The Rebellious Tide Read online

  The Rebellious Tide

  The Rebellious Tide

  Eddy Boudel Tan

  Copyright © Eddy Boudel Tan, 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Publisher: Scott Fraser | Acquiring editor: Rachel Spence | Editor: Diane Young

  Cover designer: Sophie Paas-Lang

  Cover image: unsplash.com/Katherine Gu

  Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The rebellious tide / Eddy Boudel Tan.

  Names: Boudel Tan, Eddy, 1983- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200310291 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200310399 | ISBN 9781459746879 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459746886 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459746893 (EPUB) Classification: LCC PS8603.O9324 R43 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

  Dundurn Press

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  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4L 1C9

  dundurn.com, @dundurnpress

  To all the Beauties who shared secrets with me in the disco

  CONTENTS

  Petit Géant

  ONE: Young Once

  TWO: Surprise

  Civitavecchia to Athens

  THREE: The Glacier

  FOUR: Bang Bang

  FIVE: Better Odds

  SIX: I Know What I Saw

  SEVEN: Free Dom

  Athens to Palermo

  EIGHT: House of the Heel

  NINE: Sirens

  TEN: Little Rebellions

  ELEVEN: Backstage

  TWELVE: Family Portrait

  THIRTEEN: The Weakest of Men

  FOURTEEN: A Gift

  FIFTEEN: Six Little Circles

  SIXTEEN: The Beginning of Something Else

  SEVENTEEN: The Calm or the Storm

  EIGHTEEN: Real Smoke

  Palermo to Cannes

  NINETEEN: Hotel Memoria

  TWENTY: Spanish Snow Globe

  TWENTY-ONE: Premiere

  TWENTY-TWO: Finale

  TWENTY-THREE: The Same Place at the Same Time

  TWENTY-FOUR: Young Once

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Petit Géant

  ONE

  Young Once

  “I used to be beautiful,” she said.

  It was true. Sebastien grew up surrounded by the evidence of his mother’s beauty. Ruby kept most of these faded photographs in boxes stacked on the top shelf of her closet, a hidden archive of tattered prints that spanned decades. Her favourites were trapped in cheap frames throughout their apartment. Sebastien had them etched in his memory, having seen them every day for as long as he could remember.

  The young woman was striking. Every image preserved the delicate curve of her neck and the clarity of her eyes. Her hair was worn the same way in each one, a heavy veil black as a nun’s habit. She began to smile more with time, as though age softened whatever caused her younger self to be so serious.

  “You’re still beautiful.” Sebastien looked into her yellowed eyes to show he meant it. She laughed, unconvinced. Ruby Goh was no longer the vital woman who stared at them from the photographs. Her body sank into the shallow canyon that had formed in her mattress. A pile of blankets concealed her bloated stomach and swollen legs. She wore her long hair in the same way, but the colour had faded over time.

  “I’m fifty-two and I look like I’ve been dead for years,” she said. “There are women my age running marathons. I’m lucky if I can make it to the toilet in time.” Her body shook as her laughter became a fit of coughs.

  Sebastien handed her a glass of water, shaking his head. “Don’t talk like that. The negativity doesn’t help.”

  “If you think I’m still hoping for a miracle, forget it. Positive thinking won’t do a damn thing. Sometimes the only thing left to do is laugh or cry. Let me laugh.”

  A year ago, Sebastien would have argued, but now he knew she was right. The chances of a liver donor materializing in time were slim. He flashed a disapproving look at his mother before moving one of his little black discs across the checkered board.

  The only similarity Ruby could find between her native country of Singapore and her adopted home of Québec was their version of checkers. There were more squares and pieces on the board than the more common variation of the simple game. They used to play on a flimsy sheet of cardboard with the squares coloured in with felt pen. Dented bottle caps had been the checkers. When Sebastien started working during high school, he used his first paycheque to surprise his mother with a proper version of the game from the local hobby store. She was thankful for the gift but preferred their makeshift board.

  “Bad move!” Ruby let out a gleeful shriek as she thrust one of her white discs over two of Sebastien’s, palming the captives.

  He grabbed fistfuls of hair and moaned in disbelief. “I didn’t see that coming.”

  She rested against the deflated pillows that lined her headboard and smiled. “I used to play this with your father, you know. He would say the exact same thing.”

  He looked up, attentive, though it wasn’t her first time offering this same glimpse into her past. Ruby rarely talked about his father. This man he had never met was a phantom whose absence still haunted their lives. He lived on in the rooms of Ruby’s memory, where he held her face in his hands, kissed the back of her neck. Her mind housed a projection room that played a continuous reel of distant scenes, remembered or imagined, that always ended with his father vanishing before it started from the beginning again.

  “I guess you had lots of time to kill on board that ship.”

  She nodded, the smile lingering along her lips.

  “Was he as terrible a player as I am?”

