Falling (26 page)

Raymond had made grilled cheese sandwiches that
day. He’d chopped wood and piled some in the mud room, in neat stacks, the way he always did. He’d put kindling there too. He was thinking of how much Cecily liked fires, though she hadn’t been out of their room in more than a week. It was possible she’d let him carry her down to the chair by the fire.

The home-care nurse paid a visit just before ten o’clock in the morning; she checked Cecily and then came down to the kitchen. He offered her coffee, but she refused politely. She’d covered the grey in her hair with an auburn dye, though it was plain that her hair had lost its colour underneath. She was getting over a bit of a cough. Her name was Mary Lynn, and she was at least fifty pounds overweight, and getting bigger, even though she went to Weight Watchers religiously and lived on iceberg lettuce and celery and cherry tomatoes, and never ate a thing after six at night. For the love of God, she’d said. Iceberg lettuce and celery and cherry tomatoes. How could a person
not
lose weight?

She filled out a form on the kitchen counter. You’ll want to watch her closely today.

She’s worse, isn’t she?

Mary Lynn didn’t lift her eyes to meet his gaze. It’ll be soon.

How soon?

It might be hours, or a day – it might be longer. Sometimes people hang on for a few days. Do you want me to stay for a bit?

No. It’ll be all right.

She collected her things and put on her winter boots, which she wore even though it was spring. The door closed behind her with a decisive sound. He watched her through the window in the mud room; she lit a cigarette and stood
in the driveway by her car, smoking. He went back into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, fatigue coming over him in a wave. He’d spent too many nights without a decent sleep, thinking Cecily would die, especially now that she was not being hydrated, now that they weren’t doing anything for her constipation. They were just keeping her comfortable. That’s how they put it. But Raymond still tried to give her water with a sponge. He couldn’t bear to think of Cecily dying of thirst.

Finally he heard Mary Lynn’s car – she had some problem with the starter – and waited until he couldn’t hear it any more. He switched off the kettle. He didn’t want tea. No, he’d make a fire instead, and then he’d bring Cecily down and warm her in front of it. He made the fire, washed his hands, and went upstairs, slowly, dreading what he’d find, though surely not much could change in a half-hour. Sometime he would climb these stairs and he would find her dead.

He unhooked the tube that fed morphine into a butterfly on her arm and took her out of her bed, though she wasn’t aware of it, and, cradling her in his arms, went downstairs to the fire he’d made. He sat in the armchair with her body in his lap, and he cried. She had no idea he was crying. Some of his tears fell on her neck and he wiped them away. She was light as a cat against him. If she slept, perhaps she didn’t feel pain, or maybe pain went through the transparency of sleep so that it was always there. He didn’t know. He could smell the burning wood in the fireplace; it crackled occasionally, and once it snapped quite loudly, but nothing bothered her. She breathed noisily. Though he’d put balm on her lips, they were cracked
and dry. He held her body close to him and her pale feet, swollen, hung down as if they didn’t belong to her. He studied her arches, the curved line of each instep. There was a smell of wood burning. There was a smell of dying, though it was probably something he imagined. He knew it was something he imagined.

There was also a scent of almond soap. A neighbour had brought over a basket of soaps – watermelon, almond, and apple spice – and he’d chosen the almond. He’d washed her that morning. He’d started with her face and worked his way down her body. Her thin arms, her forearms, her wrists. Her stomach with the sharp pelvic bones on either side, and her thighs, legs, and ankles. He did all of this gently, with a basin of warm water and a washcloth, and then he towelled dry each part of her before moving on to the next part. He rubbed lotion into her dry skin after he was finished.

When the fire died down he took her upstairs and put her back on the bed, covering her up as quietly as he could. Her eyes flew open and she looked at him, without seeing anything. Something lodged itself within him, because it was her look, and yet it was not her look. It was the look of death. Her eyes seemed darker than they’d ever been. They bored through to the realm of death, which she could see and he could not.

