This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  *

  The next day, plywood sheathing will go on. I try not to think about how close I am to having to climb the ladder.

  We begin trimming the rafter tails. “See?” Ed says. “The walls are slightly crooked. Typical of a building this old.” I don’t see, but I nod nonetheless. He climbs, measures and ties a string embedded with chalk across the rafters where they poke out at the eaves. He plucks it with his knotty index finger. Twang. “Try that,” he says to Andy. When the dust settles, I see what he has been talking about.

  Andy cuts with a circular saw. One by one, irregular ends of shorn lumber tumble to the ground. The remaining ends of the rafters are uniform, like dentures, or freshly-trimmed bangs.

  “Why don’t we do this after the sheathing goes on?” I ask as I pick up the scraps.

  “Appearance. This building line is the most important one. If it’s crooked, you’ll notice.”

  Finally we are ready for the sheathing. Time to climb the ladder.

  “It’s pretty easy with a roof like this,” Ed says, “no hips, no valleys. You just work your way up from the eaves to the centre ridge.” Yet, when he explains how the panels should be staggered and meet in the centre of each rafter, I hardly hear his words.

  The aluminum ladder creaks. I climb, past the height of my hips, then my shoulders. No problem. I’m fine. This is easy. I pass the windows. Then it hits me. I’m going down. Fingers reaching, arms clutching, eyes open, trying to focus on something, trying to grab anything, the world accelerating by my body until –

  My knuckles whiten. I wait. The moment dissolves. I pull myself onto the roof trying to imitate Andy’s ease.

  The aluminum ladder teeters as my foot leaves it. A second wave of panic rushes in. I push my chest into the rafters. Wrap my arms around their boniness. The wood is unyielding to my small grasp.

  If I look anywhere except at my fingernails, which are turning purple, I will fall as Graham did. If I say a word, I will fall. I will fall, not once but a hundred times, and each time, I will experience the thud when I hit the earth, both as myself, a falling woman, and as an onlooker, powerless to stop the fall.

  “Uh – did you bring a hammer?” Ed says, over his shoulder. He’s ahead, surveying the situation, and doesn’t seem to notice my immobility.

  My pores have opened to release the excess adrenaline that floods my system, short-circuiting the tangle of nerves that make up me. I’d happily descend and get the hammer, but the only thing worse than going up is going down.

  So I ignore Ed and shinny up a quivering rafter. The floor of my schoolhouse yawns below. I am a fly watching myself move in that world underneath. I decide not to look. I push myself higher with my booted feet, a mixed blessing – true, they grip the wood, but they are heavy like cement. If I could, I would kick them off, just to feel again the bend of my ankle.

  Until I am as high as I can go. My hands, fingers wrapped around the ridge, look like scaly bird’s feet.

  “Robin?” Ed calls from the cap plate where he is comfortably standing. Holding onto nothing. “We start the sheathing from here, and work up to the ridge.”

  I peer over the ridge. The slope down goes on forever, then plummets to the earth. I feel my heart drop with it. How did Graham fall? Head over heels? A straight slide, maybe. Or, like an Olympic diver, a single roll. I close my eyes.

  It’s always quiet at my schoolhouse, but it’s even quieter up here. The voices of Ed and Andy seem to emanate from another world. A ship’s whistle calls distantly across the water. The sounds of wind chimes mysteriously find their way to me. I open my eyes at once because I cannot bear the memories that multiply, fed by this stillness. Between farmhouses and barns, St. Mary Lake is edged, the cottages around the shore like pieces of a board game. And off in the distance, like a footnote, the ocean.

  I can see the ocean from my roof. I never knew that before.

  I experienced my first night sky in East Pakistan on the roof of the Chowdhury home with Luna. She and I were seeking relief from the sweaty chambers below. Dhaka was so poorly-lit then, stars glittered in abundance, even from the middle of the city. It was a monsoon night, windy but not raining. High clouds whisked overhead, obscuring the moon and stars one moment, then revealing them the next. Warm, fishy smells were carried from the lake nearby. Despite the odour, we turned our faces into the wind. Our sweat evaporated. Luna untied her hair and let it loose. I pulled the elastic from my own hair, and set it free with my fingers. We opened our mouths as though we could swallow whatever wild thing the wind bore.

