THEY HAD THE PARTY; THERE WERE LIGHTS STRUNG AND flowers strewn across the gazebo and into the large greenhouse, where lights shone dimly over the many flowers and shrubs. They rallied for social change. It was not out of the ordinary to do so then. It is certainly not out of the ordinary to do so now.
Albert had spent the day hanging pictures of Jimi Hendrix and Trotsky above the patio, and he had managed to get some good hash and marijuana. He went from one group to another laughing and talking about the United States, and how their empire was doomed. It all seemed very radical to some of the frosh girls.
Dykes who had come, walked to a certain chair in the centre of the garden and sat, now and again nodding, now and again scowling, and seeming quite imposing to the youngsters who arrived. A young woman with many beads around her neck was his companion.
The editor of Floorboards—a man who already going bald and with a thin goatee looked ten years older than he was—was convincing students a new world was approaching, and the poetry of Wordsworth and Tennyson, the work of Keats and Browning, would soon be destroyed. It had to be—it meant nothing, compared to the poetry today. It meant nothing in the new revolution. It meant nothing to the youth who had evolved. He quoted one of his illusive poems:
“I destroy the earth
For what it’s worth
And reclaim it in rebirth.”
“Destroy it all—destroy everything,” Albert said, passing by with a bowl of punch. “Destroy and reclaim, reclaim and destroy—destroy and fight back.”
He had no idea why he was saying what he was saying—it all was simply the thing to say because everyone else seemed to be saying it too.
“Bring out the guitars,” he yelled.
It was now getting quite dark in the large back yard. A luxurious warm darkness hung in the clouds. The luxurious smell of hash lingered here and there amid the dancing girls and boys.
He had at this moment a great expansiveness as he gestured in his flowered shirt, and putting the punchbowl down went into the dark toward the gate. Hair fell in front of his eyes, that he kept brushing away, as he wandered toward this gate, thinking of his lost girlfriend, the one who had written him the letter of warning. Why at this time he thought of her, and her square jaw and rather masculine face, but a face with deep honesty, he did not know. It was in fact thinking of her that caused him to turn and go in the other direction.
He had not intended to go toward the gate, he had intended to go back toward the hothouse—why (he thought in future years, why oh why a thousand times, over those years when as Bell predicted he would become more decrepit, his face filled with the result of sin) did he go toward the gate? He was also sure he felt he must do something very brave very soon. He had lied to people—the lies innocent enough—but enough lies about himself that he must now act out in some way.
He wanted people to know who he was. Why? Because they had laughed at him, at his speech, at his weight and seemingly at almost everything else. And he felt as so many young do, that he was better than they were.
At that moment a young girl walked in through the gate timidly and started toward him. She smiled at him, and he turned toward her and smiled as well—as if it had all been planned somehow, somewhere before. This was the test for this short, somewhat overweight fellow. It would take an eternity to understand that eternity mattered in this moment. The poem about destroying the earth, for what it was worth, still flickered in his mind.
He turned almost in slow motion and Shane Stroud was looking at him with meanly happy and quite clever eyes.
“Ha,” Shane said, “I got it for you—”
And he held out his hand.
In the farther dark he saw a glimpse of his mother swishing her dress.
A moment or two passed—yes, just a moment or two. The girl smiled up at him, as if he was her friend.
“Yes, destroy it,” Carmel yelled, looking around eagerly. But she was suddenly frightened because someone had pushed her aside when they were going for a beer; her husband had just been taken to the hospital again, and the wind had come up over the hedges and seemed to blow a warning about her husband back and forth in the trees themselves. She had been drinking and had a puff or two of hash, and saw her reflection suddenly in the hothouse glass. She shut her eyes and darkness surrounded her, with a warning.
It was in the dark as if whispering to her that she was in fact losing a great man, and his achievement towered over the people she and her little son wanted to impress. She only heard it for a slight second, but this was to become clear later in the evening.
