Circle of Stones (4 page)

“Waste of good money.” Geoff shakes his head no.

“Nikky took a cab to the bus station,” I say, trying to pique a reaction. “He didn't see Annette.” Geoff turns up the volume on the radio. I think I heard him mumble “Kid's messed up,” but I'm not certain. I worry about Nikky, trying to take care of himself in Vancouver. Will he do his own laundry? Did I give him enough money? Should I send more? What is he eating? It starts to rain harder. Geoff twists the windshield wiper controls again, agitated. He adjusts the fan and vents then bangs his hand on the steering wheel.

“Can't see a damned thing.” He leans forward and rubs condensation off the windshield with a swoop of his hand. “Quit breathing so hard, Ma.”

A small stream of water pours down from the roof of the truck, onto Geoff's matted hair and the front of his dirty ski jacket. “Goddamn roof leaks. Goddamn rain.”

The bulky shape of my condo building appears ahead. I fret about what the rain will do to my set hair. It won't do to arrive home looking as bedraggled as my son. Geoff screeches to a stop at the door, under the lobby overhang so I won't get wet.

“I'll bring the groceries on Friday.” Geoff reaches around me to open the passenger door. “I won't forget.”

“That will be nice. Thank you.” I climb out, taking my time. Geoff watches, trying to be attentive. “Call your son,” I say and push the door closed. The lobby is toasty warm after the damp of the truck, and, as I shake the rain off my coat, I feel my silver curls still bouncing.

Back upstairs I decide to make a batch of blueberry scones. I'll feed them to the seagulls if Charles declines a visit again after our walk. I pace in the living room while waiting for the oven timer to ring, thinking about Nikky. And Charles. The timer bleats its staccato beep and I place the scones on a trivet to cool, checking and rechecking to make sure I've turned the oven off. I flip the pages of a mystery novel, realizing I'm clever enough to have already figured out whodunit, but not enough to know whether Charles wants to see me. I pour myself a glass of ice wine. And then another.

I feel something prickling my face. Carpet. The colour of slate. The same shade as the dull morning light streaming through the windows. Wobbly, I push myself up to my feet using the chair for support. I step over to the windows and watch tufts of morning fog coming up from the water, rolling up like the spasms in my stomach. Near-invisible cars inch along the highway, headlights cutting through interminable grey. My TV is still on, broadcasting an exercise show. The arms of the clock splay vertical. Six a.m. I walk down the hall past Nicky's still unmade bed. The flowered coverlet on my own bed is still smooth.

In the bathroom, I let the water warm up as I undress, shedding clothes into the white vinyl-covered hamper. I stand for a long time, wavering under the steady spew of hot water in the shower. I feel the cool white tile, then my forehead, receiving water on my head like a blessing. It reminds me of my last confession, so many years ago. I'd fallen in love. Jean-Marc. Montreal was such a romantic city. But I also remembered the teenage confusion, rejection. The priest had listened, but I felt as though he were laughing at me, grinning behind the curtain. I vowed to never let myself expose such naked feelings again. I let go of the tile.
“Je m'excuse,”
I whisper, feeling as ashamed as a child. “I am too old for a hangover.” I let the words hang in the steam, swirling to encircle me. I wobble out of the shower and wrap myself in a pale yellow towel, unable to dry my own back.
Too old.

I find my robe and slippers, make coffee, and sit down at the dining table to watch the fog dissipate, along with my headache. The tide begins to change, the waves agitated like worries. Charles. Nikky. Geoff. Parkinson's. Losing control. Losing authority. Losing. Drinking. Medications. Charles.
Too old.

I shuffle to my bedroom to get dressed. I put my ear up against the wallpaper above my nightstand. I can hear a clock radio tuned to the CBC.
Charles.
If I knock on the wall, Charles will hear me. I sit on the bed and decide that I have nothing to wear.
Geoff.
I notice fine dust collecting on my old cedar trunk.
Nikky.
I get down on my hands and knees, push the trunk open. Wool. Knitting needles. I'd forgotten my idea. I finger the skeins, feeling their textures for the first time after so many years. The yarn is something tangible. Useful. I have what looks like enough charcoal grey yarn to make a sweater for Nikky. It will match his eyes. And I can cast off the final rows with black, his favourite colour, for contrast. I select a pair of size-eight needles from my orange plastic needle holder, nestle the wool in my arms, and return to the living room. I sit down in my big chair and begin to knit the first sleeve, counting the stitches aloud as I cast them on.
Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq …
Without a few steadying drinks in me, each stitch is a struggle. After a few rows my fingers began to ache. Progress will be slow, but I have time. I can keep busy, filling long afternoons with the rhythmic conflation of knit and purl, sips of tea, and a kaleidoscope of memories. I'm quite certain Nikky's sweater will be ready for him by the time he returns.

