Home Schooling (10 page)

Nadia argued with Sherry over some paltry thing, like Sherry telling her she should change out of her jeans for dinner, as if anyone did that anymore. “Keep you elbows off the table,” Sherry would say. “Don't talk with your mouth full.” Or she'd say Nadia should be more polite and respectful when speaking to Nolan. “But I never speak to him,” Nadia said.

“Yes, I mean that, too,” Sherry said. “That's another thing. You're very welcome here, Nadia. We both love having you here. This is your home, too. We're a family, aren't we? You and me and Nolan and Marni.”

Sherry looked at Nadia, her eyes brimming. She always asked Nadia how Jonah was doing. Nadia said Jonah was seeing Laurel, from the library, and Sherry said she was pleased to hear it. “She's just a friend,” Nadia said. “Jonah goes on hikes with her and sometimes she comes to the house for dinner. It's not serious, or anything.” Sherry said, well, she was glad Jonah was getting along okay.

“He misses you a lot,” Nadia said.

“Nadia, I miss him, too,” Sherry said. “My memories of Jonah are precious to me, of course they are. I'm very fond of Jonah. But I have to tell you, nothing is going to change, Sweetheart. You know that, don't you?”

On the boulevard outside the house there was an immense pine tree that looked to Nadia like it could, if it chose, give anyone passing by a whack on the head with its twisted-up branches, like the tree in the Harry Potter movie, which she and Marni actually sat through at a matinee while Sherry was shopping. She loved this old tree, partly because Nolan Ganz said it got pitch on his driveway and his car's tires picked it up and in the fall its dried-up needles littered the lawn and burned the grass. It was one tree he couldn't cut down, which was why Nadia worshipped it. Its bark was silvery, thick, and spongy as cork. Its shadows were an inky violet, cleansing on the skin as water. What she liked to do was put her hands on a low branch of the tree and let herself slump forward, her spine bowed, weightless, drifting. Her hands picked up a kind of energy the tree had, right at its core, and through her this power got transferred out into the world. Once, she'd been walking back from a swim at the public beach three blocks away, and she saw someone standing under her tree. He wore sunglasses, baggy shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt. He had a handkerchief tied over his hair, gold earrings in his ears: very cool. She thought he glanced at her as she walked past. Later, she wished she'd said something, asked him if he needed directions or anything. She should have; she should have spoken. Once she got inside the yard, the laurel hedge and the old pine tree hid him from her sight; she couldn't tell when or if he left.

Sherry wanted a book on rhododendrons. She and Nadia drove to Maurice's bookstore, which was in a small shopping centre near a busy three-way intersection, not far from the Royal Jubilee Hospital. On one side there was a flower shop and on the other a pharmacy.
Inside the store it was noisy from the traffic and a construction site on the opposite corner. On the counter an electric fan ruffled a pile of papers. A woman stood behind the counter. She was talking on the phone, her back turned to the store, and she didn't look at Sherry and Nadia. Sherry went to find the gardening books and Maurice came from the back of the store and intercepted her. “How good to see you,” he said, kissing Sherry on one side of her face and then the other. “And you, Nadia. You've changed. I forget how quickly young people grow up these days.”

He found Sherry a book on rhododendrons.

“Does it say anything about black spots on the leaves?” Sherry said. “We've got that, on some of our rhododendrons. I'd hate to see those big old plants dying. If they are dying.” She sat in a child's chair at a child's table and opened the book. She slid her bare feet out of her sandals and crossed her ankles. She leaned forward, an elbow on the table. Maurice sat beside her on one of the little chairs.

Nadia browsed through the books. She heard Maurice say that if they hadn't had lunch yet, he'd like to take them to a place he knew, a little Mexican restaurant.

“I'm parked in a fifteen-minute zone,” Sherry said.

“We'll take your car,” Maurice said. He stood up. He slid the little chair under the little table. He picked up the book Sherry had been looking at and closed it and put it on the counter. He arranged with the clerk, whose name was Shannon, for her to take her lunch break when he got back. He sat in the back of the car, leaning forward, his hand on the driver's seat, directing Sherry. His fingers touched the ends of her hair. Nadia saw this. Only the unscarred side of his face was visible to her. He had put on dark glasses. He wore a white linen suit.