Until that time, truth be told, she had never read a poem by Keats. Nor cared to. Or by anyone except Bliss Carman. She created a great deal of excitement by talking loudly about feelings, and sincerity. She wandered here and there about the grounds, wearing a laurel of picked flowers and a long flowered dress. Her necklace glittered under the lights, and there were shouts everywhere by people arriving through the backyard gate that they had broken down. There was a scream and a cry, and someone said someone had hit someone else—or so it seemed. Many people were arriving she did not know.
Then there was a darkness. It crept over the hilarious faces of the guests, and there was a conspiracy to do something very bold. Within the next hour things started to happen that she hadn’t at all expected. One boy and girl rolled on the ground in front of her, the girl’s blouse being taken off.
Now bewildered she wandered away, but where she wandered, in the dark part of the yard, someone approached her. He was wearing a cut-off sweater, and a wallet with a chain, and black motorcycle boots. He began to dance all around her—and it was as if she was compelled by his sudden dancing to dance too.
He hugged her—and suddenly she was in the arms of a stranger, a strange man. He put his tongue in her mouth, and she let him; he put his hand under her dress and under her bra cup. He held her close, so she couldn’t breathe.
Then he put his face close to hers and whispered a terrible profanity in her ear.
Carmel broke free and ran upstairs, locked the door, sat on a chair and looked out the window. She became confused, and more and more the woman was becoming confused, about books and politics and some kinds of philosophy her son kept talking about. She was no longer the vivacious, hard-nosed lady of years past.
All these ideas, all this spontaneous understanding, had left her sad and perplexed. She stared down at the young people hoping they would go away. But they didn’t go away for almost another four hours. In fact the yelling and laughing continued, as if all of them were falling through the cracks of a terrified, horrified mimicry. Oh of course it was fine, if you didn’t mind—she wondered what it was she was looking at. And then the motorcycles arrived, people from across the province, two different motorcycle groups who had heard of this party at this grand house, and another fight started.
And after a while, it seemed the dancing and cavorting in front of the fire in the large pit looked like somewhere in hell. She realized she was in her fifties and doing what a teenager might do, and felt a cataclysm over her spirit. She saw Dykes and the man from Floorboards magazine quickly leave in fear—and others follow in fear as well, heading back to the university where the idea of revolution was always safe—so the yard was emptying of all but hard-drinking people she did not know. People Shane Stroud had taken the liberty to invite.
It seemed to say, This is what you wanted.
The students too were going home—and she was frightened like a little girl. Then a motorcycle drove right through the patio and a side window got smashed. Everyone was yelling and laughing. And then someone had cut his head and there was blood on a lawn chair.
She wanted to phone her husband, tell him to come and stop this, but the phone was in the upstairs hallway, and that strange odious man named Shane Stroud she had flirted with was lurking there. She felt for her necklace and was relieved it was still about her neck. Then she realized something very important: she had never been disrespected when her husband was with her—that was, at this moment, her actual agony. The man in the hall kept whispering that word through the door.
“Let me in, you”—then that word—“let me in.”
But that was not what was bad. She had heard that word before—had used it when she herself was a girl. What was bad was—the poor girl later that she noticed, yes—that poor naked child.
Afterwards the lawn and the trees about the house were empty, the silence in midday entered a state of ennui and all things that had transpired seemed pitiless and mean. Mrs. Raskin now undressed and hid in her room. She thought the party would be filled with talk, and politics, but it had slipped those bounds very early. She thought she would be commended by everyone, about her suddenly new and brilliant mind, and everyone would glorify her in some brilliant way—that too did not happen. Dykes had run—away.
She telephoned people to ask if they had heard the noise, and was it true police had patrolled because people had reported a disturbance and the bikers from Maine were rounded up by the police?
Albert hid in the basement for a few days, and never answered the phone, and ate only ketchup sandwiches and drank warm pop.
Then the police left a card saying: “At your earliest convenience, please contact Constable Donaldson.”
The very name seemed to wave in the trees, the heavy sky bloated by a coming storm, when he read it.
