by Kurt Palka
Thank you, she said.
* * *
—
Much later, in the kitchen at the cottage, she picked at a TV dinner and glanced up at the main house, all in darkness. She stepped outside into the cool night, all those bushes and trees washed clean. She took a few deep breaths, looked up at the sky and up at the house again, and turned back into the kitchen.
Near eleven she called Michael at home. She sat on the bed, in her robe with her face scrubbed and her hair down. She had her knees pulled up and at times she talked resting her forehead on them.
Into one of her pauses he said, “Margaret? Will you be all right there tonight? In that cabin? Why not go up to the main house again?”
“It’s not that bad in here, Michael. It’s actually quite nice.” “What’s the name of the all-night drugstore on Yonge Street near you? I’ll call in a prescription.”
“No, I don’t want anything. Most of that stuff turns me into a zombie, but I need to be able to function. And I’m able to, during the day. The nights are something else.” “There’s a new antidepressant we can try. We could start with a low dose.”
“No, Michael. Listen, I called Jack.”
“And?”
“And nothing. It didn’t go well.”
“What happened?”
“The usual.”
After a silence Michael said, “Please try to remember that pharmacy name. I can look up the phone number. Have you used the codeine?”
“Once or twice. I don’t like the side effects of that either, but I’m keeping one ready in my pocket.”
With her forehead off her knees now she said, “I had another dream about having been too busy. Lately I keep thinking I let Andrew down. Neglected him when he was small and I was working all the time. I often worked until one and two in the morning and Jack was never there.”
“Not never.”
“He was gone much more than he was home. Not that I ever complained, because from the beginning we had a deal, a career for both of us. I was home for the first eight months with Andrew, but then I hired nannies and started looking for work.”
“Many women do that.”
“These days, maybe. Not then. Sometimes when it got late and I couldn’t leave the office, I’d pump breast milk in the washroom and send it home to the nanny in a taxi. One time a young lawyer found out and from then on the joke was, I’ll have full-fat in mine, Mags. They called me the Milkmaid behind my back. But I was determined to hang in, Michael. So determined. Only now when I think back, I’m asking myself if maybe with all the focus on work I let my boy down.”
There was a pause, and she always liked him for that, for the space he gave her.
“I don’t think you let Andrew down,” he said eventually. “Margaret, please listen. Andrew’s death is not your fault. It is not your fault. What you are going through now is a common second-stage response. Since there is no one else to blame, we tend to look for the cause within ourselves. But when Andrew boarded that plane, he was a grown young man and he did what he’d signed up for. What he wanted to do.”
“But maybe I hadn’t equipped him to make the right choices. And why do I want to remember him more as a little boy than as a grown man? Learning to ride a bicycle, and all those baseball practices that I drove him to and picked him up from. His thrilled excitement when he’d done well. His fresh-air boy-smell next to me in the car. So healthy, Michael. So very much alive and with so much to look forward to, to try out and explore. And then school and university and the training, and when that bus took him away it felt like just a short time later, and I didn’t realize he was actually leaving. And how could I have known? How could he? It’s all so unfinished.”
“I know. I do know, Margaret.”
“And then he never did come home again.”
“I know, Margaret. I understand.”
She was weeping now and couldn’t help it. It was all wrong, all askew, and she didn’t know how to make it straight again.
“Margaret? Never mind about that drugstore. I can call information. I think it’s a Guardian something. I’ll come and see you on the weekend. Let’s say Sunday mid-afternoon. Will that be all right?”
“And Lakewood,” she said to him. “Even that’s come back. I didn’t want it to, but today at the office window it did.” “We’ve dealt with Lakewood, Margaret. More than once. It’s in a safe place, so let’s leave it alone for now.”
She said okay, okay, and he asked again if Sunday mid-afternoon would be all right, and she said yes.
* * *
—
That same night, at one o’clock in the morning and then again at two and at three, she looked up toward the main house and wished there were lights on in the windows. Not so dark, not so looming. And then she was glad there weren’t any lights, because they would mean she’d have to face Jack, when she had quite forgotten how to do that in good faith. It was hard enough on the phone, and it would be worse face to face. What to say, how to be with him, who not so long ago had been her everything and she could wrap herself in him as in a garment and feel loved and be her true self. That was what she’d lost, the wellspring of that ability within herself. That and the humour and the fine intelligence between them. And had replaced it with what? With guilt and confusion and a flow of memories about past events and Andrew. With all that to be dealt with.
In the kitchen of this cottage that she’d fixed up herself like a hiding place in the woods, she’d found refuge, and it was here that for some reason she could talk with Andrew, always with the boy he’d been, when he’d still listened. When he’d still looked up and watched her face so earnestly, watched her expression.
And she imagined he could hear when in whispers as soft as thoughts she talked to him about the poison that in recent weeks was eating her. The idea, so common after the war and well into the 1950s and even the ’60s, that women in selfish pursuit of a profession always let their children down. Too busy. Scorned by the full-time mothers and dedicated homemakers doing it right.
