Cleo said, Che and Cliff! But she could not stop, now. It was too late. The air was blowing through her, she had no body of her own, and she could not stop.
She tells an abridged version of the story to Cliff and Ben, Cleo jumping in occasionally. She leaves out the part about leaving Cliff and Che behind. Why? She doesn’t know.
Cleo says: That’s why we were all taken so far away from Butterfly Lake. Myrna Pollard kept Che, but Mandalay ended up in a sort of reform school, didn’t you, Mandalay?
It wasn’t really, Mandalay says. Kind of a group home. All of the other girls were cutters. It was a pretty sad place.
And I went to live with the Giesbrechts, who had a foster home in Abbotsford, a farm, really, that was for troubled youth.
And Cliff, too? Ben asks.
Cliff came later, Cleo says.
But Cliff is asking now: Where was I, when you abducted Ben? I don’t remember this. Did you abduct me too?
She looks at Cleo. She has left that part of the story out, but Cliff has picked up on the gap, anyway.
Cleo doesn’t meet her eye. Mandalay says, of course, Cliff. You should remember. I said run! And you just ran, on your little seven-year-old legs. You just ran. You beat Cleo to the car. It was amazing. Don’t you remember it?
Cleo is shaking her head, but she won’t contradict Mandalay. Cliff is smiling. It’s a tour-de-force. Mandalay didn’t know she had it in her.
How far did you get? Ben asks, admiringly.
Not far. She had thought she knew the way to Knucklehead, but she hadn’t ever driven it. She’d missed the turn, had gone down a dead-end road. There had been sirens, pretty quickly, and the police — the same ones, again. She hadn’t tried to run; the spirit of Faye Dunaway had left her suddenly. She’d stopped the car and got out and cried, and they’d been pretty gentle with her.
Cleo says, And then they put all of us in the police car, and one of the cops drove Crystal’s car back to the house.
Cliff says, I think I remember being in the back of the cop car.
Yes, Cleo says.
Mandalay remembers, now, the howls Cleo made when Bodhi was removed from her arms, back at the school: a groaning howl, in the voice of a mature woman. She remembers something about how Cliff came to be at the Giesbrecht’s with Cleo, some story about that.
What they all can’t forgive Crystal for, she thinks: not having that will, that unselfishness, that fierce maternal instinct or whatever it is, that has possessed Cleo. But if it is possession that is required, that unpicking and restitching of the self, who can be expected to undergo it, to succumb to it, to be capable of it?
It’s in that moment, emerging from the ammoniac-smelling path into the clearing around the house, that Mandalay realizes what even her cells have been trying to tell her for the past week.
BEN/BODHI has travelled through France and Turkey and Vietnam and Cambodia. He plays soccer for fun and snowboards and has a bicycle and an old Saab that he loads up with friends’ furniture on weekends. He has never tree-planted but has friends who have. He plays in a band and he has read The Brothers Karamazov and A Farewell to Arms and his favourite movie is Reservoir Dogs. He likes micro-brewery beer and punk music and doesn’t like celery. He has a wet suit and he has slept with at least two girls.
His teeth are very white and straight, unlike Mandalay’s or Cliff’s, or even Cleo’s.
He used to collect pop cans, beer cans, when he was little. If he saw a can on the ground he would bring it to his parents, or his nanny.
His nanny.
A procession of nannies, he said. French girls in their late teens, early twenties. They lived in the suite over the garage.
Ben/Bodhi is taller than all of the rest of them, his legs and arms especially longer in proportion to his body. He has probably never had a bad haircut.
He has a scar on his upper lip, left side, from trying to skateboard down the front steps when he was nine.
He had probably always worn a bike helmet and had been buckled into a regulation car seat. He had bookcases full of books and he had riding lessons and nobody ever slapped him or shouted at him.
Mandalay or Cleo had always carried him around, except for when he was at Myrna Pollard’s. They had known everything about him, everything he liked and disliked, what he was afraid of, what would make him laugh until he couldn’t breathe.
