Falling (17 page)

Lisa had liked all the pictures, but the one she liked best was the illustration of Niagara Falls, with a rainbow rigidly painted in the lower left corner, and a speck in the upper
right corner that was the wooden canoe with its carved figure, going over the brink.

I grew up there, Ingrid had told her.

Lisa looked up at her with her large hazel eyes, her thumb back in her mouth. Her lips quivered as she sucked on it.

There? asked Lisa.

I didn’t live inside the waterfalls, said Ingrid. Just close by.

She’d turned to the next page, which showed the canoe and figure being tossed by the green swirls of water in the Whirlpool. But Lisa wanted to turn back the page to the full picture of the Falls. She ran a child’s hand over it.

I’ll have to take you there, said Ingrid. I’ll have to take you to meet your Uncle Roger.

She closed the book and put it on the bedside table. She kissed Lisa’s head.

Kiss my tummy, Lisa said, pulling up her nightgown.

Ingrid kissed her tummy and she burst into giggles.

Strawberries, she said.

Yes, I’ve made strawberries on your tummy. Look at them all!

It had been the gift she’d given her daughter. It was a way of passing on her own history – this lore about the Falls – to Lisa.

She approached the white house, her old family home.

But why, she wondered, had Roger Woodward lived while Jim Honeycutt had died? In the newspaper article, the boy had said that Jim Honeycutt had cried out that he would hold him, after the boat had turned over and thrown them into the water. He’d tried to hold the boy, but the water had torn them apart. One lived and the other
died. But what if the man had lived while the child had died?

Ingrid stood at the edge of the sidewalk, about to cross the street. She heard the man calling I’ll hold you, as he was swept away.

Her eyes were bright with tears. How did all the fine things on the face of the earth vanish away?

I’ll hold you.

A car honked. The driver was waiting for her to cross. She crossed the street because the driver had no way of knowing about all the fine things on the face of the earth.

The house had been turned upside down in her absence. The back door hadn’t been latched and there were bugs whirling around the ceiling light in the kitchen. There were dishes in the sink, a scattering of crackers on the table, water on the floor. No one had put the pâté or cheese in the fridge. The wine was nearly gone. And someone had gone rifling through the drawer that held the tea towels, and the drawer had been left open.

She recognized the acrid scent of smoke in the air, but it wasn’t cigarette smoke, no – it was dope. She followed it through the house and outside onto the porch, where she found Roger.

Hi, he said.

Where is everyone?

Damian just took Jasmine home.

You’ve been smoking up. I suppose you were smoking up with Damian and Jasmine.

Not Damian, no.

With Jasmine?

Yes.

Elvis is wandering around out there in the back, singing to himself. And –

Have a seat, Ingrid.

No, she said, her voice rising. This house has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Roger leaned back in his chair.

Everything’s gone to hell in this house, she went on. It’s our parents’ house, and look at it. Just
look
at it.

I can’t, he laughed.

What?

I can’t look at it, which is just as well. Ingrid, this is what you do. You come into a place and you’re fine for a while and then the shit hits the fan. Why do you always have to make the shit hit the fan?

I don’t make the shit hit the fan.

I thought it might be a good thing for both of you to come here. Spend a month, two months. Whatever you needed. But I don’t know. It’s always the same – you drive everyone away from you. You have such high expectations of people, and then they can’t meet them. I never did. It’s no wonder that kid of yours kept that girl a secret for as long as he could. She’s a really great girl. She’s perceptive and she’s kind. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s in love with her. But you’ve got to stand back and let him –

In love with her?

I said I wouldn’t be surprised, but you have to let him find out.

I don’t drive everyone away, said Ingrid. And I do stand back. I just don’t slough off my responsibilities the way you do.

We could go on and on here, he said. I’d rather not. I’d rather not ruin a nice evening.

You mean you don’t want to argue when you’re stoned.

Well, you’re right about that. You’re right about so many things, Ingrid. He got up and snapped open his cane. All except one thing.

