The Dancehall Years Page 22

  If only she could stop the night voices. Eugene. Her. Eugene. Jenny. Eugene. Maya. Eugene. Her husband’s dark eyes sit in his daughters’ narrow olive faces like those of his dachshunds. When she has the phone put in, he calls, asks to speak to Jenny. Darling, she says to him down the wire, then catches herself. She’s right here, Eugene.

  Jenny sits on the paint can. We’re sort of living in the woods, Dad. It’s good. There’s lots of kids my age. Want to speak to Mom again? Mom takes the phone, wiping her face with the paint rag. Jenny hangs on her every word.

  We’re fine, but we need money, Eugene.

  Why should I send money? he says. I want the girls back where they belong in their own apartment with a decent standard of living. You’ve taken them out of the country. I could make a legal issue of this. I’ll take the children. You could get a job and take care of yourself; that would sort it.

  She changes the phone to the other ear. Eugene, this is making me sick. I couldn’t be away from the children. You know that. Why do you want them back and not me? What have I done?

  You haven’t done anything. It’s just not working. You know that as well as I do.

  Gwen closes her eyes miserably. That’s what you say, but I want to come back. I feel like we’re camping here. She doesn’t say, but Jenny has her thumb in her mouth and is curled in foetal position on the floor.

  A few days later, he calls back and apologizes for being harsh. He’ll send money soon.

  How much? He doesn’t say. Maybe he should come for a visit, but she’s not to make too much of it. Of course she’ll make too much of it. She’ll make hay of it. The work she’s done on the cabin fades like the moon in the face of the rising sun.

  The next morning in the big house, voices murmur from the living room they call the group room when the gestalt people are there. Jenny’s at school; Maya and Annabelle are playing in the playpen. Derek said everyone is invited, so she opens the door and slips in. No one’s supposed to break the silence unless they have something real to say. You know those people in your head who shake their finger at you every time you turn around? The ones who stop whispering when you come into the room? The soldier with the gun who chases you all night? They’re all parts of ourselves we give away apparently. When people let themselves far enough into their bruised areas, the bruised areas begin to speak for themselves. You put the person who’s upsetting you or someone from last night’s dream in a chair across from you, change over and take that person’s part. When you start to listen to the parts you’ve disowned, your whole self is supposed to reconvene.

  Outsized pillows line the walls. Derek is kneeling in the centre of the circle in the spot they call the hot seat. (Sometimes they do it with chairs.) Working on a dream, he picks at the carpet tufts, searching for Annabelle, who’s turned into a contact lens. Why’s she turned into a contact lens when I just had her safe? he cries. He turns the lens concave side up on his index finger like a miniature pool, crying she’s so tiny she can’t hear him. Someone who used to sleep in the room above the kitchen is still there, he says. Whoever he is, he’s as sad as I am. Derek looks so miserable Gwen crawls into the centre of the circle and reaches out to hold him. What’s wrong with you people? she says. You can’t leave somebody out here alone like this. Afterwards in the kitchen, she’s chastised by the others for enabling, interfering, rescuing: all of the above.

  38.

  September, 1970

  Takumi is still fishing out of Prince Rupert, but the catch is nothing like it used to be. The day he’s heading out early for the one-day sockeye opening so he won’t have to lump around later, the tide is high enough to navigate through the narrow channel at the entrance to Union Inlet, and he makes good time up past Fort Simpson to the entrance to the Khutzeymateen. Back when they fished out of Blaine, they had so little ice, the packer would come by three or four times a day, sort everything at the canneries—steelhead, chum, coho—but now masses of bycatch are thrown back, unlikely to live. The damage done to the unwanted fish on the decks of the huge drift netters means they’ll never make it to the spawning ground.

