The Retreat (16 page)

The sound of the wind. And then nothing. The bottom of the plate was wet and cold. He stood and he looked down at the hole. He bent and scooped more leaves into the hole. And then he settled back in. He slept. And woke. He stood and peed off to the side of the hole. The hole was his safe place. Nothing could get him if he stayed in the hole. He closed his eyes and then opened them. The leaves were moving. The sky was moving. He thought about his father. He would be worried. And his mother would be worried. And Lizzy. He liked Lizzy best. Then Lewis. And William. He liked him too. Though he never let Fish play with him because he was too young. So, Fish followed his father. They built things. Bunk beds for Everett and William. A pump with a black pipe that came from the pond and under the kitchen and up into the sink where Doctor Amos’s wife washed her hair and other women with white legs sticking out from under their dresses cleaned potatoes for supper. And an outdoor shower with a rain catcher where he showered with Lizzy and Lizzy spilled warm water from the hose onto his hair and onto her hair and
then she put soap on her body and told him to clean himself and he did.

Just before he was lost, he’d been sitting on the cabin stairs and a frog had hopped under the cabin. He’d followed it, sticking his head into the darkness, then he’d come back out into the light. He climbed the stairs where his mother fell and snapped her wrist.
Snap.
And then Doctor Amos had come and taken her to the hospital and Doctor Amos had hair on his face and hair in his ears and in his nose and Doctor Amos kneeled and looked him in the eyes. The Doctor’s lips were pink but not special, no different than his mother’s lips or Dad’s. Lizzy had big lips. Sometimes Lizzy said “Fish” really softly and put her lips on his cheeks and mouth and ears. Lizzy had soft lips. He sat down on the stairs and looked for William or Everett or his mother, but there was only the light and a butterfly in the clearing. He stood and went to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. Margaret was there. She was making her nails pink. She asked him what he was doing and he said he was going on a trip and she said, “You betcha. Have fun.”

He took a carrot. A piece of chocolate. Closed the fridge door and went outside and up the path. There was a loud wind and it moved trees and on the path the shadows of the leaves were dancing. He tried not to step on the leaves. It was hard. The path went sideways, but always it came back, and then he was on a big rock that went up and the path was gone, but the path would be over there, and so he went up the rock and found blueberries, lots of them. His mother loved
blueberries. She was always walking up into the rocks and trees to look for patches. This was a big patch.

He took out the chocolate and sucked on it. Then he ate the carrot. He climbed over the big rock and looked for the path. It was gone. He sat down. He looked up at the sky and he looked at the trees and he heard the wind and he heard voices in the wind. Then he began to walk. He went up and down hills and through bushes and sometimes he stopped and listened and then he kept walking. At some point he sat down and began to cry, and when he was finished crying, he dug his hole.

The wind was in the trees and something was calling
Fish … Fish … Fish.
He stood and ran through the trees towards the place where Lizzy was calling him. Then he fell and hurt his knee. His pants were torn and there was blood, but Lizzy was still calling so he got up again and ran. He found Lizzy. She was in the tree. She was a big blackbird calling
Fish … Fish … Fish.
He sat down. He was thirsty. He lay back against the rock and watched the bird. The sky was grey now and the bird was blacker and the wind still blew through the trees. Then Lizzy was in the shower and pouring warm water on his legs. He opened his eyes. It was dark and his pants were wet and warm. He had wet himself, which is what William sometimes did in the morning. He took off his pants and his underwear. Put them in a pile. The sky was dark. The forest was dark. There was no more wind and Lizzy was gone. He cried. He cried for a long time and then he stopped. He opened his eyes and saw an animal beside him. The animal was very still. It was curled up and it didn’t move and when he talked to the animal it just
sat there and when he poked it the animal became his pants and underwear. He stood and walked out into the darkness. He walked until he fell and where he fell was very soft so he lay there. There were bugs and the bugs were biting his bum and legs and neck and arms. He touched his forehead to his knees and waited for Lizzy to find him.

