Swarm (34 page)

“I was protecting you. If you didn't know, it could be like you weren't even there.”

“But I was there,” I said, too loud. His excuse was bullshit. He'd lied because Thomson and Phoenix were there when he came home, watching him, waiting to judge. He didn't answer. Rain tapped on the roof like a countdown. I got out of bed. In the bathroom down the hall, I threw up in the toilet before remembering that it wouldn't flush.

I sat on the floor of that bathroom for as long as I could stand it. Breathing the smell of my vomit and the residue of strangers' waste. I thought I was nothing. I didn't know how I could escape what I'd turned into. It was like all my wrong choices ended in that bathroom—I didn't know that the worst was still to come. After a while I stood up, stared into the split seams of my face in the broken mirror, and went back to Marvin because there was nowhere else to go.

“You okay?”

I nodded, although I wasn't. He slipped his hand in his pocket and drew out a golden thread. A heart dangled, opened up, pictures inside. The locket.

“Margo wanted you to have this.” I took it from him. The grandfather with his bushy moustache, the quiet wife.

“What happened?” I asked, and Marvin told me the truth.

“She heard cries for help. Walter tried to stop her, but she went in anyway.”

I closed my fingers around the necklace, sealed it in my fist.

“Thanks,” I said, but I meant it for Margo, who I would never see again, who had been far braver than me.

When
morning came, Marvin wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me to him. I felt his erection against the small of my back. As the faded flowered wallpaper came into focus, I remembered what he'd told me. She was dead. I had killed someone. And Margo . . . Dread flooded through me. I coiled like a small thing, waiting to be crushed or carried to safety.

We lay like that for a long time, hours it felt like, before Marvin said, “We should leave. Right now.”

“And go where?”

“Away.”

I thought of Thomson's island. But it seemed impossible: the idea of starting again, as if we were innocent. I told him about the map I'd found, how Phoenix wanted to leave the dark zone, what Thomson had said about the Crusaders. As I talked, the cold seemed to pool in my stomach. My body ached from lying on the hard floor. I knew that there was no going back.

Marvin scratched his cigarette out, leaving a soot-black streak on the floorboard. He turned away. I thought he was angry at me, and to be honest, I felt almost relieved, ready to be on my own, to figure things out for myself, but then he spoke. The words sounded automatic, like a recording.

“There's a rally at the botanical gardens today. Walter's planning an action.”

“An action?”

“You know.”

I stared at the ceiling, at the grey patches where plaster had fallen away in amoebalike shapes.

“I'm serious,” he said. “We should just fucking go.” His voice broke at the end. He covered his mouth with his fingers. I stood on shaky legs. “Shit,” Marvin said under the narrow tent of his hand.

Outside the window, the rain had turned to snow. Fat clumps drifting down. I pressed my hand against the rough bark of the flaking sill, a weird calm inside me. From up there I could see all the way to the lamp factory and past that to wide water. The whole empty horizon. The clouds in the distance a blur of grey and white.

Behind me, Marvin sat cross-legged on the hard floor, the sleeping bag over his knees like a pelt. With his head in his hands, he sank deeper, as if gravity had strengthened its hold. Downstairs, I heard shuffling, the low tones of Phoenix and Thomson talking. The crack of wood. The night's chill in the house had sunk into me. I thought I'd never be rid of it.

We were like that for a little while. A frozen vignette. The lake in winter when you look out at it, expecting it to move, but it doesn't. Its skin is a solid mass. What changes is the light around it, the currents underneath. Finally, I spoke.

“What's his plan?”

“Simple. Blow it up. I think he's ventured far.”

Like a traveller
, I thought and remembered Margo's story of him in Afghanistan. Had he ever even been?

“How many people?”

“Hundreds.” He reached for his boots. I heard the heel clattering against the floor as he pulled one on. I turned back into the room. “What are you doing?”

He stopped. “I don't know.”

He opened his tin and pulled out a bent cigarette. I saw the tremor in his hand as he straightened it. After the match flared orange, he inhaled, blew the smoke toward the cracked window. His shoulders hunched like he was carrying his pack, fully loaded.

“It was our idea. Right from the beginning. Our grand fucking finale.”

