9

Of the many images of Annie stored in my memory, there were two that took up the most space. One was of her tear-stained face, twisted with anger—the one I knew would materialize and take over my senses before the sun rose. It would come as it always did, unbidden and unwelcome, but as I sat in the living room of the dark cottage, blowing smoke through the open window while Edie slept, I willed the other to take shape—the one of her looking back over her left shoulder, winking at me as she strode across the stage at the parish hall to collect her high school diploma, a diploma that probably belonged as much to me as it did to her. Annie was a proper whiz with numbers, but anything to do with words both bored and frustrated her to no end, which is where I stepped in. I tried tutoring her but somehow always wound up doing her homework alongside my own. If our teachers saw my hand in her assignments, they never said. “For Jesus’ sake, you could torch that school to the ground, and they’d give you an A plus in arson,” was all Annie had to say when I expressed my fear of being caught.

But that rainy June day in the hall belonged to her alone. My own graduation would be delayed on account of the time I’d lost growing a baby and grieving my mother. She’d been dead for almost a year and a half. I’d pushed through the worst of it, but every time I thought of her, my body burned with shame and anger, so I tried not to think of her at all. On the anniversary of her death, Annie had asked me if I missed her. “Of course I do. What kind of freak wouldn’t miss their mother?” I answered, with a snap in my tone that even I could hear. The truth was I liked my life better with her gone. The little things like the sound of the radio on blast while I showered, and the big things like being relieved of the burden of constantly worrying about her. I mourned my mother, but I did not miss her. Not like I missed my father. In the wake of my mother’s death, I came to believe that had my father lived, he would have somehow prevented every misfortune that had come my way. That the things I remembered and cherished about him—his calm, steady demeanour and happy ways—would have rubbed off on me, making me a different girl altogether. I felt cheated twice over.

I hadn’t spoken with Annie or anyone else about my mother since that day in the kitchen with Mrs. Malone. I hoped that people would eventually forget about her, but given the way I was still treated in Safe Harbour—the stares and awkward silences, the fawning and frantic efforts to be cheery—it seemed I was destined to become the face of tragedy in town, the orphan of the noble lost seaman and the village lunatic. I didn’t know if folks were wise to the baby bit because that was also something never spoken of, not by me or Annie.

Annie’s interest in boys had all but disappeared since my return from the home, and I wondered if it was my misfortune that had given her pause. Maybe she blamed herself for what had happened to me that night, or maybe she saw me as the embodiment of the hazards of lust. I was too afraid of the answers to ask her. All I knew was that I had her full attention, and that it was a kind of heaven. I suspected it was probably a mistake to need her as much as I did, to see her as the sole reason to leave my bed each morning, but I decided I didn’t care. All I cared about was the grand adventure that was on the horizon.

It was six months before Annie’s graduation when the plan first took shape. She’d decided to skip the New Year’s Eve parties—both the one hosted by her parents and the one her parents knew nothing about—in favour of a quiet night in front of the fire with me. The clock struck midnight, the seventies were finally behind us, and Annie declared she’d had enough.

“Enough of what?” I said.

“This godforsaken place. Nothing to do, everyone’s nose in your business. I mean, what’s here for us anyway? No jobs, no money, no future.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we’re not spending the rest of our lives in this hole. We’ll fuck off to St. John’s and never look back.” She began to speak in rapid bursts. “We’ll get an apartment. Down by the harbour. You’ll go to school and be a teacher. God knows what I’ll do, but I’ll think of something.”

She banged on for ages—how we’d go out dancing every weekend, eat in restaurants and travel and meet gorgeous men in suits who’d treat us like queens. I listened in amazement as a whole lifetime beside her unspooled in my mind. I could see it all, and by the time she’d finished, I saw us as two old women laughing as we looked back on it all.

She leaned back on the sofa, breathless. “There’ll be no stopping us, Frances. You and me against the world.”

