Wrecked Upon This Shore

By Kate Story

Wrecked Upon This Shore deals with life’s most significant tests: loving and dying, broken relationships, the drive to heal and the impulse to be whole.



At the novel’s centre is Pearl: wild, charismatic, and damaged. We follow her through the eyes of her adult son Stephen, and also from the viewpoint of Mouse, the girl she fell in love with as a teenager. Thirty years old when Pearl is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stephen is in danger of foundering. Pearl’s cancer becomes a crucible with the power not only to destroy but also to re-forge relationships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Breakwater Books Ltd
• Release date: Nov 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781771030021

Book preview

WRECKED

  UPON

THIS

SHORE

a novel

Kate Story

WRECKED

  UPON

THIS

SHORE

a novel

Kate Story

Wrecked_0003_001

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador

2011

© 2011, Kate Story

Wrecked_0004_002

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador through the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing program.

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5.

Cover design by Christopher Rouleau

Layout by Amy Fitzpatrick

Printed on acid-free paper

Published by

KILLICK PRESS

an imprint of CREATIVE BOOK PUBLISHING

a Transcontinental Inc. associated company

P.O. Box 8660, Stn. A

St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador A1B 3T7

Printed in Canada by:

TRANSCONTINENTAL INC.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Story, Kate

      Wrecked upon this shore / Kate Story.

ISBN 978-1-897174-76-0

I. TITLE.

PS8637.T677W74 2011     C813'.6     C2011-905316-0

Thank you

Over the course of writing this novel, I have received help from many quarters. Many thanks to many people, including:

JoAnne Corbeil, Ursula Pflug, Martha Cockshutt, Bill Kimball, the indefatigable Marnie Parsons, Tim Bowling, Prim Pemberton, Peter Sanders, Guy Ratchford, Diane Flacks, Jessica Harris, Deborah Root, Pippa Domville, Tim Haines, Curtis Driedger, Barbara Ratz, Dy Gallagher, John MacEwan, Simon Story, Lachlan Story, Em Glasspool, Lisa Dixon and all the staff at Black Honey, and Michael Morritt for the chess. Christopher Rouleau for a fabulous cover design. Robin McGrath and Jessica Grant. Charlotte Smith and Ryan Kerr, and especially Janette Platana and Joe Davies, for taking me through the home stretch.

Thanks to Donna and Pam at Killick Press.

And to all my other dear friends and family who have supported me in ways tangible and intangible through so much of what I do.

For a week Pearl has been sinking. But this morning she is buoyant. Her breath rattles strangely, high up in her chest.

How are you? Stephen asks his mother every morning, stumbling by her bedroom on his way down the hall.

Terrific, I feel great, she says today, and it isn’t until he reaches the bathroom that he realizes how strange her answer is.

He goes downstairs and gets some breakfast anyway; it’s the routine. Mouse has made coffee and left it on for the both of them, the way she’s taken to doing. She gets up so early and goes out on her runs, her heroically long runs, impressive in a woman almost fifty. Stephen drinks the coffee his mother’s friend has made, eats some toast, eggs. Then he checks back in on his mother.

The room stinks of sweat, stale smoke, the overflowing ashtray. Her eyes burn in her face, blue, startling like the pale iridescent indigo inside a mussel shell. Her face is thin now, but her eyes shine. Cancer eyes.

You hungry?

No.

I’ll fix some eggs for you.

No, I said. I’m not hungry. She always says this.

You should eat. He always tries.

The newspaper is scattered over the bed; she does not, he suspects, actually read it anymore, but she still likes to have it there. He lifts some pages and sits on the edge of the bed.

Want me to rub your feet?

Her breath rattles, in, out, in, out. Stephen wonders if she’s heard him.

But then she says, I need to see the doctor. I’m having trouble. In, out. In, out. Breathing, she clarifies.

She looks at him and the panic in her eyes brings up the same feeling in his chest. Hollow, confused and cold, like… no, not like this, we’ll drown. He looks up. Light, sky – look – humming above. Follow the sky.

But instead he plummets, cold, into the singing depths. All the careful preparations wash away.

His mind moves quickly – she isn’t going to make it to the doctor’s office – she needs to go straight to the hospital.

I’ll phone an ambulance. He makes the call fast as thinking and they’re on their way.

