by Anne Simpson
How infuriating he was, thought Ingrid. Even now, so many years later. When he’d been lost on the street that very afternoon, she’d worried about him. He’d come in looking strained and exhausted, his forehead glistening and strands of grey hair falling about his face. His hands had worked frantically, folding and unfolding his cane. How could she calm him? She’d suggested getting a guide dog, but he didn’t want a guide dog, because he knew what would happen – he’d give it a name like Bounder and start getting fond of it, and then it would just get hit by a car or something. So she’d changed the subject; she’d told him about meeting Jasmine.
That’s the name of a flower, he said. Jasmine.
She has a nose stud, Ingrid said. A little green emerald. She probably has her nipples pierced too, for all I know.
So what you’re saying is you think she’s a slut.
No, I’m not saying that at all. She’s a pretty little thing, Ingrid went on. You can see why –
You can see why someone like Damian would be all over her.
She’s sleeping with him. He’s sleeping with her.
Ingrid, said Roger. Get over it.
I’m going out.
And she’d gone, banging the door behind her.
So here she was, no longer a child, but an adult in line with thirty or forty others, and together they made the descent in the elevator. She imagined that the elevator would get stuck, and then she’d have to spend the night with Jason, who had a Buffalo Bills cap and a whining voice, his mother, with her pink shorts and bulging thighs, and his uninterested father. There was a man with sallow skin and green clip-on glasses, and his wife, two feet shorter, who wore a peacock-coloured sari patterned lightly with flowers; when Ingrid looked at it she felt as though she’d entered a jungle. An older woman with mauve-tinted hair dug her elbow into Ingrid.
Oh, she was sorry, she was awfully sorry. The woman clasped her hands in front of her and whispered to her friend that she felt claustrophobic, so claustrophobic in places like this.
When the elevator opened and disgorged them, it was as though they were moving down a tunnel to the gates of Hell. It was suffocatingly hot inside the terminal. Ingrid waited to be given her raincoat, which felt like plastic wrap when she put it on, and followed the peacock-coloured sari past the turnstile and up the ramp to the boat. It was cool on the deck, and even from this distance there was a fine spray from the Falls.
Though she’d been on the Maid of the Mist on that Saturday outing years before, Ingrid was surprised that the boat managed to move upstream at all. She could feel the river resisting them, as if at any moment the boat might be spun away and driven downstream. Yet the boat kept chugging deliberately toward the Falls, first to the American Falls, with the yellow ponchos making their way down to the lookout and back up, and then to the Horseshoe Falls. How dreadfully predictable it was.
There was so much spray as they approached the Falls that Ingrid had to draw the raincoat close and put up her hood. She felt the vibration of the diesel engines against the thunder of the water. Lisa would have loved it, thought Ingrid. Lisa would have wanted to go far too close – she’d have wanted to be dangerously close. How like Roger she was, thought Ingrid. No. How like Roger she had been.
Ah, this was familiar, wasn’t it? Tunnel of rage, tunnel of sorrow. It was at this point that she would blame Damian, even though it was no one’s fault. It was no one’s fault, but why shouldn’t she blame Damian, who had left the keys for the ATV where Lisa would find them? Who had been sleeping as his sister drowned? She wanted to throttle him, yes, she did. What allowed him the right to mess around with a pretty young thing named Jasmine, who had a nose stud, and possibly a belly button stud – a stud for this and a stud for that?
She wasn’t being fair. No, she wasn’t.
She gripped the rail of the boat. How she hated the woman with the mauve-tinted hair who was claustrophobic, and the podgy-looking woman next to her, with the gentle face. She hated Jason, with his Buffalo Bills cap, and Jason’s mother with her grotesque thighs made even more grotesque by the nearly transparent blue raincoat, and Jason’s father, who hated it all as much as she did. She hated the boat and she hated the captain, who was just now turning the boat downstream, away from the Falls that Lisa would have loved.
When the captain turned the boat it was as though someone had let out a breath; something was released. It did absolutely no good to get angry, Ingrid thought, but she was angry. She couldn’t stop it. What would put an end to it? Some miracle would put an end to it. She looked back at the wall of rushing water.
