Chapter Three

Elizabeth and I made it to Campbellford Tuesday afternoon. We signed out some books from the town library and then walked over to Downey’s Restaurant to order milkshakes. Elizabeth bought a pack of Players and some matches while we listened to the machine grinding up the ice cream. She lit up and blew the smoke away from the table out of the side of her mouth as she shook the match to put out the flame.

“Want one?” she asked and twisted her mouth into a sideways smile.

“I’m trying to cut back.” Not that I’d ever smoked except the time Tyler stole a few from his mother’s pack. I didn’t like the taste but probably could have gotten used to it. “How long you had the habit?”

“Not so long,” she admitted as she waved the cigarette around in a little circle. “I just like the smell and how I look holding one.” She laughed. “You know, like Jane Fonda in Klute.”

“Wasn’t her character a prostitute? I can’t remember if she smoked or not.”

“Well, she looked classy anyhow, just like me holding a cigarette. Say, how do you stand being stuck in that claustrophobic little cottage every summer?”

She leaned back as the waitress set a milkshake in front of her, holding her cigarette in the air like a flag. Elizabeth’s eyes widened and she smirked as she looked at the woman’s orange, beehive hair. The lady had used so much hairspray, the strands were the texture of cotton candy. She turned toward me and slid my milkshake onto the table. I pretended not to notice Elizabeth’s hand rise above her own head as she outlined a mound of hair. I waited until we were alone to answer Elizabeth’s question.

“Summers here are all I know. Mom inherited the store from Grandpa Jack before I was born, and we’ve been coming to the lake every summer since.”

“Yeah, I heard the story from my mom.” Her voice got sing-songy. “Your mom got the store because Uncle George wasn’t making much money, while my dad’s rolling in it. Without the store, who knows what would have happened to you. Plus, everyone felt sorry for your family after what happened to Annie.”

She paused again and studied me. Her eyes were like a cat’s, watching and waiting for the mouse to move. The mouse was me.

I smiled and pretended that her mentioning Annie didn’t bother me. “It was fun coming to the lake when I was younger, but it isn’t as exciting now,” I said. No way was I going to talk to her about Annie. No way.

“I couldn’t imagine being stuck here with my parents,” Elizabeth said. She pounded the cigarette into the ashtray and it split in half. “Well, I wouldn’t have to worry about that since Daddy never leaves his office long enough to have a bloody vacation. If he and my mother ever went anywhere together, I’d know the end of the world was near.”

I searched for something to steer the conversation away from my family. “What’s your boyfriend like?” I asked.

“Michael? He’s very hip … and cute. He sings in a band and doesn’t do much else. My parents have no idea how to take him, since all they think about is making money and keeping up with the rich neighbours, and he’s just the opposite. They can’t stand the very idea of me dating Mick, especially since he’s black. They’re scared their grandkids will be a mocha-coloured embarrassment. I should get pregnant just to see their faces crack.”

“A good reason to bring another kid into the world.”

“Yeah, well. It would give my parents something to unite over. God knows they don’t agree on anything else, with the possible exception of looking down on those less fortunate.” Elizabeth lit another cigarette as she talked and blew a stream of smoke at me.

“I thought you wanted to make money,” I said.

“Well, it drives my parents wild to think I’m turning up my nose at their lifestyle, so I can pretend for a while … and it keeps Mick interested.” After a pause, her eyes zeroed back in on me. “Your father’s gotten kind of fixated about things. Everything in its place, nobody out of line.”

“He likes things done a certain way.”

Elizabeth flicked the ash of her cigarette onto the table and swept it onto the floor with her fingertips. “That’s the biggest understatement I’ve heard all week. My way or the highway, more like. Was he like that after he came out of the hospital? You know, obsessive about everything?”

I looked into Elizabeth’s grey eyes and wondered how much she knew. She stared back at me without blinking. I took my time answering.

“My dad is how I’ve always known him. He … worries.”

