Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  I had discovered by then that Great-Grandmother Morrison was more right than she knew about the power of education. She had seen it both as an ultimate good and as the key to escaping the poverty of farming, but she’d had no idea of the other doors it could open. I was studying zoology and I’d passed my first-year exams at the top of the class, and had been told that if I continued in the same vein I would be funded to do my Ph.D. I knew that if I acquitted myself well in that, jobs would be available, either at the university itself or elsewhere. I knew that if at some stage I wished to work abroad, it could probably be arranged. The world was spreading itself out before me; I felt that I could go anywhere, do anything. Be anyone.

  Matt and Luke and Bo receded then into a small shadowed corner of my mind. At that time—in my second year I was not yet twenty, so Bo was only fourteen— Bo still had choices open to her, but Matt and Luke were where they had always been, and I knew they always would be. The distance between us seemed so huge and that part of my life so far in the past that I couldn’t imagine that we had anything left in common at all.

  Money was too tight for me to go home for short breaks, and as more and better-paid summer jobs were to be had in Toronto than at home, I didn’t go for summers either. There was a two-year gap when I didn’t see them at all, and it would have been longer except that they came to my graduation. All three of them came, dressed in their best. I was touched, but I was embarrassed by them. I did not introduce them to my friends.

  I had gone out a few times during those years with boys I met in classes, but none of the relationships took off. My failure in that regard didn’t bother me. For one thing I was studying too hard to give much thought to it; for another, as I said earlier, I had never thought I would love anyone. I fancied myself as the eccentric academic, I suppose. Solitary and self-sufficient, in love with her work.

  That was not just a fantasy—I was genuinely in love with my work. University life was an utter revelation to me—the books and resources, the labs with their dissecting scopes and wonderful compound microscopes, the tutors and professors, each with his or her own particular area of expertise—all there for the asking. By the middle of my third year I had decided definitely to go on to further study. By the end of that year, I had chosen the branch of zoology I would specialize in.

  That decision was made as a consequence of a field trip to a small lake north of Toronto. The lake was popular with holidaymakers, particularly those interested in boating and other water sports. We visited it in September, after the holidaymakers had gone home. The purpose of the field trip was to try to assess the impact people had had on the environment in the course of the summer months, and as part of our investigation we took samples of the water and collected specimens of the flora and fauna from the water’s edge, to examine back in the laboratory. The aquatic creatures we carried back in jars or plastic bags filled with water and sitting in a cooler full of ice; the others travelled back to Toronto in boxes or jars. Once we got to the lab, our task was to identify and document what we had collected, comment on its apparent state of health, and if it was dead, speculate on what had killed it.

  I had collected most of my creatures from a small bay at one end of the lake, and in scooping them up I had also netted a bit of decaying organic matter from the bottom of the bay. Back at the lab, having safely transferred my creatures to tanks, I tipped the mud and debris into a dish and quickly sorted through it to see if it contained anything of interest. Mostly it was just dead leaves and twigs, but in among them there was a small black unidentifiable blob. I lifted it out with tweezers, put it carefully on a wet paper towel to keep it from drying out, and slid it under the dissecting scope.

  The blob had originally been a water boatman, Notonecta, a fierce little predator who spends a lot of his time hanging upside down from the surface of the water, monitoring vibrations for signs of prey. I knew Notonecta well from my years with Matt—he was the first indication we had of the fact that surface tension works upside down as well as right-side up—and under normal circumstances I would have recognized him instantly. As it was, it took me several minutes to identify this specimen because he was covered—caked—in a sticky black coat of lubricating oil from one of the lake’s many motorboats. He was thick with it, the delicate sensory hairs on his abdomen clogged, the breathing spiracles completely blocked.

  I find it hard to explain now why I was so affected by it. All creatures die, and most of the ways they meet their end are pretty horrible when viewed in human terms. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t known about pollution—it is a major topic in all of the life sciences. Perhaps it was because the victim in this case was so well known to me. I had been intrigued by water boatmen when I was a child—it had seemed to me that they were hanging from the ceiling, and I kept waiting for them to get tired and drop off.

  Whatever the reason, what I felt, looking at that tiny blackened body, was a mixture of horror and actual … grief. I had not consciously thought about the ponds for some years, but now they came back to me, vividly. They were far too small for boating, of course, but there were countless other pollutants that could rain down on them or seep into them from the surrounding soil. I imagined myself, going back to them one day in the future, looking into their depths and seeing … nothing.

  I decided right then that I was going to be an invertebrate ecologist and that my area of study would be the effects of pollution on the populations of freshwater ponds. I suppose you could say that my choice was inevitable and was set long before I came across that single, dead bug. Perhaps. All I know is, that little Notonecta reawoke something in me, and gave me a purpose which I hadn’t even known I was lacking.

  For a long time after that, studying absorbed me so completely that I had very little time for anything else. The few boys I went out with seemed to be nothing like as interesting as my work. And the people of my past were, well, in the past. And seemed irrelevant.

