Punishment (16 page)

Nobody talked about Caddy Gillis around me after that. Which is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of talking about Caddy going on, especially inside of me. Mostly questions. If it wasn’t me, then who? I was working backward in my mind, trying to remember how far she let me go and when. I told myself: It doesn’t take much. When you’re young and inexperienced it can happen pretty much without you knowing. But if it was me who got her pregnant in some freak accident, why would she go away without telling me? Maybe to spare me? Probably to give it up without me knowing. That would be like her. But then I had a flash of anger at that thought.
You deserve to know why I’m going but I just can’t bring myself to tell you
. This wasn’t just about her. It took two to create that life that was now a problem she was trying to solve alone. No. She wouldn’t do that. But, then, maybe, for noble reasons—she’d want to spare me the grief and scandal.

A friend of mine from younger days—I’ll call him Dave—arrived home unannounced in March one year. He’d been
working far away so there was much speculation about what brought him home at that unlikely time. He kept to himself for the week he was around and it was said that he seemed grim. Was he in some kind of trouble away? Was there someone sick at home? Then he went away again. The reason for his visit remained a mystery until May when his girlfriend who was still in school began to show. It was a major topic of discussion.

Caddy knew her well and told me how it happened. One night while he was home for the Christmas holidays they were necking on a couch after her parents had gone to bed. And before she knew what was happening he’d slipped it in. Caught her totally by surprise, she told Caddy. It was her first time but it didn’t hurt, she said. She’d been pretty turned on herself, from all the fondling. He was only in for like three seconds when she panicked and he pulled back, squirting stuff all over her and the couch. What a mess! Caddy was blushing telling it.

They got married in June, right after high school graduation, because that was what you did. You did the right thing and the right thing was for the community, upholding standards that held the place together even if it was at some painful cost for the individuals involved. Values. Civility. Doing the right thing was never the wrong course of action, not in those days. You sinned and you were sorry. You owned up and did your lifelong penance after an act of contrition called marriage. Everything was okay then. I was ready for that but Caddy spared me.

And then I did the math again: I hadn’t seen her from the Christmas break until the end of February. So if it was true that she was due at the end of October it was someone else who’d
sinned. Someone who’d just run away, turned his back on values and civility.

Duncan had it absolutely right.
I was just saying, there’s a bad streak in that crowd. You’re best out of it
.

It was mid-November when I heard a baby had been born a few weeks earlier. A girl. Catherine Rosalie. No shame there, I thought. Maybe they’ll call her Caddy too. But she went by Rosalie, according to the scraps of gossip I’d hear from time to time. Everything was clear and simple then and my reaction was unambiguous. The hurt confusion had by then grown thin. I was profoundly and permanently angry. And there would be moments of cold elation. What a lesson! I should get in touch and thank her. To learn something so revealing about human nature was worth more than anything I was learning from the university professors. I looked at girls and women differently, saw them for the perils and complications that were always festering within their complex needs. After Caddy I could still be friendly, even passionate in particular situations. But I always held something back and, perversely, it seemed to make me more attractive. Women seemed to be obsessed by the idea that there were things they couldn’t know about me, places I wouldn’t let them go, things they couldn’t have. I was like that right up until I met Anna.

In time I learned that Caddy had given up the child to a relative in Windsor. And that she had moved to Toronto where she worked for several years, creating distance from her daughter so the little girl could bond, I guess, with the new parents,
Caddy’s aunt and uncle. And at some point when it didn’t matter I heard that she was home for good and married to a lovely man named Jack Stewart. Salt of the earth, Ma said of Jack.

There was inevitable speculation that Jack was the father, especially when at the age of ten, Rosalie came to live with them. But anyone who thought it through would realize that couldn’t be the case: Jack wasn’t even from around here, never met Caddy ’til after she had gone away herself. And they never had children of their own so it was clear that there was something wrong with Jack in that department. For a long time it was considered odd and tantalizing that Caddy never gave the slightest hint about the father of her baby. There were predictable jokes about the Immaculate Conception and even I could, eventually, ignore the crude insensitivity and smile a little. There would come a time when no one talked or thought of it at all. But I always knew that someday, somewhere I’d come face to face with the reality.

