Memories of You (9 page)

I tell him about our awful poverty and my mother’s erratic behavior, and how terrifying it used to be when I was a little girl, never knowing what shape she’d be in when I woke up. I tell him all of it, the squalor and the hunger, the pain of being mocked by other kids because of the way we lived. I let him know everything except my full name and the town my mother lives in.

When I get to the part about the boyfriends and how scary they’ve been lately, he reaches over and takes my hand, holding it gently.

I falter a little but keep on talking. I tell him about the newest boyfriend, about the increasing drunkenness and the threatening looks, about the knife under my pillow. His hand tightens on mine but he makes no other response.

Finally I get to that last terrible night. My voice catches in my throat and I can’t go on.

“Tell me, Callie.” He leans up on his elbow and looks at me earnestly across the knapsack and duffel bag, his face silvered by the moonlight. “You need to talk about it. Tell me what happened.”

So I do. I tell him about the man coming into my room, about how easily he got the knife away from me and what happened next. By the time it’s finished, I’m sobbing and the sacks are gone from between us. He’s holding me tenderly, brushing at my hair, soothing me like a little child.

With infinite gentleness he kisses the damaged bridge of my nose, then cuddles me in his arms.

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay, honey. Everything’s going to be all right.”

I know nothing’s going to be all right, ever again. Still, it feels good to hear him say it.

After a long time I fall asleep. He’s still holding me and the closeness of his body isn’t terrifying anymore, just tender and strong and comforting, like the father I’ve never had.

N
EXT MORNING
I wake in the pale light of dawn to find him sound asleep beside me. I rub my eyes, then roll my head on the pillow to study his face. He seems
so young when he’s sleeping like this. Despite his broad shoulders and the sinewy, muscular look of his arms, he’s like a boy. His breathing is deep and even, and his brown hair stands up in an unruly cowlick that makes me smile.

I reach out to touch his head, trying to smooth the cowlick. He opens his eyes and watches me.

“It’s standing right on end,” I tell him, stroking the back of his head. “You look like a little kid.”

He grins lazily and stretches. “I’m not a little kid.”

I know what he means, and realize it’s dangerous to keep touching his hair. He’s watching me now with a warm, intent look that scares me a bit, but I’m gripped by a kind of recklessness. I run my hand down the tanned curve of his cheek, marveling at how soft his skin feels.

He grasps my hand and brings it to his mouth, kissing my fingers, then my palm. I shiver at the feeling of his lips on my hand. Everything about him is sweet and exciting, like heady wine. I don’t even know what I’m doing.

He reaches out and gathers me close to him. Our legs are bare, and his skin is warm on mine. He tickles my ankles with his feet and laughs softly.

“You’re so sweet,” he murmurs. “Give me a kiss, Callie.”

I lift my head and feel his mouth on mine. It’s a dizzying sensation, like drowning in sunshine. He begins to stroke my body with a long, slow movement of his hands, as if he’s a sculptor shaping something beautiful. I press myself against him. Suddenly I can’t
get close enough. Something in the back of my mind tells me this is crazy, that he’s going to hurt me and I should get up and run. But I’m intoxicated by him.

“I won’t hurt you,” he whispers. “I’d never hurt you.”

He kisses me again, gently, tenderly. He strokes my hip, nestles against me. “We don’t have to do anything. I’ll just hold you if that’s what you want.”

I don’t know what I want. I need to be close to him, that’s all. I press myself against him and kiss his neck.

He holds me and strokes my back. He kisses my eyelids while I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up, there’s a wash of bright daylight from the windows. He’s standing above me, fully dressed, holding something in his hands.

I try to shade my eyes from the light. “What time is it?”

“Almost noon. Get up, lazybones. I’m starving.”

“What’s that?” I ask, looking at the cone of paper in his hands.

He unrolls the newspaper to show me a bunch of yellow flowers, wild daisies from the ditch along the highway.

“They’re for you,” he tells me shyly. “I really wanted to get you a dozen yellow roses because you’re a golden princess. But this was the best I could do on short notice.”

I pull on a shirt, take the flowers and put them in one of the chipped water glasses. “They’re nicer than yellow roses,” I tell him.

“Why? They’re just wildflowers from the ditch.”

“But you picked them yourself. That’s what makes them so beautiful.”

He smiles happily and my heart aches with love and sadness.

