Belinda's Rings (20 page)

But I'll be the first to admit that Mum has always done way more than her fair share of the responsible adult stuff. When New Wiley showed up on the scene, I started helping out a lot more. There was one day I was vacuuming the whole house and I thought Mum would be so happy when she came home to see a clean floor. I even tried to scrub out some of the stains in the carpet that always made her sigh when the afternoon sun lit them up. When I heard the garage door opening I moved to a spot where I could be seen from the back door. I wanted Mum to walk in and see me scrubbing away. I wanted to see the big smile spread across her face. But when the door opened it was Wiley. He walked in with his shoes on.

Hey! I yelled. I'm cleaning the floor here?

He stopped and quickly heeled off his shoes, leaving them in a jumble in the middle of the hall. Then he brushed past me without saying a word. He looked like he was rushing to get something.

Where've you been? I called after him. Weren't you s'posed to have students coming today?

Nope, he called back as he raced up the stairs. Got some important business to attend to!

I knew right away that Mum wasn't going to be happy about whatever he was doing. And right on cue she walked in the back door.

Hi, she said. I thought I saw Wiley driving up . . . Then she smiled. You're cleaning? she said. Isn't that a nice surprise.

She looked down at Wiley's shoes. I could tell she was trying to hold back a grimace.

Wiley came pounding down the stairs, tucking his wallet in his back pocket. He beamed when he saw Mum.

I did it! he said. I finally bit the bullet and did it!

Did what? Mum said, looking at him like he was a rattlesnake ready to attack.

Bought a new synth! Wiley said, throwing his fists up in the air as if he'd just conquered the world.

What, Mum said. Her voice was dark and deep. You bought what?

I was still kneeling on the floor, watching Mum's face go pink. I didn't dare move.

Now I know I already have one, Wiley explained, but the technology's come a long way in the last three years. If me and the guys are gonna get our band up off the ground, we need state-of the-art.

Are you joking? Mum said. You can't be serious. Don't those things cost thousands of dollars? Her voice quivered.

It's okay, Wiley said. Think of it as an investment. We'll get it all back once the band makes it big.

Mum asked me to leave the room then. She asked me to go out to the backyard and pick the dead heads off the petunias. I left the rag I was using and the carpet cleaner sitting on the floor where they were and went straight out the door.

Mum had spent a lot of time planting the garden that year, and I hadn't really noticed how lush it was and how much work it must have been until that day. It was the middle of the summer and all the flowers were in bloom, a quilt of pinks and purples and greens and yellows. There were a lot of shriveled petunia heads to pluck. I started picking at one end of the garden, gathering them in my palm, and every so often I'd catch a snippet of Mum and Wiley's fight. I heard Mum saying, What do you expect me to do? Wiley yelled back, Support me! Believe in me!

I didn't blame Mum for not believing in him. I wouldn't either. And that got me thinking about how much Mum had resting on her shoulders. When things went wrong in our family, it was always Mum who fixed them. I remember wondering, as I sat on the porch steps and arranged my dead head collection into a neat little pile, how long it would be before Mum got tired of being a mother to everyone.

XI

THE MARRIAGE COUNSELLOR HAD
asked Belinda about patterns.

Why do you think you follow these patterns? she had asked, sliding a pen out from the coil of her notebook. She was a petite woman who wore her hair the exact same way every time Belinda saw her: parted down the middle, combed and smoothed immaculately with the stiff, upturned ends hovering just above her shoulders. She insisted that Wiley and Belinda call her Norma. Belinda found this odd; if she were a doctor, she'd want her patients to call her ‘Doctor.' Dr. Spector sounded quite distinguished, she thought.

I'm sorry? Belinda said. What patterns?

Norma's eyebrows lifted for a brief moment. Well, she said, you had mentioned before that you've experienced the same feelings with different people in your life. Suffocation, feeling burdened with responsibility . . .

Yes, Belinda agreed. She could see what Norma was driving at, but she was determined not to give in.

Do you think it's a coincidence that you keep feeling this way with different people? Your mother, Dazhong, Wiley?

