Hutch had been hoping to try his kayak when the ice was gone, maybe just on Uncle Em’s pond the first time, but the position that made his leg hurt worse than anything was sitting with his legs straight out in front. Well, he couldn’t even do that yet, things were still too stiff and tight, and the closest he could get set off that awful nerve pain.
He worked at stretching things, especially that exercise where he was in a kayak-sitting position only lying on his back with his feet up the wall—the effort he put into his schoolwork was nothing compared to this—but the pain shot everywhere. And not just while he was exercising, but for hours afterwards. He knew they would tell him to stop, that he was making things worse. But he had to. Had to.
And for all his efforts nothing changed much—or at least not enough. So Hutch sat his final exams and thought he’d done okay, even with English, and watched the kayak season coming, and knew he couldn’t do it.
Part Two
“Tomorrow’s illiterate will not be the man who can’t read; he will be the man who has not learned how to learn.”
—Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, 1970
Fresh Start
The day her father left for Labrador, late in May, it came as a shock that Cathy herself might be gone when he came home in October. So she wouldn’t see him until Christmas—more than six months, more than ever before. Cathy didn’t know how to say all that. Words still didn’t come when she wanted them. But her father just looked at her and smiled.
“It’s only a few weeks longer. You’ll be too busy to notice.” He hugged her tight. “You know what you want. You’ve always known what you want. You’ll be fine.”
Another big hug and he was gone.
Then in July, after Sarah had left, NSCAD said yes. Cathy couldn’t keep still, wanted to write and accept straight away, but Mom said no, wait, wait, went down to the mailbox every day, looking for something from Grenfell. Cathy made herself wait four days, but when there was nothing in Friday’s mail she sent her acceptance to NSCAD and the application for a student loan and started checking out accommodations in Halifax.
“But Mom, it’s a bird in hand, like you always say.”
Her mother freaked. Went off to Aunt Dot’s and Cathy had to get her own supper two nights in a row. When Dad called from Goose Bay there was a silence on the other end for a bit, then: “Well, we’ll just have to manage, won’t we?”
On Tuesday, Grenfell said yes and Cathy had to write and tell them she wouldn’t be coming.
Mom had a Mood round her all summer. She was less free with the hugs and just pulled muffins out of the freezer when someone was coming instead of baking them fresh. She sighed more. Now and then Cathy would put an arm round her and Mom would pat Cathy on the hand and say don’t mind her, she was just sad when people went away—and the farther they went the less likely they’d be to come back. Cathy said that she was only going to learn about portraits and then she’d be home. Promise. And Mom would pat her hand again with a wobbly little smile and look at the floor. If only Mom could send emails whenever she felt lonely. All those tricks she’d learned, to manage without reading and writing…but they wouldn’t work long distance.
“I’ll phone, Mom. You know I’ll be home. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere but here.”
Mom was different shades of sad all summer, which made Cathy feel guilty. So she swung from making a big effort to talk and listen and be there with her mom, to taking off with her painting bag and staying away until suppertime, then back again. Sarah was out of her life and Dad was in Labrador and school was over and Cathy no longer had to keep working non-stop. All of a sudden, life was a big empty space.
She loved not having to think up things to write in her journal anymore and dumped the latest one in the box under her bed with the rest. She missed using Sarah’s computer but she’d written out all those QWERTY letters and she looked them over now and then, practicing on a paper keyboard so she wouldn’t forget.
Cathy did try to always have a book on the go, and even went into Gander to the library whenever someone was driving that way, had a session on a computer there when there was time. She did phone Sarah to tell her about going to Halifax, but it was during working hours so she left a message. And Sarah phoned back and left a message saying how wonderful. Cathy counted the days to going away.
The only thing that gave Mom a boost that whole summer was planning Cathy’s wardrobe. There were the usual arguments—“Mom, I’ll never wear that. But, but, but”—and one day they drove into St. John’s and stayed overnight with Aunt Dot’s daughter and managed to agree on new pants, a few everyday tops, boots and sneakers, and a winter jacket.
Compromise: verb: to meet half way.
Cathy saw a beautiful sweater in shades of green with such elegant trim but they didn’t buy it because the price would turn your hair white, Mom said. She said the same about the price of art supplies and they bought the minimum of the basics on the list from NSCAD and Cathy began to realize how much this all might cost and that the more she practiced, the more supplies she would use.
In that last week Mom seemed to pull herself together, said how proud she was that two art schools wanted Cathy. Cathy overheard her making a big fuss about it to the aunts and telling Aunt Gert, “Cathy was born to be an artist and I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
At first, Mom was just going to drive Cathy to the bus in Gander. Then she was going to drive her to Corner Brook. Finally she and Aunt Dot would take her all the way to the ferry at Port aux Basques. Having Dot there made everything easier. She told funny stories about when her daughter, Marianne, first moved away: how the oven in one apartment was on a slant so everything flowed sideways and came out burned on the thin side and soggy on the thick; how, on her first trip to a laundromat, there was a guy in shorts and bare feet in February because everything he owned was in the washing machine. Every time Mom started to sound sad, Dot came up with another story.
