Before Clare
Episode 1: Toronto 1959
She’s standing at the front door when I pull into the driveway. A thin woman in a black hat and a dark coat that’s too warm for this time of year. A small bag by her feet. She has a magazine in her hands.
I don’t want to be rude to her. But I’m not up for a story about her god that had a son named Jesus. Sylvester the Cat gets stars around his head whenever Tweety smacks him with a mallet. I’m thinking that if I’m now living in a cartoon, there’s lots of stars circling that bump on my head. There’s a baby now. With Clare in the hospital.
I’m sorry that the bible lady’s having to walk the streets to tell people about god’s problems with his kid, but I’ve got my own kid to worry about.
Clare and the baby were sleeping when I left. I want to rest for a few hours. I must feed the cats. Then I’ll go back to the hospital to see them.
I park the car, fiddle with my keys and move slowly. Don’t look at her, hoping she will move on to the next house. I start to wave her away but change my mind. Now that I know what being born looks like up close, it’s not something you want to do without keeping god on your side.
I force a smile and say hello.
She reaches out to take my hand. “Hello Martin.”
I apologize for not recognizing her. Margaret.
“Why didn’t you go in and sit in the porch? The door’s unlatched.”
Standing out there like an over-dressed burglar’s moll. It’s her own fault for being early. Blame the craziness of the last twenty-four hours. Clare said she’d be coming to help with the baby. I’m not sure what’s she’s to do because taking care of Clare and the baby is my job. Once I figure it out.
Or maybe Clare wants her here.
Last night, the baby messed up our plans. Revising the schedule on the fly. Clare’s finding bedding for her mother’s room and then we’re at go-time and racing to the hospital. Because Michael decides it’s time to be born.
I forgot that Margaret’s coming and there’s no one home to meet her. She should have gone into the porch. She could have sat in there and waited more comfortably.
I ask about her flight to have something to say. She didn’t like it. I have the impression she doesn’t like most things. I put out some cookies with the tea.
“Tinned milk will be fine for me,” she says.
We don’t have tinned milk.
“Your house is big,” she says. “I should take my shoes off.”
“It’s not that big. And please keep your shoes on if you like.”
I wish Clare was here.
I’ve met Margaret only once before. She and her husband came to Toronto for the wedding. It’s the first time he’d been out of Newfoundland, and he tells me an hour after I’d married his daughter it would be his last. I was welcome to stay over in the parlour if I ever got to Point au Gaul.
The only other time Margaret had been away she went to Montreal to see Caroline, Clare’s sister. Eighteen years older than Clare. But they’re very close despite that gap in age. It’s Burin they have in common. That’s what their bond is. It’s a world I know nothing about. Clare said she didn’t experience it the same as her sister did. And Caroline left when she was a baby. But I know it’s what connects them.
Caroline’s husband’s from Burin too and they took Clare in when she wanted to do something other than marry a fisherman. That’s when they became close again. So it was Montreal for Clare, to McGill. We meet there and find our way to Toronto where there was better work.
Newfoundland’s always there, far away to go to but there under her skin. Clare says that Caroline’s never going back and doesn’t talk about it anymore. But it’s there with her.
I’m not one for family relations other than my wife in front of me and now a baby sleeping off being born at the hospital. It’s not that I don’t like family. It’s just that I don’t have much to say to them. Hosting my wife’s mother now, second time we’ve met, is not what I was hoping for tonight.
I try smiling. I have no idea of what to say to her.
“Would you like some more tea?” I say.
At least the father has been true to his word. She’s the adventurer not him. I reach for her cup. She catches me off guard when she asks if we have some rum. I pretend we don’t. I worry if she saw it in the living room.
I watch Clare’s eyes in her face. It’s been hours for me standing beside her bed and rubbing her feet and getting cussed out when I touch her wrong and getting yelled at when I stop. At least Margaret’s calm.
I haven’t told her yet because I think she’d be the one to ask first.
At odd moments over the last few days, I thought of the family that would have to be told. I hear myself in my head rehearsing clever announcement phrases to phone around the country. Like hello granny. I’d obviously forgotten Margaret’s coming because she’d be in Toronto by then.
I could be more efficient with the news and limit the time I’d have to be talking by calling one of her cousins and saying would you mind telling the other cousins.
Clare’s fine. Yes, Michael. Thanks a bunch, gotta go.
I didn’t want to get sucked into long conversations about things I was sure I knew nothing about. Michael now. That’s going to take getting used to.
I’m used to Clare and Martin. But from now on, it’s to be Clare and Martin and little Michael.
I don’t want to be drinking with her. Drinking means talking. It’ll be easier for me if I can get her doing the talking. As the grandmother, it’s her right to be here. I know that.
If I told anyone that I was feeling angry at Clare for not being there—here—to deal with her mother, they’d not be sympathetic. I know that too. Under the circumstances, Clare could be excused for missing her mother’s arrival.
I pretend a big yawn. Her eyes follow me. Clare’s eyes again. And if they were Clare’s eyes, they’d be drilling lasers into my chest and telling me to knock it off because she knew what I was doing. Trying to escape.
I pantomime another yawn so wide my jaw cracks and hurts with a snap. Serves me right. I fall back on rote nodding at her words.
Surely, she’s tired. She’d changed flights twice, in Halifax and then in Montreal. I want to go to bed.
“I called Caroline from the airport in Montreal,” she says. “I talked to her half an hour.”
It sounds like the start of a story. Maybe she’s waiting for me.
“That’s nice,” I say.
“Caroline moved away after her youngest one was born. Soon after.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Would you like to go into the living room?” I say.
“The kitchen’s fine for me thanks.”
That “hello granny” thing? Supposed to be cute I guess. If it was a scene in Father Knows Best on TV, the phone would ring and someone would say “hello granny” and the audience would sigh a happy sigh. So they’d know the baby was born. I had no clue of how to say it. I’m not sure how to say granny to a stranger you’ve talked to just twice in your life.
I’d put away her hat and coat in the hall closet. I’d put her suitcase in the upstairs bedroom. I’d taken as long as I could to find the bedding Clare had already arranged. When I come back downstairs, she’s finished the tea. There was no help for it. So I found the rum. She asks for coke. I’m surprised. Not sure why I thought she wouldn’t be much of a drinker.
“The baby’s fine. Michael. Clare’s good too. Going to go back in a few hours. I found some rum.”
We’re out of ice, and the coke’s warm. I add more rum without being obvious. Tired, one drink would put me to sleep. I tip more into hers.
Margaret smiles. Is she happy about the rum or the news?
“Michael. Michael’s a good name,” she says.
