White Heat (18 page)

    At
the counter waiting to pay she ran into Sammy. Their eyes met briefly,
awkwardly. He clocked the contents of her basket and a frail smile of
recognition spread across his face. It was odd that two people could predict
what the other would buy in the supermarket and yet be in so many other ways
incompatible. She wondered if he had seen the bottle of Canadian Mist she
thought she had hidden carefully under a rack of ribs and a jar of peanut butter.
She hoped he hadn't.

    'Need
company?'

    She
considered how good it would be to feel him beside her on the sofa then, later,
in bed, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. For an instant they stood
like that, together, as though they were right back at the beginning and all of
the rocky surfaces, the sharp, brittle stones, that had come between them over
the years had dissolved. But then there would be the morning. There was always
the morning.

    'Another
night,' she said, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder.

    A
pained look flitted across his face and he backed away a little, just enough so
that her arm fell from him.

    'Sure,
Edie.' His voice was tinny with fake bonhomie. 'Sure thing.'

    She
left it until she felt quite drunk before approaching the door to Joe's room.
For a while she stood before it, this simple door, leading to the simple,
rectangular room. Since his death the house, her home, had become this door and
what lay inside. She turned the handle and went in, heart thudding. For a
moment she thought she could smell that heartstopping smell, the peculiar spicy
stench of dead flesh, but it was only a memory. Closing the door behind her,
she stepped into the room and sat down in the chair beside the bedstead.

    'Joe,
allummiipaa,
darling?' The sound of her voice surprised her.

    She
waited a while but the silence, the sucking airless- ness of the room, left her
dizzy. Whatever she had expected to find, dreaded, or perhaps longed for, it
wasn't there.

    She
threw the groceries in the trash, then she sat and waited for the night wind to
come down from the mountains. She waited for it to begin its yelling and raging
and she went out into it.

    The
following Sunday she decided to pay a visit to Minnie and Willa. Edie had
largely managed to avoid her stepson's mother and brother. It was only now she
realized that she had been angry with them for blaming her in some measure for
Joe's death and angry with herself, too, because there was a part of her that
thought they had a point. But who was really responsible for Joe's suicide? Was
it her fault for allowing Sammy to send him out on his own with a neurotic,
incompetent and manipulative jerk? Or did Andy Taylor somehow get Joe involved
in something, wrapped him up so tight he couldn't see any way of loosening
himself that didn't involve taking his own life? What it came down to was, she
needed their forgiveness and she needed to know she was worth forgiving.

    Minnie
was on the sofa, watching TV, a bottle wrapped in brown paper beside her. So it
had got that bad, Edie thought, too urgent to wait for a glass. She knew what
that felt like.

    Minnie
took her in momentarily then returned her gaze to the screen.

    'Just
what we need.' She hawked up and spat on the green speckled linoleum tiles. 'A
royal visit.'

    Edie
bit back her irritation and took a deep breath. Sure, Minnie was angry. So
what? It was easy to be angry, she was angry herself, but no one seemed to be able
to agree who to be angry with. Perhaps there was no one and the rage that
roared in after Joe's suicide, after any suicide, was like an avalanche
tumbling from a glacier; all you could do was to bear witness to its terrible
energy and hope you would still be alive at the end of it.

    'Minnie,'
Edie said simply. 'I'm sorry.'

    In
that moment she didn't know what she was sorry for. Everything maybe. Minnie
gave Edie a look so thick with hatred that it felt like a punch to the face.

    'You
wanna talk to him, Willa's in there,' pointing at the door to Willa's room,
then spitting into her hand and rubbing the palm across her face. 'You're
wasting your time with me.'

    Edie
found Willa sitting on his bed beside the open window, smoking dope.

    'Your
mother's mad at me.'

    He
shook his head. 'No, she just hates you.'

    'Any
idea why, aside from the usual?'

    Willa
took a long toke with his eyes closed. He said: 'Where to begin?'

    Silence.

    Edie
started again. 'Do you remember that time out on Craig when we went
spear-fishing? You, me and Joe.' Trying to bring him back to her. 'What are you
now, twenty- two, right? So it must have been, what, about seven, eight years
ago?'

    She'd
taken them char fishing. There was an area of deep water just off the coast of
Craig. It was a particularly good year, the fish came in so close to the coast
you could wade out a hundred metres clear of the beach and almost lift them
from the water.

    Willa
and Joe were just kids, then, of course. Joe went in the water first. Joe was
such an enthusiast about almost everything, but he loved spear-fishing in
particular and he'd practised till he'd got good at it. As usual, Willa hung
back. He never wanted to put the work in, but resented his little brother for
his superior competence. She remembered Joe whooping as he brought his harpoon
down and called excitedly to his brother to come and keep the fish from
escaping while he went for a net. With Willa pinning the fish, Joe kicked his
way back to the beach in a fury of excitement, shaping the size of the fish
with his hands. She saw Willa lift the spear and bring the creature pinned at
its end out of the water. Joe was right. It was huge, a beauty, more than
enough to provide supper for all three of them. Then something unexpected
happened. As Joe bent over to pick up the net, his back to the sea, Edie
watched Willa bring up his free hand and with one great swipe, push the fish
from its anchor and plunge the empty harpoon back into the water. Just then Joe
turned and leapt back into the sea, the water unfurling into white rags about
him, shouting, 'Keep it fast, Willa!' It was only when Joe reached into the sea
to grab the harpoon he realized there was no longer any fish to net. He stood
up, a look of devastation on his face. It was as if the sea had snatched his
whole world. For an instant Joe just looked at Willa and in that instant Edie
could see that Joe knew what his brother had done and decided to forgive him
anyway.

