Life Class

by Ann Charney

  She’d had her doubts even back in Venice, the first time Walter spoke of returning to live in the house that once belonged to his grandparents. “I have a feeling the place will change my luck,” he told her. “I think that’s what my grandmother had in mind when she left it to me — a second chance.”

  She was too overwhelmed by the generosity of Walter’s proposal to say anything at the time. Besides, he knew more about the place than she did. Listening to him talk about it, she could see that he was filled with excitement by its possibilities.

  “With no rent to pay and the cost of living much lower than in the city, I’ll be able to take my time figuring things out,” Walter went on to explain in his usual slow, methodical way. “I’ve been thinking of using part of the house — it’s a big barn of a place — to set up an antique business. I’m pretty good at spotting hidden treasures in piles of junk, and the practical skills I picked up working for the widows will come in handy. The area attracts a lot of visitors from New York and elsewhere.”

  Her first impression of the Adirondacks in late summer was reassuring. The landscape surrounding Smith Falls was as picturesque as Walter had described, and the spaciouslooking house with its screened porch promised a pleasant change from her cramped quarters in Venice.

  “Welcome to America,” Walter said, leading her into the house.

  A few days later, during one of their drives through the countryside, they came upon a sight dramatically at odds with its bucolic setting: a walled, concrete fortress, ringed by barbed wire, with an imposing tower at the entrance.

  “What was that?” Nerina asked, as they sped by in the secondhand van Walter had purchased soon after their arrival.

  “Pretty impressive, isn’t it? That’s the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximumsecurity prison, known around here as Dannemora — that’s the name of the town we’re passing through. The inmates refer to it as Little Siberia.”

  The aptness of the name became apparent once winter set in. As one snowy day followed the next, with only Walter for company and the occasional crunch of snow tires from the rare passing car to break the silence, the house, surrounded by a frozen wilderness, felt more isolated than any place she’d ever known.

  Their weekly shopping outings to Saranac Lake or Lake Placid offered little relief. The empty, snowcovered streets, where every second store and restaurant was either out of business or closed until better times, only intensified her feeling of having landed in a forgotten corner of the world.

  Walter, however, appeared to thrive in his new surroundings, spending long, happy hours working on the house, or tinkering in the garage with the finds he had carted off from neighbouring attics, barns and church bazaars. A sign went up advertising his new business venture. It had failed to attract any customers so far, but Walter believed it was only a matter of time until things turned around. Business was bound to improve in the summer, he told her.

  Nerina was not convinced. Walter’s boyhood memories of the Adirondacks, swarming with vacationers in all seasons, bore no resemblance to what she saw around her: a burntout hotel, an overgrown golf course, yards littered with brokendown cars and rusted farm machinery. She doubted that summer would change things. According to a story she read in the Saranac paper, prisons are the only thriving enterprise in the region — seventy at the latest count. The article also said that while the inmate population is growing steadily, the surrounding areas are losing people.

  She didn’t see the point of discussing the article with Walter. Why discourage him when he seemed so happy? In any case, she planned to be gone by the time summer arrived.

  While Walter worked in the garage, Nerina set her mind to mastering English. There was no TV in the house, but the ample supply of books — sturdy volumes of Robert Louis Stevenson’s works and other nineteenthcentury classics, intermingled with mouldy paperbacks left behind by summer visitors — offered a wide choice of reading matter.

  She started with Kidnapped — recommended by Walter — but soon turned to Peyton Place, whose troubled heroines she found more compelling than Stevenson’s dour Highlanders. The next book she picked, Vanity Fair, was more difficult, but the adventures of Becky Sharp held her attention. Each time she came across an unfamiliar word or phrase, she copied it into a notebook along with its dictionary definition. At night, she had Walter quiz her on her new vocabulary.

  The hard work was paying off. One night, awakened by the banging of a loose window frame — Walter’s next project — she realized that the argument she’d been having in her dream had been in English. When she told Walter about it over breakfast, he said it was time for her to learn how to drive. “It’s all part of becoming an American,” he assured her.