She guzzled down the last of her beer, turned the radio up as loud as it could go, and began to dance. I watched her twirl and bop around the living room of my dead parents’ house. I imagined her cleansing it with every movement, smashing my legacy of misery with her unbridled joy. In that moment, I believed that she alone could chart a new course for me. I was overtaken by faith and hope, and decided to place every dream I’d ever held for myself in her hands and follow her wherever she led me. I popped up off the couch and she spun me around until I was dizzy.

The next morning, I woke with a sinking feeling that the talk of the night before was nothing more than a passing youthful fancy. Annie and I were still head to foot on the couch, covered by a knitted wool blanket. I could see my breath, and frost covered the windowpanes. I got up and moved quietly toward the wood stove, wondering how I’d manage to start the fire without waking her. I turned at the sound of her voice.

“You can stop tiptoeing around. I’ve been awake for hours hatching our escape plan. The first thing is money,” she said. “We’re going nowhere without money.”

Cash quickly became our shared obsession, as neither of us had any to speak of. I’d taken to cleaning for a few old biddies in town who would hand me a five-dollar bill and a plate of dinner for my trouble. I was back at school, and even though I’d fallen behind, my teachers thought if I worked hard enough, I’d manage to snag a small scholarship. But we wouldn’t get far on that. Annie pressed her parents for a loan to make the move, but they were tapped out at the end of every month like everyone else we knew. Annie fumed daily over the fact that there always seemed to be money for her brothers to play hockey but not a cent left over for what her parents felt was pure folly.

“A lark. That’s what they said to me. And in front of those bloody fools too. Gordie laughing at me, telling me I’ll be a townie harlot before my suitcase is unpacked. As if hockey isn’t a goddamn lark. As if any one of those idiots will ever make a dime slapping a puck into a net. I’m telling you, Frances, he’s lucky I don’t take a hockey stick upside his head.”

ALL THAT WINTER, THE weather bore down on us. Blizzard after blizzard blew in from the bay. Sleet storms raged, wiping out power for days. Enormous icicles hung from every eave for weeks on end, and the roads in every direction were encased in layers of treacherous ice. February was made darker and bleaker as Annie and I began to fear our bold vision would never be more than fantasy. By the time March rolled around, we’d pretty much succumbed to despair. Then one Saturday morning, Annie burst through my front door.

“It’s a goddamn miracle,” she said. “We’re saved.”

Our saviour’s name was Ches Rideout.

“He’s an old buddy of Dad’s who left years ago to seek his fortune on the mainland, and apparently, he found it,” Annie said. “Dad says he’s dead clever. Made a pile of money, something to do with tractors. Or is it trucks? I can’t remember now. Anyway, he’s after getting tired of Toronto and he’s coming back. Imagine trading Toronto for this mess.”

“Sweet God, Annie. Get to the part about him saving us.”

“Right. He’s building a bloody big supermarket with a hardware store attached to it. And he’s hiring all locals to work in it. His son is coming in May to start handing out jobs. They say it’ll be up and running by the end of the summer.”

My heart banged wildly, and sudden tears filled my eyes.

BY MID-JULY, ANNIE HAD been hired as a cashier, and I’d applied for a part-time stockroom position. When I got the call to come for an interview, Annie came to my place to pick out my clothes and give me a pep talk before I left to meet Ches Rideout’s son, Anthony, at the almost completed store.

“Just be yourself,” she said. “Only more talkative, but not about books and stuff. And try to smile. Now, Frances, this is the most important thing: try to stay focused because Anthony Rideout is fair gorgeous. Wicked eyes on him, blue as the bay, and thick black hair all feathered back like Erik Estrada, but don’t let that distract you.”

“I think I’ll manage.”

Anthony met me in the gravel parking lot. Annie was right about his looks. He was the best-looking man I’d ever seen close up. I was expecting someone much older, but he didn’t seem that far off from us in years. He smiled and shook my hand.

“Frances, good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I nodded and pasted on a wide smile.

