Cracked Pots

by Heather Tucker

  “God, Jake, you have to write that.”

  “I’ll leave writing to you. Science doesn’t rip open your guts. I’m going to take some college courses after the freeze.”

  “For pity sake, start now. Stop worrying about making money.”

  “I’m building you a grand house with a big ocean-view room for you to write and paint.”

  “What do you want for you?”

  “Just to make you happy, proud.”

  “Stop being so bloody pleasing.” I sit up. “It’s exhausting for everyone. M&N say you drive yourself ’round the clock. What is it that makes you think I need big stuff?”

  “It’s the life you deserve.”

  “Or is it a life that makes you feel deserving?” His scared face, the child looking out the broken window, looks full at me. “Why can’t you hear why I love you?”

  “Why do you, Ari?”

  “For the small things.”

  He peeks under the blanket. “Ouch.”

  I whap him with a pillow. “Like when you hurry a stranded herring back to water or sing a foster through fears.” I settle back against his chest. “You’re my last dance, Jake.”

  “What if—”

  “There’s no what if that doesn’t land us together. Jewel must tell you that.”

  “She’s not near as mouthy as your Jasper.”

  “She’s just dizzy trying to keep up with you.” My hand turns slow circles down his chest. “I need a rest in the seagrass, unhurried hours with you.”

  “You want me to step aside with Salt Wind?”

  “No, not a single note. And I love talking dreams. Just be here when you’re here, not thinking about more and more doing. Just lay with me knowing you’re enough.”

  “Do you feel that you’re enough with me?”

  “With you is the only place I feel home in my skin, safe with the mess in me.” My long leg twines ’round his. “Last summer, the fretting about me staying or going coloured every night we had. I know this September will take me back. Help me fill up these cracks before I do.”

  A dog barks, once. We’re both asleep before the night answers.

  Thirty-Three

  Last summer I discovered imps and winged enchanters hiding in the clay. Now, the red mounds have a sinister sneer. Mary watches me just staring, hands inert. Softly she says, “Let them out.”

  “There’re screams inside.”

  Nia’s great white bear licks his lips. “Get moving. I want to see a scream on every shelf.”

  “It’ll scare customers away.”

  “Only the faint-hearted.”

  Jasper lifts his snouty head, exhaling like a dragon with a fire wanting out. And so they come, pots swallowed by monster fish, toothy creatures evoking shivery smiles from one buyer to the next.

  Mornings, I walk the shore with Nia, adding metal bits to our driftwood hunt. A rusty ten-inch spike clunks into my bucket. “That’s a backbone for Lolita.”

  “That girl needs one. All girls do.”

  “I find it odd that people are snapping these up.”

  “I’m not. They’re amusing and creepy, beautiful and piercing. They’re sculpted poems.”

  The day, and everything in it, comes to me. Jake brings coffee and a kiss before heading out. This morning, to fish. The afternoon, a whale-watching excursion. Evening, a gig somewhere close. The nights are ours. Sex, often. A tired holding, always.

  Through the window I see Mikey and his buddy Callum, barefoot and sun-brown, wobbling along, with a load shared between them. I stretch off my stool, working out neck-knots as I go meet them. “Ari, wait’ll you see what we got.” The crate sends up a puff as they plunk it down.

  I tuck on my knees for a closer look at a motherlode of watch and clock parts and letter keys from ancient typewriters. “Boy, oh, boys. Where’d you find these?”

  “Tim MacDonald’s cleaning out his dad’s shed. Sold ’em to us for a buck.”

  “They’re just what I need.”

  “He’s got a whole heap of stuff. Huey’s gone over to haul a load of scrap. Said he’ll bring you all the fish parts your net’ll hold.”

  Usually I pay them fifty cents for a bucket of bits. Giving them two bucks each feels like a bargain at half the price. “Better shake a leg if you’re crewing for Jake.” They sprint away, sending grasshoppers jumping for their lives.

  Even before Huey delivers the goods, striker keys are transmuting into fish spines, clock gears into fins, and springs into eyes.

