Catching the Light

by Susan Sinnott

  The Parsons crowd had the same idea.

  “Not beyond the first buoy and come straight in at the least sign,” Mr. Parsons shouted from the dock, just behind her. Then he left.

  The guys lifted their kayaks down the ramp and climbed in. Parsons was floating just below Cathy, close to the dock and looking out at the horizon, like he was trying to read its mind. Cathy slid her paint things out of the way and scooted to the very edge of the dock. She stretched one leg down and down until her toes reached the side of the stern of the kayak. Then she pushed down hard.

  The nose of the boat bounced up and a bit sideways. Parsons went back and his arms shot up, and his paddle flicked round and caught Cathy on the ankle. She jerked and her rear end slid off the edge of the dock, and down she went on top of everything.

  She hit the boat and the water at the same time. Freezing. Water up her nose, hair over her face, yucky oily taste. Roaring in her ears, gurgling. Something smacked her on the arm, hard, and then on the head. Something solid and orange pushed her down, down—through every shade of green with grit in it. Then she was kicking herself up and gulping air and grabbing one of those tires tied to the side of the dock as buffers.

  A face appeared in front of her, coughing and spluttering, and with more fury in it than any system.

  “You did that on purpose!” More coughing. “If you’ve hurt my boat I’ll kill you. Fucking idiot.”

  “Your boat for my sketchbook.”

  “I didn’t hurt your fucking sketchbook.”

  “And I didn’t hurt your stupid boat. Why don’t you go find it.”

  Cathy turned her back on him and started pulling herself along the dock towards the shore. After a few pulls she could feel slimy rocks under her feet. They rolled as she put her weight on them, so she had to keep pulling herself along the dock, trying to find solid footing.

  When she could stand up, the water came up to her knees and she turned to look, pulling her hair back off her face with both hands. Paul and Jenny had Parsons’s boat, upside down, keeping it from bumping the dock, Jack was trying to reach one of those little yellow waterproof bags, and Andy had the paddle.

  Paul was calling out that the boat looked okay, no damage that he could see, and Parsons was up on the ramp, saying bring it over. Always giving orders. And he had a life jacket on, which would cut the wind. That wind was a knife going through Cathy. She turned to scramble up the beach. Not your soft Florida sand, this. Lumps—big and hard and grey, like old scrambled egg. Someone should have mashed it more. Then she remembered her art stuff and had to shiver her way down the dock and gather it up, trying not to drip on anything. At least Parsons hadn’t noticed—too busy with that stupid boat.

  Cathy walked over to Sarah’s house, praying she was home, holding the sketchbook away from her wet clothes. Dr. Brooks opened the door.

  “Cathy. Good god. What happened?”

  “Fell in.”

  “Come in, come in. You must be frozen.” He called out for Sarah, turned back to Cathy, and said, “I’ll make you a hot drink.”

  Cathy stood and pooled on the porch floor until Sarah rushed out with towels and exclamations and sent her into the bathroom for a hot shower. She brought dry clothes belonging to Dr. Brooks: a green T-shirt, a sweatshirt with Roughriders on the front, and shorts the colour of government envelopes. They reached her knees and then the waist dropped halfway down her hips even though she fastened the belt on the very last hole, so Sarah found some string. She gave Cathy woolly socks but said she’d have to manage with her own sneakers, although she stuffed them with paper to soak up the worst of the wetness. Then Dr. Brooks had steaming hot chocolate on the table and it was perfect.

  When she heard the full tale Sarah said she wished someone had taken a video of it all. It would qualify for America’s Funniest Home Videos.

  ***

  Cathy started to see there was more to photography than just recording a moment. This could be art too. So at the beginning of grade eleven she joined the school photography club. It had only started in grade eight after someone donated a camera and equipment to the school and Mr. Roberts said he’d teach anybody who was interested. He was like Dad—always out at dawn looking for birds. Dad’s old camera was a Canon AE-1 and it had a zoom lens and a wide-angle lens as well as the ordinary one. He’d had it forever but Mr. Roberts said it was a great camera. Cameras the other kids had didn’t do the things Cathy’s did and most of them just shared the school camera or used Mr. Roberts’s own.

