by Judy Fischer
My father was emphatic with his harsh words.
“I’m going to get him out of the city. I am not sure how I will do that, but please don’t try to stop me. I have some money saved up and I can take some from my college fund, the one Nana set up for me.”
“What about college in the fall?” my mother asked.
“I will do my best to be back by then, but I can’t make any promises.”
I went to my room, leaving my parents more bewildered, distressed than frustrated. I felt sorry for them for having expected something else from me. They brought me up thinking that human life was of great value and now that I showed them I learned their lessons and emulated their values, they turned their backs on me.
The Escape
I went back to the hospital the following day to see René and I was shocked to find him in worse condition than when I saw him the day before. They had put him into a hospital room with three other patients, but he was the only one there when I entered the sterile room. A nurse came by and I asked her why he was in such a terrible state.
“He had some internal bleeding during the night and the doctor had to perform an emergency surgery. He should be fine now, he is just recovering and will be asleep for a while. May I ask who you are?”
“I’m his sister, Missy. I will come back later. When do you think he will be discharged?”
“Oh, baby, I can’t really say but I don’t think he will be going anywhere for a few days.”
There was a policewoman standing by his door who wasn’t there when I first entered, just a few minutes before. I tried to make myself invisible and I slipped by her unnoticed. Given the new information, time was on my side again. I had more time to make my plans; to prepare for a hasty departure the minute René was well enough to travel.
I went back to the flat during the night to gather up any evidence of our infringement. I wanted to make sure there were no clues to reveal our identities. I should say my identity, for René had none. And as I took my situation very seriously, I wiped everything clean with a wet rag. Fingerprints were a dead give-away. It was imperative to obliterate all the evidence of my name, address or any other details about our lives. Even though they didn’t buy into my resolve, one thing was for sure, I didn’t want my parents to suffer for my choices.
As it turned out, the person who had made the fake library card for René was also astute in the art of counterfeit. He could make any phony document a person could possibly need. It had always been about money, not about his ability. He was never my friend, he was introduced to me by one of my classmate’s brothers who was consistently in trouble with the law. I was not proud to have ever needed such services, I prided my ‘good girl’ status. I had never looked for trouble. I guess, when you step over the fine line between the fortunate and the unfortunate, things do change in your life. My parents were probably right. Helping a person such as René, no matter how innocent he was, opened a door to an area of life I had previously avoided.
At this early age in my life, I was involved in breaking and entering, falsifying information, lying and now I was about to flee the law with a person of interest. All I had ever wanted to do was to save a young man from a desperate situation, to be a Good Samaritan.
Until then, I was planning to follow my parents’ wishes for me: to go to university. I had thought of myself only through the eyes of convention. Following the norm was going to lead me into college, maybe find a suitable partner in life, get married, have children and do all those day-to-day mundane chores that having the former would entail. I had never thought seriously about doing anything other than what was expected of me.
Repeatedly, my friends had expressed in detail their life goals. Some had already made up their minds to skip school and bypass university and just jump right into the next phase of life. For them, it was important to get married and have children right away.
I had more aspirations than that. I always had. I once dreamed of becoming a flight attendant because I thought I wanted to spend my life travelling all over the world; visiting all those places I only read about.
My Nana Drake spent her whole life dreaming about travelling, she made me promise once, when I was little, to embrace her dreams as mine and make them a reality. Those words she used were now echoing in my ear.
I was struggling with the idea of breaking tradition and taking on a lifestyle so foreign to me. I knew my friends and family were in no position to offer the kind of advice I needed. There was only one person I could think of who was going to take my side and give me moral support and perhaps a little financial aid at the same time. That person was my Nana.
She lived in a cottage north of Montreal, on a beautiful lake surrounded only by nature. Tall pine trees lined the shore of the lakefront and her house was fenced off a few yards away from a dirt road leading to it.
I spent many summers of my carefree youth running in the tall grasses, chasing butterflies during the day and fireflies at night. For me, it was the pureness of the countryside and the freedom of the open space drawing me there.
After turning 60, she became a sort of recluse. She moved out of the city and chose to abandon her conventional lifestyle by avoiding people all together. My mother disapproved of her mother’s decisions and choices and, thus, a rift had developed in their relationship. For many years, while I was growing up, the only contact between them was during brief drop-off periods when I found myself sitting on her front porch, waiting for her to open her door. My mother handed me over into her care and left without one word between them.
I loved my time with my Nana. Living alone in the wilderness liberated her spirit and she became uninhibited. Maybe she was a little too free, but for a little girl, she was a great companion. Her house had many rooms and all of them were filled with the treasures children love to rummage through. I spent hours looking at old photographs, travel magazines and reading old romance novels.
