Something Fishy

by Hilary MacLeod

  “I’m surprised she isn’t riding on it,” Gus observed.

  Gus wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the slow cookers. April Dewey secretly disapproved of them, but didn’t dare say so. She ordered one from Moira, like everybody else.

  She dumped it, box and all, unopened, on the kitchen table. The family had to eat in the dining room for weeks after that, until Murdo picked up a microwave cart to accommodate it. April didn’t have a microwave.

  “I won’t have one of those things in my kitchen,” she’d said, after even Gus had acquired one that she never used. “Sending its rays all over the place, harming the children’s brains.” The children were one of the reasons Murdo was attracted to April. Six kids might have sent other men running, but he loved the domesticity.

  Even on its own little cart, the slow cooker could not have looked more out of place. It made a matched set with the electric stove that still had a new smell if you opened the oven door. The instruction booklet and warranty were inside, wrapped in the original clear plastic. April’s ex-husband Ron had bought it for her, trying to shove her into the twentieth, if not the twenty-first, century. April wasn’t having any of it.

  She still cooked on a wood range. She prided herself on it, and no one could fault the results. Except, perhaps, the man who’d died in the middle of eating a slice of her heavenly white cake with the thick all-butter icing. He’d died happy, a smile on his face, his hand clutching the cake that even the coroner found tempting.

  “She’s going to eat him up.” Hy and Ian were on the widow’s walk of Ian’s house on Shipwreck Hill, enjoying the sun setting in stripes of deep, deep yellow shooting across dark black clouds. An unearthly yellow. Not like any sunset Hy had seen before. The sunsets at The Shores were like that. Different every time.

  “That’s not very kind,” said Ian.

  Hy dismissed his remark with a flick of her hand.

  “I’d have said that of anybody.”

  “But you did say it of her.”

  “Well…yes.” Hy took a sip of white wine, cool and pleasant at the end of a hot summer day.

  What had got them talking about Fiona was the sight of her huffing across the cape, carrying a tray of fudge on her way to the dome.

  “Batteries. He’ll have batteries in there, ringed right around the dome, I’ll bet, on the track Big Ed used for his wheelchair. He’ll be taking the power from that wind turbine for his house and generating more to sell back to the electric company.”

  “Snowball effect.”

  “Something like that.”

  A shot of late-day sunshine lit up Hy’s copper curls. Snowball effect, thought Ian. It didn’t seem to work with the two of them. They’d just get going, and something would stop it. Start it again. Stop it. Like at Christmas.

  He reached out a hand to touch a stray curl.

  She jumped up.

  “She’s in! He let her in!”

  Ian wasn’t interested in Fiona anymore. He was wondering if Hy would ever be more than a friend. Once or twice, she had been. He wanted more than a friend, but he didn’t know how to tell her. Or how she’d react.

  They were single neighbours in a secluded village, so perhaps it was bound to happen.

  Newton and Fiona. The odd couple.

  For the first time since his lost marriage to Mary, Newton enjoyed carnal knowledge of a woman. No, he hadn’t truly enjoyed it, and it wasn’t exactly carnal.

  He had smothered himself in Fiona, lost parts of himself in her folds and had never been purely happier.

  Her breasts thrusting up from her tight V-neck top, so her breasts were squeezed up to her chin. Rolls of flesh appeared below the bottom of the T-shirt, squeezed by a belt hanging with difficulty onto her hip-hugging jeans. There were rolls around her thighs that may have been displaced hip flesh. Her calves were as big as thighs, her ankles so swollen they nearly hid her tiny feet.

  She reminded him of the comic book character from the 1950s, Little Lotta, whose fat arms and legs tapered off into a “V” shape. Only Lotta had been a blonde, Newton remembered, and Fiona had black hair. Far too black, nature given a boost.

  He’d found his way through her abundance, she squealing like a piglet as they performed a pathetic coupling, satisfying their minds, not their bodies.

