Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  “How’s it going, then, Luke?” Matt said innocently.

  Luke shot him a look and gave him the Jell-O. “Stick that where the sun don’t shine,” he said.

  “All of it?” said Matt.

  “Happy birthday, Little One,” Bo said, ignoring them and handing Simon his cake, a vast, gothic structure coated in chocolate. “You don’t look a day over twelve. Have you opened your presents? Morning, you two”—this to Daniel and me. I felt Daniel’s hand in the small of my back, easing me forward.

  “Morning,” Daniel said. “That’s quite a cake.”

  “Oh well, it’s a celebration,” Bo said. “We thought he’d never grow up.”

  We made our way toward the house. Daniel’s hand still rested on my back. His touch made my skin prickle with resentment. I wished he would leave me. I wished they would all leave me. Go away, and let me think. Marie appeared, a dishcloth in her hands.

  “Give us a job, Marie,” Luke said. “We came to help.”

  “Oh,” Marie said. “Oh, well … all right. I think you can start taking things outside now. Plates and things.”

  The world kept on turning. Marie organized us, after a fashion. I was given the job of washing glasses. As far as I could see they were already perfectly clean, but I was glad to do it; it meant I could stand at the kitchen sink with my back to the room. I washed them meticulously, one at a time, and dried them carefully, and placed them on trays for the men to take out to the tables. Daniel appeared beside me and said, “Like a dryer?” but I shook my head, and after hovering uncertainly for a moment or two he moved away. When I finished the glasses I washed the bowls Marie had been using, and the cutlery, and the cake tins, and the baking trays. Behind me Bo and Marie were putting the finishing touches to the food and the men were standing about, talking and laughing and getting in the way. Daniel was there somewhere. I could feel his eyes on me. Marie’s also. Several times she thanked me, and said, tentatively, that I’d done more than my share and wouldn’t I like a coffee, but I smiled quickly in her general direction and said that I was fine. I was relieved to find that I was capable of speech and that my voice sounded normal.

  I wondered if I could stay there all day, washing dishes until the party was over, and then say that I had a headache and go up to bed. But I knew that wasn’t possible. There are certain occasions that nothing short of death excuses you from, and this was one of them. I didn’t know how I was going to get through it though. There was such turmoil inside my head. Still simmering under everything was my anger with Daniel, but on top of that my brain kept delivering snapshots from the past: Matt, sitting beside me on the sofa in the living room after Aunt Annie had broken the news that the family would be split up, trying to point out New Richmond on the map, trying to convince me that we would still be able to see each other. I could see my child-self, sitting beside him, my mind possessed by a whirlwind of despair.

  Another snapshot: Matt in the aftermath of his exam results, taking me into our parents’ bedroom, sitting me down in front of the photograph of Great-Grandmother Morrison and explaining why he had to go away. Telling me about our family history, showing me that we played a part in it. I saw how important it was, knew it must be terribly important, or he would not leave me. And then he told me of his plan for us. Our glorious plan.

  Yet another image, this time twelve years later, the night before I myself set off for university. Matt had come over from the farm to say goodbye. For years I had managed to block that evening from my mind, but now it came back to me, as fresh, as bright, as clear in all its details as if it had taken place yesterday. The two of us had gone down to the beach. We sat on the sand, watching the night creep in over the lake, and talked stiltedly about things that did not matter—tomorrow’s train journey, the hall of residence, whether there would be phones on every floor. We talked like strangers. We were almost strangers, by then. The weight of twelve years’ worth of things unsaid, unresolved, had made strangers of us.

  When it was time for him to go—back to the farm and Marie and his son—we walked back up to the house in silence. It was dark by then. The trees around the house had drawn closer in the darkness, as they always do. At the door I turned to say goodbye to him. He was standing back a bit, his hands in his pockets. He smiled at me, and said, “You have to write me every detail, okay? I want to know every single thing you do.”

