Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  The path led to the centre of some crumbling ramparts. Sonny ran ahead, aiming an imaginary machine gun, spraying a pretend battalion with bullets. Hugh and I found a grassy spot overlooking the harbour and stretched out. The sun beat down, moulding my spine to the earth; I could feel the ground’s warmth through my T-shirt as Hugh leaned over and I shut my eyes. His kiss felt cool as mint. The sun beamed through my lids, a dance of warm light. Hugh moved away, then pressed close.

  “Open up,” he said, and I blinked. As I started to speak he put something in my mouth—a tiny, melting burst of sweetness. A strawberry. He had more in his palm, each no bigger than the very tip of an asparagus spear. He placed another on my tongue, laying the rest in a row down my front like teensy red buttons. One by one he ate them, as if undoing me. Sitting up, he started picking another handful. I sat up too, shielding my eyes against the sun, which was blinding now, and looked around.

  “Oh, God, where’s Sonny—?”

  Hugh planted another berry in my mouth.

  “That taste,” he said softly. “You could almost say it’s music, Willa. What we all should aim for.” He had an odd smile I couldn’t quite figure out.

  “Whatever you say.”

  I lay down again. The wind twitched his hair. His face was close to mine, lean and tanned with a rosy sheen. His hand was on my stomach, the fine reddish hairs on the back of it sparse as maram grass.

  “You’re so patient, Willa.”

  “Patient?”

  “Good things come to them what wait,” he said, and his joking voice only made me want him more. But I lay still, closing my eyes again; the sun was a scarlet flame now. Waiting. He opened my lips with his tongue and slipped another berry in. His mouth tasted like jam with a salty tang and—

  “Mooooo-oooooom!” Sonny’s holler arced overhead. Like a boomerang it bounced off the sun, spinning back.

  “Ooops.” Hugh’s breath was like grass tickling my ear. Pulling me to my feet, he murmured, “Tonight?”

  ***

  After supper Sonny wanted to play Scrabble—go figure. It stayed light forever. When it finally got dark, I said that the fresh air must’ve tired him. Slow as an eighty-year-old he poked upstairs, lingering on each step. Hugh and I sat in the kitchen till moonlight spilled across the table, waiting for him to quiet down. I liked to wait till he was sleeping. Taking my hand, Hugh held it as if reading my palm.

  “Let’s take a walk, Tess. Not far.”

  I went up and stood at the landing. It was stuffy, the day’s heat trapped there. A slight draft stirred from Sonny’s room. He seemed to be asleep.

  “Just in case he isn’t,” Hugh said, tugging me outside.

  The night was still warm, only a trace of dampness on the breeze. He gripped my hand and we walked quickly without talking. Glancing back at Sonny’s window, I thought I glimpsed his pale face behind the panes. But it was nothing, and want quickened my pace. Above the beach we entered the woods, stepping briskly over roots stretched like limbs across the moonlit ground. After a while we came to a clearing and the outline of a cottage bordered by flowering trees—an abandoned tea house, Hugh said. In the blackness, the boughs appeared laden with snow, luminescent. The air was heavy with their perfume, so still not a petal fell.

  We undressed quickly and lay in the grass alive with insects; who knows what animals were lurking. Hugh moved on top of me, and as he entered I felt the muscles of his back tense, and I was lost in it, in the haste and need of what we’d put off all day. It was like we were rushing to get somewhere, and afterwards, hearts still racing, we fell from each other, surprised.

  The house was silent when we tiptoed in.

  “Talk to me,” I whispered in bed. “Tell me everything—about you, your friends.” My body thrummed, resisting sleep even as Hugh drifted off. I prodded him gently, wide awake, though it must’ve been late. The newness of being together made time zip by; the prospect of tomorrow mirroring today was almost too gauzy, too amazing, to load with expectation. Who wanted to waste any of it sleeping?

  “Who?” he mumbled, spooning against me.

  “Reenie and Wayne.” I stroked his chest.

  “Been together forever. A shame.”

  My hand idled. “Why’d you say that?” I thought of Reenie’s skinny brows, the constellation of rhinestones in her ears.

