Mouse

  To be honest, right now I’d like to paint me as the hero, Mouse. A change in light, a slightly different point of view and everything looks different. The artist gets to choose those things; it’s my prerogative to pick the place from which to tell my story, right? Truth is in the artist’s eye. I wish. I’ve looked at this from every way I can: standing on a cloud, from here and over there, even from the benefit of hindsight. I’m not proud to say it, but no matter how I make this look, I’m shivering with fright. Right now, I truly wish I had the power to make myself invisible, turn back the clock a couple hours and read a book all morning. I’d gladly take a mulligan and wake up on the staffroom couch to do the morning differently. I suppose I could have typed “Hélène” or “Sr. Francis” or “Linda” telling me to haul my butt down where the ice has nothing under it but more ice and icy water. I’d go for that. I’d laugh it off; I’d make a joke of it. I’d invite Hélène to lead the charge herself. I’d tell Linda flat out, “No way, José; I just can’t do it. It’s not written in my character bio. Not my job description either.” I’d even pantomime an injury for Sr. Francis: I cannot move my leg. Never in a hundred years I’d mumble, “Sure. I’ll get right to it.”

  But, Rosemary is the one who tells me to get down there and help them. Rosemary is a whole different story. Without so much as a wisecrack, I start to climb the wall to where she stands, scrambling over ice chunks much bigger than myself, searching for a place to grip the slippery surfaces.

  Go ahead and ask your question, Mouse. “Why?” You have the right to know. Why is Rosemary’s voice so different from the others? Yes, eventually you’ll know, I hope; I hope you’ll understand. For now, just trust me please. She helped me with my class. She went out on a limb and acted like a friend. She trusted me. She treated me like a human being no matter what it cost her. Well, simply, for now, all I can say is, I cannot—will not—let her down. It doesn’t give me courage; I’m still scared shitless, but no is not an option. Bear with me, Mouse. We’ll get there in the end.

  When I crest the ridge, I see even more trouble than I imagined. The ice in the middle of the river is moving again. It’s stop and go—like traffic on downtown Yonge Street around three in the afternoon—fast for a few minutes, then slowing, then fast again, then stopping for a moment before charging on. Closer to the bank, it’s more like five o’clock when traffic stops for frustratingly longer periods, then lurches forward a few car lengths before stopping again. The boat rocks gently only a few yards from the shore. Both men and the patient now sit in the canoe staring up at me. It would be nice if their expressions mean they’re jealous of my more fortunate location on the planet, nice if they are not expecting me to have some magic docking powers derived from being a teacher or a person with white skin.

  I lock eyes with Rosemary. She says nothing. She doesn’t have to.

  “Astam! Astam ota!” one of the men shouts up at us—at me, I’m pretty sure. I know the meaning: he wants me down there.

  Rosemary doesn’t move. I go. My legs are shaking so hard I fear they will buckle but I start down the bank. The trip to water level is shorter than the climb up over the wall. The blocks of ice are cleaner, slicker.

  I watch the man in front bending over something, which could be an anchor, doing something to a rope. Now he places one hand on the patient’s shoulder for support and swings a coil of twisted yellow nylon with the other. Whatever he says in Cree is not one my teacher words. Whatever he says is too soft for Rosemary up above me to hear and translate. Maybe he is praying I’m stronger than I look. Or cursing his luck I turned out to be the only rescuer on call.

  I’m pretty sure I know his intention. I’m to catch the rope and pull the canoe up—which is about as good a plan as me attaching the rope to a skyhook and lifting it out of the water with a team of unicorns.

  Before he can throw, however, an ice block nudges the canoe sharply to one side. The man in the stern stumbles backward and tips over the transom into the swirling frigid water. For a few frozen seconds we all stare at the river.

  The three of us, the other man, the patient (who I now can see is an elderly woman) and me, we send unanswered messages to our legs to move, to do something. But before anyone can spring into action, a head appears above the slurry of ice and water—followed by an arm. The man in the water pulls himself up and a leg swings into view, a shimmering hip wader slides over the right gunwale. The man in the front still doesn’t move and now I can tell it’s more from a matter of balance than fear. The front of the craft no longer floats in water, but rests on a block of ice. Its keel has become the source of instability rather than the opposite, rocking wildly with each shift in weight inside the canoe. The man in front tries desperately now to keep the patient stable, keep the boat from slipping backward into faster water.

  The other man, soaked, shaking violently, clambers the rest of the way into the canoe. The man in the front throws the rope, and I demonstrate with an unforced error why as a child I didn’t come close to making a Little League team.

  On his second throw, I’m more fortunate—but not so lucky as I first think. The blocks shift. The boat begins to slowly drift downstream. Worst of all I have the rope in my grip and I am no longer sitting on the bench watching the game; I’m up to bat in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and the winning run on third. I’m the winch that’s supposed to pull against Nature which is pulling this speck of cedar and humanity back to some destination of its own choosing. It’s up to me to haul them back or be pulled in after them or watch them drift off toward the Bay or—God help me—watch helplessly as the tumbling icebergs grind them into the past tense.

  The rope goes taut. It pulls me. I feel myself slowly sliding down the smooth ice shelf toward the moving mass of white ice and brown water. My sneakers slide easily down the ice. Helpless. People say your life flashes in front of you at times like this. Mine doesn’t. I do think about Suzanne—that same Victoria Day. If this is my end, that was my beginning.

