As the afternoon sun fades to dusk, the other campgrounds we pass become fewer and fewer, until it seems that we’re the only other people on the road, driving along in our clunky old motorhome. Just as we begin to think that perhaps our lake doesn’t really exist, we see it. There’s no sign, and although it has an official name, it’s been called, ‘the Lake at the End of the World’ for as long as anyone can remember. It backs onto a mountain and is too cold to swim in for a long period of time, so families with children don’t come here. When we pull up, we aren’t surprised that there are only two other campers spaced out around the small beach.
“Let’s park at the end, away from them.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I answer, steering towards the narrow road, and parking right on the gravelly beach, giving us a perfect view of the lake.
We sit for a moment, and look out the front windshield, enjoying the vibrant greenness of the lakes’ colour, as the sun drops down behind the mountains.
The excitement of the trip, along with our Olympic flirting session since leaving the city, has tired us. Having memorized my notes the night before, it doesn’t take long for me to set up the site, with the awning out and chairs underneath it, while Heather starts making a fire.
“We must be sharing the head today. We’re working well together,” I say, realizing that we automatically set about preparing the campsite, each doing different chores.
“Remind me again, what possessed me to let a man I hardly know take me out into the middle of nowhere? And for someone who does all his camping in hotels, you have a very sharp hatchet.” She’s chopping up some kindling, as she says it.
“You trust your instincts, and they told you that I was safe. It doesn’t have to be complicated, does it?” I think of Natasha and how complicated our relationship seemed at times. Then I smile, and look over at Heather, standing so simply, and beautifully, wearing her shorts and tee-shirt, readying our campfire.
“I believe you, but I’ll hold on to this tonight anyway, okay?” She’s holding the hatchet across her chest, as though defending herself, smiling back at me.
The darkness falls quickly, and after a hurried dinner over the outside grill, we settle into a couple of chairs by the fire.
“Are there always this many stars out at night?” I look up, as I ask, amazed at all the different lights in the sky.
“Only if you look up, if not there aren’t any. You gotta always look up.”
The bottle of whisky appears, and Heather performs the ceremonial throwing away of the cork, explaining that it’s traditional when you’re camping, to drink the whole bottle. I smile back; knowing that even with our best efforts, there’s no possibility that we’ll empty the bottle.
She sets a candle on a rock, and we watch the glow from the light dance on the water’s reflection. I take a blanket from the motorhome and lay it over her, and she smiles a thank you back at me.
“You looked cold.”
“The whisky will warm me up,” she coughs at the strength of her drink.
I cradle the glass in my hand, sipping the drink slowly. “I like you.”
“I know you do,” she says thoughtfully, “but you still haven’t looked up yet. Look up and I’ll tell you a story.” There’s too much darkness between us for me to be sure, but I’m fairly certain that the dark flicker, the hesitation, is back in her eyes.
I lay my head back in the chair and stare at the brilliance of the stars, waiting for her to speak.
“I have a daughter, a little girl.” She pauses, “no, no, don’t look at me. Keep looking up. This is the only way I can do this.”
I want to look at her eyes. I want to see what her face is doing, but I don’t move, in case she stops talking. The courage in her voice makes the words sound harsh and unfeeling, but I can tell that she’s straining, straining to get them out.
“I wanted to tell you. I almost told you lots of times, but then something would happen; something would take it out of my mind for a little while. Then when you told me about your friend, when you told me about Hardly, I had to. I have to.” She pauses between sentences as though she’s weighing the impact of the words, listening to see what will happen once she says them. “It’s like a door that I closed ten years ago, and haven’t opened since. I think about her, but then I move onto something else, quickly, and then she’s not in my mind, not in my thoughts. The nights were bad for a long, long time. I’d meet men and they’d amuse me. They’d save me from the alone nights, or I’d drink, like I am now,” she half laughs, wearily.
“Where is she now, your little girl?”
She laughs again, but nervously this time. “Her name is Emily. That’s what I was going to call her anyways, and I think she’s in Ontario, back in my old hometown, but I don’t know. I can’t know that for sure.”
The darkness and the silence envelope us. I feel as though I’m a long, long way away from my safe apartment that overlooks the water. It’s almost like I’ve stopped breathing, as I sit there, waiting for more.
“Yes, I know. You deserve more of an explanation. What kind of mother leaves her daughter? It was complicated. I was eighteen. Michael was married, and older, much older.”
I stare at the candle, watching it’s reflection on the water.
“This man, Michael, does he have your baby?”
I glance over at her and her face is hard but her eyes are wet. She’s staring ahead, not looking at me, trying to get through her story. “Yes, she probably doesn’t even know that I exist. They kept me in a facility, told me they would look after me. I didn’t know where I was exactly. They said that they would help me raise the baby. I believed them, him and that old nurse. The whole time I was isolated. It was some kind of mental health place. I never really saw anyone else while I was there. They kept me alone. I’d spend days and nights dreaming about my baby, and figuring out how our lives would all work. I knew by this point that Michael wouldn’t leave his wife, but I still thought there would be a way to keep everybody happy. Everybody was being so nice to me, anything I needed, anything, it was given to me.”
