Métis Beach

by Claudine Bourbonnais

  “She’s a fragile girl,” Dana warned me, with that air that parents take when they’re worried about their children. “The accident really rattled her. More than all of us. And her father is mad. Robert Egan is a vicious man we should all be careful of. Don’t forget it.”

  Many of the kids in Métis Beach stood up to their parents, so why not Gail? Why hadn’t she said no to this marriage?

  “Some people prefer to suffer than to disappoint others,” Dana said. “Advocating for themselves is too painful — it means risking someone’s contempt.”

  But Gail hated her parents; she wanted nothing to do with their acceptance. “Oh, Romain, it’s more complicated than that, especially for a woman. Believe me.”

  One day, in one of her agitated moments, Gail decided we should have a picture of us. She told me, her eyes feverish with a sudden passion that I was careful not to encourage, “When I’m married and bored to death, I’ll just look at the picture that I’ll hide somewhere he’ll never find, and it’ll be like a little victory. A victory for independence. Do you understand?”

  She said we should ask Françoise to take the picture, and I quickly cut in, “No, Gail. Not Françoise.…”

  She looked at me with a teasing glimmer in her eye. “It’s funny that a boy like you wouldn’t have more nerve.…” She ran up the stairs as if she had good news to give and made her way to the kitchen where Françoise was preparing supper. Her parents were out for a round of golf, and wouldn’t return until late in the afternoon. A few minutes later, she returned, pulling a sullen and stubborn Françoise. Gail would later tell me, “You should have heard her when she said, ‘You know what your parents think of you and Romain,’ the disgust in her face when she said that!” But Gail insisted, and even shouted, “Just a picture, damn it! Just one!” Françoise threw her apron on the counter and followed Gail into the garden — all the while grumbling — where I was waiting for them, as taut as a bow. Her eyes! As if she were saying, This will cost you dearly, Romain Carrier! You can count on it. Gail placed a small camera in her hand, a flat Minolta. “What do you want me to do with that?” In an equally dry tone, Gail answered, “Certainly not pies.” I barked a laugh. Furious, Françoise pressed the button, probably imagining it was a trigger. “Happy now?” With a heavy pace, she returned to the house.

  By then I was rather nervous, and didn’t like what I was seeing from Gail. But I let myself be pulled into the garage anyway, where we began kissing. “If Françoise knew,” Gail said, her voice triumphant, “she’d be green with envy.” She imitated Françoise, mocking her fat behind. I didn’t find it funny. “Don’t worry, Romain. Nothing can happen to us here. We’re in another world, another galaxy. We could spend our lives here, living off motor oil and paint. She laughed then, and kissed me, her hands in my pants, in the dark and humid garage, among the disorder and the diesel fumes. I was dizzy, my heart beating quickly. Suddenly, I heard gravel spitting from under the Bentley’s wheels, “My parents?” Gail wheezed. I put my hand over her mouth, “Hush!”

  Through the small windowpane we saw them walk into the house before immediately coming out again, led by Françoise, one hand pointing towards the garage. “There.” The hate I felt for her at that moment.... Followed by panic. There was nowhere to go.

  “Hide!” Gail said. She pushed me behind a pile of garden chairs. Walking heavily, Robert Egan came down the driveway and pulled open the door with his powerful hand.

  “I know you’re there. Come out, now!” His face purple with rage, his eyes popping, he held a golf club in his hand. He grabbed his daughter’s arm and squeezed hard enough to force a small squeal out of her, before slapping her in the face. He turned towards me and raised his club in the air, threatening to smash it on my head. I backed up, terrified, making a barrier of whatever I could get my hands on, tools and cans of paint, finally banging my elbows and knees against Mrs. Egan’s Alfa Romeo.

  Gail was shouting, “Don’t hurt him! He did nothing!” But Robert Egan wasn’t listening. He cornered me between a paint-splashed stepladder and the sharp propeller of a boat engine. “No, Dad! No! Please!” Around us, objects of all kind were raining to the ground.

