Afloat (12 page)

He smiled at me, and his teeth looked straight.

‘I knew you were trouble when I first met you,' he said. ‘Meredith should have warned me.'

I'd never looked like trouble to anyone before. But I understood why it was attractive. We didn't get back on the road right away; we had to aerate the car.

That summer was wet and humid, so the grass was damp against our calves as we waded into the deep sloping ditch away from the road, into the Queen Anne's lace and milkweed, and the naked brown beer bottles whose labels had long since washed away. In front of us was an abandoned house with green siding – so old there was no sign of a driveway anymore; the roof had fallen in and the windows were boarded. On one of the boards someone had spray-painted
HELP
, in white capital letters.

‘Wonder if it's haunted,' Alan said, motioning towards it.

I walked closer to him, waving the bugs away, the sound of crickets humming in the wet air.

‘I hope so,' I said. ‘Looks like it should be.'

‘You ever seen a ghost?' he asked.

‘Once,' I said. ‘Maybe.'

He nodded, and we went closer to look at the tiny roadside home that had nothing around the back of it, but privacy from the road.

What I remember clearly about that moment lying in the long grass as I pulled his navy collared shirt up above his head was the birthmark by his left nipple – dark red and shaped like Lake Superior, slightly raised from the white skin. Something
I took to be a sign even though I wasn't sure I believed in them.

It only lasted about three minutes and was far from romantic, a sodden coffee cup stuck to my ass when I got up. It was a surprising demonstration of Alan's spontaneity, something I learned to relish later in our relationship.

So I was the wild one, and that's the way I wanted it, I thought.

Alan never had stocks or bonds though he was always careful with money. He bought the cheapest chardonnays and insisted there was no difference. He never threw anything when he was angry. Once when I was furious with him I threw a copy of the
TV Guide
at his head. It slapped against the side of his face and he looked so sad it made me even angrier. He never said a thing. In silence, he took Anna from her crib and went for a drive, just the two of them. I willed him not to come home,
willed
him to keep driving, imagining what I would do with my freedom. When he finally pulled into the driveway, I got up from the couch where I'd been waiting and quickly went upstairs to pretend I was asleep.

Anna always asked for her father to put her to bed. I used to feel left out.

You don't even
like
putting her to bed, he would reason.

He always had a peculiar sense of logic, of facts and so-called ‘evidence.' He embraced the idea of ghost sightings and extraterrestrial autopsies, documented telekinesis and unlikely photographs of prehistoric sea-creatures – but while the stories of the Virgin Mary's image appearing on someone's breakfast bagel did arouse his interest somewhat, there simply wasn't enough
good evidence
to convince him of a need for worship. The books of the bible were too old, too remote, and he couldn't be bothered to examine them in any detail.

You don't even know who really wrote them, he would say. Matthew
who
?

Alan preferred the
modern
mysteries of the secular world. He was an atheist, just like so many other people who claim to be atheists, until they start to pray. That's why what happened to me left him so helpless, reading the brochures and the Internet statistics. He even asked about
keeping
it, like it was my appendix from grade four in a jar, and underneath my revulsion I was oddly flattered. He wanted the evidence. Ironic in the end, I suppose, considering how it all turned out.

As an adult I only ever went to church for Christmas mass, classifying me as a PIPP – prayer-in-private-person. The terminology was developed by the Catholic Church as an effort to inflate the number of its members worldwide – a necessary step in its ongoing public relations battle with the Church of Latter Day Saints. The propaganda is so fierce now there's no telling which church is expanding more rapidly.

Being inside the church never did me any good. I might as well say my prayers when I need them – on icy highways or in the hospital room. The last time I prayed in church was the day before leaving the island, but no one heard me.

I admit to taking great delight in the symbols and commercial trinkets of Catholicism. Looking up at the kitchen clock, the famous virgin is pointing to three and half past with her blue-robed arms. I look at it again, not remembering what it said the first time.

Sifting through the rest of the envelope's contents, I come across my small day calendar of the Pope. A gift from my Aunt Lydia, a woman partial to hand-crocheted lace doilies and flea-market rosary beads. Every year Rome would see fit to bestow upon her some new trinket to pass on to me. Bryce had hung the calendar above his bed, and I suddenly remember
the evening we defaced it – perhaps that's why my summer prayers were never answered and everything came undone. I flip the pages and, yes, the July pope has a moustache. The August pope has a penis.

Anna fancies herself a Buddhist. It's better than most religions, I guess, preaching peace and acceptance. Anna has always been even and balanced, on the outside. Even now that Michael has gone and her father is dead, she will never admit to loneliness or wish things different. Everything is a lesson to be turned over and tasted, then
accepted
. She only looks forward. Seems a waste to me sometimes.

I myself have always found a sort of spiritual comfort in candles and light, because these are things I take on faith, even though they make no sense: fire and electricity. When your big questions go unanswered, you have to take comfort in the little things, I suppose. Maybe if that summer had ended differently, I'd be a different person now. Better, or more hopeful.

One evening, soon after we had bought the house, I came home with a Jesus nightlight for the hallway between our bedroom and the bathroom, and Alan refused to let me plug it in.

‘It's creepy,' he said, ‘and disrespectful.'

‘What do you care anyway?' I asked.

‘Just because I'm not religious, doesn't mean I need to make fun of people who are.'

I held the nightlight up to his face.

‘Jesus says you're boring,' I told him.

‘Well, Alan says you're being a bitch,' he replied.

Alan hardly ever swore, so I knew he was serious. I plugged it in anyway. Anna enjoyed it when she was younger, often sitting in front of the plastic figure as if she were praying, running her hands over his robe and enjoying the warmth.
We moved it into her bedroom, and years later she took it with her to college.

‘Thank God,' Alan said when he noticed its absence.

