Memories of You

by Margot Dalton

  While Vanessa watched in speechless outrage, Ari opened the book and pretended to read from it. “I just love Jason Weatherly,” he said in a loud, exaggerated voice. “When he smiles at me across the room in math class, I go all—”

  Vanessa screamed, dropped the receiver and lunged at her little brother.

  Ari dodged away from her and ran around the kitchen, still reading. “I go all shivery inside, and then I feel…”

  The teenager continued to scream. Steven, Jon’s elder son, watched idly from the adjoining family room where he lounged on a couch, watching television. None of the children seemed to be aware of Jon’s arrival on the scene.

  Vanessa tripped on the kitchen tiles and fell sprawling to her knees. She crouched on the floor, glaring furiously, long dark hair falling messily around her face.

  When Jon strode into the middle of the room, an abrupt silence fell. He crossed the kitchen, lifted the telephone and said, “Vanessa will call you back.”

  Then he hung up and turned to face his children.

  “Where’s Margaret?”

  Nobody answered. The only sounds were Vanessa’s heavy breathing and the roar of gunfire on the television.

  Jon looked from one young face to another. “Where’s Margaret?” he repeated.

  “In the garden,” Steven said at last. “She went out to pick some tomatoes for the salad.”

  “I see.” Jon turned to his younger son, who stood near the archway leading to the family room. “What’s that book, Ari?”

  “Van’s diary,” Ari said reluctantly.

  “What are you doing with your sister’s diary?” Jon asked. “You know better than to go into somebody else’s bedroom.”

  “It wasn’t in her room,” Ari said.

  Amy stood close behind him, lending support with her presence. She nodded earnestly.

  “Where was it?” Jon asked.

  “Under the couch.” Ari gestured toward Steven in the family room. “She left it right over there in plain sight. We found it when Margaret made us clean up our Lego.”

  “You horrible little monsters,” Vanessa muttered, getting to her feet. “Do something, Daddy,” she added bitterly. “You always let them get away with everything.”

  Jon looked at his elder daughter with a familiar mixture of sympathy and exasperation. At sixteen, Vanessa was a beautiful girl, and bright enough that she was already in her final year of high school. But her looks and personality were so similar to her mother’s that he often worried about her.

  Jon and Shelley Campbell had suffered through a dozen years of a stormy, unhappy marriage, complicated by the fact that they shared almost nothing in the way of tastes, dreams or attitudes. In fact, they shared nothing at all except their children, and Shelley’s interest in her offspring had always been so limited that even this tie was tenuous at best.

  Jon had met her when he she was nineteen and he was twenty-two. It had been immediately after the most distressing experience of his life, a painful time that he still remembered with frustrated sorrow.

  Lonely and desolate, Jon had been an easy target. He’d mistaken Shelley’s sexuality for warmth, her frenetic gaiety for intelligence, her possessiveness for loyalty. By the time he discovered his mistake, it was too late. She was pregnant with Steven, and both Jon and Shelley came from families where getting married was the only possible course of action.

  After Steven’s birth, Jon couldn’t bring himself to leave, for fear of losing his child, though the marriage was increasingly miserable. By the time Vanessa was born, less than two years later, Shelley had interests of her own and was seldom home.

  The twins had been the unexpected result of a final attempt at a reconciliation. Shelley was appalled when she discovered her third pregnancy. She demanded an abortion.

  Jon had talked her into carrying the twins to term, but it was the last straw for their marriage. Soon after the birth, angry and bitter, claiming that the kids were all he’d ever cared about, Shelley dumped all four children with him and left for good.

  At the moment she was living in Switzerland, using her lavish divorce settlement to support the young ski instructor who was her current lover. She barely managed a couple of trips a year back to the States to see her brood of growing children, and when she did fly in for visits, all of them were invariably hurt and disappointed by her flippant, erratic manner.

