The Waterproof Bible (10 page)

Rebecca looked up and waited, and when her mother
did not appear, she began to climb. Because the base of the ladder had remained relatively close to the house, the arc wasn’t steep. It was, however, very wobbly. Twice she almost fell. When she reached the top, she looked over the fence.

The dog saw Rebecca before Rebecca saw the dog. She tried to pull away, but the dog had already jumped. Though she jerked her head back, it was too late; the dog bit into her throat. Or so she thought as her momentum carried her backwards. In truth, the dog had only managed to get hold of her T-shirt, ripping the collar. But Rebecca thought she was mortally wounded as she fell off the ladder, which jiggled, turned and then fell on top of her. She woke up in the hospital with her arm in a cast and a profound fear of dogs.

Although Rebecca put the ripped T-shirt inside one of the growing number of shoeboxes under her bed, it did not trap her new fear of dogs, only her fear of this one specific dog: T-Bone. While it was true that no other dogs or people could feel her fear of T-Bone, this helped little with her fear of dogs in general. It was an important lesson for Rebecca: objects stored only kept the emotions specific to the moment.

Keeping her arms crossed in front of her face, Rebecca heard the dog’s jaws snapping shut. But then, nothing happened. When nothing continued to happen, she opened her eyes. The dog’s leash was taut. It stood on its hind legs, with its face less than an inch from hers. Its breath was sour. It barked. Flinching, Rebecca took a step backwards. The dog fell to all fours, then jumped back up. It strained against its leash and continued to snarl.

“Fuck you, dog,” Rebecca whispered. She turned and walked away. Four steps later, as the dog continued to bark, Rebecca turned around and yelled “Fuck you, dog!” At the end of the alley, she yelled again. “Fuck! You! Dog!” Standing in front of her car, having already unlocked the door, Rebecca stopped and turned around again. “Fuck you!” she yelled. “Fuck you, dog!”

She was in her car, still muttering “Fuck you, dog, fuck you,” when she realized that her feelings about Lisa were no longer just foggy; they were absent. Rebecca began sobbing, not for the loss of her sister, but for the loss of every emotion she had for her. Rebecca shut off the engine and pulled the keys from the ignition. She cried for some time.

She continued to sniffle as she drove towards the hospital. As she signalled her entry into the parking lot, she had a thought. Was it possible that her feelings about Lisa had been eliminated when she threw away her keepsakes? And if so, would throwing away any keepsake eradicate whatever emotional history was attached to it? It seemed ridiculous. It was the least likely explanation for the sudden absence of her feelings for Lisa. But realizing that the presence of the dog in her neighbours’ yard was the perfect opportunity to test this theory, she turned off her signal and drove directly to E.Z. Self Storage, where she parked and went immediately to the second floor.

Hanging the open padlock on the door of unit #207, she returned to the stack of boxes in the front right corner. She removed the top two boxes and then opened the one marked fears. She tipped it over, spilling its contents across the concrete floor. With the toe of her right
shoe, she pushed objects out of the way until she found a child’s T-shirt with a ripped collar.

Rebecca left unit #207 with the ripped T-shirt in her hand. Opening the back door of E.Z. Self Storage, she went straight to the Dumpster. A plywood bookshelf leaned out of the left corner, and two torn La-Z-Boy chairs were piled on the right. She scrunched up the T-shirt, making a tiny ball of cloth, which she threw into the air. It opened while still going up and then drifted lazily back down towards the middle of the Dumpster.

“Fuck you, T-Bone,” she said. “Fuck you.”

As the T-shirt landed amidst the trash, Rebecca felt the pain in her heart again, only this time it was much less intense. It was gone before she reached her car. Checking her watch, she saw that less than an hour had passed since she’d left her house. Just after she started the engine, she had a daydream in which she was a child playing in her parents’ backyard. Digging in her sandbox, she uncovered a set of miniature dogs. She lined them up in the grass and taught them to bark the national anthem. Again, this felt like a memory, though she knew it wasn’t. She’d practically forgotten about it by the time she parked on the side street behind her house and walked back to the alley.

