by Julie Paul
“I have an idea,” Mike says, while Margo is in the house changing Evie after their tea party lunch of the food he brought from Vi’s. “I’d like your help with it.”
Joel nods as minutely as possible, stares out into the trees, stone-faced.
“I want to build something back home, for Christina.”
Joel’s head whips around to stare at his pale gob. “You what?”
“I’m going start a scholarship in her name, for a promising poet or artist in Grade 12. But I also want to make a kind of monument to her.”
“What, like a totem pole?”
“No, bro. But something made of wood. More your area of expertise than mine.”
Bro. “Park bench, then? Or maybe a miniature barn?”
Mike stops smiling at this dig. “A big book, made of wood, I was thinking,” he says. “One of her poems engraved on a metal page.” He rubs his forehead and pushes his hair out of his eyes. Joel’s gesture. “She needs a memorial, in Jackson’s Point. It’s just not right to pretend that she never existed. I just came from there, Joel. It’s like none of us were ever there.”
This makes Joel soften a little. He imagines little kids running their hands over the words, pictures taking his own kid there, to show her and Margo the sights, go for a dip in the lake they all loved.
There was a day at the lake, at the old mansion beach, before it all went to hell. The OMB, they called it in code, the beach in front of an abandoned house where they used to hang out after school and on long summer afternoons, searing their skin in the sun and jumping from the borrowed, boggy dock into that silty green water. A day when Christina declared, “I want to live this day on a loop. This is the one day I want to repeat forever.” Joel remembers thinking that this would be a fine idea. Just him, his brother, and this beautiful, smart girl. Three friends at the beach, hiding out, not getting caught, suspended in time.
“Think fast,” he and Mike had said at the same time, each of them throwing her a can of Molson Canadian from the cooler, and somehow, she’d caught them both.
The twins lay on their stomachs reading comic books and drawing while she scribbled poems down in her journal. Joel had brought a ghetto blaster and played Pink Floyd and David Bowie, and they all wished they had more beer. Nothing else happened; this was pre-love, pre-choosing between them, pre-anything.
That’s the point he wants to return to, the factory reset point of their lives.
Before he can stop himself, Joel blurts it out. “Do you ever, you know, feel like she’s nearby?”
He’s never spoken about this to anyone, ever.
Mike nods. “All the time. I see movement in the corners, or feel a change in the air, sometimes music—that song by the Smiths she loved—”
“‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out.’”
“Yep.” Mike moves a little closer, places his hand on Joel’s shoulder. “I’ve missed you,” he says. “No one knew her like we did.”
He’s getting chills again, and it isn’t the weather. But this is all too fast. One afternoon and Mike thinks they’re besties again. And has he completely forgotten the burden he saddled Joel with, making him promise to never tell about the final toke?
“What poem?” Joel asks.
“I’ve got a dozen or so,” he says. “We can go through them together and choose.”
“I’ve got one too,” Joel says, and the shock on Mike’s face is priceless. “Like you said, no one knew her like we did.”
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When Margo brings Evie out onto the deck after half an hour—she’d forced herself to stay upstairs—neither she nor Evie can stop staring at Michael. The brothers are talking, even laughing a little, and Margo can’t tell their voices apart.
“Come here, little chick,” Joel says, and Evie’s fuzzy head nestles into his shoulder. Is that envy on Michael’s face? It makes Margo tear up.
“This is your Uncle Mike,” Joel says into her ear, and she turns her face out again, to see Michael. They’re all looking at Michael.
It’s incredible enough, seeing two people with the same face, mannerisms, and voice, but for one of them to be your husband, a singular being who is now—has always been—one of two? But it’s something more. Even though he’s basically a complete stranger, she feels a kinship with Michael, a sudden sense of connection beyond what she’d sensed in their few simple emails.
And okay, yes, it’s impossible not to see their differences. They both work with their hands, but carpentry versus visual arts—there’s a lot of space between those two. Michael is more stylish, Leonard Cohen to Joel’s Bruce Springsteen. Taller, somehow, or maybe that’s just the Fluevogs. Paler, trimmer, neater. Urban. He holds her gaze longer, pauses just a beat longer before responding to a question, as if “What part of Vancouver do you live in?” is the most interesting, complicated query of all time. He’s touched her shoulder and arm three times during their conversations.
“I hope you’ll stay here tonight,” Margo says now. “We have lots of space.” Joel has been hot and cold all day, a fog of coolness over him most of the time, shooting her looks of disbelief, but she caught him with tears in his eyes while he watched Michael chase Evie around the yard.
“You’re so kind,” he says. “But I’ve got a room at the Colonial Inn, out on the highway.”
Joel looks at Margo, and they both shake their heads. “It’s a hole,” he says. “Stay here.”
Is he really saying that?
Michael flips his hair out of his eyes with one quick hand, just like Joel does. “I’d be honoured,” he says. Again with that word. “Can I please make you dinner?”
“We’ve got it,” Joel says, quickly. “Meat okay?”
Michael nods. “I’m an omnivore. Happy with anything.”