She died at 5:22 in the afternoon. Perhaps it had been 5:20, because he hadn’t looked at his watch until after he closed her mouth. There was one dragging, rattling breath from her, as if she’d been emptied out inside. Her mouth was open, and it made him afraid, because now there was darkness within her mouth, and it was deep and black.
There was the sound of a crow, and then another crow. He reached to close her mouth, but his hand trembled. There was no way to shut out the brazen noise of the crows. He tried to think of what he ought to do next, and he glanced at his watch, trying to figure out the time. He couldn’t read the little golden hands on the face of his watch: the minute hand and the hour hand. What were they trying to tell him? That he was alone. He sat on the bed, looking out the window. All that was left was a blue rectangle of sky, and below, where he could not see them, were the pink tulips Cecily had planted around the birch tree.

What happened with your sister was an accident. Raymond cleared his throat. It was a terrible thing, an accident – it wasn’t your fault.

It was my fault.

You didn’t turn that
ATV
on. She turned it on. She took it onto the beach. She happened to have an accident.

Damian shrugged.

Here, Raymond said, going to Damian and taking him by the wrist. He opened the door and they both felt the cutting wind, though it was quite warm. Raymond stepped through the door, holding Damian’s wrist. He was old, but he was strong. He took Damian down the steps, across the sand.

It reminded him of leading Peter by the hand when he was a boy. When had he let go of him? He could see the child, excitedly bending to scoop up handfuls of sand and getting up, hooting, to skip beside him. Raymond had been at the centre of his son’s universe. Raymond, from the German, meaning protector. Meaning guardian.

Damian twisted his wrist lightly out of Raymond’s grasp and walked beside him.

They came to a shallow ditch where a stream of water intersected the beach. It didn’t look like the kind of place where someone could die.

When Damian found her she was face down in the water. Her hair was wet, but he could see the dark strands and the paler ones, floating out from her body in long, serpentine strands. Her body was splayed under the machine. Damian sloshed into the shallow stream toward her, breathing hard from running. He couldn’t lift the
ATV
, and he didn’t try. He managed to turn Lisa’s head with his clumsy hands, raising it out of the stream. Water dribbled from her mouth. He felt the weight of her head as he held her, as he cleared her mouth, and breathed into it.

It wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.

Time went backward. Lisa’s face came out of the stream, blind with surprise. Water streamed away from her as she was drawn up swiftly, loose as a rag doll, into the seat of the four-wheeler. It jerked and righted itself, shuddering, and jolted into motion, taking her back across the sand. It shone in the light.

She was withdrawn as if something was pulling the four-wheeler with a magnet, back to where Damian had parked it in front of the cottage, after taking it off the trailer on the back of the car. The keys came out of the ignition, and Lisa sat still for a moment looking at them in her hand, before
she got off the seat and walked around the four-wheeler. Swinging the striped beach bag out of the rack, she moved away from the vehicle to the cottage. She went backward and when she came to the steps, she sat down on them. The sun was on her hair as she fiddled, thoughtfully, with the keys.

Damian made a shallow dive, a brief arc, backward to the rocks. Water sprang from his body, gleaming, as he returned to where he’d been standing.

The two of them had been outside on those rocks the night before, and Lisa had cried, as if someone had slapped her. No one had slapped her, but she was crying. She called him a son of a bitch. It had nothing to do with Trevor, she cried, but it had everything to do with Damian wanting to control her life. He’d always wanted to be in charge of her life, trying to play the part of their father, but he wasn’t their father.

Anger was drawn back into their throats, and they stood, awkward in the silence. Lisa left him there by himself, as she walked back to the cottage. He hadn’t been looking at her; he’d been scuffing pebbles off the rocks into the black water below.
Plink, plink
. It was stupid, how things went.

Night unreeled into the day before, each hour folding into the hour preceding it. Lisa wasn’t coming into the cottage with her knapsack, she was leaving. Damian turned to her as he locked the cottage door with the key their mother had given them. He saw Lisa getting back into the car, long hair caught back in a ponytail. Going away from him. The sound of the car door: not opening, but closing.

Raymond put his hand on the boy’s arm, but after a moment he took it away. Let’s go back, he muttered.
Damian was standing next to a man he hardly knew.

