Salvage (5 page)

1

OWEN FELT CONFLICTED
leaving his mother alone when he returned to his downtown condo late Sunday night. She was a strong woman, he reasoned. She'd survived years before him, before Lori, and she'd survive even now that one of her brood was gone for good.

He knew he was just making excuses for abandoning her, but he needed to get back to work sooner or later—sooner seemed the best option for his own health, if not for his sanity, considering what he'd seen, or
thought
he'd seen, in her bathroom. The wind farm project wasn't going to finish itself, and although Teri Avery, his business partner, could handle herself in the boardroom and the work site, it wasn't fair to leave her to handle the protesters, too. So he determined to throw himself into his work. It was the best way to get through the grieving process, he decided, to move beyond all the morbid imagery and imaginings, to stop his mind from wandering to thoughts of death and drowning and lakes up north where the water was dark and cold and deep enough to drown in.

All well and good, as his mother might have said, except that it didn't work. By Tuesday, he found himself stopping in front of a dive shop on his way out of town, and on Thursday, he actually dared to go in. An hour later, after a quick call placed to Avery to let her know he'd be a little late, he came out with a shopping cart full of stuff, some of which he didn't even know what to call, let alone what they were for: wet suit, fins and booties, a regulator, something called a "safety sausage," another thing the sun-ravaged clerk had called a "pony" (which looked like a smaller version of the large scuba tank), and an underwater camera. It all came with a free T-shirt branded with the store logo on the lapel and DIVERS DO IT DEEPER stenciled on the back. The clerk had a good chuckle over this, and Owen laughed along amiably even though he hadn't found it funny. It would make a decent rag, at the very least.

Driving to the job site with the equipment heaped on the passenger seat, he felt incredibly pleased with himself, as if he'd taken a big step toward recovery, and hadn't just plunged headfirst into the initial stages of obsession.

Protesters were there in large numbers when he finally made it to the site. So many angry faces, their rage directed at his car as he passed, shaking their signs like swords at their enemy. Since they'd broken ground on the site three weeks back, the marshy area leading up to the site had been packed with the usual suspects: the environmental activist groups (Save the Wetlands was in charge this time, since the wind farm project was otherwise a benefit to "Mother Earth"); a First Nations group, some wearing traditional garb and waving the flags of their tribes; the youth groups, their faces and bodies painted with slogans, their chants aggravatingly catchy ("One, two, three, four," they sang, "we know what we're fighting for!"
Do tell
, Owen thought with gentle mirth); the NIMBY people, who weren't protesting the project, but its location, and their polar opposite, local citizens who would benefit from the jobs created, there to protest the protesters. Hence, the final component necessary for any good protest, the Provincial Police, a half dozen officers standing sentry in strategic positions between the factions.

With so many reasons for protest, their signs were an odd jumble. A silver-haired man shook a NO MORE WIND TURBINES sign at Owen's windshield. Flanking the car was a group with matching professional SAVE THE GRAY TREE FROG! signs. Many of them likely didn't know exactly what to make of Owen driving through in a hybrid. Standing side-by-side among the environmentalists were others who likely did: they held hand-painted signs demanding Owen and his partners STOP GREEN FASCISM and LEAVE JACKSON'S FIELD ALONE! The few enviro kiddies caught up in this group appeared lost, but continued their chant, calling out like the gray tree frog to prospective mates.

Owen caught a lone man's eye as he drove through the throng, long, shaggy dark hair hanging over the man's spooky blue eyes. He wore torn blue jeans and a stained white T-shirt, holding a JOHN 3:16 sign up lazily at his side, unmoving.

"What the hell…?" Owen muttered, twisting to look back as the crowd swelled in, packing tight around his small car. He shot a glance in the rearview, but the strange man and his out-of-place sign were long gone.

Police held the protesters back from the site itself, where Suburbans and Volvos and Avery's BMW were parked alongside dozers and trailers. Owen swung his feet out the driver door and tugged on his steel-toes before trudging out to meet Avery in the middle of what locals called Jackson's Field.

