Sea of Tranquility (11 page)

“Yes, please.”

“Nothing to drink but tea or well water. No pop.”

“It's okay. We're both okay. Angie wanted to come say hello.”

“Tea, then. I'll make it weak. Won't hurt the little girl. Not much caffeine if you make it weak. Sometimes I make tea from tansy or mint, too. Grows wild in the backyard.”

The old woman went to her sink and there was a hand pump. She pumped it up and down in a smooth stroking manner like she had done thousands of times in a life. Water in a kettle, set upon an electric hot plate.
So she has electricity
, Elise was thinking.

This must be what “rural” poverty is like.
Elise kept her thoughts to herself, studied every detail, prepped herself for a debriefing with the women in her group once she returned.

Sylvie wore a long, theatrical dress, something clearly from what she thought of as “the olden days.” And she was tall. A bit bent over, but tall and graceful. “Sit,” she told the mother from New Jersey.

Three of them sitting at an old oak kitchen table, with knife marks in it, chips and dings, rounded edges as if from sheer use, not design. Three rocks positioned on the table for
some purpose — or maybe just decoration. Three round, elegant, but common beach stones. The chairs: spindle-legged, flat-seated chairs creaked, thanged, hawed, and yankled with every little movement. Aside from that, the room was stone still and quiet. Outside, though, birds performed soundtracks for nature films.

Angie was still looking at the hand pump, had never seen such a thing or even heard of it.“Can I try?”

“Sure. Oh yes, dear. Please. Lots of water in the well. The island has lots of fresh water even though we're surrounded by salt. You'd think it'd be salty down there below too, but it isn't. Clean. Fresh. They say you should drink lots of fresh water, flush your kidneys and all that.”

“You live here alone?” Elise asked.

Angie pumped the handle and water flowed into the sink. She smiled and laughed and held one hand under the flowing water, then touched its wetness to her forehead, a baptism ceremony.

“Alone now. Well, depends how you figure it. Husbands are all dead.”

“All?”

“All four. Some died young, some older. Way it is sometimes. All good men. They're all still with me, though. In my heart.”

Elise tried to look at the beautiful face of the old woman but could not. She was slightly embarrassed as Sylvie revealed so much so quickly to a stranger. Elise was used to small talk, endless small talk. Her crowd talked around in circles about trivial things for a long time before zeroing in on anything real and worthy of serious woman talk.

“Where does the water come from?” Angie asked.

“Oh, just out of the ground, dear. Free gift from the island. Out in the yard there. I found the spot a long time ago with a dowsing rod. Not much of anyone better than me with a dowsing rod.”

Elise tucked her chin in.
Charming. A hundred percent charming. The old lady reeks of authenticity
. Wondered if this was part of the eco-tour somehow. Almost too good to be true.

“You knew where to find water?” Angie asked and stopped pumping, then splashed the last dribble of water onto her face, drew a little circle with it on her cheek like she was face painting.

“Yes, I did. Made the men mad, some of them. If someone wanted a well, they'd call me and I'd cut a bit of alder or willow and go tell them the best place to dig. Never failed. Now they think that's all superstition. Funny, that. No one bothers with using a dowser anymore even though it worked for generations. I did it for free. Now, if someone wants a new house, they call out a drill truck from the mainland, comes over on a barge and drills down through the rock. Costs an arm and a leg but they don't seem to care. The modern way is the better one. Old woman and a stick can't be of any use.”

“I believe there has been scientific research,” Elise said, coming to Sylvie's defence.

“Yes. Indeed. Somewhere in one of those books. I read it myself.” Sylvie pointed to books. A whole wall of books on shelves. No illiterate old island woman here. “Yes. The United Nations workers in Africa still rely on water witches, as they are called sometimes. And it's almost always women who have the touch more than men. Women are more rooted in the earth. More connected with the sea. We're tidal, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“So if you ever need to dig a well where you live, give me a call. Not that I'll come up there to the States, but I could do it over the phone with you if you use one of them portable phones and go walk around your own backyard and hold onto the right witching stick. Don't think I'm silly. Did it once for some friends on the Eastern Shore. At their cottage. She in the backyard with a little hand phone. Me on the phone down at
the Aetna. Everybody had a good laugh about that one but saved the boy a pile of money. No twenty dollars a foot to dig into the hard rock. No sir. Twenty feet into gravel and pure, sweet water, all they'll ever need and then some.”

