Our Homesick Songs Page 12

  Well, said Mrs. Callaghan, once Finn had unwrapped all the layers off his accordion and himself. That’s fucked.

  What?

  Fucked, said Mrs. Callaghan. Look here, she said, and pointed at one of the dark splotches blossoming along the instrument’s bellows. Or here, pointing at another. Or here, another. Got wet, didn’t it?

  Not today . . . said Finn. I wrapped it. I double-wrapped it.

  No, not today, yesterday, said Mrs. Callaghan. After Cora left.

  You, said Finn. You know?

  Your dad phoned me right away, right away that morning, checking she wasn’t here with me. Of course she wasn’t here with me, said Mrs. Callaghan. That wouldn’t make sense. That would be the opposite of making sense, of Cora.

  I don’t— said Finn.

  Look, said Mrs. Callaghan. She braced herself with one hand on the wall and the other on her chair and shakily stood up. She took his hand and led him up the stairs into the spare room. The telescope pointed out the window. The notebook was open on the table beside it, full of names, of people gone. In fresh letters in the second-lowest slot on the right-hand page it said:

  Cora Connor

  in careful, black pen. Finn ran his finger over the ink’s impression.

  I’m sorry, said Mrs. Callaghan.

  Finn didn’t say anything.

  I’m sorry, said Mrs. Callaghan again. I don’t have the power here for a hair dryer, with my little generator, but if you have one at home you could probably still save it. Still dry the bellows out OK.

  Yeah?

  Yes, I think so.

  OK.

  •  •  •

  They went back downstairs and Finn put his accordion in its case and its quilt and its garbage bag. Then he pulled his sweater on over his shirt and took Cora’s down off the hook where he’d hung it.

  Soon there’ll be proper ice, I think, said Mrs. Callaghan. Soon it’ll be too froze up for you to come see me for a while.

  Not yet, said Finn.

  Yes, but soon.

  I’m getting stronger at rowing, better at breaking ice, thin ice at least.

  Well, just don’t get stupider while you’re at it.

  Stupider? No, I won’t, I mean I’m just—

  Oh, you probably will. You almost certainly will, eventually. The sea does that to men. To women, too. Come on, come on, it says, you know me, surely you trust me by now, by now. And eventually they do, you do, even though they know they shouldn’t, they can’t. It comes from swallowing seawater when you’re young. When you’re a baby, usually. Something we almost all do, inevitable, really. Then it’s in you, and you can’t resist, you can’t think right, when you’ve got it like that, calling you from inside and out . . . She stopped and looked at Finn, put one arm out over his head, measuring. Though you’re probably fine for a few years yet. Probably until you’re a bit further grown.

  And Cora?

  I don’t know. I don’t know about her.

  And what about you? said Finn. How come you know better? Haven’t you ever swallowed some water accidentally?

  Of course, said Mrs. Callaghan. Of course, of course. We all did. We all do. She let her arm fall back down, away, to her side. We all do.

  She left time at the end of her voice, like she was going to say more, like a bridge to somewhere, but instead she was quiet and the bridge ended before going anywhere.

  Anyway, she said after a beat, think of the poor Spaniards. Remember them when you think about visiting me in storm-time.

  The Spaniards? All Finn knew about Spain he knew from Cora’s house. Bulls and sun and tomatoes. Nothing about seawater, about storms.

  Mrs. Callaghan sighed. Sit down, she said.

  Finn had one sleeve of Cora’s sweater on. He pulled it off, inside out. OK, he said. He walked over and sat on the sofa with the sweater in a ball on his lap. Mrs. Callaghan sat down next to him. They both faced forward, toward the fire.

  The Spanish have the sea too, she said. Not all of them, but a lot of them, and one year, one winter, it was especially high, much higher than usual, and it rose and rose all around the Spanish coast and trickled inland down roads and paths and into grain stores and under nursery doors until their bread was soaked in it and their babies licked it off their fingers and toes and their wine tasted of salt and got them drunker than ever before. And they danced and laughed and splashed and decided, that year, to send out ships, three hundred and thirty-three ships.

