The Way It Is
The
Way
It Is
Donalda Reid
Second Story Press
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Reid, Donalda J. (Donalda Joanne), 1943-
The way it is / by Donalda J. Reid.
ISBN 978-1-897187-80-7
I. Title.
PS8635.E396W39 2010 jC813’.6 C2010-904359-6
Copyright © 2010 by Donalda Reid
Edited by Alison Kooistra
Copyedited by Kathryn White
Designed by Melissa Kaita
Cover photo © becky rockwood/iStockphoto
Printed and bound in Canada
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
Published by
SECOND STORY PRESS
20 Maud Street, Suite 401
Toronto, ON M5V 2M5
www.secondstorypress.ca
To my grandchildren, Kelson Reid Hedge
and Sarah and Alex Buckley—always follow your dream.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
March 1967
Ellen ran the peeler smoothly and precisely down the length of a carrot, observing the thin peel fold and curl. With each stroke she calculated probabilities. How tightly will this peel curl before it snaps and shoots bits into the sink? Is the crispness of the carrot and the amount of water it contains a deciding factor?
“Once you’re done with those carrot sticks, Ellen, please set the table.” As Ann Manery, Ellen’s mother, opened the oven to check on the casserole, she called, “John, dinner’s ready.”
With the peeler halfway down a carrot, Ellen’s hand froze, her shoulder muscles tightening into a knot. Would Dad be the same tonight? Ellen felt her stomach sink at the thought of another silent meal.
The kitchen door opened with a squeak and Ellen’s father walked slowly into the kitchen, then sat silently at the head of the table.
Ann set the steaming tuna casserole on the table, and they bowed their heads as she said grace. Ellen added her own mute prayer. Please fix whatever’s wrong with Dad.
“How was the beach?” Ann said.
“Fine.”
Ann paused with the spoon in the air, but her husband sat staring at the table. Ellen watched her mother’s shoulders drop and her head shake slightly as she passed the plates. “Well, it must have been windy and cold by the water. There was new snow on the mountains again last night.” Without replying, her husband began to eat.
With a pasted-on smile Ann said, “How were your classes today, Ellen? Do you have much homework?”
Ellen stopped with the fork midway to her mouth and stared. If Mom’s asking me about school then for sure something’s wrong with Dad. With a bang she put her fork down. “Classes are classes. I always have homework. Nothing’s changed about school or me.” Ellen scowled.
Nearly two years earlier, after her second week in the pilot program for academically superior students, she had told her mother to stop asking about school. “There’s nothing to tell, Mom. We go to the room, do our work, and go home. Mr. Phillips, the viceprincipal, was very clear that our marks had to be exceptional and our work done independently. The boys don’t talk to me, and there’s no one for me to be friends with.” Not since Ginny left, anyway.
There were only six other students in Ellen’s class, all of them boys. The program allowed them to accelerate their courses and gain work experience at the University of British Columbia. By the time she was sixteen, Ellen would have completed all the courses she needed for graduation and acceptance into pre-med at the University of Toronto.
Ellen’s favorite part of the week was her work-experience time in the UBC science labs, where she assisted researchers with their experiments and cared for the animals. She would talk quietly to the animals while she was cleaning their cages, refilling water bottles, and charting their food and water intake. She had named most of them after animals in her old Thornton Burgess books, saving the names of the characters in The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett for the friendliest ones.
When she was eight, Ellen had burst out laughing when she read the orphaned Mary Lennox described as an ugly, sour-faced young ‘un who looked like a young plucked crow. I’m not alone, Ellen had thought in amazement. There’s another person like me, even if she is only a character in a book. Ellen read and reread the story of Mary finding a walled-off garden, making friends with the housekeeper’s brother, and rescuing a reclusive, bedridden boy. For weeks after, she’d gather Bear and her Raggedy Ann doll and reenact the story. Bear was Dickon, her friend who could charm the birds, and Raggedy Ann was Colin, the invalid. She, of course, was Mary, because Mary was just like her.
In spite of her mother’s attempt to change the topic, Ellen was determined to find out what was wrong with her father. “Dad,” Ellen began, her scowl deepening, “all you ever do after work is walk on Jericho Beach. You don’t even go to International House anymore. What’s wrong?”
“Ellen’s right, John,” Ann said. “We’ve got to talk.”
John looked up with a rueful smile.
“I’m sorry, Ann. I can’t stop thinking about Don. The last few years he was always working, even weekends. Work took over his life. And what did it get him? Nothing.” Tears ran down John’s face.
Ellen stared at her father. She had never seen him cry. Scarcely breathing, Ellen sat frozen. Only her eyes moved between her parents’ faces.
