Catching the Light

by Susan Sinnott

  Hutch clamped his teeth together to keep his thoughts in, and keep himself from shaking. His heart was pounding like he’d just run up Bald Head. As if. Mom put her hand on his, gave it a squeeze, and moved away before he had time to fling it off.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow. If you want us.”

  He tried to yell that he didn’t but he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak.

  Dad stood up, chewing his lip. “We want what’s best for you, Hutch,” he said after a bit. “You know that.” He nodded. “If it was someone else in this spot what would you tell them?” He gripped Hutch’s shoulder for a moment then they were gone.

  Hutch closed his eyes. Now he was alone—alone except for being picked at by some nurse or other, and the man in the next bed with the beige screens who he still hadn’t seen, and the beeps and buzzers, smells, trolleys rattling, and the loudspeaker paging Dr. Murphy for the thousandth time. He’d never minded being alone. Always plenty to do, places to go. This was different. Felt like he wanted to hide but someone had moved the trees.

  Everything was sliding away, out of control. Stuff was being done to him all the time—stuff he’d always done himself. Taken for granted. Even washing, for god’s sake. He’d tried to grab the face cloth out of the aide’s hand, but he’d twisted his rib cage and given himself a real jolt.

  Without the amputation one leg would be way shorter than the other, would need more surgeries, and he might end up with the leg off anyway if infection set in. Might be in and out of hospital for years. With an amputation and a prosthesis, he could be functional within months and look almost normal. Get on with life.

  Or so they said.

  But an amputation was so…forever.

  ***

  Hutch asked Dr. MacPherson when he’d be able to play hockey and the guy didn’t look straight at him like he usually did, just said something about it being early days. Well, residents didn’t know everything. God, he and Jack had really been working at it. The coach had put them on the same line because they were a good combination: Jack for speed and Hutch for power.

  Power. He had no power now, over anything. Well, he could fill out that menu card and choose his breakfast. Yeah, right. Prunes or grapefruit. The only real choice he had now was about the leg, and he wanted to tell them all to shove off.

  A nurse said Hutch was lucky to be so fit and muscular, but when Hutch checked out his arms he noticed how flabby his biceps had gone, how they’d shrunk. That nurse didn’t know what muscular was. And his shoulders had shrivelled away to nothing—his big kayaking shoulders. Frigging vanished. Months to build them up and they were gone in a few days. He couldn’t believe it, kept checking. Gone.

  Dr. MacPherson wanted to look at the leg. He asked if Hutch had seen it yet, said it was time. If he couldn’t see it lying down they’d find a mirror. The nurse was ages coming up with a mirror. Don’t let her find one. Don’t let her. The doc had opened up the splint or whatever was down there and peeled away all that padding.

  “Look at it, Hutch.” No. Not looking. “Open your eyes Hutch.” No. Can’t. Not looking. No. “You need to look at this Hutch. Open your eyes.”

  Fuck. Holy fuck.

  ***

  The aide was bellowing in his ear, “Never ate your lunch b’y.”

  Hutch looked at him, blank, and buddy lifted the cover off a plate near Hutch’s nose. “Liver,” said the aide. It looked like a piece of bark curled up at the edges with a mushy scoop of mashed potatoes and some dead carrots.

  “Not hungry,” Hutch said. “Thanks.”

  He hadn’t even noticed the food being brought and that little plastic thing for pills was empty, so the nurse must’ve done her rounds too. It was ages before Dr. MacPherson came back.

  “If I don’t have the amputation, what would you have to do to turn that,” he jabbed his chin toward the splint, “into a leg?”

  The doc stood looking at Hutch, then said he needed pictures to explain. He came back later with this big book. Like a geography textbook—Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy. He leaned it on the table, tilting it so Hutch could see. “This is what the lower leg looks like inside, the layers. See these bones, joints, these muscles….”

  “So that’s like a lever,” said Hutch, after a bit.

  The doc nodded. “Exactly.”