D
ecember 29, coming back from our walk along the trail I saw Caddy’s car at the house. Birch saw it too and dashed off to sniff a wheel. Then he barked twice and trotted to the door. I felt a combination of elation and disappointment.

Caddy was at the kitchen table, sitting with her coat on, car keys in her hand. She smiled when I came in but didn’t stand. Birch jumped up, placed forepaws on her thigh. She scratched his head. “None the worse for wear,” she said.

I started pouring water into the kettle. “So how are things in Windsor?”

“It was lovely,” she said. “A relief to be away.”

“Everybody fine up there?”

“Everybody coping. It was sad just the same.”

“I’m making tea,” I said.

“None for me,” she said. “I just wanted to take this fellow off your hands. I got in late last night. I’m beat.”

The kettle was whispering. I stood, back to the counter, arms folded. The dog was lying on the floor, on his side, looking up at her while she scratched his ribs. Her face was sad, the dog reminding her of loss. “I didn’t know he liked that.”

“Loves his belly being scratched,” she said. “I hope he wasn’t any trouble.”

“He’s great company,” I said. “Went AWOL once but he was easy to find, looking confused on your back deck. Other than that, he settled right in.”

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, and stood. “It was a great break.”

“Too bad you couldn’t have stayed longer.”

“It was long enough.” She seemed to hesitate.

“I could keep him for a few more days, ’til after New Year,” I said. “Just a thought.”

She laughed. “Look at the face on you. I think he stole your heart too.”

“No,” I said, feeling the heat on my cheeks, “It’s just I …”

“I’ll bring him back for visits.” She moved toward the door. “Come on, Birch Bark,” she said. He yapped and followed her. Passing by me, Caddy caught my hand and squeezed, then leaned in and quickly kissed my cheek. “You’re a dear,” she said.

I slept late the next morning. No reason to get up. And I’d stayed up too late, well into the wee hours, watching an American
channel where people on a panel were haranguing one another about Iraq. I thought: So this is where Neil is getting all his big ideas. Staying up late, watching American TV.

One man on the panel was a skinny, balding, whiskery academic, whose name was also Tony, I noted. He was talking about the United Nations, how non-violent measures were achieving the security everybody seemed to be concerned about. But he was mocked and shouted down. And I wished that I had told Neil the Pittman story, about what happens when we grow cynical about the law, abandoning the civility the laws protect, unleashing our own violent, fearful demons. The price we ultimately pay for chaos.

After I turned the television off and went to bed, I couldn’t sleep for all the sounds and images: Hussein, Strickland, Pittman, thudding feet, violent noise and someone’s life a bloody puddle spreading on a dirty floor. And all the people who will die because of a consensus shouted by some lucky people on a television panel, people sleeping, eating, laughing at this very moment, and unaware that they will soon be dead. And Tommy’s voice,
Stay solid, man
; and why I couldn’t have told Neil what happened when I wasn’t solid, how I succumbed to weakness, ended up alone, in an old house on the edge of nowhere.

I swung my legs out of bed, stood staring out the window. The sun was shining and the wind was out of the northwest. There was fresh snow on the ground and it was lifting and shifting, phantom dancing on the meadow. The agitation of the night returned briefly then faded in the relaxed murmuring of wind. The word “finality” occurred to me, the way that
lawyers use it. It wasn’t weakness. It was strength.
You did the right thing
, I told myself again. And,
This is the finality, the isolation that is also peace
. And I thought of the poem by Anna Akhmatova:
Strong as we are, memory punishes us, is our disease
. Be on guard, I thought. Too much memory is toxic.

I was watching coffee dribbling into the urn when I heard two sharp yaps just outside my door. I laughed out loud. Dog memory—memory without moralizing—a blessing.

“The little bugger,” Caddy said impatiently when she picked up the phone. “I’ll come and get him.”

