A Song for Nettie Johnson (28 page)

“Not yet. But soon he will. Go to sleep now. Every-thing’s all right.”

Those are her mother’s words. That’s what she always says.

“Everything’s all right.”

In the morning,
her mother stands at the kitchen counter, fitting a pleated filter into the coffee maker. She’s wearing a purple housecoat. Her hair is uncombed.

Emily, in blue jeans, her hair brushed into one long sandy braid behind her back, pulls a chair out from the table, sits down, picks up the cereal box, examines the cartoon on the side of the box. Today’s Saturday; there’s no rush.

“So,” she says, “will you drive us to the mall?”

Her mother doesn’t answer. She’s gazing into some private vision inside the coffee pot.

“You said you’d drive me and Hannah Shimizu to the mall to watch the dolphins.”

Her mother stares at the bubbles rising in the plastic tube of the coffee maker, combs her tangled hair with her fingers, covers a yawn with the back of her hand.

“Well? Will you? Our report’s due on the fifteenth. We’ve hardly gotten started. Mr. Shimizu will bring us back. So will you?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Emily shakes cornflakes from the white box into a blue bowl. “He didn’t come home, did he,” she says. It’s not a question, but in her mind’s eye she sees her father stumble into the house, slam against a chair. She pours milk over the yellow flakes.

“Don’t worry so much,” her mother says. Her neck reddens. Stiff muscles show beneath her skin. “Every-thing’s going to be fine.”

At 1:30 Emily and Hannah
are at the West Edmonton Mall at the dolphin pool. They’ve paid their dollar and are sitting in the miniature grandstand that curves around one side. They’re surrounded by noisy children, parents, grandparents, quiet lovers. On the mall’s upper level, Saturday shoppers crowd behind a thick plastic railing and gaze down on the water, restless for the show to start. On the green bridge spanning the pool’s far end, more shoppers gather. They’re waiting for the trainer to fling open the door of his secret room beside the water, to run out onto the concrete shore and sound the whistle that will call forth the dolphins.

In front of them, through the pool’s transparent wall, they see the quiet forms move slowly in the deep, and all around the moving forms, beams of yellow light shimmering, slim corridors of light flickering in the blue jade water.

Suddenly it’s time. Up they leap in perfect symmetry, four dolphins arched above the pool, grey backs glistening. Then down, head first into the waves. They swim in one long smooth and flowing circle. And swiftly up higher, higher still. Crystal sparks rise after them and fall glittering to the surface. For a moment they’re suspended in mid-air, beaks straight up, pointing to the steel and plastic sky high above.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the trainer calls. “Meet our four Atlantic Bottlenose dolphins, here to play, have fun, show you their tricks.”

He throws an orange ball into the water. In one slippery flash the dolphin has it on the end of his beak, is pushing it forward, swiftly, so smoothly, holding it steady with his snout. He flicks it off, twists, grabs it with his flippers and around and around the pool he goes, bouncing it up and down and up again.

“Look at him look at him look at him go. See him dribble that ball down the court. He’s heading for the basket,” the trainer yells.

Everyone claps and someone shouts, “Oh oh see that dolphin go.” The ball slips, the dolphin swirls around, nips it with his beak, and pushes it toward the basket sitting on the edge of the pool. He eyes the hoop, flips the ball with his snout and misses. On the second shot the ball circles the rim around and around, “Come on come on,” and falls just outside of it. “Oh oh isn’t that too bad.” But on the third try the ball sails over the rim and plunks into the bucket. The crowd cheers. Someone whistles.

“Did you see that?” Hannah asks.

“My goodness,” Emily says.

“A slam dunk!” the trainer yells.

And the old woman in red boots says, “My, what these dolphins can’t do.”

Emily stays awhile
at Hannah’s house. She and Hannah are standing at the kitchen counter spreading peanut butter on slices of white bread. They’re swirling the mixture into hills and valleys on each slice, letting broken pieces of nuts emerge like jagged stones on the brown surface. They laugh at their clever designs.