His mother is struggling to sit up – I’ve got to get some clothes on. And comb my hair, will you?

He helps her take off her pajama top, put on a shirt. It is difficult. He starts combing her hair; great blonde hanks of it come out in the comb. He won’t tell her – she’s so proud that she hasn’t lost her hair to the radiation treatments.

You look fine. Now let’s get you up, get some pants on you.

Standing is hard; he has to crouch down in front of her and link her arms around his neck, then heave up. They stand there, locked together, swaying like the last couple left standing in a dance marathon.

Okay, okay, he murmurs. Her breath frightens him; he’ll never be able to get jeans on her. Maybe your PJ bottoms are good enough, okay?

In reply Pearl begins trying to shuffle toward the bedroom door. Stephen hears the front door open downstairs – at first he thinks the paramedics have arrived – but then he hears Hello! and knows it’s Mouse.

Up here! he hollers over his mother’s head, and footsteps bound up the stairs. He is facing the door, his arms locked around his mother’s waist, and as soon as Mouse sees his face, she stops dead still. Then she nods. Stephen knows that she knows – it’s a profound relief.

Come on, Mom.

They sway and step, sway and step, and Mouse hovers by the door, breathing hard from her run, cropped hair sweaty and skin glowing with blood and health. She smells of the outdoors, brings a freshness to the stale, sick dying in the bedroom.

Stephen gets his mother to the bedroom door. But she begins to buckle, he can’t hold her. Mouse tries to help, but Pearl sags against the doorframe and begins to slide down it.

I gotta piss. Stephen, Mouse, I gotta piss.

Stephen looks at Mouse. Paramedics are on the way.

Good.

Stephen is sliding down with his mother, her arms still locked around his neck. He can’t see her face.

Stephen, I’m pissing myself.

She sounds like a little girl. Her arms loosen, and he pulls back to see her face. He is vaguely aware of Mouse crying.

Everything’s going to be all right, he says; his voice surprises him with its firmness. Then his body begins to cry. She is sliding, falling on her side on the floor, and her throat is working. Is she going to be sick? Is she trying to say something?

The rattle, the breath in her, has stopped. Mouse’s hands help him lie her down on her back, and he leans over and tries to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Her mouth reeks; he almost gags. But he keeps putting his breath into her lungs.

The paramedics arrive soon after. They put circuitry on her, shock her body a couple of times. He and Mouse hold hands over the body and he is aware that they are both crying uncontrollably, holding so tight to each other that later his hand is bruised.

One of the paramedics says, We could keep doing this but she’s gone. We’re just breaking her up inside. The paramedics stand over them for a moment, then the same one speaks again. We’ll give you a minute alone with her. Then we have to take the body to the hospital.

Stephen and Mouse crouch over the body. Their tears fall on her face. Stephen touches her teeth – her mouth hangs open – he has never touched her teeth before. They are white, even. He realizes that he had forgotten to put shoes on her. Her beautiful feet are bare.

Pearl and Mouse are driving to the island.

Pearl owns a shiny red Chevy Malibu coupe, a reward for graduating from high school. They’ve got the windows rolled down. The scents of cedar and wet grass fight with the Malibu’s gorgeous wine red interior; it still smells new. The sun keeps threatening to break through clouds.

They are not supposed to be speeding past cedar woods and farmers’ fields in a brand new cherry red car. It is October and they should be in university and thrillingly are not, because Pearl’s parents are rich and bribed their daughter to graduate from high school.

Mouse has learned a number of other interesting facts about her friend today.

One: Pearl drives horribly, and very fast.

Two: Her last name, Lewis, graces both a small town and a street in Toronto.

Three: Pearl did not hesitate to flirt outrageously with the young police officer who stopped them on Highway 7.

Four: Pearl’s blonde curls are, in fact, a perm.

Being next to Pearl makes Mouse feel even bigger than she usually does. Pearl gives an impression of delicacy; Mouse is what her father back home in Newfoundland cheerfully refers to as a big grand girl. Later in life Mouse will wonder why, in 1979, she suffered so over her imagined fatness; here in the car next to Pearl she is broad-shouldered and tall.

She and Pearl sing along to the car radio, yelling over the wind rushing through open windows. Is she reely goin ow withim? Is she reely gonna take him home to-nite?