  Three hundred and thirty-three?

  Yes. Three hundred and thirty-three, out, west and north, to explore and discover, since this was when people were still exploring and discovering. And, see, because they were from a warm and welcoming place, and because they were stupid with the sea, they pushed off, all three hundred and thirty-three of them, each with a captain and a crew and a cat, because cats were lucky and because the cats had lapped up seawater too, from the puddles and ponds, they all pushed off to explore the North Atlantic New-Found-Land that year, smack dab in the middle of March.

  She stopped for a moment. Turned and looked at Finn. In March, she said again.

  In March?

  Yes. In March. But being on the sea in March here is not the same as it is in Spain, is it?

  I don’t know . . . no?

  No. But it called them, lured them, and they were so excited and inflamed and stupid that they didn’t stop to think about the difference between there and here, what it could be, what that could mean for them. Instead they just sailed happily north and west and north and west and then, of course, once they were north and west enough to be almost here, the storms hit, of course, the March storms. Still they tried to push on, north and west, as the storms hit harder and harder and as, one by one, the sea reached up and pulled the ships, the sailors, the captains, the cats, down to her. One after another after another after another, on our rocks and our shoals, one by one by one. The sea needed them, so it called, and when they came it took them, all three hundred and thirty-three, just like that.

  Just like that.

  Just like that. The sea is different from the devil, because it doesn’t offer a bargain; it just asks and gets.

  Why did it want them?

  Hm?

  You said the sea needed them. Why? Why did it need them?

  Oh, always different reasons, always. But always a reason. That’s another way it’s different from the devil, it always has a reason. In this case, the fish were coming, the sea could feel them moving this way, pulling through it, and it knew they would need places to live and eat and hide once they’d arrived. They need that, the fish, codfish especially, a dark and sheltered place to feel safe, especially in the daytime when the sun is too bright. And the sea loves its fish. Needs its fish. And, of course, the codfish aren’t the only ones who like wrecks. The plankton, the barnacles, the mussels, the littler lives gather and grow there too, where there’s something to hold on to, and the fish like that even more because they get to eat them. The little lives don’t mind too much because they multiply so quickly, covering over a single wreck in no time, a garden of them across the bones of an old ship, so many new lives in exchange for a few.

  So . . . it was good, what happened to those Spanish ships in the end? It was good that they all sank because it meant the fish and the barnacles and the mussels and crabs and things could all stay and live?

  It’s not good or bad. It just is. But that doesn’t stop us feeling bad when a body gives in and the sea takes them away. So, even if it’s not bad, or good, I don’t want you being stupid. Not yet. OK?

  OK. Finn pushed his fingers through the place where the knit was loose in Cora’s sweater. Mrs. Callaghan?

  Yes.

  It’s almost March now, isn’t it?

  It is . . . and the storms and the ice are real, Finn, not stories, real. OK?

  OK.

  •  •  •

  The ice-rain settled into mist as Finn rowed back to Big Running, like a filter of gray-white over
everything, like a cold and constant cloth against his mouth, his nose, his eyes.

  Instead of going home after Mrs. Callaghan’s, Finn went to the Italy! house. He knew they had left a hair dryer; Cora had used it on her Sistine Chapel ceiling painting so it would dry quickly and not drip on the carpet. He hoisted the window open, lifted his accordion through and in, and then climbed in himself.

  The hair dryer was in the bathroom. Cora had put it back once she was done with it. Finn took it out again and plugged it in the living room next to the lamp made to look like a leaning tower. He unwrapped his accordion—bag, quilt, case—stretched the bellows out as wide as they’d go, and hummed along to the steady hum of warm air like Mrs. Callaghan had told him to. You can still sing, when you don’t have an instrument, she had said. Even when you don’t have anything, you can always sing.

