She says, I wanted you to see this life.
It’s foggy the day we leave. My husband shoots a video of Antoine on the dock as the ferry pulls away. He is wearing a navy and white striped T-shirt like a real Frenchman. He waves, and does not stop waving until he is engulfed by the fog.
Maureen and I met him in a bar last summer. He was wearing a faded fluorescent pink undershirt. He has an orange beard, tufts of orange under his arms, and a long orange braid.
He told us that his granny, on her deathbed, made him promise never to cut his hair.
Why would she do such a thing?
So I would understand the weight of a promise.
We watch him climb the rigging. His bare feet curling over the skeleton of the sails, a great height over the deck. His wiry body a part of the spare geometry.
Antoine’s brother visits Newfoundland from Nigeria, where he’s been studying giraffes and getting his pilot’s license.
He raps the brass knocker on the front door and steps inside. Sunlight flashes under his arms and between his legs and the door closes and the hall is dark. He stands, not moving. I am in the kitchen with my hands in the sink. I walk down the hall to greet him. He’s wearing a straw hat with tiny brass bells on the rim and patterns woven in wine and dark green straw. His face is so like Antoine’s that for a moment I think it is Antoine, playing a joke. I hold out my hand, he grips it, soapsuds squish through my fingers.
Any brother of Antoine’s is a brother of mine, I say. He tilts his head quizzically, and the bells jingle through the empty house.
He sleeps in the living room on the couch. There’s a French door with no curtain and he sleeps in his briefs with the blankets kicked away. He finally gets up and I don’t know what to do with him. With Antoine, misunderstandings could keep us talking for hours, but this guy has a firm grip on English and I’m at a loss.
Okay, stay still, I say. I’m going to paint you.
His knife pauses over the bread. A gob of marmalade hangs along the serrated edge. I do portraits in ink on wet paper. The thing about ink, as soon as you touch the brush to paper you have decided the course of the drawing. First, I am looking into his eyes. I am thinking about the shape of the eyeball, and the size, how far the eye sinks into the face. How the shadow slopes over the bone of the brow — if he sits back even an inch, the shadow will be radically different. Then the colour of his eyes startles me. I thought they were dark brown, but in this light there is a tawny copper underneath, like the bottle of marmalade, which the sun strikes so it seems to pulse. He has just come from Nigeria, and how far away that is, and what he has seen. Then I realize that I have been staring with an unself-conscious intensity into a stranger’s eyes. And this brother of Antoine is staring at me and we become aware of ourselves, and the intimacy is briefly but fiercely embarrassing.
He says, gesturing to the sketchbook, Forgive me, it’s my first time.
Weeks later in our kitchen I say, Antoine seemed strange to me. That weekend in St. Pierre I marked a change in him.
Late at night Maureen watched the video again and in the morning she said it was true. He had behaved differently.
I said, But he’s hardly in the video at all, you can’t go by that. There’s a close-up of everyone playing pool. I tried to make it like John Cassevetes, swaying the camera around them, close-ups on laughing mouths, sultry eyes, chalking the pool
cue. The high-pitched scrudge of chalk and cue. The camera swings around the bar and when it passes the open doorway a blast of sunshine casts a trail over the last half of the shot. A flame of blue light, an afterimage, swims briefly over the bartender and leaves a halo on Antoine’s white shirt.
She’s sitting on the sill of the kitchen window, a cheek and a half hefted out, so she can smoke. She turns and blows into the garden and turns back.
She says, What do you think of that? He wants to sleep with other women.
She jumps down.
Maybe I could enjoy it, she says. She holds her cigarette under the tap. I can see a tremor in her hand. Freedom, she says.
Once when we were fighting Maureen grabbed my face and kissed me on the cheek. I told her never to touch my face when I’m angry. I ran up the stairs two at a time and she was at the bottom. I leaned over the rail to shout at her, Don’t touch me.
She grabbed the banister. I’ll kiss you if I want, she said. Normally we never touch, we aren’t touchy-feely.
I’ll kiss you if I want, she screamed, the spiteful squeak of her hand on the banister. It was true, there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.
She slammed the kitchen door. Then she opened it and said, I’m sorry, that was over the top.
Antoine tells me that if he kissed me it would be very different.
From what, I say.
From the way other men have kissed you all your life.
I say, Yes, I know. French-kissing. We have that here, too. No big deal.