When she reached her neighbours’ backyard, the dog was still there, still tied to the tree. Its muscles were just as thick, its teeth just as sharp. Rebecca walked towards it. The dog did not growl or bark. As Rebecca continued to approach, she thought about the moment with T-Bone when her T-shirt had ripped and her fear of dogs had started. Although the facts remained vivid, emotionally it was if the event had never happened. Her
fear of dogs had been completely wiped out. This reality was made impossible to deny by the fact that, as Rebecca stood next to the dog, it still didn’t bark, growl or snarl. It lifted up its head and, when Rebecca reached out her hand, the dog licked it, its tail wagging.

There were few, if any, reasons for the Prairie Embassy Hotel to exist. Located three kilometres outside the town limits of Morris, Manitoba, it was not near a major tourist attraction, a natural wonder or even a major highway. The rooms did not have cable; they did not even have televisions. The phones were rotary. There wasn’t a computer in the building.

Perhaps Margaret’s most antiquated notion as a hotelier was her insistence that the front desk be manned until 2:00 a.m. regardless of how many guests were booked or anticipated. As the hotel’s only employee, this task fell to Stewart. So at 12:45 a.m. on Thursday, August 25, when Margaret came downstairs to find out why the phone kept ringing, she should have found Stewart behind the front desk. All she found was his cellphone, which, as she stood there, rang again. Margaret knew that a search of the hotel would likely prove fruitless. There was a much better chance that he was five hundred metres from the hotel, hammer in hand, working on his sailboat.

Stewart sat securing the last of the quarter-inch trim around the cabin, so focused on his work that he neither saw nor heard Margaret as she climbed the stepladder, coming aboard.

“Stewart!” she called, but he still didn’t look up.
Waiting until his hammer was high in the air, Margaret adjusted her scarf and tried again. “Stewart!”

Startled, Stewart turned, saw Margaret and set down his hammer.

“You sure want to finish this thing,” she said.

“I’m so close! Four or five days and it’ll be done.”

“As long as we don’t get any guests?”

“Well …”

“It’s okay. We probably won’t.” Margaret kneeled on the deck and then lay flat on her back.

“Do you want me to turn out the lights?” Stewart asked.

“Could you?”

“Of course.”

Hanging from the mast were four industrial lamps, each of which was plugged into a long orange extension cord that ran out the back of the hotel and up to the boat. The instant Stewart unplugged the lamps, the sky filled with stars. Stepping carefully around tools and scraps of wood, Stewart lay down near Margaret. Their heads only inches apart, their bodies making a forty-five-degree angle, they stared upwards.

Three years and six months earlier, when Stewart left Rebecca, he did not think he was leaving her forever. He had left her before, on three different occasions, and after a little time to himself he’d always returned to her. But this time was different. Something peculiar happened to Stewart He experienced a moment of divine intervention while barbecuing.

The house he was staying in belonged to a couple whose recent separation was so painful that neither of
them could continue living in their home. When Stewart arrived, he’d been startled by the evidence of quick abandonment: the bed was unmade, mildew-covered laundry filled the washer, and on the kitchen table was a half-full mug of coffee with mould growing inside it. For two days, as Stewart moved around the house, he had the odd sensation that he was on board a ship that had suddenly sunk; the kind of wreck where, years later when the scuba divers discover it, the sails are at high mast, the bunks contain skeletons, and the treasure is still safely locked in the hull.

Just after eight in the evening, Stewart checked the freezer, because cooking felt like less effort than talking to a deliveryman. He was more than a little drunk, having discovered the liquor cabinet earlier in the day. Finding a stack of seemingly inseparable patties, he carried them to the backyard. The problems began when he discovered that the barbecue was not gas but was filled with charcoal. Remembering childhood barbecues with his father behind the grill, Stewart searched for a can of lighter fluid. Finding one, he squirted a liberal amount of fuel on the coals.