I — I don't know, Belinda replied, with a firm YES resounding in her mind. Belinda had thought Norma was a good counsellor; in their joint session the week before, she'd coerced Wiley to admit his unhealthy dependency on Belinda. Leeching, Belinda called it, but Norma had deemed that term insensitive. Fair enough. But this sudden attempt to expose Belinda's faults now that she'd gained her trust seemed unfair. Predatory.

I don't see, Belinda said, how you can compare my mother to my husbands. And anyway, since when is this about me?

Norma slid her pen back into the notebook. Your marriage isn't about you? she asked plainly.

That was the last time Belinda visited Norma's office. She had no use for Norma's cunning speculations, her cultivated skill for taking Belinda's words and turning them against her. True, she had used the word suffocation to describe feelings she'd experienced with her mother, her husbands, and her children, but it was only because her vulnerability and apprehension about expressing her feelings to a stranger barred access to a more descriptive vocabulary. It was her mother's relentless decorum and her false, callous demeanour that Belinda had called suffocating, but afterwards she had thought that suffocating wasn't the right word. Stifling seemed more fitting. At any rate, she had resolved her issues with her mother long ago. Wiley was the one who needed diagnosing.

But she had nonetheless considered Norma's suggestion, reasoning that patterns ought to be something she'd be drawn to. In cereology, patterns were prized like diamonds. The more precise, complete, and calculated the pattern, the more valuable the crop circle. Anomalies and inconsistencies were indications of fraud. But in terms of social behaviour, it was the formulaic aspect of patterns that bothered her; the notion of being bound to a pre-fabricated design seemed dooming. She tried to imagine herself as a pattern, wide and sprawling, made up of thin, needled lines. Hers would be a guilloche pattern like the ones printed on cheques and bank-notes: a swirling mass of ribboned lines threading over and under each other in endless arcs and swoops. The pattern appeared smooth and uniform on first glance, but when examined closely, it revealed many layers of lines turning in unpredictable directions. It occurred to Belinda that it was natural to want to resist seeing herself as symmetrical and invariable. The flawless uniformity of crop circles was proof of their unearthliness. They were too perfect for humans to conjure. To prescribe a pattern for herself was, in a sense, dehumanizing.

But what would she feel when she stood inside a crop circle and became part of the pattern? During the drive to Sussex, she considered the possibilities. Probably awe. She hoped euphoria, clarity, a sense of harmony with the land, as the eyewitness accounts had led her to expect. Perhaps she would feel nothing, but this was unlikely. Belinda knew the mind had the power to translate faith into feeling. Just moments earlier she'd been transfixed by a dime of light whizzing across the interior of the van, until she realized it was only the reflection of her watch face. She'd wanted it to be a sign.

Dr. Longfellow had rented a van with enough space for eight people, although the team was only five, including Belinda. She had the middle bench to herself. Two men named Rich and Sampson sat in the back, Dr. Longfellow in the passenger seat, and Monika Treadstone at the wheel. Monika had the long black hair that Belinda had imagined, except streaked with silver filaments and pulled back into a tight bun. She wore a dark blue sweatshirt that said EPCOT in white letters. She was a fairly large woman — larger than Belinda, and giant compared to Dr. Longfellow's slight frame — though she wasn't fat. She had scowled at the sight of Belinda's paisley skirt.

Rich and Sampson were both American, one from Detroit and the other from somewhere in Florida, but Belinda couldn't remember which man was from where. They told Belinda they'd visited hundreds of crop circles over the last six years. She had taken out her books at the beginning of the trip and laid them on the seat beside her, and the men had shown little interest. Belinda could feel her limbs vibrating with pent-up energy, as though her seat belt were the only thing keeping her from bursting out of the vehicle and coasting across the vacant fields like vast green roller-skating rinks.

