10

Cyril Strickland arrived at nine o’clock in his rust-pocked gold Oldsmobile. The thought of being ferried around in a rural taxi warmed me a little. For three generations, Strickland men had been roaring along the back roads and stretches of highway around Safe Harbour in what ever beater they managed to get their hands on. They were a staple of life down here, and Cyril was the latest to take up the mantle, which he told me when I called to book the car. I was relieved that he seemed to have no idea who I was. As soon as I got in the back seat, I knew why: he couldn’t have been more than thirty, born long after I’d left town. But I knew if he mentioned my name to any of my contemporaries in town, he’d quickly learn all there was to know about me.

“Off to see the lovely Mrs. Rideout, are ye?”

I nodded at Cyril, then Edie asked me who Mrs. Rideout was.

“Annie’s married name,” I said.

“Huh. You know she uses Malone online, right?”

I ignored her and busied myself with the search for a seatbelt.

Cyril regaled Edie with tall tales about sharks spotted just off the coast while I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes. I was still under the spell of pills and no sleep, muddled and heavy-limbed, but my heart was beating so hard and so fast, I feared it would grind itself to a halt.

Just past the sign welcoming us to Safe Harbour, Cyril turned down a long asphalt driveway that led to a wide bungalow covered with pale yellow siding. It looked solid and well cared for. We parked next to a shiny black sedan. There was a sprawling green lawn, thick and freshly mowed, and a winding stone path to a wooden door set between high clay pots overflowing with flowers. Prosperity. Good for you, Mrs. Rideout.

Edie rang the doorbell. “Excited?”

Overwrought. Unstrung. Off my bloody head. Take your pick. “How do I look?”

“Nervous. Just try to relax.” She reached out and combed my hair with her fingers. “There. That’s better.”

The door opened and nothing could have prepared me for it, the swell of sheer joy that rolled through me as Annie Malone tilted her head and smiled. I could not meet her eyes and kept my focus on her mouth as she spoke.

“Frances Delaney. After all these years. Sure I’d know you anywhere.” She winked at Edie. “And I s’pose this is the young one who called me up the other day, is it?”

Edie stepped forward and offered Annie her hand. “Yes, I’m Edie Cleary. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Well, come in off the step. I’ve got a pot of tea and a few biscuits ready. That’s if you’re fit to eat anything after racing around in Cyril’s rickety boat. He’s a wild man behind the wheel.” She led us to the kitchen at the back of the house. “Sit, sit, the two of you. I know Frances used to like milky tea. Do you still?”

I nodded and noticed that she, too, did not seem to want to bring her eyes to mine. My cheeks were starting to cramp from smiling, and I could feel trails of sweat trickling from my armpits toward the waistband of my new pants.

“Edie, I suppose you’ll want a soft drink. I might have a drop of something fizzy in the fridge.”

“Tea is fine for me as well. Thanks, Mrs. Rideout.”

“Go on with your Mrs. Rideout. Annie to you. She’s a polite one, Frances.” She poured three cups of tea and raised hers. “To old friends,” she said to no one in particular.

I raised my cup and faked a sip. I was too fascinated to be bothered with swallowing anything down. Annie Malone sitting on a kitchen chair, pouring tea and toasting the past. The sound of her voice, the texture of her hair and skin, the movement of her limbs, the very dimensions of her. An apparition materialized into body and bones before my eyes. Her hair was still glossy and black, helped along by a hairdresser, I assumed. She looked much younger than I did. Flushed and healthy, enviably so. Fit and stylish in her tight dark jeans and white linen shirt with a chunky silver bangle encasing her right wrist.

“Annie, may I use your washroom?” I asked.

“Down the hall, second door on the left. And don’t be looking too close at that dusty floor.”

I leaned against the sink to steady myself. I could hear them talking.

“Edie, you seem like a smart kid. Did Frances ever tell you what a whiz she was at school?”

“She never said, but I figured as much. She’s always reading.”

“Is she? Can’t say I’m surprised. As I remember it, she always had her face stuck in some book. Don’t let her fool you. If she’s still the same old Frances, she’s as quiet as a mouse, but with a mind like a razor.”

My head was in a swirl and my legs were like wet noodles. Whether it was the effect of the squid moving about or what was happening in this house, I didn’t know. I fished out my seizure pills and guzzled a mouthful of water from the tap. I checked my reflection, my face dewy with sweat, my hair gone limp. When I got back to the kitchen, Edie and Annie were flipping through a photo album.

“Christ, I’m after getting so fat over the years,” Annie said. “Frances, you’re not a pound over what you were when I last saw you. How do you do it?” she asked without looking up from the album.

