Falling

by Anne Simpson

  Max came tearing out of the wild roses, looped around once, and crashed back into the bushes. He was chasing a soft brown hare. Raymond saw the alert tips of its ears, its light, bounding movements, the way the tail was dark above and white below. He took the last of the screens inside and shut the door of the shed. He’d do the caulking in the afternoon, and the next morning he’d put the storms up, but right now he wanted a good bowl of soup and a piece of toast.

  It was when he was heating up the soup that he thought of Ingrid. He thought of her face when she’d arrived, and he stirred the soup, thinking of what she’d said. How had she put it? That large moment, she’d said. He remembered holding Peter for the first time, how he’d been overcome with love as he gazed at the miniature fingers and toes. The skin, soft as the lining of a hare’s furred ear. Oh, he was getting maudlin, he thought, getting out a dish for himself and ladling the soup into it.

  It had been a large moment, so large that he hadn’t been able to quite grasp it at the time. It was a moment lit with the radiance of first things. But how strange it was, he thought, with the soup bowl in one hand and a slice of toasted twelve-grain bread, dripping with butter and honey, in the other, that it was similar to the moment when Cecily had died.

  He hooked his foot into the chair leg and pulled it out from the table. Sitting down, he bowed his head over the soup. He thought of Peter’s starfish hands, and the strength of that infant grip around his own finger. He’d loved him from the time the nurse had handed him the newly cleaned, pink-faced infant, wrapped in warm cloth. She’d shown him how to hold a newborn and smiled at him. He’d been the one to give Peter to Cecily, as if it had been his gift to her, rather than hers to him. And he’d sat beside them as Cecily had held Peter for the first time, marvelling. Everything had been new to them. It had changed them, so they were no longer two. There was a third, powerful thing between them, and it was not just this child, with the imprint of the forceps still on the side of his face. It was more than that. Cecily was crooning to Peter, touching his newborn face. She wasn’t aware of it yet, but Raymond could see it plainly. It made her more of who she was.

  Ingrid and Damian walked up the track, which gradually ascended through spruce, bayberry, and wild rose bushes, up to a headland. Signs were posted at the edge of the cliffs, warning about the danger of going too close to the edge. The two of them kept close to the edge anyway, because they could get a better view of Cape George on one side and Cape Breton on the other, with the smooth blue ocean between. Several uprooted spruce trees, tilting in different directions, were suspended halfway down the cliffs. All along the sand below were fallen rocks, like pieces of a giant’s vertebrae; the land was eroding badly and would keep eroding, because of fierce winter storms that pared away the coast each year.

  So much had happened, thought Ingrid. And it wasn’t as if she was finished with grief. There was more, and then more after that. But there were times, like today, when she could look at it steadily. It was as though it was spread out in front of her: the eroded debris, carved by the tide, and the paler blue of the shoals together with the dark blue beyond, and the horizon, far out, that marked the limit of ocean, except that it was no limit at all.

  Are you all right, Damian? she asked.

  Yes.

  You’re sure?

  He nodded.

  She didn’t press him further. It was enough just to walk beside him, along the track with the ocean on her left and a dark pond, filled with cattails, on her right. They came to the highest point of land and stood, entranced. To the east was another beach, extending in a curve as far as Pomquet Beach, which lay in the distance, and to the west, far off, was the brow of another hill, densely covered with spruce. The beaches formed an unbroken necklace of sand that joined each of the hills and headlands from Dunns Beach as far as Pomquet Point.

  When Lisa died, I felt as though someone had thrown an axe into me, said Ingrid. I’m always going to feel it, and you’re always going to feel it.

  He nodded.

  Ingrid felt her throat tighten. A parent is not supposed to outlive a child, she added. She dropped her eyes to the ground, where she noticed wild strawberry flowers close to the earth, stars hidden in the grass.

  She loved life – Lisa. She loved it intensely.

  I know, said Damian.

  Ingrid dug her hands into her pockets.

  That was all that could be said.

  Ingrid drove Damian to the bus terminal in Truro in the morning, before going home to Halifax. A light covering of fog burned off as they came to New Glasgow, and by the time they reached Mt. Thom, they saw the slopes on either side were touched with red and gold.