“Mom says he wasn’t always so angry. That he got that way after the accident.”

I shrugged then looked past her out the window. Annie. I didn’t want to get into it with Elizabeth. I didn’t want to get into it with anybody.

“Did I tell you that we have William over for dinner quite often in Toronto?” she asked.

I swung my eyes back to her face. “Really? He’s never mentioned it to me.”

“Your brother’s gotten cute. He’s so serious about human rights and marching against the war. Not to mention, he’s going to make lots of money when he becomes a lawyer. If he wasn’t my first cousin …” Elizabeth laughed. She tilted her head to one side, looking me over. “You don’t resemble him much.”

“No.”

“Annie and William looked like your mom when they were little. My mom has a photo album. You look like somebody else’s kid altogether.”

“I dream that I am. Sometimes, I believe another set of parents will come find me and take me away from all this.”

On cue, the front door to the restaurant opened, and I broke away from her gaze. Crap encore. Tyler Livingstone was standing in the doorway looking around. I slumped down in my seat and watched him head toward the counter. He was wearing a Boston Bruins T-shirt and cut-off shorts that were frayed at the bottom. He’d put on muscle since the summer before. The sight of him made my heart beat faster, like a little clock running a race. Elizabeth followed the direction of my eyes.

“Somebody you know?”

I snapped my eyes back to her face. “Tyler Livingstone. We used to hang out when we were younger before we outgrew the kids in the sandbox thing.” I didn’t want her to take an interest in Tyler … or to know of mine. Hopefully she’d never find out that Tyler and I had been inseparable until the summer before.

“Ready to go?” Elizabeth gave me a big smile and took a final suck on her straw. She reached for her macramé bag. “I’ll pay for these. My treat.”

She jumped out of the booth before bee-lining it over to the cash to stand next to Tyler, who was ordering some food to go from the waitress with the big orange hair. He was leaning on the counter and turned his head to look at my cousin. I got up more slowly but made it over in time to hear her say, “Hi. I’m Elizabeth Hopp. Darlene’s older cousin from Toronto. She tells me you spend summers at the lake too.” Elizabeth extended her hand.

Tyler pushed himself off the counter and shook it. He looked past her to me. “Oh, hi, Darlene. I didn’t see you standing there. How’s it going?”

“Just fine. You working this summer?”

“I start a road construction job tomorrow, but I’ll be able to spend nights at the lake.”

“We’re spending nights there too,” said Elizabeth. “It sure is getting hot, isn’t it? I hope July doesn’t get too unbearable.”

She pulled the top of her shirt open and shut a few times like she was letting off steam. I could see the crack between her breasts when she pulled her shirt open one last time.

Tyler looked at my cousin as if he was running her words around in his head. I didn’t need to give them any more thought. I knew exactly what she meant.

“There’s the bill.” I pointed to ours by the cash. “A dollar fifty.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Elizabeth. “Where’s the fire?” She pulled some money from her bag and took her time putting it on the counter. “It sure was nice meeting you, Tyler Livingstone. We’ll be seeing you around then.” She smiled in his direction, full wattage.

“Sure. See you around sometime,” Tyler said and grinned sideways at me before leaning back on the counter to wait for his food.

Of course, he might have been directing his smile at Elizabeth, but I wouldn’t let myself think about that or I’d stop breathing for good.

The next two days passed slow as syrup. My mother noticed that I was avoiding my cousin and called me into the store.

“You’re not being very cousinly,” she said from where she sat on her stool behind the counter. “Elizabeth has been moping around and you’re nowhere to be seen.”

“I’ll try to be better,” I said, “but she makes it hard.”

“Well, you try harder,” Mom said before she went back to doing her crossword puzzle. Without raising her head, she added, “She’s out back.”

