Moonlight Sketches is Gerard’s debut collection, and stories from this collection have already won several awards and been anthologized in collections like Hard ol Spot, a Salty Ink favourite. (Hard ol Spot is an anthology of “dark shorts by Atlantic Canadians,” with an introduction by Kathleen Winter. Do check it out.)
Cover Endorsements:
“Gerard Collins gets to the story. His writing is clean and unselfconscious.” – Kathleen Winter
“Here is outport Newfoundland like you’ve never seen it – or heard it: musical, broken-toothed, full of pathos and sly humour. Collins’ characters fall from innocence and land on their feet, with their fists up. You will admire them. You will fear them. You will find you care most about those you fear. Moonlight Sketches is a work of extraordinary imagination and empathy.” – Jessica Grant
“ Collins knows the recipe of his own work: when to add nuanced comedic relief to a dark story, and when to add a closing line that clangs like a gong.” -Chad Pelley
In the story below, “Break, Break, Break,” a mother and daughter are parked at a cliff’s edge during a violent storm. The story of a petty teenage heartbreak is imbedded in the darker story of an impending death, and that provides a rather great juxtaposition of what can feel catastrophic and what is catastrophic. As the teen in heartbreak sits in the backseat, her mother is at a cliff’s edge watching out to sea for a man who isn’t coming back. Collins doesn’t overdo it because these images, and how he frames them, are strong enough.
“Break, Break, Break” by Gerard Collins
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
–Tennyson
The house is trembling, and I can’t sleep because every time the wind slams against the side of our bungalow I feel like bawling. It’s like being violated, over and over. I just wish it would stop.
This has been the worst day of my life. Valentine’s Day in Darwin, Newfoundland. 1982. Might as well mark the date in this diary because it’s a day to remember, although maybe I’d be better off forgetting it.
Mark came over today. I was in the kitchen by myself, even though I was stuck babysitting my little brother Stevie, again. He was scared of the gale, like always, and hiding under his bed ever since it started.
“Some bad storm,” Mark said and sat down at the kitchen table like he owned the place. “Get us a cup o’ tea, would ya? I’m froze to death.”
I boiled the kettle and got him his tea. “I heard on the radio that it’s s’posed to get worse. Especially out on the Banks.”
He looked at me and said not to be talking so foolish. “That rig is unsinkable. Or so they say.” He sipped on his tea and scalded himself. He jerked in his chair and ran his tongue over that spot on his lip. “Granted, we’ve all heard that before. Nothing lasts forever, even when we think it will.”
“Thanks for cheering me up.” I folded my arms across my chest and started to pace. Even then, in the middle of the afternoon, our rickety old house was shaking once in a while like a mild earthquake had struck us from beneath the foundation. My father and his brothers had built it about fifteen years ago, and its cheap wooden frame always groaned in heavy wind. A white five-gallon meat bucket in the corner of the kitchen caught the rain that seeped inside, but so far it was only one leak. Every ten seconds or so, the bucket would go plop! It felt like the storm was coming indoors, and I must have looked miserable because Mark was looking at me like I had twenty heads. He kept running a finger across his burnt lip, and I couldn’t bear to see him hurt like that. I asked him if I could kiss it to make it better.
He averted his eyes then and would only look at the bucket slowly filling with raindrops. We made small talk about the weather for a few minutes, but he seemed agitated, like he wasn’t really there with me. The wind rocked the house again and Stevie called out to me from the bedroom. “I should check on him.”
When I stood up, Mark suddenly tested his tea and then gulped it down. “That’s all right.” He wiped his lips and rose to his feet right quick like he couldn’t wait to get away from me. “I should be going anyway, I s’pose.”
“Wait a minute, you.” I pulled on the lapels of his parka and pulled him close, trying to give him a hug, but he kept pulling away. “Don’t think you can fool me.” I grinned at him, but I was getting a little bit nervous. “It’s Valentine’s Day, you know. And I know you—you’ve got a gift or a card or something in them big pockets.” I reached into both sides of his coat and rummaged around, but he pulled away again before I could feel anything.
