She laid the spoon aside and forked slices of gammon into the pan; she hissed and rubbed vigorously at her forearm with the back of her wrist where a spit of grease had landed.

We ate our meal in silence. I, with you in my lap, tolerating you even when you dug your pudgy hands into the food on my plate and threw it to the floor. I put Tilda to bed with a story while your mother bathed you and soothed you to sleep.

In the darkness of our room, your mother and I alone in our bed, I turned to her with intimacy and an acknowledgement that the fault was mine. She took from me that night, with her body, in a way she hadn’t before and wouldn’t ever again. Afterwards, I searched for her but, even pressed against me, she was missing. It was clear she wasn’t going to tell me where she’d been for those three days, or however long it was you’d been gone. Not that night or any other. For me, for the time being at least, it was enough to know and to be humbled by the knowledge of what I had come so close to losing for good.

8

Anouk

Ottawa River, 1987

Anouk lay prostrate on The Cheese, a triangular wedge of hard yellow foam. With her hips elevated and her head down, she lay patiently while Red drummed with cupped palms up and down her back, between her shoulder blades. On the floor just by her head, a white, plastic cup. When she felt the urge to cough, she pushed herself up, coughed, and spat thick, sand-coloured sputum into the cup. She showed it to Red.

‘We can get more out,’ he said.

She bent again over The Cheese and propped her chin in her hands and looked out of the window to the yard where Nora was hanging wet towels on the line, which had been strung on pulleys from a tree to the house. It was early morning and sun hadn’t yet hit the line; in the shade, the crisp white towels looked blue. Everything Anouk saw was distorted, jumpy, because of the pounding on her back, so Nora looked almost puppet-like, or robotic, pulling another towel out of the basket and snapping the wrinkles out of it and securing it to the line with two pegs. She advanced the line forward and there was the raking squeak of the pulley mechanism, loud enough for Anouk to hear through the window. Another wad of phlegm was working its way into the bottom of her throat. She tensed her shoulders and her father stopped pounding. She spat into the cup again, showed him.

‘Gorgeous,’ he said.

Anouk stood up. ‘Am I done?’

‘You feel clear?’

‘I guess.’ She went outside and sat on the edge of the porch with her toes in the cool morning grass and watched her mother. Nora in jeans that had been cut off at the knees and a ribbed red halter top.