Berth

by Carol Bruneau

  “I know you are,” I said, my voice far away. “The weather—maybe when it warms up, things’ll improve.”

  “You have no idea.” He pulled away, bitterly. “Do you.”

  I was a crumb swept off the table suddenly, a crumb not even worthy of Oreo.

  “What, exactly, d’you think will improve? What d’you mean?” He stared, slurping coffee. Then he moved to the window, hunching there; one bare foot on top of the other, arms folded tight. His chipped blue mug dangling from his finger. “What you don’t get, Willa, is the greyness. Hunh? The fact that there’s no beginning, no end? Not like you’d have it. See, things’re like one big grey sheet, is what I’m trying to say.” He kept nodding as he spoke. “There’s no one thing that’s right—or wrong either.”

  I stared; this was asking me to make sense of everything, and of nothing. Backing away, I felt raw, and everything was bleak. Dumping out Sonny’s milk, I noticed that the counter—such as it was—needed scouring. So did the tiles, the whole house.

  “The thanks I get,” he was murmuring now, a bitter version of his old, teasing self. “For rescuing you, and that freaking kid of yours.”

  Clenching my teeth, I switched on the radio, which was tarred with grease, feathered with dust. Sonny’d been playing with the dial again. Music spurted out. “The Way It Is.” Fading in and out, the fast, tinkly piano made me want to turn the cupboards inside out, purge the place. Not just of flotsam—all the worn-out, cast-off tackiness that filled its rooms—but of my presence and Sonny’s.

  “It’s early,” he said softly. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  I didn’t budge.

  “Well. Fine, then. If you don’t feel like it.” He tucked in his shirt haphazardly. His jeans stood out from his hip bones; and I realized with a little shock how thin he’d gotten.

  “I’m gonna grab a ride with Wayne,” I said, my voice like somebody else’s, an echo.

  “Hmm?” He smirked. “Island girl scores trip to mainland. What’ll you do there? Hitchhike to the mall and shop? Right.”

  I didn’t answer, picturing myself by the Kwik Way, my thumb stuck out. Veiled from him by sea smoke. Except, in my imagination the air was fallish, damp but not biting; and everything around me was muted, earthy, not silver-plated and slick.

  “Can’t hear myself think,” he muttered, turning down the radio. Before I could escape, he came and stood behind me, sliding his arms around my waist, crossing his hands over my belly.

  “Come on, Tessie—please.” He breathed into my ear. “Don’t be pissed. It was nothing, you know, yesterday.” As I tried to pull away, he caught a handful of my sweater, clutching it. He swallowed; I could hear the spit in his throat. “You keep me alive.” His words slurred together, as if sub-zero mist had blown into the house.

  “That’s what you say,” I whispered, just loud enough for him to hear.

  In the bedroom I lay like a mannequin as he shed his things, moved, naked, against me. His breath roared in my ears as he tugged at my clothes. His hands roved. He knocked and he knocked, but I would not let him in. After a while he went limp, then curled against me. A stowaway clinging to a good luck medal, a relic from his homeland, a foggy memory now. I lay like cargo awaiting landfall until he turned, and I could tell by the way the mattress moved that he was crying.

  I went up and ran a bath, and when I stole back downstairs, he was gone. A trail of holes in the snow led to the tower.

  Oreo licked at me, following me to the dresser. He whined for a treat as I slid the drawer open. The wad of bills was gone, all but two fifties. Pocketing them, I went and called Wayne.

  By the slur of his voice, I figured he’d gone back to bed after ferrying Sonny, or was already on a toot.

  It’s urgent, I told him; a problem at school. I’d be more than happy to pay him for his trouble.

  “Fuck. All right,” he grumbled.

  I hung up just as Hugh shuffled inside, kicking snow from his boots. His eyes were red and miserable.

  “Haven’t heard a tune in a while,” I said, as brightly as I could. A tiny part of me still trying to be nice.

  “What’s up?” He sounded contrite.

  Oreo’s tail swished like a windshield wiper. I could’ve concocted something, anything. Sonny falling, banging his head, punching a kid or saucing the teacher. All I did was shrug, waiting for Hugh to speak. When he didn’t, I pulled on my jacket and a hat from upstairs, a brown and white toque thick as quilt batting. Forgetting the dishes, I left before he could ask where I was going.

