New Girl in Little Cove

by Damhnait Monaghan

  Mrs. Piercey’s gaze slipped to her mug. It was time to try a different approach. “Then again, maybe this is all just a passing fancy for Calvin.”

  She looked up, her face animated. “Passing fancy? More like his passion. His grandfadder taught him when he was still a child. He just took to it, you know?”

  I tried not to react when she picked up the brochure, but crossed my fingers under the table.

  “Did you say the director was in touch with the school?”

  I nodded. The director had been in touch with the school. On a phone call that I had initiated, but she didn’t need to know that.

  Mrs. Piercey wore a pair of reading glasses on a gold chain around her neck. She lifted them now and balanced them on her nose. She read the brochure cover to cover. Then I took out the various application forms and laid them on the table. Our heads were bent together over the paperwork when Calvin came in, with Ruthie right behind him. His mother got up, twisting a tea towel in her hands.

  “Miss O’Brine’s been telling me all about this carpentry course in town. I was wondering if you—”

  But she got no further as Calvin lifted her in his arms and twirled her around the kitchen to her delighted protestations.

  27

  At the next parent-teacher get-together, a steady stream of people gathered to speak to me. Most of their children weren’t studying French; they wanted to talk about the dog rescue. Cynthia’s mother beamed as she finally managed to squeeze through the crowd.

  “You’re popular tonight.” She wrapped her sweater protectively around her narrow frame and said, “We’re some proud of Cynthia. Imagine her going off to university next year.”

  “Is that still the plan?” I asked.

  “Yis. Most definitely.”

  I brushed non-existent lint from my dress to buy some time, then said, “It’s just that Cynthia’s work has been . . . a little up and down lately.” In truth, there was no up, it was all down.

  Mrs. O’Leary frowned. “Is she not keeping up with her French either? I’m after telling the other teachers I’ll have her by the scruff when I gets her home. She’s been out beating the paths too much.”

  I said I thought Cynthia could still achieve her targets if she knuckled down and got back to work.

  “If?” said Mrs. O’Leary. “If? Sparks are gonna fly when I gets her home.”

  The next morning Patrick called a brief staff meeting before school started.

  “I wants your views on Cynthia O’Leary,” he said, “before I writes the letter of reference for her scholarship applications.”

  “Her latest French exam was terrible,” I said. “She didn’t answer most of the questions.”

  “Same with biology,” said Doug. “She’s after taking a real nosedive.”

  Around the table, it was the same story. The golden girl was shining much less brightly.

  “She will reap what she sows,” said Sister Mary Catherine.

  Judy threw her a filthy look, then said, “She’s got such a bright future ahead of her, Pat. We can’t let her throw it away.”

  He turned his palms up. “I’m after meeting with her parents twice,” he said. “She’s got them drove mental. She’s gone right wild since she took up with Ron Drodge.”

  “Who’s he?” I asked.

  “He’s too old for her is what he is,” said Doug.

  Patrick cleared his throat. “He’s Brigid’s brother. The teacher you replaced.”

  I remembered Lucille telling me how Brigid’s brother had been driving the car when her husband, Paul, died in the accident.

  “That fella has been trouble since the day he was born,” Sister said. “Rotten through and through.”

  There was silence. Maybe everyone else felt the same as me about Sister’s judgmental nature.

  “Anyhow,” said Patrick. “Let’s focus on Cynthia’s school work.”

  We talked for a few more minutes around the table, and all agreed that unless Cynthia’s former work ethic returned, and soon, there would be no need for Patrick to write a letter of reference.

  “I could try speaking to her,” I offered.

  “I wish you would,” said Patrick.

  That afternoon, I asked Cynthia to stay behind after class.

  She grimaced. “I’m wanted at home.”

  “It won’t take long,” I said, moving to close the classroom door.

  She slumped in her desk, playing with a gold chain around her neck, zigzagging the heart pendant back and forth.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  Cynthia folded her arms over her chest.

  “You seem to be giving up on school. Your marks have slid right down. University might be—”

  She cut me off. “Don’t matter. I can get a job in the fish plant.”

  “I thought you wanted to leave Little Cove and go to university.”

  She didn’t answer, just kept zigzagging the heart until I wanted to rip it from her throat.

  “Cynthia,” I tried again. “It seems like you’re throwing away your future for some guy who’ll probably drop you in a few months.”

  Her face hardened. “Ron wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you know?”

  She gave me a scornful look. “You wouldn’t understand. Can I go now?”

  “Listen to me. You’re so bright. You could do anything. What happened to wanting to be a French teacher?”

  “Is that why you asked to see me? Because you wants me to be like you?”

  Something about that sneer on her face made me lose my cool. “Don’t throw your life away for some jerk.” I put my hand over my mouth.

  She jumped up, her eyes wild.

  Before I could say anything else, she was halfway out the door. “It’s none of your business what I does outside of school, miss. Just leave me alone.”

  I followed her down the hall, reaching the front door in time to see her climb into a red Camaro that revved its engine, skidded on the icy gravel, then roared up the road away from Little Cove.