Mouse figures the song means something different to her than to Pearl, or for that matter, to Joe Jackson. Mouse has recently emerged from what her mother described as a high-school crush. A cute, dismissive word – crush – oddly enough, though, it aptly conveys the grinding mass of overwhelming feeling that took what Mouse knew of herself and reduced it to fragments, to stumbling longing. The friend in question allowed Mouse kisses and blazing hope, only to turn against her and immediately take on a series of performative boyfriends. I’m not a fuckin dyke.

Pearl. The song is over.

Hmm?

Mouse is studying the ticket the officer wrote. "Pearl, he’s charged you with carless driving. Carless."

What?

He left out the ‘e.’

Pearl stares at Mouse for a moment, then back at the unreeling road. She throws back her head and snort-laughs.

You know what you should do? You should take it to court. Mouse adopts a deep voice. Your Honour, clearly this police officer is under a delusion. He was too busy staring at the defendant’s tits to notice that she was, in fact, driving a bona fide car.

Ah. That’s funny. Pearl inhales, lets smoke out through her nose. Dad’ll pay it.

You’ll tell your parents? Mouse’s voice goes up in an unintentional squeak. Jesus. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

Pearl shrugs.

But…carless driving!

Gimme that. Pearl takes the ticket and studies it. What a moron. She tosses the ticket out the window; it whips away on the wind, a white fragment. She throws her cigarette after it and lights another. Her blonde hair shines against her burgundy Danskin leotard, her army pants, her $2.99 canvas summer wedgies from Woolworths. She’s slumming. She looks wonderful.

By the time they hit Havelock they are talking about masturbation and Mouse is blushing. You don’t. Mary mother. I don’t believe you.

Well, if I expect other people to get off on me, I might as well make sure I can get off on myself.

That’s so…so…

Usually as a slutty schoolgirl. That’s probably from the goddamn private boot camp they sent me to, those uniforms, you know.

You jack off to your own image.

Well, I don’t have a big picture of myself on the ceiling, if that’s what you mean. Although that’s not a bad –

You imagine yourself with someone else? Or you imagine yourself as the guy fucking you?

No, no, I just picture myself.

Jesus Mary.

Pearl storms through the railway town, steering with her knee as she lights another smoke. Which hand do you use?

What?

Well, you’re left-handed, right? So which hand do you use?

As if it’s any of your –

Don’t be so prudish. Tell me.

No.

I use my right.

Mouse feels a giggle building up. Thank you very much for that. That information. For which I did not ask. Mind putting your hands back on the wheel? The car wobbles back and forth in its lane. A transport truck comes toward them down the highway.

You tell. Pearl waves her hands in the air like a cheerleader.

Ever since coming to Ontario on her university scholarship, Mouse has been trying to read people. Everyone here seems so different. They all have more money, or something – they are cooler, she thinks, so every moment she asks herself Is this how to be? Is this what to say, how to say it? But Pearl, now, Pearl is right off the radar. Pearl makes Mouse feel hot and reckless in a way that frightens her a little, in a way she has quickly found she doesn’t want to do without. The truck is almost on them, the coupe straddles the lanes.

Hands on wheel, Pearl, hands on wheel, Mouse begs, trying to sound cool.

Pearl will play chicken just to get Mouse to confess which hand she uses to masturbate.

Right! I use my right, okay!

Why? Pearl takes hold of the wheel and cruises past the blaring truck.

Hot wind shudders the car.

I don’t know why.

Maybe you’re ambivalent about masturbating.

Shut up.

Some time later they are in another town with more of those exotic red brick Ontario buildings, eating lunch at a hotel made of stone. I love places like this, Pearl says.

Mouse looks around. Excepting the mainland accent of the waitress, which lends her a confusingly upper-class, educated air, the place is nearly identical to dives back home: smoke-stained walls, a carpet with history, air heavy with grease. Why?

They’re so… authentic. They’re not trying. Pearl stuffs her mouth with French fries. I can’t wait to swim, she says thickly. It’s still warm enough. I brought three different swimsuits.

Lah-di-dah.

You’re funny. I like that: lah-di-dah.

I, says Mouse, very pleased, brought a single suit. Which will not get wet.

Why the hell not?

Because, my lovely Toronto brat, I do not swim.

Pearl stares. As in, you can’t? Or won’t?

Mouse takes a big bite of hamburger. A little of both.

