Belinda's Rings (26 page)

S'okay, I said. It doesn't matter. I held my breath between sentences, trying to disguise the shaking in my voice.

You weren't worried? she said.

Nope.

Oh. All right. So how are things there?

Fine, I said without even thinking. We're just doing nothing. Jess was standing in front of me with her hands spread out. She mouthed Who is it? I put a finger to my lips and shook my head.

Okay, Mum said. Well everything is good here too. I saw my first crop circle today. We walked around inside it and everything. It just appeared yesterday. Over a thousand feet in diameter, can you believe that?

Wow, I said in a flat voice. Neat.

Very neat, she said. But I can't talk long. I'm just going to give you my new hotel number, okay? In case of emergency.

Have you got a pen?

Shoot away, I said. There was a pen lying on top of the microwave in front of me but I didn't pick it up.

It's area code zero-one-three-two-three — Uh huh, I said. I waved my hand at Jess to act like everything was normal. I wasn't sure if she could hear Mum's voice coming through so I ducked my chin down close to my chest. My head felt full of steam.

Eight thirty-nine, five-one-two. Did you get that?

Yep, I said.

And it's the Gladwyn Hotel.

Got it.

Good. So, nothing else is new? School is going well?

Peachy, I said. My voice almost quivered.

Okay, well I should go, Mum said. It's late here — I'm going to bed in a couple of minutes. Give Jessica and Sebastian hugs for me.

'Kay, I will, I said.

Love you.

Yep, you too. Bye.

I hung up the phone and rolled my eyes at Jess. It was just Rose, I said. Asking about homework stuff again. I started walking back to the living room so I wouldn't have to look Jess in the eye. The pits of my stomach twisted themselves into one big knot.

Oh, Jess said, following me. She plunked back down on the couch. How much longer do you think we should wait?

It's five o'clock now, I said. Maybe a couple more hours. I didn't want to wait around any longer but it seemed like there wasn't anything else we could do. Jess nodded. I'm pretty sure she was thinking the same thing. And I knew that if I told her it was Mum on the phone, she would want to tell her everything, ask her what we should do, bawl like a baby and beg Mum to come home right away. Before I picked up the phone, I'd thought that was what I wanted, too. But as soon as I heard Mum's voice on the other end, it didn't seem fair. Mum was the one who left. I felt like she shouldn't be allowed to get involved in our problems. She didn't deserve to worry herself sick about Squid or feel like she could never forgive herself if something happened to him. At that moment in our lives there was nothing more important to me and Jess than Squid, and all Mum could think about were a bunch of useless circles — meaningless pictures stamped into grain fields in the middle of nowhere. As far as I was concerned, she didn't have a right to know.

Grace? Jess said. We were looking at each other in the blank screen of the TV. Jess was twirling her hair around one finger.

Yeah? I said.

What happens if Mummy never comes back?

I think I smiled then, by accident. It wasn't that I thought it was funny. It just made me feel really strange to hear Jess actually say it out loud. It was the kind of feeling you get when you hear something you know you weren't supposed to hear, like a raunchy sex joke. As if hearing it makes it possible, even real or true.

XIV

IT HAD BEEN NEARLY
two years since Belinda saw the spacecraft. On that evening, she'd had a fight with Wiley and couldn't sleep. Wiley had announced that Handbrake, his old band, was getting back together.

It was amazing, Wiley had said when he got home from the bar. It was like — spiritual. We thought we were just getting together for beers for old times' sake, and then finally we all broke down. Turns out we'd been thinking the same thing. I was the first one to say it. I said, Guys, we really were a hell of a band, and I wish we would have tried to make it.

But you did try, Belinda said. Almost eight years ago. Didn't you go to an agent and get turned down?

Yeah, Wiley said. But we only went to the one agent and then we gave up. We could've kept trying. We could've gone without an agent for a while and built up our name ourselves.

Does that work? Belinda said.

Whaddyou mean does that work? If you're good, you make it work. That's the point. We didn't try hard enough, and now we're all regretting it.

Belinda let the silence hang for a moment. Wiley's eyes, bright as glass, waited for her approval. She wanted to smother them out, extinguish them with her fists.

You can't be serious, she said. You have a child.

Wiley's face contorted, a rude shock twisting his lips. So what? he said. This can't be a grown-up job? You think I should teach kids to play piano for the rest of my fucking life?

Belinda had gone berserk. She called him immature and irresponsible, a deadbeat. Wiley had called her a dictator. The fight had fed itself from there. It lasted too long, packed with the same tired complaints repeated over and over. Jessica, Grace, and Sebastian had barred themselves in the basement living room with the television blaring.

Everything always has to be your way, Wiley kept saying. Nobody else matters. It's all about YOU.

Hours after the fight had ended, after they'd grown tired of screaming and offered their empty apologies, his accusation still clamped on her thoughts. Wiley had fallen asleep just as quickly as any other night, and Belinda hadn't even been able to keep her eyes shut without strain. She couldn't make sense of Wiley's argument; it had no basis. How could she be selfish? She who had no life of her own, whose every decision and every action was made for him and her children? She was back in her old cycle — the marriage she thought she abandoned years ago. She'd left Dazhong because he didn't allow her to be her own person. Somehow, she'd continued to drift since then, chasing after the pieces of herself, strewn and floating in different directions.

As she lay in bed staring at the ceiling, a craving for a cigarette interrupted her thoughts. She hadn't smoked once in the nineteen years since she'd quit cold turkey, and this was the first craving she'd felt since Jessica was born. Without restraint, she slipped out of bed and down to the garage, and found the packet Wiley had hidden years ago in an old plastic cooler. The smoke soothed her lungs like a warm wind. She found herself opening the garage door to let the night shine in. It was fairly balmy because it was summer, but Belinda's skin prickled under the fresh air. Outside it was silent.

