But he has started to think now about how Mandalay knows people in Butterfly Lake and how everyone here knows Che (and claims to remember him). And he has to wonder — not being ungrateful to Cleo, just wondering — if maybe, if he’d been left where he was, not taken to the Giesbrecht’s, he might have been able to come back home. Because he had not known before that Crystal was living here, that she had left the hospital and had come back and was living here with Darrell, all that time.
He can see that Crystal would not have been the most organized parent. She wouldn’t. But he would have grown up here, and would have had Mandalay and Che, and the forest, and the water. Maybe it would have been better and maybe it wouldn’t, but it would have been his. His own.
IT’S A PLACE THAT HAS been logged, and logged again, and flooded. Once there had been a lush valley with a river running through it and nine-hundred-year-old cedars creating, in their arched red boles and roots, their own microclimate. Streams had descended the thick forest, spawning streams to which salmon had returned year after year for millennia. The forest had comprised not only cedar but maple and spruce, hazel and beech and fir, salal and swordfern and moss thick enough to muffle any sound. Fourteen varieties of fish had navigated the river and streams, and a dozen species of large mammal — black bears and grizzly, cougar and bobcat, fisher and mink and muskrat and otter, hare and white-tail deer and elk and moose — as well as dozens more of smaller mammals and amphibians. And birds! Bald eagle, osprey, heron, dipper. Several species of duck. And of the small singing forest birds.
It was logged at the last turn of the century, and then logged again with bigger equipment through the forties and fifties. In the sixties the river had been dammed at Butterfly Falls, the narrow neck of the valley, named for both the many species of butterfly that passed through the gap to their summer breeding grounds — and the three species endemic to the valley — and also for the shape of the falls, the gauzy wings of water that fanned out across the granite pincers at the valley’s end. The valley had been flooded to make a hydroelectric dam. Technically, few species had been lost with the flooding. The government had commissioned studies. Most of the animals had disappeared with the loss of their habitat — the forest and streams. There had been only a great bowl of stumps and fireweed left, and a river from which most of the fish had already been extirpated — their spawning streams scoured out by the rains, after the clearcutting.
Then a little community had grown up along the lakeshore, at the point where the land was flat enough to be accessible — a community of sawmill workers and some would-be homesteaders who, in the sixties and early seventies, obtained grants of crown land on what was left of the logged-out slopes above the lake. For a decade or two the community had eked out a living, logging and milling the few remaining almost inaccessible stands of trees, trying to grow crops in the washed-out soil, picking blackberries and blueberries and mushrooms.
Then the economy had gone bad, in the early eighties, and people had moved away — moved back to Powell River or to Vancouver, or the oilfields. Cabins and mobile homes had been left derelict. The forest had begun to grow back. Fish ladders built in the seventies had finally started to make a difference, the salmon finally returning. With the salmon and forest, other wildlife had begun to reappear.
There is lots of forest now: The salmon are carried from the streams into the forest by bears and eagles and other predators and scavengers, and the nutrients of the bodies enrich the soil. But none of the trees are older than forty years, and there are nowhere near as many fish as there once were. They have started to return to spawn in those streams that have the right flow, the right kind of gravel bed, but it will never be the same. It has revived. It will never be the same.
Deal
IT’S HOT IN THE CAR. The air conditioner doesn’t seem to be coming on, and Cleo remembers, faintly, Trent telling her to do something — was she to take it to the shop, or fill something with some fluid? — something about the air conditioning, but she isn’t sure. The details elude her, small movements on the periphery of her memory. Worry over Trent’s displeasure with her settles in her mind, further clutter. He’ll be angry; he’ll say, I did tell you. Why hadn’t she done whatever it was? There must have been a reason, but she can’t quite remember that, either. Anyway, maybe he could have done it himself? Defences stack up. It was not exactly easy for her to get the car to a shop, in Butterfly Lake, with two small children.
