The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  Trevor took immediate charge. “Go and show Soryada what good skating looks like, Ma. Jason and I’ll mix up the hot chocolate and get the fire going hot enough to warm you up when you get back.”

  Perro jumped ecstatic circles around Soryada as they tramped through the afternoon dusk toward the small lake on the other side of the rail yards. They jumped the tracks and climbed through the railcars in the sidings as Isabel knew her kids had done, as she and her friends had done when they were kids. Soryada shivered in the cold, but her eyes were bright. She whispered to Isabel that she had once been taken to an ice show in Mexico City, how it was wonderful.

  The skaters broke out of the dismal alders, dead leaves still clinging to the branches, into the clearing the lake made. There was a bench, a smoking firepit, and not a flake of snow on the ice. A cleft in the mountain opened the way for a shaft of sunlight to shine through a gap in the clouds at the horizon.

  Alejandro was the first laced up and he skated straight to it, twirling in the light like a golden thing. He was a beautiful skater, light and delicate. Frank was next and he whooped as he hit the sunlight, executing a big jump. Men who grew up with skates on their feet. Soryada watched, mesmerized, until Alejandro skated back, took her hands, and backed away, pulling her, sliding on her boots across to the golden band of sunlight.

  He pointed down. When Isabel skated over she could see, under the ice, small trout swimming slowly in the cold water. It was a miracle to be standing on top of the water and to see to the bottom, the trout quivering and the small plants waving in liquid tremors. Soryada was half afraid. She chattered to Alejandro, and Isabel saw another woman emerge, a kind of emotion and intelligence that didn’t always come through in her careful English.

  Alejandro was a different person in Spanish as well. He started to sing and Soryada joined in. It was some silly thing and soon Alejandro was salsa dancing with her, as graceful on skates as he would be in shiny black dancing shoes. Soryada, too, could dance beautifully. Isabel wondered if Trevor knew this about Soryada. If he would be jealous to see her like this. If he should be.

  Frank came up behind Isabel, reached around behind her to grab her right hand and across her belly to take her left. “Come on,” he said and tugged her away to skate around the lake. It felt wonderful as they moved back and forth in unison across the perfect ice. Perro jumped and barked all around them, sliding in surprise as he tried to stop. She enjoyed the warm blood flowing down to her toes, into her hands, warm in Frank’s, and wondered if maybe she’d finally figured out how to be friends with men.

  “What a funny old fellow you are sometimes,” she said. “My dad used to skate with me like this.”

  “I don’t know that I like you to think of me as your father.” The flush in his cheeks was from more than the cold.

  “Why not? When he wasn’t drunk, he was just about my favourite man. I’d forgotten what a great skater he was. A good dancer too.”

  Frank tightened his grip and began with “Speaking of drunks,” and went on to tell her that Lance was sleeping one off upstairs, right now. Though you never knew. He might have woken up and started all over again. He used to drink a lot. That’s why he and his wife split up and she had custody of the kid. The boy isn’t happy with the wife’s new boyfriend but there’s nothing Lance can do. Frank telling her all this while they’re skating.

  Isabel knew Lance had been worried about the Christmas visit and had hoped to bring Dustin back to go skiing. She’d been looking forward to meeting the little guy, to see if she could make him laugh. He was awfully serious, Lance had said.

  “You might want to stay out of his way,” Frank continued. “He’s looking pretty hard to get laid.”

  Isabel ducked out of his grasp and scooped up Perro, Frank’s hot breath on her cheek, in her ear, unbearable. “Enough already.”

  Frank shrugged. “He said some things.”

  “I’ll bet he said some things, some really stupid things. Like we all do when we’re sloshed. I’ll bet he thought he was talking to a friend. Someone who wouldn’t go around telling his other friends things they’d rather not hear.” Even as she spoke, she knew she was crossing a line. “I’ll bet both of us thought you were a friend.”

  He stared at her, breathing hard. His face hardened into a mask of indifference, mouth a straight line, eyes slitted. She’d tried to tell him a dozen times she wasn’t interested in him as a lover. Not now. Not ever. Maybe now he would believe her.

