Monday 6 November 2017
He was perfect. Ten little fingers, ten little toes; button nose; baby-seal eyes; a cry like a newborn lamb . . . Lucy had never known love like this before. He was hers. Totally and completely hers and no one could ever take him away from her. He was her reward for all the sickness and sleeplessness, the swellings and strange pains that had afflicted her throughout the pregnancy.
It all made sense now. Even coming almost a month early, he’d weighed in at 4.3kg and the paramedic had said she’d ‘dodged a bullet’ not having to deliver him at full term – he would have been almost 5kg, he’d guessed. It had made her mother sheepish too – all those waspish comments about her size and gargantuan appetite when, all along, she’d been growing this delicious, bouncing butter-ball of a boy. Of course she’d been hungry! Of course she’d been tired! Of course she’d been big!
She sighed, resting her cheek on her arm as she watched him sleep. He was five days old but already his cheeks were rounded and plump, his scrawny little thighs beginning to fill out. He startled a lot – Moro reflex, they called it; particularly strong in boys, apparently – so she liked swaddling him in a blanket, his little pointed chin dipping into the V where it criss-crossed over. It helped to settle him and she liked how solid it made him feel in her arms, like a bag of sugar rather than a flailing mass of limbs as he rooted for the breast.
He was feeding well – she was a natural! – but he wasn’t sleeping great on account of her difficulty burping him. Her mother had been a revelation on this topic, showing off some complicated positions to help settle him but whilst they seemed to work fine in the day, they weren’t so successful in the middle of the night, although possibly that was because she was worried his crying would wake the hotel guests across the courtyard and she gave up sooner. But the pattern seemed to have been set – she’d feed him for forty-five minutes, wind him for another thirty and then would only get ten, fifteen minutes’ sleep before he was hungry again – and it was beginning to take its toll. She thought she could probably sleep standing up. The idea of sleeping for more than forty minutes at a stretch had suddenly become the greatest luxury she could imagine . . . Those were the times she wanted Tuck back. If they could just have tag-teamed, she might not feel so desperately exhausted . . .
But she knew she had to be strong now. Stronger than she’d ever been. This baby had opened her eyes only minutes after opening his own and when Tuck – on being told his son had come early – had said he couldn’t leave Toronto early (with ‘no cover’, he’d said, he couldn’t risk losing winning accounts for the coming season) she had seen with crystal clarity how things had to be. How could he not have moved heaven and earth to see his child? Everyone had been astounded – even Dolores, who wasn’t prone to sentimentality.
No. He would never be a good enough father for her child and she knew now that at some level, she’d understood it from the moment she’d seen the line on the pregnancy stick – maybe they both had – his restlessness and persistent refusal to face up to fatherhood, even in spite of his best intentions. Several times, he had raised his game – after the Room 32 incident, and following the bear attack. But he could never sustain it, always falling back into his old habits within days . . . maybe they had both been aware that this clock ticking down in the background would be detonating them.
But it was done. There was no turning back. She had grown in more ways than just the physical and she was a mother now. Once upon a time, Tuck had been the sun that shone in her sky but he’d been eclipsed – she had a new sun now. A newborn son.
No one else knew of her decision yet. Not her mother. Not Meg. But yesterday afternoon, when Barbara had taken the baby for a stroll down Banff Avenue – ostensibly to give her a rest and him some air (but really to show him off to everyone) – Lucy had packed a case of his stuff and driven to the Titch store. Mitch always used to sleep over there on a mattress in the eaves whenever he was too late or too drunk to get back up to the cabin, and now Tuck could stay there too until he got himself sorted.
She hadn’t yet decided on her cover story or whether even to use one. The truth was ugly but Tuck had made it easy for her in some ways, this latest no-show just another example of what she had to endure – his cheating on her, drinking too much, not coming home . . . But if that wasn’t enough, then there were always the bruises. Enough people had seen them over the years, although only one person had ever seen the truth. Just one. That was how good she was at hiding it.
Lightly, she stroked her baby’s cheek. He was what she’d been waiting for, he was the strength she needed to make the break and start afresh. Perhaps the way everything had happened hadn’t been accidental at all; it had been fate . . .
The sudden sound of the kitchen door slamming shut – making the baby startle in his sleep – made her jump. He was back? Hadn’t it crossed his mind that perhaps his newborn son was sleeping and he couldn’t blow in and out of the house now like a teenager?
