One Insular Tahiti

By Thea Atkinson

B.R.A.G.MedallionTM Honoree

Luke MacIsaac has shameful secrets. He lived a horrible life and now that he's dead, he can't shake the memories of his entire violent past. He wants out of death, and to escape, he needs to be born  again.

 

He chooses to live and sets in motion the very thing he'd hoped to avoid: images of war, childhood abuse, and the tortured life of a brother he loved and failed. To make matters worse, his life costs his chosen mother a great deal--especially since she wasn't supposed to survive her own birth.

 

From tragedy and loss, ONE INSULAR TAHITI is a coming of age literary novel about reincarnation and past lives from a Canadian author that demonstrates how sometimes the greatest light can come from the deepest darkness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thea Atkinson
• Release date: Sep 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9781498916769

Thea Atkinson

Thea Atkinson writes character driven fiction to the left of mainstream; call it what you will: she prefers to describe her work as psychological dramas with a distinct literary flavour. Her characters often find themselves in the darker edges of their own spirits but manage to find the light they seek. She has been an editor, a freelancer, and a teacher, but fiction is her passion. She now blogs and writes and twitters. Not necessarily in that order. Please visit her blog for ramblings, guest posts, giveaways, and more http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com or follow her on twitter http://twitter.com/#!/theaatkinson or like her facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Theas-Writing-Page/122231651163413 a special thanks to Tiffany Atkinson for taking my author photo.

Book preview

One Insular Tahiti

Thea Atkinson

Copyright © 2010 by Thea Atkinson

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.Prelude

2.CHAPTER 1

3.CHAPTER 2

4.CHAPTER 3

5.CHAPTER 4

6.CHAPTER 5

7.CHAPTER 6

8.CHAPTER 7

9.CHAPTER 8

10.CHAPTER 9

11.CHAPTER 10

12.CHAPTER 11

13.CHAPTER 12

14.CHAPTER 13

15.CHAPTER 14

16.CHAPTER 15

17.CHAPTER 16

18.CHAPTER 17

19.CHAPTER 18

20.CHAPTER 19

21.CHAPTER 20

22.CHAPTER 21

23.CHAPTER 22

24.CHAPTER 23

25.CHAPTER 24

26.CHAPTER 25

27.CHAPTER 26

28.CHAPTER 27

More By Thea

About Author

Prelude

For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man their lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick

CHAPTER 1

My death in '59 came the way I always feared it would: in the claustrophobic underground heat of a Cape Breton coal mine. The tunnel had been inching its way below the Atlantic for decades, and I'd picked and hacked my own way further into it day by day until, when an inevitable collapse happened, I wasn't surprised. Just very pissed off.

I must have known it was coming, embraced it, even, because my limbs went deaf to the warnings from my hung-over brain. From behind me, my name, yelled out by the foreman: Luke. God, he's trapped. Someone get him outta there.

I couldn't breathe; I knew I couldn't breathe, and yet the scent of apples came to me anyway. Sammy, I thought. Sammy or Gran come to get me, bring me to purgatory. Funny how the deceased can have such a living scent.

Everything went black under the weight of dirt and coal.

And so now I'm here. Waiting. Except all is not quiet. Not anymore. Not like it used to be when I first realized I was dead. There's the sound of swells and wind now as though death were an ocean that overcomes me now and then with memories of my last life. It makes me think of Melville with his great whale and his Ishmael who was meant to be some sort of symbol for God knows what. Meanwhile, I float in water, or swim, or spin freely as though I were a day old embryo struggling to join the lining of a womb. So maybe water does link me with Ishmael in a strange way: maybe it's the womb of fluid that cannot be escaped, the source of all, the infinite mother. Salvation.

Brah. God, too, could be a white whale beneath me; I've never so much as felt a bump. And if Ishmael means God hears, then my death and quiet appearance onto this god-forsaken empty ocean only proves to me that prayer is the voice of desperation.

One thing feels real to me, though, and I'm not sure why. It's a woman, this thing. A girl, actually. Nineteen and nine and newborn, depending on the wave of time that splashes about me. Ah, Astrid. Sure, she has her problems, but that just makes her a perfect fit for the next me; in fact, I sometimes wonder if her problems are because of me. I wonder too: can I save her? In the absence of any real being that fits the bill, can I be her God?

