But there was a problem. A serious predicament, Peter would call it. The predicament had been living in my mother’s bedroom for three weeks and was up before me every morning, with a pot of tea made, sitting at the breakfast table looking kind of happy and proud, like the teapot was a parade she’d thrown me. The predicament said stuff like, “I thought I came here looking for your mother—isn’t it weird that it was you I found and now that seems more important?” She told me she could see Ma in me and nobody had ever said that before. She said she didn’t see it at first, but now she saw it all over the place, in the way my eyes moved or the way I talked so fast sometimes I’d gasp a little at the end, because I’d forgot to breathe. The predicament said she wanted to stay here with me, that she thought she could make a home of my town. She said I was her whole family.
So I made a little room for her, a little space in between things. I left a pause at the end of the night, when she’d stand there watching me before I closed my bedroom door, and it was enough time for her to get certain words out. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t heard those words before, it was that I let her get them out before I closed the door. It was that I drank her damn tea and got to thinking in the morning, going down the stairs, how it would be good to have a cup and might in fact be exactly what I wanted. It was that her face seemed kinder than when I first saw it, and I liked the lines it folded into when she smiled, and I liked, too, how nervous she was, how she had always looked ready for me to do something sudden or frightening. How I didn’t even mind when she stopped looking ready.
One afternoon, I drove home thinking about the predicament, and when I got there, she was waiting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and reading something, and she jumped up and switched the lights off, and while I stood there, staring at her, because even with the blinds drawn tight it was still bright enough inside to read a cereal box by, she leapt up and turned the lights back on and yelled, “Surprise!”
I started pulling my boots off but didn’t take my eyes off her. It was hot as blazes outside, and sweat had sealed my shirt to my back. “What’s this about,” I asked.
She had that nervous, rabbit-y look about her. “I didn’t know what you’d want. I mean, should I have asked Angel and Minnie, or Peter …? I didn’t know if you’d want a big to-do.”
“Why would I want a big to-do?”
She had this paper cone hat on her head, and I had only the beginning of an idea what she was up to, but the hat was a big help. She gave a little tug on the chin elastic, looking embarrassed. “Well, that’s just it. I thought you probably wouldn’t. So I just made a cake, and—”
“You think it’s my birthday?”
She stared at me, her big, wide rabbit eyes blinking, figuring. “It isn’t?”
I dropped myself into one of the kitchen chairs. “We got any beer?”
She turned around, looking lost, and took half a step toward the fridge before turning back to me. “Yes, I got your fav—it isn’t your birthday?”
I let myself grin a little then. She had the hat on and everything. “Nope.”
“But the photo …”
I was just about ready to enjoy myself. “The beer, Aileen?”
She took it from the fridge and gave it to me in a glass, and then she ran upstairs. The really heartbreaking thing, it occurred to me, was the blanket she’d put up to cover the window over the sink that didn’t have a curtain. It was poked through with tacks and looked about ready to come down. And it didn’t make half a difference. You couldn’t have hid a shadow in the room. But it was the idea of dark. It was enough to make her think she could do something sort of stupid and heartbreaking like surprise someone in broad daylight in their own home, when it wasn’t even their birthday. And then she hadn’t heard the truck or had been so busy with whatever it was she’d been reading that she’d not even been ready when I got there. All round, it was the worst job of a surprise I could reckon, and I couldn’t stop grinning about it.
I heard her feet on the stairs. That was like Ma, how light she was on the stairs. I spent about half a thought on it every time she went up or down them. Only the creaking of the stairs themselves let me know she was coming down. Chuckling to myself a little, I picked up the envelope she’d been looking at that had had her so distracted that she missed the sound of my truck in the yard. The address was typed in giant letters and in the corner there was only an address, no name.
“So you got a letter from Toronto,” I said, as she walked toward me, holding something in her hands.
“Oh,” she said, tipping her face down like she could hide it from me, “I just wrote to a lawyer. I wrote to a divorce lawyer, Jason. He had to write to Stephan’s sister, because I didn’t even know where he was.” She dropped into her chair like an axe. “I didn’t even know where to send the damn divorce forms.”
“You okay about this?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not going to stay married to a man who doesn’t care what end of the country I’m in, am I?”
“But he doesn’t know you’re here.”
“Just leave it, Jason,” she said. “Okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said. “But did you ever think that maybe he’s looking for you?”
She was white as a stone. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, I have.”
“So the letter’s from your lawyer?” I asked, and she looked at me without saying a word. I shrugged. “Well, it’s your business.”
“Look,” she said, holding out the thing in her hands, which was a photograph. “See? On the back it says, ‘August 11, 1984.’ I had to use a magnifying glass to read it. Is that her writing or his?”
