I might join her wail. This being human – disorder, randomness, innumerable caprices, and the acts we take (or do not take) in good faith, the blunders that dog our every good intention – is nearly unbearable. I cannot get through another minute of my life without answers – about Surinder. About Luna. About the Chowdhurys, Shaheed, Shafiq. Dad. And Graham. Loose ends are the contorting limbs of a mythical octopus destined to strangle me. In such a short and uneventful life, how could I have created so many?
“Come on,” I say instead. “We’ll miss the ferry again.” We trek back to the parking lot, tense and uncertain, as though answers might jump out from behind parking meters and bus stop benches and bite off our heads.
*
After the third pay cheque, I give up tutoring. No more uncooperative kids, their forgetful parents, the erratic income. There’s no time anyway. Work with Ed is steady, and he’s right. I could work weekends if I wanted. Most of the kids betray no emotion; they shrug it off with a “What? Oh. Okay.” Their shrugs remind me of Surinder’s at that age, and I wonder if any will go on to have a skyrocketing career like hers, if any will estrange themselves from their parents.
One parent calls to thank me and wish me good luck, another to beg me to carry on just until the end of the school year – and I do agree to continue French with her daughter, though she will be the only one. A third wants me to recommend someone new. From the rest, there is silence. One of them still owes me for six sessions. It irks, but I write it off as a bad debt.
At my house, we’re going to rebuild the sub-floor next, a job I probably should have done when I bought the place.
“Think of sheathing the roof,” Ed says. “It’s much the same. We’ll frame with 2x6s, and cover it with – say – 5/8 inch OSB. That should be strong enough for you.” Blessed stars, I understand what he is saying.
On the day we plan to cover the place where Graham’s watch last rested, I am jumpy. Regret – for all I have lost, mistakenly, deliberately, everything snatched away from me, everything I ever stupidly offered up – hovers, a rank cloud which Ed and Andy must sense. But no one says more than is necessary. A little to the left. Give it another nudge. Got another nail? Mundane questions ramble on and on.
With the strike of his hammer, a last blow to a nail holding the frame together, Andy announces he needs to go into town. The blade of the table saw needs replacing soon, and he’d better buy one or at least, place an order. Ed and I carry on what we are doing, on opposite sides of the room.
I study the grey concrete slab before me. I want to burn its impression into my mind so I can recall it whenever I want, because I will probably never see it again. I wait a few minutes for the image to coalesce.
Ed interrupts. “Robin, I need a hand over here.” When I do not respond, he looks over and stops. I can sense his breathing across the room.
When the image I need is fixed, I speak. “You once said I could never know how dreadful it is to want the one thing I can never have.” Ed nods when I meet his eyes. “Well, that was wrong. I know all about it.”
He nods, more slowly this time, like he’s not sure which way this is going, what revelation may come, but trouble seems possible.
“Eleven years, and nothing has changed,” I snap, annoyed that I have to witness Ed’s trepidation, that he’s incapable of keeping his feelings to himself. This is my moment. I seize all emotion in the room as if it belongs to me. “I still miss him. I cry all the time. I dream of him so often, I hate to wake up and find he’s not there. At this rate, I’ll soon have spent more years mourning him than I spent living with him.” The words fly up into the rafters, borne by a fountain of despair, and bounce right back between us. “So you can’t have a rum and coke. Big bloody deal. I will never see Graham again. Never. Do you understand what that means?”
Neither of us moves until the fury dissipates. The air lies still.
The floor squeaks as Ed crosses it. He sets a sheet of wood carefully on the frame, butting it up against a sheet that’s already nailed into place. The spot is covered.
Business-like, he presents me with his hammer and a handful of nails. “Whenever you’re ready. It’s your house.”
I accept the tools. And when the last swing of the hammer has made the last nail head flush with the new floor, the image of the concrete slab vanishes from my mind. I’m shocked and stunned at my own stupidity, as I suddenly realize that the watch is not the last piece of Graham left in this world.
