The Year of Broken Glass Read online

  When my attempts to break the float with Emily failed, it brought upon me finally a darkness so complete I know now I could see nothing other than that failure, all my failures, and it’s what has brought rise now to Jin Su’s insisting that I return to fishing, to the sea. She thinks that is what’s gone from me, its energy, its vitality. How do you tell the woman who needs more than anything for you to be strong and sure in a world full of threats and vulnerabilities that what you’ve lost is your very centre of gravity, even your buoyancy? That you’re a hull full of holes and she’s the float you’re moored to, the only thing keeping you from sinking?

  I’ve come out of that now that the float has been broken and Fairwin’ has taken the shards to Hawaii. But there are all these lingering things I live with. Today I saw a man on the SkyTrain who I could swear had the eyes I see in my nightmares, the ones that plunge into mine like an auger and sluice, sucking the life from my skull. At first all I felt was fright standing there defenceless in that sealed-up tube, but when he looked away from me I thought I must be mistaken—though how there could be another pair of eyes like those in this world or any other I couldn’t fathom. So I moved toward him, squeezing myself through the jam-packed people, but then the next stop came and he got off. And I wouldn’t have given it much more thought if it weren’t for the scent of him that cut through the perfumes and body odours of the other passengers, bearing grease and sea salt, too unmistakable to deny.

  Now I’m here, on the eve of my daughter’s first birthday, the eve of the new year, not knowing what to do with all these memories and this fear. I went to great pains to make my emergence in Hawaii as normal and public as possible, though I lied about which direction I’d come into town from, reasoning that whoever had stolen the float at Sunimoto’s and had somehow lost it to me would be watching to see if I re-emerged with it. So I left it there in Hawaii, too afraid I might be followed if I tried to retrieve it from the beach where I’d buried it.

  When I finally reunited with Fairwin’ on Lasqueti he told me he’d been flabbergasted to learn that I’d survived, and he couldn’t see how I could have, except that it must have been the float’s potency that saved me. Which is how he knew I’d kept hold of it before I even told him. When I spoke with him about the man, the eyes, he told me it made sense, that it must be the engineer Figgs I was remembering, as he’d been there at my bedside when I began to die. What exactly he might have done to me, Fairwin’ wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t see any reason why Figgs would have wanted me dead.

  Still, I can’t excise the fear no matter what I do, no matter that Fairwin’ saw no evidence on that beach to suggest that anyone had ever been there searching for the float. No matter that the float is now broken and will any day now, knock on wood, be thrown into the Mauna Kea’s newly formed caldera. There is this feeling in me that I’m being hunted, stalked, by something, perhaps this Figgs character I see in my dreams, or perhaps the man who, for some reason I can’t begin to imagine, wanted to stop the float from being broken so badly that he was willing to kill for it. Sometimes I think what follows me is something other, some being or energy, and it is so strong that I can’t trust my own sense of things; I don’t know if the scent of the grease and sea I smelled on my ride home was an illusion I created in my own paranoia, or if it was reality. And I’m not sure what frightens me more now, these things that haunt me, or the frailty of mind that haunting has brought me to.

  The phone rings and I realize I’ve been sitting here on the living room couch staring out at the neighbour’s pink shingles for a long time. I hear Jin Su answer the call, then I hear her say Fairwin’s name. I walk into the kitchen where she’s holding Emily in one hand, stirring the dinner she’s making with the other, and talking to Fairwin’, the phone pinched between her shoulder and chin. I take it from her and put it to my ear.

  “Fairwin’,” I say, “Is it done?” There’s a long silence at the other end of the line, the faint hoots and hollers of New Year’s Eve revellers in the background. “I’m going out on a fishing charter tomorrow Ferris,” he finally says, his voice as boisterous as those behind his. “And I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if I hauled up a long scaly fish with three fins for a tail.”

  •

  I wake in the morning at first light to what sounds like a knock at the front door. I open my eyes and listen for the dog’s bark from the neighbour’s yard, then I remember that I’m no longer in Halfmoon Bay, that my neighbours here on Fourteenth Street have no dog, and so I rise from bed, pull on a t-shirt, and head to the front of the house. I open the door to nothing but the street, quiet in the grey light of another dark winter morning. I step out onto the porch and look east and west over the rows of parked cars as the streetlights flicker out. Nothing. Turning back to the house I nudge something with my bare feet, a black leather satchel, small, the size of a manila envelope. I look again behind me, but still there’s no one and nothing to be seen.

  I carry the satchel into the living room and turn the light on beside the couch where I often sit. Inside I find a key, small, silver, and a note written on plain white paper in black ink.

  Ferris,

  Go to 505 W. Broadway with this key. You will find what is rightfully yours there. I am sorry about what happened to your son. From what I knew of him, he loved you very much. As for what occurred between us, I can only say you have nothing to fear from me now, as you have nothing to fear from Jeremy Gibbon either.