That's her there. She's the one clinging to the doorframe of a frat house nearly four decades after I die as Luke. She's the young woman with a cap on her front tooth, thin eyebrows that don't arch gracefully over her muddy brown eyes but vee downward. The one with borrowed shoes that pinch her toes, who avoids everyone's gaze as she fidgets in a skirt too tight, that she thinks shows too much leg. She's the one who, although she doesn't know it yet, will conceive me. Tonight she'll meet my new father--whoever he is-- and she'll lie with him and I will become a mustard seed in her belly. If all goes well, that is. I think I've spent my entire death trying to get ahead to that moment when I can be someone new, someone who forgets there was a Luke and all the things he--I--did, but it always sloshes away like so much water in a spilled bucket. So please, for once, let it go well.

I can hear her breath coming in deep draughts, hear her tell herself the party will be over soon. It's strange that I can hear these things, but I do. Her internal flogging sweeps across me, raising hairs as though we're two red ants communicating. Strange, yes, but sweetly intimate. I hear her when she thinks she's had enough of the party, that she doesn't want to stay.

Frat bashes, they get to her. There's beer and tequila, too many people, and necking in the corner, if she's seeing right. She searches out a stain on the carpet that for the last half hour has been a good point of focus. What's it from? It's brown. In the shape of a bear, if you look at it just so. Soda probably, is what she thinks, and I imagine she's right. But does it matter? She's had about all the dirt and noise she can stand by now. She wonders what she's doing here. Did she really need to get out of her apartment so badly? Carley will pay for dragging her here when she could be studying.

I watch her cringe when a guy with fresh vomit on his T-shirt mistakes her for a coat rack. His words are slurred bunches of syllables when he speaks to her. My coat? You got my coat?

She shakes her head in answer. He laughs then crumples onto the floor at her feet where three female partiers take to sitting on his hip, stomach, and shoulders, and bounce on him until a dribble of drool makes its way out the corner of his mouth. He tries to roll away from the asses intent on helping him purge the last of his booze. Hell, he says to one of the girls. How lucky can a guy get to have three ladies ride him all at once?

Jerk, is what I think they call that kind of fellow here at the end of the millennium, but then, who am I to judge. It isn't as if Astrid is against sex or nudity, or even crassness--God knows she's seen her share, but she's sick of being here, of watching everyone act like idiots, of suspecting they've gotten drunk just for the sake of telling everyone they meet exactly how bombed they are.

So she uses the fellow's comment as an excuse to escape onto the porch where the March night seems so much more benign, even in the middle of Halifax, than the fully lit living room. Besides, the darkness of 2 a.m. doesn't seem so black in the city the way it does in rural Yarmouth, where the streetlights are usually broken or are sprinkled hundreds of feet away from each other to save a precious penny. Here, the lights of the Victoria General Hospital cast a haze that spills as far as the rundown frat house. House? It's a shack, really. Worn out from the constant scuffing of feet and noise.

She sees she's got the jerk's vomit on her shoes and scrapes the toe of one against the wooden step. She can still see inside, and notices the collapsed guy has been abandoned by his comrades. A girl with a fuchsia bra strap hanging off her shoulder steps over him and shudders, says something to a friend before she closes the door. Astrid can't hear, but she can make out the unmistakable mouthing of Asshole.

Well, maybe, but most people are assholes when they've overindulged, and tonight just happens to be his turn. She reaches down to pull off the offending shoe. He'll never remember he's been a revolting prick anyway. Better to just let him ride it out. She clomps down one step, two, to the paved sidewalk and finds a patch of grass beside the house to wipe the shoe in.

She's better out than in anyway: something I could have told her if I just had the wherewithal to speak. The view is much better out here--a hospital and black pave without any real traffic maybe, but still better--even when a siren interferes with the boom boom of Nelly's rap and brain-numbing music coming from inside.

There's a flicker of red light, and she looks over at the hospital where the flashes rampage into the street: Shit. An ambulance. Watching it, she holds her breath until the vehicle veers in the other direction. What poor soul would need emergency services at this hour? And how badly? She's tempted to offer up a prayer: God let them be okay, but she's not sure there's a god there to hear. Or whether those someones would even want to be okay. And that was the weird thing about hoping the victim will live: that they might not want to. Funny what a simple thing like an ambulance can do to your psyche. But then, that could also be thanks to Joan and her constant bouts of depression, her dizzying highs, her suicidal lows. Joan.

