Adam's Peak (5 page)

In the bedroom he put on a T-shirt, an ancient souvenir from the Toronto Jazz Festival, with gaudy splashes of turquoise and pink. His sarong was covered in red and gold elephants.

“A real fashion plate you've become, machan,” he heckled his reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Turning sideways, he sucked in his belly and straightened his shoulders, ran his fingers through his damp hair and cursed at the amount that came out. He considered doing some sit-ups while the air was cool, then he remembered Adam's letter.

He imagined what it would say.

I think we need to talk about our relationship, Rudy. I've tried to connect with you, but it hasn't really worked, has it. What have you got against me? I don't think I've deserved your coldness
...

The more Rudy imagined, the more real the words became, until he felt he knew the contents of his brother's letter precisely. A vague memory came to him. He was twelve or so; Adam was still little. They'd built something together in the backyard. It was a rock sculpture of some kind, but it all fell apart. What he remembered most clearly was picking up one of the rocks and throwing it as hard as he could. But he couldn't recall what his target had been.

“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.

Leaving the letter in his trouser pocket, he unknotted the mosquito net hanging over the bed. He made his way around the mattress, tucking the net underneath, leaving a small gap through which he finally crawled. Safe inside, he reached his hand out to switch off the bedside lamp then tucked in the rest of the net.

T
HROUGH A GAUZE OF CLOUDS
Clare glimpsed the grey-white landscape, cut through with ruler-straight roads and patched with rectangular roofs. She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. On the headphones Gilles Vigneault was singing “Mon Pays,” but her mind wasn't on the music.

We can't ever really know anyone else, can we
, she began
.

Depends what you mean by
know
.

What life is really like for them, what they really think. It's impossible. We're all locked inside ourselves.

You mean
you
are, Clare.

Maybe. But I think it goes for everyone. We can imagine somebody else's life, but we'll never know for sure if we're right.

Yeah, well as far as that goes, who's to say we know ourselves any better? Who the hell is Clare Fraser?

Sometimes I think I know. When I'm back here, it's obvious. The question seems pointless.

The plane dipped gently, and the seatbelt sign chimed.

What made you think of this anyway?

I was thinking about my parents. What they were like when they were younger ...

Their sex life you mean.

Emma. It's not that. It's nothing to do with that.

Oh, come on. You're dying to know if—

No, never mind. We're about to land.

THE PEOPLE SURROUNDING CLARE
and her mother in the arrivals hall had waiting faces—necks craning, eyes searching. The greeters hovered in heavy coats and clumpy boots, dripping dirty puddles of melted snow on the linoleum floor. The passengers streamed endlessly through the sliding security doors and around the luggage carousel, underdressed, burdened with parcels, a little dazed. Like camera flashes, faces lit up as searched-for parties or pieces of luggage were spotted, and gradually a uniform wave of satisfaction swept through the crowd. Beyond their superficial uniformity, however, the people in the crowd were, as always, unreadable, their circumstances unknowable. Even the most banal of exchanges with any one of them would involve infinite risks: a smile could be tactless; a comment about the weather could trigger terrible memories. How could one tell? Sensibly averting her eyes from these strangers' faces, Clare watched the assembly-line progress of suitcases rumbling from the chute and sliding into place on the carousel. In her head, the conversation with Emma competed with the hurried, desperate voice of Gilles Vigneault.

Go on, ask her
.

I'll ask her in the car.

You're such a chicken.

Dans la blanche cérémonie, où la neige au vent se marie; Dans ce pays de poudrerie, mon père a fait bâtir maison.

I just got here.

You've only been gone three weeks. And it's just your mother. What are you worried about?

I'm not worried. But it
is my mother. We don't talk about that stuff.

Et je m'en vais être fidèle, à sa manière, à son modèle.

Don't talk about it then. Just get a yes or a no.

I'll ask her, Emma. When the time's right.

You promise?

Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver ...

She reached in front of her mother for her suitcase and hauled it awkwardly onto the luggage trolley. As they made their way out through the mob, she kept her eyes down. The conversation in her head drivelled on, a secret necessity, until they exited into the vast, frozen airport parking lot, where at last she relaxed her grip on the trolley and allowed herself to look around. Like her fellow passengers, she was underdressed—jeans, T-shirt, running shoes, rain jacket—but at home.

“It's a pity Easter's so early this year,” her mother said. “It hardly seems the season for it.”

“Mmm. You're right.”

“Did you have a good flight, pet?”

“It was fine.”

“Was the food all right?”

“Not too bad.”

“Was there a movie?”

“Yeah. I didn't watch it.”

She'd fallen asleep listening to
Traditions Québecoises
on the headphones. Leaning against the window she'd dreamed of a solitary man on a snowy plain. It could have been Gilles Vigneault—the man in the dream was singing—but he was wearing her father's overcoat. His grey hair blew wildly in a whistling gale that threatened to drown his voice completely. In her dream, Clare struggled to hear him but caught only meaningless fragments.

She paused to zip her jacket, and her mother took over the trolley and hurried on, the hemline of her skirt swaying in perfect alignment with that of her black wool coat, her coppery bob dancing over the collar. Clare followed. Shutting out Isobel Fraser's chit-chat, shutting out Emma, she searched the frigid air for her father. She'd been back home almost an hour; it was about time they spoke.