  The day was capped off with a note tucked under the wipers of my car when I left later that evening. More of the same. I crumpled up the note and got in my car.

  28

  After our failed talk, Cynthia began missing school more than she showed up. There were only a few days left until the Easter break, and I found myself wondering if she would bother coming back before then. But on the last day of school before the break, she was standing by my car in the parking lot when I came out.

  “Miss, can I talk to you?”

  Then I noticed mascara had run all over her cheeks and dried, like little railroad tracks cutting through a field.

  “What is it?”

  She glanced around the empty parking lot. “Could we talk in your car?”

  Tears and the need to confide in someone privately. Just like that, I knew.

  Stunned, I held open the passenger-side door for her. Then I went around to my side and got in. She stared at the dashboard, biting her lip. Patrick was always going on about what a credit Cynthia was to the community. I thought of Georgie working in the takeout. I didn’t want Cynthia to miss out on any opportunity that might still be available to her.

  “How late are you?” I asked when the silence became unbearable.

  She gasped. “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess,” I said. “When was your last period?”

  Her face twisted as if she was in pain. “I’m not sure.” She looked down, playing with a button on her jean jacket.

  “Have you told your mother?”

  “No, miss, she’d kill me, she would.” She pressed her hands down on her still-flat stomach. “What’s going to happen? When Georgie got pregnant, she had to leave school.”

  “Have you told Ron?”

  She slowly moved her head side to side. “He don’t want kids. Oh, miss, what am I going to do?”

  “Do you want to keep the baby?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. And I w
on’t be able to graduate,” she wailed.

  “Cynthia.” I kept my voice as even as I could. “This might be hard to hear, but I’m not sure that would’ve happened anyway. Your grades have slipped and you’ve missed so much school.”

  She exhaled, loud juddering breaths. “I knows. But I was talking to Mr. Donovan, and he said if I really buckled down, I might still be all right. Not for a scholarship, but just to get my certificate. But now . . .” A sob escaped from her mouth.

  “Look,” I said. “You have options. You could keep the baby. Or you could have it and give it up for adoption.”

  “But either way, I wouldn’t be able to finish school.” She chewed her nails and I was reminded of Georgie’s, bitten to the quick.

  I’d seen Georgie in Clayville last month, struggling to push a baby carriage through the snow. Little Alfie was fast asleep, under a hand-knit blanket. After I’d admired him, I’d asked Georgie when she might return to school.

  She reached in to adjust his blanket. “I’m not,” she said. “I couldn’t leave him.”

  Cynthia bounced her knees up and down so hard the car began to shake. I looked out the window at the school where I was employed to uphold church doctrine. “There’s one other possibility,” I said.

  “What, miss?”

  “You could make it go away.”

  “What do you mean, miss?”

  I took a deep breath. “You could get rid of it.”

  She inhaled sharply, like she’d stepped on a tack. “Miss, I could never do that. It’s a mortal sin.”

  A mortal sin. It sounded so archaic. I’d certainly never uttered those words in my life. But religion seemed to have a stronger hold on the students at St. Jude than it had ever had on me.

  At that moment, the red Camaro drove into the parking lot, circling like a shark. Cynthia rubbed her eyes roughly, then opened the door and got out. Then she leaned back in and said, “Miss, promise you won’t say nothing. Please. I’ll tell Ron you were having a go at me about missing school. He’ll wonder why I was in your car.”

  “Don’t leave it too long, Cynthia,” I said. “You want to keep all your options open.”

  The car door slammed and she ran for the Camaro. I pounded my fist on the steering wheel. Dammit! Her future was now well and truly screwed. Then fear dropped into my stomach like a stone into a well. I had kept my words somewhat ambiguous, but Cynthia had figured out that I meant abortion. What if she told someone what I’d said?

  There was only one person in whom I felt I could confide, but Sheila had just left for a two-week holiday in Mexico. Would Doug be sympathetic? I drove over to his place to find out.

  “I need some advice,” I said when he answered the door.

  “You okay?”

  “Not sure.”

  He hollered to his mother that he was going out and we got into my car. Then he directed me away from Little Cove and past Mardy too. After about ten miles, we turned off onto a dirt road that led to the sea, as so many of those little roads seemed to. I turned off the engine and we got out of the car.

  “Bartlett’s Cove,” he said. “I loves it here, especially in the summer.”

  We walked carefully over the icy beach rocks as they skittered beneath our feet. We sat down on a large pile of boulders, about twenty feet from the water. The waves scraped the shore and Doug waited while I tried to find the right words.

  Finally I spoke. “I may’ve messed up. One of the girls at school is pregnant and came to me for advice.”

  “Who?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t say.”

  He was quiet for a minute and I imagined him running through the list of probable suspects in the school.

  “What did you say?”

  “I ran through a bunch of options with her.”

  “Like what?” Doug asked.

  “Keep it, give it up for adoption . . .”

  He nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  I jumped down from the boulder and picked up a small beach rock. I threw it towards the sea, but it bounced short. “I also mentioned abortion.”

  Doug whistled softly. “Trying to get yourself fired?”

  I kept my gaze focused on the horizon.

