Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  I lay close to Hugh, my cheek to his chest, breathing in his smell. Pressing against his moist softness.

  I thought of the times in bed when nothing had worked, and Charlie’d rolled over, sighing, “I don’t know what’s wrong.” Something in his voice had blamed me. One morning Sonny had been in the living room watching cartoons so loud the walls shook. “Leave him be,” Charlie had said when I threw on my nightie to speak to him. “It’s the noise,” he said, “the fear of interruption.”

  “What else is new?” I wanted to say, but put a sock in it instead, as Charlie would’ve said. Put a sock in it, Alex. Listen to your mother.

  Now Charlie was a string of vapour, a jet stream. A patch of fog lifting off the horizon.

  The dampness in the air deepened, and I moved against Hugh’s warmth. I drifted off and, sometime before dawn, woke feeling faintly sweaty and sick. Easing myself out of bed, I crept slowly upstairs to the bathroom. The floorboards felt cold and slivery. From the little window I watched the waves slap like ink against the breakwater.

  Nothing prepared me for what happened next: a blast that rumbled through the floor, shaking the panes. The foghorn split my ears, caught my lungs in mid-breath. It froze the air, its mournfulness bellowing over the ocean, chased by a squealing echo that pierced my brain.

  Rattled, I crept down the dank, slanted staircase, my ears ringing as I crawled in again. Hugh’s hair was like a bird’s nest against the pillow. Without opening his eyes he slid his arm around me and we sank together. I’d just gotten comfy when the blast went again.

  “Foghorn,” he murmured, pressing my ear to his chest. “Runs on remote.” The steadiness of his heartbeat grounded me, our skins somehow blotting out the noise. But the possibility of drifting off again was wrecked, and we lay whispering. As if the house was bugged, as if Sonny were nearby, might hear and walk in.

  “Tell me about yourself,” I breathed, steeling myself for the next blow. Between blasts, the only sound was the waves.

  “Nothing to tell,” he said, his voice gravelly as he twisted my hair around his finger. “We moved a lot. My old man sold insurance. Hardly stayed anywhere long enough to start and finish a year at the same school, my brothers and me. Three of ’em—my poor mom. You?”

  “One father, one brother. I hardly see them. My mother, um, died when I was five. So you’d know, then—about moving.” I ran my fingertip over the jut of his nose, a motherly sort of gesture, I realized, embarrassed.

  “Alex, you mean? Yeah, I can relate, I guess.” He pressed his palm to my ear, stroking my hair away.

  “You weren’t born here?” I murmured, just in time. We waited out the noise. “So where’d you grow up, mostly? There must’ve been some place—”

  “Out west, sort of,” he said. “Okay. How about you?”

  Greyish light had leaked into the room, and there were birds outside the window. Gulls, making an awful racket. My mouth felt woolly, my eyes as if full of sand. Our clothes lay on the floor, my jeans and Hugh’s, a comb sneaking from a pocket, and his wallet.

  I shrugged, naked, feeling the silliness of our questions.

  His breath was warm, almost salty, as we kissed and he moved on top of me, gently sliding inside. We made love quickly, cosily. No words. His movements a silent praise.

  “Hallelujah,” he said afterwards, studying me under the blankets. My body like a stretch of sand at low tide, Hugh combing it. Every bump and curve, as if overnight a new crop of things had washed up.

  “What time is it?” I inched myself up, hugging an afghan. It was like something a grandma would knit, itchy and smelly.

  “Only early,” he said, kissing my knee.

  His watch was on the floor. It wasn’t quite seven.

  “Alex’s out like a light, I’ll bet,” he said, reading my mind. “Ten more minutes. It’s Saturday.” He laughed. “Let me at least make you something to eat. Tea and seaweed?”

  I imagined Sonny smiling in his sleep, dreaming about some gag on TV. Then, like a video fast-forwarding, an image of Charlie shot by, an image of him shaving. The pair of us in the bathroom, me hogging the mirror to put on make-up. Not just lipstick. Blush, mascara, the whole deal. Sonny liked watching me do my face, said it reminded him of people doing shop windows, those painted decorations. He didn’t like the results, though; he said I looked different, not like his mom at all. Charlie liked me in make-up, though he never said so.

