Falling (21 page)

as if nothing had happened she came out to the sidewalk with her bicycle in the dark then into a pool of street light and he could see the shape of her legs under her skirt and her hair swinging as she walked it made him want to run to her put his arms around her and she’d hold him close and kiss him but she made him angry he didn’t want her to hold him close and kiss him and he sat in the driver’s seat crying looking at her through his tears she brushed something from her face a mosquito and glanced behind her down the street there was still time and he opened the door but she’d already begun to ride away with a reflector shining one weird red eye just above the rear wheel of her bicycle and at the convenience store at the end of the street she turned the corner and sped away with her light flashing in front and he couldn’t change anything and maybe it was the last time

he’d see her the tears came down his face and he couldn’t stop them he couldn’t get back to what went before because it had all changed when his mother said his father wouldn’t be coming back he was sitting on the bed in his room picking at the chenille spread and he saw he could stretch the loop as long as a noodle but what will he do Damian asked he won’t have a house to live in oh he’ll find an apartment his mother told him Damian could see a large framed picture of himself on top of the bureau he was in a rocking chair with his feet sticking out in front and behind him a window that wasn’t a real window and a tree in the window that wasn’t real either and he was holding a stuffed bunny with soft fur but they’d only given it to him to keep him quiet while they took the photograph

and then they’d taken it away he thought of his father leaving in the orange taxi as the snow fluttered down his father who hadn’t finished the story about the dragon he’s gone back to Vancouver his mother said his mother and sister are there she reached over and put her hand on Damian’s because he was pulling at another strand in the bedspread you know sometimes people get confused so they do rash things but he didn’t finish the story Damian said twisting the loop of chenille he went away she said as if she hadn’t heard him because he had to go but you know we’ll be fine the three of us together we’ll be fine

Damian started the car again and slowly drove along the street turning at the convenience store there was his mother walking with her head down because it had begun to rain and she didn’t look up as he passed he almost stopped but he had to do one thing then another if he could do each thing carefully it would be all right he wouldn’t say goodbye to anyone he was shivering but it was hot hotter than before his hands clenched the steering wheel he was perspiring strange to be hot and cold at the same time he drove to the Hydro Control Dam above the Falls he knew he was done with it and all he wanted was to walk out of his life into the first pattering of rain he heard no thunder and there was no lightning but it rained hard streaming down the windshield as he sat in the parked car

imagining the huge crouching shape of the Control Dam by the river he recalled how happy he’d been when his father lifted him up to put him on his shoulders and the pieces of a puzzle had been far below on the floor how easily things vanished how swiftly his sister had gone too as if she had not lived it would happen to him he thought of Lisa putting his hair in pigtails all over his head and his mother laughing he heard the tumbling sound of his mother’s laughter as though she were next to him he curled up in the driver’s seat and when he woke the rain had stopped and there was a breeze several times he fell asleep his dreams vivid and fleeting night passed he didn’t want it to end

yes he did and now he could see the grey struts of the Control Gates with hundreds of herring and ring-billed and great black-backed gulls wheeling up and over and down he fumbled among his things and got a card out of his wallet glancing at it before dropping it on the passenger seat he got out of the car unfastened the kayak from the rack and took it down he hefted up the boat and went along the path everything was clear to him a car passed and splashed up water as it went he felt the light spray but he didn’t want to be seen carrying a boat at this time of night or was it morning he could feel the river going past as he walked to the place where the trees grew sparsely and the rocks were jumbled on the bank there was no fence he’d been here before and he knew all along he’d do it like this but he wanted to see the first of the light in the sky even if he had to wait for it

he worked his way down the bank testing each rock because they were slippery after the rain and at the bottom he wedged the kayak between the rocks where it was half hidden by a screen of sumac he could make out the turbulent water then he went back for the box fitting its flaps together so it would keep all the broken things inside he was tired when he reached the yellow boat it was too noticeable it was colourful as a toy in a sandbox he shifted it out of its hiding place and stowed the rattling box with its fragments as far as he could under the sturdy cross-ribs at the bow it would be hurled out into the river but wasn’t that the point he found a sheltered place out of the rush of water and this was where he pushed the nose of the boat into the river he could feel the pull but not as much as he thought and he knew he’d be able to shove off without difficulty there were several ducks with four brown ducklings protected from the river swirling past just a few feet away he pulled up the boat’s rudder because it didn’t matter how the current took it

