black water of Bradley Lake beneath the centuries-old Indian paintings
of the legendary Wendigo of the St. Barthélemy settlement etched into
the granite cliffs that stood sentinel around the lake. He dreamed of his
mother’s house. In those dreams, he explored the vast dim rooms on the
upper floors of the house. They were dreams of secrecy, as though he
were hiding, though in the dreams it was unclear what he might be hiding
from. He dreamed of his mother—dreams of guilt and chastisement
and shame, dreams from which he sometimes awoke gasping for breath,
feeling as though he’d been caught
in flagrante delicto
committing some
terrible crime for which the punishment was being sent away forever.
The worst dreams were those of Elliot McKitrick, because Elliot
berated him as Jeremy wept, telling him that Jeremy had ruined Elliot’s
life forever by being so
weak
and
sick
and such an
invert
and leading him
astray, destroying Elliot’s chances for a respectable life among decent
people. And in those dreams, Elliot’s voice wasn’t Elliot’s voice at all—it
was the voice on the tape.
After six months, Jeremy lost twenty-five pounds he could barely
afford to lose. He had dark circles under his eyes and almost-healed burns
on the most private parts of his body. But Dr. Gionet had pronounced
him cured and he’d been allowed to return home.
Adeline welcomed him home as though he’d been away visiting
relatives which, as it turned out, was what she’d told everyone in Parr’s
Landing who’d asked where Jeremy was.
On his first night home, Jeremy and Adeline ate dinner in the
mahogany-panelled dining room at Parr House. Although it was just the
two of them, Adeline ordered the table to be set formally with Viennese
damask and Georgian silver, as though Jeremy were a visiting dignitary
instead of her seventeen-year-old son who had just returned under the
cover of darkness from a private psychiatric hospital.
“I expect things to be different now, Jeremy,” Adeline said. “With
the boys, and your . . . incident. They will be, won’t they? I missed you
so much while you were away. It was hard enough when your brother got
that slut in the family way and ran off without a word. The detectives
said he was in Toronto, living openly with her. Openly. Can you imagine?”
This line of lament—her abandonment by Jack five years before; the
“slut”; Morgan, the “bastard granddaughter,” whose existence Adeline had
discovered when she hired a private detective in Toronto to find Jack—
was one Jeremy had heard many times before from his mother. He’d long
since learned to let his mother’s invective run its course, especially on
this one topic of family betrayal.
“And apparently they have a five-year-old. My only granddaughter,
born
illegitimate
. But still, never even a photograph!” Adeline looked
pained. “Can you imagine? Your old mother hates to be left alone,
darling.” Adeline paused delicately as though she were waiting for him
to hold a door open for her, or pull her chair out. She laid the sterling
silver fork in her hand elegantly against the gold rim of the plate. “You
won’t disappoint me, will you, Jeremy? You
are
cured, aren’t you? Dr.
Gionet assures me that you are, and that we won’t have any more trouble.
Because if we do,” she added, “he has also assured me that there will
always be a place waiting for you at the Doucette.”
Jeremy ran away that night.
He hitched a ride with the driver of a supply truck returning to Wawa
from a round-trip delivery. From Wawa, he’d hitchhiked to Toronto over
the course of four days of near-starvation and beneath a thick coating of
accumulated highway grime. Most of his rides assumed he was a runaway
of some kind, but because he was frail and small, his rides took pity on
him, especially those men who were travelling with their wives.
After two days, he became aware of a solidarity of sorts among
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