Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  Closing my eyes, I felt him playing me.

  Sonny was still awake when I picked up the blanket and went outside, holding Hugh’s hand. We didn’t make it as far as the field.

  But when something roused me in the middle of the night, Hugh was gone. Checking the light, maybe, or polishing that new tune. Drowning everything out, the sea put me back to sleep. He was there when I woke in the morning.

  ***

  The last week of August we went to a house party over in the Passage, not far from Wayne’s. Some friends of Hugh’s were hosting it: Kenny, the drummer in the band, and his wife, Paula. They had a barbecue and live entertainment—a glorified jam. Kids were invited. Wayne and Reenie were there, and the other band members and their “partners.”

  Reenie was outside having a cigarette as we drove up, the four of us squished into the front of Wayne’s truck. “Long time no see,” she said coolly, raising an eyebrow at Sonny. He had his nose in the latest Punisher. He hadn’t wanted to come, arguing that he could watch the light while we partied.

  “Not likely,” I’d argued back, trying to keep it down as Hugh and Wayne loaded stuff into the boat and waited for us to get in.

  Even with the engine whining, Sonny’d kept it up, glum as a rattlesnake as we landed and climbed the ramp to the dock. “Dad never made me do crap like this.”

  “Behave,” I’d muttered, and when Hugh glanced back, impatience had flicked over his face. Who could blame him? He’d gone ahead to the truck, lugging his sax and a bag of munchies.

  It was a short drive to Kenny’s, a small, grey-sided house with a whale weather vane, a shaky white deck out front, and a barrel by the driveway, spilling flowers. Kenny looked vaguely familiar and it made me blush, remembering New Year’s Eve. Paula, his wife, was slim and perky in white jeans and a skimpy top. She had a new baby and a little boy of two or three. When introduced, Sonny scowled and waved.

  Reenie led me to the kitchen where three or four women scurried around getting food. The room was newly renovated, with blond cupboards and an island and crisply black and white tiles. Some little kids were building a plastic castle—two girls and a boy who barely looked up at Sonny.

  “You’re too big for castles?” Paula asked my boy. One of the kids spilled juice and another dripped Popsicle on the floor. Sonny sat down at the pine table, clutching his comic book.

  A blond woman came up to me. “You must be Julie…” She had an infant in one of those backpack things and looked like she’d just finished a hike. “You’re with Hugh?”

  The chatter stopped. Reenie disappeared. Paula was rinsing vegetables; the only sound was the tap running. The blond woman looked a bit dazed, then smiled, sticking out her hand. “I’m Emily,” she said, tipping forward, “and this is Johanna. We haven’t met. I’m Bob’s wife. The bass player?”

  Paula drifted over, patting my arm. “Could I get you some wine?” Her hand felt wet.

  “Veggie?” interrupted another woman—Shayla—passing a plate.

  “Guess I’m confused,” said blond Emily, eyeing me while dangling a carrot stick over her shoulder. The baby grabbed it and spit bits into Emily’s braid. “I was sure your name was Julie,” she said, rubbing her cheek.

  Paula pushed a glass into my hand. “Does your son like Cheezies? Everybody!” she called out above the chords vibrating from another room. “This is Wil-la. Willa…?”

  “Jackson.” I smiled at Emily. “This is my son Alex.” I willed him to look at me but he just kept staring at his comic.

  “My husband Bob plays bass,” Emily said. “I guess we haven’t met before. It’s this baby stuff, right? Hormones, they screw your memory.”

  I sipped wine and unloaded our snacks: chips and Bits & Bites. They looked poisonous beside all the vegetables and dip. I felt everyone staring at Sonny. At least summer had melted off most of his chubbiness.

  “Party food,” someone said, digging in. Emily nibbled a Shreddie. “Mmm,” she said, being nice.

  “Better take the guys some beer, eh?” Paula rooted through the fridge, thrust a Keith’s at me. “Oh. Right. Hughie doesn’t drink.”

  Emily covered her mouth. The baby chewed her braid.

  Julie, I thought, the name stirring from nowhere.