“Cleaning keeps me fit, I guess.”

Annie’s head snapped up. “Cleaning?”

“She’s the best in town,” Edie piped in. “Everyone says so. And she’s a great cook.”

Annie gave Edie a quizzical look. “But she’s a teacher.”

I sat down and reached for my tea. “Housekeeper. That’s how I met Edie. I worked for her mother.”

And then Annie sought my gaze. She held it briefly, then closed the photo album. “Right. What’s the plan, then? Stroll around the old stomping grounds? Show young Edie the sights? That should take all of five minutes. Still, it’s a grand day for it.”

We climbed into Annie’s car. Edie filled the space with questions for Annie, while I watched my home slowly take shape through the window. The lichen-covered boulders along the side of the road, then the low, leaning picket fences in front of the wooden houses now all repainted in vibrant colours, then the white church gleaming in the sun. I shut my eyes until it was well behind us. And in the background, always in view, the big blue water, insistently moving and patiently waiting.

Annie parked at the top of the lane I once knew so well and then I was standing in front of the house where my life began. Gone was the dark green paint my mother had chosen, replaced by a turquoise glaze. Smart wooden flower boxes sat under the windows with perky pink geraniums waving in the wind. The glossy black door seemed better suited for a city house. I stood looking at it, trying to decide if the whole effect was hideous or beautiful.

“The colour is ridiculous, I know, but it’s after growing on me,” Annie said. “A couple of young fellas from town bought it years ago and spent three summers doing it up. They come out for their holidays. Made of money, those two. Anyway, Edie, that’s where Frances and I first met, right there on that patch of grass. Still in diapers, the pair of us.” She paused for a moment. “Feels like a long time ago.”

“It feels like yesterday,” I said and walked around to the back. My mother’s garden had been gutted for a flagstone patio and neat raised beds of black earth sprouting fancy plants and tufts of high grass.

“It’s pretty,” Edie said over my shoulder. “Great for parties.”

“My mother used to feed us from this garden. Potatoes and carrots and turnips and beets. But I suppose parties are good too.”

We walked back to the front of the house, where Annie was chatting with an elderly woman.

“Frances, do you remember Mrs. Dillon?”

She was our neighbour three houses down, as I recalled it. She was a dour, religious woman, but also a woman who left casseroles and fruit pies on our doorstep for years after my father died. She peered at me with her watery eyes as I shook her hand.

“Hello, Mrs. Dillon, how are you?” I said.

“I’m above ground, so I expect I’m grand. You remind me of your mother, God rest her.”

I looked at my feet and felt an unexpected wave of embarrassment as I waited for some sign of judgment.

“Oh, she was some singer, your mother. I can still hear her beautiful voice. What a lovely woman she was.”

I almost wept from her words, words that made me suddenly hopeful that the world was kinder than I’d believed it to be. “Thank you, Mrs. Dillon. Thank you very much.”

“Come on, Edie,” Annie said. “The grand tour goes on.”

We had lunch at a restaurant in the centre of town, a small café tarted up for the tourists. And we were tourists, Edie and I. Enough time had passed to make me feel like a stranger to Safe Harbour. Apart from Mrs. Dillon, I didn’t see a soul I knew. And there wasn’t a single remnant of the fishing life anywhere to be seen. Once the trawlers came along in the eighties, they dragged the ocean bare and I saw that Safe Harbour was like all the other towns that had no choice but to find their bounty elsewhere. Annie said that now it was all whale-watching excursions and holiday lets. She was playing the tour guide with an enthusiasm that felt forced to me, the strain between us still living just under the surface of the small talk about the town and its people. Edie’s presence kept us well clear of any choppy waters, and I was content to drift about aimlessly in the small talk about the town and its people.

After dessert, Edie suggested we head to the beach. The path down to the shore was steeper than I remembered. I trailed behind, carefully planting one foot before the other. Edie doubled back and offered me her hand.

“How are you making out, Frances?”

“Fine, just a bit unsteady today. Now remember,” I said, tapping my head, “not a word.”

“Go slow. She’ll just think you’ve got old and helpless.”

I laughed. “Cheers, Edie.”

I kept my eyes downward partly to avoid falling on my face, but mostly because I didn’t trust myself to look at that water. I walked toward the sound of the waves until I saw the first glistening stones, then slowly raised my eyes up to the horizon. The sun’s glare was blinding, and I was grateful for the seconds of adjustment it forced. I squinted and blinked and then Annie was beside me, her presence gracing me with the strength to focus. We stood in silence and faced the sea together, just as we had so many times before.

The dory was where it had always been, faded and splintered but still intact. Annie gave it a kick with the toe of her shoe.

