Into That Darkness (7 page)

Not a day goes by I don't think of her. I wonder sometimes what my
grandfather would have made of her. I didn't quit painting because of
her. I don't care what anyone says.

A couple of years ago a woman came by to interview me for a book
she was writing on Callie. I didn't want to do it. But I sat with her for a
time. She pulled out a small blue notebook and scribbled down curt notes
when I spoke. I didn't see how what I said could possibly be written down
so quickly. I told her she could take a minute and get the rest of it if she
wanted. I'd thought she'd smile at that but she didn't. She asked me if
Callie left me because she couldn't complete her work with the pressures
of being a wife. I suppose she wanted to know if I stifled her. I didn't
know what to say to that. I told her my grandfather had been a judge
and his favourite kind of sentence was a question. She didn't write that
down in her little notebook.

I used to believe if I lived severely enough I might come to some kind
of understanding about all of it. I don't know what I would have done
then. I never did understand it. The heart's a dark room to me still.

THE LABYRINTH
AND THE THREAD

She could feel a wind on her sleeves, her shirt front. It was dark.

It was dark and the darkness was very blue and then she understood that she was staring into the sky and the sun was down. Something had happened. Something had just happened.

And then she was remembering her father's last visit, six months before his death. She had not known that he was dying. Her children adored him, this grandfather they'd hardly known. His great soft hands and the dark pitted skin on his face and the low rasp of his voice when he laughed. He had left Canada for his native Trinidad when she was six. Had returned after her mother's death only to vanish again into a small coffee shop he'd opened in Fernwood. His nation, his politics, his second life, these had consumed him. She carried always inside her that cold October day in the playground when she had realized he did not—did
not
— need her.

He was tilting the neck of the bottle towards her glass at the table and she came in from the patio and set her hand over the rim and shook her head no. The light was already deepening out in the yard and she looked at her father's face in the grey and thought he was still handsome. It was just the four of them there amid the clatter of dishes and the scent of dish soap and the steady running of the faucet. Her, and her father, and her two children. Her daughter sat on the counter with her coltish legs swinging loose and lifting her glass and holding it out.

Oui monsieur, she was calling to her grandfather.

Yeah right, the woman said.

Eh come on Jean-Paul, the girl said in her terrible accent. Toppa me off.

Jjjjahn-Pollluh, her son laughed.

Now look what you've started, the woman said. You call him Poppa.

Her father smiled and shook his head. I think one glass is enough, he said.

Come on. I drink more than that at recess.

The woman's father was looking now at his granddaughter's hair where she had cut it short and he waved a hand towards it. It looks nice, he said. Different.

Shut up, she smiled, then blushed.

Kat, the woman frowned. What's got into you? You want to go to your room?

What? I was joking. Kids say it all the time at school.

Listen to her. A little red wine and she loses her manners completely.

I got manners.

Right. Manners of speaking maybe.

Would you like anything more to eat, Mr Clarke? Could I fetch you a coffee, Mr Clarke?

The woman's father laughed. Ah yes. That is very polite.

Kat what did I tell you about sitting on the counter?

The girl smiled at her grandfather. See? Mom's driving us crazy.

You're not driving me crazy Mom.

Thank you Mason.

Her daughter snorted.

The woman crossed to the sink and banged open the cupboard and began putting the dishes away. Blue serving bowls emblazoned with asian fish. She squared the glasses of blown green glass. Oh your horrible mother, she said. However do you stand it. Tell your grandfather how I beat you, how I work you like slaves. Oh you poor things.

You don't even know. You don't know how hard it is, it's not like when you were a kid. It's a different world. You think you had problems? We got problems.

The woman's father folded his chin onto his hands, raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly. I would love to hear, he said. These are the boyfriend problems? The drug problems?

She
had
a boyfriend. But Crispin Carter dumped—

Shut up Mason.

Hey? Language?

The girl glanced across at her mother. As if I'd talk about it anyway. She'd probably just ground me or something.

She
has a
name
, the woman said.

It's Mom.

Thank you Mason. Aren't you awfully helpful tonight.

Yes.

Ah. She would ground you would she?

Poppa, you don't even know.

Usually I just lock her in a closet. With bread and water.

I used to send your mom out in the fields for the day. I think she should send you out to the fields maybe.

We don't have fields here Poppa.

Neither did we, honey, the woman said.

You could tie her to the rack, her father said. Or shave off all of her hair.

The woman laughed. I think she already did that.

You're both hilarious, the girl said, all at once distracted and immensely bored. She lifted the glazed head of the cookie jar and peered in, then slid lazily off the counter and sauntered out, a cookie in either hand, another in her teeth.

Can I have a cookie too? her son asked.

No.

I remember when you were that age, her father said.

No you don't.

He looked at her. Well. You were perfect. You were a perfect angel.

You said before that Mom was a little devil.

Hey? You want to be grounded too?

Her son shook his head. After a moment he looked up. Kat's grounded?

You get out of here. Go on. Go see what your sister is doing.

Her son scrambled down from the table.

She looked at her father. He's going right into his sister's room to tell her she's grounded. You know that.

Her father smiled. It is nothing. I had five brothers.

And two sisters.

Yes.

She said nothing then. She looked towards the sitting room. In the gloom its couches were lumped and misshapen, the old fireplace cold in the shadows. Embers of darkness coalesced within. The smell of the yard came in through the open window and she could hear a dog barking beyond their fence. She wiped the countertop down with the dishcloth and shook its crumbs into the sink. Filled her tarnished kettle with water, plugged it in.