Mouse is an even better name for you than I thought. Mice don’t swim.

I don’t doubt I’ll be stuck with it for life. Mouse puts weary skepticism into her voice, but she’s been pleased ever since Pearl named her. She’s had nicknames before: boys, of course, dubbed her Dog; and more lastingly, because she’s always done well at school, Brain. Not a compliment. Mouse is better.

Pearl has a gift for naming people. Uncle Tod: the director of the production of The Tempest in which they are both involved is barely two years older than they are, but uncle suits Tod Owens’s beard, the affected way he wears sweater-coats and loafers. Garage Bob: Robert Smith, who plays Antonio, lives in a garage. And Mouse: Mandy, stage manager, is brown (her hair, her eyes, her summer skin); her last name is Brown; and facetiously, she is Mouse because she is big and loud. They will all keep these names in the years to come, and they will remember Pearl because of it.

After lunch they head south through rolling, rocky countryside. The towns have names that chime like bells: Springbrook, Stirling, Belleville (although Bonarlaw leads to an elaborate scenario where perpetual erections are legislated on pain of death). Pearl takes a ramp onto the 401. Mouse remembers the late-night flight to Toronto, falling asleep against a bus window and waking up cold. Over a month ago; it seems like years.

The cherry red coupe gets attention from guys with mustaches who race alongside the girls.

Our marina’s near Gananoque, says Pearl. Gananoque could be a town, a mall, or a swamp; Pearl says the name like Mouse should know what it is. The boat will still be in the water. I think.

You think?

"Well, family tradition, the word is slow and bitter, is that dear old dad and mom go up there on the last weekend of September; Dad’s birthday, you see. Then Floyd shuts up the cottage and the big house for winter, and once he’s done, the boats come out of the water. But I don’t think he’ll have done that yet."

What if he has?

Pearl waves her hand and says nothing.

Great. What did you have in mind? A brisk swim down the mighty St. Lawrence River?

Pearl squints into the hazy distance, east. I’m coming, island, she sings under her breath. Here I come. There’s a sweetness in her voice that makes Mouse’s breath catch.

They’re off the highway, and Mouse catches glimpses of water. The grass is so green, and oaks tower over the winding road; autumn has set the tips of trees alight, burning against grey sky. The air smells spicy, the stands of sumac tropical; dusky green leaves surge gently beneath calyxes of red fur, rising and falling, soothing as waves.

Suddenly Pearl twists the wheel and leaves the road, lurching over the shoulder and across a green field, sliding from side to side. Mouse screams. Clots of dirt spin up behind the car. Pearl swerves around a stand of trees, and brings the car to a halt.

Jesus Christ, Mary Mother of Holy Jesus god fuck are you insane?

Calm down. Pearl turns off the ignition and checks herself out in the rear-view mirror, scrunching her permed curls with one tiny, perfect hand.

Mouse gets out of the car, legs trembling. A breeze reaches her and she can smell water on it.

Can you see the road from here? Pearl calls from the car.

What?

"Can you see the road fromhere?" Pearl addresses Mouse as though she is a retarded child.

Jesus. No. Mouse looks. Not really.

Go out a bit and see if the car shows.

Fuck. Mouse ducks under a branch, stomping partway across the field. Bits of red car gleam through the leaves, and tire tracks cut a telltale track through the soil. She stomps back into the grove, where Pearl is now out of the car slinging bags over her shoulders, mouth down-turned to secure her cigarette. Tracks are a dead giveaway, and the red shows through.

Rip off some branches and camouflage it.

Yes, your Highness. Sometimes Mouse feels like Han Solo to Pearl’s Princess Leia. Immediately, Your Worship. Or maybe more like Chew-bacca. She doesn’t ask why they are doing this.

They cover the car in torn branches. Then, loaded with bags (Mouse takes most of them), and carrying two cases of beer each, they set off across the field and down a green slope.

Mouse is used to the business and noise of an industrial ocean harbour, great tankers with Japanese and Russian and Portuguese names, smaller boats making do along the waterfront. Pearl leads her toward a long, low, corrugated-metal building painted dark green. No one’s around. There is a parking lot – only two cars in it, old beaters – and a grassy verge, green and soggy. They walk into the building and in the dimness there are wooden docks and rows of boats, each with a watery parking spot. Mouse breathes in the musty, wooden, watery smell, hears the hollow licking of the water.

