Looking at the Moon (18 page)

“It is not!” cried Clare. “It really works! Louise and I found out all sorts of things—we know who we're going to marry!
You
don't have to do it, Norah,” she added coldly. “Come on, Janet. Put your hands there. That's right, our fingers should just barely touch. Don't put any
weight on it. Now—
Ouija, Ouija
…” Her voice sounded ridiculously ghoulish. “Tell us … tell us the name of Janet's future husband.”

Janet giggled. “Quiet!” hissed Clare. “You have to concentrate.”

They were all silent. The waves lapped softly outside. Then, very slowly, the planchette moved over the board on its three felt-covered feet.

Janet gasped. “Keep your hands on it!” Clare warned her. The tiny table went as far as the letter
H
and stopped.

“That's the first letter of his name,” said Clare. “What's next, Ouija?”

Slowly the pointer moved to
A
.

“It's laughing at you,” said Norah. “HA!”

The others ignored her. “Now
R,
” whispered Janet. “But now it won't move—why not?”

“Is it another
R
?” asked Clare. The planchette swung over to the word yes.

“Har, har,” whispered Norah.

“Y!”
said Clare. “Harry! Is the name ‘Harry', Ouija?”

Yes, answered the planchette.

Clare and Janet dropped their hands in their laps. “I told you it worked!” said Clare. “Do you know any Harrys, Janet?”

“No,” whispered Janet. Her hands were trembling. “You mean, that's who I'm going to marry?” She began to smile. “That means I'll
get
married one day!”

Norah scowled. “Clare was moving it, Janet. I told you, it's just a trick.”

Clare looked disgusted. “All right then—
you
try it, with Janet. Then you can't say I'm moving it. Janet wouldn't cheat.”

Norah shrugged and placed her fingers on the planchette.

“Ask it who
you're
going to marry,” ordered Clare.

“You ask it,” retorted Norah. “I'm not speaking to some dumb board.”

“No, it has to be one of you two.”

“I'll do it, then,” said Janet. “Ouija, Ouija,” she crooned, her voice sounding even sillier than Clare's. “Tell us who Norah is going to marry.”

Norah waited, confident that the pointer wouldn't move at all. Then it slid across the board so fast she could hardly keep her fingers on it. “Stop it, Janet!” she cried. “I thought you weren't going to cheat!”

“I'm not doing it!” whispered Janet frantically. “Don't let go, Norah!”

“C!” cried Clare triumphantly.

In an instant Norah's mind swept from disbelief to acute disappointment that it wasn't an
A
.

“A … N … T … S … A … Y,”
chanted Clare, as the planchette almost zoomed around, making a tiny scraping sound. “Is that all, Ouija? Yes.”

“CANTSAY—what kind of name is that?” said Janet. “Maybe it's a last name.”

“No,” said Norah suddenly. “It's
can't say
. It doesn't know.” That was almost a relief—it still left the possibility open for Andrew.

Then she shivered. It really did seem to work—she knew Janet hadn't been moving it. “Okay,” she admitted to Clare. “I believe it now. But I don't believe it's magic. There must be some explanation.”

“Louise's father says that we will it to go to certain letters. But
I
think it's supernatural. You can even talk to someone who's dead—do you want to try?”

“No!” shuddered Janet. “That's too spooky. Let's ask it how many children I'm going to have—me and Harry, that is,” she snickered.

They crouched around the board again and Norah tried it once more with Janet. A strange thrill washed over her, as if they were doing something forbidden.

“Three!” said Janet. “Good, because that's exactly how many I've always wanted. Ask it how many Clare's going to have.”

They couldn't stop now. Again and again they asked questions and the Ouija board obliged them every time. They found out that Clare would have no children and that Norah would have two (so I
will
marry Andrew, she concluded); that Clare would travel and Janet would pass math.

“Ask it when the war will be over,” said Norah.

But the Ouija wouldn't budge. “I guess it doesn't know,” said Clare. “It can't know everything.”

