The High-Rise in Fort Fierce Page 8

  Mostly, she went because Carolyn was in town. Marly had seen her in Northern Groceries buying salmon, what a luxury, and this happened once in a while, Carolyn returning home to visit her parents. It was like a national holiday, the pub packed with everyone she’d left behind, everyone wanting to get close to her, buy her a drink, look at her legs, fawn over her spectacular success down south, a restaurateur in Vancouver, how glamorous. Marly went, kept her distance, and Carolyn ignored her, much as expected.

  But Niles did not. Staggering out of the men’s washroom, wearing a red button-up shirt tucked into tight blue jeans, a black toque stuffed into his back pocket, Niles caught Marly’s eye and held it as he stumbled across the bar to the exit. He jerked his chin at her before slipping through the dented, black door. She left her rum and coke fizzing on the bar and followed him into the weather.

  The snow came slowly out of the sky like shredded feathers from a torn duvet. Two sets of footprints meandered across the parking lot, one pair staggering and wild, the other direct and sure. Marly and Niles climbed into his truck. The windshield was buried in snow. They fumbled through his long johns and up her shirt. Outside, the storm filled their footprints.

  Niles passed out when he was finished. Marly held him through the cold night, his saliva stinking on her neck. She turned his truck on a few times to run the heater. She had this strange vision of his dog dying the week before she started grade nine, when he’d chased her down the Shorelines and hurled her toad into the river. His dad had crushed the dog’s hind legs backing out of their driveway and made Niles shoot it in the mouth with an old .22. She looked at his head resting on her shoulder. Poor Niles. In the morning, still dark at nine o’clock, he drove her to the high-rise and dropped her off in silence.

  That spring, Old Town flooded. The river ice broke up and clogged the mouth of Little Raven Lake, and the reeds that Marly ran through when she was a kid were gradually submerged. The water came high enough to damage the flooring in Carolyn’s childhood home, which had been built in the eighties on an elevated platform. Cold water sloshed across the lobby of the high-rise and Billy Franklin tromped around in his rubber boots with a Shop-Vac in one hand and a giant squeegee in the other.

  Marly’s mother died the same morning. They found her slumped in a kitchen chair, next to the telephone, hair hanging in her raw-boned face. She was wearing a tattered pink nightie. Her bare feet were purple and blue. They dangled in the water. Mike, with rubber boots up to his knees, put his arm around Marly, and he smelled faintly of sweat. She sobbed into the liner of his open spring jacket. He brought her back to the apartment and made her a nest of blankets and pillows on the living-room couch. Then he swallowed some of his medication and handled the whole situation. Marly called her dad and consoled him while he cried.

  Two weeks later, Mike wordlessly moved back south, leaving divorce papers on the kitchen counter. The story got back to Marly piecemeal through the queue at work because people sometimes whispered about her, even though they knew she could hear. Carolyn had been in Old Town. She’d flown in from Vancouver to help her parents tidy their property. She’d seen Mike and helped him with some of the funeral arrangements. She asked him how he and Marly were getting on after what happened with Niles at the pub. She didn’t mean to pry, but she thought they made such a lovely couple.

  VII

  Marly rented apartment 204, a bachelor. She moved her mother’s water-damaged furniture inside, made a nest of the couch.

  And she started taking cold baths. She researched the health benefits, the stimulated weight loss, the relief of depression, the improved immunity and circulation. She lowered herself stiffly into the water and imagined herself emerging twenty minutes later, a merry goddess. At first, she took warm showers before the tub had even drained. But slowly, she got used to the jarring temperature. She skipped the showers and brought a bucket of ice to the bathroom, perched it on the edge of the tub, and when the water started to warm up, she dumped the cubes in all at once, her face blank as she watched them float across the surface.

  In her dreams, she made love to Niles Willis, his body rough with black feathers. Sometimes, she woke up laughing, but it was a laugh that didn’t belong to her. She didn’t know whose it was. In other dreams, she was trying to swim south up the river, away from Fort Fierce and into Alberta, but the current was cold and powerful, thick with ashes, and before she could drown, Ms. Baker’s skeleton rescued her, brought her ashore, and sent her back to town.