He says he isn’t talking about just the tongues. He says speaking French uses a whole different set of muscles in the lips, the tongue, the mouth. A kiss is different.
But you’re speaking English now, I say, you probably have your technique all fucked up.
At night he comes to Maureen with something on a fork, his hand cupped underneath. The yacht is rocking gently and the fog is already settling. He says, Ferme les yeux, ouvre la bouche.
She giggles.
What is it, she says.
You must trust me, he says.
She closes her eyes and opens her mouth. She chews once, twice. And he says, a snail.
Then she screams and spits it into her hand.
Maureen says of the woman with the blonde hair like mashed banana, A life defined solely by pleasure.
I say, Yuck.
Once Maureen held a big light for Antoine when they were trying to dock at night and he said, Get it out of my fucking eyes. It was their only fight in two months of sailing.
But he was proving himself, she says, and I could have blinded him.
She looks far away, her eyes so full of the dock and him reaching for the boat, him in the brilliant blast of light and a dark, uninhabited coastline behind him.
She says, That light. And she shakes her head in amazement. Get it out of my fucking eyes, she says.
It was so heavy. It was all I could do to hold it.
After she left for France I found a diary of hers on a high cupboard shelf where we kept linen. I was alone in the house, standing on a chair gripping the dusty book. I let the diary fall open and read just one paragraph. She described a gold dress.
I snapped it shut. It was as if she were in the room, but I could feel the longing for her too — how much I missed her. The dress was a metallic orange, shiny, formfitting to just above the knee, and she wore it dancing. We went out and got drunk, walked home in a windstorm when the bars closed. There was a sluice of yellow leaves in the centre of Cathedral Street. We walked up the steep hill with our calves aching and the wet leaves clinging to our boots like spurs.
T
he doorbell rings and Bethany lets herself in. She’s wearing a red blazer and navy skirt. Coming from early morning mass.
Leaves fly in behind her, scrabbling sideways across the linoleum.
Trigger leaps off the kitchen chair and shoots down the hall, hitting the back of Sara’s knees, slopping coffee, yelping, thrashing his tail against the coatrack.
The street behind Bethany is shiny, bluish after the rain. How bright. A boy on a bike, working hard, sun melting the chrome beneath him, obliterating spokes, the wheels flimsy as snowflakes. Flock of pigeons. An armful of flung bread crusts. A man with a stolen shopping cart, jitterbugging bottles and cans.
Bethany gives her red jacket a sharp tug, her eyes adjust to the dark hallway. Water drips on her from the ceiling.
Several drops hit her thick, grey hair imperceptibly until a single icy drop runs down the side of her face, startling her. The
church was quiet and dark. Seagulls flew over the skylight. Father Ryan raised the Eucharist, torpid complaint from the organ, seagulls screeching, wings slicing the pillar of sun from the skylight. His bald head.
Now this chilly drip. She touches her cheek. Doesn’t know herself. How dark in here, cool. A deluge, part of her dream last night. Everything comes true.
That bathtub should be fixed, Bethany says. They won’t fix anything. Peanut butter fingerprints on the French doors, dog hair. Dust on the light fixture, cobwebs. If they’d just listen.
Sara catches a glimpse of the trees in the churchyard over Bethany’s shoulder. Big holey sponges sopping up the spill of sunshine, outrageous orange.
There’s my little boy!
Bethany crouches, twisting on her ankles, one heel lifts from her shoe, a frost of stocking. Thomas starts down the hall, laughing.
The arch of Bethany’s foot. Stretching and exposed in shimmery nylon. Sara imagines her as a girl. Grant McCarthy overcoming shyness. A Knights of Columbus dance before Grant went to war in Korea. The photograph near Bethany’s bed. Her dress with satin shoulders, frothy skirt. Her hair is so dark it must be black, and curls, high French cheekbones. Maybe some Mi’kmaq, the dark tan in summer. She’s saucy and adoring.