She stood with five guys in hard hats and steel-toes going over the technical drawings, swinging a long arm out to indicate to the men where the future towers would stand. In a group of men, Avery held her own; it didn't hurt that she towered over most of them, but even if she hadn't, her knowledge and experience had carried her far. There was never a time when Owen wasn't glad to have her as a partner. He doubted Avery could say the same of him.

The group broke up their huddle and went about their various duties. Avery spotted Owen as he approached, and shook her head. "Lot more protesters today," she said. "I thought the freaks only came out at night?"

"Did you see the guy with the John 3:16 sign? What's that about?"

She glanced over his shoulder. "Must've thought he'd found himself a backwoods wrestling match," Avery said, and Owen chuckled. "You look like you're in a brighter mood today. Good to see it."

"Feeling much better, actually. Thanks."

Avery eyeballed him a few more seconds before squinting off at the marshy field. "You ever see one of these green tree frogs they're chanting about?" It didn't seem to Owen it was what she'd
wanted
to say. He assumed she wanted to press him about how he was doing, and couldn't bring herself to. They didn't have that kind of relationship. He'd never had that kind of relationship with anyone but Lori. Even the few women he'd dated had accused him of being closed-off—
Wasn't that what Gerald called me?
—a state of being that had eventually, inevitably, ended the relationships. Only Lori had known his true self. Even so, he'd shut her out near the end, too. He'd told himself they were growing apart, as siblings often do, but the truth was he'd been pushing her away.

"They're
gray
tree frogs, I think," he said. He remembered catching one when he was little, younger than he could ever recall being, and it had peed in his hand. Whether it had done it out of self-defense or fear, he'd never known. Either way, he'd had no special feelings for the animal. "The fact that there's maybe one single tree in this whole goddamn field doesn't make me believe we'll being doing any harm to their habitat, though."

Avery chuckled. "No, I wouldn't think so."

"When's the Premier supposed to be showing up?" The Ontario Premier had been scheduled to break ground today, a fact Avery had reminded Owen of when he'd called to say he'd be a bit late. Owen hadn't forgotten; the idea of the smiling dignitary stomping on a brand-new shovel while the press snapped photos and shot footage filled him with mild dread.

Breaking ground reminded him of the clean little four-by-ten burial plot in St. John's Norway where Lori's body quietly decomposed, and he was afraid his mask of composure might slip in front of the cameras. How would that look for the little company they'd built, he and Avery, with one of its lead architects looking like his sister had just died, on the front page of every paper?

Avery glanced at her watch. "Little after twelve," she said. "It's almost eleven now."

"Good, good," Owen said. There was a skirmish in the crowd, but the police quickly broke it up. A man and a woman shouting at each other. The woman belonged to the workers' side, the man was a NIMBY. The cop held them back from each other, then made them shake hands and mutter apologies.
A uniquely Canadian brawl
, Owen thought. It wasn't very funny, but he felt it deserved a grin.

The bustle cleared, opening the way for the man with the spooky eyes and his JOHN 3:16 placard, which he'd raised to shoulder-height. He stood immobile, his gaze fixed on Owen. Owen felt his heart quicken as anger flooded his veins.
He's provoking me
, he thought, remembering the chapter and verse from Lori's funeral.
Don't let it get to you
.

"What's the matter?" Avery said.

"Nothing."

But the man turned the sign, his expression unchanging, the board still resting on his shoulder. The backside was painted in red, curdled like streaks of blood:

LORI'S WITH US

NOW, OWEN

Without a thought, without even blinking, Owen rushed out into the muddy parking lot, ignoring Avery's cries for him to stop. Just beyond the cars, he fell to his knees in muck, getting a reaction from the crowd, laughter and shock. He pushed himself up, muddying his hands, and stormed toward the man with the sign.

"Who are you?" he demanded. "How do you know who I am?" The man said nothing, only pushed his icy blue stare further into Owen's skull, a mesmerist's trick. Childish rage spilled over, and Owen shoved the man in the center of his chest, leaving a muddy palm print against the man's dingy white T-shirt.

"Owen!" Avery sounded both terrified and angry. She grabbed him by the shoulder and drew him away from the man. "Are you
nuts
? What the hell are you doing?" She whispered this, harshly, and threw a smile over Owen's shoulder at the man with the sign. "I'm terribly sorry, sir. He's had a bad week."

