Belinda's Rings (16 page)

What's she so mad about? I asked. Maybe you can say sorry. I remember thinking this was a totally legitimate proposal. It seemed like all grandmothers had to be warm and jolly like Darla's.

It's nothing I did, Gracie, Mum said. It's hard to explain. Grown-up stuff.

I tried asking Mum again a bunch more times after that, but she just kept using the same excuses. Wouldn't say much about her sister either, said that she barely even knew Prim, and her dad had died of lung cancer when she was just a baby. But she did tell us a few things about Mere, the town in Wiltshire where she grew up. There was an old castle and a bacon factory, and lots and lots of farmland, just like here in the prairies except greener. She told us that when she first moved to Canada and went for breakfast in a restaurant, she could barely swallow the bacon 'cause it was so fatty — nothing like the lean cuts of back bacon she grew up with.

I couldn't believe that people who had enough money to go to restaurants actually
chose
to eat that, she said. Streaky bacon, we called it.

If we asked for more stories about Mere, Mum would just say it was a boring little town and we wouldn't like it anyway. Wiley made this cheeseball joke that they probably named it Mere because there was
mere
ly nothing there.

Probably, Mum said, not laughing.

But a few years later when we were doing the geography unit in Social, I learned that the word mere can also mean a lake or an arm of the sea. And even though I looked on a map of Wiltshire and saw that the town of Mere is nowhere near a lake or the sea, I still like to tell myself that's what the name means.

The day after Mum left, when I was taking Squid home on the bus after his concert, I told him that Mere was an underwater city where everyone was born with gills instead of lungs. Since he doesn't get any more answers from Mum than the rest of us, I figured it wouldn't hurt to make something up.

But Mummy doesn't have any gills, Squid said, curling his finger around his nose.

Well, I said, you just haven't seen them. They're these really small slits, and they're on the sides, sort of below her armpits. I scratched under my armpits like a gorilla to show him.

But how come I never saw them? Squid asked. Nuh-uh, he shook his head. You're just teasing.

Nope, it's true, I said. Think about it: Mum is always wearing shirts that cover up the spots under her armpits, right?

Squid narrowed his eyes.

Plus, I said, she doesn't need to use them when she's not in the water. So they're hard to see 'cause they just lie flat, like flaps of skin.

Squid was quiet. He crossed his arms, slid his fingers back and forth along the tops of his ribs.

Are we ever gonna get to go to Mere? he asked.

I dunno, I said, how long can you hold your breath?

Squid got all excited about that. Oh a long time, he said, nodding like a bobblehead. I'm the only kid in grade one who can blow up a balloon. The other kids say it's too hard.

You should probably keep practicing, I said. And you need to be a good swimmer too.

Like an amphibian? Squid asked. Amphibians are good swimmers.

Yep, you're right, I said. In fact, that's exactly what the people in Mere are. Amphibians.

Looking back now, I realize it was my fault that Squid got into trouble at school. When I got home the next day, the little red light on the answering machine was blinking. Wiley must not have heard the phone ring 'cause he was out in the garage. The message was from Mrs. Trainer, Squid's teacher.

Hello this message is for Belinda Spector, Sebastian's mother? This is Louise Trainer, your son's teacher. Yes I'm calling because Sebastian had some difficulties at school today. Please call me at your earliest convenience. Two-four-six, twenty-five-hundred, thank you.

Without even thinking, I erased the message. I didn't think it was any of Mrs. Trainer's business to know that Mum was away and couldn't return her call. And I got this feeling from the way she talked that she was probably just another prunecrotched ol' battleaxe (as Wiley says), and that whatever Squid did must've been her fault anyway. It's hard to understand why Squid does some of the things he does, but I guess I did some pretty weird things when I was younger too. For a while when I was four or five I insisted on drinking everything from a sponge because I thought it made things taste better. Didn't matter what it was — juice, water, chocolate milk — it had to be put into a bowl so I could soak it up with my yellow sponge. It was a real sponge too, not one of those cheap synthetic ones you can get at the dollar store. This sponge used to be a living thing. Makes me gag to think about putting my lips around it now, and I wonder why Mum even let me drink from something that was supposed to be for scrubbing our dirty bodies in the bathtub. Just goes to show you that those neuroscientists are probably right when they say your brain keeps growing until you get into your teens. You start looking back and wondering what the heck was going through your head when you did all those ridiculous things. And so because I knew that I did my share of freaky things as a kid, a tiny part of me wasn't all that surprised when Squid finally told me that he had taken the class newt out of its aquarium and accidentally killed it. Don't get me wrong, I was shocked, but not altogether surprised, if that makes any sense. Before I let myself lose it on him I tried to tell myself that ‘accidentally' was the key word. Shit happens, right?

All right, I said to him. How did this happen? We were in his bedroom and I had made sure the door was closed even though Jess wasn't home yet. She'd stayed after school that day for bio tutoring, which was lucky 'cause I knew she would've freaked if she found out about this.

I was making a potion, Squid said quietly. The juice of a newt, remember? Suddenly everything made perfect sense. One of Squid's favourite books was about a friendly little witch who could stir up potions that would give kids superpowers. One of the kids in the story had wanted to be able to swim like a dolphin, so the witch prescribed the juice of a newt, which she said would give him the power to breathe underwater.

That was a
story,
Squid, I said. I was pressing my fists to my ears to stop myself from yelling. Just a goddamn story!

But I didn't think it would hurt! he said. Tears started to pool in his eyelids.

What did you do, squeeze the thing to death?

No! he wailed. I just scraped him a little. On his back. Squid made like he was scooping ice cream.