“How this old thing has survived, I’ll never know. Every year someone patches it up and gives it a lick of paint, but now I think they’re finally going to let the elements have their way with it.” She climbed over the edge and sat on the weathered seat. “Come on in, Frances. Old times’ sake.”

Edie helped me into the boat and went off toward the shore. She waded into the water, then jumped back from the shock of the cold and raced toward her shoes.

Annie laughed and said, “She’ll know not to do that twice now. She’s lovely, Frances.”

“She is indeed.”

“Christ, will you just look at her. She could be you or me back when.”

Annie smiled but seemed to be growing restless, like she had somewhere else to be. We watched Edie for a bit, then Annie stood and hopped out onto the beach.

“I’m going by the cemetery if you want to come along.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then let’s get that fool away from the water before she freezes off a leg.”

I called to Edie and she ran back toward us, her head back and her arms spread wide. She was youth personified, and the sight of her brought a smile to Annie’s face and to mine.

At the cemetery, I stood over my father’s grave while Edie knelt beside me and placed a bunch of ragged wild daisies she’d yanked from the ground.

“Do you still miss him?” she asked.

“Every day.”

She stood and looked around. “Where’s your mother?”

“Over yonder.”

“How come she’s not buried next to your father?”

“Good question. It was a clerical error.”

“Are you going to hers next?”

I turned toward the back of the cemetery, where she was laid. I could see the low white fence and the tall wild lupins bending in the breeze. “Wait here for me.”

I started walking and felt a knot begin to form in my gut—a knot that tightened with every step I took. I made it about halfway, then stopped. I knew I’d find no peace in it. I’d managed to find a way to live without facing her again, and I’d have to find a way to die without facing her too. I turned my back on her and returned to Edie, who somehow knew better than to ask me any questions.

“Okay, I’m done,” I said and pressed my hand against the warm grass that grew over my father’s grave and walked away.

We found Annie by her mother’s grave. I asked Edie to find me some flowers for Mrs. Malone. Then we followed Annie to another grave a few feet away. She straightened a vase of roses next to a black granite headstone, then backed away a few steps and closed her eyes. She appeared to be praying, and Edie and I stood behind her and waited quietly. A photograph was embedded in a small square of glass in the headstone, a boy on the cusp of manhood. He had Annie’s curly black hair and rosy colouring. The stone read, “Stephen Rideout. Beloved son, brother, grandson, and friend.” I leaned forward squinting at the dates—just eighteen when he died, and he’d been dead almost as long as he’d been alive.

“Annie, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

She turned around, her face expressionless and unreadable. “How could you have?”

A sickly chill passed through me, and the pain in my head began to dig in. I gave Edie a look that told her we needed to get on, and she nodded and walked ahead. I waited a few moments before speaking.

“What happened?”

Annie kept walking, her eyes straight ahead. “Car accident. Rounded a corner too fast on the winter road.”

“He looks just like you when you were young.”

“I know. Everyone always said so, and it drove Anthony crazy. My daughter, Angela, is more like her father, in looks and personality.”

“And how is Anthony?”

“Difficult. Although less so since I divorced him a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry about that too.”

“Well, don’t be. I shoved him out the door and had a celebration drink poured for myself before he was out of the driveway.”

I walked alongside her in silence.

“Go on, Frances, say your piece,” she said. “Go ahead and say you told me so.”

“I’ll say nothing like it.”

“He was never a great husband, but after Stephen died, he was a right bastard, and I had no more room for it. He’s up in Toronto now, out to the bars whoring around every night of the week, or so I hear. Good luck and good riddance, I say.”

“Do you have someone else now?”

“I have Angela and a new grandson, and my friends. A bit of money from Sobeys buying out the stores we owned. That’s enough for now.”

Annie offered to drive us back to the cottage and spare us another rumble in Cyril’s car. We stopped to pick up some food to make a light supper, then parted with a promise to drop in the next day to see the baby. I watched her drive away and felt an ache in my chest like I hadn’t felt for decades, the same ache I’d felt so deeply the last time I spoke to her. I could see the ugly green carpet of the motel room and feel the phone receiver in my hand. A wave of nausea rolled over me and I was suddenly soaked in sweat.

I lay on the bed at the cottage and woke with a start two hours later, having dreamt of tripping in the graveyard and falling into a deep, wide hole filled with water. The last thing I saw before I went under was Annie leaning over the edge yelling for me to grab her hand. I eased myself up off the bed and walked to the bathroom. I splashed some cold water on my face, then joined Edie on the front veranda. She was slouched in a wooden chair, a leg slung over the armrest. Her face had caught the sun, the pink rising underneath the sprinkling of light freckles across the bridge of her nose. Summertime Edie. Poignant.

