Catching the Light

by Susan Sinnott

  They paddled round the last buoy and headed back, Hutch’s strokes growing more and more ragged. A gull glided ahead of them with just a dip of the wings now and then to keep it on course. Hutch would hit the weights all this winter to build himself up for the next season. He wanted to be as smooth as that gull.

  Step Three

  Sarah said let’s work on listening, the other side of conversation. She had this recording of two people talking and they listened for five minutes then Sarah said she’d be the interviewer asking the questions and Cathy would be the interviewee answering. Let’s see how much they could remember. Never mind if she didn’t understand some of the words. She could guess. They’d go back to them later.

  “But we’re just testing memory, not listening,” Cathy said.

  “How can we remember what people say if we don’t hear it first?”

  And that was it. Cathy didn’t listen to Mrs. Elliot because she kept talking about things they’d done before which she hadn’t listened to, so this new bit didn’t make sense. And she didn’t listen to her mother because Mom always went the long way round. And she didn’t listen to her cousins because they just talked about stupid stuff like clothes and boys.

  August 31 1995

  Sarah says jus bcos im not intrested in what sumbodys torking about dusnt meen mean I dont have to lisen its part of shairing giv and tak

  “If you want people to listen when you talk about painting,” Sarah said, “it’s only fair that you listen to them talking about clothes or what they did on Saturday night.”

  “But I don’t want to talk about painting. Nobody ever understands. Nobody cares.”

  “Do you think you’re the only person in the world who likes pictures?”

  “You and Paul Wilson maybe. But you’re different and Paul…” Cathy turned away. Kids asked to look at her pictures and said “wow” and stuff, but Paul was the only one who really saw them the way Cathy saw them. And he took real art classes in St. John’s and was even thinking of going to art school after grade twelve. She’d love to talk pictures with Paul but—in her dreams. Mostly he just said hello. But she didn’t say any of that to Sarah.

  ***

  Sarah started asking for a look at Cathy’s sketches whenever she finished a pad.

  “Why don’t you draw your mother?” she said one time. “You have four marvellous pictures of your father here and none of your mom.”

  The first reason that popped up was that Mom was such a fidget and she always wanted to see what Cathy was doing before she’d done it. It drove Cathy crazy. But it was more than that: Mom was a little ball of doing, of bustle. She was a voice Cathy didn’t listen to, a pair of hands in the kitchen.

  “Not sure I can draw her.”

  “Just draw what you see, like you always do.”

  So Cathy drew her mother’s hands: in the dishpan, hooking a rug, peeling potatoes. She drew her back-on, stirring something on the stove, and side-on, reaching into the washing machine.

  Once she drew her aunts playing Auction from a photograph: Aunt Maisie and Aunt Joan like squashy pillows; Aunt Elsie, showing her gums when she laughed and waving her cards around; Aunt Gert with her mouth turned down and her chest stuck out so Cathy went back and stuck a helmet on her and armour like a Roman soldier from some Bible picture she remembered. Aunt Dot with her cards almost touching her nose because she’d forgotten her glasses again. But nothing of Mom.

  Now and then Mom talked about needing glasses but she never did anything about it. Said she didn’t have trouble seeing cards or cross-stitch. It was the newspaper she complained about the most, all that small print, and she was always asking Dad or Dot to read things out. She said reading by yourself wasn’t neighbourly, that it was more friendly with two people—two people thinking about the same thing. And anyway, how could she hold a newspaper when she always had her hands full?

  ***

  Dad had Cathy reading to him from newspapers sometimes and from the easy parts of his bird books. He said his other books would have to wait a while. All through his time at Memorial, he took her on day trips when he was home for the summers. He’d asked her in the past and she’d always said no, couldn’t drag those old paint cans with her—marine paint, masonry paint, latex, auto paint, rust proofing—any outside paint or stain left in her dad’s shed. She still used those for rocks and walls but now she used fancy tubes or oil pastels on paper when she had them, crayons sometimes, pencils when she’d run out. When supplies were really low, the pencil stubs got so short she had to dig her fingernails in to steady them the way the old guys made a cage of their fingers round a cigarette. Every gift was picture stuff. The aunts said it was never a problem shopping for Cathy. A packet of crayons was nothing compared to the brand-name clothes their daughters wanted.

