Home Schooling

by Carol Windley

  When we’d lived here, I’d just finished school and had got a job at the local radio station. I had no real training, but I could write grammatically and type with some accuracy. My manner on the telephone was, I believed, helpful without being effusive. But then, I was never very talkative, which made Simon remark, in a baffled, suspicious tone, “You write poetry, don’t you? You must have some thoughts inside that head of yours.” It was true; I did. But I was used to being solitary and keeping my thoughts to myself and until Simon began to goad me I hadn’t known this was a flaw.

  Bethany called Simon a bad influence, and I suppose he was. I remembered driving home from some party with Simon and he’d be so woozy from drink he’d have to hang on hard to the steering wheel for balance. His tolerance, he’d said, wasn’t as good as it had been. Simon was forty-seven, although I had the presence of mind to subtract a few years when Bethany pressed for details. Far from being a detriment, Simon’s age made him seem a romantic figure to me. He had the dusty, tattered appearance of a traveller from some vast, arid country fraught with danger. His hazel eyes were flecked with grains of light, as if he were continually focusing on some new thing. His person was weighted down with well-thumbed note-books, ballpoint pens, a small tape recorder. He talked to me about serious things, world politics, economics, the books he’d read. He even looked at my poems and told me which ones he liked and which ones, in his opinion, didn’t work all that well.

  I pictured our house the way it had been in those days: small and plain, rundown, and me inside it, nineteen years old, slightly hung-over following another debauched night in Simon’s company. I remembered getting out of bed at noon and going into the kitchen in my pyjamas to pour myself a cup of coffee. From the window I could see Bethany weeding a border of sweet alyssum and those little dwarf marigolds. It must have been a Sunday, because she wasn’t at work. I winced at the light, the radiance of the flowers, which seemed like nothing you’d find in an ordinary garden. Bethany used to make me do some weeding or pruning as punishment for some misdemeanour, like not phoning home to say where I was, or not getting home until nearly dawn. Where’s the punishment in that, I’d ask, laughing and holding out my hands for her to see: gardening had already destroyed my fingernails and left dirt permanently embedded around my cuticles. Bethany had said, Fine, if that didn’t sound enough like punishment, she’d lock me in my room. She would lock me in and swallow the key, if necessary. I’d laughed and said she wouldn’t dare. She said try her and see.

  It was hard to keep up to Bethany’s high standards. She worked six days a week as a clerk at a building supply store, and after work she kept busy tending the house and the garden. That morning, I remembered, she was in faded denim cut-offs and stubby yellow clogs. She looked about twelve years old. She must have sensed I was watching her, because she’d stood up and shaded her eyes with her hand and called, “Is that you, Rachel?” Through the open window I’d called back, “It’s me.” Who else would it have been, I’d wondered? I finished my coffee and rinsed out my cup and then tried to comb my hair into some kind of order before she saw me.

  I’d met Simon at the radio station. He’d come across the street from the newspaper office to read the news as it came off the Teletype machine in the newsroom and then he’d stay, clutching torn-off sheets of newsprint, he and the station news director arguing about whether Patty Hearst had been kidnapped or had joined the Symbionese Liberation Army of her own free will, and about Watergate and the possibility the American president would be impeached. My desk was nearby, and as I worked I’d imagine Simon being as distracted by my presence as I was by his. No one was supposed to know we were seeing each other, mostly because Simon didn’t want to get teased about robbing the cradle, as he put it. I didn’t care. I was pleased Simon was interested in me. The first time he’d asked me out was the same day the news director had introduced us, as an afterthought more than anything, as in: Oh, yes, this is our new girl, Rachel.

  Simon and I got in the habit of driving over the Malahat to Victoria every Friday, to a theatre Simon was fond of that showed foreign films with subtitles. They were old films, even then. Simon had a way of becoming completely engrossed as the story unfolded on the screen. I would rest my head on the rough tweed of his sports jacket, which smelled of marine engine oil, salt water, and spicy aftershave lotion, and amuse myself dreaming up words that would in some measure describe my state of mind: bemused, ecstatic, well-content. Once, the word “happy” came into my mind just as it appeared on the screen. “Oh, I’m so happy,” a young Polish woman was saying to her lover. “I’m so happy,” I whispered in Simon’s ear, and he patted my hand and said, Please, Rachel, be quiet and let me watch the film.