  “Wayne’s not what you’d think,” he murmured. “Not what most people would think. Underneath it all he’s a puss, a lamb of a guy.”

  “O-kay,” I said, unconvinced.

  Outside the window something creaked—the clothesline, it sounded like.

  “Reenie’s a piece of work.” His breath was a whisper against my neck.

  “How’d they meet?”

  “Huh?” He was struggling to stay awake.

  I could’ve lain there all night talking, listening to fog rub the shore. He kicked off the quilts and we lay with just the sheet covering us.

  “Give me a break,” he laughed sleepily, kissing my breast. “How do most people meet growing up in a two-house town? At the ball field?” He snuggled close. “The cemetery. Fuck, the playground—I dunno. You’d have to ask them.”

  I imagined Reenie’s face smoothed with make-up, the hard beige ridge of her chin.

  “She keeps him in line, boy. Without Reenie he’d be fu —”

  “Listen.” I put my finger to his lips. There was that creaking again, like rope swinging from wood. It made me think of a tree. A Joshua Tree, like on that U2 album that’d just come out. Someone swinging from it. God knows where this came from; there wasn’t so much as a two-foot spruce out on the spit. As suddenly as it started, the creaking stopped.

  “And what about you—how’d you meet them?”

  “Reenie an’ Wayne?” he slurred, sighing into my hair. “Same way we met, at a dance. The guys—the other guys—said Wayne could make things happen.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “When I was trying for this job. Lotta guys with way more experience. Wayne figured I could help him out, you know. With business.”

  “Um…I’m missing something?”

  “Think he pays for that house and truck and boat and all those tole paints and earrings with his ferry service?” He laughed, swallowing. His eyes closed, he rubbed his thumb and fingers together. “Oh, Tessie, all the eco-tourists in the world couldn’t keep Wayne afloat. A little of this, a little of that. You don’t wanna know,” he murmured. “You could call him an entrepreneur. Unlike moi.” He stroked my shoulder.

  “Thank God,” I said, turning onto my side.

  “Thank who?” He tickled me. “Sheeesh, Willa, don’t tell me you’re tired?”

  Then he kissed my ear, sliding his arms around my belly. “You’re really here,” he whispered, moving gently against me. “How lucky is that?”

  ***

  We woke to fog, and the rest of that week it rained. A lousy start to summer, Sonny complained, though you had to hand it to him; he could’ve been a lot worse, what with no TV or kids around. He spent a lot of time in his room reading comics and drawing. Drawing what? I wanted to know, but he wouldn’t say. A couple of times I caught him sliding papers under his bed, but there was nothing there when I went to make it.

  “Leave him be,” was Hugh’s only comment.

  The foghorn roused me one morning. Hugh was already up; a bulb needed replacing in the lantern. I heard him upstairs rooting through the storeroom and hoped he wouldn’t wake Sonny. We were going to have coffee first, the two of us, but before we could, Sonny appeared. He flopped down with an Archie comic, glancing up with mild interest when Hugh showed him the big mercury bulb. Its filament made me think of a ship in a bottle.

  Sonny watched as Hugh kissed me on his way outside.

  The day started off drizzly, but after breakfast the sun peeked through. I did a wash—jeans, underwear, socks�
�in the ancient wringer washer, and hung them out, stiff as dried kelp. The wind tore at the saggy line. Still in his pyjamas, Sonny charged at it like a bull, snorting and pawing the ground. My hair stuck in my teeth from the wind. A fine mist hugged the whitecaps and spray spiked the air. From the lantern above I could hear snatches of “Blue Train,” the notes gliding and muffled, smothered by Sonny’s shouts and the smashing waves.

  The sun climbed, already baking. A beach day, had the water been swimmable. You could imagine the heat in the tower, cooking the mercury, vapour rising. I wondered if you could see or smell it, pictured it moving like cirrus clouds.

