by Barb Howard
It had been raining a lot and the dock was slippery. The commodore put his boat in the water, tied it to the ring. Then he went back to his car to help his wife down to the shoreline. She never went in the boat with him—she had frail, spidery legs and used two canes—but she sat on the shore in a fold-out lawn chair, reading, waving, while he canoed back and forth in front of her. After the commodore set her up that day, after they kissed, as he was returning to his canoe on the dock, he slipped. He let out a great whoop and his feet flew up in front of him. It was funny at first—a man with a big belly doing a banana-peel fall into the water. “Tell him swimming is illegal,” someone said, and that brought a laugh from everyone on shore, even from the commodore’s wife.
It was a long time before the commodore surfaced. Scott hurried to the dock. Nadia followed. The commodore’s bald head rose out of the water. He spluttered, then his arms began flapping. He didn’t appear to be a very good swimmer, but he was making progress and he didn’t have far to go. His hands lunged at the dock. Scott hauled him onto the boards, rolled him on his back. The commodore stopped gasping. Call 911, Scott said, taking the commodore’s pulse with two fingers.
Nadia remembers running up the dock toward the phone in the club. At the end of the dock she noticed the commodore’s wife—hands locked onto the arms of the lawn chair, neck muscles taut and white, eyes devastated, utterly devastated. Later, when Nadia played the scene back, again and again, she didn’t think much about the commodore, she focused on his wife. How could the commodore’s wife possibly bear losing a love like that?
From his bench above the reservoir, Scott sees the patrol boat docked across the water. Still an open-bow jet boat, good for shallows and travelling upstream. The only time he was in it alone was the last day of that summer. Labour Day weekend. It was dark when he took the keys from the hut and slowly crossed the reservoir at six a.m. He could see Nadia walking down the canoe club dock with a ski under her arm. Her head was bare; she wore a shorty wetsuit. He pulled the boat up and handed her the rope, a new one. Back then he didn’t know anyone in the city who could loan him a ski rope. She had told him she liked the rope twenty-eight feet shorter than the standard seventy-five, so he knew she was going to be good.
He doesn’t remember her jump-start off the dock, or even her first few turns, he only remembers her rhythm once she settled in, the spray from her ski as she cut one turn after another, the empty water ahead of the boat. After looping the reservoir, he tucked in close to shore so she could release the rope handle and ride her ski into the shallows. The water was only up to her knees when she stopped.
No swimming involved, he joked when he pulled the boat up, tossed her a towel. Then he noticed she was crying. He asked if she’d hurt herself. She tightened the towel around her shoulders, said no, thanks, everything was perfect.
Not exactly perfect. It was nothing about him, she said, but she was going to leave him right after the weekend. She was headed to BC to find work as a lifeguard in Vancouver. There were plenty of lifeguard jobs in Calgary so he knew, he knows, her leaving was all about him.
Nadia has slipped a Converse sneaker onto her hand. The white rubber toe has grey streaks on it from the aluminum Grumman canoes she used when teaching. She slides the shoe on the floor beside her, back and forth, a slalom run on the carpet. Labour Day weekend. She remembers him coming to pick her up that last morning, an apparition driving out of the mist in the white boat. He wasn’t wearing a patrol jacket—he was wearing a blue hoodie with the hood over his head. And when he handed her the rope at the dock, he had the calmest expression in his eyes. Just here we go. Before the rope tightened he pushed down his hood. And when she was skiing, she could see the shape of his back muscles under his hoodie, the back of his head, his shaggy hair, his thumbs-up when he turned to watch her. The water, the morning, the summer. The guy. She never wanted them to lose their pre-dawn shimmer.
Nadia pulls her hand out of the sneaker, leans back against the basement wall, hears the constant lap of the boat wake against the shore in front of the canoe club, pictures Scott leaning toward her with a green towel in his hands, the start of a smile on his face as though he’s about to make a joke. Then she hears her two younger kids upstairs sliding furniture, maybe trying to reach for something too high, or making a fortress. She hears the two teenagers in the next room planning to build a ceiling-high pyramid with her old album covers. That will never work, Nadia thinks. She takes off her ball cap, goes up to make everyone a snack.
Scott tucks his cell phone into the pocket of his cycling jacket. He stands and looks at the full length of the canoe club dock below him. He thinks about the commodore dying there, about how the commodore’s wife phoned the patrol hut a few days after the death and thanked Scott for his efforts. She had been on the shore, watching him perform his first responder duties, his unstopping CPR. She said she was grateful for the commodore, for their time together. She said she’d had more than her share of happiness, that every day with the commodore had been a treasure.
Scott reaches for his helmet. It’s time to go home.
PUBLICATION HISTORY
“Basic Obedience”
The New Quarterly. Winter 2012.
“Still Making Time”
The Prairie Journal. Fall 2011.
“Eulogy for the Feminist Movement”
Other Voices. Fall 2011.
“Breaking the Mould”
FreeFall. Fall 2011.
“Mrs. Goodfellow’s Dog”
Grain. 2008.
“Western Taxidermy”
Alberta Views. 2007.
“Big Fork Campground”
The Dalhousie Review. 2007.
“My Brother’s Shit-kickers”
Alberta Views. 2003.
“Thanksgiving” (published as “Stanley’s Wish”)
Yalobusha Review. 1999.
“Buckaroo Drive-Thru”
Other Voices. 1997.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many thanks to Anne Nothof, editor extraordinaire, and to all the readers, writers, friends, and neighbours who have provided feed–back and fact-checks over the years.
Love and appreciation always to Mike, Ross, and Stu.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barb Howard is a third-generation Calgarian who worked as a lawyer and a land contract analyst before receiving her M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. In 2009, Barb received the Writers’ Guild of Alberta (Howard O’Hagan) Award for short fiction. She has won contests in Alberta Views and Canadian Lawyer, and was a finalist at the Western Magazine Awards.
Barb’s first novel, Whipstock, was published by NeWest Press in 2001. Since then, Barb has published the novella Notes for Monday (Recliner, 2009), and the young adult novel The Dewpoint Show (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2010). Barb lives in Bragg Creek, Alberta with her husband, a pair of easygoing sons, and one neurotic dog.