  It hadn’t been easy saying goodbye to Raymond. All three of them were awkward, and then Damian had forgotten a sweatshirt and had gone back for it, and Raymond wanted Ingrid to take a jar of honey that a friend had given him.

  Will you stay here much longer? asked Ingrid. She’d rolled down the window to talk to Raymond.

  No, he said. I’ll go soon.

  I don’t know how to thank you.

  Don’t thank me, he said gruffly. He leaned down and spoke to Damian. You take care of yourself.

  I will, said Damian.

  As they drove away Ingrid could see Raymond in the rear-view mirror, standing alone at the side of the road. Then the morning fog obscured him.

  While drinking coffee with Raymond that very morning, in the early hours before Damian got up, Ingrid mentioned Ralph LeBlanc. She’d hardly given Ralph a moment’s thought in years.

  Ralph LeBlanc, she’d told Raymond, came from a place called Paradise Hill in upstate New York. For a while he lived in Niagara Falls, and then he went to Maine with his uncle. He had black hair and he was tall, taller than anyone else she knew. There was a huge, winding tattoo of a python on his left arm. It went all the way around his left arm in a spiral. He used to lift weights in his uncle’s garage, summer and winter, and he was so strong he could easily murder someone. He never minded the cold, and he said that anyone who minded the cold was a chicken shit. He had the power to do something out of the ordinary, but he wound up slowly destroying himself, and the police caught him, probably because he let himself be caught. Probably because he thought anyone who ran away was a chicken shit.

  What did he do? Raymond asked.

  He burned down a house with another man, she said. There was someone inside, and he got out, but he had to be treated for smoke inhalation. Much later on, I heard Ralph was up for armed robbery. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this. You’ll think less of me.

  No, I won’t.

  It was strange, you know. We’d have bonfires on the beach at Lake Erie. Mostly it was harmless, but sometimes Ralph would build up the fires so much we had to back away because they gave off such intense heat. We used to drink vodka straight out of the bottle, and when it was done Ralph would throw the bottle away. I remember the way the bottle would shatter and little pieces of glass would fly out from it.

  Ingrid thought of the time she’d turned to Ralph without thinking and caught hold of his arm, the muscles like thick rope. He’d set fire to the brush by the side of the road and the fire was too close; it was dangerous. She could feel it coming back to them where they stood on the gravel shoulder. The others had gone farther up the road to the bend, where they huddled together, laughing. They weren’t looking back at Ingrid and Ralph.

  The fire went through the underbrush and then it came back. She could taste the smoke. It had a heavy, sickening taste. It caught a young, slender birch and shot up through it, through the canopy of green leaves. It caught the leaves, and burned them, so they were brilliant, flickering things. In a moment they would be hanging, dead. It burned the tree through and went on to another, brushing from one to the next.

  Ingrid had put her arm on Ralph’s because she was frightened, and then she drew away. He pulled her to him. He pulled her close and kissed her hard on the mouth. She remembered it clearly. She remembered
the smoke, and the feel of his body, and how she had relaxed a little, as he’d held her, his mouth against hers. He hadn’t let her go.

  She could feel him pressing against her. And, abruptly, she wanted him to stop; she didn’t like the scent of the cheap stuff he put in his hair. She didn’t like the smell of his Player’s cigarettes. All of this was mingled with the acrid smell of the smoke from the fire – the fire Ralph himself had set – and it made her sick. She yanked away from him, flinging her hair over her shoulders, and walked up the road to her friends.

  Ingrid, he called.

  She didn’t turn back, but she knew something had passed between them.

  I loved those fires, she told Raymond. I loved everything about them. But then Ralph wanted to start fires up on the escarpment, and that was different, because there was no way of stopping them. We’d watch a dead tree go up in flames, exploding. It wasn’t quite real. It was terrifying, but there was nothing like it. I craved it, but I was afraid of it. And this is what I didn’t realize until much later: I was like Ralph. I mean, how was I so different?

  You loved him?

  No, she said. It wasn’t that. I didn’t love him. And I didn’t admire him; in fact, I pitied him later on. His life had gone off the rails. It was just that I recognized something in him.