he was prolonging it perhaps he should say something some kind of prayer he hunched over the boat his fingers grasping the coaming it had begun to rain again drenching him and he shivered as it came down fiercely when it stopped a robin sang out maybe an omen the trunks of the sumacs dark and graceful against the moving water and a few drops fell from the slender leaves in a flash of amber the light increased imperceptibly so it was impossible to tell if it was fading or growing but then the dimness turned to gold the first sunlight broke through a ragged part of the cloud he looked up to the east and then at the Control Dam before passing the boat hand over hand onto the river and time wasn’t outside he could feel it through his body his head his hands his bones his skin

the strong river rushing rushing rushing through him –

DAMIAN PUSHED THE KAYAK
away from the bank and, through the sumacs, watched it float, tipsily, over the water. Orphaned. He went back to the car and got his wallet, knapsack, and drawings; he put the keys in the glove compartment. When he turned around, he couldn’t see the boat on the river. Maybe it had already gone over the brink. Maybe it was falling. By now the ashes would have become one with the water. He walked along the path by the river. He’d done what he’d come to do. His feet moved ahead, but he could feel things collapsing. His body, a house of bone. Soon he could rest. It took a long time to walk to the bus terminal. A woman and a man, sitting by the wall, talking, as the man divided a chocolate bar into pieces. No, he said to her. You can’t look – you have to shut your eyes. He put a piece of the chocolate bar on her tongue, and it seemed to Damian that darkness rushed into her mouth at the same time. Toronto, said Damian, at the counter. No, just one way. The kayak floated gaily down the river, tropical yellow on the grey water. He could have gone with it. By now the box had been thrown out of the boat; the box flaps pulled open by the force of the water, the urn shattered.
Niagara Falls to Toronto. That’s $28.76. Man behind glass, an insect. Leaves at 7:10. The ashes had spilled into the river. Shards of urn, like bone, turned over and over in the water. The man stroked the woman’s closed eyelids. The ashes were part of the water too, now, flickering in it, part of the chloride, mercury, phenol, phosphorous, a brilliant taint of water, pouring from Lake Erie into Lake Ontario. Mmmm, she said. He put another piece of chocolate in her mouth, then another. She laughed each time he did it, and he smiled as she ate it. Then he kissed her; she was loose in his arms, letting him taste the sweetness on her tongue. Damian went outside to wait for the bus because he couldn’t look at them. Once, there had been a green moth, with wings like doll-sized sails, dying on the screen of the back door. He’d put his finger up to the screen, on which the creature was hanging, limply, but not so close his finger touched it. The moth didn’t move. Then, as he watched, it twitched weakly. Or had the air moved its wings? It was the first time he’d seen something die, but the moment came and went and he didn’t catch it. A moth, dying. A soft band of purple all along the top of the wings; markings that looked like eyes, and antennae, feathery and delicate. The wings themselves were green and transparent, thinner than the thinnest silk, shot through with morning light as it hung on the screen. He’d never seen anything so beautiful, but it had been dying. Ticket? You got a ticket? The bus driver ripped off part of his ticket and handed the receipt to him. It was snowing the morning Damian’s father left. The cabbie thumped the trunk shut, so the shadows inside the trunk would stay there, together with the red suitcase and the old brown one with the straps. Tears on his father’s face. Can’t stay here, a man said, leaning over Damian in the bus
terminal in Toronto. The man’s breath stank. He could have buried the green moth, but he didn’t want to think of putting heavy earth on top of those wings. So he left it and by evening it was gone. Can’t stay here, repeated the man. Security’ll come. You gotta go. It might have blown away after it died, because he couldn’t find any trace of it when he looked outside. The man had a chain around his thick neck, tight, so it pressed against the flesh. He said that his name was Yvan, like Yvan Cornoyer, one of the greats. In 1972, Cornoyer passed the puck to Paul Henderson with thirty-four seconds left in the game, so they scored the winning goal, and
that
was a great moment. No great moments any more, but
that