“Well, see, there’s the thing.” He cleared his throat and looked out the window behind me. The wind howled like a banshee through the chimney and I thought for sure the whole house would lift off its moorings and fly away. Meanwhile, Stevie bawled out to me again and I had to tell him I’d be there in a minute. Mark sighed patiently.
“I got some bad news that I came here to tell you.” His eyes were misty and a bit angry. I knew what he was going to say and asked him not to say it. But he’d screwed up his courage and made himself come so far to deliver the message that it wasn’t fair for me, he said, to deny him the chance to just out with it.
“I can’t do this anymore.” He had a hard time looking at me, and he was doing up his coat and tugging at his stuck zipper while pulling my world out from under me.
“Please don’t, Mark.” I tried to put my arms around him, but he pushed me away.
“Don’t make this harder. It’s not easy for me to do.”
“Then don’t do it. Just stay with me. I don’t have anyone else.”
He pulled open the kitchen door and stepped into the porch, turning around to look at me one last time. Meanwhile, the raindrops kept dripping into the meat bucket, making that depressing sound.
I grabbed hold of the knob on my side of the door. “You’re breaking my heart.” I didn’t say it angrily, just incredibly sad, from deep down into my bones. My life was over. It was Valentine’s Day and my boyfriend for the last three years was breaking up with me. If he walked out that door, I would be completely alone.
He gripped the doorknob and looked straight at me, and I’ll never forget the expression in those steely blue eyes that I’ve always adored most about him. It was as if he was running for his life, scared of getting trapped by me.
Last time we talked, Friday night down at the snack bar, Mark was really moody. I was playing pool with some girls from school and he was just sitting on a stool in the corner, pretending to be interested. He kept asking me if I was going to be at this all night, and so we left earlier than I wanted to. It seemed that, lately, he was always pulling me away from my friends. Still, I never saw it coming. We were walking home, holding hands, when he asked, “Does it ever bother you that I’m a bit older than you?”
“It’s only three years.” I let go of his hand and halted in my tracks. A steady cold breeze made my eyes water. When he turned to face me, I shrugged and made light of it. “Besides, girls mature faster than boys.”
“Not always.” Something in the way he said it and the cold, distant look in his eyes when he kissed me goodnight on the front step made me wonder what he meant. “Besides, sometimes I wonder if I’m holding you back.”
Two nights later, at the beginning of that vicious storm, he stood in the porch, on the verge of leaving me, and suddenly I knew for sure what he’d been getting at. Mark was never one for words and probably just couldn’t say it outright. Sure, I understood, but I often wished he would try a bit harder to explain himself. He thought he was too old for me, keeping me from spending time with friends my own age.
He reached toward me and laid a hand on my cheek. I was trying not to cry, but I couldn’t help it. “Someday you’ll see that this is not the worst thing in the world that could happen to you.”
“Why are you doing this?”
He just shrugged and shook his head mournfully. “Don’t ask what you already know the answer to.”
“Please don’t leave me. I love you.”
He wiped one tear from my cheek and withdrew his hand, sticking it in his pocket. He pulled the door shut and was gone. Just like that. I didn’t even get a last kiss or a hug. My heart was pounding. My head was spinning. I thought I was going to die on the spot. When Stevie yelled out again, I just sank in a heap in the middle of the kitchen floor and bawled my eyes out until my mother came home from Mass and found me there. When I told her what had happened, she just pulled me up by my fingertips, guiding me into her arms and sat me down at the table. She went in to check on Stevie and, a few minutes later, she came back and sat down across from me, holding my hands. She didn’t say anything, though. It wasn’t like my mother to talk very much. She went to church a lot lately, especially since Dad took the job out on the rig last fall. There were two of us kids and, with Mom not working, he had to pay child support, so what choice did he have? “The money is good,” I remember him saying. It would mean not seeing me and my little brother very often, just every four months. He kept saying that, with a faraway look in his eyes, every time I asked him why he had to go all the way out on the ocean just to find a stupid job.
“With money, you can have a life,” he said at Christmastime.
“Aren’t there any jobs around here?” I asked. He and Mom weren’t even divorced yet, but he was still coming around to see us, to make sure we didn’t need anything.