    'I
don't remember any fishing trip,' Willa said now. There was defiance in his
voice. 'Look, Edie, it was you insisted Joe went out with that
qalunaat
and I guess you'll just have to live with that.'

    Edie
saw now she had been stupid to imagine the Inukpuks would forgive her. Neither
Minnie nor Willa were ever going to want to understand why Joe had died,
because they had already decided that Edie was to blame. Sammy had spun a
version of the story and the Inukpuks had bought it. Anyone else, she'd think
of it as a betrayal. But Sammy wasn't bad, he was just weak. She'd known it
when she'd married him and nothing had changed. Some day Willa might find out
the truth, but she wasn't going to be the one to tell him.

    She
turned and picked up her outerwear, then she walked out of the house and went
back home. She spent the early part of the evening watching Buster Keaton
punch, bludgeon and flee his way out of trouble in
The Frozen North,
feeling by turns numb and unhinged. Eventually she got up and, fetching the
steps from the utility room, clambered up to the high kitchen cupboard and took
out the bottle of Canadian Mist.

    
The
Frozen North
was on its fourth or maybe fifth loop, and Edie was on her
third double when Sammy's face peered around the door.

    'Edie,
you OK?' He came over and sat beside her.

    'You
know what day it is?' she said.

    Sammy
looked puzzled. 'Sunday?'

    'A
month.'

    Sammy
helped himself to a glass of whisky. Some kind of dark energy came over the room.
Neither of them said anything. A thought burst into her mind, a horrible,
pricking thought, but one that she couldn't altogether dismiss.

    'Sammy,'
she said, 'you don't think Willa could have have held something over Joe?'

    Sammy
instantly flung down his glass, stood up and went to the door.

    His
voice was cracked and tremulous: 'You know what, Edie? Sometimes I'm amazed I
ever loved you.'

    A few
hours later, when she could not sleep, she found herself at Sammy's door. The light
was still on, and she went inside.

    He
was sitting on his cheap sofa, the one that smelled of old beer and rancid seal
fat, maudlin with drink. Beside him sat several empty cans of Coors and a
half-bottle of Wild Turkey. She went over and for a while they held one another
in silence. Then he poured a shot of whisky into a grimy glass sitting on the
table and pushed it towards her. She lifted the glass to her lips; the booze
burned its way into her stomach. Beside her, her ex-husband sat watching intently.

    'I'm
sorry,' she said.

    He
waved her apology away, as though everything had returned to how it had always
been and by the simple act of sharing a drink, they had achieved a perfect
understanding.

    'I
came round to tell you something before,' he said. 'About Andy Taylor.'

    The
evening before the trip, Taylor had asked to go to the mayor's office to make
an urgent phone call.

    'You
know where to?'

    'Uh
nuh. Family situation, he said. It'll be on the record, though.'

    Edie
took him in. Even now he was a puzzle to her.

    'Sammy,'
she said, 'why are you telling me this?'

    He
smiled thinly. 'I'm not brave, Edie. I know you'd like me to be, but I'm not.
Not like you.'

    Someone
had left a desk light on inside the Town Hall offices and its light cast faint
stripes across the empty desks and office chairs. She passed by the conference
room where, what now seemed like a hundred years ago, the council of Elders had
agreed not to investigate Felix Wagner's death while she and Joe waited outside
like scolded school kids.

    At
the comms room she turned right down a side corridor and headed towards the
large grey door at the end, which led into the mayor's office. The office
itself was locked. For a moment she sat at the desk of the mayor's personal
assistant, Sheila Silliq, just outside Simeonie's office door. Sheila was one
of those women who'd willingly given up their sense of being Inuit for a cosy
office job and a twice-yearly trip down south to the bright lights of Ottawa.
Polite, efficient, and with just the smallest air of superiority.

    Beside
her desk was a metal shelf and on it sat a number of box files, neatly
labelled. Edie found the one marked 'phone log', and scrolled through the
sheets to April. Almost no one made calls to anywhere other than the
surrounding area, Iqaluit and, occasionally, to Ottawa. The US area code stood
out a mile. She scribbled down the number, closed up the records and was
putting them back in the cabinet just as the door to the main entrance swung
open and Sheila appeared in the corridor, bustling towards her, rosy from the
wind outside.

    The
only thing for it was to go on the offensive. 'Couldn't sleep,' Edie said,
trying to appear as though her presence at a desk not hers in the middle of the
night was nothing out of the ordinary 'What's your excuse?'

    Sheila
stared at her, open-mouthed, an expression of bewilderment on her face. 'I left
my flask.'

    It
wasn't until she got back home from the school the following day that Edie
allowed herself to look at the number Andy Taylor had called. The area code
wasn't one she recognized: nowhere in Nunavut, Ottawa or Toronto. Taylor had
told Sammy he wanted to make a private call to his family but, as Derek had
discovered, the skinny
qalunaat
didn't have any close family.