They stopped for a big lunch in Corner Brook at this cafeteria-type place with turkey and all the fixings and Mom and Aunt Dot told Cathy to enjoy it because it would be the last one she’d get for ages. They made such a racket about it that the women behind the counter were all wishing Cathy well and said to come in for a feed on her way home at Christmas and people at other tables were clapping and cheering for her and Cathy’s eyes filled up. Didn’t cry when she said goodbye to the aunts and cousins but had tears in her eyes for a bunch of strangers.
She felt all stirred up for a while after that but on the highway to Port aux Basques they pulled off the road to watch a herd of caribou and Cathy went all-out sketching them until Mom said it was getting late. Cathy had never seen caribou this close. They stayed up in the hills usually. They were so lovely, small and fragile-looking compared to moose, and with such delicate colouring. It was like comparing Jenny Sheppard or Sarah Brooks to herself. And caribou were always in a group. Moose were lumbering loners with big feet. Thinking about that took her all the way to the ferry terminal.
Mom wanted to go on-board with Cathy but Dot said no, let’s say the goodbyes here.
“Phone me when you arrive,” Mom kept saying. “I’ll be waiting.”
So Cathy left them standing by the truck, shoulder to shoulder, and she walked alone, loaded to the ears with bags, up the ramp of the huge Nova Scotia ferry. It was so much bigger than ferries serving the islands around home. She waved from the door and Aunt Dot had her arm round Mom now and Cathy blew strings of kisses then turned and went inside.
***
It was awkward squeezing along corridors and up and down steep skinny stairwells with both hands full and a lumpy big backpack with bundles hanging off it—Cathy even had her ticket in her teeth for a while. It was ages before she found a seat with room for everything. The throbbing from the engine came up through and gave her a headache. The oily smell and used-up air and that slow twistin
g and untwisting made her queasy, but it was too hard moving her stuff to go out on deck. Boats were only good in pictures. She kept counting her belongings, checking and re-checking.
She ate the sandwiches Mom had packed, drank her water, felt a little better. She slept on and off in the seat, waking with each change in the motion or when someone walked past with a swish of clothes or a stir of air, or when her head fell forwards and yanked on her neck. For once she had no urge to draw.
She felt lightheaded when she was waiting for the Maritime Bus to Halifax, felt she couldn’t get enough oxygen, like she was in a bottle. Everything looked faded and smudged. Every colour was a bit grey as if some dirt had been mixed in, every sound muffled and off-key. She had been too excited to sleep the last week and now she was too exhausted to see straight. Halifax was a blur of streets and traffic and noise and fumes and Cathy ached all over by the time she reached her room. Her fingers and the fronts of her elbows felt stretched. It was a strain on her painting hand—her heart beat louder for a moment. Her shoulders burned and her neck had a rubbed patch where she’d hung her art bag with her valuables.
“Guard it with your life,” Mom had said.
***
The student loan was not as big as they’d hoped, hardly enough to cover the basics, but Dad said they’d be all right for now so long as Cathy was careful. Maybe she could look for a student job in Halifax.
She had spent her last weeks in Newfoundland looking up accommodations and finally took a single room at the top of a house on Vernon Street. Cathy wasn’t up to sharing her space with strangers, even though it would have cost a bit less. And for once her mother agreed. She estimated she could walk to the college on Duke Street in twenty minutes in good weather, and it was still cheaper than many other options.
You could tell it was a rental place from way down the road: all those neat lawns, then this yard with its mess of dandelions, weeds, buttercups, and those tangled threads that spread over everything like a hairnet and have tiny blue flowers on them in the summer. Near the sidewalk, litter was trapped in fat trenches—ruts from winter tires, by the look of the deep clear patterns they’d left. There were raised shapes like the potato prints she’d made in grade one. If only her camera weren’t so far down in her bag….
Inside, the walls were the colour of cream gone sour—that thick beige skin. The floor was covered in bumpy, cracked linoleum in overlapping geometric shapes, browns with a ginger line here and there. Worse than drab. Ugly. No pictures, no plants, no rugs, and a sign in her room about no thumbtacks on walls.
The bed was a futon in a dead-looking gold with flecks of brown, the brown of the ruts outside. The two yellowish blankets on the shelf had been dead even longer. She had brought her light blue sheets from home and the colours glared at each other—or would’ve glared if they’d had the energy. But there was a tree outside her window—not a tree like home but green and growing—and she was here and it was all good.
The house was full of students. She was to share a bathroom with a girl in the other single room, but Cathy never saw her, although the others said she came by every week to pick up her mail. She was living with her boyfriend and this place was a cover-up to please the parents. Expensive cover-up, but nice not having to share.
Mom sounded shocked when Cathy told her about it on that first phone call.
“Cathy! What kind of people are living in that house? Is there a good lock on your door?”
Aunt Dot would have to calm her down. And Cathy would have to be more careful what she told her mother in future.
