Pluto's Ghost

by Sheree Fitch

  We stayed quiet for a long time. We just breathed, in and out, together. See, I thought I’d never hold her in my arms again and so I didn’t want to break the spell, and she must have felt the same, besides it felt good to just let the sun soak in and through us. Picture those huge blue electric stingrays. Underwater angels. We floated on that sand. New word: Luminous. Translate: More than happy. When we did start talking it was really tough. We talked about her dad. How he’d always been a kind of Jekyll and Hyde. How she loved him but was afraid of him, how her mother had suffered and covered. How it was worse when he didn’t drink, not better. How many times she’d wished him dead. And how he could be so funny, and sometimes, yes, even kind. “It’s so fucked up,” I said. “Yeh,” she said. “It really is. And so am I.”

  I told her about the long darkest night of my soul then and the things I just told here. The wild ride as I tried to get into the city. The truth and the strangenesses. I told her about Rita and the girl in the coffee shop who gave me directions and the librarian with a smile like Jamaica must be. “There’s a lot of good in the world, too,” I said. “There just is.” That was when I gave her the rock that Rita had given me to give to her and I talked about the moon rock I still thought of in that stained-glass window in the Washington National Cathedral and the song I was writing about the person I imagined setting the eye of God right into the glass. “Are you ever going to finish any song?” she said. That was damn brutal if you ask me. Up and killed my mood and I thought I was being kind of deep you know and my next move which would have been to kiss her got cancelled. Pretty fuggin’ fast. Instead, I asked the question I’d needed to ask.

  “What would you have done if you were pregnant?” I wanted an answer. “I just want to know.” Skye circled her finger at my throat a long while, a real long while, so long I thought she might not answer, and I shouldn’t have asked.

  “I would have told you first,” she said. “I would have told you.” It made me feel better, knowing that, but I still wanted to know. “I even thought of names,” I said, my hand twirling her hair. Skye half laughed though her tears. “Speedy—for a boy,” I said, “because he was going to be a quick learner, and for a girl, well, what would you name a girl?” I asked. “Melvina,” Skye said quietly. “After your mother.”

  When I reached for her hand she pulled away. “Look, Jake, I’m not sure what I would have done and I hope I never have to find out but I know it would have been my choice,” she said firmly. “Mine, not yours.”

  “I get that,” I said. “Sort of. I dunno, though—I mean, shit, aren’t I a part of this, too?”

  She nodded, shrugged, reached for me. I moved away.

  “Yeah, so sure, I kind of get that it’s your body and your choice in my head, but all that other stuff, in the gut, you know, your heart, it—well, but well, you never know until you know, you know?”

  “Jake, that’s a song!” She laughed. “Write me one?” I nodded. “And fuggin’ finish it!” She laughed. And I did, too. That’s when she dropped the bombshell.

  “Mum and I…are moving, Jake. Out west.”

  She kept talking, saying how we’d write and keep connected and yada yada yadayadayada. Blah. Blah. That’s all I heard then. I started yelling and shadow boxing with the wind. She was yelling, too. Tears streaming down her face. Rivers down a windowpane of sadness. She held out her arms. But I started running. Don’t fight take flight.

  I’d learned that wasn’t such a bad strategy after all. When I stopped and looked back she was long gone. Looking out towards the horizon, I swear I saw: A narwhal leaping up from the waters. A swan appearing close by riding on the crests of waves. Voices screaming Jake. Skye. Jake. Skye.

  Overhead, seagulls. Crowing.

  Waves crashed and seafoam eddied up over beach pebbles.

  The tide was coming in. I felt raw and like I was living inside a sliced-open poem and guess what—empty is a word that tastes like seaweed. Wind’s laughter can make you fall to your knees.

  Dear Jake,

  I love it here. The mountains are spectacular. The sea is right outside my window. We are living in a cottage of my aunt’s good friend in Robert’s Creek. I’m working in a daycare and writing in my diary and taking a yoga class. Meditation is a way of life out here. Works for me. I am also swimming a lot. They say exercise is good. Endorphins and all that. Why does that word remind me of little elves? Helpful ones. Like the shoemaker’s elves. I’m applying to some universities for next year. English, maybe. I am also interested in sociology. My mother’s doing so much better. She’s working in a small café and loving it. I think she’s staying. I’m not sure. I miss you. I do.

  I have this fantasy I’m heading back to Poplar Hills. It’s springtime. I’m coming on the train, taking my time, seeing the country on my way back east. You’ve agreed to meet me. We’re both nervous seeing each other. Just picturing the train pulling in and seeing each other after almost a whole year—well, it makes me lose it. Takes my breath away. For a lot of reasons. Anyhow, in this daydream we go visit Shep. Her garden’s blooming with life again. Then I see us, you and me, going to Europe or the caverns in Vietnam and travelling for a bit before me heading off to university next fall.