“Everyone I know with the last name Malone says if I don’t hire you, I’m a fool. So part-time work is what you’re after?”

“Yes, I missed some school last year. I still have six months left.”

“Yeah, Annie told me about your mother. I’m sorry.”

I was too preoccupied wondering how well he knew Annie to say anything sensible. He led me toward a black pickup truck and handed me an application form from a pile lying on the passenger seat.

“Just a formality,” he said. “You can start right away.”

A guy in a yellow hard hat called out to him from inside the store. Anthony asked if I could wait a minute and left me standing alone, somewhat bewildered by the ease with which I’d landed my first job. I wandered around the parking lot until he was done. He walked toward me, long confident strides, wide shoulders set back, a swagger if I ever saw one. He seemed to enjoy being in his own body more than anyone I knew, and he unnerved me beyond the usual agitations brought on by strangers.

“Hey, Frances,” he said, “can I ask you something?”

I nodded.

“Annie. Does she have a boyfriend?”

I shrugged. “I expect you’ll have to ask her.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “I might just do that.”

He gave me a slow wink, and a cool little shiver rippled through me.

IT WAS LABOUR DAY weekend when the store finally opened. The whole town turned out to eat their fill of free grilled hot dogs and watch Ches and Anthony Rideout cut a big red ribbon in half. Annie worked one of the five cash registers while I was tucked away in the stockroom. At the end of the day we walked home together, exhausted but full of talk about how we’d soon be flush enough to make a break for town. Annie gushed about Anthony—his looks, his charming ways, his keen mind and helpful manner. She didn’t mention if he’d asked her the question he’d asked me. I didn’t mention it either. I didn’t want to know. All I wanted to know was our good fortune.

My mother used to say that no good ever came without a balance of bad. Her words returned to me over and over that fall. School was almost unbearable for me without the steadying presence of Annie. I kept my focus on the lessons, ate my lunch alone in the empty classroom, and watched the clock tick away the minutes until I was free to run the half-mile to Rideout’s, where Annie was always the first person I saw. She’d smile and buoy me enough to stock the shelves with cans of soup and bunches of bananas until six o’clock, when we’d walk home together and squeeze ourselves in at the rowdy Malone dinner table. I’d linger as long as I could, then trek back to my place, finish my schoolwork, and call Annie to say goodnight.

Then one night when I called, Gordie answered and told me she wasn’t home. “She’s off gallivanting with that Rideout quiff,” he said and hung up. I lay in bed stewing over it for hours, then spent the rest of the night scrubbing the spotless kitchen. The next evening, she said nothing about it the whole walk home. I felt like my head was going to burst open, but I hung on until we got to the front door of her house.

“Why didn’t you tell me about you and Anthony?”

She shrugged. “Because there’s nothing to tell.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“He showed up at the house and I went for a walk with him. That’s it.”

“He’s your boss. And mine.”

“So?”

“What if it goes south and he fires you?”

“There’s nothing to go south, so give it up.”

“And he’s too old for you.”

“He’s twenty-two. Four years is nothing.”

“I just think we need to focus. Eyes on the prize.”

She pressed the palms of her hands against my cheeks. “Frances, you’re gonna worry yourself to death. Trust me, my eyes are right where they need to be.”

A month later, I let Annie talk me into going to the Rideout’s Grocery Christmas party. The parish hall was hot and damp and tinselled beyond recognition. Annie danced and held court with our co-workers while I held up the wall and nursed a warm syrupy Coke until my nerves could take no more. I scanned the room for her but couldn’t find her. I mumbled a few words of thanks to Ches Rideout and his wife, then jostled my way through the throng of merrymakers to the coatroom. I heard a rustling sound beyond the coat rack and peered into the dimly lit corner. I saw the back of Annie’s red party dress and Anthony’s hand cradling her mop of black curls while he planted soft kisses along the length of her neck, like I’d seen men in the movies do. He placed his other hand against the small of her back, drawing her toward him and away from me. I grabbed my coat and slipped out.