  “I would always beat him,” she said. Her eyes were alive, less clouded than usual. “That’s why he fell in love with me. He wasn’t used to losing.”

  Sebastien had collected shards of information from Ruby’s stories over the years to form a picture of his father. The man was charismatic and bold, a young sailor who loved the sea more than any woman. He had the angular features and thick tangle of hair that his ancient Greek ancestors chiseled into stone, traits that were passed on to his son.

  There were inconsistencies in Ruby’s stories. Sometimes he was a gentle lover who adored her. Other times he was an ill-tempered brute who viewed her as disposable. Sebastien was clever enough to know that both versions must have been true.

  “I was young once,” she went on, her eyes clouding over again. “And I was beautiful. He promised to take me to France. I couldn’t believe it. A poor girl from Singapore sailing away to Europe with a handsome foreigner. It was like a dream.”

  Sebastien had heard this story before. He used to let his mother indulge herself in the f
og of these memories. The older he became, the more he realized the danger of selecting the memories that lived on and those that got buried. Ruby did this ruthlessly as though choosing which photographs to display and which to hide in boxes.

  “It was a dream,” he said, moving one of his pieces aimlessly forward on the checkerboard.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It wasn’t real. He was never going to take you to France.”

  “He was going to —” she said, but Sebastien couldn’t listen to any more.

  “You’ve never been to France because he didn’t take you there,” he interrupted, his tone steady and factual. “He brought you here to this nowhere town instead. He got you pregnant, then he left. He ran away like a coward.”

  Ruby shook her head. The two captured discs were still clutched in her hand. “That’s not what happened.”

  “Then tell me. What happened? Why did he leave?” Sebastien knew he wasn’t likely to get any answers. These questions always upset her, so he had learned to fill in the blanks himself. He hoped one day Ruby would provide an explanation that would redeem his father. Until then, the young foreign sailor who abandoned his mother would remain guilty. This was Sebastien’s own private mythology.

  “Things didn’t go according to plan,” she said as she wrapped a blanket around her thin frame.

  “You used to make him sound like some sort of hero. I wanted to be just like him, to sail the world, wake up every day in a different port. But he was no hero, was he? He was selfish and cruel. That’s the truth.”

  He paused, drawing a deep breath. “We don’t need him, anyway. We have each other.” He offered her a reassuring smile.

  “I made some bad choices, but you know what? I don’t regret any of them.” She placed her hand on his warm cheek. “Those choices gave me you. I will always be proud of that. You should be, too.”

  Sebastien set the checkerboard on the floor and pulled his chair closer to Ruby’s bed. Her hands were silk gloves filled with bones as he held them. “I am proud,” he lied. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s late. You should get some sleep.”

  The last image in the projection room of Ruby Goh’s mind was of Sebastien and his father. They were roughly the same age — two men brimming with such youth they seemed immortal — sitting side by side, laughing. The thought made her smile before sleep washed over her like the ocean’s tide. She never woke up.

  TWO

  Surprise

  The residents of Petit Géant didn’t care for the world outside the town’s borders, despite the welcoming signs in English and French at either end of the main road. The hand-painted porcupines on these signs, their paws waving in the air, were meant to make visitors feel welcome. The truth was the locals had always been wary of outsiders.

  No one was more of an outsider than Ruby Goh. Imagine the confusion and suspicion the unexpected arrival of the young Singaporean woman must have created thirty years earlier. And she had been pregnant, too, with no husband in sight. The local hair salon was filled with gossip from mouths puckered with distaste.

  Ruby gave her newborn son a name that would be considered acceptable by the inhabitants of her new home. The name sounded both strange and beautiful to her ears when she first heard it spoken on the radio. Even so, the young child was excluded no less than his mother. Being the outsider’s son was a sin equal to being the outsider.

  No matter how much effort Ruby put into helping him blend in, dressing him in sweater vests from the thrift store and trimming his hair with the kitchen scissors, people would still look at him as though he were a wild animal. This little boy with the deep green eyes and bronze skin, with hair as black as his mother’s but coiled like a nest of serpents, was like no one they had ever seen before.

  Back then, Ruby cleaned the homes of Petit Géant while their owners were busy living their lives. She found a sense of purpose in detergent and disinfectant, taking something neglected and making it sparkle.

  The money was barely enough to cover the bills even during the busier months, but she enjoyed the work. She loved having the privilege of spending time in these houses. She would look at the portraits on the walls and admire the fine furniture. Sometimes she’d pretend she lived there, tidying up while her husband worked in a fancy office.

  The only place she didn’t like to clean was the Villeneuve house. Pierre Villeneuve worked as a councillor at the town hall. His young daughter was Sebastien’s age. “She’s sweet as a rock,” he had once told his mother. But the lady of the house was the reason Ruby dreaded her weekly appointment.