A good name? If only she knew. I’ll let Clare tell her. Clare’s had her heart set on Michael the whole time. Won’t be changing her mind. Clare and Martin and little Michael. I’ll get used to it.
Clare wanted to sleep. A nurse wheeled the baby out of the room and down the hall. I wondered if they watch them constantly or leave them in those big rooms behind the glass you see on TV.
I sit across the table looking at Margaret. Clare’s eyes watching me. They take in everything in the room. Not sleepy. When there’s a bit of coke left in her glass, I’ll yawn and tell her I’d made up her bed. Not say more than was necessary.
But she will have this ritual talk I want no part of. On this night of all nights. Clare’s mother. The rhythm of her family stories make me feel our strangeness. I’ll be too tired to remember.
I always try to listen respectfully when people tell their family stories. They are all completely true to me because they’re stories they believe. And in most cases there’s enough of the person’s hopes in them to make them worth believing even if a bit’s rejigged here and there to make the telling smoother.
When you remember things, truth is a funny thing. Truth is what you remember and tell someone else. Of course, there are the barebones facts of stuff that you just accept. Like Diefenbaker is prime minister. George Armstrong has a great playoff and the Maple Leafs still lose to Montreal. There’s a god even if we don’t go to church anymore. And Newfoundland’s been in Canada since 1949. Clare’s told me that enough times so I know that’s true. Honestly I never paid much attention. I’m thinking now I should have.
But Newfoundland and what happened there is so far away from us. Clare’s a librarian for goodness sake, not a fisherman’s wife from Newfoundland. I’m an engineer. I build buildings so they don’t fall over if Lake Ontario ever pushes a tsunami up Yonge Street.
I wasn’t sure how much of what Margaret’s remembering and telling is Clare’s story. But she’s determined to make me listen to it. Here in Toronto this night.
Margaret is definitely smiling more, looking at me.
“Baby Michael. My Clare. That doesn’t surprise me. You should be told then.”
Margaret says it’s a warm November on the Burin Peninsula. I know I’m not remembering all the places she’s telling about because it’s her history, not mine.
She tells me to get us new drinks first. I wonder if she’s beginning to like me. Or I’m just a necessary part of Clare’s story.
Margaret breaks the filter off the cigarette I pass her. There’s nowhere to go. Her names and places demand nothing of me but to listen. I withdraw into my own smoke.
She calls it a tidal wave because that’s what it was called then. I don’t know when it became a tsunami. That’s the scientific word for it. Seems such a foreign sounding word to describe something in Newfoundland so long ago. How could it have happened and we know almost nothing about it?
As she talks about that night in 1929, I think of the structural engineering and the loads and forces caused by water. The boats, and nets and fishing gear and the wharves and how they would have been swept up to create a grinding forward edge to the water. And that would have torn loose all the water-side structures, the storage buildings that held more gear and property and heavy tools and metal blades for cutting. And then all of that would be mixed in and added to the load that would have hit the most vulnerable structures. The houses where the people are just there. Waiting for it to be over.
Margaret calls it an unimaginable force. Unimaginable. Perhaps. But not incalculable. I reduce the horror to its mathematics as I listen. There’s pressure, and density of the water, and the acceleration of waves and the height. There are minimum and maximums to wave crests. There are numbers that describe force. I have the numbers in my head.
Margaret says there’s a second tidal wave and then a third one. I increase a number and concentrate on the math that gives me load and then force and I hold those numbers in my head. And that’s the total of all those numbers, that’s what hits the houses. There’s nothing built that survives those numbers. Unless you’re just throwing up your hands and yelling curses at god.
Episode 2: Burin Peninsula, Dominion of Newfoundland 1929
Wes sits in his arm chair in the parlour with a mug of tea. The outside door opens and his son-in-law bangs down the hall. He stops in front of him.
He sips his tea before looking up at him.
“The door. You didn’t get it shut all the way Michael.”
“We’re going back out.” Michael rolls a football off the back of his hand up his arm to his shoulder. He catches it in his other hand. Then he rolls it again.
Skinny with wild hair. Already finding cod better than men twice his age. What would Caroline have seen in him? Not half as smart as her. But the husband she wants so that’s good enough.
“You’re stunned as a lump. The door.”
Michael trudges down the hall. The door closes. Wes listens to the boots scuffing back on the linoleum.
“You want to suck your tea there, Mr. Tyler. The boys are waiting for us.”
“Not for me today. G’wan b’y. And now you kin shut the door again on your way out.”
Football with the lads. Not the thing on his mind these past weeks.
Michael pretends to toss him the ball.
“How ya getting’ on, old man? I see your boat’s all put to bed when I come in. Too old are ya for a full day fishing?”
“Old enough to know where the cod’s at until I comes where they are. And not stay out half the night to do a day’s work. ”
“I’m glad of that Mr. Tyler. That you know where the fish is. A man’s gotta take care of his family, specially with a growing one like yours.”
The last month had been busy. The merchants are pleased to be taking all the cod the fishers at Point au Gaul can supply. And they got to pay down their bills so they’re fishing while they can. Didn’t leave him the time to be thinking about it. About Margaret and a baby coming.
One of the women must have noticed. Or Margaret told someone when they were salting cod. And now the hens are doing some clucking.
The women thinks it’s deadly. They keep clucking and then it’s told to someone’s husband. And then the story’s with his mates and they’re driving him cracked. The details don’t much matter when men hear stories like that and tell their mates.
Then one morning there’s a boat next to his going out and a bunch of them howling at him and laughing and he doesn’t know why. And one of them makes a vulgar gesture. All young ones, same as Michael.
The boat’s captain, Rene, he’s older and he and Wes they know each other having come up on the same boats, he yells at his crew “Don’t do that.” And they’re back to working.
Rene the captain tips his head at him because he knows when you’re too old for where you’re at in life. Like telling a story but always starting at the wrong place and having to go back to explain how you got where you’re at now. And then noticing no one’s listening to the story he’s telling anyway.
Wes nods at Rene and their boats move apart and they go out to the fish. He pretends he knows and doesn’t act surprised. Margaret must have told him before and he didn’t hear. He wouldn’t have forgot. She’s thirty-six and another baby coming. Wes never remembers his exact age because it doesn’t matter to him or to anyone else. It’s forty one or forty two.
He asks her that night if they’re having a baby. He doesn’t tell her about the other fishers laughing. Margaret says yes and looks at him like he’s an idiot. So he knows it’s for sure. As sure as there is shit in a cat.
That’s more babies than he expected this year because Caroline and Michael had the twins just after past Christmas. He’s not sure it’s good to be starting over being a father again. But now he is and so it’s time to get going on it.
