by William Bell
Second, love at first sight had to be strictly physical, but everybody said that love was more than that. How could it be, if you fell in love without speaking a word? I didn’t buy it. Love at first sight was all fairy-land and movies and bad novels with pictures on the cover of nurses gazing into the eyes of firm-jawed doctors.
I believed in logic, reason, science, hard fact — which was why I disliked poetry. I read a lot, non-fiction and fiction (but never romances). I wanted a good story, or information, not dreams and gooey sentiment about moonlight and fields of flowers and Gee, isn’t that a lovely sunset.
For the debate, the difficulty was to get my thoughts in order so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself — I hated talking in front of others — and maybe I could salvage my English mark.
chapter
But what about Romeo and Juliet?”
“What about them?”
“Well, it should be obvious, even to you. They fell in love at first sight. At the Capulet party. And later they were married by Friar What’s-his-name. So, if they experienced love at first sight, it must be real. They’re famous.”
André, a skinny straw-haired guy, sat down, bathed in background noise, looking pleased with himself. Randy jumped to his feet again.
“Not so fast. Juliet was fourteen, and Romeo wasn’t much older. You can’t build your argument on the actions and feelings of two bone-headed teenagers who ended up dead through their own stupidity. Besides, they weren’t real. They’re characters in a play. We’re debating real life here.”
Randy dropped into his seat, accepting high-fives from the guys around him, preening like the only rooster in the barnyard and playing with the rings in his ear. The two sides flung insults at each other. A paper ball sailed across the room and was batted back to its owner. In the clamour, the classroom door opened and someone slipped in. I paid no attention. I was psyching myself up.
“Garnet, your turn,” Paulsen shouted. “The rest of you, pipe down!”
I got ready to slay them with logic, knock down their arguments like bowling pins. No sticky romantic mumblings or passions of the heart. Clear thinking. In my room the night before, it had sounded good.
“Mr. Speaker,” I began with a squeak. Someone laughed. I cleared my throat. “Mr. Speaker, this is simply a matter of sound logic, a quality which my opponents have never heard of.”
Hissing and catcalls from the opposition. Cheers from my side. Paulsen liked it when we sounded arrogant.
“All of us here today, even my opponents, with their diminished mental capacity, would agree that true love is both physical and spiritual. Now, love at first sight is, by definition, love without knowledge of the loved one’s character. The lover does not know the other person’s interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes and so on. Romeo, to use Andre’s example, fell in love with Juliet from across the room. For all he knew she could have been insane, a thief or, for that matter, a lesbian.”
An uproar. Groans and giggles from both sides. Paulsen shot me a harsh look, then tried to quiet the class down.
“Since he had never so much as spoken to her,” I went on, “his so-called love for her must have been based on physical appearance alone. Obviously, the same goes for her.”
I paused for dramatic effect. “And, since true love is, as I have said, physical and spiritual, Romeo and Juliet could not have been experiencing true love. What they felt was lust. They wanted to get inside each other’s clothes. Period. The spiritual element was missing.”
The hubbub swelled once more. “Love at first sight,” I strained to make myself heard above the roar, “is a hoax!”
They think I’m debating, I thought, but I meant every word I said.
The din continued. A couple of paper airplanes took off and crash-landed. Paulsen shouted something. At the front of the classroom, by the desk next to the door, someone stood up.
None of us knew much about the new kid, although there had been the usual swirl of rumours — some of them pretty nasty, some far-fetched. She had changed schools because of conflicts with other students. She’d been expelled for poor attendance. Jill, who considered a tasty morsel of gossip sweeter than a candy bar, had told us Raphaella’s mother owned the health food store and that the word was, Raphaella never dated. “She’s weird,” Jill had concluded. “I mean, what kind of name is that? And they tell me she belongs to some cult or other.” Raphaella had transferred to our school from Park Street Collegiate about a week before — just in time to be assigned a role in the debate — then had disappeared.
