Road Ends Read online

  She felt no guilt about stealing the photos; no one else in the family ever looked at them and she was sure they wouldn’t be missed. She put them in an envelope and slid it under everything else so that it would lie flat on the bottom of the suitcase. Then she tried to close the case and found she couldn’t. She removed two sweaters, two skirts and the smart white shoes, leaned on the case, managed to close it and do up its shiny new latches and discovered she couldn’t even lift it off the bed. So out came everything and she had another cull and then, at last, it was done.

  She stepped back and surveyed her room. Nothing left. No dolls to linger over even if she’d been the lingering type; with all those babies in the family the last thing she’d needed was a doll. Likewise no dollhouses or miniature tea sets; “playing house” had very little appeal if you spent your days doing the real thing. Nothing on the window sills or on the walls, nothing on her narrow wooden desk. A clean sweep; it was immensely satisfying. Adam would have the room, she decided. Then he would no longer wake Peter and Corey or vice versa. When she came back for visits she would share with him.

  The cardboard box full of rejects she stashed in the garage; she would sort through it later for serviceable clothes that could go to the Goodwill and take the rest to the dump. The contents of the suitcase went back, neatly folded, into cupboards and drawers to await departure day. The suitcase itself she put under the stairs.

  What next? Megan thought, consulting her mental list. She’d already asked Mrs. Jarvis, who came in on Mondays to help with the laundry and the cleaning, to come on Thursdays as well, starting in two weeks’ time. She’d made sure the house was stocked up with all the staples—tins of food, toilet paper, laundry soap. She would change all the sheets and do the laundry the Monday before she left.

  That’s it, she thought. All that remained was to tell her family and Patrick that finally—finally—after years of thwarted attempts, she was leaving home.

  She started with her mother because that would be the hardest. The second hardest was going to be Patrick, but she wouldn’t be seeing him until Saturday.

  “Leaving?” her mother said, looking incredulous. You’d have thought no one had ever left home before, despite the fact that Tom had been gone for over two years. But of course, Megan thought grimly, Tom was a boy. No one batted an eye when a boy left home. If anything it was cause for celebration.

  “I’m twenty-one, Mum.” She dusted the kitchen counter with flour and began kneading a lump of pastry the size and heft of a cannonball. It was late afternoon and they were alone in the kitchen, preparing supper. “It’s time I left.”

  “Why does being twenty-one mean it’s time you left?”

  Her mother was peeling potatoes, but she stopped, her arms in the sink, to stare at Megan.

  Megan sliced the cannonball in half, briefly kneaded both halves, set one aside and began rolling out the other with brisk sweeps of the rolling pin. A small crease had appeared between her eyebrows. She’d known it would be like this. It’s your own fault, she thought. You should have gone years ago.

  “I told you I was going to go, Mum. When you were pregnant with Adam I said I’d wait until he’d arrived and settled in and then I’d be off. Remember?” She scanned her mother’s face for any sign that she recalled the conversation. Not a trace. Lately Megan had started to wonder if her mother was going senile, but surely she couldn’t be—she was only forty-five. More likely she’d simply erased it from her mind. She’d always been good at not hearing things she didn’t want to hear; maybe forgetting was an extension of the same thing.

  “That was a year and a half ago,” Megan said, flipping the pastry over and rolling it out again. “I had to put it off because after Adam was born you weren’t well. And then Adam got whooping cough, so I put it off again. Then Peter and Corey got flu. Then you got flu …”

  Her mother’s eyes had an unfocused, inward look as if she were searching through dusty files down in the basement of her brain.

  “Now everybody is fine,” Megan said firmly. “Tom’s gone and the twins will be off soon and Adam’s a very easy baby.”

  She could have added that she also happened to know that he would be the last baby, because in the aftermath of Adam’s birth she’d overheard Dr. Christopherson telling her father so. She’d been coming downstairs with a pile of dirty laundry and heard the doctor, who was in the living room with her father, say, “This must be the last child, Edward.”

