The Journey Prize Stories 30

by Sharon Bala

  Ganesh takes a sip of the tea and purses his lips; the taste hasn’t lived up to his expectations. He sets the cup down on the kitchen counter and scribbles his phone number in my day planner that I left open after breakfast.

  “You’ll call me?” he asks.

  “I will.”

  “You promise?” His high-pitched voice sounds like pleading.

  “I do.”

  * * *

  —

  On the morning I leave for Canada, Kaaka puts her hand on my back and leaves it there as she accompanies me to my father’s beat-up Range Rover, caked with mud. We stand on the passenger side. I drape myself around her small frame, breathing her in, letting her clean scent—the smell of soap just unwrapped from its package—cleanse all the fissures of my soul. I transform my body into a plaster mould and imprint her on it, creating an impression of her on me.

  “Christmas will come quickly,” she whispers. “We’ll see each other very soon.”

  When she lets go of me, I have a sinking feeling, like I have fallen out of time.

  * * *

  —

  I’m sitting in my living room drinking the tea Ganesh abandoned. Without sugarcane syrup, it’s bland, like a cheap, watered-down version of the real thing. But the aroma is potent and breathing it is restful.

  I sink deeper into the couch, dropping my head over the backrest like someone getting their hair washed in a salon. And that’s when I feel it—a hand on my shoulder. The sensation is real enough for me to jump up, terrified, but all I see behind the couch is an unadorned wall the colour of dry bone. And yet my shoulder carries a memory of the hand, its familiar smallness and warmth. Suddenly, I’m filled with a lightness of spirit and aware of the irreplaceable joy of this moment, what it might mean. Are my eyes growing eyes? I’m open to all that is possible.

  CARLY VANDERGRIENDT

  RESURFACING

  The volunteers wait in a cluster on the beach. Thirty or so of them in all. Faces Jackie recognizes, people who’ve been coming to the Point for a long time. If her mother were here, she’d be nudging her and whispering, That twit brings his wife up one weekend and his mistress the next. Or, Boy, did the DeWitt girl ever straighten out.

  The afternoon sun spills across the surface of the lake. You wouldn’t know a man drowned here this morning. An out-of-towner. It’s always the out-of-towners, thinks Jackie. They don’t know about the rip current. It pulls you halfway to Erie, Pennsylvania, before you even realize.

  “His poor family. How terrible,” says Anna. A ladybug lands on her bare shoulder. She flicks it away.

  What does Anna know about terrible things? Jackie wonders, glaring. There’s a dull ache in her forehead, tucked behind her skull. She was trying to sleep it off when the helicopter started up. It circled for hours. She knew what it meant. After lunch, she told Chris to take their boys to town for the afternoon. Her brother, Jeff, went with them. Anna stayed.

  Someone from Norfolk County Fire & Rescue had been by the cottage. A kayaker had gone missing that morning, he told Jackie. They needed help with the search.

  The same county volunteer now reappears before the crowd, holding a loudspeaker. “We’re going to make a chain,” he calls, corralling them.

  The group thins out. Anna seizes Jackie’s right hand before she can move away. The lady who ends up on her left has a cottage on the channel side. Jackie thinks she was at her mother’s funeral.

  The county volunteer wades out to a Sea-Doo and revs the engine. He holds the loudspeaker in front of his face, calling them forward.

  It’s a slow march into the water. Jackie’s arms break out in a rash of goosebumps. The lake is always colder after a storm. And opaque. Brown. Unsettled.

  “I kind of hope we don’t find him,” whispers Anna. “Is that bad?”

  “Don’t think about it,” says Jackie. Though she’s thought about it herself. What it might feel like. The waterlogged body. She imagines a certain leadenness, pickled skin. She shivers.

  They reach the first sandbar and stagger to a collective stop. Jackie is stretched between Anna and the woman from across the channel. Gentle waves slosh at her knees.

  “We’re stopping?” Anna pokes her head out and looks down the line.

