Mad Hope (8 page)

Beth and Paul huddled together, watching the water rise around them. When Miguel threw them two sawed-off bottoms of bleach bottles, they gamely began to bail, although nothing seemed that serious, not really. They scooped and poured like toddlers, side by side, laughing. Beth knew that they had truly loved each other in that moment. It was as if they had just met, or had never exactly met.

But then on the second Wednesday of the trip, the group had travelled in tiny, tippy, handmade canoes to the opposite shore, 300 metres downstream. On the way they spotted pink river wraiths – freshwater dolphins cresting in the calm waters.

‘We will visit one of my friends,' Miguel announced cryptically.

They disembarked on a small beach where sandbugs began immediately to chomp at their exposed flesh. Through it all, Miguel remained serene in his orange flip-flops, smiling as they flailed and slapped at their skin, scrambling in their packs for repellent. When they looked up, sweating, he was already waving a walking stick up ahead, soldiering farther into the thick woods and unknown.

‘Isn't it exciting,' Beth said to Paul. ‘I wonder where his friend lives. I wonder what he does in here.'

‘I imagine he lives his life, Beth. Just with different dining room furniture.' Paul did not react well to bug bites; his legs were covered in loonie-sized pink welts. ‘Besides,' he said, pointing up ahead, ‘I'm not sure Miguel knows where he's going. Maybe he's not as canny with a compass as your coureur de bois, eh?'

Beth searched for Miguel and found him zigzagging over a small patch of land, stopping to make peculiar bird calls, his hands cupped up near his lips. ‘He's signalling,' she told Paul. ‘We don't always have to resort to cellphones.'

And sure enough, within minutes, a three-tiered whistle call came sailing back from an easterly direction. Miguel began leaping and running over the log- and mulch-strewn ground, bounding over obstacles and jumping to high-five low-hanging palm leaves.

‘He expects us to follow when he's carrying on like that?' Paul said.

But they did follow him; they had no choice. There were times when they lost sight of Miguel altogether and the two of them paused, turned to each other, searching for signs of their own selves, the crumbs that might signal a trail of existence. If not for the other members of their band, who came stumbling through the ground cover with their digital cameras outstretched, they might have believed themselves to be truly abandoned and alone.

‘C'mon,' Miguel finally called to them. ‘We are almost there.'

And he was right; all of a sudden they were there. A small settlement presented itself in a long narrow clearing amidst a profusion of what must have been cornstalks.

‘Meet my friend,' said Miguel, waving his hand towards a woman tending fire in a large pit circumscribed by stones. The woman straightened for an instant to pull her long black hair back from her face and over one shoulder. She wore grimy white shorts and a baggy red tank top over a pink camisole. No bra, Beth noticed. How wonderful not to have to worry.

Miguel sat them down on a log and told him that his friend would now demonstrate a traditional recipe. Miguel's friend did not look up again from the fire. She bent to retrieve what looked like a turnip from a large pot near her feet and began to shred it into a wooden bowl. A kitten sprung from behind the log with an angry oversized rooster in hot pursuit. Then a mongrel dog roused itself from behind a post and began to chase the rooster. The assembled group watched the kitten, rooster and dog as they circled the woman's cooking shelter. Then they sat and observed the woman shred her root vegetable. After about fifteen minutes, a young girl – maybe fourteen? – with an infant straddling one hip came striding, barefoot, from between the cornstalks. She smiled at Beth, who smiled back. When the girl began walking away, towards the river, Beth rose to follow.

‘Beth,' said Paul. ‘No.'

Beth patted Paul on the shoulder. ‘I'm all right,' she said. ‘I'd just like to know her name.'

Beth followed the girl into another small clearing, empty of structures. ‘Hello,' she called out. ‘I'm Beth.' She patted both hands against her chest and stepped closer to the girl, who was still smiling, her head cocked to one side coquettishly.

‘Juana,' said the girl. ‘Me llamo Juana.'

‘Encantada,' said Beth, and for a moment the two simply stood staring. It was a moment that opened up like a hard coconut cleft in two to reveal its white tender meat, the flesh and milk of its insides.

Then Beth pointed to the baby, whose round brown eyes had pivoted towards her. ‘And what is the baby's name?' she said.

‘No.' The young girl shook her head.

She had misunderstood, or not heard correctly. Beth tried again. ‘El nombre del niño?'

‘No,' the girl said again.

Perhaps it was a girl? ‘El nombre de la niña?'

Again, the girl shook her head and shifted the baby to her other hip impatiently. She was bored with this. Beth was not showing her anything new, was she? Still, the baby must have a name, she looked to be at least three months old. ‘Nombre,' she said again. She pointed to herself and said, ‘Beth.' Then she pointed to the girl and said, ‘Juana.' Finally, she pointed to the baby and shrugged emphatically.

