But I let her stand next to me. I let her move around me. And I love how her voice sounds when she asks me to lift up my arm. How she touches me, I love how she touches me. Her hand on my shoulder. My back. Her fingers trip my skin when she slides on the sleeve, a new kind of electric shock. And when she picks up the hook, I love how she leans in and kisses me, once, before she fits it onto my arm. How she touches her lips to mine, so for a second, a half second, I am both living and dying, letting her love me—because she does, we both know she does—and saying goodbye at the same time.
When she’s done, I reach out and I touch her with it. Her soft skin. Her long, beautiful neck.
Coming to the Mekong for lunch hadn’t been Michael’s idea. Halfway through his third pint, he’s still jumpy every time the front door opens. But like Peter Conrad—who hasn’t shown up, thank god—apparently Clint Sheppard also enjoys two-for-one Asahis and solicitous Asian waitresses on Friday afternoons.
Clint, tie gone and top button open, leans across their table for two. The quarter pound of gold ring he’s wearing clunks against his wedding band as he taps his index finger on the table. This isn’t their first lunch together. Michael’s been working for Clint for over a month; he knows all about his glory days as a safety for the Western Mustangs, how they blew out Saskatchewan thirty-five to ten in the first-ever Vanier Cup to be played at the Toronto SkyDome. Michael’s done some digging. Found out Clint was third string, and despite his stories, Michael doubts he even played in the championship game. His new boss. So far it’s been an uncomfortable fit. He’d been his own man for fifteen years. Or so he’d thought.
“You realize we have an opening,” Clint says, his tapping finger paused.
“An opening?”
“What happened with Conrad’s daughter?” He is not a discreet man, but he has the decency to lower his voice. “It makes people uncomfortable. They’d rather not deal with the dad.”
Michael doesn’t flinch, but something, a flicker in his eye, an involuntary micro-contraction of his brow muscles, gives him away.
“What?”
Despite all the beer, Michael’s mouth is dry. He can only shake his head.
“You think it’s ruthless?” Still tipped across the table, Clint points at Michael. “It’s not ruthless. It’s life. It’s business. There’s an opportunity, you take it. You know that. I mean, we all feel bad for the girl, horrible, but after the way Conrad fucked you over, I didn’t think you’d have a problem going after old clients. Am I wrong, here?”
“No.”
Clint leans back in his chair and picks up his glass, too tall, too elegant for his beefy hand. Eyeing Michael over the rim, he takes a slug of Asahi, then lowers the glass, empty except for the drifts of foam slipping down the sides. “People like you, Michael,” he says. “Peter’s always been a prick to deal with.”
“There’s no problem, Clint. I’ll make the calls. I’ll get it done.”
“Good. Because that’s why we brought you on.” He signals their waitress, who bobs her way to their table. Kimmy. Michael knows her, from all the other Fridays. Originally from Taiwan. Has a young son at home. Has never mentioned a husband. Can’t be more than thirty, although it’s hard to tell. When Michael came in, she gave him a warm welcome back.
She takes their order—two more beers—and they watch her slipstream between tables, making her way to the bar. “They should put that on the menu,” Clint says, “instead of fucking coconut ice cream.”
Michael forces himself to laugh.
“That’s what you need,” Clint says, still staring across the room. “Time to climb back on.”
They watch her. Michael watches her. Her narrow waist, the swell of her ass, her small hand circling the tall pull on the beer tap. When he finally looks away, it’s Clint who laughs.
Michael picks his knife off of the table, tilts the blade, one way then the other, the handle cool and heavy in his hand. “Last thing she needs is some old fuck like me.” He glances up from the knife just to watch Clint’s laughter fade. “A couple more years, I’ll probably be fighting to get it up.”
It’s the phone that saves them, vibrating next to the boss’s plate. He picks it up and starts thumbing something in. Michael says a quick thank-you for them both when Kimmy delivers their beer. He checks his own phone. Opens a text from Mia, clicks on the breaking news link.
