Every Time We Say Goodbye (36 page)

In the mornings, they attended an open-floor session before getting into a van and driving into Toronto, where they handed out pamphlets on Yonge Street. Krista and Justin stayed behind to facilitate the advanced practitioner sessions with Andre, but after the first day, Justin came into the city with them. On Yonge Street, they were divided into units of three, and no matter where Dawn stood during the count-off, she and Justin always ended up in different groups. At least she managed to sit next to him in the van, and once, he put his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. She thought she would float up out of the seat with the sheer joy of his curls against her neck.

Toronto
, Dawn repeated to herself each morning as they drove into the city.
Toronto!
All those years she’d spent imagining the city Dean had conjured for them, a blaze of lights and billboards, everybody dressed in black, hailing taxis between clubs, and now
here she was. She scanned the passersby for Dean, imagining his delight when she fell into step beside him and said casually, “Hi, Dad.” It would be the kind of surprise he would orchestrate himself. And she didn’t think he would have a problem with Lighthouse. In fact, out of everyone in the family, he was probably farthest along the path to UC. But she didn’t see Dean on Yonge Street, and in the evenings, they were too busy at the farmhouse for Dawn to figure out how to find him.

In the evenings, they were divided into either work groups or session groups. Dawn was often in the kitchen with Justin, who was struggling with the fact that Krista said he just wasn’t ready to advance. “No judgment, no fear,” he said, “but Jesus H. Christ!” He hadn’t come all this way to hand out pamphlets. Why had she brought him if he wasn’t going to do advanced practice? He knew why. It was because she needed a ride and he had a car. He stopped washing dishes and braced himself against the sink, staring into the water. “I’m sorry, Dawn,” he said. “I’m having a hard time with this.”

Krista had already confided in Dawn about this very subject. “I’m afraid Justin is slipping off the path,” Krista said. “Sometimes people advance too fast and they aren’t ready, so in a crisis, they slip back to where they actually belong.” She put an arm around Dawn’s shoulder. “I want to ask you a favour, Dawn. I want you to keep an eye on Justin and tell me what he says.”

“Everything he says?”

Irritation flickered in Krista’s face. “No, Dawn. What he says about me.” Her face smoothed itself out. “I think you can really be a beacon for him, Dawn. He has a special connection with you.”

Dawn’s heart missed a beat.
A special connection
. She promised Krista she would try, but now, drying soapy plates with a filthy dishtowel, she wasn’t sure how to reach him.

Justin dropped a pot into the sink, splashing them both with greasy water. “I don’t know,” he said to Dawn. “Sometimes I think I should just go.”

Dawn grabbed his sleeve. “Go? Go where?”

“Nowhere. I’m just … complaining.” Justin patted her shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Do you promise?” She couldn’t think of what else to say, but it worked, because Justin gave her hair a playful little yank and said, “Promise.”

She slept on a mattress on the floor in one of the upstairs rooms with three women from Quebec, all of whom ignored her. She lay awake, thinking up ways she and Justin could end up in the same room, and then the same bed, and fell asleep with his imaginary arms around her. On the fifth day of the retreat, she woke up from a dream in which she and Justin were driving down a highway, just the two of them, and he reached over and took her hand and told her, “I love you, Dawn. I have always loved you.” When she opened her eyes, she could still feel the dry warmth of his fingers. She got dressed and went to find him. He was chopping wood behind the barn. “I’m off kitchen duty,” he said, wiping sweat out of his eyes. “It seems I was lacking kitchen commitment. Actually, this is better for me. Physical exertion. But can you bring me some juice?” She ran and came back with a glass of Tang. They sat on an unchopped log. Justin tilted his head back and drained the juice. She watched his Adam’s apple bob. When he put the glass down, he looked at her curiously and said, “What?”

Dawn pressed the palm of her hand to her face to hide her blush. “Oh! Nothing!”

“You had a weird expression.”

“I was just thinking—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“No judgment, no fear,” he said, peering at her. “No? Okay.” He stood up.

“I was thinking what if you kissed me,” Dawn said. She was breathless now, whirling downstream on a dark, fast current.