He had nannies. She thinks about the nannies, now: they would have been girls her own age. Lying beside Ben, now, under the aspens, at the edge of the rushes, she feels it as a new hurt. Girls her own age, but not her. She had not been allowed to see him.
His parents were lawyers and in their early forties when they adopted him. They couldn’t have kids. Then they got Bodhi, a little golden toddler not talking yet, not toilet trained. He could be theirs.
Or so Cleo imagines.
They were intelligent and they had worked through all of their shit. But their arms, maybe just the woman’s arms, felt empty. They were sad at seeing families in the park. Maybe the wife cried every month when she got her period. Maybe she’d had an abortion when she was young and wondered. But she’d been a student from a poor family on a scholarship; she’d had to choose. Or maybe she thought she’d still have good eggs after she got established in her career and then it took longer and she didn’t. Or maybe it was him, mumps when he was fourteen, or something. In a doctor’s office with a little bottle and a Penthouse, the microscope slide. Swimming. Not enough.
Cleo had known above everything else that she wanted children. If Trent had been infertile she’d have got a donor. If Trent had been infertile she wouldn’t be with him and that was the truth. They wouldn’t have made it the first year. She was pregnant with Olivia by the time she had known Trent a year.
She had not been able to see Bodhi, the social worker had told her, because she was a flight risk: because she and Mandalay had tried to abduct Bodhi and couldn’t be trusted. But she knows, she has always known, that it was because his adoptive parents wanted to believe that he was theirs.
Ben’s adopted parents had been together a long time, maybe. (Mandalay would know if this was true.) They had been together for years. They were still passionate and they knew each other’s bodies so well. They worked too hard but they sometimes talked about their cases before they fell asleep. On the weekends they went to Granville Island and bought figs and goat cheese. They cooked together, or he cooked, and they had really interesting new dishes. They went on holiday and held hands on the beach. For birthdays they always knew what to give each other, a new camera lens or a hammered silver bowl or windsurfing lessons. They had everything but not a child. They had blond Danish furniture and a Volvo but no child.
Ben woke in the night and cried and they were both wrecked from work. Or she finally went and lifted him out of the new hand-turned birch crib and brought him into their bed, and the husband got up with sharp movements and went to sleep on the couch. The spare room. Or maybe the other way around. Or she took some leave, maybe her firm was very progressive that way, and took the child out in the Perego Peg and bought toys at the expensive little shop in the village, a maze of coloured wires and wooden beads, wooden puzzles from Germany with prints of intelligent, logical-looking rabbits, and a gaudy, rainbow-coloured plastic Fisher-Price xylophone, because who hadn’t had one of those as a kid? And she sat on the floor with him for hours, just watching him, because he was so beautiful and fascinating and hers, though after a few months of it, of watching him and banana ground into everything and not being able to go for a jog or haircut until her husband got home, she’d had enough. She was glad to go back to work.
They had not witnessed his first words or steps, but they saw him grow up into a person, like them and not like them. They had thoughtful conversations about discipline and preschool and music lessons and French immersion, and if Bodhi was a name that would set him apart too much, draw attention to him in the wrong ways. They dressed him in tiny checked shirts and cords from baby bo
utiques which they bought too big at first because they couldn’t get their heads around how small he was.
They gave him his first bath together, because she was scared: The baby cried, wailed really, at the water, the shampoo; he wouldn’t sit in the tub, but fought and tried to climb out and slipped, banged his head, and howled so loudly that they couldn’t think, and the husband just wrapped a towel around him and lifted him out, shampoo still in his hair, and held him against his chest until he’d stopped, though his shuddering sobs went on for a long time. Clearly he was terrified of the bathtub.
The child didn’t want to touch them; he didn’t like them, and because of their sleep deprivation they just looked at each other and thought, what have we done?
And what have we done might or might not surface again and again. It would depend on what sort of people they were. It would depend on how stable their little boat had been before they had brought in this third person, more than on the child himself.