  Now and then he took the club on a field trip. One day, down on the wharf by the Mariners Cove fish plant, they were sizing up boats, on the shore and on the water, but Cathy noticed that old bike belonging to the school caretaker, Obadiah Jenkins. Kids called him OJ and Obi-Wan but he only ever answered to Mr. Jenkins.

  His bike was leaning against the concrete wall, all ruler-straight lines with sharp shadows, and perfect circles with all those spokes. What was the plural of radius? Imagine geometry being useful! Cathy chose black-and-white mode and moved the bike wheels to make the angles tighter where the shadows met the ground, tilted the handlebars more.

  She took a whole roll of pictures. When Mr. Roberts taught them about prints she made a print of the best one and he showed her how to frame it. They entered it in a provincial competition and it won first place. Cathy got a certificate in the mail and a free pass to a photography show, which she couldn’t go to because it was in St. John’s.

  She gave Mr. Jenkins a signed copy of the photograph. Sarah had said she should practice her signature first so Cathy worked on all kinds of swoops and swirls with the tail of the Y and the last stroke of the R.

  “Doesn’t feel right,” she said to Sarah. “Maybe when I’m a real artist.”

  “Well, I think you’re an artist already. But whatever you’re comfortable with.”

  “A signature’s like a little portrait of yourself and I’m Cathy Russell: straight up, no frills.”

  And Sarah laughed and said, “Go for it.”

  So Cathy signed the photograph on the back with her usual round, careful letters and Mr. Jenkins said he had a frame he could use and he’d put it up on his kitchen wall.

  Sarah gave Cathy a stiff folder to put the photo and the certificate in, said this was a good time to start getting a portfolio ready for art school.

  Portfolio: noun: a set of pieces of creative work intended to demonstrate a person’s ability.

  Cathy kept looking at the folder, running her hands over it, smelling the cardboard smell of it.

  Little Pigs

  Mom tucked Cathy up in her room with Tylenol, a hot lemon drink, and some “man-sized” tissues. Said there was a nice pile of books by the bed, and the dictionary. But Cathy’s head hurt so much she just lay back and closed her eyes.

  Scuffles at the front door. It was the aunts arriving for Tuesday Night Cards.

  “Oh, that wind.”

  “Move in a bit, let’s get the door shut.”

  “Had to dig out gloves and hats and it’s not even November month!”

  “—be okay when I get my hands on a hot cup of tea.”

  The draft made Cathy sneeze and blow and cough and blow. She hauled the covers up round her ears. Downstairs, they’d reached the tea ceremony.

  “Ah, Tetley. Maisie just had Red Rose last time, ran out of the good stuff.”

  “Once in ten years! Anyway Red Rose is good, my guys like it best.”

  “Where’s my mug?” That was Aunt Gert.

  “That mug with the flowers broke,” said Mom. “But there’s another china one the same, right there, only it has a Santa Claus on it.”

  Aunt Gert humphed about the Santa Claus, saying how did the flower one break.

  “It just broke,” said Mom. It broke when Cathy was reaching behind her to put it on the table without taking her eyes off her book. Sh
e thought she’d reached far enough but she hadn’t. First thing Mom said was, “Aunt Gert will have a fit.”

  “You put that tea bag right in.” Aunt Elsie’s voice. “You know Joanie just likes her tea bag waved over the cup twice. Abracadabra. She’ll never drink that.”

  “Yes I will. Anything hot on a night like this. Just fish it out quick.”

  “Mugs don’t break by themselves,” Aunt Gert was saying. “Did Cathy break it?”

  “Mugs wear out same as everything else. Sometimes the handle just falls off in the wash. Give it up, Gert.”

  Yay, Mom. GertRude. Sometimes Cathy wished she had a sister but mostly she didn’t. Never one like Aunt Gert, anyway. Someone like Jenny Sheppard, maybe.

