Gargoyles

by Bill Gaston

  In the rearview Marta sees Jeff and Alison come at a trot. Did Ray say anything to them?

  Two car doors open and close behind her and Marta steps on the gas, the tires spinning on the moss and dirt, which is hard not to do in any case. She takes a breath then announces, “Your father is going to have a little holiday here by himself.” Neither child answers her. The car is moving and she is more afraid than she should be — and there he is now, framed in the rearview, there is Ray. Of course he is aware of them leaving, of course he hears the car. He doesn’t seem to care. He is not lurching or crying like a madman but instead he crosses the porch in a few ordinary steps, pointing the carving knife safely down, if anything looking content as he rounds the corner to get at Honey.

  The station wagon crunches down the lane, through trees that are almost too close even for one car, the crooked branches reaching for her, and when the tires finally hit pavement, the suddenly cool and smooth sound puts everything that just happened back into another time and place. Marta sighs, then works to breathe routinely. She finds her children in the rearview and is glad to see that Alison’s face is already full of Kyle, though Jeff’s is disgusted with his father. And perhaps with her. She can change that. She will tell them what she has understood, that their father has stepped over the line this time, and that if he ever expects to sleep in her house again they will have to have a talk, and he will have to listen.

  Mercurial

  POINT NO POINT

  Neil McRae puts his suitcase down and says, mindlessly but sincerely, “Great!”

  Joanne places hers beside Neil’s. Both gaze out the picture window at the famous oceanview that this evening is obscured by a perfectly uniform press of fog. Tomorrow is the longest day of the year, the solstice, and Neil wonders if they’ll see it. Their daughter, Vicky, has trailed them in, pulling her suitcase-on-wheels, chewing fresh gum. Neil can smell mint behind him.

  “Unbelievable,” Vicky says. “You were right, no TV.”

  Joanne stabs her finger at the window. “That’s the best TV.”

  “A two-hundred incher,” says Neil, trying to lighten things. It’ll take time for travel jitters to fade. He’d love to grab a beer from that little fridge but of course it’s empty, which is a problem he’ll tackle tomorrow. On the long bus ride here he noticed the endless giant trees and complete absence of stores but he’ll keep this to himself. Joanne’s already mad at herself for screwing up connections — two buses and waiting rooms took five hours to get them maybe eighty miles, whereas the flight all the way from Calgary to Victoria had taken just one. Joanne hadn’t let Neil rent a car. It was Joanne’s retirement, and if she wanted to waste five hours on buses it was her choice.

  “So this counts as the first day?” Vicky asks. She hasn’t dropped her suitcase handle. At first Vicky was going to stay home alone, but after her delivery to the front door by the cops a month ago, arrangements were made for her to stay with Joanne’s bowling partner Raquel, who in the past two weeks has fallen seriously ill. When Vicky learned she had to come with them she began moaning, “Five days.” Neil saw only that she didn’t complain about them not trusting her to stay on her own, which to his mind proves them right.

  “This was day one,” says Joanne encouragingly, willing to be happy for her daughter but the slope to her voice letting them know she is sad for herself.

  “Check out the goat on the driver?” Neil asks them. He is at the sink testing the cold, then the hot, taps. The fixtures are solid but not what you’d call elegant. He holds his finger under until the stream warms, then he turns it off. By “goat” he means goatee.

  “I didn’t, no,” says Joanne.

  “He was a kid. It’s coming back.”

  Neil grew his goatee forty years ago when he was twenty, the kind favoured by Wolfman Jack and, for a while, the Philadelphia Flyers. And of course bikers everywhere, and Neil has always had his Harley. Jet black and thick, his goatee is an extension of the head of hair he used to style in glossy waves, a style a friend said could hide a crow. Employees at Neil’s hardware store always told customers with queries to see the man with the goatee.

  Joanne leans in and whispers, “She’s taking our room.”

  Vicky has wandered into the larger bedroom and swings her suitcase up onto the bed, which looks to be bigger than the one in the smaller room.

  Joanne has Neil by the arm. “Don’t. Let’s all just relax.”

  “Brochure said there’s a bar. Think they sell off-sale? And we can ask about groceries.”