Pearl dumps her bags and skips down the dock, springing up onto a biggish boat and disappearing into a cabin. Mouse follows and swings a bag up onto the deck, but Pearl reappears. Naw, I won’t take the Lyman. She jumps back down to the dock. The Montauk.

The Montauk is a smaller boat with no cabin. Mouse watches as Pearl steps onto the white and wooden boat, strokes the wheel on a centre console.

Well, come on, says Pearl. Load her up.

Mouse doesn’t like stepping across that gap of water; she’s afraid she’ll fall in. She swings the bags one by one over the metal railing, and last of all, hands Pearl the precious cases of beer. Pearl starts the engine; the key has been left in the ignition. Noise and the smell of gas fill the space.

Get aboard!

Aren’t there any life jackets?

Pearl shrugs, rummaging around. Here.

By the time Mouse has negotiated the tippy, swinging boat and that strip of water, Pearl has untied the boat. You want to drive? she asks suddenly, as if offering a treat.

No! Never driven a boat in me life, Mouse shouts over the motor.

But you’re from Newfoundland. Pearl says New-FOUND-lind, just to irritate Mouse, who has taught her the right way to say it.

I’m a townie, not a goddamn bayman.

Pearl shrugs. Suit yourself.

They rumble backwards, out into the air. Pearl turns the boat around, and they are off, across the water.

Boat words, river words, cottage words: slip, painter, Boston Whaler, red right returning. Mouse cannot imagine why this fiberglass Montauk thing is called a Boston Whaler, they being neither in Boston nor whaling. Are there whales in the St. Lawrence?

Never thought about it.

The channel is muddy, and there are reeds and ducks. Pearl says the water level begins falling in September, and continues to fall until it freezes; in places the water will be less than a foot deep. Rocks lurk.

You know the channels, though, right?

Sure. And then of course there are the gummint boo-eys.

The who whatsit?

Gummint boo-eys. That’s Thousand Island talk for government buoys.

They come out onto open water. It’s the first time in a month Mouse has felt this strength of moving air on her body, wind that has come across water, the force of that. It awakens a longing in her for home, an ache.

Islands: small, furry, woolen things. Jack pines, and Canadian and American flags. Islands crusted pink and white around the edges like the rim of a Caesar. Crenellated treetops rising and falling, outlined against the sky. Fairytale buildings, lace-trimmed, pink and green and red, storied houses, turrets.

"You call these cottages?"

Yeah, some of them are mansions. Pearl is adorable standing behind the wheel, wind combing her long blonde hair.

Does every island have a cottage?

Hmm?

Does every cottage have an island?

Pearl considers, squinting across the water. "No. Some islands definitely have more than one cottage. Houses. And people live on Grindstone year-round. They have cars."

How long has your family had your island?

So many questions. Pearl flashes her smile.

I’d like to be armed with a little knowledge as I surge forward into unknown and possibly hostile territory.

Well, since my great-grandfather for sure.

My God, a dynasty. He built it?

Pearl is laughing now, and Mouse is pleased she has made Pearl laugh. Well, he didn’t build it himself. He had people do it.

Naturally.

He bought the island in 1905 from a farmer, and the big house went up in 1909.

Pearl points out islands, naming them: Wolfe, Hickory, Black Ant Island. Weekly square dances on Grindstone in summer, Pearl says. Mouse looks a question at her friend. Anything to escape my goddamn family, Pearl answers.

"You square dance?"

The boat bangs across waves and the engine rumbles and whines. By the time Pearl points and says, There it is, Mouse has started feeling just the tiniest bit queasy.

The island is green, she sees. The

Reviews for Wrecked Upon This Shore

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As the story opens, 49-year-old Pearl dies in the arms of her 30-year-old son, Stephen, and her friend, Mouse, who she's recently been reunited with. This is a story of family secrets, difficult relationships, and finding your own way in the world.Pearl is a difficult character...bossy, alcoholic, self-absorbed. Yet, there is a fierce independence in her that makes her a compelling character. She's hard to like, but somehow charismatic. Stephen knows no family but Pearl, and she's not talking. Her illness makes him question his background. Mouse is a successful business person who fell in love with Pearl as a teenager. Her return to Pearl's life helps smooth the edges between Pearl and Stephen.This is a very good story, well written, strong characters.