There were times when he brought them an egg-shaped stone, at the beach, or when he looked up from his crayoning and said, this is a backpack for a hippopotamus, or looked around at them when they were all watching a street entertainer in Paris and just grinned, and they felt their chests explode.
There was the first time he came to her, or maybe him, for a cuddle, on his own, and nestled in, and maybe fell asleep, and they knew that he had claimed them.
Maybe the nanny because he would be better off in his own home, he’d had enough change. Because they wanted him to be bilingual, they wanted him to go to the Montessori preschool and kindergym. Or because she would stay late, they both worked long hours, and would do some housework so it was more economical, really, in the long run.
The nannies were French girls who wanted to see another part of the world: They were chic and saucy with the husband, pragmatic, promiscuous, socialist, opinionated. They met other nannies in the parks and spoke in French. They did not like to cook or clean or look after children more than any other twenty-year-olds, but they liked pushing strollers in a leisurely way through Point Grey. They liked being in charge of their own time. They liked bossing around their young charges. When they left they were demonstrative, weeping, kissing, or angry, voluble, their hands slicing the air. (A succession of strangers had looked after him, when it could have been her. But his parents had looked after him, had loved him too. She understands that.)
Bodhi/Ben falls in love with them but learns not to get too attached. He learns it is better not to be too attached. He learns to let go.
He wears a uniform to school, navy shorts or trousers and a grey long-sleeved knit shirt with a collar and placket: a Rugby shirt. His parents go to all of the parent events. Their friends are there too. They walk home together in the dusk, the wet streets, the child between them in his navy duffle coat, holding both their hands, chattering about the teachers. He says things that they recognize as foreign, not coming from them or the French nannies, but the teachers, and they feel the first pang: He is not all theirs. But they are okay with that because they are liberal people and it is a very good school.
This is the school Cleo will pass on the Number Four bus on her way to the university each day. She will see the groups of boys in their navy trousers, their grey shirts, their blazers and caps. One of them will be Bodhi, but she will not suspect that.
Sometimes groups of these uniformed boys will get on the bus she’s riding, on field trips, maybe, to the anthropology museum. Maybe Ben brushes by Cleo, in the aisle. Maybe he says excuse me or sits in the seat next to her. She will not suspect: In her mind, at this time, Bodhi is forever a year-and-a-half old, and lost.
Because this school is expensive and prestigious, it might be very progressive, there might not be gold stars on spelling tests, arithmetic, maps. But there might. It might be very traditional. A lot of the students would be privileged and the standards would be high. Ben might not seem especially bright. He might struggle to do fractions. He might be mischievous, be part of a group that sets a wastepaper bin on fire. His parents called to the headmaster’s office. Wondering maybe what is in the package that is their son, what genetic proclivities, what time bombs. Will he fall into addiction, will he be limited intellectually, will he be a boy who never thinks about consequences, impulsive, destructive?
This is what Cleo knows about Bodhi. That he is sociable, good at sports, well-read for his age, sure of himself. He is kind and appears to think things through, not react. He has a sense of humour, by which she means not that he’s always joking or teasing, like Trent, but that he has distance from things, that he sees the absurdity in things. That he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
That he likes to play Nintendo too much, that he is sometimes more boy than man, that he drinks too much beer and forgets his wallet. That he is not sensitive but not afraid. That he is not afraid to take risks with his heart, to be wrong, to try, to reach out.
That he is okay. He has grown up fine.
Salmon Returning
THEY WERE LYING, those girls. Cliff knows that. He can remember, he wasn’t that young. He can’t remember much, but he remembers two things: sitting in the back of the police car, and running after Cleo and Mandalay, running after their mom’s car as it drove away. Che running beside him, swearing: Stop the car, you cunts! Che had a filthy mouth for a ten-year-old, everyone said. Even in his dreams, sometimes, he’s running after that car, watching it disappear into the cedars.
They are lying and he sees why but he doesn’t want them to. He wants things clean and sharp. He has to build his whole life now from the start and he wants everything to be clean and clear and true.