The girl stomped her foot. ‘She no have name,' she said. ‘No name.'

‘What do you mean?' Beth cried. ‘She is so beautiful and new. She must have a name!'

Juana smirked. ‘No name,' she said.

Beth leaned up against a tree, steadying herself. If the baby had no name, then perhaps it was not … claimed. Perhaps it had not yet been properly tied to this place, these people. Maybe there was a chance. In a flash, she saw it – the plump, umber-coloured child, tucked under a yellow fleece blanket, being ferried along Bloor Street like a royal in her sturdy stroller. If she got homesick, Beth would show her the Humber. They would gather bouquets of pale purple phlox and Queen Anne's lace and she would tell her the story of Étienne Brûlé, who learned to live among the Hurons. She would show her the
CN
Tower, that useless, soaring, space-age thing. Oh, there were those little pots of organic baby food in the No Frills grocery store, weren't there?

Juana moved closer to her, reached out to touch Beth's cheek and hair, the silver camera that hung like a medal around her neck. Beth brightened. ‘Would you like me to take your picture?'

‘Yes, yes,' Juana said happily, bobbing up and down.

‘Okay,' said Beth. ‘You should stand over there. Maybe I should hold the baby.' She held out her arms to take the child, but Juana backed away, cradling the baby's head under her stern chin.

‘No,' Juana said.

And then the group had spilled into the clearing, muttering and perspiring, craning their necks to see a flock of parrots winging by.

Next to the Humber, Beth could hear thunder rolling in over the lake.

‘Paul,' she said, ‘do you think we should go back, find a way to help them rebuild?'

Paul sighed heavily. Soon the sky would open, and it was possible the humidity would break.

‘I mean, if we are responsible, maybe we should just take responsibility ... ' Beth knew she was whining a little, but couldn't help herself.

Paul threw up his arms, which almost made Beth laugh. ‘
Jesus
, Beth, do you even know what happened to Étienne Brûlé?'

Beth nodded. Brûlé had eventually been disowned by his countryman, Champlain, it was true. And then the Hurons decided he'd betrayed them to the Iroquois, or at least this was the speculation. And those were harsher times, weren't they? ‘They killed him,' she said quietly.

‘Yes,' said Paul, pleased with her accuracy, but not nearly finished with his own story. ‘The Hurons killed him.' He paused to take a breath, then turned towards her and whispered sadly, excitedly, ‘Then they ate him.'

And that was when Beth pushed him. If he had fallen differently, with more agility and pliability, the water might not have borne him, the way it did, to the centre of the flow. But within seconds, Paul was struggling in the depths of the river, carried farther and farther away from Beth by a wicked undertow.

For a few seconds, he seemed not to care; there was surrender in the position of his body. But then Beth watched as he clambered strangely towards the shallow water on the opposite shore, and she watched as the current caught him by the ankles and pulled him back into its grasp. It confused her to think about what she wanted – how rarely people's plans and yearnings find their proper, perfect form. Beth stepped into the river. She felt it push gently on her thighs, then with more force on her torso, until her feet lost purchase, pedalled uselessly, freely, above the rocks and minnows of the riverbed. She lost sight of Paul, then found him again, as she would continue finding him for many years to come. The current would carry them both back to shore and one day they might laugh about this. But for the moment she focused on the rushing water between them, its opaque mystery, the smell of rust, fish gut and human effluent. She noted its very force, a liquid force that pulsed around the globe, hastening into places humans could not reach.

The evening after Beth met the nameless baby, Miguel invited her on a jungle walk. Paul had gone to bed early, blaming the bug bites and cheap wine for his fatigue.

‘It is possible we will see some night animals, the nocturnals,' Miguel said as they traipsed carefully along the path. ‘Do you have any like this in Toronto?'

Beth laughed. ‘Maybe raccoons,' she said. ‘They're the cleverest creatures you've ever met, and they've adapted to us, so now we adapt to them.'

‘Adaptation,' Miguel said. ‘Is that how you call it?'

The light was beginning to fade, making shapes waver, turning living tableaux into unreliable dreamscapes. Miguel placed his hand at the small of her back and invited her to take a closer look at an orchid the size of a thimble that was growing in the crook of a tree.

