The Lake and the Library (7 page)

As I walked carefully home, shaking my head and feeling a bad, unfamiliar buzz coursing at my temples, I could clearly picture Li lounging in solitude in the quiet shadow of a bookcase, poring contentedly through my pictures. And I was left empty-handed, with one Polaroid that meant nothing at all.

Nothing to anyone, except me.

She has made the best out of what little she had available to her on such short notice. The town hall sparkles with a hundred frosted lights, and the serving men are sharper than diamonds in their smooth tails. All locals, of course, but they enjoy playing the part, hustling martinis and canapés as though it were just another day on the grain line. And besides, they want to feel the light coming off him when he makes his toast.

The Fort Garry Hotel would have been a more suitable venue
, she muses from the top of her champagne glass, the bubbles prickling her upper lip. But Treade has come through for her, yet again, just as she knew it would. She surveys the burgeoning party from a shaded alcove, greeting businessmen and their spouses with utmost courtesy, fawning over their attire — which has either come from the States or straight from the Hudson's Bay catalogue, but at least they've made a sporting go of it. Tuxedos and gowns, the upper crust of Winnipeg, having flocked to farm country for a mere birthday party, coo over the long ride in and just how
endearing
this little hamlet is. She can very clearly picture David's restless ghost scowling at the entire affair, drowning his contagious misery in gin. But not tonight. This is not his night, or his place anymore. She finishes the champagne and shudders, exhausted already.

“Shall I get you another, Mrs. Jovan?”

And there he is at her shoulder, sly and quiet, and just as apt as her to hide from the smattering of guests and attention. Like mother like son, as ever. They retire to the mezzanine for some privacy. He passes her another full champagne flute from a proffered serving tray along the way.

“You know,” she says to him, “it is
your
birthday. Surely you could thank your friends for coming.” She doesn't scold him, not truly. How can she, when she was avoiding the lot of them, too?

He looks heavenward as she puts the drink aside to adjust his silk tie. “They were my father's friends. Not mine. Neither of us have use for these kinds of things. They were always his affair.”

“
He
cannot direct a burgeoning agribusiness from his grave, dear. And if you want this grain elevator expansion project of yours to succeed in Treade, you must woo the investors. If you didn't already know, our money is really theirs.”

Reclaiming his tie, he eases his hand onto a coffee table covered in fresh gardenias behind him. They were no Broadway Florists' work, but as he fidgets with the petals, she sees none of it really matters anyway. He has been sulky since she declared his twentieth to be marked by such an elaborate occasion, and that his taking the mantle of Jovan Grain, his father's jilted legacy, was something to celebrate. Tonight it would be official, but he had been holding back from it. And she had known why. But she had not wanted to test the waters of it.

“I know you didn't want this. I know but . . . believe me, you
will
show all of those empty-headed socialites that their trust in you is not in vain.” She takes his hand in her opera-gloved one. “I know you can do this. You have his charm, Nel. And his strength. Even though you did not see much of those traits by the end of it, they were there.”

“That's enough,” he forces through a smile. “Let's not talk about that. Tonight is supposed to be a celebration.”

She steps back. Inspecting her reflection in the golden drink at hand, she snorts. “I believe that is my line.”

Before she can register, he has taken the glass from her and downed the contents.

“Please don't,” she grimaces.

A waiter has somehow found them, and he is already gone to fetch back a whisky. “Liquid courage,” he shrugs.

Her eyes narrow. “I said channel his charm, not
become
him.”

But that breaks him.

“I said
that's enough
!” The champagne flute shatters on the marble tile, and she recoils, speechless and shaking.

He is still, covering his mouth with a palm, before trying to smooth back his usually unruly hair, tidied tonight by enough pomade to sink a ship. His eyes soften immediately as she turns away, hand clutching the silk organza at her frail chest. She is bundled into his arms, and she does not fight as he leads her to a chaise, kneeling and taking her small hands in his. Acknowledging this weakness makes her even sicker than she already is.

“I'm sorry, Mama, I'm sorry,” he whispers as he strokes her fine hair, hair that barely remembers what colour it may have been when she had been a girl, easily seduced by the uptown galas and the chance to swan endlessly around in a sea of champagne and frivolous lives. The cold, endless prairie may not have been Toronto or New York, but it offered delicate dreams in a harsh landscape. And she has smothered them all.

