Any parent can scan any piece of writing, even writing done in an unfamiliar hand, and quickly discern the name of his own child, and Treadway had done this. Wayne had brought hot chocolate to the tree. Wayne had sung melody for Wally so she could try out harmonies. Wayne read while she practised writing treble clefs, half notes, whole notes, eighth and sixteenth notes, flats, naturals, rests, and accidentals. Wayne was copying triangles from Thomasina’s postcard of Andrea Palladio’s bridge over the Cismone. None of this was what a normal Labrador son would do, but none of it frightened Treadway until the part of Wally’s diary that detailed Wayne’s recurring dream.
“Wayne dreamed he was a girl again last night,” Wally had written beneath a list of supplies. String. Oreos. A shoebox. Scissors. The foot out of an old pair of pantyhose. A cup of cold bacon fat with sunflower seeds in it. “If you saw my diary, you saw my music,” Wally said.
“There might have been some pieces of wet paper. I didn’t think they looked like music.”
“Can I see them?”
“I threw them out.”
“I need to look in your garbage.”
“They’re burnt.” Treadway never threw paper in the garbage. He threw it in the stove. He did not like filling garbage bags with anything you could burn.
He felt sorry about the music, but he did not say so.
11
Old Love
JACINTA AND TREADWAY WERE POLITE with each other during the shortening days after Treadway took down Wayne’s bridge. Jacinta made the bed the way Treadway liked it; Treadway wanted no air to touch his feet, and Jacinta could not sleep unless her feet breathed through an opening in the blankets. She no longer woke him when he snored, and he picked up and washed teacups she left in the grass. The politeness was unbearable. They avoided touching each other, careful as strangers on a train. But there was one thing they had always done, and they did not stop doing it now, because to stop would have been to acknowledge their marriage had broken, and they were not able to acknowledge this. The thing was that when each took a bath, at the end of the bath the other took the sponge that hung on the shower head, soaped it with a cake of Ivory, and lathered the other person’s shoulders and back. They had never thought of this as an expression of love. It was something they had started early in their days together, and now it continued. They had always done it without speaking. The silence was nothing new.
A family can go on for years without the love that once bound it together, like a lovely old wall that stays standing long after rain has crumbled the mortar. Where was Jacinta going to go? Back to St. John’s? She berated herself for not having the courage. It is amazing how small things keep you anchored in a place — the cake of soap on its little mat with rubber suckers, the moulded plastic shower stall. The bathroom cabinet with Aspirins in it, and blue razors, and Tiger Balm. The plastic runner to stop dirty tracks on the cream-coloured hall carpet. The television with its rabbit ears and its reruns of Bewitched and Get Smart that give you something predictable at four thirty every weekday. None of these things were what Jacinta loved, or even liked, but she could count on them, and she could not count on what might happen if she left Treadway and went back to St. John’s, especially if she took Wayne with her. The thing that had prevented her from running out of Goose Bay Hospital when Wayne had gone for his baby surgery existed in her now, larger and stronger than it had been then. Material things were important. Her slippers. Her sewing basket with sinew in it and needles with the right-sized eye for sewing leather. The cribbage board and the deck of cards that had a toreador swirling his glorious cloak in the bullfighting ring. Any of these things, Jacinta knew, she could find for less than two dollars apiece in St. John’s, or in any other place in North America to which she might escape.
But was there a place where she could live with truth instead of lies? Truth or Consequences was another TV show. She could relate to that title. You told the truth or you lived with consequences like these. If you held back truth you couldn’t win. You swallowed truth and it went sour in your belly and poisoned you slowly.
There was a pale green pill Wayne cut in half with the small, heavy knife his mother used to peel potatoes. There were two white capsules full of powder, which he knew was also white since he had broken one to find out. Finally there were two tiny, flat yellow pills that his mother, when he had asked, had told him were to prevent dizziness.
“Am I a diabetic?” Kevin Slab was diabetic, and he had pills, but his were orange.
“No.”
“Do I have leukemia?” In grade four Joey Penashue had got leukemia and lost his hair.
“No.”
“Do I have a brain tumour?” Last year Stevie White, who had sat two seats in front of Wayne, developed a brain tumour and died.
“No.” Jacinta sounded more impatient than she wanted to.
“Which ones can I stop taking when I start taking the new ones in grade seven?”
They had been through this before. He liked to get it straight, Jacinta believed, as this was the only aspect of the pills about which he was certain.
“You can stop taking the white ones. But then you will take four yellow ones instead of two, and you might have to have a needle.”
“But we won’t know if I need a needle until Dr. Toumishey examines me.”
“It might not be Dr. Toumishey. It might be a doctor you haven’t met.”
“Will it be Dr. Hedgehog?”
The specialist was always changing. Once it had been a Dr. Edgecombe, who had wanted to examine Wayne’s throat using an extra-wide tongue depressor that looked as if it were made of sandpaper. Wayne wouldn’t open his mouth, and Dr. Edgecombe had told Jacinta to pin his arms and pinch his nose so he couldn’t breathe. “He’ll open up then,” Dr. Edgecombe had said. Wayne had been six.
“No. Dr. Edgecombe has gone back to St. John’s.”
“Maybe this time I won’t need a needle.”
“I wish you could just wait and see.”
“If you had to take a needle you’d like to know about it first.”
“That’s true.”
“Will I have to take another needle after the first one?”
“You might.”
“If I knew how many then I would know when it was over.”
“I know. We would know where we stood.”
“Me. Not we.” This was new. Now that Wayne was twelve he demanded accuracy, and justice.
“You’re right. You. You would know where you stood.”
“What if I have to have four needles?”
“You might. You might need more than four. But you might not have to have any. We won’t know until the doctor examines you.”
“Remember that time we went, Mom? Remember the sign on the glass?” A card posted on the receptionist’s cage had said, PLEASE TELL US IF YOU LEAVE WITHOUT BEING SEEN. Wayne had looked at it for a long time. He had been eight. He had looked carefully at all the people in the waiting room, then he had said, “Mommy, do invisible people come in here?”
“Yes,” Jacinta had said. “There has been a parade of them since we came in.”
“How do you know?”
“Can’t you see their wet footprints all over the floor? And they have measles.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read it in the paper. An epidemic of measles is affecting the invisible community of Goose Bay and the Labrador Straits.”
Wayne had giggled. “Mommy, what does the sign really mean?” he had asked, and she had told him.