Justin sat back down on the log, a slight crease between his eyebrows. “I … don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said, and Dawn’s dark current became a whirlpool of shame, but then he leaned over and kissed her. His lips were chapped, and she didn’t feel anything at first. Then he licked her bottom lip and her mouth opened. His tongue lapped against hers and heat went through her, softening her arms, which opened on their own accord. She put her hand on the back of his neck, where it was warm and damp, and he put his hand over her breast. She felt her nipples harden against the inside of her T-shirt. He took her other hand and pressed it between his legs. He pushed her off the log into the soft earth and began kissing her throat while his fingers pulled at the zipper of her jeans. She struggled to help him. He pulled up her T-shirt and squeezed one breast while his tongue circled her other nipple. She gasped. “I love you, Justin,” she said.

“I love you too,” he said automatically. “Lift your legs.”

But then he stopped and pushed himself up. “Shh! Listen!”

Krista was calling her. Suddenly, Justin was standing above her. “Get up,” he hissed. She scrambled up and did up her jeans, her fingers stiff and trembling with cold. Justin brushed off her back.

“Dawn?” Krista called.

“It’s okay,” Justin told her. “You’re fine. Just go.”

“But—” She was desperate for a better ending, anything but “Just go.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said, and gave her a gentle push.

Krista was waiting for her on the front porch. “Dawn! Where were you?”

“I was helping Justin chop wood,” she said. Her voice sounded odd in her head, like she had a cold. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and pulled uselessly at her T-shirt.

“Tonight is your closed-door with Andre! Isn’t that wonderful?”

Dawn gulped in air and said it was. Krista told her to go and help carry pamphlets to the van.

Dawn looked back towards the barn. “Should I go get Justin?”

“No,” Krista said. “He has work to do here.”

“I—I was just talking to him and he’s feeling much stronger in his commitment. He—”

“Never mind Justin,” Krista said curtly. “Just go.”

All day on Yonge Street, she replayed it, from the beginning of the kiss to his declaration.
At last
, she thought. At last, at last: she had a boyfriend. Not some pimply, wheezing debate team co-captain, either, but Justin, who was twenty-two and looked like a movie star and loved her. She remembered every time he had touched her, from the first day. This was the real reason she had found her way to Lighthouse. The only thing that worried her was the way he had said, “We’ll talk about it later.” She didn’t like the “it” part. But he had also said, “I love you too.” Would he have said that if he hadn’t meant it? If Krista hadn’t called her, they would have had sex right there behind the barn.

When they got back to the farmhouse in the evening, Krista was waiting to take her to Andre. “Now?” Dawn said. “But I just got back. I—”

“Now,” Krista said firmly, and led her upstairs.

The session was not what she had expected. Neither was Andre. She had had only glimpses of him, usually getting in or out of a turquoise Oldsmobile in the evenings. Up close, he was short and slight, with thin, greying hair and glasses and a spotless white shirt tucked into jeans. Sitting at a wooden desk with a pad of paper, pencils, a calculator, he looked like a high-school
principal. Dawn sat in a folding chair across from Andre. Krista angled her chair so that she could see them both.

“Welcome, Dawn,” Andre said. “Krista tells me you have remarkable potential.”

Dawn dipped her head and tried to arrange her features into an expression of humility.

Andre said he and Krista wanted to talk about her future with Lighthouse, where she saw herself in five years. They wanted to know about her commitment. Did she see herself travelling along the path at higher and higher levels? Dawn said she did.

“Excellent. Now, I understand you haven’t yet paid your fee.”

Dawn looked at Krista for help. Before they’d left Sault Ste. Marie, she had explained to Krista about her university fund, and Krista had told her not to worry, they would work it out after the retreat. But now, Krista was looking at her the same way Andre was: expectantly. Dawn explained again that she had no way of getting the money because it was in an account her mother had set up for her.

Andre said, “Is the money in your name?” Dawn thought it was. “And you’re eighteen?” Dawn said, “Seventeen.” Andre asked if she knew the account number, but Dawn only knew the bank name. Andre said they had someone at a branch in Toronto who could look into it. If Dawn had proper ID, something could probably be done. Tomorrow, when they went into the city, Krista would take Dawn to the bank. Dawn could pay all the money she owed at once: the retreat money, plus all the membership and meeting fees Krista had kindly deferred.

