The Retreat

by David Bergen

  In the morning there were flies. One fly had crawled to the edge of his mouth. He made it go away and then he got up and walked. He was missing one shoe and his pants and he tried to find them, but they were lost. After a while he stopped walking and he lay down under a big tree where the ground was bare and soft and he fell asleep. When he woke he felt happy. The sun was warm, the birds were singing. He stood and walked. He found a trail and the trail went up and down. The leaves and trees were making shadows again, but there was no wind. He didn’t like the wind. Then he heard the sound of a bee. He sat up. The bee was above him, and all around him. He listened. Then he got up and followed the sound of the bee. He went round and round. He saw again that he had no clothes and he worried his father would be unhappy and his mother would tell him to go find his shirt and pants and underwear. He walked and walked and the sun was on his back and a shadow was in front of him and he stepped on the foot of the shadow and when he looked down he saw his feet and the scratches on his legs and his bare stomach and he heard the saw and a sound like someone talking. The voice was saying Come, come, and so he did.

  Lizzy waited for Raymond to return, but by mid-morning, when everybody had already been searching for a number of hours, she gave up waiting and headed into the bush with Everett. They walked side by side. The distant sound of the chainsaw was a persistent whine, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear. She thought about the words Fish had recently learned: clutch and sapling. There was the clutch on Raymond’s pickup and here was the sapling scratching Lizzy’s arm. She saw him on his back looking up at the sky, which was black with many bright holes and out of the holes came insects that landed on his ears and cheeks and arms and chest, and the insects were eating him. He opened his mouth to call out but there was no noise, only the sound of his breath going in and out, in and out.

  The sound of a whistle nearby. A voice called out. It was Franz. Lizzy and Everett made their way towards him. Emma was with him and Franz was holding a runner. It was Fish’s, orange with black stripes. It was all he had found. There was nothing else.

  Lizzy took the shoe and held it and looked about and then pressed her fingers against the inside sole. The shoe was damp, perhaps from dew. The lace was untied. She fell against Franz and hit at his arms and chest and screamed at him. She said that the runner was useless, useless. Everett stood to the side and watched his sister flail. Franz held Lizzy and Emma went over to Everett and put her arm around him.

  Together the four of them walked back to the clearing. There was no one there. The chainsaw spun and cried out. Franz sat Lizzy down and Emma brought her tea and someone wrapped her in a blanket. She huddled and shook.

  Later, after everyone had gone out to search again, she willed Raymond to arrive. She willed and willed but it did not work. She eventually went and sat on her stairs and she gave up all willing. She said, “Fish is dead.” The chainsaw sputtered and quit. It must have been out of gas. It hung from its branch, finally quiet, spinning uselessly.

  And then the trees opened up to the path that led up past the outhouse towards the Lookout. Down the path came a little naked boy wearing one shoe. He was Fish. He was walking and his face was dirty and he went to his parents’ cabin and sat down on the bottom step. And then Lizzy was running towards him, calling, and he looked up, and he saw her. He stood and smiled.

  One evening, Lewis gathered up his children and drove them into town for dinner. William had wanted them to take the pickup so they could sit in the box. Lewis drove slowly, checking the rear-view mirror, watching Fish on Lizzy’s lap, and calling out the window at William to sit down or he was going to fall out of the truck and crack his head on the pavement. The children were excited to be eating restaurant food, to be away from the Retreat, and Everett had already written down on a piece of paper what he wanted to eat: flatiron steak, root beer, french fries, and chocolate ice cream. Lewis had looked at the list and said, “What if they don’t have flatiron steak? What if it’s filet mignon?” He saw his children in the mirror and heard their voices lift and then fly away, and he thought how fragile everything was.

