After River by Donna Milner Page A

they do?’ I asked trying to sound uninterested. ‘Play silly games?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ Mom smiled. ‘Though they probably spend more time talking about boys if sleep-overs are anything like the ones I went to when I was a teenager.’
    â€˜You went to pyjama parties?’
    â€˜Sure, I was young once too, you know.’
    â€˜You still are,’ Dad called in from the porch where he was hanging up his barn coat.
    So I went. If it was good enough for my mother, it was good enough for me. I was nervous, but secretly I was curious.
    Boyer drove me in on Saturday evening. He parked in front of the Ryans’ house on Colbur Street. ‘Smile,’ he said as I opened the truck door. ‘You look like you’re going to a wake instead of a party.’
    I shrugged. ‘It’ll probably be just as boring.’ I grabbed my pillow and a cloth bag that held my flannel nightgown and toothbrush.
    â€˜Then I hope you have a book in your sack.’
    I groaned. Boyer had long ago taught me always to carry a book with me wherever I went. In the nervous preparations for my first night away from home I had forgotten to pack one. Boyer reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small dog-eared paperback. ‘Here, take this one,’ he said. ‘I think you’re ready for it now.’ He winked as he handed me The Catcher in the Rye .
    I tucked the book into my bag and leaned over and kissed Boyer goodbye.
    Mrs Ryan answered my knock. Every time I saw her, Elizabeth-Ann’s mother looked as if she were on her way to a party. Her angora sweater, tweed skirt, and high heels were in such contrast to my mother’s bibbed apron tied over a printed cotton dress.
    â€˜Hello,’ she said. ‘Natalie, isn’t it?’ she asked as she waved me into a foyer as large as our kitchen.
    I nodded.
    â€˜The girls are upstairs,’ she smiled and gestured to the stairway. She smelled like a cloud of perfume and hair spray.
    â€˜Thank you Mrs Ryan,’ I said and headed towards the stairs.
    As I crossed the foyer I heard the clinking of ice against glass. ‘Well, if it isn’t the pretty little milkmaid,’ Elizabeth-Ann’s father called out from the living room.
    Gerald Ryan, the owner of Handy Hardware, was the mayor of Atwood. Somehow being called the milkmaid by him did not sound the same as when my father said it.
    Unbidden, a forgotten image welled up. An image from when I started helping Dad deliver milk years ago. As I placed milk bottles on his porch early one morning I glanced down and saw Mr Ryan standing at the basement window. At first I felt embarrassed that I’d caught him scratching himself and I hurried away. The following weekend he stood in the basement again, his hand rubbing the front of his pants as he stared out the window. I plunked the full milk bottles down, almost dropping them in my haste. I spun away, but not before his narrow red-rimmed eyes met mine. His lips opened in a leering smile. I didn’t tell my father. I still can’t say why. Perhaps it was because I didn’t understand why it frightened me. But I did ask Dad to change sides of the street with me when we delivered to houses on Colbur Street. Without hesitating, or questioning, he said, ‘Okay, Sunshine,’ and that was as close as I came to telling anyone. After a while I began to question what I had really seen behind that window. But as Mr Ryan winked at me over his raised glass, I felt the same repulsion I had back then.
    â€˜Hello, Mr Ryan,’ I mumbled. I kept my head down, but I felt those red, rodent eyes follow me as I hurried up the stairs.
    It looked like half of the grade seven girls’ class was in Elizabeth-Ann’s bedroom. They were sprawled about, lying or sitting on the twin beds, and on the jumble of sleeping bags covering the floor. Movie Star, True Story and Mad magazines were scattered everywhere. Even Bonnie King was there.