Parallel Rivers Read online

  A large flock of crows waited for Gabby at Horseshoe Bay, cawing madly from every building, swaying on phone wires. A local building contractor waved her down. The man hitched up his jeans, came over to the open window.

  “How are you, Gabby.”

  “Jake. About the deck.”

  “It’s on my list.”

  “You said that last week.”

  She cranked the wheel and hit the gas. Sidewalk folk looked like cardboard cutouts. Cars shimmered in the afternoon light.

  She walked from the car to the house like a clown, a dumb feather.

  Pretend it’s all an act, she said to herself.

  Some kid wobbled by on a bike, called out, “You walk funny.”

  Spray rose from his wheels.

  She turned to watch it splash.

  Winston woke up in the cab of his truck in the parking lot of the Arrow Lounge just before dawn. The engine wouldn’t catch so he set out to walk the five miles home along the new road where houses raising themselves up both sides looked already old and ruined. His neck was so stiff that to look at anything he had to stop and turn his whole body. The touch of frost in the air and the smell of clay reminded him of being a kid. I’m still pissed, he thought.

  He watched teenagers kibitzing at the end of the strip mall he’d designed fifteen years ago, and tried to think of what you’d call those girls and boys. What were they? The definition was at the end of his thoughts like a little low fence, a kind of border. Probably they’d been up all night. They had that loose, haywire look. He could smell the sun rising, the bakery with its loaves like breasts.

  Why couldn’t he figure out what people were? They weren’t themselves. They were practising for something. What were they practising for?

  And behind the mall, behind the baking bread, all that poison coming down from the factory. “Boom,” he said. But couldn’t clear his head. Couldn’t get further than trying to stop himself from thinking about work: organize the office, shop for food, meet clients, feed the dog. In the headlines crops looked like corpse.

  The winter morning reminded her of other Sundays short on booze, waking alone with a promise to stay sober until after she’d talked on the phone to Robin, the sun rolling over the mountains, turning pink the sides of the islands, jacking up the blues and reds on the moored pleasure craft. Perhaps this was the dream of the original explorer, eyes uncomprehending the new land churned, tidied and separated, and a long road driven along the coast. The dream of having nothing your own way, despite having orchestrated the whole shebang. Oh but this bright Sunday the old trumpeter from the reserve was sounding pretty hot. This was surely new. She had the furious urge to drink a whole bottle of Bombay Sapphire while chaos and civilization shook hands. Instead, she walked out into the village and sat on an icy bench.

  He aimed and blew away the cop who shot his brother. He slugged his father. A kind of horniness zigzagged across his brain. In the distance the reservoir gleamed like sheet metal, small figures by the shore, the children already there. All summer the black flies had been vicious, and the kids had taken to the water whenever they could, stayed immersed for as long as possible. Now, though the flies were gone and the weather was cooler, they still hung around the edge, pitching pebbles and smoking dope.

  As he walked home, he sobered up. He could never have imagined a world without his wife and kids, yet here it was. He thought about his family: Evan’s house that wouldn’t sell, Paddy’s maxed-out credit cards, Nigel’s health, and where was Anna right now? He stopped. An owl sobbed. What was Gabby doing?

  She was dizzied by the pattern of maple leaves on the ground. Early autumn a pointillist’s nightmare. Black leaves white path. How the tannin stained the sidewalk after the leaves had left, left, he had a good home and he left. That was the reserves. What rotted here would in spring cohere. What was she to do? She’d like to talk to Winston. No, she wouldn’t. Her demons moved slowly today. They were stupid. They were arrogant and stupid. She watched the ferry sail toward Bowen Island. Half down the beach a condom looped over the long kelp.

  When she got home she made coffee and drank the whole pot. She’d been living under a membrane that used to fit nice and snug but now hung thick and heavy and loose, and blurred the faces of those around her. Time to get out from under. Booze spoiled her balance. She moved the cereal bowl and put her head down, cheek cool against the pine table. Once upon a time they lived in a ravine where night always lingered. In the bottom of the grey wood where green wood lived: Mom and Dad and Winston and Gabrielle. Déjà vu. She dreamed Peter had returned and she did not recognize him. Her heart broke, she heard it crack, and when she woke it ached.

