Coming Up for Air Read online

  Red and Fraser came back around the side of the sugar shack, smelling like skunks. Anouk tried not to laugh when her father came close to her, thinking he’d gotten away with something, but she did laugh, so deep and good that it tickled her in the wrong spot and set off a coughing fit. She held on to the tree, doubled over, consumed.

  ‘Shit. Is she okay?’ Fraser’s voice, alarmed.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Red.

  The more she tried to stop, the harder she wanted to laugh, and the coughing got worse. She coughed until she felt the release, and there was a great gob in her mouth.

  Red, who’d left her alone, now handed her a tissue. Still hugging the tree with one arm, she spat into the tissue. Put it in her jeans pocket and drew the back of her hand across her lips, wiped her eyes. A few remnant coughs sputtered like an engine just turned off.

  Fraser, one hand clasped over his forehead: ‘Christ. You were hackin’ like an old man.’

  ‘People say I sound like a dog barking,’ she said. ‘Or a smoker.’

  ‘That’s a two-pack-a-day cough,’ Fraser offered, ‘at least.’

  ‘At least,’ Red agreed.

  9

  Nora

  Ottawa River, 1987

  Nora and red had argued that morning again, about moving south, back to Toronto. For Anouk, Nora reasoned, to avoid the cold winters. To be closer to the specialist clinic. But Red countered with the fact that Toronto could be just as cold as Pembroke, and why would they want to live where the air was less clean?

  Because nobody in Toronto will ever be shocked that I’ve never driven a snowmobile, thought Nora. Or question why I would rather stay home and watch TV than go fishing, or cross-country skiing. No one would ever expect me to know about canning my own tomatoes. Because in Toronto, Nora thought, I could go to a party crammed with people I’ve never met, or I could ride the Queen Street car from where it starts to where it ends, and through my window see the different parts of the city pass by like rock strata. Big, leafy maples and Lake Ontario in the east, drunks cocooning themselves in sleeping bags on benches in Moss Park, the centre point of Yonge Street. I could keep riding, she thought, past the Eaton Centre and Sears and all the head shops and record stores on Queen West, the street vendors selling nuts and hot dogs with sauerkraut, past the suede tassels and leather boots and army surplus in the windows of the retro stores; I could just sit on the streetcar all the way west until I hit the Polish delis on Roncesvalles and then High Park, and then turn around and go back again.

  She didn’t say this though. Nostalgia was a weak argument. And she did appreciate Pembroke. She loved how her daughter was growing, this child of the river. Anouk’s lungs were more robust for all the time she’d spent in the water. The river – its rhythms, its fluctuations and its pull – the river welcomed Anouk. It enveloped and accepted her. Absurd. But Nora believed it.

  It made her spit though, Red’s insistence that nothing ever change. That they stay here for ever. And why did every damn thing have to be about Anouk anyway?

  * * *

  As soon as the stones that spun off Red’s truck tires could no longer be heard pinging the roadside trees, Nora and Jody moved to each other in the middle of the kitchen. It was a bit of a fumble; Jody was no romantic. A farmer of hops and sunflowers, and endearingly stupid. Two hours of hockey every Tuesday night in the old boys’ league kept him fit as a fiddle. His face was beautiful and made more so by a partially missing front tooth that had been cracked by a flying hockey puck years before, and capped, then knocked loose again and left.

  This thing had been going on for months, but never in her house. It was always at his place, or in his truck or her car down a dirt road. Once or twice, a motel.

  She put her hand on his chest and pushed him away, the other hand on his belt. Anouk’s dirty breakfast bowl was still on the table.

  ‘You want to go for a drive?’ he said, his eyes already heavy, drugged. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you want.’

  She stepped away and straightened her top, tightened the elastic around her hair. ‘I knew this was going to happen.’

  ‘Isn’t that why I’m here?’

  ‘You’re here to help me with the walls.’

  He stared at her for a bit, as if hoping this were a joke. ‘You sure?’

  She reached for the bag of sandpaper and pulled it out and found that Red had bought plenty. Three different grains.

  ‘I’m going for a swim first,’ Jody said, and let the screen door bang on his way out.