  It wasn’t until I met Daniel that I realized that I hadn’t left my family behind after all. We were introduced when I joined the department, and after that we kept bumping into each other in the corridors—you know how it goes. And then one day I was working in my lab—I have what is called a wet lab, full of aquaria, where I can control the environment of my invertebrates and study their responses—and I turned to find him standing in the doorway. I hadn’t known anyone was there and gave a slight start, and he said, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have disturbed you. You look engrossed.”

  I said, “No, it’s fine. I was only watching a pond skater.”

  “Watching him do what?” he said.

  “Skate,” I said, and he smiled.

  “Is he particularly good at it?”

  I smiled back uncertainly. I’m not very good at casual chit-chat. It’s not that I can’t be bothered; it just seems to be a skill I can’t quite get the hang of.

  I said rather lamely, “He is, actually. I mean, pond skaters in general are amazingly good … skaters.”

  “May I have a look?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  He stepped in and peered into the tank, but he moved too quickly, and the pond skater was so startled, it leapt about four inches into the air. There is netting covering the tank to prevent creatures escaping, so I wasn’t perturbed, but Daniel backed off hastily.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I seem to be startling everyone today.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. I was anxious that he not be put off. There was something about him that I liked—a seriousness which I thought I detected underneath his easy manner. I liked his face too. It is long and thin, like the rest of him, with that strong, rather hawkish nose and thinning sandy hair. “He’s a bit nervous, that’s all. I’ve been lowering the surface tension. I’ve lowered it by eight percent so far, and he’s getting edgy.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Surfactants. The effect they have on surface dwellers.”

  “You mean detergents? That sort of thing?�
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  “That’s right. And other pollutants. Quite a few things can lower the surface tension. Or they stick onto the hydrophobic surfaces of the insects so they aren’t waterproof any more. So they sink.”

  “But not the pond skater?”

  “Not yet. But he’ll have his limit.”

  “Sounds very cruel.”

  “Oh, I’ll rescue him,” I said quickly. “He’ll be fine.”

  He smiled, and I realized he’d been joking, and felt myself flush. There was a slight pause, and then he said, “When you’ve rescued him, would you be interested in a coffee?”

  So we went for a coffee, and talked about pond skaters, and the fact that they can glide six inches with a single stroke of their legs and reach the astonishing speed of forty-nine inches per second. And then we talked about pollution in general, and oil spills in particular, and the fact that snails have been known to eat oil and apparently enjoy it. And after that we talked about bacteria (Daniel’s specialty) and their ability to change and adapt, and whether that means they are going to inherit the earth.

  And then we started going out together.

  He amazed me. The fact is—and I’m aware that this sounds a ridiculously cynical thing to say—I had never expected truly to admire anyone again, yet I admired Daniel. I’ve said that I found him naive in some ways, and rather too easygoing, but I think that is partly a result of his generosity of mind. For a while I convinced myself that admiration and liking were all I felt. I made lists of his good points—his sense of humour, his curiosity, his intelligence, his attractiveness, his refusal to join in the back-stabbing and pettiness that seem to be part of the academic environment—as if that would render them emotionally neutral. I made lists of his bad points—his old-womanish dislike of getting his feet wet, his physical laziness, his tendency (though he would deny it) to think he’s always right—as if they would cancel out the good points and mean I felt nothing at all. And then one day—I was in the shower at the time, soaping my feet, or some such emotionally neutral part of myself—it came to me that the feelings I had for him could only be described by the word love. It was then, I think, that I unconsciously decided not to think about our relationship too much, not to analyze it or ask myself whether he returned my feelings, whether it would last. This, as I’ve said, led to problems between us, and my only excuse is that in the past, people I have loved have tended to disappear from my life, and I was afraid of that happening again.

  Anyway, the point is that although the love I felt for Daniel was quite different from anything I had felt before, still there was a sort of recognition about it. Love goes deeper than anything else, I guess. It gets to the core of you, and when Daniel got to the core of me I found that Matt and Luke and Bo were there too. They were part of me. In spite of the years apart I still knew their faces better than my own. Anything I knew of love, I had learned from them.

  I began going home for holidays occasionally. I had the money by then. It felt strange—I was an oddity in the community, “the one that got away.” They were all proud of me, of course, and teasingly addressed me as Dr. Morrison, or “the professor.” Some were deferential, which should have been funny but somehow was painful instead. Luke played the proud father, which should have been painful but was funny. Bo was the one I felt easiest with. Bo takes you as you are.

  Matt? Oh, Matt was proud of me. Matt was so proud of me I could hardly bear it.

  Simon’s birthday party was at the end of April, and I spent most of March trying to think of a suitable present for him. What do you give a boy on the occasion of his entry into manhood? More particularly, what does an aunt give to her only nephew? More particularly still, what was the appropriate present to give to Matt’s son? To be honest, I was as concerned that Matt approve of the gift as I was that Simon like it.

  I knew that Simon was hoping to come to the university to study physics in a year’s time. (I might say that “hoping” is unnecessary in Simon’s case. He has inherited his father’s brains and will walk through his exams.) So I prowled around the physics department on a couple of afternoons looking for inspiration. None came.