“What had happened?” he kept asking. “Dear oh dear—what had happened with that little girl and me? It was just a joke. Why did Shane come—I only met him once in my life and he shows up. Why did he hand me it—how was it that he was just right there and handed me it! At that very moment the girl entered through the gate—walked toward me—and if I had been anywhere else she would not have seen me or me her—and yet, it was all preordained. I was not even thinking of going to the gate—”
And the answer came as a sudden emotion.
Shane showed up because you wanted to prove yourself to these friends—and to him. He came because you wanted to introduce your mother to him, you wanted to shock people. Mel and Shane will never go anywhere they aren’t invited. You invited him to bring the drugs. You loved all the excitement—how people always need to notice you—how you spill yourself in all directions so everyone will say, There he is—there he is, he’s— Well there you were! You don’t know answers to the problems of the world, you just shout that you do. You don’t know anything about your uncles, you just imply that you know.
These were the sensations—not the actual words but the sensations of shame and worry—he had about himself.
But there was something else in all of it. The idea that in order to change society he wanted to destroy himself, in fact he rushed headlong into destruction that very night, and now that it had happened there was no way to go back. In a way he had this night destroyed himself—and he would spend the rest of his life trying to put himself back. He didn’t want to—but he had.
Did he attempt to have sex with that young girl when she was terrified and begging him not to?
And the answer came:
Yes. Yes—but it was a joke—it was all supposed to be—a joke.
She had been hiding from the bikers in the hothouse—behind a plant in the corner, shaking.
This is what he thought during the first day—the first morning he himself hid in the basement, shaking and spiting and trying to hide even from himself. Yes, he had wet his pants, that’s why he took them off, he could tell people, yes, I wet my pants, that’s why I took them off—but hadn’t meant to. Oh—it was all bad! The night had turned very bad. Who were those two rolling about in the dirt—who was it defecating on his favourite lawn chair—and yes, who stole the tools from the back garage—almost a thousand dollars’ worth—no, he couldn’t go to the police—he couldn’t. He didn’t even know what tools were really.
So he hid.
He remembered his mother running upstairs in her flowered dress, the flowered laurel coming off her red hair, and closing her bedroom door. He remembered Shane having kissed her on the mouth in the far section near the hothouse. He wanted to stop it all but he froze. At that moment, he realized that she was puzzled. There was blood and a smashed bottle and Shane had left and gone upstairs to see where she was. He had kept whispering things at her through the door.
Then coming down in the night air he punched the first boy he saw, pulled his knife and told people not to bother him. From her bedroom window poor Carmel witnessed all of it. All the shouting—the damage done to the flowerbeds and the side windows.
But that was not the worst.
At first, when he woke groggily at noon the next day, he did not remember anything, but then when he sat up on the edge of the bed, he did. Little sickly flashes of insight became clearer and clearer—little sickly moments presented themselves to him like explosions inside his head.
A young girl. Seventeen years of age. Cute. With a frosh hat. Nice dress. Happy face—where did he see her first?
He did not go see Constable Donaldson. Her name seemed ominous. And when the constable came, and knocked on the side door two days later, it was raining, and big drops fell from the shingled roof. He went to the door, and when Constable Donaldson, her cap enclosed in a rain cover, her eyes bright and merry, and a .38-calibre on her thick black belt, asked if he saw anything of this girl—showing him a graduation picture of one Annie Howl—he said:
“Man oh man, I don’t know,” scratching the side of his chin and looking at it, with his hair in braids which seemed to make his eyes very blue. “We had a little party—but people dropped in and out—and some only stayed a minute or two—I don’t remember her.” He gave a short defensive apologetic laugh.
“I see. Well, we are checking because she was here and there the other night—it was Frosh Week and she was out doing a pledge of some kind.” Donaldson smiled at him, still—but when he caught them, her eyes narrowed just ever, ever so slightly, but her smile remained, and he realized it was not really as much a smile as a portent, a slight warning. He only knew he had seen her somewhere before—but where?