Hannah’s mother is also at the counter, at the far end. She’s stirring rice in a large bowl. One arm circles the bowl, holds it tight against her chest. With the other she mixes the rice. The counter is too high for her. Her arm sticks straight out from her shoulder, bent at the elbow like the stiff wing of a bird. She stops stirring, sprinkles vinegar over the mass, stirs again, then with her hand fans the mixture until it glistens. She does this over and over. She’s making sushi for a family outing tomorrow at the Devonian Gardens.

Mr. Shimizu is sitting at the kitchen table in the centre of the room. He’s reading the paper and drinking coffee from a thick mug. The Devonian Gardens is his idea; he’s a botanist. He’s wearing sweatpants and an old sweater. Sits easy, seems to feel at home here, to like it here, in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading, not saying much of anything. Emily notices these things. Upstairs, Hannah’s brother and his friend whoop and thump at some game or other.

Hannah leans toward Emily and says in a low voice, “My parents don’t know anything about dolphins.”

“Mine neither,” Emily says. “Well, I’ve told my dad one or two things.”

Suddenly Hannah turns and moves to the refrigerator across the room. She moves in an arc, around her father sitting at the table. She stands with her back against the fridge, her hair sharply black against the white door.

“I would like your attention,” she says. She stands straight, her hands resting on her narrow hips. She stands like Mr. Murray, the sixth grade science teacher.

“Today I will teach you about dolphins,” she says.

Her father looks up from the table. “A lesson on Saturday?” But his eyes smile. Her mother looks up too, but she doesn’t stop working the rice.

“We recognize the intelligence of dolphins by what they do,” Hannah says. “One. They make friends. That’s important. Two. They play and have fun. Not like some people I know – I won’t mention names. Three. They take good care of their children. You may want to think about that for awhile.” Mr. Shimizu makes a face at Hannah, but he’s enjoying the speech, Emily can tell. “Four,” Hannah continues, “they come to the aid of other dolphins in their time of need. They’ve even been known to help creatures not of their own species. Like humans. There’s another, but I can’t remember.”

“They mourn the death of loved ones,” Emily says.

“Yes,” Hannah says. “They feel sorrow.” She looks intently at her father, then at her mother. “In conclusion, these are the signs of intelligence.”

Mr. Shimizu claps. Mrs. Shimizu stops stirring and wipes her forehead with the palm of her hand.

“I know something about dolphins,” she says.

“What,” Hannah says. “What do you know?”

“In winter, in the north, in Hokkaido, Ainu fishermen stand on the shore and look out to the sea. The water’s cold and black, and they stand there on the rocks and call out.
‘Iruka kujira,’
they say.”

“What’s that?” Hannah asks.

“And sometimes,” her mother continues, “these fishermen can see one of them way out there, alone, lost, left by the others, jumping up and down like they do, in that icy water.”

“What does it mean,
iruka kujira?”
Hannah asks again, but her mother still doesn’t answer. Hannah goes to her, leans her chin on her mother’s shoulder, speaks loudly into her ear.
“Mother.
You can’t just not tell us. What does it mean?”

“It means dolphin,” her mother says. “Dolphin whale.”

“That’s it? That’s all it means?” Hannah says.

But her mother doesn’t answer. She’s standing alone on a rock somewhere in Japan, looking out.

Hannah’s room
is full of stuff – shelves of dolls, games, furry animals; a dressing table with photographs on it and little bottles of perfume, a long-handled mirror, a crystal bell. Hannah clears a space on the dresser. Emily puts the plate of bread down. She picks up an old brown photograph in a silver lace frame.

“It’s my grandfather,” Hannah says. “My mother’s father.”

“He looks young,”

“He
was
young.” She turns on the red lamp suspended over her pine Ikea desk. “He died of leukemia.”

“Really,” Emily says.

“After the bomb. A long time after. He lived in Nagasaki.” She adjusts the light to shine closer to the clippings and coil notebooks that litter the desktop.