  Still, she was a beautiful woman, Jon thought ruefully. Even at forty, Shelley looked a lot like her older daughter, with the same violet-blue eyes, delicate complexion and slim figure. But Vanessa at least had an excuse for her selfish behaviour, since she was caught in the miserable throes of adolescence. Jon had hopes that his daughter might yet develop into a mature and caring person. Shelley, on the other hand, simply refused to grow up.

  Jon turned from Vanessa to look at Ari. “Just because Van left her diary out here doesn’t give you the right to read it,” he said. “Everybody’s entitled to privacy and respect for their belongings, Ari. Give me the book.”

  Ari moved forward silently and handed the diary to his father.

  Behind him, Amy’s green eyes filled with tears. Jon knew his children well enough to understand a little of what was going on with the twins.

  They’d never known the security of a mother who loved and cared about them. Over the years Jon had tried hard to make up for their loss, but he knew they were as hurt and confused as the older children by their mother’s carelessness. As a result, they tended to cling fiercely to familiar and comforting things.

  Now they’d been uprooted from the isolated ranch home they both loved. Their security was further disrupted by this move to a strange new environment, a different kind of school and a modern, unwelcoming house.

  Their loneliness and homesickness tore at Jon’s heart. He knelt on the kitchen floor and took Amy’s little body in his arms, reaching for her brother. “Come here, Ari,” he said.

  Ari hesitated, then pressed against him.

  “Tell Van you’re sorry,” Jon whispered. “Tell her you’ll never do it again.”

  Ari gulped, swallowed hard and turned to Vanessa. “We’re sorry,” he mumbled.

  “We won’t touch any of your stuff ever again,” Amy added.

  “Daddy, for God’s sake,” Vanessa began furiously. “Don’t let them get away with this! You should make them…”

  But Jon was holding the twins again, cuddling them tenderly. “How would you both like to come with me to the ranch this weekend?” he murmured against their dark curls.

  Ari’s gray eyes shone. “Really, Daddy?” he whispered huskily.

  “Really. But you have to be super-good between now and then.” Jon kissed Amy’s cheek and wiped her tears. “Now run and wash your face, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Let’s eat our supper.”

  While the twins ran out of the kitchen, he got up and seated himself at a big oak table that was neatly set for seven.

  When the twins came back, all four children joined him silently. A side door opened, and Margaret came in from the garden, carrying a basket of ripe tomatoes.

  The housekeeper was a big, friendly young woman with a mop of red hair and plump freckled arms. She had a boyfriend who worked on the oil rigs north of Edmonton, and who came home infrequently to visit his sweetheart. This erratic courtship seemed to suit both of them well enough, much to Jon’s relief. Margaret was the only housekeeper he’d ever found who was able to deal patiently and lovingly with all the children, and he dreaded the thought of losing her.

  She greeted Jon with a smile and carried the tomatoes to the sink.

  “What’s all this?” she asked when she saw Amy’s reddened cheeks.

  “They’ve been reading my diary,” Vanessa said sullenly. “But Daddy refuses to punish them, as usual. Little monsters,” she muttered, glowering at Amy, whose eyes began to glisten with tears again.

  “Poor little chicks.” Margaret ruffled Amy’s dark curls. “That’s all right, love. You know, Ari, you shou
ldn’t have touched that book,” she said, turning to the other twin. “Did you apologize to your sister? Poor Vanessa, she has to put with an awful lot from the pair of you. Steven Campbell, don’t you dare start eating till your daddy has a chance to dish up the food.”

  The tension left the room with her cheerful arrival and evenhanded approach. All the children watched as Margaret served bowls of salad and sliced tomatoes along with a macaroni casserole.

  Jon sat at the head of the table, looking around at the young faces that were so dear to him.

  The twins had obviously been comforted by their promised trip to the ranch. Even Vanessa appeared somewhat mollified. Only Steven was quiet, his handsome face looking bored.

  Steven resembled his father more than any of the other children, but nowadays he lacked any trace of Jon’s casual air or easy smile.