  He was standing in the rectangle of light from the doorway, and I could hardly bear to look at him because of the strain in his face. I tried to imagine writing to him, telling him about all that I was doing—all that he should have been doing. I imagined him reading my letters and then going out to milk the cows. It was unthinkable. It would be nothing but rubbing salt in the wound, reminding him, constantly, of what he had lost. I didn’t believe he could possibly want such a thing, and I knew I couldn’t bear to do it.

  So I had written very seldom, and said next to nothing about my work. I had wanted to spare him—to spare both of us. And now Daniel was trying to tell me that Matt had not wanted to be spared. That the strain I had seen, and continued to see, was because, try as he might, he could not re-establish the link between us. That he had just wanted me to write to him, regardless of the subject matter, and knew as well as I did that I would not.

  I could not—could not—believe that interpretation. Daniel thinks he is right about everything, but he is not always right. He is not. I have known him to be wrong before.

  But now, when I tried to close my mind to what he had said, when I looked around urgently for more dishes to wash—anything, an egg beater, a knife, a spoon—his words kept seeping back into my mind, sliding in, like water under a door.

  The guests began arriving just after noon, and by that time I had gone beyond feeling much of anything. I felt light-headed. Unreal. It was almost pleasant. Mrs. Stanovich was the first to arrive, and when Marie saw her truck rolling along the side road and urged me to go out and meet her, I did so quite calmly. The men had been sent off on some errand, Daniel among them. I was relieved not to have to introduce him. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with him. I’d been aware over the course of the morning of his growing concern, and to be honest it gave me some satisfaction. I had in no way forgiven him. It wasn’t until later, when I was in a more rational frame of mind, that it occurred to me that it must have been difficult for him to say what he had said. The weekend meant a lot to him, and he would know he was putting it in jeopardy, and possibly risking more than that. At the moment of speaking I’m sure he thought he was doing the right thing, but I suspect he regretted it straight away.

  He was right to be worried. My feelings toward him—well, I think if you had asked me, at that stage in the afternoon, if our relationship was going to continue, I would have said no. I suppose it was a variation on the theme of shooting the messenger—the bearer of bad tidings. I know it was unfair.

  I went out alone to greet Mrs. Stanovich. She was heaving herself out from behind the wheel of her truck as I came up, and she gave a little cry of joy when she saw me. She is unchanged, I am glad to say, except possibly for the addition of a chin or two.

  “Katherine, sweetie! Sweetie, you look so beautiful, you look so like your mother, you look more like her every day.” And she hauled me to her bosom, just as she used to do, just as she always will. It shows the state I was in that for the first time in my life I almost wanted to accept that bosom for what it really is—a pillow to cry into. A great, soft, warm pillow, into which to unload all your grief and pain and regret, in the sure knowledge that Mrs. Stanovich will pass it all directly on to Jesus. But I am me, and I cannot do such things, though I did return her embrace for longer than she was accustomed to.

  “Sweetie,” she said, delving around for her eternal handkerchief (Matt once said he bet there were hundreds of them down there somewhere), “just look at the day the Lord has given us! Not a cloud! And here you are, you came all this way to help in the rejoicing. Isn’t Simon the most wonderful
boy you ever saw? Somewhere there’s a cake.” She puffed her way around to the back of her truck, mopping herself as she went, and let down the tailgate with a crash. “I couldn’t put it in the front because Gabby’s put a gearbox on the seat. I hope it’s survived—now look at that, it’s just fine. All you need is to trust in the Lord, sweetie. He takes care of everything. Who is the young man with Matt?”

  It was Daniel. Matt was bringing him over to be introduced. They were walking slowly, heads down. Matt was gesturing with his hands, explaining something, and Daniel was nodding. As they got closer I heard Matt say, “… only about six months of the year when it’s above forty-two degrees, which is the absolute minimum. So you need to get it in as soon as possible after the snow melts—as soon as the soil dries out enough to drill.” And Daniel said, “Do you use particular strains? You know, more frost-resistant?”