  After the movie, Simon and I liked to stroll around the block in the June twilight to a restaurant he claimed made authentic British-style fish and chips. He told me how, when he was younger, he’d liked nothing better than to stand on a street corner in Durham eating chips straight out of the newspaper wrapping. His first foray into journalism, he said. He was born in the north of England and had lived there until he was thirty, when he and his wife, Rosemary, had immigrated to Canada. They’d divorced years ago. Rosemary still lived in the area, but Simon rarely saw her. He claimed his ex-wife was the most neurotic person he’d ever met, although her neuroses manifested themselves in small, obscure ways that had to do, mostly, with disapproving of whatever he did. For example, he said, when they were married she forbade him to eat fish and chips, partly because she couldn’t abide the smell of grease, but mostly because she considered fish and chips to be working-class fare. Going for a beer after work was also working-class, in Rosemary’s estimation, and so he hadn’t been allowed to do that, either. The worst thing, of course, was his acquiescence. Rosemary had trained him to be as docile as his dog, Mitzy, and Mitzy, he said, was an extremely docile animal.

  By the time we drove home over the Malahat it was long past midnight and the road was free of traffic, which gave Simon an opportunity to demonstrate how fast his MG could go. The clean, cold mountain air, perfumed with the scent of dry pine needles, blew my hair around and made my eyes stream with tears, and all I could think was, well, if something happens, it happens; if we crash, we crash. As Simon leaned heavily into a corner, or grappled with the stick shift when he headed into a steep downhill bend, I found myself involuntarily repeating in my head one of the simple prayers Bethany had taught me when I was small. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,/Guard the bed that I lay on. The words slipped through my mind at about the speed of light, which was approximately how fast Simon’s car was travelling. I prayed my childish prayers and laughed too loudly, out of fear.

  Simon lived miles out of town in a place called Venice Bay, a community of marinas, houseboats, and summer cottages situated at the end of a narrow unpaved road. Simon’s rented cottage perched out over the sea on pilings coated with creosote. It had a deck shaped like the prow of a ship — or perhaps I should say a raft, since it had no railings. The sea, enclosed on three sides by forested land, was green, heavy looking, with iridescent pools of oil on the surface, and the air, thick with insects, had about it a drowsy, golden quality. There was a marina down the road where Simon kept his boat. The boat was a cabin cruiser with a diesel engine. It was an old boat, but it had a galley in good repair and bunks to sleep in. So far, though, we hadn’t. We hadn’t slept together on his boat or anywhere else. Naturally, Bethany suspected otherwise. Even though she’d had what she called a strict religious upbringing, Bethany had a harder time than most people recognizing the simple truth when she heard it. Of course, I found it hard to believe myself, at times. Was it that Simon found me too immature, too boring? Or was it the other way around? Was Simon too mature to want to bother with sex? This seemed unlikely, based on what I’d learned from those foreign films, and from books, and even from the behaviour I’d observed at the parties I went to with Simon, where everyone told dirty jokes and some guy was always trying to cop a feel. I coul
dn’t ask my mother for advice, obviously. Who could I ask? I thought of Dr. Bergius. Bring your problems to me, he had advised, running his hand over his crisp Sigmund Freud look-alike beard.

  Dr. Bergius was the new owner of the radio station. He arrived four weeks after I started work. One of the first things he said to me was that people always told him he looked like Freud. Isn’t it the truth? he’d said, touching a hand to his long, thin face and perfectly barbered silver beard. For all I knew, he did look like Freud. He looked like a lot of different people, a lot of older gentlemen. He sat behind his desk like a train passenger, apprehensive yet anxious to be off. He said he knew he wasn’t a great psychoanalyst like Freud — he wasn’t any kind of psychoanalyst, come to that. As a medical practitioner, however, his primary concern had always been to listen to his patients’ stories, no matter how insignificant or pointless they seemed. He’d been in love with words since he was a boy in Germany and his mother had read to him before he slept. Great books, she had read, like Robinson Crusoe — in translation, of course — and also novels and poetry by German writers such as Theodor Storm and Goethe and the incomparable poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Why, even now he remembered perfectly certain of Rilke’s lines, such as: For her he loves and spoils her with felt skies.

