Angie’s up and into the bathroom immediately, because of her recurring bladder infections, trying to piss out any unfriendly bacteria that might be trying to climb up her urethra. Usually, by the time she gets back in beside me I’m fast asleep — and those are the only nights I sleep well. But tonight I’m still awake, eyes-closed-pretending as she slips quiet as a mouse across the carpeted floor, standing stark naked at the window awhile to look out at our neighbourhood, dawn light behind the mountains, her hand pressed to her mouth as though she’s trying to stop something from escaping. When she eases herself back into our bed, I realize, for the first time, how careful she is not to wake me up.
THE LIGHT IS WHITE HOT through the curtains and the windows are closed against the noise of the neighborhood, but there are still reverberations — lawnmowers, motorcycles, children running down the sidewalk. The knock on the bedroom door is what woke me up and it comes again, louder this time. I sit up on the edge of the bed, groggy with sleep. The room is thick with heat, nearly airless. The fan is buzzing, jerking through its rotation. Angie pokes her head through the door with the baby on her hip and holds up the phone. She’s wearing shorts and nothing but a sports bra on top. “Work,” she mouths as I take it from her.
It’s the Transportation Safety Board. “We had a few questions for you regarding yesterday’s incident.”
“The crash?” I run my hand over the bedsheet. It’s damp. I feel over-rested, my mind in a fog. I try to rub my head out of its stupor. They’re calling to go over the data: weather information for five hours prior and one hour after the crash, audio records of radio contact, records from the navigational aids and radar. There’s someone else on the line, a voice that pipes in every once in a while to elaborate on a question or detail, someone’s name I didn’t catch. Everything they are checking is normal for any emergency, but now they’re asking me for a chronicle of all previous shift activity and an account of my sleep patterns.
“My sleep?” My voice catches in my throat, dry from the hot bedroom.
“The details of your sleep schedule over the past week.”
“Why?” I reach for a glass of water on the bedside table, take a sip.
“Have you been having any difficulty sleeping?”
“Sorry, am I being investigated for something?” Beside the water glass is a roll of antacids. I tear back the paper, pop a few in my mouth.
“These questions are procedural.”
“Procedural?” I rub the tingle of sweat on the back of my neck along the hairline and pop the window open, the racket from the neighbour’s mower flooding into the room.
“Normal for any investigation.”
“Oh, normal.” I take a deep breath out the window; the smell of cut grass. “All right.”
“Mr. Harris, have you been unusually fatigued this week?” I can hear the other voice talking to someone in the background. Somewhere in the house Angie is singing rhyming songs.
“Fatigued? No.” I crunch another antacid, chalky residue coating my tongue. “I sleep like the dead.” The words are out before I take the time to consider them.
“Can you think of anything else, Mr. Harris, that might help us with our investigation?”
“Anything of importance was submitted to you in that envelope. You should have everything you need.” I try to keep my tone even, but it comes off sharp and annoyed.
“If you think of anything else you can reach us at the office.”
“I won’t need to reach you.” I push the drapes back and bright midday light pours through the window. What time is it? Suddenly, it occurs to me I might have slept for more than a night. Would Angie let me sleep for an entire day? Longer?
“Do you have any questions, Mr. Harris?”
“No,” I say, pulling the drapes closed again, a draft sucking them against the open window. “Actually, yes. How old was the pilot?”
I can hear papers being shuffled through the phone line.
“He was thirty.”
I thank them for their thoroughness and hang up the phone.
THERE’S ANOTHER CALL FROM the flight service station in the afternoon. Data that doesn’t correspond to the timeline and catapults me off the couch to scramble through drawers all over the house searching for some paper and a pen, the baby howling, startled by my abruptness, and Angie running her outside to walk the yard and calm her down. I watch them from the window, Angie pinching a yellow honeysuckle bloom free from the vine, holding it up to tickle Sophie’s nose. Everything right in the world. The supervisor must hear something in my voice, because he tells me — same as the TSB agent — this is standard protocol when a plane goes down. And why do they want my sleep account? He says the words again: standard protocol. He wants to know what kind of questions the TSB agent asked. I get him off the phone quickly without mentioning my worries, but there are things I’ve started thinking about ever since the call this morning. If I had exercised caution during that first communication with the pilot, advised him to land instead of wishing him safe travels like a fool, things could have turned out differently. There’s an empty aerodrome not too far from the crash site. There’s a field next to a high school nearby. I had to look closely at a map, but they’re there.
“Why do they keep calling?” The screen door slams as Angie comes back in with the baby, yellow pollen on her nose.
“I don’t know.” I rub my face in my hands. All day the extra sleep has hung over my head like the weight of a bottomless lake. “They’re going over the data. It’s standard protocol.”
“But what are they looking for?”
“How would I know that, Ange?”
“Shouldn’t you know?”
“I’m going for a walk.”
I intend to head for the forested paths behind the house, but as soon as my feet hit the front walk I lose steam and end up sitting on the edge of our curb, the sun barrelling down my back. The neighborhood is buzzing in the late-afternoon August heat, tinder-dry, vulnerable to any kind of spark. There’s been a water ban all summer and the lawns are brown and thirsty. There are thunderstorms in the forecast. From where I’m sitting I can hear the phone inside the house ringing.
IN THE MORNING WE prepare to leave for the cabin. On the radio they’re calling for a high of thirty-nine degrees Celsius. “Hotter here than Kuwait today,” I say, scanning the weather section of the newspaper.
“Maybe we should stay.” Angie’s leaning against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, holding her elbows the way she does when she’s willing to have a long talk. The baby’s in the playpen in the middle of the living room, ignoring us. She’s been fussy all morning from the heat. Angie says babies are sensitive to changes in a house. Somehow we’ve lost most of the day. At this rate we won’t reach Osoyoos until dinnertime.
“The car is packed.” I brush past her to fill my travel mug with the leftover dregs of morning coffee, but the pot’s empty. “Did you drink it all?”
“I’ll make more,” she says, without moving. “We can unpack the car.”
“I’ll make it.” I measure off spoonfuls. Pour the water. “Are you going to put on a shirt?”
Angie looks down at her sports bra. “It’s like a shirt.”
“No, it’s not.”
Early this morning I got another call, this time someone from the Critical Incident Stress Management team. It was a woman on the other end of the line, one of my peers, but the call was anonymous. The program is made up of a group of volunteer counsellors, people who have gone through similar incidents. I recognized the woman’s voice, but couldn’t place her. I asked her what she wanted to know, but she said she didn’t have any questions, just wanted to talk. I told her all I wanted to do was get a head start on my holiday.