“Do you know any other tricks?” Angie asked.

“It's not a trick,” her mother corrected.

Sylvie smiled, set out a plate of cookies, another one of small cakes, one of crackers, and a jar of relish and homemade mustard. Some preserves, too, then poured tea. “I added some mint and one tea bag. Fine for both women like yourselves. Tricks? Why, yes.”

Three cups of tea steamed little twirling wraiths up into the sunlight above the table. Dust motes sailed like tiny hang-gliders in the shaft of light from the backyard window.

“It's not necessary.”

“Just one then.” Sylvie walked to the bookshelf and lifted off an old mariner's compass. Elise looked at all those books and then noticed the rocks sitting on the shelves as well. She realized, too, there were other rocks on tables or piled up on the floor as if some kind of art or avant garde sculpture.

The compass in its polished copper mounting was placed in the centre of the table. The compass needle floated on clear liquid. It was a relic, for sure, something that would sell for a mint back in a Montclair antique store. The compass needle wobbled, wavered this way and then that, until it found north and anchored itself on its little inland sea.

“So that's north,” Angie said.

“North it is.”

“Now watch.” Sylvie took three smooth stones from the bookshelf and set them on a triangle on the table, framing the compass. She rubbed the palm of her right hand and then held it over the magnetic needle, closed her eyes but then opened one eye in a squint to get a look at Angie's intent face. Next she
raised her hand up once and brought it back down on the compass, then fanned her hand left slowly, and then right. The needle moved with her.

Sylvie worked her hand around in a perfect circle and the needle followed her movement like a well-trained dog. Then she fully opened her eyes and showed that she had nothing in the palm of her hand.

Angie clapped her small but enthusiastic applause. Elise smiled, knew there was some easy explanation.

“Do you let us in on how the trick is done?”

“Absolutely, madame. No trick at all really. Magnetism. All basic scientific principles.”

Two mainlanders waiting for the punch line.

“The lodestone in that floating needle came from this rock beneath us. I was born here. I live here, grow my food here, drink water from the well. The island is part of me just as that little magnet was once part of the island. We are kin. I belong to this place.”

The smell of minty tea in the air. Stillness. No one reaching for cookie or cracker or homemade relish.

Angie wide-eyed. Elise suddenly feeling very remote, far outside of her comfort zone. The peculiar sensation tapped into something that had been simmering on the back burner of her mind. Something missing in her life. Some strong attachment to place. She had never felt like she truly belonged to any physical place, ever. They'd moved from one house to another since she married Bruce. Each time he stepped up in his career, it was always a new car, a new house, a new neighbourhood, and sometimes a new set of friends that seemed to go along with the move. Together as a family, yes they belonged. But no allegiance to geography, adrift in the urban-suburban sea of countless faces. No rudder, no compass with a true north bearing.

Sylvie bit into a cookie, looked at Angie when she saw the far-off drift in the eyes of the child's mother.“These are old skills
women had before we started relying on other parts of our brain.” Sylvie tilted the sugar bowl and purposefully spilled some sugar on the table. Then drew a picture of the earth in the sugar and curved lines arcing out and down from the north to the south pole. “Magnetic fields. Birds sense them. So do fish. Whales, dolphins. Most animals make use of these magnetic fields in their every day lives. People did too once.”

“Is that the earth?” Angie asked.

“Yes.”

“Is the earth made of sugar?”

“In a story it could be.”

“It would get sticky if it got wet.”

“Good point.”

“Can I draw in the sugar?”

“Yes.” Sylvie poured some more upon the table. Angie trailed her finger around like it was beach sand. She had never played with sugar on a table since she was an infant. “Oops, I messed up your earth.”

“It's okay.”

The child was occupied dissecting the planet into several triangles like it was a pie. Sylvie looked at Elise, who was coming back from someplace far off. “Ever feel like you know a lot more about some things than you should? Feelings? Intuition?” Sylvie asked.

“Sure. Often.”

