This took a second to sink in. “You palmed her off?” I pictured Wayne in his ball cap, his burly fist around a beer.
Hugh’s eyes were as liquid as the mercury in the tower. “Well, not just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Not till after…look, I was lonely. You have no idea...”
“That was then, right?” I snuggled closer, and his embrace absorbed me as if our skins had dissolved and his spirit moved inside mine.
“Don’t worry,” he sang against my throat, a deep, melodious thrum like a gospel singer’s. “Be happy, Willa, my sweet, sweeeet wisp.”
“What about Reenie?” I murmured after a while.
“What about her?” He paused, his fingers drumming a silent beat on my arm. “She and Wayner have an agreement. They’ve been together so long, you know. They’re good friends.” His breath warmed my shoulder.
“I bet.”
“It happens, Tessie, I guess. Don’t get me wrong. Wayne worships the ground Reenie walks on. She says jump, he says how high.”
“Nice,” I said drowsily. “You still haven’t told me.”
“What?”
“Why they’re such buddies of yours.”
His eyes widened. This time we both heard it: the creak of a rope. I wondered if I’d brought everything in, those jeans of Sonny’s that’d flapped all day like dried salt fish.
“We knew each other before,” he said, “that’s all. Would you knock it off and go to sleep?” Breathing softly, he put his hand over my mouth. I slid my leg over his, pushing against his warmth.
“Tell me more about you,” I said, feeling him harden. He pulled me closer.
“Nothing to tell, really.”
“First person you kissed, first time you got loaded, stuff like that,” I coaxed, joking.
He didn’t laugh. “Don’t remember. Don’t want to. There. You?”
My body stretched taut against his, that little voice swinging in and out of my thoughts: don’t waste it.
“Whistlestop, Alberta. A kid in grade two. He brought his G. I. Joe collection to school. The grad dance at Whistlestop High; lemon gin,” I snorted. “Tom Collins was my date.” The bed shook with my laughter. Hugh hardly grinned, which made me try harder. I loved how his teeth showed when he laughed, his teeth but not his gums. “I literally fell out of his car.”
“Whose car?”
“My date’s!”
“You’re lucky, then.” He yawned, and I felt him softening. “So…how ‘bout you?”
“Lucky?” he said. “Shit, if you knew…”
“This…girl.” I walked my fingers over his chest and under his chin. “How’d you cross paths with her?”
He didn’t answer right away, closing his eyes and appearing to drop off. After a minute or two he inhaled slowly. “Out west. The three of us were out there at the time.” His voice was tired. “Me and Wayne…and this chick.”
“Chick?” I mimicked. “She was his tore guide?”
“Well, you know.” His breathing grew slower, deeper. “Hell on wheels, Willa; that’s how it was at the time.” Don’t even ask, he seemed to say, stopping me with a kiss.
14
MERIDIAN
One morning we overslept, all three of us. It was almost lunch by the time we got up. Setting out Corn Flakes, Sonny spotted them first: a pair of black and orange boats in the curl of the beach, a few hundred yards offshore. We ate our cereal watching divers bob and disappear. Hugh went up to the lantern for the binoculars.
“Knock yourselves out,” he teased, plunking them down between us. “Jeez, I’ve never seen such nosy parkers as you and your mother, Alex!” He rubbed my arm. “It’s just the navy doing routine stuff. Practice dives.”
“What for?” Sonny asked like a normal kid, not a military brat.
“Defusing bombs, checking dumped artillery? Who knows, Alex. The military works in strange ways. Youse would know.”
“Maybe they’re diving for treasure,” said Sonny, too earnestly. “Or bodies.”
“You guys figure it out. I’ve got work to do,” Hugh said. “Oh, hey, the sunscreen’s under the sink. You’ll want it if you’re heading out.”
“Feel like a hike?” I asked Sonny, peeling him an orange, laying out the sections like dories.
He had the binoculars pressed to the window, his cereal gone mushy. “How can they be ‘frogmen’ if their gear’s black?”
Here we go, I thought. Next he’ll ask about his dad. We’d been out here more than three weeks, and not a peep from Charlie, not so much as a note or a phone call for Sonny. Not that I expected anything. But thinking about it threw a shadow like that of a passing container ship.
