The Opening Sky (30 page)

Aiden sinks into a different plane of sleep. She hears his breathing change and she’s hit with a new understanding, a most painful thought: that the way she felt and acted when she wandered into that party on the river was entirely ordinary. She was like somebody out of
Desperate Housewives
. There was nothing profound about it, just her glimpsing the possibility that all she was – all the energy and life and longing (which she sees now like the water in those thin silver cups, fresh and cold, that you get in a Thai restaurant) – that all of that would just dribble away and vanish into the dusty ground.

A
fter Sylvie’s fed the baby, somebody thumps on the front wall of the cabin. A skinny guy in a Goldeyes cap grins in the doorway. “Sylvie, hey!” He steps into the cabin hauling a twelve of Kokanee. She’s friendly in a cautious way because she doesn’t have a clue who he is. He has a friend with him, a large older man in a plaid shirt.

The baby’s in her car seat on the table, awake and in her contented phase. The skinny guy spies her. “Hey, Sylvie!” he shouts. “What the fuck? You been busy!” He sets the beer on the table and walks around, looking at the baby from all angles. “Cute. Boy or girl?”

They pull out chairs and sit down. “Gilles,” the guy says to his friend, “give the lady a beer,” and they all crack cans and lift them over the baby. “Cheers,” Sylvie says. “Go, Jets!” says the skinny guy, and Gilles lifts his can silently. He has a broad chest and a kind, alert face, like a woodcutter in a fairy tale. He’s taken off his cap and hooked it onto his kneecap, and his thick grey hair is dented in a line all around his big head.

Noah’s at the station doing his checks. “We’ll talk when I get back, okay?” he said when he was leaving, but he’s been gone more than an hour. This is the first beer Sylvie’s had in six months, and it tastes fantastic. She asks how the summer’s going. “Work sucks,” the skinny guy says. “I’d rather be on EI.” He was on EI all winter and he got to go ice fishing every day after freeze-up. And he went to Fargo for a Garth Brooks concert and ended up sleeping in his truck. In February. “No shit,” Sylvie says.

Noah comes in, looking unimpressed to see them here.

“Hey, Burb!” Sylvie’s new best friend yells. “You been busy.” He raises his can in Noah’s direction.

“You betcha,” Noah says. He reaches for a beer.

Tyrone
, Sylvie thinks. She met him when she was here last summer. They played horseshoes, and he was wearing the same T-shirt:
DON
’
T HUNT WHAT YOU CAN
’
T KILL
.

“What’s with the shorts?” Tyrone says. “It’s fuckin’ cold! And they try to say it’s getting warmer. They must think we’re stupid.”

Noah ignores him. He pulls out the fourth chair and sits down. Tyrone goes back to studying the baby, who is sucking on a plastic pot scraper from the kitchen drawer.

The cabin fills with the yellowish grey of daytime darkness. Rain starts to come down, hard. “Shit,” Noah says. He gets up and runs outside.

Tyrone hands Sylvie another beer. The shutters on the front of the cabin drop with a bang and the darkness deepens. Noah comes back in and takes his chair again; she can sense the damp coming off him. They sit and listen to the rain, the four of them around the little square table the way Sylvie’s nana used to sit with her bridge friends. The wind is all from the lake, so Noah has lowered only the front shutters. On either side of them rain falls like a heavy curtain, they can hear it pounding wetly on the ground.

The baby gleams in her white onesie, as if all the light in the dim room is coming from her. Gilles’s big face fills with pleasure. He leans over and puts out an index finger, and she wraps her fingers around it and tries to pull it to her mouth. Gilles grins silently and shakes her tiny fist.

Tyrone has shifted from checking out the baby to checking out Sylvie. She takes a long pull on her beer and swings her legs up to the arm of the couch, which is in her corner. She’s had to change because the baby puked on her favourite top, but this one is fine, cut low over her breasts – her new, spectacular breasts. The beer is amazing; she feels herself coming back with every swallow. Her parents have been puritans about her having a drink, but alcohol is actually good for nursing mothers, it makes their milk flow.