  Did I have any idea what those words meant? he’d demanded. Dr. Bergius’s intensity frightened me a little, and so did my ignorance. What did the words mean? What did they mean? I pictured Dr. Bergius running frantically around under a low grey sky, his arms raised, while a young woman stood petulantly off to the side.

  Well, Dr. Bergius said at last, neither did he know the exact meaning of the words. And yet, didn’t I feel, as he did, their wonderful musicality?

  On Dr. Bergius’s desk, between a black telephone and an onyx pen stand, there was a framed portrait of his late wife, whose name, he told me, was Eva. With her prominent cheekbones and small, shrewd eyes, Eva seemed unnervingly lifelike. When he’d met Eva, he said, he’d been a medical student and she’d been studying what would now be called Home Economics at a girls’ academy in Leipzig. She was, he said, a lovely, lovely girl who adored nature, flowers, and animals. That was in 1934, in a very different world, he said, absently tugging at his bow tie.

  In spite of his long interest in the subject, Dr. Bergius was a newcomer to the realities of commercial broadcasting. He might as well be honest about this, he said. The station had been on the verge of bankruptcy when he took over, and the situation was still precarious. He was going to need the help of the announcers, news director, music director — not that the station had a music director at present, but that would come, fingers crossed — and the salesmen. And the copywriter. “That’s you,” he said, beaming.

  “Yes,” I said, nervously. I didn’t want Dr. Bergius questioning me about my qualifications. I’d been hired as a receptionist, but during the transition period, in the days before Dr. Bergius arrived, the previous copywriter had quit, and I’d been offered his job, no questions asked, no experience necessary. I’d inherited a desk in a corner near the coffee room, and an antique Royal typewriter on which to compose copy. I thought I was improving. As far as I could tell, it was all a matter of rhythm and timing, in order to transform the dull, repetitive half-truths of commerce into something that didn’t entirely offend the ear. A matter of musicality, as Dr. Bergius had just said of poetry. I thought of mentioning this, but I didn’t want to sound pretentious, as if I was trying to come across as more knowledgeable than I was, or worse, trying to compare myself to a famous poet.

  At the conclusion of the interview, Dr. Bergius came out from behind his desk and took my hand. He was tall, with the slightest stoop. His bow tie was the same velvety midnight blue as his eyes. No doubt he should have gone into radio years ago, he said, but his mother had wanted a career in medicine for him. Such a devoted mother, how could he have disappointed her? Anyway, medicine had been good to him. He had no regrets.

  And now he had his own little radio station. He smiled slightly and opened his office door for me. Before I left, I happened to glance at the window in the wall of Dr. Bergius’s office. It looked directly into the control room. One of the announcers, Brent, was at the microphone, reading a piece of my copy. Once, Brent had buzzed me on the intercom and summoned me to the control room. “Never begin with a question,” he’d told me. He’d been referring to a piece of copy I’d written for the Star Cinema, on Station Street, the first line of which read: Are you in the mood for a Wild West adventure? Anyone listening, Brent had pointed out, would naturally feel like saying, No, damn it, I’m not in the mood. “Starting with a question is a sure sign of a novice,” he’d said. He’d put his hand under my chin, forcing me to look at him. “It’s all right. Everyone makes mistakes,” he’d said. “That’s how you learn.”

  One morning Dr. Bergius came and stood beside my desk. He straightened my pile of yellow newsprint. Then he said, “I met your mother. She was in the grocery store when I was there. To be honest, I thought she was you. You resemble her to a remarkable degree.”

  “I know,” I said. “Everyone says that.”