“There was never enough time for him to travel the way he wanted. And now he’s dead. Where’s the sense in killing yourself for a job?” John’s voice faded and became rough with the last words; he covered his face with his hands. Ellen’s mother stood up and wrapped her arms around her husband, drawing his face into the shelter of her apron.
Upset by the intensity of her father’s anguish and excluded by the intimacy of her parents’ embrace, Ellen slipped away to her bedroom. On the top shelf of the closet, Ellen found her tattered teddy bear. Clutching Bear tightly with her chin on the worn spot between his ears, she climbed into the center of her bed, wrapped herself in her quilt, and sat huddled in the dark. From the kitchen she could hear the faint sounds of her parents talking.
My dad never cries. What did he mean, “Where’s the sense in killing yourself for a job?” Does he mean that he’s sick and is going to die, too? Pictures of funerals and graveyard visits, her mother and her dressed in black with thick veils covering their faces, ran through her head. She finally fell asleep with Bear in her arms.
“Hello, Archibald Rat. I finished Physics 91 today,” Ellen said the next day as she poured pellets into a food dish. The rat hopped off the spinning wheel, its nose twitching.
“Yes, I did very well in the exam, thank you.” The rat chewed a pellet, then stuck its nose against the mesh close to Ellen.
“Kind of you to say so, Archibald Rat. I did think the questions were a bit simple.”
The door behind Ellen creaked as it opened, and Syd, her UBC mentor, came in.
“Oh, it’s you, Ellen. I thought I heard voices.”
Ellen blushed and stammered, “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I was just, um, talking to myself.”
Syd laughed. “I talk to myself all the time, too. My wife said that it’s fine unless I start answering. I didn’t tell her that I’ve been answering myself for years. I’ve just learned to do it in my head where no one else can hear.” Ellen smiled.
“You’re here early today, aren’t you?”
“I left right after my physics exam.”
“How’d it go?”
“Very well, I think.”
“Not surprising. You’re a bright young lady, Ellen.”
“Kind of you to say so, Syd. I did think the questions were a bit simple,” Ellen said with a slight smile, glancing back over her shoulder at Archibald Rat, who was cleaning his whiskers.
“I’m glad I caught you. I’ve got the information about the lab work you’ll be doing this summer in my office. U of T has confirmed that they’ll credit it toward your first-year labs. Don’t forget to pick it up before you go.”
Ellen ducked her head and nodded.
“Mom,” Ellen said that night as she set the table for dinner, “Why was Dad talking about Mr. Andrews again last night?”
Ann closed her eyes for a few seconds then looked at Ellen. “Don’s death really upset him. You remember how he was when Sylvia phoned, Ellen.”
“But, Mom, the heart attack was a couple of months ago.”
“Ellen,” Ann said, “Don was your father’s best friend for more than twenty-five years. When a close friend dies, you don’t get over it quickly.”
“Oh,” she said slowly, thinking about Ginny, the girl who had started with Ellen in the accelerated program. Ellen frowned.
When Ginny had entered the class that first day, Ellen had stared at her in amazement. She’s from a fashion magazine, Ellen thought, comparing her own calf-length skirt of light yellow gingham to the new girl’s full-sleeved white blouse and black miniskirted jumper belted with a chain. Not only was the scarf that tied back her thick black hair the exact color of her fringed orange go-go boots. but she also wore make-up—heavy mascara, thick black eyeliner, and bright pink lipstick. And she was chewing gum.
At the bell, Mr. Phillips strode in. “Good morning, boys and girls.” He looked intently at each student. “You are making history. As you know, this pilot program is designed to allow academically superior students to more quickly acquire the credits needed for graduation. Technically you’re in Grade Nine, but only until you complete the requirements for that grade. Then you’ll move seamlessly to the next grade’s courses, and the next. To permit the maximum flexibility, all your classes will be individualized.” He smiled broadly. “Except for Physical Education, which will be taken throughout this academic year with the regular stream.” Ellen’s stomach lurched at the thought of PE all year.
“We expect your academic achievement to be exceptional and all your work to be done strictly independently. Since this is the first day of school and therefore a short afternoon, I thought we should use the time to get to know each other. We’ll go around the room. Each of you say your name and tell a little about yourself.” Ellen slid lower in her desk and looked down at her shoes. As Mr. Phillips turned toward her, Ellen felt like a mouse stalked by a bird of prey.
“Oh, God. Boys and girls, let’s play This Is Your Life,” Ellen heard Ginny mutter.
“Ellen, why don’t you begin?” Ellen ducked as though she were being physically attacked. Shoulders hunched, she ran her tongue over her lips and tried to swallow.