When she got to her feet, something remarkable happened. She stood quietly, completely at ease, and waited. Normally, a new kid gives off vibes like a high-tension wire — fear, embarrassment, a pathetic desire to be accepted. Not this one. Wearing a long navy blue dress over a black T-shirt, a silver-colored ankh hanging from a leather thong around her neck, she appeared calm — except for her bitten-down fingernails — and completely indifferent to us. She was slender, a bit taller than me, with glossy black hair that fell almost to her waist. A plum-colored birthmark stained her neck and half her right cheek.
I felt something shift inside me, a kind of low-level seismic tremor.
Gradually, as she waited patiently, the noise around her ebbed away. It was as if she had taken control of the room without effort. Everyone, including Paulsen, stared at her. Nobody moved.
She lifted a piece of paper from her desk, consulted it and put it down. She never referred to it again.
She turned her gaze on me. Unblinking. Straight into my eyes.
“Logic is only one way of looking at the world,” she said, “and it’s very limited. It’s like looking at life through binoculars held the wrong way around.”
A murmur ended almost as soon as it began.
“Your argument sounds reasonable “— she said the word as if it were a minor obscenity — “but only if we accept the idea that there is only one kind of knowledge, the kind based on direct experience. Juliet and Romeo had never met before her father’s masquerade. Therefore, according to you, they could not know each other. Therefore, what they felt was only physical desire, not love.”
She paused. Some of the students around her traded smirks that revealed their inability to follow her argument.
“Unfortunately,” she continued in the same confident tone, “your idea is wrong. There is more than one kind of knowledge. Or, as Hamlet put it, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’”
“Like what?” Randy sneered. “Horoscopes and oracles?”
“I mean intuition, spontaneous insight. Romeo and Juliet knew each other in a split second of revelation. When they had a chance to talk —”
“Yeah, all that ‘Pilgrim’ stuff,” André cut in.
“— they were able to confirm what they already knew, that the other person was worthy of being loved. The balcony scene allowed them to explore each other even more.”
There were a few snickers at the word “explore.”
“Intuition and revelation aren’t knowledge,” I insisted. “They’re for religion and mysticism. They’re just … well … feelings.”
“You guys always say that,” Janet Bilisis remarked from the corner of the room, always the feminist. Her nose stud twinkled. “You can’t accept —”
“Oh, here we go again.” This from Randy. “It’s a girl thing, is it? Only girls get it? Garnet is right. Admit it.”
“If it is a girl thing,” Janet seethed, “that’s only because you guys are such emotional cripples that you can’t feel anything.”
Confusion. Insults and lame jokes darted back and forth.
Raphaella waited once more until quiet returned. “If they are just feelings, as you put it, they’re still knowledge. There is such a thing as emotional knowledge. Face it,” she said, once again training those large, dark, soft eyes on me. “Love at first sight is valid. It’s real. People fall in love every day. Science can’t explain it
, except to make numb comments about biological urges. Science can’t explain most things that are important.”
She sat down gracefully, ignoring the groundswell of talk that surged around her. Even before she finished talking, I had fallen in love with her.
chapter
All weekend, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. This is crazy, I kept telling myself. This is stupid. I must have food poisoning. Can you get hardening of the arteries in the brain before you finish high school?
In my workshop at the rear of my family’s antique store I fussed and puttered aimlessly among cans of wood stain, varnish and solvent, afraid to work on a difficult restoration in case I split the wood or cut my thumb off. I went for walks, hoping each time I turned a corner I’d run into her. I strolled casually past the Demeter health food store, stealing glances through the window, searching for her willowy form, her long dark hair.
Monday morning I actually made it to school on time. I stalked the halls between classes and at lunch period, trying to fake a chance meeting, mentally rehearsing what I would say. The day dragged until final class — English. I entered the room with forced nonchalance, my stomach in a knot, my nerves jangling like a ring of old keys. She didn’t show.