He looks at her earnestly. “I don't want his charm or his strength,” he says. “They failed him when it was most important. I don't want any of him. Please. All we need is each other and this beloved town, not this business, this curse. Let us be rid of it. Let it be someone else's burden.”

There it is, the dark thing that has hung between them since they arrived, and maybe even through all the years she had urged him through a business degree in preparation for this day. But without the business, there would be nothing for him once she was gone. Their name, their very claim to the upper society that had wrecked them, would fade in the annals of an already subpar province. She wanted it all; the magic that this town had worked on their ruined family, and the tremendous boons that marrying an alcoholic agribusiness monarch had given them. But her son has never wanted that. He yearns for the simple life that this farm town has offered, for the solitude of his books, for the peace that grounds him firmly in place. But with Jovan Grain, they could have every dream they grasped for. She could not let him abandon that now. Not after all this time, when it's already too late.

She is smiling now, smiling as if someone has only just asked her,
Isn't the night divine?

“You should prepare your toast, love,” she says, patting his face. “Everything will be fine.
I'm
fine. After tonight, we can talk about anything you like, all right? We will be set after the ghastly affair is done with. You'll see.”

Worn down, he gets to his feet. His whisky arrives, and he swallows that, too, in one mean gulp. He beckons the server to leave him the still-full bottle, and he refills his mickey. His eyes are growing darker and darker, but she feels just as feeble watching him drown in this way, as she had been with her husband so long ago. She looks from the champagne flute shards on the floor to her poor son, and feels whatever fight she has left in her drain away.

“Would you like me to help you get some air?” he offers, but she waves him off.

“Don't worry about me. Go, enjoy the party. It's your night.”

Adjusting his jacket, he has not even the energy to fake a smile. She has hurt him with this, all of this. “I think
I
will get some air, then,” he says, bending down and kissing her on the cheek. His frustration is carved in his slumped shoulders, as he gets farther away from her, his gait an exaggerated attempt at keeping from stumbling.

She whispers “Happy birthday,” but he is gone. This is the last time she will ever see him.

I
n the dream, this time, I am down deep in the water. I know it is Lake Jovan, can tell by how green the water is, how murky, the lake weed choking the bottom like angry cilia, loose garbage stuck in an eternal tableau in the depths. Even in the dream I think this isn't unusual.

But there is something else, other shadows tumbling through the black surface of the lake above my head. I swim closer, twisting, reaching out. The shapes clarify; they are books, pages coming loose like soggy flesh in my hands. I let them sink behind me into nothing. I swim and I swim, and the farther I go, the thicker the water becomes with books. Pretty soon, with every stroke of my arms, I am hitting them on all sides. The water is being displaced, and I am being drowned by them.

There is someone else with me. I know it before I see her. She is floating in the book mire, and I nearly crash straight into her. She isn't moving, floating there as lifeless as the water, the lake weed, the books. She is as much a part of the lake as they are. And she has endless hair, white, milky, and it blurs her face from me. I stick my hand in and try parting it so I can see her, because I feel I'd know her, and I need to know for sure.

Her eyes snap open as soon as I am able to get a good look at them. Then her hands go for my throat, and she drags me to the bottom.

I woke up on the floor, tangled in my bedsheets. I'd knocked over one of the many stacks of books I had on the nearby floor and the bedside table, too. My neck was sore from having used a few of them as pillows during the night in my sleep. I had no idea how long I'd been down here. I had never fallen out of bed before.

I tossed everything back in its place and looked out the window, pushing my dancing princess painting to the side. In the immediate distance was a grain elevator, an enormous J inside a diamond painted on the whitewashed brick. “J for Jerktown,”
Tabitha had said once, in one of her more bitter moments. The elevator had always been there, blocking out the sun as it set every single day for ten years of my life. When we first moved here, I had told Mum that it must be Rapunzel's tower, and one day it would be mine, too. She just smiled and let me dream.

