Galveston (6 page)

Beverly realized that she was sweating, and she paused to consider her wardrobe, especially in light of the little the girls were now wearing. Beverly was dressed as she had been when she’d left Canada—a blue skirt and matching jacket, a white blouse, a camisole. She pulled off the jacket and then, after a moment’s hesitation, unbuttoned and removed her blouse. She rolled up the clothes, tucked them in the crook of her arm. Beverly figured she still outstripped the overfed girls on the modesty front.

But as she climbed into the minivan, claiming the front passenger seat, she could sense Maywell stiffening. Beverly understood suddenly that she was wearing
underwear
, and even if she was less exposed than the girls, she was more
provocative. Beverly often forgot that her body was still well formed, that her skin remained perfect, no matter the life she led—and she had led some odd lives. For two years, for instance, she had inhabited the same seedy tavern as her grandfather, sitting with him and his ancient cronies. She had laughed too loudly, wept and consumed grain alcohol, and when she abandoned that, she had attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in a church basement no less gloomy than the shadowy Dominion Tap Room. And yet, when she finally emerged, her skin glowed like a child’s.

Another reason for Maywell’s bristling, Beverly realized, was her seat selection. Beverly had claimed the front passenger’s, even though there was space on the benches behind. She’d seen that it was free and jumped in, forgetting her place as a guest, forgetting herself maybe, thinking this was a chase somewhere in Oklahoma, that they were off core punching and it was her turn in the shotgun.

The sunburnt man turned the key in the ignition and the van howled before grudgingly turning over.

“Any word on the hurricane?” asked Beverly.

Maywell shrugged. “Plenty of words, ma’am. Not much that means anything.”

The two girls asked, “Do you think it will hit this island?”

Maywell jerked his head upwards so that he was gazing into the rear-view mirror. “No. We’re just a little island. No big storm’s got business with Dampier Cay.”

The coffee-coloured man spoke up from the seat in the rear. “What will be, will be.”

“No it won’t, Lester,” said Maywell.

“Are there a lot of people staying at the Water’s Edge?” wondered one of the girls.

“Not too many,” admitted the driver. “There were some cancellations.”

“So,” interpreted the other girl, “there’s not like a lot of guys there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Like how many?”

“There would be none, ma’am.”

“Ma’am,”
scowled the girl, turning to look out the window. They were driving through Williamsville now, which consisted of a long cobblestone road fronted by a general store, a post office, a bar and two nearly empty gift shops.

Maywell was looking into the rear-view mirror, not really paying attention to the road ahead. Mind you, the inhabitants of the island knew him well, and whenever they saw the Water’s Edge van they sought shelter in doorways, between buildings. “We had some last-minute cancellations,” repeated Maywell, studying Caldwell and Jimmy Newton. “Of course,” he said, swinging his head to stare at Beverly, “there were some last-minute
registrations
too.”

“My name’s Beverly.” She had meant to say it civilly, even sweetly, but for some reason it issued forth with volume and an edge.

“Yes, ma’am.”

One of the girls introduced herself as Gail and the other had a very odd name, Sorvig or something that sounded like that. They directed questions toward Maywell’s back. “So you’re pretty sure the hurricane’s going to miss, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ha!” barked Jimmy Newton, but then he pretended he hadn’t, looking at Caldwell as though they were friends. The girls likewise pretended they hadn’t heard him, and Sorvig put another question to Maywell.

“So you’re not worried?”

“No, ma’am.”

“How come?”

“Hurricanes are always headed towards more important places—Florida, Carolina—so they can make the national news at seven,” he said.

“What about Fred?” asked Beverly.

“Ma’am?”

“Fred. October eighty-six. Seventeen dead on this island.”

“I don’t think you want to be talking about Fred, ma’am.”

“Fred took my son,” said Lester, the immaculate man.

They drove the rest of the way to the Water’s Edge in silence.