  A month after she moved in, Marly went to wing night at the pub and spent an hour alone, trying to catch Niles’s eye. His mouth looked sticky with hot sauce. Was he ignoring her? She looked over her shoulder on her way out the door and couldn’t be certain if he’d just quickly looked away.

  Marly started the Welcome Wagon that summer. She went from business to business and pitched the owners, many of whom she’d known since she was a kid. She told them a small gift certificate for a newcomer could produce a loyal customer. Why not give it a try? They waved her off to assistant managers, but she managed to get her certificates and make her welcome baskets. She put an ad in the back pages of the Northerner and waited for people to call.

  For a month, no one did. Marly developed headaches and a cough. Her eyes were always itchy and sometimes she had trouble breathing. Must’ve been something in the air. She worked a split shift at Northern Groceries, trudged to work in the morning, blackflies buzzing loops around her head, and then back again for the evening shift. When there was a band at the pub, she sat on the same barstool and watched them play. She didn’t care what people said about her. She had her drinks and went home at eleven.

  Most nights, she’d lie down in her bed and stare at the ceiling. She’d pasted a galaxy of phosphorescent stickers up there, stars, moons, and planets faintly glowing, and for each of the dozen storeys above her head, she’d imagine real-life scenarios: a child brushing her teeth over the toilet, stepfather banging on the door, hurry up; rice water boiling over on the stove while a young couple chopped vegetables on the opposite counter, and he kept nuzzling her neck; an action movie flickering on the TV screen, middle-aged bachelor passed out with his chin on his chest and his cellphone in his hand and his three-legged shepherd quietly yanking fluff out of a teddy bear. And up less than a dozen floors, where the apartments were immaculately clean and meticulously tiled, where the appliances were renewed every couple years and the musty smells never managed to reach, maybe up there she’d left some trace of herself in the apartment she’d lived in with Mike. Maybe a hair crumbled in the cracks under the baseboards. Maybe a bobby pin in the back of the bathroom cabinet. Maybe something small like that, so she could find it in her dreams and bring it to Mike and remind him of their life together and explain what she’d done to ruin it. Apologize until he took her back.

  Marly spent most of her free time working on the Welcome Wagon. She serviced a dozen or so clients throughout the winter. She’d forgotten there were so many outsiders in town, and sometimes she thought of Mike, and then Owen, and she wished she lived farther north, where it was darker or brighter and colder or warmer, but no matter the season, there were fewer people around, because who could live a life that far removed? But generally she liked meeting all these new people, even if the feeling wasn’t always mutual. There was the coast guard couple from Esquimalt who snickered at her basket of token offerings; they invited her in for coffee, but no one spoke except Marly, who gave them detailed directions to and from each of the businesses represented in the basket. She met a divorcée who moved in across the hall and cried in Marly’s arms but refused to answer her door thereafter; in the elevator, Marly invited her over for a drink, but she smoothed her dyed-black hair and stared at the buttons as if no one had spoken. There were the volunteer schoolteachers from England and the librarian from South Africa, all of them searching for some kind of success along the northern frontier, some kind of experience, some kind of escape. They were all intriguing in their own ways, b
ut none were interested in friendship, least of all the volunteers, who kept her company at the pub over the course of a couple evenings but then stopped returning her calls, and even her glances, once they’d settled into the town’s more established social networks.

  The strangest of her clients was the man with the threelegged shepherd, who was actually born in Fort Fierce but called her anyway. He shrugged sheepishly when Marly appeared at the door and raised her eyebrow. His dog sniffed her crotch and they watched Seinfeld reruns for three hours, up until he made an awkward, half-hearted pass. His hand on her denim-clad knee, stroking; his fingertips yellow with nicotine. Marly considered this briefly but decided against it when she realized she knew nothing about him, even though he’d lived in town for as long as she could remember. He was a recluse. An oddity. She told him she had to go to the bathroom, stopped instead at the front door and refused to look up while he stood in the hallway, watching quietly as she hurried into her jacket and boots.

