The Western Light (26 page)

A Girl Talks about Goodness with Her Father

 

The father, a large man over six-foot-five and his thirteen-year-old daughter are discussing Montaigne. Their conversation is not in his office, where he dispenses pills and cough medicines dressed in a white coat, but during an afternoon walk. It's a habit with them, to hike in the countryside while they explore Montaigne's ideas. The going is rough on the old lumber trail near the Bay, and the father takes his daughter's hand to make sure she doesn't stumble.

“Montaigne thought to do good was the proper duty of a virtuous man,” the girl says. “How do you feel about this, father?”

“When I come into the hospital in the morning and see the patients smiling in their beds, I know I have done my duty.”

“When I try to be as good as you, I feel angry. As if too much is expected of me,” the girl answers.

“If you do good every day, you will learn to ignore those thoughts. I have no resentment now. I just set a course and follow it.”

They stop by his Oldsmobile and the father gets in. He motions for her to get in too. The girl hesitates. Then she starts running as fast as she can in the opposite direction. Suddenly, she stops. What has she done? She shouts for her father, but by now his car has turned into a speck on the country road.

IT STRIKES ME NOW THAT the story I wrote after Little Louie put me to bed was based on a recurring dream. In the dream an old 1950s car is travelling down a country road. A large, menacing stranger wearing a fedora gets out and asks me to get in. I can't see who it is because the man's face is hidden under the brim of his hat but I know he is my father. All the same, if I get into the old car with him, I will end up dead. At first, I don't understand the dream's meaning. I think it's warning me not to get into cars with older strangers. Years later, I understand: the dream isn't about strangers. It's about my will taking me over. It's about the danger of falling into my father's habits until I work myself to death like he did.

49

AROUND NOON THE NEXT DAY, AN ENVELOPE WITH FAMILIAR handwriting arrives. It's postmarked with the stamp of a village near Towanda Lodge, but Little Louie's name is on it instead of mine. Sal is preoccupied with boiling up tomato soup for lunch and she doesn't see me grab the envelope and put it inside my satchel. I disappear upstairs to read it:

 

 

“All my love?” He signed my letters “affectionately,” meaning what you would think affectionately means (i.e., he has fond, affectionate and all-round serious feelings about me). He could have signed off with “best regards.” Did “affectionately” mean nothing? And how could Little Louie love him? Not long ago, she had Max and now she has John, too. Humiliating thoughts crash around inside my head:
He wouldn't love you, no matter how much somebody paid him. You are too scrawny and twisted-looking, even if you have become a bleeder
. To steady myself, I try breathing slowly, and reread his postscript. It still says the same thing: “the thought of you keeps me going” and I get mad all over again. There's not a word about me, his special friend. A big fat zero. His compliments were meaningless tossaway things. I was dumb enough to think he cared for me when all the time he was saving his real love for her. “Thirteen is the aching age,” Big Louie said. Well, I'm filled up with aching and somebody better make it go away. Yes. Why didn't I think of it before? Something is owed me by John and Little Louie and I have to get that owed thing before I ache myself to death in Madoc's Landing where the big empty spaces between the houses will make you go wild with loneliness.

When I get myself calm again, I call down that I don't want any lunch. Sal comes upstairs and stands outside my room, muttering as she dusts the hall furniture. The fake chirping of her voice suggests that she hopes I'll stop sulking and come out and talk. I stay where I am. Later, when Sal is gone, I put John's letter back in its envelope, glue its edges shut with LePage glue, and leave it on the hall table.

THE NEXT MORNING, SAL HAS to wake me because I slept in. It's Saturday and she reminds me that it's Scooterama, when everybody in Madoc's Landing comes out to see the scoots race each other up the Bay. The race is later this year because the Department of Lands and Forests wanted to enter its new fibreglass scoot built by the Department of Lands and Forests. The scoot wasn't ready in time so town council postponed the race until the end of March. Thanks to our icebox winter, the ice is still thick enough to give the crowd a good show.

Scooterama has never interested me before, but a front-page story about the new fibreglass scoot in
The Chronicle
starts me thinking. The scoot has a closed-in cabin, and a giant half-moonshaped rudder, and it outruns the older, wooden models, which are heavy and hard to steer. Most of the scoots on the Bay are hand-built and resemble wooden motorboats, except that an airplane engine and a propeller mounted on the stern drives them. The new fibreglass scoot works on the same principle only it's bigger and sleeker.

There's a picture of it on the front page along with a newspaper diagram that shows the position of its steering wheel, foot-feed gas pedal, and the storage compartment under its bow, which has lots of bunk beds, the newspaper says. Its driver plans to take it north to the town of Kilarney to demonstrate how much farther and faster it can travel than other scoots.

I go upstairs and pack some clothes into my school satchel. I stick in my Scholastic notebook and my grandmother's history of southwestern Ontario, too, and leave my hockey cards behind. Then I write my goodbye note.

Mouse's Note to Morley

 

 

I put my note on Morley's dresser and go downstairs for breakfast. My father is still in the kitchen working on the soft-boiled eggs that Sal cooked for him. I stare sadly at the back of his head.
You will never see him again, I tell myself. You will never see the thick iron-grey hair that matches his fedora, or his sad, deep-set healer's eyes, or feel the rough love tap of his hand against your cheek when he says hello. You will never sit by his chair and keep people from disturbing him when he naps after supper, or write things for him that he doesn't read. And he has no way of knowing that you are going out of his life forever, and Sal doesn't either although she'll be glad to have Morley to herself.

