Deluded Your Sailors (2 page)

1) OPENING REMARKS
J
ANUARY
5, 2009,
AS MADE AT THE
T
OURISM
, C
ULTURE AND
R
ECREATION
D
EPARTMENT
B
REAKFAST
,
BY
A
SSISTANT
D
EPUTY
M
INISTER
C
HRIS
J
ACKMAN
, S
T
. J
OHN
'
S
, R
EPUBLIC OF
N
EWFOUNDLAND AND
L
ABRADOR
.

I got bacon on me tie, just a minute. Is the mic on?

Good morning, me gaffers. Let me welcome you all back from a generous and what I hope was a restful Christmas and / or holiday season break. The government of the Republic of Newfoundland and Labrador supports employment equity and diversity. I should add we respect all religions, regardless of where they do or do not go to church.

As our doors are knocked on by the new year, I rest assured we all see the need to embrace the upcoming challenges as regards putting a fine polish on the incoming tourism experience.

All tourism is cultural. Whether tourists actually come out and say they want cultural tourism, the Republic's rich and unique culture and heritage are always a part of a visitor's experience. It certainly isn't the weather that brings them here, except inasmuch as the weather informs our culture. Because all tourism is cultural, all cultural industry must keep tourism in mind. In these days of changing energy supplies and fickle international markets, at least we will always have ourselves. To market our authenticity and create the best possible tourism experience, we must think, act, and feel that authentic experience. History is a resource as much as nickel, oil, copper or gold. Dig it up, refine it, and put it to market. The joy of tourism and culture, however, lies in the realities of host's privileges. When it comes to nickel and oil, we cannot tell the markets what they need when. They tell us. But when it comes to marketing our culture, we can tell the tourists, those wonderful end-consumers, what they need and want. By hosting tourists to our culture, we can focus their experience and, in the end, generate more revenue. The key to all of this is to always think of the lucrative tourism market and thereby always present the culture and heritage of this republic in the manner most appropriate.

New project and sustaining funding guidelines will be available by the fall of this year. In the meantime, funding applications for cultural endeavours need to be decided on a case-by-case basis for best fairness within the boundaries of budget. By working patiently within these fences now, we can best ensure that no layoffs or cutbacks will be necessary this fiscal year.

Anyways, I hope everyone enjoyed their breakfast as much as I did. I'm sure I'll see ya later up on deck.

2) CASE NOTES
J
ANUARY
6, 2009, S
T
J
OHN
'
S
.

—You don't have to forgive him.

So her psychiatrist said.

Nichole Wright, hiding her face behind curtains of long hair, twisted and destroyed a tissue.—All this time I've felt guilty about even accusing him in my head, never mind out loud, then thinking I owe at least the hard work and duty of forgiving him, it's just – hard.—hard.

—Owe whom?

Nichole pretended to study the muted landscape Dr Miller had hung on the wall: placid pond, smooth rocks, white birch. No cracked boulders, no deranged black spruce.
All the better for
calming the crazies like me.
In truth, Nichole examined her distorted reflection in the glass laid over the painting: eyes wide like a child's after a visit to a fairground haunted house, face lined like an old whore's after a dead night.
Yeah. Whore. You heard me. Take it away, Robertson Davies, you and yer spooky Canadian
identity questions: Hoo-er ya? Newfoundland version: Whore you at
all, hey? Who owns you?

The glass over the painting reflected back a somewhat overweight woman wearing rectangle-framed glasses, that particular shape and style ubiquitous in 2009. Subtle makeup softened what Newfoundland English called a right hard-lookin face, that face made all the harder from years of grotesque weight loss and weight gain – of bingeing and purging. Her thinned-out teeth, enamel translucent at the biting edge, betrayed that lovely little habit. Not beautiful, oh no; Nichole took great care to avoid
beautiful
.

Not ugly, though.

And no whore.

So pretty. Can't keep my eyes off ya. Come sit in my lap, ya pretty
thing. Shh...

—Nichole, you don't owe anyone. You are the injured party.

Experienced, white-haired, physically strong but pale, as though he bled in secret, Dwayne Miller looked to be drowning in compassion and quite unaware of it, a happy child dog-paddling in water maybe six inches over his head and watching the bubbles rise.

Not accepting, not believing Miller's words, lies the norm, after all, Nichole gave a nod. So easy to lie, to ooze past the chasm between the desired reality and the dirty truth.—But how much of it do I even know? I mean, I know it, somewhere, yet I don't, because I can't pin down the memories. How can I not know what I know? What if I'm accusing these men falsely? Holes. My memory's holed. Not like those things you simply don't remember, but like someone stove in your skull and shoved out great ragged chunks.

Dr Miller spoke some more, reminding Nichole that her symptoms read like a bulleted list in a textbook, that her damaged memory and roughed-up storyline could only be called common. Normal to refuse knowledge and belief, to create an historical naught. Not. Knot.