  “My girl will marry, by God! Leave her alone!” His club whipped through the air, scratching Mrs. Egan’s car, which I managed to slip around, catching my feet in some empty bottles. I stepped through the broken glass and managed to leave the garage and run off, like a rabbit chased by a fox.

  By the time I got home, my father was waiting for me. He already knew. Robert Egan hadn’t lost any time. My father jumped at me like a frothing animal. And he hit. His hard fist in my stomach, leaving me panting. “What got into you? You want to bring shame on us, is that it? What do we look like now, you…!” He was about to hit me again when my mother screamed so loudly that my father pushed her against a wall.

  Straightening, searching for breath, I said, “Don’t touch my mother, you dirty.…” but my voice was no more than an inaudible cry among the cacophony of tears and shouts. “You’re done for in Métis Beach! I’m going to cancel all your contracts. We don’t want to see you back there, understand? You’ll keep a low profile for the rest of the summer, and after that we’ll see what happens!” They couldn’t ask that of me, it was too cruel. What would I do?

  “We’ll see wha..?” my voice tapered out. “We’ll see what?” My father straightened, as if I’d hit him.

  “Shut up!” He was about to grab my collar with his calloused hands, but I pushed him off me with my shoulder and got back up, challenging him with my newfound six feet of strength.

  “You want to throw me out, is that it?” My mother, hysterical, began throwing dishes to the ground.

  I looked at her one last time, then turned and ran down the stairs into the street, and ran as far and as fast as I could.

  11

  I waited for darkness to fall, my whole body shaking like a leaf. The night was warm, with no wind. Slivers of voices and music burst forth from the Tees’ mansion and reached me on the beach. Above, an almost-full moon — a quicksilver disk trimmed away, a small nothing preventing it from perfect roundness, a cotton sphere resting in a hand.

  The cream of Métis Beach, at least what was left of them in the summer of 1962, had congregated at the Tees home for the annual garden party, a prestigious event whose secondary purpose was to finance the Protestant churches. Long tables covered in white tablecloths, uniformed servants in black and white, alcohol in indecent volume, a cold buffet — though refined in taste — and a string quartet. In the humid air, notes of Vivaldi, Bach — none of the music that you’d play if you wanted your guests to dance. Margaret Tees had required a certain amount of sombreness that summer as a sign of respect for Johnny Picoté Babcock and Veronica McKay, as well as the mourning families, and all of the parents of Métis Beach, really, who couldn’t help fearing the worst each time one of their children borrowed their car or drove on their own. It was known now that the kids weren’t as responsible as previously thought: we learned that Johnny Picoté drank at least four beers at the clubhouse that evening, beer Art and Geoff Tees brought by the crate — two? three? — and it had been easy for them, the Tees being the owners of one of the largest breweries in the country. But I’d seen none of that.

  My mother and Françoise spent that morning making hundreds of cucumber sandwiches that Mrs. Tees ordered every year and my mother agreed to make, even if it meant she had to close her store on a Saturday. Margaret Tees paid well, and she thanked my mother profusely. Meanwhile, my mother took some pride in the fact that a great lady of the world who counted among her friends the wife of Lester B. Pearson trusted her so much.

  They began working in our kitchen at seven in the morning, the pungent, nauseating smell of cucumber floating through the house, all the way to my bed. When I left my room, Françoise looked away from me. She just couldn’t look me in the eye since the incident in the garage. My m
other, defending her as usual, felt it necessary to add, “You know what your father said, you stay here!” I thought I saw a satisfied smile on Françoise’s face, or maybe not, but I didn’t care, I had other plans, which I’d put into action when they left in their black dresses and white aprons, heading up to the Tees mansion, the cucumber sandwiches all carefully stacked in boxes on the Chevrolet’s backseat.

  I stood on the beach in the moonlight, my heart beating with apprehension and excitement. I could feel my penis like a weight in my pants, raw, as if it had been rubbed with sand.

  They could all go to hell! My mother, my father, Françoise, Robert Egan … I refused to see the danger as you refuse to accept blame you don’t deserve. I was seventeen, for God’s sake, I wasn’t a child anymore!