  Then Aunt Maisie was saying something about hating carpenter bugs and where had that come from this time of year and Aunt Dot said it was in the birch junks and Mom was saying I’ll do it, I’ll do it, and they all started laughing and joking about Betty to the rescue again.

  “Remember that piece of cardboard next to the kitchen window?”

  “—out of a package of pantyhose!”

  “Nobody was allowed to touch it. Little Betty’s Bug Carrier.”

  Aunt Gert said, “Better than picking them up in her fingers like that rain beetle that fell apart when she put it out by the kitchen door. Remember? Cried all day because it didn’t say thank you and run off and play.”

  “Did not.”

  And Aunt Dot said how about those kittens old Albert had in a sack, and Elsie said, “Oh, but the baby crow was the best.”

  “Oh, my god, yes. Every crow on the east coast lined up on the roof and the barn and jammed side-by-side on the wires—”

  “—screeching at us: ‘leave our baby alone!’ Real Alfred Hitchcock. Thought we were all killed.”

  Then Mom’s voice, dignified: “When you’re finished…”

  Game time. Chairs being moved and that solid thunk of the end of a pack of cards being banged on the table to even up the edges. Slapping-them-down noises.

  “Go easy, you’re bending the cards.”

  Silence. Mutters. Creaks and bumps. A busy silence.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Well, I thought…”

  “My lord. Your deal.”

  Then it started all over again.

  Cathy blew her nose, blew and blew until her ears popped. She aimed the used tissues at the garbage but mostly missed. Then she lay still with her eyes closed. It was a different world with no eyes. You could hear the house breathing, hear rattles you’d never noticed. Not that there were many here, not like the house up at the light. Dad had done a real good job building this house. But a night like this made the trees rattle, the rocks creak. It made the ocean boom close in and roar further out.

  “…Sarah Brooks.”

  Cathy opened her eyes.

  “Little pigs have big ears.” That was Mom.

  The voices went real quiet but Cathy could still hear Aunt Joanie in her Big-News voice speaking low. Cathy rolled out of bed, wrapped the comforter round her shoulders, and trailed it to the door. She pulled it open a few more inches—slow, slow—and stuck out an ear.

  “…Jessie Rowsell’s cousin…married that townie…Holyrood…one of those giant Ford trucks.” Aunt Joanie’s voice was coming and going—leaning in and back, maybe, or turning her head. “…Grace Hospital…old nurse’s residence. There they were…both of them, Doctor and Missus…that clinic. Her with tears down her face and him with his arm round her.”

  Oh god. What was going on?

  “What clinic?”

  “Oh, come on, Else—that fertility place.”

  “You mean where they do test-tube babies?” Aunt Elsie sounded shocked. “Didn’t know…in this province.”

  “…a nice bit but…” Joanie said. “…Halifax for the rest.”

  “Bet you don’t get that on Medicare.” Dot’s big laugh.

  “Don’t agree with it.” That was Aunt Gert, loud over the others. Of course it was Aunt Gert. “If The Good Lord intended them to have a baby they’d have had one the proper way.”

  “Poor thing,” said Aunt Maisie. “When I think how often…Time and Tide…must have got her drove.”

  “…just last week: ‘That tree will fall down before you gets a swing in it.’”

  Someone was on her feet—for a bathroom break, maybe. Cathy eased the door shut and climbed back into bed, knocked the pile of books as she climbed in so the top ones slid off, standing Harry Potter on his head. She didn’t have time to get the comforter straightened away before the door opened. Mom came in and Cathy tried to look half asleep.

  “Need anything?”

  “No thanks.”

  ***

  Cathy remembered back at the beginning, that first summer, when she spent hours at Sarah’s house or going for walks with her. Cathy had said thank you and sorry for taking up so much of your time. And Sarah had said something about her having to take her turn when she had ten children, but for now it wasn’t an issue.

  Issue: noun: an important topic or problem.

  It was also something legal to do with children of one’s own. Did Sarah know that? Of course she did. Sarah knew everything about words—just not how to have a baby, how to have an issue.

