Gina entered the living room with two cups of coffee, handing Jesse his before cradling her own in both hands as she looked out the window with him. He muttered his thanks but kept his eyes on the river. Nevertheless his attention was very much on Gina. She was long and lean and her skinny jeans exaggerated her slim silhouette. Her long black hair held a few wiry strands of grey and smelled of wood smoke, from the two wood stoves that heated the bungalow she shared with Grant. Her face had grown softer, more welcoming, he thought. More forgiving.
“I appreciate all your advice,” he told her. “And I can’t thank you enough for coming over today. I don’t think Hannah will listen to me otherwise.”
“Oh, I won’t be much help on that front,” Gina said. “Even when she asks for my help, she resents me for it.”
“She’s not still holding a grudge, is she? After all these years.”
“Can you blame her?”
Jesse sipped his coffee. “I suppose not.”
Gina looked away briefly and Jesse realized he had hurt her. They both watched a flock of Canada geese lift from the field and fly towards the lake, circling as they gained strength for their flight south.
“I hope I can get this place cleaned up before snow hits,” Jesse said, to break the silence.
“You do understand you’ll need to stay for a while now. You may have to rethink the sale of the farm.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Gina didn’t respond right away. “Got a girlfriend?” she asked him finally. “Is that why you don’t want to come back?”
Jesse laughed at the bluntness of her question. “No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “No girlfriend.”
She smiled a little at him as she sipped her coffee. He was surprised that Gina appraised him with such obvious pleasure. Her attention made him feel awkward; he was all at once the boy in high school, navigating his way into adulthood, that shy, skinny kid who was more comfortable reading books than hanging out at parties. He only found his footing with women in his twenties, after he was married. And then, after Elaine’s death, he lost what little confidence he’d had in that regard. He’d spent most nights in recent years eating his supper alone in front of the TV.
“What then?” Gina asked. “Why won’t you stay?”
“Work, I guess. I have a business to run.”
Gina raised an eyebrow, though she understood all the many reasons he didn’t want to return. “Stew is proud of you, you know,” she said. “The work you do. He never wastes a chance to brag about how you own your own business.”
Jesse grunted. His business was a mobile welding rig mounted on the back of his Chevy pickup. Stew had taught Jesse to weld in the first place, then harangued him to give it up after he earned his ticket, warning him that his chosen occupation would leave him blind if it didn’t kill him. Jesse had already experienced his share of welder’s flash when he worked at the mill: the painful, watery eyes and sensitivity to light that left him grounded for days, unable to drive or even watch TV. Sparks had set his pants and shirts on fire several times. His hands and arms were covered in burns.
When Jesse didn’t volunteer anything more, Gina looked back out the window. “You will have to move back,” she said. “The kids need you. You have to stay.”
“You almost sound like you want me back.”
Gina kept her eyes on the landscape in front of them, the brilliant yellow leaves of the poplars, the rust and gold leaves of the fruit trees, the deep blue of the river. She didn’t reply, but still, a small smile played on her face.
Jesse studied her. “What would Grant think about that? Me moving home?”
Gina’s smile faded. “That’s all behind us now, isn’t it?”
Jesse looked back to the river, the relentless movement of its water, knowing he was stepping into one of those moments he would likely regret. “I think about you all the time,” he said, but then Hannah drove her grandfather’s truck into the yard.
“Why is she home already?” Jesse said. “She only just left for the hospital.” He hadn’t been in to see the old man himself again in the days since he arrived. He promised himself he would, tomorrow, or the next day.
As Hannah got out of the truck, Abby ran up to greet her and she bent to pet the dog.
“Are you clear on how you’re going to handle this?” Gina asked.
“I think so.”
“Stay calm,” Gina said. “Don’t let your emotions get the better of you. She’ll undoubtedly fight you.”
Hannah had disappeared from view, heading for the back entrance. As she opened the kitchen door, the wind picked up again; the glass of the window shuddered and even the floorboards vibrated as if a giant were attempting to rip the house from its foundation and expose its wretched, spider-infested crawl space to the sky.
Hannah entered the living room, apparently intent on watching some television before making supper, but she stopped when she saw Jesse and Gina and turned on her heel, as if she had caught them in an incriminating embrace. Gina tipped her head at Jesse, nodding him towards the kitchen, and he followed his daughter. Hannah had put the kettle on and was placing a round Tetley tea bag in a mug, something Jesse had seen Elaine do many times.
“How’s Dad?” he asked Hannah.
“He was asleep, so I turned around and came home.” When Jesse leaned on the counter next to her, she lowered her voice to a near whisper. “What’s Gina doing here? Fuck, Dad, she’s married to a cop.”
“I had some questions about Bran, about the drawings on his bedroom walls. When I talked to him about them, he seemed confused.”
Hannah poured hot water into her cup. “He’s into sketching, that’s all. His art teacher thinks he should go to Emily Carr.”
“He’s drawing on the walls, for Christ’s sake.”
From the living room, Gina cleared her throat, reminding him to keep his temper in check, and he lowered his voice. “Do you remember your mother’s drawings?” he asked. “The animals? The boy?”