She winds down the window, but Olivia roars: The wind hurts her ears. Well then, Cleo says, you’ll have to put up with being hot. Sam, at least, has fallen asleep. She should have taken the jacket off him, though. His face, when she glances in the rear-view mirror, is red and moist-looking, his hair damp. He’ll be so uncomfortable, so cranky when he wakes. But he is sleeping, so she won’t wake him now.
She sees, on one of her glances, Olivia reaching across to shake Sam’s seat. Don’t you dare, she says, hissing it between her teeth. Don’t you dare!
What? Olivia asks. I was just.
Don’t you dare wake him up.
I’m so hot, Olivia says. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.
We are on our way home, Cleo says. But Olivia’s misery fills up the car, beating at Cleo. She thinks of the couple she had overheard in the school playground, talking about how they had bicycled through France with their two little girls, aged one and three. How could that be done? She can’t imagine it. More placid children? Perhaps the husband, Greg, took on the kids more, or more enthusiastically: She remembers him putting the younger child into her jacket, adeptly, with good humour. Of course, that wasn’t evidence that he was always helpful. Trent tends to pay a lot more attention to the kids at other people’s houses. People that know them probably think he is a pretty hands-on dad, pretty easygoing.
She rolls down her window again, gets a few kilometres of fresh air before Olivia’s howl. I’m so thirsty, Olivia moans. She must look for somewhere to stop. Gas station, maybe. She doesn’t remember seeing one along this stretch of highway but she doesn’t know the new road that well. She doesn’t really have a sense of where she is, or what is up ahead.
I know, I know, she says, soothingly. I’ll stop soon, I promise. She should have bought more to drink. She had intended to, had even put a case of bottled water in the cart at the grocery store, but Mandalay had said, you don’t need that; you can fill some bottles from the tap. Of course she had forgotten to do that, in the scrum of packing up.
Let’s sing, she says, and starts in: Skinnamarinky dinky dink, but the words trail off feebly and Olivia says, Not now, you’re hurting my brain.
Then the blue sign, the silhouette of plate and pump, and the exit, the largish painted clapboard building blooming into view just off the road. There are a couple of other vehicles in the parking lot, a minivan and a newish sedan. It should be okay to stop. In the store there is an ATM, yes, and big cooler cases of drinks.
Can I have anything I want?
Anything, she says, feeling expansive, wise. Sam is groggy and hot and limp. She’d have liked to have left him in the car, with a window cracked — she parked in the shade — but since that time at the convenience store in Abbotsford, she has been afraid to do that. She has to sit him on the restroom floor so that she can use the toilet. How unhygienic is that? she says to him. Just don’t lick the floor. She buys cold bottled water and iced tea and chips and cookies. Anything to distract Olivia, to have a couple of hours of uninterrupted driving.
Outside are a picnic table and a path leading through the aspens and cottonwoods. She can hear the river nearby, the cool gurgle of it. Hear that? she asks Olivia. What do you think that is?
River, Olivia says. Let’s go down and see it. Do you hear the river, Sam?
They walk down the path. There are others down there, on the river’s gravelly shore: an older couple, a couple of boys around ten or twelve with their father. They’re all wading, paddling. Of course Olivia wants to go in.
; You’ll have to swim in your panties, Cleo says. I’m not going back to the car for your suit.
For once Olivia doesn’t argue, but strips off her pants and T-shirt, her shoes, and wades in. Don’t go past your waist, Cleo says. She strips Sam down, holds his hands as he steps into the water, gingerly on the stones. His round little bum looks red; his diaper is soaking. He wants to walk in further, to follow Olivia. She levers off her own runners and socks, off-balance while she tries to hold Sam up at the same time. A stork, she is. Flamingo.
The man with the two sons is playing with them, chasing and splashing, and laughing in the river, further out. They’re like three boys together, she thinks. Hard to imagine Trent like that, into the game, unselfconscious.
Olivia is up to her waist now and pushing out further into the river. Cleo stands up, calls her to come back. Olivia turns, smiles, stops. The older couple are both smiling at Sam, who is slapping at the water with his free hand, crowing. She dips some water, pours it over his sweaty head. He gasps and then laughs, and she pours more. How delightful, how easy, that he is fearless of water.