  “Well, we can eat at the restaurant.”

  “It said ‘fine dining.’ Did we remortgage?”

  He’s smiling but Joanne answers seriously, in charge. It’s her vacation. She says, “We can treat ourselves a few times.”

  “There’s a whole little box of chocolates on my pillow,” Vicky calls from their bedroom.

  Next morning in the lodge they stand first in line at the dining room’s entrance, which is blocked by a plum-velvet rope strung between bronze-cupid posts, the kind of thing you’d see in an old movie house, and which looks funny in all this cedar and glass. Vicky won’t stand with them, hissing, “You’re not supposed to ‘line up.’” True, they’re the only ones in line, but they’re starving. Neil explains that since they’re from Alberta they’re an hour hungrier than all the other folks here. Who do look to be from the West Coast. Men in sandals, women wearing no makeup and almost colourless clothing that still comes off looking expensive. Some women are alone or in groups, women (whispers Joanne) who might be professors. On their walk to the lodge they noticed it was all B.C. and two Oregon cars parked in front of the cabanas, lots of Volvos and late model Hondas and one of those new electric hybrids, not popular in oily Alberta. It’s the first hybrid car Neil has seen in person, and he pointed and said, “In Drumheller we’d shoot that.” Their cabana is the only one without a car out front.

  Eventually a sleepy-looking young man unhooks the velvet from cupid’s elbow and mumbles while walking away that they can sit anywhere.

  The dining room is all windows, all of them bright with solid fog. Joanne declares it beautiful, gazing around as if the windows offer some variety. Neil wonders aloud if they could see the beach from here, and then reminds himself not to complain, and to be glad he’s here.

  When Neil retired and sold the hardware store he flew to Cincinnati by himself. What drew him was an article about a TV Museum. The old TVs and the ’50s living-room replicas he described to Joanne as “sweet and sour,” meaning it made you feel too old and young at the same time. He couldn’t explain to her exactly why he spent all those hours there just watching the shows — F-Troop, Combat!, Queen for a Day — but when he got home he felt the trip had been a good one and he had no regrets about not seeing more sights, or a Reds game.

  So he felt humbled when, though only fifty-three, Joanne decided to retire now too and announced that the only retirement trip she could imagine included him. That Vicky was a last-minute addition was sad, for Joanne had been planning for two years, talking it up endlessly, and Neil joked that it sounded like they were really going to Eden.

  What first twigged Joanne to the Point No Point area, and EdenTides Resort, was a Sears co-worker who returned from a vacation there. Joanne didn’t particularly like Dorothy but you don’t ignore a person who speaks with such passion about a place. Then one day Joanne thumbed through a book called North America’s Sacred Spots and there was Point No Point again, being called “a zone of powerful silence.” The name came from a land form that looked like a point but wasn’t.

  For two years Neil watched Joanne read about British Columbia and solstice-this and healing-that. He stopped ribbing her, because why not get excited about something? Even if it meant planning a vacation around a solstice? At their age, excitement was harder to come by. And he was a bit excited himself at seeing whales, and possibly a bear. But Neil noticed with a snicker how Joanne acted the instant they left Drumheller, as if they were alr
eady somewhere great and everything was worth mentioning. In Calgary she was pointing out things on the way to the airport — an old gas station, an African restaurant, and a yard with probably twenty cheap gnomes in it.

  Their eggs benedict (on yam muffin with smoked salmon) arrive. When Neil calls the waiter back to get some extra butter, Vicky smiles, stares down at her tapping fork, and asks the young man, “So what’s there to do around here?”

  The waiter stops, gives her a look, and says, “Hmmm” like he’s assessing her and will tailor his answer. Neil doesn’t like his manner — the little smile, the drum roll on his belt buckle — not because he’s eyeing his daughter but because he’s getting paid to be a waiter so that’s what he should be. He looks like the kind of boy who recently had a ponytail but now doesn’t. He greeted them here at the table by saying, “Happy solstice,” and Neil couldn’t figure his attitude.

  “Well, we’re having a bonfire tonight,” he says to Vicky like Neil’s not even here. “Might be okay. Few people just hangin’.”