  

  Too bad for you, Mouse, my typing fingers are so slow. A brain can travel light years in a second. Mine crops the pictures flashing through its scrapbook without a single word to slow it down. But what you get is all slow motion. You have to wait until I hunt and peck it onto paper one letter at a time.

  The rain peters out. During the stroll to the coffee house, which turns out to be closed, we revise our plans and settle on a simple meal of pasta and a glass of cider at a place called Becky’s Family Restaurant. We don’t say much until we find a booth where we can steal furtive glances over top our menus. By then neither of us is eager to work on lesson plans. She wants to know where I’m from and the kind of person I might be—subjects I find somewhat complicated. Suzanne cups her chin into her palms as I haltingly describe my flounder through adolescence, my failure to graduate from university, my pilgrimage from Iowa to a somewhat bleak loft in downtown Toronto. At first she makes me feel nervous and awkward, but she keeps me talking and the shyness starts to fade. She wants to know about the art of dodging the draft and the dodge of doing art in a drafty loft, the horror of becoming a Tim Horton’s part-time employee of the month. The waitress keeps stopping at our table to see if we’re ready to order, but Suzanne says, “Not quite yet,” again and then asks another question, looks at me as if I might actually know the answer.

  It feels like I do all the talking, Mouse. I have no idea when or how I come to know she used to lead the cheers for the Fellow’s High School Panthers back in Pembroke and waited tables at a greasy spoon while doing Honours at the University of Ottawa. Somehow I discover she thinks painting pictures is a lot cooler than studying Primary/ Junior Education. I’m both curious and maybe a little envious of how she headed back to her hometown after graduation and worked the last six years with groups of thirty ten-year-olds.

  “But now I’ve thrown it all away. How lame is that?” She makes a face and raps her knuckles on her forehead as she describes leaving a job at which she
undisputedly is good (except for teaching art) but somehow has lost the “this-one’s-outta-here thrill, the going-going-gone high I want to find somewhere else, anywhere but Pembroke, David.”

  “So you’re a baseball fan,” I say, thinking that would be easier for us to talk about.

  Her face lights up. “Les Expos. Kenny Singleton! You wait. He’ll be an All-Star this year.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You’re not impressed.”

  “I used to follow the Cubs. When I was in the States. Not so much now. It’s kind of a States thing, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, right. Like after you stole it from us.”

  “Really? They must have left that part out of my history book.”

  “I’m not surprised. It was Beachville, Ontario, not your Cooperstown. Your history text probably said Edison and Bell were Americans, too. And basketball? James Naismith was from Almonte just down the road from here. Did you know that?”

  “Really?” It’s all news to me.

  “You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?”

  "”No. I was...” I put my fork down so I can look at her without stabbing my cheek or dropping a meatball. “I was thinking, you know. This is actually, really kind of nice, just talking.” Nice, not being completely terrified is what I actually think. “I guess the rain was bumming me out, that and the quote unquote art exhibition. You cheered me up.”

  She smiles at that. “It doesn’t take much to cheer you up then, does it? You’re lucky you don’t have thirty kids to entertain tomorrow morning. And you’ve very cleverly avoided that blockbuster idea for my art period until it’s probably time for me to go.”

  “I forgot completely. We should talk about it now. It’s never too late for art.”

  She turns her arm to check her wrist. “Crap. What happened to the time? It’s almost eight. I won’t get back till after nine, and I haven’t done a thing for tomorrow.”

  “Call in sick.” That’s what I’d do. It sounds dumb as soon as it’s out of my mouth. She’s a teacher; she has a real job.

  “I’m not sick—just foolish. And anyway that wouldn’t solve a thing. It’s twice as much work making lesson plans for a supply teacher as doing it myself.”

  “What if you just ran away?” I’ve completely lost my mind. Her hair? Her eyes? Her voice? My mouth goes right on talking totally independent of my brain. “Abandon your car here. Come back with me. They’d never find you. You could keep me awake on the drive to Toronto.”

  “What a generous offer, David. Especially the part about ditching my car—about the only thing I own of any value.”

  I’ve lost my mind. I bite my lip but words keep spewing out. “I’m serious. Dodge the job. Liberate yourself. You know, just start all over; turn the page if you don’t like what you’re doing. Buy yourself some clean gotchies in the morning and create a new life in a new place.” Gotchies? Really? I say this to a woman I’ve only known an hour? Maybe I could blame it on the cider.

  She blushes and smothers a laugh in her palm. “Stop. I’m eating. And who are you to say my gotchies aren’t clean.”

  “Well, just buy a new toothbrush then. Underwear is bourgeois anyway.”

  “If I could afford to just pick up and leave, I would’ve bought one of your paintings. I really liked them—a lot.”

  “Oh!” I clap both hands to my heart and wince. I’ve gone mad. I must think I’m playing a scene from Father Knows Best or Leave It to Beaver.

  Suzanne’s eyes widen. “Dave?”

  “This is definitely fate. You like my art. I like your hair. We both like baseball. You like my art. Game over. I’ll do anything you ask; I’ll follow you anywhere you say. You really like my art? Really?”

  “You’re an idiot, David. Yes, I like the paintings—quite a lot.”

  “Really? Seriously? You said the magic word; you win a hundred dollars.” No, I do not say that in my Groucho Marx voice. Please.

  “Okay. I have to end this. I need to get my butt out of here. I have lots of work to do.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes. Unless you can write me a foolproof lesson plan for art tomorrow—now. Right now.” She rummages in her purse, I suspect for a pen or pencil.