And then glances up for Olivia and sees her neck deep, more than neck; she’s holding her chin up to keep her mouth out of the water, and in that second Olivia bobs under, comes up paddling, already moving with the current, her face swinging around to look for Cleo’s, her eyes and mouth perfect circles of surprise.
How long does it take before Cleo starts after her? A split second, an eternity. She must let go of Sam, sit him on the gravel edge, say, firmly, stay, start running through the water, over the slippery round stones. She doesn’t take her eyes off Olivia, watches her expression change from surprise to fear. Feels Olivia’s terror in her own mind. Cleo slips, starts paddling, realizes she should have headed toward the point Olivia was going, not the point where she had been.
Olivia opens her mouth, screams: Mummy! Cleo doesn’t know if she has answered: She keeps moving. In an instant Olivia will have been carried past this little widening of the river, this shallow beach, to where the banks are steep and the current moving faster.
Swim! Cleo shouts, and Olivia does swim. Her paddling doesn’t take her anywhere, but it keeps her afloat.
It’s the older gentleman who reaches her first, running, as Cleo should have done, along the shore to intercept Olivia. He leaps in past her, plucks her out of the water, holds her up, laughs. You went for a swim, he says.
Olivia on the border between anger and relief. She is poised for a moment, Cleo sees, watching her rescuer’s face, then decides to laugh. When the man hands Olivia to Cleo, his eyes say: Make it light. And so Cleo laughs too.
Only then does she remember Sam, and turns with an explosion of adrenalin, but the older woman has picked him up, is holding him safely in her arms.
How did they manage to do that, to be so calm, to do the right thing?
They are a group now, the eight of them, the older gentleman laughing as he holds his dripping wallet, takes bills out, dries them on his wife’s scarf, the younger man with the sons making a joke to Olivia. They are acting as if it was nothing. How do they do that?
She forces herself not to rush off — to get dry clothes out of the suitcase, to buy hot dogs for the three of them from the store, which they eat at the picnic table, because Sam could choke on a hot dog if she weren’t right there, if she were driving and he in the back seat. She is shaking, but she makes herself not shake, makes herself smile.
When they’re back on the road, Olivia says, severely: You don’t know how much danger I was in.
Why do you say that?
You laughed, after. You weren’t scared.
I wasn’t scared because you were already safe.
But did you think I would drown?
Cleo feels the conversation is carrying her off in a dangerous direction. Then she is inspired.
I was scared for a second but then I saw how brave you were.
Olivia considers this for a moment, then says: I was brave, wasn’t I?
Yes, and I saw that you weren’t panicking. That was the important thing. You kept your head. You didn’t panic. You thought it out, and you knew that if you just kept swimming like you learned in your Sunfish and Dolphin classes, someone would get to you and pull you in.
I did see that, Olivia says.
So it was an adventure. You had an adventure. And you learned something.
Then she feels that she has done something very powerful, and also very dubious.
She’d thought, when Olivia was in the river, that she was gone. And also when Sam cracked his head, at the Jensen’s. And she lies awake, often, imagining the terrible things that could happen to her children. There are so many levels and types of bad things that can happen.
It occurs now to her, though, that everybody must worry. Everyone must, and some people are less careful, less alert, less diligent, less intelligent than others, but everyone must worry, all the time.
She is not sure what is to be done about that.
She cannot do this anymore. But she will.
NOW THE LATE AUGUST DAYS are getting shorter, but are still long enough, and warm, and Cleo sometimes takes the children to the school playground in the evenings, the long light evenings after dinner, when Trent just wants to have peace and quiet. It seems like a good idea, to be outside. Healthy for children. (Cleo is dying to be outside.) Their backyard is not much use: It’s in shadow, sloped, nude of toys or anything to play on.