I’d forgot what day it was. “His,” I said. I looked at the photograph. He had a cone-shaped paper party hat on hardly any different from Aileen’s. Cavemen, probably, had worn hats like that. He was sitting beside me at the end of the table. There wasn’t any cake, just a pile of cupcakes on a plate, with icing two inches high on top. The sign hung behind the table read, “Happy birthday, Jason.” There were a few people around the table, but I could only guess who they were, with their backs to the camera, looking at me and him, who was the only one looking back at whoever was taking the picture. She wasn’t in the photo. I wondered who had taken it, and why they hadn’t waited for my mother to come back from the kitchen or wherever she had gone, outside the camera frame. “She couldn’t write.”
Aileen covered her eyes for a second. “Oh,” she said. “Of course.” After a moment, she asked, “So she didn’t take the picture then.”
“She was blind, Aileen. She wasn’t a photographer.” I would have been twelve years old, but I looked younger. I was looking at the cupcakes like they were happiness itself. It was my father’s face I couldn’t read. And I hated how much I recognized his face, not from remembering him but from the reflection of my own face and what it was turning out to look like.
“So why does it say it’s your birthday then?”
“It doesn’t. It was his.” I gave the photograph back to her and took a slug from my beer.
“His …” She thought about that. “His name was Jason too?”
I gave a nod and slapped the table. “So where’s that cake?”
“In the … I’ll get it.” She tucked the photograph into her apron pocket. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know.”
“I know,” I said, and then she went into the kitchen. “So what the hell are you doing with a cigarette,” I asked, pulling what was left from the ashtray on the table and sucking the last puff or two out of it till I got the sweet, metallic tang of filter.
“Oh, I only do it from time to time. It’s no big deal. I smoked in high school, you know.”
“I can’t picture that,” I said.
“Did Mara smoke?”
I closed my eyes and imagined coming home to find her in the dark, a cloud of smoke rising around her, the dull, mechanical return of her hand from mouth to ashtray and back. “Nah,” I said. “Hardly ever.”<
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She set a plate down in front of me. It was about the sorriest piece of cake I’d ever seen. “I never made a cake before,” she said, sounding angry.
“Looks good,” I said. I took the fork she gave me and shovelled a piece of cake into my mouth. It was dry as dirt, but the icing was sweet and I figured I could finish it off no problem. Watching me eat seemed to be making her happy. “So how’s the job hunt,” I asked.
“Fine,” she said. “I put an application in at The Northern Light.”
“The newspaper? To do what?”
She looked down. “To write, I guess. I used to think I might like to be some kind of a writer. When he interviewed me, Melvin, the editor, made me come up with three ideas for stories. He said I had good instincts. I guess he liked my ideas.”
“Melvin,” I said like his name tasted bad in my mouth. Melvin weighed three hundred pounds on a good day and was from Alabama or some made-up place like that. He’d been in Dawson a decade and still acted like his feet didn’t touch the same dirty ground the rest of ours did. “Here’s an idea. Twenty-two years we’ve been negotiating our claims, and we’re the only ones without a dollar to show for it. How’s that for a story?” That morning I’d run into a buddy of mine who said it could be another year till we saw a cent. Or maybe we never would. His brother worked in the government and said that they were refusing to buy out the claim some mining company had on Tr’ochëk, where our people used to live. And we couldn’t reach a settlement till somebody budged, and till then they were playing chicken with the feds. While the rest of us got old waiting to get what even the goddamn feds said we were owed.
She hesitated. “It’s not really that kind of a paper. It’s not really … hard news. More like cultural stuff, community pride, you know.”
“Yeah,” I said.
She looked worried. “Maybe, if I get the job, you could help me. You know, give your perspective on Dawson’s history—”
“Just forget about it,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.” When that money came I could leave. Go far enough away that I’d never find my way back even if I wanted it. Maybe take her with me.
She didn’t seem convinced. “Jason, can I ask you … I mean, I understand that these … settlements … are important to you. It’s a matter of justice for your people, okay, I get that.”
“You think we’re just looking for a handout?” I gave her the eyes I looked at tourists with.
“Of course not. I understand”—she fluttered her hands around her face—”they did something wrong here. White people just came and kicked you off your land—”
“They didn’t kick us off it. They bought it for nothing. Our people back then didn’t understand they were buying our land. They didn’t know you could own land. They just thought the white folks were taking the little houses they’d built on the land.”
She sighed. “So the government owes you the proper worth of your land. And reparations. I understand that. But what I don’t understand is why this money is so important to you. You’ve got a house, a job. What do you need this money for?”
I took the pack beside the ashtray and pulled out another cigarette. “I don’t know, Aileen,” I said, with the cigarette clamped between my teeth as I lit it. “Guess that’s a real mystery. Well, here’s another one. How come this letter with a date of two weeks ago stamped on it is still all sealed up, tight as teeth? What are you waiting around for? You worried that lawyer’s going to tell you Stephan signed the deal? Maybe all you wanted to do was give him a scare, getting a lawyer after him for a divorce, without even telling me a word about it. And maybe it didn’t work. Maybe it didn’t scare him at all to be done with you. That what you’re worried about?”
She looked more tired than insulted. “You can drop it, Jason.”