was a great one. Yvan used to have a pet rat called The Terrible, but The Terrible had died. He laughed; he had a missing eye tooth. He took Damian to the mission on Spadina Avenue, but it was full, so he took him farther. Around they went, and down, like two small creatures caught in water as it swirled them past the rocks. Yvan found him a place in a hostel and gave him a peace sign when he left. Be cool, man. There was a smell in the hall of the hostel, but it wasn’t the same as the sharp, acrid smell of the stained urinals. It had the thick sea smell of eelgrass. On the door of Damian’s room was a plastic-covered placard explaining the rules. Block letters, tilted and pressed close together. A lost and found box by the door of the hostel’s office, filled with unmatched shoes. The eelgrass washed along the shore, that in-between place between high tide and low tide, where there was always a thick, musty smell of salt. Death came to the beach every day. Usually it was so small no one noticed – a crab, the remains of a lobster – but sometimes it was larger. One of the shoes in the box was a child’s black patent leather shoe with a
strap and a sparkling fake diamond clasp. There had been the kid who had been diving with his friends, and the other one who had been hit from behind by a Sea-Doo. There was the man who’d had two vials of Ambien in his knapsack, one empty, one full, who had walked into the water, up to his knees, his thighs, his waist, waiting for the cold water to take his sleeping body out to sea, as far as Georgeville, on the other side of the cape, where a twelve-year-old found it. The clasp on the shoe glinted, mysteriously, in the box. When he was turned out of the hostel in the morning, Damian went to lie down under a tree in a park. Children in a wading pool. A body could be washed into shore; it could be rolled back and forth, as the tide pulled away. Sometimes the children in the wading pool screamed. Lengths of eelgrass over the white skin of a drowned man’s legs. And on the beach, higher up, the eelgrass was matted, woven together, in long scrolled patterns. Here and there were jellyfish, purpled and shiny, and flattened into round, gelatinous disks, like organs taken out of the body: a liver, a heart, strewn here and there. He didn’t like it when the jellyfish were in the water, because they stung him. They usually came in July during a spell of slow, humid heat, but they were gone by early August. Jellyfish thronged the water like blooms and died on the sand, with the eelgrass in strands over them, the way hair falls over eyes. He left the park and went to the terminal on Bay Street, taking a bus out of the city. He didn’t care one way or the other that he was running out of money. Inside the bus it was cool, but it was very hot when he got out. Waves of heat, making the road look fluid as he walked from the Bowmanville bus terminal to the truck stop by the highway. The Fifth Wheel had full-service fuel islands, parking for more than one hundred rigs, drivers’
lounge and showers, a forty-nine-room motel, a restaurant featuring an All-day Breakfast, Daily Buffet & Weekend Brunch, and, in the parking lot, near one of the fuel islands, the softened pink mess of a strawberry ice cream cone, melting. It was harder to swim when the jellyfish were in the water. They came in droves. In the gift shop, Damian fingered a miniature tiger with a bobbing head as people washed into the shop and out of it, swirling around him. He was hungry; he would have eaten the sweet, pink ice cream lying in globs on the pavement. He would have fallen to his knees to eat it. The glossy mass of a dead jellyfish on the sand. I’m going as far as Trois-Rivières, said the driver, his moustache like a grey-white brush above his lips. I’m not supposed to pick up anyone, but you don’t look so good. So what am I gonna do – let you die of heatstroke? When he turned the steering wheel of the eighteen-wheeler he used both arms to do it, pulling hard. Where you from? Halifax. You sick? No. Eat something. Eat that bag of Cheezies, kid. I’m not sick, said Damian, opening the bag of Cheezies. The world was darkening slowly. Lights flashed at the side of the road. Red, yellow. My name’s Greg, said the driver. That’s my father’s name, said Damian. Well, Bob’s your uncle. What? Damian’s father had taught him about fireflies. It was June, and they were in the backyard, watching as the night air lit up, closed, lit up again. They’re talking to each other, Damian’s father had said. Look, there’s one now. This one’s talking to that one over there. The way I’m talking to you. Damian’s face in the truck’s passenger window, pale, in a black window, through which passed a gloss of red and white light from a gas station, yellow brilliance from a U-Store-It. Aria of lights, passing through him. Well, you look kinda sick. You had trouble with your