Sampson and Rich talked amongst themselves, flipping through the curled pages of their tattered notebooks and pointing figures out to each other. In the front of the van, Dr. Longfellow read the paper, the broad grey sheets enclosing him in his own paper room, and Monika focused on the road ahead, her small brown eyes darting to the rear-view mirror every now and then to check the back window, but never the passengers. Belinda considered how like a family road trip it was — the bored and dutiful parents taking their three children on a day trip, and the children boxed into the vehicle's back seat, anticipation seeping out the cracks around the windows. Belinda had never sat in the back seat on a road trip; her mother had never driven her beyond the town limits, and every road trip she'd taken with her own children followed a strict itinerary which she had designed herself. She'd always sat in the front passenger seat, playing the responsible role of navigator, snack-distributor, and spill-mitigator. And there had always been a clear direction to take towards a definitive end, no surprises. To be chauffeured about England without knowing exactly where she was felt luxurious and self-serving, like taking a midday bubble bath with unsparing dollops of expensive oils and salts.

And yet, seeing herself in this situation made her feel vital. She was on a scientific expedition, she told herself. She was a member of a research team, a group of brilliant scientists searching for the centre of an imperative mystery. It was up to her in the next few days to become a valuable and respectable member of the team. Belinda listened to Rich and Sampson's conversation, nodding along and allowing their terminology to fall about her like snow as they spoke of Milk Hill, magnetism levels as high as 4.36, and centrifugal deposits.

In the soil? Belinda cut in, and the two men stared at her and smiled.

He's a soil man, Rich replied, pitching his head at Sampson, the one with the handlebar moustache.

Sampson grinned. Soil is the secret, he said proudly, and Belinda could tell this was something of a mantra that the team joked about. It takes a keen eye, he continued. You have to know what you're looking for. We've been finding these little balls, see. Little metal balls scattered on the surface of the soil.

What are they? Belinda asked, her eyes growing wide.

Iron, mostly, Sampson said. But they're these little balls, see, and that's the important bit. Sampson cupped his palm and pinched at the air inside with a thumb and forefinger to illustrate the size of the balls. That means, he said, that they were once
molten
. So we find these once-molten balls of iron inside the crop circle, and what do you think that means?

They must have melted! Belinda shouted, nearly springing out of her seat. Rich began to chuckle and she blushed, touching two fingers to her open mouth. I mean, she said, it sounds like something must have melted them, some kind of force. Something hot enough to melt metal in the soil. That would be my guess.

I like her already, Sampson said to Rich. His smug grin displayed large square teeth like Chiclets.

You said something about centrifugal dispersion, Belinda said. Does that mean the balls are dispersed in some sort of pattern?

Uh oh! Rich cried, clapping a hand to his knee. Marshall, he called up to the front of the van, Sampson's doing missionary work back here! He's got his first follower!

Dr. Longfellow glanced back and shook his head like a disapproving father, then re-settled himself into his reading.

As a matter of fact, Sampson said loudly to drown Rich's chuckling, I would argue that the concentration of the balls increases as you get closer to the formation's perimeter. Like an explosion, from the centre out. Sampson's hands mimed an expanding mushroom cloud.

Is he talking about his balls again? Monika called out. She eyed the three passengers in her rear-view mirror, a sly smile stretching across her face.

What else? Rich replied.

Let her make up her own mind, Sam, Monika said, still smiling.

Oh no, Belinda said, I think it's fascinating. She was quite certain that Monika was joking, but the team's constant teasing of Sampson seemed cruel. Monika said nothing in reply, and her smile stayed frozen in place as she turned her eyes back to the road.

I'm a mathematics nut myself, Rich piped up. Never did too good in grade school but now I got calculations coming out the wazoo. He passed his notebook to Belinda, the pages spread open. The paper was chicken-scratched with numbers and small sketches of circular formations dissected like pies.

Show her your other one, Sampson said, elbowing Rich in the side.

Sure, Rich said, I don't mind sharing. He reached into the backpack tucked under the seat in from of him and pulled out another, smaller notebook which he tossed on top of Belinda's books. She flipped through dozens of pencil drawings of spiral galaxies, so loose and large that they fell off the pages like the clumsy scribblings of a small child.

Beautiful, Belinda said. Did you do these?

They come to me when I'm inside, Rich replied.