At the Edge of the World

by Jones, Kari;

  Bo catches me a few minutes later as I head into town to buy milk. “Ivan, you look terrible.”

  “I’m hungry.” I don’t know what made me say that, because I don’t want Bo’s help or Maddie’s, for that matter, but maybe it’s because I’ve eaten with them so many mornings over the years. Somehow I know he won’t ask questions.

  “Peter’s making pancakes, I think,” Bo says.

  I take that as an invitation and follow him along the road toward the path down to his house.

  Maddie and Peter have the table on the deck set with pancakes and syrup and steaming coffee already waiting and five plates, like they knew I was coming. My stomach growls loudly as I step onto the deck, and we all laugh.

  “You’d better get started,” Maddie says.

  Nothing has ever tasted as good as these pancakes. I eat five of them before I even look up. When I do, Bo and Peter and Maddie and Alex are all staring at me.

  “When was the last time you ate?” Peter says with a laugh.

  I run the last piece of pancake through the syrup on my plate and shrug.

  “When’s Des coming back?” asks Bo.

  It’s hard to tell what he knows from the way he speaks, how he even knows Des is gone, so I simply say, “He’ll be back by Friday.”

  “Where’d he go?” asks Peter.

  “A delivery,” I say. Maddie catches my eye, and we both look away quickly.

  No one talks for a minute; then Peter says, “Maddie, pass the marmalade, please.”

  As she does, she says, “Ivan, want to come over to Noah’s house with me today? I promised his mom I’d give her some more help with her garden.”

  “I thought about surfing,” I say, though I’d mostly thought about spending the day in bed. I’m not sure I’m up for spending the day with Maddie.

  “We can do both,” she says.

  “Well, I should probably also spend some time cleaning up my house. It’s kind of a disaster.”

  “What did you do all day yesterday? I went looking for you,” she says.

  I shrug. “Spent the day in bed.”

  She pinches her lip with her teeth and creases her forehead, but doesn’t say anything more.

  Bo pushes back his chair and says, “I’m going to start building the new shed today. I was hoping you and Des would have time to help, Ivan, but I need to get some stuff organized first.”

  “I will, for sure, and Des, he will too, when he gets back,” I say. Maddie stares at me but doesn’t say anything.

  “All right, then, let’s get this day started,” Bo says, and he and Peter and Alex all take their plates and head into the house. Maddie plops the second half of her last pancake onto my plate and holds up the syrup. “More?”

  I nod. “Thanks, Maddie.”

  She smiles.

  “I mean for not saying anything to Bo and Peter.”

  She leans over until I can’t avoid looking her in the eye, then says, “I told you I wouldn’t, didn’t I?”

  “But thank you anyway.”

  We both chew for a bit, and then she says, “They’re not stupid, you know. They’ll figure out that something’s up.”

  It makes me laugh to hear that. How many years have I been living this life without anyone noticing? It’s not me they’re noticing; it’s Maddie. They’re tuned to her troubles, not mine. And I know I can’t have it both ways: I can’t tell everybody to butt out and also want them to help me.

  “They both just shrugged off the fact that I said my house is a total disaster and I spent the entire day in bed yesterday and Des is not around to help with the shed.”

  Maddie’s face puffs up and goes all blotchy, and her voice cracks as she says, “But Ivan, you work so hard at not letting anyone know what’s going on with you. How could they?”

  “Yeah. But still…”

  “Sometimes you wish they did?”

  “It’s just…sometimes I wonder if I’m really that good at hiding things?”

  Her eyes tear up as she says, “Yeah.”

  “Bo and Peter—and everyone else around here, including you—have ignored all kinds of things,” I say. Even though I’ve just eaten a whole pile of delicious pancakes, I am still in a pissy mood.

  “Yes,” she says in a tiny voice. “I know.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Maddie

  The sky clouds over when Ivan says the words including you, and I shiver. How can he be so cruel?