  He shrugged again and skated away, joining the others. The light faded as the sun snagged on the mountain and dipped behind it. All her pleasure disappeared with it. In spite of what she’d told Frank, she was shaken. Just what she needed. A live-in drunk.

  Back at the house, Trevor had put Jason in charge of the fire. Other arrivals had laid the picnic table with marshmallows, buns, wieners, and salsa and chilies for the hot dogs. A big pot of hot chocolate. Another of apple cider. Trevor had already poured out Lance’s flask of vodka, sat him down in one of the chairs, and was talking quietly to him. Lance kept nodding his head. A goofy grin slid off his face, leaving desolation in its wake, only to reappear. He raised one hand when he saw Isabel, but then it flopped back down as if he didn’t quite know what it was doing.

  Isabel stayed away from them, knowing Frank was hoping for all hell to break loose. Knowing Jason was expecting something unpleasant to happen, already planning his escape. Once the wiener roast was well under way, she put him in a chair at the backside of the fire and draped the plastic cape around his shoulders. He didn’t protest; it was part of the ritual. The clearing away for the new year. She snugged it up tight under his chin and bent to ask if he’d heard from his sister.

  He shrugged, uncomfortable and Isabel wished she’d just kissed him instead. She didn’t know how much Janna had told him when she ran away, but he’d only once asked Isabel for money to help out. Couldn’t you at least get something out of her old man, he’d snapped when she said all she could manage was the family allowance. She’d hung up the phone and it had been months before they’d spoken again.

  His hair was the same golden brown his father’s had been and it was already thinning in the same places. As she trimmed the ends curling on his slender neck, she told him about the close call on the highway and he told her about a little Subaru four-wheel drive station wagon he had on the lot. She should think about it.

  “You were right about that answering machine,” she said. “It comes in handy. Just don’t you ever use it as an excuse not to call back.”

  She blew the hair off his collar and flipped off the cape. “Happy New Year, my first love,” she said, kissing him goodbye. He had a party at Cindy’s folks, he said.

  She watched him and Trevor give each other backslapping hugs, thanking her lucky stars for the solid creature Trevor was, the one against whom all the family tumult crashed and broke, to subside into something navigable. They loved each other, those two, in spite of their different temperaments. From when he was a toddler, Trevor had been able to deflect Jason’s jealousy simply by adoring him. Both fathers included both boys whenever they could — Trevor’s because that’s what families did, and Jason’s because Jason was always better behaved when he was with Trevor. She hoped he could talk to Trevor now, unload when Cindy got too nasty, spent too much money, ate too many doughnuts, refused to even speak to Isabel. Just handed over the phone to Jason when Isabel called. Or hung up without a word. Jason saying it would be easier if he called her. And he did, dutifully, once a week.

  As Jason opened the back gate to leave, Isabel saw Frank sitting in his truck, the engine idling. He was talking on his phone, nodding, yes, yes. By the time Jason closed the gate, Frank was pulling away. Sorrow and relief for both departures. Some things couldn’t be fixed.

  “That Lance giving you trouble?” Trevor asked as he took his turn in the barber’s chair.

  Isabel looked through the smoke. Lance had a girl on his lap now but there was still that long distance p
ain, the look she’d thought had to do with his car accident. Now she wondered. He met her eyes across the tousled head pressed giggling into his shoulder. He put his hand up to the girl’s hair, stroking it as if it were something precious.

  “Not so far,” she said, struggling with Trevor’s cowlicks. Bending to give the swirl at the crown of his head a kiss. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I think so. He doesn’t have any more booze and he’s not driving. His truck’s somewhere else.”

  “Thanks.”

  When Soryada told her she wanted her hair cut short, Isabel protested that she wasn’t really a hairdresser. Soryada insisted and they both laughed at the shock on Trevor’s face as it fell in coils at her feet. Whoops went up as the remaining hair, relieved of its own weight, sprang up around her laughing face and Isabel was finally fully present at her own party, feeling in her fingers, in Soryada’s pleasure, the presence of her daughter. Janna would love her, she thought. She should be here.

