The Stone Frigate

by Kate Armstrong

  The New Gym had been transformed again, this time with row upon row of desks placed as far apart as possible to prevent cheating, but close together enough to fit over 230 desks in one room. In high school, my marks had always been high enough that I’d had exemptions from exams, so just the sight of all those desks was daunting. The two weeks of exam routine flew past in a whirlwind of meals and studying interspersed with the actual exams and the sense of helpless finality.

  17

  HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

  I stared out the aircraft window at the frozen expanse of Canada, looking down on the innumerable kilometres of the snow-covered grid, a patchwork quilt of farms and roads. We were chasing the setting sun. I felt a sense of dread, though I wasn’t sure why. I’d been looking forward to these two weeks of escape for months.

  Mom and Dad were waiting at the baggage carousel of the Vancouver airport. When our eyes met, I spread my arms and pirouetted in my navy-blue No. 4 uniform and gold-trimmed pillbox. They smiled and we hugged in greeting.

  My mother’s first words to me were “Are you eating enough?”

  I ignored the dig and gave her a warm smile.

  The temperature was hovering around freezing, but it was mild and there was no sign of snow — typical West Coast winter weather. Our black Pomeranian, Trixie, excitedly greeted me in the car and settled in my lap for the drive home. We set out on the highway toward Abbotsford.

  Mom turned around to me in the back seat. “Now that you’re home, do you really want to go back to camp?”

  “Mom! I’m attending the Royal Military College of Canada. It is not cadet camp. You should be proud of me,” I said. She turned around to face straight ahead and I stared at her never-changing brown hair: dyed, cut, and curled in the same style as Queen Elizabeth’s. “I am not going to quit. The only way I will leave RMC is if I fail out trying.”

  “You’ve moved across the country alone to go through who knows what sort of crazy stuff. You said you wanted to quit,” she persisted.

  “I thought I did, for a while. I still do, lots of days. Most days. But I’m not quitting,” I said fiercely. Her criticism made me suddenly fond of RMC. “There’s a cadet expression that says RMC is a good place to be from.”

  “You’re not making sense,” she snipped. We drove in silence for a bit; the warmth I had felt for her at the airport was already dissolving.

  “Any news on pilot opening up to women?” Dad asked.

  “Not yet. It could take years. I might graduate and get my commission before it happens. Maybe our success at RMC will help open the doors of other career opportunities for women.”

  Mother blew an audibly dismissive blast of air from her nose. I turned my attention to petting my dog.

  I came into the dark house with a sense of trepidation — it was after seven at night — and caught the scent of Dad’s pipe tobacco. I didn’t even have to look. In my mind’s eye I could see his chair and the end table with the tobacco pouch resting next to the black glass ashtray holding his upside-down pipe. Nothing had changed on the surface, but inside everything had changed. My dread evaporated. I felt lucky. I’d survived and made it out unscathed. I had escaped; I never had to live here again. I could continue into my adult life as a normal person, leave the past here. From now on, I was a guest in my old life. Only two other people knew the truth, my mother and my brother, and they weren’t talking. Childhood stories could be anecdotal, even in my own mind, and focus on the good stuff. I knew how to play along in this house.

  Suddenly, I was exhausted. A surge of disorientation passed through me. In truth, I didn’t know how to be home anymore. I wondered if I ever had.

  I took my time changing into my jeans and a sweater and hanging my uniform in the closet of my old room. I thumbed through my clothes that had been sitting undisturbed for months and lay back on my queen-sized bed, arms flung wide in the peach and lime-green cloud of comfortable duvet bedding.

  “Come on down, and I’ll beat you at cribbage,” Dad’s warm voice called up to me. When I walked into the dining room, he was at the table with the board set up. “You’re looking fit.”

  “Are you eating enough?” Mom called out from the kitchen. I rolled my eyes, smiled, and shook my head at my dad.

