Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  “She’s not your mom,” Sonny muttered; I’d swear sometimes he ran on cruise control.

  “Thank God,” Hugh said, and I swatted him. He caught my arm and tickled my ribs, doubling me over.

  “Uncle!” I gasped, laughing like a hyena.

  “Movies! Two words; first word,” Sonny cut in, chopping the back of his hand with two fingers. Pointing at the ceiling, he gazed up, spinning slowly. Then he fluttered his fingers, opening and closing his fists like Pacman mouths. Twinkle, twinkle, he mouthed at me, turning one hand into a gun and zapping Hugh.

  ***

  That last week of summer, taking the pup out first thing, I spotted something lying on the ground by the clothesline. It was a large bundle, khaki tarp tied with yellow rope. Camp gear, was my first thought; my second: is this some kind of invasion? Hugh was still asleep. He’d complained of tiredness—a bug, he said, and there must’ve been something to it, since we hadn’t made love for three days. I lifted the bundle; it wasn’t heavy so much as awkward. As I tugged at the rope, my breath caught. It was tied with the neat, efficient knots you’d imagine sailors using, or the military. Like the ones Charlie’d fussed over once, tying a borrowed tent to the roof rack the sole time we’d tried camping.

  Lugging the parcel into the shade behind the tool shed, I prayed that Sonny wouldn’t come outside. The puppy nipped at me as I laid it down. My fingers shook undoing the knots. Inside were clothes—my clothes, things left behind in drawers and closets, non-essentials. A pair of burgundy cords rolled as if for a hike; T-shirts, sweatshirts; an ancient, unworn nightie, my old leather jacket, a ratty pair of shoes. As I lifted the pile from the tarp, a note fell out. The writing made my throat tighten.

  You’ll need these more than me—Charlie. He hadn’t even bothered to write “from,” but what did I expect? Below was a PS, painfully legible: Take good care of my son, or there will be consequences.

  Consequences. It conjured everything from pitchforks to game show hosts. It stung as I stared at the sky, swallowing back an awful taste.

  “Tess?” Hugh’s voice spilled out above the waves and the wind and gulls yammering overhead. Shakily I bundled everything into the tarp and stepped out into the yard with it, steadying myself. He was leaning from the porch, his face shaded by the roof. His jeans looked slept in, hanging off him, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He looked shaken, as if plucked from a nightmare.

  ***

  It was as if Charlie’s care package carried germs. That same week I caught a flu that made everything a dream, a mirage. The wind-beaten clothes on the line lifted and flapped over the sea like terns. Shirts became bodies—headless, legless—doing the deadman’s float on the dancing, diamond surface.

  Hugh compared them to scarecrows frightening away birds.

  “What birds?” I asked at the height of my fever. “What garden?” Scarecrows were useless without a garden.

  But you couldn’t grow a thing out on the spit—not anything needing shelter or soil. The wind flattened everything, rendered the birds paper cut-outs against the clouds. Sweating into my pillow, I thought of ways to thwart it: like planting hollyhocks against the house. I dreamed of pink crepe-paper blooms bleeding through fog, and fogbanks blooming into stoppers plugging up the harbour mouth. To quench the fiery cattail in my throat I swallowed fog—fog as solid as freighters shouldering past. At the very worst of it, I gulped water: drowning, galloping waves. I drank the harbour dry.

  Lord knows how Sonny amused himself those couple of days. Hugh put cold cloths on my forehead and fed me thin yellow soup. I fretted and fussed that Sonny needed scribblers, shoes.

  “Sweat it out,” Hugh said, shutting out the world beyond the bedroom. “Just try and sleep.”

  It worked. On the third day I got up in time to see the sun paint the hangman’s beach gold, a tarnished gleam to its smooth, grey stones. The sea was amazingly calm, lapping at that steep, slate crescent. Not a peep from Sonny or Hugh, so I took myself outside.

  The light pricked my eyes and my mind swam, weightless, with that feeling when you’ve lost touch and are only half returning to your body. I floated over the yard to the lighthouse, laid my palm against its cold cement for grounding. Earth to Willa, a voice murmured: mine.