  “That might be impossible. I’m not a writer. Not even a printer. I might be able to describe one—maybe. I could show you one, for sure.”

  “Okay. Show me. But make it fast. I should have been on the road hours ago.”

  “Show you here? Do you want to do spaghetti art tomorrow? Something with forks and napkins?”

  “Very funny. I figured you’d find a way out of this. That’s okay.”

  “Wait. That hurt. Now it’s a question of honour. I almost never go back on my word. I was a Cub Scout once. I promise I’ll put together one, no, two incredible lessons and you can take your pick.”

  “When then?” I can tell by her face the joke has gone too far. Her voice is edged with responsibility and discipline. “That sounds good—too good to be true. It’s time. Now I have to go.”

  I push my chair back and glance up at the ceiling as if the score might be posted there. “Okay. We’ll go to your place. I’ll set up the lesson for you there. Two lessons, I mean.” If I can think of one, then why not two? I don’t have to be back in Toronto until Thursday. And Timmy’s, well, they’ve never asked me for a lesson plan yet. I have no prep at all for them. Just show up in uniform and smile. “I’ve got nothing on my calendar for days.” I try to sound convincing even though I know I’m in this way over my head. It cannot possibly work. I know she’s going to laugh. There’s a chance she’ll mime a finger down her throat. Yet she does neither even though she isn’t buying it.

  “You can’t be serious. You have no idea where Pembroke is, do you? It’s more than an hour’s drive—in the wrong direction for you. Sorry. It’s been nice.”

  I don’t know when to quit. “So? Is there a gas station in Pembroke?”

  “What? It’s a city. Look. This has been great, but I do have to go. I don’t expect you to do my job for me. You were very kind to offer. I enjoyed this.”

  I frown. “Is there a boyfriend or a husband at your place? I mean even if there is, I think you need some help with this. And this has been the nicest meal I’ve had, I mean shared... I mean, in years—or ever, really. It was fun. It was... It was easy. I’m usually no good at conversation. I think I’d really like to do this. I mean, just help. You know? No strings.” My hands suddenly disconnect from my brain and randomly my fingers start to panic—ten little kids who’ve suddenly lost their mommy and have no idea about what to do next.

  “Crap,” she mumbles as she starts to get up. “This is totally insane. I’m going.”

  It’s months later she confesses what I already guess: she is filled with doubt as she drives down Highway 17—east and then southeast, following the river with my ridiculous old Buick Electra tagging along in her wake. “Totally insane!” She says it to Meilleurs Bay and Alexander Point, Deep River and Mountain View—and fifty times more between each interval. She’s supposedly a teacher—straight-laced and sober minded. I’m a drifter, a draft dodger, and probably more undependable than weather. “What the bloody hell have I gone and done now?” When she puts her blinker on as she approaches 41, she can’t bear to check the rear-view mirror. She’s sure that I won’t follow; I’ll keep right on going down number 17. Either I’ve figured out it would be wise to dump my ill-conceived commitment or my mind will have simply wandered back to where ever it is Toronto hippy artists’ minds go wandering. In either case ditching me would be for the best. My so-called art lesson undoubtedly would have been weird anyway, something foolish. Suzanne might think about the nudes she’d helped me stack inside my spacious trunk. She might shiver, thinking of the model, a naked woman standing there in front of me. She doesn’t tell me that, but maybe... And maybe she squeezes her thighs together at the thought.

  My thoughts are simpler. Don’t freaking run out of gas—not now. God
, that hair, it weeps to be painted. What kind of lesson would a ten-year-old kid like anyway? No, what kind of stuff would impress Suzanne? What grade do ten-year-olds attend and what are they like? This isn’t really happening. It’s just me showing her something. That’s it. I don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell with her, do I? She is so out of my league. I’m an idiot. Cool it. If she drives any faster, I’ll lose her in this piece of shit Buick. But I don’t lose her. I don’t miss the turn. I find a parking spot right next to hers beside her low-rise apartment complex near the river.

  She’s all business when we get inside her place, and I’ve got no complaint with that. She has all the art supplies a class of kids could want jumbled into pasteboard boxes and lots of space to work. She has real furniture that matches and drapes and a carpet on her floor, and I’m reminded of my parent’s house in Iowa. I’m reminded of my barebones loft back in Toronto, but mostly I focus on the job at hand: a way to make paint and paper interesting to kids. Her watch reads midnight when I almost finish cutting out crazy shapes from poster board and can finally demonstrate the way things might be done tomorrow in her class. It barely grazes my brain that what’s a game and a shot in the dark for me is a real job for Suzanne Robinson, a real potential fiasco, a painfully real humiliation in waiting. I have no idea, not a clue if this will work, but she’s impressed, she’s certain of success before I even tell her all the details. Use the random shapes as templates. They can trace outlines on a long banner of sketch paper rolled out on the floor. They’ll keep choosing different shapes. Make it into a game like musical chairs with one less shape than the number of students in the class—make it a race for shapes each time the music stops. Make it so they just do it fast and not worry about what they’re doing. Keep it random. Let them overlap the shapes. Make them fill the banner. Then everybody picks one colour marker or crayon and see how many shapes they can fill without touching a shape with the same colour. Make it fun. Make it a game. Make them cooperate. Make it so everyone has the same chance to succeed. It might even look good in the end. It might be something anyway. It might be fun. Maybe. To me, maybe it’s kind of dumb and fairly awful. But Suzanne glows. I can tell she’s psyched. She never even mentions the second lesson, which is a very good thing since this is all I have.