It was a clear night, cold and starry. I walked past wooden houses adorned with colourful lights, round wreaths of spruce boughs hung on their doors. Plumes of pungent woodsmoke billowed up from their chimneys, but the Christmas charm was lost on me. I was too preoccupied by what I had seen. Too busy trying to sum up what I felt about Anthony Rideout, addled by the search for a word that refused to rise. Sometime in the middle of the night it finally surfaced, and I woke myself speaking interloper into the dark.

I suppose I knew from the moment I met him that he would have her. People like that always got whatever they wanted. Sparkly folks from the mainland blessed with looks and charm and money, those come from aways as exotic as peacocks. She never stood a chance when faced with the likes of him. Neither did I. Within a month, Annie and Anthony had become the town’s newest couple. Two or three times a week, I sat next to her empty chair at the Malone dinner table while Annie’s mother piled too much food on my plate. Saturday nights were spent with my books. When I did have her to myself, she was distracted and restless and I could tell she was just biding her time with me until he was free.

On the first warm evening of spring, she appeared at my door trying to convince me to join a crowd from work down at the shore for a boil-up. She knew full well I couldn’t go to that water, and I told her so. When she shook her head, exasperated, and said, “You can. You just won’t,” it was as if I were standing in front of a stranger. Through the window I watched her walk down the lane and toward the sea, feeling as if yet another part of me would be swept away.

THE LESS I SAW Annie, the more I retreated into myself. When it came time to collect my own diploma, I asked to be excused from the ceremony. My teachers were disappointed, but I was unable to steel myself enough for a crowded celebration. The only thing that had kept me going to that point was Annie’s insistence that despite not having near enough money for me to go to school, we were still on track to leave at the end of the summer.

The day after I graduated, I started full time at Rideout’s, where Annie was now head cashier. We ate lunch together almost every day and she carved out a night here and there to stay over at my place, and slowly the axis of my world began to right itself. I learned to be grateful for what little I got from her. Despite what I saw in Anthony—his winking, wandering eye for every girl who walked past, his lording himself above the local guys every chance he got—I decided that maybe he was neither the cock of the walk he thought himself nor the threat I’d worked him up to be. Maybe he was just another planet in Annie’s orbit, spinning around the sun like everyone else. I convinced myself that Annie’s dalliance with Anthony was just that, and I told myself that once the bright lights of town came into view, he’d be forgotten before she even got off the bus. I invested all my energy into making an uneasy peace with it all, and I was too busy just trying to stay afloat to feel the current shifting direction. Too focused on the horizon to notice that my boat was slowly sinking. Even when she came to my door that August night, pale and shaking, I didn’t see it coming.

She’d come from a big talk with Anthony about our leaving and she was a wreck, rattled beyond anything I’d ever seen. I pulled her through the door and served her up a mug of tea. I sat beside her until she stopped sobbing.

“He said he couldn’t see his life without me,” she said. “He had it all worked out in his head. Training me up to be assistant manager. Me and him running Rideout’s together someday.”

I could barely draw breath enough to speak. “Annie, what are you getting on with? We’re supposed to be leaving in a few weeks.”

“I know, I know. But he said he loves me and I’m so confused. I can’t go. Not yet. Not until I get this all sorted in my head.”

“And how long will that take?”

She didn’t answer and started crying again. “I know you must be raging at me, but what if I never get another chance like this?”

“There’s a hundred boys as beautiful as him in town. You’ll have your pick.”

“No, I mean a job like that. Not everyone is as smart as you are. You have the brains to be anything you want. This is a chance for me to really make something of myself. And I don’t want another boy. Anthony’s not a boy, he’s a man. And I want him.” She reached out and held my hand between hers. “Listen, I’ll give you all the money I’ve saved so you can start school in January just like you planned. You don’t need me.”

