The Waterproof Bible (25 page)

She put her mother down. Margaret coughed as she
took in air again. Dead birds and car batteries were scattered across the roof. Aby looked around her; as far as she could see, there was nothing but water. Even now, water was lapping at her feet. Quickly, Aby lifted her mother in her arms. The water rose to her waist, and Aby lifted Margaret over her head. The cloud above her seemed low enough to touch. The water rose to Aby’s shoulders, then up her neck and over her face. Aby held her mother as high as she could. Her arms and legs ached. The rain fell. She felt the water reach her forearms. She felt her mother’s body tighten and then go limp.

Aby looked up, through the water, and saw a blinding flash of blue light. She did not resist as the current lifted Margaret’s body out of her grip and carried her away.

Anderson and Kenneth stood on deck, watching the rain strike the water. The wind was loud and the sound of thunder almost constant, and when Anderson spoke he used a voice so hushed and small that his father had to lean towards him to hear it.

“We couldn’t have known,” Anderson said. “How could we have known?”

Anderson looked at his father, who looked out at the storm. Then they looked at each other. For a moment the thunder stopped, the wind died down, and the only sound they could hear was Stewart banging on the hatch.

“How many people do you think would fit on this boat?” Kenneth asked.

“Quite a few, I bet.”

No verbal or physical cue followed, but a decision was made and passed between them. Anderson unlocked the hatch, Kenneth opened it, and Stewart charged up the steps, his hands in fists. But when he reached the deck, he was brought to a halt by the view around him. Lowering his arms, he turned in a circle. In every direction, all the way to the horizon, there was nothing but water.

“We want to use your boat to help.”

“Help who?” Stewart said, gesturing at the water that surrounded them.

“Well, Winnipeg’s pretty close, right?”

Stewart looked up at the small Canadian flag attached to the top of the mast. He watched it flap in the steadily increasing wind. For the first time in years, and certainly since he’d taken employment at the Prairie Embassy Hotel, Stewart felt a sense of purpose. Finally, there was something he
must
—not just could—accomplish. He began moving quickly, his motions decisive, giving him an unquestionable authority.

“You, the thin one,” Stewart said.

“Anderson.”

“Anderson, take the rudder and keep us pointed into the wind. And you …”

“Kenneth.”

“Remove the halyard … unfasten that thing,” Stewart said, pointing.

All three men began working quickly and collectively. The halyard was attached to the headboard. The mainsail was allowed to run free. But as Stewart was raising the sail hand over hand, he suddenly stopped and looked around. He looked over the bow and the stern and the starboard side, but there was no point of reference. They had no map. No compass. No way to determine what direction to sail in.

“Which way?” Stewart asked.

Just then, a blinding blue light flashed in the distance.

None of the men knew that the blue light had anything to do with Margaret, or that it was above the roof of the Prairie Embassy Hotel, which was now completely underwater. Nor did they know that sailing directly towards it would set them on a straight-line
course to Winnipeg. But all three felt that the blue light’s sudden and timely appearance was unlikely to be a coincidence.

“I presume we’re going that way?” Anderson asked.

“Definitely,” Stewart replied. “And you, Kenneth, get down in the cabin, start bailing and keep at it.”

Lewis left the movie theatre and began searching for a telephone. All the stores were closed. No cars stopped; they just splashed water on him as they passed. He did not know where his cellphone was—the last time he remembered using it was back in Toronto, which seemed like a very long time ago. The puddles were now so large, and his clothes were already so drenched, that he stopped avoiding puddles and simply walked through them.

At the corner of Albert and McDermot, Lewis found what he assumed was the last full-sized phone booth in the world. Closing the door behind him, Lewis wiped the rain off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. He shook his head, sending beads of water onto the Plexiglas. After so long without colours and sounds, even the black of the plastic receiver and the rain against the Plexiglas were overwhelming.

Lewis had to close his eyes to remember the number his wife had forced him to memorize. The phone began to ring. After the third ring, a click indicated that the call had been answered, but no one spoke.

“Rebecca? Are you there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I don’t have much time, so please listen.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Lewis. Just listen.”

“Lewis Taylor?”

“Rebecca, you were right. So right. I treated your sister badly. I never noticed that she was my whole life. Forgive me that I only learned this after she died.”

Lewis waited for a response, but none came. The phone went dead. Looking down, he saw that water had pooled at the bottom of the phone booth and was quickly rising.

Rain soaked into Rebecca’s clothes and Lewis’s apology began to dissolve her emotional invulnerability. She looked at her hands. The flesh was solid, and she felt more open and free than she ever had before.

It was a fragile state, Rebecca knew, and to sustain it she began thinking of Stewart. Working chronologically, she pictured each significant moment in their relationship. She saw him kneeling behind the damaged tail light. She watched him tinker with the engine of the Karmann Ghia. She saw him on their first date, the day they moved in together, their wedding day.

