Excerpt from Issue 305 (Autumn 2025)
"The Cure" by Michelle Spencer
Content note: references a fatal accident, suicide, and grief.
Jeet moved Sloane from his bed to the sofa late in the night after tearing himself away from the tubes of oils. Musical beds are part of their routine to accommodate sleep and activity in their one-room cabin. She’s still there, sweaty and flushed, black curls plastered to her cheeks from sleep and the heat of the woodstove. The easel stands in the corner, calling him back to it. But he’s committed to the routine: say a prayer, wake Sloane, make oatmeal, and get to work by seven.
Still, he takes a minute to assess the painting from a distance. It’s of the river that winds its way through their rental property. He’s pleased with how the slabs of grey rock disappear into the clear pool and how the trees, battered and stunted by the wind, fringe the river’s edge. The sky, on the other hand, feels leaden and heavy to Jeet; it doesn’t reflect the speed and lightness of the clouds from the summer day he wants to capture, when Sloane had played in the clay along the riverbank and the ravens circled overhead in their watchful way. He’s desperate to get the sky right, as if this small accomplishment could be the gateway to feeling carefree again.
Even as he lights a candle for his morning prayer, he laughs at himself. Occasionally, doubt sets in about his odd self-made routine. He stares into the flame and then glances over at Sloane again. His resolve hardens, and the brief prayer flows smooth and patient like honey dripped from a spoon. He doesn’t pray to a particular god — wouldn’t even know which one to pick — but he takes this minute each morning to reach out, to touch something overhead, something resembling the hum of a tight wire, a frequency promising peace.
Minutes later, oats sputter on the stovetop while Jeet tucks little containers of food into Sloane’s backpack. She insists her snacks don’t touch one another. He’s happy to indulge, so last night he’d stacked away her blueberries, bits of cheese and crackers into their separate colour-coded containers, ready for preschool. Quickly running out of jobs, Jeet changes into his scrubs and only then is he prepared to wake Sloane. It’s not as difficult as it was during the first year, when the sight of his sleeping daughter reminded him of being handed Sloane when they were reunited after the accident. She’d slumbered her way through those first moments of his life being turned upside down. Now he feels more of a gnawing regret that his daughter doesn’t wake up expecting or asking for her mother.
As always, Sloane bolts into the day. She trips over her pyjama bottoms as she beelines to his painting. “You did a lot of painting, Daddy.” She tugs at the pink elastic waistband, hiking up the mermaid-patterned bottoms that ride low on her hips after a night of wriggling around.
“Thanks. And you had a good sleep,” he says, swinging Sloane off the floor and plopping her in front of the porridge in one fluid motion.
“And I didn’t even bug you. You’ll have a lot of ebergy today.”
Jeet turns so she doesn’t see him laugh. “I sure will.” He doesn’t bother correcting her pronunciation or her prediction.
She doesn’t need to know about his restless night, the tossing and turning. The worrying he did about the young woman who went missing from a family funeral a few days ago, the random images of her possible demise stuttering him awake. The other nurses at the hospital know the family — or enough to talk unkindly about them — but he’s not sufficiently in the loop to understand the speculation. The only detail he picked up from their gossip that makes any sense to him is that since the brother died, she’s been carrying around his old point and shoot camera.
After getting dressed, Jeet shoos Sloane outside to play with the cat while he tidies and packs up. She’s still chatting with Tiny on the deck when Jeet slips past her. He likes to give the camper van a few minutes to idle before heading out. It rumbles awake, timidly at first, as if still protesting the change in climate and elevation five years later.
They’d been lugging the van over Rogers Pass when Renee announced she missed her period. Like little kids, they jumped at the summit to stay warm, and Renee tugged on his turtleneck, teased him for looking so preppy. Before Jeet, she’d made a point of only dating guys from punk bands, but she’d said she got smart at the ripe old age of eighteen and had traded up for a nerd. “Nerds make better dads,” she said. A few hours later, she came beaming out of a Walmart washroom in Cranbrook, waving a stick with two thick blue lines.
“Come on, Sloane. Let Tiny be. We need to get to town.”
Jeet lifts Sloane. She buzzes with life and fires off a string of questions: Why can’t cats be purple? Why does she have to wear boots when the snow is all blown away? Why does her friend smell like bananas? Like an outfielder scrambling for pop flies, Jeet fields question after question. It tests his concentration as he also eases her arms through the harness of the car seat. He pauses and swipes the largest curl out of her brown eyes — the eyes are from his side of the family, but she has Renee’s wild lashes.
“What is it?” she says, putting a warm finger to his chin. He can’t tell her about his fleeting and desperate wish — that these straps could secure her in place as a five-year-old forever. With the last snap into the car seat, he gives Sloane a kiss on the forehead, a substitute for an answer, and she grabs him around the neck. Every day he thinks this small child will suffocate him.
“All right, you little lobster,” he jokes. “Loosen those claws. We’re never going to get to town at this rate.”
“Daddy.” Sloane unwinds her grip. “We need to take Tiny to the barn. It’s ’portant.” Jeet smiles again at her special dialect.
“We have to,” she adds with emphasis and wriggles in her seat. “I heard the door shut in the night. It might be Mommy.”
Without responding, Jeet clambers out of the door and flattens himself against the van to buy himself time. He sucks in fall air, hoping it might open his airway. More and more, Sloane’s been talking about seeing Renee, fantasies that at times go too far. Jeet reaches for one of the strategies the counsellor recommended: redirection. He dips back into the van and places his hands on her chest.
“Dad! Get me out!”
“No, baby, sorry. You know the wind. It’s always catching that door. Mom isn’t here. But she’s always looking out for you. We’ve talked about this. She isn’t here. Come on. Let’s go see your friends at daycare.”
As they pull down the lane, he turns on Sloane’s music. She disappears into her own world and so does Jeet.
A phone rings in his head. His father’s words rattle around, an echo that still finds purchase.
Oh, sweet Renee. She went walking with headphones. To have a break. Me and your mother were looking after baby Sloane. Oh, Jeet. Oh, Jeet. She never heard the car.
Jeet fights off this indulgence and tells himself to focus on the drive. He avoids the rear-view mirror. Sloane’s singsong voice is enough. He can’t bear seeing her as well. Instead, he counts power poles as they branch off from the highway and disappear into the foothills.
— Michelle Spencer lives in the ranch lands of southern Alberta which she gratefully acknowledges is the beloved territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy. Her work was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize as well as the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award and appears in numerous literary magazines.
Read the rest of "The Cure" by Michelle Spencer in Issue 305 (Autumn 2025). Order the issue now:
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