toddling too far from the doorplace and wondering if he should go farther. It was a nice smile. And nice crinkling eyes. Hard to think someone with nice smiling eyes would trample graves and spray his wife with oven cleaner.
Kate strummed into the silence and the dog trotted over to Clar, staring up at him, ears pricked. He barked, tail wagging. Nipping his beer between his knees, Clar leaned forward and cupped the dog’s smooth, shiny head with both hands and ruffled its ears with his thumbs. The dog wagged its tail faster and Clar blew a short puff of air into its black leathery nostrils. The dog snuffled and licked its chops. Clar blew another puff into the shiny black snout and the dog whined. It tried to twist away. Clar gripped its jaws, holding it closer. “What’s you going to do now eh, what’s you going to do,” he crooned and blew long and easy into the dog’s nostrils, gripping tighter to its struggling head. The dog’s haunches went rigid, its nails grappled onto rocks. Clar kept blowing. Kyle got to his feet.
“Let the fucker go, asshole!”
Clar grinned up at him, the dog’s head still cupped between his hands, his thumbs caressing its jaws.
“Need to get yourself a set of bagpipes, Clar,” said Kate.
“Or a fucking balloon,” said Kyle. He sat back down.
Clar rubbed down the Lab’s quivering haunches. “Go. Get,” he said, smacking the dog’s rump. The dog skittered through the fog, tail folded between its hind legs. Clar stood up and drained his beer, weaving a bit—first sign to Kyle that he was drunk—then hove the bottle towards the sea. He dramatically lifted a finger for silence, then smiled when he heard the plash. “G’nite,” he said and sifted into the fog after his dog.
“Somebody should shoot that sonofabitch.”
“Just another poor boy, Ky.”
“He’s a prick.”
“Flouting his poverty.”
“How the fuck’s that, Kate. He’s got everything.”
“But his father’s heart.”
Jaysus. “You makes everything sound like a song.”
“That’s what we are. Love songs gone wrong.”
“Yeah. Well. Someone should capo the crap outta that one. Arse.” He got to his feet, dropped a buddy pat on Kate’s shoulder, and headed off.
Their room door was ajar when he went inside the house. A dim light peered through the crack from a night lamp his mother read under before sleeping. Most nights he crept past their door and dove beneath his blankets to muffle their voices as they oftentimes bickered with each other. In the mornings he was always astonished to find them tucked into each other like a skein of wool. This evening he peered through their half-opened doorway and his father’s head was on his mother’s bosom as though he were already asleep and she was cradling him, one of her hands holding on to his as though she were frightened of wandering lost through her dreams. She was gazing at a framed picture of Sylvie and Chris and himself on her wall and he knew it was Chris she was gazing at. His eyes, so earthy brown and eager. His smile wide and open. His cropped blond hair. The golden boy, long before death took him. Framed and hanging beside the picture was a pencilled drawing Chris had done of their father sitting in a boat on moon-rippled water. Or, and Kyle could never tell, perhaps it was Chris himself, looking expectantly towards the stars.
Did you know you’d soon be amongst them?
“Did you close the door, Kyle?” his mother asked in a half-whisper.
He nodded, knowing she’d heard and was just wanting something to say.
“Now, don’t go worrying,” she said.
“I won’t.” He bumbled to his room and into his bed and across his pillow and the silence without their arguing resounded through his head and he stared like a hawk into the dark.
He’d scarcely fallen asleep when dawn trickled an ashy grey light around the edges of his blinds. In the kitchen his mother poured him tea and smeared partridgeberry jam on his toast.
“Your father’s out in the shed,” she told him. “Nursing himself, no doubt.”
He stood by the sink and watched her, feeling within himself that hushed quiet of a mourner already at the wake. She leaned past him for the dishcloth and he smelled her scent of lavender and remembered Sylvie once saying how she thought as a youngster that lavender was a flower that smelled like their mother.
He followed her to the table as she carried his tea and toast, sitting in the chair she hauled out for him.
“Eat it for me too, I suppose,” he said and flinched as she pinched his ear.
“Now, I don’t want no foolishness,” she said to him.
He swallowed lumps of toast and gulped them down with the tea.
“And try keeping your father sober.”
“What about Sylvie?”
“She called day before yesterday. We won’t be hearing from her for another week.”
“So—she don’t know?”
“I didn’t know for sure when she called. It’s fine she don’t know, let her have her holiday.”
He felt a stab of resentment, a strong stab of resentment.
“She should be here.”
“There’s nothing she can do, only worry.”
“We can call the embassy there, they’ll find her.”
“Call the embassy. Yes now, we’re doing that. Foolish. The doctors haven’t made any decisions yet, and there’s nothing she can do anyway. Let her have her trip.” She put her purse on the table, rooting through it. “Take this.” She took out a packet of bills and laid them on the table. “Nine hundred. I’ll get the rest from the bank this morning.”
“We won’t go ahead with that.”
“Yes, go on. I spoke too quick last evening. He likes building. The pride he took building this house—you’d have thought he was building a castle. I’ll keep five hundred in the bank.”
“Would—will that be enough?”
“I’ll know more when I talks to the oncologist today.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, stay with him. Bonnie’s taking me.”
“Who?”
“How many Bonnies do we know, Kyle. That’s her outside, now. Go get her some coffee. Use that mug on the table there, it’s clean. I’ll finish getting ready.”
“Christ, Mother, you don’t need Bonnie Gillard driving you to Corner Brook.”
“Rather