"Bad week?" Owen shouted, incredulous. "Avery, this fucking guy—"

But as he struggled to remove her hand he took in the sign's message: STOP GREEN FASCISM. No John 3:16, and zero mention of his or Lori's names. Owen's muscles slackened at the realization:
the hallucinations were still happening
. Twice now; three times, counting the lucid dream. Avery was still pulling him away from the man with the sign, and he fell into her arms. She gave him a one-armed hug, patting him cursorily on the back.

"Is everything okay here, ma'am?" A young cop had sashayed over, looking apprehensive to dive into the fray.

"Don't ma'am me, Sonny Jim," she snapped, a classic Averyism. "And yes, we're fine. It's a misunderstanding, that's all."

The troubled officer turned to the spooky-eyed man for confirmation.

"I'm really sorry," Owen said, and he meant it. "I thought you were… someone else."

"No harm no foul," the man said.

"I'll pay for the dry-cleaning, if you—"

"I got six more shirts like this at home, fella. Like I said, water under the bridge."

These last words slugged Owen in the chest, but he wouldn't allow the feeling to express itself on his face. Avery, meanwhile, stared the cop down until he reluctantly moved away. Then she turned back to Owen and said, "Go home, Owen." She spoke directly into his ear. "Take some time off. You need it."

"I
don't
," he said, his voice nearing a whine. "I need to work."

"Work doesn't need
you
.
I
don't need you. The lion's share is done, you know that. It's all PR bullshit now, nitpicky little detail-work you're no good at anyway. You're a big-picture guy. Take a week off." It was a demand, not a request, and though she couldn't exactly give him orders, she could easily make things difficult for him at the office. "Shit, take
two
. Let yourself
grieve
."

But Owen was looking past her at the rise of green before the land gave way to swamp, where his sister stood, her damp hair and white gown caught in the same wind that rocked him.

"I don't want to grieve," he said, watching Lori mouth her voiceless plea, wondering why she couldn't just
leave him alone
.

"Nobody does, Owen," she said. He saw sympathy in Avery's eyes, revealing an emotional side she'd kept hidden from him in the eleven years they'd been partners. "If people did, they'd call it something else."

When he looked again, his sister was gone.

2

The funeral bill arrived that day. He'd known his mother couldn't afford it on her fixed income, so he'd asked that they send it to him. He hadn't been expecting it so soon, though, with the wound still fresh, and after his breakdown earlier in the day, it hit him hard. It was a business, he supposed, like any other, and businesses needed to be paid. But they could have waited a few weeks, at least, in his opinion. Out of compassion.

"Something wrong?"

Owen turned at the vaguely familiar voice. The girl from the condo next door stood behind him, the key to her mailbox held between slender fingers, nails painted black, chipped and bitten. Her face was as white as the wall behind her. She might have blended in entirely, like a ghost, if not for her dark clothes.

He'd seen the young woman around the building before, in the elevators, in the underground lot. Seen her entering the condo next to his, and said nothing, had only given her a brief smile. After the first missed opportunity, it felt awkward to speak up on subsequent meetings in the hall. He knew her last name was Huang, because they'd gotten their mail mixed up once, her coupon for some hair product left in his mailbox, his receipt for some charitable donation in hers.

"Nothing's wrong," he said, shrugging up his shoulders a little too high. He realized he must have been standing in the mail room for some time, staring at the bill in his hand, a handful of flyers in the other.

"Oh. You just seem depressed is all," she said.

His breath caught. He felt as if he were drowning, water in his lungs choking out his breath—
Is that what this is?
Depression
?

Funny how it was so obvious, that a woman he'd only just met had read it on his face, in a single phrase, a single gesture, but he'd never once considered it himself.
Did Avery notice before today?
Owen wondered.
Have clients?
In that moment of self-reflection, he realized his head had been drooped, his chin almost touching his chest, his mouth downturned on one side like a man with Bell's palsy, but in a way that seemed to feel natural. He straightened immediately, forcing his mouth into a tight smile. Christ, how long had it been like that? Hours? Days?
Weeks?