“No,” I said. “I needed motivation to go out for a walk. This is good. I have to go to the store later anyway so I’ll bring him by.” On a sudden impulse I said: “Then again … what are your plans for tonight? I just realized it’s New Year’s Eve …”

“You can imagine,” she said. “I’m picking up the new ball gown in a few minutes. Then the beauty parlour for the rest of the day.” She laughed. “What the heck do you think my plans are? Sitting in front of the TV watching a bunch of Mr. Bean reruns, waiting for the magical midnight moment.”

“Okay, why don’t you come over here and I’ll make dinner. And you can take your little friend home with you when you go.”

“I didn’t know you were a cook.”

I almost said
there’s a whole lot you don’t know about me
, but I caught myself and said instead, “Well you can be the judge of that. Besides I’ve got a bigger TV than you.”

She sounded wary when, after a long pause, she said “O-
kay
,” a kind of query on the second syllable.

——

The phone rang at three o’clock that afternoon. Caddy was already laughing when I picked it up. “You’re serious about this?” she said. “You’re sure now?”

“What?” I said, pretending to be hurt. “You don’t think I can cook a dinner?”

“I’m sure you can, but I was thinking, why don’t you come over here?”

“No,” I said. “I’m baking a ham right now. I have the fixings for a salad. I even found a nice baguette in town. And an expensive bottle of wine. There’s no turning back now.”

“Ham,” she said. “I’m impressed. But I have to do something. How about I whip up a casserole of scalloped potatoes? You plan on that.”

“My mother used to make it with lots of onions and cheese,” I said.

“I have the same recipe.”

She arrived at seven sharp. I had music on low, some Brahms. Making the selection I was reminded of how little I knew about her. I tried to recall if she drank alcohol. I thought I remembered Dixie cups of rye and ginger but it might have been like the cigarettes she’d smoke more out of curiosity than desire. I realized that I was nervous and badly needed something strong to drink.

Her chestnut hair, thick and rich, faintly greying, was gathered up high on her head, giving prominence to forehead, eyes and cheekbones. Her face, I noted with a pang, was still extraordinary. She seemed slimmer than she was before she went away. She was wearing a long loose pale blue sweater that hung to her
hips, tailored blue jeans, boots almost to her knees. She handed me a heavy object in a plastic bag—the casserole. It was warm. “Put that in the oven, on low,” she instructed. From a large shoulder bag she extracted a bottle of wine. One question answered. She sat then on a kitchen chair and struggled with the boots.

“They’re new,” she said. “I did some cross-border shopping.”

“Let me help,” I said, and knelt in front of her, seizing the heel of a boot, one hand on her calf. When I looked up she was staring at me, half-smiling, hands gripping the edges of her chair. Her eyes were shining. “Just look at you down there.”

Boots off, she reached back into the shoulder bag and produced a pair of shoes.

“And oh yes,” she said, reaching in again. “I brought dessert.” She was holding a small plastic container. “Some brownies,” she said. “They’d be great with ice cream.”

“Ice cream I have,” I said. “I’m going to have a drink while the wine is breathing for another little while,” I said. “How about yourself?”

“I’ll have some breathless wine,” she said.

I poured myself a very large glass of Scotch.

We were playful preparing dinner. Anybody watching through the window would have seen an extraordinarily attractive woman, age irrelevant, busy in a kitchen that was not unfamiliar to her. I guess all kitchens are more or less the same. Occasionally, though, she’d have to ask me where she could find something or other. “This place could use some organizing,” she said, then blushed. “Will you listen to me?”

I checked my image in the window of the microwave. Hairline holding, hair steely grey on the sides, but still black on top. Swarthy face too fleshy. I regretted the shirt that I was wearing, an old denim thing that was a bit too tight around the middle.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” I said. “How do you keep in shape? You look fantastic.”

She cocked her head, “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t mind you asking at all.” She turned back to the counter where she was squeezing garlic for the salad dressing. “It’s mostly in the genes.”

“That’s a part of my problem,” I said. “I don’t know much about my genes.”

She let the comment pass and I resisted the temptation to pour another Scotch.