loved Wally in the way that children can love each other only in that flickering window when they no longer play with toys but are not fully sexual. Her mother and father left Wally alone in the house often, because she was intelligent and they trusted her. She was allowed to make tea, and she made it with maple syrup from Quebec. They drank it sitting on cushions stacked on the deck facing the bright south and the mountains. The space let them talk about things that required vision, and they did not go inside to watch
Bewitched
or
Jeopardy
.
“You have to have a goal.” Wally was as certain about her vision as she had been about lettuce sandwiches. This startled Wayne, whose parents concerned themselves with what he was beginning to see as only a segment of life. The kitchen: his mother, her pans of fried liver, heart, little shoulder chops of caribou, and the other animals his father hunted — was that all? There was always what Jacinta called beautiful music: Brahms, Chopin. But the music came in to them through the radio, and there was no portal back out through which his mother could leave the realm of the ordinary. Wayne knew Jacinta had come from another world, that she remembered an elsewhere, but she was here now. She was staying here and the radio music could visit her, but she could not escape. She could not go out to meet it. And his father’s life was small in a different way. Treadway loved the wilderness, but Treadway’s wilderness did not call to Wayne. It did not seduce him and he did not wish he could spend more time in it than he did. Wally Michelin had a different world to go to, and Wayne felt it here, in the sun, on the deck of her house.
“If you don’t have a goal” — their backs touched the wall, which was hot though there were patches of snow — “you might as well blindfold yourself and see where you end up.”
Wally Michelin’s father spent his trucker’s wages on building supplies every chance he got, and he had covered the walls with terracotta stucco no one else in Croydon Harbour had. It retained heat like clay. Treadway had not approved.
“That’s going to crumble inside five winters,” he’d said, as Gerald Michelin and his visiting brothers-in-law had applied the mud with graceful trowels. But it had not crumbled, and Wayne had heard Jacinta tell Eliza Goudie she envied the way Ann Michelin’s pots of geraniums splashed red against it like an Italian villa.
“I’ve got a goal.” Wally gave Wayne a stack of Oreos. The Michelins ate brand-name groceries. Wayne was used to food procured from raw materials.
“What?”
“To sing in German.”
“Like Lydia Coombs?”
“I wrote her a letter and guess what. Lydia Coombs wrote me back. And she sent me a present. An important present. Want to see it?”
Lydia Coombs had come to Croydon Harbour Elementary on a national tour of outpost schools, to show children the life and work of a real opera singer. Lydia Coombs had told them that, when she was ten years old in her town on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, one of the nuns, Sister Angelica, had told the class to run away. She had told them that if she, Sister Angelica, had run away in time, she could have gone to Vienna and made a life there for herself as a professional contralto. She told the class this in secret. Run away, before it’s too late. When the mother superior was outdoors milking the school’s cow every morning at eleven, too far away to hear, Sister Angelica had sung Schubert for the children. “It became normal for us to hear Schubert,” Lydia Coombs said, “and nothing in my whole life has ever been as beautiful as that voice, and I promised myself I would run away and learn to sing like that.” Then Lydia Coombs had sung something for Wayne and Wally’s class.
“What was that German thing she sang?” Wayne asked now.
“It wasn’t German,” Wally said. “It was a French poem by Jean Racine, and Gabriel Fauré
Bewitched
or
Jeopardy
.
“You have to have a goal.” Wally was as certain about her vision as she had been about lettuce sandwiches. This startled Wayne, whose parents concerned themselves with what he was beginning to see as only a segment of life. The kitchen: his mother, her pans of fried liver, heart, little shoulder chops of caribou, and the other animals his father hunted — was that all? There was always what Jacinta called beautiful music: Brahms, Chopin. But the music came in to them through the radio, and there was no portal back out through which his mother could leave the realm of the ordinary. Wayne knew Jacinta had come from another world, that she remembered an elsewhere, but she was here now. She was staying here and the radio music could visit her, but she could not escape. She could not go out to meet it. And his father’s life was small in a different way. Treadway loved the wilderness, but Treadway’s wilderness did not call to Wayne. It did not seduce him and he did not wish he could spend more time in it than he did. Wally Michelin had a different world to go to, and Wayne felt it here, in the sun, on the deck of her house.
“If you don’t have a goal” — their backs touched the wall, which was hot though there were patches of snow — “you might as well blindfold yourself and see where you end up.”
Wally Michelin’s father spent his trucker’s wages on building supplies every chance he got, and he had covered the walls with terracotta stucco no one else in Croydon Harbour had. It retained heat like clay. Treadway had not approved.
“That’s going to crumble inside five winters,” he’d said, as Gerald Michelin and his visiting brothers-in-law had applied the mud with graceful trowels. But it had not crumbled, and Wayne had heard Jacinta tell Eliza Goudie she envied the way Ann Michelin’s pots of geraniums splashed red against it like an Italian villa.
“I’ve got a goal.” Wally gave Wayne a stack of Oreos. The Michelins ate brand-name groceries. Wayne was used to food procured from raw materials.
“What?”
“To sing in German.”
“Like Lydia Coombs?”
“I wrote her a letter and guess what. Lydia Coombs wrote me back. And she sent me a present. An important present. Want to see it?”
Lydia Coombs had come to Croydon Harbour Elementary on a national tour of outpost schools, to show children the life and work of a real opera singer. Lydia Coombs had told them that, when she was ten years old in her town on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, one of the nuns, Sister Angelica, had told the class to run away. She had told them that if she, Sister Angelica, had run away in time, she could have gone to Vienna and made a life there for herself as a professional contralto. She told the class this in secret. Run away, before it’s too late. When the mother superior was outdoors milking the school’s cow every morning at eleven, too far away to hear, Sister Angelica had sung Schubert for the children. “It became normal for us to hear Schubert,” Lydia Coombs said, “and nothing in my whole life has ever been as beautiful as that voice, and I promised myself I would run away and learn to sing like that.” Then Lydia Coombs had sung something for Wayne and Wally’s class.
“What was that German thing she sang?” Wayne asked now.
“It wasn’t German,” Wally said. “It was a French poem by Jean Racine, and Gabriel Fauré
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