Elise was beside her again, opened the door with some gusto to reveal a bedroom the size of a large closet. A twin bed jammed into a corner, log cabin quilt hung over the footboard. “Well,” Elise said. “A short nap’ll do you good, Mother. And you don’t need nothing more than you got here.”
Stella sneezed lightly.
“You’ll feel better afterwards.”
As she sat on the edge of the creaky mattress, Stella grunted. The older she got, the more difficult she found it to disguise her annoyance for Elise. Or for anyone else for that matter. Stella’s words often emerged before her brain had time to warn her tongue. She couldn’t help herself. And she could get away with it too. People attributed her occasional display of crotchetiness to her age.
“Refreshed.”
Stella lay her head down, thought about the stupidity in Elise’s statement. Feeling refreshed. How was it possible to feel refreshed when her faulty carcass was degrading much faster than it was being born?
“That don’t look much like a lamp,” Elise said, indicating a pale blue contraption on the nightstand. She reached along the cord, snapped a button, and light emerged from the inside of a hard papery cylinder. The cylinder, decorated with a smattering of cutout stars, began to revolve slowly, coating the walls in moving shapes of light.
“Isn’t that nice, Mother?” Elise asked.
“Don’t need a nightlight now, Elissse.” She hated to whistle her daughter’s name. “I idn’t a child.”
“Not far off,” she said with a half smile, and shook the quilt in the air, covered Stella up to her neck.
“God, Elise, I got to breathe.”
“I would hope so.”
After Elise had receded down the hallway, the house became quiet, except for the gentle knocking of pipes, floorboards creaking as though ghosts were ambling over them. Stella did not mind these noises. They were sounds of ease, well-deserved after more than a century of standing.
She slid her hands under her cheek, began to think about Leander. She often conjured his image before sleeping, pulled him up from her reserves. And there he was, as though by magic, appearing inside her mind’s eye, standing on the cliff near their home. His hair was thick and wind-whipped, a tawny brown. He wore black trousers, a crisp white Sunday shirt, and she could see the outline of his undershirt beneath it. Harriet was by his side, yipping and jumping up to kiss Leander’s outstretched hand, wiggling her backside to gain height. Behind them, man and dog, the black ocean sparkled with a thousand points of light.
Leander turned, began to meander on the path along those cliffs, Harriet following close on his heels. But there was something different. She noticed Leander’s gait was even, balanced. Steady and strong. He wasn’t limping as he had done in life.
And when she noticed this, a curious feeling spread throughout Stella’s frail bones, a tingling of sorts. She was reminded of being a young child in summertime, sitting on a stretch of rounded beach rocks, dirt-stained feet near the very lip of the ocean. The tide would slowly edge over her toes, her ankles, her legs, slipping in ever so gently. Covering her. Then, as gently, drawing her out. Lying there, she had this sense of being solidly still and in a state of motion at the same time. These images of Leander gave her the same feeling. For a reason she could not grasp, she understood that the Leander in her mind was not a memory, and not quite an imagining. Something ever so slightly different.
He stopped just before the path dipped downwards, the place where earth and frigid water met with sky. As she watched, he looked over his shoulder, waved his hand, beckoning her to follow him. Harriet howled, her furry neck stretched upwards, wide jaw snapping at the clouds.
That feeling again, throughout her entire body now. Leander, like the tide, washing over her, pulling her towards him. She had no desire to rise, shake off her dripping frozen limbs, run towards the house. She desired, more deeply than anything she’d ever experienced, to move with that tide.
“Wait,” she managed. “Wait.” And with some urgency, she tried to get up from her bed and go. To flow forward. Before he disappeared down over the cut of the cliff. She reached outwards, knocked the lamp with her hand, and it fell, striking the wooden floor, covering her in a blanket of soft-edged stars. The light moved over her eyelids, and ever so gradually, under her eyelids. She barely noticed the shift at all, it was so subtle. Nothing more than a single breath in, a single breath out. “Wait,” she said again, as she stood up. “Wait for me, Leander. I’m coming.”