  For a brief period, after Fish had been lost and then returned, and in that week before Norma left, they had been able to talk more easily, with an open honesty and with no inclination towards sex or disagreement. Norma had spoken about the foolishness of having taken all of them out to this place, what had she been thinking, and she talked about Fish almost dying, and how after Fish had come back, she had seen herself as a terrible person. She was not a good mother. She had been much more interested in freedom than in the welfare of her children. She said she had been mad, a completely different person. She went up on an elbow, the moon fell through the window onto her bare shoulder. She was wearing a white undershirt with narrow straps and Lewis saw the sheen of her skin. Her cast had been removed earlier that day and her arm was thin and vulnerable-looking. He did not move. He waited. She said that the Doctor had offered sex, but she did not accept. “I was like a virgin. Touch me here and here and here, but no penetration. Am I scaring you, Lewis?” And then, not waiting for an answer, she said that she had wanted to keep the Doctor holy. “The idea of him. This I wanted.”

  “So you didn’t kiss,” Lewis said. His voice was low, and he repeated the statement, as if repetition might make it fact.

  “Why do you keep asking that? Do you want it to be true?”

  Then she lifted her thin shoulders and turned to him and said that yes, they had kissed and he had touched her and he had seen her naked, though only briefly. “Oh, Lewis. In the tool shed. Imagine. The smell of gasoline, the Johnson motor at our feet, washers, oil, grease, and I’m removing my bra. It was like I was thirteen again and showing my breasts to Mickey Ketler.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “There’s something more to tell you. We were interrupted by Fish.”

  Lewis began to shake his head. “Norma. Norma. What the hell did you do?”

  “I told him everything was okay. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really see anything.”

  Lewis closed his eyes.

  “It wasn’t me. Don’t you see?” She reached across to touch his face. Her hand went flat against his chest and rested there.

  “And now? Are you you now?”

  She was quiet for a long time and he imagined that she might have fallen asleep and then she said that she didn’t know. Everything felt out of control. He needn’t worry, she was finished with the Doctor. They had traded kisses, that’s all.

  And then on another night, she said that she couldn’t breathe. “Remember in Calgary, after Fish was born, and I wanted to bludgeon someone or something? And you took me away from the children because you saw danger? I’m not saying this time is as grave or dangerous, but I’m feeling wild, Lewis. The day Fish got lost? I was supposed to be watching him, and I went to the Hall to get something. I can’t remember any more what I wanted, but I got delayed. There was this furious discussion taking place, about some ancient philosopher, and I got involved for a time, not long, at least it didn’t feel very long, but when I came back, he wasn’t there. I can’t forgive myself.” She said that she had gone to the children’s cabin just before and found Fish asleep. “Everything is so uncomplicated when a child is sleeping, don’t you think? I found myself wishing he would stay sleeping.”

  She said that she’d been thinking that she would leave for a while. She would visit her sister in Chicago. Saul Bellow also lived in Chicago. Did he know that? She had been reading Bellow. She carried Herzog around as if it were a gift to her, as if Mr. Bellow had sat down to write a novel for Norma Byrd. It had become her Bible, and one night, reading by flashlight, she offered the image of Herzog pressing his daughter’s little bones. Her face had softened, and Lewis wondered how it was that the woman he had married could feel more love for a child who was not real than for her own flesh and blood. She said that she would marry Saul Bellow if he asked. “Would you let me do that, Lewis?” Her mouth had twisted into a smil
e. She was teasing both of them with an impossible desire.

  The night before she intended to leave, he sat at the edge of the bed in his jeans, and he said that he didn’t know what to do. He said that too much was being asked. He wanted her to stay; he asked what it would take to make her stay with the family. He got up and kneeled before her and held her hands.

  “Don’t beg, Lewis,” she said. “That’s not you.” She touched the back of his neck and drew her hand down his spine. “This is not about you,” she said. “You shouldn’t take responsibility. I feel ashamed. I don’t want to face these people any more. It’s possible you’ll all be better off without me here. I’m not asking for your pity or your blame, Lewis. Can you understand?”

  “I’m trying to,” he said, and he pushed his face against her and said no more.