The water was the same as it had always been, slowly coming in, slowly going out, making a soft, hushed sound. He wanted to lie down on the sand and let it all slide away from him, but it wouldn’t slide away. He knew it wouldn’t. It was there in the morning when he woke up, and it was there when he went to sleep. It would always be there.

I keep waiting for something to feel different, Damian said.

For what to feel different?

I don’t know.

You’d like to get outside yourself. But you can’t.

I made her cry. The night before she died, we had an argument.

You’re torturing yourself – it’s going to make you crazy. I’m positive that a single argument wouldn’t have changed anything for your sister. Sure, she might have been angry, but she’d have forgiven you if she could have. It’s not your sister who needs to forgive you.

Who, then? asked Damian, bewildered.

DAMIAN WASN’T EXPECTING
his mother to answer the phone. He was expecting Roger.

Mum, he said. It’s me – it’s Damian.

There was a pause.

It’s me.

Raymond was tapping his pipe into the palm of his hand.

Damian put down the receiver slowly. She hung up, he said. I guess I should have expected that.

Raymond put the ashes from his pipe in the hollowed-out rock that served as an ashtray. You dropped out of sight and didn’t tell anyone, he said, taking new tobacco from the tin and tamping it down in the bowl of the pipe.

What should I do? asked Damian.

Give her some time, and try again.

Raymond’s briar pipe, which had been his father’s, was the one he liked best. It had an elegant little bowl and a curving stem, and when he smoked from it he thought of his father.

She didn’t think it was me, said Damian.

She’s probably been beside herself with worry. Raymond
lit a match and danced it across the surface of the tobacco, drawing on the pipe at the same time. It’s a shock.

He got the pipe going and sat back, imagining Damian’s mother receiving the call. Perhaps she sat down and ran her hands through her hair, or got up and wandered around her kitchen before sitting down again.

When Raymond and Cecily brought Peter home from the hospital, he wasn’t himself, though they’d been assured that his medication was back on track. Once they were home, they took him up the stairs to his room, where he sat down, heavily, on his bed, eyes closed. He didn’t help to take off his clothes, except to extend his arms when he was coaxed, or to stand so his jeans could be taken off. His face was smooth and blank as a stone.

You’re crying, Cecily said softly to Raymond.

He needs his pyjamas.

She got them and handed them to Raymond. She touched Peter’s arm, but there was no response.

What have they done to him? she whispered.

I don’t know.

Ray, he’s cold. We should get him in the bathtub – get him warmed up.

She ran the water in the tub and came back to help Raymond take him into the bathroom. He was big and awkward, and they had to move him as if he were asleep or dead. This thought wouldn’t dislodge itself from Raymond’s mind. They sat him down on the edge of the tub, but Raymond had to roll up his own trouser bottoms to the knee and step ankle-deep in the hot water. The tap was still running. He got Peter into the tub, and finally got him to sit
down, head bowed, with his legs stretched out in front of him. Cecily went to make up the bed, leaving Raymond and Peter alone.

The light in the bathroom had always been otherworldly, like the depths of a forest. It was the reflection of the mint-green tiles, and it tinted Peter’s fair-skinned body pale green. His legs, underwater, were thin. There was dark hair on them, but it was sparse. It was curious how the threadlike hairs waved a little in the steamy bathwater, as though they weren’t part of a body at all, but had small alien lives of their own.

Are you warmer now? asked Raymond.

Nothing. Nothing at all in Peter’s eyes.

Raymond got up and dried the breakfast dishes when Damian phoned a second time.

It
is
me, Damian said.

Raymond finished drying a mug, a bowl, a plastic container.

But I didn’t. I didn’t. I’m sorry –

Raymond set things out on the counter as quietly as possible.

I’m at Cribbon’s, said Damian. No, not the cottage. I couldn’t – You mean you’ll come? You’ll come all this way?

Damian looked at Raymond.

No, I’m at a different place. Yes – yes, it
is
me. Wait, I’ll let you speak to the person I’m staying with. Raymond – his name is Raymond.

He passed the receiver over to Raymond.