Aftershock Read online

  Hollywood could suck it. I tasted ocean and toothpaste and lemonade, felt the coolness of damp neoprene under my palms, the wet undercoat of hair at Lee’s neck. When a loudspeaker announced the Ladies’ Over Forty, I laughed, and we finally broke apart.

  Ladies, eh?

  Aw, don’t get me started.

  Lee picked up my pack in one hand, grabbed me with the other and started pulling us away from the water.

  You don’t wanna watch—

  No.

  Back across the road and into a campground, we pushed and kicked aside packs in Lee’s small tent even as she pulled my T-shirt up over my head. With her wetsuit unzipped and peeled off, a team effort, we toppled onto a sleeping bag. She tasted like the ocean and the ocean was the universe. Fingers twisted in hair, our mouths hanging on like kissing was breathing, our brains and bodies fusing, bare arms wrapped fiercely around backs, bodies straining to get closer, to be more inside each other. Everything washed over us in waves. Then I went over the edge, the pulsing shook my whole body and I cried out. Lee’s neck strained back, the tendons in her throat standing out, and she looked so beautiful.

  Photograph.

  Later, we ventured down the beach, our beacon the bonfire where Sean and a few other surfer types already sat around drinking. Sean roared when he saw us and ran over to scoop me up in a hug.

  I’ve missed you too, I laughed.

  This one’s been pining—

  Lee smacked him playfully across the back of his head. Shut up about it, yeah?

  I found a seat on a lopsided bench near the fire, and Lee sat on the ground in front of me, leaned back against my legs. Beer and cheap wine went around in travel mugs and plastic cups, and surfers trickled in like night spirits drawn to the fire. Sean and a gangly Argentinian named Jorge rolled a number of joints and passed them around, and we all lit up ceremoniously. I drew in deeply and watched the smoke wind and circle between us, rising. I felt the delicious tweak to my state of consciousness, a dimensional slip that added layers of perception and possibility. Lee’s hand trailed light fingers down the back of my calf, and I thought, This. This is the moment I came for. No matter what happened—and I was so low on cash, my plans clearly needed to change, were changing by the minute—I had reached this place, and I could feel something fundamental shifting, the tectonic plates of my brain starting to realign.

  Lights came on behind us, and the surfers cheered. A small building I hadn’t noticed before squatted at the edge of the woods. A couple people beelined for it, and Lee leaned back to tell me it was a surf bar—cheap beer and free bathrooms, she said. Unpredictable hours.

  Been here forever, Sean added. You seen the pictures of your dad yet?

  I have not, Lee answered, with some trepidation in her voice.

  He used to surf here, Sean told me, back in the day.

  Sean sprinted over to the bar and came back holding a framed photograph. I’ll bring it right back! he called to whoever was inside. They have this up on the wall, he said, as he placed it in Lee’s hands. That’s got to be—what?—thirty, thirty-five years ago?

  Look at those shorts, I laughed, looking over Lee’s shoulder.

  A broad, lanky twentyish guy, with a tanned surfer’s physique and neon-green-and-pink shorts, stood next to an orange surfboard that towered over him. I felt Lee go still against my legs, could only imagine what she saw: her father at an age she’d never known him, at the age she herself was now. But I knew what loss was, knew from the curl of her shoulders, her shallow breathing, that it was knowledge we shared.

  Y’alright?

  Lee nodded. Thanks. She reluctantly handed the picture back to Sean, and he went to return it.

  I rested my chin on Lee’s head, squeezed her rib cage gently with my knees. As she stared into the fire, her hand slipped into mine and held it, right over her heart.

  He just loved life, she said. Loved it to the extreme.

  I thought about Jules, clocking time and numbing pain. Working obsessively, always trying to make more money. Drinking herself to sleep, waking up to do it again. He taught me how to surf, said Lee. Every time I go out, he’s right there with me.

  I heard her voice rip and my heart ached for her. But also for myself, as I remembered that I too had once had a parent who’d doted on me, who was lost to me now and whom I’d been grieving for years.

