At the Edge of the World

by Jones, Kari;

  “Yeah.” He’s said many things. “There are other bills too—we still owe for the repairs on the septic system,” I say.

  “No problem,” he says. “And after a while I’ll have paid off all my debts and I’ll get back to working with wood. We’ll work together. Partners.”

  “Sure,” I say, because though I don’t want to be enough of a sucker to believe him, there’s something in me that already does.

  “Relax, Ivan. I’ll get paid at the end of the week, and I swear that you can personally walk me to the grocery store. I will buy soap, toilet paper, bread, milk, juice, those nasty pepperoni sticks you like, some apples…”

  “Okay, okay. I get it. We’ll get groceries.”

  “We will,” he says. “I promise we will.”

  Well, shit. I guess I’m going to have to believe him.

  EIGHT

  Maddie

  “Peter wants us to talk,” Bo says when I pop into the living room on Sunday morning to say I’m leaving. He’s settled into writing for the day; already there are books open all over his desk.

  “Do we have to?”

  “He’s in the shower, so if you leave now, you might be able to miss him. I’ll cover for you.”

  I run into the room and engulf Bo in a huge hug. “Thank you,” I say into his hair.

  I jog up to the road and text Ivan to see what he’s up to. He’s been helping Bo out back with the shed, but we haven’t had any time to hang out together, which is unusual. We agree to meet on the beach.

  “You look happy,” I say when we both reach the root that marks the midway point between our houses.

  “Finally finished those shelves Bo ordered.”

  “He’ll be glad.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty happy with them. What are you up to?” he says.

  “Delivering invitations to the Lazy Days party. I like to get them out early so no one makes plans.”

  He laughs. “Maddie, no one in Bear Harbour or anywhere in a hundred-mile radius is going to make plans for that weekend. Your parties are famous.”

  I like this happy Ivan. The smile that reaches his eyes.

  He takes an invitation from the box I’m carrying and looks at the scene I’ve painted on it. A fire on the beach, people sitting on logs, Ivan and me laughing behind them. When he looks up, his smile covers even more of his face.

  “You painted us.”

  “You like it?”

  Ivan holds the card up and examines it like it’s a famous painting. “I do,” he says, and then he asks, “So this is still going ahead, even with Peter and everything?”

  “Yes.” We’ve held a Lazy Days party in the summer every year since I was eight. No way we’re going to cancel just because we’re all stressing out.

  “Need some help delivering? Des is doing something with Arne today. They went off in Arne’s boat, so I have the van. It’s at the dock in town, I just have to pick it up,” Ivan says.

  “That’s awesome. I was going to walk.”

  Ivan looks at me like I’m crazy, and it’s true. It would take days to deliver all these cards on foot.

  * * *

  Ivan and I spend the morning delivering invitations to everyone in town and even a few people living in the coves and bays nearby. It’s fun spending the morning together. Des’s van has a pretty good music system, even though it’s old, so we take turns plugging in our phones and choosing what to listen to. Ivan has some music from way back when we were kids, which is pretty funny, and people walking by must think we’re weirdos singing along to Fred Penner at the top of our lungs.

  When all the invitations are delivered, Ivan says, “Let’s go to Scottie’s. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  “No way. You just spent ages driving me around. I’ll buy you a drink.”

  He puts the van in Park and reaches past me into the glove compartment. He pulls a twenty out of a tin.

  “I know where Des keeps a bit of cash.” Ivan chuckles and winks at me, which makes me laugh.

  “Nice.”

  We’re still laughing when we go into Scottie’s and walk to the back where the drinks are.

  “Coke or chocolate milk?” Ivan says.

  “Orange juice, please.”

  He reaches into the fridge and pulls out a bottle of juice and a carton of chocolate milk. “Snacks?” he asks.

  “You choose.”

  We wander through the aisles. He points to a bag of salt-and-pepper chips and I nod, and then we go to the candy section.