On the way back from the playground, she takes different routes, winds through the residential streets. There’s one she likes more than the others; it’s older, from the eighties, and the houses are bigger, with wood siding stained rich, earthy colours: spruce green, oxblood, marine blue, and the street has mature trees, maple and chestnut and chokecherry, that spread their new green canopies, their candles of blossoms, and are full of birdsong. In driveways parents — mostly dads — shoot baskets with half-grown offspring, and in lighted windows bend over tables where children sit with books. She stays out until dusk, sometimes, to see the lights come on.
One evening a woman in a window raps, and then beckons to her: She crosses the street, pushing the stroller with both of the children in it, and the front door — which is painted purple — opens, and from it emerges the dark-haired woman from kindergarten registration, Mira. Come in for tea, come in, Mira says. And she does, surprising herself. She lifts Olivia and then Sam from the stroller and follows the woman inside.
The front hallway is wide and decorated with a wall-sized collage of framed photographs: She glimpses some posed, black and white; others coloured, informal. Family photos: some recent, some in styles of other decades, back to the 40s. The wide hall opens to a great room: The entire main floor of the house is open. Two-thirds of it seems to be kitchen: a huge open kitchen, with miles of cupboards in whitish distressed wood, with open upper shelves, painted Mediterranean-style tiles, the fruit gleaming in rich subtle colours, a gas range, an enormous refrigerator, a heavy table of rustic-looking reclaimed wood that must seat ten easily, unmatched, but related, chairs.
Sit, sit, Mira says.
She sees that there are stacks of clean plates and cutlery on the table. But you’re just about to eat.
Not for half an hour, Mira says. Jim won’t be home for half an hour. Will you have some tea? Or maybe a glass of wine? Wine might be better, this time of day. I’m going to have a glass of wine. Betts (she says to a girl of about twelve drawing at the far end of the table), Betts, that’s enough for tonight, I’m sure, take the baby and the little girl — Olivia, isn’t it? — up to the playroom. I think Mariah is up there. Keep an eye on the baby.
Cleo is dazzled. She has fallen into another country.
Excuse me for not taking you into the living room, Mira says. I just have to watch this pot of pasta and finish the sauce.
Cleo glances into the living room, which is filled with a fireplace, a deep sofa upholstered in a soft olive and green and wine velvet. There is a
fireplace, made of carved antique-looking oak, an armchair upholstered in gold and one in wine, solid, old-looking tables and footstools. And in an alcove, an upright piano, on which a small boy is playing a recognizable melody. And a window seat, on which a girl a little younger than the first is reading.
It’s almost too much to take in. Mira gives her a glass of wine, and pours one for herself, but remains standing at the stovetop which is on an island, facing the table. She is wearing a long loose dress of some sort of very soft rich fabric — actual wool, maybe — in a deep blue and teal and purple print, and with it leggings, and little soft embroidered slippers, Indian, Cleo thinks. Her long curly hair is held back with a gold-lamé band.
This is lovely, Mira says. I love this time of day, when everything is starting to slow down, don’t you?
Cleo thinks of the dead time after their supper: her struggle to clean up and get the kids ready for bed. She doesn’t answer.
Then she begins to ask Cleo questions about herself: How long has she lived here? What does she do? What does her husband do? Where did she grow up? Does she have siblings? Where did she go to school? — and with more and more branching and detailed sub-questions, so that answering them, Cleo feels that this woman knows more about her than maybe anyone else in the world.
And Mira presses for detail, not in a judging or nosy way but with what feels like genuine curiosity. It’s a strange experience, to meet someone who is so interested. The even stranger thing that Mira does is question. Often when Cleo makes a certain kind of statement, what she’d call a statement of opinion, Mira will pick it up — not in a critical way, but again with that tone of simple curiosity. Why do you think that? she’ll ask. So things that Cleo has ceased to question, or has not questioned, are shaken down and turned around: She has to look at them anew. By the time she’s sat there an hour — at which point a car is heard in the drive and the girl who was reading jumps up to put the plates around the table, and Mira calls up the stairs, and Cleo’s children are delivered back to her — Cleo feels like her brain has been doing sprints.
What is Going to Happen Next Page 27
