Kathleen Winter - Annabel

“You don’t have to be. But a lot of things like that are based partly on beauty. And youth.”

“Elizaveta Kirilovna is beautiful, isn’t she, Mommy?” They had shared a can of lime drink in wineglasses and watched the Russian soloist together over a bowl of ripple chips. Elizaveta Kirilovna had chosen Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. It had sounded like snow that floats before a storm. Wayne had listened carefully to the commentator’s descriptions of what Elizaveta Kirilovna had choreographed. The commentator labelled and broke down the magic poetry of her routine, naming the parts with names and numbers Wayne liked so much he wrote them in the margins of page 176 of the Labrador phone book. Deckwork eight. Pretzel tuck two. Right left right left eggbeater eight. Move diagonally. Tub two. Front flutter twist. Sailboat. Flowerpot. Vertical spin.

“Yes, Wayne, she’s beautiful. If you’re not going to eat that yolk don’t let your father see it. Here.” Jacinta scraped it into the bowl in which she kept kitchen scraps for Treadway’s dogs and covered it with a piece of toast crust.

“I wish I was her.”

Jacinta put the bowl on the counter and stood with her back to him. “You can’t go wishing that, Wayne.”

“But I do. I wish it. I would be so good at that. If we had a pool. Maybe we could get a pool. Some people have pools in their backyards. They have them in the catalogue. How do they get the water so blue?”

“They cost fifteen hundred dollars. And they’re not practical in Labrador. They’re hardly practical anywhere in Canada. Two months of the year. Then the winter destroys them. It destroys them, Wayne.”

“Do they put blue dye in it?”

“They have to put a lot of chlorine in it.”

“If I was Elizaveta Kirilovna I’d get an orange suit. Bright orange. And a gold cap. I really like orange and gold. And I’d like to do that eggbeater thing. That looks great. I could do that here, in the river, in summer. Mom?”

“What, Wayne?”

“Would it be all right if I got a really nice bathing suit that was orange, the same shape as Elizaveta Kirilovna’s, instead of swimming trunks?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t?”

“No, Wayne.”

“Boys don’t wear them?”

“They could, if people would let them.”

“But people won’t?”

“No.”

“Even if I wore it when no one was looking?”

“I don’t know about that, Wayne. I don’t think so.”

“Would you let me?” He gave her a fierce little look that broke her heart. “I know Dad wouldn’t let me. But would you? You understand, don’t you, Mommy? About how amazing Elizaveta Kirilovna is? I could be like her.”

“Wayne, your dad was asking me about that. He doesn’t think there are any boy synchronized swimmers.”

“Maybe there are some and we just haven’t seen them on TV yet. Maybe the boys are on another channel.”

“Your dad doesn’t think so.”

“But he doesn’t know for sure.”

“He’s pretty sure.”

“But just because Dad hasn’t seen them doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

“That’s true.”

“There’re lots of things Dad hasn’t seen, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s never seen a giraffe. He’s never seen a hippopotamus. He’s never seen Bobby Orr in person. He’s never seen the Entire State Building.”

“Empire.”

“Has he?”

“It’s the Empire State Building, Wayne.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Could we get me a bathing suit like Elizaveta Kirilovna’s and not tell Dad?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Does that mean maybe?”

“I don’t think so, Wayne.”

“Even if I really, really, really, really want one and don’t mention it to him at all and he never finds out and I use my own money?”

“I don’t know if I can be complicit in a thing like that, Wayne.”

“What’s complicit?”

Jacinta put the lid back on the jar of Skippy peanut butter. “Complicit is when you agree to something in secret and hide it from another person.”

“Is it always bad?”

“It could be, if you hide something important from someone you love.”

“But it could be good too?”

“It could be something you do to save your life.”

“Could it be in between?”

“This is giving me a headache, Wayne.”

“Could it be when you hide something important from someone you love to sort of save your life in a way?”

“Wayne.”

“Because I really, really, really, really, really, really—”

“Stop it.”

“— want a bathing suit like Elizaveta Kirilovna’s. More than anything else in the world.”

“I’ve got something” — Treadway stood in the kitchen doorway draining his cup — “you might like to see.”

“What, Dad?”

Treadway put his cup in the sink and went mysteriously out of the room. “If you want to come, come.”

“But what is it?”

But Treadway would not tell. He had a way of enticing Wayne out of the house, into the woods, with unexplained beckonings. One time it was to fish smelt on the ice at Bear Island. Another time it was to see his cousin Lockyer tar the joints in a dory. Wayne knew that whatever it was this time would be outdoors, hot and windy. He knew it would take a long time. He knew that before it was over he would be wishing he had not come. Still, there was something irresistible about the way Treadway started on a mission. There was, along with the mystery of it, an intangible promise that Treadway would love and approve of Wayne if he came. By the end of most such outings, that promise had turned into disappointment. Maybe this time it would be different.

“Dad, where are we going?”

Treadway drove the truck past the Hudson’s Bay store, which was the westernmost building in the settlement, and into the woods to where began the road everyone called the trans-Labrador highway, though it was only half built and was, for the most part, a one-way dirt track. Dust rose, and no matter how tightly Wayne rolled his window, dust got into the truck, past his shut lips and eyes and into his tears and his teeth. He hated it.

“Are we going to the Penashues’ tent?”

The Innu had tents in the bush all along this road. They had used the route long before anyone thought of starting a road. Treadway was not the one who had brought Wayne to the Penashues’ tent. Jacinta and Joan Martin had walked there with him to drink tea with Lucy Penashue. The women had given Wayne black tea boiled on a tin stove and bread that Lucy had kneaded and lain on the stove and torn.

“No.” The truck lurched.

Wayne wanted a glass of water but did not tell his father he was thirsty. “Did you bring any fly-dope, Dad?” He touched behind an ear and his finger was covered in blood crust.

“DEET.”

Wayne got the DEET out of the glove compartment and rubbed some behind his ears, on his neck, around his hairline, and into his hair. He hated its stink.

“Want some, Dad?”

“We’re here now.”

The truck swerved into a huge cul-de-sac, a place in the road where men with backhoes were digging dirt out of the side of a hill and heaping it along the road for the grader. This road had to be rebuilt after every winter. One day, said the politicians in Newfoundland, it would cross Labrador into Quebec with two full lanes, and even farther ahead in their crystal balls they saw it paved, so no one would have to spend the summer rebuilding it again. But now flies and heat and dust made the men sweaty and filthy. They sat high in their machines and swigged water out of plastic bottles, and they ate bologna-and-mustard sandwiches that had earth handprints on the bread. It was noon, and the men were happy to see a kid, and they joked with Treadway about putting the kid on the job. Treadway was a man who, though silent in his town, laughed and joked with the road builders and with any men in a group. He was a man who was made to be part of a team working hard with dogs on the ice or machines in the dirt. An easiness came over him. He did not have to think about what to say. It was not one man talking here, but the pack. What one man said could easily have been said by another. They threw their voices back and forth in the sun like baseball players fooling around with the ball. Summers were short in Labrador, and there were not many days a man could fool around with his friends in his shirtsleeves and feel sweat all over his body.