  I don’t know why I suddenly saw it then. Maybe because they were both so intent on the subject, so absorbed. Two remarkable men, deep in conversation, walking slowly across the dust of the farmyard. It was not a tragic picture. Definitely not.

  I suppose the real question is not why I saw it then, but why I didn’t see it years ago. Great-Grandmother Morrison, I accept that the fault is largely mine, but I do hold you partly to blame. It is you, with your love of learning, who set the standard against which I have judged everyone around me, all of my life. I have pursued your dream single-mindedly; I have become familiar with books and ideas you never even imagined, and somehow, in the process of acquiring all that knowledge, I have managed to learn nothing at all.

  Miss Carrington arrived while Daniel was being introduced to Mrs. Stanovich, and right behind her were the Tadworths; and then several cars and battered farm trucks all rolled in together and the party got underway. It was a good party. As Mrs. Stanovich said, we had the weather on our side, and the event quickly took on the air of a large and rather chaotic picnic, with people sitting on the grass in little clusters or milling about near the food tables, talking and laughing and trying to solve the problem of how to eat when you have a plate of food in one hand and a glass of fruit punch in the other.

  I would like to be able to say that I threw myself into the spirit of it all, but the truth is, I still felt a bit dazed. A bit abstracted. It’s going to take time, I guess. If you’ve thought in a certain way for many years, if you’ve had a picture in your mind of how things are and that picture is suddenly shown to be faulty, well, it stands to reason that it will take a while to adjust. And during that time, you’re bound to feel … disconnected. Anyway, that was how I felt—and still feel, to some degree. What I would really have liked to do was sit quietly somewhere, preferably under a tree, and watch the goings-on from a distance. In particular, watch Matt. Let my eyes absorb this new view of him, this new perspective on our lives.

  That’s what I would have chosen to do that afternoon, rather than help to host a birthday party. But still, it was good to see everyone—very good, in fact. They were all there, apart from Miss Vernon, who sent a message that she was a bit old for parties but wished Simon well. I introduced Daniel to most of them, I think. He was rather subdued himself, no doubt still unsure of my state of mind. But he rose to the occasion—all the Professors Crane are good at occasions. We talked quite a bit with Miss Carrington. She is the principal of the school now—it has expanded to three rooms and she has two teachers working for her. She was looking very well. There is a serenity about her. Possibly there always was and I just hadn’t noticed it before. Anyway, it makes her very restful to be with.

  Simon had a good time, I think, which was the object of the exercise, after all.

  The evening was the best though. The evening will stay with me. After supper, when the clearing-up was done and Simon had gone off with his friends, Matt and I sprayed Daniel from head to toe with insect repellent and took him back to the ponds. Matt has filled in the one where Laurie’s body was found and planted a small group of silver birches on it. They were just coming into leaf and looked very peaceful.

  The other ponds, our pond included, are just as they have always been.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Crow Lake is a work of fiction. There are so many lakes in northern Ontario that there are bound to be half a dozen named after a crow, but none of them is the Crow Lake in this novel. Likewise, with two exceptions, all the characters in the novel are figments of my imagination. The first exception is my great-grandmother, who did indeed fasten a book rest to her spinning wheel. She had four children rather than fourteen, but she lived on a farm on the Gaspé Peninsula and time for reading was hard to come by. The second exception is my younger sister, Eleanor, whose infant self was the model for Bo. My thanks to her for permitting me to use her infancy, and also for her unceasing support, advice, and encouragement in the writing of the book.

  I would like to thank my brothers, George and Bill, not only for their humour, faith, and encouragement over the years, but also for advising on the “natural history” of Crow Lake. They both know the North a thousand times better than I ever will, and their love for it played a part in the inspiration for the book.

  There are others to whom I owe a great debt:

  —Amanda Milner-Brown, Norah Adams, and Hilary Clark for their insight and their support, and for being honest when it would have been easier and more polite to lie.

  —Stephen Smith, poet and teacher, for his encouragement and inspiration.

  —Penny Battes, who helped me to get started all those years ago and who never seemed to doubt that I would get there in the end.