As we put on our winter coats, Morley trains his eyes on me. “Are you all right, Mary?”

“I'm not ‘Mary' now,” I reply. “I want to be called ‘M.B.'”

“What's wrong with ‘Mary?'” he asks, trading a look with Sal over my head.

“You named me after a dog,” I reply.

He reels back. Then he asks in a false, jolly voice, “You didn't believe Sal's story that you were named for my old spaniel, did you? Your mother always wanted a girl she could call Mary.”

I look at Sal for confirmation and she nods; suddenly, it's way too much: having to say goodbye when they don't know I'm leaving and then finding out that I wasn't named after a springer spaniel. But it's too late to change plans now. I just smile like anything and follow Morley and Sal out the door.

50

AT THE TOWN DOCK, MORLEY STOPS THE CAR AND SAL AND I GET out. To my surprise, he keeps the engine idling and watches me walk off into the crowd. He smiles and flaps his hand at me and I flap mine back, willing him to go before I lose my nerve. After a few minutes of watching me from his car, he drives along the line of people waiting to see the scoots. I feel as if he's following me, until the crowd parts to let his car through and then there's no sign he was there at all. Morley won't be back for ages. He's on his way to the hospital and there's no telling how long he'll be gone. So when Sal goes off to talk to Kelsey Farrow, I tell her I'm meeting Ben at the Dock Lunch stand, and I'll find her in a couple of hours. “We'll watch the scoot race together.” Sal, the fool, takes what I say as gospel and when she says goodbye for the last time, she doesn't know it's her final chance to tell me to watch my P's and Q's or call me Lady Jane, a name I hate more than apple juice in baby-sized glasses.

Ben isn't coming to Scooterama because he's visiting his grandmother so I'm not worried that he'll show up and wreck my plans. The only fly in the ointment is Mrs. Pilkie, who is standing next to me in the lineup to see the new fibreglass scoot. I have to make an excuse about why I'm by myself and not with Sal. Then we all file aboard and admire the scoot, which is twenty-eight feet from stem to stern. But I don't get off with the rest. While the next group of people line up to get in, I duck into the storage compartment and lock the door. The compartment isn't as big as The Chronicle claimed, and oil drums are stacked on some of its bunk beds. There are oil drums on the floor too, but why sweat the small stuff? I check my watch and lie down on the empty bunk. In two hours and forty minutes the race will start, and I'll be flying over the ice faster than John Pilkie can skate. Nobody can stop me now. I'll go like the wind without even trying. And then because I'm worn out from getting ready to leave my old life behind, I close my eyes and dream that John and I are flying down the Beaudry hill on a toboggan. Exhilarated, I press my face into the fur of John's raccoon coat, feeling the strength of his back muscles.
He wants me, and for that, I will stand by him through thick and thin, and nobody will catch us because John is too fleet of foot.

WHEN I WAKE UP, THE scoot is rattling and shaking like a tin can. Scoots vibrate when they travel over ice but inside the compartment, the vibrations feel worse than usual because I am up against the fibreglass side. The next thing I notice is that my bed isn't as comfortable as my bed at home and there are the oil drums all over the place and then I remember I am running away because John loves Little Louie and Morley is too busy with his patients to care about me. Then the vibrations stop. I can't hear anything except the whining sound of the wind outside.

Somebody tries to push open the door of the compartment. Before I can react, there's a horrible splintering noise as the wooden door breaks and a man pokes his head in. At first, I don't recognize him. I'm not used to his face with a beard, although his big pop-out eyes and cowlick are the same. I burst out: “I didn't tell on you! I mean, I did tell but Sal wouldn't believe me.” He takes a wheezing breath as if pneumonia is rattling his lungs. “Mary, you're too damn honest for your own good, eh?” Giving me a wink, he sticks his head outside and calls: “Sweetheart, we've got a stowaway. Come see for yourself.”

Little Louie pokes her head inside, and now it's our turn to stare although I turn away as soon as I see it's her, and she cries in a low, sad tone: “Mary! Dear God!” She must see the look of pure hate on my face because she adds in a shamefaced whisper: “John didn't want me to tell you.”

“That's not true!” I shout. “You're a big, fat liar!”

“Mary, I didn't mean to hurt you!” She tries to come in, but he gently pushes her back outside. “Let me talk to Mary, darling.” He sits down on the bunk beside me. “How did you get here, Annabel Lee?”

“I'm running away to start a new life.” My voice comes out in a whisper, because I still love him — but not in the way I used to before.

“You and me both. And Louisa too.” He smiles slightly. “But we've got a few people right now who want us back in Madoc's Landing. Like to have a look?”

I'm not sure I do, although I let him take my hand and we go up on deck. My aunt is there, gripping the gunnels and staring at the mainland where five small black dots spouting rooster tails of snow are speeding across the ice.

“They're coming after you?”

He nods. “They won't catch us. Not if I can help it. Right, Louisa?” He grins and she smiles back reluctantly. For the first time, I notice she isn't properly dressed. She's wearing her expensive Persian lamb jacket and her cloche hat. Plus her nylons, of all things, and a new pair of high leather boots that I've never seen before. John has on his raccoon coat and chocolate-brown fedora. The two of them look like they're dressed for church, or maybe a honeymoon, but I'm too cowed to ask how they got on the scoot or why they are wearing clothes like that.