Through Different Eyes

by Karen Charleson

  The gas station in Port Hope was just opening when Monica pulled the truck up to the pump. Another older truck was already ahead of her. To her surprise, she recognized Michael Clydesdale. The embarrassment she had felt that day on the new loop road returned in a rush. She wished that she could avoid the guy, but it was too late. He had already seen her. He nodded in her direction and she could have sworn that there was the briefest hint of a smile on his face. Monica managed to nod in return and deliberately looked away.

  “Here.” She looked up as he passed her the fuel nozzle.

  “Thanks.” She concentrated on filling Martin’s truck. She only glanced up when she heard his footsteps moving away. Before she could completely relax though, he was back. Yes, he was standing beside his truck, watching her.

  “Are you heading to Campbell River?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She supposed that he was only trying to be polite, and making the most of an uncomfortable situation. “Yes, I am. For the night.”

  “Me too,” Michael said, then appeared to pause.

  Just get in your truck and take off then. Monica did not say this out loud.

  “Hey,” he continued. “I wanted to apologize to you. I don’t know if I sounded short with you when we met on the road over there. I was taken by surprise, that’s all.”

  It was the most that she had heard him say. She nodded again, not really wanting to answer.

  “I’d like to talk,” Michael said. “That is, if you’re willing? We could maybe have coffee in Campbell?” When she did not reply immediately, he added “How’s three o’clock? This afternoon. The café at the Highliner. I can meet you there.”

  Before Monica could say anything in reply, he climbed into his truck. This Michael had practically given her an order. She wondered if he realized that. Damned if she’d be told what to do by some punk. He could sit in the Highliner and wait all afternoon, she thought. She would not be there.

  Monica had intended to use the long drive to carefully plan what she was going to say to Saul. There was too much going on at Ruby’s for her to take the time she needed. Most evenings in bed, instead of getting things clear in her head, she fell asleep almost immediately. Now, instead of preparing her speech for Saul, Monica found herself spending the first part of her trip thinking about Michael.

  The guy was a puzzle. She was usually pretty good at reading people, but she could not figure Michael Clydesdale out. How Brenda had ended up with him, Monica could not imagine. Brenda flirting and trying to get his attention, she could see. Brenda was not too different from herself as a teenager. And that’s what teenagers tended to do: they tried out their new-found abilities to attract the opposite sex. Michael was definitely an attractive young man, so sure, she could see Brenda smiling at him or tossing her hair or giggling hello. She could see her niece hanging around the construction site, too. Was Michael so easily impressed? Or distracted from his work? Was he the type to be drawn into something so foolhardy? Monica just did not know.

  Or had he taken advantage of Brenda? Anyone who would do that would surely display some trace of guilt or shame. Wouldn’t he be nervous or twitchy or evasive or hostile or something? Maybe he was just a drunk. If there was anywhere a person might drink in Kitsum, it was at his place. The problem with that scenario was there was absolutely no way Brenda would be partying at the Clydesdales. She would have been known there and her parents would have found out quickly. She would have been yarded home and grounded for life. Maybe they drank somewhere else. Monica knew that she was grasping at straws here. But what else could have happened? Michael did not look like a boozer, but appearances could be deceptive. People did stupid things when they were drunk. It was probably as simple as that. Monica was pretty sure that Brenda had exaggerated the extent of her relationship with Michael. She would go have coffee with this guy, she decided suddenly. She would find out more.

  Monica had already reached the Kitsum River Canyon. She pulled the truck over onto the widest part of the shoulder. There was only a slight crust of dirty snow. Walking carefully, she retraced her way back to the curve where she had a clear view of the canyon. She could see far below the roadway, where once-bare boulders were now covered by powerfully rushing white water. Months of rain and snow had swollen the river to at least twice its summertime size. Unlike in the ocean, where waves never stopped moving, here in the river, the biggest waves appeared to stand at attention. They retained their form while constantly flushing the running water through them.