She was a gem and I valued her outlook on life. While I was with her, the ordinary, everyday kind of activities were dismissed and we involved ourselves in childish activities and outlandish games. Once, I remember this so well, we painted our faces and ran naked through the fields, then we jumped into the lake, swimming for hours. Her Peter Pan way of life was refreshing and alluring.
I was allowed to spend my summers with her until my mother deemed my visits did me more harm than good. Carla called a doctor to check in on my grandmother and she seriously entertained the idea of having her mother committed to an institution where she could get the type of help my mother considered necessary. The doctor persuaded Carla to back off and let my Nana live her life in peace and in her own home.
“She is not hurting anyone, Carla. Let her be. Don’t take away her freedom, I believe you value those liberties yourself,” he advised.
Unfortunately, slowly, I lost regular contact with her. My school obligations became more taxing and truth be told, my parents forbade me to see her. Hence, I had not seen her for a long time, until the fall of ’79.
I arrived on her doorstep without calling. When she opened the door, she was surprised to see me, but the twinkle in her eyes, which I longed to see, was missing. I noticed the many changes in her. She was walking with a cane and her mobility was everything but good. The medications she was taking had dulled her personality and that bubbly nature of hers had long been stifled and perhaps even distinguished.
She was very happy to see me, not many visitors had kept her company in the past few years. However, she didn’t complain about being lonely, she told me many times in the past that she preferred the tranquillity and the peacefulness of nature instead. She read, she knitted and when she craved for human contact, she had a few friends who still came to see her when she called them. There were a few cats and one dog also, keeping her days from being totally void of warm physical contact.
I told her the whole story about René and how my life had changed after meeting him.
I told her about the trouble
circling our lives.
“I have to leave Montreal, Nana. It’s the only way to resolve this situation. I will be back one day, I don’t know when.”
“Honey, follow your heart. I can’t and won’t stop you. You are a unique individual, Melissa. You have always been loving, pure and with too much love in your precious heart.”
Then she reminded me of the money she had set aside for my future.
Nana Drake also reminded me of the promise I had made to her as a young child: to travel and to see the world through her eyes.
To inspire and to encourage my dream of discovering the world, she had started a savings fund on my behalf many years ago. My parents had always looked upon that money as my college tuition fund. Then again, while her faculties were still sharp and acute, Nana had set up the trust fund in my name. It was guaranteed I was to be the only one who had the last say in the handling and dispersing of the funds. The bank account had my name on it, only my signature was required. I had ignored the existence of that money. It was my intention to use it wisely.
With the new developments in my life, I decided to follow my dreams. I was going to dip into that pot of gold to get my own education by seeing the world.
Nana had a car in her garage, it had been parked there for years. She gave up driving when her arthritis had progressed to the stage when she had no more control over the movement in her right leg. Her driver’s license had expired as well. She offered the car to me and even arranged for a mechanic to give it a second life. After spending a few days with her, I drove back home in my own car, carrying a firm commitment to my plan.
Every day, following the visit with Nana Drake and until the day when René was fully recovered, I spent preparing for our escape. I had some fake identification papers drawn up for René and I applied for my own legal Canadian passport.
The driver’s license I had studied for during my last year in high school arrived in the mail. Slowly and patiently, I accumulated all the important and necessary documents and itineraries to facilitate our departure. I said goodbye to all those who I called my friends and avoided answering their questions about where I was planning to go. For every question, I had but one comment, “I will write to you.”
I sat with my parents for hours, trying to persuade them one last time to understand my choices. Sadly, without their blessing, I continued to execute my plan.
South
In the middle of November, driving away from Montreal usually meant that the direction you took was the southern one. The road west kept you heading into a direct line with winter; however, going south, as the birds do, made the most sense. René and I had discussed our plans briefly, but I knew it was my determination that had persuaded him to go along with them. He had never been out of Quebec, perhaps once when he was a little boy and went to Maine for a family vacation. He only had a very faint recollection of the time. The tragic events of his past had all but shocked his fond memories from his memory bank. He had placed his former life into a safe spot there and he had thrown away the keys. For him, it was all about today and tomorrow. For the time being, I was his present and his day after. He trusted my judgement, for he planted his life into my hands without having doubts. Never had it crossed his mind that I could do anything to jeopardize his future, one for which he didn’t have too much passion anyway.
We stopped for a few minutes at the police station, where Officer Michel took René’s statement again and as soon as the interview finished, he insisted we not leave town. Regardless of the warning, we left.
On the 15th of November, two days after I wheeled René out from the hospital, we drove south, leaving the skyline of Montreal steadily diminishing in our rear-view mirror.
I had a road map drawn up by a touring company at the same time I was making my exit preparations. Their job, as directed by me, was to draw out the closest, quickest, least expensive, least noticeable route to the farthest point south on a map of North America. When I checked their findings, I was not surprised. They recommended I pass through the border between Canada and the United States at a border crossing hidden in the farmlands of eastern Quebec. There was an inconspicuous border crossing; a lone building housing one border guard. I was told my chances of a successful entrance into the USA was through that one inconspicuous checkpoint.