Other men make their jokes about him and why he’s going home early all the time. They’re thinking they’re really funny. It’s not worth the powder to blow them to hell. If it gives them something to talk about other than their own troubles, then it’s no matter to him.
“Mr. Tyler, if you want to call it a draw now that we got the twins, then Caroline and me, we won’t have anymore. I don’t want to be pushing at ya to win at making babies.”
“I dies at ya b’y.”
Michael kisses the ball and holds it out to him.
“So you coming up to the pitch then? There’s a boat from St. Pierre next week playing the Grand Bank Boys and we’re going to get a friendly with them. And their ladies. You’ll want to be ready.”
“I should stay in tonight. You run along like a little boy.”
“If you’re too tired Mr. Tyler, you could be goalie tonight. Or ball boy and go chasing it up the hill whenever I boot it through the goal.”
Margaret comes in from the kitchen and boffs a dish towel at the back of Wes’ head as she passes his chair.
“Why didn’t you call me when my favourite son-in-law’s come?”
She hugs Michael and he squeezes her back as he drops the ball into Wes’ lap.
“How’s my boy? And my baby’s babies? Tell Caroline I will come round tomorrow for tea.”
“They’re deadly mum. Keeping us up all night so Caroline’s in a rotten mood when I get home. Good to get on the go with my mates for a bit.”
Margaret laughs. “She’s a stubborn one, thinks the world’s supposed to be the way she wants it. Babies will be putting her on her arse because she’s too cocky.”
Margaret taps Wes on the shoulder.
“Wes, go to the football tonight. I don’t want you hanging around here like an old man. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
“I don’t need to go out tonight.”
“If you’re too old for football with the young ones, I’ll find you a shawl and pull your chair close to the stove. Maybe fill the wood box while I’m at it and make you a nice fire. I can split some more wood if you’d like.”
Michael laughs and gestures for the ball back from Wes. Wes is up, flipping him the ball. But he’s not on the move yet.
“Margaret, you shouldn’t be alone now. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Mrs. Burgess’s right next door and she’s pestering me to come over for tea once you’re gone. So out with ya or you’ll be sitting here listening to her yap about her kids getting away to do better than everyone’s ever done from here.”
From the doorway, Michael’s voice. “I’ll bring him back safe and sound mum, so you can tuck him in.”
Margaret points to the door. Wes mimes a grimace.
“God Margaret, the things that you and him get going on in your heads. Fine Michael, come on we goes.”
Wes walks down the hall and out.
Margaret listens for the quiet. She pats her belly. There’s no plans for Mrs. Burgess. With dinner done, it’s good to be alone for a few hours. She can’t remember a time when she wasn’t Caroline’s mother. She’s always a mother but only to that one. And that one now grown up and gone with babies of her own. Though not far away but still gone out of the house.
Something as simple as having tea with no one hanging off you demanding something. It’s a peace she likes.
She looks at her hands. The hands of an old woman. But now at least they are mostly hers again. She’s used to not having to be always reaching to catch hold of someone. For a few years she’s mostly had to do only for herself.
But you can’t think like that with a new baby. A new baby makes an old woman a new mother. She knows she’s not an old woman. Just not sure she’s feeling up to being a new mother.
Soon things are going to be because of the baby. It’s already started. A month ago she’d stopped going down to the sheds at the waterfront where the women are making fish now.
They all put in their times gutting and cleaning the cod at the stages, getting it ready for salting. And drying it on the flakes and turning it. They need many hands when the men come back with the boats loaded. She’s always one of them. Those that had young ones bring them along when the weather’s good and everyone watches all the kids playing while they work. Others leave babies with neighbours or older girls minding them ’til when they’re done and collect their kiddies going home. It feels strange to not be with them. But she couldn’t go now. Because of the baby.
Wes watches Michael drive the ball down the pitch to one of his brothers. Slipping away from the game, he wishes this wasn’t where he’s at. He settles down on the flat top of the boulder at the cliff’s edge. The harbour lays quiet in front of him a hundred feet below.
He spreads his feet and stiffens his back so he won’t fall forward. The water rests like it’s waiting for when it’s called back to work running in and out of the bay.
When he was a boy, his mother read stories to him. There was one about keeping watch from an old castle, up in a tower high above a harbour. He remembers the water in the story is twinkling quiet down at the bottom of a steep cliff before it raises itself up in the shape of great roaring lion’s head and swallows the castle whole. Not a story he’d read a child today. But he loved hearing it from his mum then even as it gave him the terrors at night.
He drops his head downward and relaxes his gaze, letting his eyes lose focus so it’s more a scene he’s feeling than seeing. He remembers the game behind him and forces himself to glance back. If they call him and send the ball his way, he’d have to jump up and stop it. Or watch it go over the edge and bounce down to the rocks below. Not a good ball boy he’d be if lets the ball be lost.
Wes doesn’t hear Michael glide up and bang the ball off the back of his rock.
“Oh me nerves, Michael Wilkes.” But his heart’s not in it. He’s thinking only of how the water’s gone still, like a painting of what should be in the harbour. Soon it will be time to say he’s got to get back.
Michael gathers the ball in and coaxes it forward to the edge. To where the ground falls away, where the earth becomes nothing but cold wind. The ball hesitates, peaks over and spins back, rolling up against Michael’s boots, refusing to go that last step, no pirate’s prisoner walking the plank. It’s such a sook and smarter than those that fall out of boats.
“Hello Mr. Tyler, my brothers and I was wondering if you’d do us the great honour of joining us this evening and showing us, please, how football was played in the olden days.”
Someone laughs. Wes looks at the faces. They’re so young, full of themselves, free of the worry that life visits on those who live long enough. A voice calls Michael for the ball. He boots it away with a heavy thud. The ball flies up, hangs against a duckish sky like a brown cannon ball fired from the gun of an ancient man-of-war. He once read a book about pirate ships and how they’d get sunk when cannon balls smashed holes in their hulls when they attacked the merchant vessels. Tonight the ball falls harmless back to earth, bouncing a few times before rolling to a stop.
When are you done worrying about a child? Can you ever be finished with that? His whole life has been to get Caroline raised and grown up. He never knew how they’d do it or when they’d be finished because Margaret was the sure one. His job was only going out to fish and coming back with enough to take care of them. But another child that’s now trying to grab hold of him? That’s not something he thought he’d be thinking about.
He’d started to let Caroline go because she was grown up and moved out even if it was only to a house he could walk to in twenty minutes. A mile from where she’d been born. She’s with Michael now and it’s up to them two to figure it out.