People think they lie because they love you and maybe this is true but it is also true that the lying puts you in a box. It cuts off some of the world and puts you in a box. How is that a good thing?
He will not lie. Even if he has kids someday, which it looks like he won’t, he will not lie. He won’t go out of his way to be cruel, but he will tell them the truth, even if it makes them hate him.
He says, now: I don’t want a party.
They are all on the deck. The weather has turned hot again. A last kick of the can, Darrell says. The air is hot to breathe and tastes of toast: fires, somewhere. It’s comfortable only in the morning and evening, when the lake and land breezes rise.
Cleo has said, only Cleo remembers, and she has said: It’s Cliff’s birthday this week. Of course Mandalay has picked it up. Let’s have a party. And now everyone is planning it and he doesn’t want a party.
It’s the last thing I want, he says. A birthday party. It’s the last thing I want.
Okay, okay, Crystal says. You don’t have to have a party. Everyone is suddenly sad. His fault.
Then Darrell says: Let’s just have a party anyway. Can we do that? Not a birthday party. Just a reunion party. A coming back together party.
Crystal brightening up then. She’s like a kid, Crystal, sometimes. Not always, though: that’s the tricky thing. Darrell seems to get that, but not the others.
What would you call Darrell? He thinks not stepfather: that’s for if you are raised by someone. Not dad, no. Mr. Giesbrecht had wanted him to call him dad but he wouldn’t. Cleo had said, just do it, but he wouldn’t.
In some countries, he’s seen this on TV, older male friends, even if they are not family members, are called uncle. And women are called auntie. He likes this idea but it wouldn’t work here. He couldn’t really call Darrell uncle, could he? That would be confusing.
Cliff is an uncle, to Sam and Olivia. He had not thought about that before, but living with them for a few weeks, he has got to know them and he has figured out some things. For one, it’s maybe better to be an uncle than a parent. He doesn’t care what Sam or Olivia do, as long as they don’t hurt themselves. So immediately that improves things. Though already he can see things he would do differently if he were a parent. He would not keep all of the toys and the TV in the basement room, for one. He’d make a hidd
en room in the basement where an adult could go to be quiet, that’s for sure. But he’d take that big room upstairs, with the leather couches, where the kids aren’t supposed to play, where nobody goes all day, and he’d put something washable on the floor, something like they have in kitchens but maybe softer, and he’d hang paper all over the walls, maybe chalkboards.
At his work, in the main office where they all have their cubbies, there’s a wall that’s painted in chalkboard paint, the whole wall. He had not understood it, had wondered where they had got a chalkboard that big, but Nicki had said: It’s just paint, Cliff. You can make anything into a chalkboard.
He’d get some of that paint and paint a wall with it and just let the kids go to town. He’d make a kitchen, kid-height, with running water but maybe not a working stove. He’d dig up the yard and let them play in the dirt. Cleo should do that: should dig up some of that lawn and just let them play in the dirt. Too many cats, she’d say, but the cats should be inside anyway. They don’t get it about cars and they kill too many birds. He keeps Sophie inside, at Cleo’s.
He doesn’t know if little kids should have a cat. Olivia’s fine, she gets it, but Sam wants to squeeze the hell out of Sophie.
He hopes that Trent is looking after Sophie. Cleo told him he had to. He’s not sure that Trent will.
If he ever has kids, he will not be like Trent, who says, I’m tired. Go off and play now. Though that at least is not lying. Now he has to think about it, because Trent doesn’t lie to be nice, but maybe he should. Trent will say, this steak is tough, or, I don’t like cauliflower, or, I really dislike this new cushion. While Cleo, he sees, Cleo pretends things all day long: She pretends that she wants to read Scuppers the Sailor Dog again, that she isn’t tired, that she doesn’t want to just lie down and read her own book. He can see that. But what would happen if she didn’t?
Maybe he had just better decide right now that he will never have kids. Like Mandalay. Mandalay seems to have decided that. Mandalay can do and say what she likes, it seems.
What is Going to Happen Next Page 25