  “Romain, is that you?”

  In the darkness, Gail was waiting for me, huddled in an Adirondack chair taken from her parents’ garden, a sidelong smile on her lips. I had expected something else. That she might make an effort, and not just sit there in dirty shorts and an ample, half-buttoned rumpled cotton shirt, almost masculine really. “Gail, are you okay?” She didn’t answer.

  Suddenly, she laughed like a glass sphere crashing to the floor when she saw Locki jump towards me, his tail whipping through the air, “What a truly stupid dog! If he was actually trained, and he listened to my father, he would have attacked you!” My heart tightened — certainly not the sort of joke I wanted to hear.

  “Gail, are you sure there’s no one around?”

  “Do you see anyone? They’re all over there, having fun. Perfectly insensitive to the tragedy of others.”

  She spoke as if there were someone around her to be angry at. I was upset and disappointed that she was in this state — she was drunk, I could smell it on her breath, and her clothes were dirty — almost repulsive. This is how she wanted to welcome me? She had planned this moment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it at first; it was too risky, and she knew it, she wasn’t stupid. Yet she was insistent, imploring, and seductive, “It’s important to me, to you, to both of us. Something special will bind us together, forever. Do you understand?” And of course I believed her, or wanted to believe her, a girl like her who was interested in me, even if a part of me was saying, You’re being had, man, this girl isn’t well. But what’s the point of ruminations, if not to torpedo your heart? I much preferred concentrating on my pleasure.

  Of course it was mixed in with a certain degree of anxiety; after all, I was a seventeen-year-old boy, assaulted with these sudden urges as strong as the need to piss in the morning, just at the idea of doing it for the first time. We knew we would be going all the way that night, a prospect both enticing and frightening, though I was beginning to believe she might be making fun of me, seeing her limply moving her head, her hair tangled and flush against her skull, and that savage light in her eyes, more incandescent than the night we’d seen Rebel Without a Cause.

  Disappointment in my voice, I said, “You want me to go?”

  She straightened. “Why?”

  “You don’t look so well. Are you sure everything is okay?”

  “Of course everything’s okay, what do you think? Everyone is having fun tonight. And so will we.”

  The sarcastic edge to her voice cut me, but not enough for me to refuse the arm she offered so I might pull her to her feet. She bumped against a chair and held onto me heavily. Staggering, she brought me into the house, bathed in darkness. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place since the infamous dinner with Reverend Barnewall, and I couldn’t repress a thrill of vengeance thinking of Robert Egan: This time I’m here to sleep with your daughter.

  “No, Locki! No!” The dog had followed us, barking, scratching us with his claws. We were playing, why not him as well? “I said no!” Incensed, Gail grabbed him by the collar, pulled him towards the great French doors, and tied him outside, on the veranda; we heard a few more barks before he lay down, his nose pointed towards the sea.

  “Here, drink this.” The bottle of Southern Comfort she’d already gone to work on. I brought it to my mouth, a big mouthful, burning, I felt it going all the way down to my stomach. Gail dropped onto the couch; on the coffee table, a piece of art that looked like an egg fell to the ground and rolled away without breaking, and again her laugh put ice in my veins. I glanced nervously around the room, as if a trap was about to spring. What was that on the chair there, a glimmer of movement when I looked quickly, something left to dry … Robert Egan’s red swimsuit? Anxious, I said, “And what if your parents decide to come home early from the party?”

  “Relax, Romain.”

  She pushed away a lock of her blond-white hair that kept falling over her eyes, took my hands, and placed them on her breasts. “Kiss me.” I obeyed clumsily, my hands motionless on her breasts, as if I might break them, as if I feared I might detonate if I moved. A musk came off her, dried sweat and body odour. Around us, in the living room lit by the moon, the four great windows opened onto the sea made us as vulnerable as thieves in daytime.

  “Gail...?”

  She pushed me away brusquely. “You’re shaking? Why? There’s nothing to fear, I told you!” She swallowed another mouthful of Southern Comfort. She began speaking very quickly, eyes fixed on the floor, as if she’d been offered a reprieve, and had only a few hours left to pour everything out from within — her marriage, her parents.… “Do you know what I am for them? A commodity. Merchandise. That’s all I am.”

