SOMETIME IN THE WEEKS before Lakewood there had been the night when she heard them talking at a near whisper, Father and Grandmother AJ, down in the living room at Sweetbarry while she was sitting at the top of the stairs.
“For her own good—you understand that, Charles, don’t you? Look at me. For the girl’s own good. So she made a mistake, but down here, among humans, that’s what we do. We make mistakes. This one you might as well blame on her youth and on her innocent bloom and on that boy, and on nature’s relentless push toward the only thing that matters to it. More babies, more trees, more rabbits, just blindly more of everything. She says she felt pressured and was tempted and confused, and so forth. It’s the same sad old story repeated a million times over. But we don’t want her to have to pay for that one mistake forever. Right, Charles? Say something.”
But he said nothing, or perhaps he just nodded, and Grandmother continued.
“I’ve spoken to the boy’s father. Not an easy conversation, as you can imagine. Twice, in fact, and now it’s all arranged. No one around here will ever know, and the less said the better.”
“Who’s the boy?”
“A summer boy. A blond sixteen-year-old kid from Montreal. A nice kid, except for this now. You’ve seen him around. They always rent the house with the green shutters on the other side of town.”
For a while there was silence down there, and Margaret strained to hear.
“I’m actually proud of her, Charles,” Grandmother said. “It must have taken a lot of courage for her to come and ask for my help. Most girls wouldn’t. They’d just stand on the train track and stare at the light coming.”
“What’s his name?”
“His name. Unless you really want to know and get involved, don’t even ask. Maybe just let me deal with it. I’ve put a lot of work into it already. Lakewood will be perfect for her. They even have a schoolroom and tutors up there, and doctors, of course. She’ll probably fall a bit behind with her studies, but I’ve spoken to Thérèse in Paris, and that is exactly what her school is set up for. To help girls in situations like this catch up. Margaret can do her baccalaureate there and then go on to university and law school. Put all this behind her and get a profession. A solid career. That’s what I would have wanted for myself.” “As though nothing ever happened?” said Father. “You really believe that these things leave no marks?”
“Of course they do. For a while. But what are the alternatives, Charles? Tell me.”
Grandmother, always so clear and strong. Until that night she’d often feared her, sometimes even hated her. This, not that, Margaret. Pay attention. Think for yourself, child, always.
For a while there was silence down there again. Then Grandmother said, “Exactly. Our Margaret is young and bright and she has a future. Let’s not have her waste it. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow, but I wanted you to know. Don’t make that face, Charles. Do you agree with the plan?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Of course you do. Tell me.”
Through all this she sat hugging her knees on the landing, feeling new waves of gratitude and respect for Grandmother. It was late, past midnight. She’d gone to the bathroom and on her way back to bed had heard her name.
“Charles?” Grandmother was saying down there again. “Do you agree?”
Next day when they were alone in the house, Grandmother sat her down at the oak table in the kitchen and told her in more detail what the plans were. Lakewood was a retreat and a clinic and an adoption centre all at once.
“It’s unfortunate what happened, Margaret, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ve spoken to Xavier’s father, and he was shocked of course, and angry, but in the end he agreed to the Lakewood plan. He would not agree to anything else, such as long-term obligations if on some misguided notion you should want to keep and raise the baby. He’ll pay for half of Lakewood, and he’ll even contribute to the private school in Paris so you can catch up. I was quite firm with him.”
“They’ve packed up already and gone back to Montreal,” she said. “There was even a truck that took away bits of furniture. I saw it from the post office.”
“Did you now. It’s easy for boys, isn’t it? Look at me, Margaret. All this will pass. We’ll work it out. I promise.” But she couldn’t look at Grandmother. She sat kneading her fingers, thinking how confused and embarrassed she was. How angry.
“The school in Paris is called École Olivier,” said Grandmother. “A distant relative of ours runs it. Thérèse Lafontaine. She’s the cousin of a niece of mine. I’ve spoken to her already. What happened doesn’t make you a bad person, Margaret, but it does make you vulnerable. I suggest you tell no one. Aileen, perhaps, if you really must. Any gossip about it will attach to you forever in this community, and that’s not what you want. Trust me about this. If your mother were here with us today, she would advise you to do the same. Margaret, please look at me.”
She finally looked up from her hands and across the table at Grandmother.
“You need to put all this behind you, dear. Start again and make something of yourself. First things first. Become good at something, and then organize your life around that gift. Get a career, a vision. A foundation for yourself that no one can take away, and then have your children, as many as you want and can afford. It’s all possible, Margaret. You’ll see.”
That afternoon she and Aileen took the rowboat out to Gull Rock and they sat with their brown legs in the water, on their spot on the rock where it was smooth and flat and shaped just right. Both in their bathing suits, the bottoms worn thin on these sun-warm rocks with the little mosses and tiny purple flowers that smelled of honey if you put your nose right to them.
They stuck out their legs and kicked them up and down, playing motorboat to see who could go faster. They laughed and stopped kicking.
“Shift over a bit,” said Aileen. “So I can see the house in case Mom’s waving for me to come in.”
