She picked up one of her shells and flung toward the waves, watched it plop in the shallows. “Your father called it the river world. Because it all started when he was floating in the river. After he was thrown out of the boat.”
“When what started?” Erik said, confused.
“He would turn off. He had episodes when he would be present and cognizant and functional, but he had no emotional connection to anything. He felt nothing. He said the color would go out of the world. His adjectives would disappear. Like he was a harp and one by one his strings were unplucked until he was just a hollow frame. An empty shell, standing in the center of his life and none of it meaning anything to him.”
“For how long?”
“Sometimes minutes. Sometimes hours. Then he’d come back. He said coming out of the river was the reverse of strings breaking. Instead of one at a time, he came back with a glissando.” Christine’s hand fanned through the air, sliding along the keys of an invisible piano. “He’d slam back into himself, as if being concussed again. It was terrifying. It would leave him in tears.”
Erik flailed for a question. “Did his parents know?”
“They took him to doctors,” she said, nodding. “They did a lot of studies up in Montreal. But not much could be done for him. It was episodic. And between episodes, he was completely functional. While having them, he didn’t become psychotic or catatonic. He didn’t convulse on the floor or pass out. He just…”
“He’d get a faraway look in his eyes,” Erik said softly. “Like he was listening to music no one could hear.”
Christine leaned away a little. “Who said that?”
“Mike Pettitte.”
She blinked, her chin nodding a little. “I wonder if he knew. Of course Farmor and Farfar knew, but they didn’t discuss it. They felt lucky their son was alive. If this occasional detachment issue was the only after effect, so be it. They took it in stride, carried on and kept it to themselves. It was their way. Your father said it didn’t bother them when he was in the river world. Coming out with a huge outburst of emotion was what upset them. As he got older, he learned to hide the returns. Or at least manage them.”
“When did you find out?”
She drew patterns in the sand. “I saw it for the first time at Xandro’s funeral. Everyone went back to the hotel afterward for coffee. I didn’t know anyone. I felt awkward and shy so I went for a walk by the river. I saw this boy sitting on the rocks and he was crying. Crying with his whole body. I recognized him as Xandro’s brother. I don’t know why I… You’d think I’d have gone away and given him some privacy. Instead I went up to him. I sat on another rock and… I just sat. Because next to him was where I was supposed to be.”
She touched Erik’s arm, a small smile on her lips. “You of all people know what it’s like when you find a soulmate.”
“He was coming out of an episode? Right then?”
“Yes,” she said. “I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought he was crying for Xandro. Not long after, he told me about it. When it was clear what was happening with us, he told me everything.”
“It didn’t scare you?”
She shook her head. “It was the only way I knew him. I didn’t have an old Byron to compare to. I was never afraid, even when I watched it happening. It scared him, though. When I got pregnant with you, he was beside himself. He was already terrified he’d one day go into the river world and never be able to come out. With a family, there’d be so much more to lose.”
“But you had me anyway,” Erik said, his voice gruff.
“Nothing could stop me,” she said, running her hand along his cheek. “When you were born, it happened. In the hospital, when you were just hours old, Byron went into the river. I put him in a chair and put you in his arms. I said, ‘You hold onto him. You look at him. He’ll keep you afloat.’ Then I watched.
“It was a long episode. I didn’t take my eyes off him. He didn’t take his eyes off you. Finally I could sense it was coming around. He was going to slam back into himself. And when he did…” Christine’s arms curved, cradling an invisible baby. “He never let go of you. I could see the amount of effort it took for him to control the glissando. To let it all sweep through him and back into him without letting go of you or waking you up. The tears slid down his face and dripped onto your little mouth. Then he laughed. He came out of that one laughing at the end…”
Erik dropped his head onto his forearms. Christine’s hand settled soft on the back of his neck. “It always stayed in my mind,” she said. “How the first thing you ever tasted in your life was your father’s tears.”
Slowly Erik leaned until he touched his mother’s side. She put her arms around him.
“You’re so strong, Erik,” she said. “You’re the strongest person I know. Stronger than a river. You asked me and I told you the truth. I believe in my heart your father went into that world of his one last time and couldn’t come back. Something happened. He sank this time. He drowned. It was the only thing that would make him leave. It’s what I believe. It’s what I have to believe.”
She went on holding him. Erik lifted his eyes and over his kneecaps he looked out at the ocean.
“Believe me,” Christine said. “Believe when I tell you he loved you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the rest,” he said, already knowing the answer.
“Because my heart was broken.”
Erik stared as wave after wave hit the sand. Relentless. Eternal. They’d been crashing onto shores for millennia and would go on doing so long after Erik was gone.
He loved me, Erik thought, staring at the water, defying it to disagree. You heard her. Him leaving had nothing to do with me. I was his son and he loved me.
The tide laughed as it advanced and retreated.
I don’t care, it told him.
The ocean had ceased being emotional eons ago. Its majesty lay in its aloofness. It didn’t care about your problems or your grief. You were nothing to the waters. They took your troubles with an almost cruel ambivalence, knowing they would outlive you forever. Whether you broke or fixed. Whether you stayed or left.