  “And the muscle that would move the lever should be down there but mine’s gone?” He waited for the nod. “And you’d need to glue all those bits together before you could stick it back on again?” Yes. “And it wouldn’t work anyway because the wiring’s gone?” More nods. Hutch stared at the diagrams, reached up and flicked a page. “You do plumbing too?”

  Dr. MacPherson smiled. Waited.

  Hutch’s throat closed up and his mouth felt like wrinkled cardboard. How would he manage on a trawler? In a storm? He’d manage. Somehow he’d manage. But he’d have to change stuff. It meant letting go of hockey and hiking, even chasing a ball around the schoolyard. He’d walk like an old man. And girls. God, don’t think about girls. He could practically hear his Mom: Nice girls won’t care. Yes, but the other kind was more fun.

  He tried to speak but had to clear his throat and start again. He took a tight breath and forced the words out; they came out in a bellow, like when his voice was breaking.

  “Better take it off then.”

  ***

  Mom and Dad smiled when they came back, hugged him, and said they were proud of him. Said he’d just needed time to think it through.

  “So now you can stop whispering to all the nurses.” Hutch’s grin felt a bit stiff.

  They both stood there like lumps with that scary look back in their eyes.

  “What?” He looked from one to the other. “What?”

  Nobody spoke.

  “Tell me.”

  “Eugene and Jenny,” Mom said. Stopped. “The back of the bus.” She was whispering. “It went through the ice into a pond.”

  Dad put his arm round her shoulders. “They were both killed, Hutch. They’re gone.”

  Hutch lay there. The facts seeped into the edges of him but his insides had frozen solid. Eugene and Jenny? Couldn’t be. Now and then something tiny would float up: Jenny splashing him with her paddle, Eugene’s big front teeth. After a time he turned his head away and pulled the sheet up over his face.

  Surprise

  Cathy dropped by, which was something she never did. Sarah wouldn’t mind—always said she liked unexpected visitors. But Sarah paused for a second when she opened the door, didn’t open it wide straight away, and the smile was just a bit slow arriving. She said she was sorting out some mail and the kitchen was up to your eyes.

  “Sorry. Can I just wait here for half an hour until Mom’s ready?” Cathy said. “Won’t get in your way and I’m soaked.” Sarah said of course, switched on the coffee pot and started shuffling papers into a pile. Cathy pulled out a chair and an envelope caught her eye. She’d seen that logo before.

  “Mount Allison University,” she said, surprised. “That’s where Mary Pratt went.” She remembered reading about her in one of those art books of Sarah’s. Colours swam up before her: reflections off glass bowls, the shine on aluminum foil, the way the light shone through a jar of fruit jelly—translucent, Sarah called it. “I’ve tried painting a jar of Mom’s partridgeberry jam the way Mary Pratt does it but I can’t.”

  “That’s why you’re going to go to art school.”

  The rain was really rattling on the windows now, leaving those little smudges that said some of it was sleet. Cathy’s jacket was steaming softly where Sarah had hung it in the corner by the radiator and a wet-laundry smell was trying to smother the smell of fresh coffee.

  Sarah set a blue-and-white-striped mug in front of Cathy. “Don’t burn yourself.”

  She came back with the milk. Those mugs each held a pint, easy. Cathy had drawn a cartoon once,
of Sarah trying to climb out of one. The sketch hung on their fridge for ages. Then Dr. Brooks said it was starting to show its age so he put it away in an album to save it, saying it was better than a photograph.

  Now Sarah was putting a bowl of nuts between them. All the papers and stuff were gone. That envelope. Cathy looked around and there was a pile of papers on the counter with a blank sheet on top. She looked at Sarah, trying to read her face. It looked closed up. Mustn’t ask. Was it about art school? Was it about babies? Mind your own business, Cathy Russell. Her eyes crept back to the pile.

  “Have some nuts.”

  “Thank you.”

  Cathy took a handful and one bounced onto the table and rolled off. Dog scrabbled to his feet and went hunting then stood by Cathy’s elbow, staring at the bowl, first with the left eye, hauling that eyebrow up in folds, then with the right. Nothing sneaky or sideways about dogs. Not like Mom’s cat.

