Runaway (21 page)

Mrs. Travers herself didn’t speak of it this way at all. She had lived with Neil in a big old house broken up into apartments, not far from the railway tracks in the town of Pembroke, and many of the stories she told at the dinner table were about events there, about her fellow tenants, and the French-Canadian landlord, whose harsh French and tangled English she imitated. The stories might have had titles, like the stories of Thurber’s that Grace had read in
The Anthology of American Humor
, found unaccountably on the library shelf at the back of her Grade Ten classroom. (Also on that shelf was
The Last of the Barons
, and
Two Years Before the Mast.)

“The Night Old Mrs. Cromarty Got Out on the Roof.” “How the Postman Courted Miss Flowers.” “The Dog Who Ate Sardines.”

Mr. Travers never told stories and had little to say at dinner, but if he came upon you looking, say, at the fieldstone fireplace, he might say, “Are you interested in rocks?” and tell you where each of them had come from, and how he had searched and searched for the particular pink granite, because Mrs. Travers had once exclaimed over a rock like that, glimpsed in a road cut. Or he might show you such not really unusual features as he
himself had added to the house design—the corner cupboard shelves swinging outwards in the kitchen, the storage space under the window seats. He was a tall stooped man with a soft voice and thin hair slicked over his scalp. He wore bathing shoes when he went into the water, and though he did not look fat in his usual clothes, he displayed then a pancake fold of white flesh slopping over the top of his bathing trunks.

Grace worked that summer at the hotel at Bailey’s Falls, north of Little Sabot Lake. Early in the season the Travers family had come to dinner there. She had not noticed them—they were not at one of her tables and it was a busy night. She was setting up a table for a new party when she realized that someone was waiting to speak to her.

It was Maury. He said, “I was wondering if you would like to go out with me sometime?”

Grace barely looked up from shooting out the silverware. She said, “Is this a dare?” Because his voice was high and nervous and he stood there stiffly, as if forcing himself. And it was known that sometimes a party of young men from the cottages would dare one another to ask a waitress out. It wasn’t entirely a joke—they really would show up, if accepted, though sometimes they only meant to park, without taking you to a movie or even for coffee. So it was considered rather shameful, rather hard up, for a girl to agree.

“What?” he said painfully, and then Grace did stop and look at him. It seemed to her that she saw the whole of him in that moment, the true Maury. Scared, fierce, innocent, determined.

“Okay,” she said quickly. She might have meant, okay, calm down, I know it’s not a dare, I know you wouldn’t do that. Or, okay, I’ll go out with you. She herself hardly knew which. But he took it as agreement, and at once arranged—without lowering
his voice, or noticing the looks he was getting from diners around them—that he would pick her up after work on the following night.

He did take her to the movies. They saw
Father of the Bride
. Grace hated it. She hated girls like Elizabeth Taylor in that movie, she hated spoiled rich girls of whom nothing was ever asked but that they wheedle and demand. Maury said that it was only supposed to be a comedy, but she said that was not the point. She could not make clear what the point was. Anybody would think that it was because she worked as a waitress and was too poor to go to college, and that if she wanted anything like that kind of wedding she would have to spend years saving up to pay for it herself. (Maury did think this, and was stricken with respect for her, almost with reverence.)

She could not explain or quite understand that it wasn’t altogether jealousy she felt, it was rage. And not because she couldn’t shop like that or dress like that. It was because that was what girls were supposed to be like. That was what men—people, everybody—thought they should be like. Beautiful, treasured, spoiled, selfish, pea-brained. That was what a girl should be, to be fallen in love with. Then she would become a mother and she’d be all mushily devoted to her babies. Not selfish anymore, but just as pea-brained. Forever.

She was fuming about this while sitting beside a boy who had fallen in love with her because he had believed—instantly—in the integrity and uniqueness of her mind and soul, and had seen her poverty as a romantic gloss on that. (He would have known she was poor not just because of the job she was working at but because of her strong Ottawa Valley accent, of which she was as yet unaware.)