  Megan had paused on the stairs with her armful of dirty sheets. Her father mumbled something she couldn’t catch, his voice strangled by embarrassment. The doctor said, “That may be so, Edward. It may be her wish. But you have a say in the matter too, and for the sake of your other children—for all your sakes—it must stop now. She is worn out.”

  At last! Megan thought. At last! The way her parents kept on having children was just plain ridiculous, in her opinion. It wasn’t as if they were Catholics.

  Now she looked at her mother to check that she was listening. “So now’s the perfect time for me to go,” she said. “It’s time I started my own life.”

  She’d rehearsed that last line, but inside her head it hadn’t sounded so corny. Her mother looked aggrieved.

  “Megan, what nonsense! ‘Starting your own life!’ As if you didn’t have a life here!” Suddenly she turned to fully face her daughter, the paring knife in one hand and a half-peeled potato in the other. Water trickled down her arms to her elbows and onto the floor. “Don’t tell me you’re marrying Patrick McArthur,” she said. She looked appalled.

  “MacDonald,” Megan said. “No, Mother” (she called her mother “Mother” when she was annoyed with her), “I am not marrying Patrick MacDonald. I’m not marrying anybody. I’m going to Toronto. You’re dripping all over the floor.”

  The kitchen door opened and Peter, age ten, prowled in, eyes scanning left and right, searching for something edible, anything at all.

  “Out,” Megan said, pointing a floured finger at the door.

  Peter clutched his belly and made an anguished face.

  “Out!” Megan said, louder, and he left.

  “Mrs. Jarvis will be coming in on Thursdays as well as Mondays to help with the cleaning,” she continued, “and I’ll do a big shopping before I go.”

  “But you haven’t told me why you’re going! That’s what I don’t understand.” There was a tremor in her mother’s voice.

  Megan hardened her heart. I don’t care, she thought. I do not, will not, care. I’m going. And anyway, it will be good for her. She needs to take charge again. She’s been depending on me too much.

  “I’m not leaving for another two weeks,” she said, striving for the right mix of firmness and reassurance. “And I’ll come back and visit. I’m only going to Toronto, remember.” Initially, at any rate, she added to herself.

  “I don’t understand you, Megan,” her mother said. “All these years, and now suddenly out of nowhere you say you’re leaving. Truly, honestly, I do not understand you.”

  “I know you don’t,” Megan said, her tone more gentle now that it was over. “You never have.” She thought how pretty her mother was still—even now, when she was upset. Her face was as round and smooth as a child’s.

  Her father was next. He would be easier, Megan thought, if only because he wouldn’t care so much. Nonetheless, an audience with her father always made her anxious. Whenever you knocked on the door of his study he gave the impression that you were interrupting him in the middle of something critically important.

  “Leaving?” he said, gazing at her from behind his desk. Abutting the desk at one end there was a long table heaped with books and at the other end there was a small bookcase, so that he was surrounded on three sides. Like a fortress, Megan thought. A fortress of books. Protecting him from us.

  “Leaving home? Or leaving Struan altogether?”

  “Both,” Megan said. “I’m going to Toronto to start with. And then when I’ve saved up enough money I’d li
ke to go to England.”

  “England?” He looked startled, which Megan found gratifying. “Why England?”

  “I have a friend there. Cora Manning. You remember Mr. Manning, the pharmacist? They moved to England a few years ago. Cora works in London now. She shares a house with friends. I could stay with her; she’s invited me. And I’d like to see England.”

  “I see,” her father said. He looked out of the window. Megan waited. She thought this was possibly the longest conversation she had ever had with him. Generally one sentence apiece would do it. The only one of his children he’d ever taken any notice of was Tom, and even then it hadn’t been much.

  “Do you have a job to go to in Toronto?” he asked finally.

  “No,” Megan said. “But I’ve saved enough money to last me for a couple of weeks. I’m sure I’ll find something by then.”

  “I see,” he said again. “You’ve been planning this for some time, then.”