  Cora went the long way, across the dark marshes. She went the dark way, away from the road, over the moss and mud and slush and rocks, to the combination grocery store/gas station. It was the only one on the island, at the ferry lot. Eleven kilometers or nearly seven miles away. It was rainy and windy, so her footsteps washed and blew out of any snow or ice she crossed. She had a portable reading light that Aunt Minnie had sent her for her birthday that she used as a headlamp, like the cavers in Mexico. She attached it to the top of her coat’s hood so she could have one hand free for her violin and one for her suitcase.

  The ferry station was right at the midway point of the island, where the rocks met the trees. Cora switched off her headlamp and waited in the darkness between two firs for a car to pull in. It was almost morning. Only an hour until today’s boat.

  Eventually the O’Learys pulled in, in their battered, wine-red station wagon, Mrs. O’Leary driving and Mr. O’Leary asleep in the passenger seat. When Mrs. O’Leary, tired-eyed, sad-eyed, went into the office to pay and to chat, Cora slipped out, away from the trees. She carefully, quietly, opened the back door on the car’s far side and pulled the latch that dropped the seat forward and exposed the trunk. Carefully, quietly, she pushed her violin and suitcase through and in, then climbed in herself, closing first the car door, then the back seat hatch. She sat in the trunk’s cramped darkness, between her own things and the O’Learys’ suitcases and boxes, with just one finger hooked out so the hatch didn’t quite latch shut, so she could escape if she needed to. Just one finger, not quite invisible, but almost. She had practiced everything at home, in their car, was good and fast and silent. Mr. O’Leary slept and slept. Didn’t wake when his wife came back and closed the driver’s door more loudly than she meant to. Didn’t wake when she started the car and drove it around to the waiting area. Or when the gulls started circling and calling and calling and circling in the wake of the ferry pulling in.

  Of course the car was going to the boat. Was going west. That’s where they all went now.

  No news? John leaned into the frame of Martha’s room door. No news about Cora? He had just got off work. She could tell by the way his face sparkled under the fluorescent light with bits of dried sweat-salt.

  No news, said Martha. But you don’t need to keep checking up on me like this. You haven’t been to bed yet.

  Have you?

  No.

  You going to stay up much longer?

  Probably.

  Let me teach you how to knit.

  Now?

  It will be good for you. For your tense hand.

  I already know how to make net, it must be pretty similar.

  I’ve never seen you do that.

  Not much use for it here, is there?

  I don’t know, maybe there is. You should teach me.

  To net?

  Yes. I’ll teach you to knit and you teach me to net.

  OK, OK. Come in, John.

  He came in, shutting the door after him, and sat next to her on the bed. Martha lifted a hand and ran it down the side of his face, across the salt. You didn’t have to come, she said.

  I know, he said.

  Cora sold her violin in Toronto. She also had a couple credit cards she’d found in houses back home that she could try, if she had to. She kept the violin case and filled it with food, supplies. She hitchhiked. She’d been on two boats and in six cars so far. If anyone asked, she gave a different name each time. She held a small boning knife hidden and ready in her pocket whenever she got into a new vehicle. She was almost there.

  The police came from the mainland. They knocked on all the doors Finn had already knocked on. They checked all the boats Aidan had checked. They searched all the water Mavis and Violet had searched. They did it again and again. They asked Finn questions, the same questions, again and again. Finn watched his father, on the other side of the kitchen, leaning into the counters with his eyes shut, saying, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

  And the ice pushed in and out and in, and the days went by.

  The police left, promising phone calls and databases, promising anything when there was anything, anything, anything, anything at all.

  Then Finn’s father went too, off to Alberta, and his mother came home. The ferry was late because of the ice, and needed a quick turnaround to make up time, so Aidan and Martha only had a minute in the parking lot, just a seconds-long embrace, her head into his shoulder, his hand on her back, until Martha pulled away.

  You’ve got to go, she said.

  I know.

  They won’t hold it for you.

