Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  ***

  Sonny’s birthday crept up like a thief. “When is it, again?” Hugh asked five times if he asked once. “Should we plan something?” To steady myself, I’d visualized cosmic bowling, pizza; kids roaming a black-lit bowling alley, lobbing balls into the wrong lanes, neon squiggles across faces.

  A shark derby? Kayaking through ice floes? A picnic! I thought. Landing en masse on Devils, Sonny and a horde of boys scaling the icy shingle, tailing Hugh and his sax. I imagined wailing notes as the kids fell into the sea like mice. Hugh’s singsong as he hauled them out, tramping over the cloven prints in the sand to safety. The sand itself glittery-black as ground coal. Hence the island’s name.

  Keeping a light meant harbouring things: superstition. Criminals, ghosts. Like the ones on Hangman’s Beach, deserters hung out to dry. But the only moans and groans lately came from the saxophone. Wailing riffs Hugh played after dark; stitches of tunes picked up and dropped. He’d gotten out of practice. It happened in winter. The isolation, he said.

  I quit coaxing him to see a doctor. He couldn’t have anyway, once the weather closed in again. In the torpor of mid-January, the prospect of the birthday drifted and beached, washing up in my dreams. Night after night Sonny marched across the flat, grey tabletop of Devils to the side where waves overtook land, and all was ice.

  One day Wayne had mail for him. It was from Calgary, our forwarding address scratched in Charlie’s hand. A card “for Alexander” with a cowboy on it and a twenty-dollar bill inside. It was signed, Sharla & Howard (Grampa), with a note from my father: Get your mum to bring you out sometime. Like to see you before you’re all grown up!

  Like a tree or a hedge?

  Sonny added the money to his stash, and out of the blue confided how he’d got that mark on his neck months before. A girl had done it, he said after his bath. A grade six.

  He left the water for me to drain. Wiping up wet footprints, I imagined the glow from the window being picked up by a passing ship, and myself on a flutter board out there, knocking against the rocks. Kicking.

  Following more footprints to his room, I ambushed him. “So. This girl—”

  “This girl who?”

  “What was she trying to do?”

  He snapped a piece of yellow rope at Oreo. A whip. “She tried to kiss me.”

  “And? Did she have any luck?”

  His face went pink.

  “Then what did she do?”

  He shrugged his shoulders to his ears, glaring. That look, like Charlie’s, as if a target had popped up, a snare; gears were about to engage.

  His face and ears glowed red. “Nothing, okay?”

  I slunk downstairs and he followed. Hugh had made tea and there were enough cookies for us each to have one. We were almost out of groceries but for some tins, things nobody would eat, like cocktail wieners. Baby birds, Sonny called them.

  “Who’s the card from?” Hugh wanted to know.

  But Sonny piped up, “A scavenger hunt! That’s what I want. You could bury things.”

  “Good luck,” Hugh said. After a round of freeze, thaw, and freeze again, the ground was rock-hard, bare.

  “Why can’t it be in spring?” Sonny complained. It was what Charlie had said when I was pregnant, as if Sonny’s arrival were up to me.

  During these short dark days it was hard not to feel stuck, harder still to summon the memory of green without feeling disconnected, a deep and distant longing. That inchworm hue of fiddleheads and the spruce buds Hugh had picked, tossed, and caught like peanuts. “Save you from scurvy!” He’d put one in my mouth; I’d spit it out. The least of my worries, scurvy. But I’d thought of Sonny who reviled things green.

  At bedtime Hugh conceded, “You could do a scavenger hunt if we had snow.”

  Weariness overtook me; all I wanted was sleep. “But you’d need prizes. Ones worth digging for. And a pack of kids, for competition.”

  He traced my nipple with his finger, and I covered myself. He looked away—disgusted? “It’s the hunt that counts. Alex could use the lesson.”

  I rolled over, studying an icicle at the window. In the light’s flash it gleamed like a blade. The mattress jiggled as he coughed, a thickness in his throat.

  ***

  The night before Sonny’s birthday Hugh took off, and while he was gone someone called. “We’re s’posed to meet,” the guy said, impatient. “I’ve been waiting at the dock.”

  “About a gig, is it?” I could hear him squeezing the receiver.