Her arms around Grant’s neck, one of his hands on her waist. Looking into each other’s eyes. Coming to an understanding, there in the photograph. From here they will have six
children, call to each other from different rooms over the vacuum. A station wagon, the beach. She will go to mass. They’ll lose little Davy, see his red inflatable dinosaur dipping, rising. The Atlantic roughed up farther out. Bell Island, smoky blue, windows flashing. Grabbing strangers. Have you seen? About this high. But he’s safe in the car. Laughter. Fell asleep. Laughter. But the inflatable dinosaur so far out. Asleep under the sweaters. They will both agree there is a place for everything. She will put banana in the blender. He will call to her from the basement, hand resting on the banister, head bent, listening. They will come into a windfall. He touches the fork, the knife, the fringe of the placemat, waiting. A glass of milk. A linen napkin. She serves him. He thanks her. He listens to her. She tells him. They change the wallpaper, she wants it changed so they change it. Wainscotting she wants, new linoleum. They both agree to do everything. They will do everything for the children. He does the crossword. He stands for a last moment before the TV. She will want a fire. He’s leaning on the rake, wipes his forehead. The water tasting of sun-warmed rubber, cut grass, and brass from the nozzle. Is it brass? He turns on the sprinkler. They will work hard but enjoy it. The children will come with the snowblower. He lights the fire. Father Ryan. Grandchildren. A drop of water, the seagulls.
This is the content of the photograph by Bethany’s bed: her hands on his neck, a swing band, the glint of a horn, the crowded dance floor, an unfurling streamer.
The picture is a quiet one. The picture is a vow.
Come to Nanny, says Bethany.
Thomas holds his arms out for balance, two pale blue mitts hanging on a bit of string from the cuffs of his snowsuit. He plunges, new shoes making sharp, triumphant smacks with each step. He dives into her arms, his cheek against her chest. Her raised heel slips back in the shoe.
Why don’t you do something about that leak?
She scoops Thomas up, shutting her eyes and pressing her nose to his red corduroy chest.
Nanny’s going to eat you.
She wets her fingers and flicks his filmy blond hair. His cheek, a tiny imprint of an anchor from the white plastic sailor button on her blouse. Thomas grabs her gold earring and she pries his fingers away.
He always goes for the earrings.
Sara kisses Bethany’s cheek. She loves her mother-in-law, there is no question. Happy birthday, Bethany. She holds out an azalea in cranberry and silver foil. The foil flings shards of reflected sunlight into Bethany’s face, over the walls. The shards turn and swim like goldfish in a bowl.
I told you, says Bethany. I didn’t want you to spend your money.
To replace the one.
I’m bringing it back. You shouldn’t have.
Try to enjoy it!
Sara lugs Thomas’s gear out to the car. Penaten, Tempra, sippy cup, the royal blue Osh Kosh. The wind plows up New Gower, the leaves, a hamburger wrapper. Sherry O’Rourke in her lime green hat waves her purse before getting on the bus.
Bethany thinks royal blue is Thomas’s colour.
When Sara gets back inside, slamming the door against the wind, Bethany has set the plant on the coffee table and is standing back.
I can’t accept that.
Please.
It’s not a good plant.
What do you mean?
The flowers are open.
I want to —
That plant is finished.
Sara picks up the plant and whisks it out the door. She’ll go for a run around the lake. Or work on the proposal. These few hours —
Bethany takes Thomas often. Then her back gives. She’s resolute, pushing Thomas’s stroller, every weather. She and Thomas. The park with stale bread. The beaks, angry wings, afternoon fog. If Thomas falls asleep in the fresh air.
You should see the colour in his cheeks, Bethany tells her on the phone.
Sara stands in her own kitchen. An old mattress against the back fence, yellow leaves. A cat with a patch of fur missing steps along the tops of the pickets. Bethany’s garden has the glossy rhododendron. The grass sliding from dark blue to emerald to fire green, glass wind chimes.
Are you sure he’s warm?
You should see!
Thomas sleeps under an afternoon sky as dark as boiling
jam, the moon, school children running along the sidewalk with their hair flying out before them, spiralling leaves, the wind thrumming the hood of Thomas’s stroller.
Sara puts the azalea in the back seat of Bethany’s car. New leather and tweed. She puts Thomas in the car seat and stands back. Bethany catches Sara’s sleeve through her open window.
That plant is half dead.
The seatbelt locks around Bethany as she speaks, moving with an almost unnoticeable whir. The elegant motion of the automatic seatbelt stirs Sara with its prudent luxury. This is Bethany: maven steeliness. Six children, a consulting firm, St. John’s, winter visits to Florida. She keeps everything immaculate. Indecent to pay for something she’s able to do herself. She will always take care of her own house. She likes gadgets, a long-handled lint remover, a grill that drains fat, a silver toast holder. But there’s no clutter. She and Grant haven’t succumbed to greed or any kind of eccentric frugality. They’ve worked steadily, been generous and careful.