  Cathy loved being dug in somewhere with no people for miles, watching the change in the light as the sun moved across the sky, how it changed colours and brought out the yellow in things. She saw how it lit the near side of every leaf, every wrinkle and whisker, making a tiny shadow on the far side, like a mini landscape. When the sun went behind a cloud and the light went out, the leaf went flat.

  It was great watching the wildlife and picking out birdcalls. She tried counting the different mosses but it was too hard after five or six—the differences were small and it was no good sticking a bit in a baggie because by the time she got it home to look it up it had shrivelled into something different. Grasses were beautiful swaying in the wind, but they turned drab after you picked them.

  Drab: adjective: lacking brightness or interest; dull and dreary.

  After their first day trip, Cathy began packing her small dictionary because Dad used new words and made her work them out. He was as bad as Sarah for that. Said he was using different words deliberately so she’d be familiar with them. Didn’t talk like that other days. Maybe he’d read all those fat books in the back room.

  She listed the mosses in her little notebook and Dad made her read them back to him and seemed pleased when she could remember which bit of moss went with which name. Said Mom had had trouble with that. And Cathy wanted to ask what he meant but Dad saw something over in the trees and was getting his camera ready and saying hush, so she never did.

  A rabbit. That was a rabbit—a snowshoe hare, Dad called it. It bounded between two clumps of trees, back legs going past the front ones, muscles all bunched up then stretched out, rippling with life. Rippling was Dad’s word. She knew what it meant but it was only when she saw a hare in action that she could see how well it fit something that wasn’t water.

  Later she saw one Dad had snared, hanging up by its back feet, dead. No ripple. The muscles just sagged down; elastic that would never go tight again. Dad said paint that, she could still copy the way the fur lay, the shape of the bones. But it was missing the spark. It was drab without the spark; the aliveness was what she wanted to paint, that something inside that said, “wheee, I’m me!”

  And when she said that to Dad, in fits and starts because she wasn’t sure of the words, he put his arm round her shoulders and said yes, he knew just what she meant. And it was so nice to have someone say they knew what she meant in that way, as if she’d said something special, something clever, that she felt tears in the back of her throat but she didn’t let them up.

  ***

  After Cathy started lessons with Sarah, Mom didn’t mind hearing her saying a Dad word in the house and explaining what it meant—like when Cathy said it was a drab day—but she didn’t want to hear Sarah words.

  “Well, Cathy, I’m pleasingly plump all the time and that’s how I like it. I don’t want to be ‘plump’ on Mondays and ‘chubby’ on Tuesday and ‘well-padded’ the rest of the week and anyway that sounds like a chesterfield and I don’t like you talking about me to Sarah Brooks like that and—”

  “We weren’t talking about you, we were talking about wor
ds. I just said pleasingly plump because you say it all the time.”

  “Well, I say it to you and Dad but I wouldn’t say it to her so don’t talk to her about things I say.”

  “Well, okay.”

  “Now don’t get snippy with me. And don’t go scowling. You’ll get wrinkles.”

  And the timer went off and Mom gave a little squawk and said the gravy was going lumpy and go away, leave me alone when I’m cooking.

  ***

  On Labour Day Dad went back to Memorial for his second year and he wouldn’t be back until mid-term break. When Cathy’s own school year started, Sarah cut back their lessons to three or four times a week after school, and said she would give Cathy a ride home afterwards.

