Just after eight in the evening, Stewart checked the freezer, because cooking felt like less effort than talking to a deliveryman. He was more than a little drunk, having discovered the liquor cabinet earlier in the day. Finding a stack of seemingly inseparable patties, he carried them to the backyard. The problems began when he discovered that the barbecue was not gas but was filled with charcoal. Remembering childhood barbecues with his father behind the grill, Stewart searched for a can of lighter fluid. Finding one, he squirted a liberal amount of fuel on the coals.
Stewart went back to the house and returned with a box of wooden matches. He opened the box without realizing it was upside down. The majority of the matches fell through the grill and onto the coals. Lighting one of the few that remained, Stewart dropped the match. The sudden whoosh made him close his eyes. Putting his hands to his eyebrows, he confirmed that they were still there. When he opened his eyes, Stewart saw what seemed to be dangerously tall flames rising from the barbecue. The flames did not get bigger or smaller. They seemed to burn without consuming anything. In the centre was a tiny blue flame that flickered higher and lower as it spoke.
“You know as well as I do that she has to ask you back,” the tiny blue flame said. His voice was kindly and familiar. “And she has to voice it. She has to say it out loud. And what she’s saying underneath it, what she’s saying with her heart, has to be the same.”
“That would be nice.”
“But has she ever done it before?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“No, not once.”
“So it’s pretty obvious that you’re gonna have to wait for her to say it, no?”
Stewart became suspicious. “What are you getting at?” he asked.
“I mean, you could go back to her, but where’s that gonna get ya?”
“Right back here.”
“Exactly. That’s all I’m saying. You’re gonna have to wait.”
“I guess so.”
“So while you’re waiting, here’s something you can do. A noble cause. A personal quest.”
“Is this a vision?”
“Call it what you want.”
“What? What do you want me to do?”
“Go west.”
“And?”
“Maybe build a boat?”
“Maybe?”
“The rest is up to you.”
“Come on!”
“Sorry, but that’s as specific as I can get right now,” the tiny blue flame said. It got smaller and disappeared.
Stewart stood there for a second, failing to notice that the flames had suddenly gotten higher and hotter and that the white vinyl siding on the house was turning black. He threw his drink on the fire, which only made the flames spurt higher, then he spotted the garden hose.
The next morning, Stewart drove to Home Depot and purchased seventeen feet of vinyl siding. Still hung-over but having completed the repairs, he called Rebecca to make plans for his return. But when they talked, Stewart could not feel her heart. Or, at least, he felt no sadness, grief or loss coming from her—neither her voice nor her heart asked him back.
Stewart headed west and, through a combination of chance and cheap bus tickets, arrived in Morris, Manitoba. He’d planned on spending a single night at the Prairie Embassy Hotel, but the next morning, purely on impulse, Margaret offered him a job as night clerk. Stewart accepted, agreeing to a three-month contract.
It was during the first month of his long, lonely nights at the front desk that Stewart began to wonder if the flame of the burning barbecue really did have a divine origin. He began to set small, controlled fires in an effort to seek advice and wisdom—and sometimes simply out of loneliness. It never worked, so Stewart began to suspect that only an accidental fire would make the tiny blue flame speak to him again. But accidentally setting a fire was difficult to do.
However, three weeks after his arrival in Morris, he began building a sailboat. Although he wasn’t entirely convinced that the tiny blue flame had been divinely inspired, he figured, why chance it? He had a lot of time on his hands. Things at the Prairie Embassy Hotel were slow, and Stewart was a man who liked to stay busy. Plus, he estimated that he could get the whole thing built in under three months, easy.
Stewart and Margaret continued staring upwards, neither moving nor speaking. Both had been lulled into a contemplative state by the innumerable stars overhead. After more time passed, Margaret spoke. “How metaphorical do you think this boat is?” she asked.
Propping himself up with his left arm, Stewart looked at Margaret. She continued looking up at the sky. “What are you asking?” he asked.
“Can I be frank?”
“When aren’t you?”
“This requires a greater degree of frankness than usual.”
“I’ll tell you if I think you’re going too far.”
“That’s fair,” she said. She spoke directly but continued looking up at the stars. “Do you think this boat, the building of it, is misplaced anxiety about leaving Rebecca? About how badly you want to leave her—emotionally, not just physically—but you can’t?”
Stewart did not immediately reply. He tapped the toes of his workboots together. He looked up at the mast, which he saw as a long, thin absence of stars. Making a knuckle with the index finger of his right hand, he tapped the deck three times. “That’s a lot of misplaced anxiety,” he said.
“The only other explanation I can think of is that you feel fated, or called upon, to build a sailboat in the middle of the Canadian Prairies.”
Once again Stewart’s reply was not immediate. He patted his pockets and realized that he’d left his phone in the hotel. He sat up halfway, so he could see Margaret’s face, and then lay down on the deck again. “I see your point,” he said.
“So which is it?”
“Can it be a little Freudian as well?”
“A little whatian?”
