The Retreat (8 page)

Visitors often passed through, staying at the Retreat for several days, and the Doctor entertained these people, sitting with them in the Hall and talking to them. The room was full of light and smelled of cooking. Everett sometimes went back to the Hall in the late morning after breakfast, or on several occasions after lunch, when the conversation had carried through the meal and into the long afternoon, and he stood and listened to the adults talking, aware of a tightness in his throat, the cause of which he could not locate. When he heard the Doctor speak on some topic – one time he had been talking about space and time, and he kept using the name Hider – Everett felt a twinge of excitement, and then loneliness. He felt the possibility that he might grasp in a small way what was being said, followed by the realization that he did not, nor would he ever, match up to the people gathered around the long table. A circle, like a fence, surrounded the Doctor, and it remained a mystery to Everett how a person might enter that place. Perhaps an invitation was necessary, or humour, or intelligence, or maybe there was a password. If there was, Everett did not know it. His mother must have known the way in, because she was often there, sitting close to the Doctor, and he wished that she would call him over and ask him to sit beside her, but she never did. Once, he heard her speak, but he did not catch what she said, only the Doctor’s response as he said, “Good question, Norma.” At that moment, Everett’s chest began to ache, and he stepped out of the room.

Everett’s father rarely went to the Hall, because he said that the atmosphere was stultifying. “You know the word,” Lewis
said to Everett one afternoon. “That’s what it is. Stultifying. The air is heavy with minds roiling in their own crap.” Everett was helping cut stringers for a new set of stairs, the same stairs that his mother had lost her footing on during the family’s second week there and broken her wrist. His mother and father had just had an argument. Everett had been sitting on the stairs of their cabin and he had heard his father’s voice as he said, “That may be, but he’s got a pecker, you know, Norma,” and his mother had laughed and said, “Lewis, Lewis.” And then his father came outside and he walked past Everett, got into the car and slammed the door, and then he was gone. Everett heard his mother behind him, on the porch, and she said his name as if surprised to see him there. Then she came down onto the first step and it gave way. She fell forward with a small “ohh” and put out her arms to stop her fall and as she landed her right wrist snapped backwards. Everett heard the sound that came out of her mouth. It was a sharp cry, and he felt embarrassed and looked away; his mother’s legs were spread and he could see her panties. He felt humiliation and willed his mother to close her legs. His helplessness kept him from moving. And then the Doctor appeared and bent over Mrs. Byrd and put his face very near hers and it seemed he would kiss her, but he didn’t. He helped her up, placing his hands under her arms so that he touched her breasts. Everett turned his head away and then back again. The Doctor’s mouth was close to his mother’s neck. He told her that her wrist might be broken. She shook her head and studied her arm. She looked at Everett, her face very white. She moaned then, and the sound was intimate and sexual. Her
cheek rested against the Doctor’s chest. The Doctor asked for help and Everett finally stepped forward and gripped his mother’s arm. The three of them hobbled towards the pickup. His mother was muttering. She said, “Fuck,” and then laughed and she turned her face towards the Doctor and said, “Sorry.” Everett’s forearm was under her bare armpit and there was a slickness of sweat. This was her good arm, round at the shoulder and clean and straight, and Everett had been surprised at the strength in her bicep. Her dress, sleeveless and soft, had smelled of soap. “Tell your father,” she said. “Okay? Tell him I’m fine.”

The Doctor drove his mother to the hospital, and when Everett’s father came back he had told him about the fall and he said that his mother’s wrist might be broken. He described the fall, the colour of his mother’s face, her bravery. He said nothing about the Doctor almost kissing her, or the tilt of his mother’s body as she whispered
sorry
to the Doctor. He wanted his mother and father to be happy, and he imagined that this accident might soften his father in some way. When his mother returned from the hospital, she had made her way onto her porch where the family gathered. She called out to Fish and put him on her lap and showed off her cast. When she saw Everett standing off to the side, she motioned for him to come, and she allowed him to write his name on her cast. As he did so, he caught his mother’s scent, a mix of leaves and sweat and soap, and overlying that, a slightly wet odour that reminded Everett of the sculptures he had created in his junior-high art class.