I thought of the maps—on the wall downstairs and the one I'd seen on the door of the pantry at my basement hideaway. Both with the gardens in the centre of the sparkling stars.

“To kill people?” I asked because I couldn't believe it. How far had I come?

Marvin shook his head, an adamant swing from left to right. “But Walter,” he said, and when he spoke again he sounded ashamed. “He's taken over. He heard about the rally and . . .”

I got up. I needed a break. When I moved toward the door, Marvin asked urgently: “Where are you going?”

“To get some water.” My throat felt raw and when I swallowed, I thought I tasted blood: the cold, coppery flavour of it filling the back of my mouth. The floor creaked underfoot as I moved to the top of the stairs. Beneath me, Phoenix and Thomson's voices rumbled, reassuring at first, until I heard the hardness in them. Halfway down the stairs, I stopped. Light from the fire flickered through the room. It was blazing, the air warm. They didn't see me so I lowered myself onto the step and peeked through the banister. Phoenix sat on the edge of their mattress, wearing only a pair of underpants and a sea-green T-shirt, the collar cut into a ragged V. One arm held across her chest, holding her breasts. Thomson in the bed, propped up by pillows, facing her so all I saw was the top of his head.

“We're running out of time,” she said, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.

“It's the coward's way.”

“Will we serve people better in jail?”

“Lots of people have gone to jail,” Thomson said, scratching at the roots of his hair. “Many good people. Dissidents.”

“I don't want that. For me or for you.”

“We didn't have any part in this.”

“The police won't make that distinction. If we pack now, if we go to Marvin's mom.”

Thomson was shaking his head steadily, like a switch had been flicked.

“She won't blame you,” Phoenix said, her voice getting louder.

“I haven't been able to stop him.”

“No one has!”

“But he wasn't your responsibility.”

She stood up. I realized she was wearing a pair of denim shorts, white strands hanging from the frayed edge. “Forget it,” she said. “We'll figure out another way.”

One half of her face grew dark as she turned away from the fire. I thought she might see me so I sank lower, tucked my chin to my chest. My heartbeat thumped in the cage of my ribs.

“Stay,” Thomson said. Phoenix looked at the ground. “Stay with me.”

“They'll think I'm just like him. They won't understand the difference. I have that history.”

By then she was facing me, full on, only her eyes turned away, set on Thomson's face. Her body, the curve of her waist, clear through the thin fabric of the T-shirt. My neck prickled and I glanced back, up at the landing, but it was empty, the door exactly how I'd left it, slightly ajar.

“We
have to stop it,” I told Marvin, afraid of what would happen to us all if Walter's plan went ahead. Marvin was Jump Ship; Margo, me, and Phoenix. But he already had his boots on. His face tightened in on itself in a way I hadn't seen before. Determined. When we got to the bottom of the stairs, Phoenix and Thomson stopped talking. She was standing with her back to the fire, a blanket draped over her shoulders, a mug in her hand. Her bare toes squeezed the edge of the brick hearth. Thomson sat in a chair, his sock feet on the mattress. They both looked at us, expectant, but Phoenix's eyes quickly slid away from mine. She took a gulp of her tea. I felt far from her, as if our stories had come together only to break apart. Two separate entities. I wanted her to be free. She had already made her decision about what road to follow.

In that moment, I was pushing again toward some sort of happy ending. I thought Marvin and I could be heroes, stop Walter's plan, return and convince Thomson and Phoenix to leave. Maybe Marvin would come with us, maybe he wouldn't. Either way, this was my family now. I remember feeling that, Melissa, and feeling brave. I thought it would be easy.

“We're going out,” I said, pulling on my green hoodie. When Phoenix spoke, I barely heard her through the soft, linty dark.

“Where?”

I told an effortless lie. “Marvin heard about this dumpster full of frozen food. He saw it last night. It'll still be good.”

“Really,” she said. “And how will we keep it cold?”

“We won't. We'll cook it all and eat it.”

She paused. “Do you need help?”

Marvin shook his head. “We got it,” he said, lighting another cigarette. Chain-smoking.