  We played a few rounds of cribbage. My earlier sense of exhaustion became acute, and I used the three-hour time change as an excuse to go to bed early. On my way up the stairs, I imagined the sound of Gary’s car driving past the house. I hurtled into my bedroom, desperate for a glimpse of him. In the dark room, I peeked from behind my bedroom curtain, face pressed against the glass, hoping to catch him driving past, looking up at my room. The street was quiet, empty of traffic. He’s not coming.

  Trixie came in and curled up on my bed. I closed my door and pulled the drapes. Then I crawled under my duvet, cuddled my feather pillows, and sprawled out in the luxury of a queen-sized bed. I slept for ten hours.

  I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing and bacon cooking, stretched, threw back the duvet, and padded downstairs barefoot in my pyjamas. Mom rounded the corner coming out of the kitchen.

  “I was just coming to get you. I’m making scrambled eggs. Can you do the toast?”

  “Sure. Hey, Mom, all that stuff in my closet is exactly where I left it. It’s as though I still live here. Do you want me to clear it out?”

  “There’s no rush.”

  “I’m not coming home,” I said, pushing down the first two pieces of bread and staring down at the glow of the filaments inside the toaster. The simple act of making my own toast pleased me.

  “We’ll see,” she muttered. “Can you call your brother?”

  “Craig! Breakfast,” I hollered up the stairs. My brother Craig was three years older than me and still lived at home, despite being fully recovered from his childhood head injury and capable of making his own way in the world. He had worked at the local Keg Steakhouse since high school and was a manager there now.

  By the time he got to the table, we were already eating, but Mom got up to make his breakfast.

  “Hey,” he said. “Welcome home.”

  “Hey.” I stood for a perfunctory hug. “How’ve you been?”

  “Good,” he said. He sat at the table waiting for Mom to serve him. “Nothing new.” She came in with a plate of hot sliced toast covered in peanut butter and jam.

  “Mom, can’t he make his own toast?”

  “I’m right here. You can ask me directly,” Craig said.

  “Can’t you make your own toast?”

  “Mom does it better than me.”

  “Don’t get started, you two,” Dad said, snapping his news-paper in front of him.

  On Christmas Eve, Mother always served a traditional holiday meal — roast turkey, dressing, gravy, yams, mashed potatoes, corn, green Jell-O salad, cranberries, pickles, and all the fixings.

  My sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Doug, arrived with their ten-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son. Appetizers were served and Dad and I shared our annual plate full of toothpick-skewered smoked oysters.

  “I miss your hair,” Doug said, tousling my pixie cut. He grabbed my arm and squeezed my bicep. “Impressive.”

  “You have no idea,” I said. “I bet I could take you in an arm wrestle now.”

  “That will require quite a few more drinks before you’ll convince me.”

  Ellen joined in. “It’s so surreal. I can’t believe you actually went to military college.”

  “It was your idea,” I said.

  “What? How do you figure?”

  “Remember when I was in grade nine, you showed me that magazine article about the first women at West Point and said that I should do something like that? Somehow I’ve gone and done it.”

  “Well, don’t blame me!” she said.

  “I don’t. I’ve done it to myself. But still. Tell the truth. Do I seem different to you?”

  “I don’t think so.” She stepped back and looked me up and down. “Maybe y
ou look even more fit?”

  “I feel tense. Intense. Like I’m not funny anymore.”

  “You’re funny looking,” Craig cracked from the couch.

  We sat down to eat. I filled my plate to overflowing and ate with gusto. When I was nearly done eating, I glanced around the table. Most plates were still full, and some were seemingly untouched. Everyone’s mouths hung open and they were all staring at me. My niece and nephew giggled.

  “What?” I asked defensively.

  “I had heard that you learned extreme table manners at RMC,” said Ellen.

  The whole family burst out laughing, and then, while they ate, I told my stories about recruit term, demonstrating square meals, describing circle parade and the quirky facts we had to memorize and sleepwalking each night to do my ironing.