She came to English on Tuesday to write a test and didn’t so much as glance my way. She finished early and disappeared. I flunked the test.
The torture went on all week. I didn’t dare ask anyone for her last name because I couldn’t face the ridicule — “She creamed you in the debate and now you want to romance her, Garnet?,” “I guess love at first sight works for some people!” — so looking her up in the phone book was impossible, even if I could get up the nerve to call.
Finally, after the final class on Friday had inched to an end without her turning up, I walked down West Street and along Mississauga to our store, closed myself in the office and picked up the phone.
“Hello. Park Street Collegiate. How may I help you?”
In my most businesslike voice: “Guidance office secretary, please.”
“One moment.”
“Guidance office. Mrs. Connor speaking.”
“Good afternoon. It’s Stanley Paulsen over at O. D. I have a new student who has just transferred and her student record hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Yes?”
“I just want to check that she has the prerequisite to take this course. Her name is … let me see, where did I put the paperwork?” I rustled a few invoices Dad had piled on the desk. “The name is unusual. Um, Raphaella? Oh, where’s that damn class list gone?”
“Skye. Raphaella Skye.”
“Ah, yes. Of course. And it’s spelled?”
“With an e.”
“Right. Oh, for heaven’s sake! I have the record right here. Sorry to trouble you.”
I hung up. A quick look at the phone book. One listing for Skye, in Orillia.
I got up from the desk and stalked back and forth for a few minutes, psyching myself as I had for the debate. I went back to the phone and keyed in the number. I hoped my voice hadn’t become a mousey squeak.
“Hello?” I heard. It wasn’t her.
“Hi, could I speak to Raphaella, please.”
“Who’s calling?” she demanded with the warmth of a morgue attendant.
“A friend from school. Garnet.”
A rustle and a scratchy sound told me the woman was holding her hand over the receiver. “It’s some guy named Gannet.”
“No, no!” I said. “It’s Garnet.”
“Never heard of him.” Raphaella’s voice, muffled by the woman’s hand on the mouthpiece.
“Says he’s a friend from school.”
“I don’t know any Gannet. A gannet’s a bird.’
“Garnet!” I shouted. “It’s Garnet. G-A-R —”
“Are you going talk to him or not?”
“No, thanks. I’ve had enough crap from those jerks at Park. And I don’t know anyone at O. D. Especially a seabird. Tell whoever it is to migrate.”
“She’s not here,” the voice told me.
“My name’s Garnet,” I repeated. “We’re in the same English class. We were in the debate together.”
The woman gave out an exasperated “Tsk!” and reluctantly conveyed the information. By then I had completely lost my courage. My throat went dry. I was about to write the whole thing off and hang up when I heard, “Hello?” It was Raphaella.
“Er, hi. It’s Garnet Havelock. I’m in Paulsen’s English class. And I’m not a seagull.”
Silence. So much for my killing sense of humor.
“The debate?” I prompted. “We were on opposite sides?”
“Oh, I remember.”
“Well, um, I just called to see if, well, you’d be interested in maybe, you know, having a cup of coffee or something, sometime.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
This is like mining coal, I thought. “Well, it doesn’t have to be coffee. I mean, tea, a soft drink, anything.”
“I don’t think so. But thanks anyway, Gannet.”
“Okay, well, goodbye, then.”
“Bye.”
I slammed down the phone in frustration, Garnet Havelock, Mr. Cool. Mr. Romance. Mr. Total Loser.
2
How my parents ever managed to get together and stay that way was beyond me.
If you had looked up “introverted” in the dictionary you’d have found my father’s picture, a shy, half-apologetic smile on his face. Unassuming and friendly. A receding hairline, a bit overweight. He had his feet stuck firmly in the mud. For him, the hour-and-a-half drive to Toronto was a major safari.