  Once I got past the pond, I reached for the envelope in my pocket, the one from the lawyer with Reenie’s address. If I had to walk there, I’d find her.

  Wayne’s face looked like a torn overshoe. He was in rough shape, but coherent. I handed him a fifty, which he pocketed with a smirk. He even cracked a joke or two as we set out through the freezing mist. For a minute I couldn’t see land—neither the island nor the shore—and I had the sense once more of being nowhere, of moving through clouds or sleep. “What’re you and Hughie up to these days?” he leered, wiping his nose on his sleeve. When I didn’t answer he clammed up again, as usual.

  When we reached the other side, he pulled a letter out of his back pocket. Its postmark was in Arabic. He watched as I opened it and slid out the cheque that was inside, made out to me, for five hundred dollars. I don’t want Alex going without, said the note. Though there was no salutation, Charlie had signed it with love.

  Wayne actually offered to drive me to the school, which, steeling myself, I took advantage of. He offered to wait while I went inside; his saintliness made me want to vomit. I said it might take a while and wouldn’t be fair, holding him up. He picked at his chin, and for an instant, a blink maybe, looked regretful.

  “Gimme a shout, then,” he bellowed as I jumped out. “Any time before dark.”

  It was a half-hour bus ride to where Reenie was staying. I almost missed the stop, mulling over Charlie’s writing, his blocky signature on the cheque. As if there might be more, penned in indelible Bic.

  Once I started walking, it wasn’t hard to find the place. Just under the bridge, a dumpy, brick apartment building, one of a cluster like shoeboxes. I buzzed #4, which had the name A. Smeltzer taped underneath it. The lobby door was open. There was no answer at first, but after a few more buzzes a voice echoed down—Reenie’s.

  “Who is it? I don’t want any.”

  I followed it up a scuffed set of stairs. “Reenie? Reenie Tobias?” I called quietly, a little out of breath.

  “Yup?” She peered anxiously from a doorway. The hallway was carpeted in dingy red and smelled of cat pee. “Jesus Christ—Willa?” Her voice had a huskiness; she wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see me. Not that I’d expected her to be. But for a minute I felt like an invader, and wanted to flee.

  She seemed plumper, and as usual was wearing too many earrings. She had on sweatpants and a tube top with a shirt tied over it, and around her neck a gold chain with a little crucifix. Her face looked awful, as if she’d been on some sort of binge—non-stop bingo?—and she’d had her hair done, chopped and permed till it looked fried.

  After a bit she stepped back to let me in. The place was cramped and stuffy, a TV blaring somewhere. Reenie went straight to the narrow kitchen and lit a cigarette off the stove.

  I followed her into the tiny living room. The blinds were drawn, the walls a dismal green. The TV sat on a plastic milk crate and a cheap flowered couch lined one wall. A black velvet painting of the Last Supper hung above it. There was little else in the way of furniture, but lots of ornaments. A clock made from a varnished slab of wood with a decoupage Christ on its face, and plush figures from Sesame Street—fuzzy red Elmo, and Kermit the Frog—in various sizes, one adorning the TV. A few items looked vaguely familiar: a tole-painted cat and birdhouse and a miniature sled with dried flowers glued to it.
/>   “It’s a friend’s place,” Reenie said warily. “A sublet.” She kept eyeing my backpack, as if hoping for something—a housewarming present? Food? Shit, it hadn’t even occurred to me. What did you give someone like Reenie anyway? Unpainted wood, maybe: cut-outs of squirrels with acorns, hearts. Things for people whose fingers never stopped, for people who felt guilty not being party to their own gifts.

  She sat at the wobbly dinette suite, gestured for me to sit too.

  “I got nothing much to offer you,” she said, as if I expected a fuss. “What’s wrong?” She eyed me suspiciously. “How’d you know where to come, anyways? You’ve been talking to Wayne, haven’t you.”

  “Um, well...” The envelope had been in my pocket nearly a month.

  “How is he?” She spoke as if the room was bugged.

  “All right, I guess.” I pictured him in their kitchen gooned up and half-naked. I pushed the image away. “Reenie. I need to talk to you.”

