Gargoyles (19 page)

Joanne is ready. She shakes her head. “Vicky? We came here to sit still and breathe.”

Vicky does sit down with a pile of magazines in the lodge fireplace area so Neil and Joanne head back for showers. En route they pass an odd, tall woman with long grey hair who looks like she would be shy in the city but here she wishes them happy solstice.

Waiting for his turn in the tub Neil stares out the window into the hanging white. He's learned the fog is normal but that there's a chance of it breaking today and their view coming out. He picks up the brochure, more the size of a book, looking for Services, but there aren't any. Instead there are paragraphs about
not
having services, not even phones or TVs or radios, and instead you got silence and healing and raccoons visiting your porch. There are pages on local arts and crafts, with pictures of pottery. There's a page on the Indians who once lived here, and one on Spanish explorers (which is why islands are Galiano and Cortes), and how Captain Vancouver came to map the area for England, and gave Point No Point its name. There's a page on the “resident” bald eagles, and ravens, which are described not as “tricksters” but as “The Trickster.” All interesting, but to Neil, who was in business for thirty-three years, it rings suspiciously like fancy excuses for why a bare-bones resort costs so much.

He listens to Joanne showering, hearing changes in spray that mean she's reaching for shampoo or enjoying a blast on the neck. He Frisbees the brochure onto the table. Amazing they are finally here. Here they are. The place she's talked about for so long. One plan had been to go to Sally Too's, the main art gallery for local artists. “Artists from around the world,”
Joanne told him, more than once, “choose to live here.” Thing is, he's just read that Sally Too's is fifteen miles down the road and there will be no getting there without a car, another thing Neil will keep to himself and hope Joanne doesn't discover.

Showers done, it's decided Neil will do the grocery run while Joanne hikes off on the trails, the main activity here. Neil suggests this arrangement, reminding her of his solo adventure to Cincinnati and hinting how it might be good for her to do the first hike alone, because it's her retirement and this is her special place. She dresses against the chill of the fog, throwing a bright yellow scarf around her neck. She's so excited that as she strides out the door when he wishes her good luck she can barely mumble a reply.

Neil finds no good luck himself. He spends the afternoon seeking some sort of ride to the nearest grocery, which is in Sooke, a half-hour back along the curvy road. The one bus was hours ago. A taxi is a hundred bucks. They really should have planned better but Neil just wants to get the fridge filled, find some beer and wine, make a nice meal for her. Steaks, a fancy salad with sliced eggs in it.

Maybe because it's Sunday, or because of wild solstice parties or whatever the hell they do here, no one at the Sooke taxi answers. Now the guy at the lobby desk is impatient with him hogging the phone. The guy — Andrew — hesitated shaking hands when Neil stuck his out and said, “Neil McRae, cabin fourteen.” Andrew didn't smile once, making Neil want to call him Andy, and he had nothing more helpful to say than, “We
do
have an excellent restaurant.” He says this twice, which Neil decides is a sort of insult.

Out in the parking lot he considers hitchhiking but suspects that a burly older man standing in fog on a gravel shoulder
with his thumb out looks like bad luck. The goatee makes him look even riskier. And though he stopped the weights a decade ago he knows he can still look dangerous in a T-shirt, especially the tight blacky he has on now. Not knowing what to do, he sees a younger man in jeans taking a white bucket out of the trunk of his tan Mercedes.

“How ya doing there?” Neil says to be friendly, but mostly to let the guy know he's a fellow patron of the resort, not someone who's considering hitchhiking to Sooke for beer.

“I'm doing
well
. Found a nice appetizer.” He tilts the bucket at Neil. Black shells.

“Watcha got there?”

“Oh, a good bunch of mussels,” says the man, quite proud. “Steam 'em in wine and garlic —
oh
yes.”

“Get 'em yourself?”

“You have to hunt a little but they're around. Any low tide. Go that way, or that way” — He points either direction along the highway — “Find a road down to the beach, find a rock outcrop. Find a fissure in the rock, they cluster in there. You need a heavy knife or screwdriver or something, pry them off.” He makes prying motions with one hand and he grits his teeth.

