Falling (11 page)

Fuck.

He didn’t know what to do with the dead hare, so he left it where he’d killed it, without making any attempt to bury it, and kept going along the path. He heard a raven making a noisy croaking, and it made him want to put his hands over his ears, except that he was holding the rifle.

Damian? said Jasmine.

It was hard to tell whether her eyes were green or hazel. There was a ring of amber, or topaz, around the black of her pupils.

Do you think there’s such a thing as grace? Damian asked.

What do you mean? She was baffled.

Let’s go. What do you think – do you want to go?

All right.

They walked down through the ravine and crossed the road to Table Rock Plaza, where he bought her ice cream.

That’s Goat Island, she said, pointing to it as they came out of the plaza. I know that much.

A hermit used to live there. It was sometime in the nineteenth century.

Strange place to live.

You could get to Goat Island from the American side, even back then. There used to be a pier between it and the point, close to the Falls, where there was a tower – Terrapin Tower – and one section that jutted right out over the edge. No one in his right mind would go out there, but this guy –

The old goat?

He laughed. Young – a young goat. The guy was fearless. Sometimes he’d lie down on the pier, on the part without railings that jutted out, and he’d hang right over the Falls.

And then he fell in.

No, he committed suicide later. Or at least that’s what they think. But maybe you’re right, maybe he just fell in.

It’d be hard to tell, she said, suppressing a smile. I mean, hard to tell between an accident and suicide, don’t you think?

I guess so.

You’ve been reading up on the Falls.

My uncle knows everything there is to know about them. It’s a family obsession. Look, your ice cream –

Oh, it’s dripping.

It’ll get on your dress. Here, I’ll do it.

No, they’re
my
drips. She wheeled away. You just want my ice cream because you’ve finished yours.

You’re not even going to give me the cone?

No, not even the cone. She eyed him as she ate the last of it.

Was it good?

Oh, very good, she smirked.

They pressed against the railing, looking at the river.

What did you mean about grace? she said.

Oh, I don’t know.

Well, what’s grace anyway, when you think about it?

It was cool by the river and she drew her tasselled scarf over her shoulders.

He let himself become hypnotized by the rush of water. A faint, subtle scent emanated from her. A flowery scent, with a tang of lemon.

You think hard about things, don’t you? she said.

It depends.

Sometimes I get preoccupied, she said. I’ll be thinking about something and I’ll just go off somewhere. Does that happen to you?

Yes.

She shivered.

Cold? he asked.

No, I like it here.

Did you mind leaving home? he asked.

No, she said.

Frothing water curled and dipped and rushed before it spilled over the edge. Mist touched their faces and arms.

Well, yes, she said. I
did
mind leaving. But it’s complicated. My family’s complicated.

All families are complicated.

I guess I’m most like my father, not so much like my
mother or my sister. But the one I loved most was my grandmother.

You have a sister?

My sister, Shirl. She’s older than I am, and she got pregnant, and you know, maybe my mother was right, maybe it was a disaster. But when Shirl got married to Gary, I thought
that
was a disaster. I was just a kid at the time, but I thought it was a disaster.

You don’t have any brothers?

They told me Gary was my brother when Shirl married him. Jasmine snorted. Gary wasn’t my brother. Gary was an asshole.

You’re not exactly impressed with him.

Gary Petryshyn. Anyway, I want to know about your family, she said. You must have brothers or sisters – well, unless you’re an only child.

He grinned. I’m a spoiled brat.

No, you’re not.

Oh, my parents split up and all that shit. It doesn’t make for good conversation.

Well, then, tell me what kind of art you do.

I did a lot of different stuff.

Painting? Drawing?

Drawing.

She threw up her hands.

What? he said.

You don’t give me a lot to go on.

Well, okay, he said. I used to draw everything. You name it: stones, feathers, dead flies. And if you asked me what I’d like to do, well, I guess I’d do studies of people, each one large enough to cover a wall.

If that’s what you’d like to do, why did you stop?

I stopped because – I just stopped. I don’t know.