  “Stay put,” Hugh said, yanking on his clothes. I snuggled back under the covers while he went to cook breakfast. I could hear him moving around, getting things. Cooking was something Charlie hated doing, unlike those guys who enjoy the novelty of it. He’d never been one for cooking. Or looking. With Charlie the bedside light stayed off. He went for certain spots the way you went to the fridge for milk, though maybe it hadn’t always been like that.

  Lying there, the smell of bacon drifting in, I tried to remember when things had changed. Probably when Sonny was an infant and hardly slept out of my arms.

  I’d gained weight being pregnant. Maybe I’d been too easy with the way Charlie started treating me—politely, as if nothing had stretched or loosened. Back then he was polite. But it was hard, feeling invisible night after night.

  Maybe he’d been seeing someone else. The scent of coffee wafted in, and I thought of Charlie’s captain at the base, who had to be in her forties. But that was a non-starter; aside from tours of duty and search-and-rescues, most nights he’d come home for supper. He’d watch TV with Sonny, unless Sonny nagged him into playing Lego. If he was really tired, he’d close his eyes and pretend to be asleep—a trick from when Sonny was in diapers. Back then, Sonny would crawl onto his lap and peel back his eyelids. Wake up, Daddy.

  Wake the fuck up. I’d thought—how many times? Who knows what Charlie had been feeling. Resentment? Anger, maybe, burbling away like a faulty compressor.

  I shut my eyes and listened to Hugh out there in the kitchen, singing under his breath. An old Elvis tune: “Love Me Tender”? And I imagined Charlie flying over Avenger Place, seeing me in the yard hanging laundry, and parachuting down. Like a doll attached to a red-spotted toadstool, floating from a cartoon sky. Landing by the fence wearing nothing but his Jockeys and that grim smile.

  Hugh appeared with a cup of coffee. Behind him I heard the snap of fat and, beyond that, imagined the roar of wind overhead. I pictured the sky again: empty.

  “You okay?” he said, and then: “There’re things that can make a person crazy, Willa. You know what they are, best to just avoid ’em.” He watched me dress. Fastening my bra, I thought of laundry fluttering on a line. Pink panties, socks, and military greens: a shade matching spruce. Camouflage.

  9

  BUOYS

  Fishcakes, bacon, and warmed-up beans awaited, their smells driving out the kitchen’s dankness. I was starving. The coffee was instant and the food had a disappointing musty taste but I devoured it like candy, perching on a wobbly chair with my knees up.

  “How old you say you were?” he asked, and I stopped chewing. Seeing he was teasing, I squinted at the grease-spattered clock above the hotplate. Call Sonny, I thought. Talk to Derek’s mother, invite Derek for a month of sleepovers.

  “What is it?” Hugh said, and I felt a tingle, like wet sand on my skin, and a sudden heaviness. I imagined Sonny phoning, the sound jangling in the empty house. Where the frig is she? I could hear him, and see Derek’s mother frowning as she flipped pancakes.

  Hugh leaned over his plate. Butter congealed with ketchup.

  His face was full of curiosity, sympathy even. None of Charlie’s What’s your problem? impatience.

  “I’ll give Wayne a shout. Buddy’s probably itching to get out of the house. Don’t worry.” Hugh massaged my wrist. “I hate for you to go.” His hand crept to my bicep, lingering there, gently squeezing.

  I was thinking of the night bef
ore, the wail of the sax above those singing frogs. The foghorn had stopped, for hours now, it seemed.

  “Play me one more tune,” I said, leaning closer, my hands tucked under my chin. As if I had all day to listen.

  Then I pictured Sonny dragging his sleeping bag up to the door and finding it locked (naturally he wouldn’t have the key I’d finally given him after he pestered me) and pounding till he did himself damage. Without a sound I rose and went in and made the bed. It smelled of us. I shook out the afghans, hideous by daylight, crocheted from red and brown Phentex God knows how long ago by somebody without enough to do. Folding each one, I laid them over the bedstead.