The wind had come up out of nowhere, forcing curled leaves to skitter over the pavement, across the sheet of rock, out over the cliffs. As she watched them, Elise thought these tired leaves looked as though they were being propelled towards certain death. Tumbling into nothingness against their will. There was something romantic about it, as though those leaves were unable to resist the wildness of the wind. She liked this weather, would love it, in fact, if only she could excise the raspy whistle from inside her ears. That sound reminded her of her mother’s voice. Chiding her.
She held her coat across her chest, ambled up the laneway, then stood for a moment at a curve in the road, stared up at the old farmhouse. It was bright red now, like a fresh wound, when before, the clapboard had been painted blue, perhaps grey. Maybe it had been no colour at all, that last time she had seen it. Close enough to be touching the boards, fingernails scraping the boards. Maybe the farmhouse had been stripped bare of paint, standing there in the salty storms, naked as the day it was built. No, she couldn’t remember the colour. Couldn’t remember it at all.
In her mind, she decided to continue her walk around Bended Knee, maybe stroll down to the old schoolhouse, rest on the cement stoop, stare at the field where she and Robert had eaten ice cream, bowled with the set of homemade pins her father had fashioned so many years ago. But her body had other ideas. Without thought given to the tall grass, the mucky ditch, her feet stepped off the laneway and onto the property of the bed and breakfast. Secured inside new shoes, her feet cut a line straight across the land until they reached the farmhouse. Elise looked around, wondering how she had arrived on that particular spot, and she hunched down, her back firmly pressed against the wood slats.
Stupid. Forcing herself to sit there and think about that night. Her body wanting her to stay, when her mind longed to meander about, dodging this way and that, blissfully ignorant. Very well. Get on with it. Not as though one particular day in a life makes a whole lot of difference, she thought. It’s the culmination of years that shape a person, not a few hours with some boy. Some boy who was worth nothing. “Lewis Hickey.” She whispered his name into the wind, then knotted the tough grass through her fingers, and pulled. Its roots were old, would not let go, and urged her down. No point to focus on that now. Think about something else.
Two empty cola cans, a married pair, rattled down the road side by side, popping over pebbles, rollicking left and right, clanking into each other for a metal kiss. Garbage. Who would throw out garbage like that? Bloody litterbugs. Elise hated trash on the roads, was meticulous about her own garbage. Double-bagged, heavy-duty twist ties. No chance of leakage or emission of foul odours. She took pride in her silver container at the end of her driveway, undented, clean. A much better job than a man would do.
But she hadn’t always been like that. One week, she’d missed the truck, and after two weeks of unprecedented summer heat, the mess had begun to liquefy, leak out of newly created holes, trailing down the incline towards her driveway. But that wasn’t the worst of it. On the top of each bag she noticed the contents rippling, the black plastic shifting, a faint crackling sound rising up from within. Before her brain could assess the prospects, her hand reached out, tugged away the bag. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw the maggots. Masses of identical fat beige bodies, writhing over and under each other, bathed in filth. Surely, Elise thought, that is the very image of Hell. Right there before her.
For months, she couldn’t get that picture out of her head. S
ometimes, when she’d be slipping into a hot bath or just dozing off, it would jump up and startle her. She couldn’t help but imagine, in some crevice of her mind, what it might feel like. To be right in the middle of it all. Entities slithering over and under. Lost inside a tangle of identical bodies. In time she came to the conclusion that perhaps it was not so horrible after all. Might even be soothing. No individuals. Just a humming chaos. Common goal.
Elise could see a thin line of the ocean from her perch. Fog, like billowing chalk dust, was tumbling inland. The clouds had dropped lower, and to Elise, they reminded her of injured flesh. Enormously fat arms and legs and backsides, beaten beyond, draped over one another in a haphazard manner. “Lewis Hickey.” Spit it out this time. Offered it up to the brutish wind. Just to see if anything might happen.