“I’ll start,” Ginny said. Ellen stared as Ginny untied her orange scarf and gave her head a quick shake, sending her shiny hair rippling over her shoulders. Deliberately she looked at Mr. Phillips, each of the boys in turn, and, finally, Ellen. Then, so fast Ellen wasn’t sure it had happened, Ginny winked.
“I’m Ginny Samuelson from California. Palo Alto. As soon as I can get out of here,” she said making a fast spiral in the air with her finger, “I’m going to university. I’m an astrophysicist.”
“You mean you’re going to be an astrophysicist,” Mr. Phillips said.
“No. I am an astrophysicist,” Ginny said. “I don’t think there’s a law that says you need to graduate from high school before you can study astronomy. I’m working on two projects—the mass of Cygnus X-1 and the velocity of the galaxy M31.”
Mr. Phillips cleared his throat and nodded once.
“OK, kid.” The smile Ginny flashed at Ellen seemed to light up the room. Ellen straightened in her desk, took a breath, and smiled back, her right cheek quivering.
“I’m Ellen Manery. From here. I’m going to be a doctor, one who does research on human illnesses. I’d like to go to the University of Toronto.” She glanced at Ginny, who was still smiling. “Um. That’s all.”
Ellen was aware that all the boys introduced themselves, but she didn’t hear anything they said. Instead, she sat drinking in everything about Ginny out of the corner of her eye. Another girl. Look at her! She’s smart. She understands. She went first. She winked. For years Ellen had denied her longing for a friend, for someone who was like her and understood her. Without letting the thought fully emerge from where it was buried, Ellen was filled with the hope that, maybe, just maybe, if there were only two of them, if they were always together in this room…maybe …just maybe…
When Mr. Phillips left, Ellen sat watching as the hands on the clock inched glacially toward break time. Used to being ignored by the other students, Ellen was shocked when, ten minutes before the bell rang, Ginny grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the door. “Come on,” Ginny said, “Show me where the girls’ can is.”
Ellen stopped in the classroom doorway and pointed left. “The washrooms are down the hall and around the corner.” Ginny took two steps and then stopped, staring back at Ellen.
“Aren’t you coming?”
Though Ellen’s legs were twice as long as Ginny’s, she had to hurry to keep up. Inside the bathroom entrance Ellen paused awkwardly when Ginny pushed a stall door open. The door swung shut and then opened again immediately. “Come on.”
“In there? With you?”
“Quick.”
With her back jammed in the corner between the stall door and wall, Ellen watched as Ginny dug around in the bottom of her soft cloth bag. “Aha.” Ginny pulled out a pack of Export A’s and put one of the three remaining cigarettes in her mouth. She held the package up to Ellen and raised her eyebrows. Ellen shook her head. Ginny shrugged, struck a wooden match on the side of the stall, lit the cigarette, and flipped the match into the toilet. She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. “Ah-h-h.” Exhaling, she leaned against the side wall and put one foot up on the toilet seat. She picked a bit of tobacco off the end of her tongue and turned the end of the cigarette butt toward Ellen.
Of its own volition Ellen’s hand reached out and took the cigarette. She held it tentatively between her index finger and thumb, staring at the pink smudge of lipstick and the soft smoke curling out of the tip. As Ellen’s hand brought the cigarette toward her mouth, the pink smudge grew bigger and brighter; smoke curled into her nose. With a cough she handed the cigarette back to Ginny. “No, thanks. Um, I don’t smoke during school.”
Ginny took two more quick drags. “God, I don’t know how you last.” Smoke filled the cubicle and began to curl up toward the high ceiling. Hearing something, Ellen stared at the stall door as though she had X-ray vision. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered.
Footsteps stopped just inside the door to the washroom. “Someone’s smoking.”
Ellen felt the blood leave her face. A succession of scenes flashed in her mind—the principal’s disapproving face; her crying parents wringing their hands in shame; a transcript with a red EXPELLED stamped across it.
“Shit.” Ginny took a long drag before dropping the cigarette in the toilet. As it sizzled out, she exhaled and flushed the toilet. She reached past Ellen, opened the door, and squeezed out.
Three girls stared as Ellen and Ginny left the cubicle in a cloud of smoke. “What are you staring at?” Ginny said.
“Nothing.”
“Right.”
That night Ellen escaped as quickly as she could from the deathly silence blanketing the kitchen. Back in the seclusion of her bedroom, she wrapped toilet paper in a piece of note paper and practiced holding it like a cigarette in front of the mirror. She hoped the combination of her near-six-foot height and the cigarette would make her look older, more mature. When Ellen was young, her father, who was six-foot-four, had made being tall feel special. “Look,” her father had said on her third birthday as he marked her height on the growth chart pinned to her bedroom wall, “You’re as tall as a five-year-old. I think you ate some of Jack’s magic beans. You’re growing as tall as his beanstalk. Let me check your ears. Are there any leaves?” But it wasn’t funny anymore. Ellen hated being taller than almost everyone.