  The last time the Van Leeuwens came to the Point as a family, Jackie was fifteen. Later that year, her dad disappeared. He was gone nine months before he reappeared like it was nothing. He wouldn’t say where he’d been. Jackie’s mother never got over it.

  It probably killed her. But that came later.

  Another call from the loudspeaker and they advance in slow motion. A line of lumbering astronauts. The water is up to Jackie’s hips. This is where it drops off, she thinks.

  * * *

  “That’s six to four,” said Jackie. Smug, because she and Anna were winning. She pushed the cards toward Chris. “Your deal.”

  Chris didn’t care for euchre. Not like the Van Leeuwens. They were a euchre-playing family. That is, when they were still a family. Their mother had been dead now for over a year. Neither Jackie nor Jeff spoke to their father. In fact, they only saw each other once a year, when Jackie and Chris brought the kids down from the Ottawa Valley.

  “Time out,” said Jeff. “Anyone want anything?”

  “Another beer,” said Chris.

  “I’ll take a top-up,” Jackie said, handing Jeff her glass.

  “Nothing for me,” said Anna. She rose from the table and walked to the row of windows at the back, looking out at the shifting darkness that was the lake.

  “You sure?” called Jackie. All of the windows were shut, but the sound of the roaring wind and crashing waves filled the cottage.

  Anna didn’t answer.

  Jackie tried to exchange an eye-roll with Chris, but he was caught up dealing the next hand. On his face, the same look of forced concentration Cole made when he read. She smiled at the thought of their eldest son. Buoyed by two glasses of white wine and several rum and cokes, she could forget the fight he’d put up about brushing his teeth. And Felix, her sweet baby. Maybe he wouldn’t cry for her later on that night. Alcohol made raising kids seem only mildly awful.

  Chris doled out four neat piles of five cards. He put the kitty in the middle of the table and turned over the top card.

  “Not yet,” whispered Jackie. “Jeff’ll murder you.”

  He turned the card back over. Under the table, she rubbed a clumsy foot against his. God, she loved him. For stepping in when Cole got mouthy. For playing euchre. For making an effort with Jeff and his fun-sponge of a girlfriend. Anna wouldn’t even have a drink, now what was that about? She was too thin to be pregnant. When Jeff brought her last year, Jackie hadn’t paid much attention because Jeff’s relationships never lasted. He didn’t even have a type. Women, plural. That used to be his type.

  Jackie studied Anna as she returned to the table. Tall and gawky, with that thing all the twenty-something women were talking about. A thigh gap. Jackie’s thighs were dimpled and doughy, like oliebollen batter. They probably hadn’t not touched since 1988.

  “Windy out there,” said Anna.

  “Gearing up for a storm,” said Jeff. He smiled, set the drinks on the table, and took his seat next to Jackie. Jeff wasn’t some megastud, thought Jackie. He was just a likeable guy. He should have been bored with Anna by now.

  “Erie likes to show off,” Jackie added. A distant clap of thunder sounded, as if to prove her point.

  “I guess that’s our cue,” said Chris. “Game on.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jeff.

  Chris turned over the upcard. They lifted their cards to their chests. For a second, Jackie imagined Jim-and-Janet and Jeff-and-Jackie circa 1982. Bound to each other by some invisible force, they sat in the shadowy living room of the cottage, playing out yet another summer storm.

  Jackie had a dismal hand. Three nines, two queens, and only one of every single suit. She passed. The others did too. Jeff and Chris took five tricks that hand, tying the g
ame six-six. It was Jackie’s turn to deal.

  “Do you remember,” started Jeff, “when Mom used to go away for the weekend and we’d stage those euchre tournaments in the basement?”

  Now, whenever they were together, they ended up reminiscing about that parentless time. Adulthood had set Jeff and Jackie adrift of one another. That parentless time was all they had.

  “Marty lost his old junker in a bet,” said Jackie, as she dealt the cards. “And on Monday morning his dad showed up at school to beg Jerry De Vries to give it back.”

  “Where was your mom?” asked Anna.

  Jackie bristled as she turned over the queen of spades.