Through the walls a thrum of music started up and the woman smiled grimly, regarded her father. The floor tiles under their socks shaking.

He stood. I will ask her to turn it down, he said.

You're great with them, she said.

I could stay longer.

No. You should go.

He nodded but did not move.

I could take them out on the boat on Saturday.

No.

Anna Mercia. What do you think I am doing here?

But she made a cutting motion with her hand and he went quiet.

He had always loved the ocean. When she was a girl and he would telephone on her birthday or on Christmas he would ask first about the changing light on the water. In the West Indies he had owned a small boat and it was one of the first things he purchased when he returned here, to this colder ocean. He had been famous in his country as a public figure. She wondered suddenly at how things alter.

She turned back to the sink. Standing there feeling slack and grotesque and old. She held a warm plate staring at it without interest and she set it again aclatter in the rack. She thought her father had left the kitchen but all at once she felt his hands on her shoulders and he turned her gently so that she was facing him. He took her chin in his palm.

He said to her very softly: They love you. You are their mother.

They need a father.

They do not.

She looked into his face. Everyone needs a father, Dad.

Everyone
wants
a father, he said. There is a difference.

She looked at his soft sloped shoulders and doughy face in the kitchen light and it seemed to her then that he was asking something of her she could not give. At first she did not recognize it and then she did and it was something she remembered from when Mason was very little. She felt all at once as if she were older than her father and feeling this filled her with a great sadness.

You were a good father, she said to him.

Even as she said this she knew it was not true and she knew that he knew it also.

There were many things else, he said quietly. But I did always love you.

No you didn't, she said, and looked at him. You didn't, Dad. That wasn't love.

She opened her eyes.

She was very cold. She felt something flutter across her face and it felt like a moth and the darkness before her was utter and absolute. Then she sat up, and the white sheet fell away.

She had been laid out in a field of the dead. She pulled the sheet away and got to her feet and her left arm was hanging at a strange angle from the elbow. All around her lay the bodies of the dead and some were covered as she had been and others had been rolled onto their backs and their sightless faces shone in the night. She was naked to the waist but she did not cover herself and in the darkness she could not see the bad shape her arm was in.

She staggered over the rolled corpses and down a grassy incline towards the street.

Her throat was dry and her lips cracked and her tongue felt huge and furred in her mouth. There was something not right with her and she cast her face slowly from left to right and then she knew it was her son and she lurched back up towards the bodies and picked her way among them. Gasping, her bad arm dangling. She could not think clearly and she stooped, peered, straightened, stooped. But she did not see her son.

She felt nothing. She did not think she could walk but even so her legs carried her down to the street and towards a yellow lantern where a man sat staring into the night. There were lights moving out in that darkness and she could not understand what they were.

He stood very quickly when he saw her.

Oh my god, he said. Oh god. Are you okay? Pike! Sit here. Pike!

She was trying to ask about her son and her ruined mouth worked silently and no words came. Then in that soft light she saw her crushed hand. The skin was mottled and black as if the rot had already set in and her fingers were half again as long as they should have been. Two fingers stood out at a weird angle. The arm was covered in slicks of blood and some yellowish grease that smelled of fat and she looked at it as if it did not belong to her.

Where'd you come from? the man was asking. And then: Pike!

Where is my arm? she said thickly. She raised her head and looked at the man. Where is my son? she tried again.

A second man came out of the darkness. He looked at her and kneeled down beside her speaking to her all the while and then he stood and disappeared again into the night. He came back carrying a case and set it down and unlatched and lifted its lid and he pulled from the box several coils of bandages and wrappings. He looked very tired. He pressed a pill between her lips and then lifted a bottle of water to her and she choked as it went down.

Give it a minute, the man said. He was a squat thick man with a black beard and his eyes were liquid and wet. He smelled of sweat and urine. His mouth was hard.

I know this woman, he said to his companion. I was there when they brought her out. We thought she was dead.

Christ. I thought she was a ghost.

The second man was wiping very gently at her face and the gauze was coming away black with dried blood.

My son, she said thickly. My son. My son is.

Try not to say anything just yet.

My son. He was with me.

The man sat back on his heels and looked at her. He did not smile. He said in a soft clear voice: Your son is alive. Look at me. No look at me. He's fine. We pulled him out hours ago.

Mason?

Yes.

She started to cry then and she bent over and cried for what seemed a very long time. She cried and then someone was draping a blanket across her naked shoulders and the bearded man was still talking.

What? she said through her tears. What are you saying?

Your son's fine, the man went on. He'll be glad to see you.

Where is he? she said. I want to see him.

What's wrong with her head? the first man said.

Nothing. It's just a small cut. But look at this. The second man lifted her arm with great gentleness. Each shift in position left her shuddering with pain, light-headed and dazed with it.

It's crushed, he said finally. And I don't know what else.

I want to see my son.

You will. Try to be patient. I haven't seen him since last night. He must have been taken to the relief station on the last truck. Which is where you've got to go yourself.

There'll be doctors there, the second man said.

You're a, she said and frowned. You're a doctor?

No. He did not look up from her arm as he spoke. I worked construction for a few summers. There were a lot of accidents. I don't know what else could be wrong with her, he said over his shoulder. She might be hurt internally.

She grimaced, her teeth clenched. Already the pain was subsiding and then it flared up again and then it seemed as if it were sifting through some sort of a mesh screen and when it reached her it was in very tiny points of pain and then even that was dissolving.

It's kicking in now. Look at her.