  He made it sound like a bank raid, Megan thought, or maybe premeditated murder. But she would not allow him to make her feel guilty; she had done far more than her share. “Yes,” she said briskly. “I’m twenty-one and I think it’s time I started my own life.” (It didn’t sound so bad this time.) “I’ve arranged for Mrs. Jarvis to come in twice a week to help Mum.”

  Her father looked at her strangely for a moment as if he’d never noticed her before and was wondering who she was. Then he looked out of the window for such a long time that Megan began to wonder if the interview was over and she should simply leave the room. But finally he looked back.

  “What sort of job do you expect to find in Toronto?”

  “I don’t know,” Megan said. “Anything. Waitressing. I’ll find something.”

  Her father nodded thoughtfully. “And how long do you expect it to take, working as a waitress, to save up enough money to go to England?”

  It wasn’t surprising that he sounded like a bank manager, Megan thought, given that he was one. What was surprising—amazing, in fact—was that he was interested enough in what she was doing to ask questions. It was most unlike him.

  “I’ve no idea,” she said truthfully. “Probably quite a while.”

  Her father picked up his pen, unscrewed the cap, screwed it back on again and put it down. “Quite a while is right,” he said, still looking at his pen. “In fact, a very long while. You’ll be paying rent for a start, and in Toronto the rents will be high. And you’ll have many other living expenses. My guess is that you will be hard pressed to save anything at all for quite some time. Possibly years.”

  Megan opened her mouth to say that was okay, she didn’t mind how long it took, that in fact going to England wasn’t the important thing as far as she was concerned, it was leaving home, living her own life, that mattered. But her father looked up and something in his expression made her pause.

  He said, “If you want to go to England and you have a friend there now, you should go now. These things—opportunities—have a habit of slipping away. I will stand you the money for a plane ticket and a little to tide you over until you find a job there. I believe there is an arrangement whereby Commonwealth citizens can work in the United Kingdom for a limited period. You’ll need a passport, of course. I imagine you don’t have one?”

  Megan stared at him. She couldn’t have been any more astonished if he’d suddenly climbed up onto his desk and danced a jig.

  “Do you have a passport?” her father asked.

  “Yes,” Megan said faintly.

  He looked surprised again but Megan was too confused to enjoy it.

  “You seem to be well organized,” her father said. “It’s all settled then.” He gave her what Megan thought of as his end-of-interview smile.

  At the door she turned and said, “Thank you very much.”

  Her father was gazing out of the window again but he turned his head and looked at her. “I dare say you’ve earned it,” he said, which was his most amazing comment yet, suggesting as it did that he’d actually noticed.

  Megan went out and closed the study door and stood for a moment, not thinking of England or even of leaving home, but thinking instead how sad it was that she had never known the strange man who was her father and now she never would.

  She phoned Tom to tell him. He was in a hall of residence down at the University of Toronto, so it was a long-distance call, but she decided it would be worth it to hear the astonishment in his voice. She timed the call for six o’clock at night, reasoning that he’d be home from his classes by then and not yet out for the evening with his friends, and she was right.

  “England!” he said. “England—holy cow, when did all this happen?”

  He’d been urging her to leave home and predicting that she never would for years. “You’re gettin’ old, Meg,” he’d say, shaking his head over her. He was only a year older than Megan but he’d always acted as if she was his baby sister, and it drove her mad. “You keep saying you’re going but you never do. How much do you want to bet you’re still here when you’re thirty?”

  Now she said casually, “I’ve been planning it for a while. Dad seems to think it’s a good idea. He’s paying for the ticket.”

  “He’s what?” Tom said. “He’s what? You got money out of him?”

  Then he said seriously, “That’s really great, Meg. Congratulations—I never thought you had it in you.”

  Oh, but that last comment tasted sweet.

  She told the rest of the boys at suppertime. She summoned them a few minutes early while her mother was still in the kitchen making the gravy. Their father ate separately in his study after the rest of them had finished. Megan had suggested the arrangement some years before and it had been a great relief all around.

