Fever (28 page)

“If that’s the case,” he says to Jamie, “that this is autobiographical and you even wrote some of your own lines, how did you find working on the play? It must have been hard for you, all things considered.”

“As a production it wasn’t particularly difficult,” Jamie replies, then plunges in in the way Alexis hasn’t been able to. “But considering that it was at least partly my story and my mother’s and that in working through the part I had to try to understand what happened, I found it cathartic.”

Alexis stops listening. Cathartic? How could that be? As far as she was concerned much of the play was a fabrication they had built based on a few grains of truth. Or was this just what he had decided ahead of time he would say?

“Alexis, if this play was cathartic for James to act in, was it cathartic for you to write?” She supposes she has to say yes to
this and so she does, although privately her mind is racing, wondering what the real answer is. “Was it hard to write all this down?” Bill prompts her, crushing out his cigarette and lighting another one. No, she is thinking, no, not cathartic, it was … but what was it?

“It was good for me to try to understand what happened,” she allows, her voice trails off, she has forgotten the radio audience. Bill, impatient with her, turns to Jamie, says something, and Jamie is off talking.

One part of her thinks how well he is doing, how he understands the pace of the show, while she, used to a different kind of interview, is lost. She sees how charmed Bill is with Jamie’s quickness and his good looks. She finds it both strange and delightful to realize that she gets more respect because she is the mother of this handsome and talented young man. But all the while she is thinking, hard to write? Yes, in the way that everything is hard for her to write, never knowing if she is going in the right direction or not, never sure she hasn’t hit a note that is merely maudlin, struggling to bring what is really only another sordid divorce story to a level that would redeem it, trying to explain what she thought it meant to be an artist. Had she understood what it was she had done? Had she, inadvertently, stumbled on the truth? What was the truth, and what was only the play?

The field on their left ended in low hills a mile away and she saw the pair of golden eagles that lived to the north in a deep coulee, one ridge of which was studded with the remains of ancient medicine wheels, flapping onerously to rise out of it, then following the line of the hills, blurred now with blowing snow, searching for prey. She and Jamie had reached the point where the river curved past them to go south, and the fenceline was in front
of them. Instead of going to the gate, she put her foot on the bottom pole, slipping a little on the crust of ice, and climbed it. Jamie waited till she was over, then climbed it too. Plumes of grey smoke rose from the tractor her husband was running in the feedyard in the next field.

Although it was hardly past two in the afternoon, already their shadows were lengthening. Soon the day would grow dark, would turn to night. In a few days it would be the winter solstice, the death of light, and of the old year.

“It’s wonderful to have you home,” she said.

“It’s really nice to be here,” he answered, looking across the field to the distant hills. She was struggling to say something, but not sure what it was.

“I didn’t have a happy childhood,” she said, “but I think you did, at least, till you started school.” But no, that wasn’t it, and he didn’t reply, or made some sound that might have meant anything or nothing, meant only that he was listening. Since the day he was born she had had the compulsion to speak to him, but she had never been able to translate that barely contained tide of feeling into words. She wondered, hope rising in her chest, is this the time when I will finally speak to him?

“Do you ever wonder if our luck is tied together?” she asked Jamie.

“What?” he said.

“When we did that play together, when we used my writing and your acting—we’re mother and son. Do you ever wonder if in some way that neither of us can know about, at least not in this daylight world, that we’re linked together? If one of us has good luck, so does the other, and if it’s bad, it’s bad for both of us?” But this isn’t quite what she meant. She had a quick vision of him and all the members of his ashram with their guru seated cross-legged in front of them, leading them all through a long evening
of chanting and meditation. But, frightened of it, when he had invited her to come, though she had wanted to, she had refused.

“It never occurred to me,” he said, thoughtful. “I don’t know.”

Seeing his perplexity, afraid she might have gone too far, assumed too much, Alexis decided to let the subject drop. But, she thought, I wonder if on that same level that nobody has words for, I wonder if that is where one person can help another, if maybe that’s the only place that makes any difference. Not through money or jobs or gifts of food, but somehow, by thinking hard enough about the other person.

