The armlet was still inside the lacquer box, unaffected by two decades of careless storage and basement humidity, and was as dark and crusty as the day I’d picked it up off the ground. The simplicity of its shape, its rustic finish, and its heavy weight all still pleased me, so I brought it upstairs, in its box, and set it on the corner of my desk. I play with the armlet still, sometimes, during long phone calls.
When Jesse asked me about it, I told him the armlet was very old and had a storied history, but I glossed over the finders-keepers aspect in my explanation of how it came to be in my possession. I said I found it in the spoil tip on the last day of the dig and asked and obtained permission from an indifferent Clive to take the worthless piece home. That the piece is of little monetary value is true — I’ve seen a similar object for sale on an Internet auction site with a price of fifteen English pounds. The part about Clive’s indifference was true also. So I didn’t lie, or not about anything that mattered.
Thomas Denby of the email must be — is — the same Tom who snored in his tent in North Cave while I fretted in mine that long summer night thirty years ago. I read his email again, pick up the box on my desk, and remove the armlet, hold it in my right palm, lift it, do a few bicep curls with it in my grasp. Tom would no longer be young, and likely not smelly, is probably a respectable and married-with-kids kind of urban planner. I run an Internet search on him, but his name is not sufficiently unique to deliver any meaningful results, and I find no picture.
I spend the next few hours working at my desk, when I’m not looking up and staring into time. Reunions have no appeal for me — I have, in recent years, avoided nostalgic gatherings organized by all of my former elementary school, high school, and graduating university classes. I have no need to revisit the past, but with the armlet in my hand I’m taken back to that summer in England, to the sunny blue and green days, the rolling countryside, the rosy sunsets, the starry night skies. And to memories of the itchiness of being unwashed, the army of earwigs that invaded the tent, and the way a dinner from the chip shop would coat the inside of my mouth with such pervasive grease that only a gin and tonic or two in the pub afterwards could cut it.
In those days, I ate fish and chips, with pineapple fritters on the side, chased by alcohol and cigarettes, a few times a week, and I didn’t gain weight. I also flung my long hair around in an obnoxious fashion, and when I spoke, I tried to attract attention, to amuse, to stand out, and as a result said many regrettable things.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, I compose this reply:
Tom,
I am indeed the Emily Harada who dug alongside you in Earith and North Cave for a few weeks in 1975, though my memories of that summer are sketchy (I’m surprised you remembered my name, as I can’t recall hardly anyone’s). So much has happened in the intervening years that that period seems very far away now.
As you’ve gathered, I’m an architect, living in Toronto. I don’t have much of an appetite for reunions as a rule, but do say hello to whoever might know me when you go, and I’m glad to hear you’re doing well with the urban planning and so on.
Cheers,
Emily
Could I be more cold? Yes — I could not answer at all. Will poor unoffending Tom pick up on the little jabs meant for Clive and Mary — the bit about not remembering anyone’s names and the implication that my life has been so goddamned glamourous and action-packed since 1975 that I’ve forgotten all about North Cave? Likely not.
The reply is petty, sly, and was fun to compose. Before my better, wiser instincts can prevail, I send it off, shut down my computer, and go into the kitchen to cook dinner.
In a commercial break between the hip hop music videos Jesse watches while he eats, I say, “So I got an email today from a guy I did archeology with in England thirty years ago. A guy from the place where I found the armlet that I keep in my office.”
His eyes stay on the TV, but he says, “What did he want?”
“To know what I was up to, so he could tell people at a reunion in England.”
“What kind of reunion?”
“A reunion of archeologists.”
He says, “Remember when you told me that old bracelet thing had magical powers?”
“That old bracelet thing, as you call it, is a genuine Bronze Age artifact. And you were much younger when I told you it had powers.”
“I believed in dream catchers in those days, too. I was so gullible.”
He scoffs at his own naïveté, but all I remember is how every few nights, for months after Henry left, I woke up at two or three or four a.m. and found ten-year-old Jesse standing by my bedside, looking down at me. “What is it, honey?” I’d say, my mind clouded with its own anxious images.
“I had a bad dream.”
I’d take his hand, and walk with him back to his room, and crawl into his double bed with him, and fall back asleep until I woke up an hour or two later, groggy and stiff, underneath the ineffectual dream catchers, surrounded by the dull gleam of the sports trophies on his shelves.
Now, I say, “How do you know the armlet doesn’t really have magical powers? Maybe it’s the reason I ended up with a lovely son like you.”
“Yeah, sure.” He turns up the TV volume with the remote. “Hey, this video is sick. You have to watch it.”
He’s right. The video is sick.
~ CHAPTER THREE ~
After I drop Jesse off at Westdale of a morning, I sometimes reward myself for getting him up, fed, out of the house, and to school on time by stopping in at a neighbourhood tea shop called Ruby’s. Twinings is available there, the chairs are chintzy and comfy, and the reading material on hand, British tabloid-style magazines, is a fascinating collection of stories about celebrities I’ve never heard of. Ruby’s also has wonderful scones that are baked on-site — not those bumpy things filled with raisins or cranberries but plain, wedge-shaped, floury scones, served warm, with butter.
On this particular Friday, I’ve finished my scone, wiped butter from my fingertips, and am deep into a photo spread on the eighteenth-century country cottage belonging to a middle-aged woman I’m led to believe is an English television star, when a shadow falls over a picture of her, reclining, in an evening dress, on top of her kitchen counter.
The shadow belongs to Spencer, kid dope dealer, standing next to me with takeout coffee in hand and cocky grin on face. “Hey, Emily,” he says. “Come here often?”
His eyes look sleepy under the sideways brim of his baseball cap. Could he be stoned already, at 9:15? Of course he could. I say, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I have a first period spare.”
I turn a page of the magazine.
He says, “About the other night at the dance — ”
“Were you there? I don’t recall seeing you.”
He grins wider. “Okay, fine. We didn’t speak. Nothing happened. And I guess I’ll never know if you enjoyed the gift I didn’t slip into your pocket.”
“There was no gift. I emptied my pockets as soon as I got home and threw all the crap that was in there into the garbage.”
He emits an unpleasant yelp that is supposed to indicate merriment. “That’s too bad. I hate to see good shit go to waste. But I’m sure you know what’s best. Like you did in the girls’