  She went along with the idea if only to break the monotony of her day, but she couldn’t concentrate. What was the point? From what she’d seen during her drives with Walter, there was nowhere she wanted to go. Instead of listening to Walter’s directions, her mind drifted to the letter she planned to write to Helena when she got home. Her correspondence with her friend in Venice was her only link to the outside world.

  This morning, when she reaches the mailbox, there are two letters for her. One is from Helena, her faithful correspondent; the other, from Marco, is a surprise. Despite his promise to stay in touch, she hasn’t heard from him since he left Venice to join his sister in New Jersey. In the past she had waited for him to contact her, but loneliness drove her to break the rule and write to him at his sister’s address. But as time went on with no word from him, she gave up waiting for a response.

  Thick flakes of snow lick her face as she tears open Marco’s letter. The confident tone is instantly familiar. While she’s been stuck in Smith Falls, Marco has been moving on with his life. He has a place of his own now, in Astoria, Queens, and a job as a courier.

  “I’m on the go all day long,” he writes, “meeting all kinds of people, and I’ve gotten to know the city better than most natives. It’s only a beginning, of course, until something better comes along. There’s lots of opportunity here if you know your way around, and you know me, I’m a quick learner. Come and see for yourself. You must be pretty sick of the old guy by now. Any time you’re ready, I’ll give you a personal tour of the sights.”

  She puts the letter back in the envelope and looks up to find a pair of deer staring at her. Silent sentinels, their eyes follow her as she trudges back to the house. These are not the first deer she’s seen close to the house, but she’s still startled by their boldness. Walter says their growing numbers have forced the creatures into the open to look for food.

  A week ago, they found a fawn dead by the side of the house. The ground was too frozen for burial, so she and Walter lifted the animal by its hooves and carried it into the woods beyond the house.

  “I’m thinking of getting a dog,” Walter said, after they deposited the animal at the foot of a spruce tree. “To keep the deer away from the house.”

  “No!” Nerina shouted, before she could stop herself. “Promise, no dogs.”

  “What’s the matter with you? Don’t tell me you’re afraid of them.”

  “I was bitten by a dog once,” she said in an attempt to justify her panic. There was no way she was going to tell Walter the truth about the packs of wild dogs that roamed the streets of Sarajevo during her childhood. The animals’ owners had either been killed, or, unable to feed themselves, had abandoned their pets. Sometimes, when there were no people about, the snipers on the roofs of the buildings would use the animals for target practice, just to keep their hand in. She couldn’t see the snipers, but the dogs were everywhere, even in her nightmares.

  “Nerina is more afraid of dogs than snipers,” her parents told their friends, as if her childish incomprehension of the real danger gave them some comfort.

  The deer follow her with their eyes as she walks to the house. Thinking of what she will write to Marco, she’s sure of one thing at least: there will be no mention of prisons, deer and empty ro
ads going nowhere. Marco is too smug as it is.

  X

  Cashier

  TO leave Smith Falls, she needs money. That means finding a job. Her English is nearly fluent now and Marco’s example spurs her on. There’s no demand for couriers in this sparsely populated region, but when she and Walter were grocery shopping at the Grand Union in Saranac yesterday she noticed a sign in the window, saying the store needed a cashier. She called as soon as she got home.

  This morning Walter is driving her to meet with the store manager. “Hurry up,” he says, heading out to warm up the van. “You don’t want to be late for your interview.” Nerina tells him she’ll be right there, but can’t resist checking herself out one last time before leaving the house.

  “Do I look all right?” she asks, as they pull out of the driveway.

  “You look fine,” he says, staring straight ahead. “You know, people around here don’t spend much time worrying about their appearance.”

