That same spring my family had been thrown into turmoil by what Mom and I had taken to calling the house thing. It was a typical Gareth Havelock scenario. The Bertram House, a Victorian monstrosity on the corner of Brant and Matchedash Streets with a mansard roof, a wrought-iron fence enclosing the yard, old hardwood trees shading the property, had come up for sale. Dad had had his eye on it for years, dying to buy it, renovate it and fill it with antiques. Mom was almost as keen as he was. I wanted to stay where we were, the house I had grown up in, but nobody asked.
What should have been a simple real-estate deal — buy a house, sell the one you’re in, arrange a moving day — fell apart. We sold our modern bungalow on Peter Street across from the golf links — Orillia had a small course right in town — but the buyers wanted to move in before we got legal possession of Bertram. There would be a “little gap,” Dad told Mom and me. A gap of a couple of months. Probably. Unless the three parties could come to an arrangement.
We couldn’t move into the apartment above the antique shop because the tenant had a lease. Besides, he was a family friend, a truck-parts salesman who was on the road a lot. Enter another family friend who owned and operated a mobile home park, Silverwood Estates, west of town. We would store our furniture and live in a trailer. Great. A trailer. Three of us. Way to go, Dad.
As if things weren’t crazy enough, Mom got a call from National Scene newsmagazine and, as she put it breathlessly when we were on the patio finishing a course of semi-burnt Dad-style hamburgers, the magazine made her an offer “I can’t possibly turn down.”
“Now, Annie?” Dad complained. “You want to go now, in the middle of things?”
Mom looked at me, to share her excitement, I guessed. She didn’t see what she wanted.
“Now just a second, you two,” she said. “Gareth, the things we’re in the middle of are all your doing, so don’t start playing that tune. Besides,” she added weakly, “there’ll be more room in the trailer —”
“It’s a mobile home.”
“— with me gone.”
“I think the hedge needs trimming,” Dad said, getting up and heading for the shed at the foot of the yard.
Mom blew out a puff of air in exasperation. “You just trimmed it yesterday.”
“Well, I missed a few spots,” Dad mumbled.
“Where this time?” I asked Mom after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.
The snip, snip of Dad’s shears seemed louder than necessary.
Mom’s eyes took on the excited twinkle she got when a trip was coming up. “East Timor,” she said.
“East where?”
“Timor. East Timor. It’s part — or was, until it voted for independence — of Indonesia, which wasn’t happy about the vote and has been trying ever since to quash it with an underground campaign.”
“And the magazine wants you to tramp right into the whole mess?”
Mom went on to explain that there was trouble in East Timor — again — and the U.N. was planning to send in a peacekeeping force — again. The magazine wanted her in place when the U.N. came in, to cover their arrival and the reaction of hostile, out-of-control militia groups, which were apparently sponsored by the Indonesian army.
“Sounds dangerous, Mom. Maybe you should reconsider.”
“Oh, I’ll be all right,” Mom assured me. “I’m a tough old bird.”
“It doesn’t matter how tough you are and you know it,” I said, my eyes on Dad’s back as he attacked the hedge. “If it was safe there, there’d be no story and you wouldn’t be going.”
“I need to go,” Mom said. “In this business you have to keep up your momentum. If you’re off the pages for long, people forget about you.”
“When do you leave?”
“In a couple of weeks.”
“I hope you get back while we still have a hedge left,” I said.
The day Raphaella had come to see me in the shop, I was, for once, in a pretty good mood when I came home after closing the store. Dad was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes.
“Hey, Dad,” I greeted him, opening the fridge and taking out a can of pop.
“Hi, Garnet. Good day?”
“Not bad. Sold a few small things. Finished the crib.” I didn’t tell him the shop had been closed for a couple of hours.
“Fine,” he said distractedly.
“Um, Dad,” I began, sitting down at the kitchen table. “Would this be a good time to bring up my latest idea about school?”
He groaned, almost, not quite, silently. “I guess you told your mother about not going on past high school.”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“About what you’d expect.”
He washed the potatoes and cut them into chunks, put them in a pot of water and turned on the stove.
“So, what’s the new idea?”
“Drop out now.”
“What? You’re almost finished. A month or two and you’re out — with a diploma.” Then he got that crafty look of his. “You want to pull this off when your mother’s away, don’t you?”
I dodged the question. “I can’t stand school any more. I hate it and I don’t need it. The bottom line is, it’s my life. I ought to be able to make the decision.”
