This One Because of the Dead

by Laure Baudot

  “Have you kissed anyone yet?” Vee asks.

  Sonya opens her eyes. “Have you?”

  “There’s a guy I’m supposed to go out with when I get back to the city.”

  “I’m saving myself,” Sonya says, then regrets it.

  Vee props herself up. “For who?”

  Sonya shuts her eyes.

  “It’s not my brother, is it? Gross.”

  The light under Sonya’s squeezed eyelids goes from yellow to red-black. In the distance, a motorboat approaches, a hum getting louder.

  When they return to the cottage, Asta is leaning over an open oven. The kitchen is filled with the scent of roasting chicken. “Your mother called,” she says. Asta doesn’t have a phone; none of the islanders do. The only phone on the island is located at its centre, in a hut. “Jean Thomas was on the main path when she heard the phone ring,” says Asta. She takes a baster to a trussed chicken and curtains its skin with juices. Rising, she says, “There’s a flashlight by the door. And take a quarter for the phone.”

  When Sonya sets out, it’s already dark. Her flashlight creates a small, full moon on the dirt path before her. In her periphery, giant pines sway.

  The small hut, lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, is comforting until she catches sight of the spider webs and cobwebs netted up and down its corners. Her coin clatters within the phone’s belly.

  Joy answers after several rings, her voice sounding far away at first.

  “Why are you calling me?” asks Sonya.

  “I’m just checking in on you,” says Joy.

  “Oh.”

  “Listen. I think I’ve figured some things out.”

  Sonya strains her ears for Beethoven. “Are you calling me because you’re on a break?” This is how it usually is: the pity she feels for her mother when they are apart evaporates in her presence.

  “No, honey. I just thought. If you wanted to come home.”

  “Everything’s fine.” She longs to be back in Asta’s kitchen, its warmth and its scent of roasting poultry.

  “Right.” As usual, Joy gives in to Sonya. If only she persisted, if only she tried to get more out of her daughter, something might change between them. This conversation is no different from those before it, after all.

  “I have to get going,” says Sonya.

  The next day, Sonya has trouble keeping her eyes open in the morning light that filters through the opening in the bedroom curtains. Her nose is runny and her throat sore. Asta brings her ginger ale and feels her forehead. “Stay right here.” Sonya is thrilled to have Asta’s attention, to give herself over to Asta’s care. In this instance, Asta has not disappointed her. Sonya sinks into the sagging mattress and burrows herself under the wool blanket, becoming so hot that she sweats.

  Charles comes in later that morning. “You missed practice.”

  “I’m sick.” Her neck is stiff and aches.

  “Okay.” He shrugs.

  She spends the next hour thinking of him swimming, his shoulders flashing above the water. She drags herself out of bed and puts on her bathing suit. The rough grass down to the shore pricks her bare feet.

  Charles is sitting on a rock facing the lake. He looks up. “Ah. Great.”

  “Where’s Vee?”

  He points to a figure farther along the shore, in the water. “She’s moody, as usual.”

  The cold water takes Sonya’s breath away, so she treads quickly to get used to the temperature, as Charles has taught her. After a minute she feels her limbs warm up and loosen. She kicks out, concentrates on technique: rotate arms, kick strong, breathe efficiently. Soon, her body relaxes, glides for-ward with less effort. She sees herself as if from above, a sea creature with water streaming down its oiled back.

  Afterward, she’s breathless, aching. The soreness returns, coats the inside of her throat. Charles hands her a towel. “You see? You have to push through.”

  Across Charles’s right shoulder, descending diagonally across his back, is a red welt. After morning practice, he took a canoe out and balanced on the stern, bouncing up and down to move the canoe forward. The islanders call this “gunny jumping.” As he tried to walk on the gunwale — like a tightrope walker, imagines Sonya — a motorboat wake unbalanced him and he struck his back on the gunwale’s hard edge.

  At dinner, Arnold says, “It wasn’t smart. You’ll need two or three days at least.”