When Belinda was a small child, her mother told her stories of the witching hour to keep her from leaving her bed at night. It happens in the middle of the night, her mother said, when everyone is asleep. If you're not asleep, the creatures of the night will come for you. The witches and the demons and the ghosts. You'll know they're on their way when everything is dark and deadly silent. That's how you know they've got you.

That night, as Belinda stood on the driveway and listened, she couldn't make out the faintest sound or movement. Up and down the street, the trees and houses and cars and telephone wires were part of a photograph, silent and suspended in time. The crackle of her cigarette as she drew in seemed as loud as a bonfire.

And then, she felt the atmosphere brighten ever so slightly, as if a match had been struck somewhere behind the dark curtain of the sky. She looked up and the sky was blotted with inky blue clouds, a few dull stars like grains of sand sprinkled between them.

The spacecraft appeared in a blink. Three round lights pierced the dark, each one glowing white as a moon. Together they made the three points of an empty triangle.

It must be an airplane, Belinda told herself. Some sort of high-tech military craft. But then the lights began to move, or rather, glide, fixed in their triangular orientation. They glided in a diagonal motion, a quick slash across the sky like a checkmark. Belinda had never seen an airplane or any other machine move with such grace. The craft changed direction in a sharp but seamless motion and glided west, more slowly this time. There was something organic, even delicate about the spacecraft's movements; it seemed to dangle from an invisible hand, letting the wind carry it like an enormous kite. Belinda held her breath, willing her memory to record what she was seeing. The lights hovered only a few seconds longer before they went out, as quickly as they had appeared, snuffed by the shadows weaving through the sky.

Belinda didn't move. She fixed her view on that spot in the sky, her eyes flicking across the vague outlines of clouds, searching. Minutes passed. The cigarette tucked between her fingers smouldered into an ashen claw. The lights never reappeared.

When Belinda got back inside the house, her hands felt numb and she realized she had been cold. The time on the microwave said 3:58 AM. She had been standing on the driveway for almost an hour, wearing only her pajamas and slippers. But she felt as though she'd just emerged from a mountain lake, fresh and clean, the air against her skin like tiny bites of electricity. She had witnessed something extraordinary. The lights had been real — there was no doubt in her mind. And no matter how she tried to make sense of what she saw, she couldn't escape what she knew to be true. It was a
UFO
. A flying object like she had never seen. It was unexplainable.

The
RCMP
seemed the best place to call. She'd heard of people reporting
UFO
sightings, but she'd never taken such stories seriously before. The police would probably be less sympathetic, too busy with more pressing matters.

I'm calling to report a
UFO
, Belinda said into the phone. And I'm not crazy.

Can I get your name? the woman on the other end asked. She sounded unsurprised, even bored.

Belinda Spector, she said. It happened about an hour ago. Just over my house, these lights —

Can you please describe what you saw, Ma'am? The woman sounded as if she were reading from a script.

When Belinda finished her story, the woman said, All right, Ma'am, we'll look into it. Thank you for letting us know. She hung up.

Belinda considered calling back, but she didn't know what she would say. She wanted the woman to believe her. Anything she could think to say —
You have to believe me!
or
I'm telling
the truth!
— sounded hackneyed.

She realized then that this would be something she would always keep for herself. She was the only one who would ever really believe what happened. And rather than feeling discouraged, she felt a small thrill. The vision — the knowledge that such a beautiful moment could exist — was hers. It was a gift that no one else could share.

Days later, she'd tried to make a sketch of the spacecraft, as a record. But after she'd drawn three dots, she hadn't known what else to do. She connected the dots with lines, knowing they were only part of her imagination. And then she'd given up. It was impossible to recreate what she had seen. But she kept the drawing anyway, tucked it in her journal. Eventually it came to represent more of a place marker, like a red dot on a map. She saw the sighting as the beginning of her journey, the start-point of her path. Since that day, she thought she had been drawing a course for herself, a jagged line that navigated through paranormal mysteries to someday reach a definitive end. But she'd never been able to picture that end, because she'd never known what she was looking for to begin with. She'd assumed that once she found the answer, the question would become clear.

Instead, the path had led her to the centre of the Triple Julia Set crop circle. She had been following an arc, so wide and sweeping that she hadn't noticed herself turning back toward its beginning. She had ended up where she started — far beyond crop formations or spacecraft. Against her will, she'd travelled in one huge circle, all the way back to her childhood. Back to Prim, and back to the Snow White fairytale she'd forced herself to believe.

When Prim had called out to her, the world seemed to turn inside out. The field around her softened, the ground bent away like toffee. Before Belinda knew it she was leading Prim off by the elbow, gaining distance from the group,
Come
this way,
her voice hushed. She'd shooed away Rich with his look of concern. All of this without thought. It felt necessary, but she didn't know why. Now they stood on the edge of the innermost circle, Prim shelving her fingers under her eyelids, tears dripping off her knuckles. She looked old for her age, coral lipstick smudged on one side and filling the wrinkles around her mouth. Her hair, unruly and streaked with white, blew across her face. Her cheeks flared pink with heat.

You look exactly how I imagined you, Prim told her. Her smile clawed into Belinda's memory. She remembered a dream she'd once had of Prim in a long white sundress, the hem dragging on the ground and swept with grass stains. Her hair in a dandelion crown. As a child Belinda had imagined this as a scene from Prim's wedding. For years she believed it had really happened, that she had channeled her way into Prim's life through her dreams. But this Prim, the one standing in front of her, would never have worn a white dress like that. She was not that kind of woman — too severe, and in no way ethereal.