Cathy was awake half that night, from excitement and fright and too much coffee, but mostly because she was wondering how she could face Hutch after this, or his parents, and knowing she’d blown any chance of them getting together again. Ever.
Home Stretch
Hutch met the class in their homeroom in early June. He was not going to talk about Cathy. He was not showing anybody his stump. He wore his interview shirt, even ironed it, walked in with equal steps and all that. Every eye looked at his face and then down at his legs. So what did he expect? They were just a bunch of teenagers.
Mrs. Barlow was a bit dumpy looking and her face was all nose, but she had a beautiful voice with a sort of chime in it. Kind eyes.
“Would you mind telling us what happened to you?”
He felt on parade, stiff and formal. Make it snappy, Parsons.
“There was a bus crash and my legs were trapped under the seat in front. The doctors said the left one was a mess and I’d be better off without it.”
There was total silence in the class. There were some shocked expressions but nobody twitched an eyelid and nobody said a word. So Hutch carried on.
“’Course the first thing I said was No. No way was anyone cutting off my leg. And I wasn’t very polite.” They relaxed a bit then, back to the normal level of fidgets, and there were a couple of nods and some grins.
A big guy in the front said, “So what made you change your mind?”
And suddenly Hutch was back in that bed, feeling like he was tied to the train tracks with a train coming, powerless to stop it, feeling the fear and the horror and that refusal to see, right up to the last second. He had to make an effort to answer.
“They made me look,” he said and his heart was racing just thinking about it. “I was flat on my back but they found a big mirror so I could see the splint, opened it up so I could see inside. Then they made me look. Kept saying, open your eyes, Hutch. Look at it, Hutch. And finally, I did.” He realized he’d had his eyes closed and his whole body was rigid, his hands balled into fists. He let them uncurl and flexed his shoulders a little.
The class seemed paralyzed. The shufflers had stopped their shuffling and the heavy breather on Hutch’s right had stopped his heavy breathing. He heard a crow or something whacking a snail on the window sill, whacking and whacking. Then a girl sneaked a hand up and wiped her eyes. There were a few shiny eyes around the room. His heart slowed down and everything went back to normal.
Mrs. Barlow broke the tension. “A dreadful experience,” she said. “But you’ve done so well since. In your final year at Dalhousie. Could you tell us how you got from that point to this?”
So Hutch hitched his rump on the side of the teacher’s desk and folded his arms and started to explain. And it was easy. Because these teenagers were the same age Hutch had been and they looked like they understood, like they’d felt that fear right along with him. So he took them through all the steps, the problems he’d had to accept, changes he’d had to make.
“…but now I love computer science and there are so many different jobs in that field and I’m in control of my future again—as much as anybody is. Never thought I would be.”
“Do people ask about…?”
“Often people don’t realize so I don’t mention it. I can usually tell if someone’s noticed. Then I tell them yes, I’ve lost a bit of leg but this works okay.”
Hutch tried to think of questions they might feel too awkward to ask. “Sometimes a guy might want to hide the fact that he’s missing a leg, at a job interview or if he’s dating somebody special. But sooner or later they’ll find out. Best to let everyone know up front. And some girls are turned off so you need to make sure they’re okay with it before you get too involved.”
There were a few squirms and blushes here and a skinny guy who’d been turning his pen over and over groaned and pulled a face at the boy next to him.
“But I guess it’s no worse than anything else that’s a bit different: the guy’s shorter than the girl or he’s got bad acne or he’s the wrong colour or comes from the wrong part of town or goes to the wrong church or he talks funny like me.” There were a few chuckles at that. “There are all kinds of ‘barriers.’”
Kids were nodding. Nobody spoke. The teacher got to her feet and said thank you and Hutch stood, waiting. She glanced round the class asking if there was anything they wanted to add, and most of them just muttered thank you but a girl’s voice said his picture was fantastic and another girl asked how he liked being famous. Hutch pulled a face and said not much. The big guy said he bet Hutch hated that picture; he wouldn’t want to see himself in a picture like that.
The two girls both said of course he would and other kids called out yes and no and soon everyone was arguing about it and the teacher said calm down and apologized to Hutch and told the kids they were getting too personal and they looked awkward and went quiet. Hutch said it was okay, good to get it out in the open, and he was surprised they all had such strong opinions. The big guy was hunkered down now and his voice was a bit defensive.
“I just don’t think anybody should paint a picture of your…of you. Like that.”
“Yes, it was hard. The…artist was making me see in the same way Dr. MacPherson made me see. Open your eyes Hutch. Look at it.” And Hutch realized that was exactly what she had done. “Cathy said I was a whole person, even with a piece missing, and she painted me that way. Painted me with a stump of a leg and called the picture A Man. I think I act like a man. Feel like one anyway.” He looked at the class, shrugged his eyebrows, and bunched up his mouth for a second. “Cathy’s shown that I solved the problem—or I’ve come to terms with it—whatever. So I lost half a leg.” Another little shrug. “I’m still a man.”