  He eats the last of the pancake, looks at me like he thinks I’m going to bite him, says, “I’m sorry” and leaves. I put my head down on the table and cry. Again. All I seem to be doing these days is crying.

  A long walk along the beach helps clear my mind, solidify some ideas. I’m gone a long time, and when I get back, I head over to the studio.

  “There you are. Can I talk to you for a sec? And Bo,” I say.

  “I’ll be right in,” Peter says.

  Bo’s in the living room at his desk. He’s been working for hours on an article about the impact of sea-otter populations on kelp harvesting. “Bo, I have something to tell you. Peter’s on his way in.” He swivels around in his chair and pulls down his glasses. When Peter joins us a second later, I take a deep breath and say, “I’ve decided to go to Emily Carr.”

  “You have?” Bo asks.

  “Yep. I have.”

  “It wasn’t because I pressured you so hard, was it, Maddie? I’d feel bad if it was,” Peter says, though I’m not sure I believe him.

  “No, I decided it’s the best thing to do after all, the best way to learn.”

  Peter and Bo both beam at me like I’ve just told them they’ve won the lottery. Peter reaches out and pulls me and Bo into a hug. “We’ll have to let them know right away and sort out a residence.”

  “I’d like to live off campus,” I say.

  Peter opens his mouth to object. I know what he’s going to say: Vancouver’s a big, expensive city, and I don’t know anyone there, and it’s not safe, so I quickly add, “With Ivan.”

  “Ivan’s going to Vancouver?”

  “Yes.” I haven’t asked him yet, but I’m sure he will. Who wouldn’t want to get away from the crazy situation he’s in?

  “That’s good. We’ve been worried about him.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Known what?” Peter asks.

  “That—” But then I think, What do they know? Maybe they don’t know as much as they think they do. “That Des and Ivan need help.”

  “A long time, Maddie.”

  I sit with that for a minute, watching the dust motes swirl in the late-afternoon sun. The sense of relief I just felt is being replaced by something else, and it takes me a minute to understand that it’s disappointment.

  My voice is shaky when I say, “If you knew, how come you didn’t do anything?”

  Bo closes the lid of his computer and turns to me before he says, “Maddie, family troubles are hard to interfere with. Peter and I have always tried to support both Des and Ivan in any way we can.” He sweeps his hand around the room, and my eye follows his arm. “Do you think we really need this much shelving? And I’m pretty sure either Peter or I could have cut all that wood last year. And our grocery bills would be a lot smaller if Ivan didn’t eat with us so often. We’ve suggested Des get some professional help, but he always shrugs off the idea. Early on we debated getting social services involved, but we thought Ivan might be taken away, not just from Des, but from all of us. We decided the best thing to do was just keep an eye on them and help where we could.”

  We sit in silence for a long time while I think about what he’s said. So they know at least some of what’s going on. But do they know how much Ivan takes care of Des? How bad it gets?

  * * *

  Ivan acted like he didn’t want to see me this morning, but I’m on a mission, and I won’t give up.

  I walk up the path just as he’s coming the other way from the forest behind his house. His hair has sticks in it,
and his pants have what looks like sawdust in a streak down the leg.

  “What have you been up to?” I ask.

  He shrugs his usual noncommittal shrug and tries to turn me down toward the beach, but I sidestep him and say, “Ivan, can we go inside? I want to talk.”

  “Let’s go to the beach.”

  I know he wants to get me away from his house so I won’t see the state it’s in, but that’s part of my plan, so I say, “Let me in. I really have to pee.”

  He frowns, and for a second I think he’s going to tell me to pee in the woods, but then he reaches for the door and pushes it open.

  It’s worse than I thought it would be. Somehow I’d imagined what my house would be like if someone threw stuff around, but I’d forgotten to factor in the years of neglect Ivan’s house has suffered. When I’ve been here recently, I’ve been so preoccupied by other things that I didn’t really look around.

  “You said it was a mess, but this is something else,” I say. The garbage overflows the can, dirty dishes fill the sink and the smell of the unwashed dishes hangs in the air. “Jeez, Ivan.”