And where’s Michael? Look for the ball. He’s the one with it. The oldest of the three Wilkes boys. Michael’s the good looking one for sure. But some saucy he is. He’d need that to put up with Caroline.
Gabriel and Bernard, the brothers, they follow like puppies wherever he gets to first. They lumber along after him like they’re carting bags of coal on their backs and they’re chasing a dragonfly who’d run off with their ball.
On the open ground, Michael bumps the ball up at them and snags it away. The ball shimmies a live thing, side to side and back and around and over tufts of brown grass. It does what he’s telling it. It twitches and jumps to the nods of his head and the thrusts of his shoulders without touching. Howling, a pack of boy men stumps after him as he skips away, swooping in on the goal and booting the ball home.
It’s near time to go. The sea’s gone out early tonight. Low tide but not like this. Like someone’s knocked a hole in the bottom of the bay. There’s the tidemark that’s against the wharf where his boat is docked. The mark’s way high. It’s all still. It’s a rough pebbly landwash where the water’s supposed to be deep. His boat’s not in water. The sea’s missing. The boat lays tilted on washed stones and mud, aground, not swaying on the tide. There’s no edge to the water.
When they’re at football, the men see out past the point, the high view of the long narrow harbour. He hears Michael breathing beside him. The dories are still, their grey hulls exposed, all scrapes they’d picked up bumping the hard things hidden by the sea. Like a story his mum read him where the ogre’s been playing toys with the boats and then leaves them tumbled over on their sides.
On clear evenings, the schooners in the harbour are rising and falling with the waves. Not this night. The schooners are stuck, weirdly arrested, great birds dead and broken on the landwash. Ships lean over at each other like they’re stumbling half cut and stopping to rest on the way home. The masts point at each other in jumbles of angles, dark lines, glued pieces of a painting stuck up on a graying wall. The sea is gone and the schooners are grounded.
There’s a line moving away from the land, long and thin, the blunt edge of a knife laying down across the mouth of the bay out past the last schooner. Like the ogre got a fishing hook snagged on one side of the point and drags his line right along the horizon to the other side. That line he sees going away is the water from their bay leaving.
The others come up to see. Their breathing slows as the game passes from them.
“Fuckin’ Jesus.” It’s Wes.
“Bring the kids. And the old folks. Everyone comes from the houses. All up here.”
Wes looks at Michael.
“They’ll have to be got up from the sheds. They won’t see it down there or even know what they’re seeing if they do.”
Michael nods and puts his hands on his brothers. “Gabriel, you go for Caroline and the twins. She’ll need help. Bernie, you get mum and bring her here.”
“The babies’ at mum’s. We’ll get them all.”
“She said Caroline’s gone back to the salting tonight. Caroline’s at the sheds, Michael.”
The two brothers speak at once. Wes wants to ask them if they’re sure. But saying what they said, they’d know the twins are with Mrs. Wilkes. They’d know where Caroline was. They have to go. It’s a mile one way to the sheds and the women cleaning and salting. The houses are a mile the other way.
“LUH! There.”
They look at it. The sea’s back. It’s a dark curtain hanging from the sky behind the schooners. The horizon’s gone. A green sky bends low, like a collapsing roof snagged on a beam. The sun’s a luminous wafer in the west dropping into the water. The ships are going to ghosts, masts are jangled gouges, dark lines against a moving background that that’s coming in to shore.
Then the light is gone off and it’s all darkness. Only thunder on the water, a cold roaring air, a sound that hurts like ice and sleet in the eyes. Then a rolling drumming. A gray bilge of ocean coming up the bay like a hundred ships with too much wind behind them.
When Wes reaches his house, Mrs. Burgess is in the kitchen with her daughter Bessie. The girl’s putting the kettle on the stove.
“Caroline’s come back from the salting. She’s upstairs with her mother. Margaret’s having a lay down,” Mrs. Burgess says.
Caroline’s sitting by the bed, holding Margaret’s hand. She rises to give him the chair, but he waves her back. Margaret smiles at him. Her hair needs brushing. She wears a nightdress.
He doesn’t know how to say it with them all here and tea being made like it’s just a visit and a chat. The stab in his chest is when he can’t find words. He wants to say it to her without Caroline there because whenever he can’t say something, Margaret hears it and understands and knows what to do.
“Well, Mr. Tyler, it looks like I won’t be alone to have this baby. Doctor’s been sent for. You picked a good time to come home.” Margaret smiles at her daughter.
Wes says nothing. She never goes without brushing her hair. She wouldn’t want to look like that in front of neighbors. He still can’t find words.
Caroline prompts him. “Father, whaddya at?”
“She’s all mops and brooms. You should brush her hair.”
Margaret’s tone is sharp. “And you’re right crooked today.”
Margaret winces. Her hand squeezes the blanket that’s across her. The tremor passes.
“We’re going to send Bessie up for you,” Margaret says, her eyes closed. “It’s good you’re back now.” She sucks in her breath.
“Breathe mum,” Caroline says.
Margaret lets her breath out. She shakes her head at her daughter as she speaks to Wes.
“Whaddya think, Wes. Your grown daughter’s left her own babies to tell her mum how to have another.”
He wishes they could now be birds and fly away. All of them a flock seeking safety. Margaret and Caroline and the twins and Michael now. And while he’s at it, the brothers Gabriel and Bernard too and their mother. And then everyone from town, the whole village flying up, all trilling and calling, a great bunch of them heading somewhere away from here. He says nothing about that nonsense in his head.
“She’s a bossy one, just like her mother,” he says. “But now the tide’s coming in high, and we should be up the hill watching it. Come on we goes.”
Caroline starts chirping something at him. She’s rubbing Margaret’s hand. Margaret jerks it away and waves her daughter to stop. Margaret stares at him. She takes a deep breath. He’s not sure if she’s doing Caroline’s slow breathing. Then she speaks.
“Are you gone where the ducks are wearing mitts? We’re here and we’re staying here. I’m not going thwacking about up mountains so you can go looking at whales.”
Margaret puts her hand on Caroline. “There’s no babies being born tonight on the side of a rock somewheres. Here we stay. Here where you were born. You should go now.”
Wes knows it’s settled. The tea kettle whistles downstairs.
The front door opens. Heavy boots, they’re echoing in the hall and then the kitchen. The man’s voice is all shouting but not words they can understand. Mrs. Burgess’ voice then. She’s screaming up the stairs. Then she’s there at the door.
“My husband’s come. It’s a tidal wave.”
Caroline stumbles against Wes as she jumps from the chair, pushing by him. He holds her.
“My babies,” she says.
“Gabriel and Bernard’s gone for ’em. And Mrs. Wilkes. They’re gonna meet you up the hill.”
