Falling (31 page)

He hadn’t phoned and now he’d come too late.

What could he possibly say? When he went inside, the terminal was dark after the sharpness of the light. He walked toward her slowly. He’d surprise her, coming upon her so suddenly; he’d probably frighten her. It would do more harm than good. She was trying to fix the clasp of the suitcase, but he could tell from a distance it couldn’t be fixed.

Jasmine.

She couldn’t hear him.

Jasmine.

Elvis saw him first. He didn’t say Damian’s name or his birthdate.

Damian’s mouth was dry, which made it hard to speak.

Hello, Elvis.

Jasmine was holding the halves of the suitcase together. He could tell she was bracing herself by the way she held the suitcase, as if it were an animal that might escape.

So, she said.

She spun on her heel and walked away, still holding the suitcase together. A man coming out of the terminal held the door open for her and she smiled. His eyes lingered.

Damian stared at Elvis’s unbuttoned shirt.

That’s a new shirt, said Damian.

It’s got snaps instead of buttons. See?

Elvis unsnapped the shiny blue shirt to his waist, so his pale chest was fully exposed, and then he did it back up again.

Your boat was on
TV
, Elvis said. Tarah saw it. They said you were a daredevil.

I’m not.

They said there’s people like you every year.

Damian took out his water bottle and drank greedily from it.

Jasmine’s going all the way to New York City, said Elvis. She’s getting the bus.

Why? asked Damian.

Elvis put his hand up in the air, fist clenched.

If she was leaving, Damian didn’t know what he could do to change her mind. He couldn’t think clearly, because it was so strange that her life had intersected with his life, precisely, when they could so easily have passed one another.

Roger said you were coming. Elvis fingered the pearly snaps on his shirt. He said you were coming here.

Did Jasmine know I was coming?

Yes.

She knew I was coming today and so she decided to leave? asked Damian.

Elvis didn’t answer.

Damian watched Jasmine inside the terminal, pressing against the ticket counter. She’d put down the suitcase and the knapsack. Her heels had lifted out of her ballet slippers as she leaned forward to speak to the vendor through the opening in the glass.

He wondered if it was the last time he’d see her, ever, if he’d remember only her feet lifting out of her ballet slippers, turning into tawny birds. She reached into her drawstring bag and her silver bangles slid down her wrist. Her hair fell in a dark swoop, dark against the yellow of her sweater, as he knew it would. She was so far from him, behind the door that people opened and closed as they went in and out.

She came to the door and held it open. Elvis, she called. Maybe you can go home with Damian. You don’t have to wait for me to get the bus.

But I brought something for you, said Elvis. I’ve got something to give to you.

She didn’t hear him, and he went inside the terminal after her.

Damian looked down at an oily puddle on the ground: blue-black streaked with purple and turquoise and gold. It had been a stupid idea, coming back. In the pool of oil, colours bloomed light years away from him, one nebula whirling into the next.

When he went inside, he couldn’t find them. Then he saw them over by the fixed seats against the wall. Jasmine had some duct tape and she was busy wrapping it around
her suitcase with Elvis’s help. Around and around went her hand, unrolling the silver tape. When she finished, she cut the tape neatly with a pair of scissors, and took the tape and scissors back to the ticket vendor. Her skirt swung, showing her slender legs, as she turned away from the counter and went back to sit beside Elvis.

Damian went to them, putting down his knapsack and sitting where he faced them, one seat over from a woman in a green jacket who was combing her hair.

Jasmine was looking at her ballet slippers. One of them was scuffed and she bent down and rubbed it.

She sat back before speaking. We thought you were dead.

The woman sitting one seat over from Damian took out a small hand mirror and tilted it toward her face, peering into it.

Damian leaned forward, trying to find words. I’m sorry, he said.

Her face was closed; she wouldn’t look at him. She crossed her legs; he watched one of the ballet slippers go up and down. One of the slippers clacked to the floor and she put it back on. For a moment he saw the arch of her naked foot and he thought of running his hand along it, of kissing it.

