by Darren Greer
“Isn’t your father at work?” I asked him.
“Not today,” Cameron said. “He took the afternoon off.” He wouldn’t look at me while he said it, just kept his eyes cast down. I knew he was lying. I couldn’t imagine why. I thought, in my innocence, there were troubles at his house, too.
A few days later, I asked him if he would come to my house. I also told him all about what was going on, so it wouldn’t come as a surprise if my grandmother looked at him like he had two heads, or if conversation dried up when he walked into a room. He begged off, saying he was going to visit his aunt in Halifax.
At dinner that night, I complained to my mother that Cameron was being strange.
“In what way?” my mother asked.
“He never wants me to come over anymore. He says his parents are always doing something. Like tonight he said they were going to see his aunt. They never go see his aunt on a week night!”
My mother and Jeanette exchanged glances. My grandmother didn’t catch any of it. She was busy feeding her cat, Princess, in the dining room. Jeanette sometimes complained that Princess, who was older than me and weighed almost as much, was the only member of the family who got to eat there. My mother put her arm around me and said she was sure there was a perfectly good explanation.
But that is what parents say when there isn’t.
“You want me to call Mrs. Simms and find out what’s going on?”
“Why would you do that?” I asked, genuinely surprised. My mother generally didn’t get involved in my affairs unless it was serious, like the year before when one of the Shannon brothers gave me a black eye at recess. She called Mr. Shannon and threatened to have the boy arrested. My grandmother was aghast because the Shannons were good Irish Catholics. From her point of view, it was only Protestants who got rough and tumble. But that incident was not to be compared to this. This was a kid thing. Maybe Cameron was mad at me for something that I’d done and I didn’t know it. He had done nothing wrong, except to come up with what I was sure were excuses to not have me over or come to my house.
I was tempted to ask my grandmother if she had provoked an argument with Mr. or Mrs. Simms in the supermarket over their atheism, something that had happened once before. My mother beat me to it. When my grandmother came back to the kitchen and resumed her seat, my mother said to her, “Have you been talking lately to Mr. or Mrs. Simms? Cameron’s parents?”
“Not recently,” she said. “Why?”
“No reason,” said my mother.
My grandmother harrumphed and dropped her fork beside her plate without taking a bite. “Now come on, Caroline. There must be a reason. No one asks a question like that out of the blue without some purpose.”
My mother shrugged, casually, without guile. “Jacob says that they’ve been away a lot lately. I was just wondering if you knew where they might be going?”
“Me? For heaven’s sake, do you think I take account of every coming and going in Advocate? I don’t work for the Gazette. Really! Sometimes I think you girls …”
As my grandmother went on, I realized my mother had not told her the truth. Why would my mother withhold this? Especially now since she had my grandmother riled up about being accused a gossip?
Depressed at the situation in my house, and equally as unhappy with things outside of it, I excused myself and went outside. I picked up a smooth stone and walked around with it, massaging it like a Chinese stress ball. I wanted to throw it through someone’s window, but didn’t have the nerve. I hadn’t met up at the mill with Deanny for a while, because sometimes she’d be there waiting for me and sometimes she would not. I regretted the lack of playmates. After a time, I went back into the house, had a shower, changed into my pyjamas, and went to my room to get ready for bed. For the summer I was allowed to stay up until ten o’clock and watch television with the adults downstairs, but I often chose to stay in my room and read. My mother came in to wish me goodnight and said my uncle would be coming home from the hospital a week from Saturday.
“Good,” I said.
My mother smiled, and kissed me on the cheek as I lay in my bed. “I know things have been a little strange around here lately,” she said. “They’ll straighten out soon.”
“Okay,” I said.
“My little boy is turning out to be not so little anymore. Have you thought about what you’d like to do for your birthday?”
“I’d like to have a party,” I said.
“Really?” said my mother. “You never wanted a party before.”
It was true. I never considered I’d had enough friends for one, and inviting bullies and students from school did not seem an appealing option. But I was suddenly thinking I could invite Deanny and Cameron to the bowling alley below the iga on the Protestant side. I didn’t tell my mother about Deanny, but I did tell her about Cameron and bowling.
“Done,” she said. “Your birthday falls on a Saturday this year. I’ll get the time off and we’ll do it that day.”
“I’ll tell Cameron.”
My motivations were twofold: to bring Deanny into the clan, and to force Cameron back into my acquaintance. He liked to bowl, and he couldn’t refuse to see me on my birthday. After all, I had gone to Halifax with him on his birthday to see the Nova Scotia Museum. With this simple logic in place, I went to sleep.
▪ ▪ ▪
about my birthday party at the bowling alley, Cameron was evasive. For a week after I told him, he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. So the Friday before my birthday, I cornered him in the town library. I’d watched him slip in there when he saw me coming down Main Street. I sat down beside him at a table and asked again about bowling on my birthday. He closed his book and looked at me.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’m busy.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” I said. “It’s my birthday!”
“You didn’t let me finish. We’re going to see my aunt that day.”