  “You tell him Darrell called. Got his stuff. And tell him, he stands me up again, he’ll be swimming.”

  Before I could get a number, he hung up.

  “What’s your problem?” Sonny asked when I stepped outside to watch for Hugh. Sprayed with stars, the night was freezing, the city a distant twinkle—so distant we could’ve been the only ones alive. Giving up, I went and got into my nightie, pulling on a sweater over top.

  Hugh returned just after Sonny went to bed. He came in smelling of the cold, his eyes shiny. In this world of ice, the sight of him snatched my breath. There was always the hope of a melt even as I relished solidity; my love dangled in the possibility of everything being liquid.

  “All clear?” he said, puffing a little. “Alex isn’t still up?” He went back outside, then trundled in some gear—a black bag shaped like an elephant gun, and a dusty amplifier. It smelled like an ashtray.

  “Shh!” He put his fingers to my mouth. “It’s supposed to be a surprise. He said that’s what he wanted, remember? That business about turning ten, or whatever.”

  He unzipped the bag and slid out a guitar. It was thin and horned, the colours of a Doberman pinscher. Speechless, I forgot about the phone call, the voice on the other end. A draft travelled up my legs as I moved my feet trying to keep warm. “Oh, Hugh. It’s…he’ll...”

  “What? He won’t like it?”

  The draft climbed through my innards. “He can’t play a note!”

  “Yet.”

  “The cost, though,” I fretted. Birthdays for us had been Lego and Duncan Hines. When I was small, Barbies—bought by Dad—and grocery store cake.

  “Look, it’s no big deal. Got it off a buddy of Wayne’s. He just wanted to unload it.”

  He knelt and plugged everything in. The light on the amp blinked, a tiny red eye. Then he hit the strings with a crash like a roof collapsing. I stifled a shriek of laughter.

  “For shit sake, Tess.” He glared. “Let me get it outta here before he sees.”

  I helped lug the gear to the lighthouse. “He’ll be over the moon,” I murmured, tugging on Hugh’s arm. But he gave me a look as if I’d spoken in another tongue.

  From somewhere overhead we caught the boom of a passing jet. I thought of Charlie, how, if he’d sent anything, it was late and I’d need to go all out, making up for it with the cake. Chocolate, though it’d be a challenge baking one in the woodstove. A giant hockey puck is what I imagined: a theme. Except Sonny hated sports.

  25

  PILOTS

  After breakfast, Hugh tied a bandana over Sonny’s eyes and the three of us trooped to the lighthouse. A little extreme, though I didn’t say anything. Climbing those steep, slippery stairs, Sonny didn’t complain. He was a good sport.

  “You won’t believe it, sweetie,” I whispered into his ear, steering him by the shoulder. At the top, he yanked off the blindfold, blinking in the sun rippling off the water. His face looked pale, almost bluish like skimmed milk. Spying the gig bag, he whipped down the zipper and pulled out the guitar, almost dinging the light’s huge lens. Hugh winced.

  “Holy crap!” Sonny kept saying. “Wait’ll I tell Derek.”

  “Come here and I’ll show you a G chord,” Hugh said, but Sonny ignored him. He was kneeling by the juiceless amp, twisting knobs then frantically strumming. His fingers thudded the strings like a c
lawless cat picking a screen, not remotely musical.

  “After school, Sonny,” I cut in. “Maybe Hugh’ll give you a lesson then.”

  The idea of a party had fizzled; the feeling of being stranded out here, caught in an icy limbo, had that effect. Plans became pilot whales, dark shapes that surfaced and dove, and, if they did come ashore, died out of the water.

  “I wanted a go-kart party,” was Sonny’s first comment when I met him coming home that afternoon. Wayne didn’t bat an eye, but that wasn’t unusual. He no longer spoke on our crossings, but he seemed to be keeping score. I could see him calculating Hughie’s tab.

  The cake was cooling on top of the fridge.

  “Derek’s mother took him and all the grade fives go-karting.”

  “The whole class?” I rolled my eyes. “Where were you, then? Ah, Sonny.” I sighed, wiping down his lunch bag.

