Catch Me When I Fall (6 page)

Eustace looked up. “Do you even know any Catholics, Mom?”

He was lippy these past couple of weeks, Beatrice thought. His voice flat, like he didn't care whether he goaded them. “No, but I know what they believe. Some of it's not even Christian.”

“Like what?” Eustace buttered a piece of bread.

“Like that. People doing things to help get them saved. We don't believe in that. It's all from God. It's all God's work.” She glanced over at Willem, trying to signal her need for support.

“So we shouldn't do good things?”

“That's not what I . . . Forget it.” She added another ladle of soup to her bowl.

“You leave your mother alone,” said Willem. “She's a good woman. She knows her catechism.”

•  •  •

Eustace lay on his bed wishing he had listened to the sermon. It had been about making amends, he knew that much.

His friend Tony was Catholic. Once, the two of them had looked at the Victoria's Secret catalogue on the computer at Tony's house. A long time ago now. They'd ogled the bra and underpants pages until Tony was red-faced and giggly like a girl. Flushed with excitement, or maybe guilt, Tony joked that he'd have to go to Confession that week. Do penance.

Eustace fiddled with his little
MP
3 player and inserted his ear buds. He would like to do penance. He'd do anything. Shovel manure. Clear rocks. Straighten fences, as best he could. Whatever would make things right.

He kept telling himself things were okay. It was sad that he'd lost Naomi, but good about the baby.

He hit Shuffle on his hip-hop playlist and pressed the ear buds farther into his ears.

He'd lost Naomi. He'd lost the baby. He'd lost the righteous path.

He would live with these losses, even if he left Poplar Grove someday. They had lodged in his belly, where they would keep gnawing at him. And then there were the shortages, the lacks that tore at him too. Love, forgiveness, atonement.

He turned up the volume on his player and lay still, not thinking, just listening. The rhythmic drumbeat was a hand on his shoulder telling him to endure. Live your life.

•  •  •

On Monday morning he dragged himself to science class, edging around Matthew and Rodney's shoving match as he entered the room. Not far enough. Matthew gave Rodney a sharp push so that he careened into Eustace. “Sorry,” Eustace said. He collapsed into the desk he'd collided with.

Mr. Peet looked excited. “Listen to this,” he said once most students were settled. He took his glasses off and leaned toward the class. “Today's Fabulous Fact. Scientists have a new theory about the source of the G-ring around Saturn! The second-last ring.” He held up an astronomy textbook with a small photo of the planet. From where Eustace sat, he could see Saturn but not the rings around it. “They think they've found a tiny moon in the ring—a moonlet.” Audrey laughed. Mr. Peet raised his voice. “As the moonlet circles Saturn, it collides with other matter, meteoroids and such. Slowly, the moonlet is disintegrating from the collisions, and the ring is its trail of dust. Isn't that fascinating?”

Eustace, sketching a tiny moon on his binder, thought it was the saddest thing he'd ever heard.

AFTER THE MEMBERS
of her book club left the house, Eliza cleared the teacups and plumped her velvet cushions. In her head she composed an email to Samantha, her friend in Australia. Would she mention the mishap at school? Her neck muscles tightened as she recalled her third-period class. It was all Stan Ellis's fault. Eliza disliked labelling people, but everyone could see Stan Ellis was a fanatic, a
military
fanatic, the worst kind.

This year he was more worked up than ever because he'd read about some teacher in Ontario who enlisted his students to dig First World War–style trenches on his property. Stan had spent the summer dressed up as an American Civil War soldier, participating in battles in some former confederate state. And now he was bringing this military fervour into his classroom. He probably looked good in a uniform, Eliza thought, with his trim body, the straight nose, and wide mouth. Still, anyone who loved war that much shouldn't be teaching the teenagers of Poplar Grove.

When she spoke to Ronald Hill, the social studies department head, Ronald had been—to say the least—patronizing. Eliza blamed her height for this. She was a shorter, plus-sized woman. That was how she referred to herself.

In October she had complained to her book club. It was their annual film night, during which they watched a
DVD
instead of discussing a book.
Il Postino
. Eliza laughed and laughed as she watched the postman's encounters with Pablo Neruda. “Hey, Eliza,” said Helena while the credits rolled, “maybe you can fight Stan's war-mongering with poetry!”

When Eliza had voiced her concerns to the principal in November, she'd been gently ushered out of his office. “Thank you, Eliza. I'll look into it.” She'd been so upset that she'd worn a Peace on Earth button instead of a poppy for Remembrance Day. In church that week, when the minister announced the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers,” she'd refused to sing.

“You could try a poetry unit,” Helena had said again at the December book club meeting.

“Anti-war poems or love poems?” Bea had wondered, and a short discussion ensued. Valerie, a newcomer to the group, had said in her soft and hesitant voice, “I think you should fight violence with love.”

“Love is the strongest force,” Helena agreed.

But Eliza had insisted, “Nothing will change Stan Ellis.”

Helena set her teacup down to put a hand on Eliza's arm. “That doesn't sound like you.”

•  •  •

Eliza believed teaching poetry to teenagers should resemble cheerleading more than literary criticism. She chose Elizabeth Barrett Browning as the first author in the unit and rehearsed the poems in her living room. She strove to know the words well enough that she could almost recite them, thus keeping her arms free for interpretive gestures. Her voice trilled and skipped, emphasizing the words the students would relate to the most. “How do I LOVE thee? Let me COUNT the ways!”