“My turn,” I said, taking the glasses from him and focusing on the divers huddled on deck. They looked like carpenter ants, too small to make out faces.
They were still there when I hung the laundry out, and when Sonny and I went to the pond to feed the ducks. As we cut back past the marsh, we watched the boats weigh anchor and steam slowly around the island’s northern tip.
The ancient phone was ringing when we reached the porch, Hugh nowhere in sight. Its clanging filled the kitchen as I ran to grab it.
“Hello?” Catching my breath, I started to explain that Hugh was working.
The person on the other end drew a deep breath and cut in. “Bitch.”
My hand tightened around the clunky receiver. “Y-you must have the wrong—”
“Goddamn bitch,” his voice gouged the air, then the line went dead.
Sonny had poured himself some Coke and stopped in mid-sip. “Mom? Who was that?”
“Nobody,” I said, though he must’ve seen me trembling. “Will that be canned soup for supper, or canned soup?”
For once, his groans were like Noxzema on a sunburn.
“You okay?” he kept up, in a way that wasn’t like him at all.
“Fine.” To prove it, I grinned. “Do me a favour. Run next door, would you, and see what Hugh’s up to?”
He made a gargling sound. “Do I have to?”
“Sonny!”
Opening cans calmed me, and by the time they came in the Campbell’s was bubbling.
“Whassup?” Hugh wanted to know.
“Hm? Oh—we missed you, that’s all.”
***
We were crossing the beach late one day, returning from one of our picnics, when it fell: a silence that thrummed like a bird inside an egg. Hugh squinted up at the sky, the clouds packed like traffic. Sonny was by the water, dropping rocks on jellyfish that had washed up.
“Where’s a bucket?” he shouted. “I could make jellyfish stew.”
As I yelled for him to hurry up, the stillness broke. Rain began to spit. At the first drops we stuck our tongues out, laughing, barely noticing the squall chugging up the harbour.
But as it closed in we started to run. In minutes the spit was wrapped in mist that blotted out the lighthouse. Waves churned the sand and thunder boiled from the opposite shore.
“Better move it.” Hugh grabbed my hand and Sonny’s, propelling us over the rocks. Fog wisped past our shins like a gas and way out on the water the buoy clanged. The pounding behind the breakwater rumbled through our feet.
“Nasty!” Sonny winced, skidding over seaweed stuck to tarry feathers. I started to laugh, but Hugh’s expression stopped me.
This wasn’t your average squall, it hit me as he shouted, “Move it!” The words were barely out when hail the size of mothballs flew down, pinging from the rocks.
“Jesus, Willa, I’ve seen you move when you have to,” he hollered, with no hint of fun. He grabbed Sonny’s arm roughly.
The hail thickened. “Ping-pong balls!” Sonny yelled, as it pelted and ricocheted. I threw the picnic blanket over him and tried to duck, stumbling along. As we neared the house—Hallelujah!—we coul
d see that a kitchen window had been smashed. Foam seeped between the giant boulders beyond the tower, dotting the gravel like spit.
“Get in, quick!” Hugh shouted. “For chrissake, stay clear of the windows!”
I bristled; he was overdoing it, surely, to get a rise out of us. His voice had a sharpness I didn’t like, a roughness as he pushed us into the kitchen, and left to check on the light. Through the rattling panes I watched him run to the tool shed and grab a jerry can, then dash to the tower, ducking baseballs now.
I tried the kitchen light. Nothing. Then I picked up the phone. It still worked, thank God. After a few minutes there was a grating roar, and light flashed from the lantern again.
“Scrabble?” I kidded, hunkering down with Sonny. There was a thud outside, a crash like something giving way. As I fought panic, Hugh appeared. His hair a wet tangle, his face looked almost bruised.
“Fuck,” he said.
“A duck,” Sonny chorused. Nobody moved. Then came a groan, a grinding that drove a needle of fear through me. Hugh’s face was gaunt as the waves slammed.
Like an idiot I slunk to the window.