“You find me a good job right here on land and I’ll stay.” He took me onto his knee and wrapped his arms around me, even though I’m nearly sixteen and getting too big for that. But he never cares about that stuff. He isn’t a perfect Dad. I think he drinks a little bit and he always seems to be smoking. And he swears around us, which Mom is forever warning him about. “I’ll do this for a couple of years and make me fortune. Meanwhile, I can take care of you and your brother. Then I’ll come back and build me a great big house right here, just up over the hill with that great ocean view, and we can see each other all the time.”
I nodded and smiled, even gave him a squeeze, but he could probably see in my eyes that I didn’t believe him. Not much good ever happens in my life, so I don’t believe in happy endings even though I want to.
He stroked my cheek with his rough hand. “Have a little faith, my darling.” He didn’t even have Christmas dinner with us, even though Mom asked him if he would like to stay. He mumbled something about us probably having more fun without him and then he just left.
I don’t know why I was thinking about all of that after Mark broke up with me. Meanwhile, here was my silent, well-meaning mother sitting here and stroking my hand. “It’s going to be okay,” she finally offered. Then she got up to dump the bucket’s contents into the sink and placed it in the corner again without missing a drop. I just sighed, thinking it was the most useless thing she could have said when my life was in shambles and tomorrow wasn’t something I could ever look forward to again. Not without Mark. Dad would have painted a picture of what it would be like, of how it would all be better soon. He would have hugged me.
The tears wouldn’t stop coming, even when Stevie came out from hiding and crawled into my lap, asking me what was wrong. Whenever I thought I was cried out, it would start over, especially when the wind rocked the house again and again. Each time I just held my little brother tighter and tighter until I thought we both would break. Now and then, Mom would get up and look out the window, leaning on the sink and clutching the countertop with her fingers as if she would snap off a chunk of it if she was strong enough.
“I wish Dad was here.” It probably sounded like I was accusing her of not being sufficient, and I wished I could take it back the moment I said it.
She just wheeled around and looked at me as if I had broken her heart. She wasn’t crying though. I was looking for tears and they just weren’t coming. Her eyes were as dry as the Sahara. “I wish he was, too.” Her words amazed me, to the point where my tears suddenly stopped, except for the occasional one leaking down from the corner of each eye.
I wonder now what she meant by that. Did she wish he was there always and back living with us? Would she and Dad patch things up when he came home? That would be the best Valentine’s gift ever! It would almost make up for Mark being such an idiot. I mean, who breaks up with their girlfriend on Valentine’s Day? Now I’m getting angry, the more I think about it. And I find myself wishing that something terrible would happen to him. I used to love Mark, but he hurt me so bad today that I don’t think I can ever laugh or smile again. I hope he has an accident. I don’t want him to die, but I want him to lie in a hospital bed and wish I would come see him. And then I would be there, stroking his hair and kissing his forehead, not telling him it was me that had wished him such bad luck and probably caused the accident. But he’d see how pretty I am and how good I could have been to him, but now it’s too late. “You can’t have me,” I’d say. “I’ve moved on.”
I often think I can not only see the future, but affect it too. So I know it’s wrong to say, but I’m really concentrating now on Mark having something bad happen to him. Something so horrible that he’ll have to see how beautiful I am. How much grace I have. How much he’s lost.
Now I’m focusing on my Dad, out there on the ocean, with the rest of the men. Huge waves are probably battering the side of the Ranger and making it rock like it was going to sink. But it won’t sink. The waves calm down, in fact. I imagine there’s a protective shield over the entire rig, and the snow and freezing rain, the wind and the fog are all on the outside of it, just blowing around this invisible bubble, unable to hurt either the rig or my Dad. I know he’ll be safe. And the morning will come, and the sun will be shining, and no one will even know that it was me who kept them protected throughout the night. Just me and my little thoughts.
It’s not really prayer, though, because me and God aren’t exactly on good terms after today. I think God’s abandoned me, just like he did with Jesus when his son needed him most. Forsaken. That’s the word. And then he just left Jesus to die, and the people were incredibly sad and angry that God the Father could just let His only child be crucified like that. It was almost like they didn’t believe it could really happen, especially it being the Passover and everything. If God is really good, he has a funny way of showing it sometimes.