“Of course I remember. When she died you burned them all.”
She was right. Jesse had gathered the drawings from every corner of the house and set them alight in the burn barrel. He had watched bits of the burned images lift and drift up from the fire.
“So he’s working out some stuff with those drawings,” Hannah said. “That’s not surprising, is it? He just about lost Grandpa to drowning, the same way he lost Mom.”
Gina stepped into the kitchen. “I think we all know there’s more going on,” she said. “Why don’t both of you sit?” Jesse did, but Hannah remained standing. “Hannah, you must be hungry. I’ll make you and Jesse a sandwich.”
“I’m not hungry,” Hannah said, holding up her teacup.
Gina made the sandwiches anyway, moving around the room with the familiarity of family, knowing exactly where the plates, the cutlery, the cheese and bread were kept.
“We had Bran checked out at emergency after he fell in the river,” Hannah said. “We were all checked out.” Then she looked pointedly at her father. “He’s fine.”
“The afternoon I got here, Bran walked down to the river in his underwear in broad daylight,” Jesse told her.
Hannah looked into the dark surface of her tea. “So he’s eccentric. That’s not a crime.”
“He thought something attacked him in the river,” said Gina. “A water mystery. A spirit.”
“So he spends too much time with Alex.” Hannah held out a hand. “Look, Bran is into Alex’s stories in the same way he’s into his art. He’s playing at it, trying to figure out who he is.” She turned to Gina. “And what if he did take some of the old stories seriously? Your own ancestors did. There are paintings all over the cliff face of Little Mountain, what they saw there.”
“But those stories aren’t from Brandon’s culture,” Gina said.
“So he has no right to have an interest in them? You go to church. I could say the stories you hear there aren’t your stories.”
&
nbsp; Gina placed the sandwiches on the table and sat.
“I think we need to take him to a psychiatrist,” Jesse said. “Have him assessed.”
“You’re not taking him to see a shrink.” Hannah looked from Jesse to Gina. “You don’t know him. Neither of you know him.”
“Hannah, we’ve already been through all this, with your mother,” Gina said, then reached across the table, took Jesse’s hand and held it a moment before letting go.
Hannah turned her back on them and braced herself on the counter. “I do remember,” she said. “I was here too.”
“I know,” Jesse said quietly. He saw his daughter’s face reflected, distorted, in the electric kettle on the counter in front of her. Jesse had used that same kettle to make cups of tea for Elaine and had asked Hannah to carry them into the living room, where her mother sat drugged and alone in the captain’s chair, staring out the window that overlooked the river and the reserve. Elaine took the cups Hannah offered without saying thanks or even acknowledging her daughter. Her eyes remained unblinking on the river or something beyond. Jesse had once watched Hannah bend in front of her mother so Elaine was forced to look into her face. Elaine startled and, for a moment, focused on Hannah. Elaine’s eyes were bloodshot and confused as if she had just been woken from a dream. Then she shifted the captain’s chair so she could look past Hannah, to the cliff. Hannah had hugged her anyway. Elaine had not hugged her back.
Hannah opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a wash bucket and scrubby, before filling the bucket with warm soapy water. “You come waltzing in here like you own the place,” she said to Gina, though Jesse knew she was also talking to him. “You act like you’re part of this family. You’re not. You don’t know shit.” She lifted the bucket from the sink and headed through the dining room.
“What are you doing?” Jesse asked her. When she didn’t answer, he followed her, took her arm and made her turn to him. “I said, what are you doing?”
Hannah yanked her arm from her father’s grip, sloshing water on the floor, and carried the bucket through the living room and up to Brandon’s room.
“Let her be,” Gina told Jesse.
Brandon was huddled in the corner of his bed with his sketchbook on his lap, drawing with frantic strokes. The floor and walls of the room were covered with pictures of animals in various stages of transformation, human into animal, animal into human. Hannah took down one, then another and another, crumpling them and dropping them to the floor, to reveal the drawings he’d sketched right on the wall.
Brandon jumped up. “What are you doing?”
In answer, Hannah pulled the scrubby from the bucket, squeezed the water from it and started washing the wall.
“You can’t do that. This is my artwork.”
“People don’t draw on walls.”
“Of course they do. Graffiti, right? And this is my room.”
“You’re not doing this, Bran.” She lowered her voice. “Dad and Gina want to take you to a psychiatrist.”
“No fucking way.”
“Then quit acting like a nutcase. And stop dressing like a hobo. Put on some shoes when you go outside. For Christ’s sake, aren’t you wearing underwear? You can see everything.”
Brandon looked down at his dirty feet, the outline of his genitals in his sweats. “Underwear don’t feel right,” he said. “Shoes hurt or something.”
“What do you mean they hurt? You outgrew them?”
“No—I don’t know.”
“I’ll get you some new runners.”
“I don’t need any.”
“Boots then. You’ll need them for winter.”
“I can’t feel the ground when I wear shoes. I feel like I’m floating, not attached to myself.”
“Floating?”