  The sax sat in its case by the door. Hugh sauntered in, tucking in his Levi’s shirt, and bent over me, kissing my nape. Turning, I started to undo his buttons. Then imagined dented wood, Sonny’s swollen fist.

  “Can you call Wayne soon?” My voice was a minnow darting through shallows.

  He nodded good-naturedly, then I heard him in the kitchen, dialling. When I went out, he was pulling on his jacket. He had to check the light.

  I started the dishes, rinsing off ketchup. The water smelled brackish, and only got lukewarm. The detergent was green and sticky, clinging to the plates in globs. You wondered how he managed to bathe, how he got along out here, period. I couldn’t wait to shower.

  When he returned, he walked me quickly to the dock, where Wayne was waiting. Kissing me, he “muckled right on,” as his buddy said, muttering as I got in. It was nearly eleven-thirty; with any luck, Sonny had slept in. I made myself picture him sitting on a hide-a-bed eating Cheerios. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Visualize what you want, think hard, letting your brain lap over whatever it is: a bowl of strawberries or new shoes. Knowing what you want is half the battle—I’d read it in a magazine.

  Wayne’s eyes seemed to drill through me, and I concentrated on the scenery, the cranes at the container pier poised like giant crab legs; the red and white bulk of a Coast Guard cutter heading to sea. His silence shamed me, as if he could picture Sonny. The only time he spoke was to offer a cigarette.

  As we approached the marina, with a leaden feeling I remembered the car sitting in the driveway at home, a decoy. I’d have to ask Wayne for a lift. But as we docked, he mumbled something about “the wife” having stuff to do, and invited me for the ride.

  I felt exhausted as we pulled up to the bungalow. I got out of the truck, waiting for Reenie to come outside. Wayne sat there smoking, the engine running. After a while she appeared, her wet blond hair in a ponytail, the trace of a smile on her thin face. “Where’s Hughie?” she wanted to know, elbowing Wayne as she slid in beside him.

  “Shut up, Reenie,” he said. Nobody spoke as we sped past a collection of houses and what looked like a convenience store.

  “I have to get back for my son,” I explained, and Reenie shrugged. Our thighs almost touched, hers like sticks in her black stone-washed jeans. My jeans would go into the wash the minute I got home. She kept staring at my knees, as if she could read the past few hours in each grainy thread.

  “How old’s he?” she asked dully.

  “Nine—ten come January.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all she said, watching the car ahead.

  For the rest of the drive nobody talked, except Wayne grunting the odd question. “We need milk? Bread? How ‘bout them egg rolls, you know, that kind…” It was as if I were invisible, but it didn’t matter. Maybe it was a good thing. I was feeling like I’d been run over—that tiredness that starts in your hips, works its way up. Yet, it was a good tiredness, a lightheadedness, like being hungover without the queasiness.

  “Take ’er cool,” Wayne said, letting me off. I wanted to pay him for going out of his way. But when I held out a curled-up bill he clamped his mouth shut and waved.

  “It’s no problem,” Reenie said in a bored voice, “we were coming this way anyhow.” She didn’t say goodbye as I slammed the door; and by the time I reached the steps they’d peeled off.

  It was like being fourteen again, honestly, turning the key, tiptoeing inside. Half expecting a voice like my father’s to bark, Where’ve you been? I clapped my hand over my face and breathed in, as if I’d been drinking. “Sonny?” I called out, which was silly—of course he hadn’t taken his key. The house felt empty and watchful and unnaturally quiet, that sort of stillness that precedes a cloudburst.

  I ran a bath and checked the phone machine. Two messages: someone wanting squares baked for Spring Fling; someone else trying to sign me up for bowling. I dialled Derek’s, hoping a kid would answer. But his mother picked up, listening as I explained who I was.

  “Oh,” she finally said, “they’re not here right now. They’ve gone fishing.”

  “Fishing?” She’d as easily have told me they’d stolen a car. “Excuse me?”

  “You know, you get a line, I’ll get a pole—that kind of thing? What kids do? I’d be surprised if they caught a Sobeys bag, myself.” She laughed—suspiciously, it seemed. Remembering the tub, I asked her to send Sonny home whenever.