She pursed her lips, considering. I felt her analysis. It was my turn to look away. Marvin reached for my hand, but I shoved mine in my pockets. Phoenix saw and her eyes were warm when they met mine and I knew we'd be together again. A bloom opened in my throat. I couldn't stop the smile.

“Get ready,” I said as I pulled on the doorknob. “We'll have a feast.” The damp outside air burst in, pushing aside the heat from the fire. When Thomson cleared his throat, I anticipated coughing, but he just said my name and I stood there like I was waiting for someone, welcoming them in.

“Be careful,” he said without looking at either one of us.

As we left I remembered the Rumi quote.
Flies gather on a wound
. I had to wave them away, live with what I'd done, accept the consequences. Act.

Halfway up the street, I looked back and saw Phoenix standing in the doorway, a slender pillar in the ruins all around.

I walked to
the door, carrying Phoenix's scarf. The boys watched me go, but Marvin didn't even look. Graham shifted, his right leg moving out from under the table to follow, but Marvin laid a hand beside his plate and said, “Stay here.”

It was dark out, but I knew the way. I walked along the stone and sand of our laneway, my eyes slowly opening to the world. The forest lightened to grey and I thought of Phoenix turning off her flashlight as we walked to that apartment—Walter's old place, I realized later—to pick up the mattress. The dread in me that night, and fear. The fire from the bomb I'd planted burning not far away. The secret a new sliver inside me as my eyes hunted every hollow for Thomson's missing bees. I ached for her to be there, walking with me toward the trees. How my life would have been different, how it could have been. Regret burned in me as I reached the car and carefully opened the front passenger door. The hinges screamed. I shimmied over to the driver's seat and listened to the bees' loud buzzing as I draped the red scarf over the steering wheel. I didn't have the smoker, but I didn't care if I got stung. I felt tough as a beech tree, my skin a thick, smooth bark. Grief a running sap inside me.

“We had Thomson's funeral,” I said out loud and then: “because he died.” I adjusted the folds of the scarf, pulled it flat to reveal a skull, the wide black eye sockets, the crooked teeth. Stupidly, I expected something to happen—the bees to pause—but the night went on. The oak leaves rustling above me. The chorus of frogs and crickets. A stone formed in my throat, a hard thing defining the open, yawning absence. Thomson felt close by, like he was watching me, like he still existed. I had felt that about Phoenix too, those first few days afterwards on the island, and a terror that we'd left her behind. Fingering the hem of her scarf, I hoped that they had found each other, in the heavenlike afterlife Thomson didn't believe in. That dream seemed ridiculous to me, a reverie, and I remembered Phoenix calling me on the fantasy I'd created out of the dark zone. How young I must have been to imagine that place as a kind of retreat, somewhere that would serve me. Although I had been happy in the last days, before Marvin returned and laid the outcome of our actions at my feet. An innocent, Marvin had called me, and that's how I'd felt—new, only just learning who I was. He'd taken all that possibility away from me . . . A few bees drifted in from under the steering wheel and rose in a lazy flight. One landed on my wrist, crawled through the fine, brown hairs on my forearm, and then lifted, buzzing around my face, near my eyes. Thomson?
Choose your prison
, he'd said.

My nose burned. Sobs pushed out of my lungs. I wept. Of course it had been my fault, my choices, each step a mistake taken only by me. Those long days living in darkness while I waited for Marvin to tell me what to do and then did it. I lifted my hands to cover my face as the bee flew away. Pain poured out of me, long held under the weight of blame. Tears soaking Phoenix's scarf, brightening to red the dull brown stains of her blood.

I did get stung. A sharp pinch after I'd cried for half an hour. I took it to be Thomson, telling me enough was enough:
Get on with it! There's life to be lived.

When I climbed out of the car, I don't know what I expected. More of the same, I suppose. Silence. The continuing toil of the everyday life that Marvin and I knew. Smoking fish, gardening, going to town. Shannon occasionally opening the door so I could check on her children. There would be more grieving, I knew. For Thomson, all the others—even my parents, who I'd pushed down deeper than anyone. On my way down the laneway, I swallowed a resurgence of tears and thought of what I would tell them, if I was able, if I hadn't let them go so carelessly—
I'm all right, I've come full circle, my hands know what to do in the dirt.