This One Because of the Dead

by Laure Baudot

  “You’re lucky.” Alcohol spread up from my abdomen and into my chest, which made me feel both very happy and very sad. “Don’t your parents mind?”

  Darren shrugged. “My booze, my rules.”

  “Are they even here?” Jen asked.

  “My mom works double shifts at a diner up the road.” He swigged his beer. “Anyway, one more year and I’m outta here.”

  “And you’re off to …?” Jen asked.

  “Secretarial college in to. There are a lot of jobs.” He stared hard at us.

  “We’re not laughing,” Jen said.

  Darren’s leg fell against mine. “Yup,” he said. “Rent is taken care of. The camp job will pay for the books. One more year and I’m set.” He frowned.

  He tuned a transistor radio until he hit on Guns N’ Roses. Then he sat back down. His leg bounced to the music. With each movement, his jeans rubbed against my bare right knee.

  When Jen got up to use a washroom that, despite being on the other side of the trailer, seemed too close, Darren rose to turn up the music. “You know.” He winked. “To cover up.”

  Later, he gathered our empties, opened a cupboard under the kitchen sink, and slotted them into their case. With a dishrag, he wiped the wet bottle rings off the counter.

  Someone must have said something to Murray about what happened in Michelle’s cabin. The next day, I came out of the main building’s bathroom, into the lobby, to find Murray and Michelle talking. They stood near a wall that was tiled in yellow; the colour appeared to extend from Michelle’s hair to form several bright sun rays around her head.

  Murray bent over her. “I understand one of your campers was intimate with another.”

  She looked down. On her cheeks were two round spots.

  “Have you thought that someone might get pregnant?” he asked.

  “Betty is old —”

  “Extrapolate, please, Michelle. It’s our job to keep our campers safe.”

  In the end he patted her arm and let her go. As I left the lobby, Logan came through the door to the dining hall and drew Michelle in for a hug.

  I figured that Logan just needed time to get to know me. After all, guys had never been a problem. One day, I followed him to the lakefront. The swimming area was cordoned off on two sides. Perpendicular to the shore was an L-shaped, light-blue dock, which swayed in the wind.

  Logan paced on the dock and smoked. There was a morning swim and an afternoon swim, and he smoked before and after each one.

  When the dock trembled, he looked up.

  I moved forward. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?”

  “Sorry, all out.”

  “I’m Lydia, by the way.” I held out my hand.

  He stared at it. “I know who you are.”

  I nodded. What was it with this one?

  “You from that high school in the city? Meadowvale or Sunnyvale?” he asked.

  “Meadowvale. How did you know?”

  “Every year, they send us some.”

  “It’s a good opportunity.”

  He snorted.

  “What?”

  “Forget it.” He threw his cigarette into the water, where it floated like a bit of ribbon. He turned toward the shore.

  “No, really.” I smiled in a way I considered winning.

  He spun around. “Here’s the thing. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “I know enough —”

  “Really. Did you know that Betty Bernowski was abused?”

  “I didn’t know if it was true,” I said.

  “What about those burn marks on her backside? Some-one sat her down on a stove when she was a kid.”

  I stared. “Oh my God. I didn’t realize.”

  “Right. People like you. Campers suffer because of you.” He turned away again.

  “Don’t you mean ‘clients’?”

  “What?” He glanced at me out of his periphery.

  “Clients!” I shouted. “We’re supposed to call them clients. It’s politically correct.”

  He marched back. “I could draw circles around you, girl.”

  I went out into the woods. Just took off right after lunch. I figured the post-lunch nap-time would last an hour. Jen could handle the cabin while I was out. I needed to get out of there. The messes, the noise, Logan — I’d had enough.

  He knows nothing about me, I thought. Nothing at all.

  The path started in the woods, but almost immediately opened up into a field. The grass was beige in spots. My body moved through floating wisps of milkweed. Soon, the path went past an apple orchard, and the scent of baked apples joined that of dry grass. The sun fell on my shoulders. I picked up the pace.

  After a while I felt better. I’ll stick it out, I decided. The money, at least, was worth it.

  I was halfway around a loop that we had hiked as a camp group two weeks before. It didn’t make sense to backtrack, so I went around the loop. The path went through fields, then woods again, before circling back to a different part of the camp, near the water. When I broke out of the woods, my legs were scratched from nettles. I saw from my wrist-watch that I had been away for two hours instead of one. Nap time had ended, and swim period had come and gone. A breeze hit the sweat on my forehead.

  Near the swimming beach, beside a large oak, a group of counsellors was gathered. This was weird, for the swimming area itself was empty. Even stranger was the makeup of the group: Michelle, Logan, Murray, and Jen. Jen didn’t like any of those guys. Who was with our campers?

  Jen sat on a log under the oak, her head in her hands. Michelle was beside her.

  When I was a few meters away from them, Murray and Logan looked up.

  “We have a situation, here, Lydia,” Murray said.

  “Jen, what’s wrong?” I asked.

  She looked up. Her eyelashes were wet. “It was a bit too much.”

