Leaning, Leaning Over Water (17 page)

The water was low, and rocks were exposed here and there along the riverbed. Two logs side by side on a rock shelf were drying in the sun. There was a breeze and I tilted my face into it so I could feel it on my skin. The woods to the right of the cove were the same as they’d always been, a line of trees into which purple martins lowered themselves in quick vanishing clouds every summer evening at dusk. Mother had loved the purple martins.

Lyd and I began to walk downriver, following the bank close to the edge. Past the deceptively still shallows we’d often waded through, bare foot, bracing ourselves, feet apart on sharp-edged bottom. I thought about how, as children, we’d stood in water close to shore, bending forward over the soft grey waves in front of the house. Mother had stood in the river beside us, washing her own and our hair. Soap bubbles swirled around our thighs, were caught by the current, streaked away towards the rapids. She’d helped us rinse once, twice, taking turns. Dipped our heads into the river until each strand squeaked between forefinger and thumb. When we finished rinsing we waded the few steps to shore and bent forward again while Mother opened the towels and wrapped our hair. Gently tilting our heads back, creating a turban with a firm twist of her wrist. “There,” she said. I could hear her voice, even now. “Run up to the house and dry. Sit out in the sun while you brush.”

Lyd and I kept walking, making our way along the banks of shale until we were forced to higher ground. When we entered
the Pines we still hadn’t spoken. I glanced to the left, towards the bushes where we’d crouched to watch Mother in the light of the bonfire. It was the last time we’d seen her alive, the night of the corn roast. It was the same place I’d stood on the cliff and tried to fix my gaze on the tip of a wave, a single spot. A childhood game I was sure I would grow to conquer. After Mother drowned I had tried, over and over, to imagine the exact place her life had been swept away. If only I could know that one spot, I had told myself—but the thought was never complete. The spot had been impossible to hold. The eyes shifted with the current, jerked back, would never stay still.

“I used to think,” I said to Lyd, “every time I came up here—after Mother—every time I walked here I used to say to myself:
You have to get past the clump of bushes where you and Lyd hid. Keep on. You have to get past.”

“You, too?” said Lyd.

“Our mother jumped off the cliff,” I said. I was astonished at what I heard my voice say.

I felt Lyd’s body tighten, beside me. “Oh, Trude,” she said, “my God, don’t say that.”

“She might have,” I said.

“We don’t
know
that. We couldn’t possibly know that.”

“We’ve never
said
that,” I said.

“Well, maybe she didn’t.”

“She was saying something, that night by the fire. I always wished I could have known.” I looked at Lyd’s face and then out across the river. “She did or she didn’t. We’ll never know.”

“Look at us,” said Lyd. “Since she died. We’ve been trying to recover our balance, every one. Father. You and I. Eddie. That’s what it comes down to.”

“We never talked about this before,” I said.

“There was nothing to say,” she said. We were both silent.

I remembered how we’d walked in the river when we were younger. Farther up, beyond the house. Sometimes we’d be wearing shorts in the water, or underpants. The current was swift but from the beginning we seemed to know how to make our way. Chest level, arms outstretched at our sides, horseshoe ripples forming around our bodies as we leaned over the surface of the water and thrust ourselves one step, another and another. Recovering and recovering and recovering. Always having to regain balance before the next step, catching the rhythm that would keep us moving against current until either the water was too deep, or until we fatigued and had to dog-paddle back, or let the current sweep us down until the skin of our legs scraped bottom. Then, back to the starting point again. I knew that Lyd was right.

Ahead of us now, I could see iron spikes twisting up out of the ruins. We stopped abruptly and stared into a gap of about thirty feet. A chunk of wall was down, a huge chunk.

The wide ledge from which Eddie and I had tossed worms pressed to hooks was gone. The section upon which Mimi and I had sat staring down into rapids was gone. Fallen into fast water. Three massive sections now lay in the rapids where waves were rushing around their angular concrete shapes. One enormous chunk, dull and mottled, rested on its side, a blanket wave smooth across its surface. The bank, a gaping mixture of loose dirt and embedded rock, was laid bare as if the huge mass had skidded down on its way to whirlpools below. Water swirled as it gathered, rippled and broke into smaller eddies. The colour had changed; new light splashed over new surfaces. There was movement, continuous movement. That was all. Water spilling from one shelf to another
and another, joining in steady downward flow. What remained of the wall—no longer an unbroken line—tilted heavily over rapids.

The path came to an end. There was nothing more to see. Only
down below.
I thought of Mimi’s house at the end of the rapids. I thought of Mimi’s weak grin as she had been wheeled away. I knew I would never tell Lyd about holding the basin between Mimi’s legs. It was another secret to be kept inside while all of us, separately and together, were trying to make our way.

“We have to tell Father,” Lyd said. “About the wall. He always said it would fall.”

But it didn’t matter to me now.

“Look,” said Lyd. “The water’s so clear, I can see my reflection.”

I leaned forward and looked down and, as I did, I felt the sound, the roar of rapids, as it took hold inside my head. I knew that I would not be back here for a long time.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There are shadows.” And I thought: Sometimes we see our reflection, sometimes we don’t. It depends on how dark is the sky.

“Leaning, Leaning Over Water…
[stands] its own in the company of some of Canada’s finest short story collections.”

Quill & Quire

“The book has great passages of lucid, emotionally stirring writing about ordinary life and childhood discoveries. Frances Itani is an award-winning short-story writer, and there is enough piquant prose here—and more than enough sustained storytelling strength—to make this a striking first novel.”

The Globe and Mail

“The stories reveal, slowly and with a sureness of touch, the cluttered cares of childhood, the confusion that accompanies the coming of adulthood and stolid acceptance of unavoidable sorrow.”

London Free Press

“Itani’s writing is consistently strong, polished and refined in the best sense of the word. Her work is reminiscent of Margaret Laurence’s—Itani has a real gift for showing the world through an articulate, intelligent, curious, and observant girl’s eyes.”

The Edmonton Journal

Leaning, Leaning Over Water: A Novel in Ten Stories

Copyright © 1998 by Frances Itani.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © JUNE 2010 ISBN: 978-1-443-40251-4

www.harpercanada.com

First HarperPerennial Canada edition 2003

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Itani, Frances, 1942-

Leaning, leaning over water : a novel in ten stories / Frances Itani.

“A Phyllis Bruce book”.

I. Title.

PS8567.T35L42 2003 c8i3’.54 C2002-904689-0

PR9199.3.183L43 2003

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