He played his hands along the railing as if it were a piano.

Your turn, he said. Tell me about your grandmother.

You want to hear about my grandmother?

You said you loved her.

I did. Her farm was next door to ours. I liked my grandparents’ place better than ours. My grandmother had two gardens: a kitchen garden and a rose garden. It’s not easy to grow roses in Saskatchewan, because of the winters, but she did it. She grew Morden roses. When I had the measles, she took care of me – she had cool hands. But she died two and a half years ago, and I miss her – and I miss that house, that garden. There was a cottonwood tree near the porch that I thought of as my own. I thought of the whole place as my own.

So it was like leaving a part of yourself behind – when you went away.

I guess so.

You’ll have to go back there.

No, not for a long time. She drew the scarf more tightly around her shoulders. Have you ever left part of yourself behind?

I’ve never really thought about it.

A couple passed them. The woman’s back was humped over with osteoporosis, and she walked slowly with the help of a cane. The man kept pace with her, nodding at something she was saying.

Are you staying here for a while? asked Jasmine.

A few weeks, maybe more – it’s up to my mother. We’re visiting my uncle.

What’s she like? Your mother.

Oh, she’s strong. Strong-willed.

It’s good to be like that.

My mother could get through anything. I couldn’t, but she could.

The river was real and unreal at the same time, he thought. The water was flecked with silver as it flowed to the brink, tumbling into the gorge below. Jasmine had propped her elbows on the railing, and he could feel the fine hairs of her arm against his skin.

La Cascada
, she said. That’s what it is in Spanish.

You speak Spanish? Damian asked.

No, someone told me that. I just know one or two things. I know the word
cariño
. It means dear.

Cariño
.

Except that you’d have to say
cariña
, she said. I mean, if you were saying it to me.

He leaned over. They were so close he could feel her breath. He could see the green of her eyes. He wanted to kiss her, but he didn’t, even though she expected him to. Even though he wanted to. She didn’t kiss him, either, but she stayed where she was, close to him, watching with those eyes of hers, green or hazel, or a colour between green and hazel. She didn’t move away.

INGRID HAD TRIED TO SLEEP
. Then she dozed off and had a nightmare and woke, gasping. She looked at the clock on the bedside table, which informed her, in sharp red numerals, that it was twelve-thirty. Getting up, she took an old
New Yorker
magazine from the table and went down the hall to the bathroom, thinking that this was what she’d be like when she was old. She wouldn’t be able to sleep. She’d sit on the toilet long after she needed to, flipping through a
New Yorker
to look at the cartoons. A June issue. Eleven years old. Lisa had been alive eleven years ago in June. Enough. She rolled up the magazine and put it under her arm, flushed the toilet, and went downstairs.

It had been a nightmare about Greg.

She opened the screened door quietly and stepped outside, padding in bare feet around the porch, but, of course, Damian had not yet come home, had not parked the car in the driveway. She returned to the front of the house and sat down heavily in a chair. It was a curse not to be able to sleep. Out of the indigo shadows came the headlights of one car, another, flashing on the lawn as they drove along River Road.

When Greg told her he was going to leave, they’d been in the kitchen in the house in Halifax. They were doing dishes; or he was doing dishes and she had the red-and-white-checkered tea towel in her hand, ready to do the drying. He’d go to Vancouver; his friend Lance had asked him to work at his new plastic surgery clinic. Vancouver was the other side of the continent – the other side of the planet, she heard herself saying. Then she must have asked what would happen to the kids, because he told her he’d support the kids; he’d support Ingrid. But she’d never worried about money, and it wasn’t something she worried about now. There were larger, more terrible things in the world, like the way the kitchen walls had fallen away. A gale-force wind was blowing through.

They’d be civilized about it, he told her.

Civilized, she thought.

She asked him whether there was anyone else.

No, there was no one.

If there’d been someone else it would have been easier, in a way, she imagined.