  “Hey, Willow,” Ivan says to a small girl. She runs down the aisle and throws herself at him, and he grunts when he catches her in his arms. “Wow, you’re getting big,” he says.

  “I am. I weigh thirty-eight pounds, and I bet I’m going to be forty pounds when I turn six.”

  “I bet you are.”

  She holds up a fistful of gummy bears and says, “Grandpa said I could have candy.”

  “Nice grandpa,” says Ivan.

  “Is she your girlfriend?” Willow says, pointing at me.

  “Nah,” Ivan says, and he gives me a funny look. It’s starting to feel super awkward, but then Pedro comes around the counter, looking for Willow.

  “Hey, Ivan,” he says.

  “What are you doing in town, Pedro?”

  “Came to meet Des for some business. Didn’t he tell you?”

  Ivan shakes his head. The way his eyebrows bunch together and his mouth goes thin tells me everything I need to know about how Ivan feels about Pedro.

  “What kind of business?” Ivan’s voice is so heavy it drops onto the ground.

  “Don’t worry, Ivan, it’s fine. Des is going to be working with the Salmon Festival. He asked me to help. That’s all.” He tries to pat Ivan on the shoulder, but Ivan flinches away.

  “Who asked him to help with the Salmon Festival?” says Ivan.

  Pedro shakes his head and shrugs. “No idea. Someone.”

  Willow shoves her way between Ivan and Pedro and thrusts her fist into Pedro’s face. “Grandpa, can I have these ones?”

  “Sure. One fistful, I said.”

  Willow bounces up and down. “Look what I get to have!” she says.

  Ivan gives her a high five before she and Pedro go to pay for the candy, but as soon as she leaves, his face goes flat, like the person inside it walked away.

  “What?” I ask.

  He shakes his head and walks back into his face. This is the Ivan I usually see, but… “Come on, Ivan, what’s up? You don’t like that guy.”

  “It’s nothing. You want candy, or is this enough?”

  The smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

  “Ivan.”

  “It’s nothing,” he says. “Let’s get gummy bears. I love gummy bears.”

  I let him scoop out gummy bears and licorice. He plays with the gummy bears and pulls on the licorice and gulps at his chocolate milk, but I don’t play along, because I feel like I’ve been punched between the eyes.

  That flat face, so quickly controlled.

  Gummy bears, so sweet they put my teeth on edge.

  NINE

  Ivan

  Just once I’d like to believe Des and have that be the right thing to do. Just once. Here he is, back from his outing with Arne, sitting on the sofa and smiling at me over his laptop like I’m a kid who knows nothing.

  “Des,” I shout at him from the doorway.

  “What’re you shouting about?”

  “Pedro. I thought you were done with him.”

  He slurps something.

  “I saw Pedro in town. He told me some bullshit about you being hired to do something for the Salmon Festival.”

  Des slams his computer shut and stands up.

  “Why can’t you ever believe in me?” he asks. He points his finger at my face and says, “Bo asked me to build a stage for him, for out front of the library. For your infor-fucking-mation.”

  I take a step back. “And Pedro? Why’s he here?”

  “To help me.” He sinks b
ack down into the sofa and pulls the computer onto his lap, knocking over a beer bottle in the process.

  He’s drunk. Awesome.

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” I say. I’m still standing in the doorway. Seems like a good place to stay.

  He peers over the top of his screen. “What?”

  I take a deep breath and say again, “Why didn’t you ask me to help you?”

  He stares for a minute, his eyes droopy, then looks back at the screen. He has no answer, just as I thought.

  “You want to know why I don’t believe in you. Well, maybe it’s because you don’t ever believe in me.” I grab my sweater and storm back out the door.

  I stomp down to the beach, heading nowhere in particular, just away from Des. It feels like shit to be duped all the time. What a fucking idiot I am.

  I should leave. Really, really, I should pack up and walk away.

  It’s only because of the way Des cries in his sleep that I don’t. And a memory or two from long ago. Oh, and the small fact that he’d probably burn down the house with himself inside if he was left alone. I shouldn’t let these things keep me here, but like I said, I’m an idiot.