  Before she starts writing in her daybook, she says she’ll be right back and wants me to wait so she can help cut out the last two templates. She’s only gone a minute before sliding back into the living room, barefoot in cut-off jeans and a thin, white cotton blouse its tails swinging off her hips. I can’t help noticing the two white pockets in the front that cover her breasts where a brassiere clearly isn’t. The two top buttons are undone.

  Sorry, Mouse. I have to think a minute. I’m balancing on the tightrope between too much information and too little honesty. It was okay to be smitten by her hair, but—bear with me, Mouse. Suzanne is very sexy right now. But at the same time she acts totally unaware that slipping into something comfortable might be an invitation to me. It’s my turn to panic, my turn to wonder what might be happening, my turn to forget all about art lessons while deciding if I’m some kind of pervert or if uncharacteristically I’m about to get lucky.

  “I can’t tell you how much this means. I still think you must be out of your mind doing all this work, coming all this way.”

  “Fun.” My voice cracks, and I try to clear my throat. “This is fun—for me anyway. Anyway, I don’t have to face your class.”

  “Oh, I think it ought to work. They’ll love the music idea, too.”

  “Depends on what you play. I wouldn’t pick opera.”

  “Right.” She laughs. I like her laugh. “Do you want something to drink or eat?”

  “I’m good. This won’t take much longer.”

  She walks past the daybook open on her dining room table and over to the sofa where I’m working with the scissors. “Let me do at least one. It looks like fun.” She smells like rain—sweet and fresh, like spring itself. Her arm brushes mine as she reaches for the stack of templates. “I have another scissors somewhere. I should’ve helped.”

  “There’s just a couple more. You had your planning.”

  “I’ll watch you do this one, then I’ll do the last one so I can take all the credit.” She laughs as she slides onto the couch next to me. Close. Close enough to see what I’m doing. As if cutting with scissors isn’t covered in teacher’s college. Or just to make sure there isn’t some special “artist” technique to what I’m doing. Surely, not just so her bare leg will warm the length of my jeans. “Comfy?”

  “Sure. You’ve got a nice place.”

  “What’s your apartment like in Toronto?”

  “Kind of empty I guess by comparison. It’s a good place to do art.”

  “Is there a—roommate? Sorry. I’m being nosey?”

  I shake my head. “No, not at the moment, no roommate. Unfortunately. It’s pricey downtown. I was sharing it with this other painter and his girlfriend. Then he sold some big pieces and they got their own studio.”

  “That’s what I hear: housing is expensive in the city. That’s it for the poster board. You’re sure we have enough cut-outs?”

  “This isn’t rocket science. If you come up short, just cut one of these in half. Don’t worry. No pressure.” I put the scissors down on the coffee table and flip the template onto the pile. “You’re up to bat.” I watch her graceful fingers cut carefully along the outline as if it makes a difference, watch her lay both the template and the scissors on the table but make no move to get up from the sofa.

  “Thank you. I’m impressed. What a day, eh? It’s been very cool.”

  “You look tired,” I say.

  “Do I? I don’t feel tired at all.”

  I move my arm to the back of the sofa so I can turn and look at her—her eyes, not the pockets of the blouse. Her eyes. I study the sky inside them trying to keep my mind there. “I didn’t mean you look bad. Just you have a class to teach tomorrow morning.”

  She winks. Yes, that’s exactly what she does. “Maybe I just need to relax for awhile.” She rests her head against my side. Yes, that’s what really happens—before I close my arm around her shoulders, before my hand slides off her sleeve and onto the bare skin of her arm. She looks up at me. And says, “Yes,” with her eyes.

  To my surprise, the rest is easy. I kiss her on the forehead and hear the catch in her breathing that I think gives me permission. My thumb paints a line along her arm: can I, please? She says yes with her nose against my neck. I slide forward to face her squarely and touch her cheek, and her lips smile against me. Then I study her with the tips of my fingers, learning her topography, the way a sculptor studies a maquette—the set of her cheekbones, the hollow of her temples, the ridge of a clavicle. All the time listening to her breath, letting it tell me the answers to questions I don’t have the courage to voice. All of that before we both decide it’s time to let our lips swim up to the surface together and lightly fall exhausted on the beach.

  I don’t say anything, Mouse. I don’t say one word until the next morning when she wakes me up with coffee before she leaves for school. In all the unwrapping of our clothing, all the explorations and caresses, I let my fingers tell her how I feel about the curves, the tender cavities behind her elbow and her knees. I paint her body with skin on skin. I use my nails like I’m shading contours on her thigh, all in silence. She likes it. She whispers, “You’re making me scream inside, David.”

  I play inside the titian garden of her hair. Rake her scalp. Watch the strands of amber slide across my palm, inspect for flecks of brighter orange, of pumpkin. Listen for her softening moan. Yes, we kiss. Yes, more than kiss, Mouse. “Jesus. Come inside me, David. Now.” Well yes, and yes, she grabs me by my hair and pulls me up to her and begs me, “Fuck me. Fuck me, now.”

  And afterward? When we lie panting in the sweat and tangle of the sheets, she finds my hand and holds it, squeezes it fiercely and asks me tenderly, “Are you
okay? Are you hungry? I could get us both a snack? Something to drink?”

  But I am smiling too broadly to speak. My breathing is too heavy to move. My eyes are too heavy, too full of everything to see anything more. My face hides inside the firestorm of her hair.

