For Your Tomorrow (26 page)

In September, Sylvie puts her one-bedroom condo up for sale and begins house-hunting in Toronto, just as she and Jeff planned two months ago. She traipses through many houses—“perfect for a family”—but can’t imagine living in any of them. Nothing seems right. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. After weeks of fruitless looking, she begins to wonder if Toronto is the right place for them.
Should we move? Where do we belong? Who will take care of Ry when I go back to work? Where should he go to school?
She needs to talk to Jeff about all of this, all the decisions she’ll now have to make on her own. Waking up every morning to this reality feels like a life sentence.
Can I do this? What’s the purpose? Jeff, I need your help. Give me a sign
.

R
USS RISES AT SIX
in the early morning darkness. He makes his coffee, and takes it to the rocking chair across from the large portrait of Jeff on the corner table. For an hour, he sits in silence, rocking and remembering, and bracing himself for the day ahead. He puts on his striped shirt and a pair of beige pants that were Jeff’s. He is comforted by cloth against his skin that once touched his son’s. He drives Jeff’s black VW Golf across the Murray MacKay Bridge to Gottingen Street, and parks behind the concrete office
block of Canadian Blood Services. As he takes the elevator up to his fourth floor office, he dons his mask—smiling, level-headed, in control.

He returns home at 5:00 and lounges on the deck with a Guinness. He stares out at the undulating waves, and cries. Darkness descends. In the living room, he lights the seven white candles on the buffet-shrine beneath Jeff’s photo, whispering a name as he sets the match to each one:
Captain Jeff Francis, Captain Matthew Dawe, Master Corporal Colin Bason, Corporal Jordan Anderson, Corporal Cole Bartsch, Private Lane Watkins, the Afghan interpreter
—whose name is still unknown, guarded for his family’s safety.

Marion wakes in the dim dawn and looks through the picture window onto the fog-bound sea. All the familiar moorings have disappeared. A Sea King helicopter from CFB Shearwater whirrs over the water.
They’re looking for the house
, she thinks.
They’re bringing him home. It’s all been a mistake
. Her jeans and sweatshirt, lying on the chair beside the bed, remind her that she has to get up. She will make it through this day, just this one day. She peers into the bathroom mirror and recoils at the alien face reflected there—puffy eyes, dark circles, furrowed frown lines, greying hair that gets shorter and shorter.

She doesn’t know how she can live without Jeff in this world. She cannot imagine the future without him. She borrows books from the library about grieving the loss of a child:
Lament for a Son; A Broken Heart Still Beats: When Your Child Dies; What Forever Means: After the Death of a Child; When the Bough Breaks
 … parents telling stories about what she, herself, is enduring. She’s not alone. It is possible to survive. The books become her companions—they understand, and relieve her isolation. Her friends are all moving forward with their lives, chatting about their kitchen renovations and visits with their children. But she is walking backwards—to a year ago when the world was still inhabited by her living son.

Marion reads, voraciously, books about afterlife communications:
We Don’t Die, The Bridge over the River: After Death Communications of a Young Artist Who Died in World War One, To Dance with Angels, The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved Parents
. They affirm her belief that her son lives on—somewhere, and they set her on a quest to find him. From a list of accredited psychic mediums, she selects a name, the minister of an American spiritualist church. She’s a clairvoyant who attempts to connect with a particular loved one on the other side, but makes no guarantees about who will “come in” during the session. Marion makes an appointment for a one-hour reading over the phone. The week before, she lights a candle and meditates every day, strives to empty her mind and see a white light, a blue aura. She invokes Jeff’s spirit, tells him about the date and time, and pleads with him
—I need to hear from you
.

The scheduled day arrives. She paces the floor all morning until the phone rings at one o’clock. For half an hour, she listens to the medium describe spiritual energies. But she knows that Jeff isn’t present. She receives no personal details about him or their relationship. Still, she continues to wander in the land of death, searching for her child. She contacts another psychic, certified by the Forever Family Foundation—“where science and spirituality work hand-in-hand to bring comfort to the bereaved.” This medium claims she will provide knowledge that your loved one lives on. From the books she has read, Marion knows that a psychic medium should be able to reveal intimate details that only she and Jeff would know about. But during the one-hour
telephone reading, the medium speaks only in generalities. Again, Marion learns nothing.

M
ICA AND
A
ARON
move into their newly built cedar home secluded in the hemlocks by the West River, just outside Antigonish on Nova Scotia’s north coast. They begin new jobs. Aaron manages his father’s company, Steel Mac, a supplier of structural steel products; Mica is an outreach worker with the Women’s Resource Centre. It’s a fresh start. But Mica dwells in the past, with the family that was and never will be again. Her only sibling and best friend has vanished. Her parents have become different people—sad, despairing, suspended in limbo by the thread of a life-line. Every night when she calls, she hears their thin voices, as if they’re talking from some cold distant planet. She feels helpless, not knowing how to bring them back, or how to ease their suffering.

I
T COMES TO
S
YLVIE
one golden October morning. She awakens after an uncommonly restful sleep, the sun filtering through the yellow leaves of the birches outside her bedroom window. The word and the place shine pellucid in her mind.
Ottawa
. Her parents are there to help care for Ry when she returns to work. She’ll be doing three-day rotations with Air Canada, flying out on Tuesday mornings and back on Thursday nights. So she could commute to the Toronto airport with a half-hour flight. She won’t have the anxiety of finding the right caregiver. Ry will bask in the love and attention of his Nanny and Papa. He could go to Centre des Petites, the French daycare that she attended and loved. Back to her hometown—a smaller, kid-friendlier city, the place Jeff resided for fifteen years, longer than anywhere else.
Jeff, is this where we should go? Give me a sign
.

She starts viewing houses in the Carleton University area where her parents live. Within a few days, she discovers the ideal three-bedroom house with a spacious basement play area and a large backyard on a cul-de-sac. It’s only a five-minute walk from a playground where Ry squeals with glee as she pushes him, back and forth, in the baby swing.

F
OR
M
ARION AND
R
USS
, Thanksgiving weekend has always been celebrated at Fanjoy’s Point. As well as the family gathering for dinner, it’s the weekend for closing up the cottage—draining the pipes, cleaning out the fridge and cupboards, stacking lawn furniture in the garage. Marion goes through the motions of the ritualistic dinner: makes the stuffing, cooks the turkey, mashes the potatoes; infuses the cottage with the same savoury scents of Thanksgivings past. But nothing smells or tastes the same. And she does not feel thankful. She simply feels tired, wants the long day to be over; then she can clear up the dishes and go to bed.

She and Russ have always slept in the glassed-in sun porch that overlooks the lake. But lately, Russ has been sleeping in Jeff’s room in the bunkhouse adjoining the garage. He finds it consoling, he says; he feels closer to Jeff out there in his bed, surrounded by his clothes and books, and the board games from Jeff and Mica’s childhood. As she drifts off to sleep, Marion hears his muffled crying through the open window, mingled with the rustling leaves and the waves shushing on the rocks.

In a beam of light, Jeff is sitting on the bed beside her. He wears his khaki T-shirt and camouflage fatigues. She strokes his arms, his face and the top of his shaven head. “Jeff, it really is you,” she says. “You really are here. I can feel you. I have to go get Dad.”