Elizabeth looked up from where she was lying in the hammock as I crossed the lawn toward her. I plopped down on the grass nearby. From my position, I could see my mother’s garden and glimpses of the lake past the pine trees at the back of our property. Bees were buzzing in the climbing rose against the house and the air was hot and still, as if someone had turned on a space heater. Elizabeth kept one foot on the ground and rocked herself slowly back and forth. Every time the hammock swung to its highest point, she’d hold herself there and stare at me before letting it swing back through the shadow of the spruce tree. Her purple-tinted granny glasses made her eyes look big and owlish. She was freaking me out, which I knew was her plan. Her little blue radio sat next to us on the lawn. Cat Stevens was singing about a hard-headed woman.

“Do you want to come with me to see Gideon?” I offered when I couldn’t take being watched anymore.

“Who’s Gideon?” Elizabeth’s head bobbed up again.

“The guy who delivers the mail. He lives on the other side of the lake. He also writes a column for the Globe and Mail. Mom always talks to him when he brings our mail. Last summer I didn’t have much to do, so I started going over to his place to find out about writing for a newspaper. We sort of hit it off.” I didn’t tell her that the reason I was bored was because Tyler had deserted me for his new friends.

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know. Fifty-something.”

“He’s old enough to be your grandfather. You’re not the prettiest girl on the block, but even you could do better than that.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You have so much to learn. Fifty-year-old men don’t hang around with fifteen-year-old girls for their intellect, believe me.”

“Is that another Elizabeth rule of dating?”

“Yeah. Rule number two. Never date a man over twice your age. Someday they’ll be pushing a walker and you’ll be wishing they could just get it up one more time.”

“I should take notes.”

“You should. Someday my advice could be a bestseller. Like that woman in the paper.”

“Dear Abby?”

“Yeah, her. I could start a column and get rich and famous.”

I laughed. “The thing is you have to know what you’re talking about. Gideon is not interested in me like that, so you’re wrong about him. Have you ever dated an older man?”

“I went out with a phys ed teacher for a semester, but he wasn’t that old.”

“Couldn’t he have gotten into trouble dating a student?”

Elizabeth smiled. “Of course. That was why I did it.”

“Well, I’m going to see Gideon and will try to keep all your brilliant pointers about men in mind.”

I pushed myself up from the ground to go find my mother and let her know where I was going. I’d tell her I’d tried hard to get Elizabeth to come with me but she didn’t want to. Maybe Mom would buy it. I’d be happier visiting Gideon alone anyway, once I shook off Mom’s sigh and the disappointed look that I knew were coming.

I liked the hot sun on my arms and legs as I biked to Gideon’s. It felt like a thick wool blanket keeping me warm. Trickles of sweat ran down my back where the strap of the knapsack chafed across my shoulder. The road veered away from the lake for the first while and then swooped back so that I followed the sun sparkling on the water for the last half mile. I could hear the drone of flies in the bushes lining the road and now and then crows cawing from the higher tree branches.

Just when I was starting to really cook in the heat, Gideon’s little pine cottage came into view. It was built on a crest of land that overlooked the bay. Gideon lived alone except for his goat Nanny, four hens, a rooster, and a black lab named Ruby. He was one of the few who stayed in his cottage over the winter, maybe because he wasn’t all that happy hanging out with people. Anyone could see that if they read his opinion column in the Saturday Globe. I especially liked the fact that he railed against all things stupid, most of all the Vietnam War, which I thought a total waste of effort.

“I was a big gun once,” he’d told me the summer before. “Not sure it made me happy. I like it better now, weeding the garden, writing poetry, and not dealing with idiots on a daily basis.” He didn’t look like a poet, but just goes to show.

I found Gideon in the garden staking up bean plants. He was wearing denim coveralls and a wide-brimmed straw hat, and I thought he looked older than the summer before. His face got happy when he saw me — well, happy for Gideon, which amounted to a quick smile and his hand running up and down through his beard.

“Darlene Findley. You’re a sight for my sore eyes. Did you grow a foot over the winter or am I sinking?” He straightened awkwardly and started walking toward me. Ruby leapt ahead and jumped up on my legs. I bent to rub her head.