He crossed his arms on his chest. He didn’t look very firm, not wearing a sky-blue apron with big red chrysanthemums splashed all over it.
“If you go through with it, you’ve got to have a plan,” he said.
Hooray! I almost shouted. He was weakening. “I do. I’ll work at the store every afternoon and look for a cabinetmaker who wants an apprentice. I’ve also checked into a couple of community colleges that have courses in design.”
He smiled. “You need your diploma to get into community college.”
He thought he had me. “No, I don’t,” I said. “The courses are given at night, and there’s no prerequisite.”
“If you’re out of school you need a job.”
“I have a job. At the store.”
“Well, that might not be enough, you know. Minimum wage, half a day, that’s not much income.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, quitting school has consequences. One of which is to earn enough to keep yourself. I’m not sure you qualify right now.”
I began to see his strategy. He and Mom had obviously cooked all this up.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said, staying calm, not letting my voice rise. “If I quit school I turn from a son into a tenant who lives at your house and eats your food. And I have to pay for that — room and board.”
He nodded. Behind him, the potatoes began to bubble.
“And you’re saying that I don’t earn enough at the store to cover it.”
He nodded again.
“Suppose I get another job, full time.”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to pursue your goal, would you? Not enough time.” He turned down the heat under the pot and opened the oven door. Chicken wings sizzled away on a roasting pan.
“On the other hand …” Dad said, his back to me, letting his sentence trail off.
Here it comes, I thought. The net is about to fall on my head.
“If I stay in school,” I finished his sentence, “and graduate, we can come to an arrangement.”
Dad closed the oven door, removed a tossed salad and a bottle of dressing from the fridge, along with a bottle of Creemore Springs beer. He uncapped the bottle and drank from it, then sat down at the table.
“Right. Now, here’s the thing,” he began. “I think we’ve got your mother onside about you not going to university. This has been hard for her. Don’t think it hasn’t. She had big hopes for you, but she’s coming around. Still, dropping out of high school — that would break her heart. You owe her, Garnet. You’ve got to finish this thing properly, for her sake if not for yours.”
I sat back in my chair, expelled my breath. “The laying on of guilt,” I said. “Every parent’s joy.”
Dad smiled. “One of the few real pleasures in life.”
He took another pull on the beer. “Want to hear the good news?”
“Sure,” I said, letting my disappointment show. Putting it on display. I could do the guilt thing, too.
But Dad wasn’t having any of that. He looked very pleased with himself.
“Okay, I’ve managed to get the house transaction straightened out.”
Big deal, I thought. I don’t want to move anyway.
“That’s point one. Two, the mobile home we were going to use is still available, and a little job comes with it. Roy Weeks is going away for a few months — he has family down in Arizona — and he wants someone on site at the park to act as superintendent. You mow the grass. That’s about it. If someone has a problem, plumbing, septic tank or whatever, you call a repair shop from a list he’ll leave you. He’s willing to take you. You can live in the trailer, go to school, work at the store on Saturdays, keep an eye on things for him, earn a small wage. What do you say?”
I was confused. After blackmailing me into staying in school, he was talking about another job. “So you’ll line this job up for me if I stay in school. And the reason I stay in school is, if I drop out, I need a job, which I don’t have.”
“For a gifted student, you can be a bit dim,” he joked. “I’ve moved on from that, so try and follow. Roy needs a hand. I thought of you, that’s all. It would give you a chance to save some money.”
“Over the summer.”
“Actually, he wants you to start right away. Now, want to hear part three?”
Feeling a bit over my head, I nodded.
“I’ve spoken to a fellow I used to do business with, before you became Olde Gold’s refinisher and refurbisher. You’ve heard me mention him — Norbert Armstrong over in Hillsdale.”
Armstrong, I knew, was a master cabinetmaker. I had planned to approach him about taking me on as an apprentice. I looked Dad in the eye and nodded.
“He’s agreed — if you do — to accept you in September, half days. That way you could still work in the store and have time to take your courses.”
“Dad! You’re kidding!”
“I’m not kidding.”
“That’s great!”
“But, my bonny lad, like all things in life, this deal comes with a condition.”
“Gee, I wonder what that is.”
“So, you’re staying in school.”
“And loving the idea,” I sneered.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“I never did know what that meant.”
“Well —”
“Never mind, Dad.”