The Bay of Love and Sorrows (18 page)

“Tom’s been violent to me too,” she said. It was perhaps the first lie she had ever told about him, but she couldn’t help it. It suddenly felt very natural that Tom would have tried to bully them both.

Michael looked at her as she nodded her head and then glanced sideways.

“A little bit.”

The last of the evening’s light came through the trees in a golden splash and touched her cheek.

“I
will
go to Tom,” he said.

“No, no — never mind,” she said, and she clutched his hand. There was a pause. A swallow darted, zigzagging up the path as if a scout for God. It felt awkward for him to hold her hand and she sensed this.

“But maybe you can’t help me,” he said.

“Don’t you worry,” she said, “don’t worry,” And she winked. She felt very grown up suddenly, and motherly “I’ll protect you — here, let me kiss your eyes.” And she lifted herself up and kissed both his eyes. He stared at her sadly

“Oh, yes, money,” she said, raising her finger in mock indulgence. “I think I can get us some of that dirty ole money.”

For once Karrie felt important. And she would surprise Michael with so much money he would never have to worry. And though he hadn’t asked her to come, she knew he would want her to go too. So she made up a story about going to Fredericton, and when Dora pressed her she used the only name she knew. That she knew a Professor Becker, whom Michael had gone to see about enrolling her. He was a professor dealing with social problems, who had written an article for a book, and now knew all about her.

Michael spent a few days at his parents’, sitting in his large bedroom staring at the wall of books, the microscope from his youth, trying to work on his article and hide from what he realized about himself: that until he resolved matters with who he now called “those people,” that is, Everette and Daryll, he had no moral authority to sit in judgement of the antics at his boarding school, most of which were juvenile. He realized this is what Tom must have seen that Christmas night when he had shown part of the article to him.

Yet he could straighten things out. He would ask Karrie to forgive him. He would confess to Laura about the drugs. He must do this, not because he was high-minded, but because he felt he had no other option now. It would be a great relief.

He would tell Laura about the drugs the night of her party. Then the next morning — September 10 — he would go to his father and confess everything, plead guilty if it went to court.

He would forfeit the article and not let recrimination be his. He would do all of this at the right moment. It would mean devastation for himself. It would mean appearing in court and becoming a prosecution witness against Everette, and maybe even against Silver and Madonna. Yet, no matter how tormented this made him, it was the only thing he could think of to do.

His mother was happy he was home, and in order to apologize to him, told him where the money on the ironing board had turned up.

“Do you know where the money turned up?” she said.

“No,” he answered, startled.

“It turned up in the pocket of my housecoat — the very next afternoon — I wanted to phone you but I felt so silly.” And she looked at her husband, smiling, as if seeking comfort. But a little later, after she laughed and talked about nothing in particular, he realized that she could not look him in the face, and that her eyes were cast downward.

When he got up to go to bed and said goodnight, she raised her eyes.

“Yes, goodnight,” she said, looking at him, startled, which unnerved him.

“Well, I’m glad you found it,” he said, but he went to the door of the den without turning around.

“I’m glad you are going to see Laura,” she called, when he was halfway down the hall.

Karrie spent a good deal of time that last week doing her nails while sitting with her legs tucked up under her in the porch. As the days came and went she thought many times what she must do. And when the day came, she did everything as if she were sleepwalking. She packed a suitcase and left it in her room. She waited until Dora went back over to the gas bar after supper to flirt with the young men, as Dora did every night.

Karrie crossed the den and closed the door. She removed from her brassiere a key that she had taken from Dora’s jewellery box. She opened the small hinged drawer at the back of the modest-sized bookshelf, which had three copies of the Bible and four Jacqueline Susanne novels, and took out the tin box with both hands. She opened it slowly and timidly, and her mouth opened in surprise at the amount of money there was inside.

“Oh God,” she whispered, and brushed a tear away.

Then she counted some, with her hands shaking. She hoped this would not be discovered right away — she assumed the loose money was “new money” collected over the summer, and she hoped she would be able to send it back to them soon. The majority of the money was wrapped in two large red plastic bands.

She began to giggle at the awful thing she was doing, and for several moments she didn’t know whether to put the money back or not, and tears of shame rolled down her face. But they were not so much tears of shame for her part, as for that of her father and stepmother, who’d had the gas pumps rigged, and had robbed even her friends, like Bobby Taylor.

Suddenly she stood and went into the kitchen and wrote a note and placed it on the fridge. Just then she heard her stepmother coming back and ran to put the key back in her stepmother’s jewellery box just as Dora came in, and having nowhere to put the money, she shoved it down her panties against her crotch.

When Dora met her in the hallway, Karrie suddenly remembered she had forgotten to put the tin box away, and in panic she left the house, deciding that she wouldn’t come back until everyone was asleep to pick up her passport photos and her suitcase.

At this moment, as it had been the first night she had sex, she felt she was unable to stop, even though she wanted to.

Tom was in the barn that evening of September 9. He’d let the mare run out kicking after her oats, and now rested against the side door looking out at a pale sky filled with the first scent of autumn. Everything in the distance was darkened, but the sky, the foreboding sky, was white, and the lights in the house shone yellow.

When he saw the figure standing within spitting distance he jumped. She was standing in a white pantsuit in the middle of his yard,

“Go away,” he pleaded.

A bat flew haphazardly against the sky right in front of his face, and he turned away, feeling the last draughts of heat from the horses.