  Everyone cheered again when Trevor picked up Soryada, his nose and mouth snuffling around her head like an eager puppy. Isabel gathered up the cloth under the chair and flipped the hair into the fire, the acrid smell of its burning billowing up into the night sky. To Isabel its stink was the smell of cleansing. They all stood and watched it rise, the old year vanishing in smoke and vapour.

  At first they all thought it was ash drifting down onto their upturned faces, but then one by one they held out their hands like children do. Flakes landed everywhere, some tangling themselves in the fuzz of mittens, others white against black leather. Some glistened for an instant and then coalesced to a drop of water on warm skin. They held their hands out and turned, offering the evidence to each other. A collective sigh and then cheers as the few flakes gathered themselves into a flurry and everyone whirled around and around, arms out, welcoming the snow. At last, the snow they’d all been waiting for.

  Part II

  14

  The small window that opened at the foot of Álvaro’s bed swirled with white light, light that filtered under the curtain and spread across the quilt. His still half-asleep brain struggled to decipher the mound on his feet. He wiggled his toes and watched the white lump fracture and slide. Snow drifting in through the open window. He wiggled his toes again. He had slept dreamlessly and awoken to nothing more than snow and the pleasant feeling of being warm and dry.

  Make a note of it, Chris had suggested when he told her about the lightness he felt, spreading his pictures on the table between them. This happened and then this happened and it was awful. The pictures, paper and paint. Flour and chili powder. It wasn’t everything, but it was something. No God anywhere in it. Lightness or emptiness?

  Lots of people live without anything they’d call faith, she said. Day by day. Assuming they’ll be free-floating molecules at the end of it.

  “Floating or falling?” He’d drawn three little Mayan figures, the first tipping over, the second upside down, the third turning back upright.

  Chris had looked at the picture for such a long time he almost dozed off in the afternoon twilight. She cleared her throat to bring him back. “This upsets you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We used to jump off things all the time when we were kids. Snow banks and sand cliffs.”

  “But landing?”

  She pointed to the space beneath the last figure. It was empty. “Isn’t that what we’re doing all the time?” she asked. “Falling toward the centre of the earth, falling toward the sun, falling into the universe? Maybe there is no bottom. Maybe there is just the falling.”

  He stared at the white paper. Inside his body, somewhere between his heart and stomach, something flipped. He leaned back, holding on to the arms of his chair.

  “Maybe we have to get used to it. Come, somehow, to enjoy it.”

  His sudden laughter, a child’s gleeful explosion of pleasure, startled him into memory. He and Clara riding a log over a small waterfall, splashing into the pool where women were washing clothes. The women screeching at them, angry and afraid for their spirits. Water was dangerous. Water and blissful abandon were deadly. Forgetting yourself. His mother, burning endless cleansing copra to assuage the mountain god she thought was determined to steal Álvaro’s spirit.

  Álvaro brushed the snow back out the window. Every time you wake up peacefully, Chris had said yesterday, every time you smell the rain and are glad, every time the food simply slides down your throat into your welcoming stomach, make a note. You are alive. You are alive and welcome.

  Through the big slow flakes, he could see down to the waves carving a grey curve where the snow hit the tide line. Snowflakes merged into a blur of pale, shifting fog. A small prayer formed. Lord, take away my heart of stone.

  Downstairs he found Margaret standing on a chair chalking the Magi’s initials above the front door. It was the feast day of the Epiphany. The Spanish words for the blessing of the house slid as easily from his mouth as it had in hundreds of Guatemalan homes. Margaret was delighted.

  It must be the snow, he thought as he sat down to breakfast, the lightness tingling through him. It changed everyone. Here was Joseph, usually on his way to school by now. Here was Thomas, who never appeared before ten, wearing a thick sweater with reindeer circling his chest. Between bites of egg and sips of tea, he tried on gloves from a stack on the chair beside him.

  “Will you need help shovelling?” Álvaro asked.

  Thomas looked at him and down at the puffy blue glove on his hand.

