At the pub on St Martin's Lane, you guzzle Brooklyn Lager while Iggy uploads photos to the Internet. England Trip with Dad--Day One, she's called them, and she tags you in each: London Heathrow! Eating fish 'n' chips! Dad's neckbeard, lol! In one hand she cradles her cellphone and in the other a champagne flute that pulses with prosecco, which, you've learned, is European for sparkling wine. Iggy's got irises dark as ground coffee and skin the colour of cork. After each taste of bubbly her lips leave a forensic imprint on the glass. Eighteen, your daughter, not old enough to drink legally in British Columbia and too young to have voted--though she will, she reminds you, she'll vote for the goddamn Liberals. She's heading to university in Toronto, …show more content…
Outside the train, a thunderstorm turns the ground to muck. Across from you, Iggy fingers a tall can of cider and reads from Trainspotting. You fidget against nausea. When you taught Iggy to sail, the two of you wore dime-size patches of medication on your jugulars--scopolamine--that kept the seasickness at bay. What do you call a Scotsman with diarrhea? Iggy says. With your face on the pillow of your arm you manage a throaty, What? Bravefart. Good God, Isabel. She clucks her tongue. She raises the cider to her lips. Old Man, you're hungover. I am not, you say, but Iggy sets her drink down and grins. Beneath you, the train's engine cuts in and out, in and out--its own kind of heaving. ***** Back home, after you found her on the bluff, you didn't leave. The two of you sat with your feet over the edge. Below, Kirkwall's lake lit with the last light of the sun. Iggy sat shoulder to shoulder with you. Your phones buzzed. A few kids appeared on lower plateaus and chutes of water rose in answer to their cannonballs. It'll be okay, you told …show more content…
she said. Under the honey-coloured light you saw tears cocoon her eyelashes, mascara in long moults from tear duct to chin. And over the rocks, over the water, over time and heartache--yours, hers--you glimpsed insights more fleeting than the wing of a moth. For that instant, on that cliff jump on that evening in July, you knew the answers to the questions she'd ask. But you knew, too, in a moment, you'd lose that insight and return to the clichés passed to you that would be passed on by her. It felt good, right then, to be a dad again. Even now, when Iggy skips toward the barriers in Edinburgh, you feel it--an ache, like when you fix something and it breaks again, that whisking away of satisfaction. Iggy waves. Hurry up, Dad, she mouths. You hike your pack higher on your shoulder.