“I’m a growing machine,” I said. “Just call me Twiggy with red hair.”

“Twiggy started a fashion revolution, if I recall. You might be the next one if you’re not careful.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath. Red hair and freckles on a bean pole aren’t likely to cause any riots.”

“None of that now, Little Fin. Come up to the house and I’ll get you something cold to drink. You look like you’ve been in the sun more than is good for you.”

His brown eyes saw too much when they looked at me, and I was happy to turn around and lead the way to his back door with Ruby bounding through the tall grass ahead of us.

It was cooler in his front room. A ceiling fan was moving the soupy air around, and I plunked myself directly under it on the couch. Gideon set a glass of lemonade for me on the coffee table. I looked over to where his navy blue mail bag hung on a hook by the door.

“You’re still on mail duty?”

“For now. Thinking of giving it up, though. I’m busy with writing and the house. New people in the Davidson cottage this summer,” he said, settling into his desk chair. He spun it around so he was facing me. “They have different last names but that could mean nothing. People get married nowadays and women keep their last names. Women’s lib they call it.”

“I met them. Well, I met her anyway. They have a little boy too.” I hadn’t thought about Candy since talking with Danny and Michelle about the new family staying in the Davidsons’.

“I delivered a package up there this morning. They were still in bed and it was close to eleven thirty. Your cousin Elizabeth Hopp got a letter this morning too. She from Toronto?”

I nodded. “She’s been sent to stay with us for the summer. Her parents figure a summer with me will straighten her right out.”

Gideon shook his head. “They’ve got to be dreaming. If she likes the fast life, a summer at Cedar Lake won’t change her. She’ll just come up with new ways to amuse herself.”

“You don’t think people can change?”

“Only if they want to … or have to. People are basically selfish, self-serving hedonists. I could go on now, but we have all summer.”

I laughed and Gideon smiled again. His smiles never hung around for long, and it always felt good to be the cause of one. “How was your winter?” I asked.

“Not bad. Caught a cold, though, and am having trouble shaking the cough. Ruby developed a bit of arthritis in her hind legs.”

“Poor old Ruby,” I said, rubbing her back. She let me fuss over her for a bit before getting up to go lie at Gideon’s feet.

“How’s your writing going? Win any school essay-writing contests this year?” Gideon’s eyes studied my face. I would have liked him not to be watching me so intently.

“No. I didn’t enter,” I said and looked down at my leg. I swiped at some dirt on my knee.

“But you won last year. What was your topic again?”

I kept my head down. “Sending more aid to starving people in Biafra.”

“That’s right. Why didn’t you enter again with all that success?”

I thought of how Dad had torn apart my ideas after I’d won. He’d said we should be keeping our money in Canada and helping our own people first. “I just didn’t have time,” I said.

Gideon kept looking at me over the rim of his glass but he didn’t say anything. I set my glass on the coffee table.

“Thanks for the drink, Gideon. I guess I’ll be getting home to give Mom a break from the store.”

“Your lovely mother. Say hi for me. Your dad still commuting on the weekends?”

“Yup. He’s fulltime in the mill since last year.”

“That’s good. I know it’s a rough go for your folks when he’s not working.”

He let the implication lie between us. I didn’t pick it up. Family solidarity and all that. We walked toward the door.

“I hear there’s a beach party for you kids Friday night. I guess you’ll be taking your cousin Elizabeth.”

“Maybe.”

“Next time you stop by, I should have my new poem done. I’ve tentatively called it ‘Alcoholic Haze on the Northumberland Hills’.”

“All your poems seem to follow a certain theme, Gideon.”

“Write about what you know, kid. Lesson number one.”

“Between you and Elizabeth, this summer should be quite an education.”

“Your cousin teaching you something?”

“You might say that. I figure I’ll be well-rounded by the time she leaves, or so screwed up, I’ll never get a date.”