  I helped myself to more wine and escaped into the living room. It was small and dark with heavy carpeting and a beach stone fireplace, a row of small, high windows along one wall and a picture window facing the road. The sofa and a matching chair were shoved aside to accommodate the drum kit; its cymbals and toms were a sprawl of brass and chrome like something from The Ed Sullivan Show. Wayne squatted over a mess of cords and mic stands, adjusting things. His shirt came untucked, and you could see his crack. Getting up he staggered a little, almost stumbling into an amp and Hugh’s sax.

  The other guys and Reenie were out on the deck drinking. Hugh sipped from a tumbler—Coke?—winking as I peeked outside. He turned and kept talking as Paula appeared with her baby glued to a breast, her top pulled up, showing her midriff. She beckoned, “Can I ask you a favour?” A car turned in, some guy in a Mustang. Darrell, I heard someone say.

  I was on my third glass of wine, slicing lemon when the music started. Sonny had finally put down Punisher and was playing a game with the other kids, shooting them with a wooden spoon. Oh God, I thought, as the little ones fell, giggling their heads off. As the sax started in, I let it go. Drifting to the doorway, I stood beside Reenie, listening. The newcomer, a bearded guy with poodle hair, was rolling a joint. He looked out of place with all these upscale granola types, his lizard eyes darting around. I’d seen him before, but it took a moment to realize where: at the Tim’s that snowy day, months ago.

  Caught up in the music, the women had stopped talking. Emily and Paula swayed babies on their hips. Their eyes were locked on Hugh, just like mine. We were like remote control cars with the same beautiful kid at the switch, mesmerized by his moves, moves that should’ve been for me alone. Now they belonged to this room, these wives, girlfriends and babies, and to a past, it jabbed me, probably full of other such rooms.

  It hurt to peel my eyes away. The music bubbled and broke inside me, and someone yelled, “The volume! The kids! They really oughta tone it down!”

  At the end of the set, Hugh dripped with sweat. The other guys too, but who noticed? All those women watched as he scooted over and kissed me, the kind of kiss that singles you out like that one hailstone falling from blue sky. Suddenly the room was ours. The women and their little kids, even the men—all but Darrell, the burly guy, who coughed.

  “C’mon out to the car for a sec, Wayner,” he said. “Hughie?”

  It must’ve been the wine. By the time we ate—me perched on Hugh’s knee out on the deck, Sonny running around throwing Cheezies—I was properly pissed. Otherwise I mightn’t have been so easy about what happened. The neighbours had a dog with a litter of pups. Sometime between dessert and coffee the kids wandered over for a look, and Hugh and Sonny disappeared. They came back with a black and white puppy wrapped in a pink towel. “It’s a boy,” Sonny said, to reassure me. No babies to worry about. “Oreo,” he named him, kneeling on Paula’s floor as Hugh kept shooting me looks.

  “My whole life I wanted a dog,” Sonny said, rubbing his face in the pup’s fur. He let it crawl over his lap as it tried to escape all the tiny, mauling hands. The pup hijacked the party. The band regrouped for a few more tunes, but things lacked drive after that.

  “You’re not mad, I hope,” Hugh said as we were getting into the truck. Wayne’s eyes were glassy. Reenie was on the deck, holding somebody’s kid—Johanna, the backpack baby. She looked out of place and fed up, turning as we pulled out of the driveway. I tried not to lean into Wayne, but it wasn’t easy packed in like that. The puppy squirmed from lap to lap, peeing on Hugh. Sonny hooted as Hugh threw up his hands. Wayne slapped the wheel, and it seemed to me as good a moment as any
to blurt out, “Who’s Julie?”

  Wayne’s eyes slid to the rear-view. The only sound was the pup licking Sonny’s finger. “Ow!” he yelped when it nipped.

  Hugh’s arm rested along the top of the seat; he kneaded my shoulder, nudging Wayne.

  “Hey, loverboy,” Wayne scoffed, turning down to the dock. “Got your stuff all right, eh?”

  Hugh tapped his sax case. His eyes were on the water. Like Sonny, he was sober. “You want to know who Julie was?” he said, matter-of-factly. “I’ve already told you. An old girlfriend—”

  “Right,” Wayne chimed in, blasting the horn at a gull.

  “—that’s all,” Hugh added, jumping out.

  “Okay, Wayne,” he said, once we were in the boat, “Let’s see you drive ’er, buddy.”