If Ginny offers me a cigarette again, I’ll hold it and wave it around. Maybe she won’t notice that I’m not puffing. “Yes, I’ve been smoking for a long time,” Ellen said to her reflection, paper cigarette held high. She lifted her pinky like she’d seen people on TV do with teacups. Using her other hand she placed the cigarette carefully between her index and middle fingers and tapped the ashes off. “This is my favorite brand. It has such a smooth taste.”
For the rest of the week, watching Ginny preempted all of Ellen’s attention. Every time Ginny got up, Ellen waited, hoping Ginny was going to notice her again. Though Ellen surreptitiously held her pencil against her lips like a cigarette, Ginny remained focused on her studies. Each day Ellen’s hope of their being best friends, or friends at all, faded a little more.
“Hey, kid,” Ginny said on Thursday afternoon. “Gym’s next. Where do we change?” Ellen’s head snapped up and her stomach clenched in a knot.
Without waiting for an answer, Ginny left. Ellen hurried after her. “We go left at the corner and down the stairs.”
“How uptight are the gym teachers?” Ginny called back as she took the stairs at a near run.
“Uptight?”
“Yah. Like, if I tell them I’m on the rag, will they let me skip it?”
“On the rag?”
“Time of the month, bleeding, having a period. You know.”
“Menstruating?”
Ginny stopped and stared at Ellen. “You do get your period, don’t you?”
Her cheeks burning, Ellen nodded, and then quickly added, “Yes.”
“Yes, you get your period, or yes, they’ll let me out of PE?”
“I never tried to get out of PE.”
“Really? Where is it?”
“The change room.”
On the warm-up run around the school, Ginny slowed to a walk as soon as they were out of the teacher’s sight, pulling Ellen’s arm to keep her alongside. “Whoa, that is one tough teacher. She didn’t even let me finish asking. Does she take attendance at the end of class, too?”
“Why would she do that?”
“Doesn’t anyone around here ever skip out?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so, they don’t skip or, I don’t…”
“She doesn’t take attendance at the end.”
“Great,” Ginny turned and began to jog through the car park toward the road.
“Ginny, we run this way,” Ellen said.
“But my boyfriend’s this way.”
“Boyfriend?” Ellen watched as Ginny jogged over to a shiny black 1964 Chevy Impala SS. A tall young man got out of the car and held the door open for Ginny. She wrapped her arms around the man’s waist, slid her hands over the seat of his hip-hugger bellbottoms, drew his body tight against her, and kissed him deeply.
Ellen’s hope of finally having a friend evaporated at the end of the first week.
When Ginny didn’t come back to class after lunch on Friday, Ellen, sure something terrible had happened, walked into Mr. Phillips’s office.
“Ginny’s gone!” Ellen said.
“Oh.” Mr. Phillips shook his head. “Ginny’s not coming back to school, Ellen.” As Mr. Phillips’s words sank in, Ellen’s face twisted and tears threatened.
“Sit down, Ellen.” Mr. Phillips sighed. “I usually don’t give out personal information, but…. Do you know anything about the war in Vietnam?”
Ellen looked at Mr. Phillips quizzically, but nodded.
“The Samuelsons, Ginny’s parents, are opposed to the Vietnam war. Because Ginny’s brother would be eligible for the draft on his next birthday, Dr. Samuelson moved his family here this past summer. Ginny’s a very bright girl. Although she’s older than the rest of you, we thought our program could accommodate her until her parents could arrange her admission to Simon Fraser University. This morning, much sooner than expected, the university notified Ginny’s father that she’d been accepted and she starts next week.”
Suddenly the room grew darker. Ellen looked up at the lights, surprised to find they were still on. Ellen’s heart pounded so hard that she pushed her hands against her chest to stop it from bursting through her ribs. A tiny voice began whispering inside her head, getting louder and louder with each repetition. “She wasn’t your friend. She didn’t say good-bye. She didn’t care. She wasn’t your friend she didn’t say good-bye she didn’t care. Shedidntsaygoodbye. Shedidntcare.”
“Since you’ll be the only girl,” Mr. Phillips said, “we weren’t sure if you would want to continue in the class alone.”
Alone. Ellen’s shoulders bent under the familiar weight of that word. Alone. She looked up at Mr. Phillips with bleak eyes. Slowly she shook her head. “No,” she said quietly, “I’m not quitting.” Ellen took a deep breath and walked slowly out of the office.
Without any memory of going through the halls, Ellen found herself back inside the drab, colorless classroom. Alone. Ellen shriveled around the word until she was no longer visible.
That had been almost two years ago. Ellen was still wondering what it would be like to have a friend.