The sound of my heartbeat in my ears was deafening. I couldn’t even hold a thought, let alone form a plan of how to talk her back around. I sat in stunned silence while a hot fury began to burn in my chest. That bastard had won, and I knew there wasn’t a bloody thing I could do about it.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said. “What about us? What about all our plans? And what happens when he gets tired of you and runs off to the next one who’ll let him put his hand up her dress?”

She recoiled as if I’d slapped her. “He loves me. Is that so hard to believe?”

“You’re so blinded by his razzle-dazzle act that you can’t see what’s in front of your face. He loves himself too much to have any love left over for you.”

“What the hell would you know about it anyway? You don’t know what it’s like to love someone. Who do you even know besides me? No one. You’re holed up in this house with your books all the time, too afraid to walk through the door and speak to anyone. You’re like a bloody hermit.”

“I can’t help that. It’s just how I am.”

“That’s a load of shit and you know it.”

“I don’t even know who you are any more, talking to me like this. I believe this guy has you brainwashed.”

“Oh, that’s very nice. I can talk and think for myself, thank you very much. Stop being such a selfish bitch.”

“Get out.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Get out of this house right now.”

“Like hell I’ll get out. We’re staying here until this is settled.”

“Sounds like you already have it all settled, Judas.”

She grabbed her purse off the table and stood up so fast that her chair fell over. “You know what, Frances? You’re about as crazy as your mother, and if you don’t get your shit together, you’ll end up just like her.”

“And if you and your sainted mother had seen to her like you promised, maybe she’d still be here.”

We stood across from each other in my mother’s kitchen with those ugly words wedged between us, our chests heaving and our eyes wet, and I knew we’d never be the same again. A wave of panic rose up inside me so hard and fast that it dropped me to my knees. I closed my eyes and panted through it. When I looked up, Annie was gone.

I got up from the floor and moved without thought or feeling up the stairs and into my room, where I packed a duffle bag with clothes and reached for the shoebox of money under my bed, just over four hundred dollars, and rolled it into a sock. I scrawled two words on a sheet of paper for Mrs. Malone: Thank you. I left the note on the kitchen table, closed the door, and started walking. All night I put one foot in front of the other, watching them move as if they belonged to someone else. Then I stopped walking. The night bled away into the morning light, and I sat on my duffle bag by the side of the highway. I had a sense of hovering high above the road, looking down at myself, like I was watching a scene on television. I saw a blue station wagon stop and an elderly woman wave me over, and I mindlessly got in the car. She and her husband lectured me on the evil that befell young girls nowadays and told me how lucky I was that God-fearing Catholics had come upon me instead a knife-wielding rapist.

They dropped me off at the Roadway Motel, a low red-brick building on the outskirts of St. John’s, a place I chose simply because it was the first motel I saw. The woman at the desk smiled at me when I walked through the door. Her hair was wrapped around pink plastic rollers and she was wearing a blue windbreaker with “Martina” embroidered in white thread across the upper part of her arm. She pulled a key from a pegboard behind her. “Number 12—last one on the left side. Right quiet, that one is, and handy to the soft-drink machine,” she said. It was twenty-one dollars a night plus an extra three for cleaning. I listened while she moaned about having to do all the rooms herself because her girl had quit three days before. “But you looks as clean as they come, so I don’t expect you’ll be needing me.” I handed her some cash, trudged down the walkway, and flopped onto the musty-smelling bed.

It was dark when I awoke. I lay listening to the roar of traffic along the highway, the raised voices of the people in the room next door, the drip of the bathroom tap, and I longed for the safety and stillness of my bedroom. My body was stiff and sore, and I was suddenly full of regret about what I’d done. I reached for the phone and dialled Annie’s number. She answered after a single ring.

“Hello?”

I swallowed hard and tried to speak, but nothing came.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

“Annie, it’s me.”

“Oh my God, Frances. Where are you? We’re gone mad here looking for you.”

“I’m at some motel near town.”