  A picnic day, I decided, watching the wind twist our clothes. I slapped together a lunch. Peanut butter sandwiches, Cokes for Sonny and Hugh and a beer for me, a lonely Keith’s found in a cupboard. Oranges for dessert, and some dried-up jujubes Sonny had got his hands on somewhere. I imagined Hugh’s surprise; he always looked amazed when such things turned up, as amazed as when we’d find new paths or plants or evidence of wildlife on our hikes. A beaver lived in the pond, we’d discovered one grey morning, with the same delight we’d felt watching red-winged blackbirds flutter above the reeds. I’d never seen a beaver before, except on a nickel.

  “Years ago,” Hugh had said, “the poor bugger would’ve been turned into a hat. One of those tall things like Abe Lincoln’s?” Then he’d told a story about mad hatters, real ones, long ago in Connecticut. Their shaking hands dyed red from the mercury they’d used to make the felt.

  Hugh took forever changing that bulb. Maybe he’d decided to polish the lens too, or clean the mercury bath. I thought of the trough, that liquid metal as bright as a mirror, and of Alice and her Mad Hatter. Along with keeping things spic and span, Hugh was supposed to strain the quicksilver now and then, to pick out dirt and dead flies, anything that impeded the lens’s smooth turning. Though from what I’d seen, the job was mainly babysitting. The Coast Guard controlled most of the operations by computer. But Hugh worried about the sailors passing the light, port or starboard, and putting their faith in it. Hoping there was someone looking out for them—a human eye—which is what he tried to be. There was something about a man’s presence, he said, even if the Coast Guard didn’t think so. Even if all you could do was watch from shore and radio for help, or wave and hope some poor bugger out there took comfort believing he wasn’t alone. Of course they weren’t, he’d told himself. There were hundreds of people at sea, keeping each other amused with card games and pictures of naked women and enough to drink and toke.

  “How do you know that?” I’d wondered early on, the night of Wayne’s party, what Hugh had against drinking. He hadn’t answered right away, so I guess it was out of vigilance, some knowledge of his that disasters dropped from the sky, got spat up by waves.

  “You never know,” he’d said. “The last thing you’d wanna be, if someone’s in trouble, is passed out at the switch. You wouldn’t want to be spilling your cookies, either, making the rounds.”

  “Rounds?”

  “Beachcombing. Used to be what keepers did, especially on islands. Daily walkabout? Checking for washed-up bodies.”

  I threw the lunch into a bag and went and hollered up to Hugh. After a few minutes he came down, locking up behind him. Again I read the sign: DANGER. KEEP OUT. This is an aid to navigation and persons found tampering with this equipment will be prosecuted.

  Sonny ran ahead as we strolled down the beach and up the tea house path. The three of us, a real family. The clearing looked bigger in daylight, and you could hear the usual squeals and rumbles from the port, that ever-present hum. The branches bowed like fishing poles, the frothy blossoms like lace against green and the sky’s aching blue. The sun burned directly overhead.

  The wind ruffled the long grass, showering confetti as we approached. The ruined garden opened like a door in a movie, as though we’d drawn back the woods’ gloom, stepping into sunlight. Daisies sprang from the spot where we’d lain that first night, and I had the oddest feeling I was viewing things through the wrong end of a telescope.

  Hugh’s hand moved at my waist as we whisked through the grass. I noticed each blade, each tasseled head. Tramping uphill. Sonny stopped and stripped bark from a tree. Above that distant hum, flies buzzed, the sound pierced by cawing. Ravens? In the heat you could almost hear the sun crisping rotted shingles on the tea house roof. I felt these sounds as we passed a foundation of fieldstones half buried in the grass, the thorny sprays of a hedge gone wild.

  “Here?” said Hugh, flinging down the striped blanket beneath a massive tree. Its leaves were the burnished copper of an Irish setter and its bark was scarred with initials. Scabbed with lichens, the limbs swung upwards like elephants’ trunks. Hugh lay back, leaning on his elbow, and curled around me. Opening his pop, he closed his eyes and drank, then lay back once more, arms cradling his head.

  “They’re calling for rain again,” I said, repeating the morning’s forecast. “Should you stick around?”

  He moved closer, laying his head in my lap. He squinted up at that hapless blue—not a hint of cloud. Upside down, his face reminded me of Sonny’s.

  “You worry too much. God’s in her heaven, Willa.”