She wasn’t about to ask what that one thing might be. She waited while he put the cane in front of him, tapping forward. She didn’t help him by shifting one of the chairs out of the way as he walked to the door. He’d bump into it. He did, but then he went around it. When he got to the door, he stood groping for the handle until he found it.

This isn’t our parents’ house any more, he said with his back to her. And it’s not your house. It’s my house.

Ingrid lay on her bed, her arms by her sides, her legs splayed. It was too hot to pull up the sheet.

Had she driven people away from her? Yes, of course she had. She could have made a list: her mother, her father, Bryce Morrison, who kept hanging around her locker in grade ten, Randy Kelly, Steve Phalen, with that springy rust-coloured hair of his, her cousin Melanie Vickers, Ralph LeBlanc, except Ralph didn’t count because he was an arsonist, Dick Schluter, her girlfriend Donna Paugh, who had that tiny mole on her forehead like the eye of a Cyclops, Gerry van Ryswyk, who used to write her letters in green ink, quoting Dylan Thomas, for God’s sake, Roger and Marnie, and Greg, her husband who was now her ex-husband. Damian. And Jasmine. She couldn’t bear to think of Lisa, and whether she’d driven her daughter away.

No, she said.

She didn’t want to drive people away. Maybe people only felt close to her when she was a wreck. She remembered
sitting next to Greg at the end of the visitation. Ingrid had been on the carpet, without her shoes, and she’d simply put her head in Greg’s lap. She’d been sobbing; she couldn’t stop sobbing. Greg had stroked her head over and over. He put his hand gently on her head and stroked it.

Oh, she groaned softly. She would have given a great deal to feel a gentle hand on her head, so she wouldn’t feel desperately alone.

But she was alone. They were all alone, the living and the dead. They were being carried forward in the rush of water. Roger Woodward, Deanne Woodward, Jim Honeycutt, the overturned boat. All of them were being carried forward: the young Mr. Hockridge, newly married, and inclining his head to the young Mrs. Hockridge, the child who had been Ingrid with her patent leather purse, and the child who had been Roger, frowning, and the photograph of the two of them, a brother and a sister – a happy, expectant sister – held together by a hinge.

JASMINE GOT HER BICYCLE
, which was leaning against the side of the house at the back, and, together with Damian, walked along the street in silence. A couple of cats yowled horribly. A man turned on the light on his front porch and came out with a bag of garbage that he tossed in a can. He listened to the cats for a few moments before going back inside.

What time is it? Jasmine asked. It can’t be all that late.

She’d been watching clouds from the porch as she talked to Roger. The clouds had been soft and purple, as if they were long couches made out of velvet. She’d wanted to stretch out on one of them. Now dusk had fallen and lights had been turned on inside the houses they passed.

I don’t know the time, said Damian.

You know, it’s strange – your mother didn’t come back.

She’ll be back.

Are you all right, Damian?

You’re the one who’s stoned.

A hardness had come between them. If he wouldn’t talk to her, she wouldn’t talk to him.

As they walked across the intersection at Victoria and Clifton, Jasmine noticed a bright red box at the corner. It looked like a mailbox, but it wasn’t.

Just a second, she said.

The Love Machine
.

Oh God, snorted Damian, walking on ahead.

TEST YOUR RATING, commanded the machine.

She propped the bicycle against the window of a fabric store, dropped a couple of quarters into the slot, and put her palm down on the glass surface. The hand below, matched with hers, began to light up.

The Girdle of Venus, the Heart, the Head, the Inner Life
.

You are Sexy
, said the illuminated hand.
You are Sensitive. You are
Curious.
You are not always Forgiving
.
Your Girdle of Venus shows
Vulnerability.
You are
LOYAL
. There were several glowing exclamation marks.
!!!!!!

You are Impetuous
, it went on to say, but then the lights flashed and something buzzed and everything went dark. The magical hand beneath the glass faded away.

She caught up to Damian, who was waiting near a pawn shop on Clifton, looking at a saxophone in an opened case. He was irritated with her.

I asked your uncle about you, you know, she said.

You talked about me – the two of you?

Yes.

I’m sure my uncle knows me inside out.