  “It could have been worse,” says Asta.

  “He certainly won’t do it again.”

  Charles eats, his nape flushing.

  After dinner, Sonya goes to Charles’s room. The room has a desk, a single bed, and a shelf, all wood. Charles is seated with his back to her. His legs, too big to fit under what must be a child’s desk, are splayed on either side of the chair. A lamp casts a pool of light on some papers. As Sonya approaches, he starts. “What’s up?” He covers the papers, then reveals them when he sees it’s her.

  They are drawings of warships, in delicate blue ink.

  “Those are amazing,” she says.

  “That’s the Achilles. From the first ship battle in double u double u two.”

  She leans over him.

  “And here is HMS Prince of Wales. Because of her, the German KMS Bismarck sank.” He looks at her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about the war.”

  “Oh, it’s not the same. Well, I guess it is.”

  “Does your mother talk about it?”

  “Not much.”

  “Is it true that her older sister was killed in a concentration camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “Well, I —”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

  How she wishes she could talk to him, but where could she start?

  “Her name was Sonya.” Unbidden, tears come to her eyes.

  “Forget it.” Absentmindedly, he brings his arm around to his back.

  “Don’t!”

  It’s too late: he has scratched the sore. He grimaces. “Shit.” He picks up a pen and weaves it between his fingers. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He pushes his chair out from the desk. “Anyway, I might pass on the swim.”

  She steadies herself with her hand on the bed. “But you worked so much.”

  “It might be nice to slack off. My dad —”

  “He’s pretty scary.”

  He laughs. “He doesn’t scare me. He annoys me.” He looks at her. “You’re lucky to avoid all this. Family.”

  Her voice whispering now. “I thought I might follow you. I mean, you know what I mean.”

  A look that she can’t read crosses his face. “Yeah. I know.”

  On the day of the swim, the sky is blue. They go out to the grass above the shore. Asta is at the starting point, seated in her lawn chair. Arnold, who will paddle beside them in the canoe, stands beside his son. He puts his arm around Charles and pulls him into his embrace. “You’ll hold up.”

  Charles smiles shyly and returns his dad’s pat on the back. A few seconds later, he starts to jog on the spot. He looks a little silly, like he’s in a 1930s Olympic film, one that makes the athletes’ movements robotic.

  Sonya searches for signs that he’s going to change his mind again. Standing there with a towel around her midsection, she looks out at the water that is cold and black and impenetrable and maybe something that can be tamed, if only temporarily.

  “He’s concentrating.” Vee has come up beside her, wearing a navy blue and white suit that she bought when she got her bronze cross. “Don’t bother him.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “He has a girlfriend, back at school.”

  “You’re not his boss.”

  “He doesn’t like you,” Vee whispers. “He feels sorr
y for you.” She walks away, the scoop of her bathing suit showing off her thin, tough back.

  When Sonya finally drops her towel to the grass and moves toward the shore, Vee and Charles are already in the water. There’s a cool edge to the wind and the hairs on her upper arms rise. She stands on a rock and lets the water lap her toes. She is thinking of how, when push comes to shove, the Remingtons help one another, stick together as a family.

  For a moment Sonya forgets what comes next. Her calves strain like a dog on a leash, but her feet grip the rock. As if, in going in, she risks everything: her family, herself. The swim, like all the things Sonya does with the Remingtons, separates Sonya from her mother. Standing there, she feels, behind her rib cage, a languid caress of guilt.

  Sonya pictures her arms windmilling, pushing aside things that give shape to horror and grief. Driving them down to the silt-covered bottom of the lake.

  Vee and Charles tread water a few metres away. Charles puts his hands around his mouth. His voice arcs over the expanse. “Are you coming?”

  Starting Somewhere

  My cabin was one of ten scattered up a hill like a flight of steps. Each one housed ten campers and two counsellors. The buildings had been refinished and I could still smell the addictive scent of wood stain. The screen doors were rickety and their hinges squeaked. None of them shut properly: I had to pull hard to get the latch to click.