“You’re always going to see your aunt,” I said. “Is she sick or something?”
“No,” said Cameron, going back to his book. “She just wants to see us a lot.”
“So, we’ll change it,” I said. “What day are you available?”
The town library was deserted. We sat at the centre table, whispering. The librarian, Mrs. Frail, was at her desk. She glanced up occasionally from her papers to make sure we were being quiet as a nun. While nice in all other respects, she was a demon about preserving the acoustic integrity of the room. No loud talking. Nothing above a whisper. It was like being a prisoner of war in there, which is why a lot of kids didn’t go.
Cameron didn’t glance up from his book. “The thing is, I’m not really available any day,” he said. “I’m pretty busy with stuff at home. So I guess I’ll have to miss your party.”
“What’s going on?” I cried.
Mrs. Frail looked up sharply. “Jacob McNeil,” she said. “This is not a basketball court, or a hootenanny. It’s a library. Accordant tone, please.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Frail.” Then, more softly, to Cameron, “Are you mad at me or something?”
Cameron, by this time pretending to be fully back into his book, shook his head without looking at me. “Busy is all.”
“You lie,” I whispered. “You’re a liar.”
It was the one thing I knew would get to him. He prided himself on always telling the truth, no matter what the cost. When I got a higher mark on a test, he would tell me, seemingly without guile, it was because I got lucky, there was no way I was smarter than he was. It was a principle of his mother’s he’d inherited. Liars, she said, both degraded themselves and the people they lied to. It was the worst kind of semantic treachery, and on par with murder or stealing. One of the reasons Cameron often got beat up at school was because he refused to lie to the bullies and tell them what they wanted to hear. Instead of saying he didn’t have time to do their homework when they asked, he’d say he would rather be shot and pissed on than help them achieve something they d
idn’t deserve. This commitment to honesty would get Cameron in a lot of trouble in his life. But he would rather be hurt than accused of lying.
I really did think he was lying then, and I couldn’t understand why. He had always been my friend. Now here he was avoiding me. Without Cameron I had no one. I’d forgotten about Deanny. All I could think of was a birthday party of one. I needed to understand what was going on. Had his mother finally decided I was not worthy to play with Cameron? That I was not good enough for her son? Was it something I had done? Something I didn’t do?
Cameron closed his book and set it on the table. He looked over at Mrs. Frail to make sure she was not listening and then leaned in towards me, whispering even lower than before.
“It’s your uncle,” he said.
“What?”
Cameron nodded. “My mother says I’m not supposed to hang out with you anymore. Because of your uncle. I’m not supposed to tell you this. I was supposed to let you down easy. But you were my friend, so I can tell you. But you can’t tell anyone else okay?”
“My uncle?” I said, confused. “Is it because he’s a homosexual?”
He shook his head adamantly. “My mother says it’s not that. She doesn’t care about that at all. It’s the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
Cameron just looked at me. Studying me. He looked much older than eleven then. Even I could see he was struggling with whatever he was trying to tell me. For a minute, it looked as if he might cry.
“Mom says when it all blows over we can be friends again. It’s only now we can’t. She says we don’t even know how it’s transmitted. It could be airborne, or through touch. We just don’t know.”
“Cameron? What are you talking about?”
“Jacob,” Mrs. Frail warned. “If you don’t keep your voice down I’m going to have to ask you to leave the library.”
“Sorry Mrs. Frail.”
“The disease,” Cameron said. “The thing your uncle has.”
“Meningitis?” I said.
“No,” said Cameron. “That’s not what he has. He has aids.”
Mrs. Simms, being a biologist, was familiar with it. Of course she would know. Of course she would be one of the first to figure it out. From this perspective of time and place, her concerns that Cameron might catch it seem incredibly naïve for such an educated woman. But it was a different time, and she was right about one thing. We knew nothing about it.
Cameron explained to me that he couldn’t be around me anymore. I would just have to find someone else to invite to my birthday party. Then he went back to his book.
It was my turn to cry. My vision blurred as I left the library and my best friend. I was in a kind of shock. Is this what all the whispering had been about? Is this what I had to look forward to the rest of the summer?
I didn’t want to stay downtown.
When my grandmother saw me she asked what I was doing home. Shouldn’t I be out playing with Cameron on such a beautiful day? I told her I didn’t feel well, and went to my room. My uncle was scheduled to come home the next day. I was depressed. I stayed in my room all afternoon, and when my mother came home at five, she immediately came up to check on me and ask me what was wrong.
I wanted to tell her what happened, but something kept me. It was not loyalty to Cameron and my promise that I would not tell. He had deserted me, so I had no allegiance to him any longer. Perhaps I just didn’t want to know the truth.
I lied to her. For once I had no qualms about stretching the truth.
I told her I had a stomach ache.
My mother made me some tomato soup, and sat with me in the kitchen while I ate it. As I said, she had an uncanny knack of knowing when someone was lying. She asked me if something happened that day.
I told her nothing had.