We go about our day, playing with the puppies again, riding downtown on the bike. Later we come back to the motel, carrying our pizza in a box this time, and go to bed. While we eat, we snuggle companionably beneath the covers and talk about everything under the sun. He’s full of plans.

“First we need to buy you some more clothes,” he says.

“No way. You’ve already spent too much on me.”

He brandishes a wedge of pizza at me, frowning with mock sternness. “Quit arguing with me, woman. I’ve still got hundreds of dollars in my wallet. We’re going to buy you some more clothes, and then I’m taking you home with me.”

“Home?” I ask in alarm.

“You’ve got to meet my parents,” he says placidly, so busy with his plans that he’s not even aware of my frightened reaction. “And then we’ll need to find a place to live in Saskatoon before the fall term starts.”

I look at him blankly.

“I have to go back to college,” he tells me, bending to kiss my neck. “You can finish high school there and enroll in some freshman classes next term. You’re so smart, you’ll probably catch up to me in no time.”

It all sounds so simple when he says it like that, as if it were really possible for me to meet his parents, share an apartment with him in the city and go to college like a normal girl.

We eat the last of the pizza while I talk and laugh with him to hide my breaking heart. Afterward, we watch television for a while, and fall asleep in each other’s arms.

I wake after a few hours. The world is plunged into darkness and the only sound is a chorus of coyotes as they hunt somewhere on the prairie. While he’s sleeping close to me, I lie awake and brood about what I’m going to do.

Because of him, something odd has been happening to me. I don’t want to die anymore, or embark on some kind of crazy, self-destructive life. I’m determined to survive and make something of myself.

But to do that, I’ll need to leave him behind. He knows all about my past. If I’m going to have a future, that other life has got to be erased completely, wiped out as if it never existed. I can’t be with anybody who knows who I am or what I used to be.

The old Callie Pritchard needs to die if the new one is going to survive.

Besides it wouldn’t be fair to let him believe we could have a future together. He’s so good and so kind he deserves someone better than me. His parents and his friends would hate me. The thought of leaving him floods me with agony. I feel tears stinging behind my eyelids, and have to bite my lip to keep from sobbing out loud. My mind darts around, trying to
think of some other way. But there’s simply no choice, and I know it.

At last I slip out of bed, moving with infinite care so I won’t wake him. I gather my new clothes and dress in the bathroom, then grab the rest of the things he bought and stuff them into the red duffel bag.

I creep around the room in the moonlight, looking nervously at his still form in the bed. He mutters something and turns over, begins to breathe deeply again.

His wallet is lying on the dresser. I open it and take out all the bills, then hesitate. He’ll need enough money to get home. I think he has a credit card, but I still can’t bear to leave him with nothing.

Actually, it would probably be better to take all the money. He’d really hate me then, and be less likely to come looking for me. I waver, trying not to cry. At last I stuff a couple of bills back into his wallet and pocket the rest.

Finally, I shoulder the duffel bag and slip out the door. The night is cold and still, with a pale shimmer of light along the distant horizon where the sun will be rising in an hour or so. I lower the bag to the ground, fighting with myself.

I know it’s crazy, but I can’t keep myself from creeping back into the room and bending over him. I don’t want to risk waking him, so I drop a kiss on the pillow beside his cheek.

“Thank you,” I whisper to his dear, sleeping face. “Thank you for everything. I’m so sorry. I’ll never stop loving you as long as I live.”

Then I leave, closing the door soundlessly behind
me. I head out onto the highway and start to jog, turning around with my thumb extended whenever headlights pierce the darkness.

A woman picks me up. She’s middle-aged, sour and tired, heading off to a Bible class she teaches in one of the rural school districts. She preaches at me for a hundred miles while I rest my head against the back of the seat and try to look as if I’m paying attention.

Finally she lets me off and a trucker picks me up almost immediately, taking me all the way to Regina. He’s kind and quiet, and tells me a lot about his three daughters. When I promise him I’ll go back to school and not hitch rides anymore, he drops me at a youth hostel in the downtown core, near the warehouse where he’s going.

My heart is frozen, hard as stone. I know what I’m going to do and where I have to begin. But I know, as well, that I’ll never really be happy. And I’ll never love anybody again.

I always thought cruelty and neglect were the most painful, but I was wrong.

Love is the real agony. Love hurts more than anything….

“Q
UEEN!
What’s the matter? Hey, guys, come and look at the Queen. Oh man, is she
crying?”

Camilla came back to reality with a start Three ragged teenage boys stood watching her, their faces puzzled and worried.