In the morning there were flies. One fly had crawled to the edge of his mouth. He made it go away and then he got up and walked. He was missing one shoe and his pants and he tried to find them, but they were lost. After a while he stopped walking and he lay down under a big tree where the ground was bare and soft and he fell asleep. When he woke he felt happy. The sun was warm, the birds were singing. He stood and walked. He found a trail and the trail went up and down. The leaves and trees were making shadows again, but there was no wind. He didn’t like the wind. Then he heard the sound of a bee. He sat up. The bee was above him, and all around him. He listened. Then he got up and followed the sound of the bee. He went round and round. He saw again that he had no clothes and he worried his father would be unhappy and his mother would tell him to go find his shirt and pants and underwear. He walked and walked and the sun was on his back and a shadow was in front of him and he stepped on the foot of the shadow and when he looked down he saw his feet and the scratches on his legs and his bare stomach and he heard the saw and a sound like someone talking. The voice was saying
Come, come
, and so he did.

L
izzy waited for Raymond to return, but by mid-morning, when everybody had already been searching for a number of hours, she gave up waiting and headed into the bush with Everett. They walked side by side. The distant sound of the chainsaw was a persistent whine, like a mosquito buzzing in your ear. She thought about the words Fish had recently learned:
clutch
and
sapling.
There was the clutch on Raymond’s pickup and here was the sapling scratching Lizzy’s arm. She saw him on his back looking up at the sky, which was black with many bright holes and out of the holes came insects that landed on his ears and cheeks and arms and chest, and the insects were eating him. He opened his mouth to call out but there was no noise, only the sound of his breath going in and out, in and out.

The sound of a whistle nearby. A voice called out. It was Franz. Lizzy and Everett made their way towards him. Emma was with him and Franz was holding a runner. It was Fish’s, orange with black stripes. It was all he had found. There was nothing else.

Lizzy took the shoe and held it and looked about and then pressed her fingers against the inside sole. The shoe was damp, perhaps from dew. The lace was untied. She fell against Franz
and hit at his arms and chest and screamed at him. She said that the runner was useless, useless. Everett stood to the side and watched his sister flail. Franz held Lizzy and Emma went over to Everett and put her arm around him.

Together the four of them walked back to the clearing. There was no one there. The chainsaw spun and cried out. Franz sat Lizzy down and Emma brought her tea and someone wrapped her in a blanket. She huddled and shook.

Later, after everyone had gone out to search again, she willed Raymond to arrive. She willed and willed but it did not work. She eventually went and sat on her stairs and she gave up all willing. She said, “Fish is dead.” The chainsaw sputtered and quit. It must have been out of gas. It hung from its branch, finally quiet, spinning uselessly.

And then the trees opened up to the path that led up past the outhouse towards the Lookout. Down the path came a little naked boy wearing one shoe. He was Fish. He was walking and his face was dirty and he went to his parents’ cabin and sat down on the bottom step. And then Lizzy was running towards him, calling, and he looked up, and he saw her. He stood and smiled.

O
ne evening, Lewis gathered up his children and drove them into town for dinner. William had wanted them to take the pickup so they could sit in the box. Lewis drove slowly, checking the rear-view mirror, watching Fish on Lizzy’s lap, and calling out the window at William to sit down or he was going to fall out of the truck and crack his head on the pavement. The children were excited to be eating restaurant food, to be away from the Retreat, and Everett had already written down on a piece of paper what he wanted to eat: flatiron steak, root beer, french fries, and chocolate ice cream. Lewis had looked at the list and said, “What if they don’t have flatiron steak? What if it’s filet mignon?” He saw his children in the mirror and heard their voices lift and then fly away, and he thought how fragile everything was.

For a brief period, after Fish had been lost and then returned, and in that week before Norma left, they had been able to talk more easily, with an open honesty and with no inclination towards sex or disagreement. Norma had spoken about the foolishness of having taken all of them out to this place, what had she been thinking, and she talked about Fish almost dying, and how after Fish had come back, she had seen herself as a terrible person. She was not a good mother. She
had been much more interested in freedom than in the welfare of her children. She said she had been mad, a completely different person. She went up on an elbow, the moon fell through the window onto her bare shoulder. She was wearing a white undershirt with narrow straps and Lewis saw the sheen of her skin. Her cast had been removed earlier that day and her arm was thin and vulnerable-looking. He did not move. He waited. She said that the Doctor had offered sex, but she did not accept. “I was like a virgin. Touch me here and here and here, but no penetration. Am I scaring you, Lewis?” And then, not waiting for an answer, she said that she had wanted to keep the Doctor holy. “The idea of him. This I wanted.”