“Joel’s the chef around here,” Margo says. “Sounds like you’re a cook too?”
“I dabble,” he says. “Mainly Thai and Japanese these days.”
“Damn,” she says. “We’re more straight-up around here. Things the baby can eat, you know?”
Michael laughs and opens his hands to the sky. “I love me some Gerber’s pears.”
“Joel’s favourite.”
“Of course it is.”
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Joel can hear Mike and Margo talking quietly in the kitchen, finishing up the supper dishes. He and Margo are trying to keep to a routine for Evie, post-weaning, so he did the bath and bed ritual, and Evie went down much quicker than normal despite all the excitement of the day.
His brother is in the house, and his guts are a complete mess—emotional rollercoaster doesn’t come close to describing it. Part of him wants to sneak away into his shop and bang the shit out of some wood, part of him still wants to punch Mike out, but he’s got to face this music like an adult now.
He remembers, after it happened, how hard it actually was to stop talking to Mike back then, even holding the secret of the final toke. Because even through the blame and the fury, he was able to put himself in Mike’s shoes—to know he’d hurt someone, unwittingly, and then, for worse things to happen as a fallout. And, he reminds himself, Christina had pressured Mike into getting the weed. To improve her poetry, maybe, or to defy her strict father. Even if he’d accidentally caused the fire, Mike wasn’t the only one smoking up in the hayloft.
When he gets downstairs, Margo and Mike have moved to the deck in the twilight, and Joel holds onto these thoughts, these threads of compassion, while he settles into a chair on the deck with a beer. A couple of fireflies in the cedar boughs wink their way behind Mike’s head—the first ones they’ve seen this season.
“Mosquitoes will be out soon,” Margo warns. “But isn’t this hour just golden?”
“You are extremely blessed,” Mike says. “All of this, and Evie t
oo.”
His brother says blessed now? At least he hasn’t asked about Margo’s background, or not while he’s been around. She is never thrilled when the inevitable question comes up: But where are you really from? This woman is from downtown Toronto. She misses shopping on Queen Street, the pakoras and shawarmas and blintzes of home. Yes, okay, she has a Jamaican father she never met.
“So you’re half Jamaican,” Mike says, apropos of nothing. Mom must’ve told him. Or else he’s doing that mind-reading thing they used to do.
Margo laughs. “Fifty-fifty,” she says.
“Evie seems to have gotten a fair percentage,” he says. “Those giant brown eyes.”
“I see Schaefer cheekbones and smile,” Margo says. “But definitely my nose and naughty streak.”
They all smile, Joel included, and Mike says, “We had our fair share of shit-disturbing, didn’t we, Joel?”
He likely means things like colouring on the walls with magic marker or hiding for an hour in Sears while their frantic mother cried, thinking they’d been taken. But Christina just pops in ahead of these things and takes over his thinking. “You could say that,” he says. “Compared to us, Evie’s good as gold.”
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When Michael came home that day after visiting Christina for the first time after the fire, he was in shock. He and Joel were still speaking at that point, but Joel didn’t ask about it—no doubt he could tell it had been bad. After a couple of hours in his bedroom with headphones plugged into his Discman, Michael emerged and gave a quick report. Half of her face destroyed, patched badly together again, her mouth not working on that side, same with her arm. A patch over one eye. A scarf pinned to her hair, to curtain over the damage. A version of herself he barely recognized.
What he didn’t say was how awful it was, what had replaced her cheek, her brow, her eyelid. He’d heard of skin grafts and remembered the smoothness of her bum—couldn’t they use skin from there to fix things up?
Every time the phone rang over the holidays, Michael jumped. Joel told him he was going to go with him the next visit, even if she said no. He had to see for himself, he said. To let her know she’d get better, that they were still her buddies. She didn’t call. Whenever they phoned her house, no one answered.
At the end of the first school day after Christmas, Jean met them at the door.
“They say it was depression,” she told them, then started wailing.
“Mom, what is?”
Through her hysterics, they heard the news. “She shot herself, out in the barn, last night.”
Michael sat down on the steps, unable to stand.
“She’s gone. Christina. She’s dead.”
According to Christina’s mother, it was the disfigurement that was too much to bear. The trouble with eating, spilling drinks out of straws, all of that was hard, she told them after the funeral. But the fact that Christina would look like that forever and see pity before anything else in people’s faces—that was beyond her.
Had she left a note saying this? How did anyone know for sure?
“If only she had never been in that barn,” Christina’s mother said, her face grey and flat. “God knows why she ever fell asleep in there in the first place. But that girl was an explorer. She was probably writing a poem about hay and needed to go smell it.”
Michael turned away so she wouldn’t see his imploding face.
“You killed her,” Joel said, when they were alone, his face a mess of tears. “Not a shotgun. You.”
Michael doesn’t know if Joel has told anyone about the spark; he hasn’t said a thing. But he knows that it was the last day Joel had spoken to him, until today.
Now Michael surveys the sky, the yard, the old house, the deck—the whole dreamlike moment. Actual fireflies.