“It’s so peaceful here, isn’t it?” she said.

I sat in the chair next to her and lit a cigarette, my first of the day. Peaceful was not a word I would connect to this place. Loss at every corner and all along that shore, a grave I still couldn’t bear to face, and two women who could barely look each other in the eye. The fine weather offered an effective disguise, but as for seeing this part of the world as Edie did, I doubted we’d ever fully agree on it. How wonderful to be able to take a place as you found it, not to be influenced and encumbered by the history of what had happened to you there. I sat and smoked, wishing I had faith in a higher power, if only to put in a last-minute request for Edie to find peace wherever she wandered.

We ate a light supper and afterward sat watching the sun melt into the sea and then the stars, hundreds and hundreds of stars that Edie thought were the best celestial display she’d ever seen. My God, her happiness came easily. Where she’d got that from, I had no idea. Certainly not from her parents, who seemed to suffer from chronic unrequited desire. But this one, give her a plate of cut vegetables and a bit of cheese and crackers, a dying old maid for company, and a backwoods starry night, and she thought she was in paradise.

We stayed on the veranda and she talked about the colleges she was thinking of applying to, weighing the pros and cons of her many options. I grew gloomy as she prattled on about all the wondrous things she would do—all the wondrous things I would never see her do. I had to stop her mid-sentence and ask her to fetch me a glass of water, just to break from her for a few moments. When she returned, I was together enough to let her go on. She showed me funny videos of goats on her computer, then we went to bed. I took two pain pills and spent my night in and out of fitful dreams, watching my father swim alongside his boat while tossing strange and colourful sea creatures onto the deck, to my great amusement.

The morning was cool and overcast, like the summers I remembered. Once again, Cyril delivered us to Annie’s house. She met us on the doorstep, holding her grandson. She passed him to me. It was the first time I’d ever held a baby in my arms. He’d been given the name of his dead uncle. Annie called him Stevie. He was impossibly fragile yet ingeniously made with all the working parts for survival—a flawless, firing brain; a heart pumping blood; lungs filling and releasing; a strong mouth that puckered and clamped around the tip of Annie’s little finger. He was warm and surprisingly weighty in the crook of my arm. Annie stood by my side, cooing and rubbing his cheek. Edie hung back, unimpressed, and I wondered if it was a general lack of interest in babies or if this one was making an appearance too soon after her own brush with pregnancy. I handed Stevie back to Annie and we followed her into the house.

Angela was in the kitchen assembling a plate of sandwiches. She wiped her hands on a dishtowel. She was tall and thin, with no visible evidence of a genetic connection to her mother. Her hair was artificially blond, her skin coloured by something other than the sun. Her feet were bare, and her toenails were shaped and polished hot pink. She looked every bit the city girl and nothing at all what I expected.

“You must be the famous Frances,” she said.

She approached, extended her hand, and smiled, but I could see it was an effort. Her tone was just shy of frosty, and there was something unnerving and unpleasant about her.

“I am,” I said. “Although I can’t imagine what would make me famous.”

“Mom’s been telling us stories about the two of you for as long as I can remember. Glory days, right, Mom?”

Annie was too busy adoring Stevie to catch what was said.

“Congratulations on your baby, Angela. He’s just perfect.” I introduced Edie.

Angela gave her a quick nod and returned to her food duties. Edie and I exchanged furtive frowns and sat at the kitchen table. Annie placed the baby in a motorized rotating contraption, and he promptly fell asleep.

“Will you just look at that machine,” Annie said. “We’ll have robots to mind them next.”

“Mom, you sound like an old biddy when you say things like that,” Angela said. She brought a knife down through a cucumber like a lumberjack splitting firewood.

“I think it’s very cool, Angela,” Edie said. “I was just thinking I wish they made them big enough for me.”

“My mother thinks it’s excessive.” Chop, chop, chop. “Sit down and I’ll make up a pot of tea.”

“Marvellous,” Annie said. “The old biddy could do with a bit of tending to.”

We passed a pleasant enough hour over lunch despite the obvious friction between Annie and her daughter. Angela was gruff and snide, and with each passing minute in her company, I found it harder to see her as someone likeable. The way Annie let it roll off her led me to believe they’d been dancing to this tune for many years.

After dessert, I slipped away to the bathroom to take my seizure pill. I could no longer decipher the label with my wonky eyesight. I’d have to start taking measures to avoid mixing them up with the pain pills. My hands were weak, and it took me several tries to get the bottle open. Perhaps I had a touch of the old biddy myself, or perhaps the squid was staking its claim on yet another patch of brain.

