One Hundred Days of Rain Page 3

  They are going to work to school. They are going going beyond the reach of rain. They won’t be caught. They won’t be left out. Rain is a vengeful thing, it has but one goal. To saturate them. Rain would like to fill her up until she can’t hold it in any more. She sees herself broken and flooding, a vessel. She knows they should feel grateful to rain that fills up the city’s reservoirs for summer. That waters the bushes & grass so that they spring up later. They’re impatient though. It’s difficult to grasp, to think ahead. Theoretical. What matters is the here & now. Rain is the citizenry’s inheritance, their boondoggle, their folly, their insurance policy. Rain creates. Rain is cause and effect. Rain makes them.

  17.

  Vancouver, on the edge of the rain forest, the mountains a craggy wall. They are friendly and they stop the weather cold so that rain stays. The sea too does its part. Buffeted here between wet expanse and high back. Nothing else suits her, not the high or wide plain, not the anonymous inland tuck of cities in the smack centre of big islands. Without mountains at her back and sea at her feet she feels unmoored, drifting. Take me and keep me. Never let me go.

  There are other places, true. Places she stayed and about which she can testify upon returning that it never rained there, not once. Kingston. The cold knife-like, that sharp it was. Summers muggy & clear. Quebec City, her lashes freezing together, the warm sweep of her uncovered shoulder above the woolen sweater when she took off her coat. All the students wore giant overcoats from the thrift store, boiled wool, heavy as God the Father.

  It never rained in New York City either. How she begged for rain as that summer stretched out. To wash the pee away. So many men peed in the streets, there was nothing else you could do if you didn’t have a toilet. She wanted rain to overlay the smells, smells that climbed and intertwined as day after day the heat continued to lengthen and rise. She walked through not grimacing, shuddering inside.

  18.

  Places she lived where it did rain. A different kind of rain though. In Salt Lake City the storms came sudden out of the west. One minute cloudless ordinary sky. The unthreatening sky of the desert. The next rain had passed over in violence. There was a hard insistent quality to the way it dropped on them, for twenty minutes or so. The colour of the rain was yellow. It threw up the dust as it hit. She could watch the rain from under overhangs where everybody dashed. In a few minutes it was gone again and the mountains, mauve in the distance, resumed their indifferent overlooking. The rain was like a murky dream that came and passed. She had imagined it perhaps. Given another hour the pavements resumed their colouring of bone, the moisture bleached clean from them.

  19.

  In Birmingham it rained just like home except nobody mentioned it, nobody seemed to think it worthy of notice. The rain went on and on and on, dreary, dripping, like a man with a head cold and not enough energy to wipe his nose. It was too pervasive to be discussed. It lasted too long. It took the heart and spirit out of them. The locals found themselves in pubs drinking beer. Lager. Mild. Bitter. Something to quench the spark the rain had almost, but not quite, succeeded in putting out.

  Later everybody got on the bus damp and drunk and it didn’t matter any more.

  20.

  She cycles in the wet, in the thick of it. Her pants dampen, then go slack, pulling away from the lean flesh of her legs: sand clings to their bottoms. Why sand? It’s what lies on the street, arcs under her wheels. Her bicycle is dirty – so dirty she should clean it, instead of letting it sully the interiors of kind strangers’ cars. She will cycle again today. Again today it is raining. Cycling in the rain: proof of her stoicism, what sort of person she is. What she’s earned and deserves. How good she is.

  Yesterday she saw a film about cyclists in Vancouver. They were cycling over the Lion’s Gate Bridge, which goes straight up. Swarming against the dark pavement like crawling insects on a hill. How ugly they looked swathed in their outdoor jackets, their helmet covers like puffy mushrooms. How grey the world was. How brave they were, braving rain. There is something perverse about them all, or must be, to choose this. To resist what is comfortable. To exercise their rights. To be wet, and ultimately to be wrong.

  21.

  Weekly her son visits M. The child returns the next day bearing twists of cookies in a small stack, chocolate-covered raisins. Darkening pears. M phones in a flutter: I had no idea his teeth were so bad. This after the second set of cavities. The child isn’t allowed any of the sugary snacks and his mother will touch none of the fruit, not if it’s the last piece in the bowl.

  A few days ago the drinks cupboard was bare and she persuaded herself to a can of soda the child had toted all the way from M’s place. It’s sealed, she told herself, it’s not as if it could possibly hurt me. She drank it down and the acid rose in her throat in a terrible boil.

  Yesterday she was in a courtroom with M, M’s lawyer, a judge. A friendly meeting, supposedly. A chance to work things out although she would testify M has no such intention. The judge makes the customary speech about the harm done children by warring spouses. M nods, puts on her sincere expression. Later M screams that her son is confused: he doesn’t understand why his mother is returning all the gifts M ever gave her. With some pleasure she is able to inquire mildly as to how her child comes to know of such things. M falls silent.

  Today rain is a faint stippling on the glass across the way, sun illuminating each drop so that it stands out in glorious relief. Today the rain invites ignoring, persuading her almost, as she glances out her window, that it’s not really there. Don’t bother with a coat, a hat, an all-encompassing rainsuit: it’s February after all. Nearly spring.

