Monsoon Season (20 page)

Emily was a woman. That was clear, despite her small stature. She was confident and talkative; poised. She had perfect posture, a long neck, and a chic cropped hairstyle. She had graceful mannerisms and touched people lightly as she talked.

They came straight from the airport. Alex looked relieved to see Mom walking around. We sat down in the living room and talked about how she’d been feeling.

‘I’d always regretted that I never broke my arm when I was younger. It looked like such fun having people sign your cast,’ Mom said.

Alex shook his head and Emily smiled politely. ‘You’ll have to remember to let us sign it later,’ she said.

‘Why don’t you do it now?’ my mother suggested. ‘That way I won’t forget.’ She looked to me. ‘Can you find a marker, sweetie?’

I got to my feet and wandered into the kitchen, returning with a red one.

‘Riley’s been taking such good care of me,’ Mom said, holding out the marker to Alex. He took it and leaned in, looking over the cast, trying to find a good spot. ‘We’ve pretty much traded roles now. She’s doing the mothering. She’s really quite good at it.’

My father cleared his throat and left the room, mumbling an offer for beer.

That was when I knew he hadn’t told her.

‘I’ll take one,’ Alex called. He looked at Emily, who shook her head.

Alex finally settled on a spot, scribbling a quick ‘Get well soon’ and his name. He handed the red marker to Emily and they smirked at each other, as if remembering an inside joke. I decided I liked her.

My father returned, handing a beer to Alex. Emily just signed her name.

‘It’s really just the fatigue,’ my mother was saying. ‘I’ve turned into a housecat.’

‘I’ve always thought I’d like to be a cat in my next life,’ Emily said.

‘Oh?’ My mother wanted to ask Emily if she believed in reincarnation. She stopped herself. I saw it, was sure Alex had seen it. My mother shifted her thoughts around, smiled. ‘I think that sounds like a very good idea.’

We took two cars to the restaurant. I sat in the back seat and Alex looked me right in the eye as he reversed out of the driveway. ‘So how is she really?’

‘She’s doing well,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t just an act. That’s how she is.’

He shifted the car and watched the road ahead of him. ‘For real?’

‘Yeah. I mean, she has trouble with her memory sometimes. Short-term stuff. Nothing big.’

‘How are things with her and Dad?’

‘What do you mean?’ I watched his eyes avoid mine in the rear-view mirror. ‘They’re fine. Why?’

‘No reason. Just asking.’

Alex was holding the spatula and poking at the burgers and hotdogs on the grill. Through the screen, Mark could see Carol and Emily chatting on the dock. Riley was splashing in the water with Gracie.

‘How old were you when you asked Mom to marry you?’ Alex asked, without looking up.

‘Eighteen? Nineteen?’ It was hard for Mark to believe they had really been that young. They had been just out of high school when they got engaged. It was a long engagement, though. The wedding had been the summer before Mark’s junior year of college and they’d moved into his tiny apartment, with a mattress on cement blocks, a rickety brown card table, folding chairs and a couch all in the same room.

‘How did you know you were ready?’

‘Well, back then people didn’t spend their twenties figuring it out, the way you kids do now. Settling down was something you did at a certain age. We didn’t take a decade weighing the pros and cons.’

Alex frowned, like maybe that hadn’t been the answer he was looking for.

Mark tried again: ‘I think it’s more important to decide if you’ve found the right person.’

By the time they had been Riley’s age, Carol and Mark had had two children, a small house and a station wagon that they shared. She’d drive Mark to work in the morning so that she’d have transportation during the day for grocery shopping or in case there was an emergency. They thought about having a third baby but it was never the right time and they were just scraping by in the first few years. Mark had trouble imagining Alex or Riley grappling with those kinds of decisions.

He took the spatula from Alex, who stepped away from the grill to let his father take over. ‘Are we talking about someone in particular here?’ Mark asked.

Alex chuckled. ‘How did you know Mom was the right person?’

‘I don’t ever remember not knowing.’

Carol and Mark had spent more of their lives together than apart. He could hardly remember life without her. They’d met when Mark was sixteen, and when he thought about it, he didn’t have a single memory from before he was ten. The fact was, Carol had been a part of every significant moment he’d ever experienced.