That’s sort of like my Mom. She was really restless all day. I mean, I know she loves me and my brother, but she just has a strange way of showing it.
Like tonight after supper. She just sat around the kitchen table, listening to the radio, getting really sombre when the sad country songs came on the radio. Like “Rose Garden” and “Crystal Chandelier.” She hummed along with them, but not in a happy voice. Whenever the news report came on, she would turn up the radio and walk over to the kitchen window, looking out to the ocean. Which made no sense to me because when it’s dark, you can’t see the ocean from our house, only hear it. And with the wind so loud, you couldn’t hear anything else.
Every weather report made her get more antsy. At one point, she started pacing around like a madwoman, wringing her hands in front of her and praying. She pulled her rosary beads from out of her apron pocket and knelt down in front of the sink. “Come say the rosary with me,” she said in a low, scary voice. Instead of arguing as I usually would have done, I knelt with her and joined my hands. She called out for Stevie to come join us, and when he was kneeling there beside me, rubbing his tired eyes, my mother led us in the rosary. It wasn’t fast and meaningless like usual, though. This time, it was slow and deliberate. Terrifying.
Meanwhile, as the water level in our bucket rose, the house shook and groaned as if the clapboard was going to pull away from the exterior, nails and all. And I was deathly afraid that the house would fall apart and leave the three of us kneeling there by the sink while the wind and rain and snow lashed at us from all sides.
One particular blast struck the house with such brutal force that we clung to each other to keep from falling to one side. I held tight to Stevie, especially, and when the gust had passed over, my mother stopped praying and slowly stood up. She grabbed her boots and coat from the porch, and told us to do the same while she was pulling on her outdoor clothes.
My brother asked, “Where are we going?” But my silent mother ignored our questions while she dumped and replaced the rain bucket.
She hustled us outdoors into the wildest February night I have ever seen, and I couldn’t help but wonder where Mark was and who he was with. I wondered if it was really over between us. Just because he said it didn’t mean anything. Men often say things they don’t mean. Mom says that men are natural-born liars and they’d say anything to get you to do what they wanted. But I’m not sure I believe her. I’m not certain of anything anymore. To tell the truth, I think most men actually believe the things they are saying. That way they don’t have to lie.
She shunted us into the car, with the rain and snow pelting down on our windshield in big sploshy drops and wet, splashy flakes. We’ve got a crappy old Chevette whose wipers don’t work right—the blades are so worn out they can barely clear a space in windshield. I don’t know how she could see anything. Every now and again, big gusts of wind would seize the car and make it rattle, like it was going to run us off the road and into a ditch.
It was the longest ten minutes of my life, and I honestly didn’t think we’d make it home alive.
She drove out on the dirt road to The Point and suddenly I knew why she had taken us there.
“Stay in the car,” she told us, and I had no argument with that. The Point is just outside of town and it’s mostly young people who go there to drink or neck or whatever. It’s just this skinny bit of land that sticks out into the North Atlantic, and it’s not a place where you’d want to be on a stormy night. So, truthfully, I feared for her sanity. She looked tired and worn at the edges, with a look in her eyes that made me think she had spent the whole day staring at the one thing for too long, like I used to do when I was studying for exams before Christmas. I wished I could reach out to her, to do something for her, to at least make the storm relent and leave us alone so that we could all go back to normal.
I was also worried about my baby brother. This must all be so weird and horrible to him, to have his mother acting like a crazy woman in the middle of a winter hurricane and his big sister brooding and crying her eyes out all day. I sat him on my lap and held him tight in my arms, rocking back and forth. “It’s going to be okay,” I said, turning on the radio to some soft country song. “Mark’s left me, and I wish I were dead. Mom’s losing her mind over a man she’s not even with anymore. But we’ll go home again soon and everything will be fine. The wind will stop, and Mom will calm down, and we’ll all go to sleep.”
“Okay,” he said, and within moments he was dozing in my arms.