—Cherry trees. He liked to pose me nude in front of this one particular cherry tree, all young and spindly. Wild cherries, little things, more pit than fruit, suck off all the fruit and skin and spit out the seeds. I'd gorge on them, pack my mouth and cheeks so full I didn't dare speak, because then I might choke. I'd dance with that tree, when no one could see me, lead it, like it stood rooted to be my passive partner. Later, I scrawbed into the bark of it with a soup spoon. Broke off its branches. Flung them into the woods. Likely a half dozen more cherry trees there, yes now, a whole forest of cherry trees, all from one beat-up sapling. All my fault.

—None of this is your fault, Nichole.

—Sanded me down just fine for getting tangled up with that Foxe fucker, didn't it?

—Re-victimization. It's another common pattern.

—Is there a peel-and-stick label standing by for everything I've gone through?

Dwayne Miller sighed, very tired. Tired of how often he had these conversations with patients. He'd not been raised Catholic, but some days he wished he'd instead become a priest who could give absolution after hearing confessions, those rituals looking easier than these long struggles to heal. That's why he studied medicine, wasn't it, to heal?
Right, a priest.
At least he'd corrected Nichole's prescriptions; some fool colleague had done harm, writing Nichole up for lithium. —Re-victimization is part of what happened when Almayer Foxe stalked and attacked you. Because of your past, you'd been groomed, so to speak, to respond a particular way to a predator's overtures.

—Then it
is
my fault.

Not that Nichole spoke loudly enough for anyone to hear.

Dr Miller kept talking. —I wish medicine better understood the predators. Then we might treat and heal someone like your grandfather, too.

—Heal
him
? I want him staked down to a bog and left for the rats and the crows and fuckin starved stray dogs! You hear me?

—I hear you. Keep speaking.

—I want him to suffer! I want him to feel the pain and the humiliation and the dirt, the fuckin
dirt
soakin into his soul and stainin him forever!

—And why do you want that?

Don't drop your Gs, don't aspirate your vowels, always speak
nicely.
—Because he hurt me. And he had no right to.

A few moments of quiet. Miller asked if Nichole still meditated.

—When I can get my mind settled down.

—Binge-eating?

—Now and then.

—Purging?

—Not as much.

—And are you testifying at Foxe's trial?

—No fucking way.

Her own worst enemy, some days.
—Nichole, I wonder –

—I don't have to forgive him. You said so.

—I was referring to your grandfather, but –

—All the same to me. One abuser, two abusers, three abusers, four. I am not looking at Almayer Foxe ever again; it's as simple as that. Besides, I just got this play commission from the Allied Cultural and Heritage Enterprises for the Settlement 250 celebrations out in Port au Mal. TCR money and two hundred and fifty years of white European history, all you can eat. I've got a fair bit of research to do, so I just won't be able to go to court.

—Are you afraid?

Nichole glared at him. Dignity vanished as if on her breath, and she hunched her shoulders and sank in her chair, a sneer ageing and deforming her face, while her voice fell into the tones of an old-school moneyed townie: disgust and entitlement.

—Fuck fear.

She stood up calmly, wrapping her pashmina scarf round her shoulders and slipping on her long coat. A clean and simple authority radiated from her.—I think our time's up today, and the waiting room is busy. I'd better go.

—Reception will call you with your next appointment time. Prescriptions good?

Nichole's smile transformed the snotty troll who'd just said
Fuck fear
. —Fine. Everything's fine.

Boots clicking on the hard floor, she departed.

After completing his notes, Dr Miller emerged from his office to call his next patient. A busy waiting room, yes – he shared it with two other psychiatrists – but the clock told him Nichole's hour still had fifteen minutes left.

Not the first time she's done that.

3) LIVE DOCUMENTS
F
EBRUARY
9, 2009, R
IORDAN
'
S
B
ACK AND
S
T
J
OHN
'
S
.

Crazy cunt.

Evan Rideout sighed; dust motes danced. Harsh winter sunlight – tormented, quickened by old windows that seemed to melt and spill, dull panes thicker at the bottom, glass refusing gravity yet surrendering, beautiful – galled his eyes. His recent ex-girlfriend, had she heard his thoughts, would have punched his upper arm hard enough to leave a mark.
Rightly so,
Evan told himself, rubbing the imaginary wound.
Where do I get off thinkin
about a nice old lady like Mrs O'Dea in words like that? Grandfather would tear a strip off me, too.

Mrs Rebecca O'Dea laid a china plate of cookies and squares on the table, directly under Evan's nose. Date squares, lemon squares, snowballs and those waxed chocolate mice with the crispy rice and peanut butter centres, Evan's favourite, tottered and slid, only saved in the end by the friction of the paper doily beneath them.