  “It’s done,” Joseph answered, his mouth crammed with a muffin. He reached for a mango. “Today’s his first snowboarding lesson. My Christmas present. First snowfall after Christmas I told him.”

  “Isn’t it a school day?”

  Joseph swallowed. “It’s snowing in Vancouver. That is enough to stop the world. The snow will be beautiful. Light enough for turning, but a soft landing.” He turned to his father, his fingers deftly wielding the knife that peeled the mango. “You’re going to love it.” He licked his fingers and spread out his arms at shoulder height, fingers spread. “Cast off the tyranny of poles and float free.”

  Thomas pointed a mitten at Álvaro. “Why doesn’t he join us? All that working out he does, he should put those muscles to some use. You could teach two as well as one.”

  Joseph shrugged, sure. “But I know you’re just hoping he falls more than you do.”

  “Go, Álvaro, go,” Margaret said, appearing from the basement, still in her housecoat, her hair uncombed. “There are four boxes down there,” she said to Joseph before the phone interrupted her.

  “Lord,” she said, “they’re in a panic already.” She took the phone out into the hall.

  “What is it?” Álvaro asked.

  “Warmth for the homeless,” Thomas explained. “Hats, mittens, socks, fuzzy blankets, and mugs of hot tea. Margaret is the campaign coordinator and her troops despair without her commanding presence.”

  “Oh shut up, Thomas,” she said, coming back into the kitchen. She hung up the phone and sat down with a cup of tea. “Drat that Amy.”

  “What’s up?” Joseph asked.

  “She’s got this friend, a student, who got sick and didn’t have a clue how to take care of herself. The most basic things like drinking plenty of water when you have a fever. How complicated is that?”

  Thomas and Joseph concentrated on their juice glasses.

  “Where are her parents? Leaving the girl alone all through Christmas. Do they think giving birth and buying them cellphones and designer jeans is what being a parent means? Leave it to strangers to take her in?”

  Thomas looked up. “She’s coming here?”

  “Just for a day or two. Until Amy can figure out what’s really wrong with her. I guess it’s complicated.”

  Joseph pushed back his chair. “Gentlemen, daylight is wasting.”

  Álvaro hesitated. “Shouldn’t I be helping downtown?”

  Margaret plopped a couple of pieces of
bread in the toaster. “Nothing like snow to bring out the do-gooders. There’ll be plenty of help. Just drop off the boxes on your way across town.” She yanked open the dishwasher and rooted around in the cutlery tray.

  Before Álvaro could protest, Joseph dragged him downstairs to rummage through the boxes for the homeless. He pulled out jackets and toques, handing them to Álvaro to try. A vest, a fleece, a red anorak, and a toque with earflaps and ties. Snow pants.

  When they opened the basement door, the snow and cold air floated in. Thomas had already shovelled a neat path to the garage where the car sent out great feathery plumes of exhaust. Joseph shoved two boxes into Álvaro’s arms and they piled everything in and strapped Joseph’s snowboard to the roof.

  As they drove through the snarl of downtown traffic to deliver the clothes and then across the big bridge thrust out into the white swirling air, no land or water visible beneath them, past all the cars driving into the city, Álvaro felt as if he’d left himself somewhere behind. He had nothing with him but the unfamiliar clothes on his body and he was travelling to a place he’d seen only as lights blinking high above the city.

  It wasn’t until they were standing in the lineup waiting for the gondola that fear returned. They were herded into the car, a forest of skis and poles and snowboards and sleepy faces shivering in the unheated metal and glass cage. When the doors were drawn shut, the gondola swung into the air. Álvaro sucked in his breath as the car swooped up toward the trees looming on the steep hillside in front of them. Thomas stood close, one hand on his arm, explaining. Reassuring. The gondola jerked up above the trees just before clipping them. Álvaro stared at the logo on Joseph’s snowboard, a large black arrow curling in on itself, for the long minutes as they rumbled up the cable, the trees and cliffs appearing and disappearing through the snow. Finally a pause, a bump, and the gondola stopped in its metal berth, disgorging them into a gloomy cave of a room and then back outside into snow, bright clothes, and children calling back and forth.