Some of the kids were giving the big guy dirty looks, especially the girls.
“Don’t feel bad for saying that, buddy. That’s how I felt too and it’s taken me a long time to look right at it, straight on.” And he felt a grin spreading right across his face, couldn’t stop it. It stretched his ears, probably met at the back.
***
Hutch started an email to Cathy to tell her that he finally understood that portrait and he wished her well with it, hoped she won the contest. Did he want to say anything else? Was he ready to try again? Ready for the tug-of-war? If he had any sense he’d forget about her and put all his efforts into setting up his own work future.
He did have a few work feelers out. He’s sent off applications. One was for the place where he had done his work term in Ottawa. Last fall they’d hinted in a no-promises way that he might want to apply after he had his degree. The other two places were in St. John’s and his buddy from Ottawa was applying there too. In the meantime he would have to live on air and water.
He reread the email to Cathy. That was all he wanted to put in writing and it sounded so cold by itself, like it was waiting for the I-love-you bit and he wasn’t sure if he did. Well, yes, he was quite sure he did love Cathy but the point was, he didn’t want to—didn’t want all the strings that went with it. He left the email in Drafts for a week then deleted it.
***
He drove to North Sydney at the end of a sunny Saturday in August, singing loudly on the highway with all the windows down. He boarded the ferry, not in the new black truck he’d always dreamed of but in a 2000 Honda Accord, bought with his last work term money and a loan from his dad. The car was previously owned by an old lady who didn’t drive in the dark, in the snow, when it rained, and probably not on Sundays. At least it was black.
He stayed at home Sunday night. The folks had heard all about the exhibition. They’d been looking after their granddaughter while Brian and Lori went to a wedding, planned to go see the show next weekend.
“Everybody in Mariners Cove has been asking about you and Cathy,” said his mom. “They’re asking us. And we have to say we don’t know a thing.�
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“I don’t know a thing either,” Hutch said. They asked a dozen questions but that was all he would say. He headed into St. John’s early Monday morning to look for Cathy, made himself sandwiches for the trip and borrowed gas money from his dad. First thing he’d do was drive downtown to the gallery to see her exhibition. Then he’d go see Sarah Brooks. Had to find Cathy.
Driving in St. John’s. Jesus. Newfoundlanders would give you their kidney if you asked for it but no way they’d let you out in traffic. And three times down Water Street before he could slide into a parking spot as someone edged out.
The exhibition was on the top floor of a two-storey house. Hutch wandered around the main floor first, getting a feel for the place. The paintings ranged from a still life of a bunch of dead rabbits hanging in a shed, to a nude girl back-on in a bath with claw feet, to weird but interesting green pictures of slob ice off Labrador. There were a few splashy things he didn’t go for and some Andy Warhol–type ones.
Customers from a cruise ship in the harbour were asking questions about the Jellybean houses down Cochrane Street, shown in a little townscape. Were those real houses? Did people actually live in them? They sounded Texan, like actors from an American soap opera. They bought an iceberg picture and the manager started wrapping it on a long table in the back room with brown paper and lots of brown tape and hairy string, telling them all about Icebergs He Had Known. He nodded at Hutch as he started up the stairs, a slow old-fashioned nod that would go with tipping a hat.
Creaky old stairs they were, painted dark green at the edges but scuffed bald in the middle. This house looked the same age as his Gramps’s old house, with much the same layout. It smelled of old wood and paint thinner with a whiff of exhaust from the street.
And when Hutch walked into the second-floor room his portrait was right smack in the middle with its own special lighting. He stood in front of it, absorbing it. It was wonderful. He looked happy. He looked comfortable with himself just the way he was.
The paintings all shouted Cathy. He could see things through her eyes now—the obvious things anyway: the source of light, the brush strokes, the way she used colours. A few smaller pictures he recognized from Halifax. The larger ones were of Mariners Cove.
He moved closer to examine one with kayaks and realized it was him paddling and Paul and Jenny and the rest. All the old crowd. Then he noticed that one of the people busy in the harbour in the next picture looked like him too—and in the one next to that. He started looking for himself in each picture and he was in quite a few. Sometimes he was tiny, back-on in a corner or only partially seen in a group, but in most of them he was there.
Just four pictures had no people. Two were of that tree by their building and the other two were called Catching the Light. He’d been on the ferry to Change Islands once on that kind of day with the weird light when you couldn’t tell up from down.
“Look at the signature on that one.” It was the picture-wrapping guy from downstairs. Come to see why he was taking so long, probably. “You’re down by the signature.” And the man passed him a magnifying glass and there he was, tiny, lying on his side, up on an elbow, below Cathy’s name. Without the magnification it just looked like any squiggle under a signature.