“Okay, thanks, that sounds good.”

“The tide's still good right now. I found a road down, five miles south of here.”

“Well, great. I think I will.”

“And the red tide's okay. I phoned Fisheries. The PSP update.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Which is so reassuring.”

“It sure is.”

“So, wine and garlic, ten minutes, maybe some lemon as well, dip some baguette in the broth or, or — do know what's
good
?”

“No.”

“
Foccacia
. Dip some foccacia.
Oh
yes. With the salt, the embedded rock salt.”

“Well, okay. I'll do that.”

“Good luck.”

“Hey, thanks.” Neil is already turning away when out the side of his face he adds, “Happy solstice,” feeling bad even as he says it, but the man with the Mercedes calls back, “Yes!”

Out behind the lodge Neil finds and empties a white compost pail. He grabs the sturdiest knife from his kitchenette drawer. Joanne still hasn't returned — she must be having herself a time. He heads down the trail into the fog, through the trees, some really humongous trees, they really are big. Paths crisscross but it's easy — just keep heading downhill where the water's going to be. The surf grows louder and louder the closer he gets.

It's good to be out of the trees, and on the beach it's fairly exciting. It lies under the canopy of fog and he can see not only the waves crashing on shore but also across the water to a distant wall of black that, according to the map, is Washington State, several miles away. Here on the beach it feels ten degrees colder, hard to believe it's almost July, and Neil finds himself striding to a rock outcrop with tight, herky-jerky speed. He should have grabbed his leather vest.

It doesn't take long. In fact, this beach is mostly rock out-crop and there are mussels galore, clustered in the fissures, sure, but also spilling out in carpets of nothing but mussels. Neil simply stoops and begins scraping a cluster away. It takes no time at all. No need to drive anywhere. Odd that no one's discovered this spot, right here at the base of the main path to the resort, and a resort with kitchenettes no less.

He keeps it neat, carving out a square patch, maybe four feet by four feet, on the mussel-covered rock face. Mussels are really quite something, so black and glossy, way more exotic than your basic clams. Turn them in the light and they shine hints of blue, just like a crow. And now the bucket is full. Neil hefts what feels like six, seven pounds of mussels — plenty for dinner, and just in time. Heading up the trail back into the forest, he wonders if he likes mussels. He's pretty sure he had them in Calgary once, at that hardware conference. He knows they're orange, which is a weird colour meat to put in your mouth.

Her crying starts that evening.

Neil returns from his food mission with a bucket of mussels, a bottle of what he's been told is good B.C. white wine, and French bread. He even has a plastic baggie of butter pats. After complaining to Andy the desk guy that their brochure fails to mention there being no stores anywhere, Andrew let him buy some wine from the bar at cost after Neil agreed to tell no one, since it was “highly illegal.” Neil didn't care for his churchy way of doing business, like there's something wrong with you for wanting wine in the first place. Neil begged some bread too, and at the door he remembered butter. He hated bread without butter, it was one of his little things, as Joanne called them. Throw in some of those butter pats and you have yourself a deal, he joked, the joke being that, with wine in hand and paid for, the deal was already done. Andy didn't smile, and for this and other reasons Neil was now pretty certain he was the owner, which would make him that waiter's father. Not that it was “a deal” anyway — fifteen bucks for one skinny bottle of wine. Stepping out into the fog and aiming himself at his
cabin, Neil thumbed the bottle neck through the plastic bag to make sure it wasn't a screw-top.

He comes in whistling, loaded down with their romantic dinner, and Joanne is curled on the couch bucking with sobs. She hears him and keeps crying as she looks up, cheeks wet and shiny, eyes red but wide open and just looking at him. And the slightest, scariest smile.

“Where's Vicky?” is what Neil automatically says.

But Joanne shakes her head and says Vicky's fine, Vicky's been in and out, she gave her money for the evening and made her promise to act responsibly. It's not Vicky, Joanne says.