I glance at the clock. Somehow it's already five minutes to ten. I set my knitting down and head to the elevator. I'm shaking. My medicine isn't working. But when the elevator doors open, I see Charles already waiting for me at the lobby door.

“Good morning, Charles.” He holds the door open for me and I step through it, popping my umbrella open.

“Good morning, Hélène,” he says, unfurling his.

We walk at our usual slow pace through the mist. I catch Charles looking at me and return his gaze, lobbing it back like a badminton shuttlecock. I was good at that game in my day.

“Feeling all right?” he inquires.

“Oh yes,” I say, thinking of my new knitting project. “Just fine. And yourself?”

“Well, thanks.”

We step to the side to allow a jogger and his big brown dog to dash past. I feel Charles looking at me. He stands still. So do I. He reaches his hand toward my face and touches my cheek so softly the sensation gets caught in a gust of wind and twirls all around me. For a moment the weather holds me steady.

“Hélène,” he says.

I want to touch his hand, but he'll feel me shaking.

“I don't want to be like other old people,” I say.

Charles lets his hand fall to his side.

“We don't complain, though,” he says. “Like other old people and their incessant blather about their aches and pains.”

I nod. We start walking again.

“You helped me, Hélène,” Charles says. “I can help you.”

There's a soft authority in his voice. A calm confidence that reminds me of how I used to take small children's hands in mine and lead their hesitant, trembling bodies to their classrooms.

At the park Charles takes a folded sheet of plastic out of his pocket and spreads it out to cover the wet bench. He sits down and bangs his cane on the carpet of grass at his feet. I walk over to look at the circles. The plastic flowers are fading. The wood of the picture frames weathering. The Mason message jar has already been knocked over and the Tonka trucks are covered in dirt, disturbed by a cat or a raccoon. I step back and count.
Un, deux, trois
. There will be more.

“Hélène,” Charles says when I perch on the bench beside him. “When my wife and I had a house we hired the neighbour kids to mow the lawn and trim the hedges. And after Meredith passed away I moved into the condo and hired someone to look after the cleaning.”

Charles takes his handkerchief out of his pocket and dabs the sea mist from his forehead.

“I'm not a nature person. I'm a numbers man, so I might not know how to do this, and you're an elegant French lady, so I can't expect you to dig in the dirt.”

“Certainly not,” I concur.

“But I believe somebody has to start looking after these memorials.” He rests a warm hand on the top of my thigh. “I think we should do it.”

I look at Charles. His glasses are covered in mist.

“Everything is deteriorating, Hélène,” he says with a thud of his cane.

“It's inevitable.” I remember how dashing Charles used to look in his suit. He was a man you'd notice walking into a bank or restaurant. It must have been difficult for him to retire, become invisible. I know. When an elementary school vice-principal walks into a room, people look up in attention. When they see a silver-haired woman with shaky hands, they think, “I hope she doesn't fall down our stairs.”

“Let's make it anonymous,” I say.

“Our secret?”

“Of course.”

The only thing I wish right now is that Nikky could be by my side, too. I think of him as we walk back. Nikky and Charles. My two good men.

In the elevator I dig around in my pocket for keys.

“Would you like to come to my place for B&B today, Hélène?” Charles asks, taking my arm and guiding me onto our floor and toward his door. “For a change of scenery?”

It's my first time in Charles's place. I admire his large bookcases stacked full of hardcovers. His antique globe. Three wooden ship models. The floor plan is identical to mine.

“Now,” says Charles, fumbling in the kitchen, “I don't have anything fancy. I drained my liquor cabinet of its sugary temptations. But I can make you a cup of tea with honey and lemon.”