  —Professor Deborah McLennan and Professor Héléne Cyr of the zoology department at the University of Toronto, for giving me a glimpse into the world of academic research. (It’s a safe bet that I’ve still got it all wrong, but that’s my fault and not theirs.)

  —Felicity Rubinstein, Sarah Lutyens, and Susannah Godman, all of Lutyens and Rubinstein, for their skill, tact, energy, and enthusiasm.

  —Alison Samuel of Chatto & Windus in London, Susan Kamil of the Dial Press in New York, and Louise Dennys of Knopf Canada in Toronto, for the perceptiveness, sensitivity, and skill with which they steered Crow Lake through the editing process.

  I would also like to acknowledge the publication Animals of the Surface Film, by Marjorie Guthrie, which was an invaluable source of technical information.

  Finally, and above all, my thanks to my husband, Richard, and to my sons, Nick and Nathaniel, for years and years of unfaltering faith, comfort, and support.

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  PROLOGUE

  There was a summer back when they were kids, when Arthur Dunn was thirteen or fourteen and his brother, Jake, was eight or nine, when for weeks on end Jake pestered Arthur to play the game he called knives. Jake had a great collection of knives at the time, everything from fancy little Swiss Army jackknives with dozens of attachments to a big sleek hunting knife with a runnel down one side for blood. It was the hunting knife that was to be used in the game because according to Jake it was the best for throwing.

  “Just once, okay?” Jake would say, dancing about barefoot in the dust of the farmyard, tossing the knife from hand to hand like a juggler, leaping back quickly if it decided to fall blade-first. “Come on, just once. It’ll only take a minute.”

  “I’m busy,” Arthur would say, and carry on with whatever task his father had set him to. It was the summer holidays and the list of tasks was unending, but it was better than going to school.

  “Come on,” Jake would say. “Come on. You’ll love it! It’s a really good game. Come on!”

  “I gotta fix this hinge.”

  Jake had explained the rules of the knife game to him and it was crazy. You stood at attention facing each other, about four feet apart, and took turns throwing the kni
fe into the ground as close as possible to your opponent’s naked foot. You had to be barefoot, Jake explained, or there would be no point to the game. Wherever the knife landed, your opponent had to move his foot alongside it. The idea was to make him do the splits bit by bit, as slowly as possible. The more throws the better. The smaller the distance between the still-vibrating steel and the outer edge of your brother’s foot, the better. Nuts.

  But in the end, as they had both known he would, Jake wore Arthur down. That was Jake’s speciality— wearing people down.

  It was a warm evening in July, the end of a long hot day out in the fields, and Arthur was sitting on the back step doing nothing, which was always a mistake. Jake appeared around the corner of the house and saw him, and his eyes started to shine. Jake had dark blue eyes in a pale triangular face and hair the color of wheat. In build he was slight and reedy (frail was the word their mother used) and already good-looking, though not as good-looking as he would be later. Arthur, five years older, was big and slow and heavy, with sloping shoulders and a neck like an ox.

  Jake had the knife on him, of course. He always did; he carried it around in its own special sheath with its own special belt-loop, so as to be ready for anything. He started badgering Arthur right away and eventually Arthur gave in just to get it over with.

  “Once, okay?” Arthur said. “Once. I play it once, now, and you never ask me again. Promise.”

  “Okay, okay, I promise! Let’s go.”

  And so it was that on that warm July evening when he was thirteen or fourteen years old—at any rate plenty old enough to know better—Arthur found himself standing behind the line his little brother had drawn in the dust, waiting to have a knife thrown at his bare and vulnerable feet. The dust felt hot, warmer than the air, and soft as talcum powder. It puffed up between his toes every time he took a step and turned them a pale and ghostly gray. Arthur’s feet were broad and meaty with red raw patches from his heavy farm boots. Jake’s feet were long and thin, delicate and blue-veined. Jake didn’t wear farm boots much. He was considered by their mother to be too young for farm labor, though Arthur hadn’t been too young at the same age.