Surinder is.
*
I promise Jason a frappuccino and with the clues I have, put him to work on the Internet at the café in Ganges. It takes him a minute.
“Look, Robin,” he points to a pop-up window on the screen. There’s an obscenely tumescent bronze acorn mounted on a stand. “She’s going to get a trophy.”
Surinder is one of thirty North American lawyers under the age of thirty being recognized for their outstanding contributions to the legal arena. We click on the photo of a young woman from Mexico and find out she performed more than a thousand hours of pro bono work with an indigenous group, which resulted in the closure of a multi-national battery manufacturer polluting their water source, and a UN resolution to protect environmental rights of indigenous people in Mexico and three neighbouring countries.
Surinder, on the other hand, is being recognized for her contribution to interprovincial procedural law. While representing a brewery in Alberta that wasn’t getting fair access to markets in Quebec, she helped clarify and re-define the court’s evidential requirements. In certain cases, there would be a shift in the onus of proof.
“What’s ‘ozone of proof?’” Jason asks.
“Onus of. It means responsibility.” I wish I could feel happy. On one hand, I do, happy for her, even proud she’s my child. But I cannot silence the part of me that wishes she had done the pro bono work instead.
Her bio tells me nothing I don’t already know. Same law firm, I was right. She’s not married. No children. What else is happening in her life? Why do I have to find out from a computer?
There’ll be a ceremony in Seattle in July. And ceremonious it will be, if the pictures of past events are anything to judge by. I see somber lawyers on stage, posed group photos, a few of the proud parents, arms entwined with their children. Everything they wear is sophisticated, classy and achingly alike. Clearly they all shop at the same store.
Even if she wanted me there, I would never be able to afford the shoes to attend such an event.
Besides, there’s the issue of the border. Going to America is simply out of the question.
*
Ed and I are installing an old, claw foot bathtub at a home in Long Harbour. It’s a huge, graceful beast which, once it’s taken out of its packaging, reveals insides that have been reglazed to a finish so perfect, it begs to be scratched or chipped. Ed cautions me to be careful when we shift the tub into place, extra careful with the pipe wrench which I need to hook up the new plumbing connection.
I know how slippery a wet pipe wrench can be. I know because I did this once before, put in a bathtub, stopper and tap set at our old house in East Vancouver, the spine of the do-it-yourself book pressed open, an upside-down tea cup containing hardened plaster holding down the pages against the slight breeze that blew in the window. It was the first project I tackled on my own. Graham was working on something else that day.
“My son’s coming next week,” Ed says suddenly, casually.
I stop only for a half a beat, then continue with the wrench. “I didn’t know you had kids.”
“Kid. Singular.” Ed’s bent over a pile of parts which will come together to make the pop-up stopper. I can’t see his face. He sorts with his curled up finger. There’s the striker rod, an adjusting nut, a spring which will hook into the middle link. He lays the flange next to the rubber o-ring and the stopper, and lines them up with the rocker arm
. “Not many people do. I myself haven’t seen him in twelve years.”
There were big pictures beside the instructions in the book. I had read the whole thing over about fifty times the night before, but still, I finished each step completely, checked and re-checked it, before I moved on. I twisted the book up and down, around and around, like it was a map, and I didn’t want to lose my way.
“Why not?” I ask Ed.
“He left with his mother – my ex. Things were pretty bad. I was drinking a lot back then.” Clink, clink. Ed attaches the striker rod, then checks the lever on the overflow plate. “That’s when I made up my mind to get sober. But by the time I did, there was too much water under the bridge. How are you doing over there?”
I nod, okay. “What made him get in touch with you now?”
He shrugs. “He’s on his way overseas for a few months. Some exchange or something. Has to fly through Vancouver.” He sits back on his haunches. “He writes poetry. In Spanish.”