  As we shot from shore, Sonny cradled the pup like an infant, kissing its muzzle. It occurred to me that we had nothing to feed it. Tomorrow, I thought hazily, burping wine and Cheezies, and gripping the side. Maybe Wayne thought I’d barf; he eyed me nervously, with new interest. Then it struck me, the meaning behind his look. One of a string, it seemed to say. One of a flock. He was wrong, of course. I knew better. Hugh just wasn’t the type to love a pack.

  15

  LEARNING THE ROPES

  Sonny carried Oreo on his shoulder, that little white snout poking from the towel like a rat’s. It was dark by the time we reached the spit, and I had to stop and pee in the dunes. Chilly and damp, the wind had that edge that signalled summer’s end. The puppy blinked feverishly as we hiked along, picking our way around the ruined boardwalk.

  We made a nest of old blankets and a life jacket, and laid it near the foot of Sonny’s bed, beside a swath of newspapers. Sonny splashed milk into a saucer and shook flakes of tuna into an old margarine tub.

  “It’s up to you, bud, to train him. You have to take him outside to do his business,” Hugh said.

  “Like having a baby,” I slurred.

  “Wouldn’t know about that.” Hugh flicked my ponytail off my neck. “Your ma and I are beat,” he told Sonny. “We’re off to bed. You and Mr. Christie okay?”

  “His name’s Oreo. Nerd,” Sonny started, as Hugh headed downstairs stiffly, almost limping. He paused on the landing to get his balance, stooping in the greenish light flashing in.

  I lay on Sonny’s bed for a while, watching him play with the pup. It waddled and staggered, attacking folds in the newspaper. My throat felt dry and my head ached above one eye. Sonny flicked a bottle cap across the floor like a puck, barely noticing when I got up and slipped to the bathroom.

  A cruise ship glided past as I splashed my face; you could feel the shudder through the floor before its reflection danced in the mirror. Glowing like a chandelier, it slid over the indigo water like a Hollywood phantom. Captivated, I watched it float into the night till it was just a firefly on the horizon.

  Downstairs, Hugh was in bed with the light on. He pushed back the covers to let me in.

  “Tell me about your girlfriend,” I tried teasing, sliding into the crook of his arm. He kissed my hair, then took a big, long drink from the glass of water at the bedside.

  “Which one, Tessie?”

  It had to have been the wine; in my dreams that night I took a joyride through the circuit of streets on the base. The Dodge had pedals instead of an engine, like a car on The Flintstones. Gaining speed, my feet scraped the pavement; my sandals had fallen off. Blood oozed from my toes. Coasting past the house on Avenger, I nearly ran down someone walking. She was wearing a brown leather jacket and jeans, all you could see from behind. The street narrowed suddenly and I swerved to avoid her. She turned and I froze. She had a face like mine. I think it was my mother.

  ***

  As soon as we were up and dressed, Sonny and I got the pup outside. Hugh stayed in bed, his sax abandoned on the kitchen table, no sign of the case. I sat on a rock drinking coffee while Sonny tried teaching Oreo to sit. A chilly haze blew in off the ocean—so much for the clothes I’d left on the line. Soon we were engulfed in fog. Someone with the Coast Guard had taken charge of the foghorn; every few minutes it blared.

  Oreo trembled and pressed his belly to the ground, leaving a wet spot. He’d already had a few accidents. Hugh had almost slipped in one, going to the bathroom. We’d soon be out of newspaper. I was thinking that we’d have to call on Wayne to get dog food, when a noise burned in the distance. A purr at first, it mounted to a roar. As it got louder, the fog broke and a helo skimmed towards us. At the same time, a destroyer glided past the boulders at the end of the spit, its sonar orbiting slowly in the mist.

  The chopper swooped in closer, hovering so low we glimpsed the maple leaf on its side, the crew hanging about the opened door. Sonny dropped the puppy, gazing up. For an instant I forgot myself and waved. The noise was deafening, blending with the foghorn. As the chopper banked and began to ascend, passing over the ship then heading out to sea, the childishness of what I’d done sank in. Like the itch from a string of bug bites, it spread, then set. Even as the chopper disappeared, its noise stayed with me. In the echo, I imagined its flight path circling over land and touching down at the base.