“Or maybe it isn’t from the lawyer at all,” I said, taking a long drag and feeling her want a cigarette of her own. Almost enjoying myself. “Nothing about this letter looks official to me. What’s this address, Aileen? Who lives here?”
She rubbed her face, and I couldn’t tell if that was what brought the red to it or not. “Yes, Jason, you don’t miss a trick. The letter’s not from the lawyer, it’s from him. From Stephan. And that’s our address on it, mine and his. And he used the magnatype. My special typewriter. He used the magnatype so I could read it.” She picked the envelope up and stared at it, shaking her head like it was full of wonder. She seemed now hardly to be talking to me at all. “And that means he must have gone back to the house. Maybe he’s there now, for all I know. And I’m not ready to read this letter. Maybe I should tear it up. Maybe it’s him just sending back the papers, signed like you said. Or maybe it’s something else and I should tear it up anyway. But I just keep thinking about picking up the phone. About just seeing if he’d answer if I called our home. About how good it would be to talk to someone, to really talk.”
And somehow that made me feel a hot, dull anger in me, because what did she need to go to him for to talk of things. “I talk to you,” I said.
“Yes,” she answered slowly. “You do. But you don’t listen much.” And as she spoke, there was a crash at the window behind her. In the crack of light between the window and the closed blinds, I saw the body of a raven slide down the glass, dead, its eyes watching me as it fell to the ground below. Aileen seemed not to notice. I wanted it to fly again, as it was, the dead and broken thing it was now. I wanted it so hard I saw a flap of black feathers pass the window and head up toward the sky, past where I could see. I had wanted the bird into flight, and it made me glad to see that. “You know you don’t, Jason.”
It wasn’t true. I’d heard all I wanted to hear of Stephan, but I always shut up when she got to talking of him again. “That’s a lie.”
“It isn’t. You let me talk, I know that and I appreciate that. But it isn’t the same as listening. And I know you’re always so eager to start telling me your own things. I don’t feel I can get help from you.”
Faintly, I could hear someone moving upstairs. Aileen didn’t seem to notice, but I listened to the steps, which circled toward us till they were standing just over our heads and then retreated. “You think maybe if we talked, like you said, you wouldn’t want to call that guy anymore, you’d stop wanting to do that?”
She shrugged and snapped up the blind behind her and light flew into the room. “Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t. But it’s nice to talk.”
“So talk to me then. You want to talk about Stephan? Tell me about him. Why don’t you open the letter. What do you think it says?” I was listening harder for the steps upstairs than I was to her. But they didn’t move. The footsteps themselves were listening.
From across the table, she reached her hand out and took mine. Then she tipped back her head and rested it against the window. Light was coming in all around her, blazing around her face. She was hardly there, in the middle of all that light. I tried to take my hand from her, but she held it tight. “See this,” she said. “I don’t know that I ever took another person’s hand. It might be your mother’s hand was the last one I held. What a thing to think.”
She held it tight. “That’s a lie. You talk like you think I’m stupid. You telling me Stephan never held your hand?” She held it so tight.
“We weren’t like that,” she said shortly. “Stephan wasn’t … affectionate, not in an obvious way like that.”
“What kind of way was he?”
Light nipping away at the edge of her face and her hair. Her at the centre of all that light. Till she looked like someone else. “Well, one time I remember, while we were still in college, he turned the palm of his hand out toward me while we were walking, and made mine face his, so they were touching, but we didn’t reach for each other or move our fingers. So while we walked, our palms brushed against each other, just slightly, and with the rise and fall of every step I could feel that movement of him beside me, as if everything of him was there, in my hand, but only ever so lightly and just for a moment. He
only did that once, but I never forgot it. Because it was how we always were. Separate—not dependent on each other like some couples, hanging on every word, calling every time we were apart, kissing every time we saw each other … but always that kind of closeness that was private and strange and our own, like a secret.”
I nodded, slowly. “I get that.”
“Well, I’m glad you do, because it boggles my mind, personally.”
“How?”
“Because a thing can look a lot like love, smell like love, talk like love. But maybe, in the end, if it hurts you or leaves you, you’re going to have to tell yourself, ‘Well, that wasn’t love.’”
“Why?”
“Because.” The sun was sliding past the window, and I could see half her face again, the line of it with the sky behind it, everything as it was, sharp and true as something carved there. Till she looked like her. “Because, Jason, he’s not going to come back. That was all I got.”
“You know, I think you should open that letter—”
“I told you, I’m not ready yet.”
“Well, when you are, you shouldn’t worry about me. Doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Thanks,” she said and stood up, pulling my empty plate away. “Was that any good?”
“Pretty awful,” I said, grinning. “But not you. You’re pretty great.”
She had her back to me at the sink, but even from there, I could feel her smiling. And the thing upstairs was silent, or maybe gone. “You remind me of him a little, you know.”
“I do? Of your husband?”
“Yeah, you do. I don’t know why. You’ve both—and I don’t mean any offence by this—you’ve both got something a little broken about you. A girl could go crazy trying to fix it.”
In the Land of Birdfishes Page 15