He flushed and blushed. Yes, she might have recognized him.
“You do know who I am?” he asked.
She stared at him, with no expression at all. Then looked down at her notes, made a mark and looked up again.
“No drugs of any kind?” she asked quickly, and just as her eyes had narrowed so now her smile disappeared, then returned just a bit, and he noticed when he looked down her flat black boots, that were issued to her by the department after her training, telling everyone that her life had become the life of officialdom, of preparation for service and of service. He noticed her soft blond hair just at the top of her forehead and again, at the side of her ears, telling one something of her teenaged years, recently passed, and this startled him. The black belt where her holster was positioned was buckled around her police jacket, and that jacket was buttoned to her chin. For some reason the .38 revolver, the handle of which he could just make out, showed her freshmanship. The rain kept falling, and behind her, in the driveway near the trees, her squad car sat. She had come on a mission. He could refuse this mission, her request to answer, but her standing before him was still evidence of the seriousness of her undertaking. This is now what her smile said.
“No, my mother was here,” he said. “We just had a get-together—talked poetry and such. Talked about the changing world. Or I mean we talked about how the world should change.” Then he heightened his speculation. “And if it did, you might not be needed.” He looked reflective as the rain fell.
“Might I speak to your mother?”
He knew then he had made a mistake—her expression said she did not believe him, or care for his lapse into philosophy. He thought he would impress her, but he had only shown his youth—and she had recognized it instantly as veneer, even if younger than him—which made her expression so deflating to him when he saw in it a slight fascination with his own ingenuousness. This all passed between them in a second.
“Ah,” he said. “What is it? Might I ask why?”
“Might I speak with your mother?” she said. Now the smile decreased but remained visible, and it unnerved him. He went and got his mother, and Carmel came to the door in her nightgown and housecoat. She began talking before she reached the dinette, her knobby knees hitting together, and came through to the door waving a cigarette. She was suddenly scared. She remembered Shane having pulled a knife. Her flimsy voice seemed to complement her reddish hair, and her face had splotches because of the tanning light she had spent time under, and her red lipstick was the first thing one noticed.
Then Albert unexpectedly with much more force realized who this Becky Donaldson was. She was the young girl at her sister Joanie’s graduation party they had extravagantly crashed some years before. He remembered she and little Clara Bell had tried to stop them. He realized that was where he had seen her before, trying to protect her older sister Joanie who had sent out all the invitations. He also remembered something undefined, the force of her personality that night when she was still hardly a teenager. The sordid little scene of crashing a party and concocting mayhem had in fact been relieved by her.
He looked at her, startled by this, and it was as if she knew why he was startled. Suddenly, subtly, there was a different measure between them. She handed his mother Annie Howl’s graduation picture.
The girl’s graduation picture is all they had, her long hair in a flip, with the cap jauntily to one side, the eyes a little narrow, and the smile mischievous—as if to complement the narrowing of the eyes. His mother looked at it.
“No,” she said, handing the picture back, “she is not a relative of ours.” She said it rather flippantly, a little disrespectfully. This was noted by the voice lisping out into the sound of the rain, the drops falling off the shingles and onto Constable Donaldson’s hat. A dull, dismissive quality she sometimes had, even at times unconscious.
“I know,” Constable Donaldson said, “she is not. She is Annie Howl. I played softball with her when we were in high school.”
“Well, whatever happened to her?” his mother asked, with a level of insincerity, which now seemed a condition of the universal-minded.
“Oh God, I wouldn’t read Tolstoy” she remembered she had said at one point that night, not knowing who Tolstoy was—perhaps a professor somewhere, but overhearing the editor of Floorboards speak about “old-fashioned writers like Tolstoy.”
“We don’t know exactly what happened to her, ma’am—she fell from the Anderson Bridge. We are unsure what was going on with her—we are trying to find out. Last week she was a bright happy young woman. What happened? We tracked her back along the avenue—she was found a couple of mornings ago, without her clothes. Yesterday she fell from the Anderson Bridge.”
