Mum’s brain is so scrambled, she can’t match sounds with feelings. She sits, emitting a laugh-cry caterwaul, worsening when I stuff her in the cab. I give the cabbie a five-dollar tip for the three drops of blood that fell on his seat before I wadded a sock against Mum’s nosebleed. Once inside emerg, I let it gush, because it moves her to the head of the line and off to a cubicle. The nurse writes down Mum’s info and details about the tumble. “Has the patient been at this hospital before?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Her disgraceful file will be next to mine, the one detailing the time she split my head with the dustpan. The nurse asks my name. “Um, Ar . . . ah, Ronnie Irwin.”
“Relationship?”
“Stepdaughter.”
“Emergency contact?”
“Detective Richard Irwin, Metro Toronto Police, Oxford8-2996.”
“Have a seat in the waiting area.”
“Come on, Mikey. I need to call Jennah.”
She picks up on the first ring. “Ari? Why aren’t you on the train?”
“Mum had a fall.”
“Bad?”
“Walloped her head. Likely busted her arm.”
“It’s like she knows we’re all going on holidays and has to wreck it.”
“When’re you leaving?”
“Soon as Wilf gets home. He’ll have a coronary if we’re a minute late for the tournament. Where’re you?”
“East General.”
“Well, that’s fine then. Split before they tell you to take her home.”
“Just ditch her?”
“Oh, like she never ditched us. Jory loves ministering to pathetic souls. I’ll get her there.”
“What if you can’t reach her?”
“I’ll hire a nurse. Leave my number with the desk and get yourself gone.”
“You’re the best, Jen.”
“Go. Now.”
“Can you let Jillianne know we’re coming.”
“Will do and I’ll let Mary know you’re delayed but on your way.”
Mikey slips his skinny hand into mine. “You’re nice.”
For all intents and purposes, she is.
Shut it. I’m in no friggin’ mood.
* * *
The Montreal delay is a gift. For years, I watched Jillianne Appleton wreck herself with drugs and boys. Now, I see my beautiful sister reborn as Anne Trembley, at her job. Witnessing her create gives me hope, as big as the sea-serpent costume we’re wiring together. Destruction. Construction. She’s content. Zen. Evolving. And there’s a child. A little girl named Celine.
“Where’s her mom?” I ask.
“Think she’s dead, or good as. Her Uncle Isa, one of the dancers, was looking after her. He got a gig in Europe and couldn’t manage. Auntie D and me were over the moon to get a kid without the bother of a man.”
Next morning, at Central Station, Mum’s oldest sister, Auntie Dolores, gives me a folio. “Heard you were looking for pictures of your dad.”
“I—”
“Take a look. I insist.”
The folio contains a wad of handwritten pages and several ancient snaps of a toddler and several of a small boy. The face, the mane of curls, the inward turn of the foot are identical to photos Mary has of me as a child. “No question I’m an Appleton, eh.”
“I do question that. These snaps are your grandpa, Frederick Trembley. His friends called him Fish.”
“Fish?”
“Fred and his big fish stories. He was so sick by the time you came along, I don’t think you ever heard one. Thought you’d especially like this one. All the animals are talking.”
I almost knock the alpaca in Auntie D off its skinny legs. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing but some scraps of paper.”
“Thank you for giving my sister this life.”
“It’s my treat having her and Celine underfoot. Go, get yourself home, Ari Joy Trembley Zajac.”
“I’m trying, Auntie. Trying hard.”
Thirty-One
There should be a poem in a journey home but my thoughts are as disjointed as the billboards streaking by: You’ll wonder where the yellow went when—Brylcream, a little dab will—on your way with Chevro—
William stops, opens his palm. “I’ll be taking that penny, little miss.”
Two pennies closer to home.
Bet Jake could turn that into a song.
He pockets the one I hand over. “We clear on what this one’s for?”
“The boy that I—”
“Not your doing. Remember? It’s for the courage it took to search for who you are.”
