Taking a Chance on Love (6 page)

My father came home unexpectedly on a few days' leave from the Air Force. He was on his way to the Queen Charlotte Islands to run the power station at Alliford Bay.

One morning while we were all still eating breakfast, the priest, Father Smith, called in at our house. He refused the coffee my mother offered.

“I have other things on my mind,” he said to Mom, but looking at Dad. “I'll get right to the point. In the eyes of the Holy Church, you two are not married. You are committing a sin if you persist in having a physical relationship.”

“Not married? What kind of crazy talk is this?” said Dad, standing up and pushing his chair back.

“Because you are a divorced man, Mr. Woods. The Church does not recognize this marriage. The only way you can continue to stay together is if you live as brother and sister.”

Dad reached over and took Father Smith by the scruff of his neck and hustled him out the back door.

“You damned excuse for a man,” he yelled. “Get out of here. And don't come back. How dare you interfere between a man and his wife? If I ever catch you around here again, I'll beat the living daylights out of you.”

I watched from the window as Father Smith started to crank his old Chev. His face got redder and redder. Finally the engine caught, and he jumped into the front seat and left in a black cloud of burning oil.

Mom was crying and trying to hush Dad at the same time.

Whenever my parents fought, I found it better to leave and stay away as long as possible until things cooled down. That's what I did, wishing that I could talk to Amy. She was still in Vancouver. I went down to the beach and skipped stones across the water for the next half-hour.

The next morning, there was a note for me from Glen at Mrs. Hanson's.
Back from Vancouver. Have to see you. Will be waiting for you when you get off work. Glen XOX

I wondered if Mrs. Hanson or her daughter Anna had read the note. They must have because as I got ready to leave at eleven, Anna handed me two small brown paper bags, the kind the guest house packed for those who wanted a picnic lunch. Anna winked. Whoops. Had Bruce told them that I had winked at him?

Glen was waiting for me outside Mrs. Hanson's back gate. I had forgotten how handsome he was. We took the path down to the beach. Finding a warm spot in the sun, we propped ourselves against a log. The tide was out, and the sand lay glistening before us.

“Tell me everything,” I said. “Start with your mother.”

“I'm still trying to sort things out,” he said. “My mother's husband seems okay, though I don't think he's overjoyed to have me join his family. Can't blame him. My half-sister and half-brother are kind of bratty and want to hang around me all the time … It's what I thought I wanted, but … I don't know. I don't feel comfortable.” Then he dropped his voice so that I could barely hear him. “I still feel empty.”

“Oh, Glen.”

He took a deep breath. “They want me to come live with them in Vancouver. Go to university there in the fall.”

“I thought you were only seventeen.”

“I am, but I finished grade twelve, and I have university entrance. We've already been out to see the campus.”

“Then you've decided to go?” I said.

“Not really … I'd have my own room. They've got this huge house … My own father will be furious. Probably cut me off financially. But my mother says I can count on her for cash, that she has money of her own.”

I couldn't help wondering if Glen could count on his mother. I'd asked him once if she had ever tried to get in touch with him after she'd left him when he was so young, and he'd said no. “I blame my father totally for her absence in my life,” he'd said. Again I thought of my own mother. Nothing would have stopped her from getting in touch with a child of hers.

More to hide my feelings than from hunger, I opened the lunch bags and handed Glen a devilled egg sandwich. “Your mother … What's she like? Do you like her?”

“She's my mother … I need her, but … Oh, Meg, I don't know. She's falling all over herself to please me. Maybe she feels guilty. The others don't like it.”

The waves made small slapping sounds at the shoreline. “I'm glad you're back, Glen. It's good to have a friend.”

“I missed you,” he said, “even though they kept me so darn busy all the time, I hardly had time to think.”

“Will you stay here for the summer?” I asked.

“Yeah. I'll go in to see my mother a couple of times before I go into Vancouver for university.” He picked up my hand. “I want you to go to the dance with me on Friday night.”