  They talked about Dog for a few minutes and took tiny hot sips from their mugs. Sarah spread her hands flat on the table, fingers straight, and sat staring at them, then she looked up and said, “I’ve been applying for jobs. That’s why there was an envelope from Mount Allison.”

  “You’re leaving.” Cathy’s mug jerked and coffee slopped out onto her hand. The world turned dark: black and white, grey, brown, sepia. “When?”

  “Oh, you’ll be gone long before me.” Sarah fetched a tissue and held it out. Cathy just looked at it. “To dry your hand,” Sarah said. “I’ve been applying for jobs but there’s a lot of competition. No luck so far. I knew it would be like this—that’s why I’ve started already.”

  The fridge gave a little bang and a shake and Dog flopped down on the floor again.

  “Don’t you like it here?”

  “Of course I do. But I need something to do, Cathy, especially after you’re gone.” They drank another inch of coffee. “Please don’t tell anybody. It’s not a good time to be talking about this when everyone’s so upset about the crash. I’d started before it happened.”

  Cathy nodded.

  “And I don’t want people asking about it all the time. It’s a slow process, chasing academic jobs. Might take years.”

  “But you’ve got a doctorate.”

  Sarah’s eyebrows twitched. “So have lots of other people. And other people didn’t go off to a little Newfoundland outport for four years. Other people taught in universities or got some sort of experience to put on their resumé.” She laughed, but it wasn’t the kind of laugh that meant you were enjoying yourself, and said, “Resumé: summary: nothing at all.”

  “But you’ve taught me for four years. You got me from grade seven to grade eleven. Doesn’t that count?”

  Sarah looked at Cathy and smiled her own real smile. “It’s a wonderful achievement as far as I’m concerned. Worth everything.” This was more like Sarah. “I have so enjoyed teaching you. And learning—you’ve taught me a lot too, you know.”

  “But can’t you put that on your resumé?”

  “Oh, I have. But it doesn’t carry as much weight as a regular job.” Sarah finished off her coffee, gathered up the empty mugs. “But I haven’t given up. There may be a job out there for someone with practical experience in literacy problems and I’ll just—”

  Was that what Cathy was? A literacy problem? Does that mean…?

  “What exactly did you say? About me?” Sarah turned and looked at her, mouth open. “On the summary,” Cathy said. “The resumé.”

  Sarah looked like she was thinking. “Just that I taught someone for four years whose level of literacy was not sufficient to keep up in school and who had therefore failed grade seven. And at the end of those four years that person was passing everything—and I put in a few grades as examples—and was about to graduate from grade eleven, and was determined, moreover, to continue with post-secondary education.”

  Moreover. Move over, moreover.

  “You didn’t mention my name?” No. “Or the name of the school?” No. “Or about art school?” No, nothing personal at all.

  “Did you say I was illiterate?”

  “No. You were never illiterate. That means you can’t read or write anything.”

  Like Mom. But she had that brain thing where the letters get all fooled up. Dyslexia. It was something in your body, like diabetes or arthritis. Nothing to be ashamed of. Cathy’s kind of illiteracy was more that you were lazy or a bit dumb and just couldn’t keep up. Cathy took a big breath, “Can you be a little bit illiterate?”

  Sarah said she never used that word. Cathy asked if other people did and she said, well, yes, some people. And did they say you could be a little bit illiterate? Sarah didn’t answer and her lips were all pressed together so Cathy said it was all right, she didn’t have to answer, Cathy would look it up.

  “Well,” Sarah said, and sighed. Sarah didn’t usually do the sigh thing. “Some textbooks refer to functional illiteracy—some reading and writing but not enough to function in the workplace or daily life.”

  Like school. So Cathy had been functionally illiterate back when they first met? There was a long silence, then Sarah said it was an expression she never used and didn’t like. Some people just liked putting labels on things. But would some people say Cathy had been functionally illiterate? Perhaps, but it had only been for a very short time. Cathy had come a long way since then and was definitely going a lot further.

