by William Bell
“So, what’s the new idea?”
“Drop out now.”
“What? You’re almost finished. A month or two and you’re out — with a diploma.” Then he got that crafty look of his. “You want to pull this off when your mother’s away, don’t you?”
I dodged the question. “I can’t stand school any more. I hate it and I don’t need it. The bottom line is, it’s my life. I ought to be able to make the decision.”
He crossed his arms on his chest. He didn’t look very firm, not wearing a sky-blue apron with big red chrysanthemums splashed all over it.
“If you go through with it, you’ve got to have a plan,” he said.
Hooray! I almost shouted. He was weakening. “I do. I’ll work at the store every afternoon and look for a cabinetmaker who wants an apprentice. I’ve also checked into a couple of community colleges that have courses in design.”
He smiled. “You need your diploma to get into community college.”
He thought he had me. “No, I don’t,” I said. “The courses are given at night, and there’s no prerequisite.”
“If you’re out of school you need a job.”
“I have a job. At the store.”
“Well, that might not be enough, you know. Minimum wage, half a day, that’s not much income.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, quitting school has consequences. One of which is to earn enough to keep yourself. I’m not sure you qualify right now.”
I began to see his strategy. He and Mom had obviously cooked all this up.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, staying calm, not letting my voice rise. “If I quit school I turn from a son into a tenant who lives at your house and eats your food. And I have to pay for that — room and board.”
He nodded. Behind him, the potatoes began to bubble.
“And you’re saying that I don’t earn enough at the store to cover it.”
He nodded again.
“Suppose I get another job, full time.”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to pursue your goal, would you? Not enough time.” He turned down the heat under the pot and opened the oven door. Chicken wings sizzled away on a roasting pan.
“On the other hand …” Dad said, his back to me, letting his sentence trail off.
Here it comes, I thought. The net is about to fall on my head.
“If I stay in school,” I finished his sentence, “and graduate, we can come to an arrangement.”
Dad closed the oven door, removed a tossed salad and a bottle of dressing from the fridge, along with a bottle of Creemore Springs beer. He uncapped the bottle and drank from it, then sat down at the table.
“Right. Now, here’s the thing,” he began. “I think we’ve got your mother onside about you not going to university. This has been hard for her. Don’t think it hasn’t. She had big hopes for you, but she’s coming around. Still, dropping out of high school — that would break her heart. You owe her, Garnet. You’ve got to finish this thing properly, for her sake if not for yours.”
I sat back in my chair, expelled my breath. “The laying on of guilt,” I said. “Every parent’s joy.”
Dad smiled. “One of the few real pleasures in life.”
He took another pull on the beer. “Want to hear the good news?”
“Sure,” I said, letting my disappointment show. Putting it on display. I could do the guilt thing, too.
But Dad wasn’t having any of that. He looked very pleased with himself.
“Okay, I’ve managed to get the house transaction straightened out.”
Big deal, I thought. I don’t want to move anyway.
“That’s point one. Two, the mobile home we were going to use is still available, and a little job comes with it. Roy Weeks is going away for a few months — he has family down in Arizona — and he wants someone on site at the park to act as superintendent. You mow the grass. That’s about it. If someone has a problem, plumbing, septic tank or whatever, you call a repair shop from a list he’ll leave you. He’s willing to take you. You can live in the trailer, go to school, work at the store on Saturdays, keep an eye on things for him, earn a small wage. What do you say?”
I was confused. After blackmailing me into staying in school, he was talking about another job. “So you’ll line this job up for me if I stay in school. And the reason I stay in school is, if I drop out, I need a job, which I don’t have.”
“For a gifted student, you can be a bit dim,” he joked. “I’ve moved on from that, so try and follow. Roy needs a hand. I thought of you, that’s all. It would give you a chance to save some money.”
“Over the summer.”
“Actually, he wants you to start right away. Now, want to hear part three?”
Feeling a bit over my head, I nodded.
“I’ve spoken to a fellow I used to do business with, before you became Olde Gold’s refinisher and refurbisher. You’ve heard me mention him — Norbert Armstrong over in Hillsdale.”
Armstrong, I knew, was a master cabinetmaker. I had planned to approach him about taking me on as an apprentice. I looked Dad in the eye and nodded.
“He’s agreed — if you do — to accept you in September, half days. That way you could still work in the store and have time to take your courses.”
“Dad! You’re kidding!”
“I’m not kidding.”
“That’s great!”
“But, my bonny lad, like all things in life, this deal comes with a condition.”
“Gee, I wonder what that is.”
“So, you’re staying in school.”
“And loving the idea,” I sneered.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I never did know what that meant.”
“Well —”
“Never mind, Dad.”
chapter
A week went by, a week of heavy homework and a major English essay on Wuthering Heights. Now there was a couple of strange ones, Cathy and Heathcliff, skulking around the windy moors under a brooding sky.
Raphaella turned up in English once, on Wednesday, but had slipped away after class before I could talk to her. I thought about her constantly, carried the ache around like a bulky package I was afraid to put down.