“How?”
He winks. “Just rest and grab hold of the joy ahead.”
Nia picks us up in Sydney. “Hey, Mikey. Wait ’til you see the shirts Sadie’s made for you kids.”
“Can we earn badges?”
“You bet. Did you bring your compass?”
“Of course.”
“Then direct us home and get started on your navigation badge.”
“Thought Jake was coming?” I say.
“He’s a little off his feet.”
“Sick?”
“Heartsick, I suspect.”
I nab the middle seat, one, so I can snug up to my white bear, and, two, so I can see Mikey’s constant smile reflected in the side mirror. He asks, “Jake fishing?”
“He’s over at Mabou. Salt Wind’s playing a benefit for Chedabucto tonight.”
“Can we go? Can we?”
“Tomorrow, there’s a big ceilidh in Ingonish, with fireworks and all. Today’s for getting your ocean legs back.” Her hand encourages my knee. “Let all the heaviness go. Let it all go.”
Welcomed silence takes me home. As we turn into the gravel driveway, a carving suspended in Skyfish’s window shakes up the broken pieces in me. “Ohhh. Let me out.” Nia is stopped before my words are out. I scrabble over Mikey and run. It’s a fish, a leaping fish, three, maybe four feet long. The head half is etched clay, glazed the rainbow colours seen in a pearly shell. The tail half is a fluid curve of weathered wood. Most spectacular is the copper threading through its length, so finely embedded it looks not pieced but spectacularly whole.
“Mary and I’ve been having some kintsugi fun. Want to play?”
I back away, my hair pulled not by the Dick, O’Toole, or BS, but by the ocean. I outrun the dogs to the shore; boots, clothes falling away. I hit the icy water, emerging with a roar.
My head turns right. Sitting on the rock-fall rubble is the Missus, knitting while watching the flock of fosters skimming the shore. Kylie, the cranky babe from last summer, toddles over with an offering of slimy seaweed. “Fuzzy bunny.” I accept the gift and she heads off for more.
The Missus offers a gritty blanket for my goose-bumped flesh. “Here’s our girl, home to mends.”
“Aye.” I plunk beside her. “Last summer you said my world was going to break apart and I’d know how to piece it together. But I haven’t a clue.”
“Oh, those happenings weren’t your breaking.” She doesn’t miss a stitch or take her eye off the kids. “It was the Koshkins’ and that misassembled boy. You just got caught up in the landslide, all good for muscling up and moving the rocks ahead.” In sky-blue Keds, puddled red socks, flowered housedress, brassy hair springing from an orange scarf, the Missus feels like the most assembled person on the planet. I’m guessing she sees the blackness of the year ahead.
“The doctor said Mum’s got a year, tops.”
“Nothin’ will be okay, but everything will turn right.” She whistles the kids and stands. “Can I asks a weighty favour?”
“Anything.”
“Lets our Jake know you loves him, cracks and all. One day you’ll thank me. A perfect man is no one yous can make a life with.” She waddles off, seven duckl
ings follow.
Is he drinking, Jasper? I can’t spend my life with another Mum. I won’t.
He has Jewel. She won’t let him drown.
A flat-edged red rock perfect for the fireplace catches my eye. A dozen, veined with mica, are strewn about. I scan the vertical distance from the shore to Moondance. We need to start on a new path up.
Thirty-Two
New things are being explored at Skyfish. Mary’s pottery and Nia’s carvings have merged in several pieces: a heron, a mermaid, a turtle . . . Tiny polished stones, sliced agates, metals intertwine organically in the clay and wood. Mary says, “You need to unravel before weaving something new.” She places a lump of clay on my palm. I turn to the wheel, spinning through hours without a worry of who will take care of Mikey. I fill two trays with squat pots and marine shapes for Ari-Fairy chimes. While the kiln fires up, I sit across from Nia and paint sandpipers on weathered wood. She’s hammering a twist of wire on a mandrel and I see the dolphin emerging. “When’d you start making jewellery?”