  I don’t see Maddie until her red skirt comes into view and she’s pacing along with me. “Stop,” she says.

  I don’t. I can’t face Maddie right now.

  “Stop.” She pulls on my shoulder and spins me around.

  “What?”

  “What are you upset about?”

  “Mind your own business, Maddie.” I turn away from her and continue along the beach. After ten steps I stop and spin around to face her. “Did Bo ask Des to make a stage for the Salmon Festival?” I ask.

  “I don’t know.”

  I turn away again and keep walking, but this time she calls after me, “Ivan, do you have to be so angry? Can’t you let it go?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?” I shout back at her. I keep going down the beach, and she doesn’t follow me.

  When I’ve walked the beach back and forth three times, I slow down and head over to Maddie’s house. She’s sitting on the deck with two cups steaming next to her.

  “Yes, he did,” she says when I step onto the deck.

  “He did?”

  “Yep. I asked.”

  She hands me a mug and wraps her hands around her own. I sit on the log that makes a railing and take a sip. Sweet hot chocolate fills my mouth. Maddie’s smiling at me because she thinks she’s given me the right answer. I smile back because I don’t feel like explaining. We sit together and drink hot chocolate and watch the waves. I like that about Maddie, how we can sit together and not say anything.

  When I’m done my drink, I put the mug down and say, “What are you doing now?”

  “River’s coming by a bit later to borrow a board. You know he broke the fin on his when he went to Tofino last week.”

  “Surfing. Perfect,” I say.

  Maddie stands and says, “Let’s go get your stuff.”

  I tip my mug up so the chocolate sludge at the bottom slides into my mouth. I don’t want to go home. “How about I just use something here, an old suit of Bo’s or something?”

  “Sure. We’ve got lots of old suits. Even one that used to be Peter’s. Something here’ll fit. And there’s lots of boards.”

  Maddie goes inside and comes back out a couple of minutes later in her bathing suit. She leads me around the house to one of the sheds at the back. The burned one is gone now, and we’ve piled up wood for building a new one, but the stink of fire stirs as we walk past. She pulls open the door to the shed they keep their gear in, and the fug of old wet suits fills the air, replacing the smoke.

  “There must be something in here,” she says.

  The room is filled with wet suits, life jackets, paddles, spray skirts, all hanging on pegs on the walls. She pulls a suit off a peg and tosses it to me. “Try this.”

  There’s no privacy from her in here. I’ve always been careful to wear long shorts when I’m surfing, longer than the boxers I’m wearing right now. Goose bumps rise on my arms as I pull off my clothes. I try to get my wet suit over my legs as quickly as possible, while she’s got her head in a pile of her own gear, but I’m not fast enough. She glances over at me while I’m still half naked. Her intake of breath is audible. She steps forward and runs her hand along an old scar on my thigh. The flesh tingles. She’s about to ask. I can see the question in her eyes, but then River’s face appears in the doorway.

  “Maddie, you coming out? I need a board. Can I use that old one I had the other day?” he says.

  Maddie tosses her hair and lets her hand drop, then grabs her suit from the peg and shoves her legs into it.

  “Hey, Ivan. You guys ready?” River asks.

  I turn around and pull my suit up over my chest. Maddie points to a board on the wall, and I take it down and follow her and River out of the shed and onto the path to the beach.

  She’ll ask her question later, I know it. I’m going to have to think about how I’ll answer.

  TEN

  Maddie

  Surfing is fun. We lie on our boards and wait for the waves. The fog comes in, turning everything soft and slow, and silence flows easy between us. A lone seal joins us in the waves, and we take turns riding them with him. Then Jack and Noah arrive, and it starts to feel crowded, especially because Jack insists on giving Noah surfing tips, which he does by shouting a running commentary with every wave Noah catches. It’s nice of Jack to do this, but it spoils the mood.