Margaret shifted. She said, “Did you hand in the application?”
“I did. Yesterday. They told me more or less what to expect. Turns out it’ll take years. Years.” Aileen lay back on the rock.
“Not that many. Four, five? How long do you think it’ll take me with the law school bit? If I can even get in.” “You’ll get in,” said Aileen. She sat up again. “They told me that while I’m candy-striping I’ll need to take a bunch of courses. Well, I knew that. Six of them, can you believe it? And there’ll be exams at different levels. But if everything goes well I could be a nurse in training, a real NIT, by the time I’m nineteen. Then more courses and the licensing bit, and a couple of years later I could be a real nurse.”
For a while they said nothing, and all they could hear was the ocean and a few gulls somewhere.
“Aileen,” she said then. “If I tell you a deep, deep, a very deep secret, will you look at me and we cross fingers and you swear to me that you’ll never tell anyone? No one, ever? Will you?”
Aileen sat very still suddenly.
“Will you?”
“You sure, Margaret?”
“I am, if you promise. I want you to know. I need you to know. And I trust you. It’ll help me.”
“All right, I promise.”
And solemnly they both held out the fore and middle fingers of their right hands and crossed them.
A week or two later, on the last day before they turned off the water and closed up the house in Sweetbarry to move back to Toronto, she stood naked in front of the mirror and looked at herself. Because she had always been so slim, she thought she could already see the baby showing. She wondered if Aileen had already known when they were sitting on Gull Rock that time. Noticed something but didn’t say anything, and like a true friend did not probe but waited and hoped to be told. That would be like Aileen.
At Lakewood there was the little clinic and a nursery and a recovery room behind white swing doors, and there were the schoolroom and the kitchen and dining and other rooms in the basement, and the dormitory facing the lake. The one area that was absolutely off limits to them was the entrance and the gravel drive in front of the building. And because they weren’t allowed even to be seen in any of the windows above the entrance, they had to imagine what went on there, and they discussed it in colourful detail.
They imagined fine chauffeur-driven cars pulling up and men and women in elegant clothes climbing out, and the matron welcoming them and then leading the way to her office. And perhaps an hour later, with papers having been signed and the transaction concluded, the new parents would come back out and walk to their car, and the chauffeur would open the door for the woman, who was holding a newborn in a little blanket, kissing its tiny face and cooing at it and having absolutely no eyes for anything else.
From those imaginary people and from the real people in the boats going by they chose the parents for their children. The woman Margaret finally selected had a kind face and a lovely smile, and the man was the one with the blond curly hair they’d seen in the mahogany boat, the one with the sleeves rolled up on strong arms. On the day when they’d come to Lakewood to take home her baby, he would be wearing a white linen jacket and the woman a white dress, and she would look happy with her arm in his. Margaret could clearly see his firm step and the kindness in the woman’s face, and that was enough for her.
During Margaret’s time at Lakewood, Aileen came to visit her twice, once in late October and the second time during Christmas. It was a long journey for her, from Halifax by train to Montreal with a nighttime wait and change of trains, and then on to Toronto and north from there with Father and Grandmother in the car. Margaret offered to pay for the train tickets from her allowance, but Aileen would agree only to a fifty-fifty split.
At Lakewood there was a visiting room in the basement, but there were usually other parents and girls present. People whispered and there was no privacy. And so on both visits she and Aileen snuck out the back door and propped it open, and they hugged, and at first Margaret was teary-eyed because it was so good to see Aileen.
In October Aileen told her that the house with the green shutters had been rented full-time now, and it seemed that Xavier’s family would not be back for the summers. Margaret listened. She looked away from Aileen and down at the ground, and after a while she looked up and said it did not matter.
She told Aileen about the boats going by and how they were choosing parents, and how that might seem imaginary but it helped them and so in some way it was also real.
And she talked about day-to-day life at Lakewood and how here, unlike at St. Gregory’s, the high school where she’d been in Toronto, there was real camaraderie and mutual support among the girls. Perhaps the closeness of survivorship, she said.
She could laugh about that, here among the flaming bushes in the fresh air with Aileen. Aileen in her cords and running shoes and a windbreaker, with her black hair blowing and her clear eyes so attentive. Margaret described how sometimes in the night, when one of the new girls could be heard sobbing in the dark, the eight- or nine-monther whose turn it was that week would pad barefoot over there and sit in silence on the edge of the girl’s bed for company. It was something they’d come up with and worked out among themselves.
By the time of her Christmas visit, Aileen was already candy-striping part-time at the hospital. She described her duties at length, and as she did so her face was flushed with excitement. Margaret had rarely seen her so happy, and it made her happy too.
“I think I might actually manage to do it,” Aileen said. “Get to be a real nurse someday. Can you believe it, Margaret? It’s so amazing. A real nurse!”
Both times when she came to visit, Aileen managed to smuggle in a bag of chocolate chip cookies, which the girls shared the same night, sitting on their bunks and nibbling away like kittens. The telltale cookie bags she’d crumple up and sneak them out to the incinerator and watch them flare up in the dark.