Despite all my care, when I finished the job and called Graham, hot water came out of the cold tap. “But I did everything exactly the way they showed,” I complained. I picked up the book, turned the page, turned back, as if the answer might lie there. “It’s these pictures. They’re useless.” Graham laughed and pulled his t-shirt over his head. “What are you doing?” “Having a bath,” he said. He unzipped his jeans and pulled them down. “Come on.” “But it’s filthy.” And indeed, the tub was, filled with dust and bits of caulking. But he climbed in anyway. His feet squeaked. “Ooh, this feels great. Do we have any bubble bath?” And when the taps were turned off and I was lying in his arms immersed, little bubbles popping in my ear, still sulking a little, he said, “Never mind. We’ll get used to it.” I felt his smile against my forehead. “We can get used to just about anything.”
I look over at Ed. “You’re okay with this?”
“The poetry?” Then he grows serious. “Truth be told, I’m scared out of my wits. I don’t know what he’s expecting from me, but I’m no saviour.”
“No – but you’re his father.”
He laughs. “Sometimes that’s the problem, isn’t it? I only hope he’s not too disappointed with his old man.”
“I’m just about finished here,” I say. “How’s the stopper?”
“I’m ready,” he says. I make room for him to work. “Really, I admire him for taking the initiative. I didn’t have the courage – all I said and did back then. I was one sick puppy.” He positions the flange and gently taps it into place.
“I have a kid, too.” It seems the right time to reveal this. Still, I blurt it out because I’m hardly used to talking to anyone about her. “A daughter.”
“Really? How old?” He takes the news mildly.
“Twenty-eight.”
He looks impressed. “What’s she up to?” He slides the rocker arm into the drain.
“She’s a lawyer in Toronto – as far as I know.”
Ed’s got the inside mechanism in place. Now he’s screwing on the overflow plate.
“Kids, eh?” He sighs.
“We’re like chalk and cheese,” I say lightly and shrug. “I never could understand her.”
Ed grows serious. “At least you know that much about her. My son’s a total stranger. I don’t know what he likes, what he hates, what he eats for breakfast, when he gets up and goes to bed – ”
“Don’t worry. You’ll find out. At least he wants to see you.”
“We only get a few days together. He has to be at his new job beginning of next month.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Bangladesh – I think that’s the name of it.” He says it bang, like an explosion. “He’s going to work with orphans. Or maybe it’s a hospital?” He finishes with the screw. “Sounds interesting whatever it is, though I wish we had a bit more time together.”
I am grateful he is not looking my way. Grateful he does not see the expression on my face, have the chance to witness the muddle of feelings there until I have a chance to sort them out. Part of me wants to tell Ed unequivocally to do whatever he can to prevent his son from going to Dhaka. Another part wishes it was me going.
“Speaking of which –” Ed gets up, wipes his hands on the back of his jeans. “Having courage, and spending time together, and all that I mean – how’d you like to go for coffee sometime?”
I redden; though his tone is casual, his intention is perfectly clear. He doesn’t mean a coffee break with a work buddy. No one has asked me out since Graham died. The words sound strange, and the idea of sitting across a table from Ed Malone and talking seems –
I nod, yes, before I know it. “OK. That would be nice.”
Robin Rowe, you fool.
You just agreed to go out on a date with your boss.
*
I stop before Fee’s home, as afternoon turns to evening, as her house becomes a silhouette against the streaky sky to the west. Someone turns on the lights inside. Windowpane-shaped beams fall then stretch across the yard. The colour of the grass and trees changes. I look away. I don’t want my vision distorted.
Up above, the sky is clear. The moon is a broken boat. The first stars float around it. I count two, then a third, then two more, though I think they have been there all along, and it’s just now I have noticed. I trace the shapes of the constellations I know, where I think they will appear: the dippers, Orion, Cassiopeia and Cygnus.
I’m not expected inside – not yet anyway. A walk to clear my head would do me good. So I take the road to the sea. It curls over and down hills, past a real school, a bed and breakfast, the fire hall. I step onto the gravel shoulder for the one set of headlights that disrupts my train of thought. I am alone the rest of the way.
