Surfacing - Margaret Atwood [68]
It wasn’t anywhere in the main room. When we’d finished I went into David’s and Anna’s room: her leather jacket was there, hanging up, it hadn’t been put back since the trip. I examined the pockets; there was nothing in them but an empty metal aspirin container and an ancient kleenex, and the husks from sunflower seeds; and a charred filter from one of Anna’s cigarettes, which I dropped on the floor and crushed with my foot.
My room was the only one remaining. As soon as I stepped inside it I sensed the power, in my hands and running along my arms, I was close to it. I scanned the walls and shelves, it wasn’t there; my painted ladies watched me with their bristling eyes. Then I was certain: it was in the scrapbooks, I’d shoved them under the mattress without reading through all of them. They were the last possibility and they weren’t supposed to be here, they belonged in the city, in the trunk.
I heard a motor droning from down the lake, a different pitch, deeper than a powerboat.
“Hey look,” Anna called from the main room, “A big boat!” We went out on the point: it was a police launch like the ones driven by the game wardens, they were checking us the way they used to, to see if we had any dead fish and a licence to go with them; it was routine.
The launch slowed and drew into the dock. David was down there anyway, I would let him meet it, he was the one with the papers. I re-entered the house and stood by the window. Anna, inquisitive, sauntered down to join them.
There were two men, police or probably game wardens, they were wearing ordinary clothes; and a third man, blond, Claude from the village probably, and a fourth one, older, the size of Paul. It was odd that Paul was on the launch: if he were coming for a visit he would bring his own boat. David shook hands with them and they clustered on the dock, talking in low voices. David dug into his pocket, for the licence; then he scratched his neck as if worried. Joe appeared from the outhouse path and the talking started over again; Anna’s head turned up towards me.
Then I saw David hurrying, taking the hill steps two at a time. The screen door banged shut behind him. “They found your father,” he said, breathing hard from the climb. He squinted his face, as if to show sympathy.
The door slammed again, it was Anna; he put his arm around her and they both studied me with the intent pouncing look they’d had at supper.
“Oh,” I said. “Where?”
“Some American guys found him in the lake. They were fishing, they hooked him by mistake; the body was unrecognizable but an old guy named Paul something-or-other down there, says he knows you, he identified the clothes. They figured he’d fallen off a cliff or something, he had a skull fracture.” Seedy department-store magician, producing my father out of nowhere like a stuffed rabbit out of a hat.
“Where?” I said again.
“It’s awful,” Anna said, “I’m really sorry.”
“They don’t know where it happened,” David said, “he must’ve drifted; he had a camera around his neck, big one, they think the weight kept him down or he would’ve been found sooner.” His eyes gloating.
It was clever of him to have guessed the missing camera, since I’d told them nothing. He must have thought quickly in order to make it all up in such a short time: I knew it was a lie, he was doing it to get back at me. “Did they ask to see your fishing licence?” I said.
“No,” he said, faking surprise. “You want to talk to them?”
That was a risk, he should have calculated better, it would expose his whole false construction. Maybe that’s what he wanted, maybe it was intended as a practical joke. I decided to act as though I believed him, see how he’d get out of it. “No,” I said, “tell them I’m too upset. I’ll speak to Paul tomorrow when we get to the village, about the arrangements.” That was what they were called, the arrangements. “He’d want to be buried around here.” Convincing details, if he could invent I could invent