  “What happened is that you didn’t do your job,” Murray said.

  “Logan saved a camper from drowning,” Michelle said. “The others freaked. Jen couldn’t deal with them. No offence, Jen.”

  “You know how it is, Lyds,” Jen said. “They feel what’s going on around them.”

  “You saved someone?” I asked Logan.

  Michelle answered. “He saw someone floating. And he just went in.”

  Logan looked bewildered. “I just did it. Without thinking, you know?” He took out a cigarette. I expected someone to stop him, but no one did. When he lit up, his hands shook.

  “Where were you?” Murray asked me.

  “Walking. Just needed to recharge.”

  “How many campers do you have?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many?”

  “Ten.”

  “Jen had ten campers on her own, while you went traips-ing about.”

  Logan narrowed his eyes at me. “I heard that you were on patrol duty the night Betty was caught in flagrante.”

  “Delicto,” I said. “It’s in flagrante delicto.” I couldn’t help it. I was always a bit of a snob. Another reason most girls hated me, I suppose.

  “You should kick her out,” Logan said.

  “Now.” Murray made an appeasing gesture. “You did well today, but I’m still the boss.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Jen.

  “Lydia, go up to your cabin and take over from Shelley,” Murray said.

  “The secretary?”

  “Tonight, after Jen has rested, she can watch the cabin and I’ll see you in my office.”

  “I’m going to lie down,” Jen said.

  “I’ll go with you.” Michelle put an arm around Jen. They walked away like that, together, all the way up the hill.

  Jen stayed in bed until after dinner, leaving me in charge of bringing the campers down
to the dining hall and then back up the hill to bed, which meant that after I’d undressed everyone and tucked them in, I’d wanted to scream to all of them to get the frig to bed already. And I still needed to talk to Murray.

  It was dark by the time I came back from Murray’s office. Darren was sitting on the front steps of our cabin.

  “How did it go?” he asked.

  “He can talk.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He expects more from me, and he thinks he sees maturity.”

  “Phew.”

  I looked at him.

  “I thought he would fire you,” said Darren.

  “Yeah, well.” I was too embarrassed to tell him that Murray had put me on probation, that one more step in the wrong direction would get me kicked out. I pictured telling my parents. My father would say, “There’s a lesson here.” My mother’s eyes would glint in a way that meant, triumphantly, “I told you so.” She too had warned me repeatedly about my irresponsibility.

  “Where’s Jen?” I asked.

  “She went out. Said she needed fresh air.”

  “She left you here with the campers?”

  “Wait. Are you complaining about that?”

  I sat on the steps. Automatically, I checked for wood-stain marks on my shorts, even though the wood had been dry for weeks.

  “What kills me,” I said, “is she’s always telling me to think for myself.”

  “But she’s your friend.”

  I slapped a mosquito on my thigh and wiped away the blood with my finger. After a while I asked him if he wanted to go inside.

  He looked surprised. “Sure.”

  Darren held the screen door open for me. I went into the alcove bedroom. Moonlight filtered through the open window, so I kept the light off, and reached behind him to close the door. It bounced back, leaving a one-inch gap.

  “Forget it,” I said when he made a move to close it again. “It never works. Lie down.”

  “Why?”

  “Do you want a massage?”

  “I won’t say no.” His voice had risen by half an octave.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  He took it off quickly and threw himself on my cot.

  I straddled him and went to work.

  “Hmmm.” His eyes were closed.

  I took off my shirt and leaned into his skin.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Was this all there was? Yet being in control felt good. It was like with all those other boys, a taut line of power, a deep thrill that ignored consequences.

  The light came on, and I flew off.

  Betty stood in the doorway, her square, middle-aged face contemplating us. A look between curiosity and amusement crossed her face. I had this strange urge to flaunt everything, to bare the rest of myself to her.

  Murray’s head rose behind her right shoulder. He must have been on his rounds. “What the hell.” He bent his neck to fit under the doorframe. A giraffe. A giggle struggled to loose itself from my throat. “You, out,” he said to Darren.

  Darren picked up his shirt and moved toward the door.

  “Pack your bags. You can take the bus into the city tomorrow.”

  Darren stared at Murray. “But I live here. I mean, just outside camp.” He had that goofy grin he got whenever he was nervous.

  “As long as you’re out by morning.”

  Darren stopped smiling. He looked at me and then at Murray. His eyes went back and forth between us and then settled on me. Red rose into his face, then leached out as he tried to remember why it was that he couldn’t be angry at me.

  “And you,” said Murray, to me. “Do you have any idea how inappropriate this is?”

  “Betty is an adult.”

  “I don’t care. You are in a position of power.”

  We argued some more. He told me I was fired. All the while, I kept my arms where they’d landed when he came through the door: crossed, crushing my T-shirt against my chest.

  Stage Presence

  Five years before Jesse died, I ran into him in the shopping centre below my building. I was entering; he was on his way out. He bumped my shoulder, put out a hand as if to steady me, then retracted it. “Amy. What are you doing here?”