  “It’s true” said Dr. Bergius, “Let me tell you what happened. I said good morning to your mother, or, as I thought, to you. Then something made me a little unsure. I took a closer look. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but are you Rachel’s mother?’ She laughed and said indeed she was. It was very pleasant, meeting unexpectedly in the store like that. Your mother is a very gracious person, Rachel.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I erased a typing mistake, then typed: Don’t miss out! Prices have been slashed — quantities are limited!

  I wouldn’t have called Bethany gracious. She was too plainspoken, without guile. However, it was true, we looked alike. We were the kind of mother and daughter people often mistook for sisters. We had the same heart-shaped faces, the same large, pale-grey eyes. Even our feet were the same shape, narrow at the heel and wide across the toes. We both tied our light brown hair back in a pony-tail. We borrowed each other’s clothes and went shopping together. All the years I was growing up, going to school, sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, Bethany would say, “Thank the Lord I have you, Rachel. I’d be lost without you.” What she meant, I thought, was that we had each other. We had each other and no one else. Not long after I was born, my father had disappeared. His name was Gary. I knew nothing about him. When I was younger, I had begged Bethany to tell me what he’d looked like, what kind of person he was, what kind of music he liked, whether or not he smoked, if he went to church, and she would shake her head. Well, I would say, you must remember something. No, I don’t, she’d insisted, laughing a little; I have total amnesia.

  For years I tried to add the name Gary — its two crisp, hurried syllables — to the list of people I prayed for at night. But what I breathed into the darkness returned to reside stubbornly in my mind. I imagined a father with a different name: Charles, Edward, Rupert. Something substantial, the name of a conscientious, reliable individual. Finally, I gave up. I came to believe there’d only ever been Bethany. Bethany in the moonlight, working magic in the soil, digging and tilling and adding nutrients and then something, some little thing, germinating. Me.

  It occurred to me that Gary, wherever he was, whoever he might be — if, indeed, he had ever existed — would be only a little older than Simon. Or even the same age, or younger. Thinking this, I started a game. I imagined that Simon was Gary in disguise. He was biding his time, pretending to be my boyfriend so he could get to know me. He cared about me the way a father would. He planted kisses on the top of my head and took me for Sunday afternoon rides in his car. I came to believe this wasn’t a game, but the truth. Then Bethany invited Simon to our house for tea, and there was no sign of recognition between them, only a little animosity on Bethany’s side.

  She’d made a pot of herbal tea and set the table with her pink raffia placemats. She offered Simon freshly baked oatmeal cookies and raisin scones. Simon talked to Bethany an
d ignored me. He and my mother were adults together, he seemed to be implying, while I was merely a child. I was jealous. Did Simon find Bethany prettier than I was, livelier, more interesting? Before he left, Bethany had taken him on a tour of her garden, pointing out her successes and her failures, including a clump of dried-out, decaying bog myrtle. Gallantly Simon said he couldn’t imagine anything dying on her, and she laughed and cut two of her precious peony blooms for him. They were a deep rose pink, the size of the human heart.

  He thanked her, looking slightly dumbfounded, and I said, “Watch out, they’re crawling alive with earwigs.”

  Dr. Bergius straightened my supply of yellow newsprint, then immediately brushed against it with his suit jacket and had to straighten it again. He took his time, then stood back and gave me a long look.

  “That’s a bad sunburn you have, Rachel,” he said.

  “I know,” I said. I lifted my shoulders a little, defensively, which made me wince. I was wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps. My legs were sunburned, too, but at least they were hidden under my desk.

  “Cold compresses,” Dr. Bergius said. “Plenty of fluids. Aspirin would help. I have some in my office, if you like.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” I lied. “It looks worse than it is.” I did feel ill and feverish, and every part of my body ached and burned. The day before, I’d gone out with Simon in his boat and we’d got stuck for hours on a sandbar in the narrow channel between two small islands. Simon had been sure he could navigate his way through at low tide, but he’d been wrong. He’d tried ramming the engine from reverse into forward, then running out of the cabin to stare down at the murky water. He’d banged his head hard on the lintel over the door, which infuriated him and he started cursing, calling his boat an unseaworthy old tub, threatening to sink it. And you, he said, pointing a finger at me, you’ll go down with it, how will you like that? Then he looked away, breathing hard.