  For a split second, I felt the thrill of success. I finally felt seen by my family for my real self: a strong, capable woman.

  I leaned back in my chair and took it all in. Mother appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding hot bread pudding and hard sauce. She looked right through me and said, “Too bad Kate isn’t here. She always loved this pudding.”

  The words punched me in the gut. “Knock it off,” I said. “I hate that game. I never found it funny.”

  Right on cue, the laughter turned on me. The others around the table ignored me and joined in the teasing, pretending they were saying nice things about me in my absence. Instantly, I was ten years old again and collapsed into a sulking posture.

  “Would anyone like Kate’s share of Auntie Alma’s bread pudding and sauce? It was always her favourite,” said Mother, persisting.

  Doug spoke up, “I would!”

  I stood up from my slouch, pushed in my chair RMC style, and said, “Why don’t you go fuck yourselves?” They were still laughing as I closed my bedroom door.

  The holiday weeks sped past. I was rested again and eager to get back to RMC. I had seen my friends who were still living in Abbotsford and had spent time with Gary. He had mentioned getting back together but it didn’t go anywhere. It was hard to believe that four unremarkable months had passed in their lives, months that felt like an eternity in mine. When my friends reacted with shock and amazement at what I had endured, I felt proud but couldn’t really answer their questions about how I’d done it. I remembered having the feeling at RMC that I was missing out on something really good going on at home, that life was continuing on here without me. Well, now I knew that I wasn’t a part of this world anymore. A future sprawled out before me, one in which I would continue on the path I had chosen, away from Abbotsford.

  The day before heading back to RMC, I went downstairs to do my laundry. Even though my older brothers had left home years ago, Dad always built every house with a large basement bedroom furnished with their matching pine twin beds and orange bedspreads. I couldn’t stop myself from peeking in. Almost like a test. That’s when I saw the blue-covered book Be Here Now by Ram Dass sitting on the bedside table. My brother Robert had brought it home from his second year at UBC that last Christmas, right after I had told Mother about him. I remembered the weird lettering and drawings, like the sketch of two penises on one page framing the words for the path to enlightenment.

  I walked into the room, sat on the bed, and picked up the book, remembering the scene with Robert that Christmas in 1971. He’d given me the promise of being special to buy my silence, to guard his secret. When I got older, I struggled with feelings of being dirty and frightened. I was afraid to stop him and be alone. His long absences at university had been plagued with shame and promises to myself that I would make him stop. In the summer after his first year of university, he had been especially attentive toward me and I didn’t want to give that up.

  I don’t know what I had expected to happen when I finally said no that Christmas, but it had been so anticlimactic. “I don’t want to do it anymore. It makes me feel bad,” I had said when he told me to go to his room.

  He looked shocked, but all he said was “Okay,” and he never pressed the issue.

  “I still love you.” I hugged his side, hoping he would say he loved me, too. He silently patted my back the way Dad did when he hugged us.

  In the new year, Robert went back to UBC, immediately dropped out of his second-year studies, packed his bags, and emigrated to Australia. He was twenty years old. I was nine.

  When I was eleven years old, I would learn about having my period and how babies were conceived. Then I started to understand what he had been doing to me. Still, I felt like a bad person, like it was my fault. What I said had made him go away. I had still wanted him to be my brother; I just wanted him to stop. From the time he fled the country, it would be twenty-eight years, in 1999, before I would see Robert again.

  18

  THE BOSS

  I shuffled my suitcase into the main foyer of the Frigate, dropped it at my feet, put my hands on my hips, and beamed a big smile. I had been nervous to go home to Abbotsford for fear of being overcome with a desire to stay, but I knew that the Frigate was home now.

  In the orderly room, I glanced at the fourth-year bar slate for winter term: Mr. Jansen was cadet squadron leader, the top cadet in the Frigate. Mr. Morgan was moving into Wing HQ as the new cadet wing training officer to replace Helstone. No more Helstone! And effective immediately, first years were granted the privilege of no longer being required to make the side-to-side checks at the edge of the square. We could simply run across. Things were looking up.