“And everyone’s down at saltin’,” she says.
“Michael’s gone for ’em.”
He wants it back as soon as he says it.
“Jesus dad, he’ll be lookin’ for me. He won’t know I’m come home.”
Wes notices she calls it home.
“They’ll tell him. No worries. He’s smart enough to get them all up the hill. Where you should be to get your babies from Gabriel and Bernard. Now scoot.”
Mrs. Burgess’ voice trails off going downstairs. “We must leave now my husband says.”
Margaret waves Wes over to her.
“I’m staying at home Wes,” she says.
He’d have as much chance as holding the water back with his hands as moving her that night.
“I know. You’re not easy. We’ll stay together.”
Wes pushes the pillows up behind her and helps her sit more comfortably. She holds his arm and she eases herself back. She closes her eyes.
Caroline stands frozen, watching. He’ll have to tell her. He sees the little girl she is. He can’t help. But she can.
“C’mere. I thinks I want ya.” He pulls her into a fierce hug and smells the sea in her hair. “Now go for your babies,” he says pushing her towards the stairs. “They’ll need you now Caroline.”
Caroline turns and races down the stairs. He hears Mrs. Burgess say something to her and they leave.
Episode 3: Toronto 1959
Margaret reaches into her purse and takes out a brown leather journal. The cover’s worn and glossy where it’s been rubbed thin. She undoes the clasp and handles it gently. The binding cracks as she presses the covers open. Faded newspaper clippings and old photos are slipped between pages.
She hands me a photo. Four men stand stiffly in black and grey. They’re on a dock in front of a small hand-cranked crane that lifts stacks of dried cod out of a boat. Fixed in place by the camera, they stare, waiting until they can go back to work. In their hands, they clench fish flats by their tails, the large bodies of the cod without heads hanging down almost to the ground. I wonder how long they would have been standing there unnatural, frozen in the moment, as rigid as the boards of fish they were unloading until the photographer releases them. They’re in overalls with flat caps on their heads.
“That’s her father. That’s Wes when he was younger,” Margaret says pointing at a man clutching fish like an upside down bouquet of flowers. “They’re taking dried cod to be weighed at the Ryans store.”
Clare’s father. The man she points out looks older than I remember from the wedding. Maybe he was less burdened when he was here giving her away. I feel sad that I have no clear memory of him. I should do better.
Margaret looks through the pages and finds two yellow sheets that have been torn out of a school copy book. They’re folded in half nested together.
“You be careful with this,” she says holding it out to me.
I wipe my hands on my pants because I don’t want to leave sweaty fingerprints on paper that old. I take the packet gingerly and open it. Blue ink, a child’s handwriting.
“Clare did this. When she was in school,” she says.
I look at the shapes of the letters. The straight lines, the spaces. They’re perfect. I recognize Clare’s handwriting. Precise and disciplined. Everything in its place.
“She loved going down to the school. And even when times were bad, I didn’t keep her home to work. She had to go to school. Clare’s best subject was history. And she liked writing stories. She was good enough to write them in ink the first time. She won a prize for this one. That’s why I kept it.”
Margaret stops and waits for me to say something. Do I read it? Or look at it and hand it back? It’s too long to skim. I want to read it carefully. The house feels empty with Clare’s childhood accomplishments on display and her not being here to talk about them.
“The teachers all said she should go to college after she’s done with Burin. When she’s ready we think about her going to Memorial University College in St. John’s. It’s still new for us then and far away. But I have cousins there and it’s Newfoundland.”
“We met at McGill. But I guess you know that,” I say.
Margaret nods.
“Yes. She wanted to be with her sister Caroline who’s moved to Montreal. So McGill it was.”
Margaret gestures at the papers in my hand.
“I brought this to give her. I saved it. I don’t know how she knows half the stuff she says in this when she’s a girl. You read that and learn something about your Clare.”
Margaret pours us more drinks. I read a bit to myself. I’d prefer to read it later without her staring at me like I’m being scrutinized for the right reaction. I’m showing interest but there’s a difference between reading something this long and just looking at it like a piece of childhood artwork. But I don’t think I’m supposed to keep it for later. I try to ignore Margaret as I take it up again and start reading. I can hear Clare’s voice in the words.
“No,” says Margaret. “ Read it out loud. So I can hear it too.”
Out loud.
“I was born in Point au Gaul on the Burin Peninsula the day a tidal wave came to Newfoundland. It was November 18, 1929. This is about what happened to my family that day. It is true because I’ve heard it from my mother Margaret Tyler and my father Wes Tyler and my sister Caroline Wilkes and other people who were there. No one person has the whole story. But everyone has a bit they remember. I have put down only what I know from them and what is true.”
“One hundred and fifty miles south of the coast of Burin, there was an earthquake under the ocean that opened a great trench. Part of the bottom of the Grand Banks broke like it was glass and the pieces fell into a deep hole. It was five o’clock at home in Point au Gaul. The hole swallowed all the sea from our harbour right out past the point. Father was playing football with other men and boys. They saw the tide go out. Our harbour was left empty of water. The dories were grounded first because they were tied to the wharves close to the landwash. Near the flakes and stages. They were spinning around pulling at their ropes and then sitting on the ground. The schooners out past the point go dry next. They were almost a mile out and they were large boats. They were sitting on ground too.”
I stop and look at her. It’s Clare behind her eyes. I wish I wasn’t alone doing this. I have to ask. I worry that she might be angry.
“I know there was some tidal waves years ago. I may be wrong but I didn’t think it lasted very long. But this story from Clare? Is it true or is it something she’s making up?”
I feel like I’ve climbed the steps all the way up to the top of a water slide. I’m at the top and I hate water slides. I can’t go back down because there’s a crowd walking up. I offer the pages back to her.
“I thought this was a story. I mean something she made up. From her imagination, not real. But this reads like it really happened.”
Margaret leans forward on her elbows. She takes a deep breath and puts her head down. Then she’s back looking at me. Clare’s eyes.
“I call it a story because it’s what she wrote down. It’s her story about things that happened and that were real. Now be quiet and read it to me like a clever boy,” she says.
I read.
“No one knows for sure when the sea came back. Different people have different stories. They say that another earthquake pushed the walls of the trench back together. This is the trench under the Grand Banks that was suddenly there and then after few minutes not there. There was no hole anymore to hold all the water from our harbour that had gone in. The water all came back at Point au Gaul and that was the tidal wave. There were two more tidal waves. The waves picked the schooners off the ground and broke them like splits for the fire. The ships were pushed along up the landwash and through the sheds where the women were cleaning and salting cod. Some had their children with them. The high road up to the houses was already gone and there was a darkness like it was raining hard but there was no moon or stars yet so no one could see. Some say the darkness was the water, the waves that took everything. Some say there was noise that sounded like the waves roaring. And even after some people still have that sound always in their head.”