But when he’d been small, had she ever felt she was letting him down? Not laying the right foundation? If she was honest, hardly ever. Perhaps in weak moments, as an excuse to abandon her own struggles. Abandon her dream of a career, of who she wanted to become. When first Lakewood, then Paris, then law school, and finally Jack had helped her to see that so very clearly.
* * *
—
At Lakewood they hadn’t been allowed in the dormitory in daytime, but on weekends when the matron and half the staff were off, Sister Elvira would let them in for an hour in the afternoon. It was a golden fall, and the girls, all in different stages of pregnancy, would crowd the row of windows to watch the boats going by on Lake Rosseau, the fine wooden Muskoka launches burbling past, each carrying women in white dresses under a green canvas fly roof sipping from champagne glasses and eating small sandwiches off a tray, and the men in the cockpit dressed in white as well, passing a flask and wiping their lips on the backs of their hands. And always the men would look up and see the girls at the windows, and then the men would lean close to say something their women couldn’t hear, but the girls could see their lips moving and their eyes looking up, and the boat would glide on, smooth and luxurious, just a breath of smoke lifting off the water behind it and hardly a wake at all to show its passing.
In her own time there, her six months of 1946–47, not one of the girls was older than seventeen. She herself was just sixteen and a half.
One of the girls, a fifteen-year-old from New York, had a pair of opera glasses, and through them they would pick out loving parents for their children: rich, elegant men and kind women in white. This one, they’d exclaim. Or that one, the one with the blond curly hair and the shirt sleeves rolled up. He looks nice! And excitedly they’d pass the glasses up and down the line of girls, some of them going on eight and nine months, some just four or five.
* * *
—
She heated some milk on th
e stove and poured it into a cup and then stepped outside into the cool air and sipped the steaming liquid. Some stars tonight, a few moonlit clouds. She looked up at the house, the windows all dark. He’d be home on Monday, he’d said. He wanted to talk, and she was not looking forward to it.
Eventually she stepped back inside and washed out the cup and saucepan and put them on the drain rack. She left the little light on in the kitchen and went to bed.
Three
SOMETIME IN THE WEEKS before Lakewood there had been the night when she heard them talking at a near whisper, Father and Grandmother AJ, down in the living room at Sweetbarry while she was sitting at the top of the stairs.
“For her own good—you understand that, Charles, don’t you? Look at me. For the girl’s own good. So she made a mistake, but down here, among humans, that’s what we do. We make mistakes. This one you might as well blame on her youth and on her innocent bloom and on that boy, and on nature’s relentless push toward the only thing that matters to it. More babies, more trees, more rabbits, just blindly more of everything. She says she felt pressured and was tempted and confused, and so forth. It’s the same sad old story repeated a million times over. But we don’t want her to have to pay for that one mistake forever. Right, Charles? Say something.”
But he said nothing, or perhaps he just nodded, and Grandmother continued.
“I’ve spoken to the boy’s father. Not an easy conversation, as you can imagine. Twice, in fact, and now it’s all arranged. No one around here will ever know, and the less said the better.”
“Who’s the boy?”
“A summer boy. A blond sixteen-year-old kid from Montreal. A nice kid, except for this now. You’ve seen him around. They always rent the house with the green shutters on the other side of town.”
For a while there was silence down there, and Margaret strained to hear.
“I’m actually proud of her, Charles,” Grandmother said. “It must have taken a lot of courage for her to come and ask for my help. Most girls wouldn’t. They’d just stand on the train track and stare at the light coming.”
“What’s his name?”
“His name. Unless you really want to know and get involved, don’t even ask. Maybe just let me deal with it. I’ve put a lot of work into it already. Lakewood will be perfect for her. They even have a schoolroom and tutors up there, and doctors, of course. She’ll probably fall a bit behind with her studies, but I’ve spoken to Thérèse in Paris, and that is exactly what her school is set up for. To help girls in situations like this catch up. Margaret can do her baccalaureate there and then go on to university and law school. Put all this behind her and get a profession. A solid career. That’s what I would have wanted for myself.” “As though nothing ever happened?” said Father. “You really believe that these things leave no marks?”
“Of course they do. For a while. But what are the alternatives, Charles? Tell me.”
Grandmother, always so clear and strong. Until that night she’d often feared her, sometimes even hated her. This, not that, Margaret. Pay attention. Think for yourself, child, always.
For a while there was silence down there again. Then Grandmother said, “Exactly. Our Margaret is young and bright and she has a future. Let’s not have her waste it. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow, but I wanted you to know. Don’t make that face, Charles. Do you agree with the plan?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do. Tell me.”
Through all this she sat hugging her knees on the landing, feeling new waves of gratitude and respect for Grandmother. It was late, past midnight. She’d gone to the bathroom and on her way back to bed had heard her name.
“Charles?” Grandmother was saying down there again. “Do you agree?”
* * *
—
Next day when they were alone in the house, Grandmother sat her down at the oak table in the kitchen and told her in more detail what the plans were. Lakewood was a retreat and a clinic and an adoption centre all at once.