Several weeks later, after Easter Sunday Mass, Ellen’s mother said, “Come into the living room, Ellen. Your father and I want to talk with you.” Ellen stiffened and dropped her book. She had heard her parents’ muffled voices in the living room after many a silent dinner. What were they keeping from her? What nameless disease did her father have? Cancer? Heart? What would happen if he died?
Ellen perched on the edge of a chair, legs together, hands tucked between her knees, and stared at her parents. Their relaxed posture belied the seriousness of the announcement Ellen was anticipating. Her father cleared his throat. “Ellen,” he began, “I grew up during the Depression.”
The Depression? Ellen frowned. One weekend on late-night TV, they’d all watched the old movie The Grapes of Wrath. Dad wasn’t like one of those men living in tents with hungry kids and no jobs.
“Forget the history,” Ellen burst out. “What are you sick with?”
“Sick? Me? I’m not sick.”
Flustered, Ellen stammered, “But y-you were crying. I thought …I thought you were going to die, too.”
“Oh, Ellen,” John said. “I’m not sick.” A huge weight that Ellen hadn’t been aware she was holding dropped away. She threw herself into her father’s arms and began to cry.
“Ellen, it’s my work. I hate my job,” he said, pulling her up to sit between him and his wife. With his arm around Ellen’s shoulders, he continued. “All my life I’ve done what was expected. I worked hard; I got raises and advancements—John Manery, director of Accounting Services. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“For the past few weeks,” Ann added, “your father and I have been talking about our future and how we can start living the way we want.” She smiled at her husband. “If we wait till we retire, it may be too late.”
“But Mom, adults always do what they want.”
“Huh!” Ellen’s father said. “I wish that were true, Ellen.”
“But you make the decisions.”
“In one way you’re right. But I want to be involved with people, not numbers; I want to use my hands to build things. We love the outdoors, nature. We’re going to make some changes.”
John smiled at his wife. “Today I gave my notice at work. By the end of the month, for the first time in twenty-five years, I will no longer be working for the bank.”
Ellen frowned and looked at her mother, who had worked as a secretary since shortly after Ellen was born. “Are you quitting, too?”
“No. Not yet. But I’ll have to when we move.”
“Move?” Stunned, Ellen looked back and forth between her parents. They didn’t smile or laugh.
“Ellen, we’re moving to Salmon Arm.”
Chapter 2
September 1967
On Sunday, September third, Ellen settled beside the window in the coach car on the late morning CPR train. With a jerk and the bang of metal couplings, the train began moving slowly out of the downtown waterfront. Within an hour the dense urban landscape relaxed into a broad expanse of meadowland farms. The train wound through the Fraser Valley past Chilliwack, where her parents shopped for groceries when they camped at Cultus Lake. When the Chilliwack station disappeared, Ellen stared out the window at a foreign landscape. It’s so big, she thought, and so empty.
Then, almost imperceptibly, the mountains drew closer, squeezing the fields into a narrow ribbon of green edging the broad, flat, gray of the Fraser River. Ellen sat with her nose against the glass as the train traced the edge of the Fraser Canyon, hanging suspended on a delicate line stretched along the rocky cliffs. Below her in the oily, roiling water, the swirling river eddies mirrored the play of Ellen’s emotions. The heat trapped in the deep recesses of the Fraser Canyon shimmered and waved as it beat against the sides of the train. The air blowing in the open windows was so hot that it provided no relief. When the train passed the Hell’s Gate rapids, Ellen imagined the long lines of miners that had struggled along the sharp banks of the river a hundred years earlier, lured by the promise of gold at Barkerville. The miners must have thought they were headed into Hell. My hell’s called Salmon Arm.
For weeks after Ellen’s parents had announced they were moving, the arguments had gone on. But no matter how hard Ellen had tried, nothing swayed her parents.
“Is this Salmon Town near Vancouver?”
“No,” Ellen’s father said, “It’s in the Interior.”
“If you move, where will I live?”
“With us, of course.”
“But how will I get back here to school?”
“You’ll go to school in Salmon Arm,” her mother said.
“But my program!”
“Ellen, I’ve talked with both schools. No matter how hard you work for the next couple of months, you’ll still be short two courses for graduation. There’s Senior Matric at the high school in Salmon Arm. You can take some first-year university courses next year while you finish those last couple of Grade Twelve courses.”
“You can’t be serious.”
When her mother didn’t respond, Ellen slammed her hands on her knees and stood up. “I don’t care what they have in Salmon Whatever. I’m not going. I’ll stay here. Get my own place.”
“You’re fifteen,” her father said. “There’s no way a fifteen-yearold is ready to leave home. You’re young.”
