Algoma (30 page)
Silence on the other end of the line.
“He ran out,” Algoma said. “But he’ll be fine. He’ll come back soon. Steel’s out looking for him.” She didn’t sound sure.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Bay said. “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”
Algoma said she was getting out in a couple of hours. “I just want to go home.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Bay said and hung up the phone. She turned off the ringer. Joy was exhausting.
Early evening light spilled in through the windows of Bay’s house. There was no need to turn on a light. She went into her study and sat down at her desk. She picked up the hospital bracelet that was sitting beside her computer and tried to wrap it around her wrist. The ends had been destroyed when it had been ripped off, so that it wouldn’t stay on.
While Bay did not believe in good luck, she believed in bad luck. Superstitious, she thought it a mistake to keep a hospital bracelet, yet she’d held onto this one after it had come in the mail the week before. She wondered what the mail carrier had thought when she’d delivered it. Port had kept both bracelets she’d “earned” in recent years from the two concussions she’d had: one from skiing, the other from one too many drinks at a house party paired with an unforgiving oak window sill. Despite Bay’s constant insistence that Port throw them away, she kept them. They were souvenirs from a trip where she had been able to forget the bad details.
“A collection only grows,” Bay had warned her sister.
Port had rolled her eyes.
Bay ran a finger over the laser-printed details on the plastic bracelet: G. Beaudoin. There was also some sort of hospital identification number. She turned her computer on and searched for hospitals in Toronto and called every one she could find. Most of the operators were reluctant, bound by privacy laws, they said, and were unable to tell her anything. Finally, someone let slip that, yes, they’d had a patient by that name, and yes, he had been discharged, but the operator had stopped short of telling her why he had been hospitalized in the first place.
“Are you his wife?” the operator asked.
The line crackled. Bay stalled.
“Hello. I said, Ma’am, are you his wife?”
Bay pressed the receiver button to end the call, but continued to hold the earpiece tightly in her hand. She listened to the dull hum of the dial tone, as if it would reveal some mystery to her. If Gaetan had been discharged, he had to be okay. She examined the bracelet further to see if it would give her a sign, but there was nothing. What she did know, however, was that the bracelet did not belong to her.
Using a Sharpie, she blacked out her address. For good measure, she used a ballpoint pen to scribble circles over top, confusing the impressions so that it was unreadable, untraceable. Knowing that she had a few hours before Algoma was released from the hospital, she took the bracelet and got into her car.
On arriving on Algoma’s street, Bay did a slow roll-by to ensure no one was house sitting, but the driveway was empty, the curtains drawn. Even from a distance, she could see that the property was in disrepair: the grass overgrown, broken tree branches on the lawn, the asphalt at the end of the driveway crumbling like old bread. How much longer could her sister hold it all together when everything was falling apart so quickly?
Bay parked her car several houses down. It took her ten minutes before she convinced herself to get out of the car and ten more to cross the short distance to her sister’s home. The wooden slats of the front porch creaked as she walked over to the mailbox. She dropped the hospital bracelet into it and tried to close the lid, but it was jammed and refused to move. Using both hands, she tried to force the lid shut. A bolt snapped and the lid slammed down.
“Fucking hell,” she choked and sucked on her sliced palm.
Two thick streams of syrupy blood ran down her forearm, collecting in the soft bend of her elbow. Patches of the limestone-coloured silk blouse she wore turned dark red, almost black. She held her hand in front of her and looked at the messy flap of skin, the growing blood stains on her shirt. Her shoulders grew limp, her mouth slack. She was tired.
Bay stripped off her blouse and wrapped it around her wounded hand. Dressed in her skirt and bra, she sat down on the porch in plain view of the neighbourhood. She leaned her shoulder against one of the support beams and let her legs dangle above the marigolds as she waited for her sister to return home.
______________
7:18 p.m. 19°C. Wind NW, strong.
Running shoe caught between two rocks down river.
His cheek pressed into cool, wet dirt, Ferd’s eyes fluttered open. A curious grackle walked back and forth in front of his face, its pale yellow eyes staring back at him. The bird’s feathers were iridescent, oil on black asphalt. It was the closest Ferd had ever been to a live grackle. If he reached out, he could probably touch its sharp, black beak, its long tail. When he sat up, the bird let out a noise like a rusty hinge and flew into the pine trees that lined the riverbank.
