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Stories by Laurie Elmquist


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“How are things in Lotus Land?” my father asked. He liked to call Vancouver Island by this name, liked to remind me that many people leave wide-eyed from Ontario for the Coast, only to return a few months later, disillusioned and empty-pocketed.

He didn’t seem to know about the ones who stayed on the Island. I wanted to tell him about the phosphorescence in the water and how one scoop could shower down stars, but instead I told him about banana slugs. “About six inches long, they wear a skin that looks like army fatigues.”

A few months later I told him about Trevor. I’d met someone who was actually from the Island, a rare breed in Victoria. Over the phone I told him about Trevor’s arrest at Clayoquot Sound. My father said that there were a lot of tree huggers on the West Coast and it sounded like I’d found one. His voice was soft, like it didn’t matter what he told me, I’d go and do whatever it was I had to do. I liked the term “tree hugger”—the image it created of holding onto trees with all the strength of love.

It was Trevor who set me straight the next afternoon. “What did you call me?” he asked. I learned, then, that tree hugger was a term of derision. Trevor showed me the video tape of his arrest and over the next few weeks took me to an old growth forest, took me to a clear-cut, took me to a small café in Port McNeill with posters on the walls in support of the logging industry. Told me how environmentalists and loggers turned against each other while trees were cut and jobs disappeared.

I didn’t talk to my father much over the months that followed. He refused to visit the West Coast. Once in a while he called from Ontario to ask me if I needed money. Not that he had any to give, but I should let him know if I ran into trouble. “In Ontario, they think a lot about money, don’t they?” asked Trevor. We were busy packing for a trip to Salt Spring Island, but not so busy that I didn’t notice the way he said Ontario, like he was talking about the moon.

“My father’s funny that way,” I said. “He offers and then unoffers money.”

Trevor shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t understand our ways.

“Lunch for tomorrow,” he said, holding up a large bag of oatmeal. “With apples and raisins.”

I didn’t usually eat hot oatmeal for lunch, but I liked his enthusiasm. I was packing a couple of bottles of red wine for later that night. For my first meeting with Maiya, another of Trevor’s old girlfriends.

It was dark when we stepped into a house that smelled of cedar, with a sweeping staircase to the top floor. Maiya greeted us with hugs. She had just taken some bread out of the oven.

“Would you like some?” she asked.

She was beautiful. One arm all silver bracelets from her elbow to her wrist, brown eyes that settled on nothing. She poured wine, gave us chunks of bread, and sitting cross-legged on the floor, began to talk about the house she and her husband were building in Australia. “It’s surrounded by banana trees,” she said. “Banana trees shoot out of the ground, grow into a plant that curves and bushes its way to the sky. Everything is lush.”

Maiya used her hands to shape the bunches of bananas in the air, and I saw them heavy and green, the fruit overlapping like petals.

“They cut them down when they’re green. Slash them from the tree with a big banana knife,” she said.

“Have you tasted avocado fresh from the trees?” Maiya asked. And I realized that somewhere we had switched from one fruit to another. Was it the wine, or because I was nervous that I couldn’t concentrate? But I liked listening to Maiya’s stories. Stories about the octagonal house she and her husband were building. A house that seemed to sprout from the ground like a banana tree. And a quiet Ontario voice said very clearly in my head, “You’re not actually swallowing this stuff?”

But no, Maiya didn’t say the house sprouted from the ground in a single day. She said her partner Adam was working seventeen hours a day to build their new house in Australia. Long days because the wood could not be exposed to rain. If rain got into it, it would ruin and blacken. She told us she had photographs of the house and rose to get them, her wrap-around skirt hugging her curves as she walked away.

It’s a strange feeling to watch your boyfriend as he tries not to look at another woman’s ass, but you know he’s seen the shake and shimmy of it. I reached up, pulled his gaze into mine as he said innocently, “What?”

Over photos, Maiya pointed to this and that, heads close together. Hers, honey-blond next to his black curls. Here, a picture of the house as it’s being framed. Here, a picture of her two boys feeding a bonfire. “Remember the fires we used to have on the beach?” asked Maiya. “The time someone called the fire department and the guys came down with their axes and shovels? What a waste of a good fire.”