  After a minute, he asked, “Do her parents know?”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t get too involved, Rachel,” he said. “Don’t take her to town.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s bad enough you mentioned it, but don’t help her get one, if that’s what she decides. She’d have to go to St. John’s. And it’s not guaranteed. A committee of doctors would decide. I’m not sure, but I think parents needs to be involved if she’s a minor.”

  “How do you know so much about it?” I asked.

  “They does them at the hospital where Geri works.”

  My heart was slamming against my chest now. But I had to know. “What do you think about it?”

  “I think you were right foolish to talk about abortion with whoever this girl is, and you teaching in a Catholic school.”

  “That’s not what I mean. What do you think about abortion?”

  “Why do you care what I think?”

  I climbed back on the boulder and sat beside him, hugging my knees. “I just do.”

  Doug shifted on the rock. “I don’t understand women at the best of times. But I can’t imagine what it would be like carrying a baby you didn’t want.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, men can’t get pregnant so we don’t get to decide. It’s down to the woman to do that.”

  I felt my shoulders relax.

  “So, what do we do now?” Doug asked.

  “Wait and see,” I said. “Maybe it’s a false alarm.”

  “I hope so,” said Doug. “For everyone’s sake.”

  I got up, rubbing my arms.

  “We going?” Doug asked.

  “I’m cold.”

  “I’m hungry. Let’s go to Tony’s,” Doug said.

  An hour later, we arrived in Clayville and parked in front of Tony’s, where there was a lineup out the door.

  “Damn, I was really wanting pizza,” Doug said.

  Then a family walked out the door, the father carrying two pizza boxes, the two kids chattering excitedly.

  “We could get takeout and eat at my house,” I suggested.

  “Excellent idea, girl.”

  Back at my place, Doug poured wine while I grabbed plates and glasses from the cupboard. Just before we sat down, I went to the living room and put on the cassette he’d made me.

  “You never did tell me what happened to your mother,” I said, handing him a napkin.

  A shadow passed over Doug’s face. “She tried to kill herself.”

  “What?”

  “After Dad drowned, in the run-up to the funeral, she took to walking up above Little Cove, at the rocks near the end of the bay. She was out all hours, didn’t eat, didn’t sleep. And she fell out with Lucille something bad.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  Doug topped up his glass. I put my hand over mine to stop him refilling it. “Dad and Lucille’s husband drowned on the same day. They were out fishing together and a bad storm came up. They didn’t have a chance.”

  I thought of the gravestones in the cemetery out back, documenting all the lives lost at sea.

  “Mudder got it into her head that John, Lucille’s husband, had convinced Dad to go out even though a storm was brewing. That Dad didn’t want to go and felt forced into it. It wasn’t true. If Dad didn’t want to go fishing, he wouldn’t have gone. He was his own master.”

  “But why did they go out if a storm was coming?”

  Doug drained his glass. “That was all part of Mudder’s revisionism. That storm was not predicted: it came from nowhere. Seven men drowned up and down the coast that day and tons of boats were wrecked. They held a joint funeral for Dad and John. At the wake afterwards, Mudder caused a right old scene, said John had killed D
ad and Lucille had blood on her hands, too. She said she’d never speak to Lucille again.”

  “And when did . . .” I tried to think how best to phrase it. “When did she have her accident?”

  “She disappeared from the wake and threw herself off the rocks up above. Lucky not to be killed. She claimed she slipped, but I don’t think anyone believes that. When she got out of hospital, she became a recluse. My aunt comes every day to help out. That party at Lucille’s after you rescued Ruthie, I think that’s the first time she’s left the house in five years, apart from hospital appointments and such.”

  When the pizza was gone and the wine bottle was empty, Doug slid another bottle from my wine rack. “Grab your glass,” he said. “Let’s go sit somewhere more comfortable.”

  I turned over the cassette, then joined Doug on the loveseat, where we sat and talked for a while. Then “Sweet Forget Me Not” began to play on the boombox and he pulled me to my feet and took me in his arms. We danced slowly around the room, Doug bending low and singing softly. When the song came to an end, we kept dancing. Doug tilted my chin up, looked in my eyes and smiled. Then he pulled me gently back over to the loveseat.

  “Rachel,” he said, his voice soft. He put a hand either side of my head and stared at me for what felt like a long time. Then he leaned over and I closed my eyes, waiting for what I knew would be a kiss this time.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” he whispered. I waited for the answering machine to kick in.

  “Rachel,” my mom’s voice was weepy and small. I pushed Doug away and rushed to pick up the phone.

  “Mom, what’s happened, are you okay?”

  I mouthed “sorry” to Doug. He poured himself another glass of wine and picked up a newspaper from the coffee table.

  Mom was talking but I couldn’t understand what she was saying through the sobs. And then I heard her say “one year,” and I felt a lump blocking my throat.

  “It’s one year. He died one year ago today,” she whispered.

  “No, Mom,” I said. “It’s tomorrow.” Like that would be any comfort to her.

  “It is tomorrow in Australia.” Her sobs came in huge waves. I sat down on the floor and murmured, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” when clearly it wasn’t.