Never mind. Just exhale slowly, through the nose. Good. She lets her abdomen push the air out of her lungs, then she drags in a deliberately slow breath. There, that's better. She can catch a whiff of the homefries cooked in trucks along Spring Garden Road, and it puts her more at ease just knowing someone else is still out on the city streets. She settles on the bottom of the wooden and rickety stoop, glances down the street at the nearest bus cubicle. Empty. She'll wait outside a little longer--just to settle her nerves--then she'll take the bus. Go home to the one bedroom apartment she shares with Carley.

Even as she thinks this, the door of the frat house cracks open again, throwing a slant of light onto the step. Before she can say anything to the lump of clothes and skin spilling out, it fetches against her and stumbles down the stairs, finding unsteady footing on the sidewalk below.

Watch out, she says to it.

Watch out? The blur of clothing straightens into a Columbia coat and Mavi jeans. Fine thing to say to a guy after you've tripped him up.

Tripped you? I was just sitting here. She wants to add: minding my own business, but thinks better of it. Last thing she wants to do is get into an argument. Ah, to hell with it, she says. She doesn't need some long string of bad wire knocking her over, talking her up, or puking again on Carley's shoes. She's out of here.

Hey, where you going? he says, and she hesitates. His voice is clear. Almost too clear. Can't be stoned. Can't be drunk. And if he is, he sure must be practiced because she can't tell, and she's an expert, isn't she?

She turns around to tell him it's none of his business where she's going, but she catches scent of something, the same aroma that keeps creeping up on her. She feels as if she's in the middle of a déjà vu, chasing down an elusive thread of time that tangles as quickly as it's recognized. Yes. Cinnamon. As though apples are being mixed for a baked pie. She must be mildly epileptic or something. Or was it burnt toast before a seizure? Shoot. She must just be crazy. The only baking going on in that apartment is the minds of a hundred would-be doctors, or lawyers, even Anthropology majors like Carley. Carley. Carley will worry.

She yells back at him. Hey? You know Carley Windsor?

Huh? he says, cupping a hand to an ear that sticks out Dumbo-like past his errant curls. Who?

Astrid sighs and twists her wrist so she can see her watch: a Wittnauer with a fine gold bracelet and mother of pearl face. A leftover from Joan because Evan thought she should have it. Five minutes to midnight, five minutes left before the number 4 to Clayton Park arrives and then leaves, five minutes till Evan's sixty-ninth birthday. And on the heels of his image comes one of Joan: perfect skin and hair, manicured toenails, Versace on a husk of skin because whatever was beneath the shell had long before expired. What had driven her mother anyway? What kind of spores budded beneath her skin that made her the kind of Joan who couldn't find happiness, even in a doting husband and... well, imperfect daughter, but a daughter just the same? It wasn't something Astrid thought she'd ever know. She tells herself to let go the thought as she notices the fellow from the party has tired of waiting for an answer to his question. He's walking back to the apartment, scuffing his Phat Pharmed toes against the cement sidewalk.

She shouts again, enunciating as clearly as she can to get his attention. Do you know Carley?

Instead of shouting back, he turns on his heel, comes forward. Who?

Carley Windsor. Great big redhead. She holds her hands out at chest level to indicate how big. Big boobs?

He's close enough she can see him chewing on his lip, considering.

She's got braces with green bands. And hands the size of... the Minas Basin, she continues, casting about for the biggest recognizable metaphor she could imagine that a Haligonian would understand.

Ah, she's got him; his features light with realization just as the number 4 rumbles and spits to a stop; she has to get on if she's going, swerve for the doors so the driver doesn't swing them closed before she can get in.

Oh, Never mind, she calls over her shoulder. It's nothing. The stink of exhaust comes up into her nose. She's moments from boarding when the youth trots up and grabs her arm.

Wait. He pants.

Inside, the driver seesaws his lower jaw back and forth. Astrid can see his bloodshot eyes checking the mirror so he can pull out. You getting on?

Yes, yes, she says. She can't afford to miss the last transit of the night. Carley will look for me, she tells the boy.

Carley with the big boobs?

Exasperated, Astrid nods, and the driver prods her again, telling her to get the fuck on or he'll pull out without her. Just a sec, she tells him.

The driver moves a blob of purple gum around in response. Listen, I got a schedule.

She feels the youth's finger in her ribs. So what about Carley? he asks.