  He shrugs again. Super communicative today. He points down the hallway, and I pick my way past piles of stuff to the door. As soon as I open it, I regret it. The smell of mold hits me before the stink of dirty clothes, and whatever’s stuck in the sink makes my stomach lurch. I pee as quickly as I can into the filthy toilet and make my way back to the living room, where Ivan has already picked up some of the papers lying around.

  I take a good look around the room. When I was little, I used to come here sometimes with Peter. He and Ivan’s mom were friends, and he’d bring me here to play when he came for coffee. I’m sure there were curtains on the windows then.

  “You used to have curtains. White with yellow flowers,” I say.

  “Sunflowers. Yeah, we did.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “That was years ago,” says Ivan.

  “When your mom was here.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  He never talks about his mom. Never. I always wondered about that, but one day when I asked why he never spoke about her, he said he tried writing to her when he was little, and she never responded. I can only imagine how much that would hurt.

  There used to be framed pictures on the walls, bright, like the curtains, but now there are yellowing maps stuck into the plaster with thumbtacks.

  “That’s a lot of maps,” I say.

  “Charts,” Ivan corrects me, and he’s right. They’re charts of the islands. Someone, probably Des, has made notes all over them.

  “What are the red dots?”

  “Red dots are creeks where the water’s not brackish, blue are navigable beaches, yellow means there’s usually surf, so coming off the beach can be tricky, and green shows hidden rocks.”

  “I’m impressed. You guys know a lot about the area. I bet Bo would love to see these.”

  I walk to the wall to look more closely, but Ivan takes my hand and says, “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait. There’s something I want to say.”

  He looks scared now as he waits for me to speak. I don’t know how he’ll react to my plan, so I just come out and say it. “Come to Vancouver with me.”

  The startled-deer look grows wilder, so I say, “I’ll go to Emily Carr like everyone wants me to, and you can get a job or study or something. We can live together in a crappy apartment. It’ll be so awesome—” I stop, because his face looks like he just heard someone he loves has died.

  “It would just be for a little while, until Des sorts himself out. Then you could come back if you want.”

  Ivan stares at me, but his eyes are not seeing me at all. They’re a thousand miles away, and I’m not even sure he’s heard what I said.

  “Say something.” I reach out my hand, but he doesn’t take it, so I grab his, and even then his hand is limp, like he doesn’t realize I’m holding it.

  “Is it because the house is such a mess?” he says.

  “No, of course not. It’s not that at all. Well, maybe a little bit.”

  “So…you’ve told Bo then. Or Peter.”

  It’s terrible to look at the face of a person who thinks they’ve been betrayed. I pull my hand back, and my voice is barely a whisper when I say, “I haven’t said anything they didn’t already know.”

  “So what do they know?”

  “That you and Des have difficulties. That’s all—I swear.”

  He turns away then and walks out of the room. I want to follow. My whole body wants to follow, except my feet won’t move. It is wrong. All wrong. And I don’t know why. The house is a disaster, and so is Des. Ivan can’t stay here—he can’t. My feet finally unglue from the floor and allow me to follow him. He’s at the sink, running water.

  “I can tidy the house,” he says, not looking up from the sink.

  “Ivan…it’s not the house…” I don’t know what else to say.

  “Just go, Maddie.”

  Again my feet stick to the floor as my mind scrambles around, looking for something to hold on to, some raft to cling to. But he turns the tap up so the water’s loud, and he slams dishes back and forth. After watching him for a minute, I go.

  This is the part I don’t understand: why he will never leave.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Ivan

  Maddie thinks she can fix everything by getting me to move out. Like not being here would somehow make everything okay. Des would solve his problems and start a new life, and we’d have a great relationship. We’d be partners in a carpentry company. We’d build beautiful bed frames and doors and shelves, and we’d sip beer together while making jokes, and there’d always be money for groceries. He’d be good at taking care of himself, of staying out of trouble. On stormy days we’d spend hours surfing. Pedro would stop pressuring Des, and little Willow would grow up happy and free. Violins would sound. The sun would shine.

