Once We Had a Country (16 page)

“You don’t really want him married,” Maggie told her then. “You’d rather have him to yourself.”

By that point she was too old to be grounded or sent to her room, so Gran’s only response was a hurt silence. Maggie should have felt guilty about it, but after a childhood assuming it was a requirement to love her grandmother, she had realized she didn’t even like her very much. All through Maggie’s years of high school, Gran had taken every opportunity to tell her how to live her life, her favourite topic being the sacred temple of a girl’s body and the dangers of young men. It was ridiculous of her to dwell on it, because Maggie never dated anyone. She knew she needed to win a scholarship if she wanted to attend college, and she told herself she didn’t have time for boys.

For that reason, it surprised her when, in the spring of 1966, Peter Leggat asked her to the senior prom. All year in Latin class she’d sat behind him, admiring the back of his head and growing weak in the knees when he conjugated verbs. They’d barely spoken to each other, though, and she was so startled by his invitation that she wasn’t
able to feign indifference. Right away she blurted out a yes.

Afterward, she made up for it by not telling Gran or her father. On her own she bought a pair of pointy blue shoes and a chiffon dress with cape sleeves and an over-skirt that the saleslady said would twirl nicely in a waltz, leaving Maggie distressed because she had never waltzed in her life. Once she’d snuck the outfit into her closet, it seemed quite natural to say nothing to anyone until the night itself.

That evening, while her father watched television downstairs, she put on the dress and shoes, then crept into his room, never before having entered it on her own. Her mother’s dressing table was against the far wall. Maggie had often peered at it from the hallway when her father wasn’t there, studying her reflection in the mirror. Now, drawing close, she examined the things spread across the table’s surface: the pots of cream, the perfume bottles and lipsticks, a wooden jewellery box embossed with metal hearts. In a small pewter frame was a photograph of her mother at seventeen or eighteen, sitting on a bicycle with her hair pulled back, wearing a long grey coat that hung past her knees, smiling at some secret thought.

Maggie picked up a tube of lipstick from the table and removed the cap. She had already put the stick to her lips when she realized it stank foully, and she fled to the bathroom so she could wipe the stuff off.

Downstairs, she waited by the edge of the living room until her father turned to see why she was lingering. He took in the chiffon dress and the pointy shoes, and suddenly she apprehended just how preposterous she must look.

“Tonight’s the prom,” she told him. “Peter Leggat’s taking me.” She said it with an air of confidence, but it didn’t sound right, even to her.

“Who’s Peter Leggat?”

“Just a boy,” she replied. “I don’t know him very well.” Realizing how that might sound, she added, “He’s Catholic, I think.” But that sounded no better. She waited for her father to tell her she couldn’t go.

“I can see your knees,” was all he said.

“You can’t,” she insisted.

“I can almost see them, then.”

“You want me to put on something else?” It was a stupid thing to say, because she had nothing else to wear. She almost added, “You want me to stay home?” If he said so, she’d do it gladly. Anything was better than the look spreading across his face, one she’d never quite seen before. There had only been a hint of it those times she’d asked him to let her attend a slumber party or an overnight school trip. From those hints alone she’d learned to avoid situations where he might gain the forlorn expression he wore now.

A vision came to her of how it would go if she went. Every dance, Peter Leggat would step on her toes and stick his tongue in her ear, and afterward he’d drive her to Green Lake so he could slide a hand under her dress while they sat on the beach. She’d be so worried about her father that she’d barely perceive the movement of Peter’s fingers, tentative as he waited for her rebuke. She wouldn’t say a word because her mind would be back in the house, imagining how it would have been if she’d stayed behind to watch
Gilligan’s Island
, and she would barely be paying attention until Peter Leggat reached the wet centre of her.

When he appeared on the doorstep, clutching a pink corsage with his parents’ car running in the drive, Maggie told him her father was ill and she couldn’t go. It was a surprise to her when Peter looked relieved. She should have been glad, but it made her furious, and she almost changed her mind. Had he invited her on a bet? Probably his mother put him up to it. On the spot, Maggie decided that Peter Leggat was a scrawny, pimply, ninety-nine-pound weakling. What had she been thinking?