  As a ship slid closer—a monster container ship, its windows pinpricks of gold—I lifted my hand and waved. It took a lot of effort. Had Sonny been there, I’d have made him wave, too. It was like watching the whole world glide past my fingers. The engines’ shuddering rocked the balls of my feet, and I grew legs again. Who knows why this ship was special? When ships like it passed, the air always changed. Dishes rattled. Once, in one of his better moments, Sonny said it was like a giant bowling on the harbour floor. As quickly as it entered my range, the ship passed, leaving the smell of bilge, a press of breakers. In the good old days, Hugh had told me, ships left the scent of cargoes: oranges from Jaffa, bananas from Haiti, molasses from the Dominican Republic. There was a story passed down from an earlier keeper, of how his family awoke one day to a sea of bananas, a yellow lagoon; and another time, cabbages. Bald green heads bobbing and washing up.

  The mist split then, showing the buildings of the city beyond, dwarfed but there. Like King Kong’s New York about to be eaten, except on a teensy scale, and no Statue of Liberty holding the fort on the island—our island.

  ***

  Well before the start of school, the leaves in the hollows began to turn—red-tipped at first, mottled as apples. It felt like a warning.

  “Why jump the gun?” Hugh laughed. “Those leaves are green, Willa. You’re seeing things.”

  Other things filled my head, sounds and voices. In my sleep I heard the wind, like a girl singing and men groaning, the squeak of winching rope. I dreamt of bodies swinging in the midday sun, and of tar painted on the rocks and whatever pilings remained of the boardwalk. Sticky and warm, it coated wood that otherwise left slivers in your hands and feet. “Wear your shoes,” I’d told Sonny every living day that summer. He never listened.

  Two days before school, Sonny started getting ideas; was it something in the air, in those cirrus clouds? He’d spotted a pony, he said, a brown and white one with a mane like a broom, running through the woods above the Strawberry Battery. He hatched a plan to lure it with carrots and lasso it with Oreo’s rope.

  “What about the dog?” I played along. “Isn’t he enough to look after?”

  “Moommm! I could ride it!”

  “What about your bike?” It hadn’t left the shed, where it leaned against a sawhorse. Most of the paths were too overgrown for biking.

  “You don’t believe me. You think I’m just makin’ it up.”

  Angling for attention, more like it. Though Sonny had always had a thing for horses. “Whoa, boy,” he used to yell, riding his bed’s footboard, whipping it with his housecoat belt. It had driven Charlie crazy; he’d smack the arm of his chair and holler, “Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

  “It worries me,” I told Hugh that evening. We were huddled together drinking tea on the step, watching the stars. “I think he’s been alone too much.”

  “Hardly.” He rolled his eyes. “Well, school’ll fix that.”

  “Yeah. But... a pony? D’you think ...?”

  Hugh shrugged. Anything’s possible, his look said. He slid his arm around me, and I leaned into his warmth, the coziness of things being okay.

  “Used to be wild ponies out here, right? Well, maybe not wild—somebody owned them. They pastured them in summer.”

  “You think—?”

  “Who knows? Buddy’s got quite the imagination, Tess. But, hey, it might do him good, horse-hunting for a couple days.”

  I ducked away from him, jostling my tea. My period was due, and I wasn’t in much of a joking mood. Though I tried to stifle them, the words sneaked out: “Ever notice, when someone doesn’t get something, it feels like a stone in
your shoe? Something you have to dump out?”

  I was more fretful than exasperated. But Hugh picked up his mug and went inside. When it got cold, I went in too, and could hear him in the bedroom shuffling papers. After a while, he came out for more tea.

  “This pony of his, Willa—it’s probably a deer.” He was trying to reassure me, while apologizing, maybe, or making amends.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. Next day, his last day of freedom, there was conviction in Sonny’s eyes as he coiled the rope over his shoulder and took off towards the marsh, the puppy leaping for attention.

  He came back after lunch, empty handed.

  Putting a peanut butter sandwich in front of him, I pulled up a chair. “Sonny?” My voice was quiet, measured. “Do you hear things—at night, I mean?”

  “Things?”

  “Sounds. Noises.”

  “Duh.” His mouth was full of peanut butter. “Like, um, boats? Buoys? Like, yeah, Mom.”

  “No, it’s more, I dunno—” a pause “—like squeaking.” He rolled his eyes and snorted, wiping his nose on his sleeve. A man trapped in a nine-year-old’s body.

