With school behind us, Raphaella and I were suddenly confronted with our futures. I had settled on what I wanted to do long before, and my plans to apprentice to Norbert Armstrong in Hillsdale were still firm. I was looking forward to it.
But with Raphaella, it was a different story. She was at loose ends. She had no plans for university or college because, with all the pressure from her mother, she hadn’t applied. She liked working in the theatre, but it wasn’t really a career option, especially as far as her mother was concerned. She could keep at it as a volunteer in community shows. She didn’t mind working in the Demeter, she said; she even liked it.
“But I can’t see myself growing old there, either,” she told me the day after we buried Hannah. “Oh, it’s a mess. I can’t separate what I really want from the temptation to spite Mother.”
We had taken the aluminum fishing boat that Dad kept at a family friend’s boathouse and putted out to Horseshoe Island, lowered the anchor, and gone swimming. Afterwards we lay side by side on the bottom of the boat, looking up into a painfully blue sky, and talked as the lake gently rocked us.
“As long as we’re together, I don’t care what I do,” Raphaella mused.
“But someone as smart and talented as you,” I began, and stopped. I sat up and looked down into her eyes. “Look, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with working in a store, especially if it’s yours, and you’re interested in it. I’m doing that now, and so is my father. And,” I added carefully, “I’m not trying to butt in where I don’t belong. All I’m saying is, I’d hate to see you trapped into something you’ll end up hating. I think you’re right to take your time and think things over.”
Raphaella closed her eyes. “Trapped is the word, all right. I feel like I’ve been trapped all my life. It’s as if …” She opened her eyes. “Well, suppose there’s this room, and you really like it, you like being in it. But somebody says to you, ‘You must live in this room. There’s no choice. And you can never live anywhere else.’ Even if you like the room, you’d feel resentful. See what I mean?”
I didn’t, not exactly, but I nodded anyway.
“You’d always wonder, Why can’t I go into other rooms? What are they like? Maybe they’re better than this. Maybe this room only seems nice because I’ve never had the chance to try other ones. I sound demented, don’t I?”
“No, I understand what you’re saying,” I replied, catching on. “What bugs you is not having the choice. It’s wondering, if you could choose, what would you really want?”
“Exactly. No wonder I love you. You’re smart, too. And you look pretty good in that bathing suit.”
“You want to change the subject,” I said.
“Yeah. There’s something you should know.”
As if she had opened a door in herself that had been closed for so long the hinges creaked and the wood groaned, she told me.
“I’ve been afraid to tell you these things for a lot of reasons,” Raphaella began. “At first, I didn’t want you to laugh at me. I’ve had enough of that in my life to last a century. Later, I was afraid you’d dump me. No, don’t say it. You think you wouldn’t have, but don’t be so sure. I’m not blaming you; I’m just saying. Now I’m confident about us. Especially after that night in the woods.
“I want to tell this right. You know I’m not … that I’m unusual. My grandmother — on Mother’s side — was also, well, I guess the modern word is psychic. She could feel things, as if she were a string on a musical instrument that vibrated is sympathy with her surroundings. I was very young — I can’t remember how young — when it first happened to me. I recall being terrified. But Gram taught me not to fear the gift, and finally to appreciate and treasure it.
“Mother says that, in our family, the gift skips a generation. She doesn’t have it, but I have. I can’t give up my gift or ignore it. I know that. And I don’t want to. Denying it would destroy me. It’s part of what I am, more than the shape of my nose or my shoe size or this mark on my face. But I’m certain now that I don’t have to give it up. Being with you doesn’t mean I have to deny what’s part of me. And I know you wouldn’t expect me to. That’s what I’ve told Mother, what I tried to make her understand. You don’t take away from me; you add to me.
“But being different isn’t the only thing I’ve hidden all my life.
“You asked me once about my father and I ignored your question. I know, it’s not the only question I’ve dodged or ignored, so don’t give me that look. The truth is that, other than in the biological sense of the word, I don’t have a father.
“I come from Edmonton originally, but I don’t remember it because Mother and I left there when I was five. And I don’t recollect much about my father.
“He was a lawyer in a big firm, and he was away from home a lot of the time. He’d come home late. I’d already be in bed and he’d come into my room and kiss me good night. Then one night he didn’t come home at all. Suddenly, it was horrible around our house, with a dark atmosphere of doom and secrecy and disgrace, my mother crying all the time and Gram trying to comfort her. I didn’t know what was going on, why things had changed so fast.
“Slowly, I gathered that I was losing my father because he had done something bad, he had made our lives dirty, but I was too young to take it all in. It was as if fate had come by one day and turned out all the lights.
“It happened at a Christmas party at his firm. He came on to a woman who worked there. She claimed he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He forced her. It sounds so cliché when I talk about it, something you’d see in a second-rate TV movie. A couple of people at an office Christmas party who had too much to drink.
“My father claimed she was willing. He was found guilty anyway. The thing was, my mother told me later, when I was old enough to understand better, she would have supported him, believed him, but, during the trial, a lot of stuff came out. Stuff about his life. He had a couple of girlfriends on the side. He’d been unfaithful for years.
“That’s what destroyed my mother. The humiliation. Finding out in a public courtroom, in front of people. Like I said, she could have held up under the trial, stood behind him, but when the other stuff came out, she broke.
“So we moved away, and my father is never, ever mentioned. I don’t miss him. All that was a long time ago. I’m glad I have no feeling for him, because if I did it would probably be hate, and I don’t want to feel like that about anybody. I’ve seen what it does to my mother.
“I don’t know how you get over something like that, the betrayal and the debasement. It made my mother bitter, and it turned her against men. She has no use for males. That’s why she gets so unreasonable with me. She’s kept me away from boys all my life. You scare the wits out of her, because she knows how I feel about you. If she had her way, I’d be a nun, and we aren’t even Catholic. I understand how she feels, but the decisions she’s made should apply to her life, not mine. That’s what I told her that day we had the big fight. It’s over now for me. I have to live my own life, and you’re a part of it. You’re the biggest part.
“I’m glad I told you this, Garnet. I’m tired of carrying secrets on my back. I want to lay my burden down.”