  I know. I’ll call.

  I’ll call too.

  OK. Tell Finn. Tell him I’ll call.

  Yes. Go, go.

  Finn waited in the car, his hot cheek against the frozen smooth of the window.

  In a ditch, down between the marsh grass and weed that stuck brittle out of the snow, Cora didn’t move, she breathed as shallow as she could. She could feel cold-wet melting into the gap between her coat and jeans; the side of her face was numb where it lay against the drift. Through the fogging of her breath, out and up, she watched a pair of boots trudge along the road above her, heard them crunch the gravel through snow, now closer, and,

  Girl?

  Now away,

  Girl?

  Drunk. Or, worse, not drunk.

  Girl!

  Up and back, again,

  Girl, I only want to . . .

  And, as Cora watched through the cloud of her breath and felt the plastic handle of the boning knife in her hand, and as the ice dripped down, through her pants, her underwear and her socks, as Cora’s breath fogged and lifted and hung, she thought, to the rhythm of her pulse, I am strong, I am alone, I am strong, I am alone.

  Until she heard the boots slowing, then stopping, then a door pulled shut and then a truck starting up and then pulling away and then gone. She counted up to a hundred and back and then to a hundred again and back and up and back again, and again, breathing through the weeds up to the road, then up to the black and star sky.

  She was in Alberta now, she must be. She was almost there. She got up, brushed the snow and grass off, and waited for another car to come by.

  Finn’s parents sang less now. Before going back over to work, his father still hummed sometimes, but more quiet, more slow. And Finn’s mother never sang; she slept late into the afternoon and then sat silent by the phone; Finn would tiptoe past her as he came and went, even though it was day, even though it was his own house. Sometimes she would reach out and catch him as he went past and would pull him to her, her breath warm and wet in his hair.

  •  •  •

  Mom?

  Yes? Martha had Finn tight to her again, caught as he went to get a carrot out of the fridge. Her voice muffled by his hair.

  There are still fish, right? Like at all, like in the oceans somewhere?

  I don’t know.

  There must be.

  Maybe.

  Like in Mexico, maybe.

  Yes, maybe in Mexico.

  And they could swim from there to here, or from Ireland, or Italy, if they really wan
ted to, right? Like the whales swimming from Hawaii.

  Yes, they could.

  And, if I got them to, if I got them to swim back, the newspapers and things would report on it, wouldn’t they? It would be a famous thing?

  If you got them back, Finn, they would talk about it around the world, I’m sure.

  And, so, wherever she is, Cora would hear.

  Cora might hear, yes.

  She’d hear and come home, probably, come and see if it was true?

  Martha pulled away from Finn a bit. One of his hairs stuck to her cheek. She might, she said. She might.

  •  •  •

  Finn found a pail with a lid and a folding chair in the garage at The Philippines! He found an auger, ice chisel and skimmer in South Africa!, and some rubber lures from home. Live would be better, but the ground was too frozen to dig anything up. He found the things he needed in The Philippines!, in South Africa!, at home and, finally, in the downstairs deep freeze in Italy! And then he was ready. He put everything in their backyard shed. The lock that didn’t actually lock had ice crystals along its arch like a frozen rainbow.

  Back inside, he tiptoed past the kitchen. He was starving, but had a bag of frozen peas from Italy! that he could eat in his room.

  Finn? said his mother when he was almost but not quite at the stairs.

  Yeah?

  Did you see anyone out there?

  No.

  Did you ask them if they’d seen Cora?

  No.

  No you didn’t ask them or no they hadn’t seen her?

  No they hadn’t seen her, Mom. But they were looking. They said they were looking.

  OK.

  •  •  •

  The next day was a Monday, the second Monday of the month. Which meant, or used to mean, school-field-trip day. Finn was up and out by six, preparing everything. He was back outside his parents’ bedroom door by seven. Good morning, Mom. He knocked the rhythm out on the door frame at the same time as he said it. Good! Morning! Mom!