“It’s unfortunate what happened, Margaret, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ve spoken to Xavier’s father, and he was shocked of course, and angry, but in the end he agreed to the Lakewood plan. He would not agree to anything else, such as long-term obligations if on some misguided notion you should want to keep and raise the baby. He’ll pay for half of Lakewood, and he’ll even contribute to the private school in Paris so you can catch up. I was quite firm with him.”
“They’ve packed up already and gone back to Montreal,” she said. “There was even a truck that took away bits of furniture. I saw it from the post office.”
“Did you now. It’s easy for boys, isn’t it? Look at me, Margaret. All this will pass. We’ll work it out. I promise.” But she couldn’t look at Grandmother. She sat kneading her fingers, thinking how confused and embarrassed she was. How angry.
“The school in Paris is called École Olivier,” said Grandmother. “A distant relative of ours runs it. Thérèse Lafontaine. She’s the cousin of a niece of mine. I’ve spoken to her already. What happened doesn’t make you a bad person, Margaret, but it does make you vulnerable. I suggest you tell no one. Aileen, perhaps, if you really must. Any gossip about it will attach to you forever in this community, and that’s not what you want. Trust me about this. If your mother were here with us today, she would advise you to do the same. Margaret, please look at me.”
She finally looked up from her hands and across the table at Grandmother.
“You need to put all this behind you, dear. Start again and make something of yourself. First things first. Become good at something, and then organize your life around that gift. Get a career, a vision. A foundation for yourself that no one can take away, and then have your children, as many as you want and can afford. It’s all possible, Margaret. You’ll see.”
* * *
—
That afternoon she and Aileen took the rowboat out to Gull Rock and they sat with their brown legs in the water, on their spot on the rock where it was smooth and flat and shaped just right. Both in their bathing suits, the bottoms worn thin on these sun-warm rocks with the little mosses and tiny purple flowers that smelled of honey if you put your nose right to them.
They stuck out their legs and kicked them up and down, playing motorboat to see who could go faster. They laughed and stopped kicking.
“Shift over a bit,” said Aileen. “So I can see the house in case Mom’s waving for me to come in.”
Margaret shifted. She said, “Did you hand in the application?”
“I did. Yesterday. They told me more or less what to expect. Turns out it’ll take years. Years.” Aileen lay back on the rock.
“Not that many. Four, five? How long do you think it’ll take me with the law school bit? If I can even get in.” “You’ll get in,” said Aileen. She sat up again. “They told me that while I’m candy-striping I’ll need to take a bunch of courses. Well, I knew that. Six of them, can you believe it? And there’ll be exams at different levels. But if everything goes well I could be a nurse in training, a real NIT, by the time I’m nineteen. Then more courses and the licensing bit, and a couple of years later I could be a real nurse.”
For a while they said nothing, and all they could hear was the ocean and a few gulls somewhere.
“Aileen,” she said then. “If I tell you a deep, deep, a very deep secret, will you look at me and we cross fingers and you swear to me that you’ll never tell anyone? No one, ever? Will you?”
Aileen sat very still suddenly.
“Will you?”
“You sure, Margaret?”
“I am, if you promise. I want you to know. I need you to know. And I trust you. It’ll help me.”
“All right, I promise.”
And solemnly they both held out the fore and middle fingers of their right hands and crossed them.
* * *
—
A week or two later, on the last day before they turned off the water and
closed up the house in Sweetbarry to move back to Toronto, she stood naked in front of the mirror and looked at herself. Because she had always been so slim, she thought she could already see the baby showing. She wondered if Aileen had already known when they were sitting on Gull Rock that time. Noticed something but didn’t say anything, and like a true friend did not probe but waited and hoped to be told. That would be like Aileen.
* * *
—
At Lakewood there was the little clinic and a nursery and a recovery room behind white swing doors, and there were the schoolroom and the kitchen and dining and other rooms in the basement, and the dormitory facing the lake. The one area that was absolutely off limits to them was the entrance and the gravel drive in front of the building. And because they weren’t allowed even to be seen in any of the windows above the entrance, they had to imagine what went on there, and they discussed it in colourful detail.
They imagined fine chauffeur-driven cars pulling up and men and women in elegant clothes climbing out, and the matron welcoming them and then leading the way to her office. And perhaps an hour later, with papers having been signed and the transaction concluded, the new parents would come back out and walk to their car, and the chauffeur would open the door for the woman, who was holding a newborn in a little blanket, kissing its tiny face and cooing at it and having absolutely no eyes for anything else.
From those imaginary people and from the real people in the boats going by they chose the parents for their children. The woman Margaret finally selected had a kind face and a lovely smile, and the man was the one with the blond curly hair they’d seen in the mahogany boat, the one with the sleeves rolled up on strong arms. On the day when they’d come to Lakewood to take home her baby, he would be wearing a white linen jacket and the woman a white dress, and she would look happy with her arm in his. Margaret could clearly see his firm step and the kindness in the woman’s face, and that was enough for her.