  Even that didn’t last long. Both were soon in tears, after Newton zipped up and Fiona stumbled home. He hadn’t been able to do it. And Fiona hadn’t felt a thing. She never did. Not that she had the opportunity very often.

  She was glad to be wanted at all. It pained her that she accepted so little.

  Viola came early, too soon for Anton. He’d hoped to clear Fiona’s trailer out of the way before she arrived. As he expected, it was the first arrow she launched after she had removed her white gloves. She wore them summer, fall, winter, and spring, no matter the climate.

  She should keep them on, thought Anton, observing the number and size of age spots on hands as small and spare as a bird’s claws.

  “That will have to go.” She didn’t bother to look at or gesture towards Fiona’s trailer. It was obvious. She burrowed in her purse and pulled out a cigarette case and a long, elegant ebony and silver holder. She put the cigarette in place and pressed the holder between her thin, bloodless lips.

  “I know.” Anton picked up the antique silver lighter from the coffee table, snapped it on and lit the cigarette. She took a deep drag.

  “I’ve been trying, but I haven’t been successful so far.”

  Viola thought of herself as a tree hugger. She gave generously to environmental and wildlife causes, but didn’t hesitate to pollute other people’s environments and homes. She smoked everywhere she went, never asking permission.

  “Trying is not…” She puffed a huge cloud of smoke out of her mouth and it floated up towards Anton. He dodged it, stopping short of fanning it away. That would have infuriated her.

  Outside, the limousine driver who’d brought her from the airport in Charlottetown had all the doors of his vehicle open, using the sea breeze to air it out. It was a no-smoking car, but she’d given him a hundred bucks to shut up and let her do as she pleased. “I would simply die if I had to last an hour without a cigarette,” she’d said, in a tone that implied it was some special skill. As it was, she sounded to him as if she were going to die – blowing smoke, hacking and wheezing her way across the island.

  That’s what she was doing now – hacking and wheezing, while Anton fantasized she was choking to death. Tears running down red-rimmed eyes, she regained her composure.

  “As I was saying, trying is not doing. Have determination, for God’s sake.”

  “I will do it,” he said.

  “See that you do,” she responded. “Or there won’t be any more money.”

  A familiar refrain.

  Chapter Eight

  Newton was shivering – not his usual shivering from blood that ran cold. He was shaking with excitement that the rungs welded onto the turbine and the platform at the top were finally ready to be used.

  The metal had cooled and hardened. He stepped on the first rung, and though he was weak, he was so light that he slipped up the tower with ease. Rung by rung he went, his heart pounding in his chest, pounding with excitement to reach the top. Halfway. A few more steps. He was tempted to stop and look around, but he didn’t want to distill the experience. Eyes half shut, focusing only on the metal bars in front of him, the cold metallic shaft of the tower, he kept on pushing up, up, to his destination – the platform behind the blades.

  Fiona was watching him from her trailer, wondering what he was doing. She’d already talked herself into love with him, and her hands gripped the counter in fear for his safety. Smoke filling the trailer and the burning smell coming from the stove made her look away from him. Not for long. She grabbed the pot, yanked it off the stove, and set it do
wn on the counter, where it proceeded to burn a dark ring.

  Then back to the window.

  He had reached the top. He stood there, arms outstretched, his image jerky as the blades passed in front of his body.

  He could see almost the full shape of the north shore of Red Island. He peered down the coast all the way to the east, where a lone lighthouse stood at the edge of a cape descending into a trail of rocks, reaching out into the water, ready to capture an unsuspecting boat. He saw the ocean side of New London Bay and the spit of sand drifting across it. To the other side, all of Big Bay and its islands. Beyond that, in the far distance, Red Island came to an end in a whirr of experimental wind turbines, and a trickle of stones that stretched out from the shore, washed by a shallow kiss of water. People would walk out as if walking on water. A stunning view, here, on top of his world, the whirr of the blades and their rhythmic movement lulling him into a semi-hypnotic state.