“Soak it all up, Little Fin. You never can take in too much information, no matter how extraneous it appears at the time.”

“What does extraneous mean, Gideon?”

“Irrelevant. Superfluous. Unnecessary.”

“Like studying math or reading Love Story for the tenth time?”

“The very same. Although it’s beyond me why anyone would stoop to read that pulp even one time. It’s like people nowadays get their taste in a box of Cracker Jacks.”

I braked in front of Candy Parsens’ driveway and stood with both feet on either side of bike, my back resting against the seat. I looked towards the cottage. It was set well back from the road and almost completely hidden from view by two maple trees, a stand of birch, and a tangle of shrubs that needed cutting back. From where I stood, I could hear loud music pouring out of an open window. Janis Joplin was singing “Me and Bobby McGee,” and I rested for a minute to listen. The album had been released in January after she’d died, and I hadn’t heard it all the way through. I looked back toward the house. What would it hurt to check out how they were doing?

I got off my bike and followed Janis’s gritty voice up the drive and through the bushes to the far side of the path that wound through scrub along the front of the building. Around the corner of the cottage, I found Candy bent over a clothes basket, lifting a shirt to pin on a line she’d strung between two trees. Her white peasant skirt billowed around her legs as she reached to clip the clothes peg. Her feet were bare and I could see her breasts spilling over a red tube top. This time, her blonde hair was wound into a knot at the base of her neck, but pieces had escaped and hung down her back in uneven strands. When she looked in my direction, she cupped a hand over her eyes. It took her a few seconds to recognize me. She started walking in my direction, her smile wide.

“It’s Darlene, isn’t it? Darlene from the store? It’s so good to see somebody familiar. I can’t tell you how much.”

When she was just a few feet away, she stopped. “Would you like something cold to drink? I’ve just squeezed some lemons. It was as if I knew I’d have company today. It’s good karma.”

She looked so hopeful, it didn’t feel right just leaving.

I nodded. “That’d be nice. Thanks.”

Candy talked non-stop as we walked toward the back door. I left my bike leaned against a rain barrel and followed her dancing feet into the kitchen. When I stepped inside, it took me a second to take it all in. The counter was filled with torn bags of flour and brown sugar, containers of granola cereal, whole wheat pasta, and different beans and grains that I couldn’t place. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes while half-full coffee cups and bowls of milk and cereal lay scattered across the table. I could see glass ring stains and the freshly burned outline of a pot on the counter near the stove, now caked in a layer of grease. A bag in the corner spilled over with garbage. The smell of food left too long in the sun mixed with rotting fruit and burned coffee made me breathe in shallow gulps. I figured Mrs. Davidson would have a bigger heart attack if she dropped by unexpectedly.

Candy noticed my neck swivelling back and forth to take it all in. She waved a hand at the mess and said happily, “Doesn’t take us long to settle in. We can sit outside if you like. I’ll just get the lemonade.”

“I’ll wait outside.” I tried to speak without inhaling.

Candy pushed open the screen door with her hip a few minutes later and stepped outside. She handed me a glass as she sat down next to me on the back steps. I sipped the fresh lemonade, and it was good, better than Gideon’s store-bought stuff. Candy took a long drink, then reached inside the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a crumpled package of cigarettes and a red Bic lighter. She lit one and inhaled deeply, letting the smoke come out of her nose like a head of steam.

“That’s better. I’ve been washing clothes by hand all morning and needed a break.”

“Where’s your little boy?” I’d forgotten his name.

“Seany? He’s having a nap. I’ve never met a kid who likes to sleep as much as this one. He’s up half the night, mind you.” Candy turned sideways on the step and looked at me. “You’ve gotten some sun today. Do you like being outside? I personally can hardly stand being indoors.”

“I’m outside as much as I can be. I burn easily though.”

“I guess with your colouring. You have such lovely creamy white skin. I love your freckles.”

“Are you kidding?” I said without thinking.