Why did it make her think of the boating accident? A man had taken his neighbours’ children out for a boat ride. They’d struck something and the shear pin had broken. Without the shear pin, the boat had no power. She knew this as if it had happened to her.
One of the children had gone over the Falls. She imagined the boy’s flight, his fall. His name had been Roger Woodward. She thought of him floating over the Falls like a gull’s feather. She could see him whirling in the air so he was only a pale figure with legs and arms windmilling out from the orange square of his life jacket. She saw him falling. There was a long moment of nothingness, then the plunge into the water, the jerking down into a wild, swirling darkness, the bobbing up to the surface of the river. A boy, coughing, with his mouth full of water.
He had lived. Ingrid’s mother had saved the newspaper story about him, with a photograph in which he was gripping a life preserver that had been thrown to him by a man on the deck of the Maid of the Mist.
His name is Roger, Ingrid’s mother had said, as if it were the name of an angel. Roger Woodward. Isn’t that something? Just like our Roger.
The child’s legs were thin as needles. He had lived; it was impossible, but true. Ingrid imagined him looking up at that wall of whiteness from below. Perhaps he was still alive now, so many years later; perhaps he was dead. All his life he must have remembered that moment, Ingrid thought. He must have remembered being saved.
He’d had a sister, Ingrid recalled, as she filed behind the others down the ramp from the Maid of the Mist. The terminal was as hot as before, and even when she took off her plastic raincoat and put it in the bin, it didn’t make her feel any cooler. He’d had a sister called Deanne. Roger Woodward’s sister, Deanne, had been thrown out of the boat above the Falls. There hadn’t been a picture of Deanne in the newspaper article, though; there was only one of Roger. The two children had lived, but the man who’d taken them out in the boat had died. Honeycutt – his name was Jim Honeycutt. The story had been all about Roger, though, because he’d gone over the Falls, while Deanne had been thrown out of the boat above the Falls, close to Table Rock, where a tourist had rescued her.
Ingrid moved into the elevator, and people followed, pressing against her. She hardly noticed. She was thinking about how Honeycutt’s boat had struck a shoal that broke the shear pin, so the propeller didn’t work. By that time the boat must have been rolling forward, carried by the rushing water toward the brink. There must have been time for Honeycutt to realize, as he tossed the remaining life jacket to Deanne, that all three of them would likely die. But it wasn’t a big thing that had gone wrong: it was a small thing. The shear pin had broken.
Ingrid walked back to the house thinking about how Lisa’s fascination with the Falls had begun. Maybe it had all begun with the book. Ingrid had bought Paddle-to-the-Sea, for Lisa’s fifth birthday. She had bought it because the same book had been bought for her, years before. There was a bookplate sticker on the fly leaf that read, in large letters, that it was the property of Lisa Felicity MacKenzie. They’d sat on Lisa’s bed looking at the pictures, and Lisa had sucked her thumb. Ingrid told her big girls didn’t do that.
Lisa had liked all the pictures, but the one she liked best was the illustration of Niagara Falls, with a rainbow rigidly painted in the lower left corner, and a speck in the upper right corner that was the wooden canoe with its carved figure, going over the brink.
I grew up there, Ingrid had told her.
Lisa looked up at her with her large hazel eyes, her thumb back in her mouth. Her lips quivered as she sucked on it.
There? asked Lisa.
I didn’t live inside the waterfalls, said Ingrid. Just close by.
She’d turned to the next page, which showed the canoe and figure being tossed by the green swirls of water in the Whirlpool. But Lisa wanted to turn back the page to the full picture of the Falls. She ran a child’s hand over it.
I’ll have to take you there, said Ingrid. I’ll have to take you to meet your Uncle Roger.
She closed the book and put it on the bedside table. She kissed Lisa’s head.
Kiss my tummy, Lisa said, pulling up her nightgown.
Ingrid kissed her tummy and she burst into giggles.
Strawberries, she said.
Yes, I’ve made strawberries on your tummy. Look at them all!
