Michael Christie - If I Fall, If I Die

“He can stay over anytime he wants, you know, I won’t mind. I don’t love the thought of him going through that culvert at night. We could set up another cot.”

“Jonah can’t sleep if he’s not at home,” Will said. “He doesn’t feel safe.”

“Well, we’ve got that in common,” she said, laughing with her eyes shut. “I really like him,” she added. “He livens this place up. It’s so good you two are friends. It wasn’t always like that in Thunder Bay, Will. Your uncle and I didn’t have Native friends. It just wasn’t something people did. Actually, with those skateboards of yours, in a way you boys both remind me of your uncle.”

Will fought the urge to sit up. “What was he like?”

“He was smart. And funny. And daring,” she said. “And angry.” She gave a quick smile.

“What was he angry about?”

“Oh,” she said, scooping some bubbles in her palm, “I suppose he was mad about losing our parents, and at the way things were here. And he didn’t know where to put it. He could’ve done so much, gone to university somewhere or created things. He was brilliant, like you. But when our dad died, he had to stay to take care of us. At that time people in Thunder Bay didn’t have options the way people in other places did.”

“They still don’t, Mom.”

She shook her head as though to clear it. “But you’re happy out there, aren’t you?”

Will nodded. “The world is really big,” he said. “It’s hard to believe. It just keeps going and going.”

“I remember that,” she said.

“Mom, I heard that people die in their houses way more than anywhere else,” he said, “making this, like, the most dangerous place in the world. At least for us.”

She put her wrist over her eyes. He could see her body tense like a bow drawn with an arrow. “That’s because people are in their houses more often than other places,” she said. “It’s just statistics, Will.”

“But it still means you’re safer if you go out and do stuff,” he said. “That’s the truth. That’s not just statistics. Everybody Outside knows it.”

They sat for a while in silence, and she seemed to let it go.

“Mom, is it because of Dad? Or is it because of Charlie?”

“What, Will?”

“The … Black Lagoon?”

Her eyes were open and searching.

“The reason you can’t go Outside,” he added.

“Is that what you call it?”

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “In some way, I guess. I do miss them both. For different reasons. But it also comes from … me.”

“Then you can stop it. If it’s from Inside you.”

“It’s not that easy, honey.”

“Being brave is never easy. That’s why it’s good for you.”

She cocked her head and sighed but didn’t say anything.

“What if we built you a shack in the backyard and brought all your stuff out there, like your bed and your books and guitar? Wouldn’t it be basically the same?”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“But if we painted it exactly like your room and got—”

“Look,” she said, her voice cutting, “sometimes I’m scared to breathe , Will. The more I fight it, the worse it gets. But I’ve been doing better lately. This Relaxation business really helps.”

“Why be scared of breathing, Mom? Breathing never killed anyone. It keeps you alive . You just think about it too much.”

“I’ve tried to stop thinking about it. Believe me.”

“You need something to do . Like solve a puzzle or something. Find a mystery. Get a hobby. That’s what I’m doing.”

“Honey, I don’t think crossword puzzles are going to fix this.”

“But what are you actually afraid of? Dying? Kids at my school have scraps all the time, and they’re fine. It’s actually pretty hard to die, Mom.”

She snapped her elastic. “Oh, please don’t say that word,” she said. “You’ve come close before, believe me. You just can’t remember.”

“I got amnesia?” Will said, excited at the potential territory of himself previously unmapped.

“No, you were young. When we were in Toronto, the sub …”—she seemed to weaken for a moment—“you nearly fell — actually, you did slip … on a pool deck, and cracked your head.” Her elastic thwacked twice. “You bled like a faucet. They had to clear the pool because it went pale-pink.”

“You took me to a pool?”

“You were young,” she said in a long quivery breath. “Oh, Will,” she said, shutting her eyes. “What I’m most afraid of is breaking apart and losing everything.”

“Aren’t you already broken apart?”

“Not completely.”

“Well, maybe you just need to get it over with,” he said, “like I do in skateboarding. If I’m scared to try a trick, I need to fall once really bad, and then I’m not scared anymore.”

“You and Jonah going skateboarding tomorrow?” she said, turning to examine her face in the mirror, except her eyes weren’t looking anywhere.

“Yeah, probably,” he said, then, just to scare her: “We might go find some hills to bomb downtown.”

Her breath caught, and she stared at the bubbles for a long while. She pulled back the elastic at her wrist but didn’t let it go.

“Could you do something for me, Will?” she asked, avoiding his eyes.

“I’m never quitting skateboarding, so don’t even ask—”

“No, no, it’s not that. Promise me one thing. Please don’t go downtown to the harbor. Okay? It’s just … very, very dangerous down there. Even more so than the creek.”

Though he’d never admit it to Jonah, he was still reluctant to leave the neighborhood anyway, because of the Butler’s wolves and the possibility of the Wheezing Man’s bear hug breaking all his ribs like sticks. “Sure, Mom,” Will said, and she put her hand in his wet hair and they sat like that for a while listening to the bubbles fizz.

It was July, and she’d been daring to open a window in her bedroom, letting the delicious air slide over her skin, amid nothing more than a manageable stitch of anxiety. Perhaps she had absorbed a little of Will’s courage, or perhaps all this talking into her reel-to-reel was helping to loosen panic’s grip on her, finger by finger, word by word, memory by memory.

Both the radio and TV had gone dead, and there hadn’t been a newspaper delivered in weeks. Even after Diane had berated the profusely apologetic circulation office for an hour, still the paper did not come. At first these had seemed terrible omens, but now she was enjoying the quiet. It cheered her to be free from the Thunder Bay Tribune ’s ever-depressing editorials, all those missing children and dour forecasts of a worsening economic future. She was reading Great Expectations and watching old films on her 16mm projector Will and Jonah had set up. Even sketching a little and taking some still photos here and there — mostly when some regular household object caught the sunlight in such a way that the light seemed to originate from within it.

Will had started sleeping on his own in Charlie’s old room. Sometimes she still woke in the dark and listened hard for his breathing but found no little warm engine of a boy beside her, only the unearthly roar of night. To compensate, she’d ordered an extra quilt to put atop her old one. Tonight she vowed to check on him only twice — a hard-fought number. It was as high as ten previously. Poking her head into his room was like diving into a pool of his sweet breath. She loved to watch his perfect chest rise in the half-light like smoke. But she’d been sleeping better on her own. Now whenever she was troubled by a dream, she could click on her reading light without fear of waking Will.