Mark was seventeen years old the first time he was a pallbearer. It was his brother Paul’s funeral. His other brother, Danny, thought the word was ‘Paul-bearer’. He was six at the time and couldn’t be a pallbearer although he wanted to be. He sat in the front row at the church, between their mother, who wore a black dress with white lace at the neck, and their father, who sat stiff in a suit and tie and shiny black shoes.

Paul was fifteen when he died. It was summer. He’d spent the day at the quarry, swinging on a rope that hung from a tree over the water and drinking with his friends. Mark had planned to go with him, but had decided to sleep in that morning. Paul had tried to wake him, but Mark had thrown a pillow at him and told him to get lost.

When Paul was found, he had a gash on his head, but what had killed him was the water he’d breathed in. His friends had scattered, afraid their parents would skin them alive for drinking at the quarry on a Saturday. They’d all been too drunk to save him and too scared to call for help.

After the funeral, everyone went back to the house. Mark’s mother sat on the couch without speaking to anyone. She hadn’t cried since the police had been at the front door, days earlier. People would stop to offer condolences and she would nod without quite looking at them.

Carol was there. She and her mother had made enough food to fill the back seat of their car. It took several trips to bring it all inside. Some of it went into the refrigerator, casseroles to eat later, and the rest of it went on the dining-room table with the other offerings from the neighbours. Carol seemed to walk in and out of the kitchen the whole day, searching for Mark and forcing a smile whenever she spotted him in the crowd.

When the house began to empty, Mark stood near the front door with his father, shaking hands and saying goodbye. Danny had disappeared upstairs or into the back yard. Mark found Carol sitting in the living room with his mother, holding her hand. His mother was leaning her head on Carol’s shoulder, her eyes closed. Carol was talking to her in a low voice and Mark couldn’t hear what she was saying. His mother’s slight frame trembled as tears streamed down her face and fell into her lap.

Riley left wet footprints on the steps to the screen porch. She opened the door lightly and stepped through sideways so Gracie couldn’t follow.

‘How’s lunch coming?’ she asked.

‘Almost done,’ Alex said. ‘How’s Emily doing?’

Gracie plopped down on the top stair and sighed audibly.

‘Last I heard, Mom was talking to her about babies,’ Riley said. She shifted her weight to one leg, bending the other knee and pointing her toe. She looked like a ballerina in rubber swim shoes instead of ballet slippers.

‘What?’ Alex’s head shot up from watching the grill.

Riley laughed. ‘I’m
kidding
,’ she said. She grabbed some potato chips and talked with her mouth full. ‘She’s fine. Seems to be holding her own.’

Alex smiled and tried to act like he hadn’t been worried at all. He rolled the hotdogs.

Mark sat in a corner with a section of newspaper and listened to them chatter like he wasn’t there.

‘Mom seems so much better,’ Alex said.

‘Yeah.’ Riley leaned into the screen and looked out, pressing her palm against the mesh. ‘She doesn’t really need me any more,’ she said softly. She sounded almost sad about it.

‘Cool.’ Alex started sliding hotdogs into buns. ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do next?’

‘Um, sure,’ Riley said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all summer.’ She placed two of the hotdogs on a paper plate and smeared one with yellow mustard, for Carol. She spooned sweet relish on the other, which was hers, Mark guessed. She shoved some napkins into her back pocket.

‘Tell Emily her burger is almost ready. I’ll bring it out in a minute,’ Alex said.

Riley nodded and told Gracie to move out of the way. She slipped back through the door and walked down the dock toward Carol.

‘Riley still doesn’t know?’ Alex looked at Mark over his shoulder.

‘Know what?’ Mark set the paper in his lap.

‘About the accident. How it happened.’

‘I don’t see any reason to tell her.’

‘You told me.’ Alex got more paper plates ready.

‘I probably shouldn’t have,’ Mark said.

‘It’s okay, Dad. I mean, I don’t think she’d be upset. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Right, it doesn’t matter,’ Mark said, standing up. ‘Are these mine?’ He motioned to two burgers.

Alex nodded.

Mark covered the plate with potato chips, grabbed a beer and walked outside.