  Each evening, my co-counsellor Jen and I sat on our steps, with Darren joining us. He sprawled at our feet against the bottom step, and complained — mostly about me.

  “Lyds showed me a naked chick today.” He grinned, but his face was red.

  “I was giving a camper a shower.” We were supposed to call them clients, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. “You walked in.”

  This wasn’t strictly true. I’d told him to come in, and he had.

  The camper, Betty Bernowski, was in her fifties. Like the others, she had a disability — something genetic, I think. She’d stood under the water with her eyes closed, and I couldn’t tell if she was loving the water or feeling trapped by it; just biding her time until I told her to come out. Betty was over-weight and her buttocks seemed to overflow onto the backs of her thighs. Covering both buttocks was a large mark consisting of two concentric circles, one inside the other.

  Darren shrugged. “You could have warned me.”

  He was fifteen, a virgin, and he liked me. At home, I was having a bad time with the girls at school. I’d slept with most of the eleventh grade guys, but had no real girlfriends. Teasing Darren felt like a sort of escape valve.

  “And thanks for the little present,” he added. Betty was in the shower because she had soiled herself on the bench out-side the dining room, and I’d left the mess for him.

  “That’s your job,” I said. It came out a little shaky.

  “Is seeing someone naked wrong?” Jen said. “Fundamentally, I mean.” It always gave me a jolt, seeing someone with hair the colour of her purple consider things seriously.

  “Wouldn’t you care?” Darren said.

  “No.” Jen tugged at her tank top and made as if to flash him.

  “Get the frig out of here.”

  I could do it, I thought. I could pretend that my body meant nothing more than a collection of skin cells, that my nipples were just tagged-on conglomerations.

  “We shouldn’t be so hung up on nakedness. I mean, we’re all the same. Society has to start somewhere. Why not with our campers?” Jen got up. “I need repellent.”

  The screen door, set up to protect campers’ fingers, shut slowly. Looking into the cabin from the porch, I could see a row of bathroom sinks at the far end. To the left, out of sight, were bunk beds. Our small alcove bedroom was on the immediate right as I walked in; it had an accordion door that, like the front door, didn’t close well, always bouncing back with a gasp and leaving a two-inch gap, which made me feel a perpetual lack of privacy.

  Jen, Darren, and I were at the camp for more or less the same reasons. I’d come to get away from my mom and make money for clothes. Jen, who was from The Kingsway, in western Toronto known for its hundred-year-old trees and six-bathroom houses, was probably there for a similar purpose. Darren was definitely in it for the cash: he once wore the same Star Trek T-shirt three days in a row, and only changed when Jen complained about the smell.

  Other counsellors saw their jobs as preludes to their social work careers. Jen called them “do-gooders.” She especially disliked Murray, our camp director. When Murray hired me, he’d asked me to rate my desire to work at the camp on a scale of one to ten. He liked formulas.

  I’d smiled sweetly. “Nine-point-five.”

  “Perfect.” And he unfolded his body — he was over six feet — from behind his desk to shake my hand.

  Whenever Jen saw Murray around camp, overseeing camper activities, she’d whisper, “Is Murray putting on his director’s face again?”

  He really did look like he was only pretending to care, with his gesticulating hands, his ever-widening blue eyes, and his Saint Bernard jowls.

  When they’d first come off the camp bus, the campers had shouted out greetings and hugged counsellors they had known for years. To someone like me, who had never paid attention to people with special needs, their differences stood out. Their eyes seemed either too deep-set, or bulging. Their lips appeared narrow or bulbous and wet. Above all, they were noisy. Many of them yelled when they spoke. It was as if they knew they wouldn’t be heard unless they made themselves louder than everyone else. I saw they could be divided into two categories: boisterous or withdrawn. The quiet campers tended to stare. Betty Bernowski was a starer. Her look held no judgment, though, which killed me; the world needed people to take a stance.