Those elevators were sprinkled all over Manitoba, though, appearing on postcards and sometimes in our textbooks at school. The J itself had become a sort of provincial staple, and Treade was proud, to some extent, to boast two or three of them. The history behind the elevators and the people who owned them had faded now, the story of it on some plaque yet to be set up. But with the ethanol plant providing most of the town's income, Treade had little use for the abandoned grain towers and all they implied. As usual.

The house was empty, the sun shone on my Rapunzel elevator, and my heart was raring to go. There was no time like the present to fulfil my promise. Before I could exhale, I was darting through the suburbs and open fields, getting lost in my head.

I found myself standing in front of the Fable Door so quickly that the effort it took to get here seemed like it had happened to someone else. I fingered the carvings, which always looked like they were submerged in the wood, diving through the waves on their way to worlds elsewhere. I had this urge to fling the door open and walk in through the front, bold as brass, taking ownership of the place like it was mine instead of having to scurry in the back way like a squirrel seeking refuge. I tugged on the chains and, as usual, they wouldn't budge.

I spent some time clearing away my hole, making it easier on myself, and Li, too, to keep getting in and out. Now that I thought about it, this
had
to be how he'd been getting in here; probably saw me doing it on that rainy afternoon and followed me in like a shadow . . . even though he was so much taller than me, and it'd be a wonder to see him fit through at all. Short of him passing through the walls, though, there was no other way.

I pulled over an abandoned piece of rusted sheet metal from one of the various scrap piles leaning against the building, keeping it at the ready to cover my tracks when I left. I'd been pretty careless so far; if any of those new property owners showed up to appraise the place after that storm, they'd see my and the tree's handiwork faster than we'd made it. I didn't want to take the chance anymore. I crawled in.

Morning sun filtered through the rose window, tinting the library in the pinks of the glass. I shut my eyes and inhaled; the old book smell was like a cake cooling on a windowsill. Potent. Inviting. I wanted to soak it up, and I twirled in the joy of it, dancing in the dust motes caught in the light, and revelling in the discovery of this sanctuary. A palace of books, of dreams themselves. My perception of the library had shifted in spite of (or because of) my misadventures here: I felt safe, felt at home, and calm, too, even though Li could pop out from any corner and catch me off guard. And even though I didn't know him at all, and that we especially didn't have much to talk about . . . I found myself missing him.

“Li?” My voice bounced off the books and vanished. I was probably early. But I was still excited. Maybe we shared more than I thought. Maybe he was the answer to all my empty hopes for this town. Maybe he was a dreamer that had been ill-treated by Treade, too.

Or maybe he just hung out here to get away from his overbearing parents.

Either way, there was something about him, the way his eyes barbed into me like they were willing me to keep still. How he flitted from one place to another like a handful of light. How he so badly wanted to see me again. Or had that just been a hopeful daydream, too?

Deciding to wander around while I waited, I wove from stack to stack. The books were endless, each one a speck in a universe. I wondered where they came from, where the covers had been bound, where the gold foil had been stamped. Some books were musty and worn, others looked unopened and fresh, and I could see that many were first editions. I snatched them up like precious stones, and after a handful of random selections, I settled in perfect quiet with Oscar Wilde in hand. There was a beautiful engraving of Dorian's portrait on the facing page, and I touched his brooding brow to feel the smooth parchment paper against my finger. It was so new, I could feel the grooves of where the press had insinuated the image.

That's when I heard the flapping.

It broke the silence so hard that I jumped, dropping the book. I stood still, thinking it was just another one of
his
tricks. “Li? Is that you?”

I scooped the book back up, trying to find the source of the noise, or at the very least detect Li's shadow nearby. But I was totally alone. I heard a rustling, and then again the flapping. It sounded like someone shuffling a newspaper restlessly, and it was getting closer.

I looked up and something white flashed above me, diving for my head with its wings spread. I ducked as it swooped back up and flocked to the banister of a nearby landing. I raced out to meet it, stopping short a few feet to get a good look at it. It was big, about the size of a crow, with an unforgiving beak. In the light it looked creamy beige instead of white, and it was speckled with indiscernible black markings.