  Nobody gets it at all. Not even Maddie. And if she doesn’t get it, no one will.

  The water in the sink is hot, but it cools fast as it lands on my shirt, and soon I’m standing at the sink shivering, so I take my shirt off and use it as a rag to wipe down the counters and cupboard doors. Once the doors are clean, I vacuum the floor, then take out the garbage and put a new bag in the garbage can. The place still smells of old food, so I root around in the recycling until I find a jar to rinse out, then reach out the window and pick a few tendrils of honeysuckle and put them in the jar.

  I’m on a roll, so I clean up the living room, even dusting the windowsills and under the carpet. Then I gather the piles of newspaper stacked up on the dining-room table and throw them into a recycling bin. We don’t own a tablecloth, so I make a mental note to buy one.

  The worst is the bathroom, but I’m not about to stop now. It feels like it takes hours to scrub the walls and wash out the sink and the tub and the toilet, but it looks pretty good when it’s done, and I add soap and new towels to my list.

  Upstairs, I pull all the sheets off both beds and make them up new, then dust and vacuum and tidy until I’m so tired I’m dragging my butt around. When I’m done, I open the windows to let in some fresh air, and then I pull off the rest of my clothes and stand in the shower, letting the hot water steam away what’s left of my anger.

  Fuck Maddie and Bo and Peter. What gives them the right to try and run my life? How come they’re never there when Des gets so drunk he can’t take care of himself? Or when he loses yet another job? Or gets caught up with Pedro? Or spends days and days in bed not eating? Or almost burns the house down? They don’t even know about that. I don’t need their help. Never have. I’m not sure which is worse. No one knowing, or Maddie and her family interfering. Both feel shitty.

  The water runs over me, down my shoulders and across my back. It feels good. When there’s no more hot water, I turn off the tap and reach for a towel, but there isn’t one. They’re all sitting in a pile beside the washing machine. And there’s no
one for me to call to bring me one.

  * * *

  When Des finally returns at the end of the week, he finds the house clean and smelling good. There’s toilet paper on the roll in the bathroom, soap at the sink and a tablecloth on the table.

  “I guess you don’t need me at all, do you?” he says as he slips off his boots in the mudroom. “Got groceries too?”

  He’s right. I don’t need him. “There’s a fridge full.”

  “And beer?”

  “Fuck off.”

  He clenches his face tight and stops himself from hitting me. I can tell. I’ve seen the signs before. He’s drunk, at least a little bit. He goes away, and when he returns he’s drunk.

  “I need a drink,” he says, and he picks up his boot to pull back onto his foot.

  “Whatever.” I slip my flip-flops on and head out the door ahead of him.

  * * *

  I walk over to Jack’s. Noah’s already there, and the three of us take out longboards for a while, then soak in the hot tub. Jack’s mom offers me dinner, and afterward Noah and I head to the beach for a while before it gets too dark. The surf’s crap, but that’s okay. We just sit on the sand and watch the waves come in.

  I don’t move when Jack walks down the beach toward us, though I’m surprised to see him.

  “I thought your mom wanted you to stay home this evening,” I say.

  “You better come with me.” His eyes slide over Noah, and he doesn’t explain. There’s something in his voice, a tightness that makes me sit up.

  “What’s happened?”

  Jack’s eyes slide over Noah again, and he doesn’t say anything, so I say, “Just tell me.”

  “It’s Des. He’s been beaten up. Bad. You’d better come.”

  Noah and I follow Jack up the path to the road, where Jack starts walking fast. “I found him when I was on my way to visit my uncle,” he says.

  “Found him?” asks Noah.

  Jack doesn’t answer until we come to a bend in the road where the grass grows tall and an apple tree casts shadows on the ground. Des is sitting in the grass, covered in blood and vomit, groaning.