  This wasn’t love. Far from it.

  * * *

  The sanding was done, the walls stripped, and the holes filled and smoothed over. And the dust, fine and powdery, was everywhere. Nora and Jody were both coated with it and there was still all the cleaning to do, but he came up behind her and slid his hand into her shorts. She dropped the rag she was holding and his tongue groped her ear (she never liked this much: hot and wet, the breathing cartoonishly loud) and she let him take her weight. Closed her eyes and got what she wanted, the only thing she wanted out of this: the illusion that she could have been anywhere, that her days were not inevitable. The newly sanded walls fell away and she floated up, over the river, over the choking trees, over the purple fields, the yellow fields. She never knew where she would land but this time it was the apartment she’d lived in, in Toronto, before Red. It was in a building just off the boardwalk along Lake Ontario. The building, gone now, was listing to the east, sinking into the soft ground. It was so dilapidated that to walk down the corridor was to stumble like a drunk. It was a shitty apartment. Dark. Small windows. Always someone else’s television. Always someone else’s dog. The odours of other people’s lives.

  Jody pulled her hand around to him and she obliged. Her knees felt weak. But only because this was awkward, standing up like this leaning against him.

  There was too much space here. She missed the comfort of close walls, or the incoherent mumble of a neighbour’s radio. Her sister Mel lived near by, and they used to talk, all the time. Drinking coffee in her shitty apartment or walking out on the pier in winter, brown hunks of ice hanging off its edge like a beard. She didn’t remember what they spoke about but if it had been fear, she wouldn’t have known about fear then. Likewise for love. She wouldn’t have known about love. She saw now that the two were inextricable.

  Oh. But. The farmer certainly knew what to do with his hands. Nora brought herself back into the room, the back of her neck moist from his breath. She turned to him and finished it, and climbed the stairs to wash. He went outside to the river.

  There was always guilt afterwards. Here in the bathroom, a cabinet in the corner for Anouk’s medications. Nora, sitting on the toilet, stretched out her leg and prised open the cabinet with her toe. White boxes and cups stacked neatly, endlessly. There would always be a need for this stuff until there wasn’t.

  She finished, stood, watched Jody through the window. He had stripped down to the skin and was wading into the river. She lost sight of him behind trees but he soon reappeared and was now almost at Anouk’s island. Don’t get out, Nora pleaded, don’t go there. But he did, pulled his long body up on to the rock, shook water from his hair like a dog. He’ll go to the other side and piss into the river, Nora thought, disgusted.

  * * *

  That night, after dinner, Nora filled the bath with hot water and a few drops of lavender oil. She ran the tap and the shower too, to fill the bathroom with steam, and helped Anouk out of her clothes. Anouk’s body, nine years old nearly ten, was still, to Nora, an extension of her own. That’s my knee, she thought. Those fine white, perfect hairs that follow the curve of my daughter’s forehead, the thick blue vein that travels across the pale inside of the wrist, the downy stuff that licks the hairline, and the subtle dip in the chin, as if pressed by a thumb when she was still in the mould, that’s all me.

  Nora dropped her own cloth
es on to the bathmat and stepped into the bath and reconciled her shoulder blades with the taps, settling in. Anouk got in too, winced with the heat and sat opposite, their legs entwined. She still showed no signs of puberty; the malnutrition she suffered from the CF stunted her development. Her bones and muscles were as evident under her skin as the borders on a map. She was growing though, and getting older, and room in the bath for the two of them was depleting. This nightly ritual would come to an end.

  After the bath, wrapped tightly in towels fresh from the clothesline, Nora brushed Anouk’s hair and braided it in one long rope and squeezed it until water dripped from the end of the wick. They went downstairs in their pyjamas and Anouk flopped on to The Cheese. Outside, the sun fell behind the trees on the far bank of the river and the world was muted.

  The river hardly moved at all. Two or three stars in a sky not yet black. Nora cupped Anouk’s back, and then Anouk stood at the window with a glass of water and handful of pills, wiped water from her chin with the sleeve of her pyjamas. This small gesture filled Nora with enough love to make her panic.