Tell her I went home, is all. Astrid turns to board, but the doors wheeze shut before she can lift a leg. Shit, she says, pounding the glass, but she can't even hear herself for the love of Pete because the bus is already starting to groan away.

Shit, she yells again. You made me miss my bus.

You missed it yourself.

She stomps her shoe onto the sidewalk. Now I'll have to take a cab.

She faces him. It'll take her grocery money to pay for a taxi. Shit, shit, and shit again. Well, you're gonna have to pay for it.

Like hell. He shoves a finger under her nose. You stopped me. You wanted me to do something for you. He kicks at a bottle cap on the sidewalk. Yeah well, guess it's what I get for being nice.

Oh, this is rich. He looks so much like a sulking boy scout that she can actually picture him helping an old lady across the street and getting smacked with a purse for his trouble. Imagine, this six-foot pole all sinew and angles, a baby-faced rugrat. Before she knows it, she's chuckling.

Well it's just all so flippin' hilarious, he says but his tone is light, like he's joking with an old friend.

Sorry.

He sticks his hands into his front jeans pockets; they bulge into fists beneath the indigo. He leans forward slightly, comfortable in those jeans, giving no thought to how constricting his sweatshirt must be bunched up around the neck because his jacket is zippered too tightly. He looks to be waiting for her to apologize again, maybe thinking once isn't enough.

I'm not saying it again, she tells him and makes for the phone booth thirty feet away. This would be one of those times when she could use the cell phone she'd had to give up. She wonders if she even has a quarter in her wallet to make the call for a cab. She knows there's a ten-dollar bill in there, but she'd really like to keep it for bus passes next week. You've come a long way, baby, she mumbles, thinking about the old ad for cigarettes that Joan used to like, and remembering that the long way she has come is a one eighty turn and at least as many thousand kilometers.

She hears him jingle change in his pocket.

Wait, he says, but it's too late. She's been a jerk to him and now she can't take it back. She hates that, when she's being a bitch, and realizes it, but God what can she do except apologize and hope for the best. Except she did apologize.

She stops at the booth and shoves her purse onto the ledge where it threatens to plop straight back off again. She readjusts it so the bottom is good and flat, then rummages through, past wads of paper. Pennies rattle at the bottom. Two nickels and at least sixty pennies. Nothing she can stick into the coin slot.

She hears him come up next to her, catches the smell of spearmint gum and Calvin Klein cologne. Have you got a quarter? she asks. Look, I'm sorry. I just need to borrow a quarter to call a cab.

He sticks the point of his tongue into the corner of his mouth, considering. What's the hurry?

I just can't... Can't what? Can't stand the prickles she gets up her spine as she lurks in a room where everyone is so out of it they're barely visible? Can't stand the feeling that she's being watched while she's in there.

The party, is what she ends up saying, because what else can she say, really.

Yeah. I know what you mean. It's starting to get out of hand.

She looks up at him. Even though most of his face is in shadow, the light from the phone booth spills out enough that she can see how wide his mouth is, how full and effeminate, how oddly sensitive it looks. She wants to touch it. Wants to run a finger along the outer edge just to feel something good for a change. To feel something soft enough to make her want to close her eyes, to make her want to sleep without dreaming, soft enough to make her forget. And as she thinks these things, she imagines other soft items: satin, velvet. Those things remind her of the funeral home from just months ago, of Joan in her casket, and she suffers the uncomfortable worry that she could have saved her mother if only she'd been good enough.

CHAPTER 2

Ah, death. It has problems for the living, surely, but it gives us dead far worse trouble. Time means nothing in death. Just knowing Astrid is thinking about funerals and all they imply threatens to put me bobbing again from one wave of time to the next. I want to stay on that 1999 street with her, move ahead even, get to the moment I anchor in her belly as that tiny seed that will grow to humanity. So I try to use her character to keep me on track, to keep the waves of death from throwing me backward and forward. Think of Astrid, I tell myself, hoping that the act of thinking will solidify her for me, take me there, keep me there, seal in the sights and senses of a time past my own. Again, time is stubborn. It gives me sensory elements alright: sounds, scents. But not what or when I hope for.