“Some blew up, some burned up, some just blistered all over. My grandfather got leukemia. Where do you want to sit, on the bed or on the chair?”

Emily sits cross-legged in the middle of the bed, on a pink quilt, ruffled and rippling like a small sea, Hannah on the chair by the desk. “I’m glad this war is over,” Emily says. The War in the Persian Gulf ended only short weeks before. “I don’t think it did much good.”

“Not for people anyway,” Hannah says.

“Especially not for little children.”

“Mothers either for that matter.”

“Are there dolphins in the Persian Gulf?”

“I guess.”

Hannah leans forward and raises her head.
“Iruka kujira,”
she calls. She reaches to the dresser for a slice of bread. “I told you, didn’t I? My mother knows nothing about dolphins.”

Emily takes
the long way home, following the Mill Woods ravine. The evening sky is overcast but strangely bright. A harsh light. It has an edge to it, like tin. It lies sharp on stones and dirt, on mouldy scraps of paper stuck on branches, on dead leaves packed in ditches. Scattered flakes of snow drizzle down on her. She buries herself in her jacket.

She thinks of the Shimizus at the Devonian Gardens tomorrow. She sees them walk among the trees and shrubs, stop to look at branches, to examine small buds. They comment, ask questions, make jokes. They don’t hurry. Then she sees them sitting on a bench outside. They pass around the box of sushi and everyone takes and eats. Mrs. Shimizu pours tea from a tall thermos into small cups without handles. They hold the cups in both hands, their hands like bowls. And everyone’s there, not somewhere else. They take time, don’t always look at their watches. Some families are like that.

When she gets home,
the car is not in the driveway. Her mother must still be shopping. She walks around to the back, digs in her pocket for the key, but the door is unlocked. She pushes it open and climbs the four steps into the back hall. The light is on. She removes her jacket, hangs it in the hall closet, and opens the door to the kitchen. She stops. Her breath freezes in her chest.

Her father is sitting at the kitchen table.

He sits rigid, chin on chest, one arm stretched over the formica top, one hand holding an empty glass. Nothing else is on the table, just one thick empty glass. Emily knows that somewhere in the house – on a ledge in the basement, behind some books in the bookcase, on a closet shelf – his bottles are hidden. She knows her mother will find them, will gather them up in green plastic bags and carry them to the alley. She will do this at night when no one can see her.

Emily watches her father. Maybe if she moves behind him lightly, ever so softly, as quiet as a robin’s feather, her feet hardly touching the floor, she can get to the corridor and to her bedroom at the end of it, without his notice.

“Hold it. Just hold it right there.”

He turns in his chair and, barely lifting his head, raises his eyes and looks at her. His face is wrinkled, the whites of his eyes lined with pink threads. He’s wearing a brown bathrobe, open at the neck, and his neck is very thin.

“No greeting? No salutation?”

“Hi, Dad,” Emily says.

“Hi, Dad? Is that it? Hi, Dad? I’m your father, remember. Honour your father, don’t forget. Sneaking behind me, creeping like a scared caterpillar.” His Adam’s apple swims and bulges under the loose skin of his neck. He leans back in the chair. Emily shifts slightly.

“Hold it.”

She breathes in thin strips of air.

“What’s going on? Where’s your mother? Who’s in charge around here anyway?”

Emily shrugs. He lets go of the glass. It sits alone in the centre of the table. “Hey.” He raises his hand to her, a limp benediction. “Can you answer the questions of eternal life?”

She’s stuck. She knows her father’s drinking pattern: first religion and poetry, then anger, more like rage, finally a whimpering self-pity. The last is worst.

“Where did you come from? Why are you here? Where are you going?” He says the words slowly, overarticulates. He eyes her slyly. “Well? Answer me.”

“I’ve been to the dolphin show,” she says, “and I live here.”

“Damn,” he says. “I forgot about that. Oh, I
am
sorry,
very very
sorry. Truly I am. I do repent.”