It had been the gift she’d given her daughter. It was a way of passing on her own history – this lore about the Falls – to Lisa.
She approached the white house, her old family home.
But why, she wondered, had Roger Woodward lived while Jim Honeycutt had died? In the newspaper article, the boy had said that Jim Honeycutt had cried out that he would hold him, after the boat had turned over and thrown them into the water. He’d tried to hold the boy, but the water had torn them apart. One lived and the other died. But what if the man had lived while the child had died?
Ingrid stood at the edge of the sidewalk, about to cross the street. She heard the man calling I’ll hold you, as he was swept away.
Her eyes were bright with tears. How did all the fine things on the face of the earth vanish away?
I’ll hold you.
A car honked. The driver was waiting for her to cross. She crossed the street because the driver had no way of knowing about all the fine things on the face of the earth.
The house had been turned upside down in her absence. The back door hadn’t been latched and there were bugs whirling around the ceiling light in the kitchen. There were dishes in the sink, a scattering of crackers on the table, water on the floor. No one had put the pâté or cheese in the fridge. The wine was nearly gone. And someone had gone rifling through the drawer that held the tea towels, and the drawer had been left open.
She recognized the acrid scent of smoke in the air, but it wasn’t cigarette smoke, no – it was dope. She followed it through the house and outside onto the porch, where she found Roger.
Hi, he said.
Where is everyone?
Damian just took Jasmine home.
You’ve been smoking up. I suppose you were smoking up with Damian and Jasmine.
Not Damian, no.
With Jasmine?
Yes.
Elvis is wandering around out there in the back, singing to himself. And –
Have a seat, Ingrid.
No, she said, her voice rising. This house has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Roger leaned back in his chair.
Everything’s gone to hell in this house, she went on. It’s our parents’ house, and look at it. Just look at it.
I can’t, he laughed.
What?
I can’t look at it, which is just as well. Ingrid, this is what you do. You come into a place and you’re fine for a while and then the shit hits the fan. Why do you always have to make the shit hit the fan?
I don’t make the shit hit the fan.
I thought it might be a good thing for both of you to come here. Spend a month, two months. Whatever you needed. But I don’t know. It’s always the same – you drive everyone away from you. You have such high expectations of people, and then they can’t meet them. I never did. It’s no wonder that kid of yours kept that girl a secret for as long as he could. She’s a really great girl. She’s perceptive and she’s kind. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in love with her. But you’ve got to stand back and let him –
In love with her?
I said I wouldn’t be surprised, but you have to let him find out.
I don’t drive everyone away, said Ingrid. And I do stand back. I just don’t slough off my responsibilities the way you do.
We could go on and on here, he said. I’d rather not. I’d rather not ruin a nice evening.
You mean you don’t want to argue when you’re stoned.
Well, you’re right about that. You’re right about so many things, Ingrid. He got up and snapped open his cane. All except one thing.
She wasn’t about to ask what that one thing might be. She waited while he put the cane in front of him, tapping forward. She didn’t help him by shifting one of the chairs out of the way as he walked to the door. He’d bump into it. He did, but then he went around it. When he got to the door, he stood groping for the handle until he found it.
This isn’t our parents’ house any more, he said with his back to her. And it’s not your house. It’s my house.
Ingrid lay on her bed, her arms by her sides, her legs splayed. It was too hot to pull up the sheet.
Had she driven people away from her? Yes, of course she had. She could have made a list: her mother, her father, Bryce Morrison, who kept hanging around her locker in grade ten, Randy Kelly, Steve Phalen, with that springy rust-coloured hair of his, her cousin Melanie Vickers, Ralph LeBlanc, except Ralph didn’t count because he was an arsonist, Dick Schluter, her girlfriend Donna Paugh, who had that tiny mole on her forehead like the eye of a Cyclops, Gerry van Ryswyk, who used to write her letters in green ink, quoting Dylan Thomas, for God’s sake, Roger and Marnie, and Greg, her husband who was now her ex-husband. Damian. And Jasmine. She couldn’t bear to think of Lisa, and whether she’d driven her daughter away.