They stood for a moment in silence. His mother looked at him as if he might have an explanation.
Albert didn’t know who to look at or where to put his hands, because they seemed to him to be shaking.
“Was she here?” Carmel asked.
“I doubt it very much,” he said. “Is she all right?”
“No.”
“No?” his mother asked.
“She is dead,” Constable Donaldson said matter of course, and she took the picture out of his mother’s hand and put it back into a small leather folder with her notebook. “Thank you—this is the only picture I have, and I need to see other people.”
As for Albert’s stepfather, Byron was as tough as nails, had been on missions in the Second World War, had fought hand-to-hand combat, but the world had gone beyond him and he was confused. Whatever he had done and loved was now over. He planned to talk to Albert to cure him of all of this—before it was too late. But he was unsure of what it was.
He had dreams where he saw Albert in trouble and could not protect him. He saw that all of this was a way to one portico only—and led to sin. Perhaps it was because he was now alone, and reflected upon too many things.
“They are not like me,” he had said to William Bell years before. “They are of this world, and I am not of this world.” What he meant by that he wasn’t quite sure. He was no less flawed than they were—but perhaps he had different flaws.
It was something that Bell had finally noticed when he was at the house.
Byron had heard about the party—even the fact that Shane Stroud had kissed his wife. The sense of betrayal was so acute it was like being burned by a stove—but it was no worse than listening to her mock him, which she had done one evening in front of a whole table of dinner guests celebrating their anniversary.
It was terrible but he was frightened to know what had actually happened, especially with his wife. Then the girl—what had happened to her?
When he asked his stepson, who finally visited him in the hospital, about this party, his stepson answered, “Oh it was nothing—some people had a little too much—but it was nothing.”
“A girl went missing,” Byron whispered. “Was she at the party—was wandering around the street with her nose painted and naked—everyone was concerned—she had been given drugs—yes—her parents, the poor country bumpkins that they were, wouldn’t expect to see her running about with her nose painted red, stark naked, three days after she got to university.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Byron stopped speaking.
“No, Dad. No—she wasn’t even there,” he said defensively. “She wasn’t—I never saw her there—and neither did Mom.”
“You promise me she wasn’t at our house—at our house?”
“Nooo!” Albert said. “She wasn’t. She was acting out all night—but it was at another party—people told me she was taking a lot of drugs. Things are different, Dad—thinking is different.”
“Nothing is different ever under the sun,” Byron said.
“Well how many times do I have to tell you she wasn’t? I will go to her parents and talk to them, if you wish.”
“I had a vision of it.” He tried to take Albert’s hand.
“A vision—”
“Well, a dream—”
Byron told him he had dreamed in a state of semi-consciousness of a young girl’s death. It was certainly scattered—people seemed to come in and out of his dream—
But as conservative and out of date as he was, Byron was right. This impetuous, seemingly innocuous incident would never leave their life. No matter what he might do in the years to come, no matter how well he seemed to have hidden it—there was the rumour, a rumour that opened another door to another world.
He had given the young girl the mescaline because Shane Stroud had handed it to him seconds before—showing up at the party—and in that moment of foolishness, it was as if it had all been premeditated.
At that exact moment young Annie Howl was standing in front of him. She was enthused and happy to be a frosh, to have been accepted to university. She wore a frosh beanie on her head.
“How are you, my little brown-eyed girl!” he said.
“I have a terrible headache,” he remembered her saying, just as Shane put the mescaline in his hand.
Of course he was drunk, and not thinking of the consequences. (But you see, in a way he was thinking of the consequences and said to himself he was bold enough not to care what these consequences were—and now that he did care it was too late. He was mimicking all those he believed he wanted to be like.)
The girl wandered off, for a while she was laughing and someone painted her nose. But for now, Constable Donaldson filed her report and did not come back and the story seemed to ebb away.
“Nothing definitive as to where she was or what party she was at—spoke to twenty-two people—as yet no clear picture of how she came to be in such a state.”