  Then spring began finally to push the winter away. It happened quickly, darkness giving over to light. The river broke up again and the waterfalls upstream filled it with mud and wood, a seasonal tribute destined for Little Raven Lake that brought with it another bout of flooding, but nothing so severe as the year before. Soon, it would be summer and then a whole new set of extremes.

  Marly saw Norman Franklin in the elevator one day after her morning shift at the grocery store. It took her a second to recognize him. He was carrying tools and he stared at the ground and when she got off the elevator he quickly pushed the button to close the doors. Had he gone somewhere? Or was he just sort of invisible, like her?

  She drew a bath and lit candles even though it was the middle of the day. She brought her cellphone into the bathroom and set it on a towel next to the base of the tub, just in case someone called, and after fifteen minutes of soaking in icy water, someone did, and it was Becky Baker. She said she felt silly calling. She’d grown up in Fort Fierce, so why should she need to be welcomed? It was silly. She was sorry she called. It was dumb.

  Marly curled her toes over the edge of the tub. She wanted to say, I knew your mother. She wanted to say, Your mother was my best friend. But instead she said, “You probably change when you leave a place like this. It’s probably a good thing.”

  And Becky said, “It’s not even the gift certificates. Honestly. I mean, do you want to go for a coffee? You know, like, if you’re free? I feel stupid asking. I’m trying to open myself, you know, like, to new things. New people or whatever.”

  It was ten in the morning and water sloshed over the side of the tub as Marly sat up suddenly. “Sure,” she said. “How about now?”

  Becky said that sounded great. She said she’d need time to get ready, like half an hour. Marly hung up the phone and sat back in the tub. She sneezed three times, hard. She was always getting stuffed up in this place, no matter how much dusting she did. Maybe the cold bath regimen was a bunch of shit. Maybe it did nothing for her immune system. She’d been doing it for ages now, and did she feel any less depressed? No. Any healthier? No. Had she lost even five pounds as a result? No. She hadn’t. She’d remained the same all throughout.

  Maybe what she needed was a warm blast of water. She sat up and dug the plug out of the drain. It took an eternity for the tub to empty, but she waited. She wanted to feel the hot water run right down to her toes. She wanted it to be perfect.

  When finally the tub was empty, she huddled against the faucet wall and angled the showerhead so it sprayed over her back. She crouched and turned the tap, was surprised to see it still travelled that far to the left. Even before the water touched her skin, she could feel the heat coming off it. The steam. It was a bit oppressive. A bit heavy. She coughed and sneezed and felt the spray dampen her face. Her blood responded. Her skin. She stood up and stepped into the flow.

  Cold baths, she thought, water streaming down her back. Maybe not the best idea.

  I

  They chased each other in circles, four horses bolted to a carousel, one for each corner of the world. Their legs were carved taut and strong, galloping, and their thick manes flowed back between their ears. They were caught in a warm summer breeze and rotating slowly in the corner of the schoolyard, near the swing sets. A plastic bag blew past, twisting in wind-spun circles of its own.

  II

  The first time Amy saw them, she was eight, which was four times two, which was the number of important adults in her life: two. She and her mother had left the reserve and moved in with a new boyfriend. He lived in Franklin Place, on the sixth floor, and he was a white man from Alberta who fixed cars and always had grease-black hands. His name was Charlie.

  People were forever talking about Franklin Place, which was the only high-rise anywhere outside Yellowknife. In the wintertime, when the river was frozen and the ice road was ploughed, lots of people drove from the reserve to town, and lots of them wound up in Franklin Place. They went there to visit family and friends. They went there to pick things up and drop things off. They went in on a Friday and didn’t come back until Tuesday morning, when they were thin and broke and had a hard time speaking and couldn’t stop scratching their faces.