The barn was dark and the air was quiet. Two more bats flew out of the air vent far above them.

“Poor Vincent, I thought I might come visit him,” Karrie said.

“He’s gone down to get tobacco,” Tom said, “so he’ll be wandering the road again tonight. He keeps staying out later and later looking for you. If he tries to get you to come up here — you just tell him no.”

He wanted to say something terrible to her, but he couldn’t. And thinking this, and remembering the diamond in his pocket, he took it out and thrust it at her.

He had expected to get on his knee when he handed it to her. But that was a ridiculous thought from a long while ago. Now she was a stranger, and he thrust it at her to prove that she was nothing to him.

She took it without a word and stared at it.

“Keep it for old-time’s sake,” he said in a daze of nonchalance and control, as if resigned now to their new condition and accepting it.

She looked up at him quickly, trying to measure something, and handed the ring back, but he didn’t take it. So, after a moment, holding it tenuously in her fingers, she tucked it into her pocket.

“It was you who was following me then — to give me this?”

He didn’t answer. She smiled. Suddenly she wanted to feel as if everything would turn out for her.

“Don’t worry about me, Tom — I’ve grown up. You were over-protective,” she sighed. “That’s what Michael tells me. I guess that’s why I rebelled. Michael trusts me. I’ve met a whole group of new people — wonderful women and men who know what’s going on.”

She saw the pain in his face, and it reminded her of her own pain a week ago. Her legs trembled just slightly. The mare had gone across the old paddock and rested near Arron Brook. The sky was dark.

He said nothing. He stood with his eyes lowered as she spoke.

“I’ll tell Vincent not to bother you again — but he doesn’t have his wits.”

“Don’t worry about me, Tom, please — you’re too good a man for me. I’m not a good person — but I’m very independent now - that’s the striking difference between me now and before. Independence for women is what people like us are now after.” Strangely, she spoke in a little girl’s voice. “And once we get things straightened out here, we are on our way to Spain.” She smiled a little vainly, and couldn’t help it, because she’d almost never travelled before. Her hair was done up, held with pins, and her eyes were splendid.

Now, as Tom looked at her, she felt a great sentiment wash over her. A new life was coming, the old life drifting away. She thought of how silly she had been, to think of Tom as special just that short while ago. Now he feared her, and she questioned this. She did not understand that he feared her because she was naive, and the naive are always dangerous to themselves and to others.

“We have to go away — Michael and I is trapped here now — always being watched by the locals. I don’t feel anything for people here now, Tom. I’ve grown away from people here — that’s why Michael and I is going away — I tried — it’s been very hard for me this summer, so please consider that! There is no — no love of poems like I learned about — and sweet wonderful sentiment, and things like that there — that Michael has taken the time to teach me. Tom, I have to tell you this,” she said. “I have to tell you that I was scared a ya. I was frightened. Remember when you picked up that wheel, and just threw it against the side of the barn, how it scared me? I thought you were going to kill me.”

Tom did not understand at this instant that she was telling him this because she had already told this to Michael and then to her father and stepmother, and so she had to make the story true.

“I — I don’t — but I mean — you come here,” he said, and he made a clumsy attempt to hold her one more time. When he held her, he felt as if he were suddenly holding some great part of his life that he had lost.

She tore away from him, looked up at his face and turned. She walked down the dark road. Night had come as silent as a stone. She was feeling happy. She took a deep breath and looked up at the sky

“Well, that’s settled,” she thought.

Then she remembered the tin box. What would they do to her when they saw their money missing? How could she face them? She would stay out until late, until she was sure they’d be asleep.

And as she walked she thought instead of how she would tell Michael about her mother’s death. And how her mother had been a victim. Perhaps Madonna and Silver would come to say goodbye to them. Karrie would tell all of them how she grew up without a mother: how she went to midnight Mass that first Christmas after her mother died and the old priest, Father Lacey, called her up to the altar and told her she had a pretty dress and when she turned to go back to her seat a sad feeling came over her that was the best feeling in the world, and people were looking at her and crying.

Madonna would then know who she was, and hug her, and there would be tears in Madonna’s eyes. And there would be that great reconciliation she longed for with the entire world.

“Please write,” Madonna would say.

She would buy Madonna something too — something very special to give her — before they left. She could not think of what it would be, but then suddenly she decided it would be a brooch, just like the one she owned.

Madonna would say: “Oh, I don’t deserve none a this.”

And Karrie would simply smile radiantly and hug her. Then, of course, Silver. Well, she would hug him too, and tell him to be good, and the train whistle would blow at the exact same time she spoke, just like in the movies, and he would see that she was right, and change his life, and that would be the end of it.

In her mind years passed, and she and Michael would have an argument over something. And then he would come up to her and say: “Yes — you are right — what would I do without you?” They would be in Spain, perhaps* And own a villa there.

Gail and her son. Her
people.
That was one of her
good
acts she told no one about,

Karrie had tried to be kind to Gail and her boy all summer long. But to Karrie, Gail’s brother Everette and his friends were those “sad people” she did not understand.

Did she want to go and say goodbye? She thought she might have to go to them to say goodbye tonight!

She had brought Gail pies, and macaroni and cheese, and candy for the little boy Hardly anyone knew this either. It was her secret. She never minded how dark and sordid the place was, with vicious stingers growing outside the back window. The little boy always seemed to be glad to see her, and one time she brought him a toy