Anouk’s cough, rattling down the hall, was wet and desperate. She wanted to go to her daughter but didn’t dare. There was the sound of the cough and of the wind outside, and there was the sound of Red’s voice too, deep and soothing and humble and kind.

18

Anouk

Ottawa River, 1987

Each cough was a punch. Too big for the ribcage, too big for the throat. Some were so violent, Anouk was afraid that if she fell asleep she would suffocate. She was afraid her ribs might break. This was possible; it had happened to other people. Experience had taught her not to cry because this only made things wetter and stuffier.

Her mom had gone to bed, but her dad was here and she was glad it was him. He kept his hands off her, didn’t even look at her, didn’t try to stop it. Only touched her to wipe the stuff off her chin. Once or twice he tried to coax her to sleep and she must have slept a little because there were dreams. Sticks and mud and half-eaten bits of fruit in the mud.

The hour finally came when the light through the window changed to grey, and her dad was asleep with his chin on his chest. She poked his knee and he opened one eye, lifted his head slowly.

‘Oh my God, that hurts,’ he whispered, rubbing his neck. He grimaced and smiled both. ‘Good morning.’

Her throat was too pummelled to speak. Her ribs ached too.

‘Did you sleep at all?’

She shrugged. Her chest was heavy with mucus. Breathing was difficult. She scratched a few words out. ‘Don’t you want to go to bed?’

‘Nah.’ His face had darkened, as if he just that moment realized how tired he was. ‘We’ll let your mother sleep.’

No school. Her dad stayed home from work too. Her parents watched her closely over the next few days and she watched them too. One afternoon, the light fading by three, Anouk watched her dad go out in the snow with no coat, and she watched him through the window as he stood next to the big fir tree with his hands on his hips and looked up into its branches. When he came back in and sat in the armchair across from her, she said, ‘What were you doing just standing out there?’

‘Thinking about that old fir.’

‘What were you thinking about it?’

‘I might get rid of it.’

‘Why?’

Her mother came through the room then and just walked between them on her way to somewhere else, and his eyes followed her until she was gone.

‘Why?’ Anouk asked again.

He shrugged one shoulder.

Every time Anouk coughed, which was a lot, her parents checked the colour of what came up. As long as it stayed a light, oatmeal brown, she could stay home. If it looked green, hospital.

And then one morning, before dawn, she woke with dry eyes, lids creaking on hinges and a familiar, gritty tickle in her lungs, the sandpapery rub against her ribs. She was full of fluid and brought up a mouthful, spat it into a tissue. It was thick. A collection of tiny globes all nestled together like frog spawn, and green as pond scum. She called for her dad and he came quickly, hair on edge, and a rumple and sideways-ness to the clothes he’d slept in. She showed him the tissue, and he sat on the edge of the bed and searched his beard with thumb and forefinger.