Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“You really see something in that guy?” He’s looking over her shoulder at the editing machine. When she turns to it, she realizes that the image of Fletcher being punched in the gut still glows in the viewer.

“Don’t,” she says again, shaking free of him and flicking off the editor. A low electric hum disappears that she didn’t notice until the moment of its vanishing.

“You haven’t written your dad lately?” says Wale. “You haven’t heard from him?”

“Why do you care?” It’s impossible to stay here; she has to leave. “I’m going to bed. Turn out the lights, will you?”

She starts for the door, wishing there were something she could say to let them speak of more trivial things in the future. Instead, she ends up asking, “Did you really meet my father?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I don’t believe you just ran into him. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“What do you think happened?”

She doesn’t reply because she doesn’t know.

“Good night,” she says, worried he’ll call after her and wake everyone. The trip down the hallway seems to take forever. When she makes it to her room without hearing his voice, it feels like a lucky escape.

In bed, unable to sleep, she remembers the father she once had, the one unwilling or unable to change his life. Gran always thought the solution was for him to marry again. She said a man in his thirties was still young. Besides, she insisted, playing her trump card, Maggie needed a mother. Gran always said this in a patronizing tone Maggie loathed. “I don’t,” Maggie wanted to say. “My father’s all I need.” But she never spoke the words aloud. It wasn’t until she had been accepted for college and was on the verge of freedom that she decided she could say whatever she liked.

“You don’t really want him married,” Maggie told her then. “You’d rather have him to yourself.”

By that point she was too old to be grounded or sent to her room, so Gran’s only response was a hurt silence. Maggie should have felt guilty about it, but after a childhood assuming it was a requirement to love her grandmother, she had realized she didn’t even like her very much. All through Maggie’s years of high school, Gran had taken every opportunity to tell her how to live her life, her favourite topic being the sacred temple of a girl’s body and the dangers of young men. It was ridiculous of her to dwell on it, because Maggie never dated anyone. She knew she needed to win a scholarship if she wanted to attend college, and she told herself she didn’t have time for boys.

For that reason, it surprised her when, in the spring of 1966, Peter Leggat asked her to the senior prom. All year in Latin class she’d sat behind him, admiring the back of his head and growing weak in the knees when he conjugated verbs. They’d barely spoken to each other, though, and she was so startled by his invitation that she wasn’t able to feign indifference. Right away she blurted out a yes.

Afterward, she made up for it by not telling Gran or her father. On her own she bought a pair of pointy blue shoes and a chiffon dress with cape sleeves and an over-skirt that the saleslady said would twirl nicely in a waltz, leaving Maggie distressed because she had never waltzed in her life. Once she’d snuck the outfit into her closet, it seemed quite natural to say nothing to anyone until the night itself.

That evening, while her father watched television downstairs, she put on the dress and shoes, then crept into his room, never before having entered it on her own. Her mother’s dressing table was against the far wall. Maggie had often peered at it from the hallway when her father wasn’t there, studying her reflection in the mirror. Now, drawing close, she examined the things spread across the table’s surface: the pots of cream, the perfume bottles and lipsticks, a wooden jewellery box embossed with metal hearts. In a small pewter frame was a photograph of her mother at seventeen or eighteen, sitting on a bicycle with her hair pulled back, wearing a long grey coat that hung past her knees, smiling at some secret thought.

Maggie picked up a tube of lipstick from the table and removed the cap. She had already put the stick to her lips when she realized it stank foully, and she fled to the bathroom so she could wipe the stuff off.

Downstairs, she waited by the edge of the living room until her father turned to see why she was lingering. He took in the chiffon dress and the pointy shoes, and suddenly she apprehended just how preposterous she must look.

“Tonight’s the prom,” she told him. “Peter Leggat’s taking me.” She said it with an air of confidence, but it didn’t sound right, even to her.

“Who’s Peter Leggat?”

“Just a boy,” she replied. “I don’t know him very well.” Realizing how that might sound, she added, “He’s Catholic, I think.” But that sounded no better. She waited for her father to tell her she couldn’t go.

“I can see your knees,” was all he said.

“You can’t,” she insisted.

“I can almost see them, then.”

“You want me to put on something else?” It was a stupid thing to say, because she had nothing else to wear. She almost added, “You want me to stay home?” If he said so, she’d do it gladly. Anything was better than the look spreading across his face, one she’d never quite seen before. There had only been a hint of it those times she’d asked him to let her attend a slumber party or an overnight school trip. From those hints alone she’d learned to avoid situations where he might gain the forlorn expression he wore now.

A vision came to her of how it would go if she went. Every dance, Peter Leggat would step on her toes and stick his tongue in her ear, and afterward he’d drive her to Green Lake so he could slide a hand under her dress while they sat on the beach. She’d be so worried about her father that she’d barely perceive the movement of Peter’s fingers, tentative as he waited for her rebuke. She wouldn’t say a word because her mind would be back in the house, imagining how it would have been if she’d stayed behind to watch Gilligan’s Island , and she would barely be paying attention until Peter Leggat reached the wet centre of her.

When he appeared on the doorstep, clutching a pink corsage with his parents’ car running in the drive, Maggie told him her father was ill and she couldn’t go. It was a surprise to her when Peter looked relieved. She should have been glad, but it made her furious, and she almost changed her mind. Had he invited her on a bet? Probably his mother put him up to it. On the spot, Maggie decided that Peter Leggat was a scrawny, pimply, ninety-nine-pound weakling. What had she been thinking?

After he drove away, she stormed into the living room.

“I’m not going,” she declared. “I hope you’re happy.” She couldn’t quite escape upstairs quickly enough to avoid seeing her father’s stunned expression.

In her room, she entertained a fantasy of Peter Leggat driving wildly around Syracuse, overcome by regret, then returning to beg her forgiveness. When a knock came at her door, for a second she believed it was him. But it was her father, head down, staring at the carpet.

“You know, it’s all right for you to date,” he said.

“I know,” she replied, although she didn’t believe he meant it.

“I want you to see the world,” he told her. “I want you to have a career.” It was the first time he’d said any of these things. “Maybe you’ll be a teacher.”

“A teacher?” The idea had never occurred to her.

“You’d be good with children. Also, it would give you the summers to travel.”