No, she said.
She didn’t want to drive people away. Maybe people only felt close to her when she was a wreck. She remembered sitting next to Greg at the end of the visitation. Ingrid had been on the carpet, without her shoes, and she’d simply put her head in Greg’s lap. She’d been sobbing; she couldn’t stop sobbing. Greg had stroked her head over and over. He put his hand gently on her head and stroked it.
Oh, she groaned softly. She would have given a great deal to feel a gentle hand on her head, so she wouldn’t feel desperately alone.
But she was alone. They were all alone, the living and the dead. They were being carried forward in the rush of water. Roger Woodward, Deanne Woodward, Jim Honeycutt, the overturned boat. All of them were being carried forward: the young Mr. Hockridge, newly married, and inclining his head to the young Mrs. Hockridge, the child who had been Ingrid with her patent leather purse, and the child who had been Roger, frowning, and the photograph of the two of them, a brother and a sister – a happy, expectant sister – held together by a hinge.
JASMINE GOT HER BICYCLE, which was leaning against the side of the house at the back, and, together with Damian, walked along the street in silence. A couple of cats yowled horribly. A man turned on the light on his front porch and came out with a bag of garbage that he tossed in a can. He listened to the cats for a few moments before going back inside.
What time is it? Jasmine asked. It can’t be all that late.
She’d been watching clouds from the porch as she talked to Roger. The clouds had been soft and purple, as if they were long couches made out of velvet. She’d wanted to stretch out on one of them. Now dusk had fallen and lights had been turned on inside the houses they passed.
I don’t know the time, said Damian.
You know, it’s strange – your mother didn’t come back.
She’ll be back.
Are you all right, Damian?
You’re the one who’s stoned.
A hardness had come between them. If he wouldn’t talk to her, she wouldn’t talk to him.
As they walked across the intersection at Victoria and Clifton, Jasmine noticed a bright red box at the corner. It looked like a mailbox, but it wasn’t.
Just a second, she said.
> The Love Machine.
Oh God, snorted Damian, walking on ahead.
TEST YOUR RATING, commanded the machine.
She propped the bicycle against the window of a fabric store, dropped a couple of quarters into the slot, and put her palm down on the glass surface. The hand below, matched with hers, began to light up.
The Girdle of Venus, the Heart, the Head, the Inner Life.
You are Sexy, said the illuminated hand. You are Sensitive. You are Curious. You are not always Forgiving. Your Girdle of Venus shows Vulnerability. You are LOYAL. There were several glowing exclamation marks.!!!!!!
You are Impetuous, it went on to say, but then the lights flashed and something buzzed and everything went dark. The magical hand beneath the glass faded away.
She caught up to Damian, who was waiting near a pawn shop on Clifton, looking at a saxophone in an opened case. He was irritated with her.
I asked your uncle about you, you know, she said.
You talked about me – the two of you?
Yes.
I’m sure my uncle knows me inside out.
He doesn’t, really. But he did say that maybe you were afraid.
Afraid? Damian scoffed.
Yes.
What do you think?
I don’t know, she said.
It was too much effort, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.
He didn’t understand her, because if he understood her, he would have seen her sister, Shirl, who’d come from Lethbridge with Gary and the new baby, Jessica. He would have seen her parents, leaving the house that August morning, with Shirl and the baby. Leaving Gary behind. Leaving twelve-year-old Sandra behind, with her friend Marci.
Marci had a red-and-orange bathing suit, and she’d snapped her straps and twirled on her bare feet in the wet grass. Sandra had a yellow two-piece bathing suit; it was new, and her mother had bought it for her in Saskatoon when they’d gone shopping together the Saturday before. The yellow showed off her tanned skin, her slender arms and legs. She’d worn it to bed under her nightgown.
She and Marci had laughed and shrieked all morning, running back and forth, back and forth through the sprinkler, under the hot sun, their hair wet as seals. Gary lay on the couch in the living room, because he was on disability from work and that gave him the right. Something had happened to his heart. He wasn’t yet twenty-eight and he’d had a heart attack.