“What do the red stickers mean?”
“Sold.” The man waved his hand round the room. “There are twenty-eight pictures and nineteen were sold in the first week. The yellow sticker on the portrait of you means it’s not for sale. On loan from the artist. I could have sold that ten times over, any price.”
“What kind of price?”
“A gentleman yesterday offered three thousand and would have gone higher. He wanted to talk to the artist, to see if he could persuade her to sell. Miss Russell refuses to talk to any of them.” He talked like a bank manager, Head Office.
“Does she ever come in?”
“In the afternoons for a few minutes.” Good. He’d wait.
The bell over the door clanged and feet thudded on the wooden floor below, a woman’s voice saying, “That’s it over there.” The man excused himself and went down the stairs in an English-butler way, taking his own good time.
“May I help you?”
Voices bounced back and forth discussing whatever It was and Hutch went back to his portrait. Yes, he looked comfortable with himself, but it was still embarrassing to be nailed like this. Cathy said she’d just painted how he was, what everybody could see if they looked. But everybody didn’t look. Cathy highlighted what she thought was important and made them look, and maybe that was what artists were supposed to do, but she’d highlighted parts of himself he’d just as soon keep hidden. Not just the stump…thoughts. Feelings.
The doorbell clanged again. There were more customers than Hutch had expected even for the tourist season, although most of them would just be window-shoppers like him. Mister was listing off countries where the gallery delivered and Missus kept interrupting, making him say everything twice.
“Very experienced. Never had anything damaged.”
Cathy was not embarrassed to display her feelings and hopes. They were all round this room. What if people scoffed? It would not have stopped her. She’d been mocked growing up—he’d done his share of that—and it had never stopped her. She was one tough cookie. And yet, she had been crushed by Sarah’s paper. Was life always this tangly?
There were creaking noises from the stairs—tired wood showing its age. A truck started reversing close by, beep-beep-beep, and Hutch wandered over to the window to check on his car. This room was full of Cathy’s talent and he felt a rush of pride, of admiration for all that single-minded determination. This is how I see my world, she was saying. And Hutch was in the middle of that world.
A flicker of movement caught his eye and there she was at the top of the stairs, standing still now, looking at him.
Cathy.
Cathy.
Acknowledgements
For background information on multiple topics I thank: Mannie Bucheit for his long-ago life painting class and more currently George J. Casey, Tom Dawe of Teachers on Wheels, Alison Drover, Jon Drover, Susan Finn, Heather Foley, Linda Furlong, Becky Horsman, Mary Lawlor, Cy Power, Jennifer Shears, John K., John R., and Kate Sinnott and Elsie Thistle. Any errors are my own.
I have so many people to thank for inspiration and guidance in the actual craft of writing, starting with Miss N. Dixon, my high school English teacher, my mother, who was first to suggest I become a writer, and my father from whom I have stolen so many humorous sayings.
More recent inspiration starts with Ed Kavanagh and the participants in Memorial University’s continuing education creative writing program, now sadly defunct, then the provincial Writers’ Alliance mentorship program with Paul Butler, the Piper’s Frith Retreat with the so-gifted Michael Crummy, the excellent creative writing courses at Memorial taught by Robert Finley and Lisa Moore, the many talks, seminars, and panels presented by the province’s active arts community, and for the annual stimulation of the Arts and Letters Awards.
I thank Annamarie Beckel for her helpful advice and my editors at Vagrant (Nimbus) Publishing, Emily MacKinnon and Lexi Harrington for all their patience.
I salute the Newfoundland Writers Guild for initiating and promoting a cohesive writing group back when this province’s writers, especially women, were dismissed and ignored, and for their fifty productive years. Happy Anniversary.
I thank my lovely, lovely family, who never rolled an eyeball when I started writing and have been supportive and encouraging throughout.
Finally I thank my wonderful writing group, the Port Authority, inspired by Lisa Moore after her creative fiction course six years ago. This group has weeded and watered every written thought twice monthly ever since and I thank them all: Sharon Bala, Melissa Barbeau, Jamie Fitzpatrick, Carrie Ivardi, Matthew Lewis, Morgan Murray, and Gary Newhook, with a toast to thos
e who’ve moved on.
About the Author
Courtesy of Rhonda Hayward Photography
Susan Sinnott was born in the UK and now lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She was awarded the 2014 Percy Janes First Novel Award for her then-unpublished manuscript, “Just Like Always” (later Catching the Light), and an excerpt was adapted for inclusion in Racket, an anthology of short fiction by the Port Authority writing group, edited by Lisa Moore. Susan has also contributed to the Newfoundland Quarterly Online.
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