“Not at all. I’ll bet you hate how you look, am I right? We all want to look like some other overpaid, cookie-cutter fashion model. It’s all a load of brainwashing from corporate America. You are a natural beauty. Boys’ll be falling all over themselves to go out with you in a few years. Just you wait and see.”

A few people had told me that I was unusual looking, but that hadn’t felt like a compliment. I looked at her with a greater interest. The cigarette moved up and down between her lips as she talked.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to go for a swim?” Her eyes were wide and sparkly. “Johnny doesn’t like me to leave Sean with a sitter or even go outside when he’s in his crib, but maybe one afternoon when Sean’s sleeping, we could sneak to the beach for an hour. Seany’s dead to the world for a few hours every day.”

I’d never heard an adult speak like this before. I sat still thinking about what she’d said. “Why doesn’t your husband want you to leave Sean with a sitter?”

Candy laughed as if I were the most amusing person on earth. “Says we’ve uprooted him and he wants the kid to have some stability for a while. My husband Johnny is a strange man.”

She swept her cigarette in a wide arc to take in the property. She looked at me and her eyes were shiny with tears. “This is a far cry from my old life. Do you know I used to be a back-up singer for a couple of bands? I lived in L.A. for a while and dated rock singers. It was a great life.”

“So why did you give all that up?”

“I fell for Johnny. Simple as that.” Elizabeth said the words as if free will had nothing to do with it. The cigarette in her hand was trembling. “Sure, he’s five years older than me, but we just had a connection, you know? Johnny just had this aura and I knew I was destined to be with him. It’s our karma.”

That karma word again. “Did you date or know anyone famous … I mean, before Johnny?”

“Famous? Of course. I used to hang out with Janis Joplin — I still like to play her music in the morning to kick-start my day. It takes me back, you know? I was devastated when she died in L.A. They asked me to speak at her funeral, but I was too ripped apart to get up in front of all those people. Jesus, I miss her still. Her high school voted her the ugliest girl, did you know that? How do you get over something like that? People can be such monsters.” She shook her head. “We used to zip around L.A. in her Porsche. It was painted all psychedelic colours and everyone watched us go by, like we were really something. We had such a blast when we were together. Those were the days, my friend, to quote another musician pal of mine.”

“Wasn’t she that Welsh …?”

“Singer. Yes, Mary Hopkin. I met her when I was over in Britain one summer. We toured around together.”

Candy was friends with Janis Joplin and Mary Hopkin? Elizabeth would kill to hear Candy’s stories. She wanted to meet somebody famous even more than I did. Candy touched my bare arm with her fingers.

“Janis was troubled, you know? And the drugs … well, that’s what did her in. I was supposed to be with her that night but met up with Jimmy and that was that. It hurts to think I could have saved her.”

“Jimmy?”

“Jim Morrison. You ever heard of him?”

I nodded. I forced my lips back together. Everybody under the age of thirty had heard of Jim Morrison and the Doors.

Creases appeared in Candy’s forehead and her eyes got worried. “You won’t tell? Johnny hates when I talk about the old days and living in the States.”

I shook my head.

“Speaking of Johnny, he should be back within the hour, so I’d better get Seany up and get him bathed and ready to see his daddy.”

“I should be going too.”

I stood and she took my empty glass from me. I’d been hoping for a few more of her stories.

Candy looked up at me with her crystal blue eyes and a crooked smile, as if she could read what was going on inside my head. “Won’t you come back tomorrow? We could swim in the bay. If you feel weird about leaving Sean alone, you could watch him while I do some lengths. Johnny has an appointment in Toronto and he’ll be gone early. You don’t know how much that would mean to me if you could come by.”

“What time?”

“Johnny’s gone for the day, so one o’clock would be perfect.”

“I should be able to make it then.”

“And remember, not one word about us living in the States. Johnny would kill me if he knew I was talking about my past life. He just hates me talking about those days to anybody.”