  Carefully, not wanting to offend her, I risked saying, “Why are you agreeing to it?”

  She stiffened, rage in her voice. She’d been promised as a way of closing a deal. She would marry Don Drysdale of Drysdale Insurance, the eldest son of the company’s owner. Her father owned shares in it, but they weren’t as valuable as the union of their two families. The marriage loomed on the horizon, and her parents were overjoyed. “And what about me? I think I’m going crazy, Romain.”

  She grabbed the bottle, took another swig, a portion of which ran down the front of her neck. She looked entirely incredulous when I said, “No one can force you to marry a man you don’t love.”

  It was followed by a bitter laugh. “Well, they certainly don’t care about that!”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I don’t know. Maybe so, maybe not. But it doesn’t matter.”

  She loves him? Why lie to me?

  “If you love him, why are you against the marriage?”

  She looked at me as if I were an imbecile, “You don’t understand anything, Romain. Come on, this is our last chance.”

  Baffled, I followed her to her room on the second floor, my legs like wet rags. She mentioned the marriage again, always with the same desperate rage — the Tees would be there, and other families from Métis Beach, not witnesses, no, but voyeurs, “You know, the same sort of people who look at a man being put to death from behind a pane of glass.” She muttered something about Marilyn Monroe, found dead two weeks before, “I think I’m meant to die young. Even younger than Marilyn.…” And with an air of defiance, she pulled the engagement ring off her finger, a ring mounted with a diamond — I noticed it for the first time just then. So it was serious with Don. I glanced up and saw my guilty reflection in the mirror over the dresser.

  “Gail, no.…”

  “No what?”

  “Let’s go back down. It’s not a good idea.”

  “For who? Your vicar? Come on.”

  I glanced anxiously around the room — a young girl’s bed, with a pink and white comforter, matching wallpaper, Beatrix Potter authenticated watercolours that Mrs. Egan had so proudly ferreted out at an antique store in London. A room decorated for a child, it wasn’t right for what we were about to do, a sacrilege against childhood.

  She shot me a knowing look, mixed with a desire for vengean
ce. But revenge for what, exactly? Does she love him or not, this Don Drysdale? As if reading my thoughts — and seemingly to humiliate me — she pulled a picture of him from one of the dresser’s drawers and pushed it towards me with a triumphant air. A flash of jealousy filled me as I saw this young man so sure of himself, athletic body and perfect teeth, as unbearable as a blinding light, and then, as if she wanted to be forgiven, she began kissing me passionately, her lips against mine, famished, pulling her shirt off, my God, those firm breasts, far fuller than I thought, their points like prune pits. “Hush!” She put her finger against my mouth. She was shaking, removing the rest of her clothes, her eyes filled with light, with the pleasure of seeing me watching her. I was excited, of course, though in the back of my mind I couldn’t help feeling I wasn’t taking full advantage of the moment. I was too nervous, too clumsy. I couldn’t help thinking of Don, handsome like the actors on the screen at the clubhouse. I was afraid to disappoint Gail. I knew I’d disappoint her.

  “Come on!”

  “No, Gail. I don’t think.…”

  “Please, please! I know you’ve been dreaming it for a long time. Tomorrow it’ll be too late.”

  “I … I don’t know.…”

  She stumbled towards me, and I submitted to her with fearful docility. She undid my belt, took my clothes off. I felt blood rushing to the bottom of my stomach. A fog in my brain, I didn’t even know where I was anymore. She said, panting, “Help me.” I tripped trying to take off my pants and my underwear, my cock hard, aimed at her, her eyes avoiding it entirely. Timidly, I lay down next to her; the tension slowly cleared as our lips touched, her warm body next to mine, her salty, fresh skin, then her suddenly agitated hands finding their way towards my crotch, an electric shock that ran down to my toes, she guided me clumsily into her, moist heat, sublime, my head emptied, my conscience completely gone, and a groan shuddered through me, without warning.