‘Can you see?' he said. ‘Here.' He slid a penlight from his pocket and shone it tightly on the flower. ‘It's precious, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' Beth said. And then, in a rush, ‘There was a child, back there, in the forest. She was maybe three months old, so sweet, and she didn't have a name. I was wondering, if there might be a way, if she is not wanted or if she is a burden of some kind, I know I – we – could provide a good home. We live in a village of sorts – clean and comfortable, with very good educational opportunities and lots of diverse friends and toys for her to play with, second-hand clothes, because we don't like to be wasteful, and love. We have love for her. We can't have kids of our own, or at least that's what we've found.'

‘I don't think so,' Miguel replied.

‘But I don't understand!' Beth began to sob, then stopped when she noticed Miguel chortling to himself, bent at the waist with the laughter that was coursing through him. He stopped for long enough to hold out a fibrous piece of bark he had pulled from the trunk of a tree. The bark was a coppery colour, flecked with a darker, richer brown, and the piece he had stripped sat in the palm of his hand like a special seashell.

‘Try it,' Miguel said. ‘Rub it here.' He ran his index finger across his gums. ‘Chew on it,' he said. ‘It was what we used when we went to the dentist, to do the dental work. A way of freezing, of feeling no pain.' He passed her the bark and she put it in her mouth like a lozenge. It was true what he said; within seconds her tongue felt clumsy and numb. She looked at him, shocked, and found she could not speak.

‘Shh,' he said, although she had not uttered a word. He sidled up close to her, from behind, and put his arms around her in a restrictive embrace.

I should resist, she thought, but fear was making her tingly and compliant. She wondered if there was a place where she truly belonged.

Then Miguel's fingers were down the front of her pants, his lips tender at her neck, his fingers rubbing and hooked up inside of her. ‘Here you go, Toronto,' he said into her ear. ‘A souvenir.' And Beth came, gasping soundlessly into the hand he had clasped firmly across her mouth. ‘Now,' Miguel said. ‘Now do you understand?'

When she returned to the camp, Paul was sitting cross-legged on his sleeping mat. Beth could tell by the studied rhythm of his breathing that he had been crying. She lay one hand lightly on his shoulder and he let her. Why did people's wounds never match up? Was life only always going to be terrible, terrible timing?

‘That baby was … ' Paul whispered.

‘I know,' Beth replied. ‘I know.'

Geraldine and Jerome

GERALDINE WENT FOR AN ULTRASOUND
of her left breast and tried to make friends with the technician.

‘I like your hair,' she said. She didn't really. It was trying too hard, had the look of one style superimposed on another, something from the eighties, asymmetrical and pop-star-esque, plopped on top of a pixie cut, the feathery innocent bangs. Plus the woman seemed not really to notice her, and she was wearing a wide brown belt over a large white shirt that made her look part handyman, part artist. But Geraldine supposed it was what people did; they snuggled up to their kidnappers, curried favour with their captors, tried to forge connections with those who held their fate in their hands. Although lately her will to live had been ragged at best, she still wanted the woman with the two wrong haircuts to like her.

‘Thank you,' said the technician brusquely. ‘Could you please scoot up a little? And just lie still.'

Geraldine scooted, then lay still while the technician squirted some gel onto her wand.

‘It will be cold,' the technician said. ‘Sorry.'

Geraldine's flesh went goosebumpy in anticipation.

The technician pressed some buttons, seemed poised to begin, then sighed. ‘I'm sorry,' she said again. ‘You'll have to go back to the waiting room for a while. There's something wrong with this machine. We'll have to wait for the other one to be free.'

‘Back to the waiting room?' said Geraldine. She was only wearing a blue paper napkin on top.

‘I would change back into your clothes.' The technician sighed again. She had replaced the wand and was clicking around on the screen, pivoting on her tall stool.

‘Okay,' said Geraldine. ‘Will you call me?'

‘
Someone
will call you,' the technician said testily. Then she smiled at Geraldine and Geraldine felt the smile like sunshine.

‘Sorry,' said the technician for the third time. ‘It's not supposed to work this way.'

‘It's okay,' said Geraldine. ‘I like your belt.'

‘Thanks,' said the technician, in a way Geraldine understood to mean dismissal.

There were magazines in the waiting room that had women dressed in outfits people had voted on – and sometimes one woman came out on top because she paired her minidress with high-heeled boots instead of strappy sandals and sometimes it was a bracelet or a hairdo that tipped the balance. The readers decided; it was a democracy. She liked these magazines.

But when she stepped into the waiting room there was a boy there. A teenager. He was sitting in one of the chairs with his knees thrust out into the middle of the space. He was tall but his slouching made him even larger than he needed to be, considering the venue. His ball cap was pulled low over his eyes and at first Geraldine thought he might be asleep, but then she realized he was just hiding – in the way that hoodlums hide. And Geraldine got angry – how
dare
he? She decided she would sit next to him. He wanted all that space to himself – well, he could not have it! She would have some too; she wanted to slouch and thrust too. She took her seat purposefully.

