The Seary Line (49 page)

“Did you do that?” Summer exclaimed. “Is that some sort of trick to end this off? Come on. Tell the truth now, Mr. Barrett.”

“No, ma'am. 'Tis the old man. Out for his walk.”

“Well, that was something.” Summer shook her head, reached forward and shook the gate with her hand. Secure. “Quite a good ending. I'll give you that.”

Jamie removed his top hat, tucked it underneath his bent arm, scratched near the edges of his woolen hat. “I didn't do nothing. Honest.”

“Must've been a trick of the wind,” Summer replied, looking out towards the harbour. “I'll tell Mom we really had a good time.”

He opened his hand, a second quick peek at the money. “Thanks. I'm glad.” Placing his hand on top of the fence, he began traipsing down the field, letting his hand ride up and down over every point. “Oh,” he turned and yelled. “Forgot to say. You can go and get yourselves a warm cup of something at the Captain's Drawers there on Helmet's Hill. Just tell him you was out with me. He knows who you are.”

“He knows.” Gemma's words were a breath.

Summer wrapped her arms around Gemma, hugged her pre-adolescent body, that lanky construction of bones, stretched skin and muscle. “Should we go for some hot chocolate, honey?”

Gemma dropped her arms, looked up at her mother, burst suddenly into tears. “He knows me.”

“Who, honey? Who knows?”

“He really does, Mom. I'm not joking. He knows who I am.”

Summer and Gemma nestled into a booth near the front window of the Captain's Drawers. Decorated in a nautical theme, there were worn leather seats, heavy wooden tables, ship wheels and portholes mounted on the walls. Beside the front door, a large glass case held a model replica of a vessel called the HMS
Nipper
, complete with a dozen miniature carved seamen. “'Tis accurate,” Mr Atkins, the owner, informed them as they arrived. “Right down to the splinter stuck in the skipper's tooth. Meant to be a toothpick, you sees.”

It was good to be inside. Even though there was no one on the streets, Summer sensed the night air was overflowing with energy. Confusion. Like too many people gathered around a dining table, everyone reaching for the serving spoons all at once. Inside the dimly lit pub, it was quiet. Several other patrons were seated nearby, mostly older men perched on bar stools, drinking from tall glasses of amber beer. But with no one dropping coins into the jukebox, there was only a continual soft banter, occasional raucous laugh.

Summer stared out the window. There was little to see. Thick fog had tumbled in, strands of it crawling over the houses, gliding along the open roads, pressing itself into every available crevice. She could actually see the fog moving, lifting and waving, as though it comprised innumerable parts, dozens of milky silhouettes strolling by.

“Do you remember when you were little, Gemma?” Summer asked. “You used to say, ‘it's froggy out'?”

“I did?”

Summer smiled, reached across the table, touched her daughter's fingers.

“Here you go, ladies.” Mr. Atkins was beside them, a pair of foaming ceramic mugs in his bear-sized hands. “Two
of the best hot chocolates in all the province.” He slid the mugs across the table, foam jiggling, but staying put. “Will you look at that.” He motioned towards the window. “God awful, idn't it? Someone's apt to be killed tonight if they's out around.”

“Yes,” Summer replied. “It's like we just stepped off the earth.”

“Oh, Lard.” Full belly laugh, scratch of his balding scalp. “I'm in no rush there.”

When Mr. Atkins had left, Summer said, “Are you okay, honey? What happened back there?”

Gemma gripped the handle of her mug. “Nothing, Mom.”

“You know you can talk to me about it if you like. But you don't have to.”

Gemma blew the foam, stopped when it oozed down the side, clumped on the table. “I thought I felt him, Mom. I really did.”

“What did it feel like, my sweetie?”

“Glorious. It felt glorious.”

Summer lifted the toes of her shoes up and down, noticed the stickiness of the floor wanting to hold her feet in place. “Well, that's a strong word. A strong feeling.”

“There's no other way to explain it.” She gazed sideways at Summer, expression serious except for the foam mustache.

“Do you want to come with me tomorrow to see Nanny Stella's grave?”

“I will.”

“I don't mind if you don't want to. I just like to go and see. You know. Make sure everything's okay.”

“I will, Mom. I don't mind.”

Summer wrapped her hands around her mug, noticed
how her chilly palms drew the heat from the ceramic.

“Are we related to that old man?”

“What's that?”

“Are we related to that old man at the gate?”

“Maybe, but I don't think so, honey.”

“You're not sure?”

“No. Nan never talked much about her growing up. All I know is that she lived here until she was fairly old and that her parents were not originally from here.”

“What about her husband?”

“Don't know much about him at all. Died when Mom was still a child. She doesn't like to talk about him. Neither did your great-grandmother.”

“That's too bad.”

“Why?”

“I thought we might be. I thought he was trying to let me know.”