After he drove away, she stormed into the living room.

“I’m not going,” she declared. “I hope you’re happy.” She couldn’t quite escape upstairs quickly enough to avoid seeing her father’s stunned expression.

In her room, she entertained a fantasy of Peter Leggat driving wildly around Syracuse, overcome by regret, then returning to beg her forgiveness. When a knock came at her door, for a second she believed it was him. But it was her father, head down, staring at the carpet.

“You know, it’s all right for you to date,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, although she didn’t believe he meant it.

“I want you to see the world,” he told her. “I want you to have a career.” It was the first time he’d said any of these things. “Maybe you’ll be a teacher.”

“A teacher?” The idea had never occurred to her.

“You’d be good with children. Also, it would give you the summers to travel.”

She found it strange to hear him talk of travel. He
subscribed to
National Geographic
and liked telling her of the places he read about, but he never talked of visiting them, either by himself or together, and she didn’t mind. The idea of travelling with him didn’t seem right. She wanted to do it by herself one day.

But what she said was, “You’ll come with me.”

“I couldn’t afford it.”

“I’ll pay, then. I won’t leave you by yourself.” She hoped it was what he needed to hear, but he only looked more dejected.

“You’re leaving in the fall,” he said.

She gritted her teeth. So that was why he’d mentioned travel. She should have known.

“Boston isn’t so far,” she said, as if he didn’t know where Boston was. “I’ll come home on weekends.” At this, he only shook his head.

Suddenly his presence in her doorway was too much. She needed him to be downstairs in his easy chair. She wanted to be wearing her normal clothes and sitting on the couch. “I don’t have to go,” she heard herself say. “Maybe I could still get into Syracuse.”

He didn’t look up from the carpet. “You need to see the world. I’ve been a selfish father.”

Did he want her to go or not? When she went to hug him, she felt him shiver. Why was her father shivering? He shook like a little boy who knew a terrible secret.

“I should have sent you off on trips,” he said. “I should have made you get some distance.”

A year later, in Boston, she had a chance encounter with a girl from high school, someone whose name Maggie had
already forgotten. The girl told her Peter Leggat had burnt his draft card and moved to San Francisco with flowers in his hair. This bit of gossip was followed by a long, sly look. Not for the first time, Maggie wondered what Peter had told people to explain his inviting her to the prom. Perhaps in San Francisco she still had a walkon role in the stories he related. Maybe, as he told it now, she was the last girl he’d tried before giving up and heading west. Perhaps she played the same sort of crucial, casual role in his personal history that he seemed to play in hers.

Maggie thinks of telling Fletcher about her encounter with Wale in the playroom but decides he already has enough to manage. Each day seems to bring him into conflict with people on the farm. Those on the payroll begrudge the chores he assigns them, while those who aren’t being paid don’t bother with his labour schemes at all and entice the others to movie matinees in St. Catharines or the beach at Port Dalhousie. In bed he complains to her that Dimitri’s the main culprit, setting a bad example with his truant walks in search of John-John. Fletcher complains about the garbage everywhere, the mud on the floors, the noise from record players and car stereos, the shouting and laughing downstairs that make it hard to sleep, until he and Maggie end up arguing over which of them should go tell people to be quiet. In the mornings, there are often bodies asleep in the hall, and many residents of the barracks don’t get up until noon. Fletcher starts going out to the building
before breakfast, rapping on the door and hollering hellos, poking people awake.

His shortwave radio goes missing, then his welding torch. She tells him not to take it personally, but it’s no good. At meetings, he battles with Dimitri, who hasn’t lost interest in debating. While Fletcher sits with pens and sheaves of notes laid out on the coffee table like weapons, Dimitri takes equine strides around the room and sweeps the hair from his forehead. He wants a credit system to apportion the work more fairly. Fletcher wants to ban drugs and set a nightly curfew. The number of Fletcher’s supporters shrinks with each meeting, and half-jokingly Dimitri takes to calling him Captain Morgan. Brid, whose vote cannot be depended upon by either man, rolls her eyes a lot. It makes for compelling film but is hard on Fletcher’s nerves. He vents his anger watching TV coverage of the Republican convention. One night Maggie catches him before the bathroom mirror speaking to invisible assailants.

