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| The Road to Arrowpoint | |
| By andybyers | ||||
| 12 August 2007 | ||||
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Adult themes.  She remembered holding him in his nakedness; his body perfect and glistening wet. Her son. A gift of her love and her own body. She could see him now, the same glistening beauty as the sun dashed off his shoulders, much broader now. Watching him from the cottage window, she let herself be pulled back to simpler times, when he was younger, and so was she. While she was proud of how he’d grown, looking almost like a man as he splashed around a makeshift raft with his friends, he was the clearest evidence of the years that had slipped past her. Golden-tanned, dressed in shaggy cut-offs, it was almost as though he were still attached to her by time, with the passage of seasons giving to him whatever they took from her; as though the umbilicus had never been severed… Oscar commanded and the other boys obeyed. Not with any arrogance or condescension; he simply suggested and they fell into line. He had a charm, a precocious brilliance about him that everyone saw, that all admired. Frank dreamed of Harvard, Oxford, the way fathers will; but even their friends saw great things for the boy. Oscar seemed success made flesh. She watched him wave his arms, directing, then diving in to help the boys move the raft as he had specified. Wasn’t that how kings did it? The best of kings, the ones remembered as “great”? Commanded, and then waded in to share the toils? Isn’t that what made them great? Frank stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding the lintel and regarding her. She gave him a soft smile and padded to the table, where he met her. She said, “What would you like for breakfast?” “Why don’t you surprise me?” he winked. He waved the towel he held in one hand, advising, “I’ll be back in ten. You decide, and I’ll eat whatever you put in front of me.” “Right, I’ve heard that before,” she nodded. “Oh, have I ever disappointed you?” He gave her a shot with the towel. “We’ll discuss it another time,” she scolded. “Where are the girls?” Frank shrugged. “Beats me. Off with friends, I guess. Summer mornings, they’re all up before the sun, you know that.” “And not a cartoon in sight. Will wonders never cease?” He nodded. “Oscar outside?” “Yes, he’s with his friends.” Frank stepped into the hall. Ellen heard the screen door slam; heard Frank calling to their son. Her husband was one of those people who was too clean, if such a thing were possible; people so fastidious that they scrubbed away any personal scent at all, whether good or bad, leaving only the bright, cheerful, overly-pleasant scent of soap. Such people, she felt, smelled vaguely artificial, like squeaky-clean plastic dolls brought to life. And one of these was Frank. She could glimpse him now, through gaps between the trees, standing naked with Oscar in the creek beside their cottage where the family bathed. She could see their bodies, dappled with sunlight, as they laughed and splashed one another. Frank scrubbed himself and scrubbed himself until she wondered if he meant to shed his skin and crawl out of it, butterfly wings rising from his back, stretching, drying, empowering his escape… The night before. The dying firelight. The mosquitoes taking potshots at anything they exposed. Margaret-Anne and Stacy already asleep. Ellen herself, stirring the coals, toasting one last marshmallow. Her men busy with important things across the dying flames. With the precision of some circus performer, Frank up-ended himself for what must have been the ten thousandth time. Oscar stood, scratching his cheek, eyes darting up and down Frank’s inverted form to grab onto some clue, some magical epiphany that would open the door to his own acrobatic success. Taking inspiration, he threw himself up onto his hands, and somersaulted onto his back. Frank chuckled. “There is a trick to it,” he said, “but I don’t want to force it on you unless you really need it. I think you can manage it. Try it again.” The boy nodded, brushing his locks from his eyes, and launched himself onto his hands again, falling over to the side this time. “Here, I’ll hold your ankles till you get a sense of balance,” Frank offered. “No, Dad,” Oscar declined. “I want to learn to do this.” Ellen watched her husband beam at the child as, once more, he threw himself onto his palms, fingers, thumbs, and fell over. “Oscar, listen. I’ll tell you the—” “No, Dad, no!” “It’s okay, it’s just a hint. You still have to do it yourself, okay?” The boy pouted a bit, looked skeptical, then finally nodded, the blond hair hanging in his eyes again as if mocking him with gravity. “You’ve seen squirrels on branches, right?” “Sure.” “Well, imagine you’re