  Jon felt increasingly troubled about the boy.

  When Steve was a child, they’d had a warm, open relationship. Father and son had spent long hours together on their windswept prairie ranch as they fished, rode horses and tramped through the coulees. These days, though, Steve was slipping further away from the entire family, wrapped up in some mysterious world that Jon could no longer enter.

  “How are your classes, Steve?” he asked.

  The boy shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  Jon glanced at his elder son again, but didn’t press. Instead, he turned and addressed the twins. “Tom called me last night. He says the calves are just about ready to sell.”

  “What else did he say?” Ari asked.

  Tom Beatch was the foreman at the ranch, a grizzled old cowboy who was a great favorite with the twins.

  Jon told the children the news from Tom and the other cowboys, including the latest in Tom’s sporadic courtship of Caroline, who ran a lunch counter in a Saskatchewan border town.

  “Those two will never get together,” Margaret said placidly from the sink. “Tom Beatch doesn’t want to get married any more than my Eddie does.”

  “When’s Eddie coming back?” Jon asked the housekeeper.

  “Next month,” Margaret said, beaming. “He’ll be home for a whole week at least, then off north to look for work again.”

  Jon looked at the twins, whose animation at the mention of Tom seemed to have disappeared. They were picking at their food, looking disconsolate. Apparently, their homesickness was as deep as ever. He sighed and cut up a tomato, searching for something else to say.

  “Tom’s getting real worried about me,” he told the children finally. “He wonders what I’m going to do with myself for a whole winter here in the city.”

  Steven gazed out the window at the trees bordering the front driveway, clearly lost in his own thoughts. The twins exchanged an unhappy glance and continued to move bits of macaroni around on their plates while Margaret watched them.

  Only Vanessa, who seemed to have recovered from her sulks, was interested in what her father was saying. “I know what I’d do,” she told him. “I’d spend the whole day shopping. I’d buy every single thing I ever wanted, and spend all day trying clothes on.”

  Jon watched her pretty face, wondering whether her preoccupation with material things was just a teenage phase—something she would outgrow. “Well, Van, I know what I’m going to do, too,” he said calmly. “I’ve got it all planned. In fact, I started today.”

  “What’s that, Mr. C.?” Margaret got up and began to load the dishwasher.

  “I’m going back to school.” Jon helped himself to more casserole while the others watched in astonishment. “I had my first two classes today.”

  Vanessa’s jaw dropped. “Back to school?” she said at last. “Like, to college, you mean?”

  Jon smiled at his elder daughter. “Don’t look so amazed,” he said. “I took two years of college when I was young, then had to quit before I graduated. I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to finish my degree.”

  Vanessa gripped her fork and continued to stare at her father, aghast. “You’re going to university?“ she asked. “On the same campus with Steven? The same place I’ll be going next year?”

  “The very same,” Jon told her solemnly.

  She dropped her fork, speechless with horror. Privately, Jon was a little amused by her reaction, but took care not to show it. In fact, he often tried deliberately to ruffle Vanessa’s feathers to keep her from getting as self-absorbed as her mother.

  But this time, judging from her look of whitelipped shock, it seemed Jon might have pushed his daughter too far.

  “It’s a big campus, Van,” he told her gently. “Thousands and thousands of students. Nobody’s going to notice me.”

  “But what if you’re in one of my classes next year?” she wailed. “God, I’d just die.”

  Steven’s lip twisted. “Oh, shut up, Van,” he muttered. “Why do you always have to be such an idiot?”

  Jon frowned at him and turned back to Vanessa. “I won’t be in any of your classes, You’ll be a freshman. I’ll be taking fourth-year courses next term.”

  “But having my father on the same campus…” Her face twisted with distress. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said tragically. “The totally, absolute worst.” She pushed her chair back, got up and ran from the room.

  There was a brief silence in the kitchen.

  “She’ll get over it, Mr. C.,” Margaret said comfortably. “She gets upset about a dozen times a day, and every time it’s the very worst thing that’s ever happened to her.”