It was Lewis’s job to fix the stair, and Everett asked if he could help, which really meant that he wanted to watch. In Calgary, when his father had worked Saturdays, Everett would walk over to the glass-blowing factory, sit on a crate, and watch. He liked the tools, the rubber tubing, the lapping wheel, the pastorale. His father would make him wear special glasses. He’d put them on and watch the liquid glass pulled from the furnace. The movements of his father’s hands, and the shapes and colours that suddenly appeared. He made vases, birds with long necks, butterflies, and fancy ashtrays. Sometimes, when a piece didn’t turn out, his father would set it aside, let it cool, and then hand it to Everett. “You can take it home,” he’d say.

On this day, Lewis intended to rebuild the stairs completely. He held a pencil, eyed the square, and said that it was absolutely essential to measure the stringer at least three times so as not to waste a good piece of board. “Care must be taken.” And then he nodded in the direction of the Hall and said, “Like I was saying, it is not a pretty thing to watch men stew in their own crap. Or women. You know?” He seemed to want to say more, but then he shook his head and said, “Ach, I sound bitter.” Then he said that Norma was content at the Retreat, and if she loved dipping into those dull conversations in the Hall, who was he to complain about their mother’s happiness. “Eh?”

Above them a V of geese was flying north.

“Here,” Lewis said, handing Everett the hammer and some nails. “Drive in a few spikes.” The hammer was twenty-two
ounces and Everett had trouble holding it. He tapped lightly at a nail and it went spinning off into the grass. He tried again and this time managed to put the nail in halfway before it bent. Lewis took the hammer back and said that he shouldn’t be timid. The hammer was a simple object really. “The less you stare at it, the more you seize and hold it, the more real it becomes. If you try too hard, you will either bend the nail or miss completely, or hit your own thumb. Sort of like life. Oh, listen to the wise man.” And with three swings, Lewis drove in a nail.

Everett tried again and managed to put home a nail with many hits.

“There you go,” his father said. “Feels good, doesn’t it? Sometimes too much thinking can get in the way.”

One night, Everett woke and heard Lizzy and William talking. William was telling her about a dream, something to do with a cave and an animal inside the cave. Then Everett slept, and when he woke again the light from the moon was falling across Lizzy’s bed. He could see her hands resting on her chest, and he watched them to see if she was sleeping or not. She looked childlike, soft and innocent, though he knew she wasn’t innocent. When Lizzy and Lewis had drowned the kittens, Everett had been sad not because the kittens were dead but because his father had seen that Everett was incapable of helping. And, it was true. He might have failed. Choosing Lizzy made sense. She was efficient and she could be cruel. Lately, she had seemed to him distracted and restless, and one
time she had asked him what he thought of Raymond, the boy who delivered chickens. When she asked the question, Everett felt as if she were turning away from him to look in another direction, and he did not like this feeling.

The cabin began to open up and reveal its shape as dawn arrived. Everett crawled out of bed and dressed and went outside, and instead of walking up to the outhouse, he went into the bush and peed. He pulled up his zipper and stood in the grey light, listening. Everything alive in the bush seemed to be moving, crawling through the leaves, flying in the air, calling and screeching. “A cacophony,” his father had said late one night, cocking an ear towards the forest. His father didn’t like the forest, and neither did he. He missed hot water, television. He missed streets, sidewalks, pavement.

The sky was getting brighter now, rosy. A door slammed and he heard footsteps approaching. Then he saw the Doctor step out of the far cabin. He walked right up the path, past Everett who was still standing, out of sight, at the edge of the treeline. The Doctor was wearing only red shorts and he had a towel draped over his neck. He was talking to himself, something about declaring the facts. Everett went down onto the path and followed him at a distance. The Doctor turned towards the pond, and when he arrived at the pond’s edge, he folded the towel and laid it down, then he slipped off his shorts and looked up at the pink sky and walked into the water.