  Cathy lay in her bed, unaware of the comforter lumped round her legs or her sore throat or the wind thumping. Sarah had said things about starting a family here in Mariners Cove, Cathy just hadn’t taken much notice. She tried to remember. Early on Sarah had said things like that but not in a long while. And she’d been doing all this running up and down to St. John’s in all weathers, staying over a couple of nights each time, Dr. Brooks driving in to join her. Cathy had asked her about that. Sarah had said she didn’t mind the drive except sometimes when it was foggy in the isthmus. Said about those stupid trucks scaring her, crossing the centre line like that, and Sarah would grip the wheel and wonder if there was a pile-up ahead and what was off to the side if she had to go round—a cliff up or a cliff down.

  “Yes, but why are you going so often?”

  And Sarah would say stuff about a few meetings and then get into a story about something funny that happened when she had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, or how pretty it was just past Clarenville with those little white communities in the cliffs like flowers tucked behind ears. Cathy should paint houses in the cliffs round here like that. And Cathy thought about trying, only she didn’t know what magnolias looked like. Sidetracked. Cathy had been sidetracked. But now they’d been seen, so the whole coast would know.

  ***

  Another Tuesday a month or so later, Dad had the radio on CBC listening to more stuff about that Monica Lewinsky person. Then they were advertising a series of health talks and there was one about infertility. Mom was going to Aunt Joanie’s for cards when it came on and Dad was doing a lot of banging in the back room, so Cathy listened.

  She missed the beginning about Intrauterine Insemination because Dad kept coming in for things, but the next part was on In Vitro Fertilization and how they only went on to IVF if the first bit hadn’t worked. What a lot of bother. You had your insides checked out and blood pressure taken a million times and blood tests and needles and pills—Sarah must really miss her coffee and red wine—and more tests and adjusting the drugs and piles of ultrasounds, and you had to go to a special clinic all the time, which would be annoying even if you lived next door but Sarah had a four-hour drive each way.

  There was a little bit about the sex part, which Cathy didn’t want to hear, but it sounded like you didn’t just mix it up in a test tube—they had to get together a lot and try things out so you couldn’t have one person in St. John’s and one in Mariners Cove.

  And it could go on for months, going in for ultrasounds on certain days. And what if there was a snowstorm and you couldn’t
get there that day? Must have to start over. And it cost—god, did they really say thousands? Dad was making such a racket, hammering. And the chances of success were not great. People must really really want a baby to go through all that and pay all that with such a small chance of it working.

  And for Sarah, it hadn’t.

  On Course

  Hutch chewed the end of his pen as he sat balancing the chair on its back legs at the kitchen table. On the table was the application for the Marine Institute, all filled out. He’d be off to the post office with it in a minute before the folks came back. He’d tell them after it was done. He figured he’d get the theory at the institute and write his fishing master certificates—right up to first class if he could. He’d get the practical experience in between with Uncle Em.

  Everyone kept saying no, don’t do it, the bottom was out of the fishing industry. The fishermen were all tight in the face and grim round the mouth saying, “Forget it b’y,” and his mom saying, “Do something less dangerous—you’ve got the brains to do anything.” He could understand Mom because her brother’s boat had been lost before Hutch was born.

  But. He wanted to be out on the water.

  Brian’s friend Chris had come to stay for a few days. He’d been in Africa working as a geologist, Tanzania and Kenya, and he was going to South America soon. He worked outside a lot, not stuck behind a desk all day. Now that was an exciting life. Chris had stories about everything and money in his pocket. He’d talked Hutch into considering a geology degree and the family had been pushing it ever since. He’d even filled out the application for Memorial last month.

  But. He wanted to go to sea.

  His family was always trying to discourage him, and only let him out once with Uncle Em last summer. Dad said Em had sunk a lot of money into his longliner adapting it for shrimp, said he’d need some real good catches to make it worth it. Hutch had been out fishing for herring but never for shrimp. And by the summer of ’98 the cod were long gone.