  She spoke aloud to her mother and father. “I’m staying in Kitsum,” she said. “With Ruby and Martin and Brenda and Junior and Thomas and Becky and Millie. I’m going to be fine. We’re all going to be fine.”

  She stood silently for a few minutes and then slowly returned to the truck. Her mind was calmer now. She inched the truck up the mountainside and around the corners. There was no one else on the road.

  Poor Saul, she thought. Five years ago, when they had first gotten together, he had worshipped her. He had treated her as though she were some treasured and revered icon that he had the supreme good fortune to hold. Admittedly, the adoration had been intoxicating. Maybe she had needed it at the time. She had been Lady Monica tapping out favours with her royal wand. Of course, it had all been a fairy tale that could not last. Perhaps a year earlier, she had yelled at Saul “I’m not your Indian Princess.” He had not understood; he had blabbered on about never having seen her that way. She had remained silent, not because she believed him, but because she knew that it was pointless to get him to admit to his own lie.

  Every Sunday morning, Saul would bring her breakfast in bed. He had purchased a gold-trimmed tray with thin metal legs that folded out to balance on the mattress. He would often decorate it with fresh flowers or an ornament he had picked up at one of the garage sales he liked to frequent on Saturdays. Of all the white doves and stately carriages and fairy tale figurines he had chosen, she had preferred the frog that had accompanied her small glass of orange juice one morning. She had saved that one because she liked the bulging eyes, the speckled throat, and the greenish-brown colour.

  Saul’s timing had been impeccable. He had never brought the tray when she was still asleep or when she had first awakened. He brought it after she had used the washroom and stretched her legs. That had taken a lot of care, Monica conceded. He had to have waited and waited to determine the right moment.

  The thing Saul never understood was that Monica had only pretended to be pleased. He had gone to a lot of trouble and the whole scenario had obviously meant a lot to him. She had not wanted to disappoint him by telling him the truth — that eating in bed made her feel lazy and slovenly. It made her think of her Uncle Dan eating supper while reclining on his couch, oblivious to the bits of food that he spilled around him. As a child, when they had visited, she had avoided sitting on that couch even when the only alternative was sitting on the cold uninsulated floor. The idea of sitting on the remains of his messy meals had made her cringe.

  Saul was in love with Indians. He considered himself one of the few anthropologists who truly understood Native peoples. He had told her exactly that on a number of occasions. For anyone who might doubt his depth of comprehension, there was the example of his Native girlfriend. Monica had warned him about making her a showcase. Once again, he had not understood, or at least, he had pretended not to understand. In the end, she had found it easier to bow out of most of the conferences and university events.

  In another five or six years, Monica calculated, Saul would have a house in Ottawa. No, just outside of Ottawa. In his yard, he would have flowers and plants and trees, definitely trees. They would be oaks or elms or whatever it was that grew back there. He would fret with his new wife over academic papers and dinner parties and the next big research grant. Yes, he would be perfectly content. He would slowly rise to a certain prominence in his field. He was a smart man. It would not take him too long to get
on the successful career track he wanted.

  As Monica neared the end of the rough logging road, she was already anticipating the last few hours of fast driving on the smoothly paved highway. Then she noticed that Michael’s truck had pulled over. Vehicles commonly broke down or had blowouts on the Port Hope road. If he was having trouble, she would have no choice but to stop. She kept her foot on the brake, waiting to either drive onto the highway or pull off the road altogether. Then she saw his old truck start up and merge ahead of her. Michael had been waiting for her to be sure that she had made it through the road safely. Martin had done the exact same thing when she had driven her car back to Vancouver alone a few years ago.

  Monica walked into the Highliner Hotel a few minutes after three o’clock. She would leave quickly if Michael was not there. Then she spotted him. He was sitting beside a window in the rear of the café, watching the entrance. Monica saw him motion with his head. If she could have seen his eyebrows, she knew they would have been raised. It was that familiar Kitsum signal for “over here.” She crossed the blue patterned carpet and slid into the booth. The table separating her from Michael seemed slender at best. She looked across at the young man and managed a smile. He smiled back.