She shook her head, rubbing hastily at her eyes. “I was…I guess I must have been daydreaming. What’s happening?”

“A couple of kids want to get in. Have we got enough room?”

“I…I think so. Do we know them?”

“Zippy does. He says they’re buddies of his, and one of them’s sick.”

“Okay. I’ll let them in.”

Still dazed, Camilla got up to unlock the door, dealing mechanically with the new arrivals. When they were settled in the other room and the street door was safely locked again, she came back to the office and sat down at her desk, staring at the final words of Jon Campbell’s essay.

After she disappeared, I went tearing around the country on my bike for a few days, trying to find her. At last I headed for home, got my truck and started to search the whole province, then all of western Canada. I quit college and spent a year looking for her, following up every lead I could think of, going into every little town I passed and asking if a blond girl named Callie had ever lived there. But I couldn’t find any trace of her. She’d dropped off the face of the earth.

After a few years the memories began to fade. Now I can’t even recall exactly what her face was like. But I’ll never forget those two days I spent with her in an old motel room that was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

J
ON STOOD
in his bathroom, examining his face absently in the mirror as he shaved. He was thinking about the essay he’d written, wondering if the professor had read it yet.

He frowned and lifted his head to shave his jawline.

What had possessed him to tell that story, anyway? Especially to a woman whose opinion was growing more important to him with every passing day…

She’d probably think it was ridiculous, a boyish, overly sentimental reminiscence about his long-ago encounter with a girl.

After so many years of keeping the story to himself, he should never have broken his silence. But lately, for some reason, he’d found himself thinking about Callie again.

Sweet little Callie. He smiled and moved his head to shave the other side.

Even after all this time, he couldn’t think of her without a powerful surge of emotion. For years, he hadn’t been able to summon up an accurate memory of her face. But he could still see brief flashes of the girl…her sober gray eyes and that glorious mane of silvery-blond hair, her gentle hands, the small shapely body.

Still, it wasn’t just her body that he remembered with such wistful fondness. It was her mind and spirit, the very essence of her. They’d only spent a couple of days together, he and Callie. But in all his life, Jon had never felt such a sense of total connectedness to any other person.

Callie had understood and trusted him, and she’d allowed him to see the depths of her mind, her remarkable intelligence and shy, playful imagination.

He thought about the awful story she’d told him that night, the way she’d been neglected and abused, how she was certain she’d committed a murder.

His jaw tightened with pain.

Ever since that encounter, Jon had found himself unable to bear the thought of children and adolescents suffering any kind of abuse. Nowadays, he was a silent benefactor to a number of charities that assisted runaways and teenagers at risk. He understood a lot more, too, about the devastating effects of neglect and cruelty on young people.

Maybe if he’d known more back in those days, he could have helped Callie and kept her close to him while they tried to work out her problems. But he’d been too young to understand, and had handled the whole situation so clumsily.

As a result, Callie vanished from his life and he’d never been able to find her. The pain had been so devastating that it almost killed him.

Even now, he was stunned by remembered grief.

For the thousandth time, Jon found himself wondering what might have happened to her during these
twenty years. He simply couldn’t picture her as a mature adult woman. In his mind she’d be forever seventeen, a shy, sweet waif with her bruised face and wondrous smile. But Callie had been only a few years younger than Jon, so she must be in her late thirties by now.

That is, if she’d managed to survive whatever happened to her after she ran away from him….

He finished shaving, put away his razor and went down the hall, pausing at Steven’s closed door. After a brief hesitation he rapped sharply, then opened the door and glanced inside.

His son lay in bed, looking bleary and annoyed.

“Time to get up,” Jon said. “You’ve got a class at nine.”

“I’m not going today. I’ve got a headache.”

“Why?” Jon came into the room and stood at the foot of Steven’s bed, eyeing the boy steadily.

“How should I know? My head hurts, okay? I’m going back to sleep.”

“No, you’re not,” Jon said. “You’re getting up and going to class. Take a couple of aspirin if your head aches.”

The boy watched him stubbornly from the pillow. For a long moment their eyes locked in silent challenge. At last Steven cursed under his breath, rolled out of bed and trudged toward his bathroom.

Jon followed him to the door.

“Look,” Steven said with heavy sarcasm, “do you think I could have a little privacy? Or is that too much to ask?”

“Where were you last night, Steve?”

“I was out with my friends.”