Or maybe I’m only talking about prayer.

“Well, really,” Alexis interrupts, impatient now. “I decided to write the play because Jamie was just out of theatre school and it’s so hard for a young actor to make a start. Like any mother, I wanted to help him, but since I have no influence in the theatre world, I couldn’t think what I could do. Then I thought of writing a play, one with a good part in it for Jamie, and with second stages springing up all around the country, I was sure we could find a venue for it.”

“And this has nothing to do with your having,” he is careful with the word, “left him?”

“No, of course not, not at all,” she replies. Then, “Maybe.”

“I felt it was a gift,” Jamie says suddenly, without being asked. “And when I performed in it, it seemed to me that I was giving back my mother a gift.”

Alexis is astonished. Warmth floods over her. Then, staring at Jamie she wonders, does he think I wrote the play to give him back some of what he lost when I, of my own free will, went away and left him? But I didn’t, it wasn’t free will, I had to go, my life was unbearable the way it was, I had no choice.

She has missed something, she isn’t sure what Bill has asked, but Jamie is replying in a manner that is almost too patient, “But you see, we changed the story so that the woman in the play abandons her children.” He pauses, and for once, Bill waits. “But I never felt abandoned,” he says. “I wasn’t abandoned.”

The snow in the field they entered was knee-deep in places and, shorter than Jamie, she found it hard going. Seeing her floundering, he said, laughing, “Here, I’ll break trail,” and strode ahead, his strong legs plowing back the deep, fresh snow.

It had turned even colder since they’d left the house to go for a walk. The wind was rising and she pulled her parka hood around her face to break its force. With so much snow lying about, she thought, it’s bound to blizzard, but with two days left before he had to leave to begin rehearsals of the latest play he was in, a storm tonight wouldn’t hold up his departure.

They reached the other side of the field, both of them panting, and climbed the fence into the feed yard where her husband was clearing away snow drifted up against the balestacks using a small snowblower mounted on the tractor. Mutely, over its roar, using her eyebrows and a gesture, she offered him their help. He shook his head no, opened the tractor door and called to her, “You might as well go in. I’m just about finished here.” They went gratefully to the house.

On the deck as Jamie bent down to brush the snow off his pantlegs, she stepped around the corner to see how the weather looked to the west, the direction the wind was blowing from. Snow scudded across the fields, blotting out the line of hills in a blur of swirling white. For a second, all she was able to stand, she stood and let the stinging snow strike her full in the face. I
should have stayed. The thought rose up unbidden, and left a gap behind, a white space. It’s true. I’ve never accepted the responsibility for what I did.

She dropped her head, putting up both her mittened hands to shield her face. She would ask him to forgive her, but she knew he wouldn’t want to hear even that. Not now, after all these years and their various attempts to talk to each other, to put things right. In his busy life in the city he had shrugged the past off, while she, moving each day through the wide fields, under the limitless, pale sky, was enshrouded in it.

Early that morning they had parked the car on the edge of the narrow road with the Atlantic, or at least an arm of it, on their right, glistening that deep blue that only the Atlantic is. On their left, before the forest starts, is an empty field. The balloonists have put up a big, blue and white striped tent at the edge of the field on a slight rise of ground close to where the cove ends. Beyond it is only ocean and more ocean and then the British Isles. They have come to watch the balloonists take off in an attempt to cross the Atlantic.

Already other cars are striking up the muddy little road, going slowly to cushion the bumps, and Jamie steps behind her as one comes too close and almost splashes him. She reaches down and takes his hand.

“Let’s walk in the field,” she says to him. Jim strides ahead, not waiting for them till Jamie shouts, “Daddy, wait for me!” Jim pauses, looks back at Jamie, and waits while Jamie runs up to him and grasps his hand. She lengthens her step, just a little, so as to grow closer to them without appearing to hurry or to have been left behind. More people are arriving all the time and beginning to park in the field.