‘Excuse me,' she said, searching not for absolution but ­attention.

The boy looked at her.

Fourteen or fifteen, Geraldine guessed. Why was he here?

‘Oh,' said the boy. ‘Right. You waiting?'

‘Yes,' said Geraldine.

The boy glanced at her again, then quickly scanned the empty chairs that surrounded them. He canted forward slightly then tapped at the underside of the brim of his cap. ‘I'm Jerome,' he said.

‘Oh,' said Geraldine. ‘I'm Geraldine.'

Jerome nodded.

Geraldine had not expected this. She began reaching for a magazine, then stopped herself. ‘I guess we're both Gerrys then, aren't we? I mean, me with a G and you with a J, but still.' Geraldine had been Gerri (with a tiny heart over the i) until she turned sixteen, and then the more sophisticated – she imagined – Ger, until she met her husband, Simon, who insisted on Geraldine. It's less jaunty, he said. It has a gorgeous seriousness to it.

Jerome shook his head. ‘I don't like it when girls have boy names. It's confusing.'

‘Well, not really,' said Geraldine. ‘It's just different.'

‘It's
messed up
,' said Jerome. The way he said this seemed to imply some mess-up of Shakespearean proportions. A reversal that could precipitate unchecked chaos.

‘Are you ... are you waiting?' said Geraldine. Of course he was waiting. But for what? For whom?

‘Yeah, waiting to rob me some ultrasound machines,' the boy said.

Geraldine made a sound like a laugh. ‘Don't steal the one in that room,' she said, pointing. ‘It's not working.'

Jerome smiled. ‘Are you okay, lady?'

‘No,' said Geraldine. Geraldine used to be the type of person who apologized to hydro poles and thigh-high furniture. No more. Bereavement had made her reckless and easily incensed. ‘I don't understand why you have to wear your pants like that. Your belt around your thighs, waddling around like a penguin. And why don't you let people see your eyes? It's a bit suspicious, you know. You're not doing yourself any favours, especially considering you're … ' She stopped.

Jerome stood up out of his seat, moonwalked in a neat circle around the magazine table and came to a stop directly in front of Geraldine. He reached his hand into his pocket and drew out – nothing. Then he held his thumb and forefinger up in a pinch and drew them across his mouth in a slow mime. ‘Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket,' he said softly.

Jerome took his seat and resumed his former slouching position, ball cap now slightly askew on his head.

Geraldine was shocked but managed something like a
tut, tut
under her breath. Jerome countered with a remarkably similar sound, a subtle teeth sucking that communicated with a sharpness and succinctness lacking in Geraldine's utterance.

Geraldine, schooled, reached for a magazine. And after a moment, Jerome did the same. Out of the corner of her eye, Geraldine saw the cover; it was a design mag, glossy and heavy and square, with a fat vase full of poppies on the cover.

Geraldine's magazine was
Chatelaine
, not one of the tabloids plastered with tirelessly perfect people. She leafed through absently. Some recipes designed for the busy family – heart-healthy burritos and miso soup with veggies – and an article about a woman lost at sea that captivated her with its headline and arty illustrations. The woman had not exactly been lost – no, not lost – but kidnapped. She chose to go sailing, on a sailing expedition, and she ended up at the mercy of the captain/instructor, who, it seemed to Geraldine, was also a sociopath and a tyrant. The trip was extended by months. The captain did not respond to radio signals. The woman's husband thought she was dead. He grieved, he mourned, he absorbed the loss, and then she came back! She came sailing back into his life like some modern-day Lady Odysseus and he had to figure that out. They had to figure that out as a couple. It was the reverse of real life, really, where someone was snatched away from you but you imagined that he was not really dead, only vacationing, only lost at sea, held for ransom … You wished and yearned and dreamed that he was still alive and then … he was still dead.

The couple did not last. How do you learn to live with a ghost? How do you live as a ghost? Geraldine shook her head at the magazine – the gall, to publish such a strange, head-spinning story and then leave it in the waiting room at the breast-cancer clinic. Did they not understand that people like her – widowed at fifty-two, lumpy boobs – wanted outfit contests and gossip, not contemporary tuna casseroles and explorers risen from the dead? She closed the magazine. Jerome appeared to be sleeping. His chest was rising with some regularity and his hands hung relaxed off the ends of the chair's arms. Perhaps Geraldine should also sleep. Sleep took her suddenly these days; often the mere thought of it sedated her, bringing weight to her limbs and eyelids.