Ellen crossed her arms and glared. “If it’s so important that we live together, you can stay here for a year till I finish.”
“Ellen, that’s enough. You’re going with us, and that’s the end of it.”
“Can’t you be flexible?”
“No, we can’t,” her father said. “The resort is for sale now, not next year.”
“Resort? What resort?”
“Your mother and I have put an offer on a summer resort just outside of Salmon Arm. The ad was in the paper last week. It’s as though fate planned it this way.”
“What do you know about running a resort? You’re an accountant.”
“Ellen, don’t be rude.”
“If our offer is accepted, we’ll take possession on the first of June. It’s a little later than I might have liked, but we’ll be there for the main tourist season.”
“June!” Ellen wailed. “Making me move is bad enough, but not in June! I can’t leave then. I’ve got exams. I have to work in the lab this summer!”
Ellen’s father rubbed his hand over his jaw. “We know. That’s what your mother and I have been talking about the last couple of nights. We know you have to stay for your UBC job, but we can’t wait. You’ll need a place to stay. Fortunately, Sylvia Andrews has volunteered to have you stay with her during the summer. That will work for everyone. You finish your year and job, we run the resort.”
“You’re ruining my life! This is so unfair,” Ellen cried as she ran to her room.
“OK, I give up,” Ellen said several days later, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to convince her parents that she could manage on her own for the coming year. “But I can’t believe the only reason you won’t let me stay and finish school here next year is because I’m fifteen. You’ve set it up so that I can stay here this summer. I don’t see the difference between summer and next year.” She stared at them through narrowed eyes.
John sighed. “Ellen, think of this summer as your first chance to experience independence. Your mother and I worry that you’re very isolated. Your life is made up of school and study. I don’t want you to wake up one day like I did and realize you’re caught in a dead-end, boring job.”
Ellen threw up her hands. “Dad, that has nothing to do with me. I’m going to be a doctor, not an accountant. I like what I’m doing. And I do other things. The symphony. Movies. Plays. You take me.”
“That’s right, Ellen,” her mother said, her tone sharp and heated. “We take you. Your father and I. Without us, you’d be a hermit. You should be going to dances and movies, or having friends over to listen to records.” Ellen cringed as her mother talked.
Ann looked at Ellen’s stricken face and wilted. “It’s not your fault. I know you’ve tried. Maybe going to a new place will give you a new start,” she added wistfully. “At least we’ll still be together as a family.”
Unlike most married women Ellen knew, Ellen’s mother had worked after her daughter’s birth. The older women who had taken care of Ellen had encouraged her quiet, introverted behavior. Before she started school, Ellen’s only contact with other children had been on occasional weekends when her parents took her to the neighborhood park to play. Ann had tried to encourage her to make friends, but Ellen had hovered close to her mother, watching the other children.
“Here, Ellen,” her mother said one day as she handed fouryear-old Ellen a red pail and a small yellow shovel. “There’s a girl about your age over there by the sandbox. Off you go. Play with her.”
Head bowed, toes dragging in the grass, the pail and shovel dangling limply from her hands, Ellen began to walk toward the sandbox. Every few steps she turned and looked back at her mother. “Go play.”
Toes against the wooden edge of the sandbox, Ellen stared down at the girl who was dropping sand into her pail, hitting the sand with the shovel, and upending the pail to make castles. Ellen looked back at her mother, who made shooing motions. Squatting cautiously in the sand beside the girl, Ellen reached out with her shovel and patted a castle. As the sand mound crumbled, the little girl let out an ear-piercing wail. Eyes wide with panic, Ellen stared, the shovel still extended in front of her. A hand appeared and pulled Ellen to her feet. “Did you hit her?” Ellen looked up into a strange woman’s red face and began to cry.
“She was just playing,” Ellen’s mother said as she took Ellen back to the bench.
“Well, she should be playing with someone her own size.”
Ellen’s attempts to play with children her size were equally unsuccessful. She lacked the older children’s coordination; she couldn’t skip, play jacks, or catch a ball. The polite girls ignored her while the more rambunctious boys played Keep Away with her red rubber ball or used her head as a target.
For Ellen’s seventh birthday Ann invited three girls from catechism class for a beach party. Ellen made a beach-themed quiz game with clues printed on cardboard cut from empty cereal boxes.
“What’s a mol-luck?” one girl asked.
“Moll-usk. ‘Find a single-shell mollusk.’” Ellen said, reading the clue.
“‘Find part of an animal that has molted,’” another read slowly. “I don’t get it.”
“You know, when an animal outgrows its exoskeleton and sheds it so a new one can harden.”
“This is dumb,” a girl said, dropping her clue. “Let’s go build a wall and keep the tide from coming in. I’ll be the King of the Castle. Last one to the water’s a rotten egg.” Ellen watched the three girls race down the sandy slope toward the tidal flats. The cardboard clues dropped out of her hand and cartwheeled down the beach in the gusty breeze.
After Ellen had weathered countless rebuffs and teasing, she had stopped trying. She had stayed an outsider. She convinced herself that she preferred to be alone, that she didn’t need friends. She spent her time in solitary activities. Reading and learning, her constant companions, never disappointed her. When being alone was her choice, it no longer hurt.
Pushing the memories back into her subconscious, Ellen stood up, slammed her hands on the table, and glared at her parents. “Ever since I started school you’ve nagged me about friends. I don’t see how going to a new town will help.” With her head held high and her lips tight together, Ellen stomped to her room. Her bedroom door slammed so hard that the glass in the kitchen windows shook.
By the end of summer, Ellen understood what her parents meant about becoming a hermit. Unlike her parents, Sylvia Andrews had made no effort to interact with Ellen. She provided a bed and meals, nothing more. After Ellen walked into the living room one evening and found Mrs. Andrews crying, she avoided her as much as possible.
Ellen was hungry for the discussions she used to have with her parents. Other than brief conversations with Syd, she hadn’t talked with anyone all summer, not even her favorite librarian, who always seemed to be off work when Ellen went to the library. At the end of every day Ellen biked back to Mrs. Andrews’s house, ate the supper that was left for her, and spent the evening alone reading or watching TV.
At the end of August Ellen gathered her personal effects from the locker at the lab. Arms full, she turned around as Syd came hurrying up.
“Oh, good. I was hoping I’d catch you before you left, Ellen. I intended to do this earlier, but things piled up and, well…” Ellen waited. “I want to thank you personally for doing such a good job in the lab. Not every student approaches the work with such commitment and attention to detail as you have. You’re moving somewhere in the Interior?”
Ellen nodded. “Salmon Arm.”
“That’s too bad. It’s not easy to find someone to work who’s as meticulous as you. If there’s ever anything I can do, please feel free to ask.”
Ellen looked down at her arms so Syd wouldn’t see the wide smile on her face. In a quiet voice she said, “Thanks. I enjoyed working here.”
Unable to concentrate on reading, Ellen stared out the window at the passing darkness, slowly relaxing into the rhythm of the swaying train. As the train broke out of the confines of the Fraser Canyon into the broad, tumbleweed-dotted plateau lands around Cache Creek, the sun dropped behind the rolling hills. Waves of heat from the sere, sun-baked hills continued to pulse against the train. Slowly the sky deepened from blue to a deep green-indigo. In the fading light, the land became increasingly featureless. Soon the only thing Ellen could see was an occasional, lonely light shining bravely in the darkness outside the train. She wondered who lived so far from everything, and if they liked being so alone.
When the train stopped in Kamloops, the lights and bustle of the station seemed discordant, frantic. Then, as the Kamloops lights disappeared, Ellen felt her frustration with herself grow. She had stubbornly refused to discuss the resort or Salmon Arm with her parents. It was as though what she didn’t acknowledge didn’t exist; what she ignored, disappeared.
The newly risen moon lighted the passing land and a long strip of water paralleling the tracks with a silver glow. The bare hillside gradually acquired a mantle of trees, and the ribbon of water broadened into a small lake. Small settlements, identifiable only by a handful of lights and signs along the track, appeared suddenly out of the dark and disappeared again in seconds. To the click-clack rhythm of the train wheels, Ellen repeated the names over and over as though each was a bead on a rosary. Monte Creek. Pritchard. Chase. Squilax. Sorrento. Tappen. In the distance Ellen could see moonlight reflecting off the surface of a broad lake. In spite of the heat that still filled the train, Ellen shivered. Salmon Arm.
As the train drew near the station, Ellen strained to see along the dimly lighted platform. Among the distant figures she recognized her parents. She smiled, surprised by the rush of relief and love that hit her. Then, anger flared. All the resentment she had felt when her parents told her they were moving came bubbling out from where she had buried it, overwhelming her anticipation and pleasure at seeing her parents again.
From what Ellen could see in the couple of minutes it took to drive from the station to the highway, the town wasn’t very big. Two blocks and we’re in the wilderness, she thought, ignoring the sprinkling of house lights on the seven-mile drive along the highway to the resort.
Over the soft music playing on the car radio, Ellen listened to her parents talk enthusiastically about the resort. “Everyone’s trying to fit in one last weekend before school. The cabins are full, of course, but the campground is bulging at the seams, too. As fast as your dad can build a picnic table, someone registers and puts up a tent. I expect tomorrow will be a madhouse. Thank goodness all our casual help’s coming in to work this weekend. It isn’t going to be much of a homecoming for you.”