When they got back from the restaurant, Nadia picked up a book and opened it, not with any sense of anticipation and dread, or however Maurice had described it at Sherry's wedding. She flipped through the pages while she waited for Sherry to pay for her book
on rhododendrons. “Let me know if you find it helpful,” Maurice said as he put the book into a bag. “If not, you can exchange it.” Then he said, “What's that you've got there, Nadia?” He came over and took the book from her. He said it was famous and had been made into a movie more than once.

“Excellent summer reading,” he said. “Take it. It's on the house. You are a reader, aren't you? A reader who's somehow missed this celebrated novel. Let me know what you think.”

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
So began
Rebecca,
the book Maurice had given Nadia. Rebecca had died aboard her sailboat. At least, it had seemed so, but it turned out her husband had murdered her and put her body on the boat, which he then sank. In his haste, however, it seemed he didn't take the boat far enough out to sea to evade detection and eventually he was caught.
When I killed her, she was smiling, still.
Rebecca's husband, Maxim de Winter, confessed to his new wife, the novel's unnamed narrator, that yes, he had murdered Rebecca. He didn't think of himself as a murderer though: he thought he'd been provoked, because Rebecca had been unfaithful to him. In spite of everything, the murder and the fear and the uncertainty,
Rebecca
was a love story. The punishment came in the form of love everlasting.

The book seemed to Nadia a pallid, half-swooning vision of some former time. Yet it was also, she could see, a faint, imperfect echo of Sherry's life here in this house. Was that why Maurice had wanted her to read it? Did he want her to notice the similarities between Rebecca and Eleanor? Did Maurice really believe Nolan had murdered Eleanor and would now do the same to Sherry? Was Nolan capable of murder?

Killing began in the mind and moved outward until it found its object, Nadia thought. The one who killed was the hunter and the other was … nothing.

Had Maurice moved here because he believed Nolan had been
responsible, in some way, for Eleanor's death? Had he dedicated his life to watching Nolan, so that the same thing didn't happen again?

Nadia had only a few pages left in the book. She took it with her into the kitchen and got an apple out of the fridge and sat at the table. She started to read and she heard Marni at the front door, talking to someone. Marni walked into the kitchen with the guy Nadia had seen on the sidewalk a few days earlier, beneath the big old pine tree.

“This is Gavin,” Marni said, very casually.

Nadia smiled at Gavin. He gave her the same high-voltage smile she remembered from the wedding. Could it be? No, it couldn't. Yet it was: Gavin was the waiter from the wedding.

She said, “Were you … do I know you?” He said, yes, she did know him. “Quite a coincidence, isn't it?”

“Not really,” Marni said. “It's not a coincidence at all.” She opened a can of pop and handed it to Gavin. Then she opened one for herself. She and Gavin sat down at the table with Nadia. Marni told her how, the day of the wedding, after her dad and Sherry had driven away, she'd gone back into the hall to look for her coat. Gavin had helped her. Of course, the coat wasn't there. She'd known it wouldn't be, some creep had definitely walked off with it. So Gavin had loaned her his jacket.

“Anything to cover up that atrocious dress,” Marni said, laughing. She and Gavin had exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers. They met when she returned his jacket. After that, they got together whenever they could, either here, in town, or in Vancouver. She hated secrets, she said; she wanted Gavin to meet her dad and Sherry, properly meet them, not like at the wedding.

“Gavin is studying environmental science,” Marni said.

“And film animation,” Gavin said.

“Yes, but mainly environmental science,” Marni said. “Where's Sherry? What are we having for dinner? Are we having a barbecue? It's too hot to eat, anyway, isn't it?”

Marni reached for Nadia's book. She said she'd read
Rebecca
when she was about twelve. She preferred
Jane Eyre.
Weren't they kind of the same book?

“‘Reader, I married him,'” she said, scornfully. “That was in
Jane Eyre,
wasn't it? The fire, the maimed hero. It was all kind of the same.” She handed the book back. She put her elbows on the table and leaned her face close to Gavin's, their foreheads touching. Nadia saw her tender, complicit smile and looked away. The window was open, but no air came in. The back of her neck prickled. Each day was hotter than the previous one. She thought of how Gavin had appeared to her at the wedding, like a kind of merman: he was in the sea and then he walked out of the sea and became mortal. She liked Gavin. She wished she'd talked to him instead of to Maurice. She could have pretended she'd lost her coat, too.

