Gargoyles (20 page)

Though dinner was thick with this kind of talk, and Neil hardly noticed the mussels going into his mouth, Joanne said it was the best dinner she'd ever had. Neil said some garlic would have been nice, and more wine, but — look out there, the fog was gone and the stars were out. Which for some reason set her off crying again.

Sex was her idea. Because of this and her general spookiness he was nervous, but he rose to it. There was crying in the middle, then an awkward attempt to start it up again, which somehow worked, for both of them, but then there was crying, way more crying, at the end.

And more now. It's the middle of the night. He needs to fix this. His hand on her shoulder, which has stopped convulsing for the moment, he decides to try to get her talking again, though it sometimes triggers the crying.

“So, Joanne, so, Joanne, honey, are you saying that you think there's nothing left to live for? I think there's lots left to live for. There's a ton. There's way more great places to see.”

She answers him and he drops to his knees to hear her say through the cushions, “Neil, I know. It's not that.”

He has an idea. “Are you thinking you maybe want to
move
here?”

“No I don't think so. I don't think that would —”

“Because we could.” He shouldn't be saying this but he senses new interest under those cushions. “If, if that's what you want. Another couple years, Vicky's not so much in the picture and —”

“Vicky. Go check on Vicky.”

Neil flicks on the hallway light and silently turns the doorknob to Vicky's room. He can't hear her breathing so he leans in further, to see. He closes her door and returns to the couch to sit beside Joanne, who has knocked away the cushions and is staring at the ceiling.

“Yeah, she's fine.”

“What time is it?”

“Three. Ten past three.”

“No, I couldn't move here,” she says. And, after a moment, “I don't fit.”

“Well, then it's not good enough for you.”

Neil doesn't wonder, not for a moment, if that might be true. All he sees is, for the moment she isn't crying, and she no longer looks on the verge of crying, and maybe whatever happened to her is gone. But her face says differently and there's no way he's going to tell her that Vicky's not in her room. It's like he couldn't tell her even if he wanted to. He feels pulled in two directions, by two women he somehow no longer knows.

The next morning, getting dressed for brunch in the restaurant, Neil pokes his head in Vicky's room and pretends to be surprised, telling Joanne, “Hey — she's already up and out.” And now in the restaurant — the velvet rope is down so they just wander in and take a table — Neil and Joanne see their daughter approach wearing an apron with an EdenTides logo. She has menus, a pad and pencil, and a deadpan joke going.

“Good morning, I'm Victoria and I'll be your waitress this morning?” Not breaking a smile she places the menus and jots on her pad. She chirps, a bit deliriously, “And you're table
one
?” Neil doesn't know what to say and Joanne has an eyebrow way
up. “Alex,” Vicky tells them in a stage whisper, notepad over her mouth, “had a rough night. I'm doing his shift.”

Neil can see her nervousness through all this, her waiting for the explosion, like the one a month ago. Across the table Joanne looks troubled again, staring but not seeing, like someone doing hopeless math in her head.

Neil asks his daughter, “Do you know how?”

Vicky cocks a hip and readies herself to write in her pad. “Would you like extra butter with that bread, sir?”

“Hey, you do. You're good.”

“Do you
mind
doing this?” Joanne asks, sincere as Neil has ever seen her. Damned if she isn't going to cry again.

“Alex told me ten an hour plus tips.”

Neil asks, “How about Andrew?”

“Who's Andrew?”

“I think he owns this place.”

“Alex's dad?”

“Thin guy, glasses, yeah.”

“His dad's not . . . saying much. When Alex shows up I'll remind him he said ten plus tips.”

“Okay.” Neil cracks open his menu and peers in. “What's the special?”

“Sockeye in an omelette with chipotle. It's very fresh.”

“I don't know what that is,” Neil says, “but you're good.”

“I'm
really
good,” Vicky says as she curls away.

Neil mumbles “butter” to Joanne and rises to chase his daughter. Around the corner at the double door to the kitchen he catches her by the arm. She spins, won't look him in the eye.

“Your mother doesn't know.” He squeezes harder. “Don't tell her.”