  “I’m heading home,” I say to Ivan when I’m tired of listening to Jack. He nods and waves and catches a sweet ride.

  At home, once I’m dry and changed, I head to my bedroom and pull out my paints. It’s late afternoon, and the light bounces off the roof of Peter’s studio and catches the lichen hanging off the trees. A raven rests on a branch, looking out toward the sea until Peter bangs the studio door, and then it caws angrily.

  The painted raven takes shape in front of me, angry, sharp beak turned to me like a knife, ready to strike, but wings like an angel’s, bright and fierce. The light fades, but I keep painting, trying to capture its movement, keep the tension between light and dark, sharp and soft, angel and wild beast. My hand flows, inspired by the fog-suffused light and my afternoon surfing and something else I can’t put my finger on. It’s my best work yet.

  Peter wanders into the room when I’m almost done. He has the scent of resin around him, and that air of coming back from far away that he gets when he’s been working on a new violin. He sits on my bed and watches me. “It’s good to see you working on real paintings, Maddie,” he says.

  I don’t answer, but I do stand back so he can look at what I’ve done. He stares at it, his eyes wandering over each section of the painting. “It’s good,” he says, but there’s no conviction in his voice.

  “But?”

  “But nothing. It’s good.”

  “You can say it,” I say.

  “Here,” he says, pointing to the tail. “There’s something missing.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m working on it.”

  Peter nods. “It’s good though. This is what you should be spending your time on.”

  “I am spending time on it,” I say. I’d like to keep working on the tail, but it’s hard to concentrate with him here.

  “I mean real time, instead of those whatever-you-call-them you’re wasting your time with at the market.”

  “The henna tattoos, do you mean?” My voice has gone chilly.

  “This is what you should be spending your time on, Maddie,” he repeats.

  “I made almost three hundred dollars on Saturday,” I say.

  Peter snorts. “Three hundred dollars? You think that’s enough?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “But that’s not the point, is it? Are you going to spend the rest of your life painting henna tattoos when you could be doing this kind of thing instead?” Peter waves his arm at my painting.

  “Don’t be su
ch a snob, Peter. What’s wrong with tattoos?”

  Peter shakes his head and says, “My God, you’re infuriating, Maddie. You have so much talent. I don’t know why you don’t want to take it somewhere.”

  “I do, just not the way you want me to. Can’t you trust me?”

  “It’s not about trust. It’s about experience, knowledge, being open to learning and new ideas.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Peter, leave me alone. I don’t want to go to university right now. Why can’t you understand that?”

  “You’re too young to truly know what you want, Maddie. When I was your age, I was totally lost. I wish I’d had someone help me out. That’s all we’re trying to do.”

  “Well, that was you,” I say. “This is me, and I know what I want.” This conversation feels so repetitive. How often are we going to have to have it?

  Peter throws his arms up dramatically and leaves the room. I try to go back to my painting, but I can’t concentrate anymore. He’s ruined it for me.

  I take the painting into the living room to see if the light’s better there. There’s only one surfer still at the far end of the bay, too far away for me to see him clearly, but it’s got to be Ivan. He’ll stay there for hours, long past when everyone else goes home. When I see him, I realize what the other element was that kept me painting, the thing sitting in my mind that I couldn’t put my finger on. The scar. The one I saw this afternoon. It’s a bad one, not something a person could easily hide, and it must be from something that happened several years ago, judging by how faded it is. No one knew about it, and I don’t understand why not. How could someone hide an injury like that? Why would they?

  And it makes me wonder what other things Ivan’s hiding. That flat, controlled face I saw this morning. It makes me shiver to think about it, or, rather, to think about why he needs it. What kind of life makes you good at shutting down? What’s going on that I don’t know about? What kind of injury made that scar?

  “Peter tells me I have to look at your painting,” says Bo, interrupting my musing. He stands in front of the painting with his hand on his chin. “He’s right. This is one of your best,” he says.

  “That’s what he said?”