  The boys came promptly; there was a house rule—also of Megan’s devising—whereby anyone who wasn’t sitting at his place within five minutes of being called went hungry. No excuses. It had proved to be very effective. When she first instituted the rule Tom had accused her of being a dictator, and Megan had said, “Absolutely.”

  They shambled in two by two—like the animals in the Ark, Megan thought, apart from being all the same sex and considerably less appealing. Donald and Gary, age seventeen; Peter and Corey, age ten and nine. The latter two were bickering, as always.

  “I never touched it,” Peter said.

  “You did too,” Corey said. “I saw you.”

  “You couldn’t have, pig, ’cause I never touched it.”

  “If you two don’t shut up, I’m going to tear your heads off,” Donald said. He sat down and heaved his chair closer to the table.

  “Sit down, all of you,” Megan said, stuffing Adam into his high chair. “I have something to tell you.” She tied Adam’s bib firmly around his neck and manoeuvred the high chair up to the table. Tom’s empty chair was still there, taking up valuable space. Megan would have liked to shove it back against the wall, but her mother insisted on it staying where it was, like a ghost at the feast.

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Peter said to Corey.

  “Yeah, I am. Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

  Donald half stood and reached across the table to cuff him, but Corey dodged out of the way.

  Megan picked up a spoon and rapped the table warningly. They all looked at her. “I have something to tell you,” she repeated.

  Peter looked back at Corey. “Snot-head,” he said.

  Megan stepped around the table and rapped him on the head with the spoon.

  “Ow!” Peter said, outraged, rubbing his head. “Megan! That really hurt!”

  “Pay attention!”

  Donald put his hand up.

  “What?” Megan snapped.

  “I’m really, really sorry to interrupt,” Donald said languidly, “but I thought you’d like to know the baby is strangling.”

  “No, he’s not,” Gary said. “He’s just having a crap.”

  “He doesn’t go blue when he’s having a crap, he goes red.”

  �
�Would you please not use words like that at the table,” Megan said automatically. She glanced at Adam. He was making gasping noises and pulling at his bib and was indeed a little blue. She undid the strings of the bib, did them up again more loosely and patted him on the back. He took several deep breaths, yelled briefly and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Megan patted him again in approval; he was a stoical little soul. He was the only one of them she was going to miss.

  “Now all of you, listen,” she continued. “In two weeks’ time I’m leaving home.”

  “Good!” Peter said.

  “This is great, great news!” Gary said.

  “Really?” Donald said. “You mean, for good?”

  “Yes,” Megan said. “For good. And it’s going to affect all of you. You’re going to have to do more to help around the house.”

  Corey said, “Can we eat now?”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Megan demanded. “You’re going to have to help Mum. She won’t be able to manage without help. Did you all hear that?”

  “Yes,” Donald said. “Not being stone deaf, we all heard that.”

  “Good. I’ve made out a list of chores for each of you and I’m going to pin them to the wall next to the fridge. I’ll go through them with you, individually, before I leave. You are to do them without being asked. Do you understand? Without being asked! I will be checking, regularly, with Mum.” How she was going to do that from England she had no idea, but in any case she held out no hope that it would work. It just had to be said.

  “Okay,” Gary said. “Fine. Can we get on with supper? I’ve got homework.”

  “Corey?” Megan said. “Peter?”

  “Okay! Okay! Okay! Can. We. Eat. Now?”

  None of them had asked where she was going. I’m sick to death of the lot of you, she thought. I really am.

  She told Patrick on Saturday night over coffee at Harper’s. They always went to Harper’s on Saturday night, along with everyone else in town under the age of thirty. The only other place to go was Ben’s Bar, which on Saturdays was jammed with drunken loggers. In the summer there was the beach, but now it was February and minus twenty-six degrees outside and it hurt to draw a breath. In Harper’s it was so hot everyone was stripped down to their shirt sleeves, but the snow tracked in on people’s boots refused to melt. Mounds of parkas and hats and gloves were heaped onto hooks and stuffed into the corners of benches.