“That sounds lovely.” I try not to notice the long row of medications on the counter behind him. I sit down at his fine oak dining table and place my hands under my knees to prevent them from shaking.

N
ik
does his best painting after midnight. That's when his three roommates sprawl out on the second-hand sofa. Ilana and Kendall begin fooling with each other's long, stringy hair. Aaron watches them and paws at Ilana, his girlfriend, while he tells all the same stories — the semi-fictional ones that begin, “one night when I was totally high” or “one night after I took shrooms.” That's the part of the evening when everything used to happen. But the girls are a shadow presence. Interlopers. Distractions. And Aaron is absorbed in their games. Now Nik goes into his room, locks the door behind him, and paints Jennifer.

The girls didn't bother Nik as much when Jennifer was still around. Jennifer used to be a regular at the Rumble Shack. She was a revolutionary. A force. She was the one who named the apartment, which reels and sways because of its rail-side proximity to the SkyTrain. She was a dance and choreography major: rapid and restless. He could draw by the light of her eyes.

She was the only girlfriend Nik ever let call him Nikky, like his family does. The only girlfriend who made him feel simultaneously comfortable and panicked. The only girlfriend he clung to while they were sleeping, the only one he brought a glass of water to after she woke up. Jennifer was the only girlfriend who mattered.

Nik has had a lot of girlfriends. He has to think hard to remember all their names. Jennifer is the only one who reverberates in his mind. Like part of her lives there.

Nik paints Jennifer one body part at a time. A dissection. Conjuring Jennifer whole is too ruptured. He dabs black paint on a white canvas. He is painting Jennifer's right eye, the brown one, except each segment is detached from the rest, as though the eye is glass, slowly shattering. He has already sketched the retina, cornea, iris, lens, and blood vessels in pencil. This is a more literal rendering than the one of Jennifer's blue eye, which Nik depicted as a cobalt smudge in a glass of water. He is planning to paint her optic nerve next.

On the other side of the door Aaron is banging on something and shouting. Nik turns his iPod on, inserts earbuds. Ambient electronica pours in. Jennifer's right ear was one of his first paintings in this series. It fills an entire wall in his room, as though her auditory canal is a giant snail shell. Big enough for Nik to curl up and fall asleep in. He gazes at the ear mural and sips a ration from the bottle of Crème de Cacao his grandmother gave him. At four in the morning Nik realizes he might as well keep painting and stay up for his nine o'clock class. He has one amphetamine left.

During Cultural Theory, Nik draws the bridge of Jennifer's nose in his notebook. He writes the due date for his next assignment beside it. The only reason he is passing this course is because Jennifer was helping him write his papers. That was something they used to fight about.

“It doesn't make sense that I need to know how to write in art school when all I want to do is draw and paint,” he would say.

“It's part of the business,” Jennifer said, which made Nik feel agitated.

“I shouldn't have to explain what my art is about,” he said. “People should see it and feel it.”

She always sighed and told him to think realistically about his career. She said that what everybody always said about being an artist was true. You need to have more than talent. She believed in fame and success, sacrifices and selling yourself. Nik would analyze the curvature of her bottom lip as she spoke, or the philtrum groove underneath her nose. Then he'd get back to work. He began to think Jennifer would always be there to do the writing. But then Jennifer started talking about taking big risks. The importance of growing and changing. He didn't know what she was planning, or what she wanted. It scared Nik enough to cut his reading week break short and return to Vancouver. He wanted to hold her in his arms and keep her there, safe. He had promised his grandmother he would look after her. He replays in his mind how much his grandmother's hands shook, how her voice quavered when she asked him. It wasn't like her to get emotional — she had always taken care of him — and her frailty startled him. His agreement made him feel, for the first time, like a man. But what his grandmother was saying was there was a right way to be in the world. He didn't ask her how. He felt like part of his promise was to figure it out.