  “I haven’t eaten yet,” he said, shifting his gaze to the menus. “Have you?”

  Shaking her head, Monica looked down. None of the listed items appealed to her. When the waitress arrived, she asked for the daily special — a hot beef sandwich. It was the speediest order that she could make.

  “Well,” Michael started.

  “Well,” Monica mimicked. “We’re here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m worried about my niece.”

  “Is she okay? Is she going to be okay?” Michael sounded genuinely concerned.

  “She’ll be all right, I think. She’s having a hard time right now though.”

  Monica saw the grimace tighten his face like a fist.

  “Look, I’ll say my piece here, okay?” Michael waited for her to nod, to give her assent. “You can tell Brenda what you want out of this. That’s all I can do. Look, I couldn’t really talk before by the construction site. I was still at work and I was on my way back from phoning in an order for more nails…”

  Monica sighed.

  “I’m sorry, not that it helps anything. Believe me, I know that I should never have taken up with Brenda. It’s not her fault. She’s still too young. I know it’s my fault. But there’s nothing I can do about that now, is there? Not a damned thing.” Michael took a long drink of ice water, but Monica sensed that he was not finished. She had come here to listen, and listen she would.

  “I was flattered, I guess. When she started talking and flirting with me. Martin Joe’s daughter. I mean, she’s a nice girl too. She tried to act all grown-up and cool like she went out with lots of guys and stuff, but I could tell she was…is a nice young woman.”

  Michael stopped talking and Monica could not resist asking the question that both of them had to see hanging in the air. “Well, how could you, then?”

  Michael grimaced again. His voice took on a bitter quality, and for a second Monica was afraid that he was about to get angry, very angry. “How could I? You don’t think I’ve asked myself that question? Christ. I’m not going to start giving you details, if that’s what you’re after. Let’s just say that I tried to dissuade her. Not hard enough, obviously. But I definitely tried. You know,” he let out a hoarse laugh. “Your family thinks I’m an asshole. I guess they have that right. But if I had been more of an asshole before, and told her to get lost or not to come back, none of this would have happened. Man, I was trying to let her down easy. To show her, you know, that whatever she had imagined about the two of us was not going to work. I was trying to not totally wreck her confidence or anything.”

  It was Monica’s turn to take a drink of water before speaking. “Martin talk to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  Michael was not going to elaborate. Kitsum men, Monica thought. Like Martin, Michael was tight-lipped. She was the intruder, even for bringing things up. She decided to change tacks.

  “Brenda’s in love with you, you know.”

  “Brenda thinks she’s in love with me. It’s all some dream world to her. Believe me, it’s all in her imagination. I bet by now she’s probably realized. Even if she hasn’t admitted it to anyone. She must be more embarrassed than anything else. She’s stuck with the harsh reality now. You think I ever fooled myself into thinking that she really loved me? Forget it.”

  Monica could not say anything because Michael was close to revealing the truth. In fact, it surprised her that he had understood things so clearly. That had required some serious, honest reflection on his part.

  “Okay,” she said.

  At that point, she did not want to hear any more about her niece. She lowered her eyes to the tabletop and stared at the hints of stains that had been absorbed into the polish. She felt vaguely dirty discussing Brenda’s private life. It hardly mattered how true or untrue any of it might be.

  “You’re thinking maybe you shouldn’t have asked for this?” Michael said quietly. “And I’m thinking maybe I should have kept my mouth shut, eh? Look, I’m sorry. I’ll always be sorry. That’s what I got.”

  Monica nodded sadly.

  The waitress arrived with their meals. Monica wished that she had not ordered anything. Her stomach did not digest well whenever she was nervous or upset, but she had not eaten more than a piece of toast that morning. She began picking at the food in front of her. Then she realized that she was actually eating. She could hear Michael chewing ravenously.