“Could it be that you’re also obsessed with this boat?” Stewart asked. “So much so that you keep me employed, even though you have no need for me, because you see this boat as a metaphor for yourself? That you are, in fact, a sailboat stranded in the middle of the Prairies?”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“Thank you.”
“But which is it?”
Sitting up, Stewart took off his shoes and socks and then lay back down. “Isn’t it kinda the same thing?” Stewart asked. “If I hadn’t met Rebecca and fallen in love with her, and then left her, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be making this boat. So the boat wouldn’t exist and neither would your question. Was it fate that I fell in love with Rebecca? And then that I left her? Or that I loved her, left her and then found this place and started building this boat? What’s fate and what isn’t? Where does it stop and where does it start? Is fate part of the story or the whole story?”
“Well, which is it?”
“I don’t know. What about with you?”
“We’re different because I managed to leave everything. And I think I left even more behind than you did.”
“Like what?” Stewart asked. He closed his eyes, knowing that a long pause would follow.
Even though they’d worked side by side for three years, Stewart knew very little about Margaret. What he did know had come slowly, during quiet moments exactly like this one.
When Margaret finally did speak, her voice was uncharacteristically hushed and soft. “I left a husband and a daughter. The husband I don’t think about much; he rarely crosses my mind. But my daughter, I think about her every day. She was so young that I was never able to explain to her why I had to leave. I haven’t seen her or talked to her since. It was her birthday on Wednesday.”
Stewart did not know what to say, and he cared enough about Margaret to say nothing. Reaching out his hand, he touched her gently on the shoulder. Margaret leaned towards this touch, and for some moments they were quiet, the only sound a transport truck on the highway far away. Then, with a quiet
intake of air, Margaret stood up. “Anyway, that’s not what I’m here for,” she said.
“You want me to stop hammering?”
“Why would I want that?”
“It’s after one in the morning?”
Margaret laughed. She stretched out her arms and turned in a circle. “Who would you be keeping up?”
“You?”
“That’s not what’s keeping me up. No, you left your cellphone at the front desk. It’s been ringing all night and driving me crazy. Somebody’s really trying to get a hold of you,” Margaret said. She pulled out his phone and handed it to him.
“Thank you.”
Margaret climbed down the ladder, stopping halfway. “Be nice, but don’t be too nice,” she said.
Stewart had already begun dialling Rebecca’s number.
14
All things Stewart
Rebecca had been sitting in her car for hours, watching bugs circle the streetlight in the parking lot of E.Z. Self Storage. She opened the door just far enough that the overhead light went on and the warning signal pinged. She looked at her cellphone resting on the dashboard and was surprised when it began to ring. Without checking the caller display, she answered it. “Stewart?”
“Hey,” Stewart said. “How are you? How’d it go?”
Rebecca closed the car door and was in darkness again. “What would you do if you could walk away from your past?” she asked.
“Wait—what happened with the eulogy?”
“It was very bad. Terrible. But something new has happened. Just listen.”
“Okay.”
“If you could, would you walk away from your past?”
“Rebecca, I did walk away from my past.”
“Then why are you calling me? It must be, like, after one in the morning there.”
Stewart had no reply to this. “Why are you asking me this?” he finally said.
“Just play along. Please? Pretend something magical happened and you suddenly had the power to emotionally detach from your past. To make it all evaporate, completely. Would you do it?”
“Is it all or nothing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do I have to get rid of all of my past? Or can I pick and choose?”
“That’s it.”
“What is?”
“You’re saying I could just pick what I want to get rid of, the stuff that’s making me stuck—stuck in the past—and leave the rest.”
“Isn’t this hypothetical?”
“It’s perfect.”
“Rebecca?”
“Thank you so much.”
Rebecca closed her phone. She got out of the car. Using the key Zimmer had given her, she entered E.Z. Self Storage through the loading bay door. The lights flickered in the sluggish elevator, making her wish she’d taken the stairs. When the doors opened, she ran as fast as she could. She was out of breath when she reached unit #207. She inserted the key into the lock and twisted. She put her forehead on the door and stood perfectly still.
For three years, since Stewart left her, Rebecca had felt that her life had been ruined by how much she’d loved him. But no matter what she did, she couldn’t get rid of that love. She did not know what would kill it. Both neglect and abandonment had failed. Its survival, Rebecca believed, was due to her unchanging life, which trapped her in the same moments again and again, as if time were hiccupping. But now she had a way out. Her toes curled in her shoes. She took three very deep breaths and then pulled the padlock open.
Inside, Rebecca began to search for the boxes marked STEWART. She had divided him into a large number of tiny boxes, the majority of which were on the left, about three rows back. She found a box marked STEWART—SINCE DIVORCE. Beside it was STEWART—HOUSE ON WATER STREET. The three below that were all marked STEWART—WEDDING. She found a box marked STEWART—FIRST APARTMENT and two that were labelled STEWART—DATING. Soon she had located them all.