  I expected Amma to appear, Hasan with a reprimand, Shafiq sent to call us to tea, to a meal, to study, anything really to ensure we were not behaving wantonly. But that was the only time I ever remember Luna and I finishing our fun before someone else decided it was over. When we’d filled our bellies with all the wind had to offer, we scampered down the stairs, our laughter diminishing as we drew close to the ground again. It took a minute to comb out the tangles and re-tie our hair. But the red in our cheeks took much longer to fade.

  I wonder where beneath this sky Luna is. Whether she is alive. Whether I will ever know.

  In a brush of wind, Graham’s ghost manifests. I let him flow to me, through me – it’s the first time he has appeared unbidden. The first time it has not been me initiating contact, seeking him so desperately. His presence both defines and fills the spaces between the pulses of my heart. I understand then what pulled me so purposefully to this house. All along I thought it was the stone, when really, it’s been what’s up here. It’s taken six years and a catastrophe to discover the truth.

  Something moves in my line of vision: I look down. Andy smiles.

  “Good view from up there, eh?”

  “Yeah, real good.”

  “Robin?” Ed calls from behind. “What are you up to?”

  I slither back down the rafters, look over my shoulder from time to time to see how far I’ve left to go. The view disappears first, then the sounds revert, finally the wind is lost. Graham is gone, too. In the natural order, everything must regress to its earthly essence.

  I reach the eaves finally, my grasp firm on the house. My trembling is residual. What will remain is less clearly named.

  Slowly, I pull myself to a standing position on the cap plate beside Ed. Up, up, up – and I’m taller than I was ten minutes ago. Taller and leaner.

  Let the sheathing begin.

  *

  In my newly covered home, I inhale the scent of fresh-cut wood. My eyes adjust to the light and when I taste something of my previous life, I understand how hungry I have been these past weeks. “When will I be able to move back?”

  Ed scratches his chin, dirty, gnarly fingers leaving prints around a tiny razor cut. He stopped the bleeding with a scrap of tissue that’s miraculously stayed in place all day. “Depends on the weather.”

  But this business is erratic. Andy goes off to drywall a family room at a home on Musgrave Road. Ed and I stay at my place, work on the trim, then tackle the soffits, but without Andy, we are slow. We’re ready for the roofing felt – tar paper – but Ed needs Andy’s help to carry it up the ladder. Nevertheless, when Andy’s available, Ed has some business with the regional district and has to run to Victoria for a day. Then there’s a weekend.

  On Sunday night, it rains. Until the sheathing dries, we can’t apply the tar paper. So Monday, we wait for the sun and wind to do their work. In the meantime, there are other jobs. Back at the house with the deck, Ed and I install French doors. We cut an opening through an intact wall. I fight the impulse to resist such destruction. Finally, Andy and Ed’s schedules coincide. We spend a half day applying roofing felt. But in the afternoon, Ed and Andy go back to the family room to do the trim.

  “Don’t worry,” Ed says as they leave. “We’re making good progress.”

  At the end of my first pay period, Ed h
ands over the cheque, which I try not to snatch. His trademark fingerprints are all over it. I am learning to live with my own black fingerprints, which now adorn my purse, jacket cuffs, boots and the light switches at Fee’s. “I know it’s not much –” he says with embarrassment.

  “It’s fair,” I say, doing my best not to show how moved I am.

  *

  We’re all back on the job on a grey Monday morning. Andy and Ed carry two bundles of shingles to the roof. They grunt. Their bodies stagger – the chemical stench of the asphalt burdens as much as its mass. Up on the roof, Ed peels shingles apart and shows how they fit. “This is where architecture meets nature. Just remember – tabs down, four nails per shingle, stagger the joints, and don’t forget the gap.” He gets me going with the starter strip at the eaves. As with the sheathing, we’ll work up to the ridge. Eventually, I get the concept, but am happier once I figure out how to nail the gritty things together without them buckling.