Late one night, a few days after he returned from the island, Jennifer laid out her tarot cards on Nik's futon mattress. He didn't want his cards read again, but she said it was time to tell her own fortune. She piled her thick, dark hair onto the top of her head and fastened it with two chopsticks. She sat cross-legged at the foot of the futon and adjusted the placement of the cards with delicate arms. Nik watched her wrists. The precise movements of her nimble fingers. Jennifer closed her eyes and said an incantation in Hindi, a secret verse from the aging mystic who sold her the deck in Gastown. She told Nik it was a very good sign that she never saw the mystic's street stall there again. Nik reclined on the bed and kept still so he would not disturb the cards. He was hoping for a long rumination. A detailed story about the two of them that would make his head prickle as Jennifer told it. Then affectionate kisses. Instead, she said “Hmmm.” Nik looked at the cards, with their fantastical, airbrushed images, but the symbols weren't obvious. There were cups, wands, and strange medieval figures. He didn't know which card Jennifer was perplexed by. Nik anticipated a riddle. A new special little game they'd play, then answers. Instead, Jennifer put the cards away into their purple velveteen pouch and lay down. Nik felt a new, unspecific distress take shape, sculptural in the corner of the room. He fell sound asleep with his arms around her.

The next morning when Nik awoke, Jennifer and her cards were gone. Her resin-scented dance bag was gone. So were her high-heeled boots. She left everything else: her black ruffled scarf, her cellphone, her book bag made from recycled rubber, her red candles, the collection of aromatherapy oils she carried around in a red satin box. He assumed she had gone to an early dance rehearsal and didn't want to wake him. He was upset she didn't wake him. He wondered why he didn't hear or feel her leave. How she'd slipped from his arms. He was angry at himself for not waking. She didn't come back that evening or the next.

He couldn't text or call her — she didn't have her phone. He wasn't sure why she left so many of her things behind. The sculptural feeling grew and darkened. Nik called her roommates but they said they hadn't seen her either. They said she owed rent. Nik was confused, and with every day that passed, he became more afraid. He spent as much time as possible in his room waiting for her. He kept her cellphone charged. He went to the Vancouver police station to file a missing-persons report, but without Jennifer's help he had difficulty filling out the forms. He would draw her face in the margins and have to start again. It took two weeks before Nik understood Jennifer was not coming back.

On the way to his afternoon Anatomical Drawing class, Nik slips his hand into the leg pocket of his black military-style cargo pants and feels for Jennifer's cellphone. He always carries it with him in case it rings.

It hasn't yet. For awhile there were text messages about dance rehearsals and classes. Nik deleted them. Then they stopped and he wished he hadn't.

After class Nik buys a coffee at the stand outside. He's been putting almost all of the money his family gives him into his Jennifer Fund, a savings account devoted to Jennifer-related art supplies — and now his one-man search. His stomach lurches, but he doesn't have enough change left over to buy a sandwich. Hunger is the cost of not being convincing enough to the police. He was told he was not a spouse or a relative. His story was questioned. Nik doesn't know who Jennifer's relatives are. She told him she wanted to live completely in the present. That success depended on now. She never talked about her past. When he was with her, Nik didn't think of his either.

Nik thuds up the rickety back stairs to the Rumble Shack. The third-floor light is still burned out and in the dim he has trouble getting his key into the lock. He puts his ear up to the rough wooden door but doesn't hear anything. There's always music when his roommates are home. Kendall practises bass. Aaron broadcasts erratic noise loops from his computer. Ilana, who somehow figured out the Wi-fi password for the neighbours downstairs, hosts an Internet podcast from her bedroom. The key finally slips into place.

Nik flicks the light switch and snaps the door shut behind him. The apartment reeks of cigarette smoke and something stale and rotten. Unwashed dishes, old garbage, and uneaten takeout remains are the norm in their grubby kitchen. Nik leaves his boots on, steps on a dirty blue hoodie left on the hallway floor, and over a broken canvas frame that's had its painting kicked through. He strolls into the living room and turns on the overhead light. There's a half-melted, oversized candle on the paper-strewn coffee table. On a long piece of dowel stuck into the candle is the rigid body of a dead rat.

Nik knows Aaron is responsible. Not for the catching, or perhaps even the killing. Aaron doesn't make things happen. But certainly for the retrieval. And the reclamation. Aaron's performance art is always convenient. Or lazy. Nik wonders what grade the rat will earn.

