Circle of Stones (24 page)

Nik sits down on the bench beside her and the top of her head touches his shoulder. His grandmother's friend stands behind them, both hands resting on the handle of his cane.

Jennifer can't break the spell, Nik's magic. She waits behind the tree. Watching Nik with his family feels like an intrusion to her, like staring through the windows of their living room. She lets the dream of it unfold like cinema, wondering if it's real or exhaustion. A feverish hallucination. She crouches down at the base of the tree until she no longer hears the rise and fall of their quiet voices. She looks out from behind the tree again and sees the elderly man take Nik's grandmother's arm gently in his as he leads her around the corner, back on the path, heading home. And then the trio is gone. Jennifer thinks about how Nik's grandmother will make him dinner later, daydreaming about how he will relax, curled up under a warm blanket, all the tension in his face dissipating in comfort. She thinks about that — a sense of home — a place where one feels calm and cared for. She had looked for that — and found it — onstage.

She steps out from behind the tree and looks out at the water, listening to the sound of the waves crashing violently and repeatedly onto rocks, pummelling them out, and slowly over time eroding them to stones. If she read Nik's tarot right now, she knows she would see that his grandmother never gave up on him. The whole time he was away — disappeared, lost, given up for dead — she was knitting him that sweater.

Jennifer hobbles toward the log to retrieve her dance bag. She knows she needs to get to a doctor and try to heal her leg. But she sits on the log and pulls both legs up again, hugging them to her chest with both arms, the injured one swollen, throbbing, and hot to the touch. Then she rests her forehead on her knees immersing herself in her own waves, the peculiar noise of her own voice rising and falling somewhere outside her body.

She feels her hair move gently away from her face and thinks it's the wind. When she finally lifts her head again she sees Nik sitting beside her on her piece of driftwood. She wonders, at first, if he is a ghost. One of her illusions. But when she rests her hand on the top of his thigh it feels admirably solid. It's real. He circled back for her. And she does not want to let go.

I
'm
grateful for the reading, advice, support, encouragement, assistance, and writing space from Anar Ali, Chris Andrew, Irene Andrew, William Andrew, Artscape, Linda Bec, Ryan Bigge, Andy Brown, Susan Bustos, Andrew Daley, Ms. Guidi, The Haylows, Samantha Haywood, Sarah Henstra, Deane Hutchinson, Larissa Kostoff, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Mike Lewis, Meghan Macdonald, L.T.R. McDonald, Maria Meindl, Menalon (Joseph Murray and Lodewijk Vos), Grace O'Connell, Natalie Olsen, the Ontario Arts Council, David Palibroda, Karen Palibroda, Ryan Palibroda, Ron Piovesan, Robyn Read, Heidi Reimer, Rebecca Rosenblum, Saving Gigi, Sarah Selecky, Roey Shemesh, Stephanie Sinclair, Danyl Sobolev, Ania Szado, Conan Tobias, Jessica Westhead, Shannon Whibbs, Liz Worth, Julia Zarankin, the wonderful women of the Toronto Writers' Salon, and in memoriam, Meg Sircom, who wrote with bravery and honesty for too short a time.

S
uzanne
Alyssa Andrew grew up in Campbell River, a coastal community on Vancouver Island. She studied at Carleton University in Ottawa, where she earned a Bachelor of Journalism and a Master of Arts degree in English. Her work has appeared in various print publications including
Taddle Creek
, OCAD University's
Sketch
magazine,
The Toronto Star
, and
Broken Pencil
, and in digital film and TV co-productions such as the award-winning interactive documentary
The Defector
. She lives, writes, and plays bass in Toronto.

Copyright © Suzanne Alyssa Andrew, 2015

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All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Line excerpted from
The English Patient
by Michael Ondaatje. Copyright ©1992 Michael Ondaatje. Reprinted by permission of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company.

Line from the poem “The Blue Guitar” from
The Collected Poems
(Vintage Books) copyright © 1923/1982 by Wallace Stevens and Holly Stevens and reprinted with the permission of Penguin Random House.

Editor: Shannon Whibbs

Design: Colleen Wormald

Cover Design: Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design

Cover Image: © rehvolution.de/photocase.com

Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Andrew, Suzanne Alyssa, author

Circle of stones / Suzanne Alyssa Andrew.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4597-2934-6 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2935-3 (pdf).--

ISBN 978-1-4597-2936-0 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8601.N4497C57 2015 C813'.6 C2014-904988-9 C2014-904989-7

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