“Get lost,” he says. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

She steps back from the door with a pang, glad nobody else is there to see him. Her period’s a week late, and she has been wanting to tell him about it, but when he’s in such a state it seems unfair to burden him. She’s been late before to no consequence. It would be easier on the pill, except the pill didn’t agree with her, and anyhow they’re so careful—always the diaphragm or a condom. Probably it’s just stress. She hasn’t been eating well.

The next morning, he awakens her, already in the middle of a rant. When she asks him what’s wrong, he flings a piece of paper onto the bed.

“A complaints letter! I found it under our door. They can’t write me a complaints letter—it’s a fucking commune! Dimitri’s behind this, I know it.”

She looks over the page. “Some of these things might be reasonable.”

“Like what?”

“Like not enough vegetarian meals—”

“That’s Rhea. Goddamn Rhea and Dimitri. Why do we have all those meetings if they’re going to bitch behind my back? I swear, they only came here to ruin things. Dimitri’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Cape Cod.”

Maggie thinks of asking him what he knows about Dimitri and speed, but she only rubs his back and tells him it will be fine. She says everyone’s trying to make the farm better. She tells him to focus on the happy things.

And she’s right, too: in some ways it isn’t so bad. The lettuce she planted after the hurricane is flourishing. The pumpkins have begun to spread tendrils beyond the borders of their allotment. On warm evenings after sunset, she and Fletcher walk hand in hand down the orchard’s central lane, and sometimes through the fading dusk they see pairs of bodies lying together under the trees. There’s the luminescence of bare legs, the undulation of a head. At first she’s startled by such sights, even as part of her stirs, but she comes to take them as propitious, signs that together all of them have created something good.

The last week of August has arrived when one morning she goes upstairs to find George Ray standing there in his orange toque, knocking on her bedroom door. As far as
she knows, he has never set foot in the house before, and he looks uncomfortable standing in it now.

“Sorry to be a bother,” he says. “I was hoping to speak with you. Will you come outside?” She nods and follows him down to the porch. After glancing in all directions, he continues onto the lawn before turning to her.

“Top secret, huh?” she says, trying to sound lighthearted, but he doesn’t smile, only keeps his eyes on the house as he speaks.

“I had an encounter last night,” he says. “Near midnight, in the orchard.”

She frowns, confused. “What were you doing out there?”

“Taking a walk. I do it most nights before bed.”

Maggie thinks again of the others in the barracks. “Are the people out there too loud? At a meeting we agreed on no noise after eleven—”

“They’re fine. The walk is good for me.” He doesn’t sound as if he’s being honest, but she can tell he’s not interested in arguing the point.

“So what happened in the orchard?” she says.

He speaks in a low voice. “Some time ago you told me about a pair of girls next door.” She nods, remembering.

“Last night I met them out there. They were by the wrecking yard wall, smoking up with a man from this place.”

“Who?” Her first thought is that it was Fletcher. No, it couldn’t have been. He was lying beside her all night.

“You have to understand,” says George Ray, “I didn’t wish to intrude on them. It was dark and I stumbled upon them before I could turn back.”

“Who was it?” she repeats.

“I promised not to tell. The man was very worried about people finding out.”

“So why are you telling me?” She’s unable to keep a hint of frustration from her voice.

“Because I’m concerned,” he replies. “A grown man with a couple of girls.” He looks at her without blinking. “It could cause problems.”

She nods. Whoever it was, if Frank Dodd found out, he could get the police involved. They might use it as an excuse to raid the farm, and with all the dope around, God knows what would come of that.

“They were just smoking up?” she asks.

George Ray takes a moment to consider his answer. “The thin one was sitting in his lap.”

All manner of debauchery begins to run through her mind.

“How did they act when they saw you?”

“The man was ashamed, the girls less so.” George Ray smiles wryly. “The red-haired one has a sharp tongue.”