  Falling asleep in the bath, I didn’t hear the car outside, or the door, just footsteps in the hallway and whimpering, a shell-shocked sort of crying, a woman’s frantic comforting. “MOM?” Sonny roared through the crack of the door, and in a heartbeat I was out of the tub and into my robe, dripping everywhere.

  He was standing there with a fish hook in his temple, half an inch from his eye. The woman—Derek’s mom, I guessed—was nearly hysterical. “It’s okay honey, it’s okay,” she kept saying. “Mrs. Jackson, it’s, it’s…” Her words skipped past me, not quite registering, as if addressed to someone else.

  “Let’s get in the car,” I heard myself saying calmly, after throwing on dirty clothes. “It’s all right, Sonny,” I repeated, hearing a door slam behind us, Derek’s mother making helpless, apologetic noises.

  “Thanks for having him,” I yelled mechanically, rolling down the car window. Waving. Sonny sat in the passenger seat, his face tear-streaked and sullen but calm—too calm, maybe.

  At least there was no blood.

  At Emergency the nurse cracked jokes. “Nice jewellery. Popular this time of year.” Sonny glared back, a tear leaking out. By and by an intern arrived to remove the hook and swab the pinprick wound.

  Half an inch closer pulsed through me, my heart still pounding as we got back into the car. Thank God it had started. As we pulled out of the hospital lot, I remembered Derek’s mother, the poor woman.

  “What happened, anyways?”

  Sonny shrugged, sucking a Popsicle, the fish hook wrapped in a Kleenex on his lap, a souvenir like the baby teeth I’d find whenever we moved, squirrelled away among other keepsakes, single earrings and safety pins.

  “Derek started casting and, and…” Sonny’s voice trailed off as he caught a drip. “It’s okay, Mom—he didn’t mean to.”

  Half an inch. My heart beat even faster.

  “It was just an accident, for crud sake.”

  Lord, if he didn’t look just like Charlie then, forget his teary cheeks and the fact that his voice had miles to deepen. Where was his father at that moment—ducking rotor blades or hovering over equipment or standing around a ship’s deck telling jokes? I pictured him smiling through his Ray-Bans up at the sun. It jabbed at me, that we had no idea, really, what he was doing or where he might be. The only sign of him was in Sonny’s look, the cowlick at his part like a patch of grass that had been slept on. It was just like Charlie’s, if Charlie’d let his hair grow.

  With a pleasant little jolt I remembered Hugh, the way you remember someone on a wharf, tiny but still waving.

  ***

  That night I dreamt about painting the hallway yellow, a deep canary yellow, and keeping on until the whole upstairs was like being inside a forsythia bush. The glow spread over the tiles and furniture. In the middle of my project Charlie walke
d in, dropping his duffel bag. He eyed me standing on a chair also painted yellow, and shook his head. “Go towards the light, Willa,” he said, and left. But that’s what he said, honest to Jesus. Go towards the light.

  I woke with his voice in my ears and a chill as if the window had been left open. Sonny was sleeping like a mummy, the effects of his overnighter. The house was a tomb. I turned on the TV but the cable was on the blink. Nothing but white noise and music playing. On a whim I found the duster and whirled around the living room with it. Hugh’s smile kept flashing through my head; an image of him making toast. I must’ve started singing, because Sonny shuffled in, puffy-eyed, in his pyjamas.

  “What’re you dancing for?” he asked, switching off the TV. Staring as if I had two heads. It made me think of Charlie doing the Loco-Motion. Maybe his dance moves weren’t so illogical, since he loved engines, understood them. It still knocked me out that he could look at something and know how it worked.

  But that made it harder to figure out how he could be so thick, too. He’d never understood, for instance, why I liked sugar on oranges and shows like Jeopardy. Had never comprehended why I put clothes in the dryer on nice days, or why I wouldn’t let Sonny have those Fluff sandwiches he wanted for lunch. It was beyond him why I avoided things like kaffeeklatsches, and wearing pastels. “Couldn’t you wear something besides jeans?” he’d asked once, meaning, what have you got against looking feminine? That word that reminded me of tampons and douching and “feminine” deodorant spray.