The boy has been found. Fallen through the early-winter ice. Miles downstream from Old Aberdeen. For millennia, the river has carved rock, cleaved land, carried flowers, but still refuses our sins. Police recovered the body this morning. It’s early going, but at this point there’s no evidence of foul play. People walking their dogs by the river have been interviewed and it’s unanimous—everyone’s happy Connor Tucker is dead. Except for his parents: a dentist and his wife, a dental assistant. Michael finds this news staggering. They’re quoted as saying Connor was a good kid who struggled with health and learning issues, a loner who never managed to fit in. They apologize to the Conrad family, although they believe in Connor’s innocence; they know their son would never do the things he’s accused of.
Michael texts Mia back. Thanks for sending. He struggles to find the right keys. Heavy news, he types, and something breaks hard in his chest. I love you. As he hits the last letter, he isn’t certain he hasn’t sobbed.
“You all right?” Clint frowns across the table. “Christ, buddy, you’re scaring me. You’re making me worry.”
Michael sets his phone on the table. He cannot hold it in his hand, waiting on a reply that may never come. To be loved. To be forgiven. To be worthy of either one.
He takes a long second to draw himself back. Another few seconds to find the strength to reach up and loosen his tie.
His friend, the rapist, is dead. And Frankie, afraid to fully live.
He tells Clint the one about the camel. Tells him the one about the hat. Asks how his daughter’s getting along in first-year engineering. How the renos are going. About the vacation he has planned. Clint scrolls through his photos, so his new VP of sales and marketing can marvel at his beautiful life.
Michael does it. He nods. He smiles. He sits back and he lets the man talk.
—
ON THE TABLE, his screensaver pops up. Finn in that ugly brown ski tuque, his guileless smile, the gracious truth of him. Michael picks up the phone. Sends his son the same message he sent his wife. A second later, a dotted grey text bubble blooms green.
Hey thanks! Love you 2 dad!
Easy. It can be as easy as that.
Sitting at the high table in her studio, Mia flips through the photographs she’s finally had printed, the ones of Randolph’s tree. Lying on her back, she’d shot up through the foliage in September and October—a lift of staggered greens turned to autumn golds, interlaced by dark branches. In the chill of November, a vein work of wood above her, each sturdy limb mother to slimmer limbs, curving higher, dividing into outstretched arms and twiggy hands. She loves the tree bare, the architecture of its branches. While she wouldn’t dare mention it to anyone, and isn’t sure why she’s skipped over the photographers, Mia’s been studying Van Gogh’s olive groves for inspiration, Monet’s last blind water lilies, Pollock’s cosmic One, hoping to use her lens to reveal a beauty both new and infinite, the secret of a grand survival, converging light and capturing time via leaf and water and wood.
So far the old maple hasn’t given up much. The pictures she’s taken are static, everyday—she knows Finn’s not impressed. He thinks she should get back to people and portraits, but she’s looking forward to a good windstorm to bring the century-old limbs into motion. Come spring she’ll take action shots, the unfurling of tender new worlds. She’d like to burrow underground to photograph the hidden cathedral, rooted deep in good earth, tethered to bedrock, in community with all its neighbours. If she can’t get the tree right, she’ll go small. Lying flat on her belly in the long grasses, she’ll photograph the souls of crickets, the dusty sex of wildf
lowers.
Of course there are no shots, will never be any shots, of what happens when she lowers her camera and presses her palms to the trunk. Creeps her fingers into the woody grooves and rests her cheek on the bark. She’s not sure how long she communes with the old beauty, doesn’t care if anyone’s watching. With each breath she draws in the tree, wills it to calm her, to fill her with some ancient grace, a divine truth she didn’t know she’d forgotten.
“Mia.”
She sets the photograph down slowly and swivels carefully around on her stool. In the doorway, Frankie stands stiff inside a navy coat, unbuttoned, her hands buried deep in the pockets. Mia recognizes it; an old peacoat of Helen’s.
She forces herself up. Takes one step forward and then another. Frankie turns her head sharply to the left. Her nose ring’s back in, her hair’s lassoed into a ponytail and her face is lightly tanned—Finn says they’ve been walking outside a lot.