“Know what, honey?”

Gemma stared out the window, into the thick fog. “That he's okay. That he's happy. He's proud. That he's glad he did what he did.”

“What do you think he did?”

“I got no idea. Married that other woman, I guess.”

“It was just a story, Gemma. Probably wasn't much truth to it. And you know what the wind is like.”

“I guess so. It's just disappointing, is all.”

“That you're not related to him?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I suppose we're all related. If you go back far enough. Search through our histories. Body or spirit, we're all connected somehow. Right?”

“I guess so.”

“Remember when your dad was teaching you about Venn diagrams a few days ago?”

“Yeah, math. He's always talking math.”

“Well, in my mind, the whole world is kind of like that. Each of us with our own little Venn circle. All of our properties inside that circle. Our lives. Our Venn circle expanding as we age.”

“And our circles overlap?”

“I think so. Somehow, our circle overlaps with everyone else's. Sometimes in big, important ways. Sometimes in small ways.”

“Yeah, it's complicated though. Dad lost me when he started talking about rotational symmetry and ‘n' being prime.”

“Yes, it is complicated. Simple, too, though. My smart little darling.”

“Mom.” Eyes rolling slightly, feigning irritation.

As she watched Gemma, Summer felt a sharp pain in her chest. Where had her daughter come from? This girl with the thin chocolate mustache over her pouty lips. Her hair, a little greasy, pulled into a sloppy ponytail. Mouth moving, talking of Venn diagrams and ghostly admissions and the tissues of life. Just how did she arrive on this very spot?

Of course Summer was not thinking about the business of procreation or birth or their years of growing together or their mother-daughter escape to Bended Knee. No. Something much more ethereal than that. She was once again considering, as she often had before, the innumerable number of events that needed to occur in order to create Gemma. If the mind could skip back through even a handful of generations, just how many happenings were necessary to bring this single body into the light? A rock
striking a seagull. A lick of butter. A nibbling goat. A splinter stabbed in a finger. A deadly disease. A slab of overcooked meat. A bonfire. A cookbook in a hidden drawer. A handful of orange beads. A string of ducklings crossing the road. Summer's mind could churn up a million miniscule images, and she was certain each random flicker of thought had somehow nudged Gemma into existence. As though her daughter, as she sat before her now, were the highest grain of sand on one enormous pyramid. Remove one element, the structure would shift, fold, and Gemma would dissolve into oblivion.

Summer stared at her daughter, reached out to touch the cowlick on her forehead, smoothed the strands of baby hair that splayed like a crescent. It was painful almost, to regard something so precious, something that she had created. Painful, and humbling. Her human heart, like a fist inside her chest, struggled to hold the ball of emotion, solid, perfect, like a child's glass marble. A universal sphere of clear pure joy, shot through with bright slivers of cold blue agony and bright red love. Her own peppermint swirlie. Strands of intertwining gain and loss. Visible in the light, no matter the angle. This marble. A prize. It belonged to her now. She would place it in her palm, close her fingers around it.

Trade it for nothing.

After her eccentric mother's death, young Arva House moves to a close-knit outport with hopes of escaping the past that plagues her. But tangled rumours follow, and she soon becomes the object of speculation. Craving a sense of stability, Arva makes hasty choices, and finds herself enmeshed in a net laden with deceit, infidelity, and latent hostility. Only when the man she thought she loved completely takes her apart, does she realize that all of her unique features somehow fit together to form a whole.

ISBN 978-1-894377-05-8 / $16.95 PB / 5.5 x 8.5 / 240 PP

“. . .a superb first novel from an exciting
new Canadian talent.”

– Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail

(Selected as a top ten pick for 2004)

“. . .a blend of magic realism and spot-on vernacular.”

– Joan Sullivan,
The Telegram

“. . .the author's voice is a slow melt.
Unraveling Arva
teases every experience for sensory detail.”

– Paul Butler, Atlantic Books Today

On Christmas Eve, 1898, a young widow gives birth while caught outside in a swirling blizzard. Thaw follows the unsettled life of this child, as she grows into a disquieting presence in tranquil Cupboard Cove. Hazel Boone lives life on its border, moving among familiar strangers, her body driven by temptation and an inner fire. Her self-indulgence creates a shame that percolates down through generations, seizing everyone in its path including her son, the painter David Boone, and his young apprentice, Tilley Gover. Seventy years after her birth, during a winter of constriction, a tragedy repeats itself, and the residents of this small outport re-discover that passion can be as destructive as it is redeeming.

ISBN 978-1-894377-11-9 / $19.95 PB / 5.5 x 8.5 / 340 PP

“. . .a vivid, rich, galloping story, gothic and true. . .”
– Lisa Moore, author of
Alligator

“One of the major pleasures of this excellent
novel is reading it aloud.”
– Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail