Rosie O'Dell (4 page)

I turned over on my stomach again on the warm wharf wood and peered through the
pellucid depths to the stones and starfish so defined and vivid on the bottom.
The pale doomed face, eyes closed now, appeared among them down there. A yelp
from Brent roused me from my tragic
meditation. He laughed,
“That’s two connors for me and you haven’t caught shag all yet.” He wrenched the
connor off the hook and threw it ahead of the scampering cats who batted it
about as soon as it landed until one of them seized it between its jaws and
bellied along the ground. I turned away from the sight of the poor fish
helplessly twitching, its life purposelessly and heedlessly ripped out.

“I can’t concentrate,” I said. “That accident on the news keeps bugging
me.”

“But like you said up at the house, your mother or father would’ve called you
by now if it was one of them. Let’s go to the dump and see what’s going
on.”

“Okay.”

As I started to stand up, my name came wafting over the air. It was Brent’s
mother singing out from the back porch that I was wanted on the telephone. Brent
looked down at me, eyes full of foreboding. “Jeez, that’s your mother
now.”

I sprang ahead. The agony of collision. It was the first time I’d thought of
that since my Uncle Bill, visiting us from Halifax where he was in the Navy,
told me that the most horrible feeling he’d ever experienced in his life was
standing on the bridge of one ship as it headed straight for another, with
nothing at all that anyone could do to stop them from colliding. The helpless
watching and waiting for the unfolding, unavoidable disaster to happen. “‘The
agony
of collision, ’ they call that interval between the
certainty
, and the actual occurrence,” said Uncle Bill, “and they
didn’t wrong-name it!” Running off the wharf now, knowing what I was going to
hear up at the house, I could feel the emotion Uncle Bill had described in my
bones and guts.

The rhythmic swishing of the tall grass against my legs as I raced along the
path from the wharf to the house evoked in my brain a chant: “Rosie O’Dell is
dead and gone. Dead and gone. Dead and gone.”

When I pushed open the screen door, Brent’s father was standing in the kitchen
with the telephone receiver in his hand, looking pained. Less than an hour ago
he had insisted it couldn’t be her. He spoke into the phone, “Here he is now.
Yes, he had to come up from the wharf. I know, long-distance charges are
wicked.” He turned to me. “It’s your father. Here, sit down at the table.” He
passed me the phone with a mien as tragic as if he were handing me a chalice of
hemlock.

My heart was beating madly again, but not from the running. “Hi,
Tom,” Dad replied to my squawked hello. “Mr. Anstey told me you heard on the
radio that someone drowned. Mom and I figured you would, so we wanted to let you
know who it was before they put the name on the news.” I heard my father’s voice
in the roar of blood in my ears saying, “Rosie O’Dell… Mom is over with Mrs.
O’Dell right now.”

But suddenly I was not sure what I’d heard. “Who? Who?” I shouted, “Did you say
Rosie O’Dell?”

“Good God, Tom.” Dad sounded greatly wronged. “I specifically said it
wasn’t
Rosie O’Dell, because Mr. Anstey said you thought it was her.
I said it was
Mister
O’Dell, not Rosie. What made you—”

“I was scared it was Rosie. She’s up there with him.”

“Yes, right. I know. No, it wasn’t Rosie, thank God, that would have been
terrible, I mean it’s all bad enough, but no, it was her father, not her, poor
fellow. This is all a big shock to everyone… Hello, Tom, are you still there?”
The receiver was resting on my shoulder. I could hear my father but I could not
answer him for the moment. I hadn’t burst into tears, but tears were streaming
down my face. “Tom, are you there or not? This is long-distance.”

I lifted the receiver again and said, “Mr. O’Dell. God that’s awful. Where’s
Rosie now? Is she home yet?”

“Not yet. She’s driving from Sop’s Arm to Deer Lake with the other men who were
canoeing with them. An aunt from Corner Brook is meeting her in Deer Lake and
flying with her to St. John’s on the first flight they can—”

“Dad, I’ve got to come home too.”

My father paused. “Pardon? Come home, my man? You?”

“I’ve got to. Rosie is in my class.”

“Yes, I know she is. But I didn’t have the impression you and she were… Why do
you need to come home? That would mean someone having to get you and drive you
back in the middle of all this—five or six hours one way. What—”

“I can fly in like Rosie is doing, but from Gander. I can get a taxi from here.
I’ll pay for that and the plane ticket myself out of my own bank account.”

Dad said nothing for another moment. “It’s not a question of money, Tom. Though
money is always a consideration. I didn’t think that these days, or for months
now, you’ve been close enough to any of the O’Dells, especially Rosie who’s your
own age, to make you—”

“Dad. I’ve got to.” I sat there trembling.

“You’ve
got
to! Why have you got to, Tom? We didn’t want you to go way
out there to Twillingate in the first place, but you kept on and on until we
said yes, and now after a couple of days you want to come back. Your mother and
I were going to spend next week over in Bonne Bay hiking around Gros Morne, and
then pick you and Brent up on the way back. Now how are we…? How is he…? Why
have you got to come back now, Tom?”

I couldn’t say why. But I had to go back. “Mom was always trying to make me and
Rosie friends. Mom would want me to.”

“Oh for the love of…” Sometimes I got the idea I really annoyed my father. I
waited as he got over huffing and sighing to say at last, “Put your Mr. Anstey
back on.”

BRENT’S FATHER DROVE ME
to Gander for the flight
that afternoon, and his wife took advantage of it to be dropped off at the
Gander Mall for an hour. Brent and I sat in the back seat. I loved that drive
along the Gander River with mile after mile of tall silver birch trees lining
the bank. On the way, Mr. Anstey said to his wife, “They had to shoot that bear.
She tried to attack Wince Elliot’s young fellow. He only got away by the skin of
his teeth. It was lucky Wince had his rifle in his pickup.”

“What bear was that?” asked Brent’s mother.

“The one hanging around the dump. The mother bear with the cub.”

Brent and I looked at each other wide-eyed. We would have been up there this
morning, probably all by ourselves, being attacked by a vicious bear if Dad’s
call hadn’t come. “Why didn’t you tell us it was a mother bear with a cub in the
dump?” asked Brent.

“What? Everyone in Twillingate knew that. Except you, apparently. You know, it
wouldn’t hurt one bit for you to spend a little time with your baywop cousins
now and then, the ones you think you’re too high and mighty for. The little
corner-boy city slicker might find out what’s going on in the real world.” After
a pause, Brent’s father said, “I told you not to go near the dump. What were you
going to do, go over there on the strength of that?”

“My God,” breathed Brent’s mother at that certainty, putting her hands on the
sides of her head.

“No-o-o,” squeaked Brent, much offended, “we weren’t going to the dump.”

His father laughed. “That would have been something to see, both of
you trying to outrun each other so that the bear would catch the
one behind and the one in front could get away.”

No one else in the car laughed, Brent’s mother showing the least tendency to do
so, going by the scowling stare at her husband. The one behind—that would have
been me, since Brent could run faster. All the rest of the way to Gander, I had
various immature thoughts. Mr. Anstey wouldn’t really have allowed us to blunder
into that danger at the dump, would he? No, how could he? But if he would have,
then divine providence had contrived to spare my life by drowning someone I knew
so that I’d get the life-saving phone call. However, in divine providence’s
infinite wisdom, the person drowned was Rosie’s father instead of her, as I had
originally hoped, which in turn shocked me into seeing the truth about my
feelings for Rosie. Christ, it all seemed stupidly complicated for any mind with
a measurable IQ to contrive, let alone one of limitless intelligence, not to
mention what a prick divine providence must be to kill off Rosie’s dad. It was
the beginning of the loss of my childish faith. But not, unfortunately, of my
belief that Brent’s dad was just a funny guy.