  She’s noticed. Even Walter walks around now in jeans, flannel shirts, quilted vests and heavy work boots. His new style suits him, but unlike Walter she has no desire to blend in, not even for a short time. Today, a jaunty mauve beret, with matching scarf and gloves — handmedowns from Alice Ohstrom — add a note of frivolity to the bulky clothes she’s forced to wear to keep from freezing. Her hands inside the fine leather gloves are already turning numb, but she doesn’t care. The mauve accessories are her way of fighting the drabness that surrounds her.

  The manager at the Grand Union turns out to be a middleaged woman with straggly hair tied back with an elastic band, whose nametag identifies her as Doris. Sitting down across from her, Nerina finds herself being examined with unmistakeable curiosity. Perhaps the mauve touches were a mistake after all.

  “You don’t come from around here, do you?” Doris asks, handing her an application to fill out.

  When Nerina hands it back to her a few minutes later, Doris rewards her with a warm smile. “So, you’re the girl Walter Scalin married. We heard he came back from Italy with a wife. Now there’s a place I’d like to visit someday. Maybe when I retire. My grandmother was Italian, you know.”

  Nerina doesn’t mind passing for Italian. Walter has warned her not to go into any detail about her background. “Most people here have never even heard of Bosnia,” he’d explained. “And those who have can’t tell the good guys apart from the bad guys.”

  Discovering Nerina’s connection to Walter has made Doris much friendlier. “I live just a couple of miles down the road from your place. It’s good to see the old house being lived in again after all these years. Most of the time, when the old people die, their children close up the house, except for a couple of weeks in the summer at best. You planning to live here year round?”

  Nerina evades the question, but she can tell she’s passed the test. Doris is almost apologetic when she tells Nerina she can only offer her the evening shift, from five to eleven. “Even with jobs as scarce as they are in these parts, it’s still hard to find people willing to work at night. The hours suit me just fine, but the young ones like to keep their evenings free for themselves. You and Walter are still practically newlyweds! Won’t he mind?”

  No problem, Nerina rushes to assure Doris. She and Walter are together all day long. “At least this way, he’ll manage to get some work done while I’m at the store.”

  “Yeah, I remember what that was like,” Doris says, sounding wistful. “Now, it’s gotten so I can hardly wait for Ron to go off with his buddies on their hunting and fishing trips. He’s a guard up in Dannemora and by the time he gets home, he’s wiped. But hey, don’t listen to me. Enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Nerina can hardly wait to tell Walter the good news. He looks pleased until she mentions Doris’s name. “I knew her as a kid,” he explains. “Her Dad used to do repairs for my grandparents. Too bad you stumbled onto her. I was hoping we could stay under the radar a while longer. Just watch what you say to her.”

  Nerina wants to say she knows better than he does how to appear friendly without giving anything away. Instead, she pretends to lock her lips with an invisible key and throw it away.

  “I suppose I’ll have to drive you back and forth every day. Lucky for you, I’m such a nice guy.” Walter still sounds grumpy, but she can tell he’s teasing her now.

  “I’ll arrange for rides with Doris,” Nerina says. “We can share gas and lots of girl talk.” The idea, which just came to her, strikes her as highly plausible. Doris’s daily route takes her past Walter’s house and she seems eager for company.

  “As long as it’s just girl talk. Good thing you spent so much time on Peyton Place.”

  Nerina’s first day at work gets off to a shaky start when Doris tries to show her how to work the electronic cash register and the credit and debit card machines. It seems to take Nerina forever to process each customer, and she frequently has to stop and ask for assistance. It doesn’t help that the clerk assigned to supervise her, Charlene, seems contemptuous when she has to show Nerina for the third time how to open the locked cash drawer.

  Not only are the machines baffling, she doesn’t recognize most of the food items gliding past her on the checkout counter. The Grand Union is nothing like the outdoor markets and small stores in Venice where she used to shop for the Ohstroms. She spends her lunch hour checking out the aisles of the store, trying to familiarize herself with products unknown to her: pop tarts, tortillas, endless varieties of cereals and soft drinks, an entire wall of frozen foods.