Caldwell paid attention to none of this, because a memory was happening to him. He gazed out the window as though sightseeing, but his eyes, behind dark glasses, were soft and a little watery. The memory, which happened to Caldwell often, was of a man flying and smiling.

The man was Bob Janes, and Caldwell could recall a lot about him. He was the father of Kenny, Caldwell’s childhood playmate. They had lived at 32 Raymore, and Mr. Janes was not at home when Hurricane Hazel came. He worked nights at Dominion Packers, and management, choosing to endorse
only the weather report for “rain,” insisted that he come work his shift. So Bob Janes had been away when his house and family were taken by the storm. He wasn’t the only one: Eddie Ducammen worked at Dominion Packers too, and he lost his wife, his child and his mother. Afterwards, Eddie Ducammen disappeared, which was somehow judged right and proper. But Bob Janes remained in the neighbourhood, mostly at the New Leaf Restaurant, where he eschewed everything from the menu except the draught beer and bar shots. He was indulged in this. The man had lost his family, after all, and besides, everyone would much rather have Mr. Janes inside the New Leaf than walking the streets. Bob Janes had become a very nasty piece of business, hollering at people for little, or no, reason. Caldwell was fascinated by him.

The memory, then: Caldwell steps out of the corner store, a new Superman comic book tucked under his arm so that he can unwrap a few pieces of Double Bubble. Bob Janes is in the middle of Bloor Street, dodging traffic like a matador dodges bulls, swivelling his hips just enough to avoid getting hit. Then he loses his balance and falls backwards. A car, a red Edsel, smacks him, sends him flying through the air. Mr. Janes lands at the young Caldwell’s feet. A halo of red spreads out around his head. And, Caldwell sees, the man is smiling.

B
EVERLY WOKE FROM HER NAP
with a start. She almost always woke with a start, something the professionals—the counsellors and doctors—said was atypical and therefore worthy of attention. But it was not atypical in her experience. Her grandfather usually sputtered to life already kicked into a state of advanced alarm, his lips formed around obscenities. And Margaret, her Margaret, had been visited by nightmares. Several times a night the child would bolt upright in her bed, shrieking as though she could keep the demons away simply with ear-bleeding pitch. The only person in Beverly’s intimate acquaintance who passed peacefully from slumber was her ex-husband, Don Peabody.

Beverly took a look around and remembered where she was: Dampier Cay, the Water’s Edge, cottage “K.” The woman
behind the check-in counter, Polly her name was, had assigned everybody quarters arbitrarily and rather imperiously. Gail and Sorvig were sharing a cabin halfway up the rise to the main building. When they asked if they could be closer to the beach, Polly shook her head, glancing at a clipboard as if to confirm the rightness of the declaration. Jimmy Newton was in A2, one of four apartments joined together in a squat row. “Just as long as it’s got a lot of electrical outlets,” he said. Polly didn’t respond to this, she was busy giving the phys. ed. teacher the key to cottage “J.”

“J” and “K” were actually the same cottage, with a wall running down the middle. Beverly suspected that the phys. ed. teacher’s quarters were a mirror image of her own. She could hear him over there: he was sleeping, or at least trying to, and his bed groaned and squealed as he tossed.

Beverly supposed that he, like her, had poor sleep habits. That was about the only thing the professionals were agreed upon, that she had poor sleep habits. They worked hard on this, they prescribed pills and recommended regimens. Beverly threw away the pills and ignored the regimens. For example, what she had just done was verboten according to the pros. It was late afternoon, and instead of sleeping before dinner, she should have stuck it out until ten-thirty, which was the bedtime she was supposed to maintain. It saddened and angered Beverly that they denied her the wholesome pastime of napping, but such was her life. In the land of the damned, there is no nap time.

Beverly climbed out of bed and went to stare through the large window. Bushes and greenery pushed against the screen,
as if the tendrils and leaves were seeking refuge. And perhaps they were, she thought; she vaguely believed in a spiritual confederation of life, with the most silent members—plants, animals, unborn children—in possession of the most profound knowledge. According to this theory—half baked, to be sure—the plants knew full well that the hurricane was coming, and pushed against the screen seeking communion.