  This huge jigsaw puzzle comes together quickly. And when, halfway through the day, it still hasn’t rained and the picture emerges – a black roof, smartly pointed and better proportioned than I remember – I am impressed. There’s still the ridge to shingle, the chimney to flash, and nails need to be coated with roofing cement. But once that’s done, we can begin work inside. And then I can go home.

  Mac’s called and plans to return again in two weeks. It would be nice to give him back his bed.

  “When will we be finished?” I ask Ed.

  “Well, the inside’s not habitable yet. We’ll need to finish a little work in there before you can move in.”

  Ed, Andy and I work together on the new windows. It’s awkward to work around the bulging stone – and we find several openings lack the trouble-free ninety-degree angles that would make the installation proceed smoothly. “Predictable considering the age,” Ed says, “but still a bit of a nuisance.” Andy curses often. But by the middle of the second day, they’re installed, and my house is sealed.

  Wind and rain finally shut out, warmth has a chance to develop. Despite the cold stone and concrete, it swells to fill the space. Though much more remains to be done, Ed tells me I can go ahead with finishing the frames – and the underside of the roof and rafters, if I wish. Indeed, I do. The emerging warmth, and the way the sun falls though the windows gives me an idea.

  The stain I’ve chosen for the inside is tinted the soft colour of silt on the banks of the Jamuna River. I last saw this riparian shade from the window of my airplane, a river’s edge in constant flux, traced across the land like a scar. I run my brush over a freshly caulked, sanded and cleaned windowsill. Stain – it implies damage. Imperfection. The reverse of what I am actually doing. This colour looks even better than it did on the chip at the hardware store.

  Ed and Andy have gone to Saturna Island for the day to install a hot tub at the home of another of the half-famous painters of which these islands are so full. It’s a job that’s been put off since the trusses arrived. But I make good progress on my own, and today in particular, I am happy to share the company of my house with no one.

  My brush is a superb tool – such fine bristles, though they are dense. I soak them in the can, and then squeeze off the excess on the rim. I brush back and forth, back and forth, my whole body into the rhythm. The wood drinks the stain. My house is thirsty.

  I reach up. A drop falls on my new boots. It spreads, fine fingers of pigment seeking their limits. Like the black fingerprints that trail me, the chipped fingernails and callouses, it is a sign of my experience, a crown I have no choice but to bear, dignity being the only option.

  Earlier this week, I received a second pay cheque from Ed. Used to frugality, I neatly divided it into four: the loan that enslaves me to the bank until I’m sixty-three, the loan to Fee and Mac, my living expenses and savings. But then Fee proposed a celebration. “Shakespeare in Victoria. There’s a matinee on the weekend. But it’s your decision. To be or not to be?”

  “To be,” I said. Insane as such a decision is for someone as poor as I am, one luxury will be permitted.

  My arm aches from reaching, so I take a break. Outside, I walk around my house. The neat shingles, the fascia, the evenly-spaced soffits. The gutters are rather poetic. All the lines are clean and straight as they must have been a long time ago. The trusses and joists feel sturdy even though they cannot be seen. Ed was right. There was enough integrity left to work with, to rebuild.

  Back inside, I wet the brush and look around for somewhere to begin again. There are so many surfaces.

  *

  The production of Much Ado About Nothing is superb. The manic woman who plays Beatrice steals the stage. Fee and I laugh a lot. When the curtain falls, we choose not to rush for the next ferry, which we could just make, provided the lights are in our favour and we break the speed limit all the way down the Pat Bay Highway. Fed by Beatrice’s spirit, we are tempted. However, we opt for procrastination. We follow an alley bounded by dumpsters that intersects Pandora and enter Chinatown. We choose a dark, aromatic cafe where the hot drinks menu, written in coloured chalk, is longer than the food menu.