  Turns out they’re paying four dollars a pound in Vancouver for fish that are kept alive in tanks until the night before they’re sold. It’s a lot more work bringing in the net every half hour than it was back when it didn’t matter whether or not the fish were alive, but this way he can get anything out by hand that isn’t sockeye. He watches the net carefully as it’s rolled out; he doesn’t want it to fold back on itself and tear. It shimmers green when it’s turned on the drum; the pink buoys roll over and over like regulated decoys of the fish themselves. At the same time, he yards in his never-ending worrying about Shima; it’s been months since he’s heard from her. Longer than months. She used to call every few weeks, even if it was only to badger him about her grandparents. You’d remember where they lived if you tried hard enough, Dad. When he was young, he’d tuned out his parents’ voices when they talked about the old country. Somehow he was certain they’d returned to Japan, sent letters to the family registries in as many areas as he could think of, but found no trace.

  Quick handwork to pull in the net. He yanks off the kelp and tosses the seaweed out to sea. Carries the fish to the trough and hoses water into its mouth to help it recover from the shock of being caught. The eye is too still. When he returns with a couple more, the eye of the first fish is turning, so that’s good. He sets one aside for his lunch, lets it go through rigor mortis before he cooks it. If you throw a fresh fish full of lactic acid into the pan, the blood runs to the muscle and it curls up.

  For the next set, he heads closer to the kelp beds where the sockeye like to swim. Out goes the net, over the roller between the pins. The seawater is running steadily through the side checkers; when he opens them to insert another fish, the ones in the bottom swim up, take a bite of air, head back down. When the lid’s closed, they lie recovering on the bottom of the tanks. The net gets spooled out. The net gets spooled in. It describes one arc, then another. He unhooks the buoys with his pole, patrols the line. Untangles a black bass—only the mouth is caught—throws it back. Flings out more kelp, more seaweed. A kelp bulb gets caught in the net; he stops the roller and bites the long whiplash, winding the stem around his hand and elbow as if rolling it up for future use. Another set over, only three fish this time. He only has twenty-five sockeye, but at least they’re all alive and swimming as he heads back down Chatham Sound. Tomorrow he’ll butcher them, pack them and send them out on the plane.

  39.

  Before they head for the airport on the day Eugene’s coming, Gwen and the girls have lunch in the city at McDonald’s. Well, she and Eugene and the children have lunch at McDonald’s, since he’s with them in every bite she takes. He’s the man in the green mackinaw riding his bike down the street. Now he’s put on a black vest and leans on the wall at the rink where she takes the girls to skate. Later, he’s balded, changed into a jean jacket and walks down Granville St. She’d lined up the children’s socks like small clenched fists in the drawer of their thrift shop bureau in the Deluxe.

  At the airport, Eugene’s legs are kid magnets. How long until night? How are you? he says. Okay now, Gwen says, smiling as Jenny tugs at his hand. Nothing can separate flesh from flesh. Not really. We’re going to ride in the ferry that looks like a birthday cake, Dad. At Horseshoe Bay, Jenny drags him down the ferry dock to look at the weird stuff you can see when the tide’s out. You can pop those yellow things, Dad. I’ll show you. Is the car in this row? Nooooo. Dad automatically starts to get in the driver’s seat, changes his mind, lets Gwen drive onto the ferry. Jenny’d taken her boots off to get a stone out, so intent on looking at her father she put them back on the wrong feet. They’re the last car on, yay. She runs bowlegged to hold the button that slowly whooshes open the door to the stairs.

  Dad has a new ski jacket, short hair compared to most people here. He takes one look at the homespun shirts and sweaters, asks if he looks like a stranger who doesn
’t know how to dress. No, Gwen says, even if she knows he’s alluding to the way he thought about her clothes in the States. Jenny pulls out a slate with carbon-backed plastic and shows him the adding she can do. When he takes them to Fantasia, she’ll lean forward in the darkened theatre to watch his face watch her favourite parts. When he comes back from getting hot chocolate, he takes Jenny’s boots off, lines them up the right way, but she crosses her legs so she can put them back on the wrong feet. Maya crawls all over him. He pulls an issue of Harper’s from his briefcase to show Gwen an article he wants her to read, hands her some material that came for her from the Movement office. All passengers should return to the car deck and prepare to disembark. Gwen will always remember that ferry crossing, will dole moments out to herself spoonful by spoonful over a series of long winters. Her mother said that, in the overall scheme of things, the time when your children are young will seem short compared to the rest of your life. That’s impossible.