“
WHAT DO I SAY
when I see her first?” I asked my mother
from the back seat. We were driving to the O’Dell house from the drugstore where
she’d picked up some things for Nina. Mom was a nurse at the General Hospital
and, as I’d heard her say to someone at St. John’s airport last night when she
and Dad had come out to pick me up, she was well acquainted with sudden death,
but this one had really knocked her for a loop. She didn’t look it though. Her
big hazel eyes were a bit red but seemed as calm and unperturbed as usual and
her short brown hair still gave her face a poised, no-nonsense alertness. I
always felt more comfortable driving with Mom than Dad. The only difference I
noticed in her today was a tendency to go off into a trance. Like now. “Mom,
when I see—”

“Pardon? Oh. You can say, ‘My condolences or my sympathy, Auntie Nina.’
Something simple is best.”

“No, I mean to Rosie.”

Mom looked at me in the rear-view mirror. “You can say the same thing to Rosie,
and to Pagan.”

“Can I go to the funeral home when the time comes?”

“Sure. You can come and go with your father when he makes his visit.”

“But you said you’re going to stay there the whole time with the family. Can I
stay there with you? I don’t mean with you, I mean while you’re there.”

My mother looked back at me again. For the first time since I’d arrived home
from Twillingate last night, the longest period I’d ever seen her face without a
smile, a tiny smile now played about her moist eyes. “If you want to. That won’t
start till the day after tomorrow, though.”

“How come it’s taking so long for the funeral home part to
start? When Grandma died, her coffin was in there the next day.”

“If someone doesn’t die from natural causes, if they die violently, say, or you
can’t tell the reasons right off the bat, there’s usually an autopsy. A doctor
examines the body to try to figure out what caused the death. That’s why it’s
taking a while here.”

“I thought he got drowned.”

“Yes, but they want to know why he drowned, what caused it.”

“What do you think, Mom?”

She didn’t answer for a long moment. But I could tell she wasn’t in one of her
trances this time. Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel and her eyes
became suddenly red-rimmed and enraged. I thought she must be mad at me for
digging and poking into something that was none of my business again. She pulled
the car over to the curb and turned to reach back for my hands in my lap. “Oh,
my sweet love,” she whispered, “I don’t know what to think. I’m just so angry
at him for all the pain and hurt…” She removed her hand from mine to fish a
tissue out of her pocket and dry her eyes. Then she blew her nose and looked at
me again. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, my man. That’s between you and me
only.”

“I won’t, Mom, don’t worry.”

“That’s good, Tom.” She pulled the car out into the lane and drove on. “This
delay is hard on the family, but in a way, it’s all right. Remember on the radio
this morning they mentioned that Mr. O’Dell won the Governor General’s award for
poetry a couple of years ago? Well, he was quite a well-known writer and lots of
people from across Canada want to come down here for the funeral, and many of
his friends at the university who went away for the summer want to get back for
it too.” We pulled into the O’Dell driveway where their car was still half full
of trip provisions and gear. Mom had told me that Nina and Pagan were just
preparing to drive out to meet up with Joyce and Rosie when they got the
word.

Walking to the house, Mom said, “Okay. We have to keep in mind that everyone in
here is very upset.” She tapped on the front door and went in. An old woman met
us in the hall. I recognized her as Joyce O’Dell’s mother. I hadn’t seen her
since I stopped coming over a couple of years ago. I recalled having the feeling
that any politeness between Nina O’Dell and Gram O’Dell was in the nature of an
uneasy truce. Mom said in a formal tone, “Mrs. O’Dell, you may remember my son,
Tom.”

“I
do
remember him, not
may
,” said Gram O’Dell.
“I’m not brain-dead yet.”

Mom continued with the same formal tone, “And Tom, you will remember Mrs.
O’Dell, Rosie and Pagan’s grandmother.”

“My sympathy,” I said.

“Likewise I am sure,” said Gram O’Dell, drawing back haughtily, leaving me
wondering if I’d said it right.

I followed my mother into the living room, glimpsing in the kitchen the back of
a woman who had the same tilt to her head over the sink that Rosie’s mother had.
That must be the aunt who had brought her in from Deer Lake. Nina O’Dell was
sitting on the sofa, her cheeks shiny with tears. Pagan was pressed into her
mother’s side, her beautiful little face wooden with shock. Rosie was not
there.