“Get the fuck away from there!” Hugh seized my wrist, pulling me away—but not before I glimpsed water encircling the shed. It slid under the clothesline, swirling around the pole.
We were being cut off, it seemed, an island off an island, a clutch of buildings surrounded by the ocean. I put my arms around Sonny. He was shaking. “It’ll be okay,” I kept murmuring, a mantra to push back the waves.
A slo-pitch from heaven hit the pane and burst in, showering glass. It rolled across the linoleum like a foul in outfield. Sonny’s eyes widened and he leapt to grab it. It dripped through his fingers as he raced to the freezer. From upstairs came a steady pummelling. It was like being attacked by pitchers at batting practice. Maybe just then Sonny had the same thought, or maybe it was out of fear. We both let out a jumpy laugh.
“Hold tight,” I think Hugh yelled, staring as if we’d lost our senses. “Hang on,” he ordered, a bit more calmly, walking the floor as if it were a rolling deck. Opening the door to the cellar crawl space, he fished out a kerosene lamp and lit it. I could hear water lapping.
As the dirty light broke the gloom, something bizarre happened. The pelting ceased, and as the smashed window filled with a strange, peachy glow, the wind stopped. After a while, the sea subsided to a normal hiss, a rustling like leaves. Hiss and swell, hiss and swell, the sound stilled my swaying brain.
As fast as it had risen, the storm passed.
Hugh came and wrapped his arms around Sonny and me. Group hug, Sonny would’ve sneered and weaselled out of it, any other time. Now he rested against Hugh’s shoulder, grabbing a handful of wet flannel; and for once, that smart-assed mouth of his left him high and dry.
***
Venturing out the next morning, I felt like Noah’s wife leaving the ark after the flood. All that remained of the boardwalk were twisted planks, the spikes wrenched from them. The yard was a garden of rotting net, garbage that had washed up, and reams of kelp. There was even a crate of bananas, black and disgusting.
“Bet you a buck you won’t guess what they are,” I said, coaxing Sonny outside.
Some of the boulders shoring up the seaward edge of the spit had shifted.
“What if you’re out here, and I’m over there in the woods or something, next time a storm comes?” he asked warily.
“Better to stick close,” was my reply, though the thought rankled.
It got awkward having him underfoot all day, especially with no TV. He wasn’t much of a reader, except for comic books. And you could only play so much Scrabble, though as summer wore on, we took to playing cards, charades, and Risk. Sometimes at night Hugh told stories, mostly to get Sonny to turn in early so we could claim the dark. I was always afraid he’d hear us, even from that upstairs room, with the waves for a lullaby and the honks of passing ships. Though I’d brought him here, I never meant for Sonny to be my witness.
We started sneaking out at night, Hugh and I, like teenagers parking. The grass was our back seat, the darkness our blanket. The wind blew the bugs away. The paleness of our skins made us ghosts moving against the woods’ velvet backdrop. When the stars came out, they were eyes watching us, but without judgment. It was as if they were winking, a party to our craving. And though helicopters—Coast Guard and military—often chewed the air above, approaching and leaving the base, I never thought of Charlie up there looking down.
Except the night of the storm, once things subsided—then I did. Impossible to watch breakers and not feel my heart swim out. An image pushed and pulled inside me, of Charlie leaning out of a chopper, feeding down a lifeline—a basket or horse collar—to a sole survivor bobbing on the sea. Impossible not to think of him and his buddies, all hands, searching and rescuing.
Seeking but not finding?
I thought of that phone call: Bitch. It was only right that I’d given up on him. And that he’d given up on me. But on Sonny?
***
I could count on one hand the times that we went ashore that summer. Only when we needed groceries. Then, I felt like a castaway craving greens. Hugh would phone Wayne who’d ship us over, then chauffeur us to the Superstore. It felt strange going back there, to that shiny world of plastic and chrome. None of it looked real. It hurt my eyes. Even the air hurt—the hot whirr of cars in the parking lot, the store’s air-conditioned chill moving up my arms. Sonny, though, stepped inside as if we’d never left. He clamoured for Coco Puffs, chocolate bars, frozen cakes and pizzas.