  Mary’s squeal tells me the firing has birthed something evolutionary. “Nia, come see these.”

  Nia’s laugh is husky and musical. I ask, “Is Lolita in one piece?”

  “Nothing a little kintsugi won’t mend. Love her underbite.”

  My current sculpture won’t let me even sneak a look at another fish. It hasn’t given up her name yet, but we’re connected on a molecular level. I can look right through her, like in the bible storybook where an illustration gave a peek of Jonah inside the whale. I’ve cut away so much that it has no purpose as a pot. At most it could be a cage for a small candle. The tail is a fluted display, like seen on the fanciest fish. Copper veins hold where it snapped in the firing. The hollow inside has me itching. It’s not long before the three of us are solving the dilemma. Nia’s jewellery tools are skinny and long-nosed. Mary uses a pipette to place drops of glue. We fill it with polished stones, bits of sea glass, a fishhook, a tiny starfish, a rusty ginger beer cap, clock hands . . . You should fill up their bellies before you kintsugi it.

  You might’ve suggested that yesterday.

  Mary steps back, tilting her head. “She really is extraordinary.”

  The dogs bark at a car turning in. “Keep at it. I’ll see to the shop.”

  I set a tiny brass watch gear into a snaggletooth, like an amalgam in a cavity. Snip striker keys at varying lengths and fix them into the holes poked before the firing. Inside the protruding mouth, I glue four old typewriter keys: P, L, A, and Y.

  * * *

  It’s long past closing but the night is too peaceful not to piece together a broken pot.

  A flash of light and tires on the gravel suggests time has folded from nine p.m. to two a.m. and Jake is home. The bell in the shop rings and a man says, “Hello? Are you open?”

  I poke my head out of the workroom. “Can I help you?”

  “I saw the lights on and—” His gray head moves with the air of a diplomat. “Sorry, I was here earlier today. Bought some mugs for my daughters.”

  “Did you want to return them?”

  “Oh, no. No. No.”

  Auntie Nia comes in through the back. “Thought I heard a car. Everything ’right?”

  “This is rather silly. Got all the way around the trail and had to come back for that.” He points to a shelf.

  “You needed a teapot?” I ask.

  “No, there was a, a thing there earlier, a speckled fish of sorts.”

  “Oh, Louis.”

  Nia says, “Sorry. It sold. Fast as they’re done they swim away.”

  “Oh.” He turns to leave. “Sorry to bother.”

  “Wait,” I say. “What would make you drive back around the bend for a monster fish?”

  “I suppose, my wife told me to.”

  “She’s in the van?”

  “No, she died months ago. I could hear her laugh as soon as I saw that, that whatchamacallit. She would’ve bought it in a flash.”

  “Where does someone put a monster fish?”

  “Patty would’ve used it as a centrepiece for an important dinner or on a pedestal in our vestibule.”

  My head tilts and he follows me into the workroom. “And where would you put one?”

  “Smack on my desk, maybe with a cigar in its mouth.”

  “Louis was more of a pip
e smoker.”

  He smiles, accepting the offer of a stool. Nia plugs in the kettle and opens the cookie tin. “This is too kind of you.” I pick up my palette knife to use up my mix of glue before it hardens and resume reassembling the broken pot. “Accident?”

  “No. Meditation. Therapy.”

  “Beautiful.” He near chokes on a macaroon when he sees Lolita and her friends on the rack behind me. “Oh, there’s more? May I?”

  “They’re not fully evolved yet.”

  He helps himself to a long gander and picks up the one with a mouthful of PLAY. He looks at Nia. “When will this one be done?”

  “Ask the creator.”

  His eyes narrow as he takes me in more fully. “This is your work?”

  “They all swim out of my dreams. That one’s just waiting for her name.”

  He lifts it like one might examine a new kitten. “It’s Joy.”

  Thirty-Four

  I lie with Mary and Nia on the Skyfish floor feeling veined with East Coast gold. “I’ve run out of monster fish.”