“I wish Mom and Dad could see this,” he says. “Have they met you, Margo?”
“Only over the phone,” she says. “But I’m thinking we should make the trip west, sooner than later. They were intending on coming to the wedding, but we eloped, so that didn’t happen.”
Michael nods. “It’s pancreatic. They’re not giving him much time.”
Joel squirms in his seat. “But what about remission? That happens, right?”
Hasn’t Joel talked to them lately? Or heard how quickly this one moves?
“He’s stopped all treatments. It’s more about . . . day-to-day, now, doing whatever he wants in the time left.”
“Is that why you’re here, then?” Joel says. “Bill’s wish list?”
“You heard about it,” Michael says. “But not entirely. I mean, I’ve wanted to see you for years, Joel.”
“Okay. But how did you know I’d open the door at all?”
Michael shrugs. “I didn’t.”
The brothers lock glances for a second, then both look at Margo.
“Bill is going to be pretty stoked, you know,” Margo says. “Should we call them? It’s only dinner time in bc.”
Joel shakes his head. “In the morning. When Evie’s up to chat.”
“Good plan,” Margo says, then slaps her smooth calf. “Bastard mosquito got me!”
“They always do,” Joel says. He gets up and reaches a hand toward her, as if Mike isn’t even there. “Time to go in.”
“I’ll be right in,” Michael says, and stays in his chair. He wants to take some photos for some future work, mostly of the magenta sky. Joel smirks at him, like he thinks he’s going to light up a joint. If he had one, he might.
Once they’re inside, he can hear the river, flowing half a block away, and little else. Not even a Smiths song. Maybe Christina will leave him alone now. Maybe the goosebumps on his forearms are just from the dropping temperature.
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Joel’s bringing a second bottle of red into the living room when he feels a change in the air. There’s a thickening, a pressure to it, and before Joel knows what he’s doing, he sits down beside Margo on the sofa and extends his hand to pat Mike’s leg—a signature Mike move—and says, “I appreciate you coming all this way. I don’t really want to talk about anything, you know, from before, but I’m willing to start again, from here. For Dad.”
He can see Margo wiping her eyes, and now she’s taking his hand, and Mike’s, and squeezing her joy into their fingers.
“You guys!” she says. “This is amazing.” And then she just sits there holding both hands. Joel pulls his away, and Mike doesn’t. Joel stares at his wife until she lets go. Enough already.
“Did Joel point out the painting on the ceiling?” she asks. “Our ancient beaver?”
“I told him,” Joel says.
“Impressive,” Mike says, again. “What year did you say the house was?”
“1894,” Margo says. “I remember each time the wind howls through the attic.”
“More wine?” Joel asks.
“The Prosecco I brought should be chilled by now,” Mike says. “Might be time for a little celebratory bubbly?”
He doesn’t feel like celebrating, let alone with some pretentious froth, but he lets Mike go pop his cork. He’s doing it for Bill. But as much as their father says he wants this little reunion, it likely won’t make much of a difference at all.
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The bubbles go right to Margo’s belly, never mind her head, so it feels like she’s pregnant all over again. Or maybe it’s a bad feeling coming over her, drinking with these guys—how long can this new peace last? And Prosecco, after four glasses of wine! Way more than her usual half-glass, what with the pregnancy, then breastfeeding.
She heads to the kitchen, red wine glasses in hand, to make up a snack plate: this much alcohol needs something to soak it up.
The radio is on, a late-night program she likes; now it’s De
stiny’s Child’s “Say My Name” making her hips move. When was the last time they went dancing? In front of the TV with Barney the purple dinosaur doesn’t count.
She’s prepping their go-to snack without thinking—Wheat Thins, marble cheddar, and sliced dills—but it suddenly seems inadequate. She can’t even blame Evie—Joel loves this simplicity. Michael likely eats caviar on the regular, lifted to his mouth on endive leaves by his elegant, pampered hands.
What she’s seeing is an experiment’s results right here and now: what happens to identical twins when the variables change. Environment versus temperament, nature versus nurture. Michael’s surface is all pretty and gentle, but there’s a steely layer beneath that she can sense when he’s up against Joel’s pragmatism, his confidence, here in his house with wife and child.
They’ve missed out on so much, in the missing years. To look at them, sunlight and physical work have skipped over Michael, but deeper—do they feel a gap, an empty shelf, a hollow?
She’s only known Joel without his brother. Would he be different if this rift had never happened?
So many questions. But more than anything, Margo’s dying to know what really happened to this Christina girl to cause this kind of damage. She wants a quiet moment with Michael alone, to ask him.
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It feels like a mirror Joel’s staring into, seeing Mike talking to Margo like that, laughing, clinking their glasses together, eating their favourite snack. Or maybe it’s more like looking at his shadow.
It still feels unbelievable, having his brother here, but this is different. An out-of-body sense coming over him that it isn’t his brother’s hand suddenly on his wife’s shoulder, but his own, just a friendly squeeze to the arm before a kiss.
And then rage hits, storming his body like a terrorist.