It must be a wee bit warmer in Vancouver these days
, he said, predictably.

His voice was perfectly intact. He'd been gone so long (heart attack in the driveway, on his way to play golf) that many of the particulars of his existence could be difficult to retrieve. But the voice of
Alastair Fraser, no less real than it had been in life, lingered, indefinitely it seemed, in Clare's head.

You say that every time I go out there, Dad
. Vancouver's warm and rainy, just like Scotland. You'd hate it.

Aye, I suppose I would.
He spoke in the scant, reluctant way he'd always spoken, never uttering more than a sentence or two, a measured observation, a pellet of sensible advice. But only at home.
You'll be moving out there then, I suppose
, he said next, and Clare clenched her hands in her pockets.

I don't know. Maybe.

She'd been thinking about it. “It's time, Clare,” the real Emma had insisted, just the night before. “You're stuck in a rut and it's not doing you or your mother any good. Listen to me: I've known you forever. It's fine to be close to your family, but there's a limit. You're thirty-one, for God's sake. I'll help you find work. I've got heaps of connections at the college.” It all made sense. And Vancouver was a nice enough place—slower than Montreal, which suited Clare fine. Each time she visited, the idea of moving there gained appeal, until now, she realized, it was pressing inside her with just enough urgency that she could, perhaps, act on it.

She caught up to her mother at the trunk of the Oldsmobile.

“I think this old thing has had its last winter,” Isobel said. “Time for something new.”

Clare lifted her suitcase into the trunk. She'd never cared for the Oldsmobile, but as she climbed into the passenger seat, she felt a pang of regret that her father's sturdy blue car would be replaced.

Her mother started the engine and pumped the gas pedal. She set the heat on high and the CBC on low. Then she extracted a pack of Virginia Slims and a plastic lighter from her purse, pinched a long cigarette between her copper lips, and closed her eyes as she lit up. Clare frowned and cracked her window.

“When did you start smoking again, Ma?”

Isobel examined the cigarette between her fingers as if baffled by how it had come to be there. “Oh. I hardly ever. I decided to treat myself on my fiftieth, and I guess my body just remembered how much it enjoys them.” She slid open the ashtray and squashed the
cigarette into a mess of lipsticked butts, then she wrestled the gearshift into reverse.

The word
body
, coming from Isobel, sounded foreign and off-key.

Clare rubbed the car window with her fist, but in the waning afternoon light and the dirty snow of late winter, the world outside was hardly worth looking at. She stared at the dashboard. Inside her pockets, her hands clenched and her thumbs fretted her index fingers. The question, Emma's question, made her absurdly tense. It was pathetic. Her mother wouldn't care, and the answer would hardly change anything. There'd be the jolt of having her suspicion confirmed, of looking at a portrait she'd professed to know intimately and discovering in the corner something new and out of place. But aside from those small shocks, there'd be nothing remarkable. The answer to her question would be just another oblique reminder of something she already knew: in the social world, Clare Fraser was a failure. A bore. A mute, staring spinster from a different century.

Oh, for God's sake,
the Emma in her head blurted.
Don't be so negative.

I'm just being realistic.

She removed her headband and shook her hair down in front of her face. Emma had suggested she colour it. Highlight the blond, or darken it all. It might look good, she had to admit, though surely people would see through the disguise. Her mother had been colouring for years, but the red had once been natural. Clare had her father's hair, his blue-grey eyes.

“So you had a good holiday?” Isobel said.

“Uh-huh.”

“And how's our little Emma?”

Clare slid the headband back across her head. “Not so little. But she's fine. She's teaching voice this term.”

“Oh, lovely. Does she ever miss Montreal? How long has she been in Vancouver now?”

“I don't think so. Almost six years.”

“That long! Are you sure?”

“She left right after I moved back with you.”

Isobel changed lanes without signalling. “Gordon Bennett! Does that mean it's been almost six years since your father ...”

“I guess so.”

“Good lord.”

Ask her now
, Emma's voice urged.
While she's on the topic
.

She's remembering Dad's heart attack. It wouldn't be fair.

Fair-shmair. Your mother has dealt with his death just fine. You're the one who still has issues.

“And are the flowers out yet in Vancouver?” Isobel said, switching on the headlights.

“Uh-huh.”

Clare closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest. She could be lazy with her mother. Conversation for Isobel was a gliding over smooth surfaces, an avoidance of bumps and cracks. Her questions never challenged; they led directly into short, easy paths of response. Emma's questions, on the other hand, opened onto vast and frightening terrain. Politics, ethics, relationships, sex. Apart from the ones about sex, she didn't mind Emma's questions. Talking to Emma wasn't like talking to other people. It was the closest she came to the conversations in her own head. But on this last visit, Emma had been pushy on the sex thing. In her view, sex was a character-defining experience, a crucial element of one's humanity, and, having made this argument, she'd forced a blind date with the recently divorced director of the jazz studies program at her college. Not, she pointed out, that it would necessarily lead to anything at all. Just to get Clare in the swing of things.