“A few tried crossing through the swamp because when it was dry in summer there was a path that ran straight through it to the high road. But it was all mud up past their knees. Then the tidal wave came through the swamp and took them.”
“Some women stayed with children at the salting sheds because they didn’t know what to do. There were three sisters who all agreed they should not leave because they’re not going out anywhere to get drowned. And then the wave came in and took their shed and they were in there and they got drowned. That’s where my sister Caroline says her husband Michael got drowned too. He was a hero. He had gone down there against the water to get those sisters out.”
Clare has never shared any of this with me. It’s a violation for me to read this here, now, with her mother. Without her. A show-and-tell at school gone badly wrong.
“We should stop this,” I say. “We can finish once Clare’s home.”
“There’s not much to go,” she says. “Finish it.”
I scan the next page. Then I read.
“Father says it was the dories that tore through the walls of houses. The dories were strong because they were smaller than the large boats. They were built to bob up and down on the water. So the tidal wave couldn’t break them. Instead it picked them up and smashed them like they were battering rams, smashing them at the walls of the houses that stood in their way. People said they could feel their house moving. Then the water brought up the whole works of what’s used for the cod from the stores and threw it all against the houses. That was lumber and wharves and fishing gear, nets, oars and broken masts. Even pieces of the sheds along with flakes and stages were brought up to where the houses were.”
Margaret taps her hand on the table. I stop reading and wait for her.
“You pay attention to this next part,” she says. I read to us again.
“When my sister Caroline gets sad, I know it’s for Michael. I never forget because it’s always November 18 every year and that’s my birthday. The day we lose our Michael is my birthday. I know what she’s thinking when she’s wishing me happy birthday. She’s thinking that Michael drowned because he was looking for her at the sheds. She’s thinking he won’t find her because she’d come back to be with our mother at our house. When I was being born.”
Margaret stops me again. She waves her finger at my face. I can’t pay any more attention than I already am.
“Caroline has her youngest the next April. After the tidal wave. She didn’t know she was going to have a baby when Michael drowned. A baby girl born to no father. And she’s already got the twins and no husband anymore. But Michael’s brothers are always there, that’s Gabriel and Bernard. They’re taking care she’s not falling into hell with all the demons let loose. She’s got to keep demons away because she’s got three kids to be a mother to. She’s a strong girl that one. Like her sister.”
I nod and jiggle the pages in my hand. I want to be finished. Margaret raises her voice and leans forward.
“Wait until I explain this to you. If you want to know Clare, this is what you should know,” she says.
I put the pages down on the table and sit back. Margaret stares at me. It takes me a moment to understand the enormity of this, what she’s doing by forcing me to listen to this tonight. She’s pulling me into a history that’s hers. It’s Clare’s history and Caroline’s and their father’s. It’s not mine. I’m the husband from away. She’s speaking of some place thirty years ago, a world very far away from me. In Point au Gaul, Newfoundland. I’m Toronto. I have no idea how to make sense here of what was there.
“A year after, she’s marrying Gabriel, that’s Michael’s middle brother. He’s nice and good with her babies. She wants to be out of Newfoundland and so they move away to Montreal. All of them. But Caroline’s not forgetting us. Never forgetting Clare. She’s always remembering her on her birthday and sending her a card from Montreal. And when Clare’s seven in school, she’s already writing her stories. Now she wants to send them to her sister. I say that I will write the address for Caroline on a letter for her. But she says no, she wants to do it herself so I show her how. She gives her letter to the pastor and he takes it into the post office”.
Margaret leans back. “Now you can finish your reading.”
“I write letters to Caroline now that she’s gone away to Montreal. I tell her Michael’s the man who would have gone down to rescue people even if he knew she was not there. I tell her by going he saved a little boy who was hiding in a dory tied to the wharf, holding on with two hands as the waves shook it and tried to roll it over to dump him out. The boy wouldn’t let go and Michael talked to him and got him free and took him up past the swamp to a bit of the high road that’s still left. Michael gave the boy to an older girl and she took him home to his mum. The girl is a woman now and she told me that’s what Michael did.”
“Then Michael went back down to the sheds at the landwash to get the others. That’s the story the pastor tells every year at remembrance about our Michael. It was after Christmas that year, his brothers found him in the swamp that’s frozen ice. Where the water took him, they didn’t know and they were searching every day. But he was close by and they found him and they took him home. Now we remember him every year on my birthday because he was a hero and a good man.”
Margaret’s hand is out before I finish reading. I pass the pages to her.
“We never told Clare that part about her birthday when she was a girl. We told her that birthdays are for good girls and getting a present. We wanted to fuss about her but it was hard on account of what happened. And her sister Caroline never forgets her and always sends a card from Montreal. No one tells a child what happened that night.”
Margaret stops talking. She stares at Clare’s pages and carefully folds them back up. She finds the spot in her journal where they go and puts them back. She’s not talking at all, her head down, the journal in her lap. I think her eyes are closed. I wonder if she’s starting to nod off. Then she’s back.
“There’s some older people who know. But they wouldn’t say that to a child. She was a babe and it had nothing to do with her.”
Margaret adjusts the clasp around the journal. We must be almost done.
“Except it had everything to do with her. And it’s the pastor who tells her. He of all people. He does remembrance every year for our Michael, the hero who saved the boy in the dory and maybe others too. At service, Clare is listening because she knows it’s her sister’s husband. Our Michael. And it’s the same day as her birthday.”
I’ve forgotten the time. I wonder if she will ever sleep. It must be time for me to get back to the hospital. I remember thinking don’t screw it up Martin, just listen.
“She’s seven years old and she’s asking us what the pastor’s saying about Michael. We put her off because she’s too young. He teaches her at Sunday school twice a month so when she sees him next she asks him herself.”
“He tells her. She has questions. She knows that Michael’s gone up to heaven so does that mean he’s an angel? The pastor says no Michael didn’t become an angel but now that he’s in heaven he lives with angels. That’s a lot for her to take in. I’m glad she asks him not me. The pastor says Michael is a hero because he saved people.”
Margaret adjusts the journal in her lap. She flips it open, searches for a blank page.
