by Julie Paul
Allan looked back at Fraser. We stopped paddling. Our two kayaks slowed. Choppy waves jostled us. My stomach rolled.
“Oh, shit,” Fraser said.
Allan looked first at Fraser and then at me. “Guess we’ve got to face our demons.”
“What do we do?” Fraser asked.
“Confess,” Billy said in a congested voice. “Get your story straight and get it over with.”
“Yeah,” Allan said. “Come to think of it, the little girl’s bang on. Better to just lay it all out.”
He smirked at me. My heart stopped.
“Sue,” he said. “Why don’t you go first?”
The King Is Dead
There was little chance we’d see any loon chicks that morning on the lake. It was the middle of summer, and I knew the babies had been growing for months already. But my nephew, Sammy, age five and three-quarters, wanted to look all the same—at the end of our family’s beach, he’d found a few dark feathers with white spots. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they were most likely from a long-dead chick.
Sammy and I set out for a trip in the old green canoe, after he’d pleaded with his mother, my sister Donna, to let him go. She relented only after I promised to make him wear his sun hat and lay down my life for him if we tipped—I practically had to demonstrate my CPR skills.
He turned his blond, curly-haired head around to face me as I pushed us away from the dock. “Auntie Trish, what did you call the canoe when you were a little kid?”
“The pea-green pod.”
Sammy laughed as if he hadn’t heard me say it just ten minutes earlier. “And we’re the peas, right?”
Donna made him sit in the bottom of the canoe because he was less likely to fall overboard from there. We’d had to do the same thing when our father—a man I termed “The Emp”—took Donna and me out to hunt for bullfrogs when we were kids. On one of those frog hunts, Donna and I decided to trail our fingers in the water on the same side of the canoe at the same time, and we ended up in the lake just a few feet from the dock. It shouldn’t have been a big deal; Donna and I thought it was hilarious, and we’d bobbed around in our keyhole life jackets, kicking and splashing. But Dad started yelling at us to keep our heads up, as if we could do anything else, our heads framed in padded canvas, and next thing I knew, he was screaming for our mother. “Dee! Help! Help!” She came rushing right into the water, arms flailing, to save us. We didn’t need saving, but she’d acted as though the lake held electric eels or a crazy undertow. She didn’t catch her breath until we were safely on the dock. Then she helped Dad turn the canoe over and pull it back to shore. He repeated over and over, “I’m sorry, Dee, I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.” Our bossy, headstrong father was sobbing.
“Your father needs a rest,” our mother had said and helped him up the stairs to the cottage as though he were wounded.
Sammy and I were out a hundred feet from shore. From that distance I could barely see a cottage at all; the cedars in front of it had grown into one another to form a dull green cloud. My mother was away at a local day spa with some friends from Ottawa, a celebration for a woman whose cancer had gone into remission, but The Emp was behind that cloud, holding down a Muskoka chair, a highball in his hand.
I paddled as little as possible, just one J-stroke every few minutes, while Sammy looked for loons, and then I let my paddle rest across the gunwales and watched the water drip back, dimpling the flat surface. I’d always loved this lake best in the morning, before anyone else could ruin the day with their rules about water safety or their hangover gloom. I used to wake up early and swim, unencumbered, before my parents were up; just in case my mother asked if I’d worn my life jacket, I always left it soaking in the water, ready to show her.
Sammy was squirming around like someone needing to pee, although he’d gone before we set off. I asked him why he was so wiggly.
“Because we’re on an adventure!” He opened his small blue backpack and pulled out four plastic people. “Look who I brought!” He held up one of the figures. “You gave me these, back when I was little-little.”
The pirates. Wow. I’d bought him the pirates the last time I’d seen him—two Decembers ago, when Donna had brought him to Toronto to see The Nutcracker. We’d met in the Eaton Centre, in front of a toy store, and Sammy was crying because he wanted the hundred-dollar Playmobil pirate ship, and he wanted it right then and there. The crowd curdled around us; I could barely breathe in my puffy coat. My hair was full of typical winter mall static, my fingers were cracked from the cold, and my lips were shredded.
