Indian Summer on Ontario Beach

You remember this.

It is autumn and the days shorten. All things are red, gold, purple-gray. All things are cooling down. Wet winds and leaves blowing flat against your chest.

You remember this as if from a dream.

You took the child to the fair. The child is your daughter. No. Your sibling. No. The child is of no relation to you. The fair was a screeching place. Wind whistling through the Ferris wheel, children fluting high-pitched voices over the scattered candy wrappers and fire-orange leaves. You bought the child cotton candy, but she dropped it.

Who was the child? Not your daughter. Not your sibling. Did you know the child? Did you know her?

You remember this.

Your mother took you to a fair like this one once, many years before. She wore white patent leather heels with big silver buckles on them and it was 1981. How old were you in 1981? Hardly older than the child.

The child nudged your hand and she said wheel. The wind whistled through the spokes of the Ferris wheel. It carried people up up up into the sky. One side always went up and the other side always went down and yet, they were one and the same side. But they were no side, ever.

The child pulled you towards the big wheel in the sky and the littered candy wrappers fluttered against the toes of your boots like dying butterflies. And the sides went up and down at one and the same time.

Once your mother took you to Ontario Beach. Her sundress was haunted in the wind, flip-flopping and dancing with a soul of its own. And the painted mahogany horses went round and round and the calliope ground away at its self day and night. Were there other painted animals? The Duchess of Ontario Beach consists of thirty-three painted horses, three rabbits, three cats, three ostriches, three pigs, two mules, and one deer, goat, lion, tiger, and giraffe each. It also carries two chariots around in circles. The chariots never arrive anywhere. Why ostriches?

You remember this.

Remember.

Did the man come before or after the child pulled you to the Ferris wheel? It was after. But you saw him before that. You saw him because he had eyes like the painted horses of the Duchess carousel. Painted wood eyes. And he was smiling and that was why you stopped so suddenly that the child walked into you and the cotton candy went into the leaves. Though a small tuft of it stuck to the seat of your pants and you didn´t remember to pull it away. The man stood behind a shooting gallery populated by balloon animals. He smiled his wood-painted smile.

The child dragged you over to the Ferris wheel and you paid a quarter to ride. They told you hold on to the child and you thought about throwing her over the side, a thought that had not occurred before they said hold on to the child. Just like when mother used to say don´t get run over and suddenly you had to hold on to the lamp posts so that you wouldn´t step out into the road.

So you went up up up and you held the child. And the tip of her palm tree ponytail brush-stroked your chin and her tiny body was so warm, so warm in your arms that you wanted her to be your daughter, no, your sibling. So warm that you wanted to own her. And the child squirmed on your lap trying to look over the edge of the gondola, little knuckles blushed on the carved wooden side. And your knees hurt from the squirming but you didn´t let go. And you concentrated hard on holding onto her, like the lamp posts, so that she wouldn´t go over the edge.

And the child said sea! And from up at the top of the wheel you saw it too. Beyond the booths and rides of the fair, the suicidal sands rushing topsy-turvey to hurl themselves into the ocean. In the distance, the long black pier put its arm out into the water. There was a pier at Ontario too, a different one. Where mother haunted her sundress to the sound of the calliope warble and she swept all the flowers off its hem and down into the waves.

Don´t. The child put its sticky sugar finger to your eye and balanced a teardrop on the tip. Her eyes were twin moons and you held on even tighter and you said I´m not crying.

Liar, said the child.

The painted man watched from the foot of the Ferris wheel. The wind whistled through the spokes and lifted his coattails and he whistled too. You couldn´t hear it, he made no sound but you saw his lips fluting. The painted man was bald and his face was sunken but painted ruddy with full lips. Like a chubby skeleton. And the wheel went up up up and down down down and the child squirmed and was so warm in your arms. And again and again, the boardwalk of the pier peaked out over the top of the booths and then it grew legs alarmingly fast and then it stunted down again until it vanished once more. The child laughed and flailed her pink sneaker feet at the sky and you cried and thought about the grains of sand drowning themselves in the sea.

You remember this. The way the bald painted man stood and grinned up at you and how you could see his big white teeth all the way up into the sky. His coat flapped around with the dead candy butterflies and he grinned up and his painted cheeks glowed like a beacon. Then he waved. And the child waved back. Did she? That was the moment, wasn´t it? You remember that this was the moment. You knew it was all bad now. The wheel and the wind. And the sea and the sand. And the pier and its long crooked insect legs. And the cotton candy too, and all the dead wrapper-flies. And the child, too. All of a sudden you didn´t want to hold her anymore. That was the moment.

Then the Ferris wheel stopped at the ground and you had to leave the gondola. You put the child back on her little feet. The painted man still grinned, still looked at you. You took the child´s sticky hand in your own and you pulled her between the booths. The booths were a maze. Sometimes the spaces between them dead-ended in a white plastic fence. Sometimes they didn´t. You dragged the child along all of them until you found the ones that didn´t dead-end. You felt the painted man with the wooden eyes behind you but you couldn´t see where he was. The child laughed. She thought it was a game to get through the maze. Your heart pounded against your ribs because if the man heard the child´s laughter he would know exactly where you were. You dragged the child out between the booths and out behind them and across the little concrete road and down to the beach. Where the waves lap-lapped and the kernels of sand hurled themselves into the water.

In Ontario, it was always September. Bright and buffeted by warm winds and all was red-hued like tinted glasses. The haunted sundress flapped over the waves without a mother inside it. All the little flowers washed from its hem.

The beach was gold. Gold like Indian summer. The child wanted to stop to take off her shoes but you didn´t stop. You struggled through the sand and tried not to look at the water until you climbed up on the pier that walked out into the sea on its spindly dark legs.

Pretty, said the child, where the horizon washed out pale pink into the sea and the small, dark square of a ship sailed off the edge of the world.

Pretty, you said. Pretty, you thought and looked for little flowers in the water off the edge of the pier.

Then, the man was there, smiling his wood-painted smile on the end of the pier. The maze did not trouble him and neither did the uneven sand. He made it here before you. The painted man has always been, and he will always be. There, behind you. At the end of every pier.

You gripped the child´s hand and walked towards him. She was your daughter, your sibling, she was you. You were a haunted sundress in the September wind. You were little flowers.

The man held out a reaching hand. No, you said. Not her. He smiled. His bald head was pink from the sky. You remember this detail.

The child was not your child. Did you know the child? How did you meet her? What happened before the fair? Whose child? Not yours. Whose child? She was not yours to give away. But your heart was beating itself against the inside of your ribs and the child was smiling at you. And so was the man. You gave the child to the man with the painted wooden face and he took her in his painted wooden arms.

You stepped to the end of the peer and then you stepped again. You were a haunted sundress flapping on the waves, motherless. You spilled little hem flowers.

And then you were back on the pier. And the child was flapping, washing out, sinking. And the painted man stood at your back. As he always has, as he always will. The painted man put his painted hand on your shoulder.

You remember this. That is good.

Take your pills, now.

Tomorrow, we will remember again.