  In the morning, as she hurries off to school with her briefcase full of art, I find my voice and finally call out to her weakly. “I think I’m in love with you, Suzanne Robinson. I hope that’s okay?” The door closes. My eyes open onto a strange room, a stranger world, a whole new ballgame.

  

  The first base coach flashes me signs I’ve never seen before, flashes them so fast my mind spins. I command my feet to step out of the batter’s box. Time out! But they refuse to respond. My feet keep sliding down that block of river ice in Orkney Post, Ontario. Not the dream I was hoping for. Not a dream at all.

  The boat gathers speed, drifting stern-first downstream in slush and ice and freezing water. The rope joining us lifts out the river and becomes taut. In an act that belies every cowardly emotion I’ve felt today, I twist the yellow nylon cord around my wrist and hand as if I plan to hold onto the drifting freighter even as it tows me with it out into the swelling current.

  I lean back, easing myself down onto my bum, onto the frozen block until I feel the cold seep through my jeans. The long slab of ice slopes gently, and so far at least, it’s solid. At its base another frozen boulder, partially submerged, sits atop this one, crosswise; I brace my tennis shoes against it. If it gives way, I will have to make a quick decision about my future. I’m never fond of making choices.

  The man in the bow of the canoe yells something at me in Cree. I don’t think he is saying anything I want to hear. He’s not shouting, “Save yourself, you fool! Get off the ice now before the bank collapses!” It’s not, “Thanks anyway. It was nice of you to try.” He motions to me by holding his hands together in front of him and pulling them back toward himself. He thinks I can pull the three people and the boat against the current.

  I try—with both hands and the rope cutting into my bare flesh. It’s a little late now, but I imagine how smart it would have to been to put on a pair of gloves when I left the house this morning, perhaps a pair of rubber boots as well. My arms flex. My biceps contract. The boat looks stationary, but it must have moved. When my hands reach my chest, I wind a loop around my elbow and quickly grip the rope further out. Water ripples around the sides of the boat. The closer the boat draws to shore the easier the job becomes. As the gap narrows, I realize I can do this. What continues to scare me is the block of ice bracing my feet. Everything depends on my footing and the ice on which I’m lying remaining stable; both are things I can’t control.

  It isn’t long before I feel the bow bump against the far side of my footrest. In an instant the man in the front of the boat leaps over the side and onto my ice and grabs the rope tangled around both my arms. The only word I understand in his introductory speech to me (unless he is looking at me and talking to the man still shivering in the back of the boat) is, “Fuck.”

  I follow his eyes up the ice ridge to Rosemary. More faces look down at us now. Probably everyone still on the mainland has bought a ticket for this show.

  The man in the back of the boat peg legs forward carrying a metal rod with two flat wings, which together look like home plate on a baseball diamond. It must be the anchor. Shivering, he swings stiffly over each of the five thwarts one at a time, holding the metal close to his chest. His drenched parka crackles, and flecks of ice fall into the canoe.

  Now the things that have been unfolding in slow motion begin to flow at sixty frames per second. In an instant, the shaking man thrusts the anchor and rope at me and I clutch them against my jacket. The lead man— buried inside his parka hood, but who I now recognize as the custodian, Thomas Cheechoo, the owner of the old truck idling up on the road in anticipation of the patient—mimes my next job which is to tie the rope back onto the anchor and secure the boat. He busies himself at the bow helping the shaking man lift the old lady over the gunwale and onto the shore ice. The patient softly whimpers perhaps from pain or fear or relief to be so close to solid ground. The frozen man is nearly convulsive now and hard put to keep his balance. Thomas works as quickly as he can to help them both up the steep pile of boulders. As soon as I finish with the canoe, I climb up behind them to help, but I feel like I’m superfluous on the awkward climb unless I might be useful to cushion someone’s fall should that happen.

  When I get far enough up the ice to peek over the top of the ridge I see the pickup is backed up as close as it can get to the ridge. Hélène barks orders in French and broken English. Half a dozen sets of arms stretch out, ready to assist or catch the men and the old woman in the event of a slip. At the top, Thomas turns to me and points his chin down at the canoe. He says something in Cree to Rosemary who is still standing where she was when she sent me down. All I catch is, “Kinipi,” and I really don’t feel like hurrying right now. “Lunchtime!” would sound so much better.

  “David, he wants you go get her bag. It has her things, her meds. He says to hurry.” She doesn’t tell me why.

  I look at her. She nods at the boat, but she doesn’t smile.

  I feel better about the ice the second time down. I’m more confident in its thickness and strength. I’m not afraid to slide a little way, like I’m skiing downhill, standing up, holding my arms out for balance. I even grin now that I have helped rescue the old lady. I suppose I’m more than a little self-satisfied for having played a role in this; for me it’s an uncommon act of valour, a grown-up job at least. I’ve passed muster in the end, or so I’d like to think.

  For the very first time, I climb into a freighter canoe. Standing upright in the bow, the thwarts come almost to mid-thigh. I see the small black plastic shopping bag in the stern. It takes only seconds for me to climb over the sets of seats and thwarts to get to it. I turn. Rosemary is gone. Linda stands, brow furrowed, in her place on the ridge. I can’t see the pickup but I hear it pulling away. I wave at Linda. Then I hear the explosion. Two big boulders of ice shift just to the left of Linda’s perch. One of them crashes down toward the river onto the makeshift path we used for helping the patient up the bank.