“I don't know. My mother's got a thing against dancing. She met my father at a dance and, well … He swept her off her feet, she says, and has been unfaithful to her ever since.”

“Has he?”

“Well … Maybe. Probably.”

“Parents,” said Glen, shaking his head. “Don't you wish they'd just behave themselves and let us get on with our own lives?”

Mom was working in the small garden at the front of our house. I knelt down to help her pull weeds. “Anna Hanson is going to the dance tomorrow night at the tennis court,” I said, knocking the dirt from a long dandelion root against a stone. “I'd like to go, too.”

“How late would you be getting in?”

“I'm not sure when the dance ends. Midnight? I'd come straight home.”

She put down the trowel. “You're so young.” She stood up and stretched, putting her hand to the small of her back. “Don't be in a hurry to grow up, Meg. It happens fast enough as it is. You know what I think about dancing. I sometimes wonder how my life would be if I'd never gone to that dance where I met your father.”

What if Dad were in earshot? They must be still quarrelling, I thought.

Just then Dad spoke from the top of the front doorsteps. “Let the girl go and enjoy herself, Vera,” he said. “Don't let the priest turn you sour on our children.”

The same old bickering. With Dad away in the Air Force, there had been a break from that. But at least I was going to the dance. I could hardly believe it had been so easy.

“Mom says it's okay for me to go to the dance tomorrow night,” I told Glen when he met me after work later that day. “Dad's home, and he stood up for me. But I'd like to meet you at the bridge tomorrow evening, okay? Don't come to my house. My parents are having a bit of a tiff, and I don't want you to see it. Oh, and I have to be home right after the dance.”

He leaned forward, as if he were about to kiss me. I didn't move away. He looked at me with those piercing eyes that made me feel as if he knew everything about me and liked it. After a moment, he drew back.

I had nothing to wear to the dance. Finally, I thought of asking Amy's mother. She had always been helpful to me. Once she'd given me a dark red cardigan sweater, saying, “The colour doesn't suit me, and Amy doesn't want it. I think it will look good on you with your dark hair.”

The next day I went to see Mrs. Miller, but she didn't answer my knock. I had turned away and was already halfway out the gate when I heard the door open behind me. Looking back, I saw Rob Pryce lounging in the doorway.

“Who is it?” I heard Mrs. Miller's voice call from behind him.

“It's okay, Sweetie,” said Rob. “Whoever it was has gone.”

“Sweetie” for Sylvia Ballard in the woods and “Sweetie” for Mrs. Miller in her home? I definitely did not like Robert Pryce.

Later that same morning, I knocked again on Mrs. Miller's door. She opened it. No sign of Robert this time. She seemed happy to see me.

“Come in,” she said. “I've missed seeing you since Amy's been away in the city.”

“I'll be glad when she gets back.”

I told her about the dance.

“You really should wear a dress,” Mrs. Miller said. “Or a pretty skirt and blouse.”

“I don't have any,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Just ones for school.”

“Well, all right, come on in to the bedroom, and I'll see what I can find.”

“This is really nice of you, Mrs. Miller.”

“No, I'm glad to help.” She began to rummage through her closet. “I have a couple in mind. Try this one on … That colour's not good on you. This one is better, but it's too tight across the bust … Now, how about this yellow one?”

A yellow dress of polished cotton with printed angel faces drawn in thin black lines, like pencil drawings, it had a tiny bow of the same material at each shoulder. The skirt was full, and the dress fit as if it had been made for me. It was not one I would ever have picked out to wear, but once on, I could see that it was perfect.

Glen was already at the bridge that evening when I got there. His eyes lit up, and I smoothed out the fullness of the skirt. The look in Glen's eyes made up for the disapproving one I'd seen in my mother's when I told her where I'd got the dress.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” she'd said.

“You look beautiful,” Glen said. “I can't wait to show you off. I want to keep you all to myself, though.” The creek murmured under the bridge.