“So you didn’t kiss,” Lewis said. His voice was low, and he repeated the statement, as if repetition might make it fact.

“Why do you keep asking that? Do you want it to be true?”

Then she lifted her thin shoulders and turned to him and said that yes, they had kissed and he had touched her and he had seen her naked, though only briefly. “Oh, Lewis. In the tool shed. Imagine. The smell of gasoline, the Johnson motor at our feet, washers, oil, grease, and I’m removing my bra. It was like I was thirteen again and showing my breasts to Mickey Ketler.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“There’s something more to tell you. We were interrupted by Fish.”

Lewis began to shake his head. “Norma. Norma. What the hell did you do?”

“I told him everything was okay. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really see anything.”

Lewis closed his eyes.

“It wasn’t me. Don’t you see?” She reached across to touch his face. Her hand went flat against his chest and rested there.

“And now? Are you
you
now?”

She was quiet for a long time and he imagined that she might have fallen asleep and then she said that she didn’t know. Everything felt out of control. He needn’t worry, she was finished with the Doctor. They had traded kisses, that’s all.

And then on another night, she said that she couldn’t breathe. “Remember in Calgary, after Fish was born, and I wanted to bludgeon someone or something? And you took me away from the children because you saw danger? I’m not saying this time is as grave or dangerous, but I’m feeling wild, Lewis. The day Fish got lost? I was supposed to be watching him, and I went to the Hall to get something. I can’t remember any more what I wanted, but I got delayed. There was this furious discussion taking place, about some ancient philosopher, and I got involved for a time, not long, at least it didn’t feel very long, but when I came back, he wasn’t there. I can’t forgive myself.” She said that she had gone to the children’s cabin just before and found Fish asleep. “Everything is so uncomplicated when a child is sleeping, don’t you think? I found myself wishing he would stay sleeping.”

She said that she’d been thinking that she would leave for a while. She would visit her sister in Chicago. Saul Bellow also lived in Chicago. Did he know that? She had been reading Bellow. She carried
Herzog
around as if it were a gift to her, as if Mr. Bellow had sat down to write a novel for Norma Byrd. It had become her Bible, and one night, reading by flashlight,
she offered the image of Herzog pressing his daughter’s little bones. Her face had softened, and Lewis wondered how it was that the woman he had married could feel more love for a child who was not real than for her own flesh and blood. She said that she would marry Saul Bellow if he asked. “Would you let me do that, Lewis?” Her mouth had twisted into a smile. She was teasing both of them with an impossible desire.

The night before she intended to leave, he sat at the edge of the bed in his jeans, and he said that he didn’t know what to do. He said that too much was being asked. He wanted her to stay; he asked what it would take to make her stay with the family. He got up and kneeled before her and held her hands.

“Don’t beg, Lewis,” she said. “That’s not you.” She touched the back of his neck and drew her hand down his spine. “This is not about you,” she said. “You shouldn’t take responsibility. I feel ashamed. I don’t want to face these people any more. It’s possible you’ll all be better off without me here. I’m not asking for your pity or your blame, Lewis. Can you understand?”

“I’m trying to,” he said, and he pushed his face against her and said no more.

She wanted to have sex that night. She wanted him inside her. Would that be okay? Not waiting for his response, she came to his side of the bed and sat beside him so that their thighs touched. She was wearing light blue panties and an old T-shirt of Lizzy’s. They lay on the floor, on a blanket. Norma lay on her back and put her legs over Lewis’s shoulders because this was her most pleasurable position, and when she came she made the smallest of sounds, like the muted bleating of a lamb, and Lewis, as he came, pushed his face against Norma’s
neck, where the collar of the T-shirt lay, and he smelled there the residue of his daughter. His anguish surprised him and Norma’s tears surprised him, and later, as he lay awake listening to Norma breathe, he was sorry that he gave in so easily to what was being asked of him.