Stewart went back to the house and returned with a box of wooden matches. He opened the box without realizing it was upside down. The majority of the matches fell through the grill and onto the coals. Lighting one of the few that remained, Stewart dropped the match. The sudden whoosh made him close his eyes. Putting his hands to his eyebrows, he confirmed that they were still there. When he opened his eyes, Stewart saw what seemed to be dangerously tall flames rising from the barbecue. The flames did not get bigger or smaller. They seemed to burn without consuming anything. In the
centre was a tiny blue flame that flickered higher and lower as it spoke. “You know as well as I do that she has to ask you back,” the tiny blue flame said. His voice was kindly and familiar. “And she has to voice it. She has to say it out loud. And what she’s saying underneath it, what she’s saying with her heart, has to be the same.”

“That would be nice.”

“But has she ever done it before?”

“No.”

“Not once?”

“No, not once.”

“So it’s pretty obvious that you’re gonna have to wait for her to say it, no?”

Stewart became suspicious. “What are you getting at?” he asked.

“I mean, you could go back to her, but where’s that gonna get ya?”

“Right back here.”

“Exactly. That’s all I’m saying. You’re gonna have to wait.”

“I guess so.”

“So while you’re waiting, here’s something you can do. A noble cause. A personal quest.”

“Is this a vision?”

“Call it what you want.”

“What? What do you want me to do?”

“Go west.”

“And?”

“Maybe build a boat?”

“Maybe?”

“The rest is up to you.”

“Come on!”

“Sorry, but that’s as specific as I can get right now,” the tiny blue flame said. It got smaller and disappeared.

Stewart stood there for a second, failing to notice that the flames had suddenly gotten higher and hotter and that the white vinyl siding on the house was turning black. He threw his drink on the fire, which only made the flames spurt higher, then he spotted the garden hose.

The next morning, Stewart drove to Home Depot and purchased seventeen feet of vinyl siding. Still hung-over but having completed the repairs, he called Rebecca to make plans for his return. But when they talked, Stewart could not feel her heart. Or, at least, he felt no sadness, grief or loss coming from her—neither her voice nor her heart asked him back.

Stewart headed west and, through a combination of chance and cheap bus tickets, arrived in Morris, Manitoba. He’d planned on spending a single night at the Prairie Embassy Hotel, but the next morning, purely on impulse, Margaret offered him a job as night clerk. Stewart accepted, agreeing to a three-month contract.

It was during the first month of his long, lonely nights at the front desk that Stewart began to wonder if the flame of the burning barbecue really did have a divine origin. He began to set small, controlled fires in an effort to seek advice and wisdom—and sometimes simply out of loneliness. It never worked, so Stewart began to suspect that only an accidental fire would make the tiny blue flame speak to him again. But accidentally setting a fire was difficult to do.

However, three weeks after his arrival in Morris, he began building a sailboat. Although he wasn’t entirely
convinced that the tiny blue flame had been divinely inspired, he figured, why chance it? He had a lot of time on his hands. Things at the Prairie Embassy Hotel were slow, and Stewart was a man who liked to stay busy. Plus, he estimated that he could get the whole thing built in under three months, easy.

Stewart and Margaret continued staring upwards, neither moving nor speaking. Both had been lulled into a contemplative state by the innumerable stars overhead. After more time passed, Margaret spoke. “How metaphorical do you think this boat is?” she asked.

Propping himself up with his left arm, Stewart looked at Margaret. She continued looking up at the sky. “What are you asking?” he asked.

“Can I be frank?”

“When aren’t you?”

“This requires a greater degree of frankness than usual.”

“I’ll tell you if I think you’re going too far.”

“That’s fair,” she said. She spoke directly but continued looking up at the stars. “Do you think this boat, the building of it, is misplaced anxiety about leaving Rebecca? About how badly you want to leave her—emotionally, not just physically—but you can’t?”

Stewart did not immediately reply. He tapped the toes of his workboots together. He looked up at the mast, which he saw as a long, black absence of stars. Making a knuckle with the index finger of his right hand, he tapped the deck three times. “That’s a lot of misplaced anxiety,” he said.

“The only other explanation I can think of is that
you feel fated, or called upon, to build a sailboat in the middle of the Canadian Prairies.”

Once again Stewart’s reply was not immediate. He patted his pockets and realized that he’d left his phone in the hotel. He sat up halfway, so he could see Margaret’s face, and then lay down on the deck again. “I see your point,” he said.

“So which is it?”

“Can it be a little Freudian as well?”