I set out the lasagna and a Caesar salad while Ricky grabbed himself a beer from the fridge. “So, I take it you’re a good cook then?” he said, eyeing the food. “Cuz if you’re not good in the kitchen, then you’d better be good in the bedroom, eh?” He laughed at his own unfunny joke.
I GOT UP EARLY AND brewed a pot of coffee using bottled water. The tap water was safe to drink after boiling, but it had a strong smell. Besides, I was sensitive about water quality after working for so many years at the plant where water was disinfected and deodorized and treated within an inch of its life.
I stepped outside onto the weather-beaten deck and sipped my coffee as the sun slowly spread in a pink band across the water. The morning air was pierced by the sudden haunting wail of a loon. I breathed it all in: the sights, the sounds, the smells. Amir was convinced this trip would do both me and Ricky a world of good, and I hoped he was right, but he didn’t know the lurking truth behind our seeming estrangement. I wasn’t sure that even nature would be enough of a balm to combat the tension I felt around my brother.
When Ricky stumbled out of his room at ten a.m., he plonked himself at the table. I cooked us scrambled eggs and thick slabs of back bacon. Ricky disappeared into his room again as soon as we were done eating, so I cleaned up and did the dishes alone. The sink was streaked with a large, rust-coloured stain from all the iron in the tap water.
Lance was waiting for us at the dock with the tackle and rods he was lending us for the day. He wanted to see us off and to wish us luck. Did it bother him, I wondered, that we hadn’t gone out last night, after all his careful explanations and suggestions?
I had my camera slung around my neck. I planned to fish, but I also planned on getting some good shots while we were out on the water.
“Have fun out there,” Lance said, after helping us to load our gear into a beaten-up aluminum boat. The vinyl seat covers were cracked and peeling and the wooden floorboards looked like they were rotting. I eyed the tiller apprehensively, wondering when this boat had last been used.
“You know how to drive this thing?” Ricky asked.
“Yeah, Amir taught me. He made me get my boater’s licence the first time we came up.”
To my relief, the motor caught on the first pull. I waved at Lance as I guided the boat into the channel and toward the little island he’d pointed out yesterday.
“Is there a bailing bucket in this thing?” Ricky asked. “I can’t believe he doesn’t have anything better for us to use than this piece of crap.”
“I think people usually bring their own boats. Besides, he’s not charging us to rent it.”
We trolled around the island for a while, neither of us catching anything, or saying much. The sun bore down on us, and at one point, Ricky took off his watch.
“I don’t want a weird tan line,” he explained, as he dropped his Rolex into one of the plastic compartments in the tackle box. “I bought that watch after my first quarter million in commissions,” he added, seeing me eyeing the glinting silver. “A little thank you to myself.”
“It’s nice,” I murmured. My real focus, though, was on the scenery. I couldn’t take any good pictures while I was driving, so my camera sat unused by my feet. At some point, I knew I had to capture the wind-swept white pines along the rocky shoreline. It was like a painting by Tom Thompson. The landscape around us had a fierceness to it, all jagged edges and raw surfaces. As I took it in, I wished I had been born with that same kind of rugged resilience, able to withstand life’s harshness.
Ricky was unmoved by the craggy rocks and the wind-swept pines. When I pointed them out, commenting on their beauty, he looked at me like I was nuts. He was irritated by our lack of success on the water; he wanted to try something new.
“You have to be patient,” I explained.
“Let’s be patient somewhere else. I’m sick of circling this island.”
I steered us through a narrow pass and into a larger channel. At some point, I realized, Ricky and I were going to have to strike up an actual conversation; our seemingly companionable silence was beginning to wear thin.
“How’s your new place?” I asked. After his split from Erika, Ricky had moved into an apartment temporarily, but he’d just recently bought another condo.
“Expensive,” he said. “But its value will only go up. In ten years, what I paid for it will seem like peanuts. And Leah has a bedroom now. She was sleeping in the living room in the apartment.”
“She must like it then,” I said, although I doubted that, as a four-year-old, Leah really cared about having her own room.
“Erika likes it. She hated the idea of her precious little angel sleeping on a mattress on the floor.”
The bitterness in Ricky’s voice surprised me. And the way his lips curled when he referred to Leah as Erika’s “precious little angel” made my skin crawl. “At least you gave her a mattress,” I said. “Remember when you made me sleep on the floor in your room?”
“I gave you a mattress too! That was one night, by the way.”
I turned away from him to adjust my lure and as I untangled the line from where it had snagged on one of the hooks, the barbed edge of the hook caught in my thumb. When I yanked it out, my thumb started to bleed. “Is there a first aid kit in here?” I asked.
Ricky reeled in his line and began digging through the tackle box. I