Vicky looks up. Though no one's in hearing range she
mouthes an over-large
thank you
. Neil sees her bloodshot eyes, her fatigue. He releases her and she turns quickly and shoulders through the door into the kitchen.

“Butter,” Neil tells Joanne again when he returns.

“She has your sense of humor,” Joanne says, not looking up from the menu.

Scanning his for sausages, spotting none, Neil weighs this. He did find her waitress routine funny. “Well, I guess maybe she does.”

After a time Joanne says, “I hope Alex learned a lesson.” She seems to have figured the math out in her head.

“She looks good in that getup,” Neil says. It's true. She's showered — she's had herself a shower somewhere — and looks fresh. Her shirt is buttoned all the way up, and not a wrinkle in that apron. Sometimes his daughter can look slutty, and though it's how they all look these days he doesn't like it. Despite the night, this morning she looks good, a good employee.

“Anyway, Neil” — Joanne puts her hand over his — “I'm feeling better. You helped.” She pauses, pulls her hand away. “I know what happened now. I healed. I had to heal, and I did.”

He really hopes it's true that she's better. He thinks he's tearing up now himself. He's so tired. This vacation has been . . . like some sort of trial. He directs his gaze out the window. The fog is thinner. There's wind in there swirling it around. He doesn't like this place.

“Hey,” he says, “you haven't had a good cry like that in a while.”

“No, I guess I haven't.”

“So you're feeling better.”

“Let's play cards tonight. Let's get a deck of cards. And
two
bottles of wine.”

“Two. Holy cow.”

“I'm on vacation.”

“Yes you are.”

“I'm retired.”

“Welcome to the
big
vacation, then.”

“Thank you.”

Joanne lifts her water glass and so does Neil. They clink them. He finds her eye, and there she is, it's her. There's that confidence she has when she gets the high bowling score, or sometimes when she comes home from church.

“So, was that some of that
super
menopause I was warned about?” He chuckles, and she blinks rapidly and looks out the window. “Sorry, sorry — that was some of my famous sense of humour.”

“It's okay.”

“Sorry. Can we do this again?” He raises his water glass, but she doesn't. Instead she asks him to remind her to phone Raquel, who had her scan yesterday.

Vicky comes for their orders and both want the sockeye special. Neil asks Vicky if she wouldn't mind checking what the house dressing is and Vicky says yes and thanks him, saying it's something she should know. Neil is just beginning to feel okay about things, about his wife not crying any more and his daughter doing a good job, when the desk guy — Andrew, the owner — appears at their table, breathing heavily. He almost shoulders Vicky out of the way. His face is so slack it takes a second for Neil to realize the man is angry.

“Was it you,” Andrew begins, catching his breath. “Was it you, who took those mussels, down in front?”

“Yesterday? Down here?” Neil points at the window.

“From the resort beach — was that you?”

Trying a little half-smile, Neil looks up to face him. He is
aware of a table of ladies, and his daughter and his wife, paying close attention.

“Hey, we wanted some, you know, some
solstice
-mussels. There a problem?”

“Can you read?”

“Can you
run
?”

Joanne's hard hand pins his to the table, and the guy asks if that was some kind of threat. Neil can feel his leather vest tight over his grey T-shirt, which is tight as well. His heart is going pretty good. He hasn't been in a fight in too many years.

Andrew jabs his finger and hisses, way too loud, that the brochure explains clearly, as does the laminated card on the back of the bathroom door, that no harvesting of shellfish is allowed on the property, just as guests are not to pick wildflowers or — and here the guy's hiss becomes a shout — “
chop down the bloody trees for firewood
.” He asks if Neil even noticed what he “brutalized,” that there's now an ugly square of bare rock, “ruining a pristine beach that is no different than a garden.”

Neil speaks softly. “This is my wife, Joanne.” He shakes a finger at her. “It's her retirement vacation.” He glances at her, expecting to see her in tears again, expecting at least an expression that will help his point and make this guy Andrew feel bad. He is surprised to see her clear-eyed, looking almost bored, like what's happening here at their table is nothing much.

