The Latchkey Kid

by Helen Forrester

  His quick eye also registered with some interest that not one of the ladies present, as far as he could judge, belonged to his mother’s circle. This quiet group of people looked so simple and unassuming that at first he could not think what made them interesting to him, and then he realized that they gave every appearance of complete sincerity. Like Isobel, they were what they looked, quiet people doing very necessary jobs and at that moment grieving for one of their number who had left them.

  He thought that he left the church unnoticed, but Isobel saw him as she stepped out of her pew, and, as far as anything could penetrate to her at such a time, she was touched by his solicitude.

  It had been apparent to Hank for some time that, in spite of repeating Grade 12 at school, he was likely to fail his exams again. French and Ukrainian, mathematics and chemistry bored him to the point of insanity; only in music and English could he hope to get decent marks. On December 28 he would be twenty years old, and he wondered bitterly when he might be allowed to grow up. He decided to consult Mr. Dixon, his English teacher, who was also his counsellor and, therefore, knew more about him than did the other teachers.

  Mr. Dixon, friend of Mrs. Murphy and conductor, in his spare time, of the amateur orchestra, had accidentally launched Hank on his writing career a few years earlier by encouraging him to enter an essay competition sponsored by a service club. The essay, on “The Dangers of Smoking”, had cost Hank a number of Sundays of hard work, and he estimated that he must have smoked at least eight packs of cigarettes while writing it, but to his astonishment it had won him a hundred dollars. He looked at Mr. Dixon with new respect and, to that gentleman’s delight, really began to work hard.

  On the Monday morning after Isobel had advised him to accept his publisher’s invitation to go to New York, he went to see Mr. Dixon.

  Mr. Dixon could hardly believe his ears as Hank poured into them the story of the book and its apparent success. He immediately insisted that Hank should tell his parents, and warned him of the evils of leaving school without succeeding in obtaining the magical Grade 12, without which there was no hope, he insisted, of leading a normal life. Hank already had the feeling that his life was going to be anything but normal and was adamant about leaving school, but agreed reluctantly to tell his father when next he came home. The clinching argument that Mr. Dixon made about informing his father of his literary success was that probably Hank would need help in investing discreetly the earnings of the book, and it was well known that Mr. Stych was an astute businessman. Hank was the product of a boom town and knew that money earned money extremely fast; with luck, he could double and treble his capital by investment in Tollemarche.

  Mr. Dixon heaved a sigh of relief at having gained at least one point, and decided that the question of leaving school could be left to the parents and the Principal. Hank was grateful to him for his promise not to discuss either matter with anybody.

  Hank went home to lunch.

  His mother was in, seated at her kitchen desk and gloomily going over the month’s bills – her Persian lamb coat made the Hudson’s Bay bill look enormous, and, at the rate she was paying it off, it would take until next Easter to clear it.

  “Like a bologna sandwich?” he asked her, as he made one for himself.

  She grunted assent, and he filled the coffee percolator, set it on on the stove and then rooted around in the refrigerator for the ketchup, while he wondered how to approach the subject of his going to New York.

  “Ma,” he said in a tentative tone of voice, his face going slowly pink with the strain of trying to communicate with his despondent parent.

  “Yeah?” she queried absently. She would wear the Persian lamb to the meeting of the Symphony Orchestra Club tonight, even if it was a bit warm.

  He thrust a sandwich on a plate in front of her. “Ma, I’m going on a trip for a week.”

  Mrs. Stych swivelled round on her stool and forced herself to attend to her son.

  “Y’are?” She sounded puzzled.

  “Yeah. I’m going to New York for a week.”

  He told himself that it was ridiculous for him to be nearly trembling with fear, wondering what form her explosion would take.

  She frowned at him for a moment; then her brow cleared.

  “With the United Nations Debating Club?”

  Hank accepted the temporary reprieve thankfully. Darn it, why hadn’t he thought of that himself? Undermining his mother’s social prestige was one thing, having to tell her about the book himself was another.

  Her face darkened again.

  “Who’s payin’?”

  “I’m going to pay some. You know I got a bit saved. The rest they’re paying.” He hoped she would not ask who “they” were.

  “Well, I guess that’s O.K. When you goin’?” It was typical of her that, although she regarded Hank as a child, she did not ask who would be supervising the group she imagined would be travelling to New York.

  “Thursday. Be back next Wednesday.”

  “O.K. Y’ father will be home by then.”

  His legs began to feel weak and he sat down hard on a red plastic and chrome chair, while he held his sandwich suspended half-way to his mouth. He remembered Mr. Dixon’s persuasive arguments regarding telling his father about The Cheaper Sex, but he doubted if Mr. Dixon knew what kind of father he had.

  “That’s good,” he said dully, putting down his half-eaten sandwich.

  The book should have been in Tollemarche’s only bookstore for several weeks; however, when Hank casually sauntered in and asked for a copy, old Mr. Pascall said it had not arrived. It would probably come in the next shipment from Toronto.

  Hank had no doubt that, sooner or later, old tabby-cats like the MacDonald woman would get wind of it and would give his mother hell about it. His mother would never get round to reading it, and he hoped fervently that his father would not either. Anyway, he consoled himself, nobody in Tollemarche over the age of forty ever really read a book, though they talked about them.