  She twiddled an earring, tapped her cigarette, glancing towards the door with its dangling chain lock. Voices echoed from the hall—a family, perhaps, a mother herding small children, arguing.

  “Reenie—I need to know…what, well, exactly happened to that girl.”

  “Girl?”

  “Julie.”

  “Who’s Julie?” She rose to turn up the TV, cranking it so high the window rattled. Through the mini-blinds the glass looked streaked and there were the shadows of birds—pigeons.

  “You told me, that time—”

  “Oh. Her!” Reenie’s eyes narrowed. The blue eyeliner made them crooked.

  “Wayne sent you, didn’t he.” She sounded frightened—no, pissed off. I waited for her to tell me to leave, but she didn’t.

  “Look—I’m asking…I don’t mean to bug you, but…I need to know. I mean, listen, we can’t just let this go.” My face was hot, the stuffiness of the place getting to me.

  Reenie sighed, raking her cigarette over the ashtray. She turned the shiniest hoop in the curve of her ear, studying a spot on the wall—the traitor, perhaps, in the black velvet painting.

  “He screwed around on me, okay?”

  Remembering Wayne in the photos, I faked surprise. “No!”

  She faced me then, the skin above her eyes bald as rock. “The two of them, missy, where you been? You want to know the truth. They both screwed her, both of ’em gave it to her, right. I thought you knew. No big frigging deal.” She laughed sarcastically. “But don’t go running to anybody, sayin’ I said so.” A shadow across a dingy bedspread. The image flared like an ad. More voices burst from the hall, men’s this time, discussing mufflers.

  “When…when was this?”

  She lit a cigarette off her old one, exhaled. “I dunno, coupla years ago. Me and Wayne, we were having problems.” She spoke as if it were my fault—or I was blaming her.

  “Okay…?”

  “She got pregg-nant, then got rid of it. A write-off, this chick. Trust me.” She flicked back a frazzled lock. “I mean, I wanted Wayne to get a blood test. You know, with all them diseases going around these days.” She laughed, as if having described a thwarted shopping spree.

  “Well.” I felt sick. “You must’ve—”

  “Must’ve what?”

  My head felt dangerously light. “Well…been worried.”

  “Look. It happened a while ago, okay? Case fuckin’ closed.”

  “Yeah, but…that girl, I mean, after…? Her family! The cops…”

  It was almost as if Julie were there in the apartment, hiding in a closet.

  “Oh?” Reenie squinted, holding her cigarette aloft. Her mouth had a greyish look. She started to speak, then slouched back, blowing a chain of rings. “It’s none of your fuckin’ business. I mean, wouldn’t worry about it,” she said bitterly. “If I was you?”

  “You were me what?”

  “I’d move on too, Willa. Go back to my hubby, or whoever. Hear he’s a real nice guy.” I gawked at her. “Wouldn’t know him from a hole in the ground, of course. All’s I know, maybe he’s a first-class arsehole. Like, forget him too, right?”

  Speechless, I reached for her Players. I wanted to break them.

  She caught my wrist, then dropped it. “Like I told you before, look out for Hugh.” Putting down her cigarette, she picked at a nail. I still hated her, pitied her too. That hardness, those flaky earlobes, that brittle hair. She must’ve known, though she didn’t let on. “Can’t trust that one as far as you can throw ’im.” Her lips tightened like a bingo player’s, or a Jeopardy contestant’s. “Like Hugh? Like shit?”

  There was a clanging; air in the pipes or the radiator coming on, as if the place needed heat. I noticed a smell, like rancid chicken. It seemed to come from the vicinity of the couch.

  I should’ve just risen then and left. But Reenie smiled, of all things; her look reminded me of a rabbit. And it hit me that, despite the apartment, despite her hair—heck, despite the apparent lack of a jar of Maxwell House in the cupboard—she had climbed. In the oddest, most unsettling way, she dangled high above me now, free to look down.

  There was nowhere for me to look but up.

  “What do you mean, can’t trust him? Reenie. Tell me.” As if I needed it repeated.

  The smell grew stronger. Sure enough, there was a Kentucky Fried Chicken snack pack mouldering under a cushion.

  “Nothing you haven’t already figgered out.”

  She shocked me by laying her hand on mine. I jerked it away. “Hughie’s whacked, Willa. Plain and simple.”