  Figgs

  I go up into the office above our bedroom and turn on the computer. When I google Jeremy Gibbon I learn that a rich young man by that name has gone missing somewhere in India and that it’s been almost a month since he was last seen or heard of. I recall the earthquakes that took place there shortly after the float was stolen from Sunimoto’s, and it makes sense. Then I search the Broadway address in Figgs’s note. It’s the Royal Bank of Canada on the corner of Broadway and Cambie. It must be a safety deposit box key I hold here in my hand. I can only imagine what’s in it. Perhaps the cash I was to be paid for the float? Or something of Anna’s or Willow’s this man managed to hold onto as the boat went down?

  I’m not sure what to think of this. Whether to take this as the end of things, or the beginning. Aside from the very little Fairwin’ has told me, that he was a rough man, and that Anna seemed to like him, I have no idea who Figgs is or why he tried to kill me, as I now can confirm from his letter that he did. But who are Figgs and Gibbon, and how do they fit into all this? I can only assume Gibbon to be the man responsible for Willow’s death, though I have no idea what Figgs would have done to him. I suppose I can well imagine. But how much am I missing, and how will I ever find out?

  A telephone wire runs from a pole in the back lane to the roof of this house just above the window beside me. There’s a little bird that’s just landed upon it and I can hear its chirping and trilling through the closed single-pane glass. Leonard Cohen. “Bird on a Wire.” I was never much of a fan, but the song’s ubiquitous. And I suppose it has its place. I suppose Leonard has his point. Today is my daughter’s first birthday. Later some of Jin Su’s family and friends will come to our home to celebrate with us. There will be gifts and laughter, candles and cake. Simple things. Maybe more than enough. Maybe these questions can go unanswered. Maybe I can take this letter on my desk at face value and put the rest behind me. It’s a new year, not something I’ve ever made much of. But maybe this one is of greater significance than most. For me. For Anna. For Jin Su and Emily. For everyone. Maybe the past is the past, and what’s done is done. It’s hard, I think, for anyone to say.

  But regardless, I know where I belong today, and whom I belong to, and I’m going to walk downstairs to the kitchen to put the coffee on now, quiet so as not to wake them. And when they do, when Emily finally finishes her morning nursing and Jin Su carries her out into the living room, I’m going to kiss them both, and I’m going to take my feisty daughter from her mother’s arms and put this shiny little key in her hands.


  Ferris,

  I’ve had a letter I wrote to you sealed in a stamped envelope beside my bed for months now. Almost every day I think to send it, but don’t. It’s a letter I wrote the night before Willow and I left with Arnault and Fairwin’ to find you. That was the last night our son slept in his own bed, in our home. I found it where I left it, tucked under your pillow, when I came back with my parents to clear out my things. I found a few strands of Willow’s hair under his pillow then, too, and I’ve kept both things together since, sealed in that envelope with your new address written on it. Tonight I put it in an old coffee tin and set it out to sea on a piece of driftwood. I lit the envelope on fire as I did so. I’ll send this letter instead.

  Today is the first anniversary of our son’s death, Ferris. The last time I saw him he was running from me back into the ship’s cabin to save you. How it is you survived and he didn’t, given the shape you were in, I’ll never know or understand. It’s taken all this year for me to forgive you for surviving. It doesn’t make much sense to me. None of it does.

  I met your daughter and her mother once, as I’m sure you know, in front of the general store. They came to our home for dinner the night before we left to find you. They are both lovely. Still, I’m not sure what it is you found in them that you couldn’t find in Willow and I, but whatever it is I hope it’s enough for you now.

  I’ve been so angry with you, Ferris. Tonight, at least, I’ve set that aside. The letter I put to flames spoke of my love for you, of how much a part of me you are. It spoke too of how we’d both made such a mess of things. And we have, haven’t we?

  I’m living up here in Echo Bay now, doing good work. I don’t think we’re winning, but I can’t say what the future will bring. I would have never thought what happened to us, to our son, could have. Often it feels I’m still waiting to wake from a dream. To our little house with its crooked floor and its crappy plumbing. To our dear son getting himself ready for another day down by the sea.

  Love Always,

  A.

  This first letter arrived late this spring, nearly a year after it was written. I suppose it spent a bit of time by Anna’s bedside too before she finally sent it off. This one I’m glad she didn’t burn.

  Before I opened it I thought it might be a very belated thank you for the portion of Figgs’s money I sent her. That she made no mention of it is just like her, and I’m happy for that too. More than any of the words in her letters it tells me that, despite it all, her spirit’s intact. Anna the independent fighter. It’s what I’ve always loved about her.

  I spent the night she wrote that letter, June 28th, the date Fairwin’ told me would be the anniversary of my son’s death, with Svend and a bottle of Scotch just a block from our old home. I suppose I wanted to be with her that night, and with Willow. I suppose Svend and the bottle was the closest I could come.

  In the middle of the night I went down to the water, to the beach Willow always used to play at. It was warm, mid-summer, and the sea was calm. Just little waves stroking against the shore. Nothing more. No visions of my son building castles in the sand or digging clams from the intertidal muck. I realized then that even my memories of him were beginning to wear thin. It’s not what I’d expected to find there that night. But what ever is? Not much seems certain in this life beyond the waves that keep on breaking against the shore. The forgiveness Anna wrote of eludes me, too.