  He gathered contracts through each fall, a fair harvest, and worked hard all winter. He found out where Anna was living and drove west several times to visit her while her new man was at work. He talked to his mother on the phone once a week. Then the dog died and he wept and wept. Every night was tender then, and before it got dark he mowed the grass. He made different patterns in the field around the house until he couldn’t see a thing and neighbours were shouting that it was too late to mow.

  When he pushed the mower he thought about his sons. Love to Nigel, mow a row, my love to Evan, another row, love to Paddy, mow another. Some nights he dreamed of the sea, and when he left for work next morning he could smell it. Some nights he heard people along the street singing inside their homes.

  The dreams dreaming

  WINSTON FELT A HOLLOW SPACE ALONG his right side, slightly in front. A place his heart wanted to open into but couldn’t. Late in August his mother had died and he’d attended the funeral in Vancouver, yet felt nothing but a species of calm verging on indifference. All through the two days he’d spent with Gabby and Robin — now a doctor — and his own three boys, he’d spoken only a handful of words.

  In the fall he and Gabby flew to Zihuatanejo for two weeks.

  The woman came up the steps from the beach as he was on his way down. They met there, on the flagstones between flights, and she said it was strange they’d not talked to each other yet. He said that he’d been avoiding her because he was attracted and that scared him. Her teeth were big, a bit crooked. She lit a cigarette and he asked her for one and she refused. She said, “You are with your wife, also.”

  They sat on the sandy step and listened to the waves.

  “That’s my sister,” he said. “She’s not an early riser.”

  She blew out smoke. The wind fanned her hair across her face, and he remembered a girl on a bridge in Stanley Park many years ago whose long brown hair whipped about like a flag against her boyfriend’s face.

  “I’m Astrid,” she said.

  He looked at her. “Winston.”

  “Bad boy,” Gabby said. “Naughty boy.”

  “I’m just looking.”

  “She’s a kid. Oh well, it doesn’t matter,” she said. She wiggled her toes into the sand. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell. I work too hard. My marriage collapsed. My sons live all over the place.”

  “Okay.”

  “She’s really nice. She has her own house inland.”

  “What’s she doing here then?”

  “Scouting.” He looked at his sister and laughed. “She’s not pretending to be anything she’s not.”

  “How does that feel, to be scouted?”

  “Pretty good. Okay. I’m lonely. And you? Who are you pretending to be?”

  “Someone we both know.”

  “A mutual friend.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’re both fucked.”

  “I guess.” She grinned. “Yeah.”

  “And now,” he said. “What do we need now?”

  “I have to call Robin. Then a drink.”

  Winston moved into Astrid’s house on the edge of a rock, long views to the river. One day when he was travelling on business a neighbour came by to say she must salt the rock in their basement because it had been a place of burning since her mama’s
time and before. Their basement sat on pure stone, a gently sloping grooved floor. Because Astrid was pregnant she needed to cast a salt spell to purify the place. The dead had burned there, no place to bury them. She must go down to salt the rock.

  Malcolm was born in the spring. The fourth son. Winston dreamed of darkness without end, one of his grown sons at the bedside saying there was a boy downstairs lying on the cold rock, a woman tracing his outline in salt.

  Gabby woke up many times that night to foghorns.

  Astrid, with her new son strapped to her back, barrowed topsoil into the wide crevice of the yard behind the house. That year she grew squash. Long vines snaked round the back of the house, and the orange, yellow, and red fruit baked on the warm stone. Lizards lay under the gourds. Every year she built more beds, planted more flowers, herbs, shrubs, vines, vegetables. Winston visited his older sons every summer, returned to doze in the hammock. In winter he worked. Nights he was home they lay in bed facing each other, and Malcolm slept in a small closet off their room.

  “You’re a workaholic,” she said.

  “You love your work,” said Winston. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  She smiled with her lips closed, eyes wide, an expression he loved.

  “Just let me know if you’re bored.”