  Nia says, “They were a limited edition.”

  “I’ll miss this content and the long deep sleeps.”

  “I’ll miss having you here to slow our Jake down.”

  “Hours this summer felt like when we were kids roaming the shore.” I turn my head to Mary. “How’s it possible Jake’s mum never came back to even check how he was?”

  “We tried to contact her but a cousin said she’d moved away. Started over.”

  “No matter how messed up Laura is, Mikey still knows she thinks he’s a treasure. And as much as I wanted Mum to disappear, she always kept track of me.”

  Mary squeezes my hand. “There’s beautiful wabi-sabi in the world because of your and Jake’s mums.”

  “Jake isn’t wabi-sabi.”

  “He just never stops long enough for his off-kilteriness to be seen more than a blink. Sooner or later he’ll have to stop and face up to imperfection.”

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?”

  “Weather forecasts are helpful. But new music will follow, of that I’m certain sure.”

  “You’re such a treasure hunter, Auntie.”

  “Lots more to be discovered.”

  “Yeah, back to the bowels of the Earth to wait for Mum’s skin to follow her lost mind into the great beyond.”

  Nia asks, “What did Dick say when you asked about you both staying?”

  “That Mum’s liver is shot and if I think he’s cleaning up her shit I’ve got another think coming.”

  Mary surveys the roof. “Elsie and Dolores said they’d help.”

  “Mum’s not my worry. It’s Mikey. If I could arrange for the Dick to get Len’s money, he’d give me Mikey.”

  “Len left that for your schooling.”

  “I could get a volleyball scholarship.”

  “Is that what you want?” Nia asks.

  “I just might. Smashing balls for four years could be very cathartic.”

  “Agreed,” Mary says. “But think this through. After he used up the money? Then what? You know he’d snatch Mike back ’til he’d rung everything out of you both.” Mary rises easy, like a curtain going up, and I wonder what Mum could’ve become if she hadn’t pickled herself. “Come on, Nia. I’m guessing there’s a boy waiting outside the door.”

  Under the porch light, Jake leans, cap in hand. “It’s a calm night. Thought I’d take Ari for a last turn around the bay.”

  Mary laughs. “Is that what they call it these days?”

  We walk, holding hands through to the landing. “Jake, what if you didn’t have to prove a single thing to anyone? What would you do?”

  He breathes in the cooling air. “Go to school. Teachers told me time and again I could be a scientist. It always stirred something in me.”

  “We’ll have more than enough money for our future. Do what’s right for you now. That’s all I want.”

  He steadies me onto the boat. “Okay, I’ll go.”

  “Where?”

  “Dalhousie. They accepted me.”

  Under us is water but the universe feels steady and in order. “Promise you’ll go?”

  “My word. But I’m not aiming for the top.”

  “Why the frig not?”

  “Cause that’s where I like you.”

  “Oh, Mr. Tupper, wind’s comin’ up.”

  Thirty-Five

  Last September the return to Toronto hit like an earthquake. A catastrophic event that left a crack in the foundation of life and a knowing that aftershocks go on forever. As the train slows on Labour Day, 1970, Mikey, tanned, confident, solid, squares his shoulders. “Don’t worry. I earned my exterminator badge.”

  “Be prepared” has a whole other scope when you’re Dick Irwin’s kid. I hoist my bag over my shoulder. “If the rats are back, we’re going to Sabina’s.”

  “Huey says we need to get a cat for mousing and a terrier for ratting. Did you know a group of rats is called a mischief?”

  “Fitting.”

  We stop at the corner and assess the mischief out front of crapdom. The Dick shakes the hand of a guy in a fedora. He’s in the same suit as the day we left, with more belly sloshing over the waistband. Three guys get into a black caddy and drive away. The Dick and O’Toole climb into the blue sedan and follow. “Well, that’s a lucky start.”

  The kitchen chair is right where we left it eight weeks ago, but plywood replaces the cardboard on the broken windows and a spike has been added to the grassless lawn, securing a heavy chain with a spikey dog collar at the end. “Oh, Ari. We got a dog?”