  I thought about the first time Jules took me skating. She and David had both scorned baby steps—no training wheels on my bike, no shoes without laces and none of those easily balanced two-bladed skates for me. At not quite four years old, I was straight into what must have been a tiny pair of hockey skates, my mum in snow boots shimmying backwards on the ice while she held both of my hands. The balance had come quickly, and it wasn’t long before I started peewee hockey. But what I remembered about that day was the absolute and undivided attention: I was the centre of Jules’s universe. The edges of my blades cut into the ice, and my legs figured out what to do, as I propelled myself forward, ever forward, into my mother’s ever-retreating embrace.

  You’re amazing, Chloe, she’d said.

  You’re a natural, she’d said.

  And the smile.

  She’d scooped me right off the ice, held me in a brief but tight hug, my heart bursting.

  Then she’d placed me back down, steadied me for a moment and let go. You don’t need me at all! And she’d shoe-skated off to drink her coffee in the penalty box, leaving me to wiggle and slide across the now-vast frozen expanse by myself.

  You don’t need me at all.

  HEY, SAID LEE, bringing both of us out of our respective reveries, did Chlo tell you guys how some ass-hat ripped her off?

  I grimaced, still embarrassed I’d let it happen, that I’d been so naive. But when I told the story, Sean said, Fuck it, let’s kill him, and I immediately felt exonerated. No one but me thought it was my fault.

  It could have been worse, Jorge said. It’s only money. The lit end of his joint etched slow red lines across space. Better to have friends than money.

  Or stuff, I said. That is an excellent mantra. I liked how opposite it was to Jules’s materialism, her tendency to use money as a tool of manipulation.

  I knew she’d refused to send me cash when I told her I was robbed because I hadn’t called more (not that she was ever nice when I did) and she was feeling sorry for herself (as usual). Jules withholding money was a gesture meant to hurt. She might call it Tough Love, but it felt like no love at all.

  I had four hundred and some dollars left in my moneybelt. I already knew I’d have to cash in my round-the-world plane ticket and somehow find work again.

  But it was exhilarating—every moment felt precipitous: I was about to take a flying leap, I had only to choose a direction, and I just didn’t care how broke I was. I liked the idea of not needing Jules, and how possible it felt.

  Fuck money, I said out loud. And Lee laughed, which was everything.

  Court.

  Jules woke at 6 a.m., tried to reconstruct her turbulent dreams: Chloe drowning, Lizzie wailing, Jules held down by men in lab coats, cutting open her brain and telling her to keep an eye on her blind spot. A little white hatchback, sinking in the ocean, a teenaged daughter waving from the passenger seat, Jules had no ears, she couldn’t hear anything, she knew she should help but then her eyes were sealed shut too, and she couldn’t get them open, couldn’t remember how.

  Siege mentality, Dr. Morrow had called it, when she had finally found a box she could check to describe Jules: Child of an Alcoholic. That’s how you’ve been living your life, she nodded, as though it explained everything. You’ve built bunkers—barriers of drugs, booze, work, anything to keep your feelings at bay, and keep people at a distance.

  Morrow’s uncharacteristic directness felt like a reprimand, but then she’d softened it by asking if that felt about right. Jules couldn’t say no but refused to say yes. It felt to her like all her barriers had recently been dismantled.

  Their
hour had ended, but the words had been dogging her ever since.

  AT 7 A.M., she remembered it was Friday and got out of bed. It was still dark, night smothering day a little longer every morning, a little earlier every afternoon as winter approached. Killing spirits with its velvet pall.

  She rummaged in the basket of laundry she’d managed to wash the night before, promising herself she’d fold it later. She branched out from the track pants she’d inhabited for the past week with jeans and a sweatshirt. Okay, the sweatshirt wasn’t really branching out. Anyway, it was too casual for court. She started again with wool pants and a button-down. Better for court, certainly, but so conservative it chafed. She tried a skirt: no way. Went back to the jeans, and found a black T-shirt and a blazer.

  She made a cup of coffee, relishing the chainsaw gnash of the coffee grinder. She drank it on the back porch, watched the sun come up, smoked one of Farzan’s cigarettes and confronted the full awareness that she’d started a new habit. Well, if she had to go to jail, she’d already be one of the cool kids.