  She wanted to have sex that night. She wanted him inside her. Would that be okay? Not waiting for his response, she came to his side of the bed and sat beside him so that their thighs touched. She was wearing light blue panties and an old T-shirt of Lizzy’s. They lay on the floor, on a blanket. Norma lay on her back and put her legs over Lewis’s shoulders because this was her most pleasurable position, and when she came she made the smallest of sounds, like the muted bleating of a lamb, and Lewis, as he came, pushed his face against Norma’s neck, where the collar of the T-shirt lay, and he smelled there the residue of his daughter. His anguish surprised him and Norma’s tears surprised him, and later, as he lay awake listening to Norma breathe, he was sorry that he gave in so easily to what was being asked of him.

  The following morning, early, Lewis drove Norma to the bus station. Before they left the Retreat, he asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to say goodbye to the children. She stood in a light rain by the car and shook her head. She said that if she did that, she wouldn’t be able to leave. It would break her heart. “Tell them,” she said, “I love them terribly.”

  “Are we supposed to stick it out here for the next month without you?”

  “Oh, Lewis. I’m not leaving for good. I will be back.”

  At the bus depot, saying goodbye, she had clung to him and at that moment he had experienced a loosening in himself and it had felt right to hate her.

  That day he’d broken the news to Lizzy. He took her into his cabin and sat her down and told her that her mother had gone away for a bit. “She’s beleaguered,” he said. A light rain still fell, and though it had been mid-morning, it felt like dusk in the cabin, on the verge of darkness. Lewis was standing by the small table in the corner of the cabin, and as he talked he looked straight at Lizzy. “She’s gone to Chicago to stay with her sister for a while. Fish getting lost, that pushed her over the edge. She needs some time.”

  “She couldn’t even say goodbye?”

  “Don’t be angry, Lizzy. I know it’s hard, but don’t be angry.”

  “Oh, no, why would I be angry? It’s always been all about her anyway. But how are you going to explain to Fish that his mother is gone. Or to Everett and William. Don’t expect me to do that.”

  “Of course not, I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just telling you first because you’re older and self-possessed and strong. Okay? She doesn’t want to hurt you. She just needs some time, a safe place to push the pieces around in her head.”

  “But this was the place,” Lizzy said. “Right here. That’s why we came here. What’ll we do now?”

  “We have some time left here. We’ll wait here for her to come back. She will be back. She’s gone before and always come back.”

  Lewis had been suddenly very tired, exhausted by his optimism. He thought of Fish. And William, who, ever since Fish got lost, was suffering terrible nightmares, waking up at night sucking for air and calling out, so that Lizzy had to come get Lewis to talk to him until he went back to sleep.

  He went outside and walked through the rain and found the boys in their cabin. He sat with them and explained that their mother had gone to Chicago to visit their aunt Anna and she would be back soon. William wanted to know how soon, and Lewis said that he couldn’t be sure, perhaps a week or so. Everett had listened to this explanation, and then asked why they hadn’t all gone, and why his mother hadn’t said goodbye. It was a challenge, and Lewis ignored it. He said that their mother would come back refreshed, with a new view of the world. “This is a good thing,” he said.

  The restaurant Lewis had chosen was attached to a hotel and there was an elevator that Fish had to ride up and down in before they ate. Lizzy and William went with him while Lewis and Everett sat and studied the menus. There was round steak with mushrooms and a salad. Everett lifted his head and said that that was fine. His eyes were dark and hollow from lack of sleep.

  “We’re kings tonight,” Lewis said. He ordered a beer. Everett asked for a Coke. Lewis said that when he was a child he’d been taken to a restaurant in Vancouver, down by the harbour, and he’d ordered fish and hated it. “The head was still on the fish, imagine that, and it lay on my plate and I thought it was still alive. It was staring up at me. My father ate the eyes.”

  “I know, Dad. You’ve told that story before.”

  “Have I? Well. That’s why steak is safe. No chance of the steer landing hooves and all on your plate. I considered, for a time, when I was fourteen, being vegetarian. That lasted all of two weeks. My mother refused to feed me.” He studied Everett. “You miss her.”

  Everett shook his head and said he was fine.

  “That’s all right.”