“Then, she was born. She was so soft and warm. I remember holding her, I remember that. Then I just remember darkness and when I woke there was no baby, and I was in a different room, a different place, but with the same old nurse who had been looking after me.”
She pours another glass of whisky and shakily holds it to her lips. She’s angry now, and her face is smeared with tears.
“I don’t know how long it was before I saw the light again. It was two weeks, maybe a month. I really don’t know how long.”
I stare at the water, the candle, anywhere, trying to let her tell her secret in the darkness between us. I wait for a while, before asking, “Why didn’t you go back, find her, find Michael?”
“I was eighteen and scared shitless. They had taken me to some old musty hospital in Alberta. Alberta, I had never been a hundred miles away from home and now I was in Alberta. And this nurse terrified me, things became different, there were no smiles anymore. It just seemed easier, safer; to move on, try to forget.”
“At the time, I did ask, I asked about Michael, where was he, where was my baby. Then the darkness would come again. When I awoke it was the same nurse, same room, but I felt different, lighter in my head, but still sad, really sad. I kept asking the questions, and each time the darkness would come, and each time I woke, the questions seemed to matter less and less, until finally I understood. I knew that if I stopped asking the questions she’d let me go. So, I stopped asking.”
“She was drugging you.” I look over at her face, wet with tears.
“Yes, I knew that at the time, but didn’t know. It’s hard to explain. The day they let me go, the old nurse followed me out, and told me that there had been another option. She told me her instructions had been to decide whether I walked out of there, or left on a slab. Those were her words; I still remember them. She told me that I was a good girl, and should get on with my lif
e. She said that I should get on a bus to somewhere, anywhere, go find a new home, but to remember that she’d be watching me. On a slab, Malcolm. She said that I could have left there on a slab.”
The fire is almost out. The few red embers are glowing in the dark, and the last of the candle has extinguished itself. I pull my chair until it’s touching hers. I reach over and try to hold her. She feels cold underneath the blanket. My confident girl is shaking now, scared.
“I used to think I could see her, that insane old bitch, in crowds or when I was alone. Sometimes, I thought I sensed eyes. One day I’m sure I did. I was in a park; it was busy and I was running. I passed this old woman, who was sitting on a bench, and she smiled at me. Her eyes had that knowing look about them. It was her, older, but still her, and she nodded as though she was still telling me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Your parents, your father is still alive, I thought?”
She pauses again, trying to compose herself, her voice changing again, becoming frightened again. “We weren’t close. When my mother died he died too. He brought me up, and when I turned sixteen, he stopped caring what I did or didn’t do. When I became pregnant I never told him. I just said I was leaving. He didn’t care.”
“Brothers, sisters, there was no one who would look for you?”
She seems frustrated now. “No, there’s no one else. I just disappeared, Malcolm. I just came out here. I saw the ocean and knew that I couldn’t get much farther away from them. I got a job, and then another one, and then started working for Terry. I just tried to disappear from all of them.”
It makes sense. It all makes sense. There’s always been something below the surface. There’s always been a secret. “This man, Michael, who is he? Is he capable of hurting you, of hurting Emily?” I think of Hardly’s father, Rab, and the bullies during my Kilmarnock school days.
She won’t answer though. She just keeps staring straight ahead, barely acknowledging that I’m holding her. “No one knows. No one knows, only you. I wasn’t going to tell you, but after what happened, after what you told me about your friend...”
By the time we make our way to the bed in the old motorhome it’s pitch dark and the only sound is the whistling of the night air. She lets me hold her, and we lie there, fully clothed, feeling each other’s warmth, until we fall asleep.
When the first lights of the morning squeeze through the blinds on the window, her breathing changes, and I know that she’s awake. Her words come out firmly and without hesitation. “I keep dreaming about her, Malcolm. I see her face, her little baby face. I can’t stop thinking about her face.” She pauses and takes a deep breath before continuing. “Now that it’s out, now that I’ve said it, I know what I have to do. I have to find her. I need to see her. I need to make sure that she’s okay. I’m going back there.”
CHAPTER 19
Things seem quieter, slower. It’s as though the weight of the night before is holding me down, weighing me down. I tinker with the motorhome, checking fluid levels, inspecting the tires, and spend long minutes staring at it, trying to keep my mind busy. Heather soaks her feet in the cold water of the lake, staring out at its greenness.
We eat, almost in silence, respecting each other’s thoughts. She touches my hand from time to time, and I try to smile, rubbing hers back, enjoying the comfort, the closeness.