  The impact moves my boat. An hour ago I would have been terrified. Now I’m calm feeling the current’s gentle pull on the boat. The men have taught me something, maybe given me some small modicum of courage. I’m attached to the shore now. All I need to do is pull the boat, hand over hand, back to safety. I chuckle at how brave I’ve become as I make my way back to the bow, which has already started to turn itself downriver.

  I pick up the rope and pull it. Surprisingly there is little tension, and I quickly pull it again. I can see the anchor. I can see the rope lift briefly out of the water and sink back in. Then I watch my hastily tied knot slowly come undone, slip in slow motion, over, under, and through itself. No! The frayed end slowly slithers through the metal eyelet of the anchor until it finally bobs up and down in the water as I yank it toward me.

  The canoe smoothly turns around to face the open water. I am adrift—headed toward the more turbulent current in mid-river. I try to yell for help but there is dust in my throat again and nothing comes out.

  

  “Help me. Please.” Suzanne stands in the dim light of my entryway her hyperextended right arm clutching a very large suitcase. With her other arm she hugs to her fisherman’s knit sweater a badly folded place mat featuring a pictorial view of Toronto’s downtown streets. Sweat glistens on her brow.

  “Suz?” My throat constricts. My open mouth wonders where and how she got here. Lost? Hurt? Has something dreadful happened? Why the sweater—in August? Really? She’s here! She’s really here and why or how or if she’s wearing ice skates really doesn’t matter. “Suzanne!”

  I step into the hallway and stub my bare toe on an empty beer bottle, sending it clattering into the stairwell. “Ouch! What are you... Are you okay? I thought you... Come in. Let
me take that.” But instead of reaching for her bag, I reach for her and crush her map between us. “God, it’s good to see you.”

  Her head buries in my shoulder. I can feel her shudder and know she’s crying. She mumbles, “I went the wrong way on Queen. I thought I’d never find you.” She blows her nose. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I just came; I just got on the bus and... Is your toe okay? Can I stay here tonight?”

  “Of course you can.” A large dog of ambiguous parentage nuzzles me from behind and I block the doorway with my leg. “Sir Visa, no. Get back in there.”

  “Mon, I keep telling you his name is Cervesa. Visa is a damn credit card.” The voice comes from behind me, behind the dog inside the loft.

  “Well, whatever, just keep him inside before we attract a problem with the landlord. This is Suzanne.”

  “The Suzanne?”

  “Yes, the Suzanne of all those phone calls and letters. This is the one.”

  “Mon! We celebrate now!”

  “Suzanne, meet Juan. He’s—just about to leave.” I grab the suitcase and used it as a battering ram to push the dog and Juan back into the loft and make a path for Suzanne. “Come in, come in. Don’t mind the mess. I’ll take care of all this later. I’ll take care of everything. You’re here! Everything will be fine.”

  “I thought there’d be an elevator. God. Three flights. How do you do it?”

  “All that matters is you’re here.” I still can’t believe it even with her standing in the doorway. Every week since my incredible art lesson and two more nights of making love, every week there’s been a letter in the mail, a trip to the payphone on the corner so I can hear her voice until my change runs out. When we parted, back in May, yes we talked about it: what if I quit my part-time job and move; what if she joins me here. But that was just “if.” I could never ask her to give up what she had there for this, trade down to chaos and insecurity from a real home and real profession. In the end I had to get the Buick back to Juan’s friend; Suz had to finish out her year. In the end, I decided not to decide. And here she is—but for “just tonight?” Surely that’s negotiable.

  “If you’re working on something, David, I don’t want you to stop. I just came on an impulse. I don’t do impulsive very well.”

  I have a hundred questions. I want her to know how good it is to see her, but all I do is pull her closer and kiss her. I have to catch her scent again and reacquaint my fingers with her shape and contours, and when I feel the faint convulsions of her chest, holding back a sob into my tee shirt, then I whisper in her ear, “It’s okay, Suz. It’s okay. You’re here now and everything will be okay.”

  Juan squats on his haunches at the far end of the loft, looking at a row of wrinkled white sheets of typing paper lying on the floor. Cervesa laps a suspicious amber liquid from a bowl, slopping it onto the tile in the part of the loft I generously call the “cooking place,” a space Suzanne eventually, without a trace of sarcasm, will call a kitchen.

  “Come on, let me introduce you properly. Then you and I are going to take a walk, a nice long walk, maybe get a bite to eat, and when we get back...” I clear my throat as we approach my friend. “And when we get back, Juan and Sir Visa will be busy somewhere else.”

  “Mon, I just got here. And you are gonna give that dog a complex if you keep calling him Visa.”

  “They will be gone, like I said.”

  Juan grins a Cheshire smile of yellow teeth. “I am so pleased to finally meet you, Miss Suzanne.”

  “Show her your latest work, Juan. Juan is doing some highly experimental watercolours—although it’s hard for me to see any colour at all on the paper. Be honest. Do you see even a hint of colour on any of them, Suz?”

  “You don’t get it, mon. De essence of watercolour is transparency. And de colour, it is just in da way. You are looking at purity, Miss Suzanne. Pure purity.”

  Suzanne picks up one of the crinkled sheets of bond and studies it. “I think... I maybe get it.” She looks at me, wrinkling a brow as if to ask if this is really on the level. I answer with a shrug.

  “See! She gets it, Taylor. Why don’t you get it? She has the good eye. It takes a pure eye to see into the heart of things.”