  The camp ran itself. Each day, we walked the campers to their assigned places: the dining hall, the art barn, the music room, the swimming beach. Like herding cattle, I thought on my bad days. Back then, I was callous, and didn’t always think of them as real people. Still, we had responsibilities. On the first day, Murray had taken us out onto the open grass down the hill from the dining hall to give us instructions. He’d talked about how the campers sometimes snuck out of their cabins at night to have sex. “They have natural urges,” he’d said. “But we don’t encourage it.”

  “He’s a hypocrite,” Jen hissed afterwards. “Didn’t he just lecture us on the importance of autonomy?” Her nose ring refracted the sunlight. “They have a right to their bodies.”

  I loved Jen. She really didn’t give a damn about what any-one thought of her.

  Logan didn’t look like a lifeguard. He was skinny and had a white guy’s afro and wore synthetic shorts through which you could see the details of his bulge. He didn’t seem to notice, just paraded around the camp, sometimes stop-ping to talk to someone, one hand on his thrust-out hip like a girl. Because he’d been returning to camp for several years, he did what he wanted. Often he could be found at the camp docks, smoking a cigarette, preparing himself for his shift.

  “He’s taken,” Jen told me. “Michelle.”

  “Seriously? She’s so —”

  “Obviously a catch?” Darren said.

  “Do you think she gives him what he needs?”

  “She’s got that classic look,” Jen said. “Blonde.”

  “Maybe he wants something more exotic.”

  “I don’t think he’s ready,” Jen said.

  “He’s not that special,” Darren added.

  Once a week, each of us had night patrol. Patrollers were supposed to check in on the campers, but, since Jen had once told me I was too conscientious, I no longer went into each cabin to sweep my flashlight over sleeping faces. I simply listened at doors.

  One night, sounds came from Michelle’s cabin. I knew that she was out that night, probably by the docks with Logan. Her campers should have been asleep. I stepped closer. The cr
y from within came again, its meaning unmistakable now. I peered behind me, on the lookout for Murray, who liked to make his own rounds. Every night, he walked up and down the path parallel to the cabins, flashing a torch flashlight and humming a tune from Guys and Dolls. Tonight, Murray wasn’t in sight, and I walked back down the hill without going into Michelle’s cabin.

  Jen sat on her cot in our room, painting her nails violet. “What’s wrong?”

  I told her what I’d heard.

  “Can you imagine if Michelle walks in on them,” she said.

  “Would she even know what it is?”

  One Wednesday, we ran all the way to the camp gates and farther still, gravel pockmarking our bare legs, pine-scent rushing up our nostrils. We ran as if someone were after us, as if Murray would suddenly appear and say, “What, guys, is it your day off or something? And I thought you actually liked it here.”

  Darren led us through trailer park gates and then to a trailer. A sign on the door of the trailer read, Welcome to Our Home.

  Jen stood still. “Is this a joke?”

  Darren smiled lopsidedly and took out a key.

  We walked into a kitchen. Beside a sink, a squat tap gleamed. A washcloth folded in quarters was draped over an empty drainer, which sat on a white counter. There was a little white fold-out table. A yellow, floral curtain fluttered over a small window.

  Darren opened a tiny fridge, the kind my dad had in the garage to stock for summer parties. He took out three beers, then led us to the back of the trailer, into his bedroom, and handed one to each of us. He lifted his beer. “To freedom.”

  We sat on his single bed, our backs knocking the particle board wall, our feet dangling over the edge of the mattress. Jen’s leg touched mine, which as usual she didn’t notice: she had no idea what personal space was. I didn’t mind, though. Not like those girls at school who would shriek if I so much as skimmed them in the halls with my knapsack.

  The bedroom window was open. A faint smell of gasoline, latrine, and gardenias hung in the air. Apart from occasional shouts of children, there was a far-off drone of a highway, and a steady chirp of crickets. In between these small noises, the quiet thrummed. Back home, whenever I took a minute to myself on our back deck, my mom would come out and nag me to do some chore. Like she was waiting to pounce.