Each memory returned to her so clearly that she forgot about the park and the bench and the rain. Each moment she remembered, she almost relived. A tiny residue of her feelings for Stewart had remained inside her: the combination of her new vulnerability with the vividness of the remembered moments created a tiny opening. As she pictured the day Stewart left her, Rebecca began to fall in love with him again.

She tried to pick up her cellphone, but it passed through her fingers. Her state was now so advanced that there was only one thing that could save her, something that part of her—her pride, or her fear, or both—had stopped her from doing before. For three years she’d
been unable to make herself do it. And even now, even though she knew that making this call was her only chance, she was still hesitant to do it.

As Aby swam down towards the Prairie Embassy Hotel, she tried to justify what she had seen—it was the rust reacting with something in the air, or a mirage, or a trick of her tired eyes. She could not bring herself to believe the most obvious explanation: the first sign that a
koma upplifa
has passed is a flash of blue light. But Aby knew that once a
koma upplifa
enters a cloud, it absorbs the cloud entirely, using the cloud’s strength to travel to the next world. Although there was some debate about how long it took a soul to fuse with a cloud, it was generally believed to be just under two hours.

When Aby reached the hotel, she swam through open doors and out windows, into rooms and back outside. She delighted in her renewed ability to go up when she wanted to and down when she wanted to. She swam up all five flights of stairs, then dove straight down through the middle. She made loop-de-loops in the lobby. When she was sure that at least two hours had gone by, Aby swam back up to the surface.

Hovering just below the water, she kept her eyes closed; she could not bring herself to look. She reached her hand out of the water. She felt no rain on her skin. Opening her eyes, she gave a tiny kick and pushed her head above the surface. The rain had stopped. She did
not see lightning or hear thunder. She looked at the sky and saw that the cloud was shrinking.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Aby said, although for the first time in her life she knew she wasn’t. She dove under the surface and began swimming, although she hadn’t yet decided where she would go.

With the wind pushing the sailboat at just under forty knots, Stewart and the rainmakers arrived in Winnipeg in just under two hours. The water continued to rise. They travelled into the city on the Red River, and then began sailing through streets as if they were tributaries.

Stewart stayed at the rudder as they navigated between office towers and through the intersection of Portage and Main. Anderson and Kenneth took turns leaning over the side and plucking survivors from the water. They rescued people clinging to lampposts and temporary rafts made of doors and debris. Survivors jumped from the roofs of buildings to swim up to the boat. There were more than forty people aboard when Anderson spotted a man treading water, his exhaustion evident. When he was pulled over the side of the boat, he began to thank everyone aboard. It was some time before he worked his way to the stern and recognized the man at the rudder.

“Stewart?” Lewis asked, his voice full of disbelief.

“Lewis?” Stewart replied, just as bemused. He wanted to say how sorry he was about Lisa. He wanted to marvel at this uncanny reunion. But he knew they had no time. “Later. We’ll get into it later,” he said. “Just get down to the cabin and bail.”

Lewis obeyed. He joined the long line of people passing bucket after bucket back and forth. Although
they had to keep bailing at a furious pace, the boat did not sink. The people on deck continued plucking survivors from the water. Even when the deck had no more room, more and more people were pulled on board.

Stewart had no idea how much time passed, but just as the rain stopped, his cellphone rang. It was Rebecca’s number.

Rebecca waited for her hand to become firm again, picked up her phone, and then dialled Stewart’s number.

“Stewart?” she said. She couldn’t place where he was, but a considerable crowd seemed to be very happy about something.

“Rebecca! Hello! It stopped raining. The rain has stopped!”

“I just. I wanted to ask you …”

“Speak up! I can hardly hear you.”

“This is hard for me.”

“That means it’s important. So just say it, Rebecca. Just say it out loud.”

“I want you to come home,” she said.

Stewart did not immediately answer, but through the line she heard many people rejoicing.

“Soon,” Stewart said. “I’ll be there very, very soon.”

The phone no longer felt soft in her hand. In front of her was a man walking his dog. Feeling Rebecca’s joy, he turned and stared, but Rebecca did not care. She didn’t care that the teenagers on the other side of the park could feel what she was feeling. Or that everyone driving past could feel it. Or that people in their living rooms three blocks away could feel it. Rebecca did not care that anyone and everyone could feel what she felt and she knew that she would never care again.

The following people contributed to this book more than they will ever know: Anne, Angelika and Sam. Zach, Suzanne, Ian and the Impostors and Rosemary. Andy and Mary. Chris and Rob. Stephanie, Alana, Rebecca, Michele. Rolly, Shirley, Liz, Karen and Barry, Marlo, Phoenix and Frida.

I’d also like to gratefully acknowledge the financial support of The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Lamport/Sheppard Productions.