  “I’m partial to her eyes as well. But I think you should work on the paintings a little more before you take them to a gallery. Eh? Tweak it, okay? Watercolour does kind of imply, you know, some colour.”

  “You always say dat, mon. Tweak. Is dat even a word? Okay. Okay, I will try another sequence. I am thinking. All the time, I am thinking. What is da purest water there is? That is my question to you, Miss Suzanne. That is my quest.”

  “What water did you use on these?”

  “Distilled water, because that is what I was thinking is the most pure. No chemicals. Just water. Now I have another idea. Distilled water is processed water. Right? Where does water begin? Unprocessed water. De ocean, right. That is de essence of water. I think I might be trying some salt water next time. Come on now, Cervesa. T’ank the good mon for his beer.”

  The dog barks as the artist gathers his paintings into a thick but somewhat tidy sheaf. We don’t wait for him to finish or worry about him locking up or tidying or remembering to take his dog. We have too much catching up to do, too many details to sort out into piles: the possible and the impossible. We have skin that hasn’t been explored, egos that haven’t been stroked, not to mention emotions that haven’t been provoked or properly released in months.

  We find a park bench just off the Esplanade near George Street and simply stare at each other.

  “I guess this is it, then.” Suzanne takes the lead.

  “It looks that way.” I place my hand on top of hers.

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “It wasn’t all that easy when you were up in Pembroke. When I was down here. That was pretty hard.”

  “It was hard for me too, David.”

  “Then I guess we’ll what, just work things out?”

  She reaches a careful finger and strokes my cheek. “I really missed you.”

  “I was thinking.” I frown. I wince. I close my eyes. I peek up to the bits of sky that show between the buildings. “I’m thinking we could maybe, if it's okay with you, maybe before we work things out, maybe we could eat some fish and chips or something.”

  “I think we could,” she says.

  “We have lots of time,” I say. “No need to jump into anything too quickly.”

  

  She says, “Jump, you fucking idiot! Now! Just do it!” It’s Linda not Suzanne yelling at me. Linda, not Suzanne, stands on the ice ridge above the river waving her arms as if I have not been paying attention.

  Her command makes no sense. From her nice, dry, solid riverbank, she wants me to abandon ship, to swim for it. She has no idea how foolish that sounds to a dog-paddling weakling. If there were anything worse than being adrift in a traffic jam of icebergs, it would be teaching myself to swim in ice water. My fear of drifting clear out to James and Hudson Bay and then the North Atlantic is less than my fear of either drowning or disregarding Linda. I only smile at her and offer up a hapless shrug.

  It feels peaceful—surprisingly—sitting all alone in a drifting canoe. I am somewhat cold but relatively dry and at the mercy of Mother Nature, a goddess that, until recently, I have had no reason to mistrust. If I had a paddle or a pole or even a motor, I could probably figure something out, but there is nothing here. The men weren’t using this as a boat; they’d improvised a waterproof sled for their trip across the mass of frozen slabs. The poles they used for testing ice they used again to help them up the bank. The heavy motor no doubt sits right now on the village side. And now, through my own foolishness, I sit in the hands of an angry river dwarfed by massive ice pans all around me.

  Already I’ve drifted too far away from Linda to hear her shouts. The ice grumbles louder as the flow thickens and the channels of open water shrink. A large flat sheet of ice floats next to me, three times longer and ten
times wider than my wooden freighter. I debate the wisdom of trading wood for ice as my mode of transportation or my instrument of torture. It would be an easy gamble to step from one onto the other—a decision that might spell life or death. The size of the ice compared to the size of the boat tempts me. I can’t shake the vision of my wooden craft jammed between two boulders mashing together and turning my life raft into kindling. Should I go or should I stay? The line from the song amuses me. In the middle of my mental coin toss, I’m distracted by a crack that forms on the ice sheet and, within minutes, spreads into a web of lines, which silently separate into a hundred smaller bobbing cubes. I sigh in relief. I congratulate myself, my prescient indecision, on saving my hide, or at least postponing my demise. Doing nothing wins again.

  Linda has disappeared from where she was or where I thought she was. If she went for help, I find it hard to imagine what form that might take. It’s more difficult to even see the bank with the piles of ice around me growing higher. Landmarks move or change or disappear. I estimate I’ve drifted maybe fifty or a hundred yards, angling toward the middle of the channel and perhaps several hundred yards downstream. That’s a guess. Knowing my exact position means very little right this minute since I’m at the mercy of forces new to me, forces over which I have absolutely no control.

  I know there’s danger, but all I can imagine is how peaceful it is out here. If the ice jams again... Well, maybe I could walk to shore if there is anything left of me. That is a truly terrifying idea, walking on this ice, and I quickly change the subject of my dreams. Instead, I imagine painting this. I imagine a canvas filling a whole wall of the Robert’s Gallery in Toronto. I would create all these massive shapes of ivory and eggshell white—bits of cadmium sky along the edges at the top. I would want it to move somehow; it would have to push up out of the canvas and into the gallery. I am smiling, dreaming of my painting, when I hear the thumping, unaware of how long the steady thud-ud-ud-ud has been insulting my detailed plan of the grand opening of my very first one-man exhibition.

  I nearly fall overboard when a helicopter flying at ice level swoops past me. I try to shout above its roar. I start to pull my jacket off so I’ll have something to signal with, but seconds after it shoots over me it banks and swoons 180 degrees and returns to hover right above me. I am rescued.