  Most of the employees are young like Charlene, barely out of their teens, and seem to have known each other forever. When she goes outside for a cigarette break she finds them laughing and chattering together, a tight little clique. She might as well be invisible as far as they’re concerned.

  “You don’t want to get too chummy with these kids,” Doris says, lighting up beside her. “I’ve known most of them since they were in diapers. They’re okay on their own, but as a group they get up to some pretty dumb things — racing cars, drinking, getting high on whatever they can get their hands on. Not that there’s much else for them to do. The ones with any gumption get out of here as soon as they can.”

  Nerina is grateful for Doris’s chattiness when they’re driving back in her Toyota. Doris is the first person she’s met since her arrival in Smith Falls, and she’s curious about her life. In the first half hour of their drive, Doris tells Nerina about her husband’s diabetes, her son’s bitter divorce, the grandchildren she never sees anymore. Most of all, Doris is worried about her daughter, Stacey.

  “Stacey always wanted to be a teacher, you know,” she explains. “But the only job she could find was teaching inmates at the correctional facility in Malone. Those guys are so mean, they’re kept locked up twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day. The only contact Stacey has with them is through an opening at the top of the cell door, and she has to stand on a stool to reach it. What kind of a job is that for a young woman who dreamt of working with little kids?”

  A car pulls out of a side road ahead of them, causing Doris to blast her car horn.

  “I get such a kick every time I see one of those bumper stickers,” she says, pointing to the rear of the car. “‘Keep honking while I reload.’ Get it?”

  Nerina doesn’t get it, but then this day has shown her she has a lot to learn about local customs. “You mean reload, like a gun?”

  “Yeah. It’s the kind of macho stuff guys around here go in for. I can’t resist calling their bluff.”

  Doris honks the horn again as they pass the car, chuckling with pleasure.

  “What if someone came at you with a gun?” Nerina asks, unable to see the humour in the situation.

  “Nah, it’s just a way of letting off steam. Everybody knows me around here. They know I like to kid around. Don’t worry, you’ll soon catch on.”

  Nerina is not exactly sure what Doris means, but after her disastrous day at work any words of encouragement are welcome.


  XI

  Zipping along

  FILLED with fresh resolve the next morning, Nerina finds that the intricacies of the machines under her command and the codes of the items sliding past her on the checkout counter are not as difficult to master as they seemed at first. Even disdainful Charlene offers a grudging compliment in passing. “Well look at you, zipping right along. What are you trying to do, make the rest of us look bad?”

  Her newly acquired skills do not help her make any headway with Charlene or the other workers. Their smiles and greetings are friendly enough, but for the most part they ignore her, excluding her from the banter that goes on during breaks and the long lulls between customers. She gets the message: she is a stranger, passing through, here today, gone tomorrow. Not worth the time or effort.

  Doris, on the other hand, grows friendlier by the day, inviting Nerina to join her for a smoke in the shelter of her car whenever the temperature is particularly frigid, and chatting nonstop during their drives to and from work. After several days of this camaraderie, Nerina is able to report to Walter that Doris is devoid of any curiosity about them. Doris’s steady stream of words is restricted to what’s on her mind on any given day, a field of concerns that flits from her aging cat to her children’s unsatisfactory lives to her husband’s sciatic nerve, which has been acting up again. Throughout all this, little is expected of Nerina except her company.

  Two months into the job, Doris stops by at Nerina’s counter to ask if she has any special plans for the coming weekend. The store is nearly empty of customers and the bright fluorescent lights overhead, turning night into day, offer no protection from what Nerina suspects is coming: an invitation to Doris’s home.

  Doris’s next question suggests Nerina has jumped to the wrong conclusion. “You think Walter can spare you on Saturday?” she asks, taking a gulp of her Diet Coke. “This stuff will probably kill me, but I need the caffeine to keep going.”