hair washed in the ship’s beauty parlour and had struck up a conversation. Annabelle thought that Maisie was very attractive for her age, but noticed that there were already little pouches forming under her eyes. She could see a varicose vein snaking down Maisie’s left calf. It does seem unfair, she thought, to make people wait until they’re almost thirty to marry. But she guessed they had their reasons.
She noticed that there were a lot of handsome unmarried men on the ship, returning from home leave, and Maisie and some of the other girls went dancing every night. There was no shortage of male attention on board the ship. If she had wanted to, Annabelle knew she could probably dance all the way to Singapore, and with a different man every night. But she had no interest in other men, nor did she particularly want to drink cocktails and smoke cigarettes the way Maisie and her chums did. Many nights when she gazed up at the stars, she wished with all her heart that Francis could be there with her. How romantic it all was. In the middle of the ocean you could imagine that time had stopped forever and that the ship would never dock. There might be nothing in the world beyond this ship, and the ship was a tiny speck in a grand universe. What earthly difference does it make, she wondered, if you brought a hundred or a thousand or even ten thousand heathen headhunters to Jesus? What did anything matter in a universe so infinite?
Chapter Six
Maris had sent an email to her brother Ray telling him her arrival time and asking him to meet her at Vancouver airport. After nearly twenty-four hours of travelling, she was never so glad to see anyone. He stood head and shoulders above everybody else, his fierce blue eyes fixed on the automatic doors as they opened and closed, ejecting three or four people at a time, like a giant Pez dispenser. His dark brown hair was almost black and clipped close to his head, but even so, the unruly curls he had always hated could not be tamed. He looked younger than his thirty-five years, maybe because he was so thin, or maybe because he wore a yellow stretched-out T-shirt with a smiley face on it, under a plaid flannel lumberjack shirt whose sleeves ended an inch above his wrists.
“Ra Baby,” she called as she pushed her luggage cart through the gate. “Am I glad to see you.”
Ray rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna start that again?”
“Start what?” she said.
“You know I hate that name.”
She laughed and threw her arms around him. “Okay, Ra Baby,” she said, hugging him so tightly he couldn’t escape. “I won’t call you Ra Baby any more. I promise.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I’m glad to see you haven’t grown up yet, Maris. Because if you grow up, that means I have to grow up, too. And I’m not ready.”
While Ray went to get the car, Maris thought about what he’d said. Growing up had never been on the agenda while they’d lived on the commune with their mother, Spirit. In fact, the whole idea had been to stay close to the soul of childhood, to embrace innocence, and even to hold on to a kind of unknowing, especially about the outside world. “I want you always to remember how precious and special your life is now,” their mother had said. “Don’t let anyone take that away from you, not your father, not society, not your lovers when you have them, and not your children when you have them. Promise me?”
Of the three of them, only their sister Terra walked in the shoes of an adult. She had been married for fifteen years to a stockbroker and they had two daughters, Emma and Alison, and a huge, faux-Tudor house with a kitchen that was bigger than Ray’s whole apartment. Terra had opted for the comforts of the conventional life, just as their father had, and who could blame her for that? There were things that Terra never had to worry about in this life. Like who she was, how she was going to pay the rent, whether or not she was doing the right thing. Her parents had named her well. Terra’s feet were firmly planted. She was the least introspective of the three of them and could make a decision without waffling. “The buck stops with Mom,” she always joked about herself. “And Mom always knows best.”
Ray, on the other hand, was living in a rooming house in East Vancouver. He was unmarried and still lived like a student. When they got to his place it was Maris’s turn to roll her eyes.
“Ray,” she said, “you’re such a cliché. Look at this place.”
“What?” said Ray. “This is my home you’re talking about.”
“Oh, please,” said Maris, shaking her head. “I mean, empty pizza boxes and beer bottles? The unmade bed? And — yuck — green stuff growing in the sink? There’s no way I’m opening that fridge.” She laughed. “I still love you, but I’m glad I don’t have to live with you.”
They had hauled her suitcase and the trunk Peter had left her up two flights of stairs. All Maris wanted was something to drink and a place to sleep. “Which is my room?” she asked, looking around.
“Ha ha,” said Ray, “very funny. Since there is only one room, you can either have the pull-out couch with the dirty sheets or the futon on the floor with the sleeping bag.”
“That’s a tough one,” said Maris. “Uh, can I see the sleeping bag?”
“As it happens,” he said, “I actually had it cleaned after my last camping trip. But only because I accidentally made my bed on a pile of bear shit that I didn’t see in the dark.”
“So bears really do shit in the woods?”
“Yes, indeed they do. Luckily, it was fairly old and fairly dry bear shit, otherwise we might not be talking because I’d be bear shit myself. But I did think it would be a good idea to have the bag cleaned. It was pretty disgusting. I even went for the ‘sanitized’ option, with deadly chemicals.”
“Hmmm,” mused Maris. “That almost sounds like the grown-up thing to do. But I’m betting Terra would have burned it and bought a new one. That would be the really grown-up thing to do.” They both laughed.
“Dare I ask if you have anything to drink? I’m dying of thirst.”
“Well, I have beer … and beer. Which would you like?”
“Uh … I guess I’ll have a beer. You mean you don’t have any pomegranate juice?”
He pulled two bottles of beer from the fridge and unscrewed the caps. “If you want pomegranate juice, go stay with Spirit. And if you want Perrier, stay with Terra. I’m a beer and pizza guy right down the line. You will not find a single lentil or a Brussels sprout in this house.”
“I sure hope you have coffee. I’m going to want some tomorrow, whenever I wake up.”
“Ah,” he said, “coffee there is. A nice Colombian dark roast, freshly ground today for a French press coffeemaker. My one luxury.”
“Ooh la la,” said Maris. “I’m impressed.”
They drank their beer and Maris told him about her flight. She’d had a three-hour layover at Narita airport in Tokyo and hadn’t slept at all. She’d watched three movies and eaten several meals and snacks, all of them tasting the same. Maris had a theory that all airline meals were made out of soybean product, cut into the shapes of various foods, dyed the appropriate colours, and injected with artificial flavours.
“God, I’m tired,” she said. “What time is it?”
“It’s 11:00 p.m., Pacific Standard Time,” he answered.