Brandon picked up a charcoal pencil, wiped the wall with his sleeve and redrew the lines that Hannah had just scrubbed away.
“Stop that.” Hannah took the charcoal from his hand and went back to scrubbing the wall. She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed until not only the lines of Brandon’s drawing but the paint under it gave way.
Brandon grabbed hold of Hannah by both wrists. “No!” he cried and pushed her to the floor. He redrew the image, the eye of the crow now taking three-dimensional shape within the shallow cavity Hannah had just created in the wall’s surface.
Hannah got up and started on another wall, washing away the sketch of a coyote standing as a man.
“Stop it!” Brandon roared, and slammed her against the wall.
Jesse loomed in the doorway. Hannah caught a glimpse of Gina behind him. “Hey, hey, what’s going on?” he said.
Hannah shook Brandon off and slopped more soapy water onto the wall. “I’m cleaning up his mess.”
“She’s destroying my art,” Brandon said.
Jesse went to his daughter and took hold of one hand, then the other, to stop her restless scrubbing. But Hannah slipped from his grip and went on cleaning. “That’s enough, Hannah. This isn’t the time,” Jesse said.
“There’s nothing wrong with Bran,” Hannah cried. “Nothing!”
“Nothing,” Brandon echoed. He dropped to the bed and went back to his feverish sketching, mumbling to himself. “Nothing, nothing, no thing, no thing, something, some thing…”
Hannah looked at him a long moment, then turned back to her chore. Jesse took her arm to stop her, but she struggled with him, fighting to wipe Brandon’s madness from the walls. It was only when Gina said Jesse’s name that he finally let go, leaving the red imprint of his thumb on his daughter’s arm. It would become a bruise.
“Hannah,” Gina said from the door. “You can’t wash this away.” She stepped forward to put a hand on Hannah’s shoulder. “You’ve done enough. You took care of your grandfather for a long time. We’ll let Jesse handle this one, okay?” She eyed Jesse.
After a moment, Jesse nodded. “I’ll take care of this.”
Gina wrapped her arms around Hannah from behind, to stop her, to comfort her. Hannah dropped the scrubby and hung her head. “I can’t do this again,” she said.
“We know,” Gina said. And she rocked her, even though Hannah remained stiff in her arms.
Hannah looked at her brother as he chanted nonsense in a singsong voice. Something, nothing, no thing, some thing, thing, thing, thing…
In the few minutes they had been in this room he had completed a drawing that would have taken her hours: the face of a native boy about Brandon’s age who glared up at her from the paper with an expression of fury. She looked away, to the animals on the walls—the coyote, the bear, the fox, the crow—and each of them, in turn, stared back at her.
— 11 —
Elopement Risk
IN THE HOSPITAL elevator, Hannah eyed the photograph of her grandfather on a poster with a caption that read: Elopement Risk. As if her grandfather was at risk of committing this rash act of happiness. Stew was caught hunched over his tray, clearly trying to wrench it off, his face panicked as the flash hit, his eyes red.
Hannah had received a call from the hospital that morning. Her grandfather had left his ward using his canes and was waiting for a taxi outside the building when staff in emergency saw him in his hospital gown and led him back inside.
The elevator door opened.
“Is it really necessary to put my grandfather’s photo in the elevator?” Hannah asked the nurse, Annette, as she approached the reception desk. “And how did he get that far without anyone noticing?”
Annette said, “We had no idea he was that mobile. Or that determined.”
“Maybe if I’d stayed on Tuesday, waited until he woke up, I could have calmed him down.”
Annette held her hand up. “You can’t blame yourself. You’ve got a life to live too. You can’t be here every day.”
“He should be at home.” Hannah strode to her grandfather’s room but he wasn’t in it. The bed was neatly made and a man in overalls was screwing a shelf back in place above the bed. Th
e man stopped his work and pulled an earplug from his ear. “I’ll be done in a minute,” he said.
Hannah turned back to the hall. “Where is he?” she asked Annette.
“Stew was restless,” she replied. “He yanked the shelf down in the night. We thought it best to give him a change of scene. He’s sitting in the visiting area down the hall.”
Hannah found her grandfather parked there with several other elderly patients, his head down, his body curled over his tray. She squatted down beside him and took his hand. “Hey, Grandpa. I hear you went for a walk.”
Stew searched her face without recognition.
Annette caught up with her. “We have him on morphine for the pain in his hip and knee,” she said, maybe to explain his lack of response.
“He shouldn’t be left out here,” Hannah said. “He hates people looking at him.” She turned again. “Grandpa, it’s Hannah.”
When she touched his arm, Stew startled as if he had just woken. “Where am I?” he asked.
“You’re in the hospital,” said Hannah.
“My hat?”
“It’s at home,” said Hannah. “Along with your wallet and keys. They’re safe.”
“Bran? Where’s Brandon?” The worry on his face.
“Bran is okay,” Hannah told her grandfather. “Everything is all right.”
“No! He’s lost! Look. Look!”
Hannah turned to the window, to where her grandfather was pointing.
“He’s there. His ghost is by the lake. Don’t you see him?”
The Spawning Grounds Page 8