  Fish flew in, his brother and sister in his wake. He climbed onto the bench seat beside Everett, put his fists on the table, and said, “Chocolate milk.” Lizzy put William between her and Lewis. She was pensive, untalkative, and when Lewis tried to draw her out, she ignored him. They ordered and when the food arrived they all ate quickly and greedily, as if they had come on a long voyage with little food. When he was finished eating, Lewis put his cutlery down, ordered coffee, and said that the ease with which the food had appeared and then been devoured was a delight. “A real delight,” he said again, and he tilted his head. “This is very nice, sitting here with my children.” He put his hand on William’s head and said that sometimes he failed to keep an eye on things and so he lost track, and he had every intention of keeping his eye on his children from now on.

  “Mum?” Fish asked.

  “Oh, sweetie. You know she went away for a little while. Like a mother bird that’s gone out to look for worms to feed her babies. She’ll come back.”

  “With worms?”

  “Of course.”

  Fish grinned and looked at Lizzy, who wrinkled her nose at him.

  “You’re full of shit.” This was Everett. He was holding his fork. On his plate there was a pile of mushrooms that he’d scraped away from the steak. A smear of ketchup beside the mushrooms.

  “Ev,” Lizzy said.

  “Fullashit,” Fish said. He blew bubbles into his chocolate milk.

  “Your words,” Lewis said. William was beside him, a stoic little boy, already thick at the neck and waist. He had his father’s hands, his father’s mouth. The boy got lost in the melee of the family. He was a listener; he observed and reflected. He would never act impetuously like his mother, he was too careful. Lewis looked down at him. “You okay?” William nodded. He’d eaten a hamburger and taken out the pickles and lettuce and they lay on his plate. He had a tiny bald spot on the side of his head.

  “What’s this?” Lewis asked and touched it.

  William pulled away and put his hand over the spot.

  “Size of a dime,” Lewis said.

  Fish had unearthed shit and was using it to make compound words:fullashit, cuppashit, forkashit. Lizzy reached out and put her hand over his mouth.

  Everett was angry.

  “Ev,” Lewis said. He let the first letter of the name stretch out and then closed it down with a quick drop into the v, as if he had arrived at a dead end. The boy usually liked that.

  This time he didn’t. He sa
id, “You’re a liar, Dad. You always do that, make things up to make us all feel better.”

  “Whoa,” Lewis said. “Not everyone’s fourteen or older here.”

  “Fish? William?” Everett’s voice was quick and bitter. “They know Mum’s gone. They know she doesn’t love us. Fuck the Doctor and his stupid ideas.”

  “Fuckthedoctor,” Fish said. He stretched for his straw and closed his lips around it.

  For a moment Lewis was without words. He took a breath. Finally he said that their mother had not betrayed him or the children. “She loves you. Absolutely. No question. She just isn’t happy with herself. She went away and at some point she will miss you all so much that she will come back. Very soon, I think.”

  “Jesus, Dad.” This was Lizzy, shaking her head in disgust. Lewis ignored her. Then he said that it was a warm night and they would walk down to the wharf and look out at the lake.

  And so they wandered outside, Everett following sullenly behind the group, and they walked down to the wharf and sat on benches while Lewis commented on the last remnants of the blood-red sunset.

  “Look at that,” he said, and they all looked.

  Several days later, in the evening, Lizzy walked out to the main road, stood on the shoulder, faced the oncoming traffic, and held out her thumb. The first car that came along picked her up. The driver was a woman who was camping at Rushing River and had come into Kenora for supplies. When Lizzy got into the car she tried to make her voice sound confident and assured, though she did not feel confident. When she saw the sign for Bare Point she asked the woman to stop. She thanked her and walked up the gravel road, past the houses on the reserve, and into the tunnel of trees that led towards the turnoff to Raymond’s cabin. It was nine-thirty in the evening and the sun was setting; she had an hour of light left. She would get to the cabin before dark and then later Raymond could drive her back. She missed him. She had seen him only once since Fish had wandered off. He’d come back the next day, and arrived to discover everyone in the Hall, gathered around the little boy. He had stood on the outside of the group and to Lizzy it seemed that he had been unwilling to share the joy, or that in some way he did not understand it. He had seemed weary and uninterested, and had disappeared before she could talk to him.