  “Our dad left,” Jeff explained. Not missing or lost. Just left. As if the real leaving came then and not later. “When he left, she would go around to different cities showing his picture to people.”

  “She just left you two alone?” asked Anna. White lightning filled the cottage, illuminating the freckles on her nose.

  “It was the ’80s,” said Jeff. “Things were different then.”

  “To be fair,” Jackie cut in, “Jeff was seventeen. He should have been capable of looking after me. Instead he started an illegal gambling operation in our basement.”

  “Well, what about that babysitter Mom hired?” asked Jeff. “She wasn’t exactly going out of her way to stop me. Pass, by the way.”

  Jeff always brought up the babysitter, Jackie thought. Did he know? She studied her hand. She had both bowers. If she picked up that queen, she could go this round alone. That’d be four points and a win for her team. That’d show Jeff.

  “She was nineteen,” said Jackie.

  “Pass,” said Anna.

  “Pass,” said Chris, his eyes on his cards. “What was her name again?”

  “Sharon,” said Jackie, off-handedly. “Spades.” She picked up the queen. “I’m going to go it alone.”

  Anna sighed as she set her cards face down on the table.

  “Winner gets the loser’s car,” said Jeff, playing the ace of diamonds. Chris followed suit with a jack.

  “You want our minivan?” asked Jackie, taking the trick. “You can have it.”

  “You know she was at Mom’s funeral.”

  “Who?”

  “Sharon.”

  “I know,” snapped Jackie. Seeing Sharon at the funeral had sparked a small-scale, pre-midlife crisis during which Jackie began compulsively noticing women. There was Cole’s teacher, a sinewy woman with a mop of tight brown curls. There was the blond woman from the Office of External Relations with the New Agey name Jackie could never remember. What did Jackie like? She had no clue. Once, she had liked Sharon.

  “She looked different,” said Jeff. “Don’t you think?”

  “I’d hope. Twenty years later,” said Jackie. What was he getting at? “Look. Can we, like, drop the babysitter thing?”

  “I thought you guys were friends?”

  “Why would I be friends with our old babysitter?”

  She slapped the left bower down. Jeff laid a low spade, Chris an ace. Jackie took the trick. Three more tricks and she’d get her four points. She looked at Anna, who was sitting with her chin propped on her hands, a yawn about to slide across her face.

  “You were so close back then.”

  “Are you still friends with everyone from back then?” Wrong question, Jackie knew immediately. Jeff had never left their hometown.

  “Don’t get so worked up.” Her brother was the only person in the world who could use that line. And it worked. Now, she couldn’t deny being worked up without sounding worked up. Jackie had a thought, then. A boozy thought. What if she told him?

  She played the right bower. “You know what?” she started.

  “What?” asked Jeff, laying down an off-suit card.

  Chris hesitantly showed diamond. Jackie took her third trick.

  “Sharon and I—” continued Jackie. She had to play a card first. King of spades or king of clubs? She chose the spade.

  “Yes?”

  “We were girlfriends.” No, thought Jackie. That wasn’t right. Not girlfriends—she has girlfriends now. Female friends, that is. “We were…together.”

  “What?”

  “We were,” she hesitated, “romantic.”

  Jeff scrunched his brow. He set the jack of diamonds down. Chris played a nine, and Jackie took a fourth trick. She lifted her chin as she swept up the cards, noticing Anna was staring at her.

  “You were, what, fifteen? Isn’t that kind of wrong?” Jeff paused. “She took advantage of you.”

  “Right,” said Jackie. At the funeral, the four years between them seemed utterly insignificant. “Because you never dated anyone that young when you were nineteen.”

  Another clap of thunder sent the plates clinking in the cupboards. Felix would be awake soon, thought Jackie. She played her last card.

  “That’s different,” said Jeff. “I mean, at that age. How could you know?” He played a low diamond and looked to Chris. “Did you know about this?”

  “What does it have to do with him?” asked Jackie. She heard a moan from the boys’ room.

  “Yeah,” Chris answered, clutching his last card. “I knew.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you?”