He honored her feelings about the movie. Indeed, now that he had listened to her angry struggles to explain, he struggled to tell her something in turn. He said that he saw now that it was
not anything so simple, so
feminine
, as jealousy. He saw that. It was that she would not stand for frivolity, was not content to be like most girls. She was special.

Grace always remembered what she was wearing on that night. A dark-blue ballerina skirt, a white blouse, through whose eyelet frills you could see the tops of her breasts, a wide rose-colored elasticized belt. There was a discrepancy, no doubt, between the way she presented herself and the way she wanted to be judged. But nothing about her was dainty or pert or polished in the style of the time. A bit ragged round the edges, in fact, giving herself gypsy airs, with the very cheapest silver-painted bangles, and the long, wild-looking curly dark hair that she had to put into a snood when she waited on tables.

Special.

He had told his mother about her and his mother had said, “You must bring this Grace of yours to dinner.”

It was all new to her, all immediately delightful. In fact she fell in love with Mrs. Travers, rather as Maury had fallen in love with her. It was not in her nature, of course, to be so openly dumbfounded, so worshipful, as he was.

Grace had been brought up by her aunt and uncle, really her great-aunt and great-uncle. Her mother had died when she was three years old, and her father had moved to Saskatchewan, where he had another family. Her stand-in parents were kind, even proud of her, though bewildered, but they were not given to conversation. The uncle made his living caning chairs, and he had taught Grace how to cane, so that she could help him, and eventually take over as his eyesight failed. But then she had got the job at Bailey’s Falls for the summer, and though it was hard
for him—for her aunt as well—to let her go, they believed she needed a taste of life before she settled down.

She was twenty years old, and had just finished high school. She should have finished a year ago, but she had made an odd choice. In the very small town where she lived—it was not far from Mrs. Travers’ Pembroke—there was nevertheless a high school, which offered five grades, to prepare you for the government exams and what was then called senior matriculation. It was never necessary to study all the subjects offered, and at the end of her first year—what should have been her final year, Grade Thirteen—Grace tried examinations in History and Botany and Zoology and English and Latin and French, receiving unnecessarily high marks. But there she was in September, back again, proposing to study Physics and Chemistry, Trigonometry, Geometry, and Algebra, though these subjects were considered particularly hard for girls. When she had finished that year, she would have covered all Grade Thirteen subjects except Greek and Italian and Spanish and German, which were not taught by any teacher in her school. She did creditably well in all three branches of mathematics and in the sciences, though her results were nothing like so spectacular as the year before. She had even thought, then, of teaching herself Greek and Spanish and Italian and German so that she could try those exams the next year. But the principal of the school had a talk with her, telling her this was getting her nowhere since she was not going to be able to go to university, and anyway no university course required such a full plate. Why was she doing it? Did she have any plans?

No, said Grace, she just wanted to learn everything you could learn for free. Before she started her career of caning.

It was the principal who knew the manager of the inn, and said he would put in a word for her if she wanted to try for a
summer waitressing job. He too mentioned getting a taste of life.

So even the man in charge of all learning in that place did not believe that learning had to do with life. And anybody Grace told about what she had done—she told it to explain why she was late leaving high school—had said something like
you must have been crazy
.

Except for Mrs. Travers, who had been sent to business college instead of a real college because she was told she had to be useful, and who now wished like anything—she said—that she had crammed her mind instead, or first, with what was useless.

“Though you do have to earn a living,” she said. “Caning chairs seems like a useful sort of thing to do anyway. We’ll have to see.”

See what? Grace didn’t want to think ahead at all. She wanted life to continue just as it was now. By trading shifts with another girl, she had managed to get Sundays off, from breakfast on. This meant that she always worked late on Saturdays. In effect, it meant that she had traded time with Maury for time with Maury’s family. She and Maury could never see a movie now, never have a real date. But he would pick her up when her work was finished, around eleven o’clock, and they would go for a drive, stop for ice cream or a hamburger—Maury was scrupulous about not taking her into a bar, because she was not yet twenty-one—then end up parking somewhere.