“Are you sure?” she said.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” said my mother. “I know I’ve said this a thousand times, but if you ever need to talk to me seriously about something, you can. You’ll never get in trouble if you bring up the subject first.”
“Okay,” I said.
The phone rang. My grandmother was upstairs and answered it in her bedroom. She came to the head of the stairs and shouted for my mother. “It’s Cameron’s mother,” my grandmother said. “She said she needs to speak to you immediately.”
My mother looked at me. “Did you and Cameron have a fight today?”
“No,” I said, and this time it didn’t feel like a lie. We had witnessed the end of our friendship, but it wasn’t because we had fought. My mother told me she’d be right back and took the call in the living room. My grandmother came downstairs. She asked if I was sure there had been no disagreement.
I told her what I had told my mother.
“Odd,” said my grandmother. “I don’t think Mrs. Simms has ever called here before.”
It was the first of many calls, of many odd things.
My falling out with Cameron was just the beginning.
▪ ▪ ▪
as far as I could make sense of it later, Cameron went home and told his mother he had told me why he could not be around me any longer. His mother berated him. She called and told my mother Cameron had been insensitive and needlessly cruel, and I did not need to hear what he told me.
“But was it true?” my mother asked. “Did you ask that Cameron not be around Jacob anymore because of David?”
My mother was a waitress. Though she had finished high school, and could read, write, and do basic arithmetic, she hadn’t done very well in school. She was not interested in academics, either as a career or pastime. She was no match intellectually for Sharon Simms. But when it came to defending my interests, she was a powerhouse. I do not know what was said, but as I understand it, she swept aside all of Mrs. Simms’ well-reasoned, articulate, and intelligent arguments for why Cameron and I should be kept apart.
When Jeanette got home from work, my mother told her about it. “They make assumptions,” she said, “and act on them like they’re gospel truth. She has actually convinced herself she’s doing Jacob a favour!”
“What did you say to her?”
“I said she was as superstitious and as ignorant as everyone else in this town, and if those are the values she teaches her son, I don’t want Jacob hanging out with Cameron anyway.”
“Why did she call?” said Jeanette.
“To apologize,” said my mother. “Can you believe that? For the insensitive way Cameron told Jacob the truth. Which is that they’re afraid of David. And these are some of the most educated people in town. What happens when the rest of them find out?”
“Maybe they won’t,” said Jeanette.
“They will,” my mother said. “Some of them already suspect.”
If these events weren’t enough, something else happened. After my mother’s call to Mrs. Simms ended, she realized I wasn’t really sick. She made me eat supper with the rest of them. Everyone was quiet. There was much clinking of forks against plates and the silence was oppressive. The grandfather clock in the dining room chimed six. It had a solemn, lugubrious effect on an already depressing meal.
My grandmother stayed particularly silent. Then, seemingly apropos of nothing, she dropped her fork and said, in surprising distress, “I can’t take it! He’s coming home tomorrow, and this is just the beginning!”
“The beginning of what?” asked Jeanette.
“Don’t you see?” said my grandmother. “The Simms are right. Who knows what this means? Jacob is here. We don’t know if it’s even safe! We don’t know what to do. I can’t take it, I tell you! It’s not tolerable!”
And then my grandmother did a remarkable thing. Something I had never seen her do before. She began to cry. For the second time that day, I was in a state a shock. My mother and Jeanette did their best to calm her down, but in the end she left the table and went to her room. My mother checked on her and then came back down to finish her dinner with us. But no one was
hungry.
“What’s going on?” said Jeanette. “Is the whole world going crazy?”
“Not the whole world,” said my mother. “Just Advocate.” She looked sympathetically at me. “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Maybe we should tell him,” Aunt Jeanette said. “What Cameron hasn’t already said, that is.”
“Soon,” my mother said. “Let’s let things settle down first.”
We didn’t finish our meals. We scraped them into the garbage and did the dishes. My grandmother wasn’t there to rinse so I did it for her. I was grateful for something extra to do. While we worked in the kitchen, the grandfather clock in the dining room ticked with more authority than I had ever noticed before.
2
how the news broke in town about the nature of my uncle’s illness was never revealed to me, not even later when we began to talk about it openly. Perhaps my grandmother, once she figured it out the night she smashed her Depression glass bowl, mentioned it to a bridge partner. Perhaps his string of illnesses, coupled with his known proclivities, was enough. David himself had told my mother and Jeanette. Dr. Fred admitted afterwards to my mother that he had surmised David’s condition on his first visit, shortly after he arrived home. Still, there was no clear explanation how the town knew.
Only that it was increasingly obvious they did.
Uncle David was kept in isolation in the hospital. He told my mother that every nurse who came into his room was gowned and gloved. They seemed terrified, and never stayed long. He was not allowed to use the bathroom, but was given a plastic bedpan that was removed by a man in a Hazmat suit. He slept on worn sheets and was given threadbare towels; he suspected these were burned after his use. The only person not dressed as if he were in a radiation zone was Dr. Fred. But he was not my uncle’s doctor in hospital. He could only visit, and express his displeasure at the way my uncle was being treated.