Her hand on her friend’s, Mom murmured, “Where’s Rosie, Nine?”

“Upstairs in the bathroom, Glad,” came the hoarse whisper. “She’ll be back
down in a minute.”

“Why don’t you wait for her out in the hall by the stairs, Tom?” Mom said, and
I went out. I heard her before I saw her. She was talking to herself, reciting
something, as she walked down the steps to the upper landing. Her navy blue
loafers and white stockings appeared between the railings, and I heard as she
turned to come down, “… tonight’s forgotten gush of love…” She saw me and
stopped. Her face had its usual fresh and open look, but her eyes were full of
pain. A sad little smile came to her lips. “Hi,” she said in a voice so small I
would not have known it.

I struggled to say, “My sympathy.” It came out as “My symphony,” but Rosie
didn’t laugh sarcastically at me as she would normally have done.

She descended the stairs towards me and I realized as she reached the hall that
I had not stood close enough to her recently to notice she was two inches taller
than me. “Thank you for coming back, Tom,” she said, giving me a brief hug.
“Auntie Gladys said you told them you were returning all the way from
Twillingate when you heard. That was very kind of you.”

I meant to say something like, “I wanted to stay with you and help you get
through your grief as a friend.” What came out was, “That’s okay.”

Rosie took me by the hand as I’d often seen her do with one of her girlfriends,
and spoke at the living room door: “Tom and I are going up to my room, Mom. Let
me know if you need me.”

The last time she had told her mother, a couple of years before, that we were
going up to her room to play, Auntie Nina had said, “All right, but no
fighting please,” and Pagan had squealed, “It’s my room too,
Mommy, and don’t let them touch any of my stuff,” both entreaties proving
futile when Pagan’s teddy bear, employed as a bludgeon, had a leg torn off
during the ensuing brawl. This time, though, Nina only mewled something
unintelligible and Pagan said nothing.

Upstairs in the shared room, Rosie lay on one of the twin beds and I sat on a
chair at one of the two desks. She turned over on her side to face me. “The
police asked me what happened,” she said, “and I told them as much as I knew,
and they were like, ‘How much by way of spirits, wine, or beer would you
estimate the men drank during the evening preceding the alleged accident?’ or,
‘Did you observe any hostility among the men? You know, arguing or fighting?’ I
told them I know what ‘hostility’ means, thank you very much. I shouldn’t have
been like that because they had their job to do. I told them the facts but I
couldn’t tell them the really awful part. I wouldn’t even be able to tell Mom
that. Oh God. Is it all right if I tell you, Tom?” She looked straight at me,
her eyes unwavering as usual, but moist and sad, and a novel sensation flowed
down my neck and shoulders into my arms and hands that made me desire to enfold
her and protect her against the whole world.

“Yes, if you want to, Rosie.”

“I really do, Tom.” She rolled over on her back and looked up at the ceiling.
“It was our third night camping on the river. We were around the campfire for a
while after supper. Daddy and Steve and Derek, that’s his two friends from the
canoeing club, were drinking whisky and telling yarns— it was really
interesting—but then at dusk the blackflies got too bad, so we went in our
tents, Daddy and me in ours and the other two in theirs. I was in my sleeping
bag reading and Daddy was in his, writing in his notebook—‘old foul sheets, ’ he
called his notebook. Then he closed it up and said, ‘Just listen to that
torrent.’ Our tents were pitched pretty close to the edge of the bank so that we
could hear the river all night long. Then he asked me if I was ready to go to
sleep. We were going to get up at dawn the next morning. I said yes and he
reached for the lamp. Just before he turned it out he looked down at me and
said, ‘All the awards I’ve received for my poetry are but piffling baubles given
out for mediocrity, Rosie. For I know in my soul that I have only reached the
foothills yet of my true poetic summit and in the years ahead before I die I
will scale the crest of that glorious far-off bardic peak.’ In the lamplight,
Tom, I could see my father’s total genius shining in his eyes. Then he kissed me
here on the forehead and
turned out the lamp. ‘Good night, my
muse, the inspiration of my life, ’ he said. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’”
Rosie turned over on her side away from me with a groan, “Oh God,” and brought
her knees up to her chest.