Grace’s memories of these parking sessions—which might last till one or two in the morning—proved to be much hazier than her memories of sitting at the Traverses’ round dining table or—when everybody finally got up and moved, with coffee or fresh drinks—sitting on the tawny leather sofa, the rockers, the cushioned wicker chairs, at the other end of the room. (There was no fuss about doing the dishes and cleaning up the
kitchen—a woman Mrs. Travers called “my friend the able Mrs. Abel” would come in the morning.)

Maury always dragged cushions onto the rug and sat there. Gretchen, who never dressed for dinner in anything but jeans or army pants, usually sat cross-legged in a wide chair. Both she and Maury were big and broad-shouldered, with something of their mother’s good looks—her wavy caramel-colored hair, and warm hazel eyes. Even, in Maury’s case, a dimple.
Cute
, the other waitresses called Maury. They whistled softly.
Hubba hubba
. Mrs. Travers, however, was barely five feet tall, and under her bright muumuus she seemed not fat but sturdily plump, like a child who hasn’t stretched up yet. And the shine, the intentness, of her eyes, the gaiety always ready to break out, had not or could not be imitated or inherited. No more than the rough red, almost a rash, on her cheeks. That was probably the result of going out in any weather without taking thought of her complexion, and like her figure, like her muumuus, it showed her independence.

There were sometimes guests, besides family, on these Sunday evenings. A couple, maybe a single person as well, usually close to Mr. and Mrs. Travers’ age, and usually resembling them in the way the women would be eager and witty and the men quieter, slower, tolerant. People told amusing stories, in which the joke was often on themselves. (Grace has been an engaging talker for so long now that she sometimes gets sick of herself, and it’s hard for her to remember how novel these dinner conversations once seemed to her. Where she came from, most of the lively conversation took the form of dirty jokes, which of course her aunt and uncle did not go in for. On the rare occasions when they had company, there was praise of and apology for the food, discussion of the weather, and a fervent wish for the meal to be finished as soon as possible.)

After dinner at the Traverses’, if the evening was cool
enough, Mr. Travers lit a fire. They played what Mrs. Travers called “idiotic word games,” at which, in fact, people had to be fairly clever, even if they thought up silly definitions. And here was where somebody who had been rather quiet at dinner might begin to shine. Mock arguments could be built up around claims of great absurdity. Gretchen’s husband Wat did this, and so after a bit did Grace, to Mrs. Travers’ and Maury’s delight (Maury calling out, to everyone’s amusement but Grace’s own, “See? I told you. She’s smart”). And it was Mrs. Travers herself who led the way in this making up of words with outrageous defenses, insuring that the play should not become too serious or any player too anxious.

The only time there was a problem of anyone’s being unhappy with a game was when Mavis, who was married to Mrs. Travers’ son Neil, came to dinner. Mavis and her two children were staying not far away, at her parents’ place down the lake. That night there was only family, and Grace, as Mavis and Neil had been expected to bring their small children. But Mavis came by herself—Neil was a doctor, and it turned out that he was busy in Ottawa that weekend. Mrs. Travers was disappointed but she rallied, calling out in cheerful dismay, “But the children aren’t in Ottawa, surely?”

“Unfortunately not,” said Mavis. “But they’re not being particularly charming. I’m sure they’d shriek all through dinner. The baby’s got prickly heat and God knows what’s the matter with Mikey.”

She was a slim suntanned woman in a purple dress, with a matching wide purple band holding back her dark hair. Handsome, but with little pouches of boredom or disapproval hiding the corners of her mouth. She left most of her dinner untouched on her plate, explaining that she had an allergy to curry.

“Oh, Mavis. What a shame,” said Mrs. Travers. “Is this new?”

“Oh no. I’ve had it for ages but I used to be polite about it. Then I got sick of throwing up half the night.”

“If you’d only told me—What can we get you?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m fine. I don’t have any appetite anyway, what with the heat and the joys of motherhood.”

She lit a cigarette.

Afterwards, in the game, she got into an argument with Wat over a definition he used, and when the dictionary proved it acceptable she said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just outclassed by you people.” And when it came time for everybody to hand in their own word on a slip of paper for the next round, she smiled and shook her head.