  How this happens is a mystery. There wasn’t any helicopter this morning when I shuffled past the airstrip. Unless? Could it be Annika’s dog? The Health Nurse in the village. Sr. Theresa telling me about her conversation and the amusing prospect of a dog refusing a boat ride. I imagine Sister will enjoy even more recounting this new story of salvation: the rescue of a tenderfoot teacher who waited until breakup to take his first joyride in a freighter canoe.

  The whirling giant hovers directly over me, just out of my reach. There is a man in the co-pilot’s seat opening the door. He points to one of the long runners under the chopper, the one I’m trying to reach, and shakes his head violently. Then I can hear a loud speaker: “Stay off the damn skid, sonny! And watch out for the tail rotor. Just relax a minute. We’re dropping you a ladder.”

  The rest is simple, at least for me. Once I climb the swinging web of rope and settle into the back seat and fasten my safety belt, I am ready for home. The pilot turns his head and says, “Chad Ewing, North Star Air. Looks like I arrived in Orkney just time for your fireworks.”

  “David Taylor.” I extend a hand, but quickly withdraw it, hoping he’ll keep both his hands on the controls, his attention on the river.

  “Let’s get you back to solid ground, son.”

  Before I can impress him with a cute, “Roger; over and out,” or he can twist the throttle, the man in the co-pilot’s seat grabs the pilot’s arm and points a finger down at the water. The rash move turns him just enough so that I can see that it’s Thomas, the caretaker. He doesn’t look happy, but then he never does. “Nina n’chiman,” he shouts above the rotor's growl. He shakes his finger toward the boat. “Api!”

  I understand the last word at least. “He wants you to sit down. I think he wants you put the helicopter down out here somewhere. I bet he wants his boat.”

  Chad doesn’t waste time talking to me. “No can do, Chief.” He tries to remove Thomas’ hand from his arm. “Kiss the canoe good-bye. We’re heading back to base.”

  Thomas’ grip tightens. An angry string of Cree ensues containing not a single teacher word I recognize. A punch looks imminent. Even though I’m clearly the only person with no experience at all in helicopters I’m very certain a fistfight is not recommended, especially if one of the combatants is the pilot. I try to mediate. I tell the pilot I am in no hurry at all, and I could help if he wants to lift the canoe. I accept responsibility. Were it not for my sad effort at knot tying we wouldn’t be in this mess. Freighters, I’ve heard, are expensive—well beyond my budget. And Thomas and his boat were here on an errand of mercy. I tell him, “This man has just risked his life to get a patient to the hospital.”

  The pilot shakes his head. “No can do—even if I wanted to. You never took physics, right?” He starts to explain about weight and displacement and his load limits but quickly senses we are both remedial students. “Just tell the Chief to let go of my arm. Sorry, but this ain’t no Sikorsky flying crane. Lifting his damn boat ain’t gonna happen.”

  Thomas doesn’t wait for a translation, possibly knowing the only word I could put into Cree would be, “No!” He does, however release the pilot’s sleeve, but immediately unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the passenger door and leans out as if trying to locate his property.

  Now the pilot grabs a handful of Thomas’s parka with his right hand. “What the fuck, man? Are you crazy? It’s just a boat.”

  Thomas turns and looks directly at me—like I have created his problem or like he is about to toss me out to lighten our load.

  “Chad, there must be a way to fix this,” I plead.

  “Christ on a crutch! You’re both crazy.” He manoeuvres the helicopter around and back over the canoe. “Just fucking be patient for a minute. We’ll put the ladder down. Maybe we can tow it. But if it snags or something, that’s it. We’re out of here.” I breathe a sigh, and eventually Thomas uses the ladder to fetch the rope, and we pull it back to the shore through the maze of icebergs. The drama finally ends. We drop Thomas off at the bank to tether his craft properly and then land in the parking area by the airport terminal. When I finally sense my Keds touch solid ground again, I'm relieved in a way that's hard to express.

  My stomach, however, rumbles. I realize I have missed both lunch and supper. I thank Chad and start for home, but before I get past the hospital Thomas comes trotting up behind me. He puts a large hand on my shoulder. He speaks to me in Cree, words I don’t understand. His angry voice is no help. “Chiman,” he keeps saying and finally draws the shape of a canoe in the air with his finger and then points down the road. If there is anything at all written on his face that I can read, it’s disgust at my ignorance.

  “He needs you to help him get the boat out of the river. He’ll use his truck to pull it up but he needs help.” The voice belongs to Rosemary. She stands on the hospital porch with one hand on her hip.

  “Of course. Of course, I’ll help him. I’ll try.”

  “Are you okay?” Rosemary asks to me.

  “I’m fine. How is your patient?”

  “She’ll be okay. You’d better hurry. Thomas is anxious. The boat is in a precarious place.”

  I turn to him and he is already sitting in the cab of the old truck looking straight ahead. “I’m coming. Wait up.”

  By the time Thomas has chopped the sharpest edges off the ice ridge with an axe, and we have used the truck to slowly inch the freighter up onto dry land and have secured it with the anchor rope tied carefully to a tree, I’m pretty sure I’ve had enough excitement for one day. The temperature is dropping. The sun is low in the west. I am ready for a hot meal, a warm bed, and a good book.

  I walk back t
oward my house and am just passing the terminal again when I hear Sr. Theresa shouting and see her running toward us. “Il y a une inondation! Flooding now! Across! Dey need the helicopter in the village! Now!”

  Chapter Four