So that night I phoned her. The mother answered.
“It’s the bird guy,” she called out after I told her who I was. “Gannet.”
“I’m Garnet,” I corrected her hopelessly. “G-A-R —”
“Tell him you’re busy or something.”
“Hello.”
“Hi, Raphaella. How are things?”
“Fine.”
“Let’s go to a movie tonight.”
“I can’t.”
“Don’t tell me. You have to wash your hair.”
My lame attempt at a joke fell flat.
“No, I’m just busy.”
“Tomorrow, then?”
“Sorry.”
“I’d really like to see you again.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Are you going with someone?”
“No.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
Wow, this is going well, I thought.
“Well, let’s get together, then.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I have to go.”
“But —”
“Bye.”
She wasn’t in class next day or Friday. I began to wonder if she skipped off just to avoid me.
On Saturday morning a warm spring wind blustered up and down the sidewalk, rattling the budding branches of the trees along Mississauga Street. I opened up the store at the usual time, got my coffee from next door — I needed it; I had hardly slept — turned the “Open” sign to face the street and put Beethoven on the CD player. The showroom looked a little bare — the theatre people had come by and picked up the pieces Raphaella had chosen for the set of The Sound of Music or, as I thought
of it, The Worst Musical Ever.
I was a little on edge about Raphaella rejecting me and my complete failure to come up with a clever stratagem that would win her heart, or at least get her to talk to me, so I decided not to work out back that day. I selected an old leather-bound gilt-edged book from the shelves along the wall, settled into a re-upholstered loveseat with my coffee at hand, put my feet up on a 150-year-old needlepointed ottoman and opened the book. It was Edgar Allan Poe, just the thing to cheer me up.
“For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief,” began “The Black Cat,” one of the few of his stories I hadn’t read. “Mad indeed would I be to expect it.” Great stuff, wild mystery, insanity, dark happenings. I sipped my coffee and slouched deeper into the soft seat.
The writing was gripping but I fell asleep anyway and sank into a nightmare. I was running through a night forest, panting with exhaustion and terror, pursued by a razor-clawed, slavering black cat with eyes like fire. Frantic, I pressed forward, but my legs wouldn’t work, as if I was running waist-deep through mud. Behind me bounded the cat, ready to leap, sink its claws into my back and pull me down before tearing my flesh with its teeth.
The ground fell away and I floated like a falling leaf, landing in a grassy field that hissed at my legs as I stumbled along through the dark toward a building that loomed ahead. I pushed open the door to escape the cat, slammed it behind me. Shaking, I curled up on the floor in the corner.
Then I heard voices. Angry voices, heavy with fear and loathing, the words running together like distant thunder.
Eighty wish.
Now!
Go back!
No, no!
Stones, stones!
A bell rang in the distance and the voices drifted away like mist.
“Hey, Garnet.”
I leapt from the loveseat, sending the book flying and upsetting the coffee, and stood trembling, blinking against the bright light in the window.
“Who’s there?” I demanded.
When my eyes adjusted I recognized Brad Summerhill, whose father ran one of the local weekly auctions. He was wearing his usual bush shirt, jeans and broken-down high-tops, and he carried a clipboard in his right hand.
“Got a delivery for you,” he said.
“Oh, okay,” I managed, my heart hammering. “What is it?”
“Bunch of stuff your old man snagged at the Maitland sale.”
“If you bring it around back to the usual place, that will be fine.”
“You got to help me unload, though. The price only covers delivery.”
Brad always carried a clipboard, always came through the front door rather than the back, always said the same thing.
“Sure, Brad. Glad to help.”
“Long as you know.”
“I know, Brad. I know.”
chapter
By a strange — well, maybe not so strange — thought process, helping Brad unload Dad’s latest haul brought me to Raphaella. I lugged a spinning wheel directly into the showroom, thinking it would partially fill the empty space made by the loan to the opera house, then looked across the street to the ugly old redbrick building itself. Was she there? Fifty yards away? Ignoring me?
By the time I had signed the waybill, thanked Brad and sent him on his way, Raphaella had taken over my mind like an invading army, and I was good and angry. Why had she dismissed me so abruptly on the phone? We had had a nice talk in the shop that day. She had seemed relaxed, friendly, not eager to get away. I was sure she wasn’t being friendly because of the deal we had made about the furniture.
So why the brush-off?
Okay, she didn’t want to go anywhere with me. Fine. But she could at least have told me why. Or at the minimum, she could have been polite. What was I, a leper?
The more I turned thoughts over in my head, the angrier I got.
I shrugged into my jacket, put the “Back in a minute” sign in the window, hastily locked up the store and stomped across the road. The stage door at the rear of the building was unlocked. I climbed a set of dimly lit stairs and found myself backstage in a confusion of chairs, dangling ropes, garment racks hung with old-fashioned gowns and morning coats, props of all kinds.
Voices coming through the curtains from front stage indicated that a rehearsal was in progress. When my eyes had adjusted to the gloom I caught sight of Raphaella on the other side of the backstage area, sitting in the glow of a small lamp, a headset on, a clipboard on her lap.