  When Amy still went to the grade school on reserve, lots of her classmates came from broken homes and had parents in the building. In the summer, when it took way longer to get to town because the ice road was gone and people had to drive all the way to the bridge, some of these kids vanished for weeks at a time, stowed away in the high-rise until a ride could be arranged to get back home. They’d show up at school with all kinds of stories, and Amy was a bit scared of Franklin Place, even though her mom said it’d be much easier for them to get around now that they lived there: the grocery store, church, work, school, the playgrounds, the airport. Everything was in the shadow of the high-rise, or close to it.

  Now, up on the sixth floor, Amy brushed her teeth over the toilet bowl, because she was short and the sink was tough to reach, and Charlie was banging impatiently on the door. Hurry up. Tall but not gangly, Charlie stooped to one side when he held her hand on the walk to school. He wasn’t allowed to drive, even though it was his job to fix cars, and he was running late for work. Amy’s mother was still asleep on the couch, sitting up in the corner with her mouth hanging slack and beer cans scattered around like garbage, until eventually someone would gather them up and take them in for a return, and instead of garbage they’d be like small change, and then that change would once again turn into cans of beer. The shadow of the high-rise enveloped the front doors of the school at the end of the street, and the two of them followed it across the road and through the playground.

  Two dozen kids dashed in circles around the carousel, but there were only four lucky riders, three girls and a boy, hands in the air as they cantered in circles. Amy wanted to slip out of Charlie’s dirty hand and run to the horses. She’d seen real ones on television and the internet, and even right before her eyes, because there was a man in town who owned two brown ones. He came to the reserve in the summer and tethered his animals outside the Anglican Church, where Amy once fed one an apple from her palm.

  She remembers the animal’s lips in her hand, his teeth plucking the apple, gently, and then the affectionate nudge of his long, hard brow. She remembers her fingers picking through his mane. That was how they made friends, and the horse snorted something about travel and adventure. She remembers the man watching her carefully, unsure if she would be gentle with the horse, or if it would even like her back. After a while, he smiled and went to look for the pastor.

  But there was no time for horses this morning, not even the fake ones on the carousel. Charlie pulled her into the office, cursing under his breath, scratching the stubble on his cheeks. His eyelids sagged as he tried to explain to the dowdy, sniffling receptionist that this little girl would be attending classes here now, and it was Amy’s turn to feel anxious, to blow air through her nose and peer out the sides of her eyes.

  Later, the lunch
bell was sudden and shrill, and instantly the equations scribbled on the chalkboard were unimportant. Kids shrieked and wheeled into the playground, chasing each other in circles. The four horses were set upon, crowded around, tamed and claimed by children used to shoving their way to the top.

  This time, Amy got close enough to enjoy the exquisite details carved and painted into the animals. She saw the fur spreading all over their lean bodies. Each of their ears was slightly different from the other, the wind, real and imagined, rippling the thin flesh of their inner lobes. Their saddles were all different colours, crazy shades of yellow, green, pink, and orange. She wanted to reach out and touch one, to feel the texture of the carving, to stare one right in its majestic face. But they spun past at dizzying speeds.

  Around the carousel, the roiling crowd was not to be trusted, not if she were to lean too close, if she were to fall and be trampled under hoof. Even still, she was able to catch the odd horse’s eye, black and profound, like her own, and to feel her anxiety fizz away before the recess bell sucked everyone back into the classrooms.

  That night, from a balcony on the high-rise, leaning against the railing next to a rusted barbeque and flats of empty, ashy beer cans, Amy marvelled at the horses, alone now, riderless in the schoolyard, as they must’ve been every night.

  She imagined herself mounting them one by one, riding them in busy circles of glee and a touch of fear, as well. They would’ve galloped over the poles and around the Earth, stamping up adventure wherever they went.

  Her mother caught her creeping across the parking lot, snatched her by the wrist and gave her bones a tight, cruel twist, wrenching her around and hauling her back inside, where she came from.