one, and you have to balance all your weight on one spot. Meantime, a bird comes and grabs your tail and hikes it straight up into the air. You have to stick your feet back so you don’t fall over. Picture it that way, and you’ll get it.” “That’s silly,” Oscar sighed. “That’s how Granddad taught me,” Frank assured his son. “Keep at it, okay?” Oscar sighed, and nodded again, and tossed his ankles back into the sky again before they returned to earth. The fire snapped like a hungry wolf, but Ellen would feed it no more. It was time they slept. Her, Frank, Oscar, the fire. She marveled at the orange glow in the half-dead black coals, thinking how much they looked like monarch butterfly wings… then she issued them a cold, merciless drink. ***** Nineteen-sixty-one. Thirteen years ago. Frank had landed a good job, a really good job, with an ad agency on King Street, and in no time flat, they had the down payment for a home. Not long after that, they’d bought the cottage. Here. This place. It was a long, thirsty dirt road that connected Arrowpoint to Highway 161. Hardly more than a dry path even when it sprawled across the two-lane asphalt, it degenerated into a pair of muddy ruts through a field by the time it crawled, gasping, onto the rocks at Arrowpoint. It was here that boys with towels around their shoulders rode their bikes to go diving off the point. Here that young couples parked their cars on breathless summer nights. And between the point and the highway, it was here that two dozen cottages hugged the shore or skulked in the woods. And they were real cottages. No power, no phone, no running water. A shithouse out in the back. And Arrowhead Lake, so named for its shape, with the point thrusting in among the cottagers. Their children had grown up here in the summers. One of them had even been born here, slightly unexpectedly, one wet spring morning. That had brought the neighbours for miles; the women crowding in, the men congratulating themselves in the yard for their hanging nuts. But Ellen had never felt more a part of a family. That had been, what, eight years now? Margaret-Anne bounded up the stairs and slammed the screen door. “What’s for breakfast?” she inquired. Ellen glanced at the youngest of her children; dressed in a light blue jumper, the girl was already stained with grass and dirt. The rambunctious eight-year-old was an unapologetic tomboy; her rougher edges had yet to be buffed away smooth by experience and advancing years. “French toast, I think,” Ellen said. “If your father and brother weren’t already in the creek, I’d be sending you there.” “Why?” Margaret-Anne asked. “I’ll only get more dirty by tonight.” “Where have you been?” Ellen frowned. “You’re leaving footprints on my kitchen floor.” “Been building a dam with Michael by the point.” Margaret-Anne pulled up her chair and plunked into it, kicking her filthy feet; a child with too much energy to burn. Ellen began cracking eggs. “Do you know where Stacy is?” “Nah,” the girl mumbled, twirling her hair around her finger while perusing a year-old magazine. “I seen her with Darcy, but I dunno where they went. Her bike’s gone, so maybe they peddled to the store down the other side of the highway.” “Should have asked me,” Ellen sang at her absent child, whisking the mixture around a big Tupperware bowl. “She’s so unreliable,” Margaret-Anne sneered. “Oh yeah, I forgot you were the perfect one,” Ellen teased. “Well, I am,” the girl beamed. Frank and Oscar came into the cottage, the screen door banging behind them. They were laughing, their hair still bath-scattered. Ellen said, “Ah. Have a bath and then get right back into the same filthy clothes you just took off. That’s a piece of thinking.” Oscar said, “I’ve been wearing these same shorts for two weeks now.” “Not anymore,” Ellen said, pointing down the hall. Oscar smiled and wandered past her to change. “You too, while we’re at it,” she said to Frank. “Maybe tonight,” Frank said with a wink. “I might want to do something dirty today.” Ellen flushed just a bit, glancing at Margaret-Anne, who had entirely missed the comment. “We’ll see,” she murmured, trying not to smile. ***** Stacy never did show up for breakfast. When the sun was high, Ellen got concerned and sent Frank out in the car to go look for her. Oscar volunteered his gang to comb Arrowpoint Road, but Ellen declined. The last thing she needed was two kids lost on the road. Frank came back in a soft cloud of dust. “She’s fine,” he said, getting out of the car. “Where is she? Didn’t you bring her back?” “What for?” he asked. “She was on her way back when I met her; she and Darcy’ll be here in half an hour, or at Darcy’s place. You’re not mad at her, are you?” Ellen stood on the lawn, the scrub grass pricking her soles. “She should have let me know where she was