  “Stay back. Let me make sure it’s friendly.” I open the door a crack. “Hello? Here, boy.”

  Todd calls, “Hey. Welcome back.” He bends so he can see me from the top of the stairs. “Chain’s a ruse. Pop just wants people to think we have a guard dog.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “There’s weird shit going on.”

  Mum is sitting on the chenille chair. Wearing my blue gym romper? Her hair is teased up, but so thin I can see her scalp. She’s looking at the TV, but it’s not on. “Mum?”

  Her head turns and she squints. “Hello? Say, you’re that girl. That movie girl.”

  Todd ambles down. “She keeps calling me Mr. Fairchild.”

  “Any rats?”

  “Just the Jimmy Cagney kind. Don’t know what’s up, but you can be sure it ain’t on the up and up.”

  Mikey comes inside, taking our gear upstairs while I shimmy though boxes stacked like a warehouse. “What is all this shit?”

  “I’ve been home two days and there’s been like thirty guys coming and going.”

  We enter the kitchen and it looks pretty much like when we left. “Haven’t they been eating?”

  “Takeout. Paper plates. Only thing in the fridge is beer.”

  “The porch?”

  “Go look.” The back porch is a stash of boxed goods. Smirnoff Vodka, Buxton watches, Barbie dolls, London Fog raincoats . . . I smell smoke and follow it to the backyard. There’s a new wood fence, high with a gate. Sheets of plywood have murdered the grass; a garden swing and two patio sets, complete with umbrellas, fill the space. Empty beer bottles and overfull ashtrays clutter the tabletops. Wisps of smoke escape from metal drums lining the driveway. “Figure they keep the fires going with trash so evidence can be burned quick.”

  “What happened to him being a detective?”

  “No idea what went down, but O’Toole’s running Pops like a whipped dog.”

  “What if we just turned them in?”

  Todd snaps me around like a sling. “What cop are we a hundred percent sure of? Say nothin’ about this to no one. Not Aaron, or Sabina, or your teacher friends.”

  “Halpern—”

  “He couldn’t see
a psycho’s hand down his own pants. You heard Snake say they’re friends. Just keep low ’til we can sort out who’s what. We’re safe. Heard one of them say there’s no better cover than a sick wife and kids. Pops ain’t gonna do nothin’ to cause any attention.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “We’re in for smooth sailing. Come on, I’ll treat you to pizza and we’ll get a keyed lock for our door.”

  “Ronnie back?”

  “Yeah, but no Tork. She’s hooked up with Pinto.”

  “What? He’s like forty.”

  “Welcome home.”

  * * *

  Mum’s remaining brain cells number less than a head of lettuce, yet she is oddly content in this vegetative state. She sits at the TV table, dipping puffed wheat into applesauce. I leave her watching Tom and Jerry while I hustle Mikey out the door. “Bye, Mark. Arriva diva, Ava.”

  Mikey says, “Least she got our names close.”

  “She thinks I’m Ava Gardner.” I give Mikey an envelope. “Breakfast club money, Y sign-up, emergency form, and swim registration.”

  “Is there volleyball tonight?”

  “Starts next week.”

  He slips his hand in mine and I feel the pull to our life away from here. “Could Todd ever live in Pleasant Cove with us?”

  “After sacrificing his closet, he can have the pick of any room in Moondance.” I tug him across the street, toward the here and now. “Do you want to join Scouts with Sabina’s boys on Saturdays?”

  “Oh, boy, can I?” Since the lockout, weekends with Laura are something Mikey both fears won’t happen and worries will. “What about my mom?”

  “Sunday, we’ll take her some groceries and see how she is.”

  Mikey dashes off to meet friends. My feet are stuck at the fork in the path. Is this the calm before the storm, the eye of the storm, or are we really in for smooth sailing?

  It’s disquieting feeling Jasper tip backwards off his tail, rolling with laughter. Smooth sailing. Oh, Ari, you are too funny. We’ve eight pennies to go.