My Ghosts (34 page)

And she knows that memory works something like this, no matter how it seems. Not a file in a drawer but a fluid thing,
which changes each time you recall it. She’s taught that too in the lecture hall and she knows that it’s tricky, that it just doesn’t
feel
right. “It’s not like a photograph,” she used to say to her students, “it’s not like a movie.” And then she’d say, “Think of a time, I’m sure you’ve had them, with family or a friend, a time there was disagreement about something that had happened. What it was or when it was or who was there. You’re probably quite certain they were wrong and you were right. But what does it open up, when you think that really you both were?”

Every few days she walks to the store and the shush of the waves falls away, as she climbs the slight hill to the main street. It’s not far, but there’s a different quality to everything, the sound of her feet on the sidewalk, and the way slamming car doors shift the air. Even the light, where it falls through the trees, instead of on the endless lake. Maybe that’s why her own voice sounds strange to her, saying things she’s expected to say. Why everything she overhears seems significant—a mother who tells her child, “It’s a bridge, not a tunnel,” or an old man who mumbles, “But what was it he
didn’t
say.” In the checkout line two women talk about poor June, about how she doesn’t get out at all, now Alvin is gone. “Such a shame,” they say, “but you can understand it, can’t you. It’s just not the same, doing things on your own.” She knows that’s true, but she doesn’t think that if Alvin came back June would take him to the mall, to the casino or out to a movie. She’s quite certain that if the dead came back you’d just want to sit down with them; she thinks that would be enough. To sit quietly with them, breathing the same air, so close that it’s as if you are touching.

It wasn’t that same
night, but not long after, that a cruel wind blew up in the dark. Shrieking and roaring through all the narrow alleyways, shutters banging off white walls and all kinds of debris careening through. By mid-afternoon it had blasted off again but nothing was the same, not even the colour of the sky, the paler sun not quite strong enough to warm anyone who still went into the white-capped bay. We pulled sweaters and jackets from the bottoms of our packs, smelling of wet canvas and diesel and other places, and we looked different to each other, wearing things that had been packed away for so long. The remnants of that wind clattered the bright plastic that hung in doorways, fluttering the corners of the clipped-down plastic cloths on the outside tables and finding every fissure, drawing in the rain that trailed after.

Inside the cafés
it was steamy, sound was different and time was too, stretched out longer but not in any good way. We talked about Marrakesh and about Kathmandu, and about the things that were calling us home, while we waited for the rare boats to appear. Jackson and Robert dealt out cards and Carly threaded the beads she’d poured in a dull mound on the battered table. She called Hans a brat when he puffed out his cheeks as if to blow them away. And Douglas taught Clare to play chess and Iz had to watch it as it happened. Their heads bent together while pieces tapped in set moves on the board and their conversation growing into a different kind of attention. Later she said what did it matter, that it wasn’t something they’d planned. Or that no one owned anyone else; she knew that. She was tired of the long conversations, everything out in the open as if that would make it easier to bear. Tired of them both being
sorry
and expecting her to say something that would make Clare feel better when she curled up with Douglas
in her stolen space. Rain fell in the long afternoons and Clare ran through it, trying to think only of the splashing sounds her feet made. And somewhere else in the white village Iz wrote down how it felt. She closed her notebook and wondered if anything would ever change.

Different boats came
and we moved on, the white wake fanning out until the island was just another mound in the sea, until it was gone. We left some things behind and there were others we carried with us, tiny beads and flimsy tickets and threads of memory that would fade, twist and change when they were drawn back to the light. Clare stood on a windy deck while time folded back, the grey buildings of Piraeus getting closer, until they were all she could see. She didn’t know it yet, but inside her, new cells were growing, twitching and dividing. A careless, random combination becoming someone who would appear, months later, in a space no one knew was there, until it was filled.

And whatever way Clare thought her life might go, it went this way, even if she didn’t deserve it. A kind man opened his arms wide enough, and they were more together than they would have been apart. Sometimes things were easy and there were times they were so much harder. But they held on to each other until they couldn’t, anymore.

It seems the world she’s stepped out of is waiting to welcome her back. Her contractor leaves a message with Bonnie—all the repairs have been done, pipes replaced and the stained floors refinished. Her boxes are waiting, old things to unpack into a
new, clean space. Bonnie drives down to tell her and holds out a plate of fresh muffins, the ploy so blatant it would be cruel to turn her away. While they drink coffee Bonnie looks around, takes in the piles of paper and the dirty dishes, the wet clothes draped over most of the chairs. She says, “I heard that—that you like to walk,” and then she laughs her hoarse laugh, says, “What did I tell you, you can’t have any secrets around here.”