  He swallowed the last of his coffee and went to his room to inspect his wardrobe. He decided to put his two drip-dry shirts through the washer that night. His one decent pair of dark pants and his formal suit were too small for him. The rest consisted largely of T-shirts and jeans. Mind made up, he returned to the kitchen, picked up his zipper jacket and departed, officially for school, but in fact for the town to do some shopping. His mother, busy checking the T. Eaton Company’s report on the state of her account there, did not bother to reply to his monosyllabic “Bye.”

  Albert Tailors, in the shape of old Mr. Albert himself, took one look at him and channelled him to the Teens Room, which was festooned with guitars and pictures of pop singers. But Hank protested firmly that he wanted a dark business suit, three white drip-dry shirts, dark socks and tie, black shoes, a light overcoat and an appropriate hat. The clerk inquired delicately if it would be cash or charge.

  “Cash,” snapped Hank irritably, and was hastily rechannelled into the men’s ready-tailored department. The clerk stopped for a moment and whispered to Mr. Albert, who, realizing that instead of selling a pair of jeans he really had a customer with money to spend, hurried towards Hank.

  “I want a good suit. It must look real good. But I gotta have it now.”

  Mr. Albert humphed and measured.

  The first suit was too loud, even Hank knew that.

  “No. I want the kind of thing – the kind of thing these big oil executives wear.”

  Mr. Albert laughed, a trifle scornfully. “It would cost about a hundred and twenty dollars at least.”

  “So what?” replied Hank belligerently. “That’s what I want. I gotta go to New York. I wanna look right.”

  Mr. Albert’s superior smile waned. He sent the clerk hurrying into the back room to get a dark grey suit which had just come in, and then said: “Going to New York? You’re a lucky fellow.”

  “Yeah,” said Hank noncommittally, as he examined himself critically in Mr. Albert’s b
ig triple mirror. He was not pleased with what he saw. He tried drawing in his stomach and straightening his shoulders, as instructed by the physical education teacher. The result was better, but not his idea of a distinguished author.

  He was soon eased, pinned and patted into the grey suit, the cuffs hastily turned up by the clerk, the back smoothed by Mr. Albert. It looked weird over a T-shirt, but it undoubtedly fitted quite well, except for the length of the pants.

  He gyrated carefully so that he could see himself at all angles. My, he did look different. The good cut made his shoulders look their proper width and reduced his generally plump look. He grinned at himself. He looked a man at last, not a school student.

  Fascinated by this new vision of himself, he continued to stare. He Would like Isobel and Dorothy to see him like this.

  Mr. Albert’s voice came from a distance: “You’ll need a good white shirt with it, and a tie…” Mr. Albert considered ties. “One in a quiet red, I think. And plain black shoes.”

  Hank did not hear. He was still staring at himself in the mirror, seeing himself for the first time as a man, not a boy. In that moment, his uncertain struggle towards manhood was over. He had always been taught by women, with the exception of Mr. Dixon, and ignored by his parents. Unthreatened by war service, he found, like his friends, that the only way to prove to himself that he was grown up was to chase, and lie with, innumerable young women. Some of his friends had married while still in high school, and all of them, married or single, were agreed that sex was a dissatisfying pastime. None of them had as yet discovered a deep, rewarding love.

  Now Mr. Albert, with more ability than Hank thought such an old fogey could exhibit, had shown him that he could look quite as dignified as Captain Dawson, not a bent peasant like Grandfather Palichuk or a rugged, outdoor type like his father, but a very respectable townsman called Hank Stych.

  Hank was suddenly deeply grateful to old Mr. Albert for taking him seriously. He glowed, as he came out of his trance, and said: “I’ll take it. Do you think you could find me a dinner suit as well?”

  CHAPTER 7

  In the eyes of most Albertans, Tollemarche was a tourist centre second only to Calgary and Edmonton. In order to encourage the winter tourist industry, it had a winter fair featuring exhibitions of interest to farmers, and many winter sport events. Of recent years, the fair had been lengthened into a fortnight-long frolic called Edwardian Days, finishing two weeks before Christmas. The city dressed up in Edwardian clothes, shop windows showed displays of Edwardian families enjoying Christmas, the restaurants served such Edwardian delicacies as Oxford sausages and English beef-and-kidney pie, and the bars offered large glasses of white wine cup. The Tollemarche ladies, in bonnets and cartwheel hats, gave teas at which they coyly sipped at China tea flavoured with lemon and mint. In the evenings, skating parties were held under coloured lights, and skates flashed under long skirts to tunes like “The Blue Danube”. The climax of the fortnight was the Grand Edwardian Ball, which was the most important occasion of the whole winter, and thinking up suitable costumes for this event kept the ladies occupied for weeks beforehand.