More than anything else, she always wondered why her mother never tried to help her, never supported her. Looking back on it now, Elise had been nothing more than a young woman, innocent, naïve. But when she tried to tell her mother about Lewis, she was shut down. Told to let it go. Her thighs still bloody, skin scoured from her knees and shins, and already the time had come to let it go. Elise remembered every word they exchanged as her mother stood in the doorway to her bedroom.
“Elise? I’d like to say something to you.”
“What’s that, Mother. That this mess is my own fault? That you hopes to God I idn’t pregnant?”
“No.” Silence for a moment. “I want to say. I want . . . Don’t let this get the better of you, is all.”
“What do you mean, Mother?”
“Shape your life.”
“Stop, Mother.”
“This now, what went on ’tween you and Lewis. Idn’t nothing every woman don’t go through.”
“Stop, Mother.”
“In some shape or form, Elise. We all goes through it. ’Tis part of who we is.”
“I hardly think that’s true.”
“Put it out of your mind,” her mother had said. As though it were that simple. “Decide to be done with it.”
Then, Elise scratched her nails in the moist cuts on her knees, and informed her mother that she was leaving Bended Knee. And never coming back. She remembered looking at her mother, leaning against the doorframe, eyes like shadows, body weary. Yes, she remembered looking at her mother, thinking, believing she had never brought that woman an ounce of joy. Not a single ounce of joy.
When she arrived in St. John’s, she took her mother’s advice, placed that evening with Lewis on a shelf far back in her mind. Allowed it to develop a substantial layer of dust, a cloak of stringy cobwebs. Lived her life, free of the mental kinks such an encounter might create.
Lately though, she wished she hadn’t forced it back so far. Wished she had of taken a week or nine days to feel some sadness over it. Then perhaps, she wouldn’t be sitting there on that knoll, a grey-haired about-to-be grandmother, whispering the name of her worst childhood crush. She might be thinking of other more important things, like her bank account. And the fact that Arthur, her second ex-husband, was late once again with the spousal support payment. She would have to contact her lawyer, make an arrangement that was more secure.
Elise put her head into the knees of her jeans, felt the first pecks of rain, tiny shards of icy water on the back of her neck. She shivered, though she did not feel the chill on her skin. Sitting there, on the earth of her childhood, she could practically grasp the quantity of time that had passed. As though all of her adult years were the loop of a wide ribbon, and she was now resting at the knot near the ends.
She looked up, watched a man stride down the laneway ahead of her, salt-and-pepper cap hauled low on his forehead. He stopped, as though he sensed her watching him, made a sharp turn and walked halfway down the driveway towards the bed and breakfast. He hollered towards her. Something about a storm.
Elise leaned forward, wind whistling sharply in her ears. She could see his mouth moving, an arm waving towards the farmhouse, but his words were stolen by the gusts, driven elsewhere. “What’s that?” she yelled back.
Another bout of mumbling. “Storm . . . good . . . fit . . . dog . . .” He pointed his finger towards the sky.
“What?” She scrunched up her face, trying to hear. She stood up, took several steps, resisted taking more. “I can barely catch a word.”
He removed his cap, wind immediately seizing the greased fingers of his comb over, making them dance atop his skull. He said something else, “Works. . .grounds. . .” stepped towards her, smiled.
He wasn’t an unattractive man, this stranger: stocky body, ruddy cheeks, clear eyes. Hands like hammers. Someone who obviously wasn’t afraid of a good day’s work, and this was a trait Elise valued even more as she grew older.
He smiled again, took another two steps towards her, yelled, “Rising. . .wicked. . .tea. . .”
“I’m sorry, sir.” She frowned, shook her head and shrugged. “The wind.”
She watched as he held his hair in place, jammed his cap back on, and waved in a somewhat embarrassed gesture, went on about his way. For a moment, she watched him stroll down the drive, lurching this way and that as the wind pressed down upon him. And she wondered who he was. Maybe he had recognized her. Somehow, after all these years. Maybe he was a widower with fully grown, uncomplicated children.