“Used to make trinkets all the time back in the day. When I picked up the wire for sculpting, it felt like I’d bumped into an old friend. Sadie takes bits and baubles to the fairs and the Butters get a little extra cash for their brood.”
“I wonder how things would’ve turned out if ByBillyBob had landed with the Butters.”
“Well, the name would be a treat.” She seems to read the questions scrawling through my head. “Don’t know if history is written or we write it. I suspect we’re all just rocks being shaped by the waves.”
“You can’t argue, though, that some are sparkly quartz and some are gray lumps that catch unsuspecting toes.”
“Look at the rocks you’re gathering for your hearth. You’re drawn to what’s at your heart.”
“My favourites are the fern fossils.”
“They’re testament to what happened in the past.” She buffs and polishes a dolphin curve of copper-brass-silver that will circle any size finger.
“Does the past imprint people, too?”
“Inevitably, but expose those fossils, let the movement of the waves at them, and the defined edges change.”
“Are the waves redefining something in Jake?”
“It’s the way of things. Past two weeks he’s been sadder than a hang-dogged hound.” She looks right at me. “You do know, don’t you, that boy has to break and deal with his shit.”
“I don’t know what I know, anymore.”
“He’s scared if he’s not perfect, he’s going to be left.”
“That’s a lot like Mikey. He never gives me a pebble of trouble.”
“Mikey has a healthy dose of self-preservation in him. Like any respectable dragonfly, he’ll eat up the pesky mosquitoes.” Her pliers punctuate her thoughts. “Jake’s so weighted with doubt. No one can keep up a dance like that boy does.”
“So, what happened?”
She snips lengths of copper and silver. “Likely something as inevitable as a misguided roll in the hay.”
“You mean?”
“That’d be my guess.” She files a barb of silver and blows away the dust.
“Jake’s always been my certainty.”
“Only certainty is changing winds. Only control is deciding what you’re going to do with the energy of it.”
“No treasure blathering just now, please, Auntie.” I’m tired. I’m pissed. And I am bloody well going to have my long-waited-for summer.
* * *
I make up the bed in the summer house with line-dried sheets, put on the nightie that swirls like mist, and drape the quilt over my shoulders. The rock Jake gave me for my sixteenth birthday sits on the acres between Skyfish and the Butters, saturated in moonlight. Climbing atop is tricky, but on it I’ll be seen whether Jake turns right or left off the drive. Ribbons of mist slip over the grass and the ocean hush-hush-hushes through the dark. To my left are my queer aunties, to my right, acres of throwaways, and throughout the Cove are spirited people akin to me. I am home, and the hour spent waiting is like soaking in the Milky Way. Jewels gather in my hair and I wonder what the light does to them, when the old truck turns down the drive. Jake stops at the fork. The wait before he opens the door is an intolerable half minute. The engine stops. Lights disappear. Door opens. His shape moves across the dewy grass. Jake is more than six foot. His shoulders are hard-work wide. I see him. Not the breadth and width of him, but the vulnerability at his core. Aaron’s right, nothing is guaranteed. Even rocks break.
His hair is a mess of unruly waves. In the light of a veiled moon, his face looking up at me is the storybook mariner rescuing the mermaid from the rocks. Before any hellos, I say, “Just tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Do you love me?”
“More than life.”
“Do you want me?”
“More than air.”
“Well then, spit out what’s stuck in your throat so we can breathe.”
“What makes you think—”
“You didn’t come running across the field, peeling down to your skin to meet me.”
He looks at my bare toes poking out of the quilt, pockets his hands, and shrugs.
“There’s nothing you can say that will end us. Nothing.”
“You’ll hate me.”
“Left all my hate in Toronto. Is it someone from the Cove?”