  “You want tea or anything?” he asked her after a while.

  “The water’s fine,” she replied. He was trying to be nice. She would try too. She wished the meal to be over as soon as possible.

  Michael persisted in attempting more neutral conversation. “Are you staying here…at the Highliner?”

  She tensed at the question, and he noticed.

  “I saw the truck in the parking lot, that’s all,” he laughed. “I’m not psychic or anything.”

  “Oh,” she laughed nervously. “Yeah, I am. Just overnight though. I needed to do some shopping and make some phone calls.”

  “When are you going back to Vancouver? Everyone in Kitsum knows you live in Vancouver.”

  For a moment it felt like a friendly conversation. “Everyone, eh?” she said lightly. “I’m not going back. Not right now, anyways. Gary — the school principal Gary Ashton — he offered me a job at the school so I’m going to try that for a little while.”

  “Hey, that’s good. I wasn’t going to stay either when I came home in the spring for my mom’s funeral, but they offered me the construction work. I didn’t have anything else going on, so I thought, what the hell? It would be good to stay home for a while.”

  Monica found herself relaxing to the sound of his voice. Michael did not talk to her like she was a meddling old aunt. He talked to her like an acquaintance. At the same time, he looked at her the way a man looks at a woman. That was what had unnerved her when she had spoken to him on the road. Monica had spent too long in Vancouver. The men she had associated with there were colleagues at work or friends — mostly fellow academics — of Saul’s. Those men were tightly buttoned types who kept their sexuality hidden; some pretended that it did not even exist. Michael, she was pretty sure, would have found them ridiculous.

  “I’d better be going,” she told Michael as soon as the waitress brought the bill.

  He insisted on paying, and she did not argue. Monica climbed the first set of stairs so that she did not have to wait in front of the elevator. She was fairly certain that she had turned the corner halfway to the second floor before Michael had time to leave the café.

  Saul had phoned Ruby’s the day before New Year’s Eve. That was how Monica learned that he wa
s in their Vancouver apartment, packing for “their” move east. He had wanted her to leave Kitsum the next morning to join him. He had sounded surprised, in fact, that she had not already been in the city awaiting his arrival back. That was exactly what Monica had done in the past; she had cut short her visits home to Kitsum so that she could be in Vancouver when Saul got there. After not hearing from him for nearly two weeks, beyond a very quick Merry Christmas call that she took in the midst of all kinds of activity in Ruby’s kitchen, Monica was amazed at how arrogant Saul sounded on the telephone. She was deliberately vague in response. Only after she had hung up did she admit to herself that she was confusing Saul on purpose. Maybe, just maybe, he deserved a straight answer from her.

  Saul’s flight to Ottawa was in two days. Monica could not delay any longer. Trying to plan out her conversation was only making matters worse. She filled the hotel room’s coffee maker and watched the small pot gradually fill. Instead of thinking about Saul as she waited, she found herself thinking about Michael and their lunch together. Once they had stopped talking about Brenda, the conversation had turned pleasant. She was not comfortable admitting it, but she had actually started to enjoy herself.

  The coffee was ready. She needed to concentrate on Saul. Monica dialed the familiar number. It had been her phone number too, only a few weeks ago. A part of her hoped that Saul would be out or that he had already had the line disconnected.

  “Hello,” he answered on the second ring.

  “Saul. It’s me.”

  “Monica. Thank God. Where are you?”

  “I’m in Campbell River, Saul. But I’m not going to Vancouver. I’ve taken a job in Kitsum. I can explain it all, but Saul, listen. I’m sorry for not phoning sooner. I should have, but you know how crazy Ruby’s place can be. There’s always someone in the kitchen and I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  “Monica, what are you talking about? You’ve taken a job in Kitsum?” He pronounced Kitsum as though it were a disease. “Did I hear that correctly? What about your job here?”