  It is bright and warm outside, so the place is almost empty. Fee and I can actually hear one another talk. The afternoon stretches ahead, lazy as a sun-drenched cat. After coffee, we decide to miss the next ferry, too, and instead join the rest of the sun seekers outside.

  We follow Wharf Street, tourist-occupied restaurants on one side, and parking lots that dip down to the sea on the other. We follow stairs to the apron of the Inner Harbour. Sun sparkles on the waves. Boats knock restlessly against one another and the wharf. Seagulls call out when someone throws a hotdog bun or a piece of doughnut into the water. Pigeons and crows whirl overhead looking for leftovers.

  The combination of the laughter, coffee, sunshine, and the luxury of time loosens my tongue. “I’ve been thinking about Surinder.”

  “Really? What about her?”

  “Just that this has gone on too long now.”

  Patient Fee. She neither changes the pace of our stroll, nor says a word. This is exactly why I spend time with her. She lets me unwind at my own speed.

  “It’s embarrassing – having to cover up all the time.” I cough. “And anyway, it would be nice to get a mother’s day card – a phone call on my birthday – that sort of thing – have a half-decent intelligent major argument about politics again.” When I force a laugh, I feel less desperate.

  But Fee knows me well. She has heard every single word and more.

  A gas-masked man makes alien landscapes with spray-paint and sells them on the apron. The air reeks of solvents. He shakes his can, the ball bearing rattling inside and loosening up the paint. When he sprays, Fee speaks over the hiss. “What’s your plan?”

  I wait for him to finish painting the moon silver. “I always thought I’d have the watch to fall back on – you know, that I could parcel it off to her and mend everything. Not an option anymore.”

  “Have you a plan B then?”

  “I can’t think of another idea I haven’t already tried.”

  Fee and I walk on, a grassy bank at our left, the water to our right. First Nations carvers, bent over miniature totem poles and masks, line this part of the walk. The smell of cedar lightly masks the heavy fuel odours from the harbour. “Speaking of plans – A, B and C – I’ve news of my own,” Fee says casually. “Mac’s met someone.”

  Met someone? It seems unthinkable – I didn’t know he was looking. I thought he and Fee were – well, if not a couple, at least content. Why hasn’t she said anything earlier?

  “She works at the hospital in Kitimat.”

  “Is it serious?”

  She breathes in, exhales long and loud. “He wants to bring her home to meet Jason and Hayley.”

  I need to catch my own breath. Try not to jump to conclusions. “What do you think of that?”

&nb
sp; Fee resembles a tightly-wound dervish unleashed in a crystal shop. “She’s a baby. Only two years older than Hayley, and plays guitar in a rock band on weekends. Can’t you just imagine the tattoos? And holes pierced all over that taut body like she’s a bloody sieve. Hayley’s old enough to make up her own mind – mind you, I don’t want to be anywhere near when that happens – but Jason – he’s a child – what am I supposed to say to him?” She sighs. Clearly, she’s been thinking a lot about this. Five steps later, she continues. “But all this means naught. For I’ve realized that I still have feelings for the bugger.”

  This news sits heavy, though I must admit I am not surprised. “Sounds complicated.”

  “The truth is – and I must face it – it’s been over for a long time – but the way we live, I guess I’ve been thinking all along it was going to turn out different. Like we’d end up sharing a porch swing and pots of Earl Grey one day.

  “One lump or two, my lover?” she simpers. “Ooh, I’ll give him a lump he’ll never forget.”

  “Are you going to say anything?”

  “What’s to be said now? Fiona Burns knows as well as anyone things in life don’t turn out how we expect. No matter how many years’ worth of lying we’re willing to do to ourselves pretending otherwise. I feel such a fool.”

  “Sorry. That’s dreadful. He’s acting like a jerk. Maybe you could try to talk to Jason instead. Even Hayley. Prepare them.”

  “The question now is not what to do about Mac and Jason, Mac and Hayley, not even Mac and me, the answer to that being rather obvious now, don’t you think? I hope he enjoys the hospitality of that flea-pit hostel in Ganges. But how’m I going to forgive myself for being so thick-headed? And what’m I going to do now?”