  Eyes closed, arms outstretched, he remembered being born. He remembered the moment of his conception. He remembered it in the deepest part of him. He had always been aware of the time when there was nothing, the floating darkness, and then light. Surrounded in fluid – the water of life – swimming, fighting to be first. Did others experience this? No one he knew had ever claimed to remember being born, and certainly not conceived.

  He’d thought about discussing it with a doctor, a psychiatrist, but, on the point of doing so, had drawn back. That moment of his conception was a treasure to him, a secret that he hugged to himself.

  He was more certain about what followed. The memory of the womb. He remembered the rhythm of his mother’s heartbeat, steady, comforting. It pulsed through his tiny body and veins, his own small heart.

  He remembered his brother. The intruder in the womb. He’d done what he could to strangle him with the umbilical cord, but then came that frightening time when they took him away. Scraped him out. Newton had huddled in the darkest recess of the womb, hiding from the cold metal killer. He’d succeeded. And even when the time came for him to kick, he held back, not wanting to announce his presence and suffer the same fate as his brother.

  Slowly he began conscious movements, ones that wouldn’t be perceived – sucking his thumb, scratching parts of his body, experiencing these small tactile pleasures. He remembered hearing voices for the first time. Hers, of course. It came from without and within. The others vibrated to him in the womb, voices talking, singing, and music, too. Still he did not announce himself, but surrendered to the pleasure of his isolated water world. In retrospect, it was the most pleasant time of his life. It gave him an immutable belief about when life starts. He’d never faced the challenge himself of deciding whether to keep a child. No one had wanted to make him a parent.

  But the birth. What a shock. At first, he felt as if it were the end. Pushed from the shelter of his pre-birth home. Inexorably pushed, trying to fight, to stay in the warm place with the comforting beat of the heart. Struggling to hold on there, claw his way back in.

  Pushed. Pushed. Shoved. Squeezed. Finally, worst of all, steel tongs grasping his head, squishing it, pulling him out while he tried to cling to his mother’s womb.

  There was no turning back. He must be born.

  He cried. Of course he cried. All babies cry when they come into the world.

  It is a very rude awakening.

  Newton thought that was why he was always shaking, shivering, that he had never been truly warm again after he was expelled from the womb. That’s how he thought of it. Because his mother had wanted little to do with him after pushing him out into the cold world.

  So meeting Fiona was exactly what he needed. She was warm. Embracing. Bursting with life.

  She was there, as if summoned, when he climbed down the tower. She watched as he descended, the sun behind his head like a halo, a man who needed her as much as she needed him. That had never happened to her before.

  When he slid down the last few rungs, slipped and fell into the safety of her open arms, it was like being enfolded in the womb again. He didn’t question it. Didn’t question her, but felt himself melt into her abundance, disappear into her flesh.

  Gus saw it all happen. It had stopped her from turning on the soaps on a dull afternoon.

  She smiled.

  This was much better than television.

  Viola’s heart was beating in her temples, her lungs ready to explode, but she was doggedly determined to do what she’d set out to do. The chauffeur had refused to drive her up to the village, having just cleared the worst of the smell of smoke out of his car. When she’d asked, he hadn’t even answered. He jumped in the car and took off for Charlottetown. Viola was determined to find the power broker at The Shores – the person who could get rid of the trailer and the wind turbine, killer of birds, the species dearest to her heart.

  April Dewey and Annabelle Mack were having a natter at the side of April’s house. Annabelle had been admiring April’s garden, which had given her lettuce, beans, and strawberries in abundance this year. They stopped talking at the sight of Viola, puffing her way up the Shore Lane.

  I need a cigarette, she thought, but she didn’t dare have one. She hardly had the lungs to make this trek, and hoped she didn’t have to go much farther.

  She crossed over the lane when she got to April’s house.

  “Who runs this place?” she gasped, after taking a moment to catch her breath.

  Annabelle smiled and pointed up the lane.

  “Gus Mack,” she said.

  “The mayor?”

  “Of all you survey.”