  Ruby would arrive with a smile every Wednesday at one o’clock in the afternoon. Overdressed and eager for company, Genevieve Villeneuve would open the door and then follow Ruby from room to room, smoking a cigarette while she supervised. “I just want to be sure you don’t feel tempted to take anything,” she said on more than one occasion. “I mean, I’m not saying you’re a thief, but I’ve heard stories about that sort of thing happening.”

  She would offer generous amounts of feedback on Ruby’s performance. “I pay you good money. I don’t want you getting lazy.”

  Her favourite topic of conversation, though, was her family. “Chloe and I are so lucky to have Pierre. He works so hard to give us such a good life. I don’t know how you single mothers cope. And a wild little boy like that without a father! I just can’t fathom it.”

  Ruby would return home every Wednesday, close her bedroom door, and cry into the red, raw skin of her hands. She knew Genevieve was a silly woman whose opinions didn’t matter, but every comment felt like the lash of a whip against Ruby’s self-worth. Maybe Genevieve simply spoke what everyone else in town thought.

  Sebastien would return from school and sit beside his mother with his little hand in hers. It wasn’t fair that women like Genevieve Villeneuve could have such power over women like his mother. “She thinks she’s better than you, but she’s not,” he would tell her.

  Ruby would nod and force a smile. “You’re right,” she would say, not quite believing it.

  The weeks went by and every Wednesday was the same. Finally, Sebastien had had enough. One night, when he was nine, he slipped out his bedroom window and walked to the tree-lined streets of the wealthy part of town. The Villeneuve home lay under the moonlight like a sleeping giant. He reached into his backpack. His little hands wrapped around the jagged rocks inside. He didn’t stop throwing until the windows were shattered.

  Now, many years later, Sebastien heard the sound of broken glass as he cracked the eggs against the side of the frying pan, an echo from the past. He tucked the memory back into a crowded corner of his mind. The eggs spilled from their shells and sizzled in the heat of the pan. Sunny side up, the way his mother liked them.

  The cramped apartment with the faded wallpaper and stained ceiling was the only home Sebastien had ever known. It sat directly above the neighbourhood’s convenience store in an old two-storey building covered in stucco the colour of traffic cones. The store had been a laundromat when Sebastien was younger. He would sit on the rusted metal steps of the fire escape outside his window and absorb the scent of detergent like a chemical sauna.

  It was barely enough space for the two of them, especially as Sebastien got older, but they’d learned ways of simulating privacy. They had their own bedrooms, though the wall they shared couldn’t have been made of much more than sawdust and cardboard. Sebastien used noise as a curtain, dialing up the volume of his music when he needed to be alone.

  The moon-shaped clock on the wall counted the seconds as Sebastien slid the eggs onto a plate. He crossed the linoleum floor of the kitchen, bumping into their faux-wood dining table along the way.

  “Your breakfast awaits, m’ lady,” he said, in his best English-butler accent.

  There was no answer. He glanced at the clock. It was unusual for Ruby to sleep in so late.

  “You awake in there?” he asked with two knocks against the door. “Rise and shin
e, lazy bum.”

  He held his ear against the door, but he couldn’t hear a thing besides the creep of worry that had a way of altering his senses.

  “I’m coming in.” His fingers wrapped around the doorknob as he paused, afraid of what he’d find on the other side. He thought about how silly he’d feel for expecting the worst if his mother was asleep in her bed. He held onto that silly feeling as he pushed open the door.

  Ruby’s bedroom looked exactly as it had the previous night except for the morning light that slipped through the blinds. She even lay in the same sacrificial pose, cupped by the curves of her mattress.

  Sebastien set the plate on her desk and stood over the bed.

  “Wake up, Mama,” he said, although he knew the truth. She was as cold and still as the morning-after remains of a fire.

  “Wake up.” His voice was less steady the second time. The pain started out dull, but he could feel it blossoming deep within his chest. “Wake up. Wake up.” His face was calm as his fingers felt for the missing pulse in Ruby’s thin wrist. It occurred to him how funny it was that absence could be felt more strongly than presence.

  He drew a long breath and swallowed it.

  The checkerboard was on the floor beside the bed where Sebastien had placed it, the game no longer paused but abandoned.

  With a loud exhale, he picked up the plate of eggs and walked briskly out of the room. He stood in the middle of the kitchen for several seconds before throwing the dish against the wall with such force that it snapped cleanly down the middle like two halves of a moon. The sound wasn’t satisfying. It was flat and blunt, nothing like the music created by the rocks and shattering windows from many years ago.

  The pain now clawed at his lungs. He grabbed a chair and lifted it above his head until its wooden legs scraped against the uneven ceiling. With a groan, he swung the chair downward. It crashed against the surface of the kitchen table, creating a pleasing sound. The chair sliced through the air repeatedly until his hands gripped nothing more than a splintered frame of wood.