, someone without a phone, let alone internet. It was no surprise Ondine’s cellphone didn’t work here. Halfway up the mountain she noticed she had no signal when she checked her texts, something she knew better than to do while she was driving but did anyway because there wasn’t a single other car on the road.

  She had a feeling of solitude, which then gave her a sense a safety. She knew it was false. All it would take was one deer leaping out from the trees, or a child appearing at the side of the road on a bicycle, something unexpected . . . and then life irrevocably changed. It was hard to believe, with the blue sky, the fields of hay and wildflowers, that there could be any danger here. But this was the place of her family legends, of women evanescing, of dangerous forest streams and sudden fogs.

  Ondine had taken a chance and booked a flight, rented a car, and then undertook the five-hour drive through the country and up and over the mountain, finally to this dirt road. She didn’t have an actual civic address. Her grandmother had told her there was only one house on the Flying Squirrel Road, about fifty miles from a place called Lupin Cove. Ondine planned to interview anyone she could find, if she could actually locate the house, and then drive back and stay at the airport hotel. But even Google Maps didn’t show anything when she did a search for the road name.

  Her grandmother had retreated more and more from reality and it was difficult to know whether what she’d whispered was truth or fantasy, or if the stories were a weave of both. That was often the case, Ondine had discovered in her research. Her grandmother had longed for the seashore and sometimes hadn’t recognized the people around her. She was cryptic and lapsed into long silences. Ondine regretted not doing more formal interviews with her grandmother while she could — before, that is, she walked out of the country nursing home when the door to her unit had been propped open by a new nurse. They never found her body. The police didn’t make much of an effort to find someone that elderly. They figured she had fallen into a ravine or been eaten by coyotes, although they had put it more delicately.

  Ondine saw the old woman sitting on the porch as soon as she pulled into the driveway. Her frizzy silver hair flowed around her shoulders and deep wrinkles rippled through her face. Ondine had expected someone much younger, but realized that of course her grandmother had spoken as though still a teenager, her mind floating through all the years of her life and anchoring in her girlhood. Ondine was nervous. She sat in the car with her hands on the steering wheel, surprised by her own inability to bring professional objectivity to her personal life.

  As soon as the car engine was off, a seagull squawked and the old woman called out to Ondine. “Young woman, are you lost or is this your destination?” She didn’t seem surprised to see her. It was Ondine who was surprised the place even existed, how it wasn’t a fictional setting in a story passed down within her family.

  Ondine got out of the car but the woman didn’t get up or beckon her to the house. Ondine was not sure what to do. She gave what she hoped was a friendly wave. “I think this is the right place. My grandmother said she grew up on the Flying Squirrel Road. I always promised her I would come back to visit when she died.” Ondine didn’t begin explaining the complicated story of her grandmother’s end.

  “Well, imagine! Isn’t that nice of you to respect her wishes. No doubt she’ll be pleased. It’s some hot today. What a summer. It’ll be cooler down by the water. Cool and foggy but it will be most welcome. It’s been a long time in coming. I wasn’t sure who could be pulling into my driveway. My friends are all passed away now and there are only a few distant cousins but I don’t want a thing to do with their corruption.”

  The old woman cleared her throat as Ondine introduce
d herself and explained she was here to do some research for her dissertation on oral tradition as a method of cultural preservation. The old lady didn’t say a word but she began laughing until she started coughing and hacking, each heave of her chest seeming to be the last. It subsided and she sat there in her chair in the dense afternoon heat. “Come on up and have a rest. You’ve got that parched look to you which comes from living inland.”

  Ondine walked over the overgrown path to the front verandah. There was a small pond in front of the house with an old fountain in the centre, nothing coming out of the odd, fishlike sculpture in the middle. She looked up from the fountain to see the old woman watching her carefully. She didn’t even seem to blink. Ondine couldn’t interpret much from the old woman’s face, which was like a piece of crumpled linen. She was fanning herself with an antique hand-held fan. She held a cane in the other and with it she summoned Ondine up the rotting steps and gestured toward an old bench.

  Ondine sat down and took out her phone and a small black notebook and pen. “Perhaps you could just tell me some of your childhood stories, events of your life. Is it okay if I record you?” She showed the woman her phone and explained it worked as a recording device as well.

  “Be my guest.” The old woman snorted as though it was amusing, as though technology wasn’t something to be taken seriously. “But we must get started for we won’t have long,” she said.

  “Well, I’m doing research on a specific story, a legend, which originates from this area, of women who disappeared. It’s for my Ph.D. in cultural anthropology, on storytelling.”