  At Scarborough, Gwen and her family stand at the kitchen door for inspection, all of them visitors now that her husband is there. Derek comes over to shake hands with Eugene. Annabelle’s in her booster seat at the table, white hair puffed out around her narrow face. Eugene picks up her small limp hand and shakes it. Lily is popping cubes of frozen lemonade from the ice cube tray that they bought when lemons were on special.

  We shouldn’t have come empty-handed, Eugene says to Gwen quietly. There’s a store, she replies, standing there married. Her eyes are over-bright, cheeks a spreading pink.

  So this was your grandparents’ place, Eugene says to Lily. It’s a wonderful old house.

  It is, isn’t it? she says.

  Derek gives him the tour, tells him how they boarded the toilets in the bathroom because the septic field was dodgy. Built composting toilets out back because there wasn’t enough riparian zone left between the house and the ocean. Good idea. Both of them look and look again, the way men go over work together, the one who hasn’t done it not saying anything about the way he would have done it. The bathtub by the cider press has a trough underneath, firewood piled beside it. You fill it with a hose and wash yourself before getting in like they do in Japan, Jenny explains.

  Gwen and Eugene are to have the bedroom above the kitchen. Probably Eugene doesn’t say anything about wanting to sleep alone to be polite. You know what, Dad? says Jenny at supper. If I’ve got a chocolate bar at school and my friend, Fred, finishes his first, he makes me give him some of mine and my silver paper.

  Maybe you should make a deal where you both get to eat to a midway line and whoever gets there first waits for the other.

  It’s not a question of logic, her look says.

  Eugene stays downstairs reading to the children in their makeshift bedroom, visits much too long with Lily who, Gwen now knows, spends her nights in the renovated school bus. Upstairs, she lights candles and puts on Zen music. Oh, a seduction scene, Eugene says indifferently when he finally comes up. Never ask your husband if he’s sleeping with someone else. If he doesn’t say anything, it will mean he is. He sits down on the edge of the bed, pats her back absently.

  Don’t do that. I’m not a baby.

  Sorry. He moves to the window, keeping his back to her. Jenny’s down there feeding a crow, he says. I thought I’d tucked her in.

  It’s her pet, says Gwen. She probably forgot she hadn’t fed it.

  Honestly now, in your heart of hearts, wouldn’t you like to sleep with other men once in a while? he’d said once. Not at all, she’d replied, which was true. It’s a lonely place if what you’re doing isn’t working. Clockwise. Counterclockwise. Show me how you do it, he said then. Then I’ll do it how you like.

  That’s private. It’s trickier now… since the children. It’s harder to concentrate.

  Well, fine, I’ll never get it.

  No, sometimes you’re emotionally excited, and it’s a whole other thing. It’s not that cut-and-dried. If you’re in love with someone, there’s an emotional kind of coming that can mean more than the technical kind.

  Do you ever get caught up in your own rhetoric, Gwen? I mean…

  He’s left his journal open on their dresser. On purpose? Came across Lily lying in the bath today. Couldn’t help admiring her handsome bush. People who read other people’s diaries deserve what they get.

  Maybe if something happens to me, you should marry Lily, she says to his back at the window.

  Okay, he says much too quickly. You asked for that, he says.

  When he comes to bed, he leaves his underwear on, so there is someone else. He holds her stiffly, only coming into her so that she’ll stop pawing at him. A few minutes of manufactured hoist holding himself still for a different second from what she’s used to, waiting for his fantasy of whoever he’s sleeping with now to kick in. Whoever she is probably has a convenient low clitoris. He moves his finger faster than she’s used to, the way someone else likes it. He rolls over. Actually, love, I don’t think we should be doing this. I should have left you to sort yourself out.