  I unwrapped the sandwiches, balancing mine on my knee. Sonny squatted in the shade, overturning rocks at the edge of the garden. He ambled over with a salamander between his palms; it was charcoal with brilliant orange spots.

  “Hey,” said Hugh, “let’s find something to put it in.” Dropping his sandwich, he got up and poked through the weeds beside the crumbling cottage. He managed to find a jar with half a rusted lid. Sonny deposited the creature inside, stuffing in leaves and dirt.

  “Seek and ye shall find,” Hugh tickled my side. “Everything you need, when you need it—hey, Alex?”

  “Sonny,” I called, “come eat your lunch.”

  “I ain’t hungry.” That dude talk again; my boy flexing whatever muscles he could. He’d lost some of his chubbiness, even after just a week and a half of being out here. Though his bike still sat in the shed where he’d left it—out of the weather, at least.

  Hugh put his thumb to my lips. “Alex? C’mere.”

  Sonny set down the jar and the two of them took off up the hill beyond the snow-white trees. Wrapping their food, I caught up to them in a grove of chestnuts.

  Something made Sonny jump. A snake, a green thread wriggling through the clumped grass.

  “Don’t be a wuss.” Hugh laughed, bending to watch its progress. “It’s just a grass snake, buddy.”

  Under his tan Sonny looked pale; sweat beaded his lip. “Grab it,” Hugh said, and I waited. I hate snakes, have always hated their squiggle and the thought of their sliminess. Those books from the school library lied when they said the scales were dry and that human hands passed on deadly diseases. Death by touching—it had to be a lie.

  Sonny’s chest moved under his T-shirt. As he chewed his lip, his face changed. His shoulders tightened as Hugh scooped up the snake and dropped it into his palm. He flinched and might’ve let it go. Instead he held still, cupping his hands, not wishing it harm. Did snakes have bones? You could see his mind working as the creature twitched and flicked; he closed his fists around it and held it out. Its tongue flickered, lightning forking from its tiny jaws.

  Probably I screamed—a totally stupid reaction—and felt instant shame. You were supposed to teach kids the opposite of fear, that everything was somehow good and lovely and worthy of awe.

  “Now your mother’s a wussy!” Hugh walked his fingers up my back. Sonny stooped to let the snake go. It hairpinned sideways and vanished into the grass, apparently unscathed. I wiped my palms on my shorts, running back down the hill ahead of them.

  When I reached the ruined hedge, there was a shriek and I turned to see Sonny barrelling towards me. His shoulders were scrunched up and his mouth was open in a howl, his face a sickly shade.


  Hugh brayed with laughter. “Jesus!” he kept saying. “A little thing like that—totally harmless!”

  As Sonny caught up to me, his mouth trembled and there were tears and a little trail of snot starting from his nose.

  “If I w-wanted a snake down my shirt, M-Mom, I woulda asked.” He was trying to be brave.

  “Oh…sweetie.” I went to loop my arm around him. Hugh was smiling and tamping the grass with his feet. Something about his expression stopped me. “It’s okay. Sonny, really. Be a brave soldier. You’re not a baby.”

  Squinting, Hugh shook his head. “Figure if he likes salamanders ...” He seemed confused, blank.

  As I turned to hug him, Sonny wriggled away, wiping his face on his shirt. Hugh and I watched him run towards the tea house, then comb the ground by the blanket as if he’d lost a loonie.

  When we got there, the jar was empty; the pet had escaped.

  “Sneaky little bastard,” Hugh said, opening Sonny’s Coke and passing it.

  ***

  That night in bed we waited till all was quiet before making love. Instead of being sleepy afterwards, we lay wide awake.

  “You still haven’t told me,” I said, “what you used to do. How you and Wayne got to be friends.”

  “Me and Wayne?”

  There was a pause. I nudged him.

  “It was over a girl, actually.” He was dismissive, tracing my side with his finger. “A bit of a case—the kind you feel sorry for? A street kid, kind of…you know.” I didn’t.

  “She worked for us—for Wayne, I mean. For a bit. No big deal. She might’ve had the hots … well, I palmed her off on him.”