“And — and this is my daughter, Vicky, doing your son's job. Maybe when he gets out of bed you can get him to, you know, glue a bunch of mussels from someone else's beach back onto yours.” Using only his nostrils to breathe, Andrew widens his eyes at this but he doesn't move. Neil sees that his glasses are dotted with salt spray and that the knees of his pants are wet. This guy has been down on the beach, really upset about his rock.

“Okay, no, seriously,” Neil continues, trying actually to be helpful now, because the guy is still just staring, and hasn't been thinking straight, what with his kid out all night too. “If you took all the
rest
of the mussels off that, you know, rock outcrop, it would look better. Really, it would look okay. It would be, you know,‘uniform'.” Andrew is still staring. “I could give you a hand. Hey, you could add them to the menu. A mussel special. You know, they're pretty good if you steam them in a little wine.”

He turns to the window. Above are drifting cuts of blue, and he can see down through moving gaps to distant black water, not unlike the view from a landing plane. The remaining fog seems to be churning in fear of the sun. He has just been given public shit and is embarrassed at having been friendly in return. He hopes the guy knows he has been let off easy.

But Andrew, who only now identifies himself as the owner of EdenTides Resort, quietly tells the three of them that he won't instigate criminal charges, or enforce the specified $500 vandalism fine, or charge them for the two nights, or for this brunch. He does insist that he and his family vacate the premises as soon as they finish their meal.

“You get paid?”

Hair dripping from the shower, Vicky is getting her suitcase-on-wheels together.

“I sure did.”

“Atta girl.” Neil is glad she doesn't mention the twenty tip he left her. “It's good you finished your shift. Mom says you even went in back and helped with clean-up.”

Vicky says it was the most passive-aggressive thing she could think of and Neil has only a fleeting sense of what his daughter might mean. Nor does he know what to make of what he overheard
her telling her mother, when Joanne asked if she'd seen Alex today and Vicky told her with a sassy little smile, “I left him crying beside the walk-in fridge.”

But Neil is proud how no one in his family lost their cool in the face of hostility. Joanne is off on the trails having a last little hike, in the sun. And Neil has some business of his own still to attend to. Their taxi won't be here for another half hour.

When it does come, Vicky gets up front with the driver, who introduces himself as Chris. He pivots awkwardly and shakes Neil's and Joanne's hands. In the air is that it's going to be a long ride.

As they begin taking the curves, Neil watches Joanne closely. She's alert and smiles at all the sights they pass. He no longer knows this woman.

“Have a nice walk?”

“It was wonderful.”

“Nicer in the sun?”

“Still cold by the water but it wakes you up.”

Neil calls forward, “Ever get warm here, Chris?”

“Nope.”

“Well,
that
sucks.” He waits. “I'd say that place sort of sucked in general.”

Joanne doesn't look at him to say, “It was wonderful.”

“You don't seem all that sad to be leaving.”

“No, I'm not sad. I've seen it.” She adds, softly, “It isn't for outsiders.”

Neil settles into his seat-back. It was almost better when she was crying. He waits until he thinks of something good to say. “Joanne? It doesn't mean they're better.”

“
I
know that.” She watches more trees go by. She looks completely okay with things. “They wouldn't get Drumheller either.”

“No. They damn well wouldn't.”

It's a long ride but no one speaks. Neil feels hollow, and alone. He pictures Drumheller in a tourist brochure, then sees the inside of the dinosaur museum, and he knows what those giant trees reminded him of — they were like dinosaurs, the same thigh-bone thickness of dinosaur bones, only they were alive, and black in the fog, and he didn't like being in them. He thinks fondly, almost pleadingly, of his garage at home, its cement-cool in summer, and the old console TV he has in there for hot weather. For some reason he pictures a show last week when a beaten-up son squints up at a mean father and yells that he'll die a lonely death. Neil looks at Joanne over against her window and it only makes sense that he stay over here leaning against his. He's had enough crazy thoughts for a month and he wishes he could snooze, and then he must have because now he's being elbowed awake by Joanne who says, “Vicky and I are thinking Vancouver. The driver needs to know.” Neal sees they're not even in the outskirts of Victoria, the meter reads $111 and is flying up fast. He's still working out how to charge all this to EdenTides Resort.