  Don’t you think, he said, don’t you think there’s so much that’s wild in all of us? I don’t mean grief, though that’s wild enough. I mean –

  Most of us live half asleep, she said. And then there are some people who don’t live that way. They’re all lit up and they don’t know what to do with it.

  The bus was already there when they arrived at the terminal in Truro. Damian went inside and came out with his ticket in his teeth as he hoisted his knapsack on his back.

  He took the ticket out of his mouth. Bye, Mum.

  You’ve got teeth marks on it.

  I know.

  Take care of yourself. And let me know how you are. You will let me know how you are, won’t you?

  Yes.

  I love you, Damian.

  She kissed him fiercely and stepped back, bumping into a woman who was waiting to get on the bus.

  Oh, she said, flustered, I’m sorry.

  He got on the bus and sat on the side where he could see her. He waved. She waved until the bus pulled out of the terminal and turned the corner.

  She walked to her car and got in. There – the maple tree across the street was bright red. She put the key in the ignition, but didn’t turn it; she couldn’t take her eyes off the tree, vibrant with the last thing it could do before winter.

  When she was young she’d painted a small canvas, an oil painting. She’d liked it when she finished because it was riotous with crimson. It was the colour she’d liked, more than anything. It had been one of the few things that she’d saved, but then she’d misplaced it somewhere along the line. She recalled it vividly as she gazed at the maple tree.

  She held so many people. She held Greg, even though he’d left her, and she held Lisa, living and dead, and she held Damian. She held Roger and Elvis, and even Marnie. She held Ralph LeBlanc. It was her life. It was her life and no one else’s.

  IT’S RAINING HIPPOS AND ELEPHANTS, said Elvis, coming in, his hair plastered damply against his head. Bruce says it’s raining hippos and elephants.

  Elvis unsnapped the buttons on his raincoat and took it off, holding it out in front of him. He hung it on a hook beside the door, where it dripped into puddles on the cushioned flooring, and then he took off his boots and put them side by side on the mat. One wasn’t lined up exactly with the other one, and he adjusted it. He straightened up and looked around the kitchen, first at Jasmine, then Roger, then Tarah. They hadn’t said anything. He saw they made a triangle, standing there in three different places. Three points of a triangle. A = Jasmine, B = Roger, and C = Tarah. ABC made a triangle.

  Ingrid left here right away, said Roger. She drove all night. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

  Holy shit, said Tarah. Holy fucking shit.

  It wasn’t a mistake? asked Jasmine. Are you sure it wasn’t a mistake?

  No, said Roger. Damian was there – alive and well – when Ingrid arrived.

  But how is that possible? I just don’t understand.

  Elvis liked to look at Jasmine even when she didn’t look at him and even when she was A in a triangle. He felt warm, the way he did after he ate chicken broth, because Jasmine was there and Jasmine hadn’t been there for a long, long time, now that Damian had gone away. She glanced at him and that made him feel even warmer, so he had to put his hands up to his wet face and wipe it. She didn’t say hello to him, but that didn’t matter.

  He took his Mickey Mouse Thermos to the sink and rinsed it out and put his zip-up bag in the recycling bin. Usually after he did this, he went upstairs and lay on Roger’s bed with his legs wide apart and listened to the Elvis ’56 CD with Roger’s CD player and earphones, but now he stood rocking from his left foot to his right, uncertain of what to do next. He wanted to go upstairs and lie on Roger’s bed, and he wanted to stay in the kitchen where he could look at Jasmine, but Tarah was looking at Jasmine too, and Roger wasn’t talking, and they didn’t seem to want to move out of the triangle where AB = AC. If Elvis replaced Roger, he would be B and there would be a direct line from A to B. But Roger was making his own small triangle inside the triangle with his left leg and his right leg and the one he called his seeing leg. They didn’t look happy. A was not smiling at B and B was not smiling at C.

  I have a joke, said Elvis.

  It’s true, Jasmine, said Roger. It is true.

  How can it be? He was gone so long – he was gone for weeks. And now he turns up?

  I know, said Roger gently.