“Who are these friends? I’ve told you before that it’s about time I met them.”

“Well, maybe they’re not so anxious to meet you.”

Steven ran water into the sink and splashed it angrily on his face. He looked pale, and there were dark circles around his eyes. A soft golden stubble dusted his cheeks.

Jon watched in silence, thinking how passionately he’d loved this son of his when Steven was a baby, a pudgy toddler, an eager little boy full of questions.

“Look, Steve, I want you to stay home for the next few evenings and get caught up on your schoolwork,” he said.

“Come on, Dad, get real! Most of these courses are so easy, I could do them in my sleep.”

“I know you’re a smart kid,” Jon told him quietly. “But that doesn’t mean you should be giving this any less than your best effort. I want you at home for a few nights.”

Steven’s eyes flashed. “What do you think I am, a little kid like Ari? You can’t push me around anymore.”

“You’re living under my roof, and I still make the rules,” Jon said.

“Then maybe I don’t want to be under your damn roof!” Steven gripped the edge of the sink tensely as their eyes met in the mirror a second time.

Jon knew that it was dangerous to press the issue.
If his son was pushed too far, he might make good on his threats to walk out.

But he couldn’t forget Camilla Pritchard’s warning about Steven and his unsuitable friends….

To his relief, the boy was the first to look away. “All right,” Steven muttered. “I’ll do the bloody schoolwork if that’s what you want.”

“Good,” Jon said quietly. “I’m glad to hear it. Hurry up and come down to breakfast, okay? You can catch a ride with us this morning if you like.”

“I don’t want to ride with you. I’ll drive my own car.” Steven lathered shaving cream on his face, looking sullen.

On impulse, Jon moved closer and dropped an arm around Steven’s lean shoulders. “You know, you can always talk to me, son,” he said. “If anything’s bothering you, I’ll be happy to listen.”

A muscle jerked tensely in Steven’s cheek but he said nothing, standing rigid and stubborn in his father’s embrace. After a moment, Jon turned away and headed downstairs.

The rest of his family were already at the table, engaged in various pursuits while they ate.

Amy nibbled absently on a slice of toast, concentrating on a Tinkertoy model in front of her, adding little spokes and disks after intervals of deep thought. Beside her, Ari gulped cereal and made notations on a computer diagram of a dragonfly and a helicopter that he was showing to Enrique.

Enrique still looked pale and weak, but he was getting better every day. He’d been with them for two
weeks. He now had a modest wardrobe of new clothes supplied by Jon, and was responding well to Margaret’s nourishing meals.

But he was still painfully shy. Though he’d begun to establish a warm relationship with the twins, he seemed frightened of everybody else in the household, particularly Vanessa.

Jon’s elder daughter sat a little removed from the others, reading an issue of
Vogue
propped next to her coffee mug. She was truly beautiful, with her glossy dark hair and delicate complexion, her slim figure set off by tight-fitting jeans and a black jersey top.

Jon looked at the girl’s bent head and wondered what was happening to his two older children. How could he possibly reach them and start getting close to them again? Once upon a time it had been enough simply to love them.

But not anymore….

“Hi, Daddy.” Amy beamed up at him. “I’m making a hydrogen molecule. Camilla said it’d be a good idea to use my Tinkertoys.”

Jon kissed the twins and settled into his chair. “What does Dr. Pritchard know about hydrogen molecules? I thought her specialty was English, not chemistry.”

“The model’s just another kind of symbol,” Ari said. “Camilla wants us to make a list of as many different symbols as we can find. Ordinary things that can stand for other things.”

“So is a dragonfly a symbol for a helicopter?” Jon
smiled his thanks as Margaret set a couple of poached eggs in front of him.

The twins exchanged a thoughtful glance. “No,” Ari said at last. “They’re two things that are
like
each other, but one isn’t a symbol of the other. That’s not what a symbol is.”

“I see. Van, could you pass me the salt, please?”

Vanessa pushed the saltshaker across the table without looking up.

“Enrique says that where he grew up, dragonflies can grow
this
big.” Ari held up his hands, the forefingers about eight inches apart.

“That’s a pretty big dragonfly,” Jon said, smiling. “How are you feeling this morning, Enrique?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” The boy cleared his throat and glanced nervously at Vanessa who was reading and paying no attention to him. He lowered his head again.

“All ready for our English class this morning?” Jon said.

“I think so. I finally have the assignments done, and I’m catching up on the reading I missed.”