“Looking good,” Donna said. Donna’s curls lay flat due to the toque she’d stuffed in her coat pocket. On her thigh was a smear of snot at Sammy’s nose level.
“You, too.” At one point our words would have carried irony, but we pretended we meant it. “Should we grab a bite to eat now?” The only thing I knew about kids: keep them fed and things go better.
Sammy then spent the whole half-hour in the food court driving French fries through ketchup drifts, making vroom-vroom noises while Donna and I caught up.
The food court was crammed with dozens of little kids all jumping out of their skin, so hyped up for the big day. I remembered that can’t-wait feeling so well, and I missed it. On impulse, I hopped to my feet and told Donna and Sammy to keep themselves parked, and ran down to the toy store to buy him that pirate ship.
The look on Sammy’s face when I handed it to him was worth the frown on Donna’s.
“What do you say?” she prompted.
“It’s awesome!” Sammy had cried.
What was truly awesome was that this little boy remembered that the pirates were a gift from me. He lined them up on the canoe seat in front of him, faces staring into the clear blue sky because they wouldn’t stay standing; my solo paddling skills weren’t what they used to be. I hadn’t been in a canoe for three years, the length of time I’d been away from the cottage.
Sammy, the pirates, and I scoured the lake’s edge, trying to avoid the big rocks marked by floating bleach bottles. He was so happy, he was singing made-up songs, every now and then adding a matey and an Arrr, as if he never came out on the water.
Sammy, Donna, and her husband, Mitch, live half a mile up the road, inland. Spending so much time by the water when we were kids made my sister want to move to the area; Mitch commutes to the outskirts of Ottawa for some kind of boring telecom work while she stays in the country with Sammy, who’s just finished kindergarten. When The Emp inherited the cottage, we spent our summers at the lake.
“Do you come out on the lake very often?”
“No, Mommy’s afraid I’ll drown,” Sammy said matter-of-factly. “She knows a lot of stories about kids who died in water.”
The same old paranoia, coming down the line. “And you’re not scared?”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve got this life jacket. Plus, you’re here.”
His trust and obedience were kind of sweet. He was a kid who didn’t even try to go hatless or upset his mother.
What did he know about me? I’d been a scrawny, jumpy, sugar-loving kid, then a sullen teen with a hate-on for pretty much anything except for my own take on style—wearing lingerie as clothing, lacy underwear over street clothes, an upside-down crucifix—and I’d turned into a scrawny, jumpy, sugar-loving tattooed adult with my own company, designing websites for people who want an edge to their image—Artful Darkness. Nice of Donna, in a way, to have kept the stories of Auntie Trish to herself.
Sammy and I returned to the dock, empty-handed and hungry. Donna greeted us by throwing her arms around Sammy as if she’d been away from him for weeks. “You need more sunscreen,” she told him. “Come on, let’s go up.”
We climbed the stairs and discovered that The Emp had a visitor. “You remember George, Trish?” The Emp asked.
I nodded. I guessed the family was still buying corn on the cob and tomatoes from his farm. He was sitting in the other Muskoka chair on the deck. Donna
disappeared into the cottage.
“Gidday, kiddo,” George said. “How’s the fishing?”
Sammy cocked his head and put his hands on his hips. “We weren’t fishing, we were searching for loons.”
George laughed and looked at me. “Looks like you found one.”
“Sammy, come here and give your old grandpa a hug.” Sammy ran over to The Emp and nearly sent his highball flying. “Careful, now, my boy. Careful.”
“Long time no see,” I said to George. “How’s it going?”
“Can’t complain.” He lifted his beer. “And what do we have here?”
Donna brought out a bowl of nuts, some crackers and cheese, and a jelly sandwich for Sammy, who snatched it and headed back down to the beach, announcing his intention to make a sandcastle. Donna looked at the spray in her hand. “Wait! I forgot your sunscreen!”