  “What,” asks Vicky softly, “just down here?” She drifts a thumb over her shoulder at the ocean unseen but dully loud beyond the windows. Her half-smile Neil knows is meant to look superior.

  “That’s the resort beach. We’re at the next one over.”

  He tells her to stop by at eight and he’ll walk with her there. His name is Alex, and his parents “sort of own this place.”

  Vicky asks Alex more questions, not letting him go get the extra butter, which Neil knows will be forgotten altogether. He lets his face fall into cupped hands. He can’t pretend he isn’t tired. Last night Joanne did get Vicky to switch rooms, and she was embarrassed for eating the little box of chocolates meant for them. But the bed was hard in that way that’s supposed to be good for you and he had an awful sleep, though he always slept awful in strange beds — it had happened in Cincinnati too. Undressing, Joanne raised eyebrows and dangled black negligee from pinched fingers, but they both agreed they would “use it” another night. Joanne had bought the negligee for herself a year ago. In truth, Neil wasn’t eager to “use it.” Her body looked nothing like it did thirty years ago. He didn’t mind her tubbiness down there, but you really don’t want it framed.

  Vicky asks Alex the waiter why this place is called Point No Point and Neil is surprised she even noticed.

  “If you’re out on a boat,” the waiter says quickly, used to this one, “approaching, it looks like you’re rounding a point that just keeps going and going and it isn’t a point at all. It’s sort of an optical illusion.”

  At this the waiter clicks his heels together and speeds away. Neil calls “Butter?” to his back, which causes him to spin in a full circle, falsely smiling.

  Not ten seconds pass before Vicky joins her father with face-in-hands and she asks again what there is to do here.

  Joanne is ready. She shakes her head. “Vicky? We came here to sit still and breathe.”

  Vicky does sit down with a pile of magazines in the lodge fireplace area so Neil and Joanne head back for showers. En route they pass an odd, tall woman with long grey hair who looks like she would be shy in the city but here she wishes them happy solstice.

  Waiting for his turn in the tub Neil stares out the window into the hanging white. He’s learned the fog is normal but that there’s a chance of it breaking today and their view coming out. He picks up the brochure, more the size of a book, looking for Services, but there aren’t any. Instead there are paragraphs about not having services, not even phones or TVs or radios, and instead you got silence and healing and raccoons visiting your porch. There are pages on local arts and crafts, with pictures of pottery. There’s a page on the Indians who once lived here, and one on Spanish explorers (which is why islands are Galiano and Cortes), and how Captain Vancouver came to map the area for England, and gave Point No Point its name. There’s a page on the “resident” bald eagles, and ravens, which are described not as “tricksters” but as “The Trickster.” All interesting, but to Neil, who was in business for thirty-three years, it rings suspiciously like fancy excuses for why a bare-bones resort costs so much.

  He listens to Joanne showering, hearing changes in spray that mean she’s reaching for shampoo or enjoying a blast on the neck. He Frisbees the brochure onto the table. Amazing they are finally here. Here they are. The place she’s talked about for so long. One plan had been to go to Sally Too’s, the main art gallery for local artists. “Artists from around the world,” Joanne told him, more than once, “choose to live here.” Thing is, he’s just read that Sally Too’s is fifteen miles down the road and there will be no getting there without a car, another thing Neil will keep to himself and hope Joanne doesn’t discover.

  Showers done, it’s decided Neil will do the grocery run while Joanne hikes off on the trails, the main activity here. Neil suggests this arrangement, reminding her of his solo adventure to Cincinnati and hinting how it might be good for her to do the first hike alone, because it’s her retirement and this is her special place. She dresses against the chill of the fog, throwing a bright yellow scarf around her neck. She’s so excited that as she strides out the door when he wishes her good luck she can barely mumble a reply.

  Neil finds no good luck himself. He spends the afternoon seeking some sort of ride to the nearest grocery, which is in Sooke, a half-hour back along the curvy road. The one bus was hours ago. A taxi is a hundred bucks. They really should have planned better but Neil just wants to get the fridge filled, find some beer and wine, make a nice meal for her. Steaks, a fancy salad with sliced eggs in it.