“She wants to write it down so she can tell it to Caroline. That’s how it starts. So he sits with her and they write a letter together that she can send to her sister about how Michael lives with angels and she doesn’t have to be sad because that’s a good thing. He’s in heaven because he was a hero when the tidal wave came in. Every year on her birthday, Caroline in Montreal sends a card to Clare. And Clare’s listening to the pastor about Michael and writing a story about how Michael’s living with angels on account of being a hero who saves people. And she’s sending it to Caroline. That’s what’s happening between these sisters.”
I thought it odd that every year on her own birthday, Clare would send a letter to her sister. On her own birthday. I asked her about it once and she said it was sister talk.
Margaret looks at me and speaks quietly.
“Michael’s no angel. Just the man who would go out into rough seas in a leaky dory to rescue a cat that fell off a boat.”
Episode 4: Burin Peninsula, Dominion of Newfoundland 1929
Wes sits beside them. Margaret’s on the bed, the baby cradled against her.
He takes a wool blanket and rolls it round like a log pillow and places it firm, running it down the side of the bed. Behind the baby. Margaret smiles at him.
“She’s not going to be rolling out of bed yet Wes,” she says.
The water licks the top step outside the room. It had come in through the door downstairs. That door never closed easily and probably’s open now. He’s always after Michael to shut it. The parlour window’s gone. A wharf stave that was floating by smashed it in. Their house is a two story. It was one wave and then another which was worse. And then another one not as much as the first two. It didn’t matter now because the waves are done.
The house’s a nice ways from the water. In the first wave, a dory’s banging the wall of the kitchen, hammering on it like a drunk punching the pub door when he’s sent out. There’s dishes falling off a shelf. Wes thinks of her teacups. She’s been collecting from St. John’s. She’ll have to start again. The evening had started beautiful fine, a nice Monday to do washing and put it out. That was before the water came in and put Point au Gaul afloat.
For a while, he’s watching the water drop back to the bay. He sees the top stair. Wet and soiled and slick. At least it’s a stair now that’s ruined not a memory of something. It’s not water like the devil laying there staring at him waiting to come in if he looks away. He can see the carpet he’s nailed along the top tread so they wouldn’t slip. The stair’s above water. The first wave goes a hundred feet along the high road past the house. He looked at it quick from the window but keeps watching the water that’s coming up the stairs for them.
There’s a cracked dory that’s still floating waiting for them outside their window. Like a taxi. He thinks he’d break the window beside their bed and he’d snag it and get her and the baby in the dory. Rip the door off the wardrobe and make it a plank to reach the close side of it. Then she could crawl out first, then he’d give her the baby. But there’d be all glass and there’s no light. That’s not going to work.
His brain feels like he’s got a cramp in his head. He’s hearing only the noise of water pushing at their house. He’s not sure if that’s roaring in his ears or real water outside. Then it’s done. Except for the water leaving and them that’s left alive to get on with finding who’s gone.
He’s always been afraid of the water when he’s on the boats. You go in and you’re lost. He knows it’s not trying to kill you, it’s just there and you shouldn’t fall out of your boat. But today it’s a thing that’s coming for them. Like a monster demon in a fairy tale that’s told to scare kids. It comes up from the landwash. It’s mud and cold wet and it takes the shape of a beast as it slouches thick and solid, coming for them. It’s bloated with bodies it has no right to. Some it’s taking out to sea and some it’s leaving there broken, trapped over top of a fence or snagged on a post by their clothes. It’s Point au Gaul holding onto them, keeping at least their bodies safe from the sea, holding them until they can be collected by their families.
He knows you can’t hear sounds under water when you’re not in it. He wonders if the hall clock hits nine when the baby’s born. He’ll have to let it dry and fix it. It smells of sea in the parlour just after. The smell of the cod when he pulls them into his boat.
He’s been at the window for an hour watching the water sit quiet outside his house. There’s a light in the dark. It flicks a signal. Then flashes again south. Maybe the bow beacon on a schooner that’s drifting. Or a buoy loosed from its moorings.
The light turns again and it’s a house that’s floating. He knows the house. Mrs. Hopkins. She owns that house and it’s floating away. That’s a lamp in her kitchen. He can’t see if there’s people with it. She has the two grandkids Mary the older one and Susan just started school. Her son’s gone now into the woods. He’s a fisher but he quits fishing after summer and goes cutting wood for the winter so he wouldn’t be here now. There’s no wife for him so he leaves the kids with his mother ’til he’s back before Christmas.
The way it’s going it’ll soon be out past the point. Mrs. Hopkin’s house. He watches it until it’s past where the schooners have been wrecked. He doesn’t see the light as it turns past the point.
He’s watching for it when Margaret calls him. He sits with her on the bed. She tells him, “We’ll call her Clare.”
Episode 5: Toronto 1959
Margaret opens her book to a blank page. She takes a pen from her purse and presses the button several times. She looks around and then settles on the A&P flyer on the table.
“May I have this,” she says reaching for it.
“Be my guest,” I say.
Margaret places it on the table in front of her and carefully draws straight lines through Eight O’clock Coffee Mild and Mellow 27 cents a pound.
It’s a good price.
“I want to start the ink so it doesn’t blot on my page,” she says.
I see where Clare gets it. I watch her write June 18, 1959.
She holds her breath. Then she writes Toronto, Ontario.
“Maybe you should write Canada too?” I say. It’s a joke.
“No. We’re familiar with Canada. We know Toronto’s part of it. Not the best part for sure. But we’ll take it.” She looks a little cross. She’s back at her page. I let myself sink back into my chair. She writes Michael.
I’m still annoyed at her for forcing Clare’s story on me. It was Clare’s and it was her right to be here to feel whatever a daughter is supposed to feel when the doting mother brings out her childhood school work. It shouldn’t have been me. At least not without her here. I’m wondering how to take her down a peg without causing a row. That’s why I’m saying it very slowly so there’s no missing it.
“Michael. We’ll call her Michael. That’s what Clare said,” I say.
I don’t want to risk getting into it with her. I’ve already measured out the remaining time in my head before I’ll be back with Clare telling her that her mother’s here.
“We’ll call her Michael. That’s what Clare said,” I say again.
“Yes. Michael. I have that,” she says.
Did she not hear? Still not getting it? Michael’s a boy’s name. The baby’s a girl.
“And what’s her second name?” Margaret says.
“Michael’s a boy’s name. Clare wants it. She’s got her heart set on Michael. There’s no changing her mind. I worry she’ll be teased in school, ” I say.
“Then she’ll grow up strong. Like her mother. Like her aunt. I told you Michael’s a good name for a girl.”
“You didn’t say for a girl. I was listening to what you said when I told you the baby’s Michael,” I say.
“Didn’t I? No matter. I knew she’s a girl,” she says.
“How? I haven’t told you.”