Rain hits the window with a slap and keeps on coming, and Bonnie keeps talking. She says the old woman in the Lakeview took another stroke; she’s holding on, but everyone knows how those nephews are rubbing their hands. The hardware’s closing, and that dress shop too, not that she could ever afford it. Her husband’s cheques have been cut back and her son sleeps every day away, Lord knows what he gets up to at night. And then somehow she’s talking about high school, about the Nature Club and all those great hikes they used to take. The teacher who gave her his old camera, and the photographs she hasn’t looked at for years. Blades of grass that sort of
glowed
with the dew, she remembers, and a small deer just before it startled and leapt away. Bonnie says she was quite sure back then and that was her plan, to travel the world and take pictures, perfect pictures that she’d sell to magazines.

There’s a little pause then, and maybe they both see it. A different Bonnie, crouched and holding her breath under some foreign sky. Waiting for the right moment, her finger so steady on the button, waiting for the soft click that will catch exactly what she wants. “Kids’ stuff,” the real Bonnie says, shaking her head, and her earrings glint and tremble, as they always do. She looks at Bonnie and sees the ghosts that trail everyone; mostly they mumble, but sometimes they roar, and they can cluster so thickly that it’s hard to peer through.

In the morning the gulls wing out in their set direction, and if the wind is against them they flap harder, that’s just what they do. By the back steps she blows to warm her cupped hands, then scoops everything into an old bucket. The small stones and bits of wood, the sleek feathers she collected; they don’t weigh much at all and she dumps them in a damp trail at the water’s edge. A wave rolls in, rolls back, and what’s left is a random scattering; already she’s not sure what she’s added and what was already there.

The dark sand is rain-pocked but shows lighter and softer in all the places where her footsteps have broken through. When she looks back they make a line that shows clearly, and leads right to the place where she now stands. And she thinks maybe these are the thoughts she was waiting for, while she walked the cold shore and looked out at the misbehaving moon. While she traced a path through other times and other places, like someone looking for the familiar shape of one lost thing, an outline as clear as a lucky coin or a misplaced key. While she rummaged through one room, then another, picking up other things she’d quite forgotten, had set aside. Maybe it’s those things themselves or just the time it took her to find them; what matters is how steadily she now stands, as the waves roll in. Knowing that something has formed a counterbalance to the surprising weight of it, this vague need for forgiveness she understands she’s been carrying so long.

It’s still early and the beach is quite empty. She has things to pack up and things to tidy but not many, and then she’ll move on without leaving any trace. She told Bonnie she would, but she knows she won’t even sign the guest book. Won’t join
that line of strangers who happened to be in the same place looking through the same windows, names that mean even less than the ones that hang from a family tree. She tips her head back and it’s cold enough to see her breath, before it vanishes beneath the enormous, shifting sky.

And she’s quite certain that other girl sailed off into her own happy life, happy enough. A usual kind of life, with the usual thoughts and worries, regrets. They could still run into each other, maybe in an airport or on an unfamiliar street. Or maybe one day she’ll bend to pick up the mail that’s scattered on the smooth slate tiles. Everything damp from the rain that’s been falling, her blurred name on a postcard sent from somewhere that’s not, after all, so very far away. Of course they arrange to meet and they arrive at exactly the same time, as if they’ve been moving in step all along. If it’s summer they’ll choose a place with a patio and it will remind them. They’ll think of long afternoons and other tables set on uneven flagstones, the legs levelled with crushed matchboxes and folded paper, with whatever someone thought they could spare.

But it’s not summer, she knows that; instead it’s quite a different season. Snow swirls beyond the wide window, and they watch people hurrying home through the cold early dusk. Inside where they are, though, it’s perfect. Not too bustling or quiet, and just the right music underneath. The earth-coloured walls like a small, warm cave, and between them a white candle flickers in a glass bowl. It’s a little awkward at first, as she’d imagined it would be, and they both fuss with their reading glasses, take their time with the oversized menus. But they begin to talk and the wine comes, one laughs, then the other, and very soon it’s clear that everything is all right. Because that’s what she does, isn’t it. She imagines it all.

With thanks to my agent, Dorian Karchmar, and my editor at Knopf Canada, Anne Collins, for their encouragement, their patience and their humour. And to all the librarians and archivists, the family members, friends and perfect strangers who have answered my sometimes bizarre questions—I wish I could name you all.

MARY SWAN’s first novel,
The Boys in the Trees
, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2008 and for the Amazon First Novel Award. She is the winner of the 2001 O. Henry Award for short fiction and is the author of the novella
The Deep
, a finalist for the Canada/Caribbean Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, and the collection
Emma’s Hands
. Her work has appeared in several Canadian literary magazines and anthologies, including
Malahat Review
and
Best Canadian Stories
, as well as in American publications such as
Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Zoetrope
and
Harper’s Magazine
. She lives with her family in Guelph, Ontario.