  “It’ll be nice for you, seeing Derek again,” I said, changing tack. He gazed blankly. The table stretched between us; God knows what he was thinking.

  “You’ll need a bath tonight. And—listen—those dishes? You could dry them while I figure out supper.”

  But first I went up and rooted out his knapsack and cleaned it off. When I came downstairs he was gone, scarce as pavement, as Hugh would say. From the window I could see something moving through the dunes.

  “A bear?” I said, as if Hugh were there. Which he wasn’t. Once the weather started changing, he spent less time around the house. He had tunes to work on; perhaps they sounded better to him in the tower’s echo chamber.

  If he was playing, he was playing softly. He could’ve been anywhere. Sonny and I might’ve been alone out here—it was bound to happen sometime, Hugh would have to go ashore on some errand or other without us. A matter of time. Time not measured by a clock or flashes of light, but the kind that moves like porpoises underwater. The thought of being left alone out here was a bit like the smell of tar, or the salty dampness that settled into my bones that summer.

  Flies buzzed at the panes.

  “Is it birds you hear, Mom?” Sonny startled me, creeping in. His voice cutting the stillness. “That sound, I mean.” He watched me, suspicious. “Planes taking off—that’s what you hear. When you’re tryin’ to sleep? Planes, landing at the base.”

  “Right.” Suddenly I felt tired. “That must be it.” I was still sleeping fitfully, getting over that flu. “Now. Those jeans—the ones you hate? Think you can still get into them?”

  “Fuck those jeans,” he mumbled. “Fudge, I said.”

  “Feed the dog. And if I hear that language once more I’ll—”

  “What?” There was hate in his eyes. “Ground me?”

  Maybe I should have spanked him. There were mothers who would’ve. Watching him dump kibble into Oreo’s bowl, it struck me that he’d grown too big to spank.

  “And when you’re done that, call Hugh, would you please? Tell him supper’ll soon be on.”

  ***

  We went to bed early, all three of us. What luxury to crawl between sheets that smelled like the wind, while the light at the window was still blue. Hugh undressed quickly and crawled in beside me, and when the sounds of Sonny turning over upstairs subsided, we made love quietly, carefully, until I felt myself absorbed by him. That’s how it felt, as if every bit of me was blotted up and drawn into him, the way the sun draws vapour from liquid, and lifts moisture from sand.

  Afterwards we lay still, listening to Oreo scrabble downstairs.

  “Shhh,” Hugh whispered, almost asleep. It’d gotten cold, and I rose reluctantly to shut the window. It was that time of year, that shift that feels like jeans you’ve outworn but hate to switch for new ones, ones not broken in. I thought of sneaking up to check on Sonny, then decided: let sleeping babes lie.

  16

  DUE EAST

  Hugh kissed me awake the first day of school. “Rise and shine,” he whispered, getting up.

  I lay watching dust motes jig in a ray of sunlight. “Be ready for a fight.”

  Rolling out of bed, I tugged on my clothes. Stumbling into his, Hugh put both hands on my waist as if to steady himself.

  Sonny shocked us, padding downstairs in his jeans and a T-shirt he’d shunned all summer. He looked tanned, his eyebrows sun-bleached, and he was smiling.

  “Whatever,” Hugh muttered, as Sonny helped himself to some stale Corn Flakes and downed a mugful of juice.

  “Good luck,” Hugh called out, going up to shave.

  Sonny had grown a good two inches since spring, but I tried not to think about that, or about the clouds scudding over the horizon as we set out for the pier. You could still see the moon, a pale eye overlooking the marsh. The sea rolled like dice over the sand, murmuring gently, and we didn’t talk, cutting through the wet woods. It was barely seven-thirty, yet he behaved as if this were a trip to the grocery store. I dared not open my mouth; maybe all this was harder on me than on him, the wrinkle school put in our routine.

  Wayne was waiting in the boat, drinking take-out coffee. He looked hungover as usual, but he took Sonny’s backpack as Sonny climbed in. When we reached the other side, he tapped Sonny’s shoulder.

  “Have a good one, bud,” he said, pointing out the bus stop. It was just across the road, on a flat stretch beside the Kwik Way. Leaving the engine running, he downed his coffee, pitching the cup overboard.