While my sister did her mother-thing, I settled in for a chat on the deck and George told us why he could afford to visit, evidently a rare event. At the beginning of the summer, his wife and kids had gone to the East Coast, to visit her family until Labour Day. “It’s a good thing,” he said. “Time on my hands for once.” I didn’t believe him. His shoulders were sad—even with all that meat on his bones, his shoulders looked thin and empty.
“Hey, those things hurt?” George was pointing at my tattooed shoulder, the morning glory vines wrapping around from my pecs to the bottom of my shoulder blade.
“Not much.”
The Emp said, “Bring the good man another beverage, Patricia.”
I took a deep breath: nothing had changed. My father hadn’t asked a single question about my life since my arrival, and while my mother had been chatty, Donna ignored me and went about doing Sammy stuff. I’d always been the outsider, estranged from them, not part of their secret family club. We were right back to the usual patterns. Sure, I’d go get George another beer.
Donna came back and we sat and shot the breeze for a few more minutes, marvelling at the run of decent weather, the low number of mosquitoes.
After he finished his beer, George needed to use the bathroom. He started to rise from his chair, but it wouldn’t let him go. He tried again, grunting and laughing, with no luck. George had really wedged himself into that Muskoka chair. He was completely jammed in.“You attached to this here chair, Bob?” he asked my father. “Might have to bust me out of her.”
“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll get you out.” The Emp directed Donna and me in his teacherly voice that was beginning to slur a little. “Each of you hold down an arm now, while George stands up. These chairs are awful. Damned nuisances.”
It worked. Freed from the chair, George shook himself off like he’d won a fight, then limped to the bathroom.
“Thank God we’re outside,” I whispered. George gave off a blend of cow shit, diesel fumes, and farts. “Pee-ew.”
“Hush, now,” The Emp said. “He works hard.” He put on his glasses and picked up the Globe and Mail ’s Review section. Soon he was making a sound I recognized: a half-whistle, half-hum that meant he was feeling no pain.
I remembered Bob Hudson, a.k.a. The Emp, as a successful man in every way, including his success, if you’d call it that, at getting completely sloshed on a daily basis. It seemed he was still good at it. I came up with “The Emp,” my name for him, as a teenager, and I’d referred to him as The Emp ever since. When I mentioned it to Donna, I said the name referred to his proclamations, his putting on airs and accents, like an aristocrat—short for The Emperor. The one who wears no clothes? she’d asked. Sure, I’d said. If the shoe fits. It could also be short for Empties. Donna stuck with “Dad.” The good daughter who’d stuck.
I was just coming out of a pretty bleak period—a dark and rainy spring, a bad breakup, my friends dating decent people and plotting their futures. The guy who’d dumped me, like most of the guys I’d attracted, had taken my darker look to mean hard “partier.” Yet I’d always been too afraid; I worried that it would be like enticing tapeworms to come out through my mouth with a saucer of milk at my lips—the addict rising from deep inside, wanting to be fed. The last guy quipped, “I didn’t know I was signing up for a church lady. You have twelve tattoos. You like Rage Against the Machine, for fuck sakes!” He called my look “false advertising.” Needless to say, I hadn’t found a decent match.
With George rescued, Donna left the deck and descended the dozen steps to the beach to skip stones with Sammy. It was like being on holiday for her. Whenever our parents were at the cottage, Donna came over every day.
“Want some cheddar?” I asked The Emp. “Or did you already have lunch?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Sister took care of me.”
I took up the steel wool and continued scrubbing down the barbecue. We’d cooked up some tandoori chicken breasts I brought from the city only on Mom’s condition that the grill would be pristine again the next day.
“Just turn her up to five hundred and walk away,” George said, returning from the loo. “Best clean you’ll ever get.”
“Is that so?” I kept at it. George sat himself down on another, easier-to-exit chair. The Emp had gone quiet, his pink face contemplative under his bushy white head of hair—good hair even at seventy years old, no messy-look hair product required. He looked smaller than he had on my last visit to Ottawa, but I put it down to the oversized chair he was in.