Through the windshield, I watched my mother make her way onto The Point. The rain and snow obscured my view, but the wind was mostly just sweeping the water across the glass landscape, allowing me to see her through a foggy glaze.
She didn’t go all the way out to the edge because that would have been suicide. Even in the dark, I could see the gigantic waves smashing against the rocks, trying to pull the entire cliff out into the sea, all in one huge grab. My mother was about fifty yards off from the car where I sat. She almost seemed to be enjoying the feel of the wind through her body, even though it threatened to take her away. It was like she wanted to let go of the earth and surrender herself to whatever was going to come. I knew because I was having that same feeling myself, like my insides were in knots and all I wanted to do was just curl up and go to sleep forever. She leaned slightly towards a massive boulder to her left, her hair flying in tangles towards her face.
My gaze followed hers. She was looking out to sea, presumably in the direction of my father, where he probably clung to a bunk, like everyone else on board, riding out the storm, wishing and praying that it was over. Just like we were. But the longer my mother stood there, the more worried I got. A vision flashed in my mind, so dark and disturbing, so hopelessly violent, that I can’t even write it down. Even now as I think about it, I just want to get down on my knees and vomit. I became so scared that I started to pray out loud in a whisper, “Our Father who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy name…” I couldn’t remember it all. Strange, because I knew it by heart. But, for some reason, my rote memory failed me. So I skipped around to words I could grasp onto. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
My mother stood beside that rock, one hand gripping its edge to keep her from blowing forward. It was then I realized how dangerous it was for her. I blew the horn several times as a warning, but she didn’t seem to hear it. The wind was just howling and screeching all around us. I actually feared the car would tip over and tumble down over the rocks and into the sea.
My mother suddenly turned back towards the Chevette, gripping the front collar of her jacket closed with one hand and covering her face with the other to protect it from the bitter cold and driving rain.
“It’s enough to cut you in two,” was all she said when she got in the car. She had to struggle to keep the door from blowing off its hinges before she finally got it shut. When she clicked off the radio, we both sat there for a few moments, looking out at the awesome waves. Stevie was snoring gently, his arms still wrapped around my neck.
“He’ll be okay.” It was all I could think of to say. I felt just as much anguish as she did. I loved her more than ever in that moment because I could tell how much she loved my father. Even if they couldn’t be together in the same house. “The radio says the storm should let up a bit in the morning.”
She laid a cold hand on my lap. “That’ll be some good news anyway.”
Then she drove us home without another word between us. Somehow, though, by the time I crawled into bed in this tiny bungalow, I felt that things were better between me and her.
As I write this, I actually have a little bit of hope inside of me that everything will be okay. Maybe Mark and I can patch things up tomorrow. I’m sure he still loves me. He’s just confused, that’s all. It’s the storm and the time of year. Valentine’s Day can make everything seem so much worse than it is, even if things are pretty bad.
He did break my heart, though, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that. It’s the worst thing that could have happened to me on this day of all days, and with Mom going out of her mind with worry about Dad, she wasn’t able to comfort me at all. I feel bad for her, but I really needed her today. Dad is always the one I turn to, and I hate that he’s always away, especially nights like this.
Mom will feel better in the morning too. She’ll stop worrying, and so will I, and we’ll go back to our routine. I’ll get up and go to school. (God, I hate Mondays!) I’ll talk to my friends and we’ll fool around and make fun of the teachers, and if the weather is good, we’ll all meet up at the snack bar tomorrow night. I could use some company right now.
Jesus! There goes the wind again. Just now, the loudest gust I have ever heard slammed into the side of the house like a bomb went off. I’ve got actual tears coming from my eyes and falling onto the page. I know it’s only the wind, but I wish it would stop. I hope Stevie’s okay, though I don’t hear him. I wonder if Mom remembered to dump the meat bucket. God, I want this storm to be over! I might even pray again tonight.
Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.
I’m signing off now. I’m laughing suddenly at that morbid prayer and Mom just yelled out to ask if I was crying. Some day, years from now, I’m sure I’ll be reading my diary for this night and I’ll laugh at how silly and scared I was. Just a childish little girl who wants her daddy. Tomorrow, everything will look different.
Thank God for that.
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