  She, Cathy, had been Functionally Illiterate.

  ***

  Funny how having a label made such a difference. It meant she was in textbooks. It meant there were enough other people with the same problem to make it important enough to be in textbooks, which should have been comforting but wasn’t. It just made it official.

  It was like having a criminal record. Jed Batton’s uncle had always been a bad lot. Everyone knew that. Mom said you just don’t put temptation in his way. But then he ended up in court in Gander and was found guilty. So now he had a record. Now he’d have trouble getting a job—not that he’d ever try. Now he was a criminal, so they wouldn’t let him into the States—not that he’d want to go.

  It was like the time Aunt Maisie had that awful cough. Once she started coughing she couldn’t stop and she’d be almost choking and going red in the face. Made noises like when you’re drinking from a straw and there’s nothing left at the bottom. The aunts just said oh dear, poor Maisie, and carried on. Except for Aunt Gert, who said it was ruining card night. Then old Dr. Powell told Maisie it was bronchitis. And the aunts changed their tune:

  “Oh my, Maisie. Go home and go to bed. Should be looking after yourself better.”

  “Make Reg cook supper for once. Do him good.”

  “I’ll pick up groceries for you. Just tell me what you want.”

  Aunt Maisie kept saying she didn’t feel any different from yesterday but nobody listened.

  Relearning

  Hutch’s eyes were open. If they’d shone a light in, his pupils would have contracted and dilated obediently, but he was not at home. The room was a blind white square and he was a blind white shape inside it. For two days the trolleys went on rattling, the fluorescent light near his bed kept up that high F-sharp hum, and Dr. Murphy was still the most wanted man in the hospital. It was all white noise to Hutch.

  The amputation was just a shadow in the background while his mind flickered through reruns of Jenny and Eugene, of life Before. He was aware of being transferred to stretchers and wheeled along hallways for scans and X-rays and to the operating room, but nothing felt as real as those reruns.

  ***

  Bright light on his eyelids. The sun warm on his arms and the gentle lift and fall of swells under his boat. The best gift ever: back in grade eight when his parents gave him material to build a kayak of his own—if he promised to work harder at school. And Hutch promised. Do anything.

  He triple measured every pie
ce and fussed over each step. He hung over the soaking wood strips, smoothed every tiny roughness to perfection, breathed in that wood-and-resin smell. Dad checked stuff but Hutch wouldn’t let him help. This was His Boat. He stencilled her name on the side in bright green: Dolphin. And he did put a bit of effort into his homework now and then. He only pipped off a few times.

  And over those next summers he got more of a feel for the ocean, for the pull of the tide, for wind direction and dampness in the air. He watched for changes in visibility and the clearness of edges, knew where he’d be less sheltered from the wind and where sunkers could cause waves. He learned everything about his boat. They moved together, him and Dolph.

  ***

  His leg was gone. Hutch couldn’t see the stump because it was all wrapped up but he could see what was missing: his foot, his shin. And he could still feel it, all crunched up and really hurting, how it was after the crash. Now that wasn’t fair. When he told the docs about that they upped his pain meds. Something about reducing pain memory. He was never quite awake after that.

  He thought maybe Paul had been leaning over him once except he looked awful. Never seen him like that. Looked like he was on something heavy, only Paul wouldn’t, ever. Never did join in when the guys had something special. Jenny would give him hell. He could never see why Paul was so wound up in Jenny. Pretty, for sure, but bossy. Bossed all her brothers. They never seemed to mind—just laughed—maybe because she was the youngest and the only girl. But she treated Hutch the same way and he didn’t like it. Didn’t have a sister. Didn’t want one. And whenever he broke up with someone Jenny always took the girl’s side, especially after Jane Butt.

  “…Hutch? Hutch.” A nurse was looking down at him.

  Jenny.

  Eugene.

  The leg.

  It was like hearing it fresh every time.

  As soon as his stitches were out they transferred him. Hutch asked about the other leg, why that burning pain was still there, but the docs just said give it time.