The summer after she finished school, Nadia worked at her grandparents' bakery. She hoarded the money she earned. She got her driver's licence and sometimes drove Jonah's beloved car over to Sherry's, where she'd stay for a day or two at a time, rarely longer. On the island she got to witness Jonah and Laurel's on-again-off-again romance, while at Sherry's house she had the drama of Marni and Gavin, which had eclipsed the drama of Sherry and Nolan.

One day she arrived at Sherry's just in time for a crisis. Sherry met her at the door and told her Marni had just informed her father she was going with Gavin to Belize, where his ecology class was going to study the environmental effects of logging in protected forest preserves. “Can you imagine how impressed Nolan is?” Sherry said. “Anyway, go ahead. Go on in and join the fray.”

In the living room Nolan was sunk into his chair, his hands resting on the arms. He glowered at Nadia and Sherry like a large disgruntled baby. Sherry went over and patted his arm. Gavin was sitting on a hassock, his legs stretched out in front of him, his hands
in the pockets of his shorts. Marni sat in a chair behind him, her hand draped over his shoulder. Sherry said she was going to make coffee. Nadia said she'd help. She took a step toward the door. “Stay,” Nolan said, snapping his fingers at her. Nadia sat down.

“We can't stay Daddy,” Marni said. “Gavin and I have to leave. We're going to a movie.”

Nolan thumped his fist on the arm of the chair. He said Marni wasn't going anywhere. She couldn't just walk in here and make a pronouncement like that and then take off. Nor could she go to some foreign country without his permission, for God's sake. There were things to discuss. For one thing, she had her education to think of.

“Oh, Daddy,” Marni said. “This will be an education.”

“Actually, Mr. Ganz, it's going to be really cool work,” Gavin said. “We'll be right up there, in the rainforest, on these canopy walkways strung between the trees, up with the bats and the birds, taking samples.”

“Samples of what?” Nolan said.

“I don't know yet. Samples. Leaves and bird droppings and stuff, I guess. Insects.” Gavin sat up. He looked uneasily in Nadia's direction, as if for assistance.

“We're going to miss this movie,” Marni said. “I have one day in which I can see this movie and I'm going to miss it.”

“Shut up,” Nolan said. “You're acting like a spoiled brat.”

“You made me into one,” Marni said.

“That can be changed,” Nolan said. “You can try living without my help if you like. You can go and be a hippie with Gavin in the jungle, if that's what you want.”

“A hippie?” Marni said. “Oh, Daddy. That's so cute.”

“Look at Nadia,” Nolan said, waving a hand in her direction. “Nadia doesn't have everything handed to her on a silver plate. She's got a job. She works. She looks after herself. She's a credit to her mother.”

“She works for her grandparents,” Marni said. “That's not exactly a job.”

“Marni, you are not going to Belize,” Nolan said. “And that's my last word on the subject.”

“I'll be nineteen by then, Daddy,” Marni said. “Nineteen-year-olds are fighting in a war at this minute. I can do whatever I want. Why can't you be happy for me? Belize is a beautiful country. Gavin will be doing important research.”

“Not another word from you,” Nolan said, shaking a finger.

“My mother said I can go,” Marni said. “She's given her permission.”

“Marni, I'm warning you,” Nolan said. He closed his eyes and put his hand to his forehead. Sherry came in with the coffee. Nolan said he'd have coffee later. He needed a breath of fresh air, he said. He stood up and went to the door. He turned and said, “Marni, don't go anywhere. I want you to stay here for supper. I don't want you to leave while you're angry with me. Do you hear me?”

In Gavin's opinion there was no hope. He mentioned this at dinner, in a conversational tone. Nadia had to hand it to him: he seemed perfectly relaxed, while she still felt nervous eating at the same table as her stepfather, invariably dropping her fork on the floor or spilling water on the tablecloth. Tonight they were having lobster and shrimp and salad. Nadia helped herself to some salad and passed the bowl to Nolan. Even with the napkin he'd tucked into his collar bunched up around his neck he managed to look formidable. Nadia was surprised Gavin had the nerve to argue with him. Gavin said scientists knew for sure that if greenhouse gases weren't reduced right now — this year, this decade — the world was doomed. “I can give you stuff to read,” he said to Nolan. “It'll really open your eyes. We all have to come together and act now, if we want to avert catastrophe.”