René’s documents were professionally made but were far from perfect. We needed a very unsuspecting eye to look at them. His wounds had all healed, giving his face an angelic appearance, with no suspicious scars or bruises. Marks on a person’s face always brought an unnecessary scrutiny from the law. Before leaving, I took him to a barber shop and the man gave René a clean cut, conservative-styled hairdo.
We were both dressed for the occasion in ordinary clothes bringing practically no attention to our getaway. I drove, as I had the only valid driver’s license and experience. René had one also as part of his phony documents but he had never driven in his life. And he had no desire to drive, anyway.
We looked like an ordinary young couple, lovers or friends, going on a day trip to visit a friend in Upstate New York. According to the papers we had created for René, his legal name was René Martin. I never knew his real family name, it had never been mentioned. I had never heard him say his name, the name tying him to the other significant people previously part of his life. René had conveniently rubbed out the memory of his family members. It appeared that if he didn’t have the family name, he didn’t have the pain that went along with the memory of them. To think and remember his loved ones was to accept their fate and his. He was very comfortable, it seemed, with this new name someone of absolutely no significance had given to him.
We drove in silence, looking at the scenery, barren farmland, which only a few months ago was lush with produce of diverse variety. The autumn harvest and the colder pre-winter weather had all but levelled the land now, begging for the white blanket that would soon cover it.
Since the recent attack on his life, René had relapsed into his former state of depression and despair. I was mistaken and fooling myself thinking I had somehow cured him.
He had never been much of a talker but with the help of my friendship, he had started to become more open and fluid with his words. Our trip toward freedom, however, was happening in a subdued and quiet atmosphere. There was an element of apprehension, a fear of the unknown and everything we talked about was well-measured for value.
“I packed some new clothes for you, René. My friends were very generous with their gifts. I hope you don’t mind my flare for fashion.”
“Whatever you chose will be fine for me. I am not very concerned about the fashion trends of today.”
“You know, René, we are leaving for your own safety.”
“I know, Missy, you mean well. I just think staying would have given me more freedom in the eyes of the law. Now, I will always have to look behind my back, wondering if someone is out to get me.”
“If you would have stayed, René, those people would have the chance to find and perhaps hurt you again and this time for keeps. The police don’t care about your safety. They just want you to help them catch those assholes. Unfortunately, your lifestyle has given you an undesirable status in society and the police look upon people like you as burdens. Trust me, they would not lift a finger to give you the kind of safety net you deserve.”
“But now your life has turned upside down because of me,” he looked at me and touched my hand.
“Not exactly, I have always had an itch to travel and this gave me the push I needed. It is yet to be determined whose life we have chosen to disturb. Let’s just go and find out what lies in our path and make the best of it. Besides, I have this crazy need to have you in my life, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.” I needed to say that, to reassure him and me.
I truly meant those last words, more than I had even known at the time. There was something compelling me to bind myself to him. I had felt the urge right from the moment I had laid eyes on him. I loved him in
a very special way. Somehow, and I can’t find the words to explain it, he gave me an affirmation of my existence. I was me because of him. It doesn’t make sense, yet, it is how I felt.
Crossing the border was less complicated than I had imagined. The border guard was cordial and quite pleasant. He didn’t ask any questions we weren’t able to answer and our documents passed his examination without any challenge.
According to the map someone had taken the trouble and my money to plot, we were to head south following the course that eventually would bring us to the Florida Keys. Key West was the most southern point, our destination if we stayed in the same longitude as our home province. The length of time to reach our journey’s end was up to us. The drive itself was estimated to being 30-some hours nonstop.
For the first day, I decided to drive until the air outside was pleasant enough to throw away our winter jackets. I had packed a light suitcase for myself and one even lighter for René. Too much stuff seemed to be an obvious show of our intentions. I told the officer at the border we were only going to visit friends; we were not intending to move in with them. Whatever we needed from then on had to be purchased.
My financial picture was positive, but frugality had to be upheld. Nana Drake, bless her heart, had provided quite a nest egg for me. However, the money she had saved generously was not meant to last forever. I knew it would eventually be depleted, depending on my spending choices. René was a good travelling companion but the events in his past had prevented him from learning the life skills necessary to help me make wise decisions.
Road Trip
We lived on bacon and eggs for the first day. I intentionally only stopped for gas fill-ups at the gas stations off the main highway and drove within the recommended speed limits to avoid the wrath of the state troopers. They were known to treat young drivers with no mercy. I was fortunate to have gathered such information from friends who had learned their lessons by making those same mistakes I was now avoiding.