going, that’s all,” she said. “Yeah, well, that’s what I told her,” Frank shrugged. “When I was up at the highway, I saw Fiskard’s truck go by, go-carts on the back. Got me thinking; we haven’t had the kids up there yet this summer.” Ellen nodded. “Oscar’ll probably like the idea,” she said. “Yeah, that what I was thinking. Maybe he could grab a couple of his friends and we could run them over there.” “You take them. I’ll stay here with the girls.” “Margaret-Anne will probably want to go too,” Frank said. “Maybe,” Ellen said. “But I’ve still got a couple of choice words for Stacy.” “Take it easy on her,” Frank smiled, pleading the girl’s case in absentia. He walked down the lawn toward the beach, and began calling to Oscar, waving his arms. Ellen saw the blond head rise up, and then sleek, sure form cut into the water, and make its way back to shore. Frank glanced back at her with a big grin, the two of them congratulating themselves silently. Oscar reached the sand and hauled himself up out of the water, shedding its weight as he strode forward. The shorts that he wore were plastered to his legs, and he looked like a swim champion emerging from a meet. He said, “What’s up, Dad?” Frank planted his broad, smooth hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “Hey, buddy, what do say we round up some of your posse and maybe go to the go-cart track?” he suggested. Oscar smiled, and then screwed up his face in a perfect mask of skepticism. It was new and belied a precocious world-weariness that only added to his sophistication, it seemed to Ellen. “I dunno, Dad,” the boy demurred. “We’re getting’ kinda old for go-carts. That’s kid stuff… you know?” He said it with all kindness, as though he were the parent, sugar-coating some sad fact of life that Frank had apparently overlooked. When Ellen checked Frank’s response, she saw something new there as well. A slight tilt to the head and a look of consternation, like a dog who’s just heard a new sound and can’t believe the world capable of such strangeness. His lips were parted in the impotence that betrays a thunderstruck adult, all composure and just a hint of what’s happening inside. Ellen wondered what was happening inside. “You, uh…” Frank murmured, “you sure, there, kiddo…?” “Thanks anyway, Dad.” Oscar turned to Ellen. “What time’s supper?” “Around five,” she said. “Okay, I won’t be late.” Oscar scampered off to where his friends were rowing away with the raft, to do whatever it is the tribe of the twelve-year-olds do on empty summer days. Frank stood there as though he’d been turned to oak and was pushing roots into the soil. Watching. Looking after Oscar, even when had vanished into the bush to cut off the escaping raft. “He’s growing up so fast,” Ellen said. She smiled and took Frank’s hand, squeezing it. “Had to happen one day.” Frank just stood, staring, as though he were in the desert, and watching his last hope gallop away over the dunes. It was the subtlest of expressions, a pale hint of emotion, but in it she could see the colours of anger, disbelief, desolation. She frowned. It seemed an oddly strong reaction to an inevitable teenage brush-off. For a moment she wondered if he were having a stroke or a heart attack. “Frank?” she urged. “Frank, are you alright?” Ellen reached up and took his chin, turning his head. When his eyes lit on her, they were black, and narrow, like a soldier’s eyes. Eyes that had seen something ugly. “What’s wrong?” she asked him. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, all of it melting out of his face and leaving only the bland look of 40 years behind. He stepped around her and wandered back to the outhouse, and shut the door. It was the perfect refuge. She didn’t dare to stand outside, badgering the toilet, looking like a fool. So instead, she retreated to the cottage, sat in the kitchen, and waited. She made tea on the Coleman stove, and tried to eat a cookie. It didn’t want to go down. An hour went by. She started worrying about his heart again, and was just getting to her feet when the outhouse door opened and he stepped out. She opened the screen door and padded out onto the porch. She was in shadow, and he seemed ablaze in the sun. She shielded her eyes, her brow furrowed. “It’s been a long time,” he said. “You want to go for a paddle?” It seemed to her not so much a suggestion as a demand. “The girls won’t know where we are,” Ellen protested. “The girls’ll be fine, Ellen. Come on.” It was flat, vaguely impatient. Something was going to happen, and it was either going to be very private or very public. Her mouth was dry, but she crept down the hot steps and gave him a brittle grin. “Why not,” she said. They wandered down to the canoe, where Oscar had left it, half shoved up into the sand, and tied to the dock. Frank untied it, stepped