breweries in the country. But I’d seen none of that.
My mother and Françoise spent that morning making hundreds of cucumber sandwiches that Mrs. Tees ordered every year and my mother agreed to make, even if it meant she had to close her store on a Saturday. Margaret Tees paid well, and she thanked my mother profusely. Meanwhile, my mother took some pride in the fact that a great lady of the world who counted among her friends the wife of Lester B. Pearson trusted her so much.
They began working in our kitchen at seven in the morning, the pungent, nauseating smell of cucumber floating through the house, all the way to my bed. When I left my room, Françoise looked away from me. She just couldn’t look me in the eye since the incident in the garage. My mother, defending her as usual, felt it necessary to add, “You know what your father said, you stay here!” I thought I saw a satisfied smile on Françoise’s face, or maybe not, but I didn’t care, I had other plans, which I’d put into action when they left in their black dresses and white aprons, heading up to the Tees mansion, the cucumber sandwiches all carefully stacked in boxes on the Chevrolet’s backseat.
I stood on the beach in the moonlight, my heart beating with apprehension and excitement. I could feel my penis like a weight in my pants, raw, as if it had been rubbed with sand.
They could all go to hell! My mother, my father, Françoise, Robert Egan … I refused to see the danger as you refuse to accept blame you don’t deserve. I was seventeen, for God’s sake, I wasn’t a child anymore!
“Romain, is that you?”
In the darkness, Gail was waiting for me, huddled in an Adirondack chair taken from her parents’ garden, a sidelong smile on her lips. I had expected something else. That she might make an effort, and not just sit there in dirty shorts and an ample, half-buttoned rumpled cotton shirt, almost masculine really. “Gail, are you okay?” She didn’t answer.
Suddenly, she laughed like a glass sphere crashing to the floor when she saw Locki jump towards me, his tail whipping through the air, “What a truly stupid dog! If he was actually trained, and he listened to my father, he would have attacked you!” My heart tightened — certainly not the sort of joke I wanted to hear.
“Gail, are you sure there’s no one around?”
“Do you see anyone? They’re all over there, having fun. Perfectly insensitive to the tragedy of others.”
She spoke as if there were someone around her to be angry at. I was upset and disappointed that she was in this state — she was drunk, I could smell it on her breath, and her clothes were dirty — almost repulsive. This is how she wanted to welcome me? She had planned this moment, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any part of it at first; it was too risky, and she knew it, she wasn’t stupid. Yet she was insistent, imploring, and seductive, “It’s important to me, to you, to both of us. Something special will bind us together, forever. Do you understand?” And of course I believed her, or wanted to believe her, a girl like her who was interested in me, even if a part of me was saying, You’re being had, man, this girl isn’t well. But what’s the point of ruminations, if not to torpedo your heart? I much preferred concentrating on my pleasure.
Of course it was mixed in with a certain degree of anxiety; after all, I was a seventeen-year-old boy, assaulted with these sudden urges as strong as the need to piss in the morning, just at the idea of doing it for the first time. We knew we would be going all the way that night, a prospect both enticing and frightening, though I was beginning to believe she might be making fun of me, seeing her limply moving her head, her hair tangled and flush against her skull, and that savage light in her eyes, more incandescent than the night we’d seen Rebel Without a Cause.
Disappointment in my voice, I said, “You want me to go?”
She straightened. “Why?”
“You don’t look so well. Are you sure everything is okay?”
“Of course everything’s okay, what do you think? Everyone is having fun tonight. And so will we.”
The sarcastic edge to her voice cut me, but not enough for me to refuse the arm she offered so I might pull her to her feet. She bumped against a chair and held onto me heavily. Staggering, she brought me into the house, bathed in darkness. I hadn’t stepped foot in the place since the infamous dinner with Reverend Barnewall, and I couldn’t repress a thrill of vengeance thinking of Robert Egan: This time I’m here to sleep with your daughter.
“No, Locki! No!” The dog had followed us, barking, scratching us with his claws. We were playing, why not him as well? “I said no!” Incensed, Gail grabbed him by the collar, pulled him towards the great French doors, and tied him outside, on the veranda; we heard a few more barks before he lay down, his nose pointed towards the sea.
“Here, drink this.” The bottle of Southern Comfort she’d already gone to work on. I brought it to my mouth, a big mouthful, burning, I felt it going all the way down to my stomach. Gail dropped onto the couch; on the coffee table, a piece of art that looked like an egg fell to the ground and rolled away without breaking, and again her laugh put ice in my veins. I glanced nervously around the room, as if a trap was about to spring. What was that on the chair there, a glimmer of movement when I looked quickly, something left to dry … Robert Egan’s red swimsuit? Anxious, I said, “And what if your parents decide to come home early from the party?”
“Relax, Romain.”
She pushed away a lock of her blond-white hair that kept falling over her eyes, took my hands, and placed them on her breasts. “Kiss me.” I obeyed clumsily, my hands motionless on her breasts, as if I might break them, as if I feared I might detonate if I moved. A musk came off her, dried sweat and body odour. Around us, in the living room lit by the moon, the four great windows opened onto the sea made us as vulnerable as thieves in daytime.
“Gail...?”
She pushed me away brusquely. “You’re shaking? Why? There’s nothing to fear, I told you!” She swallowed another mouthful of Southern Comfort. She began speaking very quickly, eyes fixed on the floor, as if she’d been offered a reprieve, and had only a few hours left to pour everything out from within — her marriage, her parents.… “Do you know what I am for them? A commodity. Merchandise. That’s all I am.”
Carefully, not wanting to offend her, I risked saying, “Why are you agreeing to it?”
She stiffened, rage in her voice. She’d been promised as a way of closing a deal. She would marry Don Drysdale of Drysdale Insurance, the eldest son of the company’s owner. Her father owned shares in it, but they weren’t as valuable as the union of their two families. The marriage loomed on the horizon, and her parents were overjoyed. “And what about me? I think I’m going crazy, Romain.”
She grabbed the bottle, took another swig, a portion of which ran down the front of her neck. She looked entirely incredulous when I said, “No one can force you to marry a man you don’t love.”
It was followed by a bitter laugh. “Well, they certainly don’t care about that!”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know. Maybe so, maybe not. But it doesn’t matter.”
She loves him? Why lie to me?
“If you love him, why