The decomposing rodent is what smells rank. Nik grabs his silver Zippo. He lights a stick of Ilana's incense. Then another. And another. The sticks fit into gaps in the high, cracked baseboards and into the splintered grooves of the smashed bookshelf. He slips two into the knife-gouged frame of the old wooden TV box.

Nik retreats to his room. The metal chain and padlock with which he secures his door while he's at school has been busted open. Again. There are ashes on the floor and his blue-and-green-striped duvet is bunched up in the corner of his futon, as though somebody slept there all afternoon. The thick navy drapes he sewed himself to block out natural light are open. Nik prefers working in artificial light. Otherwise he can't see the dancing shadows that keep him company while he paints — miniature Jennifers whirling in his periphery the way she used to revolve and writhe onstage. He shuts the drapes and reaches into a punched out hole in the drywall behind his dresser. His paints and graphite pencils are still there. The C
rème de Cacao is, too.

Nik gives a silent toast to modern dance in Jennifer's memory.
To rapid choreography
, he thinks.
And its unpaintability
.

He takes a sip from the bottle. He hangs up his leather jacket. The hook is a blackened old door handle he found once in the recycling and stuck into the wall. He lights a couple of Jennifer's candles — the red one still jammed into the old wine bottle and a squat, round white one in an old jar. He watches candle flames flicker in glass, closes his eyes, sees Jennifer. Then, ritual complete, he's ready to paint. He picks up a tube of red ochre and begins rubbing it on the wall with his fingers, adding a red teardrop earring to the ear mural. Red smears appear on his faded black T-shirt beside old dollops of aquamarine. Nik can't seem to keep any of his clothes clean.

“I gather you saw the rat,” says Ilana. She's leaning on the doorframe, an enormous paper cup of coffee in her small hands.

“Revolting.” Nik shakes his head, but doesn't allow himself to glance away from his painting. “I never know what I'm going to come back to here.”

Ilana sits down cross-legged on the floor at his feet, letting her short black skirt twist up to her hips. She shifts her knee so it grazes Nik's calf. He finally looks at her. Ilana's intentionally ripped tights reveal glimpses of freckled skin. Her eyes are puffy and red, but she always looks like she's been crying, so he doesn't mention it.

He doesn't understand the things Ilana always talks about to Kendall. Something is always wrong. Everything wrong is dramatic. She receives frequent, upsetting phone calls. Nik thinks she should stop answering her cellphone and go to class. Nik doesn't know what she studies. Ilana never seems to do homework, but she has a student card. He saw it once, after Aaron dumped the contents of Ilana's purse out onto the living room floor and emptied her wallet of cash. Two hundred and fifty dollars. Nik remembers thinking that was a lot of money and wondering where she got it. He remembers Ilana shrieking first, then smirking. Ilana's reactions never make much sense. Nik doesn't trust her. He watches her absently pick at her chipped and bitten burgundy fingernails. He turns back to his mural.

“I like your room.” Ilana's boots clatter and clunk against the floor. “It's better than mine. Stinks like paint, but I could always open a window.” Nik tries to find the perfect angle with his brush to add more shading. He wonders what angle Ilana is working on him.

“Hey, what's this?” Ilana says, arching towards the bottle of Crème de Cacao Nik left at the foot of his easel.

Nik tries grabbing the bottle out of Ilana's reach, but she's too fast. She grips it with both hands, tips her head back and chugs it. Nik snatches the bottle back and she sputters, coughing liqueur spittle down the front of her torn black sweater.

“That's mine,” Nik says, wiping the rim with his shirt. “Don't tell Aaron I have it. It's for drinking
slowly
.”

“Of course,
Nikky
,” Ilana says. “I do keep secrets from my boyfriend, you know.”

For a moment Ilana is silent. She picks up her coffee cup and cradles it close to her chest. Nik sighs, daubs paint onto the mural, and then stops. He wants another colour, but doesn't trust Ilana with the hiding place. He feels rigid when Ilana watches him paint. He can't think of what to say to make her leave. It bothers him that she is calling him Nikky. Like Jennifer did. He stares at the canvas, raises his paintbrush to it, stops again.

Ilana sneaks up behind him and licks his elbow. The surprise warm wet dries instantly. He tries not to respond, thinking ignoring it will make her stop, but she reaches up under his shirt and scratches her nails up his back.