Of course not, and that action alone told her he was still the same man he’d been six months ago, a year, ten years ago. He wasn’t a father. How could he be when he was still a boy himself? He was never going to change. Throughout the entire pregnancy she’d waited for him to join her on this path – after Mitch’s death, after the bear attack, after she and Meg had fallen out and she’d barely spoken to another soul apart from him and her mother. But he was as fixed as the Pole Star; the man he was now was the man he would always be. She might once have taken comfort in that, construed it as constancy, but their lives had changed in the time it had taken her to grow this baby. She had to leave him.
He was standing there now, gazing at her from the doorway, looking indecently handsome in his jeans and navy parka, blond hair dazzling under the light. He’d always been too handsome for his own good and it had spoilt him – bringing pleasures he hadn’t had to earn.
She pulled the belt tighter on her dressing gown (she hadn’t got dressed today; if she couldn’t stay in her pyjamas with her newborn, when could she?) and watched the change on his face as he saw the baby, swaddled tight and dreaming, on the bed beside her – physical proof at last of what had just been an abstract concept to him up to now, her pregnancy little more than an affront to his desires.
‘Holy fuck,’ he whispered, tiptoeing over.
He reached a hand to touch him but her arm shot out, stopping him. ‘Don’t wake him. He’s just finished feeding.’
Tuck looked at her, apprehension in his eyes, and nodded. ‘You look whacked.’
That was the first thing he said to her on becoming a mother? ‘Thanks.’
He didn’t seem to notice her sarcasm, instead tilting his head to the side and trying to get a better look at his son’s face. ‘Does he look like me?’
‘He doesn’t look like anyone yet.’
‘I reckon he’s got my nose,’ he murmured, carefully lying flat on the mattress – boots and all – his face just centimetres from the baby’s.
Lucy didn’t need to look between Tuck’s once-broken nose and the baby’s snub one to know he had nothing of the sort. ‘Mmm.’
He chuckled softly, looking up at her. ‘I always think most babies look like pugs but he’s cute, right?’
She sighed. ‘Well, I think so, but clearly I’m biased.’
‘He’s big too. He’s gonna take after his papa.’
Lucy nodded but she wasn’t bemused or charmed by this belated show of affection. He was five days old already. How could Tuck not have come back before now? ‘He wasn’t as big five days ago. He’s put on a hundred grams since then.’
She couldn’t keep the tint of sourness from her voice and Tuck heard it this time, pushing himself back up to sitting, the baby between them. ‘Listen, honey, I’m so sorry I couldn’t get back before now.’ His voice was a low murmur.
‘Oh, no, I get it,’ she replied flatly. ‘You can’t let something like becoming a father get in the way of work.’
Tuck looked surprised, then hurt. ‘No, you don’t understand—’
‘Oh, I think I do.’ The vein of steel in her voice caught his attention and she watched as the realization dawned on his face as to how much trouble he was in with her. But it was still more than he knew. He had no idea of what was about to happen to him.
Tuck blinked at her. ‘Sweetheart, believe me – our lives changed out there.’
‘No, Tuck, they changed here,’ she whispered. ‘I had a baby. On my own.’
He frowned. ‘I though you said Meg was with you?’
‘Without a doctor, is what I meant!’ she hissed. ‘We were on our own in that godforsaken cabin. Anything could have happened and you were thirty-five hundred kilometres away, selling snowboards.’
‘Hey, that is not fair! You weren’t due for another month—!’ he shot back angrily, raising his voice.
‘Shh!’ she hushed him furiously as the baby startled again.
Tuck withdrew, physically pulling in his arms and legs as though he was worried he might accidentally hurt the baby in some way, looking anxious as his son twitched and jerked his legs, his mouth beginning to open and root.
‘I never would have gone if I’d known the baby was coming,’ Tuck whispered.
‘But you didn’t come back when he did.’
‘I told you! Things happened out there.’
She rolled her eyes. He just didn’t get it. It didn’t matter if he’d quadrupled their number of stockists for the coming season; they could have survived another year on the existing contracts. He should have been here. She’d needed him to prove to her the kind of father he could be; she had needed evidence that things had changed, that she could trust him. But he’d failed. He’d fallen at every hurdle and he was out of time. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – wait for him any longer. She had to put her baby first now.