I’m certain Luna did not lie to me. Certain Razzak was not a spy. And yet, what good is my certainty? It did not change the course of their escape, neither has it brought them back.
And Shafiq. The final act of the loyal servant – the shameful part Luna and I played in his fate. How willingly we sacrificed his honour. Surely to live without forgiveness, as I do now, with memory, without a way of making reparation, is the only just punishment. I try to swallow the guilt, but there is more. Infinitely more. An ocean full, and still more.
Luna on my mind, I seek the parts of her I loved the best – her spontaneity, her spirit, her capacity for both loving and being loved. It seems natural, at the edge of the sea, barnacles of the low tide crunching under my work boots, to enter the water. I drop clothing and inhibitions. This island is crowded now – but crowded with people who’d think nothing of a solo swim at night in the nude.
At the far edge of the bay, lights rim the ferry wharf. Their reflection shimmers in the sea, creating the illusion of underwater torches. The wharf remains otherwise deserted. The ferry won’t be in for another couple of hours.
The chill halts me before my thighs are wet. Arms wrapped around my breasts, hands on my shoulders, I have the sense someone is watching. I turn. No one’s on the beach. My invisible spectator remains so, but the feeling of being observed does not lessen. Only one way to stop the show. I churn forward and when I think I really won’t be able to take it any longer, I plunge. I imitate the arc of a seal, a dolphin, a whale. I become liquid as the medium around me. I dive until my belly scrapes the stones, then, arching my head back, I rise to the surface.
I’m still in very shallow waters. I squat, immersed, reluctant to feel the jagged edge of evaporation on my wet skin. The water I’ve displaced surfacing merges with the waves bound for the beach. Always for the beach, unstoppable, forevermore. No one hand can alter their path in any but the most superficial way. I am no different. I will leave no mark here tonight.
I push off and stroke out to sea. My body slips through the water, against the flow of the tide. With tough, dirt-embedded hands, I part waves. They fold back behind me, obli
terating any indication that I have passed this way.
I wish it was such for my time in Bangladesh. Luna should be presenting great-grandchildren and complaints about her too busy and too absent adult offspring to Amma and Mr. Chowdhury. Shaheed should be taking his son to Ramna Park, Bangabandhu’s house, the banyan tree on campus – all the places where he himself took part in changing history – and then to the monument erected in memory of his own martyred father. Shafiq should have spent years resting his skinny legs in the comfort of a family he was not bound to serve, except perhaps as a raconteur of familial history, or an arbiter of small disputes.
The water seems warmer out here, though this defies logic and biology. With my next stroke, a flash in the water. My heart pounds. I collide with the memory of my night exodus from Dhaka, the rockets that flared overhead. Then I remember something else about biology. The plankton that light up when agitated. Bioluminescence is a natural part of this world. The shimmer that surrounds me is not a rocket, a bomb, a grenade. Not a chemical. Not a violent rage made manifest. Just microscopic organisms going about their lives.
When I have recovered somewhat, I stroke on out to sea. Fear has passed, but leaves a new chemical energy. I do not turn around to see how far I have come.
My protector that night, Hasan – am I anywhere near making peace with this man? What might I wish for him? Certainly health – and perhaps less of the misery than I have experienced so far with my own life. Dare I wish him peace? Certainly a restfulness that may allow him to recognize what I cannot seem to – that which is important.
Not a flash of lightning then. No thunderbolt from the wispy clouds. No scorching baptism. Instead, grace moves in like a tide. Gradual, persistent, inevitable. Stubbornness and denial cannot withstand its force.
A splash ahead. I suspect a harbour seal, fishing, playing, whatever it is that people anthropomorphize into “cute” behaviour. I stroke twice toward the sound, then turn on my back and float.
Overheard, the constellations have emerged. It gives me a sense of order to be able to find the ones I know. The water licks my ears. I let my body rise and fall with my breath, moving limbs as little as I can, enough only to keep myself from sinking.
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