  Room reassignment moves were underway and the hallways were full of cadets traipsing armloads of bedding, unpacked belongings, boxes, and luggage to their new rooms. With only four women, there were limited roommate possibilities for second term. Meg and Nanette would be together on the second floor in a room overlooking the water. Nancy and I were in the largest room on the third floor overlooking the square. I was as tall and willowy as she was petite and curvy, which landed me in the top bunk that term. We would be the only women in C Flight. In second term, all the flights were a mix of first-, second-, and third-year students. Only first years shared rooms.

  After class on the first day, we went directly to a large bulletin board in Mackenzie Building to check for exam results. My main concern had been chemistry, but I had passed. Barely. I had passed all my courses. Barely. How had life seemed so easy in high school? I was going to have to work harder this term.

  I couldn’t believe the day would ever come, but basketball was on the chopping block. There was no point pretending or being sentimental. Besides, ever since Kurt had sprained his ankle and had to sit out for the season, my enjoyment of practice had lost its edge. My chronic exhaustion had spawned an unnatural obsession with sleep. I would count every moment of sleep per day and rush to my room during any block of spare time longer than forty-five minutes and power nap while laying at attention on my bed, fully dressed in my uniform without taking off my boots. I also developed an aversion to unnecessary exercise — I simply didn’t have the time or energy to keep practising in the hopes of fourteen other women basketball players coming to RMC in the future. Especially if I failed out and wasn’t even here to play anyhow. But I did feel sentimental. Ever since I had sprouted in grade five, being a basketball player had been part of my identity. On this team, I wasn’t even allowed to play in the real games. But who was I without basketball? Time to find out. I ran the parade square back to the Frigate, went straight into the orderly room, and signed up for intramural floor hockey.

  Contrary to my resolve to conserve energy, here I was going alone, as the only woman, on winter survival training with ten men to Algonquin Park, where the snow was four feet deep and I was easily the most inexperienced cross-country skier of the group. Luckily, Jerry Stawski and his best friend, Bill, from Eight Squadron, had taken me under their wing and agreed to watch out for me. I carpooled with them and one other guy. I kept wondering who had written that stupid note about why I didn’t want to come on this trip. Whoever it was didn’t mention the only re
al reason — I should be back at the college doing homework instead of chasing after a bunch of guys through the wilderness to prove something.

  At each rest break, I would glide toward them, soaked with sweat through my layers, and they would start skiing ahead again. They took turns blazing trail while I slogged away at the back for the entire four days. I started counting my strides. Just get through the next fifty.

  At one point, I lost sight of the group and despaired that I might collapse and die of hypothermia, when the tracks broke out of the trees onto a frozen lake covered in several feet of pristine powder. There wasn’t another mark in the snow within eyeshot, just a rolling plain of perfection cut by our trail. The guys stood still in the middle of the lake as I panted up to them. No one spoke. Jerry turned and held his fingers to his lips. I held my breath and then I heard it. The silence was so heavy it had gravity. A tear of awe leaked from the corner of one eye, crystallizing in my lower lash. For a split second, I remembered that the real world still existed outside of RMC and would always continue to exist.

  On the way home, I resolved to never sign up as a member of the mountaineering club. I was glad I’d done this trip, but once was enough. It was time to quit trying to prove that I belonged. I dozed in a semi-lucid state as Jerry and Bill sang along at the top of their lungs to the Doors cassette blasting over the stereo. In concert with the lyrics, Bill made a comical display of keeping his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel.

  I fell asleep with a smile on my windburned face, grateful to be in a car full of laughter and heading home.

  Bruce Springsteen was on tour for his new album, The River, and had a concert booked in Ottawa in January. I had signed up to go. On the bus, an unfamiliar voice said, “Mind if I sit here?” I looked up to see a tall man with fine features gesturing toward the empty aisle seat next to me. Dangerously handsome.