  Maybe because it’s Sunday, or because of wild solstice parties or whatever the hell they do here, no one at the Sooke taxi answers. Now the guy at the lobby desk is impatient with him hogging the phone. The guy — Andrew — hesitated shaking hands when Neil stuck his out and said, “Neil McRae, cabin fourteen.” Andrew didn’t smile once, making Neil want to call him Andy, and he had nothing more helpful to say than, “We do have an excellent restaurant.” He says this twice, which Neil decides is a sort of insult.

  Out in the parking lot he considers hitchhiking but suspects that a burly older man standing in fog on a gravel shoulder with his thumb out looks like bad luck. The goatee makes him look even riskier. And though he stopped the weights a decade ago he knows he can still look dangerous in a T-shirt, especially the tight blacky he has on now. Not knowing what to do, he sees a younger man in jeans taking a white bucket out of the trunk of his tan Mercedes.

  “How ya doing there?” Neil says to be friendly, but mostly to let the guy know he’s a fellow patron of the resort, not someone who’s considering hitchhiking to Sooke for beer.

  “I’m doing well. Found a nice appetizer.” He tilts the bucket at Neil. Black shells.

  “Watcha got there?”

  “Oh, a good bunch of mussels,” says the man, quite proud. “Steam ’em in wine and garlic — oh yes.”

  “Get ’em yourself?”

  “You have to hunt a little but they’re around. Any low tide. Go that way, or that way” — He points either direction along the highway — “Find a road down to the beach, find a rock outcrop. Find a fissure in the rock, they cluster in there. You need a heavy knife or screwdriver or something, pry them off.” He makes prying motions with one hand and he grits his teeth.

  “Okay, thanks, that sounds good.”

  “The tide’s still good right now. I found a road down, five miles south of here.”

  “Well, great. I think I will.”

  “And the red tide’s okay. I phoned Fisheries. The PSP update.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Which is so reassuring.”

  “It sure is.”

  “So, wine and garlic, ten minutes, maybe some lemon as well, dip some baguette in the broth or, or — do know what’s good?”

  “No.”

  “Foccacia. Dip some foccacia. Oh yes. With the salt, the embedded rock salt.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll do that.”<
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  “Good luck.”

  “Hey, thanks.” Neil is already turning away when out the side of his face he adds, “Happy solstice,” feeling bad even as he says it, but the man with the Mercedes calls back, “Yes!”

  Out behind the lodge Neil finds and empties a white compost pail. He grabs the sturdiest knife from his kitchenette drawer. Joanne still hasn’t returned — she must be having herself a time. He heads down the trail into the fog, through the trees, some really humongous trees, they really are big. Paths crisscross but it’s easy — just keep heading downhill where the water’s going to be. The surf grows louder and louder the closer he gets.

  It’s good to be out of the trees, and on the beach it’s fairly exciting. It lies under the canopy of fog and he can see not only the waves crashing on shore but also across the water to a distant wall of black that, according to the map, is Washington State, several miles away. Here on the beach it feels ten degrees colder, hard to believe it’s almost July, and Neil finds himself striding to a rock outcrop with tight, herky-jerky speed. He should have grabbed his leather vest.

  It doesn’t take long. In fact, this beach is mostly rock out-crop and there are mussels galore, clustered in the fissures, sure, but also spilling out in carpets of nothing but mussels. Neil simply stoops and begins scraping a cluster away. It takes no time at all. No need to drive anywhere. Odd that no one’s discovered this spot, right here at the base of the main path to the resort, and a resort with kitchenettes no less.

  He keeps it neat, carving out a square patch, maybe four feet by four feet, on the mussel-covered rock face. Mussels are really quite something, so black and glossy, way more exotic than your basic clams. Turn them in the light and they shine hints of blue, just like a crow. And now the bucket is full. Neil hefts what feels like six, seven pounds of mussels — plenty for dinner, and just in time. Heading up the trail back into the forest, he wonders if he likes mussels. He’s pretty sure he had them in Calgary once, at that hardware conference. He knows they’re orange, which is a weird colour meat to put in your mouth.