  Cathy walked into her very first grade eight class early, head up and ready to start. She sat at the front because Sarah had said there would be fewer distractions at the front. Mrs. Elliot was their homeroom teacher again this year and she smiled right at Cathy and said it was nice to see her back. It was not just the everyday smile she gave to the whole class and her eyebrows didn’t go up in that fed-up way they sometimes did when she looked at Cathy and she didn’t sigh once. It made Cathy feel like she was getting somewhere, even before she’d started. And after a month or so, Mrs. Elliot said how much better her schoolwork was and to keep it up.

  If she stared at her desk all the time it was easier to keep her mind on listening. Only in science class, Mr. Roberts said look at him when he was speaking and his moustache had something stuck in it and by the end of class it had worked its way down to the bottom of the bristles and was hanging there and Cathy just kept waiting for it to drop. She only heard half of what he said and had to ask Jenny Sheppard what he’d given them for homework. They had a giggle over a moustache being a funny place to keep leftovers. Sarah had said pick someone nice to ask stuff if she had a problem and Jenny was the nicest. But it didn’t happen often, now. Her listening muscles were getting stronger all the time.

  Summer

  Hutch was heading over to the soccer field at the school for a scratch game, three days after the end of grade nine, when he saw Mrs. Brooks and Cathy Russell meeting up with Dr. Brooks at the bottom of their road. Nice woman, Sarah Brooks. Nice couple. They came for supper sometimes with Mom and Dad and once last year they’d asked Hutch to show them his boat. He’d taken them down to the shed and they’d asked about the kind of wood and said how important it must be to avoid knots and how long did the planks have to soak before they’d bend the right amount. Sensible questions. Dr. Brooks had done river kayaking in Ontario. Later they bought a double from Dad and Hutch would often see them paddling round the harbour at sunset.

  Tim Brooks was Hutch’s official doctor—he was everybody’s doctor—but Hutch was healthy as a horse and never needed him. When Hutch needed attention it was straight to emergency in Gander Hospital, Do Not Pass Go: a broken arm falling off the shed roof, a broken nose from someone’s elbow in basketball, a broken collarbone wrestling Jed Batton—wrestling was the polite name for it, anyway; Batton had been waiting there too, looking even worse.

  Today there was a brisk northwesterly blowing and it was picking up to gale force now so kayaking was probably out for more than just one day. It would blow the ball off course too, but if you waited for the wind to go away around here you might as well stay in bed. Hutch stopped and stared out at the ocean, willing the wind to blow itself out, and Cathy Russell walked past him.

  She looked at him from the corner of her eye and grunted, “’Lo.”

  “Hi, Cathy.”

  She had the same old bag over the same old shoulder with that everlasting sketch pad sticking out and school books, even in summer. And that was the arm she used for painting walls and barns and anything else that was flat and couldn’t run away. It was a wonder her whole right arm wasn’t twice the size of the other one.

  Hutch grabbed his ball cap as a gust took it. He remembered a windy day just like this back in grade two or three, when Cathy Russell was still in his class. Her scribbler had gone flying across the schoolyard and he’d chased after it, jumped on it, put it right side out, and given it back. In the process he’d noticed lots of red X marks and not many ticks and no gold stars at all. His own scribbler was always thick with stars and until then he’d thought that was normal. And now she was down a grade, just finished grade eight, and still having trouble. Homework in summer. What a life. Hutch set off again. He had a game to go to.

  Full Steam Ahead

  Grade eight was a struggle and sometimes Cathy thought her brain might boil over. At first it took almost twenty minutes to focus on her homework and stop her thoughts zigzagging from wondering what Mom was cooking, to how to tackle some painting problem, to the fog rolling up the ocean. But over the weeks it took her less and less time to zero in on the page in front of her until sometimes she could do it straight away.

  Cathy came home with her report card on the last day of grade eight with mostly borderline marks but the only subject she’d failed outright was English, and Sarah said they’d really work hard on the set books next year.