I jump in the water, letting the coldness numb me, thinking about all the trips back to Scotland that I didn’t take, and all the phone calls from Hardly when he would ask me when I was coming home. I swim out and back, and when I surface she’s staring at me, waiting for me.
I pull myself up, and can feel the calmness coming from the still lake.
She’s sitting on a rock by the edge of the water, leaning forward, looking as beautiful and helpless as I’ve ever seen anyone look.
I think about the movie of my life that plays in my head. I think about my Dad, and, I think about Hardly. I think about his phone calls, his letters. The same Hardly, the same Hardly that climbed the tree with me, the same Hardly that had to go home to Rab, his father, every night.
As I watch Heather, and think of the journey ahead of her, I decide.
It has nothing to do with the blueness of her eyes, or the way her face tries to look strong yet pleading, at the same time. In fact, it really doesn’t even have anything to do with a little girl, who may or may not be called, Emily. It’s about chapping on the door and staring into a man’s face. It’s about taking in a young boy when there’s no one else to help him. It’s about doing what my Dad would do.
“You’re staring at me, Malcolm. Say something to me. Say anything.” She’s crying again.
“I don’t want to get old and have a list of things I haven’t done, Heather. I don’t want to have regrets.”
“I don’t understand. What does that mean, Malcolm?” She’s speaking quickly now, wiping at her eyes.
“I’m going to come with you. I’m going to come to Ontario with you. I’ll help you.”
She looks back at me, and shakes her head, telling me no, over and over again. It doesn’t matter of course. It almost feels good to me. I don’t feel like I’m the man who was pushed into the pool at his friend’s party. Instead, I feel like the boy who punched Stuart Douglas in the face to help my friend, and I haven’t felt like that boy in a very long time.
There’s an old song where the singer sings about his girlfriend moving in with him, and that he had to buy her a washing machine. Well, I already have a washing machine, but after our night at the Lake at the End of the World, it makes sense to be closer. In the song it happens quickly, but with us, it took from the beginning of my summer, that was supposed to be about maybes, and sex, but wasn’t, until early October.
The days after the trip we spend moving her belongings from her apartment to mine. She stops in front of my big windows, from time to time, looking out at the water, smiling. She’s glad to be here. I can tell. We unpack only the bare necessities, knowing that we’ll be leaving soon. We avoid talking about specific things, and in my mind I try to think of little beyond the obvious. I know that we’re going to Ontario, to find a ten year old girl, who may or may not be called Emily. I know that I have to ask some questions though.
“You need to tell me about him, Heather; I need to know what I’m walking into.”
“I know. I’ll tell you what I remember.” She sits on the edge of my bed, our bed, taking a break from arranging her figurines on top of a bookcase.
“He had this presence. It’s hard to explain. He was a large man, but that wasn’t it. He just had this way of being that made you want to listen to what he was going to say next. He’d talk about the power that he had in the town. He frightened me once. We pulled into a parking lot and he ran from the car to a group of men. There were lots of them, but when they turned and saw that it was him, they backed off. They let him through. He grabbed one of them, and pulled him to the ground. I looked away and couldn’t see what happened, but I could hear the sounds of the man as he was beaten. When he came back to the car his hands were bleeding, but he was smiling, happy.
“The other men didn’t step in?”
“That was the thing. They were afraid. There was always talk about him in town, talk that he was dirty, that he took the law into his own hands, but it’s a small town. People talk about each other all the time.”
“He? You mean, Michael? That’s who you mean?”
She keeps looking at the walls, not facing me, avoiding my gaze. Her voice is almost automatic and it seems as though she’s reading from a book, when she answers. “Yes, yes, of course, Michael. Michael.”
It’s not fear, or maybe it is. Maybe it’s the uncertainty, the unknown, but I have to ask, have to see if there’s another way. “I wonder if there’s someone who specializes in this, a detective, an investigator. I wonder if there’s somebody that could work with us, research it, find out more. There must be somebody that can help us to find Emily, find out where she is.”
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br /> I know that she must have thought about it, considered it, and she doesn’t hesitate in answering me. “I can’t Malcolm. I just can’t. I can’t take the chance that he’ll take her away, hide her away, if he knows that I’m looking for her. I have to do this myself. It’s time. I left it too long as it is. She’s ten, ten years old, and she’s my girl Malcolm, she’s my little girl.”
I don’t know children. I don’t have brothers or sisters. I have an aunt, my father’s sister, in Scotland, who has boys, cousins of mine. They’re younger though, and I had left my Scottish school, by the time they attended it. I remember them as rambunctious, unruly, boys, who were always getting under my father’s skin. My early girlfriend, who had wanted children seems like a long ago adventure, a youthful romance. When I think of her now, and my long ago reluctance to want a child, it seems like it was someone else living my life.
My Temporary Life Page 13