When Jerome woke up, the woman, Geraldine, was still sleeping, her messy bun lopsided on the top of her head. He wondered if she was sick like his mother. He wondered if she had children, and where those children were now. He imagined dinner­time at Geraldine's house. He saw speckled granite countertops – he had learned about these from his magazine, they were the rage. He saw eggshell-coloured walls and eggs lined up in the fridge like little round white soldiers. He saw a long wooden table and a place for everyone. The food on the plates was colourful and subdivided, complete.

At his house, Jerome was the cook. It had not always been this way; the arrangement had evolved. There were a few things he was really good at – sausages and mashed potatoes a babysitter had taught him (she called it bangers and mash – rude in his opinion), a jerk chicken his auntie cooked, a beef stir-fry he just made up and refined with some help from the internet. And he made sure the fridge was full of the types of sauces that could make plain pasta taste fancy, the freezer stocked with pizzas and pot pies. He never wrote it down but he had a schedule in his head too: what dinners for which day, a checklist for what was running low. He knew the aisles of the supermarket, the placement of products, like he knew the stairwells of his apartment complex – which were sketchy, which might mean the right kind of business.

His girlfriend Carla was a terrible cook. She was like a kid in the kitchen. The one time he went to her house for lunch she slapped together a peanut-butter sandwich for him – it was like a flat little cake made of white bread and brown frosting. Not nutritious at all. But he didn't say anything. She was an only child. Two parents but mostly
TV
.

Jerome stared at Geraldine. She looked like an animal asleep – a dog dreaming, legs twitching, eyeballs all crazy with chase under the lids.

Geraldine woke up with a start and a sob that was followed by another sob and another, until she was shaking in her seat, her arms wrapped around herself for protection and warmth and something else she did not want to name, or could not. Intimacy, maybe. Love. A poor approximation of the touch of someone she had known and not known for twenty-three years.

And next to her, Jerome's face, alarmed.

‘Do you have cancer? Do you have breast cancer?' he called to her as if the sobbing might have deafened or retarded her ­somewhat.

‘No,' said Geraldine. ‘Well, I don't know. My husband's dead.'

‘Fuck,' said Jerome. ‘That sucks. When?'

Geraldine breathed more deeply, calmed by his concern. ‘Six months ago. I'm sorry, Jerome. I didn't mean to upset you.'

‘'S'okay,' Jerome said. ‘I wasn't really upset. How did he die?'

'A car accident,' she replied. ‘A drunk driver.'

‘I never knew anybody died in a crash,' Jerome said. His friend Tyrell was stabbed in middle school by his other friend Joseph, and his friend Rogelio once drove his mother's car into a cement planter because he smoked too much pot, but no one hurt or killed by cars. ‘Did you see the body?'

Geraldine loved this question, its clueless indelicacy and important curiosity.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘But only after they had cleaned him up.'

Jerome nodded.

‘I wanted to see him bloody and broken. The social worker said no, to live with that vision would be … terrible.'
But it would be real
, Geraldine had said.
Real is not always the best thing
, her therapist had said later. But Geraldine wasn't so sure.

‘Maybe,' said Jerome. ‘But you'd
know
.'

‘Exactly,' said Geraldine. She thought at that moment that she would gladly buy crack from this boy, whatever it took for him to feel accepted and useful. ‘What 'bout you? What you in for?' Geraldine made her voice a bit twangy and cowboyish.

‘Oh,' said Jerome. ‘My moms. She had to have a breast removed. A mastectomy.' He said this last word carefully, reverently, cognizant of its seriousness, the power and respect that accuracy commands. Jerome had never encountered the word
euphemism
; nevertheless, he was not a boy who believed in the cloaking of facts. ‘Tell me,' he sometimes said to the boys in his crew. And what he meant was: The Truth.

‘I'm sorry,' Geraldine said. ‘How awful.' Something about Jerome moved her, even as his attitude and general comportment continued to irk her.

There was a feeling Geraldine got sometimes, talking to people who, like her, had endured a terrible loss. It was not a kind feeling. She felt almost disdainful of those who believed that what they had endured – a mother whose
MS
had wasted her slowly over the years; a brother who hung himself in the garage, using the box that contained his children's old board games to stand on; a dear friend whose heart attacked while she was teaching a Grade 2 class; a child, dear God, a child – was somehow equivalent to her own pain, her own cavernous emptiness.
Really
, she would say,
how terrible
. But these were mere words. She did not feel them. Instead, what she felt was indignation. She had been wronged, terribly misunderstood, and knew it was up to her to set matters straight. This very burden of proof, this responsibility, also angered her. She could not say exactly what it was she had done or who she had supposedly harmed, although on some level it seemed she
knew
.