  Elvis wanted to say something about Jasmine so she would look at him, the way she looked at Roger. But they hadn’t laughed at elephants and hippos.

  So I’m the only one who didn’t know? said Jasmine. You knew, and Ingrid knew, and –

  I’ve only known a couple of days. I’m sorry. Maybe I should have called you before. I thought Damian –

  You’re right, maybe you should have called me.

  Ingrid said that he’d been through a bad time of it.

  A bad time of it?

  Yes.

  I have a joke, said Elvis.

  It sounds like he’s doing just fine, she said. That’s what it sounds like.

  What’s pink and lies at the bottom of the ocean? You won’t get it.

  He’s alive and well, said Roger. That’s the main thing.

  That was the joke. What’s pink and lies at the bottom of the ocean?

  That’s nice for him.

  Not now, Elvis, Roger told him.

  But it’s good. It’s a good joke. Bruce told it to me and he laughed when he told it to me. He said it was a dumb joke, but he liked it anyway.

  I thought you should know, Roger said. But Ingrid said Damian wanted to talk to you himself.

  Oh, right. It doesn’t look like he’s going to do that. That would be hard on him, wouldn’t it? Since he’s been through a bad time of it.

  It’s Moby’s dick, said Elvis. Get it?

  Elvis didn’t want to see Jasmine’s eyes go all shiny and bright. He didn’t like it when her voice went high and then went low. He wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to put his whole body against her whole body, but he wasn’t allowed to because she was the girlfriend of Damian Benjamin MacKenzie, May 31, 1987, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

  Tarah moved over and put her arms around Jasmine.

  Elvis was hungry, and they hadn’t listened to his joke.

  He stepped between Roger and Jasmine holding on to Tarah. There was no triangle any more; there was only a line from B to CA, so it didn’t matter if he went between them. He got a can of asparagus soup from the cupboard. He got the can opener and the pot, but some of the other pots fell over when he got out the pot he wanted, and Roger made the sound he made when he was cross w
ith Elvis. Elvis knew how to make soup, though, and he was hungry. He didn’t want to eat macaroni and cheese again, even though he knew how to make that too.

  They hadn’t laughed at his joke.

  He opened the can carefully and put the creamy liquid in the pot, but he put the pot on the stove with a bang. It was a louder bang than he meant it to be, and droplets of asparagus soup flew out of the pot and landed in a pattern all around the burner. It had to be wiped up. He hadn’t turned on the burner yet, and now he lifted the pot, undecided.

  There was a front left burner and a back left burner, and then a front right burner and a back right burner. It was like arms and legs. Left arm, left leg. Right arm, right leg. He put the pot down on the right leg burner and turned the right leg burner dial to five, which was in the middle. He would have to stir it and he got the wooden spoon out of the large ceramic frog above the stove, where the spoons and ladles were kept. They’d told him at the workshop that if he got confused he just had to do things slowly and in order. Everything had an order. He had to follow the right order, but right now he wished he could have ice cream and not soup. He’d rather have ice cream. He’d rather have ice cream and cake with lots of swirly white icing and pink and yellow roses on the top and Elvis Presley’s picture right in the middle and Happy Birthday Elvis in pink icing. That’s what he wanted.

  Maybe they wouldn’t be angry and he could tell them the other joke that Bruce had told him. The one about the seven dwarves and the penguins.

  And so all this time Damian’s been safe and sound in Nova Scotia?

  Yes –

  Well, fuck him.

  Elvis stirred the soup. He didn’t like it that Jasmine’s voice wobbled. He stirred the soup faster because it was bubbling, and that meant it was time to take it off the burner, but he had to remember to turn off the right leg burner too and not turn on another one when he did it. He had to do it right. He used the blue-and-white-striped pot holder to lift the pot, which he put on the coaster on one side of the stove. He was doing everything right. He didn’t need the pot holder, though, because the handle wasn’t hot, so he left it on the stovetop and went over to the counter. He had to walk between B and CA again as he did this, with the pot held out in front of him. He kept holding it while he got a white bowl out of the cupboard. Then he put the pot down in the sink and the white bowl on the counter, so he could spoon the soup into it.