  Outside, rain is a trace, the sky rising brilliant above. The wet streets on which she walks seem almost impossible, the drops scattered on every surface illusory. Surely there has been no rain, not on such a fine day as this. Surely everyone’s very eyes and nostrils are mistaken.

  22.

  Once more rain has come back, faithless unwelcome friend. Bad penny. Everyone bumping around outside like the invitees in the hallway of a party that isn’t going. Slowly fighting to get out. Avoiding rain’s gaze. Rain doesn’t seem to notice. Once more rain coats the glass with tiny bumps and rivulets. Once more rain nyah-nyahs her with the damp of its embrace, to forsake shelter, to brave rain. How she will come home smelling of the wet, how gradually her things will dry, how squelchy and generally mussed she will feel: only she knows these things. Rain has no conscience, it thinks of nothing now or ever beyond the wet earth and always down, down, into and inside. Rain is inexorable and dumb, it can’t even speak except in a tiny drumming.

  Yesterday it seemed rain had gone for good. How bravely the sun shone, how careless were the few clouds in the sky. Us? Harmless, we tell you. And she believed it, they were so fluffy and light, like pancakes.

  Her city is a rainless one, it will always shine on her this way: these are the kind of lies she believes when the sun spreads out with such rich abandon. She’s good at forgetting, not remembering. A survival skill, maybe. Yesterday she wandered the shopping street near her place in a half-daze, meeting nobody’s eye. Clothes in brilliant windows, fancy magazines with bright covers, and the pedestrians, a little out of place in all the gleam. The women not quite right in some way, their clothes too old, their faces too fat, their expressions peevish or distracted. All passing under her indifferent undifferentiating gaze.

  This morning she gets up and oils her boots. The leather gradually darkens, the creases turn almost black, the scuffed tops take on a sheen. They will be proof against anything: puddles, infidelity, mutual accusations, even her private and wild despair. She developed a passion for these boots in the store, even though – or perhaps because – they are like nothing else she owns. They were outdoorsy and pretend-rugged: they reminded her of starlets gamely trekking wilderness trails for photos. There was a fey, almost girlish quality to the two buckled straps at top and bottom, despite the gesture towards practicality in the stacked woode
n heels. Yesterday she was getting dressed when Nurse phoned. She had nothing on but the boots over a pair of socks. She stood and talked to Nurse, who she’s dating in desultory fashion, and sorted through receipts, looking at herself in the mirror all the while. Monstrous self-satisfaction. When rain next comes she will be ready.

  23.

  The smell of rain is ozone, smoke, earth, and cloud: a smell impossible to duplicate or bottle, though people try. “Spring Rain”-scented detergent. “Summer Rain” cologne.

  “Winter Rain”: disinterred ski suits, mildew, urine and chill.

  “Autumn Rain”: clouds of leaves left to moulder on the ground, skunk spray in the park, a sharp overtone of dog waste.

  Springtime. Find a field, a park will do, and one of those days that cries out with the promise of it. Smell the green. Listen to the soft patter across the grass like tiny rabbits running away from you. Run with rain. No coat.

  Wait until summer. Night falls, later than anyone could imagine. The rain starts up again as if it has been waiting for this: a soft insistent patter, gentle as faith. Looking out into the night there is no way to believe in rain, invisible.

  Go out to the nearest body of water in which it is permissible to bathe, or more practically one with a low fence. Go out to the sea.

  It should be high summer. August, when the heat is at its peak, when you pant a little just breathing, when exertion seems unthinkable. When you are covered with your own moisture, visibly. When you wait for night like the answer to a wish.

  Slip into the water, the ocean, the salt: slip into the warm liquid from whence we are rumoured to have come. The ocean and the air are practically the same temperature: it’s like floating in a cool bathtub.

  Turn on your back, let yourself float belly-up, let the rain cover you with little x’s.

  Of course take off all your clothes.

  Watch autumn rain from behind a window, warm cup in your hands. Curl in the frame of the window if possible. Wear your most touchable clothes, the loosely woven chunky sweater, the velveteen pull-on pants. Wear woolen socks that don’t itch. Feel your feet in them.

  In winter wish for snow.

  24.

  This morning rain is faint, almost Victorian. Rain totters about with a skim-milk wrist held to its forehead, collapses on the divan. Rain seems not to be long for this world.

  Outside the cars swish on by, ignoring rain, the possibility of it, the outside world. Who cares! Rain has nothing on them. Rain can’t get in behind these sealed windows. Rain is barely there, not worth noticing, another dismissable part of the world nobody quite inhabits anymore.

  Rain’s days are numbered, it seems. The way rain does things is not the way things are done, not any longer. Rain doesn’t have any interface, it isn’t mediated. It lies there shuddering. Not very long now, rain murmurs quietly to itself.

  25.