This morning, she had positioned herself in front of her desk, placing the poetry anthology on Matthew Post's front-row desk. “Elizabeth,” Eliza began, “had a beautiful romance. She married Robert Browning, also a poet. Her most famous poems are her love sonnets.” Eliza sometimes felt teary when she spoke about romantic love, perhaps because it had not yet happened for her. She steeled herself. “Today's poem is her famous sonnet, ‘How Do I Love Thee?' Some of you may have heard it,” she said, beaming in Clara's direction—Clara read a lot—“and if you haven't, well, you're in for a treat.”

She began reciting, aware of the interest on many of the students' faces. Yes, she thought, love will always win out. Addressing the students in the back row, she threw her arms wide. Her blouse stretched tight as a drum across her breasts as she took a deep breath. “I LOVE thee to the height and breadth and depth / My SOUL can reach, when FEELING—” A series of muted pops interrupted her. The tension across her chest released with the speed and force of a pricked balloon. Something—a button—flew sideways and hit Antonio on the cheek. She heard a gasp. A giggle. Her eyes flickered downward. She stood exposed in her catalogue-order lilac corset. She yanked the blouse together. “I'm sorry!” she mumbled and fled the room.

She dashed to the staff lounge, flew in, one hand gripping the blouse, one hand wiping her wet eyes. And there was Stan Ellis, sitting at a table facing the door. He looked up from his newspaper, eyes on her chest. She veered sideways into the teachers' washroom.

The rest of her school day was unspeakably miserable.

•  •  •

Eliza sat on her sofa in the semidarkness. She pulled a needlepoint cat cushion onto her lap and kneaded it rhythmically. At 11:00
PM
the songbird clock in the kitchen tweeted the hour. She winced—she had never thought of finches as scornful birds. She hauled herself up and trudged across the room to her roll-top desk. Switching on the computer, she waited for the dial-up to connect, logged into her email program, and typed,

Dear Samantha,

School was difficult today, but this evening I enjoyed a lovely book club meeting, full of good discussion and laughter as usual. Friends are a balm to the heart. I hope you are doing well, and that your marking pile has diminished since your last email! Looking forward to hearing from you.

Eliza

•  •  •

Stan Ellis smeared butter and jam on his bedtime toast. Homemade raspberry jam tonight. It had come in a little Christmas basket last month from one of his students, Rodney VanEng—well, more accurately, from Rodney's mother, Vicky, who sent all the teachers gifts. Stan was grateful. He'd used up the last jar of jelly from the cold cellar last fall and now had to buy commercial jams. He didn't care so much about the inferior taste, but a Smuckers jar in the fridge was one more tangible reminder that Lucy was gone.

Stan chewed the toast methodically as he fingered a tiny plastic soldier, part of a set his sister had sent for Christmas, along with a book he hadn't opened,
Painting Military Figures.
Saturday nights were the worst. That was the night he and Lucy had leisurely shared much more than toast before they drifted off to sleep. He swallowed the last bite, rose, and scrubbed the plate clean under running water in the sink. The plates were looking scratched these days. Probably he should use a cloth rather than the pot scrubber. He added “dish cloth” to the grocery list taped on the fridge.

Lucy had called herself a breast cancer warrior. She didn't like the term
survivor
, said surviving seemed too passive, like you were just waiting for luck. They were planning to move east once she completed her
PhD
thesis. He was going to become a training development officer with the armed forces—he already had a master's degree in education and was a member of the Reserves. They were going to have children.

He added bread and bologna to the grocery list. Tomorrow he would do laundry and drive to Safeway. Keep moving. Because Lucy the warrior was now resting in eternal peace. Good soldiers, he reminded himself, did not brood on lost battles—unless there was something to be learned. He should think about his work instead. It too felt like a battle. His grade ten social studies class, the western history class, and, really, the Canadian history class too. He was marching students through the content, but they weren't grasping the significance. Didn't see how understanding the past enabled one to embrace a deliberate life in the present.

Stan placed the pencil in the cutlery drawer and ambled into the bathroom. The problem was, he thought, that when students left his room, discipline vanished. Because of teachers like his colleague Liana Steen, who never seemed to educate—she just showed
DVD
s and assigned group presentations. Or Eliza Zylstra in the English department. She taught many of the same kids he did, and destroyed his efforts with her touchy-feely discussions and lax rules about deadlines.

Still, he found himself thinking as he brushed his teeth, she looked good today. The fullness of her flesh, the tantalizing purple lace. He tried not to notice breasts, or at least not to dwell on them. It seemed a betrayal of Lucy. He looked away from women in tight T-shirts or with cleavage-revealing necklines. Ally, a short girl in his grade eleven Canadian history class, habitually leaned forward so that her large breasts rested on the desktop, like two plump dinner rolls at a banquet. When he'd found his eyes straying too often toward her, he moved her to the back corner of the room.

Stan got into bed. He read a few pages of
Rommel's Desert War: The Life and Death of the Afrika Korps
. Feeling wide awake, he turned on
CNN
with his bedside remote control. Another roadside bomb in Afghanistan; no background story, just the smoky image of an overturned jeep. All hype and no depth in the reporting. He hauled himself out of bed, walked to the spare room, and rifled through his desk for blank paper. None there. He checked the kitchen counter and finally wrote on the grocery list, “Explain to the grade tens the difference between the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Use maps.”

That was another infuriating thing about Eliza. Her thinking was simplistic. Illogical. Ron, his department head, had told him with some concern that Eliza suggested they gloss over wars in their lessons, instead spending their time highlighting great deeds in history. “Use HISTORY class to provide students with ROLE models.” Ron had mimicked Eliza's strange emphasis on certain words. Staring at the grocery list, Stan imagined Eliza saying his name with that trilling voice. Maybe she'd call him Stanley instead of Stan, like his first girlfriend had.