  Ready?

  Drew stood at the back door, his lined trench coat open over a lime-green suit, nectarine shirt and grape-juice tie.

  What, now? It was only eight o’clock, and her hearing was scheduled for eleven. It really was a crazy outfit. It cheered her up.

  Marc says early is better. Shows a good attitude. This judge likes it.

  This judge better not examine said attitude too closely, she thought, but kept it to herself.

  MARC MET THEM on the steps of the old courthouse.

  Hello, darling. Drew gave him a hug and a quick kiss on the lips. Thanks for doing this.

  Oh, my pleasure, said Marc, as he and Jules exchanged cheek kisses. Need more pro bono anyway.

  Pro bono? This was news to Jules, and it irked her.

  I told you, sweetie, the partners—

  I can pay my own legal bills, Drew. I have money.

  Drew’s face turned cherry pink, and he stuttered. I just . . . at your house, I saw the stack of unopened mail—

  Don’t worry, sweetie. I need more freebies, and “unemployed recovering addict” is just what they like to see on my sheet. Marc winked and squeezed her arm.

  I’m unemployed?

  Ask me tomorrow, said Drew.

  Great. Well then, thanks, I guess.

  OTHER THAN THE bailiff who guarded the door behind the bench, they were the first people in the courtroom. It was eight forty-five. By nine o’clock, the room was packed with frazzled lawyers in cheap suits, sullen clients from a large cross-section of demographics, and their parents and wives and husbands, who had crowded in to witness these reckonings. Jules did a quick survey and thought that of the people she took to be defendants, she was probably the only middle-aged white woman. Well, there was one woman with bleached hair and a stretched-out tank top who might have been Jules’s age, but her terrible makeup made it hard to tell. Jules wondered what she was being charged with, but then she tousled the gel-stiffened hair of a scowling tattooed kid about Chloe’s age, who flinched and swatted away her hand, and Jules realized she was just somebody’s mother.

  Judge Enrique Mancuso entered, striking and in his fifties. Marc had explained that he had a first-come, first-served policy in his courtroom, so even though her hearing was officially set for eleven, the bailiff now read her docket number aloud from his tablet:

  Stacie Julie Wright.

  Jules was too busy cringing to hear anything else. The Wright was from David, that was okay, but she’d long ago dropped and amended the rest of it—never legally, though, and as she followed Marc and Drew to the defence table, she took a moment to regret it.

  Good morning.

  The judge was smiling. It was the beginning of the day. Marc said Judge Mancuso played squash every morning—sometimes with Marc, in fact—and whether he won or lost, the exercise always put him in a good mood. Jules had wondered about the vague ethics of working such advantages. But she wasn’t stupid enough to shy away from proffered help when the possibility of prison still circulated in her universe.

  Judge Mancuso consulted a file on his bench, then asked Marc and the Crown attorney to confirm that they’d reached a potential plea agreement, which they had. Then he turned to her.

  So, Ms. Wright, for the sake of the record, how do you plead to the charges in question? That would be—oh fine, read them, then.

  A communal chuckle moved across the gallery. The bailiff, a clean-cut young guy with smooth brown skin, suppressed a grin as he read Jules’s charges, after which the judge again asked her how she wished to plead.

  Jules stood up and took a deep breath, but kept it from turning into a sigh.

  Guilty. Her voice crumbled like dried crackers as it left her mouth. But within her, it resonated like a fundamental truth, a hibernating monster stirring in the back of its cave.

  I’m guilty, Your Honour. This time with more air, and it came out too loudly, made her shiver. Her ears rang.

  May the record show it. Ms. Wright, I have a note from your Show Cause that says you were in pretty rough shape. Says you “exhibited classic signs of opiate withdrawal.”

  Jules nodded as he looked her over.

  You seem better. Are you feeling better?

  Somewhat, Your Honour.

  Oxy, was it?

  Yes, Your Honour.

  No fun, withdrawal, is it?

  It truly sucked, Your Honour.

  This got a sympathetic laugh from the gallery.