She says she doesn't know what it is. She adds, “I'm fine,” before coughing into sobs again. Neil grabs her up and hugs her timidly. He asks if something happened. Before shaking her head she hesitates, which scares him. He has no idea how to hug her or for how long. He tries, “I know you miss Sears, hon, but this is ridiculous,” and she can't even laugh. So he holds her until she settles and he hears another, “I'm fine.” Then she bravely asks him what he's brought.

Neil explains his day, and promises to make a proper grocery run tomorrow. He tells her you really do need a car here. Joanne nods at this and for a second he thinks he's triggered more tears, but she takes an interest and goes to look in the bucket in the sink. He tells her his idea, which is to melt half the butter pats for dipping, but save the rest for the bread. He asks if she likes mussels and she's unsure.

“We'll steam them up in that wine,” says Neil. “They're good that way.”

Joanne whimpers, waking him. She scrambles out of bed and Neil goes up on an elbow. Her timing, why now? He is frightened
anew, speechless watching her moaning dance. At her most tearful surges she smacks her bare feet on the cabana's pine floor, trying to make noise. Her new black lingerie rides high on her, rumpled from their sex and dark wet at the belly. It did make her look silly and older and Neil feels nothing but bad to think this about her now, as if these thoughts of his can reach her through the air and add to her horrible burden. Whatever it is. He only half-understands what she told him, and he still wants to try to find a doctor.

Slapping at the air, she spins around, sees him watching.

“Neil, oohh, I'm just — I don't —”

She seems worse. She stares fiercely at him then punches the heels of her palms into her mouth. Her cheeks puff in and out as she breathes and she gazes off now at nothing, looking truly crazy. He has come to understand while watching her tonight that, when you no longer care what you look like to others, there's no question you're in some sort of trouble, and for Joanne, so careful with her looks, this is twice as true.

“Ohh!” Joanne throws her head back and this leads her in a stumble to the couch where she flops. She closes her mouth tight and forces long hissing breaths through her nostrils.

Neil has struggled up, got his pyjamas back on, and stoops at her side, not quite touching her with his outstretched hand.

“Sweetheart? Sweetheart, is there pain? Can you — can you feel something? Physically wrong?”

Joanne shakes her head.

“If there is I want to call a doctor.” He adds, almost as a threat, “I'm calling a doctor anyway.” He's said all this before, several times.

“
Neil!
” She flings her hands toward his face to stop him talking. She turns to escape him, sees something worse out the
dark window, and plunges her face into the cushions to escape that too. She gathers cushions around her head. Her whimpering is muffled but Neil hears words in it. He bends lower to catch what might give him some clue.

He hears, “I told you. I told you what it is. I told you, I told you.”

Sure, she did. He still doesn't know what to make of it. Over dinner — a half hour of no crying at all — she told him she was walking when it happened, when
something
happened. She had just climbed up from the beach, the famous wilderness beach, which had all been exactly as described, perfect. The towering old growth cedar and hemlock, the whispering breeze up in their canopy, which speaks to you. She heard a raven — it croaked at her, then clucked. She maybe saw a whale breach, a huge splash off in the distance. A couple she spoke to had yesterday seen an orca. Yes, it was Eden. In fact, as soon as she'd set foot on the beach she had thanked the place. She had said out loud to the ocean, not feeling silly at all, “Thanks for bringing me here. You were right.” Everything was perfect, and wonderful. And then, back on the trail, it happened. She stopped dead in the middle of the gorgeous trail, she looked around her, and panicked. She couldn't catch her breath and she started shaking. Shaking, crying, holding on to a tree for support.

When she told Neil the problem, none of it made sense to him. One thing she said was, “I knew it was all over.”
No
, she didn't mean she was sad to be retired, and getting old. It wasn't that at all. Another thing she said was, “I knew that this was it, there was nothing better than this.” To Neil's question, “So you
do
like it here then?” she got angry and told him that she loved it here and that was the problem. He tried suggesting that she
was overtired, which made her cry harder in frustration. He asked her if, after all the build-up, she was maybe having a little let-down?
Yes!
she said. A
big
let-down. But didn't she just say she liked it here? Yes,
and there's nothing left!