“Tonight’s the prom,” she told him. “Peter Leggat’s taking me.” She said it with an air of confidence, but it didn’t sound right, even to her.
“Who’s Peter Leggat?”
“Just a boy,” she replied. “I don’t know him very well.” Realizing how that might sound, she added, “He’s Catholic, I think.” But that sounded no better. She waited for her father to tell her she couldn’t go.
“I can see your knees,” was all he said.
“You can’t,” she insisted.
“I can almost see them, then.”
“You want me to put on something else?” It was a stupid thing to say, because she had nothing else to wear. She almost added, “You want me to stay home?” If he said so, she’d do it gladly. Anything was better than the look spreading across his face, one she’d never quite seen before. There had only been a hint of it those times she’d asked him to let her attend a slumber party or an overnight school trip. From those hints alone she’d learned to avoid situations where he might gain the forlorn expression he wore now.
A vision came to her of how it would go if she went. Every dance, Peter Leggat would step on her toes and stick his tongue in her ear, and afterward he’d drive her to Green Lake so he could slide a hand under her dress while they sat on the beach. She’d be so worried about her father that she’d barely perceive the movement of Peter’s fingers, tentative as he waited for her rebuke. She wouldn’t say a word because her mind would be back in the house, imagining how it would have been if she’d stayed behind to watch Gilligan’s Island, and she would barely be paying attention until Peter Leggat reached the wet centre of her.
When he appeared on the doorstep, clutching a pink corsage with his parents’ car running in the drive, Maggie told him her father was ill and she couldn’t go. It was a surprise to her when Peter looked relieved. She should have been glad, but it made her furious, and she almost changed her mind. Had he invited her on a bet? Probably his mother put him up to it. On the spot, Maggie decided that Peter Leggat was a scrawny, pimply, ninety-nine-pound weakling. What had she been thinking?
After he drove away, she stormed into the living room.
“I’m not going,” she declared. “I hope you’re happy.” She couldn’t quite escape upstairs quickly enough to avoid seeing her father’s stunned expression.
In her room, she entertained a fantasy of Peter Leggat driving wildly around Syracuse, overcome by regret, then returning to beg her forgiveness. When a knock came at her door, for a second she believed it was him. But it was her father, head down, staring at the carpet.
“You know, it’s all right for you to date,” he said.
“I know,” she replied, although she didn’t believe he meant it.
“I want you to see the world,” he told her. “I want you to have a career.” It was the first time he’d said any of these things. “Maybe you’ll be a teacher.”
“A teacher?” The idea had never occurred to her.
“You’d be good with children. Also, it would give you the summers to travel.”
She found it strange to hear him talk of travel. He subscribed to National Geographic and liked telling her of the places he read about, but he never talked of visiting them, either by himself or together, and she didn’t mind. The idea of travelling with him didn’t seem right. She wanted to do it by herself one day.
But what she said was, “You’ll come with me.”
“I couldn’t afford it.”
“I’ll pay, then. I won’t leave you by yourself.” She hoped it was what he needed to hear, but he only looked more dejected.
“You’re leaving in the fall,” he said.
She gritted her teeth. So that was why he’d mentioned travel. She should have known.
“Boston isn’t so far,” she said, as if he didn’t know where Boston was. “I’ll come home on weekends.” At this, he only shook his head.
Suddenly his presence in her doorway was too much. She needed him to be downstairs in his easy chair. She wanted to be wearing her normal clothes and sitting on the couch. “I don’t have to go,” she heard herself say. “Maybe I could still get into Syracuse.”
He didn’t look up from the carpet. “You need to see the world. I’ve been a selfish father.”
Did he want her to go or not? When she went to hug him, she felt him shiver. Why was her father shivering? He shook like a little boy who knew a terrible secret.
“I should have sent you off on trips,” he said. “I should have made you get some distance.”
A year later, in Boston, she had a chance encounter with a girl from high school, someone whose name Maggie had already forgotten. The girl told her Peter Leggat had burnt his draft card and moved to San Francisco with flowers in his hair. This bit of gossip was followed by a long, sly look. Not for the first time, Maggie wondered what Peter had told people to explain his inviting her to the prom. Perhaps in San Francisco she still had a walkon role in the stories he related. Maybe, as he told it now, she was the last girl he’d tried before giving up and heading west. Perhaps she played the same sort of crucial, casual role in his personal history that he seemed to play in hers.
Maggie thinks of telling Fletcher about her encounter with Wale in the playroom but decides he already has enough to manage. Each day seems to bring him into conflict with people on the farm. Those on the payroll begrudge the chores he assigns them, while those who aren’t being paid don’t bother with his labour schemes at all and entice the others to movie matinees in St. Catharines or the beach at Port Dalhousie. In bed he complains to her that Dimitri’s the main culprit, setting a bad example with his truant walks in search of John-John. Fletcher complains about the garbage everywhere, the mud on the floors, the noise from record players and car stereos, the shouting and laughing downstairs that make it hard to sleep, until he and Maggie end up arguing over which of them should go tell people to be quiet. In the mornings, there are often bodies asleep in the hall, and many residents of the barracks don’t get up until noon. Fletcher starts going out to the building before breakfast, rapping on the door and hollering hellos, poking people awake.
His shortwave radio goes missing, then his welding torch. She tells him not to take it personally, but it’s no good. At meetings, he battles with Dimitri, who hasn’t lost interest in debating. While Fletcher sits with pens and sheaves of notes laid out on the coffee table like weapons, Dimitri takes equine strides around the room and sweeps the hair from his forehead. He wants a credit system to apportion the work more fairly. Fletcher wants to ban drugs and set a nightly curfew. The number of Fletcher’s supporters shrinks with each meeting, and half-jokingly Dimitri takes to calling him Captain Morgan. Brid, whose vote cannot be depended upon by either man, rolls her eyes a lot. It makes for compelling film but is hard on Fletcher’s nerves. He vents his anger watching TV coverage of the Republican convention. One night Maggie catches him before the bathroom mirror speaking to invisible assailants.
“Get lost,” he says. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
She steps back from the door with a pang, glad nobody else is there to see him. Her period’s a week late, and she has been wanting to tell him about it, but when he’s in such a state it seems unfair to burden him. She’s been late before to no consequence. It would be easier on the pill, except the pill didn’t agree with her, and anyhow they’re so careful—always the diaphragm or a condom. Probably it’s just stress. She hasn’t been eating well.
The next morning, he awakens her, already in the middle of a rant. When she asks him what’s wrong, he flings a piece of paper onto the bed.