Erik stared at the rising walls of water, the frosting crest as each rolled over, like fingers folding down into a fist around the shore. Their cadence, so mocking before, turned soothing.
Give it here.
Give it to me, I’ll hold it.
The waves didn’t care. Their rhythm would never be interrupted. Their purpose would never be lost.
The ocean was forever.
So was the river.
He went to forever.
Where nothing feels.
He rolled up his left wrist and gazed at the daisy tattooed there. He remembered the day he had it inked. And remembered a dark night when he pressed the blade of his jackknife to its petals and almost cut it out. He turned up his other hand and looked at the black K.
These things happen and they are terrible things to bear.
Still the waves kept coming.
Give it here, they said. Live your life. Feel your life. Or else go to your father’s forever and feel nothing. It makes no difference to us.
He looked at his wrists and the ink permanently in his skin. He would die with these. I will set you in my presence forever.
Dais is forever.
I go to her.
A break in the ocean’s sound made him look up. The water seemed to be drawing back, as if waiting. The shoreline in its wake glistened and bubbled.
Your father broke and left. You broke and left, but then you came back.
You stayed and fixed.
You are not him.
Give it here now and feel your life.
Let him go.
“All right.” Erik’s mouth shaped the words with no sound. A large wave crested and fell, rolling up the beach. Nearly reaching his bare feet before melting into the sand.
“I feel like I’ve given you nothing to make you feel better,” Christine said.
&n
bsp; He put his hand on top of hers, twining their fingers. “You gave me everything.”
WILL TEXTED ERIK on a Monday afternoon: Come over to the theater. Dais and I want to show you something.
“This is romantic,” Erik said as they led him into one of the studios. The lights were dimmed and votive candles lit all around the perimeter of the space. “Am I overdressed?”
“Terribly,” Will said. “Take your pants off.”
“Quiet, you,” Daisy said. “Take a seat, honey.”
Curious, Erik sat on the floor beneath the barres. “What’s going on?”
“Professional consultation,” Daisy said.
She hit the music. Three precise guitar chords, a single drumbeat and the hair rose up on Erik’s forearms. It was Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary.”
He set his chin on his kneecaps, hugging his shins. He hadn’t seen Will and Daisy dance together in over fifteen years. His stomach curled in anticipation, mixed with an odd fear they wouldn’t be what he remembered. But of course, they were.
Complex and percussive phrases layered on top of the lazy, syrupy music. Quickly, Erik was drawn in, tasting the flavor Will and Daisy were going for. It wasn’t romantic. They danced primarily in unison and the partnering was about mutual strength and support. As usual though, Erik was pulled into Will’s movements. Through Will he felt Daisy’s hands, limbs and weight. He watched her, but he was Will.
Our best performances together were from me being not a partner, but a mirror.
Floating in the flickering candlelight, absorbed mind and body in the dance and mesmerized, Erik realized what a gift they were giving him. Or returning to him, rather: all the lost years of their partnership. The collaboration he had missed. By letting him watch this embryonic version of a pas de deux, he felt the last, small sins of the past finally forgiven. Set free on the wind and let go forever.
They ran out of choreography at the end of the bridge. Will set Daisy down and they became human and ordinary again.
“What do you think?” Will said, breathing hard.
“I think it sucks,” Erik said, wiping his eyes on his shoulder. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Will tapped the side of his head. “In here. Meanwhile, I need you to build a set.”
“Not a set,” Daisy said as she toweled off her face. “An experience.”
“Something wild,” Will said.
Erik rubbed the back of his neck, chewing on a germ of an idea. “How wild?”
“Woodstock wild.”
“Let me drop acid and think about it,” Erik said.
It helped the Fredericton Playhouse was doing a run of the 60’s musical Hair and Erik’s mind was already in an expansive, let-it-all-hang-out mode. He came to the ballet’s early rehearsals and took copious notes. He played Hendrix in his car and through his earphones while running. He pored through production books, leafed through Daisy’s photo albums from her days at the Metropolitan Opera House. He researched the hazards of a multi-storied, vertical set and how to overcome them. He quizzed every member of New Brunswick Ballet on what would make them feel safe and what would get in their way.
“This isn’t going to be a nude ballet, is it?” he asked.
“Yes,” Will said.
“No,” Daisy said.
“Maybe,” Will said.
Erik made a careful note. “No splinters, no sharp edges, no sticky surfaces.”
He threw all his ideas and concepts into the stockpot and stirred in the memory of the forest scene his father once built in his bedroom. The result was a cross between construction scaffolding and a psychedelic playground. Three levels of space for the dancers to move in, on, under and through. Steps, ropes and cargo nets bridged the gaps between.
He brought the final sketches next door and sat at the kitchen table with a beer while Will went through them.
“I should be able to make a model this week,” Erik said.
Will hummed absently, his eyebrows pulled low, his fingers running along his hairline. Erik smiled as he caught sight of Will’s new tattoo: a small, black fish on the inside of his forearm, leaping ahead of a cresting wave.