Margaret puts down her pen. I don’t know why I’m doing this. This is a woman who stared down a tidal wave. Her disappointment in me couldn’t be more if I’d spilled some coke on her book.
“Martin, of course Clare would have a girl.” She smiles at me. A real smile. “And you deserve a girl because she’ll make a father of you. Like Clare’s father.”
Margaret picks up her pen.
“And now, Michael’s middle name?”
I’m sorry for being churlish in the presence of such a remarkable woman. I think of Clare with our Michael at the hospital. I’m about to be surrounded by remarkable women.
“Angelina.”
“Michael Angelina,” Margaret says writing it down.
I should say something. To show I’m part of this. I try a wide grin.
“I like Angelina very much. It’s a sweet name. Good for a girl. I worry it’ll be shortened. She’ll end up with Angel. That’s a silly nickname.”
“Angelina. It means messenger of God. You’ll do well to remember that, Martin.”
My name on her lips sounds strange. She’s said it a couple of times the last few minutes. I’ll get used to it. I don’t want her to call me Marty. I nod agreement.
“Yes, that’s what Clare said too. She wants her Michael Angelina, a girl with a bit of a boy’s name who’s a messenger from god. I can get used to that.”
Episode 6: Voices, Burin Peninsula 1929 and Toronto 1959
Wes watches the sea resting outside his window. It’s quieter now, gently bumping lumber against his house half way up where the door used to be. Caroline sits on a chair near him. She’s looking at her hands. She’s waiting.
“The ground shakes,” says Wes. “There’re tremors and the water’s gone out. The harbour’s dry. Then the waves come in. The waves are drowning us. That’s what happened.”
“Michael Wilkes is my husband,” says Caroline. “He’s looking for me. At the sheds. I’m not there. I can’t tell him I’m not there.”
“Michael runs for them,” says Wes. “His brothers tend to his mum and the twins. He’s down at the landwash for the women. He goes for Caroline.”
“It’s people all over the Burin Peninsula who lose their lives. Neighbours and friends,” says Caroline.
“I don’t know that the water’s taking from our family too,” says Wes.
“Michael Wilkes. He’s my husband. He’s father to my children,” says Caroline looking at her father.
I stand at the window measuring the height of our lawn in my mind. Clare will probably notice it needs cutting tomorrow when she comes home. Toronto’s comfortable for June. Seventy degrees. But tomorrow it’s going to be hotter, almost ninety. Probably not time to lug the lawn mower out of the garage now. Margaret comes up behind me.
“There’s no data from Newfoundland about what happened,” I say to her. “They don’t have a seismograph in Newfoundland.”
“We don’t know. They know in New York. They have tide gauges there that warn people. We have no warning,” says Margaret.
“We don’t know,” says Caroline. “We’re all doing what needs to be done.”
“There’s not time to give warning before we’re swept,” says Wes.
“We have no warning,” says Caroline.
“We don’t know,” says Wes.
“We know more now. It was 7.2 on the Richter scale. Clare’s researched it,” I say.
“Clare says we shouldn’t say it’s a tidal wave because it’s a tsunami,” Margaret says. “That’s the earthquake that sent the water at us. It was dead calm that night except for the waves that swept the houses away.”
“They feel it in Montreal and New York,” I say. “Some waves come to Burin at 140 kilometers an hour. Some as high as 27 meters. That’s almost ninety feet. That’s what scientists know now.”
“Clare says there’s more lost than our Michael. It’s in The Evening Telegram from St. John’s. She’s reading it in Toronto at her library,” says Margaret. “ By November 25, it’s one more lost at Lamaline and five from Taylor’s Bay and four at Lord’s Cove.”
“There’s eight more lost in Point au Gaul,” says Caroline.
“Why don’t we know this? We don’t know about this in Toronto. There was a tidal wave in Newfoundland that did this,” I say.
“You know,” says Margaret.
“Yes, I know because you told me, Clare told me,” I say.
“You know,” says Wes.
“You know there was no food for the children for days,” says Caroline.
“The stores, all the medicine and a hundred buildings torn away,” says Wes. “The water has roofs floating on it and below there’s broken windows being pushed along with glass that cuts bodies that are drowned. Beds and dressers and kitchen chairs and clothes that are swirling away. That’s all from houses.”
“After it’s done and for a long time the men can’t go fishing even if they had boats and gear because the waves roil the fish and they go away,” says Margaret.
“The telegraph’s gone out from a storm a few days before,” says Caroline. “We don’t tell anyone to come. Because we can’t.”
“There’s a wireless radio on a boat in the harbour but the operator’s drowned. There’s no crew left who knows how to work it. No one in town knows,” says Wes.
“The waves take the landlines down then,” says Margaret. “We wait and share the food and medicine that’s left with those that need it. Those that have a house bring others in.”
“No one knows in St. John’s. There’s no way of telling them. No one knows about us,” says Wes.
“We can’t tell them even in places close by. It’s happening to them too in Port au Bras and Taylor’s Bay. In Lamaline and Lord’s Cove. Probably Kelly’s Cove,” says Caroline. “But I know only what’s in Point au Gaul.”
“It’s the ship, the Portia steaming in that finds us. It’s three days after and they don’t know. They have a wireless. They tell them in St. John’s. And a telegram goes to the Prime Minister of Newfoundland,” says Margaret.
“Some boats are coming with men to help,” says Wes.”
“The captain of the Portia sees our store drifting out past him when he turns the point,” says Margaret. “He tells the newspaper there’s nine buildings that floated out. Some are stuck on the harbour rocks and others are still floating away.”
“It’s more that’s lost. Almost a hundred buildings gone when they go looking for them and counting those that are lost,” says Caroline.
“They settle on twenty-eight as how many that died,” says Wes. “Maybe it’s more. Some they have the bodies for and others are swept. Out the harbour.”
“You lost . . . Caroline and Clare and you and Wes . . . you lost Michael,” I say. “And you got him back after. When his brothers found him.”
“We get Michael back,” says Margaret. “Clare’s never letting Caroline forget what Michael does that night when he got drowned. And now we get Michael back.”
Margaret looks across and sees Wes. He smiles at her.
“That night, Margaret says we’re not drowning today because now there’s Clare,” Wes says. “And now this night we get Michael back.”
Caroline sees Michael standing a few feet away near the stairs. He’s wearing a neat brown shirt but he’s wet from being in the water. He gives her a wide grin. She smiles and nods back at him.
THE END
About the story
An earlier version of Before Clare appeared in 1988 in The Dalhousie Review (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia).
About the play
Before Clare, The Play is around the corner and taking the stage sometime somewhere soon.
SpookyB 