“Cripes, Mom is here grabbing for the phone. Get away, Mother, you can talk to her in a minute. Listen to me, you have to—”

“Come now. Just get on the bus and come. Please. I can’t do it without you.”

I could hear her breathing into the receiver.

“No, you come back here,” she said. “We’ll work it all out. A whole new plan. I swear.”

“I can’t live there anymore. I just can’t.”

More silence, Annie breathing.

“Frances, listen to me. You have to come back.”

“No, you have to come here.”

“You don’t understand. He said he wants to marry me someday.”

I dropped the receiver in the cradle and slumped down to the grimy carpet. I felt like I’d spent the last year dangling from a cliff by my fingertips, desperately clinging to the only thing that made my life worthwhile. All that time I believed that Anthony and I were rivals. That he had slithered into my world intent on taking what was mine. It wasn’t until that very moment that I understood Annie had never belonged to me. And now she was lost to me as surely as everyone else I’d ever loved. Our dream of building a bold new life together was mine and mine alone, and I felt broken beyond repair.

For three days I left the motel bed only to go to the bathroom. I didn’t eat a morsel of food and took sips of water from the bathroom tap. I thought briefly about hanging myself or smashing a glass and opening my wrists, but I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to go about it. I willed my heart to stop beating, but it ignored me and just pumped on. On the fourth morning, my stomach rumbled loud enough to wake me, and I wondered how long it would take to starve myself away.

Then I thought about my mother, holding herself under the waves, and for the first time, I realized the level of determination that must have required. Surely her body would have bucked and fought against the water seeping into her lungs, and still she held fast. That was how badly she wanted to die. Then I pictured her washed up on the shore, the Malones and my mother’s neighbours gasping and weeping. I pictured Annie being told that my stiff, stinking body had been found in this crummy room. She would blame herself, and a small thrill passed through me at the thought of it. Yet it was the same vision of Annie’s suffering that brought me around to living. And the need to prove her wrong. I would not end up like my mother. I would not return to her house and take up her role as the madwoman of Safe Harbour. And never again would I stand on that shore and risk feeling the pull of that water.

I eased out of bed, woozy and weak. I had to lean against the shower wall to keep upright. An image of a dead jellyfish I’d found on the shore when I was young popped up in my mind. A round white blob, pale and slack, all flesh and no backbone. I dressed and walked across the highway to a diner, picked at some toast and a greasy fried egg, and circled back to the motel office. I offered my services to Martina in exchange for a free room and a low hourly wage. Within three weeks, every surface in that motel was fit to eat off.

Six months later, Martina sold up to a developer looking to build a strip mall. She gave me a glowing reference letter and called her sister, who owned a boarding house in St. John’s. “Nothing fancy,” Martina said, “but it’s clean and quiet and a good enough place to start.”

When I got off the bus at the station downtown, I felt like I’d landed on another planet. The noise. The traffic. Strangers everywhere I looked. I was tired and jumpy and feared I might throw up. I sat on a bench and put my head between my knees. An older woman stopped and asked me if I was all right. I handed her a piece of paper with the address of the boarding house on it.

“Can you tell me how to get here?”

She squinted at the paper. “Sure you’re not far at all, my love. Only ten minutes down the road,” she said, and walked me right to the door.

I stayed in my small room, avoiding the city. I scanned the job postings in the newspaper for a week, then found one looking for maids at the Newfoundland Hotel. I stammered my way through an interview with a gruff, sweaty man called Harvey, and the next morning, I reported for duty as a junior chamber maid. The work suited me well. Slipping in and out of people’s messy rooms while they were off living their busy lives. Moving through the world like a phantom, silent and invisible.

THE MORNING SUN WAS fully up, burning off the fog. I looked around the holiday cottage. It was not so different from my room at the Roadway Motel. Full circle, I thought. I heard Edie moving about the bedroom, then the shower running. I was still sitting by the window when she came out, fresh-faced and smiling and raring to go.