And here she is at the lake with the guy they call Burb, who almost glows with the intelligence he brings into this tiny cabin. She’s amazed by him, as if she’s seeing him for the first time, and she longs to know him, to penetrate the secret of his composure. How neat he is – his long cyclist’s leg muscles and his T-shirt that looks as though it’s been ironed. His fingernails on the beer can clean and trimmed. He looks after himself as a matter of course.
He believes that rules have a purpose; he doesn’t see them as a challenge or an attack on his freedom. They are part of the systematic way things work. He’s been like this since he was little. When he showed her the mimosa plant, he didn’t feel awe at the way it curled its leaves up over your finger. From what she can remember, he knew what was happening, based on plant chemistry. Possibly hydraulics were involved, like a male erection. And he was
seven
. Think what an amazing scientist he will be! But, she thinks, he is somebody who can be broadsided, because there will always be phenomena outside what your systems predict.

Pheno-mena
. She takes a long pull on her beer. Phena Mina.

“So, you two go to school together?” Tyrone is looking at Noah.

“No, we met last summer.”

“Where’d ya meet?”

“At Zach’s cottage.”

“Well, actually,” Sylvie says to Tyrone, “Noah and I were best friends when we were little. We played together all the time. I almost killed him once. We were at the park, we were swinging really high on these huge swings, and I dared him to jump off. He did it, and the swing came up and smashed him in the face.”

He swivels his head and looks at her out of that exact face.

“What,” she says. “You don’t remember?”

“I had a concussion. I got my nose broken. Of course I remember. I just didn’t remember it was you.”

“Who did you think it was?”

“I don’t know … that kid who lived behind the store.” He’s just pretending, because he’s mad at her. He remembers
everything
.

The baby lies with the pot scraper on her chest. They sit with their eyes fixed on her and listen to the rain. She’s getting sleepy. Her eyelids start to slide.

“Hey,” Tyrone says. “Your kid looks drunk.”

Noah’s laptop is on the counter behind him. He reaches for it and pulls it down to his lap. He opens a spreadsheet and starts entering data from a little notebook, stroking and tapping the touch pad expertly.

“Hey, Burb,” Tyrone says. “Don’t you watch the news? You’re not supposed to sit with a laptop on your junk. It’s bad for you – you’re gonna fry your sperm. Ha! Guess it doesn’t matter now. Your boys already did their swimming. Your boys already won the goddamn Olympics!”

Noah closes the laptop and puts it on the table. He gets up and goes over to the counter, where his iPod is docked. The clanging of Sister Machine Gun fills the cabin. “Fuck, Burb,” Tyrone says. “You trying to drive us out with that shit? You don’t got no Garth Brooks?” Thunder rumbles over the music. Gilles crushes his beer can and opens another.

Noah sits back at the table. His face is absolutely blank.

“So,” Sylvie says, opening herself another beer. “What’s the ‘Burb’ all about?”

“You can probably figure it out,” Noah says.

It seems the rain has mostly stopped. Tyrone stands up. “Well, we’ll leave you two lovebirds to it,” he says. “We’re gonna go see what Wheeler’s up to. You can keep the cans. I owe you anyways.”

The screen door slams. This startles the baby, who slept through Sister Machine Gun but now starts to fuss. Noah goes to the counter and turns off his iPod. It’s colder than ever, and Sylvie puts on her hoodie and sits cross-legged on the couch.

Noah walks restlessly around the cabin. “What’s that smell?”

She doesn’t answer. He finally discovers the diaper from home that she dropped by the couch earlier. He doesn’t say a word, just puts a plastic bag over his hand, picks up the diaper the way you pick up dog poop, and heads for the door.

“By the way,” Sylvie calls as the door slams, “I’m starving.”

In a minute he comes back in and goes to the sink to wash his hands. “I’ll get us some pizza,” he says. The grocery store at the end of the lane has takeout. He puts on his cap and sets off, still in his T-shirt and shorts.

The baby is winding up to throw a real fit. Sylvie picks her up and goes to the screen door and watches Noah make his way down the cabin line, head straight up in spite of the wind and the rain. It’s only two weeks since she saw him in the city, but he seems taller. He
is
taller, she realizes with a pang – he’s still growing.

He walks by cabin two without once looking to the side. Her old self is in cabin two, lying on the bed slim and naked and propped up on one elbow, her hair falling over her face and her whole body rimed with sweat. The room is full of afternoon sun and Noah is naked too, sitting on the edge of the bed gazing at her. They’re not talking; they’re both stunned by what just happened on the saggy cabin mattress.

She was hungry that night. When they got up, she made black bean dip, which they ate with taco chips. Noah pan-fried some pickerel. They had imperial cookies from the lake bakery – it was a three-course meal – and they lit a candle, sticking it on a saucer with melted wax.