into the water, and pushed the canoe out. Ellen felt the water grab her ankles as she chased in after it. She hopped in, sitting at the stern, staring at Frank’s orange-brown back, broad and powerful, as he stared forward, dipping the oar, the two of them pushing further and further from the cottage, the dock, the shore. It was instinctive. They headed for the place they simply called “the Cove”. A little dent in the side of the lake, bordered by crooked pines and glacier-caressed granite boulders, half-buried in the earth. They had come here every summer, often. It was a place to be alone together, without the kids, without the neighbours. There, in the water, him pressing against her, her back on the cold, smooth rock like the original sinning bed; she felt like Eve. Almost shameless. They had a joke that the kids were all such good swimmers because they started here. And all three had been conceived in the summer, and born in spring. Ellen wondered if he had suggested the trip to take his mind off something. She imagined the relief with which she would strip off her checked dress and slip into the cool water, and eventually let him wear her body like second skin. Maybe Oscar’s maturity had left him feeling his age, and he needed reassurance. Please, let it be that, she thought. They settled in the Cove, near the shore, out of sight except to anyone who happened to pass right by the mouth of the inlet. It seemed to her, over the years, that the Cove must have served the same purpose to any number of other people, but there were so few people on the lake that it had never been an issue. Sitting there, the lake gently rocking the aluminum hull, Ellen could smell the acrid hints of a recent campfire. She was looking around to see where it might have been when Frank half stood, and turned himself around to face her. She met his gaze, across the half dozen feet from one end of the canoe to the other. It seemed much longer. Naked except for his cut-offs, his unshaven chin beginning to show salt as well as pepper, he said to her, “I’ve always liked you in that dress.” Ellen blinked, swallowed. “I know,” she said. “That’s why I wear it.” “You look so natural in it.” “I look even more natural out of it,” she joked, trying to corral the conversation down a certain path. Frank nodded. “I like,” she started, “I mean, you’ve always looked so rugged like that. I think that’s when I really fell for you. The first time we went camping and you weren’t in a suit and your hair slicked down. You looked like a man instead of a boy.” “I felt like a man instead of a boy,” he said, just the hint of a smile there. Ellen breathed a deep, almost painful sigh of relief. Silently, of course. She began to relax, and looking around, she undid the lacing at the front of her dress. Shouldering out of it, she leaned back, breasts and shoulders bare, and let her hands dip into the water at either side of the canoe. She smiled at him as the light danced on the water like wine, the sun touching her in places it could so rarely reach. His eyes poured over her, as though he were taking her in for the first time. “We’re not too old to have another, you know,” she said softly. She liked how neatly that summed everything up. It took in his vague insecurities and his immediate wants all in one breath, a subtle solution for both. “Do you want another?” he asked. “I don’t know… sometimes. I’m working again but somehow it’s not… I mean… I felt more important when… you know, when the kids were at home.” She leaned further back, arching just a bit into the sun, arms out and head back as if she were flying; her hair spilled back, the tips spreading out into the water like paint. “He’s not my son, is he?” It came so suddenly, and so gently, that she almost missed it. Who would have thought that the stone you smash the window of a marriage with could come so silently, without warning? And she, herself, so taken in by his manner, so foolish as to let herself completely relax, let her guard down. She was stunned by the realization of how easy it would have been to simply say, “No, he’s not,” if only something in her mind had not leapt up and put on the brakes. She looked up at him, her hair streaming water back into the lake. “What are you talking about?” He was looking at the space between them, the aluminum floor beneath their feet. He spoke as though coming out of a coma, as if recovering the power of speech after a long time and a profound effort. He said, “Oscar is not my son. Is he, Ellen.” He wasn’t asking. He was declaring. He knew. How do you act? What do you say? She tried to imagine what she would say if he were utterly wrong, but even then, what on earth do you say? “What are you talking about?” she babbled again. His eyes flicked up and pinned hers. “Walt Chrysler,” he