  So are you okay? Still seeing Shrinkette? You nut. Does she have a name? Is she young and pretty? I hope not! Are you going to work on your credit? You’re right about me needing to see you keep your word. You are soooo right there is no magic change machine. So yes, if you graduated, I might think you meant it when you said you could prove to me you could stick to something long enough to finish. That might be a sign you could learn to control that rage problem you have. I’ve had too much anger to deal with already and I’m not even twenty. I’m ready for people of peace, the ones who choose kindness as a way of living. Not easy. We’re human. I can be mean, too. It is not just a boy thing. My therapist tells me it’s the wounded who wound. Sounds great. Still, it is no excuse for what my dad did. Not ever. But…well, it helps me start to understand. And it’s worth a try to travel heart-first. Isn’t it? Jake, I just need to be safe.

  As for us…and what happens. You want me to promise things I can’t.

  Do you remember when we were in D.C. and found out how Dolly Madison defended the White House? I never forgot what she wrote to her sister as the city was burning down around her. She wrote: “We will proceed, although where we will all be tomorrow, I cannot say.”

  I feel that way about us, Jake. There’s just so much I cannot see. Or say.

  Love, Skye

  i

  Shep was stirring a pot on her stove with a large wooden ladle, humming a song that sounded like gladness, when I brought her my last installment of this never-ending truth-telling tale. Even from where I stood, I smelled basil and garlic and sage. The herbs I’d helped her plant last year. I could see her in the window when I tromped up the steps. She was adding some rosemary, rubbing needles between her thumb and forefinger. I rang the doorbell.

  “Hey,” I said, staying on the stoop, rocking a little, side to side.

  “Jake!” Shep made a move as if to hug me. I stepped back. “It’s been a while. You look good,” she said, keeping the door open.

  “I’m done.” I held out an envelope and shuffled from one foot to another.

  “Well, good for you! Good. Very good. Come in, Jake. Please. If you want. I’ll look it over right away.”

  “Really?”

  “No need to prolong the wait. Come in. I’ll need a cup of tea. You want hot chocolate? Root beer?” I nodded and cleared my throat.

  In summers, when I’d worked in her garden, she used to bring me frosted mugs of root beer. Sure enough, she opened the freezer and a mug was there, almost as if she’d been waiting for me all this time.

  After settling on the sofa, Shep reached for her reading glasses. Her two cats, curled like furry commas in wingback chairs, gave me the once-over. Standing by the window, I took a good long look at her garden. Even at that time of the ye
ar, and without me helping out the past few months, there was a kind of magic in the place. I felt Shep watching me and turned around as she ripped opened the envelope. I went into her sun-room, bursting with pink geranium and smelling of lemon verbena. I practised some Qigong. Along with pumping iron, I’d really gotten into an exercise regime. “Whatever works,” my dad said, as he grabbed his fishing pole. “Whatever gets you through,” he said, as he snapped in one more puzzle piece. “As long as you’ve got your community,” he’d say, throwing a log in the wood stove before his centring prayer group came over. “Remember the mystery,” he’d say, patting his copies of Keats’s collected poetry and Einstein’s essays. My dad. My dad. My beautiful dad. All my life I missed my mother, but hey, I finally got it. I had a father whose teaching was wiser than any professor with degrees up his yin-yang and a father whose heart was big enough to pray for me and every motherless child in the world. Sort of like God. Dad. God. Dog. Good. God. Odd. Food. Father. Mother. Me. Men. Amen. Ommm. It took me a while, but I realized I had it pretty fucking good.

  “Well,” murmured Shep an hour or so later. Jeez, she was crying and laughing and blowing her nose all at the same time. “You, Jake Upshore, are a piece of work.”

  I cleared my throat. “How do you say it anyhow?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Is it tha end or thee end? I never got it right.”

  “Before a word starting with a vowel the is pronounced like thee. Thee end.”

  Shep uncapped her pen then.

  “Give it to me.”

  She handed the essay back to me. I read, moving my lips. “A” she’d scrawled in generous script. Beside that she’d written:

  Aside from the punctuation, and enjambment, this is a perfect essay. I recommend the candidate go on to the next assignment towards his final credit for the completion of his high school diploma.

  I couldn’t lift my head to look at her. A splotch fell onto the page. Shep let me be. When she handed me a tissue a few minutes later, I grabbed her arm and tugged on it like a small child.

  “Will Skye—come back…ever?”

  “Give her time.”

  “Time. A year, a month, a day? Time?” My voice was getting deeper. Angry. The look on Shep’s face cut into my heart.

  “Sorry. I’m de-escalating. But I think maybe you need to read this,” I said, thumping my collarbone. I threw down Skye’s last letter.

  When Shep handed the letter back, I balled the paper up in my fist and brought it to my face, inhaling, as if I could smell Skye’s hair and skin.

  “Well, so.” Shep was matter-of-fact as she gathered up our dishes. “There’s a lot of hope here in this letter, I’d say. Hope. It’s like a light under a closed door, Jake. As long as you see that speck of light, hope! Speaking of which, I’m having dinner with your dad next week. Want to come over?”

  At the mention of my father I straightened up. “Yeah, the old guy’s pretty happy these days.” Shep reddened and then said, almost defiantly, “So am I.”

  I took a step and hugged her, tight, like you would a long-lost mother.

  “Cool, cool,” I said.