The baby has settled down by the time Noah gets back. They turn on the lights and sit on the couch, picking orange coins of stinking pepperoni off a convenience-store pizza, not talking. The couch is up against two big windows, and Sylvie feels the cool post-rain air on the back of her neck.

When the last soggy piece is finished, Noah digs out a deck of cards and asks Sylvie politely if she would like to play rummy. She decides not to answer, but when he deals her a hand, she picks it
up. They use the couch between them as a table. He plays intently, going for the discard pile every chance he gets. He never lays down, so there’s nothing for Sylvie to build on. His goal is to cash out big and stick her with a handful of points. And he does. After three hands the score is Noah 345, Sylvie minus 90. This is the conversation he promised her.

He has an open beer on the floor beside him, but Sylvie has stopped drinking. The booze in her system feels like a strong current she has to swim against. She looks around the cabin, not bothering to sort her hand. The baby drops her pot scraper and tips her head to the side with a sharp look that is exactly like Noah. He doesn’t give any sign that he sees it – he’s too intent on sorting the hundreds of cards in his hand into tiers, searching for a discard so he can go out.

Watching him, she finally gets it, the bitter truth this whole day has been trying to teach her: Noah is an android. This explains everything. How he’s never cold, how focused he is on the task at hand. His flat voice and the stiff way he moves, the impersonal look in his eyes. He’s an android, no doubt about it. She sits with her unsorted cards in hand, her chest squeezing and her eyes burning. The question is, did he just turn into one because of everything that’s happened, or has he always been one?

“Excuse me,” she says. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

The bathroom is over-lit and has the sort of fake flush toilet you can’t put toilet paper down. Noah has burned incense by the sink. She puts her finger to the little cone and watches it crumble into ash. Then she opens the tin medicine cabinet. Everything is lined up and spotless. His razor and his shaving cream. His sunscreen and his inhaler. His toothbrush and toothpaste – he has one of those keys so he can squeeze his toothpaste methodically, without waste. On the top shelf, which she can’t see without standing on
tiptoes, is a box of Band-Aids. And in the corner, behind the Band-Aids, a stash of condoms. Sylvie crinkles one of the envelopes and feels the perfect flexible ring inside.

The baby is fussing when she comes out. Sylvie sits on the couch and ignores her until Noah finally picks her up. He walks methodically around the perimeter of the cabin, bouncing her up and down, moving her from one shoulder to the other. But she won’t settle and Sylvie has to take her. While she sits on the couch and nurses, Noah goes out to do his midnight checks. When he comes back, he lies on the bed with his laptop. He’s holding it conscientiously on one thigh, she notes, not on his crotch.

After the baby is burped and changed and sleeping in the portable bassinette, Sylvie stretches out beside him and he pulls up a movie he’s downloaded. He seems to be totally engrossed in it, a black-and-white film about workers in a chemical factory gradually turning into lizards. They’re at the stage of losing their ears; within another minute they’ll have nothing but holes on the sides of their heads.

“Why are you watching this?” she asks.

“It’s a cult classic,” he says.

They lie fully dressed on the quilt, their heads propped up by pillows that smell of mothballs. He’s wearing his five-toe rubber sandals – he looks like he’s starting to develop his own exoskeleton. Sylvie doesn’t even pretend to be watching the movie. The bare overhead light is still on and she has to close her eyes against it. Why do people ever talk? she thinks. Her legs are strangely heavy. She feels herself sinking into the bed as if it’s an air mattress deflating and there’s nothing she can do to keep herself afloat.

A loon wakes her and she drifts on the oscillating sound, feeling a deep sense of recognition and relief at being at the lake. It’s
stopped raining. The waves and the wind in the trees are all one sound. She’s alone on the bed – Noah has moved to the couch. From somewhere below comes whimpering. Sylvie’s jeans are cutting into her thighs; she gets out of bed and wiggles out of them and drops them on the floor. She has to pee badly. When she gets back from the bathroom, she stands at the end of the couch for a minute. Noah is on his side, still wearing his shorts. His long, strong legs are scissored – likely he’s cold. He had a blanket but it’s slid off. She sees herself nudging him onto his back, straddling him as he stirs awake and opens his arms for her. Lying over him, dipping in low to find his mouth, her new body moving with all its old joy.