Elise shook her head, frowned at her own stupidity. In the van on the way to Bended Knee, she had the ridiculous fear that she would saunter onto this patch of grass and be gulped down. Devoured by a memory that she now realized had significantly faded. Like an old photo, edges chipped and tattered, image out of focus.
She lifted her face to the rain, let the plump drops strike her eyelids, cheeks. And for several moments, enjoyed the comfort of being alone in growing darkness.
“Read a little something, honey.” Jane nestled into Robert’s side, head lying on his warm shoulder, soft blue cotton sweater. “You know I love to listen.”
Robert reached up, let his hand cover her ear, her coarse hair. She was a decent woman, his wife. He never lacked for affection, never wondered if he were loved, never felt the brunt of a grudge held high. Jane seemed, and likely was, perfectly content to be seated on this musty furniture in the makeshift library of this old house, the firelight mellowing their wrinkles, hiding the dust in the corners.
“Anything in particular, dear?” He stood, began to peruse the shelves. “Mrs. Hilliard has quite the selection of poets.”
“Surprise me.”
“All right then.” He selected a book, settled back beside her, and loosely crossed one leg over the other. Glasses that dangled on a chain lifted to his nose, he flipped through, randomly selected. “Okay. Elizabeth Akers Allen.”
Cleared his throat, began to recite:
“BACKWARD, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for to-night!”
“Ohhh. Lovely,” Jane murmured, slid her arm across Robert’s stomach, tucked her hand underneath the bend of his elbow.
“Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me. . .”
He paused, looked up at his wife, leaned forward, and her arm fell away.
She clasped her hands together, sat up as well. “Why that’s beautiful, darling. Um. Who was that again?”
“Shhh.”
“Shhh?”
“Shhh!”
He stared towards the door that opened on to the hallway, waited, listening. And after a second or two, he heard a solid thud, something falling from a short height onto the wooden floor. For a reason he could not explain, he had expected to hear that sound. Wanted silence as he listened for it.
“What do you suppose that was?” Jane whispered.
His face fell flat, mouth sligh
tly open, voice cracked ever so slightly. “How long did you say Mom’s been asleep?”
chapter seventeen
A young man, not older than eighteen or nineteen years, lingered near the edge of a cliff. He was wearing a long satin cloak, black top hat, and had a cane, carved bird’s head handle, hooked over his right wrist. Raising his palms towards the starless heavens, cloak slapping in the wind, he said in a deadly serious tone, “The spirits is agitated. I feels it in the air.”
A tiny congregation of four females accompanied the young man. Summer had arrived on the cliffside with her daughter Gemma, and there were two additional teenaged girls. Summer guessed they were locals. It was difficult to determine their age in the hazy darkness that surrounded them. Street lights, wrapped in tendrils of fog, offered little light, and the windows of the many homes appeared farther away than they really were.
Gemma giggled nervously, gripped Summer’s mittened hand, leaned against her shoulder. “Will we see anything?” she whispered.
“It’s only some stories, Gemma,” Summer whispered back. “We can leave if you want.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“Welcome,” he continued. “Welcome to what I likes to call ‘Weak in the Bended Knee.’” He took a step farther back on the cliff, giving himself some additional height. “This is not for the faint of heart, folks. Tonight, you’ll hear stories, true stories, of the tormented souls that wander around our little village of Bended Knee. A history of murder.” He paused, stared out through widened eyes, leaned closer. “Stories of unrequited love, affairs of the heart, of the flesh.”
One of the two girls snorted, said, “I likes the sound of that, Jamie.”
“Shut up, will you?” Snapped back. Then, “I will be calling on these ghosts to have a word to us, to communicate. If you finds you’s overwhelmed, folks, let me know and we can take a spell. The portal is open tonight, and they might have a lot to say.”
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