Janet yawned. “I can hardly keep my eyes open.”

They heard Flo brushing her teeth below them and hid the Ouija board under Clare's bed again, guessing that she wouldn't approve.

After the others were asleep, Norah tossed restlessly and finally got up again. She shrugged her clothes on over her pyjamas and wandered along the shoreline. Once she was back in the city she was going to miss this freedom of getting up at night if she wanted to.

Two loons called back and forth to each other in a yearning warble. Poring over the Ouija board had made her feel slightly sick, as if she had eaten too much rich food. It had been fascinating and strange, but she didn't want to do it again.

Up in the cottage the lower lights were off and the upper ones on; the Elders must be getting ready for bed. Norah fetched a flashlight from the boathouse and made her way to her rock. She studied the stars and found the Great Bear, which she had now learned to call the Big Dipper. The Northern Lights rippled across the sky in shifting bands of greenish-white. Their majestic, eerie beauty was almost frightening.

Norah glanced down at Andrew's dark cabin. Where was he tonight? If only he were up here, confiding in her again; she began to go over that whole magical encounter, as she had done a million times already.

Just as she began to feel too cold to stay out any longer, she heard the
Putt-Putt
arrive at the dock. Andrew's laugh rang out—someone was with him. A light female voice joined his in singing “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.” Then two dark figures came into view behind the cottage. In the light from the back windows Norah could make out the other singer—Lois Mitchell.

The two of them hung onto each other and stumbled down the hill to Andrew's cabin. Its windows lit up after they went in. Norah couldn't help slipping down to eaves-drop, even though the longer she heard them together the worse it made her feel.

The window was open a crack. “I can't stay long,” Lois was saying.

“Just a little while,” said Andrew. “I managed to get two bottles of beer.”

“Well … maybe half an hour,” said Lois.

This was just the opposite of the party, when Andrew had been the one to want Lois to go. Now his voice was tender and Norah shook with jealousy. Why am I listening? she asked herself. She was filled with the same kind of self-disgust she'd felt over the Ouija board. But she couldn't seem to leave, and moved farther into the bushes by the window.

“It's so maddening that we're not going to the same university,” said Lois. “Will you come and visit me at Queen's?”

Norah was glad to hear the hesitation in Andrew's voice before he mumbled, “I'll have to see.” At least he'd only told
her
his secret.

She tried to calm herself. After all, it was normal for Andrew to have girl friends until Norah was old enough to be one. She knew he'd had them before—Janet had told her. And Lois was acting so silly, laughing and teasing—surely he didn't take her seriously.

Andrew and Lois began to dance to their own music,
humming “You'll Never Know.” That's
our
song! Norah whispered between clenched teeth. She was relieved to hear them sit down again but now it was worse—the whimpers and endearments of kissing began.

Norah couldn't stand this—she really had to leave. She began to unbend her cramped legs, but Lois's next words made her freeze.

“I'm so lucky that you picked
me,
” she said, in her ironic voice. “Do you realize how many girls are in love with you? Alma Field is crazy about you. So is Ceci Johnson. And that funny little English girl—I saw the way she looked at you that day in town. At the party too—she was watching your every move, and glaring at
me
!”

“Oh,
Norah,
” laughed Andrew. “Yes, she does seem to have a crush on me. I try not to encourage it, but she shadows me like a hawk! She's a good kid, though.”

Somehow Norah managed to make her legs move. Forcing her body to be silent, she crept out of the bushes and stumbled up the hill and down the steps to the boathouse, forgetting to use her flashlight. She kicked off her shoes and crawled under the covers without taking her clothes off. Then she crammed her blanket into her mouth so the huge sobs bursting out of her wouldn't wake the others.

A kid. “Oh,
Norah,
” he had said in a dismissing tone. He had
laughed
at her. He had called her love a crush.

He didn't love her. He never had.

A wave of pain crashed over her.
“Ohhh,”
she wailed, hardly caring now if the others woke up. But they slept
on. Norah cried until her whole body ached. Then she lay rigid and stared at the wall, not thinking or feeling anything at all.