***
There were three girls and a guy in the apartment below: two sisters and two cousins. That first Friday the one called Heather invited her in. She introduced Cathy to a couch-load of people and they squeezed together to make room but Cathy chose an upright chair back against the wall, behind the circle of chatter. She hated being in the middle. At first they turned in their seats to talk to her.
“Did you really grow up in a lighthouse?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t that lonely?”
“No.” Silence. “Well, I never thought it was.”
After a bit they stopped turning round so she watched and listened at the start. There were postures and expressions that caught her eye, but the talk was just sea-moan.
Cathy was the first to leave and Heather’s eyebrows floated up. “Already?”
Cathy said how she’d enjoyed herself and everyone was so nice and thank you but she just wasn’t very good at parties. She went to her room and sketched everything she could remember and was still drawing when the front door banged for the last time. She strained to remember details but they’d melted away as she walked up the stairs. Only the simple things stayed with her: the way that twitchy guy’s face was all grooves and spiky lines and how the girl in pink was like Mom’s cat—stacked circles, purring—and how that Jeff guy suited his name with his light brown baby-fine hair that flopped over his eyes like the tops of a double ff.
***
Those first few days she listened so hard in class she went home with a headache. Then came her very first drawing class.
October 20 2000
Foundation Drawing. The Prof took newsprint and screwed it up in a tall shape and messed with it until it would stand on the table without tipping. She walked all round checking from every angel then we sat at the table and drew it. We looked at all the sketches after. How difrent different they were. There was a great discussion about ways to show shadow—stippeling, crosshatching, squiggels. The whole seshen session went by in a flash.
She only wrote special stuff in her journal these days and this was special. The part about painting was even more special and took even longer.
And now its Studio Practice and this is my first real Painting Class….
She had been waiting for this all her life. She was so full of light and air she could float away or burst. The room was bigger than she had pictured—big sinks, cans full of brushes on counters, cupboards full of supplies, washed-out paint splodges all over, and a smell like wood and pressboard being wet and dried and wet again over and over—kind of musty but not a bad musty. Rain flooded the windows and she couldn’t see out so it was a separate world. Her world.
They painted a jug of flowers with acrylics on boards three feet by two. Eight pictures stood on easels and at the end everyone crowded round to critique each one. Critique was not the same as criticize.
Criticize: verb: to indicate faults in a disapproving way.
Critique: verb: to make a detailed analysis and assessment.
Sarah said always say the good stuff first and be gentle with anything bad. Only say part of the bad stuff if there was a lot.
The first three paintings were like photos. One looked exactly like the real flowers; one was a bit heavy looking; the third had lots of detail in one part but nothing much in the rest. The prof asked other people first and when Cathy was asked for her comments she just repeated what another girl had said—she had nothing to add.
The next one was that full-of-himself guy who tipped his head back and looked down his nose. He’d painted geometric shapes, which didn’t seem right because the flowers were softer than that, and there was a funny face in the shadow on the jug, which Cathy had noticed but not painted because it didn’t match her flowers. The prof asked Cathy first. She said she liked the funny face. She said it wasn’t how she saw the flowers but everyone saw things differently so that was fine and she liked what he’d done with the colours. She was proud of herself for being diplomatic but he glared like she’d said it was garbage. She wondered about that afterwards, whether she’d used the wrong words. She decided no, but critiquing was harder than you’d think.
Cathy’s was next. She had painted the flowers like butterflies. They were fabric; silk maybe. One was like a flame lying on the table and had curly bits—tendrils,
like smoke—so that’s how she painted it. She made the stalks more bendy and the jug more open so everything was looser. The first person said wow. Nobody else said a word. The silence went on too long so she sneaked a look round and full-of-himself looked mad and the others just looked…she didn’t know—maybe how she used to look with a set of English questions in front of her, not knowing where to start. The girl who said wow said she didn’t want to go after Cathy because hers was so great. Cathy knew it was the best thing she’d ever done because she was feeling the best she’d ever felt.
But Ive had more practise practice because all I ever do is paint. Those guys have a life.
***
The girl in class who liked Cathy’s painting came up to her that same day and asked all kinds of questions. Her name was Jessica and she was from Halifax. She was real nice and invited Cathy to sit at her table at lunch. Two other girls joined them. They were doing different classes but all of them wanted to do a bachelor of fine arts. Cathy didn’t say much, just answered when they asked her anything.
She sat with them a few more times, until a few days later when the three of them were walking down the hall. They didn’t know Cathy was just inside the bathroom and one of the girls said to Jessica: “She’s like a big black cloud and she hardly talks and I can’t understand half of what she says when she does talk.”
Cathy wasn’t going to be anybody’s big black cloud. No way. So she made sandwiches for lunch after that and ate them down by the water, or inside the ferry terminal. It was cheaper anyway.
On the second Thursday of classes, that guy Jeff from her building caught up with her as she was walking to school. Not too many people could do that, but his stride was even longer than hers. He worked in a restaurant downtown, Thursdays and Saturdays, “at least until classwork gets heavy.” They started walking down together every Thursday.
Catching the Light Page 13