  Viola continued on her way, with Annabelle and Alice holding their laughter until she was out of earshot.

  A knock at the door. Gus pried herself out of the purple chair. It seemed to be getting harder to do every day. She shuffled over the beige vinyl flooring that still shone like new after forty years.

  More knocking. Desperate-sounding.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming.” Who could it be? No one she knew. No one from the village.

  “Viola Featherstonehaugh,” said the wizened old woman on the Macks’ stoop. She handed Gus a business card. Gus looked at it blankly. Her lips moved silently as she read the name. What a mouthful.

  “Call me Viola. Everyone does.” The woman extended a hand.

  Shaking hands was something Gus rarely did.

  “I’m looking for your husband.”

  “Abel? You might be looking a long time.”

  “No, not Abel. Gus. I was told Gus Mack.”

  “Well, I’m Gus Mack, as anyone will tell you.” The woman was quite out of breath. “Come in. Come in. Please, take a seat. Cuppa tea?”

  “No, thank you.” Viola sat down. “Got tuckered out on my way up here, but I have my own medicine.” She pulled off her white gloves, and fished for her cigarette case and holder.

  Gus had gone into the pantry to make tea and a plate of biscuits, as she did when anyone, especially a stranger, showed up at her door.

  She came back into the room, to be confronted by billows of smoke.

  “My land, a fire! We best get out of here.” She dumped the tray with the teapot, two cups and saucers, and plate of cookies on the table next to Viola.

  A cackle from Viola was followed by a round of hacking and coughing. Gus joined her, because she wasn’t used to cigarette smoke. There had been a time when Abel smoked, but he hadn’t in years, not in the house.

  Gus opened a window on either side of the room, and the fresh air soon cleared it.

  Viola stabbed her cigarette in one of the saucers, dug in her purse again, and drew out an ornate silver flask. She opened it and poured a generous dollop into a teacup.

  Gus had been about to ask the woman not to smoke, but faced with this new problem, didn’t know what to say. She wondered why Viola had come. She couldn’t ask that flat out. It woul
dn’t be polite.

  “What brings you to The Shores?”

  “I’m a business partner,” Viola smiled coyly, “of Anton Paradis. Also his very good friend.” Viola winked.

  Nobody had winked at Gus in sixty-five years. She knew it to the year and day. Setting day, when the fishermen put their lobster traps out for the season. Cheeky young fella, very good-looking, mind, did odd jobs for Abel. She’d given him a thermos of tea. It would be cold on that boat, and him on his first time out.

  He had saluted her with the thermos.

  “Thanks, missus,” he’d said, and winked.

  Gus, a young wife not twenty years old, had flushed and covered her face with an apron.

  She wouldn’t be doing either of those things now. She did find it odd, though, for a woman to wink at another woman. What did it mean?

  Viola had no idea that Gus would get flustered over a wink.

  People were different here. That’s why she was here – with Gus. Not the mayor, obviously, but able to fill her in on that turbine and trailer.

  She downed the scotch and poured more from the flask.

  “That…uh…trailer.” She was looking out the window, frowning twice. Once for the trailer, and once for the wind turbine. “Will that be there all summer?”

  “She’ll not be moving from there this summer, nor anytime, don’t matter what you do, I ’spec.”

  “Not even an offer to purchase?”

  Gus had her eyes glued to Viola’s hands, reaching into her purse again, this time for her silver cigarette case.

  “I doubt it. She’s sitting on a gold mine and she knows it. Could get a lot for it today, more tomorrow, and she’s young. She’ll be around for a while.”

  “And she is?”

  “Fiona…” At the moment, Fiona’s last name escaped Gus. Then it came to her. Winterbottom. How could you forget that? “Fiona Winterbottom. She’s the fudge lady.” As if that explanation made up for forgetting the woman’s surname.

  “Winterbottom. My God. How unfortunate.”

  “She goes by Winter.”

  “I’m not surprised. If I had such a name, I’d change it.”