  “You’ll know.”

  During the heat wave of late summer, when their son was ten, he swam every day in the river. From the patio behind the house where they sat evenings, they could see him splashing in the last deep pool. Next summer their neighbour died, the well ran dry, and they took it in turns carrying water in buckets up from the skinny river, up the steps that had been carved into the side of the hill centuries ago. Day after day for a whole summer. But their garden was finished.

  In the interval between Astrid’s tests and the results came Christmas; Nigel and Anna visited Astrid’s river house. They ate turkey at the pine table.

  “I’m not going to work any more, Anna,” said Winston.

  “What will you do?” said Anna.

  “We’re thinking of Vancouver,” said Astrid. “Robin says the team there’s the best in the world.”

  “You know,” said Win, “if the results are positive.”

  “Positive is bad,” said Nigel. “That’s weird.”

  Nigel and Astrid danced to Bing Crosby. Anna and Win and Malcolm watched. That night it snowed.

  The cancer ward was noisy. This was the hospital where his father had died and it scared Win, but Robin often dropped by and Gabby lived just outside the city in her big house that could sleep all the visiting boys, and she promised to help him manage things. Months went by of aggressive treatments, Win or Gabby driving Astrid to her appointments and back. By fall she was gaunt and meek. Cancer was winning. She developed pneumonia and was admitted to intensive care.

  They were all in the kitchen after dinner one windy night.

  Winston wiped his face with his hand and there were tears on his fingers. “What is it with you doctors these days?”

  “We need to find out what Astrid wants,” said Robin.

  “It’s ridiculous, all these choices. She wants some clear place to die is all. She wants me to tell you what to do. For Christ’s sake this is enough. She’s in such pain.” He staggered a little to the right, turned with a wide sweeping gesture and snatched his drink off the kitchen counter.

  His boys watched him.

  Robin said nothing.

  Gabrielle wrinkled her nose. “You remind me of Dad.”

  He had a vision of himself in the red plaid shirt, how worn it was, how thin across the shoulders. Outside, deer were grazing on the windfalls under the apple tree by the well. He pointed. “They just live and die. No one tells them. They just get on with it.”

  Nine months later they disconnected Astrid, and she floated away.

  He was outside in Gabby’s garden, yet he knew. He knew. The bell rings and you take a breath. The breath ends and you take another. The next comes like a mountain. Like a fresh orange. Gabby came out of the house, gave a cry, and burrowed into his arms.

  He dipped his hands into the stone bucket full of rain to wash off the soil, wiped them on his jeans as he made his way back to the house. He stopped. What loved him now? Slowly he sat down on the sloping lawn, tucked one leg and let the other stretch out. When the sunflower bloomed would it love him? He’d started to paint Gabby’s house green. Ugliest shit colour you ever saw, yet his sister was pleased. On the colour card the one below had reminded him of Astrid’s eyes. His spine stayed straight. Gabby had stopped drinking again. Together they’d planted annuals. In him now was a fragile spirit gathering strength to go on, for God knew what purpose, and he sat into evening, through the last chorus of birds, waiting for his sons, till the sky darkened. He thought about architecture. Some he’d done was fine, some could have been better. How was anyone’s guess. He’d designed one or two things he was proud of. Details overtook a soul. He leaned forward. Whatever had left him he’d love back again. The quiet, for instance, the stillness. Desire lines across a field, not the footpath along the edge. The perfect place, the right materials, and a vision. Was perfect stillness what they all kept secret and loved, and let go of, and filled with attempts?

  “Did I tell you about our family allotment?” He spoke quietly to Malcolm who had wandered out from the house to sit crosslegged on the wood table in front of his father. “Every spring when I was a boy, and right through till my dad died, we had these picnics in the allotment where my parents gardened. It was a great place with a huge oak tree and a stream, and we’d always take fish, herring, to feed the eagles. Your brothers will remember — well, Evan and Paddy anyway.”

  The boy blinked.

  “Malcolm, when a person dies something happens to the world, a tiny rift, a crack, and if you’re lucky enough to be there you see there’s nothing lacking, nothing missing, nothing hidden, not a thing left out.” He smiled. “I see you. And I love you very much.”