We were a divided family then, and not just on our opinions of the CIA's involvement in the selection of the papacy when the news was revealed in the early thirties.

‘
The LDS and the CIA
,' the papers said. ‘
Who's really in control of the Catholic Church?
' The smaller headlines were about six RWPs hitting Indiana in the space of just over a month.

‘I hear the CIA
is
all Mormon,' Alan said to me, loving the idea of a conspiracy theory. A secret religious takeover, a hostile bid. His favorite book from his youth was
The Da Vinci Code
. While I believed the church of my childhood would survive this media frenzy, I optimistically imagined the aftermath to involve a systematic utopian deconstruction of the world's religions, everyone shrugging and saying: I guess we really did get it wrong and the otter with the dirt in its mouth and the breath of Vishnu and the endless wheel of misery and the Great Mother Goddess and the cosmic egg of opposites are all one and the same and it's all about the individual journey and it's nothing about power so everything is okay.

As long as I could still get my
His Essence
candles that smelled like Jesus – myrrh, aloe, and cassia.

But no one who ever believed had any problem
still
believing, the way it should be I suppose. It was the system that was perhaps at fault, but the white-columned arms of the Vatican still embraced the world ready to forgive the political ambitions of its followers. After a few days of violence anyway.

‘Good riddance,' Alan said, watching the riots in St. Peter's Square.

Russ Gerhardt shook his head when I delivered the morning papers to his desk along with his whipped cream latte.

‘I hear Italy's got some real nice paintings,' was all he said.

One of Anna's friends brought her a shell casing as a souvenir from the Via della Conciliazione, where the Italian military opened fire on the crowd.

‘You can't separate the two, can you?' she asked, as she held the gold casing up to the light. ‘Religion and politics, I mean.'

I looked over to where she sat at the table, as she tried to have some kind of Zen moment.

‘The Mormons never hurt anyone,' I pointed out.

I close the calendar. Something to throw away.

I pick up the letter.

When my mother's breasts wash up on the shore heavy with cancer, I cast them out again with the tide. I have been expecting them for years, but I am not ready for them yet.

I walk down to the beach to read the letter again. After the mile of shops on either side of Main Street the shore opens up, and beside the narrow road everything tumbles down slowly towards the water. The beach is made of stones the size of my fist. In colors of slate and sand and brick, the ground shifts under my feet as I pick down the incline to the shore. I've been daring enough to go swimming in the lake only once, and that was around the other side of the island, where it's shallower.

I sit on a flat piece of driftwood looking out at the water. From here I can watch all the ferries slide across the short dark horizon, as well as the traffic as it arcs along the Mackinac Bridge. The sun is a hazy bulb behind gray clouds, the light soft and muted. Families on bicycles pass along the road behind me, their voices full of idleness and air.

Stewart stay with us, don't ride so far ahead, STEWART!

Where's the Evian? Did you bring the Evian?

They come and go in waves, and soon there is nothing.

Finally, reluctantly, I drag my mother's disease aground to examine it closely.

When my grandmother died after living her last years in a special bed in our basement, I had gone outside to smoke a cigarette. It was late at night and the highway in front of my house was silent. With the cigarette still in my mouth,
I lay down along the double yellow line in the middle of the road. The pavement was dry and still warm from the heat of day. I lay there for maybe a minute, but probably not that long. I wanted the moment to mean something, but I think it meant nothing at all.

Dear Bell
. The letter has a border of yellow pansies. The wind folds the top of the paper over, and I hold it open like a scroll.
Everything is fine
, she says.

I notice a fat ladybug, one with not too many spots, moving along the driftwood towards me. I put my index finger down to tempt it. Changing direction when it meets my skin, it continues down towards the underside of the log and disappears.

Everything is fine
.

They wheeled my grandmother out the next morning, upright on the gurney because she couldn't fit around the corners. My last image is of her strapped down and dead, a grotesque Frankenstein's monster. I was on my way to the bathroom, and you'd think someone would have warned me she was coming.

She is the only person close to me who has died. Bryce's best friend died when he was fourteen after being hit by a school bus, and another of his friends has a bullet in his knee from a drive-by. No one in my high school even suffered a serious illness, apart from alcohol poisoning. It's left me unprepared. I've been too long without tragedy, and I have no learned response, no instincts. Maybe I'm overreacting. But I cry anyway.

Everything's fine
, she writes,
no need to come home
.

I make the long walk to the other end of Main Street, not riding my bike, not wanting to get there too fast. Saint Mary's church is white and impermanent looking – its severe, square
shape and high wooden stairs a testament to its preparedness for snow and isolation. Whenever I pass by, its doors are always open.

Inside the ceiling is higher than seems possible from the outside. It is white inside as well, the pews warm and made of wood. Above the altar is a strange mural – the Virgin Mary arriving on Mackinac Island via ferryboat, her arms outstretched. There aren't too many ornaments, just red carnations on either side of the altar, crimson hymnbooks in place, everything functional. The church is busy with visitors, the click of cameras echoes about the space. I have a massive painful splinter from the driftwood log, and it reminds me of when I used to get pencil lead jammed into my skin at school.

At the back of the church are the candles where I expect them to be, and for a dollar donation I light one with a long match.

Burning in its metal cup I put my candle beside the others. It strikes me that two tea lights together look like waxy white breasts with flaming nipples. I move my candle so it sits alone, but then I wonder if it was some sort of sign. I move it back.

The skin around my eyes feels wet, and I wish I'd brought my sunglasses.

A man enters the church with his two sons, all three of them eating ice cream, and they stop near the back as he points out the mural.

‘I told you God was everywhere,' he says. ‘Even here, look.'

He points to the Virgin Mary arriving on the island.

‘He's like Santa, he sees everything.'