  Jon looked at the doorway where his daughter had vanished. “I’ll talk to her later,” he said. “She won’t be so upset once she realizes that our paths are never likely to cross on that big campus.”

  Steven’s brief spurt of animation had vanished. He ate macaroni in gloomy silence.

  “How about you, son?” Jon asked. “Will it bother you, having me on campus?”

  Steven shrugged. “Why should I care?”

  “You don’t seem to care about much of anything these days,” Jon said, trying to keep his voice casual. “What’s the matter, son?”

  Steven looked at him with a brief flash of emotion, and Jon held his breath, hoping the boy was about to say something meaningful. But the moment passed and they all returned to their meal, eating in silence while Margaret continued to load the dishwasher.

  A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER, on a hill near the house, Ari lay on his stomach in the slanted rays of evening sunlight. He drummed his feet on the ground as he chewed a spear of grass.

  “Churks,” he muttered. “Fizzlespit.”

  Amy looked at her brother with tense sympathy. These words were part of their private language, seldom used and shockingly profane. The fact that Ari was saying them now showed how sad and lonely he was.

  “We get to fly to the ranch this weekend,” she said, watching a dark green beetle as it lumbered through the tangle of grass. “Daddy promised. It’ll be fun to see Tom and ride our ponies, won’t it?”

  But Ari wasn’t ready to be comforted. “I wish Daddy would get married.” He plucked another blade of grass. “We need a mother.”

  Amy turned to him in confusion. “We already have a mother.”

  “I mean, we need one who lives in our house. If Daddy got married, we’d all move back to the ranch and live together and be like a family.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked wistfully.

  “If Daddy was married, he wouldn’t worry so much what school we went to. When Mummy was home, Daddy and Van and Steve all lived on the ranch together. I hate being in this place.”

  “It’s not so bad here,” Amy said loyally. “Daddy wants us to go to school without having to ride so far on the bus, and Mrs. Klassen is really nice. I like the aquarium at school,” she added. “And the model of the hydrogen molecule. Don’t you?”

  Ari scowled. “I want to go back to the ranch. We need to find a lady for Daddy to marry.”

  “Maybe he could marry Margaret.”

&
nbsp; “You’re so dumb,” Ari said. “Daddy could never marry Margaret.”

  “Why not? She’s nice to us all the time, and she cooks and cleans and everything.”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted after a few moments of deep concentration. “But it can’t be Margaret. It needs to be somebody different”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know,” Ari repeated. “But I’ll think of somebody.”

  The twins lay quietly for a while. Then, like birds or fish moving in response to an invisible signal, they got up at the same moment and began to run, swooping down the grassy hill with their arms spread wide and their legs flying.

  They ran until they were exhausted, then climbed another hill, heading for one of their favorite places on the new farm. It was the oldest building on the property, a big stone barn nestled at the foot of the hill and surrounded by trees.

  The previous owner had used the barn to house a couple of vintage automobiles, and several improvements had been added to protect the valuable cars. All the windows were stoutly boarded, and a metal overheard door that was operated from outside by pressing a button had been installed. The control button was inside a panel that could be secured with a padlock.

  Although the lock had been removed along with the contents of the barn, the control button remained functional. Ari loved to press it and watch the big door slowly open and close, sliding as if by magic.

  When Vanessa reported on the existence of the automatic door, Margaret had immediately forbade the twins to play anywhere near the barn because they might get locked inside, a suggestion that made Ari scoff privately in derision.

  “How could we get locked inside?” he asked Amy when they were alone. “You have to be outside to push the button. Margaret doesn’t know anything.”

  So they ignored the housekeeper’s order and continued to frequent the barn. Amy was a little anxious about their disobedience, but her loyalty to Ari always outweighed her caution.

  Now she followed him down the hill and crept along behind him as he edged toward the old building. The door was open which meant that somebody was inside.