I get aged wood smells and the sounds that come from dozens of people crowding around a matchbox living room. I hear a woman's voice asking someone if they'd like a sandwich, and a quick pan of the room shows me a long rectangular box propped against a living room wall. The casket's pine is a knotty one, with a small hole smack in the middle that reveals a slip of pink flannel. Nightdress, I suppose, left on the deceased beneath the funeral dress she'd been forced into for appearance's sake. I know that this time must be mid century, not the end of it where Astrid is. Forties, I guess, because I've seen these kinds of wakes during my life as Luke.

The old face within looks like a cardboard cutout with cheeks colored by crayons and eyes drawn as copper pennies. Black stitches loop through her lips. One knot isn't tied tightly; it looks as though it will come undone at a breath too close, and I want to yank on it, but the sound of a muffled heartbeat stops me. I think foolishly that the sound comes from this old woman in the coffin, but it can't be. No. I realize the tempo comes from a boy standing next to the casket, his fingers reaching out to touch the age-spotted hand inside.

A fiddle begins to tune with the squawking, crow-language noise of a bow being pulled over strings almost too tired to find a song. The melody line to Loch Lomond moves easily into How Great Thou Art. Someone laughs, and another person shouts out, To Maggie, bless her soul. May she be able to keep those pennies.

Then someone else--a man whose eyes are too red to be just from grieving--says, She sure knew how to pinch a penny, did my Ma. He smells of smoke and alcohol, this man. He raises a pint of amber ale--stubby neck bottled--toward the casket.

The woman carrying the tray puts it down on a dented end table. A wan smile fleets across her face. Go on, Luke, she says to the boy whose fingers are still in midair, and I feel my own hand reaching out with his, trying to decide whether I should or shouldn't make contact. She presses a thin hand against my cheek, then brushes my hair back. It's only then I realize that this Luke she speaks to was me--is me, and that my hair is wet, soaked through with sweat. I feel her hand on my back in a nudge. You have to touch your Gran if you want to let her go.

I swear I can smell apples. The stink is coming off Gran, but how could it; she hadn't baked in the week before she got the cold. Surely the smell isn't still clinging to her, surely that smell can't still put the guilt into me. Surely it can't harm me. My feet itch to be free of the room, of Gran, of Ma pushing me closer so I can touch flesh that doesn't live anymore. Go on, Ma says to me. Go on.

I almost reach in, touch her hand, but something within sends my fingers to her ear instead. A get a giddy sense of glee, doing this, yanking hard on the old woman's earlobe. D'ya like that? I yell pulling hard enough that her head moves and when I see it--when it fetches sideways and I realize what I'm doing, that it's my Gran in there getting her ear pinched and the stink of apples gets even stronger, the more she moves, the more I jiggle--I blubber out something stupid. She stinks, I yell and my feet fetch up on the floor when I back away so that I almost fall. She stinks.

Someone from the side of the room lets out a snigger that has another voice, a female one, shushing him. Donald's voice comes too, but his comment is typical of an older brother: He thinks she stinks, and him just coming from the shithouse. Then I'm firing out of the room, colliding into family, friends, knocking plates out of hands. Twenty sole-pounding steps; I can even feel the thudding of my feet on the cracked boards, sense the slight give they have in the middle from being tread so often, and I'm up the stairs. Running up the to the bedroom I share with Donald and used to share with Sammy. His found bullet is still sitting on our bureau. He's shined it up recently, I can tell; it's not mirror polished, but brassy from age. The tip looks clean though. I imagine this bullet and it's never-to-be enemy. Maybe even the Kaiser, may he burn in hell, said Gran. Gran.

There's more rapid shots of feet plundering the stairwell, and I swipe at the liquid on my cheeks, knowing Donald is standing in the hall, waiting to see if I'm okay, and the last thing I want is for him to know I'm crying.

What's the matter with you? I demand of him, angry all of a sudden for the expression of worry on his face. His hair looks like it usually does despite Ma trying to get him to keep it neat. It's hanks of straw because he's been running his greasy hands through it again. Well, what?

Nothing.

Good. I throw myself across the bed.

Did she feel weird?

I flip over and look at the web of cracks in the ceiling. Don't know. Maybe. My face screws into such contortions it hurts. My chest burns and the liquid running down my face, onto my chin, dipping in at my neck, does nothing to put out the fire. I hear my own stupid voice howling. Stupid Donald pulls me close.

Shh, he croons. Shh. It's okay. I couldn't even touch her. Cooties.

It's so ridiculous, what he says, that I have to laugh.

It's true, he says, his breath a warm sweep of air down my neck because he's