“Good.” Jon glanced at his watch. “Do you want a ride to school, Van?”

“I can go with Steve.”

“Steve might be a little late today,” Jon said in a neutral tone. “You’d better come with us.”

“Whatever.” She shrugged, then closed her magazine, got up and wandered from the room while the others watched her.

E
NRIQUE
sat in the back seat with a twin on either side. Amy held a Barbie doll in one hand, frowning as she struggled to fit a pair of tiny plastic shoes on its feet.

Enrique found these little twins endlessly interesting and appealing. They were so smart, talking all the time about computer designs and molecules. But they also played with ordinary toys and involved themselves in all kinds of imaginative games, just like other kids their age.

He reached out to take the doll, showing Amy how to fit the shoes in place.

When his sister, Maria, was little, Enrique used to help her all the time with her toys and her schoolwork.

Maria had been such a pretty child, with her big dark eyes and shining ponytail. She looked like their mother, who’d worked with Enrique’s father in a shabby school building at the edge of the jungle, trying to educate the local kids.

During the uprising, word had spread that the Valeros family was teaching political propaganda in the school. Soldiers stormed the building with their machine guns blazing, and Maria died along with her parents in the hail of bullets. Enrique stayed alive by crawling into the jungle and hiding for several days.

Later he made his way down the seacoast to Panama, traveling by night and hiding in the day. He talked himself onto a steamer bound northward up the west coast, laboring in the cramped galley to pay for his passage, and didn’t breathe easily until he was
finally on Canadian soil. Every moment of that nightmare time, he kept expecting the monsters who’d killed his family to find him and dispose of him, too, because he was the only witness.

He still had nightmares about their slaughter and his terrified flight. Sometimes it was almost more than he could bear, looking into Amy’s clear, trusting eyes and thinking about his own little sister.

Maria had been just nine years old when she died.

“Thanks, Ricky,” Amy whispered, smiling happily when he handed the doll back.

On his other side, Ari was poring over a book about judo. The little boy studied one of the diagrams, then chopped the air experimentally as he made a dreadful, threatening face.

Enrique chuckled and glanced at the two people in the front seat.

Jon was driving. His eyes crinkled briefly into a smile as he caught Enrique’s glance in the mirror. Enrique smiled back, feeling warmed and comforted.

He’d never met anybody as kind, strong and totally competent as Jon Campbell. It felt safe to be near the man, as if nothing could harm you when he was looking after you.

Still, it hadn’t been easy for Enrique to accept this kind of generosity. Jon had forced him to give up both jobs for a while, arguing that Enrique would find himself in the hospital if he kept pushing so hard.

Enrique knew in his heart that his friend was right. He was jeopardizing his precious education by keeping such a brutal schedule. Still, he didn’t want to
live on another man’s charity. As soon as he was strong enough, he had to find work again, get out of Jon’s house and begin standing on his own two feet.

But when he recalled the grinding poverty of his life, the constant fatigue, the lack of study time, he could hardly bear to think about going back to his old room in that smelly basement.

Enrique glanced at Vanessa’s glossy head, thinking wistfully about this girl and her older brother who’d lived all their lives with so much security. Neither of them had ever known a moment’s hunger or fear in all their lives. They dwelt in a kind of luxury that was almost unimaginable for him.

And yet it seemed to him, amazingly, that the two young people weren’t happy at all.

Steven was the nicer of the two, at least to Enrique, though he was hardly ever home and seemed tense and preoccupied when he occasionally showed up for meals.

Vanessa was so distant that Enrique was sure she resented his presence. He longed to be able to talk with her, to laugh and chat easily the way her friends did. But the mere sight of Jon’s beautiful daughter made him feel tongue-tied and awkward, and she did nothing at all to ease his tension.

Jon stopped the car outside Vanessa’s school. Enrique watched as she got out, lifted her backpack and strolled off into the milling crowd of students, giving her family a curt wave as she vanished.

“My turn to ride with Daddy!” Ari climbed out of the car and scrambled into the front seat next to his
father, holding the judo book under his arm while Enrique and Amy exchanged a shy smile.

“Look, Ricky,” she said. “Barbie’s got her own little cell phone.”

Enrique watched, fascinated, as Amy opened and closed the tiny plastic telephone. “Hey, that’s really neat,” he whispered. “I’ll call her, okay?”

He made a soft ringing noise while Jon put the car in gear and headed toward the university. Amy beamed and held the phone to her doll’s head.