Pacifique, page 20
Breathe, mate.
One breath in, one breath out. He steps back and leans over again. No cracked skull, no blond hair splayed like a lover on a bed of sand, no blood. No one. The bike! Yes, her bike, off to the left, leaning against the railing of the stairwell that goes from the beach to the street above. He runs. Too fucking far. Running on this soft earth slower, giving way with every step. He grasps the metal railing, swings himself around, takes the stairs two and then three at a time. Jumps to the landing, continues. Watching her bike. The bike. A bike. A green bike. He lands on the rocky beach, grabs the handlebars. A slight sheen to the paint, but it is chipping in places. The crankshaft needs oiling, reddish tint of rust coming on. Pedals bare, no toe clips for strapping in Converse sneakers. For speed, Tia said. The tape around the handles a peeling white, not a clean, fresh black.
What in the fuck?
I do not understand.
It ain’t hers.
I know.
He looks up. Yes, this is the bike he spotted from the escarpment. He missed her. She is lying somewhere hidden, and that is why no one came. He lets the bike fall against the railing. Running on sand the worst, one step forward, two steps back, the endless journey just to get twenty-five metres up the beach. No one. No body hidden in a crevasse of driftwood, no one hidden in the underbrush close to the cliff’s side.
A woman laughs behind him. He spins. There she is, in the water, with … who? A much smaller woman, with short dark hair. Tia wears a sweatshirt and blue jeans. Rolled at the ankles, her feet hidden in the surf. She holds hands with the smaller woman, who wears tartan tights, also rolled up, under a skin-tight black miniskirt. Gold bomber jacket. Who laughed? Tia or the other woman?
Is that Pacifique?
Nah, she has long hair.
What the fuck is Tia doing with some other woman at the beach?
Maybe it is Pacifique.
Tia turns to the stranger, and something about her profile, the nose, the smile, does not sit right. He takes a step, then another. They do not see him. Are wrapped in each other and the Pacific spreading out ahead of them, the Olympic Mountains an indistinct coda. Closer. He does not recognize the sweatshirt Tia wears. Does not remember Tia’s butt filling out a pair of jeans quite like that. He stumbles. Under his foot, a Converse sneaker. He snaps back to the pair, opens his mouth. The blond turns. She is gorgeous, golden hair brushing her shoulders, face bright and like the clear sky above them. Under the unfamiliar hoodie the woman has an undeniable hourglass shape. She sees him, for a moment, and then looks away. He wills the other woman to turn. Stares. Wishes.
Turn around, Pacifique. Turn around.
She does not. Instead, she wraps her arm around the blond woman’s midsection and pulls. They step further into the waves until the water reaches knee height and when they lean in to kiss, Andrew turns away.
He retraces the steps he took to the scene of an imagined accident. He shoves his hand into his pocket and removes the letter. Flattens the creases.
Goodbye, she said.
Goodbye.
Acknowledgements
This book was written over many years in many places. Thus I acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands I occupied as a visiting white settler while I wrote. This includes especially the lək̓wəŋən and WSÁNEĆ peoples and the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations, on whose lands the novel is set, and the traditional keepers of Te Awa Kairangi, on whose banks I now reside.
Many individuals contributed to this book; the names below form only a partial list. Please forgive me and my frail human memory if I have forgotten you.
Pacifique the manuscript wouldn’t exist without the mentorship and care of Dave Margoshes. Thank you.
Pacifique the book wouldn’t exist without Amanda Leduc. Thank you for championing this work, for your generous and astute edits, and for your friendship. May I live long enough to properly express my gratitude.
Natalie Olsen, thank you for the cover. I remain astonished.
Thank you to the Coach House Books team, especially Alana Wilcox, Crystal Sikma, James Lindsay, Lindsay Yates, Tali Voron, and Sasha Tate-Howarth. Thank you also to Cassie Smyth, Mich Anger, and Stuart Ross.
For your generous words, my deepest thanks to Alicia Elliott, Adam Pottle, and Debbie Willis.
Sara Peters, you transformed my understanding of the manuscript. Rilla Friesen, you brought Pacifique into submittable shape. Thank you also to Terry Jordan and Tina Shaw for your readings.
I am also grateful for Canada Council for the Arts funding. To Tish at d’Lish, thank you for the peanut butter cookies, which fuelled much of the writing of this novel.
To my MFA colleagues who saw Pacifique grow, especially Elise Marcella Godfrey and dee Hobsbawn-Smith, thank you. And thank you to my teachers and thesis committee members at the University of Saskatchewan: Joan Borsa, Hilary Clark, Erika Dyck, Kathleen James-Cavan, and Guy Vanderhaeghe. Thank you especially to Jeanette Lynes, whose faith in this novel never wavered.
To my teachers John Gould and Lorna Jackson at the University of Victoria, thank you for supporting my early short fiction. To Bill Gaston and Devin Krukoff, who looked at early versions of this novel, thank you.
To Paul Millar for the idea, thank you. (Alex, for the original title, thank you.) For being there when the title became real, thank you Ashley Little.
To ngā wāhine o Te Herenga Waka, especially Sally Day, Anahera Gildea, Alice Little, Jenny Tomscha, Lizzie Towl, Jessica Wilson, and Sarah Young: kia ora for your support while I was editing Pacifique and trying to be a PhD candidate.
Tyler Balone, Marilyn Biderman, Eli Bovard, Jamie Broadhurst, John Brown Spiers, Jessica Bruhn, Marjorie Celona, Yolande Cole, Gabe Davidson, Ben Egerton, Stephen Harrison, Alicia Irwin, Fiona Jager, Ebony Lamb, Fionncara MacEoin, Michelle Meier, Anna Moore, Arwyn Moore, Chelsea Rushton, Artur Shashlov, the Swedish couple at the vegetarian café in Inverness, Greg Urantowka, and Alejandro Valbuena, thank you for reading, supporting, listening, and sharing.
Much of the psychiatry and mental health ‘treatment’ I’ve encountered has been harmful, as it is harmful for many survivors; however, I have met some bright lights. Thank you, Tricia Best, Bella French, Claire Miranda, Beth Moore, and James Sacamano. To the mad activists and survivors who came before me, my gratitude goes out to you.
Thank you, Mom, Michael, Xiaoling, Max, and Molly. I love you.
Finally, thank you, Ravin and Bagel. Ravin, this book is possible because of you.
Sarah L. Taggart is a queer writer with lived experience of madness and forced psychiatrization. She has published short fiction in The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Journey Prize Stories. Her short fiction won the Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction and was an honourable mention in The Fiddlehead’s annual fiction contest. She lives in Pito-one, near Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa New Zealand with her partner and their dog, Bagel, and is pursuing a PhD at the International Institute of Modern Letters, Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington.
Typeset in Arno Pro and Picket.
Printed at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Zephyr Antique Laid paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1973 Heidelberg KORD offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda, and trimmed on a Polar single-knife cutter.
Coach House is on the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples, and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. We acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit. We are grateful to live and work on this land.
Edited for the press by Amanda Leduc
Cover design by Natalie Olsen, Kisscut Design
Interior design by Crystal Sikma
Author photo by Ebony Lamb
Coach House Books
80 bpNichol Lane
Toronto ON M5S 3J4
Canada
416 979 2217
800 367 6360
mail@chbooks.com
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Sarah L. Taggart, Pacifique