He put things in the drying rack, making a precise tower of bowls, saucepans, and pot lids. She worked more slowly than he did; she dried things methodically and put them away. This was a game of Prisoner’s Dilemma, she thought. As the game went, Prisoner A and Prisoner B had the option of remaining silent after arrest and receiving a six-month jail term. But there were options. Prisoner A could escape punishment by betraying Prisoner B, who would then serve a ten-year jail sentence. Or it could be reversed: Prisoner B could betray Prisoner A and go free. But if they both betrayed each other, neither would be off the hook. They would each serve a five-year term.

Silence, betrayal.

Greg would escape the marriage. She’d be the one left behind, while he went scot-free.

She was calm, but she was also furious. Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she sink down to the floor, banging at the tiles with the flat of her palms? No, she stood staring at the checkers in the tea towel, after putting the salad bowl in the cupboard. Red, white. Red, white. It was a pattern.

If he hadn’t suggested this, she knew she would have done it herself. He’d just beaten her to it.

It was time, he said, and they both knew it. They’d spent their marriage being angry with each other.

She turned off the radio, midway through a terse warning of snow squalls during the night. He was right. She could start a new life and so could he. It made sense to her, she answered, given that she was the one at home, while he worked constantly. But she hadn’t absorbed the fact that he really meant to go to the opposite end of the country.

It’s no one’s fault, he said.

But they were both at fault, she thought. Prisoner A, Prisoner B.

La vita nuova
, she said.

What?

La vita nuova
. The new life.

That’s Dante, he said.

But she hadn’t been thinking of Dante. She thought of Dante years later, because Greg had mentioned it that night in the kitchen, and it was only then that she read about Dante and Beatrice. When she’d read all the poems Dante had written about Beatrice, she got angrier than she’d ever been. What did Dante know? He didn’t know Beatrice, that was for damn sure.

She thwacked the rolled magazine on her arm, killing a mosquito. What she hadn’t counted on was Damian, and how upset he’d been. Running out into the snow after his father. Damian, who loved people so intensely it was dangerous. She unrolled the magazine and looked at the cover. She could make out a picture of people on a beach lined up as neatly as bowling pins, and a couple of sharks getting ready to knock them over with a beach ball. That very night, Damian had said he was going out with someone, and then he’d gone and had a shower. When he came downstairs he was wearing a white shirt and blue jeans, and his good looks startled her.

You look nice, she told him. The keys are right there on the table. Maybe you could put some gas in the car.

Sure. Thanks a lot.

Catch you later, said Roger, who was sitting at the table.

She watched Damian through the window. He still hadn’t taken the kayak off the roof of the car. He swung open the door. He looked happy – that’s what it was. Handsome as a bridegroom.

Behold, she murmured. He cometh, leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.

Damian drove away.

Thinking of this, she got up, went inside, and turned on the light in the kitchen. Ah, she thought with a pang – 1:42 a.m. He wasn’t home yet. He’d come home, she thought. Of course he would. He’d come home before too long. He was responsible in his own way.

She remembered Damian getting in the car with Lisa, just before they drove to the cottage for the weekend. Ingrid
bent down to speak to him, telling him to drive safely, which she always did. And Lisa had leaned over so she could see her mother.

Bye, Mum, she said. Hazel eyes, wide smile. Dark blonde hair caught back in a ponytail.

I love you both, said Ingrid.

She’d thumped lightly on the roof before they backed out of the driveway. But if she had gone to the cottage with them. If she hadn’t had a Saturday lunch date with Kristie, who’d just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. If she’d been there, she might have been able to stop Lisa from driving Damian’s
ATV
onto the beach. And if she hadn’t stopped her, she would have chased her. She might have been able to save her.

It was no one’s fault.

It was no one’s fault, but if only –

She went to the cupboard where Roger kept his hard liquor. She opened it, took out the gin, and put it on the table. She sat down and stared at the blue liquor – Bombay Sapphire – the blue of swimming pools under an August sky. What had Roger told her? This gin was the world’s best, flavoured with almond, angelica, cassia, coriander, cubeb – how did she remember all these things?