The woman had put the comb and mirror into her purse, and now she put up a hand to fluff her hair in the back. A thread of hair detached itself and floated away.

I’m sorry, Jasmine, he said again.

This time she met his gaze. You said that already.

What else can I say?

I don’t know.

If you asked me to go to Montreal and get a – I don’t know – a hat, he said, I’d go to Montreal and get you a hat. If you asked me to go to the Gobi Desert, I’d go.

The woman glanced at him.

I wouldn’t ask you to do that, said Jasmine, concentrating on her scuffed shoe. Anyway, I don’t want a hat.

What do you want?

I want you to tell me what happened.

I don’t know what happened. I had to get out of here, so I did.

That’s it?

I wanted to get so far away –

Far from me.

No. I wanted to get so far away that I couldn’t feel anything any more.

There’s no place you could have gone. There’s no place like that.

I know.

Oh, she murmured. Oh, Damian.

You’ve been to hell and back – I realize that, he said. That’s why I’m here. I thought – I guess I thought if I showed up, the words would come to me.

I don’t think words would help. She couldn’t stop moving; one hand was swinging back and forth. I don’t think anything would help. You and I – we can’t go on.

Her eyelashes seemed darker than before, fringing her eyes. Green, so green. He had to hold her gaze without looking away.

Don’t, she said.

He had to lean forward to hear what she was saying.

Don’t make it harder.

She’s going to Buffalo, said Elvis. She’s going to Buffalo, then Rochester, then Syracuse, then – I forget what’s after Syracuse. And after that, New York City. She’s going to be an artist in New York City.

Damian fiddled with a toggle before he hefted his knapsack up.

Well, he said. I guess there’s nothing left to say.

He couldn’t talk to her in this place. He could feel his eyes stinging.

There was no way to stop things from going forward. It made him feel desperate, and he walked away from her, pushing the door open. When he got outside he couldn’t see because of his tears. A woman brushed past him on her way inside the terminal, and he moved away from the door. He started down the street without knowing where he was going, but it heartened him, when he glanced over his shoulder, to see that Elvis had come out after him.

Jasmine’s leaving, said Elvis.

I know.

Damian, called Jasmine.

She’d come outside the building, where she’d put down her suitcase. She kept her knapsack on her back, but wrapped her arms around herself, around her sweater, as she waited for Elvis and Damian to retrace their steps.

A tree nearby had turned pale yellow, and it was almost the same colour as her sweater. She seemed to be examining the way the bright leaves overlapped one another, but she shifted her gaze and looked directly at Damian when he approached.

My bus is here, she said. But I can’t keep this – Elvis, I can’t keep this.

It’s for you, said Elvis.

They stood together, awkwardly. She held out a photograph, but Elvis didn’t take it.

Damian leaned forward and spoke quietly in her ear. She looked at him.

Please don’t go, he said again.

I have to. She dropped her eyes.

Jasmine.

Inside, they heard the final call for her bus.

She looked up and met his eyes, and he knew something had softened in her. He saw how she would look when she was old.

With stops in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Schenectady, Albany –

Elvis, she said. I can’t take something like this from you. I’m honoured you wanted me to have it, but I have to give it back.

Elvis took the photograph and held it with both hands, looking down at it.

It belongs to you, she said. It’s precious. She bent and turned her head so he would look at her. That baby is you. And he’s named after the greatest star in all of music history.

Elvis smiled when she kissed him on the cheek.

She turned to Damian and threw her arms around him. She held him tightly.

Oh, Damian.

It was only for a moment, and then she let go and wiped her eyes. She picked up her suitcase, which she held with both arms, and the light flashed on the door as Elvis held it open for her.