She stayed silent and I was about to ask her if she had a pain somewhere when
she rolled over on her back again and went on: “In the middle of the night,
something woke me up in the dark. I said, ‘Dad?’ and he said, ‘Sorry I disturbed
you, Rosie. I’ve got to go out and use the bathroom. I’ll be back in a minute.
Go back to sleep.’ I woke up at dawn and his sleeping bag was empty. I thought
he was out with Steve and Derek getting the fire going but when I went outside,
Steve said, ‘How’s the skipper this morning? Hope he hasn’t got a big head.
Don’t want your canoe to be too top-heavy.’ When I told them I didn’t think he
came back from using the bathroom hours ago, they couldn’t believe it. We ran
over to the edge of the bank. It dropped twenty or thirty feet right into the
river. Derek spotted a place where the ground juniper was trampled on right to
the edge. There was poo there. I asked if that was bear droppings. Derek said,
‘No, my love.’ Then I heard him whispering to Steve, ‘Jesus Christ, he fell in
the river taking a crap.’ Back in our tent, we saw his big flashlight. One of
the men said, ‘He went out in the dark next to the river without his light? With
black bears, and bull moose, and lynx and God knows what prowling around all
night.’ I was frightened to death and started to cry and they said, ‘Don’t
worry, your father is a very powerful swimmer. Remember how he swam across the
tickle from Portugal Cove to Bell Island a few summers ago? That was three miles
of frigid ocean with icebergs still dotting Conception Bay. We’ll find him
downriver sitting on a rock waiting for us in a few minutes.’ We toted a canoe
down to a launching place. On the way, I heard one of the men whisper to the
other, ‘Did you hear him bawl out or anything?’ And the other said, ‘No, he must
have been too embarrassed at being so effing stupid as he went over.’ We put on
our life jackets, pushed off and shot the rapids. It only took us a few minutes
to spot him. He was partly on a beach in a little cove in the river lying on his
back, and my hopes went up sky high because someone who is drowned lies face
down, I thought, and he looked like he was just peacefully sleeping.” Rosie
paused and turned her eyes to me. They were welling tears, as, I realized, mine
were too. Then she returned her gaze to the ceiling and said with a terrible
sigh, “But he was dead, Tommy. Icy cold and dead and gone.”

I disguised my shivering with some shifting in my chair. Rosie then said, “I
can’t believe it. Not that he’s dead. I believe that. But that one min
ute, he has big brilliant plans for years ahead and the next
minute he falls into the river in the middle of doing his poo and he’s found
dead with his underwear down around his ankles. No matter how great you are, or
everyone thinks you are, you can be snuffed out like a disgusting insect any
second in the most ridiculous way possible. We are the same as stupid insects.
That’s all we are—silly meaningless ridiculous insects.”

I had no answers. I sat and waited. When she didn’t begin again, I asked,
“Would you like me to stay with you at the funeral home when it starts? Mom told
me she was going to be there the whole while with your mother.”

“I’d like you to stay there with me very much, Tommy. I don’t know how I’m
going to get through all this without somebody nice’s help.”

AT CARNELL’S FUNERAL HOME
the room containing Joyce O’Dell’s
body swelled full of his colleagues and friends. I stood next to Rosie and
watched them. Nearly all went over and looked down on the corpse in its open
coffin and wept. Then drying their tears they talked in close camaraderie with
other mourners and laughed. I saw only two exceptions to this weep-and-laugh
routine. One was a stranger, tall and elegant, who came in without a word to any
of the other mourners, skirted the coffin, and went directly to Nina
O’Dell.

“Who’s he, I wonder?” Rosie said to me.

“Maybe someone your mother knows from the library.”

“She must know him really well from somewhere, the way she’s letting him hog
her like that and cause that big lineup.”