He doesn’t, really. But he did say that maybe you were afraid.

Afraid? Damian scoffed.

Yes.

What do you think?

I don’t know, she said.

It was too much effort, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.

He didn’t understand her, because if he understood her, he would have seen her sister, Shirl, who’d come from Lethbridge with Gary and the new baby, Jessica. He would have seen her parents, leaving the house that August morning, with Shirl and the baby. Leaving Gary behind. Leaving twelve-year-old Sandra behind, with her friend Marci.

Marci had a red-and-orange bathing suit, and she’d snapped her straps and twirled on her bare feet in the wet grass. Sandra had a yellow two-piece bathing suit; it was new, and her mother had bought it for her in Saskatoon when they’d gone shopping together the Saturday before. The yellow showed off her tanned skin, her slender arms and legs. She’d worn it to bed under her nightgown.

She and Marci had laughed and shrieked all morning, running back and forth, back and forth through the sprinkler, under the hot sun, their hair wet as seals. Gary lay on the couch in the living room, because he was on disability from work and that gave him the right. Something had happened to his heart. He wasn’t yet twenty-eight and he’d had a heart attack.

Sandra didn’t like going inside the shadowy, cool house when he was there, but they’d had to go in for lunch, and he’d given them exactly what they asked for, with extra peanut butter and lots of grape jelly. He was a big man, with a stubble of chin hair and a handsome square jaw. Shirl had said once that he was the love of her life, but that had been a couple of years before they were married, when he’d had a motorcycle. She’d said that to her mother,
slamming her purse down on the table so the lipstick fell out of it. Gary was the love of her life.

A pall hadn’t come over the sky as Sandra and Marci had been eating their sandwiches and drinking two percent milk out of unbreakable glasses at the kitchen table. No, the day was bright as ever, the sun shining through the windows that Sandra’s mother had cleaned the day before, and the driveway where it had always been, with one crabapple tree on either side, though the rose-pink blooms were long gone. Queenie was playing with something out by the garage, running around in circles. And then Marci’s father had come by in his pickup truck, that old brown truck with the rust around the wheel wells, and Marci had gone, leaving her half-finished sandwich on the table. Her father had tossed her a striped towel, and she’d wrapped it around herself, and then, leaving wisps of dust where her feet had been, she’d climbed into the truck.

Sandra had dawdled over her own sandwich, looking at the blue mirror ball in her mother’s garden. She’d taken her time, hummed a song, run her fingers through her wet hair. Gary came into the kitchen and stood against the door jamb.

You’re a nice little kid, he said. I’ve been watching you all morning.

She moved her plastic glass in a circle on the Arborite of the kitchen table.

That sure is a pretty bathing suit you’ve got, he went on. His voice was sort of lazy and calm. She got up from the table, but there was only one way out of the kitchen, unless she went through the window, and why would she go through the window? She stood uncertainly by her
chair, and then she took her plate and glass to the sink where she ran water over the plate, into the glass. A bird came to the feeder, and its wings made a quick shadow against the window. It terrified her – it was only a bird and it terrified her. She ran out of the kitchen, out of the house. She ran down the dusty driveway, glancing behind her. Queenie was following her, small ears flipping back, barking.

Maybe I overreacted about Elvis, she said, as they turned onto Stanley Street.

I shouldn’t have treated him like that. Damian stopped under the street light. I know. It’s just that – well, that was my sister.

Your sister? said Jasmine.

In the box – the box you asked about, in my room.

Your sister, repeated Jasmine uncomprehendingly.

What’s left of her.

She made a small sound, as if breath were being pressed out of her. Oh, Damian.

He groaned. Don’t.

He looked so strange under the harsh brightness of the street light. His eyes were caves. There was something desperate about him.

I don’t want to talk about it. He shook his head. Not with you. Not with anyone.

It’s tearing you apart, she said softly.

He took hold of her abruptly and kissed her. He held her shoulders firmly, clutching her.

His eyes were open, but they were in shadow. They
frightened her. When he stopped kissing her, she found herself gasping. He was still gripping her, his face inches from hers.