  Late that year an iceberg was calved off the coast of Antarctica. Forty kilometers wide and eighty long with a peak three hundred feet above the surface of the ocean, it drew a thousand feet. Imperial in its own blue light, dazzling everything that approached, it floated toward Argentina. Night after night smaller bergs were calved, groaning, into the stars, to be swept out by giant waves. At dusk flocks of seabirds flew through the ice valleys, following rivers that led to the sea.

  THAT TIME IN PALM SPRINGS

  TEN MILLION YEARS FOR THE GREAT clouds of dust to crease and the gravitational epics to give way to the rotation of crops and it’s harvest time: a meadow of stars that one by one bloom red and go out.

  One

  “Food’s an altogether too common experience for you,” I said.

  We were in the Costco parking lot, listening to Bush telling the world “You’re with us or with the terrorists.” Dad was begging again, tapping me on the shoulder and whistling between his teeth. I was glued to the radio, listening for a mention of Canada and waiting to go in to buy underwear and a massage table.

  I try to keep the morning for meditation, then often defeat myself by lying in, having lingered late in the attic with pornography or solitaire, collapsing into bed in the small hours, thus avoiding the moments of anguish when sleep does not readily come. O my bruised psyche, I have lost much. What, though, beside the will to meditate? A wife, children, my youth, a firm grip on stuff. Is that enough? Opportunity. Ah. Income. Yes. Well. After breakfast, in season, I try to see things from the perspective of mowing. I mow the paths through lengthening grass to the back of the valley where it turns to swamp. Then I collect eggs, feed the chickens, chop and carry wood. Most mornings keep themselves wide open, full of birdsong, cicadas in July, a haze of rain in autumn and spring, winter tasks. Mornings care little for the uses we put them to; the dreams we bring into daylight remain ours alone.

  I’ve always been attracted to hedgerows of wild rose and mountain ash. Does that make me a bird or a bee or a criminal
on the look out for cover? I don’t know who I’m with. Not Bush, not terrorists, whoever they are. I’ve felt and caused terror. My dad is here with me. He has been with me forever, though as a child I saw him infrequently. Let’s say his visibility has increased with the years. Over time he has become more solid, more present, till now he fills the house, the little acreage. He’s fat, in a word. And while his voice, when my mother was alive, rarely competed with hers and now seldom speaks at all, there was a time, recently, a few years ago, it feels like yesterday, when I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Now he has replaced talking with eating.

  We watch James Bond videos at night, alternated with Jackie Chan. I like Bond, he likes Chan. Dad’s body, so full of aches and pains all day, contorts and jerks itself about through Jackie’s idiocy. Buffoon, he says. Rascal. For Bond it’s scallywag, and he’s sober and critical, though interested, as am I, in the girls. When it’s all done with, when the last echo of the last semi-automatic gunfire has faded, Dad yawns out silent, epileptic guffaws, then we go to our separate rooms, his downstairs, mine up, to our separate sleeps, often disturbed. I hear him beneath me groaning as he slogs back and forth to the bathroom, and I worry about him falling. Such groans I must arm myself against, such groans and meanderings, or I won’t sleep. Once I found him, all three hundred pounds, in a corner of the bathroom, dead to the world, a snoring sack of potatoes. He’d heard an owl and felt like resting on the tiles, he said. That was a few years ago, perhaps a decade, when he still uttered sentences. He has more energy than me these days and is ever bigger, inflated, moist as the moon. His skin is yellow. His mouth gormless. If I can’t sleep I go upstairs to the attic where I’ve built an altar, the centrepiece of which is my ancient laptop, to bookmarked girls and a pixilated version of what my mum called patience. No one ever disturbs me here. Bird song heralds morning. A red-shafted flicker hammers on the chimney flashing.

  Hours glide past me at night doubled over in orgasm or mopping up the mess, and pile up in the morning as I wait for the kettle to boil, and then later in the day catch me stoned on homegrown, striding the ridge with the dog.