  Mrs. Elliot said Cathy was reading at about a grade seven level now, although she was still slow. The report card hardly mentioned her writing, which took so much more effort, just that her spelling needed work. Reading was getting easier but writing had all those extra steps of thinking what to put and making words legible (though she couldn’t say what ledges had to do with anything) and capitals and commas and whether it was there or their. Mom always complained about the standard shift in Dad’s truck, said Aunt Dot’s automatic gears were so much easier. Cathy thought writing was a lot like reading with a stick shift.

  Earlier that day, Mrs. Elliot said how well Cathy had done—right there in class, in front of everybody, said she’d caught up so much in just one year. Jenny Sheppard came over after, put her hand on Cathy’s arm, and said, “Good for you. That’ll show ’em.” The rest of Jenny’s crowd smiled at her too, saying yes and wasn’t she doing great.

  “Yeah,” Jed Batton yelled from the door, “pretty soon she’ll be able to write her own name. Loser.”

  The girls all muttered and glared at him but Cathy never minded Batton. He was like that with everybody. But Joan White was right behind him, looking at her feet. Joan failed things too—not as much as Cathy—but she was starting to skip class, starting to “forget” her homework more often, wasn’t hanging around with the girls as much. Cathy knew what that felt like.

  She caught up with Joan in the hallway and said, “I’m only doing better because Sarah’s helping. She might help you if you asked.”

  “What for?”

  “Well…so you could pass things. Graduate maybe. Get a job.”

  “What job?”

  “Well, there might be a job somewhere bigger.”

  “My sister Eva graduated. Good grades. Went to St. John’s. Only jobs she could get were minimum wage and they’d only give her a few shifts ’cause they didn’t want to pay her benefits.”

  “Well…it’s a start?”

  “Worked funny hours so the buses had stopped running. Had to walk. Couldn’t afford a taxi. Girl she knew was attacked walking home on that same street so Eva quit. Moved in with my aunt ’til she could find something else and now Aunt Madge is breathing down her neck all the time. Eva says she might as well be home.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence.

  “Is she all right?” Cathy asked. Joan stared at her. “The other girl. The one who got attacked?”

  “Looks all right on the outside.”

  “Oh.”

  Joan pushed open the bathroom door and looked over her shoulder at Cathy.

  “Don’t care if I ever graduate. Don’t give a shit.”

  Cathy stood outside the door with her mouth open, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Poor Eva. Poor girl who was attacked. Cathy walked off
quickly before Joan came back out. On her way home she thought Poor Joan. Then she started worrying about herself too. Would she ever get a job? How much did art classes cost? Grey fear rolled over her again.

  No way. She was learning more, passing things. She didn’t have that brain thingy. One step at a time like Sarah said. She marched up the long hill faster than usual.

  ***

  Cathy couldn’t wait for Mom and Dad to see her report card but when she bounced into the kitchen, Dad was gone and Mom didn’t know when he’d be back. Her mother insisted on waiting for him. Cathy said they could go through it twice, couldn’t they?

  “Well, why don’t I just sit here and you read it to me, because my eyes hurt.” Mom sat back in her chair and put a hand over her eyes and it made Cathy think of Jed Batton when he told the teacher the dog had eaten his homework. What a pile.

  “Oh, come off it, Mom. There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.”

  Her mother’s chin crinkled up like she was trying not to cry and the hand stayed over her eyes and after a bit she got up and went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  So when Cathy heard the truck arriving she was outside before the engine stopped.

  “Dad. Can Mom…? Can she…? Does Mom really have a problem with her eyes?”

  And Dad stood by the truck holding the door, looking at nothing in particular. Then he swung it ever so slowly to the side of the truck and leaned on it and there was that big click as everything slid home.

  “Have you asked Mom?”

  “I just asked her to read my report card. She says her eyes hurt. They weren’t hurting five minutes ago when she was mending your shirt. And she always asks you to read stuff for her.” This was far harder than Cathy expected when she’d first rushed out and there were long spaces between thoughts. “She can read numbers, no trouble. You give her columns of figures to add up because she’s so fast.”