said, and the two words came at her like knives, further pinning her. She couldn’t move. And suddenly she felt incredibly stupid, lying there nearly naked, with her tits pointing out at a man who had just declared an almost total alienation from her. How the hell did he know? How the hell did he know that? “Are you… are you nuts?” It was the best she could do. “That look he had. When he said he didn’t want to go go-carting. Did you see it?” “I… I… what?” “I saw that look ten times a day at the office. I know it like I know my own face. And that wasn’t my face making that expression. It was Walt’s.” “Frank, you’re scaring me. You know I barely even knew Walt Chrysler, I certainly never—” He grabbed an oar and threw it out into the Cove. She squealed. “Don’t lie to me!” he thundered. “I looked down into my son’s face today and saw Walt Chrysler staring back at me! Do you think any thin thread of bullshit you can spin out is gonna change that?” She trembled, her hands hanging near her temples, him looming over her. He sat down. “So what’s the fucking story?” The tears were hot and stung, as though they were made of acid. She was disgusted with herself; with all these years to prepare, to be caught flatfooted, and to come apart so quickly. She threw the only dagger she really had. “What about you and Debbie Draker?” “Debbie Draker? The artist? Our conceptual artist? Is that what you’re telling me? You made me a cuckold and let me raise someone else’s son for twelve years because you thought I was fucking Debbie Draker?” “Don’t tell me you weren’t!” Ellen bawled. “All those late nights, staying up with her, did you think I didn’t know?” “Having an affair with Debbie? Well, Christ, now I wish I had. But no, Ellen, I never touched her. Sorry to tell you. The only time I ever kissed her was at her wedding.” “You’re lying.” Frank laughed. It was bitter and painful. He was on the verge of tears himself. “Why would I lie now? What would be the point? If I ever had an affair, Ellen, I’d be telling you all about it right now. I’d be telling you how her toes curled when I put it to her, the way yours used to. I’d be telling you about my bastard sons. I’d be telling you I balled your sister, or Tammy, or some other person you cared about and trusted for years and fucking years…” The boat rocked in silence, the lake still lapping at the sides like some unconcerned cat, still purring while the thunder of the gods went on around it. “You did have an affair with her…” “Fine, if that’s what you need to believe to make it alright, you go right ahead.” She looked up, and right before her eyes, all the strength that was in a man, her man, drained out of Frank, and he dissolved. “Jesus,” he said, the tears now spilling from him as a new sensation washed over him. “Jesus, Jesus, you murdered my son,” he croaked. “What?” she cried. “This morning I had a son,” he moaned. “I had a beautiful son. But he was never mine. Right from the start. My son died; he’s someone else’s…” She wanted to throw herself into the water and drown, let the cold, smothering weight of it fill up her misery and guilt, sink them away like the Titanic. Walt Chrysler. Company parties, company picnics… the grey hair, the smiling face. He was in his early 40s then, divorced, athletic, a little dangerous. He had a dash about him, like some kind of flavour you can’t pick out, but which makes all the difference in a memorable meal. He paid attention to her without being flirtatious, and she was flattered. In more honest moments, she admitted to herself that he was everything she wanted Frank to grow into. And when the long, lonely, tearful nights started, she decided she had no reason to wait. And Walt was there. She broke it off with him, reluctantly, when Frank started talking about having kids. She had to. But they could not keep apart, not completely. The affair lingered, until she was finally pregnant, and a little scared, and they both knew it was over. She had managed somehow to convince herself that Oscar had to be Frank’s son, and had never allowed herself to wonder about it again, except once, at the side of Walt’s open grave, four years before. Standing there, thinking of Oscar at home, playing with his trucks on the living room carpet, and wondering if she had just buried her son’s father. And having to wait till she was alone to cry. But Frank had never known, and she had never had to face it, until now; her sins given flesh, and a ghost passing over the face of her only son. ***** She wondered how much time passed before either of them found the courage, or the audacity, to break the pus-filled silence. It was her, in fact. “What happens now?” she asked him. It took him a while, and when he did respond, he was a toy with exhausted batteries, summoning the power to move. He loped his head from side to side. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “What are we… what are you going to say?” He looked around, as if waiting for her, forcing her, to finish the thought. “To Oscar,” she said, coughing, the name catching in her throat. “I don’t know,” he said again. “Don’t hurt him,” she begged, the tears coming again. “Please, Frank, don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt Oscar.” Frank stared at the rocky shore. Ellen reasoned, “It’s not… it’s not his fault…” “No. It’s yours,” he growled at her. “Yes,” she said. “Whatever happens,” he hissed, “is your fault. Yours.” “Please, Frank. Don’t.” He said nothing more. When he seemed satisfied with his composure, he began to paddle. She had little choice but to dip her oar and help. It was a strange feeling, recriminating herself for doing something so long ago that the people it would affect most, their children, hadn’t even existed to be considered at the time. Stranger still that, without doing it, one might not even exist at all. She watched Frank row, not hurried, but determined, and at that moment, she would have sold her soul for a glimpse of what was going on in his mind. But she wasn’t sure she had a soul, and there was no one there to take the offer in any case. Slowly they came around the curve, trees stepping aside to reveal the familiar coast line, the dim light on the cottage, the forest, the dock. Ellen hoped the kids had had the sense to eat something, even if it were just a bowl of cereal. For a moment, she was sure they had a very long night ahead of them all. She could make out Stacy and Margaret-Anne by the shore. They were clapping, excited. There was a knot of kids around the dock; she tried to pick out Oscar. There he stood, on the dock, like a vision in the evening sky; like a statue or a god or some wild thing not glimpsed in a hundred years: Oscar, clad in his wet cut-offs, blond hair dark and licking his temples, up-ended, pink heels hung over his head, his arms and shoulders quaking as they supported his weight on the spit of wood jutting from their home out into the lake, the doorstep of the big wide world. A dozen boys clapping from the water and the shore, hooting, calling encouragements. She saw Frank freeze, the paddle dribbling water like quicksilver; like semen, it seemed to her for a second, glistening and alive. Heard him gasp, not like a woman, but a man, audible, throated, like a punch in the gut. Almost a sob, it was. Maybe it was. “Look, he—” she began, but stopped herself. Fear suffocated her joy like lava smothering a forest too close to a volcano. Oscar caught sight of them, and looked over. His face split, a slice of pink watermelon full of little white seeds. A smile as wide as only the supple, unwearied muscles of childhood will allow. His eyes were on his father. Or the man he had always known to be his father. The one who had sat up nights with him, gone to his ball games, patched his skinned knees. Behind Frank’s back, out of sight of her son, Ellen felt a fat tear jump off her cheek. What would Frank do, or say? Was this the end of the world? Their world? She saw him rise, drop the oar into the canoe, stand there. The act of balancing at his full height in the canoe every bit as impressive as Oscar’s feat. She reached out for him, her fingers wanting to pull him back, her lips wanting to beg him, anything, anything, just don’t tell him, don’t say— His voice unfolded like a rumpled suit, sloppy and lined. He said, “That… that’s it! That’s it, Oscar, you’re doing it…” “Look, Dad, look! You were right,” Oscar called. “Squirrel tail! You were right.” It sounded foolish, even to Ellen’s ears, but she heard Frank cry, “I love you, son. I’m so proud of you…” His voice trailed off as he turned his head away, spent and broken now, a decade worth of war in a few seconds. He dropped, before her, head hung, his broad shoulders heaving silently as he fought hard. “Fuck you, Walter,” he blubbered. “He’s my son now. Not yours.” Ellen sobbed. Frank looked up at her, his eyes glistening in the darkness, nearly lost. But she would have felt them on her even in the pitch black. He said, “It’s going to take time, Ellen. It’s going to take me some time.” “I know,” she whispered to him. “I know.” She swallowed hard, and listened to him breathe, his whole being concentrating all his strength on controlling it, burning off the rage inside, leaving only the crystal that once was pure, but might still be beautiful. In her mind Ellen saw his wings snap off, flap themselves away. If only in her mind. She remembered holding him in his nakedness; his body perfect and glistening wet. Her husband; some other mother’s son that she had made her own, and promised herself, would again.
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