16

“I'll Never Smile Again”

T
he next day Andrew and Lois seemed to have become a couple. Andrew invited her for dinner and she came early to spend the afternoon swimming with the family.

“Such a pretty girl,” said Aunt Dorothy.

“Very polite, too,” added Aunt Bea.

“And she comes from a good family,” pronounced Aunt Florence. “I must write to Constance and tell her how much we like her.”

The aunts switched to the topic of possible husbands for Princess Elizabeth, as if she, too, were an acquaintance.

“So Lois gets the seal of approval,” whispered Flo, lying beside Norah on the dock. “They'll have them married in no time!
I
don't think it's going to last long. She doesn't take him seriously, but he can't see that yet.”

Norah glanced at her, surprised to hear Flo sounding jealous too. Maybe it
wouldn't
last. And maybe Lois wouldn't like him any more when she heard that he wasn't going to fight. But even if Andrew stopped seeing Lois, Norah could never forget what he thought of
her
. Andrew
was as friendly as ever today but she could only hear “good kid” behind every word he said to her.

The trouble was … she still loved him. She watched him climb up the ladder, panting and dripping. He shook his wet hair at Lois and his musical laugh rang out when she shrieked.

I don't
want
to love him, thought Norah. But she couldn't help it. The rest of her life was ruined; she would always love him and he would never love her back. All day she kept having to escape from everyone to have a cry—she, who had always been proud of the fact that she
never
cried. She hid her face in her towel as tears threatened once more.

“I'll never smile again,” crooned the phonograph they'd brought out onto the dock. Norah dived into the lake to cool her agony.

“Will you be our stage manager, Norah?” Gavin asked her that night. He and the rest of the Fearless Four were putting on a play for the last evening. “We need someone to pull the curtain and things.”

“Sure,” shrugged Norah. She listened dully while Gavin told her the plot. “Creature is the star!” he grinned.

“I'll help you make some costumes,” Norah told him. At least it would give her something to do.

Picking blueberries was another distraction. “With jam about to be rationed I want as many as you can find,” Hanny told the children the next morning. Aunt Anne, Aunt Dorothy and Aunt Mary joined Hanny for a jam-making marathon. For a couple of days the sweet heavy scent of cooked berries filled the cottage. Norah helped
sterilize jars and melt paraffin. In Toronto she retreated to the kitchen with Hanny whenever Aunt Florence was too much to bear. Now she used this kitchen for a refuge from Andrew.

O
N THE AFTERNOON
they finished all the berries, Norah sat dully on the dock wondering what to do with herself.
Wuthering Heights
lay abandoned beside her; it was too painful to read a story about love.

The
Putt-Putt
appeared around the point; Andrew's arm waved. Norah jumped up to escape him, but he was calling her name and she had to wait.

“Would you like to go out in the canoe?” he asked as soon as he landed. “There's something I have to talk to you about.” Norah flushed—whenever she encountered him she felt ashamed.

“No thanks,” she said as coolly as she could manage. She ran up the steps before he could say more.

He tried again that evening, actually turning up at the boathouse when they were getting ready for bed. “Norah!” he called up.

She stuck her head out the window.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

“No thanks,” said Norah. “I'm already in my pyjamas.” She withdrew her head quickly, but not before she had seen an apologetic look on Andrew's face. Part of her wondered what he wanted, but she was no longer strong enough to be alone with him, not when she knew what he thought of her.

He probably wants to talk about how he's going to tell the Elders, she decided. Well, he'll just have to work it out by himself. She tried to be angry with him, but she was filled with a rush of yearning. She put out her head again and watched his back as he walked slowly up the steps to the cottage.

“Imagine Norah turning down a walk with Andrew,” taunted Clare.

Janet looked puzzled. “But Norah doesn't like Andrew.”

“That's right—I don't,” said Norah stiffly.

“Then you've changed,” said Clare.

“Why did Andrew want to go for a walk with just you?” asked Flo.