But how did she say those words, ‘I’m leaving you’?
He reached across the bed for her hand. ‘Look, I get why you’re pissed. Honestly I do. And if things had worked out any way different, I’d have been straight back here. But there’s something I really need to tell you.’
She inhaled sharply, summoning her courage. ‘Yeah? ’Cause there’s something I need to tell you too.’
He looked a little surprised. ‘OK. You first?’
She shook her head. ‘No. You. I insist.’ Once she’d said her words, there’d be nothing left to say.
He looked straight at her and she felt those blue eyes lock around her heart like a clamp, holding her in place the way they always did, stopping her from leaving, giving her hope when she thought there was none. ‘I sold the company.’ The words smoked in the air like flares in a night sky. ‘Well, in principle,’ he added quickly. ‘Obviously it’s not just my decision to make but . . . it’s an amazing offer.’
At first she couldn’t reply. She couldn’t form the shapes to make words, she couldn’t push the air from her lungs.
‘What?’ she managed, finally.
‘Nordica made an approach on the second day. I’ve been in meetings with them ever since.’ He grinned delightedly, his eyes electric. ‘That was why I couldn’t leave, baby.’
It wasn’t a joke? He’d sold Titch?
‘Ask me how much,’ he said, enjoying the stunned expression on her face.
It was another moment before she physically could. ‘How much?’
His smile stretched across his face and she realized she hadn’t seen him as happy as that, not once, in the last seven and a half months. ‘Seven million dollars.’
He got up from the bed and walked round to her side, pulling her up by the hands so that she was standing toe to toe with him, his hands on her waist. Her stomach was still swollen – in truth she still looked pregnant – but for once she didn’t care. ‘I did it, baby. I did it for us.’
‘Seven million dollars?’ she whispered. They would never need to worry again.
He beamed wider, his excitement growing. ‘Say it again! I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of hearing it.’
‘This isn’t a joke?’
‘Luce, do you really think I’d have missed the first few days of my son’s life for anything less than seven million dollars? I was too scared to leave until we’d got the details sorted out. I kept thinking it would just go up in smoke, turn out to be some crazy-ass dream,’ he said, bending his knees so that he was eye level with her. ‘It almost killed me not being able to tell you, but I wanted to see your face. I wanted to see this,’ he said, clasping her face in his hands.
He kissed her and she let him. In fact, she kissed him back. She’d missed him. Seven million dollars?
‘Oh, Tuck,’ she whispered, looking up at him. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘It changes everything, don’t you see?’
She caught her breath. ‘Everything?’
‘Everything, baby. We can get out of this shithole, buy someplace new—’
‘Someplace bigger?’
‘Much bigger. And without your mom spying from the windows.’ He kissed her again and this time she snaked her arms around his neck, holding him closer. The physical side of things had always been good between them. Too good. Too much.
He kissed the tip of her nose. ‘What was the thing you wanted to tell me?’
She swallowed, looking back at him, then shook her head. ‘Nothing.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not important.’
Wednesday 8 November 2015
Tuck was more nervous than he thought he’d be. In the intervening months since Mitch had died, they hadn’t spent one moment alone together and he knew that was deliberate on Meg’s part. In the past, he’d found her easy company – a ready smile, good sense of humour, loyal and pretty fearless on a board herself. How could he not have liked her? It was practically written in the stars; the two people in the world he loved most, loved her. And yeah, she was attractive too, he wouldn’t deny it. She had a great body but she didn’t flaunt it, which only made her the more intriguing as far as he was concerned, but she was Mitch’s girl, Lucy’s best friend. Perhaps without those connections, something might have happened once, but there was no chance of it now – not just because he was married or she was a widow, but because she blamed him for Mitch’s death. She’d never said the words out loud – she was too generous, too loyal to Lucy to do that – but he saw it in her eyes every time she looked at him.
It was why he’d gone out of his way to keep a low profile around her – not coming home early on the nights Lucy said Meg was stopping in for dinner, making sure not to walk past the window of Dolores’s store, pulling his baseball cap lower and pretending not to see her if he passed her at the movies.