We walked up to the tennis court. The moon, full just two nights before, showed a small bite out of the front curve. I could see its image shimmering on the surface of the ocean spread out below the cedars.

Three or four couples were already waltzing on the dance floor. Anna and Bruce Hanson were one. They danced together so well that I thought they must have practised together, growing up in the same household.

Summer kids began to arrive. The boys had their hair slicked back with Brylcreem, and the girls all smelled of Johnson's baby powder. They were a clique of their own and didn't mix with the locals. They even dressed alike: the boys wore cords and pullover sweaters; the girls wore slacks and long V-necked sweaters that they had knit themselves. I'd seen the girls on the porch of the village store, knitting needles flashing in the sun and balls of brightly coloured yarn poking from the top of patterned cotton bags.

Glen held out his arms to me, and we moved out onto the dance floor. The moon followed us as we danced. The lessons paid off — we knew each other's moves — there were no missteps or awkward turns. Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie … It was as if their music was being played just for us.

The music was in sets of three. “Stardust” opened the next set, Artie Shaw's clarinet solo rising clear and pure. It was one of my favourites.

Bruce Hanson appeared beside us. “May I cut in?” he said.

Glen's arm tightened around me for a moment, but he dropped both arms and stepped aside.

To dance with Bruce was very different than with Glen. Where Glen's movements were smooth and light, even when holding me close, Bruce held me more at a distance. Maybe his skin grafts were hurting him, I thought. With his hand putting pressure on my back, first this way and then that, we circled the dance floor and ended in the middle. I felt as if I wasn't getting enough air, as if I had been taken over, almost commanded. I was definitely dancing with an older man. It was exciting but a little frightening.

Glenn Miller's “Chattanooga Choo Choo” followed “Little Brown Jug.” Bruce started to jitterbug. For the first time, he spoke to me.

“You know how to do this,” he said.

I did. All I had to do was follow his lead. He knew exactly what he was doing.

Soon other couples stopped dancing and stood to watch us. Duke Ellington's “Missed the Saturday Dance” began to play, and Johnny Hodges' alto sax led into the melody. Bruce's grip tightened. I wondered where Glen was.

I saw him dancing with Anna Hanson. When the Duke Ellington record finished, Glen came over and cut in on Bruce. I didn't know if I was relieved or not.

“It's good to have you back,” he said, as he danced me away from Bruce.

Around eleven, Glen wanted to leave.

“I want to have some time alone with you,” he whispered into my ear.

We stopped at the bridge on the way home, leaned over the railing and listened to the water running below. Glen put his arm around my waist and turned me so that we were face to face. His eyes were brilliant in the moonlight.

“I like having you as a friend,” he said. “But I want more. To see that Hanson guy dancing with you … I didn't like that.”

“Glen, I'm —”

“I need you, Meg. You make up for everything.”

“I
am
here for you. You know that.”

“No, more than that. I want you to belong to me.”

He tightened his arms and began to kiss me. It was not the kind of kiss I had always imagined, romantic, loving. It felt too hard, too rough.

I leaned back.

He pulled me in even tighter. The moonlight caught his face at an angle, and at that moment, he looked exactly like his brother, Robert Pryce. I stiffened. He began to kiss me again, more fiercely, and I felt his hand start at the bottom of my skirt and move quickly up my inner leg.

“No!” I said, pushing away.

He grabbed me back. “Wait, wait! We don't have to go all the way. Let me touch you. Here, feel this.” He put my hand on the front of him. “I have needs. You do, too.”

I struggled and managed to get free. I hurried away. As soon as I got around the bend in the road, I started running towards home.

There were no lights on at my house. I opened the back door and saw my mother standing in the middle of the kitchen floor in a square of moonlight.

“I got up to get a drink of water,” she said, “and I saw this patch of moonlight. It was so beautiful, I had to dance in it.”

For a second, I saw Mom differently. I thought she would probably understand how upset I felt if I told her what had happened. But she seemed so happy, I didn't want to break the spell for her.