  Nora glanced at the wall that she and Jody had used to hold themselves up only hours before. Sometimes she couldn’t remember who she was or what she was supposed to be doing. Could have forgotten her own name.

  10

  Pieter

  Stavanger, 1955

  Little bear, my first swim the summer of your fourth birthday was on a Sunday in early June. I remember it well because even though the air temperature had been rising steadily over the previous weeks, the sea was burning cold. You were digging in the sand with your sister and your mother, and I could hear you laughing as I walked into the sea, the smooth stones sliding against each other under my feet. When water is that cold, I don’t hesitate. I have to keep moving forward until it’s deep enough that I can float, and then plunge in and go. It couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen degrees that day, and the sea took my breath from me. But my thoughts were pure and indivisible – this is why I love swimming in cold water. I plunged in and there was the first gasp, involuntary but familiar; then the chill-ache came right away to my eyes and forehead. I circled one arm over my head and pulled a pulse of that beautiful water down the length of my body, then the other, moving further and further away from you and your mother and your sister. I kicked hard and my calves balled up, and a cool spray of bubbles plumed from my toes. My skin began to burn and tingle across my cheeks and collarbone, down my arms and the barrel of my chest. As the blood left my extremities to warm my organs, my fingers and toes went numb and curled into claws, while the hearth of me remained warm and pumping. Then, all through me, electricity like the rainbow pulsations of a jellyfish, and tranquillity as the gasping subsided and my body learned to breathe again.

  My thoughts meandered and soon I was thinking about wooden spinning tops, the manufacture of. The smooth running of a lathe over hardwood – solid, Norwegian maple. We used the heartwood for the manufacture of spinning tops because its quality wasn’t as good as the sapwood used for furniture or musical instruments or what have you, so we got it cheap, and besides, it was richer in colour. It was prone to burn on the lathe but . . . none of this matters anyway. The point is, you were right there on the beach, your white-blond hair ignited by the sun, your soft, pink lips pursed in concentration as you dug your hole to who knows where, while I swam in the sea ruminating over spinning tops. I wasn’t thinking about your mother, or Tilda; I wasn’t thinking about you. I was thinking about red dust flying from a spindle, a floor covered in ragged wood chips, sawdust settling over everything.

  The thing is, I was becoming restless. Our company had done well on spinning tops and building blocks and fighter planes, on small wooden copper-inlaid boxes for girls to keep their feathers or glass beads or bits of ribbon. I was getting bored of wood and my interest had turned to plastics, specifically soft plastics. I know you don’t care about any of this, my Bear, but this is part of the story. And it’s important. And I want you to know everything. I swam that cold day, saltwater pickling my tongue, causing it to swell, my arms passing by my vision like ghosts, I swam that day further and further from you and your sister and your mother, thinking about polymers. About ethylene and benzoyl peroxide. Chemistry, Bear. I had been reading about the development of a new kind of plastic that was soft and durable, and I thought about the toys I could design with this material: cars and trucks. Dolls with soft faces and pudgy, bendable knees.

  I kept to my usual kilometre-long route, hugging a shoreline that dipped and crested like a waltz, then turned and came back. Before I reached the section of beach where you were, I felt my cold-water tolerance waning. It happens fast. To swim in water like this you have to pay close attention. The warmth in my core was slipping away, as if someone had opened a window to let the winter air in. I looked up to see how far away you were, my beacons – a bright blue blanket and two blond heads, you and your sister, bobbing about. I kicked my way back home to you, and came clumsily out of the sea on tumbling stones and bloodless feet.

  You took no notice of me as I trudged and tripped my way back to our blanket. Your sister had buried you in a hole and there you were, just a head, with a wet rim of dark sand around your mouth and under your nose. Your mother, who’d been reading, who was always reading, carefully placed a strip of leather down the spine of her book to mark her place and put it on the blanket. (Books in your mother’s hands were always precious things.) She passed me my post-swim clothing: a woollen, long-sleeved top, flannel trousers, a scarf and thick socks. She poured me a mug of hot coffee from a glass bottle kept warm under blankets and handed it to me once I was dressed, and handed me also a piece of apple cake, because nothing warms a cold body better than cake. I curled around my mug of coffee and took long, sweet and indulgent gulps while you ate sand, spitting it down your chin in gritty rivulets. Crying and laughing at the same time.