  Hugh had the gear plugged into the outlet for the toaster and was noodling around on the guitar, bending and stretching notes in a tune I recognized. Johnny Cash, “Ring of Fire.” He glanced up at Sonny, a guarded look in his eyes as his fingers curled over the strings.

  “What birthday is this, again? You won’t learn to play by bitching.”

  I looked at him.

  “Complaining. When we were kids,” he said, “you got a swat on the arse for each year.”

  He took a swing at Sonny. Dodging it, Sonny grabbed the guitar, aiming it like a rifle. He blushed, with the same look as when Charlie had got him the bike. The look I’d had taking Sonny home from the hospital all those years before. Joyful but scared, grateful but not at all sure what to do with the gift. It was then, maybe more than at any other time, that I missed having a mother.

  An expression of shame—guilt?—crossed Sonny’s face. Hugh yanked the cord from the outlet.

  “Fine, then. My mistake, kiddo. Thought you’d at least act interested.”

  I put my hand on Hugh’s wrist. His eyes had a shadowy look.

  “I’m just saying. Jesus. I went to some effort here, Alex. Next time I’ll think twice.”

  I dug Sonny hard in the ribs, and he blushed a deeper pink. Hugh’s mouth was a flat line.

  “C-can you teach me ‘Jeremiah Was a Bullfrog’?”

  “Sonny,” I laughed nervously, “where’d you ever hear that?”

  “Derek’s,” he said, gazing from me to Hugh. “His mom sings it.”

  “O-kay.” I waited for Hugh to laugh. Instead, he slouched away, and next we heard him in the bedroom opening drawers. For one dizzy moment my heart bottomed.

  Sonny rammed candles into the cake.

  “You could’ve said thank you,” I muttered.

  He stared back, his bottom lip pushed out. The candles were burned down, all I’d found stashed at the back of the cupboard. At least there were enough, with four spares: fourteen in all, mostly pink. Saved from some other birthday, someone else’s cake. Someone we’d never know and likely wouldn’t meet. A girl, a teenager, I imagined, with Patty Duke hair and a miniskirt. I pictured somebody sticking those candles, new, into a pink cake. Licking icing off her chapped fingers: a mother. Lighting the candles then carrying the cake across the darkened kitchen; people singing, How o-old are youuuuu? A swat for every year. A big, fat swat across the butt. I thought again of my mother and a time so faint maybe it hadn’t even happened. A time with no swats but coins baked in a cake—dimes wrapped in wax paper—and candles. Three or four. The present was a baby doll with a tiny hole in her lips for a bottle, another tiny one to pee out of. Sonny was hunched over the guitar, glowering at the strings. I squeezed his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, darling.” Not for a second did I think it was enough.

  He was on his third slice of cake when the phone rang. After a crackly pause, a voice asked for him, just as faint, and disembodied.

  “Charlie?”

  Another, brittle pause.

  “Put my boy on, would you.” There was a breaking sound like foil being crumpled.

  “Come back on after. I want to … there’s something I’ve got to say.”

  Saaaaayyyyyy, the word echoed with squirrelly feedback. Another pause.

  “How are you, anyway?”

  “All right,” I murmured, thrusting the phone at Sonny.

  Hugh was licking chocolate from his thumb, about to cut himself more cake. He gazed up at me, haunted.

  “Yup…Yeah, sure…Uh-huh. Okay…Not bad. Sucks…You too. Yeah, okay…Okay!” Sonny mumbled, his lips pressed to the receiver. He kept turning his back, then every few seconds glancing over at me with this funny look, as if checking to see if his answers added up.

  “His dad,” I whispered to Hugh, my throat tightening. The blood rose to my cheeks. Then Sonny handed me the phone.

  “Your turn.” His voice was bright with hope.

  “Charlie,” I said, avoiding Hugh’s gaze. Forcing myself to sound calm, measured, though my heart was pounding. My eyes roved, then flicked away. There was a clatter as Hugh dropped the knife.

  “Willa.” A windy sound came over the line, like dry leaves shifting.

  “Good of you to call.” I couldn’t keep sarcasm from creeping in. “Where are you?”

  “Kuwait; some sort of—” the line crackled. “—the blessed land of sand.” He let out a parched little laugh and sniffed. “I can’t stand this,” he said, and I supposed he meant the desert. I thought of the heat, and Sonny’s need for a parka. This seemed as good a time as any to raise it.