My mother, a slender, fair-haired bundle of nervous energy, was born with itchy feet. She was a freelance journalist, most alive when she was in the thick of international conflict, national disaster, political scandal. She was famous for her pitiless analysis and piercing questions, a kind of butterfly with a sting. Sometimes, she was away for weeks on end. She’d come back frazzled and worn down, exhilarated and exhausted, drop her bags in the front hall and announce, “Boy, am I glad to be home!” and crash. But sooner or later her eyes would take on that faraway look, she’d go for long walks, and eventually she’d pick up the phone, call her contacts at newspapers and magazines, scratching for an assignment, and take wing like a migrant bird.
Dad’s unspoken motto was, Old Is Good, New Is No Good. He liked old cars, old tunes, old books, old movies. Words and phrases like “groovy” or “snazzy” flavored his speech, and he liked to imitate characters from classic cinema. The only trouble was, nobody knew who he was impersonating, so the effect was lost. He didn’t care.
Dad taught music at a couple of elementary schools in the mornings. He enjoyed working with the rug-rats and ankle-biters, but his real love was Olde Gold Antiques and Collectibles, the shop we owned on Mississauga Street across from the library and the opera house. It was open on weekdays from one o’clock, and all day Saturday, when I ran the store myself. Dad liked to scan the newspaper Friday night and make a list of garage sales running the next day. He’d tear around town from place to place in his refurbished 1966 Chevy pickup looking for bargains.
“You’d be surprised what kind of stuff people sell at those sales,” he would say to Mom every once in a while.
“I don’t think I would be,” Mom would reply sarcastically. Then she’d repeat her theory that people who went to garage sales searching for bargains eventually collected so much junk they had to hold one themselves. Then others came along and bought back their own stuff and the cycle would start over.
Old things, recycled ideas, drove her nuts. Being a journalist, she was always frantic to know what was new, the latest scoop, the breaking story — and sometimes she brought these things to light herself. Her reports were widely admired, and Dad and I sometimes heard her interviewed — always in five-or ten-second sound bites — on the radio or TV. Once we saw her on the tube, standing in the center of an African refugee camp that the opposing army had thr
eatened to attack, surrounded by rake-thin victims of civil war whose hollow eyes showed their desperation. Dad kept all Mom’s written reports in a big scrapbook, despite her reminders that everything she wrote was on disk.
“I don’t trust electronics,” he would say.
I was never certain whether I had inherited the best from each of them or the worst. For as long as I could remember I’d had a raging curiosity about things, an endless thirst for answers (this from my mother) — which made fitting in at school pretty hard most of the time.
At the antique store, I was the official Olde Gold restorer and refinisher. In the back was a workshop with a lathe, a workbench, saws, planes, chisels and what-all. If a piece of furniture came in with a splintered rail or leg, a smashed or missing drawer, I made new ones. For me, raising the grain in a piece of oak or pine with sandpaper, stain and plastic finish, or turning a chair rail in bird’s-eye maple or cherry wood brought greater satisfaction than an A on a test. This from my father.
When I was in grade nine, I asked out a girl named Sandy Mills. She had been named athlete of the year at Hillcrest Public School the year before and had a high opinion of herself. I had a high opinion of her too; she was pretty, smart and popular. When I invited her to go to the movies she said she couldn’t let me know until Friday. Having no choice, I said okay. I was grateful for the possibility. We went out and we both had a good time. The following Monday, I asked her again. Same response. On Friday night she agreed to have dinner at the Bay Burger, then go to the movies again. I finally found out why she would put me off until Friday before committing herself. She was waiting to see if Tony Randall, who was in grade eleven, would ask her out. If nothing developed by Friday she would say yes to me.
I was her backup boyfriend. Try that for a morale killer.
When I was little, I had felt that way about Dad and me. We were Mom’s backup life. If nothing was happening with her job, she’d be with us, but it always seemed that her career had priority. As I grew older I got over that feeling and I understood Mom more. She was ambitious, not just for herself but for me as well.