Rebecca carried all of these boxes out of her storage area and set them on the concrete floor in the hallway. She walked down to the main floor to get the dolly. She took the elevator back to the second floor. She pushed the dolly to unit #207 and began loading the boxes.
Even fully loaded, the dolly was easy to move. It fit easily into the elevator. She rode down to the first floor, where she pushed it out the back door and down the ramp, stopping in front of the Dumpster. Without hesitating, Rebecca opened the Dumpster and began throwing boxes inside. Some of the boxes made a loud crash when they landed. Others made a dull thud. Rebecca found both sounds extremely satisfying. When there was only one box left, she threw it as high as she could, watching it rise up into the air and then crash into the Dumpster. Rebecca closed the lid and stood silently in front of it.
The pain in her chest came quickly. It was severe and sharp. She doubled over and collapsed onto the ground. She brought her knees up to her stomach. She tasted bile in the back of her throat, but she did not throw up. The pain stopped as quickly as it had started.
Standing up, Rebecca brushed the dirt off her pants and, without looking back at the Dumpster, walked to her car. Driving home, she became overwhelmed with fatigue. During the twenty-minute trip, she felt the need to pull over twice. Both times she had to get out of the car and walk around it twice before she felt ready to continue.
Parking in front of a fire hydrant, Rebecca barely made it to her house. She lay down on the couch and began dreaming, or remembering—she couldn’t tell which. She saw herself in bed with Stewart. Shortly after waking, they sneezed at exactly the same time. Both sneezes were forceful: so forceful that Rebecca blew her personality into Stewart and Stewart blew his into Rebecca. Neither immediately noticed that anything unusual had happened. Stewart rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom. Rebecca reached for the Kleenex on her bedside table and discovered that she was on the wrong side of the bed. The right side was usually hers, but being on the left side wasn’t particularly odd. It had happened before. When she put on her housecoat, she found it tight, but not so tight that she was alarmed. But then, looking at her hands, she saw that they were large and masculine. They didn’t look like her hands at all. She was still staring at them when she heard a scream from the bathroom.
The scream was odd because it sounded exactly like her voice. Rebecca went to investigate and saw herself coming out of the bathroom. This made her scream. The scream that came out was not her voice, but her husband’s voice.
“Stay away from me,” Rebecca said.
Stewart raised his hands, open-palmed, noticing that his nails were long and painted. “Rebecca?” Stewart asked in Rebecca’s voice.
“Stewart?” Rebecca asked in Stewart’s voice.
They exchanged housecoats and wondered what they should do. Craving normality, they went downstairs and started breakfast. Rebecca made eggs. After they’d eaten and cleared the table, Rebecca suggested that they might as well make the best of it.
“Wouldn’t that be ... gay?” Stewart wondered.
“More like self-abuse.”
“It is tempting.”
They went upstairs to the bedroom. It was over quickly. Afterwards, they stared up at the ceiling. Neither of them had found it that arousing.
“It must have been the sneeze,” Rebecca said.
“That’s what I’m thinking too.”
They headed back to the kitchen, where Rebecca took the pepper shaker from the back of the oven. They both sniffed. The pepper made them sneeze. The sneezes were intense, but it was hard to get the timing right. On the seventh try, they managed to sneeze simultaneously. Stewart blew his personality back into his body and Rebecca blew her personality back into hers.
“Weird,” Stewart said, happy to be back in his own body.
“Very,” Rebecca agreed.
They hugged, showered, got dressed and went to work. They pretended that nothing had changed. They continued to pretend when they returned that evening. But something had changed. Touch had become something they had
to think about, and each time they had to think about it the less inclined they were to do it. In four days it became impossible, and in four weeks they’d drifted so far apart that Rebecca couldn’t find Stewart anywhere. She looked in every room, under every bed and inside every closet, but he wasn’t in the house.
Rebecca woke up frightened. She was filled with anxiety and a desperate feeling that something very important was missing. She got off the couch and began searching for her keys, which she found on the kitchen table. She searched through her purse and found her wallet near the top. Still, the feeling that something was missing would not go away.
Taking short, shallow breaths, she stood in the middle of the kitchen. Hoping it would relax her, Rebecca decided to shower. She had just covered her hair with shampoo when she realized that she didn’t know what time it was. Fearing that she was late for work, she rushed to the kitchen. Dripping on the linoleum floor, she looked at the clock on the microwave, which read 5:47 a.m. The shower continued running. Rebecca sat down, her skin slipping on the vinyl kitchen chair. Twenty minutes later, stuck to the chair, she realized that what she was missing was the missing of Stewart.
PART FIVE
Vatn Auk Tími
Aby II
15
The windshield cracks
Aberystwyth was driving north on Highway 400, two hours outside of Toronto, and had just passed Wood Landing when a stone flew out of the gravel truck in front of her. It cut through the air so sure of itself, as if it already knew where it was going. She had never before seen an object move like this. The stone displayed so much confidence. She stared at it, envious, studying its progress. Then it struck her windshield, creating an elliptical chip and scaring the hell out of her.
The Waterproof Bible Page 8