“This isn’t my home.”
Ellen spent the next day with her transistor radio playing on the blanket beside her, alternately reading in the shade and cooling off in the lake. In spite of herself Ellen was impressed by the long stretch of white sand and the warm, clear lake water. This beats Jericho Beach hands down, she thought, and the water’s not salty.
Every time she saw her parents, Ellen focused on her book. At one point, just after she had watched her parents hurrying away from the office in opposite directions, a car pulled up in front of the office. Ellen frowned and resolutely began to read. I’m not getting involved. Let Phil, that town kid they hired to collect from the cars, deal with it.
Several times during the day she swam out to the float on the cabin side of the beach. The float was a magnet for kids. Cries of “Mom, look at me!” “Bombs away!” and “Yippee!” were followed by splashes as the children jumped or dove into the water.
In the late afternoon, though the sand still radiated trapped heat, the east-facing cabin beach was in full shade from the cottonwood trees growing along the bank. Ellen checked that her parents were nowhere in sight and began to walk down the wide, shady beach in front of the cabins, which was sprinkled with families on blankets, air mattresses, and old inner tubes of all sizes for playing in the water. She recognized several of the kids who had been swimming; they were now sprawled on their stomachs, feet waving in the air, intently reading comic books. As she neared the last cabin, the ground rose slightly, forming a shoulder-high, treeroot-webbed bank with rough dirt paths from the narrowed beach to each cabin. The sand below the last cabin was grass-tufted and log-tangled. An insubstantial wire fence, the split posts standing in every direction but straight up, marked the end of the resort property. A sign, “Private Property—Keep Out,” was tacked onto one of the posts. Although she could see the lakefront curving away, the willows growing in the sand blocked her view of the shore.
She turned and walked back, her feet ankle-deep in the water. Not seeing her parents, she continued around the long sand point to the tenters’ beach, where the sunlight still reflected off the sand, white, and blinding bright.
The afternoon sun, not yet behind the round, tree-covered hills to the west, spotlighted the tents packed side by side on the ground at the top of the long, sloping beach. Just past the launching ramp the water’s edge was lined with a flotilla of colorful boats pulled securely into the sand slope, their sterns rocking gently in waves from the wake of passing boats. Off shore, the broad bay was still churning with the wakes of boats pulling water-skiers. A thick layer of wood smoke hung high above the beach, dissipating as it floated over the water. As Ellen meandered down the length of the beach she could see a second and, in places, a third line of tents stretching back from the sand. Like the cabin beach, the tenters’ beach ended in a tangle of willows, logs, and grasses.
As the sun fell behind the hills, Ellen watched the water mirror the subtle color changes in the sky. It’s beautiful, she thought.
After Ellen’s father shut the office for the night, they sat down together for a late dinner of bologna, cheese slices, bread, and a pile of carrot, cucumber, and celery sticks.
“So, who’s driving me to school tomorrow, Mom? You or Dad? You can’t expect me to walk from out here in the wilderness.” Ellen leaned back with her toes on the floor and balanced on the back legs of her chair, rocking slightly.
“There’s a school bus,” her father said.
“A bus?” Ellen leaned forward, and the front legs of her chair hit the floor with a thunk. She tried to mask the wave of panic that hit her. “Just tomorrow, right?”
“No, every day.”
“You said I had to live here, and I came. But I can’t go on a bus. I can’t.”
“There really isn’t any option. School buses are a fact of life in rural areas, Ellen. You took the train here by yourself. What’s the big deal about going on the bus?”
Ellen’s stomach began to churn as memories of the merciless teasing she had endured on school outings flooded back. There would be no teacher to protect her or sit beside her. “You have to drive me. Dad. Please.”
Ann looked at her husband and raised her eyebrows. He shook his head slightly. “Ellen, someone who’s mature enough to live on her own can cope with taking a bus to school.”
“Are you finished ruining my life, or is there something else I need to know?”
Her mother shook her head. “You also need to know that the bus stops to let off kids for Salmon Arm Elementary and the junior high first. The senior high is up the hill. When you get there, go to the school office,” she said. “We got the transfer paperwork done in May so everything should be there. Do you want me to call the vice-principal?”
“And say what? Take care of my baby daughter who’s coming on the bus? Make sure she gets off at the right spot?”
“Remember, if there are any problems you can always phone us,” her father said.
“Why? So you can come hold my hand? If you really wanted to help, you’d drive me.”
“Watch your tone, young lady,” her father said.
Her mother shot a look at Ellen through narrowed eyes. “Ellen, don’t start. I’m too tired.”
A buzz from the office cut through the tension. Ellen’s mother pushed herself upright with a groan. “I had the light off. You’d think they’d know we’re closed for the night.”