“What’s the big thing at the farm these days?” I asked George, as if a century-old farm made quick decisions on crops and livestock. I wondered if organic had hit that part of the country yet. I handed him another Molson’s.
“Oh, same old corn and beef. After sixty years of farming, Dad won’t stray from those. But there’s a couple fields in the back corner where I’m growing buckwheat, kind of an experiment. A cereal company pays decent money for the stuff. Purely a cash crop, I guess.”
“I used to sell buckwheat. Raw and toasted. When I worked at the health food store.”
“Yeah, it’s a hippie thing.” George squinted at my nose. “See you took your bull ring out.”
I ignored this brilliant observation. “It’s high in protein, compared with other grains.”
“You ever eat it?”
“Sure.” I’d only ever eaten it once, at a friend’s geodesic dome. They served it like porridge with soya butter and soya sauce, and I couldn’t get the burnt, bitter taste off my tongue for two days.
“I’ll stick to other protein, thanks,” George said and dug through the bowl of mixed nuts with his dirty hands, rooting out the cashews. “You want some, Bob?” But The Emp couldn’t answer; he’d passed out.
Just as we noticed his condition, we heard excitement from the lake.
“Grandpa! Grandpa!” It was Sammy, yelling from the dock. “We caught a bullfrog!”
The Emp’s head was bent toward his chest.
“Good job,” George yelled back. “Hold on tight!”
My father didn’t stir.
“Napping, Bob?” George nudged The Emp’s foot with his own. “He okay? Heart okay?”
“Oh, I think so,” I said. “He’s been drinking his medicine all day.”
“Ah, shit.” George chuckled. “I shoulda known that. I thought it was water at first, all fancy-like with the lemon. The way he was guzzling.”
“The only water he gets is in the ice.”
The Emp was slowly slumping over; his top half was about to fall sideways out of the chair. George jumped up to catch him.
“You want me to put him to bed?”
“I guess we’d better.”
Donna had come up to check on things. George picked up my father like he was a sack of potatoes, hefted him into the cottage, and laid him down, tenderly, on the old feather mattress in the bedroom closest to the front door. As I shifted him away from the edge of the bed, I was surprised to feel how bony The Emp’s limbs were, how insubstantial they felt under his grey cotton slacks.
At that moment Sammy yelled from the dock again. “M
ommy! Come help me! The pool noodles are floating away!”
“Oh, bloody hell,” Donna muttered.
A fake inner Brit surfaced when she panicked, something else she inherited from The Emp. He always liked to act British, used to go days with an affected accent, a slight tea-time tightness to his voice. Maybe a by-product of the gin, a distillation of Her Majesty’s royal juniper berries, but more likely it was a way for him to feel distinguished among the neighbours in Ottawa, who were senior civil servants or professors. A high school history teacher was not a prof. At one point, apparently, he could have taken things further and done his PhD, but then Donna came along, and then me, and after all (although this is not a part of the official story), in my opinion, he was busy dedicating his free time to the bottle.
I could feel the day settling into my shoulder muscles, knotting them up. “Thanks for stopping by,” I said to George, who stood on the deck, finishing his beer. A light wind had begun to blow, and on it, the scent of the wild roses growing along the dirt lane. I decided to walk with him out to the main road. We kept a leisurely, work-boot pace.
“You don’t miss it around here? Big city’s not too much for you?”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. It wasn’t true. I missed the lake so much. The city offered me chances, diversity, stimulation, but the lake was my medicine; it settled me down.
“Donna’s pretty happy living here, seems like,” George said. “Nice little family. Good mother.”
“Yeah. Maybe a little over the top with the safety drills.”
George slowed down and lowered his voice. “Well, now, you can never be too careful. After Patrick and all.”
Who was Patrick? “What do you mean?”
He jerked his head to the side and looked at me hard. “Oh. Well, then. I better be off.” He looked embarrassed. He hoisted up his jeans and turned toward his farm. “Give my best to your mother.”
Probably a little dotty, mixing up stories. Or maybe it was the beer at work, making him forget that I hadn’t been around in years and no longer knew the local stories.