  In Victoria overnight to attend a conference, she emerges onto wet streets in the morning. There is no sign of rain. The city’s ordinary residents seem unastonished by this. So far as she can tell their normal temper, a mild ever-present sweetness, remains unchanged. They live in a slower simpler town. Not so much of this hurry hurry and let’s go. Everyone has umbrellas and hats at the ready of course, that’s the kind of place it is. But there’s no need. Rain has vanished from above the quiet city, leaving only the evidence of its passage: a stain, to fade in turn.

  A different kind of wet awaits as the ferry pulls itself towards Vancouver. Another ship draws close, displaying an enormous confidence. Giant and balletic, the white boats pivot around an invisible central axis, toot their mournful whistles one to the other. This is the narrowest part of the passage, here between these rocky islands with their houses levered out from the slope, above the meagre skirts of sands.

  Ahead rain gathers on the slopes of the nearer islands. You can’t see rain until you draw closer, into its midst. The clouds thicken into a white concentration in the folds of the hills rising sternly in their turn from the mist.

  In Vancouver the sun is a sudden shining, a punchline. She turns her face up to it: brevity, and the bright quaver of the light.

  26.

  Heading out into the shrouded afternoon rain has obliterated all else. Heavy, wet drops cover the known world. They are splashing like a curtain wrapped around her as she bicycles with her head down.

  In a few seconds she feels the wetness trickling into her shoes. Her face all slick. Plastered to her is the hair that creeps out from under her helmet. She thinks she can feel rain working its way into the vents above her head. Rain is coldly furious. It finds the hidden ways inside coat & covering, seeping through to the tender skin of her neck. Her scalp.

  She arrives at the office drenched. Her tights heavy at their bottoms with trapped moisture. She takes off her soaked shoes under the table where nobody can see. Her dripping black overcoat. There is nowhere to hang it so she settles for the back of her chair. The arms of the silk shantung jacket she picked out this morning before school are bleeding at the insides of the elbows. Dusty rose blooming a shocked pink. She takes that off too – she has to – and hangs it discreetly from her chair’s arm. The chill settles in. This is what is worst about rain: the getting inside, the wet left on her. She is stained by her journey, short as it was: the marks of passage are upon her. It is all very well to say that she will dry but what nobody counts are these silent dripping hours in between, and the shiver. Rain has ruined her.

  27.

  In the years she and M lived together their duplex was on the southern edge of the city. She wrote grants for the arts consortium that rented out space from the university. Working mostly at her computer. Occasional days she visited.

  She and M lived at the top of a hill. You could see weather coming, clouds in the far sky or wisping round the mountains, and the brown smudge that blurred the hills across the way. On a bicycle you were in it for the long haul, unless she called on M’s near-vintage Land Rover. It looked all right that day. She decided to ride to the campus, a good hour away on the perimeter road.

  On her way back from the university, the weather shifted. Morning’s clear skies vanished. The sky turned dark, then let loose. Water fell on her unceasingly, as from a bucket. The streets were slick. A mist before her eyes made it difficult to see. A passing bus threw up a watery frill between her and the road. This is crazy, she thought. Shivering in her suit and overcoat, she pulled over.

  M was home. So you want me to drop everything and come get you.

  Yes.

  Well I won’t. If you cared about what I have to do, you wouldn’t even ask.

  She was so tired when she dragged herself in the back door finally, like a warrior returning from a great battle. Too tired to feel anything. When she took off her coat she saw that the furious rain had leached through to her clothes below. There was a fat spreading line down the centre of her back, where she had hunched over the handlebars. The sleeves of her fine woolen suit wet up to the middle of her forearms, as if she’d plunged them in water. Her brown hair, grown only as far as her neck then, soaked.

  You think I wasn’t there for you but that’s not true, M told her later. They were having one of their fights. She was bringing up things from the past that still bothered her, which you weren’t supposed to do. At that time in her life she read books about relationships, the kind of books she’d always scorned, and tried to follow their precepts. “I” statements. Sticking to the issue. Times she felt like a counselor herself.

  Later she thought M must resent her knowledge. How she remembered, might always remember, hanging on the line and being told no.

  28.

  Rain again. Dismayed she goes to the office door. The alley is awash, the pigeons who gather on the asphalt vanished. Their feed lies sodden on the tiny-trampled ground of the neighbour’s backyard. He only does it to annoy.

  The grass has a hopeful spring look, rising in rain’s dark. Its green is almost luminous, in the murky day.

&n
bsp; She would like to deny rain, its very existence. Or if it can’t be denied, to say it’s not so bad.

  She would like to defy rain. To lift a fist and challenge rain: do your worst!

  She would like most of all for rain not to touch her. But even she knows she can’t seal herself off completely. She reminds herself, like a catechism you recite: it’s not so bad.

  You’ll feel better once you’re out in it. You’ll warm up. You’ll see.

  Shivering, unwilling, full of disbelief, she mounts her cycle. On the ride what she has promised comes slowly true. The miracle. By the time she arrives home she is so flushed and rosy from her exertions that when she shrugs off her black coat she imagines herself steaming. So deeply warm that she can no longer even feel rain on her.