  “Comin’, Willa?” he hollered. I’d gotten out, and was tailing Sonny to the roadside. “Yo!”

  I turned once and waved.

  Sonny marched ahead as if I wasn’t there, his thumbs hooked in the straps of his loaded-down pack. God knows what he had in there, besides an empty notebook of Hugh’s and a couple of sandwiches I’d slapped together.

  There were a couple of kids waiting, a teenage girl with a Walkman, and a boy half Sonny’s size. Sonny stood with his back to us, kicking the gravel. “What time is it?” the girl asked, and there was a funny sound. I turned to see Sonny throwing up into some goldenrod.

  “Gross me out!” the girl sneered, just as the blue-and-white bus rounded a curve, lights flashing. I scrabbled for Kleenex uselessly, corralling Sonny and touching my wrist to his brow. He knocked my hand away, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The bus stopped, the door swinging wide, and without glancing back, he climbed in.

  “Wait!” I yelled. The driver must’ve seen Sonny’s face, because he waved me aboard. Falling into the first empty seat, I could feel the eyes on me, especially Sonny’s, full of disgust.

  “Where to?” asked the driver, a scrawny man with a comb- over. He looked pissed off and amused.

  “I’m sorry,” I babbled, “but—”

  “Don’ worry about it.” Then he clammed right up, as if I were one of the kids. The kids, meanwhile, twittered like Hitchcock’s birds, a clamorous chirping that foretold disaster.

  “Slow learner, are ya?” the driver shouted after a while. A joke.

  Fifteen minutes and five stops later, we pulled up in front of the school. Damn, if Sandi (what was her last name?) wasn’t there with a flock of women.

  Sonny stomped past me, eyes locked on the kid ahead.

  “Far as I go, dear,” the driver said once they’d all shoved and stumbled their way off. The bus felt lighter—a whale after giving birth.

  “Thanks.” Hoping it sounded sincere, I took my time on the steps.

  It was like being dropped on the moon; the beaten-down schoolyard with its rusty swings and view of the base, those houses clumped together as if for protection. The air smelled of diesel and trampled weeds.

  “Willa?” I imagined a voice like Sand
i’s calling me back to the fold, in exchange for news. Information. But neither she nor her friends had budged. Maybe I’d turned invisible? Sonny had beelined to the playground, throwing off his pack. He was shaking a pole, causing the kids on the swings to shriek. One of them was Derek.

  I turned away, walking quickly down the hill with no clue where I was headed. But at the highway, instead of starting back towards the Passage, I crossed the railway tracks and, passing through the open gates, headed towards Avenger.

  What is wrong with you? chorused through my head as I marched along the cracked pavement past those faded, look-alike houses. Reaching Number 12, I almost kept going. It was like seeing something dead familiar, watching some aspect of your tiny life on TV. My heart pounded as I glanced up and down the street. Joyce LeBlanc was dragging a tricycle out of her driveway. A radio burbled faintly from somewhere, and the whine of a vacuum cleaner.

  The Dodge sat in the driveway, backed in. The lawn needed cutting. The drapes hung crookedly in the picture window. My key lay in a pocket of my pack. What was I thinking? Who knows what I’d have done had Charlie been there.

  Something made me walk up and let myself in. It was so simple, it was scary: the key turning, the door opening.

  Inside, it seemed brighter than I remembered, despite the drapes. The sun breaking in was like beaten yolks, shockingly cheery. Feeling like a burglar, as if any second an alarm would sound, I scooted to the kitchen. The counter was even cleaner than I expected: spotless. Somewhere, a tap dripped. In the bathroom? The tap in the kitchen was turned off tightly. I checked. The toaster gleamed. My note, penned so exactingly that last morning, was gone, of course.

  Moving down the hall to the bedroom was like watching my feet in a movie. Any second the scene would shift, lifting them from the carpet.

  The bed was made, an inside-out pair of Charlie’s jeans slung over the foot. Apart from this, nothing looked out of place. It was like being in a museum. A film of dust coated the dressers, nothing serious. A few of my clothes hung in the closet, like items in a new-to-you store: worn, but by whom? I flipped through them without much interest, careful not to touch Charlie’s things hanging there too.