Ferd looked around. To the West, the sun was almost behind the trees, and to the East, he could see the train bridge. From where he sat, the bridge’s iron truss looked unfinished, a house awaiting walls. A beginning instead of an ending. And down by the water, he saw it. What he’d lunged after so hungrily was caught in limbo in the waves several feet from shore. A large, black garbage bag. Amorphous, the empty bag took new shape with each wave.
In that moment, Ferd knew that Leo was not coming back. He never had been. Cold and wet, his body aching, Ferd stood up and walked barefoot along the riverbank. He stripped off his wet T-shirt and tossed it into the water. The grackle flew down from the trees and landed behind Ferd, following him as he looked for the opening in the woods that would allow him to find his mother and sister.
______________
8:32 p.m. 18°C. Wind NW.
Yellow light from the hallway cutting into the darkened hospital room.
A lifetime of waiting was over. In her daughter’s face, Algoma saw a glimpse of her own. What her mother could not give her, what no one could provide, she had created. The baby’s weight against her chest felt like an anchor.
She lifted her head to acknowledge the nurse who had quietly entered the room.
“Your ride is here,” the nurse said. “Let’s get you ready. It’s time to go home.”
Algoma could hear Steel and Ferd talking in the hallway.
The nurse carefully lifted the baby from her chest. “I’ll get this one ready if you can take care of yourself.”
Algoma sat up and slowly swung her bare legs over the side of the bed. She remained still for a moment, listening to the sounds of the hospital. The hum of wheelchairs, the soft snores of the new mother in the bed beside hers, the sound of her family’s voices in the hallway. The laughter. When the nurse took the baby out of the room, Algoma lay back down on the bed and closed her eyes. One more minute, she thought. She imagined the roads she would drive down to take her daughter home, every stop and turn. She saw each of her sisters’ homes, the plot where her parents were buried, The Shop. Her small planet. Drifting off, the road turned into a river—glossy and black as a crow’s wing—and on it, a freighter moving slowly from port to port. A ship bound for better things.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you
to Stephanie Domet for her editorial insight and to Nic Boshart, Megan Fildes, Robbie MacGregor, Julia Horel-O’Brien, Chloe Vice, and everyone at Invisible Publishing for incredible enthusiasm, hard work, and vision.
For invaluable advice, for guidance
: Samantha Haywood.
For lending her skills to the manuscript early on:
Becky Toyne.
For conversation, for research, for sharing your knowledge:
Eugenia Catroppa, Ben Gibson, Kelvin Kong, Andy Willick, and Julie Wilson.
For friendship unfailing, for couches, for listening, for meals and take-out, for late-night walks, for everything, always:
Stacey May Fowles, Chris Gramlich, Shawn Levis, Stefanie Stevanovich, and Natalie Zina Walschots.
For energy, for love, for feedback at every stage, for BBQ, for fishing in the little green boat, for 5:00 a.m. walks into woods and swamp:
My parents, Debbie and Réal Couture.
For a lifetime of stories, for good company, for endless games of cards and Western movies:
Joseph Couture and Simone Belanger, Rudy Couture, Liette Couture and Richard Trudeau, Guy Couture and Giselle Perron, and Garnet and Kathy Deneau.
For influence that will never be forgotten:
Dr. John Ditsky.
For the boy from Algoma District, for being my anchor for the past twelve years, for always being there. I’ll miss you always:
David Gold.
For reading and re-reading every word several times, for thoughtful notes and late-night correspondence, for generous encouragement, for friendship I’m lucky to have:
Carolyn Black.
______________
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Text copyright © Dani Couture, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any method, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The narrative in no way reflects an opinion, positive or negative, about the Algoma Central Corporation, its products or employees.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Couture, Dani, 1978-
Algoma / Dani Couture.
ISBN 978-1-926743-18-9
Issued also in Print format.
Print Versioun ISBN 978-1-926743-14-1
I. Title.
PS8605.O92A64 2011 C813’.6 C2011-905769-7
Cover & Interior design by Megan Fildes
EPUB design by Nic Boshart
Typeset in Laurentian & Gibson
Special thanks to type designer Rod McDonald
Printed and bound in Canada
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www.invisiblepublishing.com
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