  We watched the ship slide towards port, flags waving in the stinging breeze. I’d just taken a sip of cold coffee when the chopper returned, with that roar like the clouds being put through a blender. It scudded over us, flying faster this time. I watched till the rotors were a daisy twirling out of sight. When I glanced at Sonny, he was staring at me with that wide-open look only a kid can get away with. The puppy had stumbled over some stones and was chewing a plastic bottle cap. We watched him arch his body and leave a deposit. “Oh, gross,” I waited for Sonny to howl. Instead he picked a wild aster from a crack in the rocks and pulled off its petals.

  “Where d’you think Dad is right now?” he asked the stem. “Aren’t we ever gonna go back?”

  ***

  That second question was quite practical, as it turned out—prickly, too, as the blackberry canes along Hangman’s Marsh. It was so called because the British navy had executed people on the rocky shingle hemming it. “Fucking Brits’d hang ’em, right there, see?” Hugh would point. “Then they’d tar the corpses and feather ’em.” After two months, we’d only begun learning the names of spots on the island, names Hugh tossed out like shorthand, knowing the stories behind them.

  School started in a week and something would have to be worked out.

  “You could home school,” Hugh suggested one day. He’d been busy all morning, straining dirt from the mercury. Sonny wanted to help; who knows why that stuff attracted him so. He was still nagging for a sample to keep on his windowsill, in a jar like his other specimens—shells, insects, rocks.

  “Keep him home? Right,” I said to Hugh. Thinking, What planet are you from?

  He wrapped his arms around me and waltzed me to the sink. Ran us each a drink of water, downing his in a gulp.

  “You know best.” He held his glass to my cheek, then refilled it. “God, I can’t get enough.”

  Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to—an odd little voice crowed inside me.

  There was a scuffling and Oreo bounded past our shins. Sonny made a dive for him.

  “Arsehole dog. He messed again!”

  “Get a rag.”

  But Sonny wasn’t listening. He’d sprawled out, swatting the puppy with the rope used for tying him to the shed so he wouldn’t run off.

  “We’ll work something out,” Hugh said, guzzling down another drink. Stepping over Sonny on his way outside.

  Sonny rolled onto his back, the puppy gnawing on his ear. “This sucks,” he moaned, batting Oreo away. The pup rolled onto all fours, whimpering. Sonny pounded the tiles with his heels. Horrified, I saw tears.

  “I’m sick of this, I’m bored,” he ranted. “I want to go to a movie. I want to see my friends. I want French fries. I want real pizza, n
ot frozen crap. For shit sake, I want—” As suddenly as it’d started, like that hailstorm the tantrum passed. He lay there with his arms over his face, sniffling. Perching on his chest, Oreo licked his chin.

  “Sonny?” Kneeling, I peeled away an arm.

  “Frig off!” was all he muttered.

  When Hugh came in a little while later, things had calmed down. Digging out some pop from the fridge, he announced that everything was arranged. The school bus stopped in the Passage; all Sonny had to do was be there on time.

  “Let me guess. Wayne to the rescue.”

  He gave me a funny look. When he reached out to stroke my arm, his hand felt icy.

  “I’m not going,” Sonny said when we broached it. “School’s a friggin’ waste of time. Who needs it?”

  Hugh vamoosed to the bedroom; I could hear him in there flipping pages—sheet music for a tune the band was supposed to be learning. Notes honked out, random as duck calls. After a few bars, he sauntered into the kitchen, where I was trying to interest Sonny in a book. He played “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits” to get our attention, then let the sax dangle from its strap.

  “You know what they do to deserters, eh Alex?”

  “Listen up, Sonny,” I rolled my eyes and wanted to laugh. “Here comes a story.”

  “Take a look out there,” Hugh said quietly, gazing from the little diamond-shaped window above the coat hooks. “When they hanged a guy, they’d leave ’im out in the sun to rot, and the birds’d eat out his eyes. Yummy, eh?”

  “Bullshit,” Sonny blurted out, and I swatted his wrist. But he had this look that he never got reading anything.

  “Ask Wayne.” Hugh shrugged, grinning. “You complain about your mother’s cooking.”

  Sonny kicked the rungs of his chair. “You’re lyin’,” he said, but you could see his delight.

  A smile worked the corners of Hugh’s mouth. Though it was early, he looked bushed.

  “A warning, Alex. To guys with the same idea. Deserters—first thing you saw entering or leaving the harbour. Dunno about you, but it’d make me think twice, eh, Mom?”