And she did the same, he knew – he’d seen her double back on herself in the reflection of the meat counter at the supermarket, driving past without waving on the nights he worked late at the studio. It was a game they were both pretending not to play and they were very good at it, for no one suspected the gaping great hole that flapped in the tight weave of their friendship – Lucy hadn’t picked up on it, or Dolores; not even Barbara, who watched him like a hawk.
But he couldn’t avoid this. Lucy had been resolute that he had to tell Meg, saying it was still too early for her to be up and leaving the house, the baby was still so small, the temperatures had started to plunge. It was true that snow was in the air, the sky lowering itself onto the mountaintops in readiness for the first heavy fall of the season, but that wasn’t it – he knew she just didn’t want to be the one to tell Meg the news. Because there was no way she was going to take it well, no matter how logically Lucy argued it.
It wasn’t like Tuck even agreed with it himself. It didn’t sit well with him – on the contrary, in fact – but there’d been no arguing on it for once: the deed was already done, Lucy’s signature was already dry on the dotted line.
He wrung his hands together, feeling how chapped and rough the knuckles felt in his palms. Still, once Meg heard the good news he had to share with her about the Nordica offer, he was confident she’d come round about this.
‘Hey.’
He looked up. Meg was standing by the bar beside him, looking willowy in her plaid shirt and black dungarees, her hair held back in a loose braid. He twisted slightly on his stool. ‘Meg, hey. Thanks for coming.’
She pulled out the stool next to him.
‘Fancy a beer?’ he asked, holding up his own bottle.
She shrugged and sat down, smiling opaquely and nodding to a few of the other locals.
‘So how’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘It’s been a while.’
‘I know, right?’ she replied, without answering him, and he felt his nerves spike again.
‘Another two,’ he said to Jeff, the bartender who’d been working here since Mitch and Tuck had tried sneaking in, underage, all those years ago.
‘How’s Lucy doing?’ she asked, eyes everywhere but on him.
‘Great. Really good,’ he nodded. ‘She’s an amazing mother already – I mean, a real natural. It blows my mind just watching her with him.’
Meg shrugged. ‘You should have seen her during the birth. Most women would have freaked but she kept so calm.’
Tuck snuck a sidelong look at her, trying to tell whether the remark was a jibe for the fact that he hadn’t been there, but Meg was watching Jeff, her body language relaxed. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for what you did that day. I’m not sure I could’ve done it.’
Meg looked at him, doubt in her face too. Instead she shrugged. ‘Instinct kicks in.’
Jeff brought over the beers and set them down on mats. Meg gripped hers, the tips of her fingers white as they pressed the glass, and he saw she was more nervous – or stressed – than she wanted to let on.
‘I’ll swing by after this – see how she’s getting on and have a sneaky cuddle with the little man.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ Tuck grinned. ‘I’ve barely held him yet. He’s always either feeding or sleeping.’
‘Really?’ Meg looked surprised. ‘I guess I’ve been lucky with my timings then. I’ve had lots of cuddles with him.’
‘She’s probably scared I’m going to drop him,’ Tuck joked after a pause.
‘Probably.’ Meg took a swig of the beer and glanced round the bar. It was surprisingly busy for a Wednesday afternoon, another small group of tourists walking in. ‘Looks like everything’s getting into full swing for the festival kick-off on Friday.’
‘Yeah.’
She looked at him again without making eye contact. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘About the film?’ He shrugged but looked into his beer. ‘What will be, will be, I guess. It’s out of my hands now.’ His fingers played with the foil on the bottle’s neck. In truth, he could hardly sleep. That film had been his lifeline in the immediate aftermath of Mitch’s death; he had poured everything he had into it and if it didn’t make the cut . . . he knew he’d never be able to better it. ‘Are you going to go to the screening?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’ It was her turn to stare at her beer. ‘Maybe.’
He hesitated, and then said, ‘Me either.’
‘You’re not sure? But all that time you spent on it? Months.’
He gave a hopeless shrug. ‘It’ll be different. In the editing suite, I could make myself believe he was right there beside me. But on the big screen, all those strangers watching . . .’ He sighed, cutting himself off. How could he tell her he was terrified it would feel like saying goodbye?
They sat in silence for a few minutes and Tuck could feel Mitch’s presence between them, like a balloon being inflated in the space between their arms until finally it touched them both and their thoughts merged, putting voice to her blame, his guilt.