When Riley was a little girl, she used to fall asleep in the back seat whenever the family went on long drives. Mark would pull the car into the driveway at dusk and Carol would sing softly: ‘Home again, home again, jiggity jig.’ Mark still heard those words in his head whenever he returned from a long trip away.

He’d carry Riley’s tiny limp body into the house and up the stairs, slip off her little shoes and tuck her into bed. When she was getting older, she’d often pretend to stay asleep when he turned off the car’s engine.

Carol and Mark would discuss the merits of leaving her in the car overnight.

‘We’ll lock the doors. She’ll be fine,’ Mark would pretend to argue.

This always woke Riley right up. She’d feign a yawn, stretching her arms over her head. ‘Are we home?’

Sometimes, he’d go along with the ruse, knowing she was faking and carrying her inside anyway.

Mark kept having this dream that he was making confession. He could tell by the dark wood and the musty smell that it was the church he’d gone to growing up. At first, he’d think he was there to confess on Riley’s behalf. It didn’t really work that way, Mark knew, and that was basically what the priest would tell him. But the priest would keep at him, trying to find out why Mark wanted forgiveness, what he needed to be absolved of. Mark would sweat as he thought about it. He’d press his hands together and try to crack his knuckles. It seemed like the walls of the confessional were moving even closer together, pressing down on him.

In actuality, Mark hadn’t made confession since he was a boy. He hadn’t set foot in a church since he’d found out what Riley had done. The problem was not that he felt disappointment in her. He did, but it was trickier than that. What he was afraid of, what he grew more and more convinced of with every passing day, was that what he really felt, what he felt most sharply, was relief.

There is a buoy in the middle of the pond behind my parents’ house. It’s been there for as long as I can remember. It seems like at one point it was white and red stripes, but now it’s just white.

I’ve never been a confident swimmer. I liked to swim back and forth, parallel to the shore. I swam fastest under water and always kept my eyes closed because the pond was cloudy with silt, especially when stirred up by swimmers. Sometimes I would accidentally swim out too far, try to set my feet on the sand, and realize I was over my head. I would panic, flailing around, forgetting how to kick my feet, water burning up my nose. Once, when I was very small, my mother had to jump in fully dressed, dragging me to shore, coughing and spluttering and dripping snot.

My brother swam out to the buoy easily, had since he was eight years old. We weren’t allowed to swim without adult supervision. We could wade up to our knees, catch frogs, but no swimming.

One summer afternoon when I was ten, my dad tried to persuade me to swim for the buoy. He told me there was nothing to be afraid of, reminded me that my brother did it all the time, tried to inspire me with competition, the pride I would feel in myself, anything. He told me to be brave.

I sat on the dock, staring at the buoy, trying to will it closer. It seemed so far away. I kept trying to get the nerve to jump in, to go for it, but I couldn’t. I sat there as the afternoon blurred into evening, feeling my father’s disappointment as he sat behind me, reading the Sunday paper. Eventually he folded it in half, got to his feet and went inside.

I sat hugging my knees in a one-piece swimsuit that had the belly cut out. It was yellow and red and purple polka dots and I thought it was the best article of clothing I had ever owned. I squinted at the buoy as the screen door banged behind my father.

I jumped in.

The water was not as cold as I had expected. The air had cooled, making the pond seem warmer. I pushed my feet into the sand until I got out further. I held my breath, ducked my head and swam fast with my eyes closed. I broke the surface, opened one eye and saw the buoy still far off. I ducked under again, kicking my feet, blowing big air bubbles out of my nose. I reached the buoy quickly. I was triumphant. I wished my father could see me.

I turned then, and saw the shore was so far away, too far. I held onto the buoy, which was hardly big enough to balance my weight. I lost my breath, my energy and my nerve.

I screamed for help. My father appeared on the screen porch. Only then did it occur to me that I was breaking the rules, swimming without supervision. My father’s figure was obscured by the mesh. His voice carried across the water, though, and I didn’t have to wonder whether he was angry.

He marched down the steps and stood on the shore with his hands on his hips, refusing to save me. He told me I had managed to swim out and I could certainly swim back again. I cried and swallowed water and swore I was drowning, but I made it to shore. My father had taken off his shoes and he stepped into the water and pulled me up by the armpits.