  “Now, about Sonny—there’s things he could use,” I began, remembering boots, jeans. “You should see, he’ll soon be taller than—”

  “I miss you,” he interrupted, and there was a crackling silence.

  Hugh stared from the table. In the yellow light his face was pale and there was chocolate on his mouth.

  Me too, part of me wanted to say, cupping the receiver.

  “Well,” Charlie’s voice faded in and out. “So long then. Oh, and the cheque’s in the mail.”

  If he said goodbye, it got lost. A piercing zing split the air. Dangling the guitar by its neck, Hugh raked out another crashing chord before shoving it at Sonny. Sonny chewed his lip, his hand freezing over the fret board.

  ***

  The guitar ended up hardly leaving its case. It could’ve been a Lego man forgotten under the bed. God knows, with winter locking down there was loads of time to practise. Once or twice, nights when you couldn’t see the breakwater for blowing snow, Hugh got out the sax and tried getting Sonny to play along. There was no predicting. Curled over Sonny’s shoulder, Hugh showed him chords, his fingers guiding Sonny’s on the frets.

  “Try this,” he said, running through some old Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven” or “The Immigrant Song,” things my brother and I listened to as teens in the basement. Either the songs were too hard, or Sonny didn’t like them.

  “Show me some Wham! ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’.”

  Hugh rolled his eyes. Then, to please us maybe, Sonny picked out a jingle from the radio.

  “Not bad.” But then Hugh disappeared to the bedroom. We sat there in the kitchen, Sonny and I, listening to notes through the wall as he blew something on the sax, no competition against the wind and the foghorn. Snow worked like a megaphone, or a blanket pinning the noise close to the rocks and the pitching swells. We felt it rattle the floorboards, watched it shake the dishes. Hugh’s music was no match at all.

  Maybe it was the cold, the boredom, but he played less and less, and when he did he barely moved his body; forget that wrestling dance. It was as if he’d fallen out with the sax; as if he’d won, and it had given up. Like someone he’d grown tired of.

  With a sickening tug I thought of Julie; imagined myself picking up the phone and spilling my suspicions. But love—that icy inertia—prevented me. Who’d have believed? He’s not right, I’d have exp
lained. But who would’ve listened? He’s suffering, and doesn’t know it. But what then? It was like walking the island’s edge backwards with no choice but to fall or leap off. An avalanche of ocean flooding over as I sank, filling every cavity with its freezing effervescence. Burying me alive.

  ***

  The first week of February it snowed every day, not just dustings, but a couple of feet. School got cancelled five days straight. Drifts piled so high against the doors that one morning we coaxed Sonny to climb out a window and shovel off the stoop. Then Hugh went out and tunnelled paths to the shed and the lighthouse.

  I tried to cut a pathway to the front door.

  “What for?” Hugh hollered from the angled shade of the house, as the clouds cleared temporarily and the sun sparkled down. The snow-covered boulders made me think of the Rockies set against dazzling sky; the delineation of land and sea as crisp as a blue and white flag, not a shade in between.

  I stood my shovel in the snow and flopped onto my back, moving my arms and legs, grinning at the sun. Its brilliance made my head ache. “Sonny?” I yelled. Come make an angel, a child voice urged inside me. Hugh’s shouts, Sonny’s laughter sifted from around back. The dog’s yapping. Ka-POW! Geronimoooo. Suckerrr.

  Wading through waist-high drifts, I tried rolling a ball for a snowman, without any luck. The snow was so powdery it squeaked.

  The barking rose as I pushed to the back of the house. Hugh was crouching by the porch, a mitt over his eye. Oreo yapped even harder when he saw me. Sonny skulked by the shed.

  “Nearly took my fucking eye out,” Hugh muttered as I peeled his hand away. The skin was pink with the start of a bruise.

  “Sonny!” I screamed. But he disappeared behind the shed then clambered towards the boulders.

  Oreo flicked snow with his snout, nipping at the sparkles. His tail was a plume.

  “Sonny!” I yelled again, setting off more barking.

  Paying no attention, Sonny started climbing the boulders, sliding into crevices.

  “Get back here!” But it was no use.