The river spilled past the Control Dam and descended in a series of rapids toward the rusted hulk of the Old Scow and the scrawny, bent poplars on scattered islands, and kept tumbling around Goat Island, pouring over stacked layers of dolomite as it fell over the edge, offering up a great, feathery veil of mist as it roared to the river below. It was all wild, noisy turbulence below the Falls, but the
Maid of the Mist
plied the water: one boat pushed upstream, before slipping into a curtain of white, and another followed, with its hooded cargo of humanity. It strained against the rush of water, and then, like something sprung from a trap, it turned and vanished. As soon as one boat departed, another appeared.

In the distance, a line of figures descended the stairs to the base of the American Falls, miniature people disappearing into a dark maw that swallowed them whole. But then they reappeared, ascending to the top, keeping their video cameras hidden under plastic ponchos. They came from every corner of the globe: women in tunics, wearing veils, men with turbans, girls speaking German, tourists led by someone who spoke mutilated high-school Spanish, an elderly couple from Tokyo, a school band from the American Midwest, and four sisters from Weslaco, Texas, who went on a trip together every year. The ponchos were dry when people began the trek down to the base of the Falls and wet when they came back up.

They all came to look at the great Niagara. But the water rushed away from them, sweeping chaotically through the gorge, under the Rainbow Bridge, where the Honeymoon Bridge had collapsed, in 1938, because of an ice jam. It flowed downstream to the Whirlpool, pulling everything into it: part of a boat fender, a stick, a shredded piece of tire, a Coke bottle that bobbled, dipped, and shot
free, only to plunge back down. On the observation decks, people watched the jet boats packed with tourists skidding out to the edges of the Whirlpool. Above them, the Spanish Aero Car moved along its cable and drew back again, a bright red spider making a filament in its web, venturing out and then returning. From there, the river shot through a confined channel, past the Devil’s Hole Rapids, with the Niagara Parks Botanical Gardens to the west and the Devil’s Hole State Park to the east. It tumbled under the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, until it opened out below Queenston Heights Park, topped by the monumental, unblinking gaze of General Brock on his high column.

It was still a powerful river, but it had less vigour as it flowed toward Lake Ontario. It was here, rounding the last corner, unheeded by the golfers at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club, that it spent itself in an ease of blue, or the Shining Water, as it had been called by the Iroquois. The river became a lake, and the water moved east, around the many islands and islets of the Thousand Islands, before it was channelled into the St. Lawrence River. Northeast of Quebec City, long before it reached the Gaspé, the river broadened into a vast expanse that moved ceaselessly, losing all the names by which it had been known, as it opened out, opened wide.

Thanks to the people at McClelland & Stewart – Jennifer Lambert and Ellen Seligman, in particular – for giving this novel a home. It was my great pleasure to work with Jennifer Lambert so closely during the editing process. Deepest thanks, as well, to the wonderful Anita Chong for helping so much, and to Heather Sangster, for her fine work.

To Jackie Kaiser, of Westwood Creative Artists – my thanks for such clear-eyed insights.

I am also indebted to Jennifer Glossop, whose assistance came at a crucial time.

* * *

A Nova Scotia Arts Council grant helped give this novel the start it needed.

I was able to spend brief periods of time at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de l’Assomption in Rogersville, New Brunswick, where several chapters of this novel were written. Warmest
thanks to the community there, especially Sister Kate Waters.

Dr. Rod Michalko was an enormous help to me.

I am also grateful to the late Dr. George Sanderson.

For medical advice, I am deeply indebted to Dr. Leone Steele, Dr. Imogen Fox, and Dr. Patty Menard. Many thanks, as well, to Brian Kelly, a paramedic based in Guysborough, N.S., whose help was invaluable.

Special thanks to Chief Tim Berndt of the Niagara Parks Police for his patience with my questions. I am also grateful for the help I received at both the Niagara Falls Public Library and at the Lundy’s Lane Historical Museum.

As always, heartfelt thanks to Janet Simpson, and my sisters, Jennifer and Sue. Loving thanks to Paul, David, and Sarah, who give me such encouragement. I could not have written this without you.