Everett had cut around the pond and was standing in the trees off to the side, quite close to the Doctor. When the Doctor bent forward and removed his shorts and then
straightened, Everett saw the Doctor’s penis. Then the Doctor walked into the water and Everett saw only his mouth moving. He was talking to himself again, nothing Everett could understand, and then he was singing. He had a deep voice and he sang so loudly that his voice probably carried back to the cabins. He came up out of the water and bent to retrieve something from his towel. A bottle of shampoo. He soaped his hair and his armpits and he soaped between his legs.

The Doctor’s legs were thin and ropey. He was very blond and did not have much hair, except under his arms and at his groin, and even this blended in with the whiteness of his body. Everett turned away, and then looked back. The Doctor had gone into the water again and he was knee-deep and rinsing himself. Then he dove in with a soft splash and his head resurfaced far out into the pond. When he finally came back on shore and towelled himself dry, Everett’s legs were shaking and his mouth was dry and hot.

For the next two mornings, Everett woke early and walked out to the pond and waited in the trees. The Doctor came. He undressed and he bathed. He towelled himself dry, put on his shorts, and walked back to his cabin. Everett did this for several more mornings and always it was the same. And always, standing there hidden in the bushes and watching the Doctor bathing, Everett felt a strange thrill and then shame. When he returned to the cabin that last morning, Lizzy lifted her head and looked at him.

“Where are you
going
every morning?” she said.

“To pee,” he said. He sat on his bed and removed his runners.

“You’re gone a long time, Everett,” she said.

Everett didn’t answer. The image of the Doctor’s ropey legs appeared and disappeared. He said, “I couldn’t sleep. I was walking.”

Lizzy seemed to consider this, then she lay back down and said, “Oh.”

Later, at breakfast, the Doctor asked Everett if he wanted to come by the Den. “Just a little meeting,” he said. “I like to get to know everyone here.”

Everett looked around at the rest of the group. His father wasn’t present, he’d gone into town for building supplies. His mother smiled encouragingly. She said, “Of course he’d love to. Right, Everett?”

Everett shrugged. He believed that the Doctor had seen him down at the pond, spying, and this was why he was to join him in the Den. He searched for a reason why he wouldn’t be able to go, but his mind was empty.

His mother said, “You’d think he was going to his death. Don’t look so glum, Ev.”

And so, after breakfast, Everett knocked on the door to the Den, and when the Doctor called out, he entered. The room was cool and dark. There was no fire, as Lizzy had said there was when she had come here. The Doctor was sitting in a canvas chair, holding a book. He put the book down and got up and pulled a chair over for Everett. There was a large desk in the corner of the room with papers and magazines scattered across the surface. The shelves on the walls held books and there were framed photographs, many of which were of the Doctor posing with people, both men and women, and
always the Doctor appeared to be on the verge of a smile. There was a white owl mounted on the far wall and it was looking right at Everett, and though Everett knew that the owl was dead, the eyes disturbed him.

The Doctor explained that there was nothing to fear, everyone in the camp had already sat, or would in the future sit, in the chair Everett now found himself in. “Not to worry. We are not bullies here, nor are we black-and-white thinkers. This place exists as a harbour from the world, a place to find the courage to affirm one’s own reasonable nature over what is accidental in us. I’m interested in the accidental. I’m also curious about how society works. Take a group of people and plunk them down in a village, a village that is created from scratch, and make those people live together. What happens? That’s what interests me. I’m not a social scientist. Neither am I a hippie who believes in free love or self-abasement or the willy-nilly taking of drugs for pleasure. Don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in pleasure as well as in denial and sublimation, but all these things are much easier to measure in this place than in the chaos of the city. And, I’m interested in communism. Not the communism of a centrally controlled government, but the machinations of a community. How do I take what I have that is special and share it with others? Take your father, for instance. His gift lies in his hands and in his ability to build things, to imagine a water system that will provide a shower for the community, and then to build it. One has to be clean, no? Or, my wife Margaret. Her gift is gardening. The tomato you had for breakfast was provided by her hands. You see?”

“I didn’t eat a tomato.”

“Maybe not, but you see my point. One gift is no better than another.”