It’s a perfect Nova Scotia day, the sky above the spruces and over the flat, dark blue ocean is a pale blue and cloudless and there is a light wind blowing, but not so strong as to cause trouble for the balloonists. The sea smell rises, strong and salty and she remembers the first time she smelled the ocean, the Pacific it was, and she had been faintly shocked by the odour.

Jim and Jamie are walking around the tent and she follows them, feeling silly, but what else is there to do? The two balloonists are working on the far side of the tent, facing the ocean. A small crowd has gathered watching them, and more people are coming all the time. The tent is filled with huge iron cylinders, the kind that are filled with gas of some kind and the balloon itself lies collapsed and wrinkled, spread out over the damp grass. The balloon is striped too, red and white, in a spiral from its red base to its white top. It is huge. One of the balloonists calls to them to keep back from it, not to step on it.

People crowd around and from then on Alexis catches only brief glimpses of whatever it is the balloonists are doing. There is a poof, and after that, until the balloon takes off, there is the steady, muted roar of a propane torch at work, doing what, she doesn’t know, but the balloon, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, begins to fill over the next few hours. She sees only glimpses of this, only partial views, before someone steps in front of her. Little Jamie goes as close to the front as he dares, but if she and Jim lose sight of him, it is always Jim who pushes his way through the crowd to find him. Jamie asks question after question, his hazel eyes wide and full of wonder, and neither of them knows the answers.

Nor does the rest of the crowd. Most of them are young, men mostly, and many of them are drinking beer which they offer to the balloonists, who refuse it. The balloonists are intent on their preparations for their flight; they move around with their heads
down, their hands always busy, serious, steady expressions on their faces. Nobody understands what they are doing or why, and members of the crowd of watchers turn to each other and ask each other questions and receive shrugs or murmured, puzzled phrases in reply. Alexis supposes that if the balloon fails the two balloonists might drown, although they are using a wooden fisherman’s dinghy for a basket.

All day long Jamie, Jim and Alexis and the crowd watch the progress of the balloonists. There are several setbacks, once a heavy cannister of gas falls against one of the balloonists who is kneeling at the time, and knocks him unconscious. Or so she hears, the crowd has grown so huge now that only the top of the tent is visible to her, but soon the word passes back that the balloonist is fine and things continue as before. Once Jim wants to leave and get something to eat, but Jamie is outraged at the very idea.

“I’ll wait for you here,” he says to his father, who laughs.

“You’re only four years old,” he tells their son, “I can’t leave you alone here.”

“Mom will stay with me,” Jamie says, confident, but although Alexis would never say so, she is always afraid that if Jim leaves without her, he will never come back. In the end a rumour moves back through the crowd that the balloonists are almost ready to take off, so nobody leaves. Another hour passes, then two. Alexis is seated on the wet grass now, and Jamie is leaning against her, his little elbow in the crook of her neck. She puts her arm around him. Jim has disappeared in the crowd.

Then a low murmur starts among the people, gathers volume, people near the tent press together and those who have wandered away come quickly from all over the field and even out of the forest beside it. The crowd around the tent swells and Jamie says, “They’re taking off! Let’s go, Mom!” and tugs at her.

Jim appears and lifts Jamie up in his arms and strides away so that once again she is forced to follow him. He skirts around the wide perimeter of the now huge mass of people until they are at the shoreline. The tide is out, there is no sandy beach here, only rocks that are wet and slippery underfoot. She follows him, her shoes sliding off the rocks. The distance between Alexis and her son and husband grows wider. Her shoes are wet and she keeps slipping on the rocks and has to stop to find better footing, she gives up trying to catch up with them and now they are out of sight around the curve of the shore. Others following come between Alexis and her son and his father.

Over to the left the beautiful red and white balloon bobs over the heads of the crowd. Voices grow louder, excitement is rising.

“Look!” someone behind her shouts, and yes, the balloon is rising, ever so slowly, wavering uncertainly, almost dropping, it rises above the crowd, dwarfing it, at the same time moving slowly on a diagonal path toward the end of the cove far ahead of her. She stops where she is and and watches its progress.