  “It’s not really his fault,” I blurted out, in spite of everything. One last bleat of denial. An excuse? “It’s, well, it’s the mercur—”

  “What? Is that what you think?” She snorted. “Fuck, girl, you’re more full of it than…It’s all the acid him and Wayne did when they were kids, right? Growing up? I told you. Wonder they’re not both dead, like, you know.” Her voice soured, as if she’d bitten into something nasty. “Or in prison. My fuck, the stuff they’re into…”

  I could almost taste it too. My stomach knotted like a fist. I stood and tried to zip up my jacket.

  “Ever notice?” Her eyes had a funny look, as if she were talking to herself. “Some people? Guys especially? Get away wit’ blue fuckin’ murder.”

  She chewed her thumbnail, gazing at the TV, an ad for some kind of mop. Her eyes had a naked glitter. I wondered then how she was getting along, paying for things.

  “Did you ever get on at the bank?” I said, idiotically. Embarrassed. Ashamed, for both of us. Her gaze didn’t move from the screen. I felt for the fifty in my pocket, that and a few coins. The coins would’ve been insulting.

  “Wonder the cops aren’t onto them,” she started rambling. “Shows you how stunned the cops are, right? I mean, drug city. Not exactly your smooth operators, them two…You know, I thought—when that chick, when she disappeared…” I sat down again, my zipper dinging chrome. A draft scooted up my arms. “Julie?”

  Reenie shrugged, smiling as if she pitied me.

  “What did they do with her, Reenie? Where is she?”

  The TV was a distant burble.

  “You should ask Wayne,” she grunted, and I thought once more of the photos and what he’d tried on me. I looked away.

  “How long were you guys married?”

  She opened her mouth, then sighed. “She’s dead.” She sounded exasperated. “And you know it.”

  My stomach kicked. That clanging started up again, like monkeys wielding wrenches.

  “Where?” I made myself ask.

  “Hughie could tell you better than me.” She waited, eyes level with mine. “Berthed, far as I know.” An ugly little laugh broke from her. “Far as I ever could drag outta Wayne. Someplace in the harbour.”

  Red nylon swelled before me, filling, emptying, moving in the wate
r like a jellyfish.

  “Huh?” She looked at me as if I’d spoken, then got up and shoved the chicken box into the garbage.

  “The body…” It took all my strength to say it.

  Reenie picked up a dusty fry. “Wild, the shit you can drag out of Wayne—stuff you’d rather not know. Stuff you could live without, right.”

  “He told you she was ...?”

  She looked about to tell me to fuck off. But her voice cracked. “That was it, you know, when Wayne—”

  “So it was his.”

  She rolled her eyes, and my bowels twisted. “Doubt she knew whose it was.”

  Bitterness filled my throat.

  “Maybe you should go back to your base.”

  “That’s hardly your business.” It sounded shrewish and small.

  “And this is yours? Wayne’s my husband, for fuck sake!” She shoved over to the window and played with the blind, watching something below. “You’d best go home,” she said, her voice raw—with sarcasm or regret, I couldn’t tell. “And don’t you breathe a word, missy. They find out I told you, and I’m screwed. Your life won’t be worth shit either, if you squeal.”

  Nausea hummed, rising inside me, as if I’d been viewing everything through the wrong lens. The couch, the decor, and all the rest. “But, how can they—?”

  “Stand each other?” Light striped her face, and she seemed far away. “Go home to your little guy,” she said then, almost sappily.

  As I fled, her voice tailed me through the thin door: “Watch yourself, Willa.” The bolt shot behind me with a clink.

  Making it outside, thinking of Sonny, I vomited into the dirty snow beside the step.

  27

  LANDFALL

  The wind hurled litter along the curb. The sky had a muzzy look. It had warmed up a little and almost felt like rain as I waited by the bridge. The bus took forever to come and when it finally did, it only went as far as the Superstore. I got off and started walking, watching for another bus, but none came. It was almost three o’clock; I needed to race to meet up with Sonny. Already the sun seemed low, a bilious glow over the harbour. My chest tightened. Near the base I stuck out my thumb, desperate, and a rusty station wagon stopped. The driver was an old guy in a green mesh ball cap.