  “I live upstairs.”

  “I’m in the next complex! Wait.” He reached his hand out again, placing it on my forearm. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

  In the fluorescent light, his forehead glistened with sweat, as if it were covered in a layer of plastic wrap. His cheeks were doughy and his red hair no longer shone in the way I remembered. He looked worried. Anxiety was a quality I didn’t associate with him. And there was something else, too, which I couldn’t place.

  “Do you want to come to my party?” I asked.

  “I was thinking something quieter.”

  I hadn’t wanted him to come, but now I did. Some old affection had grabbed me. “You’ll like my friends. They’re from film school.”

  “So you did it.”

  Was that envy in his voice?

  “I’ll come.”

  Jesse was the first to arrive that evening. He wore a down coat, though he’d only had to walk around the block to get from his apartment to mine.

  “Everyone’s on their way,” I said.

  I wanted all my successes to unfold before him. I felt an odd breathlessness, as if I were yearning for the friendship that had been extinct for years.

  Jesse was my only friend when I was twelve. He was beautiful, with near-feminine features: that skin Victorian writers described as porcelain, a long narrow nose, and thick reddish curls. I wonder now whether his pallor was due to a chronic kidney illness, which he’d had since childhood. He almost never talked about his poor health, nor about his regular visits to the hospital for dialysis. He joked constantly and it was impossible to have a serious conversation with him. I’d assumed that he felt close to me because we both had absent fathers, until we found our common obsession with movies. He lived with his mother, who worked for an acting agency and had arranged employment for him as a child actor on a historical drama on public television. By the time he reached high school, he needed classes that accommodated his filming schedule, so he chose an alternative school for actors and dancers — and I followed him.

  I put Jesse’s jacket in my bedroom. “Do you want a drink? Or a tour?”

  “I’ll take the tour.” He moved toward an east-facing window overlooking Toronto’s skyscrapers. “Nice view. I face the other side.”

  “On clear nights you can see the CN Tower. Not to mention the neighbour opposite, who walks around naked.”

  “Nice.” Frost had crept up the window in an arc like a peacock’s plumage. Jesse rubbed at it with an index finger.

  “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”

  “I can’t. My kidneys.”

  “How is all that?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Alright.”

  “How about a Perrier?” I said, fleeing into my kitchen.

  The year he turned seventeen, his illness had worsened. He was absent from school for an unusually long time, and when he returned, he’d gained weight. His features had softened, as if we were seeing him through an unfocussed camera lens. He wore glasses, oversized frames he must have pulled out of a drawer. Poor guy, I’d thought, he can’t wear his contacts. By that time I’d stopped talking to him, and my pity was coupled with an uneasy justification. Everything we did in those years rode on our appearance and I figured that his marred looks were punishment for his bad behaviour toward me.

  Now he wore wire-rimmed glasses, as dated as his first pair.

  “I’m going to make a call,” I shouted from the kitchen. Although the room was open-concept, the cement dividing wall absorbed sound, and I was forced to raise my voice. I picked up the cordless phone. “
Figure out where everyone’s at.”

  At one time or another, we’ve all thought of high school as a space of possibility. The evening before my daughter started grade nine, she talked about the outfit she would wear, as if by wearing the right thing she could control what would happen to her in the subsequent four years. As if overnight she would become someone other than who she was. Children think they can perpetually make themselves up. They’re optimists that way.

  My own high school had been filled with kids who were professional artists. Ballerinas and actresses minced into school in preppy clothes, carrying portfolios of their head shots which they giggled over at lunchtime. I understood even then that beauty could propel a person through the world, that behind good looks a person could hide all shortcomings.

  Once, I strode into class with my chin up, as if I were balancing a book on my head. “You walk funny, Amy,” a ballerina said. She was thin and had short hair like an enormous black brush stroke. “I’m joking! Jesse, tell her I’m joking.”

  Jesse, sitting at a desk, looked up and smiled gently. “Buck up, Amy,” he said. He wasn’t interested in teenage girls’ dramas.

  When my friends finally showed up at the party, they tumbled in with the chaos typical of those used to having stage presence. Angus and Christian came in first and shook the snow off their boots.

  “Damn, it’s cold,” Angus said.

  Behind them came Angus’s girlfriend, who stared at Jesse. “I’m Caterina.” She extended her hand, forcing Jesse to cross the room to shake it.

  They moved toward my sitting area, two cream-coloured love seats and a couch pushed against a wall. In the middle was a pentagon-shaped, faux-marble table. Caterina and Angus sat kitty-corner rather than beside each other, which made me wonder if today was an off day in their on-again, off-again relationship. Angus, as usual, sprawled, looking as if he took up more space than he actually did. Christian sat opposite him, his self-esteem suffering in Angus’s presence. Christian worked hard at school, but no one noticed whereas Angus was inconsistent in his efforts, but when he paid attention he blew everyone away. Passionate about something, he talked fast, leapfrogging from one idea to the next; I could almost see his synapses firing.