  Oh, thanks.

  I don’t even know why I’m here.

  The children, isn’t it?

  You’re playing your strongest card when you talk about the children, Gwen. I’m as worried about them as you are. I want them with me at least half the time. But there’s something else you have to do. You know it and I know it. It’s not working, you trying to live my life. You don’t belong in my culture.

  She rolls over to face the wall. That’s all very well for you to say now. Is it still her? That Maria character?

  No, he says with a snorting breath, as if how could it possibly be. It’s as if no matter how much I give you, it will never be enough. I thought the separation might have made a difference, but it hasn’t.

  His lips are swollen as if she’d beaten him. She can’t put names to any of the shadows pressing her from behind. Doesn’t he understand she won’t be able to breathe if he stops touching her? Being entered, it seems as if the whole person comes into you and stays. Maybe for a man, she thinks, it’s only part of you.

  There’s something wrong with me, she says. I feel like I’ve been struggling up a ragged stream since I met you, but when I get to the spawning ground, it’s the wrong one. I wasn’t born there after all.

  I’m what’s wrong with you, Gwen. I don’t know why it’s so hard.

  He turns his back and falls asleep, leaving her out in the cold night. Their former selves call from his Deep Cove house like their own lost children. If she moves a millimeter closer to him, she’ll beg forever. She tries to stitch herself back together, sews a finger to her heel, a breast on her head. The fingers of her other hand are basted down the side of her body like a fringe. Her cells drip into him all night at the spot where their ankles touch.

  Worse, there is someone else in the room. The rush of two rivers meet under a mountain whose striations slant diagonally to a peak. The only way into the wooded valley at its base is by tongue. It’s impossible to sleep; she’s rigid with tension and desire, is still awake when the watery sun softens the window. Look, Mommy, the dark is all better. Eugene gets up as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, stands by the window, twirling her last cell on his finger like a Hula-Hoop. Aren’t you going to get up? he says.

  She’s up already. He’s up, so she’s up. He knows it too. He comes back and sits on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the ragged cedars.

  There’s something wrong with this place, Gwen. I thought it was the pressure of the mountains and being at sea level, but it’s not that.

  It’s just the rain.

  No, it’s not just the rain.

  She sits up, holds her face between her hands. I’m going to take a shower, she manages.

  I’ll check on the girls, he says.

  The girls are all right. They’re down on the beach.

  They’re not all right, you know, Gwen.

  I’ll look after the girls, she hisses between her teeth.

  She
will too. You watch.

  In the shower, she stands at an angle she’s never stood at before. If she goes back into the bedroom without a plan, her fingers will end up as a begging bowl. Her tongue is a stone. She turns off the water and stands under it anyway. They’re not going to be half and half anywhere by the way, she’ll tell him later. They need a home base. All she would have to do is never touch him again. Is that all? What I want the most, I can’t have. Are you sure?

  Finally, she has to go back to the room because she’s cold. The only way to stop herself going over and clinging to him is to think of a way she won’t be able to bear his seeing her. No makeup. Not clean her teeth. Keep on the ugly nightie that shows the remains of her pregnancy bulge. If she concedes one particle to her instinct to fluff her plumage, she’ll end up clamping her toothless gums on his neck and hang forever like a person with no arms. Do other people need like she does? She has no idea. Tell you what. If she makes it across the room to the cupboard and outside without losing her dignity, she’ll get to interpret whatever she sees when she steps into the yard as a touchstone to remember whenever she needs courage.

  There’s an old tweed coat hanging in the closet. She puts it on, takes a deep breath that she holds until she’s across the room and down in the kitchen. Outside, a tall hollyhock has climbed the shed and is turning black. Strips of cloud split the early morning moon. Wherever she might end up settling, remind her to plant some hollyhock.