“Why?” Erik said, when he first saw it a few weeks ago.
“Because I hate your guts,” Will said, which was the extent of the conversation.
Erik watched now as Will unconsciously folded his fingers into a fist and relaxed them, over and over, making the fish ripple. He set aside the last sketch, exhaled heavily and looked at Erik.
“What do you think?” Erik said.
“I think I’m in love with you again.”
“I know, but what do you think of the set?”
Will slid the drawings across the table. “If you build it, I will come.”
Daisy was deep in a creative zone as well. The first time Erik saw her dance “Hey, Joe” was in the empty nursery at Barbegazi. It brought him to his knees, staring open-mouthed and stunned at the raw emotion. One minute her body was a mirror of Hendrix’s signature guitar sound, the next it was the undercurrent of percussion. Barefoot, strong and glorious, dancing from her unapologetic guts, she squeezed the music tight in her limbs and wrung a story out of it.
“Has Will seen this?” he asked when it was over and he felt like a truck had hit him.
She shook her head, sucking wind. Hands braced on her knees, back and chest heaving and sweat dripping onto the hardwood floor.
“You have to show him,” he said.
“It needs a little more work.”
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t need anything except Will’s eyes.”
The three of them went over to the quiet Imperial Theater. Daisy wanted to try the solo on the stage, to see if it translated from a small space to a larger one. Erik sat with Will in the back row to watch. At the end of the second verse, Will dropped his head in his hands, fingers clenched tight in his hair and shoulders quivering.
“Fuck. Me.”
“I know,” Erik said.
“Jesus Christ, Fish.”
“I know. It’s so many things. It’s her after losing Kees. Or it’s me after she slept with David. Or her father trying to get his son back.”
Will’s dropped his hands and his face flicked to Erik with a look that was almost angry. “The fuck are you talking about?” he said, eyebrows pulled in a single straight line. “It’s James.”
Erik felt his face widen as his brain scrambled, rewound and started over again with fresh perspective. He looked at the stage, looked back at Will. “Oh my God.”
“You see it?”
“I see it.”
“Where was he going with that gun in his hand?”
Erik folded his arms on the seat back in front of him and set his chin down. “Unbelievable it wasn’t the first thing I thought of.”
Will hitched forward as well. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m kind of glad it wasn’t.”
Erik glanced at him. “You mean the shooting’s been replaced by better tragedy?”
Will smiled and shrugged. “Maybe that’s life. Trading in one tragedy for a better tragedy.”
Erik looked back to the stage where his wife was dancing and had to agree.
Being part of Experience helped heal Erik’s soul like nothing else. When the company took to the set in a rough, technical run-through, a pure, clean delight swept through him. The first unadulterated happiness he’d known since they lost Kees.
The rock ballet was a smash, selling out its three-week run. It earned Daisy and Will a prize for choreography at the Canadian Ballet Festival. The gala performance was staged at Fredericton Playhouse. From the lighting booth, through a raucous, standing ovation, Erik watched his wife and best friend collect their award.
He reached and pressed his palm flat to the glass. From the stage, Daisy touched her fingertips to her mouth and turned her palm back out to him.
Erik leaned his elbows on the console and leaned hard on the moment. Filled with the unwavering certainty that if li
fe were going to throw tragedy at him, it would whether he embraced the joy of right now or not.
He might as well make out with it.
Take it to bed.
Get it pregnant.
Later that night, he told Daisy, “I want to try again. I’m ready if you are.”
She drew her breath in, slowly let it out. “If something happens this time,” she said. “I mean, if it doesn’t work, or we lose it… I think I’ll be done. I think my heart will have taken all it can.”
He nodded, brushing her hair back from her face. “I’m ready for that, too.”
“Of course, if nothing happens, if it all goes smoothly… I’ll be a fucking lunatic anyway.”
He gathered her close and smiled against her head. “Count me in.”
TRUDY DIED IN THE spring of 2010. A stroke took her fast. She didn’t suffer, Mike said.
Erik and Daisy drove to Clayton for the funeral and stayed at the Saint Lawrence Inn. Trudy was buried in Pettitte family plot in the village cemetery, next to her husband, Louis.
Kirsten looked stunned at the service. Her face gaunt, the vivid blue of her eyes cut in half. Erik could feel her bones when he hugged her. Beneath his chin, the tender pink of her scalp showed through her white hair.
Kirsten hugged Daisy then took her face between her wrinkled hands. She stared a moment. When she looked up at Erik, a bit of mischief was back in her expression.
“You did it again, didn’t you?” she said.
Erik ducked his head, acknowledging guilt.
“We were thinking,” Daisy said. “If we have a girl we—”
“Don’t you dare,” Kirsten said, her eyes flaring to life. She raised a warning finger, looking from Erik to Daisy and back. “Trudy hated her name. You name your daughter Gertrude, you will answer to me.”
Chastised as young children, they scrapped the idea and promised.
The summer passed in construction. Giving fate, fear and superstition the finger, they blew out Barbegazi’s south wall and built a family room, with a new bedroom and bath on top of it.
Here to Stay Page 28