  I left it for a week or two, thinking that something would come to me, but nothing did. All the normal things—clothes and books and music—were insufficient for a milestone birthday, and in any case I wouldn’t have dared to guess at Simon’s taste in any of them. Very large things—a car, a trip to Europe—were beyond my means. Middle-sized things—music machines and so on—he either had already or would be given by his parents.

  Days passed. April arrived. I am an organized person; I dislike leaving things to the last minute. Particularly important things.

  In desperation I went downtown on two successive Saturdays, looking for ideas, wandering through the crowds, hopefully scanning the mountains of junk for something worthy of the occasion. On the second Saturday Daniel came with me, claiming that he loved shopping and always had good ideas. In fact he had ridiculous ideas. He loved everything he saw and made increasingly silly suggestions until I got cross and told him to go home.

  “God but you take it seriously,” he complained. “Is there anything in this world that you don’t take seriously? This is about a birthday party, for God’s sake! It’s supposed to be fun!”

  I pointed out that (a) as he was an only child and had no nieces or nephews he didn’t know what he was talking about, and (b) anyone who thought shopping for important presents under a time constraint was fun needed his head read.

  “Look,” he said, irritation starting to creep in around the edges, “over there is a phone. Why don’t you phone your brother and ask him if he can think of anything this kid would like?”

  “Daniel, I want to do this myself. Please go home.”

  He went, looking peeved. But he’d been in such good spirits since I’d invited him to the party that I knew even my neurotic behaviour wouldn’t bring him down for long.

  Finally I decided to open an account for Simon at the university bookstore and pay into it enough to cover the cost of textbooks in the first year of his degree. In addition, so that he would have something to unwrap on the day, I bought him a small gyroscope—just a toy, really, but well made and nicely symbolic of the beauty and intricacy of the subject he had chosen to study.

  Daniel redeemed himself, when I told him what I had decided, by saying that he thought they were great presents. Then he spoiled it, as only Daniel can, by saying that they were also very “me.”

  “What do you mean?” I said suspiciously.

  “Well, textbooks. Does he have any other aunt who would give him textbooks for his eighteenth birthday?”

  “When I think of the hours I spent in the library trying to get hold of textbooks that were out on loan, because I couldn’t afford to buy my own …”

  He grinned and said he was only teasing.

  I don’t know if it was because Matt was on my mind, but on the Tuesday of the week before Simon’s party I had a bit of a crisis at work. Nothing like it had ever happened before and I can’t think of anything else that it could have stemmed from—I hadn’t received a critical review of a paper or hit a stumbling block in my research or anything like that. It had to be related to thoughts of home.

  My job—assistant professor, invertebrate ecology— has a number of components: carrying out research, analyzing and writing up my findings, writing papers for publication, giving papers at conferences, supervising graduate students, teaching undergraduates, plus a ridiculous amount of administration.

  The research I love. It calls for patience, precision, and a methodical approach, and all of those I have. That makes it sound dull, but it is far from dull. On a pure level, it allows you to feel that you have added your own tiny piece to the jigsaw of scientific knowledge. On a more basic level, an understanding of the environment is essential if we are to avoid destroying it. Research is the most important part of my job, and I never have enough time for it.

  The writing of papers and ar
ticles I don’t mind. The exchange of ideas is vital, and I’m prepared to do my bit.

  I don’t much care for giving papers at conferences because I know I don’t speak terribly well. I’m clear enough, I can present a well-structured paper, but my delivery lacks zip.

  Teaching I don’t enjoy at all. This is primarily a research university, and I only have four hours a week in front of a class, but it takes me almost a week to prepare each lecture and it eats great chunks out of my research time. Also, I find it hard to relate to the students. Daniel enjoys them. He pretends not to, in the same way that he pretends not to work—he works all the time, he just calls it something else. Secretly, he finds the students interesting and stimulating. Secretly, I do not. I don’t understand them. They don’t seem to take anything seriously.

  Anyway, this “crisis,” if that isn’t too dramatic a name for it, came in the middle of a lecture. It started as a minor hiccup. I’d been explaining the hydrophobic nature of the hair piles of specific arthropods to a lecture hall filled with third-years, and I suddenly had such a vivid flashback that I completely lost my train of thought. What I remembered was Matt and me, in our usual pose, flat on our bellies beside the pond, our heads hanging out over the water. We’d been watching damselflies performing their delicate iridescent dances over the water when our attention had been caught by a very small beetle crawling down the stem of a bulrush. He was about six inches above the surface when we spotted him, trotting purposefully downward. Where did he think he was going, we wondered, and what would he do when he reached the water? Did he realize it was there? Matt said insects don’t have noses as we do but they can smell and detect damp with their antennae, so probably he did. In which case, what was he after? A drink? Matt said he’d thought insects got all the liquid they needed from the plants they ate or the blood they sucked, but maybe he was wrong about that. I said maybe the beetle was a she and was going to lay her eggs in the water as the damselflies did. Matt said he didn’t think beetles did that, but he could be wrong about that too. I said maybe the beetle was just thinking of other things, like what to have for dinner, and wasn’t looking where he was going, and Matt said in that case he was in for a surprise.