She was wearing black denims and a scarlet T-shirt that said “Tax the Rich.” The lamplight fell on her bare arms and the curves of her upper body. Desire surged through me like an electric current, burning away my anger.
I approached quietly. Intent on her work, she didn’t notice, but spoke softly into the mike and made a notation on her clipboard. Unselfconsciously, she reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, revealing the birthmark, lending a trace of vulnerability to her beauty.
My heart pounded in my ears. My throat went dry. I whispered her name.
Calmly, she looked up, pressed her finger to her lips to signal quiet. She pointed to her watch, held up her hand with the fingers splayed, five minutes, and turned her attention to her notes.
I stood watching her, my resolve leaking away as each minute passed. What was I going to say to her, now that I’d dropped the idea of telling her off? How would I justify interrupting a rehearsal? Now she’ll really think I’m a loser, I thought. A little puppy too stupid to realize he’s not wanted.
“All right, everybody, that was fine,” came a man’s voice from the other side of the curtain. “Take ten and we’ll do the third scene.”
Raphaella stood up, her dark eyes sparkling in the lamplight. I figured I had about five seconds to persuade her to talk to me or she’d brush me off again. But I still couldn’t think of what to say. I opened my mouth to speak.
But instead of talking I stepped toward her, took her in my arms and kissed her.
In an instant, thoughts darted through my mind.
Her lips are full and soft, just as I imagined.
Her hair and skin smell wonderful.
Her arms are hanging loose at her sides; she’s not responding.
The small of her back is firm and slender.
Her lips aren’t responding either.
The swell of her breasts burns against my chest. God.
I could be charged with sexual assault for this.
I flashed back to grade one and Evvie McFadden, the love object I had kicked in the shin.
But slowly, Raphaella’s arms rose to embrace me, one hand behind my head. Her breathing quickened. I kissed her harder, then broke away.
“I know it sounds corny,” I said hoarsely, “like I took the line from a bad movie, and you probably don’t want to hear this, and —”
“Shut up and say it.”
“I’ve loved you from the moment I saw you.”
“But you don’t believe in love at first sight, remember?” she whispered, and this time she kissed me, long and hard.
“Hey!” someone yelled from across the stage. “Are you guys gonna come up for air soon?”
2
“This,” my father crowed triumphantly, “is not for sale.” He held a bashed-up book with half the leather cover missing.
“Who’d want it? It’s just an old book.”
“It’s more than that, kiddo.”
“So?”
“Tell you later,” he said, putting the book back into a box filled with other old volumes.
Dad and I were poring through the stuff he had bought at an auction on a farm out in Oro. I hardly paid attention to his excited ramblings. My every nerve still tingled from being with Raphaella a short time before. Our great love scene had drawn a few laughs and barbed comments from the cast of the WME, and Raphaella had sent me away, saying she’d talk to me as soon as rehearsal was over.
I was in shock, at the boldness of m
y action and — more — at her reaction. Who would have guessed that, rather than scream “Rape!” or punch me or bite my lip in disgust, Raphaella would wrap her slender arms around me and squeeze as if she’d never let me go? I couldn’t figure it out. And at that moment I didn’t care.
My father was as churned up as I was, for a different reason. Strictly speaking, he hadn’t participated in the auction at all. He had preempted it by contacting the Toronto lawyer handling the Maitland estate and offering a lump sum for the entire contents of the house. The remaining items — lawn tractors, patio furniture, two cars, some old farming equipment — went on sale to the public.
“He thought he was pulling a fast one on a country bumpkin awed by his big-city sophistication,” Dad said, still going on about the lawyer. “He pulled up in his luxury SUV, wearing a Peak Outfitters parka, brand-new hiking boots, every inch the outdoors man from downtown, and talked to me as if I was a cretin. I played along, trying hard not to drool out the corner of my mouth or say ‘aw shucks’ while we worked out the deal.”
All I knew of the Maitland farm was that it was old, one of the original pioneer homesteads in Oro going back to the early 1800s. According to Dad, who was up on all that stuff, the original farmhouse had been added to and refurbished over the years. The last surviving Maitland, who lived in California and had left the farm unused for two years after his mother died, finally put the whole place, chattels and all, up for sale.
Dad really had scored a big one this time. Along with a lot of junk there was furniture, some of it priceless, original paintings, silverware, lamps, carpets, blanket boxes — enough to keep Olde Gold Antiques and Collectibles stocked for a long time. The loot, as Dad called it, would keep me busy for another century, it seemed.
I set the boxes aside, mumbling that we had enough cracked-leather-bound Dickens and Thackeray and Haliburton and Susanna Moodie to outfit a geriatric library. But nothing could ruin my mood that day.
I had kissed Raphaella and she had kissed me back.
part TWO
chapter
For someone about to fly halfway around the world, my mother was traveling light. Aside from her laptop in its leather case and a roomy carryall, she had only one bag. The three pieces sat in the hallway by the front door.