  The greatest complication about any ball is that one requires menfolk with whom to attend it. Most of the year, the matrons of Tollemarche regarded their husbands as nuisances better out of the house, but the ball was an occasion for which husbands, sweethearts, even brothers, were in great demand. Young women married to salesmen, for once, took an interest in where their husbands would be on the great day; the older men, who ricocheted between various business interests, were lectured steadily, any time they put in an appearance at home, on the necessity of being in Tollemarche at this time; and those males who were doomed to spend their lives in Tollemarche found themselves with intolerable lists of jobs to be done, from laying out backyard skating rinks to pinning up the hems on their female relatives’ costumes.

  While Mr. Stych was canoeing back down a tributary of the Mackenzie, already dangerous with chunks of ice, to an appointment with a helicopter, Mr. Frizzell was trying on his last year’s brocade waistcoat and finding it too small; Mr. MacDonald, Ian’s father, was winding up a trying compensation case for his insurance company at Vermilion; and Mr. MacDonald (oil) was trying to explain to his superiors in Sarnia, Ontario, why he must be back in a place like Tollemarche by the middle of December. In the ornate new council chamber, Mayor Murphy was trying to convince the city council that to be a real Edwardian Mayor he ought to wear mayoral robes, as they did in England; the newly extended hospital was bracing itself for additional accident cases; and Hank Stych stood in the airport at Calgary waiting for a local plane to take him north to Tollemarche.

  Though he had found New York impressive, the people did not seem to him very different from those of Tollemarche. His publishers had been smoothly charming and undoubtedly a little surprised to find their backwoods author a careful, quite business-like man in a town suit, who would not sign anything until he had read the small print several times and understood it thoroughly.

  Full marks to Isobel, Hank thought grimly; she had done a lot of homework trying to check what his rights were regarding serialization, filming and translation, and had primed him well. He had met the press at a cocktail party and had stood there answering impertinent questions with disconcerting honesty, a glass of ginger ale in one hand and a canapé in the other; when he could not immediately think of an answer he nibbled the canapé and viewed the questioner with cold button eyes. His childhood exposure to life in the streets of a western town, still so new that most of the people who had founded it were still alive, had left him with no illusions about people or their motives, and it was always for the motive behind the question that he looked.

  Now, as he waited for his flight, he felt exhausted, as if he had been playing an enormously difficult game of poker for high stakes. And yet, in spite of the fatigue, he felt good, as if for the first time in his life he had really stretched himself and grown up. He knew that basically he had enjoyed the careful battle of wits.

  In his bag was a tiny music box in the shape of a windmill, bought specially from Macy’s for Isobel, and a stuffed monkey for Dorothy to sit on her bed. He had also rather reluctantly bought a box of chocolates for his mother and a box of cigars for his father.

  On the aircraft the stewardess brought him a copy of the Tollemarche Advent. The preparations for Edwardian Days were not yet featured on the front page, but an inner page had a half column on the redecorating of the main hotel’s ballroom for the Edwardian Ball. He let the paper fall into his lap.

  Up to now, he had always competed in the skating events and had escorted one of his classmates to the Teens’ Square Dance, held well away from the elegant ball. Now he had a sudden ambition to go to the ball. Like Cinderella, he told himself with a grin. But there was more to it than that. Attendance at the ball indicated considerable standing in the adult world, and he had a sudden savage desire to show his parents, who would be there, that he had made it on his own, without any help from them. The tickets alone were so expensive, not to speak of the need for a good costume, that they would realize that inexplicably he had had some financial success.

  He considered taking Dorothy, but she was only seventeen, too young to hold her own in a possibly difficult encounter with the élite of Tollemarche. He wondered if he dared ask Isobel. She had been widowed for five months, very nearly. Did she go out now and, if so, with whom? He felt a pang of jealousy, which was intensified when he remembered the smart army officers who had been at her husband’s memorial service. Had any of them made any approaches to her?

  He brushed the newspaper angrily off his lap and told himself not to be a fool. She was seven years older than he was. She’d never look at him.

  He arrived home at one in the morning. His mother was not yet in; presumably she had gone to a party. He made himself a cup of coffee and then, feeling deflated and not a little depressed, went to bed.

  Isobel and Dorothy were battling their way ag
ainst the wind down to the bus stop, the following morning, when they met Hank hunched up in his old black zipper jacket and a pair of earmuffs, which gave him a quaintly catlike appearance. He had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, which were, as usual, at least two inches too short, and tucked under one arm were one or two school-books. His face was pinched with cold and he looked rather dejected, but he greeted them heartily.

  “Hiyer, babe?” he said to Dorothy, and: “Hi, Isobel.”

  “Hello, Hank,” they said in chorus from the depths of the fur collars of their coats.

  They were burning to know how he had got on in New York, and Isobel asked him.

  “I’m rich, ma’am. I’m rich. Book’s doing fine – going into paperbacks next year, and they confirmed about the film.”

  “Oh, Hank, how exciting!” exclaimed Isobel, her face going even pinker than the wind had made it. “Congratulations!” Then she noticed the books. “Are you going to school?” she asked.

  Hank looked guilty.

  “No, but I haven’t told Ma yet, so I came out as if I were going to school.”

  “Hank, you are naughty,” Dorothy chided. “It’s going to be all over town – in fact, I can’t think why it isn’t already – and your mother will be the last to know.”

  He turned up his inadequate collar and executed a dance step or two to keep his circulation going.