The Opening Sky Read Online Free

clear between us,” she said.
    “Odette,” Aiden said. He leaned forward and took her hand, something he never did – in six or eight years of counselling he had never before touched a client. But he held her wrist hard to get her attention. She finally met his eyes, already resentful.
    “Listen to me,” he said. “That would be a huge mistake. It would be extremely damaging to your son. It would deprive him of his mother. These feelings of yours have nothing to do with him.” He could feel his anger in his nostrils. “Tell me this,” he said. “You chose your last appointment before a two-week break to drop this. Why?”
    “It just came to me.”
    “I don’t believe that. You’ve set your mind on this. You don’t want to give us a chance to work it through. You’re asking me to ratify a decision you’ve made to act destructively.”
    “So feelings are bad? That’s what you’re telling me?”
    “Acting on them can be. You’re an adult. It’s infantile to think we’re entitled to act on every feeling.”
    Finally she promised not to talk to Dante about it over the holidays. That was the most Aiden could extract from her.
    As soon as the door closed behind Odette, Aiden picked up the phone, punched in Edith Wong’s number, and left a message. She’s a good colleague; they do a lot of consulting. Don’t obsess, he tells himself now, plodding between stands of red dogwood poking through the snow. Have a little trust. She brought it to therapy first.
    He overtakes two women, passes them in a show of strength. He jogs by the shack – the homeless shack hidden in the trees on the riverbank. Simple living. His thoughts jump to his daughter, to Sylvie at Lower Fort Garry, the job she had as a kid. As a historical re-enactor – what a great job – it was 1832 the whole summer. He was away a lot, doing the intensive for his counselling program, but when he could, he got up in the morning and drove her there. She’d sit in the car braiding her hair with nimble fingers, holding each pigtail in her mouth while she fixed it with a white ribbon. No elastic bands back then.
    “Was that in your handbook?”
    “Nope,” Sylvie said. “I figured it out.” She was about eleven at the time, she was under some sort of child-labour contract.
    The path curves into the forest and the city falls away – just him in the bush. Twelve trees per person in this city. He reaches up and squelches his iPod. Sometimes you hear chickadees along this path. Today all he hears is his Adidas on the gravel, plod, plod, plod, plod. His feet
have trod, have trod, have trod, and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with toil, and wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell
. Ah, fuck Hopkins, you can’t run to Hopkins, all those sprung rhythms. Running, you gotta have the old iambic. Ta-
da
, ta-
da
, ta-
da
, ta-
da
.
With tears he fights and wins the field, his naked breast stands for a shield, his camp is pitchèd in a stall, his bulwark but a broken wall
.
    Then he’s back in traffic, he’s jogging on the spot at the stoplight, and then he’s at his building. Sweat worms down his face and his runners are sopping. Somebody’s plastered cheap Christmas crap all over the elevator; tinsel droops like cobweb onto his head. He’s riding up with an MBA in a tailored suit. Sixteen floors of tax lawyers and marketers and accountants and real estate tycoons in this building – the whole block hums with mercantile intrigue.And there at the centre of it, in a cloister of secrets and tears, sits Aiden Phimister, Bachelor of Arts (Psych./Eng.), Master of Arts (Eng.), Master of Family and Individual Therapy. The MBA sharing the elevator doesn’t look at him, but no doubt he smells him, he feels Aiden’s heat. They’re two different species, sensing each other in the woods and veering in opposite directions.
    T he winter sun is a white disk behind the clouds when Sylvie slings her backpack over one shoulder and starts down