  As my blood, lower in temperature due to its efforts to keep my core warm, returned to my extremities, it cooled me even more and I started to shiver violently. Your mother, used to this sort of business by now, ignored me and went back to reading her book. My teeth clattered, jangling the bones in my ears. I spilled coffee over my hands.

  You wanted to show me something. You asked me many times to come and see. I didn’t bother. I was cold, and I was thinking about something else.

  * * *

  At home under the pressure of a hot shower, I stood, swaying from side to side, warming my fingers and toes. This gentle rocking on the balls of both feet was a physical memory from when you and your sister were infants and needed to be held and moving, all the time. In those days, fathers didn’t generally hold their children so much, but I did. I just couldn’t believe the feel of you, the weight of you in my arms. You were the perfect, perfect design, in the way your smooth skin tightly contained the bones and the blood of you. The creases in your wrists and toes, the round knobs of your ankles, the sworls of your ears. Every inch of you was just as it should be.

  I got out of the shower and cleared a circle of steam from the mirror so I could shave. When I opened the bathroom door, you were sitting on the hallway floor, holding your fat arm up for me to inspect. Just above your elbow, on the inside of your arm, there were the angry pink welts of a sharp pinch.

  I knelt down to you. ‘Did Tilda do that?’

  Your blue eyes were wide, jewelled with tears. Your long white lashes were clumped together. You nodded yes.

  ‘What did you do to antagonize her?’ I asked.

  Confused, you only continued to nod.

  ‘Did you hit your sister? Did you ruin her game?’ You were always knocking over her towers, chewing her puzzle pieces or stripping the clothing off her dolls.

  You nodded yes, vigorously. Not yet old enough to lie. ‘I hit Tilda,’ you said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I picked you up and shifted you to
my hip, and carried you into our bedroom. I put you down on the bed and took my underwear from where I’d slung it over the back of a chair, and stepped into it.

  ‘You have fur,’ you said to me, pointing to my groin.

  ‘Yes I do,’ I said. ‘And one day you will too.’ I put on my trousers and undershirt, and selected a fresh, short-sleeved shirt from the closet. I doused my palms with cologne and patted my cheeks and neck, then oiled my hair and combed it back. My skin, invigorated by the sea and then the hot shower, buzzed like music.

  ‘Do me too,’ you said, pointing to the bottle of cologne.

  With the bottle sealed, I pretended to dab more cologne on to my hands, and patted your cheeks, still tear-damp. ‘All better?’ I asked.

  ‘You didn’t,’ you said. ‘You didn’t put any.’ You clumped the bedspread in your strong hands.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’ I pulled the top from the cologne bottle and measured the tiniest bit into my hand, and spread it on your cheek, admonishing myself for playing you for a fool.

  11

  L’Inconnue

  Paris, 1898

  Sundays, there was the river. Of course it was always there, pumping through the city, involuntary and vital as a heartbeat, but on Sundays we would take the omnibus as far as the Jardin des Tuileries and walk along paths lined with rhododendrons and roses, then cross over the Pont Royal to the Quai d’Orsay. It was the only time Madame Debord would willingly leave the apartment. She may have been paranoid but she was still a Parisienne; watching people was sport. Seeing what they were wearing. Who was out. Passing judgement. Sometimes we would see people whom Madame knew, or used to know, and they would treat her with caution, as if she were feral. But as far as I could see, she was only a little touched with nerves. While we walked she stayed close to me, her fingers clamped to the crook of my arm. These walks got her talking. She spoke a little about her husband, about how they used to go to the theatre in the evenings, eat in restaurants. She told me that once, she too was new to Paris, that she had been born on the north coast, in Wissant. She told me that on a clear day, you could see across La Manche, all the way to England, to the white cliffs. She told me about how, when the tide was low, she and her brother would walk out on the mudflats with buckets and sticks, and she would hike her skirts up high and they would dig cockles out of the sand.