Beverly went into the washroom and turned on the shower. The plastic stall stood in the middle of the tiny room, pushed into this odd position by a small tank and a complex arrangement of thick pipes.

One of the reasons Beverly had poor sleep habits was because Don Peabody had had proper ones. It was her own little act of resistance and rebellion. The professionals prided themselves on uncovering this (“You developed these odd sleeping patterns during your marriage? Interesting!”), but Beverly had never kept it a secret. During her marriage she purposefully stayed awake late, even if her eyelids were leaden. She arose early, even if every part of her, save a little pocket of perversity, wanted to stay in bed. It was a way of protesting Don’s doglike attachment to the conventional
.

Don Peabody embraced the ordinary, aspired to it as an ideal. When they were courting, for example, he had kissed her on the first date, felt her breast on the second, fingered her tentatively on the third and made love to her on the fourth. Then he proposed marriage. They honeymooned in Niagara Falls. Beverly went along with all this in a haze of incredulity that she was convinced was romantic love. She even enjoyed the conventionality, for a while.

But to Don Peabody the ordinary was a drug, and he was hopelessly addicted. Perhaps this explained a great deal about their daughter Margaret; perhaps there was a genetic component. Not that Beverly believed any such crock, but she was so soured by her trips to the professionals, constant and court-mandated, that she sometimes played their little games with caustic irony. So Beverly conjectured (in a manner only she found amusing, and even then not very) that she should never have wondered at her daughter’s affinity for the conventional, seeing as the child was conceived during dutiful, straightforward intercourse on a heart-shaped mattress while Muzak poured down from tiny speakers in the ceiling.

What it all boiled down to (the professionals always wanted to boil things down, they were the witches of the new age) was this: Don Peabody lacked an imagination. He was incapable, therefore, of improvising his life. Don relied on cues and clues that he’d gather from various sources: television, magazines, perhaps the odd newspaper column. It was as though he were always taking straw votes and going along with the majority. When the honeymoon at Niagara Falls was over and they were living together in a two-bedroom rented condo, Don found himself somewhat at sea. He didn’t seem to know how to proceed, how to conduct himself. He could only follow the charts. He went to work, he watched prime-time television, he went to bed at eleven. When Margaret was born, Don chucked her under the chin. That was the extent of his parental involvement, virtually all he could think of. He chucked the baby so much that Margaret began to scowl when he loomed near and turtle her shoulders into her ears. Still, everyone was
reasonably happy—until Don recalled that there was one more thing he could do under the circumstances, something he’d seen on television, something he heard about a lot, something he’d seen his own father do. He left Beverly for another woman.

One of the pros, Dr. Herndorff, had asked, “Why do you think you married him in the first place?”

“Search me,” Beverly replied, adding a large, melodramatic shrug for effect. She was opposed on general principles to the quest for truth and understanding. This was, however, an area in which she had a little insight. For one thing, Don was basically a nice man, because it takes imagination to be evil or perverse. More importantly, he was unable to extrapolate imaginatively from her origins, which meant that Don Peabody was basically the only eligible bachelor the town of Orillia had to offer.

The shower’s controls were finicky. To avoid scalding herself, Beverly had to concentrate as though she were a pilot landing an airplane. She stood beneath the water with a hand on each knob, mixing hot and cold. A minute into the shower the hot water ran out. Beverly cranked the left-hand knob as far as it could go, but the spray turned first tepid and then cool. Beverly defiantly pulled the cake of soap from the dish, worked up a lather rubbing her goose-pimpled flesh. She threw the soap down between her feet and let the water strike her. It was now so cold that she was short of breath. How could the water be so cold? Surely on sun-baked Dampier Cay it would be easy to keep water hot. She thought about this to prevent herself from thinking about the icy ache that enveloped her body. She stood in the shower until all of the
suds had gone down the drain, and then she stumbled out, laughing, a bright pink from the chill.