  That night I fell asleep in the sand above high water mark. When I awoke there was a blue heron standing in the shallows, perfectly still. I lay there watching him for a long time, admiring the innate patience, the gift of the species. Then finally, suddenly, his head plunged into the water, and he came up with a small silvery fish flashing in his beak.

  Fishing. Patience. The given catch. The grace of survival. For a moment it seemed that simple. Then the heron flew off with the fish still struggling in its beak, and I stood, brushed the sand from my clothes, and climbed through the tall grasses, between the houses, and up to the road.

  At the gate that leads into our old yard I stopped and stood, leaning against its waist-high, weathered pickets. Anna’s garden had been left untended, the beds overgrown with weeds. Around them there were various plastic toys strewn. A wagon, a slide, a car, a collection of dump trucks and diggers, and as I looked them over I noticed that the ground was soaked, a continuous stream of water flooding beneath them. With my eyes I followed the path of water to its source, the shallow pool I’d found for Willow at the landfill when he was a toddler. A plastic, green, turtle-shaped pool, Anna had kept it around as a bird bath long after our son outgrew it. And there it was, still in its same spot, being used again by this new family that had moved in after us. Someone had left the hose on overnight, Anna’s old garden hose, and the pool was overflowing with water.

  I opened the gate as quietly as I could, its rusty hinges creaking in the dark blue light before dawn, and walked into the yard. I stepped over the toys, between Anna’s garden beds, approaching the sleeping house. The tap hissed and groaned lightly as I shut it off. Then I unthreaded the hose, drained what water I could from its end, and coiled it over my shoulder.

  I use that hose to water the small garden of peas, nasturtiums, kohlrabi and kale Jin Su and I keep in the backyard now. It’s the only thing I have of my life with Willow and Anna. Occasionally I receive a letter from her and I write back. With each one there is a widening of the distance between us, a diminishing intimacy. She’s still so angry. I write to her of the thirty-seven million sockeye that returned to the Fraser last fall, the greatest run in over a century; and of Joni Mitchell’s rumoured plans to donate her land and new home to the local community as an ecological reserve and interpretive centre. But when she writes back, she ignores my overtures toward a more hopeful dialogue. She rails, just as she always has. The last letter I received was the first in which she failed to mention Willow. I’ve yet to respond. I’m not ready to let him die in that way, too.

  With the money Figgs left, Jin Su and I bought a more expensive house in Deep Cove on the outskirts of the city. It feels more like home here, at the end of the road, tucked into the mountains up Indian Arm. When we sleep, we sleep in darkness. There is a trail across the street from our house that leads down through a small forest to a beach of pebbles and stones.

  Often I go in the morning. I wake in the dark, slide from bed and leave the house quietly without disturbing Emily and Jin Su. The forest is thick and silent before dawn, an entirely other world from the one I spend my days working in downtown, the fish plant’s fluorescent-lit concrete and steel.

  When I reach the beach I go to the water, dip my cupped hands in and splash it cold and salty on my face. Then I skip a few smooth, flat stones across its surface. When the sun begins to rise I walk a little further along the beach toward it, my back to the city, to a little spot I found where the rocks are just right for sitting. There I look up the channel, like I used to look upon the mountains above Sechelt Inlet from the deck of the Prevailer, and watch night give way to day. Sometimes this occurs, when the mountains are holding thick clouds across their slopes, as only a lightening and lightening of grey. But when the sky is clear the sun casts an array of colours—oranges and pinks and golds—over the peaks. Some mornings there is a gentle wind sweeping up the channel, churning its surface to a rippling chop. It’s these mornings I think Willow, as a man, would have loved: the moment the colours fade to blue in the sky, and the sun comes beaming over the dark mountains, speckling down across the water like the sea is made of countless flecks of glass, each one holding the light.

  Notes

  The Albert Camus passages are from Stuart Gilbert’s translation of The Plague.

  The John Berger passages are from his novel From A to X: A Story in Letters.

  Gratitude

  To Sue Wheeler for the Velella velella; to Stu Farnsworth for 1949; and to Doug Beguin, for everything you’ve taught me through the years about fishing and boats and the sea.
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  For reading the manuscript early on, and for your thoughts and support: Alison, Katherine, and Nancy Denham; River Rohlicek; David Drury. To Theresa Kishkan, for the same, and all the careful red ink along with it. And to Liz Marshall, for the late read, and for all your invaluable insights and encouragement.

  To Bob Doleman, for helping me see the centre clearly.

  To Silas White for everything: early and late edits, interest, advice, and all the work bringing the book into print.

  To everyone at Harbour/Nightwood for all your diligence and enthusiasm.

  To Carleton Wilson for the cover, and to Adam Lewis Schroeder and Angie Abdou for the kind words which grace its back.

  To Vicki Ziegler and Peter Taylor, for your time and effort.

  To Alexandra, Joni, and David, for being fuel and fodder for Anna’s passion and fury, and for all your good work in the world.