That was the end of her session. “Be a beacon,” Andre said.

Dawn went to sit on the wooden bench on the porch. It had happened so fast she hadn’t had time to protest. No, that wasn’t
true. She wouldn’t have protested even if it had gone slowly, because even after all the weekly meetings and the closed-doors and the open floors, she was still bound by fear. She was afraid that Andre and Krista would be disappointed. Worse than disappointed. But she was also afraid to go to the bank in the city tomorrow. Even if the money was in her name, it hadn’t actually been given to her. Even if it had been given to her, it was for university. And if she failed math and didn’t graduate, it wasn’t right to use it for something else. She didn’t want to be arrested for whatever you got arrested for when you took money that was in your name but wasn’t technically yours.

But if it was? If it turned out to be hers technically and legally and completely?

She didn’t want to give it to them. Her head was full of murk and sludge, but that one thought was clear. She didn’t want to give them the money, and she didn’t have to, and that’s all there was to it. She didn’t have to be afraid of Krista’s disappointment or Andre’s judgment. No judgment, no fear. That was the message of UC, and finally, finally it had sunk in!

She got up and went inside to tell Krista that she had solved her own blockage.

Krista was going over a column of figures at the kitchen table. She didn’t even look up when Dawn told her. “I understand,” she said.

Dawn said, “I knew you would! After all this time, I finally—”

But Krista went on. “I understand your fear. But you’ve already committed that money to Andre.”

“But it’s not my money to commit.”

“If it’s in your name—”

“But it’s still not exactly mine.”

Krista said, “Technicalities. You’re obscuring the real issue with technicalities.”

“The real issue?”

Krista threw down her pencil and folded her arms. Her eyes were cold and narrow. “Your commitment. Is extremely weak.”

“But—”

“No. No buts. No excuses, Dawn. Either you’re with us or you’re gone. You commit fully or you leave.”

“Leave?”

“Yes, leave. I’m tired of having to carry people who can’t carry themselves.”

“You mean—leave the retreat? Or leave Lighthouse?”

“They’re the same thing.”

Dawn said, “But I have no way of getting home.”

“Well, then, stay and honour your commitments,” Krista said coldly. Then she sighed. “Look, Dawn, I don’t want to lose another of my practitioners.”

“Another?”

“Justin left this afternoon.”

“What?” Dawn gasped. “Where—where did he go?”

“He couldn’t honour his commitments. He was warned. A number of times. He was given the option of staying or going, and he chose to go.” Her voice softened. “Oh, Dawn. Don’t let yourself be led astray. I know you had a crush on him. But you’re worth five Justins.” She got up and stroked Dawn’s arm. “Listen. You’ve come too far to fall off the path now. You have more potential than any other practitioner I’ve ever met. Stay and honour your commitments, Dawn. To us and most importantly, to yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I’ll stay. I’ll honour my commitments.” Dawn was surprised at how easily it came out. She was surprised Krista believed her. She was surprised she wasn’t crying. She didn’t feel at all
like crying. She was burning with a deep, cold wrath, like she had been on the night she pounded on Laura’s door. No judgment, no fear. Just ferocious goddamn fury.

“Good.” Krista beamed at her. “I knew you would.”

Dawn walked down the driveway to the rough road. She didn’t look back to see if anyone was watching her. She didn’t care if they were. Anyone could be free. Anyone could choose to fuck you over anytime they wanted, and you were free to let them or stop them. She had had enough.
Fuck you, Krista
, she thought.
Fuck you, Andre
. If they tried to come after her, she would scratch out their eyes. They were liars. The whole thing was a lie. It was
all
judgment and fear.

Under the pines, the shadows were growing dense. The rough road seemed to be running parallel to the highway; she could hear cars somewhere through the trees. She guessed it was around seven o’clock. The light would not last much longer. She would have to walk quickly.

Justin
, she thought.
How could you leave me like this?

He had promised to stay. Then he had left. What was wrong with her that he wouldn’t take her with him? She began to run. If she cut through the woods, she could get to the highway before it got too dark.