Trevor and Maiya talked about their plans to meet in Spain. Maiya was doing some traveling in November and she would try to meet Trevor in Granada. She said, “Gran-ah-da,” and the name lingered in the air. “Aren’t there waterfalls?” she asked.

I pictured plunging Tarzan falls. Loins wrapped in leopard spots. First Trevor, then Maiya, diving into pools below. Hot, hot, hot in Spain. With ferns and parrots and swinging vines.

Where am I? I wondered.

I was sitting on a pillow in a house on a Gulf Island, listening to talk that sounded strangely like a mating ritual. I had had too much wine. I gave up trying to follow the conversation, slipped down onto the pillow, and felt the velvet patches against my cheek. I was half in love with Maiya, seduced by her imagery. “Stay with me in Spain," she said, "Mi casa es tu casa."

Trevor’s voice deepened. “I’d like that."

I pretended to be asleep waiting for the next promise to fall from his lips, but their talk shifted to “Remember when” in high school, about being in the band together, she on tenor sax, he on trumpet. “Remember that band trip to Seattle?” she asked.

His memory faltered.

“Sure you do,” she prompted. “We stole that guy’s lawn ornaments? His family of deer?”

“Not sure that was me,” he said.

The conversation flagged and even they sounded bored with their talk, now that my eyes were closed and they had no audience. They held each other before saying goodnight. Even half-asleep, I could hear them. I heard Trevor murmur, “It’s so good to see you, Maiya” in a voice husky with sex.

It was the same voice he used to rouse me from my pillow, gently calling my name. He told me Maiya had been kind enough to give us her bed. I was tired of their kindness to one another, tired of the attraction between Trevor and his former girlfriends: Sky, Sage, Autumn. Didn’t anyone have a normal name out here? I heard my own name shifting and shrinking on my lover’s tongue. Trevor said, “Good-night, Laura.” I knew a Laura once, but it wasn’t me. He apologized. Said he was tired and that of course he knew my name. I told him to get some sleep, and then lay there thinking about sex.

When he was away would he have sex with other women? Four months was a long time. Would I have sex with other men? We’d talked about it and decided we should use our own discretion. Neither of us would go out looking for it, but if by chance we were tempted and it were to just happen, there would be no guilt. Although no one planned to be tempted. Or were we really making plans?

I felt a loss. I felt that practically speaking we’d made the right decision. Not to demand, not to police each other’s bodies. Our decision to use our own discretion was very mature, adult. But what did it mean? That we couldn’t commit to one another for four months? Four was a low number.

Trevor and Maiya had sunbathed in the nude many times together. How did I know this? It must have been one of those details of introduction that Trevor gave me about his friendship. It’s okay, okay, okay then that Maiya came into our bedroom the next morning, really her bedroom, and took her clothes off. Not that I could see her, because I was nearsighted and so was Trevor. Both of us couldn’t really see Maiya, long-limbed, choosing from the clothes in her closet. A shift of rose pulled over her hips. Very, very natural. Naturally, we don’t do this in Ontario.

Things were different on the Gulf Islands. But on the first morning? After I had just met Maiya. Why not? Why should she have acted any differently with me in the room? She acted as if I were not there. But I was.

It didn’t last long. Maiya slipped into her rose dress and pulled her tights up from ankle to waist. She was heading to the Vancouver Folk Festival. Said it was nice to meet me and hoped we enjoyed the rest of our stay on the Island.

Yes, it’s been a slice of magic realism, I wanted to say.

“Good-bye, Maiya,” I called, naked beside my lover. I knew I should have added thank-you, but I didn’t feel like it.

Trevor and I ate hot oatmeal with apples and raisins, and lay nude in the sun on the porch. He told me he used to sun bathe here with Maiya all the time. He was repeating himself. I wondered how I would tell him this world he inhabited was too strange for me. I was somewhere in between his world and the one I’d left behind, and still changing.

A few weeks later my father called, “How are things in Lotus Land?” he asked. I went outside under the carport and held out the receiver so he could hear November rain falling on the Island. He asked if I needed any money, and I said I would be sure to let him know.