Mia cannot understand how foolish she’d been to have thought a slim hoop of gold through one nostril gave Frankie some kind of edge; frail decoration, her skin would be torn if someone yanked it from her nose.
“Finn’s not here,” Mia says, finally. “He’s at home.” She corrects herself. “He’s at his father’s.”
“I didn’t come to see Finn. I came to get the pictures you took of me. The ones you got printed.”
“Oh. Okay.”
When Mia returns with the folder, the door is closed, the turnpiece on the deadbolt horizontal. Seated on a stool, still huddled inside her coat, Frankie nudges Mia’s photographs around the wooden table.
“Is that the big maple? On the corner of your street?” Mia nods and sets the folder down, within easy reach. “Does that guy even let you on his lawn?”
“Technically the tree’s on city property. Or part of it anyway. Randolph’s been surprisingly good about it. Told me the tree was the reason he bought the house in the first place.”
She glances up. Not directly at Mia; her gaze drifts toward the back of the room. “I’ve always loved that tree.”
“You can have these if you want.” Flustered, heartsick, clumsy, humbled, Mia can’t say what she is as she gathers the pictures, babbling nervously—“I’m just starting out. Sorry. Hopefully they’ll be better next time.”
When Mia offers the photographs, Frankie slides them into the back of the folder, centres the folder in front of her, and starts slowly flipping through.
Every shot, Mia remembers. She has known Frankie all of her life. A newborn, red faced and furious, tiny hands balled into fists. An eight-month-old, propped in a pumpkin patch, embroidered snowflakes decorating the sleeves of her sweater. Her chubby arms clutch at the pumpkin settled between her legs. In the low autumn light, her hair fizzes a sunstruck bronze.
“We were at Sanders’ farm,” Mia says. “You kept falling over. Your mom had to prop you up.”
“I was so fat.”
“You were so sweet.” Frankie and Finn just babies and she and Helen so young, faking their way into motherhood. “How is she? Your mom.”
“Destroyed. She misses you.”
“I miss her.”
“So call her, then,” Frankie says, and flips the picture down. As she moves through the stack, the girl in the photographs grows up.
“Finn told me you’re back at school,” Mia says, softly.
“When I walk down the halls I feel like a ghost. No one’s supposed to know, but everybody does. Most people won’t even look at me.”
Mia’s heart stalls. “Finn—”
“Finn’s different,” Frankie says. She glances at the stool beside her. “Could you? Standing behind me—”
“Oh. Oh sorry.” Mia sits down, clumsily, and not too close.
Frankie stops flipping. She has sprouted up. Four feet tall and skinny now, wearing a red dress, the hem just above her knees. She wasn’t happy about the dress, but loved the backpack humped at her feet. Helen had helped her embroider her name on it, Frankie, hooped above the zippered pocket in thick yellow thread.
“First day of school. I came to your house to take your picture.”
“Grade three.” Frankie frowns. “We had Mr. Jensel. He used to touch my hair.”
Through the floorboards, Mia can feel the shiver of the washers and dryers. The sweet smell of laundry soap wafts up the stairs. “Maybe you and your mom can come here.” She floats the idea carefully, her voice soft, the offer light. “We could have dinner with Finn.”
“Maybe,” Frankie says. Maybe. The buttons on her sleeve scrape the table as she drags two photographs from the folder. Mia took one of them last winter. Frankie casting a long stare into the camera, the day they’d talked about boys. So open in that moment. So unafraid to show herself. The other shot was taken at the beginning of summer, when she came looking for a present for her dad. Half of her face, half of her plea to stop, hidden behind the bright, big palm of her hand.
“I knew you’d get this one printed.”
They both stare at the pictures lying side by side on the table. A lump has set high up in Mia’s throat, but even if it hadn’t—what is there to say? She swallows hard. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken that one.”