  “Why would it?” asked Chris. He set the card down. The ace of clubs. So Chris had the ace. He took the trick as Felix erupted into a full-fledged wail.

  “Then I guess everything worked out,” said Jeff, looking from Jackie to Chris and back. He swiped the cards into a messy pile. “What is that now? Seven to six?”

  Jackie frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you didn’t get your four points,” said Jeff.

  “No,” said Jackie. “You guess everything worked out? You mean I didn’t end up with Sharon? You mean I’m not—” Jackie stopped herself. She stood up and left the table.

  The darkness in the boys’ room was disorienting. “Mummy’s here,” she whispered. She padded her way to the bottom bunk and fit her body next to Felix’s, lifting his pyjama to rub the hot skin on his back. “Shhh,” she murmured.

  Sharon had left for university around the same time Jackie’s father reappeared. For months, Jackie wrote her long-winded letters in blue ink, the ballpoint tip tearing through the paper while her mother’s voice spilled from the family room, husky and bitter. Tell me. Where did you go? But Jackie never heard a response.

  Eventually, Sharon stopped writing back.

  After a few minutes, Jackie could feel her son’s small body letting go, his awareness receding. His breathing slowed. She wouldn’t be like her own mother. She wouldn’t abandon her children before they were ready.

  Jackie got over Sharon. She moved to Ottawa to go to university, where she met Chris. She married and thought little of the past. Her father’s disappearance and his refusal to talk about it had wedged itself like a stake between the members of the Van Leeuwen family. Her parents divorced, and Jackie had her own kids. When her mother got sick, she found she wanted to tell her about Sharon. She wanted to say, This is what was happening then, and you had no idea.

  But she didn’t.

  Jackie hadn’t realized she’d dozed off until the door opened. There was someone in the doorway.

  “Chris?” she muttered.

  From the bed, Jackie saw the hall light silhouetting Anna’s thighs, the space between them glowing. She sat up, startled.

  They’re up to their midriffs now, their linked hands suspended above the surface. Jackie looks back. The pastel-coloured cottages are strung out like beads on a candy necklace.

  “I wonder,” says Anna, “how much farther we can walk.”

  “Erie is shallow,” says Jackie. “There’s a second sandbar.” They used to make it that far as kids. Then their mother would stand on the beach and holler into the wind for them to come in. Because that’s what mothers are supposed to do, and that’s what Jackie’s mother had always done. Until her husband left and she just sto
pped. Hollering. Caring.

  “What I don’t get,” starts Anna, “is how a full-grown man gets pulled under here.

  “That’s it,” says Jackie. “The current doesn’t pull you under. It pulls you out. You get tired. And then—”

  “Oh,” says Anna.

  “It happens every year.”

  “You mean, people drown?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jeff never mentioned that.”

  “Mr. Positive,” says Jackie.

  “I know.”

  Jackie waits for her to say more.

  “Jeff is great.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s just…I don’t know if he told you? But I’m on an antidepressant. It makes me kind of. Not myself,” says Anna.

  Is she talking about last night? wonders Jackie.

  “It’s like. Sometimes I do things and I just don’t care about the consequences.”

  Jackie was still foggy with sleep when Anna sat down on the bed. Her hand grazed Jackie’s leg, ever so lightly. Jackie’s heat felt like shame, her son sleeping next to her in the bed. She stood up. Dizziness caught her as Anna left the room.

  The water laps at her collarbone. Around them, the chain is breaking. The lady from the channel side lapses into a doggie paddle. Jackie pulls her hand from Anna’s, lifts her feet from the sandy bottom. That’s when she sees it. A flash of something pale between the waves. Driftwood, thinks Jackie, because dead bodies don’t float. Or do they?

  “Can you see that?”

  “What?” asks Anna. Her head is still above the water, her feet still planted.

  “There’s something there.” Treading, Jackie points. The more she studies it, the more it looks like a limb. An arm, maybe.

  “I see it,” says Anna.

  Jackie kicks. Her foot jabs at sand. It’s getting shallower. She can stand again.