girlfriend or something? asked Greg. I had a girlfriend, I guess, said Damian, until I – Lisa had looked at him with her clear hazel eyes, judging him, the needle still in her hand, as she embroidered a flower on her jeans. Now he felt the needle under his skin, stitching it. Shit – you ran away from her, didn’t you? Greg laughed. And now you’re kicking yourself. Lisa pulled the thread taut, and Damian felt it glide through his flesh and stop. Then he felt it again. The thing with women is you gotta understand them, Greg said. That’s the thing. Most guys don’t even try. I buy roses, you know, on Valentine’s Day. I buy roses on birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas. Always the same, always a dozen. And red, not pink or yellow. Red. I take her out to a steak house. I treat her like a queen. That’s the way she should be treated. Greg took down a photo from a clip on the sun visor. Her name’s Angela. Damian looked at Angela’s curled brown bangs, the soft cleft in her chin. She’s a great gal – Angela, said Greg. What’s your girlfriend’s name? Jasmine. You love her? Well, said Damian. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, said Greg. You love her, she loves you. What you need to know about fireflies, Damian’s father told him, is that the male does a kind of aria in lights – an entire light song. But the female only flashes once. I don’t think she wants anything to do with me now, said Damian. How does he know which one is the girl for him? his father said. It’s a case of timing. So many beats in the darkness, then just one beam of light, like a voice. Oh, there you are, she says, lighting up. It’s a two-way street – that’s what I figure, Greg told him. If you’re good to her. Remember what I said, kid, Greg said, as he dropped him off. Remember it. Damian got a ride to Cabano, then a ride to Edmundston in Jean-Marie’s pickup truck. He remembered everything Greg had said,
waiting half a day by the side of the road in Edmundston, watching the smoke from the mill plume into the air, filling it with a noxious smell. Jean-Marie had given him two rolled cigarettes, an old pack of matches, and a package of beef jerky. Had he slept? Had Jasmine slept, far away from him? The sky was white, the heat was white, and even the smell of the pulp mill was white. Had he dreamed? He could taste it in his mouth: cloudy, thick, and almost sweet in its sourness. He smoked one of the cigarettes and afterward he felt sick because he hadn’t had enough to eat. He lay down by the highway under a tamarack tree with his head on his knapsack, and even with his eyes closed it seemed there was an intricate contraption hovering above his face, a finely made miniature palace. He put his hand up to touch it, but he couldn’t find it. Oh, there you are, said Damian’s father. He could hear the logging trucks passing on the Trans-Canada Highway. There you are, there you are. How soft Jasmine had looked when she held the candle between them. Her face, her skin, her eyebrows, her eyes, gazing at him. The candle, fixed in the little dish, divided the world into light, into darkness. You love her? Damian turned his head. In the ditch, the clover swayed. Some of the flowers were purple, some were blackened and dead. Damian,
stop, Jasmine
said, but he didn’t want to stop, because if he’d stopped, he wouldn’t have been able to go all the way through her body. She wanted him to stop. He didn’t stop even when her head began to hit the wall each time he shoved himself inside her. Both of them were sweating, and it wasn’t easy to keep a firm grasp on her hips. He heard his own body against hers. Slapping. He groaned as he came. Smoke filled the air above him, grey against white, making itself into Jasmine’s body high in the air, where it
hung, suspended. She’d turned away from him and curled up on her side of the mattress, without saying a word. There she was, light as cloud, with her back to him. It was hard to breathe. Damian was on his way home, away from her. I treat her like a queen, Greg said. That’s the way she should be treated. Damian would go to the beach at Cribbon’s, where there were wild rose bushes on either side of the path. He wouldn’t go near the cottage. Lisa might be there, sitting on the couch, asking him why he’d taken so long. He’d go straight to the beach, where water would shimmer, in its coolness, over his thighs, his waist, his chest. There would be a familiar, almost savoury, smell of kelp and eelgrass. One arm would slide into water, then the other, and the ocean would be pearl-grey, calm and quiet. It would be easy, slipping into it. He didn’t need a Sea-Doo; he didn’t need vials of Ambien. He’d swim as far as he could, to the east, as far as the blue of Cape Breton. In a fringe of spruce near the water there would be one crow, another, then a frenzy of crows. High up, much higher than the crows, would be a single bald eagle, cutting silently through air.