Frankie taps the photograph. “This,” she says, “this is nothing.” She says, “People keep calling them animals, but they’re not animals. They’re men.” She says, “I want you to take my picture,” and she stands up and shrugs off her mother’s old coat.
Underneath, black leggings and a loose black sweater that hangs halfway to her knees. She moves inside the sweater as she moves across the room. She sits down on the settee at the front of the studio. Behind her the windows frame a sky thinned to winter blue, beautiful and clean, as if it doesn’t read the papers, as if it never got the news.
Mia opens her camera bag. Couples body to lens.
Through the viewfinder, Frankie comes up bright against the crushed purple velvet. Her hair packed away. Her chin lifted. Her eyes closed. The studio buzzes with silence, the soft grief of a dryer thumping downstairs.
“Talk to me,” Frankie says. “You know me. You know who I am.”
Where the myth fails, human love begins.
ANAÏS NIN
I stand inside the dark cottage and watch the men untie the ropes. Flames flicker low in the boat as they push it away from the dock. It glides into blackness, stops thirty feet from shore, quiet for once, its engine off. The boat floats on its own reflection. A lifejacket bursts to orange. The flames spread and climb. The captain’s seat becomes a pyre, the windscreen a warp of gold.
Together, we watch the boats burn, one up, one upside down. The water so calm it’s hard to tell which is real and which is not. If the men are cheering I cannot hear them. They stand motionless on the dock. They are not drunk or high or dangerous. They do not turn around. They do not see me standing half-asleep in the front window, the wild outline of my hair. They do not see the black bears printed on the nightshirt I’ve had forever, the finger-sized hole near the neck, the pulled threads. My breasts underneath, the right one a little smaller than the left. My not-so-flat belly. My private girl parts, what I’ll need to make a new life. They say pussy. They say cunt, slut, bitch. I say clitoris. I say womb. I say earthling. When I press my hand to the window the glass is cool, the heat of the flames far off.
My mother will be happy. She never liked the boat. One night, their fighting woke me. She was crying, pleading with my dad to get rid of the fucking thing, him yelling he would not. It was a long time ago, but I still remember the shock of hearing my mother swear.
In the reflection, my father is a generous man. He gives his money to charity. Orphans come to live with us. My mother teaches them to speak English. We have a houseful of people and no boat to burn.
Michael knows how to handle my father and is always kind to his son. He is not the type to throw balls at other people’s houses. My father is not the type to throw casserole dishes at women.
Eli asks me to go to the m
ovies and I say okay, but just as friends. I never kiss him in the kitchen trying to make Finn jealous. I am not the kind of girl to do something stupid like that. I do not lose my virginity to Eli on the floor in his basement, just to get it over with. He does not pound into me because he knows it’s my first time. I tell him it’s my first time.
When I walk home alone on a hot summer night, I am not thinking about my tight top or my short shorts or my long legs. I do not look down at the gravel as I pass under the bridge. I do not make myself small. There is no reason to be afraid of those boys.
My mother frowns when she sees my new nose ring, but she doesn’t make me take it off. She listens as I tell her it’s my body and I can do what I want with it. Later, when my dad freaks about the piercing, she tells him to back off. I tell him to back off.
When Mia asks if I’ve met anyone special I say, yes, I’ve known him all my life. When I ask her about a birthday present for my father, she offers the photograph of me laughing and it is already framed.
When Finn turns around in his chair at the party he’s happy to find me standing behind him, and we are both only pleasantly lit. He takes my hand and leads me out of the kitchen. We put our boots on in the laundry room, zip up our coats, dig through the hats and mitts and find him a glove that fits. We slip out the side door together and clomp into the backyard where we throw poorly packed snowballs at each other, like couples in those rom-com movies who are just about to kiss.
This is the story I choose. A fun, easy night, fooling around with Finn and the possibility of love in the distance. The generous choices. The good people. The girl I am, the girl I was, safely back in bed and the canoes headed home with their crews of righteous men, their paddles dipping soundless into the water.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I guess I’m still growing up. Biggest thanks to:
We All Love the Beautiful Girls Page 29