“A—a gig in Halifax. Too much beer. A girl ducking into the room where we stashed our gear. Without even a ‘how d’ya do,’ she went down. I went up. My head left. I came.” He looks into my eyes. “I hate myself for it.”
My legs fold against my chest and I tug them against the hurt, the fear. Too much beer?
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Oh, for pity sake, Jake. Deserving has nothing to do with us. You told me that seahorses mate for life, and I’m sure as sure that’s true for us, but we were fifteen and eighteen when you said I was the only girl you could ever be waiting for. Sixteen and nineteen when we promised last dance. There are years ’til we get there. I’m away more than here. You play love songs to an ocean full of seahorse predators. What warm-blooded hippocampus wouldn’t have its head turned by a flashy angelfish?”
“I’m sorrier than I can say.”
“Missteps are inevitable. Believe me, I know. We better settle on that right now.”
He opens his arms and I tumble into terror-tight arms. “Just say you forgive me.”
“I accept you. I forgive this. Trouble is, you’re going to kick yourself ’round the trail and back, and the summer’s too bloody short for it.” I pull back. “Go shower. The sheets on our bed are clean.”
Minutes later, the spring stretches on the door to the summer house. Jake’s hand quiets its smack against the frame. The hairs on my skin startle up as his naked length slips next to mine. I savour the fragrance of soap mixing with ocean breeze, the featherweight of his arm slipping around me, his heart music felt at my back. At my turning he says, “Ari, I promise—”
I clap his mouth quiet, “Just promise that no matter how much we both mess up we’ll fight for us, we’ll work it out.”
His hair is shower-damp and laced with moonlight. Before the long, slow kiss, his lips soft, minty, open, say, “I promise.” His fiddle-fingers play down my body, along each rib. I shift under, wrap him with my legs, and he fills the hollows in me.
* * *
The old iron bed is positioned smack in the middle of the summer house. Fog, like smoke, slips through the screens. I spoon into Jake, away from the damp and the nightmare. He whispers into my fright of hair, “You ’right, love?”
“No, I need to throw some clay at a monster.”
He lifts the covers for me to escape. I nab his sweater, step into rubber boots, and head to Skyfish.
I’m half-aware of coffee, muffins, lunch, Mikey going off
to build a dragonfly nest.
It’s the neck kiss from Jake that has me lifting my head to his question. “A monkfish?”
I survey the toothy creature encasing the pot. “It ripped off my ear in a dream. I’m harnessing it.”
He says, “I’m heading over to the lodge.”
“Already?”
“It’s gone past six. You’re coming, right?”
“Well, someone has to protect you.”
“There’s just a gig in Halifax July end. Rest of the bookings will all land me home after.” His fingers dance through my hair without a bit of hurt in them. “I have something to show you. Later.”
* * *
The moon smiles through a smoke of stars. Jake’s grade twelve transcript is in my hand. “You’re really smart, Jake.”
His skin blankets my back. “Right. I’m past twenty and just finished grade twelve.”
“Stop doing that. I’m proud of you.”
“Truthfully, I kept at it in hopes of hearing that.”
“How’d you manage it with your dozen other jobs?”
“Wasn’t so hard, except this assignment where I had to write my earliest memory. I wrote about fishing with Huey, not about what I really remembered.”
“Was it too sad?”
“No, too precious to give to a teacher pickled in Aqua Velva.”
“Tell me?”
“I remembered sitting in the shanty, looking out the broken-paned window. Morning light made the face looking in empty, a space to be coloured how I wanted. I always made it my mum coming back to get me. In a way it was. It was Mary. She coaxed me out, washed a thousand bites.” He inhales deep. “She warmed my toes in woolly socks, tugged a sweater over my head. While I shovelled in chicken and buttered bread, apple squares and milk, she fussed with my hair. She was picking nits, I now know. I still feel that salve soaking in behind my ears and along my neck.” He turns, tucks his hands under his head, and stares at the roof bones. “The days my dad left me behind, I could count on her or Nia showing up minutes after.”
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