I could picture what had happened then. Squid holding the newt against the table and scraping its back with the plastic spoon from his lunch bag, the newt wriggling and Squid's fingers mashing down so it couldn't get away. Squid not knowing how hard was too hard 'cause he was only a kid and didn't think it made any difference.

I wondered if newts had blood, and what colour it was if they did.

IX

IN ALL THE YEARS
she'd lived in England, Belinda had only once seen Stonehenge. She'd been a sullen schoolgirl on a class field trip and she couldn't remember anything about the experience. She hadn't felt compelled to visit Woodhenge. History had not been a topic of interest in her mother's household. But when Belinda came across a diagram of Woodhenge in one of the crop circle books she was studying, she felt its importance resonate like an echo. The diagram mapped the site where archaeologists had uncovered the remnants of 168 post-holes arranged to form six concentric rings, and buried in the centre, a small child's skeleton. A dedicatory sacrifice, they presumed. The post-holes originally held wooden pillars, though the function of these was still a mystery. Some suspected the site had a religious purpose, and other theories touted moon and sun patterns to suggest it was a giant cosmological calendar that signaled the summer solstice when the dusk-light struck the pillars in a particular way. With Stonehenge just two miles away, a connection between the two monuments was almost undeniable. If you were to stand in the centre of Stonehenge with a map of all the archaeological sites in the area, you would be able to see Woodhenge in the distance, as well as dozens of surrounding burial mounds, simply by rotating on that fixed spot. You just needed to know where to look.

That Belinda had been raised in an English town only forty kilometres west of Salisbury was a coincidence solely of geography. She saw no significance in this fact. Twenty-three years before, she'd told her mother she would never return to Mere. It was a vow she would not allow herself to break. On the map of her memory, she'd drawn an invisible circle around Stourhead Gardens and Castle Hill, the town cemetery, the old bacon factory, the market square, and the perpetual clock tower — sealing the town behind a quarantine boundary, solid and unwavering. If she were to even think about how reachable the town really was, she might risk breaching that boundary.

On the phone the previous night, Wiley had begged her to come home. Belinda could hear the tightness in his voice. He'd obviously swung into one of his high-energy moods.

I've decided to reorganize the garage, he said. By myself. I'm going to turn it into a jam space. Maybe even build a stage.

Sounds great, Belinda said, knowing he would never follow through with the plans. So you're doing fine then?

Oh yeah, yeah, he said. I'm just fine. Wonderful, in fact.

Good, she said. I'm doing well, too. You might be interested to know that I'm going to Woodhenge tomorrow. It's going to be incredible.

Oh, Wiley said. That's nice.

Do you even know what Woodhenge is? Belinda asked.

Think so, Wiley said. Like Stonehenge, but wood, right?

You're impossible, Belinda said. Jessica says you haven't been helping out.

Jesus Christ, you're gonna nag me from across the Atlantic?

You're not giving me a choice, she said. I mean it — I need you to help the kids.

He sighed, and Belinda could tell he was rubbing his face. She could hear the phone in his hand, creaking. Please, he whined, just come home already.

What did he mean ‘home'? she'd thought to herself, but decided it best left unsaid. Having always lived in the Canadian prairies, Wiley wouldn't understand how she could feel phantom pains from a removed landscape: a recalcitrant longing for rain-soaked air, pastures salted with woolly sheep, the knowledge that rocky beaches draped in solemn grey seas lay within an hour's drive.

And yet when she was finally there, riding the local Salisbury bus to Old Sarum where she and Pierre would take the footpaths to Woodhenge, the place seemed entirely foreign. Sitting across from her on the bus was an old woman in a flower-print skirt carrying a fraying basket of brown eggs. How quaint, Belinda thought. The woman's mouth was cracked and sunken like a deflated pudding. She seemed a quintessential accessory to the stone, brick, and timber façades reeling past the window behind her. Belinda had expected Wiltshire to have changed drastically since she was a child. It was enchanting to see that it hadn't, and yet the sight of the old woman made Belinda slightly sick to her stomach. With the bus bumping and lurching, Belinda felt the sensation of riding a merry-go-round, cantering on the slick back of a fibreglass horse while giant carnival tents revolved around her.

Pierre was an Englishman with a thick South-Country accent and uniformly crooked teeth, which Belinda hadn't expected. He wore a tweed flatcap and rough callouses on his red hands. For the entire bus ride, Belinda humoured him as he reminisced about growing up in a small Cornish village and his Mum's Stargazy Pie, the crispy sardine-heads stuck up through a golden crust. But when they'd stepped off the bus and found the footpath, she seized the opportunity to interject. She asked Pierre how long he'd been working with Dr. Longfellow.

Marshall? he said. I've known Marshall for — ohh . . . four years now? Ever since the crop circle appeared in my barley field.

A crop circle? Belinda repeated, nearly tripping on the long grass brushing her ankles. In your field? What was it like?

Pierre chuckled, pulled his cap down over his eyebrows and pushed it back up again. Well Ma'am, he said, it was like a circle is all I can say. It was just a plain circle, very large. Nothing like those extravagant pictures you see on the news reports.

But did you see it? she asked. Did you see it happen?

Ah, no, he chuckled again. I didn't think much of it until Marshall arrived on my doorstep and asked to take photographs. Pierre walked steadily, pulling up handfuls of grass along the path and picking off the seedlings ritualistically.

Tell me something, Belinda said gravely, and Pierre stopped walking and turned to face her expectantly. What's your opinion? she asked. Who do
you
think made the circle?

He smiled sheepishly, revealing a yellow eyetooth that stuck out like a fang. I haven't a clue, Ma'am, he said. I haven't put much thought into it, truth be told. I'd've mown it all down if Marshall hadn't come to my door. Didn't know a circle in a field could be worth something.