He wanted to say it – tell her how sorry he was for ever picking up the goddam phone that day. If he’d only waited. Or left it till later; if only he’d gone home instead of to Bill’s – but her silence bristled like a wary animal, its hackles up, and he moved his thoughts away again.
‘So, what’s up?’ she asked, inhaling deeply as she looked down at the beer mat and holding her breath for a moment. Tuck was reminded of an octopus he’d seen out diving once – it puffed itself up and made itself look bigger when it felt vulnerable or under attack. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’
‘There’s something I have to tell you.’
She frowned. ‘Sounds ominous.’
‘It’s not,’ he said quickly. ‘But we thought you should hear it first. From us.’
‘“Us”? You mean you and Lucy?’
He nodded and grabbed another swig of beer, just as someone came and stood by the bar behind her to place an order. Tuck regretted choosing here to meet – this was the wrong place to tell her after all. It was too public.
‘Well, go on,’ she prompted as he lapsed into silence. ‘What is it?’
‘Before I do, I want you to know the decision was made for the very best of reasons.’
She blinked. ‘OK, now I’m really worried.’
He inhaled deeply, his gaze catching hold, for once, of her elusive hazel-green eyes. They were so clear, like a sky after the rain, washed clean, and he saw at once in them all the pain and sorrow, hurt and loss she’d endured. She was far lovelier than she knew.
‘We’ve chosen the name for the baby.’
‘Oh, my God, is that all?’ she asked, visibly deflating, one hand over her heart. ‘I thought you were going to—’
He watched as she stopped in her tracks. Understood.
‘No.’ She stiffened, her hand falling away from her beer, her face draining of colour. She rose from the bar stool in a single fluid motion.
He reached a hand out to catch her wrist but she pulled it away before he could touch her. ‘Meg, it was Lucy’s idea. She feels it’s a fitting way to remember and honour him.’
‘Honour him?’ Meg repeated, beginning to tremble, the amber flecks in her eyes sparking like fire. ‘Where’s the honour in naming your son after the man you sent to his death?’
Tuck flinched as the words poured over him. They were the ones he’d been expecting ever since that fateful dawn knock at the door but still they burned, excoriating his flesh.
He hung his head.
‘What do you expect me to say to this?’ Meg spat. ‘Do you really think I’m going to call him by that name? Must I have what I’ve lost thrown in my face, day after day, by the very people who stole him from me?’
‘Meg, listen to me—’
‘No! You listen.’ Her face was up to his suddenly. ‘He is not having Mitch’s name. You change it, you understand me? This is not remembrance. It’s not honour. It’s torment. You are the reason why he’s dead. You don’t get to feel better about what you did by paying lip service to his memory. You don’t! I won’t let you do this.’
His mouth opened but it was another moment before the words would come out. ‘It’s too late. She’s already registered the birth. Lucy’s signed the birth certificate.’
Meg stared at him, her entire body trembling. ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. Tears were filling his eyes but he didn’t even care who saw. She was right in what she was saying. It was because of him that his friend was dead; he could never make amends, never make it right. Not with a film, not with a name.
Meg’s hand connected hard against his cheek, the slap carrying over the music and making every person in the room stare. Tuck knew what they were all thinking – lovers’ quarrel.
‘If I could change it, I would. All of it.’
Meg stared at him, nodding, agreeing. ‘So would I. It should have been you that night. You should have died, not him,’ she hissed. ‘You were right, what you said at the funeral – you never will be half the man he was. You’re a deadbeat, Tuck, just a waste of space. You clung to his coattails, desperate to keep up while he took you on the ride of your life. And now he’s gone and you’re lost, you’re nothing without him . . .’ She stared down at him, desolation in her eyes, all the fight leaving her suddenly. ‘Why couldn’t it have been you?’ she whispered, a single tear on her cheek like a dewdrop on a rose.
She turned on her heel and left, Tuck watching her go, her handprint like a tattoo on his face and marking out his shame. He hadn’t even had the chance to tell her the really life-changing news.
He looked around the bar and in its unnatural stillness and quietude, saw the way everyone was looking at him, looking down on him. He turned back in his seat, his eyes on the upended liquor bottles on the other side of the bar. It was the only way out he knew . . .
‘Get me a Scotch, Jeff, no rocks,’ he mumbled. ‘And make it a double.’