  “Cool, cool,” Shep replied.

  “Well, maybe I’ll come over, then,” I said, heading for the door and heading out across the yard. The grounds were a shade of blue that reminded me of a certain person’s eyes. As the shadows settled, and even though the garden was settling in to dormancy, there was a kind of petrified beauty to it all. Shep was watching in the window. I turned to wave and it was then I saw it. “Well, if that isn’t the damnedest,” I said.

  Jumping up and down, I waved my hands like windshield wipers and then pointed. Although winter was near, there at the back of the garden—was a solitary rose in full bloom.

  In that light, from where we both stood, that rose almost glowed.

  j

  So, Skye, I’ve done what Shrinkette said. I’ve told the tale and it’s the whole truth and I wrote it for you and for my credit because Shep said she’d help me pass it in and fix it up (but not too much because she didn’t want to take away my voice) for my last credit towards my English and I did it for you and for my dad and for anyone else who ever ended up in jail because they couldn’t read did you know how many in jail have even harder reading problems than me and I want you to know that Shrinkette’s been good helping me smell my way to a good place and get rid of the bad dreams and I’m also seeing a speech language pathologist and went out to Rita’s and did a sweat lodge ceremony and some soul-retrieval work and coyote is with me to help me keep feeding the peaceful animal in me and I’m not sure what all this is about except some day it might not be so hard and do you think maybe you could find it in your heart to come back to give us another chance? This is the first song I ever finished. A long one. Hard to sing. Maybe hard to hear, too. So don’t read with your eyes or hear with your ears. Listen. Poplar leaves. Whispering: I’m graduating in three weeks.

  take off

  White light blinds me.

  The photographer asks us to shake hands, smile, say cheese, hold out my diploma and scholarship certificate. My jaw’s locked from all this grinning for cripe’s sake. Locked-jaw Jake.

  We’re a small group, all polished up, all different ages. Yes, we’re wearing our best dress-up clothes and are looking pretty spiffy. I even wore a tie. Hey, it’s not every day you finally graduate high school.

  I might—and this is just a might at this point—apply to community college to take landscaping.

  I think of Derucci all the time still. That POPPING SOUND, that image of a pumpkin exploding, a nightmare for the rest of my life maybe. It’s never going to happen that I forget—you just can’t erase all this. Healing, they say, is a never-ending process. Shrinkette’s still helping me with that buried deep painful crappy stuff. Talking’s still hard. She still gets on my nerves somewhat. But she’s here, today, at the back of the room, smiling like a cheerleader. And Shep’s saying some real nice things about me at the podium.

  “Say cheese,” the photographer says again. The woman who starts shaking my hand, someone I’ve never met before, hugs me real tight. She smells like rose petals.

  “I read your story,” she says. “I’m very proud of you, dear. You’ve overcome so much, you make me hopeful.”

  Overcome. I’m kind of embarrassed myself and almost blurt out, lady, don’t call me dear, okay, but I zip it up.

  “It’s all because of my girlfriend I’m here,” is what I say instead.

  So yeah, I worked damn hard and all, but what kept me at it was thinking Skye’d come back and I’d get to feel her hand in mine again—even for a little while. And there she is, clapping alongside my Dad and Teddy. She’s looking good, almost happy even. The tune in my head is the wheels on the bus go round and round from back in the day. That jeezlus kindergarten song kept me going. Round and round. Round and round. We can go forward, me and Skye, even if we don’t know where to. New word: Hope. Translate: Love. Translate:

  Endless possibilities.

  Acknowledgments

  Or go to www.​sheree​fitch.​com

  I would like to acknowledge the guides on my many trips underground to The Luray Caverns, David Hunt at The Smithsonian for speaking to me about the Princess bones, Anthony Pitch for his books and conversations and the DC walking tours still ahead; Lucinda Conger for tour of the Washington National Cathedral; Heather Neilson for diligence, patience, and deciphering my two-finger typing; Kim McAdam for invaluable, colourful detail of brewery work; Leanne Fitch and members of the Fredericton City Police for allowing me to see and smell from the inside out; three writer men friends in China who made me laugh and ask and let me be one of the guys; Sandra Berry for conversations about Elizabeth Bishop. Natural Path Wellness and Little Grandmothers Medicine Lodge helped me balance and gain insight, and Sally Austin and Cumberland County’s Sexual Health Education Centre provided fresh motivation to complete.

  Special thanks to Carol Ann Hoyt and members of
the Montreal Children’s Literature Round table as well as Heritage High School students in St. Hubert. You were the best first listeners any author could ask for.

  Thanks to the Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick for the adult learner scholarship program funded by PGI tournaments. Every year, I meet tutors who are Sheps and young men who are my continued inspiration and hope that many angry Jakes might travel more gladly into the light in themselves.

  Deepest gratitude to Art Lepp, the father of Cory Lepp, a victim of violence. I was ready to give up on this book until I heard her story. Her presence was deeply felt throughout this creative voyage.

  And finally, she’s-got-my-back Amy Black—for unwavering patience and faith in my mining process, her eagle eyes, humour, editorial guidance and friendship.