“No problem,” Hugh said. “Fill your boots. No, really, Willa. Whatever he wants.”
Once Sonny put a big box of Drumsticks in the cart, which escaped notice till they’d been rung through. They were a sticky white soup by the time we got home. Hugh handed him a spoon. “Have a blast,” he said.
Money wasn’t an issue. Hugh kept a wad of it inside his wallet, which made me uncomfortable.
“I feel bad, you footing everything.”
“Tttt.” He eyed me. “Listen, Tessie. What’s it for, then? I got cash to burn, no place to spend it.”
Returning to that abandoned world—the mainland—made me feel like a fruit bat leaving the jungle, temporarily blinded. Hugh, like Sonny, had no trouble. He moved as easily through frozen foods as he did an aisle of ferns. It was as though his feet didn’t touch the ground; no signs of shock or adjustment, of resetting his inner rhythm to a faster, jerkier one. In the supermarket I was all thumbs, terrified of seeing someone from the base; stepping back on the island, all knees and elbows following Hugh up the path, weighed down with cans while slapping at insects. But by the time we got to the beach, my limbs would relax, my stride almost matching his until I’d stop and wait for Sonny hauling his share.
A small inconvenience, the awkwardness of re-entry in exchange for paradise.
Maybe Hugh’s ease moving between two worlds could be put down to practice, and had little to do with a chameleon spirit. Not long after Charlie’s bitch call, the phone seemed to ring regularly, though the sound never stopped jolting me, bringing back the venom in Charlie’s voice. It was members of Hugh’s band, hoping to get together. He seemed uninterested at first, his days so entwined with mine—like the morning glories twisting around the rocks above the high-tide mark. He didn’t like to leave us out here alone. I didn’t much relish it either, the threat of a storm always lurking off the tip of my imagination. He started spending more time playing, though, afternoons in the tower, the buzz of notes like a chorus of bees in perfect pitch. He played jazz tunes mostly, a few weeping, wailing blues, and sometimes Van Morrison, which made me want to dance out there under the blistering sun. Sometimes in the evenings before we escaped, he’d play in the kitchen, music waxing and waning to the rush of surf and the wind tapping the curtain rod against the open window.
One night he played
a slow, mournful tune new to me. ‘“Motherless Children,’ Blind Willie Johnson,” he said. “Though Eric Clapton gets all the credit.”
In spite of my happiness, a tear snaked down.
“Tell me,” he said.
“What? About my mother?”
The sax dangled between us. At the table, Sonny was all eyes.
“Um—she had brown hair, blue eyes. Smelled like green Jell-O.” Something caught in my throat. “Don’t remember a whole lot. I was only ...” An image flashed of my brother and me eating breakfast, our mother at the sink. A dribble of blood down her bare leg. This terrified look on Jason’s face, our mother saying, It’s nothing, and running upstairs.
Hugh stroked my arm. Sonny went back to his comic.
Then I saw myself, not much bigger than a doll, crying and sucking on my fingers. Wearing a pale pink dress, standing all alone on a corner of our suburban street, lost. Bad, bad girl, wandering away. How’s Mommy to know where to find you?
“Spider-Man sucks, y’know that?” Sonny griped.
Next I thought of my mother lying in bed. I’d taken her sewing scissors and lopped off my bangs. The room was dim and shadowy, and she herself hardly had any hair left, save for baby tufts sticking out here and there, like my doll’s when I gave her a trim. Thank you my darling. Her voice a dry, coughing whisper. Its sound, a papery whisk, and the memory of her sobbing moved through me, a dull ache settling under my heart. It dissipated as Hugh started playing again. Something fun, cocky, and my mother was gone. Even Sonny was bopping along. I lost myself, watching the slow swing of Hugh’s body, the sway of his head, the way he opened his eyes as if surprised, then squeezed them shut to the instrument’s lift and thrust. It made me jealous, the way they possessed each other, Hugh and his sax, as though with each bar he wrestled to make it behave. Perhaps it was all about taming, bending the thing to his purpose. He could’ve charmed cobras with that music, his playing was pure erotica—the opposite of guitarists’, who seemed to play with themselves instead.
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