When I came back to the kitchen, Angela was nursing Stevie. She looked softer and I decided she deserved a second chance. Edie reminded me that we had a bus to catch to town, and we took Annie up on her offer of a ride back to the cottage. When we got there, the sun was making an effort to shine, and the air had lost most of its chill. Edie went inside to pack up our things, leaving me with Annie on the veranda. She spied the pack of cigarettes on the arm of the deck chair.

“I’ll be having one of those before I leave,” she said.

“Help yourself.”

She lit up and took a deep drag, moaning with pleasure as she blew out the smoke.

“Christ, I don’t remember the last time I had a cigarette. Oh, it’s bloody gorgeous.”

We sat side by side on the veranda. I considered her in brief sideward glances while she kept her eyes on the water. I saw in her the beautiful girl she once was, but now there was a new depth, the allure of a story written on her face and carried in her body. I wanted to know every detail of it, and I wanted her to know every detail of mine. I wanted anything and everything she could give me. And I wanted to sit close to her and tell her that I was running out of time. I gripped the arm of the chair and readied myself to speak, but then I thought of her dead son, her hard husband, that scowling daughter. She was clearly stealing a moment of peace, and I let her have it. She stubbed out the butt of the cigarette on the sole of her shoe and laid it on the weathered railing.

“Frances,” she said to the water, “I’ve no words for it, seeing you again.” She stood and walked to her car with me trailing close behind. She opened the car door, then quickly closed it again and spoke with her back to me.

“You know what, I lied. I do have words for it.” She turned to face me, and a deep and sudden flush coloured her cheeks. “What the hell happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? God bless her.” She shook her head in frustration. “You just vanished. Like one of those poor youngsters on the milk cartons.”

“It was”—I searched my pounding head for the word—“complicated.”

“Christ, what isn’t? That’ll excuse precious little in this life.”

“Annie, please.” My voice sounded foreign, and the ground began to feel soft and yielding beneath my feet.

“That last phone call. It nearly did my head in. A week went by, then two, and so I thought, Well, she’s good and gone now. Then not a word for years. Not a single thought for me left here in this goddamn fishbowl, guilty by association, the friend of that girl who got knocked up, the girl whose mother walked into the sea, the girl who up and disappeared. Not that I ever judged, mind you, but there were plenty who did. Half the time I think I got married just to rub the stain of you off me.”

Her voice had been steadily rising. She glanced toward the open door of the cottage and dropped it down a level.

“You just cut me off, never to be heard from after. If you knew how many trips we made to town, trolling the streets looking for you. Mom even called the cops, who told us to go whistle, leaving us with no option but to fear the worst. For years, I carried it around, this sadness and anger, this . . . confusion, somewhere deep in my belly, always sitting there underneath anything good that happened. And then my children came along and I didn’t have time for anything that wasn’t about them. And like that”—she snapped her fingers—“I was rid of you. Oh, the relief of it.” She drew in a deep breath and blew it out hard and fast. “But then when Stephen died, it was the oddest thing. I wanted nobody—not my husband, not my friends. It was only you I wanted to talk to. And I had to go through missing you all over again. And ever since, every now and then it rises up and worms its way back in. That old puzzle I could never solve, keeping me up half the night about once or twice a month. The disappearance of Frances Delaney. And now here you are, fucking resurrected, back home with that sweet girl in tow, doing your bidding and guarding all your secrets.” Her voice caught and she looked away, her eyes flooded with tears.

Each word she spoke ignited a spark of shame for what I had done, for what I was doing, for being so wrapped up in how hard it would be for me to see her and not once thinking about how hard it would be for her to see me. Hot humiliation burned through my body like a brush fire, consuming me from the inside out. The skin on my neck and ears prickled. Bile burned in my throat. I swallowed and struggled to find enough air to power my voice.

“Annie, I’m sorry. I’d lost so much, and I felt so betrayed by you. I wasn’t in my right mind. I’m not sure my mind has ever been right.”

She heaved a shaky sigh and her lower lip began to tremble. “I know I let you down, terribly so. I know how much I hurt you. I’ve had a lifetime of regretting it, believe me. And I don’t pretend to know what it is you suffered, but I suffered too.” She tapped two fingers hard against the centre of her chest. “I lost too.”

She turned and climbed in her car, started the engine, put the window down, and gripped the wheel until her knuckles blanched. Eyes forward, shoulders set. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me why you came back. I’ll be right here where I’ve always been, trying to decide if I care.”

I closed my eyes as she pulled away, tires spinning on gravel and the piercing cries of gulls overhead. I walked to the cottage and picked up my bag, then boarded the bus and once more left it all behind.