  Alright. Are you in a treatment program?

  Marc spoke up for her:

  Ms. Wright is being treated by a psychiatrist, Your Honour.

  And how long have we been doing that?

  Marc looked at Jules, who shrugged.

  Years.

  Marc rushed to clarify that it was years because of depression, not Oxy addiction.

  Hmm. Prosecutor?

  The Crown attorney was young, maybe thirty, and had an eight-inch stack of files on the desk in front of her. It was a first offence, she said. If Jules would commit to her current treatment, the Crown would be satisfied with one-year probation.

  But the judge said:

  Well, I’m not satisfied. Doesn’t seem like your shrink helped you avoid this conundrum, does it?

  No one answered him. Mancuso was rereading something in the file, maybe more details of her case, the charges that had been dropped. Jules held her breath, terrified the deal Marc had wrangled out of the Crown was about to poof away. Drew took her hand and squeezed. Mancuso continued:

  I’m sure the Crown attorney is aware that the real risk here is that you’ll turn to street drugs, and right now a great many of those are being cut with fentanyl. Which can kill you. It’s turning up in heroin, street Oxy, any opiate not from a pharmacy—and that’s where Oxy users are turning. And—I played squash with a narcotics detective just this morning, and he tells me that’s not just street users, but people—well, like you, Ms. Wright, people who had prescriptions but somehow—you know how—got hooked, and need a substitute. Or a supplement.

  Jules had a desperate sense of impending impact on her life. Your Honour, I’m not about to start doing heroin.

  Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! someone called from the back of the room, and the judge hit his gavel to quiet the room.

  Thank you, he said to whoever had yelled it out. I believe you’ve made my point.

  More laughter. But not from Jules. Drew was crushing her hand, but she held on like she was falling out of an airplane.

  Let’s go with the year probation, that’s fine, but contingent on your completion of an in-patient program, okay? Ninety days. The Crown here can give you a list of the court-recognized ones. Stay out of trouble, Ms. Wright.

  He gave her a nod of encouragement and banged his gavel.

  Happy holidays. Who’s next?

  NINETY DAYS?

  Oh sweetie, it could have been worse.

  Yeah, said Marc. I thought he was a
bout to give you thirty days.

  He gave me ninety!

  I don’t mean rehab.

  Oh.

  At least they took that thing off your ankle, though, right?

  She stared out the car window, the melting and grey remains of an early snowfall, the hardy cyclists who sprayed through gutters of slush alongside the row of inching cars. Winter hadn’t even officially begun and already the city felt grimy and hostile.

  When do I have to go?

  Fourteen days, so . . . by New Year’s. I really think that’s the best one for you. Pricey, I know, but super cush.

  Jules looked at the brochure in her lap. Marc had “just happened” to have it in his briefcase. A big red-brick farmhouse in the country, with white trim and pillars, sat in the protective embrace of weeping willows and elms. But anything could look welcoming in summer. Greenvalley Healing Centre, dark-blue cursive print spelled out across a light-blue sky. Your Journey to Recovery Begins Here, in smaller yellow cursive scrolled across the immaculate front lawn.

  It’s like a vacation, said Drew. At a spa. If you sign on, I think I can persuade Simon and Raj to, you know . . . He didn’t need to finish: To not replace you. To not fire you. He patted her knee.

  The inside of the pamphlet showed well-dressed, relaxed-looking people lounging in a sunlit room for “Group Therapy: You Are Not Alone”; a white-haired but still handsome man relaxing in an armchair next to a serious, pretty young woman with glasses and a clipboard: “One-on-One Counselling: We’re Here to Listen”; a yoga class (“Strengthen the Core of Your Being”); and a silhouetted figure passing in front of a tequila sunrise (“Rediscover Beauty”). There were also some more descriptive paragraphs, but one of them began with the words “You are Beautiful,” and it hurt too much to read further.

  I am not doing yoga.

  Jules folded it back up and rolled it into a tube.

  Her cellphone rang, the screen showing a long international number Jules thought was familiar.

  Jules Wright.

  Hey there, this is Chandra, I’m calling from the Backpackers here in Picton.