“Most of us push those feelings away. Replace them with reason. But an old woman has so much time on her hands. She follows some of those things in her head, things she feels. She discovers some interesting notions.” Sylvie pointed to the books. “And then she discovers that she's not onto anything new at all. Old stuff. All in the books. Just sometimes hard to know what's true and what's false until you feel it for yourself. The island things, though, I understand. That part is always true. For me at
least. Finding water? I just know. Make a compass needle move? My magnetism can be as powerful as the pull of the earth's, if I'm close by. You want me to tell you if it's a full moon, a quarter moon, or no moon at all without ever looking into the sky or reading it in the paper? I can do that too.”

“And more?”

“Yes. More. Some of the islanders know. They have respect for these things. Most people do not. Is there any value to these… these skills? I don't know. I don't think of them as
useful.
They just
are
. I can't imagine leaving this island. I just can't. It would be like shutting off
who I am.”

Elise was confused.“Why would you have to leave?”

Sylvie shrugged. “An old woman, alone. Talks to the birds, the whales. Daft, they say. Needs to be looked after.”

“You seem to be doing all right on your own.”

“That's because I never really feel like I am alone. Angeline, what grade are you in?”

“Third.”

“On the island, children still go to a one-room schoolhouse. Just like I did when I grew up here.”

“Do they have computers?”

“Yes, two anyway. Two computers and one wood stove. My friend, Kit, teaches there. She knows more about the moon than anyone I ever met.”

“Does she talk to the moon?” Angie asked.

“I don't know. She studies it. She has names for all the seas. Sea of Rains, Sea of Clouds, Sea of Serenity, Sea of Nectar. Sea of Tranquility is the name I like best. The craters all have names, too. Abulfeda, Catharine and Cardanus. Walter and Pitiscus.”

“Pitiscus?”

“He must have been someone famous.”

Angie began to smooth out the sugar and then drew a moon, dotting it with the tips of her fingers to make craters.

“Walter,” she named one. “Pitiscus,” she named another.

“Angeline” was next.“Sylvie,” she said, and looked up at the old woman whose face seemed to be almost imaginary, like something she would see when she stared into the clouds.

Elise and Angeline met up with Bruce and Todd at four-thirty at the Aetna Canteen as planned. Right on schedule. They would catch the five o'clock ferry back to the mainland and spend the night at the Bay View Motor Inn back near the Number 3 Highway.

Sitting around the outside pool at the Bay View something was wrong. They'd had a wonderful day and were supposed to drive on tomorrow to see Peggy's Cove and then back towards New Brunswick, to take in the tidal bore and Magnetic Hill. Bruce was nursing a Moosehead beer and Elise had a Tom Collins, which she studied more than she drank. A crisp half of a moon had just hoisted itself up out of the bay and you could see the low, dark outline of the island they had visited.

“The moon is so bright,” Angeline said.“I can see Catharine and Pitiscus, I think.”

“It's not the moon that's bright,” Todd corrected. “It's light reflecting off the moon from the sun. That's all.”

“Well, that's something.”

Angie splashed Todd and then Todd grabbed her and pulled her into the swimming pool, where they horsed around.

“I'm thinking,” Bruce began, furtively, tentatively, like he was fishing for something, waiting for the words to form the idea. Elise held her breath. It was the way Bruce had begun any number of conversations that had to do with buying a new BMW or moving into a bigger house. What now? she wondered.

“You know that guy Phonse Doucette who runs the salvage yard?”

“Um hmm.”

“He told me about a place to rent for the summer.”

Elise drew a deep breath, felt an electric thrill run down her back.

“A house?”

Bruce was cautious. Would she think he was completely out of his mind? He'd have to phrase this delicately, with just the right spin. He would use the same tack he had used when introducing his investment firm to the idea of California Geothermal. One little baby step at a time. It sure did sound California flaky at first, but it had paid off big-time and was one of the most environmentally sound investments going. “Yes. A house. Owned by his cousin, gone to Toronto or wherever. For rent. Dirt cheap. We could rent it. You and the kids stay, if you wanted. I could be there three, maybe four days a week. Been talk at the office of doing this sort of thing — you know, laptop off in the boonies, all wired up to the big system. They have phone lines out there. I'd just have to get at least three days in at the office. Fly from Halifax to Newark and back. Hour and a half in the air is all.”