“How did you get in here?” I wondered aloud. There might have been a hole in an eave somewhere; the place was old enough. But as I got a closer look, I realized that it was definitely not a bird I had ever seen on the prairie before, and as it preened under a wing and I squinted at it, I felt no closer to knowing. When I took one step too close, its head swivelled my way and it opened its beak. Not a sound came out, and before I could move, it had taken a direct dive for me and stolen the book from my hands in its outstretched talons. It vanished into the dark corners of the library.

“Well,” I said, keeping the dialogue-with-no-one going, “okay, then.”

Further rustling. But this time it was the sound of a page turning, and as I whipped around, there he was, clearer than the daylight dancing through the rose window.

“Oh, hi!” I said, breathless with enthusiasm.

He stood with his back to a bookshelf, the jacket I'd seen him wearing both times we'd crossed paths now slung over his shoulder, revealing a wrinkled — but pristinely white — button-up shirt that seemed like it belonged on Jay Gatsby and not this continuous trickster of mine. He was reading, and what I first took to be immersion in whatever the book was, turned out to be just another prank, as the book was upside down in his hands. He still didn't look up, though; didn't even seem to register that I was there.

I waved my hand in front of him. “Hellooo?” But as soon as I started waving, his hand lifted up to copy me. I stopped and lowered mine. So did he. He suddenly looked up from the book and at his hand, bewildered that it was moving of its own accord. We were suddenly trapped in a grainy Chaplin film.

I took a step back until the gulf of the aisle between the bookcase rows stood between us. He put the book down and backed up, too, never meeting my eyes. We judged each other, poker-faced and trying to predict the next move. I pinwheeled my arms gracefully in the air, one at a time before doing a slow twirl. He followed suit, trying to keep a very serious face as we performed these mock-ballet moves, shuffling our feet in complement. I lurched forwards suddenly and he caught on just in time. Danced to the left, now to the right. Twirling, arms up again, into the aisle, and out from the row. We mirror kids were nearly nose to nose, hands up. Who was the original image now? Who called the shots?

We stood there in the silence for what seemed like a decade, daring each other to break the spell. Somewhere close by, I heard what had to be that bird flapping. I twisted away.

“Did you hear that?”

As usual, Li's way of replying was as far from words as he could get. He jumped out of our mirror dance and grabbed my hands, spinning the both of us in dizzy circles and distracting me from any noise, had there been one. I stumbled but he caught me, and we laughed as he helped steady me on my feet.

“You're crazy!” I puffed, far from being genuinely peeved as I gave him a playful nudge. He just smiled and looked down, collecting his jacket where it had fallen and draping it over a nearby chair. He looked a little sheepish.

“What, you didn't think I'd come back?” I teased. He shrugged, but his eyes shone with gratitude. “You must be really bored, hanging around an abandoned library just to mess with me.”

He puffed out his cheeks and rolled his eyes, pivoting on a heel back towards the bookshelf. I followed as he plied a few books free, balancing them on his head, feet feeling for the invisible trapeze line.

“Really bored,” I said, following him close and walking his line, “to take all my pictures just to make sure I came back.” A surprised chuckle rose up as he lost one of his carefully balanced books to the floor. I rushed past him, snatching the last book from his head before he could get a hold of my shirt, and perched it on my head, instead.

“You know,” I started, walking his trapeze backwards now, “I don't think it'd be in my best interest to keep hanging around with a thief. Not good for my reputation, you know how it is.” Hands clasped behind his back, his broad shoulders dipped down, he nodded and took on an air of gentlemanly understanding as he waltzed in my wake. I did a little twirl.

“And I really needed them, so that of course adds insult to injury,” I pressed on, the book on my head wobbling a bit as my conviction started to slacken. He came around me in a slow half circle, appraising my form as he came to the other side, gently taking the book from my head. He clutched it to his chest like he was afraid it would get away, then revealed its cover and the title emblazoned on it in red cursive. He grinned like a clever cat.
Finders Keepers
by R. Stoat, it read. My mouth fell open and I just laughed. He gave a little bow and shelved it again.

“I would have come back anyway, you know,” I said, flicking him hard on the shoulder. “When I make a promise, I keep it.”

He beamed beatifically and pinched my nose before turning away, but I seemed to think there was something like relief in those grey eyes.